Morning journal and courier., 1884-08-28

or balZac, Wn1cn M. ObuCeI an1 OeA.Sh = pies are continuing; not of the work of hu- manitarians and idealists like George Sand and her master, Rousseau. The work, wheth- CT of idealists or of realists, must stand for what it is worth, and must pay the penalty of it's defects, George Sand has admirably stated the conditions under which Rousseau's s work was produced: Rousseau had within him the love of goodness and the enthusiasm for beauty-and he knew nothing of them to start with. The absence of moral education had prolonged the childhood of his spirit be-
 yond the ordinary term. The reigning phi losophy of his time was not moralist; in it's
 hatred of unjust restraints it left out the
 chapter of duty altogether. Rousseau, more logical and more serious than the rest, came
 then to perceive that liberty was not all and
 that philosophy must be virtue, religion,
 a social law
 'fOf George Sand herself, too, we may say
 that she suffered from the absence of moral
 education, and had to find out for herself
 that liberty is not all, and that philosophy
 must be virtue, a religion, social law.
 Her work, like Rousseau's, had faults due to
 the conditions under which it arose-faults
 of Reclamation, faults of repetition, faults of
 extravagance. But do not let us deceive our
 selves. Do not let us suppose that the work of Rousseau and George Sand is defective be-
 cause those writers are inspired by the love
 of goodness and the desire for beauty, and
 not, according to the approved recipe at pres ent, by a disinterested curiosity. Do not let
 us assume that the work of the realists is sol
 id-that the work of Balzac, for instance,
 will stand, that the work of M. Daudet will stand, because it is inspired by dislnterest-
 ed curiosity.
 f'The best work, the work which endures,
 has not been thus inspired. M Taine is 8
 profound believer in the motive of disinter-
 ested curiosity a fervent admirer of the work of Balzac. He even puts his name in con
 nection with that of Shakespeare, and ap-
 pears to think that the two men work with the same motive. He is mistaken The mo tive of Shakespeare, the master-thought at
 the bottom of Shakespeare's production, IS
 the same as the master thought at the bottom
 of the production of Homer and Sophocles,
 Dante and Moliere, Rousseau and George
 Sand With all the differences of manner,
 power and performance between these
 makers, the governing thought and motive IS
 the same. It is the motive enunciated in the
 burden to the famous chorus in the Aga memnon' Let the good prevail Until
 this is recognized Shakespeare's work IS not
 understood We connect the word morality
 with preachers and bores, and no one IS so little of a preacher and bore Shakespeare;
 but yet, to understand Shapespeare alright,
 the clue to seize is the morality of Shakes
 peare The same with the work of the older
 French writers, Moliere, Montague, Babe
 lais The master pressure upon their spirit ia the pressure exercised by this same thought: Let the good prevail And the result is that they deal with the life of all of us-the life of man in it's fullness and great ness
 e'The motive of Balzac is curiosity. The result is that the matter on which he ope rates bounds him, and he delineates, not the life of man, but the life of the Frenchman, and of the Frenchman of these our times, the homme sensuel moyen. Balzac deals with this life, delineates 1t with splendid ability, loves it and is bound by it. He has for his public the lovers and seekers of this life everywhere His imitators follow eager ly in his track. are more and more subdued by the material in which they work, more and more imprisoned within the hte or the average sensual man, until at last we can hardly say that the motive of their work IS the sheer motive of curiosity, It has become a mingled motive of curiosity, cup1d1ty, lu- bricity. And these followers of Balzac, in their turn have some of them high ability, and they are eagerly read by whosoever loves and seeks the life they believe in
 Rousseau, with all his faults, yet with the love of goodness and the enthusiasm for beauty moving him, is even to-day more trl- ly alive than Balzac; his work is more than Balzac's real part of French literature. A hundred years hence this will be far more ap- parent than it is now. And hundred years hence George Sand, the disciple of Ruosseau, with much of Rosseau's faults, but yet With Rousseau's great motive inspiring-George Sand, to whom the French literature of to- day is backward to do honor-George Sand 1 will have established her superiority over l Balzac as incontestably as Rousseau. In | that strenuous and mixed work of hers, con tinuing from Indiana, in 1882, to her death l in 1876, we may take 'Mauprat,' La Petite 1 Fadette,' Jean de Ia Roche, and 'Valv6dre,' as characteristic and representative points; | and re-reading these novels, we shall feel her power. The novel is a more superficial form of literature than poetry, but on that very account more attractive. If the iterature>of ] our century, if the work of Goethe is the | greatest and wisest influence, if the work of l Wordsworth is the purest and most poetic, l the most varied and attractive influence is l perhaps the work of George Sand. 'Blen dire, c'est bien sentir, and her ample and noble style rests upon large and lofty quail l ties. To-day, with half-hearted regard, her will unveil her statue in the lit tie town by the meadows of the poplar-bor- dered Indre, the river which she has immor-  Still gides the stream and shall not cease to glide while she, like so many of the great, the ' mighty and the wise,' seems to have had her | hour and to have passed away. But in her \ case we shall nor err if we adopt the poets ! faith,
 tI,o,