cenes of Agrippina
with Nero; and for Benedicite the first scene of Phaedra with her
confidante. Especially there is to be little emphasis--a warning
grievously needed by ninety-nine English speakers out of a hundred--for
emphasis is hardly ever natural; it is only a forced imitation of
nature.[282]

Diderot had perceived very early that the complacency with which his
countrymen regarded the national theatre was extravagant. He would not
allow a comparison between the conventional classic of the French stage
and the works of the Greek stage. He insisted in the case of the Greeks
that their subjects are noble, well chosen, and interesting; that the
action seems to develop itself spontaneously; that their dialogue is
simple and very close to what is natural; that the denouements are not
forced; that the interest is not divided nor the action overloaded with
episodes. In the French classic he found none of these merits. He found
none of that truth which is the only secret of pleasing and touching us;
none of that simple and natural movement which is the only path to
perfect and unbroken illusion. The dialogue is all emphasis, wit,
glitter; all a thousand leagues away from nature. Instead of
artificially giving to their characters _esprit_ at every point, poets
ought to place them in such situations as will give it to them. Where in
the world did men and women ever speak as we declaim? Why should princes
and kings walk differently from any man who walks well? Did they then
gesticulate like raving madmen? Do princesses when they speak utter
sharp hissings?

People believe us to have brought tragedy to a high degree of
perfection. It is not so. Of all kinds of literature it is the most
imperfect.[283]

The ideas which appeared thus incongruously in the tales of 1748
reappeared in the direct essays on the drama in 1757 and 1758. We have
left nothing undone, he said, to corrupt dramatic style. We have
preserved from the ancients that emphasis of versification which was so
well fitted to languages of strong quantity and marked accent, to vast
theatres, to a declamation that had an instrumental accompaniment; and
then we have given up simplicity of plot and dialogue, and all truth of
situation.[284] La Motte nearly fifty years before had attacked the
pseudo-classic drama. He had inveighed against the unities, against long
monologues, against the device of confidants, and against verse. His
assault, in which he had the powerfu