On the contraft of merry and affecting fentiments, and on the cause of laugh- ter, in comedy. In a preface to the Of CRITICAL ESSAYS. ESSAY on TRAGEDY; Addreffed to Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke. T HOUGH I dedicate to an Englishman a play reprefented 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 re * * There is an English Brutus by an author named Lee; but it is a performance unknown, and never reprefented in London. Voltaire. tired to Wandsworth at my good friend, Sir Everard Falkener's, that worthy and virtuous patriot, I applied myself to write, in english profe, the first act of this play, pretty much in the fame manner as it now ftands in the french verfe. I spoke to you of it fometimes, and we were both furprized that no english writer had handled this fubject, which is fo extremely well adapted to your theatre. You emboldened me to continue a subjectso susceptible of great fentiments. Give me leave then, my lord, to offer you Brutus, tho' wrote in a foreign tongue, dotte fermones utriufque linguæ to you who could give me inftructions in the french as well as in the english, to you who at leaft, might teach me to add to my native language that energy and force which a noble liberty of thinking inspires: for the vigorous fentiments of the foul pafs always to the tongue; a strength of mind always commands, a ftrength of expreffion. I muft own that at my return from England, where I spent a couple of years in a continual ftudy of your language, I |