A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2

by George Saintsbury

  CHAPTER XI

  GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  [Sidenote: The contrast of Flaubert and Dumas _fils_.]

  In doing, as may at least be hoped, justice to M. Alexandre Dumas _fils_in the last chapter, one point was excepted--that though I could rankhim higher than I ever expected to do as a novelist, I could not exactlyrank his work in the highest range of literature. When you comparehim--not merely with those greatest in novel-work already discussed, butwith Musset or Vigny, with Nodier, or with Gerard de Nerval, not tomention others, there is something which is at once "weird and wanting,"as the admirable Captain Mayne Reid says at the beginning of _TheHeadless Horseman_, though one cannot say here, as there, "By Heavens!it is 'the head!'" There is head enough of a kind--a not at all unkemptor uncomely headpiece, very well filled with brains. But it has noaureole, as the other preferred persons cited in the last sentence andearlier have. This aureole may be larger or smaller, brighter or lessbright--a full circlet of unbroken or hardly broken splendour, or a sortof will-o'-the-wisp cluster of gleam and darkness. But wherever it isfound there is, in differing degrees, _literature_ of the highest class;of the major prose _gentes_; literature that can show itself withpoetry, under its own conditions and with its own possibilities, andfear no disqualification. Of this I am bound to say I do not find verymuch in this second division of our volume, and I find none in Dumas_fils_. But I find a great deal more than in any one else in GustaveFlaubert.

  [Sidenote: Some former dealings with him.]

  As I have said this, the reader may expect, magisterially, dreadingly,or perhaps in some very "gentle" cases hopefully, a full chapter onFlaubert. He shall have it. But the same cause, or group of causes,which has been at work before prevents this from being a very long one,and from containing very full accounts of his novels. One of the longestand most careful of those detailed surveys of forty years ago, to whichI have perhaps too often referred, was devoted to Flaubert, and wasslightly supplemented after his death. The earlier form had, though Idid not know it for a considerable time, not displeased himself--afortunate result not too common between author and critic[389]--andthere are, consequently, special reasons for leaving it unaltered andunrehashed. I shall, therefore, as with Balzac and Dumas, attempt ashorter but more general judgment, which--his work being so much lessvoluminous than theirs--may be perhaps even less extensive than in theother cases,[390] but which should leave no doubt as to the writer'sopinion of his "place in the story."

  [Sidenote: His style.]

  No small part of that high claim to purely literary rank which has beenmade for him rests, of course, upon his mere style--that famous and muchdebated "chase of the single word" which, especially since Mr. Patertook up the discussion of it, has been a "topic" of the most usitate inEngland as well as in France. When I left my chair and my library atEdinburgh I burnt more lecture-notes on the subject than would havefurnished material for an entire chapter here, and I have no intentionof raking my memory for their ashes. The battle on the one side with theanti-Unitarians who regard "monology" as a fond thing vainly invented,and on the other with Edmond de Goncourt's foolish and bumptious boastthat Flaubert's epithets were not so "personal" as his own and hisbrother's, would be for a different division of literary history. Butthere is something--a very important, though not a very longsomething--which must be said on the subject here. I have never foundmyself in the very slightest degree _gene_--as the _abonne_ was byGautier's and as others are by the styles of Mr. George Meredith and Mr.Henry James--by Flaubert's style. It has never put the very smallestimpediment, effected the most infinitesimal delay, in my comprehensionof his meaning, or my enjoyment of his art and of his story.[391] Whatis more, though it has intensified that enjoyment, it has never--as mayperhaps have been the case with some other great "stylists"--_diverted_,a little illegitimately, my attention and fruition from the storyitself. Style-craft and story-craft have married each other so perfectlythat they are one flesh for the lover of literature to rejoice in. Andif there be higher praise than this to be bestowed in the cases andcircumstances, I do not know what it is. It seems to belong inperfection--I do not deny it to others in lesser degree--to threewriters only in this volume--Gautier, Merimee, and Flaubert--though ifany one pleads hard for the addition of Maupassant, it will be seen whenwe come to him that I am not bound to a rigid _non possumus_; and thoughthere is still one living writer with whom, if he were not happilydisqualified by the fact of his living, I should not refuse to completethe Pentad. But let this suffice for the mere point of style in itspurer and therefore more controversial aspect. There may be a littlemore to say incidentally as we take the general survey under the oldheads of plot, etc. But before doing this we must--the books being sofew and so individually remarkable--say a little about each of them,though only a very little about one.

  [Sidenote: The books--_Madame Bovary_.]

  Flaubert, after fairly early promise, the fulfilment of which waspostponed, began late, and was a man of eight and thirty when his firstcomplete book, _Madame Bovary_, appeared in 1859--a year, with itspredecessor 1858, among the great years of literature, as judged by thebooks they produced. An absurd prosecution was got up against it by theauthorities of that most moral of _regimes_, the Second Empire, with theeven more absurd result of a "not guilty, but please don't do anythingof the kind again" judgment. This, however, belongs mostly--not (_v.inf._) entirely--to the biographical part of the matter, with which wehave little or nothing to do.[392] The book itself is, beyond allquestion, a great novel--if it had a greater subject[393] it would havebeen one of the greatest of novels. The immense influence of _ManonLescaut_ appears once more in it; but Emma Bovary, with far more thanall the bad points of Manon, has none of her good ones. Nor has she thehalf-redeeming greatness in evil of her somewhat younger sister Iza in_Affaire Clemenceau_. Except her physical beauty (of which we do nothear much), there is not one attractive point in her. She sins, not outof passion, but because she thinks a married woman ought to have lovers.She ruins her husband, not for any intrinsic and genuine love ofsplendour, luxury, or beauty, but because other women have things andshe ought to have them. She has a taste _for_ men, but none _in_ them.Yet her creator has made her absolutely "real," and, scum of womanhoodas she is, has actually evolved something very like tragedy out of herworthlessness, and has saved her from being detestable, because she issuch a very woman. He has, indeed, subjected her to a _kenosis_, anevisceration, exantlation--or, in plain English, "emptying out"--ofeverything positively good (she has the negative but necessary salve ofnot being absolutely ill-natured) that can be added to an abstractpretty girl; and no more. I have paid a little attention to the heroinesof the greater fiction; but she is the only one of all the _mille e tre_I know whom the author has managed to present as acceptable, without itsbeing in the least possible to fall in love with her, and at the sametime without its being necessary to detest her.

  This defiant and victorious naturalness--not "naturalism"--pervades thebook: from the other main characters--the luckless, brainless,tasteless, harmless husband; the vulgar Don Juans of lovers; theapothecary Homais[394]--one of the most original and firmly drawncharacters in fiction--from all, down to the merest "supers." It floodsthe scene-painting (admirable in itself) with a light of common day--nottoo cheerful, but absolutely real. It animates the conversation, thoughFlaubert is not exactly prodigal of this;[395] and it presides over theweaving of the story as such in a fashion very little, if at all,inferior to that which prevails in the very greatest masters of purestory-telling.

  [Sidenote: _Salammbo._]

  Hardly any one, speaking critically, could, I suppose, also speak thuspositively about Flaubert's second book, _Salammbo_--a romance ofCarthaginian history at the time of the Mutiny of the Mercenaries. EvenSainte-Beuve--no weak-stomached reader--was put off by its blotches ofblood and grime, and by the sort of ghastly gorgeousness which, if itdoes not "relieve" these, forms a kind of background to throw them up.It was violently attacked by clever carpers like M. d
e Pontmartin, byeccentrics of half-genius and whole prejudice like M. Barbeyd'Aurevilly, and by dull pedants like M. Saint-Rene Taillandier; whileit may be questioned whether, to the present day, its friends have notmostly belonged to that "Save-me-from-them" class which simply extolsthe "unpleasant" because other people find it unpleasant.[396] For myown part, I did not enjoy it much at the very first; but I felt itspower at once, and, as always happens in such cases when admiration doesnot come from the tainted source just glanced at, the enjoymentincreased, and the sense of power increased with it, the"unpleasantness," as a known thing, becoming merely "discountable" anddisinfected. The book can, of course, never rank with _Madame Bovary_,because it is a _tour de force_ of abnormality--a thing incompatiblewith that highest art which consists in the transformation andtranscendentalising of the ordinary. The leprosies, and thecrucifixions, and the sorceries, and the rest of it are ugly; but thenCarthage _was_ ugly, as far as we know anything about it.[397] Salammboherself is shadowy; but how could a Carthaginian girl be anything else?The point to consider is the way in which all this unfamiliar, uncanny,unpleasant stuff is _fused_ by sheer power of art into something whichhas at least the reality of a bad dream--which, as most people know, isa very real thing indeed while it lasts, and for a little time after. Itincreases the wonder--though to me it does not increase the interest--toknow that Flaubert took the most gigantic pains to make his task asdifficult as possible by acquiring and piecing together the availableknowledge on his subject. This process--the ostensible _sine qua non_ of"Realism" and "Naturalism"--will require further treatment. It is almostenough for the present to say that, though not a novelty, it had been,and for the matter of that has been, rarely a success. It has, as waspointed out before, spoilt most classical novels, reaching its acme ofboredom in the German work of Ebers and Dahn; and it has scarcely everbeen very successful, even in the hands of Charles Reade, who used it"with a difference." But it can hardly be said to have done _Salammbo_much harm, because the "fusing" process which is above referred to, andto which the imported elements are often so rebellious, is hereperfectly carried out. You may not like the colour and shape of theingot or cast; but there is nothing in it which has not duly felt andobeyed the fire of art.

  [Sidenote: _L'Education Sentimentale._]

  That there was no danger of Flaubert's merely palming off, in his novelwork, replicas with a few superficial differences, had now been shown.It was further established by his third and longest book, _L'EducationSentimentale_. This was not only, as the others had been, violentlyattacked, but was comparatively little read--indeed it is the only oneof his books, with the usual exception of _Bouvard et Pecuchet_, whichhas been called, by any rational creature, dull. I do not find it so;but I confess that I find its intrinsic interest, which to me is great,largely enhanced by its unpopularity--which supplies a most remarkablependant to that of _Jonathan Wild_, and is by no means devoid of valueas further illustrating the cause of the very limited popularity ofThackeray, and even of the rarity of whole-hearted enthusiasm for Swift.Satire is allowed to be a considerable, and sometimes held to be anattractive, branch of literature. But when you come to analyse theactual sources of the attraction, it is to be feared that you willgenerally find them to lie outside of the pure exposure of general humanweaknesses. A very large proportion of satire is personal, andpersonality is always popular. Satire is very often "naughty," and"naughtiness" is to a good many, _qua_ naughtiness, "nice." It lendsitself well to rhetoric; and there is no doubt, whatever superiorpersons may say of it, that rhetoric _does_ "persuade" a large portionof the human race. It is constantly associated with directly comictreatment, sometimes with something not unlike tragedy; and while thefirst, if of any merit, is sure, the second has a fair though morerestricted chance, of favourable reception. Try Aristophanes, Horace,Juvenal, Lucian, Martial; try the modern satirists of all kinds, and youwill always find these secondary sources of enjoyment present.

  There is hardly one of them--if one--to be found in _L'EducationSentimentale_. It is simply a panorama of human folly, frailty,feebleness, and failure--never permitted to rise to any great heights orto sink to any infernal depths, but always maintained at a probablehuman level. We start with Frederic Moreau as he leaves school at thecorrect age of eighteen. I am not sure at what actual age we leave him,though it is at some point or other of middle life, the most active partof the book filling about a decade. But "vanity is the end of all hisways," and vanity has been the beginning and middle of them--a perfectlyquiet and everyday kind of vanity, but vain from centre tocircumference and entire surface. He (one cannot exactly say"tries," but) is brought into the possibility of trying loveof various kinds--illegitimate-romantic, legitimate-not-unromantic,illegitimate-professional but not disagreeable, illegitimate-conventional.Nothing ever "comes off" in a really satisfactory fashion. He is"exposed" (in the photographic-plate sense) to all, or nearly all, theinfluences of a young man's life in Paris--law, literature, art,insufficient means, quite sufficient means, society, politics--includingthe Revolution of 1848--enchantments, disenchantments--_tout ce qu'ilfaut pour vivre_--to alter a little that stock expression for "writingmaterials" which is so common in French. But he never can get any real"life" out of any of these things. He is neither a fool, nor a cad, noranything discreditable or disagreeable. He is "only an or'nary person,"to reach the rhythm of the original by adopting a slang form in notquite the slang sense. And perhaps it is not unnatural that otherordinary persons should find him too faithful to their type to bewelcome. In this respect at least I may claim not to be ordinary. Onegoes down so many empty wells, or wells with mere rubbish at the bottomof them, that to find Truth at last is to be happy with her (withoutprejudice to the convenience of another well or two here and there, withan agreeable Falsehood waiting for one). I do not know that _L'EducationSentimentale_ is a book to be read very often; one has the substance inone's own experience, and in the contemplation of other people's, tooreadily at hand for that to be necessary or perhaps desirable. But agreat work of art which is also a great record of nature is not toocommon--and this is what it is.

  [Sidenote: _La Tentation de Saint-Antoine_.]

  Yet, as has been remarked before, nothing shows Flaubert's greatnessbetter than his absolute freedom from the "rut." Even in carrying outthe general "Vanity" idea he has no monotony. The book which followed_L'Education_ had been preluded, twenty years earlier, by some fragmentsin _L'Artiste_, a periodical edited by Gautier. But _La Tentation deSaint-Antoine_, when it finally appeared, far surpassed the promise ofthese specimens. It is my own favourite among its author's books; and itis one of those which you can read merely for enjoyment or take as asubject of study, just as you please--if you are wise you will give"five in five score" of your attentions to the latter occupation and theother ninety-five to the former. The people who had made up their mindsto take Flaubert as a sort of Devil's Gigadibs--a "Swiss, not ofHeaven," but of the other place, hiring himself out to war on all thingsgood--called it "an attack on the idea of God"! As it, like its smallerand later counterpart _Saint Julien l'Hospitalier_, ends in amanifestation of Christ, which would do honour to the most orthodox ofSaints' Lives, the "attack" seems to be a curious kind of offensiveoperation.

  As a matter of fact, the book takes its vaguely familiar subject, and_embroiders_ that subject with a fresh collection of details fromuntiring research. The nearest approach to an actual person, besides thetormented Saint himself, is the Evil One, not at first _in propriapersona_, but under the form of the Saint's disciple Hilarion, who atfirst acts as usher to the various elements of the Temptation-Pageant,and at last reveals himself by treacherous suggestions of unbelief. Thepageant itself is of wonderful variety. After a vividly drawn sketch ofthe hermitage in the Thebaid, the drama starts with the more vulgar anddirect incitements to the coarser Deadly Sins and others--Gluttony,Avarice, Ambition, Luxury. Then Hilarion appears and starts theologicaldiscussion, whence arises a new series of actual visions--the excessesof the heretics, the degrad
ation of martyrdom itself, the Easterntheosophies, the monstrous cults of Paganism. After this, Hilarion triesa sort of Modernism, contrasting the contradictions and absurdities ofactual religions with a more and more atheistic Pantheism. This failing,the Temptation reverts to the moral forms, Death and Vice contending forAnthony and bidding against each other. The next shift of thekaleidoscope is to semi-philosophical fantasies--the Sphinx, theChimaera, basilisks, unicorns, microscopic mysteries. The Saint isnearly bewildered into blasphemy; but at last the night wanes, the sunrises, and the face of Christ beams from it. The Temptation isended.[398]

  The magnificence of the style, in which the sweep of thisdream-procession over the stage is conveyed to the reader, is probablythe first thing that will strike him; and certainly it never palls. But,if not at once, pretty soon, any really critical mind must perceivesomething different from, and much rarer than, mere style. It is theextraordinary power--the exactness, finish, and freedom from any excessor waste labour, of the narrative, in reproducing dream-quality. A verylarge proportion--and there is nothing surprising in the fact--of thebest pieces of ornate prose in French, as well as in English, are busiedwith dreams; but the writers have not invariably remembered one of themost singular--and even, when considered from some points of view,disquieting--features of a dream,--that you are never, while dreaming,in the least surprised at what happens. Flaubert makes no mistake as tothis matter. The real realism which had enabled him to re-create themost sordid details of _Madame Bovary_, the half-historic grime andgorgeousness mixed of _Salammbo_, and the quintessentially ordinary lifeof _L'Education_, came mightily to his assistance in this his Vision ofthe Desert. You see and hear its external details as Anthony saw andheard them: you almost feel its internal influence as if Hilarion hadbeen--as if he _was_--at your side.

  [Sidenote: _Trois Contes._]

  The _Trois Contes_ which followed, and which practically completed(except for letters) Flaubert's finished work in literature,[399] haveone of those half-extrinsic interests which, once more, it is the dutyof the historian to mention. They show that although, as has been said,Flaubert suffered from no monotony of faculty, the range of hisfaculty--or rather the range of the subjects to which he chose to applyit--was not extremely wide. Of the twin stories, _Un Coeur Simple_ is,though so unlike in particular, alike in general _ordinariness_ to_Madame Bovary_ and _L'Education Sentimentale_. The unlikeness inparticular is very striking, and shows that peculiar _victoriousness_ inaccomplishing what he attempted which is so characteristic of Flaubert.It is the history-no-history of a Norman peasant woman, large if simpleof heart, simple and not large of brain, a born drudge and prey tounscrupulous people who come in contact with her, and almost in hersingle person uniting the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. Iadmire it now, without even the touch of rather youthful impatiencewhich used, when I read it first, to temper my admiration. It is not a_berquinade_, because a _berquinade_ is never quite real. _Un CoeurSimple_ shares Flaubert's Realism as marvellously as any equal number ofpages of either of the books to which I have compared it. But there_is_, perhaps, something provocative--something almost placidlyinsolent--about the way in which the author says, "Now, I will give younothing of the ordinary baits for admiration, and yet, were you theDevil himself, you shall admire me." And one does--in youth ratherreluctantly--not so in age.

  _Herodias_ groups itself in the same general fashion, but even moredefinitely in particulars, with _Salammbo_--of which, indeed, it is asort of miniature replica cunningly differentiated. Anybody can see howeasily the story of the human witchcraft of Salome, and the decollationof the Saint, and the mixture of terror and gorgeousness in the desertfortress, parallel the Carthaginian story. But I do not know whether itwas deliberate or unconscious repetition that made Flaubert give ussomething like a duplicate of the suffete Hanno in Vitellius. There isno lack of the old power, and the shortness of the story is at leastpartly an advantage. But perhaps the Devil's Advocate, borrowing from,but reversing, Hugo on Baudelaire, might say, "Ce frisson _n'est pas_nouveau."

  The third story, _Saint Julien l'Hospitalier_, has always seemed to meas near perfection in its own kind as anything I know in literature, andone of the best examples, if not the very best example, of thatadaptableness of the _Acta Sanctorum_ to modern rehandling of the rightkind, which was noticed at the beginning of this _History_.[400] Theexcessive devotion of the not yet sainted Julian to sport; the crime andthe dooms that follow it; the double parricide which he commits underthe false impression that his wife has been unfaithful to him; hisself-imposed penance of ferrying, somewhat like Saint Christopher, andthe trial--a harder one than that good giant bore, for Julian has, notmerely to carry over but, to welcome, at board _and_ bed, a leper--andthe Transfiguration and Assumption that conclude the story, give some ofthe best subjects--though there are endless others nearly or quite asgood--in Hagiology. And Flaubert has risen to them in the miraculousmanner in which he could rise, retaining the strangeness, infusing thereality, and investing the whole with the beauty, deserved and required.There is not a weak place in the whole story; but the strongest placesare, as they should be, the massacre of hart, hind, and fawn whichbrings on the curse; the ghastly procession of the beasts Julian hasslain or _not_ slain (for he has met with singular ill-luck); the final"Translation."[401] Nowhere is Flaubert's power of description greater;nowhere, too, is that other power noticed--the removal of all temptationto say "Very pretty, but rather _added_ ornament"--more triumphantlydisplayed.

  [Sidenote: _Bouvard et Pecuchet._]

  Little need be said of the posthumous torso and failure,[402] _Bouvardet Pecuchet_. Nothing ever showed the wisdom of the proverb abouthalf-done work, children and fools, better; and, alas! there issomething of the child in all of us, and something of the fool in toomany. It was to be a sort of extended and varied _Education_, not_Sentimentale_. Two men of retired leisure and sufficient income resolveto spend the rest of their lives "in books and work and healthful play,"and almost as many other recreative occupations (including "teaching theyoung idea how to shoot") as they or you can think of. But the workgenerally fails, the books bore and disappoint them, the young ideasshoot in the most "divers and disgusting" ways, and the play turns outto be by no means healthful. Part of it is in scenario merely; andFlaubert was wont to alter so much, that one cannot be sure even of theother and more finished part. Perhaps it was too large and too dreary atheme, unsupported by any real novel quality, to acquire even thatinterest which _L'Education Sentimentale_ has for some. But the moreexcellent way is to atone for the mistake of his literary executors, innot burning all of it except the monumental phrase quoted above,

  Ainsi tout leur a craque dans la main,

  by simply remembering this--which is the initial and conclusion of thewhole matter--and letting the rest pass.

  There is one slight danger in the estimate of Flaubert to which, thoughI actually pointed it out, I think I may have succumbed a little when Ifirst wrote about him. He is so great a master of literature that onemay be led to concentrate attention on this; and if not to neglect, toregard somewhat inadequately, his greatness as a novelist. Here at anyrate such failure would be petty, if not even high, treason.

  [Sidenote: General considerations.]

  One may look at his performance in the novel from two points ofview--that of "judging by the result" simply and in the fashionof a summing-up; and that of bringing him under certainticket-qualifications, and enquiring whether they are justly applicableto him or not. I need hardly tell any one who has done me the honour toread either this or any other critical work of mine, which of these twoI think the more excellent way; but the less excellent in thisparticular instance, may demand a little following.

  Was Flaubert a Romantic? Was he a Realist? Was he a Naturalist? This ishow the enquiries come in chronological order. But for convenience ofdiscussion the first should be postponed to the others.

  "Realist," like a good many other tickets, is printed on both sides, andthe answer to
our question will be by no means the same whichever sidebe looked at. That Flaubert was a Realist "in the best sense of theterm" has been again and again affirmed in the brief reviews of hisnovels given above. He cannot be unreal--the "convincingness" of hismost sordid as of his most splendid passages; of his most fantastic_diableries_ as of his most everyday studies of society; is unsurpassed.It is, in fact, his chief characteristic. But this very fact that it_pervades_--that it is as conspicuous in the _Tentation_ and in _SaintJulien l'Hospitalier_ as in _Madame Bovary_ and the _Education_--at oncethrows up a formidable, I think an impregnable, line of defence againstthose who would claim him for "Realism" of the other kind--the cult ofthe ugly, because, being ugly, it is more real than the beautiful. Hehas no fear of ugliness, but he cultivates the ugly because it is thereal, not the real because it is the ugly. Being to a great extent asatirist and (despite his personal boyishness) saturnine rather thanjovial in temperament, there is a good deal in him that is _not_beautiful. But he can escape into beauty whenever he chooses, and inthese escapes he is always at his best.

  This fact, while leaving him a Realist of the nobler type, at once shutshim off from community with his friends Zola and the Goncourts, andsaves him from any stain of the "sable streams." But besides this--orrather looking at the same thing from a slightly different point ofview--there is something which not only permits but demands the mostemphatic of "Noes!" to the question, "Was Flaubert a Naturalist?"

  This something is itself the equally emphatic "Yes!" which must bereturned to the third and postponed question, "Was he a Romantic?" Thereare many strange things in the History of Literature: its strangeness,as in other cases, is one of its greatest charms. But there have beenfew stranger than the obstinacy and almost passion with which theRomanticism of Heine, of Thackeray, and of Flaubert has been denied.Again and again it has been pointed out that "to laugh at what you love"is not only permissible, but a sign of the love itself. Moreover,Flaubert does not even laugh as the great Jew and the great Englishmandid. He only represents the failures and the disappointments and thefalse dawns of Love itself, while in other respects he is _romantique atous crins_. Compare _Le Reve_ with _La Tentation_ or _Saint-Julienl'Hospitalier_; compare _Madame Bovary_ with _Germinie Lacerteux_; evencompare _L'Education Sentimentale_, that voyage to the Cythera ofRomance which never reaches its goal, with _Sapho_ and _L'Evangeliste_,and you will see the difference. It is of course to a certain extent "LeCoucher du Soleil Romantique" which lights up Flaubert's work, but the_crapauds imprevus_ and the _froids limacons_ of Baudelaire's epitaphhave not yet appeared, and the hues of the sunset itself are stillgorgeous in parts of the sky.

  Of Flaubert's famous doctrine of "the single word" perhaps a little moreshould, after all, be said. The results are so good, and the processesby which they are attained get in the way of the reader so little, thatit is difficult to quarrel with the doctrine itself. But it was perhaps,after all, something of a superstition, and the almost "fabuloustorments" which it occasioned to its upholder and practitioner seem tohave been somewhat Fakirish. We need not grudge the five years spentover _Salammbo_; the seven over _L'Education_; the earlier and, I think,less definitely known gestation of _Madame Bovary_; and that portion ofthe twenty which, producing these also, filled out those fragments of_La Tentation_ that the July Monarchy had actually seen. Perhaps with_Bouvard et Pecuchet_ he got into a blind alley, out of which suchlabour was never like to get him, and in which it was rather likely toconfine him. But if the excess of the preparation had been devoted tothe completion of, say, only half a dozen of such _Contes_ as those weactually have, it would have been joyful.

  Yet this is idle pining, and the goods which the gods provided in thisinstance are such as ought rather to make us truly thankful. Flaubertwas, as has been said, a Romantic, but he was born late enough to avoidthe extravagances and the childishnesses of _mil-huit-cent-trente_ whileretaining its inspiration, its _diable au corps_, its priceless recoveryof inheritances from history. Nor, though he subjected all these to asevere criticism of a certain kind, did he ever let this make him (assomething of the same sort made his pretty near contemporary, MatthewArnold, in England) inclined to blaspheme.[403] He did not, like hisother contemporary and peer in greatness of their particular country andgeneration, Baudelaire, play unwise tricks with his powers and hislife.[404] He was fortunately relieved from the necessity ofjourney-work--marvellously performed, but still journey-work--which hadbeset Gautier and never let go of him.[405]

  And he utilised these gifts and advantages as few others have done inthe service of the novel. One thing may be brought against him--I thinkone only. You read--at least I read--his books with intense interest andenjoyment, but though you may recognise the truth and humanity of thecharacters; though you may appreciate the skill with which they are setto work; though you may even, to a certain extent, sympathise with them,you never--at least I never--feel that intense interest in them, aspersons, which one feels in those of most of the greatest novelists. Youcan even feel yourself in them--a rare and great thing--you can _be_Saint Anthony, and feel an unpleasant suspicion as if you had sometimesbeen Frederic Moreau. But this is a different thing (though it is agreat triumph for the author) from the construction for you of loves,friends, enemies even--in addition to those who surround you in theactual world.

  Except this defect--which is in the proper, not the vulgar sense adefect--that is to say, not something bad which is present, but onlysomething good which is absent--I hardly know anything wrong inFlaubert. He is to my mind almost[406] incomparably the greatestnovelist of France specially belonging to the second half of thenineteenth century, and I do not think that Europe at large has ever hada greater since the death of Thackeray.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [389] He _might_ have said--to make a Thackerayan translation of whatwas actually said later of an offering of roses rashly made to someFrench men of letters at their hotel in London: "Who the devil is this?Let them flank him his vegetables to the gate!" But what he did say, Ibelieve, though he did not know or mention my name, was that "a blondeson of Albion" had ventured something _gigantesque_ on him. And_gigantesque_ had, if I do not again fondly err, sometimes if not alwaysits "milder shade" of meaning in Flaubert's energetic mouth.

  [390] As in those cases, and perhaps even more than in most, I havetaken pains to make the new criticism as little of a replica of the oldas possible.

  [391] Possibly this is exactly what M. de Goncourt meant.

  [392] There is some scandal and infinite gossip about Flaubert, with allof which I was once obliged to be acquainted, but which I have done thebest that a rather strong memory will allow me to forget. I shall onlysay that his early friend and quasi-biographer, Maxime du Camp, seems tome to have had nearly as hard measure dealt out to him as Mr. Froude inthe matter of Mr. Carlyle. Both were indiscreet; I do not think eitherwas malevolent or treacherous.

  [393] For in novels, to a greater degree than in poems, greatness _does_depend on the subject.

  [394] Somebody has, I believe, suggested that if Emma had marriedHomais, all would have been well. If this means that he would havepromptly and comfortably poisoned her, for which he had professionalfacilities, there might be something in it. Otherwise, hardly.

  [395] His forte is in single utterances, such as the unmatched "J'ai unamant!" to which Emma gives vent after her first lapse (and which"speaks" her and her fate, and the book in ten letters, two spaces, andan apostrophe), or as the "par ce qu'elle avait touche au manteau deTanit" of _Salammbo_; and the "Ainsi tout leur a craque dans la main" ofthe unfinished summary of _Bouvard et Pecuchet_.

  [396] It is known that Flaubert, perhaps out of rather boyish pique(there was much boyishness in him), had originally made its offenceranker still. One of the most curious literary absurdities I have everseen--the absurd almost drowning the disgusting in it--was an Americanattempt in verse to fill up Flaubert's _lacuna_ and "go one better."

  [397] The old foreign comparison with London was merely
rhetorical; butthere really would seem to have been some resemblance between Carthageand modern Berlin, even in those very points which Flaubert (takingadvice) left out.

  [398] There is a recent and exceptionally good translation of the book.

  [399] The Letters are almost, if not quite, of first-rate quality. Theplay, _Le Candidat_, is of no merit.

  [400] Vol. I. p. 4.

  [401] All these will be found Englished in the Essay referred to.

  [402] Too much must not be read into the word "failure": indeed the nextsentence should guard against this. I know excellent critics who,declining altogether to consider the book as a novel, regard it as asort of satire and _satura_, Aristophanic, Jonsonian or other, in gistand form, and by no means a failure as such. But as such it would haveno, or very small, place here. I think myself that it is, from thatpoint of view, nearer to Burton than to any one else: and I thinkfurther that it might have been made into a success of this kind or evenof the novel sort itself. But _as it stands with the sketch of acompletion_, I do not think that Flaubert's alchemy had yet achieved orapproached projection.

  [403] I have sometimes wished that Mr. Arnold had written a novel. Butperhaps _Volupte_ frightened him.

  [404] There is controversy on this point, and Baudelaire's indulgence inartificial and perilous Paradises may have been exaggerated. That itexisted to some extent is, I think, hardly doubtful.

  [405] I know few things of the kind more pathetic than Theo's quietlament over the "artistic completeness" of his ill-luck in the collapseof the Second Empire just when, with Sainte-Beuve dead and Merimeedying, he was its only man of letters of the first rank left, and mighthave had some relief from collar-work. But it must be remembered thatthough he had ground at the mill with slaves, he had never been one ofthem, and perhaps this would always have prevented his promotion.

  [406] Reserving Maupassant under the "almost."