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University Studies 



Vol. Ill JULY, 1903 No. 3 



I. — George Sand and Her French Sfyl^^ 



BY PROSSER HALL FRYE 



Though it is to be feared that the influence which Matthew 

 Arnold^ speaks of as exerted by George Sand upon his own 

 youth is exceptional and that as a matter of fact she has never 

 been particularly popular with English readers, yet she certainly 

 ought in justice to be so, for more than any other great French 

 novelist she wrote in the English way. The English judge 

 writing by its spontaneity rather than by its finish. They have 

 hardly been able to understand, at least until very recently, much 

 less to sympathize with the feeling of those French writers, who 

 in assuming the name of artists, have tried to indicate something 

 of the slow, self-conscious elaboration of their processes. To 

 the Englishman writing is a gift, not an art; and he has never 

 been tempted to confound the two. This is the reason that style 

 and construction have counted for so relatively little in the Eng- 

 lish novel. Even so great a novelist as Thackeray has no com- 

 position to speak of; while the fact that a person with George 

 Meredith's viciousness of expression should have won his repu- 

 tation as an author, illustrates the native English indifference to 

 grace of manner. And yet, to be just, Mr. Meredith does not 



1 George Sand: the novels, Histoire de tna vie, Corres/^on dance, etc. 

 See also, for original impressions, Caro: George Sand; Flaubert: Lettres d. 

 George Sand; des Goncourt: Journal; Sainte Beuve: Portraits coniem- 

 porains, note to George Sand; Heine: Lutezia; Matthew Arnold: George 

 Sand; etc. 



^George Sand. 



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