not very scrupulous, but not that praeternatural deep designing villain that he is represented in the piece of Maffei.  In fact Maffei’s Polyphonte appears too outre; but then on the stage may not a little exaggeration be allowed, just as statues which are destined to be placed in the open air or on columns appear with greater effect when larger than the natural size?  Alfleri seems to have given the preference to the Merope of Voltaire.

I have seen Talma a second time in the part of Nero in the Britannicus of Racine; Mlle Georges played the part of Agrippina.  Talma was Nero from head to foot; his very entry on the stage gave an idea of the fiery and impatient character of the tyrant, and in the scene between him and his mother Agrippina nothing could be better delineated.  The forced calm of Agrippina, while reproaching her son with his ingratitude, and the impatience of Nero to get rid of such an importunate monitress, were given in a style impossible to be surpassed.  Talma’s dumb show during this scene was a masterpiece of the mimic art.  If Talma gives such effects to his roles in a French drama, where he is shackled by rules, how much greater would he give on the English or German stages in a tragedy of Shakespeare or Schiller!

Blank verse is certainly better adapted to tragedy than rhymed alexandrines, but then the French language does not admit of blank verse, and to write tragedies in prose, unless they be tragedies in modern life, would deprive them of all charm; but after all I find the harmonious pomp and to use a phrase of Pope’s “The long majestic march and energy divine” of the French alexandrine, very pleasing to the ear.  I am sure that the French poets deserve a great deal of credit for producing such masterpieces of versification from a language, which, however elegant, is the least poetical in Europe; which allows little or no inversion, scarce any poetic license, no enjambement, compels a fixed caesura; has in horror the hiatus; and in fine is subject to the most rigorous rules, which can on no account be infringed; which rejects hyperbole; which is measured by syllables, the pronunciation of which is not felt in prose; compels the alternative termination of a masculine or feminine rhyme; and with all this requires more perhaps than any other language that cacophony be sedulously avoided.  Such are the difficulties a French poet has to struggle with; he must unite the most harmonious sound with the finest thought.  In Italian very often the natural harmony of the language and the music of the sound conceal the poverty of the thought; besides Italian poetry has innumerable licenses which make it easy to figure in the Tuscan Parnassus, and where anyone who can string together rime or versi sciolti is dignified with the appellation of a poet; whereas from French poetry, a mediocrity is and must be of necessity banished.  Neither is it sufficient for an author to have sublime ideas; these must be filed