Note 98 — Chapter II · RHYTHM AS THE ESSENTIAL FACT OF POETRY

Œuvres Complètes de M. de Fénélon, Tome V., “Discours sur le poeme épique,” pp. 34 ff. There are many discourses on this theme of prose-poetry in the Mémoires of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. The Abbé Fraguier is dull but weighty for the test; Burette, a real scholar, is sensible on the same side (Mém. X. 212 f., in 1730). The younger Racine is very feeble; after reading his contradictory and vapid papers, one has Chaucer on one’s lips—“No more of this, for goddes dignité!”