anating from it.
Joining hands with all that is fearless and superior in letters, it
will deliver us from two scourges: tottering _classicism_, and false
_romanticism_, which has the presumption to show itself at the feet
of the true. For modern genius already has its shadow, its copy, its
parasite, its _classic_, which forms itself upon it, smears itself
with its colours, assumes its livery, picks up its crumbs, and, like
_the sorcerer's pupil_, puts in play, with words retained by the
memory, elements of theatrical action of which it has not the secret.
Thus it does idiotic things which its master many a time has much
difficulty in making good. But the thing that must be destroyed first
of all is the old false taste. Present-day literature must be cleansed
of its rust. In vain does the rust eat into it and tarnish it. It
is addressing a young, stern, vigorous generation, which does not
understand it. The train of the eighteenth century is still dragging
in the nineteenth; but we, we young men who have seen Bonaparte, are
not the ones who will carry it.

We are approaching, then, the moment when we shall see the new
criticism prevail, firmly established upon a broad and deep
foundation. People generally will soon understand that writers should
be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to
nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art
of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments.
The sound judgment of all men will be ashamed of the criticism which
broke Pierre Corneille on the wheel, gagged Jean Racine, and which
ridiculously rehabilitated John Milton only by virtue of the epic
code of Pere le Bossu. People will consent to place themselves at the
author's standpoint, to view the subject with his eyes, in order
to judge a work intelligently. They will lay aside--and it is M. de
Chateaubriand who speaks--"the paltry criticism of defects for the
noble and fruitful criticism of beauties." It is time that all acute
minds should grasp the thread that frequently connects what we,
following our special whim, call "defects" with what we call "beauty."
Defects--at all events those which we call by that name--are often the
inborn, necessary, inevitable conditions of good qualities.

Scit genius, natale comes qul temperat astrum.

Who ever saw a medal without its reverse? a talent that had not some
shadow with its brilliancy, some smoke with its flame? Such