the conclusion that the canons and the principles of a criticism of this
kind will not repay, and perhaps do not deserve, any careful
consideration? Certainly they are not calculated to spare the
susceptibilities of Englishmen. And, after all, this is only natural; a
French critic addresses a French audience; like a Rabbi in a synagogue,
he has no need to argue and no wish to convert. Perhaps, too, whether he
willed or no, he could do very little to the purpose; for the
difficulties which beset an Englishman in his endeavours to appreciate a
writer such as Racine are precisely of the kind which a Frenchman is
least able either to dispel or even to understand. The object of this
essay is, first, to face these difficulties, with the aid of Mr.
Bailey's paper, which sums up in an able and interesting way the average
English view of the matter; and, in the second place, to communicate to
the English reader a sense of the true significance and the immense
value of Racine's work. Whether the attempt succeed or fail, some
important general questions of literary doctrine will have been
discussed; and, in addition, at least an effort will have been made to
vindicate a great reputation. For, to a lover of Racine, the fact that
English critics of Mr. Bailey's calibre can write of him as they do,
brings a feeling not only of entire disagreement, but of almost personal
distress. Strange as it may seem to those who have been accustomed to
think of that great artist merely as a type of the frigid pomposity of
an antiquated age, his music, to ears that are attuned to hear it, comes
fraught with a poignancy of loveliness whose peculiar quality is shared
by no other poetry in the world. To have grown familiar with the voice
of Racine, to have realised once and for all its intensity, its beauty,
and its depth, is to have learnt a new happiness, to have discovered
something exquisite and splendid, to have enlarged the glorious
boundaries of art. For such benefits as these who would not be grateful?
Who would not seek to make them known to others, that they too may