one play, would be worth a
multitude of others? The romantic stage would make a piquant, savoury,
diversified dish of that which, on the classic stage, is a drug
divided into two pills.

The author has soon come to the end of what he had to say to the
reader. He has no idea how the critics will greet this drama and
these thoughts, summarily set forth, stripped of their corollaries and
ramifications, put together _currente calamo_, and in haste to have
done with them. Doubtless they will appear to "the disciples of
La Harpe" most impudent and strange. But if perchance, naked and
undeveloped as they are, they should have the power to start upon
the road of truth this public whose education is so far advanced,
and whose minds so many notable writings, of criticism or of original
thought, books or newspapers, have already matured for art, let the
public follow that impulsion, caring naught whether it comes from a
man unknown, from a voice with no authority, from a work of little
merit. It is a copper bell which summons the people to the true temple
and the true God.

There is to-day the old literary regime as well as the old political
regime. The last century still weighs upon the present one at almost
every point. It is notably oppressive in the matter of criticism. For
instance, you find living men who repeat to you this definition of
taste let fall by Voltaire: "Taste in poetry is no different from what
it is in women's clothes." Taste, then, is coquetry. Remarkable words,
which depict marvellously the painted, _mouchete_, powdered poetry
of the eighteenth century--that literature in paniers, pompons and
falbalas. They give an admirable resume of an age with which the
loftiest geniuses could not come in contact without becoming petty, in
one respect or another; of an age when Montesquieu was able and apt
to produce _Le Temple de Gnide_, Voltaire _Le Temple du Gout_,
Jean-Jacques _Le Devin du Village_.

Taste is the common sense of genius. This is what will soon be
demonstrated by another school of criticism, powerful, outspoken,
well-informed,--a school of the century which is beginning to put
forth vigorous shoots under the dead and withered branches of the old
school. This youthful criticism, as serious as the other is frivolous,
as learned as the other is ignorant, has already established organs
that are listened to, and one is sometimes surprised to find, even
in the least important sheets, excellent articles em