Note 335 — Chapter IV · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF THE POETRY OF ART

Interest even in the great tragedies has come to be duty rather than inclination. In the Abbé Dubos’s day tragedy was still preferred; but he says that whereas he read Racine with keenest delight at thirty (“lorsqu’il etoit occupé des passions que ces pièces nous dépeignent”), at sixty it was Molière.