It begins attractively, but
the attraction wanes, and by the end I was very tired of it. Why?
Because the noise of a mill-wheel sends one to sleep, and these pages
without paragraphs, these interminable chapters, and this incessant,
dialectical clatter, affect me as though I were listening to a
word-mill. I end by yawning like any simple non-philosophical mortal in
the face of all this heaviness and pedantry. Erudition, and even
thought, are not everything. An occasional touch of esprit, a little
sharpness of phrase, a little vivacity, imagination, and grace, would
spoil neither. Do these pedantic books leave a single image or formula,
a single new or striking fact behind them in the memory, when one puts
them down? No; nothing but confusion and fatigue. Oh for clearness,
terseness, brevity! Diderot, Voltaire, and even Galiani!
A short article by Sainte-Beuve, Scherer, Renan, Victor Cherbuliez,
gives one more pleasure, and makes one think and reflect more, than a
thousand of these heavy German pages, stuffed to the brim, and showing
rather the work itself than its results. The Germans gather fuel for the
pile: it is the French who kindle it. For heaven's sake, spare me your
lucubrations; give me facts or ideas. Keep your vats, your must, your
dregs, in the background.
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