ut
I cannot admit that it is predominant elsewhere, and I am prepared to
deny utterly that, until the time of the Sensibility and _Philosophe_
novels, it is even a notable characteristic of French fiction. Many hard
things have been said of criticism; but, acknowledging the badness of a
bird who even admits any foulness in his own nest--far more in one who
causes it--I am bound to say that I think the state of the department of
literature now under discussion was happier before we meddled with it.
Offence must come; it would even be sometimes rather a pity if it didn't
come: but perhaps the old saying is true in the case of those by whom
some kinds of it come. If criticism and creation could be kept as
separate as some creators pridefully pretend, it would not matter. And
the best critics never attempt to show how things should be done, but
merely to point out how they have been done--well or badly. But when men
begin to write according to criticism, they generally begin to write
badly, just as when women begin to dress themselves according to
fashion-mongers they usually begin (or would but for the grace of God)
to look ugly. And there are some mistakes which appear to be absolutely
incorrigible. When I was a Professor of Literature I used to say every
year in so many words, as I had previously written for more than as many
years, when I was only a critic of it, "I do not wish to teach you how
to write. I wish to teach you how to read, and to tell you what there is
to read." The same is my wish in regard to the French Novel. What has
been done in it--not what these, even the practitioners themselves, have
said of it--is the burden of my possibly unmusical song.

* * * * *

The excuse, indeed, for this long digression may be, I think, made
without impropriety or "forcing" to coincide with the natural sequel and
correlation of this chapter. The development of the novel of ordinary
life in the second half of the century _was_ extraordinary; but it was
to a very large extent marked by the peculiarities--some of them near to
corruptions--which have been just discussed. With the possible exception
of Beyle, there was little more theory, or attempt at synthesis in
accordance therewith, in the "ordinary" than in the "historical"
division of this earlier time. We have seen how the absence of "general
ideas"--another way of putting it--has been actually brought as a charge
against Balzac. George S