There is, in Péguy at his best, something not so much antique as unchanged since ancient times, like the pronunciation of certain peasants; and this something makes us understand how there once was in France a people of artists, the unknown, unnamed, immortal builders of the great Gothic cathedrals; we almost believe there might still be such in reading his verse. There is also in Péguy at his best a peculiar humanity which makes me often remember those lines of Mrs Browning concerning her favourite Greek poet:-- ‘Our Euripides the Human With his droppings of warm tears,’ and an imagination so naturally and naïvely religious that it would enchant me but for its familiarity. No Baptist minister over his tea and muffins, is on more intimate terms with the Eternal. The interminable poem of _Eve_ (as long--but not as beautiful! as the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ united) fulminates against the Intellectuals of France in an outburst of rhetoric which too often degenerates into mere violence. Péguy is more really poetic in his prose. The description of rural life on the banks of the Loire, in _Victor-Marie_, _Comte Hugo_; the death of Bernard Lazare in _Notre Jeunesse_; above all, the long but the inspired elevations and prayers of Jeannette--especially the conversation with her little fourteen-year-old friend Hanorette (which we keep in our remembrance along with the dialogue of Antigone and Ismene, and with the scene in the Gospel of Martha and Mary, as a perfect characterisation of the two great types of Charity and Piety)--are to our thinking far more interpretative of Péguy’s true genius than the mighty jog-trot of his later muse. Still there is a power and an eloquence in that. So far as the meaning goes, all his voluminous outpourings have the same. There is but one thing needful, and that is to be a hero or a saint. Preferably, perhaps, a hero! ‘Ainsi Dieu ne sait pas, ainsi le divin maître Ne sait quel retenir et placer hors du lieu, Et pour lequel tenir, et s’il faut vraiment mettre L’amour de la patrie après l’amour de Dieu.’ The saints that Péguy sang were patriot saints: Geneviève, who preserved the city of Paris from the Huns of Attila; Jeanne, who hunted the English out of France. Of all glories, of all honours, that dearest to this poet was military glory and national honour-- ‘Il n’y a rien à faire à cela, et il n’y a rien à dire. Le soldat mesure la quantité de terre où on parle une langue, où règnent des mœurs, un esprit, une âme, un culte, une race. Le soldat mesure la quantité de terre où une âme peut respirer. Le soldat mesure la quantité de terre où un peuple ne meurt pas.