Page:George Sand by Bertha Thomas.djvu/225

Rh acknowledges, with a sort of complacency, "has always been my weak point." Thus whilst in many of her compositions, especially the shorter novels, the construction leaves little to be desired, Consuelo is only one among many instances in which all ordinary rules of symmetry and proportion are set at nought. Sometimes the leading idea assumed naturally and easily a perfect form; if simple, as in André and her pastorals, it usually did so; but if complex, she troubled herself little over the task of symmetrical arrangement. M. Maxime Du Camp reports that she said to him, "When I begin a novel I have no plan, it arranges itself whilst I write, and becomes what it may." This fault shocks less in England, where genius is apt to rebel against the restrictions of form and such irregularity has been consecrated, so to speak, by the masterpieces of the greatest among our imaginative writers. And even the more precise criticism of her countrymen has owned that this carelessness works by no means entirely to her disadvantage. In fictions more faultless as literary compositions the reader, whilst struck with admiration for the art with which the whole is put together, is apt to lose something of the illusion—the impression of nature and conviction. The faults of no writer can be more truly defined as the défauts de ses qualités than those of George Sand. Shorn of her spontaneity she would indeed be shorn of her strength. We are carried along by the pleasant,