Phèdre to Oenone wherein she reveals her passion for Hippolyte and
pourtrays the terrible struggle between duty and female delicacy on the one
hand, and on the other a flame that could not be overcome, convinced as it
were of the complete inutility of further efforts of resistance and
invoking death as her only refuge. I was moved even to tears. I am so great
an admirer of the whole of this speech beginning "Mon mal vient de plus
lorn" etc., and ending "Un reste de chaleur tout prêt à s'exhaler," that I
think in it Racine has not only united the excellencies of Euripides,
Sappho and Theocritus in describing the passion of love, but has far
surpassed them all; that speech is certainly the masterpiece of French
versification and scarcely inferior to it is that beautiful and ingenuous
confession of love by Hippolyte to Aricie. What an admirable _pendant_ to
the love of Phèdre! In Hippolyte you behold the innocence, simplicity and
ingenuousness of a first and pure attachment: in Phèdre the _embrasement_,
the ungovernable delirium of a criminal passion.

I have seen Mlle Duchesnois again in the _Mérope_ of Voltaire and admire
her more and more. This is an admirable play. The dialogue is so spirited;
the agitation of maternal tenderness, and the occasional bursts of feelings
impossible to be restrained, render this play one of the most interesting
perhaps on the French stage, and Mlle Duchesnois gave with the happiest
effect her part in those two scenes; the first wherein she supposes Egisthe
to be the person who has killed her son; in the other where having
discovered the reality of his person, she is obliged to dissemble the
discovery, but on Egisthe being about to be sacrificed she exclaims
"Barbare, c'est mon fils!" The part of Egisthe was given by a young actor
who made his appearance at this theatre for the first tune, and he executed
his part with complete success (Firmin, I think, was his name). Lafond did
the part of Polyphonte and did it well. At this tragedy many allusions were
caught hold of by the audience according as they were Bourbonically or