It would be great good luck if any remnants of either should survive in this cataclysm of false art, false style, false poetry.
This is what has caused the errors of several of our distinguished reformers.

Disgusted by the stiffness, the ostentation, the _pomposo_, of this alleged dramatic poetry, they have concluded that the elements of our poetic language were incompatible with the natural and the true.

The Alexandrine had wearied them so often, that they condemned it without giving it a hearing, so to speak, and decided, a little hastily, perhaps, that the drama should be written in prose.
They were mistaken.

If in fact the false is predominant in the style as well as in the action of certain French tragedies, it is not the verses that should be held responsible therefore, but the versifiers.
It was needful to condemn, not the form employed, but those who employed it: the workmen, not the tool.
To convince one's self how few obstacles the nature of our poetry places in the way of the free expression of all that is true, we should study our verse, not in Racine, perhaps, but often in Corneille and always in Moliere.

Racine, a divine poet, is elegiac, lyric, epic; Moliere is dramatic.