20 Prosscr Hall Frye 



in no sense literary, and should have been obliged to work her 

 way alone out of much that was harmful to her spirit. Had 

 her flow been less full and copious, it may well be questioned 

 whether the stream would not have choked in the sands of so- 

 ciological and metaphysical discussion with which she was sur- 

 rounded,- and she have ended where George Eliot began, as a 

 mere controversialist. It is not a little singular that these two 

 women, the greatest litteratrices of their respective countries, 

 should both have been for a time under the dominance of in- 

 spirations other than literary, and should have been more or less 

 diverted from their proper paths and more or less hindered in 

 their proper activities by philosophical speculation. Of the two 

 George Eliot was more inclined to such thought, and never, 

 indeed, got quite clear of the clutter of erudition, while George 

 Sand was in reality of no great philosophical bent and never 

 assimilated such ideas thoroughly enough to handle them with 

 firmness. 



As a result of her feeble grasp of such subjects and of the 

 Vivacity of her feelings, she was at her best when she centered 

 her novels neither in a doctrinal motif nor a merely personal 

 emotion, but in some simple episode of common life, which she 

 had noticed and been touched by. Her masterpieces are few in 

 number — as any one's must be — but they are perfect in their 

 kind: — la Mare an diahlc, la Petite Fadctte, Francois le chauif^i. 

 Les Maitres sonneurs, of the same attempt as the others, errs 

 by excessive development; it overreaches and outruns itself and 

 in spite of much good grows wearisome by its length ; while 

 Jeanne and the Mcunier d'Angibanlt, which are sometimes classed 

 with these, show traces of confusion due partly to the intro- 

 duction of extra-literary ideas and partly -to the mixture of 

 idyllic and social elements ; so that none of these latter three 

 can be ranked as masterpieces beside the former. Her own dis- 

 trict of Berri, which she always loved and to which she returned 

 more and more in later life, furnished her with the setting for 

 these flawless gems. After the welter of passions and ideas, 

 into which she had been cast young and in which she was long 

 whirled, had subsided, and she could attend to the voice of her 



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