French diet, feeble, but well seasoned. These poor Giants, of whom Zola
would talk, have become so weak and shrunken with time, that nobody is
able any longer to make them out, even as dwarfs.




THE SPANISH REALISTS


The Spanish realists of the same period are the height of the
disagreeable. The most repugnant of them all is Pereda. When I read him,
I feel as if I were riding on a balky, vicious mule, which proceeds at
an uncomfortable little trot, and then, all of a sudden, cuts stilted
capers like a circus horse.




THE RUSSIANS


_Dostoievski_

One hundred years hence Dostoievsky's appearance in literature will be
hailed as one of the most extraordinary events of the nineteenth
century. Among the spiritual fauna of Europe, his place will be that of
the Diplodocus.

_Tolstoi_