was scratching over the paper."

In these two detached pictures--the one from a so-called "romantic,"
the other from a so-called "realistic" book--one readily observes
the likeness in the subjects, which are of a ghastly repulsiveness;
the same minuteness of observation--e.g., the lion's hind legs
"slightly drawn up," the woman's thumbs "bent into the palms of her
hands"; the same careful notation of effect on the several senses;
the same rhetorical heightening--e.g., the "stalactites at the end
of his tail," the web in the woman's eyes "as if spiders had spun it
over"; and finally, that celebrated detachment, that air as of a
medical examiner, recording the results of an autopsy. What can we
know of such an author? All, or nearly all, that he knew of himself,
provided we will searchingly ask ourselves what sort of mind is
steadily attracted to the painting of such pictures, to the
representation of such incidents, and what sort of mind expresses a
lifetime of brooding on the significance of life in two such books
as Madame Bovary and Salammbo.

At its first appearance, Madame Bovary was prosecuted, though
unsuccessfully, as offensive to public morals. In derision of this
famous prosecution, Henry James with studious jauntiness, asserts
that in the heat of his first admiration he thought what an
excellent moral tract it would make. "It may be very seriously
maintained," he continues, "that M. Flaubert's masterpiece is the
pearl of 'Sunday reading.'" As a work of fiction and recreation the
book lacks, in his opinion, one quite indispensable quality: it
lacks charm. Well, there are momentary flashes of beauty and grace,
dazzling bits of color, haunting melancholy cadences in every
chapter of Flaubert; but a charming book he never wrote. A total