Note 46 — THE ROUND TABLE (continued 2)

The late ingenious Baron Grimm, of acute critical memory, was up to the merit of the Beggar’s Opera. In his Correspondence, he says, ‘If it be true that the nearer a writer is to Nature, the more certain he is of pleasing, it must be allowed that the English, in their dramatic pieces, have greatly the advantage over us. There reigns in them an inestimable tone of nature, which the timidity of our taste has banished from French pieces. M. Patu has just published, in two volumes, A selection of smaller dramatic pieces, translated from the English, which will eminently support what I have advanced. The principal one among this selection is the celebrated Beggar’s Opera of Gay, which has had such an amazing run in England. We are here in the very worst company imaginable; the Dramatis Personæ are robbers, pickpockets, gaolers, prostitutes, and the like; yet we are highly amused, and in no haste to quit them; and why? Because there is nothing in the world more original or more natural. There is no occasion to compare our most celebrated comic operas with this, to see how far we are removed from truth and nature, and this is the reason that, notwithstanding our wit, we are almost always flat and insipid. Two faults are generally committed by our writers, which they seem incapable of avoiding. They think they have done wonders if they have only faithfully copied the dictionaries of the personages they bring upon the stage, forgetting that the great art is to chuse the moments of character and passion in those who are to speak, since it is those moments alone that render them interesting. For want of this discrimination, the piece necessarily sinks into insipidity and monotony. Why do almost all M. Vade’s pieces fatigue the audience to death? Because all his characters speak the same language; because each is a perfect resemblance of the other. Instead of this, in the Beggar’s Opera, among eight or ten girls of the town, each has her separate character, her peculiar traits, her peculiar modes of expression, which give her a marked distinction from her companions.’—Vol. i. p. 185.