abit, intoxicated with the wild amusement
they amply received from their farces and moralities.

The following curious anecdote, which followed the first attempt at
classical imitation, is very observable. Jodelle's success was such,
that his rival poets, touched by the spirit of the Grecian muse, showed
a singular proof of their enthusiasm for this new poet, in a _classical_
festivity which gave room for no little scandal in that day; yet as it
was produced by a carnival, it was probably a kind of drunken bout.
Fifty poets, during the carnival of 1552, went to Arcueil. Chance, says
the writer of the life of the old French bard Ronsard, who was one of
the present _profane_ party, threw across their road a _goat_--which
having caught, they ornamented the goat with chaplets of flowers, and
carried it triumphantly to the hall of their festival, to appear to
sacrifice to Bacchus, and to present it to Jodelle; for the goat, among
the ancients, was the prize of the tragic bards; the victim of Bacchus,
who presided over tragedy,

Carmine, qui tragico, vilem certavit ob hircum.

The goat thus adorned, and his beard painted, was hunted about the long
table, at which the fifty poets were seated; and after having served
them for a subject of laughter for some time, he was hunted out of the
room, and not sacrificed to Bacchus. Each of the guests made verses on
the occasion, in imitation of the Bacchanalia of the ancients. Ronsard
composed some dithyrambics to celebrate the festival of the goat of
Etienne Jodelle; and another, entitled "Our travels to Arcueil."
However, this Bacchaualian freak did not finish as it ought, where it
had begun, among the poets. Several ecclesiastics sounded the alarm, and
one Chandieu accused Ronsard with having performed an idolatrous
sacrifice; and it was easy to accuse the moral habits of _fifty poets_
assembled together, who were far, doubtless, from being irreproachable.
They repented for some time of their classical sacrifice of a goat to
Tragedy.

Hardi, the French Lope de Vega, wrote 800 dramatic pieces from 1600 to
1637; his imagination was the most fertile possible; but so wild and
unchecked, that though its extravagances are very amusing, they served
as so many instructive lessons to his successors. One may form a notion
of his violation of the unities by his piece "La Force du Sang." In the
first act Leocadia is carried off and ravished. In the second she is
sent back with an evident