have, on the present occasion, been so much struck with some of the remarks in his dedication of this piece to Voltaire, that we shall insert them here. After having paid the celebrated veteran some very high and elegant compliments, he thus proceeds: You have told us, Sir, that theatrical pomp adds greatly to the interest of a piece; and you have recommended this accessary, which had been too much neglected before your time. What has been the consequence? Tragedy is become a series of moving pictures; the representation is crowded with events, combats, and poignards; and in these works all depends on the acting and the decoration. Writers have forgotten what you have said a hundred times, that, without interest and style, these foreign ornaments produce only a momentary effect, and that no trace of a performance of this sort survives the dropping of the curtain.-Amid the prevalence of this bad taste, I have hazarded a drama of extreme simplicity. It has been my opinion that crowded events interest curiosity alone, while they leave sensibility untouched; that, in order to excite durable emotions in the audience, the utmost simplicity in the action is necessary, and that at each successive moment it ought to grow more interesting; that it was necessary that the different sentiments of the several characters should deeply affect the minds of the hearers; and that tragedy was not merely the art of making men act on the stage, but that of making them speak. Yes, I am not afraid to repeat it, eloquence alone can animate tragedy; this is what characterizes the great masters, and this is the feature which distinguishes you.' It was the fashion at this time to require, in every new piece, brilliant and striking passages, which were to be pointed, and to embrace general maxims,-des vers saillans, des vers à retenir. On this subject, the disciple thus addresses his great master: 'When you shall have read this tragedy, you will not be surprized that it has been charged with a total deficiency of these striking lines, these lines for recollection. You will compliment me on the omission of them. You will agree with me that lines depending on connec tion are profoundly felt, are a hundred times worth those which, however brilliant, damp the aggregate interest; and that the style which gives life to the piece is of far more value than that which makes the actor dazzle. Give me the lines, the merit of which consists in ease and simplicity, which inversions do not distort, nor epithets encumber; which render the piece intelligible, and causes us to attend to it with unbroken satisfaction; yes, when this simplicity moves the soul, I prefer it to the grandest thoughts. High matter should be expressed in simple terms. Such, Sir, are my notions; and it is from you that I learned them.' The dutiful pupil here probes to the quick the faults of the master, though he is all the while complimenting him, and pressing his name and authority on the side of pure classical taste, Gg 2 against against a sort of corruption which the sage had introduced. The wary veteran, in a masterly answer, readily admits that theatrical pomp is to be considered only when it forms a necessary part of the subject, that otherwise it is mere decoration, that incidents have no merit unless they are natural, and that declamations are puerile, particularly if they border on bombast:-but the vers à retenir were too much in his own manner to receive condemnation from his lips, and he disposes of the point with that consummate address of which he had so often shewn himself master. "You claim merit (says he) for not having composed lines to be committed to memory; while I, Sir, perceive that you have written many such." He then proceeds to a defence of them, in which we discern all his exquisite art but still it is insufficient to cover from view the sophistry which pervades it. Of this tragedy, it may be said that it is great as a first essay, that the design is excellent, and that the taste which it displays is above controversy: but it wants that grandeur of conception and that ardour in the thoughts which characterize the great masters. The failure of his next dramatic performance plunged La HARPE, who was now married, into those difficulties with which it is so generally the fate of literary men to struggle. In this situation, the doors of Ferney were thrown open to him, and the young couple became the guests of its Lord during thirteen months. If the beneficent host levied the tax of deference on his visitors, it was impossible that the rising candidate in the career of letters should not derive the greatest advantages from the commerce which arose out of the protection thus benevolently extended to him.-The good offices of Voltaire with the Duc de Choiseul, and farther attempts at the drama, were however ineffectual; and the youthful aspirant was obliged to depend on exertions of another kind. Lacombe engaged him to write in the Mercure. This journal, the sole merit of which had been that of favoring the opinions then in vogue, being placed under the direction of LA HARPE, soon exhibited a new aspect. Sound criticism, luminous discussion, and profound and comprehensive views, supplied the place of the shallow declamations with which it had till that time been filled. Though he continued his labours in the Mercure, he did not neglect the theatre; and his Melanie, the object of which was to expose the mischiefs of monastic institutions, met with considerable success. In his Barmécides, he delineates the generous mind; and Joan of Naples exemplifies the mischievous consequences of the passions: while in Menzikoff we witness the fall of a powerful minister, accompanied with resignation that is unexampled. 1 Having for years manfully opposed the difficulties which straitened circumstances, his openness, his independent spirit, and the envy and jealousy of rivals, had accumulated on him, we at length find him an Academician, rescued from the uncertainties of a precarious existence, living in intimacy with every distinguished character in the French metropolis, and successively enjoying the friendship of Turgot and of Necker. If LA HARPE was on his guard against the faults of his master Voltaire, he never reached equal dramatic eminence, never rose to the same elevation, and never attained to the same lucid style. His genius, indeed, was not of the same order. Though he was master of a more easy and elegant diction than either D'Alembert or Condorcet, it does not appear that like them he could boast the highest attainments in the ocult sciences: but in judgment he was not inferior to either, while in correctness of taste he excelled them both, and well merited the designation bestowed on him of the French Quintilian. Of his claims in this respect we have had frequent occasions to speak; and though we did not always approve his decisions, we never perused them without instruction and pleasure. Most parts of the Cours de Littérature may be compared to the works of the great artists; they strongly attract the attention of all men; all feel delight in gazing on them; and true judges are never weary with studying and examining them. M. de Pezay, whose name occurs in the story of Necker, had been the college friend of LA HARPE, and the intimacy survived to a later period. The following pointed lines describe the occasion of its subsiding: 'Dorilas avec moi fut uni dès l'enfance. Tout nous étoit commun, jeux, plaisirs, espérance : Gg3 Je laissai Dorilas, de lui-même ébloui, It is not his high rank in literature, however, nor the honours to which it led, nor the valuable performances which he added to our learned stores, that principally distinguished La Harpe. The circumstance which gives the most peculiar interest to his annals is his conversion, in advanced life, from French infidelity to Christianity, or rather to the Romish faith. In this conversion, we apprehend, the sober and enlightened friend of religion will see little to please or to edify him. The instance is not that of inquiry producing rational conviction; the change is not the result of research and reflection; it is instantaneous and miraculous; and nature is put out of her course in order to beget a single confessor to the falling church. It seems as if there were magic in words, and as if the passages in pious books had the effect ascribed to the Sortes Virgiliana: but the whole is unintelligible to those who have not been initiated in the mystic jargon of fanaticism. We shall, however, submit to our readers the relation of the matter as it is here given. LA HARPE hailed the commencement of the revolution; and during the first two years of its course, he was its advo cate. Under the reign of terror he was arrested, and lodged in the Luxemburgh; and in this situation he became very disconsolate. We are told that he did not feel his principles adapted to give relief, in the conjuncture in which he found himself; and a friend, who was anxious for his welfare, requested him to peruse the Psalms of David. Into these com positions he had never before looked, except with a view to discover poetical beauties, and they were very little in his recollection. Fearful of offending the philosopher, and of stumbling as it were at the threshold, his friend requested him to peruse them as a resource for killing time; and in order to fix his attention more on the sacred compositions, he was requested to compose a purely literary comment on them. He undertook it. Scarcely had he begun, before he discovered in the Psalms a number of beauties of a superior order: this persuasion continued to gain strength; and farther perusals soon fortified it. From this commentary, originating in a mere regard to friendship, and afterward pursued from pious zeal, was formed the preliminary discourse prefixed to his translation of the Psalter, the first work in which he announced his conversion. We now come to his own account of that memorable event. I was alone in my prison in a small dark chamber, very sorrow- some some good books. Their effect had been rapid, though progressive. I was already restored to the faith, I saw a new light, but it terrified me in shewing me an abyss, that of forty years of error. I saw all the evil, but no remedy. Nothing around me offered to me the succour of religion. On one side, my life was before my eyes, such as it appeared by the torch of divine truth; and on the other, death, such as was then inflicted, and which I expected every day. The priest no longer appeared on the scaffold to comfort those who were about to die; he no longer ascended it, except to die himself. Full of these distressing ideas, my heart had sunk within me; it silently addressed itself to God, whom I had just found, and whom I scarcely yet knew. I besought of him what I was to do, and what was to become of me? I had on my table the Imitation, and I had been told that 1 should frequently find in that excellent book an answer to my thoughts. I opened it without any view to a particular place, and fell on these words: Behold me, my son, I come to you because you have invoked me. I read no more; the sudden impression which I experienced is beyond description; and it is not more possible to convey it in words than to forget it. I fell with my face on the ground, bathed in tears, almost suffocated, uttering inarticulate cries, and broken sentences. I perceived my heart lightened and dilated, yet at the same time ready to burst. A multitude of ideas and sentiments rushed on my mind; I wept for a long time; and I am without any recollection of the situation, except that it was something beyond comparison the most violent and the most transporting that my heart ever experienced. These words, behold me, my son, never ceased to sound in my ears, and forcibly to agitate my frame.' Relations of this sort occur frequently in the works of the Puritans of former days, and in those of some sects of the present time. On being released from prison, the new convert resumed his lectures at the Lyceum; where he displayed all the zeal which is natural to that character. The sensation produced by this novelty, the ridicule which it provoked, and the persecutions which it drew on this confessor in the cause of the Roman church, are well known to those who paid attention to events at Paris at that period.-In what is termed the revolution of the 18th of Fructidor, LA HARPE was obliged to fly, in order to escape deportation: but he found a secure and commodious asylum near Paris, where he composed a part of his Fragments of an Apology for Religion. Soon after his release from his last captivity, his health rapidly declined, and early in the year 1803 he closed his mortal career. His conversation, we are informed, was in the highest degree pious and edifying on the prospect of dissolution, and he died a fervent votary of the Catholic religion.-The following is given as his dying confession of faith: • Jesus Christ is the speaker. • Haying |
