romanticists;
his writings have found favor in the eyes of the frank impressionists
and also at the hands of the severer custodians of academic standards.
Mr. Henry James has declared that Daudet is "at the head of his
profession" and has called him "an admirable genius." Mr. Robert Louis
Stevenson thought Daudet "incomparably" the best of the present French
novelists and asserted that "Kings in Exile" comes "very near to being
a masterpiece." M. Jules Lemaitre tells us that Daudet "trails all
hearts after him,--because he has charm, as indefinable in a work of
art as in a woman's face." M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, who has scant
relish for latter-day methods in literature, admits ungrudgingly that
"there are certain corners of the great city and certain aspects of
Parisian manners, there are some physiognomies that perhaps no one has
been able to render so well as Daudet, with that infinitely subtle and
patient art which succeeds in giving even to inanimate things the
appearance of life."

I.

The documents are abundant for an analysis of Daudet such as
Sainte-Beuve would have undertaken with avidity; they are more abundant
indeed than for any other contemporary French man of letters even in
these days of unhesitating self-revelation; and they are also of an
absolutely impregnable authenticity. M. Ernest Daudet has written a
whole volume to tell us all about his brother's boyhood and youth and
early manhood and first steps in literature. M. Leon Daudet has written
another solid tome to tell us all about his father's literary
principles and family life and later years and death. Daudet himself
put forth a pair of pleasant books of personal gossip about himself,
narrating his relations with his fellow authors and recording the
circumstances under which he came to compose each of his earlier
stories. Montaigne--whose "Essays" was Daudet's bedside book and who
may be accepted not unfairly as an authority upon egotism--assures us
that "there is no description so difficult, nor doubtless of so great
utility, as that of one's self." And Daudet's own interest in himself
is not unlike Montaigne's,--it is open, innocent and illuminating.

Cuvier may have been able to reconstruct an extinct monster from the
inspection of a single bone; but it is a harder task to revive the
figure of a man, even by the aid of these family testimonies, this
self-analysis, the diligence of countless interviewers of all
nationalities, and indiscre