he sort of sudden illumination that one gets
from catching a significant gesture under the street lamp, or meeting
a swift tale-telling glance beneath a crowded doorway.

Bitterly inspired as he is by the irony of the physiological tragedy of
human life, Guy de Maupassant is at his greatest when he deals with
the bizarre accidents that happen to the body; greatest of all when he
deals with the last bizarre accident of all, the accident of death.

The appalling grotesqueness of death, its brutal and impious levity,
its crushing finality, have never been better written of. The savage
ferocity with which he tears off the mask which the sentimental
piety of generations has thrown over the features of their dead is no
sign of frivolousness in him. The gravity of the undertaker is not an
indication of deep emotion; nor is the jesting of Hamlet, as he stands
above Ophelia's grave, a sign of an inhuman heart.

The last insult of the scurrilous gods--their flinging us upon oblivion
with so indecent, so lewd a disregard for every sort of seemliness--is
answered in Guy de Maupassant by a ferocious irony almost equal
to their own.

But it would be unfair to let this dark-browed Norman go, without at
least a passing allusion to the large and friendly manner in which he
rakes up, out of brothel, out of gutter, out of tenement, out of
sweat-shop, out of circus-tent, out of wharf shanty, out of barge cabin,
every kind and species of human derelict to immortalise their
vagrant humanity in the amber of his flawless style.

There is a spacious hospitality about the man's genius which is a rare
tonic to weary aesthetes, sick of the thin-spun theories of the schools.
The sun-burnt humour of many queer tatterdemalions warms us, as
we read him, into a fine indifference to nice points of human
distinction. All manner of ragged nondescripts blink at us out of
their tragic resignation and hint at a ribald reciprocity of nature,
making the whole world kin.

In his ultimate view of life, he was a drastic pessimist, and what we
call materialism receives from his hands the clinching fiat of a
terrific imprimatur. And this is well; this is as it should be. There are
always literary persons to uphold the banners of mysticism and
morality, idealism and good hope. There will always be plenty of
talent "on the side of the angels" in these days, when it has become a
kind of intellectual cant to cry aloud, "I am no materialist!
Materialism has been