M. de St. Lambert. She died in childbirth; came rather late to a great supper in the neighand the following dramatic elegy was circu- bourhood; and as it was known that she made lated all over Paris the week after that catas-it a point of honour to attend on him, the trophe. catastrophe was generally suspected. She

M. de Chatelet.-Ah! ce n'est pas ma mentioned it, however, herself, immediately

of that most agreeable veteran. Nothing can be more just than the greater part of the fol'owing observations.

66

Quoi-qu'il y ait dans ses Essais une infinité de faits d'anecdotes et de citations, il n'est pas difficile de s'appercevoir que ses études n'étaient ni vastes ni profondes. Il n'avait guère lu que quelques poëtes latins, quelques livres de voyage, et son Sènèque et son Plutarque."

opportunity of saying something of the Essays-Hawkesworth's Voyages are also very much commended; and Sir William Jones' letter to Anquetil du Perron, is said to be capable, with a few retrenchments, of being made worthy of the pen of the Patriarch himself.-Mrs. Montagu's Essay on Shakespeare is also applauded to the full extent of its merits; and, indeed, a very laudable degree of candour and moderation is observed as to our national taste "De tous les auteurs qui nous restent de l'an. fit for us, and Racine for them; and each in the drama.-Shakespeare, he observes, is tiquité, Plutarque est, sans contredit, celui qui a recueilli le plus de vérités de fait et de spéculation. should be satisfied with his lot, and would do Ses œuvres sont une mine inépuisable de lumières well to keep to his own national manner. et de connaissances: c'est vraiment l'Encyclopédie When we attempt to be regular and dignified, des anciens. Montaigne nous en a donné la fleur, we are merely cold and stiff; and when they et il y a ajouté les reflexions les plus fines, et sur-aim at freedom and energy, they become abtout les résultats les plus secrets de sa propre expérience. Il me semble donc que si j'avais à donner une idée de ses Essais, je dirais en deux mots que c'est un commentaire que Montaigne fit sur luimême en méditant les écrits de Plutarque...Je pense encore que je dirais mal: ce serait lui prêter un projet...Montaigne n'en avait aucun. En mettant la plume à la main, il paraît n'avoir songé qu'au plaisir de causer familierement avec son lecteur. Il lui rend compte de ses lectures, de ses pensées, de ses reflexions, sans suite, sans dessein: il vent avoir le plaisir de penser tout haut, et il en jouit à son aise. Il cite souvent Plutarque, parce que Plutarque était son livre favori. La seule loi qu'il semble s'être prescrite, c'est de ne jamais parler que de ce qui l'intéressait vivement: de là l'énergie et la vivacité de ses expressions, la grace et l'origialité de son langage. Son esprit a cette assurance et cette franchise aimable que l'on ne trouve que dans ces enfans bien nés, dont la contrainte du monde et de l'éducation ne gêna point encore les mouvemens faciles et naturels."

After a still farther encomium on the sound sense of this favourite writer, M. Grimm concludes

'Personne n'a-t-il donc pensé plus que Montaigne? Je l'ignore. Mais ce que je crois bien savoir, c'est que personne n'a dit avec plus de simplicité ce qu'il a senti, ce qu'il a pensé. On ne peut rien ajouter à l'éloge qu'il a fait lui-même de son ouvrage ; c'est ici un livre de bonne foi. Cela est

divin, et cela est exact."

64

Qu'est-ce que toutes les connaissances humaines? le cercle en est si borné!.... Et depuis quatre mille ans, qu'a-t-on fait pour l'étendre? Montesquieu a dit quelque part, qu'il travaillait à un livre de douze pages, qui contiendrait tout ce que nous savons sur la Métaphysique, la Politique et la Morale, et tout ce que de grands auteurs ont oublié dans les volumes qu'ils ont donnés sur ces sciences Je suis très sérieusement persuadé qu'il ne tenait qu'à lui d'accomplir ce grand projet.'

surd and extravagant. The celebrity of Garrick seems to have been scarcely less at Paris than in London,-their greatest actor being familiarly designated "Le Garrick François." His powers of pantomime, indeed, were universally intelligible, and seem to have made a prodigious impression upon the theatrical critics of France. But his authority is quoted by M. Grimm, for the observation, that there is not the smallest affinity in the tragic declamation of the two countries;-so that an actor who could give the most astonishing effect to a passage of Shakespeare, would not, though perfectly master of French, be able to guess how a single line of Racine should be spoken on the stage.

We cannot leave the subject of the drama, however, without observing, with what an an auxiliary in that battle which we have for agreeable surprise we discovered in M. Grimm, some time waged, though not without trepidation, against the theatrical standards of France, and in defence of our own more free and irreg ular drama. While a considerable part of our own men of letters, carried away by the authority and supposed unanimity of the continental judges, were disposed to desert the cause of Shakespeare and Nature, and to recognize Racine and Voltaire, as the only true models of dramatic excellence, it turns out that the greatest Parisian critic, of that best age of criticism, was of opinion that the very idea of dramatic excellence had never been developed in France; and that, from the very causes which we have formerly specified, there was neither powerful passion nor real nature on their stage. After giving some acMontesquieu, Buffon, and Raynal are the count of a play of La Harpe's, he observes, only authors, we think, of whom M. Grimm "I am more and more confirmed in the speaks with serious respect and admiration. opinion, that true tragedy, such as has never Great praise is lavished upon Robertson's yet existed in France, must, after all, be writCharles V.-Young's Night Thoughts are said, ten in prose; or at least can never accommoand with justice, to be rather ingenious than date itself to the pompous and rhetorical tone pathetic; and to show more of a gloomy im- of our stately versification. The ceremonious agination than a feeling heart.-Thomson's and affected dignity which belongs to such Seasons are less happily stigmatized as ex- compositions, is quite inconsistent with the cessively ornate and artificial, and said to just imitation of nature, and destructive of all stand in the same relation to the Georgics, true pathos. It may be very fine and very pothat the Lady of Loretto, with all her tawdry etical; but it is not dramatic:-and accordfiuery, bears to the naked graces of the Venus ingly I have no hesitation in maintaining, that de Medici.-Johnson's Life of Savage is ex- all our celebrated tragedies belong to the epic tolled as exceedingly entertaining-though and not to the dramatic division of poetry. the author is laughed at, in the true Parisian The Greeks and Romans had a dramatic laste, for not having made a jest of his hero., verse, which did not interfere with simplicity

là. . .

of the mixed nature of our government, persons of all degrees take a share in both, each in his own peculiar character and fashion: and the result has been, in both, a much greater activity, variety, and vigour, than was ever exhibited under a more exclusive system. In England, too, the stage has in general been dependent on the nation at large, and not on the favour of the Court;-and it is natural to suppose that the character of its exhibitions has been affected by a due consideration of that of the miscellaneous patron whose feelings it was its business to gratify and reflect.

or familiarity of diction; but as we have none, | spirit of absolute monarchy-the same arutiwe must make up our minds to compose our cial stateliness-the same slow moving of few tragedies in prose, if we ever expect to have persons-the same suppression of ordinary any that may deserve the name. What then?" emotions, and ostentatious display of lofty he continues; "must we throw our Racines sentiments, and, finally, the same jealousy of and Voltaires in the fire?-by no means;- the interference of lower agents, and the same on the contrary, we must keep them, and horror of vulgarity and tumult. When we study and admire them more than ever;- consider too, that in the countries where this but with right conceptions of their true nature form of the drama has been established, the and merit-as masterpieces of poetry, and Court is the chief patron of the theatre, and reasoning, and description ;-as the first works courtiers almost its only supporters, we shall of the first geniuses that ever adorned any probably be inclined to think that this unination under heaven:-But not as tragedies, formity of character is not a mere accidental -not as pieces intended to exhibit natural coincidence, but that the same causes which characters and passions speaking their own have stamped those attributes on the serious language, and to produce that terrible impres- hours of its rulers, have extended them to sion which such pieces alone can produce. those mimic representations which were origConsidered in that light, their coldness and inally devised for their amusement. In Engchildishness will be immediately apparent ;—land, again, our drama has all along partaken and though the talents of the artist will always be conspicuous, their misapplication and failure will not be less so. With the prospect that lies before us, the best thing, perhaps, that we can do is to go on, boasting of the unparalleled excellence we have attained. But how speedily should our boastings be silenced if the present race of children should be succeeded by a generation of men! Here is a theory," concludes the worthy Baron, a little alarmed it would seem at his own temerity, "which it would be easy to confirm and illustrate much more completely-if a man had a desire to be stoned to death before After having said so much about the stage, the door of the Theatre François! But, in the we cannot afford room either for the quarrels mean time, till I am better prepared for the or witticisms of the actors, which are reporthonours of martyrdom, I must entreat you to ed at great length in these volumes-or for keep the secret of my infidelity to yourself." the absurdities, however ludicrous, of the Diderot holds very nearly the same lan-"Diou de Danse" as old Vestris ycleped himguage. After a long dissertation upon the difference between real and artificial dignity, he proceeds,-"What follows, then, from all this-but that tragedy is still to be invented in France; and that the ancients, with all their faults, were probably much nearer inventing it than we have been?-Noble actions and sentiments, with simple and familiar language, are among its first elements;-and I strongly suspect, that for these two hundred years, we have mistaken the stateliness of Madrid for the heroism of Rome. If once a man of genius shall venture to give to his characters and to his diction the simplicity of ancient dignity, plays and players will be very different things from what they are now. But how much of this," he adds also in a fit of sympathetic terror, "could I venture to say to any body but you! I should be pelted in the streets, if I were but suspected of the blasphemies I have just uttered."

With the assistance of two such allies, we shall renew the combat against the Continental dramatists with fresh spirits and confidence; and shall probably find an early opportunity to brave the field, upon that important theme. In the mean time we shall only remark, that we suspect there is something more than an analogy between the government and political constitution of the two countries, and the character of their drama. The tragedy of the Continent is conceived it. the very genius and

self-or even the famous "affaire du Menuet” which distracted the whole court of France at the marriage of the late King. We can allow only a sentence indeed to the elaborate dissertation in which Diderot endeavours to prove that an actor is all the worse for having any feeling of the passions he represents, and is never so sure to agitate the souls of his hearers as when his own is perfectly at ease. We are persuaded that this is not correctly true;-though it might take more distinctions than the subject is worth, to fix precisely where the truth lies. It is plain we think, however, that a good actor must have a capacity, at least, of all the passions whose language he mimics,—and we are rather inclined to think, that he must also have a transient feeling of them, whenever his mim cry is very successful. That the emotion should be very short-lived, and should give way to trivial or comic sensations, with very little interval, affords but a slender presumption against its reality, when we consider how rapidly such contradictory feelings succeed each other, in light minds, in the real business of life. That real passion, again, never would be so graceful and dignified as the counterfeited passion of the stage, is either an impeachment of the accuracy of the copy, or a contradiction in terms. The real passion of a noble and dignified character must always be dignified and graceful,—and if Cæsar, when

of abuses so enormous as this: But the tone in which M. Grimm notices it, as a mere foiblesse on the part of le Grand Maurice, gives us reason to think that it was by no means without a parallel in the contemporary history. In England, we verily believe, there never was a time in which it would not have produced insurrection or assassination.

actually bleeding in the Senate-house, folded | from the arms of her lawful husband, and to his robe around him, that he might fall with compel her to submit again to his embraces,— decorum at the feet of his assassins, why and that the court was actually guilty of the should we say that it is out of nature for a incredible atrocity of granting such an order! player, both to sympathise with the passions It was not only granted, M. Grimm assures of his hero, and to think of the figure he us, but executed, and this poor creature was makes in the eyes of the spectators? Strong dragged from the house of her husband, and conception is, perhaps in every case, attended conducted by a file of grenadiers to the quarwith a temporary belief of the reality of its ters of his highness, where she remained till objects; and it is impossible for any one to his death, the unwilling and disgusted victim copy with tolerable success the symptoms of of his sensuality! It is scarcely possible to a powerful emotion, without a very lively ap- regret the subversion of a form of governprehension and recollection of its actual pre-ment, that admitted, if but once in a century, sence. We have no idea, we own, that the copy can ever be given without some participation in the emotion itself-or that it is possible to repeat pathetic words, and with the true tone and gestures of passion, with the same indifference with which a schoolboy repeats his task, or a juggler his deceptions. The feeling, we believe, is often very momentary; and it is this which has misled those who have doubted of its existence. But there are many strong feelings equally fleeting and undeniable. The feelings of the spectators, in the theatre, though frequently more keen than they experience anywhere else, are in general infinitely less durable than those excited by real transactions; and a ludicrous incident or blunder in the performance, will carry the whole house, in an instant, from sobbing to ungovernable laughter: And even in real life, we have every day occasion to observe, how quickly the busy, the dissi-perience and a certain maturity; and implies, pated, the frivolous, and the very youthful, in nations as well as individuals, the extinc can pass from one powerful and engrossing emotion to another. The daily life of Voltaire, we think, might have furnished Diderot with as many and as striking instances of the actual succession of incongruous emotions, as he has collected from the theatrical life of Sophie Arnoud, to prove that one part of the succession must necessarily have been fictitious.

There are various traits of the oppressions and abuses of the government, incidentally noticed in this work, which maintains, on the whole, a very aristocratical tone of politics. One of the most remarkable relates to no less a person than the Maréchal de Saxe. This great warrior, who is known never to have taken the field without a small travelling seraglio in his suite, had engaged a certain Madlle. Chantilly to attend him in one of his campaigns. The lady could not prudently decline the honour of the invitation, because she was very poor; but her heart and soul were devoted to a young pastry cook of the name of Favart, for whose sake she at last broke out of the Marshal's camp, and took refuge in the arms of her lover; who rewarded her heroism by immediately making her his wife. The history of the Marshal's lamentation on finding himself deserted, is purely ridiculous, and is very well told; but our feelings take a very different character, when, upon reading a little farther, we find that this illustrious person had the baseness and brutality to apply to his sovereign for a lettre de cachet to force this unfortunate woman

One of the most remarkable passages in this philosophical journal, is that which contains the author's estimate of the advantages and disadvantages of philosophy. Not being much more of an optimist than ourselves, M. Grimm thinks that good and evil are pretty fairly distributed to the different generations of men; and that, if an age of philosophy be happier in some respects than one of ignor ance and prejudice, there are particulars in which it is not so fortunate. Philosophy, he thinks, is the necessary fruit of a certain ex

tion of some of the pleasures as well as the follies of early life. All nations, he observes, have begun with poetry, and ended with philosophy-or, rather, have passed through the region of philosophy in their way to that of stupidity and dotage. They lose the poetical passion, therefore, before they acquire the taste for speculation; and, with it, they lose all faith in those allusions, and all interest in those trifles which make the happiness of the brightest portion of our existence. If, in this advanced stage of society, men are less brutal, they are also less enthusiastic ;-if they are more habitually beneficent, they have less warmth of affection. They are delivered indeed from the yoke of many prejudices; but at the same time deprived of many motives of action. They are more prudent, but more anxious-are more affected with the general interests of mankind, but feel less for their neighbours; and, while curiosity takes the place of admiration, are more enlightened, but far less delighted with the universe in which they are placed.

The effect of this philosophical spirit on the arts, is evidently unfavourable on the whole. Their end and object is delight, and that of philosophy is truth; and the talent that seeks to instruct, will rarely condescend to aim merely at pleasing. Racine and Molière, and Boileau, were satisfied with furnishing amusement to such men as Louis XIV., and Colbert, and Turenne; but the geniuses of the present day pretend to nothing less than enlightening their rulers; and the same young men

who would formerly have made their debût | After these precious ameliorations were com with a pastoral or a tragedy, now generally pleted, they threw of the full impression; leave college with a new system of philoso- and, to make all sure and irremediable, conphy and government in their portfolios. The very metaphysical, prying, and expounding turn of mind that is nourished by the spirit of philosophy, unquestionably deadens our sensibility to those enjoyments which it converts into subjects of speculation. It busies itself in endeavouring to understand those emotions which a simpler age was contented with enjoying;-and seeking, like Psyche, to have a distinct view of the sources of our pleasures, is punished, like her, by their instant annihilation.

signed both the manuscript and the original proofs to the flames! Such, says M. Grimm, is the true explanation of that mass of impertinences, contradictions, and incoherences, with which all the world has been struck, in the last ten volumes of this great compilation. It was not discovered till the very eve of the publication; when Diderot having a desire to look back to one of his own articles, printed some years before, with difficulty obtained a copy of the sheets containing it from the warehouse of M. Breton-and found, to his Religion, too, continues M. Grimm, consid- horror and consternation, that it had been garered as a source of enjoyment or consolation bled and mutilated, in the manner we have in this world, has suffered from the progress just stated. His rage and vexation on the of philosophy, exactly as the fine arts and af-discovery, are well expressed in a long letter fections have done. It has no doubt become to Breton, which M. Grimm has engrossed in infinitely more rational, and less liable to his register. The mischief however was ir atrocious perversions; but then it has also remediable, without an intolerable delay and become much less enchanting and ecstatic-expense; and as it was impossible for the much less prolific of sublime raptures, bea- editor to take any steps to bring Breton to tific visions, and lofty enthusiasm. It has punishment for this "horrible forfait," withsuffered, in short, in the common disenchant-out openly avowing the intended publication ment; and the same cold spirit which has chased so many lovely illusions from the earth, has dispeopled heaven of half its marvels and its splendours.

We could enlarge with pleasure upon these Just and interesting speculations; but it is time we should think of drawing this article to a close; and we must take notice of a very extraordinary transaction which M. Grimm has recorded with regard to the final publication of the celebrated Encyclopedie. The redaction of this great work, it is known, was ultimately confided to Diderot; who thought it best, after the disturbances that had been excited by the separate publication of some of the earlier volumes, to keep up the whole of the last ten till the printing was finished; and then to put forth the complete work at once. A bookseller of the name of Breton, who was a joint proprietor of the work, had the charge of the mechanical part of the concern; but, being wholly illiterate, and indeed without pretensions to literature, had of course no concern with the correction, or even the perusal of the text. This person, however, who had heard of the clamours and threatened prosecutions which were excited by the freedom of some articles in the earlier volumes, took it into his head, that the value and security of the property might be improv ed, by a prudent castigation of the remaining parts; and accordingly, after receiving from Diderot the last proofs and revises of the different articles, took them home, and, with the assistance of another tradesman, scored out, altered, and suppressed, at their own discretion, all the passages which they in their wisdom apprehended might give offence to the court, or the church, or any other persons in authority-giving themselves, for the most part, no sort of trouble to connect the disjointed passages that were left after these mutilations and sometimes soldering them together with masses of their own stupid vulgarity.

of a work which the court only tolerated by affecting ignorance of its existence, it was at last resolved, with many tears of rage and vexation, to keep the abomination secret-at least till it was proclaimed by the indignant denunciations of the respective authors whose works had been subjected to such cruel mutilation. The most surprising part of the story however is, that none of these authors ever made any complaint about the matter. Whether the number of years that had elapsed since the time when most of them had furnished their papers, had made them insensible of the alterations-whether they believed the change effected by the base hand of Breton to have originated with Diderot, their legal censor-or that, in fact, the alterations were chiefly in the articles of the said Diderot himself, we cannot pretend to say; but M. Grimm assures us, that, to his astonishment and that of Diderot, the mutilated publication, when it at last made its appearance, was very quietly received by the injured authors as their authentic production, and apologies humbly made, by some of them, for imperfections that had been created by the beast of a publisher.

There are many curious and original anecdotes of the Empress of Russia in this book; and as she always appeared to advantage where munificence and clemency to individuals were concerned, they are certainly calcu lated to give us a very favourable impression of that extraordinary woman. We can only afford room now for one, which characterises the nation as well as its sovereign. A popu lar poet, of the name of Sumarokoff, had quarrelled with the leading actress at Moscow, and protested that she should never again have the honour to perform in any of his tra gedies. The Governor of Moscow, however, not being aware of this theatrical feud, thought fit to order one of Sumarokoff's tragedies for representation, and also to command