merits of French poetry are many and great, it is not among the pages of
Racine that they are to be found. Within a few months of the appearance
of Mr. Bailey's book, the distinguished French writer and brilliant
critic, M. Lemaître, published a series of lectures on Racine, in which
the highest note of unqualified panegyric sounded uninterruptedly from
beginning to end. The contrast is remarkable, and the conflicting
criticisms seem to represent, on the whole, the views of the cultivated
classes in the two countries. And it is worthy of note that neither of
these critics pays any heed, either explicitly or by implication, to the
opinions of the other. They are totally at variance, but they argue
along lines so different and so remote that they never come into
collision. Mr. Bailey, with the utmost sang-froid, sweeps on one side
the whole of the literary tradition of France. It is as if a French
critic were to assert that Shakespeare, the Elizabethans, and the
romantic poets of the nineteenth century were all negligible, and that
England's really valuable contribution to the poetry of the world was to
be found among the writings of Dryden and Pope. M. Lemaître, on the
other hand, seems sublimely unconscious that any such views as Mr.
Bailey's could possibly exist. Nothing shows more clearly Racine's
supreme dominion over his countrymen than the fact that M. Lemaître
never questions it for a moment, and tacitly assumes on every page of
his book that his only duty is to illustrate and amplify a greatness
already recognised by all. Indeed, after reading M. Lemaître's book, one
begins to understand more clearly why it is that English critics find it
difficult to appreciate to the full the literature of France. It is no
paradox to say that that country is as insular as our own. When we find
so eminent a critic as M. Lemaître observing that Racine 'a vraiment
"achevé" et porté à son point suprême de perfection _la tragédie_, cette
étonnante forme d'art, et qui est bien de chez nous: car on la trouve
peu chez les Anglais,' is it surprising that we should hastily jump to