Donna Lucretia. No! I tell you that it is impossible. No! among the most horrible ideas that ever entered my mind, this has never occurred to me. Well! well! You raise the knife! Stop,

Gennaro, I have something to tell you.

Gennaro. Quick.

Donna Lucretia. Throw away your knife, wretch! Throw it away, I tell you! If you knew Gennaro, do you know who you are? Do you know who I am? You do not know how nearly I am related to you.-Must I tell him all? The same blood flows in our veins, Gennaro! Your father is John Borgia, Duke of Candia!

Gennaro. Your brother! Ah! you are my aunt!

Why, at the moment when Gennaro pronounces these words, are we always surprised, and a surprise which inclines us to laugh? We are surprised because, being preoccupied with the announcement, I am your mother! which we expect from Lucrece with so much impatience, we are astonished and disappointed in hearing another word, because we are aware that, unless he be the son of Lucrece Borgia, Gennaro must be implacable against her; because this halfrecognition is only a means invented by the poet to suspend the word which makes the terror of the situation, and this expedient is too apparent. It is not before this intermediate title of relationship that Gennaro would stop at this fatal moment. The error of Gennaro, who believes that Lucrece is his aunt, ought not to produce any change in the sentiments of the two characters. Lucrece is no less nearer death, and Gennaro is no less nearer parricide; therefore Gennaro, more enraged than ever, takes hold of Lucrece, and prepares to strike her. Is she about to speak? Is she ready to pronounce the solemn word, the only one which can save herat this fatal moment the only one which can save Gennaro from committing parricide-the only one, in short, which can move and touch the spectator? No. In vain do we expect in this drama, full of crimes and the chastisements of hellin vain do we expect a tear, a single one, which can move us to pity or calm our feelings. No! replies the remorseless enchanter, to me no pity, no tears! Here hearts are not affected, they only palpitate with terror.

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che'ntrate.*

Abandon every hope, ye who enter here.

In Semiramis, Voltaire has been less violent: he has *DANTE, Inferno 3.

mingled, as much as he could, pity with terror, wishing to touch the human heart on both sides, and to melt it into tenderness after having filled it with terror. When Semiramis, an adulteress and murderess, like Lucrece Borgia, recognizes her son in Arsace, and, in her son, the avenger of Ninus, whom she causes to be assassinated, the scene is terrible; but it becomes pathetic by virtue of the sacred names of mother and son:

Ah! I was without pity: be a barbarian in your turn, exclaims Semiramis in despair

Be the son of Ninus, in depriving me of life:

Strike. But what! your sobs are mingled with my tears!
O Ninias! O day full of horrors and delights!

Before giving me the death which you owe me,

Let the voice of nature still be heard:

Suffer at least the tears of your guilty mother

To bedew a hand so fatal and so dear.

Arsace (Ninias). Ah! I am your son; and it is not for you, Whatever you have done, to embrace my knees.

Act iv. scene 4.

See how pity succeeds to terror, and how hearts become melted after having trembled. See Zopire, in Mahomet, when assassinated by Seide-he drags himself over the stage, bleeding and pierced with stabs, and when Seide and Palmyra endeavor to sustain, detesting the crime which they had committed:

say they;

Strike your assassins,

I embrace my children,

exclaims Zopire, who knows the secret of their birth; and these simple words, my children, change also terror into pity.

These are the touching emotions of which the piece of Victor Hugo is divested, in suspending until the last word of the drama, the revelation of Lucrece Borgia.

The ancients wished that terror should be purged by pity; that is to say, that emotion should take repose after fright. They knew that man could not long endure terror. A single passion, a solitary sentiment, and especially that of horror, cannot make tragedy diverting; it is necessary that there

should be at least two sentiments placed in contrast with each other, so as to keep the soul in a state of excitement which would not be oppressive. We are willing that horror should strike and penetrate the soul, on condition that pity comes to alleviate the pain and pour its healing balm into the wound. Then, in succeeding, the two emotions temper each other; they lose what they have, the one too much harshness, the other too much tenderness.

We have so far only considered the subject of art. There remains the subject of morality, which is intimately connected with the former, and on which we will now make a few observations.

The author intended, he says in the preface of his drama, to repair the moral deformity of Lucrece Borgia by the beauty of the maternal sentiment; to use his own forcible expression, he intended to put the mother in the monster. We should here draw a distinction. We admire the tenderness which the most ferocious animals have for their young; and when the dying lioness covers her whelps with her body, wounded and bleeding, we are struck with admiration and the most touching emotions. But the woman who is a mother ought, in her tenderness for her children, to have more intelligence. Instinct does not suffice for her: she must have sentimentthe sentiment which does not exclude instinct, but which perfects and purifies it. Thus, when, at Florence, a mother threw herself in despair before the lion who had taken her child, and the animal, astonished at this despair, or comprehending it, deposited the child at the feet of its mother, it was instinct which urged on this mother; and it was, perhaps, also the instinct of the lion which responded to it. But these good instincts, whatever noble actions they may cause at certain moments, are only the germ and beginning of human virtues; and even that which distinguishes, in the most decided manner, the instincts from those virtues which are purely human, is that the former are barren and unfruitful, although strong. A good instinct lives near the side of a bad one without changing or purifying it, and without suffering itself to be infected or perverted. A single virtue in a vicious soul can convert it entirely to good; so a single vice in a virtuous soul can also entirely corrupt it. But instinct, even when it is good, supports without disquiet the presence of evil; and it is thus that, in Lucrece Borgia, the mother and the

monster are placed side by side, without, if we may so speak, either touching or combatting each other. But there is nothing less natural, and above all, less dramatic, than this mutual tolerance. Those characters, which are a mixture of good and evil, are only dramatic because in their soul the contrary sentiments struggle with each other before the eyes of the spectator. But, in Lucrece, where is the struggle between good and evil? At what moment is it that maternal virtue suddenly enlightens and purifies this soul lost in darkness? When is this marvellous and yet natural transfiguration made? And do you not believe that this moment of conversion will be the moment the least dramatic? Ah! if Lucrece Borgia dared for a moment to say to Gennaro, my son, do you not think that at this sacred word, which touches so many good sentiments, that all these sentiments, until then suppressed in the soul of Lucrece, would be aroused, and, as if by a sudden effort, drive away the impure passions which besieged it? Show us, then, this regeneration of a criminal soul accomplished in the sacred embraces of mother and son; show us how, at this sacred word, I am your mother, all the vices were put to flight which tormented this wretched heart. Then we would at once feel ourselves elevated and melted into pity, which is the most noble pleasure which the arts can give

to man.

This is an extraordinary indication of the change which has been made in our moral ideas. Formerly the poets gave to their characters a single vice or a single passion, taking great care in other respects to make them virtuous, so that they may be considered worthy of interest; in our days the poets give to their heroes innumerable passions and vices with a single virtue as a counterpoise. Yet this weak and solitary virtue, is not charged with purifying the perverted soul where it is by chance preserved; it carefully respects the independence of the vices which are willing to suffer it near them; it is not even intrusted with inspiring the interest of the spectators, for it is vice which nowadays inspires interest, because they invest it with a certain noble and captivating air, which is taken from the heroes of Lord Byron, and which becomes so seductive to the public. Even vice is often sentimental and melancholy; it becomes interesting and affecting under the pretext that it preserves in its abasement something great and good. It seems, in fact,

that we have a taste for ruins in morals as in architecture, and that we love what is fallen, better than that which remains standing upright. Let us love what is still good and pure in perverted souls, as a testimony of human dignity, which can never be entirely destroyed; but let us admire the ruin only in memory of the edifice, let us not value the rags more than the cloth; in a word, let us take in crime what remains of virtue as an excuse, and let us not push the pity which inspires the excuse so far as to respect and even to admire it. The lesson which was inculcated by the ancient tragedy, such as Racine has conceived in his Phedra, was that one bad passion was alone sufficient to destroy the soul; a severe and hard lesson, which makes man tremble at his frailty and which inspires him with a scrupulous and perpetual vigilance; a lesson worthy of a Christian and of a pupil of Port Royal, as Racine was. The moral lesson which is taught by our modern dramas is, that only one good quality is sufficient to excuse many vices; an indulgent lesson, and one which puts the heart of man very much at its ease.