and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all time.

Such a classic may for a moment have been revolutionary; it may at least have seemed so, but it is not; it only lashed and subverted whatever prevented the restoration of the balance of order and beauty.

If it is desired, names may be applied to this definition which I wish to make purposely majestic and fluctuating, or in a word, all-embracing.  I should first put there Corneille of the Polyeucte, Cinna, and Horaces.  I should put Moliere there, the fullest and most complete poetic genius we have ever had in France.  Goethe, the king of critics, said:—­

“Moliere is so great that he astonishes us afresh every time we read him.  He is a man apart; his plays border on the tragic, and no one has the courage to try and imitate him.  His Avare, where vice destroys all affection between father and son, is one of the most sublime works, and dramatic in the highest degree.  In a drama every action ought to be important in itself, and to lead to an action greater still.  In this respect Tartuffe is a model.  What a piece of exposition the first scene is!  From the beginning everything has an important meaning, and causes something much more important to be foreseen.  The exposition in a certain play of Lessing that might be mentioned is very fine, but the world only sees that of Tartuffe once.  It is the finest of the kind we possess.  Every year I read a play of Moliere, just as from time to time I contemplate some engraving after the great Italian masters.”

I do not conceal from myself that the definition of the classic I have just given somewhat exceeds the notion usually ascribed to the term.  It should, above all, include conditions of uniformity, wisdom, moderation, and reason, which dominate and contain all the others.  Having to praise M. Royer-Collard, M. de Remusat said—­“If he derives purity of taste, propriety of terms, variety of expression, attentive care in suiting the diction to the thought, from our classics, he owes to himself alone the distinctive character he gives it all.”  It is here evident that the part allotted to classical qualities seems mostly to depend on harmony and nuances of expression, on graceful and temperate style:  such is also the most general opinion.  In this sense the pre-eminent classics would be writers of a middling order, exact, sensible, elegant, always clear, yet of noble feeling and airily veiled strength.  Marie-Joseph Chenier has described the poetics of those temperate and accomplished writers in lines where he shows himself their happy disciple:—­