ing before the mind the terrors of nightmare, a single
phrase can conjure them up--

C'etait pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit.

By the same simple methods his art can describe the wonderful and
perfect beauty of innocence--

Le jour n'est pas plus pur que le fond de mon coeur;

and the furies of insensate passion--

C'est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee.

But the flavour of poetry vanishes in quotation--and particularly
Racine's, which depends to an unusual extent on its dramatic
surroundings, and on the atmosphere that it creates. He who wishes to
appreciate it to the full must steep himself in it deep and long. He
will be rewarded. In spite of a formal and unfamiliar style, in spite of
a limited vocabulary, a conventional versification, an unvaried and
uncoloured form of expression--in spite of all these things (one is
almost inclined, under the spell of Racine's enchantment, to say
_because_ of them)--he will find a new beauty and a new splendour--a
subtle and abiding grace.

But Racine's extraordinary powers as a writer become still more obvious
when we consider that besides being a great poet he is also a great
psychologist. The combination is extremely rare in literature, and in
Racine's case it is especially remarkable owing to the smallness of the
linguistic resources at his disposal and the rigid nature of the
conventions in which he worked. That he should have succeeded in
infusing into his tiny commonplace vocabulary, arranged in rhymed
couplets according to the strictest and most artificial rules, not only
the beauty of true poetry, but the varied subtleties of character and
passion, is one of those miracles of art which defy analysis. Through
the flowing regularity of his Alexandrines his personages stand out
distinct and palpable, in all the vigour of life. The presentment, it is
true, is not a detailed one; the accidents of character are not shown
us--only its essentials; the human spirit comes before us shorn of its
particulars, naked and intense. Nor is it--as might, perhaps, have been
expected--in the portrayal of intellectual characters that Racine
particularly excels; it is in the portrayal of passionate ones. His
supreme mastery is over the human heart--the subtleties, the
profundities, the agonies, the triumphs, of love. His gallery of lovers
is a long one, and the greatest portraits in it are of women. There is
the jealous, terrific Hermione; the delicate, melancho