As author he owns two main elements of effectiveness. The first is the ingenuousness which prevents his characters ever being—what Voltaire's often are—marionettes; they move freely on their own legs, and lead a life independent of their author and undisturbed by him. Their naïveté makes them natural.
Manuscript of a letter.
The second element is art. France has what he himself calls the French writer's three great qualities—in the first place, lucidity; in the second, lucidity; in the third and last, lucidity. But this is only one fundamental quality of his art. He has proved himself possessed of moderation and tact, in which for him, as the true Frenchman (and to use his own words), "all art consists." His detestation of Zola as a novelist was due to that Italian's utter lack of moderation as an artist. He himself as narrator is always subdued.
He lacks passion, and he is never wanton; his eroticism is only Epicureanism. There is sensuality in his writing, and there is intellectuality—a good deal of the former, an overpowering amount of the latter.
He is, taken all in all, more the artistic and philosophic than the creative author. Delacroix has said that art is exaggeration in the right place. France's exaggeration lies in the wealth of ideas with which he endows his characters, a wealth which the books can hardly contain (vide Thaïs and Balthasar), and for which place must be made in whole additional volumes, such as Les Opinions de M. Jérôme Coignard, Le Jardin d'Épicure, and a part of Pierre Nozière. He has more ideas than feelings. He has ideas upon every subject, criticises everything—not only human prejudices and institutions, but nature herself.
He reproaches her, for instance, with giving us youth so early, and letting us live the rest of our life without it; it ought to come last, as the crown of life, like the butterfly stage, which in insects comes after the larva and cocoon stage, and ought, as the last, highest phase of development, to be directly followed by death.
France's own highest stage of development has come last. For in his latest phase, as combatant, he is far from having lost any of his satirical power, or of the artistic superiority which it confers. Never has his irony been so effective as in his most distinctly polemical work, L'Anneau d'Améthyste, where the most immoral actions, one breach of the Seventh Commandment after the other, become links in the cleverly woven chain of intrigues which, aiming at gratifying an ambitious young parvenu baron's desire to become member of an ultra-Conservative aristocrat's hunt, result in procuring the episcopal ring for a crafty, submissive priest. This priest has cringed to every one, and by his humility has prevailed on men and women to act. Hardly is he appointed before he reveals himself as the most warlike son of the Church, the irreconcilable enemy of the State.