In France, in the short story, we may easily notice, the uglier forms of ‘Realism’ are wearing themselves out. ‘Le soleil de France,’ said Gluck to Marie Antoinette, ‘le soleil de France donne du génie.’ And the genius that it gives cannot long be hopeless and sombre. It leaves the obscure wood and tangled bypath; it makes for the open road: ‘la route claire et droite’--the phrase belongs to M. Leygues--‘la route claire et droite où marche le génie français.’ Straight and clear was the road followed--nay, sometimes actually cut--by the unresting talent of Guy de Maupassant, the writer of a hundred short stories, which, for the world of his day at least, went far beyond Charles Nodier’s earlier delicacy and Champfleury’s wit. But, somehow, upon De Maupassant’s nature and temperament the curse of pessimism lay. To deviate into cheeriness he must deal with the virtues of the _déclassées_--undoubtedly an interesting theme--he must deal with them as in the famous _Maison Tellier_, an ebullition of scarcely cynical comedy, fuller much of real humanity than De Goncourt’s sordid document, _La Fille Elisa_. But that was an exception. De Maupassant was pessimist generally, because, master of an amazing talent, he refreshed himself never in any rarefied air. The vista of the Spirit was denied him. His reputation he may keep; but his school--the school in which a few even of our own imitative writers prattle the accents of a hopeless materialism--his school, I fancy, will be crowded no more. For, with an observation keen and judicial, M. René Bazin treats to-day themes, we need not say more ‘legitimate’--since much may be legitimate--but at least more acceptable. And then again, with a style of which De Maupassant, direct as was his own, must have envied even the clarity and the subtler charm, a master draughtsman of ecclesiastic and bookworm, of the neglected genius of the provincial town (some poor devil of a small professor), and of the soldier, and the shopkeeper, and the Sous-Préfet’s wife--I hope I am describing M. Anatole France--looks out on the contemporary world with a vision humane and genial, sane and wide. Pessimism, it seems to me, can only be excusable in those who are still bowed down by the immense responsibility of youth. It was a great poet, who, writing of one of his peers--a man of mature life--declared of him, _not_ ‘he mopes picturesquely,’ but ‘he knows the world, firm, quiet, and gay.’ To such a writer--only to such a writer--is possible a happy comedy; and possible, besides, a true and an august vision of profounder things! And _that_ is the spirit to which the Short Story, at its best, will certainly return. (_Nineteenth Century_, March 1898.) MY RARE BOOK