Greek drama, has nothing sententious or nor experience has qualified them, they declamatory. Ajax, in a fit of insanity, has look on failure as a personal insult; and slain the flock of sheep, believing them to the greater the neglect of the world, the be his enemies. He soon discovers his bitterer their sarcasms on its malevolent error, and is overwhelmed with shame. He envy and bad taste, and the greater the cannot reappear before the Greeks, and so conviction of their own genius. The less

resolves on death. His resolution is calm, but sad. He regrets life, though determined on quitting it.

praise the world bestows, the more they
give themselves; and thus make up for in-
gratitude by a liberality which begins where
it ends at home:

Et de ses tristes vers, admirateur unique,
Plaindre, en les relisant, l'ignorance publique.
Boileau.

In the modern drama, suicide is also philosophical and passionate; but the philosophy differs from stoicism. It is directed against society; it is dreamy and melancholy, skeptical and revolutionary. In the monologues of Hamlet, Manfred, and Karl When, however, a génie incompris, exasvon Moor, we may see the northern tenden- perated by failure or desperate from povercy of probing the mysteries of existence, ty, sees that his calling in this world is not and the vague terrors of infinity. In Wer- acknowledged, he commits suicide, as Chatther and Chatterton, passion predominates terton did. Stobæus relates that a young over reflection; but in both suicide is a man, forced to attend to agricultural emmiserable weakness. Chatterton, in the ployments, hanged himself, leaving a letter play of M. Alfred de Vigny, kills himself behind him, in which he said that agricul

because a journalist pretends that he is not the author of his own poems, and because the lord mayor humiliates him by the offer of a menial situation. Remark, also, that this trivial motive in this contemptible character appears so important to M. de Vigny, that he has not only made a play of it, but a novel also.

As the love of life is a healthy feeling, so is suicide a symptom of disease. If there are frequent examples of suicide daily recurring, it is because our age is full of anarchy and disease. It resembles Rome under the emperors. It has the same wide

ture was too monotonous; that it was necessary incessantly to sow and reap, and reap and sow, in one eternal circle, which made life insupportable. This idleness, affecting a disgust for labor, is a type of the suicides of the present day. Instead of there being any thing fine in this recklessness of life, it is to us unspeakably contemptible. Instead of its being made the subject of dramas and tragic tales, it should be held up to pitiless ridicule or stern contempt. It enervates by flattering the worst portions of our feeble nature. It dignifies weakness with the purple and fine linen of sentiment. 'For,'

ly-spread skepticism, the same egotism, the as M. Girardin well says, 'what is both cusame ennui, the same social anarchy. In rious and sad to notice is, that in proporsuch times quacks flourish, and 'neglected tion as suicides become more numerous, geniuses' complain. Reverie has usurped the causes become less serious. People do the place of action. Pretension supplants the fixed and resolute ambition of great men. The age of great deeds gives place to the age of great pretensions: 'Ote-toi que je m'y pose,' is the general cry. The curse of the young men of the day is ἀθυμια (Unmuth, as the Germans say), the want of vital energy, the want of faith in energy. They have talents enough, but their progress is rendered impossible by the vastness of their pretensions. This renders them uneasy and fretful: they fancy they belong to the great, because they have not the force of the vulgar. They have so profound a contempt for any thing 'mechanical,' for any thing

not kill themselves now for the sake of honor, as Pamela wished to do, nor for love, as Werther did; but from vanity, caprice, ennui, imitation. By dint of tending and cultivating the sensibility of our hearts, we have contracted a temperament like that of the sensitive plant: we shudder at the least touch, every movement is a shock, every scratch is a wound, every contradiction is a despair. The soul has become a Sybarite: it can no longer support the wrinkle of a rose-leaf.'

Connected with this subject is the remark of M. Girardin respecting the goût de la mort, which he finds characteristic of

like 'drudgery,' that they easily persuade English literature. All that is profound themselves into regarding their idleness and and indefinite in the idea of death, all that weakness as signs of superiority. Under- it has of vague terrors, all the horribletaking subjects for which neither education | nay, disgusting associations which it excites, seem to have a peculiar fascination obvious, from the fact that Italy and Spain for our poets. Shakspeare forms an inter- are equally Christian countries, and they esting study in this respect. Not only the manifest no love of images of death and melancholy Hamlet, but the young and horror. He himself has said that in the south,

but he has not understood the cause. He the greatest of Englishmen, and embalmed justly says that ' un fils du génie d'Homère in immortal verse the spirit of his nation. ou de Sophocle, un amant Grec ou même Let us not forget this. There is a tenItalien,' would never think Juliet more dency, in these days, not only to the idolalovely in death, as Romeo does. Sopho-try of Shakspeare, but to the refining away cles makes Hæmon kill himself by the of all his characteristics. The cant of crittomb of Antigone, as Romeo kills himself icism, not satisfied with proclaiming him by the tomb of Juliet; but Sophocles does the greatest of men, endeavors, by pomp

meo, who passionately talks of taking up was a man that we admire him; had he his abode with Juliet and the worms. The been exempt from human imperfections, English Romeo delights in contemplating from human influences, where would be Juliet in her tomb, beautiful though lifeless. the miracle of his all-surpassing power? The Italian Romeo thinks only of Juliet as The Germans have absurdly wanted to she was, thinks of her beautiful and living. prove that Shakspeare was a cosmopolitan, This difference is both curious and im- not a national poet; that he belonged to portant, and M. Girardin deserves our the whole world, and not alone to England. resented handsome men. Who would paint thee,' says an ancient epigram, since no one would look at thee?" The Greeks abhorred portraits, i. e. the resemblance of ordinary men. The victors at the Olympic games had each a right to a statue; but only he who had thrice been victorious obtained the honor of a portrait; so much did the Greeks dread ugliness in the fine arts. With this horror of ugli

LECTURES ON THE DRAMA." man, it is because criticism suffers from | represented men they had the same care of errors like the one we combat. Shak- beauty: their painters and sculptors only repspeare pleases in Germany; he is regarded there almost in the light of a national poet; but this is because the general character of the English and German spirit is the same. Shakspeare is admired in France and Italy; admired for his unmistakable power, not because he expresses their national spirit. He is not a household god, but a foreign divinity whom they admit into their Pantheon; for Shakspeare is not Italian in spirit, nor French; but eminently English;

ness, the painters and sculptors were careful

never to represent the excess of passion; the extremes of grief and rage border on contortion, and contortion is ugly. Timanthes, in

he could not express it without disfigurement. Sculpture has represented the children of

Niobe, some dead, the others dying. But neither the dying nor the supplicants are represented in disordered attitudes, or violent gestures; their countenances and their persons express supplication, suffering, terror, and even death, with striking fidelity, but at the same time with dignity and beauty. Niobe herself, the mother, seeing her children perish, is lovely and majestic; the sculptor has seized on the moment, when having still one daughter whom she entreats the gods to spare, she has not yet arrived at the excess of grief. In truth, as long as grief has a glimmering of hope, the soul, and consequently the human face, preserves a sort of calmness and dignity, which is the moral and physical beauty that Greek art endeavored to express."

in his greatness, English; in his weakness, his picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, veilEnglish; in his very buffooneries and trivi- ed the head of Agamemnon; not that he dealities, his recklessness and want of polish; spaired of rendering such grief, but because in his careless prodigality and occasional perversity of dulness, he is English. Homer is not more intensely Greek; Racine not more characteristically French: Goethe not more German. If he is for all times and for all men, it is because intensely human, true, national; it is because his greatness is unparalleled; it is because his works contain food for all minds and for all ages; delight for the young and trivial, delight for the old and contemplative, boundless amusement and endless thought: but with all this, English in every fibre; and the English character in its purest form; before sour puritanism had banished music and painting, and lusty revelry and boisterous mirth; before the brand of sin had been stamped on the innocent joys of life. Whoever reads Shakspeare, and confounds his spirit with that of any foreign poet, has but dim perceptions of the great

boundaries of character.

So far so good. M. Saint Marc Girardin has here done little more than adapt some striking pages from Lessing's 'Laokoon; and as long as he continued in the To return from this digression. Shak- company of so safe a guide, he was safe himself. But at this point he separated speare did not alter Christianity; he acfrom Lessing, and maintains an opinion cepted it as his nation had accepted it; if common enough in Germany, but which there is alteration, the causes must be the whole scope of Lessing's work was to sought in the national spirit. M. Girardin refute; the limits of poetry and painting, has committed the error of attributing to the subjects which they could each treat, one man the formation of a national spirit, and the manner of their different treatment, when it is obvious that man must himself this was the object of the 'Laokoon,' and have partaken of the spirit, or the nation it was executed in such a style that we may would not have listened. The error is not express surprise at any one's ever blunder

uncommon, but it bears no examination.

There is another error, repeated from wri

ter to writer, and accepted by M. Girardin, respecting the love of beauty, and its influence on Greek art, which we may here

combat. He thus states it :

"We admire beauty, but we do not adore it. The Greeks both admired and adored it. They had no gods but those that were beauti ful; Pluto himself was beautiful, although the god of the infernal regions. When the Greeks

ing after it. M. Girardin however says:

"Do not fancy that the antique poetry was bolder than painting or sculpture, in representing the passions in excess. Thus when Niobe has arrived at the last degree of grief, poetry, instead of doing violence to art to represent the distraction of this desperate mother, changes her into a rock: it prefers the metamorphosis to the disfigurement of man. The ancient imagination believed that when the passion is excessive, the man disappears; a profound

idea, which lies at the bottom of the meta- (Misled by this dogma of the adoration felt morphoses of Ovid. As soon as a passion ex- for beauty by the Greeks, M. Girardin is ceeds the force of endurance, the ancient poet led into inconsistency in his critique on has recourse to a prodigy: preferring a mira- the Philoctetes. cle to exaggeration. He changes Biblis into a fountain, because he despairs of expressing the grief of a love at once incestuous and

scorned.

"The art of the ancients, whether choosing with admirable tact the amount which precedes the excess of passion, or whether in

passing beyond that and arriving at a prodigy

which envelopes all in its shadow; this

Physical suffering was

there too plainly represented to admit of denial; how then to make it accord with the notion of universal beauty? Thus: The Greeks,' he says, 'did not fear expressing physical suffering; but they submitted it to the laws of the beautiful.'

،

This is one of those metaphysical phrases

greater effect on the imagination than modern in which Schlegel and his followers de

art, which boldly endeavors to express passions in their excess. The pretension of modern art is to tell every thing: what then rests for the imagination to divine? Is it often well to trust to the spectator's completing the idea of the poet or sculptor?"

light. What meaning can it have applied to the scene with Achilles above quoted? What are the 'lois du beau' to begin with? and where are they visible in that scene? M. Girardin has a few words in which he endeavors to analyze the impression made by Philoctetes: 'the pity which his sufferings inspire is never pushed too far, because it is elevated and replaced in time by another pity, more gentle and more noble, the pity of the soul, inspired by his emotions of joy and gratitude, and even by his anger and hatred. With this art of tempering the passions one by the other, excess, and consequently the moral or physical contortion, become impossible.' This is weak and sophistical; and it applies to the grief and phrensy of Gudule (in the passage quoted

There is much ingenuity and some truth in this, but it rests, we believe, on a confusion of ideas. In the first place it is not true that the Greek poets refrained from expressing passions in their excess; it is not true that they avoided the introduction of moral and physical ugliness. Thersites, on the one hand, and Philoctetes or Œdipus on the other, may be instanced to the contrary. As to the expression of passion, we will set the dramatists aside, and only refer to Homer, and Homer's greatest character, Achilles, contenting ourselves with one from 'Notre Dame de Paris') quite as example. When (Il. xviii. v. 22-35) the well as to Philoctetes, and not at all to news arrived of the death of Patroclus, the agony of Laokoon, when the serpents Achilles threw himself on the ground, enfold him:

Perfusus sanie vittas atroque veneno;
Clamores simul horendos ad sidera tollit:
Quales mugitus, fugit cum saucius aram

Taurus.*

heaped dust and ashes on his head, tore out his hair by handsful, howled horribly (σμερδαλέον δ ̓ ὠμοξεν), and was so frantic, that Antilochus feared much lest he should commit suicide. If this is not passion in excess we know not where to find it. Facts, therefore, are against M. Girardin. But, as we said, his opinion rests on a confusion of ideas: unable to deny the physical ugliness of the disease of Philoctetes, he says, 'it would, however, be wrong to fancy that he chose the subject from that love of the deformed which has for some time been one of the manias of modern literature.' Granted: does it follow, however, that because Sophocles had not the modern 'goût du laid, therefore the Greeks of M. Girardin's work; the books are rare

refused to represent the deformed? Clearly not. The Greeks were too poetical to prefer the deformed; too great artists not to see its occasional value as a contrast.*

* The fact alone that both Æschylus and Euripides had treated the subject of Philoctetes before Sophocles, is sufficient proof of what is advanced in the text. See Dio. Chrys. 52.

There is no glimpse here either of 'les lois du beau, nor of emotions which temper each other and prevent contortion: on the contrary, the pain is physical and the contortion violent. If the reader wishes to learn the reason why the ancients admitted deformity, contortions, and excess, in poetry and not in sculpture, let him consult the Laokoon' of Lessing: it is impossible to refuse assent to his reasoning.

The above errors are the only two of any consequence, which struck us in the whole indeed of which we could say as much. Willingly would we accompany him in all

* Æneid,' ii. 221. Let us also remember the story current respecting the Furies of Æschylus having terrified women to death. The story is apochryphal; but that it was ever circulated is a proof that the Furies were terrible to look upon.

his well-selected illustrations of the pas-how to produce an effect is no longer scarcely

sions as treated by ancient and modern dramatists, but we have no space to do so.

On the appearance of his second volume, we may perhaps find opportunity for resuming the subject. Meanwhile we cannot do better than close this notice with his reflections on literature as the expression of society.

"Is the alteration in the expression, a sign of the alteration in the generous sentiments of the heart? Do the men of our day love life with a more cowardly and effeminate love than their ancestors did, because Catarina is less resigned to death than Iphigenia? Are paternal and maternal love less ardent and less noble, because Goriot and Lucrèce Borgia love their children differently from Don Diègue and Mérope? Are there no simple and truthful sorrows in the world, because novels are full of false despairs? In a word, is literature now the expression of society?

"Our age is certainly not the age of violent and disordered passions. Yet, to take our literature as a sign, never were great passions in such honor: our heroes all aim at wonderful energy; it is on that account they please us, for we adore ardent and passionate characters, we even deify vice if it has but a bold appearance. In our novels the lovers are enthusiastic and exaltés: the girls are dreamy and melancholy. Nevertheless, in the world, marriages are made more and more according to convenance; interest usurps the place of passion. Society indeed writes and talks in one manner and acts in another. The most certain way of misunderstanding it is to take it at its word.

"Shall we then say that society is a hypocrite? No: hypocrisy mimics virtue. Here, on the contrary, society seems to affect the vices which it has not. Its grimaces slander it; but it is absolved by its actions: for it acts better than it writes, better even than it thinks.

"This discrepancy between society in its writings and in its acts is a fruitful source of error: for society laughs at the dupes, who, in ordinary life, attempt to put in action that ardent and passionate morality which is good only for circulating libraries. It treats morality as the abbés of the eighteenth century treated religion, lived by it and laughed at it: as the audience at the theatre laughs at marriage, and marries. If, indeed, any one commits any breach of morality, society has no hesitation in submitting him to the penal code: it punishes him for having believed in the paradoxes which it encouraged; and what is remarkable, it often punishes more than it disapproves, especially if the culprit has sufficient impudence. Effrontery, in our eyes, borders upon greatness; so completely do we, in losing the taste for truth, lose also the sentiment of greatness! A criminal who knows

guilty; his crime disappears in the curiosity inspired by the man; and if we condemn him at the assizes, we talk of him so much in our

drawing-rooms, that his celebrity almost supplies the place of innocence.

Thus, so far from modern literature being an image of society, one would believe it wished to present the reverse, so much does society belie, by its manners and deeds, the morality of its literature. Shall we, therefore, say that literature borrows nothing from society? No; these unchecked passions, these hideous characters, these insolent crimes, which compose the staple of modern literature, have been taken from the thoughts, if not from the actions of our age; from our imaginations, if not from our characters.

"I thus arrive at the second point of view. There are two sort of sentiments in literature, and these correspond with two different phases of the literary history of nations. There are the sentiments which man finds in his heart, and which compose the staple of every society; there are also the sentiments which he finds only in his imagination, and which are but the altered reflection of the former. Literature begins with one and ends with the other.

"When literature arrives at this second stage, when imagination, which formerly contented itself with painting natural affections, endeavors to replace them by others, then books no longer represent society: they only represent the state of imagination. Imagination loves and seeks above all things that which does not exist. When civil war agitates society, the imagination willingly paints idyls and preaches peace and virtue. When, on the contrary, society is in repose, the imagination delights in crimes. Like the merchant in Horace, celebrating the security of the shore when the tempest lowers; but when in the harbor delighting in storms and roaring seas. Add to this the remembrances still so vivid amongst us of the revolution and its wars, the taste for adventures, the hope of renown and fortune, the contempt of living insignificantly, a contempt more bitter in the hearts of the children of those who have done great things. It is these restless desires and confused emotions which imagination collects and places in literature. Hence the energy of novels, and the terror of the drames; hence that literature which pleases society more, the less it resembles it.

"Another cause aids this separation of society and literature, and that is, is, the imitation of foreign literatures. When a literature has become decrepit, it begins to imitate, hoping thereby to be re-invigorated. But there are times when this imitation only serves to augment the separation between art and society. What, indeed, can become of the French mind, accustomed, ever since the sixteenth century, to a distinctness of ideas and expressions, which has made the national character,