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Qu'en cherchant l'amitié de ce prince Numide
Qui te rend tout ensemble impudique et perfide-
Que me pourrois-tu dire, impudente effrontée?"

Syphax is afterwards killed in battle; she says he is too happy to be dead, and entreats some of her suite to kill her, but not in such a tone as to ensure obedience, and her confidant tells her that there is always time enough for that remedy, adding

'Vous n'auriez pas besoin de beaucoup d'artifice,

Pour vous rendre agréable aux yeux de Massinisse.' Sophonisba exclaims-' Plût aux Dieux!' but corrects herself, and adds

'Je n'attends rien du tout du coté de mes charmes.
Ce remede, Phenice, est ridicule et vain;

Il vaut mieux se servir de celui de ma main;'

and then follows some very smart reasoning between the heroine and two of her confidants, whether her hand, that is, killing herself, or her charms, that is, killing Massinissa, be the better method. Phénice says,

'Au reste la douleur ne vous a pas éteint

Ni la clarté des yeux, ni la beauté du teint.

Vos pleurs vous ont lavée; et vous êtes de celles
Qu'un air triste et dolent rend encore plus belles.'

Massinissa, however, enchanted also at first sight, requests permission to take un honnête baiser, à son aise,' which of course is granted; and Scipio exclaims Massinisse en un jour voit, aime et se marie!' The Numidian suddenly recollects himself after his wedding, and somewhat curiously inquires

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Apropos où naquit, en quel temps, et pourquoi,

La bonne volonté que vous avez pour moi ?'

The last acts, however, are pathetic.

In the Mariamne of Tristan, Herod, annoyed by a dream, asks his confidant, Phérore, what the doctor says of dreams? Phérore

answers:

'Il disoit que l'humeur qui dans nos cœurs domine, A voir certains objets, en dormant, nous incline. Le flegme humide et froid, s'élevant au cerveau, Y vient représenter des brouillards et de l'eau. La bile ardente et jaune, aux qualités subtiles, N'y depeint que combats, qu'embrasements de villes. Le sang, qui tient de l'air, et reponds au printemps, Rend les moins fortunés, dans leurs songes, contents.' To his two confidants who endeavour to persuade him that Mariamne is a rock, Herode gallantly answers:

Si le divin objet dont je suis idolâtre,

Passe pour un rocher, c'est un rocher d'albâtre.

Un écueil agréable, où l'on voit éclater
Tout ce que la nature a fait pour me tenter.

Il n'est point de rubis vermeil comme sa bouche,
Qui mele un esprit d'ambre à tout ce qu'elle touche;
Et l'éclat de ses yeux veut que mes sentimens

La mettent, pour le moins, au rang des diamants.'

Rotrou, almost a contemporary of Corneille, wrote thirty plays; but his Venceslas is the only one that has kept possession of the stage. It contains some genuine passion, and some nonsense, as the following:

'Qui des deux voulez-vous; de mon cœur ou ma cendre?
Quelle des deux aurai-je, ou la mort ou Cassandre?
L'amour, à vos beaux jours, joindra-t-il mon destin?

Ou bien votre refus sera mon assassin?'

Mascarille and Jodelet could certainly not have made love more ludicrously to Madeleine and Cathos in the Précieuses Ridicules.

These extracts are taken from the very best productions of the dramatic art in France, previous to the Medea and the Cid of Corneille, which latter appeared in 1636; and thus they belong to the epocha in which all our dramatic writers, down to Shirley, flourished. Shirley, indeed, and Corneille may be considered as nearly contemporaries; for the former, between the years 1629 and 1666, when he died, produced thirty-nine plays; and the dramatic career of the latter was included between 1635, when he began with Médée, and 1675, when he concluded with Pulchérine and Suréna. A fair comparison then may be made of the dramatic merit of the two countries, in their earliest days, by balancing all our dramatic writers, from the time of Lord Sackville's Gorbuduc, in 1562, and Still's Gammer Gurton's Needle, in 1566, to James Shirley's first effusion, against all the authors who had written for the French stage, before Corneille's Médée. Jodelle may be considered as contemporary with Gorboduc and Gammer Gurton's Needle; to which succeeded Gascoigne's Jocasta, in blank verse, and Edward's Palemon and Arcite, much admired by Queen Elizabeth. Before 1581 ten

tragedies of Seneca had been translated into English, together with Edipus, by Alexander Neville, aged but sixteen. In 1568 a tragedy, on the subject of Tancred and Sigismunda, was written by Robert Wilmot, and shortly afterwards another on the story of Cambyses. But the David and Bethsabe of Peele, produced about the year 1584, six years before the death of Hardy, contained more natural expression of passion, than was to be met with in the whole French theatre before Corneille, and we might, indeed, almost add, since Corneille; and the language is less antiquated, at this day, than that of the Cid. We must

support

support this opinion by a short extract, regretting that we canDavid is thus described by Joab:

not give more.

'Beauteous and bright is he among the tribes,

As when the sun, attired in glistering robe,
Comes dancing from his oriental gate,

And, bridegroom like, hurls through the gloomy air.
His radiant beams: such doth King David show,
Crown'd with the honour of his enemy's town;
Shining in riches, like the firmament,

The starry vault that overhangs the earth:
So looketh David, King of Israel!'

The description of Bethsabe is likewise very beautiful, as are also David's grief for Absalom, and Joab's remonstrance. But the poets who filled up the space in question, and completed what these had begun, were Green, Marlow, Lyly, Legge, Lodge, Shakspeare, Daniel, Beaumont and Fletcher, Marston, Chapman, Randolph, Middleton, Jonson, Earl of Stirling, Field, Dekker, Webster, Ford, Rowley, Massinger, Suckling, Heywood, Phillips, Heminge, with some others. We will deduct nine or ten of these principal names, and compare the remainder with all that existed in France before Corneille; or we will strike out the name of him who never had an equal, and then put the rest in competition with the entire French stage, down to the present hour; and we will still say that, for true imitation of natural feeling, and exquisite poetry, they are superior to any and every thing that France has produced. They did not indeed copy from the Greek or Roman stage; and translation and imitation were very soon discarded by British poets, who took subjects in a wider range, and dressed them in the grand beauties of universal nature. Neither did they restrict the bold delineation of the theme they had chosen by any fictitious rules, which, far from adding real beauties to the tragic muse, take away from it all the development of character and passion, which make it a living picture of the human heart. We have given extracts from the French Sophonisba of Mairet, the rival of Corneille; and we must now be allowed to support our opinion with a few passages from a play on the same subject, treated by one of our old dramatic writers, Marston. Sophonisba thus entreats Massinissa not to give her up to be led captive by Scipio:

"Sophonisba.

Sophonisba,

A name for misery much known,—

Entreats of thy graced sword this only boon:
Let me not kneel to Rome; for though no cause
Of mine deserves their hate; though Massinissa
Be ours to heart; yet Roman generals
Make proud their triumphs with whatever captives.

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O, 'tis

O, 'tis a nation which from soul I fear,

As one well knowing the much grounded hate
They bear to Asdrubal and Carthage blood!
Therefore, with tears that wash thy feet, with hands
Unus'd to beg, I clasp thy manly knees.

O save me from their fetters and contempt,
Their proud insults, and, more, their insolence!
Or if it rest not in thy grace of breath

To grant such freedom, give me long wish'd death,
For 'tis not much loath'd life that now we crave-
Only an unshamed death and silent grave

We will now deign to bend for.'

Massinissa promises, but Lelius comes from the Roman general to demand her.

'Lel. Give place to faith and fate.

Mass. 'Tis cross to honour—

Lel.

'Tis but just to state.

So speaketh Scipio: "do not thou detain
A Roman prisoner due to this great triumph,
As thou shalt answer Rome and him."

Mass.

We now are in Rome's power. Lelius,
View Massinissa do a loathed act,

Lelius,

Most sinking from that state his heart did keep :
Look, Lelius, look! see Massinissa weep.
Know I have made a vow more dear to me

Than my soul's endless being. She shall rest,

Free from Rome's bondage.'

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Lelius retires, and Massinissa, questioned by Sophonisba, tells her she must wreath back her arms, bend down her neck, practise base prayers, make fit herself for bondage.' She resolves upon drinking poison, which swallowed, she dies thus:

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And now, with undismay'd resolve, behold,

To save you-you-(for honour and just faith
Are most true gods, which we should much adore-)
With even disdainful rigour I give up

An abhorr'd life. You have been good to me-
And I do thank thee, Heaven!-O, my stars!

I bless your goodness that, with breast unstain'd,
Faith pure, a virgin wife, tied to my glory,

I die, of female faith the long lived story.'

But the period concluding with Shirley may be called the bright era of our drama; whereas the brilliant epocha of the French had scarcely yet begun. It certainly opened with Corneille, and succeeding poets very much increased its splendour. Still, however, the characteristics of the French stage remained the

same;

same; only the language, the diction, the poetry were improved; and no country can boast of a tragic writer, whose style so far excels all his other scenic merits, as Racine. But wider conceptions of nature were not admitted; and if the passions assumed a truer tone, it was not because they were more extensively studied and known, but because wit, pertness and conceits began to grow out of fashion, and made way for a better taste. Still, however, these continued to be perceptible in Corneille, and now and then a reminiscence of them may be found even in Racine.

Of all the epithets which have been bestowed upon Corneille, that of creator is the most unmerited. Corneille hardly created any thing; and the improvements which he introduced in dramatic diction were not such extraordinary innovations as to merit the praise bestowed upon them. Rotrou alone contained examples sufficient to guide him, and the task which was left to him to perform was rather to avoid than to invent, to select than to add. Neither has Corneille, like Shakspeare, in any part of his works, left a standard for the language of his country; and, at this moment, the turns, and constructions, and mechanism of his style are generally more obsolete than the good poetry of the British bard, though his predecessor by nearly a century. What has become unintelligible in Shakspeare, consists chiefly in local phrases, and in allusions to customs now forgotten; but the style of the fifth act of his Merchant of Venice,' for instance, is such as the most modern poetry might own; and no tragic author has succeeded him, between whose language and his own there appears to be so much difference of date, as between those of Corneille and Racine, though contemporaries. In Corneille, too, we are often struck with the extreme negligence and triviality of some expressions in the midst of the most pompous dialogue, and of a dialogue evidently intended to maintain the high tone of tragedy. We will give no less than four examples from a speech of Felix, in the tragedy of Polyeucte, consisting of twenty lines.

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Que tu discernes mal le cœur d'avec la mine-
J'en connois mieux que lui la plus fine pratique—
C'est en vain qu'il tempête, il feint d'être en fureur-
Et moi j'en ai tant vu de toutes les façons.—

In a word, Corneille is too much upon stilts, or else too trivial; too dull, or too ingenious; too prosaic, or too grandiloquous. The first acts of Polyeucte are altogether in the style of comedy, and not of the best comedy.

It will readily be admitted that in Medée' Corneille, has not created much. He found the subject in mythology, and saw it fully treated by Seneca. He had therefore nothing to do but to

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