Note 129 — LECTURE X. FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
O. W. (Orlando Williams) Wight translation
It would be a curious and useful study, to compare with the original all the passages of Britannicus imitated from Tacitus; in them Racine would almost always be found below his model. I will give a single example. In the account of the death of Britannicus, Racine thus expresses the different effects of the crime on the spectators:
Juez combien ce coup frappe tous les esprits; La moitié s'épouvante et sort avec des cris; Mais ceux qui de la cour ont un plus long usage Sur les yeux de César composent leur visage.
Certainly the style is excellent; but it pales and seems nothing more than a very feeble sketch in comparison with the rapid and sombre pencil-strokes of the great Roman painter: "Trepidatur a circumsedentibus, diffugiunt imprudentes; at, quibus altior intellectus, resistunt defixi et Neronem intuentes."