" Though Voltaire
relates this as a matter of fact, it is doubtful if it be more than an
_on dit_ which he had picked up in London society. Voltaire could not
have seen Andreini's drama, for it is not at all a ridiculous trifle.
Though much of the dialogue is as insipid as dialogue in operettas
usually is, there is great invention in the plot, and animation in
the action. Andreini is incessantly offending against taste, and is
infected with the vice of the Marinists, the pursuit of _concetti_, or
far-fetched analogies between things unlike. His infernal personages
are grotesque and disgusting, rather than terrible; his scenes in
heaven childish--at once familiar and fantastic, in the style of the
Mysteries of the age before the drama. With all these faults the
_Adamo_ is a lively and spirited representation of the Hebrew legend,
and not unworthy to have been the antecedent of _Paradise Lost_. There
is no question of plagiarism, for the resemblance is not even that of
imitation or parentage, or adoption. The utmost that can be conceded
is to concur in Hayley's opinion that, either in representation or in
perusal, the _Adamo_ of Andreini had made an impression on the mind of
Milton; had, as Voltaire says, revealed to him the hidden majesty of
the subject.
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