Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

CRITICAL ESSAYS.

ESSAY on TRAGEDY.*

Addreffed to Henry St. John, Lord
Viscount Bolingbroke,

T

Berry

HOUGH I dedicate to an Englishman a play represented at Paris, it is not, my lord, that there are wanting in France men of great merit, and excellent judges, to whom I might have paid that homage. But, you know, the tragedy of Brutus was begun in England: you remember when I was retired to Wandfworth at my good friend, Sir Everard Falkener's, that worthy and virtuous patriot, I applied myfelf to write, in English profe, the first act of this play, pretty much in the fame manner as it now ftands in

* Prefixed to his Tragedy of Brutus.

There is an English Brutus by an author named Lee; but it is a perfornmance unknown, and never reprefented in London. Voltaire..

A

the French verse. I spoke to you of it sometimes, and we were both furprized that no English writer had handled this fubject, which is so extremely well adapted to your theatre. You emboldened me to continue a subject so susceptible of great fentiments.

Give me leave then, my lord, to offer you Brutus, though wrote in a foreign tongue, docte fermones. utrifque linguæ, to you who could give me instructions in the French as well as in the English; to you, who, at least, might teach me to add to my native language that energy and force which a noble liberty of thinking infpires: for the vigorous fentiments of the foul pafs always to the tongue; a strength of mind always commands a strength of expreffron. Imuft own that at my return from England, where I fpent a couple of years in a continual ftudy of your language, I found myself at a lofs, when I attempted to write a French tragedy. I was almost accustomed to think in English. I perceived that the French terms did not offer themselves to my imagination in the fame abundance they formerly did. It was a rivulet whofe fource had been diverted another way: both time and pains were neceffary to bring it back to its former channel. I became fenfible that, to fucceed in an art, we mufl cultivate it our whole life.

What terrified me most, me moft, was the great frictness of our poetry and the flavery of rhime. I regretted that literty you poffefs of writing: your tragedies in blank verfe, of lengthening,

1

or of shortening almost all your words at plea fure, of throwing one line into another, and of creating new terms at will, which are always adopted by the nation when their neceffity is obvious, their fenfe easily understood, and their found harmonious *. An English poet, I used to fay, is a free man, who subjects his language to his genius; the Frenchman is a conftant flave to rhime, often obliged to write four verf es to convey a thought, which in English can be expressed in one. An Englishman says what he will fay, but a Frenchman, only what he can. The one runs on boldly in a vast career; the other, loaded with chains, steps on flowly in a flippery narrow path.

Notwithstanding these reflections and complaints, we shall never be able to free ourselves from the yoke of rhime. It is effential to French poetry. Our language does not admit of tranfpofitions, our verse does not allow of lines running into each other, our fyllables are incapable of causing any sensible harmony by long or short

*It must be remarked that in France the admittance of new words finds much more difficulty than the naturalization of a foreign fubject. One remarkable instance I remember, which is the word Profateur, profe-writer. The famous Menage, who wrote fo much and fo well on the French language, and of its origin, was very fond of Profateur, and laboured forty years, it is faid, among his brethren of the French academy to introduce this really-ufeful term; but without fuccefs. The writers of that nation are fince grown a little lefs difficult, and among others, this word has gained admittance.

measures. Our hemistics and a stated number of feet are not alone fufficient to diftinguish profe from verfe, and therefore the addition of rhime is abfolutely neceffary in French poetry.

Besides, so many great writers, who have made use of rhime, fuch as the Corneilles, Ra. cines, and Boileaus, have fo accustomed our ears to that kind of harmony, that we can endure no other; and I must repeat it, whoever attempts to get rid of a burden which was borne by the great Corneille, will be, with justice, looked upon, not as an enterprizing genius, who opens out to himself a new road, but as a very weak man unable to fupport himsef in the antient track.

It has been attempted to give us tragedies in profe; but I do not fuppofe that this undertaking will ever fucceed. They who have more will not be easily fatisfied with less. He that diminishes the public's pleasure, will be always ill received by them. If, among the pictures of Rubens or of Paul Veronefe, any body placed his own defigns in crayon, would he not be in the wrong to put himself in competition with these painters? We are accustomed at feasts to fing and dance; would it be enough merely to walk and speak, because it would be eafier and more natural?

It is probable that verfe will be every where found necessary in the tragic scene, and rhime

* In French verfe, there is, generally, a paufe about the middle of every line, which is called Céfure, and each half-line is diftinct from the other, and called Hémiftiche.

« AnteriorContinua »