which lay outside and beyond, for which he had found or
sought no formula, on which perhaps his philosophy even
looked askance, is wanting in my study, as it was wanting in
the guide I followed. In some ways a less serious writer, in
all ways a nobler man, the true Thoreau still remains to be
depicted.

VILLON. - I am tempted to regret that I ever wrote on this
subject, not merely because the paper strikes me as too
picturesque by half, but because I regarded Villon as a bad
fellow. Others still think well of him, and can find
beautiful and human traits where I saw nothing but artistic
evil; and by the principle of the art, those should have
written of the man, and not I. Where you see no good,
silence is the best. Though this penitence comes too late,
it may be well, at least, to give it expression.

The spirit of Villon is still living in the literature of
France. Fat Peg is oddly of a piece with the work of Zola,
the Goncourts, and the infinitely greater Flaubert; and,
while similar in ugliness, still surpasses them in native
power. The old author, breaking with an ECLAT DE VOIX, out
of his tongue-tied century, has not yet been touched on his
own ground, and still gives us the most vivid and shocking
impression of reality. Even if that were not worth doing at
all, it would be worth doing as well as he has done it; for
the pleasure we take in the author's skill repays us, or at
least reconciles us to the baseness of his attitude. Fat Peg
(LA GROSSE MARGOT) is typical of much; it is a piece of
experience that has nowhere else been rendered into