O’Neddy) as presenting this caractere d’outrance et de tension.  “The word paroxyste, employed for the first time by Nestor Roqueplan, seems to have been invented with an application to Philothee.  Everything is pousse in tone, high-coloured, violent, carried to the utmost limits of expression, of an aggressive originality, almost dripping with the unheard-of (ruissilant d’inouisme); but back of the double-horned paradoxes, sophistical maxims, incoherent metaphors, swoln hyperboles, and words six feet long, are the poetic feeling of the time and the harmony of rhythm.”  One hears much in the critical writings of that period, of the mot propre, the vers libre, and the rime brise.  It was in tragedy especially that the periphrasis reigned most tyrannically, and that the introduction of the mot propre, i.e., of terms that were precise, concrete, familiar, technical even, if needful, horrified the classicists.  It was beneath the dignity of the muse—­the elegant muse of the Abbe Delille—­Hugo tells us, to speak naturally.  “She underlines,” in sign of disapprobation, “the old Corneille for his way of saying crudely

  “‘Ah, ne me brouillez pas avec la republique.’

“She still has heavy on her heart his Tout beau, monsieur.  And many a seigneur and many a madame was needed to make her forgive our admirable Racine his chiens so monosyllabic. . . .  History in her eyes is in bad tone and taste.  How, for example, can kings and queens who swear be tolerated?  They must be elevated from their royal dignity to the dignity of tragedy. . . .  It is thus that the king of the people (Henri IV.) polished by M. Legouve, has seen his ventre-saint-gris shamefully driven from his mouth by two sentences, and has been reduced, like the young girl in the story, to let nothing fall from this royal mouth, but pearls, rubies, and sapphires—­all of them false, to say the truth.”  It seems incredible to an Englishman, but it is nevertheless true that at the first representations of “Hernani” in 1830, the simple question and answer

  “Est il minuit?—­Minuit bientot”

raised a tempest of hisses and applause, and that the opposing factions of classics and romantics “fought three days over this hemistich.  It was thought trivial, familiar, out of place; a king asks what time it is like a common citizen, and is answered, as if he were a farmer, midnight.  Well done!  Now if he had only used some fine periphrasis, e.g.: 

          “——­l’heure
  Atteindra bientot sa derniere demeure.[16]