Jamais un bon esprit ne fait rien qu’aisément.
…
Je veux faire des vers qui ne soient pas contraints
…
Chercher des lieux secrets où rein ne me déplaise,
Méditer à loisir, rêver tout à mon aise,
Employer toute une heure à me mirer dans l’eau,
Ouïr, comme en songeant, la course d’un ruisseau.
Ecrire dans un bois, m’interrompre, me taire,
Composer un quatrain sans songer à le faire.
27
Caractères, ch. V.
28
His psychology of the memory and imagination is still Aristotelian. Cf. E. Wallace, Aristotle’s Psychology, Intr., lxxxvi-cvii.
29
An Essay upon Poetry (1682).
30
The French Academy discriminates in its Sentiments sur le Cid between two types of probability, “ordinary” and “extraordinary.” Probability in general is more especially reserved for action. In the domain of action “ordinary” probability and decorum run very close together. It is, for example, both indecorous and improbable that Chimène in the Cid should marry her father’s murderer.
31
In his Preface to Shakespeare.
32
For a similar distinction in Aristotle see Eth. Nic., 1143 b.
33
The Platonic and Aristotelian reason or mind (νοῦς) contains an element of intuition.
34
In his Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles.
35
Rousseau contre Molière, 238.
36
Letters on Chivalry and Romance.
37
See verses prefixed to Congreve’s Double-Dealer.
38
Change l’état douteux dans lequel tu nous ranges,
Nature élève-nous à la clarté des anges,
Ou nous abaisse au sens des simples animaux.
Sonnet (1657?).
39
See, for example, A. Gerard’s Essay on Genius (1774), passim.
40
The English translation of this part of the Critique of Judgment, edited by J. C. Meredith, is useful for its numerous illustrative passages from these theorists (Young, Gerard, Duff, etc.).
41
Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould has dealt interestingly with this point in an article in the Unpopular Review (October, 1914) entitled Tabu and Temperament.
42
See Biographia literaria, ch. XXII.
43
This message came to him in any case straight from German romanticism. See Walzel, Deutsche Romantik, 22, 151.
44
“De tous les corps et esprits, on n’en saurait tirer un mouvement de vraie charité; cela est impossible, et d’un autre ordre, surnaturel.” Penseés, Article XVII. “Charité,” one should recollect, here has its traditional meaning – the love, not of man, but of God.
45
See poem, Ce siècle avait deux ans in the Feuilles d’Automne.
46
For amusing details, see L. Maigron, Le Romantisme et la mode (1911), ch. V.
47