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BOUVARD. A great irregular enclosure, which appears to be still larger than Lagrange, S.E. of Piazzi, and close to the limb. It is bounded by a very lofty rampart, rising at a peak on the W. to 10,000 feet. It has a fine central mountain.
Louis Blanc, in the interests of the working class, wishes to abolish external commerce; Lafarelle to tax machinery; another to take off the drink duties, to restore trade wardenships, or to distribute soups. Proudhon conceives the idea of a uniform tariff, and claims for the state the monopoly of sugar. "These socialists," said Bouvard, "always call for tyranny." "Oh, no!" "Yes, indeed!"
Cannan is giving us; but there is a greater predecessor to this comprehensive and spectacular treatment of a single mind and its impressions and ideas, or of one or two associated minds, that comes to us now via Mr. Bennett and Mr. Cannan from France. The great original of all this work is that colossal last unfinished book of Flaubert, "Bouvard et Pécuchet."
Salammbo is indeed a work of erudition; years were spent in getting up its archaeological details. But Madame Bovary is also a work of erudition, and Bouvard and Pecuchet is a work of enormous erudition; a thousand volumes were read for the notes of the first volume and Flaubert is said to have killed himself by the labor of his unfinished investigations.
The ancient teachers were inaccessible owing to the length of their works, or the difficulty of the language; but Jouffroy and Damiron initiated them into modern philosophy, and they had authors who dealt with that of the last century. Bouvard derived his arguments from Lamettrie, Locke, and Helvetius; Pécuchet from M. Cousin, Thomas Reid, and Gérando.
La Grange, who proved the stability of the solar system, Laplace, Biot, Arago, Bouvard, and afterwards Poinsot, formed a perfect constellation of undying names; yet the French had been for many years inferior to the English in practical astronomy.
Bouvard was the first to grow tired of it, and, dealing frankly with the subject, demonstrated how artificial and limping it was, the silliness of its incidents, and the absurdity of the disclosures made to confidants. They then went in for comedy, which is the school for fine shading. Every sentence must be dislocated, every word must be underlined, and every syllable must be weighed.
The flowers, the butterflies, the birds may be beautiful. Finally, the first condition of beauty is unity in variety: there is the principle. "Yet," said Bouvard, "two squint eyes are more varied than two straight eyes, and produce an effect which is not so good as a rule." They entered upon the question of the Sublime.
Let him gag them, the rabble, and exterminate them this will never be too much for their hatred of right, their cowardice, their incapacity, and their blindness." Bouvard mused: "Hey! progress! what humbug!" He added: "And politics, a nice heap of dirt!" "It is not a science," returned Pécuchet. "The military art is better: you can tell what will happen we ought to turn our hands to it."
Thenceforth Maître Gouy economised the manures, allowed weeds to grow up, ruined the soil; and he took himself off with a fierce air, which showed that he was meditating some scheme of revenge. Bouvard had calculated that 20,000 francs, that is to say, more than four times the rent of the farm, would be enough to start with. His notary sent the amount from Paris.
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