fuge, storm without shelter, wandering on the heath, the bed of straw; and when his grief ends in madness, he represents him as a real madman, as well as a real beggar. He indulges in extravagant speeches, sings foolish songs, wears tattered garments, puts a crown of poppy and vervain on his head, and in short, exhibits all the signs of madness. Shakspeare, it is true, draws from this very degradation, the most touching emotions. The storm brings from Lear these sublime apostrophes :

"Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks.
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!

Crack nature's moulds, all germins spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit fire! Spout rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness,
I never gave you kingdoms, called you children,
You owe me no subscription; why then let fall
Your horrible displeasure; here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man ;-
But yet I call you servile ministers,

That have with two pernicious daughters joined
Your high-engendered battles, 'gainst a head
So old and white as this."

The madness of Lear introduces also the beautiful scene, where Cordelia weeps over her sick father. It pains us, we confess, to witness the madness of Lear, when he utters foolish expressions which cannot make us laugh, (for madness is a melancholy thing in spite of its extravagancies,) and which can no longer affect us, although mingled with some flashes of good sense: for the fantasies of madness too quickly interrupt the emotion of grief. But we love and admire Lear, when, awakened by the kisses of his beloved daughter Cordelia, he strives to recognize her; when struggling in vain to recover his reason, he believes that he sees his daughter, and fears, nevertheless, that he may be deceived. This struggle between madness and paternal instinct, is profoundly touching. Then, we no longer complain that Shakspeare has

pushed even to madness the grief of Lear; then, we no more regret the severe majesty of the grief of Edipus. Antigone, guiding her old blind father, is the most touching character in the ancient drama; Cordelia, taking care of her crazy father, and assisting him in recovering his senses, surpasses Antigone in pity, if not in virtue.

We have pointed out the literary differences between Edipus and King Lear, Shakspeare and Sophocles, because they aid us in comprehending the idea which the Greeks had of the drama. But what we desire particularly to remark, because that relates to the subject of our reflections, is the resemblance of intention in Sophocles and in Shakspeare. Both have the same idea of the sacred authority of fathers; both believed that the child which offended the paternal majesty, must perish miserably. Hence the grandeur of their Edipus and their King Lear: they are fathers, and fathers outraged by their ungrateful children. Under this sacred character disappeared the crimes of Edipus, and the faults of Lear that one should have been, against his will, a parricide and incestuous: that the other should have been proud and credulous in prosperity, that he rejected his old servant Kent, and his daughter Cordelia; it is for the gods to remember these faults and to cause them to be expiated. But

:

A son does not arm himself against a guilty father;
He turns away his eyes, pities and reveres him.

VOLTAIRE. Brutus, Act i.

Such is the sacred law imposed upon children, and whoever violates it will perish in the midst of his days: they will fall slain by each other's hands, these two sons of Edipus, who have made him a beggar and a vagabond; they will then fall slain by each other, these daughters of Lear, who have driven him away from the palace which he has given them, and have driven him to madness by their cruelty; they will both perish, cursed and detested even in death, in order that the divine law upon Sinai may be verified: "Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother, in order that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."

We have seen what a grand and majestic idea Sophocles and Shakspeare had of the paternal character. Let us see what this character has become in one of our modern romances, the Father Goriot of De Balzac.

There is displayed in this romance much talent, much invention and observation. There are even scenes in which the tenderness of Father Goriot is exceedingly touching. But we compare the Father Goriot with Edipus and King Lear, in order to study the changes which have been made, from age to age, in the manner of conceiving and expressing the most generous emotions of the human heart. Every people, in fact, begin their career, having some grand ideas and sentiments destined to keep society alive, and which are, if we may so speak, its viaticum, a viaticum which it expends in its progress; and we have seen misanthropes, who thought that what was called the work of civilization, was nothing but the consumption of this fund of the old virtues, which sustains and defrays the expenses of society.

Father Goriot is an old merchant, who, having made a large fortune, has retired to a boarding-house in the Faubourg St. Marceau, where he lives very meanly. He has given all his property to his two daughters, who have married; one a Count, and the other a banker. These daughters are ungrateful; are ashamed of their father, and only go to see him to beg for money, for the good man idolizes them. He has given them every thing, reserving only a few hundred francs of rent and some silver, both of which he sells to gratify the fancies of his daughters, and ends by expiring on a mean little bed without their coming even to see him die.

Such is the history of Father Goriot. Certainly, there is a great difference between Edipus, King Lear, and Father Goriot; but they are all fathers outraged by their children. By virtue of this title, he has a right to their respect and pity. Yet, in order to move us, this outraged father ought to resent the injury done to his paternal character; he ought to preserve the consciousness of the authority which he has over his children, and of the respect which they owe him. It is not only necessary that he should love his daughters, he ought also to know that he is loved by them, and that they are culpable if they despise or neglect him. He ought to have something of the anger of Edipus, or the grief of Lear. It is not necessary in order to interest us, that he should be either a prince or a king: but it is necessary that he should be a father, and that he should maintain the dignity of a man.

The love which Father Goriot has for his daughters, resembles that of Triboulet for Blanche: it proceeds from in

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stinct; and in order that we may not be under any delusion with regard to the kind of affection which Father Goriot entertains, the author takes care to define it: "It was," said he, an unreflecting feeling which elevated Father Goriot to the sublime of canine nature.' We do not here find this paternal love, intelligent and serious, which is at once a virtue and a happiness; this love united to authority, which renders authority more pleasant and obedience more agreeable. The love of Father Goriot is irresistible and instinctive; his tenderness also has all the characteristics of instinct. Their violence, their tenacity, their frenzy in joy as in grief: the forgetfulness, or rather the impossibility of every thought which is foreign to his passion. The novelist represents him as stupid in every respect, except on the side of his brain which corresponds to his instinct. What is curious to remark is, that all the words which the author makes use of to describe the paternal love of Father Goriot, are borrowed from material passion. Thus when Father Goriot embraces his daughter, "he hugs her with a wild and delirious embrace; and again, "he lies down at the feet of his daughter to kiss them; he rubs his head against her gown; short, he commits all the follies of the most youthful and ardent lover. Again, in a scene of anger and insults between the two daughters of Father Goriot, one of them stops, suddenly terrified at "the savage and crazy expression which grief impresses upon the countenance of her father." In fine, when Goriot, dying, sends for his daughters, who do not come; when he confesses his paternal passion, how does he express himself when even in despair he acknowledges the ingratitude of his children? My daughters, it was my own fault, they were my mistresses! . . . I swallowed all their insults, while they were selling my little comforts." Here we see a romancer, who wishes to describe paternal love, the most pure, the most intelligent, the most holy of human affections; and wishing to give to his age a lively and strong idea, he renders it brutal and vicious.

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We cannot have for this feeling of paternity, "pushed to derision," any other sentiment but that of pity; for monomania saddens us, or makes us laugh, according to our tastes; but it is not attractive. Can we be more affected, when, instead of this language borrowed from the dictionary of physiology and medicine, the author, in describing the

paternal love of Father Goriot, uses words consecrated to describing another kind of love? This transposition of sentiments and style shocks us still more. When Madame Guyon expressed how much she loved God, she also borrowed her expressions from the language of human passions; her style made a lover of God; and Bossuet, indignant at this profane confusion of words, prays that God would send the most burning of his cherubim, to purify with a live coal, taken from his altar, the lips which spoke of the love of God, as we speak of the love of man. And we may also demand that the burning coal of the cherubim would purify the lips of a father who speaks of paternal love as they speak of the love of lovers.

All is of a piece in the conduct of Father Goriot. He does not feel paternal love as he should, since he feels it as an uncontrollable instinct, instead of feeling it as a pious affection, which has its rules and its obligations; he expresses it badly, since he uses, in expressing the most chaste of sentiments, the most impure language; in fine he makes a bad use of it, since in his daughters he loves every thingtheir vices, as well as their virtues-and he regards the one as the other, and the vices more than the virtues, because they are the vices which particularly require a blind devotion.

The comparison which we have endeavored to make between Edipus, King Lear, and Father Goriot, would be incomplete, if we did not compare the death of these personages. Death reveals the whole man: it expresses in a decided man how he has lived. Let us see how Edipus, King Lear, and Father Goriot die.

The death of Edipus is like all his life, full of terror and grandeur. He is not a man who expires; it is a mystery which is accomplished. Edipus curses and rejects Polynice; he has pronounced upon his ungrateful sons, the decree of divine justice. Suddenly the thunder rolls. Edipus understands the voice of the God who calls him. He demands Theseus, for Theseus alone must know the mystery of his death and his tomb. Theseus arrives, and then Edipus, as if his blind eyes had acquired a wonderful clear-sightedness, "Follow me, my daughters," says he, "follow me; it is I who must guide you now, as you for a long time guided your father. Do not touch me; permit me to find myself the sacred tomb where destiny wills that I should be buried in the bosom of