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<h2> LETTER CLVII </h2>
<h3> LONDON, January 23, O. S. 1752. </h3>
<p>MY DEAR FRIEND: Have you seen the new tragedy of Varon,—[Written by
the Vicomte de Grave; and at that time the general topic of conversation
at Paris.]—and what do you think of it? Let me know, for I am
determined to form my taste upon yours. I hear that the situations and
incidents are well brought on, and the catastrophe unexpected and
surprising, but the verses bad. I suppose it is the subject of all
conversations at Paris, where both women and men are judges and critics of
all such performances; such conversations, that both form and improve the
taste, and whet the judgment; are surely preferable to the conversations
of our mixed companies here; which, if they happen to rise above bragg and
whist, infallibly stop short of everything either pleasing or instructive.</p>
<p>I take the reason of this to be, that (as women generally give the 'ton'
to the conversation) our English women are not near so well informed and
cultivated as the French; besides that they are naturally more serious and
silent.</p>
<p>I could wish there were a treaty made between the French and English
theatres, in which both parties should make considerable concessions. The
English ought to give up their notorious violations of all the unities;
and all their massacres, racks, dead bodies, and mangled carcasses, which
they so frequently exhibit upon their stage. The French should engage to
have more action and less declamation; and not to cram and crowd things
together, to almost a degree of impossibility, from a too scrupulous
adherence to the unities. The English should restrain the licentiousness
of their poets, and the French enlarge the liberty of theirs; their poets
are the greatest slaves in their country, and that is a bold word; ours
are the most tumultuous subjects in England, and that is saying a good
deal. Under such regulations one might hope to see a play in which one
should not be lulled to sleep by the length of a monotonical declamation,
nor frightened and shocked by the barbarity of the action. The unity of
time extended occasionally to three or four days, and the unity of place
broke into, as far as the same street, or sometimes the same town; both
which, I will affirm, are as probable as four-and-twenty hours, and the
same room.</p>
<p>More indulgence too, in my mind, should be shown, than the French are
willing to allow, to bright thoughts, and to shining images; for though, I
confess, it is not very natural for a hero or a princess to say fine
things in all the violence of grief, love, rage, etc., yet, I can as well
suppose that, as I can that they should talk to themselves for half an
hour; which they must necessarily do, or no tragedy could be carried on,
unless they had recourse to a much greater absurdity, the choruses of the
ancients. Tragedy is of a nature, that one must see it with a degree of
self-deception; we must lend ourselves a little to the delusion; and I am
very willing to carry that complaisance a little farther than the French
do.</p>
<p>Tragedy must be something bigger than life, or it would not affect us. In
nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak,
and speak with dignity too. Hence the necessity of their being written in
verse, and unfortunately for the French, from the weakness of their
language, in rhymes. And for the same reason, Cato the Stoic, expiring at
Utica, rhymes masculine and feminine at Paris; and fetches his last breath
at London, in most harmmonious and correct blank verse.</p>
<p>It is quite otherwise with Comedy, which should be mere common life, and
not one jot bigger. Every character should speak upon the stage, not only
what it would utter in the situation there represented, but in the same
manner in which it would express it. For which reason I cannot allow
rhymes in comedy, unless they were put into the mouth, and came out of the
mouth of a mad poet. But it is impossible to deceive one's self enough
(nor is it the least necessary in comedy) to suppose a dull rogue of an
usurer cheating, or 'gross Jean' blundering in the finest rhymes in the
world.</p>
<p>As for Operas, they are essentially too absurd and extravagant to mention;
I look upon them as a magic scene, contrived to please the eyes and the
ears, at the expense of the understanding; and I consider singing,
rhyming, and chiming heroes, and princesses, and philosophers, as I do the
hills, the trees, the birds, and the beasts, who amicably joined in one
common country dance, to the irresistible turn of Orpheus's lyre. Whenever
I go to an opera, I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half
guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and my ears.</p>
<p>Thus I have made you my poetical confession; in which I have acknowledged
as many sins against the established taste in both countries, as a frank
heretic could have owned against the established church in either, but I
am now privileged by my age to taste and think for myself, and not to care
what other people think of me in those respects; an advantage which youth,
among its many advantages, hath not. It must occasionally and outwardly
conform, to a certain degree, to establish tastes, fashions, and
decisions. A young man may, with a becoming modesty, dissent, in private
companies, from public opinions and prejudices: but he must not attack
them with warmth, nor magisterially set up his own sentiments against
them. Endeavor to hear, and know all opinions; receive them with
complaisance; form your own with coolness, and give it with modesty.</p>
<p>I have received a letter from Sir John Lambert, in which he requests me to
use my interest to procure him the remittance of Mr. Spencer's money, when
he goes abroad and also desires to know to whose account he is to place
the postage of my letters. I do not trouble him with a letter in answer,
since you can execute the commission. Pray make my compliments to him, and
assure him that I will do all I can to procure him Mr. Spencer's business;
but that his most effectual way will be by Messrs. Hoare, who are Mr.
Spencer's cashiers, and who will undoubtedly have their choice upon whom
they will give him his credit. As for the postage of the letters, your
purse and mine being pretty near the same, do you pay it, over and above
your next draught.</p>
<p>Your relations, the Princes B——-, will soon be with you at
Paris; for they leave London this week: whenever you converse with them, I
desire it may be in Italian; that language not being yet familiar enough
to you.</p>
<p>By our printed papers, there seems to be a sort of compromise between the
King and the parliament, with regard to the affairs of the hospitals, by
taking them out of the hands of the Archbishop of Paris, and placing them
in Monsieur d'Argenson's: if this be true, that compromise, as it is
called, is clearly a victory on the side of the court, and a defeat on the
part of the parliament; for if the parliament had a right, they had it as
much to the exclusion of Monsieur d'Argenson as of the Archbishop. Adieu.</p>
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