Like Æschylus he conducted one to virtue by terror; but unfortunately the taste of the spectators, upon which he was forced to model his, led him to degrade his tableaux by grotesque figures: the English people were not sufficiently advanced to comprehend the moral end of the tragedy. They must be amused; and Shakespeare succeeded only at the expense of the beauties of the art. Historic facts and trivial scenes replaced the mysterious and sublime subjects.
In London, the dramatic muse was turbulent and licen-*
- [Footnote:
"In the beginning, when naught was, there
Was neither sand nor sea nor the cold waves,
Nor was earth to be seen nor heaven above.
There was a Yawning Chasm [chaos] but grass nowhere. . . ."
Ár vas aida pat-es ekki vas;
vasa sandr né sær né svalar unnir,
iœrð fansk æva né upp-himinn;
Gap vas Ginnunga, enn gras ekki, . . .
Voyez Mallet, Monuments celtiques, p. 135; et pour le texte, le poëme même de la Voluspa, in Edda islandorum, Mallet paraît avoir suivi un texte erroné.
As to the Gallic poetry of the Scotch bards, that Macpherson has made known to us under the name of Ossian, much is needed that they may have a sufficient degree of authenticity for them to be cited as models, and placed parallel with those of Homer, as has been done without reflection. These poems, although resting for the greater part upon a true basis, are very far from being veritable as to form. The Scotch bards, like the Oscan troubadours, must be restored and often entirely remade, if they are to be read. Macpherson, in composing his Ossian, has followed certain ancient traditions, has put together certain scattered fragments; but has taken great liberties with all the rest. He was, besides, a man endowed with creative genius and he might have been able to attain to epopœia if he had been better informed. His lack of knowledge has left a void in his work which demonstrates its falsity. There is no mythology, no allegory, no cult in Ossian. There are some historic or romanesque facts joined to long descriptions; it is a style more emphatic than figurative, more bizarre than original. Macpherson, in neglecting all kinds of mythological and religious ideas, in even mocking here and there the stone of power of the Scandinavians, has shown that he was ignorant of two important things: the one, that the allegorical or religious genius constitutes the essence of poetry; the other, that Scotland was at a very ancient period the hearth of this same genius whose interpreters were the druids, bards, and scalds. He should have known that, far from being]*
