George Sand and Her French Style 23 



that disfigures almost all our work to-day, not only our literary 

 and artistic work but our work of every kind particularly here 

 in America, her writing offers the best contrast and correction. 

 If there are two qualities that we lack just now, they are the 

 qualities of patience on the one hand and of moderation on the 

 other; — the patience to await results and to labor honestly for 

 them, and the moderation to be satisfied with a fair day's labor 

 and a fair wage for it. For either we neglect our task, shuffling 

 it hastily aside to turn to something new, or else we are mas- 

 tered by it and become its slaves. And the reason is, as we 

 should find if we took the trouble to analyze ourselves, that we 

 are not serious about high things. About low and small things 

 we are deeply, passionately serious ; we are serious about our 

 material rewards, about the price of our work, about our popu- 

 larity that people know our names and faces and the figures of 

 the fortunes that we have made ; and. we allow ourselves to be 

 diverted from the things that are really high and serious, — from 

 the aim and purpose of our work itself, from its issue and in- 

 fluence. About these matters we are no more serious than was 

 Flaubert, when he spent his leisure picking over words and shuf- 

 fling the cadences of his artificial phrases. He had his reward: 

 he founded a cult and provoked much technical discussion among 

 the curious, and he introduced into French literature a trouble 

 of which it is not yet rid. But he lost the hearts that George 

 Sand won and holds at home and abroad. There is trouble in 

 her books, to be sure, but it is the trouble of life bravely faced 

 and nobly overcome. She does not allow her personal' anxiety 

 about her work to enter and disturb the ultimate peace of art. 

 One feels that she, like Shakespeare, was greater than her task. 

 It is work done without the haste of impatience or the waste of 

 fret ; and in consequence it is good and great, — done. I venture 

 to say, in spite of our momentary aberrations, in the true spirit 

 of English work. In its patience and moderation, in its magnifi- 

 cent spontaneity and naturalness, and, above all, in its serenity 

 it is an especially opportune example to the vices of the time, to 

 which we, no matter what our occupations, can return again, and 

 asrain with a sense of relief and renewal. 



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