Given the men and the particular pursuit, it
is all natural enough, but one wearies of the same process being
applied an impossible number of times, just as Flaubert was often
so intolerable in real life, because he ran a joke to death, and
never knew when to put it down. The result in Bouvard et Pecuchet
is a lack of proportion and subordination. It is like one of the
early Pre-Raphaelite pictures, in which every detail is painted
with minute perfection. It was all there, no doubt, and it was all
exactly like that; but that is not how the human eye apprehends a
scene. The human mind takes a central point, and groups the
accessories round it. In art, I think everything depends upon
centralisation. Two lovers part, and the birds' faint chirp from
the leafless tree, the smouldering rim of the sunset over misty
fields, are true and symbolical parts of the scene; but if you deal
in botany and ornithology and meteorology at such a moment, you
cloud and dim the central point--you digress when you ought only to
emphasise."
"Oh yes," said Herries with a sigh, "that is all right enough--it
all depends upon proportion; and the worst of all these discussions
on points of art is that each person has to find his own standard--
one can't accept other people's standards.
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