nations; to observe at that moment how crude is the imagination, and to
trace the caprices it indulges; and that the resemblance in these
attempts holds in the earliest essays of Greece, of France, of Spain, of
England, and, what appears extraordinary, even of China and Mexico."

The rude beginnings of the drama of Greece are sufficiently known, and
the old _mysteries_ of Europe have been exhibited in a former article.
The progress of the French theatre has been this:--

Etienne Jodelle, in 1552, seems to have been the first who had a tragedy
represented of his own invention, entitled Cleopatra--it was a servile
imitation of the form of the Grecian tragedy; but if this did not
require the highest genius, it did the utmost intrepidity; for the
people were, through long habit, intoxicated with the wild amusement
they amply received from their farces and moralities.

The following curious anecdote, which followed the first attempt at
classical imitation, is very observable. Jodelle's success was such,
that his rival poets, touched by the spirit of the Grecian muse, showed
a singular proof of their enthusiasm for this new poet, in a _classical_
festivity which gave room for no little scandal in that day; yet as it
was produced by a carnival, it was probably a kind of drunken bout.
Fifty poets, during the carnival of 1552, went to Arcueil. Chance, says
the writer of the life of the old French bard Ronsard, who was one of
the present _profane_ party, threw across their road a _goat_--which
having caught, they ornamented the goat with chaplets of flowers, and
carried it triumphantly to the hall of their festival, to appear to
sacrifice to Bacchus, and to present it to Jodelle; for the goat, among
the ancients, was the prize of the tragic bards; the victim of Bacchus,
who presided over tragedy,