Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (289 page)

I
asked
whether
the
influence
of
the
French
was
felt
in
recent
literature.
My
guide
said
that
the
influence
of
French
literature
had
been negligible.
Ever
since
the
restoration
of
the
French
monarchy
French literature
had
been
pursuing
an
even
but
uninteresting
course.
During the
prosperous
and
calm
reign
of
Charles
X,
the
most
notable
names in
the
literature
of
France
were,
as
in
England,
nearly
all
those
of women.
There
was
Madame
Desbordes
Valmore,
Madame
Victor Hugo,
Mademoiselle
Lamartine,
all
of
whom
had
written
agreeable lyrics
and
some
tuneful
and
melodious
narrative
poems.
Among
the male
poets
the
most
remarkable
was
Georges
Sand.
During
the
reign of
Henry
V
the
same
pure
and
refined
standards
had
been
upheld, but
it
could
not
be
denied
that
this
literature,
although
admirable
in tone,
sane
in
its
outlook,
and
exemplary
in
the
lessons
which
it
taught, did
not
go
down
across
the
Channel.
The
England
of
Miss
Yonge
and Mrs.
Gaskell—those
unflinching
realists,
those
intrepid
divers
into
the unplumbed
depths
and
mysteries
of
the
human
soul,
those
undaunted and
ruthless
surgeons
of
all
the
secret
sores
of
the
spirit
and
of
the flesh—was
used
to
stronger
meat,
and
insisted
on
getting
it.

"But,"
I
said,
"what
about
Musset
and
Baudelaire?"

My
guide
seemed
astonished.
"Musset?"
he
said.
"I
have
never heard
of
a
writer
called
Musset."

"Alfred
de
Musset,"
I
suggested.

"There
is
a
Secretary
of
the
French
Embassy
here
by
that
name, but
as
far
as
we
know
he
has
never
written
anything.
As
for
Baudelaire,
his
hymns,
psalms,
and
meditations
are
fervent
and
pious,
and deserve
respect,
but
they
are
so
ultra-devotional
and
so
full
of
technical
theology
and
the
jargon
of
the
sacristy,
that
they
would
certainly find
no
public
here.
Cardinal
Byron,
it
is
true,
admires
them
greatly, and
has
even
published
a
translation
of
some
of
the
hymns.
No,
we have
little
use
for
the
goody-goody
milk-and-water
idealism
here.
All that
would
never
go
down
in
the
country
of
Miss
Austen." .
"But,"
I
objected,
"surely
Miss
Austen
was
a
great
artist."

"Certainly,
certainly,
as
great
as
the
Pyramids,
but
artist
is
hardly the
word.
It
is
true
she
created
the
whole
world,
but
she
looked
at
the universe
through
the
distorted
lens
of
her
lurid
and
monstrous
imagination.
She
dipped
her
pen
into
the
waters
of
Tartarus,
so
that
she invests
a
page
boy
with
the
personality
of
a
Hannibal,
and
lends satanic
proportions
to
the
meanest
of
her
rogues.
Yet
what
she
saw she
described
with
such
minute
accuracy
and
with
such
wealth
of detail,
and
abundance
and
even
redundance
of
description,
that
the critics
have
almost
universally
acclaimed
her
as
the
founder
of
the great
realistic-naturalistic
English
novel,
whereas
if
they
would
only think
more
carefully
they
would
see
that
Miss
Austen
is
the
last
of
the great
romantic
poets,
the
lineal
descendant
of
Pope
and
Cowper,
and the
kindred
spirit
and
rival
of
that
most
flamboyant
of
all
the
romantics,
Crabbe."