Cinna, tu t'en souviens, et veux m'assassiner!
—CINNA, act v, scene i.
Thou dost remember, Cinna, yet wouldst kill me!
Soyons amis, Cinna; c'est moi qui t'en convie.
—ID., act v, scene iii.
Let us be friends, Cinna; 'tis I who ask it.
True beauty consists, not in what is called wit, but in sublimity and simplicity. Let Antiochus, in "Rodogune," say of his mistress, who quits him, after disgracefully proposing to him to kill his mother:
Elle fuit, mais en Parthe, en nous perçant le cœur.
She flies, but, like the Parthian, flying, wounds.
Antiochus has wit; he makes an epigram against Rodogune; he ingeniously likens her last words in going away, to the arrows which the Parthians used to discharge in their flight. But it is not because his mistress goes away, that the proposal to kill his mother is revolting: whether she goes or stays, the heart of Antiochus is equally wounded. The epigram, therefore, is false; and if Rodogune did not go away, this bad epigram could not be retained.
I select these examples expressly from the best authors, in order that they may be the more striking. I do not lay hold of those puns which play upon words, the false taste of which is felt by all. There is no one that does not laugh when, in the tragedy of the "Golden Fleece," Hypsipyle says to Medea, alluding to her sorceries:
Je n'ai que des attraits, et vous avez des charmes.
I have attractions only, you have charms.
Corneille found the stage and every other department of literature infested with these puerilities, into which he rarely fell.
I wish here to speak only of such strokes of wit as would be admitted elsewhere, and as the serious style rejects. To their authors might be applied the sentence of Plutarch, translated with the happy naivete of Amiot: "Tu tiens sans propos beaucoup de bons propos."
There occurs to my recollection one of those brilliant passages, which I have seen quoted as a model in many works of taste, and even in the treatise on studies by the late M. Rollin. This piece is taken from the fine funeral oration on the great Turenne, composed by Fléchier. It is true, that in this oration Fléchier almost equalled the sublime Bossuet, whom I have called and still call the only eloquent man among so many elegant writers; but it appears to me that the passage of which I am speaking would not have been employed by the bishop of Meaux. Here it is:
"Ye powers hostile to France, you live; and the spirit of Christian charity forbids me to wish your death.... but you live; and I mourn in this pulpit over a virtuous leader, whose intentions were pure...."