and the bold.  No one in his senses would regret this, for it has given our literature all its most characteristic glories, and, of course, in Shakespeare, with whom expression is stretched to the bursting point, the national style finds at once its consummate example and its final justification.  But the result is that we have grown so unused to other kinds of poetical beauty, that we have now come to believe, with Mr. Bailey, that poetry apart from ‘le mot rare’ is an impossibility.  The beauties of restraint, of clarity, of refinement, and of precision we pass by unheeding; we can see nothing there but coldness and uniformity; and we go back with eagerness to the fling and the bravado that we love so well.  It is as if we had become so accustomed to looking at boxers, wrestlers, and gladiators that the sight of an exquisite minuet produced no effect on us; the ordered dance strikes us as a monotony, for we are blind to the subtle delicacies of the dancers, which are fraught with such significance to the practised eye.  But let us be patient, and let us look again.

    Ariane ma soeur, de quel amour blessee,
    Vous mourutes aux bords ou vous futes laissee.

Here, certainly, are no ‘mots rares’; here is nothing to catch the mind or dazzle the understanding; here is only the most ordinary vocabulary, plainly set forth.  But is there not an enchantment?  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.  In the following passage, for instance, what a sense of dignity and melancholy and power is conveyed by the commonest words!

    Enfin j’ouvre les yeux, et je me fais justice: 
    C’est faire a vos beautes un triste sacrifice
    Que de vous presenter, madame, avec ma foi,
    Tout l’age et le malheur que je traine avec moi. 
    Jusqu’ici la fortune et la victoire memes
    Cachaient mes cheveux blancs sous trente diademes. 
    Mais ce temps-la n’est plus:  je regnais; et je fuis: 
    Mes ans se sont accrus; mes honneurs sont detruits.

Is that wonderful ‘trente’ an ‘epithete rare’?  Never, surely, before or since, was a simple numeral put to such a use—­to conjure up so triumphantly such mysterious grandeurs!  But these are subtleties which pass unnoticed by those who have been accustomed to the violent appeals of the great romantic poets.  As Sainte-Beuve says, in a fine comparison between Racine and Shakespeare, to come to the one after the other is like passing to a portrait by Ingres from a decoration by Rubens.  At first, ’comme on a l’oeil rempli de l’eclatante verite pittoresque du grand maitre flamand, on ne voit dans l’artiste francais qu’un ton assez uniforme, une teinte diffuse de pale et douce lumiere.  Mais qu’on approche de plus pres et qu’on observe avec soin:  mille nuances fines vont eclore sous le regard; mille intentions savantes vont sortir de ce tissu profond et serre; on ne peut plus en detacher ses yeux.’