ere works of genius, they depend upon their
subjects, and, consequently, upon the characters and practices of the
times in which they were written; this, at least, is the light in which
they are beheld. This rule of judgment is not equitable; for, as I have
said, over and over, all the orators and the poets are painters, and
merely painters. They exhibit nature, as it is before them, influenced
by the accidents of education, which, without changing it entirely, yet
give it, in different ages and climates, a different appearance; but we
make their success depend, in a great degree, upon their subject, that
is, upon circumstances which we measure by the circumstances of our own
days. According to this prejudice, oratory depends more upon its subject
than history, and poetry yet more than oratory. Our times, therefore,
show more regard to Herodotus and Suetonius, than to Demosthenes and
Cicero, and more to all these than to Homer or Virgil. Of this
prejudice, there are regular gradations; and to come back to the point
which we have left, we show, for the same imperceptible reason, less
regard to tragick poets than to others. The reason is, that the subjects
of their paintings are more examined than the art. Thus comparing the
Achilles and Hippolytus of Euripides, with those of Racine, we drive
them off the stage, without considering that Racine's heroes will be
driven off, in a future age, if the same rule of judgment be followed,
and one time be measured by another.

Yet tragedy, having the passions for its object, is not wholly exposed
to the caprice of our taste, which would make our own manners the rule
of human kind; for the passions of Grecian heroes are often dressed in
external modes of appearance that disgust us, yet they break through the
veil when they are strongly marked, as we cannot deny them to be in
Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The essence then gets the better of
the circumstance. The passions of Greece and France do not so much
differ by the particular characters of particular ages, as they agree by
the participation of that which belongs to the same passion in all ages.
Our three tragick poets will, therefore, get clear by suffering only a
little ridicule, which falls directly upon their times; but these times
and themselves will be well recompensed, by the admiration which their
art will irresistibly enforce.

Comedy is in a more lamentable situation; for, not only its object is
the ridiculous, w