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The names of Vladislavian, Agrippine, Uranodavian, and Ferdinandotertian, which were hastily given to these common telescopic stars, soon disappeared from the page of science, and even the splendid telescopes of modern times have not been able to add another gem to the diadem of Jupiter.
In 1848 she played Agrippine in the "Britannicus" of Racine, and dressed in plain white muslin, and clasping the tri-colored flag to her heart, she delivered the "Marseillaise" to please the Revolutionists, lending the air strange meaning and passion by the intensity of her manner, as she half chanted, half recited the words, her voice now shrill and harsh, now deep, hollow, and reverberating her enraptured auditors likening it in effect to distant thunder.
Clairon, the actress in vogue, recites the roles of Phedre and Agrippine, Lekain reads Voltaire, and Goldoni a comedy of his own, which the hostess finds tiresome. New books, new plays, the last song, the latest word of the philosophers all are talked about, eulogized, or dismissed with a sarcasm. The wit of Mme. du Deffand is feared, but it fascinates.
In RACINE'S, the parts of Athalie and of Phedre in the tragedies of the same name, of Agrippine in Britannicus, of Clitemnestre in Iphigenie en Aulide, and of Roxane in Bajazet. In VOLTAIRE'S, those of Merope and Semiramis; and, lastly, that of Medee in the tragedy by LONGEPIERRE.
This indeed is the framework of his poetry, and to speak of it adequately would demand a wider scope than that of an essay; for how much might be written of that strange and moving background, dark with the profundity of passion and glowing with the beauty of the sublime, wherefrom the great personages of his tragedies Hermione and Mithridate, Roxane and Agrippine, Athalie and Phèdre seem to emerge for a moment towards us, whereon they breathe and suffer, and among whose depths they vanish for ever from our sight!
It is, perhaps, as a psychologist that Racine has achieved his most remarkable triumphs; and the fact that so subtle and penetrating a critic as M. Lemaître has chosen to devote the greater part of a volume to the discussion of his characters shows clearly enough that Racine's portrayal of human nature has lost nothing of its freshness and vitality with the passage of time. On the contrary, his admirers are now tending more and more to lay stress upon the brilliance of his portraits, the combined vigour and intimacy of his painting, his amazing knowledge, and his unerring fidelity to truth. M. Lemaître, in fact, goes so far as to describe Racine as a supreme realist, while other writers have found in him the essence of the modern spirit. These are vague phrases, no doubt, but they imply a very definite point of view; and it is curious to compare with it our English conception of Racine as a stiff and pompous kind of dancing-master, utterly out of date and infinitely cold. And there is a similar disagreement over his style. Mr. Bailey is never tired of asserting that Racine's style is rhetorical, artificial, and monotonous; while M. Lemaître speaks of it as 'nu et familier, and Sainte-Beuve says 'il rase la prose, mais avec des ailes, The explanation of these contradictions is to be found in the fact that the two critics are considering different parts of the poet's work. When Racine is most himself, when he is seizing upon a state of mind and depicting it with all its twistings and vibrations, he writes with a directness which is indeed naked, and his sentences, refined to the utmost point of significance, flash out like swords, stroke upon stroke, swift, certain, irresistible. This is how Agrippine, in the fury of her tottering ambition, bursts out to Burrhus, the tutor of her son: Prétendez-vous longtemps me cacher l'empereur? Ne le verrai-je plus qu'
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