to meet in that long corridor of time leading to eternity, the
walls lined with the world's masterpieces of portraiture? I can answer
for myself that no Shakespearian lovely dame or Balzacian demon in
petticoats would ever be taken off the wall by me. They are either too
remote or too unreal, though a word might be said for Valerie
Marneffe. In the vasty nebula of the Henry James novel there are
alluringly strange women, but if you summon them they fade and resolve
themselves into everlasting phrases. In a word, they are not tangible
enough to endure the change of moral climate involved in such a game
as that played by Charles Lamb and his friends.

But Emma Bovary might come if you but ardently desired. And the
fascinating Anna Karenina. Or Becky Sharp with her sly graces. Perhaps
some of Dostoievsky's enigmatic, bewildering girls should be included
in the list, for they brim over with magnetism, very often a malicious
magnetism, and their glances are eloquent with suffering, haunt like
the eyes one sees in a gallery of old masters. I do not speak of
Sonia, but of the passionate Natasia Philipovna in The Idiot, or
Aglaya Epanchin, in the same powerful novel, or Paulina in The
Gambler. However, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of so many
favourites, even if they are only made of paper and ink. I confess I
am an admirer of Emma Bovary. To the gifted young critics of to-day
the work, and its sharply etched characters, has become a mere
stalking horse for a new-fangled philosophy of Jules Gaultier, called
Bovarysme, but for me it will always be the portrait of that unhappy
girl with the pallid complexion, velvety dark eyes, luxuriant hair,
and languid charm. Anna Karenina is more aristocratic; above all, she
knew what happiness meant; its wing only brushed the cheek of Emma.
Her death is more lamentable than Anna's--one can well sympathise with
Flaubert's mental and physical condition after he had written that
appalling chapter describing the poisoning of Emma. No wonder he
thought he tasted arsenic, and couldn't sleep. Balzac, Dickens, and
Thackeray were thus affected by their own creations, yet Flaubert is
to this day called "impersonal," "cold," because he never made
concessions to sentimentalism, never told tales out of his workshop
for gaping indifferents.

As for Becky Sharp, that kittenish person seldom arouses in me much
curiosity. I agree with George Moore that Thackeray, in the interests
of mid-Victorian m