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. In a word Mlle Mars
reigns unrivalled as the first comic actress in Europe.
I have seen too, Les Plaideurs of Racine and Les fourberies de Scapin
of Moliere, both exceedingly well given; particularly the scene in the
latter wherein it is announced to Geronte that his son had fallen into the
hands of a Turkish corsair, and his answer "Que diable allait-il faire dans
la galere?"
I have seen also Andromaque, Iphigenie and Zaire.
