“FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE (1821–1880), French novelist, was born at Rouen on the 12th of December 1821. . . . . Flaubert in his youth ‘was like a young Greek,’ full of vigour of body and a certain shy grace, enthusiastic, intensely individual, and apparently without any species of ambition. . . . . Returning to Paris, he wasted his time in sombre dreams, living on his patrimony. . . . . The personal character of Flaubert offered various peculiarities. He was shy, and yet extremely sensitive and arrogant; he passed from silence to an indignant and noisy flow of language. The same inconsistencies marked his physical nature; he had the build of a guardsman, with a magnificent Viking head, but his health was uncertain from childhood, and he was neurotic to the last degree. This ruddy giant was secretly gnawn by misanthropy and disgust of life.”

(Edmund Gosse, LL.D., in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition, vol. X, p. 483.)