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1839.] which Ducis has occasionally thrown into his dialogue, we shall extract the passage in which Œdipus denounces his unnatural son Polynices, in which the sombre gloom and energy of hatred which it displays, may have been in some degree inspired by that parallel scene in which Lear pronounces his curse upon his daughters.

This is better, we think, than Crebillon, and as good as most passages in the same vein in Voltaire.

We shall imitate the example of M. Villemain, and pass over the names of Champfort, Duclos, Rulhiere, and Raynald—men of wit and talent, but merely the creatures of their time, and altogether without originality of mind. Nor does poetry, during this period of decline, offer any thing on which the reader would willingly linger. The school of descriptive poetry, indeed, after its introduction by St Lambert and Delille, found numerous imitators, such as Roucher, whose poem Les Mois, has been rather unjustly treated by La Harpe; and Rosset, who deserves our gratitude, were it merely for a conscientious attempt to banish that eternal mythology in which French pastoral and descriptive poetry had so invariably dealt.

But the best of the class of descriptive writers after Delille is Fontanes, whose Verger and Jour des Morts dans une Campagne contain some very pleasing passages. Fontanes too, was not without lyrical inspiration, and some of his compositions in this class, such as his stanzas to Chateaubriand, seem to us to possess more real feeling and elevation than those of J. B. Rousseau.

In the lighter departments of the song and the romance or ballad, the inferiority of the French poetry of this period is less perceptible. Many of the songs of Desaugiers, the predecessor of Beranger, are excellent; and nothing can be better in its way than Moncrif's ballad of Alexis and Alix. How pleasing, for instance, the simplicity of these stanzas—

"Que sert d'avoir bague et dentelle
 * Pour se parer?

Ah! la richesse la plus belle,
 * Est de s'aimer.

Quand on a commence la vie,
 * Disant ainsi,

Oui, vous serez, ma mie,
 * Vous, mon ami.

Quand l'age augmente encore l'envie
 * De s'entr'unir

Qu' avec un autre, on nous marie—
 * Vaut mieux mourir.

Cinq ans, en dépit d'elle même,
 * Passa les jours

A se reprocher qu'elle l'aime,
 * L'aimant toujours—

Pour chasser de sa souvenance
 * L'ami secret;