If the religious and moral principles of this fociety are to be detefted, as they justly are, the wifdom of their political principles is as juftly to be admired. Sufpected, collectively as an order, of the greateft crimes, and convicted of many, they have either efcaped punishment, or triumphed after it, as in France, in the reign of Henry IV. They have, directly, or indirectly, governed the confciences and the councils of all the catholic princes in Europe: they almoft governed China, in the reign of Cang-ghi; and they are now actually in poffeflion of Paraguay in America, pretending, but paying no obedience to the crown of Spain. As a collective body, they are detefted, even by all the catholics, not excepting the clergy, both fecular and regular; and yet, as individuals, they are loved, refpected; and they govern wherever they are.

Two things, I believe, chiefly contribute to their fuccefs. The firft, that paffive, implicit, unlimited obedience to their General (who always refides at Rome) and to the fuperiors of their several houses, appointed by him. This obedience is obferved by them all, to a moft aftonishing degree; and, I believe, there is no one fociety in the world, of which fo many individuals facrifice their private intereft to the general one of the fociety itself. The fecond is, the education of youth, which they have in a manner engroffed; there they give the firft, and the firft are the lafting impreffions: thofe impreffions are always calculated to be favourable to the fociety. I have known many catholics, educated by the Jefuits, who, though they detefted the fociety, from reafon and knowledge, have always remained attached to it, from habit and prejudice. The Jef uits know, better than any fet of people in the world, the importance of the art of pleafing, and ftudy it more: they become all things to all men, in order to gain, not a few, but many. In Afia, Africa, and America, they become more than half Pagans, in order to convert the Pagans to be less than half Christians.-. In private families they begin by infinuating themselves as friends, they grow to be favourites, and they en

H h

rectors. Their manners are not like thofe of any other regulars in the world, but gentle, polite, and engaging. They are all carefully bred up to that particular deftination to which they feem to have a natural turn; for which reafon one fees moft Jefuits excel in fome particular thing. They even bred up fome for martyrdom, in cafe of need; as the fuperior of a Jefuit feminary at Rome told Lord Bolingbroke.

- Inform yourself minutely of every thing concerning this extraordinary establishment: go into their houfes, get acquainted with individuals, hear fome of them preach. The finest preacher I ever heard in my life is le Père Neufville, who, I believe, preaches ftill at Paris, and is fo much in the beft company, that you may ea fily get perfonally acquainted with him.

If you would know their morale, read Pafchal's Lettres Provinciales, in which it is very truly displayed from their own writings.

Upon the whole, this is certain, that a fociety, of which fo little good is faid, and fo much ill believed, and that ftill not only fubfifts, but flourishes, must be a very able one. It is always mentioned as a proof of the fuperior abilities of the Cardinal Richelieu, that, though hated by all the nation, and ftill more by his mafter, he kept his power in fpight of both.

I would earnestly with you to do every thing now which I wish that I had done at your age, and did not do. Every country has its peculiarities, which one can be much better informed of during one's refidence there than by reading all the books in the world afterwards. While you are in catholic countries, inform ycurf:lf of all the forms and ceremonies of that tawdry church; fee their convents both of men and women, know their feveral rules and orders, attend their most remarkable ceremonies; have their terms of art explained to you, their tierce, fexte, noues, matines, vépres, complies; their breviaires, rofaires, beures, chapelets, agnus, c. things that many people talk of from habit, though few know the true meaning of any one of them. Converfe with, and study the characters of fome of thofe incarcerated enthufiafts. Frequent fome parloirs, and fee the air and

manners of those reclufes, who are a distinct nation themselves, and like no other.

LETTER CXXXIV.

New Tragedy French and English Drama...Critical Remarks on Tragedy, Comedy, and Opera.

I MY DEAR FRIEND,

London, January the 234.

HAVE you feen the new tragedy of Varon, and

**

what do you think of it? Let me know, for I am determined to form my tafte upon yours. I hear that the fituations and incidents are well brought on, and the catastrophe unexpected and furprifing, but the verfes bad. I fuppofe it is the fubject of all the converfation at Paris, where both women and men are judges and critics of all fuch performances: fuch onverfation, that both form and improve the tafte and whet the judgment, are furely preferable to the converfation of our mixed companies here; which, if they happen to rife above brag and whift, infallibly stop fhort of every thing either pleafing or inftructive. I take the reafon of this to be, that (as women generally give the tone to the converfation) our English women are not near fo well informed and cultivated as the French; befides that they are naturally "more ferious and filent.

I could wifh there was a treaty made between the French and the English theatres, in which both parties fhould make confiderable conceffions. The Englifl ought to give up their notorious violations of all the unities, and all their maffacres, racks, dead bodies, and mangled carcafes, which they fo frequently exhibit upon their ftage. The French fhould engage to have more action, and lefs declamation; and not to cram and crowd things together, to almoft a degree of impoflibility, from a too fcrupulous adherence to the unities. The Englifh fhould reftrain the licentiouf

* Written by the Vicomte de Grave, and at that time the general. topic of converfation at Paris.

nefs of their poets, and the French enlarge the liberty of theirs their poets are the greatest flaves in their country, and that is a bold word; ours are the moft tumultuous fubjects in England, and that is faying a good deal. Under fuch regulations, one might hope to fee a play in which one fhould not be lulled to fleep by the length of a monotonical declamation, nor frightened and fhocked by the barbarity of the action. The unity of time extended occafionally to three or four days, and the unity of place broken into, as far as the fame street, of fometimes the fame town; both which, I will affirm, are as probable as four and-twenty hours and the same room.

More indulgence too, in my mind, fhould be shown than the French are willing to allow to bright thoughts and to fhining images; for though I confefs it is not very natural for a hero or princefs to fay fine things in all the violence of grief, love, rage, &c. yet I can as well fuppofe that, as I can that they fhould talk to themfelves for half an hour; which they must neceffarily do, or no tragedy could be carried on, unless they had recourfe to a much greater abfurdity, the choruffes of the ancients. Tragedy is of a nature that one must fee it with a degree of felf-deception; we must lend ourfelves a little to the delufion; and I am very willing to carry that complaifance a little farther than the French do.

Tragedy must be something bigger than life, or it would not affect us. In nature the most violent paffions are filent; in tragedy they muft fpeak, and fpeak with dignity too. Hence the neceflity of their being written in verfe, and, unfortunately for the French, from the weakness of their language, in rhymes. And for the fame reafon, Cato the Stoic, expiring at Utica, rhymes masculine and feminine at Paris, and fetches his laft breath at London in moft harmonious and correct blank verfe.

It is quite otherwife with comedy, which fhould be mere common life, and not one jot bigger. Every character fhould fpeak upon the ftage, not only what it would utter in the fituation there reprefented, but

in the fame manner in which it would exprefs it. For which reason I cannot allow rhymes in comedy, unless they were put into the mouth, and came out of the mouth of a mad poet. But it is impoffible to deceive. one's felf enough, (nor is it the leaft neceffary in comedy) to fuppofe a dull rogue of an ufurer cheating, or gros Jean blundering in the fineft rhymes in the

world.

As for operas, they are effentially too abfurd and extravagant to mention: I look upon them as a magic fcene, contrived to please the eyes and the ears at the expence of the understanding; and I confider finging, rhyming, and chyming heroes, and princeffes and philofophers, as I do the hills, the trees, the birds, and the beafts, who amicably joined in one common countrydance to the irrefiftible tune of Orpheus's lyre. Whenever I go to an opera, I leave my fenfe and reafon at the door with my half guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and my ears.

Thus I have made you my poetical confeffion; in which I have acknowledged as many fins against the established tafte in both countries, as a frank heretic could have owned against the established church in ei ther; but I am now privileged by my age to taste and think for myfelf, and not to care what other people think of me in thofe refpects; an advantage which youth, among its many advantages, has not. It muft occafionally and outwardly conform, to a certain degree, to established taftes, fafhions, and decifions. A young. man may, with a becoming modefty, diffent in private Companies from public opinions and prejudices; but he must not attack them with warmth, nor magisterially fet up his own fentiments against them. Endeavour to hear and know all opinions; receive them with complaifance; form your own with coolness, and give it with modefty.