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,

or the least knowledge of rules.

I will make it is, that the

a bold assertion, but a true one merit of Shakspeare has ruined the English drama. There are so many beautiful scenes, so many grand and terrible passages, scattered through his monstrous farces, called tragedies, that their performance has always been attended with great success.”

Such were the first impressions which Shakspeare produced on Voltaire. But when it was attempted to set up that great genius as a model of perfection, when his writings were unblushingly pronounced to be superior to the master-pieces of the Greek and of the French drama,—then the author of Merope felt the danger. He saw that by exhibiting the beauties of Shakspeare, he had dazzled men who could not, like himself, separate the gold from the alloy. He was induced to retract; and he assailed the idol to whom he had himself offered incense. But it was too late, and he vainly repented having opened the door to mediocrity, deified the drunken savage, and placed the monster on the altar.

Shall we go further in our infatuation than our neighbours themselves? In theory, the English are unreserved admirers of Shakspeare:

but in pratice their zeal is much more circumspect. Why do they not act the plays of their deity in a perfect form? By what presumption do they venture to abridge, mutilate, alter, and transpose the scenes of Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, the Merchant of Venice, Richard III. etc.? Why have these sacrileges been committed by the most enlightened critics of the three kingdoms? Dryden observes that Shakspeare's language is out of date, and, conjointly with Davenant, he adapted his plays for performance. Shaftesbury declares that the style of the old bard is coarse and barbarous, that his expressions and his wit are alike antiquated. Pope remarks that Shakspeare wrote for the populace, without seeking to please persons of more refined taste: that his writings present to the critic materials at once the most agreeable and the most revolting. Tate appropriated to himself King Lear, which was then so completely forgotten that no one detected the plagiarism. Rowe too, in his life of Shakspeare, utters many blasphemies. Sherlock has ventured to say that there is nothing middling in Shakspeare; that all he has written is either detestable or excellent; that, he never kept to or even conceived a plot, though he frequently wrote very good scenes. Lansdowne carried

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his impiety so far as to re-write the Merchant of Venice. Let us be on our guard against innocent mistakes. When we are thrown into ecstasies scene in the dénouement of Romeo and Juliet, we imagine that we are burning with pure love for Shakspeare, whilst in reality our ardent homage is addressed to Garrick.

at a

Johnson, the great admirer of Shakspeare, and the restorer of his glory, observes that, with all his beauties, he has faults, and faults which would obscure the merits of any other writer than himself; that his effusions of passion, when the situation calls them forth, are for the most part striking and energetic : but that, when he puts his invention and his faculties to the rack, the fruits of his labour are bombast, meanness, tediousness, and obscurity. Johnson is of opinion, that, in narration, Shakspeare affects a disproportionate pomp of diction. His plays, he admits, contain scenes of sustained and undeniable excellence, but he adds that there is not a single one of Shakspeare's dramas, which if performed as the productions of a living author would be heard to the end.

Can we be better judges of an English writer than the celebrated Johnson? Yet, if any French critic were to make such bold assertions, would he not run the risk of being stoned? Might

not the severe Aristarchus be right, though he suspected certain enthusiasts of caressing their own deformities under those of Shakspeare?

What I have said respecting the changes which have occurred in the written and spoken language of England, and of the two periods when the Norman and the Italian encroached upon the Anglo-Saxon idiom, will enable the reader to form an idea of the compositions of the British Eschylus. His plays present a mixture of the subjects and styles of the north and the south. Into the subjects, which he borrowed from Italy, Shakspeare infused the natural tone of feeling peculiar to the Scandinavian and Caledonian nations. In his subjects taken from the northern legends, he has introduced the affectation of style common to the transalpine countries. Passing from the Scottish ballad to the Italian tale, he had nothing he could call his own but his genius; yet, with that noble gift of Heaven, he might well be content.