Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

always in our's. It is even to this constraint of rhime, and to the extreme severity of our verfification, that we are indebted for the excellent performances we poffefs in our language.

We infist that rhime fhould not be at the expence of thought; it must be neither trivial nor far fetched. We require the fame purity and exactness in our poetry as in our profe.

We do not fuffer the leaft license. An author muft never discontinue to wear his chains, and yet he muft always appear as if free from them. We acknowlege for poets, only fuch as have fulfilled all thefe conditions.

On this account it is easier to make an hundred verses in any other languages than four in French. The example of our abbe Regnier Delmarais of the French academy, and of the academy della crufca, is an evident proof of this affertion. He tranflated Anacreon into Italian verfe, with fuccefs; and yet his French poetry, excepting a few ftanzas, is extremely indifferent. Our Menage was just in the fame case. many of our ingenious countrymen have wrote excellent latin verfe; whofe French poetry is not even tolerable!

How

I know how many difputes I have had about our versification, in England, and the reproach. es made me by the learned bishop of Rochefter on this puerile conftraint, which, he pretends, we impofe on ourselves without any colour of neceffity. But be affured, my lord, that the more a foreigner is acquainted with our lan

* Dr. Atterbury.

A

guage, the more he will be reconciled to the very rhime which startles him fo much in the beginning. It is not only neceffary to our tragedies, but it embellishes even our comedies. happy thought is easier remembered in verse than in profe. Descriptions of human life are always more striking when poetically expressed; and by verfe, in French, we must always neceffarily understand rhime; in fhort, we have fome comedies in profe, of the celebrated Moliere, that we have been obliged to turn into verse; and now they are never acted but in their new drefs.

As I could not venture blank verfe on the French stage, according to the custom of Italy and England, I would fain, at least, introduce fome other beauties on our fcene from yours. You must own, the English theatre is very imperfect; I have heard you fay, my lord, that you had not one good tragedy; but for recom, pence, you have, in these monftrous compofitions, scenes truly admirable. Almost all the tragic authors of your nation are defective in that elegance, that exactness, that decency of action and ftile, and all the delicate finesses of the art which have established the reputation of the French theatre, fince the great Corneille. But your most irregular plays have one great merit, which is that of action.

We have tragedies in France that are esteem. ed, which are conversations, rather than a reprefentation of facts. An Italian author wrote to me in the following manner, in a letter on the theatres: "A critic on our Paftor-Fido "faid that this work was a collection of excel

"lent madrigals: I belive, were he now alive, " he would fay of the French tragedies, that "they are a collection of fine elegies and sub"lime epithalamiums."

I am afraid this Italian is in the right. Our exceffive delicacy obliges us often, to recite what flrould be reprefented. We are loth to venture a new fpectacle before a people so inclined to turn every thing into ridicule that is not cuftomary.

The place where plays are acted, and the abuses that have crept in by degrees, are another cause of that heavinefs which is found in fome of our compofitions. The benches on the stage, for the use of spectators, freighten the scene, and render almost every action imperfect *. This defect alfo hinders decorations, fo much recommended by the antients, from being ever rightly adapted to the piece; and the actors cannot pass from one apartment to another before the fpectators, as the Greeks and Romans ufed to do, in order to preferve, at the fame time, unity of place and probability.

How could we dare, for example, to intro

* The tranflator is informed that this great abufe was corrected in the theatre of Paris in the year 1759, through the means and at the expence of the count de Lauragais, whom it cost about a thoufand pounds fterling, for the different changes and reparations that this reformation required.

This young

nobleman is member of the royal academy of sciences of Paris; he is remarkable for his attachment in general to every branch of science and literature, but is particularly known as a chemift and as a poet.

duce on our theatre, the ghost of Pompey, of Brutus's genius, in the midst of a parcel of young fellows, who never confider the most ferious matters but as an occafion of manifesting their wit in the cracking of a joke? How could we have attempted, among such, upon the stage, the bloody corpfe of Marcus before his father Cato? who fays,

Welcome, my fon! here lay him down, my friends,
Full in my fight, that I may view at leifure

The bloody coarse, and count those glorious wounds.
How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue !
Who would not be that youth? what pity is it
That we can die but once to ferve our country!
Alas, my friends!

Why mourn you thus! let not a private loss
Afflict your hearts. 'Tis Rome requires our tears.
The miftrefs of the world, the feat of empire,
The nurfe of heroes, the delight of gods,
That humbled the proud tyrants of the earth,
And fet the nations free, Rome is no more.
O liberty! O virtue! O my country!

This is what the late Mr. Addifon did not dread to reprefent to the English stage, and what has been tranflated into Italian, and acted in feveral towns of Italy. And yet if we fhould venture fuch a fpectacle at Paris, do not you think the pit would be fhocked, and the ladies fhudder?

You cannot imagine how far they push this fort of delicacy. The author of our tragedy of Manlius took his fubject from Mr. Otway's Ve

nice Preferved; and each, from the history of the confpiracy of the marquifs de Bedmar, wrote by the abbe de St. Real; and give me leave to add, that this piece of hiftory, equal perhaps to Salluft, is much fuperior either to your Otway or to our Manlius.

In the first place, you will take notice of the prejudice which obliged our French poet to difguife under Roman names a known fact, which the English author naturally relates under the real ones. It was not thought ridiculous on the theatre of London, that a Spanish ambassador should be called Bedmar, and that confpirators fhould be named Jaffier, Pierre, and Eliot. That alone in France would have been fufficient to damn the play. But Otway goes still further; he is not afraid of assembling the confpirators. Renaud receives their oaths and promifes, affigns to each his particular poft, fixes the hour of maffacre, and, every now and then, cafts unquiet and fufpicious looks on Jaffier, whom he mistrusts.

tic fpeech, tranflated

He makes them this patheword for word from the

abbe de St. Real;

Never did fo profound repofe fore-run
Calamity fo great; nay, our good fortune
Has blinded the moft piercing of mankind,
Strengthen'd the fearfulest, charm'd the most respect-
Confounded the most fubtile for we live,

:

We live, my friends, and quickly shall our life
Prove fatal to these tyrants:

[ful,

« ZurückWeiter »