of 1681, before the division into chapters, which was introduced later, passed from the margin into the text, very thing is developed in a single series, almost in one breath.  It might be said that the orator has here acted like the nature of which Buffon speaks, that “he has worked on an eternal plan from which he has nowhere departed,” so deeply does he seem to have entered into the familiar counsels and designs of providence.

Are Athalie and the Discourse on Universal History the greatest masterpieces that the strict classical theory can present to its friends as well as to its enemies?  In spite of the admirable simplicity and dignity in the achievement of such unique productions, we should like, nevertheless, in the interests of art, to expand that theory a little, and to show that it is possible to enlarge it without relaxing the tension.  Goethe, whom I like to quote on such a subject, said:—­

“I call the classical healthy, and the romantic sickly.  In my opinion the Nibelungen song is as much a classic as Homer.  Both are healthy and vigorous.  The works of the day are romantic, not because they are new, but because they are weak, ailing, or sickly.  Ancient works are classical not because they are old, but because they are powerful, fresh, and healthy.  If we regarded romantic and classical from those two points of view we should soon all agree.”

Indeed, before determining and fixing the opinions on that matter, I should like every unbiassed mind to take a voyage round the world and devote itself to a survey of different literatures in their primitive vigour and infinite variety.  What would be seen?  Chief of all a Homer, the father of the classical world, less a single distinct individual than the vast living expression of a whole epoch and a semi-barbarous civilisation.  In order to make him a true classic, it was necessary to attribute to him later a design, a plan, literary invention, qualities of atticism and urbanity of which he had certainly never dreamed in the luxuriant development of his natural inspirations.  And who appear by his side?  August, venerable ancients, the AEschyluses and the Sophocles, mutilated, it is true, and only there to present us with a debris of themselves, the survivors of many others as worthy, doubtless, as they to survive, but who have succumbed to the injuries of time.  This thought alone would teach a man of impartial mind not to look upon the whole of even classical literatures with a too narrow and restricted view; he would learn that the exact and well-proportioned order which has since so largely prevailed in our admiration of the past was only the outcome of artificial circumstances.

And in reaching the modern world, how would it be?  The greatest names to be seen at the beginning of literatures are those which disturb and run counter to certain fixed ideas of what is beautiful and appropriate in poetry.  For example, is Shakespeare a classic?  Yes, now, for England and the world; but in the time of Pope he was not considered so.  Pope and his friends were the only pre-eminent classics; directly after their death they seemed so for ever.  At the present time they are still classics, as they deserve to be, but they are only of the second order, and are for ever subordinated and relegated to their rightful place by him who has again come to his own on the height of the horizon.