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For ourselves, we think Voltaire altogether in the right, and we respect Lessing's honesty too much to suppose, with his biographer, that it was this which led him, years afterwards, to do such severe justice to Merope, and other tragedies of the same author.
A further reprint in 1881 restored the whole Church of Brou and A Dream, and gave two or three small additions, especially Geist's Grave. The three-volume edition of 1885 also republished Merope for the first time, and added Westminster Abbey and Poor Matthias.
Gray about the same time reports that money is being collected to help "poor Smart," not for the first time, since in January 1759, Gray had written: "Poor Smart is not dead, as was said, and Merope is acted for his benefit this week," with the Guardian, a farce which Garrick had kindly composed for that occasion.
The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems. 1852. ~Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems~. 1853. Poems. 1855. Merope. 1867. New Poems. 1869. England and the Italian Question. 1861. Popular Education in France. 1861. On Translating Homer. 1862. Last Words on Translating Homer. 1864. A French Eton. 1865. Essays in Criticism. 1867. On the Study of Celtic Literature. 1868.
Emil, Pantaleone, and the poodle Tartaglia accompanied him to the corner of the street. Pantaleone could not refrain from expressing his displeasure at Gemma's reading. 'She ought to be ashamed! She mouths and whines, una caricatura! She ought to represent Merope or Clytemnaestra something grand, tragic and she apes some wretched German woman!
Dramatist and miscellaneous writer, s. of a country gentleman of Wiltshire, was ed. at Westminster School, and thereafter made a tour in the East. He was the author of 17 dramatic pieces, some of them, such as his versions of Voltaire's Zaire and Merope, being adaptations. He also wrote a quantity of poetry, which, notwithstanding some good passages, is as a general rule dull and pompous.
It was that very autumn that Madame Villars had kissed Voltaire publicly, in her box at the theater, at the first performance of Mérope, and to the delight of the audience. Perhaps Monsieur Voltaire's head was not a little turned by this; perhaps Madame du Châtelet could have told a tale of the airs he gave himself with all the women after that, but no matter.
In 1869, when the first Collected Edition of his poems was in the press, he wrote to Palgrave, who had suggested some alterations, this estimate of his own merits and defects, "I am really very much obliged to you for your letter. I think the printing has made too much progress to allow of dealing with any of the long things now; I have left 'Merope' aside entirely, but the rest I have reprinted.
He even remembered the names of some of them; there was Maia, Tagete, Alcyone, but the other four lay in his mental lumber room, whence they could not be evoked, although Merope, he felt sure, was one of them. Of Maia, however, he felt positive.... How beautiful the names were!
'Merope, yes, the delighted Minks went on. He knew it because he had looked it up recently for his lyric about 'the Doves of Thought. 'She married a mortal, Sisyphus, the son of Aeolus, and so shines more dimly than the rest. For her sisters married gods. But there is one who is more luminous than the others 'Ah! and which was that? interrupted Rogers. 'Maia, Minks told him pat.
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