the novelist's hand while it is
actually at work. Not indeed that anybody's hand is more delicate than
Tolstoy's at certain moments and for certain effects, and a critic is
bound to come back to him again in connection with these. But we have
seen how, in dealing with his book, one is continually distracted by
the question of its subject; the uncertainty of Tolstoy's intention is
always getting between the reader and the detail of his method. What I
now want, therefore, will be a book in which the subject is absolutely
fixed and determined, so that it may be possible to consider the
manner of its treatment with undivided attention. It is not so easy to
find as might be supposed; or rather it might be difficult to find,
but for the fact that immediately in a critic's path, always ready to
hand and unavoidable, there lies one book of exactly the sort I seek,
Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Whatever this book may be or may not be,
after much re-reading, it remains perpetually the novel of all novels
which the criticism of fiction cannot overlook; as soon as ever we
speak of the principles of the art, we must be prepared to engage with
Flaubert.

This is an accepted necessity among critics, and no doubt there is
every reason why it should be so. The art of Flaubert gives at any
rate a perfectly definite standard; there is no mistaking or
mis-reading it. He is not of those who present many aspects, offering
the support of one or other to different critical doctrines; Flaubert
has only one word to say, and it is impossible to find more than a
single meaning in it. He establishes accordingly a point in the sphere
of criticism, a point which is convenient to us all; we can refer to
it at any time, in the full assurance that its position is the same in
everybody's view; he provides the critic with a motionless pole. And
for my particular purpose, just now, there is no such book as his
Bovary; for it is a novel in which the subject stands firm and clear,
without the least shade of ambiguity to break the line which bounds
it. The story of its treatment may be traced without missing a single
link.

It is copiously commented upon, as we know, in the published letters
of its author, through the long years in which phrase was being added
to phrase; and it is curious indeed to listen to him day by day, and
to listen in vain for any hint of trouble or embarrassment in the
matter of his subject. He was capable of hating and reviling his
un