The classical attitude
of the great age had produced splendid manifestations of thought and
form. However revolutionary it pleases us of 1918 to be, we cannot get
away from the perfection of the age of Bossuet and Racine and La
Fontaine and Fenelon. We come back to these solid and passionate
writers after each one of our romantic excursions, not entirely
satisfied with them, as our forefathers were, but with a sense of
their solid glory, with a confidence in their permanent value in
stimulating and supporting human effort. They may not give us all that
they were once presumed to give, but they offer us a firm basis; they
are always there for the imagination to start from. We must not
forget, of course, that in 1688 in Paris these classics of the hour
represented a great deal more than that; their prestige was
untarnished. They so completely outshone, in cultivated opinion, all
else that had been produced since the Christian era, that the Italy of
Dante, the Spain of Cervantes, and the England of Shakespeare did not
so much as exist. If the intelligence was not satisfied by Descartes,
well! there was nothing for it but to go back to Plato, and if Racine
did not sufficiently rouse the passions, they must be worked upon by
Sophocles.
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