My present aim is to show clearly the influence of even incomplete simplisme, in certain pernicious effects upon literature.  Edgar A. Poe entered the realm of the fanciful after Hoffman, and how is it that the initiator is less dangerous than his disciple?  It is because of these two simplistes, who have put reason out of consideration, the first addressed himself only to the imagination, while the American poet sounded the emotions to depths where terror is awakened and madness begins to sting.  Hoffman has perhaps upon his conscience some readers confined in asylums for the deranged, but the far more perilous hallucinations of Poe must account for greater harm.  The distance is great between imagination and sentiment, and should be so regarded.  This extravagance should surely not be allowed to usurp the place of morality, but this is what is done, and greatness is not for them.

Another illustration lies in the transition intermediate between the romances of Balzac, Frederic Soulie, Emile Souvestre, and Eugene Sue, and the poetry of Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Beranger, Barbier and the impressionalist school whose decline is already at hand.

Of many names, which have acquired notoriety, I select the two which afford the best contrast,—­Charles Baudelaire and Jules de la Madelene.  The first, among other eccentric works, has left us “The Blossoms of Evil.”  In the ideas which it embraces it is the successful production of an imagination misled and in distress; a pathological experience probably prompted the conception.  In it one reads beautiful verse of scholarly construction, and readily perceives an individuality and originality of thought and expression; but no one would predict or desire that this production should pass to posterity.

“Le Marquis des Saffras,” by Jules de la Madelene, on the contrary, gratifies both judgment and feeling.  It is a spirited painting, acute and profound, as well as true, of human life, especially of provincial life.  The human being is revealed in all his aspects.  Though the author disguises neither errors nor weaknesses, he presents clearly the redeeming side—­the simple manners and the humble devotion of sincere hearts.  This, then, is the reason why, sustained by a style rich in grace and strength, full of the breath of poetry which is felt rather than described, “Le Marquis des Saffras” holds its place as an incontestable masterpiece in the choice libraries that preserve the renown of great writers.

A more careful examination of the doctrine of Delsarte—­“The necessity of the concurrence of the mother modalities of the human organism to fulfil the conditions of aesthetics”—­but forces the conviction that disregard of this requirement renders all sterile and incomplete, if not monstrous.  Is this equivalent to saying that the deductions from the law of Delsarte tend to condemn in French literature its simple gaiety, its graceful lightness, and to efface this stamp of the race that our ancestors have surely imprinted?