nor to subsist for a fortnight on that which is worth no more than one of Chamfort's epigrams, one of Panard'a songs, or one of Dorat's heroics.
Accordingly, for the last twelve or fifteen years, that is to say, since the time when France first began to breathe quietly again after the horrors of anarchy and the confusions of conquest, while we see all that small, affected literature which had its summer of Saint Martin under the empire, fall into insignificance and disrepute, at the same time that we see genteel garbs, court manners, and beautiful monarchical principles abandoned, we also see springing up on all sides a taste for whatever is solid and true. Erudition is being restored; there is a more real appreciation of the ancients now than there ever was in any former time; the knowledge of foreign languages is being extended every day; voyages are being multiplied; scientific and literary correspondence is being extended on all sides; central institutions for intellectual pursuits are established in our departments, and are beginning to undertake laborious inquiries respecting our national antiquities. The Normal School glittered only for a season, but it has left permanent memorials of its existence; it has founded, for example, a philosophical school, which now occupies a foremost position in Europe, which does not swear by the words of any master, which does not despise the labors of any of its predecessors, which does not blink any of the great problems of the world and of humanity; while it neither arrogantly attempts to decide them by a few phrases, nor infatuatedly dismisses them with disdain. Side by side with this philosophical school, a historical school has arisen, in which a union is often effected between that vast erudition which allows no details to escape it, and that powerful imagination, we would willingly say, that half-creative imagination, which knows how to revive times and men that have passed away, and presents them before us glowing with the colors of life and of truth The admirable romances of the most original and fertile genius of our period, so riveting and instructive, filled at once with reality and poetic invention, with the idiosyncrasy of the writer and the erudition of the schools, with ability and gracefulness—these romances all testify, by their immense popularity, to the not less popularity of that mental disposition which they inspire. For, in fact, the delight felt by the upper classes, and the admiration expressed for them by those of high culture is but a small part of their success; they penetrate into counting-houses, they descend into shops, answering a universal and imperious necessity, and affording it an aliment which entertains without completely satisfying it.
Can we seriously believe that, in this general forward movement, the theatre will remain stationary? Can it be that the public will bring to the drama other ideas, other tastes, other dispositions than those which it carries into all other places and all other things?
The play must, in these times, address itself to the public; it must interest and excite them; no longer is it designed to relieve the monotony of a couple of hours for a select number of languid, lounging, fashionable gentlemen, or to supply materials for conversation to four or five recognized cliques and their dozens of humbler imitators who may frequent the coffee-houses. And this change must inevitably influence, sooner or later, the general tone of all dramatic writings. Those immortal beauties— beauties for all times and all places—with which our theatre abounds, have not, thank Heaven! lost their power over our minds; but where, henceforth, will an audience be found to relish the precious metaphysical gallantry, the comic or tragic balderdash, the philosophical and sentimental declamation which so often disfigure it?
Can we really think, for instance, that if the great Corneille were to return to earth, the Romans which he might exhibit would not be somewhat sensible of the increased efficiency of our colleges? Can we believe that the illustrious Racine, if he should revisit us, would still make Achilles talk like a French chevalier, and put madrigals into the mouth of Pyrrhus, Mithridates, or Nero? Can we believe that Voltaire, the brilliant and pathetic Voltaire, if he should once again take his place among us, would make Zaire profess indifference to all matters of religion, and declaim to the savages of America on toleration —that he would represent Mohammed employing the inflated periods of a Tartuffe, and depict Gengis-Khan under the guise of a faded libertine and a philosopher disappointed with human greatness? No! Emphatically No! Every thing in its place and time! Voltaire himself was the first to ridicule the heroes who preceded him—tender, mild, and discreet; he was the first to hold up to scorn the ridiculous fashion of describing
"Caton galant et Brutus dameret."
He has attempted tragedies in which there are no love scenes; he has proposed to restore to us, once for all, the Greeks of Greece and the Romans of Rome; and the reason why he did not completely succeed was only that he was not sufficiently acquainted with them. Chenier, in his turn, has thought good to remodel Voltaire's "Œdipe." Still, Voltaire was the first who attempted to appeal to national sentiments and popular recollections, and many others since his time have followed in his track. We might trace back to a time considerably anterior to the beginning of this century, a confused sense of the necessity for a reform in the theatre, a dim consciousness how much there was in the existing state of the theatre that was formal, narrow, and contemptible. Grimm's correspondence indicates this in every page. More than seventy years ago, Collé lampooned the French tragedy in a satiric poem full of wit, in which great good sense is contained beneath an inexhaustible vein of drollery. And if this want was felt thus strongly at this period, what must be the case now, when authors, as we have just said, have to do no longer with a fictitious, but with a real public? when that same public has, for more than forty years, taken its part in all the great realities of public as well as private life.
Indeed, we ourselves, who are now occupying the scene, have taken part in terrible events; we have witnessed the fall and rise of empires: and how can we be persuaded that such revolutions are accomplished by some six or seven persons, whose two or three uninteresting confidants bustle and declaim in a space of fifty square feet? We have known, and that personally, great men—conquerors, statesmen, conspirators—men of flesh and blood: powerful by their arms, by their genius, and by their eloquence; and, in order to be interested, we must be pointed to men equally real, to men who resemble them in all respects.