When reading him sympathetically one recalls the saying of Maurice Barrès: "For an accomplished spirit there is but one dialogue, that between our two egos--the momentary ego that we are and the ideal one toward which we strive." For Jacobeans this interior dialogue, with its "secondary intention" marches like muted music through the pages of the latter period. Henry James will always be a touchstone for the tasteless. CHAPTER VI GEORGE SAND Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man, self-called George Sand! --MRS. BROWNING. I Who reads George Sand nowadays? was asked at the time of her centenary (she was born, 1804; died, 1876). Paris responded in gallant phrases. She was declared one of the glories of French literature. Nevertheless, we are more interested in the woman, in her psychology, than in her interminable novels. The reason is simple; her books were built for her day, not to endure. She never created a vital character. Her men and women are bundles of attributes, neither flesh nor blood nor good red melodrama. She was a wonderful journalist, one is tempted to say the first of her sex, and the first feminist. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was a shriller propagandist, yet she accomplished no more for the cause than her French neighbour, not alone because she didn't smoke big cigars or wear trousers, but on general principles. In a word, Mrs. Godwin didn't exactly practise what she preached and George Sand did. For her there was no talk of getting the vote; her feminism was a romantic revolt, not economic or political rebellion. George Sand should be enshrined as the patron saint of female suffragism. By no means a deep thinker, for she reflected as in a mirror the ideas of the intellectual men she met, she had an enormous vogue. Her reputation was worldwide. We know more about her now, thanks to the three volumes recently published by Vladimir Karénine (the pen-name of a Russian lady, Mme. Komaroff, the daughter of Dmitri Stassow). This writer has brought her imposing work (thus far over 1,700 pages) down to 1848, and, as much happened in the life of her heroine after that, we may expect at least two more fat volumes. Her curiosity has been insatiable. She has read all the historical and critical literature dealing with Sand. She has at first-hand from friends and relatives facts hitherto unpublished, and she is armed with a library of documents. More, she has read and digested the hundred-odd stories of the fecund writer, and actually analyses their plots, writes at length of the characters, and incidentally throws light on her own intellectual processes.