original thought and research, but that it created in everyday life an
intolerable spirit of suspicion and distrust. It was to the animosity of
their private enemies that the imprisonment of both Archbishop Carranza
and Luis de León was due, and it is difficult to believe in the
sincerity of the witnesses who, “without being cited” and “for the
discharge of their conscience,” laid their accusations before the
Inquisition. In the University of Salamanca there was much prying and
spying, fostered by the rivalries and enmity of the professors. The
professors were elected by the votes of the students after a public
discussion between the candidates on a given theme, and this system
naturally led to considerable ill-feeling and many abuses. During
discussions in the University there would be always some one on the
watch for any specious subject of accusation. Thus, when Luis de León
maintained that “marriage was not in itself an evil but only a less
blessed state than celibacy,” León de Castro had written it down in
order to denounce it to the Inquisition, and in the same way another
professor had gone hastily out during a discussion in order to fetch pen
and ink. On one occasion, when Zuñiga was in Luis de León’s cell at
Salamanca, the latter mentioned a book which his friend, the celebrated
Arias Montano, had sent him. Zuñiga thereupon displayed suspicions of
Montano which Luis de León resented. A few days afterwards, to quote
Luis de León’s own words, “he seemed to me to be still suspicious and,
knowing that he was of a morose spirit and ever inclined to see things
in their worst light, I said to him laughingly: ‘You are indeed a
pessimist; it seems you still think ill of Montano.’ He said, ‘No; of
the man I do not think ill, but I am not certain that it is not my duty
to denounce the book.’” Luis de León goes on to say that more than two
years afterwards he also “had a fit of pessimism, and, considering the
number of heretics who had been discovered and were being discovered
daily in Spain,” determined himself to lay the matter before the
Inquisition--a common way of forestalling an accusation. Again, Medina
examined with most holy zeal (_con santísimo celo_) Luis de León’s
lectures and other papers. The result would be all the more fruitful in
that he would not omit the notes taken by students at the lectures, and,
as Luis de León was well aware, “ignorant students often put a quite
wrong interpretation on what the lecturer said.” Medina did, in fact,
call a meeting of students in his cell and inquired of them if they had
heard or knew of any suspicious or perverted doctrines of Luis de León.
Such methods must multiply means of attack and further spin out a trial.
Of one witness Luis de León, in his defence, said, “This witness is the
Bachelor of Arts Rodríguez, nicknamed ‘Doctor Subtle’ in the University.
I think it is he because he says I left him without an answer, and he
was the only person of that University with whom this happened. For as
he was a man of unsound judgment and sometimes asked impertinent
questions and from what he heard and did not understand collected
nonsensical answers, I grew angry and called him a fool. And at other
times, in order not to become angry and out of humour on his account, I
would give him no answer but flee from him. And he is so witless and
importunate that I remember trying to escape him both indoors and in the
Schools and in the streets, he following and asking absurd questions, I
hurrying on without answering, until at last some of my companions or
other students would push him aside and hold him back by force.” A
little picture of academic life which for vividness it would be hard to
surpass. Luis de León, indeed, was not sparing in his criticism of his
various accusers. Their names, in accordance with the custom of the
Inquisition, were kept from him, but on reading the anonymous
accusations, he referred each one to its true author with unfailing
judgment and was thus enabled to refute them with a sure hand. Of one of
the witnesses who belonged to his own order he said: “He is known among
us as a man who never speaks the truth except by accident.” Of another
he speaks satirically as “most spiritual,” _espiritualísimo_, and says
that the words “kisses,” “embraces,” “bright eyes,” and other words in
the Spanish rendering of the Song of Songs scandalized him; words, that
is, which had not struck him when he read them in Latin, shocked him now
that they were written in the romance. Luis de León was not unaware that
the worst interpretation would be put on his sayings, or reported
sayings, and he was led by this fear himself to lay many trivial details
before the Inquisition. Thus he confessed that at a lecture “the
students furthest from me bade me speak louder, for I was hoarse and
they could not hear me well, and I said: ‘I am hoarse and, you know, it
is better to speak low that the gentlemen of the Inquisition may not
hear.’” He was full of life and humour, and many a chance word spoken in
jest might be twisted by the malicious to an uncatholic implication. He
felt in prison that he was fighting blindfold against many enemies and
asked more than once to be brought face to face with his accusers. “And
thus,” he says, “they speak from afar as men in safety and free, while
I, blind and in prison, cannot see who is attacking me.” Many absurd
charges were brought against him. According to one witness he “always
said low mass, even on a feast day, and no one could hear what he said
as he mumbled ‘tu, tu, tu,’ and made an end very speedily.” Another
accusation seems to have been based on a mere quibble between the words
_vino_, “wine,” and _vinó_, “came.” For at a dinner some one seems to
have asked for wine and Fray Luis to have said that it was doubtful if
it had come; but, according to the witness, all understood his answer to
refer to the coming of Christ! Another witness said that he was “a very
clever theologian, but somewhat bold in his lectures”--a charge less
petty than the preceding, but from its vagueness scarcely less
ridiculous. In the same spirit Castro “had heard say,” “thought that he
had heard”; Medina “thought that he saw in Fray Luis an inclination to
new things.” Such charges coming from enemies made his innocence, as he
said, “clearer than the light of noon.” Minute points were elaborately
dealt with. For instance, the sale of Castro’s book on Isaiah had been
spoilt, he said, by the Jews (Luis de León and his friends); according
to Luis de León, the real reason of its failure was its size and
costliness. As to the accusation of being, in fact, by descent a Jew, it
would appear that Fray Luis’ great-grandmother, or rather the second
wife of his great-grandfather, was of Jewish origin.
The one serious charge was, indeed, that he did not give due authority
to the Vulgate. It is probable that his attitude had been inopportune at
a time when the Vulgate was being attacked on all sides by the heretics,
and that the numerous students who attended his lectures were apt to
exaggerate his doctrine.
And so the trial dragged on. Luis de León began to lose patience. “If
only,” he exclaims, “the sun were divided fairly between me and my
accusers”--a metaphor borrowed from duelling. He complains frequently of
unnecessary delay. He writes to the Inquisitors, “You are delaying the
conclusion of my trial without just cause,” “without cause and to the
one end of lengthening out my imprisonment, and with the wish to put a
term to my life, since you find me without fault.” He begs that there be
no more delay “considering the length of time I have been here, and the
small cause there was for bringing me here, and the enmity and notorious
calumnies that began and occasioned this scandal.” His imprisonment, he
says, is “a long, harsh and cruel torment.” Partly constant
communications between Valladolid and Madrid caused delay. Thus a
request of Fray Luis, made on the 20th of August, did not receive an
answer from the Supreme Tribunal at Madrid till the 20th of September.
Partly, too, it must be admitted that after the scandal and excitement
caused by his imprisonment at Salamanca, where he had a host of friends
and followers, it would seem almost as if the Inquisitors were unwilling
to release him with the confession that the whole matter had been smoke
without a fire; and the longer the trial continued the greater,
naturally, would become their embarrassment.
He was allowed some books and a few other articles. Thus he asks for a
crucifix, a brass candlestick, a knife, “to cut what I eat,” the works
of St. Leon, a Hebrew Bible, a Sophocles in Greek, a Pindar in Greek and
Latin, etc. He complains that he is not properly attended, and “it has
happened that I have fainted with hunger from having no one to give me
food, and I beg that I may be given a monk of my order to serve me if
you do not wish to allow me to die alone between four walls.” He was not
allowed the use of the Sacraments, and in his frequent illness this was
a constant torture. “You persist,” he says, “in keeping me in prison as
if I were a heretic, deprived of the use of the Sacraments, with
manifest danger to my life and to my soul, though you bring no fresh
charge against me.” He therefore begs them, pending the sentence, to
“allow me at least a free death among my monks.” Seeing that the
conclusion of his case was delayed from day to day he implores, in
another petition, to be transported to some monastery in Valladolid that
he may die there as a Christian. “This is the only thing that I solicit
or desire, since the passion of my enemies and my own sins have taken
from me all that one desires in life.”
IV.--EX FORTI DULCEDO.
On the 28th September, 1576, the sentence is at length pronounced. The
majority of the judges “are of opinion that Fray Luis de León be put to
the torture as to his meaning, and as to what has been witnessed against
him, and as to the propositions that have been noted as heretical, in
spite of the fact that the theologians profess finally to be satisfied
with them and to give them the meaning that Fray Luis would have them
bear; and that the torture to be applied to him be moderate, seeing that
the accused is of delicate health; and that the results obtained be then
further examined.” This was the verdict of four out of the seven judges;
one gave no decision; the remaining two were of opinion that the accused
should be reprimanded in the Court of the Holy Office, and that in the
general hall of the greater Schools of Salamanca, in the presence of the
students and other persons of the University, he should declare his
propositions to be suspicious and ambiguous; that he should be forbidden
to lecture in the Schools or elsewhere, and that his translation of the
Song of Solomon should be prohibited and withdrawn from circulation.
The superior and more impartial tribunal of Madrid quashed the sentence,
and Luis de León was not questioned on the rack. It ordered (7th
December, 1576) that Fray Luis de León should be acquitted and
admonished in the Court of the Holy Office to be careful in future how
he treated of matters so dangerous as those implicated in the trial. The
sentence pronounced runs as follows: “We find, in accordance with the
decrees and on the merits of the said suit, that it is our duty to
absolve and we do absolve the said Fray Luis de León from the burden of
this trial.” He requested and obtained a declaration that he had been
acquitted without penance or stain whatsoever, and was free to exercise
all his duties in the University.
Luis de León’s health had never been robust, and the hardships of his
imprisonment broke it completely. That he survived is probably due to
his fortitude and mystic faith. In a dedication to Cardinal Quiroga, he
says: “When I was on trial, owing to the intrigues of certain of my
enemies, and was branded as suspicious in the faith, and was cut off not
only from the conversation but from the intercourse and very sight of
men, and was buried in a prison for five years, in the midst of all this
I felt a peace and joyfulness of spirit which I often miss now that I am
restored to the light of day and to my friends.”
These years spent in prison were not passed in idleness. Besides the
business of his defence, he wrote several of his poems during this time
and his long treatise “Los Nombres de Cristo.” Many know his short poem
beginning, “Here falsehood and wrong kept me imprisoned,” and ending
with the line so often quoted in Spanish literature, “ni envidiado ni
envidioso.” And we may refer to this time of his imprisonment such
passages as “No pinta el prado aquí la primavera”--
“Here with the spring the meadows are not gay
Nor the clouds golden in the rising sun;
No nightingale pours forth its plaintive lay:
But here the night is sleepless, and the day
Is full of tears and unconsoling sorrow,
And the sad present has a sadder morrow....”
Or the beautiful poem beginning “Virgen que el sol más pura”--
“Virgin purer than the sun,
Glory of mortals, of the heavens light,
Whose pity is not less than thy great might,...”
Without the enforced leisure of these years we cannot doubt that his
“Nombres de Cristo” would never have been written, and Spanish prose
would have lacked one of its most luminous and brilliant jewels.
Spanish literature owes him a great gratitude for having written in
Spanish, contrary to the prejudices of the learned, who held that a
writing to be profound must be obscure, and “marvelled that a theologian
of whom they expected some great treatise full of deep questions had
ended by writing a book in romance.” But Luis de León wished, he says,
to open the “new path” of good style, that consists “both in what is
said and in the way of saying it, and in the task of choosing the best
words of those in common use, and considering the sound of them, and
even at times of counting the letters, and weighing and measuring and
mingling them, that the matter be presented not only with clearness but
with softness and harmony.”
Nearly five years after his arrest Luis de León returned to Salamanca.
He returned entirely justified, and the University welcomed him back
with rejoicing. Over the Augustinian Order especially his trial had hung
like a cloud, and the condemnation of so distinguished a professor must
have been felt as a disgrace by the whole University. The legend is well
known. When Luis de León resumed his lectures the entire University
thronged to hear him. He was enjoined by the Inquisition to preserve
complete silence as to its proceedings, but this was an occasion at
least for subtle and indirect allusions, and for the excitement of
general sympathy. Luis de León rose in the crowded room and began his
lecture with the words: “Gentlemen, we were saying yesterday,” and so
continued his course. The intervening five years were obliterated. The
story is so thoroughly in keeping with the character of the man, whose
simplicity and sincere humility produced an effect unattainable by the
most studious artifice, that we would willingly maintain its truth. We
would thrust aside the prosaic facts that Luis de León did not resume
his lectures, the chair having been occupied in his absence, and he
acquiescing in this on his return (_la daba por bien empleada_), and
that, when he was assigned another course of lectures, a long dispute
arose in the University as to the hour at which he should deliver them.
We may say at least that, if the story is not literal in the facts, in
spirit it is essentially true. The quaint kind of pulpit from which the
words were spoken, and the lecture-room with its rough-hewn benches, are
still preserved in the University at Salamanca, and the sublime words,
“_Decíamos ayer_,” form part of the _repertoire_ of the tourist’s
cicerone.
Luis de León, on the recovery of his freedom, might exclaim, in the
words of the Persiles of Cervantes (Cervantes, who professed himself
Luis de León’s “reverent votary and follower,” _á quien yo reverencio,
adoro y sigo_): “I give you thanks, immense and merciful Heavens, that
you have brought me to die where your light may look upon my death, and
not in the shades of the dark prison-house which I now leave.” He
survived for fifteen years, dying on the 23rd of August, 1591, nine days
after being promoted from Vicar-General to Provincial of his Order. His
good humour and natural gaiety, his unselfishness and common-sense, won
for him many and strong friendships--we feel, indeed, that he was a man
not without failings, but entirely lovable. He had been commanded by the
Inquisitor-General to publish his own works, and was entrusted with the
publication of those of Santa Teresa. His second Inquisition trial arose
apparently from a lecture on the vexed question of predestination and
freewill. It was declared that the University of Salamanca was greatly
scandalized at the boldness with which he maintained that the contrary
of his own opinion was heresy. The matter, however, ended by his being
“benevolently and lovingly admonished” at Toledo. Besides these and many
other occupations, he gave ungrudging help to the Carmelite nuns in
asserting their independence, which was threatened by a reform
sanctioned by Philip II. The Pope, indeed, was favourable to the nuns,
but the King opposed the Papal Brief, and Luis de León is reported to
have said: “It is impossible to carry out a single order of His Holiness
in Spain.” The story that Fray Luis died of grief on account of the
King’s anger at this opposition is certainly untrue, although it is
likely enough that the King was annoyed. He is said to have exclaimed:
“Quien le mete á Frai Luis en estas cosas?--What has Fray Luis to do in
this _galère_?” Luis de León’s life was thus not without many turmoils.
But we may like best to think of him, as in the description in his
“Nombres de Cristo,” “in the month of June, after the Feast of St. John
when the Salamanca term breaks up,” retiring from a long year of work to
the country house possessed by his monastery on the banks of the Tormes.
There, in the great garden of trees growing without order, with a stream
“running and pausing as if in laughter,” and with the winding river
Tormes in sight--“a place far better than the professor’s chair”--he
would meditate alone or converse with friends “in the cool of the
morning, on a day most calm and bright;” “for,” he says elsewhere in the
same work, “it may be that in towns there is more refinement of speech,
but fineness of sentiment is of the country and of solitude.”
XIX
THE MODERN SPANISH NOVEL
I.--REVIVAL. FERNÁN CABALLERO
The success of “Don Quixote” might have been expected to fire a host of
imitators, but the seventeenth century in Spain was given rather to the
drama than to the novel, and the eighteenth century “was an age of
barrenness in Spain, so far as concerns romance.”[99] In the first half
of the nineteenth century the Spanish novel was for the most part a pale
imitation of Sir Walter Scott, and these somewhat insipid romances, in
spite of the wealth of subjects afforded by Spanish history, were not
genuinely Spanish; they were due to a taste imported by returning
exiles, and were not a natural growth of the soil. Thus the Condesa
Pardo Bazán could say that in Spain the novel has no yesterday, only an
_anteayer_, a day before yesterday, and the appearance of Fernán
Caballero’s “La Gaviota” was hailed by a Spanish critic as a link
between Cervantes and the nineteenth century. It marked, indeed, the
revival of realistic fiction in Spain. Cecilia Böhl von Faber, daughter
of a distinguished German settled in Spain, was born in Switzerland in
1796, but passed nearly the whole of her life in Spain, and chiefly at
Seville. She combined German depth with the wit and clear vision of
Andalucía. A discerning Madrid critic reviewing “La Gaviota,” the first
published work of the then unknown Fernán Caballero--it had been written
first in French, and now appeared in Spanish in the pages of “El
Heraldo” (1848-49)--said that it displayed a mixture of the German and
Andalusian Schools, the pencil of Dürer, and the colouring of Murillo. A
character in “La Gaviota” observes: “Were I Queen of Spain, I would
command a novel of customs to be written in every province.” It was the
_novela de costumbres_ that Fernán Caballero wrote with such brilliant
success. She wished, she said, to show Spain as it really was, and not
as it was commonly painted by foreigners.
Cecilia Böhl von Faber was thrice married--to Spaniards--and it was as
Marquesa de Arco Hermoso, living on her husband’s estate at Dos
Hermanas, a small village near Seville, that the idea first occurred to
her to collect the fast-disappearing customs and traditions of the
peasants. She came into frequent touch with them owing to her wish to
learn their individual needs, and know how best to administer her
charity. The thirteen years from her second marriage in 1822, to the
death of the Marqués de Arco Hermoso, in 1835, were spent mainly at
Seville, at their house in the _Plaza de San Vicente_, or in the
neighbourhood. The story _La Familia de Albareda_, the scene of which is
Dos Hermanas, was then written, from events that actually occurred in
this village, although it was not published till later. It was when her
third husband was absent in Australia that she thought of publishing her
stories, and took her _nom de plume_ from a small village of La Mancha,
called Fernán Caballero. The appearance of “La Gaviota,” which is,
indeed, one of the best, if not the best, of Fernán’s novels, aroused
considerable surprise and enthusiasm, and many surmises as to who might
be the author. It was a work so unlike the romantic tales and insipid
imitations then in vogue; it showed so fresh and spontaneous an
inspiration. Here were no echoes of older novelists; all was written
from keen personal observation, and the reader was enabled by the
author’s art to realize in words scenes and characters which he had
known and felt, but had been unable to express.
After the tragic death of her third husband, in 1859, Fernán Caballero
was firmly resolved to enter a convent, but her friends did their utmost
to dissuade her, and she believed, moreover, that the only books she
would be allowed to read would be those of devotion. Finally she gave up
this idea, and lived for nearly ten years in one of the houses of the
_Patio de las Banderas_ in the Seville Alcázar, granted to her by Queen
Isabel II. It would be difficult to imagine a more pleasant home for a
writer. On one side the beautiful gardens of the Alcázar, with their
myrtles, palms, and oranges, clipped box-hedges, and white marble
fountains; on the other the _Plaza del Triunfo_, planted with
orange-trees, acacias and palms, and the Cathedral and wonderful Giralda
tower. The Revolution of 1868 came to destroy this peace. The Alcázar
became for the time the property of the nation, and Fernán Caballero was
driven to seek a home elsewhere. She was for other reasons, as a devout
Roman Catholic and Royalist, deeply distressed by the Revolution and its
sacrilegious results in Seville. The pettiness of many revolutionary
measures was shown by the fact that the night-watchmen--the
_serenos_--of Seville were forbidden, in calling out the hours, to use
the traditional preface “Ave María Purísima.” Fernán Caballero obtained
the reversal of this decree. She lived to listen with tears of joy to
the bells of the Giralda, as they rang out the news of the Restoration
and the beginning of Alfonso XII.’s reign. She was then living in the
curving, silent bye-steet that now bears her name. No. 14 is
distinguished from the other houses by having, besides the _patio_, a
garden with a large lemon-tree, and other shrubs. Here she died in the
spring of 1877, in her eighty-first year. The Queen came to visit her
here, and a memorial tablet was placed above the entrance of the house
by her friends the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier.
The quality that gives imperishable value to Fernán’s work is its truth:
the scenes are at once felt to be real, the characters are living. She
reproduces the lively mirth and malicious wit of the _andaluz_ peasant,
the gay laughter-loving nature of the Sevillians, with their keen
perception of the false and the ridiculous. She describes a Seville
_patio_ (in “Elia”), or a bull-fight (in “La Gaviota”), or a country
house, _quinta_ (in “Clemencia”), or a deserted convent (in “La
Gaviota”) with a delicate minuteness of detail that brings them vividly
before us. Writing of simple, everyday events, as in the preface she
characterizes those of “Elia,” she paints them with unsurpassed
clearness and vigour, and much of the piquancy and charm, the _sal y
pimienta_, of the South is in her pages. There are in her works some
scenes that in sobriety and psychological skill are worthy of Stendhal.
Her characters are drawn from life with the sure and penetrating
analysis of genius. Perhaps the best example of all is the character of
Marisalada in “La Gaviota,” but the slighter figures, the conservative
General Santa María and the bull-fighter Pepe Vera, in the same novel,
the vivacious, charitable Asistenta in “Elia” (having much in common
with Fernán’s own character), who is unmoved by the discovery of a Roman
epitaph on one of her farms and refuses to believe that there is a land
where bishops marry, Marcial and Jenaro in “Lágrimas”--all these and
many more are sketched with masterly skill. It is when they treat of
country scenes and peasant life that the novels of Fernán Caballero are
at their best, as the first half of “La Gaviota” in the village of
Villamar, or a part of “Clemencia” (1852) in the village of Villa-María.
The character of Don Martín of Villa-María and the scene of his
interview with the importunate Tía Latrana are thoroughly in the manner
of Pereda. So, too, is the wife of the village mayor in “Lágrimas.”
“Haber gastadu mis cuartus” she exclaims--and the use of dialect, so
freely employed by Pereda, is noticeable--“en facere de esse fillu meu
un hulgazán! Non me lo dejú para esu mi tíu Bartulumé, es verdad.” The
foreigners at Seville are portrayed with less sympathy; so we have Sir
John Burnwood, who has come to Seville in order to ride up the Giralda,
and, finding this impossible, proposes to buy the Alcázar, or Sir George
Percy, who is admitted to have noble qualities, but allowed to show
unmistakably bad taste.
Fernán Caballero is not afraid of interrupting her story by digressions,
whether their object be to inculcate virtue, to exalt the Roman Catholic
religion, or to ridicule the importers of foreign fashions and foreign
phrases into Spain. Sometimes, as in “Lágrimas,” this is carried to
excess and rather spoils the effect of the story, but in most of her
works the digressions are never altogether wearisome; the original and
fascinating character that won for Cecilia Böhl von Faber a host of
friends is not often or for long absent from the novels and _relaciones_
of Fernán Caballero. It has been observed that “La Gaviota,” though it
contains scarcely any action, has not a line too much. “No aspiramos á
causar efecto,” says the preface of “La Familia de Albareda,” and it is
this very absence of thrilling action or melodramatic effect that gives
so permanent a charm to Fernán’s works. For a proper appreciation of
Seville and Andalucía they are invaluable: there is not one of them in
which some trait explanatory of the Sevillian and _andaluz_ characters
does not appear. A recent Spanish writer quite unjustly denies that
Fernán Caballero shows any of the _sal andaluza_, and is of opinion that
her work has not left a deep trace in Spanish literature, but must be
considered rather as a preparation for the higher flights of the
novelists who followed. It is difficult to agree with this view. Fernán
Caballero not only hoisted the flag of true Spanish realism, and pointed
to a land of promise, but carved for herself a very real and abiding
empire in this land of her rediscovery.
II.--1870-1900.
In 1864 Pereda published his first work, “Escenas montañesas,” and ten
years later, and three before the death of Fernán Caballero, appeared
Valera’s first novel, “Pepita Jiménez,” and Alarcón’s “El Sombrero de
tres picos.” Since 1874 scarcely a year has passed without producing a
Spanish novel that deserves a high rank in literature. Yet Pereda[100]
did not at once impose himself, and early in 1874 Pérez Galdós could put
the following words into the mouth of one of the characters in _Napoleón
en Chamartín_: “In the matter of novels we are so far astray that, after
producing the source of all the novels of the world, and the most
entertaining book ever written by man, Spain is now unable to compose a
novel of more worth than a grain of mustard seed, and translates these
sentimental French stories.”
Similarly, Señor Menéndez y Pelayo remarks that “about the year 1870,
the date of Pérez Galdós’ first book, the Spanish novel was slumbering
in the arms of insipid or monstrous productions, _entre ñoñerías y
monstruosidades_.” There is little insipidity or sentimentalism in the
more modern Spanish novel. Realism is the dominant note of Spanish
literature. The very atmosphere of Spain makes for clear vision. Its
artists are realistic, even brutally realistic, as Goya occasionally is;
even its mystics have not been wrapped wholly from the world: they do
not live in a cloud, insensible to the real facts of life. And in the
same way the great Spanish novelists are realistic. There is, however, a
true Castilian dignity about their realism. They do not, in George
Meredith’s phrase, mistake the “muddy shallows” for the depths of
Nature. They may treat of the vulgar and the base, but they do not treat
of them in a way that is vulgar and base. They may be as outspoken as
Martial, but their realism is eminently sane and clean.