The groundwork or canvas being
transferred from love to religion, it gains a little in freshness and
directness of purpose, but hardly in general readableness. Thus, for
instance, two whole pages of the _Miroir_, or some forty or fifty lines,
are taken up with endless playings on the words _mort_ and _vie_ and
their derivatives, such as _mortifiez, and mort fiez, mort vivifiee and
vie mourante_. The sacred comedies or mysteries have the tediousness
and lack of action of the older pieces of the same kind without their
_naivete_; and pretty much the same may be said of the profane comedy
(which is a kind of morality), and of the farce. Of _La Coche_, what has
been said of the long sacred poems may be said, except that here we
go back to the actual subject of the models, not on the whole with
advantage: while in the minor pieces the same word plays and frigid
conceits are observable.
But if this somewhat severe judgment must be passed on the poems
as wholes, and from a certain point of view, it may be considerably
softened when they are considered more in detail.
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