As a "literary artist," and such he was,
his force was in direct ratio with the dramatic invention of his author,
with the brave audacities of the spirit that kindled his own. Hence his
success with Rabelais, with "Le Juif-Errant," "Les Contes Drolatiques," and
"Don Quixote," and hence, conversely, his failure to express the beauty of
Tennyson's Idyls, of "Il Paradiso," of the Hebrew pastorals, and other
texts requiring exaltation, or sweetness and repose. He was a born master
of the grotesque, and by a special insight could portray the spectres of a
haunted brain. We see objects as his personages saw them, and with the very
eyes of the Wandering Jew, the bewildered Don, or the goldsmith's daughter
whose fancy so magnifies the King in the shop on the Pont-au-Change. It was
in the nature of things that he should be attracted to each masterpiece of
verse or prose that I have termed unique. The lower kingdoms were called
into his service; his rocks, trees and mountains, the sky itself, are
animate with motive and diablerie. Had he lived to illustrate Shakespeare,
we should have seen a remarkable treatment of Caliban, the Witches, the
storm in "Lear"; but doubtless should have questioned his ideals of Imogen
or Miranda. Beauty pure and simple, and the perfect excellence thereof, he
rarely seemed to comprehend.
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