melody of versification, the delicacy of sentiments, the frequent
touches of the pathetic which his writings exhibit, will for ever secure
him a high place in the opinion of men; and justify the saying of
Voltaire, that whoever would acquire a pure and elegant French style,
must have the _Petit Careme_ of Massillon, and _Athalie_ of Racine,
constantly lying on his writing table.

Voltaire, though he adhered, in part at least, to the old subjects in
his tragedies, is far more various and discursive in his mode of
treating them. The prodigious fecundity of the author of a hundred
volumes, the varied acquisitions of the philosopher, the historian, the
satirist, the moralist, give diversity to his subjects, and an endless
variety to his ideas. He possessed, as it were, a polyglot mind; he
threw himself into the feelings and passions of every country and every
age, and brought out in his dramas part at least of the inexhaustible
store of human thoughts and events which have from the beginning of time
agitated the human race. The East, with its sultans, its harems, its
sultanas, and its jealousies, strongly arrested his imagination, and
furnished the subjects of some of his finest pieces; witness _Mahomet_,
_Bajazet_, _Tamerlane_, and _Zaire_. For this reason his tragedies are
more general favourites now than either those of Corneille or Racine;
you will see the audience in the parterre of the Theatre Francais
repeating whole speeches from _Brutus_, _Alzire_, or _Le Fanatisme_,
after the performer on the stage. They have sunk deeper into the general
mind than any of their predecessors; more of their lines have become
household expressions, as is the case with Shakspeare, Gray, and
Campbell in England, than those of any other author in the French
language. Voltaire, too, was strongly impressed with the necessity of
keeping up the interest of his piece from first to last; he drives on
the story with an untiring hand, and even before the final catastrophe,
contrives to produce a passing excitement at every step, by subordinate
and yet important events. What he constantly complains of in his
admirable commentaries on Corneille is, that, in his inferior pieces at
least, that great master lets the story flag, the interest die away, and
that, trusting to the fascination of his language, the power of his
thoughts, he neglects the important matters of dramatic power and stage
effect. His perfect knowledge of both these important auxili