PREFACE.
bauche. La ceremonie nous defend d'exprimer par paroles les choses licites & naturelles, & nous l'en croyons; la raison nous defend de n'en faire point d'illicites & mauvaises, & personne ne l'en croid. My comfort is, that by this opinion my Enemies are but sucking Critiques, who wou'd fain be nibbling ere their teeth are come.
Yet, in this nicety of manners does the excellency of French Poetry consist: their Heroes are the most civil people breathing; but their good breeding seldom extends to a word of sense: All their Wit is in their Ceremony; they want the Genius which animates our Stage; and therefore 'tis but necessary when they cannot please, that they should take care not to offend. But, as the civilest Man in the company is commonly the dullest, so these Authors, while they are afraid to make you laugh or cry, out of pure good manners, make you sleep. They are so careful not to exasperate a Critique, that they never leave him any work; so busie with the Broom, and make so clean a riddance, that there is little left either for censure or for praise: for no part of a Poem is worth our discommending, where the whole is insipid; as when we have once tasted of pall'd Wine, we stay not to examine it Glass by Glass. But while they affect to shine in trifles, they are often careless in essentials. Thus their Hippolitus is so scrupulous in point of decency, that he will rather expose himself to death, than accuse his Stepmother to his Father; and my Critiques I am sure will commend him for it: but we of grosser apprehensions, are apt to think that this excess of generosity, is not practicable but with Fools and Madmen. This was good manners with a vengeance; and the Audience is like to be much concern'd at the misfortunes of this admirable Heroe: but take Hippolitus out of his Poetique Fit, and I suppose he would think it a wiser part, to set the Saddle on the right Horse, and chuse rather to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken honest Man, than to die with the infamy of an incestuous Villain. In the mean time we may take notice, that where the Poet ought to have preserv'd the character as it was deliver'd to us by Antiquity, when he should have given us the Picture of a rough young Man, of the Amazonian strain, a jolly Huntsman, and both by his profession and his early rising a Mortal Enemy to Love, he has chosen to give him the turn of Gallantry, sent him to travel from Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, and transform'd the Hippolitus of Euripides
