"'Well!' resumed the lachrymose inditer, 'since you would have me suspicious of this tribunal, I rely on the applauses of the pit.' 'Bah! talk not to me of your pit,' replied the other; 'its judgment is guided by caprice. Stupidly won by the novelty of a first representation, it will be for months enraptured by a wretched piece. It is true that in the end it discovers its folly; and, then, it never forgives an author for having received from it an undeserved renown, or cheated it into mercy.'
"'That is a misfortune for which I have nothing to fear,' said the tragic poet; 'my pieces are reprinted as often as they are played. This, now, never occurs with comedies; printing exhibits their feebleness. Comedies being but trifles,--the lighter productions of mind....' 'Softly! my tragic friend; softly!' interrupted the other: 'you are getting somewhat warm. Speak, I beg of you, of comedy with less irreverence to me. Do you think, now, a comic piece less difficult to write than tragedy? Undeceive yourself! It is far less easy to make good men laugh, than it is to make them weep. Learn that a subject drawn from ordinary life requires talent of as high an order as do the stilted heroes of antiquity.'
"'I'faith,' cried the tragic poet with an air of raillery, 'I am delighted to hear you so express yourself.' 'Well! monsieur Calidas, to avoid disputation, I agree henceforth to as greatly admire your productions as I have heretofore despised them.' 'I care little for your contempt, monsieur Giblet,' hastily replied the comic author; 'and in return for your insolence, I will plainly tell you my opinion of the rubbish you have just been inflicting on me: your verse is a mixture of bombast and absurdity, and the ideas, although borrowed from Homer, have, in passing through your brain, become tinctured with its vulgarity. Achilles talks to his horses, and his horses reply to him; what nonsense! It is a pity they were not asses, for then you could have put into their mouths with propriety your splendid comparison of the village bonfire on the top of a mountain. It is doing no honour to the ancients to pillage them after this fashion: their works are undoubtedly filled with beauties; but it requires greater taste than you possess to make of them a fitting use, or to enable you to borrow from them to advantage.'