Their moving to and fro in the ideal gives the vertigo. Nothing is too lofty for them, and nothing too low. They pass from the pygmy to the Cyclops, from Polyphemus to the Myrmidons, from Queen Mab to Caliban, and from a love affair to a deluge, and from Saturn's ring to the doll of a little child. _Sinite parvulos venire._ One of the pupils of their eye is a telescope, the other a microscope. They investigate familiarly these two frightful opposite depths,--the infinitely great and the infinitely small. And one should not be angry with them; and one should not reproach them for all this! Indeed! Where should we go if such excesses were to be tolerated? What! No scruple in the choice of subjects, horrible or sad; and the idea, even if it be disquieting and formidable, always followed up to its extreme limits, without pity for their fellow-creatures! These poets only see their own aim; and in everything are immoderate in their way of doing things. What is Job?--a worm on an ulcer. What is the Divina Commedia?--a series of torments. What is the Iliad?--a collection of plagues and wounds; not an artery cut which is not complaisantly described. Go round for opinions on Homer: ask of Scaliger, Terrasson, Lamotte, what they think of him. The fourth of an ode to the shield of Achilles--what intemperance! He who does not know when to stop never knew how to write. These poets agitate, disturb, trouble, upset, overwhelm, make everything shiver, break things, occasionally, here and there. They can cause great misfortunes; it is terrible. Thus speak the Athenæa, the Sorbonnes, the sworn-in professors, the societies called learned, Saumaise, successor of Scaliger at the university of Leyden, and the _bourgeoisie_ after them,--all who represent in literature and art the great party of order. What can be more logical? The cough quarrels with the hurricane. Those who are poor in wit are joined by those who have too much wit. The septics lend assistance to the fools. Men of genius, with few exceptions, are proud and stem; that is in the very marrow of their bones. They have in company with them Juvenal, Agrippa d'Aubigné, and Milton; they are prone to harshness; they despise the _panem et circenses_; they seldom grow sociable, and they growl. People rail at them in a pleasant way. Well done.