Emilie, in support of her mother, read a passage from that elegant writer, M. Suard[18], who has lately attacked, with much ability, the pretensions of the English to the exclusive possession of humour. Mrs. Somers then changed her ground, and inveighed against French tragedy, and the unnatural tones and attitudes of the French tragic actors. “Your heroes on the French stage,” said she, “always look over their right shoulders, to express magnanimous disdain; and a lover, whether he be Grecian or Roman, Turk, Israelite, or American, must regularly show his passion by the pompous emphasis with which he pronounces the word MADAME!--a word which must certainly have, for a French audience, some magical charm, incomprehensible to other nations.” What was yet more incomprehensible to Mad. de Coulanges, was the enthusiasm of the English for that bloody-minded barbarian Shakspeare, who is never satisfied till he has strewn the stage with dead bodies; who treats his audience like children, that are to be frightened out of their wits by ghosts of all sorts and sizes in their winding sheets; or by a set of old beggarmen, dressed in women’s clothes, armed with broomsticks, and dancing and howling out their nonsensical song round a black kettle. Mrs. Somers, smiling as in scorn, would only reply, “Madame la comtesse, yours is Voltaire’s Shakspeare, not ours.--Have you read Mrs. Montagu’s essay upon Shakspeare?” “No.” “Then positively you must read it before we say one word more upon the subject.” Mad. de Coulanges, though unwilling to give up the pleasure of talking, took the book, which Mrs. Somers pressed upon her, with a promise to read it through some morning; but, unluckily, she chanced to open it towards the end, and happened to see some animadversions upon Racine, by which she was so astonished and disgusted that she could read no more. She threw down the book, defying _any good critic to point out a single bad line in Racine_. “This is a defiance I have heard made by men of letters of the highest reputation in Paris,” added la comtesse: “have not you, Mons. l’Abbé?” The abbé, who was madame’s common voucher, acceded, with this slight emendation--that he had heard numbers defy any critic of good taste to point out a flat line in _Phædre_.