Then the black bile warms itself, flies up, inflames the brain, and the poet is poetically furious. But in another memorable passage, “being strong in black bile will not necessarily make you a poet.”[334] [Alas! it will not.] There must be discipline, &c. In short, the book is a precious one. ----- Footnote 332: _De Poemate Epico._ Paris, 4to, 1652. Footnote 333: _Aliquantum furoris aspergi non negaverim._—_De Poem. Ep._, p. 269. Footnote 334: _Neque, tamen si quis atra polleat bile ... continuo is in poetis censendus est, nisi accesserit disciplina_, &c.—Ibid., _post_. ----- There are few critics—not such by profession, and not precisely of the very highest rank—who, from the very first, and with an unbroken record, have enjoyed such a reputation as has been constantly maintained by Saint-Evremond.[335] [Sidenote: _Saint-Evremond._] Nor is there, perhaps, a single one who has better deserved this constancy on the part of the great inconstants, Time and Fortune. He was commended to his own time scarcely more by birth and station as a fine gentleman and soldier, or by his singular political and personal history, than by the admirable quality of his writing; to the eighteenth century by his touches of scepticism and libertinage; to the Romantic revival by his championship of Corneille against Racine, and by the _frondeur_ spirit which made him resist the tyranny of the classical creed. But it is also true that he has purely critical qualities of a very uncommon kind. It is perhaps a testimony to that spice of universal in him which has been noticed, that the particular stamp to be put on these qualities—the particular class to which Saint-Evremond is to be referred—is not quite matter of agreement among those who fully agree as to his general merits. To M. Bourgoin, for instance, his critical spirit seems to be nearer to that of Boileau and the critics of rule than to that of Fénelon, or even La Bruyère, and the critics of impression and _sens propre_. To me the approximation seems to be in the other direction. ----- Footnote 335: There is no absolutely complete and authentic edition—that of Desmaiseaux (frequently reprinted in the fifty years after the author’s death, from 3 vols. 4to at London, 1705, to 12 vols. 12mo at Paris, 1753) was at least authorised. The critical matter will be found well arranged in the 2nd vol. of Giraud’s _Œuvres Mêlées de Saint-E._ (3 vols., Paris, 1865). I may refer to an essay of mine, first published in the _Fortnightly Review_ for July 1879, and reprinted in _Miscellaneous Essays_ (2nd ed., London, 1895). -----