hich he owes the almost literal fulfillment of his prophecy that he
would not be appreciated until 1880. Before that date they had been
comparatively neglected, in spite of Balzac's spontaneous and
enthusiastic tribute to the 'Chartreuse de Parme,' and the appreciative
criticisms of Taine and Prosper Merimee. The truth is that Stendhal was
in some ways a generation behind his time, and often has an odd,
old-fashioned flavor suggestive of Marivaux and Crebillon _fils_. On the
other hand, his psychologic tendency is distinctly modern, and not at
all to the taste of an age which found Chateaubriand or Madame de Stael
eminently satisfactory. But he appeals strongly to the speculating,
self-questioning spirit of the present day, and Zola and Bourget in turn
have been glad to claim kinship with him.

Stendhal, however, cannot be summarily labeled and dismissed as a
realist or psychologue in the modern acceptation of the term, although
he was a pioneer in both fields. He had a sovereign contempt for
literary style or method, and little dreamed that he would one day be
regarded as the founder of a school. It must be remembered that he was a
soldier before he was a man of letters, and his love of adventure
occasionally got the better of his love of logic, making his novels a
curious mixture of convincing truth and wild romanticism. His heroes are
singularly like himself, a mixture of morbid introspection and restless
energy: he seems to have taken special pleasure in making them succeed
where he had failed in life, and when the spirit of the story-teller
gets the better of the psychologist, he sends them on a career of
adventure which puts to shame Dumas _pere_ or Walter Scott. And yet
Stendhal was a born analyst, a self-styled "observer of the human
heart"; and the real merit of his novels lies in the marvelous fidelity
with which he interprets the emotions, showing the inner workings of his
hero's mind from day to day, and multiplying petty details with
convincing logic. But in his preoccupation for mental conditions he is
apt to lose sight of the material side of life, and the symmetry of his
novels is marred by a meagreness of physical detail and a lack of
atmosphere. Zola has laid his finger upon Stendhal's real weakness when
he points out that "the landscape, the climate, the time of day, the
weather,.--Nature herself, in other words,--never seems to intervene and
exert an influence on his characters"; and he cites a passag