The oak, colossus that it is, can produce and sustain nothing more than the mistletoe.
Let there be no misunderstanding: if some of our poets have succeeded in being great, even when copying, it is because, while forming themselves on the antique model, they have often listened to the voice of nature and to their own genius--it is because they have been themselves in some one respect.

Their branches became entangled in those of the near-by tree, but their roots were buried deep in the soil of art.

They were the ivy, not the mistletoe.

Then came imitators of the second rank, who, having neither roots in the earth, nor genius in their souls, had to confine themselves to imitation.

As Charles Nodier says: "After the school of Athens, the school of Alexandria." Then there was a deluge of mediocrity; then there came a swarm of those treatises on poetry, so annoying to true talent, so convenient for mediocrity.