The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-09-07

as the epic, as tragedy, as comedy. Now
| the novel is not form of the same
sharply defined individuality; it is-or
| at least it may be-anything. 1t is the
child of the epic and the heir of the
drama; but it is a hybrid. And one OF
the foremost of living American novel;
lists. who happens also to be one of the
most acute and sympathetic of Amer
! lean critics, told me that he was often
distracted by the knowledge Of this
fact, even while he was writing mover.
| In the history of literature the short
story was developed long before the
novel, which, indeed, is but a creature
of yesterday. The short story also
seems much easier of ccomDlishment
! than the novel, if only becauseyit is
| briefer. And yet the list of the masters
of the short story is far less crowded
! than the list of the masters of the
longer form. There are dozen or
more very great novelists recorded in
! the history of fiction, but there are
! scarcely more than half a dozen short
story writer's. From Chaucer and Boo
caccio we pass to Hawthorne and Poe
almost without finding another name
that insists upon enrolment. A little
! later we light upon Merimee and Tur-
genet, whose title to be recorded there
is none to dispute. Now, at the end of
the nineteenth century we find two
dare to omit-Guy de Maupassant and
Rudyard Kipling.
| Guy de Maupass born in 1850, had
| the usual education given to the son
of French parents neither rich nor poor.
! In the Franco Prussian war in 1870, he
! did his duty as soldier. When peace
came at last, he received a position in
| the civil service-a clerkShip n the
navy department, that paid him $500
year. His school days had been passed
| at Rouen, where he had come under
the influence OF Louis Bouilhet, a
| French poet of celebrity now a little
| faded. His new post was III Paris,
where he was enabled to avail himself
of the kindly advice OF Gustave Flau-
bert, the author of that merciless mas
terpiece, Madame Bovary.'' ~
In the preface of Pierre ct JEAN"
Maupassant has recorded how he learn
ed from Bouilhet that a single lyric,
a scant 100 lines. would give immortal
| ity to a poet, if they were only fine
enough, and that for the author who
sought to escape oblivion there was
only enc course to pIrsue-to. learn his
trade thoroughly, to master every Sc
cret of the craft, to do his best always,
in the hope that some fortunate day
the muse would reward his unfailing
| devotion. And from Flaubert the young
man learned the Importance of indi-
viduality, of originality. of the personal
note which should be all his own, and
which should never suggest OR recall
any one else's. Flaubert was kindly
and encouraging but he was a desper-
ately severe taskmaSter. AT FlauperI's
dictation, Maupassant gave up verse
for prose, and for seven years he wrote
necessarily and published nothing. The
stories and tales and verses and dramas
of those seven years of apprenticeship
were rllthlessly criticised by the author
of Madame Bovary," and then they
were destroyed imprinted. No other
author ever served so severe a novit1-
ate.
Douglas Jerrold once said of Ger
tain British author, who had begun TO
publish very young, that "he had taken
down the shutters before he had any
thing to put up in the shop window
From being tranSfixed by such J!be,
MaupaSSant was preserved by Elaubert
When he was 80 he contributed to the
SoireeS de Medan that masterpiece OF
ironic humor. .Boule de Suif,' and on
his first appearance in the arena OF
letters he stepped at once to the front
rank. That was in 1850, and in 1892 his
mind gave way, and he was taken to
the asylum, where he soon died In
those twelve years he had published
dozen volumes of short stories and half
a dozen novels. OF the novel he might
have made himself master in time; of
the short story he proved himself a
master with the very earliest of all his
tales to appear
1t must be admitted at once that
many of his earlier short stories have
to do with the lower aspects of mans
merely animal activity. Maupassant
had an abundance of what the French
themselves call "Gallic SALT His HUI
NOR was not soueamish: it delighted
in dealing with themes that our Anglo
Saxon prudery prefers not to touch.
But even at the beginning this liking