Note 129 — Chapter II · THE MORALISTIC GROUP

“Yet for the real student, these secondary writers [e.g. Marmontel] ... have, as they had for Sainte-Beuve, a peculiar interest. We see the movement, the drift, the line, in them more clearly than in their betters, precisely because it is less mingled with and distorted by any intense personal idiosyncrasy. They are not distractingly great nor distracted by their own greatness; they are clear if limited, comprehensible from beginning to end. The man of genius, being never merely, is never quite, of his time, the man of talent is.” Professor Saintsbury’s Introduction to Marmontel’s Moral Tales.... London, 1895, p. xiv.