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I do not deny, in fact, that the same reasons which make me hold to be quite inexcusable the dangerous pictures drawn by the Roman Ovid and the German Ovid, those of Crebillon, of Voltaire, of Marmontel, who pretends to write moral tales! of Lacroix, and of many others that these same reasons, I say, reconcile me with the elegies of the Roman Propertius and of the German Propertius, and even with some of the decried productions of Diderot.
When I saw how entirely lost the unlucky Monsieur de Magny seemed to be, in spite of all the claims I had against him, I urged him to fly. 'How she squints, he would say of the Princess, 'and how crooked she is! She thinks no one can perceive her deformity. She writes me verses out of Gresset or Crebillon, and fancies I believe them to be original.
We have then forgotten that Racine had already reached the age of twenty-two, when he first appeared, producing Theagenes and Charicles, and the Inimical Brothers; that Crébillon was nearly forty years of age when he composed a tragedy on The Death of the Sons of Brutus, of which not a single verse has been preserved; finally, that the two first comedies of Molière, The three rival Doctors and The Schoolmaster, are no longer known but by their titles.
To Crébillon, who had given her elocution lessons in her early days and who was now in want, she gave a pension of a hundred louis and quarters at the Louvre. Buffon, Montesquieu, Marmontel, and many other men of note were taken under her protection.
I once heard the housekeeper send away an author with these words: "Come again next week; we have had no time to examine your manuscript." During a whole year I paid M. Crebillon three visits every week, and from him I learned all I know of the French language, but I found it impossible to get rid of my Italian idioms.
After her return to Venice she married the son of the Uccelli, who sixteen years before had taken her out of her poverty. She died ten years ago. I was still taking my French lessons with my good old Crebillon; yet my style, which was full of Italianisms, often expressed the very reverse of what I meant to say.
Do you know 'Crebillon le fils'? He is a fine painter and a pleasing writer; his characters are admirable and his reflections just.
Victorious enough in some senses; defeat, in Literature, never visited him. His Plays, coming thick on the heels of one another, rapid brilliant pieces, are brilliantly received by the unofficial world; and ought to dethrone dull Crebillon, and the sleepy potentates of Poetry that now are.
In one of my most wretched, sleepless nights, the devil overcame me, and said: 'Revenge Cicero and France! Crebillon has disgraced both. Wash out this stain from France. This was a good devil; and even you, sire, could not have driven me to work more eagerly than he did. Day and night he chained me to my writing-desk!
They described Fontenelle, adolescens omnibus numeris absolutus et inter discipulos princeps, "a youth accomplished in every respect, and the model for his companions;" but when they describe the elder Crébillon, puer ingeniosus sed insignis nebulo, "a shrewd boy, but a great rascal," they might not have erred so much as they appear to have done; for an impetuous boyhood showed the decision of a character which might not have merely and misanthropically settled in imaginary scenes of horror, and the invention of characters of unparalleled atrocity.
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