Shakespear, Corneille, and Racine, are the only modern writers of Tragedy, that we can venture to oppose to Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The first is an author so uncommon and eccentric, that we can scarcely try him by dramatic rules. In strokes of nature and character, he yields not to the Greeks: in all other circumstances that constitute the excellence of the drama, he is vastly inferior. Of the three moderns, the most faultless is the tender and exact Racine: but he was ever ready to acknowledge, that his capital beauties were borrowed from his favourite Euripides; which, indeed, cannot escape the observation of those who read with attention his Phædra and Andromache. The pompous and truly Roman sentiments of Corneille are chiefly drawn from Luoan and Tacitus; the former of whom, by a strange perversion of taste, he is known to have preferred to Virgil. His diction is not so pure and mellifluous, his characters not so various and just, nor his plots so regular, so interesting, and simple, as those of his pathetic rival. It is by this simplicity of fable alone, when every single act, and scene, and speech, and sentiment, and word, concur to accelerate the intended event, that the Greek tragedies kept the attention of the audience immoveably fixed upon one principal object, which must be necessarily lessened, and the ends of the drama defeated, by the mazes and intricacies of modern plots.
The assertion of Addison with respect to the first particular, regarding the higher kinds of poetry, will remain unquestionably true, till nature in some distant age, for in the present, enervated with luxury, she seems incapable of such an effort, shall produce some transcendent genius, of power to eclipse the Iliad and the Edipus.
The superiority of the ancient artists in Painting, is not perhaps so clearly manifest. They were ignorant, it will be said, of light, of shade, and perspective; and they had not the use of oil colours, which are happily calculated to blend and unite without harshness and discordance, to give a boldness and relief to the figures, and to form those middle Teints which render every well-wrought piece a closer resemblance of nature. Judges of the truest taste do, however, place the merit of colouring far below that of justness of design, and force of expression. In these two highest and most important excellencies, the ancient painters were eminently skilled, if we trust the testimonies of Pliny, Quintilian, and Lucian; and to credit them we are obliged, if we would form to ourselves any idea of these artists at all; for there is not one Grecian picture remaining; and the Romans, some few of whose works have descended to this age, could never boast of a Parrhasius or Apelles, a Zeuxis, Timanthes, or Protogenes, of whose performances the two accomplished critics above mentioned, speaks in terms of rapture and admiration. The statues that have escaped the ravages of time, as the Hercules and Laocoon for instance, are still a stronger demonstration of the power of the Grecian artists in expressing the passions; for what was executed in marble, we have presumptive evidence to think, might also have been executed in colours. Carlo Marat, the last valuable painter of Italy, after copying the head of the Venus in the Medicean collection three hundred times, generously confessed, that he could not arrive at half the grace and perfection of his model. But to speak my opinion freely on a very disputable point, I must own, that if the moderns approach the ancients in any of the arts here in question, they approach them nearest in The Art of Painting, The human mind can with difficulty conceive any thing more exalted, than "The Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo, and "The Transfiguration" of Raphael. What can be more animated than Raphael's "Paul preaching at Athens?" What more tender and delicate than Mary holding the child Jesus, in his famous "Holy Family?" What more graceful than "The Aurora" of Guido? What more deeply moving than "The Massacre of the Innocents" by Le Brun?
But no modern Orator can dare to enter the lists with Demosthenes and Tully. We have discourses, indeed, that may be admired, for their perspicuity, purity, and elegance; but can produce none that abound in a sublime which whirls away the auditor like a mighty torrent, and pierces the inmost recesses of his heart like a flash of lightning; which irresistibly and instantaneously convinces, without leaving, him leisure to weigh the motives of conviction. The sermons of Bourdaloue, the funeral orations of Bossuet, particularly that on the death of Henrietta, and the pleadings of Pelisson, for his disgraced patron Fouquet, are the only pieces of eloquence I can recollect, that bear any resemblance to the Greek or Roman orator; for in England we have been particularly unfortunate in our attempts to be eloquent, whether in parliament, in the pulpit, or at the bar. If it be urged, that the nature of modern politics and laws excludes the pathetic and the sublime, and confines the speaker to a cold argumentative method, and a dull detail of proof and dry matters of fact; yet, surely, the Religion of the moderns abounds in topics so incomparably noble and exalted as might kindle the flames of genuine oratory in the most frigid and barren genius much more might this success be reasonably expected from such geniuses as Britain can enumerate; yet no piece of this sort, worthy applause or notice, has ever yet appeared.
The few, even among professed scholars, that are able to read the ancient Historians in their inimitable, originals, are startled at the paradox, of Bolingbroke who boldly prefers Guicciardini to Thucydides; that is, the most verbose and tedious to the most comprehensive and concise of writers, and a collector of facts to one who was himself an eye-witness and a principal actor in the important story he relates. And, indeed, it may be well presumed, that the ancient histories exceed the modern from this single consideration, that the latter are commonly compiled by recluse scholars, unpractised in business, war, and politics; whilst the former are many of them written by ministers, commanders, and princes themselves. We have, indeed, a few flimsy memoirs, particularly in a neighbouring nation, written by persons deeply interested in the transactions they describe; but these I imagine will not be compared to "The retreat of the ten thousand" which Xenophon himself conducted and related, nor to "the Galic war" of Cæsar, nor "The precious fragments" of Polybius, which our modern generals and ministers would not have discredited by diligently perusing, and making them the models of their conduct as as well as of their style. Are the reflections of Machiavel so subtle and refined as those of Tacitus? Are the portraits of Thuanus so strong and expressive as those of Sallust and Plutarch? Are the narrations of Davila so lively and animated, or do his sentiments breathe such a love of liberty and virtue, as those of Livy and Herodotus?
The supreme excellence of the ancient Architecture the last particular to be touched, I shall not enlarge upon, because it has never once been called in question, and because it is abundantly testified by the awful ruins of amphitheatres, aqueducts, arches, and columns, that are the daily objects of veneration, though not of imitation. This art, it is observable; has never been improved in later ages in one single instance; but every just and legitimate edifice is still formed according to the five old established orders, to which human wit has never been able to add a sixth of equal symmetry and strength.
Such, therefore, are the triumphs of the Ancients, especially the Greeks, over the Moderns. They may, perhaps, be not unjustly ascribed to a genial climate, that gave such a happy temperament of body as was most proper to produce fine sensations; to a language most harmonious, copious, and forcible; to the public encouragements and honours bestowed on the cultivators of literature; to the emulation excited among the generous youth, by exhibitions of their performances at the solemn games; to an inattention to the arts of lucre and commerce, which engross and debase the minds of the moderns; and above all, to an exemption from the necessity of overloading their natural faculties with learning and languages, with which we in these later times are obliged to qualify ourselves, for writers, if we expect to be read.
It is said by Voltaire, with his usual liveliness, "We shall never again behold the time, when a Duke de la Rochefoucault might go from the conversation of a Pascal or Arnauld, to the theatre of Corneille." This reflection may be more justly applied to the ancients, and it may with much greater truth be said; "The age will never again return, when a Pericles, after walking with Plato in a portico, built by Phidias, and painted by Apelles, might repair to hear a pleading of Demosthenes, or a tragedy of Sophocles."
I shall next examine the other part of Addison's assertion, that the moderns excell the ancients in all the arts of Ridicule, and assign the reasons of this supposed excellence.