Without question the return of Anatole France to the spirit and mode of his earlier books, to the idealism, combined with photographic vividness in _The Bloom of Life_, influenced the decision of the Swedish Academy in his favor, in 1921. He was, in his old age, living again the scenes of his youth--discussing with his schoolmate, Fontanet, “People Who Do Not Give Enough”; playing truant from the ferule of Monsieur Crottu whose rule “was a tissue of injustices”; recalling “Days of Enchantment” when he went to his first play; photographing “Monsieur Dubois, the Quiz,” and plucky Phillipine Gobelin; and yielding again to the spell of Vergil and the Sixth Eclogue, with its wonder and beauty. The stinging irony disappeared from these later pages--irony which motivated such books (or portions of them) as _Histoire contemporaine_ and _The Revolt of the Angels_ or “A Mummer’s Tale” in _Histoire comique_. Dual personality which resides in all persons was most marked in this writer of charm and force, this exponent of his race, and of his age among _all_ races. “Compassionate idealism” is the phrase chosen by James Lewis May to explain the polemical essays and radical criticisms of governments and religions, that are expressed or implied in many of his writings. James Huneker calls him “a true humanist”; he thinks he loved humanity and learning; he loved words, also, but he was “a modern thinker, who has shed the despotism of the positivist dogma and boasts the soul of a chameleon.”[145] He stresses his irony which is “Pagan” and his pity which is “Christian.” Sisley Huddlestone, in _Those Europeans_, devotes a chapter to Anatole France as “Ironist and Dreamer.” The phrases are well chosen; the interpretation of his salient traits is condensed but convincing: “In his irony one constantly catches glimpses of beauty. By showing us life as it is, though without bitterness, he indicates life as it should be. He teaches tolerance and placidity in an age in which even the reformers add to the confusion by their reckless energy.”[146] FOOTNOTES: [136] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1921. [137] _Anatole France: the Man and His Work_ by James Lewis May, London and New York, 1923, p. 72. [138] _Studies from Ten Literatures_ by Ernest Boyd, New York, 1925. [139] _Anatole France Himself_ by Jean-Jacques Brousson, Philadelphia, 1925. [140] London, Bodley Head, Crown Edition, 1924, pp. v and ix. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co. [141] _Anatole France: the Man and His Work_ by James Lewis May, London, 1924, p. 120. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co. [142] _Ibid._, p. 108. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co. [143] _The Opinions of Anatole France_, recorded by Paul Gsell; in American edition, _The Conversations_, etc., New York, 1924. [144] _Anatole France Himself: a Boswellian Record_, by Jean-Jacques Brousson, pp. 95, 347, Philadelphia, 1925. By permission of J. B. Lippincott Co.