HOW great was Racine? What was his achieve-
ment as an artist? The temptation which lies
across every assessment of his work is to consider
him primarily as a poet and to base his pre-
eminence on that aspect of his talent alone. That Racine
was a great poet is now hardly disputed; that he was a great
poet because of, rather than in spite of, his limitations, is
widely recognized; that he was of necessity a unique poet
is less often pointed out.

There are no disciples of Racine, no competent minor
poets writing pleasantly in the Racinian vein. His imitators,
who supplied a large proportion of the French tragedies of
the eighteenth century, are without exception flat and arti-
ficial. Between the master's success and their failure the
contrast is complete: it is all or nothing. In the same way,
Racine has proved untranslatable. He comes limping into
English in so pitiable a plight that it is kinder not to
recognize him. Yet men of some discernment have attemp-
ted the task because, it must be supposed, they admired
the qualities of the original and wanted to display them to
their compatriots. One and all--from Philips and Thomas
Brereton to R. B. Boswell and Lacy Lockert--have failed to
produce a rendering which evokes the poetry of Racine or
which has much independent merit as English verse.
While the task of translation has been competently per-
formed for such far more 'difficult' authors as Villon,
Rabelais, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé, the English student must
accept the fact that Racine can only be read satisfactorily

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