classical school, and to its least liberal section. He regarded
literary forms as imposed from without on the content of poetry, not
as growing from within; passion and imagination he would reduce to
the strict bounds of uninspired good sense; he placed Virgil above
Homer, and preferred French tragedy to that of ancient Greece; from
his involuntary admiration of Shakespeare he recoiled in alarm; if
he admired Corneille, it was with many reservations. Yet his taste
was less narrow than that of some of his contemporaries; he had a
true feeling for the genius of the French language; he possessed,
after the manner of his nation and his time, _le grand gout_; he
honoured Boileau; he exalted Racine in the highest degree; and, to
the praise of his discernment, it may be said that he discovered
_Athalie_.

The spectacular effects of _Athalie_ impressed Voltaire's
imagination. In his own tragedies, while continuing the
seventeenth-century tradition, he desired to exhibit more striking
situations, to develop more rapid action, to enhance the dramatic
spectacle, to add local colour. His style and speech in the theatre
have the conventional monotonous pomp, the conventional monotonous
grace, without poetic charm, imaginative vision, or those flashes
which spring from passionate genius. When, as was frequently the case,
he wrote for the stage to advocate the cause of an idea, to preach
tolerance or pity, he attained a certain height of eloquence. Whatever
sensibility there was in Voltaire's heart may be discovered in _Zaire_.
_Merope_ has the distinction of being a tragedy from which the passion
of love is absent; its interest rests wholly on maternal affection.
_Tancrede_ is remarkable as an eighteenth-century treatment of the
chivalric life and spirit. The Christian temper of tolerance and
humanity is honoured in _Alzire_.

Voltaire's incomparable gift of satirical wit did not make him a
writer of high comedy: he could be grotesque without lightness or
brightness. But when a sentimental element mingles with the comic,
and almost obscures it, as in _Nanine_ (a dramatised tale derived
from Richardson's _Pamela_), the verse acquires a grace, and certain
scenes an amiable charm. _Nanine_, indeed, though in dramatic form,
lies close to those tales in verse in which Voltaire mingled happily
his wisdom and his wit. "The philosophy of Horace in the language
of La Fontaine, this," writes a critic, "is what we find from time
to time in