Que ma douleur seduite embrasse aveuglément, Vous prenez fur mon ame un trop puissant empire: Durant quelques momens fouffrez que je respire, Et que je confidere, en l'etat où je suis, Et ce que je hazarde, & ce que je poursuis. Quand je regarde Auguste au milieu de sa gloire, Et que vous reprochez à ma triste mémoire Que par sa propre main mon pére massacré Du trône où je le vois fait le premier degré : Quand vous me presentez cette sanglante image, La cause de ma haine, & l'effet de sa rage, Je m'abandonne toute à vos ardens transports, Et crois pour une mort lui devoir mille morts. Au milieu toutefois d'une fureur fi juste, J'aime encor plus Cinna que je ne hais Auguste; Et je sens refroidir ce bouillant mouvement, Quand il faut pour le suivre exposer mon amant... Oui, Cinna, contre moi moi-même je m'irrite, Quand je songe aux dangers où je te précipite. Quoique pour me servir tu n'apprehendes rien, Te demander du sang, c'est exposer le tien. D'une si haute place on n'abat point de têtes, Sans attirer sur soi mille & mille tempêtes; L'issue en est douteuse, & le peril certain. Un ami deloyal peut trahir ton dessein; L'ordre L'ordre mal concerté, l'occasion mal prise, Peuvent fur fon auteur renverser l'entreprise, Mais peut-on en verser alors qu'on venge un pere? I do not pretend, as Mr. Voltaire does, to make the reader a judge of the stile of Corneille by my translation; he must allow for the want of verfification, and be content with the thoughts, the sentiments, the conceits of the original. EMILIA. " Impatient defires of an illustrious vengeance, to which the death of my father gave birth, impetuous children of my resentment, which my deluded forrow embraces too blindly, you affume too great an empire over my mind. Suffer me to breathe a moment, and let me consider the state I am in, what I hazard, and what I would attempt. When I behold Cæfar in the midst of glory, you (I fuppose this means, you, the impetuous children of the impatient defires of an illustrious vengeance) reproach my melancholy memory that my father, massacred by his hand, was the first step to the throne on which I see him. And when you present me that bloody image, the cause of my hatred, the effect of his rage, I abandon abandon myself to your violent transports, and think that for one death I owe him a thousand deaths. In the midst of so just an indignation I still love Cinna more than I hate Augustus; and I find this boiling anger cool, when to obey it I must hazard my lover. Yes, Cinna, against myself, myself am angry, when I think of the dangers into which I precipitate thee. Though to serve me thou fearest nothing, to ask thee for blood is to expose thine. One beats not down heads from so high a place without drawing upon one's felf a thousand and a thousand storms; the issue is doubtful, the peril is certain. The order ill concerted, the opportunity ill chosen, may on their author overturn the whole enterprize, turn on thee the blow thou wouldst strike, and even envelope thee in his ruin; and what thou executest for my fake may crush thee in its fall. Ah! do not run into this danger. To ruin yourself in revenging me is not to revenge me. That heart is too cruel which finds a sweetness in that vengeance which is corrupted by the bitterness of forrow; and one should should put in the rank of the greatest miffortunes the death of an enemy which costs so many tears. But can one shed tears when one revenges a father ? Is there a loss which does not feem light at that price? And when his afsassin dies by our means, ought we to confider what his death costs us? Cease vain fears, cease foolish tenderness to affect my heart with your unworthy weaknesses: and thou who producest them by thy superfluous anxieties, O love, assist my duty, do not combat with it; to yield to it is thy glory, to vanquish it thy disgrace; shew thyself generous, fuffer it to overcome thee. The more thou givest to it, the more it will give thee, and will triumph only to crown thee." Such mighty nothings in so strange a ftile Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile. The second scene of Emilia, and Fulvia her friend, is not so absurd as the foliloquy; but the answer Emilia gives to Fulvia, who urges to her, that the benefits she has received from Augustus, and the credit she has with him should mitigate |