No More Learning

The Duke of Liancourt, being president of the provincial
assembly of the election of Clermont, and passing several days
there in business, asked me to dine with the assembly, as he
said there were to be some considerable farmers present. These
assemblies, which had been proposed many years past by the


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16270
ARTHUR YOUNG
French patriots, and especially by the Marquis de Mirabeau, the
celebrated l'ami des hommes; which had been treated by M.
Necker, and which were viewed with eyes of jealousy by certain
persons who wished for no better government than one whose
abuses were the chief foundation of their fortunes,- these as-
semblies were to me interesting to see. I accepted the invitation
with pleasure. Three considerable farmers — renters, not proprie-
-
tors, of land — were members, and present. I watched their car-
riage narrowly to see their behavior in the presence of a great
lord of the first rank, considerable property, and high in royal
favor: and it was with pleasure that I found them behaving with
becoming ease and freedom; and though modest, and without
anything like flippancy, yet without any obsequiousness offens-
ive to English ideas. They started their opinions freely, and
adhered to them with becoming confidence. A most singular
spectacle was to see two ladies present at a dinner of this sort,
with five or six and twenty gentlemen: such a thing could not
happen in England. To say that the French manners in this
respect are better than our own, is the assertion of an obvious
truth. If the ladies are not present at meetings where the con-
versation has the greatest probability of turning on subjects of
more importance than the frivolous topics of common discourse,
the sex must either remain on one hand in ignorance, or on the
other filled with the foppery of over-education, – learned, affected,
and forbidding. The conversation of men not engaged in trifling
pursuits is the best school for the education of a woman.
The 14th. – To the Benedictine abbey of St. Germain, to see
pillars of African marble, etc. It is the richest abbey in France:
the abbot has 300,000 liv. a year (£13,125). I lost my patience at
such revenues being thus bestowed: consistent with the spirit of
the tenth century, but not with that of the eighteenth. What a
noble farm would the fourth of this income establish! . what tur-
nips, what cabbages, what potatoes, what clover, what sheep, what
wool! Are not these things better than a fat ecclesiastic?
active English farmer was mounted behind this abbot, I think he
would do more good to France with half the income than half
the abbots of the kingdom with the whole of theirs. Pass the
Bastile: another pleasant object to make agreeable emotions vi-
brate in a man's bosom, I search for good farmers, and run my
head at every turn against monks and State prisoners.
>
.
If an


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ARTHUR YOUNG
16271
In the evening to M. Lomond, a very ingenious and invent-
ive mechanic, who has made an improvement of the jenny
for spinning cotton. Common machines are said to make too
hard a thread for certain fabrics, but this forms it loose and
spongy.
In electricity he has made a remarkable discovery:
you write two or three words on a paper; he takes it with him
into a room, and turns a machine inclosed in a cylindrical case,
at the top of which is an electrometer, a small fine pith-ball; a
wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a dis-
tant apartment; and his wife, by remarking the corresponding
motions of the ball, writes down the words they indicate: from
which it appears he has formed an alphabet of motions. As
the length of the wire makes no difference in the effect, a cor
respondence might be carried on at any distance: within and
without a besieged town, for instance; or for a purpose much
more worthy, and a thousand times more harmless,— between
two lovers prohibited or prevented from any better connection.
Whatever the use may be, the invention is beautiful. M. Lomond
has many other curious machines, all the entire work of his own
hands: mechanical invention seems to be in him a natural pro-
pensity.
The 5th. – To Montauban. The poor people seem poor in-
deed; the children terribly ragged, if possible worse clad than if
with no clothes at all; as to shoes and stockings, they are luxu-
ries. A beautiful girl of six or seven years playing with a stick,
and smiling under such a bundle of rags as made my heart ache
to see her: they did not beg, and when I gave them anything
seemed more surprised than obliged. One third of what I have
seen of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it in
misery. What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and
States, to answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands
that would be industrious, idle and starving through the execra-
ble maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices
of a feudal nobility! Sleep at the Lion d'Or, at Montauban, an
abominable hole. — 20 miles.
The 6th. — The same inclosed country to Brooms; but near
that town, improves to the eye, from being more hilly. At the
little town of Lamballe, there are above fifty families of noblesse
that live in winter, who reside on their estates in the summer.
There is probably as much foppery and nonsense in their circles,


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16272
ARTHUR YOUNG
and for what I know as much happiness, as in those of Paris.
Both would be better employed in cultivating their lands, and
rendering the poor industrious. - 30 miles.
The 12th. - Walking up a long hill, to ease my mare, I was
joined by a poor woman, who complained of the times, and that
it was a sad country: demanding her reasons, she said her hus-
band had but a morsel of land, one cow, and a poor little horse;
yet they had a franchar (42 lb. ) of wheat, and three chickens, to
pay as a quit-rent to one Seigneur; and four franchar of oats,
one chicken and i f. to pay to another, besides very heavy tailles
and other taxes. She had seven children, and the cow's milk
helped to make the soup. But why, instead of a horse, do not
you keep another cow ? Oh, her husband could not carry his
produce so well without a horse; and asses are little used in the
country. It was said, at present, that something was to be done
by some great folks for such poor ones, but she did not know who
nor how, but God send us better, car les tailles & les droits nous
écrasent. - This woman, at no great distance, might have been
taken for sixty or seventy, her figure was so bent, and her face
so furrowed and hardened by labor,— but she said she was
only twenty-eight. An Englishman who has not traveled, can-
not imagine the figure made by infinitely the greater part of the
countrywomen in France: it speaks, at the first sight, hard and
severe labor; I am inclined to think that they work harder than
the men, and this, united with the more miserable labor of bring-
ing a new race of slaves into the world, destroys absolutely all
symmetry of person and every feminine appearance. To what
we to attribute this difference in the manners of the lower
people in the two kingdoms ? To GOVERNMENT.
The 26th. — For twenty miles to Lisle sur Daube, the country
nearly as before; but after that, to Baume les Dames, it is all
mountainous and rock, much wood, and many pleasing scenes of
the river flowing beneath. The whole country is in the greatest
agitation; at one of the little towns I passed, I was questioned
for not having a cockade of the tiers état. They said it was
ordained by the ticrs; and if I was not a seigneur, I ought to
obey. But suppose I am a seigneur, what then, my friends?
What then ? they replied sternly: why, be hanged; for that most
likely is what you deserve. It was plain this was no moment
for joking; the boys and girls began to gather, whose assembling
are


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ARTHUR YOUNG
16273
has everywhere been the preliminaries of mischief; and if I had
not declared myself an Englishman, and ignorant of the ordi-
nance, I had not escaped very well. I immediately bought a
cockade; but the hussy pinned it into my hat so loosely that
before I got to Lisle it blew into the river, and I was again in
the same danger. My assertion of being English would not do.
I was a seigneur, perhaps in disguise, and without doubt a great
rogue. At this moment a priest came into the street with a let-
ter in his hand: the people immediately collected around him,
and he then read aloud a detail from Befort, giving an account
of M. Necker's passing, with some general features of news from
Paris, and assurances that the condition of the people would be
improved. When he had finished, he exhorted them to abstain
from all violence: and assured them they must not indulge them-
selves with any ideas of impositions being abolished; which he
touched on as if he knew that they had got such notions. When
he retired, they again surrounded me, who had attended to the
letter like others; were very menacing in their manner; and
expressed many suspicions: I did not like my situation at all,
especially on hearing one of them say that I ought to be secured
till somebody would give an account of me. I was on the steps
of the inn, and begged they would permit me a few words; I
assured them that I was an English traveler, and to prove it,
I desired to explain to them a circumstance in English taxation,
which would be a satisfactory comment on what M. l'Abbé had
told them, to the purport of which I could not agree. He had
asserted that the impositions must be paid as heretofore: that
the impositions must be paid was certain, but not as heretofore,
as they might be paid as they were in England. Gentlemen, we
have a great number of taxes in England, which you know noth-
ing of in France; but the tiers état, the poor, do not pay them,
they are laid on the rich: every window in a man's house pays,
but if he has no more than six windows he pays nothing; a
seigneur with a great estate pays the vingtièmes and tailles, but
the little proprietor of a garden pays nothing; the rich for their
horses, their voitures, and their servants, and even for the lib.
erty to kill their own partridges, but the poor farmer nothing
of all this; and what is more, we have in England a tax paid
by the rich for the relief of the poor: hence the assertion of M.
l'Abbé, that because taxes existed before, they must exist again,
XXVII-1018


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16274
ARTHUR YOUNG
did not at all prove that they must be levied in the same man-
ner; our English method seemed much better. There was not
a word of this discourse they did not approve of; they seemed
to think that I might be an honest fellow, which I confirmed by
crying, vive le tiers, sans impositions, when they gave me a bit
of a huzza, and I had no more interruption from them. My mis-
erable French was pretty much on a par with their own patois.
I got however another cockade, which I took care to have so
fastened as to lose it no more. I did not half like traveling in
such an unquiet and fermenting moment: one is not secure for
an hour beforehand. — 35 miles.
The 27th. – To Besançon: the country, mountain, rock, and
wood, above the river; some scenes are fine. I had not arrived
an hour before I saw a peasant pass the inn on horseback, fol.
lowed by an officer of the guard bourgeois, of which there are
1,200 here and 200 under arms, and his party-colored attachment,
and these by some infantry and cavalry. I asked why the militia.
took the pas of the King's troops ? For a very good reason, they
replied: the troops would be attacked and knocked on the head, but
the populace will not resist the milice. This peasant, who is a
rich proprietor, applied for a guard to protect his house, in a vil.
lage where there is much plundering and burning. The mischiefs
which have been perpetrated in the country, towards the mount-
ains and Vesoul, are numerous and shocking. Many châteaus
have been burnt, others plundered, the seigneurs hunted down
like wild beasts, their wives and daughters ravished, their papers
and titles burnt, and all their property destroyed: and these
abominations not inflicted on marked persons, who were odious
for their former conduct or principles, but an indiscriminating
blind rage for the love of plunder. Robbers, galley-slaves, and
villains of all denominations, have collected and instigated the
peasants to commit all sorts of outrages. Some gentlemen at
the table d'hôte informed me that letters were received from the
Maconois, the Lyonois, Auvergne, Dauphiné, etc. , and that simi-
lar commotions and mischiefs were perpetrating everywhere; and
that it was expected they would pervade the whole kingdom.
The backwardness of France is beyond credibility in everything
that pertains to intelligence. From Strasbourg hither, I have not
been able to see a newspaper.
Here I asked for the Cabinet Lit-
téraire ? None. The gazettes ? At the coffee-house. Very easily


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ARTHUR YOUNG
16275
replied; but not so easily found. Nothing but the Gazette de
France; for which, at this period, a man of common-sense would
not give one sol. To four other coffee-houses: at some no paper
at all, not even the Mercure; at the Caffé Militaire, the Courier
de l'Europe a fortnight old; and well-dressed people are now
talking of the news of two or three weeks past, and plainly by
their discourse know nothing of what is passing. The whole
town of Besançon has not been able to afford me a sight of the
Journal de Paris, nor of any paper that gives a detail of the trans-
actions of the States; yet it is the capital of a province large as
half a dozen English counties, and containing * 25,000 souls, - with,
,
strange to say! the post coming in but three times a week. At
this eventful moment, with no license, nor even the least restraint
on the press, not one paper established at Paris for circulation in
the provinces, with the necessary steps taken by affiche, or pla-
card, to inform the people in all the towns of its establishment.
For what the country knows to the contrary, their deputies are
in the Bastile, instead of the Bastile being razed; so the mob
plunder, burn, and destroy, in complete ignorance: and yet with
all these shades of darkness, these clouds of tenebrity, this uni-
versal mass of ignorance, there are men every day in the States
who are puffing themselves off for the FIRST NATION IN EUROPE!
the GREATEST PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE! as if the political juntos,
or literary circles of a capital, constituted a people; instead of the
universal illumination of knowledge, acting by rapid intelligence
on minds prepared by habitual energy of reasoning to receive,
combine, and comprehend it. That this dreadful ignorance of the
mass of the people, of the events that most intimately concern
them, is owing to the old government, no one can doubt; it is
however curious to remark, that if the nobility of other provinces
are hunted like those of Franche Comté, of which there is little
reason to doubt, that whole order of men undergo a proscription,
suffer like sheep, without making the least effort to resist the
attack. This appears marvelous, with a body that have an army
of 150,000 men in their hands; for though a part of those troops
would certainly disobey their leaders, yet let it be remembered
that out of the 40,000 or possibly 100,000 noblesse of France, they
might, if they had intelligence and union amongst themselves,
* That is, the town, not the province.


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162 76
ARTHUR YOUNG
fill half the ranks of more than half the regiments of the
kingdom with men who have fellow-feelings and fellow-sufferings
with themselves: but no meetings, no associations among them;
no union with military men; no taking refuge in the ranks of
regiments to defend or avenge their cause : fortunately for France
they fall without a struggle, and die without a blow. That uni.
versal circulation of intelligence which in England transmits the
least vibration of feeling or alarm, with electric sensibility, from
one end of the kingdom to another, and which unites in bands of
connection men of similar interests and situations, has no exist-
ence in France. Thus it may be said, perhaps with truth, that
the fall of the King, court, lords, nobles, army, church, and par-
liaments, is owing to a want of intelligence being quickly circu-
lated, consequently is owing to the very effects of that thraldom
in which they held the people: it is therefore a retribution rather
than a punishment.


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16277
EDWARD YOUNG
(1684-1765)
COX
He author of the Night Thoughts) had a vogue in his day
that is not easy to understand for one who now reads his
sententious verse. But fashion changes in words and in lit-
erature, and the poetry of one century may become the commonplace
of the next. Such a well-known line as
«Procrastination is the thief of time,
makes one smile: it is hopelessly hackneyed. Yet it may very well
have struck the eighteenth-century reader as a thought admirably
expressed. Again, Young's worst and best
are far apart. He lacked self-criticism, and
more often than not is incredibly bald
and dull. But his thought has strength;
and there are passages in his verse which
are undeniably fine, and have entered into
familiar quotation. Then, too, in the hand-
ling of that difficult form, blank verse (in
which the Night Thoughts' is written),
Young shows himself an artist, especially
notable in a day when blank verse was in
comparative disrepute, and the trail of the
heroic couplet still over English poetry.
Young's quiet life had few salient feat- EDWARD YOUNG
ures for the chronicler. He was born at
Upham, Hampshire, England, in 1684; was educated at Winchester
School and at Oxford, winning a fellowship in law at All Souls' Col-
lege in that university. His doctor-of-law degree was taken in 1719,
and he took orders as a Church of England clergyman in 1727. Pre-
ferment came to him soon; for the next year he was appointed a
royal chaplain, and in 1730 became rector of Welwyn in Hertford-
shire, remaining in that living the rest of his life. In 1731 he mar-
ried the Earl of Lichfield's daughter. His only other appointment,
thirty years later, was that of clerk of the closet to the Princess
Dowager of Wales. His death occurred at his rectory, April 12th,
1765. It will be seen by this digest of biographical facts that Young
was a personage of some importance by position and connection, -



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16278
EDWARD YOUNG
came
which may account in part for the contemporaneous acceptance of
his literary work. He began by publishing The Last Day,' in 1813.
followed by “The Force of Religion,' — the former poem, though
unattractive as a whole, containing some of his most characteristic
work. Next came the formal and dreary tragedies, Busiris (1719).
and "The Revenge (1721). In “The Universal Passion were col-
lected his satires, in which the influence of Pope is to be seen: the
theme and manner are more sprightly than is true of the writer's
most typical work.
Much minor poetry, - including a paraphrase of the Book of Job,
- various laudatory epistles to people of rank, and another play,
from his pen, which was easy-flowing. The first Night
Thought' appeared in 1742, the last in 1744. This series, upon which
Young's fame rests securely, is didactic and solemn in tone, and may
be characterized broadly as religious verse;
the full title, Night
Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality,' indicates the subject-
matter. Young was led to make verse on these lofty themes by the
deaths of those dear to him: he turns to religion for consolation in
his grief, and finds it. As has been implied, his poetry is only to be
read now with any pleasure in judicious selections. Those that fol-
low are examples of the poet at his most eloquent: that on Procras-
tination and that on (Tired Nature's Sweet Restorer) are the most
famous that can be found in the entire body of his works. A col-
lected edition of Young's writings in four volumes was published in
1762.
FROM NIGHT THOUGHTS)
PROCRASTINATION
B
Y NATURE's law, what may be, may be now:
There's no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none: and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant we build
Our mountain hopes, spin out eternal schemes,
As we the fatal sisters could out-spin,
And big with life's futurities expire.
Not e’en Philander had bespoke his shroud,
Nor had he cause; a warning was denied :


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EDWARD YOUNG
16279
-
How many fall as sudden, not as safe;
As sudden, though for years admonished home!
Of human ills the last extreme beware;
Beware, Lorenzo, a slow sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprise!
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer:
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange ?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.
Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears
The palm, —« That all men are about to live,
Forever on the brink of being born. ”
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel: and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise, -
At least, their own; their future selves applaud
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead.
Time lodged in their own hands is folly's vails;
That lodged in fate's to wisdom they consign.
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone.
'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool,
And scarce in human wisdom to do inore.
All promise is poor dilatory man,
And that through every stage: when young indeed,
In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool,
Knows it at forty and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves, - then dies the same.
THE DEATH OF FRIENDS
OUR dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardors; and abate
That glare of life which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth


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16280
EDWARD YOUNG
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
'Cross our obstructed way; and thus to make
Welcome as safe, our port from every storm.
Each friend by fate snatched from us is a plume
Plucked from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aerial heights,
And, damped with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lowered,
Just skim earth's surface ere we break it up,
O’er putrid earth to scratch a little dust
And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends
Are angels sent on errands full of love:
For us they languish, shall they die, in vain ?
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their silent soft address,
Their posthumous advice and pious prayer ?
Senseless as herds that graze their hallowed graves,
Tread underfoot their agonies and groans,
Frustrate their anguish and destroy their deaths ?
ASPIRATION
O Thou great arbiter of life and death,
Nature's immortal, unmaterial sun,
Whose all-prolific beam late called me forth
From darkness — teeming darkness where I lay,
The worm's inferior, and in rank beneath
The dust I tread on - high to bear my brow,
To drink the spirit of the golden day,
And triumph in existence; and could know
No motive but my bliss; and hast ordained
A rise in blessing, with the patriarch's joy,--
Thy call I follow to the land unknown.
I trust in thee, and know in whom I trust:
Or life, or death, is equal; neither weighs;
All weight in this, - Oh, let me live to thee!
SILENCE AND DARKNESS
TIRED nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles, the wretched he forsakes:


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EDWARD YOUNG
16281
Swift on his downy pinions Alies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.
From short (as usual) and disturbed repose,
I wake: how happy they who wake no more!
Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave.
I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams
Tumultuous; where my wrecked desponding thought
From wave to wave of fancied misery
At random drove, her helm of reason lost :
Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change! ) severer for severe:
The day too short for my distress! and Night,
Even in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the color of my fate.
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world:
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound !
Nor eye, nor listening ear, an object finds;
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause -
An awful pause! - prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be soon fulfilled :
Fate! drop the curtain,- I can lose no more.
Silence and darkness! solemn sisters! twins
From ancient night, who nurse the tender thought
To reason, and on reason build resolve
(That column of true majesty in man),
Assist me: I will thank you in the grave;
The grave, your kingdom - there this frame shall fall
A victim sacred to your dreary shrine.
But what are ye? -- Thou, who didst put to flight
Primeval silence, when the morning stars
Exulted, shouted o'er the rising ball,
0 Thou! whose Word from solid darkness struck
That spark, the sun, - strike wisdom from my soul:
My soul which flies to thee, her trust, her treasure,
As misers to their gold, while others rest.
1,
FORMALISM
Oye cold-hearted, frozen formalists!
On such a theme 'tis impious to be calm;
Passion is reason, transport temper, here!


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16282
EDWARD YOUNG
Shall Heaven, which gave us ardor, and has shown
Her own for man so strongly, not disdain
What smooth emollients in theology
Recumbent virtue's downy doctors preach, -
That prose of piety, a lukewarm phrase ?
Rise odors sweet from incense uninflamed ?
Devotion, when lukewarm, is undevout;
But when it glows, its heat is struck to heaven,
To human hearts her golden harps are strung;
High heaven's orchéstra chaunts Amen to man.
THE BETTER PART
No man is happy, till he thinks, on earth
There breathes not a more happy than himself:
Then envy dies, and love o'erflows on all;
And love o'erflowing makes an angel here:
Such angels all, entitled to repose
On Him who governs fate. Though tempest frowns,
Though nature shakes, how soft to lean on Heaven!
To lean on Him on whom archangels lean!
With inward eyes, and silent as the grave,
They stand collecting every beam of thought,
Till their eyes kindle with divine delight;
For all their thoughts, like angels, seen of old
In Israel's dream, come from, and go to, heaven:
Hence are they studious of sequestered scenes;
While noise and dissipation comfort thee.
Were all men happy, revelings would cease,
That opiate for inquietude within.
Lorenzo! never man was truly blessed,
But it composed and gave him such a cast
As folly might mistake for want of joy.
A cast unlike the triumph of the proud;
A modest aspect, and a smile at heart.
Oh for a joy from thy Philander's spring!
A spring perennial, rising in the breast,
And permanent as pure! no turbid stream
Of rapturous exultation swelling high;
Which, like land floods, impetuous pour awhile,
Then sink at once, and leave us in the mire.
What does the man who transient joy prefers ?
What but prefer the bubbles to the stream ?


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## p. 16282 (#635) ##########################################

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EMILE Z'LA.


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16283
ÉMILE ZOLA
(1840-)
BY ROBERT VALLIER
W
HOEVER wishes to study Émile Zola and his work impartially
is immediately impressed with one fact, that of their im-
mense notoriety. It defies all comparison. Unquestionably
the most resounding name of French literature at the present hour
is the name — in reality Italian — of the author of L'Assommoir. '
His books have found admission and readers everywhere. Consider-
ing their diffusion alone, it might be supposed that the spirit of the
country of Châteaubriand and Lamartine, of Mérimée and Octave
Feuillet, is especially represented in the eyes of the world by the
talent least corresponding to the established conception of its essen-
tial traditions and its genius.
It is not an Émile Zola who deigns to inquire whether the great
majority of the public accepts him.
He is swift to seize upon the
fact of success, and he invokes it as the sovereign judgment of uni-
versal opinion which posterity will ratify. This confidence is not
surprising in the case of an author, who, one day taking it into his
head to draw up a list of his brother novelists in the order of their
merit, adopted as his basis of criticism the sum total of their sales.
One might prefer another method of appreciation. But one cannot
ignore a result not wholly explained by the trickery of constant self-
advertising, by the aggressiveness of a blustering polemic, by his
expert hunt after the seductions of actual life, nor even by the cyni-
cism that springs from a constant dwelling upon the lowest instincts.
This result proclaims a power. One would willingly find this in
an undeniable talent which rests on an astonishing obstinacy of labor
and conviction. But the author does not leave us free to separate
his work from the doctrine on which he flatters himself he has
established it. He constrains us to consider the artist only after we
measure the theorist, - a position fraught with trouble and perplexity.
A work of art cannot be conceived as beautiful and fruitful except as
it proceeds from an emotion. Emotion alone creates its life. What
becomes of it if it must be adapted, subordinated to a system?
Now it is evident that all the production, all the literary develop-
ment of Émile Zola, are characterized by methodical systematization.
Even his vocation of authorship seems not to have revealed itself


## p. 16284 (#638) ##########################################

16284
ÉMILE ZOLA
spontaneously. At least the hardships of life were the determining
cause which engaged him in the profession of letters.
His origins were complex. His father was an engineer, - an in-
ventor, of Venetian stock, who had become somewhat cosmopolitan.
His mother was French, the descendant of a Chartrain family. He
may be considered as having inherited from his father his exuber-
ance of hyperbolical imagination; and from his mother his intellect
and taste for the realities.
For a long time he allowed himself to be supposed a southerner.
In reality he was born at Paris, April 2d, 1840. But about the same
time, circumstances obliged his family to move to Aix in Provence.
It was there that he passed his infancy and adolescence. He re-
turned to Paris at seventeen. His youth was shaped in the midst of
the privations and rancors of poverty. Twice refused at the exami-
nation for the baccalaureate, it was only after hard experiences and
painful seekings for the way that he finally found suitable employ-
ment in the large publishing-house of Hachette. His beginnings
there were modest. Soon, however, a place was made for him which
brought him before the public. Little by little, ambition had awak-
ened within him. Secretly, in his days of enforced idleness and
destitution, he had accumulated a stock of mediocre verses which
betrayed an ingenuous taste for Musset. Among these manifold at-
tempts, in which the drama had its place, be began the Contes à
Ninon' which soon appeared. In this initial volume, with its rather
affected fancy and sentimentality, none of the distinctive character-
istics of his future talent are revealed. However, several journals
were now opened to his nimble wits; while, thanks to his duties, he
had facilities for reading by which he profited. Above all, he found
himself in contact with several distinguished men, and more espe-
cially with Hippolyte Taine.
This is the first name to remember in explaining his development.
Deprived of serious instruction and of philosophical education, natur-
ally inclined toward materialistic rationalism, Émile Zola found him-
self already prepared to submit to the influence of this robust spirit;
an influence indeed scarcely recognizable except through the medium
of the master's works. They doubtless inspired in large measure the
partiality, vehement but vigorous, of his artistic and literary polemics;
which, like the daring and pessimistic narrations, Thérèse Raquin
or Madeleine Férat,' attached a certain notoriety to his name. They
contributed to determine his taste, among modern authors, for Bal-
zac, Stendhal, and Flaubert, in whom successively he thought to have
discovered himself. Balzac amazed him as a Michel Angelo, who, as
it were, recreates in his brain a world more striking and in a sense
truer than the actual world. Stendhal showed him, he thought, how


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ÉMILE ZOLA
16285
«to see clearly what is. ” Flaubert stood to him for minute observa-
tion, contemptuous individuality in a cold impersonality. The Gon-
courts initiated him into those refinements of style that correspond
with the nervous exaltation in which the perturbation of our epoch
expresses itself.
At the same time, he ventured, mistakenly self-
taught, into the half-explored regions of sociology and physiology
with the Auguste Comtes, the Darwins, the Claude Bernards, the Spen-
cers, and the Ribots. Thus he improvised a determinism of his own,
according to which he came to consider the science of life, individ-
ual or social, as he would have considered chemistry or physics, which
depend upon a single kind of study and investigation, the experi-
mental method, the one touchstone of all truth. The experimental
method! In his fervor as a neophyte, Émile Zola saw in this, not
only the revivification of certain kinds of knowledge, but he antici-
pated a revolution of human intellect. It was to have its equivalent
and prolongation in literature. Idealism, romanticism, realism even,
had had their day. To naturalism fell the glorious mission of rejuve-
nating the old form of the novel, and of adapting it to the definitive
conception of the universe, in order to make it the supreme form of
the art of the future! Moreover, the question was no longer that
of giving, with more or less talent, a transcript of reality more or
less æsthetic but simply picturesque. The innovator proclaimed
an ambition certainly unforeseen. He assumed to continue «the busi-
ness of the physiologist. ” Henceforth the novel would not be merely
« an observation, showing the combinations of life”; it would becoine
“an experience which seeks to bring forth facts and to disengage a
law. ” How could this unheard-of prodigy be possible ? Émile Zola
does his best to show this by example as well as by theory. Thus
was first conceived the project of a natural and social history of a
family under the Second Empire ); thus from year to year, according
to the needs of his cause, appear the warlike manifestoes which pro-
claim the title of the Roman Experimental (experimental novel) to
final supremacy.
It was in 1869 that Émile Zola determined the plan of a cycle
of studies in which he would have the life of the Second Empire
“recounted by its personages with the aid of their individual dramas. ”
For this purpose he imagined a family, the family of the Rougon-
Macquarts. He began by making it spring from diseased physical
conditions; and basing his work upon studies that pushed to their
extreme consequences the doctrines of heredity, he proposed to de-
velop “the slow succession of nervous and sanguineous accidents
which declare themselves in a race after a first organic lesion. ” In
one single family, then, he would show all the physiological states;
he would show there at the same time all the social conditions. In


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16286
ÉMILE ZOLA
this way too he would retrace the Origines de la France Contem-
poraine' [of Taine).
To this end, while retaining the means of inquiry proposed by
Taine, he would seek from Claude Bernard the processes for extract-
ing the laws of life and codifying them into formulas which are con-
stantly being added, one by one, to the ever-growing catalogue of
the inalienable acquisitions of science. The race, the environment.
the moment, completed by the action of the dominant inherited
instinct, should furnish him with the elements of a true experiment-
ation as admissible, as well proved, as that of the physiologist in his
laboratory. At least so he imagined. And here is his manner of
effecting it:- Let it be well understood in the first place that all
the functions of life are due to simple organic phenomena, to a sim-
ple continuity of reflex action. Easily then, all free-will being sup-
pressed, may you “undo and put together, piece by piece, the
mechanism of the human machine; make it work under the influ-
ence of environment”; seek, in short, “from the point of view of the
individual and of society, what such a passion, in such an environ-
ment and in such given circumstances, will produce. ” Will not these
results be really experiences in the rigorous sense of the word ?
As a fact, science proceeds only upon tangible realities; upon
given phenomena, which, always identical, she reproduces at will.
She questions nature; she does not dictate the responses. The novel-
ist, on the contrary, has before him only imaginary creatures whom
he maneuvres by entirely arbitrary conceptions. But Émile Zola
has never been willing to admit that his pretended experiences limit
themselves to pure hypotheses, having neither existence nor consist-
ency outside of his brain. He says that he verifies these hypotheses
outside of himself. While directing the phenomena, he piques him-
self upon maintaining in them a character of absolute necessity, upon
preserving their proportions and their relations. He will not allow
himself to see the impossibilities, the contradictions. Up to the end
of his Histoire Naturelle et Sociale des Rougon-Macquart, he persists
in an attitude in which he believes his highest glory involved. In
(Le Docteur Pascal,' the last narrative of the famous series, by the
mouth of the hero of the book, his own proxy, he solemnly bears
witness to himself: “Is this not fine,” he exclaims, – "such a whole,
a document so definite, so complete, in which there is not one gap? »
And he says elsewhere: "I do not know work nobler or of larger
application. To be master of good and ill, to rule society, to resolve
in time all the problems of socialism; above all, to furnish solid
foundations for justice by furnishing answers through experience, to
the questions of criminality — is not this to be among the most use-
ful and most moral workers in the human workshop ? »
>
»


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ÉMILE ZOLA
16287
»
Here and there, however, one surprises in him, as it were, a pru-
dent reserve, almost a confession. Apropos of “those new sciences
– in which hypothesis stammers,” he is not far from confessing that
the role of the “poet” is a rôle of divination. But is it not in the
foregleams of emotion only that this divination can be sought and
found ? And emotion makes things more true to human nature only
as it makes them less exacting. In reproducing them, it re-shapes
them according to the genius of the artist. Zola himself, interpret-
ing the old definition of Bacon, has written this express phrase: “Art
is a corner of nature seen through a temperament. ” There is then,
according to his own statement, an artistic truth which is not the
scientific truth. The two do not contradict each other: it is even
indispensable that the first should ask direction from the second.
But in no respect are they one.
Thus in the application of his system, Émile Zola can only show
himself continually inconsequential with himself. Not only, indeed,
does he fail — and with reason - to obey the rules of scientific
experimentation, but he does not always trouble himself to conform
to the precepts of literary observation. He has been reproached,
and justly, with having undertaken many a subject after insufficient
preparation. That he might describe and narrate, he has often
contented himself with superficial impressions. He has frequently
employed mere second-hand documents; thus demonstrating that the
truth he thought to discover and reveal, he sought chiefly in himself.
Moreover, the vast programme which the inventor of the Rougon-
Macquart scheme undertook to fill, involved inevitably the obligation
of working in great measure upon borrowed material. The first
novels exhausted his stock of recollections of his childhood and
youth, which for example so vivify several Provençal descriptions in
La Fortune des Rougons,' or certain pictures of suburban customs
in L'Assommoir. Consequently the scruples of Zola the observer
grew more and more feeble.
On the other hand, a kind of enormous
lyricism developed and blossomed in him. Already in copying the
real from nature, he had exhibited a tendency toward amplification
and excess. He had exaggerated the proportions, over-emphasized
contours, accentuated colors. Now he abandoned himself more and
more to this kind of transposition. It is what he would define as
“adding the personal expression to the sense of the real. ”
Unhappily, in him the personal expression does not assert itself
alone in the necessity of enlarging things according to the traditions
of the romantic school, to which in part he belongs in spite of him-
self. It is still further manifested in a surprising and abnormal
predilection for the ugly, the trivial, the hideous; for the odious and
horrible. He seems usually to estimate the truth in proportion to the
turpitude. It is not in the least a choice for conscience's sake, but
(


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16288
ÉMILE ZOLA
a choice by vocation. He frankly glorifies himself for having estab-
lished ignominy in literature, as for having made us receive a billings-
gate vocabulary. He has opened his work wide to «the human
brute let loose. ” For man — according to his doctrine, at the mercy
of heredity, of collectivity, of environment, of interests, and of pas-
sions — man appears to him habitually an ape of a particularly ma-
levolent species. So that he has presented to us as average products
of French society under the Second Empire, a most astonishing col-
lection of brute beasts, of criminals, of madmen, and of sick people.
With such a predetermination, what becomes of noble virtues, of
delicate qualities? What becomes of all that makes the honor and
value of life ? Everywhere and in everything Zola sees only states of
matter. Therefore he has not thus far succeeded in drama, which
must exhibit action controlled by will. A bad habit, a mania, a
physical defect, are not enough to constitute a type on the stage.
Now, exactly these are the only attributes by which Zola ordinarily
portrays and characterizes his personages. The sign once chosen,
the novelist applies himself to giving it the effect of an obsession, of
a fixed idea; he recalls it ceaselessly; he shows it on all occasions,
under all lights: and this simplification of description usually pro-
duces a kind of puppets who are much more symbolic than real. As
to that highest form of nature which is mind, as to that intelligence
by which all action, even instinctive action, is, as it were, kneaded,
the author of the “Ventre de Paris' perceives no appreciable traces
in the combination of blind forces which to him represents the
world.
The unity of his narrations, then, is wholly external. They have
no soul, and they lack love. For he has no right to degrade the
name of love to describe that fierce desire whose aberrations and
eccentricities he especially delights in describing. It is mere brute
instinct, an abettor of miseries and crimes, a fatal scourge; and not
that “collaboration to the ends of the universe » of which Renan
spoke. In Zola's work, love does not lose its malice to become nor-
mal, except in a few healthy, well-poised beings. For to him, vir-
tue is physical health, and moral imperfection is only a resultant
of organic imperfection. There is no other ruling principle than
a tranquil belief in the energies of life. ” Moreover, he evidently
prefers brute nature to human nature. The beauty in which he
delights is a beauty of the beast. ” He has not hesitated to degrade
woman in her most august functions to animality.