Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 105.djvu/116

Rh The simplicity of the Attic iambus charms him less than the composed gravity of the Latin hexameter," Now, when Racine's style is at its best, there is no denying to it, our critic owns, a very noble and imposing effect; marked by no great energy, indeed, for it is too diffuse and long-drawn-out for that,—nor again very highly coloured,—but by a beautiful harmony and balancing of phrase. But when that style is of so-so execution, it is really, he objects, "something particularly detestable." The weakened woof breaks asunder under the stress of burdensome epithets; the idea, lost in the labyrinth of words, can hardly ever reach the termination of the phrase; and the harmony of the verse is merely an insufferable dangling of idle terms, parasitical hemistiches, and bad rhymes. And so we get "slab for plenty, plethora for fulness, and tinsel for splendour." Such, in the main, contends M. de Cassagnac, is the verse of "Athalie:" with the exception of some fine tirades, it is a lamentable heap of useless epithets and broken metaphors. "It is the style of Voltaire anticipated; for we may call the tragedies of Voltaire a completed and enlarged edition of the faults of Racine." The choruses, so universally and uninquiringly admired, are an "inconceivable lumber of vulgar and hollow expressions," such as no birthday ode-manufacturer of to-day would put his name to. Above all, Racine is convicted of sins against—grammar!" Racine, one of the creators of the French language, can he have made mistakes in French? Alas! yes, beyond a doubt, as facts will show. However, we shall distinguish between cases where it is the language itself which has changed, and those where Racine has absolutely violated the unchangeable rules of grammar." For example, the following couplet contains an offence against the grammar of all times:Or this line:where we ought to read "d'un courage et d'une foi nouveaux," Such a sexual license, again, as the next line ventures to take, would be allowed, says our critic, neither by Vaugelas, nor by Despautère, nor by Lhomond—

To those who accuse M. de Cassagnac of a restless obtrusion of paradox and novelty, in thus confronting the time-honoured verdict of France on its favourite poet, he answers by the way, that after all he is giving expression less to his own judgment than to that of the seventeenth century entire. For, as most people are aware, when this same "Athalie" was first acted, in 1691, it was unanimously pronounced a mediocre production, by no means "up to" the reputation of its author. "And yet among its judges were names which are s^ll accepted as authorities; these were men like Labruyère, La Fontaine, Boileau, and women like Madame de Sevigné and Madame de Maintenon, without reckoning all the court of Versailles, a very world of men of wit and taste, and without reckoning Louis XIV., that great writer in an age of great writers, as may be seen from his correspondence on the subject of the succession of Charles II." So that, if "Athalie" has subsequently been lauded to the skies, and if La Harpe has cancelled the decree