22 VOLTAIRE. 



is one of the most admirable ever contrived for the 

 stage, and it is a pure creation of fancy. Nothing 

 can be conceived more full of interest and life and 

 spirit nothing more striking than the combinations 

 and the positions to which it gives rise, while at the 

 same time it is quite natural, quite easy to conceive, 

 in no particular violating probability. Nor can any- 

 thing be more happy or more judicious than the 

 manner in which we are, at the very first, brought 

 into the middle of the story, and yet soon find it 

 unravelled and presented before our eyes without 

 long and loaded narrative retrospects. Then the 

 characters are truly drawn with a master's hand, and 

 sustained perfectly and throughout both in word and 

 in deed. Orosman, uniting the humanized feelings 

 of an amiable European with the unavoidable remains 

 of the Oriental nature, ambitious, and breathing war, 

 more than becomes our character, yet generous and 

 simple-minded ; to men imperious, but as it were by 

 starts, when the Tartar predominates ; to women deli- 

 cate and tender, as if the Goth or the Celt prevailed 

 in the harem ; unable to eradicate the jealousy of the 

 East, yet, like a European, too proud not to be 

 ashamed of it as a degradation, and thus subduing it 

 in all instances but one, when he is hurried away by 

 the Asiatic temperament and strikes the fatal blow, 

 which cannot lessen our admiration, nor even wholly 

 destroy our esteem. The generous nature of Nour- 

 estan and Lusignan excites our regard, and, perhaps, 

 alone of all the perfect characters in epic or in dramatic 

 poetry, they are no way tiresome or flat. But Zaire 

 herself, unlike other heroines, is, if not the first, at 



