No, says Voltaire, in his edition of Corneille, this mixture of buffoonery and solemnity is intolerable.--Voltaire is a genius--but not of Shakespeare’s magnitude. Without recurring to disputable authority, I appeal from Voltaire to himself. I shall not avail myself of his former encomiums on our mighty poet, though the French critic has twice translated the same speech in _Hamlet_, some years ago in admiration, latterly in derision; and I am sorry to find that his judgment grows weaker when it ought to be farther matured. But I shall make use of his own words, delivered on the general topic of the theatre, when he was neither thinking to recommend or decry Shakespeare’s practice; consequently at a moment when Voltaire was impartial. In the preface to his _Enfant Prodigue_, that exquisite piece, of which I declare my admiration, and which, should I live twenty years longer, I trust I shall never attempt to ridicule, he has these words, speaking of comedy (but equally applicable to tragedy, if tragedy is, as surely it ought to be, a picture of human life; nor can I conceive why occasional pleasantry ought more to be banished from the tragic scene, than pathetic seriousness from the comic): “_On y voit un melange de serieux et de plaisanterie, de comique et de touchant; |souvent meme une seule avanture| produit tous ces contrastes. Rien n’est si commun qu’une maison dans laquelle |un pere gronde|, |une fille occupée de sa passion pleure|; le fils se moque des deux, et quelques parens prennent part differemment à la scene, etc. Nous n’inferons pas de là que toute comedie doive avoir des scenes de bouffonerie et des scenes attendrissantes: il y a beaucoup de tres bonnes pièces où il ne regne que de la gayeté; d’autres toutes serieuses; d’autres melangées: d’autres où l’attendrissement va jusqu’aux larmes: |il ne faut donner l’exclusion à aucun genre|: et si l’on me demandoit quel genre est le meilleur, je repondrois, celui qui est le mieux traité._” Surely if a comedy may be _toute serieuse_, tragedy may now and then, soberly, be indulged in a smile. Who shall proscribe it? shall the critic, who, in self-defence, declares that _no kind_ ought to be excluded from comedy, give laws to Shakespeare?