The English, thanks to their sturdy Saxon origin, elevated, not depressed, by the Norman infusion, never were children.

The difference is striking, when you regard the representatives of both in their great men--whether writers or active citizens." "Yes," said De Montaigne, "in Milton and Cromwell there is nothing of the brilliant child.

I cannot say as much for Voltaire or Napoleon.
Even Richelieu, the manliest of our statesmen, had so much of the French infant in him as to fancy himself a _beau garcon_, a gallant, a wit, and a poet.

As for the Racine school of writers, they were not out of the leading-strings of imitation--cold copyists of a pseudo-classic, in which they saw the form, and never caught the spirit.

What so little Roman, Greek, Hebrew, as their Roman, Greek, and Hebrew dramas?
Your rude Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_--even his _Troilus and Cressida_--have the ancient spirit, precisely as they are imitations of nothing ancient.