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POLITICS AND THE ARTS
what is done to make them agreeable; love never reigns on the stage other than in decent souls; the two lovers are ahvays models of perfection. And how could one fail to be attracted by such a seductive passion between two hearts whose characters are already so attractive in themselves? I doubt whether in our entire drama one single play can be found in which mutual love does not have the favor of the spectator. If some unlucky fellow is inflamed by an unreciprocated passion, he becomes the butt of the audience. The poets think they are working wonders in making a lover estimable or detestable according to whether he is well or ill received in his loves, in making the public always approve the sentiments of his mistress, and in investing tenderness with all the attractiveness of virtue. They ought, rather, to teach the young to distrust the illusions of love, to flee the error of a blind penchant which alway believes that it founds itself on esteem, and to be ~fraid of confiding a virtuous heart to an object that is sometimes unworthy of its attentions. I know of no other play than the Misanthrope in which the hero made a bad choice.· To make the misanthrope fall in love was nothing; the stroke of genius was to make him fall in love with a coquette. All the rest of the theatre is a treasury of perfect women. One would say that they have all taken refuge there. Is this a faithful likeness of society? Is this the way to render suspect a passion which destroys so many wellendowed persons? Weare almost made to believe that a decent man is obliged to be in love and that a woman who is loved can be nothing other than virtuous. In this way we are very well instructed indeed! Once more, I do not undertake to judge if we do well or ill in founding the principal interest of the theatre on love. But I do say that, if its pictures are sometimes dangerous, they are always so, whatever may be done to disguise them. I say that it is to speak in bad faith or in ignorance when its impressions are expected to • Add Le Marchand de Londres,4:9 an admirable play the moral of which is more to the point than that of any French play I know.
