London, April 30, 1759

Sir,

A letter to you from an English author will carry with it the appearance of corresponding with the enemy, not only as the two nations are at present involved in a difficult and important war, but also because in many of your late writings you seem determined to live in a state of hostility with the British nation.
Whenever we come in your way, 'we are ferocious, we are islanders, we are the people whom your country has taught, we fall behind other nations in point of taste and elegance of composition; the same cause that has withheld from us a genius for painting and music, has also deprived us of the true spirit of tragedy; and, in short, barbarism still prevails among us'.

But, notwithstanding this vein of prejudice, which has discoloured almost all your fugitive pieces, there still breathes throughout your writings such a general spirit of humanity and zeal for the honour of the republic of letters, that I am inclined to imagine the author of the English Orphan of China (an obscure islander) may still address you upon terms of amity and literary benevolence.

As I have attempted a tragedy upon a subject that has exercised your excellent talents, and thus have dared to try my strength in the bow of Ulysses, I hold myself in some sort accountable to m. de Voltaire for the departure I have made from his plan, and the substitution of a new fable of my own.

My first propensity to this story was occasioned by the remarks of an admirable critic of our own, upon the Orphan of the house of Chau, preserved to us by the industrious and sensible p. Du Halde, which, as our learned commentator observes, amidst great wildness and irregularity, has still some traces of resemblance to the beautiful models of antiquity. In my reflections upon this piece, I imagined I saw a blemish in the manner of saving the orphan, by the tame resignation of another infant in his place; especially when the subject afforded so fair an opportunity of touching the strugglings of a parent, on so trying an occasion. It therefore occurred to me, if a fable could be framed, in which the father and the two young men might be interwoven with probability and perspicuity, and not embarrassed with all the perplexities of a riddle, as, you know, is the case of Heraclius of Corneille, that then many situations might arise, in which some of the nearest affections of the heart might be awakened: but even then I was too conscious that it must be executed by a genius very different from myself.

In this state of mind, sir, I heard with pleasure that m. de Voltaire had produced at Paris his L'Orphelin de la Chine: I ardently longed for a perusal of the piece, expecting that such a writer would certainly seize all the striking incidents which might naturally grow out of so pregnant a story, and that he would leave no source of passion unopened. I was in some sort, but not wholly disappointed: I saw m. de Voltaire rushing into the midst of things at once; opening his subject in an alarming manner; and, after the narrative relating to Gengiskan is over, working up his first act like a poet indeed.

In the beginning of the second act, he again touches the passions with a master-hand; but, like a rower who has put forth all his strength, and suddenly slackens his exertion, I saw, or imagined I saw, him give way all at once; the great tumult of the passions is over; the interest wears away; Gengiskan talks politics; the tenderness of a mother, flying with all the strong impulses of nature to the relief of her child, is thrown into cold unimpassioned narrative; the rôle pour l'amoureux must have its place, and the rough conqueror of a whole people must instantly become le chevalier Gengiskan, as errant a lover as ever sighed in the Thuilleries at Paris. Your own words, sir, strongly expressive of that manly and sensible taste, which distinguishes you throughout Europe, occurred to me upon this occasion: 'Quelle place pour la galanterie que le parricide & l'inceste, qui désolent une famille, & la contagion qui ravage un pais? Et quel exemple plus frappant du ridicule de notre théâtre, & du pouvoir de l'habitude, que Corneille d'un côté, qui fait dire à Thésée

Et moi, soixante ans après lui, viens faire parler une vieille Jocaste d'un vieil amour; & tout cela pour complaire au goût le plus fade & le plus faux qui ait jamais corrompu la litérature'. Indeed, sir, Gengiskan, in the very moment of overwhelming a whole nation, usurping a crown, and massacring the royal family, except one infant, whom he is in quest of, appeared to me exactly like the amorous Œdipus in the midst of a destructive plague. 'Nunc non erat his locus' How would that noble performance, that chef d'œuvre of your country, the Athalie of Racine, have been defaced by the gallantry of an intrigue, if a tyrant had been introduced to make love to the wife of the high-priest? or if Joad, entertaining a secret affection for Athalie, and being asked what orders he would give relating to the delivery of his country, should answer, 'aucune', none at all. And yet this is the language of a northern conqueror, whining for a mandarin's wife, who has no power of resisting, and having no relation to the royal family, could not, by an intermarriage, strengthen his interest in the crown. But to you, sir, who have told us that love should reign a very tyrant in tragedy, or not appear there at all, being unfit for the second place; to you, who have said that Nero should not hide himself behind a tapestry to overhear the conversation of his mistress and his rival, what need I urge these remarks? To fill up the long career of a tragedy with this episodic love must certainly have been the motive that led you into this error; an error I take the liberty to call it, because I have observed it to be the hackneyed and stale stratagem of many modern writers. Within the compass of my reading, there is hardly a bad man in any play, but he is in love with some very good woman: the scenes that pass between them, I have always remarked, are found dull and unawakening by the audience, even though adorned with all the graces of such composition as yours, of which it is but justice to say, that it bestows embellishments upon every subject.

For me, sir, who only draw in crayons, who have no resource to those lasting colours of imagination, with which you set off every thing; a writer such as I am, sir, could not presume to support that duplicity of passion which runs through your piece. I could not pretend, by the powers of style, to suborn an audience in favour of those secondary passages, from which their attention naturally revolts. A plainer and more simple method lay before me. I was necessitated to keep the main object as much as possible before the eye; and therefore it was that I told a survey of my subject in order to catch at every thing that seemed to me to result with order and propriety from it. A scantiness of interesting business seemed to me a primary defect in the construction of the French Orphan of China, and that I imagined had its source in the early date of your play. By beginning almost 'gemino ab ovo', by making the orphan and the mandarin's son children in their cradles, it appeared to me that you had stripped yourself of two characters, which might be produced in an amiable light, so as to engage the affections of their auditors, not only for themselves, but consequently for those also to whom they should stand in any degree of relation. From this conduct I proposed a further advantage, that of taking off the very obvious resemblance to the Andromache, which now strikes everybody in your plan. This last remark I do not urge against accidental and distant coincidences of sentiment, diction, or fable. Many of the Greek plays, we know, had a family-likeness, such as an Œdipus, an Electra, an Iphigenia in Tauris, in Aulis, a Merope, &c. But what is a beauty in Racine, seems in his great successor to be a blemish. In the former, nothing depends on the life of Astyanax but what was very natural, the happiness of the mother: in the latter, the fate of a kingdom is grafted upon the fortunes of an infant; and I ask your own feelings, (for nobody knows the human heart better) whether an audience is likely to take any considerable interest in the destiny of a babe, who, when your Zamti has saved him, cannot produce any change, any revolution in the affairs of China? No, sir; the conquered remain in the same abject state of vassalage, and the preservation of the infant king becomes therefore uninteresting and unimportant. He might die, sir, in cutting his teeth, of the whooping cough, or any of the disorders attendant on that tender age: whereas when the orphan is grown up to maturity, when he is a moral agent in the piece, when a plan is laid for revenging himself on the destroyers of his family, it then becomes a more pressing motive in the mandarin's mind; nay, it is almost his duty, in such a case, to sacrifice even his own offspring for the good of his country. In your story, sir, give me leave to say, I do not see what end can be served by Zamti's loyalty: his prospect is at least so distant, that it becomes almost chimerical. And therefore as history warrants an expulsion of the Tartars, as it was not upon the first inroad, but in process of time and experience, that they learned to incorporate themselves with the conquered, I had recourse to my own preconceived notions. Whether I was partially attached to them, or whether my reasonings upon your fable were just, you, sir, and the public will determine.

You will perceive, sir, in the English orphan some occasional insertions of sentiment from your elegant performance. To use the expression of the late mr Dryden, when he talks of Ben Johnson's imitation of the ancients, you will often track me in your snow. For this I shall make no apology, either to the public or you: none to the public, because they have applauded some strokes for which I am indebted to you; and none certainly to you, because you are well aware I have but followed the example of many admired writers; Boileau, Corneille, and Racine, with you; and in England, Milton, mr Addison, and mr Pope. It was finely said by you (I have read the story and take it upon trust) when it was objected to the celebrated abbé Metastasio, as a reproach, that he had frequent transfusions of thought from your writings, 'Ah! le cher voleur! il m'a bien embelli'. This talent of embellishing I do not pretend to; to avail myself of my reading, and to improve my own productions, is all I can pretend to; and that I flatter myself I have done, not only from you, but many of the writers of antiquity. If the authorities I have above mentioned were not sufficient, I could add another very bright example, the example of m. de Voltaire, whom I have often tracked, to use the same expression again, in the snow of Shakespear. The snow of Shakespear is but a cold expression; but perhaps it will be more agreeable to you, than a word of greater energy, that should convey a full idea of the astonishing powers of that great man; for we islanders have remarked of late, that m. de Voltaire has a particular satisfaction in descanting on the faults of the most wonderful genius that ever existed since Homer; insomuch that a very ingenious gentleman of my acquaintance tells me, that whenever you treat the English bard as a drunken savage in your avant propos, he always deems it a sure prognostic that your play is the better for him.

If the great scenes of Shakespear, sir; if his boundless view of all nature, the lawn, the wilderness, the blasted health, mountains, and craggy rocks, with thunder and lightning on their brows; if these cannot strike the imagination of m. de Voltaire, how can I expect the studied regularity of my little shrubbery should afford him any kind of pleasure? To drop the metaphor, if the following tragedy does not appear to you a monstrous farce, it is all I can reasonably expect. But whatever may be your opinion of it, I must beg that you will not make it the criterion by which you would decide concerning the taste of the English nation, or the present state of literature among us. What you have humbly said of yourself, in order to do honour to your nation, I can assert with truth of the author of the English orphan, that he is one of the worst poets now in this country. It is true, indeed, that the play has been received with uncommon applause; that so elegant a writer as the author of Creusa and The Roman father was my critic and my friend; and that a great deal of very particular honour has been done me by many persons of the first distinction. But, give me leave to say, they all know the faults of the piece, as well as if it had been discussed by the academy of belles-lettres. We are a generous nation, sir; and the faintest approaches to merit, always meet here the warmest encouragement. One thing further I will assure you, in case you should discover any traces of barbarism is the style or fable, that if you had been present at the representation, you would have seen a theatrical splendour conducted with a bienséance unknown to the scène française; the performance of the two young men would have made you regret that they were not in your pièce; and, though a weak state of health deprived the play of so fine an actress as mrs Cibber you would have beheld in Mandane a figure that would be an ornament to any stage in Europe, and you would have acknowledged that her acting promises also to be the same: moreover, you would have seen a Zamti, whose exquisite powers are capable of adding pathos and harmony even to our great Shakespeare, and have already been the chief support of some of your scenes upon the English stage.

Upon the whole, sir, I beg you will not imagine that I have wrote this tragedy in the fond hope of eclipsing so celebrated a writer as you are: I had a humbler motive, propter amorem quod te imitati aveo. Could I do that in any distant degree, it would very amply gratify the ambition of,

sir, your real admirer,

and most humble servant,

the author of The Orphan of China