a poetry which Pellisson long ago reproached with its want of
the true poetic stamp, with its _politesse sterile et rampante_, but
which nevertheless has reigned in France as absolutely as if it had
been the perfection of classical poetry indeed. The dissatisfaction is
natural; yet a lively and accomplished critic, M. Charles d'Hericault,
the editor of Clement Marot, goes too far when he says that 'the cloud
of glory playing round a classic is a mist as dangerous to the future
of a literature as it is intolerable for the purposes of history.' 'It
hinders,' he goes on, 'it hinders us from seeing more than one single
point, the culminating and exceptional point; the summary, fictitious
and arbitrary, of a thought and of a work. It substitutes a halo for a
physiognomy, it puts a statue where there was once a man, and hiding
from us all trace of the labour, the attempts, the weaknesses, the
failures, it claims not study but veneration; it does not show us how
the thing is done, it imposes upon us a model. Above all, for the
historian this creation of classic personages is inadmissible; for it
withdraws the poet from his time, from his proper life, it breaks
historical relationships, it blinds criticism by conventional
admiration, and renders the investigation of literary origins
unacceptable. It gives us a human personage no longer but a God seated
immovable amidst His perfect work, like Jupiter on Olympus; and hardly
will it be possible for the young student to whom such work is
exhibited at such a distance from him, to believe that it did not issue
ready made from that divine head.'

All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must plead for a
distinction. Everything depends on the reality of a poet's classic
character. If he is a dubious classic, let us sift him; if he is a
false classic, let us explode him. But if he is a real classic, if his
work belongs to the class of the very best (for this is the true and
right meaning of the word _classic, classical_), then the great thing
for us is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can, and to
appreciate the wide difference between it and all work which has not
the same high character. This is what is salutary, this is what is
formative; this is the great benefit to be got from the study of
poetry. Everything which interferes with it, which hinders it, is
injurious. True, we must read our classic with open eyes, and not with
eyes blinded with supe