George Sand and Her French Style 5 



comes to write, it is the result rather than the process that he 

 aims to give, and then crystaUized in poHshed sentences which 

 shall have something of the finality of a formula, and forestall 

 posterity. When he has once said a thing it is said forever. 

 From this peculiarity of his mind results the importance taken 

 in his literature by epigram. 



Beside this intellectual difference between the two nations 

 there exists also a difference of language which, though it may 

 be sprung from the former, must be spoken of separately. 

 French words, partly tlvough the influence of the Academy, 

 have comparatively little of that indistinctness or blur of out- 

 line, that sort of emotional penumbra which is so noticeable 

 with English words and to which English poetry owes in great 

 part its haunting suggestivcness. But they are defined and out- 

 lined, stamped clean to the very edges, covering the ideas upon 

 which they are set with a nicety and exactitude that make French, 

 for all its narrow vocabulary, an ideal instrument of thought, 

 particularly analytic thought. About most English words there 

 is something vague, floating, elusive — something left over to be 

 accounted for after they are applied to the ideas which they 

 symbolize. And this fringe of meaning, which scatters such an 

 iridescent halo about English poetry, makes it necessary in 

 English prose, where such diffraction is an embarrassment, to 

 qualify, limit, and extenuate in order to define the thought with 

 accuracy. 



But these two conditions, far as they go, are not enough in 

 themselves to explain all the phenomena we have been observ- 

 ing and have still to observe. It is necessary to take account 

 also of a total difference as between the conceptions of genius 

 held by the two peoples. Genius to the Frenchman means essen- 

 tially an infinite capacity for taking pains — an intelligence cap- 

 able of discerning the nature of the end proposed, of holding it 

 steadily in view, and of applying cunningly and patiently every 

 means at hand to its attainment. Characteristically, the ends 

 of French genius are always rational, attainable by the emi- 

 nently reasonable man — the man. it may almost be said, of com- 

 mon ideas and uncommon energies. To every race genius is 



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