Even the French are not uniformly
insensible to this Grecian grandeur. I remember that Voltaire, amongst
many just remarks on the Electra of Sophocles, mixed with others that are
_not_ just, bitterly condemns this demand for a love fable on the French
stage, and illustrates its extravagance by the French tragedy on the same
subject, of Crebillon. He (in default of any more suitable resource) has
actually made Electra, whose character on the Greek stage is painfully
vindictive, in love with an imaginary son of Aegisthus, her father's
murderer. Something should also have been said of Mrs. Leigh Murray's
Ismene, which was very effective in supporting and in relieving the
magnificent impression of Antigone. I ought also to have added a note on
the scenic mask, and the common notion (not authorized, I am satisfied, by
the practice in the _supreme_ era of Pericles), that it exhibited a Janus
face, the windward side expressing grief or horror, the leeward expressing
tranquillity. Believe it not, reader. But on this and other points, it
will be better to speak circumstantially, in a separate paper on the Greek
drama, as a majestic but very exclusive and almost, if one may say so,
bigoted form of the scenic art.
THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. [1]
It sounds like the tolling of funeral bells, as the annunciation is made
of one death after another amongst those who supported our canopy of
empire through the last most memorable generation.
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