The artificial work of these men, however talented they may be, has no existence so far as art is concerned.

It is a theory, not poetry.
Having attempted, in all that has gone before, to point out what, in our opinion, was the origin of the drama, what its character is, and what its style should he, the time has come to descend from these exalted general considerations upon the art to the particular case which has led us to put them forth.

It remains for us to discourse to the reader of our work, of this _Cromwell_; and as it is not a subject in which we take pleasure, we will say very little about it in very few words.
Oliver Cromwell is one of those historical characters who are at once very famous and very little known.

Most of his biographers--and among them there are some who are themselves historical--have left that colossal figure incomplete.

It would seem that they dared not assemble all the characteristic features of that strange and gigantic prototype of the religious reformation, of the political revolution of England.
Almost all of them have confined themselves to reproducing on a larger scale the simple and ominous profile drawn by Bossuet from his Catholic and monarchical standpoint, from his episcopal pulpit supported by the throne of Louis XIV.
Like everybody else, the author of this book went no further than that.