portion as the poet soars to his highest. I ask again, In what
consists this distinction between the rare genius and the commonalty of
minds that exclaim, "He expresses what we feel, but never the whole of
what we feel"? Is it the mere power over language, a larger knowledge of
dictionaries, a finer ear for period and cadence, a more artistic craft
in casing our thoughts and sentiments in well-selected words? Is it true
what Buffon says, "that the style is the man"? Is it true what I am told
Goethe said, "Poetry is form"? I cannot believe this; and if you tell me
it is true, then I no longer pine to be a writer. But if it be not
true, explain to me how it is that the greatest genius is popular in
proportion as it makes itself akin to us by uttering in better words
than we employ that which was already within us, brings to light what
in our souls was latent, and does but correct, beautify, and publish the
correspondence which an ordinary reader carries on privately every day
between himself and his mind or his heart. If this superiority in the
genius be but style and form, I abandon my dream of being something else
than a singer of words by another to the music of another. But then,
what then? My knowledge of books and art is wonderfully small. What
little I do know I gather from very few books and from what I hear said
by the few worth listening to whom I happen to meet; and out of these,
in solitude and revery, not by conscious effort, I arrive at some
results which appear to my inexperience original. Perhaps, indeed,
they have the same kind of originality as the musical compositions of
amateurs who effect a cantata or a quartette made up of borrowed details
from great masters, and constituting a whole so original that no real
master would deign to own it. Oh, if I could get you to understand how
unsettled, how struggling my whole nature at this moment is! I wonder
what is the sensation of the chrysalis which has been a silkworm, when
it first feels the new wings stirring within its shell,--wings, alas!
they are but those of the humblest and shortest-lived sort of moth,
scarcely born into daylight before it dies. Could it reason, it might
regret its earlier life, and say, "Better be the silkworm than the
moth."

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

Have you known well any English people in the course of your life? I say
well, for you must have had acquaintance with many. But it seems to
me so difficult to know an Englishman