which an author is judged by the next generation that will
have time to criticise only the most famous of the works this
generation leaves behind it. We can see also that much of Daudet's
later writing is slight and not up to his own high standard, although
even his briefest trifle had always something of his charm, of his
magic, of his seductive grace. We can see how rare an endowment he has
when we note that he is an acute observer of mankind, and yet without
any taint of misanthropy, and that he combines fidelity of reproduction
with poetic elevation.

He is--to say once more what has already been said in these pages more
than once--he is a lover of romance with an unfaltering respect for
reality. We all meet with strange experiences once in our lives, with
"things you could put in a story," as the phrase is; but we none of us
have hairbreadth escapes every morning before breakfast. The romantic
is as natural as anything else; it is the excess of the romantic which
is in bad taste. It is the piling up of the agony which is disgusting.
It is the accumulation upon one impossible hero of many exceptional
adventures which is untrue and therefore immoral. Daudet's most
individual peculiarity was his skill in seizing the romantic aspects of
the commonplace. In one of his talks with his son he said that a
novelist must beware of an excess of lyric enthusiasm; he himself
sought for emotion, and emotion escaped when human proportions were
exceeded. Balance, order, reserve, symmetry, sobriety,--these are the
qualities he was ever praising. The real, the truthful, the
sincere,--this is what he sought always to attain.

Daudet may lack the poignant intensity of Balzac, the lyric sweep of
Hugo, the immense architectural strength of M. Zola, the implacable
disinterestedness of Flaubert, the marvellous concentration of
Maupassant, but he has more humor than any of them and more
charm,--more sympathy than any but Hugo, and more sincerity than
any but Flaubert. His is perhaps a rarer combination than any of
theirs,--the gift of story-telling, the power of character-drawing,
the grasp of emotional situation, the faculty of analysis, the feeling
for form, the sense of style, an unfailing and humane interest in his
fellow-men, and an irresistible desire to tell the truth about life as
he saw it with his own eyes.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

Columbia University,
in the City of New York.

CONTENTS