affected. When they love they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but are
binding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomes
almost a holy thing; the spectator no longer wishes to be malicious or to
jest; women do not think of their own happiness, but of that of the loved
ones; they aim not at pleasure, but at devotion."

Thus far M. Taine's brilliant antitheses--the most fascinating and most
dangerous model for a young writer. But we are indebted to him for a most
suggestive study of the period. His astonishment, the astonishment of the
Gallic mind, at what he finds, is a measure of the difference in the
literature of the two races as an expression of their life. It was
natural that he should somewhat exaggerate what he regards as the source
of this expression, leaving out of view, as he does, certain great forces
and currents which an outside observer cannot feel as the race itself
feels. We look, indeed, for the local color of this English literature in
the manners and habits of the times, traits of which Taine has so
skillfully made a mosaic from Harrison, Stubbes, Stowe, Holinshed, and
the pages of Reed and Drake; but we look for that which made it something
more than a mirror of contemporary manners, vices, and virtues, made it
representative of universal men, to other causes and forces-such as the
Reformation, the immense stir, energy, and ambition of the age (the
result of invention and discovery), newly awakened to the sense that
there was a world to be won and made tributary; that England, and, above
all places on the globe at that moment, London, was the centre of a
display of energy and adventure such as has been scarcely paralleled in
history. And underneath it all was the play of an uneasy, protesting
democracy, eager to express itself in adventure, by changing its
condition, in the joy of living and overcoming, and in literature, with
small regard for tradition or the unities.