writers, none of whom equalled him,--Parnassians in
poetry, positivists in criticism, realists in romance or in dramatic
writing,--who laboured at the same work. His aestheticism is not his
alone, yet _Madame Bovary_ and _Salammbo_ shot like unexpected meteors
out of a grey sky, the dull, low sky of the Second Empire. In 1860 the
sky was not so grey or so low; and the _Poemes Antiques_ of Leconte de
Lisle, the _Etudes d'histoire religieuse_ of Renan, and the _Essais de
Critique_ of Taine, are possibly not unworthy to be placed in parallel
or comparison with the first writings of Flaubert. An exquisite judge of
things of the mind, J. J. Weiss, very clearly saw at that time what
there was in common in all these works, in the glory of which he was not
deceived when he added the _Fleurs du Mai_ by Charles Baudelaire, and
the first comedies of Alexandre Dumas _fils_. But the truth is, not one
of these works was marked with signs of masterly maturity in like degree
with _Madame Bovary_.

It is, then, natural that, from day to day, Flaubert should become a
guide, and here, if we consider the nature of the lessons he gives, we
cannot deny their towering excellence.

If there was need to agitate against romanticism, _Madame Bovary_
performed the duty; and if in this agitation there was need to save what
was worth salvation, _Salammbo_ saved it. If it was fitting to recall to
poets and to writers of romance, to Madame Sand herself and Victor Hugo,
that art was not invented as a public carrier for their confidences, it
is still Flaubert who does it. He taught the school of hasty writers
that talent, or even genius, is in need of discipline,--the discipline
of a long and painful prenticehood in the making and unmaking of their
work. He has widened, and especially has he hollowed and deepened, the
notion that romanticism was born of nature, and, in doing this, has
brought art back to the fountain-head of inspiration. His rhetoric and
aestheticism brought him face to face with Nature, enabled him to see
her, a gift as rare as it is great, and to "represent" her--the proof of
the preceding. It is the artist that judges the model. Poets and
romance-writers, like painters, we value only in as much as they
represent life--by and for the fidelity, the originality, the novelty,
the depth, the distinction, the perfection with which they represent it.
It is the rule of rules, the principle of principles! And if Flaubert
had no other merit