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When we come upon a passage like this we know, so to speak, that the hunt is up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. But Racine, on other occasions, has another way of writing. He can be roundabout, artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of high-sounding words and elaborate inversions.

That is Racine's way of saying that Aricie did not join in her brothers' conspiracy. He will describe an incriminating let- ter as "De sa trahison ce gage trop sincère." It is obvious that this kind of expression has within it the germs of the "noble " style of the eighteenth century tragedians, one of whom, finding himself obliged to mention a dog, got out of the difficulty, by referring to-"De la fidélité le respectable appui." This is the side of Racine's writing that puzzles and disgusts Mr. Bailey. But there is a meaning in it, after all. Every art is based upon a selection, and the art of Racine selected the things of the spirit for the material of its work. The things of sense-physical objects and details, and all the necessary but insignificant facts that go to make up the machinery of existence-these must be kept out of the pic- ture at all hazards. To have called a spade a spade would have ruined the whole effect; spades must never be men- tioned, or, at the worst, they must be dimly referred to as agricultural implements, so that the entire attention may be fixed upon the central and dominating features of the com-