Titus. O de ma passion fureur desesperée!

Brutus of Voltaire, Act III. Sc. 6.

What other are the foregoing instances but describing the passion another feels?

A man stabbed to the heart in a combat with his enemy, expresses himself thus:

So, now I am at rest :-

I feel death rising higher still, and higher,
Within my bosom; every breath I fetch

Shuts up my life within a shorter compass :
And like the vanishing sound of bells, grows less
And less each pulse, till it be lost in air.

Dryden.

Captain Flash, in a farce composed by Garrick, endeavours to hide his fear by saying, "What a damn'd passion I am in."

An example is given above of remorse and despair expressed by genuine and natural sentiments. In the fourth book of Paradise Lost, Satan is made to express his remorse and despair in sentiments, which, though beautiful, are not altogether natural: they are rather the sentiments of a spectator, than of a person who actually is tormented with these passions.

The fourth class is of sentiments introduced too early or too late.

Some examples mentioned above belong to this class. Add the following from Venice Preserved, Act V. at the close of the scene between Belvidera and her father Priuli. The account given by Belvidera of the danger she was in, and of her husband's threatening to murder her, ought naturally to have alarmed her relenting father, and to have made him express the most perturbed sentiments. Instead of which he dissolves into tenderness and love for his daughter, as if he had already delivered her from danger, and as if there were a perfect tranquillity:

Canst thou forgive me all my follies past?
I'll henceforth be indeed a father; never
Never more thus expose, but cherish thee,
Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life,

Dear as those eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee:
Peace to thy heart.

Immoral sentiments exposed in their native colours, instead of being concealed or disguised, compose the fifth class.

The Lady Macbeth, projecting the death of the King, has the following soliloquy :

-The raven himself's not hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come all you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to th' toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose.

Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7.

This speech is not natural. A treacherous murder was never perpetrated even by the most hardened miscreant, without compunction: and that the lady here must have been in horrible agitation, appears from her invoking the infernal spirits to fill her with cruelty, and to stop up all avenues to remorse. But in that state of mind, it is a never-failing artifice of self-deceit, to draw the thickest veil over the wicked action, and to extenuate it by all the circumstances that imagination can suggest and if the crime cannot bear disguise, the next attempt is to thrust it out of mind altogether, and to rush on to action without thought. This last was the husband's method:

Strange things I have in head, that will to hand;
Which must be acted ere they must be scann'd.

Act III. Sc. 5.

The lady follows neither of these courses, but in a deliberate manner endeavours to fortify her heart in the commission of an execrable crime, without even attempting to colour it. This I think is not natural; I hope there is no such wretch to be found as is here represented. In the Pompey of Corneille,* Photine counsels a wicked action in the plainest terms without disguise:

Seigneur, n'attirez point le tonnerse en ces lieux,
Rangez vous du parti des destins et des dieux,
Et sans les accuser d'injustice, au d'outrage;
Puis qu'ils font les heureux, adorez leur ouvrage ;
Quels que soient leurs decrets, déclarez-vous pour eux,
Et pour leur obéir, perdez le malhereux.

Press de toutes parts des coléres celestes,

Il en vient dessus vous faire fondre les restes ;

Et sa tête qu'à peine il a pû dérober.

Tout prête dechoir, cherche avec qui tomber.
Sa retraite chez vous en effet n'est qu'un crime e;
Elle marque sa haine, et non pas son estime;

Il ne vient que vous perdre en venant prendre port,
Et vous pouvez douter s'il est digne de mort!

Il devoit mieux remplir nos vœux et notre attente,
Faire voir sur ses nefs la victoire flotante;

Il n'eût ici trouvé que joye et que festins ;

Mais puisqu'il est vaincu, qu'il s'en prenne aux destins.
J'en veux à sa disgrace et non à sa personne,

J' execute à regret ce que le ciel ordonne,

Et du même poignard, pour César destiné,
Je perce en soupirant son cœur infortuné,
Vous ne pouvez enfin qu' aux dépens do sa tête
Mettre à l'abri la vôtre, et parer la tampéte
Laissez nommer sa morte un unjuste attentat,
La justice n'est pas une vertu d'état.

Le choix des actions, ou mauvaises, ou bonnes,
Ne fait qu' anéantir la force des couronnes;

* Act I. Sc. 1.

Le droit des rois consiste à ne rein épargner :
La timide équité détruit l'art de regner;

Quand on craint d'étre injuste un a toûjour à craindre ;
Et qui veut tout pouvoir doit oser tout enfraindre.
Fuir comme un deshonneur la vertu qui le pert,
Et voler sans scrupule au crime qui lui sert.

In the tragedy of Esther,* Haman acknowledges, without disguise, his cruelty, insolence, and pride. And there is another example of the same kind in the Agamemnon of Seneca. In the tragedy of Athalie.‡ Mathan, in cool blood, relates to his friend many black crimes he had been guilty of, to satisfy his ambition.

In Congreve's Double-dealer, Maskwell, instead of disguising or colouring his crimes, values himself upon them in a soliloquy :

Cynthia, let thy beauty gild my crimes; and whatsoever I commit of treachery or deceit, shall be imputed to me as a merit. -Treachery! what treachery? Love cancels all the bonds of friendship, and sets men right upon their first foundations.

In French plays, love, instead of being hid or disguised, is treated as a serious concern, and of greater importance than fortune, family, or dignity. I suspect the reason to be, that, in the capital of France, love, by the easiness of intercourse, has dwindled down from a real passion to be a connexion that is regulated entirely by the mode or fashion.§ This may in some measure excuse their writers, but will never make their plays be relished among foreign

ers:

*Act II. Sc. 1.

Act III. Sc. 3. at the close.

+ Beginning of Act II.

A certain author says humorously, "Les mots mêmes d'amour et "d'amant sont bannis de l'intime société des deux sexes, et relegués avec ceux de chaine et de flame dans les Romans qu'on ne lit plus." And where nature is once banished, a fair field is open to every fantastic imitation, even the most extravagant.

Maxime. Quoi, trahir mon ami?

Euphorbe.

L'amour rend tout permis,

Cinna, Act III. Sc. 1.

Un veritable amant ne connoît point d'amis,

Cesar. Reine, tout est plaisible, et la ville calmée,
Qu'un trouble assez leger avoit trop alarmée,
N'a plus à redouter le divorce intestin
Du soldat insolent, et du peuple mutin.

Mais, ô Dieux! ce moment que je vous ai quittee,
D'un trouble bien plus grand à mon ame agitée,
Et ces soins importuns qui m'arrachoient de vous
Contre ma grandeur même allumoient mon courroux.
Je lui voulois du mal de m'étre si contraire,
De rendre me presence ailleurs si necessaire.
Mais je lui pardonnois au simple souvenir
Du bonheir qu'à ma flâme elle fait obtenir.
C'est elle dont je tiens cette haute espérance,
Qui flate mes desirs d'une illustre apparence,
Et fait croire à César qu'il peut former de vœux,
Qu'il n'est pas tout-à-fait indigne de vos feux,
Et qu'il peut en pretendre une juste conquête,
N'ayant plus que les Dieux au dessus de sa tête.
Oui, Reine, si quelq' un dans ce vaste univers
Pouvoit porter plus haut la gloire de vos fers;
S'il étoit quèlque trone où vous pouissiez paroître
Plus dignement assise en captivant son maître,
J'irois, j'irois à lui, moins pour le lui ravir,
Que pour lui disputer le droit de vous servir;
Et je n'aspirerois au bonheur de vous plaire.
Qu'après avoir mis bas un si grand adversaire.
C'étoit pour acquerir un droit si précieux,
Que combattoît par tout mon bras ambitieux,
Et dans pharsale même il a tiré l'epee

Plus pour le conservir, que pour vaincre Pompe.
Je l'ai vaincu, Princesse, et le Dieu de combats
M'y favorisoit moints que vos divins appas.

Ils conduisoient ma main, ils enfloient mon courage,
VOL. I.

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