"Not content with introducing dancing as an essential part of the lyrical scene, the Academicians have sometimes even made it its principal subject; and they have operas, called _ballets_, which so ill respond to their title, that dancing is just as much out of its place in them as in the others. Most of these ballets form as many separate subjects as there are acts, and these subjects are linked together by certain metaphysical relations, which the spectator could never conceive, if the author did not take care to explain them to him in the prologue. The seasons, the ages, the senses, the elements, what connexion have these things with dancing? and what can they offer, through such a medium, to the imagination? Some of the pieces referred to are even purely allegorical, as the Carnival, and Folly; and these are the most insupportable of all, because, with much cleverness and piquancy they have neither sentiments nor pictures, nor situations, nor warmth, nor interest, nor anything that music can take hold of, to flatter the heart or to produce illusion. In these pretended ballets, the action always passes in singing, whilst dancing always interrupts the action. But as these performances have still less interest than the tragedies, the interruptions are less remarked. Thus defect serves to hide defect, and the great art of the author is, in order to make his ballet endurable, to make his piece as dull as possible.... * * * * * "After all, perhaps, the French ought not to have a better operatic drama than they have, at least, with respect to execution; not that they are not capable of appreciating what is good, but because the bad amuses them more. They feel more gratification in satirising than in applauding; the pleasure of criticising more than compensates them for the _ennui_ of witnessing a stupid composition, and they would rather mockingly pelt a performance after they have left the theatre, than enjoy themselves while there." * * * * * [Sidenote: LE DEVIN DU VILLAGE.] I have already remarked that, although in his _Lettre sur la Musique Française_, Rousseau had praised the melody of the Italians as much as he had condemned the dreary psalmody of the French, he expressed the highest admiration for the genius of Gluck. He never missed a representation of _Orphée_, and said, in allusion to the gratification that work had afforded him, that "after all there was something in life worth living for, since in two hours so much genuine pleasure could be obtained." He observed that Gluck seemed to have come to France in order to give the lie to his proposition that good music could never be set to French words. At another time he observed that every one complained of Gluck's want of melody, but that for his part he thought it issued from all his pores. * * * * *