18 V.OLTAIBE. 



tenderness with the horrors of the subject. It is 



cJ 



related of him, and he has himself countenanced the 

 anecdote, that in the giddiness of youth, and plunged 

 in dissipation, he was insensible to the dangers of 

 failure, and felt so little of the nervous agitation 

 belonging to a dramatic author's first night, as to 

 be seen carrying in mockery the train of the High 

 Priest. Madame la Marechale de Villars, then at the 

 head of Parisian society, asked who that young man 

 was, who appeared as if trying to have the play 

 damned ; and upon being told that it was neither 

 more nor less than the author himself, she was so 

 struck with the originality, that she desired to have 

 him presented to her. Becoming one of her circle, he 

 conceived for her the first and probably the only 

 passion which he ever seriously felt. His love was 

 unsuccessful ; but it interrupted his studies, nor did 

 he ever after allude to it but with a feeling of 

 regret bordering upon remorse. 



The merits of 'CEdipe' no longer form a debateable 

 question. If the continued representation for forty- 

 five nights had left any doubt upon this subject, the 

 concurrent voices of so many different audiences during 

 the sixty years and upwards that it has kept possession 

 of the stage pronounce a sentence from which there 

 is no appeal.* For an author of any age it is a fine 



* The judgments pronounced by the audience on a first represent- 

 ation are a very different test, being necessarily much more subject 

 to accident, to caprice, and to party manoevures. The striking 

 example of the ' Britannicus,' nay, even of the ' Phedre' and the 

 ' Athalie ' themselves (these two now admitted on all hands to be 

 Racine's masterpieces), may well guard us against yielding to the 



