indeed say so by death. For _Bouvard et Pecuchet_ as
it stands, and as outlined further, is very near Naturalism. Earlier he
had carried the principle far in _Salammbo_, and would have carried it
farther if he had not listened to good advice for once. But he had fire
enough in his interior to burn the rubbish and smelt the ore in his
better books, and skill enough to run off the metal from the dross, into
proper shape. The others had not.

[471] I learn from the lucubrations of some Americans--who, having been,
rather late and with some difficulty, induced to perceive that Edgar Poe
was their chief literary glory, have taken vehemently to his favourite
kind, and written voluminously in and on it--that it ought to be called
a "brief-narrative," the hyphen being apparently essential. This is very
interesting: and throws much light on the subject. However, having read
a great deal on it, I do not find myself much advanced beyond a position
which I think I occupied some fifty years ago--to wit, that a short
story is not merely a long one cut down, nor a long story a short one
spun out.

[472] Barbey d'Aurevilly's (_v. sup._) attack on the book is one of the
most remarkable instances of the irresponsibility of his criticism.

[473] _V. sup._ p. 258.

[474] One ought perhaps to verify; but that would be hard lines to have
to read _Nana_ twice!

[475] That of the _Union Generale_.

[476] _Verite_, though a remarkable "human document" itself, and an
indispensable _historical_ document for any student of the particular
popular madness with which it deals, need surely be inflicted a second
time on no mortal. It is a transposition into the regions of the
unmentionable, of the Dreyfus case itself. But nobody save a failure of
something like a novelist of genius, with this failure pushed near the
confines of madness, could have written it.

[477] "M. Zola [is] apparently persuaded that, if you can only kill God,
the Devil will die--an idea which seems to leave out of consideration
the idiosyncrasy of a third personage, Man" (_The Later Nineteenth
Century_, Edinburgh and London, 1907, pp. 93, 94).

[478] Only it would have to be real Blake, not imitation, which latter
is one of the furthest examples of dreary futility known to the present
writer.

[479] The horticulture of _L'Abbe Mouret_ is nearest to an exception;
but even that is overdone.

[480] Who might even say, "Is not this a slip of pen or press? Has not
'might'