But it is too much to dwell upon points of criticism which do not belong to my subject. I have touched upon them only slightly so that you may feel, _Messieurs_, notwithstanding the pretensions of three rival peoples, that the epic career remains none the less wholly open to the French nation. Some out-of-the-way paths have been traced here and there; but no poet since Vergil, has left the imprint of his steps upon the true path. The moment is perhaps at hand for gathering the palms that time has ripened. Must this century, great in prodigies, remain without an impassioned and enchanting voice to sing of them? Assuredly not. Whoever may be the poet whose genius raises itself to this noble task, I have wished from afar to lend him my feeble support; for I have often enough repeated, that talent alone will aspire to this in vain. Epopœia will only be the portion of the one who thoroughly understands the essence of poetry and who is able to apply to it a proper form. I have penetrated this essence as far as has been possible for me, and I have revealed my ideas, _Messieurs_, as clearly as the insufficiency of my means has permitted. I trust that their development may have appeared satisfactory and useful to you; I trust equally that the new form which I offer you merits your attention. I have applied it before you, to ideas, to intentions and to very different harmonies: it adapts itself here, for of itself it is nothing. Subject wholly to poetic essence, it receives therefrom all its lustre. If the ideas that it would render have grandeur and sublimity, it will easily become grand and sublime; but nothing would be poorer and more void, than that it should serve trivial thoughts or that it should conceal an absolute want of ideas. Do not imagine, _Messieurs_, that the absence of rhyme makes easy the French verse; it is precisely this absence which makes the great difficulty: for there is not then the means of writing without thinking. One can, with the aid of talent and practice, compose pleasing rhymed verse, without a great expenditure of ideas; the enormous quantity that is made today proves that it is not very difficult. The elegance of form supplies the sterility of substance. But this form becomes at last worn out; the rhymes are not inexhaustible; one word attracts another, forces it to unite with it, making understood the sounds that one has heard a thousand times, repeating the pictures which are everywhere; one repeats unceasingly the same things: the enjambment which gives so much grace to the Greek and Latin verse and without which real epic impulse cannot exist, is opposed to the rhyme and destroys it. You can see, _Messieurs_, that it constitutes one of the principal qualities of eumolpique verse; nothing here constrains the enthusiasm of the poet.