who could fit to hear the following addrefs of a lover to his mistress's bodkin, with which he had just put out one of his eyes: PYMANTE. O toi, qui fecondant fon courage inhumain, Tu devais pour le moins refpecter son image: Devait être adoré de ta pointe rebelle. Clitandre de Corneille. The whole foliloquy includes seventy 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 stage. Our countryman was betrayed into his error by want of judgment, to difcern what part of his ftory was not fit for representation. Corneille, for want of dramatic genius, was obliged to have recourse to points, conceits, cold and unin teresting his plays, teresting declamations, to fill up 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 fhould 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 fo 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 fome incomparable fpeeches: whereas the worst plays of Corneille have not a good stanza. The 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 prefent, with another in Cliṭandre; as they both happen to be on fimilar fubjects. The blinded lover, after many complaints, and wishes for revenge, hears the noife 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 circumstances. LEAR. Spit fire, fpout rain; Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters; That have with two pernicious daughters join'd So old and white as this. Oh! oh! 'tis foul. They must have little feeling that are not touched by this fpeech, so 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 juftice! Hide thee thou bloody hand, Thou Thou perjur'd, and thou fimular of virtue, That under covert, and convenient seeming, Haft practis'd on man's life? Close pent up guilts,` Thus it is that Shakespear redeems the nonfenfe, the indecorums, the irregularities of his plays; and whoever, for want of natural tafte, or from ignorance of the English language, is infenfible to the merit of these paffages, is just as unfit to judge of his works, as a deaf man, who only perceived the blackness of the sky, and did not hear the deep-voiced thunder, and the roaring elements, would have been to describe the awful horrors of this midnight ftorm. The French Critic apologizes for our perfifting in the representation of Shakespear's plays, by faying we have none of a more regular form. In this he is extremely mistaken; A |