If writers or preachers of morality could, by the force of eloquence, eradicate selfishness from the hearts of men, and make them in reality love their neighbours as themselves, it would be a change devoutly to be wished. But until that blessed event, let us not find fault with those forms and attentions which create a kind of artificial friendship and benevolence, which for many of the purposes of society produce the same effects as the true.
People who love to amuse themselves with play, and have not ready money, are obliged to use counters. You and I, my friend, as long as we cut and shuffle together, shall never have occasion for such a succedaneum;—I am fully persuaded we are provided, on both sides, with a sufficient quantity of pure gold.
LETTER XII.
Paris.
When B—— and I went to the playhouse, as was mentioned in my last, we found a prodigious crowd of people before the door: We could not get a place till after a considerable struggle. The play was the Siege of Calais, founded on a popular story, which must needs be interesting and flattering to the French nation.
You cannot conceive what pressing and crowding there is every night to see this favourite piece, which has had the same success at Versailles as at Paris.
There are some few critics, however, who assert that it is entirely devoid of merit and owes its run to the popular nature of the subject, more than to any intrinsic beauty in the verses, which some declare are not even good French.
When it was last acted before the King, it is said, his Majesty, observing that the Duc d’Ayen did not join in applauding, but that he rather shewed some marks of disgust, turned to the Duke and said, Vous n’applaudissez pas? Vous n’étes pas bon François, Monsieur le Duc:—To this the Duke replied,—à Dieu ne plaise que je ne fusse pas meilleur que les vers de la piéce.