vation, the extreme freedom of his
pen. It is equally true again that he often omits them, and that, in
other cases, he introduces only a small number of them, because he
avoids giving to these general characters a richness and complexity that
might interfere with the story. The simpler the theme the clearer its
development, the first duty of the author throughout this literature
being to clearly develop the restricted theme of which he makes a
selection.

There is, accordingly, a radical defect in the classic spirit, the
defect of its qualities, and which, at first kept within proper bounds,
contributes towards the production of its purest master-pieces, but
which, in accordance with the universal law, goes on increasing and
turns into a vice through the natural effect of age, use, and success.
Contracted at the start, it is to become yet more so. In the eighteenth
century the description of real life, of a specific person, just as he
is in nature and in history, that is to say, an undefined unit, a rich
plexus, a complete organism of peculiarities and traits, superposed,
entangled and co-ordinated, is improper. The capacity to receive and
contain all these is wanting. Whatever can be discarded is cast aside,
and to such an extent that nothing is left at last but a condensed
extract, an evaporated residuum, an almost empty name, in short, what
is called a hollow abstraction. The only characters in the eighteenth
century exhibiting any life are the off-hand sketches, made in passing
and as if contraband, by Voltaire, Baron de Thundertentronk and Milord
Watthen, the lesser figures in his stories, and five or six portraits of
secondary rank, Turcaret, Gil Blas, Marianne, Manon Lescaut, Rameau, and
Figaro, two or three of the rough sketches of Crebillon the younger
and of Colle, all so many works in which sap flows through a familiar
knowledge of things, comparable with those of the minor masters in
painting, Watteau, Fragonard, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, Lancret, Pater, and
Beaudouin, and which, accepted with difficulty, or as a surprise, by the
official drawing room are still to subsist after the grander and soberer
canvases shall have become moldy through their wearisome exhalations.
Everywhere else the sap dries up, and, instead of blooming plants, we
encounter only flowers of painted paper. What are all the serious poems,
from the "la Henriade" of Voltaire to the "Mois" by Roucher or the
"l'Imagination" by Delille, but so m