past, and not a study of the past that has breathed its influence over the present. The literature of the moment is native to the moment.

But the different English articles that I have seen on the state of the French drama have been written without notice of the circumstances which have produced its peculiarities; and while the absurdities and the atrocities of the French dramatists have been ridiculed and condemned, their merits have not been seen nor their faults accounted for. The difficulty is in separating what is peculiar to the author himself from the time and the public for which he writes.

I don't blame an author for suiting himself to the period and to the people he addresses; he must be understood by his audience; but then he should elevate his audience. If he live in a time when exaggeration is to be expected, you hope to see that exaggeration softened by his skill and ennobled by his art. You hope to see him true to nature, though you know it must be the nature of his particular period. You hope to see him keeping to the ancient costume of history, though you know that that costume will be coloured by the spirit of a new time. You hope to see him seize and concentrate the vaguer sentiments that are abroad, and deduce from them some kind of order which will give a character to his epoch. You hope to see him give force and clearness, rather than add pomp and paradox to what he finds. This you hope; and above all, you hope that he will awake and excite the better feelings, and make you forget or loathe the more mean and pernicious passions of your soul.

How has the modern French dramatists satisfied the hopes and the expectations that we had a right to form?

18*

4

CHAPTER VII.

How far the horrid subjects chosen for the French stage are allowable, and in what their offence consists.

THE first consideration which opens upon us in relation with the present French drama is, the horrid nature of its subjects, and the manner in which those subjects are handled and introduced.

I shall now, therefore, proceed to inquire, How far those subjects are in themselves allowable, or how much they depend on the manner in which they are treated.

A subject is not allowable on the stage either because it offends the rules of art, or because it offends the still more important rules of morality.

Now, I say here, as I said in speaking of the Tour de Nesle, no subject, as it appears to me, offends the rules of art which is in harmony with the character, or with our general ideas of the character, of the time in which it is introduced. The offence against the rules of art in bringing "bloody Queen Mary" on the stage is in not making "bloody Queen Mary” bloody enough. The offence against the rules of art in bringing Darlington on the stage is in making Darlington a much greater political profligate than he could possibly have been.

I do not, then, I confess, join in the usual cant which denounces as an abomination the mere bringing Lucrèce Borgia and Marguerite of Burgoyne on the stage. I see no reason, as a question of art, why any person, why any passion, why any subject should be prohibited the author that his audience does not forbid; but I do see every reason, as a question of art, why the persons he creates should be in the image of the

times in which he creates them-why the persons, for whom he is indebted to history, should stand forth in their historical characters-why the countries of which he speaks should be spoken of with a knowledge of their manners--why the events that take place in the drama should not be wholly unnatural in their comparison with the events of real life.

It is in these, the finer parts of their pursuit, that the present dramatic writers of France are universally defective. If M. V. Hugo and M. Dumas were schoolboys, and told to write about English history in the time of Marie Tudor, or English manners and laws at the present time, they would have been whipped for the ridiculous faults that they have both committed. These are not faults of genius; they are purely and entirely faults of negligence or ignorance.

I turn, then, from this first inquiry to the second-viz. how far these subjects offend, what every dramatist is most bound to protect, the laws and the interests of morality. King Lear is a horrid subject--Macbeth is a horrid subject. Do they offend the morals of an audience? It is of the rules of morality as of the rules of art it is not the horrid nature of a subject that offends either the one or the other; it is in the manner in which that subject is treated that its beauty as a piece of composition, or its value as a lesson of virtue, depends. The immorality of M. V. Hugo and of M. Dumas is, not in having brought Marion de Lorme and Antony upon the stage, but in affecting to breathe a mawkish interest over the infamy of the prostitute, and attaching a romantic heroism to the adulterous seducer of female honour. The inverted philosophy of M. Hugo appears to me, as I have frankly said, a kind of unphilosophic madness, with which I have no sympathy, for which I think there is no excuse; and what I say of the intentional follies of M. V. Hugo, I say of the wild and whining vice of M. Dumas.

And why is this? Why, M. Dumas, instead of attempting to breathe a false poesy into the grovelling

amours of a Parisian salon, or holding up for imitation a political profligacy--which, thank God, is yet untrue-in the public men, and the parliament of Great Britain,—why have you sought for no truer, no better, no brighter models for the emulation of those ardent youths who admire your talent and worship your career? Are there no characters you can take from the heroes of July, or the enthusiasts of June? Are there no models of female heroism and devotion you can draw from the revolution of 1789, and the restoration of 1815? Have Madame Roland and Madame Lavalette lived in vain? Have you had no men in France who have been disinterested and brave? Have you had no women in France who have been noble and virtuous? Must you fill your stage with sickly-faced apothecaries in the frontispiece attitude of Lord Byron, and fourth-rate fine ladies vulgarly imitating the vices and the ton of Mde. de Mirepoix? Why should you invent imaginary personages in the representation of your age who are exceptions to your age? Why should you make as the heroes and heroines of your drama the creatures whom it would sicken you to meet in the commerce of daily life?

And you, M. V. Hugo!-you, the promise of whose youth was so generous-in whose odes breathed a spirit no less remarkable for its purity than its poesy -you, who seemed by instinct to have caught the chivalry and the grace of the old knightly time, with the popular language that goes to the heart of the present day-have you no better mode of elevating your countrywomen than by teaching them to be good mothers by the example of Lucrèce Borgia, or devoted mistresses by the example of Marion de Lorme? What! have you found no cleverer mode of elevating the people in their own esteem than by telling every unwashed apprentice that a countess wishes to marry him--not because he is a good man, and a steady apprentice--Oh, no! simply because he is an apprentice, because he is a working man?

Is not this stuff! Is not this prostrate and dust-lick

ing flattery! Can you talk of the ringing of a courtier to his monarch, when you bow thus slavishly before the meanest of your mob? Nor is my praise or censure indifferent to you--if I, a foreigner, far away from all your petty jealousies and rival cliques--if I, who not even as a man of letters, a title to which I have not the honour to pretend-if I, who neither as a countryman, nor even as a literary man, can possibly have any rivalry with you--if I, who honour your talents, love your country, and approve of many of your principles--if I, who, if any wish were stirring in my mind, can only have the wish to propitiate your friends, to obtain and enjoy the pleasure and honour of your acquaintance—if I have allowed words to be wrung out from me, words of reproach, strong words, words expressive of more than my regret at the manner in which you have allowed ignorance, and prejudice, and adulation, and negligence, and indifference, and immorality to obscure and to tarnish the lustre of talents for which such a country, and such a time, as that in which you live, opened so great, and so noble, and so heart-cheering a path to fame--if I have had language such as that which I have used, unwillingly, I declare, extorted from me--is it not possible, that far away from that feeble chorus of easily-enchanted friends, who, like the bird in the Arabian Nights, pass their lives in repeating" there is but one poesy, and Dumas and Victor Hugo are its true prophets !"--is it not possible, I say, that, far away from these sicklied sounds, there is an opinion rising, gathering, swelling-an opinion which shall be the opinion of Europe, the opinion of posterity--an opinion which might have raised you in a new time to such pedestals as those of the old time occupy--an opinion which shall break as busts of clay what you might have made statues of stone and of marble-an opinion which shall leave you the lions of a drawing-room, and which might have made you the landmarks of an epoch?

But I pass from this. And now, having expressed an opinion in respect to the present French drama,