212 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fessor Dowden recognizes what Frencli critics with repeated insist- 

 ence emphasize, the cunning harmonies of his verse. 



Much space is of right devoted to Moliere, who with La Tontaine 

 has ever been a stumbling-block to English criticism. Professor 

 Dowden voices our national feeling in refusing to consider him as a 

 poet, preferring to emphasize his profound and healthy philosophy 

 of life. Tartufe he considers to be an attack on religious hypocrisy 

 merely. Is not the interpretation perhaps correct which regards it 

 as an attack on the intolerance and Puritanism of all religion, even 

 the most sincere? 



Once again, in dealing with Eacine, the author shows that subtle 

 discernment in which his criticism abounds. He penetrates to the 

 heart of the secret reason for the cabals that harassed Racine in the 

 later years of his dramatic activity, and which doubtless had their 

 influence in enforcing his retirement. Have we ever sufficiently 

 realized that Boileau, Moliere, and Racine were waging constant 

 war against a rebirth of the precieux spirit which threatened not 

 only society with ridiculousness but literature with ruin ? Such, in- 

 deed, was the case, and in the eyes of the super-refined coterie that 

 grouped itself round the Duchesse de Bouillon, Boileau and his fellow- 

 workers were innovators of a dangerous and revolutionary order. 

 Does not this idea carry us far from our preconceived notions of the- 

 narrow conservatism that dominated the leaders of classical thought? 

 Referring to the disastrous check of Racine's Phedre, the author 

 writes: " It is commonly said that Racine wrote in the conventional 

 and courtly taste of his own day. In reality his presentation of tragic 

 l^assions in their terror and their truth shocked the aristocratic pro- 

 prieties which were the mode. He was an innovator, and his audacity 

 at once conquered and repelled." The point of view may seem 

 extreme to us, and this vaunted realism may show pale and weakly 

 when contrasted with the grossness of much of the realism that pre- 

 vails at the present day, or with the graphic directness of the best ex- 

 amples of the type. But the words ring true if we are willing to 

 accept the refined psychological realism of Racine as equally worthy 

 to the title with the physiological naturalism of our more scientific 

 age. Our whole conception of Racine's art falls into line with this 

 Adew, and his constant solicitude for an easy and natural intrigue in 

 the structure of his tragedies may be brought home to the same healthy 

 impulse of his mind. Was it not Faguet who maintained that so 

 natural indeed were the processes of his plots that a happy ending 

 would have alone been needed to make any of his tragedies, with some 

 added modicum of wit, in all essential features a comedy that 

 Moliere might have penned? Mr. Saintsbury, on the other hand, 

 in dealing with Racine is seemingly swayed by some innate prejudice, 



