Delacroix, therefore, was victorious, but not as Rubens was; and his ceiling of the Louvre, with the "Triumph of Apollo," one of his most remarkable works, strikes one almost as an allegory of his own life. What especially attracted and inspired the artist in this painting were the spasms and convulsions of the misshapen monsters which the god expels from the earth--the serpent twisting itself in movements of pain and fury, raising its head on high, hissing rage, and vomiting venom and blood. The god himself, who in the midst of a sea of light ascends into heaven in a golden chariot drawn by radiant steeds, shows in his sturdy limbs and attitude ready for defence, and in his wrathful face, no trace of the proud majesty and joyous splendour which Greece connected with the name of Apollo. He is a mortal who has fought and conquered, not a god who triumphs in tranquil power. He is Delacroix, not Rubens; a Titan, not an Olympian god. The artistic power in Delacroix could in no wise submit to the confinement imposed by the French spirit of his time. It was not possible for a single man, though endowed with the most splendid courage, to overthrow in a moment all the traditions of French art. Any one who knows the French must feel that David's Latin style could not so suddenly disappear out of their art, that it was not possible at a blow to banish all that had hitherto held sway and to replace it by its opposite. Ever since Poussin they had sought in Roman antiquity the formulæ of their art. The predilection which the Parisians have even to-day for the representation of Racine's and Corneille's tragedies, the admiration which even the most extreme Naturalists bestow upon Poussin and Lesueur, prove abundantly how deep Classicism is rooted in the flesh and blood of the French people. Brandes has remarked, very acutely, that, strictly speaking, even Romanticism was on French soil in many respects a Classical phenomenon, a product of French Classical rhetoric. "They never saw the dances of the elves, never heard the delicate harmony of their roundelays." In Victor Hugo, the great opponent of Corneille, Corneille himself was re-embodied. He too is a draughtsman, constructs his poems like architectural works, chisels the form, polishes the verse, and confines his colouring within powerfully conceived Michelangelesque outlines. [Illustration: J. A. D. INGRES. _L'Art._] Once the first eager impulse of the Romantic school had subsided, these old Classical tendencies showed themselves anew and with all the greater vehemence. Even Hugo's dramas, with their predilection for all that is exuberant and monstrous, with their overflowing lyricism and sonorous pathos, became in the long run wearisome. He, who had hitherto been the idol of the young generation, was now called the Pater Bombasticus of the literature of the world.