in the mimetic art, they began with the idea (the delineation of persons
with heroical grandeur, more than human dignity, and ideal beauty), then
passed to character, and made passion the last of all; which, in the
collision with the requisitions of either of the others, was forced to
give way. Fidelity of representation was less their object than beauty;
with us it is exactly the reverse. On this principle, the use of masks,
which appears astonishing to us, was not only justifiable, but absolutely
essential; far from considering them as a makeshift, the Greeks would
certainly, and with justice too, have looked upon it as a makeshift to be
obliged to allow a player with vulgar, ignoble, or strongly marked
features, to represent an Apollo or a Hercules; nay, rather they would
have deemed it downright profanation. How little is it in the power of the
most finished actor to change the character of his features! How
prejudicial must this be to the expression of passion, as all passion is
tinged more or less strongly by the character. Nor is there any need to
have recourse to the conjecture that they changed the masks in the
different scenes, for the purpose of exhibiting a greater degree of joy or
sorrow. I call it conjecture, though Barthelemy, in his _Anacharsis_,
considers it a settled point. He cites no authorities, and I do not
recollect any. For the expedient would by no means have been sufficient,
as the passions often change in the same scene, and this has reduced
modern critics to suppose, that the masks exhibited different appearances
on the two sides; and that now this, now that side was turned towards the
spectators, according to circumstances. Voltaire, in his Essay on the
Tragedy of the Ancients and Moderns, prefixed to _Semiramis_, has
actually gone this length. Amidst a multitude of supposed improprieties
which he heaps together to confound the admirers of ancient tragedy, he
urges the following: _Aucune nation_ (that is to say, excepting the
Greeks) _ne fait paraitre ses acteurs sur des especes d'echasses, le
visage couvert d'un masque, qui exprime la douleur d'un cote et la joie de