actually began to test the ancients by the theory drawn from the Poetics, and declare them wanting. A war sprang up between the advocates of the old and the new, and the advocates of the Greek masters began now to defend them by showing that they had sacrificed the unities to greater freedom and the closer study of nature; that in fact they were rather to be compared to the school of Shakspere than to their French imitations; and this has been the course of French dramatic criticism ever since. While we feel that the buskins, and masks, and stereotyped messengers, and balanced discussions, are far too stiff for our stage, French critics are ever defending the irregularities and licences of the Greeks as compared to Racine, and this especially as regards Euripides. The most important and the fairest book during the epoch before us was Brumoy's Théâtre des Grecs (1715), in which he gave either full analyses or translations of most of the plays of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, with a comparison of the treatment of like subjects in each, and in the versions of Dolce, Rotrou, and Racine. This book, which earned Voltaire's sincere praise, is to the present day most instructive and useful, as it regards the Greek tragedy altogether from the theatrical and not the literary point of view. But Brumoy's tone is positively apologetic towards the evidently dominant modern school.
131. Voltaire took up the controversy in a very different spirit. When a youth of eighteen, his taste was turned to the drama by seeing a translation of the Tauric Iphigenia acted at the Duchess of Maine's; this translation being by M, Malespieu, a learned private tutor, who habitually read out to his pupils the Greek plays in French. Voltaire was delighted, and immediately composed his Œdipe; but he afterwards criticised his own work, and brought out an Oreste after Euripides, which he prefaced by his theoretical views.[1] He saw
- ↑ In this, as in most of his opinions, Voltaire was not consistent. He was at one time carried away by the admiration of
