It is not necessary to exaggerate Flaubert's influence. In his time there were ten other writers, none of whom equalled him,--Parnassians in poetry, positivists in criticism, realists in romance or in dramatic writing,--who laboured at the same work. His æstheticism is not his alone, yet _Madame Bovary_ and _Salammbô_ shot like unexpected meteors out of a grey sky, the dull, low sky of the Second Empire. In 1860 the sky was not so grey or so low; and the _Poèmes Antiques_ of Leconte de Lisle, the _Études d'histoire religieuse_ of Renan, and the _Essais de Critique_ of Taine, are possibly not unworthy to be placed in parallel or comparison with the first writings of Flaubert. An exquisite judge of things of the mind, J. J. Weiss, very clearly saw at that time what there was in common in all these works, in the glory of which he was not deceived when he added the _Fleurs du Mai_ by Charles Baudelaire, and the first comedies of Alexandre Dumas _fils_. But the truth is, not one of these works was marked with signs of masterly maturity in like degree with _Madame Bovary_.
It is, then, natural that, from day to day, Flaubert should become a guide, and here, if we consider the nature of the lessons he gives, we cannot deny their towering excellence.
If there was need to agitate against romanticism, _Madame Bovary_ performed the duty; and if in this agitation there was need to save what was worth salvation, _Salammbô_ saved it. If it was fitting to recall to poets and to writers of romance, to Madame Sand herself and Victor Hugo, that art was not invented as a public carrier for their confidences, it is still Flaubert who does it. He taught the school of hasty writers that talent, or even genius, is in need of discipline,--the discipline of a long and painful prenticehood in the making and unmaking of their work. He has widened, and especially has he hollowed and deepened, the notion that romanticism was born of nature, and, in doing this, has brought art back to the fountain-head of inspiration. His rhetoric and æstheticism brought him face to face with Nature, enabled him to see her, a gift as rare as it is great, and to "represent" her--the proof of the preceding. It is the artist that judges the model. Poets and romance-writers, like painters, we value only in as much as they represent life--by and for the fidelity, the originality, the novelty, the depth, the distinction, the perfection with which they represent it. It is the rule of rules, the principle of principles! And if Flaubert had no other merit than to have seen this better than any other writer of his age, it would be enough to assure for him a place, and a very exalted place, in the Pantheon of French Literature.