shall find, in that small society, something more
than ease and good breeding and refinement; we shall find the play of
passion and the subtle manifestation of the soul; we shall realize that
the shutting out of terrors and of mysteries has brought at least the
gain of concentration, so that we may discern unhindered the movements
of the mind of man--of man, not rapt aloft in the vast ardours of
speculation, nor involved in the solitary introspection of his own
breast; but of man, civilized, actual, among his fellows, in the bright
light of the world.

Yet, if it is true that a refined and splendid worldliness was the
dominant characteristic of the literature of the age, it is no less true
that here and there, in its greatest writers, a contrary tendency--faint
but unmistakable--may be perceived. The tone occasionally changes; below
the polished surface a disquietude becomes discernible; a momentary
obscure exception to the general easy-flowing rule. The supreme artists
of the epoch seem to have been able not only to give expression to the
moving forces of their time, but to react against them. They were rebels
as well as conquerors, and this fact lends an extraordinary interest to
their work. Like some subtle unexpected spice in a masterly confection,
a strange, profound, unworldly melancholy just permeates their most
brilliant writings, and gives the last fine taste.

Before considering these supreme artists more particularly, it will be
well to notice briefly the work of one who can lay no claim to such a
title, but who deserves attention as the spokesman of the literary
ideals of his age. BOILEAU, once the undisputed arbiter of taste
throughout Europe, is now hardly remembered save as the high-priest of
an effete tradition and as the author of some brilliant lines which have
passed as proverbs into the French language. He was a man of vivid
intelligence--courageous, independent, passionately devoted to
literature, and a highly skilled worker in the difficult art of writing
verse. But he lacked the force and the finesse of poetic genius; and it
is not as a poet that he is interesting: it is as a critic. When the
lines upon which French literature was to develop were still uncertain,
when the Classical school was in its infancy, and its great
leaders--Moliere, Racine, La Fontaine--were still disputing their right
to pre-eminence among a host of inferior and now forgotten writers whose
works were carrying on the weak