14 Prosser Hall Frye 



graph serving as the subject of the following, might give rise to 

 an amphibology. This distraction was pointed out to him; he 

 recognized it and attempted to change the sense, but could not 

 recover the sonority which he wished for, and, discouraged, ex- 

 claimed : 'So much the worse for the sense ; rhythm before every- 

 thing!'" 



Can there be a more significant contrast than that between 

 these two pictures : Flaubert, the great, rough, positive Norman 

 hesitating irresolutely over a novel for seven years, unable either 

 to perfect or relinquish it; and George Sand, the woman, feeble 

 and timorous, one might suppose, resolutely laying aside one 

 piece of work and taking up another in order to fill out half an 

 hour of scheduled time? By comparison there is something very 

 like gradeur — the grandeur of renunciation, perhaps — in this 

 ability of hers to put away the past when she was done with it, 

 to leave her work to its deserts without just one more backward 

 look, just one more correction, and to pass on confidently to the 

 next duty without worrying over what was gone. "Consuelo," 

 she w^rites in reply to a letter of Flaubert's, "la Comtesse de 

 Rudolstadt, what in the world is that? Can it be something of 

 mine? I have forgotten every last treacherous word of it. Do 

 you read it? Does it really amuse you? In that case I will re- 

 read it one of these days, and if you like me I shall like myself."^ 

 It shows at least a self-detachment, a sobriety and moderation 

 not always evident in French literary workmanship of a modern 

 school with its long brooding of the thought— often serving little 

 better purpose than to addle the eggs — and its slow coagulation 

 of the phrase, such as we have come to associate even with 

 Balzac, who would never let his copy go, as Gautier tells us, till 

 it was wrung from him by his implacable taskmaster, the pub- 

 lisher. ^ 



But for all this excess of care we might well wish that George 

 Sand had, without going too far, shown a little more concern 

 for what she had done, a little more for what she was about to 

 do, were it reasonable to suppose that all her errors were due 

 to her habits of work and could have been retrieved by revision. 



^ Cor> espondance. 

 ^Portraits contetnporains. 



212 



