them, the most insignificant of his verses can throw
a deep enchantment, like the faintest wavings of a
magician’s wand. ’A-t-on vu de ma
part le roi de Comagene?’—How is it
that words of such slight import should hold such
thrilling music? Oh! they are Racine’s words.
And, as to his rhymes, they seem perhaps, to the true
worshipper, the final crown of his art. Mr. Bailey
tells us that the couplet is only fit for satire.
Has he forgotten Lamia? And he asks, ’How
is it that we read Pope’s Satires and
Dryden’s, and Johnson’s with enthusiasm
still, while we never touch Irene, and rarely
the Conquest of Granada?’ Perhaps the
answer is that if we cannot get rid of our a priori
theories, even the fiery art of Dryden’s drama
may remain dead to us, and that, if we touched Irene
even once, we should find it was in blank verse.
But Dryden himself has spoken memorably upon rhyme.
Discussing the imputed unnaturalness of the rhymed
‘repartee’ he says: ’Suppose
we acknowledge it: how comes this confederacy
to be more displeasing to you than in a dance which
is well contrived? You see there the united design
of many persons to make up one figure; ... the confederacy
is plain amongst them, for chance could never produce
anything so beautiful; and yet there is nothing in
it that shocks your sight ... ’Tis an art
which appears; but it appears only like the shadowings
of painture, which, being to cause the rounding of
it, cannot be absent; but while that is considered,
they are lost: so while we attend to the other
beauties of the matter, the care and labour of the
rhyme is carried from us, or at least drowned in its
own sweetness, as bees are sometimes buried in their
honey.’ In this exquisite passage Dryden
seems to have come near, though not quite to have hit,
the central argument for rhyme—its power
of creating a beautiful atmosphere, in which what
is expressed may be caught away from the associations
of common life and harmoniously enshrined. For
Racine, with his prepossessions of sublimity and perfection,
some such barrier between his universe and reality
was involved in the very nature of his art. His
rhyme is like the still clear water of a lake, through
which we can see, mysteriously separated from us and
changed and beautified, the forms of his imagination,
‘quivering within the wave’s intenser day.’
And truly not seldom are they ’so sweet, the
sense faints picturing them’!
Oui, prince, je languis, je
brule pour Thesee ...
Il avait votre port, vos yeux,
votre langage,
Cette noble pudeur colorait
son visage,
Lorsque de notre Crete il
traversa les flots,
Digne sujet des voeux des
filles de Minos.
Que faisiez-vous alors?
Pourquoi, sans Hippolyte,
Des heros de la Grece assembla-t-il
l’elite?
Pourquoi, trop jeune encor,
ne putes-vous alors
Entrer dans le vaisseau qui
le mit sur nos bords?
Par vous aurait peri le monstre