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And by this same standard, unworthy as it may seem to some, Lope de Vega and Calderon were judged in their own day. Corneille and Racine also, Beaumarchais and Sheridan, Hugo and Augier and Rostand.
There can be no question that M. Rostand writes better verse than Emile Augier; but there can be no question, also, that Augier is the greater dramatist. Oscar Wilde probably wrote more clever and witty lines than any other author in the whole history of English comedy; but no one would think of setting him in the class with Congreve and Sheridan.
It is a rather curious fact that two different schools of French dramatists approach the forbidden half-world from opposite poles but they get there. Emile Augier and Dumas fils were sincere moralists according to their points of view, though the methods of their moralizing some times seem quaint to us.
Augier, Racine, Shakespeare, Aristophanes in Hookham Frere's translation, Sophocles and AEschylus in Lewis Campbell's, such were some of the authors whom he introduced to his public.
Duperrey had to give up all thoughts of visiting the island, which received the name of Clermont-Tonnerre. On all sides the waves broke violently on the rocks, and he could do no more than coast it from end to end at a little distance. The next and following days some small islands of no note were discovered, to which were given the names of Augier, Freycinet, and Lostanges.
The richer and far more complicated presentation of character which delights and amazes us in the 'Human Comedy' was most suggestive to the younger generation of French dramatists; and no one can fail to see the reflection of Balzac in the 'Maître Guérin' of Augier and in the 'Ami des femmes' of Dumas.
Has he read Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'? Has he read or heard the plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of modern literature, whose names will be household words all over the world for hundreds of years to come? He has read La Terre this kind-hearted, refined humorist!
He was charming, graceful, and wore a perpetual smile; of middle height, with studied movements, he was ideal in Musset, perfect in Emile Augier, charming in Moliere, but execrable in Victor Hugo. Bressant, who took the part of Charles Quint, was shockingly bad. His amiable and flabby style and his weak and wandering eyes effectively prevented all grandeur.
In former days, putting aside the naughty farces not supposed to present a picture of actual life, most French dramas were quite sound in conventional morality. Augier presented some wicked people, such as Olympe, concerning whom he invented the phrase la nostalgie de la boue; but he was unequivocably moral in his aims, and preached the sanctity of marriage and maternity.
I detested the piece, and did not like the part, and I considered the lines of L'Aventuriere very bad poetry indeed. As I cannot dissimulate well, in a fit of temper I said this straight out to Emile Augier, and he avenged himself in a most discourteous way on the first opportunity that presented itself.
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