Boileau had created such an atmosphere about Molière and Racine; Sainte-Beuve had attempted, but unsuccessfully, to do the same for the poets of the romantic renaissance. His failure was due in part to a certain lack of impressiveness in his own personality, but still more to the notions of individual licence which lay at the very foundation of that movement. There is a touch of real pathos in his superb tribute to Boileau: Let us salute and acknowledge to-day the noble and mighty harmony of the _grand siècle_. Without Boileau, and without Louis XIV., who recognised Boileau as his Superintendent of Parnassus, what would have happened? Would even the most talented have produced in the same degree what forms their surest heritage of glory? Racine, I fear, would have made more plays like _Bérénice_; La Fontaine fewer _Fables_ and more _Contes_; Molière himself would have run to _Scapins_, and might not have attained to the austere eminence of _Le Misanthrope_. In a word, each of these fair geniuses would have abounded in his natural defects. Boileau, that is to say, the common sense of the poet-critic authorised and confirmed by that of a great king, constrained them and kept them, by the respect for his presence, to their better and graver tasks. And do you know what, in our days, has failed our poets, so strong at their beginning in native ability, so filled with promise and happy inspiration? There failed them a Boileau and an enlightened monarch, the twain supporting and consecrating each other. So it is these men of talent, seeing themselves in an age of anarchy and without discipline, have not hesitated to behave accordingly; they have behaved, to be perfectly frank, not like exalted geniuses, or even like men, but like schoolboys out of school. We have seen the result. Nobler tribute to a great predecessor has not often been uttered, and in contrast one remembers the outrage that has been poured on Boileau's name by the later poets of France and England. One recalls the scorn of the young Keats, in those days when he took licence upon himself to abuse the King's English as only a wilful genius can: Ill-fated, impious race! That blasphemed the bright Lyrist face to face, And did not know it,--no, they went about, Holding a poor decrepit standard out Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and in large The name of one Boileau!