Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/143

Rh "How do you know it?"

"I know nothing yet; but these lines neither touch my ear nor my heart."

"Oh!" said Gordon, "the versification does not signify." The Huron asked, "What must I judge by, then?"

After having read the piece very attentively without any other design than being pleased, he looked steadfastly at his friend with much astonishment, not knowing what to say. At length, being urged to give his opinion with respect to what he felt, this was the answer he made: "I understood very little of the beginning; the middle disgusted me; but the last scene greatly moved me, though there appears to be but little probability in it. I have no prejudices for or against any one, but I do not remember twenty lines; I, who recollect them all when they please me."

"This piece, nevertheless, passes for the best upon our stage."

"If that be the case," said he, "it is perhaps like many people who are not worthy of the places they hold. After all, this is a matter of taste, and mine cannot yet be formed. I may be mistaken; but you know I am accustomed to say what I think, or rather what I feel. I suspect that illusion, fashion, caprice, often warp the judgments of men."

Here he repeated some lines from "Iphigenia," of which he was full; and though he declaimed but indifferently, he uttered them with such truth and