encountered such adroit introductions, such well-arranged evidence, such just reflections, such delicate transitions, such conclusive summing ups.  Never have dialogues borne such a strong resemblance to verbal sparring matches.  Each narration, each portrait, each detail of action, might be detached and serve as a good example for schoolboys, along with the masterpieces of the ancient tribune.  So strong is this tendency that, on the approach of the final moment, in the agony of death, alone and without witnesses, the character finds the means to plead his own frenzy and die eloquently.

II.  Its original deficiency.

Its original deficiency. — Signs of this in the 17th century. — It grows with time and success. — Proofs of this growth in the 18th century. — Serious poetry, the drama, history and romances. — Short-sighted views of man and of human existence.

This excess indicates a deficiency.  In the two operations which the human mind performs, the classicist is more successful in the second than in the first.  The second, indeed, stands in the way of the first, the obligation of always speaking correctly makes him refrain from saying all that ought to be said.  With him the form is more important than abundant contents, the firsthand observations which serve as a living source losing, in the regulated channels to which they are confined, their force, depth and impetuosity.  Real poetry, able to convey dream and illusion, cannot be brought forth.  Lyric poetry proves abortive, and likewise the epic poem.[27] Nothing sprouts on these distant fields, remote and sublime, where speech unites with music and painting.  Never do we hear the involuntary scream of intense torment, the lonely confession of a distraught soul,[28] pouring out his heart to relieve himself.  When a creation of characters is imperative, as in dramatic poetry, the classic mold fashions but one kind, that which through education, birth, or impersonation, always speak correctly, in other words, like so many people of high society.  No others are portrayed on the stage or elsewhere, from Corneille and Racine to Marivaux and Beaumarchais.  So strong is the habit that it imposes itself even on La Fontaine’s animals, on the servants of Molière, on Montesquieu’s Persians, and on the Babylonians, the Indians and the Micromégas of Voltaire. — It must be stated, furthermore, that these characters are only partly real.  In real persons two kinds of characteristics may be noted; the first, few in number, which he or she shares with others of their kind and which any reader readily may identify; and the other kind, of which there are a great many, describing only one particular person and these are much more difficult to discover.  Classic art concerns itself only with the former; it purposely effaces, neglects or subordinates the latter.  It does not build individual persons but generalized characters, a king, a queen,