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There began a course of metaphysics, tales, tragedies; Alzire, Merope, Mahomet, were composed at Cirey and played with ever increasing success. Pope Benedict XIV. had accepted the dedication of Mahomet, which Voltaire had addressed to him in order to cover the freedoms of his piece.
The Merope, a work of his ripest years, was intended as a perfect revival of Greek tragedy, an undertaking of so great difficulty, and so long announced with every note of preparation. Moreover the confidants are also entirely after the old traditional cut. The other defects of the piece have been circumstantially, and, I might almost say, too severely, censured by Lessing.
Lessing has, with the most irresistible and victorious wit, pointed out the ludicrous nature of the very plans of Rodogune, Semiramis, Merope, and Zaire. The lines with which Theseus in the Oedipus of Corneille opens his part, are deserving of one of the first places: Quelque ravage affreux qu'etale ici la peste L'absence aux vrais amans est encore plus funeste.
The quiet grace of Sophocles is perhaps impossible to reproduce in English, but Mr Arnold's verse is more than quiet, it is positively tame. The dreary tirades of Polyphontes and Merope, and their snip-snap stichomythia, read equally ill in English.
These creatures had now found out a way of galling him to the very quick. In one walk, at least, it had been admitted by envy itself that he was without a living competitor. Since Racine had been laid among the great men whose dust made the holy precinct of Port Royal holier, no tragic poet had appeared who could contest the palm with the author of Zaire, of Alzire, and of Merope.
The seven Pleiades had names given to them, and they are Alcyone, Merope, Celæno, Electra, Sterope, Taygete, and Maia. But think of the billions and trillions of daughters of starry light that God calls by name as they sweep by Him with beaming brow and lustrous robe! So fond is God of light natural light, moral light, spiritual light.
To cheer him, the messenger now informs him that he is not the son of Merope and Polybus. A babe had been found in the entangled forest-dells of Cithaeron by a herdsman and slave of Laius he had given the infant to another that other, the messenger who now tells the tale. Transferred to the care of Polybus and Merope, the babe became to them as a son, for they were childless.
How can he have rest on earth? How face his murdered father in death? The memories of Polybus and Merope come upon him, then the years of unnatural wedlock. Creon, whom he has wantonly insulted, comes not to mock at him, but to take him into the palace where neither land nor rain nor light may know him.
I am sick to death of her name. I can bear with your faults for the sake of your merits; but she has not written Mahomet or Merope." An explosion of this kind, it might be supposed, would necessarily put an end to all amicable communication. But it was not so.
Stealthily, as if on shoes of felt, as if on paws of velvet, with eyes luminous, tail bushy, he walks warily, all energies compressively summoned, towards that high goal. Hush, steady! May you soon catch that bit of savory red-herring, then; worthiest of the human feline tribe! As to the Play MEROPE, here is the notable passage: "PARIS, WEDNESDAY, 20th FEBRUARY, 1743.
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