improbable that Perrault, though often the courage to do yourself? Believe me, you ought rather to be silent. You love life; others love it no less. Be assured that, if you continue to abuse me, you shall have reproaches, and not false ones, in return." Here he is interrupted by the chorus, with-"Enough! too much on both sides! Old man, cease this ill language towards your son.' father. All the rest of the scene is in the same style: Admetus.-Oh! I am well aware that you wish to live as long as possible. One would think that the chorus should Racine used the same artifice, for he rather give the son a severe reprimand for was at least as malignant as Boileau. Al-speaking in so brutal a manner to his though he did not, like the latter, make his fortune by satire, he enjoyed the pleasure of confounding his enemies on the occasion of a small and very pardonable Pheres (to his son).-Thou speakest mistake into which they had fallen re-against thy father, without his having inspecting Euripides, and, at the same time, jured thee. of feeling much superior to Euripides imself. He rallies the same Perrault and bus partisans upon their critique on the Alceste of Euripides, because these gentlemen had unfortunately been deceived by a faulty edition of Euripides, and had taken some replies of Admetus for those of Alceste; but Euripides does not the less appear in all countries to have done very wrong in making Admetus use such extraordinary language to his father, whom he violently reproaches for not hav-think of marrying several wives, who may ing died for him:die that thy life may be lengthened. How!" replies the king his father; "whom, pray, are you addressing so haughtily? Some Lydian or Phrygian alave? Know you not that I am free, and a Thessalian? (Fine language, truly, for a king and a father!) You insult me as if I were the meanest of men. Where is the law which says, fathers must die for their children? Each for himself here below. I have fulfilled all my obligations towards you. In what, then, do I wrong you! Do I ask you to die for me? The light is dear to you: is it less so to me? You accuse me of cowardice! Coward that you yourself are! You were not ashamed to urge your wife to save you, by dying for you. After this, does it become you to treat as cowards those who refuse to do for you what you have not Pheres. And art thou not carrying to the tomb her who has died for thee? Admetus.- Ah! most infamous of men! 'tis the proof of thy cowardice! Pheres.-At least, thou canst not say she died for me. Admetus.-Would to heaven that thou wert in a situation to need my assistance ! Pheres.-Thou wouldst do better to After this scene, a domestic comes and talks to himself about the arrival of Hercules. "A stranger," says he, "opens the door of his own accord; places himself without more ado at table; is angry because he is not served quick enough; fills his cup every moment with wine, and drinks long draughts of red and of white; constantly singing or rather howling bad songs, without giving himself any concern about the king and his wife, for whom we are mourning. He is, doubtless, some cunning rogue, some vagabond, or assassin." It seems somewhat strange that Hercules should be taken for a cunning rogue, and no less so that Hercules, the friend of Admetus, should be unknown to the household. It is still more extraordinary that Hercules should be ignorant of Alceste's death, at the very time when they were carrying her to her tomb. Tastes must not be disputed, but such scenes as these would, assuredly, not be tolerated at one of our country fairs. Brumoy, who has given us the Théâtre des Grecs (Greek Theatre), but has not translated Euripides with scrupulous fidelity, does all he can to justify the scene of Admetus and his father: the argument he makes use of is rather singular. First, he says, that "there was nothing offensive to the Greeks in these things which we regard as horrible and indecent; therefore it must be allowed that they were not exactly what we take them to have been; in short, ideas have changed." To this it may be answered, that the ideas of polished nations on the respect due from children to their fathers have never changed. He adds, "Who can doubt that in different ages ideas have changed, relative to points of morality of still greater importance?" We answer, that there are scarcely any points of greater importance. "A Frenchman," continues he, "is insulted; the pretended good sense of the French obliges him to run the risk of a duel, and to kill or be killed, in order to recover his honour." We answer, that it is not the pretended good sense of the French alone, but of all the nations of Europe without exception. He proceeds "The world in general cannot be fully sensible how ridiculous this maxim will appear two thousand years hence, nor how it would have been scoffed at in the time of Euripides." This maxim is cruel and fatal, but it is not ridiculous; nor would it have been in any way scoffed at in the time of Euripides. There were many instances of duels among the Asiatics. In the very commencement of the first book of the Iliad, we see Achilles half-unsheathing his sword, and ready to fight Agamemnon, had not Minerva taken him by the hair, and made him desist. Plutarch relates that Hephaestion and Craterus were fighting a duel, but wer separated by Alexander. Quintus Curtiu tells us, that two other of Alexander' officers fought a duel in the presence o Alexander, one of them armed at al points, the other, who was a wrestler supplied only with a staff, and that th latter overcame his adversary. Besides what has duelling to do with Admetus and his father Pheres reproaching each othe by turns with having too great a love fo life, and with being cowards? I shall give only this one instance the blindness of translators and commen tators; for if Brumoy, the most impartia of all, has fallen into such errors, whe are we to expect from others? I would however, ask the Brumoys and the Da ciers, if they find much salt in th language which Euripides puts into th mouth of Polyphemus ?-"I fear not th thunder of Jupiter; I know not that Ju {piter is a prouder or a stronger god tha myself; I care very little about him. he sends down rain, I shut myself up my cavern; there I eat a roasted calf some wild animal; after which, I lie dow all my length, drink off a great potful milk, and send forth a certain noise, whic is as good as his thunder." The schoolmen cannot have very fir noses, if they are not disgusted with th noise which Polyphemus makes when h has eaten heartily. They say that the Athenian pit laughe at this pleasantry, and that the Athenian never laughed at anything stupid. So th whole populace of Athens had mo wit than the court of Louis XIV.! an the populace are not the same ever where! Nevertheless, Euripides has beautie and Sophocles still more; but they hay much greater defects. We may ventur to say, that the fine scenes of Corneill and the affecting tragedies of Racine, a as much superior to the tragedies of S phocles and Euripides, as these two Gree were to Thespis. Racine was quite se sible of his great superiority over Eur Moliére, in his best pieces, is as supenor to the pure but cold Terence, and to the buffoon Aristophanes, as to the merryandrew Dancourt. pides, but he praised the Greek poet for { rhetorical pleadings, fitter for provincial the sake of humbling Perrault. schools than for a tragedy. The same person will discover weakness and uniformity in some of Racine's characters; and in others, gallantry and sometimes even coquetry; he will find declarations of love breathing more of the idyl and the elegy, than of a great dramatic passion; and will complain that more than one well-written piece has elegance to please, but not eloquence to move him. Just so will he judge of the ancients; not by Thus there are things in which the moders are superior to the ancients; and others, though very few, in which we are their inferiors. The whole of the dispute reduces itself to this fact. Certain Comparisons between Celebrated their names--not by the age in which Works. Both taste and reason seem to require that we should, in an ancient as well as in a modern, discriminate between the good and the bad, which are often to be found in contact with each other. The warmest admiration must be excited by that line of Corneille's, unequalled by any in Homer, in Sophocles, or in Euripides: Que voulez-vous qu'il fit contre trois.-Qu'il mourut. And, with equal justice, the line which follows will be condemned. The man of taste, while he admires the sublime picture, the striking contrasts of character, and strong colouring in the last scene of Rodogyne, will perceive how many faults, how many improbabilities, have prepared the way for this terrible situation-how much Rodogyne has belied her character, and by what crooked ways it is necessary to pass to this great and tragical catastrophe. The same equitable judge will not fail to do justice to the fine and artful contexture of Racine's tragedies, the only ones, perhaps, which have been well wrought from the time of Eschylus down to the age of Louis XIV. He will be touched by that continued elegance, that purity of language, that truth of character, to be found in him alone; by that grandeur without bombast, that fidelity to nature which never wanders in vain declamations, sophistical disputes, false and far-fetched images, often expressed in solecisms or they lived-but by their works themselves. this day to come and present to us, by Suppose Timanthes the painter were at the side of the paintings in the Palais Royal, his picture in four colours of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, telling us that men that it was an admirable artifice to veil the of judgment in Greece had assured him face of Agamemnon, lest his grief should appear to equal that of Clytemnestra, and the tears of the father dishonour the majesty of the monarch. He would find connoisseurs who would reply—it is a stroke of ingenuity, but not of painting; a veil on the head of your principal personage has a frightful effect; your art has failed you. Behold the master-piece of Rubens, who has succeeded in expressing, in the countenance of Mary of Medicis, the pain attendant on child-birth-the joy, the smile, the tenderness-not with four colours, but with every tint of nature. If you wished that Agamemnon should partly conceal his face, you should have made him hide a portion of it by placing his hands over his eyes and forehead; and not with a veil, which is as disagreeable to the eye, and as unpicturesque, as it is contrary to all costume. You should then have shown some falling tears which the hero would conceal, and have expressed in his muscles the convulsions of a grief which he struggles to suppress you should have painted in this attitude majesty and despair. You are a Greek, and Rubens is a Belgian; but the Belgian bears away the palm. On a Passage in Homer. A Florentine, a man of letters, of clear understanding and cultivated taste, was one day in Lord Chesterfield's library, together with an Oxford professor, and a Scotsman, who was boasting of the poem of Fingal, composed, said he, in the Gaelic tongue, which is still partly that of Lower Brittany. "Ah!" exclaimed he, "how fine is antiquity!" the poem of Fingal has passed from mouth to mouth for nearly two thousand years, down to us, without any alteration. Such power has real beauty over the minds of men! { He then read to the company the commencement of Fingal : "Cuthullin sat by Tara's wall: by the tree of the rustling sound. His spear leaned against a rock. His shield lay on the grass, by his side. Amid his thoughts of mighty Carbar, a hero slain by the chief in war, the scout of ocean comes, Moran, the son of Fithil! "Arise," says the youth, "Cuthullin, arise! I see the ships of the north! many, chief of men, are the foe; many the heroes of the sea-born Swaran !" "Moran," replied the blue-eyed chief, " thou ever tremblest, son of Fithil! thy fears have increased the foe. It is Fingal, king of desarts, with aid to green Erin of streams." "I beheld their chief," says Moran," tall as a glittering rock. His spear is a blasted pine. His shield the rising moon! He sat on the shore, like a cloud of mist on the silent hill !" &c. "That," said the Oxford professor, "is{ the true style of Homer; but what pleases me still more is, that I find in it the sublime eloquence of the Hebrews. I could fancy myself to be reading passages such as these from those fine canticles "Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." the Highest his voice, hailstones an gave "In them hath he set a tabernacle fo the sun. Which is as a bridegroom com ing out of his chamber." "Break their teeth in their mouth, God; break the great teeth of the youn lions, O Lord. Let them pass away, a waters that run continually: when h bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, le them be as cut in pieces. As a sna which melteth, let every one of them pas away; like the untimely birth of a wo man, that they may not see the sun. Be fore your pots can feel the thorns, he sha take them away as in a whirlwind, bot living, and in his wrath.” "They return at evening; they mak a noise like a dog. But thou, O Lord shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have al the heathen derision. Consume them i wrath; consume them that they may no be." "The hill of God is as the hill of Ba shan, a high hill as the hill of Bashan Why leap ye, ye high hills? The Lor said, I will bring again from Bashan, will bring up my people again from th depths of the sea: That thy feet may b dipped in the blood of thine enemies and the tongue of thy dogs in the same. "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fil it." "O my God, make them like a wheel as the stubble before the wind. As the fire burneth the wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire; so perse cute them with thy tempest, and make {them afraid with thy storm." "He shall judge among the heathen he shall fill the places with dead bodies he shall wound the heads over many {countries." "Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones,' "Thou hast broken the teeth of the &c. &c. &c. ungodly." "Then the earth shook and trembled; } the foundation also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. The Lord also thundered in the heavens; and The Florentine, having listened with great attention to the verses of the canticles recited by the doctor, as well as to the first lines of Fingal bellowed forth by the Scotsman, confessed that he was no greatly moved by all these Eastern figures, and that he liked the noble simplicity of Virgil's style much better. At these words the Scotsman turned pale with wrath, the Oxonian shrugged bis shoulders with pity, but Lord Chesterfield encouraged the Florentine by a le of approbation. tal charger before which the proudest coursers of Limousin flee, as the bleating sheep and the tender lambs crowd into the fold at the sight of a terrible wolf issuing from the forest with fiery eyes, with hair erect, and foaming mouth, theatening the flock and the shepherd with the fury of his murderous jaws. "Martin, the famed protector of them who dwell in fruitful Touraine, Genevieve, the mild divinity of them who drink the waters of the Seine and the Marne, Denis, who bore his head under his arm in the sight of man and of immortals, trembled as they saw George proudly traversing the vast fields of air. On his head was a golden helmet, glittering with dia The Florentine becoming warm, and finding himself supported, said to them, "Gentlemen, nothing is more easy than to do violence to nature; nothing more difficult than to imitate her. I know something of those whom we in Italy call mprovisatori; and I could speak in this Oriental style for eight hours together, without the least effort; for it requires none to be bombastic in negligent verse,monds that once paved the squares of overloaded with epithets almost continually repeated, to heap combat upon combat, and to describe chimeras.” the heavenly Jerusalem, when it appeared to mortals during forty diurnal revolutions of the great Luminary and his inconstant sister, who with her mild radiance enlightens the darkness of night. "What!" said the Professor, ". you make an epic poem impromptu!” “Not a rational epic poem in correct verse, like "In his hand is the terrible and saVirgil," replied the Italian, " but a poem cred lance with which, in the first days of in which I would abandon myself to the the world, the demi-god Michael, who current of my ideas, and not take the trou-executes the vengeance of the Most High, ble to arrange them.” "I defy you to do it," said the Scotsman and the Oxford graduate at once. "Well," returned the Florentine, "give me a subject." Lord Chesterfield gave him as a subject the Black Prince, the conqueror of Poictiers, granting peace after the victory. The Italian collected himself, and thus began "Muse of Albion, Genius that presidest over heroes, come sing with me-not the idle rage of men implacable alike to friends and foes-not the deeds of heroes whom the Gods have favoured in turn, without any reason for so favouring them -not the siege of a town which is not taken-not the extravagant exploits of the fabulous Fingal, but the real victories of a hero modest as brave, who led kings captive, and respected his vanquished eneries. "George, the Mars of England, had descended from on high, on that immor overthrew the eternal enemy of the world and the Creator. The most beautiful of the plumage of the angels that stand about the throne, plucked from their immortal backs, waved over his casque; and around it hovered Terror, destroying War, unpitying Revenge, and Death the terminator of man's calamities. He came like a comet in its rapid course, darting through the orbits of the wondering planets, and leaving far behind its rays, pale and terrible, announcing to weak mortals the fall of kings and nations. "He alighted on the banks of the Charente, and the sound of his immortal arms was echoed from the spheres of Jupiter and Saturn. Two strides brought him to the spot where the son of the magnanimous Edward waited for the son of the intrepid de Valois," &c. The Florentine continued in this strain for more than a quarter of an hour. The words fell from his lips, as Homer says, more thickly and abundantly than the |