6 Prosser Hall Frye 



the apotheosis it makes of its own best faculty ; and intelligence 

 is the Frenchman's best faculty, as imagination is the English- 

 man's. "Our literature," declares Nisard^ in his well-known 

 characterization of the French spirit, "is, as it were, the living 

 image of this government of the faculties by reason. 

 This is the spectacle offered us by our masterpieces — they dis- 

 play nothing but a higher reason, sufficiently reinforced by the 

 love of truth to dominate the imagination and the senses and 

 to draw admirable assistance whence ordinarily come the great- 

 est dangers." From this eminently practical point of view there 

 is nothing absurd in Flaubert's sitting down with the avowed 

 intention of producing a classic — and succeeding' in doing so. 

 While by the very fact his opinion concerning the spirit of the 

 literature, which he knew well enough to produce a masterpiece 

 in it by malice prepense, takes on a representative character. 



"Talent," he declares for his part, and to appreciate the force 

 of the word the reader must remember that it is one maker of 

 c/te/s-d' ceuvre coaching another,^ "Talent is only long patience. 

 Everything which one desires to express must be looked at with 

 sufficient attention and during a sufficiently long time to dis- 

 cover in it some aspect which no one has as yet seen or described. 

 In everything there is still some spot unexplored. . . . The 

 smallest object contains something unknown. Find it. To de- 

 scribe a fire that flames, and a tree on a plain, look, keep look- 

 ing, at that flame and that tree till in your eyes they have lost 

 all resemblance to any other tree or any other fire. 



"This is the way to become original." 



To the Englishman, on the contrary, genius signifies some- 

 thing more, at least something other than the free play of intel- 

 ligence. It implies inspiration, as he calls it — the revelation that 

 seems to come down like a sudden light upon life, laying bare 

 its very secrets, transmuting it with new meaning, and pos- 

 sessing the writer, like one beside himself, with an enthusiasm, 

 a power, an eloquence beyond his own. And this capricious, 

 heady, lawless spirit, this emotional transport and exaltation 



'^Histoire de la litttrature frangaise. 



^Introduction to Maupassant's Pierre et Jean^ translated by Hugh Craig. 



204 



