I felt my hair stand on end, but I mastered my emotions, and told him quietly enough that one day, perhaps, he would find himself obliged to praise the poem more highly than I had done. I quoted several instances of the insufficiency of a first perusal.
“That’s true,” said he; “but as for your Merlin, I will read him no more. I have put him beside Chapelain’s ‘Pucelle’.”
“Which pleases all the critics, in spite of its bad versification, for it is a good poem, and Chapelain was a real poet though he wrote bad verses. I cannot overlook his genius.”
My freedom must have shocked him, and I might have guessed it when he told me he had put the ‘Macaronicon’ beside the ‘Pucelle’. I knew that there was a poem of the same title in circulation, which passed for Voltaire’s; but I also knew that he disavowed it, and I thought that would make him conceal the vexation my explanation must have caused him. It was not so, however; he contradicted me sharply, and I closed with him.
“Chapelain,” said I, “has the merit of having rendered his subject-matter pleasant, without pandering to the tastes of his readers by saying things shocking to modesty and piety. So thinks my master Crebillon.”
“Crebillon! You cite a weighty authority. But how is my friend Crebillon your master, may I ask?”
“He taught me to speak French in less than two years, and as a mark of my gratitude I translated his Radamiste into Italian Alexandrines. I am the first Italian who has dared to use this metre in our language.”
“The first? I beg your pardon, as that honour belongs to my friend Pierre Jacques Martelli.”
“I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that you are making a mistake.”
“Why, I have his works, printed at Bologna, in my room!”