eloped characters, of fine contrasts, and of pure and noble
diction. Literary Europe, which knows the translations of this piece,
applauded even to the philosophic traits with which the role of Cato is
filled.

The piece had the great success which its beauty of detail merited, and
which was assured to it by the troubles in England to which this tragedy
was in more than one place a striking allusion. But the appositeness of
these allusions having passed, the verse being only beautiful, the
maxims being only noble and just, and the piece being cold, people no
longer felt anything more than the coldness. Nothing is more beautiful
than Virgil's second canto; recite it on the stage, it will bore: on the
stage one must have passion, live dialogue, action. People soon returned
to Shakespeare's uncouth but captivating aberrations.

_ENVY_

One knows well enough what antiquity has said of this shameful passion,
and what the moderns have repeated. Hesiod is the first classic author
who speaks of it.

"The potter is envious of the potter, the artisan of the artisan, the
poor man even of the poor man, the musician of the musician (or if one
would give another sense to the word _Aoidos_) the poet of the poet."

Long before Hesiod, Job had said: "Envy slayeth the silly one" (Job.
chap. v. verse 2).

I think that Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," was the
first to try to prove that envy is a very good thing, a very useful
passion. His first reason is that envy is as natural to man as hunger
and thirst; that it can be found in children, as well as in horses and
dogs. Do you want your children to hate each other, kiss one more than
the other; the secret is infallible.

He maintains that the first thing that two young women meeting each
other do is to cast about for what is ridiculous in each other, and the
second to flatter each other.

He believes that without envy the arts would be indifferently
cultivated, and that Raphael would not have been a great painter if he
had not been jealous of Michael Angelo.

Mandeville has taken emulation for envy, maybe; maybe, also, emulation
is only envy kept within the bounds of decency.

Michael Angelo might say to Raphael: "Your envy has only led you to work
still better than me; you have not decried me, you have not intrigued
against me with the Pope, you have not tried to have me excommunicated
for having put cripples and one-eyed men in paradise, and succulent
c