himself likes, and will root out new ideas ninety-nine times for
once that he introduces them. Again, side by side with these
Comtists, and warring with them--at least with one of them--is Mr.
Arnold, whose poems we know by heart, and who has, as much as any
living Englishman, the genuine literary impulse; and yet even he
wants to put a yoke upon us--and, worse than a political yoke, an
academic yoke, a yoke upon our minds and our styles. He, too, asks
us to imitate France; and what else can we say than what the two
most thorough Frenchmen of the last age did say?--'Dans les corps a
talent, nulle distinction ne fait ombrage, si ce n'est pas celle du
talent. Un due et pair honore l'Academie Francaise, qui ne veut
point de Boileau, refuse la Bruyere, fait attendre Voltaire, mais
recoit tout d'abord Chapelain et Conrart. De meme nous voyons a
l'Academie Grecque le vicomte invite, Corai repousse, lorsque
Jormard y entre comme dans un moulin.' Thus speaks Paul-Louis
Courier in his own brief inimitable prose. And a still greater
writer--a real Frenchman, if ever there was one, and (what many
critics would have denied to be possible) a great poet by reason of
his most French characteristics--Beranger, tells us in verse:--

Je croyais voir le president
Fairs bailler--en repondant
Que l'on vient de perdre un grand homme;
Que moi je le vaux, Dieu sait comme.
Mais ce president sans facon [Footnote: Desaugiers.]
Ne perore ici qu'en chanson:
Toujours trop tot sa harangue est finie.
Non, non, ce n'est point comme a l'Academia;
Ce n'est point comme a l'Academie.