Though not quite a match for Crowne's it must be conceded that neither is Dryden's bombast of a mean order. The following passage which very nearly bears comparison with the above, will show how heroism appeared when transferred to the stage. In one of the dramas, the plot of which Dryden took from the French romances, Almanzor thus addresses a rival :

"If from thy hands alone my death can be,
I am immortal and a god to thee,

If I would kill thee now, thy fate's so low
That I must stoop ere I can give the blow:
But mine is fixed so far above thy crown,
That all thy men,

Piled on thy back, can never pull it down :
But at my ease, thy destiny I send,

By ceasing from this hour to be thy friend.
Like heaven, I need but only to stand still,
And not concurring to thy life, I kill,"

Any number of speeches of this sort are to be found in the heroical dramas of Dryden, Settle, Lee, and their contemporaries. Roman, Arab, Turk, Greek or Moorish heroes, pirates or princes, when they mean to set anything at defiance, choose nothing less than heaven and earth as their object; they divide the world between them as if it were an orange; they rush to the fight or stop for a speech with a fine shake of the head which sends a majestic undulation round the wig worn by them, even by the Moors, as we may see in one of the very rare dramas then published with

"Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada,” performed (with great success) in the winter, 1669-70, act iii. sc. i.

66

SETTLE'S EMPRESS OF MOROCCO," 1673.

[p. 393.

engravings. They are represented there with embroidered justaucorps, wigs and ribbons. I

Crowne besides his romance wrote several dramas that secured him a wide, if temporary, popularity. He also adapted Racine's "Andromaque" for the English stage, but he was very much disgusted with this work; the French original, though not "the worst" of French plays, was after all so mean and tame! "If the play be barren of fancy, you must blame the original author. I am as much inclined to be civil to strangers as any man; but then they must be strangers of merit. I would no more be at the pains to bestow wit (if I had any) on a French play, than I would be at the cost to bestow cloaths on every shabby Frenchman that comes over." Here we have Racine put in his proper place; what claim had he to be considered "a stranger of merit"? True, some crabbed English critics seem to have taken his part against the translator, and, incredible as it may seem, they have expressed a thought that "this suffered much in the translation.-I cannot tell in what," answers Crowne, "except in bestowing verse upon it, which I thought it did not deserve. For otherwise, there is all that is in the French play, verbatim, and something more, as may be seen in the last act, where what is dully recited in the French play is there represented, which is no small advantage." 2 And true, it is, Pyrrhus is slain

not

Settle's "Empress of Morocco," London, 1673, 4to. The engraving we reproduce represents the interior of a Moorish prison, with Muley Labas, son of the Emperor of Morocco, and the Princess Morena.

2 "Andromache, a tragedy, as it is acted at the Dukes Theatre," London, 1675, 4to.

before our eyes; there are "alarums" and other lively, if customary, ornaments.

In this age obviously Racine could not please. Nor would Shakespeare have pleased a French audience, but as we know no attempt in that direction was made in Paris. The two nations lent one another, if anything, their defects. "Alaric" was named with praise by Dryden; Scudéry and La Calprenède continued to be most popular French authors during the century. Even in the next we find something remaining of their fame. Among the books in the library of the fashionable Leonora, Addison notices: "Cassandra,' 'Cleopatra,' 'Astræa' the Grand Cyrus,' with a pin stuck in one of the middle leaves... 'Clelia,' which opened of it self in the place that describes two lovers in a bower," I &c. The passions in them which seem to us now so incredibly frigid, had not yet cooled down; their warmth was still felt so much so that in one of Farquhar's plays, "Cassandra" is mentioned as greatly responsible for Lady Lurewell's first and greatest fault, the beginning of many others: "After supper I went to my chamber and read Cassandra,' then went to bed and dreamt of it all night, rose in the morning and made verses . . . We cannot follow her in her account of the consequences.

"2

All that was truly noble and simple in French literature was known, but at the same time generally misunderstood in England. To make French authors acceptable, grossness was added to Molière, bombast to Racine;

I

Spectator, April 12, 1711.

2 "The Constant Couple, or a trip to the Jubilee," 1700, act iii., last scene.