But the manifest fitness with which it takes its place in the
category of French sculpture shows the moral difference between it and
the work of M. Rodin. Morally speaking, it is mainly--not altogether,
but mainly--rhetorical, whereas M. Rodin's is distinctly poetic. It is
delightful rhetoric and it has many poetic strains--such as the charm of
penetrating distinction I have mentioned. But with the passions in their
simplest and last analysis he hardly occupies himself at all. Such a
work as "La Republique," the magnificent bas-relief of the Hotel de
Ville in Paris, is a triumph of allegorical rhetoric, very noble, not a
little moving, prodigious in its wealth of imaginative material,
composed from the centre and not arranged with artificial felicity, full
of suggestiveness, full of power, abounding in definite sculptural
qualities, both moral and technical; it again is Rubens-like in its
exuberance, but of firmer texture, more closely condensed. But anything
approaching the _kind_ of impressiveness of the Dante portal it
certainly does not essay.
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