respect to Antiquity, or being too much against the present Age, we shall not set up the Tragedies of Sophoclesand Euripides, as the only models for the Dramatick Compositions of our times.
However, I don't say that these Tragedies wanted any thing that was necessary to recommend them to the palate of the Athenians: but shou'd a man translate even the Oedipus, the best performance of all Antiquity, into French, with the same spirit and force as we see it in the original, I dare be bold to affirm, that nothing in the world would appear to us more cruel, more opposite to the true sentiments which mankind ought to have.
Our Age has, at least, this advantage over theirs, that we are allow'd the liberty to hate Vice and love Virtue. As the Gods occasion'd the greatest crimes on the Theatre of the Antients, these crimes captivated the respect of the Spectators; and the People durst not find fault with those things which were really abominable. When they saw Agamemnon sacrifice his own Daughter, and a Daughter too that was so tenderly belov'd by him, to appease the indignation of the Gods, they only consider'd this barbarous Sacrifice as a pious obedience, and the highest proof of a religious submission.
Now in that superstitious Age, if a man still preserv'd the common sentiments of Humanity, he could not avoid murmuring at the cruelty of the Gods, like an impious person; and if he wou'd show his Devotion to the Gods, he must needs be cruel and barbarous to his own Fellow-Creatures: he must, like Agamemnon, offer the greatest violence both to Nature, and to his own Affection:
Tantum Relligio potuit suadere malorum,
says Lucretius, upon the account of this barbarous Sacrifice.
