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CHAPTER IV.
HIS FIRST TRAGEDY.
That he chose a classical subject for his essay in tragedy was owing partly to the fashion set by Racine and Corneille, partly to his recent studies at the Jesuit College; and he chose this particular story because, as he tells us, he did not approve of the Œdipus either of Sophocles or of Corneille, and endeavoured in his own play to avoid the faults which they had committed. But it was a subject that no genius could make attractive in our day. To represent a good man as the sport of a malignant destiny is of itself an idea belonging to a pagan rather than a Christian age; and when his fate takes the shape of causing him unwittingly to slay his father and to marry his mother—bringing down, by these involuntary offences, the wrath of the gods upon a whole nation—the fable would seem to be altogether outside the pale of modern sympathies. Nevertheless the play, obstructed at first by critics who did not like Voltaire, on the score that it contained reflections against religion, and by the players because the characters did not suit them, especially as there was no "lady in love," ran for forty-five nights in succession.
