idea of a natural economy, of some pre-existent adaptation, between a
relative, somewhere in the world of thought, and its correlative,
somewhere in the world of language--both alike, rather, somewhere in
the mind of the artist, desiderative, expectant, inventive--meeting
each other with the readiness of "soul and body reunited," in Blake's
rapturous design; and, in fact, Flaubert was fond of giving his
theory philosophical expression.--

There are no beautiful thoughts (he would say) without beautiful
forms, and conversely. As it is impossible to extract from a
physical body the qualities which really constitute it--colour,
extension, and the like--without reducing it to a hollow
abstraction, in a word, without destroying it; just so it is
impossible to detach the form from the idea, for the idea only
exists by virtue of the form.

All, the recognised flowers, the removable ornaments of literature
(including harmony and ease in reading aloud, very carefully
considered [31] by him) counted, certainly; for these too are part
of the actual value of what one says. But still, after all, with
Flaubert, the search, the unwearied research, was not for the smooth,
or winsome, or forcible word, as such, as with false Ciceronians, but
quite simply and honestly, for the word's adjustment to its meaning.
The first condition of this must be, of course, to know yourself, to
have ascertained your own sense exactly. Then, if we suppose an
artist, he says to the reader,--I want you to see precisely what I
see. Into the mind sensitive to "form," a flood of random sounds,
colours, incidents, is ever penetrating from the world without, to
become, by sympathetic selection, a part of its very structure, and,
in turn, the visible vesture and expression of that other world it