It is notably oppressive in the matter of criticism.

For instance, you find living men who repeat to you this definition of taste let fall by Voltaire: "Taste in poetry is no different from what it is in women's clothes." Taste, then, is coquetry.

Remarkable words, which depict marvellously the painted, _mouchete_, powdered poetry of the eighteenth century--that literature in paniers, pompons and falbalas.

They give an admirable resume of an age with which the loftiest geniuses could not come in contact without becoming petty, in one respect or another; of an age when Montesquieu was able and apt to produce _Le Temple de Gnide_, Voltaire _Le Temple du Gout_, Jean-Jacques _Le Devin du Village_.
Taste is the common sense of genius.

This is what will soon be demonstrated by another school of criticism, powerful, outspoken, well-informed,--a school of the century which is beginning to put forth vigorous shoots under the dead and withered branches of the old school.