Hor. The author makes his heroine say a thing which was false in fact: One half, says Chimene, of my life has put the other into the grave, and obliges me to revenge, &c. Which is the nominative of the verb obliges?
Cleo. One half of my life.
Hor. Here lies the fault; it is this, which I think is not true; for the one half of her life, here mentioned, is plainly that half which was left; it is Rodrigues her lover: Which way did he oblige her to seek for revenge?
Cleo. By what he had done, killing her father.
Hor. No, Cleomenes, this excuse is insufficient. Chimene’s calamity sprung from the dilemma she was in between her love and her duty; when the latter was inexorable, and violently pressing her to solicit the punishment, and employ with zeal all her interest and eloquence to obtain the death of him, whom the first had made dearer to her than her own life; and therefore it was the half that was gone, that was put in the grave, her dead father, and not Rodrigues which obliged her to sue for justice: Had the obligation she lay under come from this quarter, it might soon have been cancelled, and herself released without crying out her eyes.
Cleo. I beg pardon for differing from you, but I believe the poet is in the right.
Hor. Pray, consider which it was that made Chimene prosecute Rodrigues, love, or honour.
Cleo. I do; but still I cannot help thinking, but that her lover, by having killed her father, obliged Chimene to prosecute him, in the same manner as a man, who will give no satisfaction to his creditors, obliges them to arrest him; or as we would say to a coxcomb, who is offending us with his discourse, If you go on thus, Sir, you will oblige me to treat you ill: Though all this while the debtor might be as little desirous of being arrested, and the coxcomb of being ill treated, as Rodrigues was of being prosecuted.
Hor. I believe you are in the right, and I beg Corneille’s pardon. But now I desire you would tell me what you have further to say of society: What other advantages do multitudes receive from the invention of letters, besides the improvements it makes in their laws and language?
Cleo. It is an encouragement to all other inventions in general, by preserving the knowledge of every useful improvement that is made. When laws begin to be well known, and the execution of them is facilitated by general approbation, multitudes may be kept in tolerable concord among themselves: It is then that it appears, and not before, how much the superiority of man’s understanding beyond other animals, contributes to his sociableness, which is only retarded by it in his savage state.