ut that Mr. Bailey's
criticism of Racine affords an excellent example of the fatal effects of
this obsession. His pages are full of references to 'infinity' and 'the
unseen' and 'eternity' and 'a mystery brooding over a mystery' and 'the
key to the secret of life'; and it is only natural that he should find
in these watchwords one of those tests of poetic greatness of which he
is so fond. The fallaciousness of such views as these becomes obvious
when we remember the plain fact that there is not a trace of this kind
of mystery or of these 'feelings after the key to the secret of life,'
in _Paradise Lost_, and that _Paradise Lost_ is one of the greatest
poems in the world. But Milton is sacrosanct in England; no theory,
however mistaken, can shake that stupendous name, and the damage which
may be wrought by a vicious system of criticism only becomes evident in
its treatment of writers like Racine, whom it can attack with impunity
and apparent success. There is no 'mystery' in Racine--that is to say,
there are no metaphysical speculations in him, no suggestions of the
transcendental, no hints as to the ultimate nature of reality and the
constitution of the world; and so away with him, a creature of mere
rhetoric and ingenuities, to the outer limbo! But if, instead of asking
what a writer is without, we try to discover simply what he is, will not
our results be more worthy of our trouble? And in fact, if we once put
out of our heads our longings for the mystery of metaphysical
suggestion, the more we examine Racine, the more clearly we shall
discern in him another kind of mystery, whose presence may eventually
console us for the loss of the first--the mystery of the mind of man.
This indeed is the framework of his poetry, and to speak of it
adequately would demand a wider scope than that of an essay; for how
much might be written of that strange and moving background, dark with
the profundity of passion and glowing with the beauty of the sublime,
wherefrom the great personages of his tragedies--Hermione and
Mithridate, Roxane and Agrippine, Athalie and Phedre--seem to emerge for
a moment towards us, whereon they breathe and suffer, and among whose
depths they vanish for ever from our sight! Look where we will, we shall
find among his pages the traces of an inward mystery and the obscure
infinities of the heart.

Nous avons su toujours nous aimer et nous taire.

The line is a summary of the romance and the anguish of tw