y and truth, been so
united in the theatre of France. Racine did not seek for novelty in
the choice of a subject; Euripides had made Andromache familiar to
the Greek stage. The invention of Racine was of a subtler kind than
that which manufactures incidents and constructs a plot. Like Raphael
in the art of painting, he could accept a well-known theme and renew
it by the finest processes of genius. He did not need an extraordinary
action, or personages of giant proportions; the simpler the intrigue,
the better could he concentrate the interest on the states of a soul;
the more truly and deeply human the characters, the more apt were
they for betraying the history of a passion. In its purity of outline,
its harmony of proportions, _Andromaque_ was Greek; in its sentiment,
it gained something from Christian culture; in its manners, there
was a certain reflection of the Versailles of Louis XIV. It was at
once classical and modern, and there was no discordance between
qualities which had been rendered, to borrow a word from Shakespeare,
"harmonious charmingly." With _Andromaque_ French tragedy ceased to
be oratorical, and became essentially poetic.

Adversaries there were, such as success calls forth; the irritable
poet retorted with epigrams of a kind which multiply and perpetuate
enmities. His true reprisal was another work, _Britannicus_,
establishing his fame in another province of tragedy. But before
_Britannicus_ appeared he had turned aside, as if his genius needed
recreation, to produce the comedy, or farce, or buffoonery, or
badinage, or mockery (for it is all these), _Les Plaideurs_. It may
be that his failure in a lawsuit moved Racine to have his jest at
the gentlemen of the Palais; he and his friends of the tavern of the
_Mouton Blanc_--Furetiere among them--may have put their wits
together to devise material for laughter, and discussed how far _The
Wasps_ of Aristophanes could be acclimatised in Paris. At first the
burlesque was meant for an Italian troupe, but Scaramouche left the
town, and something more carefully developed would be expected at
the Hotel de Bourgogne. The play was received with hisses, but Moliere
did not fear to laugh at what was comic, whether he laughed according
to the rules or against them. A month later, at a court performance,
Louis XIV. laughed loudly; the courtiers quickly discovered Racine's
wit, and the laughter was echoed by all loyal citizens. In truth,
there is laughing matter i