roke upon stroke,
swift, certain, irresistible. This is how Agrippine, in the fury of her
tottering ambition, bursts out to Burrhus, the tutor of her son:

Pretendez-vous longtemps me cacher l'empereur?
Ne le verrai-je plus qu'a titre d'importune?
Ai-je donc eleve si haut votre fortune
Pour mettre une barriere entre mon fils et moi?
Ne l'osez-vous laisser un moment sur sa foi?
Entre Seneque et vous disputez-vous la gloire
A qui m'effacera plus tot de sa memoire?
Vous l'ai-je confie pour en faire un ingrat,
Pour etre, sous son nom, les maitres de l'etat?
Certes, plus je medite, et moins je me figure
Que vous m'osiez compter pour votre creature;
Vous, dont j'ai pu laisser vieillir l'ambition
Dans les honneurs obscurs de quelque legion;
Et moi, qui sur le trone ai suivi mes ancetres,
Moi, fille, femme, soeur, et mere de vos maitres!

When we come upon a passage like this we know, so to speak, that the
hunt is up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. But Racine, on
other occasions, has another way of writing. He can be roundabout,
artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of
high-sounding words and elaborate inversions.

Jamais l'aimable soeur des cruels Pallantides
Trempa-t-elle aux complots de ses freres perfides.

That is Racine's way of saying that Aricie did not join in her brothers'
conspiracy. He will describe an incriminating letter as 'De sa trahison
ce gage trop sincere.' It is obvious that this kind of expression has
within it the germs of the 'noble' style of the eighteenth-century
tragedians, one of whom, finding himself obliged to mention a dog, got
out of the difficulty by referring to--'De la fidelite le respectable
appui.' This is the side of Racine's writing that puzzles and disgusts
Mr. Bailey. But there is a meaning in it, after all. Every art is based
upon a selection, and the art of Racine selected the things of the
spirit for the material of its work. The things of sense--physical
objects and details, and all the necessary but insignificant facts that
go to make up the machinery of existence--these must be kept out of the
picture at all hazards. To have called a spade a spade would have ruined
the whole effect; spades must never be mentioned, or, at the worst, they
must be dimly referred to as agricultural implements, so that the entire
attention may be fixed upon the central and dominating feat