She thought Flaubert too much preoccupied with the sense of form, and
makes these excellent observations to him--perhaps her best piece of
literary criticism. 'You consider the form as the aim, whereas it is but
the effect. Happy expressions are only the outcome of emotion and
emotion itself proceeds from a conviction. We are only moved by that
which we ardently believe in.' Literary schools she distrusted.
Individualism was to her the keystone of art as well as of life. 'Do not
belong to any school: do not imitate any model,' is her advice. Yet she
never encouraged eccentricity. 'Be correct,' she writes to Eugene
Pelletan, 'that is rarer than being eccentric, as the time goes. It is
much more common to please by bad taste than to receive the cross of
honour.'

On the whole, her literary advice is sound and healthy. She never
shrieks and she never sneers. She is the incarnation of good sense. And
the whole collection of her letters is a perfect treasure-house of
suggestions both on art and on politics. The manner of the translation
is often rather clumsy, but the matter is always so intensely interesting
that we can afford to be charitable.

Letters of George Sand. Translated and edited by Raphael Ledos de
Beaufort. (Ward and Downey.)




NEWS FROM PARNASSUS


(Pall Mall Gazette, April 12, 1886.)