Instead of artificially giving to their characters _esprit_ at every point, poets ought to place them in such situations as will give it to them.

Where in the world did men and women ever speak as we declaim?
Why should princes and kings walk differently from any man who walks well?
Did they then gesticulate like raving madmen?
Do princesses when they speak utter sharp hissings?
People believe us to have brought tragedy to a high degree of perfection.

It is not so.

Of all kinds of literature it is the most imperfect.[283] The ideas which appeared thus incongruously in the tales of 1748 reappeared in the direct essays on the drama in 1757 and 1758.

We have left nothing undone, he said, to corrupt dramatic style.