306 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

Greeks, ought to serve as a model whereby modernauthors might form their own national history and tra-ditions into a dramatic form, not as ground-works forcold imitations. Racine, from the first, fell into thosedeplorable mistakes which render most of his plays —beautiful and graceful as they are, and full of tendernessand passion — more like copies in fainter colours of hissublime masters, than productions conceived by originalgenius, in a spirit akin to the age and nation to whichhe belonged. Another misfortune attended the compo-sition of his tragedies, as it had also on those of hispredecessor. The Greek drama was held solemn andsacred — the stage a temple : the English and Spanish theatres, wild, as they might be termed, were yet magni-ficent in their errors. An evil custom in France crushedevery possibility of external pomp waiting on themajesty of action. The nobles, the petit mattres, allthe men of what is called the best society in Paris , wereaccustomed to sit on the stage , and crowded it so as notto allow the author room to produce more than two per-sons at a time before the scene. All possibility, there-fore, of reforming the dull undramatic expedient of thewhole action passing in narration between a chief per-sonage and a confidant was taken away ; and thus playsassumed the form rather of narrative poems in dialoguethan the native guise of a moving, stirring picture oflife, such as it is with us — while the assembly of dandycritics, ever on the look-out for ridicule, allowed no stepbeyond conventional rules, and termed the torpor oftheir imaginations, good taste. We only wonder that,under such circumstances, tragedies of merit were pro-duced. But to return to Racine’s “ Alexandre.”

This tragedy was the cause of the quarrel betweenRacine and Moliere . It was brought out at the theatre ofthe Palais Royal — it w’as unsuccessful ; and the author,attributing his ill success to the actors, withdrew it, andcaused it to be performed at the Hotel de Bourgogne :to this defalcation he added the greater injury ofinducing Champmele, the best tragic actress of thetime, to quit Moliere ’s company for that of the rival