Part 43 (1/2)

We had n.o.ble games out of hours, and plenty of liberty; but even then, as I remember, we were well spoken of in the town, and rarely did any disgrace, by our appearance or manner, to the reputation of Doctor Strong and Doctor Strong's boys. The Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school; and it must have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else, for he was the kindest of men; with a simple faith in him that might have touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall.

-From d.i.c.kENS'S _David Copperfield_.

IV

His style, created from moment to moment, subordinates the form of the language to the need of expressing the immediate sensation in its original vividness. He multiplies ellipses, anastrophes, words unexpectedly connected; he takes from every vocabulary its most expressive terms; he models himself upon the very appearance of things as they are; he knows no other rhythm than that of successive impressions. He is perpetually on the move. His agility occasionally seems a little feverish. We feel some anxiety; we are afraid that the sentence may not find its balance.

A few lines from his works can be recognized at a glance, for he has only had clumsy imitators, his style being, moreover, in the language of Montaigne, of one substance with the author, being the author himself.

And yet one could hardly say that this style breaks with tradition.

He stops short just at the point at which his idiosyncrasies would degenerate into faults.-From PEt.i.t DE JULLEVILLE, _Histoire de la litterature francaise_, vol. viii.

V

But the pupils - the young n.o.blemen! Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with countenances of old men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long meagre legs would hardly bear the stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together.

There was every ugliness or distortion that told of unnatural aversion conceived by parents for their offspring, or of young lives which, from the earliest dawn of infancy, had been one horrible endurance of cruelty and neglect. There were little faces which should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suffering. There was childhood with the light of its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone remaining; there were vicious-faced boys, brooding, with leaden eyes, like malefactors in jail; and there were young creatures on whom the sins of their frail parents had descended, weeping even for the mercenary nurses they had known, and lonesome even in their loneliness. With every kindly sympathy and affection blasted in its birth, with every young and healthy feeling flogged and starved down, with every revengeful pa.s.sion that can fester in swollen hearts, eating its evil way to their core in silence, what an incipient h.e.l.l was breeding here!-From d.i.c.kENS'S _Nicholas Nickleby_.

VI

It is not only his nerves which are sensitive, it is also his heart, and the keenness of his sensations is equalled by that of his sympathies.

He is interested in his characters, and it is by loving them that he makes us love them. If the figures he paints give us a life-like impression, it is because they lived not only in his imagination but also in his heart.... Daudet can feel in his heart that love which d.i.c.kens felt towards those who are ill-favoured or poor. His favourite heroes are especially those who are sensitive, and who are made wretched by their sensitiveness. In order to create _Jack_ he left the _Nabab_, which he had already begun, and wrote in less than a year that book which is at the same time tender and cruel, but in which cruelty is only another form of tenderness, and which so oppressed the heart of George Sand that after reading it she, the indefatigable worker, remained for three whole days without being able to produce anything at all.-From PELLISSIER, _Le Mouvement litteraire au XIXe siecle_.

VII

It was not very large certainly, being about six feet long by four broad.

It could not be called light, as there were bars and a grating to the window. But it was uncommonly comfortable to look at. The s.p.a.ce under the window at the farther end was occupied by a square table covered with a reasonably clean and whole red and blue tablecloth; a hard-seated sofa covered with red stuff occupied one side; and a good stout wooden chair afforded a seat for another boy, so that three could sit and work together. Over the door were a row of hat-pegs, and on each side book-cases with cupboards at the bottom; shelves and cupboards being filled indiscriminately with school-books, a cup or two, a mouse-trap and bra.s.s candlesticks, leather straps, and some curious-looking articles which puzzled Tom not a little, until his friend explained that they were climbing-irons, and showed their use. A cricket-bat and small fis.h.i.+ng-rod stood up in one corner.-From HUGHES'S _Tom Brown's School-days_.

VIII

Daudet's imagination does not consist in the invention of facts or characters: he pictures to himself with extraordinary vividness what has pa.s.sed before his eyes. Though they are marvellously real, his scenes have not that precise and strict perfection which Flaubert used to give to his. He catches in mid-flight the faintest details and holds fast their very movement. The vibration is still there, and one can feel the tremor in the air and the play of the light.

As to his human figures, I question whether Daudet has ever had his equal in the picturesque truthfulness of his portraits, in the capacity of reproducing the expression of a face, an att.i.tude or dress.

And it does not follow that, as certain ”psychological” writers have hinted, Daudet was deficient in ”psychology.” We cannot find in him that cold, pedantic psychology which consists of the authors's own reflections; and if, to be a ”psychologist,” it is necessary to explain minutely every step and every gesture, or to put wearisome commentaries in the place of action, Daudet does not deserve the name. But perhaps there is a distinction to be made between a novel and an anatomical treatise.

-From PEt.i.t DE JULLEVILLE, _Hist. de la litt. fr_. vol. viii.