particular when we read his novels. Dickens was once heard to say, on
a public occasion, that he owed his prodigious world-wide popularity to
this: that he was "so very human." The words will apply with equal
felicity to Daudet's success. He never troubles to conceal from his
readers that he is a man. When the critic of the future has to assign
him a place and to compare his productions with the writings of his
great contemporary and fellow-worker Emile Zola, it will occur to him
that Daudet never had the steady-going indomitable energy, the ox-like
patience, the large and comprehensive intellect which are so
characteristic in the master of Medan; that he recoiled from assuming,
like the author of 'Germinal' and 'Lourdes,' a bold and definite
position in the social and religious strife of our days; that he never
dreamt for a moment of taking the survey of a whole society and covering
the entire ground on which it stands with his books.

Such a task--the critic will say--would have been uncongenial to him.
The scientist is careful to explain everything and to omit nothing; he
aims at completeness. But Daudet is an artist, not a scientist. He is a
poet in the primitive sense of the word, or, as he styled himself in one
of his books, a "trouvere." He has creative power, but he has at the
same time his share of the minor gift of observation. He had to write
for a public of strongly realistic tendencies, who understood and
desired nothing better than the faithful, accurate, almost scientific
description of life. Daudet could supply the demand, but as he was not
born a realist, whatever social influences he had been subjected to, he
remained free from the faults and excesses of the school. He borrowed
from it all that was good and sound; he accepted realism as a practical
method, not as an ultimate result and a consummation. Again, he was
preserved from the danger of going down too deep and too low into the
unclean mysteries of modern humanity, not so much perhaps by moral
delicacy as by an artistic distaste for all that is repulsive and
unseemly. For those reasons, it would not be surprising if--when Death
has made him young again--Alphonse Daudet was destined to outlive and
outshine many who have enjoyed an equal or even greater celebrity during
this century. He will command an ever increasing circle of admirers and
friends, and generations yet unborn will grow warm in his sunshine.

[Illustration: signature of Augustin Fil