24 VOLTAIRE. 



Voltaire, and forced- him to show himself the first 

 time that the honour was ever bestowed, which has 

 now become worthless, because lavished on the author 

 of every successful piece. But the multitude went a 

 step further in his case, and insisted upon the beautiful 

 daughter-in-law of the Marechale de Villars publicly 

 saluting him; a requisition savouring much more of 

 indecorum than enthusiasm. 



It is impossible* to deny either the great merits of 

 the ' Merope,' or to doubt its marked inferiority to 

 ' Zaire.' The composition, and, in general, the execu- 

 tion, must be confessed to be in the best manner of that 

 eloquence, or rather rhetoric, which I have ventured 

 to describe as the character of Voltaire's tragedies ; but 

 it is not, like 'Zaire,' at least many portions of 'Zaire,' a 

 successful incursion into the adjoining, though far 

 loftier domain of feeling : in a word, the high region 

 of fine verse is here under the author's power ; the 

 higher region of poetry does not submit to his con- 

 trol. The fable is excellently pursued ; while there is 

 little original or very happy in the characters, of which 

 the principal one is so possessed by a feeling of love 

 and anxiety for a son whom she had barely seen, that 

 it is difficult to sympathise with the leading sentiment 

 of the piece. Fine passages no doubt abound, and 

 bursts (mouvemens) of an impressive, and of a sur- 

 prising and even elevating kind, are occasionally intro- 

 duced, though by far the finest is imitated professedly 

 from the 'Merope' of Maifei it is when Egisthe men- 

 tions his mother ; and Merope then believing that he 

 had murdered her son, that is himself, exclaims 

 " Barbare ! il te reste une mere ! 

 Je serois m*re encore sans toi," &c. (Act iii. sc. 4.) 



