MY FORMER MISJUDGMENT OF SHAKSPEARE-MISTAKEN

ADMIRERS OF THE POET.

I FORMERLY measured Shakspeare with the classic microscope. It is an excellent instrument for observing the ornaments of good or bad taste, the perfect or imperfect details; but it is unfit for the observation of the whole, as the focus of the lens bears only on a single point, and is incapable of embracing the entire surface. Dante, now one of the objects of my highest admiration, appeared to me in the same diminished perspective. I wished to find an epopee according to rules, in a free epic poem, including the history of the ideas, the knowledge, the faith, the men, and the events of a whole epoch; a monument similar to those cathedrals which bear the impress of the genius of past ages, and in which the elegance and truth of the details, equal the grandeur and majesty of the whole.

The classic school, which did not blend the lives of authors with their works, deprived itself of a powerful medium of appreciation. The banishment of Dante furnishes a key to his genius when we follow the exile into the cloisters, where he sought peace;

when we are

present at the composition of his poems on the highways and in the various places to which he wandered; when we hear his last sigh breathed on a foreign land, do we not read with deeper interest the melancholy stanzas of the three destinies of man after death?

Let it be supposed that Homer never existed; that we read the lays of all Greece, instead of those of one of her sons; I can pardon the learned for this poetic heresy. Yet I should be very unwilling to lose any portion of the adventures of Homer. Yes; the poet must necessarily have played in his cradle with nine turtle-doves; his infantine prattle must have resembled the warbling of nine species of birds. Do you deny these incontestable facts? What then can you make of the cestus of Venus? What signify anachronisms? I hold that the life of the father of fable was related by Herodotus the father of history. Why should I go to Chios and Smyrna, were it not to salute the school and the river of Melesigenes,

in spite of Wolf, Wood, Ilgen, Dugaz-Montbel, and the rest of them? Of all the traditions relating to the Bard of the Odyssey, I reject none save that which makes the poet a Dutchman. Genius of Greece, Genius of Homer, of Hesiod, of Eschylus, of Sophocles, of Euripides, of Sappho, of Simonides, and of Alcæus, continue to deceive us! I believe firmly in thy fictions. What thou tellest me is as true as it is that I have seen thee seated on Mount Hymettus, amidst the humming of bees, beneath the porch of a convent of Greek monks. Thou hast become christian, but hast, nevertheless, retained thy golden lyre, and thine azure wings, on which were traced the ruins of Athens !

However, if we formerly stopped too far short of the romantic, we may now be fairly accused of having gone too far beyond it. But this is a change common to French genius, which leaps from white to black, like the knight in a game of chess. The worst is, that our present enthusiasm for Shakspeare is excited less by his beauties than by his blemishes. We applaud in him what we should condemn

in others.

Are Shakspeare's mistaken admirers charmed with the traits of passion in Romeo and Juliet ?

No truly! Did you not hear Mercutio say, of Romeo that he is" without his roe, like a dried herring?"

" I

Does not Peter say to the musicians: will carry no crotchets I'll re you, I'll fa you do you note me ?"

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Such passages as these are declared to be the wondrous beauties of Shakspeare's dialogue : pure transcripts from the book of nature ! What simplicity! What truth! What an accurate picture of the contrasts existing in life! What an able approximation of the various ranks, manners, and phraseologies of society!

I sometimes amuse myself by imagining Shakspeare's return to the world, and his indignation at your tasteless worshippers. How would he despise the adoration rendered to puerilities at which he would be the first to blush, though they are not his faults, but the faults of his age! He would regard, as incapable of appreciating his beauties, those who are enraptured with his defects, and above all those who coolly copy those defects in the midst of modern

manners.

VOLTAIRE'S OPINION OF SHAKSPEARE. OPINION OF

ENGLISH CRITICS.

VOLTAIRE was the first who made Shakspeare known in France. The first judgment he pronounced on the great English dramatist was, like most of his first judgments, marked by moderation, taste, and impartiality. In 1730 he thus wrote to Lord Bolingbroke:

"With what pleasure have I witnessed in London the performance of your tragedy of Julius Cæsar, which for a hundred and fifty years has been the admiration of your countrymen."

Again he says:

Shakspeare created the English drama, his genius was powerful, fertile, natural, and sublime; but he had not a spark of good taste,