Saint-Simon says (I quote from memory): "There has been through the whole winter but one cry of admiration for M. de Cambray's book, when suddenly appeared M. de Meaux's book, which devoured it." If Fénélon's book had been Saint-Simon's, the book of Bossuet would not have devoured it. Shakespeare is not above Dante, Molière is not above Aristophanes, Calderon is not above Euripides, the Divine Comedy is not above Genesis, the Romancero is not above the Odyssey, Sirius is not above Arcturus. Sublimity is equality. The human mind is the infinite possible. The _chefs-d'œuvre_, immense worlds, are hatched within it unceasingly, and last forever. No pushing one against the other; no recoil. The occlusions, when there are any, are but apparent, and quickly cease. The expanse of the boundless admits all creations. Art, taken as art, and in itself, goes neither forward nor backward. The transformations of poetry are but the undulations of the Beautiful, useful to human movement. Human movement,--another side of the question that we certainly do not overlook, and that we shall attentively examine farther on. Art is not susceptible of intrinsic progress. From Phidias to Rembrandt there is onward movement, but not progress. The frescoes of the Sistine Chapel are absolutely nothing to the metopes of the Parthenon. Retrace your steps as much as you like, from the palace of Versailles to the castle of Heidelberg, from the castle of Heidelberg to Notre-Dame of Paris, from Notre-Dame of Paris to the Alhambra, from the Alhambra to St. Sophia, from St. Sophia to the Coliseum, from the Coliseum to the Propylæons, from the Propylæons to the Pyramids; you may recede into ages, you do not recede in art. The Pyramids and the Iliad stand on the fore plan. Masterpieces have a level, the same for all,--the absolute. Once the absolute reached, all is said. That cannot be excelled. The eye can bear but a certain quantity of dazzling light. Thence comes the assurance of poets. They lean on posterity with a lofty confidence. "Exegi monumentum," says Horace. And on that occasion he insults bronze. "Plaudite, cives," says Plautus. Corneille, at sixty-five years, wins the love (a tradition in the Escoubleau family) of the very young Marquise de Contades, by promising her to send her name down to posterity:-- "Chez cette race nouvelle, Où j'aurai quelque crédit, Vous ne passerez pour belle Qu'autant que je l'aurai dit." In the poet and in the artist there is the infinite. It is this ingredient, the infinite, which gives to this kind of genius the irreducible grandeur.