I flatter myself that those readers who have taken any interest in my
volume have not conceived me to have been deficient in the elevated
feeling which, from early life, I have preserved for the great literary
character: if time weaken our enthusiasm, it is the coldness of age
which creeps on us, but the principle is unalterable which inspired the
sympathy. Who will not venerate those master-spirits "whose PUBLISHED
LABOURS advance the good of mankind," and those BOOKS which are "the
precious life-blood of a master-spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on
purpose to a life beyond life?" But it has happened that I have more
than once incurred the censure of the inconsiderate and the tasteless,
for attempting to separate those writers who exist in a state of
perpetual illusion; who live on querulously, which is an evil for
themselves, and to no purpose of life, which is an evil to others. I
have been blamed for exemplifying "the illusions of writers in
verse,"[168] by the remarkable case of Percival Stockdale,[169] who,
after a condemned silence of nearly half a century, like a vivacious
spectre throwing aside his shroud in gaiety, came forward, a venerable
man in his eightieth year, to assure us of the immortality of one of the
worst poets of his age; and for this wrote his own memoirs, which only
proved, that when authors are troubled with a literary hallucination,
and possess the unhappy talent of reasoning in their madness, a little
raillery, if it cannot cure, may serve at least as a salutary regimen.
I shall illustrate the case of condemned authors who will still be
pleading after their trials, by a foreign dramatic writer. Among those
incorrigible murmurers at public justice, not the least extraordinary
was a M. Peyraud de Beaussol, who, in 1775, had a tragedy, _Les
Arsacides_, in six acts, printed, "not as it was acted," as Fielding
says on the title-page of one of his comedies, but "as it was damned!"
In a preface, this _Sir Fretful_, more inimitable than that original,
with all the gravity of an historical narrative, details the public
conspiracy; and with all the pathetic touches of a shipwrecked mariner,
the agonies of his literary egotism.
He declares that it is absurd to condemn a piece which they can only
know by the title, for heard it had never been! And yet he observes,
with infinite _naïveté_, "My piece is as generally condemned as if the
world had it all by heart."
One of the great objections against this tragedy was its monstrous plan
of six acts; this innovation did not lean towards improvement in the
minds of those who had endured the long sufferings of tragedies of the
accepted size. But the author offers some solemn reasons to induce us to
believe that six acts were so far from being too many, that the piece
had been more perfect with a seventh! M. de Beaussol had, perhaps, been
happy to have known, that other dramatists have considered that the
usual restrictions are detrimental to a grand genius. Nat. Lee, when in
Bedlam, wrote a play in twenty-five acts.
Our philosophical dramatist, from the constituent principles of the
human mind, and the physical powers of man, and the French nation more
particularly, deduces the origin of the sublime, and the faculty of
attention. The plan of his tragedy is agreeable to these principles:
Monarchs, Queens, and Rivals, and every class of men; it is therefore
grand! and the acts can be listened to, and therefore it is not too
long! It was the high opinion that he had formed of human nature and the
French people, which at once terrified and excited him to finish a
tragedy, which, he modestly adds, "may not have the merit of any single
one; but which one day will be discovered to include the labour bestowed
on fifty!"
No great work was ever produced without a grand plan. "Some critics,"
says our author, "have ventured to assert that my six acts may easily be
reduced to the usual five, without injury to the conduct of the fable."
To reply to this required a complete analysis of the tragedy, which,
having been found more voluminous than the tragedy itself, he
considerately "published separately." It would be curious to ascertain
whether a single copy of the analysis of a condemned tragedy was ever
sold. And yet this critical analysis was such an admirable and
demonstrative criticism, that the author assures us that it proved the
absolute impossibility, "and the most absolute too," that his piece
could not suffer the slightest curtailment. It demonstrated more--that
the gradation and the development of interest required necessarily
_seven acts!_ but, from dread of carrying this innovation too far, the
author omitted _one act_, which passed behind the scenes![170] but which
ought to have come in between the fifth and sixth! Another point is
proved, that the attention of an audience, the physical powers of man,
can be kept up with interest much longer than has been calculated; that
his piece only takes up two hours and three quarters, or three hours at
most, if some of the most impassioned parts were but declaimed
rapidly.[171]
Now we come to the history of all the disasters which happened at the
acting of this tragedy. "How can people complain that my piece is
tedious, when, after the first act, they would never listen ten minutes
to it? Why did they attend to the first scenes, and even applaud one?
Let me not be told, because these were sublime, and commanded the
respect of the cabal raised against it; because there are other scenes
far more sublime in the piece, which they perpetually interrupted. Will
it be believed, that they pitched upon the scene of the sacrifice of
Volgesie, as one of the most tedious?--the scene of Volgesie, which is
the finest in my piece; not a verse, not a word in it, can be
omitted![172] Everything tends towards the catastrophe; and it reads in
the closet as well as it would affect us on the stage. I was not,
however, astonished at this; what men hear, and do not understand, is
always tedious; and it was recited in so shocking a tone by the actress,
who, not having entirely recovered from a fit of illness, was flurried
by the tumult of the audience. She declaimed in a twanging tone like
psalm-singing; so that the audience could not hear, among the fatiguing
discordances (he means their own hissing), nor separate the thoughts and
words from the full chant which accompanied them. They objected
perpetually to the use of the word _Madame_ between two female rivals,
as too comic; one of the pit, when an actress said _Madame_, cried out
'Say _Princesse!_' This disconcerted the actress. They also objected to
the words _àpropos_ and _mal-àpropos_. Yet, after all, how are there too
many _Madames_ in the piece, since they do not amount to forty-six in
the course of forty-four scenes? Of these, however, I have erased half."
This historian of his own wrong-headedness proceeds, with all the
simplicity of this narrative, to describe the hubbub.
"Thus it was impossible to connect what they were hearing with what they
had heard. In the short intervals of silence, the actors, who, during
the tumult, forgot their characters, tried with difficulty to recover
their conception. The conspirators were prepared to a man; not only in
their head, but some with written notes had their watchwords, to set
their party a-going. They seemed to act with the most extraordinary
concert; they seemed to know the exact moment when they were to give the
word, and drown, in their hurly-burly, the voice of the actor, who had a
passionate part to declaim, and thus break the connexion between the
speakers. All this produced so complete an effect, that it seemed as if
the actors themselves had been of the conspiracy, so wilful and so
active was the execution of the plot. It was particularly during the
fifth and sixth acts that the cabal was most outrageous; they knew these
were the most beautiful, and deserved particular attention. Such a
humming arose, that the actors seemed to have had their heads turned;
some lost their voice, some declaimed at random, the prompter in vain
cried out, nothing was heard, and everything was said; the actor, who
could not hear the catch-word, remained disconcerted and silent; the
whole was broken, wrong and right; it was all Hebrew. Nor was this all;
the actors behind the scene were terrified, and they either came
forwards trembling, and only watching the signs of their brother actors,
or would not venture to show themselves. The machinist only, with his
scene-shifters, who felt so deep an interest in the fate of my piece,
was tranquil and attentive to his duty, to produce a fine effect. After
the hurly-burly was over, he left the actors mute with their arms
crossed. He opened the scenery! and not an actor could enter on it! The
pit, more clamorous than ever, would not suffer the denouement! Such was
the conduct, and such the intrepidity, of the army employed to besiege
the _Arsacides_! Such was the cause of that accusation of tediousness
made against a drama, which has most evidently the contrary defect!"
Such is the history of a damned dramatist, written by himself, with a
truth and simplicity worthy of a happier fate. It is admirable to see a
man, who was himself so deeply involved in the event, preserve the
observing calmness which could discover the minutest occurrence; and,
allowing for his particular conception of the cause, detailing them with
the most rigid veracity. This author was unquestionably a man of the
most honourable probity, and not destitute of intellectual ability; but
he must serve as an useful example of that wrong-headed nature in some
men, which has produced so many "Abbots of Unreason" in society, whom it
is in vain to convince by a reciprocation of arguments; who assuming
false principles, act rightly according to themselves; a sort of
rational lunacy, which, when it discovers itself in politics and
religion, and in the more common affairs of life, has produced the most
unhappy effects; but this fanaticism, when confined to poetry, only
amuses us with the ludicrous; and, in the persons of Monsieur de
Beaussol, and of Percival Stockdale, may offer some very fortunate
self-recollections in that "Calamity of Authors" which I have called
"The Illusions of Writers in Verse."