and
epilepsy; of his loves or his friendships, but solely of his work. We
know, in fact, to-day, that if all such details are made clear in the
biography of a great writer, in no way do they explain his work. The
author of _Gil Blas_, Alain Rene Lesage, was a Breton, like the author
of _Atala_; the Corneille brothers had almost nothing in common. Of all
our great writers, the one nearest, perhaps, to Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
who died a victim to delirium from persecution, was Madame Sand, who
had, without doubt, the sanest and best balanced temperament.

Other writers have sought,--for instance, our great classical authors,
Pascal, Bossuet and perhaps Corneille,--to influence the thought of
their time; some, like Moliere, La Fontaine, and La Bruyere, to correct
customs. Others still,--such as our romantic writers, Hugo or De
Musset,--desired only to express their personal conception of the world
and of life. And then Balzac, whose object,--almost scientific,--was to
make a "natural history," a study and description, of the social
species, as an animal or vegetable species is described in zoology or
botany. Gustave Flaubert attempted only to work out his art, for and
through the love of art. Very early in life, as we clearly see from his
correspondence, his consideration for art was not even that of a social
but of a _sacred_ function, in which the artist was the priest. We hear
sometimes, in metaphor and not without irony, of the "priesthood" of the
artist and the "worship" of art. These expressions must be taken
literally in Flaubert's case. He was cloistered in his art as a monk in
his convent or by his discipline; and he truly lived only in meditation
upon that art, as a Mystic in contemplation of the perfections of his
God. Nothing outside of art truly interested him, neither science, nor
things political or religious, nor men, nor women, nor anything in the
world; and if, sometimes, it was his duty to occupy himself with them,
it was never in a degree greater than could benefit his art. "The
accidents of the world"--this is his own expression--appeared to him
only as things permitted _for the sake of description_, so much so that
his own existence, even, seemed to him to have no other excuse.

It is that which explains the mixture of "romanticism," "naturalism,"
and I will add, of "classicism"--which has been pointed out more than
once in Flaubert's work. _Madame Bovary_ is the masterpiece of
naturalistic romance an