mances of Balzac--_La Muse du Departement_,
or _Un Grand Homme de Province a Paris_,--you could induct Balzac's
entire psychology, or Sainte-Beuve's, or Madame Sand's, Benjamin
Constant's, Madame de Stael's or Chateaubriand's, you would find in
_Madame Bovary_ or _Salammbo_ nothing of Flaubert, except his
temperament, his taste, and his ideals as an artist. Let us suppose
another Flaubert, who did not live at Rouen, whose life is not that
related in his correspondence, who was not the friend of Maxime Ducamp
or of Louise Colet, and the _Education Sentimentale_ or the _Tentation
de Saint Antoine_ would not be in the least different from what they are
now, nor should we see one line of change to be made. This is a triumph
in objective art. "I do not wish to consider art as an overflow of
passion," he wrote once, a little brutally. "I love my little niece as
if she were my daughter, and I am sufficiently active in her behalf to
prove that these are not empty phrases. But may I be flayed alive rather
than exploit that kind of thing in style!" It has been but a short
hundred years since, as he expressed it, romanticism "exploited its
emotions in style," and made art from the heart.

"Ah! strike upon the heart, 'tis there that genius lies!" But, for a
whole generation, _Madame Bovary_, _Salammbo_ and _Education
Sentimentale_ have been teaching the contrary. "The author in his work
should be like God in the universe, everywhere present but nowhere
visible. Art being second nature, the creator of this nature should act
through analogous procedure. He must be felt in each atom, under every
aspect, concealed but infinite; the effect upon the spectator should be
a kind of amazement." Furthermore, he remarks that this principle was
the core of Greek art. I know not, or at least I do not recall, whether
he had observed (as he should, since Anglo-Saxons have been quick to
notice it) that this "principle" underlies the art of Shakespeare.

To realize this principle in work you must proceed scientifically, and,
in this connection, we may notice that Flaubert's idea is that of
Leconte de Lisle in the preface to his _Poemes Antiques_, and of Taine
in his lectures upon _L'Ideal dans l'art_.

Romanticism had confounded the picturesque with the anecdotal; character
with accident; colour with oddity. _Han d'Islande_, _Notre-Dame de
Paris_ and some romances of Balzac, the first and poorest, not signed
with his name, may serve as an example.