illiterate audience, who, as he says, loved a noise of targets. His poverty, and the low condition of the stage (which at that time was not frequented by persons of rank), obliged him to this complaisance; and unfortunately he had not been tutored by any rules of art, or informed by acquaintance with just and regular dramas. Even the politer sort, by reading books of chivalry, which were the polite literature of the times, were accustomed to bold adventures and achievements. In our northern climates heroic adventures pleased more than the gallant dialogue, where love and honour dispute with all the sophistry of the schools, and one knows not when the contest would end, if heraldry did not step in and decide the point, as in the soliloquy of the Infanta in the Cid. L'INFANTE. T'écouterai-je encor, respect de ma naissance, T'écouterai-je, amour, dont la douce puissance Pauvre. Pauvre princesse, auquel des deux Dois-tu prêter obéissance? Rodrigue, ta valeur te rend digne de moi; Le Cid, Acte 5me. Nor is this rule, that a princess can love only the son of a king, a mere Spanish punto; you shall hear two Spartan virgins, daughters of Lysander, speaking the same language: ELPINICE. Cotys est roi, ma sœur ; & comme sa couronne Parle suffisamment pour lui, Assuré de mon cœur que son trône lui donne, This lady then proceeds to question her sister concerning her inclination for her lover Spitridates, and urges in his favour; ELPINICE. Car enfin, Spitridate a l'entretien charmant, To which the other answers, Ma sœur, AGLATIDE. il n'est pas roi comme l'est votre amant. Il n'est pas roi, vous dis-je, & c'est un grand défaut *. The queen of the Lusitanians, in the famous play of Sertorius, speaks thus to that Roman general; VIRITATE. Car enfin pour remplir l'honneur de ma naissance, And upon the effect of this prudent decision turns the great interest 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 sacrificed to the ambition of his lieutenant, is the victim of his jealousy. * Agesilaus of Corneille. Shakspeare Shakspeare and Corneille are equally blameable for having complied with the bad taste of the age; and by doing so, they have both brought unmerited censures 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 excusably, accuse of effeminacy and frivolousness, those who could sit to hear the following address of a lover to his mistress's bodkin, with which she had just put out one of his eyes: PYMANTE. O toi, qui secondant son courage inhumain, Tu devais pour le moins respecter son image: Devait être adoré de ta point rebelle. Clitandre de Corneille. The The whole soliloquy includes seventy lines. I heartily wish, for the honour of both nations, the lover and his bodkin, and the soldiers and their halberds, had always been hissed off the stage. Our countryman was betrayed into his error, by want of judgment to discern what part of his story was not fit for representation. Corneille, for want of dramatic genius, was obliged to have recourse to points, conceits, cold and uninteresting declamations, to fill up his plays; and these heavily drag along his undramatical dramas to a fifth act. The ignorance of the times passed 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 censured. Mr. Voltaire has said, that the plots of Shakspeare's plays are as wild as that of the |