Racine, Wisconsin

“ Here each adult man took up forty acres at the usual minimum price of $1.25 per acre, and so began [43] the Muskego colony proper, the name, Muskego, however, being later applied to the group of settlements in Waukesha County and to several towns in Racine County. [77] Like the colony in Rock County, the Muskego group grew rapidly in spite of malarial troubles, and for ten years it was an objective point for immigrants from Thelemark, and a halting place for those bound for the frontier farther west in Wisconsin or in Iowa. ”

“ He was piqued by the attack, but his conscience sided with his censurers; and the degraded state to which clerical influence brought French actors in those days might well cause a devout catholic to doubt the innocence of the drama. A higher tone of feeling would have caused Racine to perceive that the fault lay with the persecutors, not the persecuted; but though an amiable and upright man, and a man of genius, he was in nothing beyond his age. ”

“ I only know that Louis Racine was not the judge or jury, but the avocat only, whose duty it was to do as he did. That he did it the more gladly because he was a Frenchman and you an Englishman, is not his fault or yours either. Louis Racine’s people came here two hundred years ago, yours not sixty years ago. You, the great business man, have had practical power which gave you riches. You have sacrificed all for power. Louis Racine has only genius, and no practical power. ”

“ The conviction, on the contrary, ought to be deeply impressed of the harmony of {Pg 296} characters—that certain defects and certain virtues are allied, and ever go together. We should not ask the sheep for fleetness, nor wool from the horse; but we may love and admire the gifts that each enjoy, and profit by them, both as matter of advantage and instruction.
Racine was born of a respectable family of Ferté-Milon, a small town of Valois. ”

“ He had an inclination for raillery, which, through the advice of Boileau, he carefully restrained: he was fond of pleasure; religion caused him to prefer the quiet of his home: and, as the same friend said, "Reason brings most men to faith—faith has brought Racine to reason." Fearful of pain himself, he was eager to avoid causing it to others. In society he was pliant; striving to draw others out rather than endeavouring to shine himself. ”

“ To such mutations is subject the fame of an author.
Jean Racine was early left an orphan. His grandparents put him, after preparatory training at another establishment, to school at Port Royal, where during three years he had the best opportunities of education that the kingdom afforded. His friends wanted to make a clergyman of him; but the preferences of the boy prevailed, and he addicted himself to literature. The Greek tragedists became familiar to him in his youth, and their example in literary art exercised a sovereign influence over Racine’s development as author. ”

“ Nor did the ode bound his ambitions, for in 1660 he finished one piece, Amasie, and undertook another, Les Amours d’Ovide, for the theatre. The first, however, was rejected by the actors of the Marais, and it is not certain that the other was ever finished or offered to those of the Hotel de Bourgogne. Racine's letters show that he was intimate with more than one actress at this time; he also made acquaintance with La Fontaine, and the foundations at any rate of the legendary “society of four” (Boileau, La Fontaine, Moliere and Racine) were thus laid. ”

“ He kept Racine constantly spurred to his best endeavors in art. Racine was congratulating himself to his friend on the ease with which he produced his verse. "Let me teach you to produce easy verse with difficulty," was the critic's admirable reply. Racine was a docile pupil. He became as painstaking an artist in verse as Boileau would have him.
It will always be a matter of individual taste, and of changing fashion in criticism, to decide which of the two is, on the whole, to be preferred to the other. Racine eclipsed Corneille in vogue during the lifetime of the latter. ”

“ The beautiful bluffs bordering the Mississippi; the charm and grace of the sweeping lines of Lake Pepin; the tumbling, rushing waters of the Wisconsin, with their thickly-wooded hills and their green slopes of prairie and their October sunsets, seen through crimson oak and maple leaves; or the numerous falls of the upper Fox,—all have stirred the hearts of the fortunate people privileged to live within their influence. Hence, at Stevens Point, La Crosse, Appleton, and a few other cities in the state with similar surroundings, we have a literature with charming local flavor. ”

“ Even if he wounded Racine only, what a wretched story to go abroad: that he had fought with a hunchback—a hunchback who knew the use of the sword, which he did not, but still a hunchback!
"Stop this nonsense," he said, as Louis Racine prepared to attack again.
"Don't be a fool. The game isn't worth the candle."
"One of us does not leave this room alive," said the Seigneur. "You care for life. You love it, and you can't buy what you love from me. I don't care for life, and I would gladly die, to see your blood flow. ”

“ This fancy was strengthened, in the course of conversation, by his expatiating on the greatness of Racine. I think he had a volume of the French poet in his hand. His skull was sharply cut and fine; with plenty, according to the phrenologists, both of the reflective and amative organs; and his poetry will bear them out. For a lettered solitude, and a bridal properly got up, both according to law and luxury, commend us to the lovely Gertrude of Wyoming. His face and person were rather on a small scale; his features regular; his eye lively and penetrating ”

“ An ill-natured critic constantly feels inclined to alter the lists of Racine's dramatis personae, and instead of the proper names to substitute 'a lover,' 'a mother,' 'a tyrant,' and so forth. So great an artist and so careful a worker as Racine could not, of course, escape giving some individuality to his creations. Hermione, Phèdre, Achille, Bérénice, Athalie, are all individual enough of their class. ”

“ Nicolet first set foot upon what is now the State of Wisconsin late in 1634 or early in 1635. He landed first at Green Bay, where he found a large Indian settlement, thence ascended the Fox River to a point beyond its passage through Lake Winnebago, and then turned southward. He probably proceeded as far south as the site of Chicago, and returned east by way of Lake Michigan. The next white explorers in the Wisconsin region of whom we have any record were Radisson and Groseilliers, two fur traders, who reached the country in 1658-59. ”

“ The stranger who had attracted Racine's attention was a tall thin man, with a high aquiline nose, stern fierce gray eyes, peeping out from under tufted brows, and a countenance so lined and marked by age, care, and stress of weather that it stood out amid the prim courtier faces which surrounded it as an old hawk might in a cage of birds of gay plumage. ”

“ I fear it is supremely egotistical,—so jealously sensitive that it writhes at the touch of a rival. Racine was the happiest of husbands; his wife adored his genius, but could not understand his plays. Would Racine have been happy if he had married a Corneille in petticoats? I who speak have loved an artist, certainly equal to myself. I am sure that he loved me. That sympathy in pursuits of which you speak drew us together, and became very soon the cause of antipathy. To both of us the endeavour to coalesce was misery.
I don’t know your M. Rameau. Savarin has sent me some of his writings ”

“ Pious sentiments ever smouldering in his heart, the horror felt for the theatre by Port-Royal, and penitence for the sins he had been guilty of against his friends there, revived within him; and Racine gave up profane poetry forever. “The applause I have met with has often flattered me a great deal,” said he at a later period to his son, “but the smallest critical censure, bad as it may have been, always caused me more of vexation than all the praises had given me of pleasure.” ”

“ Is there not a vision? Is there not a flow of lovely sound whose beauty grows upon the ear, and dwells exquisitely within the memory? Racine's triumph is precisely this—that he brings about, by what are apparently the simplest means, effects which other poets must strain every nerve to produce. The narrowness of his vocabulary is in fact nothing but a proof of his amazing art. ”

“ Louis Racine, owning to the lovable nature of the man, has to own, too, that he gave poor account of himself in society, and adds that his sisters, who in their youth had seen the poet frequently at their father's table in Rue Visconti, recalled him only as a man untidy in dress and stupid in talk. He gave this impression mainly because he was forever dreaming, even in company, and so seemed distant and dull; but, when drawn out of his dreams, no man could be more animated and more delightful. ”

“ Racine's joyous face may be imagined as he comes in fresh from the College of Harcourt. Since he was born in 1639, he had not arrived at his zenith till La Rochefoucault was almost past his prime. For a man at thirty-six in France can no longer talk prospectively of the departure of youth; it is gone. A single man of thirty, even in Paris, is 'un vieux garçon:' life begins too soon and ends too soon with those pleasant sinners, the French. And Racine, when he was first routed out of Port Royal, where he was educated, and presented to the whole Faubourg St. ”

“ Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe the great state of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found. ”

“ The confidential confession of RACINE to his son is remarkable:—"Do not think that I am sought after by the great for my dramas; Corneille composes nobler verses than mine, but no one notices him, and he only pleases by the mouth of the actors. I never allude to my works when with men of the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear. My talent with them consists, not in making them feel that I have any, but in showing them that they have." Racine treated the great like the children of society ”

“ His works represent perfection of technique, the ideal harmony of content and form, the Art of Beauty as it had not been seen upon the stage since the time of Sophocles.
Until late in Racine’s life religion is purely formal in his work; his plays deal with the princely world. Society is fixed, and its forms ordained; nobody is rising and displacing anybody else, hence there can be no social drama. You play your part “in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call you”; and tragedy happens when somebody takes away from you the sexual gratification you crave. ”

“ It contains agreeable passages, but nothing perfectly beautiful; nothing that carries one away; none of those tirades of Corneille that make one shudder. Racine can never be compared to him. Let us always remember the difference. The former will never go beyond "Andromache;" he writes parts for Champmélé, and not for future ages. When he is no longer young, and has ceased to be susceptible of love, he will cease to write as well as he now does." This opinion is at least false. The tragedies of Racine still live, or at least did so while Talma and the classic theatre survived in France. ”

“ How strangely is human nature constituted. Racine made a scruple of writing tragedies, or, indeed, poetry of any kind that was not religious. He believed that it was impious to commemorate in lofty verse the heroic emotions of our nature, or to dress in the beautiful colours of poetry the gentle sorrows of the loving heart: from such motives he gave up his best title to fame, his dearest occupation; but he had no scruple in following his sovereign to the wars, and in beholding the attack and defence of towns. ”

“ He had besides a real and saving vein of truth to nature, which preserved him from tricks pure and simple. He would be, and he was, as much a poet as prevalent taste would let him be. The result is that such plays as Phédre and Andromaque are supreme in their own way. If the critic will only abstain from thrusting in tierce, when according to the particular rules he ought to thrust in quart, Racine is sure to beat him. ”

“ The United States began to come to light by the gradual uplifting of this land to the north and the appearance of the tops of the Alleghanies, which were the next in order. Later, the Rockies started up. The United States grew southward from Wisconsin and westward from Blue Ridge. An early view of the country would have shown a large island which is now northern Wisconsin, and a long, thin tongue of this primitive rock sticking down from Canada into Minnesota, and these two growing states looking out over the waters at the mere beginnings of mountain-ranges east and west. ”

“ A deputy marshal of the United States proceeded to Racine with Garland and several assistants and during the evening of March 10th forced an entrance to Glover's cabin, knocked him down, bound and handcuffed him and put him in a wagon, drove rapidly to Milwaukee and lodged him in the county jail. The news of the brutal arrest was not long in reaching Racine, and the excitement in that thriving city ran high. In those days the court house meeting was the universal remedy for every public ill. The use of the court house was free to all. ”