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[ Voltaire, "Essay sur le poème épique," 290. "It must be admitted that a Frenchman has more difficulty in writing an epic poem than anybody else. . . . Dare I confess it? Our own is the least poetic of all polished nations. The works in verse the most highly esteemed in France are those of the drama, which must be written in a familiar style approaching conversation.">[
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[ Except in "Pensées," by Pascal, a few notes dotted down by a morbidly exalted Christian, and which certainly, in the perfect work, would not have been allowed to remain as they are.]
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[ See in the Cabinet of Engravings the theatrical costumes of the middle of the XVIIIth century.—Nothing could be more opposed to the spirit of the classic drama than the parts of Esther and Brittannicus, as they are played nowadays, in the accurate costumes and with scenery derived from late discoveries at Pompeii or Nineveh.]
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[ The formality which this indicates will be understood by those familiar with the use of the pronoun thou in France, denoting intimacy and freedom from restraint in contrast with ceremonious and formal intercourse.—Tr.]
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[ See the parts of the moralizers and reasoners like Cléante in "Tartuffe," Ariste in "Les Femmes Savantes," Chrysale in "L'Ecole des Femmes," etc. See the discussion between the two brothers in "Le Festin de Pierre," III. 5; the discourse of Ergaste in "L'Ecole des Maris"; that of Eliante, imitated from Lucretius in the "Misanthrope," II. 5; the portraiture, by Dorine in "Tartuffe," I. 1.—The portrait of the hypocrite, by Don Juan in "Le Festin de Pierre," V. 2.]