Letters, op. cit., vol. I, p

“ I have been seeing something of Daudet, Goncourt, and Zola ; and there is nothing more interesting to me now than the effort and experiment of this little group, with its truly infernal intelligence of art, form, manner, —its intense artistic life. They do the only kind of work to-day that I respect ; and in spite of their ferocious pessimism and their handling of unclean things, they are at least serious and honest. The floods of tepid soap and water which under the name of novels are being vomited forth in England, seem to me, by contrast, to do little honor to our race ”

- 2. Frierson, op. cit., p. 200.