Tu sais ce coffre auprès du portrait de ta mère;
L'habit est là,--je l'ai d'avance exprès fait faire.
I have little doubt but that the inspired author, when this noble
phrase, "exprès fait faire," suggested itself, felt ready to exclaim,
in the words of Philaminte and Bélise--
Ah! que cet "exprès fait" est d'un goût admirable!
C'est à mon sentiment un endroit impayable;
J'entends là-dessous un million de mots.--
--Il est vrai qu'il dit plus de choses qu'il n'est gros.
But to take the matter seriously, let us examine a little the ground
upon which this school of dramatic writers found their claim to
superiority over their classic predecessors. Is it not that they
declare themselves to be more true to nature? And how do they support
this claim? Were you to read through every play that M. Hugo has
written--(and may you long be preserved from so great annoyance!)--I
doubt if you would find a single personage with whom you could
sympathise, or a single sentiment or opinion that you would feel true
to the nature within you.
It would be much less difficult, I conceive, so strongly to excite the
imagination by the majestic eloquence of Racine's verses as to make
you conscious of fellow-feeling with his sublime personages, than to
debase your very heart and soul so thoroughly as to enable you to
fancy that you have anything in common with the corrupt creations of
Victor Hugo.
But even were it otherwise--were the scenes imagined by this new
Shakspeare more like the real villany of human nature than those of
the noble writer he is said to have set aside, I should still deny
that this furnished any good reason for bringing such scenes upon the
stage. Why should we make a pastime of looking upon vulgar vice? Why
should the lowest passions of our nature be for ever brought out in
parade before us?
"It is not and it cannot be for good."
The same reasoning might lead us to turn from the cultured garden, its
marble terraces, its velvet lawns, its flowers and fruits of every
clime, that we might take our pleasure in a bog--and for all
consolation be told, when we slip and flounder about in its loathsome
slime, that it is more natural.
I have written you a most unmerciful letter, and it is quite time
that I should quit the theme, for I get angry--angry that I have no
power to express in words all I feel on this subject. Would that for
one short hour or so I had the pen which wrote the "Dunciad!"--I would
use it--heartily--and then take my leave by saying,
"Rentre dans le néant, dont je t'ai fait sortir."