on the fact. One can see that it _must_ have given
them a good deal of trouble--perhaps as much as, say, Paul de
Saint-Victor's gave him. But then his excites a cheerful glow of
satisfaction, whereas theirs only creates, as Saint-Victor himself (to
one's regret) says of Swift, _un morne etonnement_.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Emile Zola to be treated differently.]

The tone which has been adopted[465] in speaking of the Goncourts (or
rather of Edmond de Goncourt, for Jules seems to have been the better
fellow pretty certainly, as well as probably the more genuine talent, of
the two) would be grossly unfair in dealing with Emile Zola. One may
think his principle demonstrably wrong, and his practice for the most
part a calamitous mistake. One may, while, if indeed it concerned us,
clearing him of the charge of doing any moral harm--such harm would be
as likely to be done by records of Bedlam, or the Lock Hospital, or a
dipsomaniacs' home--put on the wrong side of his account a quantity of
dull and dirty trash,[466] which, without his precept and example, would
never have been written, or, if written, read. But the great, if mostly
wasted, power displayed in his work is quite undeniable by any real
critic; he did some things--and more parts of things--absolutely good;
and if, as has been admitted, he did literary evil, he upset in a
curious fashion the usual dictum that the evil that men do lives after
them. At least it was not his fault if such was the case. He
undoubtedly, whether he actually invented it or not, established,
communicated, spread the error of Naturalism. But he lived long enough
and wrote hard enough to "work it out" in a singular fashion--to
illustrate the rottenness of the tree by the canker of the fruit to such
an extent, and in such variety of application and example, that nobody
for a long time has had any excuse for grafting the one or eating the
other. Personally--in those points of personality which touch literature
really, and out of the range of mere gossip--he had many good qualities.
He was transparently honest, his honesty being tested and attested by a
defect which will be noticed presently. He appears to have had no bad
blood in him. His fidelity and devotion to what he thought art were as
unflinching as Flaubert's own.

[Sidenote: Some points in his personality--literary and other.]

Nor was he deficient in good qualities which were still more purely
literar