What We Old
Stagers Esteemed As Classical In Fiction And BELLES-LETTRES
Are Sealed Books To The Present Generation.
It is an
exception, for instance, to meet with a young man or young
woman who has read Walter Scott.
Perhaps Balzac's reason is
the true one. Scott, says he, 'est sans passion; il
l'ignore, ou peut-etre lui etait-elle interdite par les
moeurs hypocrites de son pays. Pour lui la femme est le
devoir incarne. A de rares exceptions pres, ses heroines
sont absolument les memes ... La femme porte le desordre dans
la societe par la passion. La passion a des accidents
infinis. Peignez donc les passions, vous aurez les sources
immenses dont s'est prive ce grand genie pour etre lu dans
toutes les familles de la prude Angleterre.' Does not
Thackeray lament that since Fielding no novelist has dared to
face the national affectation of prudery? No English author
who valued his reputation would venture to write as Anatole
France writes, even if he could. Yet I pity the man who does
not delight in the genius that created M. Bergeret.
A well-known author said to me the other day, he did not
believe that Thackeray himself would be popular were he
writing now for the first time - not because of his freedom,
but because the public taste has altered. No present age can
predict immortality for the works of its day; yet to say that
what is intrinsically good is good for all time is but a
truism.
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