Page:The Galaxy (New York, Sheldon & Co.) Volume 24 (1877).djvu/65

 an intellectual refinement, a philosophic savor, a reference to spiritual things, in which he was grotesquely deficient. But to improvise, to let one's invention go, in the inner region of the relations of the sexes, to resort for one's material, one's "effects," one's surprises and catastrophes, to the psychology—I had almost said the physiology—of love-making, is—I do not say unlawful, but at least very dangerous. A writer roaming irresponsibly among these dim labyrinths is likely to make some monstrous encounters. This was constantly happening to George Sand. In such intellectual puddles as "Le dernier Amour" and "Francia," there is an extraordinary want of proportion and general verity. The standard of reality, the measure of interest, has been left quite outside. The reader feels like a person who should go down into the cellar to sit while a spacious house stood unoccupied above him.

I have given no full enumeration of George Sand's romances, and it seems needless to do so. I have lately been trying to read them over, and I frankly confess that I have found it impossible. They are excellent reading for once, but they lack that quality which makes things classical—makes them impose themselves. It has been said that what makes a book a classic is its style. I should modify this, and instead of style say form. Mme. Sand's novels have plenty of style, but they have no form. Balzac's have not a shred of style, but they have a great deal of form. Posterity doubtless will make a selection from each list, but the few volumes of Balzac it preserves will remain with it much longer, I suspect, than those which it borrows from his great contemporary. I cannot easily imagine posterity travelling with "Valentine" or "Mauprat," "Consuelo" or the "Marquis de Villemer" in its trunk. At the same time I can imagine that if these admirable tales fall out of fashion, such of our descendants as stray upon them in the dusty corners of old libraries will sit down on the bookcase ladder with the open volume and turn it over with surprise and enchantment. What a beautiful mind I they will say; what an extraordinary style! Why have we not known more about these things? And as, when that time comes, I suppose the world will be given over to a "realism" that we have not as yet begun faintly to foreshadow, George Sand's novels will have, for the children of the twenty-first century, something of the same charm which Spenser's "Fairy Queen" has for those of the nineteenth. For a critic of to-day to pick and choose among them seems almost pedantic; they all belong quite to the same intellectual family. They are the easy writing which makes hard reading. In saying this I must immediately limit my meaning. All the world can read George Sand over and not find it in the least hard. But it is not easy to return to her; putting aside a number of fine descriptive pages, the reader will not be likely to resort to any volume that he has once laid down for a particular chapter, a brilliant passage, an entertaining conversation. George Sand invites reperusal less than any mind of equal eminence. Is this because after all she was a woman, and the laxity of the feminine intellect could not fail to claim its part in her? I will not attempt to say; especially as, though it may be pedantic to pick and choose among her works, I immediately think of two or three which have as little as possible of intellectual laxity. "Mauprat" is a solid, masterly, manly book; "André" and "La Mare au Diable" have an extreme perfection of form. M. Taine, whom I quoted at the beginning of these remarks, speaks of our author's rustic tales (the group to which the "Mare au Diable" belongs ) as a signal proof of her activity and versatility of mind. Besides being charming stories, they are in fact a real study in philology—such a study as Balzac made in the "Contes