[874]. 4 vols., Paris, 1861.
[875]. The first volume—to George Sand, with Maupassant’s Introduction—appeared in 1884: the general Correspondence followed. George Sand’s replies, as well as other things of hers, give her a right to, at least, a place in this note.
[876]. V. inf. on Mr Pater.
[877]. Two such different persons and writers as Zola himself and M. Anatole France have, in different parts of the Mémoires des Goncourt, given true and valuable testimony to one of the great merits of that much-abused and certainly much-abusable thing journalism—the facility and audacity, namely, which it confers. No doubt the facility which it gives may turn to slovenliness, and the boldness in attempting great tasks to levity: but this need not be so,—M. France himself is a convincing evidence in the one case at least. And there is no doubt that the practised habit of undertaking complicated things at short notice, and of doing the “day’s darg” in the day, protects a man from that “impossibility of getting ready,” that “not knowing how to begin” (and still less how to finish), which has sterilised even genius so frequently.
[878]. The title of the first, Mes Haines (Paris, 1866), is unlucky. Taken as a joke, it is not very good: taken seriously, it is fatal. It may not be easy to preserve the critical attitude when you love: that attitude is gone, without hope of recovery, as soon as you hate.
[879]. Paris, 1880.
[880]. All these will be found in the volume cited.
[881]. Op. cit., p. 343.
[882]. Again the enemy “has said it.” You cannot have a much better description of the highest literary art than this.
[883]. He was drowned while bathing. V. Mémoires des Goncourt.