VOLTAIRE. 27 



Cicero, a mere orator, never could be endured us the 

 hero of a piece ; eloquence, the triumphs of the tongue, 

 are wholly unfitted to form the subject of a drama. 

 Voltaire has endeavoured to supply the defect by mak- 

 ing Catiline murder not his step-son, which he was 

 supposed to have done, but his father-in-law, a certain 

 Nonnius, which no one ever dreamt of but the poet ; 

 and his wife, in her grief and rage, puts herself to 

 death by stabbing herself on the stage. 



But if we desire to perceive how great is Voltaire's 

 failure, we must not only consider what he has done to 

 make his drama cold and uninteresting, but what ma- 

 terials he had within his reach, and avoided using. 

 Few narratives present so lively, nay, so dramatic a 

 picture as that of Sallust. The diction is fine ; but 

 had Livy written it, his exquisite and dignified style 

 would have placed the Catiline conspiracy at the 

 head of historical works. The character of Catiline, 

 better given in some parts of Cicero, particularly the 

 Pro Sulla, Pro Coelio, and Pro Mursena ; his dark, 

 designing, and unscrupulous nature ; his utter profli- 

 gacy of life and manners ; his fierce temper ; his un- 

 tameable ambition ; his powers, as well of body as of 

 mind; his invincible courage all form a personage 

 made for stage effect, and only prevented from pro- 

 ducing it in the highest degree by such preposterous 

 conceits as making him tender-hearted to his wife, 

 a thing to have been carefully avoided by the dra- 

 matist, even if his letter, given by Sallust, shows some 

 care for that very profligate woman and his child. 

 But then what can be finer than the meeting holden 

 in a remote recess of his house, and his address under 



