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humorous, romantic, or religious.
Yet it cannot be denied that some valuable books are partially
insane; some, mostly religious, partially inhuman; and very many
tainted with morbidity and impotence. We do not loathe a
masterpiece although we gird against its blemishes. We are not,
above all, to look for faults, but merits. There is no book
perfect, even in design; but there are many that will delight,
improve, or encourage the reader. On the one hand, the Hebrew
psalms are the only religious poetry on earth; yet they contain
sallies that savour rankly of the man of blood. On the other hand,
Alfred de Musset had a poisoned and a contorted nature; I am only
quoting that generous and frivolous giant, old Dumas, when I accuse
him of a bad heart; yet, when the impulse under which he wrote was
purely creative, he could give us works like Carmosine or Fantasio,
in which the last note of the romantic comedy seems to have been
found again to touch and please us. When Flaubert wrote Madame
Bovary, I believe he thought chiefly of a somewhat morbid realism;
and behold! the book turned in his hands into a masterpiece of
appalling morality. But the truth is, when books are conceived
under a great stress, with a soul of ninefold power, nine times
heated and electrified by effort, the conditions of our being are
seized with such an ample grasp, that, even should the main design
be trivial or base, some truth and beauty cannot fail to be
expressed. Out of the strong comes forth sweetness; but an ill
thing poorly done is an ill thing top and bottom. And so this can
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