The author wished, he tells us in his preface, to retrieve the moral deformity of Lucretia Borgia by the beauty of the maternal sentiment; he wished, according to his own energetic expression, 'to place the mother in the monster.' Here let us make a distinction. I admire the tenderness which the most ferocious animals have for their offspring, and when the dying lioness covers her young with her wounded and bleeding body, I admire and am moved. But a woman who is a mother ought, in her tenderness to her children, to have more intelligence, more of elevation of thought, than the lioness. Instinct is not enough; there must be a sentiment, a sentiment which does not exclude, but perfects and purifies the instinct. Thus, when in Florence, a mother cast herself in desperation before the lion who had taken her child, and the lion, astonished at her despair, or perhaps comprehending it, replaced the infant at her feet, it was instinct which impelled the mother, and it was probably instinct in the lion which responded to her. But good instincts, whatever admirable actions they may occasionally produce, are but the germ and commencement of human virtues; they are indeed radically distinguished from human virtue by this, that, of themselves, however strong, they are sterile: a good instinct dwells by the side of a bad without effort to reform or to purify it, and equally without danger of being itself perverted. One virtue only in a vicious character might convert it entirely to virtue, as one vice only in a virtuous might lead it to utter depravation. But an instinct, however good, supports without disquietude the neighbourhood of evil, and it is thus that, in Lucretia Borgia, the mother and the monster are placed side by side, without affecting, without combating each other. Now there is nothing less natural, and nothing less dramatic than this mutual toleration. Characters wherein good and evil are mixed together, are dramatic, only because the conflict of opposite sentiments which takes place in the mind, is brought before the view of the spectator. But where, in Lucretia, is the struggle between good and evil? At what moment does the maternal virtue enlighten and purify this soul lost in darkness? When does this transfiguration take place, so marvellous and yet so natural? * * *