But whilst the subject of “Mérope” has been thus disgraced and disfigured in one part of Europe, it has met with better fate in Italy, where it has for a long time been treated in the true taste of the ancients. In this sixteenth century, which will be famous throughout all ages, the Count de Torelli gave us his “Mérope” with choruses. If in La Chapelle’s tragedy we find all the faults of the French stage, such as useless intrigues, episodes, and a romantic air; and in the English author the highest degree of indecency, barbarism, and absurdity; we likewise meet in the Italian with all the faults of the Greek theatre, such as the want of action, and declamation. You, sir, have avoided all the rocks which they split upon; you, who have done honor to your country, by complete models of more than one kind, you have given us in your “Mérope” an example of a tragedy that is at once both simple and interesting.
The moment I read it I was struck with it; my love to my own country has never shut my eyes against the merit of foreigners. On the other hand, the more regard I have for it, the more I endeavor to enrich it, by the addition of treasures that are not of its own growth. The desire which I had of translating your “Mérope,” was increased by the honor of a personal acquaintance with you at Paris, in the year 1733. By loving the author, I became still more enamored with his work; but when I sat down to it, I found it was impossible to bring it on the French stage. We are grown excessively delicate: like the Sybarites of old, we are so immersed in luxury, that we cannot bear that rustic simplicity, and that description of a country life, which you have imitated from the Greek theatre. I am afraid our audiences would not suffer youngÆgisthus to make a present of his ring to the man that stops him. I could not have ventured to seize upon a hero, and take him for a robber; though, at the same time, the circumstances he is in authorize the mistake. Our manners, which probably admit of many things which yours do not, would not permit us to represent the tyrant, the murderer of Mérope’s husband and children, pretending, after fifteen years, to be in love with her; nor could I even have dared to make the queen say to him, “Why did not you talk to me of love before, when the bloom of youth was yet on my face?” Conversations of this kind are natural; but our pit, which at some times is so indulgent, and at others so nice and delicate, would think them perhaps too familiar, and might even discover coquetry, where, in reality, there might be nothing but what was just and proper. Our stage would by no means have suffered Mérope to bind her son to a pillar, nor to run after him with a javelin, and an axe in her hand, nor have permitted the young man to run away from her twice, and beg his life of the tyrant: much less could we have suffered the confidante of Mérope to have persuaded Ægisthus to go to sleep on the stage, merely to give the queen an opportunity of coming there to assassinate him: not but all this is natural: but you must pardon us for expecting that nature should always be presented to us with some strokes of art; strokes that are extremely different at Paris from those which we meet with at Verona.
To give you a proper idea of the different taste and judgment of polite and cultivated nations, with regard to the same arts, permit me here to quote a few passages from your own celebrated performance, which seem dictated by pure nature. The person who stops youngCresphontes, and takes the ring from him, says:
Or dunque in tuo paese i servi
Han di coteste gemme? un bel pacse
Sia questo tuo, nel nostro una tal gemma
Ad un dito real non sconverebbe.
I will take the liberty to translate this into blank verse, in which your tragedy is written, as I have not time at present to work it into rhyme.
Have slaves such precious jewels where thou livest?
Sure ’tis a noble country; for, with us,
Such rings might well adorn a royal hand.
The tyrant’s confidant tells him, when speaking of the queen, who refuses, after twenty years, to marry the known murderer of her family:
La donna, come sai, ricusa e brama
Women, we know, refuse when most they love.
The queen’s waiting-woman answers the tyrant, who presses her to use her influence in his favor, thus:
—dissimulato in vano
Soffre di febre assalto; alquanti giorni
Donare e forza a rinfrancar suoi spiriti.
The queen, sir has a fever, ’tis in vain
To hide it, and her spirits are oppressed;
She must have time to recollect them
In your fourth act, old Polydore asks one of Mérope’s courtiers who he is? To which he replies, “I am Eurises, the son of Nicander.” Polydore then, speaking of Nicander, talks in the style of Homer’s Nestor.
—Egli cra humano
Eliberal, quando appariva, tutti
Faceangli honor; io mi ricordo ancora
Diquanto ei festeggio con bella pompa
Le sue nozze con Silvia, ch’era figlia
D’Olimpia e di Glicon fratel d’Ipparcho.
Ju dunque sir quel fanciullin che in corte
Silvia condur solea quasi per pompa;
Parmi’ l’altir hieri: O quanto siete presti,
Quanto voi v’affrettate, O giovinetti,
A farvi adulti ed a gridar tacendo
Che noi diam loco!
The most humane, most generous of mankind,
Where’er he went, respected and beloved:
O I remember well the feast he gave
When to his Sylvia wedded, the fair daughter
Of Glycon, brother of the brave Hipparchus,
And chaste Olympia: and art thou that infant
Whom Sylvia to the court so often brought
And fondled in her arms? alas! methinks
It was but yesterday: how quickly youth
Shoots up, and tells us we must quit the scene!
In another place the same old man, being invited to the ceremony of the queen’s marriage, says:
—Oh curioso
Punto io non son, passo stagione. Assai
Veduti ho sacrificii; io mi recordo
Di quello ancora quando il re Cresphonte