Notes on novelists, with some other notes, by Henry James.

GEORGE SAND

I49

term of the combination appears supposable in France, but
only as distinct from the other term. The artist, we gather,
would there have lost his chance and the sitter his ease.
It completes in an interesting way these observations, which
would bear much expansion, to perceive that when we at last have
a Life of George Sand-a celebrity living with the imputed
intensity, if ever a celebrity did-we are indebted for it to the
hand of a stranger. No fact could more exactly point the moral
of my few remarks. Madame Sand's genius and renown would
have long ago made her a subject at home if alacrity in such
a connection had been to be dreamed of. There is no more
significant sign of the general ban under which alacrity rests.
Everything about this extraordinary woman is interesting, and
we can easily imagine the posthumous honours we ourselves
would have hastened to assure to a part taken, in literature and
life, with such brilliancy and sincerity. These demonstrations,
where we should most look for them, have been none the less
as naught-save indeed, to be exact, for the publication of a
number of volumes of letters. It is just Madame Sand's letters,
however-letters interesting and admirable, peculiarly qualified
to dispose the reader in her favour-that in England or in
America would have quickened the need for the rest of the
evidence. But now that, as befalls, we do at last have the rest
of the evidence as we never have had it before, we are of course
sufficiently enlightened as to the reasons for a special application of the law of reserves and delays. It is not in fact easy to
see how a full study of our heroine could have been produced earlier; and even at present there is a sensible comfort
in its being produced at such a distance as practically assigns
the act to a detached posterity. Contemporaneously it was wise
to forbear; but to-day, and in Russia, by good luck, it is
permitted to plunge.
Mme.WladimirKarenine'sextraordinarily diffuse, butscarcely
less valuable, biography, of which the first instalment,1 in two
1 4 George Sand, sa Vie et ses CEuvres, i804-1876." Paris, i899.