sublimity, and grace--what can we think of such art as this, except that
it is the genius of extraordinary men, and the origin of those rules
that writers without genius embrace with so much zeal and so little
success?'[25] And it is certainly true that the art of Racine implied
genius. The defect of the criticism lies, as usual, in a failure to see
that there is glory enough in both; in the art of highly-finished
composition and presentation, and in the art of bold and striking
creation. Yet Vauvenargues was able to discern the secret of the
popularity of Molière, and the foundation of the common opinion that no
other dramatist had carried his own kind of art so far as Molière had
carried his; 'the reason is, I fancy, that he is more natural than any
of the others, and this is an important lesson for everybody who wishes
to write.'[26] He did not see how nearly everything went in this
concession, that Molière was, above all, natural. With equal truth of
perception he condemned the affectation of grandeur lent by the French
tragedians to classical personages who were in truth simple and natural,
as the principal defect of the national drama, and the common rock on
which their poets made shipwreck.[27] Let us, however, rejoice for the
sake of the critical reputation of Vauvenargues that he was unable to
read Shakespeare. One for whom Molière is too eccentric, grotesque,
inelegant, was not likely to do much justice to the mightiest but most
irregular of all dramatists.

A man's prepossessions in dramatic poetry, supposing him to be
cultivated enough to have any prepossessions, furnish the most certain
clue that we can get to the spirit in which he inwardly regards
character and conduct. The uniform and reasoned preference which
Vauvenargues had for Racine over Molière and Corneille, was only the
transfer to art of that balanced, moderate, normal, and emphatically
harmonious temper, which he brought to the survey of human nature.