IDEA OF LAW IN POETEY 689 



essence of absurdity in the manners of Les Precieuses or Les Femmes 

 Savantes. As a mirror for such universal truths of Nature the 

 refined literary language of the Academy, and the conventional stand- 

 ard of manners in the Hotel Rambouillet, were equally inadequate. 

 Moliere in his Comedies doubtless leans to farce; but he does so 

 because the old popular French farces furnished him with the ideal 

 atmosphere required to give poetical truth to the observed realities of 

 Nature. Nor do his bourgeois instincts carry him into excess. His 

 seemingly buffoon extravagance of conception and spontaneous exu- 

 berance of expression were kept within due limits by the sense that 

 his plays were to be performed before the most fastidious of monarchs, 

 who would never have tolerated the exhibition of vulgarity beyond 

 what was necessary for the purposes of art. Hence, in spite of its 

 negligence, the composition and language of Moliere are in the highest 

 sense well-bred, harmonious, and classic. 



Exactly analogous to the dramatic practice of Moliere is the liter- 

 ary practice of La Fontaine, except that, as the poems of the latter 

 were intended to be read, no one has ever blamed him for incorrect- 

 ness of style. La Fontaine makes no more effort than Moliere to raise 

 himself info a consciously ideal atmosphere. He cares no more than 

 Moliere did for the praise of absolute originality; his fables, like the 

 plots of Moliere, are borrowed from the inventions of predecessors, 

 fabulists such as Phaxlrus, Babrius, Horace, and a hundred others. 

 But through all this borrowing and adaptation, the unmistakable char- 

 acter of the old French fabliau, and the individuality of La Fontaine, 

 make themselves felt. His verses breathe the easy Epicurean air char- 

 acteristic of his class. His peasants and citizens are types of the men 

 and women whom lie saw in the farms and markets; his beasts use 

 the average human language of prudence and good sense. In the 

 flow of his verse \ve listen to the natural idiom of the conversation of 

 his time. Nevertheless, the ideal atmosphere, required for the imi- 

 tation of the Universal, is never absent from his creations, and know- 

 ing as he did that he was writing for refined society, his poetry, with 

 all its apparent ease, is in realitv the result of the most careful selec- 

 tion of words and harmonies. 



The dominant bias of French taste, however, di-closes itself not 

 merely in work* in which the artist is felt to he dealing with materials 

 akin to his own nature, but in the abstract reasoning by which men of 

 genius have endeavored to regulate practice in the higher spheres of 

 poelic invention. For example, the French idea of law in art is strik- 

 inglv exhibited in the approved rules of composition for the tragic 

 drama. Fuliko the dramas of Athens and of England, the tradition 

 of the theatre in France is not of popular origin, but is the late 

 creation of a few great poets, accommodating Their practice to the 

 taste of comparatively refined audiences. There was. indeed, a time 



