'La vie n'épuise pas pour ses besoins toutes les ressources de
l'esprit et des sens qu'elle soutient.'

Les Divers Essais sur Léonard, p. 32

THE study of poetry, and of the true circumstances of its
production, affords us (as we have seen) an insight into the
essentials of our human condition and the destination of
our various efforts; and there is a parallel, indeed a closely related
knowledge to be derived from a similar study of science. For the
factor common to these two--what distinguishes science from
mere observation and poetry from the merely statistical writing
of most novels--is that both are, as Rabelais grandiloquently
called it, abstractors of quintessences; that the business of both
is to give a precious indication of human generality, and not to
'project' single experiences through the medium of our tempera-
ment or our reporting faculty. The least poetic features of the
novel are those which are closest to what Blake called the 'minute
particulars' of actual existence: