or contacts with the non-artistic world is thereby
too sensitive for his vocation, and fit only to fall into gentle
ecstasies over the work of artists less sensitive than himself.

The classic modern example of the tragedy of the artist who repudiates
the world is Flaubert. At an early age Flaubert convinced himself that
he had no use for the world of men. He demanded to be left in solitude
and tranquillity. The morbid streak in his constitution grew rapidly
under the fostering influences of peace and tranquillity. He was
brilliantly peculiar as a schoolboy. As an old man of twenty-two,
mourning over the vanished brio of youth, he carried morbidity to
perfection. Only when he was travelling (as, for example, in Egypt) do
his letters lose for a time their distemper. His love-letters are often
ignobly inept, and nearly always spoilt by the crass provincialism of
the refined and cultivated hermit. His mistress was a woman difficult to
handle and indeed a Tartar in egotism, but as the recipient of
Flaubert's love-letters she must win universal sympathy.

Full of a grievance against the whole modern planet, Flaubert turned
passionately to ancient times (in which he would have been equally
unhappy had he lived in them), and hoped to resurrect beauty when he
had failed to see it round about him. Whether or not he did resurrect
beauty is a point which the present age is now deciding. His fictions of
modern life undoubtedly suffer from his detestation of the material; but
considering his manner of existence it is marvellous that he should have
been able to accomplish any of them, except _Un Coeur Simple_. The final
one, _Bouvard et Pecuchet_, shows the lack of the sense of reality which
must be the inevitable sequel of divorce from mankind. It is realism
without conviction. No such characters as Bouvard and Pecuchet could
ever have existed outside Flaubert's brain, and the reader's resultant
impression is that the author has ruined a central idea which was well
suited for a grand larkish extravaganza in the hands of a French Swift.
But the spectacle of Flaubert writing in _mots justes_ a grand larkish
extravaganza cannot be conjured up by fancy.

There are many sub-Flauberts rife in London. They are usually more
critical than creative, but their influence upon creators, and
especially the younger creators, is not negligible. Their aim in
preciosity would seem to be to keep themselves unspotted from the world.
They are for ever