least is still a successful and popular play on the stage;
and it is admitted that Voltaire had both a most intimate acquaintance
with the objects and methods of the playwright, and an extraordinary
affection for the theatre. If to this be added his astonishing dexterity
as a literary workman, his acuteness in discerning the taste of the
public, and his complete mastery of the language, and if it be
remembered that the classical French tragedy is almost wholly a _tour
de force_, it will appear that it would have been very surprising if he
had not succeeded in it. His tragedies, however, are by no means of
equal merit. The best is, beyond all doubt, the already-mentioned
_Zaire_, 1732, in which Voltaire took just so much from the _Othello_ of
that Shakespeare whom he was never tired of decrying as would suffice to
animate and support his own skilful workmanship. The earlier play,
_Oedipe_, 1718, was astonishingly successful, and is still
astonishingly clever. _La Mort de Cesar_, another Shakespearian
adaptation, is less happy. In _Alzire_, a play written in the time of
the poet's greatest intimacy with Madame du Chatelet, and dedicated to
her, his extraordinary talent once more appears, as also in _Le
Fanatisme_, better known as _Mahomet_, 1742. The best, however, of his
plays, next to _Zaire_, is probably _Merope_, 1743, which is a prodigy
of ingenuity. The author has deliberately eschewed the means whereby
both Corneille and Racine respectively alleviated the dryness and
dulness of the Senecan model--the heroic virtues of the one, and the
sighs and flames of the other. The play probably is the most perfect
carrying out of the model pure and simple, and its inferiority is the
inferiority of the kind, not of the individual. Indeed it may be
questioned whether, on the mere technical merits, Voltaire is not
superior to both Corneille and Racine, though he is of course very far
inferior to them as a poet, and as a draughtsman of character. Voltaire
wrote many other plays, earlier and later, of which _Tancrede_ is the
only one which requires special mention. Nor, except Crebillon, do the
tragic contemporaries and successors of Voltaire require more than very
short notice. Le Franc de Pompignan wrote a respectable _Didon_; Saurin,
who was in some sort a follower of Voltaire, a more than respectable
_Spartacus_. The subject had perhaps the chief part in the success of
the _Siege de Calais_ of Pierre Burette, who called himself D