Now we come to the history of all the disasters which happened at the acting of this tragedy. "How can people complain that my piece is tedious, when, after the first act, they would never listen ten minutes to it? Why did they attend to the first scenes, and even applaud one? Let me not be told, because these were sublime, and commanded the respect of the cabal raised against it; because there are other scenes far more sublime in the piece, which they perpetually interrupted. Will it be believed, that they pitched upon the scene of the sacrifice of Volgesie, as one of the most tedious?—the scene of Volgesie, which is the finest in my piece; not a verse, not a word in it, can be omitted![[172]] Everything tends towards the catastrophe; and it reads in the closet as well as it would affect us on the stage. I was not, however, astonished at this; what men hear, and do not understand, is always tedious; and it was recited in so shocking a tone by the actress, who, not having entirely recovered from a fit of illness, was flurried by the tumult of the audience. She declaimed in a twanging tone like psalm-singing; so that the audience could not hear, among the fatiguing discordances (he means their own hissing), nor separate the thoughts and words from the full chant which accompanied them. They objected perpetually to the use of the word Madame between two female rivals, as too comic; one of the pit, when an actress said Madame, cried out 'Say Princesse!' This disconcerted the actress. They also objected to the words àpropos and mal-àpropos. Yet, after all, how are there too many Madames in the piece, since they do not amount to forty-six in the course of forty-four scenes? Of these, however, I have erased half."
This historian of his own wrong-headedness proceeds, with all the simplicity of this narrative, to describe the hubbub.
"Thus it was impossible to connect what they were hearing with what they had heard. In the short intervals of silence, the actors, who, during the tumult, forgot their characters, tried with difficulty to recover their conception. The conspirators were prepared to a man; not only in their head, but some with written notes had their watchwords, to set their party a-going. They seemed to act with the most extraordinary concert; they seemed to know the exact moment when they were to give the word, and drown, in their hurly-burly, the voice of the actor, who had a passionate part to declaim, and thus break the connexion between the speakers. All this produced so complete an effect, that it seemed as if the actors themselves had been of the conspiracy, so wilful and so active was the execution of the plot. It was particularly during the fifth and sixth acts that the cabal was most outrageous; they knew these were the most beautiful, and deserved particular attention. Such a humming arose, that the actors seemed to have had their heads turned; some lost their voice, some declaimed at random, the prompter in vain cried out, nothing was heard, and everything was said; the actor, who could not hear the catch-word, remained disconcerted and silent; the whole was broken, wrong and right; it was all Hebrew. Nor was this all; the actors behind the scene were terrified, and they either came forwards trembling, and only watching the signs of their brother actors, or would not venture to show themselves. The machinist only, with his scene-shifters, who felt so deep an interest in the fate of my piece, was tranquil and attentive to his duty, to produce a fine effect. After the hurly-burly was over, he left the actors mute with their arms crossed. He opened the scenery! and not an actor could enter on it! The pit, more clamorous than ever, would not suffer the denouement! Such was the conduct, and such the intrepidity, of the army employed to besiege the Arsacides! Such was the cause of that accusation of tediousness made against a drama, which has most evidently the contrary defect!"
Such is the history of a damned dramatist, written by himself, with a truth and simplicity worthy of a happier fate. It is admirable to see a man, who was himself so deeply involved in the event, preserve the observing calmness which could discover the minutest occurrence; and, allowing for his particular conception of the cause, detailing them with the most rigid veracity. This author was unquestionably a man of the most honourable probity, and not destitute of intellectual ability; but he must serve as an useful example of that wrong-headed nature in some men, which has produced so many "Abbots of Unreason" in society, whom it is in vain to convince by a reciprocation of arguments; who assuming false principles, act rightly according to themselves; a sort of rational lunacy, which, when it discovers itself in politics and religion, and in the more common affairs of life, has produced the most unhappy effects; but this fanaticism, when confined to poetry, only amuses us with the ludicrous; and, in the persons of Monsieur de Beaussol, and of Percival Stockdale, may offer some very fortunate self-recollections in that "Calamity of Authors" which I have called "The Illusions of Writers in Verse."
ACAJOU AND ZIRPHILE.
As a literary curiosity, and as a supplemental anecdote to the article of PREFACES,[[173]] I cannot pass over the suppressed preface to the "Acajou et Zirphile" of Du Clos, which of itself is almost a singular instance of hardy ingenuity, in an address to the public.
This single volume is one of the most whimsical of fairy tales, and an amusing satire originating in an odd circumstance. Count Tessin, the Swedish Ambassador at the Court of France, had a number of grotesque designs made by Boucher, the king's painter, and engraved by the first artists. The last plate had just been finished when the Count was recalled, and appointed Prime Minister and Governor to the Crown Prince, a place he filled with great honour; and in emulation of Fenelon, composed letters on the education of a Prince, which have been translated. He left behind him in France all the plates in the hands of Boucher, who, having shown them to Du Clos for their singular invention, regretted that he had bestowed so much fancy on a fairy tale, which was not to be had; Du Clos, to relieve his regrets, offered to invent a tale to correspond with these grotesque subjects. This seemed not a little difficult. In the first plate, the author appears in his morning-gown, writing in his study, surrounded by apes, rats, butterflies, and smoke. In another, a Prince is drest in the French costume of 1740, strolling full of thought "in the shady walk of ideas." In a third plate, the Prince is conversing with a fairy who rises out of a gooseberry which he has plucked: two dwarfs, discovered in another gooseberry, give a sharp fillip to the Prince, who seems much embarrassed by their tiny maliciousness. In another walk he eats an apricot, which opens with the most beautiful of faces, a little melancholy, and leaning on one side. In another print, he finds the body of his lovely face and the hands, and he adroitly joins them together. Such was the set of these incomprehensible and capricious inventions, which the lighter fancy and ingenuity of Du Clos converted into a fairy story, full of pleasantry and satire.[[174]]
Among the novelties of this small volume, not the least remarkable is the dedication of this fairy romance to the public, which excited great attention, and charmed and provoked our author's fickle patron. Du Clos here openly ridicules, and dares his protector and his judge. This hazardous attack was successful, and the author soon acquired the reputation which he afterwards maintained, of being a writer who little respected the common prejudices of the world. Freron replied by a long criticism, entitled "Réponse du Public à l'Auteur d'Acajou;" but its severity was not discovered in its length; so that the public, who had been so keenly ridiculed, and so hardily braved in the light and sparkling page of the haughty Du Clos, preferred the caustic truths and the pleasant insult.