In fact--impertinent, insolent, anything else as it may seem--I venture to ask the question, "Was George Sand a very great craftswoman in the novel?" and, what is more, to answer it in the negative. I understand that an ingenious critic of her own sex has recently described her method as "rolling through the book, locked in the embraces of her subject," as distinguished from the aloofness and elaboration of a more recent school. So far, perhaps, so good; but I could wish to find "the intricacies of Diego and Julia" more interesting to me than as a rule they are. And it must be remembered that she is constantly detaching herself from the forlorn "subject," leaving it _un_embraced and shivering, in order to sermonise it and her readers. I do not make the very facile and somewhat futile criticism that she would have written better if she had written half or a quarter as much as she did. She could not have written little; it is as natural and suitable for Tweed to "rin wi' speed" as for Till to "rin slaw," though perhaps the result--parallel to but more cheerful than that recorded in the old rhyme--may be that Till has the power not of drowning but of intoxicating two men, where Tweed can only manage one. But this engrained fecundity and facundity of hers inevitably make her work novel-journalism rather than novel-literature in all points but in that of style, which has been discussed already.[197] FOOTNOTES: [174] It is attested by the well-known story, more excusable in a man than creditable to a gentleman, of her earliest or earliest known lover, Jules Sandeau (_v. inf._), seeing a photograph of her in later days, turning to a companion and saying, "Et je l'ai connue _belle_!" [175] It is possible that some readers may not know the delightfully unexpected, and not improbably "more-expressive-than-volumes" _third_ line-- "Not like the woman who lies under the next stone." But tradition has, I believe, mercifully omitted to identify this neighbouring antipode. [176] Details of personal scandal seldom claim notice here. But it may be urged with some show of reason that _this_ scandal is too closely connected with the substance and the spirit of the novelist's whole work, from _Indiana_ to _Flamarande_, to permit total ignoring of it. _Lucrezia Floriani_, though perhaps more suggestive of Chopin than of Musset, but with "tangency" on both, will be discussed in the text. That most self-accusing of excuses, _Elle et Lui_, with its counterblast Paul de Musset's _Lui et Elle_, and a few remarks on _Un Hiver a Majorque_ (conjoined for a purpose, which will be indicated) may be despatched in a note of some length. [Sidenote: Note on _Elle et Lui_, etc.,]