chiefly excelled;
there is nothing finer in literature than the march of the strikers in
_Germinal_ or the charges of the troops in _La Debacle_. Contrast him
with such a master of prose as George Meredith, and we see how immensely
strong the battle scenes in _La Debacle_ are when compared with those
in _Vittoria_; it is here that his method of piling detail on detail and
horror on horror is most effectual. "To make his characters swarm," said
Mr. Henry James in a critical article in the _Atlantic Monthly_ (August,
1903), "was the task he set himself very nearly from the first, that was
the secret he triumphantly mastered."

"Naturalism" as a school had a comparatively brief existence--Zola
himself departed largely from its principles after the conclusion of the
Rougon-Macquart series--but its effects have been far-reaching on
the literature of many countries. In England the limits of literary
convention have been extended, and pathways have been opened up along
which later writers have not hesitated to travel, even while denying the
influence of the craftsman who had cleared the way. It is safe to say
that had _L'Assommoir_ never been written there would have been no _Jude
the Obscure_, and the same remark applies to much of the best modern
fiction. In America, Frank Norris, an able writer who unfortunately died
before the full fruition of his genius had obviously accepted Zola
as his master, and the same influence is also apparent in the work of
George Douglas, a brilliant young Scotsman whose premature death left
only one book, _The House with the Green Shutters_, as an indication
of what might have sprung from the methods of modified naturalism.
M. Edouard Rod, an able critic, writing in the _Contemporary Review_
(1902), pointed out that the influence of Zola has transformed novel
writing in Italy, and that its effect in Germany has been not less
pronounced. The virtue of this influence on German letters was
undoubtedly great. It made an end of sentimentality, it shook literature
out of the sleepy rut into which it had fallen and forced it to face
universal problems.

One must regret for his own sake that Zola was unable to avoid offending
those prejudices which were so powerful in his time. The novelist who
adopts the method of the surgeon finds it necessary to expose many
painful sores, and is open to the taunt that he finds pleasure in the
task. On no one did this personal obloquy fall more hardly than on
Zola