The man of taste, while he admires the sublime picture, the striking contrasts of character and strong coloring in the last scene of Rodogyne, will perceive how many faults, how many improbabilities, have prepared the way for this terrible situation—how much Rodogyne has belied her character, and by what crooked ways it is necessary to pass to this great and tragical catastrophe.
The same equitable judge will not fail to do justice to the fine and artful contexture of Racine's tragedies, the only ones, perhaps, that have been well wrought from the time of Æschylus down to the age of Louis XIV. He will be touched by that continued elegance, that purity of language, that truth of character, to be found in him only; by that grandeur without bombast, that fidelity to nature which never wanders in vain declamations, sophistical disputes, false and far-fetched images, often expressed in solecisms or rhetorical pleadings, fitter for provincial schools than for a tragedy. The same person will discover weakness and uniformity in some of Racine's characters; and in others, gallantry and sometimes even coquetry; he will find declarations of love breathing more of the idyl and the elegy, than of a great dramatic passion; and will complain that more than one well-written piece has elegance to please, but not eloquence to move him. Just so will he judge of the ancients; not by their names—not by the age in which they lived—but by their works themselves.
Suppose Timanthes the painter were at this day to come and present to us, by the side of the paintings in the Palais Royal, his picture in four colors of the "Sacrifice of Iphigenia," telling us that men of judgment in Greece had assured him that it was an admirable artifice to veil the face of Agamemnon, lest his grief should appear to equal that of Clytemnestra, and the tears of the father dishonor the majesty of the monarch. He would find connoisseurs who would reply—it is a stroke of ingenuity, but not of painting; a veil on the head of your principal personage has a frightful effect; your art has failed you. Behold the masterpiece of Rubens, who has succeeded in expressing in the countenance of Mary of Medicis the pain attendant on childbirth—the joy, the smile, the tenderness—not with four colors, but with every tint of nature. If you wished that Agamemnon should partly conceal his face, you should have made him hide a portion of it by placing his hands over his eyes and forehead; and not with a veil, which is as disagreeable to the eye, and as unpicturesque, as it is contrary to all costume. You should then have shown some falling tears that the hero would conceal, and have expressed in his muscles the convulsions of a grief which he struggles to suppress; you should have painted in this attitude majesty and despair. You are a Greek, and Rubens is a Belgian; but the Belgian bears away the palm.
On a Passage in Homer.
A Florentine, a man of letters, of clear understanding and cultivated taste, was one day in Lord Chesterfield's library, together with an Oxford professor and a Scotchman, who was boasting of the poem of Fingal, composed, said he, in the Gaelic tongue, which is still partly that of Lower Brittany. "Ah!" exclaimed he, "how fine is antiquity; the poem of Fingal has passed from mouth to mouth for nearly two thousand years, down to us, without any alteration. Such power has real beauty over the minds of men!" He then read to the company the commencement of Fingal:
"Cuthullin sat by Tara's wall; by the tree of the rustling sound. His spear leaned against a rock. His shield lay on the grass by his side. Amid his thoughts of mighty Carbar, a hero slain by the chief in war, the scout of ocean comes, Moran, the son of Fithil!
"'Arise,' says the youth, 'Cuthullin, arise! I see the ships of the north! many, chief of men, are the foe; many the heroes of the sea-born Swaran!' 'Moran,' replied the blue-eyed chief, 'thou ever tremblest, son of Fithil! thy fears have increased the foe. It is Fingal, king of deserts, with aid to green Erin of streams.' 'I beheld their chief,' says Moran, 'tall as a glittering rock. His spear is a blasted pine. His shield the rising moon! He sat on the shore, like a cloud of mist on the silent hill!'" etc.
"That," said the Oxford professor, "is the true style of Homer; but what pleases me still more is that I find in it the sublime eloquence of the Hebrews. I could fancy myself to be reading passages such as these from those fine canticles:
"'Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly. Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundation also of the hills moved and were shaken because he was wroth. The Lord also thundered in the heavens; and the Highest gave His voice hailstones and coals of fire. In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun. Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber.
"'Break their teeth in their mouth, O God; break the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord. Let them pass away as waters that run continually; when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away, like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as in a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.