A "LIFE" OF M. ZOLA.* EVEN at the best of
times, and with regard to the best of men, we are extremely dubious of our babbling latter-day practice of writing "Lives" and erecting statues of living celebrities. This surely is the business of posterity. In fact, were it not that, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, we, too, dread the evils of over-legislation, we should agitate to create a new political party, whose aim it should be to get enacted a law prohibiting the writing of such books as this of Mr. Sherard under penalty of literary and social ostracism. For what purpose can they serve but that of the puff preliminary ? They are of the "books that are not books," but merely stitched-together sheets of extended "interviews," brimming over with all the vulgarities of "personal paragraphs,"— surely the most depressing and demoralising feature of the "new journalism."
That Mr. Sherard has worked with the approval and assist- ance of M. Zola is no justification whatever ; in fact, it rather heightens the offence as showing what a keen and business- like eye this strange literary hero has for "bold advertise- ment," We do not therefore propose to follow the author through this lengthy personal narrative of some three hundred pages devoted to the glorification of the French novelist, who so recently was fited in London by a pious but too complaisant Lord Mayor, and by a band of journalists and minor authors eager to enjoy an " outing" at the Crystal Palace, and to see their own names in print. If M. Zola be one-half as clever as his admiring biographer would have us believe, he will be able to turn this London experience to good account in some forthcoming work of fiction. Sir Stuart Knill and Mr. Vizetelly will make a couple of admirable "human docu- ments," to use M. Zola's favourite phrase. It is as a "human document" that we would prefer to treat, in as brief a manner as possible, this uncalled-for biography. What, then, is the moral of Mr. Sherard's " Life " of M. Emile Zola P It is this. That a man with the eye and memory of a smart police-court reporter, coupled with the plodding methodical industry of * Braila Zola ; a Biographical and Critical Study. By Robert Harborough Sberard. London : Matto and Witidus. a pushing provincial shopkeeper, may, if he will turn his mind to pornographic fiction, make as much as £12,000 a year ; and after the inevitable early struggles, when he, at length, succeeds in getting himself talked about, and denounced in more select circles, he can, if he chooses, reside in as fine a country-house as tbe representative of a good county family—or the head of a flourishing patent. medicine firm. This, set forth here at inconsiderate length, is the history of M. Zola and his " Rongon-Macquart " series. If we are asked whether we do not admit the ability and literary skill of these works, we reply, " Yes ; but not to the extent nor in the spirit of Mr. Sherard." That M. Zola has literary ability it were as idle to deny, as that he has great industry and is very painstaking in "documentation." But painstaking industry, even coupled with literary aptitude, does not necessarily amount to genius ; while even M. Zola's much-vaunted "documentation" appears to be largely done by deputy. If we are not greatly mistaken, the "human document" which the historian of the future will account of value in this connection will be found not in M. Zola's novels, but in the fact that such novels made their writer an esteemed and wealthy man—a power," as he himself has it—and that a man of the ability of Mr. Sherard could boldly declare that the author of Nana and L'Assomnoir is the "moat striking figure in the literary world during the last half of the nine- teenth century." If this were even approximately true, we should join without more ado the doleful band of pessimists, if, indeed, we did not logically go further and elect to quit such a world without an hour's delay.
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