ure, and in tragedy to surpass predecessors whom his
own authority declared to have surpassed the efforts of the Attic muse.
He succeeded in impressing the world with the belief that his
innovations had imparted a fresh vitality to French tragedy; in truth,
however, they represent no essential advance in art, but rather
augmented the rhetorical tendency which paralyses true dramatic life.
Such life as his plays possess lies in their political and social
sentiments, their invective against tyranny,[111] and their exposure of
fanaticism.[112] In other respects his versatility was barren of
enduring results. He might take his themes from French history,[113] or
from Chinese,[114] or Egyptian,[115] or Syrian,[116] from the days of
the Epigoni[117] or from those of the Crusades;[118] he might appreciate
Shakespeare, with a more or less partial comprehension of his strength,
and condescendingly borrow from and improve the barbarian.[119] But he
added nothing to French tragedy where it was weakest--in character; and
where it was strongest--in diction--he never equalled Corneille in fire
or Racine in refinement. While the criticism to which French tragedy in
this age at last began to be subjected has left unimpaired the real
titles to immortality of its great masters, the French theatre itself
has all but buried in respectful oblivion the dramatic works bearing the
name of Voltaire--a name persistently belittled, but second to none in
the history of modern progress and of modern civilization.

French classical tragedy in its decline.

As it is of relatively little interest to note the ramifications of an
art in its decline, the contrasts need not be pursued among the
contemporaries of Voltaire, between his imitator Bernard Joseph Saurin
(1706-1781), Saurin's royalist rival de Belloy, Racine's imitator
Lagrange-Chancel and Voltaire's own would-be rival, the "terrible"
Crebillon the elder, who professed to vindicate to French tragedy,
already mistress of the heavens through Corneille, and of the earth
through Racine, Pluto's supplementary realm, but who, though thus
essaying to carry tragedy lower, failed to carry it farther. In the
latter part of the 18th century French classical tragedy as a literary
growth was dying a slow death, however numerous might be the leaves
which sprouted from the decaying tree. Its form had been permanently
fixed; and even Shakespeare, as manipulated by Ducis[120]--an author
whose tastes were be