reality a writer of extreme force--but it is a force of absolute
directness that he wields. He uses the commonest words, and phrases
which are almost colloquial; but every word, every phrase, goes straight
to its mark, and the impression produced is ineffaceable. In English
literature there is very little of such writing. When an English poet
wishes to be forceful he almost invariably flies to the gigantic, the
unexpected, and the out-of-the-way; he searches for strange metaphors
and extraordinary constructions; he surprises us with curious mysteries
and imaginations we have never dreamed of before. Now and then, however,
even in English literature, instances arise of the opposite--the
Racinesque--method. In these lines of Wordsworth, for example--

The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills--

there is no violent appeal, nothing surprising, nothing odd--only a
direct and inevitable beauty; and such is the kind of effect which
Racine is constantly producing. If he wishes to suggest the emptiness,
the darkness, and the ominous hush of a night by the seashore, he does
so not by strange similes or the accumulation of complicated details,
but in a few ordinary, almost insignificant words--

Mais tout dort, et l'armée, et les vents, et Neptune.

If he wishes to bring before the mind the terrors of nightmare, a single
phrase can conjure them up--

C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit.

By the same simple methods his art can describe the wonderful and