VIRITATE." Car enfin pour remplir l'honneur de ma naiffance, Il me faudroit un roi de titre, et de puiffance; Mais comme il n'en eft plus, je penfe m'en devoir, Ou le pouvoir fans nom, ou le nom fans pouvoir. And upon the effect of this prudent decifion turns the great intereft of the play. By the laws of romance the men are to be amorous, and the ladies ambitious. Poor Sertorius in his old age is in love with this lady, for whom Perpenna is also dying; and Sertorius, whom we had supposed facrificed to the ambition of his lieutenant, is the victim of his jealoufy. Shakespear and Corneille are equally blamable for having complied with the bad taste of the age; and by doing so, they have both brought unmerited cenfures on their country. The French impute barbarity and cruelty, to a people that could delight in bloody skirmishes on the stage. The English, as unjustly, but as excufably, accufe of effeminacy and frivoloufness, those who who could fit to hear the following addrefs of a lover to his miftrefs's bodkin, with which she had just put out one of his eyes: PYMANTE. O toi, qui fecondant fon courage inhumain, Tu devais pour le moins refpecter fon image: Devait être adoré de ta pointe rebelle. Clitandre de Corneille. The whole foliloquy includes feventy lines. I heartily wish for the honour of both nations, the lover and his bodkin, and the foldiers and their halberds, had always been hiffed off the ftage. Our countryman was betrayed into his error by want of judgment, to difcern what part of his story was not fit for reprefentation. Corneille, for want of dramatic genius, was obliged to have recourse to points, conceits, cold and unin teresting teresting declamations, to fill up his plays, and these heavily drag along his undramatical drama's to a fifth act. The ignorance of the times paffed over the defects of each author; and the bad taste then prevalent did more than endure, it even encouraged and approved what should have been cenfured, Mr. Voltaire has faid, that the plots of Shakespear's plays are as wild as that of the Clitandre just quoted; and it must be allowed they are often exceptionable: but at the fame time we must observe, that though crouded too much, they are not so perplexed as to be unintelligible, which Corneille confeffes his Clitandre might be to those who faw it but once, There is ftill another more effential difference perhaps, which is, that the wildest and most incorrect pieces of our poet contain some incomparable speeches : whereas the worst plays of Corneille have not a good stanzą. The tragedy of King Lear is very far from being a regular piece: yet there are speeches in it which perhaps excel any thing that has been written by any tragedian, ancient or modern. However we will only compare one paffage of it at present, with another in Clitandre; as they both happen to be on similar subjects. The blinded lover, after many complaints, and wishes for revenge, hears the noise of a tempeft, and thus breaks out: PYMANTE. Mes menaces déja font trembler tout le monde : A force de pitié, veulent m'ôter les armes. King Lear, whom age renders weak and querulous, and who is now beginning to grow grow mad, thus very naturally, in the general calamity of the ftorm, recurs to his own particular circumftances. LEAR. Spit fire, fpout rain; Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters; They must have little feeling that are not touched by this speech, fo highly pathetic. How fine is that which follows! LEAR. Let the great Gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble thou wretch, That haft within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipt of justice! Hide thee thou bloody hand, Thou |