, it is something better: it is an ideal combination of its
principal forms, a luminous tint made up of its brightest colors, an
intoxicating balm of its purest perfumes, a delicious elixir of its
best juices, a perfect harmony of its sweetest sounds--in short, it is
a concentration of all its good qualities. For this Truth, and nothing
else, should strive those works of art which are a moral representation
of life-dramatic works. To attain it, the first step is undoubtedly to
learn all that is true in fact of every period, to become deeply imbued
with its general character and with its details; this involves only a
cheap tribute of attention, of patience, and of memory: But then one
must fix upon some chosen centre, and group everything around it; this
is the work of imagination, and of that sublime common-sense which is
genius itself.

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the
imitation of life? Good heavens! we see only too clearly about us the
sad and disenchanting reality--the insupportable lukewarmness of feeble
characters, of shallow virtues and vices, of irresolute loves, of
tempered hates, of wavering friendships, of unsettled beliefs, of
constancy which has its height and its depth, of opinions which
evaporate. Let us dream that once upon a time have lived men stronger
and greater, who were more determined for good or for evil; that does
us good. If the paleness of your True is to follow us into art, we shall
close at once the theatre and the book, to avoid meeting it a second
time. What is wanted of works which revive the ghosts of human beings
is, I repeat, the philosophical spectacle of man deeply wrought upon
by the passions of his character and of his epoch; it is, in short, the
artistic Truth of that man and that epoch, but both raised to a higher
and ideal power, which concentrates all their forces. You recognize this
Truth in works of the imagination just as you cry out at the resemblance
of a portrait of which you have never seen the original; for true talent
paints life rather than the living.

To banish finally the scruples on this point of the consciences of some
persons, timorous in literary matters, whom I have seen affected with
a personal sorrow on viewing the rashness with which the imagination
sports with the most weighty characters of history, I will hazard the
assertion that, not throughout this work, I dare not say that, but in
many of these pages, and those per