is cruel, and, at the same time, highly unlike a Roman. History affords us many examples of fathers in Rome who condemned their own sons to death for crimes of state; the law gave fathers an unlimited power of life and death over their children in their own houses. But the murder of a father, though undertaken for the recovery of freedom, would have stamped the perpetrator, in the eyes of the Romans, as an unnatural monster. The inconsistencies which are here produced by the attempt to observe the unity of place, are obvious to the least discerning eye. The scene is said to be in the Capitol; here the conspiracy is formed in clear day light, and Cæsar goes out and in during the time. But the people do not appear to know rightly themselves where they are; for Cæsar on one occasion exclaims, Courons au Capitole!

The same improprieties are repeated in Catiline, which is but very little better than the preceding piece. From Voltaire's sentiments respecting the dramatic exhibition of a conspiracy, which I quoted in the foregoing Lecture, we might well conclude that even if it were not evident that with the French system a genuine representation of such a transaction is hardly possible, he was altogether unacquainted with its true nature; not only from the observance of the rules of place and time, but also on account of the dignity of poetical expression insisted on, which is incompatible with the accurate mention of particular circumstances, on which, however, the whole depends.

The machinations of a conspiracy, and the endeavours to frustrate them, are like works under ground, in which the besiegers and besieged endeavour to blow one another up. Something must be done to enable the spectators to comprehend the art of the miners. If Catiline and his adherents had employed no more art and dissimulation, and Cicero no more determined wisdom than Voltaire has given them, the one could not have endangered Rome, and the other could not have saved it. The piece turns always round on the same point; they all exclaim against one another, but no one acts; and at the conclusion the affair is decided as if by accident, by the blind chance of war. When we read the simple relation of Sallust, it has the appearance of the genuine poetry of the object, and Voltaire's work by the side of it looks like a piece of school rhetoric. Ben Jonson has treated the subject with a very different insight into the true connection of human affairs; and Voltaire might have learned a great deal from the man whom he employed falsehoods in traducing.

The Triumvirat belongs to the attempts of his age, which are generally allowed to have been unsuccessful. It consists of endless declamations on the subject of proscription, poorly supported by a mere show of action. Here we find the triumvirs quietly sitting in their tents on an island in the small river Rhenus, during the raging of storms, earthquakes, and volcanoes; and Julia and the young Pompeius are shown

as if shipwrecked on the strand, although they are travelling on terra firma; besides a number of other puerilities. Voltaire, probably by way of apology

for the poor success which the piece had on its representation, says, "This piece is perhaps in the English taste." Heaven forbid!

We return to the earlier tragedies of Voltaire, in which he brought on the stage subjects never before attempted, and on which his fame as a dramatic poet principally rests: Zaire, Alzire, Mahomet, Semiramis, and Tancred.

Zaire is considered in France as the triumph of tragic poetry in the representation of love and jealousy. We will not assert with Lessing, that Voltaire was acquainted only with the legal style of love. He often expresses feeling with a fiery strength, if not with that familiar truth and naïveté in which an unreserved heart lays itself open. But I see no trace of the oriental colouring in the mode of feeling of Zaire: educated in the seraglio, she should cling to the object of her passion with all the fervour of a maiden of a glowing imagination, rioting, as it were, in the fragrant perfumes of the East. Her fanciless love dwells solely in the heart; and how can we reconcile that with such an object? Orosman, on his part, lays claim indeed to European tenderness of feeling; but the Tartar is merely varnished over in him, and he has frequent relapses into his ungovernable fury and despotic habits. The poet ought at least to have

given a credibility to the magnanimity which he ascribes to him, by investing him with a celebrated historical name, such as that of the Saracen monarch Saladin, well known for his nobleness and liberality of sentiment. But all our favour inclines to the oppressed Christian and chivalrous side, and the glorious names which it exhibits. What can be more affecting than the royal martyr Lusignan, the upright and pious Nerestan, who, in the fire of youth, confines his endeavours to the redemption of the associates of his belief? The scenes in which they appear are uniformly excellent, and more particularly the whole of the second act. The idea of connecting the discovery of a daughter with her conversion can never be sufficiently praised. But the great effect of this act is, in my opinion, injurious to the rest of the piece. Does any person seriously wish the union of Zaire with Orosman, except spectatresses who are flattered with the homage which is here paid to beauty, or spectators who are still entangled in the follies of youth? Can the feeling of others go along with the poet, when Zaire's love, so ill justified by the act of the Sultan, balances in her soul the voice of blood, and the most sacred claims of filial duty, honour, and religion?

It was a meritorious daring (such singular prejudices then prevailed in France) to exhibit French heroes in Zaire. In Alzire Voltaire went still farther, and treated a subject in modern history never yet touched by his countrymen. In the former piece he contrasted

the chivalrous and Saracenic way of thinking; in this we have Spaniards opposed to Peruvians. The difference between the old and new world has given rise to descriptions of a true poetical nature. However the action may be invented, I find in this piece more historical and more of what we may call symbolical truth, than in most French tragedies. Zamor is a representation of the savage in his free, and Monteze in his subdued state; Guzman, of the arrogance of the conqueror; and Alvares, of the mild influence of Christianity. Alzire remains between these conflicting elements in an affecting struggle betwixt attachment to her country, its manners, and the first choice of her heart, on the one part, and new bands of honour and duty on the other. All human motives speak in favour of the love of Alzire, and against that of Zaire. The last scene, where the dying Guzman is dragged in, is beneficently overpowering. The noble lines on the diversity of religions, with which Zamor is con. verted by Guzman, are borrowed from an event in history they are the words of the Duke of Guise to a protestant who wished to kill him; but the honour of the poet is not the less in applying them as he has done. In short, notwithstanding the improbabilities in the plot, which are easily discovered, and have often been censured, Alzire appears to me the most fortunate attempt, the most finished of all the compositions of Voltaire.

In Mahomet, impurity of purpose has been dread