On the "Pucelle" you were occupied during a generation of mortal
men. I marvel not at the length of your labours, as you received a
yearly pension till the Epic was finished, but your Muse was no
Alcmena, and no Hercules was the result of that prolonged night of
creation. First you gravely wrote out all the composition in prose:
the task occupied you for five whole years. Ah, why did you not
leave it in that commonplace but appropriate medium? What says the
Precieuse about you in Boileau's satire?


In Chapelain, for all his foes have said,
She finds but one defect, he can't be read;
Yet thinks the world might taste his Maiden's woes,
If only he would turn his verse to prose!


The verse had been prose, and prose, perhaps, it should have
remained. Yet for this precious "Pucelle," in the age when
"Paradise Lost" was sold for five pounds, you are believed to have
received about four thousand. Horace was wrong, mediocre poets may
exist (now and then), and he was a wise man who first spoke of aurea
mediocritas. At length the great work was achieved, a work thrice
blessed in its theme, that divine Maiden to whom France owes all,
and whom you and Voltaire have recompensed so strangely. In folio,
in italics, with a score of portraits and engravings, and culs de
lampe, the great work was given to the world, and had a success.
Six editions in eighteen months are figures which fill the poetic
heart with envy and admiration. And then, alas! the bubble burst.
A great lady, Madame de Longueville, hearing the "Pucelle" read
aloud, murmured that it was "perfect indeed, but perfectly