aries of his
art, is not the least of Voltaire's many excellences; and has secured
for him, to all appearance permanently, if not the first, unquestionably
the most popular place in the French theatre. But still his dramas do
not represent nature. They are noble pieces of rhetoric put into rhyme.
They are the ablest possible debate arrayed in the pomp of Alexandrine
verse. But they do not touch the heart like a few words in Sophocles,
Euripides, or Shakspeare.

Metastasio was fettered by a double set of rules; for he was compelled
to attend at once to the dramatic unities of Aristotle, and the musical
restraints of the opera. It was no common genius which, amidst such
difficulties, could produce a series of dramas which should not merely
charm the world, when arrayed in the enchanted garb of the opera, with
all the attractions of music and scenery, but form a perpetual subject
of pleasing study to the recluse, far from the pomp and magnificence of
theatric representation. It is impossible to imagine any thing more
attractive than his dramas, considered as visionary pieces. Formed on
the events of the ancient world, he depicts, under the name of
Alexander, Titus, Dido, Regulus, Caesar, and Cleopatra, ideal beings
having about as much resemblance to real mortals as the nymphs of the
ballet have to ordinary women, or the recitative of Mozart to the
natural human voice. But still they are very charming. If they are not a
feature of this world, they are a vision of something above it; of a
scene in which the littlenesses and selfishness of mortality are
forgotten; in which virtue is generally in the end triumphant; in which
honour in women proves victorious over love, and fortitude in men
obtains the mastery of fortune. Generosity and magnanimity beyond what
could have been even conceived, often furnishes the _denouement_ of the
piece, and extricates the characters from apparently insurmountable
difficulties. There can be no doubt this is not human life: Alexander
the Great, Dido, Regulus, are not of every day's occurrence. But the
total departure of such representations from the standard of reality,
appears less reprehensible in the opera than the ordinary theatre,
because the singing and recitative at any rate remove it from off the
pale of mortality. We take up one of his dramas as we go to the opera,
not to see any picture of actual existence, or any thing which shall
recall the experienced feelings of the human heart, b