If Edmond de Goncourt (1822-96) and his brother Jules (1830-70) are at present in a sphere in which literary interests are permitted, the relative disrepute into which their works have fallen must be a matter of sorrow, or, at any rate, of regret at the incalculability of the things of this life. There are few writers who have something new to say, or who have found some new way of saying some old thing, who expect immediate recognition. Stendhal predicted that his turn would come about seventy years after his death. And there are few innovators, on the other hand, who do not believe that recognition will come, sooner or later. The de Goncourts fervently believed that they would be applauded both in their lifetime and after it, and they were almost completely wrong from either point of view. The genius of the survivor of the two brothers, after forty years of hard work, was recognized in two banquets, and that was nearly all.
