to stand side by side with the gigantic figures of the _Légende des Siècles._ These are all fantastic embroideries, metaphors, easel pictures, which sometimes do honour to the artistic capacity of the eulogists, but have no connexion whatever with the direct impression of Corneille's tragedies. Spinoza would have said that they have as much connexion with them as the dog of zoology with the dog-star. An obvious instance of this is the strange comparison of the character Polyeucte with the "Russian nihilist"--but it is little less evident in the other instances, because it is altogether arbitrary to interpret the Augustus of the _Cinna_ as though he were a Shakespearean Richard II or Henry IV and to attribute to him the psychology of what Nietzsche describes as the "generous man." Fancy for fancy, as well admit Napoleon's comment. He declared himself persuaded that Augustus was certainly not changed in a moment into a _"prince débonnaire,"_ into a poor prince exercising "_une si pauvre petite vertu_" as clemency, and that if he holds out to Cinna the right hand of friendship, he only does this to deceive him and in order to revenge himself more completely and more usefully at the propitious moment. It is an amusement like another to take up the personages of a play or of a story and refashion them in our own way by the free use of the fancy, or to weave a new mode of feeling out of the facts concerning certain cases and characters. Camilla can thus be quite well transformed even into a nymphomaniac; but unfortunately criticism insinuates itself into the folds of fancy and causes the fancier himself (Lemaître) to note that Camilla sacrifices her love to her duty _"délibérément,"_ that she certainly resembles a character of Racine, but "_non certes par la langue,_" and that she would show us what she really is "_si elle parlait un langage moins rude at moins compact._" As though the speech and the inflection were an accident and not the whole of a poetic creation, the beating of its heart! The demoniacal, the neurotic Camilla, it is true, speaks in this way: "Il vient, préparons-nous a montrer constamment Ce que doit une amante à la mort d'un amant." Here Voltaire's unconquerable good sense could not refrain from remarking: "'_Préparons-nous_' adds to the defect. We see a woman who is thinking how she can demonstrate her affliction and may be said to be rehearsing her lesson of grief."