VOLTAIRE. 23 



least equal to the first, of the personages in touching 

 the reader and engaging his affections. Nothing can 

 be conceived more tender; and the conflict between 

 her passion for the Sultan and her affection for her 

 family, between her acquired duty to the crescent and 

 her hereditary inclination to the cross, is most beau- 

 tifully managed. Of detailed passages it would be 

 endless to make an enumeration, but some may be 

 shortly marked. Few things in poetry are finer than 

 Lusignan's simple answer to Chatillon, who tells 

 him that he was impotent to save his children : 



" C. Mon bras charge de fers ne les put pas secourir. 

 L. Ilelas ! et j'etais pere, et je ne pus mourir." 



Nourestan's indignation, the boiling over of a fana- 

 tical crusader's enthusiasm against his sister for falling 

 in love with an infidel prince (Act iii. sc. 4), is a truly 

 noble piece of declamation. Orosman's proud feeling 

 towards the sex, for the first time following the Asiatic 

 -course (Act iii. sc. 7), is not less finely expressed: 



" Mais il est trop honteux de craindre une maitresse 

 Aux mceurs de 1'Occident laissons cette bassesse ! 

 Ce sexe dangereux, qui veut tout asservir, 

 S'il regne dans 1'Europe, ici doit obeir." 



The famous passage " Zaire, vous pleurez ?" which 

 electrified the audience in France, and never fails 

 still to produce this effect, needs not be specified, ex- 

 cept for the purpose of noting, that the exclamation 

 " Zaire, vous m'aimez !" is hardly less touching, or less 

 powerful to paint the Sultan's character. 



Next to ' Zaire ' the ' Merope ' certainly is Voltaire's 

 finest drama ; and its success at first was even greater 

 than that of ' Zaire.' At one part the audience were ^o 

 intoxicated with admiration, that they called out lor 



