to the other side, and there finds a leper in the most loathsome stage of the disease. With super-human effort he crosses the stream, but his trial does not, as in the kindred instance of St. Christopher, cease there. The leper demands shelter and hospitality, and Julian gives him both, yielding up his whole scanty supply of food and drink—an act which results, according to the horrible Jewish theory, in the communication of the wretch’s disease to the inanimate objects he touches. Then he demands Julian’s bed, and it is given him. But he is dying of cold, and Julian must lie down by him, clasp him in his arms, revive him with his own vital heat. It is done.
Then the leper embraced him closely and suddenly; his eyes had the brightness of stars, his hair grew long and shaped like the rays of the sun, the breath of his nostrils was as the sweetness of roses, from the hearth a cloud of incense arose, and the billows of the river sang in harmony. Into the soul of Julian there came an abundance of delight—a joy more than human, and like a mighty wave. But he who held him closer and closer grew and grew till the walls of the hovel on both sides were reached by his head and his feet. Then the roof parted, and the firmament was seen, and Julian went up the blue spaces of the heaven, face to face with Christ the Lord.
No discussion of Flaubert’s merits would be complete without some notice of the Realism of which he was the chief master. I do not know that this unlucky term has been included in the list of those fallen words whose history has been often bewailed, but the idle mind may contemplate with some interest the realism of William of Champeaux side by side with the realism of M. Zola. In the latter sense it is, as the Marquis de Custine called it, a grossière étiquette enough, and even, as it seems to me, one of which it is somewhat difficult to understand the precise meaning. As a term of abuse it is as intelligible as most terms of abuse; that is to say, it means that the speaker does not like the thing spoken of. But as a classifying epithet having any literary or scientific value it appears to me to be of but small account. I suppose, if it means anything, it means the faithful patience and the sense of artistic capacity which lead a man to grapple boldly with his subject, whatever that subject may be, and to refuse tanquam scopulum easy generalities and accepted phrase. This procedure is naturally more striking when the subject matter is of an unpleasant character, and hence the superficial critic runs away with the idea that realism means the choice of unpleasant subjects. From this to the deliberate choosing of unpleasant subjects, in order to qualify for the title of realist, there is only a step.
Now, in this sense, I venture to say that there is no reason whatever for affixing the “etiquette” to Flaubert. His subjects are doubtless often unpleasant enough, but I cannot see that there is the faintest evidence of their having been chosen for their unpleasantness. It is, perhaps, a question whether unpleasantness would not predominate in the absolutely faithful record of any life. It has been said that no man would dare to write such a record of his own history; and all that can be said of Flaubert is that he has dared to do, for certain classes and types, what they dare not do for themselves. The ordinary novel is a compromise and a convention. Of compromises and conventions Flaubert knows nothing. He dares in especial to show failure, and I think it will be found that this is what few novelists dare, unless the failure be of a tragic and striking sort. He draws the hopeful undertakings that come to nothing, the dreams that never in the least become deeds, the good intentions that find their usual end, the evil intentions which also are balked and defeated, the parties of pleasure that end in pain or weariness, the enterprises of pith and moment that somehow fall through. Perhaps this is realism, and, if it be, it seems to me that realism is a very good thing. It is pleasant doubtless to read about Sindbad as he comes home in triumph regularly after every voyage with his thousands or his millions of sequins. But the majority of Sindbads have experiences of a somewhat different sort, and I do not see why the majority also should not have their bard.
The antagonism, however, which has grown up as a matter of association between real and ideal makes the use of this word realism in this sense distinctly objectionable, for it leads the reader to suppose that a realist must necessarily be unideal. How far this supposition, taken in a prejudicial sense, may lead even grave and sober judges astray, may be seen in some criticisms on our author. One French critic, to whom I have before referred, M. Saint-René Taillandier, persuaded himself that Salammobô is an attack on the idea of womanhood, that L’Éducation Sentimentale is an attack on the idea of manhood, and that