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that the Grecians and Trojans fpoke the fame language, that he 

 would have hazarded fuch an unneceflary violation of hiflorical 

 truth, and before fuch judges ? Can we fuppofe that a poet, who 

 above all others was the avowed admirer of Homer ; who, with 

 that unafFedled diffidence which ever charaderizes real genius, 

 always fpoke of his tragedies as fingle difhes from the great 

 entertainment of Homer, would have deviated from him in fo 

 material a point if he really imagined that Homer confidered his 

 countrymen and the Trojans as ufing the fame language ? 



The magnanimity of Agamemnon, and the misfortunes of 

 Caffandra, certainly have no relation to this circumftance ; yet 

 I am perfuaded that yEfchylus did not mention it without defign. 

 Such minutiae fall more generally, though not more properly, 

 within the hiftoric than the tragic fphere ; for we may obfcrve 

 that uninterefting authors who write for the theatre, without the 

 true genuine talents for it (a cafe by no means uncommon) never 

 attend to fuch minutiae in the leaft, and that a real dramatic 

 genius always does. It is this which conftitutes the great diffe- 

 rence between the French theatre and that theatre which Shake- 

 fpear eftablifhed. Corneille, whofe Roman charaders in general 

 are only fo many gigantic difproportioned ftatucs of the Pompeys 

 and the Emiliani, " ftept from their pedeftals to take the air," 

 and who feems always unhappy when he is not indulging his 

 paffion for declamation, and quoting Lucan, looked down from 

 his dramatic roftrum on fuch feeming trifles with the utmoft 

 contempt ; whilft Shakefpear, on the contrary, feleds them with 

 the utmoft affiduity and tafle ; well knowing that they gave that 

 air of truth and probability to his pieces which is the very foul 



of 



