Our author’s æsthetic starting-point renders simply impossible for him any fair appreciation of the great English poet. Corneille and Racine are his models in tragedy--Molière in comedy. To them and to their productions he subordinates Shakespeare at every step. Listen!
“If [a poet] is a logician, a moralist, an orator, as, for instance, one of the French great tragic poets (Racine), he will only represent noble manners; he will avoid low characters; he will have a horror of valets and the plebs; he will observe the greatest decorum in respect of the strongest outbreaks of passion; he will reject as scandalous every low or indecent word; he will give us reason, loftiness, good taste throughout; he will suppress the familiarity, childishness,” etc.... “_Shakespeare does just the contrary, because his genius is the exact opposite_” (vol. i. p. 311).
At page 326, we are told: “If, in fact, Shakespeare comes across a heroic character worthy of Corneille, a Roman, such as the mother of Coriolanus, he will explain by passion[8] what Corneille would have explained by heroism.” “_Reason_,” M. Taine further informs us, “_tells us that our manners should be measured_; this is why the manners which Shakespeare paints are not so.” Again, “Shakespeare paints us as we are; his heroes bow, ask people for news, speak of rain and fine weather,” etc. (p. 312). As M. Taine finds that Shakespeare’s heroes bow, we should like to know his opinion of the exordium of the grand rhetorical effort which Corneille puts in the mouth of the master of the world, Cæsar Augustus:
It cannot in reason be expected that the man who admires the stiff and frigid artificiality of French tragedy should reach any clear perception of Shakespeare. Nor can we expect the appreciator of Shakespeare to find any superiority in Corneille and Racine. A distinguished German scholar (Grimm) admirably expresses the general German and English estimate of these French poets in a letter he addressed to Michelet: “Must I tell you the opinion commonly expressed among us here in Germany? With the greatest possible amount of good-will, I have again and again opened Racine, Corneille, and Boileau, and I fully appreciate their superior talents; but I cannot read them for any length of time [_mais je ne puis en soutenir la lecture_], so strong upon me is the impression that a portion of the most profound sentiments awakened by poetry are a sealed book for these authors.”