that, in all this, nature and truth get along as best
they can. It would be great good luck if any remnants of either should
survive in this cataclysm of false art, false style, false poetry.
This is what has caused the errors of several of our distinguished
reformers. Disgusted by the stiffness, the ostentation, the _pomposo_,
of this alleged dramatic poetry, they have concluded that the elements
of our poetic language were incompatible with the natural and the
true. The Alexandrine had wearied them so often, that they condemned
it without giving it a hearing, so to speak, and decided, a little
hastily, perhaps, that the drama should be written in prose.

They were mistaken. If in fact the false is predominant in the style
as well as in the action of certain French tragedies, it is not the
verses that should be held responsible therefore, but the versifiers.
It was needful to condemn, not the form employed, but those who
employed it: the workmen, not the tool.

To convince one's self how few obstacles the nature of our poetry
places in the way of the free expression of all that is true, we
should study our verse, not in Racine, perhaps, but often in Corneille
and always in Moliere. Racine, a divine poet, is elegiac, lyric, epic;
Moliere is dramatic. It is time to deal sternly with the criticisms
heaped upon that admirable style by the wretched taste of the last
century, and to proclaim aloud that Moliere occupies the topmost
pinnacle of our drama, not only as a poet, but also as a writer.
_Palmas vere habet iste duas_.

In his work the verse surrounds the idea, becomes of its very essence,
compresses and develops it at once, imparts to it a more slender, more
definite, more complete form, and gives us, in some sort, an extract
thereof. Verse is the optical form of thought. That is why it is
especially adapted to the perspective of the stage. Constructed in a
certain way, it communicates its relief to things which, but for it,
would be considered insignificant and trivial. It makes the tissue of
style finer and firmer. It is the knot which stays the thread. It is
the girdle which holds up the garment and gives it all its folds. What
could nature and the true lose, then, by entering into verse? We ask
the question of our prose-writers themselves--what do they lose
in Moliere's poetry? Does wine--we beg pardon for another trivial
illustration--does wine cease to be wine when it is bottled?

If we were entitled to say