lisings. The consequence is that
he has again and again felt himself compelled to ease his mind by
adopting the part of the lay preacher we call the journalist. He is in
much of his work a Sterne turned journalist--a Sterne flashingly
interested in leaving the world better than he found it and other
things that grieve the artistic. He might even be described as the
greatest living journalist. The Bergeret series of novels are, apart
from their artistic excellence, the most supremely delightful examples
of modern European journalism. Similarly, when he turned for a too
brief space to literary criticism, he proved himself the master of all
living men in the art of the literary causerie. The four volumes of
_La Vie Litteraire_ will, I imagine, survive all but a few of the
literary essays of the nineteenth century. They are in a sense only
trifles, but what irresistible trifles!

But no criticism would be just which stopped short at the assertion
that Anatole France is to some extent a journalist. So was Dickens for
that matter, and so, no doubt, was Shakespeare. It is much more
important to emphasise the fact that Anatole France is an artist--that
he stands at the head of the artists of Europe, indeed, since Tolstoi
died. His novels are not the issue of an impartial love of form, like
Flaubert's. They are as freakish as the author's personality; they
tell only the most interrupted of stories. They might be said in many
cases to introduce the Montaigne method into fiction. They are essays
portraying a personality rather than novels on a conventional model.
They may have a setting amid early Christianity or early Mediaevalism;
they may disguise themselves as realism or as fairy tales; but the
secret passion of them all is the self-revelation of the author--the
portraiture of the last of the mockers as he surveys this mouldy world
of churches and courtesans. This portrait peeps round the corner at us
in nearly every sentence. "Milesian romancers!" cried M. Bergeret. "O
shrewd Petronius! O Noel du Fail! O forerunners of Jean de la
Fontaine! What apostle was wiser or better than you, who are commonly
called good-for-nothing rascals? O benefactors of humanity! You have
taught us the true science of life, the kindly scorn of the human
race!" There, by implication, you have the ideal portrait of Anatole
France himself--the summary of his temper. The kindly scorn of the
human race is the basis upon which the Francian Decalogue will