it would be but _un mauvais
brouillard_) of the endeavour which he and his brother had made to
represent the only thing worth representing, _la vie vecue, la vraie
verite_. As in painting, he said, all depends on the way of seeing,
_l'optique_: out of twenty-four men who will describe what they have all
seen, it is only the twenty-fourth who will find the right way of
expressing it. 'There is a true thing I have said in my journal,' he
went on. 'The thing is, to find a lorgnette' (and he put up his hands to
his eyes, adjusting them carefully) 'through which to see things. My
brother and I invented a lorgnette, and the young men have taken it from
us.'

How true that is, and how significantly it states just what is most
essential in the work of the Goncourts! It is a new way of seeing,
literally a new way of seeing, which they have invented; and it is in
the invention of this that they have invented that 'new language' of
which purists have so long, so vainly, and so thanklessly complained.
You remember that saying of Masson, the mask of Gautier, in _Charles
Demailly:_ 'I am a man for whom the visible world exists.' Well, that is
true, also, of the Goncourts; but in a different way.

'The delicacies of fine literature,' that phrase of Pater always comes
into my mind when I think of the Goncourts; and indeed Pater seems to me
the only English writer who has ever handled language at all in their
manner or spirit. I frequently heard Pater refer to certain of their
books, to _Madame Gervaisais_, to _L'Art du XVIII Siecle_, to _Cherie_;
with a passing objection to what he called the 'immodesty' of this last
book, and a strong emphasis in the assertion that 'that was how it
seemed to him a book should be written.' I repeated this once to
Goncourt, trying to give him some idea of what Pater's work was like;
and he lamented that his ignorance of English prevented him from what he
instinctively realised would be so intimate an enjoyment. Pater was of
course far more scrupulous, more limited, in his choice of epithet, less
feverish in his variations of cadence; and naturally so, for he dealt
with another subject-matter and was careful of another kind of truth.
But with both there was that passionately intent preoccupation with 'the
delicacies of fine literature'; both achieved a style of the most
personal sincerity: _tout grand ecrivain de tous les temps_, said
Goncourt, _ne se reconnait absolument qu'a cela, c'est qu'il a une