Read it through once

The classic age of English literature is not representative of the total genius of the race: as I have intimated, we cannot say that that genius is wholly realised in any one period—with the result that we can still, by referring to one or another period of the past, envisage possibilities for the future. The English language is one which offers wide scope for legitimate divergencies of style; it seems to be such that no one age, and certainly no one writer, can establish a norm. The French language has seemed to be much more closely tethered to a normal style; yet, even in French, though the language appeared to have established itself, once for all, in the seventeenth century, there is an esprit gaulois, an element of richness present in Rabelais and in Villon, the awareness of which may qualify our judgement of the wholeness of Racine or Molière, for we may feel that it is not only unrepresented but unreconciled.