Thunders of applause proceeded from those who applied it to Napoleon. At
the line:
Est il d'autre parti que celui de nos rois?
a loud shout and clapping proceeded from the Royalists; but I fancy if
hands had been shown these last would have been in a sad minority. I have
often amused myself with comparing the Merope of Voltaire with that of
Maffei and am puzzled to which to give the preference. Maffei has made
Polyphonte a more odious and perhaps on that account a more theatrical
character, while Voltaire's Polyphonte is more in real life. In the play of
Voltaire he is a rough brutal soldier, void of delicacy of feeling and not
very scrupulous, but not that praeternatural deep designing villain that he
is represented in the piece of Maffei. In fact Maffei's Polyphonte appears
too outre; but then on the stage may not a little exaggeration be
allowed, just as statues which are destined to be placed in the open air or
on columns appear with greater effect when larger than the natural size?
Alfleri seems to have given the preference to the Merope of Voltaire.
I have seen Talma a second time in the part of Nero in the Britannicus of
Racine; Mlle Georges played the part of Agrippina. Talma was Nero from head
to foot; his very entry on the stage gave an idea of the fiery and
impatient character of the tyrant, and in the scene between him and his
mother Agrippina nothing could be better delineated. The forced calm of
Agrippina, while reproaching her son with his ingratitude, and the
impatience of Nero to get rid of such an importunate monitress, were given
in a style impossible to be surpassed. Talma's dumb show during this scene
was a masterpiece of the mimic art. If Talma gives such effects to his
roles in a French drama, where he is shackled by rules, how much greater
would he give on the English or German stages in a tragedy of Shakespeare
or Schiller!
Blank verse is certainly better adapted to tragedy than rhymed
alexandrines, but then the French language does not admit of blank verse,
and to write tragedies in prose, unless they be tragedies in modern life,
would deprive them of all charm; but after all I find the harmonious pomp
and to use a phrase of Pope's "The long majestic march and energy divine"
of the French alexandrine, very pleasing to the ear. I am sure that the
French poets deserve a great deal of credit for producing such masterpieces
of versification from a language, which, however elegant, is the least
poetical in Europe; which allows little or no inversion, scarce any poetic
license, no enjambement, compels a fixed caesura; has in horror the
hiatus; and in fine is subject to the most rigorous rules, which can on no
account be infringed; which rejects hyperbole; which is measured by
syllables, the pronunciation of which is not felt in prose; compels the
alternative termination of a masculine or feminine rhyme; and with all this
requires more perhaps than any other language that cacophony be sedulously
avoided. Such are the difficulties a French poet has to struggle with; he
must unite the most harmonious sound with the finest thought. In Italian
very often the natural harmony of the language and the music of the sound
conceal the poverty of the thought; besides Italian poetry has innumerable
licenses which make it easy to figure in the Tuscan Parnassus, and where
anyone who can string together rime or versi sciolti is dignified with
the appellation of a poet; whereas from French poetry, a mediocrity is and
must be of necessity banished. Neither is it sufficient for an author to
have sublime ideas; these must be filed and pruned. Inspiration can make a
poet of a German, an Italian or an Englishman, because he may revel in
unbounded license of metre and language, but in French poetry inspiration
is by no means sufficient; severe study and constant practise are as
indispensable as poetic verve to constitute a French poet. The French poets
are sensible of this and on this account they prefer imitating the
ancients, polishing their rough marble and fitting it to the national
taste, to striking out a new path.
The Abbe Delille, the best poet of our day that France has produced, has
gone further; he had read and admired the best English poets such as
Milton, Pope, Collins and Goldsmith, and has not disdained to imitate them;
yet he has imitated them with such elegance and judgment that he has left
nothing to regret on the part of those of his countrymen who are not
acquainted with English, and he has rendered their beauties with such a
force that a foreigner Versed in both languages who did not previously know
which was the original, and which the translation, might take up passages
in Pope, Thomson, Collins and Goldsmith and read parallel passages in
Delille and be extremely puzzled to distinguish the original: for none of
the beauties are lost in these imitations. And yet, in preferring to
imitate, it must not be inferred that he was deficient in original
thoughts.
To return to the theatre, I have seen Mlle Mars in the role of Henriette
in the Femmes Savantes of Moliere. Oh! how admirable she is! She realizes
completely the conception of a graceful and elegant Frenchwoman of the
first society. She does not act; she is at home as it were in her own
salon, smiling at the silly pretensions of her sister and at the ridiculous
pedantry of Trissotin; her refusing the kiss because she does not
understand Greek was given with the greatest naivete.
