Racine 19 



scenes of his Mithridate'^^ in the same taste. And while such 

 passages are not those that stick most tenaciously in my memory, 

 even those that do are in the same vein : 



La vie est peu de chose ; et tot ou tard qu'importe 

 Qu'un traitre me I'arrache, ou que I'age I'importe? 

 Nous mourons a toute heure; et dans le plus doux sort 

 Chaque instant de la vie est un pas vers la mort.^^ 



Good lines ; but their excellence is the excellence of eloquence. 

 Like all Corneille's best they are perceptibly declamatory : 



Nerine 



Forcez raveuglement dont vous etes seduite, 

 Pour voir en quel etat le sort vous a reduite. 

 Vostre pais vous hait, vostre epoux est sans foy, 

 Dans un si grand revers, que vous reste-t'il? 



Medee 



Moy.2o 



Conceivably, however, there is room for something else even 

 in the most serious drama, as we who are the heirs of Shake- 

 speare need hardly be told. Not that Shakespeare himself de- 

 spised the embellishments of elocution. Such commonplaces as 

 Antony's harangue over the body of Csesar and Portia's apos- 

 trophe to mercy witness clearly enough to the contrary. But 

 then Shakespeare had no prejudices against doggerel or balder- 

 dash either. Everything was grist that came to his mill with the 

 result that he had the widest range of expression that ever was, 

 so that pretty nearly every variety of dramatic style may be illus- 

 trated by his example.. And while Racine's scale is much more 

 limited than his, as it is bound to be in many cases by the dif- 

 ferent logic of their genres so that comparison is illegitimate; 

 still Racine's reach is much more comprehensive than Corneille's 

 and demonstrates much more favourably, just as does the for- 

 mer's conception of the action, the possibilities of the types with 

 which the two were dealing. 



18 III, i. 



19 Tite et Berenice, V, I. 



20 Medee, I, v. 



191 



