Employer toute une heure à me mirer dans l’eau,
Ouïr, comme en songeant, la course d’un ruisseau.
Ecrire dans un bois, m’interrompre, me taire,
Composer un quatrain sans songer à le faire.
[27] Caractères, ch. V.
[28] His psychology of the memory and imagination is still Aristotelian. Cf. E. Wallace, Aristotle’s Psychology, Intr., lxxxvi-cvii.
[29] An Essay upon Poetry (1682).
[30] The French Academy discriminates in its Sentiments sur le Cid between two types of probability, “ordinary” and “extraordinary.” Probability in general is more especially reserved for action. In the domain of action “ordinary” probability and decorum run very close together. It is, for example, both indecorous and improbable that Chimène in the Cid should marry her father’s murderer.
[31] In his Preface to Shakespeare.
[32] For a similar distinction in Aristotle see Eth. Nic., 1143 b.