One must regret for his own sake that Zola was unable to avoid offending those prejudices

which were
sopowerful in his time. The novelist who adopts the method of the surgeon finds it necessary to expose
manypainful sores, and is open to the taunt that he finds pleasure in the task. On no one did this
personal obloquyfall more hardly than on Zola, and never with less reason. It may be that he
accumulated unseemly details andrisky situations too readily; but he was an earnest man with a definite
aim in view, and had formulated forhimself a system which he allowed to work itself out with relentless
fatality. The unredeemed baseness andprofligacy of the period with which he had to deal must also be
borne in mind. As to his personal character, ithas been fitly described by M. Anatole France, himself a
distinguished novelist. Zola, said he, "had thecandour and sincerity of great souls. He was profoundly
moral. He has depicted vice with a rough andvigorous hand. His apparent pessimism ill conceals a real
optimism, a persistent faith in the progress of intelligence and justice. In his romances, which are social
studies, he attacks with vigorous hatred an idle,frivolous society, a base and noxious aristocracy. He
combated social evil wherever he encountered it. Hiswork is comparable only in greatness with that of
Tolstoi. At the two extremities of European thought the lyrehas raised two vast cities. Both are generous
and pacific; but whereas Tolstoi's is the city of resignation, Zola'sis the city of work.