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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1, by 
+George Saintsbury
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1
+       From the Beginning to 1800
+
+Author: George Saintsbury
+
+Release Date: October 8, 2008 [EBook #26838]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FRENCH NOVEL, VOL. 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lee Dawei, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+LONDON  BOMBAY  CALCUTTA  MADRAS  MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+NEW YORK  BOSTON  CHICAGO
+DALLAS  SAN FRANCISCO
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. LTD.
+TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL
+
+(TO THE CLOSE OF THE 19TH CENTURY)
+
+BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY
+
+M.A. AND HON. D.LITT. OXON.; HON. LL.D. ABERD.; HON. D.LITT. DURH.;
+FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY; HON. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD;
+LATE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
+EDINBURGH
+
+VOL. I
+
+FROM THE BEGINNING TO 1800
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1917
+
+COPYRIGHT
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In beginning what, if it ever gets finished, must in all probability be
+the last of some already perhaps too numerous studies of literary
+history, I should like to point out that the plan of it is somewhat
+different from that of most, if not all, of its predecessors. I have
+usually gone on the principle (which I still think a sound one) that, in
+studying the literature of a country, or in dealing with such general
+characteristics of parts of literature as prosody, or such coefficients
+of all literature as criticism, minorities are, sometimes at least, of
+as much importance as majorities, and that to omit them altogether is to
+risk, or rather to assure, an imperfect--and dangerously
+imperfect--product.
+
+In the present instance, however, I am attempting something that I have
+never, at such length, attempted before--the history of a Kind, and a
+Kind which has distinguished itself, as few others have done, by
+communicating to readers the _pleasure_ of literature. I might almost
+say that it is the history of that pleasure, quite as much as the
+history of the kind itself, that I wish to trace. In doing so it is
+obviously superfluous to include inferiorities and failures, unless they
+have some very special lesson or interest, or have been (as in the case
+of the minorities on the bridge of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries) for the most part, and unduly, neglected, though they are
+important as experiments and links.[1] We really do want here--what the
+reprehensible hedonism of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and his submission to what
+some one has called "the eternal enemy, Caprice," wanted in all
+cases--"only the chief and principal things." I wish to give a full
+history of how what is commonly called the French Novel came into being
+and kept itself in being; but I do not wish to give an exhaustive,
+though I hope to give a pretty full, account of its practitioners.
+
+In another point, however, I have kept to my old ways, and that is the
+way of beginning at the beginning. I disagree utterly with any Balbus
+who would build an absolute wall between romance and novel, or a wall
+hardly less absolute between verse- and prose-fiction. I think the
+French have (what is not common in their language) an advantage over us
+in possessing the general term _Roman_, and I have perhaps taken a
+certain liberty with my own title in order to keep the noun-part of it
+to a single word. I shall extend the meaning of "novel"--that of _roman_
+would need no extension--to include, not only the prose books, old and
+new, which are more generally called "romance," but the verse romances
+of the earlier period.
+
+The subject is one with which I can at least plead almost lifelong
+familiarity. I became a subscriber to "Rolandi's," I think, during my
+holidays as a senior schoolboy, and continued the subscriptions during
+my vacations when I was at Oxford. In the very considerable leisure
+which I enjoyed during the six years when I was Classical Master at
+Elizabeth College, Guernsey, I read more French than any other
+literature, and more novels than anything else in French. In the late
+'seventies and early 'eighties, as well as more recently, I had to round
+off and fill in my knowledge of the older matter, for an elaborate
+account of French literature in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, for a
+long series of articles on French novelists in the _Fortnightly Review_,
+and for the _Primer_ and _Short History_ of the subject which I wrote
+for the Clarendon Press; while from 1880 to 1894, as a _Saturday
+Review_er, I received, every month, almost everything notable (and a
+great deal hardly worth noting) that had appeared in France.
+
+Since then, the cutting off of this supply, and the extreme and constant
+urgency of quite different demands on my time, have made my cultivation
+of the once familiar field "_parc_ and infrequent." But I doubt whether
+any really good judge would say that this was a serious drawback in
+itself; and it ceases to be one, even relatively, by the restriction of
+the subject to the close of the last century. It will be time to write
+of the twentieth-century novel when the twentieth century itself has
+gone more than a little farther.
+
+For the abundance of translation, in the earlier part especially, I
+need, I think, make no apology. I shall hardly, by any one worth
+hearing, be accused of laziness or scamping in consequence of it, for
+translation is much more troublesome, and takes a great deal more time,
+than comment or history. The advantage, from all other points of view,
+should need no exposition: nor, I think, should that of pretty full
+story-abstract now and then.
+
+There is one point on which, at the risk of being thought to "talk too
+much of my matters," I should like to say a further word. All my books,
+before the present volume, have been composed with the aid of a
+library, not very large, but constantly growing, and always reinforced
+with special reference to the work in hand; while I was able also, on
+all necessary occasions, to visit Oxford or London (after I left the
+latter as a residence), and for twenty years the numerous public or
+semi-public libraries of Edinburgh were also open to me. This present
+_History_ has been outlined in expectation for a very long time; and has
+been actually laid down for two or three years. But I had not been able
+to put much of it on paper when circumstances, while they gave me
+greater, indeed almost entire, leisure for writing, obliged me to part
+with my own library (save a few books with a reserve _pretium
+affectionis_ on them), and, though they brought me nearer both to Oxford
+and to London, made it less easy for me to visit either. The London
+Library, that Providence of unbooked authors, came indeed to my aid, for
+without it I should have had to leave the book alone altogether; and I
+have been "munitioned" sometimes, by kindness or good luck, in other
+ways. But I have had to rely much more on memory, and of course in some
+cases on previous writing of my own, than ever before, though, except in
+one special case,[2] there will be found, I think, not a single page of
+mere "rehashing." I mention this without the slightest desire to beg
+off, in one sense, from any omissions or mistakes which may be found
+here, but merely to assure my readers that such mistakes and omissions
+are not due to idle and careless bookmaking. That "books have fates" is
+an accepted proposition. In respect to one of these--possession of
+materials and authorities--mine have been exceptionally fortunate
+hitherto, and if they had any merit it was no doubt largely due to this.
+I have, in the present, endeavoured to make the best of what was not
+quite such good fortune. And if anybody still says, "Why did you not
+wait till you could supply deficiencies?" I can only reply that, after
+seventy, [Greek: nyx gar erchetai] is a more insistent warrant, and
+warning, than ever.[3]
+
+                          GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
+
+    [_Edinburgh, 1914-15; Southampton, 1915-16_]
+    1 ROYAL CRESCENT, BATH, _May 31, 1917_.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA
+
+
+P. 3, _note_.--This note was originally left vague, because, in the
+first place, to perform public and personal fantasias with one's spear
+on the shield of a champion, with whom one does not intend to fight out
+the quarrel, seems to me bad chivalry, and secondly, because those
+readers who were likely to be interested could hardly mistake the
+reference. The regretted death, a short time after the page was sent to
+press, of Mr. W. J. Courthope may give occasion to an acknowledgment,
+coupled with a sincere _ave atque vale_. Mr. Courthope was never an
+intimate friend of mine, and our agreement was greater in political than
+in literary matters: but for more than thirty years we were on the best
+terms of acquaintance, and I had a thorough respect for his
+accomplishments.
+
+P. 20, l. 5.--_Fuerres de Gadres._ I wonder how many people thought of
+this when Englishmen "forayed Gaza" just before Easter, 1917?
+
+P. 46, mid-page.--It so happened that, some time after having passed
+this sheet for press, I was re-reading Dante (as is my custom every year
+or two), and came upon that other passage (in the _Paradiso_, and
+therefore not known to more than a few of the thousands who know the
+Francesca one) in which the poet refers to the explanation between
+Lancelot and the Queen. It had escaped my memory (though I think I may
+say honestly that I knew it well enough) when I passed the sheet: but it
+seemed to me that perhaps some readers, who do not care much for
+"parallel passages" in the pedantic sense, might, like myself, feel
+pleasure in having the great things of literature, in different places,
+brought together. Moreover, the _Paradiso_ allusion seems to have
+puzzled or misled most of the commentators, including the late Mr. A. J.
+Butler, who, by his translation and edition of the _Purgatorio_ in 1880,
+was my Virgil to lead me through the _Commedia_, after I had sinfully
+neglected it for exactly half a life-time. He did not know, and might
+easily not have known, the Vulgate _Lancelot_: but some of those whom he
+cites, and who evidently _did_ know it, do not seem to have recognised
+the full significance of the passage in Dante. The text will give the
+original: the _Paradiso_ (xvi. 13-15) reference tells how Beatrice
+(after Cacciaguida's biographical and historical recital, and when
+Dante, in a confessed outburst of family pride, addresses his ancestor
+with the stately _Voi_), "smiling, appeared like her who coughed at the
+first fault which is written of Guinevere." This, of course (see text
+once more), is the Lady of Malahault, though Dante does not name her as
+he does Prince Galahault in the other _locus_. The older commentators
+(who, as has been said, _did_ know the original) do not seem to have
+seen in the reference much more than that both ladies noticed, and
+perhaps approved, what was happening. But I think there is more in it.
+The Lady of Malahault (see note in text) had previously been aware that
+Lancelot was deeply in love, though he would not tell her with whom. Her
+cough therefore meant: "Ah! I have found you out." Now Beatrice, well as
+she knew Dante's propensity to love, knew as well that _pride_ was even
+more of a besetting weakness of his. This was quite a harmless instance
+of it: but still it _was_ an instance--and the "smile" which is _not_
+recorded of the Arthurian lady meant: "Ah! I have _caught_ you out."
+Even if this be excessive "reading into" the texts, the juxtaposition of
+them may not be unsatisfactory to some who are not least worth
+satisfying. (Since writing this, I have been reminded that Mr. Paget
+Toynbee did make the "juxtaposition" in his Clarendon Press _Specimens
+of Old French_ (October, 1892), printing there the "Lady of Malahault"
+passage from MSS. copied by Professor Ker. But there can be no harm in
+duplicating it.)
+
+P. 121, ll. 8-10. Perhaps instead of, or at least beside, Archdeacon
+Grantly I should have mentioned a more real dignitary (as some count
+reality) of the Church, Charles Kingsley. The Archdeacon and the Canon
+would have fought on many ecclesiastical and some political grounds, but
+they might have got on as being, in Dr. Grantly's own words at a
+memorable moment "both gentlemen." At any rate, Kingsley was soaked in
+Rabelais, and one of the real curiosities of literature is the way in
+which the strength of _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ helped to beget the
+sweetness of _The Water Babies_.
+
+Chap. viii. pp. 163-175.--After I had "made my" own "siege" of the
+_Astrée_ on the basis of notes recording a study of it at the B.M., Dr.
+Hagbert Wright of the London Library was good enough to let me know that
+his many years' quest of the book had been at last successful, and to
+give me the first reading of it. (It was Southey's copy, with his own
+unmistakable autograph and an inserted note, while it also contained a
+cover of a letter addressed to him, which had evidently been used as a
+book-mark.) Although not more than four months had passed since the
+previous reading, I found it quite as appetising as (in the text itself)
+I had expressed my conviction that it would be: and things not noticed
+before cropped up most agreeably. There is no space to notice all or
+many of them here. But one of the earliest, due to Hylas, cannot be
+omitted, for it is the completest and most sententious vindication of
+polyerotism ever phrased: "Ce n'était pas que je n'aimasse les autres:
+mais j'avais encore, outre leur place, celle-ci vide dans mon âme." And
+the soul of Hylas, like Nature herself, abhorred a vacuum! (This
+approximation is not intended as "new and original": but it was some
+time after making it that I recovered, in _Notre Dame de Paris_, a
+forgotten anticipation of it by Victor Hugo.)
+
+Another early point of interest was that the frontispiece portrait of
+Astrée (the edition, see _Bibliography_, appears to be the latest of the
+original and ungarbled ones, _imprimée à Rouen, et se vend à Paris_
+(1647, 10 vols.)) is evidently a portrait, though not an identical one,
+of the same face given in the Abbé Reure's engraving of Diane de
+Châteaumorand herself. The nose, especially, is hardly mistakable, but
+the eyes have rather less expression, and the mouth less character,
+though the whole face (naturally) looks younger.
+
+On the other hand, the portrait here--not of Céladon, but admittedly of
+Honoré d'Urfé himself--is much less flattering than that in the Abbé's
+book.
+
+Things specially noted in the second reading would (it has been said)
+overflow all bounds here possible: but we may perhaps find room for
+three lines from about the best of the very numerous but not very
+poetical verses, at the beginning of the sixth (_i.e._ the middle of the
+original _third_) volume:
+
+    _Le prix d'Amour c'est l'Amour même._
+    Change d'humeur qui s'y plaira,
+    Jamais Hylas ne changera,
+
+the two last being the continuous refrain of a "villanelle" in which
+this bad man boasts his constancy in inconstancy.
+
+P. 265, _note_ 1.--It ought perhaps to be mentioned that Mlle. de
+Lussan's paternity is also, and somewhat more probably, attributed to
+Eugene's elder brother, Thomas of Savoy, Comte de Soissons. The lady is
+said to have been born in 1682, when Eugene (b. 1663) was barely
+nineteen; but of course this is not decisive. His brother Thomas
+_Amédée_ (b. 1656) was twenty-six at the time. The attribution above
+mentioned gave no second name, and did not specify the relationship to
+Eugene: so I had some difficulty in identifying the person, as there
+were, in the century, three Princes Thomas of Savoy, and I had few books
+of reference. But my old friend and constant helper in matters
+historical, the Rev. William Hunt, D.Litt., cleared the point up for me.
+Of the other two--Thomas _François_, who was by marriage Comte de
+Soissons and was grandfather of Eugene and Thomas Amédée, died in the
+same year in which Thomas Amédée was born, therefore twenty-six before
+Mlle. de Lussan's birth: while the third, Thomas _Joseph_, Eugene's
+cousin, was not born till 1796, fourteen years after the lady. The
+matter is, of course, of no literary importance: but as I had passed the
+sheet for press before noticing the diversity of statements, I thought
+it better to settle it.
+
+P. 267. Pajon. I ought not to have forgotten to mention that he bears
+the medal of Sir Walter Scott (Introduction to _The Abbot_) as "a
+pleasing writer of French Fairy Tales."
+
+Page 453.--Choderlos de Laclos. Some surprise has been expressed by a
+friend of great competence at my leaving out _Les Liaisons Dangereuses_.
+I am, of course, aware that "persons of distinction" have taken an
+interest in it; and I understand that, not many years ago, the
+unfortunate author of the beautiful lines _To Cynara_ wasted his time
+and talent on translating the thing. To make sure that my former
+rejection was not unjustified, I have accordingly read it with care
+since the greater part of this book was passed for press; and it shall
+have a judgment here, if not in the text. I am unable to find any
+redeeming point in it, except that some ingenuity is shown in bringing
+about the _dénouement_ by a rupture between the villain-hero and the
+villainess-heroine, M. le Vicomte de Valmont and Mme. la Marquise de
+Merteuil. Even this, though fairly craftsmanlike in treatment, is banal
+enough in idea--that idea being merely that jealousy, in both sexes,
+survives love, shame, and everything else, even community in
+scoundrelism--in other words, that the green-eyed monster (like "Vernon"
+and unlike "Ver") _semper viret_. But it is scarcely worth one's while
+to read six hundred pages of very small print in order to learn this. Of
+amusement, as apart from this very elementary instruction, I at least
+can find nothing. The pair above mentioned, on whom practically hangs
+the whole appeal, are merely disgusting. Their very voluptuousness is
+accidental: the sum and substance, the property and business of their
+lives and natures, are compact of mischief, malice, treachery, and the
+desire of "getting the better of somebody." Nor has this diabolism
+anything grand or impressive about it--anything that "intends greatly"
+and glows, as has been said, with a black splendour, in Marlowesque or
+Websterian fashion. Nor, again, is it a "Fleur du Mal" of the
+Baudelairian kind, but only an ugly as well as noxious weed. It is
+prosaic and suburban. There is neither tragedy nor comedy, neither
+passion nor humour, nor even wit, except a little horse-play. Congreve
+and Crébillon are as far off as Marlowe and Webster; in fact, the
+descent from Crébillon's M. de Clérval to Laclos' M. de Valmont is
+almost inexpressible. And, once more, there is nothing to console one
+but the dull and obvious moral that to adopt love-making as an
+"occupation" (_vide_ text, p. 367) is only too likely to result in the
+[Greek: technê] becoming, in vulgar hands, very [Greek: banausos]
+indeed.
+
+The victims and _comparses_ of the story do nothing to atone for the
+principals. The lacrimose stoop-to-folly-and-wring-his-bosom Mme. de
+Tourvel is merely a bore; the _ingénue_ Cécile de Volanges is, as Mme.
+de Merteuil says, a _petite imbécile_ throughout, and becomes no better
+than she should be with the facility of a predestined strumpet; her
+lover, Valmont's rival, and Mme. de Merteuil's plaything, M. le
+Chevalier Danceny, is not so very much better than _he_ should be, and
+nearly as much an imbecile in the masculine way as Cécile in the
+feminine; her respectable mother and Valmont's respectable aunt are not
+merely as blind as owls are, but as stupid as owls are not. Finally, the
+book, which in many particular points, as well as in the general
+letter-scheme, follows Richardson closely (adding clumsy notes to
+explain the letters, apologise for their style, etc.), exhibits most of
+the faults of its original with hardly any of that original's merits.
+Valmont, for instance, is that intolerable creature, a pattern Bad
+Man--a Grandison-Lovelace--a prig of vice. Indeed, I cannot see how any
+interest can be taken in the book, except that derived from its
+background of _tacenda_; and though no one, I think, who has read the
+present volume will accuse me of squeamishness, _I_ can find in it no
+interest at all. The final situations referred to above, if artistically
+led up to and crisply told in a story of twenty to fifty pages, might
+have some; but ditchwatered out as they are, I have no use for them. The
+letter-form is particularly unfortunate, because, at least as used, it
+excludes the ironic presentation which permits one almost to fall in
+love with Becky Sharp, and quite to enjoy _Jonathan Wild_. Of course, if
+anybody says (and apologists _do_ say that Laclos was, as a man, proper
+in morals and mild in manners) that to hold up the wicked to mere
+detestation is a worthy work, I am not disposed to argue the point.
+Only, for myself, I prefer to take moral diatribes from the clergy and
+aesthetic delectation from the artist. The avenging duel between
+Lovelace and Colonel Morden is finely done; that between Valmont and
+Danceny is an obvious copy of it, and not finely done at all. Some,
+again, of the riskiest passages in subject are made simply dull by a
+Richardsonian particularity which has no seasoning either of humour or
+of excitement. Now, a Richardson _de mauvais lieu_ is more than a
+bore--it is a nuisance, not pure and simple, but impure and complex.
+
+I have in old days given to a few novels (though, of course, only when
+they richly deserved it) what is called a "slating"--an
+_éreintement_--as I once had the honour of translating that word in
+conversation, at the request of a distinguished English novelist, for
+the benefit of a distinguished French one. Perhaps an example of the
+process is not utterly out of place in a _History_ of the novel itself.
+But I have long given up reviewing fiction, and I do not remember any
+book of which I shall have to speak as I have just spoken. So _hic
+caestus_, etc.--though I am not such a coxcomb as to include _victor_ in
+the quotation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] For the opposite or corresponding reasons, it has seemed unnecessary
+to dwell on such persons, a hundred and more years later, as Voisenon
+and La Morlière, who are merely "corrupt followers" of Crébillon _fils_;
+or, between the two groups, on the numerous failures of the
+quasi-historical kind which derived partly from Mlle. de Scudéry and
+partly from Mme. de la Fayette.
+
+[2] That of the minor "Sensibility" novelists in the last chapter.
+
+[3] I have once more to thank Professors Ker, Elton, and Gregory Smith
+for their kindness in reading my proofs and making most valuable
+suggestions; as well as Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly and the Rev. William
+Hunt for information on particular points.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+                                                             PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTORY                                                    1
+
+The early history of prose fiction--The late classical
+stage--A _nexus_ of Greek and French romance?--the facts
+about the matter--The power and influence of the "Saint's
+Life"--The Legend of St. Eulalia--The _St. Alexis_.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MATTERS OF FRANCE, ROME, AND BRITAIN                        9
+
+The _Chanson de Geste_--The proportions of history and
+fiction in them--The part played by language, prosody, and
+manners--Some drawbacks--But a fair balance of actual story
+merit--Some instances of this--The classical borrowings:
+Troy and Alexander--_Troilus_--_Alexander_--The Arthurian
+Legend--Chrestien de Troyes and the theories about him--His
+unquestioned work--Comparison of the _Chevalier à la
+Charette_ and the prose _Lancelot_--The constitution of the
+Arthuriad--Its approximation to the novel proper--Especially
+in the characters and relations of Lancelot and
+Guinevere--Lancelot--Guinevere--Some minor
+points--Illustrative extracts translated from the "Vulgate":
+the youth of Lancelot--The first meeting of Lancelot and
+Guinevere--The scene of the kiss--Some further remarks on
+the novel-character of the story--And the personages--Books.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ROMANS D'AVENTURES                                             55
+
+Variety of the present group--Different views held of
+it--_Partenopeus of Blois_ selected for analysis and
+translation.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE FICTION                                73
+
+Prose novelettes of the thirteenth century: _Aucassin et
+Nicolette_ not quite typical--_L'Empereur Constant_ more
+so--_Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane_--_La Comtesse de
+Ponthieu_--Those of the fourteenth:
+_Asseneth_--_Troilus_--_Foulques Fitzwarin_--Something on
+these--And on the short story generally.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ALLEGORY, FABLIAU, AND PROSE STORY OF COMMON LIFE              89
+
+The connection with prose fiction of allegory--And of the
+_fabliaux_--The rise of the _nouvelle_ itself--_Les Cent
+Nouvelles Nouvelles_--Analysis of "La Demoiselle
+Cavalière"--The interest of _namea_ personages--_Petit Jehan
+de Saintré_--_Jehan de Paris._
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RABELAIS                                                      105
+
+The anonymity, or at least impersonality, of authorship up
+to this point--Rabelais unquestionably the first very great
+known writer--But the first great novelist?--Some objections
+considered--And dismissed as affecting the general
+attraction of the book--Which lies, largely if not wholly,
+in its story-interest--Contrast of the _Moyen de
+Parvenir_--A general theme possible--A reference, to be
+taken up later, to the last Book--Running survey of the
+whole--_Gargantua_--The birth and education--The war--The
+Counsel to Picrochole--The peace and the Abbey of
+Thelema--_Pantagruel_ I. The contrasted
+youth--Panurge--Short view of the sequels in Book
+II.--_Pantagruel_ II. (Book III.) The marriage of Panurge
+and the consultations on it--_Pantagruel_ III. (Book IV.)
+The first part of the voyage--_Pantagruel_ IV. (Book V.) The
+second part of the voyage: the "Isle Sonnante"--"La
+Quinte"--The conclusion and The Bottle.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SUCCESSORS OF RABELAIS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE
+"AMADIS" ROMANCES                                             134
+
+Subsidiary importance of Brantôme and other
+character-mongers--The _Heptameron_--Note on
+Montaigne--Character and "problems"--Parlamente on human and
+divine love--Despériers--_Contes et Joyeux Devis_--Other
+tale-collections--The "provincial" character of these--The
+_Amadis_ romances--Their characteristics--Extravagance in
+incident, nomenclature, etc.--The "cruel" heroine--Note on
+Hélisenne de Crenne.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--I.                             152
+
+_The Pastoral and Heroic Romance, and the Fairy Story._
+
+Immense importance of the seventeenth century in our
+subject--The divisions of its contribution--Note on marked
+influence of Greek Romance--The Pastoral in general--Its
+beginnings in France--Minor romances preceding the
+_Astrée_--Their general character--Examples of their
+style--Montreux and the _Bergeries de Juliette_--Des
+Escuteaux and his _Amours Diverses_--François de Molière:
+_Polyxéne_--Du Périer: _Arnoult et Clarimonde_--Du Croset:
+_Philocalie_--Corbin: _Philocaste_--Jean de Lannoi and his
+_Roman Satirique_--Béroalde de Verville outside the _Moyen
+de Parvenir_--The _Astrée_: its author--The book--Its
+likeness to the _Arcadia_--Its philosophy and its general
+temper--Its appearance and its author's other work--Its
+character and appeals--Hylas and Stella and their
+Convention--Narrative skill frequent--The Fountain of the
+Truth of Love--Some drawbacks: awkward history--But
+attractive on the whole--The general importance and
+influence--The _Grand Cyrus_--Its preface to Madame de
+Longueville--The "Address to the Reader"--The opening of the
+"business"--The ups and downs of the general conduct of the
+story--Extracts: the introduction of Cyrus to Mandane--His
+soliloquy in the pavilion--The Fight of the Four
+Hundred--The abstract resumed--The oracle to
+Philidaspes--The advent of Araminta--Her correspondence with
+Spithridates--Some interposed comments--Analysis
+resumed--The statue in the gallery at Sardis--The judgment
+of Cyrus in a court of love--Thomyris on the
+warpath--General remarks on the book and its class--The
+other Scudéry romances:
+_Ibrahim_--_Almahide_--_Clélie_--Perhaps the liveliest of
+the set--Rough outline of it--La Calprenède: his
+comparative cheerfulness--_Cléopatre_: the Cypassis and
+Arminius episode--The book
+generally--_Cassandre_--_Faramond_--Gomberville: _La
+Caritée_--_Polexandre_--Camus: _Palombe_, etc.--Hédelin
+d'Aubignac: _Macarise_--Gombauld: _Endimion_--Mme. de
+Villedieu--_Le Grand Alcandre Frustré_--The collected
+love-stories--Their historic liberties--_Carmente_,
+etc.--Her value on the whole--The fairy tale--Its _general_
+characteristics: the happy ending--Perrault and Mme.
+d'Aulnoy--Commented examples: _Gracieuse et
+Percinet_--_L'Adroite Princesse_--The danger of the
+"moral"--Yet often redeemed--The main _Cabinet des Fées_:
+more on Mme. d'Aulnoy--Warning against disappointment--Mlle.
+de la Force and others--The large proportion of Eastern
+Tales--_Les Voyages de Zulma_--Fénelon--Caylus--_Prince
+Courtebotte et Princesse Zibeline_--_Rosanie_--_Prince
+Muguet et Princesse Zaza_--Note on _Le Diable Amoureux_.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--II.                            274
+
+_From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Clèves"--Anthony Hamilton._
+
+The material of the chapter--Sorel and _Francion_--The
+_Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_--Scarron and the _Roman
+Comique_--The opening scene of this--Furetière and the
+_Roman Bourgeois_--Nicodème takes Javotte home from
+church--Cyrano de Bergerac and his _Voyages_--Mme. de la
+Fayette and _La Princesse de Clèves_--Its central
+scene--Hamilton and the Nymph--The opening of _Fleur
+d'Épine_--_Les Quatre Facardins_.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PRÉVOST, CRÉBILLON                          325
+
+The subjects of the chapter--Lesage: his Spanish
+connections--Peculiarity of his work generally--And its
+variety--_Le Diable Boiteux_--Lesage and Boileau--_Gil
+Blas_: its peculiar cosmopolitanism--And its adoption of the
+_homme sensuel moyen_ fashion--Its inequality, in the Second
+and Fourth Books especially--Lesage's quality: not requiring
+many words, but indisputable--Marivaux: _Les Effets de la
+Sympathie_ (?)--His work in general--_Le Paysan
+Parvenu_--_Marianne_: outline of the story--Importance of
+Marianne herself--Marivaux and Richardson:
+"Marivaudage"--Examples: Marianne on the _physique_ and
+_moral_ of Prioresses and Nuns--She returns the
+gift-clothes--Prévost--His minor novels: the opinions on
+them of Sainte-Beuve--And of Planche--The books themselves:
+_Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne_--_Cléveland_--_Le Doyen de
+Killérine_--_The Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité_--Its
+miscellaneous curiosities--_Manon Lescaut_--Its
+uniqueness--The character of its heroine--And that of the
+hero--The inevitableness of both and the inestimableness of
+their history--Crébillon _fils_--The case against him--For
+the defendant: the veracity of his artificiality and his
+consummate cleverness--The Crébillonesque atmosphere and
+method--Inequality of his general work; a survey of it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE _PHILOSOPHE_ NOVEL                                        377
+
+The use of the novel for "purpose"; Voltaire--General
+characteristics of his tales--_Candide_--_Zadig_ and its
+satellites--_Micromégas_--_L'Ingénu_--_La Princesse de
+Babylone_--Some minors--Voltaire, the Kehl edition, and
+Plato--An attempt at different evaluation of
+himself--Rousseau: the novel character of the
+_Confessions_--The ambiguous position of _Émile_--_La
+Nouvelle Héloïse_--Its numerous and grave faults--The minor
+characters--The delinquencies of Saint-Preux--And the less
+charming points of Julie; her redemption--And the better
+side of the book generally--But little probability of more
+good work in novel from its author--The different case of
+Diderot--His gifts and the waste of them--The various
+display of them--_Le Neveu de Rameau_--_Jacques le
+Fataliste_--Its "Arcis-Pommeraye" episode--_La
+Religieuse_--Its story--A hardly missed, if missed,
+masterpiece--The successors--Marmontel--His "Telemachic"
+imitations worth little--The best of his _Contes Moraux_
+worth a good deal--_Alcibiade ou le Moi_--_Soliman the
+Second_--_The Four Flasks_--_Heureusement_--_Le Philosophe
+Soi-disant_--A real advance in these--Bernardin de
+Saint-Pierre.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS. THE FRENCH
+NOVEL, _c._ 1800                                              428
+
+"Sensibility"--A glance at Miss Austen--The thing
+essentially French--Its history--Mme. de Tencin and _Le
+Comte de Comminge_--Mme. Riccoboni and _Le Marquis de
+Cressy_--Her other work: _Milady Catesby_--Mme. de Beaumont:
+_Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_--Mme. de Souza--Xavier de
+Maistre--His illustrations of the lighter side of
+Sensibility--A sign of decadence--Benjamin Constant:
+_Adolphe_--Mme. de Duras's "postscript"--_Sensibilité_ and
+_engouement_--Some final words on the matter--Its importance
+here--Restif de la Bretonne--Pigault-Lebrun: the difference
+of his positive and relative importance--His life and the
+reasons for giving it--His general
+characteristics--_L'Enfant du Carnaval_ and _Les Barons de
+Felsheim_--_Angélique et Jeanneton_--_Mon Oncle
+Thomas_--_Jérôme_--The redeeming points of these--Others:
+_Adélaïde de Méran and Tableaux de
+Société_--_L'Officieux_--Further examples--Last words on
+him--The French novel in 1800.
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRENCH
+FICTION NOTICED IN THIS VOLUME                                475
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES                                         479
+
+INDEX                                                         483
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+[Sidenote: The early history of prose fiction.]
+
+Although I have already, in two places,[4] given a somewhat precise
+account of the manner in which fiction in the modern sense of the term,
+and especially prose fiction, came to occupy a province in modern
+literature which had been so scantily and infrequently cultivated in
+ancient, it would hardly be proper to enter upon the present subject
+with a mere reference to these other treatments. It is matter of
+practically no controversy (or at least of none in which it is worth
+while to take a part) that the history of prose fiction, before the
+Christian era, is very nearly a blank, and that, in the fortunately
+still fairly abundant remains of poetic fiction, "the story is the least
+part" (as Dryden says in another sense), or at least the _telling_ of
+the story, in our modern sense, is so. Homer (in the _Odyssey_ at any
+rate), Herodotus (in what was certainly not intentional fiction at all),
+and Xenophon[5] are about the only Greek writers who can tell a story,
+for the magnificent narrative of Thucydides in such cases as those of
+the Plague and the Syracusan cataclysm shows all the "headstrong"
+_ethos_ of the author in its positive refusal to assume a "story"
+character. In Latin there is nothing before Livy and Ovid;[6] of whom
+the one falls into the same category with Herodotus and Xenophon, and
+the other, admirable _raconteur_ as he is, thinks first of his poetry.
+Scattered tales we have: "mimes" and other things there are some, and
+may have been more. But on the whole the schedule is not filled: there
+are no entries for the competition.
+
+[Sidenote: The late classical stage.]
+
+In later classical literature, both Greek and Latin, the state of things
+alters considerably, though even then it cannot be said that fiction
+proper--that is to say, either prose or verse in which the
+accomplishment of the form is distinctly subordinate to the interesting
+treatment of the subject--constitutes a very large department, or even
+any regular department at all. If Lucius of Patrae was a real person,
+and much before Lucian, he may dispute with Petronius--that
+first-century Maupassant or Meredith, or both combined--the actual
+foundation of the novel as we have it; but Lucian himself and Apuleius
+(strangely enough handling the same subject in the two languages) give
+securer and more solid starting-places. Yet nothing follows Apuleius;
+though some time after Lucian the Greek romance, of which we have still
+a fair number of examples (spread, however, over a still larger number
+of centuries), establishes itself in a fashion. It does one thing,
+indeed, which in a way refounds or even founds the whole conception--it
+establishes the heroine. There are certainly feminine persons, sometimes
+not disagreeable, who play conspicuous and by no means mute or
+unpractical parts in both Greek and Latin versions of the Ass-Legend;
+but one can hardly call them heroines. There need be no chicane about
+the application of that title to Chloe or to Chariclea, to Leucippe or
+to her very remarkable rival, to Anthia or to Hysmine. Without the
+heroine you can hardly have romance: the novel without her (though her
+individuality may be put in commission) is an absolute impossibility.
+
+[Sidenote: A _nexus_ of Greek and French romance? The facts about the
+matter.]
+
+The connection between these curious performances (with the much larger
+number of things like them which we know to have existed) on the one
+side, and the Western mediaeval romance on the other, has been at
+various times matter of considerable controversy; but it need not
+trouble us much here. The Greek romance was to have very great influence
+on the French novel later: on the earlier composition, generally called
+by the same name as itself, it would seem[7] to have had next to none.
+Until we come to _Floire et Blanchefleur_ and perhaps _Parthenopex_,
+things of a comparatively late stage, obviously post-Crusade, and so
+necessarily exposed to, and pretty clearly patient of, Greek-Eastern
+influence, there is nothing in Old French which shows even the same
+kinship to the Greek stories as the Old English _Apollonius of Tyre_,
+which was probably or rather certainly in the original Greek itself. The
+sources of French "romance"--I must take leave to request a "truce of
+God" as to the application of that term and of "epic" for present
+purposes--appear to have been two--the Saint's Life and the patriotic or
+family _saga_, the latter in the first place indelibly affected by the
+Mahometan incursions of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. The
+story-telling instinct--kindled by, or at first devoted to, these
+subjects--subsequently fastened on numerous others. In fact almost all
+was fish that came to the magic net of Romance; and though two great
+subjects of ours, the "Matter of Britain" (the Arthurian Legend) and the
+"Matter of Rome" (classical story generally, including the Tale of
+Troy), came traditionally to rank themselves with the "Matter of France"
+and with the great range of hagiology which it might have been dangerous
+to proclaim a fourth "matter" (even if anybody had been likely to take
+the view that it was so), these classifications are, like most of their
+kind, more specious than satisfactory.
+
+[Sidenote: The power and influence of the "Saint's Life."]
+
+Any person--though indeed it is to be feared that the number of such
+persons is not very large--who has some knowledge of hagiology _and_
+some of literature will admit at once that the popular notion of a
+Saint's Life being necessarily a dull and "goody" thing is one of the
+foolishest pieces of presumptuous ignorance, and one of the most
+ignorant pieces of foolish presumption. Not only have modern novelists
+sometimes been better informed and better inspired--as in the case of
+more than one version of the Legends of St. Mary of Egypt, of St.
+Julian, of Saint Christopher, and others--but there remain scores if not
+hundreds of beautiful things that have been wholly or all but wholly
+neglected. It is impossible to imagine a better romance, either in verse
+or in prose, than might have been made by William Morris if he had kept
+his earliest loves and faiths and had taken the _variorum_ Legend of St.
+Mary Magdalene, as we have it in divers forms from quite early French
+and English to the fifteenth-century English Miracle Play on the
+subject. That of St. Eustace ("Sir Isumbras"), though old letters and
+modern art have made something of it, has also never been fully
+developed in the directions which it opens up; and one could name many
+others. But it has to be admitted that the French (whether, as some
+would say, naturally enough or not) never gave the Saint's Life pure and
+simple the development which it received in English. It started them--I
+at least believe this--in the story-telling way; but cross-roads, to
+them more attractive, soon presented themselves.
+
+[Sidenote: The Legend of St. Eulalia.]
+
+Still, it started them. I hope it is neither intolerably fanciful nor
+the mere device of a compiler anxious to make his arrows of all wood, to
+suggest that there is something noteworthy in the nature of the very
+first piece of actual French which we possess. The Legend of St. Eulalia
+can be tried pretty high; for we have[8] the third hymn of the
+_Peristephanon_ of Prudentius to compare it with. The metre of this
+
+    Germine nobilis Eulalia
+
+is not one of the best, and contrasts ill with the stately
+decasyllables--perhaps the very earliest examples of that mighty metre
+that we have--which the infant daughter-tongue somehow devised for
+itself some centuries later. But Prudentius is almost always a poet, if
+a poet of the decadence, and he had as instruments a language and a
+prosody which were like a match rifle to a bow and arrows--_not_ of yew
+and _not_ cloth-yard shafts--when contrasted with the dialect and
+speech-craft of the unknown tenth-century Frenchman. Yet from some
+points of view, and especially from ours, the Anonymus of the Dark Ages
+wins. Prudentius spins out the story into two hundred and fifteen lines,
+with endless rhetorical and poetical amplification. He wants to say that
+Eulalia was twelve years old; but he actually informs us that
+
+    Curriculis tribus atque novem,
+    Tres hyemes quater attigerat,
+
+and the whole history of the martyrdom is attitudinised and bedizened in
+the same fashion.
+
+Now listen to the noble simplicity of the first French poet and
+tale-teller:
+
+     A good maiden was Eulalia: fair had she the body, but the
+     soul fairer. The enemies of God would fain conquer
+     her--would fain make her serve the fiend. She listened not
+     to the evil counsellors, that she should deny God, who
+     abideth in Heaven aloft--neither for gold, nor for silver,
+     nor for garments; for the royal threatenings, nor for
+     entreaties. Nothing could ever bend the damsel so that she
+     should not love the service of God. And for that reason she
+     was brought before Maximian, who was the King in those days
+     over the pagans. And he exhorted her--whereof she took no
+     care--that she should flee from the name of Christian. But
+     she assembled all her strength that she might rather sustain
+     the torments than lose her virginity: for which reason she
+     died in great honour. They cast her in the fire when it
+     burnt fiercely: but she had no fault in her, and so it
+     pained her [_or_ she burnt[9]] not.
+
+     To this would not trust the pagan king: but with a sword he
+     bade them take off her head. The damsel did not gainsay this
+     thing: she would fain let go this worldly life if Christ
+     gave command. And in shape of a dove she flew to heaven. Let
+     us all pray that she may deign to intercede for us; that
+     Christ may upon us have mercy after death, and of His
+     clemency may allow us to come to Him.
+
+[Sidenote: The _St. Alexis_.]
+
+Of course this is story-telling in its simplest form and on its smallest
+scale: but the essentials are there, and the non-essentials can be
+easily supplied--as indeed they are to some extent in the _Life of St.
+Leger_ and to a greater in the _Life of St. Alexis_, which almost follow
+the _Sainte-Eulalie_ in the making of French literature. The _St.
+Alexis_ indeed provides something like a complete scheme of romance
+interest, and should be, though not translated (for it runs to between
+600 and 700 lines), in some degree analysed and discussed. It had, of
+course, a Latin original, and was rehandled more than once or twice. But
+we have the (apparently) first French form, probably of the eleventh
+century. The theme is one of the commonest and one of the least
+sympathetic in hagiology. Alexis is forced by his father, a rich Roman
+"count," to marry; and after (not before) the marriage, though of course
+before its consummation, he deserts his wife, flies to Syria, and
+becomes a beggar at Edessa. After a time, long enough to prevent
+recognition, he goes back to Rome, and obtains from his own family alms
+enough to live on, though these alms are dispensed to him by the
+servants with every mark of contempt. At last he dies, and is recognised
+forthwith as a saint. This hackneyed and somewhat repulsive _donnée_
+(there is nothing repulsive to the present writer, let it be observed,
+either in Stylites or in Galahad) the French poet takes and makes a
+rather surprising best of it. He is not despicable even as a poet, all
+things considered; but he is something very different indeed from
+despicable as a tale-teller. To begin, or, strictly speaking, to end
+with (R. L. Stevenson never said a wiser thing than that the end must be
+the necessary result of, and as it were foretold in, the beginning), he
+has lessened if not wholly destroyed the jar of the situation by (most
+unusually and considering the mad chastity-worship of the time rather
+audaciously) associating the deserted wife directly with the Saint's
+"gustation of God" above:
+
+    Without doubt is St. Alexis in Heaven,
+    With him has he God in the company of the Angels,
+    _With him the maiden to whom he made himself strange,_
+    _Now he has her close to him--together are their souls,_
+    _I know not how to tell you how great their joy is._[10]
+
+But there are earlier touches of that life which makes all literature,
+and tale-telling most of all. An opening on Degeneracy is scarcely one
+of these, for this was, of course, a commonplace millenniums earlier,
+and it had the recent belief about the approaching end of the world at
+the actual A.D. 1000 to prompt it. The maiden is "bought" for Alexis
+from her father or mother. Instead of the not unusual and rather
+distasteful sermons on virginity which later versions have, the future
+saint has at least the grace to accompany the return of the ring[11]
+with only a few words of renunciation of his spouse to Christ, and of
+declaration that in this world "love is imperfect, life frail, and joy
+mutable." A far more vivid touch is given by the mother who, when search
+for the fugitive has proved futile, ruins the nuptial chamber, destroys
+its decorations, and hangs it with rags and sackcloth,[12] and who, when
+the final discovery is made, reproaches the dead saint in a fashion
+which is not easy to reply to: "My son, why hadst thou no pity of _us_?
+Why hast thou not spoken to me _once_?" The bride has neither forgotten
+nor resented: she only weeps her deserter's former beauty, and swears to
+have no other spouse but God. The poem ends--or all but ends--in a
+hurly-burly of popular enthusiasm, which will hardly resign its new
+saint to Pope or Emperor, till at last, after the usual miracles of
+healing, the body is allowed to rest, splendidly entombed, in the Church
+of St. Boniface.
+
+Now the man who could thus, and by many other touches not mentioned, run
+blood into the veins of mummies,[13] could, with larger range of subject
+and wider choice of treatment, have done no small things in fiction.
+
+But enough talk of might-have-beens: let us come to the things that were
+done.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] The article "Romance" in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 11th ed.;
+and the volume on _The English Novel_ in Messrs. Dent's series "Channels
+of English Literature," London, 1913.
+
+[5] Plato (or Socrates?) does it only on a small scale and partially,
+though there are the makings of a great novelist in the _Dialogues_.
+Apollonius Rhodius is the next verse-tale teller to Homer among the
+prae-Christian Greeks.
+
+[6] Virgil, in the only parts of the _Aeneid_ that make a good story, is
+following either Homer or Apollonius.
+
+[7] To me at least the seeming seems to approach demonstration; and I
+can only speak as I find, with all due apologies to those who find
+differently.
+
+[8] There is, of course, a Latin "sequence" on the Saint which is nearer
+to the French poem; but that does not affect our present point.
+
+[9] The literal "cooked," with no burlesque intention, was used of
+punitory burning quite early; but it is not certain that the transferred
+sense of _cuire_, "to _pain_," is not nearly or quite as old.
+
+[10] Not the least interesting part of this is that it is almost
+sufficient by itself to establish the connection between Saint's Life
+and Romance.
+
+[11] By a very curious touch he gives her also "les renges de s'espide,"
+_i.e._ either the other ring by which the sword is attached to the
+sword-belt, or the belt itself. The meaning is, of course, that with her
+he renounces knighthood and all worldly rank.
+
+[12] She addresses the room itself, dramatically enough: "Chamber! never
+more shalt thou bear ornament: never shall any joy in thee be enjoyed."
+
+[13] Let me repeat that I mean no despite to the "Communion of Saints"
+or to their records--much the reverse. But the hand of any _purpose_,
+Religious, Scientific, Political, what not, is apt to mummify story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MATTERS OF FRANCE, ROME, AND BRITAIN
+
+
+It has been said already that the Saint's Life, as it seems most
+probable to the present writer, started the romance in France; but of
+course we must allow considerable reinforcement of one kind or another
+from local, traditional, and literary sources. The time-honoured
+distribution, also given already, of the "matter" of this romance does
+not concern us so much here as it would in a history of French
+literature, but it concerns us. We shall indeed probably find that the
+home-grown or home-fed _Chanson de Geste_ did least for the novel in the
+wide sense--that the "Matter of Rome" chiefly gave it variety, change of
+atmosphere to some extent, and an invaluable connection with older
+literatures, but that the central division or "Matter of Britain," with
+the immense fringes of miscellaneous _romans d'aventures_--which are
+sometimes more or less directly connected with it, and are always
+moulded more or less on its patterns--gave most of all.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Chanson de Geste_.]
+
+Of these, however, what has been called the family or patriotic part was
+undoubtedly the earliest and for a long time the most influential. There
+is, fortunately, not the least need here to fight out the old battle of
+the _cantilenae_ or supposed _ballad_-originals. I see no reason to
+alter the doubt with which I have always regarded their existence; but
+it really does not matter, _to us_, whether they existed or not,
+especially since we have not got them now. What we have got is a vast
+mass of narrative poetry, which latterly took actual prose form, and
+which--as early certainly as the eleventh century and perhaps
+earlier--turns the French faculty for narrative (whether it was actually
+or entirely fictitious narrative or not does not again matter) into
+channels of a very promising kind.
+
+The novel-reader who has his wits and his memory about him may perhaps
+say, "Promising perhaps; but paying?" The answer must be that the
+promise may have taken some time to be fully liquidated, but that the
+immediate or short-dated payment was great. The fault of the _Chansons
+de Geste_--a fault which in some degree is to be found in French
+literature as a whole, and to a greater extent in all mediaeval
+literature--is that the class and the type are rather too prominent. The
+central conception of Charlemagne as a generally dignified but too
+frequently irascible and rather petulant monarch, surrounded by valiant
+and in a way faithful but exceedingly touchy or ticklish paladins, is no
+doubt true enough to the early stages of feudalism--in fact, to adapt
+the tag, there is too much human nature in it for it to be false. But it
+communicates a certain sameness to the chansons which stick closest to
+the model.
+
+[Sidenote: The proportions of history and fiction in them.]
+
+The exact relation of the _Chansons de Geste_ to the subsequent history
+of French fiction is thus an extremely important one, and one that
+requires, not only a good deal of reading on which to base any opinion
+that shall not be worthless, but a considerable exercise of critical
+discretion in order to form that opinion competently. The present writer
+can at least plead no small acquaintance with the subject, and a full if
+possibly over-generous acknowledgment of his dealings with it on the
+part of some French authorities, living and dead, of the highest
+competence. But the attractions of the vast and strangely long ignored
+body of _chanson_ literature are curiously various in kind, and they
+cannot be indiscriminately drawn upon as evidence of an early mastery of
+tale-telling proper on the part of the French as a nation.
+
+There is indeed one solid fact, the importance of which can hardly be
+exaggerated in some ways, though it may be wrongly estimated in others.
+Here is not merely the largest part proportionately, but a very large
+bulk positively, of the very earliest part of a literature, devoted to a
+kind of narrative which, though some of it may be historic originally,
+is pretty certainly worked up into its concrete and extant state by
+fiction. The comparison with the two literatures which on the whole bear
+such comparison with French best--English and Greek--is here very
+striking. People say that there "must have been" many _Beowulfs_: it can
+hardly be said that we have so much as a positive assertion of the
+existence of even one other, though we have allusions and glances which
+have been amplified in the usual fashion. We have positive and not
+reasonably doubtful assertion of the existence of a very large body of
+more or less early Greek epic; but we have nothing existing except the
+_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_.
+
+[Sidenote: The part played by language, prosody, and manners.]
+
+On this fact, be it repeated, if we observe the canons of sound
+criticism in the process, too much stress in general cannot be laid.
+There must have been some more than ordinary _nisus_ towards
+story-telling in a people and a language which produced, and for three
+or four centuries cherished, something like a hundred legends, sometimes
+of great length, on the single general[14] subject of the exploits,
+sufferings, and what not of the great half-historical, half-legendary
+emperor _à la barbe florie_, of his son, and of the more legendary than
+historical peers, rebels, subjects, descendants, and "those about both"
+generally. And though the assertion requires a little more justification
+and allowance, there must have been some extraordinary gifts for more or
+less fictitious composition when such a vast body of spirited
+fictitious, or even half-fictitious, narrative is turned out.
+
+But in this justification as to the last part of the contention a good
+deal of care has to be observed. It will not necessarily follow, because
+the metal is attractive, that its attractiveness is always of the kind
+purely belonging to fiction; and, as a matter of fact, a large part of
+it is not. Much is due to the singular sonority and splendour of the
+language, which is much more like Spanish than modern French, and which
+only a few poets of exceptional power have been able to reproduce in
+modern French itself. Much more is imparted by the equally peculiar
+character of the metre--the long _tirades_ or _laisses_, assonanced or
+mono-rhymed paragraphs in decasyllables or alexandrines, which, to those
+who have once caught their harmony, have an indescribable and
+unparalleled charm. Yet further, these attractions come from the strange
+unfamiliar world of life and character described and displayed; from the
+brilliant stock epithets and phrases that stud the style as if with a
+stiff but glittering embroidery; and from other sources too many to
+mention here.
+
+[Sidenote: Some drawbacks.]
+
+Yet one must draw attention to the fact that all the named sources of
+the attraction, and may perhaps ask the reader to take it on trust that
+most of the unnamed, are not essentially or exclusively attractions of
+fiction--that they are attractions of poetry. And, on the other hand,
+while the weaving of so vast a web of actual fiction remains "to
+credit," there are not a few things to be set on the other side of the
+account. The sameness of the _chanson_ story, the almost invariable
+recurrence of the stock motives and frameworks--of rebellion, treason,
+paynim invasion, petulance of a King's son, somewhat too "coming"
+affection of a King's daughter, tyrannical and Lear-like _impotentia_ of
+the King himself, etc.--may be exaggerated, but cannot be denied. In the
+greatest of all by general acknowledgment, the far-famed _Roland_, the
+economy of pure story interest is pushed to a point which in a less
+unsophisticated age--say the twentieth instead of the twelfth or
+eleventh century--might be put down to deliberate theory or crotchet.
+The very incidents, stirring as they are, are put as it were in
+skeleton argument or summary rather than amplified into full story-flesh
+and blood; we see such heroine as there is only to see her die; even the
+great moment of the horn is given as if it had been "censored" by
+somebody. People, I believe, have called this brevity Homeric; but that
+is not how I read Homer.
+
+In fact, so jealous are some of those who well and wisely love the
+_chansons_, that I have known objections taken to ranking as pure
+examples, despite their undoubted age and merit, such pieces as _Amis et
+Amiles_ (for passion and pathos and that just averted tragedy which is
+so difficult to manage, one of the finest of all) and the _Voyage à
+Constantinoble_, the single early specimen of mainly or purely comic
+donnée.[15] This seems to me, I confess, mere prudery or else mistaken
+logic, starting from the quite unjustifiable proposition that nothing
+that is not found in the _Chanson de Roland_ ought to be found in any
+_chanson_. But we may admit that the "bones"--the simplest terms of the
+_chanson_-formula--hardly include varied interests, though they allow
+such interests to be clothed upon and added to them.
+
+[Sidenote: But a fair balance of actual story merit.]
+
+Despite this admission, however, and despite the further one that it is
+to the "romances" proper--Arthurian, classical, and adventurous--rather
+than to the _chansons_ that one must look for the first satisfactory
+examples of such clothing and addition, it is not to be denied that the
+_chansons_ themselves provide a great deal of it--whether because of
+adulteration with strictly "romance" matter is a question for debate in
+another place and not here. But it would be a singularly ungrateful
+memory which should, in this place, leave the reader with the idea that
+the _Chanson de Geste_ as such is merely monotonous and dull. The
+intensity of the appeal of _Roland_ is no doubt helped by that approach
+to bareness--even by a certain tautology--which has been mentioned.
+_Aliscans_, which few could reject as faithless to the type, contains,
+even without the family of dependent poems which cluster round it, a
+vivid picture of the valiant insubordinate warrior in William of Orange,
+with touches of comedy or at least horse-play.
+
+[Sidenote: Some instances of this.]
+
+The striking, and to all but unusually dull or hopelessly "modern"
+imaginations as unusually beautiful, centre-point of _Amis et
+Amiles_,--where one of the heroes, who has sworn a "white" perjury to
+save his friend and is punished for it by the terror, "white" in the
+other sense, of leprosy, is abandoned by his wife, and only healed by
+the blood of the friend's children, is the crowning instance of another
+set of appeals. The catholicity of a man's literary taste, and his more
+special capacity of appreciating things mediaeval, may perhaps be better
+estimated by his opinion of _Amis et Amiles_ than by any other
+touchstone; for it has more appeals than this almost tragic one--a much
+greater development of the love-motive than either _Roland_ or
+_Aliscans_, and a more varied interest generally. Its continuation,
+_Jourdains de Blaivies_, takes the hero abroad, as do many other
+_chansons_, especially two of the most famous, _Huon de Bordeaux_ and
+_Ogier de Danemarche_. These two are also good--perhaps the
+best--examples of a process very much practised in the Middle Ages and
+leaving its mark on future fiction--that of expansion and continuation.
+In the case of Ogier, indeed, this process was carried so far that
+enquiring students have been known to be sadly disappointed in the
+almost total disconnection between William Morris's beautiful section of
+_The Earthly Paradise_ and the original French, as edited by Barrois in
+the first attempt to collect the _chansons_ seventy or eighty years ago.
+The great "Orange" subcycle, of which _Aliscans_ is the most famous,
+extends in many directions, but is apt in all its branches to cling more
+to "war and politics." William of Orange is in this respect partly
+matched by Garin of Lorraine. No _chanson_ retained its popularity, in
+every sense of that word, better than the _Quatre Fils d'Aymon_--the
+history of Renaut de Montauban and his brothers and cousin, the famous
+enchanter-knight Maugis. As a "boy's book" there is perhaps none better,
+and the present writer remembers an extensive and apparently modern
+English translation which was a favourite "sixty years since." _Berte
+aux grands Piés_, the earliest form of a well-known legend, has the
+extrinsic charm of being mentioned by Villon; while there is no more
+agreeable love-story, on a small scale and in a simple tone, than that
+of Doon and Nicolette[16] in _Doon de Mayence_. And not to make a mere
+catalogue which, if supported by full abstracts of all the pieces, would
+be inordinately bulky and would otherwise convey little idea to readers,
+it may be said that the general _chanson_ practice of grouping together
+or branching out the poems (whichever metaphor be preferred) after the
+fashion of a family-tree involves of itself no inconsiderable call on
+the tale-telling faculties. That the writers pay little or no attention
+to chronological and other possibilities is hardly much to say against
+them; if this be an unforgivable sin it is not clear how either Dickens
+or Thackeray is to escape damnation, with Sir Walter to greet them in
+their uncomfortable sojourn.
+
+But it is undoubtedly true that the almost exclusive concentration of
+the attention on war prevents the attainment of much detailed
+novel-interest. Love affairs--some glanced at above--do indeed make, in
+some of the _chansons_, a fuller appearance than the flashlight view of
+lost tragedy which we have in _Roland_. But until the reflex influence
+of the Arthurian romance begins to work, they are, though not always
+disagreeable or ungraceful, of a very simple and primitive kind, as
+indeed are the delineations of manners generally.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The classical borrowings--Troy and Alexander.]
+
+The "matter of Rome the Great," as the original text has it (though, in
+fact, Rome proper has little to do with the most important examples of
+the class), adds very importantly to the development of romance, and
+through that, of novel. Its bulk is considerable, and its examples have
+interest of various kinds. But for us this interest is concentrated
+upon, if not exclusively confined to, the two great groups (undertaken
+by, and illustrated in, the three great literary languages of the
+earlier Middle Ages, and, as usual, most remarkably and originally in
+French) of the Siege of Troy and the life of Alexander. It should be
+almost enough to say of the former that it introduced,[17] with
+practically nothing but the faintest suggestion from really classical
+sources, the great romance-novel of the loves of Troilus and Cressida to
+the world's literature; and of the second, that it gives us the first
+instance of the infusion of Oriental mystery and marvel that we can
+discern in the literature of the West. For details about the books which
+contain these things, their authors and their probable sources and
+development, the reader must, as in other cases, look elsewhere.[18] It
+is only our business here to say something about the general nature of
+the things themselves and about the additions that they made to the
+capital, and in some cases almost to the "plant," of fiction.
+
+[Sidenote: _Troilus._]
+
+That the Troilus and Cressida romance, with its large provision and its
+more large suggestion of the accomplished love-story, evolved from older
+tale-tellers by Boccaccio and Chaucer and Henryson and Shakespeare, is
+not a pure creation of the earlier Middle Ages, few people who patiently
+attend to evidence can now believe. Even in the wretched summaries of
+the Tale of Troy by Dictys and Dares (which again no such person as the
+one just described can put very early), the real novel-interest--even
+the most slender romance-interest--is hardly present at all. Benoît de
+Sainte-More in the twelfth century may not have actually invented this;
+it is one of the principles of this book, as of all that its writer has
+written, that the quest of the inventor of a story is itself the vainest
+of inventions. But it is certain that nobody hitherto has been able to
+"get behind him," and it is still more certain that he has given enough
+base for the greater men who followed to build upon. If he cannot be
+credited with the position of the pseudo-Callisthenes (see below) in
+reference to the Alexander story, he may fairly share that of his
+contemporary Geoffrey of Monmouth, if not even of Nennius, as regards
+that of Arthur. The situation, or rather the group of situations, is of
+the most promising and suggestive kind, negatively and positively. In
+the first place the hero and heroine are persons about whom the great
+old poets of the subject have said little or nothing; and what an
+immense advantage this is all students of the historical novel of the
+last hundred years know. In the second, the way in which they are put in
+action (or ready for action) is equally satisfactory, or let us say
+stimulating. In a great war a prince loves a noble lady, who by birth
+and connections belongs to the enemy, and after vicissitudes, which can
+be elaborated according to the taste and powers of the romancer, gains
+her love. But the course of this love is interrupted by her surrender or
+exchange to the enemy themselves; her beauty attracts, nay has already
+attracted, the fancy of one of the enemy's leaders, and being not merely
+a coquette but a light-o'-love[19] she admits his addresses. Her
+punishment follows or does not follow, is accomplished during the life
+of her true lover or not, according again to the taste and fancy of the
+person who handles the story. But the scheme, even at its simplest, is
+novel-soil: marked out, matured, manured, and ready for cultivation, and
+the crops which can be grown on it depend entirely upon the skill of the
+cultivator.
+
+For all this some would, as has been said above, see sufficient
+suggestion in the Greek Romance. I have myself known the examples of
+that Romance for a very long time and have always had a high opinion of
+it; but except what has been already noticed--the prominence of the
+heroine--I can see little or nothing that the Mediaeval romance could
+possibly owe to it, and as a matter of fact hardly anything else in
+common between the two. In the last, and to some extent the most
+remarkable (though very far from the best if not nearly the worst), of
+the Greek Romances, the _Hysminias and Hysmine_ of Eustathius, we have
+indeed got to a point in advance, taking that word in a peculiar sense,
+even of Troilus at its most accomplished, that is to say, the Marinism
+or Marivaudage, if not even the Meredithese, of language and sentiment.
+But _Hysminias and Hysmine_ is probably not older than Benoît de
+Sainte-More's story, and as has just been said, Renaissance, nay
+post-Renaissance, not Mediaeval in character. We must, of course,
+abstain from "reading back" Chaucer or even Boccaccio into Benoît or
+into his probable plagiarist Guido de Columnis; but there is nothing
+uncritical or wrong in "reading forward" from these to the later
+writers. The hedge-rose is there, which will develop into, and serve as
+a support for, the hybrid perpetual--a term which could itself be
+developed in application, after the fashion of a mediaeval _moralitas_.
+And when we have actually come to Pandaro and Deiphobus, to the "verse
+of society," as it may be called in a new sense, of the happier part of
+Chaucer and to the intense tragedy of the later part of Henryson, then
+we are in the workshop, if not in the actual show-room, of the completed
+novel. It would be easy, as it was not in the case of the _chansons_,
+to illustrate directly by a translation, either here from Benoît or
+later from the shortened prose version of the fourteenth century, which
+we also possess; but it is not perhaps necessary, and would require much
+space.
+
+[Sidenote: _Alexander._]
+
+The influence of the Alexander story, though scarcely less, is of a
+widely different kind. In _Troilus_, as has been said, the Middle Age is
+working on scarcely more than the barest hints of antiquity, which it
+amplifies and supplements out of its own head and its own heart--a head
+which can dream dream-webs of subtlest texture unknown to the ancients,
+and a heart which can throb and bleed in a fashion hardly shown by any
+ancient except Sappho. With the Alexander group we find it much more
+passively recipient, though here also exercising its talent for varying
+and amplification. The controversies over the pseudo-Callisthenes,
+"Julius Valerius," the _Historia de Praeliis_, etc., are once more not
+for us; but results of them, which have almost or quite emerged from the
+state of controversy, are. It is certain that the appearance, in the
+classical languages, of the wilder legends about Alexander was as early
+at least as the third century after Christ--that is to say, long before
+even "Dark" let alone "Middle" Ages were thought of--and perhaps
+earlier. There seems to be very little doubt that these legends were of
+Egyptian or Asiatic origin, and so what we vaguely call "Oriental." They
+long anticipated the importing afresh of such influences by the
+Crusades, and they must, with all except Christians and Jews (that is to
+say, with the majority), have actually forestalled the Oriental
+influence of the Scriptures. Furthermore, when Mediaeval France began to
+create a new body of European literature, the Crusades had taken place;
+the appetite for things Oriental and perhaps we should say the
+half-imaginative power of appreciating them, had become active; and a
+considerable amount of literature in the vernacular had already been
+composed. It was not wonderful, therefore, that the _trouvères_ should
+fly upon this spoil. By not the least notable of the curiosities of
+literature in its own class, they picked out a historical but not very
+important episode--the siege of Gaza and Alexander's disgraceful cruelty
+to its brave defender--and made of this a regular _Chanson de Geste_ (in
+all but "Family" connection), the _Fuerres de Gadres_, a poem of several
+thousand lines. But the most generally popular (though sometimes
+squabbled over) parts of the story, were the supposed perversion of
+Olympias, not by the God Ammon but by the magician-king Nectanabus
+personating the God and becoming thereby father of the Hero; the Indian
+and some other real campaigns (the actual conquest of Persia was very
+slightly treated), and, far above all, the pure Oriental wonder-tales of
+the descent into the sea, the march to the Fountain of Youth, and other
+myths of the kind.
+
+Few things can be more different than the story-means used in these two
+legends; yet it must be personal taste rather than strict critical
+evaluation which pronounces one more important to the development of the
+novel than the other. There is a little love interest in the Alexander
+poems--the heroine of this part being Queen Candace--but it is slight,
+episodic, and rudimentary beside the complex and all-absorbing passions
+which, when genius took the matter in hand, were wrought out of the
+truth of Troilus and the faithlessness of Cressid. The joys of fighting
+or roaming, of adventure and quest, and above all those of marvel, are
+the attractions which the Alexander legend offers, and who shall say
+that they are insufficient? At any rate no one can deny that they have
+been made the seasoning, if not the stuff and substance, of an enormous
+slice of the romance interest, and of a very large part of that of the
+novel.
+
+[Sidenote: The Arthurian Legend.]
+
+It is scarcely necessary to speak of other classical romances, and it is
+of course very desirable to keep in mind that the Alexander story, in no
+form in which we have it, attempts any _strictly_ novel interest; while
+though that interest is rife in some forms of "Troilus," those forms are
+not exactly of the period, and are in no case of the language, with
+which we are dealing. It was an Italian, an Englishman, and a Scot who
+each in his own speech--one in the admirable vulgar tongue, of which at
+that time and as a finished thing, Italian was alone in Europe as
+possessor; the others in the very best of Middle English, and, as some
+think, almost the best of Middle Scots verse--displayed the full
+possibilities of Benoît's story. But the third "matter," the matter of
+Britain or (in words better understanded of most people) the Arthurian
+Legend, after starting in Latin, was, as far as language went, for some
+time almost wholly French, though it is exceedingly possible that at
+least one, if not more, of its main authors was no Frenchman. And in
+this "matter" the exhibition of the powers of fiction--prose as well as
+verse--was carried to a point almost out of sight of that reached by the
+_Chansons_, and very far ahead of any contemporary treatment even of the
+Troilus story.
+
+[Sidenote: Chrestien de Troyes and the theories about him.]
+
+Before, however, dealing with this great Arthurian story as a stage in
+the history of the Novel-Romance in and by itself, we must come to a
+figure which, though we have very little substantial knowledge of it,
+there is some reason for admitting as one of the first named and "coted"
+figures in French literature, at least as regards fiction in verse. It
+is well known that the action of modern criticism is in some respects
+strikingly like that of the sea in one of the most famous and vivid
+passages[20] of Spenser's unequalled scene-painting in words with
+musical accompaniment of them. It delights in nothing so much as in
+stripping one part of the shore of its belongings, and hurrying them off
+to heap upon another part. Chrestien de Troyes is one of the lucky
+personages who have benefited, not least and most recently, by this
+fancy. It is true that the actual works attributed to him have remained
+the same--his part of the shore has not been actually extended like part
+of that of the Humber. But it has had new riches, honours, and
+decorations heaped upon it till it has become, in the actual Spenserian
+language of another but somewhat similar passage (111. iv. 20), a "rich
+strond" indeed. Until a comparatively recent period, the opinion
+entertained of Chrestien, by most if not all competent students of him,
+was pretty uniform, and, though quite favourable, not extraordinarily
+high. He was recognised as a past-master of the verse _roman
+d'aventures_ in octosyllabic couplet, who probably took his
+heterogeneous materials wherever he found them; "did not invent much"
+(as Thackeray says of Smollett), but treated whatever he did treat in a
+singularly light and pleasant manner, not indeed free from the somewhat
+undistinguished fluency to which this "light and lewed" couplet, as
+Chaucer calls it, is liable, and showing no strong grasp either of
+character or of plot, but on the whole a very agreeable writer, and a
+quite capital example of the better class of _trouvère_, far above the
+_improvisatore_ on the one hand and the dull compiler on the other; but
+below, if not quite so far below, the definitely poetic poet.
+
+To an opinion something like this the present writer, who formed it long
+ago, not at second hand but from independent study of originals, and who
+has kept up and extended his acquaintance with Chrestien, still adheres.
+
+Of late, however, as above suggested, "Chrestiens" have gone up in the
+market to a surprising extent. Some twenty years ago the late M. Gaston
+Paris[21] announced and, with all his distinguished ability and his
+great knowledge elaborately supported, his conclusions, that the great
+French prose Arthurian romances (which had hitherto been considered by
+the best authorities, including his own no less admirable father, M.
+Paulin Paris, slightly anterior to the poet of Troyes, and in all
+probability the source of part at least of his work) were posterior and
+probably derivative. Now this, of itself, would of course to some extent
+put up Chrestien's value. But it, and the necessary corollaries from
+it, as originality and so forth, by no means exhaust the additional
+honours and achievements which have been heaped upon Chrestien by M.
+Paris and by others who have followed, more or less accepted, and in
+some cases bettered his ascriptions. In the first and principal place,
+there has been a tendency, almost general, to dethrone Walter Map from
+his old position as the real begetter of the completed Arthurian
+romance, and to substitute the Troyan. Then, partly in support, but also
+to some extent, I think, independently of this immense ennoblement,
+discoveries have been made of gifts and graces in Chrestien himself,
+which had entirely escaped the eyes of so excellent a critic, so erudite
+a scholar, and so passionate a lover of Old French literature as the
+elder M. Paris, and which continue to be invisible to the far inferior
+gifts and knowledge, but if I may dare to say so, the equal good will
+and the not inconsiderable critical experience, of the present
+historian.
+
+Now with large parts of this matter we have, fortunately enough, nothing
+to do, and the actual authorship of the great Arthurian conception,
+namely, the interweaving of the Graal story on the one hand and the
+loves of Lancelot and Guinevere on the other, with the Geoffrey of
+Monmouth matter, concerns us hardly at all. But some have gone even
+further than has been yet hinted in the exaltation of Chrestien. They
+have discovered in him--"him-by-himself-him"--as the author of his
+actual extant works and not as putative author of the real Arthuriad,
+not merely a pattern example of the court _trouvère_--as much as this,
+or nearly as much, has been admitted here--but almost the inventor of
+romance and even of something very like novel, a kind of mediaeval
+Scott-Bulwer-Meredith, equally great at adventure, fashion, and
+character-analysis; subject only, and that not much, to the limitations
+of the time. In fact, if I do not do some of these panegyrists
+injustice, we ought to have a fancy bust of Chrestien, with the titles
+of his works gracefully inscribed on the pedestal, as a frontispiece to
+this book, if not even a full-length statue, robed like a small St.
+Ursula, and like her in Memling's presentation at Bruges, sheltering in
+its ample folds the child-like figures of future French novelists and
+romancers, from the author of _Aucassin et Nicolette_ to M. Anatole
+France.
+
+Again, some fifty years of more or less critical reading of novels of
+all ages and more than one or two languages, combined with nearly forty
+years reading of Chrestien himself and a passion for Old French, leave
+the present writer quite unable to rise to this beatific vision. But let
+us, before saying any more what Chrestien could or could not do, see, in
+the usual cold-blooded way, what he _did_.
+
+[Sidenote: His unquestioned work.]
+
+The works attributed to this very differently, though never
+unfavourably, estimated tale-teller--at least those which concern
+us--are _Percevale le Gallois_, _Le Chevalier à[22] la Charette_, _Le
+Chevalier au Lyon_, _Erec et Enide_, _Cligès_, and a much shorter
+_Guillaume d'Angleterre_. This last has nothing to do with the Conqueror
+(though the title has naturally deceived some), and is a semi-mystical
+romance of the group derived from the above-mentioned legend of St.
+Eustace, and represented in English by the beautiful story of _Sir
+Isumbras_. It is very doubtfully Chrestien's, and in any case very
+unlike his other work; but those who think him the Arthurian magician
+might make something of it, as being nearer the tone of the older Graal
+stories than the rest of his compositions, even _Percevale_ itself. Of
+these, all, except the _Charette_, deal with what may be called outliers
+of the Arthurian story. _Percevale_ is the longest, but its immense
+length required, by common confession, several continuators;[23] the
+others have a rather uniform allowance of some six or seven thousand
+lines. _Cligès_ is one of the most "outside" of all, for the hero,
+though knighted by Arthur, is the disinherited heir of Constantinople,
+and the story is that of the recovery of his kingdom. _Erec_, as the
+second part of the title will truly suggest, though the first may
+disguise it, gives us the story of the first of Tennyson's original
+_Idylls_. The _Chevalier au Lyon_ is a delightful romance of the Gawain
+group, better represented by its English adaptation, _Ywain_, than any
+other French example. _Percevale_ and the _Charette_ touch closest on
+the central Arthurian story, and the latter has been the chief
+battlefield as to Chrestien's connection therewith, some even begging
+the question to the extent of adopting for it the title _Lancelot_.
+
+[Sidenote: Comparison of the _Chevalier à la Charette_ and the prose
+_Lancelot_.]
+
+The subject is the episode, well known to English readers from Malory,
+of the abduction of Guinevere by Meleagraunce, the son of King
+Bagdemagus; of the inability of all knights but Lancelot (who has been
+absent from Court in one of the lovers' quarrels) to rescue her; and of
+his undertaking the task, though hampered in various ways, one of the
+earliest of which compelled him to ride in a cart--a thing regarded, by
+one of the odd[24] conventions of chivalry, as disgraceful to a knight.
+Meleagraunce, though no coward, is treacherous and "felon," and all
+sorts of mishaps befall Lancelot before he is able for the second time
+to conquer his antagonist, and finally to take his over and over again
+forfeited life. But long before this he has arrived at the castle where
+Guinevere is imprisoned; and has been enabled to arrange a meeting with
+her at night, which is accomplished by wrenching out the bars of her
+window. The ill chances and _quiproquos_ which result from his having
+cut his hands in the proceeding (though the actual visit is not
+discovered), and the arts by which Meleagraunce ensnares the destined
+avenger for a time, lengthen out the story till, by the final contest,
+Meleagraunce goes to his own place and the Queen is restored to hers.
+
+Unfortunately the blots of constant tautology and verbiage, with not
+infrequent flatness, are on all this gracious story as told by
+Chrestien.[25] Among the traps and temptations which are thrown in
+Lancelot's way to the Queen is one of a highly "sensational" nature. In
+the night Lancelot hears a damsel, who is his hostess, though he has
+refused her most thorough hospitality, shrieking for assistance; and on
+coming to the spot finds her in a situation demanding instant help,
+which she begs, if the irreparable is not to happen. But the poet not
+only gives us a heavily figured description of the men-at-arms who bar
+the way to rescue, but puts into the mouth of the intending rescuer a
+speech (let us be exact) of twenty-eight lines and a quarter, during
+which the just mentioned irreparable, if it had been seriously meant,
+might have happened with plenty of time to spare. So, in the crowning
+scene (excellently told in Malory), where the lover forces his way
+through iron bars to his love, reckless of the tell-tale witness of his
+bleeding hands, the circumlocutions are _plusquam_ Richardsonian--and do
+not fall far short of a serious anticipation of Shakespeare's burlesque
+in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. The mainly gracious description is
+spoilt by terrible bathetics from time to time. Guinevere in her white
+nightdress and mantle of scarlet and _camus_[26] on one side of the
+bars, Lancelot outside, exchanging sweet salutes, "for much was he fain
+of her and she of him," are excellent. The next couplet, or quatrain,
+almost approaches the best poetry. "Of villainy or annoy make they no
+parley or complaint; but draw near each other so much at least that they
+hold each other hand by hand." But what follows? That they cannot come
+together vexes them so immeasurably that--what? They blame the iron work
+for it. This certainly shows an acute understanding[27] and a very
+creditable sense of the facts of the situation on the part of both
+lovers; but it might surely have been taken for granted. Also, it takes
+Lancelot forty lines to convince his lady that when bars are in your way
+there is nothing like pulling them out of it. So in the actual
+pulling-out there is the idlest exaggeration and surplusage; the first
+bar splits one of Lancelot's fingers to the sinews and cuts off the top
+joint of the next. The actual embraces are prettily and gracefully told
+(though again with otiose observations about silence), and the whole,
+from the knight's coming to the window to his leaving it, takes 150
+lines. Now hear the prose of the so-called "Vulgate _Lancelot_."
+
+     "And he came to the window: and the Queen, who waited for
+     him, slept not, but came thither. And the one threw to the
+     other their arms, and they felt each other as much as they
+     could reach. "Lady," said Lancelot, "if I could enter
+     yonder, would it please you?" "Enter," said she, "fair sweet
+     friend? How could this happen?" "Lady," said he, "if it
+     please you, it could happen lightly." "Certainly," said she,
+     "I should wish it willingly above everything." "Then, in
+     God's name," said he, "that shall well happen. For the iron
+     will never hold." "Wait, then," said she, "till I have gone
+     to bed." Then he drew the irons from their sockets so softly
+     that no noise was made and no bar broke."
+
+In this simple prose, sensuous and passionate for all its simplicity, is
+told the rest of the story. There are eighteen lines of it altogether in
+Dr. Sommer's reprint, but as these are long quarto lines, let us
+multiply them by some three to get the equivalent of the "skipping
+octosyllables." There will remain fifty to a hundred and fifty, with, in
+the prose, some extra matter not in the verse. But the acme of the
+contrast is reached in these words of the prose, which answer to some
+forty lines of the poet's watering-out. "Great was the joy that they
+made each other that night, for long had each suffered for the other.
+And when the day came, they parted." Beat that who can!
+
+Many years ago, and not a few before M. Gaston Paris had published his
+views, I read these two forms of the story in the valuable joint
+edition, verse and prose, of M. Jonckbloet, which some ruffian (may
+Heaven _not_ assoil him!) has since stolen or hidden from me. And I said
+then to myself, "There is no doubt which of these is the original."
+Thirty years later, with an unbroken critical experience of imaginative
+work in prose and verse during the interval, I read them again in Dr.
+Forster's edition of the verse and Dr. Sommer's of the prose, and said,
+"There is less doubt than ever." That the prose should have been
+prettified and platitudinised, decorated and diluted into the verse is a
+possibility which we know to be not only possible but likely, from a
+thousand more unfortunate examples. That the contrary process should
+have taken place is practically unexampled and, especially at that time,
+largely unthinkable. At any rate, whosoever did it had a much greater
+genius than Chrestien's.
+
+This is no place to argue out the whole question, but a single
+particular may be dealt with. The curiously silly passage about the bars
+above given is a characteristic example of unlucky and superfluous
+amplification of the perfectly natural question and answer of the prose,
+"May I come to you?" "Yes, but how?" an example to be paralleled by
+thousands of others at the time and by many more later. Taken the other
+way it would be a miracle. Prose abridgers of poetry did not go to work
+like that in the twelfth-thirteenth century--nor, even in the case of
+Charles Lamb, have they often done so since.
+
+It is, however, very disagreeable to have to speak disrespectfully of a
+writer so agreeable in himself and so really important in our story as
+Chrestien. His own gifts and performances are, as it seems to me, clear
+enough. He took from this or that source--his selection of the _Erec_
+and _Percivale_ matters, if not also that of _Yvain_, suggests others
+besides the, by that time as I think, concentrated Arthurian story--and
+from the Arthuriad itself the substance of the _Chevalier à la
+Charette_. He varied and dressed them up with pleasant etceteras, and
+in especial, sometimes, though not always, embroidered the already
+introduced love-motive with courtly fantasies and with a great deal of
+detail. I should not be at all disposed to object if somebody says that
+he, before any one else, set the type of the regular verse _Roman
+d'aventures_. It seems likely, again, from the pieces referred to above,
+that he may have had originals more definitely connected with Celtic
+sources, if not actually Celtic themselves, than those which have given
+us the mighty architectonic of the "Vulgate" _Arthur_. In his own way
+and place he is a great and an attractive figure--not least in the
+history of the novel. But I can see nothing in him that makes me think
+him likely, and much that makes me think him utterly unlikely, to be the
+author of what I conceive to be the greatest, the most epoch-making, and
+almost the originating conception of the novel-romance itself. Who it
+was that did conceive this great thing I do not positively know. All
+external evidence points to Walter Map; no internal evidence, that I
+have seen, seems to me really to point away from him. But if any one
+likes let us leave him a mere Eidolon, an earlier "Great Unknown." Our
+business is, once more, with what he, whoever he was, did.
+
+[Sidenote: The constitution of the Arthuriad.]
+
+The multiplicity of things done, whether by "him" or "them," is
+astonishing; and it is quite possible, indeed likely, that they were not
+all done by the same person. Mediaeval continuators (as has been seen in
+the case of Chrestien) worked after and into the work of each other in a
+rather uncanny fashion; and the present writer frankly confesses that he
+no more knows where Godfrey de Lagny took up the _Charette_, or the
+various other sequelists the _Percevale_, from Chrestien than he would
+have known, without confession, the books of the _Odyssey_ done by Mr.
+Broome and Mr. Fenton from those done by Mr. Pope. The _grand-oeuvre_
+is the combination of Lancelot as (1) lover of the Queen; (2) descendant
+of the Graalwards; (3) author, in consequence of his sin, of the
+general failure of the Round Table Graal-Quest; (4) father of its one
+successful but half-unearthly Seeker; (5) bringer-about (in more ways
+than one[28]) of the intestine dissension which facilitates the invasion
+of Mordred and the foreigners and so the Passing of Arthur, of his own
+rejection by the repentant Queen, and of his death. As regards minor
+details of plot and incident there have to be added the bringing in of
+the pre-Round Table part of the story by Lancelot's descent from King
+Ban and his connections with King Bors, both Arthur's old allies, and
+both, as we may call them, "Graal-heirs"; the further connection with
+the Merlin legend by Lancelot's fostering under the Lady of the
+Lake;[29] the exaltation, inspiring, and, as it were, unification of
+the scattered knight-adventures through Lancelot's constant presence as
+partaker, rescuer, and avenger;[30] the human interest given to the
+Graal-Quest (the earlier histories being strikingly lacking in this) by
+his failure, and a good many more. But above all there are the general
+characters of the knight and the Queen to make flesh and blood of the
+whole.
+
+Not merely the exact author or authors, but even the exact source or
+sources of this complicated, fateful, and exquisite imagination are,
+once more, not known. Years ago it was laid down finally by the most
+competent of possible authorities (the late Sir John Rhys) that "the
+love of Lancelot and Guinevere is unknown to Welsh literature."
+Originals for the "greatest knight" have been sought by guesswork, by
+idle play on words and names, if not also by positive forgery, in that
+Breton literature which does not exist. There do exist versions of the
+story in which Lancelot plays no very prominent part, and there is even
+one singular version--certainly late and probably devised by a proper
+moral man afraid of scandal--which makes Lancelot outlive the Queen,
+quite comfortably continuing his adventurous career (this is perhaps the
+"furthest" of the Unthinkable in literature), and (not, it may be owned,
+quite inconsistently) hints that the connection was merely Platonic
+throughout. These things are explicable, but better negligible. For my
+own part I have always thought that the loves of Tristram and Iseult
+(which, as has been said, were originally un-Arthurian) suggested the
+main idea to the author of it, being taken together with Guinevere's
+falseness with Mordred in the old quasi-chronicle, and perhaps the story
+of the abduction by Melvas (Meleagraunce), which seems to be possibly a
+genuine Welsh legend. There are in the Tristram-Iseult-Mark trio quite
+sufficient suggestions of Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur; while the far
+higher plane on which the novice-novelist sets his lovers, and even the
+very interesting subsequent exaltation of Tristram and Iseult themselves
+to familiarity and to some extent equality with the other pair, has
+nothing critically difficult in it.
+
+But this idea, great and promising as it was, required further
+fertilisation, and got it from another. The Graal story is (once more,
+according to authority of the greatest competence, and likely if
+anything to be biassed the other way) pretty certainly not Welsh in
+origin, and there is no reason to think that it originally had anything
+to do with Arthur. Even after it obeyed the strange "suck" of legends
+towards this centre whirlpool, or Loadstone Rock, of romance, it yielded
+nothing intimately connected with the Arthurian Legend itself at first,
+and such connection as succeeded seems pretty certainly[31] to be that
+of which Percevale is the hero, and an outlier, not an integral part.
+But either the same genius (as one would fain hope) as that which
+devised the profane romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, or another,
+further grafted or inarched the sacred romance of the Graal and its
+Quest with the already combined love-and-chivalry story. Lancelot, the
+greatest of knights, and of the true blood of the Graal-guardians, ought
+to accomplish the mysteries; but he cannot through sin, and that sin is
+this very love for Guinevere. The Quest, in which (despite warning and
+indeed previous experience) he takes part, not merely gives occasion for
+adventures, half-mystical, half-chivalrous, which far exceed in
+interest the earlier ones, but directly leads to the dispersion and
+weakening of the Round Table. And so the whole draws together to an end
+identical in part with that of the Chronicle story, but quite infinitely
+improved upon it.
+
+[Sidenote: Its approximation to the novel proper.]
+
+Now not only is there in this the creation of the novel _in posse_, of
+the romance _in esse_, but it is brought about in a curiously noteworthy
+fashion. A hundred years and more later the greatest known writer of the
+Middle Ages, and one of the three or four greatest of the world, defined
+the subjects of poetry as Love, War, and Religion, or in words which we
+may not unfairly translate by these. The earlier master recognised
+(practically for the first time) that the romance--that allotropic form
+(as the chemists might say) of poetry--must deal with the same. Now in
+these forms of the Arthurian legend, which are certainly anterior to the
+latter part of the twelfth century, there is a great deal of war and a
+good deal of religion, but these motives are mostly separated from each
+other, the earlier forms of the Arthur story having nothing to do with
+the Graal, and the earlier forms of the Graal story--so far as we can
+see--nothing, or extremely little, to do with Arthur. Nor had Love, in
+any proper and passionate sense of the word, anything to do with either.
+Women and marriage and breaches of marriage appear indeed; but the
+earlier Graal stories are dominated by the most ascetic
+virginity-worship, and the earlier Arthur-stories show absolutely
+nothing of the passion which is the subject of the magnificent overture
+of Mr. Swinburne's _Tristram_. Even this story of Tristram himself,
+afterwards fired and coloured by passion, seems at first to have shown
+nothing but the mixture of animalism, cruelty, and magic which is
+characteristic of the Celts.[32] Our magician of a very different
+gramarye, were he Walter or Chrestien or some third--Norman, Champenois,
+Breton,[33] or Englishman (Welshman or Irishman he pretty certainly was
+_not_)--had therefore before him, if not exactly dry bones, yet the
+half-vivified material of a chronicle of events on the one hand and a
+mystical dream-sermon on the other. He, or a French or English Pallas
+for him, had to "think of another thing."
+
+And so he called in Love to reinforce War and Religion and to do its
+proper office of uniting, inspiring, and producing Humanity. He
+effected, by the union of the three motives, the transformation of a
+mere dull record of confused fighting into a brilliant pageant of
+knightly adventure. He made the long-winded homilies and genealogies of
+the earlier Graal-legend at once take colour from the amorous and
+war-like adventures, raise these to a higher and more spiritual plane,
+and provide the due punishment for the sins of his erring characters.
+The whole story--at least all of it that he chose to touch and all that
+he chose to add--became alive. The bones were clothed with flesh and
+blood, the "wastable country verament" (as the dullest of the Graal
+chroniclers says in a phrase that applies capitally to his own work)
+blossomed with flower and fruit. Wars of Arthur with unwilling subjects
+or Saxons and Romans; treachery of his wife and nephew and his own
+death; miracle-history of the Holy Vessel and pedigree of its
+custodians; Round Table; these and many other things had lain as mere
+scraps and orts, united by no real plot, yielding no real characters,
+satisfying no real interest that could not have been equally satisfied
+by an actual chronicle or an actual religious-mystical discourse. And
+then the whole was suddenly knit into a seamless and shimmering web of
+romance, from the fancy of Uther for Igerne to the "departing of them
+all" in Lyonnesse and at Amesbury and at Joyous Gard. A romance
+undoubtedly, but also incidentally providing the first real novel-hero
+and the first real novel-heroine in the persons of the lovers who, as in
+the passage above translated, sometimes "made great joy of each other
+for that they had long caused each other much sorrow," and finally
+expiated in sorrow what was unlawful in their joy.
+
+Let us pass to these persons themselves.
+
+[Sidenote: Especially in the characters and relations of Lancelot and
+Guinevere.]
+
+The first point to note about Lancelot is the singular fashion in which
+he escapes one of the dangers of the hero. Aristotle had never said that
+a hero must be faultless; indeed, he had definitely said exactly the
+contrary, of at least the tragic hero. But one of the worst of the many
+misunderstandings of his dicta brought the wrong notion about, and
+Virgil--that exquisite craftsman in verse and phrase, but otherwise,
+perhaps, not great poet and very dangerous pattern--had confirmed this
+notion by his deplorable figurehead. It is also fair to confess that all
+except morbid tastes do like to see the hero win. But if he is to be a
+hero of Rymer, not merely
+
+    Like Paris handsome[34] and like Hector brave,
+
+but as pious as Aeneas; "a rich fellow enough," with blood hopelessly
+blue and morals spotlessly copy-bookish--in other words, a Sir Charles
+Grandison--he will duly meet with the detestation and "conspuing" of the
+elect. Almost the only just one of the numerous and generally silly
+charges latterly brought against Tennyson's Arthurian handling is that
+his conception of the blameless king does a little smack of this false
+idea, does something grow to it. It is one of the chief points in which
+he departed, not merely from the older stories (which he probably did
+not know), but from Malory's astonishing redaction of them (which he
+certainly did).
+
+[Sidenote: Lancelot.]
+
+But Lancelot escapes this worst of fates in the _Idylls_ themselves, and
+much more does he escape it in the originals. In the first place, though
+he invariably (or always till the Graal Quest) "wins through," he
+constantly does not do so without intermediate hairbreadth escapes, and
+even not a few adventures which are at first not escapes at all. And
+just as his perpetual bafflement in the Quest salts and seasons his
+triumphs in the saddle, so does the ruling passion of his sin save, from
+anything approaching mawkishness,[35] his innumerable and yet
+inoffensive virtues; his chastity, save in this instance, which chastity
+itself, by a further stroke of art, is saved from _niaiserie_ by the
+plotted adventures with Elaine; his courtesy, his mercifulness, his
+wonderfully early notion of a gentleman (_v. inf._), his invariable
+disregard of self, and yet his equally invariable naturalness. Pious
+Aeneas had not the least objection to bringing about the death of Dido,
+as he might have known he was doing (unless he was as great a fool as he
+is a prig); and he is probably never more disgusting or Pecksniffian
+than when he looks back on the flames of Dido's pyre and is really
+afraid that something unpleasant must have happened, though he can't
+think what the matter can be. But _he_, one feels sure, would never have
+lifted up his hand against a woman, unless she had richly deserved it on
+the strictest patriotic scores, as in the case of Helen, when his mamma
+fortunately interfered. On the other hand, Lancelot was "of the Asra who
+die when they love" and love till they die--nay, who would die if they
+did not love. But it is certain (for there is a very nice miniature of
+it reproduced from the MS. in M. Paulin Paris's abstract) that, for a
+moment, he drew his sword on Elaine to punish the deceit which made him
+unwittingly false to Guinevere. It is very shocking, no doubt, but
+exceedingly natural; and of course he did not kill or even (like
+Philaster) wound her, though nobody interfered to prevent him. Many of
+the incidents which bring out his character are well known to moderns by
+poem and picture, though others, as well worth knowing, are not. But the
+human contrasts of success and failure, of merit and sin, have never, I
+think, been quite brought out, and to bring them out completely here
+would take too much room. We may perhaps leave this other--quite
+other--"_First_ Gentleman in Europe" with the remark that Chrestien de
+Troyes gives only one side of him, and therefore does not give him at
+all. The Lancelot of board and bower, of travel and tournament, he does
+very fairly. But of the Lancelot of the woods and the hermitage, of the
+dream at the foot of the cross, of the mystic voyage and the just
+failing (if failing) effort of Carbonek, he gives, because he knows,
+nothing.
+
+[Sidenote: Guinevere.]
+
+Completed as he was, no matter for the moment by whom, he is thus the
+first hero of romance and nearly the greatest; but his lady is worthy of
+him, and she is almost more original as an individual. It is true that
+she is not the first heroine, as he is, if not altogether, almost the
+first hero. Helen was that, though very imperfectly revealed and
+gingerly handled. Calypso (hardly Circe) _might_ have been. Medea is
+perhaps nearer still, especially in Apollonius. But the Greek romancers
+were the first who had really busied themselves with the heroine: they
+took her up seriously and gave her a considerable position. But they did
+not succeed in giving her much character. The naughty _not_-heroine of
+Achilles Tatius, though she has less than none in Mr. Pope's supposed
+innuendo sense, alone has an approach to some in the other. As for the
+accomplished Guinevere's probable contemporary, the Ismene or Hysmine of
+Eustathius Macrembolites (_v. sup._ p. 18), she is a sort of
+Greek-mediaeval Henrietta Temple, with Mr. Meredith and Mr. Disraeli by
+turns holding the pen, though with neither of them supplying the brains.
+But Guinevere is a very different person; or rather, she _is_ a person,
+and the first. To appreciate her she must be compared with herself in
+earlier presentations, and then considered fully as she appears in the
+Vulgate--for Malory, though he has given much, has not given the whole
+of her, and Tennyson has painted only the last panel of the polyptych
+wholly, and has rather over-coloured that.[36]
+
+In what we may call the earliest representations of her, she has hardly
+any colour at all. She is a noble Roman lady, and very beautiful. For a
+time she is apparently very happy with her husband, and he with her; and
+if she seems to make not the slightest scruple about "taking up with"
+her nephew, co-regent and fellow rebel, why, noble Roman ladies thought
+nothing of divorce and not much of adultery. The only old Welsh story
+(the famous Melvas one so often referred to) that we have about her in
+much detail merely establishes the fact, pleasantly formulated by M.
+Paulin Paris, that she was "très sujette à être enlevée," but in itself
+(unless we admit the Peacockian triad of the "Three Fatal Slaps of the
+Isle of Britain" as evidence) again says nothing about her character.
+If, as seems probable if not certain, the _Launfal_ legend, with its
+libel on her, is of Breton origin, it makes her an ordinary Celtic
+princess, a spiritual sister of Iseult when she tried to kill Brengwain,
+and a cross between Potiphar's wife and Catherine of Russia, without any
+of the good nature and "gentlemanliness" of the last named. The real
+Guinevere, the Guinevere of the Vulgate and partly of Malory, is freed
+from the colourlessness and the discreditable end of Geoffrey's queen,
+transforms the promiscuous and rather _louche_ Melvas incident into an
+important episode of her epic or romantic existence, and gives the lie,
+even in her least creditable or least charming moments, to the _Launfal_
+libel. As before in Lancelot's case, details of her presentation had in
+some cases best be either translated in full or omitted, but I cannot
+refuse myself the pleasure of attempting, with however clumsy a hand, a
+portrait of our, as I believe, English Helen, who gave in French
+language to French, and not only French literature, the pattern of a
+heroine.
+
+There is not, I think, any ancient authority for the rather commonplace
+suggestion, unwisely adopted by Tennyson, that Guinevere fell in love
+with Lancelot when he was sent as an ambassador to fetch her; thus
+merely repeating Iseult and Tristram, and anticipating Suffolk and
+Margaret. In fact, according to the best evidence, Lancelot could not
+have been old enough, if he was even born. On the contrary, nothing
+could be better than the presentation of her introduction to Arthur and
+the course of the wooing in the Vulgate--the other "blessed original."
+She first sees Arthur as a foe from the walls of besieged Carmelide, and
+admires his valour; she has further occasion to admire it when, as a
+friend, he rescues her father, showing himself, as what he really was in
+his youth, his own best knight. The pair are genuinely in love with each
+other, and the betrothal and parting for fresh fight are the most
+gracious passages of the _Merlin_ book, except the better version (_v.
+sup._) of the love of Merlin himself and the afterwards libelled
+Viviane. Anyhow, she was married because she fell in love with him, and
+there is no evidence to show that she and Arthur lived otherwise than
+happily together. But, if all tales were true, she had no reason to
+regard him as a very faithful husband or a blameless man. She may not
+have known (for nobody but Merlin apparently did know) the early and
+unwitting incest of the King and his half-sister Margause; but the
+extreme ease with which he adopted her own treacherous foster-sister,
+the "false Guinevere," and his proceedings with the Saxon enchantress
+Camilla, were very strong "sets off" to her own conduct. Also she had a
+most disagreeable[37] sister-in-law in Morgane-la-Fée. These are not in
+the least offered as excuses, but merely as "lights." Indeed Guinevere
+never seems to have hated or disliked her husband, though he often gave
+her cause; and if, until the great repentance, she thought more lightly
+of "spouse-breach" than Lancelot did, that is not uncharacteristic of
+women.[38] In fact, she is a very perfect (not of course in the moral
+sense) gentlewoman. She is at once popular with the knights, and loses
+that popularity rather by Lancelot's fault than by her own, while
+Gawain, who remains faithful to her to the bitter end, or at least till
+the luckless slaughter of his brethren, declares at the beginning that
+she is the fairest and most gracious, and will be the wisest and best of
+queens. She shows something very like humour in the famous and fateful
+remark (uttered, it would seem, without the slightest ill or double
+meaning at the time) as to Gawain's estimate of Lancelot.[39] She seems
+to have had an agreeable petulance (notice, for instance, the rebuke of
+Kay at the opening of the _Ywain_ story and elsewhere), which sometimes,
+as it naturally would, rises to passionate injustice, as Lancelot
+frequently discovered. She is, in fact, always passionate in one or
+other sense of that great and terrible and infinite[40] word, but never
+tragedy-queenish or vixenish. She falls in love with Lancelot because he
+falls in love with her, and because she cannot help it. False as she is
+to husband and to lover, to her court and her country,[41] it can hardly
+be said that any act of hers, except the love itself and its
+irresistible consequences, is faulty. She is not capricious,
+extravagant, or tyrannical; in her very jealousy she is not cruel or
+revengeful (the original Iseult would certainly have had Elaine poisoned
+or poniarded, for which there was ample opportunity). If she torments
+her lover, that is because she loves him. If she is unjust to him, that
+is because she is a woman. Her last speech to Lancelot after the
+catastrophe--Tennyson should have, as has been said, paraphrased this as
+he paraphrased the passing of her husband, and from the same texts, and
+we should then have had another of the greatest things of English
+poetry--shows a noble nature with the [Greek: hamartia] present, but
+repented in a strange and great mixture of classical and Christian
+tragedy. There is little told in a trustworthy fashion about her
+personal appearance. But if Glastonbury traditions about her bones be
+true, she was certainly (again like Helen) "divinely tall." And if the
+suggestions of Hawker's "Queen Gwennyvar's Round"[42] in the sea round
+Tintagel be worked out a little, it will follow that her eyes were
+divinely blue.
+
+[Sidenote: Some minor points.]
+
+When such very high praise is given to the position of the (further)
+accomplished Arthur-story, it is of course not intended to bestow that
+praise on any particular MS. or printed version that exists. It is in
+the highest degree improbable that, whether the original magician was
+Map, or Chrestien, or anybody else (to repeat a useful formula), we
+possess an exact and exclusive copy of the form into which he himself threw
+the story. Independently of the fact that no MS., verse or prose, of anything
+like the complete story seems old enough, independently of the enormous and
+almost innumerable separable accretions, the so-called Vulgate cycle of
+"_Graal-Merlin-Arthur-Lancelot-Graal-Quest-Arthur's-Death_" has
+considerable variants--the most important and remarkable of which by far
+is the large alteration or sequel of the "Vulgate" _Merlin_ which Malory
+preferred. In the "Vulgate" itself, too, there are things which were
+certainly written either by the great contriver in nodding moods, or by
+somebody else,--in fact no one can hope to understand mediaeval
+literature who forgets that no mediaeval writer could ever "let a thing
+alone": he simply _must_ add or shorten, paraphrase or alter. I rather
+doubt whether the Great Unknown himself meant _both_ the amours of
+Arthur with Camilla and the complete episode of the false Guinevere to
+stand side by side. The first is (as such justifications go) a
+sufficient justification of Guinevere by itself; and the conduct of
+Arthur in the second is such a combination of folly, cruelty, and all
+sorts of despicable behaviour that it overdoes the thing. So, too,
+Lancelot's "abscondences," with or without madness, are too many and too
+prolonged.[43] The long and totally uninteresting campaign against
+Claudas, during the greater part of which Lancelot (who is most of all
+concerned) is absent, and in which he takes no part or interest when
+present, is another great blot. Some of these things, but not all,
+Malory remedied by omission.
+
+To sum up, and even repeat a little, in speaking so highly of this
+development--French beyond all doubt as a part of literature, whatever
+the nationality, domicile, and temper of the person or persons who
+brought it about--I do not desire more to emphasise what I believe to be
+a great and not too well appreciated truth than to guard against that
+exaggeration which dogs and discredits literary criticism. Of course no
+single redaction of the legend in the late twelfth or earliest
+thirteenth century contains the story, the whole story, and nothing but
+the story as I have just outlined it. Of course the words used do not
+apply fully to Malory's English redaction of three centuries later--work
+of genius as this appears to me to be. Yet further, I should be fully
+disposed to allow that it is only by reading the _posse_ into the
+_esse_, under the guidance of later developments of the novel itself,
+that the estimate which I have given can be entirely justified. But this
+process seems to me to be perfectly legitimate, and to be, in fact, the
+only process capable of giving us literary-historical criticism that is
+worth having. The writer or writers, known or unknown, whose work we
+have been discussing, have got the plot, have got the characters, have
+got the narrative faculty required for a complete novel-romance. If they
+do not quite know what to do with these things it is only because the
+time is not yet. But how much they did, and of how much more they
+foreshadowed the doing, the extracts following should show better than
+any "talk about it."
+
+     [_Lancelot, still under the tutelage of the Lady of the Lake
+     and ignorant of his own parentage, has met his cousins,
+     Lionel and Bors, and has been greatly drawn to them._]
+
+     [Sidenote: Illustrative extracts translated from the
+     "Vulgate." The youth of Lancelot.]
+
+     Now turns herself the Lady back to the Lake, and takes the
+     children with her. And when she had gone[44] a good way, she
+     called Lancelot a little way off the road and said to him
+     very kindly, "King's son,[45] how wast thou so bold as to
+     call Lionel thy cousin? for he _is_ a king's son, and of not
+     a little more worth and gentry than men think." "Lady," said
+     he, who was right ashamed, "so came the word into my mouth
+     by adventure that I never took any heed of it." "Now tell
+     me," said she, "by the faith thou owest me, which thinkest
+     thou to be the greater gentleman, thyself or him?" "Lady,"
+     said he, "you have adjured me strongly, for I owe no one
+     such faith as I owe you, my lady and my mother: nor know I
+     how much of a gentleman I am by lineage. But, by the faith I
+     owe you, I would not myself deign to be abashed at that for
+     which I saw him weep.[46] And they have told me that all men
+     have sprung from one man and one woman: nor know I for what
+     reason one has more gentry than another, unless he win it by
+     prowess, even as lands and other honours. But know you for
+     very truth that if greatness of heart made a gentleman I
+     would think yet to be one of the greatest." "Verily, fair
+     son," said the Lady, "it shall appear. And I say to you that
+     you lose nothing of being one of the best gentlemen in the
+     world, if your heart fail you not." "How, Lady!" said he,
+     "say you this truly, _as_ my lady?" And she said, "Yes,
+     without fail." "Lady," said he, "blessed be you of God, that
+     you said it to me so soon [_or_ as soon as you have said
+     it]. For to that will you make me come which I never thought
+     to attain. Nor had I so much desire of anything as of
+     possessing gentry."
+
+     [_The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere. The Lady of
+     the Lake has prevailed upon the King to dub Lancelot on St.
+     John's Day (Midsummer, not Christmas). His protectress
+     departing, he is committed to the care of Ywain, and a
+     conversation arises about him. The Queen asks to see him._]
+
+     [Sidenote: The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere.]
+
+     Then bid he [the King] Monseigneur[47] Ywain that he should
+     go and look for Lancelot. "And let him be equipped as
+     handsomely as you know is proper: for well know I that he
+     has plenty." Then the King himself told the Queen how the
+     Lady of the Lake had requested that he would not make
+     Lancelot knight save in his own arms and dress. And the
+     Queen marvelled much at this, and thought long till she saw
+     him. So Messire Ywain went to the Childe [_vallet_] and had
+     him clothed and equipped in the best way he could: and when
+     he saw that nothing could be bettered, he led him to Court
+     on his own horse, which was right fair. But he brought him
+     not quietly. For there was so much people about that the
+     whole street was full: and the news was spread through all
+     the town that the fair Childe who came yester eve should be
+     a knight to-morrow, and was now coming to Court in knightly
+     garb. Then sprang to the windows they of the town, both men
+     and women. And when they saw him pass they said that never
+     had they seen so fair a Childe-knight. So he came to the
+     Court and alighted from his horse: and the news of him
+     spread through hall and chamber; and knights and dames and
+     damsels hurried forth. And even the King and the Queen went
+     to the windows. So when the Childe had dismounted, Messire
+     Ywain took him by the hand, and led him by it up to the
+     Hall.
+
+     The King and the Queen came to meet him: and both took him
+     by his two hands and went to seat themselves on a couch:
+     while the Childe seated himself before them on the fresh
+     green grass with which the Hall was spread. And the King
+     gazed on him right willingly: for if he had seemed fair at
+     his first coming, it was nothing to the beauty that he now
+     had. And the King thought he had mightily grown in stature
+     and thews.[48] So the Queen prayed that God might make him a
+     man of worth, "for right plenty of beauty has He given him,"
+     and she looked at the Childe very sweetly: and so did he at
+     her as often as he could covertly direct his eyes towards
+     her. Also marvelled he much how such great beauty as he saw
+     appear in her could come: for neither that of his lady, the
+     Lady of the Lake, nor of any woman that he had ever seen,
+     did he prize aught as compared with hers. And no wrong had
+     he if he valued no other lady against the Queen: for she was
+     the Lady of Ladies and the Fountain of Beauty. But if he had
+     known the great worthiness that was in her he would have
+     been still more fain to gaze on her. For none, neither poor
+     nor rich, was her equal.
+
+     So she asked Monseigneur Ywain what was the Childe's name,
+     and he answered that he knew not. "And know you," said she,
+     "whose son he is and of what birth?" "Lady," said he, "nay,
+     except I know so much as that he is of the land of Gaul. For
+     his speech bewrayeth him."[49] Then the Queen took him by
+     the hand and asked him of whom he came. And when he felt it
+     [the touch] he shuddered as though roused from sleep, and
+     thought of her so hard that he knew not what she said to
+     him. And she perceived that he was much abashed, and so
+     asked him a second time, "Tell me whence you come." So he
+     looked at her very sheepishly and said, with a sigh, that he
+     knew not. And she asked him what was his name; and he
+     answered that he knew not that. So now the Queen saw well
+     that he was abashed and _overthought_.[50] But she dared not
+     think that it was for her: and nevertheless she had some
+     suspicion of it, and so dropped the talk. But that she might
+     not make the disorder of his mind worse, she rose from her
+     seat and, in order that no one might think any evil or
+     perceive what she suspected, said that the Childe seemed to
+     her not very wise, and whether wise or not had been ill
+     brought up. "Lady," said Messire Ywain, "between you and me,
+     we know nothing about him: and perchance he is forbidden[51]
+     to tell his name or who he is." And she said, "It may well
+     be so," but she said it so low that the Childe heard her
+     not.
+
+     [_Here follows (with a very little surplusage removed
+     perhaps) the scene which Dante has made world-famous, but
+     which Malory (I think for reasons) has "cut." I trust it is
+     neither Philistinism nor perversity which makes me think of
+     it a little, though only a little, less highly than some
+     have done. There is (and after all this makes it all the
+     more interesting for us historians) the least little bit of
+     anticipation of_ Marivaudage _about it, and less of the
+     adorable simplicity such as that (a little subsequent to the
+     last extract given) where Lancelot, having forgotten to take
+     leave of the Queen on going to his first adventure, and
+     having returned to do so, kneels to her, receives her hand
+     to raise him from the ground, "and much was his joy to feel
+     it bare in his." But the beauty of what follows is
+     incontestable, and that Guinevere was "exceeding wise in
+     love" is certain._]
+
+     [Sidenote: The scene of the kiss.]
+
+     "Ha!" said she then, "I know who you are--Lancelot of the
+     Lake is your name." And he was silent. "They know it at
+     court," said she, "this sometime. Messire Gawain was the
+     first to bring your name there...." Then she asked him why
+     he had allowed the worst man in the world to lead him by
+     the bridle. "Lady," said he, "as one who had command neither
+     of his heart nor of his body." "Now tell me," said she,
+     "were you at last year's assembly?" "Yes, Lady," said he.
+     "And what arms did you bear?" "Lady, they were all of
+     vermilion." "By my head," said she, "you say true. And why
+     did you do such deeds at the meeting the day before
+     yesterday?" Then he began to sigh very very deeply. And the
+     Queen cut him short as well, knowing how it was with him.
+
+     "Tell me," she said, "plainly, how it is. I will never
+     betray you. But I know that you did it for some lady. Now,
+     tell me, by the faith you owe me, who she is." "Ah, Lady,"
+     said he, "I see well that it behoves me to speak. Lady, it
+     is you." "I!" said she. "It was not for me you took the
+     spears that my maiden brought you. For I took care to put
+     myself out of the commission." "Lady," said he, "I did for
+     others what I ought, and for you what I could." "Tell me,
+     then, for whom have you done all the things that you _have_
+     done?" "Lady," said he, "for you." "How," said she, "do you
+     love me so much?" "So much, Lady, as I love neither myself
+     nor any other." "And since when have you loved me thus?"
+     "Since the hour when I was called knight and yet was not
+     one."[52] "Then, by the faith you owe me, whence came this
+     love that you have set upon me?" Now as the Queen said these
+     words it happened that the Lady of the Puy of Malahault[53]
+     coughed on purpose, and lifted her head, which she had held
+     down. And he understood her now, having oft heard her
+     before: and looked at her and knew her, and felt in his
+     heart such fear and anguish that he could not answer the
+     Queen. Then began he to sigh right deeply, and the tears
+     fell from his eyes so thick, that the garment he wore was
+     wet to the knees. And the more he looked at the Lady of
+     Malahault the more ill at ease was his heart. Now the Queen
+     noticed this and saw that he looked sadly towards the place
+     where her ladies were, and she reasoned with him. "Tell me,"
+     she said, "whence comes this love that I am asking you
+     about?" and he tried as hard as he could to speak, and said,
+     "Lady, from the time I have said." "How?" "Lady, you did it,
+     when you made me your friend, if your mouth lied not." "My
+     friend?" she said; "and how?" "I came before you when I had
+     taken leave of my Lord the King all armed except my head and
+     my hands. And then I commended you to God, and said that,
+     wherever I was, I was your knight: and you said that you
+     would have me to be your knight and your friend. And then I
+     said, 'Adieu, Lady,' and you said, 'Adieu, fair sweet
+     friend.' And never has that word left my heart, and it is
+     that word that has made me a good knight and valiant--if I
+     be so: nor ever have I been so ill-bested as not to remember
+     that word. That word comforts me in all my annoys. That word
+     has kept me from all harm, and freed me from all peril, and
+     fills me whenever I hunger. Never have I been so poor but
+     that word has made me rich." "By my faith," said the Queen,
+     "that word was spoken in a good hour, and God be praised
+     when He made me speak it. Still, I did not set it as high as
+     you did: and to many a knight have I said it, when I gave no
+     more thought to the saying. But _your_ thought was no base
+     one, but gentle and debonair; wherefore joy has come to you
+     of it, and it has made you a good knight. Yet, nevertheless,
+     this way is not that of knights who make great matter to
+     many a lady of many a thing which they have little at heart.
+     And your seeming shows me that you love one or other of
+     these ladies better than you love me. For you wept for fear
+     and dared not look straight at them: so that I well see that
+     your thought is not so much of me as you pretend. So, by the
+     faith you owe the thing you love best in the world, tell me
+     which one of the three you love so much?" "Ah! Lady," said
+     he, "for the mercy of God, as God shall keep me, never had
+     one of them my heart in her keeping." "This will not do,"
+     said the Queen, "you cannot dissemble. For many another such
+     thing have I seen, and I know that your heart is there as
+     surely as your body is here." And this she said that she
+     might well see how she might put him ill at ease. For she
+     thought surely enough that he meant no love save to her, or
+     ill would it have gone on the day of the Black Arms.[54] And
+     she took a keen delight in seeing and considering his
+     discomfort. But he was in such anguish that he wanted little
+     of swooning, save that fear of the ladies before him kept
+     him back. And the Queen herself perceived it at the sight of
+     his changes of colour, and caught him by the shoulder that
+     he might not fall, and called to Galahault. Then the prince
+     sprang forward and ran to his friend, and saw that he was
+     disturbed thus, and had great pain in his own heart for it,
+     and said, "Ah, Lady! tell me, for God's sake, what has
+     happened." And the Queen told him the conversation. "Ah,
+     Lady!" said Galahault, "mercy, for God's sake, or you may
+     lose me him by such wrath, and it would be too great pity."
+     "Certes," said she, "that is true. But know you why he has
+     done such feats of arms?" "Nay, surely, Lady," said he.
+     "Sir," said she, "if what he tells me is true, it was for
+     me." "Lady," said he, "as God shall keep me, I can believe
+     it. For just as he is more valiant than other men, so is
+     his heart truer than all theirs." "Verily," said she, "you
+     would say well that he is valiant if you knew what deeds he
+     has done since he was made knight," and then she told him
+     all the chivalry of Lancelot ... and how he had done it all
+     for a single word of hers [_Galahault tells her more, and
+     begs mercy for L._]. "He could ask me nothing," sighed she,
+     "that I could fairly refuse him, but he will ask me nothing
+     at all."... "Lady," said Galahault, "certainly he has no
+     power to do so. For one loves nothing that one does not
+     fear." [_And then comes the immortal kiss, asked by the
+     Prince, delayed a moment by the Queen's demur as to time and
+     place, brought on by the "Galeotto"-speech._ "Let us three
+     corner close together as if we were talking secrets,"
+     _vouchsafed by Guinevere in the words_, "Why should I make
+     me longer prayer for what I wish more than you or he?"
+     _Lancelot still hangs back, but the Queen_ "takes him by the
+     chin and kisses him before Galahault with a kiss long
+     enough" so that the Lady of Malahault knows it.] And then
+     said the Queen, who was a right wise and gracious lady,
+     "Fair sweet friend, so much have you done that I am yours,
+     and right great joy have I thereof. Now see to it that the
+     thing be kept secret, as it should be. For I am one of the
+     ladies of the world who have the fairest fame, and if my
+     praise grew worse through you, then it would be a foul and
+     shameful thing."
+
+[Sidenote: Some further remarks on the novel character of the story.]
+
+A little more comment on this cento, and especially on the central
+passage of it, can hardly be, and ought certainly not to be, avoided in
+such a work as this, even if, like most summaries, it be something of a
+repetition. It must surely be obvious to any careful reader that here is
+something much more than--unless his reading has been as wide elsewhere
+as it is careful here--he expected from Romance in the commoner and
+half-contemptuous acceptation of that word. Lancelot he may, though he
+should not, still class as a mere _amoureux transi_--a nobler and
+pluckier Silvius in an earlier _As Yon Like It_, and with a greater than
+Phoebe for idol. Malory ought to be enough to set him right there: he
+need even not go much beyond Tennyson, who has comprehended Lancelot
+pretty correctly, if not indeed pretty adequately. But Malory has left
+out a great deal of the information which would have enabled his
+readers to comprehend Guinevere; and Tennyson, only presenting her in
+parts, has allowed those parts, especially the final and only full
+presentation, great as it is, to be too much influenced by his certainly
+unfortunate other presentation of Arthur as a blameless king.
+
+I do not say that the actual creator of the Vulgate Guinevere, whoever
+he was, has wrought her into a novel-character of the first class. It
+would have been not merely a miracle (for miracles often happen), but
+something more, if he had. If you could take Beatrix Esmond at a better
+time, Argemone Lavington raised to a higher power, and the spirit of all
+that is best and strongest and least purely paradoxical in Meredith's
+heroines, and work these three graces into one woman, adding the passion
+of Tennyson's own Fatima and the queenliness of Helen herself, it might
+be something like the achieved Guinevere who is still left to the
+reader's imagination to achieve. But the Unknown has given the hints of
+all this; and curiously enough it is only of _English_ novel-heroines
+that I can think in comparison and continuation of her. This book, if it
+is ever finished, will show, I hope, some knowledge of French ones: I
+can remember none possessing any touch of Guineveresque quality. Dante,
+if his poetic nature had taken a different bent, and Shakespeare, if he
+had only chosen, could have been her portrayers singly; no others that I
+can think of, and certainly no Frenchman.
+
+[Sidenote: And the personages.]
+
+But here Guinevere's creator or expounder has done more for her than
+merely indicate her charm. Her "fear for name and fame" is not exactly
+"crescent"--it is there from the first, and seems to have nothing either
+cowardly or merely selfish in it, but only that really "last infirmity
+of noble minds," the shame of shame even in doing things shameful or
+shameless. I have seldom seen justice done to her magnificent
+fearlessness in all her dangers. Her graciousness as a Queen has been
+more generally admitted, but, once again, the composition and complexity
+of her fits of jealousy have never, I think, been fully rationalised.
+Here, once more, we must take into account that difference of age which
+is so important. _He_ thinks nothing of it; _she_ never forgets it. And
+in almost all the circumstances where this rankling kindles into
+wrath--whether with no cause at all, as in most cases, or with cause
+more apparent than real, as in the Elaine business--study of particulars
+will show how easily they might be wrought out into the great character
+scenes of which they already contain the suggestion. _This_ Guinevere
+would never have "taken up" (to use purposely a vulgar phrase for what
+would have been a vulgar thing) with Mordred,[55] either for himself or
+for the kingdom that he was trying to steal. And I am bound to say again
+that much as I have read of purely French romance--that is to say,
+French not merely in language but in certain origin--I know nothing and
+nobody like her in it.
+
+That Guinevere, like Charlotte, was "a married lady," that, unlike
+Charlotte, she forgot the fact, and that Lancelot, though somewhat
+Wertheresque in some of his features, was not quite so "moral" as that
+very dull young man, are facts which I wish neither to suppress nor to
+dwell upon. We may cry "Agreed" here to the indictment, and all its
+consequences. They are not the question.
+
+The question is the suggesting of novel-romance elements which forms the
+aesthetic solace of this ethical sin. It should be seen at once that the
+Guinevere of the Vulgate, and her fault or fate, provide a character and
+career of no small complexity. It has been already said that to
+represent her as after a fashion intercepted by love for Lancelot on her
+way to Arthur, like Iseult of Ireland or Margaret of Anjou, is, so to
+speak, as unhistorical as it is insufficiently artistic. We cannot,
+indeed, borrow Diderot's speech to Rousseau and say, "C'est le pont aux
+ânes," but it certainly would not have been the way of the Walter whom I
+favour, though I think it might have been the way of the Chrestien that
+I know. Guinevere, when she meets her lover, rescuer, and doomsman, is
+no longer a girl, and Lancelot is almost a boy. It is not, in the common
+and cheap misuse of the term, the most "romantic" arrangement, but some
+not imperfect in love-lore have held that a woman's love is never so
+strong as when she is past girlhood and well approaching age, and that
+man's is never stronger than when he is just not a boy. Lancelot himself
+has loved no woman (except his quasi-mother, the Lady of the Lake), and
+will love none after he has fulfilled the Dead Shepherd's "saw of
+might." She _has_ loved; dispute this and you not only cancel gracious
+scenes of the text, but spoil the story; but she has, though probably
+she does not yet know it, ceased to love,[56] and not without some
+reason. To say no more about Arthur's technical "blamelessness," he has,
+by the coming of Lancelot, ceased to be altogether heroic. Though never
+a mere petulant and ferocious dotard as the _Chansons_ too often
+represent Charlemagne, he is very far from being a wise ruler or even
+baron. He makes rash promises and vows, accepts charges on very slight
+evidence, and seems to have his knights by no means "in hand." So, too,
+though never a coward or weakling, he seems pretty nearly to have lost
+the pluck and prowess which had won Guinevere's love under the walls of
+Carmelide, and of which the last display is in the great fight with his
+sister's lover, Sir Accolon. All this may not excuse Guinevere's conduct
+to the moralist; it certainly makes that conduct artistically probable
+and legitimate to the critic, as a foundation for novel-character.
+
+Her lover may look less promising, at least at the moment of
+presentation; and indeed it is true that while "la donna è _im_mobile,"
+in essentials and possibilities alike, forms of man, though never losing
+reality and possibility, pass at times out of possible or at least easy
+recognition. Anybody who sees in the Lancelot of the foregoing scene
+only a hobbledehoy and milksop who happens to have a big chest, strong
+arms, and plenty of mere fighting spirit, will never grasp him. Hardly
+better off will be he who takes him--as the story _does_ give some
+handles for taking him--to be merely one of the too common examples of
+humanity who sin and repent, repent and sin, with a sort of
+Americanesque notion of spending dollars in this world and laying them
+up in another. Malory has on the whole done more justice to the
+possibilities of the Vulgate Lancelot than he has to Guinevere, and
+Tennyson has here improved on Malory. He has, indeed, very nearly "got"
+Lancelot, but not quite. To get him wholly would have required Tennyson
+for form and Browning for analysis of character; while even this
+_mistura mirabilis_ would have been improved for the purpose by touches
+not merely of Morris and Swinburne, but of lesser men like Kingsley and
+even George Macdonald. To understand Lancelot you must previously
+understand, or by some kind of intuition divine, the mystical element
+which his descent from the Graal-Wardens confers; the essential or
+quintessential chivalric quality which his successive creators agreed in
+imparting to him; the all-conquering gift so strangely tempered by an
+entire freedom from the boasting and the rudeness of the _chanson_ hero;
+the actual checks and disasters which his cross stars bring on him; his
+utter loyalty in all things save one to the king; and last and mightiest
+of all, his unquenchable and unchangeable passion for the Queen.
+
+Hence what they said to him in one of his early adventures, with no
+great ill following, "Fair Knight, thou art unhappy," was always true in
+a higher sense. He may have been Lord of Joyous Gard, in title and fact;
+but his own heart was always a Garde Douloureuse--a _cor
+luctificabile_--pillowed on idle triumphs and fearful hopes and
+poisoned satisfactions, and bafflements where he would most fain have
+succeeded. He has almost had to have the first kiss forced on him; he is
+refused the last on grounds of which he himself cannot deny the
+validity. Guinevere is a tragic figure in the truest and deepest sense
+of the term, and, as we have tried to show, she is amply complex in
+character and temperament. But it is questionable whether Lancelot is
+not more tragic and more complex still.
+
+[Sidenote: Books.]
+
+It may perhaps without impropriety be repeated that these are not mere
+fancies of the writer, but things reasonably suggested by and solidly
+based upon "the French books," when these later are collated and, so to
+speak, "checked" by Malory and the romances of adventure branching off
+from them. But Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot by no means exhaust the
+material for advanced and complicated novel-work--in character as well
+as incident--provided by the older forms of the Legend. There is Gawain,
+who has to be put together from the sort of first draft of Lancelot
+which he shows in the earlier versions, and the light-o'-love opposite
+which he becomes in the later, a contrast continued in the Amadis and
+Galaor figures of the Spanish romances and their descendants. There is
+the already glanced at group of Arthur's sisters or half-sisters, left
+mere sketches and hints, but most interesting. Not to be tedious, we
+need not dwell on Palomides, a very promising Lancelot unloved; on
+Lamoracke, left provokingly obscure, but shadowing a most important
+possibility in the unwritten romance of one of those very sisters; Bors,
+of whom Tennyson has made something, but not enough, in the later
+_Idylls_; and others. But it is probably unnecessary to carry the
+discussion of this matter further. It has been discussed and illustrated
+at some length, because it shows how early the elements, not merely of
+romance but of the novel in the fullest sense, existed in French
+literature.
+
+     [_Here follows the noble passage above referred to between
+     Lancelot and King Bagdemagus after the death of
+     Meleagraunce, whose cousin Lancelot has just slain in
+     single combat for charging him with treason. He has kept his
+     helm on, but doffs it at the King's request._]
+
+And when the King saw him he ran to kiss him, and began to make such joy
+of him as none could overgo. But Lancelot said, "Ah, Sir! for God's
+sake, make no joy or feast for me. Certainly you should make none, for
+if you knew the evil I have done you, you would hate me above all men in
+the world." "Oh! Lancelot," said he, "tell it me not, for I
+understand[57] too well what you would say; but I will know[57] nothing
+of it, because it might be such a thing" as would part them for ever.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[14] The subdivision of the _gestes_ does not matter: they were all
+connected closely or loosely--except the Crusading section, and even
+that falls under the Christian _v._ Saracen grouping if not under the
+Carlovingian. The real "outside" members are few, late, and in almost
+every case unimportant.
+
+[15] There are comic _episodes_ elsewhere; but almost the whole of this
+poem turns on the _gabz_ or burlesque boasts of the paladins.--It may be
+wise here to anticipate an objection which may be taken to these remarks
+on the _chansons_. I have been asked whether I know M. Bédier's handling
+of them; and, by an odd coincidence, within a few hours of the question
+I saw an American statement that this excellent scholar's researches
+"have revised our conceptions" of the matter. No one can exceed me in
+respect for perhaps the foremost of recent scholars in Old French. But
+my "conception" of the _chansons_ was formed long before he wrote, not
+from that of any of his predecessors, but from the _chansons_
+themselves. It is therefore not subject to "revisal" except from my own
+re-reading, and such re-reading has only confirmed it.
+
+[16] It is not of course intended to be preferred to the far more widely
+known tale in which the heroine bears the same name, and which will be
+mentioned below. But if it is less beautiful such beauty as it has is
+free from the slightest _morbidezza_.
+
+[17] And to this introduction our dealings with it here may be confined.
+The accounts of the siege itself are of much less interest, especially
+in connection with our special subject.
+
+[18] A sort of companion handbook to the first part of this volume will
+be found in the present writer's sketch of twelfth and thirteenth
+century European literature, under the title of _The Flourishing of
+Romance and the Rise of Allegory_, in Messrs. Blackwood's _Periods of
+European Literature_ (Edinburgh and London, 1897), and another in his
+_Short History of French Literature_ (Oxford, 7th ed. at press).
+
+[19] It is scarcely rash to say that Cressid is the first representative
+of this dread and delightful entity, and the ancestress of all its
+embodiments since in fiction, as Cleopatra seems to have been in
+history. No doubt "it" was of the beginning, but it lacked its _vates_.
+Helen was different.
+
+[20] _Faerie Queene_, v. iv. 1-20.
+
+[21] I hope I may be allowed to emphasise the disclaimer, which I have
+already made more than once elsewhere, of the very slightest disrespect
+to this admirable scholar. The presumption and folly of such disrespect
+would be only inferior to its ingratitude, for the indulgence with which
+M. Paris consistently treated my own somewhat rash adventures in Old
+French was extraordinary. But as one's word is one's word so one's
+opinion is one's opinion.
+
+[22] Sometimes _de_, but _à_ seems more analogical.
+
+[23] Chrestien was rather like Chaucer in being apt not to finish. Even
+the _Charette_ owes its completion (in an extent not exactly
+determinable) to a certain Godfrey de Lagny (Laigny, etc.).
+
+[24] Of course it is easy enough to assign explanations of it, from the
+vehicle of criminals to the scaffold downwards; but it remains a
+convention--very much of the same kind as that which ordains (or used to
+ordain) that a gentleman may not carry a parcel done up in newspaper,
+though no other form of wrapping really stains his honour.
+
+[25] Neither he nor Malory gives one of the most gracious parts of
+it--the interview between Lancelot and King Bagdemagus, _v. inf._ p. 54.
+
+[26] Material (chamois skin)? or garment? Not common in O.F., I think,
+for _camisia_; but Spenser (_Faerie Queene_, II. iii. xxvi.) has (as
+Prof. Gregory Smith reminds me) "a silken _camus_ lilly whight."
+
+[27] As does Pyramus's--or Bottom's--objection to the wall.
+
+[28] This part of the matter has received too little attention in modern
+studies of the subject: partly because it was clumsily handled by some
+of the probably innumerable and certainly undiscoverable meddlers with
+the Vulgate. The unpopularity of Lancelot and his kin is not due merely
+to his invincibility and their not always discreet partisanship. The
+older "Queen's knights" must have naturally felt her devotion to him;
+his "undependableness"--in consequence not merely of his fits of madness
+but of his chivalrously permissible but very inconvenient habit of
+disguising himself and taking the other side--must have annoyed the
+whole Table. Yet these very things, properly managed, help to create and
+complicate the "novel" character. For one of the most commonly and not
+the least justly charged faults of the average romance is its deficiency
+in combined plot and character-interest--the presence in it, at most, of
+a not too well-jointed series of episodes, possibly leading to a death
+or a marriage, but of little more than chronicle type. This fault has
+been exaggerated, but it exists. Now it will be one main purpose of the
+pages which follow to show that there is, in the completed Arthuriad,
+something quite different from and far beyond this--something perhaps
+imperfectly realised by any one writer, and overlaid and disarranged by
+the interpolations or misinterpretations of others, but still a "mind"
+at work that keeps the "mass" alive, and may, or rather surely will,
+quicken it yet further and into higher forms hereafter. (Those who know
+will not, I hope, be insulted if I mention for the benefit of those who
+do not, that the term "Vulgate" is applied to those forms of the parts
+of the story which, with slighter or more important variations, are
+common to many MSS. The term itself is most specially applied to the
+_Lancelot_ which, in consequence of this popularity throughout the later
+Middle Ages, actually got itself printed early in the French
+Renaissance. The whole has been (or is being) at last most fortunately
+reprinted by Dr. Sommer. See Bibliography.)
+
+[29] This is another point which, not, I suppose, having been clearly
+and completely evolved by the first handler, got messed and muddled by
+successive copyists and continuators. In what seems to be the oldest,
+and is certainly the most consistent and satisfactory, story there is
+practically nothing evil about Viviane--Nimiane--Nimue, who is also
+indisputably identical with the foster-mother of Lancelot, the
+occasional Egeria (always for good) of Arthur himself, and the
+benefactress (this is probably a later addition though in the right key)
+of Sir Pelleas. For anybody who possesses the Power of the Sieve she
+remains as Milton saw her, and not as Tennyson mis-saw part of her. The
+bewitching of Merlin (who, let it be remembered, was an ambiguous person
+in several ways, and whose magic, if never exactly black, was sometimes
+a rather greyish or magpied white) was not an unmixed loss to the world;
+she seems to have really loved him, and to have faithfully kept her word
+by being with him often. He "could not get out" certainly, but are there
+many more desirable things in the outside world than lying with your
+head in the lap of the Lady of the Lake while she caresses and talks to
+you? "J'en connais des plus malheureux" as the French poet observed of
+some one in less delectable case. The author of the _Suite de Merlin_
+seems to have been her first maligner. Tennyson, seduced by contrast,
+followed and exaggerated the worst view. But I am not sure that the most
+"irreligious" thing (as Coleridge would have said) was not the
+transformation of her into a mere married lady (with a château in
+Brittany, and an ordinary knight for her husband) which astounds us in
+one of the dullest parts of the Vulgate about Lancelot--the wars with
+Claudas.
+
+[30] I have always thought that Spenser (whose dealings with Arthuriana
+are very curious, and have never, I think, been fully studied) took this
+function of Lancelot to suggest the presentation of his Arthur. But
+Lancelot has no--at least no continuous--fairy aid; he is not invariably
+victorious, and he is thoroughly human. Spenser's Prince began the
+"blamelessness" which grew more trying still in Tennyson's King. (In the
+few remarks of this kind made here I am not, I need hardly say, "going
+back upon" my lifelong estimate of Tennyson as an almost impeccable
+poet. But an impeccable poet is not necessarily an impeccable plot- and
+character-monger either in tale-telling or in drama.)
+
+[31] Of this we have unusually strong evidence in the shape of MS.
+interlineations, where the name "Percevale" is actually struck out and
+that of "Gala[h]ad" substituted above it.
+
+[32] I do not say that this is their _only_ character.
+
+[33] Brittany had much earlier and much more tradition of chivalry than
+Wales.
+
+[34] The only fault alleged against Lancelot's person by carpers was
+that he was something "pigeon"--or "guardsman"--chested. But Guinevere
+showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at least on this
+occasion we may translate _vaillant_) by retorting that such a chest was
+only big enough--and hardly big enough--for such a heart.
+
+[35] Some of the later "redactors" of the Vulgate may perhaps have
+unduly multiplied his madnesses, and have exaggerated his early shyness
+a little. But I am not sure of the latter point. It is not only "beasts"
+that, as in the great Theocritean place, "go timidly because they fear
+Cythera"; and a love charged with such dread consequences was not to be
+lightly embarked upon.
+
+[36] The early _Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere_, though only external,
+is perfect. Many touches in the _Idylls_ other than the title-one are
+suitable and even subtle; but the convertite in that one is (as they say
+now) "unconvincing." The simpler attitude of the rejection of Lancelot
+in the verse _Morte_ and in Malory is infinitely better. As for Morris's
+two pieces, they could hardly be better in themselves as poems--but they
+are scarcely great on the novel side.
+
+[37] Disagreeable, that is to say, as a sister and sister-in-law. There
+must have been something attractive about her in other relations.
+
+[38] Compare one of the not so very many real examples of Ibsen's
+vaunted psychology, the placid indifference to her own past of Gina in
+the _Wild Duck_.
+
+[39] He had said that if he were a woman he would give Lancelot anything
+he asked; and the Queen, following, observes that Gawain had left
+nothing for a woman to say.
+
+[40] _Nos passions ont quelque chose d'infini_, says Bossuet.
+
+[41] [Greek: helandros, heleptolis]. She had no opportunity of being
+[Greek: helenaus].
+
+[42] Hawker's security as to Cornish men and things is, I admit, a
+little Bardolphian. But did he not write about the Quest? (This sort of
+argument simply swarms in Arthurian controversy; so I may surely use it
+once.) Besides there is no doubt about the blueness of the sea in
+question; though Anthony Trollope, in _Malachi's Cove_, has most falsely
+and incomprehensibly denied it.
+
+[43] That this is a real sign of decadence and unoriginality, the
+further exaggeration of it in the case of the knights of the _Amadis_
+cycle proves almost to demonstration.
+
+[44] After the opening sentence I have dropped the historic present,
+which, for a continuance, is very irritating in English.
+
+[45] Lancelot himself has told us earlier (_op. cit._ i. 38) that,
+though he neither knew nor thought himself to be a king's son, he was
+commonly addressed as such.
+
+[46] Lionel (very young at the time) had wept because some one mentioned
+the loss of his inheritance, and Lancelot (young as he too was) had
+bidden him not cry for fear of landlessness. "There would be plenty for
+him, if he had heart to gain it."
+
+[47] This technical title is usually if not invariably given to Ywain
+and Gawain as eldest sons of recognised kings. "Prince" is not used in
+this sense by the older Romancers, but only for distinguished knights
+like Galahault, who is really a king.
+
+[48] There is one admirable word here, _enbarnis_, which has so long
+been lost to French that it is not even in Littré. But Dryden's
+"_burnish_ into man" probably preserves it in English; for this is
+certainly not the other "burnish" from _brunir_.
+
+[49] "Car moult en parole diroit la parole."
+
+[50] Puzzled by the number of new thoughts and emotions.
+
+[51] Ywain suggests one of the commonest things in Romance.
+
+[52] Arthur had, by a set of chances, not actually girded on Lancelot's
+sword.
+
+[53] Whose prisoner Lancelot had been, who had been ready to fall in
+love with him, and to whom he had expressly refused to tell his own
+love. Hence his confusion.
+
+[54] The day when Lancelot, at her request, had turned against the side
+of his friend Galahault and brought victory to Arthur's.
+
+[55] By the way, the Vulgate Mordred is a more subtle conception than
+the early stories gave, or than Malory transfers. He is no mere traitor
+or felon knight, much less a coward, from the first; but at that first
+shows a mixture of good and bad qualities in which the "dram of eale"
+does its usual office. Here once more is a subject made to the hand of a
+novelist of the first class.
+
+[56] Some poet or pundit, whether of East or West, or of what place,
+from Santiago to Samarcand, I know not, has laid it down, that men can
+love many, but without ceasing to love any; that women love only one at
+once, but can (to borrow, at fifty years' memory, a phrase of George
+Lawrence's in _Sans Merci_) "drop their lovers down _oubliettes_" with
+comparative ease.
+
+[57] It is excusable to use two words for the single verb _savoir_ to
+bring out the meaning. King Bagdemagus does not "know" as a fact that
+Lancelot has slain his son, though he fears it and feels almost sure of
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ROMANS D'AVENTURES
+
+
+[Sidenote: Variety of the present groups.]
+
+On the whole, however, the most important influence in the development
+of the novel originally--that of the _nouvelle_ or _novella_ in French,
+and Italian taking the second place in order of time--must be assigned
+to the very numerous and very delightful body of compositions (not very
+long as a rule,[58] but also never exactly short) to which the name
+_Romans d'aventures_ has been given with a limited connotation. They
+exist in all languages; our own English Romances, though sometimes
+derived from the _chansons_ and the Arthurian Legend, are practically
+all of this class, and in every case but one it is true that they have
+actual French originals. These _Romans d'aventures_ have a habit, not
+universal but prevailing, of "keying themselves on" to the Arthurian
+story itself; but they rarely, if ever, have much to do with the
+principal parts of it. It is as if their public wanted the connection as
+a sort of guarantee; but a considerable proportion keep independence.
+They are so numerous, so various, and with rare exceptions so
+interesting, that it is difficult to know which to select for elaborate
+analysis and translated selection; but almost the entire _corpus_ gives
+us the important fact of the increased _freedom_ of fiction. Even the
+connection with the Arthurian matter is, as has been said, generally of
+the loosest kind; that with the Charlemagne cycle hardly exists. The
+Graal (or things connected with its legends) may appear: Gawain is a
+frequent hero; other, as one might call them, sociable features as
+regards the older stories present themselves. But as a rule the man has
+got his own story which he wants to tell; his own special hero and
+heroine whom he wants to present. Furthermore, the old community of
+handling, which is so noticeable in the _chansons_ more particularly,
+disappears almost entirely. Nothing has yet been discovered in French,
+though it may be any day, to serve as the origin of our _Gawain and the
+Green Knight_, and some special features of this are almost certainly
+the work of an Englishman. Our English _Ywain and Gawain_ is, as has
+been said, rather better than Chrestien's original. But, as a rule, the
+form, which is French form in language (by no means always certainly or
+probably French in nationality of author), is not only the original, but
+better; and besides, it is with it that we are busied here, though in
+not a few cases English readers can obtain an idea, fairly sufficient,
+of these originals from the English versions. As these, however, with
+the exception of one or two remarkable individuals or even groups, were
+seldom written by men of genius, it is best to go to the sources to see
+the power and the variety of fictitious handling which have been
+mentioned.
+
+[Sidenote: Different views held of it.]
+
+The richness, indeed, of these _Romans d'aventures_ is surprising, and
+they very seldom display the flatness and triviality which mar by no
+means all but too many of their English imitations. Some of the faults
+which are part cause of these others they indeed have--the apparently
+irrational catalogues of birds and beasts, stuffs and vegetables; the
+long moralisings; the religious passages sometimes (as it may seem to
+mere moderns) interposed in very odd contexts; the endless descriptions
+of battles and single combats; the absence of striking characterisation
+and varied incident. Their interest is a peculiar interest, yet one can
+hardly call the taste for it "an acquired taste," because the very
+large majority of healthy and intelligent children delight in these
+stories under whatever form they are presented to them, and at least a
+considerable number of grown-up persons never lose the enjoyment. The
+disapproval which rested on "romances of chivalry" for a long time was
+admittedly ignorant and absurd; and the reasons why this disapproval, at
+least in its somewhat milder form of neglect, has never been wholly
+removed, are not very difficult to discover. It is to be feared that
+_Don Quixote_, great as it is, has done not a little mischief, and by
+virtue of its greatness is likely to do not a little more, though the
+_Amadis_ group, which it specially satirises, has faults not found in
+the older tales. The texts, though in most cases easily enough
+accessible now, are not what may be called obviously and yet
+unobtrusively so. They are to a very large extent issued by learned
+societies: and the public, not too unreasonably, is rather suspicious,
+and not at all avid, of the products of learned societies. They are
+accompanied by introductions and notes and glossaries--things the
+public (again not wholly to be blamed) regards without cordiality.
+Latterly they have been used for educational purposes, and anything
+used for educational purposes acquires an evil--or at least an
+unappetising--reputation. In some cases they have been messed and
+meddled in _usum vulgi_. But their worst enemy recently has been, it may
+be feared, the irreconcilable opposition of their spirit to what is
+called the modern spirit--though this latter sometimes takes them up and
+plays with them in a fashion of maudlin mysticism.
+
+[Sidenote: _Partenopeus of Blois_ selected for analysis and
+translation.]
+
+To treat them at large here as Ellis treated some of the English
+imitations would be impossible in point of scale and dangerous as a
+competition; for Ellis, though a little too prone to Voltairianise or at
+least Hamiltonise things sometimes too good for that kind of treatment,
+was a very clever man indeed. For somewhat full abstract and translation
+we may take one of the most famous, but perhaps not one of the most
+generally and thoroughly known, _Partenopeus_ (or -_pex_[59]) _of
+Blois_, which, though it exists in English, and though the French was
+very probably written by an Englishman, is not now one of the most
+widely read and is in parts very charming. That it is one of the
+romances on which, from the fact of the resemblance of its central
+incident to the story of Cupid and Psyche, the good defenders of the bad
+theory of the classical origin of romance generally have based one of
+their few plausible arguments, need not occupy us. For the question is
+not whether Denis Pyramus or any one else (modernity would not be
+modernity if his claims were not challenged) told it, but _how_ he told
+it. Still less need we treat the other question before indicated. Here
+is one of the central stories of the world--one of those which Eve told
+to her children in virtue of the knowledge communicated by the apple,
+one with which the sons of God courted the daughters of men, or, at
+latest, one of those which were yarned in the Ark. It is the story of
+the unwise lover--in this case the man, not as in Psyche's the
+woman--who will not be content to enjoy an unseen, but by every other
+sense enjoyable and adorable love, even though (in this case) the single
+deprivation is expressly to be terminated. We have it, of course, in all
+sorts of forms, languages, and differing conditions. But we are only
+concerned with it here as with a gracious example of that kind of
+romance which, though not exactly a "fairy tale" in the Western sense,
+is pretty obviously influenced by the Eastern fairy tale itself, and
+still more obviously influences the modern kind in which "the
+supernatural" is definitely prominent.
+
+It was perhaps excusable in the good M. Robert, who wrote the
+Introduction to Crapelet's edition of this poem eighty years ago, to
+"protest too much" in favour of the author whom he was now presenting
+practically for the first time--to a changed audience; but it was
+unnecessary and a little unfortunate. Except in one point or group of
+points, it is vain to try to put _Partenopeus_ above _Cupid and
+Psyche_: but it can perfectly well stand by itself in its own place, and
+that no low one. Except in _Floire et Blanchefleur_ and of course in
+_Aucassin et Nicolette_, the peculiar grace and delicacy of romance are
+nowhere so well shown; and _Partenopeus_, besides the advantage of
+length, has that of personages interesting, besides the absolute hero
+and heroine. The Count of Blois himself is, no doubt, despite his
+beauty, and his bravery, and his good nature, rather of a feeble folk.
+Psyche has the excuse of her sex, besides the evil counsel of her
+sisters, for her curiosity. But Partenopeus has not the former; nor has
+he even that weaker but still not quite invalid one which lost Agib, the
+son of Cassib, his many-Houried Paradise on Earth. He is supposed to be
+a Frenchman--the somewhat excessive fashion in which Frenchmen make
+obedience to the second clause[60] of the Fifth Commandment atone for
+some neglect of other parts of the decalogue is well known, or at least
+traditionally believed. But most certainly a man is not justified in
+obeying his mother to the extent of disobeying--and that in the
+shabbiest of ways--his lady and mistress, who is, in fact, according to
+mediaeval ideas, virtually, if not virtuously, his wife. But Melior
+herself, the heroine, is an absolutely delightful person from her first
+appearance (or rather _non_-appearance) as a sweet dream come true, to
+her last in the more orthodox and public spousals. The grace of her
+Dian-like surrender of herself to her love; the constancy with which she
+holds to the betrothal theory of the time; the unselfishness with which
+she not only permits but actually advises the lover, whom she would so
+fain, but cannot yet, make her acknowledged husband, to leave her; her
+frank forgiveness of his only-just-in-time repented and prevented, but
+intended, infidelity; her sorrow at and after the separation enforced by
+his breach of pact; her interviews with her sister, naturally chequered
+by conflicting feelings of love and pride and the rest--are all
+charming. But she is not the only charming figure.
+
+The "second heroine," a sister or cousin who plays a sort of superior
+confidante's part, is by no means uncommon in Romance. Alexandrine, for
+instance, who plays this in _William of Palerne_, is a very nice girl.
+But Urraque or Urraca,[61] the sister of Melior--whether full and
+legitimate, or "half" illegitimate, versions differ--is much more
+elaborately dealt with, and is, in fact, the chief _character_ of the
+piece, and a character rather unusually strong for Romance. She plays
+the part of reconciler after Partenopeus' fatal folly has estranged him
+from her sister, and plays it at great length, but with much less tedium
+than might be expected. But the author is an "incurable feminist," as
+some one else was once described with a mixture of pity and admiration:
+and he is not contented with two heroines. There is a third, Persewis,
+maid of honour to Urraque, and also a fervent admirer of the
+incomparable Partenopeus, on whose actual beauty great stress is
+laid, and who in romance, other than his own, is quoted as a modern
+paragon thereof, worthy to rank with ancient patterns, sacred and
+profane. Persewis, however, is very young--a "flapper" or a
+"[bread-and-]buttercup," as successive generations have irreverently
+called the immature but agreeable creature. The poet lays much emphasis
+on this youth. She did not "kiss and embrace," he says, just because she
+was too young, and not because of any foolish prudery or propriety,
+things which he does not hesitate to pronounce appropriate only to ugly
+girls. His own attitude to "the fair" is unflinchingly put in one of the
+most notable and best known passages of the poem (l. 7095 _sq._):
+
+     When God made all creation, and devised their forms for his
+     creatures, He distributed beauties and good qualities to
+     each in proportion as He loved it. He loved ladies above all
+     things, and therefore made for them the best qualities and
+     beauties. Of mere earth made He everything [else] under
+     Heaven: but the hearts of ladies He made of honey, and gave
+     to them more courtesy than to any other living creature. And
+     as God loves them, therefore I love them: hunger and thirst
+     are nothing to me as regards them: and I cry "Quits" to Him
+     for His Paradise if the bright faces of ladies enter not
+     therein.
+
+It will be observed, of course, how like this is to the most famous
+passage of _Aucassin et Nicolette_. It is less dreamily beautiful, but
+there is a certain spirit and downrightness about it which is agreeable;
+nor do I know anywhere a more forcible statement of the doctrine, often
+held by no bad people, that beauty is a personal testimonial of the
+Divinity--a scarcely parabolic command to love and admire its
+possessors.[62]
+
+If, however, our poet has something of that Romantic morality to which
+Ascham--in a conjoined fit[63] of pedantry, prudery, and
+Protestantism--gave such an ugly name, he may excuse it to less
+strait-laced judges by other traits. Even the "retainer" of an editor
+ought not to have induced M. Robert to say that Melior's original
+surrender was "against her will," though she certainly did make a
+protest of a kind.[64] But the enchanted and enchanting Empress's
+constancy is inviolable. Even after she has been obliged to banish her
+foolish lover, or rather after he has banished himself, she avows
+herself his only. She will die, she says, before she takes another lord;
+and for this reason objects for some time to the proposed tourney for
+her hand, in which the already proven invincibility of the Count of
+Blois makes him almost a certain victor, because it involves a
+conditional consent to admit another mate. To her scrupulousness, a kind
+of blunt common-sense, tempering the amiability of Urraca, is a pleasant
+set-off, and the freshness of Persewis completes the effect.
+
+Moreover, there are little bits of almost Chaucerian vividness and
+terseness here and there, contrasting oddly with the _chevilles_--the
+stock phrases and epithets--elsewhere. When the tourney actually comes
+off and Partenopeus is supposed to be prisoner of a felon knight afar
+off, the two sisters and Persewis take their places at the entrance of
+the tower crossing the bridge at Melior's capital, "Chef d'Oire."[65]
+Melior is labelled only "whom all the world loves and prizes," but
+Urraca and her damsel "have their faces pale and discoloured--for they
+have lost much of their beauty--so sorely have they wept Partenopeus."
+On the contrary, when, at the close of the first day's tourney, the
+usual "unknown knights" (in this case the Count of Blois himself and his
+friend Gaudins) ride off triumphant, they "go joyfully to their hostel
+with lifted lances, helmets on head, hauberks on back, and shields held
+proudly as if to begin jousting."
+
+    Bel i vinrent et bel s'en vont,
+
+says King Corsols, one of the judges of the tourney, but not in the
+least aware of their identity. This may occur elsewhere, but it is by no
+means one of the commonplaces of Romance, and a well hit-off picture is
+motived by a sharply cut phrase.[66]
+
+It is this sudden enlivening of the commonplaces of Romance with vivid
+picture and phrase which puts _Partenopeus_ high among its fellows. The
+story is very simple, and the variation and multiplication of episodic
+adventure unusually scanty; while the too common genealogical preface is
+rather exceptionally superfluous. That the Count of Blois is the nephew
+of Clovis can interest--outside of a peculiar class of antiquarian
+commentator--no mortal; and the identification of "Chef-d'Oire,"
+Melior's enchanted capital, with Constantinople, though likely enough,
+is not much more important. Clovis and Byzantium (of which the
+enchantress is Empress) were well-known names and suited the _abonné_ of
+those times. The actual "argument" is of the slightest. One of Spenser's
+curious doggerel common measures--say:
+
+    A fairy queen grants bliss and troth
+      On terms, unto the knight:
+    His mother makes him break his oath,
+      Her sister puts it right--
+
+would almost do; the following prose abstract is practically exhaustive.
+
+Partenopeus, Count of Blois, nephew of King Clovis of France, and
+descendant of famous heroes of antiquity, including Hector, the most
+beautiful and one of the most valiant of men, after displaying his
+prowess in a war with the Saracen Sornagur, loses his way while hunting
+in the Ardennes. He at last comes to the seashore, and finds a ship
+which in fifteen days takes him to a strange country, where all is
+beautiful but entirely solitary. He finds a magnificent palace, where he
+is splendidly guested by unseen hands, and at last conducted to a
+gorgeous bedchamber. In the dark he, not unnaturally, lies awake
+speculating on the marvel; and after a time light footsteps approach the
+bed, and a form, invisible but tangible, lies down beside him. He
+touches it, and finds it warm and soft and smooth, and though it
+protests a little, the natural consequences follow. Then the lady
+confesses that she had heard of him, had (incognita) seen him at the
+Court of France, and had, being a white witch as well as an Empress,
+brought him to "Chef d'Oire," her capital, though she denies having
+intentionally or knowingly arranged the shepherd's hour itself.[67] She
+is, however, as frank as Juliet and Miranda combined. She will be his
+wife (she makes a most interesting and accurate profession of Christian
+orthodoxy) if he will marry her; but it is impossible for the remainder
+of a period of which two and a half years have still to run, and at the
+end of which, and not till then, she has promised her vassals to choose
+a husband. Meanwhile, Partenopeus must submit to an ordeal not quite so
+painful as hot ploughshares. He must never see her or attempt to see
+her, and he must not, during his stay at Chef d'Oire, see or speak to
+any other human being. At the same time, hunting, exploring the palace
+and the city and the country, and all other pastimes independent of
+visible human companionship, are freely at his disposal by day.
+
+    Et moi aurès cascune nuit
+
+says Melior, with the exquisite simplicity which is the charm of the
+whole piece.
+
+One must be very inquisitive, exceedingly virtuous (the mediaeval value
+of consummated betrothal being reckoned), superfluously fond of the
+company of one's miscellaneous fellow-creatures, and a person of very
+bad taste[68] to boot, in order to decline the bargain. Partenopeus does
+not dream of doing so, and for a whole year thinks of nothing but his
+fairy love and her bounties to him. Then he remembers his uncle-king and
+his country, and asks leave to visit them, but not with the faintest
+intention of running away. Melior gives it with the same frankness and
+kindness with which she has given herself--informing him, in fact, that
+he _ought_ to go, for his uncle is dead and his country in danger. Only,
+she reminds him of his pledges, and warns him of the misfortunes which
+await his breach of them. He is then magically wafted back on ship-board
+as he came.
+
+He has, once more, no intention of playing the truant or traitor, and
+does his duty bravely and successfully. But the new King has a niece and
+the Count himself has a mother, who, motherlike, is convinced that her
+son's mysterious love is a very bad person, if not an actual _maufès_ or
+devil, and is very anxious that he shall marry the niece. She has
+clerical and chemical resources to help her, and Partenopeus has
+actually consented, in a fit of aberration, when, with one of the odd
+Wemmick-like flashes of reflection,[69] not uncommon with knights, he
+remembers Melior, and unceremoniously makes off to her. He confesses
+(for he is a good creature though foolish) and is forgiven, Melior
+being, though not in the least insipid or of a put-up-with-anything
+disposition, full of "loving _mercy_" in every sense. But the situation
+is bound to recur, and now, though the time of probation (probation very
+much tempered!) is nearly over, the mother wins her way. Partenopeus is
+deluded into accepting an enchanted lantern, which he tries on his
+unsuspecting mistress at the first possible moment. What he sees, of
+course, is only a very lovely woman--a woman in the condition best
+fitted to show her loveliness--whom he has offended irreparably, and
+lost.
+
+Melior is no scold, but she is also no milksop. She will have nothing
+more to do with him, for he has shamed her with her people (who now
+appear), broken her magic power, and, above all, been false to her wish
+and his word. The entreaties of her sister Urraca (whose gracious figure
+is now elaborately introduced) are for the time useless, and Partenopeus
+is only saved from the vengeance of the courtiers and the household by
+Urraca's protection.[70]
+
+To halt for a moment, the scene of the treason and discovery is another
+of those singular vividnesses which distinguish this poem and story. The
+long darkness suddenly flashing into light, and the startled Melior's
+beauty framed in the splendour of the couch and the bedchamber--the
+offender at once realising his folly and his crime, and dashing the
+instrument of his treachery (useless, for all is daylight now, the charm
+being counter-charmed) against the wall--the half-frightened,
+half-curious Court ladies and Court servants thronging in--the
+apparition of Urraca,--all this gives a picture of extraordinarily
+dramatic power. It reminds one a little of Spenser's famous portrayal of
+Britomart disturbed at night, and the comparison of the two brings out
+all sorts of "excellent differences."
+
+But to return to the story itself. Although the invariable
+cut-and-driedness of romance incidents has been grossly exaggerated,
+there is one situation which is almost always treated in the same way.
+The knight who has, with or without his own fault, incurred the
+displeasure of his mistress, "doth [_always_] to the green wood go," and
+there, whether in complete sanity or not, lives for a time a half or
+wholly savage life, discarding knightly and sometimes any other dress,
+eating very little, and in considerable danger of being eaten himself.
+Everybody, from Lancelot to Amadis, does it; and Partenopeus does it
+too, but in his own way. Reaching Blois and utterly rejecting his
+mother's attempts to excuse herself and console him, he drags out a
+miserable time in continual penance and self-neglect, till at last,
+availing himself of (and rather shabbily if piously tricking) a Saracen
+page,[71] he succeeds in getting off incognito to the vague "Ardennes,"
+where his sadly ended adventure had begun. These particular Ardennes
+appear to be reachable by sea (on which they have a coast), and to
+contain not only ordinary beasts of chase, not only wolves and bears,
+but lions, tigers, wyverns, dragons, etc. A single unarmed man has
+practically no chance there, and the Count determines to condemn himself
+to the fate of the Roman arena. As a preliminary, he dismounts and turns
+loose his horse, who is presently attacked by a lion and wounded, but
+luckily gets a fair blow with his hoof between his enemy's eyes, and
+kills him. Then comes another of the flashes (and something more) of the
+piece. Stung by the pain of his wound and dripping with blood, the
+animal dashes at full speed, and whinnying at the top of his powers, to
+the seashore and along it. The passage is worth translating:
+
+     He [_the horse after he has killed the lion_] lifts his
+     tail, and takes to flight down a valley towards nightfall.
+     Much he looks about him and much he whinnies. By night-time
+     he has got out of the wood and has fled to the sea: but he
+     will not stop there. He makes the pebbles fly as he gallops
+     and never stops whinnying. Now the moon has mounted high in
+     the heavens, all clear and bright and shining: there is not
+     a dark cloud in all the sky, nor any movement on the sea:
+     sweet and serene is the weather, and fair and clear and
+     lightened up. And the palfrey whinnies so loudly that he can
+     be heard far off at sea.
+
+He _is_ heard at sea, for a ship is waiting there in the calm, and on
+board that ship is Urraca, with a wise captain named Maruc and a stout
+crew. The singularity of the event induces them to land (Maruc knows the
+dangers of the region, but Urraca has no fears; the captain also knows
+how to enchant the beasts), and the horse's bloodmarks guide them up the
+valley. At last they come upon a miserable creature, in rags,
+dishevelled, half-starved, and altogether unrecognisable. After a little
+time, however, Urraca does recognise him, and, despite his forlorn and
+repulsive condition, takes him in her arms.
+
+    Si le descouvre un poi le vis.
+
+Yet another of the uncommon "flashlight" sketches, where in two short
+lines one sees the damsel as she has been described not so long before,
+"tall and graceful, her fair hair (which, untressed, reached her feet
+[now, no doubt, more suitably arranged]), with forehead broad and high,
+and smooth; grey eyes, large and _seignorous_" (an admirable word for
+eyes), "all her face one kiss"; one sees her with one arm round the
+tottering wretch, and with the "long fingers" of her other white hand
+clearing the matted hair from his visage till she can recognise him.
+
+They take him on board, of course, though to induce him to go this
+delightful creature has to give an account of her sister's feelings
+(which, to put it mildly, anticipates the truth very considerably), and
+also to cry over him a little.[72] She takes him to Saleuces,[73] an
+island principality of her own, and there she and her maid-of-honour,
+Persewis (see above), proceed to cocker and cosset him up exactly as one
+imagines two such girls would do to "a dear, silly, nice, handsome
+thing," as a favourite modern actress used to bring down the house by
+saying, with a sort of shake, half of tears and half of laughter, in her
+voice. Indeed the phrase fits Partenopeus precisely. We are told that
+Urraca would have been formally in love with him if it had not been
+unsportsgirl-like towards her sister; and as for Persewis, there is once
+more a windfall in the description of the "butter-cup's" delight when
+Urraca, going to see Melior, has to leave her alone with the Count. The
+Princess is of course very sorry to go. "But Persewis would not have
+minded if she had stayed forty days, or till August," and she "glories
+greatly" when her rival departs. No mischief, however, comes of it; for
+the child is "too young," as we are earnestly assured, and Partenopeus,
+to do him justice, is both too much of a gentleman, and too dolefully in
+earnest about recovering Melior, to dream of any.
+
+Meanwhile, Urraca is most unselfishly doing her very best to reconcile
+the lovers, not neglecting the employment of white fibs as before, and
+occasionally indulging, not merely in satiric observation on poor
+Melior's irresolution and conflict of feeling, but in decidedly sisterly
+plainness of speech, reminding the Empress that after all she had
+entrapped Partenopeus into loving her, and that he had, for two whole
+years, devoted himself entirely to her love and its conditions. At last
+a rather complicated and not always quite consistently told provisional
+settlement is arrived at, carrying out, in a manner, the undertakings
+referred to by Melior in her first interview with her lover. An immense
+tourney for the hand of Melior is to be held, with a jury of kings to
+judge it: and everybody, Christian or pagan, from emperor to vavasour is
+invited to compete. But in case of no single victor, a kind of
+"election" by what may be called the States of Byzantium--kings, dukes,
+counts, and simple fief-holders--is to decide, and it seems sometimes
+as if Melior retained something of a personal veto at last. Of the
+incidents and episodes before this actually comes off, the most
+noteworthy are a curious instance of the punctilio of chivalry (the
+Count having once promised Melior that no one but herself shall gird on
+his sword, makes a difficulty when Urraca and Persewis arm him), and a
+misfortune by which he, rowing carelessly by himself, falls into the
+power of a felon knight, Armans of Thenodon. This last incident,
+however, though it alarms his two benefactresses, is not really unlucky.
+For, in the first place, Armans is not at home, and his wife, falling a
+victim, like every woman, to Partenopeus' extraordinary beauty, allows
+him his parole; while the accident enables him to appear at the
+tournament incognito--a practice always affected, if possible, by the
+knights of romance, and in this case possessing some obvious and special
+advantages.
+
+On his way he meets another knight, Gaudin le Blond, with whom he gladly
+strikes up brotherhood-in-arms. The three days of the mellay are not
+_very_ different from the innumerable similar scenes elsewhere, nor can
+the author be said to be specially happy at this kind of business. But
+any possible tedium is fairly relieved by the shrewd and sometimes
+jovial remarks made by one of the judging kings, the before-quoted
+Corsols--met by grumbles from another, Clarin, and by the fears and
+interest of the three ladies, of whom the ever-faithful and shrewd
+Urraca is the first to discover Partenopeus. He and Gaudin perform the
+usual exploits and suffer the usual inconveniences, but at the end it is
+still undecided whether the Count of Blois or the Soldan of Persia--a
+good knight, though a pagan, and something of a braggart--deserves the
+priceless prize of Melior's hand with the empire of Byzantium to boot.
+The "election" follows, and after some doubt goes right, while Melior
+now offers no objection. But the Soldan, in his _outrecuidance_, demands
+single combat. He has, of course, no right to do this, and the Council
+and the Empress object strongly. But Partenopeus will have no stain on
+his honour; consents to the fight; deliberately refuses to take
+advantage of the Soldan when he is unhorsed and pinned down by the
+animal; assists him to get free; and only after an outrageous menace
+from the Persian justifies his own claim to belong to the class of
+champions
+
+    Who _always_ cleave their foe
+        To the waist
+
+--indeed excels them, by entirely bisecting the Soldan.
+
+An episodic restoration of parole to the widow of Armans (who has
+actually taken part in the tourney and been killed) should be noticed,
+and the piece ends, or rather comes close to an end, with the marriages
+which appropriately follow these well-deserved murders. Marriages--not a
+marriage only--for King "Lohier" of France most sensibly insists on
+espousing the delightful Urraca: and Persewis is consoled for the loss
+of Partenopeus by the suit--refused at first and then granted, with the
+obviously intense enjoyment of both processes likely in a novice--of his
+brother-in-arms, to whom the "Emperor of Byzantium" abandons his own two
+counties in France, adding a third in his new empire, and winning by
+this generosity almost more popularity than by his prowess.
+
+But, as was hinted, the story does not actually end. There is a great
+deal about the festivities, and though the author says encouragingly
+that he "will not devise much of breeches," he _does_--and of many other
+garments. Indeed the last of his liveliest patches is a mischievous
+picture of the Court ladies at their toilette: "Let me see that mirror;
+make my head-dress higher; let me show my mouth more; drop the pleat
+over the eyes;[74] alter my eyebrows," etc. etc. But beyond the washing
+of hands before the feast, this French book that Crapelet printed
+fourscore years ago goeth not. Perhaps it was a mere accident; perhaps
+the writer had a shrewd notion that whatever he wrote would seem but
+stale in its reminder of the night when Partenopeus lay awake, and
+seemingly alone, in the enchanted palace--now merely an ordinary place
+of splendour and festivity--and when something came to the bed, "step by
+step, little by little," and laid itself beside him.
+
+Such are the contents and such some of the special traits and features
+of one of the most famous of those romances of chivalry, the reading of
+which with anything like the same interest as that taken in Homer,
+seemed to the Reverend Professor Hugh Blair to be the most suitable
+instance he could hit upon of a total lack of taste. This is a point, of
+course, on which each age, and each reader in each age, must judge for
+itself and himself. I think the author of the _Odyssey_ (the _Iliad_
+comes rather in competition with the chansons than with these romances)
+was a better poet than the author of _Partenopeus_, and I also think
+that he was a better story-teller; but I do not think that the latter
+was a bad story-teller; and I can read him with plenty of interest. So I
+can most of his fellows, no one of whom, I think, ever quite approaches
+the insipidity of their worst English imitators. The knights do not
+weary me with their exploits, and I confess that I am hyperbolical
+enough to like reading and thinking as well as talking of the ladies
+very much. They are of various sorts; but they are generally lovable.
+There is no better for affection and faithfulness and pluck than the
+Josiane of _Bevis_, whose husband and her at one time faithful guardian,
+but at another would-be ravisher, Ascapart, guard a certain gate not
+more than a furlong or two from where I am writing. It is good to think
+of the (to some extent justified) indignation of l'Orgueilleuse d'Amours
+when Sir Blancandin rides up and audaciously kisses her in the midst of
+her train; and the companion picture of the tomb where Idoine apparently
+sleeps in death (while her true knight Amadas fights with a ghostly foe
+above) makes a fitting pendant. If her near namesake with an L prefixed,
+the Lidoine of _Méraugis de Portlesguez_, interests me less, it is
+because its author, Raoul de Houdenc, was one of the first to mix love
+and moral allegory--a "wanity" which is not my favourite "wanity." To
+the Alexandrine of _Guillaume de Palerne_ reference has already been
+made. Blanchefleur--known all over Europe with her lover Floire (Floris,
+etc.)--the Saracen slave who charms a Christian prince, and is rescued
+by him from the Emir of Babylon, to whom she has been sold in hopes of
+weaning Floris from his attachment, more than deserved her vogue. But,
+as in the case of the _chansons_, mere cataloguing would be dull and
+unprofitable, and analysis on the scale accorded to _Partenopeus_
+impossible. One must only take up once more the note of this whole early
+part of our history, and impress again on the reader the evident
+_desire_ for the accomplished novel which these numerous romances show;
+the inevitable _practice_, in tale-telling of a kind, which the
+production of them might have given; and, above all, the openings,
+germs, suggestions of new devices in fiction which are observable in
+them, and which remained for others to develop if the first finders left
+them unimproved.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[58] That is, of nothing like the length of the latest forms of the
+_Chansons de Geste_ or the Arthurian Romances proper. Some of the late
+fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Adventure stories, before they dropped
+into prose, are indeed long enough, and a great deal too long; but they
+show degeneracy.
+
+[59] The _h_ (Part_h_-) does occur in both forms, and there are other
+variation, as "Part_o_nopeus," etc. But these are trifles.
+
+[60] Taking honour to the mother as separate from that to the father.
+
+[61] The Spanish-English form is perhaps the prettier. I am sorry to say
+that the poet, to get a rhyme, sometimes spells it "Urra_cle_," which is
+_not_ pretty. Southey's "Queen _O_rraca" seems to me to have changed her
+vowel to disadvantage.
+
+[62] The original author of the _Court of Love_, whether Chaucer or
+another, pretty certainly knew it; and Spenser spiritualised the
+doctrine itself in the _Four Hymns_.
+
+[63] I think the medical people (borrowing, as Science so often does,
+the language which she would fain banish from human knowledge) call this
+sort of thing _a syndrome_.
+
+[64] See below on Urraca's plain speaking.
+
+[65] Not too commentatorially identified with Constantinople.
+
+[66] It may be worth noting that in this context appears the original
+form of an English word quite common recently, but almost unknown a very
+short time ago--"grouse" in the sense of "complain," "grumble": "Ce dist
+Corsols et nul n'en _grouce_."
+
+[67] No one will be rude enough to disbelieve her, and, as will be seen,
+her supernatural powers had limits; but it was odd, though fortunate,
+that they should have broken down exactly at this important juncture.
+Who made those rebellious candles take him to that chamber and couch,
+unknown to her?
+
+[68] For Melior, though of invisible beauty, is represented as
+delightful in every other way, as wise and witty and gracious in speech
+as becomes a white witch. And when her lover on one occasion thanks her
+for her _sermon_, there is no satire; he only means _sermo_.
+
+[69] Like Guy of Warwick; still more like Mr. Jaggers's clerk, though
+the circumstances are reversed. _He_ almost says in so many words,
+"Hullo! here's an engagement ring on my finger. We _can't_ have a
+marriage."
+
+[70] The author, _more suo_, intimates that the Court _ladies_ by no
+means shared these hostile feelings, and would have willingly been in
+Melior's place.
+
+[71] He induces him to turn Christian on the supposition of being his
+companion; and then gives him the slip. The neophyte's expressions on
+the occasion are not wholly edifying.
+
+[72] The good palfrey is found and in a state to carry his master, who
+is quite unable to walk. One hopes they did not leave the beast to the
+lions, tigers, wyverns, etc., for he could hardly hope for such a
+literal "stroke of luck" again.
+
+[73] The name will suggest, to those who have some wine-lore, no less a
+vintage than Château Yquem. Nothing could be better for a person in the
+Count's condition as a restorative.
+
+[74] These two directions obviously refer to the common mediaeval
+"wimple" arrangement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE FICTION
+
+
+[Sidenote: Prose novelettes of the thirteenth century. _Aucassin et
+Nicolette_ not quite typical.]
+
+The title of this chapter may seem an oversight or an impertinence,
+considering that large parts of an earlier one have been occupied with
+discussions and translations of the prose Arthurian Romances. It was,
+however, expressly pointed out that the priority of these is a matter of
+opinion, not of judgment; and it may be here quite frankly admitted that
+one of the most serious arguments against that priority is the extreme
+lateness of Old French Prose in any finished literary form. The excuse,
+however, if excuse be needed, does not turn on any such hinge as this.
+It was desired to treat, in the last two chapters, romance matter proper
+of the larger kind, whether that matter took the form of prose or of
+verse. Here, on the other hand, the object is to deal with the smaller
+but more miscellaneous body of fictitious matter (part, no doubt, of a
+larger) which presents it tolerably early, and in character foretells
+the immense development of the kind which French was to see later.[75] A
+portion of this body, sufficient for us, is contained in two little
+volumes of the _Bibliothèque Elzévirienne_, published rather less than
+sixty years ago (1856 and 1858) by MM. L. Moland and Ch. d'Héricault,
+the first devoted to thirteenth-, the second to fourteenth-century work.
+One of these, the now world-famous _Aucassin et Nicolette_, has been so
+much written about and so often translated already that it cannot be
+necessary to say a great deal about it here. It is, moreover, of a mixed
+kind, a _cante-fable_ or blend of prose and verse, with a considerable
+touch of the dramatic in it. Its extraordinary charm is a thing long ago
+settled; but it is, on the whole, more of a dramatic and lyrical
+romance--to recouple or releash kinds which Mr. Browning had perhaps
+best never have put asunder--than of a pure prose tale.
+
+[Sidenote: _L'Empereur Constant_ more so.]
+
+Its companions in the thirteenth-century volume are four in number, and
+if none of them has the peculiar charm, so none has the technical
+disqualification (if that be not too strong a word) of _Aucassin et
+Nicolette_. The first, shortest, and, save for one or two points, least
+remarkable, _L'Empereur Constant_, is a very much abbreviated and in
+more than one sense prosaic version of the story out of which Mr.
+William Morris made his delightful _The Man Born to be King_. Probably
+of Greek or Greek-Eastern origin, it begins with an astrological passage
+in which the Emperor, childless except for a girl, becomes informed of
+the imminent birth of a man-child, who shall marry his daughter and
+succeed him. He discovers the, as it seems, luckless baby; has it
+brought to him, and with his own hand attempts to disembowel it, but
+allows himself, most improbably,[76] to be dissuaded from finishing the
+operation. The benevolent knight who has prevented the completion of the
+crime takes the infant to a monastery, where (after a quaint scene of
+haggling about fees with the surgeon) the victim is patched up, grows to
+be a fine youth, and comes across the Emperor, to whom the abbot
+guilelessly, but in this case naturally enough,[77] betrays the secret.
+The Emperor's murderous thoughts as naturally revive, and the
+frustration of them by means of the Princess's falling in love with the
+youth, the changing of "the letters of Bellerophon," and the Emperor's
+resignation to the inevitable, follow the same course as in the English
+poem. The latter part is better than the earlier; and the writer is
+evidently (as how should he not be?) a novice; but his work is the kind
+of experiment from which better things will come.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane._]
+
+These marks of the novice are even more noticeable in a much longer
+story, _Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane_, which is found not only in the
+same printed volume, but in the same original MS. The fault of this is
+curious, and--if not to a mere reader for pastime, to a student of
+fiction--extremely interesting. It is one not at all unknown at the
+present day, and capable of being used as an argument in favour of the
+doctrine of the Unities: that is to say, the mixture, by arbitrary and
+violent process, of two stories which have nothing whatever to do with
+each other, except that they are, wilfully and with no reason, buckled
+together at the end. The first, thin and uninteresting enough, is of a
+certain King Florus, who has a wife, dearly beloved, but barren. After
+some years and some very unmanly shilly-shallyings, he puts her away,
+and marries another, with whom (one is feebly glad to find) he is no
+more lucky, but who has herself the luck to die after some years.
+Meanwhile, King Florus being left "in a cool barge for future use," the
+second item, a really interesting story, is, with some intervals,
+carried on. A Count of high rank and great possessions has an only
+daughter, whom, after experience of the valour and general worthiness of
+one of his vassals of no great "having," he bestows on this knight,
+Robert, the pair being really in love with each other. But another
+vassal knight of greater wealth, Raoul, plots with one of the wicked old
+women who abound in these stories, and engages Robert in a rash wager of
+all his possessions, that during one of those pilgrimages to "St.
+James," which come in so handy, and are generally so unreasonable, he
+will dishonour the lady. He fails, but, in a manner not distantly
+related to the Imogen-Iachimo scene, acquires what seems to be damning
+acquaintance with the young Countess's person-marks. Robert and Jehane
+are actually married; but the felon knight immediately afterwards brings
+his charge, and Robert pays his debt, and flies, a ruined man, from, as
+he thinks, his faithless wife, though he takes no vengeance on her.
+Jehane disguises herself as a man, joins him on his journey, supports
+him with her own means for a time, and enters into partnership with him
+in merchandise at Marseilles, he remaining ignorant of her sex and
+relation to him. At last things come right: the felon knight is forced
+in single combat (a long and good one) to acknowledge his lie and give
+up his plunder, and the excellent but somewhat obtuse Robert recovers
+his wife as well. A good end if ever there was one, and not a badly told
+tale in parts. But, from some utterly mistaken idea of craftsmanship,
+the teller must needs kill Robert for no earthly reason, except in order
+that Jehane may become the third wife of Florus and bear him children. A
+more disastrous "sixth act" has seldom been imagined; for most readers
+will have forgotten all about Florus, who has had neither art nor part
+in the main story; few can care whether the King has children or not;
+and still fewer can be other than disgusted at the notion of Jehane,
+brave, loving, and clever, being, as a widow, made a mere child-bearing
+machine to an oldish and rather contemptible second husband. But, once
+more, the mistake is interesting, and is probably the first example of
+that fatal error of not knowing when to leave off, which is even worse
+than the commoner one (to be found in some great artists) of "huddling
+up the story." The only thing to be said in excuse is that you could cut
+his majesty Florus out of the title and tale at once without even the
+slightest difficulty, and with no need to mend or meddle in any other
+way.
+
+The remaining stories of the thirteenth-century volume are curiously
+contrasted. One is a short prose version of that exquisite _chanson de
+geste_, _Amis et Amiles_, of which it has been said above that any one
+who cannot "taste" it need never hope to understand mediaeval
+literature. The full beauty of the verse story does not appear in the
+prose; but some does.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Comtesse de Ponthieu._]
+
+Of the other, the so-called "Comtesse de Ponthieu" (though she is not
+really this, being only the Count's daughter and the wife of a vassal),
+I thought rather badly when I first read it thirty or forty years ago,
+and till the present occasion I have never read it since. Now I think
+better of it, especially as a story suggestive in story-telling art. The
+original stumbling-block, which I still see, though I can get over or
+round it better now, was, I think, the character of the heroine, who
+inherits not merely the tendency to play fast and loose with successive
+husbands, which is observable in both _chanson_ and _roman_ heroines,
+but something of the very unlovely savagery which is also sometimes
+characteristic of them; while the hero also is put in "unpleasant"
+circumstances. He is a gentleman and a good knight, and though only a
+vassal of the Count of Ponthieu, he, as has been said, marries the
+Count's daughter, entirely to her and her father's satisfaction. But
+they are childless, and the inevitable "monseigneur Saint _Jakeme_" (St.
+James of Compostella) suggests himself for pilgrimage. Thiebault, the
+knight, obtains leave from his lady to go, and she, by a device not
+unprettily told, gets from him leave to go too. Unfortunately and
+unwisely they send their suite on one morning, and ride alone through a
+forest, where they are set upon by eight banditti. Thiebault fights
+these odds without flinching, and actually kills three, but is
+overpowered by sheer numbers. They do not kill him, but bind and toss
+him into a thicket, after which they take vengeance of outrage on the
+lady and depart, fearing the return of the meyney. Thiebault feels that
+his unhappy wife is guiltless, but unluckily does not assure her of
+this, merely asking her to deliver him. So she, seeing a sword of one
+of the slain robbers, picks it up, and, "full of great ire and evil
+will," cries, "I will deliver you, sir," and, instead of cutting his
+bonds, tries to run him through. But she only grazes him, and actually
+cuts the thongs, so that he shakes himself free, starts up, and wrests
+the sword from her with the simple words, "Lady, it is not to-day that
+you will kill me." To which she replies, "And right sorry I am
+therefor."[78] Their followers come up; the pair are clothed and set out
+again on their journey. But Thiebault, though treating his wife with the
+greatest attention, leaves her at a monastery, accomplishes his
+pilgrimage alone, and on his return escorts her to Ponthieu as if
+nothing had happened. Still--though no one knows this or indeed anything
+about her actual misfortune and intended crime--he does not live with
+her as his wife. After a time the Count, who is, as another story has
+it, a "_h_arbitrary" Count, insists that Thiebault shall tell him some
+incident of his voyage, and the husband (here is the weak point of the
+whole) recounts the actual adventure, though not as of himself and his
+lady. The Count will not stand ambiguity, and at last extorts the truth,
+which the lady confirms, repeating her sorrow that she had _not_ slain
+her husband. Now the Count is, as has been said, an arbitrary Count, and
+one day, his county having, as our Harold knew to his cost, a sea-coast
+to it, somewhat less disputable than those of Bohemia and the Ardennes,
+embarks, with only his daughter, son-in-law, son, and a few retainers,
+taking with him a nice new cask. Into this, despite the prayers of her
+husband and brother, he puts the lady, and flings it overboard. She is
+picked up half-suffocated by mariners, who carry her to "Aymarie" and
+sell her to the Sultan. She is very beautiful, and the Sultan promptly
+proposes conversion and marriage. She makes no difficulty, bears him two
+children, and is apparently quite happy. But meanwhile the Count of
+Ponthieu begins--his son and son-in-law have never ceased--to feel that
+he has exercised the paternal rights rather harshly; the Archbishop of
+Rheims very properly confirms his ideas on this point, and all three go
+_outremer_ on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They are captured by the
+Saracens of Aymarie, imprisoned, starved, and finally in immediate
+danger of being shot to death as an amusement for the Sultan's
+bodyguard. But the Sultaness has found out who they are, visits them in
+prison, and "reconciliations and forgivenesses of injuries" follow.
+
+After this, things go in an easily guessable manner. The
+Countess-Sultana beguiles her easy-going lord into granting her the
+lives of the prisoners one after another, for which she rewards him by
+carrying them off, with her son by the second marriage, to Italy, where
+the boy is baptized. "The Apostle" (as the Pope is usually called in
+Romance), by a rather extensive exercise of his Apostleship, gives
+everybody absolution, confirms the original marriage of Thiebault and
+the lady who had been so obstinately sorry that she had not killed him,
+and who had suffered the paynim spousals so easily; and all goes
+merrily. There is a postscript which tells how the daughter of the
+Sultan and the Countess, who is termed _La Bele Caitive_, captivates and
+marries a Turk of great rank, and becomes the mother of no less a person
+than the great Saladin himself--a consummation no doubt very
+satisfactory to the Miss Martha Buskbodies of the mediaeval world.
+
+Now this story might seem to one who read it hastily, carelessly, or as
+"not in the vein," to be partly extravagant, partly disagreeable, and,
+despite its generous allowance of incident, rather dull, especially if
+contrasted with its next neighbour in the printed volume, _Aucassin et
+Nicolette_ itself. I am afraid there may have been some of these
+uncritical conditions about my own first reading. But a little study
+shows some remarkable points in it, though the original writer has not
+known how to manage them. The central and most startling one--the
+attempt of the Countess to murder her husband--is, when you think of it,
+not at all unnatural. The lady is half mad with her shame; the witness,
+victim, and, as she thinks, probable avenger of that shame is helpless
+before her, and in his first words at any rate seems to think merely of
+himself and not of her. Whether this violent outburst of feeling was not
+likely to result in as violent a revulsion of tenderness is rather a
+psychological probability than artistically certain. And Thiebault,
+though an excellent fellow, is a clumsy one. His actual behaviour is
+somewhat of that "killing-with-kindness" order which exasperates when it
+does not itself kill or actually reconcile; and, whether out of delicacy
+or not, he does not give his wife the only proof that he acknowledges
+the involuntariness of her actual misfortune, and forgives the
+voluntariness of her intended crime. His telling the story is
+inexcusable: and neither his preference of his allegiance as a vassal to
+his duty as knight, lover, and husband in the case of the Count's
+cruelty, nor his final acceptance of so many and such peculiar bygones
+can be called very pretty. But there are possibilities in the story, if
+they are not exactly made into good gifts.
+
+[Sidenote: Those of the fourteenth. _Asseneth._]
+
+The contents of the fourteenth-century volume are, with one exception,
+much less interesting in themselves; but from the point of view of the
+present enquiry they hardly yield to their predecessors. They are three
+in number: _Asseneth_, _Foulques Fitzwarin_, and _Troilus_. The first,
+which is very short, is an account of Joseph's courtship of his future
+wife, in which entirely guiltless proceeding he behaves at first very
+much as if the daughter of Potipherah were fruit as much forbidden as
+the wife of Potiphar. For on her being proposed to him (he has come to
+her father, splendidly dressed and brilliantly handsome, on a mission
+from Pharaoh) he at first replies that he will love her as his sister.
+This, considering the Jewish habit of exchanging the names, might not be
+ominous. But when the damsel, at her father's bidding, offers to kiss
+him, Joseph puts his hand on her chest and pushes her back, accompanying
+the action with words (even more insulting in detail than in substance)
+to the effect that it is not for God-fearing man to kiss an idolatress.
+(At this point one would rather like to kick Joseph.) However, when,
+naturally enough, she cries with vexation, the irreproachable but most
+unlikable patriarch condescends to pat her on the head and bless her.
+This she takes humbly and thankfully; deplores his absence, for he is
+compelled to return to his master; renounces her gods; is consoled by an
+angel, who feeds her with a miraculous honeycomb possessing a sort of
+sacramental force, and announces her marriage to Joseph, which takes
+place almost immediately.
+
+It will be at once seen, by those who know something of the matter, that
+this is entirely in the style of large portions of the Graal romances;
+and so it gives us a fresh and interesting division of the new short
+prose tale, allying itself to some extent with the allegory which was to
+be so fruitful both in verse and in prose. It is not particularly
+attractive in substance; but is not badly told, and would have made
+(what it was very likely used as) a good sermon-story.
+
+[Sidenote: _Troilus._]
+
+As _Asseneth_, the first of the three, is by far the shortest, so
+_Troilus_, the last, is by far the longest. It is, in fact, nearly
+twenty times the length of the history of Joseph's pious impoliteness,
+and makes up something like two-thirds of the whole collection. But,
+except as a variant of one of the famous stories of the world (_v. sup._
+Chap. IV.), it has little interest, and is not even directly taken from
+Benoît de Sainte-Maure, but from Guido delle Colonne and Boccaccio, of
+whose _Filostrato_ it is, in fact, a mere translation, made apparently
+by a known person of high station, Pierre de Beauvau, one of the chief
+nobles of Anjou, at the close of the fourteenth and the beginning of the
+fifteenth century. It thus brings itself into direct connection with
+Chaucer's poem, and has some small importance for literary history
+generally. But it has not much for us. It was not Boccaccio's verse but
+his prose that was really to influence the French Novel.
+
+[Sidenote: _Foulques Fitzwarin._]
+
+With the middle piece of the volume, _Foulques Fitzwarin_, it is very
+different. It is true that the present writer was once "smitten
+friendly" by a disciple of the modern severe historical school, who
+declared that the adventures of Fitzwarin, though of course adulterated,
+were an important historical document, and nothing so frivolous as a
+novel. One has, however, a reed-like faculty of getting up again from
+such smitings: and for my part I do not hesitate once more to call
+_Foulques Fitzwarin_ the first historical prose novel in modern
+literature. French in language, as we have it, it is thoroughly English
+in subject, and, beyond all doubt, in the original place of composition,
+while there is no reason to doubt the assertion that there were older
+verse-renderings of the story both in English and French. In fact, they
+may turn up yet. But the thing as it stands is a very desirable and even
+delectable thing, and well deserved its actual publication, not merely
+in the French collection, of which we are speaking, but in the papers of
+the too short-lived English Warton Club.
+
+For it is not only our first historical novel, but also the first, as
+far as England is concerned, of those outlaw stories which have always
+delighted worthy English youth from _Robin Hood_ to _The Black Arrow_.
+The Fitzwarins, as concerns their personalities and genealogies, may be
+surrendered without a pang to the historian, though he shall not have
+the marrow of the story. They never seem to have been quite happy except
+when they were in a state of "utlagation," and it was not only John
+against whom they rebelled, for one of them died on the Barons' side at
+Lewes.
+
+The compiler, whoever he was--it has been said already and cannot be
+said too often, that every recompiler in the Middle Ages felt it (like
+the man in that "foolish" writer, as some call him, Plato) a sacred duty
+to add something to the common stock,--was not exactly a master of his
+craft, but certainly showed admirable zeal. There never was a more
+curious _macédoine_ than this story. Part of it is, beyond all doubt,
+traditional history, with place-names all right, though distorted by
+that curious inability to transpronounce or trans-spell which made the
+French of the thirteenth century call Lincoln "Nicole," and their
+descendants of the seventeenth call Kensington "Stintinton." Part is
+mere stock or common-form Romance, as when Foulques goes to sea and has
+adventures with the usual dragons and their usual captive princesses.
+Part, though not quite dependent on the general stock, is indebted to
+that of a particular kind, as in the repeated catching of the King by
+the outlaws. But it is all more or less good reading; and there are two
+episodes in the earlier part which (one of them especially) merit more
+detailed account.
+
+The first still has something of a general character about it. It is the
+story of a certain Payn Peveril (for we meet many familiar names), who
+seems to have been a real person though wrongly dated here, and has one
+of those nocturnal combats with demon knights, the best known examples
+of which are those recounted in _Marmion_ and its notes. Peveril's
+antagonist, however--or rather the mask which the antagonist
+takes,--connects with the oldest legendary history of the island, for he
+reanimates the body of Gogmagog, the famous Cornish giant, whom Corineus
+slew. The diabolic Gogmagog, however, seems neither to have stayed in
+Cornwall nor gone to Cambridgeshire, though (oddly enough the French
+editors do not seem to have noticed this) Payn Peveril actually held
+fiefs in the neighbourhood of those exalted mountains called now by the
+name of his foe. He had a hard fight; but luckily his arms were _or_
+with a cross _édentée azure_, and this cross constantly turned the
+giant-devil's mace-strokes, while it also weakened him, and he had
+besides to bear the strokes of Peveril's sword. So he gave in, remarking
+with as much truth as King Padella in similar circumstances, that it was
+no good fighting under these conditions. Then he tells a story of some
+length about the original Gogmagog and his treasure. The secret of this
+he will not reveal, but tells Peveril that he will be lord of
+Blanche-lande in Shropshire, and vanishes with the usual unpleasant
+accompaniment--_tiel pueur dont Payn quida devier_. He left his mace,
+which the knight kept as a testimony to anybody who did not believe the
+story.
+
+This is not bad; but the other, which is either true or extraordinarily
+well invented, is far finer, and, with some omissions, must be analysed
+and partly translated. Those who know the singular beauty of Ludlow Town
+and Castle will be able to "stage" it to advantage, but this is not
+absolutely necessary to its appreciation as a story.
+
+The Peverils have died out by this time, and the honour and lands have
+gone by marriage to Guarin of Metz, whose son, Foulques Fitzguarin or
+Warin, starts the subjects of the general story. When the first Foulkes
+is eighteen, there is war between Sir Joce of Dinan (the name then given
+to Ludlow) and the Lacies. In one of their skirmishes Sir Walter de Lacy
+is wounded and captured, with a young knight of his party, Sir Ernault
+de Lyls. They have courteous treatment in Ludlow Castle, and Ernault
+makes love to Marion de la Brière, a most gentle damsel, who is the
+chief maid of the lady of the castle, and as such, of course, herself a
+lady. He promises her marriage, and she provides him and his chief with
+means of escape. Whether Lisle (as his name probably was) had at this
+time any treacherous intentions is not said or hinted. But Lacy,
+naturally enough, resents his defeat, and watches for an opportunity of
+_revanche_; while Sir Joce[lyn], on the other hand, takes his prisoners'
+escape philosophically, and does not seem to make any enquiry into its
+cause. At first Lacy thinks of bringing over his Irish vassals to aid
+him; but his English neighbours not unnaturally regard this step with
+dislike, and a sort of peace is made between the enemies. A match is
+arranged between Sir Joce's daughter Hawyse and Foulques Fitzwarin. Joce
+then quits Ludlow for a time, leaving, however, a strong garrison there.
+Marion, who feigns illness, is also left. And now begins the tragic and
+striking part of the story.
+
+     The next day after Joce had gone, Marion sent a message to
+     Sir Ernault de Lyls, begging him, for the great love that
+     there was between them, not to forget the pledges they had
+     exchanged, but to come quickly to speak with her at the
+     castle of Dinan, because the lord and the lady and the bulk
+     of the servants had gone to Hertilande--also to come to the
+     same place by which he had left the castle. [_He replies
+     asking her to send him the exact height of the wall (which
+     she unsuspiciously does by the usual means of a silk thread)
+     and also the number of the household left. Then he seeks his
+     chief, and tells him, with a mixture of some truth, that the
+     object of the Hertilande journey is to gather strength
+     against Lacy, capture his castle of Ewyas, and kill
+     himself--intelligence which he falsely attributes to Marion.
+     He has, of course, little difficulty in persuading Lacy to
+     take the initiative. Sir Ernault is entrusted with a
+     considerable mixed force, and comes by night to the
+     castle._] The night was very dark, so that no sentinel saw
+     them. Sir Ernault took a squire to carry the ladder of hide,
+     and they went to the window where Marion was waiting for
+     them. And when she saw them, never was any so joyful: so she
+     dropped a cord right down and drew up the hide ladder and
+     fastened it to a battlement. Then Ernault lightly scaled the
+     tower, and took his love in his arms and kissed her: and
+     they made great joy of each other and went into another room
+     and supped, and then went to their couch, and left the
+     ladder hanging.
+
+     But the squire who had carried it went to the forces hidden
+     in the garden and elsewhere, and took them to the ladder.
+     And one hundred men, well armed, mounted by it and descended
+     by the Pendover tower and went by the wall behind the
+     chapel, and found the sentinel too heavy with sleep to
+     defend himself: and the knights and the sergeants were cut
+     to pieces crying for mercy in their beds. But Sir Ernault's
+     companions were pitiless, and many a white sheet was dyed
+     red with blood. And at last they tossed the watchman into
+     the deep fosse and broke his neck.
+
+     Now Marion de la Brière lay by her lover Sir Ernault and
+     knew nothing of the treason he had done. But she heard a
+     great noise in the castle and rose from her bed, and looked
+     out and heard more clearly the cry of the massacred, and saw
+     knights in white armour. Wherefore she understood that Sir
+     Ernault had deceived and betrayed her, and began to weep
+     bitterly and said, "Ah! that I was ever of mother born: for
+     that by my crime I have lost my lord Sir Joce, who bred me
+     so gently, his castle, and his good folk. Had I not been,
+     nothing had been lost. Alas! that I ever believed this
+     knight! for by his lies he has ruined me, and what is worse,
+     my lord too." Then, all weeping, she drew Sir Ernault's
+     sword and said, "Sir knight! awake, for you have brought
+     strange company into my lord's castle without his leave. I
+     brought in only you and your squire. And since you have
+     deceived me you cannot rightly blame me if I give you your
+     deserts--at least you shall never boast to any other
+     mistress that by deceiving me you conquered the castle and
+     the land of Dinan!" The knight started up, but Marion, with
+     the sword she held drawn, ran him straight through the body,
+     and he died at once. She herself, knowing that if she were
+     taken, ill were the death she should die, and knowing not
+     what to do, let herself fall from a window and broke her
+     neck.
+
+Now this, I venture to think, is not an ordinary story. Tales of
+treachery, onslaught, massacre, are not rare in the Middle Ages, nor
+need we go as far as the Middle Ages for them. But the almost heroic
+insouciance with which the traitor knight forgets everything except his
+immediate enjoyment, and, provided he has his mistress at his will,
+concerns himself not in the slightest degree as to what becomes of his
+companions, is not an every-day touch. Nor is the strong contrast of the
+chambers of feast and dalliance--undisturbed, voluptuous,
+terrestrial-paradisaic--with "the horror and the hell" in the courts
+below. Nor, last of all, the picture of the more than half innocent
+Marion, night-garbed or ungarbed, but with sword drawn, first hanging
+over her slumbering betrayer, then dealing the stroke of vengeance, and
+then falling--white against the dark towers and the darker ravines at
+their base--to her self-doomed judgment.
+
+[Sidenote: Something on these,]
+
+Even more, however, than in individual points of interest or excitement,
+the general survey of these two volumes gives matter for thought on our
+subject. Here are some half-dozen stories or a little more. It is not
+much, some one may say, for the produce of two hundred years. But what
+it lacks in volume (and that will be soon made up in French, while it is
+to be remembered that we have practically nothing to match it in
+English) it makes up in variety. The peculiarity, some would say the
+defect, of mediaeval literature--its sheep-like tendency to go in
+flocks--is quite absent. Not more than two of the eight, _Le Roi Flore_
+and _La Comtesse de Ponthieu_, can be said to be of the same class,
+even giving the word class a fairly elastic sense. They are short prose
+_Romans d'aventures_. But _Asseneth_ is a mystical allegory; _Aucassin
+et Nicolette_ is a sort of idyll, almost a lyric, in which the adventure
+is entirely subordinated to the emotional and poetical interest;
+_L'Empereur Constant_, though with something of the _Roman d'aventures_
+in it, has a tendency towards a _moralitas_ ("there is no armour against
+fate") which never appears in the pure adventurous kind; _Troilus_ is an
+abridgment of a classical romance; and _Foulques Fitzwarin_ is, as has
+been said, an embryonic historical novel. Most, if not all, moreover,
+give openings for, and one or two even proceed into, character- and even
+"problem"-writing of the most advanced novel kind. In one or two also,
+no doubt, that aggression and encroachment of allegory (which is one of
+the chief notes of these two centuries) makes itself felt, though not to
+the extent which we shall notice in the next chapter. But almost
+everywhere a strong _nisus_ towards actual tale-telling and the rapid
+acquisition of proper "plant" for such telling, become evident. In
+particular, conversation--a thing difficult to bring anyhow into
+verse-narrative, and impossible there to keep up satisfactorily in
+various moods--begins to find its way. We may turn, in the next chapter,
+to matter mostly or wholly in verse forms. But prose fiction is started
+all the same.
+
+[Sidenote: And on the short story generally.]
+
+Before we do so, however, it may not be improper to point out that the
+short story undoubtedly holds--of itself--a peculiar and almost
+prerogative place in the history and morphology or the novel. After a
+long and rather unintelligible unpopularity in English--it never
+suffered in this way in French--it has been, according to the way of the
+world, a little over-exalted of late perhaps. It is undoubtedly a very
+difficult thing to do well, and it would be absurd to pretend that any
+of the foregoing examples is done thoroughly well. The Italian _novella_
+had to come and show the way.[79] But the short story, even of the
+rudimentary sort which we have been considering, cannot help being a
+powerful schoolmaster to bring folk to good practice in the larger kind.
+The faults and the merits of that kind, as such, appear in it after a
+fashion which can hardly fail to be instructive and suggestive. The
+faults so frequently charged against that "dear defunct" in our own
+tongue, the three-volume novel--the faults of long-windedness, of otiose
+padding, of unnecessary episodes, etc., are almost mechanically or
+mathematically impossible in the _nouvelle_. The long book provides
+pastime in its literal sense, and if it is not obvious in the other the
+accustomed reader, unless outraged by some extraordinary dulness or
+silences, goes on, partly like the Pickwickian horse because he can't
+well help it, and partly because he hopes that something _may_ turn up.
+In the case of the short he sees almost at once whether it is going to
+have any interest, and if there is none such apparent he throws it
+aside.
+
+Moreover, as in almost every other case, the shortness is appropriate to
+_exercise_; while the prose form does not encourage those terrible
+_chevilles_--repetitions of stock adjective and substantive and verb and
+phrase generally--which are so common in verse, and especially in
+octosyllabic verse. It is therefore in many ways healthy, and the space
+allotted to these early examples of it will not, it is hoped, seem to
+any impartial reader excessive.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[75] The position of "origin" assigned already to the sacred matter of
+the Saint's Life may perhaps be continued here as regards the Sermon. It
+was, as ought to be pretty generally known, the not ungenial habit of
+the mediaeval preacher to tell stories freely. We have them in Ælfric's
+and other English homilies long before there was any regular French
+prose; and we have, later, large and numerous collections of
+them--compiled more or less expressly for the use of the clergy--in
+Latin, English, and French. The Latin story is, in fact, very
+wide-ranging and sometimes quite of the novel (at least _nouvelle_)
+kind, as any one may see in Wright's _Latin Stories_, Percy Society,
+1842.
+
+[76] This is one, and one of the most glaring, of the _bêtises_ which at
+some times have been urged against Romance at large. They are not, as a
+matter of fact, very frequent; but their occurrence certainly does show
+the essentially uncritical character of the time.
+
+[77] For of course the knight did not tell the _whole_ story.
+
+[78] _I.e._ not sorry for having tried to kill him, but sorry that she
+had not done so.
+
+[79] In _prose_. For the very important part played by the home verse
+_fabliaux_ see next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ALLEGORY, FABLIAU, AND PROSE STORY OF COMMON LIFE
+
+
+[Sidenote: The connection with prose fiction of allegory.]
+
+It was shown in the last chapter that fiction, and even prose fiction,
+of very varied character began to develop itself in French during the
+thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By the fifteenth the development
+was very much greater, and the "disrhyming" of romances, the beginnings
+of which were very early, came to be a regular, not an occasional,
+process; while, by its latter part, verse had become not the usual, but
+the exceptional vehicle of romance, and prose romances of enormous
+length were popular. But earlier there had still been some obstacles in
+the way of the prose novel proper. It was the period of the rise and
+reign of Allegory, and France, preceptress of almost all Europe in most
+literary kinds, proved herself such in this with the unparalleled
+example of the _Roman de la Rose_. But the _Roman de la Rose_ was itself
+in verse--the earlier part of it at least in real poetry--and most of
+its innumerable imitations were in verse likewise. Moreover, though
+France again had been the first to receive and to turn to use the riches
+of Eastern apologue, the most famous example of which is _The Seven Wise
+Masters_, these rather serious matters do not seem to have especially
+commended themselves to the French people. The place of composition of
+the most famous of all, the _Gesta Romanorum_, has been fairly settled
+to be England, though the original language of composition is not likely
+to have been other than Latin. At any rate, the style of serious
+allegory, in prose which should also be literature, never really caught
+hold of the French taste.
+
+Comic tale-telling, on the other hand, was germane to the very soul of
+the race, and had shown itself in _chanson_ and _roman_ episodes at a
+very early date. But it had been so abundantly, and in so popular a
+manner, associated with verse as a vehicle in those pieces, in the great
+beast-epic of _Renart_, and above all in the _fabliaux_ and in the
+earliest farces, that the connection was hard to separate. None of the
+stories discussed in the last chapter has, it may be noticed, the least
+comic touch or turn.
+
+[Sidenote: And of the _fabliaux_.]
+
+As we go on we must disengage ourselves more and more (though with
+occasional returns to it) from attention to verse; and the two great
+compositions in that form, the _Romance of the Rose_ and the _Story of
+the Fox_, especially the former, hardly require much writing about to
+any educated person. They are indeed most strongly contrasted examples
+of two modes of tale-telling, both in a manner allegoric, but in other
+respects utterly different. The mere story of the _Rose_, apart from the
+dreamy or satiric digressions and developments of its two parts and the
+elaborate descriptions of the first, can be told in a page or two. An
+abstract of the various _Renart_ books, to give any idea of their real
+character, would, on the other hand, have to be nearly as long as the
+less spun-out versions themselves. But the verse _fabliaux_ can hardly
+be passed over so lightly. Many of them formed the actual bases of the
+prose _nouvelles_ that succeeded them; not a few have found repeated
+presentation in literature; and, above all, they deserve the immense
+praise of having deliberately introduced ordinary life, and not
+conventionalised manners, into literary treatment. We have taken some
+pains to point out touches of that life which are observable in Saint's
+Life and Romance, in _chanson_ and early prose tale. But here the case
+is altered. Almost everything is real; a good deal is what is called, in
+one of the senses of a rather misused word, downright "realism."
+
+Few people who have ever heard of the _fabliaux_ can need to be told
+that this realism in their case implies extreme freedom of treatment,
+extending very commonly to the undoubtedly coarse and not seldom to the
+merely dirty. There are some--most of them well known by modern
+imitations such as Leigh Hunt's "Palfrey"--which are quite guiltless in
+this respect; but the great majority deal with the usual comic farrago
+of satire on women, husbands, monks, and other stock subjects of
+raillery, all of which at the time invited "sculduddery." To translate
+some of the more amusing, one would require not merely Chaucerian
+licence of treatment but Chaucerian peculiarities of dialect in order to
+avoid mere vulgarity. Even Prior, who is our only modern English
+_fabliau_-writer of real literary merit--the work of people like Hanbury
+Williams and Hall Stevenson being mostly mere pornography--could hardly
+have managed such a piece as "Le Sot Chevalier"--a riotously "improper"
+but excessively funny example--without running the risk of losing that
+recommendation of being "a lady's book" with which Johnson rather
+capriciously tempered his more general undervaluation. Sometimes, on the
+other hand, the joke is trivial enough, as in the English-French
+word-play of _anel_ for _agnel_ (or _-neau_), which substitutes "donkey"
+for "lamb"; or, in the other, on the comparison of a proper name,
+"Estula," with its component syllables "es tu là?" But the important
+point on the whole is that, proper or improper, romantic or trivial,
+they all exhibit a constant improvement in the mere art of telling; in
+discarding of the stock phrases, the long-winded speeches, and the
+general _paraphernalia_ of verse; in sticking and leading up smartly to
+the point; in coining sharp, lively phrase; in the co-ordination of
+incident and the excision of superfluities. Often they passed without
+difficulty into direct dramatic presentation in short farces. But on the
+whole their obvious destiny was to be "unrhymed" and to make their
+appearance in the famous form of the _nouvelle_ or _novella_, in regard
+to which it is hard to say whether Italy was most indebted to France
+for substance, or France to Italy for form.
+
+[Sidenote: The rise of the _nouvelle_ itself.]
+
+It was not, however, merely the intense conservatism of the Middle Ages
+as to literary form which kept back the prose _nouvelle_ to such an
+extent that, as we have seen, only a few examples survive from the two
+whole centuries between 1200 and 1400, while not one of these is of the
+kind most characteristic ever since, or at least until quite recent
+days, of French tale-telling. The French octosyllabic couplet, in which
+the _fabliaux_ were without exception or with hardly an exception
+composed, can, in a long story, become very tiresome because of its want
+of weight and grasp, and the temptations it offers to a weak rhymester
+to stuff it with endless tags. But for a short tale in deft hands it can
+apply its lightness in the best fashion, and put its points with no lack
+of sting. The _fabliau_-writer or reciter was not required--one imagines
+that he would have found scant audiences if he had tried it--to spin a
+long yarn; he had got to come to his jokes and his business pretty
+rapidly; and, as La Fontaine has shown to thousands who have never
+known--perhaps have never heard of--his early masters, he had an
+instrument which would answer to his desires perfectly if only he knew
+how to finger it.
+
+At the same time, both the lover of poetry and the lover of tale must
+acknowledge that, though alliance between them is not in the least an
+unholy one, and has produced great and charming children, the best of
+the poetry is always a sort of extra bonus or solace to the tale, and
+the tale not unfrequently seems as if it could get on better without the
+poetry. The one can only aspire somewhat irrelevantly; the other can
+never attain quite its full development. So it was no ill day when the
+prose _nouvelle_ came to its own in France.
+
+[Sidenote: _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles._]
+
+The first remarkable collection was the famous _Cent Nouvelles
+Nouvelles_, traditionally attributed to Louis XI. when Dauphin and an
+exile in Brabant, with the assistance of friends and courtiers, but
+more recently selected by critics that way minded as part of the baggage
+they have "commandeered" for Antoine de la Salle. The question of
+authorship is of scarcely the slightest importance to us; though the
+point last mentioned is worth mentioning, because we shall have to
+notice the favoured candidate in this history again. There are certainly
+some of the hundred that he might have written.
+
+In the careless way in which literary history used to be dealt with, the
+_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ were held to be mere imitation of the
+_Decameron_ and other Italian things. It is, of course, much more than
+probable that the Italian _novella_ had not a little to do with the
+precipitation of the French _nouvelle_ from its state of solution in the
+_fabliau_. But the person or persons who, in imitating the _Decameron_,
+produced the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ had a great deal more to do--and
+did a great deal less--than this mere imitation of their original. As
+for a group of included tales, the already-mentioned _Seven Wise
+Masters_[80] was known in France much before Boccaccio's time. The title
+was indeed admittedly Italian, but such an obvious one as to require no
+positive borrowing, and there is in the French book no story-framework
+like that of the plague and the country-house visit; no cheerful
+personalities like Fiammetta or Dioneo make not merely the intervals but
+the stories themselves alive with a special interest. Above all, there
+is nothing like the extraordinary mixture of unity and variety--a pure
+gift of genius--which succeeds in making the _Decameron_ a real book as
+well as a bundle of narratives. Nor is there anything like the literary
+brilliancy of the actual style and handling.
+
+Nevertheless, _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ is a book of great interest
+and value, despite serious defects due to its time generally and to its
+place in the history of fiction in particular. Its obscenity, on which
+even Sir Walter Scott, the least censorious or prudish-prurient of men,
+and with Southey, the great witness against false squeamishness, has
+been severe,[81] is unfortunately undeniable. But it is to be doubted
+whether Sir Walter knew much of the _fabliaux_; if he had he would have
+seen first, that this sort of thing had become an almost indispensable
+fashion in the short story, and secondly, that there is here
+considerable improvement on the _fabliaux_ themselves, there being much
+less mere schoolboy crudity of dirty detail and phrase, though the
+situations may remain the same. It suffers occasionally from the heavy
+and rhetorical style which beset all European literature (except
+Italian, which itself did not wholly escape) in the fifteenth century.
+But still one can see in it that improvement of narrative method and
+diction which has been referred to: and occasionally, amid the crowd of
+tricky wives, tricked husbands, too obliging and too hardly treated
+chambermaids, ribald priests and monks, and the like, one comes across
+quite different things and persons, which are, as the phrase goes,
+almost startlingly modern, with a mixture of the _un_modern heightening
+the appeal. One of the most striking of these--not very likely to be
+detected or suspected by a careless reader under its sub-title of "La
+Demoiselle Cavalière," and by no means fully summarised in the quaint
+short argument which is in all cases subjoined--may be briefly analysed.
+
+[Sidenote: Analysis of "La Demoiselle Cavalière".]
+
+In one of the great baronial households of Brabant there lived, after
+the usual condition of gentle servitude, a youth named Gerard, who fell
+in love, after quite honourable and seemly fashion, with Katherine, the
+daughter of the house--a fact which, naturally, they thought known only
+to themselves, when, as naturally, everybody in the Court had become
+aware of it. "For the better prevention of scandal," an immediate
+marriage being apparently out of the question because of Gerard's
+inferiority in rank to his mistress, it is decided by the intervention
+of friends that Gerard shall take his leave of the Brabantine "family."
+There is a parting of the most laudable kind, in which Katherine
+bestows on her lover a ring, and a pledge that she will never marry any
+one else, and he responds suitably. Then he sets out, and on arriving at
+Bar has no difficulty in establishing himself in another great
+household. Katherine meanwhile is beset with suitors of the best rank
+and fortune; but will have nothing to say to any of them, till one day
+comes the formidable moment when a mediaeval father determines that his
+daughter shall marry a certain person, will she nill she. But if
+mediaeval fatherhood was arbitrary, mediaeval religion was supreme, and
+a demand to go on pilgrimage before an important change of life could
+hardly be refused. In fact, the parents, taking the proposal as a mere
+preliminary of obedience, consent joyfully, and offer a splendid suite
+of knights and damsels, "Nous lui baillerons ung tel gentilhomme et une
+telle demoiselle, Ysabeau et Marguerite et Jehanneton." But "no," says
+Mistress Katherine sagely. The road to St. Nicolas of Warengeville is
+not too safe for people travelling with a costly outfit and a train of
+women. Let her, dressed as a man, and a bastard uncle of hers (who is
+evidently the "Will Wimble" of the house) go quietly on little horses,
+and it will save time, trouble, money, and danger. This the innocent
+parents consider to show "great sense and good will," and the pair start
+in German dress--Katherine as master, the uncle as man,--comfortably,
+too, as one may imagine (for uncles and nieces generally get on well
+together, and the bend sinister need do no harm). They accomplish their
+pilgrimage (a touch worth noticing in Katherine's character), and then
+only does she reveal her plan to her companion. She tells him, not
+without a little bribery, that she wants to go and see Gerard _en
+Barrois_, and to stay there for a short time; but he is to have no doubt
+of her keeping her honour safe. He consents, partly with an eye to the
+future main chance (for she is her father's sole heir), and partly
+because _elle est si bonne qu'il n'y fault guère guet sur elle_.
+Katherine, taking the name of Conrad, finds the place, presents herself
+to the _maître_ _d'ostel_, an ancient squire, as desirous of
+entertainment or _re_tainment, and is very handsomely received. After
+dinner and due service done to the master, the old squire having heard
+that Katherine--Conrad--is of Brabant, naturally introduces her
+countryman Gerard to her. He does not in the least recognise her, and
+what strikes her as stranger, neither during their own dinner nor after
+says a word about Brabant itself. Conrad is regularly admitted to
+Monseigneur's service, and, as a countryman, is to share Gerard's room.
+They are perfectly good friends, go to see their horses together, etc.,
+but still the formerly passionate lover says not a word of Brabant or
+his Brabançonian love, and poor Katherine concludes that she has been
+"put with forgotten sins"--not a bad phrase, though it might be
+misconstrued. Being, however, as has been already seen, both a plucky
+girl and a clever one, she determines to carry her part through. At
+last, when they go to their respective couches in the same chamber, she
+herself faces the subject, and asks him if he knows any persons in
+Brabant. "Oh yes." "Does he know" her own father, his former master?
+"Yes." "They say," said she, "that there are pretty girls there: did you
+not know any?" "Precious few," quoth he, "and I cared nothing about
+them. Do let me go to sleep! I am dead tired." "What!" said she, "can
+you sleep when there is talk of pretty girls? _You_ are not much of a
+lover." But he slept "like a pig."
+
+Nevertheless, Katherine does not give up hope, though the next day
+things are much the same, Gerard talking of nothing but hounds and
+hawks, Conrad of pretty girls. At last the visitor declares that he
+[she] does not care for the Barrois, and will go back to Brabant. "Why?"
+says Gerard, "what better hunting, etc., can you get there than here?"
+"It has nothing," says Conrad, "like the women of Brabant," adding, in
+reply to a jest of his, an ambiguous declaration that she is actually in
+love. "Then why did you leave her?" says Gerard--about the first
+sensible word he has uttered. She makes a fiery answer as to Love
+sometimes banishing from his servants all sense and reason. But for the
+time the subject again drops. It is, however, reopened at night, and
+some small pity comes on one for the recreant Gerard, inasmuch as she
+keeps him awake by wailing about her love. At last she "draws" the
+sluggard to some extent. "Has not _he_ been in love, and does not he
+know all about it? But he was never such a fool as Conrad, and he is
+sure that Conrad's lady is not such either." Another try, and she gets
+the acknowledgment of treason out of him. He tells her (what she knows
+too well) how he loved a noble damsel in Brabant and had to leave her,
+and it really annoyed him for a few days (it is good to imagine
+Katherine's face, even in the dark, at this), though of course he never
+lost his appetite or committed any folly of that sort. But he knew his
+Ovid (he tells her), and as soon as he came to Bar he made love to a
+pretty girl there who was quite amiable to him, and now he never thinks
+of the other. There is more talk, and Katherine insists that he shall
+introduce her to his new lady, that she may try this remedy of
+counter-love. He consents with perfect nonchalance, and is at last
+allowed to go to sleep. No details are given of the conversation with
+the rival,[82] except the bitterness of Katherine's heart at the fact,
+and at seeing the ring she had given to Gerard on his hand. This she
+actually has the pluck to play with, and, securing it, to slip on her
+own. But the man being obviously past praying or caring for, she
+arranges with her uncle to depart early in the morning, writes a letter
+telling Gerard of the whole thing and renouncing him, passes the night
+silently, leaves the letter, rises quietly and early, and departs, yet
+"weeping tenderly," not for the man, but for her own lost love. The pair
+reach home safely, and says the tale-teller, with an agreeable dryness
+often found here,[83] "There were some who asked them the adventures of
+their journey, but whatever they answered they did not boast of the
+chief one." The conclusion is so spirited and at the very end so scenic
+and even modern (or, much better, universal), that it must be given in
+direct translation, with a few _chevilles_ (or pieces of padding) left
+out.
+
+     As for Gerard, when he woke and found his companion gone, he
+     thought it must be late, jumped up in haste, and seized his
+     jerkin: but, as he thrust his hand in one of the sleeves,
+     there dropped out a letter which surprised him, for he
+     certainly did not remember having put any there. He picked
+     it up and saw it subscribed "To the disloyal Gerard." If he
+     was startled before he was more so now: but he opened it at
+     last, and saw the signature "Katherine, surnamed Conrad."
+     Even yet he knew not what to think of it: but as he read the
+     blood rose to his face and his heart fluttered, and his
+     whole manner was changed. Still, he read it through, and
+     learnt how his disloyalty had come to the knowledge of her
+     who had wished him so well; and that not at second hand, but
+     from himself to herself; what trouble she had taken to find
+     him; and how (which stung him most) he had slept three
+     nights in her company after all. [_After thinking some time
+     he decides to follow her, and arrives in Brabant on the very
+     day of her marriage: for she has, in the circumstances, kept
+     her word to her parents._] Then he tried to go up to her and
+     salute her, and make some wretched excuse for his fault. But
+     he was not allowed, for she turned her shoulder on him, and
+     he could never manage to speak to her all through the day.
+     He even stepped forward once to lead her out to dance, but
+     she refused him flatly before all the company, many of whom
+     heard her. And immediately afterwards another gentleman
+     came, who bade the minstrels strike up, and she stepped down
+     from her dais in full view of Gerard and went to dance with
+     him. And so did the disloyal lover lose his lady.
+
+Now whether this, as the book asserts and as is not at all improbable,
+is a true story or not, cannot matter to any sensible person one
+farthing. What does matter is that it is a by no means badly told story,
+that it resorts to no illegitimate sources or seasonings of interest,
+and that it offers opportunities for amplification and "diversity of
+administration" to almost any extent. One can fancy it told, at much
+greater length and with more or less adjustment to different times, by
+great novelists of the most widely varying classes--by Scott and by
+Dumas, by Charles Reade and by George Meredith, to mention no living
+writer, as might easily be done. Both hero and heroine have more
+character between them than you could extract out of fifty of the usual
+_nouvelles_, and each lends him or herself to endless further
+development. Not a few of the separate scenes--the good parents fussing
+over their daughter's intended cavalcade and her thrifty and ingenious
+objections; the journey of the uncle and niece (any of the first three
+of the great novelists mentioned above would have made chapters of
+this); the dramatic and risky passages at the castle _en Barrois_; the
+contrast of Katherine's passion and Gerard's sluggishness; and the
+fashion in which this latter at once brings on the lout's defeat and
+saves the lady from danger at his hands--all this is novel-matter of
+almost the first class as regards incident, with no lack of
+character-openings to boot. Nor could anybody want a better "curtain"
+than the falling back of the scorned and baffled false lover, the
+concert of the minstrels, and Katherine's stately stepping down the dais
+to complete the insult by dancing with another.
+
+[Sidenote: The interest of _named_ personages.]
+
+One more general point may be noticed in connection with the superiority
+of this story, and that is the accession of interest, at first sight
+trivial but really important, which comes from the _naming_ of the
+personages. Both in the earlier _fabliaux_ and in these _Nouvelles_
+themselves, by far the larger number of the actors are simply called by
+class-names--a "knight," a "damsel," a "merchant and his wife," a
+"priest," a "varlet." It may seem childish to allow the mere addition of
+a couple of names like Gerard and Katherine to make this difference of
+interest, but the fact is that there is a good deal of childishness in
+human nature, and especially in the enjoyment of story.[84] Only by
+very slow degrees were writers of fiction to learn the great difference
+that small matters of this kind make, and how the mere "anecdote," the
+dry argument or abstract of incident, can be amplified, varied,
+transformed from a remainder biscuit to an abundant and almost
+inexhaustible feast, by touches of individual character, setting of
+interiors, details of conversation, description, nomenclature, and what
+not. Quite early, as we saw in the case of the _St. Alexis_, persons of
+narrative gift stumbled upon things of the kind; but it was only after
+long delays, and hints of many half-conscious kinds, that they became
+part of recognised craft. Even with such a master of that craft as
+Boccaccio before them, not all the Italian novelists could catch the
+pattern; and the French, perhaps naturally enough, were slower still.
+
+It must be remembered, in judging the fifteenth-century French tale,
+that just as it was to some extent hampered by the long continuing
+popularity of the verse _fabliau_ on the one hand, so it was, as we may
+say, "bled" on the other by the growing popularity of the farce, which
+consists of exactly the same material as the _fabliaux_ and the
+_nouvelles_ themselves, with the additional liveliness of voice and
+action. These later additions imposed not the smallest restraint on the
+license which had characterised and was to characterise the plain verse
+and prose forms,[85] and no doubt the result was all the more welcome to
+the taste of the time. But for that very reason the appetites and
+tastes, which could glut themselves with the full dramatic
+representation, might care less for the mere narrative, on the famous
+principle of _segnius irritant_. Nor was the political state of France
+during the time very favourable to letters. There are, however, two
+separate fifteenth-century stories which deserve notice. One of them is
+the rather famous, though probably not widely read, _Petit Jehan de
+Saintré_ of the already mentioned Antoine de la Salle, a certain work
+of his this time. The other is the pleasant, though to Englishmen
+intentionally uncomplimentary, _Jehan de Paris_ of an unknown writer. La
+Salle's book must belong to the later middle of the century, though, if
+he died in or about 1461, not to a very late middle. _Jehan de Paris_
+has been put by M. de Montaiglon nearer the close.
+
+[Sidenote: _Petit Jehan de Saintré._]
+
+The history of "little John of Saintré and the Lady of the Beautiful
+Cousins"[86] has not struck all judges, even all English judges,[87] in
+the same way. Some have thought it mawkish, rhetorical, clumsily
+imitative of the manners of dead chivalry, and the like. Others,
+admitting it to be a late and "literary" presentation of the stately
+society it describes, rank it much higher as such. Its author was a
+bitter enough satirist if he wrote, as he most probably did, the famous
+_Quinze Joyes de Mariage_, one of the most unmitigated pieces of
+unsweetened irony--next to _A Tale of a Tub_ and _Jonathan Wild_--to be
+found in literature; but not couched in narrative form. The same quality
+appears of course in the still more famous farce of _Pathelin_, which
+few good judges deny very stoutly to him, though there is little
+positive evidence. In the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ again, as has been
+said, he certainly had a hand, and possibly a great hand, as well as
+perhaps elsewhere. The satiric touch appears even in _Petit Jehan_
+itself; for, after all the gracious courtship of the earlier part, the
+_dame des belles Cousines_, during an absence of her lover on service,
+falls a by no means, as it would seem, very reluctant victim to the
+vulgar viciousness of a rich churchman, just like the innominatas of the
+_nouvelles_ themselves. But the earlier part _is_ gracious--a word
+specifically and intensively applicable to it. It may be a little
+unreal; does not the secondary form and sense which has been fastened
+upon reality--"realism"--show that, in the opinion of many people at
+least, reality is _not_ gracious? The Foozles of this world who "despise
+all your kickshaws," the Dry-as-dusts who point out--not in the least
+seeing the real drift of their argument--that the fifteenth century was,
+in the greater part of Europe if not the whole, at a new point of morals
+and manners, may urge these things. But the best part of _Petit Jehan_
+remains a gracious sort of dream for gracious dreamers--a picture of a
+kind of Utopia of Feminism, when Feminism did not mean votes or anything
+foolish, but only adoration of the adorable.
+
+[Sidenote: _Jehan de Paris._]
+
+It would be impossible to find or even to imagine anything more
+different than the not much later _Jehan de Paris_, an evident
+folk-tale[88] of uncertain origin, which very quickly became a popular
+chapbook and lasted long in that condition. Although we Englishmen
+provide the fun, he is certainly no Englishman who resents the fact or
+fails to enjoy the result, not to mention that we "could tell them tales
+with other endings." It is, for instance, not quite historically
+demonstrable that in crossing a river many English horsemen would be
+likely to be drowned, while all the French cavaliers got safe through;
+nor that, in scouring a country, the Frenchmen would score all the game
+and all the best beasts and poultry, while the English bag would consist
+of starvelings and offal. But no matter for that. The actual tale tells
+(with the agreeable introductory "How," which has not yet lost its zest
+for the right palates in chapter-headings) the story of a King and Queen
+of Spain who have, in recompense for help given them against turbulent
+barons, contracted their daughter to the King of France for his son; how
+they forgot this later, and betrothed her to the King of England, and
+how that King set out with his train, through France itself, to fetch
+his bride. As soon as the Dauphin (now king, for his father is dead)
+hears of their coming, he disguises himself under the name of John of
+Paris, with a splendid train of followers, much more gorgeous than the
+English (the "foggy islander" of course cannot make this out), and sets
+of _quiproquos_ follow, in each of which the Englishman is outdone and
+baffled generally, till at last "John of Paris" enters Burgos in state,
+reveals himself, and carries off the Englishman's bride, with the
+natural effect of making him _bien marry et courroucé_, though no fight
+comes off.
+
+The tale is smartly and succinctly told (there are not many more than a
+hundred of the small-sized and large-printed pages of the _Collection
+Jannet-Picard_), and there is a zest and _verve_ about it which ought to
+please any mood that is for the time in harmony with the much talked of
+Comic Spirit. But it certainly does not lose attraction, and it as
+certainly does not fail to lend some, when it is considered side by side
+with the other "John," especially if both are again compared with the
+certainly not earlier and probably later "Prose Romances" in English, to
+which that rather ambitious title was given by Mr. Thoms. There is
+nothing in these in the very remotest degree resembling _Jehan de
+Saintré_: you must get on to the _Arcadia_ or at least to _Euphues_
+before you come anywhere near that. There is, on the other hand, in our
+stuff, a sort of distant community of spirit with _Jehan de Paris_; but
+it works in an altogether lower and less imaginative sphere and fashion;
+no sense of art being present, and very little of craft. It is
+astonishing that a language which had had, if only in verse, such an
+unsurpassable tale-teller as Chaucer, should have been so backward. But
+then the whole conditions of the fifteenth century, especially in
+England, become only the more puzzling the longer one studies them. Even
+in France, it will be observed, the output of Tale is by no means
+large.[89] Nor shall we find it very greatly increased even in the next
+age, though there is one masterpiece in quantity as well as quality.
+But, for our purpose, the _Cent Nouvelles_ and the two separate pieces
+just discussed continue, and in more and more striking manner, to show
+the vast possibilities when the way shall have been clearly found and
+the feet of the wayfarers firmly set in it.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[80] Prose as well as verse.
+
+[81] In the very delightful imaginative introduction to _Quentin
+Durward_.
+
+[82] This is one of the points which a modern novelist would certainly
+have seized; but whether to advantage or not is another question.
+
+[83] And of course recognised by the "Antonians" as peculiar to La
+Salle.
+
+[84] Only contrast "_Tom, Tom_, the piper's son," with "_There was once_
+a piper's son," or think how comparatively uninteresting the enormities
+of another hero or not-hero would have been if he had been anonymous
+instead of being called "Georgy-Porgy Pudding-and-Pie!" ["Puddenum" is,
+or used to be, the preferred if corrupt nursery form.] In more elaborate
+and adorned narrative the influence, not merely of the name but of the
+beautiful name, comes in, and that of the name itself remains. In that
+tragic story of Ludlow Castle which was given above (Chap. iv. pp.
+84-6), something, for the present writer at least, would have been lost
+if the traitor had been merely "a knight" instead of Sir Ernault Lisle
+and the victim merely "a damsel" instead of Marion de la Brière. And
+would the _bocca bacciata_ of Alaciel itself be as gracious if it was
+merely anybody's?
+
+[85] The amazing farce-insets of Lyndsay's _Satire of the Three Estates_
+could be paralleled, and were no doubt suggested, by French farces of
+older date.
+
+[86] Nobody seems to be entirely certain what this odd title means:
+though there have been some obvious and some far-fetched guesses. But it
+has, like other _rhétoriqueur_ names of 1450-1550, such as "Traverser of
+Perilous Ways" and the like, a kind of fantastic attraction for some
+people.
+
+[87] If I remember rightly, my friend the late R. L. Stevenson was wont
+to abuse it.
+
+[88] As such, the substance is found in other languages. But the French
+itself has been traced by some to an earlier _roman d'aventure_, _Blonde
+d'Oxford_, in which an English heiress is carried off by a French
+squire.
+
+[89] Perhaps one should guard against a possible repetition of a not
+uncommon critical mistake--that of inferring ignorance from absence of
+mention. I am quite aware that no exhaustive catalogue of known French
+stories in prose has been given; and the failure to supplement a former
+glance at the late prose versions of romance is intentional. They have
+nothing new in romance-, still less in novel-_character_ for us. The
+_Bibliothèque Elzévirienne_ volumes have been dwelt upon, not as a
+_corpus_, but because they appear to represent, without any unfair
+manipulation or "window-dressing," the kind at the time with a
+remarkable combination of interest both individual and contrasted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RABELAIS
+
+
+[Sidenote: The anonymity, or at least impersonality, of authorship up to
+this point.]
+
+Although--as it is hoped the foregoing chapters may have shown--the
+amount of energy and of talent, thrown into the department of French
+fiction, had from almost the earliest times been remarkably great;
+although French, if not France, had been the mother of almost all
+literatures in things fictitious, it can hardly be said that any writer
+of undeniable genius, entitling him to the first class in the Art of
+Letters, had shown himself therein. A hundred _chansons de geste_ and as
+many romances _d'aventures_ had displayed dispersed talent of a very
+high kind, and in the best of them, as the present writer has tried to
+point out, a very "extensive assortment" of the various attractions of
+the novel had from time to time made its appearance. But this again had
+been done "dispersedly," as the Shakespearean stage-direction has it.
+The story is sometimes well told, but the telling is constantly
+interrupted; the great art of novel-conversation is, as yet, almost
+unborn; the descriptions, though sometimes very striking, as in the case
+of those given from _Partenopeus_--the fatal revelation of Melior's
+charms and the galloping of the maddened palfrey along the seashore,
+with the dark monster-haunted wood behind and the bright moonlit sea and
+galley in front--are more often stock and lifeless; while, above all,
+the characters are rarely more than sketched, if even that. The one
+exception--the great Arthurian history, as liberated from its
+Graal-legend swaddling clothes, and its kite-and-crow battles with
+Saxons and rival knights, but retaining the mystical motive of the
+Graal-search itself and the adventures of Lancelot and other knights;
+combining all this into a single story, and storing it with incident for
+a time, and bringing it to a full and final tragic close by the loves of
+Lancelot himself and Guinevere--this great achievement, it has been
+frankly confessed, is so much muddled and distracted with episode which
+becomes positive digression, that some have even dismissed its
+pretensions to be a whole. Even those who reject this dismissal are not
+at one as to any single author of the conception, still less of the
+execution. The present writer has stated his humble, but ever more and
+more firm conviction that Chrestien did not do it and could not have
+done it; others of more note, perhaps of closer acquaintance with MS.
+sources, but also perhaps not uniting knowledge of the subject with more
+experience in general literary criticism and in special study of the
+Novel, will not allow Mapes to have done it.
+
+The _Roman de la Rose_, beautiful as is its earlier part and ingenious
+as is (sometimes) its later, is, as a _story_, of the thinnest kind. The
+_Roman de Renart_ is a vast collection of small stories of a special
+class, and the _Fabliaux_ are almost a vaster collection (if you do not
+exclude the "waterings out" of _Renart_) of kinds more general. There is
+abundance of amusement and some charm; but nowhere are we much beyond
+very simple forms of fiction itself. None of the writers of _nouvelles_,
+except Antoine de la Salle, can be said to be a known personality.
+
+[Sidenote: Rabelais unquestionably the first very great known writer.]
+
+There has always been a good deal of controversy about Rabelais, not all
+of which perhaps can we escape, though it certainly will not be invited,
+and we have no very extensive knowledge of his life. But we have some:
+and that, as a man of genius, he is superior to any single person named
+and known in earlier French literature, can hardly be contested by any
+one who is neither a silly paradoxer nor a mere dullard, nor affected by
+some extra-literary prejudice--religious, moral, or whatever it may be.
+But perhaps not every one who would admit the greatness of Master
+Francis as a man of letters, his possession not merely of consummate
+wit, but of that precious thing, so much rarer in French, actual humour;
+his wonderful influence on the future word-book and phrase-book of his
+own language, nay, not every one who would go almost the whole length of
+the most uncompromising Pantagruelist, and would allow him profound
+wisdom, high aspirations for humanity, something of a complete
+world-philosophy--would at once admit him as a very great novelist. For
+my own part I have no hesitation in doing so, and to make the admission
+good must be the object of this chapter.
+
+[Sidenote: But the first great novelist?]
+
+It may almost be said that his very excellence in this way has "stood in
+its own light." The readableness of Rabelais is extraordinary. The
+present writer, after for years making of him almost an Addison
+according to Johnson's prescription, fell, by mere accident and
+occupation with other matters, into a way of _not_ reading him, except
+for purposes of mere literary reference, during a long time. On three
+different occasions more recently, one ten or a dozen years ago, one six
+or seven, and the third for the purposes of this very book, he put
+himself again under the Master, and read him right through. It is
+difficult to imagine a severer test, and I am bound to confess (though I
+am not bound to specify) that in some, though not many, instances I have
+found famous and once favourite classics fail to stand it. Not so Master
+Francis. I do not think that I ever read him with greater interest than
+at this last time. Indeed I doubt whether I have ever felt the
+_catholicon_--the pervading virtue of his book--quite so strongly as I
+have in the days preceding that on which I write these words.
+
+[Sidenote: Some objections considered.]
+
+Of course Momus may find handles--he generally can. "You are suffering
+from morbid senile relapse into puerile enjoyment of indecency," he or
+Mrs. Momus (whom later ages have called Grundy) may be kind enough to
+say. "You were a member of the Rabelais Club of pleasant memory, and
+think it necessary to live up to your earlier profession." "You have
+said this in print before [I have not exactly done so] and are bound to
+stick to it," etc. etc. etc., down to that final, "You are a bad critic,
+and it doesn't matter what you say," which certainly, in a sense, does
+leave nothing to be replied. But whether this is because the accused is
+guilty, or because the Court does not call upon him, is a question which
+one may leave to others.
+
+Laying it down, then, as a point of fact that Rabelais _has_ this
+curious "holding" quality, whence does he get it? As everybody ought to
+know, many good people, admitting the fact, have, as he would himself
+have said, gone about with lanterns to seek for out-of-the-way reasons
+and qualities; while some people, not so good, but also accepting the
+fact in a way, have grasped at the above-mentioned indecency itself for
+an explanation. This trick requires little effort to kick it into its
+native gutter. The greater proportion of the "_Indexable_" part of
+Rabelais is mere nastiness, which is only attractive to a very small
+minority of persons at any age, while to expert readers it is but a
+time-deodorised dunghill by the roadside, not beautiful, but negligible.
+Of the other part of this kind--the "naughty" part which is not nasty
+and may be somewhat nice--there is, when you come to consider it
+dispassionately, not really so very much, and it is seldom used in a
+seductive fashion. It may tickle, but it does not excite; may create
+laughter, but never passion or even desire. Therefore it cannot be this
+which "holds" any reader but a mere novice or a glutton for garbage.
+
+Less easily dismissible, but, it will seem, not less inadequate is the
+alleged "key"-interest of the book. Of course there are some people, and
+more than a person who wishes to think nobly of humanity might desire to
+find, who seem never to be tired of identifying Grandgousier, Gargantua,
+and Pantagruel himself with French kings to whom they bear not the
+slightest resemblance; of obliging us English by supposing us to be the
+Macréons (who seem to have been very respectable people, but who inhabit
+an island singularly unlike England in or anywhere near the time of
+Rabelais), and so on. But to a much larger number of persons--and one
+dares say to all true Pantagruelists--these interpretations are either
+things that the Master himself would have delighted to satirise, and
+would have satirised unsurpassably, or, at best, mere superfluities and
+supererogations. At any rate there is no possibility of finding in them
+the magic spell--the "Fastrada's ring," which binds youth and age alike
+to the unique "Alcofribas Nasier."
+
+One must, it is supposed, increase the dose of respect (though
+some people, in some cases, find it hard) when considering a further
+quality or property--the Riddle-attraction of Rabelais. This
+riddle-attraction--or attractions, for it might be better spoken of in a
+very large plural--is of course quite undeniable in itself. There are as
+many second intentions in the ordinary sense, apparently obvious in
+_Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_, as there can have been in the scholastic
+among the dietary of La Quinte, or of any possible Chimaera buzzing at
+greatest intensity in the extremest vacuum. On the other hand, some of
+us are haunted by the consideration, "Was there ever any human being
+more likely than François Rabelais to echo (with the slightest change)
+the words ascribed to Divinity in that famous piece which is taken, on
+good external and ultra-internal evidence, to be Swift's?
+
+    _I_ to such block-heads set my wit!
+    _I_ [_pose_] such fools! Go, go--you're bit."
+
+And there is not wanting, amongst us sceptics, a further section who are
+quite certain that a not inconsiderable proportion of the book is not
+allegory at all, but sheer "bamming," while others again would transfer
+the hackneyed death-bed saying from author to book, and say that the
+whole Chronicle is "a great perhaps."
+
+[Sidenote: And dismissed as affecting the general attraction of the
+book.]
+
+These things--or at least elaborate discussions of them--lie somewhat,
+though not so far as may at first seem, outside our proper business. It
+must, however, once more be evident, from the facts and very nature of
+the case, that the puzzles, the riddles, the allegories cannot
+constitute the main and, so to speak, "universal" part of the attraction
+of the book. They may be a seasoning to some, a solid cut-and-come-again
+to others, but certainly not to the majority. Even in _Gulliver_--the
+Great Book's almost, perhaps quite, as great descendant--these
+attractions, though more universal in appeal and less evasively
+presented, certainly do not hold any such position. The fact is that
+both Rabelais and Swift were consummate tellers of a story, and
+(especially if you take the _Polite Conversation_ into Swift's claim)
+consummate originators of the Novel or larger story, with more than
+"incidental" attraction itself. But we are not now busied with Swift.
+
+[Sidenote: Which lies, largely if not wholly, in its story-interest.]
+
+Not much serious objection will probably be taken to the place allotted
+to Master Francis as a tale-teller pure and simple, although it cannot
+be said that all his innumerable critics and commentators have laid
+sufficient stress on this. From the uncomfortable birth of Gargantua to
+the triumphant recessional scene from the Oracle of the Bottle, proofs
+are to be found in every book, every chapter almost, and indeed almost
+every page; and a little more detail may be given on this head later.
+But the presentation of Rabelais as a novelist-before-novels may cause
+more demur, and even suggest the presence of the now hopelessly
+discredited thing--paradox itself. Of course, if anybody requires
+regular plot as a necessary constituent, only paradox could contend for
+that. It _has_ been contended--and rightly enough--that in the general
+scheme and the two (or if you take in Grandgousier, three) generations
+of histories of the good giants, Rabelais is doing nothing more than
+parody--is, indeed, doing little more than simply follow the traditions
+of Romance--Amiles and Jourdains, Guy and Rembrun, and many others. But
+some of us regard plot as at best a full-dress garment, at the absence
+of which the good-natured God or Muse of fiction is quite willing to
+wink. Character, if seldom elaborately presented, except in the case of
+Panurge, is showered, in scraps and sketches, all over the book, and
+description and dialogue abound.
+
+[Sidenote: Contrast of the _Moyen de Parvenir_.]
+
+But it is not on such beggarly special pleading as this that the claim
+shall be founded. It must rest on the unceasing, or practically
+unceasing, impetus of story-interest which carries the reader through. A
+remarkably useful contrast-parallel in this respect, may be found in
+that strange book, the _Moyen de Parvenir_. I am of those who think that
+it had something to do with Rabelais, that there is some of his stuff in
+it, even that he may have actually planned something like it. But the
+"make-up" is not more inferior in merit to that of _Gargantua_ and
+_Pantagruel_ than it is different in kind. The _Moyen de Parvenir_ is
+full of separate stories of the _fabliau_ kind, often amusing and well
+told, though exceedingly gross as a rule. These stories are "set" in a
+framework of promiscuous conversation, in which a large number of great
+real persons, ancient and modern, and a smaller one of invented
+characters, or rather names, take part. Most of this, though not quite
+all, is mere _fatrasie_, if not even mere jargon: and though there are
+glimmerings of something more than sense, they are, with evident
+deliberation, enveloped in clouds of nonsense. The thing is not a whole
+at all, and the stories have as little to do with each other or with any
+general drift as if they were professedly--what they are practically--a
+bundle of _fabliaux_ or _nouvelles_. As always happens in such
+cases--and as the author, whether he was Béroalde or another, whether or
+not he worked on a canvas greater than he could fill, or tried to patch
+together things too good for him, no doubt intended--attempts have been
+made to interpret the puzzle here also; but they are quite obviously
+vain.
+
+[Sidenote: A general theme possible.]
+
+[Sidenote: A reference--to be taken up later--to the last Book.]
+
+Such a sentence, however, cannot be pronounced in any such degree or
+measure on the similar attempts in the case of _Gargantua_ and
+_Pantagruel_; for a reason which some readers may find unexpected. The
+unbroken vigour--unbroken even by the obstacles which it throws in its
+own way, like the Catalogue of the Library of Saint-Victor and the
+burlesque lists of adjectives, etc., which fill up whole chapters--with
+which the story or string of stories is carried on, may naturally
+suggest that there _is_ a story or at least a theme. It is a sort of
+quaint alteration or catachresis of _Possunt quia posse videntur_. There
+must be a general theme, because the writer is so obviously able to
+handle any theme he chooses. It may be wiser--it certainly seems so to
+the present writer--to disbelieve in anything but occasional
+sallies--episodes, as it were, or even digressions--of political,
+religious, moral, social and other satire. It is, on the other hand, a
+most important thing to admit the undoubted presence--now and then, and
+not unfrequently--of a deliberate dropping of the satiric and burlesque
+mask. This supplies the presentation of the serious, kindly, and human
+personality of the three princes (Grandgousier, Gargantua, and
+Pantagruel); this the schemes of education (giving so large a proportion
+of the small bulk of _not_-nonsense written on that matter). Above all,
+this permits, to one taste at least, the exquisite last Book,
+presentation of La Quinte and the fresh roses in her hand, the
+originality of which, not only in the whole book in one sense, but in
+the particular Book in the other, is, to that taste, and such
+argumentative powers as accompany it, an almost absolute proof of that
+Book's genuineness. For if it had been by another who, _un_like
+Rabelais, had a special tendency towards such graceful imagination, he
+could hardly have refrained from showing this elsewhere in this long
+book.[90]
+
+[Sidenote: Running survey of the whole.]
+
+But however this may be, it is certain that a critical reader,
+especially when he has reason to be startled by the external, if not
+actually extrinsic, oddities of and excesses of the book, will be
+justified in allowing--it may almost be said that he is likely to
+allow--the extraordinary volume of concatenated fictitious interest in
+the whole book or books. The usual and obvious "catenations" are indeed
+almost ostentatiously wanting. The absence of any real plot has been
+sufficiently commented on, with the temptations conferred by it to
+substitute a fancied unity of purpose. The birth, and what we may call
+the two educations, of Gargantua; the repetition, with sufficient
+differences, of the same plan in the opening of _Pantagruel_; the
+appearance of Panurge and the campaign against the Dipsodes; the great
+marriage debate; and the voyage to the Oracle of the Bottle, are
+connected merely in "chronicle" fashion. The character-links are hardly
+stronger, for though Friar John does play a more or less important part
+from almost the beginning to quite the end, Panurge, the most important
+and remarkable single figure, does not appear for a considerable time,
+and the rest are shadows. The scene is only in one or two chapters
+nominally placed in Nowhere; but as a whole it is Nowhere Else, or
+rather a bewildering mixture of topical assignments in a very small part
+of France, and allegorical or fantastic descriptions of a multitude of
+Utopias. And yet, once more, it _is_ a whole story. As you read it you
+almost forget what lies behind, you quite forget the breaches of
+continuity, and press on to what is before, almost as eagerly, if not
+quite in the same fashion, as if the incidents and the figures were not
+less exciting than those of _Vingt Ans Après_. Let us hope it may not be
+excessive to expend a few pages on a sketch of this strange story that
+is no story, with, it may be, some fragments of translation or
+paraphrase (for, as even his greatest translator, Urquhart, found, a
+certain amount of his own _Fay ce que voudras_ is necessary with
+Rabelais) here and there.
+
+[Sidenote: _Gargantua._]
+
+Master Francis does not exactly plunge into the middle of things; but he
+spends comparatively little time on the preliminaries of the ironical
+Prologue to the "very illustrious drinkers," on the traditionally
+necessary but equally ironical genealogy of the hero, on the elaborate
+verse _amphigouri_ of the _Fanfreluches Antidotées_, and on the mock
+scientific discussion of extraordinarily prolonged periods of pregnancy.
+Without these, however, he will not come to the stupendous banquet of
+tripe (properly washed down, and followed by pleasant revel on the
+"echoing green") which determined the advent of Gargantua into the
+world, which enabled Grandgousier, more fortunate than his son on a
+future occasion, to display his amiability as a husband and a father
+unchecked by any great sorrow, and which was, as it were, crowned and
+sealed by that son's first utterance--no miserable and ordinary infant's
+wail, but the stentorian barytone "_A boire!_" which rings through the
+book till it passes in the sharper, but not less delectable treble of
+"_Trinq!_" And then comes a brief piece, not narrative, but as
+characteristic perhaps of what we may call the ironical _moral_ of the
+narrative as any--a grave remonstrance with those who will not believe
+in _ceste estrange nativité_.
+
+[Sidenote: The birth and education.]
+
+     I doubt me ye believe not this strange birth assuredly. If
+     ye disbelieve, I care not; but a respectable man--a man of
+     good sense--_always_ believes what people tell him and what
+     he finds written. Does not Solomon say (Prov. xiv.), "The
+     innocent [simple] believeth every word" etc.? And St. Paul
+     (1 Cor. xiii.), "Charity believeth all things"? Why should
+     you _not_ believe it? "Because," says you, "there is no
+     probability[91] in it." I tell you that for this very and
+     only reason you ought to believe with a perfect faith. For
+     the Sorbonists say that faith is the evidence of things of
+     no probability.[92] Is it against our law or our faith?
+     against reason? against the Sacred Scriptures?[93] For my
+     part I can find nothing written in the Holy Bible which is
+     contrary thereto. But if the Will of God had been so, would
+     you say that He could not have done it? Oh for grace' sake
+     do not make a mess of your wits in such vain thoughts. For I
+     tell you that nothing is impossible with God.
+
+And Divinity being done with, the Classics and pure fantasy are drawn
+upon; the incredulous being finally knocked down by a citation from
+Pliny, and a polite request not to bother any more.
+
+This is, of course, the kind of passage which has been brought against
+Rabelais, as similar ones have been brought against Swift, to justify
+charges of impiety. But, again, it is not necessary to bother
+(_tabuster_) about that. Any one who cannot see that it is the foolish
+use of reverend things and not the things themselves that the satire
+hits, is hardly worth argument. But there is no doubt that this sort of
+mortar, framework, menstruum, canvas, or whatever way it may be best
+metaphored, helps the apparent continuity of the work marvellously,
+leaving, as it were, no rough edges or ill-mended joints. It is, to use
+an admirable phrase of Mr. Balfour's about a greater matter, "the
+logical glue which holds together and makes intelligible the
+multiplicity" of the narrative units, or perhaps instead of
+"intelligible" one should here say "appreciable."
+
+Sometimes the "glue" of ironic comment rather saturates these units of
+narrative than surrounds or interjoins them, and this is the case with
+what follows. The infantine peculiarities of Gargantua; his dress and
+the mystery of its blue and white colours (the blue of heaven and the
+white of the joy of earth); how his governesses and he played together;
+what smart answers he made; how he became early both a poet and an
+experimental philosopher--all this is recounted with a marvellous
+mixture of wisdom and burlesque, though sometimes, no doubt, with rather
+too much of _haut goût_ seasoning. Then comes the, in Renaissance books,
+inevitable "Education" section, and it has been already noted briefly
+how different this is from most of its group (the corresponding part of
+_Euphues_ may be suggested for comparison). Even Rabelais does not
+escape the main danger--he neglects a little to listen to the wisest
+voice, "Can't you let him alone?" But the contrasts in the case of
+Gargantua, the general tenor (that good prince profiting by his own
+experience for his son's benefit) in that of Pantagruel, are not too
+"improving," and are made by their historian's "own sauce" exceedingly
+piquant. Much as has been written on the subject, it is not easy to be
+quite certain how far the "Old" Learning was fairly treated by the
+"New." Rabelais and Erasmus and the authors of the _Epistolae Obscurorum
+Virorum_ are such a tremendous overmatch for any one on the other side,
+that the most judicial as well as judicious of critics must be rather
+puzzled as to the real merits of the case. But luckily there is no need
+to decide. Enjoyment, not decision, is the point, and there is no
+difficulty in _that_. How Gargantua was transferred from the learned but
+somewhat, as the vulgar would say, "stick-in-the-mud" tutorship of
+Master Thubal Holofernes, who spent eighteen years in reading _De Modis
+Significandi_ with his pupil, and Master Jobelin Bridé, who has "become
+a name"--not exactly of honour; how he was transferred to the less
+antiquated guidance of Ponocrates, and set out for Paris on the famous
+dappled mare, whose exploits in field and town were so alarming, and
+who had the bells of Notre Dame hung round her neck, till they were
+replaced rather after than because of the remonstrance of Master Janotus
+de Bragmardo; how for a time, and under Sorbonic direction, he wasted
+that time in short and useless study, with long intervals of
+card-playing, sleeping, etc. etc., and of course a great deal of eating
+and drinking, "not as he ought and as he ought not"--all this leads up
+to the moment when the sage Ponocrates takes him again in hand, and
+institutes a strenuous drill in manners, studies, manly exercises, and
+the like, ending with one of those extraordinary flashes of perfect
+style and noble meaning which it pleases Rabelais to emit from what some
+call his "dunghill" and others his "marine-store."
+
+     Also they prayed to God the Creator, adoring Him, and
+     solemnly repledging to Him their faith, and glorifying Him
+     for His boundless goodness; while, giving Him thanks for all
+     time past, they commended themselves to His divine mercy for
+     all the future. This done, they turned to their rest.
+
+[Sidenote: The war.]
+
+It is only after this serious training that the first important division
+of what may be called the action begins--the "War of the Cakes," in
+which certain outrageous bakers, subjects of King Picrochole of Lerné,
+first refuse the custom of the good Grandgousier's shepherds, and then
+violently assault them, the incident being turned by the choleric
+monarch into a _casus belli_ against the peaceful one. Invasion, the
+early triumph of the aggressor, the triumphant appearance of the
+invincible Friar John, and the complete turning of the tables by the
+advent of Gargantua and his terrible mare, follow each other in rapid
+and brilliant telling, and perhaps no parts of the book are better
+known. The extraordinary felicity with which Rabelaisian irony--here
+kept in quieter but intenser activity than almost anywhere else--seizes
+and renders the common causes, excuses, manners, etc., of war can never
+have escaped competent readers; but it must have struck more persons of
+late than perhaps at any former time. It would be impertinent to
+particularise largely; but if the famous adaptation and amplification of
+the old Pyrrhus story in the counsel of Spadassin and Merdaille to
+Picrochole were printed in small type as the centre of a fathom-square
+sheet, the whole margin could be more than filled with extracts, from
+German books and newspapers, of advice to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Nor is
+there anything, in literature touching history, where irony has bitten
+more deeply and lastingly into Life and Time than the brief record of
+Picrochole's latter days after his downfall.
+
+     He was informed by an old hag that his kingdom would be
+     restored to him at the coming of the Cocqsigrues: since then
+     it is not certainly known what has become of him. However, I
+     have been told that he now works for his poor living at
+     Lyons, and is as choleric as ever. And always he bemoans
+     himself to strangers about the Cocqsigrues--yet with a
+     certain hope, according to the old woman's prophecy, that at
+     their coming he will be reinstated in his kingdom.
+
+Edward FitzGerald would have called this "terrible"; and perhaps it is.
+
+But there is much more humour than terror in the rest, and sometimes
+there are qualities different from either. The rescue of the sacred
+precincts of the Abbey of Seuillé from the invaders by that glorious
+monk (a personage at no great remove from our own Friar Tuck, to the
+later portraits of whom he has lent some of his own traits) pleases the
+soul well, as do the feats of Gymnast against Tripet, and the fate of
+the unlucky Touquedillon, and the escalade of La Roche Clermande, and (a
+little less perhaps) the pure burlesque of the eating of the pilgrims,
+and the combing out of the cannon balls, and the contrasted sweet
+reasonableness of the amiable though not at all cowardly Grandgousier.
+But the advice of the Evil Counsellors to Picrochole is still perhaps
+the pearl:
+
+[Sidenote: The Counsel to Picrochole.]
+
+     Then there appeared before Picrochole the Duke of Mennail,
+     Count Spadassin, and Captain Merdaille, and said to him,
+     "Sire, this day we make you the most happy and chivalrous
+     prince that ever has been since the death of Alexander of
+     Macedon." "Be covered, be covered," said Picrochole.
+     "Gramercy, sire", said they, "but we know our duty. The
+     means are as follows. You will leave here in garrison some
+     captain with a small band of men to hold the place, which
+     seems to us pretty strong, both by nature and by the
+     fortifications you have contrived. You will, as you know
+     well, divide your army in half. One half will fall upon this
+     fellow Grandgousier and his people, and easily discomfit him
+     at the first assault. There we shall gain money in heaps,
+     for the rascal has plenty. (Rascal we call him, because a
+     really noble prince never has a penny. To hoard is the mark
+     of a rascal.)
+
+     "The other part will meanwhile draw towards Aunis,
+     Saintonge, Angoumois, and Gascony, as well as Perigord,
+     Medoc, and Elanes. Without any resistance they will take
+     towns, castles, and fortresses. At Bayonne, at St. Jean de
+     Luz, and at Fontarabia you will seize all the ships, and
+     coasting towards Galicia and Portugal, will plunder all the
+     seaside places as far as Lisbon, where you will be
+     reinforced with all the supplies necessary to a conqueror:
+     _Corbleu!_ Spain will surrender, for they are all poltroons.
+     You will pass the Straits of Seville,[94] and will there
+     erect two columns more magnificent than those of Hercules
+     for the perpetual memory of your name. And that Strait shall
+     thenceforward be named the Sea of Picrochole.
+
+     "When that sea has been passed, lo! comes Barbarossa[95] to
+     surrender as your slave." "I," said Picrochole, "will extend
+     mercy to him." "Very well," said they, "on condition that he
+     is baptized. And then you will assault the kingdoms of
+     Tunis, of Hippo,[96] of Argier, of Bona, of Corona--to cut
+     it short, all Barbary. Going further,[97] you will keep in
+     your hands Majorca, Minorca, Sardinia, Corsica, and the
+     other islands of the Ligurian and Balearic sea. Coasting to
+     the left[98] you will dominate all Narbonese Gaul, Provence,
+     the Allobroges, Genoa, Florence, Lucca, and, begad! Rome.
+     Poor master Pope is already dying for fear of you." "I will
+     never kiss his slipper," said Picrochole.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+     "Italy being taken, behold Naples, Calabria, Apulia, and
+     Sicily all at your mercy, and Malta into the bargain. I
+     should like to see those funny knights, formerly of Rhodes,
+     resist you! if it were only to examine their water." "I
+     should like," said Picrochole, "to go to Loretto." "No, no,"
+     said they, "that will be on the way back. Thence we shall
+     take Candia, Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, and make a
+     set at Morea. We shall get it at once. By St. Treignan, God
+     keep Jerusalem! for the soldan is nothing in power to you."
+     "Shall I," said he, "then rebuild the Temple of Solomon?"
+     "Not yet," said they, "wait a little. Be not so hasty in
+     your enterprises."
+
+And so with the most meticulous exactness (Rabelais' geography is
+irreproachable, and he carefully avoids the cheap expedient of making
+Spadassin and Merdaille blunder) and the sagest citations of _Festina
+lente_, they take him through Asia Minor to the Euphrates and Arabia,
+while the other army (that which has annihilated Grandgousier) comes
+round by the northern route, sweeping all Europe from Brittany and the
+British Isles to Constantinople, where the great rendezvous is made and
+the universal empire established, Picrochole graciously giving his
+advisers Syria and Palestine as their fiefs.
+
+"Pretty much like our own days," said Mr. Rigmarole. Have we not heard
+something very like this lately, as "Berlin to Baghdad," if not "Calais
+to Calcutta"? And even if we had not, would not the sense and the satire
+of it be delectable? A great deal has been left out: the chapter is, for
+Rabelais, rather a long one. The momentary doubt of the usually
+undoubting Picrochole as to what they shall drink in the desert, allayed
+at once by a beautiful scheme of commissariat camels and elephants,[99]
+which would have done credit to the most modern A.S.C., is very capital.
+There is, indeed, an unpleasant Echephron[100] who points the old moral
+of Cineas to Pyrrhus himself. But Picrochole rebuffs him with the
+invaluable _Passons oultre_, and closes the discussion by anticipating
+Henri Quatre (who, no doubt, learnt the phrase from him), crying, "_Qui
+m'aime, si me suive!_" and ordering all haste in the war.
+
+It is possible that, here or earlier, the
+not-quite-so-gentle-as-he-is-traditionally-called reader may ejaculate,
+"This is all true enough; but it is all very well known, and does not
+need recapitulation." Is this quite so certain? No doubt at one time
+Englishmen did know their Rabelais well. Southey did, for instance, and
+so, according to the historian of Barsetshire, did, in the next
+generation, Archdeacon Grantly. More recently my late friend Sir Walter
+Besant spent a great deal of pains on Master Francis, and mainly owing
+to his efforts there existed for some years a Rabelais Club (already
+referred to), which left some pleasant memories. But _is_ it quite so
+certain that the average educated Englishman can at once distinguish
+Eudemon from Epistemon, give a correct list of the various answers to
+Panurge's enquiries as to the probable results of his marriage, relate
+what happened when (as glanced at above and returned to later) _nous
+passasmes oultre_, and say what the adorable Quintessence admitted to
+her dainty lips besides second intentions? I doubt it very much. Even
+special students of the Great Book, as in other cases, have too often
+allowed themselves to be distracted from the pure enjoyment of it by
+idle questions of the kinds above mentioned and others--questions of
+dates and names and places, of origins and borrowings and
+imitations--questions the sole justification of which, from the genuine
+Pantagruelian point of view, is that their utter dryness inevitably
+suggests the cries--the Morning Hymn and the Evening Voluntary of the
+book itself--_À boire!_ and _Trinq_.
+
+But, even were this not so, a person who has undertaken, wisely or
+unwisely, to write the history of the French Novel is surely entitled to
+lay some stress on what seems to him the importance of this its first
+eminent example. At any rate he proposes _not_ to _passer oultre_, but
+to stick to the line struck out, and exhibit, in reasonable detail, the
+varieties of novel-matter and manner contained in the book.
+
+[Sidenote: The peace and the Abbey of Thelema.]
+
+The conclusion of _Gargantua_--after the victor has addressed a _concio_
+to the vanquished, has mildly punished the originators of the trouble or
+those he could catch (Spadassin and Merdaille having run away "six hours
+before the battle") by setting them to work at his newly established
+printing-press, and has distributed gifts and estates to his
+followers--may be one of the best known parts of the whole book, but is
+not of the most strictly novel character, though it has suggested at
+least one whole novel and parts or passages of others. The "Abbey of
+Thelema"--the home of the order of _Fay ce que vouldras_--is, if not a
+devout, a grandiose imagination, and it gives occasion for some
+admirable writing. But it is one of the purest exercises of "purpose,"
+and one of the least furnished with incident or character, to be found
+in Rabelais. In order to introduce it, he may even be thought guilty of
+what is extremely rare with him, a fault of "keeping." He avoids this
+fault surprisingly in the contrasted burlesque and serious chronicles of
+Grandgousier and Gargantua himself, as well as in the expanded contrast
+of Pantagruel and Panurge. Yet the heartiest admirer of "Friar John of
+the Funnels" (or "Collops," for there is a schism on this point) may
+fail to see in him a suitable or even a possible Head for an assemblage
+of gallant gentlemen and stately ladies (both groups being also
+accomplished scholars) like the Thelemites. But Rabelais, like
+Shakespeare, had small care for small objections. He wanted to sketch a
+Paradise of Anti-Monkery, and for this he wanted an Anti-Abbot. Friar
+John was the handiest person, and he took him. But it is worth noting
+that the Abbot of Thelema never afterwards appears as such, or in the
+slightest relation to this miniature but most curious and interesting
+example of the Renaissance fancy for imaginary countries, cities,
+institutions, with its splendours of architecture and decoration, its
+luxurious but not loose living, its gallantry and its learning, its
+gorgeous dress, its polished manners (the Abbot must have had some
+trouble to learn them), and its "inscriptions and enigmas" in verse
+which is not quite so happy as the prose. One would not cut it out of
+the book for anything, and parallels to it (not merely of the kind above
+referred to) have found and may find place in other books of fiction.
+But it is only a sort of chantry, in the Court of the Gentiles too, of
+the mighty Temple of the Novel.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ I. The contrasted youth.]
+
+What it was exactly that made Rabelais "double," as it were, on
+_Gargantua_ in the early books of _Pantagruel_[101] it would probably be
+idle to enquire. His deliberate mention in the Prologue of some of the
+most famous romances (with certain others vainly to be sought now or at
+any time) might of course most easily be a mere red herring. It may be,
+that as _Gargantua_ was not entirely of his own creation, he determined
+to "begin at the beginning" in his original composition. But it matters
+little or nothing. We have, once more, a burlesque genealogy with known
+persons--Nimrod, Goliath, Polyphemus, etc. etc.--entangled in a chain of
+imaginaries, one of the latter, Hurtaly, forming the subject of a solemn
+discussion of the question why he is not received among the crew of the
+Ark. The unfortunate concomitants of the birth of Pantagruel--which is
+fatal to his mother Badebec--contrast with the less chequered history of
+Gargantua and Gargamelle, while the mixed sorrow and joy of Gargantua at
+his wife's death and his son's birth completes this contrast.
+Pantagruel, though quite as amiable as his father, if not more so, has
+in infancy the natural awkwardnesses of a giant, and a hairy giant
+too--devouring cows whole instead of merely milking them, and tearing to
+pieces an unfortunate bear who only licked his infant chops. As was said
+above, he has no wild-oats period of education like his father's, but
+his company is less carefully chosen than that of Gargantua in the days
+of his reformation, and gives his biographer opportunities for his
+sharpest satire.
+
+First we have (taken, as everybody is supposed now to know, from
+Geoffrey Tory, but improved) the episode of the Limousin scholar with
+his "pedantesque"[102] deformation of French and Latin at once, till the
+giant takes him by the throat and he cries for mercy in the strongest
+meridional brogue.[103] Then comes the famous catalogue of the Library
+of Saint Victor, a fresh attack on scholastic and monastic degeneracy,
+and a kind of joining hands (Ortuinus figures) with the German guerrilla
+against the _Obscuri_, and then a long and admirable letter from
+Gargantua, whence we learn that Grandgousier is dead, and that his son
+is now the sagest of monarchs, who has taken to read Greek, and shows no
+memory of his governesses or his earlier student days. And then again
+comes Panurge.
+
+[Sidenote: Panurge.]
+
+Many doubtful things have been said about this most remarkable
+personage. He has been fathered upon the Cingar of Folengo, which is too
+much of a compliment to that creation of the great Macaronic, and
+Falstaff has been fathered upon him, which is distinctly unfair to
+Falstaff. Sir John has absolutely nothing of the ill-nature which
+characterises both Cingar and Panurge; and Panurge is an actual and
+contemptible coward, while many good wits have doubted whether Falstaff
+is, in the true sense, a coward at all. But Panurge is certainly one
+thing--the first distinct and striking _character_ in prose fiction.
+Morally, of course, there is little to be said for him, except that,
+when he has no temptations to the contrary, he is a "good fellow"
+enough. As a human example of _mimesis_ in the true Greek sense, not of
+"imitation" but of "fictitious creation," he is, once more, the first
+real character in prose fiction--the ancestor, in the literary sense, of
+the mighty company in which he has been followed by the similar
+creations of the masters from Cervantes to Thackeray. The fantastic
+colouring, and more than colouring, of the whole book affects him, of
+course, more than superficially. One could probably give some not quite
+absurd guesses why Rabelais shaped him as he did--presented him as a
+very naughty but intensely clever child, with the monkey element in
+humanity thrown into utmost prominence. But it is better not to do so.
+Panurge has some Yahooish characteristics, but he is not a Yahoo--in
+fact, there is no misanthropy in Rabelais.[104] He is not merely impish
+(as in his vengeance on the lady of Paris), but something worse than
+impish (as in that on Dindenault); and yet one cannot call him diabolic,
+because he is so intensely human. It is customary, and fairly correct,
+to describe his ethos as that of understanding and wit wholly divorced
+from morality, chivalry, or religion; yet he is never Mephistophelian.
+If one of the hundred touches which make him a masterpiece is to be
+singled out, it might perhaps be the series of rapturous invitations to
+his wedding which he gives to his advisers while he thinks their advice
+favourable, and the limitations of enforced politeness which he appends
+when the unpleasant side of their opinions turns up. And it may perhaps
+be added that one of the chief reasons for believing heartily in the
+last Book is the delectable and unimprovable contrast which La Quinte
+and her court of intellectual fantastry present to this picture of
+intellectual materialism.
+
+[Sidenote: Short view of the sequels in Book II.]
+
+It was impossible that such a figure should not to a certain extent
+dwarf others; but Rabelais, unlike some modern character-mongers, never
+lets his psychology interfere with his story. After a few episodes, the
+chief of which is the great sign-duel of Thaumast and Panurge himself,
+the campaign against the Dipsodes at once enables Pantagruel to display
+himself as a war-like hero of romance, permits him fantastic exploits
+parallel to his father's, and, by installing Panurge in a lordship of
+the conquered country and determining him, after "eating his corn in
+the blade," to "marry and settle," introduces the larger and most
+original part of the whole work--the debates and counsellings on the
+marriage in the Third Book, and, after the failure of this, the voyage
+to settle the matter at the Oracle of the Bottle in the Fourth and
+Fifth. This "plot," if it may be called so, is fairly central and
+continuous throughout, but it gives occasion for the most surprising
+"alarums and excursions," variations and divagations, of the author's
+inexhaustible humour, learning, inventive fertility, and never-failing
+faculty of telling a tale. If the book does sometimes in a fashion "hop
+forty paces in the public street," and at others gambade in a less
+decorous fashion even than hopping, it is also Cleopatresque in its
+absolute freedom from staleness and from tedium.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ II. (Book III.)
+
+The marriage of Panurge and the consultations on it.]
+
+The Third Book has less of apparent variety in it, and less of what
+might be called striking incident, than any of the others, being all but
+wholly occupied by the enquiries respecting the marriage of Panurge. But
+this gives it a "unity" which is of itself attractive to some tastes,
+while the delightful sonnet to the spirit Of Marguerite,
+
+    Esprit abstraict, ravy et ecstatique,
+
+(perhaps the best example of _rhétoriqueur_ poetry), at the beginning,
+and the last sight (except in letters) of Gargantua at the end, with the
+curious _coda_ on the "herb Pantagruelion" (the ancestor of Joseph de
+Maistre's famous eulogy of the Executioner), give, as it were, handle
+and top to it in unique fashion. But the body of it is the thing. The
+preliminary outrunning of the constable--had there been constables in
+Salmigondin, but they probably knew the story of the Seigneur of Basché
+too well--and the remarkable difference between the feudatory and his
+superior on the subject of debt, serve but as a whet to the project of
+matrimony which the debtor conceives. Of course, Panurge is the very
+last man whom a superficial observer of humanity--the very first whom a
+somewhat profounder student thereof--would take as a marrying one. He is
+"a little failed"; he thinks to rest himself while not foregoing his
+former delights, and he shuts eyes and ears to the proverb, as old as
+Greek in words and as old as the world in fact, that "the doer shall
+suffer." That he should consult Pantagruel is in the circumstances
+almost a necessity, and Pantagruel's conduct is exactly what one would
+expect from that good-natured, learned, admirable, but rather enigmatic
+personage. Merely "aleatory" decision--by actual use of dice--he rejects
+as illicit, though towards the close of the book one of its most
+delectable episodes ends in his excusing Mr. Justice Bridoye for
+settling law cases in that way. But he recommends the _sortes
+Virgilianae_, and he, others, and Panurge himself add the experiment of
+dreams, and the successive consultation of the Sibyl of Panzoust, the
+dumb Nazdecabre, the poet Raminagrobis, Epistemon, "Her Trippa," Friar
+John himself, the theologian Hippothadée, the doctor Rondibilis, the
+philosopher Trouillogan, and the professional fool Triboulet. No reader
+of the most moderate intelligence can need to be told that the
+counsellors opine all in the same sense (unfavourable), though with more
+or less ambiguity, and that Panurge, with equal obstinacy and ingenuity,
+invariably twists the oracles according to his own wishes. But what no
+reader, who came fresh to Rabelais and fasting from criticism on him,
+could anticipate, is the astonishing spontaneity of the various dealings
+with the same problem, the zest and vividness of the whole thing, and
+the unceasing shower of satire on everything human--general,
+professional, and individual--which is kept up throughout. There is less
+pure extravagance, less mere farce, and (despite the subject) even less
+"sculduddery" than in any other Book; but also in no other does Rabelais
+"keep up with humanity" (somewhat, indeed, in the fashion in which a
+carter keeps up with his animal, running and lashing at the same time)
+so triumphantly.
+
+In no book, moreover, are the curious intervals--or, as it were, prose
+choric odes--of interruption more remarkable. Pantagruel's own serious
+wisdom supplies not a few of them, and the long and very characteristic
+episode of Judge Bridoye and his decision by throw of dice is very
+loosely connected with the main subject. But the most noteworthy of
+these excursions comes, as has been said, at the end--the last personal
+appearance of the good Gargantua, and the famous discourse, several
+chapters long, on the Herb Pantagruelion, otherwise Hemp.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ III. (IV.) The first part of the voyage.]
+
+The Fourth Book (Third of _Pantagruel_) starts the voyage, and begins to
+lead the commentator who insists on fixing and interpreting the
+innumerable real or apparent double, treble, and almost centuple
+meanings, into a series of dances almost illimitable. As has been
+suggested more than once, the most reasonable way is probably to regard
+the whole as an intentional mixture of covert satire, pure fooling, not
+a little deliberate leading astray, and (serving as vehicle and
+impelling force at once) the irresistible narrative impulse animating
+the writer and carrying the reader on to the end--any end, if it be only
+the Other End of Nowhere. The "curios," living and other, of Medamothi
+(Nowhere to begin with!), and the mysterious appearance of a shipful of
+travellers coming back from the Land of Lanterns, whither the
+Pantagruelian party is itself bound; the rather too severely punished
+ill-manners of the sheep-dealer Dindenault; the strange isles of various
+nature--such, especially, as the abode of the bailiffs and
+process-servers, which gives occasion to the admirably told story of
+François Villon and the Seigneur of Basché; the great storm--another of
+the most famous passages of the book--with the cowardice of Panurge and
+the safe landing in the curious country of the Macréons (long-livers);
+the evil island where reigns Quaresmeprenant, and the elaborate analysis
+of that personage by the learned Xenomanes; the alarming Physeter
+(blowing whale) and his defeat by Pantagruel; the land of the
+Chitterlings, the battle with them, and the interview and peace-making
+with their Queen Niphleseth (a passage at which the sculduddery-hunters
+have worked their hardest), and then the islands of the Papefigues and
+the Papimanes, where Rabelais begins his most obvious and boldest
+meddling with the great ecclesiastical-political questions of the
+day--all these things and others flit past the reader as if in an actual
+voyage. Even here, however, he rather skirts than actually invades the
+most dangerous ground. It is the Decretals, not the doctrines, that are
+satirised, and Homenas, bishop of Papimania, despite his adoration of
+these forgeries, and the slightly suspicious number and prettiness of
+the damsels who wait upon him, is a very good fellow and an excellent
+host. There is something very soothing in his metaphorical way of
+demanding wine from his Hebes, "_Clerice_, esclaire icy," the necessary
+illumination being provided by a charming girl with a hanap of
+"extravagant" wine. These agreeable if satiric experiences--for the
+Decretals do no harm beyond exciting the bile of Master Epistemon (who,
+it is to be feared, was a little of a pedant)--are followed by the once
+more almost universally known passage of the "Frozen Words" and the
+visit to "Messer Gaster, the world's first Master of Arts"; by the
+islands (once more mysterious) of Chaneph (hypocrisy) and Ganabin
+(thieves); the book concluding abruptly with an ultra-farcical
+_cochonnerie_ of the lower kind, relieved partially by a libellous but
+impossible story about our Edward the _Fifth_ and the poet Villon again,
+as well as by the appearance of an interesting but not previously
+mentioned member of the crew of the _Thalamége_ (Pantagruel's flagship),
+the great cat Rodilardus.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ IV. (Book V.) The second part of the voyage. The
+"Isle Sonnante."]
+
+[Sidenote: The "Chats Fourrés."]
+
+One of the peculiarities of the Fifth Book, and perhaps one of those
+which have aroused that suspicion about it which, after what has been
+said above, it is not necessary further to discuss, is that it is more
+"in blocks" than the others.[105] The eight chapters of the _Isle
+Sonnante_ take up the satire of the Fourth Book on Papimania and on the
+"Papegaut," who is here introduced in a much fiercer tone--a tone which,
+if one cared for hypothetical criticism, might be attributed with about
+equal probability to a genuine deepening of hostile feeling, to absence
+of revision, and to possible sophistication by some one into whose hands
+it fell between the author's death and its publication. But a perfectly
+impartial critic, who, on the one hand, does not, in Carlyle's admirable
+phrase, "regard the Universe as a hunting-field from which it were good
+and pleasant to drive the Pope," and, on the other, is content to regard
+the extremer Protestants as singularly unpleasant persons without
+pronouncing Ernulphus-curses on them, may perhaps fail to find in it
+either the cleverest or the most amusing part of the voyage. The episode
+of the next Isle--that _des Ferrements_--is obscure, whether it is or is
+not (as the commentators were sure to suggest) something else beginning
+with "obsc-," and the succeeding one, with its rocks fashioned like
+gigantic dice, is not very amusing. But the terrible country of the
+_Chats Fourrés_ and their chief Grippeminaud--an attack on the Law as
+unsparing as, and much more vivid than that on the Church in the
+overture--may rank with the best things in Rabelais. The tyrant's
+ferocious and double-meaning catchword of _Or çà!_ and the power at his
+back, which even Pantagruel thinks it better rather to run away from
+than to fight openly, which Panurge frankly bribes, and over which even
+the reckless and invincible Friar John obtains not much triumph, except
+that of cutting up, after buying it, an old woman's bed--these and the
+rest have a grim humour not quite like anything else.
+
+[Sidenote: "La Quinte."]
+
+The next section--that of the Apedeftes or Uneducated Ones[106]--has
+been a special object of suspicion; it is certainly a little difficult,
+and perhaps a little dull. One is not sorry when the explorers, in the
+ambiguous way already noted, "_passent_ _Oultre_," and, after
+difficulties with the wind, come to "the kingdom of Quintessence, named
+Entelechy." Something has been said more than once of this already, and
+it is perhaps unnecessary to say more, or indeed anything, except to
+those who themselves "hold of La Quinte," and who for that very reason
+require no talking about her. "We" (if one may enrol oneself in their
+company) would almost rather give up Rabelais altogether than sacrifice
+this delightful episode, and abandon the idea of having the ladies of
+the Queen for our partners in Emmelie, and Calabrisme, and the thousand
+other dances, of watching the wonderful cures by music, and the
+interesting process of throwing, not the house out of the window, but
+the window out of the house, and the miraculous and satisfactory
+transformation of old ladies into young girls, with very slight
+alteration of their former youthful selves, and all the charming
+topsyturvifications of Entelechy. Not to mention the gracious if
+slightly unintelligible speeches of the exquisite princess, when clear
+Hesperus shone once more, and her supper of pure nectar and ambrosia
+(not grudging more solid viands to her visitors), and the great
+after-supper chess-tournament with living pieces, and the "invisible
+disparition" of the lady, and the departure of the fortunate visitors
+themselves, duly inscribed and registered as Abstractors of
+Quintessence. The whole is like a good dream, and is told so as almost
+to be one.
+
+Between this and the final goal of the Country of Lanterns the interest
+falls a little. The island of "Odes" (not "poems" but "ways"), where the
+"walks walk" (_les chemins cheminent_); that of "Esclots" ("clogs"),
+where dwell the Frères Fredonnants, and where the attack on monkery is
+renewed in a rather unsavoury and rather puerile fashion; and that of
+Satin, which is a sort of Medamothi rehandled, are not first-rate--they
+would have been done better, or cut out, had the book ever been issued
+by Master Francis. But the arrival at and the sojourn in Lanternia
+itself recovers the full powers of Rabelais at his best, though one may
+once more think that some of the treatment might have been altered in
+the case just mentioned.
+
+[Sidenote: The conclusion and The Bottle.]
+
+Apart from the usual mixture of serious and purely jocular satire, of
+learning and licence, of jargonic catalogues, of local references to
+Western France and the general topography of Utopia, this conclusion
+consists of two main parts--first, a most elaborate description of the
+Temple, containing underground the Oracle of the Bottle, to which the
+pilgrims are conducted by a select "Lantern," and of its priestess
+Bacbuc, its _adytum_ with a fountain, and, in the depth and centre of
+all, the sacred Bottle itself; and secondly, the ceremonies of the
+delivery of the Oracle; the divine utterance, _Trinq!_ its
+interpretation by Bacbuc; the very much _ad libitum_ reinterpretations
+of the interpretation by Panurge and Friar John, and the dismissal of
+the pilgrims by the priestess, _Or allez de par Dieu, qui vous
+conduise!_[107]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What, it may be asked, is the object of this cumbrous analysis of
+certainly one of the most famous and (as it at least should be) one of
+the best known books of the world? That object has been partly indicated
+already; but it may be permissible to set it forth more particularly
+before ending this chapter. Of the importance, on the one hand, of the
+acquisition by the novel of the greatest known and individual writer of
+French up to his date, and of the enormous popularity of this example of
+it, enough may have been said. But the abstract has been given, and the
+further comment is now added, with the purpose of showing, in a little
+detail, how immensely the resources and inspirations of future
+practitioners were enriched and strengthened, varied and multiplied, by
+_Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_. The book as a whole is to be classed, no
+doubt, as "Eccentric" fiction. But if you compare with Rabelais that one
+of his followers[108] who possessed most genius and who worked at his
+following with most deliberation, you will find an immense falling off
+in richness and variety as well as in strength. The inferiority of
+Sterne to Master Francis in his serious pieces, whether he is whimpering
+over dead donkeys and dying lieutenants, or simulating honest
+indignation against critics, is too obvious to need insistence. Nor can
+one imagine any one--unless, like Mackenzie and other misguided
+contemporaries or juniors, he himself wanted to whimper, or unless he
+also aimed at the _fatrasie_--going to Sterne for pattern or
+inspiration. Now Rabelais is a perpetual fount of inspiration, an
+inexhaustible magazine of patterns to the most "serious" novelist whose
+seriousness is not of the kind designated by that term in dissenting
+slang. That abounding narrative faculty which has been so much dwelt on
+touches so many subjects, and manages to carry along with it so many
+moods, thoughts, and even feelings, that it could not but suggest to any
+subsequent writer who had in him the germ of the novelist's art, how to
+develop and work out such schemes as might occur to him. While, for his
+own countrymen at least, the vast improvement which he made in French
+prose, and which, with the accomplishment of his younger contemporaries
+Amyot and Montaigne, established the greatness of that prose itself, was
+a gain, the extent of which cannot be exaggerated. Therefore it has
+seemed not improper to give him a chapter to himself, and to treat his
+book with a minuteness not often to be paralleled in this
+_History_.[109]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[90] A complete argument on this much vexed subject can hardly be wished
+for here: but it may be permitted to say that nearly fifty years'
+consideration of the matter has left less and less doubt in my mind as
+to the genuineness of the "_Quart_" or "_Quint_" _Livre_ as it is
+variously called--according as _Gargantua_ is numbered separately or
+not. One of the apparently strongest arguments against its
+genuineness--the constant presence of "_Je_" in the narrative--really
+falls, with the others--the fiercer and more outspoken character of the
+satire, the somewhat lessened prominence of Pantagruel, etc.
+etc.--before one simple consideration. We know from the dates of
+publication of the other books that Rabelais was by no means a rapid
+writer, or at any rate that, if he wrote rapidly, he "held up" what he
+did write long, and pretty certainly rewrote a good deal. Now the
+previous Book had appeared only a short time before what must have been
+the date of his death; and this could not, according to analogy and
+precedent, have been ready, or anything like ready, when he died. On the
+other hand, time enough passed between his death and the publication
+(even of the _Ile Sonnante_ fragment) for the MS. to have passed through
+other hands and to have been adulterated, even if it was not, when the
+Master's hands left it, in various, as well as not finally finished
+form. I can see nothing in it really inconsistent with the earlier
+Books; nothing unworthy of them (especially if on the one hand possible
+meddling, and on the other imperfect revision be allowed for); and much,
+especially the _Chats Fourrés_, the Quintessence part, and the
+Conclusion, without which the whole book would be not only incomplete
+but terribly impoverished. I may add that, having a tolerably full
+knowledge of sixteenth-century French literature, and a great admiration
+of it, I know no single other writer or group of other writers who
+could, in my critical judgment, by any reasonable possibility have
+written this Book. François Rabelais could have done it, and I have no
+doubt that he did it; though whether we have it as he left it no man can
+say.
+
+[91] It is perhaps hardly necessary, but may not be quite idle, to
+observe that our Abstractor of Quintessence takes good care not to quote
+the other half of the parallelism, "but the prudent looketh well to his
+going."
+
+[92] It is possible, but not certain, that he is playing on the two
+senses of the word _apparence_, the ambiguity of which is not so great
+in English. The A. V., "evidence of things _not seen_," would not have
+suited his turn.
+
+[93] In which, it will be remembered, the "liquor called punch," which
+one notes with sorrow that Rabelais knew not, but which he certainly
+would have approved, is also "nowhere spoken against."
+
+[94] Original "Sibyle." I owe to Prof. Ker an important reminder (which
+I ought not to have needed) of Dante's "Sibilia" in the famous "Ulysses"
+passage, _Inf._ xxvi. 110.
+
+[95] The Turkish corsair, not the German Emperor.
+
+[96] Probably erected into a kingdom in honour of St. Augustine.
+
+[97] _Passant oultre_--one of Rabelais' favourite and most _polymorphic_
+expressions. It has nearly always an ironical touch in it; and it enjoys
+a chapter all to itself in that mood--V. xvii.
+
+[98] Perhaps this _à gauche_ might make as good a short test as any of a
+reader's sense of humour. But here also a possible Dantean reminiscence
+(not suggested to me this time) comes in; for in the lines already
+quoted "dalla man _destra_" occurs.
+
+[99] The King is, however, more difficult to satisfy on this point than
+on others; and objects with a delightful _preterite_, "Yes: but we _did
+not get_ our wine fresh and cool"; whereat they rebuke him with a
+respectful reminder that great conquerors cannot be always entirely
+comfortable.
+
+[100] "Suspender of judgment."
+
+[101] Of course the first book of the son _preceded_ the reconstructed
+history of the father; but this is immaterial.
+
+[102] The correct opposition of this term (Latin or Greek words
+vernacularised) to "Macaronic" (vernacular words turned into Latin or
+Greek form) is not always observed.
+
+[103] It is very seldom, after his infantine and innocent excesses, that
+Pantagruel behaves thus. He is for the most part a quiet and somewhat
+reserved prince, very generous, very wise, very devout, and, though
+tolerating the eccentricities of Panurge and Friar John, never taking
+part in them.
+
+[104] If Swift had drunk more wine and had not put water in what he did
+drink, possibly this quality might have been lessened in _him_.
+
+[105] The first of these, the _Isle Sonnante_, as is well enough known
+to all students, appeared separately and before the rest.
+
+[106] A sort of dependency or province of the _Chats Fourrés_.
+
+[107] A MS. "addition" unknown to the old printed forms, appears in some
+modern ones. It is a mere disfigurement: and is hardly likely even to
+have been a rejected draft.
+
+[108] Not Swift here, but Sterne. There is far higher genius in
+_Gulliver_ than in _Shandy_; but the former is not _fatrasie_, the
+latter is.
+
+[109] That the not quite unknown device of setting up a man of straw in
+order to knock him down has not been followed in this chapter, a single
+piece of evidence out of many may be cited. H. Körting in his justly
+well reputed _Geschichte des Franz. Romans im XVII. Jahrh._ (Oppeln u.
+Leipzig, 1891, i. 133 _note_) would rule Rabelais out of the history of
+the novel altogether. This book, which will be quoted again with
+gratitude later, displays a painstaking erudition not necessitating any
+make-weight of sympathy for its author's early death after great
+suffering. It is extremely useful; but it does not escape, in this and
+other places, the censure which, ten years before the war of 1914, the
+present writer felt it his duty to express on modern German critics and
+literary historians generally (_History of Criticism_, London, 1904,
+vol. iii. Bks. viii. and ix.), that on points of literary appreciation,
+as distinguished from mere philology, "enumeration," bibliographical
+research, and the like, they are "sadly to seek." It may not be
+impertinent to add that Herr Körting's history happened never to have
+been read by me till after the above chapter of the present book was
+written.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SUCCESSORS OF RABELAIS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE "AMADIS" ROMANCES
+
+
+In the present chapter we shall endeavour to treat two divisions of
+actual novel- or at least fiction-writing--strikingly opposed to each
+other in character; and a third subject, to include which in the title
+would have made that title too long, and which is not strictly a branch
+of novel-_writing_, but which had perhaps as important an influence on
+the progress of the novel itself as anything mentioned or to be
+mentioned in all this _History_. The first division is composed of the
+followers--sometimes in the full, always in the chronological sense--of
+Rabelais, a not very strong folk as a rule, but including one brilliant
+example of co-operative work, and two interesting, if in some degree
+problematical, persons. The second, strikingly contrasting with the
+general if not the universal tendency of the first, is the great
+translated group of _Amadis_ romances, which at once revived romance of
+the older kind itself, and exercised a most powerful, if not an actually
+generative, influence on newer forms which were themselves to pass into
+the novel proper. The third is the increasing body of memoir- and
+anecdote-writers who, with Brantôme at their head, make actual
+personages and actual events the subjects of a kind of story-telling,
+not perhaps invariably of unexceptionable historic accuracy, but
+furnishing remarkable situations of plot and suggestions of character,
+together with abundant new examples of the "telling" faculty itself.
+
+[Sidenote: Subsidiary importance of Brantôme and other
+character-mongers.]
+
+The last point, as an apparent digression but really a most important
+contribution to the History, may perhaps be discussed and dismissed
+first. All persons who have even a slight knowledge of French literature
+must be aware how early and how remarkable are its possessions in what
+is vaguely called the "Memoir" department. There is nothing at the time,
+in any modern literature known to the present writer, similar to
+Villehardouin, or a little later to Joinville,--one might almost say
+that there is nothing in any literature at any time superior, if there
+be anything equal, in its kind to Froissart. In the first two cases
+there is pure personal experience; in the third there is, of course, a
+certain amount of precedent writing on the subject for guidance, and a
+large gathering of information by word of mouth. But in all these, and
+to a less extent in others up to the close of the fifteenth century,
+there is the indefinable gift of treatment--of "telling a story." In
+Villehardouin this gift may be almost wholly, and in principle very
+mainly, limited to the two great subjects which made the mediaeval end
+as far as profane matters were concerned--fighting and counselling; but
+this is by no means the case in Froissart, whom one is sometimes tempted
+to regard as a Sir Walter Scott thrown away upon base reality.
+
+With the sixteenth century this gift once more burgeoned and spread
+itself out--dealing, indeed, very mainly with the somewhat ungrateful
+subject of the religious disputes and wars, but flowering or fruiting
+into the unsurpassable gossip--though gossip is too undignified a
+word--of Pierre de Bourdeilles, Abbé de Brantôme, that Froissart and
+Pepys in one, with the noble delight in noble things of the first,
+inextricably united to the almost innocent shamelessness of the second,
+and a narrative gift equal to that of either in idiosyncrasy, and
+ranging beyond the subjects of both. Himself a soldier and a courtier
+(his abbacy, like many others, was purely titular and profitable--not
+professional in the least), his favourite subjects in literature, and
+obviously his idols in life, were great soldiers and fair ladies,
+"Bayard and the two Marguerites," as some one has put it. And his vivid
+irregular fashion of writing adapts itself with equal ease to a gallant
+feat of arms and a ferocious, half-cut-throat duel, to an exquisite
+piece of sentimental passion like that which tells us the story how the
+elder Queen of Navarre rebuked the lover carelessly stepping over the
+grave of his dead mistress, and to an unquotable anecdote to parallel
+the details of which, in literature of high rank, one must go to
+Rabelais himself, to Martial, or to Aristophanes. But, whatever the
+subject, the faculty of lively communication remains unaltered, and the
+suggestion of its transference from fact (possibly a little coloured) to
+pure fiction becomes more and more possible and powerful.[110]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Heptameron_.]
+
+No book has been more subject to the "insupportable advances" of the
+"key"-monger than the _Heptameron_, and the rage for identifying has
+gone so far that the pretty old name of "Emarsuite" for one of the
+characters has been discarded for an alleged and much uglier
+"Ennasuite," which is indeed said to have MS. authority, but which is
+avowedly preferred because it can be twisted into "_Anne_ à Suite"
+("Anne in Waiting"), and so can be fastened to an actual Maid of Honour
+of Marguerite's. It is only fair, however, to admit that something of
+the kind is at least suggested by the book itself. Even by those who do
+not trouble themselves in the least about the personages who may or may
+not have been disguised under the names of Nomerfide (the Neifile of
+this group) and Longarine, Saffredent and Dagoucin and Gebron (Geb_u_ron
+they call him now), admit the extreme probability of the Queen having
+invited identification of herself with Parlamente, the younger matron of
+the party, and of Hircan her husband with the King of Navarre.[111] But
+some (among whom is the present writer) think that this delightful and
+not too well-fated type of Renaissance amorousness, letteredness, and
+piety combined made a sort of dichotomy of herself here, and intended
+the personage of Oisille, the elder duenna (though by no means a very
+stern one) of the party, to stand for her as well as Parlamente--to whom
+one really must give the Italian pronunciation to get her out of the
+abominable suggestion of our "talking-machine."
+
+[Sidenote: Character and "problems."]
+
+A much more genuinely literary question has been raised and discussed as
+to the exact authorship of the book. That it is entirely Marguerite's,
+not the most jealous admirers of the Queen need for a moment contend.
+She is known to have had a sort of literary court from Marot and
+Rabelais downwards, some of the members of which were actually resident
+with her, and not a few of whom--such as Boaistuau and Le Maçon, the
+translators of Bandello and Boccaccio, and Bonaventure Despériers (_v.
+inf._)--were positive experts in the short story. Moreover, the custom
+of distributing these collections among different speakers positively
+invited collaboration in writing. The present critic and his friend, Mr.
+Arthur Tilley of King's College, Cambridge, who has long been our chief
+specialist in the literature of the French Renaissance, are in an
+amicable difference as to the part which Despériers in particular may
+have played in the _Heptameron_; but this is of no great importance
+here, and though Marguerite's other literary work is distinctly inferior
+in style, it is not impossible that the peculiar tone of the best parts
+of it, especially as regards the religious-amorous flavour, was infused
+by her or under her direct influence. The enthusiasm of Rabelais and
+Marot; the striking anecdote already mentioned which Brantôme, whose
+mother had been one of Marguerite's maids of honour, tells us, and one
+or two other things, suggest this; for Despériers was more of a satirist
+than of an amorist, and though the charges of atheism brought against
+him are (_v. inf._ again) scarcely supported by his work, he was
+certainly no pietist. I should imagine that he revised a good deal and
+sometimes imparted his nervous and manly, but, in his own _Contes_,
+sometimes too much summarised style. But some striking phrases, such as
+"_l'impossibilité_ de nostre chair,"[112] may be hers, and the following
+remarkable speech of Parlamente probably expresses her own sentiments
+pretty exactly. It is very noteworthy that Hircan, who is generally
+represented as "taking up" his wife's utterances with a certain sarcasm,
+is quite silent here.
+
+     [Sidenote: Parlamente on human and divine love.]
+
+     "Also," said Parlamente, "I have an opinion that never will
+     a man love God perfectly if he has not perfectly loved some
+     of God's creatures in this world." "But what do you call
+     'perfect loving'?" said Saffredent. "Do you reckon as
+     perfect lovers those who are _transis_,[113] and who adore
+     ladies at a distance, without daring to make their wishes
+     known?" "I call perfect lovers," answered Parlamente, "those
+     who seek in what they love some perfection--be it beauty,
+     kindness, or good grace,--always striving towards virtue;
+     and such as have so high and honourable a heart, that they
+     would not, were they to die for it, take for their object
+     the base things which honour and conscience disapprove: for
+     the soul, which is only created that it may return to its
+     Sovereign Good, does naught while it is in the body but long
+     for the attainment of this. But because the senses by which
+     alone it can acquire information are darkened and made
+     carnal by the sin of our first father, they can only show
+     her the visible things which approach closest to
+     perfection--and after these the soul runs, thinking to find
+     in outward beauty, in visible grace, and in moral virtue,
+     grace, beauty, and virtue in sovereign degree. But when she
+     has sought them and tried them, and finds not in them Him
+     whom she loves, she leaves them alone,[114] just as a child,
+     according to his age, likes dolls and other trivialities,
+     the prettiest he sees, and thinks a collection of pebbles
+     actual riches, but as he grows up prefers his dolls alive,
+     and gets together the goods necessary for human life. Yet
+     when he knows, by still wider experience, that in earthly
+     things there is neither perfection nor felicity, he desires
+     to seek the Creator and the Source of these. Nevertheless,
+     if God open not the eye of faith in him he would be in
+     danger of becoming, instead of a merely ignorant man, an
+     infidel philosopher.[115] For Faith alone can demonstrate
+     and make receivable the good that the carnal and animal man
+     cannot understand."
+
+This gives the better Renaissance temper perhaps as well as anything to
+be found, and may, or should in fairness, be set against the worser tone
+of mere libertinage in which some even of the ladies indulge here, and
+still more against that savagery which has been noticed above. This
+undoubtedly was in Milton's mind when he talked of "Lust hard by Hate,"
+and it makes Hircan coolly observe, after a story has been told in which
+an old woman successfully interferes to save a girl's chastity, that in
+the place of the hero he should certainly have killed the hag and
+enjoyed the girl. This is obviously said in no bravado, and not in the
+least humorously: and the spirit of it is exemplified in divers not in
+the least incredible anecdotes of Brantôme's in the generation
+immediately following, and of Tallemant des Réaux in the next. The
+religiosity displayed is of a high temper of Christian Platonism, and we
+cannot, as we can elsewhere, say what the song says of something else,
+that "it certainly looks very queer." The knights and ladies do go to
+mass and vespers; but to say that they go punctually would be altogether
+erroneous, for Hircan makes wicked jokes on his and Parlamente's being
+late for the morning office, and, on one occasion at least, they keep
+the unhappy monks of the convent where they are staying (who do not seem
+to dare to begin vespers without them) waiting a whole hour while they
+are finishing not particularly edifying stories. The less complaisant
+casuists, even of the Roman Church, would certainly look askance at the
+piety of the distinguished person (said by tradition to have been King
+Francis himself) who always paid his respects to Our Lady on his way to
+illegitimate assignations, and found himself the better therefor on one
+occasion of danger. But the tone of our extract is invariably that of
+Oisille and Parlamente. The purer love part of the matter is a little,
+as the French themselves say, "alembicated." But still the whole is
+graceful and fascinating, except for a few pieces of mere passionless
+coarseness, which Oisille generally reproves. And it is scarcely
+necessary to say what large opportunities these tones and colours of
+fashion and "quality," of passion and manners, give to the future
+novelist, whose treatment shall stand to them very much as they stand to
+the shorter and sometimes almost shorthand written tales of Despériers
+himself.
+
+[Sidenote: Despériers.]
+
+With the _Cymbalum Mundi_ of this rather mysterious person we need have
+little to do. It is, down to the dialogue-form, an obvious imitation of
+Lucian--a story about the ancient divinities (especially Mercury) and a
+certain "Book of Destiny" and talking animals, and a good deal of often
+rather too transparent allegory. It has had, both in its own day and
+since, a very bad reputation as being atheistical or at least
+anti-Christian, and seems really to have had something to do with the
+author's death, by suicide or otherwise. There need, however, be very
+little harm in it; and there is not very much good as a story, nor,
+therefore, much for us. It does not carry the art of its particular kind
+of fiction any further than Lucian himself, who is, being much more of a
+genius, on the whole a much better model, even taking him at that rather
+inferior rate. The _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, on the other hand, though
+the extreme brevity of some has perhaps sometimes prejudiced readers
+against them, have always seemed to the present writer to form the most
+remarkable book, as literature, of all the department at the time except
+_Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ and the _Heptameron_, and to supply a
+strong presumption that their author had more than a minor hand in the
+_Heptameron_ itself. It must, of course, be admitted that the fashion in
+which they are delivered may not only offend in one direction, but may
+possibly mislead in another. One may read too much into the brevity, and
+so fall into the error of that other Englishman who was beguiled by the
+mysterious signs of Despériers' greatest contemporary's most original
+creation. But a very large and long experience of literary weighing and
+measuring ought to be some safeguard against the mistake of Thaumast.
+
+[Sidenote: _Contes et Joyeux Devis._]
+
+One remarkable difference which may seem, at first sight, to be against
+the theory of Despériers having had a large share in the _Heptameron_ is
+the contrasted and, as it may seem again at first sight, antagonistic
+tone of the two. There are purely comic and even farcical passages in
+Marguerite's book, but the general colour, as has been said, is
+religious-sentimental or courtly-amatory, with by no means infrequent
+excursions into the purely tragical. The _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, on
+the other hand, in the main continue the wholly jocular tone of the old
+_fabliaux_. But Despériers must have been, not only _not_ the great man
+of letters which the somewhat exaggerated zeal of his editor, M. Louis
+Lacour, ranked him as being, but a very weak and feeble writer, if he
+could not in this way write comedy in one book and tragedy in another.
+In fact Rabelais gives us (as the greatest writers so often do) what is
+in more senses than one a master-key to the contrast. Despériers has in
+the _Contes_ constant ironic qualifications and asides which may even
+have been directly imitated from his elder and greater contemporary;
+Marguerite has others which pair off in the same way with the most
+serious Rabelaisian "intervals," to which attention has been drawn in
+the last chapter. One point, however, does seem, at least to me, to
+emerge from the critical consideration of these two books with the other
+works of the Queen on the one hand and the other works of
+Despériers[116] on the other. It is that the latter had a much crisper
+and stronger style than Marguerite's own, and that he had a faculty of
+grave ironic satire, going deeper and ranging wider than her
+"sensibility" would allow. There is one on the fatal and irremediable
+effects of disappointing ladies in their expectations, wherein there is
+something more than the mere _grivoiserie_, which in other hands it
+might easily have remained. The very curious Novel XIII.--on King
+Solomon and the philosopher's stone and the reason of the failure of
+alchemy--is of quite a different type from most things in these
+story-collections, and makes one regret that there is not more of it,
+and others of the same kind. For sheer amusement, which need not be
+shocking to any but the straitest-laced of persons, the story (XXXIV.)
+of a curate completely "scoring off" his bishop (who did not observe the
+caution given by Ophelia to Laertes) has not many superiors in its
+particular kind.
+
+[Sidenote: Other tale-collections.]
+
+The fancy for these collections of tales spread widely in the sixteenth
+century, and a respectable number of them have found a home in histories
+of literature. Sometimes they present themselves honestly as what they
+are, and sometimes under a variety of disguises, the most extravagant of
+which is the title of the rather famous work of Henri Estienne,
+_Apologie pour Hérodote_. Others, more or less fantastic, are the
+_Propos Rustiques_ and _Baliverneries_ of Noël Du Fail, a Breton squire
+(as we should say), and his later _Contes d'Eutrapel_; the _Escraignes
+Dijonnaises_ and other books of Tabourot des Accords; the _Matinées_ and
+_Après Dinées_ of Cholières, and, the largest collection of all, the
+_Sérees_ [Soirées] of the Angevin Guillaume Bouchet,[117] while after
+the close of the actual century, but probably representing earlier work,
+appeared the above-mentioned _Moyen de Parvenir_, by turns attributed
+and denied to Béroalde de Verville. In all these, without exception, the
+imitation of Rabelais, in different but unmistakable ways, is to be
+found; and in not a few, that of the _Heptameron_ and of Despériers;
+while not unfrequently the same tales are found in more than one
+collection. The _fatrasie_ character--that is to say, the stuffing
+together of all sorts of incongruous matter in more or less burlesque
+style--is common to all of them; the licence of subject and language to
+most; and there are hardly any, except a few mere modernisings of old
+_fabliaux_, in which you will not find the famous farrago of the
+Renaissance--learning, religious partisanship, war, law, love, almost
+everything. All the writers are far below their great master,[118] and
+none of them has the appeal of the _Heptameron_. But the spirit of
+tale-telling pervades the whole shelf-ful, and there is one more special
+point of importance "for us."
+
+[Sidenote: The "provincial" character of these.]
+
+It will be observed that some of them actually display in their titles
+(such as that of Tabouret's book as quoted) the fact that they have a
+definite provinciality in no bad sense: while Bouchet is as clearly
+Angevin and Du Fail as distinctly Breton as Des Accords is Burgundian
+and as the greatest of all had been Tourangeau. It can scarcely be
+necessary to point out at great length what a reinforcement of vigour
+and variety must have been brought by this plantation in the different
+soils of those provinces which have counted for so much--and nearly
+always for so much good[119]--in French literature and French things
+generally. The great danger and defect of mediaeval writing had been its
+tendency to fall into schools and ruts, and the "printed book"
+(especially such a printed book as Rabelais) was, at least in one way,
+by no means unlikely to exercise this bad influence afresh. To this the
+provincial differences opposed a salutary variety of manners, speech,
+local colour, almost everything. Moreover, manners themselves
+generally--one of the fairest and most fertile fields of the
+novel-kingdom--became thus more fully and freely the object and subject
+of the tale-teller. Character, in the best and most extensive and
+intensive sense of the word, still lagged behind; and as the drama
+necessarily took that up, it was for more reasons than one encouraged,
+as we may say, in its lagging. But meanwhile Amyot and Calvin[120] and
+Montaigne were getting the language more fully ready for the
+prose-writer's use, and the constant "sophistication" of literature with
+religion, politics, knowledge of the physical world in all ways,
+commerce, familiarity with foreign nations--everything almost that
+touched on life--helped to bring on the slow but inevitable appearance
+of the novel itself. But it had more influences to assimilate and more
+steps to go through before it could take full form.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Amadis_ romances.]
+
+No more curious contrast (except, perhaps, the not very dissimilar one
+which will meet us in the next chapter) is to be found in the present
+_History_, or perhaps in any other, than that of the matter just
+discussed with the great body of _Amadis_ romance which, at this same
+time, was introduced into French literature by the translation or
+adaptation of Nicolas Herberay des Essarts and his continuators. That
+Herberay[121] deserves, according to the best and most catholic students
+of French, a place with the just-mentioned writers among the formers or
+reformers of the French tongue, is a point of some importance, but, for
+us, minor. Of the controversial part of the _Amadis_ subject it must, as
+in other cases, be once more unnecessary for us to say much. It may be
+laid down as certain, on every principle of critical logic and research,
+that the old idea of the Peninsular cycle being borrowed direct from any
+French original is hopelessly absurd. There is, notoriously, no external
+evidence of any such original ever having existed, and there is an
+immense improbability against any such original ever having existed.
+Further, the internal characteristics of the Spanish romances, though,
+undoubtedly, they might never have come into existence at all but for
+the French, and though there is a very slight "catch-on" of _Amadis_
+itself to the universally popular Arthurian legend, are not in the least
+like those of French or English. How the actual texts came into that
+existence; whether, as used to be thought at first, after some expert
+criticism was turned on them, the actual original was Portuguese, and
+the refashioned and prolific form Spanish, is again a question utterly
+beyond bounds for us. The quality of the romances themselves--their huge
+vogue being a matter of fact--and the influence which they exercised on
+the future development of the novel,--these are the things that concern
+us, and they are quite interesting and important enough to deserve a
+little attention.
+
+[Sidenote: Their characteristics.]
+
+What is certain is that these Spanish romances themselves--which, as
+some readers at any rate may be presumed to know, branch out into
+endless genealogies in the _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ lines, besides the
+more or less outside developments which fared so hardly with the censors
+of Don Quixote's library--as well as the later French examples of a not
+dissimilar type, the capital instance of which, for literature, is Lord
+Berners's translation of _Arthur of Little Britain_--do show the most
+striking differences, not merely from the original twelfth- and
+thirteenth-century Charlemagne and Arthur productions, but also from
+intermediate variants and expansions of these. The most obvious of these
+discrepancies is the singular amplification of the supernatural
+elements. Of course these were not absent in the older romance
+literature, especially in the Arthurian cycle. But there they had
+certain characteristics which might almost deserve the adjective
+"critical"--little criticism proper as there was in the Middle Ages.
+They were very generally religious, and they almost always had what may
+be called a poetic restraint about them. The whole Graal-story is
+deliberately modelled on Scriptural suggestions; the miracle of
+reconciliation and restoration which concludes _Amis and Amiles_ is the
+work of a duly commissioned angel. There are giants, but they are
+introduced moderately and equipped in consonance. The Saint's Life,
+which, as it has been contended, exercised so large an influence on the
+earlier romance, carried the nature, the poetry, the charm of its
+supernatural elements into the romance itself.
+
+[Sidenote: Extravagance in incident, nomenclature, etc.]
+
+In the _Amadis_ cycle and in romances like _Arthur of Little Britain_
+all this undergoes a change--not by any means for the better. What has
+been unkindly, but not perhaps unjustly, called the "conjuror's
+supernatural" takes the place of the poet's variety. One of the
+personages of the _Knight of the Sun_ is a "Bedevilled Faun," and it is
+really too much not to say that most of such personages are bedevilled.
+In _Arthur of_ (so much the Lesser) _Britain_ there is, if I remember
+rightly, a giant whose formidability partly consists in his spinning
+round on a sort of bedevilled music-stool: and his class can seldom be
+met with without three or seven heads, a similarly large number of legs
+and hands, and the like. This sort of thing has been put down, not
+without probability, to the Oriental suggestion which would come so
+readily into Spain. It may be so or it may not. But it certainly imports
+an element of puerility into romance, which is regrettable, and it
+diminishes the dignity and the poetry of the things rather lamentably.
+Whether it diminishes, and still more whether it originally diminished
+the _readability_ of these same things, is quite another question.
+
+Closely connected with it is the fancy for barbaric names of great
+length and formidable sound, such as Famongomadan, Pintiquinestra, and
+the like--a trait which, if anybody pleases, may be put down to the
+distorted echo of more musical[122] appellations in Arabic and other
+Eastern tongues, or to a certain childishness, for there is no doubt
+that the youthful mind delights, and always has delighted, in such
+things. The immense length of these romances even in themselves, and
+still more with continuations from father to son and grandson, and
+trains of descendants sometimes alternately named, can be less charged
+as an innovation, though there is no doubt that it established a rule
+which had only been an exception before. But, as will have been seen
+earlier, the continuation of romance genealogically had been not
+uncommon, and there had been a constant tendency to lengthen from the
+positively terse _Roland_ to the prolix fifteenth-century forms. In fact
+this went on till the extravagant length of the Scudéry group made
+itself impossible, and even afterwards, as all readers of Richardson
+know, there was reluctance to shorten.
+
+[Sidenote: The "cruel" heroine.]
+
+We have, however, still to notice another peculiarity, and the most
+important by far as concerns the history of the novel: this is the
+ever-increasing tendency to exaggerate the "cruelty" of the heroine and
+the sufferings of the lovers. This peculiarity is not specially
+noticeable in the earliest and best of the group itself. Amadis suffers
+plentifully; yet Oriana can hardly be called "cruel." But of the two
+heroines of _Palmerin_, Polisarda does play the part to some extent, and
+Miraguarda (whose name it is not perhaps fantastic to interpret as
+"Admire her but beware of her") is positively ill-natured. Of course the
+thing was no more a novelty in literature than it was in life. The
+lines--
+
+    And cruel in the New
+    As in the Old one,
+
+may certainly be transferred from the geographical world to the
+historical. But in classical literature "cruelty" is attributed rather
+indiscriminately to both sexes. The cliff of Leucas knew no distinction
+of sex, and Sappho can be set against Anaxarete. Indeed, it was safer
+for men to be cruel than for women, inasmuch as Aphrodite, among her
+innumerable good qualities, was very severe upon unkind girls, while one
+regrets to have to admit that no particular male deity was regularly
+"affected" to the business of punishing light o' love men, though
+Eros-Cupid may sometimes have done so. The Eastern mistress, for obvious
+reasons, had not much chance of playing the Miraguarda part as a rule,
+though there seems to me more chance of the convention coming from Arab
+and Hebrew poetry than from any other source. But in the _Arabian
+Nights_ at least, though there are lustful murderesses--eastern
+Margarets of Burgundy, like Queen Labé of the Magicians,--there is
+seldom any "cruelty," or even any tantalising, on the part of the
+heroines.
+
+A hasty rememberer of the sufferings of Lancelot and one or two other
+heroes of the early and genuine romance might say, "Why go further than
+this?" But on a little examination the cases will be found very
+different. Neither Iseult nor Guinevere is cruel to her lover;
+Orgueilleuse has a fair excuse in difference of rank and slight
+acquaintance; persons like Tennyson's Ettarre, still more his Vivien,
+are "sophisticated"--as we have pointed out already. Besides, Vivien and
+Ettarre are frankly bad women, which is by no means the case with the
+Polisardas and Miraguardas. They, if they did not introduce the
+thing--which is, after all, as the old waterman in _Jacob Faithful_
+says, "Human natur',"--established and conventionalised the Silvius and
+Phoebe relation of lover and mistress. If Lancelot is banished more than
+once or twice, it is because of Guinevere's real though unfounded
+jealousy, not of any coquettish "cruelty" on her part; if Partenopeus
+nearly perishes in his one similar banishment, it is because of his own
+fault--his fault great and inexcusable. But the Amadisian heroes, as a
+rule--unless they belong to the light o' love Galaor type, which would
+not mind cruelty if it were exercised, but would simply laugh and ride
+away--are almost painfully faithful and deserving; and their sojourns in
+Tenebrous Isles, their encounters with Bedevilled Fauns, and the like,
+are either pure misfortunes or the deliberate results of capricious
+tyranny on the part of their mistresses.
+
+Now of course this is the sort of thing which may be (and as a matter of
+fact it no doubt was) tediously abused; but it is equally evident that
+in the hands of a novelist of genius, or even of fair talent and
+craftsmanship, it gives opportunity for extensive and ingenious
+character-drawing, and for not a little "polite conversation." If _la
+donna è mobile_ generally, she has very special opportunities of
+exhibiting her mobility in the exercise of her caprice: and if it is the
+business of the lover (as it is of minorities, according to a Right
+Honourable politician) to suffer, the _amoureux transi_ who has some
+wits and some power of expression can suffer to the genteelest of tunes
+with the most ingenious fugues and variations. A great deal of the
+actual charm of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry in all
+languages comes from the rendering in verse of this very relation of
+woman and man. We owe to the "dear Lady Disdain" idea not merely
+Beatrice, but Beatrix long after her, and many another good thing both
+in verse and in prose between Shakespeare and Thackeray.
+
+In the _Amadis_ group (as in its slightly modernised successor, that of
+the _Grand Cyrus_), the handling is so preposterously long and the
+reliefs of dialogue and other things frequently managed with so little
+skill, that, except for sheer passing of time, the books have been found
+difficult to read. The present writer's knowledge of Spanish is too
+sketchy to enable him to read them in the original with full comfort.
+_Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ are legible enough in Southey's translations,
+made, as one would expect from him, with all due effort to preserve the
+language of the old English versions where possible. But Herberay's
+sixteenth-century French is a very attractive and perfectly easy
+language, thoroughly well suited to the matter. And if anything that has
+been said is read as despite to these romances, the reading is wrong.
+They have grave faults, but also real delights, and they have no small
+"place i' the story."[123]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[110]
+
+[Sidenote: Note on Montaigne.]
+
+This suggestive influence may be found almost as strongly, though shown
+with less literary craftsmanship, in Brantôme's successor and to some
+extent overlapper, Tallemant des Réaux. And it is almost needless to say
+that in both _subjects_ for novel treatment "foison," as both French and
+English would have said in their time. Nor may it be improper to add
+that Montaigne himself, though more indirectly, assisted in speeding the
+novel. The actual telling of a story is indeed not his strongest point:
+the dulness of the _Travels_, if they were really his (on which point
+the present writer cannot help entertaining a possibly unorthodox
+doubt), would sufficiently show this. But the great effect which he
+produced on French prose could not, as in the somewhat similar case of
+Dryden in English a century later, but prove of immense aid to the
+novelist. Except in the deliberately eccentric style, as in Rabelais'
+own case, or in periods such as the Elizabethan and our own, where there
+is a coterie ready to admire jargon, you cannot write novels, to
+interest and satisfy readers, without a style, or a group of styles,
+providing easy and clear narrative media. We shall see how, in the next
+century, writers in forms apparently still more alien from the novel
+helped it in the same way.
+
+[111] The character of this Bourbon prince seems to have been very
+faithfully though not maliciously drawn by Margaret (for the name,
+_Gallicé pulchrum_, is _Anglicé pulchrius_, and our form may be
+permitted in a note) as not ungenial, not exactly ungentlemanly, and by
+no means hating his wife or being at all unkind to her, but constantly
+"hard" on her in speech, openly regarding infidelity to her as a matter
+of course, and not a little tinged by the savagery which (one is afraid)
+the English wars had helped to introduce among the French nobility;
+which the religious wars were deepening, and which, in the times of the
+Fronde, came almost to its very worst, and, though somewhat tamed later,
+lasted, and was no mean cause, if not so great a one as some think, of
+the French Revolution. Margaret's love for her brother was ill rewarded
+in many ways--among others by brutal scandal--and her later days were
+embittered by failure to protect the new learning and the new faith she
+had patronised earlier. But one never forgets Rabelais' address to her,
+or the different but still delightful piece in which Marot is supposed
+to have commemorated her Platonic graciousness; while her portrait,
+though drawn in the hard, dry manner of the time, and with the tendency
+of that time to "make a girl's nose a proboscis," is by no means
+unsuggestive of actual physical charm.
+
+[112] This phrase, though Biblical, of course, in spirit, is not, so far
+as I remember, anywhere found textually in Holy Writ. It may be
+patristic; in which case I shall be glad of learned information. It
+sounds rather like St. Augustine. But I do not think it occurs earlier
+in French, and the word _impossibilité_ is not banal in the connection.
+
+[113] The famous phrase "amoureux _transi_" is simply untranslatable by
+any single word in English for the adjective, or rather participle. Its
+unmetaphorical use is, of course, commonest in the combination _transi
+de froid_, "frozen," and so suggests in the other a lover shivering
+actually under his mistress's shut window, or, metaphorically, under her
+disdain.
+
+[114] The expression (_passe oultre_) commented on in speaking of
+Rabelais, and again one which has no English equivalent.
+
+[115] A very early example of the special sense given to this word in
+French increasingly during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
+centuries, of "freethinker" deepening to "atheist." Johnson's friend, it
+will be remembered, regarded Philosophy as something to which the
+irruption of Cheerfulness was fatal; Butler, as something acquirable by
+reading Alexander Ross; a famous ancient saying, as the remembrancer of
+death; and a modern usage, as something which has brass and glass
+"instruments." But it was Hegel, was it not? or Carlyle? who summarised
+the French view and its time of prevalence in the phrase, "When every
+one was a philosopher who did not believe in the Devil."
+
+[116] His translations of the _Andria_ and of Plato's _Lysis_; and his
+verses, the chief charm of which is to be found in his adoption of the
+"cut and broken" stanzas which the French Renaissance loved.
+
+[117] Not to be confused with _Jehan_ Bouchet the poet, a much older
+man, indeed some twenty years older than Rabelais, and as dull as
+Raminagrobis Crétin himself, but the inventor or discoverer of that
+agreeable _agnomen_ "Traverseur des Voies Périlleuses" which has been
+noted above.
+
+[118] Cholières, I think, deserves the prize for sinking lowest.
+
+[119] From all the endless welter of abuse of God's great gift of speech
+[and writing] about the French Revolution, perhaps nothing has emerged
+more clearly than that its evils were mainly due to the sterilisation of
+the regular Provincial assemblies under the later monarchy.
+
+[120] A person not bad of blood will always be glad to mention one of
+the few good sides of a generally detestable character; and a person of
+humour must always chuckle at some of the ways in which Calvin's
+services to French prose were utilised.
+
+[121] He did not confine his good offices to romances of _caballería_.
+In 1539 he turned into French the _Arnalte and Lucenda_ of Diego de San
+Pedro (author of the more widely known _Carcel de Amor_), a very curious
+if also rather tedious-brief love-story which had great influence in
+France (see Reynier, _op. cit. inf._ pp. 66-73). This (though M. Reynier
+did not know it) was afterwards versified in English by one of our minor
+Carolines, and will appear in the third volume of the collected edition
+of them now in course of publication by the Clarendon Press.
+
+[122] Not always. Nouzhatoul-aouadat is certainly not as musical as
+Pintiquinestra, though Nouronnihar as certainly is.
+
+[123]
+
+[Sidenote: Note on Hélisenne de Crenne.]
+
+There should be added here a very curious, and now, if not in its own
+time, very rare book, my first knowledge of which I owed to a work
+already mentioned, M. Gustave Reynier's _Le Roman Sentimental avant
+l'Astrée_ (Paris, 1908), though I was able, after this chapter was
+composed, to find and read the original in the British Museum. It was
+first printed in 1538, and bears, like other books of its time, a
+disproportionately long title, which may, however, be easily shortened,
+"_Les Angoisses douloureuses qui procèdent d'Amour_ ... composées par
+dame Hélisenne de Crenne." This Hélisenne or Hélisaine seems to have
+been a real person: and not the least of the remarkable group of women
+authors who illustrate her time in France, though M. Reynier himself
+admits that "it is difficult to know exactly _who_ she was." She appears
+to have been of Picardy, and other extant and non-extant works are
+attributed to her. Like almost everybody of her time she wrote in the
+extreme _rhétoriqueur_ style--so much so indeed as to lead even Pasquier
+into the blunder of supposing that Rabelais hit at her in the dialect of
+the "Limousin scholar." The _Angoisses_, which M. Reynier's acute
+examination shows to have been written by some one who must have known
+Boccaccio's _Fiammetta_ (more than once Frenched about this time), is,
+or gives itself out to be, the autobiography of a girl of noble birth
+who, married at eleven years old and at first very fond of her husband,
+becomes at thirteen the object of much courtship from many gallants. Of
+these she selects, entirely on the love-at-first-sight principle, a very
+handsome young man who passes in the street. She is well read and tries
+to keep herself in order by stock examples, classical and romantic, of
+ill-placed and ill-fated affection. Her husband (who seems to have been
+a very good fellow for his time) gives her unconsciously what should
+have been the best help of all, by praising her self-selected lover's
+good looks and laughing at the young man's habit of staring at her. But
+she has already spoken frankly of her own _appétit sensuel_, and she
+proceeds to show this in the fashion which makes the fifteenth century
+and the early sixteenth a sort of trough of animalism between the
+altitudes of Mediaeval and Renaissance passion. Her lover turns out to
+be an utter cad, boastful, blabbing, and almost cowardly (he tells her
+in the usual stolen church interview, _Je crains merveilleusement
+monsieur votre mari_). But it makes not the slightest difference; nor
+does the at last awakened wrath of an at last not merely threatened but
+wideawake husband. Apparently she never has the chance of being actually
+guilty, for her husband finally, and very properly, shuts her up in a
+country house under strong duennaship. This finishes the first part, but
+there are two more, which return to more ancient ways. The lover
+Guenélic goes off to seek adventures, which he himself recounts, and
+acquires considerable improvement in them. He comes back, endeavours to
+free his mistress from her captivity, and does actually fly with her;
+but they are pursued; and though the lover and a friend of his with the
+rather Amadisian name of "Quezinstra" do their best, the heroine dies of
+weariness and shock, to be followed by her lover.
+
+This latter part is comparatively commonplace. M. Reynier thinks very
+highly of the first. It is possible to go with him a certain part of the
+way, but not, I think, the whole, except from a purely "naturalist" and
+not at all "sentimental" point of view. Some bold bad men have, of
+course, maintained that when the other sex is possessed by an _appétit
+sensuel_ this overcomes everything else, and seems, if not actually to
+exclude, at any rate by no means always or often to excite, that
+accompanying transcendentalism which is not uncommon with men, and
+which, comprised with the appetite, makes the love of the great lovers,
+whether they are represented by Dante or by Donne, by Shakespeare or by
+Shelley. Whether this be truth or libel _non nostrum est_. But it is
+certain that Hélisenne, as she represents herself, does not make the
+smallest attempt to spiritualise (even in the lowest sense) or inspirit
+the animality of her affection. She wants her lover as she might want a
+pork chop instead of a mutton one; and if she is sometimes satisfied
+with seeing him, it is as if she were looking at that pork chop through
+a restaurateur's window and finding it better than not seeing it at all
+and contenting herself with the mutton. Still this result is probably
+the result at least as much of want of art as of original _mis_feeling;
+and the book certainly does deserve notice here.
+
+The original _Oeuvres_ of Hélisenne form a rather appetising little
+volume, fat, and close and small printed, as indeed is the case with
+most, but not quite all, of the books now under notice. The
+complementary pieces are mainly moralities, as indeed are, in intention,
+the _Angoisses_ themselves. These latter seem to me better worth
+reprinting than most other things as yet not reprinted, from the
+_Heptameron_ (Hélisenne, be it remembered, preceded Marguerite) for
+nearly a hundred years. The later parts, though (or perhaps even
+because) they contrast curiously with the first, are by no means
+destitute of interest; and M. Reynier, I think, is a little hard on them
+if he has perhaps been a little kind to their predecessor. The lingo is
+indeed almost always stupendous and occasionally terrible. The printer
+aids sometimes; for it was not at once that I could emend the
+description of the B. V. M. as "Mère et Fille de _l'aliltonât_ [ant]
+plasmateur" into "_altitonant_" ("loud-thundering"), while _plasmateur_
+itself, though perfectly intelligible and legitimate, a favourite with
+the _rhétoriqueurs_, and borrowed from them even in Middle Scots, is not
+exactly everybody's word. But from her very exordium she may be fairly
+judged. "Au temps que la Déesse Cibélé despouilla son glacial et gélide
+habit, et vestit sa verdoyante robe, tapissée de diverses couleurs, je
+fus procréé, de noblesse." And, after all, there _is_ a certain nobility
+in this fashion of speech and of literary presentation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--I
+
+_The Pastoral and Heroic Romance, and the Fairy Story_
+
+
+[Sidenote: Immense importance of the seventeenth century in our
+subject.]
+
+The seventeenth century, almost if not quite from its beginning, ranks
+in French literature as the eighteenth does with us, that is to say, as
+the time of origin of novels or romances which can be called, in any
+sense, modern. In its first decade appeared the epoch-making
+pastoral-heroic _Astrée_ of Honoré d'Urfé;[124] its middle period, from
+1620 to 1670, was the principal birth-time of the famous "Heroic"
+variety, pure and simple; while, from that division into the last third,
+the curiously contrasted kind of the fairy tale came to add its quota of
+influence. At various periods, too, individuals of more or less note
+(and sometimes of much more than almost any of the "school-writers" just
+mentioned) helped mightily in strengthening and diversifying the
+subjects and manners of tales. To this period also belongs the
+continuance and prominence of that element of actual "lived" anecdote
+and personal history which has been mentioned more than once before. The
+_Historiettes_ of Tallemant contain short suggestions for a hundred
+novels and romances; the memoirs, genuine or forged, of public and
+private persons have not seldom, in more modern times, formed the actual
+basis of some of the greatest fiction. Everybody ought long to have
+known Thackeray's perhaps rather whimsical declaration that he
+positively preferred the forged D'Artagnan memoirs of Courtils de
+Sandras (as far at least as the Gascon himself was concerned) to the
+work of that Alexander, the truly Great, of which he was nevertheless
+such a generous admirer: and recently mere English readers have had the
+opportunity of seeing whether they agree with him. In fact, as the
+century went on, almost all kinds of literature began to be more or less
+pervaded with the novel appeal and quality.
+
+[Sidenote: The divisions of its contribution.]
+
+The letters of "Notre Dame des Rochers" constantly read like parts or
+scenes of a novel, and so do various compositions of her ill-conditioned
+but not unintelligent cousin Bussy-Rabutin. Camus de Pontcarré in the
+earlier and Fénelon in the later century determined that the Devil
+should not have this good prose to himself, and our own Anthony Hamilton
+showed the way to Voltaire in a kind, of which, though the Devil had
+nothing immediately to do with it, he might perhaps make use later. In
+fact, the whole century teems with the spirit of tale-telling, _plus_
+character-analysis; and in the eighteenth itself, with a few notable
+exceptions, there was rather a falling-off from, than a further advance
+towards, the full blossoming of the aloe in the nineteenth.
+
+It will probably, therefore, not be excessive to give two chapters (and
+two not short ones) to this period. In the first of them we may take the
+two apparently opposite, but by no means irreconcilable schools of
+Pastoral and Heroic Romance[125] and of Fairy Tale, including perhaps
+only four persons, if so many, of first-rate literary rank--Urfé,[126]
+Madeleine de Scudéry, Madame d'Aulnoy, and Perrault; in the second, the
+more isolated but in some cases not unimportant names and works of
+Sorel, Scarron, Furetière, and the capital ones of Madame de la Fayette
+and Hamilton. According to the plan previously pursued, less attempt
+will be made to give exhaustive or even full lists of practitioners than
+to illustrate their practice thoroughly by example, translated or
+abstracted, and by criticism; and it is necessary that this latter
+course should be used without mercy to readers or to the historian
+himself in this first chapter. For there is hardly any department of
+literature which has been more left to the rather treacherous care of
+traditional and second- or seventh-hand judgment than the Heroic
+romance.[127]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The Pastoral in general.]
+
+The Pastoral, as being of the most ancient and in a literary sense of
+the highest formal rank, may occupy us first, but by no means longest. A
+great deal of attention (perhaps a great deal more than was at all
+necessary) has been paid to the pastoral element in various kinds of
+literature. The thing is certainly curious, and inevitably invited
+comment; but unfortunately it has peculiar temptations to a kind of
+comment which, though very fashionable for some time past, is rarely
+profitable. Pastorals of the most interesting kind actually exist in
+literature: "pastoralism" in the abstract, unless treated in the pure
+historical manner, is apt, like all similar criticism and discussion of
+"kinds" in general, to tend to [Greek: phlyaria].[128] For a history in
+a nutshell there is perhaps room even here, because the relations of the
+thing to fiction cannot be well understood without it. That the
+association of shepherds,[129] with songs, and with the telling of
+"tales" in both senses, is immensely old, is a fact which the Hebrew
+Scriptures establish, and almost the earliest Greek mythology and poetry
+confirm; but the wiser mind, here as elsewhere, will probably be content
+with the fact, and not enquire too busybodily into the reason. The
+connection between Sicily--apparently a land of actual pastoral
+life--and Alexandria--the home of the first professional man-of-letters
+school, as it may be called--perhaps supplies something more; the actual
+beauty of the Sicilian-Alexandrian poems, more still; the adoption of
+the form by Virgil, who was revered at Rome, renowned somewhat
+heterodoxically in the Middle Ages, and simply adored by the
+Renaissance, most of all. So, in English, Spenser and Milton, in French,
+Marot and others niched it solidly in the nation's poetry; and the
+certainly charming _Daphnis and Chloe_, when vernacularised, transferred
+its influence from verse to prose in almost all the countries of Europe.
+
+To what may be called "common-sense" criticism, there is, of course, no
+form of literature, in either prose or verse, which is more utterly
+abhorrent and more helplessly exposed. Unsympathetic, and in some points
+unfair and even unintelligent, as Johnson's criticism of _Lycidas_ may
+seem, to the censure of its actual "pastorality" there is no answer,
+except that "these things are an allegory" as well as a convention. To
+go further out of mere common-sense objections, and yet stick to the
+Devil's-Advocate line, there is no form which lends itself to--which,
+indeed, insists upon--conventions of the most glaring unreality more
+than the pastoral, and none in which the decorations, unless managed
+with extraordinary genius, have such a tendency to be tawdry at best,
+draggled and withered at worst. Nevertheless, the fact remains that at
+almost all times, both in ancient literature and since the revival of
+letters, as well as in some probably more spontaneous forms during the
+Middle Ages themselves,[130] pastorals have been popular with the
+vulgar, and practised by the elect; while within the very last hundred
+years such a towering genius as Shelley's, and such a manifold and
+effectual talent as Mr. Arnold's, have selected it for some of their
+very best work.
+
+Such adoption, moreover, had, for the writer of prose fiction, some
+peculiar and pretty obvious inducements. It has been noticed by all
+careful students of fiction that one of the initial difficulties in its
+way, and one of those which do not seem to get out of that way very
+quickly, is diffidence on the writer's part "how to begin." It may be
+said that this is not peculiar to fiction; but extends from the poet who
+never can get beyond the first lines of his epic to the journalist who
+sits for an hour gazing at the blank paper for his article, and returns
+home at midnight, if not like Miss Bolo "in a flood of tears and a sedan
+chair," at any rate in a tornado of swearing at himself and (while there
+were such things) a hansom cab. Pastoral gives both easy beginning and
+supporting framework.
+
+[Sidenote: Its beginnings in France.]
+
+[Sidenote: Minor romances preceding the _Astrée_.]
+
+The transformation of the older pastoral form into the newer began,
+doubtless, with the rendering into French of _Daphnis and Chloe_,[131]
+which appeared in the same year with the complete _Heptameron_ (1559).
+Twelve years later, in 1571, Belleforest's _La Pyrénee et Pastorale
+Amoureuse_ rather took the title than exemplified the kind; but in 1578
+the translation of Montemayor's _Diana_ definitely turned the current
+into the new-old channel. It was not, however, till seven years later
+still that "_Les Bergeries de Juliette_, de l'invention d'Ollenix du
+Mont Sacré" (a rather exceptionally foolish anagram of Nicolas de
+Montreux) essayed something original in the style. Montreux issued his
+work, of which more presently, again and again in five instalments, the
+last of which appeared thirteen years later than the first. And it has
+been proved with immense bibliographical labour by M. Reynier,[132] that
+though the last decade of the sixteenth century in France was almost as
+fertile in short love-romances[133] as ours was in sonnet-cycles, the
+pastoral form was, whether deliberately or not, for the most part
+eschewed, though there were one or two exceptions of little if any
+consequence. It is indeed noteworthy that (only four years before the
+first part of the _Astrée_) a second translation or the _Diana_ came
+out. But it was not till 1607 that this first part actually appeared,
+and in the opinion of its own time generally, and our own time for the
+most part, though not in that of the interval, made a new epoch in the
+history of French fiction.
+
+[Sidenote: Their general character.]
+
+The general characteristics of this curious and numerous, but almost
+forgotten, body of work--which must, be it remembered, have exercised
+influence, more or less, on the progress of the novel by the ways of
+supply, demand, and reaction alike--have been carefully analysed by M.
+Reynier, with whom, in regard to one or two points of opinion, one may
+differ, but whose statements of fact are certainly trustworthy. Short as
+they usually are, and small as is the literary power displayed in most
+of them, it is clear that they, long before Rambouillet and the
+_précieuses_, indicate a distinct reaction against merely brutal and
+ferocious manners, with a standard of "courtiership" in both senses. Our
+dear Reine Margot herself in one case prescribes, what one hopes she
+found not merely in La Mole, but in others of those transitorily happy
+ones whose desiccated hearts did or did not distend the pockets of her
+farthingale as live Persian kittens do those of their merchants. To be a
+lover you must have "a stocking void of holes, a ruff, a sword, a plume,
+_and a knowledge how to talk_." This last point is illustrated in these
+miniature romances after a fashion on which one of the differences of
+opinion above hinted at may arise. It is not, as in the later "Heroics,"
+shown merely in lengthy harangues, but in short and almost dramatised
+dialogue. No doubt this is often clumsy, but it may seem to have been
+not a whole mistake in itself--only an abortive attempt at something
+which, much later again, had to come before real novel-writing could be
+achieved, and which the harangues of the Scudéry type could never have
+provided. There is a little actual history in them--not the
+key-cryptograms of the "Heroics" or their adoption of ancient and
+distant historic frames. In a very large proportion, forced marriages,
+proposed and escaped from, supply the plot; in not a few, forced
+"vocations" to the conventual life. Elopements are as common as
+abductions in the next stage, and are generally conducted with as much
+propriety. Courtships of married women, and lapses by them, are very
+rare.
+
+[Sidenote: Examples of their style.]
+
+No one will be surprised to hear that the "Phébus" or systematised
+conceit, for which the period is famous, and which the beloved
+Marguerite herself did not a little favour, is abundant in them. From a
+large selection of M. Reynier's, I cull, as perhaps the most delightful
+of all these, if not also of all known to me in any language, the
+following:
+
+     During this task, Love, who had ambushed himself, plunged
+     his wings in the tears of the lover, and dried them in the
+     burning breast of the maiden.
+
+"A squadron of sighs" is unambitious, but neat, terse, and very tempting
+to the imagination. More complicated is a lady "floating on the sea of
+the persecution of her Prince, who would fain give her up to the
+shipwreck of his own concupiscence."
+
+And I like this:
+
+     The grafts of our desires being inarched long since in the
+     tree of our loves, the branches thereof bore the lovely
+     bouquets of our hopes.
+
+And this is fine:
+
+     Paper! that the rest of your white surface may not blush at
+     my shame, suffer me to blacken it with my sorrow!
+
+It has always been a sad mystery to me why rude and dull intelligences
+should sneer at, or denounce, these delightful fantastries, the very
+stuff of which dreams and love and poetry--the three best things of
+life--are made.[134]
+
+[Sidenote: Montreux and the _Bergeries de Juliette_.]
+
+The British Museum possesses not very many of the, I believe, numerous
+works of Nicolas de Montreux, _alias_, as has been said, Ollenix du Mont
+Sacré, a "gentleman of Maine," as he scrupulously designates himself.
+But it does possess two parts (the first two) of the _Bergeries de
+Juliette_, and I am not in the least surprised that no reader of them
+should have worried any librarian into completing the set. Each of these
+parts is a stout volume of some five hundred pages,[135] not very small,
+of close small print, filled with stuff of the most deadly dulness. For
+instance, Ollenix is desirous to illustrate the magnificence and the
+danger of those professional persons of the other sex at Venice who have
+filled no small place in literature from Coryat to Rousseau. So he tells
+us, without a gleam or suspicion of humour, that one customer was so
+astonied at the decorations of the bedroom, the bed, etc., that he
+remained for two whole hours considering them, and forgetting to pay any
+attention to the lady. It is satisfactory to know that she revenged
+herself by raising the fee to an inordinate amount, and insisting on her
+absurd client's lackey being sent to fetch it before the actual
+conference took place. But the silliness of the story itself is a fair
+sample of Montreux' wits, and these wits manage to make anything they
+deal with duller by their way of telling it.
+
+[Sidenote: Des Escuteaux and his _Amours Diverses_.]
+
+It is still more unfortunate that our national collection has none of
+the numerous fictions[136] of A(ntoine?) de Nervèze. His _Amours
+Diverses_ (1606), in which he collected no less than seven love-stories,
+published separately earlier, would be useful. But it luckily does
+provide the similarly titled book of Des Escuteaux, who is perhaps the
+most representative and prolific writer, next to Montreux and Nervèze,
+of the whole, and who seems to me, from what I have read of the first
+and what others say of the second, to be their superior. The collections
+consist of (_Amours de_ in every case) _Filiris et Isolia_, dedicated to
+Isabel (not "-bel_le_") de Rochechouart; _Clarimond et Antoinette_ (to
+Lucresse [_sic_] de Bouillé); _Clidamant et Marilinde_ (to _Jane_ de la
+Brunetière), and _Ipsilis et Alixée_ (to Renée de Cossé, Amirale de
+France!).[137]
+
+Some readers may be a little "put off" by a habit which Des Escuteaux
+has, especially in the first story of the volume, of prefixing, as in
+drama, the names of the speakers--_Le Prince_, _La Princesse_, etc.--to
+the first paragraphs of the harangues and _histoires_ of which these
+books so largely consist.[138] But it is not universal. The most
+interesting of the four is, I think, _Clidamant et Marilinde_, for it
+introduces the religious wars, a sojourn of the lovers on a desert
+island, which M. Reynier[139] not unjustly calls Crusoe-like, and other
+"varieties."
+
+[Sidenote: François de Molière--_Polyxène._]
+
+I have not seen the other--quite other, and François--Molière's _Semaine
+Amoureuse_, which belongs to this class, though later than most; but his
+still later _Polyxène_, a sort of half-way house between these shorter
+novels and the ever-enlarged "Heroics," is a very fat duodecimo of 1100
+pages. The heroine has two lovers--one with the singular name of
+Cloryman,--but love does not run smooth with either, and she ends by
+taking the (pagan) veil. The bathos of the thought and style may be
+judged from the heroine's affecting mention of an entertainment as "the
+last _ballet_ my unhappy father ever saw."
+
+[Sidenote: Du Périer--_Arnoult et Clarimonde._]
+
+Not one of the worst of these four or five score minors, though scarcely
+in itself a positively good thing, is the Sieur du Périer's _La Haine et
+l'Amour d'Arnoult et de Clarimonde_. It begins with a singularly banal
+exordium, gravely announcing that Hate and Love _are_ among the most
+important passions, with other statements of a similar kind couched in
+commonplace language. But it does something to bring the novel from an
+uninteresting cloudland to earth by dealing with the recent and still
+vividly felt League wars: and there is some ingenuity shown in plotting
+the conversion of the pair from more than "a little aversion" at the
+beginning to nuptial union--_not_ at the end. For it is one of the
+points about the book which are not commonplace, though it may be a
+survival or atavism from mediaeval practice--that the latter part of it
+is occupied mainly, not with Arnoult and Clarimonde, but with the loves,
+fortunes, and misfortunes of their daughter Claride.
+
+[Sidenote: Du Croset--_Philocalie._ Corbin--_Philocaste._]
+
+The _Philocalie_ of Du Croset (1593) derives its principal interest from
+its being not merely a _Bergerie_ before the _Astrée_, but, like it, the
+work of a Forézian gentleman who proudly asserts his territoriality, and
+dedicates his book to the "Chevalier D'Urfé." And its part name-fellow,
+the _Philocaste_ of Jean Corbin--a very tiny book, the heroine of which
+is (one would hardly have thought it from her name) a Princess of
+England--is almost entirely composed of letters, discourse on them, and
+a few interspersed verses. It belongs to the division of
+backward-looking novels, semi-chivalrous in type, and its hero is as
+often called "The Black Knight" as by his name.
+
+[Sidenote: Jean de Lannoi and his _Roman Satirique_.]
+
+The _Roman Satirique_ (1624) of Jean de Lannoi is another example of the
+curious inability to "hit it off" which has been mentioned so often as
+characterising the period. Its 1100 pages are far too many, though it is
+fair to say that the print is exceptionally large and loose. Much of it
+is not in any sense "satiric," and it seems to have derived what
+popularity it had almost wholly from the "key" interest.
+
+[Sidenote: Béroalde de Verville outside the _Moyen de Parvenir_.]
+
+The minor works--if the term may be used when the attribution of the
+major is by no means certain--of Béroalde de Verville have, as is usual,
+been used both ways as arguments for and against his authorship of the
+_Moyen de Parvenir_. _Les Aventures de Floride_ is simply an attempt,
+and a big one in size, to _amadigauliser_, as the literary slang of the
+time went. The _Histoire Véritable_, owing nothing but its title and
+part of its idea to Lucian, and sub-titled _Les Princes Fortunés_, is
+less conventional. It has a large fancy map for a frontispiece; there
+are fairies in it, and a sort of _pot-pourri_ of queernesses which might
+not impossibly have come from the author or editor of the _Moyen_ in his
+less inconveniently ultra-Pantagruelist moments. _Le Cabinet de Minerve_
+is actually a glorification of "honest" love. In fact, Béroalde is one
+of the oddest of "polygraphers," and there is nobody quite like him in
+English, though some of his fellows may be matched, after a fashion,
+with our Elizabethan pamphleteers. I have long wished to read the whole
+of him, but I suppose I never shall.
+
+And it is time to leave these very minor stars and come to the full and
+gracious moon of the _Astrée_ itself.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Astrée_--its author.]
+
+Honoré D'Urfé, who was three years younger than Shakespeare, and died in
+the year in which Charles I. came to the throne, was a cadet of a very
+ancient family in the district or minor province of Forez, where his own
+famous Lignon runs into the Loire. He was a pupil of the Jesuits and
+early _fort en thème_, was a strenuous _ligueur_, and, though (or
+perhaps also because) he was very good friends with Henri's estranged
+wife, Margot, for some time decidedly suspect to Henri IV. For this
+reason, and others of property, etc., he became almost a naturalised
+Savoyard, but died in the service of his own country at the beginning of
+Richelieu's Valtelline war. The most noteworthy thing in his rather
+eventful life was, however, his marriage. This also has a direct
+literary interest, at least in tradition, which will have his wife,
+Diane de Châteaumorand, to be Astrée herself, and so the heroine of "the
+first [great] sentimental romance." The circumstances of the union,
+however, were scarcely sentimental, much less romantic. They were even,
+as people used to say yesterday, "not quite nice," and the Abbé Reure, a
+devotee of both parties to it, admits that they "_heurte[nt] violemment
+nos idées_." In fact Diane was not only eight years older than Honoré
+and thirty-eight years of age, but she had been for a quarter of a
+century the wife of his elder brother, Anne, while he himself was a
+knight of Malta, and vowed to celibacy. Of course (as the Canon points
+out with irrefragably literal accuracy in logic and law) the marriage
+being declared null _ab initio_ (for the cause most likely to suggest
+itself, though alleged after extraordinary delay), Diane and Honoré were
+not sister- and brother-in-law at all, and no "divorce" or even
+"dispensation" was needed. In the same way, Honoré, having been
+introduced into the Order of St. John irregularly in various ways, never
+was a knight of it at all, and could not be bound by its rules. Q.E.D.
+Wicked people, of course, on the other hand, said that it was a device
+to retain Diane's great wealth (for Honoré was quite poor in comparison)
+in the family; sentimental ones that it was a fortunate and blameless
+crowning of a long and pure attachment. As a matter of fact, no
+"permanent children" (to adopt an excellent phrase of the late Mr.
+Traill's) resulted; Diane outlived her husband, though but for a short
+time, and left all her property to her relations of the Lévis family.
+The pair are also said not to have been the most united of couples. In
+connection with the _Astrée_ their portraits are interesting. Honoré
+d'Urfé, though he had the benefit of Van Dyck's marvellous art of
+cavalier creation, must have been a very handsome man. Diane's portrait,
+by a much harder and dryer hand, purports to have been taken at the age
+of sixty-four. At first sight there is no beauty in it; but on
+reinspection one admits possibilities--a high forehead, rather
+"enigmatic" eyes, not at all "extinguished," a nose prominent and rather
+large, but straight and with well, but not too much, developed "wings,"
+and, above all, a full and rather voluptuous mouth. Such may have been
+the first identified novel-heroine. It is a popular error to think that
+sixty-four and beauty are incompatibles, but one certainly would have
+liked to see her at sixteen, or better still and perhaps best of all, at
+six and twenty.
+
+[Sidenote: The book.]
+
+The _Astrée_ itself is not the easiest of subjects to deal with. It is
+indeed not so huge as the _Grand Cyrus_, but it is much more difficult
+to get at--a very rare flower except in the "grey old gardens" of
+secular libraries. It and its author have indeed for a few years past
+had the benefit (as a result partly of another doubtful thing, an
+_x_-centenary) of one[140] of the rather-to-seek good specimens among
+the endless number of modern literary monographs. But it has never been
+reprinted--even extracts of it, with the exception of a few stock
+passages, are not common or extensive; and though a not small library
+has been written about it in successive waves of eulogy, reaction,
+mostly ignorant contempt, rehabilitation, and mere bookmaking; though
+there have been (as noted) recent anniversaries and celebrations, and so
+forth; though it is one of the not numerous books which have given a
+name-type--Celadon,--and a place--"les bords du Lignon,"--to their own,
+if not to universal literature, it seems to be "as a book" very little
+known. The faithful monographer above cited admits merit in Dunlop; but
+Dunlop does not say very much about it. Herr Körting (_v. sup._)
+analyses it. Possibly there may be, also in German, a comparison,
+tempting to those who like such things, between it and its twenty years'
+predecessor, Sidney's _Arcadia_, the first French translation of which,
+in 1625, just after Urfé's death, was actually dedicated to his widow.
+But I suspect that few English writers about Sidney have known much of
+the _Astrée_, and I feel sure that still fewer French writers[141] on
+this have known anything of Sidney save perhaps his name. Of course the
+indebtedness of both books to Montemayor's _Diana_ is a commonplace.
+
+[Sidenote: Its likeness to the _Arcadia_.]
+
+[Sidenote: Its philosophy and its general temper.]
+
+One of the numerous resemblances between the two, and one which,
+considering their respective positions in the history of the French and
+English novel, is most interesting, is the strong philosophical and
+specially Platonic influence which the Renaissance exercised on
+both.[142] Sidney, however full of it elsewhere, put less of it in his
+actual novel; while, on the other hand, nothing did so much to create
+and spread the rather rococo notion of pseudo-platonic love in France,
+and from France throughout Europe, as the _Astrée_ itself. The further
+union of the philosophic mind with an eminently cavalier
+temperament--the united _ethos_ of scholar, soldier, lover, and
+courtier--fills out the comparison: and dwarfs such merely mechanical
+things as the mixed use of prose and verse (which both may have taken,
+nay pretty certainly did take, from Montemayor) and the pastoralities,
+for which they in the same way owed royalty to the Spaniard, to Tasso,
+to Sannazar, and to the Greek romances, let alone Theocritus and Virgil.
+And, to confine ourselves henceforward to our own special subject, it is
+this double infusion of idealism--of spiritual and intellectual
+enthusiasm on the one hand and practical fire of life and act on the
+other--which makes the great difference, not merely between the _Astrée_
+and its predecessors of the _Amadis_ class, but between it and its
+successors the strictly "Heroic" romances, though these owe it so much.
+The first--except in some points of passion--hardly touch reality at
+all; the last are perpetually endeavouring to simulate and insinuate a
+sort of reality under cover of adventures and conventions which, though
+fictitious, are hardly at all fantastic. But the _Astrée_ might almost
+be called a French prose _Faerie Queene_, allowing for the difference of
+the two nations, languages, vehicles, and _milieux_ generally, in its
+representation of the above-mentioned cavalier-philosophic _ethos_--a
+thing never so well realised in France as in England or in Spain, but of
+which Honoré d'Urfé, from many traits in life and book, seems to have
+been a real example, and which certainly vindicates its place in history
+and literature.
+
+[Sidenote: Its appearance and its author's other work.]
+
+The _Astrée_ appeared in five instalments, 1607-10-12-19 and
+posthumously, the several parts being frequently printed: and it is said
+to be almost impossible to find a copy, all the parts of which are of
+the first issue in each case. The two later parts probably, the last
+certainly, were collaborated in, if not wholly written by, the author's
+secretary Baro. But it was by no means Honoré's only work; indeed the
+Urfés up to his time were an unusually literary family; and, while his
+grandfather Claude collected a remarkable library (whence, at its
+dispersion in the evil days of the house[143] during the eighteenth
+century, came some of not the least precious possessions of French
+public and private collections), his unfortunate brother Anne was a
+poet. Honoré himself, besides school exercises, wrote _Epistres Morales_
+which were rather popular, and display qualities useful in appreciating
+the novel itself; a poem in octosyllables, usually and perhaps naturally
+called "_La_ Sireine," but really entitled in the masculine, and having
+nothing to do with a mermaid; a curious thing, semi-dramatic in form and
+in irregular blank verse, entitled _Silvanire ou La Morte Vive_, which
+was rehandled soon after his death by Corneille's most dangerous rival
+Mairet; and an epic called _La Savoisiade_, which seems to have no
+merit, and all but a very small portion of which is still unprinted.
+
+[Sidenote: Its character and appeals.]
+
+He remains, therefore, the author of the _Astrée_, and, taking things on
+the whole (a mighty whole, beyond contest, as far as bulk goes), there
+are not so many authors of the second rank (for one of the first he can
+hardly be called) who would lose very much by an exchange with him.
+One's estimates of the book are apt to vary in different places, even
+as, though not in the same degree as, the estimates of others have
+varied at different times; but I myself have found that the more I read
+of it the more I liked and esteemed it; and I believe that, if I had a
+copy of my own and could turn it over in the proper diurnal and
+nocturnal fashion, not as duty- but as pleasure-reading, I should like
+it better still. Certain points that have appealed to me have been
+noticed already--its combination of sensuous and ideal passion is
+perhaps the most important of them; but there are not a few others,
+themselves by no means void of importance. One is the union, not common
+in French books between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century, of
+sentiment and seriousness with something very like humour. Hylas, the
+not exactly "comic man," but light-o'-love and inconstant shepherd, was
+rather a bone of contention among critics of the book's own century. But
+he certainly seasons it well; and there is one almost Shakespearean
+scene in which he is concerned--a scene which Benedick and Beatrice, who
+may have read it not so very many years after their own marriage, must
+have enjoyed considerably. Hylas and the shepherdess Stella (who is
+something of a girl-counterpart of his, as in the case just cited) draw
+up a convention of love[144] between them. The tables, though they are
+not actually numbered in the original, are twelve, and, shortened a
+little, run as follows:
+
+[Sidenote: Hylas and Stella and their Convention.]
+
+     1. Neither is to be sovereign over the other.
+
+     2. Both are to be at once Lover and Beloved. [They knew
+     something about the matter, these two, for all their
+     jesting.]
+
+     3. There is to be no constraint of any kind.
+
+     4. They are to love for as long or as short a time as they
+     please.
+
+     5. No charge of infidelity is ever to be brought on either
+     side.
+
+     6. It is quite permitted to either or both to love somebody
+     else, and yet to continue loving each other.
+
+     7. There is to be no jealousy, no complaints, no sulks.
+
+     8. They are to do and say exactly what they please.
+
+     9. Words like "faithfulness," etc., are taboo.
+
+     10. They may leave off playing whenever they like.
+
+     11. And begin again ditto.
+
+     12. They are to forget both the favours they receive from
+     each other and the offences they may commit against each
+     other.
+
+Now, of course, any one may say of the Land where such a code might be
+realised, in the very words of one of the most charming of songs, set to
+one of the happiest of tunes:
+
+    Cette rive, ma chère,
+    On ne la connaît guère
+        Au pays des amours!
+
+But that is not the question, and if it _were_ possible it undoubtedly
+would be a very agreeable Utopia, combining the transcendental charms of
+the country of Quintessence with the material ones of the Pays de
+Cocagne. From its own point of view there seems to be no fault to find
+with it, except, perhaps, with the first part of the Twelfth
+Commandment; for the remembrance of former favours heightens the
+enjoyment of later ones, and the danger of _nessun maggior dolore_ is
+excluded by the hypothesis of indifference after breach. But a sort of
+umpire, or at any rate thirdsman, the shepherd Silvandre,[145] when
+asked his opinion, makes an ingenious objection. To carry out Article
+Three, he says, there ought to be a Thirteenth:
+
+     13. That they may break any of these rules just as they
+     please.
+
+For what comes of this further the reader may go to the book, but enough
+of it should have been given to show that there is no want of salt,
+though there is no (or very little) _gros sel_[146] in the _Astrée_.
+
+[Sidenote: Narrative skill frequent.]
+
+Yet again there is very considerable narrative power. Abstracts may be
+found, not merely in older books mentioned or to be mentioned, but in
+the recent publications of Körting and the Abbé Reure, and there is
+neither room nor need for a fresh one here. As some one (or more than
+one) has said, the book is really a sort of half-allegorical tableau of
+honourable Love worked out in a crowd of couples (some I believe, have
+counted as many as sixty), from Celadon and Astrée themselves downwards.
+The course of these loves is necessarily "accidented," and the accidents
+are well enough managed from the first, and naturally enough best known,
+where Celadon flings himself into the river and is rescued, insensible
+but alive, by nymphs, who all admire him very much, though none of them
+can affect his passion for Astrée. But one cares--at least I have found
+myself caring--less for the story than for the way in which it is
+told--a state of things exactly contrary, as will be seen, to that
+produced with or in me by the _Grand Cyrus_. There we have a really
+well, if too intricately, engineered plot, in the telling of which it is
+difficult to take much interest. Here it is just the reverse. And one of
+the consequences is that you can dip in the _Astrée_ much more
+refreshingly than in its famous follower, where, if you do so, you
+constantly "don't know where you are."
+
+[Sidenote: The Fountain of the Truth of Love.]
+
+One of the most famous things in the book, and one of the most important
+to its conduct, is the "Fountain of the Truth of Love," a few words on
+which will illustrate the general handling very fairly. This Fountain
+(presided over by a Druid, a very important personage otherwise, who is
+a sort of high priest thereof) has nothing in common with the more usual
+waters which are philtres or anti-philtres, etc. Its function is to be
+gazed in rather than to be drunk, and if you look into it, loving
+somebody, you see your mistress. If she loves you, you see yourself as
+well, beside her, and (which is not so nice) if she loves some one else
+you see _him_; while if she is fancy-free you see her only. Clidaman,
+one of the numerous lovers above mentioned, tries the water; and his
+love, Silvie, presents herself again and again as he looks, "almost
+setting on fire with her lovely eyes the wave which seemed to laugh
+around her." But she is quite alone.
+
+The presiding Druid interprets, not merely in the sense already given,
+but with one of the philosophic commentaries, which, as has been said,
+are distinctive of the book. The nature of the fountain is to reflect
+not body but spirit. Spirit includes Will, Memory, and Judgment, and
+when a man loves, his spirit transforms itself through all these ways
+into the thing loved. Therefore when he looks into the fountain he sees
+Her. In the same way She is changed into Him or some one else whom she
+loves, and He sees that image also; but if she loves no one He sees her
+image alone.
+
+"This is very satisfactory" (as Lady Kew would say) to the inquiring
+mind, but not so much so to the lover. He wants to have the fountain
+shut up, I suppose (for my notes and memory do not cover this point
+exactly), that no rival may have the chance denied to himself. He would
+even destroy it, but that--the Druid tells and shows him--is quite
+impossible. What can be done shall be. And here comes in another of the
+agreeable things (to me) in the book--its curious fairy-tale character,
+which is shown by numerous supernaturalities, much more _humanised_ than
+those of the _Amadis_ group, and probably by no means without effect on
+the fairy-tale proper which was to follow. Clidaman himself happens, in
+the most natural way in the world, to "keep"--as an ordinary man keeps
+cats and dogs--a couple of extraordinary big and savage lions and
+another couple of unicorns to fight, not with each other, but with
+miscellaneous animals. The lions and the unicorns are forthwith
+extra-enchanted, so as to guard the fountain--an excellent arrangement,
+but subject to some awkwardnesses in the sequel. For the lions take
+turns to seek their meat in the ordinary way, and though they can hurt
+nobody who does not meddle with the fountain, and have no wish to be
+man-eaters, complications naturally supervene. And sometimes, besides
+fighting,[147] and love-making, and love casuistry, and fairy-tales, and
+oracles, and the finer comedy above mentioned, "Messire d'Urfé" (for he
+did not live too late to have that most gracious of all designations of
+a gentleman used in regard to him) did not disdain, and could not ill
+manage, sheer farce. The scene with Cryseide and Arimant and Clorine and
+the nurse and the ointment in Part III. Book VII., though it contains
+little or nothing to _effaroucher la pudeur_, is like one of the broader
+but not broadest tales of the Fabliaux and their descendants.
+
+[Sidenote: Some drawbacks--awkward history.]
+
+The book, therefore, has not merely a variety, but a certain liveliness,
+neither of which is commonplace; but it would of course be uncritical to
+suppress its drawbacks. It is far too long: and while bowing to those to
+the manner born who say that Baro carried out his master's plan well in
+point of style, and acknowledging that I have paid less attention to
+Parts IV. and V. than to the others, it seems to me that we could spare
+a good deal of them. One error, common to almost the whole century in
+fiction, is sometimes flagrant. Nobody except a pedant need object to
+the establishment, in the time of the early fifth century and the place
+of Gaul, of a non-historical kinglet- or queenletdom of Forez or
+"Séguse" under Amasis (here a feminine name[148]), etc.; nor, though (as
+may perhaps be remarked again later) things Merovingian bring little
+luck in literature, need we absolutely bar Chilperics and Alarics, or a
+reference to "all the beauties of Neustria." But why, in the midst of
+the generally gracious _macédoine_ of serious and comic loves, and
+jokes, and adventures, should we have thrust in the entirely
+unnecessary, however historical, crime whereby Valentinian the Third
+lost his worthless life and his decaying Empire? It has, however, been
+remarked, perhaps often enough, by those who have busied themselves with
+the history of the novel, how curious it is that the historical variety,
+though it never succeeded in being born for two thousand years after
+the _Cyropaedia_ and more, constantly strove to be so. At no time were
+the throes more frequent than during the seventeenth century in France;
+at no time, there or anywhere else, were they more abortive.[149]
+
+[Sidenote: But attractive on the whole.]
+
+But it remains on the whole an attractive book, and the secret of at
+least part of this attractiveness is no doubt to be found stated in a
+sentence of Madame de Sévigné's, which has startled some people, that
+"everything in it is natural and true." To the startled persons this may
+seem either a deliberate paradox, or a mere extravagance of affection,
+or even downright bad taste and folly. But the Lady of all Beautiful
+Letter-writers was almost of the family of Neverout in literary
+criticism. If she had been a professional critic (which is perhaps
+impossible), she might have safeguarded her dictum by the addition,
+"according to its own scheme and division." It is the neglect of this
+implication which has caused the demurs. "'Natural!'" and "'true!'" they
+say, "why, the Pastoral is the most frankly and in fact outrageously
+unnatural and false of all literary kinds. Does not Urfé himself warn us
+that we are not to expect ordinary shepherds and shepherdesses at all?"
+Or perhaps they go more to detail. "The whole book is unabashedly
+occupied with love-making; and love is not the whole, it is even a very
+small part, of life, that is to say, of truth and nature." Or, to come
+still closer to particulars, "Where, for instance, did Celadon, who is
+represented as having been reduced to utter destitution when, _more
+heroum_, he started a quasi-hermit life in the wood, get the
+decorations, etc., of the Temple he erected to Love and Astrée?" One
+almost blushes at having to explain, in a popular style, the
+mistakenness, to use the mildest word, of these objections. The present
+writer, in a book less ambitious than the present on the sister subject
+of the English novel, once ventured to point out that if you ask "where
+Sir Guyon got that particularly convenient padlock with which he
+fastened Occasion's tongue, and still more the hundred iron chains with
+which he bound Furor?" that is to say, if you ask such a question
+seriously, you have no business to read romance at all. As to the Love
+matter, of that it is still less use to talk. There are some who would
+go so far as to deny the major; even short of that hardiness it may be
+safely urged that in poetry and romance Love _is_ the chief and
+principal thing, and that the poet and the romancer are only acting up
+to their commission in representing it as such. But the source of all
+these errors is best reached, and if it may be, stopped, by dealing with
+the first article of the indictment in the same way. What if Pastoral
+_is_ artificial? That may be an argument against the kind as a whole,
+but it cannot lie against a particular example of it, because that
+example is bound to act up to its kind's law. And I think it not
+extravagant to contend that the _Astrée_ acts up to its law in the most
+inoffensive fashion possible--in such a fashion, in fact, as is hardly
+ever elsewhere found in the larger specimens, and by no means very often
+in the smaller. Hardly even in _As You Like It_, certainly not in the
+_Arcadia_, do the crook and the pipe get less in the way than they do
+here. A minor cavil has been urged--that the "shepherds" and the
+"knights," the "shepherdesses" and the "nymphs" are very little
+distinguishable from each other; but why should they be? Urfé had
+sufficient art to throw over all these things an air of glamour which,
+to those who can themselves take the benefit of the spell, banishes all
+inconsistencies, all improbabilities, all specks and knots and the like.
+It has been said that the _Astrée_ has in it something of the genuine
+fairy-tale element. And the objections taken to it are really not much
+more reasonable than would be the poser whether even the cleverest of
+wolves, with or without a whole human grandmother inside it, would find
+it easy to wrap itself up in bedclothes, or whether, seeing that even
+walnut shells subject cats to such extreme discomfort, top-boots would
+not be even more intolerable to the most faithful of feline retainers.
+
+[Sidenote: The general importance and influence.]
+
+The literary influence and importance of the book have never been denied
+by any competent criticism which had taken the trouble to inform itself
+of the facts. It can be pointed out that while the "Heroics," great as
+was their popularity for a time, did not keep it very long, and lost it
+by sharp and long continued--indeed never reversed--reaction, the
+influence of the _Astrée_ on this later school itself was great, was not
+effaced by that of its pupils, and worked in directions different, as
+well as conjoint. It begat or helped to beget the _Précieuses_; it did a
+great deal, if not exactly to set, to continue that historical character
+which, though we have not been able to speak very favourably of its
+immediate exercise, was at last to be so important. Above all, it
+reformed and reinforced the "sentimental" novel, as it is called. We
+have tried to show that there was much more of this in the mediaeval
+romance proper than it has been the fashion in recent times to allow.
+There was a great deal in the _Amadis_ class, but extravaganzaed out of
+reason as well as out of rhyme. To us, or some of us, the _Astrée_ type
+may still seem extravagant, but in comparison it brings things back to
+that truth and nature which were granted it by Madame de Sévigné. Its
+charms actually soothed the savage breast of Boileau, and it is not
+surprising that La Fontaine loved it. Few things of the kind are more
+creditable to the better side of Jean Jacques a full century later, than
+that he was not indifferent to its beauty; and there were few greater
+omissions on the part of _mil-huit-cent-trente_ (which, however, had so
+much to do!) than its comparative neglect to stray on to the gracious
+banks of the Lignon. All honour to Saint-Marc Girardin (not exactly the
+man from whom one would have expected it) for having been, as it seems,
+though in a kind of _palinodic_ fashion, the first to render serious
+attention, and to do fair justice, to this vast and curious wilderness
+of delights.[150]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Grand Cyrus_.]
+
+[Sidenote: Its preface to Madame de Longueville.]
+
+To turn from the Pastoral to the Heroic, the actual readers, English or
+other, of _Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus_[151] in late years, have probably
+been reckonable rather as single spies (a phrase in this connection of
+some rather special appropriateness) than in battalions. And it is to be
+feared that many or most, if not nearly all of them, have opened it with
+little expectation of pleasure. The traditional estimates are dead
+against it as a rule; it has constantly served as an example--produced
+by wiseacres for wiseacres--of the _un_wisdom of our ancestors; and,
+generous as were Sir Walter's estimates of all literature, and
+especially of his fellow-craftsmen's and craftswomen's work, the lively
+passage in _Old Mortality_ where Edith Bellenden's reference to the book
+excites the (in the circumstances justifiable) wrath of the
+Major--perhaps the only _locus_ of ordinary reading that touches
+_Artamène_ with anything but vagueness--is not entirely calculated to
+make readers read eagerly. But on turning honestly to the book itself,
+it is possible that considerable relief and even a little astonishment
+may result. Whether this satisfaction will arise at the very dedication
+by that vainglorious and yet redoubtable cavalier, Georges de Scudéry,
+in which he characteristically takes to himself the credit due mainly,
+if not wholly, to his plain little sister Madeleine, will depend upon
+taste. It is addressed to Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, Duchess of
+Longueville, sister of Condé, and adored mistress of many noteworthy
+persons--the most noteworthy perhaps being the Prince de Marcillac,
+better known, as from his later title, as Duc de la Rochefoucauld, and
+a certain Aramis--not so good a man as three friends of his, but a very
+accomplished, valiant, and ingenious gentleman. The blue eyes of Madame
+de Longueville (M. de Scudéry takes the liberty to mention specially
+their charm, if not their colour) were among the most victorious in that
+time of the "raining" and reigning influence of such things: and somehow
+one succumbs a little even now to her as the Queen of that bevy of fair,
+frail, and occasionally rather ferocious ladies of the Fronde feminine.
+(The femininity was perhaps most evident in Madame de Chevreuse, and the
+ferocity in Madame de Montbazon.) Did not Madame de Longueville--did not
+they all--figuratively speaking, draw that great philosopher Victor
+Cousin[152] up in a basket two centuries after her death, even as had
+been done, literally if mythically, to that greater philosopher,
+Aristotle, ages before? But the governor of Our Lady of the Guard[153]
+says to her many of these things which that very Aramis delighted to
+hear (though not perhaps from the lips of rivals) and described,
+rebuking the callousness of Porthos to them, as fine and worthy of being
+said by gentlemen. The Great Cyrus himself "comes to lay at her
+Highness's feet his palms and his trophies." His historian, achieving at
+once advertisement and epigram, is sure that as she listened kindly to
+the _Death of Caesar_ (his own play), she will do the same to the Life
+of Cyrus. Anne Geneviève herself will become the example of all
+Princesses (the Reverend Abraham Adams might have groaned a little
+here), just as Cyrus was the pattern of all Princes. She is not the
+moon, but the sun[154] of the Court. The mingled blood of Bourbon and
+Montmorency gives her such an _éclat_ that it is almost unapproachable.
+He then digresses a little to glorify her brother, her husband, and
+Chapelain, the famous author of _La Pucelle_, who had the good fortune
+to be a friend of the Scudérys, as well as, like them, a strong "Heroic"
+theorist. After which he comes to that personal inventory which has been
+referred to, decides that her beauty is of a celestial splendour, and,
+in fact, a ray of Divinity itself; goes into raptures, not merely over
+her eyes, but over her hair (which simply effaces sunbeams); the
+brightness and whiteness of her complexion; the just proportion of her
+features; and, above all, her singularly blended air of modesty and
+gallantry; her intellectual and spiritual match; her bodily graces; and
+he is finally sure that though somebody's misplaced acuteness may
+discover faults which nobody else will perceive (Georges would like to
+see them, no doubt), her extreme kindness will pardon them. A
+commonplace example of flattery this? Well, perhaps not. One somehow
+sees, across the rhetoric, the blue eyes of Anne Geneviève and the
+bristling mustachios and "swashing outside" and mighty rapier of
+Georges; and the thing becomes alive with the life of a not ungracious
+past, the ills of which were, after all, more or less common to all
+times, and its charms (like the charms of all things and persons
+charming) its own.
+
+[Sidenote: The "Address to the Reader."]
+
+But the Address to the Reader, though it discards those "temptations of
+young ladies" (Madame de Longueville can never have been old) which Dr.
+Johnson recognised, and also the companion attractions of Cape and
+Sword, is of perhaps directly greater importance for our special and
+legitimate purpose. Here the brother and sister (probably the sister
+chiefly) develop some of the principles of their bold adventure, and
+they are of no small interest. It is allowed that the varying accounts
+of Cyrus (in which, as almost every one with the slightest tincture of
+education[155] must be aware, doctors differ remarkably), at least those
+of Herodotus and Xenophon (they do not, or she does not, seem to have
+known Ctesias), are confounded, and selected _ad libitum_ and _secundum
+artem_ only. Further "lights" are given by the selection of the
+"Immortal Heliodorus" and "the great Urfé" as patterns and patrons of
+the work. In fact, to any expert in the reading and criticism of novels
+it is clear that a great principle has been--imperfectly but
+somehow--laid hold of.
+
+[Sidenote: The opening of the "business."]
+
+Perhaps, however, "laid hold of" is too strong; we should do better by
+borrowing from Dante and saying that the author or authors have
+"glimpsed the Panther,"--have seen that a novel ought not to be a mere
+chronicle, unselected and miscellaneous, but a work which, whether it
+has actual unity of plot or not, has unity of interest, and will deal
+with its facts so as to secure that interest. At first, indeed, they
+plunge us into the middle of matters quite excitingly, though perhaps
+not without more definite suggestion, both to them and to us, of the
+"immortal" Heliodorus. The hero, who still bears his false name of
+Artamène,[156] appears at the head of a small army, the troops of
+Cyaxares of Media; and, at the mouth of a twisting valley, suddenly sees
+before him the town of Sinope in flames, the shipping in the harbour
+blazing likewise, all but one bark, which seems to be flying from more
+than the conflagration. A fine comic-opera situation follows; for while
+Artamène is trying to subdue the fire he is attacked by the traitor
+Aribée, general under the King of Assyria, who is himself shut up in a
+tower and seems to be hopelessly cut off from rescue by the fire. The
+invincible hero, however, subdues at once the rebel and the destroying
+element; captures the Assyrian, who is not only his enemy and that of
+his master Cyaxares, but his Rival (the word has immense importance in
+these romances, and is always honoured with a capital there), and learns
+that the escaping galley carried with it his beloved Mandane, daughter
+of Cyaxares, of whom he is in quest, and who has been abducted from her
+abductor and lover by another, Prince Mazare of Sacia.
+
+[Sidenote: The ups and downs of the general conduct of the story.]
+
+All this is lively and business-like enough, and one feels rather a
+brute in making the observation (necessary, however) that Artamène talks
+too much and not in the right way. When things in general are "on the
+edge of a razor" and one is a tried and skilful soldier, one does not,
+except on the stage, pause to address the unjust Gods, and inquire
+whether they have consented to the destruction of the most beautiful
+princess in the world; discuss with one's friends the reduction into
+cinders[157] of the adorable Mandane, and further enquire, without the
+slightest chance of answer, "Alas! unjust Rival! hast thou not thought
+rather of thine own preservation than of hers?" However, for a time, the
+incidents do carry off the verbiage, and for nearly a hundred small
+pages there is no great cause for complaint. It is the style of the
+book; and if you do not like it you must "seek another inn." But what
+succeeds, for the major part of the first of the twenty volumes,[158] is
+open to severer criticisms. We fall into interminable discussions,
+_récits_, and the like, on the subject of the identity of Artamène and
+Cyrus, and we see at once the imperfect fashion in which the nature of
+the novel is conceived. That elaborate explanation--necessary in
+history, philosophy, and other "serious" works--cannot be cut down too
+much in fiction, is one truth that has not been learnt.[159] That the
+stuffing of the story with large patches of solid history or
+pseudo-history is wrong and disenchanting has not been learnt either;
+and this is the less surprising and the more pardonable in that very
+few, if indeed any, of the masters and mistresses of the novel, later
+and greater than Georges and Madeleine de Scudéry, have not refused to
+learn it or have not carelessly forgotten the learning. Even Scott
+committed the fault sometimes, though never in his very best work.
+Dumas--when he went out and left the "young men" to fill in, and stayed
+too long, and made them fill in too much--did it constantly. Yet again,
+that mixture of excess and defect in talking, which has been noted
+already, becomes more and more trying in connection with the previously
+mentioned faults and others. Of _mere_ talk there is enough and
+immensely to spare; but it is practically never real dialogue, still
+less real conversation. It is harangue, narrative, soliloquy, what you
+will, in the less lively theatrical forms of speech watered out in
+prose, with "passing of compliments" in the most gentlefolkly manner,
+and a spice of "Phébus" or Euphuism now and then. But it is never real
+personal talk,[160] while as for conveying the action _by_ the talk as
+the two great masters above mentioned and nearly all others of their
+kind do, there is no vestige of even an attempt at the feat, or a
+glimpse of its desirableness.
+
+Again, one sees before long that of one priceless quality--a sense of
+humour--we shall find, though there is a little mild wit, especially in
+the words of the ladies named in the note, no trace in the book, but a
+"terrible _minus_ quantity." I do not know that the late Sir William
+Gilbert was a great student of literature--of classical literature, to
+judge from the nomenclature of _Pygmalion and Galatea_ mentioned above,
+he certainly was not. But his eyes would surely have glistened at the
+unconscious and serious anticipation of his own methods at their most
+Gilbertian, had he ever read pp. 308 _sqq._ of this first volume. Here
+not only do Cyrus and a famous pirate, by boarding with irresistible
+valour on each side, "exchange ships," and so find themselves at once to
+have gained the enemy's and lost their own, but this remarkable
+manoeuvre is repeated more than twenty times without advantage on
+either side--or without apparently any sensible losses on either side.
+From which it would appear that both contented themselves with displays
+of agility in climbing from vessel to vessel, and did nothing so
+impolite as to use their "javelins, arrows, and cutlasses" (of which,
+nevertheless, we hear) against the persons of their competitors in such
+agility on the other side. It did come to an end somehow after some
+time; but one is quite certain that if Mr. Crummles had had the means of
+presenting such an admirable spectacle on any boards, he never would
+have contented himself without several encores of the whole twenty
+operations.
+
+An experienced reader, therefore, will not need to spend many hours
+before he appreciates pretty thoroughly what he has to expect--of good,
+of bad, and of indifferent--from this famous book. It is, though in a
+different sense from Montaigne's, a _livre de bonne foi_. And we must
+remember that the readers whom it directly addressed expected from books
+of this kind "pastime" in the most literal and generous, if also
+humdrum, sense of the word; noble sentiments, perhaps a little learning,
+possibly a few hidden glances at great people not of antiquity only. All
+these they got here, most faithfully supplied according to their demand.
+
+[Sidenote: Extracts--the introduction of Cyrus to Mandane.]
+
+Probably nothing will give the reader, who does not thus read for
+himself, a better idea of the book than some extract translations,
+beginning with Artamène's first interview with Mandane,[161] going on to
+his reflections thereon, and adding a perhaps slightly shortened version
+of the great fight recounted later, in which again some evidence of the
+damaging absence of humour, and some suggestions as to the originals of
+divers well-known parodies, will be found. (It must be remembered that
+these are all parts of an enormous _récit_ by Chrisante, one of
+Artamène's confidants and captains, to the King of Hircania, a monarch
+doubtless inured to hardships in the chase of his native tigers, or
+requiring some sedative as a change from it.)
+
+     No sooner had the Princess seen my Master than she rose, and
+     prepared to receive him with much kindness and much joy,
+     having already heard, by Arbaces, the service he had done to
+     the King, her father. Artamène then made her two deep bows,
+     and coming closer to her, but with all the respect due to a
+     person of her condition, he kissed [_no doubt the hem of_]
+     her robe, and presented to her the King's letter, which she
+     read that very instant. When she had done, he was going to
+     begin the conversation with a compliment, after telling her
+     what had brought him; but the Princess anticipated him in
+     the most obliging manner. "What Divinity, generous
+     stranger," said she, "has brought you among us to save all
+     Cappadocia by saving its King? and to render him a service
+     which the whole of his servants could not have rendered?"
+     "Madam," answered Artamène, "you are right in thinking that
+     some Divinity has led me hither; and it must have been some
+     one of those beneficent Divinities who do only good to men,
+     since it has procured me the honour of being known to you,
+     and the happiness of being chosen by Fortune to render to
+     the King a slight service, which might, no doubt, have been
+     better done him by any other man." "Modesty," said the
+     Princess (smiling and turning towards the ladies who were
+     nearest her), "is a virtue which belongs so essentially to
+     our own sex, that I do not know whether I ought to allow
+     this generous stranger so unjustly to rob us of it, or--not
+     content with possessing eminently that valour to which we
+     must make no pretension--to try to be as modest when he is
+     spoken to of the fineness of his actions as reasonable women
+     ought to be when they are praised for their beauty. For my
+     part," she added, looking at Artamène, "I confess I find
+     your proceeding a little unfair. And I do not think that I
+     ought to allow it, or to deprive myself of the power of
+     praising you infinitely, although you cannot endure it."
+     "Persons like you," retorted Artamène, but with profound
+     respect, "ought to receive praise from all the earth, and
+     not to give it lightly. 'Tis a thing, Madam, of which it is
+     not pleasant to have to repeat; for which reason I beg you
+     not to expose yourself to such a danger. Wait, Madam, till I
+     have the honour of being a little better known to you."
+
+There are several pages more of this _carte_ and _tierce_ of compliment;
+but perhaps a degenerate and impatient age may desire that we should
+pass to the next subject. Whether it is right or not in so desiring may
+perhaps be discussed when the three samples have been given.
+
+Artamène has been dismissed with every mark of favour, and lodged in a
+pavilion overlooking the garden. When he is alone--
+
+     [Sidenote: His soliloquy in the pavilion.]
+
+     After having passed and re-passed all these things over
+     again in his imagination, "Ye gods!" said he, "if, when she
+     is so lovable, it should chance that I cannot make her love
+     me, what would become of the wretched Artamène? But," and he
+     caught himself up suddenly, "since she seems capable of
+     appreciating glory and services, let us continue to act as
+     we have begun! and let us do such great deeds that, even if
+     her inclination resisted, esteem may introduce us, against
+     her will, into her heart! For, after all, whatever men may
+     say, and whatever I may myself have said, one may give a
+     little esteem to what one will never in the least love; but
+     I do not think one can give much esteem to what will never
+     earn a little love. Let us hope, then; let us hope! let us
+     make ourselves worthy to be pitied if we are not worthy to
+     be loved."
+
+After which somewhat philosophical meditation it is not surprising that
+he should be informed by one of his aides-de-camp that the Princess was
+in the garden. For what were Princesses made? and for what gardens?
+
+The third is a longer passage, but it shall be subjected to that kind of
+_cento_ing which has been found convenient earlier in this volume.
+
+     [Sidenote: The Fight of the Four Hundred.]
+
+     [_The dispute between the kings of Cappadocia on the one
+     hand and of Pontus on the other has been referred to a
+     select combat of two hundred men a side. Artamène, of
+     course, obtains the command of the Cappadocians, to the
+     despair of his explosive but not ungenerous rival, "Philip
+     Dastus." After a very beautiful interview with Mandane
+     (where, once more, the most elegant compliments pass between
+     these gentlefolkliest of all heroes and heroines) and divers
+     preliminaries, the fight comes off._][162] They began to
+     advance with heads lowered, without cries or noise of any
+     kind, but in a silence which struck terror. As soon as they
+     were near enough to use their javelins, they launched them
+     with such violence that [_a slight bathos_] these flying
+     weapons had a pretty great effect on both sides, but much
+     greater on that of the Cappadocians than on the other. Then,
+     sword in hand and covered by their shields, they came to
+     blows, and Artamène, as we were informed, immolated the
+     first victim [_but how about the javelin "effect"?_] in this
+     bloody sacrifice. For, having got in front of all his
+     companions by some paces, he killed, with a mighty
+     sword-stroke, the first who offered resistance. [_Despite
+     this, the general struggle continues to go against the
+     Cappadocians, though Artamène's exploits alarm one of the
+     enemy, named Artane, so much that he skulks away to a
+     neighbouring knoll. At last_] things came to such a point
+     that Artamène found himself with fourteen others against
+     forty; so I leave you to judge, Sir [_Chrisante parle
+     toujours_], whether the party of the King of Pontus did not
+     believe they had conquered, and whether the Cappadocians had
+     not reason to think themselves beaten. But as, in this
+     fight, it was not allowed either to ask or to give quarter,
+     and was necessary either to win or to die, the most
+     despairing became the most valiant. [_The next stage is,
+     that in consequence of enormous efforts on his part, the
+     hero finds himself and his party ten to ten, which
+     "equality" naturally cheers them up. But the wounds of the
+     Cappadocians are the severer; the ten on their side become
+     seven, with no further loss to the enemy, and at last
+     Artamène finds himself, after three hours' fighting, alone
+     against three, though only slightly wounded. He wisely uses
+     his great agility in retiring and dodging; separates one
+     enemy from the other two, and kills him; attacks the two
+     survivors, and, one luckily stumbling over a buckler, kills
+     a second, so that at last the combat is single. During this
+     time the coward Artane abstains from intervening, all the
+     more because the one surviving champion of Pontus is a
+     personal rival of his, and because, by a very ingenious
+     piece of casuistry, he persuades himself that the two
+     combatants are sure to kill each other, and he, Artane,
+     surviving, will obtain the victory for self and country!_]
+
+He is nearly right; but not quite. For after Artamène has wounded the
+Pontic Pharnaces in six places, and Pharnaces Artamène in four (for we
+wound "by the card" here), the hero runs Pharnaces through the heart,
+receiving only a thigh-wound in return. He flourishes both swords, cries
+"I have conquered!" and falls in a faint from loss of blood. Artane
+thinks him dead, and without caring to come close and "mak sicker," goes
+off to claim the victory. But Artamène revives, finds himself alone,
+and, with what strength he has left, piles the arms of the dead
+together, writes with his own blood on a silver shield--
+
+              TO
+            JUPITER
+    GUARDIAN OF TROPHIES,
+
+and lies beside it as well as he can. The false news deceives for a
+short time, but when the stipulated advance to the field takes place on
+both sides, the discovery of the surviving victor introduces a new
+complication, from which we may for the moment abstain.
+
+The singlestick rattle of compliment in the interview first given, and
+the rather obvious and superfluous meditations of the second, may seem,
+if not exactly disgusting, tedious and jejune. But the "Fight of the
+Four Hundred" is not frigid; and it is only fair to say that, after the
+rather absurd passage of _chassé croisé_ on ship-board quoted or at
+least summarised earlier, the capture of Artamène by numbers and his
+surrender to the generous corsair Thrasybulus are not ill told, while
+there are several other good fights before you come to the end of this
+very first volume. There is, moreover, an elaborate portrait of the
+Princess, evidently intended to "pick up" that vaguer one of Madame de
+Longueville in the Preface, but with the blue of the eyes here
+fearlessly specified. Here also does the celebrated Philidaspes (most
+improperly, if it had not been for the justification to be given later,
+transmogrified in the above-mentioned passage by Major Bellenden into
+"Philip Dastus? Philip Devil") make his appearance. The worst of it is
+that most, if not the whole, is done by the _récit_ delivered, as noted
+above, by Chrisante, one of those representatives of the no less
+faithful than strong Gyas and Cloanthus, whom imitation of the ancients
+has imposed on Scudéry and his sister, and inflicted on their readers.
+
+[Sidenote: The abstract resumed.]
+
+The story of the Cappadocian-Pontic fight[163] is continued in the
+second volume of the First Part by the expected delivery of harangues
+from the two claimants, and the obligatory, but to Artane very
+unwelcome, single combat. He is, of course, vanquished and pardoned by
+his foe,[164] making, if not full, sufficient confession; and it is not
+surprising to hear that the King of Pontus requests to see no more of
+him. The rest--for it must never be forgotten that all this is "throwing
+back"--then turns to the rivalry of Artamène and Philidaspes for the
+love of Mandane, while she (again, of course) has not the faintest idea
+that either is in love with her. Philidaspes, who (still, of course) is
+not Philidaspes at all, is a rough customer--(in fact the Major hardly
+did him injustice in calling him "Philip Devil"--betraying also perhaps
+some knowledge of the text), and it comes to a tussle. This rather
+resembles what the contemptuous French early Romantics called _une
+boxade_ than a formal duel, and Artamène stuns his man with a blow of
+the flat. Cyaxares[165] is very angry, and imprisons them both, not yet
+realising their actual fault. It does not matter much to Artamène, who
+in prison can think, aloud and in the most beautiful "Phébus," of
+Mandane. It matters perhaps a little more to the reader; for a courteous
+jailer, Aglatidas, takes the occasion to relate his own woes in a
+"History of Aglatidas and Amestris," which completes the second volume
+of the First Part in three hundred and fifty mortal pages to itself.
+
+The first volume of the Second Part returns to the main story, or rather
+the main series of _récits_; for, Chrisante being not unnaturally
+exhausted after talking for a thousand pages or so, Feraulas, another of
+Artamène's men, takes up the running. The prisoners are let out, and
+Mandane reconciles them, after which--as another but later contemporary
+remarks (again of other things, but probably with some reminiscence of
+this)--they become much more mortal enemies than before. The
+reflections and soliloquies of Artamène recur; but a not unimportant,
+although subordinate, new character appears--not as the first example,
+but as the foremost representative, in the novel, of the great figure of
+the "confidante"--in Martésie, Mandane's chief maid of honour. Nobody,
+it is to be hoped, wants an elaborate account of the part she plays, but
+it should be said that she plays it with much more spirit and
+individuality than her mistress is allowed to show. Then, according to
+the general plan of all these books, in which fierce wars and faithful
+loves alternate, there is more fighting, and though Artamène is
+victorious (as how should he not be, save now and then to prevent
+monotony?) he disappears and is thought dead. Of course Mandane cries,
+and confesses to the confidante, being entirely "finished" by a very
+exquisite letter which Artamène has written before going into the
+doubtful battle. However, he is (yet once more, of course) not dead at
+all. What (as that most sagacious of men, the elder Mr. Weller, would
+have said)'d have become of the other seventeen volumes if he had been?
+There is one of the _quiproquos_ or misunderstandings which are as
+necessary to this kind of novel as the flirtations and the fisticuffs,
+brought about by the persistence of an enemy princess in taking Artamène
+for her son Spithridates;[166] but all comes right for the time, and the
+hero returns to his friends. The plot, however, thickens. An accident
+informs Artamène that Philidaspes is really Prince of Assyria, sure to
+become King when his mother, Nitocris, dies or abdicates, and that,
+being as he is, and as Artamène knows already, desperately in love with
+Mandane, he has formed a plot for carrying her off. The difficulties in
+the way of preventing this are great, because, though the hero is
+already aware that he is Cyrus, it is for many reasons undesirable to
+inform Cyaxares of the fact; and at last Philidaspes, helped by the
+traitor Aribée (_v. sup._), succeeds in the abduction, after an
+interlude in which a fresh Rival, with a still larger R, the King of
+Pontus himself, turns up; and an immense episode, in which Thomyris,
+Queen of Scythia, appears, not yet in her more or less historical part
+of victress of Cyrus. She is here only a young sovereign, widowed in her
+earliest youth, extremely beautiful (see a portrait of her _inf._), who
+has never yet loved, but who falls instantly in love with Cyrus himself
+(when he is sent to her court), and is rather a formidable person to
+deal with, inasmuch as, besides having great wealth and power, she has
+established a diplomatic system of intrigue in other countries, which
+the newest German or other empire might envy. By the end of this volume,
+however, the Artamène-Cyrus confusion is partly cleared up (though
+Cyaxares is not yet made aware of the facts), and the hero is sent after
+Mandane, to be disappointed at Sinope, in the fashion recounted some
+thousand or two pages before.
+
+[Sidenote: The oracle to Philidaspes.]
+
+With the beginning of vol. iv. (that is to say, part ii. vol. ii.) we
+return, though still in retrospect, to the direct fate of Mandane.
+Nitocris is dead, Philidaspes has succeeded to the crown of Assyria, and
+has carried Mandane off to his own dominions. The situation with so
+robustious a person as this prince may seem awkward, and indeed, as is
+observed in a later part of the book, the heroine's repeated sojourns
+(there are three if not four of them in all[167]) in the complete power
+of one of the Rivals, with a large R, are very trying to Cyrus. However,
+such a shocking thing as violence is hardly hinted at, and the Princess
+always succeeds, as the Creole lady in _Newton Forster_ said she did
+with the pirates, in "temporising," while her abductors confine
+themselves for the most part to the finest "Phébus." Even the fiery
+Philidaspes, though he breaks out sometimes, conveys his wish that
+Mandane should accompany him to Babylon by pointing out that "the
+Euphrates is jealous of the Tigris for having first had the honour of
+her presence," and that "the First City of the World ought clearly to
+possess the most illustrious princess of the Earth." Of course, if there
+is any base person who cannot derive an Aramisian satisfaction (_v.
+sup._) from such things as this, he had better abstain from the _Cyrus_.
+But happier souls they please--not exquisitely, perhaps, or
+tumultuously, but still well--with a mild tickle which is not
+unvoluptuous. One is even a very little sorry for Philip Dastus when he
+begs his cruel idol to write to him the single word ESPEREZ, and
+meanwhile kindly puts it in capitals and a line to itself. Almost
+immediately afterwards an oracle juggles with him in fashion delightful
+to himself, and puzzling to everybody except the intelligent reader,
+who, it is hoped, will see the double meaning at once.
+
+      Il t'est permis d'espérer
+      De la faire soupirer,
+        Malgré sa haine:
+    Car un jour entre ses bras,
+        Tu rencontreras
+        La fin de ta peine.
+
+Alas! without going further (upon honour and according to fact), one
+sees the _other_ explanation--that Mandane will have to perform the
+uncomfortable duty--often assigned to heroines--of having Philidaspes
+die in her lap.
+
+For the present, however, only discomfiture, not death, awaits him. The
+Medes blockade Babylon to recover their princess; it suffers from
+hunger, and Philidaspes, with Mandane and the chivalrous Sacian Prince
+Mazare, whom we have heard of before, escapes to Sinope. Then the events
+recorded in the very beginning happen, and Mandane, after escaping the
+flames of Sinope through Mazare's abduction of her by sea, and suffering
+shipwreck, falls into the power of the King of Pontus. This calls a halt
+in the main story; and, as before, a "Troisième Livre" consists of
+another huge inset--the hugest yet--of seven hundred pages this time,
+describing an unusually, if not entirely, independent subject--the
+loves and fates of a certain Philosipe and a certain Polisante. This
+volume contains a rather forcible boating-scene, which supplies the
+theme for the old frontispiece.
+
+Refreshed as usual by this excursion,[168] the author returns (in vol.
+v., bk. i., chap. iii.) to Cyrus, who is once more in peril, and in a
+worse one than ever. Cyaxares, arriving at Sinope, does not find his
+daughter, but does discover that Artamène, whom he does not yet know to
+be Cyrus and heir to Persia, is in love with her. Owing chiefly to the
+wiles of a villain, Métrobate, he arrests the Prince, and is on the
+point of having him executed, despite the protests of the allied kings.
+But the whole army, with the Persian contingent at its head, assaults
+the castle, and rescues Cyrus, after the traitor Métrobate has tried to
+double his treachery and get Cyaxares assassinated. Nobody who remembers
+the _Letter of Advice_ already quoted will doubt what the conduct of
+Cyrus is. He only accepts the rescue in order that he may post himself
+at the castle gate, and threaten to kill anybody who attacks Cyaxares.
+
+After this burst, which is really exciting in a way, we must expect
+something more soporific. Martésie takes the place of her absent
+mistress to some extent, and a good deal of what might be mistaken for
+"Passerelle"[169] flirtation takes place, or would do so, if it were not
+that Cyrus would, of course, die rather than pay attention to anybody
+but Mandane herself, and that Feraulas, already mentioned as one of the
+Faithful Companions, is detailed as Martésie's lover. She is, however,
+installed as a sort of Vice-Queen of a wordy tourney between four
+unhappy lovers, who fill up the rest of the volume with their stories of
+"Amants _In_fortunés" (cf. the original title of the _Heptameron_),
+dealing respectively with and told by--
+
+(1) A lover who is loved, but separated from his mistress.
+
+(2) One who is unloved.
+
+(3) A jealous one.
+
+(4) One whose love is dead.[170]
+
+They do it moderately, in rather less than five hundred pages, and
+Martésie sums up in a manner worthy of any Mistress of the Rolls,
+contrasting their fates, and deciding very cleverly against the jealous
+man.
+
+The first twenty pages or so of the sixth volume (nominally iii. 2)
+afford a good example of the fashion in which, as may be observed more
+fully below, even an analysis of the _Grand Cyrus_, though a great
+advance on mere general description of it, must be still (unless it be
+itself intolerably voluminous) insufficient. Not very much actually
+"happens"; but if you simply skip, you miss a fresh illustration of
+magnanimity not only in Cyrus, but in a formerly mentioned character,
+Aglatidas, with reference to the heroine Amestris earlier inset in the
+tale (_v. sup._). And this is an example of the new and sometimes very
+ingenious fashion in which these apparent excursions are turned into
+something like real episodes, or at any rate supply connecting threads
+of the whole, in a manner not entirely unlike that which some critics
+have so hastily and unjustly overlooked in Spenser. Then we have an
+imbroglio about forged letters, and a clearing-up of a former charge
+against the hero, and (still within the twenty pages) a very curious
+scene--the last for the time--of that flirtation-without-flirtation
+between Cyrus and Martésie. She wants to have back a picture of Mandane,
+which she has lent him to worship; and he replies, looking at her
+"attentively" (one wonders whether Mandane, if present, would have been
+entirely satisfied with his "attention"), addresses her as "Cruel
+Person," and asks her (he is just setting out for the Armenian war) how
+she thinks he can conquer when she takes away what should make him
+invincible. To which replies Miss Martésie, "You have gained so many
+victories [_ahem!_] without this help, that it would seem you have no
+need of it." This is very nice, and Martésie, who is herself, as
+previously observed, quite nice throughout, lets him have the picture
+after all. But Cyrus, for once rather ungraciously, will not allow her
+lover, and his henchman, Feraulas to escort her home; first, because he
+wants Feraulas's services himself, and secondly, because it is unjust
+that Feraulas should be happy with Martésie when Cyrus is miserable
+without Mandane--an argument which, whether slightly selfish or not, is
+at any rate in complete keeping with the whole atmosphere of the book.
+
+[Sidenote: The advent of Araminta.]
+
+Now, as this is by no means a very exceptional, certainly not a unique,
+score of pages, and as it has taken almost a whole one of ours to give a
+rather imperfect notion of its contents, it follows that it would take
+about six hundred, if not more, to do justice to the ten or twelve
+thousand of the original. Which (in one of the most immortal of
+formulas) "is impossible." We must fall back, therefore, on the system
+already pursued for the rest of this volume, and perhaps even contract
+its application in some cases. A rash promise of the now entirely, if
+not also rather insanely,[171] generous Prince not to marry Mandane
+without fighting Philidaspes, or rather the King of Assyria, beforehand,
+is important; and an at last minute description of Cyrus's person and
+equipment as he sets out (on one of the proudest and finest horses that
+ever was, with a war-dress the superbest that can be imagined, and with
+Mandane's magnificent scarf put on for the first time) is not quite
+omissible. But then things become intricate. Our old friend Spithridates
+comes back, and has first love affairs and afterwards an enormous
+_récit_-episode with a certain Princess of Pontus, whom Cyrus,
+reminding one slightly of Bentley on Mr. Pope's _Homer_ and Tommy Merton
+on Cider, pronounces to be _belle, blonde, blanche et bien faite_, but
+not Mandane; and who has the further charm of possessing, for the first
+time in literature if one mistakes not, the renowned name of Araminta. A
+pair of letters between these two will be useful as specimens, and to
+some, it may be hoped, agreeable in themselves.
+
+     SPITHRIDATES TO THE PRINCESS ARAMINTA
+
+     [Sidenote: Her correspondence with Spithridates.]
+
+     I depart, Madam, because you wish it: but, in departing, I
+     am the most unhappy of all men. I know not whither I go; nor
+     when I shall return; nor even if you wish that I _should_
+     return; and yet they tell me I must live and hope. But I
+     should not know how to do either the one or the other,
+     unless you order me to do both by two lines in your own
+     hand. Therefore I beg them of you, divine Princess--in the
+     name of an illustrious person, now no more, [_her brother
+     Sinnesis, who had been a great friend of his_], but who will
+     live for ever in the memory of
+
+                              SPITHRIDATES.
+
+     [_He can hardly have hoped for anything better than the
+     following answer, which is much more "downright Dunstable"
+     than is usual here._]
+
+
+     ARAMINTA TO SPITHRIDATES
+
+     Live as long as it shall please the Gods to allow you. Hope
+     as long as Araminta lives--she begs you: and even if you
+     yourself wish to live, she orders you to do so.
+
+     [_In other words he says, "My own Araminta, say 'Yes'!" and
+     she does. This attitude necessarily involves the despair of
+     a Rival, who writes thus:_]
+
+
+     PHARNACES TO THE PRINCESS ARAMINTA
+
+     If Fortune seconds my designs, I go to a place where I shall
+     conquer _and_ die--where I shall make known, by my generous
+     despair, that if I could not deserve your affection by my
+     services, I shall have at least not made myself unworthy of
+     your compassion by my death.
+
+     [_And, to do him justice, he "goes and does it."_]
+
+This episode, however, did not induce Mademoiselle Madeleine to break
+her queer custom of having something of the same kind in the Third Book
+of every Part. For though there is some "business," it slips into
+another regular "History," this time of Prince Thrasybulus, a naval
+hero, of whom we have often heard, and his Alcionide, not a bad name for
+a sailor's mistress.[172] Finally, we come back to more events of a
+rather troublesome kind: for the _ci-devant_ Philidaspes most
+inconveniently insists in taking part in the rescuing expedition,
+which--saving scandal of great ones--is very much as if Mr. William
+Sikes should insist in helping to extract booty from Mr. Tobias Crackit.
+And we finally leave Cyrus in a decidedly awkward situation morally, and
+the middle of a dark wood physically.
+
+[Sidenote: Some interposed comments.]
+
+Here, according to that paulo-post-future precedent which she did so
+much to create, the authoress was quite justified in leaving him at the
+end of a volume; and perhaps the present historian is, to compare small
+things with great, equally justified in heaving-to (to borrow from Mr.
+Kipling) and addressing a small critical sermon to such crew as he may
+have attracted. We have surveyed not quite a third of the book; but this
+ought in any case--_teste_ the loved and lost "three-decker" which the
+allusion just made concerns--to give us a notion of the author's quality
+and of his or her _faire_. It should not be very difficult for anybody,
+unless the foregoing analysis has been very clumsily done, to discern
+considerable method in Madeleine's mild madness, and, what is more, not
+a little originality. The method has, no doubt, as it was certain to
+have in the circumstances, a regular irregularity, which is, or would be
+in anybody but a novice, a little clumsy: and the originality may want
+some precedent study to discover it. But both are there. The skeleton of
+this vast work may perhaps be fairly constructed from what has already
+been dissected of the body; and the method of clothing the skeleton
+reveals itself without much difficulty. You have the central idea in the
+loves of Cyrus and Mandane, which are to be made as true as possible,
+but also running as roughly as may be. Moreover, whether they run rough
+or smooth, you are to keep them in suspense as long as you possibly can.
+The means of doing this are laboriously varied and multiplied. The
+clumsiest of them--the perpetual intercalation or interpolation of
+"side-shows" in the way of _Histoires_--annoys modern readers
+particularly, and has, as a rule, since been itself beautifully and
+beneficently lessened, in some cases altogether discarded, or
+changed--in emancipation from the influence of the "Unities"--to the
+form of second plots, not ostentatiously severed from the main one. But,
+as has been pointed out, a great deal of trouble is at any rate taken to
+knit them to the main plot itself, if not actually and invariably to
+incorporate them therewith; and the means of this are again not
+altogether uncraftsmanlike. Sometimes, as in the case of Spithridates,
+the person, or one of the persons, is introduced first in the main
+history; his own particular concerns are dealt with later, and, for good
+or for evil, he returns to the central scheme. Sometimes, as in that of
+Amestris, you have the _Histoire_ before the personage enters the main
+story. Then there is the other device of varying direct narrative, as to
+this main story itself, with _Récit_; and always you have a careful
+peppering in of new characters, by _histoire_, by _récit_, or by the
+main story, to create fresh interests. Again, there is the contrast of
+"business," as we have called it--fighting and politics--with
+love-making and miscellaneous fine talk. And, lastly, there are--what,
+if they were not whelmed in such an ocean of other things, would attract
+more notice--the not unfrequent individual phrases and situations which
+have interest in themselves. It must surely be obvious that in these
+things are great possibilities for future use, even if the actual
+inventor has not made the most of them.
+
+Their originality may perhaps deserve a little more comment.[173] The
+mixture of secondary plots might, by a person more given to theorise
+than the present historian--who pays his readers the compliment of
+supposing that that excessively easy and therefore somewhat negligible
+business can be done by themselves if they wish--be traced to an
+accidental feature of the later mediaeval romances. In these the
+congeries of earlier texts, which the compiler had not the wits, or at
+least the desire, to systematise, provided something like it; but
+required the genius of a Spenser, or the considerable craft of a
+Scudéry, to throw it into shape and add the connecting links. Many of
+the other things are to be found in the Scudéry romance practically for
+the first time. And the suffusion of the whole with a new tone and
+colour of at least courtly manners is something more to be counted, as
+well as the constant exclusion of the clumsy "conjuror's supernatural"
+of the _Amadis_ group. That the fairy story sprung up, to supply the
+always graceful supernatural element in a better form, is a matter which
+will be dealt with later in this chapter. The oracles, etc., of the
+_Cyrus_ belong, of course, to the historical, not the imaginative side
+of the presentation; but may be partly due to the _Astrée_, the
+influence of which was, we saw, admitted.
+
+[Sidenote: Analysis resumed.]
+
+It may seem unjust that the more this complication of interests
+increases, the less complete should be the survey of them; and yet a
+moment's thought will show that this is almost a necessity. Moreover,
+the methods do not vary much; it is only that they are applied to a
+larger and larger mass of accumulating material. The first volume of the
+Fourth Part, the seventh of the twenty, follows--though with that
+absence of slavish repetition which has been allowed as one of the
+graces of the book--the general scheme. Cyrus gets out of the wood
+literally, but not figuratively; for when he and the King of Assyria
+have joined forces, to pursue that rather paradoxical alliance which is
+to run in couple with rivalry for love and to end in a personal combat,
+they see on the other side of a river a chariot, in which Mandane
+probably or certainly is. But the river is unbridged and unfordable, and
+no boats can be had; so that, after trying to swim it and nearly getting
+drowned, they have to relinquish the game that had been actually in
+sight. Next, two things happen. First, Martésie appears (as usually to
+our satisfaction), and in consequence of a series of accidents, shares
+and solaces Mandane's captivity. Then, on the other side, Panthea, Queen
+of Susiana, and wife of one of the enemy princes, falls into Cyrus's
+hands, and with Araminta (who is, it should have, if it has not been,
+said earlier, sister of the King of Pontus) furnishes valuable hostage
+for good treatment of Mandane and other Medo-Persian-Phrygian-Hircanian
+prisoners.
+
+Things having thus been fairly bustled up for a time, a _Histoire_ is,
+of course, imminent, and we have it, of about usual length, concerning
+the Lydian Princess Palmis and a certain Cléandre; while, even when this
+is done, we fall back, not on the main story, but once more on that of
+Aglatidas and Amestris, which is in a sad plight, for Amestris (who has
+been married against her will and is _maumariée_ too) thinks she is a
+widow, and finds she is not.
+
+It has just been mentioned that Palmis is a Lydian Princess; and before
+the end of this Part Croesus comes personally into the story, being the
+head of a formidable combination to supplant the King of Pontus, detain
+Mandane, and, if possible (as the well-known oracle, in the usual
+ambiguity (_v. inf._), encourages him to hope), conquer the Medo-Persian
+empire and make it his own. But the _Histoire_ mania--now further
+excited by consistence in working the personages so obtained in
+generally--is in great evidence, and "Lygdamis and Cléonice" supply a
+large proportion of the early and all the middle of the eighth volume,
+the second of the Fourth Part. There is, however, much more business
+than usual at the end to make up for any slackness at the beginning. In
+a side-action with the Lydians both Cyrus and the King of Assyria are
+captured by force of numbers, though the former is at once released by
+the Princess Palmis, as well as Artames, son of Cyrus's Phrygian ally,
+whom Croesus chooses to consider as a rebel, and intends to put to
+death. Here, however, the captive Queen and Princess, Panthea and
+Araminta, come into good play, and exercise strong and successful
+influence through the husband of the one and the brother of the other.
+But at the end of book, volume, and part we leave Cyrus once more in the
+dismals. For though he has actually seen Mandane he cannot get at her,
+and he has heard three apparently most unfavourable oracles; the
+Babylonian one, which was quoted above, and which he, like everybody
+else, takes as a promise of success to Philidaspes; the ambiguous
+Delphic forecast of "the fall of _an_ Empire" to Croesus; and that of
+his own death at the hands of a hostile queen, the only one which,
+historically, was to be fulfilled in its apparent sense, while the
+others were not. He cares, indeed, not much about the two last, but
+infinitely about the first.
+
+At the opening of the Fifth Part (ninth volume) there is a short but
+curious "Address to the Reader," announcing the fulfilment of the first
+half of the promised production, and bidding him not be downhearted, for
+the first of the second half (the Sixth Part or eleventh volume of the
+whole) is actually at Press. It may be noticed that there is a swagger
+about these _avis_ and such like things, which probably _is_
+attributable to Georges, and not to Madeleine.[174]
+
+The inevitable _Histoire_ comes earlier than usual in this division, and
+is of unusual importance; for it deals with two persons of great
+distinction, and already introduced in the story, Queen Panthea and her
+husband Abradates. It is also one of the longer batch, running to some
+four hundred pages; and a notable part in it and in the future main
+story is played by one Doralise--a pretty name, which Dryden, making it
+prettier still by substituting a _c_ for the _s_, borrowed for his most
+original and (with that earlier Florimel of _The Maiden Queen_, who is
+said to have been studied directly off Nell Gwyn) perhaps his most
+attractive heroine, the Doralice of _Marriage à la Mode_. Another
+important character, the villain of the sub-plot, is one Mexaris.[175]
+At the end of the first instalment we leave Cyrus preparing elaborate
+machines of war to crush the Lydians.
+
+Early in Book II. we hear of a mysterious warrior on the enemy side whom
+nobody knows, who calls himself Telephanes, and whom Cyrus is very
+anxious to meet in battle, but for the time cannot. He is also
+frustrated in his challenge of the King of Pontus to fight for
+Mandane--a challenge of which Croesus will not hear. At last Telephanes
+turns out to be no less a person than Mazare, Prince of Sacia, whom we
+know already as one of the ever-multiplying lovers and abductors of the
+heroine; while, after a good deal of confused fighting, another inset
+_Histoire_ of him closes the tenth volume (V. ii.). It is, however, only
+two hundred pages long--a mere parenthesis compared to others, and it
+leads up to his giving Cyrus a letter from Mandane--an act of generosity
+which Philidaspes, otherwise King of Assyria, frankly confesses that he,
+as another Rival, could never have done. After yet another _Histoire_
+(now a "four-some") of Belesis, Hermogenes, Cléodare, and Léonice,
+Abradates changes sides, carrying us on to an "intricate impeach" of
+old and new characters, especially Araminta and Spithridates, and to the
+death in battle of the generous King of Susiana himself, and the grief
+of Panthea. There is, at the close of this volume, a rather interesting
+_Privilège du Roi_, signed by Conrart ("_le silencieux Conrart_"),
+sealed with "the great seal of yellow wax in a simple tail" (one ribbon
+or piece of ferret only?), and bestowing its rights "nonobstant Clameur
+de Haro, Charte Normande, et autres lettres contraires."
+
+The first volume of the Sixth Part (the eleventh of the whole and the
+first of what, as so many words of the kind are required, we may call
+the Second Division) has plenty of business--showing that the author or
+her adviser was also a business-like person--to commence the new
+venture. Cyrus, after being victorious in the field and just about to
+besiege Sardis in form, receives a "bolt from the blue" in the shape of
+a letter "From the unhappy Mandane to the faithless"--himself! She has
+learnt, she tells him, that his feelings towards her are changed,
+requests that she may no longer serve as a pretext for his ambition,
+and--rather straining the prerogatives assumed even by her nearest
+ancestresses in literature, the Polisardas and Miraguardas of the
+_Amadis_ group, but scarcely dreamt of by the heroines of ancient Greek
+Romance--desires that he will send back to her father Cyaxares all the
+troops that he is, as she implies, commanding on false pretences.
+
+Now one half expects that Cyrus, in a transport of
+Amadisian-Euphuist-heroism, will comply with this very modest request.
+In fact it is open to any one to contend that, according to the
+strictest rules of the game, he ought to have done so and gone mad, or
+at least marooned himself in some desert island, in consequence. The
+sophistication, however, of the stage appears here. After a very natural
+sort of "Well, I never!" translated into proper heroic language, he sets
+to work to identify the person whom Mandane suspects to be her
+rival--for she has carefully abstained from naming anybody. And he
+asks--with an ingenious touch of self-confession which does the author
+great credit, if it was consciously laid on--whether it can be Panthea
+or Araminta, with both of whom he has, in fact, been, if not exactly
+flirting, carrying on (as the time itself would have said) a "commerce
+of respectful and obliging admiration." He has a long talk with his
+confidant Feraulas (whose beloved and really lovable Martésie is,
+unluckily, not at hand to illuminate the mystery), and then he writes as
+"The Unfortunate Cyrus to the Unjust Mandane," tells her pretty roundly,
+though, of course, still respectfully, that if she knew how things
+really were "she would think herself the cruellest and most unjust
+person in the world." [I should have added, "just as she is, in fact,
+the most beautiful."] She is, he says, his first and last passion, and
+he has never been more than polite to any one else. But she will kindly
+excuse his not complying with her request to send back his army until he
+has vanquished all his Rivals--where, no doubt, in the original, the
+capital was bigger and more menacing than ever, and was written with an
+appropriate gnashing of teeth.
+
+The traditional balance of luck and love, however, holds; and the armies
+of Croesus and the King of Pontus begin to melt away; so that, after a
+short but curious pastoral episode, they have to shut themselves up in
+the capital. The dead body of Abradates is now found, and his widow
+Panthea stabs herself upon it. This removes one of Mandane's possible
+causes of jealousy, but Araminta remains; and, as a matter of fact, it
+_is_ this Princess on whom her suspicion has been cast, arising partly,
+though helped by makebates, from the often utilised personal resemblance
+between her actual lover, Prince Spithridates, and Cyrus. The
+treacherous King of Pontus has, in fact, shown her a letter from
+Araminta (his sister, be it remembered) which seems to encourage the
+idea.
+
+All this, however, and more fills but a hundred pages or so, and then we
+are as usual whelmed in a _Histoire de Timarète et de Parthénie_, which
+takes up four times the space, and finishes the First Book. The Second
+opens smartly enough with the actual siege of Sardis; but we cannot get
+rid of Araminta (it is sad to have to wish that she was not "our own
+Araminta" quite so often) and Spithridates. Conversations between the
+still prejudiced Mandane and the Lydian Princess Palmis--a sensible and
+agreeable girl--are better; but from them we are hurled into a _Histoire
+de Sésostre_ (the Egyptian prince, son of Amasis, who is now an ally of
+Cyrus) _et de Timarète_, which not only fills the whole of the rest of
+the volume, but swells over into the next, being much occupied with the
+villainies of a certain Heracleon, who is at the time a wounded prisoner
+in Cyrus's Camp. The siege is kept up briskly, but Cyrus's courteous
+release of certain captives adds fuel to Mandane's wrath as having been
+procured by Araminta. He will do anything for Araminta! The releases
+themselves give rise to fresh "alarums and excursions," among which we
+again meet a pretty name (Candiope), borrowed by Dryden. Doralise is
+also much to the fore; and we have a regular _Histoire_, though a
+shorter one than usual, of _Arpalice and Thrasimède_, which will, as
+some say, "bulk largely" later. The length of this part is, indeed,
+enormous, the double volume running to over fourteen hundred pages,
+instead of the usual ten or twelve. But its close is spirited and
+sufficiently interim-catastrophic. Cyrus discovers in the _enceinte_ of
+Sardis the usual weak point--an apparently impregnable scarped rock,
+which has been weakly fortified and garrisoned--takes it by escalade in
+person with his best paladins, and after it the city.
+
+But of course he cannot expect to have it all his own way when not quite
+twelve-twentieths of the book are gone, and he finds that Mandane is
+gone likewise; the King of Pontus, who has practically usurped the
+authority of Croesus, having once more carried her off--perhaps not so
+entirely unwilling as before. Cyrus pursues, and while he is absent the
+King of Assyria (Philidaspes) shows himself even more of a "Philip
+Devil" than usual by putting the captive Lydian prince on a pyre,
+threatening to burn him if he will not reveal the place of the
+Princess's flight, and actually having the torch applied. Of course
+Cyrus turns up at the nick of time, has the fire put out, rates the King
+of Assyria soundly for his violence, and apologises handsomely to
+Croesus. The notion of an apology for nearly roasting a man may appear
+to have its ludicrous side, but the way in which the historic pyre and
+the mention of Solon are brought in without discrediting the hero is
+certainly ingenious. The Mandane-hunt is renewed, but fruitlessly.
+
+At the beginning of Part VII. there are--according to the habit noticed,
+and in rather extra measure as regards "us" if not "them"--some
+interesting things. The first is an example--perhaps the best in the
+book--of the elaborate description (called in Greek rhetorical technique
+_ecphrasis_) which is so common in the Greek Romances. The subject is an
+extraordinarily beautiful statue of a woman which Cyrus sees in
+Croesus's gallery, and which will have sequels later. It, or part of it,
+may be given:
+
+     [Sidenote: The statue in the gallery at Sardis.]
+
+     But, among all these figures of gold, there was to be seen
+     one of marble, so wonderful, that it obliged Cyrus to stay
+     longer in admiring it than in contemplating any of the
+     others, though it was not of such precious material. It is
+     true that it was executed with such art, and represented
+     such a beautiful person, as to prevent any strangeness in
+     its charming a Prince whose eyes were so delicate and so
+     capable of judging all beautiful objects. This statue was of
+     life-size, placed upon a pedestal of gold, on the four sides
+     of which were bas-reliefs of an admirable beauty. On each
+     were seen captives, chained in all sorts of fashions, but
+     chained only by little Loves, unsurpassably executed. As for
+     the figure itself, it represented a girl about eighteen
+     years old, but one of surprising and perfect beauty. Every
+     feature of the face was marvellously fine;[176] her figure
+     was at once so noble and so graceful that nothing more
+     elegant[177] could be seen; and her dress was at once so
+     handsome and so unusual, that it had something of each of
+     the usual garbs of Tyrian ladies, of nymphs, and of
+     goddesses; but more particularly that of the Wingless
+     Victory, as represented by the Athenians, with a simple
+     laurel crown on her head. This statue was so well set on its
+     base, and had such lively action, that it seemed actually
+     animated; the face, the throat, the arms, and the hands were
+     of white marble, as were the legs and feet, which were
+     partly visible between the laces of the buskins she wore,
+     and which were to be seen because, with her left hand, she
+     lifted her gown a little, as if to walk more easily. With
+     her right she held back a veil, fastened behind her head
+     under the crown of laurel, as though to prevent its being
+     carried away by the breeze, which seemed to agitate it. The
+     whole of the drapery of the figure was made of
+     divers-coloured marbles and jaspers; and, in particular, the
+     gown of this fair Phoenician, falling in a thousand graceful
+     folds, which still did not hide the exact proportion of her
+     body, was of jasper, of a colour so deep that it almost
+     rivalled Tyrian purple itself. A scarf, which passed
+     negligently round her neck, and was fastened on the
+     shoulder, was of a kind of marble, streaked with blue and
+     white, which was very agreeable to the eye. The veil was of
+     the same substance; but sculptured so artfully that it
+     seemed as soft as mere gauze. The laurel crown was of green
+     jasper, and the buskins, as well as the sash she wore, were,
+     again of different hues. This sash brought together all the
+     folds of the gown over the hips; below, they fell again more
+     carelessly, and still showed the beauty of her figure. But
+     what was most worthy of admiration in the whole piece was
+     the spirit which animated it, and almost persuaded the
+     spectators that she was just about to walk and talk. There
+     was even a touch of art in her face, and a certain
+     haughtiness in her attitude which made her seem to scorn the
+     captives chained beneath her feet: while the sculptor had so
+     perfectly realised the indefinable freshness, tenderness,
+     and _embonpoint_ of beautiful girls, that one almost knew
+     her age.
+
+Then come two more startling events. A wicked Prince Phraortes bolts
+with the unwilling Araminta, and the King of Assyria (_alias_
+Philidaspes) slips away in search of Mandane on his own account--two
+things inconvenient to Cyrus in some ways, but balancing themselves in
+others. For if it is unpleasant to have a very violent and rather
+unscrupulous Rival hunting the beloved on the one hand, that beloved's
+jealousy, if not cured, is at least not likely to be increased by the
+disappearance of its object. This last, however, hits Spithridates, who
+is, as it has been and will be seen, the _souffre-douleur_ of the book,
+much harder. And the double situation illustrates once more the
+extraordinary care taken in systematising--and as one might almost say
+_syllabising_--the book. It is almost impossible that there should not
+somewhere exist an actual syllabus of the whole, though, my habit being
+rather to read books themselves than books about them, I am not aware of
+one as a fact.[178]
+
+Another characteristic is also well illustrated in this context, and a
+further translated extract will show the curious, if not very recondite,
+love-casuistry which plays so large a part. But these French writers of
+the seventeenth century[179] did not know one-tenth of the matter that
+was known by their or others' mediaeval ancestors, by their English and
+perhaps Spanish contemporaries, or by writers in the nineteenth century.
+They were not "perfect in love-lore"; their _Liber Amoris_ was, after
+all, little more than a fashion-book in divers senses of "fashion." But
+let them speak for themselves:
+
+     [Sidenote: The judgment of Cyrus in a court of love.]
+
+     [_Ménécrate and Thrasimède are going to fight, and have,
+     according to the unqualified legal theory[180] and very
+     occasional actual practice of seventeenth-century France, if
+     not of the Medes and Persians, been arrested, though in
+     honourable fashion. The "dependence" is a certain Arpalice,
+     who loves Thrasimède and is loved by him. But she is ordered
+     by her father's will to marry Ménécrate, who is now quite
+     willing to marry her, though she hates him, and though he
+     has previously been in love with Androclée, to whom he has
+     promised that he will not marry the other. A sort of
+     informal_ Cour d'Amour _is held on the subject, the
+     President being Cyrus himself, and the judges Princesses
+     Timarète and Palmis, Princes Sesostris and Myrsilus, with
+     "Toute la compagnie" as assessors and assessoresses. After
+     much discussion, it is decided to disregard the dead
+     father's injunction and the living inconstant's wishes, and
+     to unite Thrasimède and Arpalice. But the chief points of
+     interest lie in the following remarks:_]
+
+     "As it seems to me," said Cyrus, "what we ought most to
+     consider in this matter is the endeavour to make the fewest
+     possible persons unhappy, and to prevent a combat between
+     two gentlemen of such gallantry, that to whichever side
+     victory inclines, we should have cause to regret the
+     vanquished. For although Ménécrate is inconstant and a
+     little capricious, he has, for all that, both wits and a
+     heart. We must, then, if you please," added he, turning to
+     the two princesses, "consider that if Arpalice were forced
+     to carry out her father's testament and marry Ménécrate,
+     everybody would be unhappy, and he would have to fight two
+     duels,[181] one against Thrasimède and one against
+     Philistion (_Androclée's brother_), the one fighting for his
+     mistress, the other for his sister." "No doubt," said
+     Lycaste, "several people will be unhappy, but, methinks, not
+     all; for at any rate Ménécrate will possess _his_ mistress."
+     "'Tis true," said Cyrus, "that he will possess Arpalice's
+     beauty; but I am sure that as he would not possess her
+     heart, he could not call himself satisfied; and his greatest
+     happiness in this situation would be having prevented the
+     happiness of his Rival. As for the rest of it, after the
+     first days of his marriage, he would be in despair at having
+     wedded a person who hated him, and whom he, perhaps, would
+     have ceased to love; for, considering Ménécrate's humour, I
+     am the most deceived of all men if the possession of what he
+     loves is not the very thing to kill all love in his heart.
+     As for Arpalice, it is easy to see that, marrying Ménécrate,
+     whom she hates, and _not_ marrying Thrasimède, whom she
+     loves, she would be very unhappy indeed; nor could
+     Androclée, on her side, be particularly satisfied to see a
+     man like Ménécrate, whom she loves passionately, the husband
+     of another. Philistion could hardly be any more pleased to
+     see Ménécrate, after promising to marry his sister, actually
+     marrying another. As for Thrasimède, it is again easy to
+     perceive that, being as much in love with Arpalice as he is,
+     and knowing that she loves him, he would have good reason
+     for thinking himself one of the unhappiest lovers in the
+     world if his Rival possessed his mistress. Therefore, from
+     what I have said, you will see that by giving Arpalice to
+     Ménécrate, everybody concerned is made miserable; for even
+     Parmenides [_not the philosopher, but a friend of Ménécrate,
+     whose sister, however, has rejected him_], though he may
+     make a show of being still attached to the interests of
+     Ménécrate, will be, unless I mistake, well enough pleased
+     that his sister should not marry the brother of a person
+     whom he never wishes to see again, and by whom he has been
+     ill-treated. Then, if we look at the matter from the other
+     side and propose to give Arpalice to Thrasimède, it remains
+     an unalterable fact that these two people will be happy;
+     that Philistion will be satisfied; that justice will be done
+     to Androclée; that nothing disobliging will be done to
+     Parmenides, and that Ménécrate will be made by force more
+     happy than he wishes to be; for we shall give him a wife by
+     whom he is loved, and take from him one by whom he is hated.
+     Moreover, things being so, even if he refuses to subject his
+     whim to his reason, he can wish to come to blows with
+     Thrasimède alone, and would have nothing to ask of
+     Philistion; besides which, his sentiments will change as
+     soon as Thrasimède is Arpalice's husband. One often fights
+     with a Rival, thinking to profit by his defeat, when he has
+     not married the beloved object; but one does not so readily
+     fight the husband of one's mistress, as being her
+     lover.[182]"
+
+Much about the "Good Rival" (as we may call him) Mazare follows, and
+there is an illuminative sentence about our favourite Doralise's _humeur
+enjouée et critique_, which, as the rest of her part does, gives us a
+"light" as to the origin of those sadly vulgarised lively heroines of
+Richardson's whom Lady Mary very justly wanted to "slipper." Doralise
+and Martésie are ladies, which the others, unfortunately, are not. And
+then we pay for our _ecphrasis_ by an immense _Histoire_ of the Tyrian
+Élise, its original.
+
+At the beginning of VII. ii. Cyrus is in the doldrums. Many of his
+heroes have got their heroines--the personages of bygone
+_histoires_--and are honeymooning and (to borrow again from Mr. Kipling)
+"dancing on the deck." He is not. Moreover, the army, like all
+seventeenth-century armies after victory and in comfortable quarters, is
+getting rather out of hand; and he learns that the King of Pontus has
+carried Mandane off to Cumae--not the famous Italian Cumae, home of the
+Sibyl whom Sir Edward Burne-Jones has fixed for us, and of many
+classical memories, but a place somewhere near Miletus, defended by
+unpleasant marshes on land, and open to the sea itself, the element on
+which Cyrus is weakest, and by which the endlessly carried off Mandane
+may readily be carried off again. He sends about for help to Phoenicia
+and elsewhere; but when, after a smart action by land against the town,
+a squadron does appear off the port, he is for a time quite uncertain
+whether it is friend or foe. Fortunately Cléobuline, Queen of Corinth, a
+young widow of surpassing beauty and the noblest sentiments, who has
+sworn never to marry again, has conceived a Platonic-romantic admiration
+for him, and has sent her fleet to his aid. She deserves, of course, and
+still more of course has, a _Histoire de Cléobuline_. Also the
+inestimable Martésie writes to say that Mandane has been dispossessed of
+her suspicions, and that the King of Pontus is, in the race for her
+favour, nowhere. The city falls, and the lovers meet. But if anybody
+thinks for a moment that they are to be happy ever afterwards,
+Arithmetic, Logic, and Literary History will combine to prove to him
+that he is very much mistaken. In order to make these two lovers happy
+at all, not only time and space, but six extremely solid volumes would
+have to be annihilated.
+
+The close of VII. ii. and the whole of VIII. i. are occupied with
+imbroglios of the most characteristic kind. There is a certain Anaxaris,
+who has been instrumental in preventing Mandane from being, according to
+her almost invariable custom, carried off from Cumae also. To whom,
+though he is one of the numerous "unknowns" of the book, Cyrus rashly
+confides not only the captainship of the Princess's guards, but various
+and too many other things, especially when "Philip Devil" turns up once
+more, and, seeing the lovers in apparent harmony, claims the fulfilment
+of Cyrus's rash promise to fight him before marrying. This gets wind in
+a way, and watch is kept on Cyrus by his friends; but he, thinking of
+the parlous state of his mistress if both her principal lovers were
+killed--for Prince Mazare is, so to speak, out of the running, while the
+King of Pontus is still lying _perdu_ somewhere--entrusts the secret to
+Anaxaris, and begs him to take care of her. Now Anaxaris--as is so
+usual--is not Anaxaris at all, but Aryante, Prince of the Massagetae and
+actually brother of the redoubtable Queen Thomyris; and he also has
+fallen a victim to Mandane's fascinations, which appear to be
+irresistible, though they are, mercifully perhaps, rather taken for
+granted than made evident to the reader. One would certainly rather have
+one Doralise or Martésie than twenty Mandanes. However, again in the now
+expected manner, the fight does not immediately come off. For "Philip
+Devil," in his usual headlong violence, has provoked another duel with
+the Assyrian Prince Intaphernes,[183] and has been badly worsted and
+wounded by his foe, who is unhurt. This puts everything off, and for a
+long time the main story drops again (except as far as the struggles of
+Anaxaris between honour and love are depicted), first to a great deal of
+miscellaneous talk about the quarrel of King and Prince, and then to a
+regular _Histoire_ of the King, Intaphernes, Atergatis, Princess
+Istrine, and the Princess of Bithynia, Spithridates's sister and
+daughter of a very robustious and rather usurping King Arsamones, who is
+a deadly enemy of Cyrus. The dead Queen Nitocris, and the passion for
+her of a certain Gadates, Intaphernes's father, and also sometimes, if
+not always, called a "Prince," come in here. The story again introduces
+the luckless Spithridates himself, who is first, owing to his likeness
+to Cyrus, persecuted by Thomyris, and then imprisoned by his father
+Arsamones because he will not give up Araminta and marry Istrine, whom
+Nitocris had wanted to marry her own son Philidaspes--a good instance of
+the extraordinary complications and contrarieties in which the book
+indulges, and of which, if Dickens had been a more "literary" person, he
+might have thought when he made the unfortunate Augustus Moddle observe
+that "everybody appears to be somebody else's." Finally, the volume ends
+with an account of the leisurely progress of Mandane and Cyrus to
+Ecbatana and Cyaxares, while the King of Assyria recovers as best he
+can. But at certain "tombs" on the route evidence is found that the King
+of Pontus has been recently in the land of the living, and is by no
+means disposed to give up Mandane.
+
+The second volume of this part is one of the most eventless of all, and
+is mainly occupied by a huge _Histoire_ of Puranius, Prince of Phocaea,
+his love Cléonisbe, and others, oddly topped by a passage of the main
+story, describing Cyrus's emancipation of the captive Jews. He is for a
+time separated from the Princess.
+
+The first pages of IX. i. are lively, though they are partly a _récit_.
+Prince Intaphernes tells Cyrus all about Anaxaris (Aryante), and how by
+representing Cyrus as dead and the King of Assyria in full pursuit of
+her, he has succeeded in carrying off Mandane; how also he has had the
+cunning, by availing himself of the passion of another high officer,
+Andramite, for Doralise, to induce him to join, in order that the maid
+of honour may accompany her mistress. Accordingly Cyrus, the King of
+Assyria himself, and others start off in fresh pursuit; but the King has
+at first the apparent luck. He overtakes the fugitives, and a sharp
+fight follows. But the guards whom Cyrus has placed over the Princess,
+and who, in the belief of his death, have followed the ravishers, are
+too much for Philidaspes, and he is fatally wounded; fulfilling the
+oracle, as we anticipated long ago, by dying in Mandane's arms, and
+honoured with a sigh from her as for her intended rescuer.
+
+She herself, therefore, is in no better plight, for Aryante and
+Andramite continue the flight, with her and her ladies, to a port on the
+Euxine, destroying, that they may not be followed, all the shipping save
+one craft they select, and making for the northern shore. Here after a
+time Aryante surrenders Mandane to his sister Thomyris, as he cannot
+well help doing, though he knows her violent temper and her tigress-like
+passion for Cyrus, and though, also, he is on rather less than brotherly
+terms with her, and has a party among the Massagetae who would gladly
+see him king. Meanwhile the King of Pontus and Phraortes, Araminta's
+carrier-off, fight and kill each other, and Araminta is given up--a loss
+for Mandane, for they have been companions in quasi-captivity, and there
+is no longer any subject of jealousy between them.
+
+Having thus created a sort of "deadlock" situation such as she loves,
+and in the interval, while Cyrus is gathering forces to attack Thomyris,
+the author, as is her fashion likewise, surrenders herself to the joys
+of digression. We have a great deal of retrospective history of Aryante,
+and at last the famous Scythian philosopher, Anacharsis, is introduced,
+bringing with him the rest of the Seven Ancient Sages--with whom we
+could dispense, but are not allowed to do so. There is a Banquet of them
+all at the end of the first volume of the Part; and they overflow into
+the second, telling stories about Pisistratus and others, and discussing
+"love in the _aib_-stract," as frigidly as might be expected, on such
+points as, "Can you love the same person _twice_?"[184] But the last
+half of this IX. ii. is fortunately business again. There is much hard
+fighting with Thomyris, who on one occasion wishes to come to actual
+sword-play with Cyrus, and of whom we have the liveliest _ecphrasis_, or
+set description, in the whole romance.
+
+     [Sidenote: Thomyris on the warpath.]
+
+     As for Thomyris, she was so beautiful that day that there
+     was no one in the world save Mandane, who could have
+     disputed a heart with her[185] without the risk of losing.
+     This Princess was mounted on a fine black horse, trapped
+     with gold; her dress was of cloth of gold, with green panels
+     shot with a little carnation, and was of the shape of that
+     of Pallas when she is represented as armed. The skirt was
+     caught up on the hip with diamond clasps, and showed buskins
+     of lions' muzzles made to correspond with the rest. Her
+     head-dress was adorned with jewels, and a great number of
+     feathers--carnation, white and green--hung over her
+     beautiful fair tresses, while these, fluttering at the
+     wind's will, mixed themselves with the plumes as she turned
+     her head, and with their careless curls gave a marvellous
+     lustre to her beauty. Besides, as her sleeves were turned
+     up, and caught on the shoulder, while she held the bridle of
+     her horse with one hand and her sword with the other, she
+     showed the loveliest arms in the world. Anger had flushed
+     her complexion, so that she was more beautiful than usual;
+     and the joy of once more seeing Cyrus, and seeing him also
+     in an action respectful towards her,[186] effaced the marks
+     of her immediately preceding fury so completely that he
+     could see nothing but what was amiable and charming.
+
+Thomyris, however, is as treacherous and cruel as she is beautiful; and
+part of her reason for seeming milder is that more of her troops may
+turn up and seize him.
+
+On another occasion, owing to false generalship and disorderly advance
+on the part of the King of Hyrcania, Cyrus is in no small danger, but he
+"makes good," though at a disastrous expense, and with still greater
+dangers to meet. Thomyris's youthful son (for young and beautiful widow
+as she is, she has been an early married wife and a mother),
+Spargapises, just of military age, is captured in battle, suffers from
+his captors' ignorance what has been called "the indelible insult of
+bonds," and though almost instantly released as soon as he is known,
+stabs himself as disgraced. His body is sent to his mother with all
+sorts of honours, apologies, and regrets, but she, partly out of natural
+feeling, partly from her excited state, and partly because her mind is
+poisoned by false insinuations, sends, after transports of maternal and
+other rage, a message to Cyrus to the effect that if he does not put
+himself unreservedly in her hands, she will send him back Mandane dead,
+in the coffin of Spargapises. And so the last double-volume but one ends
+with a suitable "fourth act" curtain, as we may perhaps call it.
+
+The last of all, X. i. and ii., exhibits, in a remarkable degree, the
+general defects and the particular merits and promise of this curious
+and (it cannot be too often repeated) epoch-making book. In the latter
+respect more especially it shows the "laborious orient ivory sphere in
+sphere" fashion in which the endless and, it may sometimes seem, aimless
+episodes, and digressions, and insets are worked into the general theme.
+The defects will hardly startle, though they may still annoy, any one
+who has worked through the whole. But if another wickedly contented
+himself with a sketch of the story up to this point, and thought to make
+up by reading this Part of two volumes carefully, he would probably feel
+these defects very strongly indeed. We--we corrupt moderns--do expect a
+quickening up for the run-in. The usual beginning may seem to the
+non-experts to promise this, or at least to give hopes of it; for though
+there is a vast deal of talking--with Anacharsis as a go-between and
+Gélonide (a good confidante), endeavouring to soften Thomyris, one can
+but expect it--the situation itself is at once difficult and exciting.
+The position of Aryante in particular is really novel-dramatic. As he is
+in love with Mandane, he of course does not want his sister to murder
+her. But inasmuch as he fears Cyrus's rivalry, he does not want him to
+be near Mandane for two obvious reasons: first, the actual proximity,
+and, secondly, the danger of Thomyris's temper getting the better (or
+worse) of her when both the lovers are in her power. So he sends private
+messengers to the Persian Prince, begging him _not_ to surrender. Cyrus,
+however, still thinks of exchanging himself for Mandane. At this point
+the neophyte's rage may be excited by being asked to plunge into the
+regular four-hundred page _Histoire_ of a certain Arpasie, who has two
+lovers--a Persian nobleman Hidaspe, and a supposed Assyrian champion
+Méliante, who has come with reinforcements for Thomyris. And no doubt
+the proportion _is_ outrageous. But "wait and see," a phrase, it may be
+observed, which was not, as some seem to think, invented by Mr. Asquith.
+
+At last the business does begin again, and a tremendous battle takes
+place for the possession of certain forests which lie between the two
+armies, and are at first held by the Scythians. Cyrus, however, avails
+himself of the services of an engineer who has a secret of combustibles,
+sets the forests ablaze, and forces his way through one or two open
+defiles, with little loss to himself and very heavy loss to the enemy,
+whose main body, however, is still unbroken. This affords a fine subject
+for one of the curious frontispieces known to all readers of seventeenth
+century books. A further wait for reinforcements takes place, and the
+author basely avails herself of it for a no doubt to herself very
+congenial (they actually called her in "precious" circles by the name of
+the great poetess) and enormous _Histoire_ of no less a person than
+Sappho, which fills the last 250 pages of the first (nineteenth) volume
+and about as much of the second (twentieth) or last. It has very little
+connection with the text, save that Sappho and Phaon (for the
+self-precipitation at Leucas is treated as a fable) retire to the
+country of the Sauromatae, to live there a happy, united, but unwed and
+purely Platonic (in the silly sense) existence. The foolish side of the
+_précieuse_ system comes out here, and the treatment confirms one's
+suspicion that the author's classical knowledge was not very deep.
+
+It does come to an end at last, however, and at last also we do get our
+"run-in," such as it is. The chief excuse for its existence is that it
+brings in a certain Méréonte, who, like his quasi-assonant Méliante, is
+to be useful later, and that the tame conclusion is excused by a Sapphic
+theory--certainly not to be found in her too fragmentary works--that
+"possession ruins love," a doctrine remembered and better put by Dryden
+in a speech of that very agreeable Doralice, whose name, though not
+originally connected with this part of it, he also, as has been noted,
+borrowed from the _Grand Cyrus_.
+
+The actual finale begins (so to speak) antithetically with the last
+misfortune of the unlucky Spithridates. His ill-starred likeness to
+Cyrus, assisted by a suit of armour which Cyrus has given to him, make
+the enemy certain that he is Cyrus himself, and he is furiously
+assaulted in an off-action, surrounded, and killed. His head is taken
+to Thomyris, who, herself deceived, executes upon it the famous
+"blood-bath" of history or legend.[187] Unfortunately it is not only in
+the Scythian army that the error spreads. Cyrus's troops are terrified
+and give way, so that he is overpowered by numbers and captured.
+Fortunately he falls into the hands, not of Thomyris's own people or of
+her savage allies, the Geloni (it is a Gelonian captain who has acted as
+executioner in Spithridates's case), but of the supposed Assyrian leader
+Méliante, who is an independent person, admires Cyrus, and, further
+persuaded by his friend Méréonte (_v. sup._), resolves to let him
+escape. The difficulties, however, are great, and the really safest,
+though apparently the most dangerous way, seems to lie through the
+"Royal Tents" (the nomad capital of Thomyris) themselves. Meanwhile,
+Aryante is making interest against his sister; some of Cyrus's special
+friends, disguised as Massagetae, are trying to discover and rescue him,
+and the Sauromatae are ready to desert the Scythian Queen. One of her
+transports of rage brings on the catastrophe. She orders the Gelonian
+bravo to poniard Mandane, and he actually stabs by mistake her
+maid-of-honour Hésionide--the least interesting one, luckily. Cyrus
+himself, after escaping notice for a time, is identified, attacked, and
+nearly slain, when the whole finishes in a general chaos of rebellion,
+arrival of friends, flight of Thomyris, and a hairbreadth escape of
+Cyrus himself, which unluckily partakes more of the possible-improbable
+than of the impossible-probable. The murders being done, the marriages
+would appear to have nothing to delay them; but an evil habit, the
+origin of which is hard to trace, and which is not quite extinct, still
+puts them off. Méliante has got to be rewarded with the hand of Arpasie,
+which is accomplished after he has been discovered, in a manner not
+entirely romantic, to be the son of the King of Hyrcania, and both his
+marriage and that of Cyrus are interfered with by a supposed Law of the
+Medes and of certain minor Asiatic peoples, that a Prince or Princess
+may not marry a foreigner. Fresh discoveries get rid of this in
+Méliante's case, while in that of Cyrus a convenient Oracle declares
+that he who has conquered every kingdom in Asia cannot be considered a
+foreigner in any. So at last the long chart is finished, Doralise
+retaining her character as lightener of this rather solid entertainment
+by declaring that she cannot say she loves her suitor, Prince Myrsilus,
+because every phrase that occurs to her is either too strong or too
+weak. So we bless her, and stop the water channels--or, as the Limousin
+student might have more excellently said, "claud the rives."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: General remarks on the book and its class.]
+
+If the reader, having tolerated this long analysis (it is perhaps most
+probable that he will _not_ have done so), asks what game one pretends
+to have shown for so much expenditure or candle, it is, no doubt, not
+easy to answer him without a fresh, though a lesser, trial of his
+patience. You cannot "ticket" the _Grand Cyrus_, or any of its fellows,
+or the whole class, with any complimentary short description, such as a
+certain school of ancient criticism loved, and corresponding to our
+modern advertisement labels--"grateful and comforting," "necessary in
+every travelling bag," and the like. They are, indeed, as I have
+endeavoured to indicate indirectly as well as directly, by no means so
+destitute of interest of the ordinary kind as it has generally been the
+fashion to think them. From the charge of inordinate length it is, of
+course, impossible to clear the whole class, and _Artamène_ more
+particularly.[188] Length "no more than reason" is in some judgments a
+positive advantage in a novel; but this _is_ more than reason. I believe
+(the _moi_, I trust, is not utterly _haïssable_ when it is necessary)
+that I myself am a rather unusually rapid, without being a careless or
+unfaithful, reader; and that I have by nature a very little of that
+faculty with which some much greater persons have been credited, of
+being able to see at a glance whether anything on a page needs more
+than that glance or not, a faculty not likely to have been rendered
+abortive (though also not, I hope, rendered morbid) by infinite practice
+in reviewing. I do not say that, even now, I have read every word of
+this _Artamène_ as I should read every word of a sonnet of Shakespeare
+or a lyric of Shelley, even as I should read every word of a page of
+Thackeray. I have even skimmed many pages. But I have never found, even
+in a time of "retired leisure," that I could get through more than
+three, or at the very utmost four, of the twenty volumes or half-volumes
+without a day or two of rest or other work between. On the other hand,
+the book is not significantly piquant in detail to enable me to read
+attentively fifty or a hundred pages and then lay it down.[189] You do,
+in a lazy sort of way, want to know what happened--a tribute, no doubt,
+to Mlle. Madeleine--and so you have to go on ploughing the furrow. But
+several weeks' collar-work[190] is a great deal to spend on a single
+book of what is supposed to be pastime; and the pastime becomes
+occasionally one of doubtful pleasure now and then. In fact, it is, as
+has been said, best to read in shifts. Secondly, there may, no doubt, be
+charged a certain unreality about the whole: and a good many other
+criticisms may be, as some indeed have been already, made without
+injustice.
+
+The fact is that not only was the time not yet, but something which was
+very specially of the time stood in the way of the other thing coming,
+despite the strong _nisus_ in its favour excited by various influences
+spoken of at the beginning of this chapter. This was the
+devotion--French at almost all times, and specially French at this--to
+the type. There are some "desperate willins" (as Sam Weller called the
+greengrocer at the swarry) who fail to see much more than types in
+Racine, though there is something more in Corneille, and a very great
+deal more in Molière. In the romances which charmed at home the
+audiences and spectators of these three great men's work abroad, there
+is nothing, or next to nothing, else at all. The spirit of the _Epistle
+to the Pisos_, which acted on the Tragedians in verse, which acted on
+Boileau in criticism and poetry, was heavier on the novelist than on any
+of them. Take sufficient generosity, magnanimity, adoration, bravery,
+courtesy, and so forth, associate the mixture with handsome flesh and
+royal blood, clothe the body thus formed with brilliant scarfs and
+shining armour, put it on the best horse that was ever foaled, or kneel
+it at the feet of the most beautiful princess that ever existed, and you
+have Cyrus. For the princess herself take beauty, dignity, modesty,
+graciousness, etc., _quant. suff._, clothe _them_ in garments again
+magnificent, and submit the total to extreme inconveniences, some
+dangers, and an immense amount of involuntary travelling, but nothing
+"irreparable," and you have Mandane. For the rest, with the rare and
+slight exceptions mentioned, they flit like shadows ticketed with more
+or less beautiful names. Even Philidaspes, the most prominent male
+character after the hero by far, is, whether he be "in cog" as that
+personage or "out of cog" as Prince and King of Assyria, merely a
+petulant hero--a sort of cheap Achilles, with no idiosyncrasy at all. It
+is the fault, and in a way the very great fault, of all the kind: and
+there is nothing more to do with it but to admit it and look for
+something to set against it.
+
+How great a thing the inception (to use a favourite word of the present
+day, though it be no favourite of the writer's) of the "psychological"
+treatment of Love[191] was may, of course, be variously estimated. The
+good conceit of itself in which that day so innocently and amusingly
+indulges will have it, indeed, that the twentieth century has invented
+this among other varieties of the great and venerable art of extracting
+nourishment from eggs. "We have," somebody wrote not long ago--the exact
+words may not be given, but the sense is guaranteed--"perceived that
+Love is not merely a sentiment, an appetite, or a passion, but a great
+means of intellectual development." Of course Solomon did not know this,
+nor Sappho, nor Catullus, nor the fashioners of those "sentiments" of
+the Middle Ages which brought about the half-fabulous Courts of Love
+itself, nor Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor Shakespeare, nor Donne. It was
+reserved for--but one never names contemporaries except _honoris causâ_.
+
+It is--an "of course" of another kind--undeniable that the fashion of
+love-philosophy which supplies so large a part of the "yarn" of
+Madeleine de Scudéry's endless rope or web is not _our_ fashion. But it
+is, in a way, a new variety of yarn as compared with anything used
+before in prose, even in the Greek romances[192] and the _Amadis_ group
+(nay, even in the _Astrée_ itself). Among other things, it connects
+itself more with the actual society, manners, fashions of its day than
+had ever been the case before, and this is the only interesting side of
+the "key" part of it. This was the way that they did to some extent talk
+and act then, though, to be sure, they also talked and acted very
+differently. It is all very well to say that the Hôtel de Rambouillet is
+a sort of literary-historical fiction, and the _Précieuses Ridicules_ a
+delightful farce. The fiction was not wholly a fiction, and the farce
+was very much more than a farce--would have been, indeed, not a farce at
+all if it had not satirised a fact.
+
+It is, however, in relation to the general history and development of
+the novel, and therefore in equally important relation to the present
+_History_, that the importance of the _Grand Cyrus_, or rather of the
+class of which it was by far the most popular and noteworthy member, is
+most remarkable. Indeed this importance can hardly be exaggerated, and
+is much more likely to be--indeed has nearly always been--undervalued.
+Even the jejune and partial analysis which has been given must have
+shown how many of the elements of the modern novel are here--sometimes,
+as it were, "in solution," sometimes actually crystallised. For any one
+who demands plot there is one--of such gigantic dimensions, indeed, that
+it is not easy to grasp it, but seen to be singularly well articulated
+and put together when it is once grasped. Huge as it is, it is not in
+the least formless, and, as has been several times pointed out, hardly
+the most (as it may at first appear) wanton and unpardonable episode,
+digression, or inset lacks its due connection with and "orientation"
+towards the end. The contrast of this with the more or less formless
+chronicle-fashion, the "overthwart and endlong" conduct, of almost all
+the romances from the Carlovingian and Arthurian[193] to the _Amadis_
+type, is of the most unmistakable kind.
+
+Again, though character, as has been admitted, in any real live sense,
+is terribly wanting still; though description is a little general and
+wants more "streaks in the tulip"; and though conversation is formal and
+stilted, there is evident, perhaps even in the first, certainly in the
+second and third cases, an effort to treat them at any rate
+systematically, in accordance with some principles of art, and perhaps
+even not without some eye to the actual habits, manners, demands of the
+time--things which again were quite new in prose fiction, and, in fact,
+could hardly be said to be anywhere present in literature outside of
+drama.
+
+To set against these not so very small merits in the present, and very
+considerable seeds of promise for the future, there are, of course,
+serious faults or defects--defaults which need, however, less
+insistence, because they are much more generally known, much more
+obvious, and have been already admitted. The charge of excessive length
+need hardly be dealt with at all. It has already been said that the most
+interesting point about it is the opportunity of discovering how it was,
+in part, a regular, and, in fact, almost the furthest possible,
+development of a characteristic which had been more or less observable
+throughout the progress of romance. But it may be added that the law of
+supply and demand helped; for people evidently were not in the least
+bored by bulk, and that the fancy for having a book "on hand" has only
+lately, if it has actually, died out.[194] Now such a "book on hand" as
+the _Grand Cyrus_ exists, as far as my knowledge goes, in no Western
+literature, unless you count collections of letters, which is not fair,
+or such memoirs as Saint-Simon's, which do not appeal to quite the same
+class of readers.
+
+A far more serious default or defect--not exactly blameworthy, _because_
+the time was not yet, but certainly to be taken account of--is the
+almost utter want of character just referred to. From Cyrus and Mandane
+downwards the people have qualities; but qualities, though they are
+necessary to character, do not constitute it. Very faint approaches may
+be discerned, by very benevolent criticism, in such a personage as
+Martésie with her shrewdness, her maid-of-honour familiarity with the
+ways and manners of courtly human beings, and that very pardonable,
+indeed agreeable, tendency, which has been noticed or imagined, to flirt
+in respectful fashion with Cyrus, while carrying on more regular
+business with Feraulas. But it is little more than a suggestion, and it
+has been frankly admitted that it is perhaps not even that, but an
+imagination merely. And the same observation may apply to her "second
+string," Doralise. No others of the women have any character at all, and
+we have already spoken of the men.
+
+Now these things, in a book very widely read and immensely admired,
+could not, and did not, fail to have their effect. Nobody--we shall see
+this more in detail in the next chapter--can fail to perceive that the
+_Princesse de Clèves_ itself is, from one point of view, only a
+_histoire_ of the _Grand Cyrus_, taken out of its preposterous _matrix_
+of other matter, polished, charged with a great addition of internal
+fire of character and passion, and left to take its chance alone and
+unencumbered. Nobody, on the other hand, who knows Richardson and
+Mademoiselle de Scudéry can doubt the influence of the French book--a
+century old as it was--on the "father of the English novel." Now any
+influence exerted on these two was, beyond controversy, an influence
+exerted on the whole future course of the kind, and it is as exercising
+such an influence that we have given to the _Great Cyrus_ so great a
+space.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The other Scudéry romances--_Ibrahim_.]
+
+After the exhaustive account given of _Artamène_, it is probably not
+necessary to apologise for dealing with the rest of Mlle. de Scudéry's
+novel work, and with that of her comrades in the Heroic romance, at no
+very great length. _Ibrahim ou L'Illustre Bassa_ has sometimes been
+complimented as showing more endeavour, if not exactly at "local
+colour," at technical accuracy, than the rest. It is true that the
+French were, at this time, rather amusingly proud of being the only
+Western nation treated on something like equal terms by the Sublime
+Porte, and that the Scudérys (possibly Georges, whose work the
+Dedication to Mlle. de Rohan, daughter of the famous soldier, pretty
+certainly is) may have taken some pains to acquire knowledge. "Sandjak"
+(or "Sanjiac"), not for a district but for its governor, is a little
+unlucky perhaps; but "Aderbion" is much nearer "Azerbaijan" than one
+generally expects in such cases from French writers of the seventeenth
+or even of other centuries. The Oriental character of the story,
+however, is but partial. The Illustrious Pasha himself, though First
+Vizir and "victorious" general of Soliman the Second, is not a Turk at
+all, but a "Justinian" or Giustiniani of Genoa, whose beloved Isabelle
+is a Princess of Monaco, and who at the end, after necessary
+dangers,[195] retires with her to that Principality, with a punctilious
+explanation from the author about the Grimaldis. The scene is partly
+there and at Genoa--the best Genoese families, including the Dorias,
+appearing--partly at Constantinople: and the business at the latter
+place is largely concerned with the intrigues, jealousies, and cruelties
+of Roxelane, who is drawn much more (one regrets to say) as history
+paints her than as the agreeable creature of Marmontel's subsequent
+fancy. The book is a mere cockboat beside the mighty argosy of the
+_Cyrus_, running only to four volumes and some two thousand pages. But
+though smaller, it is much "stodgier." The _Histoires_ break out at once
+with the story of a certain Alibech--much more proper for the young
+person than that connected with the same name by Boccaccio,--and those
+who have acquired some knowledge of Mlle. Madeleine's ways will know
+what it means when, adopting the improper but defensible practice of
+"looking at the end," they find that not merely "Justinian" and
+Isabelle, but a Horace and a Hypolite, a Doria and a Sophronie, an
+Alphonse and a Léonide are all married on the same day, while a "French
+Marquis" and an Emilie vow inviolable but celibate constancy to each
+other; they will know, that is to say, that in the course of the book
+all these will have been duly "historiated." To encourage them, a single
+hint that Léonide sometimes plays a little of the parts of Martésie and
+Doralise in the _Cyrus_ may be thrown in.
+
+There is, however, one sentence in the second volume of _Ibrahim_ which
+is worth quotation and brief comment, because it is a text for the whole
+management and system of these novels, and accounts for much in their
+successors almost to the present day. Emilie is telling the _Histoire_
+of Isabelle, and excuses herself for not beginning at the beginning:
+"Puisque je sais que vous n'ignorez pas l'amour du Prince de Masseran,
+les violences et les artifices de Julie, la trahison de Féliciane, le
+généreux ressentiment de Doria [this is another Doria], la mort de cet
+amant infortuné, et ensuite celle de Julie." In other words, all these
+things have been the subject of previous histories or of the main text.
+And so it is always. Diderot admired, or at least excused, that
+procedure of Richardson's which involved the telling of the conversation
+of an average dinner-party in something like a small volume. But the
+"Heroic" method would have made it necessary to tell the previous
+experiences of the lady you took down to dinner, and the man that you
+talked to afterwards, while, if extended from aristocratic to democratic
+ideas, it would have justified a few remarks on the cabmen who brought
+both, and the butcher and fishmonger who supplied the feast. The
+inconvenience of this earlier practice made itself felt, and by degrees
+it dropped off; but it was succeeded by a somewhat similar habit of
+giving the subsequent history of personages introduced--a thing which,
+though Scott satirised it in Mrs. Martha Buskbody's insistence on
+information about the later history of Guse Gibbie,[196] by no means
+ceased with his time. Both were, in fact, part of the general refusal to
+accept the conditions of ordinary life. If "tout _passe_" is an
+exaggeration, it is an exaggeration of the truth: and in fiction, as in
+fact, the minor shapes must dissolve as well as arise without too much
+fuss being made about them.[197]
+
+[Sidenote: _Almahide._]
+
+_Almahide_ is, I think, more readable than _Ibrahim_; but the _English_
+reader must disabuse himself of the idea (if he entertains it) that he
+will find much of the original of _The Conquest of Granada_. The book
+does, indeed, open like the play, with the faction-fights of
+Abencerrages and Zegrys, and it ends with Boabdelin's jealousy of his
+wife Almahide, while a few of the other names in both are identical. But
+_Almahide_ contains nothing, or hardly anything, of the character of
+Almanzor, and Dryden has not attempted to touch a hundredth part of the
+copious matter of the French novel, the early history of Almahide, the
+usual immense digressions and side-_histoires_, the descriptions (which,
+as in _Ibrahim_, play, I think, a larger relative part than in the
+_Cyrus_), and what not.
+
+[Sidenote: _Clélie._]
+
+[Sidenote: Perhaps the liveliest of the set.]
+
+Copious as these are, however, in both books, they do not fill them out
+to anything like the length of the _Cyrus_ itself, or of its rival in
+size, and perhaps superior in attraction, the _Clélie_. I do not plead
+guilty to inconsistency or change of opinion in this "perhaps" when it
+is compared with the very much larger space given to the earlier novel.
+_Le Grand Cyrus_ has been estated too firmly, as the type and
+representative of the whole class, to be dislodged, and there is, as we
+shall see presently, a good deal of repetition from it in _Clélie_
+itself. But this latter is the more amusing book of the two; it is,
+though equally or nearly as big, less labyrinthine; there is somewhat
+livelier movement in it, and at the same time this is contrasted with a
+set or series of interludes of love-casuistry, which are better, I
+think, than anything of the kind in the _Cyrus_.[198] The most famous
+feature of these is, of course, the well-known but constantly misnamed
+"Carte de Tendre" ("Map of the Country of Tenderness"--not of
+"Tenderness in the _aib_stract," as _du_ Tendre would be). The
+discussion of what constitutes Tenderness comes quite early; there is
+later a notable discourse on the respective attractions of Love and of
+Glory or Ambition; a sort of Code and Anti-code of lovers[199] occurs as
+"The Love-Morality of Tiramus," with a set of (not always) contrary
+criticism thereof; and a debate of an almost mediaeval kind as to the
+respective merits of merry and melancholy mistresses. Moreover, there is
+a rather remarkable "Vision of Poets"--past, present, and to come--which
+should be taken in connection with the appearance, as an actual
+personage, of Anacreon. All this, taken in conjunction with the
+"business" of the story, helps to give it the superior liveliness with
+which it has, rightly or wrongly, been credited here.
+
+[Sidenote: Rough outline of it.]
+
+Of that business itself a complete account cannot, for reasons given
+more than once, be attempted; though anybody who wants such a thing,
+without going to the book itself, may find it in the places also above
+mentioned. There is no such trick played upon the educated but not
+wideawake person as (_v. inf._) in La Calprenède's chief books. Clélie
+is the real Clelia, if the modern historical student will pass "real"
+without sniffing, or even if he will not. Her lover, "Aronce," although
+he probably may be a little disguised from the English reader by his
+spelling, is so palpably the again real "Aruns," son of Porsena, that
+one rather wonders how his identity can have been so long concealed in
+French (where the pronunciations would be practically the same) from the
+readers of the story. The book begins with a proceeding not quite so
+like that of the _Cyrus_ as some to be mentioned later, but still pretty
+close to the elder overture. "The illustrious Aronce and the adorable
+Clelia" are actually going to be married, when there is a fearful storm,
+an earthquake, and a disappearance of the heroine. She has, of course,
+been carried off; one might say, without flippancy, of any heroine of
+Madeleine de Scudéry's not only that she was, as in a famous and already
+quoted saying, "very liable to be carried off," but that it was not in
+nature that she should not be carried off as early and as often as
+possible. And her abductor is no less a person than Horatius--our own
+Horatius Cocles--the one who kept the bridge in some of the best known
+of English verses, not he who provoked, from the sister whom he
+murdered, the greatest speech in all French tragedy before, and perhaps
+not merely before, Victor Hugo. Horatius is the Philidaspes of _Clélie_,
+but, as he was bound to be, an infinitely better fellow and of a better
+fate. Of course the end knits straight on to the beginning. Clélie and
+Aronce are united without an earthquake, and Porsena, with obliging
+gallantry, resigns the crown of Clusium (from which he has himself long
+been kept out by a "Mezentius," who will hardly work in with Virgil's),
+not to Aronce, but to Clélie herself. The enormous interval between (the
+book is practically as long as the _Cyrus_) is occupied by the same, or
+(_v. sup._) nearly the same tissue of delays, digressions, and other
+maze-like devices for setting you off on a new quest when you seem to be
+quite close to the goal. A large part of the scene is in Carthage,
+where, reversing the process in regard to Mezentius, Asdrubals and
+Amilcars make their appearance in a very "mixedly" historical fashion. A
+Prince of Numidia (who had heard of Numidia in Tarquin's days?) fights a
+lively water-combat with Horatius actually as he is carrying Clélie off,
+over the Lake of Thrasymene. All the stock legends of the Porsena siege
+and others are duly brought in: and the atrocious Sextus, not contented
+with his sin against Lucrèce, tries to carry off Clélie likewise, but is
+fortunately or wisely prevented. Otherwise the invariable propriety
+which from the time of the small love-novels (_v. sup._ pp. 157-162) had
+distinguished these abductions might possibly have been broken through.
+These outlines might be expanded (and the process would not be very
+painful to me) into an abstract quite as long as that of Cyrus; but "It
+Cannot Be."
+
+One objection, foreshadowed, and perhaps a little more, already, must be
+allowed against _Clélie_. That tendency to resort to repetition of
+situations and movements--which has shown itself so often, and which
+practically distinguishes the very great novelists from those not so
+great by its absence or presence--is obvious here, though the huge size
+of the book may conceal it from mere dippers, unless they be experts.
+The similarity of the openings is, comparatively speaking, a usual
+thing. It should not happen, and does not in really great writers; but
+it is tempting, and is to some extent excused by the brocard about _le
+premier pas_. It is so nice to put yourself in front of your
+beginning--to have made sure of it! But this charity will hardly extend
+to such a thing as the repetition of Cyrus's foolish promise to fight
+Philidaspes before he marries Mandane in the case of Aronce, Horatius,
+and Clélie. The way in which Aronce is kept an "unknown" for some time,
+and that in which his actual relationship to Porsena is treated, have
+also too much of the _replica_; and though a lively skirmish with a
+pirate which occurs is not quite so absurd as that ready-made series of
+encores which was described above (pp. 181-2), there is something a
+little like it in the way in which the hero and his men alternately
+reduce the enemy to extremity, and run over the deck to rescue friends
+who are in the pirates' power from being butchered or flung overboard.
+"Sapho's" invention, though by no means sterile, was evidently somewhat
+indiscriminate, and she would seem to have thought it rather a pity that
+a good thing should be used only once.
+
+Nevertheless the compliment given above may be repeated. If I were sent
+to twelve months' imprisonment of a mild description, and allowed to
+choose a library, I should include in it, from the heroic or semi-heroic
+division, _Clélie_, La Calprenède's two chief books, Gomberville's
+_Polexandre_, and Gombauld's _Endimion_ (this partly for the pictures),
+with, as a matter of course, the _Astrée_, and a choice of one other. By
+reading slowly and "savouring" the process, I should imagine that, with
+one's memories of other things, they might be able to last for a year.
+And it would be one of the best kind of fallows for the brain. In
+anticipation, let us see something of these others now.
+
+[Sidenote: La Calprenède: his comparative cheerfulness.]
+
+It has seemed, as was said, desirable to follow the common opinion of
+literary history in giving Madeleine de Scudéry the place of honour, and
+the largest as well as the foremost share in our account of this
+curious stage in the history of the novel. But if, to alter slightly a
+famous quotation, I might "give a short hint to an impartial _reader_,"
+I should very strongly advise him to begin his studies (or at least his
+enjoyment) thereof, not with "Sapho," but with Gauthier de Costes,
+Seigneur de la Calprenède, himself according to Tallemant almost the
+proverbial "Gascon _et demi_"; a tragic dramatist, as well as a romantic
+writer; a favourite of Mme. de Sévigné, who seldom went wrong in her
+preferences, except when she preferred her very disagreeable daughter to
+her very agreeable son; and more than any one else the inventor, or at
+least perfecter, of the hectoring heroic style which we associate with
+Dryden's plays. Indeed the Artaban of _Cléopatre_ is much more the
+original of Almanzor and Drawcansir than anything in Madeleine, though
+_Almahide_ was actually the source of Dryden's story, or heroine.
+Besides this, though La Calprenède has rather less of the
+intricate-impeach character than his she-rival, there is much more
+bustle and "go" in him; he has, though his books are proper enough, much
+less fear of dealing with "the kissing and that sort of thing," as it
+was once discreetly put; and he is sometimes positively exciting in his
+imbroglios, as when the beautiful Amazon princess Menalippe fights a
+real duel on horseback with Prince, afterwards King, Alcamenes of
+Scythia, under the impression that he has killed a certain Alcimedon,
+who was her lover; discovers, after no small time and considerable
+damage, that he is Alcimedon himself; and, like a sensible and agreeable
+girl, embraces him heartily in the sight of men and angels.
+
+[Sidenote: _Cléopatre_--the Cypassis and Arminius episode.]
+
+This is among the numerous _divertissements_ of _Cléopatre_ (not the
+earliest, but perhaps the chief of its author's novels[200]), the
+heroine of which is not
+
+    The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands
+
+herself, but her daughter by Antony, who historically married Juba of
+Mauretania, and is here courted by him under the name of Coriolanus,
+while he is in disgrace with Augustus. La Calprenède (all these
+romancers are merciful men and women to the historically unlucky, and
+cruel only, or for the most part, to fictitious characters) saves her
+half-brother Caesarion from his actual death, and, after the due
+thousands of pages, unites him happily to Queen Candace of Æthiopia.
+There is the same odd muddle (which made a not unintelligent Jesuit
+label this class of books "historia _mixta_") with many other persons.
+Perhaps the most curious of all episodes of this kind is the use made of
+Ovid's "fusca Cypassis." If Mrs. Grundy could be supposed ever to have
+read the _Amores_, the mere sight of the name of that dusky handmaid--to
+whom Ovid behaved, by his own confession, in such an exceedingly shabby
+as well as improper fashion--would make her shudder, if not shriek. But
+La Calprenède's Cypassis, though actually a maid of honour to Julia, as
+her original was a handmaid to Corinna, is of unblemished morality,
+flirted with certainly by Ovid, but really a German princess, Ismenia,
+in disguise, and beloved by, betrothed to, and in the end united with no
+less a compatriot than Arminius. This union gives also an illustration
+of the ingenious fashion in which these writers reconcile and yet omit.
+La Calprenède, as we have seen, does not give Arminius's wife her usual
+name of Thusnelda, but, to obviate a complaint from readers who have
+heard of Varus, he invents a protest on "Herman sla lerman" part against
+that general, who has trepanned him into captivity and gladiatorship,
+and makes him warn Augustus that he will be true to the Romans _unless_
+Varus is sent into his country.[201]
+
+[Sidenote: The book generally.]
+
+This episode is, in many ways, so curious and characteristic, that it
+seemed worth while to dwell on it for a little; but the account itself
+must have shown how impossible it is to repeat the process of general
+abstract. There are, I think, in the book (which took twelve years to
+publish and fills as many volumes in French, while the English
+translation is an immense folio of nearly a thousand pages in double
+column, also entitled _Hymen's Praeludia_[202]) fewer separate
+_Histoires_, though there are a good many, than in the _Cyrus_, but the
+intertwined love-plots are almost more complicated. For instance, the
+Herod-and-Mariamne tragedy is brought in with a strictly "proper" lover,
+Tiridates, whom Salome uses to provoke Herod's patience, and who has, at
+the very opening of the book, proved himself both a natural philosopher
+of no mean order by seeing a fire at sea, and "judging with much
+likelihood that it comes from a ship," and a brave fellow by rescuing
+from the billows no less a person than the above-mentioned Queen
+Candace. From her, however, he exacts immediate, and, as some moderns
+might think, excessive, payment by making her listen to his own
+_Histoire_.
+
+Not the least attractive part of _Cléopatre_ to some people will be that
+very "Phébus," or amatory conceit, which made the next ages scorn it.
+When one of the numerous "unknowns" of both sexes (in this case a girl)
+is discovered (rather prettily) lying on a river bank and playing with
+the surface of the water, "the earth which sustained this fair body
+seemed to produce new grass to receive her more agreeably"--a phrase
+which would have shocked good Bishop Vida many years before, as much as
+it would have provoked the greater scorn of Mr. Addison about as many
+after. There are many "ecphrases" or set descriptions of this kind, and
+they show a good deal of stock convention. For instance, the wind is
+always "most discreetly, most discreetly" ready, as indeed it was in
+Mlle. de Scudéry's own chaste stories, to blow up sleeves or skirts a
+little, and achieve the distraction of the beholders by what it reveals.
+But on the whole, as was hinted above, Gauthier de Costes de La
+Calprenède is the most natural creature of the heroic band.
+
+[Sidenote: _Cassandre._]
+
+His earlier _Cassandre_ is not much inferior to _Cléopatre_, and has a
+little more eccentricity about it. The author begins his Second Part by
+making the ghost of Cassandra herself (who is not the Trojan Cassandra
+at all) address a certain Calista, whom she mildly accuses of "dragging
+her from her grave two thousand years after date," adding, as a boast of
+his own in a Preface, that the very name "Cassandre" has never occurred
+in the _First_ Part--a huge cantle of the work. The fact is that it is
+an _alias_ for Statira, the daughter of Darius and wife of Alexander,
+and is kept by her during the whole of her later married life with her
+lover Oroondates, King of Scythia, who has vainly wooed her in early
+days before her union with the great Emathian conqueror. Here, again,
+the mere student of "unmixed" history may start up and say, "Why! this
+Statira, who was also called Barsine [an independent personage here] was
+murdered by Roxana after Alexander's death!" But, as was also said,
+these romancers exercise the privilege of mercy freely; and though La
+Calprenède's Roxana is naughty enough for anything (she makes, of
+course, the most shameless love to Oroondates), she is not allowed to
+kill her rival, who is made happy, after another series of endless
+adventures of her own, her lover's, and other people's. The book opens
+with a lively interest to students of the English novel; for the famous
+two cavaliers of G. P. R. James appear, though they are not actually
+riding at the moment, but have been, and, after resting, see two others
+in mortal combat. Throughout there is any amount of good fighting, as,
+for the matter of that, there is in _Cléopatre_ also; and there is less
+duplication of detail here than in some other respects, for La
+Calprenède is rather apt to repeat his characters and situations. For
+instance, the fight between Lysimachus and Thalestris (La Calprenède is
+fond of Amazons), though _not_ in the details, is of course in the idea
+a replica of that between Alcamenes and Menalippe in _Cléopatre_; and
+names recur freely. Moreover, in the less famous story, the whole
+situation of hero and heroine is exactly duplicated in respect of the
+above-mentioned Lysimachus and Parisatis, Cassandra's younger sister,
+who is made to marry Hephaestion at first, and only awarded, in the same
+fashion as her elder sister, at last to her true lover.
+
+By the way, the already-mentioned "harmonising" is in few places more
+oddly shown than by the remark that Plutarch's error in representing
+Statira as killed was due to the fact that he did not recognise her
+under her later name of Cassandra--a piece of Gascon half-naïveté,
+half-jest which Mlle. de Scudéry's Norman shrewdness[203] would hardly
+have allowed. There is also much more of the supernatural in these books
+than in hers, and the characters are much less prim. Roxana, who, of
+course, is meant to be naughty, actually sends a bracelet of her hair to
+Oroondates! which, however, that faithful lover of another instantly
+returns.
+
+[Sidenote: _Faramond._]
+
+La Calprenède's third novel, _Faramond_, is unfinished as his work, and
+the continuation seems to have more than one claimant to its authorship.
+If the "eminent hand" was one Vaumorière, who independently accomplished
+a minor "heroic" in _Le Grand Scipion_, he was not likely to infuse much
+fire into the ashes of his predecessor. As it stands in La Calprenède's
+own part, _Faramond_ is a much duller book than _Cassandre_ or
+_Cléopatre_. It must, of course, be remembered that, though patriotism
+has again and again prompted the French to attack these misty
+Merovingian times (the _Astrée_ itself deals with them in the liberal
+fashion in which it deals with everything), the result has rarely, if
+ever, been a success. Indeed I can hardly think of any one--except our
+own "Twin Brethren" in _Thierry and Theodoret_--who has made anything
+good out of French history before Charlemagne.[204] The reader,
+therefore, unless he be a very thorough and conscientious student, had
+better let _Faramond_ alone; but its elder sisters are much pleasanter
+company. Indeed the impolite thought will occur that it is much more
+like the Scudéry novels, part of which it succeeded, and may possibly
+have been the result--not by any means the only one in literature--of an
+unlucky attempt to beat a rival by copying him or her.
+
+[Sidenote: Gomberville--_La Caritée_.]
+
+If any one, seeking acquaintance with the works of Marin le Roy,
+Seigneur de Gomberville, begins at the beginning with his earliest work,
+and one of the earliest of the whole class, _La Caritée_ (not
+"Carit_ie_," as in some reference books), he may not be greatly
+appetised by the addition to the title, "contenant, sous des temps, des
+personnes, et des noms supposés, plusieurs rares et véritables histoires
+de notre temps." For this is a proclamation, as Urfé had _not_
+proclaimed it,[205] of the wearisome "key" system, which, though
+undoubtedly it has had its partisans at all times, is loathsome as well
+as wearisome to true lovers of true literature. To such persons every
+lovable heroine of romance is, more or less, suggestive of more or fewer
+women of history, other romance, or experience; every hero, more or
+less, though to a smaller extent, recognisable or realisable in the same
+way; and every event, one in which such readers have been, might have
+been, or would have liked to be engaged themselves; but they do not care
+the scrape of a match whether the author originally intended her for the
+Princess of Kennaquhair or for Polly Jones, him and it for corresponding
+realities. Nor is the sequel particularly ravishing, though it is
+dedicated to "all fair and virtuous shepherdesses, all generous and
+perfect shepherds." Perhaps it is because one is not a generous and
+perfect shepherd that one finds the "Great Pan is Dead" story less
+impressive in Gomberville's prose than in Milton's verse at no distant
+period; is not much refreshed by getting to Rome about the death of
+Germanicus, and hearing a great deal about his life; or later still by
+Egyptian _bergeries_--things in which somehow one does not see a
+concatenation accordingly; and is not consoled by having the Phoenix
+business done--oh! so differently from the fashion of Shakespeare or
+even of Darley. And when it finishes with a solemn function for the rise
+of the Nile, the least exclusively modern of readers may prefer Moore or
+Gautier.
+
+[Sidenote: _Polexandre._]
+
+But if any one, deeming not unjustly that he had drunk enough of
+_Caritée_, were to conclude that he would drink no more of any of the
+waters of Gomberville, he would make a mistake. _Cythérée_[1] I cannot
+yet myself judge of, except at second-hand; but the first part of
+_Polexandre_, if not also the continuation, _Le Jeune Alcidiane_,[206]
+may be very well spoken of. It, that is to say the first part of it, was
+translated into English by no less a person than William Browne, just at
+the close of his life; and, perhaps for this reason, the British Museum
+does not contain the French original; but those who cannot attain to
+this lose the less, because the substance of the book is the principal
+thing. This makes it one of the liveliest of the whole group, and one
+does not feel it an idle vaunt when at the end the author observes
+cheerfully of his at last united hero and heroine, "Since we have so
+long enjoyed _them_, let us have so much justice as to think it fitting
+now that _they_ should likewise enjoy each other." Yet the unresting and
+unerring spirit of criticism may observe that even here the verbosity
+which is the fault of the whole division makes its appearance. For why
+not suppress most of the words after "them," and merely add, "let them
+now enjoy each other"?
+
+The book is, in fact, rather like a modernised "number" of the _Amadis_
+series,[207], and the author has had the will and the audacity to
+exchange the stale old Greeks and Romans--not the real Greeks, who can
+never be stale, or the real Romans, who can stand a good deal of
+staling, but the conventional classics--as well as the impossible
+shadows of the Dark Ages, for Lepanto and the Western Main, Turks and
+Spaniards and Mexicans, and a Prince of Scotland. Here also we find in
+the hero something more like Almanzor than Artamène, if not than
+Artaban: and of the whole one may say vulgarly that "the pot boils."
+Now, with the usual Heroic it too often fails to attain even a gentle
+simmer.
+
+[Sidenote: Camus--_Palombe_, etc.]
+
+Jean Camus [de Pontcarré?],[208] Bishop of Belley and of Arras--friend
+of St. Francis of Sales and of Honoré d'Urfé; author of many "Christian"
+romances to counteract the bad effects of the others, of a famous
+_Esprit de Saint François de S._, and of a very great number of
+miscellaneous works,--seems to have been a rather remarkable person,
+and, with less power and more eccentricity, a sort of Fénelon of the
+first half of the century. His best known novel, _Palombe_, stands
+practically alone in its group as having had the honour of a modern
+reprint in the middle of the nineteenth century.[209] The title-giver is
+a female, not a male, human dove, and of course a married one. Camus was
+a divine of views which one does not call "liberal," because the word
+has been almost more sullied by ignoble use in this connection than in
+any other--but unconventional and independent; and he provoked great
+wrath among his brethren by reflecting on the abuses of the conventual
+system. _Palombe_ appears to be not uninteresting, but after all it is
+but one of those parasitic exercises which have rarely been great except
+in the hands of very great genius. Historically, perhaps, the much less
+famous _Evènemens Singuliers_ (2 vols., 1628) are more important, though
+they cannot be said to be very amusing. For (to the surprise, perhaps,
+of a reader who comes to the book without knowing anything about it) it
+is composed of pure Marmontel-and-Miss-Edgeworth Moral Tales about
+_L'Ami Desloyal_, _La Prudente Mère_, _L'Amour et la Mort_,
+_L'Imprécation Maternelle_, and the like. Of course, as one would expect
+from the time, and the profession of the author, the meal of the
+morality is a little above the malt of the tale; but the very titles are
+"germinal."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Hédelin d'Aubignac--_Macarise._]
+
+François Hédelin, Abbé d'Aubignac, is one of those unfortunate but
+rarely quite guiltless persons who live in literary history much more by
+the fact of their having attacked or lectured greater men than
+themselves, and by witticisms directed against them, than by their own
+actual work, which is sometimes not wholly contemptible. He concerns us
+here only as the author of a philosophical-heroic romance, rather
+agreeably entitled _Macarise ou La Reine des Iles Fortunées_, where the
+bland naïveté of the pedantry would almost disarm the present members of
+that Critical Regiment, of which the Abbé, in his turn, was not so much
+a chaplain as a most combatant officer. The very title goes on to
+neutralise its attractiveness by explaining--with that benignant
+condescension which is natural to at least some of its author's
+class--that it "contains the Moral Philosophy of the Stoics under the
+veil of several agreeable adventures in the form of a Romance"; and that
+we may not forget this, various side-notes refer to passages in an
+_Abrégé_ of that philosophy. The net is thus quite frankly set in the
+sight of the bird, and if he chooses to walk into it, he has only
+himself to blame. The opening is a fine example of that plunge into the
+middle of things which Hédelin had learnt from his classical masters to
+think proper: "Les cruels persécuteurs d'Arianax l'ayant réduit à la
+nécessité de se précipiter[210] dans les eaux de la Sennatèle avec son
+frère Dinazel...." The fact that the presupposed gentle reader knows
+nothing of the persons or the places mentioned is supposed to arouse in
+him an inextinguishable desire to find out. That he should be at once
+gratified is, of course, unthinkable. In fact his attention will soon
+be diverted from Arianax and Dinazel and the banks of the Sennatèle
+altogether by the very tragical adventures of a certain Cléarte. He,
+with a company of friends, visits the country of a tyrant, who is
+accustomed to welcome strangers and heap them with benefits, till a time
+comes (the allegory is something obvious) when he demands it all back,
+with their lives, through a cruel minister (again something "speakingly"
+named) "Thanate." The head of this company, Cléarte, on receiving the
+sentence, talks Stoicism for many pages, and when he is exhausted,
+somebody else takes up the running in such a fascinating manner that it
+"seemed as if he had only to go on talking to make the victims
+immortal!" But the atrocious Thanate cuts, at the same moment, the
+thread of the discourse and the throat of Cléarte--who is, however,
+transported to the dominions of Macarise,--and _histoires_ and
+"ecphrases" and interspersions of verse follow as usual. But the Abbé is
+nowise infirm of purpose; and the book ends with the strangest mixture
+of love-letters and not very short discourses on the various schools of
+philosophy, together with a Glossary or Onomasticon interpreting the
+proper names which have been used after the following fashion:
+"Alcarinte. _La Crainte_, du mot français par anagramme sans aucun
+changement," though how you can have an anagram without a change is not
+explained.
+
+[Sidenote: Gombauld--_Endimion._]
+
+Perhaps one may class, if, indeed, classification is necessary, with the
+religious romances of Camus and the philosophical romance of Hédelin
+d'Aubignac, the earlier allegorical ones of the poet Gombauld,
+_Endimion_ and _Amaranthe_. The latter I have not yet seen. _Endimion_
+is rather interesting; there was an early English translation of it; and
+I have always been of those who believe that Keats, somehow or other,
+was more directly acquainted with seventeenth-century literature than
+has generally been allowed.[211] The wanderings of the hero are as
+different as possible in detail; but the fact that there _are_
+wanderings at all is remarkable, and there are other coincidences with
+Keats and differences from any classical form, which it might be out of
+place to dwell on here. Endymion is waked from his Latmian sleep by the
+infernal clatter of the dwellers at the base of the mountain, who use
+all the loudest instruments they possess to dispel an eclipse of the
+moon: and is discovered by his friend Pyzandre, to whom he tells the
+vicissitudes of his love and sleep. The early revealings of herself by
+Diana are told with considerable grace, and the whole, which is not too
+long, is readable. But there are many of the _naïvetés_ and
+awkwardnesses of expression which attracted to the writers of this time
+the scorn of Boileau and others down to La Harpe. The Dedication to the
+Queen may perhaps be excused for asserting, in its first words, that as
+Endymion was put to sleep by the Moon, so he has been reawakened by the
+Sun,[212] _i.e._ her Majesty. But a Nemesis of this Phébus follows. For,
+later, it is laid down that "La Lune doit _toujours_ sa lumière au
+Soleil." From which it will follow that Diana owed her splendour to Anne
+of Austria, or was it Marie de Medicis?[213] It was fortunate for
+Gombauld that he did not live under the older dispensation. Artemis was
+not a forgiving goddess like Aphrodite.
+
+Again, when Diana has disappeared after one of her graciousnesses, her
+lover makes the following reflection--that the gods apparently can
+depart _sans être en peine de porter nécessairement les pieds l'un
+devant l'autre_--an observation proper enough in burlesque, for the idea
+of a divine goose-step or marking time, instead of the _incessus_, is
+ludicrous enough. But there is not the slightest sign of humour anywhere
+in the book. Yet, again, this is a thing one would rather not have said,
+"Diane cessant de m'être favorable, Ismène[214] _me pouvait tenir lieu
+de Déesse_." Now it is sadly true that the human race does occasionally
+entertain, and act upon, reflections of this kind: and persons like Mr.
+Thomas Moore and Gombauld's own younger contemporary, Sir John Suckling,
+have put the idea into light and lively verse. But you do not expect it
+in a serious romance.
+
+Nevertheless it may be repeated that _Endimion_ is one of the most
+readable of the two classes of books--the smaller sentimental and the
+longer heroic--between which it stands in scope and character. The
+author's practice in the "other harmony" makes the obligatory
+verse-insertions rather less clumsy than usual; and it may be permitted
+to add that the illustrations of the original edition, which are
+unusually numerous and elaborate, are also rather unusually effective.
+"Peggy's face" is too often as "wretched" as Thackeray confessed his own
+attempts were; but the compositions are not, as such, despicable--even
+in the case of the immortal and immortalising kiss-scene itself. The
+"delicious event," to quote the same author in another passage, is not
+actually coming off--but it is very near. But it was perhaps a pity that
+either Gombauld or Keats ever _waked_ Endymion.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de Villedieu.]
+
+The most recent book[215] but one about Mme. de Villedieu contains (and,
+oddly enough, confesses itself to contain) very little about her novels,
+which the plain man might have thought the only reason for writing about
+her at all. It tells (partly after Tallemant) the little that is known
+about her (adding a great deal more about other people, things, and
+places, and a vast amount of conjecture), and not only takes the very
+dubious "letters" published by herself for gospel, but attributes to
+her, on the slightest evidence, if any, the anonymous _Mémoires sur la
+Vie de Henriette Sylvie de Molière_, and, what is more, accepts them as
+autobiographic; quotes a good deal of her very valueless verse and that
+of others, and relates the whole in a most marvellous style, the
+smallest and most modest effervescences of which are things like this:
+"La religion arrose son âme d'une eau parfumée, et les fleurs noirs du
+répentir éclosent" or "Soixante ans pesaient sur son crâne ennuagé d'une
+perruque."[216] A good bibliography of the actual work, and not a little
+useful information about books and MS. relating to the period, may
+reconcile one class of readers to it, and a great deal of scandal
+another; but as far as the subject of this history goes no one will be
+much wiser when he closes the volume than he was when he opened it.
+
+The novelist-heroine's actual name was Marie Catherine Hortense des
+Jardins, and she never was really Mme. de Villedieu at all, though there
+was a real M. de Villedieu whom she loved, went through a marriage
+ceremony and lived with, left, according to some, or was left by,
+according to others. But he was already married, and this marriage was
+never dissolved. Very late in life she seems actually to have married a
+Marquis de Chaste, who died soon. But most of the time was spent in
+rather scandalous adventures, wherein Fouquet's friend Gourville, the
+minister Lyonne, and others figure. In fact she seems to have been a
+counterpart as well as a contemporary of our own Afra, though she never
+came near Mrs. Behn in poetry or perhaps in fiction. Her first novel,
+_Alcidamie_, not to be confounded with the earlier _Alcidiane_, was a
+scarcely concealed utilising of the famous scandal about Tancrède de
+Rohan (Mlle. des Jardins' mother had been a dependant on the Rohan
+family, and she herself was much befriended by that formidable and
+sombre-fated enchantress, Mme. de Montbazon). In fact, common as is the
+real or imputed "key"-interest in these romances from the _Astrée_
+onwards, none seems to have borrowed more from at least gossip than
+this. Her later performances, _Les Annales Galantes de la Grèce_ (said
+to be very rare), _Carmente_, _Les Amours des Grands Hommes_, _Les
+Désordres de l'Amour_, and some smaller pieces, all rely more or less
+on this or that kind of scandal. Collections appeared three or four
+times in the earlier eighteenth century.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Grand Alcandre Frustré._]
+
+Since M. Magne wrote (and it is fair to say that the main purpose of his
+book was frankly avowed by its appearance as a member of a series
+entitled _Femmes Galantes_), a somewhat more sober account, definitely
+devoted in part to the novels, has appeared.[217] But even this is not
+exhaustive from our point of view. The collected editions (of which that
+of 1702, in 10 vols., said to be the best, is the one I have used) must
+be consulted if one really wishes to attain a fair knowledge of what
+"this questionable Hortense" (as Mr. Carlyle would probably have called
+her) really did in literature; and no one, even of these, appears to
+contain the whole of her ascribed compositions. What used sometimes to
+be quoted as her principal work, _Le Grand Alcandre Frustré_ (the last
+word being often omitted), is, in fact, a very small book, containing a
+bit of scandal about the Grand Monarque, of the same kind as those which
+myriad anonyms of the time printed in Holland, and of which any one who
+wants them may find specimens enough in the _Bibliothèque Elzévirienne_
+edition of Bussy-Rabutin. Its chief--if not its only--attraction is an
+exceedingly quaint frontispiece--a cavalier and lady standing with
+joined hands under a chandelier, the torches of which are held by a ring
+of seven Cupids, so that the lower one hangs downwards, and the
+disengaged hand of the cavalier, which is raised, seems to be grabbing
+at him.
+
+[Sidenote: The collected love-stories.]
+
+Most of the rest, putting aside the doubtful _Henriette de Molière_
+already referred to, are collections of love-stories, which their
+titles, rather than their contents, would seem to have represented to
+the ordinary commentator as loose. There is really very little
+impropriety, except of the mildest kind, in any of them,[218] and they
+chiefly consist of the kind of quasi-historic anecdote (only better
+told) which is not uncommon in English, as, for instance, in Croxall's
+_Novelist_. They are rather well written, but for the most part consist
+of very "public" material, scarcely made "private" by any striking
+merit, and distinguished by curious liberties with history, if not with
+morals.
+
+[Sidenote: Their historic liberties.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Carmente_, etc.]
+
+For instance, in one of her _Amours Galantes_ the
+Elfrida-Ethelwold-Edgar story is told, not only with "_Edward I._ of
+England" for the deceived and revengeful king, but with a further and
+more startling intrusion of Eleanor of Guyenne! That of Inez de Castro
+is treated in a still more audacious manner. Also (with what previous
+example I know not, but Hortense was exceedingly apt to have previous
+examples) the names of the heretic to whom Dante was not merciful and of
+his beloved Margaret--names to which Charles Kingsley made the atonement
+of two of the most charming of his neglected poems--appear as "Dulcin"
+and "Marguerite," King and Queen of Lombardy, but guilty of more
+offensive lubricity than the sternest inquisitor ever charged on the
+historical Dolcino and his sect. For this King and Queen set up, in cold
+blood, two courts of divorce, in one of which each is judge, with the
+direct purpose of providing themselves with a supply of temporary wives
+and husbands. Some have maintained that no less a thing than the
+_Princesse de Clèves_ itself was suggested by something of Mme. de
+Villedieu's; but this seems to me merely the usual plagiarism-hunter's
+blunder of forgetting that the treatment, not the subject, is the _crux_
+of originality. Of her longer books, _Alcidamie_, the first, has been
+spoken of. The _Amours des Grandes Hommes_ and _Cléonice ou le Roman
+Galant_ belong to the "keyed" Heroics; while the _Journal Amoureux_,
+which runs to nearly five hundred pages, has Diane de Poitiers for its
+chief heroine. Lastly, _Carmente_ (or, as it was reprinted, _Carmante_)
+is a sort of mixed pastoral, with Theocritus himself introduced, after a
+fashion noted more than once before.
+
+[Sidenote: Her value on the whole.]
+
+Her most praised things, recently, have been the story of the loves of
+Henri IV. and Mme. de Sauve (lightly touched on, perhaps "after" her in
+both senses, by Dumas) in the _Amours Galantes_, and a doubtful story
+(also attributed to the obscure M. de Preschac of the _Cabinet des
+Fées_[219]) entitled _L'Illustre Parisienne_, over which folk have
+quarrelled as to whether it is to be labelled "realist" or not. One
+regrets, however, to have to say that--except for fresh, if not very
+strong, evidence of that "questing" character which we find all over the
+subjects of these two chapters--the interest of Mme. de Villedieu's work
+can hardly be called great. By a long chapter of accidents, the present
+writer, who had meant to read her some five-and-thirty years ago, never
+read her actually till the other day--with all good will, with no
+extravagant expectation beforehand, but with some disappointment at the
+result. She is not a bookmaker of the worst kind; she evidently had wits
+and literary velleities; and she does illustrate the blind _nisus_ of
+the time as already indicated. But beyond the bookmaking class she
+never, I think, gets. Her mere writing is by no means contemptible, and
+we may end by pointing out two little points of interest in _Carmente_.
+One is the appearance of the name "Ardélie," which our own Lady
+Winchelsea took and anglicised as her coterie title. It may occur
+elsewhere, but I do not recollect it. The other is yet a fresh
+anticipation of that bold figure of speech which has been cited before
+from Dickens--one of the characters appearing "in a very clean
+shepherd's dress _and a profound melancholy_." Mme. de Villedieu (it is
+about the only place she has held hitherto, if she has held any, in
+ordinary Histories of French Literature) has usually been regarded as
+closing the Heroic school. We may therefore most properly turn from her
+directly to the last and most cheerful division of the subjects of this
+chapter--the Fairy Tale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The fairy tale.]
+
+One of the greatest solaces of the writer of this book, and, he would
+fain hope, something of a consolation to its readers, has been the
+possibility, and indeed advisability, of abstention from certain stock
+literary controversies, or at worst of dismissing them with very brief
+mention. This solace recurs in reference to the large, vague, and hotly
+debated subject of folklore and fairy stories, their connection, and the
+origin of the latter. It is true that "the pleasure gives way to a
+savour of sorrow," to adopt a charming phrase of Mr. Dobson's, when I
+think of the amiable indignation which the absence of what I shall not
+say, and perhaps still more the presence of some things that I shall
+say, would have caused in my friend, and his friend, the late Mr. Andrew
+Lang.[220] But the irreparable is always with us. Despite the undoubted
+omnipresence of the folk-story, with its "fairy" character in the
+general sense, I have always wanted more proof than I have ever
+received, that the thing is of Western rather than of Eastern origin,
+and that our Western stories of the kind, in so far as they affected
+literature before a very recent period, are independent. But I attach no
+particular value to this opinion, and it will influence nothing that I
+say here. So with a few more half-words to the wise, as that Mme.
+d'Aulnoy had been in Spain, that the Crusades took place in the eleventh
+century, that, independently thereof, Scandinavians had been
+"Varangians" very early at Constantinople, etc. etc., let us come to the
+two great literary facts--the chorus of fairy tale-telling proper at the
+end of the century (of which the coryphaei are the lady already
+mentioned and Perrault), and the epoch-making translation of _The
+Arabian Nights_ by Galland.
+
+[Sidenote: Its _general_ characteristics--the happy ending.]
+
+In a certain sense, no doubt, the fairy tale may be said to be merely a
+variety of the age-old _fabliau_ and _nouvelle_. But it is, for literary
+purposes, a distinctly and importantly new variety--new not merely in
+subject, even in the widest possible sense of that rather disputable
+(or at least disputed) word, but in that _nescio quid_ between subject
+and treatment for which I know no better term than the somewhat vague
+one "atmosphere." It has the priceless quality of what may be called
+good childishness; it gives not merely Fancy but Imagination the freest
+play, and, till it has itself created one, it is free from any
+convention. It continued, indeed, always free from those "previous"
+conventions which are so intolerable. For it is constantly forgotten
+that a convention in its youth is often positively healthy, and a
+convention in the prime of its life a very tolerable thing. It is the
+_old_ conventions which, as Mahomet rashly acknowledged about something
+else (saving himself, however, most dexterously afterwards), cannot be
+tolerated in Paradise. Moreover, besides creating of necessity a sort of
+fresh dialect in which it had to be told, and producing a set of
+personages entirely unhackneyed, it did an immense service by
+introducing a sort of etiquette, quite different from the conventions
+above noticed,--a set of manners, as it may almost be called, which had
+the strongest and most beneficial influence--though, like all strong and
+good things, it might be perverted--on fiction generally. In this all
+sorts of nice things, as in the original prescription for what girls are
+made of, were included--variety, gaiety, colour, surprise, a complete
+contempt of the contemptible, or of that large part of it which contains
+priggishness, propriety, "prunes, and prism" generally. Moreover (and
+here I fear that the above promised abstinence from the contentious must
+be for a little time waived) it confirmed a great principle of novel and
+romance alike, that if you can you should "make a good end," as, _teste_
+Romance herself, Guinevere did, though the circumstances were
+melancholy.
+
+The termination of a fairy tale rarely is, and never should be, anything
+but happy. For this reason I have always disliked--and though some of
+the mighty have left their calm seats and endeavoured to annihilate me
+for it, I still continue to dislike--that old favourite of some part of
+the public, _The Yellow Dwarf_. That detestable creature (who does not
+even amuse me) had no business to triumph; and, what is more, I don't
+believe he did. Not being an original writer, I cannot tell the true
+history as it might be told; but I can criticise the false. I do not
+object to this version because of its violation of poetical justice--in
+which, again, I don't believe. But this is neither poetical, nor just,
+nor amusing. It is a sort of police report, and I have never much cared
+for police reports. I should like to have set Maimoune at the Yellow
+Dwarf: and then there would have been some fun.
+
+It is probably unnecessary to offer any translations here, because the
+matter is so generally known, and because the books edited by that
+regretted friend of mine above mentioned have spread it (with much other
+matter of the same kind) more widely than ever. But the points mentioned
+above, and perhaps some others, can never be put too firmly to the
+credit of the fairy tale as regards its influence on fiction, and on
+French fiction particularly. It remains to be seen, in the next chapter,
+how what a few purists may call its contamination by, but what we may
+surely be permitted to call its alliance with, "polite literature" was
+started, or practically started, through the direct agency of no
+Frenchman, but of a man who can be claimed by England in the larger and
+national sense, by Scotland and Ireland and England again in the
+narrower and more parochial--by Anthony Hamilton. His work, however,
+must be left till that next chapter, though in this we may, after the
+"blessed originals" just mentioned, take in their sometimes degenerate
+successors for nearly a hundred years after Perrault's time.
+
+[Sidenote: Perrault and Mme. d'Aulnoy.]
+
+Well, however, as the simpler and purer fairy-tales may be known to all
+but twentieth-century children (who are said not to like them), it is
+doubtful whether many people have considered them in the light in which
+we have to regard them here, so as to see in them both a link in the
+somewhat complicated chain of novel development, and also one which is
+not dead metal, but serves as a medium for introducing powerful currents
+of influence on the chain itself. We have dwelt on one point--the
+desirableness, if not necessity, of shortness in them--as specially
+valuable at the time. No doubt they need not all be as short as
+Perrault's, though even among his there are instances (not to mention
+_L'Adroite Princesse_ for the moment), such as _Peau d'Âne_, of more
+than twenty pages, as against the five of the _Chaperon Rouge_ and the
+ten of _Barbe Bleue_, _Le Chat Botté_, and _Cendrillon_. Mme. d'Aulnoy's
+run longer; but of course the longest[221] of all are mites to the
+mammoths of the Scudéry romance. A fairy story must never "drag,"
+and in its better, and indeed all its genuine, forms it never does.
+Further (it must be remembered that "Little Red Riding Hood,"
+in its unadulterated and "_un_happy ending" form, is not a fairy
+story at all, for talking animals are not peculiar to that), "fairiness,"
+the actual presence of these gracious or ungracious but always
+between-human-and-divine-creatures, is necessary,[222] and their agency
+must be necessary too. In this and other ways it is interesting to
+contrast two stories (which are neighbours to each other, with _Peau
+d'Âne_ between them, in the convenient one-volume collection of French
+Fairy Tale classics published by Gamier), Mme. d'Aulnoy's _Gracieuse et
+Percinet_ and _L'Adroite Princesse ou Les Aventures de Finette_, which
+appeared with Perrault's, but which I can hardly believe to be his. They
+are about the same length, but the one is one of the best and the other
+one of the worst examples of its author and of the general style. It may
+be worth while to analyse both very briefly. As for Perrault's better
+work, such analysis should be as unnecessary as it would be irreverent.
+
+[Sidenote: Commented examples--_Gracieuse et Percinet_.]
+
+That _Gracieuse et Percinet_ is of an essentially "stock" character is
+not in the least against it, for so it ought to be: and the "stock"
+company that plays its parts plays them well. The father is perhaps
+rather excessively foolish and unnatural, but then he almost had to be.
+The wicked and ugly stepmother tops, but does not overtop, _her_ part,
+and her punishment is not commonplace. Gracieuse herself deserves her
+name, not only "by her comely face and by her fair bodie," but by her
+good but not oppressive wits, and her amiable but not faultless
+disposition. She ought not to have looked into the box; but then we
+should not have liked her nearly as much if she had not done so. She was
+foolishly good in refusing to stay with Percinet; but we are by no means
+certain that we should like her better if she had thrown herself into
+his arms at the first or second time of asking. Besides, where would
+have been the story? As for Percinet, he escapes in a wonderful fashion,
+though partly by help of his lady's little wilfulnesses, the dangers of
+the handsome, amiable, in a small way always successful, and almost
+omnipotent hero. There is a sort of ironic tenderness, in his letting
+Gracieuse again and again go her wilful way and show her foolish
+filiality, which saves him. He is always ready, and does his spiriting
+in the politest and best manner, particularly when he shepherds all
+those amusing but rebellious little people into their box again--a feat
+which some great novelists have achieved but awkwardly in their own
+cases. There is even pathos in the apparently melancholy statement that
+the fairy palace is dead, and that Gracieuse will never see it till she
+is buried. I should like to have been Percinet, and I should
+particularly like to have married Gracieuse.
+
+Moreover, the thing is full of small additional seasonings of incident
+and phrase to the solid feast of fairy working which it provides.
+Gracieuse's "collation," with its more than twenty pots of different
+jams, has a delightful realty (which is slightly different from reality)
+even for those to whom jam has never been the very highest of human
+delights, because they prefer savouries to sweets. Even the abominable
+duchess seems to have had a splendid cellar, before she took to filling
+the casks with mere gold and jewels to catch the foolish king. It is
+impossible to imagine a scene more agreeably compounded of politeness
+and affection than Percinet's first introduction of himself to the
+Princess: and it is extraordinarily nice to find that they knew all
+about each other before, though we have had not the slightest previous
+information as to the acquaintance. I am very much afraid that he made
+his famous horse kick and plunge when Grognon was on him; but it must be
+remembered that he had been made to lead that animal against his will.
+The description of the hag's flogging Gracieuse with feathers instead of
+scourges is a quite admirable adaptation of some martyrological stories;
+and when, in her dilapidated condition, she remarks that she wishes he
+would go away, because she has always been told that she must not be
+alone with young gentlemen, one feels that the martyrdom must have been
+transferred, in no mock sense, to Percinet himself. If she borrows
+Psyche's trials, what good story is not another good story
+refreshed?[223]
+
+[Sidenote: _L'Adroite Princesse._]
+
+But if almost everything is good and well managed in _Gracieuse_, it may
+also be said that almost everything is badly managed in _Finette_.[224]
+To begin with, there is that capital error which has been noticed above,
+that it is not really a fairy tale at all. Except the magic
+_quenouilles_, which themselves are of the smallest importance in the
+story, there is nothing in it beyond the ways of an ordinary adventurous
+_nouvelle_. The touch of _grivoiserie_ by which the Princesses
+Nonchalante and Babillarde allow the weaknesses ticketed in their names
+to hand them over as a prey to the cunning and blackguard Prince
+Riche-Cautèle, under pretence of entirely unceremonised and unwitnessed
+"marriage," is in no way amusing. Finette's escapes from the same fate
+are a little better, but the whole is told (as its author seems to have
+felt) at much too great length; and the dragging in of an actual fairy
+at the end, to communicate to the heroine the exceedingly novel and
+recondite maxim that "Prudence is the mother of safety," is almost
+idiotic. If the thing has any value, it is as an example, not of a real
+fairy tale nor of a satire on fairy tales (for which it is much too much
+"out of the rules" and much too stupid), but of something which may save
+an ordinary reader, or even student, from attacking, as I fear we shall
+have to do, the _Cabinet des Fées_ at large, and discovering, by painful
+experience, how excessively silly and tedious the corruption of this
+wise and delightful kind may be.
+
+One might, of course, draw lessons from others of the original batches,
+but this may suffice for the specimen batch under immediate review.
+_Peau d'Âne_, one of the most interesting to "folklorists" and
+origin-hunters, is, of course, also in itself interesting to students of
+literature. Its combination of the old theme of the incestuous passion
+of a father for his daughter, with the special but not invariable shadow
+of excuse in the selfish vanity of the mother's dying request, is quite
+out of the usual way of these things. So is the curious series of fairy
+failures--things apparently against the whole set of the game--beginning
+with the unimaginative conception of dresses, weather-, or sky-, moon-,
+and sun-colour, rendered futile by the success of the artists, and
+ending in the somewhat banal device of making yourself ugly and running
+away, with the odd conclusion-contrast of Peau d'Âne's squalid
+appearance in public and her private splendour in the fairy garments.
+
+[Sidenote: The danger of the "moral."]
+
+Still, the lessons of correction, warning, and instruction to be drawn
+from these gracious little things, for the benefit of their younger and
+more elaborate successors, are not easily exhausted. They are, on the
+whole, very moral, and it is well that morality, rightly understood,
+should animate fiction. But they are occasionally much _too_ moral, and
+then they warn off instead of cheering on. Take, for instance, two other
+neighbours in the collection just quoted, _Le Prince Chéri_ and the
+ever-delightful _La Belle et La Bête_. Both of these are moral; but the
+latter is just moral enough, while _Chéri_, with one or two alleviations
+(of which, perhaps, more presently), is hardly anything if _not_ moral,
+and therefore disgusts, or at any rate bores. On the other hand,
+"Beauty" is as _bonne_ as she is _belle_; her only fault, that of
+overstaying her time, is the result of family affection, and her reward
+and the punishment of the wicked sisters are quite copy-book. But it is
+not for this part that we love what is perhaps the most engaging of all
+the tales. It is for Beauty's own charm, which is subtly conveyed; for
+the brisk and artistic "revolutions and discoveries"; above all, for the
+far from merely sentimental pathos of the Beast's all but death _for_
+love, and the not in the least mawkish bringing of him to life again
+_by_ love.[225]
+
+[Sidenote: Yet often redeemed.]
+
+One may perhaps also make amends to Prince Chéri for the abuse just
+bestowed on him. His story has at least one touch which is sovereign for
+a fiction-fault common in the past, and only too probable in the future,
+at whatever time one takes the "present" of the story. When he is not
+unjustly turned into a monster of the most allegorical-composite order
+of monster architecture--a monster to whom dragons and wyverns and
+chimaeras dire are as ordinary as kittens--what do they do with him?
+They put him "with the other monsters." _Ce n'est pas plus raide que
+ça._ The present writer need hardly fear to be thought an
+anti-mediaevalist, but he is very much afraid that an average mediaeval
+romancer might have thought it necessary to catalogue these other
+monsters with the aid of a Bestiary. On the other hand, there have been
+times--no matter which--when this abrupt introduction and dismissal of
+monsters as common objects (for which any respectable community will
+have proper stables or cages) would have been disallowed, or explained
+away, or apologised for, or, worst of all, charged with a sort of wink
+or sneer to let the reader know that the author knew what he was about.
+Here there is nothing of this superfluous or offensive sort. The
+appropriate and undoubting logic of the style prevails over all too
+reasonable difficulties. There are monsters, or how could Chéri be made
+into one? If there are monsters there must, or in the highest
+probability may, be other monsters. Put him with them, and make no fuss
+about it. If all novelists had had this _aplomb_, we should have been
+spared a great deal of tediousness, some positive failures, and the
+spoiling, or at least the blotting and marring, of many excellent
+situations. But to praise the good points of fairy stories, from the
+brief consummateness of _Le Chat Botté_ to the longer drawn but still
+perfectly golden matter of _La Biche au Bois_, would really be
+superfluous. One loathes leaving them; but one has to do it, so far as
+the more unsophisticated part of them is concerned. Yet the duty of the
+historian will not let him be content with these, and, to vary "The
+Brave Lord Willoughby" a little, "turning to the [_others_] a thousand
+more," he must "slay," or at least criticise.
+
+[Sidenote: The main _Cabinet des Fées_--more on Mme. d'Aulnoy.]
+
+He who ventures on the complete _Cabinet des Fées_[226] in its more than
+forty volumes, will provide himself with "cabin furniture" of nearly as
+good pastime-quality, at least to my fancy (and yet I may claim to be
+something of a Balzacian), as the slightly larger shelf-ful which
+suggested itself to the fancy of Mr. Browning and provoked (_as_ "cabin
+furniture") the indignation of Mr. Swinburne. But he had better look
+over the contents before he takes it on board, or he will find himself,
+if his travelling library is anything like as large as that of the
+patriarch Photius, in danger of duplication. For the _Cabinet_ holds,
+not merely the _Arabian Nights_ in the original translation of Galland,
+but also Hamilton: as well, of course, as much of what we may call the
+classical fairy matter proper on which we have already dwelt, and which
+is known to all decent people. Still, he will find more of Mme. d'Aulnoy
+than, unless he is already something of an expert, he already knows, and
+perhaps he will not be entirely rejoiced at the amplification. She wrote
+more or less regular heroic romances,[227] which are very inferior to
+her fairy tales; and though these are not in the _Cabinet_, she
+sometimes "mixes the kinds" rather disastrously in shorter pieces. The
+framework of _Don Gabriel Ponce de Leon_, which enshrines the sad but
+charming "Golden Sheep," and a variant of _Cendrillon_, is poor stuff;
+and _Les Chevaliers Errans_ only shows what we knew before, that the
+junction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is not the time or
+the place in which to find the loved one, if that loved one is
+mediaeval. Still, this invaluable lady does generally reck and exemplify
+her own immortal rede. "Il me semble," says Prince Marcassin to the
+fairies, "à vous entendre, qu'il ne faut pas même croire ce qu'on voit."
+And they reply, "La règle n'est pas toujours générale; _mais il est
+indubitable que l'on doit suspendre son jugement sur bien des choses, et
+penser qu'il peut entrer quelque chose de Féerie dans ce que nous paroît
+de plus certain_."
+
+[Sidenote: Warning against disappointment.]
+
+Alas! it was precisely this _quelque chose de Féerie_ which is wanting
+in the majority of the minor fairy-tale writers. That they should attain
+the wonderful simplicity, freshness, and charm of Perrault at his best
+was not to be expected; hardly that they should reach the more
+sophisticated grace of Hamilton; but it might have been hoped that some
+would come more or less near the lower, and much more unequal, but
+occasionally very successful art or luck of Mme. d'Aulnoy herself.
+Unfortunately very few of them do. It was easy enough to begin _Il
+était autrefois un roi et une reine_, to put in a Prince Charming and a
+Princess Graciosa, and good fairies and bad fairies, and magicians and
+ogres and talking beasts, and the like. It was not so easy to make all
+these things work together to produce the peculiar spell which belongs
+to the true land of Faery, and to that land alone. Still more
+unfortunately, wrong ways of attempting the object (or some other
+object) were as easy as the right ways were difficult. They cannot avoid
+muddling the fairy tale with the heroic romance: and with the
+half-historical sub-variety of this latter which Mme. de La Fayette
+introduced. The worst enchanter that ever fairies had to fight with is
+not such an enemy of theirs as History and Geography--two most
+respectable persons in their proper places, but fatal here. They will
+make King Richard of England tell fairy tales to Blondel out of the
+Austrian tower, and muddle up things about his wicked brother the Count
+of Mortagne. They will talk of Lemnos and Memphis and other _patatis_
+and _patatas_ of the classical dictionary and the _Grand Cyrus_. In a
+fashion not perhaps so instantly suicidal, but in a sufficiently
+annoying fashion, they will invent clumsy "speaking" names, or dog-Latin
+and cat-Greek ones. And, perhaps worst of all, they prostitute the
+delicate charms of the fairy tale to clumsy adulation of the reigning
+monarch, and tedious half-veiled flattery or satire of less exalted
+persons, or, if "prostitute" be too harsh a word here, attempt to force
+a marriage between these charms and the dullest moralising. In fact, it
+is scarcely extravagant to say that, in regard to too many of them--to
+some of them at least--everything that ought not to be, such as the
+things just mentioned and others, is there, and everything that ought to
+be--lightness, brightness, the sense of the impossible in which it is
+delightful to believe, the dream-feeling, the magic of gratified wish
+and realised ideal--is not.
+
+[Sidenote: Mlle. de la Force and others.]
+
+Of course, in these other and minor writers that the _Cabinet_ has to
+give, all these disappointments do not always occur, and the crop is
+mixed. Mlle. de la Force[228] was one of those _dames_ or _demoiselles
+de compagnie_ who figure so largely in the literary history of the
+French eighteenth century, and whose group is illustrated by such names
+as those of Mlle. Delaunay and Mlle. de Lespinasse. Her full name was
+Charlotte Rose de Caumont de la Force, and she was, if not an
+adventuress, a person of adventures, who also wrote many
+quasi-historical romances in the _Princesse de Clèves_ manner. Her fairy
+tales are thin, and marred by weak allegory of the "Carte de Tendre"
+kind. A "Pays des Délices," very difficult to reach, and constantly
+personated by a "Pays des Avances," promises little and performs less.
+
+The eleven (it is an exact eleven) called _Les Illustres Fées_ is
+scarcely so illustrious as the All England and the United were, in the
+memory of some of us, in another and better played kind of cricket. The
+stories are not very long; they run to a bare eighteen small pages
+apiece; but few readers are likely to wish them longer. _Blanche-Belle_
+introduces the _sylphes_--an adulteration[229] which generally produces
+the effect that Thackeray deplored when his misguided friend would have
+_purée_ mixed with _julienne_. _Le Roi Magicien_ is painfully destitute
+of personality; we want names, and pretty names, for a fairy tale. _Le
+Prince Roger_ is a descendant of Mélusine, and one does not think she
+would be proud of him. _Fortunio_ is better, and _Quiribirini_, one of
+the numerous stories which turn on remembering or failing to remember an
+odd name,[230] perhaps better still; but the rest deserve little praise,
+and the last, _L'Ile Inaccessible_, appears to be, if it is anything but
+pure dulness, a flat political allegory about England and France.
+
+The style picks up a little in the miscellany called (not without a
+touch of piquancy) _La Tyrannie des Fées Détruite_, by a Mme.
+d'_Auneuil_, whom persons of a sceptical turn might imagine to be a sort
+of factitious rival to Mme. d'Aulnoy.[231] It returns to the Greek or
+pseudo-Greek names of the heroic romance, and to its questionable device
+of _histoires_ stuck like plums in a pudding. Nor are the _Sans
+Parangon_ and the _Fée des Fées_ of the Sieur de Preschac utterly bad.
+But _Les Aventures d'Abdalla_, besides rashly incurring the danger (to
+be exemplified and commented on more fully a little later) of vying with
+the _Arabian Nights_, substitutes for the genuine local colour
+and speech the _fade_ jargon of French eighteenth-century
+"sensibility"--_autels_ and _flammes_ and all the rest of the trumpery.
+But it does worse still--it tries to be instructive, and informs us of
+the difference between male and female _dives_ and _peris_, of the
+custom of suttee, and of the fact that there are many professional
+singers and dancers among Indian girls. This is simply intolerable.[232]
+
+[Sidenote: The large proportion of Eastern Tales.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Les Voyages de Zulma._]
+
+The great prominence of the Eastern Tale, indeed, in this collection is
+likely to be one of the most striking things in it to a new-comer. He
+would know, of course, that such tales are not uncommon in contemporary
+English; he would certainly be acquainted with Addison's, Johnson's,
+Goldsmith's experiments in them, perhaps with those of Hawkesworth and
+others.[233] He could see for himself that the "accaparation" by France
+of the peerless _Arabian Nights_ themselves must have led to a still
+greater fancy for them there; and he might possibly have heard the
+tradition (which the present writer[234] never traced to its source, or
+connected with any real evidence either way) that no less a person than
+Lesage assisted Galland in his task. But though the _Nights_ themselves
+form the most considerable single group in the _Cabinet_, the united
+bulk of their congeners or imitations occupies a still larger space.
+There are the rather pale and "moon-like" but sometimes not
+uninteresting _Thousand and One Days_, and the obviously and rather
+foolishly pastiched _Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour_. There are
+Persian Tales--origin of a famous and characteristic jibe at "Namby
+Pamby" Philips--and Turkish Tales which are a fragment of one of the
+numerous versions of the _Seven Sages_ scheme. The just mentioned
+_Adventures of Abdallah_ betray their source and their nature at once;
+the hoary fables of Bidpai and Lokman are modernised to keep company
+with these "fakings," and there are more definitely literary attempts to
+follow. _Les Voyages de Zulma_, again an incomplete thing which actually
+tails off towards its failure of an end, shows some ingenuity in its
+conception, but suffers, even in the beginning, from that mixing of
+kinds which has been pointed out and reprobated. An attempt is made to
+systematise the fairy idea by representing these gracious creatures as
+offspring of Destiny and the Earth, with a cruel brother Time, and an
+offset of mischievous sisters who exactly correspond to the good
+ones--Disgracieuse to Gracieuse, and so on--and have a queen
+Laide-des-Laides, who answers to the good fairy princess,
+Belle-des-Belles. A mortal--Zulma--is, for paternal rather than personal
+merits, chosen by Destiny to enjoy the privilege of entering and
+understanding the fairy world, and Gracieuse is the fairy assigned as
+his guide. The idea is, as has been said, rather ingenious; but it is
+too systematic, and like other things in other parts of the collection,
+"loses the grace and liberty of the composition" in system. Moreover,
+the morality, as is rather the wont of these imitators when they are not
+(as a few of the partly non-cabinetted ones are) deliberately naughty,
+is much too scrupulous.[235] It is clear that Zulma is in love with
+Gracieuse, that she responds to some extent, and that Her Majesty Queen
+Belle-des-Belles is a little jealous and inclined to cut Gracieuse out.
+But nothing in the finished part of the story gives us any of the nice
+love-making that we want.
+
+[Sidenote: Fénelon.]
+
+Madame le Marchand's _Boca_ is a story which begins in Peru but finishes
+in an "Isle of Ebony," where the names of Zobeide and Abdelazis seem
+rather more at home; it is not without merit. As for the fables and
+stories which Fénelon composed for that imperfect Marcellus, the Duke of
+Burgundy, they have all the merits of style, sense, and good feeling
+which they might be expected to have, and it would be absurd to ask of
+them qualities which, in the circumstances, they could not display.
+
+The _Chinese Tales_ are about as little Chinese as may be, consisting of
+accounts of his punitive metempsychoses by the Mandarin Fum Hoam (a name
+afterwards borrowed in better known work), who seems to have been
+excluded from the knowledge of anything particularly Celestial.[236] But
+they are rather smartly told. On the other hand, _Florine ou la Belle
+Italienne_, which is included in the same volume with the sham
+_Chinoiseries_, is one of the worst instances of the confusion of kinds
+noted above. It honestly prepares one for what is coming by a reference
+in the Preface to Fénelon; but a list of _dramatis_ (or _fabulae_)
+_personae_, which follows, would have tried the saintliness even of him
+of Cambrai almost as much as a German occupation of his archiepiscopal
+see. "Agatonphisie," for a personage who represents, we are told, "Le
+Bon Sens," might break the heart of Clenardus, if not the head of
+Priscian.
+
+_The Thousand and One Quarter Hours_, or _Contes Tartares_, have as
+little of the Tartar as those above mentioned of the Chinese, but if
+somewhat verbose, they are not wholly devoid of literary quality. The
+substance is, as in nearly all these cases, _Arabian Nights_ rehashed;
+but the hashing is not seldom done _secundum artem_, and they have, with
+the _Les Sultanes de Gujerate_ and _Nouveaux Contes Orientaux_, which
+follow them, the faculty of letting themselves be read.
+
+The best of these[237] (except the French translation of the so-called
+Sir Charles Morell's (really James Ridley's) _Tales of the Genii_ (see
+above)) is perhaps, on the whole, _Les Sultanes de Gujerate_, where not
+only are some of the separate tales good, but the frame-story is far
+more artistically worked in and round and out than is usually the case.
+But taking them all together, there is one general and obvious, as well
+as another local and particular objection to them. Although the
+sub-title (_v. sup._ again) lets them in, the main one regards them
+with, at best, an oblique countenance. The differences between the
+Western fairy and the Eastern _peri_, _dive_, _djin_, or whatever one
+chooses to call her, him, or it, though not at all easy to define, are
+exceedingly easy to feel. The magicians and enchanters of the two kinds
+are nearer to each other, but still not the same. On the other hand, it
+is impossible for any one who has once felt the strange charm of the
+_Arabian Nights_ not to feel the immense inferiority of these rehashes
+and _croquettes_ and _rissoles_, and so forth, of the noble old haunch
+or sirloin. Yet again, from the special point of view of this book,
+though they cannot be simply passed over, they supply practically
+nothing which marks, or causes, or even promises an advance in the
+general development of fiction. They may be said to be simply a
+continuation of, or a relapse upon, the pure romance of adventure, with
+different dress, manners, and nomenclature. There is hardly a single
+touch of character in any one; their very morals (and no shame to them)
+are arch-known; and they do not possess style enough to confer
+distinction of the kind open to such things. If you take _Les Quatre
+Facardins_, before most of them, and _Vathek_[238] (itself, remember,
+originally French in language), after them all, the want of any kind of
+genius in their composers becomes almost disgustingly apparent. Yet even
+these masterpieces are masterpieces outside the main run of the novel.
+
+[Sidenote: Caylus.]
+
+Although, therefore, it would be very ungrateful not to acknowledge that
+they do sometimes comply with the demands of that sensible tyrant
+already mentioned, Sultan Hudgiadge, and "either amuse us or send us to
+sleep," it must be admitted to be with some relief that one turns once
+more, at about the five and twentieth volume, to something like the
+fairy tale proper, if to a somewhat artificial and sophisticated form of
+it. The Comte de Caylus was a scholar and a man of unusual brains;
+Moncrif showed his mixture of Scotch and French blood in a corresponding
+blend of quaintness and _esprit_; others, such as Voisenon in one sex
+and Voltaire's pet Mlle. de Lubert in the other, whatever they were,
+were at any rate not stupid.
+
+[Sidenote: _Prince Courtebotte et Princesse Zibeline._]
+
+To Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières de Grimoard de Pestels de Lévi,
+Comte de Caylus, one owes particular thanks, at least when one comes to
+the history of _Le Prince Courtebotte_, after wrestling with the
+_macédoine_ of orientalities just discussed. It is not, of course,
+Perrault, and it is not the best Madame D'Aulnoy. But you are never "put
+out" by it; the hero, if rather a hero of Scott in the uniform propriety
+of his conduct, or of Virgil in his success, is not like Waverley,
+partly a simpleton, nor like Aeneas, wholly a cad. One likes the
+Princess Zibeline both before she had a heart and afterwards; it can be
+very agreeable to know a nice girl in both states. Perhaps it was not
+quite cricket of the good fairy to play that trick[239] on the
+ambassador of King Brandatimor, but it was washed out in fair fight; and
+King Biby and his people of poodles are delightful. One wonders whether
+Dickens, who was better read in this kind of literature than in most,
+consciously or unconsciously borrowed from Caylus one of his not least
+known touches.[240]
+
+[Sidenote: _Rosanie._]
+
+In the next of the Caylus stories there is an Idea--the capital seems
+due because the Count was a man of Science, as science (perhaps better)
+went then, and because one or his other tales (not the best) is actually
+called _Le Palais des Idées_. The idea of _Rosanie_ is questionable,
+though the carrying of it out is all right. Two fairies are fighting for
+the (fairy) crown, and the test is who shall produce the most perfect
+specimen of the special fairy art of education of mortals. (I may, as a
+_ci-devant_ member of this craft, be permitted to regret that the
+business has been so largely taken over by persons who are neither
+fairies in one sex, though there may be some exceptions here, nor
+enchanters in the other, where exceptions are very rare indeed.) The
+tutoress of the Princess Rosanie pursues her task, and pursues it
+triumphantly, by dividing the child into twelve _interim_ personalities,
+each of whom has a special characteristic--beauty, gentleness, vivacity,
+discretion, and what not. At the close of the prescribed period they are
+reunited, and their fortunate lover, who has hitherto been distracted
+between the twelve _eidola_, is blessed with the compound Rosanie.
+Although it is well known to be the rashest of things for a man to say
+anything about women--although certainly sillier things have been said
+by men about women than about any other subject, except, of course,
+education itself--I venture to demur to the fairy method. Both _a
+priori_ and from experience, I should say that unmixed Beauty would
+become intolerably vain; that Discretion would grow into a hypocritical
+and unpleasant prude; that Vivacity would develop into Vulgarity; and
+that the reincarnation of the twelve would be one of the most
+intolerable creatures ever known, if it were not that the impossibility
+of the concentrated essences being united in one person, after
+separation in several, would save the situation by annihilating her.
+
+[Sidenote: _Prince Muguet et Princesse Zaza._]
+
+Caylus, however, makes up in the third tale, _Le Prince Muguet et la
+Princesse Zaza_, where, though the principal fairy, she of the _Hêtre_,
+is rather silly for one of the kind, Muguet is a not quite intolerable
+coxcomb, and Zaza is positively charming. Her sufferings with a wicked
+old woman are common; but her distress when the fairy makes her seem
+ugly to the Prince, who has actually fallen in love with her true
+portrait, and the scenes where the two meet under this spell, are among
+the best in the whole _Cabinet_--which is a bold word. The others,
+though naturally unequal, never or very seldom lack charm, for the
+reason that Caylus knew what one has ventured to call the secret of
+Fairyland--that it is the land of the attained Wish--and that he has the
+art of scattering rememberable and generative phrases and fancies.
+_Tourlou et Rirette_, one of the lightest of all, may not
+impossibly--indeed probably--have suggested Jean Ingelow's great
+single-speech poem of _Divided_; the Princesses Pimprenelle and
+Lumineuse are the right sort of Princesses; _Nonchalante et Papillon_,
+_Bleuette et Coquelicot_ come and take their places unpretentiously but
+certainly; Mignonette and Minutieuse are not "out." Caylus is not
+Hamilton by a long way; but he has something that Hamilton has not. He
+is still less Perrault or Madame d'Aulnoy, but he has a sufficient
+difference from either. With these predecessors he makes the select
+quartette of the fairy-tale tellers of France.
+
+After him one expects--and meets--a drop. No reasonable person would
+look for a really great fairy tale from Jean Jacques, because you must
+forget yourself to write one; and _La Reine Fantasque_, though not bad,
+is not good. Madame de Villeneuve may, for ought I know, have been an
+excellent person in other ways, but she deserves one of the worst
+bolgias in the Inferno of literature for lengthening, muddling, and
+altogether spoiling the ever-beloved "Beauty and the Beast." Mlle. de
+Lussan, they say,[241] was too fond of eating, and died of indigestion.
+A more indigestible thing than her own _Les Veillées de Thessalie_,
+which figure here (she wrote a great deal more), the present writer has
+never come across. And as for _Prince Titi_, which fills a volume and a
+half, it might have been passed without any remark at all if it had not
+become famous in connection with the Battle of Croker and Macaulay over
+the body of Boswell's _Johnson_.[242]
+
+A break takes place at the thirtieth volume of the _Cabinet_, and a
+fresh instalment, later than the first batch, follows, with more
+particulars about authors. Here we find the attributions of the very
+large series of imitative Eastern tales already noticed, and to be
+followed in this new parcel by _Soirées Bretonnes_, to Thomas Simon
+Gueulette. The thirty-first opens with the _Funestine_ of
+Beauchamps[243]--an ingenious title and heroine-name, for it avoids the
+unnatural sounds so common, is a quite possible feminine appellation,
+and though a "speaking" one, is only so to those who understand the
+learned languages, and so deserve to be spoken to. Moreover, the idea,
+though not startlingly original or a mark of genius, is good--that of an
+unlucky child who attracts the malignity of _all_ fairies, and is ugly,
+stupid, ill-natured, and everything that is detestable. Her reformation
+by the genie Clair-Obscur would not be bad if it were cut a great deal
+shorter.
+
+It is followed by a series of short tales, beginning with _The Little
+Green Frog_, and not of the first class, which in turn are succeeded by
+two (or, as the latter is in two parts, three) longer stories, sometimes
+attributed to Caylus--_Le Loup Galeux_ and _Bellinette et Belline_. The
+_Soirées Bretonnes_ themselves, though apparently the earliest, are not
+the happiest of Gueulette's _pastiches_; the speaking names[244]
+especially are irritating. A certain Madame de Lintot, who does not seem
+to have had anything to do with the hero of Pope's famous "Ride with a
+Bookseller," is what may be called "neutral," with _Timandre et
+Bleuette_ and others; nor does a fresh instalment of Moncrif's efforts
+show the historian of cats at his best. But in vol. xxxiii. Mlle. de
+Lubert, glanced at before, raises the standard. She should have cut her
+tales down; it is the mischief of these later things that they extend
+too much. But _Lionnette et Coquérico_ is good; _Le Prince Glacé et la
+Princesse Etincelante_ is not bad; and _La Princesse Camion_ attracts,
+by dint of extravagance in the literal sense. Fairy trials had gone far;
+but the necessity of either marrying a beautiful sort of mermaid or else
+of _flaying_ her, and the subsequent trial, not of flaying, but braying
+her in a mortar as a shrimp, show at least a lively fancy. Nor is the
+anonymous _Nourjahad_--an extremely moral but not dull tale, which
+follows--at all contemptible.
+
+The French Bar, inexhaustible in such things, gave another tale-teller
+in one Pajon, who, besides the obligatory _polissonneries_, not included
+in the _Cabinet_, composed not a few harmless things of some merit. The
+first, _Eritzine et Paretin_, is perhaps the best. Nor is the complement
+of vol. xxxiv., the _Bibliothèque des Fées et des Génies_ (the title of
+which was that of a larger collection, containing much the same matter
+as the _Cabinet_, and probably in Johnson's mind when he jotted down
+_Prince Titi_), quite barren. _La Princesse Minon-Minette et le Prince
+Souci_, _Apranor et Bellanire_, _Grisdelin et Charmante_, are none of
+them unreadable. The next volume, too, is better as a whole than any we
+have had for a long time. Mme. Fagnan's _Minet Bleu et Louvette_
+contains, in its fifteen pages, a good situation by no means
+ill-treated. The pair are under the same spell--that of being ugly and
+witty for part of the week, handsome, stupid, and disagreeable for the
+other part, and of having the times so arranged that each sees the other
+at his or her most repulsive to her or his actual state. The way in
+which "Love unconquered in battle" proves, though not without fairy
+assistance, victorious here also, is very ingeniously managed.
+
+One of the cleverest of all the later fairy tales is the _Acajou et
+Zirphile_ of Duclos, who, indeed, had sufficient wits to do anything
+well, and was a novelist, though not a very distinguished one, on a
+larger scale. The tale itself (which is said to have been written "up
+to" illustrations of Boucher designed for something else) has, indeed,
+a smatch of vulgarity, but a purely superfluous and easily removable
+one. It is almost as cleverly written as any thing of Voltaire's: and
+the final situation, where the hero, who has gone through all the
+mischiefs and triumphs of one of Crébillon's, recovers his only real
+love, Zirphile, in a torment and tornado of heads separated from bodies
+and hands separated from arms, is rather capital.
+
+Not much less so, in the different way of a pretty sentimentality, is
+the _Aglaé ou Naboline_ of the painter Coypel; while the batch of short
+stories from Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont's _Magasin des Enfants_ have had
+a curious fate. They are rather pooh-poohed by French editors and
+critics, and they are certainly _very_ moral, too much so, in fact, as
+has been already objected to one of them, _Le Prince Chéri_. But
+allowances have been allowed even there, and, somehow or other, _Fatal
+et Fortuné_, _Le Prince Charmant_, _Joliette_, and the rest have
+recovered more of the root of the matter than most others, and have
+established a just popularity in translation.
+
+And then comes the shortest, I think, of all the stories in the one and
+forty volumes; the silliest as a composition; the most contemptibly
+_thought_--but by the accidents of fate endowed later with a
+tragic-satiric _moralitas_ almost if not quite unrivalled in literature.
+Its author was a certain M. Selis, apparently a very respectable
+schoolmaster, professor, and bookmaker of not the lowest
+class--employments and occupations in respect of all of which not a few
+of us have earned our bread and paid our income-tax. Unluckily for him,
+there was born in his time a Dauphin, and he wrote a little adulatory
+tale of the birth, and the editors of the _Cabinet_ Appendix thanked him
+much for giving it them. It is not four pages long; it tells how an
+ancestral genie--a great king named Louis--blessed the child, and said
+that he would be called "the father of his people," and another followed
+suit with "the father of letters," and a third swore _Ventre Saint
+Gris!_ and named the baby's uncle as "Joseph," and a still greater Louis
+said other things, and a fairy named Maria Theresa crowned the
+blessings. Then came an ogre mounted on a leopard and eating raw meat,
+who was of Albion, and said he was king of the country, and observed
+"_God ham_" [_sic_], and was told that he would be beaten and made to
+lay down his arms by the child.
+
+And the Dauphin, unless this _signalement_ is strangely delusive, lived
+to know the worst ogres in the world (their chief was named Simon), who
+were of his own people, and to die the most unhappy prince or king in
+that world. And he of the Leopard who said _God ham_, would have saved
+that Dauphin if he could, and did slay many of his less guiltless
+relations and subjects, and beat the rest "thorough and thorough," and
+restored (could they have had the will and wit to profit by it) the race
+of Louis and Francis, and of the genie who said "Ventre Saint Gris!" to
+their throne. And this was the end of the vaticinations of M. Selis, and
+such are the tears of things.
+
+The rest of this volume is occupied by a baker's dozen of _Contes
+Choisis_, the first of which, _Les Trois Epreuves_, seems to imitate
+Voltaire, and is smartly written, while some of the others are not bad.
+
+Volume xxxvi. is occupied (not too appositely, though inoffensively in
+itself) by a translation of Wieland's _Don Silvia de Rosalva_, which is
+a German _Sir Launcelot Greaves_ or _Spiritual Quixote_, with fairy
+tales substituted for romances of chivalry. The author of _Oberon_ was
+seldom, if ever, unreadable, and he is not so here; but the thing is
+neither a tale proper (seeing that it fills a whole volume), nor a real
+fairy tale, nor French, so we may let it alone.
+
+Then this curious collection once more comes to an end, which is not an
+end, with a very useful though not too absolutely trustworthy volume of
+_Notices des Auteurs_, containing not only "bio-bibliographical"
+articles on the actual writers collected, but references to others,
+great and small, from Marivaux, Lesage, Prévost, and Voltaire downwards,
+and glances, sometimes with actual _comptes rendus_, at pieces of the
+class not included. That it is conducted on the somewhat irresponsible
+and indolent principles of its time might be anticipated from previous
+things, such as the clause in the Preface to Wieland's just noticed
+book, that the author had "gone to Weimar, where perhaps he is still,"
+an observation which, from the context, seems not to be so much an
+attempt at _persiflage_ as a pure piece of lazy _naïveté_. The volume,
+however, contains a great deal of information such as it is; some
+sketches, ingeniously draped or Bowdlerised, of the "naughty" tales
+excluded from the collection itself, and a few amusing stories.[245]
+
+As, however, has been said, there was to be still another joint to this
+crocodile, and the four last volumes, xxxviii. to xli. (_not_, as is
+wrongly said by some, xxxvii. to xl.), contain a somewhat rash
+continuation of the _Arabian Nights_ themselves, with which Cazotte[246]
+appears to have had a good deal to do, though an actual Arab monk of
+the name of Chavis is said to have been mainly concerned. They are not
+bad reading; but even less of fairy tales than Gueulette's
+orientalities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not much apology is needed, it may be hoped, for the space given to this
+curious kind; the bulk of its production, the length of its popularity,
+and the intrinsic merit of some few of its better examples vindicate its
+position here. But a confession should take the place of the unnecessary
+excuse already partly made. The artificial fairy tale of the more
+regular kind was not, by the law of its being, prevented almost
+unavoidably from doing service to the novel at large, as the Eastern
+story was; but, as a matter of fact, it did little except what will be
+mentioned in the next paragraph. That it helped to exemplify afresh what
+had been shown over and over again for centuries, the singular
+recreative faculty of the nation and the language, was about all. But
+another national characteristic, the as yet incurable set of the French
+mind towards types--which, if the second volume of this work ever
+appears, will, it is hoped, be shown to have spared the later
+novel--seized on these tales. They are "as like as my fingers to my
+fingers," and they are not very pretty fingers as a rule. Incidentally
+they served as frameworks to some of the worst verse in the world, nor,
+for the most part, did they even encourage very good prose. You may get
+some good out of them; but unless you like hunting, and are not vexed by
+frequent failures to "draw," the _Cabinet des Fées_ is best left to
+exploration at second-hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To collect the results of this long chapter, we may observe that in
+these three departments--Pastoral, Heroic, and Fairy--various important
+elements of _general_ novel material and construction are provided in a
+manner not yet noticed. The Pastoral may seem to be the most obsolete,
+the most of a mere curiosity. But the singular persistence and, in a
+way, universality of this apparently fossil convention has been already
+pointed out; and it is perhaps only necessary to shift the pointer to
+the fact that the novels with which one of the most modern, in perhaps
+the truest sense of that word, of modern novelists, though one of the
+eldest, Mr. Thomas Hardy, began to make his mark--_Under the Greenwood
+Tree_ and _Far from the Madding Crowd_--may be claimed by the pastoral
+with some reason. And it has another and a wider claim--that it keeps
+up, in its own way, the element of the imaginative, of the fanciful--let
+us say even of the unreal--without which romance cannot live, without
+which novel is almost repulsive, and which the increasing advances of
+realism itself were to render more than ever indispensable. As for the
+Heroic, we have already shown how much, with all its faults, it did for
+the novel generally in construction and in other ways. It has been shown
+likewise, it is hoped, how the Fairy story, besides that additional
+provision of imagination, fancy, and dream which has just been said to
+be so important--mingled with this a kind of realism which was totally
+lacking in the others, and which showed itself especially in one
+immensely important department wherein they had been so much to seek.
+Fairies may be (they are not to my mind) things that "do not happen";
+but the best of these fairies are fifty times more natural, not merely
+than the characters of Scudéry and Gomberville, but than those (I hold
+to my old blasphemy) of Racine. Animals may not talk; but the animals
+of Perrault and even of Madame d'Aulnoy talk divinely well, and, what is
+more, in a way most humanly probable and interesting. Never was there
+such a triumph of the famous impossible-probable as a good fairy story.
+Except to the mere scientist and to (of course, quite a different
+person) the unmitigated fool, these stories, at least the best of them,
+fully deserve the delightful phrase which Southey attributes to a friend
+of his. They are "necessary and voluptuous and right." They were, to the
+French eighteenth century and to French prose, almost what the ballad
+was to the English eighteenth century and to English verse; almost what
+the _Märchen_ was to the prose and verse alike of yet un-Prussianised
+Germany. They were more than twice blessed: for they were charming in
+themselves; they exercised good influence on other literary productions;
+and they served as precious antidotes to bad things that they could not
+improve, and almost as precious alternatives to things good in
+themselves but of a different kind from theirs.
+
+What, however, none of the kinds discussed in this chapter gave
+entirely, while only the fairy story gave in part, and that in strong
+contrast to another part of itself, was a history of ordinary
+life--high, low, or middle--dealing with characters more or less
+representing live and individual personages; furnished with incidents of
+a possible and probable character more or less regularly constructed;
+furnished further with effective description of the usual scenery,
+manners, and general accessories of living; and, finally, giving such
+conversation as might be thought necessary in forms suitable to "men of
+this world," in the Shakespearian phrase. In other words, none of them
+attained, or even attempted to fulfil, the full definition of the novel.
+The scattered books to be mentioned in the next chapter did not,
+perhaps, in any one case--even Madame de la Fayette's--quite achieve
+this; but in all of them, even in Sorel's, we see more or less conscious
+or unconscious attempt at it.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[124] Herr Körting (_v. sup._ p. 133) gave considerable space to
+Barclay's famous _Argenis_, which also appeared fairly early in the
+century. To treat, however, a Latin book, written by a Scotsman, with
+admittedly large if not main reference to European politics, as a
+"French novel," seems a literary solecism. I do not know whether it is
+rash to add that the _Argenis_ itself seems to me to have been wildly
+overpraised. It is at any rate one of the few books--one of the still
+fewer romances--which have defied my own powers of reading at more than
+one attempt.
+
+[125]
+
+[Sidenote: Note on marked influence of Greek Romance.]
+
+The repetition, in the seventeenth century, of something very like a
+phenomenon which we noticed in the twelfth, is certainly striking, and
+may seem at first sight rather uncanny. But those who have made some
+attempt to "find the whole" in literature, and in that attempt have at
+least found out something about the curious laws of revolution and
+recurrence which take the place of any progress in a straight line, will
+deem the thing natural enough. We declined, in the earlier case, to
+admit much, if any, direct influence of the accomplished Greek Romance
+on the Romance of the West; but we showed how classical subjects,
+whether pure or tinctured with Oriental influence, induced an immensely
+important development of this same Western Romance in two
+directions--that of manners, character, and passion, and that of marvel.
+In the later period classical influences of all sorts are again at work;
+but infinitely the larger part of that work is done by the Greek
+Romances themselves--pastoral, adventurous, and sentimental,--the dates
+of the translations of which will be given presently. And the newer
+Oriental kind--coming considerably later still and sharing its nature
+certainly, and perhaps its origin, not now with classical mythology, but
+again, in the most curious way, with Western folk stories--supplements
+and diversifies the reinforcement.
+
+[126] Scudéry writes "Urfé," and this confirms the _obiter dictum_ of
+Sainte-Beuve, that with the Christian name, the "Monsieur," or some
+other title you must use the "_de_," otherwise not. But in this
+particular instance I think most French writers give the particle.
+
+[127] I myself, in writing a _Short History of French Literature_ many
+years ago, had to apologise for incomplete knowledge; and I will not
+undertake even now to have read every romance cursorily mentioned in
+this chapter--indeed, some are not very easy to get at. But I have done
+my best to extend my knowledge, assisted by a rather minute study of the
+contemporary English heroic romance in prose and verse; and I believe I
+may say that I do now really know the _Grand Cyrus_, though even now I
+will again not say that I have read every one of its perhaps two million
+words, or even the whole of every one of its more than 12,000 pages. In
+regard to the _Astrée_ I have been less fortunately situated; but "I
+have been there and still would go."
+
+[128] The above remarks are most emphatically _not_ intended to refer to
+the work of Mr. Greg.
+
+[129] The sheep, whether as a beast of most multitude or for more
+recondite reasons, has, of course, the preference; but it may be
+permissible to say that no guardian of animals is excluded. Goat-herds
+in the Greek ran the shepherd hard; neat-herds and swine-herds abound
+everywhere except, as concerns the last, in Jewry; even the goose-girl
+figures, and has in Provençal at least a very pretty name--_auquiera_.
+
+[130] The mediaeval _pastourelle_ is no doubt to some extent
+conventional and "made in moulds." But it is by no means so unreal as
+(whether Greek was so or not) Roman pastoral pretty certainly was, and
+as modern has been beyond possibility of doubt. How good it could be,
+without any convention at all, Henryson showed once for all in our own
+language by _Robene and Makyne_.
+
+[131] _Theagenes and Chariclea_ had preceded it by thirteen years,
+though a fresh translation appeared in the same year, as did the first
+of _Hysminias and Hysmine_. Achilles Tatius (_Cleitophon and Leucippe_)
+had been partly done in 1545, but waited till 1568 for completion.
+
+[132] _Op. cit. sup._
+
+[133] They are almost always _Amours_ after their Greek prototypes,
+sometimes simple, often qualified, and these most frequently by such
+adjectives as "Infortunées et chastes," "Constantes et infortunées,"
+"Chastes et heureuses," "Pudiques," etc. etc. Not a few are taken direct
+from episodes of Ariosto or other elders; otherwise they are "loves" of
+Laoniphile, Lozie, Poliphile and Mellonimphe, Pégase (who has somehow or
+other become a nymph) and Léandre, Dachmion and Deflore (a rather
+unlucky heroine-name), etc. etc. Their authors are nearly as numerous as
+their titles; but the chief were a certain Sieur de Nervèze, whose
+numerous individual efforts were collected more than once to the number
+at least of a good baker's dozen, and a Sieur des Escuteaux, who had the
+same fortune. Sometimes the Hellenism went rather to seed in such titles
+as _Erocaligenèse_, which supposed itself to be Greek for "Naissance
+d'un bel amour." It is only (at least in England) in the very largest
+libraries, perhaps in the British Museum alone, that there is any chance
+of examining these things directly; some of them escaped even the mighty
+hunt of M. Reynier himself. What the present writer has found is treated
+shortly in the text.
+
+[134] M. Reynier (most justly, but of course after many predecessors)
+points out that the common filiation of these things on Marini and
+Gongora is chronologically impossible. We could, equally of course,
+supply older examples still in English; and persons of any reading can
+carry the thing back through sixteenth- and fifteenth-century examples
+to the Dark Ages and the late Greek classics--if no further.
+
+[135] It is fair to say that the first is "make-weighted" with a
+pastoral play entitled _Athlette_, from the heroine's rather curious
+name.
+
+[136] It _has_ two poems and some miscellanea. Something like this is
+the case with another bookmaker of the class, Du Souhait.
+
+[137] It may be childish, but the association in this group of
+ladies--three of them bearing some of the greatest historic names of
+France, and the fourth that of the admirable critic with no other
+namesake of whom I ever met--seemed to me interesting. It is perhaps
+worth adding that Isabel de Rochechouart seems to have been not merely
+dedicatee but part author of the first tale.
+
+[138] The habit is common with these authors.
+
+[139] He gives more analysis than usual, but complains of the author's
+"affectation and bad taste." I venture to think this relatively rather
+harsh, though it is positively too true of the whole group.
+
+[140] _La Vie et les Oeuvres de Honoré d'Urfé._ Par le Chanoine O. C.
+Reure, Paris, 1910.
+
+[141] The Abbé Reure, to whom I owe my own knowledge of the translation
+and dedication, says nothing more.
+
+[142] M. Reynier, in the useful book so often quoted, has shown that, as
+one would expect, this influence is not absent from the smaller French
+love-novels which preceded the _Astrée_; indeed, as we saw, it is
+obvious, though in a form of more religiosity, as early as the
+_Heptameron_. But it was not till the seventeenth century in France, or
+till a little before it in some cases with us, that "Love in fantastic
+triumph sat" between the shadowing wings of sensual and intellectual
+passion.
+
+[143] They had, indeed, neither luck nor distinction after Honoré's
+death: and the last of the family died, like others of the renegade
+nobles of France, by his own hand, to escape the guillotine which he
+himself had helped to establish.
+
+[144] The more orthodox "laws of love" which Celadon puts up in his
+"Temple of Astraea" are less amusing.
+
+[145] He constantly plays this part of referee and moraliser. But he is
+by no means exempt from the pleasing fever of the place, and some have
+been profane enough to think his mistress, Diane, more attractive than
+the divine Astrée herself.
+
+[146] Very delicate persons have been shocked by the advantages afforded
+to Celadon in his disguise as the Druid's daughter, and the consequent
+familiarity with the innocent unrecognising heroine. But _honi soit_
+will cover them.
+
+[147] There is plenty of this, including a regular siege of the capital,
+Marcilly.
+
+[148] The constant confusion, in these quasi-classical romances, of
+masculine and feminine names is a rather curious feature. But the late
+Sir W. Gilbert played some tricks of the kind in _Pygmalion and
+Galatea_, and I remember an English novelist, with more pretensions to
+scholarship than Gilbert, making the particularly unfortunate blunder of
+attributing to Longus a book called "_Doris_ and Chloe."
+
+[149] It is fair to say that Urfé has been praised for these historical
+excursions or incursions of his.
+
+[150] Its difficulty of access in the French has been noted. The English
+translation may be less rare, but it is not a good one even of its kind.
+And, in face of the most false and misleading statements, never more
+frequent than at the present moment, about the efficacy of translations,
+it may be well to insist on the truth. For science, history philosophy
+(though in a descending ratio through these three) translations may
+serve. The man who knows Greek or Latin or any other _literature_ only
+through them knows next to nothing of that literature as such, and in
+its literary quality. The version may be, as in the leading case of
+FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam, literature itself of the highest class; but
+it is quite other literature than the original, and is, in fact, a new
+original itself. It may, while keeping closer, be as good as Catullus on
+Sappho or as bad as Mr. Gladstone on Toplady in form; but the form, even
+if copied, is always again other.
+
+[151] Some reasons will be given later for taking this first--not the
+least being the juxtaposition with the _Astrée_. The actual order of the
+chief "Heroic" authors and books is as follows: Gomberville, _La
+Caritée_, 1622; _Polexandre_, 1632; _Citherée_, 1640-42. _La
+Calprenède_, _Cassandre_, 1642; _Cléopâtre_, 1648; _Faramond_, 1662.
+Mlle. de Scudéry, _Ibrahim_, 1641; _Artamène_, 1649; _Clélie_, 1656;
+_Almahide_, 1660.
+
+[152] Cousin relieved his work on "The True, the Good, and the
+Beautiful" not only with elaborate disquisitions on the ladies of the
+Fronde who, though certainly beautiful were not very very good, but with
+a long exposition of French society as revealed in the _Grand Cyrus_
+itself.
+
+[153] Scudéry bore, and evidently rejoiced in, this sounding title,
+which can never have had a titular to whom it was more appropriate. The
+place seems to have been an actual fortress, though a small one, near
+Marseilles.
+
+[154] I blushed for my namesake when I found, some time afterwards, that
+he had copied this unusual (save in German) feminisation of the sun from
+Gomberville (_v. inf._ p. 240).
+
+[155] That is classical education: in comparison with which "all others
+is cagmaggers."
+
+[156] I have wavered a little between adopting French or Greek forms of
+names. But as the authors are not consistent, and as some of their more
+fanciful compounds classicalise badly, I have finally decided to stick
+to the text in every case, except in those of historical persons where
+French forms such as "Pisistrate" would jar.
+
+[157] Like Robina in _Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy_.
+
+[158] There are ten parts, each divisible into two _volumes_ and three
+books. There is also a division at the end of the fifth "part" and the
+tenth volume, the first five (ten) having apparently been issued
+together. The "parts" are continuously paged--running never, I think, to
+less than 1000 pages and more than once to a little over 1400.
+
+[159] Drama may have done harm here, if those dramatic critics who say
+that you must never "puzzle the audience" are right. The happy
+novel-reader is of less captious mood and mould: he trusts his author
+and hopes his author will pull him through.
+
+[160] Some exception in the way of occasional flashes may be made for
+two lively maids of honour to be mentioned later, Martésie and Doralise.
+
+[161] There is an immense "throw-back" after the Sinope affair, in which
+the previous history of Artamène and the circumstances of Mandane's
+abduction are recounted up to date--I hope that some readers at least
+will not have forgotten the introduction of Lancelot to Guinevere. We
+have here the Middle Age and the _Grand Siècle_ like philippines in a
+nutshell.
+
+[162] To understand the account, it must be remembered that the combat
+takes place in a position secluded from the two armies and strictly
+forbidden to lookers-on; also that it is to be absolutely _à outrance_.
+
+[163] It is not perhaps extravagant to suggest that Sir Walter had
+something of this fight, as well as of the _Combat des Trente_, in his
+mind when he composed the famous record of the Clan Chattan and Clan
+Quhele battle.
+
+[164] Praed's delightful Medora might have found the practice of the
+_Grand Cyrus_ rather oppressive; but she would have thoroughly approved
+its principles.
+
+[165] He is King of Cappadocia now, Astyages being alive; and only
+succeeds to Media later. It must never be forgotten that the
+_Cyropaedia_, not Herodotus, is the chief authority relied upon by the
+authors, though they sometimes mix the two.
+
+[166] There is a very great physical resemblance between the two, and
+this plays an important and repeated part in the book.
+
+[167] The King of Assyria, the King of Pontus, and the later Aryante
+(_v. inf._). The fourth is the "good Rival" Mazare, who, though he also
+is at one time in possession of the prize, and though he never is weary
+of "loving unloved," is too honourable a gentleman to force his
+attentions on an unwilling mistress.
+
+[168] It is probably, however, not quite fair to leave the reader, even
+for a time, under the impression that it is _merely_ an excursion. Of
+all the huge and numerous loop-lines, backwaters, ramifications,
+reticulations, episodes, or whatever they may be called, there is hardly
+one which has not a real connection with the general plot; and the
+appearance of Thomyris here has such connection (as will be duly seen)
+in a capital and vital degree.
+
+[169] Some readers no doubt will not need to be reminded that this is
+the original title of _The Marriage of Kitty_,--literally "gangway," but
+in the sense of "makeshift" or "_locum tenens_."
+
+[170] Cf. John Heywood's Interlude of _Love_. These stories also remind
+one of the short romances noticed above.
+
+[171] No gentleman, of course, could refuse a challenge pure and simple,
+unless in very peculiar circumstances; but hardly Sir Lucius O'Trigger
+or Captain M'Turk would oblige a friend to enter into this curious kind
+of bargain.
+
+[172] Another instance of the astonishing interweaving of the book
+occurs here; for here is the first mention of Sappho and other persons
+and things to be caught up sooner or later.
+
+[173] Such knowledge as I have of the other romances of the "heroic"
+group shows them to be, with the possible exception of those of La
+Calprenède, inferior in this respect, even allowing for the influence of
+the _Cyropaedia_.
+
+[174] An extract may be worth giving in a note: "For the rest, if there
+is anybody who is not acquainted enough with all my authors [_this is a
+very delightful sweep over literature_] to know what was the Ring of
+Gyges which is spoken of in this volume, let him not imagine that it is
+Angelica's, with which I chose to adorn Artamène; and let him, on the
+contrary, know that it was Ariosto who stole this famous ring which gave
+his Paladins so much trouble; that _he_ took it from those great men
+whom I am obliged to follow" [_a sweep of George's plumed hat in the
+best Molièresque marquis style to Herodotus, Xenophon, and Cicero (who
+comes in shortly) and the others_].
+
+[175] The opening sentences of this _Histoire_ give a curious picture of
+the etiquette of these spoken narrative episodes, which, from the
+letters and memoirs of the time, we can see to have been actually
+practised in the days of _Précieuse_ society. [_The story is not of
+course delivered in the presence of Panthea herself; but she sends a
+confidante, Pherenice, to tell it._] "They were no sooner in Araminta's
+apartment than, after having made Cyrus sit down, and placed Pherenice
+on a seat opposite to them, she begged her to begin her narrative and
+not to hide from them, if it were possible, the smallest thought of
+Abradates and Panthea. Accordingly this agreeable person, having made
+them a compliment so as to ask their pardon for the scanty art she
+brought to the story she was going to tell, actually began as follows:"
+
+[176] Observe how _vague_ what follows is. A scholar and a _modiste_,
+working in happiest conjunction, might possibly "create" the dress; but
+as for the face it might be any one out of those on one hundred
+chocolate-boxes.
+
+[177] This passage gives a key to the degradation of the word "elegant."
+It has kept the connotation of "grace," but lost that of "nobility."
+
+[178] _Abstracts_ of all the principal members of this group and others
+occurred in the _Bibliothèque Universelle des Romans_, which appeared as
+a periodical at Paris in 1778. But what I do not know is whether any one
+ever arranged an elaborate tabular syllabus of the book like that of
+Burton's _Anatomy_. It would lend itself admirably to the process if any
+one had time and inclination to do the thing.
+
+[179] With the exception, already noted, of Urfé; and even he is far
+below Donne.
+
+[180] There were, though not many, actual instances of capital
+punishment for disregard of the edicts against duelling, and
+imprisonment was common. But the deterrent effect was very small.
+Montmorency-Bouteville was the best-known victim.
+
+[181] It is amusing, as one reads this, to remember Hume's essay in
+which he lays stress on the _contrast_ between Greek and French ideas in
+this very matter of the duel.
+
+[182] A curious and rather doubtful position; well worth the
+consideration of anybody who wishes to write the much-wanted _History
+and Philosophy of Duelling_.
+
+[183] The author uses "Prince," as indeed one might expect, rather in
+the Continental than in the English way, and the persons who bear it are
+not always sons of kings or members of reigning families. The two most
+agreeable _quiproquos_ arising from this difference are probably the
+fictitious unwillingness of the excellent Miss Higgs to descend from
+"Princesse de Montcontour" to "Duchesse d'Ivry," and the, it is said,
+historical contempt of a comparatively recent Papal dignitary for an
+English Roman Catholic document which had no Princes among the
+signatories.
+
+[184] Nobody, unless I forget, has the wisdom to put the
+counter-question, "Can you ever cease loving if you have once really
+loved?" which is to be carefully distinguished from a third, "Can you
+love more than once?" But there are more approaches to these _arcana_ in
+the _Astrée_ than in Mlle. de Scudéry.
+
+[185] A very nice phrase.
+
+[186] He had refused to cross swords with her, and had lowered his own
+in salute.
+
+[187] Compare the not quite so ingenious adjustment of the intended
+burning of Croesus.
+
+[188] _Clélie_ is about as bad in this respect, _v. inf._: the others
+less so.
+
+[189] I have said that you _can_ do this with the _Astrée_, and that
+this makes for superiority in it: but there also I think absolutely
+continuous reading of the whole would become "collar-work."
+
+[190] That is to say, several weeks occupied in the manner above
+indicated. You may sometimes read two of the volumes in a day, but much
+oftener you will find one enough; in the actual process for the present
+history some intervals must be allowed for digestion and _précis_; and,
+as above remarked, if other forms of "cheerfulness," in Dr. Johnson's
+friend Mr. Edwards's phrase, do not "break in" of themselves, you must
+make them, to keep any freshness in the task. I fancy the twenty volumes
+were, if not "my _sole_ occupation" (like that more cheerful and
+charitable one of the head-waiter at Limmer's), my main one for nearly
+twice twenty days.
+
+[191] In this respect the remarks above extend backwards to the
+_Astrée_, and even to some of the smaller and earlier novels mentioned
+in connection with it. But the "Heroics," especially Mlle. de Scudéry,
+_modernise_ the treatment not inconsiderably.
+
+[192] Achilles Tatius and the author of _Hysminias and Hysmine_ come
+nearest. But the first is too ancient and the last too modern.
+
+[193] We have indeed endeavoured to discover a "form" of the greatest
+and best kind in the Arthurian, but it has been acknowledged that it may
+not have been deliberately reached--or approached--by even a single
+artist, and that, if it was, the identity of that artist is not quite
+certain.
+
+[194] The intolerance of anything but scraps is one of the numerous arms
+and legs of the twentieth century Baal. There are some who have not
+bowed down to it.
+
+[195] For Soliman is not indisposed to fall in love with his illustrious
+Bassa's beloved.
+
+[196] At the close of _Old Mortality_.
+
+[197] One is lost if one begins quoting from these books. But there is
+another passage at the end of the same volume worth glancing at for its
+oddity. It is an elaborate chronological "checking" of the age of the
+different characters; and, odd as it is, one cannot help remembering
+that not a few authors from Walter Map (or whoever it was) to Thackeray
+might have been none the worse for similar calculations.
+
+[198] It is not, I hope, frivolous or pusillanimous, but merely honest,
+to add that, as I have spent much less time on _Clélie_ than on the
+other book, it has had less opportunity of boring me.
+
+[199] Cf. the _Astrée_ as noted above.
+
+[200] He also wrote several plays.
+
+[201] This would supply the ghost of Varus with a crushing answer to
+"Give me back my legions!" in such form as "Why did you send me with
+them?"
+
+[202] At another time there might have been a little gentle satire in
+this, but hardly then.
+
+[203] It would seem, however, that the Scudérys were not originally
+Norman.
+
+[204] Chateaubriand hardly counts in strictness.
+
+[205] Although some say that almost every one of the numerous _personae_
+of the _Astrée_ had a live original.
+
+[206] These books, having been constantly referred to in this fashion,
+offer a good many traps, into some of which I have fallen in the past,
+and may have done so even now. For instance, Körting rightly points out
+that almost every one calls this "_La_ Jeune Alcidiane," whereas A. is
+the hero, who bears his mother's name.
+
+[207] I had made this remark before I knew that Körting had anticipated
+it.
+
+[208] The more recent books which refer to him, and (I think) the
+British Museum Catalogue, drop this addition. But he was admittedly of
+the Pontcarré family.
+
+[209] Neither the original, however, nor this revision seems to have
+enjoyed the further honour of a place in the British Museum. Other books
+of his which at least sound novelish were _Darie_, _Aristandre_,
+_Diotrèphe_, _Cléoreste_ (of which as well as of _Palombe_ analyses may
+be found in Körting). The last would seem to be the most interesting.
+But in the bibliography of the Bishop's writings there are at least a
+dozen more titles of the same kind.
+
+[210] Cf. the "self-precipitation" of Céladon. Perhaps no class of
+writers has ever practised "imitation," in the wrong sense, more than
+these "heroic" romancers.
+
+[211] I am glad to find the high authority of my friend Sir Sidney
+Colvin on my side here as to the wider position--though he tells me that
+he was not, when he read _Endimion_, conscious of any positive
+indebtedness on Keats' part.
+
+[212] _V. sup._ p. 177, note 3.
+
+[213] Gombauld seems to have been a devotee of both Queens: and
+commentators will have it that this whole book is courtship as well as
+courtiership in disguise.
+
+[214] A kind of intermediary nymph--an enchantress indeed--who has
+assisted and advised him in his quests for the goddess.
+
+[215] Émile Magne, _Mme. de V._, Paris, 1907.
+
+[216] This sometimes causes positive obscurity as to fact. Thus it is
+impossible to make out from M. Magne whether Hortense, in her last days,
+actually married the cousin with whom she had been intimate in youth, or
+merely lived with him.
+
+[217] By M. H. E. Chatenet, Paris, 1911.
+
+[218] There is a little in the verse, most of which belongs to the
+"flying" kind so common in the century.
+
+[219] _V. inf._ upon it.
+
+[220] His own admirable introduction to Perrault in the Clarendon Press
+series will, as far as our subject is directly concerned, supply
+whatever a reader, within reason further curious, can want: and his
+well-known rainbow series of Fairy Books will give infinite
+illustration.
+
+[221] The longest of all, in the useful collection referred to in the
+text, are the _Oiseau Bleu_ and the charming _Biche au Bois_, each of
+which runs to nearly sixty pages. But both, though very agreeable, are
+distinctly "sophisticated," and for that very reason useful as gangways,
+as it were, from the simpler fairy tale to the complete novel.
+
+[222] Enchanters, ogres, etc. "count" as fairies.
+
+[223] Apuleius, who has a good deal of the "fairy" element in him, was
+naturally drawn upon in this group. The _Psyche_ indebtedness reappears,
+with frank acknowledgment, in _Serpentin Vert_.
+
+[224] If Perrault really wrote this, the Muses, rewarding him elsewhere
+for the good things he said in "The Quarrel," must have punished him
+here for the silly ones. It has, in fact, most of the faults which
+_neo_-classicism attributed to its opposite.
+
+[225] For a spoiling of this delightful story _v. inf._ on the
+_Cabinet_.
+
+[226] Its full title, "ou Collection Choisie des C. des F. _et autres
+Contes Merveilleux_," should in justice be remembered, when one feels
+inclined to grumble at some of the contents.
+
+[227] This indeed was the case, in one or other kind of longer fiction
+writing, with most of the authors to be mentioned. The total of this in
+the French eighteenth century was enormous.
+
+[228] She is even preceded by a Mme. de Murat, a friend of Mme. de
+Parabère, but a respectable fairy-tale writer. It does not seem
+necessary, according to the plan of this book, to give many particulars
+about these writers; for it is their writings, not themselves, that our
+subject regards. The curious may be referred to Walckenaer on the Fairy
+Tale in general, and Honoré Bonhomme on the _Cabinet_ in particular, as
+well as (_v. inf._) to the thirty-seventh volume of the collection
+itself.
+
+[229] There is sometimes alliance and sometimes jealousy on this
+subject. In one tale the "Comte de Gabalis" is solemnly "had up," tried,
+and condemned as an impostor.
+
+[230] _Ricdin-Ricdon_, one of those which pass between Coeur de Lion and
+Blondel, is of the same kind, is also good, and is longer.
+
+[231] She seems, however (see vol. 37 as above), to have been a real
+person.
+
+[232] The would-be anonymous compiler (he was really Gueulette, on whom
+_v. inf._) of this and the other collections now to be noticed, when
+acknowledging his sufficiently evident _supercherie_ and some of his
+indebtednesses (_e.g._ to Straparola), defends this on Edgeworthian
+principles. But though it is quite true that a healthy curiosity as to
+such things may be aroused by tales, it should be left to satisfy
+itself, not forestalled and spoilt and stunted by immediate information.
+
+[233] The once very popular _Tales of the Genii_ (_v. inf._) which are
+often referred to by Scott and other men of his generation, seem to have
+dropped out of notice comparatively. We shall meet them here in French.
+
+[234] The late Mr. Henley was at one time much interested in this point,
+and consulted me about it. But I could tell him nothing; and I do not
+know whether he ever satisfied himself on the subject. Lesage _is_ said
+(though I am not sure that the evidence goes beyond _on dit_) to have
+revised the work of Pétis de La Croix in the _Days_; and some of his own
+certainly corresponds to it.
+
+[235] Or, as it was once put, with easy epigram, when the artificial
+fairy tale is not dreadfully improper it is apt to be dreadfully proper.
+
+[236] Nothing suits the entire group better than the reply of the
+ferocious and sleepless but not unintelligent Sultan Hudgiadge, in the
+_Nouveaux Contes Orientaux_, when his little benefactress Moradbak says
+that she will have the honour to-morrow of telling him a _histoire
+Mongole_. "Le pays n'y fait rien," says he. And it doesn't.
+
+[237] All of them, be it remembered, the work of Gueulette (_v. inf._).
+
+[238] The recently recovered "episodes" of this are rather more like the
+_Cabinet_ stories than _Vathek_ itself; and perhaps a sense of this may
+have been part of the reason why Beckford never published them.
+
+[239] He came to ask, or rather demand, Zibeline's hand for his master:
+and the fairy made his magnificence appear rags and rubbish.
+
+[240] Mr. Toots's "I'm a-a-fraid you must have got very wet." When
+Courtebotte returns from his expedition, across six months of snow, to
+the Ice Mountain on the top of which rests Zibeline's heart, "many
+thousand persons" ask him, "_Vous avez donc eu bien froid?_"
+
+[241] She is also said to have been a "love-child" of no less a father
+than Prince Eugene.
+
+[242] Anybody who is curious as to this should look up the matter, as
+may be done most conveniently in an _excursus_ of Napier's edition,
+where my "friend of" [more than] "forty years," the late Mr. Mowbray
+Morris, in a note to his own admirable one-volume "Globe" issue, thought
+that Macaulay was "proved to be absolutely right." Morris, though his
+published and signed writings were few, and though he pushed to its very
+furthest the hatred of personal advertisement natural to most English
+"_gentlemen_ of the press," was a man of the world and of letters in
+most unusual combination; of a true Augustan taste both in criticism and
+in composition; of wit and of _savoir vivre_ such as few possess. But,
+like all men who are good for anything, he had some crazes: and one of
+them was Macaulay. I own that I do not think all the honours were on T.
+B. M.'s side in this mellay: but this is not the place to reason out the
+matter. What is quite certain is that in this long-winded and mostly
+trivial performance there is a great deal of intended, or at least
+suggested, political satire. But Johnson, though he might well think
+little of _Titi_, need not have despised the whole _Cabinet_ (or as he
+calls it, perhaps using the real title of another issue,
+_Bibliothèque_), and would not on another occasion. Indeed the
+diary-notes in which the thing occurs are too much in shorthand to be
+trustworthy texts.
+
+[243] Pierre François Godard de Beauchamps seems to have been another
+fair example of the half-scholarly bookmakers of the eighteenth century.
+He wrote a few light plays and some serious _Recherches sur les Théâtres
+de France_ which are said to have merit. He translated the late and
+coxcombical but not uninteresting Greek prose romance of _Hysminias and
+Hysmine_, as well as that painful verse-novel, the _Rhodanthe and
+Dosicles_ of Theodoras Prodromus: and he composed, under a pseudonym, of
+course, a naughty _Histoire du Prince Apprius_ to match his good
+_Funestine_. The contrasted ways and works of such bookmakers at various
+times would make a not uninteresting essay of the Hayward type.
+
+[244] "Engageant," "Adresse," "Parlepeu," etc. The _Avertissement de
+l'Auteur_ is possibly a joke, but more probably an awkward and miss-fire
+_supercherie_ revealing the usual ignorance of the time as to matters
+mediaeval. "Alienore" (though it would be better without the final _e_)
+is a pretty as well as historic form of one of the most beautiful and
+protean of girl's names: but how did her father, a "seigneur _anglais_,"
+come to be called "Rivalon Murmasson"? And did they know much about
+Arabia Felix in Brittany when "Daniel Dremruz" reigned there between
+A.D. 680 and 720? Gueulette himself was a barrister and
+Procureur-Substitut at the Châtelet. He seems to have imitated Hamilton,
+to whom the editors of the Cabinet rather idly think him "equal,"
+though, inconsistently, they admit that Hamilton "stands alone" and
+Gueulette does not. On the other hand, they charge Voltaire with
+actually "tracing" over Gueulette. ("_Zadig_ est calqué sur les _Soirées
+Bretonnes_.") This is again an exaggeration; but Gueulette had,
+undoubtedly, a pleasant and exceedingly fertile fancy, and a good knack
+of narrative.
+
+[245] The best perhaps is of a certain peppery Breton, Saint-Foix, who
+was successively a mousquetaire, a lieutenant of cavalry, aide-de-camp
+to "Broglie the War-god," and a long-lived _littérateur_ in Paris. M. de
+Saint-Foix picked a quarrel in the _foyer_ of the opera with an unknown
+country gentleman, as it seemed, and "gave him a rendezvous." But the
+other party replied coolly that it "was his custom" to be called on if
+people had business with him, and gave his address. Saint-Foix goes next
+morning, and is received with the utmost politeness and asked to
+breakfast. "That's not the question," says the indignant Breton. "Let us
+go out." "I never go out without breakfasting; _it is my custom_," says
+the provincial, and does as he says, politely repeating invitations from
+time to time to his fretting adversary. At last they do go out, to
+Saint-Foix's great relief; but they pass a _café_, and it is once more
+the stranger's sacred custom to play a game of chess or draughts after
+breakfast. The same thing happens with a "turn" in the Tuileries, at
+which Saint-Foix does not fume quite so much, because it is on the way
+to the Champs Élysées, where fighting is possible. The "turn" achieved,
+he himself proposes to adjourn there. "What for?" says the stranger
+innocently. "What _for_? A pretty question _pardieu_! To fight, of
+course! Have you forgotten it?" "_Fight!_ Why, sir, what are you
+thinking of? What would people say of me? A magistrate, a treasurer of
+France, put sword in hand? They would take us for a couple of fools."
+Which argument being unanswerable, according to the etiquette of the
+time, Saint-Foix leaves the dignitary--who himself takes good care to
+tell the story. It must be remembered--first that no actual _challenge_
+had passed, merely an ambiguous demand for addresses; secondly, that the
+treasurer, as the superior by far in rank, had a right to suppose
+himself known to his inferiors; and thirdly, that to challenge a
+"magistrate" was in France equivalent to being, in the words of a
+lampoon quoted by Macaulay, "'Gainst ladies and bishops excessively
+valiant" in England.
+
+[246] Although there is a good deal of merit in some of these tales,
+none of them approaches the charming _Diable Amoureux_ which Cazotte
+produced in 1772, twenty years before his famous and tragical death
+after once escaping the Revolutionary fangs. This little story, which is
+at least as much of a fairy tale as many things "cabinetted," would be
+nearly perfect if Cazotte had not unluckily botched it with a double
+ending, neither of the actual closes being quite satisfactory. If, in
+one of them, he had had the pluck to stop at the outcry of the succubus
+Biondetta when she has at last attained her object,
+
+    "Je suis le diable! mon cher Alvare, je suis le diable!"
+
+and let the rest be "wrop in mystery," it would probably have been the
+best way. But the bulk of the book is beyond improvement: and there is a
+fluid grace about the autobiographical _récit_ which is very rare
+indeed, at least in French, except in the unfortunate Gérard de Nerval,
+who was akin to Cazotte in many ways, and actually edited him. A very
+carping critic may object to the not obvious nor afterwards explained
+interposition of a pretty little spaniel between the original diabolic
+avatar of the hideous camel's head and the subsequent incarnation of the
+beautiful Biondetto-Biondetta; especially as the later employment of
+another dog, to prevent Alvare's succumbing to temptation earlier than
+he did, is confusing. But this would be "seeking a knot in a reed."
+Perhaps the greatest merit of the story, next to the pure tale-telling
+charm above noted, is the singular taste and skill with which Biondetta,
+except for her repugnance to the marriage ceremony, is prevented from
+showing the slightest diabolic character during her long cohabitation
+with Alvare, and her very "comingnesses" are arranged so as to give the
+idea, not in the least of a temptress, but of an extra-innocent but
+quite natural _ingénue_. Monk Lewis, of course, knew Cazotte, but he has
+coarsened his original woefully. It may perhaps be added that the first
+illustrations, reproduced in Gérard's edition as curiosities, are such
+in the highest degree. They are ushered with an ironic Preface: and they
+sometimes make one rub one's eyes and wonder whether Futurism and Cubism
+are not, like so many other things, merely recooked cabbage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--II
+
+_From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Clèves"_--_Anthony Hamilton_[247]
+
+
+[Sidenote: The material of the chapter.]
+
+Justice has, it is hoped, been done to the great classes of fictitious
+work which, during the seventeenth century, made fiction, as such,
+popular with high and of low in France. But it is one of the not very
+numerous safe generalisations or inductions which may be fished out from
+the wide and treacherous Syrtes of the history of literature, that it is
+not as a rule from "classes" that the best work comes; and that, when it
+does so come, it generally represents a sort of outside and uncovenanted
+element or constituent of the class. We have, unfortunately, lost the
+Greek epic, as a class; but we know enough about it, with its few
+specimens, such as Apollonius Rhodius earlier and Nonnus later, to warn
+us that, if we had more, we should find Homer not merely better, but
+different, and this though probably every practitioner was at least
+trying to imitate or surpass Homer. Dante stands in no class at all, nor
+does Milton, nor does Shelley; and though Shakespeare indulgently
+permits himself to be classed as an "Elizabethan dramatist," what
+strikes true critics most is again hardly more his "betterness" than
+his difference. The very astonishment with which we sometimes say of
+Webster, Dekker, Middleton, that they come near Shakespeare, is not due,
+as foolish people say, to any only less foolish idolatry, but to a true
+critical surprise at the approximation of things usually so very
+distinct.
+
+The examples in higher forms of literature just chosen for comparison do
+not, of course, show any wish in the chooser to even any French
+seventeenth-century novelist with Homer or Shakespeare, with Dante or
+Milton or Shelley. But the work noticed in the last chapter certainly
+includes nothing of strong idiosyncrasy. In other books scattered, in
+point of time of production, over great part of the period, such
+idiosyncrasy is to be found, though in very various measure. Now,
+idiosyncrasy is, if not the only difference or property, the inseparable
+accident of all great literature, and it may exist where literature is
+not exactly great. Moreover, like other abysses, it calls to, and calls
+into existence, yet more abysses of its own kind or not-kind; while
+school- and class-work, however good, can never produce anything but
+more class- and school-work, except by exciting the always dubious and
+sometimes very dangerous desire "to be different." The instances of this
+idiosyncrasy with which we shall now deal are the _Francion_ of Charles
+Sorel; the _Roman Comique_ of Paul Scarron; the _Roman Bourgeois_ of
+Antoine Furetière; the _Voyages_, as they are commonly called (though
+the proper title is different[248]), _à la Lune et au Soleil_, of Cyrano
+de Bergerac, and the _Princesse de Clèves_ of Mme. de La Fayette; while
+last of all will come the remarkable figure of Anthony Hamilton, less
+"single-speech"[249] than the others and than his namesake later, but
+possessor of greater genius than any.
+
+[Sidenote: Sorel and _Francion_.]
+
+The present writer has long ago been found fault with for paying too
+much attention to _Francion_, and he may possibly (if any one thinks it
+worth while) be found fault with again for placing it here. But he does
+so from no mere childish desire to persist in some rebuked naughtiness,
+but from a sincere belief in the possession by the book of some
+historical importance. Any one who, on Arnoldian principles, declines to
+take the historic estimate into account at all, is, on those principles,
+justified in neglecting it altogether; whether, on the other hand, such
+neglect does not justify a suspicion of the soundness of the principles
+themselves, is another question. Charles Sorel, historiographer of
+France, was a very voluminous and usually a very dull writer. His
+voluminousness, though beside the enormous compositions of the last
+chapter it is but a small thing, is not absent from _Francion_, nor is
+his dulness. Probably few people have read the book through, and I am
+not going to recommend anybody to do so. But the author does to some
+extent deserve the cruel praise of being "dull in a new way" (or at
+least of being evidently in quest of a new way to be dull in), as
+Johnson wrongfully said of Gray. His book is not a direct imitation of
+any one thing, though an attempt to adapt the Spanish picaresque style
+to French realities and fantasies is obvious enough, as it is likewise
+in Scarron and others. But this is mixed with all sorts of other
+adumbrations, if not wholly original, yet showing that quest of
+originality which has been commended. It is an almost impossible book to
+analyse, either in short or long measure. The hero wanders about France,
+and has all sorts of adventures, the recounting of which is not without
+touches of Rabelais, of the _Moyen de Parvenir_, perhaps of the rising
+fancies about the occult, which generated Rosicrucianism and "astral
+spirits" and the rest of it--a whole farrago, in short, of matters
+decent and indecent, congruous seldom and incongruous often. It is not
+like Sterne, because it is dull, and at the same time quasi-romantic;
+while "sensibility" had not come in, though we shall see it do so within
+the limits of this chapter. It has a resemblance, though not very much
+of one, to the rather later work of Cyrano. But it is most like two
+English novels of far higher merit which were not to appear for a
+century or a century and a half--Amory's _John Buncle_ and Graves's
+_Spiritual Quixote_. As it is well to mention things together without
+the danger of misleading those who run as they read, and mind the
+running rather than the reading, let me observe that the liveliest part
+of _Francion_ is duller than the dullest of _Buncle_, and duller still
+than the least lively thing in Graves. The points of resemblance are in
+pillar-to-postness, in the endeavour (here almost entirely a failure,
+but still an endeavour) to combine fancy with realism, and above all in
+freedom from following the rules of any "school." Realism in the good
+sense and originality were the two things that the novel had to achieve.
+Sorel missed the first and only achieved a sort of "distanced" position
+in the second. But he tried--or groped--for both.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_.]
+
+I am bound to say that in Sorel's other chief works of fiction, the
+_Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_, I find the same curious mixture of
+qualities which have made me more lenient than most critics to
+_Francion_. And I do not think it unfair to add that they also incline
+me still more to think that there was perhaps a little of the _Pereant
+qui ante nos_ feeling in Furetière's attack (_v. inf._ p. 288). Neither
+could possibly be called by any sane judge a good book, and both display
+the uncritical character,[250] the "pillar-to-postness," the
+marine-store and almost rubbish-heap promiscuity, of the more famous
+book. Like it, they are much too big.[251] But the _Berger Extravagant_,
+in applying (very early) the _Don Quixote_ method, as far as Sorel could
+manage it, to the _Astrée_, is sometimes amusing and by no means always
+unjust. _Polyandre_ is, in part, by no means unlike an awkward first
+draft of a _Roman Bourgeois_. The scene in the former, where Lysis--the
+Extravagant Shepherd and the Don Quixote of the piece,--making an
+all-night sitting over a poem in honour of his mistress Charité (the
+Dulcinea), disturbs the unfortunate Clarimond--a sort of "bachelor," the
+sensible man of the book, and a would-be reformer of Lysis--by constant
+demands for a rhyme[252] or an epithet, is not bad. The victim revenges
+himself by giving the most ludicrous words he can think of, which Lysis
+duly works in, and at last allows Clarimond to go to sleep. But he is
+quickly waked by the poet running about and shouting, "I've got it! I've
+found it. The finest _reprise_ [= refrain] ever made!" And in
+_Polyandre_ there is a sentence (not the only one by many) which not
+only gives a _point de repère_ of an interesting kind in itself, but
+marks the beginning of the "_farrago libelli_ moderni": "Ils ont des
+mets qu'ils nomment des _bisques_; je doute si c'est potage ou
+fricassée."
+
+Here we have (1) Evidence that Sorel was a man of observation, and took
+an interest in really interesting things.
+
+(2) A date for the appearance, or the coming into fashion, of an
+important dish.
+
+(3) An instance of the furnishing of fiction with something more than
+conventional adventure on the one hand, and conventional harangues or
+descriptions on the other.
+
+(4) An interesting literary parallel; for here is the libelled
+"Charroselles" (_v. inf._ p. 288) two centuries beforehand, feeling a
+doubt, exactly similar to Thackeray's, as to whether a _bouillabaisse_
+should be called soup or broth, brew or stew. Those who understand the
+art and pastime of "book-fishing" will not go away with empty baskets
+from either of these neglected ponds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Scarron and the _Roman Comique_.]
+
+Almost as different a person as can possibly be conceived from Sorel was
+Paul Scarron, Abbé, "Invalid to the Queen," husband of the future Mme.
+de Maintenon, author of burlesques which did him no particular honour,
+of plays which, if not bad, were never first rate, of witticisms
+innumerable, most of which have perished, and of other things, besides
+being a hero of some facts and more legends; but author also of one book
+in our own subject of much intrinsic and more historical interest, and
+original also of passages in later books more interesting still to all
+good wits. Not a lucky man in life (except for the possession of a
+lively wit and an imperturbable temper), he was never rich, and he
+suffered long and terribly from disease--one of the main subjects of his
+legend, but, after all discussions and carpings, looking most like
+rheumatoid arthritis, one of the most painful and incurable of ailments.
+But Scarron was, and has been since, by no means unlucky in literature.
+He had, though of course not an unvaried, a great popularity in a
+troubled and unscrupulous time: and long after his death two of the
+foremost novelists of his country selected him for honourable treatment
+of curiously different kinds. Somehow or other the introduction of men
+of letters of old time into modern books has not been usually very
+fortunate, except in the hands of Thackeray and a very few more. Among
+these latter instances may certainly be ranked the pleasant picture of
+Scarron's house, and of the attention paid to him by the as yet
+unmarried Françoise d'Aubigné, in Dumas's _Vingt Ans Après_. Nor is it
+easy to think of any literary following that, while no doubt bettering,
+abstains so completely from robbing, insulting, or obscuring its model
+as does Gautier's _Capitaine Fracasse_.
+
+It is, however, with this pleasant book itself that we are concerned.
+Here again, of course, the picaresque model comes in, and there is a
+good deal of directly borrowed matter. But a much greater talent, and
+especially a much more acute and critical wit than Sorel's, brings to
+that scheme the practical-artistic French gift, the application of which
+to the novel is, in fact, the subject of this whole chapter. Not
+unkindly judges have, it is true, pronounced it not very amusing; and an
+uncritical comparer may find it injured by Gautier's book. The older
+novel has, indeed, nothing of the magnificent style of the overture of
+this latter. _Le Château de la Misère_ is one of the finest things of
+the kind in French; for exciting incident there is no better duel in
+literature than that of Sigognac and Lampourde; and the delicate
+pastel-like costumes and manners and love-making of Gautier's longest
+and most ambitious romance are not to be expected in the rough
+"rhyparography"[253] of the seventeenth century. But in itself the
+_Roman Comique_ is no small performance, and historically it is almost
+great. We have in it, indeed, got entirely out of the pure romance; but
+we have also got out of the _fatrasie_--the mingle-mangle of story,
+jargon, nonsense, and what not,--out of the mere tale of adventure, out
+of the mere tale of _grivoiserie_. We have borrowed the comic
+dramatist's mirror--the "Muses' Looking-glass"--and are holding it up to
+nature without the intervention of the conventionalities of the stage.
+The company to which we are introduced is, no doubt, pursuing a somewhat
+artificial vocation; but it is pursuing it in the way of real life, as
+many live men and women have pursued it. The mask itself may be of their
+trade and class; but it is taken off them, and they are not merely
+_personae_, they are persons.
+
+To re-read the _Roman Comique_ just after reading the _Grand Cyrus_ came
+into the present plan partly by design and partly by accident; but I had
+not fully anticipated the advantage of doing so. The contrast of the
+two, and the general relation between them could, indeed, escape no one;
+but an interval of a great many years since the last reading of
+Scarron's work had not unnaturally caused forgetfulness of the
+deliberate and minute manner in which he himself points that contrast,
+and even now and then satirises the _Cyrus_ by name. The system of inset
+_Histoires_,[254] beginning with the well-told if borrowed story of Don
+Carlos of Aragon and his "Invisible Mistress," is, indeed, hardly a
+contrast except in point of the respective lengths of the digressions,
+nor does it seem to be meant as a parody. It has been said that this
+"inset" system, whether borrowed from the episodes of the ancients or
+descended from the constant divagations of the mediaeval romances, is
+very old, and proved itself uncommonly tenacious of life. But the
+difference between the opening of the two books can hardly have been
+other than intentional on the part of the later writer; and it is a very
+memorable one, showing nothing less than the difference between romance
+and novel, between academic generalities and "realist" particularism,
+and between not a few other pairs of opposites. It has been fully
+allowed that the overture of the _Grand Cyrus_ is by no means devoid of
+action, even of bustle, and that it is well done of its kind. But that
+kind is strongly marked in the very fact that there is a sort of
+faintness in it. The burning of Sinope, the distant vessel, the
+street-fighting that follows, are what may be called "cartoonish"--large
+washes of pale colour. The talk, such as there is, is stage-talk of the
+pseudo-grand style. It is curious that Scarron himself speaks of the
+_Cyrus_ as being the most "furnitured" romance, _le roman le plus
+meublé_, that he knows. To a modern eye the interiors are anything but
+distinct, despite the elaborate _ecphrases_, some of which have been
+quoted.[255]
+
+Now turn to the opening passage of the _Roman Comique_, which strikes
+the new note most sharply. It is rather well known, probably even to
+some who have not read the original or Tom Brown's congenial translation
+of it; for it has been largely laid under contribution by the
+innumerable writers about a much greater person than Scarron, Molière.
+The experiences of the _Illustre Théâtre_ were a little later, and
+apparently not so sordid as those of the company of which Scarron
+constituted himself historiographer; but they cannot have been very
+dissimilar in general kind, and many of the characteristics, such as the
+assumption now of fantastic names, "Le Destin," "La Rancune," etc., now
+of rococo-romantic ones, such as "Mademoiselle de l'Étoile," remained
+long unaltered. But perhaps a fresh translation may be attempted, and
+the attempt permitted. For though the piece, of course, has recent
+Spanish and even older Italian examples of a kind, still the change in
+what may be called "particular universality" is remarkable.
+
+     [Sidenote: The opening scene of this.]
+
+     The sun had finished more than half his course, and his
+     chariot, having reached the slope of the world, was running
+     quicker than he wished. If his horses had chosen to avail
+     themselves of the drop of the road, they would have got
+     through what remained of the day in less than half or
+     quarter of an hour; but instead of pulling at full strength,
+     they merely amused themselves by curvetting, as they drew in
+     a salt air, which told them the sea, wherein men say their
+     master goes to bed every night, was close at hand. To speak
+     more like a man of this world, and more intelligibly, it was
+     between five and six o'clock, when a cart came into the
+     market-place of Le Mans. This cart was drawn by four very
+     lean oxen, with, for leader, a brood-mare, whose foal
+     scampered about round the cart, like a silly little thing as
+     it was. The cart was full of boxes and trunks, and of great
+     bundles of painted canvas, which made a sort of pyramid, on
+     the top of which appeared a damsel, dressed partly as for
+     town, partly for country. By the side of the cart walked a
+     young man, as ill-dressed as he was good-looking. He had on
+     his face a great patch, which covered one eye and half his
+     cheek, and he carried a large fowling-piece on his shoulder.
+     With this he had slain divers magpies, jays, and crows; and
+     they made a sort of bandoleer round him, from the bottom
+     whereof hung a pullet and a gosling, looking very like the
+     result of a plundering expedition. Instead of a hat he had
+     only a night-cap, with garters of divers colours twisted
+     round it, which headgear looked like a very unfinished
+     sketch of a turban. His coat was a jacket of grey stuff,
+     girt with a strap, which served also as a sword-belt, the
+     sword being so long that it wanted a fork to draw it neatly
+     for use. He wore breeches trussed, with stockings attached
+     to them, as actors do when they play an ancient hero; and
+     he had, instead of shoes, buskins of a classical pattern,
+     muddied up to the ankle. An old man, more ordinarily but
+     still very ill-dressed, walked beside him. He carried on his
+     shoulders a bass-viol, and as he stooped a little in
+     walking, one might, at a distance, have taken him for a
+     large tortoise walking on its hind legs. Some critic may
+     perhaps murmur at this comparison; but I am speaking of the
+     big tortoises they have in the Indies, and besides I use it
+     at my own risk. Let us return to our caravan.
+
+     It passed in front of the tennis-court called the Doe, at
+     the door of which were gathered a number of the topping
+     citizens of the town. The novel appearance of the conveyance
+     and team, and the noise of the mob who had gathered round
+     the cart, induced these honourable burgomasters to cast an
+     eye upon the strangers; and among others a Deputy-Provost
+     named La Rappinière came up, accosted them, and, with the
+     authority of a magistrate, asked who they were. The young
+     man of whom I have just spoken replied, and without touching
+     his turban (inasmuch as with one of his hands he held his
+     gun and with the other the hilt of his sword, lest it should
+     get between his legs) told the Provost that they were French
+     by birth, actors by profession, that his stage-name was Le
+     Destin, that of his old comrade La Rancune, and that of the
+     lady who was perched like a hen on the top of their baggage,
+     La Caverne. This odd name made some of the company laugh;
+     whereat the young actor added that it ought not to seem
+     stranger to men with their wits about them than "La
+     Montagne," "La Vallée," "La Rose," or "L'Épine." The talk
+     was interrupted by certain sounds of blows and oaths which
+     were heard from the front of the cart. It was the
+     tennis-court attendant, who had struck the carter without
+     warning, because the oxen and the mare were making too free
+     with a heap of hay which lay before the door. The row was
+     stopped, and the mistress of the court, who was fonder of
+     plays than of sermons or vespers, gave leave, with a
+     generosity unheard of in her kind, to the carter to bait his
+     beasts to their fill. He accepted her offer, and, while the
+     beasts ate, the author rested for a time, and set to work to
+     think what he should say in the next chapter.
+
+The sally in the last sentence, with the other about the tortoise, and
+the mock solemnity of the opening, illustrate two special
+characteristics, which will be noticed below, and which may be taken in
+each case as a sort of revulsion from, or parody of, the solemn ways of
+the regular romance. There may be even a special reference to the
+"_Phébus_" the technical name or nickname of the "high language" in
+these repeated burlesque introductions of the sun. And the almost pert
+flings and cabrioles of the narrator form a still more obvious and
+direct Declaration of Independence. But these are mere details, almost
+trivial compared with the striking contrast of the whole presentation
+and _faire_ of the piece, when taken together with most of the subjects
+of the last chapter.
+
+It may require a little, but it should not require much, knowledge of
+literary history to see how modern this is; it should surely require
+none to see how vivid it is--how the sharpness of an etching and the
+colour of a bold picture take the place of the shadowy "academies" of
+previous French writers.[256] There may be a very little exaggeration
+even here--in other parts of the book there is certainly some--and
+Scarron never could forget his tendency to that form of exaggeration
+which is called burlesque. But the stuff and substance of the piece is
+reality.
+
+An important item of the same change is to be found in the management of
+the insets, or some of them. One of the longest and most important is
+the autobiographical history of Le Destin or Destin (the article is
+often dropped), the tall young man with the patch on his face. But this
+is not thrust bodily into the other body of the story, _Cyrus_-fashion;
+it is alternated with the passages of that story itself, and that in a
+comparatively natural manner--night or some startling accident
+interrupting it; while how even courtiers could find breath to tell, or
+patience and time to hear, some of the interludes of the _Cyrus_ and its
+fellows is altogether past comprehension. There is some coarseness in
+Scarron--he would not be a comic writer of the seventeenth century if
+there were none. Not very long after the beginning the tale is
+interrupted by a long account of an unseemly practical joke which surely
+could amuse no mortal after a certain stage of schoolboyhood. But there
+is little or no positive indecency: the book contrasts not more
+remarkably with the Aristophanic indulgence of the sixteenth century
+than with the sniggering suggestiveness of the eighteenth. Some remnants
+of the Heroic convention (which, after all, did to a great extent
+reflect the actual manners of the time) remain, such as the obligatory
+"compliment." Le Destin is ready to hang himself because, at his first
+meeting with the beautiful Léonore, his shyness prevents his getting a
+proper "compliment" out. On the other hand, the demand for _esprit_,
+which was confined in the Heroics to a few privileged characters, now
+becomes almost universal. There are tricks, but fairly novel
+tricks--affectations like "I don't know what they did next" and the
+others noted above: while the famous rhetorical beginnings of chapters
+appear not only at the very outset, but at the opening of the second
+volume, "Le Soleil donnant aplomb sur les antipodes,"--things which a
+century later Fielding, and two centuries later Dickens, did not disdain
+to imitate.
+
+Scarron did not live to finish the book, and the third part or volume,
+which was tinkered--still more the _Suite_, which was added--by somebody
+else, are very inferior. The somewhat unfavourable opinions referred to
+above may be partly based on the undoubted fact that the story is rather
+formless; that its most important machinery is dependent, after all, on
+the old _rapt_ or abduction, the heroines of which are Mademoiselle de
+l'Étoile (nominally Le Destin's sister, really his love, and at the end
+his wife) and Angélique, daughter of La Caverne, who is provided with a
+lover and husband of 12,000 (_livres_) a year in the person of Léandre,
+one of the stock theatrical names, professedly "valet" to Le Destin, but
+really a country gentleman's son. Thus everybody is somebody else, again
+in the old way. Another, and to some tastes a more serious, blot may be
+found in the everlasting practical jokes of the knock-about kind,
+inflicted on the unfortunate Ragotin, a sort of amateur member of the
+troupe. But again these "_low_ jinks" were an obvious reaction from
+(just as the ceremonies were followings of) the solemnity of the
+Heroics; and they continued to be popular for nearly two hundred years,
+as English readers full well do know. Nevertheless these defects merely
+accompany--they do not mar or still less destroy--the striking
+characteristics of progress which appear with them, and which, without
+any elaborate abstract of the book, have been set forth somewhat
+carefully in the preceding pages. Above all, there is a real and
+considerable attempt at character, a trifle _typy_ and stagy perhaps,
+but still aiming at something better; and the older _nouvelle_-fashion
+is not merely drawn upon, but improved upon, for curious anecdotes,
+striking situations, effective names. Under the latter heads it is
+noteworthy that Gautier simply "lifted" the name Sigognac from Scarron,
+though he attached it to a very different personage; and that Dumas got,
+from the same source, the startling incident of Aramis suddenly
+descending on the crupper of D'Artagnan's horse. The jokes may, of
+course, amuse or not different persons, and even different moods of the
+same person; the practical ones, as has been hinted, may pall, even when
+they are not merely vulgar. Practical joking had a long hold of
+literature, as of life; and it would be sanguine to think that it is
+dead. Izaak Walton, a curious contemporary--"disparate," as the French
+say, of Scarron, would not quite have liked the quarrel between the
+dying inn-keeper, who insists on being buried in his oldest sheet, full
+of holes and stains, and his wife, who asks him, from a sense rather of
+decency than of affection, how he can possibly think of appearing thus
+clad in the Valley of Jehoshaphat? But there is something in the book
+for many tastes, and a good deal more for the student of the history of
+the novel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Furetière and the _Roman Bourgeois_.]
+
+The couplet-contrast of the Comic Romance of Scarron and the "Bourgeois"
+Romance of Furetière[257] is one of the most curious among the minor
+phenomena of literary history; but it repeats itself in that history so
+often that it becomes, by accumulation, hardly minor. There is a vast
+difference between Furetière and Miss Austen, and a still vaster one
+between Scarron and Scott; but the two French books stand to each other,
+on however much lower a step of the stair, very much as _Waverley_
+stands to _Pride and Prejudice_, and they carry on a common revulsion
+against their forerunners and a common quest for newer and better
+developments. The _Roman Bourgeois_, indeed, is more definitely, more
+explicitly, and in further ways of exodus, a departure from the subjects
+and treatment of most of the books noticed in the last chapter. It is
+true that its author attributes to the reading of the regular romances
+the conversion of his pretty idiot Javotte from a mere idiot to
+something that can, at any rate, hold her own in conversation, and take
+an interest in life.[258] But he also adds the consequence of her
+elopement, without apparently any prospect of marriage, but with an
+accomplished gentleman who has helped her to _esprit_ by introducing her
+to those very same romances; and he has numerous distinct girds at his
+predecessors, including one at the multiplied abductions of Mandane
+herself. Moreover his inset tale _L'Amour Égaré_ (itself something of a
+parody), which contains most of the "key"-matter, includes a satirical
+account (not uncomplimentary to her intellectual, but exceedingly so to
+her physical characteristics) of "Sapho" herself. For after declining to
+give a full description of poor Madeleine, for fear of disgusting his
+readers, he tells us, in mentioning the extravagant compliments
+addressed to her in verse, that she only resembled the Sun in having a
+complexion yellowed by jaundice; the Moon in being freckled; and the
+Dawn in having a red tip to her nose!
+
+But this last ill-mannered particularity illustrates the character, and
+in its way the value, of the whole book. A romance, or indeed in the
+proper sense a story--that is to say, _one_ story,--it certainly is
+not: the author admits the fact frankly, not to say boisterously, and
+his title seems to have been definitely suggested by Scarron's. The two
+parts have absolutely no connection with one another, except that a
+single personage, who has played a very subordinate part in the first,
+plays a prominent but entirely different one in the second. This second
+is wholly occupied by legal matters (Furetière had been "bred to the
+law"), and the humours and amours of a certain female litigant,
+Collantine, to whom Racine and Wycherley owe something, with the unlucky
+author "Charroselles"[259] and a subordinate judge, Belastre, who has
+been pitch-forked by interest into a place which he finally loses by his
+utter incapacity and misconduct. To understand it requires even more
+knowledge of old French law terms generally than parts of Balzac do of
+specially commercial and financial lingo.
+
+This "specialising" of the novel is perhaps of more importance than
+interest; but interest itself may be found in the First Part, where
+there is, if not much, rather more of a story, some positive
+character-drawing, a fair amount of smart phrase, and a great deal of
+lively painting of manners. There is still a good deal of law, to which
+profession most of the male characters belong, but there are plentiful
+compensations.
+
+As far as there is any real story or history, it is that of two girls,
+both of the legal _bourgeoisie_ by rank. The prettier, Javotte, has been
+briefly described above. She is the daughter of a rich attorney, and
+has, before her emancipation and elopement, two suitors, both
+advocates; the one, Nicodème, young, handsome, well dressed, and a great
+flirt, but feather-headed; the other, Bedout, a middle-aged sloven,
+collector, and at the same time miser, but very well off. The second
+heroine, Lucrèce, is also handsome, though rather less so than Javotte:
+but she has plenty of wits. She is, however, in an unfortunate position,
+being an orphan with no fortune, and living with an uncle and aunt, the
+latter of whom has a passion for gaming, and keeps open house for it, so
+that Lucrèce sees rather undesirable society. Despite her wits, she
+falls a victim to a rascally marquis, who first gives her a written
+promise of marriage, and afterwards, by one of the dirtiest tricks ever
+imagined by a novelist--a trick which, strange to say, the present
+writer does not remember to have seen in any other book, obvious though
+it is--steals it.[260] Fortunately for her, Nicodème, who is of her
+acquaintance, and a general lover, has also given her, though not in
+earnest and for no serious "consideration," a similar promise: and by
+the help of a busybody legal friend she gets 2000 crowns out of him to
+prevent an action for breach. And, finally, Bedout, after displacing the
+unlucky Nicodème (thus left doubly in the cold), and being himself
+thrown over by Javotte's elopement, takes to wife, being induced to do
+so by a cousin, Lucrèce herself, in blissful ignorance (which is never
+removed) of her past. The cousin, Laurence, has also been the link of
+these parts of the tale with an episode of _précieuse_ society in which
+the above-mentioned inset is told; a fourth feminine character,
+Hyppolyte (_vice_ Philipote), of some individuality, is introduced;
+Javotte makes a greater fool of herself than ever; and her future
+seducer, Pancrace, makes his appearance.
+
+Thus reduced to "argument" form, the story may seem even more modern
+than it really is, and the censures, apologies, etc., put forward above
+may appear rather unjust. But few people will continue to think so
+after reading the book. The materials, especially with the "trimmings"
+to be mentioned presently, would have made a very good novel of the
+completest kind. But, once more, the time had not come, though Furetière
+was, however unconsciously, doing his best to bring it on. One fault,
+not quite so easy to define as to feel, is prominent, and continued to
+be so in all the best novels, or parts of novels, till nearly the middle
+of the nineteenth century. There is far too much mere _narration_--the
+things being not smartly brought before the mind's eye as _being_ done,
+and to the mind's ear as _being_ said, but recounted, sometimes not even
+as present things, but as things that _have been_ said or done already.
+This gives a flatness, which is further increased by the habit of not
+breaking up even the conversation into fresh paragraphs and lines, but
+running the whole on in solid page-blocks for several pages together.
+Yet even if this mechanical mistake were as mechanically redressed,[261]
+the original fault would remain and others would still appear. A scene
+between Javotte and Lucrèce, to give one instance only, would enliven
+the book enormously; while, on the other hand, we could very well spare
+one of the few passages in which Nicodème is allowed to be more than the
+subject of a _récit_, and which partakes of the knock-about character so
+long popular, the young man and Javotte bumping each other's foreheads
+by an awkward slip in saluting, after which he first upsets a piece of
+porcelain and then drags a mirror down upon himself. There is "action"
+enough here; while, on the other hand, the important and promising
+situations of the two promises to Lucrèce, and the stealing by the
+Marquis of his, are left in the flattest fashion of "recount." But it
+was very long indeed before novelists understood this matter, and as
+late as Hope's famous _Anastasius_ the fault is present, apparently to
+the author's knowledge, though he has not removed it.
+
+To a reader of the book who does not know, or care to pay attention to,
+the history of the matter, the opening of the _Roman Bourgeois_ may seem
+to promise something quite free, or at any rate much more free than is
+actually the case, from this fault. But, as we have seen, they generally
+took some care of their openings, and Furetière availed himself of a
+custom possibly, to present readers, especially those not of the Roman
+Church, possessing an air of oddity, and therefore of freshness, which
+it certainly had not to those of his own day. This was the curious
+fashion of _quête_ or collection at church--not by a commonplace verger,
+or by respectable churchwardens and sidesmen, but by the prettiest girl
+whom the _curé_ could pitch upon, dressed in her best, and lavishing
+smiles upon the congregation to induce them to give as lavishly, and to
+enable her to make a "record" amount.
+
+The original meeting of Nicodème and the fair Javotte takes place in
+this wise, and enables the author to enlighten us further as to matters
+quite proper for novel treatment.[262] The device of keeping gold and
+large silver pieces uppermost in the open "plate"; the counter-balancing
+mischief of covering them with a handful of copper; the licensed habit,
+a rather dangerous one surely, of taking "change" out of that plate,
+which enables the aspirant for the girl's favour to clear away the
+obnoxious _sous_ as change for a whole pistole--all this has a kind of
+attraction for which you may search the more than myriad pages of
+_Artamène_ without finding it. The daughter of a citizen's family, in
+the French seventeenth century, was kept with a strictness which perhaps
+explains a good deal in the conduct of an Agnes or an Isabelle in
+comedy. She was almost always tied to her mother's apron-strings, and
+even an accepted lover had to carry on his courtship under the very
+superfluous number of _six_ eyes at least. But the Church was
+misericordious. The custom of giving and receiving holy water could be
+improved by the resources of amatory science; but this of the _quête_
+was, it would seem, still more full of opportunity. Apparently (perhaps
+because in these city parishes the church was always close by, and the
+whole proceedings public) the fair _quêteuse_ was allowed to walk home
+alone; and in this instance Nicodème, having ground-baited with his
+pistole, is permitted to accompany Javotte Vollichon to her father's
+door--her extreme beauty making up for the equally extreme silliness of
+her replies to his observations.
+
+The possible objection that these things, fresh and interesting to us,
+were ordinary and banal to them, would be a rather shallow one. The
+point is that, in previous fiction, circumstantial verisimilitude of
+this kind had hardly been tried at all. So it is with the incident of
+Nicodème sending a rabbit (supposed to be from his own estate, but
+really from the market--a joke not peculiar to Paris, but specially
+favoured there), or losing at bowls a capon, to old Vollichon, and on
+the strength of each inviting himself to dinner; the fresh girds at the
+extraordinary and still not quite accountable plenty of marquises
+(Scarron, if I remember rightly, has the verb _se marquiser_); and the
+contributory (or, as the ancients would have said, symbolic) dinners--as
+it were, picnics at home--of _bourgeois_ society at each other's houses,
+with not a few other things. A curious plan of a fashion-review, with
+patterns for the benefit of ladies, is specially noticeable at a period
+so early in the history of periodicals generally, and is one of the not
+few points in which there is a certain resemblance between Furetière and
+Defoe.
+
+It is in this daring to be quotidian and contemporary that his claim to
+a position in the history of the novel mainly consists. Some might add a
+third audacity, that of being "middle-class." Scarron had dealt with
+barn-mummers and innkeepers and some mere riff-raff; but he had included
+not a few nobles, and had indulged in fighting and other "noble"
+subjects. There is no fighting in Furetière, and his chief "noble"
+figure--the rascal who robbed Lucrèce of her virtue and her keys--is
+the sole figure of his class, except Pancrace and the _précieuse_
+Angélique. This is at once a practical protest against the common
+interpretation and extension of Aristotle's prescription of
+"distinguished" subjects, and an unmistakable relinquishment of mere
+picaresque squalor. Above all, it points the way in practice, indirectly
+perhaps but inevitably, to the selection of subjects that the author
+really _knows_, and that he can treat with the small vivifying details
+given by such knowledge, and by such knowledge alone. There is an
+advance in character, an advance in "interior" description--the
+Vollichon family circle, the banter and the gambling at Lucrèce's home,
+the humour of a _précieuse_ meeting, etc. In fact, whatever be the
+defects[263] in the book, it may almost be called an advance all round.
+A specimen of this, as of other pioneer novels, may not be superfluous;
+it is the first conversation, after the collection, between Nicodème and
+Javotte.
+
+     [Sidenote: Nicodème takes Javotte home from church.]
+
+     This new kind of gallantry [_his removing the offensive
+     copper coins as pretended "change" for his pistole_] was
+     noticed by Javotte, who was privately pleased with it, and
+     really thought herself under an obligation to him.
+     Wherefore, on their leaving the church, she allowed him to
+     accost her with a compliment which he had been meditating
+     all the time he was waiting for her. This chance favoured
+     him much, for Javotte never went out without her mother, who
+     kept her in such a strait fashion of living that she never
+     allowed her to speak to a man either abroad or at home. Had
+     it not been so, he would have had easy access to her; for as
+     she was a solicitor's daughter and he was an advocate, they
+     were in relations of close affinity and sympathy--such as
+     allow as prompt acquaintance as that of a servant-maid with
+     a _valet-de-chambre_.[264]
+
+
+     As soon as the service was over and he could join her, he
+     said, as though with the most delicate attention,
+     "Mademoiselle, as far as I can judge, you cannot have failed
+     to be lucky in your collection, being so deserving and so
+     beautiful." "Alas! Sir," replied Javotte in the most
+     ingenuous fashion, "you must excuse me. I have just been
+     counting it up with the Father Sacristan, and I have only
+     made 65 livres 5 sous. Now, Mademoiselle Henriette made 90
+     livres a little time since; 'tis true she collected all
+     through the forty hours'[265] service, and in a place where
+     there was the finest Paradise ever seen." "When I spoke,"
+     said Nicodème, "of the luck of your collection, I was not
+     only speaking of the charity you got for the poor and the
+     church; I meant as well what you gained for yourself." "Oh,
+     Sir!" replied Javotte, "I assure you I gained nothing. There
+     was not a farthing more than I told you; and besides, can
+     you think I would butter my own bread[266] on such an
+     occasion? 'Twould be a great sin even to think of it." "I
+     was not speaking," said Nicodème, "of gold or silver. I only
+     meant that nobody can have given you his alms without at the
+     same time giving you his heart." "I don't know," quoth
+     Javotte, "what you mean by hearts; I didn't see one in the
+     plate." "I meant," added Nicodème, "that everybody before
+     whom you stopped must, when he saw such beauty, have vowed
+     to love and serve you, and have given you his heart. For my
+     own part I could not possibly refuse you mine." Javotte
+     answered him naïvely, "Well! Sir, if you gave it me I must
+     have replied at once, 'God give it back to you.'"[267]
+     "What!" cried Nicodème rather angrily, "can you jest with me
+     when I am so much in earnest, and treat in such a way the
+     most passionate of all your lovers?" Whereat Javotte blushed
+     as she answered, "Sir, pray be careful how you speak. I am
+     an honest girl. I have no lovers. Mamma has expressly
+     forbidden me to have any." "I have said nothing to shock
+     you," replied Nicodème. "My passion for you is perfectly
+     honest and pure, and its end is only a lawful suit." "Then,
+     Sir," answered Javotte, "you want to marry me? You must ask
+     my papa and mamma for that; for indeed I do not know what
+     they are going to give me when I marry." "We have not got
+     quite so far yet," said Nicodème. "I must be assured
+     beforehand of your esteem, and know that you have admitted
+     me to the honour of being your servant." "Sir," said
+     Javotte, "I am quite satisfied with being my own servant,
+     and I know how to do everything I want."
+
+Now this, of course, is not extraordinarily brilliant; but it
+is an early--a _very_ early--beginning of the right sort of
+thing--conversation of a natural kind transferred from the boards to the
+book, sketches of character, touches of manners and of life generally,
+individual, national, local. The cross-purposes of the almost idiotic
+_ingénue_ and the philandering gallant are already very well done; and
+if Javotte had been as clever as she was stupid she could hardly have
+set forth the inwardness of French marriages more neatly than by the
+blunt reference to her _dot_, or have at the same moment more thoroughly
+disconcerted Nicodème's regularly laid-out approaches for a flirtation
+in form, with only a possible, but in any case distant, termination in
+anything so prosaic as marriage.[268] The thing as a whole is, in
+familiar phrase, "all right" in kind and in scheme. It requires some
+perfecting in detail; but it is in every reasonable sense perfectible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Cyrano de Bergerac and his _Voyages_.]
+
+It has been possible to speak of one of the pioneer books mentioned in
+this chapter with more allowance than most of the few critics and
+historians who have discussed or mentioned it have given it, and to
+recommend the others, not uncritically but quite cheerfully. This
+satisfactory state of things hardly persists when we reach what seems
+perhaps, to those who have never read it, not the least considerable of
+the batch--the _Voyage à la Lune_ of Cyrano de Bergerac, as his name is
+in literary history, though he never called himself so.[269] Cyrano,
+though he does not seem to have had a very fortunate life, and died
+young, yet was not all unblest, and has since been rather blessed than
+banned. Even in his own day Boileau spoke of him with what, in the
+"Bollevian" fashion, was comparative compliment--that is to say, he said
+that he did not think Cyrano so bad as somebody else. But long
+afterwards, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Gautier took him up
+among his _Grotesques_ and embalmed him in the caressing and
+immortalising amber of his marvellous style and treatment; while at the
+end of the same century one of the chief living poets and playwrights of
+France made him the subject of a popular and really pathetic drama. His
+_Pedant Joué_ is not a stupid comedy, and had the honour of furnishing
+Molière with some of that "property" which he was, quite rightly, in the
+habit of commandeering wherever he found it. _La Mort d'Agrippine_ is by
+no means the worst of that curious school of tragedy, so like and so
+unlike to that of our own "University wits," which was partly
+exemplified and then transcended by Corneille, and which some of us are
+abandoned enough to enjoy more as readers, though as critics we may find
+more faults with it, than we find it possible to do with Racine. But the
+_Voyage à la Lune_, as well as, though rather less than, its
+complementary dealing with the Sun, has been praised with none of these
+allowances. On the contrary, it has had ascribed to it the credit of
+having furnished, not scraps of dialogue or incident, but a solid
+suggestion to an even greater than Molière--to Swift; remarkable
+intellectual and scientific anticipations have been discovered in it,
+and in comparatively recent times versions of it have been published to
+serve as proofs that Cyrano was actually a father[270] of French
+eighteenth-century _philosophie_--a different thing, once more, from
+philosophy.
+
+Let us, however, use the utmost possible combination of critical
+magnanimity with critical justice: and allow these precious additions,
+which did not form part of the "classical" or "received" text of the
+author, not to count against him. _For_ him they can only count with
+those who still think the puerile and now hopelessly stale jests about
+Enoch and Elijah and that sort of thing clever. But they can be either
+disregarded or at least left out of the judgment, and it will yet remain
+true that the so-called _Voyage_ is a very disappointing book indeed. As
+this is one of the cases where the record of personal experience is not
+impertinent, I may say that I first read it some forty years ago, when
+fresh from reading about it and its author in "Théo's" prose; that I
+therefore came to it with every prepossession in its favour, and strove
+to like it, or to think I did. I read it again, if I remember rightly,
+about the time of the excitement about M. Rostand's _Cyrano_, and liked
+it less still; while when I re-read it carefully for this chapter, I
+liked it least of all. There is, of course, a certain fancifulness about
+the main idea of a man fastening bottles of dew round him in the
+expectation (which is justified) that the sun's heat will convert the
+dew into steam and raise him from the ground. But the reader (it is not
+necessary to pay him the bad compliment of explaining the reasons) will
+soon see that the scheme is aesthetically awkward, if not positively
+ludicrous, and scientifically absurd. Throwing off bottles to lower your
+level has a superficial resemblance to the actual principles and
+practice of ballooning; but in the same way it will not here "work" at
+all.
+
+This, however, would be a matter of no consequence whatever if the
+actual results of the experiment were amusing. Unfortunately they are
+not. That the aeronaut's first miss of the Moon drops him into the new
+French colony of Canada may have given Cyrano some means of interesting
+people then; but, reversing the process noticed in the cases of Scarron
+and Furetière, it does not in the least do so now. We get nothing out of
+it except some very uninteresting gibes at the Jesuits, and, connected
+with these, some equally uninteresting discussions whether the flight to
+the Moon is possible or not.
+
+Still one hopes, like the child or fool of popular saying, for the Moon
+itself to atone for Canada, and tolerates disappointment till one
+actually gets there. Alas! of all Utopias that have ever been Utopiated,
+Cyrano's is the most uninteresting, even when its negative want of
+interest does not change into something positively disagreeable. The
+Lunarians, though probably intended to be, are hardly at all a satire on
+us Earth-dwellers. They are bigger, and, as far as the male sex is
+concerned, apparently more awkward and uglier; and their ideas in
+religion, morals, taste, etc., are a monotonously direct reversal of our
+orthodoxies. There is at least one passage which the absence of all
+"naughty niceness" and the presence of the indescribably nasty make a
+good "try" for the acme of the disgusting. More of it is less but still
+nasty; much of it is silly; all of it is dull.[271]
+
+Nevertheless it is not quite omissible in such a history as this, or in
+any history of French literature. For it is a notable instance of the
+coming and, indeed, actual invasion, by fiction, of regions which had
+hitherto been the province of more serious kinds; and it is a link, not
+unimportant if not particularly meritorious, in the chain of the
+eccentric novel. Lucian of course had started it long ago, and Rabelais
+had in a fashion taken it up but a century before. But the fashioners of
+new commonwealths and societies, More, Campanella, Bacon, had been as a
+rule very serious. Cyrano, in his way, was serious too; but the way
+itself was not one of those for which the ticket has been usually
+reserved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de la Fayette and _La Princesse de Clèves_.]
+
+But the last of this batch is the most important and the best of the
+whole. This is _La Princesse de Clèves_, by Marie Madeleine Pioche de
+Lavergne, Comtesse de la Fayette, friend of Madame de Sévigné and of
+Huet; more or less Platonic, and at any rate last, love of La
+Rochefoucauld; a woman evidently of great charm as well as of great
+ability, and apparently of what was then irreproachable character. She
+wrote, besides other matter of no small literary value and historical
+interest, four novels, the minor ones, which require no special notice
+here, being _Zaïde_, _La Comtesse de Tende_, and (her opening piece)
+_Madame de Montpensier_. Their motives and methods are much the same as
+those of the _Princesse de Clèves_, but this is much more effectively
+treated. In fact, it is one of the very few highly praised books, at the
+beginnings of departments of literature, which ought not to disappoint
+candid and not merely studious readers.
+
+It begins with a sketch, very cleverly done, of the Court of Henri II.,
+with the various prominent personages there--the King and the Queen,
+Diane de Poitiers, Queen Mary of Scotland ("La Reine Dauphine"),
+"Madame, soeur du Roi" (the second Margaret of Valois--not so clever
+as her aunt and niece namesakes, and not so beautiful as the latter,
+but, like both of them, a patroness of men of letters, especially
+Ronsard, and apparently a very amiable person, though rude things were
+said of her marriage, rather late in life, to the Duke of Savoy), with
+many others of, or just below, royal blood. Of these latter there are
+Mademoiselle de Chartres, the Prince de Clèves, whom she marries, and
+the Duc de Nemours, who completes the usual "triangle."[272] As is also
+usual--in a way not unconnected in its usuality with that of triangular
+sequences--the Princess has more _amitié_ and _estime_ than _amour_ for
+her husband, though he, less usually, is desperately in love with her.
+So, very shortly, is Nemours, who is represented as an almost
+irresistible lady-killer, though no libertine, and of the "respectful"
+order. His conduct is not quite that of the Elizabethan or Victorian
+ideal gentleman; for he steals his mistress's portrait while it is being
+shown to a mixed company; eavesdrops (as will be seen presently) in the
+most atrocious manner; chatters about his love affairs in a way almost
+worse; and skulks round the Princess's country garden at night in a
+manner exceedingly unlikely to do his passion any good, and nearly
+certain to do (as it does) her reputation much harm. Still, if not an
+Amadis, he is not in the least a Lovelace, and that is saying a good
+deal for a French noble of his time. The Princess slowly falls in love
+with him (she has seen him steal the portrait, though he does not know
+this and she dares say nothing for fear of scandal); and divers Court
+and other affairs conduct this concealed _amourette_ (for she prevents
+all "declaration") in a manner very cleverly and not too tediously told,
+to a point when, though perfectly virtuous in intention, she feels that
+she is in danger of losing self-control.
+
+[Sidenote: Its central scene.]
+
+Probably, though it is the best known part of the book, it may be well
+to give the central scene, where M. de Nemours plays the eavesdropper to
+M. and Mme. de Clèves, and overhears the conversation which, with equal
+want of manners and of sense, he afterwards (it is true, without names)
+retails to the Vidame de Chartres, a relation of Mme. de Clèves herself,
+and a well-known gossip, with a strong additional effect on the fatal
+consequences above described. It is pretty long, and some "cutting" will
+be necessary.
+
+     He[273] heard M. de Clèves say to his wife, "But why do you
+     wish not to return to Paris? What can keep you in the
+     country? For some time past you have shown a taste for
+     solitude which surprises me and pains me, because it keeps
+     us apart. In fact, I find you sadder than usual, and I am
+     afraid that something is annoying you." "I have no
+     mind-trouble," she answered with an embarrassed air; "but
+     the tumult of the Court is so great, and there is always so
+     much company at home, that both body and mind must needs
+     grow weary, and one wants only rest." "Rest," replied he,
+     "is not the proper thing for a person of your age. Your
+     position is not, either at home or at Court, a fatiguing
+     one, and I am rather afraid that you do not like to be with
+     me." "You would do me a great injustice if you thought so,"
+     said she with ever-increasing embarrassment, "but I entreat
+     you to leave me here. If you would stay too, I should be
+     delighted--if you would stay here alone and be good enough
+     to do without the endless number of people who never leave
+     you." "Oh! Madam," cried M. de Clèves, "your looks and your
+     words show me that you have reasons for wishing to be alone
+     which I do not know, and which I beg you to tell me." He
+     pressed her a long time to do so without being able to
+     induce her, and after excusing herself in a manner which
+     increased the curiosity of her husband, she remained in deep
+     silence with downcast eyes. Then suddenly recovering her
+     speech, and looking at him, "Do not force me," said she, "to
+     a confession which I am not strong enough to make, though I
+     have several times intended to do so. Think only that
+     prudence forbids a woman of my age, who is her own
+     mistress,[274] to remain exposed to the trials[275] of a
+     Court." "What do you suggest, Madame?" cried M. de Clèves.
+     "I dare not put it in words for fear of offence." She made
+     no answer, and her silence confirming her husband in his
+     thought, he went on: "You tell me nothing, and that tells me
+     that I do not deceive myself." "Well then, Sir!" she
+     answered, throwing herself at his feet, "I will confess to
+     you what never wife has confessed to her husband; but the
+     innocence of my conduct and my intentions gives me strength
+     to do it. It is the truth that I have reasons for quitting
+     the Court, and that I would fain shun the perils in which
+     people of my age sometimes find themselves. I have never
+     shown any sign of weakness, and I am not afraid of allowing
+     any to appear if you will allow me to retire from the Court,
+     or if I still had Mme. de Chartres to aid in guarding me.
+     However risky may be the step I am taking, I take it
+     joyfully, as a way to keep myself worthy of being yours. I
+     ask your pardon a thousand times if my sentiments are
+     disagreeable to you; at least my actions shall never
+     displease you. Think how--to do as I am doing--I must have
+     more friendship and more esteem for you than any wife has
+     ever had for any husband. Guide me, pity me, and, if you
+     can, love me still." M. de Clèves had remained, all the time
+     she was speaking, with his head buried in his hands, almost
+     beside himself; and it had not occurred to him to raise his
+     wife from her position. When she finished, he cast his eyes
+     upon her and saw her at his knees, her face bathed in tears,
+     and so admirably lovely that he was ready to die of grief.
+     But he kissed her as he raised her up, and said:
+
+[_The speech which follows is itself admirable as an expression of
+despairing love, without either anger or mawkishness; but it is rather
+long, and the rest of the conversation is longer. The husband naturally,
+though, as no doubt he expects, vainly, tries to know who it is that
+thus threatens his wife's peace and his own, and for a time the
+eavesdropper (one wishes for some one behind him with a jack-boot on) is
+hardly less on thorns than M. de Clèves himself. At last a reference to
+the portrait-episode (see above) enlightens Nemours, and gives, if not
+an immediate, a future clue to the unfortunate husband._]
+
+It will be seen at once that this is far different from anything we have
+had before--a much further importation of the methods and subjects of
+poetry and drama into the scheme of prose fiction.
+
+We need only return briefly to the main story, the course of which, as
+one looks back to it through some 250 years of novels, cannot be very
+difficult to "_pro_ticipate." A continuance of Court interviews and
+gossip, with the garrulity of Nemours himself and the Vidame, as well as
+the dropping of a letter by the latter, brings a complete
+_éclaircissement_ nearer and nearer. The Countess, though more and more
+in love, remains virtuous, and indeed hardly exposes herself to direct
+temptation. But her husband, becoming aware that Nemours is the lover,
+and also that he is haunting the grounds at Coulommiers by night when
+the Princess is alone, falls, though his suspicion of actual infidelity
+is removed too late, into hopeless melancholy and positive illness, till
+the "broken heart" of fact or fiction releases him. Nemours is only too
+anxious to marry the widow, but she refuses him, and after a few years
+of "pious works" in complete retirement, herself dies early.
+
+It is possible that, even in this brief sketch, some faults of the book
+may appear; it is certain that actual reading of it will not utterly
+deprive the fault-finder of his prey. The positive history--of which
+there is a good deal, very well told in itself,[276] and the appearance
+of which at all is interesting--is introduced in too great proportions,
+so as to be largely irrelevant. Although we know that this extremely
+artificial world of love-making with your neighbours' wives was also
+real, in a way and at a time, the reality fails to make up for the
+artifice, at least as a novel-subject. It is like golf, or acting, or
+bridge--amusing enough to the participants, no doubt, but very tedious
+to hear or read about.[277] Another point, again true to the facts of
+the time, no doubt, but somewhat repulsive in reading, is the almost
+entire absence of Christian names. The characters always speak to each
+other as "Monsieur" and "Madame," and are spoken of accordingly. I do
+not think we are ever told either of M. or of Mme. de Clèves's name. Now
+there is one person at least who cannot "see" a heroine without knowing
+her Christian name. More serious, in different senses of that word, is
+the fact that there is still ground for the complaint made above as to
+the too _solid_ character of the narrative. There is, indeed, more
+positive dialogue, and this is one of the "advances" of the book. But
+even there the writer has not had the courage to break it up into
+actual, not "reported," talk, and the "said he's" and "said she's,"
+"replied so and so's" and "observed somebody's" perpetually get in the
+way of smooth reading.
+
+So much in the way of alms for Momus. Fortunately a much fuller
+collection of points for admiration offers itself. It has been admitted
+that the historical element[278] is perhaps, in the circumstances and
+for the story, a trifle irrelevant and even "in the way." But its
+presence at all is the important point. Some, at any rate, of the
+details--the relations of that Henri II., with whom, it seems, we may
+_not_ connect the very queer, very rare, but not very beautiful
+_faïence_ once called "Henri Deux" ware,[279] with his wife and his
+mistress; his accidental death at the hands of Montgomery; the history
+of Henry VIII.'s matrimonial career, and the courtship of his daughter
+by a French prince (if not _this_ French prince)--are historical enough
+to present a sharp contrast with the cloudy pseudo-classical canvas of
+the Scudéry romances, or the mere fable-land of others. Any critical
+Brown ought to have discovered "great capabilities" in it; and though it
+was not for more than another century that the true historical novel got
+itself born, this was almost the nearest experiment to it. But the other
+side--the purely sentimental--let us not say psychological--side, is of
+far more consequence; for here we have not merely aspiration or
+chance-medley, we have attainment.
+
+There is a not wholly discreditable prejudice against abridgments,
+especially of novels, and more especially against what are called
+condensations. But one may think that the simple knife, without any
+artful or artless aid of interpolated summaries, could carve out of _La
+Princesse de Clèves_, as it stands, a much shorter but fully
+intelligible presentation of its passionate, pitiful subject. A slight
+want of _individual_ character may still be desiderated; it is hardly
+till _Manon Lescaut_ that we get that, but it was not to be expected.
+Scarcely more to be expected, but present and in no small force, is that
+truth to life; that "knowledge of the human heart" which had been
+hitherto attempted by--we may almost say permitted to--the poet, the
+dramatist, the philosopher, the divine; but which few, if any, romancers
+had aimed at. This knowledge is not elaborately but sufficiently "set"
+with the halls and _ruelles_ of the Court, the gardens and woods of
+Coulommiers; it is displayed with the aid of conversation, which, if it
+seems stilted to us, was not so then; and the machinery employed for
+working out the simple plot--as, for instance, in the case of the
+dropped letter, which, having originally nothing whatever to do with any
+of the chief characters, becomes an important instrument--is sometimes
+far from rudimentary in conception, and very effectively used.
+
+It is therefore no wonder that the book did two things--things of
+unequal value indeed, but very important for us. In the first place, it
+started the School of "Sensibility"[280] in the novel, and so provided a
+large and influential portion of eighteenth-century fiction. In the
+second--small as it is--it almost started the novel proper, the class of
+prose fiction which, though it may take on a great variety of forms and
+colours, though it may specialise here and "extravagate" there, yet in
+the main distinguishes itself from the romance by being first of all
+subjective--by putting behaviour, passion, temperament, character,
+motive before incident and action in the commoner sense--which had had
+few if any representatives in ancient times, had not been disentangled
+from the romantic envelope in mediaeval, but was to be the chief new
+development of modern literature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There seemed to be several reasons for separating Hamilton from the
+other fairy-tale writers. The best of all is that he has the same
+qualification for the present chapter as that which has installed in it
+the novelists already noticed--that of idiosyncrasy. This leads to, or
+rather is founded on, the consideration that his tales are fairy-tales
+only "after a sort," and testify rather to a prevalent fashion than to a
+natural affection for the kind.[281] Thirdly, he exhibits, in his
+supernatural matter, a new and powerful influence on fiction
+generally--that of the first translated _Arabian Nights_. Lastly, he is
+in turn himself the head of two considerable though widely different
+sub-departments of fiction--the decadent and often worthless but largely
+cultivated department of what we may call the fairy-tale
+_improper_,[282] and the very important and sometimes consummately
+excellent "ironic tale," to be often referred to, and sometimes fully
+discussed, hereafter.
+
+The singularity of Hamilton's position has always been recognised; but
+until comparatively recently, his history and family relations were very
+little understood. Since the present writer discussed him in a
+paper[283] now a quarter of a century old in print, and older in
+composition, further light has been thrown on his life and surroundings
+in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and more still in a monograph
+by a lady[284] whose researches will, it is hoped, sooner or later be
+published. A very little, too, of the unprinted work which was held back
+at his death has been recovered. But this, it seems, includes nothing of
+importance; and his fame will probably always rest, as it has so long
+and so securely rested, on the _Mémoires de Grammont_, the few but
+sometimes charming independent verses, some miscellanies not generally
+enough appreciated, and the admirable group of ironic tales which set a
+fashion hardly more admirably illustrated since by Voltaire and
+Beckford[285] and Lord Beaconsfield, to name no others. Of these things
+the verses,[286] unfortunately, do not concern us at all; and the
+_Mémoires_ and miscellanies[286] only in so far as they add another, and
+one of the very best, to the brilliant examples of personal narrative of
+which the century is so full, and which have so close a connection with
+the novel itself. But the _Tales_ are, of course, ours of most obvious
+right; and they form one of the most important _points de repère_ in our
+story.
+
+To discuss, on the one hand, how Hamilton's singularly mixed conditions
+and circumstances of birth[287] and life[288] influenced his literary
+production would be interesting, but in strictness rather irrelevant. To
+attempt, on the other, at any great length to consider the influences
+which produced the kind of tale he wrote would have more relevance, but
+would, if pursued in similar cases elsewhere, lengthen the book
+enormously. Two main ancestor or progenitor forces, as they may be
+called, though both were of very recent date and one actually
+contemporary, may be specified. The one was the newborn fancy for
+fairy-tales, and Eastern tales in particular. The other was the now
+ingrained disposition towards ironic writing which, begun by Rabelais,
+as a most notable origin, varied and increased by Montaigne and others,
+had, just before Hamilton, received fresh shaping and tempering from not
+a few writers, especially Saint-Évremond. There is indeed no doubt that
+this last remarkable and now far too little read writer,[289] who, let
+it be remembered, was, like Hamilton, and even more so, an intimate
+friend of Grammont and also an inmate of Charles's court, was Hamilton's
+direct and immediate model so far as he had any such--his "master" in
+the general tone of _persiflage_. But master and pupil chose, as a rule,
+different subjects, and the idiosyncrasy of each was intense; it must be
+remembered, too, that both were of Norman blood, though that of the
+Hamiltons had long been transfused into the veins of a new nationality,
+while Saint-Évremond was actually born in Normandy. The Norman (that is
+to say, the English, with a special intention of difference[290]) in
+each could be very easily pointed out if such things were our business.
+But it is the application of this, and of other things in relation to
+the development of the novel, that we have to deal with.
+
+It is said, and there is good reason for believing it to be true, that
+all the stories have a more or less pervading vein of "key" application
+in them. But this, except for persons particularly interested in such
+things, has now very little attraction. It has been admitted that it
+probably exists, as indeed it does in almost everything of the day, from
+the big as well as "great" _Cyrus_ to the little, but certainly not much
+less great, _Princesse de Clèves_. But our subject is what Hamilton
+writes about these people, not the people about whom he may or may not
+be writing.
+
+What we have left of Hamilton's tales, as far as they have been printed
+(and, as was said above, not much more seems to exist), consists of five
+stories of very unequal length, and in two cases out of the five
+unfinished. One of the finished pieces, _Fleur d'Épine_, and one of the
+unfinished--although unfinished it is not only one of the longest, but,
+unluckily in a way, by far the best of all--_Les Quatre Facardins_, are
+"framework" stories, and avowedly attach themselves, in an irreverent
+sort of attachment, to the _Arabian Nights_; the others, _Le Bélier_,
+_Zénéyde_ (unfinished), and _L'Enchanteur Faustus_, are independent, and
+written in the mixed verse-and-prose style which had been made popular
+by various writers, especially Chapelle, but which cannot be said to be
+very acceptable in itself. Taken together, they fill a volume of just
+over 500 average octavo pages in the standard edition of 1812; but their
+individual length is very unequal. The two longest, the fragmentary
+_Quatre Facardins_ and the finished _Le Bélier_, run each of them to 142
+pages; the shortest, _L'Enchanteur Faustus_, has just five-and-twenty;
+while _Fleur d'Épine_, in its completeness, has 114, and _Zénéyde_, in
+its incompleteness, runs to 78, and might have run, for aught one can
+tell--in the mixed tangle of Roman and Merovingian history in which the
+author (possibly in ridicule of Madeleine de Scudéry's classical
+chronicling) has chosen to plunge it--to 780 or 7800, which latter
+figure would, after all, have been little more than half the length of
+the _Grand Cyrus_ itself.
+
+We may take _L'Enchanteur Faustus_ first, as it requires the shortest
+notice. In fact, if it had not been Hamilton's, it would hardly require
+any. Written to a "charmante Daphné" (evidently one of the English
+Jacobite exiles, from a reference to a great-great-grandfather of hers
+who was "admiral in Ireland" during Queen Elizabeth's time), it is
+occupied by a story of the great Queen herself, who is treated with the
+mixture of admiration (for her intelligence and spirit) with "scandal"
+(about her person and morals) that might be expected at St. Germains.
+The subject is the usual exhibition of dead beauties (here by, not to,
+Faustus), with Elizabeth's affected depreciation of Helen, Cleopatra,
+and Mariamne, and her equally affected admiration of Fair Rosamond,[291]
+whom she insists on summoning _twice_, despite Faustus's warning, and
+with disastrous consequences. Hamilton's irony is so pervading that one
+does not know whether ignorance, carelessness, or intention made him not
+only introduce Sidney and Essex as contemporary favourites of Elizabeth,
+but actually attribute Rosamond's end to poor Jane Shore instead of to
+Queen Eleanor! This would matter little if the tale had been stronger;
+but though it is told with Hamilton's usual easy fluency, the Queen's
+depreciations, the flattery of the courtiers, and the rest of it, are
+rather slightly and obviously handled. One would give half a dozen like
+it for that _Second_ (but not necessarily _Last_) _Part_ of the
+_Facardins_, which Crébillon the younger is said to have actually seen
+and had the opportunity of saving, a chance which he neglected till too
+late.
+
+As _L'Enchanteur Faustus_ is the shortest of the completed tales, so _Le
+Bélier_ is the longest; indeed, as indicated above, it is the same
+length as what we have of _Les Quatre Facardins_. It is also--in that
+unsatisfactory and fragmentary way of knowledge with which literature
+often has to content itself--much the best known, because of the
+celebrated address of the giant Moulineau to the hero-beast "Bélier, mon
+ami,... si tu voulais bien commencer par le commencement, tu me ferais
+plaisir." There are many other agreeable things in it; but it has on the
+whole a double or more than double portion of the drawback which attends
+these "key" stories. It was written to please his sister, Madame de
+Grammont, who had established herself in a country-house, near
+Versailles. This she transformed from a mere cottage, called Moulineau,
+into an elegant villa to which she gave the name of Pontalie. There were
+apparently some difficulties with rustic neighbours, and Anthony wove
+the whole matter into this story, with the giant and the (of course
+enchanted) ram just mentioned; and the beautiful Alie who hates all men
+(or nearly all); and her father, a powerful druid, who is the giant's
+enemy; and the Prince de Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse, and other
+personages of the environs of Paris, who were no doubt recognisable and
+interesting once, but who, whether recognisable or not, are not
+specially interesting now. To repeat that there are good scenes and
+piquant remarks is merely to say once more that the thing is Hamilton's.
+But, on the whole, the present writer at any rate has always found it
+the least interesting (next to _L'Enchanteur Faustus_) of all.
+
+On the other hand, _Zénéyde_--though unfinished, and though containing,
+in its ostensibly main story, things compared to which the Prince de
+Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse excite to palpitation--has points of
+remarkable interest about it. One of these--a prefatory sketch of the
+melancholy court of exiles at St. Germains--is like nothing else in
+Hamilton and like very few things anywhere else. This is in no sense
+fiction--it is, in fact, a historical document of the most striking
+kind; but it makes background and canvas for fiction itself,[292] and it
+gives us, besides, a most vivid picture of the priest-ridden, caballing
+little crowd of folk who had made great renunciations but could not make
+small. It also shows us in Hamilton a somewhat darker but also a
+stronger side of satiric powers, differently nuanced from the quiet
+_persiflage_ of the _Contes_ themselves. This, however, though easily
+"cobbled on" to the special tale, and possibly not unconnected with it
+key-fashion, is entirely separable, and might just as well have formed
+part of an actual letter to the "Madame de P.," to whom it is addressed.
+
+The tale itself, like some if not all the others, but in a much more
+strikingly contrasted fashion, again consists of two strands, interwoven
+so intimately, however, that it is almost impossible to separate them,
+though it is equally impossible to conceive two things more different
+from each other. The ostensible theme is a history of herself, given by
+the Nymph of the Seine to the author--a history of which more presently.
+But this is introduced at considerable length, and interrupted more than
+once, by scenes and dialogues, between the nymph and her distinctly
+unwilling auditor, which are of the most whimsically humorous character
+to be found even in Hamilton himself.
+
+The whole account of the self-introduction of the nymph to the narrator
+is extremely quaint, but rather long to give here as a whole. It is
+enough to say that Hamilton represents himself as by no means an ardent
+nympholept, or even as flattered by demi-goddess-like advances, which
+are of the most obliging description; and that the lady has not only to
+make fuller and fuller revelations of her beauty, but at last to exert
+her supernatural power to some extent in order to carry the recreant
+into her "cool grot," not, indeed, under water, but invisibly situated
+on land. What there takes place is, unfortunately, as has been said,
+mainly the telling of a very dull story with one not so dull episode.
+But the conclusion of the preface exemplifies the whimsicality even of
+the writer, and points to the existence of a commodity in the fashion of
+wig-wearing which few who glory in "their own hair," and despise their
+periwigged forefathers, are likely to have thought of:
+
+     [Sidenote: Hamilton and the Nymph.]
+
+     At these words [_her own_] raising her eyes to heaven, she
+     sighed several times; and though she tried to keep them
+     back, I saw, coursing the length of her cheeks and falling
+     on her beautiful neck, tears so natural, in the midst of a
+     silence so touching, that I was just about to follow her
+     example.[293] But she soon recovered herself; and having
+     shown me by a languishing look that she was not insensible
+     to my sympathetic emotion ... [_she enjoins discretion, and
+     then_:--] After having looked at me attentively for some
+     time she came closer to me, and as she gently pulled one
+     side of my wig in order to whisper in my ear, I had to lean
+     over her in a rather familiar manner.[294] Her face touched
+     mine, and it seemed to me animated by a lively warmth, very
+     different from the insensibility which I had accused[295]
+     her of shedding upon me when she came out of the water. Her
+     breath was pure and fresh, and her goddess-ship, which I had
+     suspected of being something marshy, had no taint of mud
+     about it. If only I might reveal all that she said to me in
+     a confidence which I could have wished longer![295] But
+     apparently she got tired of it[295] and let go my wig.
+     "'Twould be too tiresome," she said, "to go on talking like
+     this. Go out there, and leave us alone!" I turned round, and
+     seeing no one in the room, I thought this order was
+     addressed to me, so I was just rising....
+
+This quaint presentation of a craven swain is perhaps as good an example
+as could be found of the curious mixture of French and English in
+Hamilton. Hardly any Frenchman could have borne to put even a fictitious
+eidolon of himself in such a contemptible light; very few Englishmen,
+though they might easily have done this, would have done it so neatly,
+and with so quaint a travesty of romantic situation. But the main story,
+as admitted above, is _assommant_, though, just before the breach, a
+substitution of three agreeable damsels for the nymph herself promises
+something better.
+
+This combination of the dullest with some of the finest and most
+characteristic work of the author, would be rather a puzzle in a more
+"serious" writer than Hamilton; but in his case there is no need to
+distress, or in any way to cumber, oneself about the matter. The whole
+thing was a "compliment," as the age would have said, to Fantasy; and
+the rules of the Court of Quintessence, though not non-existent as dull
+fools suppose, are singularly elastic to skilled players.
+
+We are left with what, even as it exists, is by far his most ambitious
+attempt, and with one in which, considering all its actual features, one
+need not be taking things too seriously if one decides that he had an
+aim at something like a whole--even if the legends[296] about further
+parts, actually seen and destroyed by a more than Byzantine pudibundity,
+are not taken as wholly gospel.
+
+The completed _Fleur d'Épine_ and the uncompleted _Quatre
+Facardins_[297] are in effect continuous parts (and to all appearance
+incomplete in more than the finishing of the second story) of an
+untitled but intelligibly sketched continuation of the _Arabian Nights_
+themselves. Hamilton, like others since, had evidently conceived an
+affection for Dinarzade: and a considerable contempt for Schahriar's
+notion of the advantages of matrimony. It is less certain, but I think
+possible, that he had anticipated the ideas of those who think that the
+unmarried sister went at least halves in the composition or remembrance
+of the stories themselves, or she could not have varied her timing at
+dawn so adroitly. He had, at any rate, an Irish-Englishman's sense of
+honest if humorous indignation at the part which she has to play (or
+rather endure) in these "two years" (much nearer three!), and the sequel
+in a way revenges her.
+
+I should imagine that Thackeray must have been reminiscent of Hamilton
+when he devised the part of "Sister Anne" in _Bluebeard's Ghost_. Like
+her, Hamilton's Dinarzade is slightly flippant; she would most certainly
+have observed "Dolly Codlins is the matter" in Anne's place. Like her,
+she is not unprovided with lovers; she actually, at the beginning,
+"takes a night off" that she may entertain the Prince of Trebizond; and
+it is the Prince himself who relates the great, but, alas! torsoed epic
+of the Facardins,[298] of whom he is himself one. But as there are only
+two stories, there is no room for much framework, and we see much less
+of the "resurrected" Dinarzade[299] than we could wish from what we do
+see and hear.
+
+_Fleur d'Épine_, which she herself tells, is a capital story, somewhat
+closer to the usual norm of the _Nights_ than is usual with Hamilton. It
+bases itself on the well-known legends of the Princess with the
+literally murderous eyes; but this Princess Luisante is not really the
+heroine, and is absent from the greater part of the tale, though she is
+finally provided with the hero's brother, who is a reigning prince, and
+has everything handsome about him. The actual hero Tarare (French for
+"Fiddlestick!" or something of that sort, and of course an assumed
+name), in order to cure Luisante's eyes of their lethal quality, has to
+liberate a still more attractive damsel--the title-heroine--putative
+daughter of a good fairy and actual victim of a bad one, quite in the
+orthodox style. He does this chiefly by the aid of a very amiable mare,
+who makes music wherever she goes, and can do wonderful things when her
+ears are duly manipulated. It is a good and pleasant story, with plenty
+of the direct relish of the fairy-tale, Eastern and Western, and plenty
+also of satirical parody of the serious romance. But it is not quite
+consummate. The opening, however, as a fair specimen of Hamilton's
+style, may be given.
+
+     [Sidenote: The opening of _Fleur d'Épine_.]
+
+     Two thousand four hundred and fifty-three leagues from here
+     there is an extraordinarily fine country called Cashmere. In
+     this country reigned a Caliph; that Caliph had a daughter,
+     and that daughter had a face; but people wished more than
+     once that she had never had any. Her beauty was not
+     insupportable till she was fifteen; but at that age it
+     became impossible to endure it. She had the most beautiful
+     mouth in the world; her nose was a masterpiece; the lilies
+     of Cashmere--a thousand times whiter than ours--were
+     discoloured beside her complexion; and it seemed impertinent
+     of the fresh-blown rose to show itself beside the carnation
+     of her cheek. Her forehead was unmatchable for shape and
+     brilliancy; its whiteness was contrasted with a Vandyke
+     point of hair blacker and more shining than jet--whence she
+     took her name of "Luisante"; the shape of her face seemed
+     made to frame so many wonders. But her eyes spoilt
+     everything.
+
+     No one had ever been able to look at them long enough to
+     distinguish their exact colour; for as soon as one met her
+     glance it was like a stroke of lightning. When she was eight
+     years old her father, the Caliph, was in the habit of
+     sending for her, to admire his offspring and give the
+     courtiers the opportunity of paying a thousand feeble
+     compliments to her youthful beauty; for even then they used
+     to put out the candles at midnight, no other light being
+     necessary except that of the little one's eyes. Yet all this
+     was nothing but--in the literal sense, and the
+     other--child's play; it was when her eyes had acquired full
+     strength that they became no joking matter.
+
+[_The fatal effects--killing men in twenty-four hours, and blinding
+women--are then told, with the complaints of the nobility whose sons
+have fallen victims, and the various suggestions for remedying the evil
+made at a committee, which is presided over by the Seneschal of the
+kingdom ... "the silliest man who had ever held such an office--so much
+so that the caliph could not possibly think of choosing any one less
+silly." Tarare happens to be in this pundit-potentate's service; and so
+the story starts._]
+
+[Sidenote: _Les Quatre Facardins._]
+
+But--and indeed the writer's opinion on this point has already been
+indicated--Hamilton's masterpiece, unfinished as it is, is _Les Quatre
+Facardins_. Indeed, though unfinished in one sense, it is, in another,
+the most finished of all. Beside it the completed _Faustus_ is a mere
+trifle, and not a very interesting trifle. It has no dull parts like
+_Zénéyde_ and even _Le Bélier_. It has much greater complication of
+interest and variety of treatment than _Fleur d'Épine_, in which, after
+the opening, Hamilton's peculiar _persiflage_, though not absent, is
+much less noticeable. It at least suggests, tantalising as the
+suggestion is, that the author for once really intended to wind up all
+his threads into a compact ball, or (which is the better image) to weave
+them into a new and definite pattern. Moreover--this may not be a
+recommendation to everybody, but it is a very strong one to the present
+historian,--it has no obvious or insistent "key"-element whatsoever. It
+is, indeed, not at all unlikely that there _is_ one, for the trick was
+ingrained in the literature and the society of the time. But if so, it
+is a sleeping dog that neither bites nor barks; and if you let it alone
+it will stay in its kennel, and not even obtrude itself upon your view.
+
+To these partly, if not wholly, negative merits it adds positive ones of
+a very considerable and delectable kind. The connection with the
+_Arabian Nights_ is brought closer still in the fact that it is not only
+told (as of himself) by the Prince of Trebizond, Dinarzade's
+servant-cavalier, but is linked--to an important extent, and not at all
+to Schahriar's unmixed satisfaction--with one of the earliest incidents
+of the _Nights_ themselves, the remarkable story how the Lady from the
+Sea increases her store of rings at the cost of some exertion and
+alarm--not to mention the value of the rings themselves--to the Sultan
+and his brother, the King of Tartary. This lady, with her genie and her
+glass box, reappears as "Cristalline la Curieuse"--one of the two
+heroines. The other, of whose actual adventures we hear only the
+beginning, and that at the very close of the story, is Mousseline la
+Sérieuse, who never laughs, and who, later, escaping literally by the
+loss of her last garment, twitched off by the jaws of an enormous
+crocodile, afterwards the pest of the country, finds herself under a
+mysterious weird. She is never able to get a similar vestment made for
+her, either of day- or night-fashion. Three hundred and seventy-four
+dozen of such things, which formed her wardrobe, had disappeared[300]
+after the death (actually crocodile-devoured) of her Mistress of the
+Robes; and although she used up all the linen-drapers' stocks of the
+capital in trying to get new ones, they were all somewhat milder
+varieties of the shirt of Nessus. For the day-shifts deprived her of all
+appetite for food or drink, and the night ones made it impossible for
+her to sleep.
+
+This particular incident comes, as has been said, just at the end of
+what we have of the book; indeed there is nothing more, save a burlesque
+embassy, amply provided with painted cloth[301] and monkeys, to the
+great enchanter Caramoussal (who has already figured in the book), and
+the announcement, by one of the other Facardins, of its result--a new
+adventure for champions, who must either make the Princess laugh or kill
+the crocodile. "It is indifferent," we learn from a most Hamiltonian
+sentence, "whether you begin with the crocodile or with the Princess."
+Indeed there is yet another means of restoring peace in the Kingdom of
+Astrachan, according to the enchanter himself, who modestly disclaims
+being an enchanter, observing (again in a thoroughly Hamiltonian manner)
+that as he lives on the top of a mountain close to the stars, they
+probably tell him more than they tell other people. It is to collect
+three spinning-wheels[302] which are scattered over the universe, but
+of some of which we have heard earlier in the story.
+
+One takes perhaps a certain pleasure in outraging the feelings of the
+giant Moulineau, so hateful to Madame de Grammont, by beginning not
+merely in the middle but at the end--an end, alas! due, if we believe
+all the legends, to her own mistaken zeal when she became a _dévote_--a
+variety of person for whom her brother[303] certainly had small
+affection, though he did not avenge himself on it in novel-form quite so
+cruelly as did Marivaux later. It is, however, quite good to begin at
+the beginning, though the verse-preface needs perhaps to be read with
+eyes of understanding. Ostensibly, it is a sort of historical
+condemnation of all the species of fiction which had been popular for
+half a century or so, and is thus very much to our purpose, though, like
+almost all the verses included in these tales, it does not show the
+poetic power which the author of _Celle que j'adore_[304] undoubtedly
+possessed. Mere tales, he says, have quite banished from court favour
+romances, celebrated for their sentiments, from _Cyrus_ to _Zaïde_,
+_i.e._ from Mlle. de Scudéry to Mme. de la Fayette. _Télémaque_ had no
+better fate
+
+    On courut au Palais[305] le rendre,
+    Et l'on s'empressa d'y reprendre
+    Le Rameau d'Or et l'Oiseau Bleu.[306]
+
+Then came the "Arabian tales," of which he speaks with a harshness, the
+sincerity or design of which may be left to the reader; and then he
+himself took up the running, of course obliged by request of
+irresistible friends of the other sex. All which may or may not be read
+with grains of salt--the salt-merchant of which everybody is at liberty
+to choose for himself. Something may be said on the subject when we, in
+all modesty, try to sum up Hamilton and the period.
+
+But we must now give some more account of the "Four Facardins"
+themselves. He of Trebizond is a tributary Prince of Schahriar's, much
+after the fashion (it is to be feared here burlesqued) of the
+innumerable second- and third-class heroes whom one meets in the
+_Cyrus_. He begins, like Dinarzade,[307] by "cheeking" the Sultan on his
+views of matrimony; and then he tells how he set out from his dominions
+in quest of adventures, and met another bearer of the remarkable name
+which his mother had insisted on giving him. This second adventurer
+happened to be bearer also of a helmet with a strange bird, apparently
+all made of gems, as its crest. They exchange confidences, which are to
+the effect that the Trebizondian Facardin is a lady-killer of the most
+extravagant success, while the other (who is afterwards called Facardin
+of the Mountain) is always unfortunate in love; notwithstanding which he
+proposes to undertake the adventure (to be long afterwards defined) of
+Mousseline la Sérieuse. For the present he contents himself with two or
+three more stories (or, rather, one in several "fyttes"), which reduce
+the wildest of the _Nights_ to simple village tales--of an island where
+lions are hunted with a provision of virgins, chanticleers, and small
+deer on an elaborately ruled system; of a mountain full of wild beasts,
+witches, lovely nymphs, savages, and an enchanter at the top. After an
+interruption very much in the style of Chaucer's Host and _Sir Thopas_,
+from Dinarzade, who is properly rebuked by the Sultan, Facardin of the
+Mountain (he has quite early in the story received the celebrated
+scratch from a lion's claw, "from his right shoulder to his left heel")
+recounts a shorter adventure with Princess Sapinelle of Denmark, and at
+last, after a fresh outburst from Dinarzade, the Prince of Trebizond
+comes to his own affairs.
+
+Then it is that (after some details about the Prince of Ophir, who has a
+minim mouth and an enormous nose, and the Princess of Bactria, whose
+features were just the reverse) we recover Cristalline. It is perhaps
+only here that even Mrs. Grundy, though she may have been uncomfortable
+elsewhere, can feel really shocked at Hamilton; others than Mrs. Grundy
+need not be so even here. The genie has discovered his Lady's little
+ways, and has resolved to avenge himself on her by strict custody, and
+by a means of delivery which, if possible, might not have entirely
+displeased her. The hundred rings are bewitched to their chain, and are
+only to be recovered by the same process which strung them on it. But
+this process must be applied by one person in the space of twelve hours,
+and the conditions are only revealed to him after he has been kidnapped
+or cajoled within the genie's power. If he refuses to try, he is clad as
+Omphale clad Hercules, and set to work. If he tries and fails, he is to
+be flayed alive and burnt. Facardin, to the despair of his secretary,
+enters--beguiled by a black ambassadress, who merely informs him that a
+lady wants help--the enchanted boat which takes him to the fatal scene.
+But when he is to be introduced to the lady he entirely declines to part
+with his sword; and when the whole secret is revealed he, with the help
+of Cristalline, who is really a good-natured creature in more senses
+than one, slays the three chief minions of the tyrant--a watchmaker who
+sets the clock, a locksmith who is to count the detached rings, and a
+kind of Executioner High-priest who is to do the flaying and
+burning,--cuts his way with Cristalline herself to the enchanted boat,
+regaining _terra firma_ and (relatively speaking) _terra_ not too much
+enchanted. But at his very landing at the mouth of the crocodile river
+he again meets Facardin of the Mountain (who has figured in
+Cristalline's history earlier) with the two others, whose stories we
+shall never hear; and is told about Mousseline; whereat we and the tale
+"join our ends" as far as is permitted.
+
+It would be easy to pick from this story alone a sort of nosegay of
+Hamiltonisms like that from Fuller, which Charles Lamb selected so
+convincingly that some have thought them simply invented. But it would
+be unjust to Anthony, because, unless each was given in a _matrix_ of
+context, nobody could, in most cases at any rate, do justice to this
+curious glancing genius of his. It exists in Sydney Smith to some
+extent--in Thackeray to more--among Englishmen. There is, in French,
+something of it in Lesage, who possibly learnt it directly from him; and
+of course a good deal, though of a lower kind, in Voltaire, who
+certainly did learn it from him. But it is, with that slight
+indebtedness to Saint-Évremond noticed above, essentially new and
+original. It is a mixture of English-Irish (that is to say,
+Anglo-Norman) humour with French wit, almost unattainable at that day
+except by a man who, in addition to his natural gifts, had the mixed
+advantages and disadvantages of his exile position.
+
+Frenchmen at the time--there is abundance, not of mere anecdote, but of
+solid evidence to prove it--knew practically nothing of English
+literature. Englishmen knew a good deal more of French, and imitated and
+translated it, sometimes more eagerly than wisely. But they had not as
+yet assimilated or appreciated it: that was left for the eighteenth
+century to do. Meanwhile Hamilton brought the double influence to bear,
+not merely on the French novel, but on the novel in general and on the
+eccentric novel in particular. To appreciate him properly, he ought to
+be compared with Rabelais before him and with Voltaire or Sterne--with
+both, perhaps, as a counsel of perfection--after him. He is a smaller
+man, both in literature and in humanity, than Master Francis; but the
+phrase which Voltaire himself rather absurdly used of Swift might be
+used without any absurdity in reference to him. He _is_ a "Rabelais de
+bonne compagnie," and from the exactly opposite point of view he might
+be called a Voltaire or a Sterne _de bonne compagnie_ likewise. That is
+to say, he is a gentleman pretty certainly as well as a genius, which
+Rabelais might have been, at any rate in other circumstances, but did
+not choose to be, and which neither François Arouet nor Laurence Sterne
+could have been, however much either had tried, though the metamorphosis
+is not quite so utterly inconceivable in Sterne's case as in the
+other's. Hamilton, it has been confessed, is sometimes "naughty"; but
+his naughtiness is neither coarse nor sniggering,[308] and he depends
+upon it so little--a very important point--that he is sometimes most
+amusing when he is not naughty at all. In other words, he has no need of
+it, but simply takes it as one of the infinite functions of human
+comedy. Against which let Mrs. Grundy say what she likes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is conceivable that objection may be taken, or at any rate surprise
+felt, at the fulness with which a group of mostly little books--no one
+of them produced by an author of the first magnitude as usual estimates
+run--has been here handled. But the truth is that the actual birth of
+the French novel took a much longer time than that of the English--a
+phenomenon explicable, without any national vainglory, by the fact that
+it came first and gave us patterns and stimulants. The writers surveyed
+in this chapter, and those who will take their places in the next--at
+least Scarron, Furetière, Madame de La Fayette and Hamilton, Lesage,
+Marivaux, and Prévost--whatever objections or limitations may be brought
+against them, form the central group of the originators of the modern
+novel. They open the book of life, as distinguished from that of
+factitious and rather stale literature; they point out the varieties of
+incident and character; the manners and interiors and fantastic
+adjustments; the sentiment rising to passion--which are to determine the
+developments and departments of the fiction of the future. They leave,
+as far as we have seen them, great opportunities for improvement to
+those immediate followers to whom we shall now turn. Hamilton is,
+indeed, not yet much followed, but Lesage far outgoes Scarron in the
+raising of the picaresque; Marivaux distances Furetière in painting of
+manners and in what some people call psychology; _Manon Lescaut_ throws
+_La Princesse de Clèves_ into the shade as regards the greatest and
+most novel-breeding of the passions. But the whole are really a _bloc_,
+the continental sense of which is rather different from our "block." And
+perhaps we shall find that, though none of them was equal in genius to
+some who succeeded them in novel-writing, the novel itself made little
+progress, and some backsliding, during nearly a hundred years after they
+ceased to write.
+
+
+NOTE ON _TÉLÉMAQUE_
+
+     It may not perhaps be superfluous to give the rest of that
+     criticism of Hamilton's on _Télémaque_, the conclusion of
+     which has been quoted above. "In vain, from the famous
+     coasts of Ithaca, the wise and renowned Mentor came to
+     enrich us with those treasures of his which his _Télémaque_
+     contains. In vain the art of the teacher delicately
+     displays, in this romance of a rare kind, the usefulness and
+     the deceitfulness of politics and of love, as well as that
+     fatal sweetness--frail daughter of luxury--which intoxicates
+     a conquering hero at the feet of a young mistress or of a
+     skilful enchantress, such as in each case this Mentor
+     depicts them. But, well-versed as he was in human weakness,
+     and elaborately as he imitated the style and the stories of
+     Greece, the vogue that he had was of short duration. Weary
+     of inability to understand the mysteries which he unfolded,
+     men ran to the Palais to give back the volume," etc., etc.
+
+     Hamilton, no doubt intentionally, has himself made this
+     criticism rather "mysterious." It is well known that, if not
+     quite at first, very soon after its appearance, the fact
+     that the politics, if not also the morals, of Fénelon's book
+     were directly at variance with Court standards was
+     recognised. At a time when Court favour and fashion were the
+     very breath of the upper circles, and directly or indirectly
+     ruled the middle, the popularity of this curious
+     romance-exhortation was, at any rate for a time, nipped in
+     the bud, to revive only in the permanent but not altogether
+     satisfactory conditions of a school-book. Whether Hamilton
+     dealt discreetly with the matter by purposely confining
+     himself to the record of a fact, or at least mixing praise
+     to which no exception could be taken, with what might be
+     taken for blame, one cannot say. By dotting a few i's,
+     crossing the t's, and perhaps touching up some hidden
+     letters with the requisite reagent, one can, however, get a
+     not unfair or unshrewd criticism of the book out of this
+     envelope. _Télémaque_, if it is not, as one of Thackeray's
+     "thorn" correspondents suggested, superior to "_Lovel
+     Parsonage_ and _Framley the Widower_," has, or with some
+     easy suppressions and a very few additions and developments
+     might have, much more pure romance interest than its
+     centuries of scholastic use allow it to have for most
+     people. Eucharis is capable of being much more than she is
+     allowed to show herself; and some Mrs. Grundys, with more
+     intelligence than the average member of the clan, have
+     hinted that Calypso might be dangerous if the persons who
+     read about her were not likely to consider her as too old to
+     be interesting. The style is, of course, admirable--there
+     has hardly ever been a better writer of French than Fénelon,
+     who was also a first-rate narrator and no mean critic.
+     Whether by the "mysteries" Hamilton himself meant politics,
+     morals, religion, or all three and other "serious" things,
+     is a point which, once more, is impossible to settle. But it
+     is quite certain that, whether there is any difficulty in
+     comprehending them or not, a great many--probably the huge
+     majority--of novel readers would not care to take the
+     trouble to comprehend them, and might, even if they found
+     little difficulty, resent being asked to do so. And so we
+     have here not the first--for, as has been said, the Heroic
+     romance itself had much earlier been "conscripted" into the
+     service of didactics--but the first brilliant, or almost
+     brilliant, example of that novel of purpose which will meet
+     us so often hereafter. It may be said to have at once
+     revealed (for the earlier examples were, as a rule, too dull
+     to be fair tests) the ineradicable defects of the species.
+     Even when the purpose does not entirely preclude the
+     possibility of enjoyment, it always gets in the way thereof;
+     and when the enjoyable matter does not absorb attention to
+     the disregard of the purpose altogether, it seldom--perhaps
+     never--really helps that purpose to get itself fulfilled.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[247] It is perhaps not quite superfluous to point out that the
+principle of separation in these chapters is quite different from that
+(between "idealist" and "realist") pursued by Körting and others, and
+reprobated, partially or wholly, by MM. Le Breton and Brunetière.
+
+[248] _L'Autre Monde: ou Histoire Comique des États et Empires de la
+Lune_, etc.
+
+[249] It must be remembered that even Gerard Hamilton made many more
+speeches, but only one good one, while the novelists discussed here
+wrote in most cases many other books. But their goodness shows itself in
+hardly more than a single work in each case. Anthony Hamilton's is in
+all his.
+
+[250] It has been noted, I think, by all who have written about the
+_Berger_, that Sorel is a sort of Balak and Balaam in one. He calls on
+himself to curse the _Astrée_, but he, sometimes at least, blesses it.
+
+[251] The _Berger_ fills two volumes of some nine hundred pages;
+_Polyandre_, two of six hundred each! But it must be admitted that the
+print is very large and widely spaced.
+
+[252] One remembers the story of the greater Corneille calling to the
+lesser down a trap between their two houses, "Sans-Souci!--une rime!"
+
+[253] I have known this word more than once objected to as pedantic. But
+pedantry in this kind consists in using out-of-the-way terms when common
+ones are ready to hand. There is no single word in English to express
+the lower kind of "Dutch-painting" as this Greek word does. And Greek is
+a recognised and standing source of words for English. If geography, why
+not rhyparography?--or, if any one prefers it, "rhypography," which,
+however, is not, I think, so good a form.
+
+[254] There is, no doubt, significance in the fact that they are
+definitely called _nouvelles_.
+
+[255] _V. sup._ p. 204. The habit of these continues in all the books.
+_L'Illustre Bassa_ opens with a most elaborate, but still not very much
+"alive," procession and sham fight.
+
+[256] Of course Cervantes is not shadowy.
+
+[257] As far as mere chronology goes, Cyrano, _v. inf._, should come
+between; but it would split the parallel.
+
+[258] Scarron had, in Le Destin's account of himself, made a distinction
+between the pastoral and heroic groups and the "old" romances, meaning
+thereby not the true mediaeval specimens but the _Amadis_ cycle.
+Furetière definitely classes all of them together.
+
+[259] The time is well known to have been fond of anagrams, and
+"Charroselles" is such an obvious one for "Charles Sorel" that for once
+there is no need to gainsay or neglect the interpreters. The thing, if
+really meant for a real person, is a distinct lampoon, and may perhaps
+explain the expulsion and persecution of Furetière, by his colleagues of
+the Academy, almost as well as the ostensible cause thereof--his
+compiling, in competition with the Academy itself, of a French
+Dictionary, and a very good one, which was not printed till after his
+death, and ultimately became the famous _Dictionnaire de Trévoux_. Not
+that Sorel himself was of much importance, but that the thing shows the
+irritable and irritating literary failing in the highest degree.
+Furetière had friends of position, from Boileau, Racine, and Bossuet
+downwards; and the king himself, though he did not interfere, seems to
+have disapproved the Academy's action. But the _Roman_ was heavily
+"slated" for many years, though it had a curious revival in the earlier
+part of the next century; and for the rest of that century and the first
+part of the nineteenth it was almost wholly forgotten.
+
+[260] She falls in love with an ebony cabinet at a fair which they visit
+together, and he gives it her. But, anticipating that she will use it
+for her most precious things, he privately gets a second set of keys
+from the seller, and in her absence achieves the theft of the promise.
+
+[261] Any one who has, as the present writer has had, opportunities of
+actually doing this, will find it a not uninteresting operation, and one
+which "amply repays the expense" of time and trouble.
+
+[262] This is a point of importance. Details of a life-like character
+are most valuable in the novel; but if they are not "material" in the
+transferred sense they are simply a bore. Scott undoubtedly learnt this
+lesson from his prentice work in finishing Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_,
+where the story is simply a clumsy vehicle for conveying information
+about sports and pastimes and costumes and such-like "antiqu_ar_ities."
+
+[263] To us small, as are not those of its predecessors.
+
+[264] Not a bad instance of the subacid touches which make the book
+lively, and which probably supply some explanation of its author's
+unpopularity. The "furred law-cats" of all kinds were always a
+prevailing party in Old France, and required stout gloves to touch them
+with.
+
+[265] This (often called by its Italian name of Quarant' ore) is a
+"Devotion" during an exposure of the Sacrament for that time, in memory
+of the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Our
+Lord. It is a public service, and, I suppose, collections were made _at
+intervals_. No one, especially no girl, could stand the time straight
+through. The "Paradise" was, of course, a "decoration."
+
+[266] Javotte says "shoe the mule"--"ferrer la mule"--one of the phrases
+like "faire danser l'anse du panier" and others, for taking
+"self-presented testimonials," as Wilkie Collins's Captain Wragge more
+elegantly and less cryptically calls it.
+
+[267] Of course the regular "thanks" of a collector for pious purposes.
+
+[268] He does later seek this, and only loses her (if she can be called
+a loss) by his own folly. But his main objective is to _conter_ (or as
+Furetière himself has it, _débiter_) _la fleurette_. It ought, perhaps,
+to be mentioned, as a possible counterweight or drawback, that the
+novelist breaks off to discuss the too great matter-of-factness of
+bourgeois girls and women. But he was to have great followers in this
+also.
+
+[269] He was born and baptised Savinien de Cyrano, and called himself de
+Cyrano-Bergerac. The sound of the additional designation and some of his
+legendary peculiarities probably led to his being taken for a Gascon;
+but there is no evidence of meridional extraction or seat, and there
+appears to be some of Breton or other Western connection.
+
+[270] There is nothing in the least astonishing in his having been
+this--if he was. The tendency of the Renaissance towards what is called
+"free thought" is quite well known; and the existence, in the
+seventeenth century, of a sort of school of boisterous and rather vulgar
+infidelity is familiar--with the names of Bardouville, and Saint-Ibal or
+Saint-Ibar, as members of it--to all readers of Saint-Évremond,
+Tallemant, the _Ana_, etc.
+
+[271] Perhaps the dullest part is where (save the mark!) the Demon of
+Socrates is brought in to talk sometimes mere platitudes, sometimes tame
+paradoxes which might as well be put in the mouth of any pupil-teacher,
+or any popular journalist or dramatist, of the present day.--Of the
+attempt to make Swift Cyrano's debtor one need say little: but among
+predecessors, if not creditors, Ben Jonson, for his _News from the New
+World discovered in the Moon_, may at least be mentioned.
+
+[272] The key-mongers, of course, identify the three with the author,
+her own husband, and La Rochefoucauld.
+
+[273] He has ensconced himself in one of the smaller rooms of a garden
+pavilion outside of which they are sitting, having left their suite at
+some distance.
+
+[274] _Maîtresse de sa conduite_, a curious but not difficult text as to
+French ideas of marriage.
+
+[275] I have been obliged to insert "trials" to bring out the meaning of
+"_exposée au milieu_." "_Exposée_" has a fuller sense than the simple
+English verb, and almost equals the legal "exposed for sale."
+
+[276] Mme. de la Fayette was a very accomplished woman, and, possibly
+from her familiarity with Queen Henrietta Maria, well acquainted with
+English as well as French history. But our proper names, as usual,
+vanquish her, and she makes Henry VIII. marry Jane _Seimer_ and
+Catherine _Havart_.
+
+[277] This does not apply to the _main_ love story but to the atmosphere
+generally. The Vidame de Chartres, for instance, is represented as in
+love with (1) Queen Catherine; (2) a Mme. de Themines, with whom he is
+not quite satisfied; (3) a Mme. de Martignes, with whom he is; (4) a
+lady unnamed, with whom he has _trompé_ them all. This may be true
+enough to life; but it is difficult to make it into good matter of
+fiction, especially with a crowd of other people doing much the same.
+
+[278] It ought, perhaps, to be added that though manners, etc., altered
+not a little between Henri II. and Louis XIV., the alteration was much
+less than in most other histories at most other periods. It would be
+easy to find two persons in Tallemant whose actual experience covered
+the whole time.
+
+[279] You _had_ to call it so when I first saw it; when I last did so it
+was "Oiron." No doubt it is something else now.
+
+[280] For that, see Chapter XII.
+
+[281] See below on the version Introduction to the _Quatre Facardins_.
+
+[282] Including miscellaneous imbecility and unsuitableness as well as
+moral indecorum.
+
+[283] Written for the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1882, but by a chapter of
+accidents not printed till 1890. Reprinted next year in _Essays on
+French Novelists_ (London, 1891).
+
+[284] Miss Ruth Clark.
+
+[285] The conclusion of _Vathek_ is of course undoubtedly more
+"admirable" than anything of Hamilton's; but it is in a quite different
+genus.
+
+[286] The piece _Celle que j'adore_ is the best of the casual verses,
+though there are other good songs, etc. Those which alternate with the
+prose of some of the tales are too often (as in the case of the
+_Cabinet_ insets, _v. sup._) rather prosaic. Of the prose miscellanies
+the so-called _Relations_ "of different places in Europe," and "of a
+voyage to Mauritania," contain some of the cream of Hamilton's almost
+uniquely ironic narrative and commentary. When that great book, "The
+Nature and History of Irony," which has to be written is written--the
+last man died with the last century and the next hour seems far off--a
+contrast of Hamilton and Kinglake will probably form part of it.
+
+[287] As a member, though a cadet, of a cadet branch of one of the
+noblest families of Great Britain and Ireland.
+
+[288] As a soldier, a courtier of Charles II., and a Jacobite exile in
+France.
+
+[289] I may perhaps be allowed to refer to another essay of mine on him
+in _Miscellaneous Essays_ (London, 1892). It contains a full account,
+and some translation, of the _Conversation du maréchal d'Hocquincourt
+avec le Père Canaye_, which is at once the author's masterpiece of quiet
+irony, his greatest pattern for the novelist, and his clearest evidence
+of influence on Hamilton.
+
+[290] There are some who hold that _the_ "English" differentia, whether
+shown in letters or in life, whether south or north of Tweed, east or
+west of St. George's Channel is always Anglo-Norman.
+
+[291] The "Marian" and Roman comparison of Anne Boleyn's position to
+Rosamond's is interesting.
+
+[292] It is a sort of brief lift and drop of the curtain which still
+concealed the true historical novel; it has even got a further literary
+interest as giving the seamy side of the texture of Macaulay's admirable
+_Jacobite's Epitaph_. The account would be rather out of place here, but
+may be found translated at length (pp. 44-46) in the volume of _Essays
+on French Novelists_ more than once referred to.
+
+[293] The most unexpected bathos of these last three words is of course
+intentional, and is Hamilton all over.
+
+[294] The nymph is lying on a couch, and her companion (who has been
+recalcitrant even to this politeness) is sitting beside her.
+
+[295] This is as impudent as the other passages below are imbecile--of
+course in each case (as before) with a calculated impudence and
+imbecility. The miserable creature had himself obliged her to "come out
+of the water" by declining to join her there on the plea that he was
+never good for an assignation when he was wet!
+
+[296] If they are true, and if Madame de Grammont was the culprit, it is
+a sad confirmation of the old gibe, "Skittish in youth, prudish in age."
+It can only be pleaded in extenuation that some youth which was not
+skittish, such as Sarah Marlborough's, matured or turned into something
+worse than "devotion." And Elizabeth Hamilton was so very pretty!
+
+[297] "Completions" of both _Zénéyde_ and _Les Quatre Facardins_, by the
+Duke de Lévis, are included in some editions, but they are, after the
+fashions of such things, very little good.
+
+[298] The name is not, like "Tarare," a direct burlesque; but it
+suggests a burlesque intention when taken with "facond" and others
+including, perhaps, even _faquin_.
+
+[299] The Sultaness is almost _persona muta_--and indeed her tongue must
+have required a rest.
+
+[300] As Hamilton's satiric intention is as sleepless as poor Princess
+Mousseline herself, it is not impossible that he remembered the incident
+recorded by Pepys, or somebody, how King Charles the Second could not
+get a sheet of letter paper to write on for all the Royal Households and
+Stationery Offices and such-like things in the English world.
+
+[301] _I.e._ colour-printed cotton from India--a novelty "fashionable"
+and, therefore, satirisable in France.
+
+[302] Or "distaffs and spindles"?
+
+[303] She is indeed said to have "converted" both him and Grammont, the
+latter perhaps the most remarkable achievement of its kind.
+
+[304] Mr. Austin Dobson's charming translation of this was originally
+intended to appear in the present writer's essay above mentioned.
+
+[305] The chief region of bookselling. Cf. Corneille's early comedy, _La
+Galerie du Palais_.
+
+[306] For note on _Télémaque_ see end of chapter.
+
+[307] Who is here herself an improved Doralise.
+
+[308] To put it otherwise in technical French, there is a little
+_grivoiserie_ in him, but absolutely no _polissonnerie_, still less any
+_cochonnerie_. Or it may be put, best of all, in his own words when, in
+a short French-Greek dialogue, called _La Volupté_, he makes Aspasia say
+to Agathon, "Je vous crois fort voluptueux, sans vous croire débauché."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PRÉVOST, CRÉBILLON
+
+
+The words which closed the last chapter should make it unnecessary to
+prefix much of the same kind to this, though at the end we may have
+again to summarise rather more fully.
+
+[Sidenote: The subjects of the chapter.]
+
+As was there observed, our figures here are, with the possible exception
+of Crébillon _Fils_, "larger" persons than those dealt with before them;
+and they also mark a further transition towards the condition--the
+"employment or vocation"--of the novelist proper, though the polygraphic
+habit which has grown upon all modern literature, and which began in
+France almost earlier than anywhere else, affects them. Scarron was even
+more of a dramatist than of a novelist; and though this was also the
+case with Lesage and Marivaux--while Prévost was, save for his
+masterpiece, a polygraph of the polygraphs--their work in fiction was
+far larger, both positively and comparatively, than his. _Gil Blas_ for
+general popularity, and _Manon Lescaut_ for enthusiastic admiration of
+the elect, rank almost, if not quite, among the greatest novels of the
+world. Marivaux, for all his irritating habit of leaving things
+unfinished, and the almost equally irritating affectation of phrase, in
+which he anticipated some English novelists of the late nineteenth and
+earliest twentieth century, is almost the first "psychologist" of prose
+fiction; that is to say, where Madame de la Fayette had taken the
+soul-analysis of hardly more than two persons (Nemours scarcely counts)
+in a single situation, Marivaux gives us an almost complete dissection
+of the temperament and character of a girl and of a man under many
+ordinary life-circumstances for a considerable time.
+
+[Sidenote: Lesage--his Spanish connections.]
+
+But we must begin, not with him but with Lesage, not merely as the older
+man by twenty years, but in virtue of that comparative "greatness" of
+his greatest work which has been glanced at. There is perhaps a doubt
+whether _Gil Blas_ is as much read now as it used to be; it is pretty
+certain that _Le Diable Boiteux_ is not. The certainty is a pity; and if
+the doubt be true, it is a greater pity still. For more than a century
+_Gil Blas_ was almost as much[309] a classic, either in the original or
+in translation, in England as it was in France; and the delight which it
+gave to thousands of readers was scarcely more important to the history
+of fiction generally than the influence it exerted upon generation after
+generation of novelists, not merely in its own country, but on the far
+greater artists in fiction of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
+century in England from Fielding to Scott, if not to Dickens. Now, I
+suppose, that we are told to start with the axiom that even Fielding's
+structure of humanity is a simple toy-like thing, how much more is
+Lesage's? But for those of us who have not bowed the knee to foolish
+modern Baals, "They reconciled us; we embraced, and we have since been
+mortal enemies"; and the trout; and the soul of the licentiate; and Dr.
+Sangrado; and the Archbishop of Granada--to mention only the most famous
+and hackneyed matters--are still things a little larger, a little more
+complex, a little more eternal and true, than webs of uninteresting
+analysis told in phrase to which Marivaudage itself is golden and
+honeyed Atticism.
+
+Yet once more we can banish, with a joyful and quiet mind, a crowd of
+idle fancies and disputes, apparently but not really affecting our
+subjects. The myth of a direct Spanish origin for _Gil Blas_ is almost
+as easily dispersible by the clear sun of criticism as the exaggeration
+of the debt of the smaller book to Guevara. On the other hand, the
+_general_ filiation of Lesage on his Spanish predecessors is undeniable,
+and not worth even shading off and toning down. A man is not ashamed of
+having good fathers and grandfathers, whose property he now enjoys,
+before him in life; and why should he be in literature?
+
+[Sidenote: Peculiarity of his work generally.]
+
+Lesage's work, in fiction and out of it, is considerable in bulk, but it
+is affected (to what extent disadvantageously different judges may judge
+differently) by some of the peculiarities of the time which have been
+already mentioned, and by some which have not. It is partly original,
+partly mere translation, and partly also a mixture of the strangest
+kind. Further, its composition took place in a way difficult to adjust
+to later ideas. Lesage was not, like Marivaux, a professed and shameless
+"_un_finisher," but he took a great deal of time to finish his
+work.[310] He was not an early-writing author; and when he did begin, he
+showed something of that same strange need of a suggestion, a
+"send-off," or whatever anybody likes to call it, which appears even in
+his greatest work. He began with the _Letters_ of Aristaenetus, which,
+though perhaps they have been abused more than they deserve by people
+who have never read them, and would never have heard of them if it had
+not been for Alain René, are certainly not the things that most
+scholars, with the whole range of Greek literature before them to choose
+from, would have selected. His second venture was almost worse than his
+first; for there _are_ some prettinesses in Aristaenetus, and except for
+the one famous passage enshrined by Pope in the _Essay on Criticism_,
+there is, I believe,[311] nothing good in the continuation of _Don
+Quixote_ by the so-called Avellaneda. But at any rate this job, which
+is attributed to the suggestion of the Abbé de Lyonne, "put" Lesage on
+Spanish, and never did fitter seed fall on more fertile soil.
+
+[Sidenote: And its variety.]
+
+Longinus would, I think, have liked _Gil Blas_, and indeed Lesage, very
+much. You might kill ten asses, of the tallest Poitou standard in size
+and the purest Zoilus or Momus sub-variety in breed, under you while
+going through his "faults." He translates; he borrows; he "plagiarises"
+about as much as is possible for anybody who is not a mere dullard to
+do. Of set plot there is nothing in his work, whether you take the two
+famous pieces, or the major adaptations like _Estévanille Gonzales_ and
+_Guzman d'Alfarache_, or the lesser things, more Lucianic than anything
+else, such as the _Cheminées de Madrid_[312] and the _Journée des
+Parques_ and the _Valise Trouvée_. "He worked for his living" (as M.
+Anatole France long ago began a paper about him which is not quite the
+best of its very admirable author's work), and though the pot never
+boiled quite so merrily as the cook deserved, the fact of the
+pot-boiling makes itself constantly felt. _Les chaînes de l'esclavage_
+must have cut deep into his soul, and the result of the cutting is
+evident enough in his work. But the vital marks on that work are such as
+many perfectly free men, who have wished to take literature as a
+mistress only, have never been able to impress on theirs. He died full
+of years, but scarcely of the honours due to him, failing in power, and
+after a life[313] of very little luck, except as regards possession of a
+wife who seems to have been beautiful in youth and amiable always, with
+at least one son who observed the Fifth Commandment to the utmost. But
+he lives among the immortals, and there are few names in our present
+history which are of more importance to it than his.
+
+Some of his best and least unequal work is indeed denied us. We have
+nothing to do with his drama, though _Turcaret_ is something like a
+masterpiece in comedy, and _Crispin Rival de son Maître_ a capital
+farce. We cannot even discuss that remarkable _Théâtre de la Foire_,
+which, though a mere collection of the lightest Harlequinades, has more
+readable matter of literature in it than the whole English comic drama
+since Sheridan, with the exception of the productions of the late Sir
+William Gilbert.
+
+Nor must much be said even of his minor novel work. The later
+translations and adaptations from the Spanish need hardly any notice for
+obvious reasons; whatever is good in them being either not his, or
+better exemplified in the _Devil_ and in _Gil_. The extremely curious
+and very Defoe-like book--almost if not quite his last--_Vie et
+Aventures de M. de Beauchesne, Capitaine de Flibustiers_, is rather a
+subject for a separate essay than for even a paragraph here. But Lesage,
+from our point of view, is _Le Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_, and to
+the _Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_ let us accordingly turn.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Diable Boiteux._]
+
+The relations of the earlier and shorter book to the _Diablo Cojuelo_ of
+Luis Velez de Guevara are among the most open secrets of literature. The
+Frenchman, in a sort of prefatory address to his Spanish parent and
+original, has put the matter fairly enough; anybody who will take the
+trouble can "control" or check the statement, by comparing the two books
+themselves. The idea--the rescuing of an obliging demon from the grasp
+of an enchanter, and his unroofing the houses of Madrid to amuse his
+liberator--is entirely Guevara's, and for a not inconsiderable space of
+time the French follows the Spanish closely. But then it breaks off, and
+the remainder of the book is, except for the carrying out of the general
+idea, practically original. The unroofing and revealing of secrets, from
+being merely casual and confined to a particular neighbourhood, becomes
+systematised: a lunatic asylum and a prison are subjected to the
+process; a set of dreamers are obliged to deliver up what Queen Mab is
+doing with them; and, as an incident, the student Don Cleofas, who has
+freed Asmodeus,[314] gains through the friendly spirit's means a rich
+and pretty bride whom the demon--naturally immune from fire--has rescued
+in Cleofas's likeness from a burning house.
+
+[Sidenote: Lesage and Boileau.]
+
+The thing therefore neither has, nor could possibly pretend to have, any
+merit as a plotted and constructed whole in fiction. It is merely a
+variety of the old "framed" tale-collection, except that the frame is of
+the thinnest; and the individual stories, with a few exceptions, are
+extremely short, in fact little more than anecdotes. The power and
+attraction of the book lie simply in the crispness of the style, the
+ease and flow of the narrative, and the unfailing satiric knowledge of
+human nature which animates the whole. As it stands, it is double its
+original length; for Lesage, finding it popular, and never being under
+the trammels of a fixed design, very wisely, and for a wonder not
+unsuccessfully, gave it a continuation. And, except the equally obvious
+and arbitrary one of the recapture of the spirit by the magician, it has
+and could have no end. The most famous of the anecdotes about it is that
+Boileau--in 1707 a very old man--found his page reading it, and declared
+that such a book and such a critic as he should never pass a night under
+the same roof. Boileau, though he often said rude, unjust, and
+uncritical things, did not often say merely silly ones; and it has been
+questioned what was his reason for objecting to a book by no means
+shocking to anybody but Mrs. Grundy Grundified to the very _n_th,
+excellently written, and quite free from the bombast and the
+whimsicality which he loathed. Jealousy for Molière,[315] to whom, in
+virtue of _Turcaret_, Lesage had been set up as a sort of rival; mere
+senile ill-temper, and other things have been suggested; but the matter
+is of no real importance even if it is true. Boileau was one of the
+least catholic and the most arbitrary critics who ever lived; he had
+long made up and colophoned the catalogue of his approved library; he
+did not see his son's coat on the new-comer, and so he cursed him. It is
+not the only occasion on which we may bless what Boileau cursed.
+
+[Sidenote: _Gil Blas_--its peculiar cosmopolitanism.]
+
+_Gil Blas_, of course, is in every sense a "bigger" book of literature.
+That it has, from the point of view of the straitest sect of the
+Unitarians--and not of that sect only--much more unity than the
+_Diable_, would require mere cheap paradox to contend. It has neither
+the higher unity, say, of _Hamlet_, where every smallest scene and
+almost personage is connected with the general theme; nor the lower
+unity of such a thing as _Phèdre_, where everything is pared down, or,
+as Landor put it in his own case, "boiled off" to a meagre residuum of
+theme special. It has, at the very most, that species of unity which
+Aristotle did not like even in epic, that of a succession of events
+happening to an individual; and while most of these might be omitted, or
+others substituted for them, without much or any loss, they exist
+without prejudice to mere additions to themselves. As the excellent Mr.
+Wall, sometime Professor of Logic at Oxford, and now with God, used to
+say, "Gentlemen, I can conceive an elephant," so one may conceive a _Gil
+Blas_, not merely in five instead of four, but in fifty or five hundred
+volumes. But, on the other hand, it has that still different unity (of
+which Aristotle does not seem to have thought highly, even if he thought
+of it at all), that all these miscellaneous experiences do not merely
+happen to a person with the same name--they happen to the same
+person.[316] And they have themselves yet another unity, which I hardly
+remember any critic duly insisting on and discussing, in the fact that
+they all are possibly human accidents or incidents. Though he was a
+native of one of the most idiosyncratic provinces of not the least
+idiosyncratic country in Europe, Lesage is a citizen not of Brittany,
+not of France, not of Europe even, but of the world itself, in far more
+than the usual sense of cosmopolitanism. He has indeed coloured
+background and costume, incident and even personage itself so deeply
+with essence of "things of Spain," that, as has been said, the
+Spaniards, the most jealous of all nationalities except the smaller
+Celtic tribes, have claimed his work for themselves. Yet though Spain
+has one of the noblest languages, one of the greatest literatures in
+quality if not in bulk, one of the most striking histories, and one of
+the most intensely national characters in the world, it is--perhaps for
+the very reason last mentioned--as little cosmopolitan as any country,
+and Lesage, as has been said, is inwardly and utterly cosmopolitan or
+nothing.
+
+    At Paris, at Rome, at the Hague he's at home;
+
+and though he seems to have known little of England, and, as most
+Frenchmen of his time had reason to do, to have disliked us, he has
+certainly never been anywhere more at home than in London. In fact--and
+it bears out what has been said--there is perhaps no capital in Europe
+where, in the two hundred years he has had to nationalise himself,
+Lesage has been less at home than at Paris itself. The French are of
+course proud of him in a way, but there is hardly one of their great
+writers about whom they have been less enthusiastic. The technical, and
+especially the neo-classically technical, shortcomings which have been
+pointed out may have had something to do with this; but the
+cosmopolitanism has perhaps more.
+
+[Sidenote: And its adoption of the _homme sensuel moyen_ fashion.]
+
+For us Lesage occupies a position of immense importance in the history
+of the French novel; but if we were writing a history of the novel at
+large it would scarcely be lessened, and might even be relatively
+larger. He had come to it perhaps by rather strange ways; but it is no
+novelty to find that conjunction of road and goal. The Spanish
+picaresque romance was not in itself a very great literary kind; but it
+had in it a great faculty of _emancipation_. Outside the drama[317] it
+was about the first division of literature to proclaim boldly the
+refusal to consider anything human as alien from human literary
+interest. But, as nearly always happens, it had exaggerated its
+protests, and become sordid, merely in revolt from the high-flown
+non-sordidness of previous romance. Lesage took the principle and
+rejected the application. He dared, practically for the first time, to
+take the average man of unheroic stamp, the _homme sensuel moyen_ of a
+later French phrase, for his subject. _Gil Blas_ is not a virtuous
+person,[318] but he is not very often an actual scoundrel.[319] (Is
+there any of us who has never been a scoundrel at all at all?) He is
+clever after his fashion, but he is not a genius; he is a little bit of
+a coward, but can face it out fairly at a pinch; he has some luck and
+ill-luck; but he does not come in for _montes et maria_, either of gold
+or of misery. I have no doubt that the comparison of _Gil Blas_ and _Don
+Quixote_ has often been made, and it would be rather an _excursus_ here.
+But inferior as Lesage's work is in not a few ways, it has, like other
+non-quintessential things, much more virtue as model and pattern.
+Imitations of _Don Quixote_ (except Graves's capital book, where the
+following is of the freest character) have usually been failures. It is
+hardly an extravagance to say that every novel of miscellaneous
+adventure since its date owes something, directly or indirectly, to _Gil
+Blas_.
+
+One of the "faults"--it must be understood that between "faults" with
+inverted commas and faults without them there is a wide and sometimes an
+unbridgeable gulf--lies in the fact that the book is after all not much
+more of a whole, in any sense but that noted above, than _Le Diable
+Boiteux_ itself. The innumerable incidents are to a very large extent
+episodes merely, and episodes in the loose, not the precise, sense of
+the term. That is to say, they are not merely detachable; they might be
+reattached to almost any number of other stories. But the redeeming
+feature--which is very much more than a _mere_ redeeming feature--is the
+personality of the hero which has been already referred to. Lesage's
+scrip and staff, to apply the old images exactly enough, are his
+inexhaustible fertility in well-told stories and his faculty of
+delineating a possible and interesting human character.
+
+[Sidenote: Its inequality--in the Second and Fourth Books especially.]
+
+The characteristics of the successive parts of _Gil Blas_ are distinct
+and interesting, the distinctions themselves being also rather curious.
+The anecdote cited above as to the Fourth and last volume is certainly
+confirmed by, and does not seem, as so many anecdotes of the kind do, to
+have been even possibly drawn from, the volume itself. Although the old
+power is by no means gone, the marks of its failing are pretty obvious.
+A glance has been given already to the unnecessary and disgusting
+repetition of the Pandar business--made, as it is, more disgusting by
+the distinctly tragic touch infused into it. The actual _finale_ is, on
+the other hand, a good comedy ending of a commonplace kind, except that
+a comic author, such as Lesage once had been on and off the stage, would
+certainly have made _Gil Blas_ suffer in his second marriage for his
+misdeeds of various kinds earlier, instead of leaving him in the not too
+clean cotton or clover of an old rip with a good young wife. If he had
+wanted a happy ending of a still conventional but satisfactory kind, he
+should have married Gil to Laure or Estelle (they were, in modern slang,
+sufficiently "shop-worn goods" not to be ill-mated, and Laure is perhaps
+the most attractive character in the whole book); have legitimated
+Lucrèce, as by some odd crotchet he definitely refuses to do;[320] have
+dropped the later Leporello business, in which his old love and her
+daughter are concerned, altogether, and have left us in a mild sunset of
+"reconciliation." If anybody scorns this suggestion as evidence of a
+futile liking for "rose-pink," let him remember that Gil Blas,
+_ci-devant picaro_ and other ugly things, is actually left lapped in an
+Elysium not less improbable and much more undeserved than this. But it
+is disagreeable to dwell on the shortcomings of age, and it has only
+been done to show that this is a criticism and not a mere panegyric.
+
+Oddly enough, the Second volume is also open to much exception of
+something, though not quite, the same kind; it seems as if Lesage, after
+making strong running, had a habit of nursing himself and even
+going to sleep for a while. The more than questionable habit of
+_histoire_-insertions revives; that of the rascal-hermit _picaro_, "Don
+Raphael," is, as the author admits, rather long, and, as he might have
+admitted, and as any one else may be allowed to say, very tiresome. Gil
+Blas himself goes through a long period of occultation, and the whole
+rather drags.
+
+The First and the Third are the pillars of the house; and the Third,
+though (with the exception of the episode of the Archbishop, and that
+eternal sentence governing the relations of author and critic that "the
+homily which has the misfortune not to be approved" by the one is the
+very best ever produced by the other) not so well known, is perhaps even
+better than anything in the First. But the later part has, of course,
+not quite so much freshness; and nobody need want anything better than
+the successive scenes, slightly glanced at already, in which Gil Blas is
+taught, by no means finally,[321] the ways of the world; the pure
+adventure interest of the robbers' cave, so admirably managed and so
+little over-dwelt on; the experiences of travel and of the capital; the
+vivid pictures of _petit maître_ and actress life; the double
+deception--thoroughly Spanish this, but most freshly and universally
+handled--by Laure and Gil; many other well-known things; all deserve the
+knowledge and the admiration that they have won. But the Third, in which
+the hero is hardly ever off the scene from first to last, is my own
+favourite. He shows himself--not at his best, but humanly enough--in the
+affair with the ill-fated Lorença, on which the Leyva family might have
+looked less excusingly if the culprit had been anybody but Gil. The
+Granada scenes, however, and not by any means merely those with the
+Archbishop, are of the very first class; and the reappearance of Laure,
+with the admirable coolness by which she hoodwinks her "keeper"
+Marialva, yields to nothing in the book. For fifty pages it is all
+novel-gold; and though Gil Blas, in decamping from the place, and
+leaving Laure to bear the brunt of a possible discovery, commits one of
+his least heroic deeds, it is so characteristic that one forgives, not
+indeed him, but his creator. The whole of the Lerma part is excellent
+and not in the least improbably impossible; there is infinitely more
+"human natur'" in it, as Marryat's waterman would have said, than in the
+_réchauffé_ of the situation with Olivares.
+
+[Sidenote: Lesage's quality--not requiring many words, but
+indisputable.]
+
+The effect indeed which is produced, in re-reading, by _Le Diable
+Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_, but especially by the latter, is of that
+especial kind which is a sort of "_a posteriori_ intuition," if such a
+phrase may be permitted, of "classical" quality.[322] This sensation,
+which appears, unfortunately, to be unknown to a great many people, is
+sometimes set down by the more critical or, let us say, the more
+censorious of them, to a sort of childish prepossession--akin to that
+which makes a not ill-conditioned child fail to discover any
+uncomeliness in his mother's or a favourite nurse's face. There is no
+retort to such a proposition as this so proper as the argument not _ad
+hominem_, but _ab_ or _ex homine_. The present writer did not read the
+_Devil_ till he had reached quite critical years; and though he read
+_Gil Blas_ much earlier, he was not (for what reason he cannot say)
+particularly fond of it until the same period was reached. And yet its
+attractions cannot possibly be said to be of any recondite or artificial
+kind, and its defects are likely to be more, not less, recognised as the
+critical faculty acquires strength and practice. Nevertheless, recent
+reperusal has made him more conscious than ever of the existence of this
+quality of a classic in both, but especially in the larger and more
+famous book. And this is a mere pailful added to an ocean of previous
+and more important testimony. _Gil Blas_ has certainly "classed" itself
+in the most various instances, of essentially critical, not specially
+critical but generally acute and appreciative, and more or less
+unsophisticated and ordinary judgments, as a thing that is past all
+question, equally enjoyable for its incidents, its character-sketches,
+and its phrasing--though the first are (for time and country) in no
+sense out of the way, the second scarcely go beyond the individualised
+type, and the third is neither gorgeous nor "alambicated," as the French
+say, nor in any way peculiar, except for its saturation with a sharp,
+shrewd, salt wit which may be described as the spirit of the popular
+proverb, somehow bodied and clothed with more purely literary form. It
+is true that, in the last few clauses, plenty of ground has been
+indicated for ascription of classicality in the best sense; and perhaps
+Lesage himself has summed the whole thing up when, in the "Declaration"
+of the author at the beginning of _Gil Blas_, he claims "to have set
+before himself only the representation of human life as it is." He has
+said it; and in saying and doing it he has said and done everything for
+his merits as a novelist and his place in the history of the novel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Marivaux--_Les Effets de la Sympathie (?)_]
+
+The Archbishop of Sens, who had the duty of "answering" Marivaux's
+"discourse of reception" into the Academy in the usual _aigre-doux_
+manner, informed him, with Academic frankness and Archiepiscopal
+propriety, that "in the small part of your work which I have run
+through, I soon recognised that the reading of these agreeable romances
+did not suit the austere dignity with which I am invested, or the purity
+of the ideas which religion prescribes me." This was all in the game,
+both for an Academician and for an Archbishop, and it probably did not
+discompose the novelist much. But if his Grace had read _Les Effets de
+la Sympathie_, and had chosen to criticise it, he might have made its
+author (always supposing that Marivaux _was_ its author, which does not
+seem to be at all certain) much more uncomfortable. Although there is
+plenty of incident, it is but a dull book, and it contains not a trace
+of "Marivaudage" in style. A hero's father, who dies of poison in the
+first few pages, and is shown to have been brought round by an obliging
+gaoler in the last few; a hero himself, who thinks he has fallen in love
+with a beautiful and rich widow, playing good Samaritaness to him after
+he has fallen in among thieves, but a page or two later really does fall
+in love with a fair unknown looking languishingly out of a window; a
+_corsaire_,[323] with the appropriate name of Turcamène, who is
+robustious almost from the very beginning, and receives at the end a
+fatal stab with his own poniard from the superfluous widow, herself also
+fatally wounded at the same moment by the same weapon (an economy of
+time, incident, and munitions uncommon off the stage); an intermediate
+personage who, straying--without any earthly business there--into one of
+those park "pavilions" which play so large a part in these romances,
+finds a lady asleep on the sofa, with her hand invitingly dropped,
+promptly kneels down, and kisses it: these and many other things fill up
+a Spanish kind of story, not uningeniously though rather improbably
+engineered, but dependent for its interest almost wholly on incident;
+for though it is not devoid of conversation, this conversation is
+without spirit or sparkle. It is, in fact, a "circulating library" novel
+before--at any rate at an early period of--circulating libraries: not
+unworkmanlike, probably not very unsatisfactory to its actual readers,
+and something of a document as to the kind of satisfaction they
+demanded; but not intrinsically important.
+
+One has not seen much, in English,[324] about Marivaux, despite the
+existence, in French, of one of the best[325] of those monographs which
+assist the foreign critic so much, and sometimes perhaps help to beget
+his own lucubrations. Yet he is one of the most interesting writers of
+France, one of the most curious, and, one may almost say, one of the
+most puzzling. This latter quality he owes, in part at least, to a
+"skiey influence" of the time, which he shares with Lesage and Prévost,
+and indeed to some extent with most French writers of the eighteenth
+century--the influence of the polygraphic habit.
+
+[Sidenote: His work in general.]
+
+He was a dramatist, and a voluminous one, long before he was a novelist:
+and some of his thirty or forty plays, especially _Les Fausses
+Confidences_ and _Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard_, still rank among at
+least the second-class classics of the French comic stage. He tried, for
+a time, one of the worst kinds of merely fashionable literature, the
+travesty-burlesque.[326] He was a journalist, following Addison openly
+in the title, and to some extent in the manner, of _Le Spectateur_,
+which he afterwards followed by _Le Cabinet d'un Philosophe_, showing,
+however, here, as he was more specially tempted to do, his curious, and
+it would seem unconquerable, habit of leaving things unfinished, which
+only does not appear in his plays, for the simple and obvious reason
+that managers will not put an unfinished play on the stage, and that, if
+they did, the afterpiece would be premature and of a very lively
+character. But the completeness of his very plays is incomplete; they
+"run huddling" to their conclusion, and are rather bundles of good or
+not so good acts and scenes than entire dramas. We are, however, only
+concerned with the stories, of which there are three: the early,
+complete, but doubtful _Effets de la Sympathie_, already discussed; the
+central in every way, but endlessly dawdled over, _Marianne_, which
+never got finished at all (though Mme. Riccoboni continued it in
+Marivaux's own lifetime, and with his placid approval, and somebody
+afterwards botched a clumsy _Fin_); and _Le Paysan Parvenu_, the latter
+part of which is not likely to be genuine, and, even if so, is not a
+real conclusion. We may, however, with some, advantage, take it before
+_Marianne_, if only because it is not the book generally connected with
+its author's name.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Paysan Parvenu._]
+
+Notwithstanding this comparative oblivion, _Le Paysan Parvenu_ is an
+almost astonishingly clever and original book, at least as far as the
+five of its eight parts, which are certainly Marivaux's, go. I have read
+the three last twice critically, at a long interval of time, and I feel
+sure that the positive internal evidence confirms, against their
+authenticity, the negative want of external for it. In any case they add
+nothing--they do not, as has been said, even really "conclude"--and we
+may, therefore, without any more apology, confine ourselves to the part
+which is certain. Some readers may possibly know that when that
+strangest of strange persons, Restif de la Bretonne (see the last
+chapter of this book), took up the title with the slight change or gloss
+of _Parvenu_ to _Perverti_, he was at least partly actuated by his own
+very peculiar, but distinctly existing, variety of moral indignation.
+And though Pierre Carlet (which was Marivaux's real name) and "Monsieur
+Nicolas" (which was as near a real name as any that Restif had) were,
+the one a quite respectable person on ordinary standards, and the other
+an infinitely disreputable creature, still the later novelist was
+perhaps ethically justified. Marivaux's successful rustic does not, so
+far as we are told, actually do anything that contravenes popular
+morality, though he is more than once on the point of doing so. He is
+not a bad-blooded person either; and he has nothing of the wild-beast
+element in the French peasantry which history shows us from the
+Jacquerie to the Revolution, and which some folk try to excuse as the
+result of aristocratic tyranny. But he is an elaborate and exceedingly
+able portrait of another side of the peasant, and, if we may trust
+literature, even with some administration of salt, of the French peasant
+more particularly. He is what we may perhaps be allowed to call
+unconsciously determined to get on, though he does not go quite to the
+length of the _quocunque modo_, and has, as far as men are concerned,
+some scruples. But in relation to the other sex he has few if any,
+though he is never brutal. He is, as we may say, first "perverted,"
+though not as yet _parvenu_,[327] in the house of a Parisian, himself a
+_nouveau riche_ and _novus homo_, on whose property in Champagne his own
+father is a wine-farmer. He is early selected for the beginnings of
+Lady-Booby-like attentions by "Madame," while he, as far as he is
+capable of the proceeding, falls in love with one of Madame's maids,
+Geneviève. It does not appear that, if the lady's part of the matter had
+gone further, Jacob (that is his name) would have been at all like
+Joseph. But when he finds that the maid is also the object of
+"Monsieur's" attentions, and when he is asked to take the profits of
+this affair (the attitude[328] of the girl herself is very skilfully
+delineated) and marry her, his own _point d'honneur_ is reached.[329]
+Everything is, however, cut short by the sudden death, in hopelessly
+embarrassed circumstances, of Monsieur, and the consequent cessation of
+Madame's attraction for a young man who wishes to better himself. He
+leaves both her and Geneviève with perfect nonchalance; though he has
+good reason for believing that the girl really loves him, however she
+may have made a peculiar sort of hay when the sun shone, and that both
+she and his lady are penniless, or almost so.
+
+He has, however, the luck which makes the _parvenu_, if in this instance
+he can hardly be said to deserve it. On the Pont Neuf he sees an elderly
+lady, apparently about to swoon. He supports her home, and finds that
+she is the younger and more attractive of two old-maid and _dévote_
+sisters. The irresistibleness to this class of the feminine sex (and
+indeed by no means to this class only) of a strapping and handsome
+footman is a commonplace of satire with eighteenth-century writers, both
+French and English. It is exercised possibly on both sisters, though the
+elder is a shrew; certainly on the younger, and also on their elderly
+_bonne_, Catherine. But it necessarily leads to trouble. The younger,
+Mlle. Habert (the curious hiding of Christian names reappears here),
+wants to retain Jacob in the joint service, and Catherine at least makes
+no objection, for obvious reasons. But the elder sister recalcitrates
+violently, summoning to her aid her "director," and the younger, who is
+financially independent,[330] determines to leave the house. She does so
+(_not_ taking Catherine with her, though the _bonne_ would willingly
+have shared Jacob's society), and having secured lodgings, regularly
+proposes to her (the word may be used almost accurately) "swain." Jacob
+has no scruples of delicacy here, though the nymph is thirty years older
+than himself, and though he has, if no dislike, no particular affection
+for her. But it is an obvious step upwards, and he makes no
+difficulties. The elder sister, however, makes strong efforts to forbid
+the banns, and her interest prevails on a "President" (the half-regular
+power of the French _noblesse de robe_, though perhaps less violently
+exercised, must have been almost as galling as the irresponsibleness of
+men of birth and "sword") to interpose and actually stop the arranged
+ceremony. But Jacob appears in person, and states his case convincingly;
+the obstacle is removed, and the pair are made happy at an extraordinary
+hour (two or three in the morning), which seems to have been then
+fashionable for marriages. The conventional phrase is fairly justified;
+for the bride is completely satisfied, and Jacob is not displeased.
+
+His marriage, however, interferes not in the very least with his
+intention to "get on" by dint of his handsome face and brawny figure. On
+the very day of his wedding he goes to visit a lady of position, and
+also of devoutness, who is a great friend of the President and his wife,
+has been present at the irregular enquiry, and has done something for
+him. This quickly results in a regular assignation, which, however, is
+comically broken off. Moreover this lady introduces him to another of
+the same temperament--which indeed seems to have been common with French
+ladies (the Bellaston type being not the exception, but the rule). _She_
+is to introduce him to her brother-in-law, an influential financier, and
+she quickly makes plain the kind of gratitude she expects. This also is,
+as far as we are told, rather comically interfered with--Marivaux's
+dramatic practice made him good at these disappointments. She does give
+the introduction, and her brother-in-law, though a curmudgeon, is at
+first disposed to honour her draft. But here an unexpected change is
+made by the presentation of Jacob as a man of noble sentiment. The place
+he is to have is one taken from an invalid holder of it, whose wife
+comes to beg mercy: whereat Jacob, magnanimously and to the financier's
+great wrath, declines to profit by another's misfortune. Whether the
+fact that the lady is very pretty has anything to do with the matter
+need not be discussed. His--let us call it at least--good nature,
+however, indirectly makes his fortune. Going to visit the husband and
+wife whom he has obliged, he sees a young man attacked by three enemies
+and ill-bested. Jacob (who is no coward, and, thanks to his wife
+insisting on his being a gentleman and "M. de la Vallée," has a sword)
+draws and uses it on the weaker side, with no skill whatever, but in the
+downright, swash-and-stab, short- and tall-sailor fashion, which (in
+novels at least) is almost always effective. The assailants decamp, and
+the wounded but rescued person, who is of very high rank, conceives a
+strong friendship for his rescuer, and, as was said above, makes his
+fortune. The last and doubtful three-eighths of the book kill off poor
+Mlle. Habert (who, although Jacob would never have been unkind to her,
+was already beginning to be very jealous and by no means happy), and
+marry him again to a younger lady of rank, beauty, fashion, and fortune,
+in the imparted possession of all of which we leave him. But, except to
+the insatiables of "what happened next," these parts are as questionably
+important as they are decidedly doubtful.
+
+The really important points of the book are, in the first place, the
+ease and narrative skill with which the story is told in the difficult
+form of autobiography, and, secondly, the vivacity of the characters.
+Jacob himself is, as will have been seen already, a piebald sort of
+personage, entirely devoid of scruple in some ways, but not ill-natured,
+and with his own points of honour. He is perfectly natural, and so are
+all the others (not half of whom have been mentioned) as far as they go.
+The cross sister and the "kind" one; the false prude and false _devoté_
+Mme. de Ferval, and the jolly, reckless, rather coarse Mme. de Fécour;
+the tyrannical, corrupt, and licentious financier, with others more
+slightly drawn, are seldom, if ever, out of drawing. The contemporary
+wash of colour passes, as it should, into something "fast"; you are in
+the Paris of the Regency, but you are at the same time in general human
+time and place, if not in eternity and infinity.
+
+[Sidenote: _Marianne_--outline of the story.]
+
+The general selection, however, of _Marianne_ as Marivaux's masterpiece
+is undoubtedly right, though in more ways than one it has less engaging
+power than the _Paysan_, and forebodes to some extent, if it does not
+actually display, the boring qualities which novels of combined analysis
+and jargon have developed since. The opening is odd: the author having
+apparently transplanted to the beginning of a novel the promiscuous
+slaughter with which we are familiar at the end of a play. Marianne (let
+us hail the appearance of a Christian-named heroine at last), a small
+child of the tenderest years, is, with the exception of an ecclesiastic,
+who takes to his heels and gets off, the sole survivor of a coachful of
+travellers who are butchered by a gang of footpads,[331] because two of
+the passengers have rashly endeavoured to defend themselves. Nothing can
+be found out about the child--an initial improbability, for the party
+has consisted of father, mother, and servants, as well as Marianne. But
+the good _curé_ of the place and his sister take charge of her, and
+bring her up carefully (they are themselves "gentle-people," as the good
+old phrase, now doubtless difficult of application, went) till she is
+fifteen, is very pretty, and evidently must be disposed of in some way,
+for her guardians are poor and have no influential relations. The
+sister, however, takes her to Paris--whither she herself goes to secure,
+if possible, the succession of a relative--to try to obtain some
+situation. But the inheritance proves illusory; the sister falls ill at
+Paris and dies there; while the brother is disabled, and his living has
+to be, if not transferred to, provided with, a substitute. This second
+massacre (for the brother dies soon) provides Marivaux with the
+situation he requires--that of a pretty girl, alone in the capital, and
+absolutely unfriended. Fortunately a benevolent Director knows a pious
+gentleman, M. de Climal, who is fond of doing good, and also, as it
+appears shortly by the story, of pretty girls. Marianne, with the
+earliest touch of distinct "snobbishness"--let it be proudly pointed out
+that the example is not English,[332]--declines to go into service, but
+does not so much mind being a shop-girl, and M. de Climal establishes
+her with his _lingère_, a certain Mme. Dutour.
+
+This good lady is no procuress, but her morals are of a somewhat
+accommodating kind, and she sets to work, experiencing very little
+difficulty in the process, to remove Marianne's scruples about accepting
+presents from M. de Climal--pointing out, very logically, that there is
+no obligation to (as Chesterfield put it not long after) _payer de sa
+personne_; though she is naturally somewhat disgusted when the gifts
+take the form of handsome _lingerie_ bought at another shop. When this,
+and a dress to match, are made up, Marianne as naturally goes to church
+to show them: and indulges in very shrewd if not particularly amiable
+remarks on her "even-Christians"--a delightful English archaism, which
+surely needs no apology for its revival. Coming out, she slips and
+sprains her ankle, whereupon, still naturally, appears the inevitable
+young man, a M. de Valville, who, after endless amicable wrangling,
+procures her a coach, but not without an awkward meeting. For M. de
+Valville turns out to be the nephew of M. de Climal; and the uncle, with
+a lady, comes upon the nephew and Marianne; while, a little later, each
+finds the other in turn at the girl's feet. Result: of course more than
+suspicion on the younger man's part, and a mixture of wrath and desire
+to hurry matters on the elder's. He offers Marianne a regular (or
+irregular) "establishment" at a dependent's of his own, with a small
+income settled upon her, etc. She refuses indignantly, the indignation
+being rather suspiciously divided between her two lovers; is "planted
+there" by the old sinner Climal, and of course requested to leave by
+Mme. Dutour; returns all the presents, much to her landlady's disgust,
+and once more seeks, though in a different mood, the shelter of the
+Church. Her old helper the priest for some time absolutely declines to
+admit the notion of Climal's rascality; but fortunately a charitable
+lady is more favourable, and Marianne gets taken in as a _pensionnaire_
+at a convent. Climal, whose sister and Valville's mother the lady turns
+out to be, falls ill, repents, confesses, and leaves Marianne a
+comfortable annuity. Union with Valville is not opposed by the mother;
+but other members of the family are less obliging, and Valville himself
+wanders after an English girl of a Jacobite exiled family, Miss Warton
+(Varthon). The story then waters itself out, before suddenly collapsing,
+with a huge and uninteresting _Histoire d'une Religieuse_. Whereat some
+folk may grumble; but others, more philosophically, may be satisfied, in
+no uncomplimentary sense, without hearing what finally made Marianne
+Countess of Three Stars, or indeed knowing any more of her actual
+history.
+
+For in fact the entire interest of _Marianne_ is concentrated in and on
+Marianne herself, and the fact that this is so at once makes
+continuation superfluous, and gives the novel its place in the history
+of fiction. We have quite enough, as it is, to show us--as the Princess
+Augusta said to Fanny Burney of the ill-starred last of French "Mesdames
+Royales"--"what sort of a girl she is." And her biographer has made her
+a very interesting sort of girl, and himself in making her so, a very
+interesting, and almost entirely novel, sort of novelist. To say that
+she is a wholly attractive character would be entirely false, except
+from the point of view of the pure student of art. She is technically
+virtuous, which is, of course, greatly to her credit.[333] She is not
+bad-blooded, but if there were such a word as "good-blooded" it could
+hardly be applied to her. With all her preserving borax- or
+formalin-like touch of "good form," she is something of a minx. She is
+vain, selfish--in fact wrapped up in self--without any sense of other
+than technical honour. But she is very pretty (which covers a multitude
+of sins), and she is really clever.
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of Marianne herself.]
+
+Yet the question at issue is not whether one can approve of Marianne,
+nor whether one can like her, nor even whether, approving and liking her
+or not, one could fall in love with her "for her comely face and for her
+fair bodie," as King Honour did in the ballad, and as _homo rationalis_
+usually, though not invariably, does fall in love. The question is
+whether Marivaux has, in her, created a live girl, and to what extent he
+has mastered the details of his creation. The only critical answer, I
+think, must be that he has created such a girl, and that he has not left
+her a mere outline or type, but has furnished the house as well as built
+it. She is, in the particular meaning on which Mr. Hardy's defenders
+insist, as "pure" a "woman" as Tess herself. And if there is a good deal
+missing from her which fortunately some women have, there is nothing in
+her which some women have not, and not so very much which the majority
+of women have not, in this or that degree. It is difficult not to smile
+when one compares her quintessence with the complicated and elusive
+caricatures of womanhood which some modern novel-writers--noisily hailed
+as _gyno_sophists--have put together, and been complimented on putting
+together. What is more, she is perhaps the first nearly complete
+character of the kind that had been presented in novel at her date. This
+is a great thing to say for Marivaux, and it can be said without the
+slightest fear of inability to support the saying.[334]
+
+[Sidenote: Marivaux and Richardson--"Marivaudage."]
+
+Although, therefore, we may not care much to enter into calculations as
+to the details of the indebtedness of Richardson to Marivaux, some
+approximations of the two, for critical purposes, may be useful. One may
+even see, without too much folly of the Thaumast kind, an explanation,
+beyond that of mere idleness, in the Frenchman's inveterate habit of not
+completing. He did not want you to read him "for the story"; and
+therefore he cared little for the story itself, and nothing at all for
+the technical finishing of it. The stories of both his characteristic
+novels are, as has been fairly shown, of the very thinnest. What he did
+want to do was to analyse and "display," in a half-technical sense of
+that word, his characters; and he did this as no man had done before
+him, and as few have done since, though many, quite ignorant of their
+indebtedness, have taken the method from him indirectly. In the second
+place, his combination of method and phrase is for infinite thoughts.
+This combination is not necessary; there is, to take up the comparative
+line, nothing of it in Richardson, nothing in Fielding, nothing in
+Thackeray. A few French eighteenth-century writers have it in direct
+imitation of Marivaux himself; but it dies out in France, and in the
+greatest novel-period there is nothing of it. It revives in the later
+nineteenth century, especially with us, and, curiously enough, if we
+look back to the beginnings of Romance in Greek, there is a good deal
+there, the crown and flower being, as has been before remarked, in
+Eustathius Macrembolita, but something being noticeable in earlier folk,
+especially Achilles Tatius, and the trick having evidently come from
+those rhetoricians[335] of whose class the romancers were a kind of
+offshoot. It is, however, only fair to say that, if Marivaux thought in
+intricate and sometimes startling ways, his actual expression is never
+obscure. It is a maze, but a maze with an unbroken clue of speech
+guiding you through it.[336]
+
+[Sidenote: Examples:--Marianne on the _physique_ and _moral_ of
+Prioresses and Nuns.]
+
+A few examples of method and style may now be given. Here is Marianne's
+criticism--rather uncannily shrewd and very characteristic both of her
+subject and of herself--of that peculiar placid plumpness which has been
+observed by the profane in devout persons, especially in the Roman
+Church and in certain dissenting sects (Anglicanism does not seem to be
+so favourable to it), and in "persons of religion" (in the technical
+sense) most of all.
+
+     This Prioress was a short little person, round and white,
+     with a double chin, and a complexion at once fresh and
+     placid. You never see faces like that in worldly persons: it
+     is a kind of _embonpoint_ quite different from others--one
+     which has been formed more quietly and more
+     methodically--that is to say, something into which there
+     enters more art, more fashioning, nay, more self-love, than
+     into that of such as we.[337]
+
+     As a rule, it is either temperament, or feeding, or laziness
+     and luxury, which give _us_ such of it as we have. But in
+     order to acquire the kind of which I am speaking, it is
+     necessary to have given oneself up with a saintlike
+     earnestness to the task. It can only be the result of
+     delicate, loving, and devout attention to the comfort and
+     well-being of the body. It shows not only that life--and a
+     healthy life--is an object of desire, but that it is wanted
+     soft, undisturbed, and dainty; and that, while enjoying the
+     pleasures of good health, the person enjoying it bestows on
+     herself all the pettings and the privileges of a perpetual
+     convalescence.
+
+     Also this religious plumpness is different in outward form
+     from ours, which is profane of aspect; it does not so much
+     make a face fat, as it makes it grave and decent; and so it
+     gives the countenance an air, not so much joyous, as
+     tranquil and contented.
+
+     Further, when you look at these good ladies, you find in
+     them an affable exterior; but perhaps, for all that, an
+     interior indifference. Their faces, and not their souls,
+     give you sympathy and tenderness; they are comely images,
+     which seem to possess sensibility, and which yet have merely
+     a surface of kindness and sentiment.[338]
+
+Acute as this is, it may be said to be somewhat displaced--though it
+must be remembered that it is the Marianne of fifty, "Mme. la Comtesse
+de * * *," who is supposed to be writing, not the Marianne of fifteen.
+No such objection can be taken to what follows.
+
+[_She is, after the breach with Climal, and after Valville has earlier
+discovered his wicked uncle on his knees before her, packing up
+the--well! not wages of iniquity, but baits for it--to send back to the
+giver. A little "cutting" may be made._]
+
+[Sidenote: She returns the gift-clothes.]
+
+     Thereupon I opened my trunk to take out first the newly
+     bought linen. "Yes, M. de Valville, yes!" said I, pulling it
+     out, "you shall learn to know me and to think of me as you
+     ought." This thought spurred me on, so that, without my
+     exactly thinking of it, it was rather to him than to his
+     uncle that I was returning the whole, all the more so that
+     the return of linen, dress, and money, with a note I should
+     write, could not fail to disabuse Valville, and make him
+     regret the loss of me. He had seemed to me to possess a
+     generous soul; and I applauded myself beforehand on the
+     sorrow which he would feel at having treated so
+     outrageously a girl so worthy of respectful treatment as I
+     was--for I saw in myself, confessedly, I don't know how many
+     titles to respect.
+
+     In the first place I put my bad luck, which was unique; to
+     add to this bad luck I had virtue, and they went so well
+     together! Then I was young, and on the top of it all I was
+     pretty, and what more do you want? If I had arranged matters
+     designedly to render myself an object of sympathy, to make a
+     generous lover sigh at having maltreated me, I could not
+     have succeeded better; and, provided I hurt Valville's
+     feelings, I was satisfied. My little plan was never to see
+     him again in my lifetime; and this seemed to me a very fair
+     and proud one; for I loved him, and I was even very glad to
+     have loved him, because he had perceived my love, and,
+     seeing me break with him, notwithstanding, would see also
+     what a heart he had had to do with.
+
+The little person goes on very delectably describing the packing, and
+how she grudged getting rid of the pretty things, and at last sighed and
+wept--whether for herself, or Valville, or the beautiful gown, she
+didn't know. But, alas! there is no more room, except to salute her as
+the agreeable ancestress of all the beloved coquettes and piquant minxes
+in prose fiction since. Could anything handsomer be said of her creator?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Prévost.]
+
+[Sidenote: His minor novels--the opinions on them of Sainte-Beuve.]
+
+[Sidenote: And of Planche.]
+
+It is, though an absolute and stereotyped commonplace, an almost equally
+absolute necessity, to begin any notice of the Abbé Prévost by remarking
+that nothing of his voluminous work is now, or has been for a long time,
+read, except _Manon Lescaut_. It may be added, though one is here
+repeating predecessors to not quite the same extent, that nothing else
+of his, in fiction at least, is worth reading. The faithful few who do
+not dislike old criticism may indeed turn over his _Le Pour et [le]
+Contre_ not without reward. But his historical and other
+compilations[339]--his total production in volumes is said to run over
+the hundred, and the standard edition of his _Oeuvres Choisies_
+extends to thirty-nine not small ones--are admittedly worthless. As to
+his minor novels--if one may use that term, albeit they are as major in
+bulk as they are minor in merit--opinions of importance, and presumably
+founded on actual knowledge, have differed somewhat strangely.
+Sainte-Beuve made something of a fight for them, but it was the
+Sainte-Beuve of almost the earliest years (1831), when, according to a
+weakness of beginners in criticism, he was a little inclined "to be
+different," for the sake of difference. Against _Cléveland_ even he
+lifts up his heel, though in a rather unfortunate manner, declaring the
+reading of the greater part to be "aussi fade que celle d'_Amadis_." Now
+to some of us the reading of _Amadis_ is not "fade" at all. But he finds
+some philosophical and psychological passages of merit. Over the
+_Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité_--that huge and unwieldy galleon to
+which the frail shallop of _Manon_ was originally attached, and which
+has long been stranded on the reefs of oblivion, while its fly-boat
+sails for ever more--he is quite enthusiastic, finds it, though with a
+certain relativity, "natural," "frank," and "well-preserved," gives it a
+long analysis, actually discovers in it "an inexpressible savour"
+surpassing modern "local colour," and thinks the handling of it
+comparable in some respects to that of _The Vicar of Wakefield_! The
+_Doyen de Killérine_--the third of Prévost's long books--is "infinitely
+agreeable," "si l'on y met un peu de complaisance." (The Sainte-Beuve of
+later years would have noticed that an infinity which has to be made
+infinite by a little complaisance is curiously finite). The later and
+shorter _Histoire d'une Grecque moderne_ is a _joli roman_, and
+_gracieux_, though it is not so charming and subtle as Crébillon _fils_
+would have made it, and is "knocked off rather haphazardly." Another
+critic of 1830, now perhaps too much forgotten, Gustave Planche, does
+not mention the _Grecque_, and brushes aside the three earlier and
+bigger books rather hastily, though he allows "interest" to both
+_Cléveland_ and the _Doyen_. Perhaps, before "coming to real things" (as
+Balzac once said of his own work) in _Manon_, some remarks, not long,
+but first-hand, and based on actual reading at more than one time of
+life, as to her very unreal family, may be permitted here, though they
+may differ in opinion from the judgment of these two redoubtable
+critics.
+
+[Sidenote: The books themselves--_Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne_.]
+
+I do not think that when I first wrote about Prévost (I had read _Manon_
+long before) more than thirty years ago, in a _Short History of French
+Literature_, I paid very much attention to these books. I evidently had
+not read the _Grecque Moderne_, for I said nothing about it. Of the
+others I said only that they are "romances of adventure, occupying a
+middle place between those of Lesage and Marivaux." It is perfectly
+true, but of course not very "in-going," and whatever reading I then
+gave any of them had not left very much impression on my mind, when
+recently, and for the purpose of the present work, I took them up again,
+and the _Histoire_ as well. This last is the story of a young modern
+Greek slave named Théophé (a form of which the last syllable seems more
+modern than Greek), who is made visible in full harem by her
+particularly complaisant master, a Turkish pasha, to a young Frenchman,
+admired and bought by this Frenchman (the relater of the story), and
+freed by him. He does not at first think of making her his mistress, but
+later does propose it, only to meet a refusal of a somewhat
+sentimental-romantic character, though she protests not merely
+gratitude, but love for him. The latter part of the book is occupied by
+what Sainte-Beuve calls "delicate" ambiguities, which leave us in doubt
+whether her "cruelty" is shown to others as well, or whether it is not.
+In suggesting that Crébillon would have made it charming, the great
+critic has perhaps made another of those slips which show the novitiate.
+The fact is that it is an exceedingly dull book: and that to have made
+it anything else, while retaining anything like its present "propriety,"
+either an entire metamorphosis of spirit, which might have made it as
+passionate as _Manon_ itself, or the sort of filigree play with thought
+and phrase which Marivaux would have given, would be required. As a
+"Crébillonnade" (_v. inf._) it might have been both pleasant and subtle,
+but it could only have been made so by becoming exceedingly indecent.
+
+[Sidenote: _Cléveland._]
+
+Still, its comparative (though only comparative) shortness, and a
+certain possibility rather than actuality of interest in the
+situation,[340] may recommend this novel at least to mercy. If the
+present writer were on a jury trying _Cléveland_, no want of food or
+fire should induce him to endorse any such recommendation in regard to
+that intolerable book. It is, to speak frankly, one of the very few
+books--one of the still fewer novels--which I have found it practically
+impossible to read even in the "skim and skip and dip" fashion which
+should, no doubt, be only practised as a work of necessity (_i.e._ duty
+to others) and of mercy (to oneself) on extraordinary occasions, but
+which nobody but a prig and a pedant will absolutely disallow. Almost
+the only good thing I can find to say about it is that Prévost, who
+lived indeed for some time in England, is now and then, if not always,
+miraculously correct in his proper names. He can actually spell
+Hammersmith! Other merit--and this is not constant (in the dips which I
+have actually made, to rise exhausted from each, and skip rather than
+even skim to the rest)--I can find none. The beginning is absurd and
+rather offensive, the hero being a natural son of Cromwell by a woman
+who has previously been the mistress of Charles I. The continuation is a
+mish-mash of adventure, sometimes sanguinary, but never exciting, travel
+(in fancy parts of the West Indies, etc.), and the philosophical
+disputations which Sainte-Beuve found interesting. As for the end, no
+two persons seem quite agreed what _is_ the end. Sainte-Beuve speaks of
+it as an attempted suicide of the hero--the most justifiable of all his
+actions, if he had succeeded. Prévost himself, in the Preface to the
+_Doyen de Killérine_, repeats an earlier disavowal (which he says he
+had previously made in Holland) of a fifth volume, and says that his own
+work ended with the murder of Cléveland by one of the characters. Again,
+this is a comprehensible and almost excusable action, and might have
+followed, though it could not have preceded, the other. But if it was
+the end, the other was not. A certain kind of critic may say that it is
+my duty to search and argue this out. But, for my part, I say as a
+reader to _Cléveland_, "No more _in_ thee my steps shall be, For ever
+and for ever."[341]
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Doyen de Killérine._]
+
+_Le Doyen de Killérine_ is not perhaps so utterly to be excommunicated
+as _Cléveland_, and, as has been said above, some have found real
+interest in it. It is not, however, free either from the
+preposterousness or from the dulness of the earlier book, though the
+first characteristic is less preposterous as such preposterousness goes.
+The Dean of Killérine (Coleraine) is a Roman Catholic dean, just after
+the expulsion of James II., when, we learn with some surprise, that
+neighbourhood was rather specially full of his co-religionists. He is a
+sort of _lusus naturae_, being bow-legged, humpbacked, potbellied, and
+possessing warts on his brows, which make him a sort of later horned
+Moses. The eccentricity of his appearance is equalled by that of his
+conduct. He is the eldest son of an Irish gentleman (nobleman, it would
+sometimes seem), and his father finds a pretty girl who is somehow
+willing to marry him. But, feeling no vocation for marriage, he suggests
+to her (a suggestion perhaps unique in fiction if not in fact) that she
+should marry his father instead. This singular match comes off, and a
+second family results, the members of which are, fortunately, not _lusus
+naturae_, but a brace of very handsome and accomplished boys, George and
+Patrick, and an extremely pretty girl, Rosa. Of these three, their
+parents dying when they are something short of full age, the excellent
+dean becomes a sort of guardian. He takes them to the exiled court of
+Versailles, and his very hen-like anxieties over the escapades of these
+most lively ducklings supply the main subject of the book. It might have
+been made amusing by humorous treatment, but Prévost had no humour in
+him: and it might have been made thrilling by passion, but he never,
+except in the one great little instance, compressed or distilled his
+heaps and floods of sensibility and sensationalism into that. The scene
+where a wicked Mme. de S---- plays, and almost outplays, Potiphar's wife
+to the good but hideous Dean's Joseph is one of the most curious in
+novel-literature, though one of the least amusing.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité_.]
+
+We may now go back to the _Mémoires_, partly in compliment to the master
+of all mid-nineteenth-century critics, but more because of their almost
+fortuitous good luck in ushering _Manon_ into the world. There is
+something in them of both their successors, _Cléveland_ and the _Doyen_,
+but it may be admitted that they are less unreadable than the first, and
+less trivial than the second. The plan--if it deserve that name--is odd,
+one marquis first telling his own fortunes and voyages and whatnots, and
+then serving as Mentor (the application, though of course not original,
+is inevitable) to another marquis in further voyages and adventures.
+There are Turkish brides and Spanish murdered damsels; English politics
+and literature, where, unfortunately, the spelling _does_ sometimes
+break down; glances backward, in "Histoires" of the _Grand Siècle_, at
+meetings with Charles de Sévigné, Racine, etc.; mysterious remedies, a
+great deal of moralising, and a great deal more of weeping. Indeed the
+whole of Prévost, like the whole of that "Sensibility Novel" of which he
+is a considerable though rather an outside practitioner, is pervaded
+with a gentle rain of tears wherein the personages seem to revel--indeed
+admit that they do so--in the midst of their woes.
+
+[Sidenote: Its miscellaneous curiosities.]
+
+On the whole, however, the youthful--or almost youthful--half-wisdom of
+Sainte-Beuve is better justified of its preference for the _Mémoires_
+than of other things in the same article. I found it, reading it later
+on purpose and with "preventions" rather the other way, very much more
+readable than any of its companions (_Manon_ is not its companion, but
+in a way its constituent), without being exactly readable _simpliciter_.
+All sorts of curious things might be dug out of it: for instance, quite
+at the beginning, a more definite declaration than I know elsewhere of
+that curious French title-system which has always been such a puzzle to
+Englishmen. "Il _se fit_ appeler le Comte de ... et, se voyant un fils,
+il _lui donna_ celui de Marquis de ..." There is a good deal in it which
+makes us think that Prévost had read Defoe, and something which makes it
+not extravagant to fancy that Thackeray had read Prévost. But once more
+"let us come to the real things--let us speak of" _Manon Lescaut_.
+
+[Sidenote: _Manon Lescaut._]
+
+[Sidenote: Its uniqueness.]
+
+It would be a very interesting question in that study of
+literature--rather unacademic, or perhaps academic in the best sense
+only--which might be so near and is so far--whether the man is most to
+be envied who reads _Manon Lescaut_ for the first time in blissful
+ignorance of these other things, and even of what has been said of them;
+or he who has, by accident or design, toiled through the twenty volumes
+of the others and comes upon Her. My own case is the former: and I am
+far from quarrelling with it. But I sometimes like to fancy--now that I
+have reversed the proceeding--what it would have been like to dare the
+voices--the endless, dull, half-meaningless, though not threatening
+voices--of those other books--to refrain even from the appendix to the
+_Mémoires_ as such, and never, till the _Modern Greekess_ has been
+dispatched, return to and possess the entire and perfect jewel of
+_Manon_. I used to wonder, when, for nearer five and twenty than twenty
+years, I read for review hundreds of novels, English and French, whether
+anybody would ever repeat Prévost's extraordinary spurt and "sport" in
+this wonderful little book. I am bound to say that I never knew an
+instance. The "first book" which gives a promise--dubious it may be, but
+still promising--and is never followed by anything that fulfils this, is
+not so very uncommon, though less common in prose fiction than in
+poetry. The not so very rare "single-speech" poems are also not real
+parallels. It is of the essence of poetry, according to almost every
+theory, that it should be, occasionally at least, inexplicable and
+unaccountable. I believe that every human being is capable of poetry,
+though I should admit that the exhibition of the capability would be in
+most cases--I am sure it would be in my own--"highly to be deprecated."
+But with a sober prose fiction of some scope and room and verge it is
+different. The face of Helen; the taste of nectar; the vision of the
+clouds or of the sea; the passion of a great action in oneself or
+others; the infinite poignancy of suffering or of pleasure, may
+draw--once and never again--immortal verse from an exceedingly mortal
+person. Such things might also draw a phrase or a paragraph of prose.
+But they could not extract a systematic and organised prose tale of some
+two hundred pages, each of them much fuller than those of our average
+six-shilling stuff; and yet leave the author, who had never shown
+himself capable of producing anything similar before, unable to produce
+anything in the least like it again. I wonder that the usual literary
+busybodies have never busied themselves--perhaps they have, for during a
+couple of decades I have not had the opportunity of knowing everything
+that goes on in French literature as I once did--with Prévost,
+demonstrating that _Manon_ was a posthumous work of the Regent (who was
+a clever man), or an expression of a real passion which lay at the back
+of Richelieu's debauchery, or written by some unknown author from whom
+the Abbé bought it, and who died early, or something else of the kind.
+
+There does not, however, appear to be the slightest chance or hope or
+fear (whichever expression be preferred) of the kind. Although Prévost
+elsewhere indulges--as everybody else for a long time in France and
+England alike did, save creative geniuses like Fielding--in
+transparently feigned talk about the origins of his stories, he was a
+very respectable man in his way, and not at all likely to father or to
+steal any one else's work in a disreputable fashion. There are no other
+claimants for the book: and though it may be difficult for a foreigner
+to find the faults of style that Gustave Planche rebukes in Prévost
+generally, there is nothing in the mere style of _Manon_ which sets it
+above the others.
+
+For once one may concede that the whole attraction of the piece, barring
+one or two transient but almost Shakespearian flashes of
+expression--such as the famous "Perfide Manon! Perfide!" when she and
+Des Grieux first meet after her earliest treason--is to be found in its
+marvellous humanity, its equally marvellous grasp of character, and the
+intense, the absolutely shattering pathos of the relations of the hero
+and heroine. There are those, of course, who make much of the _persona
+tertia_, Tiberge, the virtuous and friendly priest, who has a remarkable
+command of money for a not highly placed ecclesiastic, lends it with
+singular want of circumspection, and then meddles with the best of
+intentions and the most futile or mischievous of results. Very
+respectable man, Tiberge; but one with whom _on n'a que faire_. Manon
+and Des Grieux; Des Grieux and Manon--these are as all-sufficient to the
+reader as Manon was more than sufficient to Des Grieux, and as he, alas!
+was, if only in some ways, _in_sufficient to Manon.
+
+One of the things which are nuisances in Prévost's other books becomes
+pardonable, almost admirable, in this. His habit of incessant,
+straight-on narration by a single person, his avoidance of dialogue
+properly so called, is, as has been noted, a habit common to all these
+early novels, and, to our taste if not to that of their early readers,
+often disastrous. Here it is a positive advantage. Manon speaks very
+little; and so much the better. Her "comely face and her fair bodie" (to
+repeat once more a beloved quotation) speak for her to the ruin of her
+lover and herself--to the age-long delectation of readers. On the other
+hand, the whole speech is Des Grieux', and never was a monologue better
+suited or justified. The worst of such things is usually that there are
+in them all sorts of second thoughts of the author. There is none of
+this littleness in the speech of Des Grieux. He is a gentle youth in the
+very best sense of the term, and as we gather--not from anything he says
+of himself, but from the general tenor--by no means a "wild gallant";
+affectionate, respectful to his parents, altogether "douce," and,
+indeed, rather (to start with) like Lord Glenvarloch in _The Fortunes of
+Nigel_. He meets Manon (Prévost has had the wits to make her a little
+older than her lover), and _actum est de_ both of them.
+
+[Sidenote: The character of its heroine.]
+
+But Manon herself? She talks (it has been said) very little, and it was
+not necessary that she should talk much. If she had talked as Marianne
+talks, we should probably hate her, unless, as is equally probable, we
+ceased to take any interest in her. She is a girl not of talk but of
+deeds: and her deeds are of course quite inexcusable. But still that
+great and long unknown verse of Prior, which tells how a more harmless
+heroine did various things--
+
+    As answered the end of her being created,
+
+fits her, and the deeds create her in their process, according to the
+wonderful magic of the novelist's art. Manon is not in the least a
+Messalina; it is not what Messalina wanted that she wants at all, though
+she may have no physical objection to it, and may rejoice in it when it
+is shared by her lover. Still less is she a Margaret of Burgundy, or one
+of the tigress-enchantresses of the Fronde, who would kill their lovers
+after enjoying their love. It has been said often, and is beyond all
+doubt true, that she would have been perfectly happy with Des Grieux if
+he had fulfilled the expostulations of George the Fourth as to Mr.
+Turveydrop, and had not only been known to the King, but had had twenty
+thousand a year. She wants nobody and nothing but him, as far as the
+"Him" is concerned: but she does not want him in a cottage. And here the
+subtlety comes in. She does not in the least mind giving to others what
+she gives him, provided that they will give her what he cannot give. The
+possibility of this combination is of course not only shocking to Mrs.
+Grundy, but deniable by persons who are not Mrs. Grundy at all. Its
+existence is not really doubtful, though hardly anybody, except Prévost
+and (I repeat it, little as I am of an Ibsenite) Ibsen in the _Wild
+Duck_, has put it into real literature. Manon, like Gina and probably
+like others, does not really think what she gives of immense, or of any
+great, importance. People will give her, in exchange for it, what she
+does think of great, of immense importance; the person to whom she would
+quite honestly prefer to give it cannot give her these other things. And
+she concludes her bargain as composedly as any _bonne_ who takes the
+basket to the shops and "makes its handle dance"--to use the French
+idiom--for her own best advantage. It does annoy her when she has to
+part from Des Grieux, and it does annoy her that Des Grieux should be
+annoyed at what she does. But she is made of no nun's flesh, and such
+soul as she has is filled with much desire for luxury and pleasure. The
+desire of the soul will have its way, and the flesh lends itself readily
+enough to the satisfaction thereof.
+
+[Sidenote: And that of the hero.]
+
+So, too, there is no such instance known to me of the presentation of
+two different characters, in two different ways, so complete and yet so
+idiosyncratic in each. Sainte-Beuve showed what he was going to become
+(as well, perhaps, as something which he was going to lose) in his
+slight but suggestive remarks on the relation of Des Grieux to the
+average _roué_ hero of that most _roué_ time. It is only a suggestion;
+he does not work it out. But it is worth working out a little. Des
+Grieux is _ab initio_, and in some ways _usque ad finem_, a sort of
+_ingénu_. He seems to have no vicious tendencies whatever; and had Manon
+not supervened, might have been a very much more exemplary Chevalier de
+Malte than the usual run of those dignitaries, who differed chiefly
+from their uncrossed comrades and brethren in having no wife to be
+unfaithful to. He is never false to Manon--the incident of one of
+Manon's lovers trying vainly to tempt his rival, with a pretty cast-off
+mistress of his own, is one of the most striking features of the book.
+He positively reveres, not his mother, who is dead, and reverence for
+whom would be nothing in a Frenchman, but his father, and even, it would
+seem, his elder brother--a last stretch of reverence quite unknown to
+many young English gentlemen who certainly would not do things that Des
+Grieux did. Except when Manon is concerned, it would seem that he might
+have been a kind of saint--as good at least as Tiberge. But his love for
+her and his desire for her entirely saturate and transform him. That he
+disobeys his father and disregards his brother is nothing: we all do
+that in less serious cases than his, and there is almost warrant for it
+in Scripture. But he cheats at play (let us frankly allow, remembering
+Grammont and others, that this was not in France the unpardonable sin
+that it has--for many generations, fortunately--been with us), at the
+suggestion of his rascally left-hand brother-in-law, in order to supply
+Manon's wants. He commits an almost deliberate (though he makes some
+excuses on this point) and almost cowardly murder, on an unarmed
+lay-brother of Saint-Sulpice, to get to Manon. And, worst of all, he
+consents to the stealing of moneys given to her by his supplanters in
+order to feed her extravagance. After this his suborning the King's
+soldiers to attack the King's constabulary on the King's highway to
+rescue Manon is nothing. But observe that, though it is certainly not
+"All for God," it _is_ "All for Her." And observe further that all these
+things--even the murder--were quite common among the rank and file of
+that French aristocracy which was so busily hurrying on the French
+Revolution. Only, Des Grieux himself would pretty certainly not have
+done them if She had never come in his way. And he tells it all with a
+limpid and convincing clarity (as they would say now) which puts the
+whole thing before us. No apology is made, and no apology is needed. It
+is written in the books of the chronicles of Manon and Des Grieux; in
+the lives of Des Grieux and Manon, suppose them ever to have existed or
+to exist, it could not but happen.
+
+[Sidenote: The inevitableness of both and the inestimableness of their
+history.]
+
+It is surely not profane (and perhaps it has been done already) to
+borrow for these luckless, and, if you will, somewhat graceless persons,
+the words of the mighty colophon of Matthew Arnold's most unequal but in
+parts almost finest poem, at least the first and last lines:
+
+    So rest, for ever rest, immortal pair,
+
+and
+
+    The rustle of the eternal rain of love.
+
+Nor is it perhaps extravagant to claim for their creator--even for their
+reporter--the position of the first person who definitely vindicated for
+the novel the possibility of creating a passionate masterpiece,
+outstripping _La Princesse de Clèves_ as _Othello_ outstrips _A Woman
+Killed with Kindness_. As for the enormous remainder of him, if it is
+very frankly negligible by the mere reader, it is not quite so by the
+student. He was very popular, and, careless bookmaker as he was in a
+very critical time, his popularity scarcely failed him till his horrible
+death.[342] It can scarcely be said that, except in the one great cited
+instance, he heightened or intensified the French novel, but he enlarged
+its scope, varied its interests, and combined new objectives with its
+already existing schemes, even in his less good work. In _Manon Lescaut_
+itself he gave a masterpiece, not only to the novel, not only to France,
+but to all literature and all the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Crébillon _fils_.]
+
+The unfortunate nobleman as to whom Dickens has left us in doubt whether
+he was a peer in his own right or the younger son or a Marquis or Duke,
+pronounced Shakespeare "a clayver man." It was perhaps, in the
+particular instance, inadequate though true. I hardly know any one in
+literature of whom it is truer and more adequate than it is of Claude
+Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon the younger, commonly called Crébillon
+_fils_.[343] His very name is an abomination to Mrs. Grundy, who
+probably never read, or even attempted to read, one of his naughty
+books. Gray's famous tribute[344] to him--also known to a large number
+who are in much the same case with Mrs. Grundy--is distinctly
+patronising. But he is a very clever man indeed, and the cleverness of
+some of his books--especially those in dialogue--is positively amazing.
+
+[Sidenote: The case against him.]
+
+At the same time it is of the first importance to make the due provisos
+and allowances, the want of which so frequently causes disappointment,
+if not positive disgust, when readers have been induced by unbalanced
+laudation to take up works of the literature of other days. There are,
+undoubtedly, things--many and heavy things--to be said against
+Crébillon. A may say, "I am not, I think, _Mr._ Grundy: but I cannot
+stand your Crébillon. I do not like a world where all the men are
+apparently atheists, and all the women are certainly the other thing
+mentioned in Donne's famous line. It disgusts and sickens me: and I will
+have none of it, however clever it may be." B, not quite agreeing with
+A, may take another tone, and observe, "He _is_ clever and he _is_
+amusing: but he is terribly monotonous. I do not mind a visit to the
+'oyster-bearing shores' now and then, but I do not want to live in
+Lampsacus. After all, even in a pagan Pantheon, there are other
+divinities besides a cleverly palliated Priapus and a comparatively
+ladylike Cotytto. Seven volumes of however delicately veiled
+'sculduddery' are nearly as bad as a whole evening's golf-talk in a St.
+Andrews hotel, or a long men's dinner, where everybody but yourself is a
+member of an Amateur Dramatic Society." The present writer is not far
+from agreeing with B, while he has for A a respect which disguises no
+shadow of a sneer. Crébillon does harp far too much on one string, and
+that one of no pure tone: and even the individual handlings of the
+subject are chargeable throughout his work with _longueurs_, in the
+greater part of it with sheer tedium. It is very curious, and for us of
+the greatest importance, to notice how this curse of long-windedness,
+episodic and hardly episodic "inset," endless talk "about it and about
+it," besets these pioneers of the modern novel. Whether it was a legacy
+of the "Heroics" or not it is difficult to say. I think it was--to some
+extent. But, as we have seen, it exists even in Lesage; it is found
+conspicuously in Marivaux; it "advances insupportably" in Prévost,
+except when some God intervenes to make him write (and to stop him
+writing) _Manon_; and it rests heavily even on Crébillon, one of the
+lightest, if not one of the purest, of literary talents. It is
+impossible to deny that he suffers from monotony of general theme: and
+equally impossible to deny that he suffers from spinning out of
+particular pieces. There is perhaps not a single thing of his which
+would not have been better if it had been shorter: and two of his
+liveliest if also most risky pieces, _La Nuit et le Moment_ and _Le
+Hasard au Coin du Feu_, might have been cut down to one half with
+advantage, and to a quarter with greater advantage still.
+
+There are, however, excuses for Crébillon: and though it may seem a rash
+thing to say, and even one which gives the case away, there is, at least
+in these two and parts of _Le Sopha_, hardly a page--even of the parts
+which, if "cut," would improve the work as a whole--that does not in
+itself prove the almost elfish cleverness now assigned to him.
+
+[Sidenote: For the defendant--The veracity of his artificiality and his
+consummate cleverness.]
+
+The great excuse for him, from the non-literary point of view, is that
+this world of his--narrow though crowded as it is, corrupt,
+preposterous, inviting the Judgment that came after it as no period
+perhaps has ever done, except that immediately before the Deluge, that
+of the earlier Roman empire, and one other--was a real world in its day,
+and left, as all real things do, an abiding mark and influence on what
+followed. One of the scores and almost hundreds of sayings which
+distinguish him, trivial as he seems to some and no doubt disgusting as
+he seems to others, is made by one of his most characteristic and most
+impudent but not most offensive heroes _à la_ Richelieu, who says, not
+in soliloquy nor to a brother _roué_, but to the mistress of the moment:
+"If love-making is not always a pleasure, at any rate it is always a
+kind of occupation." That is the keynote of the Crébillon novel: it is
+the handbook, with illustrative examples, of the business, employment,
+or vocation of flirting, in the most extensive and intensive meanings of
+that term comprehensible to the eighteenth century.
+
+[Sidenote: The Crébillonesque atmosphere and method.]
+
+Now you should never scamp or hurry over business: and Crébillon
+observes this doctrine in the most praiseworthy fashion. With the
+thorough practicality of his century and of his nation (which has always
+been in reality the most practical of all nations) he sets to work to
+give us the ways and manners of his world. It is an odd world at first
+sight, but one gets used to its conventions. It is a world of what they
+used to call, in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century,
+"high fellers" and of great ladies, all of whom--saving for glimpses of
+military and other appointments for the men, which sometimes take them
+away and are useful for change of scene, of theatres, balls,
+gaming-tables for men and women both--"have nothing in the world to do"
+but carry on that occupation which Clitandre of "The Night and the
+Moment," at an extremely suitable time and in equally appropriate
+circumstances, refers to in the words quoted above. There are some other
+oddities about this world. In some parts of it nobody seems to be
+married. Mrs. Grundy, and even persons more exercised in actual fact
+than Mrs. Grundy, would expect them all to be, and to neglect the tie.
+But sometimes Crébillon finds it easier to mask this fact. Often his
+ladies are actual widows, which is of course very convenient, and might
+be taken as a sign of grace in him by Mrs. G.: oftener it is difficult
+to say what they are legally. They are nearly all duchesses or
+marchionesses or countesses, just as the men hold corresponding ranks:
+and they all seem to be very well off. But their sole occupation is that
+conducted under the three great verbs, _Prendre_; _Avoir_; _Quitter_.
+These verbs are used rather more frequently, but by no means
+exclusively, of and by the men. Taking the stage nomenclature familiar
+to everybody from Molière, which Crébillon also uses in some of his
+books, though he exchanges it for proper names elsewhere, let us suppose
+a society composed of Oronte, Clitandre, Eraste, Damis (men), and
+Cydalise, Célie, Lucinde, Julie (ladies). Oronte "takes" Lucinde,
+"possesses" her for a time, and "quits" her for Julie, who has been
+meanwhile "taken," "possessed," and "quitted" by Eraste. Eraste passes
+to the conjugation of the three verbs with Cydalise, who, however, takes
+the initiative of "quitting" and conjugates "take" in joint active and
+passive with Damis. Meanwhile Célie and Clitandre are similarly occupied
+with each other, and ready to "cut in" with the rest at fresh
+arrangements. These processes require much serious conversation, and
+this is related with the same mixture of gravity and irony which is
+bestowed on the livelier passages of action.
+
+The thing, in short, is most like an intensely intricate dance, with
+endless figures--with elaborate, innumerable, and sometimes
+indescribable stage directions. And the whole of it is written down
+carefully by M. Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon.
+
+He might have occupied his time much better? Perhaps, as to the subject
+of occupation. But with that we have, if not nothing, very little to do.
+The point is, How did he handle these better-let-alone subjects? and
+what contribution, in so handling them, did he make to the general
+development of the novel?
+
+I am bound to say that I think, with the caution given above, he handled
+them, when he was at his best, singularly well, and gave hints, to be
+taken or left as they chose, to handlers of less disputable subjects
+than his.
+
+One at least of the most remarkable things about him is connected with
+this very disputableness. Voltaire and Sterne were no doubt greater men
+than Crébillon _fils_: and though both of them dealt with the same class
+of subject, they also dealt with others, while he did not. But,
+curiously enough, the reproach of sniggering, which lies so heavily on
+Laurence Sterne and François Arouet, does not lie on Crébillon. He has
+an audacity of grave persiflage[345] which is sometimes almost Swiftian
+in a lower sphere: and it saves him from the unpardonable sin of the
+snigger. He has also--as, to have this grave persiflage, he almost
+necessarily must have--a singularly clear and flexible style, which is
+only made more piquant by the "-assiez's" and "-ussiez's" of the older
+language. Further, and of still greater importance for the novelist, he
+has a pretty wit, which sometimes almost approaches humour, and, if not
+a diabolically, a _diablotin_ically acute perception of human nature as
+it affects his subject. This perception rarely fails: and conventional,
+and very unhealthily conventional, as the Crébillon world is, the people
+who inhabit it are made real people. He is, in those best things of his
+at least, never "out." We can see the ever-victorious duke (M. de
+Clerval of the _Hasard_ is perhaps the closest to the Richelieu model of
+all Crébillon's coxcomb-gallants), who, even after a lady has given him
+most unequivocal proofs of her affection, refuses for a long time, if
+not finally, to say that he loves her, because he has himself a
+graduated scheme of values in that direction, and though she may have
+touched his heart, etc., she has not quite come up to his "love"
+standard.[346] And we know, too, though she is less common, the
+philosophical Marquise herself, who, "possessing" the most notoriously
+inconstant lover in all Paris (this same M. de Clerval, it happens),
+maintains her comparative indifference to the circumstance, alleging
+that even when he is most inconstant he is always "very affectionate,
+though a little _extinguished_." And in fact he goes off to her from the
+very fireside, where such curious things have chanced. Extravagant as
+are the situations in _La Nuit et le Moment_, the other best thing, they
+are, but for the _longueurs_ already censured, singularly verisimilar on
+their own postulates. The trusty coachman, who always drives
+particularly slowly when a lady accompanies his master in the carriage,
+but would never think of obeying the check-string if his master's own
+voice did not authorise it; the invaluable _soubrette_ who will sit up
+to any hour to play propriety, when her mistress is according a
+_tête-à-tête_, but who, most naturally, always falls asleep--these
+complete, at the lower end of the scale, what the dukes and the
+countesses have begun at the upper. And Crébillon, despite his
+verbosity, is never at a loss for pointed sayings to relieve and froth
+it up. Nor are these mere _mots_ or _pointes_ or conceits--there is a
+singular amount of life-wisdom in them, and a short anthology might be
+made here, if there were room for it, which would entirely vindicate the
+assertion.
+
+[Sidenote: Inequality of his general work--a survey of it.]
+
+It is true that the praises just given to Crébillon do not (as was
+indeed hinted above) apply to the whole of his work, or even to the
+larger part of it. An unfavourable critic might indeed say that, in
+strictness, they only apply to parts of _Le Sopha_ and to the two little
+dialogue-stories just referred to. The method is, no doubt, one by no
+means easy to apply on the great scale, and the restriction of the
+subject adds to the difficulty. The longest regular stories of all, _Ah!
+Quel Conte!_ and _Le Sopha_ itself, though they should have been
+mentioned in reverse order, are resumptions of the Hamiltonian idea[347]
+of chaining things on to the _Arabian Nights_. Crébillon, however, does
+not actually resuscitate Shahriar and the sisters, but substitutes a
+later Caliph, Shah Baham, and his Sultana. The Sultan is exceedingly
+stupid, but also very talkative, and fond of interrupting his vizier and
+the other tale-tellers with wiseacreries; the Sultana is an acute enough
+lady, who governs her tongue in order to save her neck. The framework is
+not bad for a short story, but becomes a little tedious when it is made
+to enshrine two volumes, one of them pretty big. It is better in _Le
+Sopha_ than in _Ah! Quel Conte!_ and some of the tales that it gives us
+in the former are almost equal to the two excepted dialogues. Moreover,
+it is unluckily true that _Ah! Quel Conte!_ (an ejaculation of the
+Sultana's at the beginning) might be, as Crébillon himself doubtless
+foresaw, repeated with a sinister meaning by a reader at the end.
+_Tanzaï et Néadarné_ or _L'Écumoire_, another fairy story, though
+livelier in its incidents than _Ah! Quel Conte!_--nay, though it
+contains some of Crébillon's smartest sayings, and has perhaps his
+nicest heroine,--is heavy on the whole, and in it, the author's
+_gauffre_-like lightness of "impropriety" being absent, the tone
+approaches nearer to that dismallest form of literature or
+non-literature--the deliberate obscene.
+
+_Les Égarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit_, on the other hand--one of
+the author's earliest books--is the furthest from that most undesirable
+consummation, and one of the most curious, if not of the most amusing,
+of all. It recounts, from the mouth of the neophyte himself, the
+"forming" of a very young man--almost a boy--to this strange kind of
+commerce, by an elderly, but not yet old, and still attractive
+coquette, Madame de Lursay, whose earlier life has scandalised even the
+not easily scandalisable society of her time (we are not told quite
+how), but who has recovered a reputation very slightly tarnished. The
+hero is flattered, but for a long time too timid and innocent to avail
+himself of the advantages offered to him; while, before very long,
+Madame de Lursay's wiles are interfered with by an "Inconnue-Ingénue,"
+with whom he falls in deep calf-love of a quasi-genuine kind. The book
+includes sketches of the half-bravo gallants of the time, and is not
+negligible: but it is not vividly interesting.
+
+Still less so, though they contain some very lively passages, and are
+the chief _locus_ for Crébillon's treatment of the actual trio of
+husband, wife, and lover, are the _Lettres de la Marquise de M---- au
+Comte de P----_. The scene in which the husband--unfaithful, peevish,
+and a _petit maître_--enters his wife's room to find an ancient, gouty
+Marquis, who cannot get off his knees quick enough, and terminates the
+situation with all the _aplomb_ of the Regency, is rather nice: and the
+gradual "slide" of the at first quite virtuous writer (the wife herself,
+of course) is well depicted. But love-letters which are neither
+half-badinage--which these are not--nor wholly passionate--which these
+never are till the last,[348] when the writer is describing a state of
+things which Crébillon could not manage at all--are very difficult
+things to bring off, and Claude Prosper is not quite equal to the
+situation.
+
+It will thus be seen that the objectors whom we have called A and B--or
+at least B--will find that they or he need not read all the pages of all
+the seven volumes to justify their views: and some other work, still to
+be mentioned, completes the exhibition. I confess, indeed, once more
+unblushingly, that I have not read every page of them myself. Had they
+fallen in my way forty years ago I should, no doubt, have done so; but
+forty years of critical experience and exercise give one the power, and
+grant one the right, of a more summary procedure in respect of matter
+thus postponed, unless it is perceived to be of very exceptional
+quality. These larger works of Crébillon's are not good, though they are
+not by any means so bad as those of Prévost. There are nuggets, of the
+shrewd sense and the neat phrase with which he has been credited, in
+nearly all of them: and these the skilled prospector of reading gold
+will always detect and profit by. But, barring the possibility of a
+collection of such, the _Oeuvres Choisies_ of Crébillon need not
+contain more than the best parts of _Le Sopha_, the two comparatively
+short dialogue-tales, and a longer passage or two from _Tanzaï et
+Néadarné_. It would constitute (I was going to say a respectable, but as
+that is hardly the right word, I will say rather) a tolerable volume.
+Even in a wider representation _Les Heureux Orphelins_ and _Lettres
+Athéniennes_ would yield very little.
+
+The first begins sensationally with the discovery, by a young English
+squire in his own park, of a foundling girl and boy--_not_ of his own
+production--whom he brings up; and it ends with a tedious description of
+how somebody founded the first _petite maison_ in England--a worthy work
+indeed. It is also noteworthy for a piece of bad manners, which, one
+regrets to say, French writers have too often committed; lords and
+ladies of the best known names and titles in or near Crébillon's own
+day--such as Oxford, Suffolk, Pembroke--being introduced with the utmost
+nonchalance.[349] Our novelists have many faults to charge themselves
+with, and Anthony Trollope, in _The Three Clerks_, produced a Frenchman
+with perhaps as impossible a name as any English travesty in French
+literature. But I do not remember any one introducing, in a _not_
+historical novel, a Duc de la Tremoille or a member of any of the
+branches of Rohan, at a time when actual bearers of these titles existed
+in France. As for the _Lettres Athéniennes_, if it were not for
+completeness, I should scarcely even mention them. Alcibiades is the
+chief male writer; Aspasia the chief female; but all of them, male and
+female, are equally destitute of Atticism and of interest. The contrast
+of the contrasts between Crébillon's and Prévost's best and worst work
+is one of the oddest things in letters. One wonders how Prévost came to
+write anything so admirable as _Manon Lescaut_; one wonders how
+Crébillon came to write anything so insufficient as the two books just
+criticised, and even others.
+
+It may be said, "This being so, why have you given half a chapter to
+these two writers, even with Lesage and Marivaux to carry it off?" The
+reason is that this is (or attempts to be) a history of the French
+novel, and that, in such a history, the canons of importance are not the
+same as those of the novel itself. _Gil Blas_, _Marianne_, _Manon
+Lescaut_, and perhaps even _Le Hasard au Coin du Feu_ are interesting in
+themselves; but the whole work of their authors is important, and
+therefore interesting, to the historical student. For these authors
+carried further--a great deal further--the process of laying the
+foundations and providing the materials and plant for what was to come.
+Of actual masterpieces they only achieved the great, but not _equally_
+great, one of _Gil Blas_ and the little one of _Manon Lescaut_. But it
+is not by masterpieces alone that the world of literature lives in the
+sense of prolonging its life. One may even say--touching the unclean
+thing paradox for a moment, and purifying oneself with incense, and
+salt, and wine--that the masterpieces of literature are more beautiful
+and memorable and delectable in themselves than fertile in results. They
+catch up the sum of their own possibilities, and utter it in such a
+fashion that there is no more to say in that fashion. The dreary
+imitation _Iliads_, the impossible sham _Divina Commedias_, the
+Sheridan-Knowles Shakespearian plays, rise up and terrify or bore us.
+Whereas these second-rate experimenters, these adventurers in quest of
+what they themselves hardly know, strike out paths, throw seed, sketch
+designs which others afterwards pursue, and plant out, and fill up.
+There are probably not many persons now who would echo Gray's wish for
+eternal romances of either Marivaux or Crébillon; and the accompanying
+remarks in the same letter on _Joseph Andrews_, though they show some
+appreciation of the best characters, are quite inappreciative of the
+merit of the novel as a whole. For eternal variations of _Joseph
+Andrews_, "_Passe!_" as a French Gray might have said.
+
+Nevertheless, I am myself pretty sure that Marivaux at least helped
+Richardson and Fielding, and there can be no doubt that Crébillon helped
+Sterne. And what is more important to our present purpose, they and
+their companions in this chapter helped the novel in general, and the
+French novel in particular, to an extent far more considerable. We may
+not, of course, take the course of literary history--general or
+particular--which has been, as the course which in any case must have
+been. But at the same time we cannot neglect the facts. And it is a
+quite certain fact that, for the whole of the last half of the
+eighteenth century, and nearly the whole of the first quarter of the
+nineteenth, the French novel, as a novel, made singularly little
+progress. We shall have to deal in the next chapter, if not in the next
+two chapters, with at least two persons of far greater powers than any
+one mentioned in the last two. But we shall perhaps be able to show
+cause why even Voltaire and Rousseau, why certainly Diderot, why
+Marmontel and almost every one else till we come, not in this volume, to
+Chateaubriand, whose own position is a little doubtful, somehow failed
+to attain the position of a great advancer of the novel.
+
+These others, whatever their shortcomings, _had_ advanced it by bringing
+it, in various ways, a great deal nearer to its actual ideal of a
+completed picture of real human life. Lesage had blended with his
+representation a good deal of the conventional picaresque; Marivaux had
+abused preciousness of language and petty psychology; Prévost, save in
+that marvellous windfall of his and the Muses which the historian of
+novels can hardly mention without taking off his hat if he has one on,
+or making his best bow if he has not, had gone wandering after
+impossible and uninteresting will-o'-the-wisps; Crébillon had done worse
+than "abide in his inn," he had abided almost always in his polite[350]
+bordello. But all of them had meant to be real; and all of them had, if
+only now and then, to an extent which even Madame de la Fayette had
+scarcely achieved before, attained reality.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[309] In fact it has been said, and may be said again, that Lesage is
+one of the prophets who have never had so much justice done them in
+their own countries as abroad.
+
+[310] The first part of _Gil Blas_ appeared in 1715; and nearly twenty
+years later gossip said that the fourth was not ready, though the author
+had been paid in advance for it six or seven years earlier.
+
+[311] I have never read it in the original, being, though a great
+admirer of Spanish, but slightly versed therein.
+
+[312] This, which is a sort of Appendix to the _Diable Boiteux_, is much
+the best of these _opera minora_.
+
+[313] He had a temper of the most _Breton-Bretonnant_ type--not
+ill-natured but sturdy and independent, recalcitrant alike to
+ill-treatment and to patronage. He got on neither at the Bar, his first
+profession, nor with the regular actors, and he took vengeance in his
+books on both; while at least one famous anecdote shows his way of
+treating a patron--indeed, as it happened, a patroness--who presumed.
+
+[314] Asmodeus, according to his usual station in the infernal
+hierarchy, is _démon de la luxure_: but any fears or hopes which may be
+aroused by this description, and the circumstances of the action, will
+be disappointed. Lesage has plenty of risky situations, but his language
+is strictly "proper."
+
+[315] Against this may be cited his equally anecdotic acceptance of
+Regnard, who was also "run" against Molière. But Regnard was a "classic"
+and orthodox in his way; Lesage was a free-lance, and even a Romantic
+before Romanticism. Boileau knew that evil, as evil seemed to him, _had_
+come from Spain; he saw more coming in this, and if he anticipated more
+still in the future, 1830 proved him no false prophet.
+
+[316] In other words, there is a unity of personality in the attitude
+which the hero takes to and in them.
+
+[317] And in it too, of course; as well as in Spain's remarkable but too
+soon re-enslaved criticism.
+
+[318] As he says of himself (vii. x.): _Enfin, après un sévère examen je
+tombais d'accord avec moi-même, que si je n'étais pas un fripon, il ne
+s'en fallait guère._ And the Duke of Lerma tells him later, "_M. de
+Santillane, à ce que je vois, vous avez été tant soit peu_ picaro."
+
+[319] The two most undoubted cases--his ugly and, unluckily, repeated
+acceptance of the part of Pandarus-Leporello--were only too ordinary
+rascalities in the seventeenth century. The books of the chronicles of
+England and France show us not merely clerks and valets but gentlemen of
+every rank, from esquire to duke, eagerly accepting this office.
+
+[320] In a curious passage of Bk. XII. Chap. I. in which Gil disclaims
+paternity and resigns it to Marialva. This may have been prompted by a
+desire to lessen the turpitude of the go-between business; but it is a
+clumsy device, and makes Gil look a fool as well as a knave.
+
+[321] One of Lesage's triumphs is the way in which, almost to the last,
+"M. de Santillane," despite the rogueries practised often on and
+sometimes by him, retains a certain gullibility, or at least
+ingenuousness.
+
+[322] Not of course as opposed to "romantic," but as = "chief and
+principal."
+
+[323] The reader must not forget that this formidable word means
+"privateer" rather than "pirate" in French, and that this was the golden
+age of the business in that country.
+
+[324] Those who are curious may find something on him by the present
+writer, not identical with the above account, in an essay entitled _A
+Study of Sensibility_, reprinted in _Essays on French Novelists_
+(London, 1891), and partly, but outside of the Marivaux part, reproduced
+in Chap. XII. of the present volume.
+
+[325] By M. Gustave Larroumet. Paris, 1882.
+
+[326] I need hardly say that I am not referring to things like _Rebecca
+and Rowena_ or _A Legend of the Rhine_, which "burst the outer shell of
+sin," and, like Mrs. Martha Gwynne in the epitaph, "hatch themselves a
+cherubin" in each case.
+
+[327] The reader will perhaps excuse the reminder that the sense in
+which we (almost exclusively) use this word, and which it had gained in
+French itself by the time of Talleyrand's famous double-edged sarcasm on
+person and world (_Il n'est pas parvenu: il est arrivé_), was not quite
+original. The _parvenu_ was simply a person who _had_ "got on": the
+disobliging slur of implication on his former position, and perhaps on
+his means of freeing himself from it, came later. It is doubtful whether
+there is much, if indeed there is any, of this slur in Marivaux's title.
+
+[328] It is the acme of what may be called innocent corruption. She does
+not care for her master, nor apparently for vicious pleasure,
+nor--certainly--for money as such. She does care for Jacob, and wants to
+marry him; the money will make this possible; so she earns it by the
+means that present themselves, and puts it at his disposal.
+
+[329] He is proof against his master's threats if he refuses; as well as
+against the money if he accepts. Unluckily for Geneviève, when he breaks
+away she faints. Her door and the money-box are both left open, and the
+latter disappears.
+
+[330] Here and elsewhere the curious cheapness of French living (despite
+what history tells of crushing taxation, etc.) appears. The _locus
+classicus_ for this is generally taken to be Mme. de Maintenon's
+well-known letter about her brother's housekeeping. But here, well into
+another century, Mlle. Habert's 4000 _livres_ a year are supposed to be
+at least relative affluence, while in _Marianne_ (_v. inf._) M. de
+Climal thinks 500 or 600 enough to tempt her, and his final bequest of
+double that annuity is represented as making a far from despicable _dot_
+even for a good marriage.
+
+[331] The much greater blood-thirstiness of the French highwayman, as
+compared with the English, has been sometimes attributed by
+humanitarians to the "wheel"--and has often been considered by persons
+of sense as justifying that implement.
+
+[332] The Devil's Advocate may say that Marianne turns out to be of
+English extraction after all--but it is not Marivaux who tells us so.
+
+[333] To question or qualify Marianne's virtue, even in the slightest
+degree, may seem ungracious; for it certainly withstands what to some
+girls would have been the hardest test of all--that is to say, not so
+much the offer of riches if she consents, as the apparent certainty of
+utter destitution if she refuses. At the same time, the Devil's Advocate
+need not be a Kelly or a Cockburn to make out some damaging suggestions.
+Her vague, and in no way solidly justified, but decided family pride
+seems to have a good deal to do with her refusal; and though this shows
+the value of the said family pride, it is not exactly virtue in itself.
+Still more would appear to be due to the character of the suit and the
+suitor. M. de Climal is not only old and unattractive; not only a sneak
+and a libertine; but he is a clumsy person, and he has not, as he might
+have done, taken Marianne's measure. The mere shock of his sudden
+transformation from a pious protector into a prospective "keeper," who
+is making a bid for a new concubine, has evidently an immense effect on
+her quick nervous temperament. She is not at all the kind of girl to
+like to be the plaything of an old man; and she is perfectly shrewd
+enough to see that vengeance, and fear as regards his nephew, have as
+much as anything else, or more, to do with the way in which he brusques
+his addresses and hurries his gift. Further, she has already conceived a
+fancy, at least, for that nephew himself; and one sees the "jury droop,"
+as Dickens has put it, with which the Counsel of the Prince of the Air
+would hint that, if the offers had come in a more seductive fashion from
+Valville himself, they might not have been so summarily rejected. But
+let it be observed that these considerations, while possibly unfair to
+Marianne, are not in the least derogatory to Marivaux himself. On the
+contrary, it is greatly to his credit that he should have created a
+character of sufficient lifelikeness and sufficient complexity to serve
+as basis for "problem"-discussions of the kind.
+
+[334] To put the drift of the above in other words, we do not need to
+hear any more of Marianne in any position, because we have had enough
+shown us to know generally what she would do, say, and think, in all
+positions.
+
+[335] It has been observed that there is actually a Meredithian quality
+in Aristides of Smyrna, though he wrote no novel. A tale in Greek, to
+illustrate the parallel, would be an admirable subject for a University
+Prize.
+
+[336] Two descriptions of "Marivaudage" (which, by the way, was partly
+anticipated by Fontenelle)--both, if I do not mistake, by Crébillon
+_fils_--are famous: "Putting down not only everything you said and
+thought, but also everything you would like to have thought and said,
+but did not," and, "Introducing to each other words which never had
+thought of being acquainted." Both of these perhaps hit the modern forms
+of the phenomenon even harder than they hit their original butt.
+
+[337] It is only fair to the poor Prioress to say that there is hardly a
+heroine in fiction who is more deeply in love with her own pretty little
+self than Marianne.
+
+[338] One does not know whether it was prudence, or that materialism
+which, though he was no _philosophe_, he shared with most of his
+contemporaries, which prevented Marivaux from completing this sharp
+though mildly worded criticism. The above-mentioned profane have hinted
+that both the placidity and the indifference of the persons concerned,
+whether Catholic or Calvinist, arise from their certainty of their own
+safety in another world, and their looking down on less "guaranteed"
+creatures in this. It may be just permissible to add that a comparison
+of Chaucer's and Marivaux's prioresses will suggest itself to many
+persons, and should be found delectable by all fit ones.
+
+[339] His books on Margaret of Anjou and William the Conqueror are odd
+crosses between actual historical essays and the still unborn historical
+novel.
+
+[340] Mlle. de Launay, better known as Mme. de Staal-Delaunay, saw, as
+most would have seen, a resemblance in this to the famous Mlle. Aïssé's.
+But the latter was bought as a little child by her provident
+"protector," M. de Ferréol. Mlle. Aïssé herself had earlier read the
+_Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité_ and did not think much of them. But
+this was the earlier part. It would be odd if she had not appreciated
+Manon had she read it: but she died in the year of its appearance.
+
+[341] The excellent but rather stupid editor of the [Dutch] _Oeuvres
+Choisies_ above noticed has given abstracts of Prévost's novels as well
+as of Richardson's, which the Abbé translated. These, with
+Sainte-Beuve's of the _Mémoires_, will help those who want something
+more than what is in the text, while declining the Sahara of the
+original. But, curiously enough, the Dutchman does not deal with the end
+of _Cléveland_.
+
+[342] He had a fit of apoplexy when walking, and instead of being bled
+was actually cut open by a village super-Sangrado, who thought him dead
+and only brought him to life--to expire actually in torment.
+
+[343] Crébillon _père_, tragedian and academician, is one of the persons
+who have never had justice done to them: perhaps because they never
+quite did justice to themselves. His plays are unequal, rhetorical, and
+as over-heavy as his son's work is over-light. But, if we want to find
+the true tragic touch of verse in the French eighteenth century, we must
+go to him.
+
+[344] "Be it mine to read endless romances of Marivaux and Crébillon."
+
+[345] Learnt, no doubt, to a great extent from Anthony Hamilton, with
+whose family, as has been noticed, he had early relations.
+
+[346] He goes further, and points out that, as she is his _really_
+beloved Marquise's most intimate friend, she surely wouldn't wish him to
+declare himself false to that other lady?--having also previously
+observed that, after what has occurred, he could never think of
+deceiving his Célie herself by false declarations. These
+topsy-turvinesses are among Crébillon's best points, and infinitely
+superior to the silly "platitudes reversed" which have tried to produce
+the same effect in more recent times.
+
+[347] It has been said more than once that Crébillon had early access to
+Hamilton's MSS. He refers directly to the Facardins in _Ah! Quel Conte!_
+and makes one of his characters claim to be grand-daughter of
+Cristalline la Curieuse herself.
+
+[348] Nor perhaps even then, for passion is absolutely unknown to our
+author. One touch of it would send the curious Rupert's drop of his
+microcosm to shivers, as _Manon Lescaut_ itself in his time, and
+_Adolphe_ long after, show.
+
+[349] Some remarks are made by "Madame _Hépenny_"--a very pleasing
+phoneticism, and, though an actual name, not likely to offend any actual
+person.
+
+[350] No sneer is intended in this adjective. Except in one or two of
+the personages of _Les Égarements_, Crébillon's intended gentlemen are
+nearly always well-bred, however ill-moralled they may be, and his
+ladies (with the same caution) are ladies. It is with him, in this last
+point at any rate, as with our own Congreve, whom he rather closely
+resembles in some ways: though I was amused the other day to find some
+twentieth-century critical objections to actresses' rendering of _Love
+for Love_ as "too well-bred." The fact is that the tradition of
+"breeding" never broke down in France till the _philosophe_ period,
+while with us it lasted till--when shall we say?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE _PHILOSOPHE_ NOVEL
+
+
+[Sidenote: The use of the novel for "purpose"--Voltaire.]
+
+It has been for some time a commonplace--though, like most commonplaces,
+it is probably much more often simply borrowed than an actual and (even
+in the sense of _communis_) original perception of the borrowers--that
+nothing shows the comparative inevitableness of the novel in the
+eighteenth century better than the use of it by persons who would, at
+other times, have used quite different forms to subserve similar
+purposes. The chief instance of this with us is, of course, Johnson in
+_Rasselas_, but it is much more variously and voluminously, if not in
+any single instance much better, illustrated in France by the three
+great leaders of the _philosophe_ movement; by considerable, if
+second-rate figures, more or less connected with that movement, like
+Marmontel and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; and by many lesser writers.
+
+There can be no question that, in more ways than one, Voltaire[351]
+deserves the first place in this chapter, not only by age, by volume,
+and by variety of general literary ability, but because he, perhaps more
+than any of the others, is a tale-teller born. That he owes a good deal
+to Hamilton, and something directly to Hamilton's master,
+Saint-Évremond, has been granted elsewhere; but that he is dependent on
+these models to such an extent as to make his actual production unlikely
+if the models had not been ready for him, may be roundly denied. There
+are in literature some things which must have existed, and of which it
+is not frivolous to say that if their actual authors had not been there,
+or had declined to write them, they would have found somebody else to do
+it. Of these, _Candide_ is evidently one, and more than one of
+_Candide's_ smaller companions have at least something of the same
+characteristic. Yet one may also say that if Voltaire himself had not
+written these, he must have written other things of the kind. The
+mordant wit, the easy, fluent, rippling style, so entirely free from
+boisterousness yet with constant "wap" of wavelet and bursting of
+foam-bubble; above all, the pure unadulterated faculty of tale-telling,
+must have found vent and play somehow. It had been well if the
+playfulness had not been, as playfulness too often is, of what
+contemporary English called an "unlucky" (that is, a "mischievous")
+kind; and if the author had not been constantly longing to make somebody
+or many bodies uncomfortable,[352] to damage and defile shrines, to
+exhibit a misanthropy more really misanthropic, because less passionate
+and tragical, than Swift's, and, in fact, as his patron, persecutor, and
+counterpart, Frederick the Jonathan-Wildly Great, most justly observed
+of him, to "play monkey-tricks," albeit monkey-tricks of immense talent,
+if not actually of genius. If the recent attempts to interpret
+monkey-speech were to come to something, and if, as a consequence,
+monkeys were taught to write, one may be sure that prose fiction would
+be their favourite department, and that their productions would be,
+though almost certainly disreputable, quite certainly amusing. In fact
+there would probably be some among these which would be claimed, by
+critics of a certain type, as hitherto unknown works of Voltaire
+himself.
+
+Yet if the straightforward tale had not, owing to the influences
+discussed in the foregoing chapters, acquired a firm hold, it is at
+least possible that he would not have adopted it (for originality of
+form was not Voltaire's _forte_), but would have taken the dialogue, or
+something else capable of serving his purpose. As it was, the particular
+field or garden had already been marked out and hedged after a fashion;
+tools and methods of cultivation had been prepared; and he set to work
+to cultivate it with the application and intelligence recommended in the
+famous moral of his most famous tale--a moral which, it is only fair to
+say, he did carry out almost invariably. A garden of very questionable
+plants was his, it may be; but that is another matter. The fact and the
+success of the cultivation are both undeniable.
+
+[Sidenote: General characteristics of his tales.]
+
+At the same time, Voltaire--if indeed, as was doubted just now, he be a
+genius at all--is not a genius, or even a djinn, of the kind that
+creates and leaves something Melchisedec-like; alone and isolated from
+what comes before and what comes after. He is an immense talent--perhaps
+the greatest talent-but-not-genius ever known--who utilises and improves
+and develops rather than invents. It is from this that his faculty of
+never boring, except when he has got upon the Scriptures, comes; it is
+because of this also that he never conceives anything really, simply,
+absolutely _great_. His land is never exactly weary, but there is no
+imposing and sheltering and refreshing rock in it. These _romans_ and
+_contes_ and _nouvelles_ of his stimulate, but they do not either rest
+or refresh. They have what is, to some persons at any rate, the
+theatrical quality, not the poetical or best-prosaic. But as nearly
+consummate works of art, or at least craft, they stand almost alone.
+
+He had seen[353] the effect of which the fairy tale of the
+sophisticated kind was capable, and the attraction which it had for both
+vulgars, the great and the small: and he made the most of it. He kept
+and heightened its _haut goût_; he discarded the limitations to a very
+partial and conventional society which Crébillon put on it; but he
+limited it in other ways to commonplace and rather vulgar fancy, without
+the touches of imagination which Hamilton had imparted. Yet he infused
+an even more accurate appreciation of certain phases of human nature
+than those predecessors or partial contemporaries of his who were
+discussed in the last chapter had introduced; he _practicalised_ it to
+the _n_th, and he made it almost invariably subordinate to a direct,
+though a sometimes more or less ignoble, purpose. There is no doubt that
+he had learnt a great deal from Lucian and from Lucian's French
+imitators, perhaps as far back as Bonaventure des Périers; there is, I
+think, little that he had added as much as he could add from Swift.[354]
+His stolen or borrowed possessions from these sources, and especially
+this last, remind one in essence rather of the pilferings of a "light
+horseman," or river-pirate who has hung round an "old three-decker,"
+like that celebrated in Mr. Kipling's admirable poem, and has caught
+something even of the light from "her tall poop-lanterns shining so far
+above him," besides picking up overboard trifles, and cutting loose
+boats and cables. But when he gets to shore and to his own workshop, his
+almost unequalled power of sheer wit, and his general craftsmanship,
+bring out of these lootings something admirable in its own way.
+
+[Sidenote: _Candide._]
+
+_Candide_ is almost "great," and though the breed of Dr. Pangloss in its
+original kind is nearly extinct, the England which suffered the
+approach, and has scarcely yet allowed itself to comprehend the reality,
+of the war of 1914, ought to know that there have been and are
+Pangloss_otins_ of almost appalling variety. The book does not really
+require the smatches of sculduddery, which he has smeared over it, to
+be amusing; for its lifelikeness carries it through. As is well known,
+Johnson admitted the parallel with _Rasselas_, which is among the most
+extraordinary coincidences of literature. I have often wondered whether
+anybody ever took the trouble to print the two together. There would be
+many advantages in doing so; but they might perhaps be counter-balanced
+by the fact that some of the most fervent admirers of _Rasselas_ would
+be infinitely shocked by _Candide_, and that perhaps more of the special
+lovers of _Candide_ would find themselves bored to extinction by
+_Rasselas_. Let those who can not only value but enjoy both be thankful,
+but not proud.
+
+Many people have written about the Consolations of Old Age, not seldom,
+it is to be feared, in a "Who's afraid?" sort of spirit. But there are a
+few, an apple or two by the banks of Ulai, which we may pluck as the
+night approaches. One is almost necessarily accidental, for it would be
+rash and somewhat cold-blooded to plan it. It consists in the reading,
+after many years, of a book once familiar almost to the point of knowing
+by heart, and then laid aside, not from weariness or disgust, but merely
+as things happened. This, as in some other books mentioned in this
+history, was the case with the present writer in respect of _Candide_.
+From twenty to forty, or thereabouts, I must have read it over and over
+again; the sentences drop into their places almost without exercising
+any effort of memory to recognise them. From forty to seventy I do not
+think I read it at all; because no reason made reading necessary, and
+chance left it untouched on the shelf. Sometimes, as everybody knows,
+the result of renewed acquaintance in such cases is more or less severe
+disappointment; in a few of the happiest, increased pleasure. But it is
+perhaps the severest test of a classic (in the exact but limited sense
+of that word) that its effect shall be practically unchanged, shall have
+been established in the mind and taste with such a combination of
+solidity and _netteté_, that no change is possible. I do not think I
+have ever found this to be more the case than with the history of
+Candide (who was such a good fellow, without being in the least a prig,
+as I am afraid Zadig was, that one wonders how Voltaire came to think of
+him) and of Mademoiselle Cunégonde (nobody will ever know anything about
+style who does not feel what the continual repetition in Candide's mouth
+of the "Mademoiselle" does) of the indomitable Pangloss, and the
+detestable baron, and the forgivable Paquette, and that philosopher
+Martin, who did _not_ "let cheerfulness break in," and the admirable
+Cacambo, who shows that, much as he hated Rousseau, Voltaire himself was
+not proof against the noble savage mania.[355]
+
+As a piece (_v. sup._) of art or craft, the thing is beyond praise or
+pay. It could not be improved, on its own specification, except that
+perhaps the author might have told us how Mademoiselle Cunégonde, who
+had kept her beauty through some very severe experiences, suddenly lost
+it. It is idle as literary, though not as historical, criticism to say,
+as has been often said about the Byng passage, that Voltaire's smartness
+rather "goes off through the touch-hole," seeing that the admiral's
+execution did very considerably "encourage the others." It is
+superfluous to urge the unnecessary "smuts," which are sometimes not in
+the least amusing. All these and other sought-for knots are lost in the
+admirable smoothness of this reed, which waves in the winds of time with
+unwitherable greenness, and slips through the hand, as you stroke it,
+with a coaxing tickle. To praise its detail would again be idle--nobody
+ought to read such praise who can read itself; and if anybody, having
+read its first page, fails to see that it is, and how it is,
+praiseworthy, he never will or would be converted if all the eulogies of
+the most golden-mouthed critics of the world were poured upon him in a
+steady shower. As a whole it is undoubtedly the best, and (except part
+of _Zadig_) it is nowhere else matched in the book of the romances of
+Voltaire, while for those who demand "purposes" and "morals," it stands
+almost alone. It is the comic "Vanity of Human Wishes" in prose, as
+_Rasselas_ is the tragic or, at least, serious version: and, as has been
+said, the two make an unsurpassable sandwich, or, at least, _tartine_.
+Nor could it have been told, in any other way than by prose fiction,
+with anything like the same effect, either as regards critical judgment
+or popular acceptance.
+
+[Sidenote: _Zadig_ and its satellites.]
+
+_Zadig_, as has been indicated already, probably ranks in point of merit
+next to _Candide_. If it had stopped about half-way, there could be no
+doubt about the matter. The reader is caught at once by one of the most
+famous and one of the most Voltairian of phrases, "Il savait de la
+métaphysique ce qu'on a su dans tous les âges, c'est-à-dire fort peu de
+chose," a little more discussion of which saying, and of others like it,
+may perhaps be given later. The successive disappointments of the almost
+too perfect[356] hero are given with the simplicity just edged with
+irony which is Voltaire's when he is at his best, though he undoubtedly
+learnt it from the masters already assigned, and--the suggestion would
+have made him very angry, and would probably have attracted one of his
+most Yahoo-like descents on this humble and devoted head--from Lesage.
+But though the said head has no objection--much the reverse--to "happy
+endings," the romance-finish of _Zadig_ has always seemed to it a
+mistake. Still, how many mistakes would one pardon if they came after
+such a success? _Babouc_, the first of those miniature _contes_ (they
+are hardly "tales" in one sense), which Voltaire managed so admirably,
+has the part-advantage part-disadvantage of being likewise the first of
+a series of satires on French society, which, piquant as they are, would
+certainly have been both more piquant and more weighty if there had been
+fewer of them. It is full of the perfect, if not great, Voltairian
+phrases,--the involuntary _Mene Tekel_, "Babouc conclut qu'une telle
+société ne pouvait subsister"; the palinode after a fashion, "Il
+s'affectionnait à la ville, dont le peuple était doux [oh! Nemesis!]
+poli et bien-faisant, quoique léger, médisant et plein de vanité"; and
+the characteristic collection of parallel between Babouc and Jonah,
+surely not objectionable even to the most orthodox, "Mais quand on a été
+trois jours dans le corps d'une baleine on n'est pas de si bonne humeur
+que quand on a été à l'opéra, à la comédie et qu'on a soupé en bonne
+compagnie."
+
+[Sidenote: _Micromégas._]
+
+_Memnon, ou La Sagesse Humaine_ is still less of a tale, only a lively
+sarcastic apologue; but he would be a strange person who would quarrel
+with its half-dozen pages, and much the same may be said of the _Voyages
+de Scarmentado_. Still, one feels in both of them, and in many of the
+others, that they are after all not much more than chips of an inferior
+rehandling of _Gulliver_. _Micromégas_, as has been said, does not
+disguise its composition as something of the kind; but the desire to
+annoy Fontenelle, while complimenting him after a fashion as the "dwarf
+of Saturn," and perhaps other strokes of personal scratching, have put
+Voltaire on his mettle. You will not easily find a better Voltairism of
+its particular class than, "Il faut bien citer ce qu'on ne comprend
+point du tout, dans la langue qu'on entend le moins." But, as so often
+happens, the cracker in the tail is here the principal point.
+Micromégas, the native of Sirius, who may be Voltaire himself, or
+anybody else--after his joint tour through the universes (much more
+amusing than that of the late Mr. Bailey's Festus), with the smaller but
+still gigantic Saturnian--writes a philosophical treatise to instruct us
+poor microbes of the earth, and it is taken to Paris, to the secretary
+of the Academy of Science (Fontenelle himself). "Quand le sécretaire
+l'eut ouvert il ne vit rien qu'un livre tout blanc. 'Ah!' dit-il, 'je
+m'en étais bien douté.'" Voltaire did a great deal of harm in the world,
+and perhaps no solid good;[357] but it is things like this which make
+one feel that it would have been, a loss had there been no Voltaire.
+
+[Sidenote: _L'Ingénu._]
+
+_L'Ingénu_, which follows _Candide_ in the regular editions, falls
+perhaps as a whole below all these, and _L'Homme aux Quarante Écus_,
+which follows it, hardly concerns us at all, being mere political
+economy of a sort in dialogue. _L'Ingénu_ is a story, and has many
+amusing things in it. But it is open to the poser that if Voltaire
+really accepted the noble savage business he was rather silly, and that
+if he did not, the piece is a stale and not very biting satire. It is,
+moreover, somewhat exceptionally full (there is only one to beat it) of
+the vulgar little sniggers which suggest the eunuch even more than the
+schoolboy, and the conclusion is abominable. The seducer and,
+indirectly, murderer Saint-Pouange may only have done after his kind in
+regard to Mlle. de Saint-Yves; but the Ingénu himself neither acted up
+to his Huron education, nor to his extraction as a French gentleman, in
+forgiving the man and taking service under him.
+
+[Sidenote: _La Princesse de Babylone._]
+
+_La Princesse de Babylone_ is more like Hamilton than almost any other
+of the tales, and this, it need hardly be said here, is high praise,
+even for a work of Voltaire. For it means that it has what we commonly
+find in that work, and also something that we do not. But it has that
+defect which has been noticed already in _Zadig_, and which, by its
+absence, constitutes the supremacy of _Candide_. There is in it a sort
+of "break in the middle." The earlier stages of the courtship of
+Formosante are quite interesting; but when she and her lover begin
+separately to wander over the world, in order that their chronicler may
+make satiric observations on the nations thereof, one feels inclined to
+say, as Mr. Mowbray Morris said to Mr. Matthew Arnold (who thought it
+was Mr. Traill):
+
+    Can't you give us something new?
+
+[Sidenote: Some minors.]
+
+_Le Blanc et le Noir_ rises yet again, and though it has perhaps not
+many of Voltaire's _mots de flamme_, it is more of a fairy moral
+tale--neither a merely fantastic mow, nor sicklied over with its
+morality--than almost any other. It is noteworthy, too, that the author
+has hardly any recourse to his usual clove of garlic to give seasoning.
+_Jeannot et Colin_ might have been Marmontel's or Miss Edgeworth's,
+being merely the usual story of two rustic lads, one of whom becomes
+rich and corrupt till, later, he is succoured by the other. Now
+Marmontel and Miss Edgeworth are excellent persons and writers; but
+their work is not work for Voltaire.
+
+The _Lettres d'Amabed_[358] are the dirtiest and the dullest of the
+whole batch, and the _Histoire de Jenni_, though not particularly dirty,
+is very dull indeed, being the "History of a Good Deist," a thing
+without which (as Mr. Carlyle used to say) we could do. The same sort of
+"purpose" mars _Les Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield_, in which, after
+the first page, there is practically nothing about Lord Chesterfield or
+his deafness, but which contains a good deal of Voltaire's crispest
+writing, especially the definition of that English freedom which he
+sometimes used to extol. With thirty guineas a year,[359] the
+materialist doctor Sidrac informs the unfortunate Goudman, who has lost
+a living by the said deafness, "on peut dire tout ce qu'on pense de la
+compagnie des Indes, du parlement, de nos colonies, du roi, de l'état en
+général, de l'homme et de Dieu--ce qui est un grand amusement." But the
+piece itself would be more amusing if Voltaire could let the Bible
+alone, though he does not here come under the stroke of Diderot's
+sledge-hammer as he does in _Amabed_.
+
+One seldom, however, echoes this last wish, and remembers the stroke
+referred to, more than in reference to _Le Taureau Blanc_. Here, if
+there were nobody who reverenced the volume which begins with _Genesis_
+and ends with _Revelation_, the whole thing would be utterly dead and
+stupid: except for a few crispnesses of the Egyptian Mambrès, which
+could, almost without a single exception, have been uttered on any other
+theme. The identification of Nebuchadnezzar with the bull Apis is not
+precisely an effort of genius; but the assembling, and putting through
+their paces, of Balaam's ass and Jonah's whale, the serpent of Eden, and
+the raven of the Ark, with the three prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and
+Daniel, and with an historical King Amasis and an unhistorical Princess
+Amaside thrown in, is less a _conte à dormir debout_, as Voltaire's
+countrymen and he himself would say, than a tale to make a man sleep
+when he is running at full speed--a very dried poppy-head of the garden
+of tales. On the other hand, the very short and very early _Le
+Crocheteur Borgne_, which, curiously enough, Voltaire never printed, and
+the not much longer _Cosi-Sancta_, which he printed in his queer
+ostrich-like manner, are, though a little naughty, quite nice; and have
+a freshness and demure grace about their naughtiness which contrasts
+remarkably with the ugly and wearisome snigger of later work.
+
+[Sidenote: Voltaire--the Kehl edition--and Plato.]
+
+The half-dozen others,[360] filling scarce twenty pages between them,
+which conclude the usual collection, need little comment; but a "Kehl"
+note to the first of them is for considerable thoughts:
+
+     M. de Voltaire s'est égayé quelquefois sur Platon, dont le
+     galimatias, regardé autrefois comme sublime, a fait plus de
+     mal au genre humain qu'on ne le croit communément.
+
+One should not hurry over this, but muse a little. In copying the note,
+I felt almost inclined to write "_M. de_ Platon" in order to put the
+whole thing in a consistent key; for somehow "Plato" by itself, even in
+the French form, transports one into such a very different world that
+adjustment of clocks and compasses becomes at once necessary and
+difficult. "Galimatias" is good, "autrefois" is possibly better, the
+"evils inflicted on the human race" better still, but _égayé_ perhaps
+best of all. The monkey, we know, makes itself gay with the elephant,
+and probably would do so with the lion and the tiger if these animals
+had not an unpleasant way of dealing with jokers. And the tomtit and
+canary have, no doubt, at least private agreement that the utterances of
+the nightingale are _galimatias_, while the carrion crow thinks the
+eagle a fool for dwelling so high and flying so much higher. But as for
+the other side of the matter, how thin and poor and puerile even those
+smartest things of Voltaire's, some of which have been quoted and
+praised, sound, if one attempts to read them after the last sentence of
+the _Apology_, or after passage on passage of the rest of the
+"galimatias" of Plato!
+
+Nevertheless, though you may answer a fool according to his folly, you
+should not, especially when he is not a fool absolute, judge him solely
+thereby. When Voltaire was making himself gay with Plato, with the
+Bible, and with some other things, he was talking, not merely of
+something which he did not completely understand, but of something
+altogether outside the range of his comprehension. But in the judgment
+of literature the process of "cancelling" does not exist. A quality is
+not destroyed or neutralised by a defect, and, properly speaking (though
+it is hard for the critic to observe this), to strike a balance between
+the two is impossible. It is right to enter the non-values; but the
+values remain and require chief attention.
+
+[Sidenote: An attempt at different evaluation of himself.]
+
+From what has been already said, it will be clear that there is no
+disposition here to give Voltaire anything short of the fullest credit,
+both as an individual writer of prose fiction and as a link in the chain
+of its French producers. He worked for the most part in miniature, and
+even _Candide_ runs but to its bare hundred pages. But these are of the
+first quality in their own way, and give the book the same position for
+the century, in satiric and comic fiction, which _Manon Lescaut_ holds
+in that of passion. That both should have taken this form, while,
+earlier, _Manon_, if written at all, would probably have been a poem,
+and _Candide_ would have been a treatise, shows on the one side the
+importance of the position which the novel had assumed, and on the other
+the immense advantages which it gave, as a kind, to the artist in
+literature. I like poetry better than anything, but though the subject
+could have been, and often has been, treated satirically in verse, a
+verse _narrative_ could hardly have avoided inferiority, while even
+Berkeley (who himself borrowed a little of novel-form for _Alciphron_)
+could not have made _Candide_ more effective than it is. It is of course
+true that Voltaire's powers as a "fictionist" were probably limited in
+fact, to the departments, or the department, which he actually occupied,
+and out of which he wisely did not go. He must have a satiric purpose,
+and he must be allowed a very free choice of subject and seasoning. In
+particular, it may be noted that he has no grasp whatever of individual
+character. Even Candide is but a "humour," and Pangloss a very decided
+one; as are Martin, Gordon in _L'Ingénu_, and others. His women are all
+slightly varied outline-sketches of what he thought women in general
+were, not persons. Plot he never attempted; and racy as his dialogue
+often is, it is on the whole merely a setting for these very sparkles of
+wit some of which have been quoted.
+
+It is in these scintillations, after all, that the chief delight of his
+tales consists; and though, as has been honestly confessed and shown, he
+learnt this to some extent from others, he made the thing definitely his
+own. When the Babylonian public has been slightly "elevated" by the
+refreshments distributed at the great tournament for the hand of the
+Princess Formosante, it decides that war, etc., is folly, and that the
+essence of human nature is to enjoy itself, "Cette excellente morale,"
+says Voltaire gravely, "n'a jamais été démentie" (the words really
+should be made to come at the foot of a page so that you might have to
+turn over before coming to the conclusion of the sentence) "que par les
+faits." Again, in the description of the Utopia of the Gangarides (same
+story), where not only men but beasts and birds are all perfectly wise,
+well conducted, and happy, a paragraph of quite sober description,
+without any flinging up of heels or thrusting of tongue in cheek, ends,
+"Nous avons surtout des perroquets qui prêchent à merveille," and for
+once Voltaire exercises on himself the Swiftian control, which he too
+often neglected, and drops his beloved satire of clerics after this
+gentle touch at it.[361]
+
+He is of course not constantly at his best; but he is so often enough to
+make him, as was said at the beginning, very delectable reading,
+especially for the second time and later, which will be admitted to be
+no common praise. When you read him for the first time his bad taste,
+his obsession with certain subjects, his repetition of the same gibes,
+and other things which have been duly mentioned, strike and may
+disgust--will certainly more or less displease anybody but a partisan on
+the same side. On a second or later reading you are prepared for them,
+and either skip them altogether or pass them by without special notice,
+repeating the enjoyment of what is better in an unalloyed fashion. And
+so doth the excellent old chestnut-myth, which probably most of us have
+heard told with all innocence as an original witticism, justify itself,
+and one should "prefer the second hour" of the reading to the first. But
+if there is a first there will almost certainly be a second, and it will
+be a very great pity if there is no reading at all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Rousseau--the novel-character of the _Confessions_.]
+
+According to the estimate of the common or vulgate (I do not say
+"vulgar," though in the best English there is little or no difference)
+literary history, Rousseau[362] ranks far higher in the scale of
+novel-writing than Voltaire, having left long and ambitious books of the
+kind against Voltaire's handful of short, shorter, and shortest stories.
+It might be possible to accept this in one sense, but in one which would
+utterly disconcert the usual valuers. The _Confessions_, if it were not
+an autobiography, would be one of the great novels of the world. A large
+part of it is probably or certainly "fictionised"; if the whole were
+fictitious, it would lose much of its repulsiveness, retain (except for
+a few very matter-of-fact judges) all its interest, and gain the
+enormous advantage of art over mere _reportage_ of fact. Of course
+Rousseau's art of another kind, his mere mastery of style and
+presentation, does redeem this _reportage_ to some extent; but this
+would remain if the thing were wholly fiction, and the other art of
+invention, divination, _mimesis_--call it what you will--would come in.
+Yet it is not worth while to be idly unlike other people and claim it as
+an actual novel. It may be worth while to point out how it displays some
+of the great gifts of the novel-writer. The first of these--the greatest
+and, in fact, the mother of all the rest--is the sheer faculty, so often
+mentioned but not, alas! so invariably found, of telling the tale and
+holding the reader, not with any glittering eye or any enchantment,
+white or black, but with the pure grasping--or, as French admirably has
+it, "enfisting"--power of the tale itself. Round this there cluster--or,
+rather, in this necessarily abide--the subsidiary arts of managing the
+various parts of the story, of constructing characters sufficient to
+carry it on, of varnishing it with description, and to some extent,
+though naturally to a lesser one than if it had been fiction pure and
+simple, "lacing" it, in both senses of the word, with dialogue.
+Commonplace (but not the best commonplace) taste often cries "Oh! if
+this were only true!" The wiser mind is fain sometimes--not often, for
+things are not often good enough--to say, "Oh! if this were only
+_false_!"
+
+[Sidenote: The ambiguous position of _Émile_.]
+
+But if a severe auditor were to strike the _Confessions_ out of
+Rousseau's novel-account to the good, on the score of technical
+insufficiency or disqualification, he could hardly refuse to do the same
+with _Émile_ on the other side of the sheet. In fact its second title
+(_de l'Éducation_), its opening remarks, and the vastly larger part of
+the text, not only do not pretend to be a novel but frankly decline to
+be one. In what way exactly the treatise, from the mere assumption of a
+supposed "soaring human boy" named Émile, who serves as the victim of a
+few _Sandford-and-Merton_-like illustrations, burgeoned into the romance
+of actual novel-kind with Sophie in the Fifth Book, and the purely
+novel-natured, but unfinished and hardly begun, sequel of _Émile et
+Sophie ou Les Solitaires_, it is impossible to say. From the sketch of
+the intended conclusion of this latter given by Prévost[363] it would
+seem that we have not lost much, though with Rousseau the treatment is
+so constantly above the substance that one cannot tell. As it is, the
+novel part is nearly worthless. Neither Émile nor Sophie is made in the
+least a live person; the catastrophe of their at first ideal union might
+be shown, by an advocate of very moderate skill, to be largely if not
+wholly due to the meddlesome, muddle-headed, and almost inevitably
+mischievous advice given to them just after their marriage by their
+foolish Mentor; and one neither finds nor foresees any real novel
+interest whatever. Anilities in the very worst style of the eighteenth
+century--such as the story how Émile instigated mutiny in an Algerian
+slave-gang, failed, made a noble protest, and instead of being impaled,
+flayed, burnt alive, or otherwise taught not to do so, was made overseer
+of his own projects of reformed discipline--are sufficiently
+unrefreshing in fact. And the sort of "double arrangement" foreshadowed
+in the professorial programme of the unwritten part, where, in something
+like Davenant and Dryden's degradation of _The Tempest_, Émile and
+Sophie, she still refusing to be pardoned her fault, are brought
+together after all, and are married, in an actual though not consummated
+cross-bigamy, with a mysterious couple, also marooned on a desert
+island, is the sort of thing that Rousseau never could have managed,
+though Voltaire, probably to the discontent of Mrs. Grundy, could have
+done it in one way, and Sir William Gilbert would have done it
+delightfully in another. But Jean-Jacques's absolute lack of humour
+would have ensured a rather ghastly failure, relieved, it may be, by a
+few beautiful passages.
+
+[Sidenote: _La Nouvelle Héloïse._]
+
+If, therefore, Rousseau had nothing but _Émile_, or even nothing but
+_Émile_ and the _Confessions_ to put to his credit, he could but obtain
+a position in our "utmost, last, provincial band," and that more because
+of his general literary powers than of special right. But, as everybody
+knows, there is a third book among his works which, whether universally
+or only by a majority, whether in whole or in part, whether with heavy
+deductions and allowances or with light ones, has been reckoned among
+the greatest and most epoch-making novels of the world. The full title
+of it is _Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, ou Lettres de deux Amans,
+habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes, recueillies et publiées,
+par J. J. Rousseau_.[364] Despite its immense fame, direct and at
+second-hand--for Byron's famous outburst, though scarcely less
+rhetorical, is decidedly more poetical than most things of his, and has
+inscribed itself in the general memory--one rather doubts whether the
+book is as much read as it once was. Quotations, references, and those
+half-unconscious reminiscences of borrowing which are more eloquent
+than anything else, have not recently been very common either in English
+or in French. It has had the fate--elsewhere, I think, alluded to--of
+one of the two kinds of great literature, that it has in a manner seeded
+itself out. An intense love-novel--it is some time since we have seen
+one till the other day--would be a descendant of Rousseau's book, but
+would not bear more than a family likeness to it. Yet this, of itself,
+is a great testimony.
+
+[Sidenote: Its numerous and grave faults.]
+
+Except in rhetoric or rhapsody, the allowances and deductions above
+referred to must be heavy; and, according to a custom honoured both by
+time and good result, it is well to get them off first. That peculiarity
+of being a novelist only _par interim_, much more than Aramis was a
+mousquetaire, appears, even in _Julie_, so glaringly as to be dangerous
+and almost fatal. The book fills, in the ordinary one-volume editions,
+nearly five hundred pages of very small and very close print. Of these
+the First Part contains rather more than a hundred, and it would be
+infinitely better if the whole of the rest, except a few passages (which
+would be almost equally good as fragments), were in the bosom of the
+ocean buried. Large parts of them are mere discussions of some of
+Rousseau's own fads; clumsy parodies of Voltaire's satiric
+manners-painting; waterings out of the least good traits in the hero and
+heroine; uninteresting and superfluous appearances of the third and only
+other real person, Claire; a dreary account of Julie's married life;
+tedious eccentricities of the impossible and not very agreeable Lord
+Edward Bomston, who shares with Dickens's Lord Frederick Verisopht the
+peculiarity of being alternately a peer and a person with a courtesy
+"Lord"-ship; a rather silly end for the heroine herself;[365] and
+finally, a rather repulsive and quite incongruous acknowledgment of
+affection for the creature Saint-Preux, with a refusal to "implement"
+it (as they say in Scotland) matrimonially, by Claire, who is by this
+time a widow.[366] If mutilating books[367] were not a crime deserving
+terrible retribution in this life or after it, one could be excused for
+tearing off the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Parts, with the
+_Amours de Lord Édouard_ which follow. If one was rich, one would be
+amply justified in having a copy of Part I., and the fragments above
+indicated, printed for oneself on vellum.
+
+[Sidenote: The minor characters.]
+
+But this is not all. Even the First Part--even the presentation of the
+three protagonists--is open to some, and even to severe, criticism. The
+most guiltless, but necessarily much the least important, is Claire. She
+is, of course, an obvious "borrow" from Richardson's lively second
+heroines; but she is infinitely superior to them. It is at first sight,
+though not perhaps for long, curious--and it is certainly a very great
+compliment to Madame de Warens or Vuarrens and Madame d'Houdetot, and
+perhaps other objects of his affections--that Rousseau, cad as he was,
+and impossible as it was for him to draw a gentleman, could and did draw
+ladies. It was horribly bad taste in both Julie and Claire to love such
+a creature as Saint-Preux; but then _cela s'est vu_ from the time of the
+Lady of the Strachy downwards, if not from that of Princess Michal. But
+Claire is faithful and true as steel, and she is lively without being,
+as Charlotte Grandison certainly is, vulgar. She is very much more a
+really "reasonable woman," even putting passion aside, than the somewhat
+sermonising and syllogising Julie; and it would have been both agreeable
+and tormenting to be M. d'Orbe. (Tormenting because she only half-loved
+him, and agreeable because she did love him a little, and, whether it
+was little or much, allowed herself to be his.) He himself, slight and
+rather "put upon" as he is, is also much the most agreeable of the
+"second" male characters. Of Bomston and Wolmar we shall speak
+presently; and there is so little of the Baron d'Étange that one really
+does not know whether he was or was not something more than the
+tyrannical husband and father, and the ill-mannered specimen of the
+lesser nobility, that it pleased Saint-Preux or Rousseau to represent
+him as being. He had provocation enough, even in the case of his
+otherwise hardly pardonable insolence to Bomston.[368]
+
+[Sidenote: The delinquencies of Saint-Preux.]
+
+But Saint-Preux himself? How early was the obvious jest made that he is
+about as little of a _preux_ as he is of a saint? I have heard, or
+dreamt, of a schoolboy who, being accidentally somewhat precocious in
+French, and having read the book, ejaculated, "_What_ a sweep he is!"
+and I remember no time of my life at which I should not have heartily
+agreed with that youth. I do not suppose that either of us--though
+perhaps we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for not doing so--founded
+our condemnation on Saint-Preux's "forgetfulness of all but love." That
+is a "forfeit," in French and English sense alike, which has itself
+registered and settled in various tariffs and codes, none of which
+concerns the present history. It is not even that he is a most
+unreasonable creature now and then; that can be pardoned, being
+understood, though he really does strain the benefit of _amare et
+sapere_ etc. It is that, except when he is in the altitudes of passion,
+and not always then, he never "knows how to behave," as the simple and
+sufficient old phrase had it. If M. d'Étange had had the wits, and had
+deigned to do it, he might even, without knowing his deepest cause of
+quarrel with the treacherous tutor, have pointed out that Saint-Preux's
+claim to be one of God Almighty's gentlemen was as groundless as his
+"proofs," in the French technical sense of gentility, were non-existent.
+It is impossible to imagine anything in worse taste than his reply to
+the Baron's no doubt offensive letter, and Julie's enclosed
+renunciation. Even the adoring Julie herself, and the hardly less
+adoring Claire--the latter not in the least a prude, nor given to giving
+herself "airs"--are constantly obliged to pull him up for his want of
+_délicatesse_. He is evidently a coxcomb, still more evidently a prig;
+selfish beyond even that selfishness which is venial in a lover; not in
+the least, though he can exceed in wine, a "good fellow," and in many
+ways thoroughly unmanly. A good English school and college might have
+made him tolerable: but it is rather to be doubted, and it is certain
+that his way as a transgressor would have been hard at both. As it is,
+he is very largely the embodiment--and it is more charitable than
+uncharitable to regard him as largely the cause--of the faults of the
+worst kind of French, and not quite only French, novel-hero ever since.
+
+[Sidenote: And the less charming points of Julie. Her redemption.]
+
+One approaches Julie herself, in critical intent, with mixed feelings.
+One would rather say nothing but good of her, and there is plenty of
+good to say: how much will be seen in a moment. Most of what is not so
+good belongs, in fact, to the dreary bulk of sequel tacked on by
+mistaken judgment to that more than true history of a hundred pages,
+which leaves her in despair, and might well have left her altogether.
+Even here she is not faultless, quite independently of her sins
+according to Mrs. Grundy and the Pharisees. If she had not been, as
+Claire herself fondly but truly calls her, such a _prêcheresse_, she
+might not have fallen a victim to such a prig. One never can quite
+forgive her for loving him, except on the all-excusing ground that she
+loved him so much; and though she is perhaps not far beyond the licence
+of "All's fair, in certain conditions," there is no doubt that, like her
+part-pattern Clarissa, she is not passionately attached to the truth.
+It might be possible to add some cavils, but for the irresistible plea
+just glanced at, which stops one.
+
+_Quia multum amavit!_ Nobody--at least no woman--had loved like that in
+a prose novel before; nobody at all except Des Grieux, and he is but as
+a sketch to an elaborate picture. She will wander after Pallas, and
+would like to think that she would like to be of the train of Dian (one
+shudders at imagining the scowl and the shrug and the twist of the skirt
+of the goddess!). But the kiss of Aphrodite has been on her, and has
+mastered her whole nature. How the thing could be done, out of poetry,
+has always been a marvel to me; but I have explained it by the
+supposition that the absolute impossibility of writing poetry at this
+time in French necessitated the break-out in prose. Rousseau's wonderful
+style--so impossible to analyse, but so irresistible--does much; the
+animating sense of his native scenery something. But, after all, what
+gives the thing its irresistibleness is the strange command he had of
+Passion and of Sorrow--two words, the first of which is actually, in the
+original sense, a synonym of the second, though it has been expanded to
+cover the very opposite.
+
+[Sidenote: And the better side of the book generally.]
+
+But it would be unfair to Rousseau, especially in such a place as this,
+to confine the praise of _Julie_ as a novel to its exhibition of
+passion, or even to the charm of Julie herself. Within its proper
+limits--which are, let it be repeated, almost if not quite exactly those
+of the First Part--many other gifts of the particular class of artist
+are shown. The dangerous letter-scheme, which lends itself so easily,
+and in the other parts surrenders itself so helplessly and hopelessly,
+to mere "piffle" about this and that, is kept well in hand. Much as
+Rousseau owes to Richardson, he has steered entirely clear of that
+system of word-for-word and incident-for-incident reporting which makes
+the Englishman's work so sickening to some. You have enough of each and
+no more, this happy mean affecting both dialogue and description. The
+plot (or rather the action) is constantly present, probably managed,
+always enlivened by the imminence of disastrous discovery. As has been
+already pointed out, one may dislike--or feel little interest in--some
+of the few characters; but it is impossible to say that they are out of
+drawing or keeping. Saint-Preux, objectionable and almost loathsome as
+he may be sometimes, is a thoroughly human creature, and is undoubtedly
+what Rousseau meant him to be, for the very simple reason that he is
+(like the Byronic hero who followed) what Rousseau wished to be, if not
+exactly what he was, himself. Bomston is more of a lay figure; but then
+the _Anglais philosophe de qualité_ of the French imagination in the
+eighteenth century was a lay figure, and, as has been excellently said
+by De Quincey in another matter, nothing can be wrong which conforms to
+the principles of its own ideal. As for Julie and Claire, they once more
+
+    Answer the ends of their being created.
+
+Even the "talking-book" is here hardly excessive, and comes legitimately
+under the excuse of showing how the relations between the hero and
+heroine originally got themselves established.[369]
+
+[Sidenote: But little probability of more good work in novel from its
+author.]
+
+Are we, then, from the excellence of the "Confessions" _in pari materia_
+and _in ipsa_ of _Julie_, to lament that Rousseau did not take to
+novel-writing as a special and serious occupation? Probably not. The
+extreme weakness and almost _fadeur_ of the strictly novel part of
+_Émile_, and the going-off of _Julie_ itself, are very open warnings;
+the mere absence of any other attempts worth mentioning[370] is evidence
+of a kind; and the character of all the rest of the work, and of all
+this part of the work but the opening of _Julie_, and even of that
+opening itself, counsel abstention, here as everywhere, from quarrelling
+with Providence. Rousseau's superhuman concentration on himself, while
+it has inspired the relevant parts of the _Confessions_ and of _Julie_,
+has spoilt a good deal else that we have, and would assuredly have
+spoilt other things that we have not. It has been observed, by all acute
+students of the novel, that the egotistic variety will not bear heavy
+crops of fruit by itself; and that it is incapable, or capable with very
+great difficulty, of letting the observed and so far altruistic kind
+grow from the same stool. Of what is sometimes called the dramatic
+faculty (though, in fact, it is only one side of that),--the faculty
+which in different guise and with different means the general novelist
+must also possess,--Rousseau had nothing. He could put himself in no
+other man's skin, being so absolutely wrapped up in his own, which was
+itself much too sensitive to be disturbed, much less shed. Anything or
+anybody that was (to use Mill's language) a permanent or even a
+temporary possibility of sensation to him was within his power; anything
+out of immediate or closely impending contact was not. Now some of the
+great novelists have the external power--or at least the will to use
+that power--alone, others have had both; but Rousseau had the internal
+only, and so was, except by miracle of intensive exercise, incapable of
+further range.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The different case of Diderot.]
+
+Neither of the disabilities which weighed on Voltaire and Rousseau--the
+incapacity of the former to construct any complex character, and of the
+latter to portray any but his own, or some other brought into intensest
+communion, actually or as a matter of wish, with his own--weighed upon
+the third of the great trio of _philosophe_ leaders. There is every
+probability that Diderot might have been a very great novelist if he had
+lived a hundred years later; and not a little evidence that he only
+missed being such, even as it was, because of that mysterious curse
+which was epigrammatically expressed about him long ago (I really
+forget who said it first), "Good pages, no good book." So far from being
+self-centred or of limited interests, he could, as hardly any other man
+ever could, claim the hackneyed _Homo sum_, etc., as his rightful motto.
+He had, when he allowed himself to give it fair play, an admirable gift
+of tale-telling; he could create character, and set it to work, almost
+after the fashion of the very greatest novelists; his universal interest
+and "curiosity" included such vivid appreciation of literature, and of
+art, and of other things useful to the novel-writer, that he never could
+have been at a loss for various kinds of "seasoning." He had keen
+observation, an admittedly marvellous flow of ideas, and a style which
+(though, like everything else about him, careless) was of singular
+vigour and freshness when, once more, he let it have fair play. But his
+time, his nature, and his circumstances combined to throw in his way
+traps and snares and nets which he could not, or would not, avoid. His
+anti-religiosity, though sometimes greatly exaggerated, was a bad
+stumbling-block; although he was free from the snigger of Voltaire and
+of Sterne, you could not prevent him, as Horace Walpole complains of his
+distinguished sire, from blurting out the most improper remarks and
+stories at the most inconvenient times and in the most unsuitable
+companies; while his very multiscience, and his fertility of thought and
+imagination, kept him in a whirl which hindered his "settling" to
+anything. Although in one sense he had the finest and wisest critical
+taste of any man then living--I do not bar even Gray or even
+Lessing--his taste in some other ways was utterly untrustworthy and
+sometimes horribly bad; while even his strictly critical faculty seems
+never to have been exercised on his own books--a failure forming part of
+the "ostrich-like indifference" with which he produced and abandoned
+them.[371]
+
+[Sidenote: His gifts and the waste of them.]
+
+It is sometimes contended, and in many cases, no doubt, is the fact,
+that "Selections" are disgraceful and unscholarly. But what has been
+said will show that this is an exceptional case. The present writer
+waded through the whole of twenty-volume edition of Assézat and Tourneux
+when it first appeared, and is very glad he did; nor is there perhaps
+one volume (he does not say one page, chapter, or even work) which he
+has not revisited more or fewer times during the forty years in which
+(alas! for the preterite) they remained on his shelves. But it is
+scarcely to be expected that every one, that many, or that more than a
+very few readers, have done or will do the same. It so happens, however,
+that Génin's _Oeuvres Choisies_--though it has been abused by some
+anti-Ydgrunites as too much Bowdlerised--gives a remarkably full and
+satisfactory idea of this great and seldom[372] quite rightly valued
+writer. It must have cost much, besides use of paste and scissors, to
+do; for the extracts are often very short, and the bulk of matter to be
+thoroughly searched for extraction is, as has just been said, huge. A
+third volume might perhaps be added;[373] but the actual two are far
+from unrepresentative, while the Bowdlerising is by no means
+ultra-Bowdlerish.
+
+[Sidenote: The various display of them.]
+
+The reader, even of this selection, will see how, in quite miscellaneous
+or heterogeneous writing, Diderot bubbles out into a perfectly told tale
+or anecdote, no matter what the envelope (as we may call it) of this
+tale or anecdote may be. All his work is more or less like conversation:
+and these excursus are like the stories which, if good, are among the
+best, just as, if bad, they are the worst, sets-off to conversation
+itself. Next to these come the longer _histoires_--as one would call
+them in the Heroic novel and its successors--things sometimes found by
+themselves, sometimes ensconced in larger work[374]--the story of
+Desroches and Mme. de la Carlière, _Les Deux Amis de Bourbonne_, the
+almost famous _Le Marquis des Arcis et Mme. de la Pommeraye_, of which
+more may be said presently; and things which are not exactly tales, but
+which have the tale-quality in part, like the charming _Regrets sur ma
+Vieille Robe de Chambre, Ceci n'est pas un conte_, etc. Thirdly, and to
+be spoken of in more detail, come the things that are nearest actual
+novels, and in some cases are called so, _Le Neveu de Rameau_, the
+"unspeakable" _Bijoux Indiscrets_, _Jacques le Fataliste_ (the matrix of
+_Le Marquis des Arcis_) and _La Religieuse_.
+
+The "unspeakable" one does not need much speaking from any point of
+view. If it is not positively what Carlyle called it, "the beastliest of
+all dull novels, past, present, or to come," it really would require a
+most unpleasant apprenticeship to scavenging in order to discover a
+dirtier and duller. The framework is a flat imitation of Crébillon, the
+"insets" are sometimes mere pornography, and the whole thing is
+evidently scribbled at a gallop--it was actually a few days' work, to
+get money, from some French Curll or Drybutter, to give (the
+appropriateness of the thing at least is humorous) to the mistress of
+the moment, a Madame de Puisieux,[375] who, if she was like Crébillon's
+heroines in morals, cannot have been like the best of them in manners.
+Its existence shows, of course, Diderot's worst side, that is to say,
+the combination of want of breeding with readiness to get money anyhow.
+If it is worth reading at all, which may be doubted, it is to show the
+real, if equivocal, value of Crébillon himself. For it is vulgar, which
+he never is.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Neveu de Rameau._]
+
+_Le Neveu de Rameau_, has only touches of obscenity, and it has been
+enormously praised by great persons. It is very clever, but it seems to
+me that, as a notable critic is said to have observed of something else,
+"it has been praised quite enough." It is a sketch, worked out in a sort
+of monologue,[376] of something like Diderot's own character without his
+genius and without his good fellowship--a gutter-snipe of art and
+letters possessed of some talent and of infinite impudence. It shows
+Diderot's own power of observation and easy fluid representation of
+character and manners, but not, as I venture to think, much more.
+
+[Sidenote: _Jacques le Fataliste._]
+
+_Jacques le Fataliste_ is what may be called, without pedantry or
+preciousness, eminently a "document." It is a document of Diderot's
+genius only indirectly (save in part), and to those who can read not
+only in the lines but between them: it is a document, directly, of the
+insatiable and restless energy of the man, and of the damage which this
+restlessness, with its accompanying and inevitable want of
+self-criticism, imposed upon that genius. Diderot, though he did not
+rhapsodise about Sterne as he rhapsodised about Richardson, was, like
+most of his countrymen then, a great admirer of "Tristram," and in an
+evil hour he took it into his head to Shandyise. The book starts with an
+actual adaptation of Sterne,[377] which is more than once repeated; its
+scheme--of a master (who is as different as possible from my Uncle Toby,
+except that when not in a passion he is rather good-natured, and at
+almost all times very easily humbugged) and a man (who is what Trim
+never is, both insolent and indecent)--is at least partially the same.
+But the most constant and the most unfortunate imitation is of Sterne's
+literally eccentric, or rather zigzag and pillar-to-post, fashion of
+narration. In the Englishman's own hands, by some prestidigitation of
+genius, this never becomes boring, though it probably would have become
+so if either book had been finished; for which reason we may be quite
+certain that it was not only his death which left both in fragments. In
+the hands of his imitators the boredom--simple or in the form of
+irritation--has been almost invariable;[378] and with all his great
+intellectual power, his tale-telling faculty, his _bonhomie_, and other
+good qualities, Diderot has not escaped it--has, in fact, rushed upon it
+and compelled it to come in. It is comparatively of little moment that
+the main ostensible theme--the very unedifying account of the loves, or
+at least the erotic exercises, of Jacques and his master--is
+deliberately, tediously, inartistically interrupted and "put off." The
+great feature of the book, which has redeemed it with some who would
+otherwise condemn it entirely, the Arcis and La Pommeraye episode (_v.
+inf._), is handled after a fashion which suggests Mr. Ruskin's famous
+denunciation in another art. The _ink_pot is "flung in the face of the
+public" by a purely farcical series of interruptions, occasioned by the
+affairs of the inn-landlady, who tells the story, by her servants, dog,
+customers, and Heaven only knows what else; while the minor incidents
+and accidents of the book are treated in the same way, in and out of
+proportion to their own importance; the author's "simple plan," though
+by no means "good old rule," being that _everything_ shall be
+interrupted. Although, in the erotic part, the author never returns
+quite to his worst _Bijoux Indiscrets_ style, he once or twice goes very
+near it, except that he is not quite so dull; and when the book comes to
+an end in a very lame and impotent fashion (the farce being kept up to
+the last, and even this end being "recounted" and not made part of the
+mainly dialogic action), one is rather relieved at there being no more.
+One has seen talent; one has almost glimpsed genius; but what one has
+been most impressed with is the glaring fashion in which both the
+certainty and the possibility have been thrown away.
+
+[Sidenote: Its "Arcis-Pommeraye" episode.]
+
+The story which has been referred to in passing as muddled, or, to adopt
+a better French word, for which we have no exact equivalent, _affublé_
+(travestied and overlaid) with eccentricities and interruptions, the
+_Histoire_ of the Marquis des Arcis and the Marquise de la Pommeraye,
+has received a great deal of praise, most of which it deserves. The
+Marquis and the Marquise have entered upon one of the fashionable
+_liaisons_ which Crébillon described in his own way. Diderot describes
+this one in another. The Marquis gets tired--it is fair to say that he
+has offered marriage at the very first, but Madame de la Pommeraye, a
+widow with an unpleasant first experience of the state, has declined it.
+He shows his tiredness in a gentlemanly manner, but not very mistakably.
+His mistress, who is not at first _femina furens_, but who possesses
+some feminine characteristics in a dangerous degree, as he might perhaps
+have found out earlier if he had been a different person, determines to
+make sure of it. She intimates _her_ tiredness, and the Marquis makes
+his first step downwards by jumping at the release. They are--the old,
+old hopeless folly!--to remain friends, but friends only. But she really
+loves him, and after almost assuring herself that he has really ceased
+to love her (which, in the real language of love, means that he has
+never loved her at all), devises a further, a very clever, but a rather
+diabolical system of last proof, involving vengeance if it fails. She
+has known, in exercises of charity (the _femme du monde_ has seldom
+quite abandoned these), a mother and daughter who, having lost their
+means, have taken to a questionable, or rather a very unquestionable
+manner of life, keeping a sort of private gaming-house, and extending to
+those frequenters of it who choose, what the late George Augustus Sala
+not inelegantly called, in an actual police-court instance, "the
+thorough hospitality characteristic of their domicile." She prevails on
+them to leave the house, get rid of all their belongings (down to
+clothes) which could possibly be identified, change their name, move to
+another quarter of Paris, and set up as _dévotes_ under the full
+protection of the local clergy. Then she manages an introduction, of an
+apparently accidental kind, to the Marquis. He falls in love at once
+with the daughter, who is very pretty, and with masculine (or at least
+_some_ masculine) fatuity, makes Madame de la Pommeraye his confidante.
+She gives him rope, but he uses it, of course, only to hang himself. He
+tries the usual temptations; but though the mother at least would not
+refuse them, Madame de la Pommeraye's hand on the pair is too tight. At
+last he offers marriage, and--with her at least apparent consent--is
+married. The next day she tells him the truth. But her diabolism fails.
+At first there is of course a furious outburst. But the girl is
+beautiful, affectionate, and humble; the mother is pensioned off; the
+Marquis and Marquise des Arcis retire for some years to those invaluable
+_terres_, after a sojourn at which everything is forgotten; and the
+story ends. Diderot, by not too skilfully throwing in casuistical
+attacks and defences of the two principal characters, but telling us
+nothing of Madame de la Pommeraye's subsequent feelings or history, does
+what he can, unluckily after his too frequent fashion, to spoil or at
+least to blunt his tale. It is not necessary to imitate him by
+discussing the _pros_ and _cons_ at length. I think myself that the
+Marquis, both earlier and later, is made rather too much of a _benêt_,
+or, in plain English, a nincompoop. But nincompoops exist: in fact how
+many of us are not nincompoops in certain circumstances? Madame de la
+Pommeraye is, I fear, rather true, and is certainly sketched with
+extraordinary ability. On a larger scale the thing would probably, at
+that time and by so hasty and careless a workman, have been quite
+spoilt. But it is obviously the skeleton--and something more--of a
+really great novel.
+
+[Sidenote: _La Religieuse._]
+
+It may seem that a critic who speaks in this fashion, after an initial
+promise of laudation, is a sort of Balaam topsyturvied, and merely
+curses where he is expected to bless. But ample warning was given of the
+peculiar position of Diderot, and when we come to his latest known and
+by far his best novel, _La Religieuse_, the paradox (he was himself very
+fond of paradoxes,[379] though not of the wretched things which now
+disgrace the name) remains. The very subject of the book, or of the
+greatest part of it, was for a long time, if it is not still, taboo; and
+even if this had not been the case, it has other drawbacks. It
+originated in, and to some extent still retains traces of, one of the
+silly and ill-bred "mystifications" in which the eighteenth and early
+nineteenth century delighted.[380] It is, at least in appearance, badly
+tainted with purpose; and while it is actually left unfinished, the last
+pages of it, as they stand, are utterly unworthy of the earlier part,
+and in fact quite uninteresting. Momus or Zoilus must be allowed to say
+so much: but having heard him, let us cease to listen to the half-god or
+the whole philologist.
+
+[Sidenote: Its story.]
+
+Yet _La Religieuse_, for all its drawbacks, is almost a great, and might
+conceivably have been a very great book. Madame d'Holbach is credited by
+Diderot's own generosity with having suggested its crowning _mot_,[381]
+and her influence may have been in other ways good by governing the
+force and fire, so often wasted or ill-directed, of Diderot's genius.
+Soeur Sainte-Suzanne is the youngest daughter of a respectable
+middle-class family. She perceives, or half-perceives (for, though no
+fool, she is a guileless and unsuspicious creature), that she is
+unwelcome there; the most certain sign of which is that, while her
+sisters are married and dowered handsomely, she is condemned to be a
+nun. She has, though quite real piety, no "vocation," and though she
+allows herself to be coaxed through her novitiate, she at last, in face
+of almost insuperable difficulties, summons up courage enough to
+refuse, at the very altar, the final profession. There is, of course, a
+terrible scandal; she has more black looks in the family than ever, and
+at last her mother confesses that she is an illegitimate child, and
+therefore hated by her putative father, whose love for his wife,
+however, has induced him to forgive her, and not actually renounce (as
+indeed, by French law, he could not) the child. Broken in heart and
+spirit, Suzanne at last accepts her doom. She is fortunate in one
+abbess, but the next persecutes her, brings all sorts of false
+accusations against her, strips, starves, imprisons, and actually
+tortures her by means of the _amende honorable_. She manages to get her
+complaints known and to secure a counsel, and though she cannot obtain
+liberation from her vows, the priest who conducts the ecclesiastical
+part of the enquiry is a just man, and utterly repudiates the methods of
+persecution, while he and her lay lawyer procure her transference to
+another convent. Here her last trial (except those of the foolish
+post-_scrap_, as we may call it) begins, as well as the most equivocal
+and the greatest part of the book. Her new superior is in every respect
+different from any she has known--of a luxurious temperament,
+good-natured, though capricious, and inclined to be very much too
+affectionate. Her temptation of the innocent Suzanne is defeated by this
+very innocence, and by timely revelation, though the revealer does not
+know what she reveals, to a "director"; and the wayward and corrupted
+fancy turns by degrees to actual madness, which proves fatal, Suzanne
+remaining unharmed, though a piece of not inexcusable eavesdropping
+removes the ignorance of her innocence.
+
+[Sidenote: A hardly missed, if missed, masterpiece.]
+
+If the subject be not simply ruled out, and the book indexed for
+silence, it is practically impossible to suggest that it could have been
+treated better. Even the earlier parts, which could easily have been
+made dull, are not so; and it is noteworthy that, anti-religionist as
+Diderot was, and directly as the book is aimed at the conventual
+system,[382] all the priests who are introduced are men of honour,
+justice, and humanity. But the wonder is in the treatment of the
+"scabrous" part of the matter by the author of Diderot's other books.
+Whether Madame d'Holbach's[383] influence, as has been suggested, was
+more widely and subtly extended than we know, or whatever else may be
+the cause, there is not a coarse word, not even a coarsely drawn
+situation, in the whole. Suzanne's innocence is, in the subtlest manner,
+prevented from being in the least _bête_. The fluctuations and
+ficklenesses of the abbess's passion, and in a less degree of that of
+another young nun, whom Suzanne has partially ousted from her favour,
+are marvellously and almost inoffensively drawn, and the stages by which
+erotomania passes into mania general and mortal, are sketched slightly,
+but with equal power. There is, I suppose, hardly a book which one ought
+to discommend to the young person more than _La Religieuse_. There are
+not many in which the powers required by the novelist, in delineating
+morbid, and not only morbid, character, are more brilliantly shown.
+
+It is not the least remarkable thing about this remarkable book, and not
+the least characteristic of its most remarkable author, that its very
+survival has something extraordinary about it. Grimm, who was more
+likely than any one else to know, apparently thought it was destroyed or
+lost; it never appeared at all during Diderot's life, nor for a dozen
+years after his death, nor till seven after the outbreak of the
+Revolution, and six after the suppression of the religious orders in
+France. That it might have brought its author into difficulties is more
+than probable; but the undisguised editor of the _Encyclopédie_, the
+author, earlier, of the actually disgraceful _Bijoux Indiscrets_, and
+the much more than suspected principal begetter of the _Système de la
+Nature_, could not have been much influenced by this. The true cause of
+its abscondence, as in so much else of his work, was undoubtedly that
+ultra-Bohemian quality of indifference which distinguished Diderot--the
+first in a way, probably for ever the greatest, and, above all, the most
+altruistic of literary Bohemians. Ask him to do something definite,
+especially for somebody else's profit, to be done off-hand, and it was
+done. Ask him to bear the brunt of a dangerous, laborious, by no means
+lucrative, but rather exciting adventure, and he would, one cannot quite
+say consecrate, but devote (which has two senses) his life to it. But
+set him to elaborate artistic creation, confine him to it, and expect
+him to finish it, and you were certain to be disappointed. At another
+time, even at this time, if his surroundings and his society, his
+education and his breeding had been less unfortunate, he might, as it
+seems to me, have become a very great novelist indeed. As it is, he is a
+great possibility of novel and of much other writing, with occasional
+outbursts of actuality. The _Encyclopédie_ itself, for aught I care,
+might have gone in all its copies, and with all possibility of
+recovering or remembering it on earth, to the place where so many people
+at the time would have liked to send it. But in the rest of him, and
+even in some of his own Encyclopædia articles,[384] there is much of
+quite different stuff. And among the various gifts, critical and
+creative, which this stuff shows, not the least, I think, was the
+half-used and mostly ill-used gift of novel-writing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The successors--Marmontel.]
+
+What has been called the second generation of the _philosophes_, who
+were naturally the pupils of the first, "were not like [that] first,"
+that is to say, they did not reproduce the special talents of their
+immediate masters in this department of ours, save in two instances.
+Diderot's genius did not propagate itself in the novel way at all[385]:
+indeed, as has been said, his best novel was not known till this second
+generation itself was waning. The most brilliant of his direct hearers,
+Joubert, took to another department; or rather, in his famous _Pensées_,
+isolated and perfected the utterances scattered through the master's
+immense and disorderly work. Naigeon, the most devoted, who might have
+taken for his motto a slight alteration of the Mahometan confession of
+faith, "There is no God; but there is only one Diderot, and I am his
+prophet," was a dull fellow, and also, to adopt a Carlylian epithet, a
+"dull-snuffling" one, who could not have told a neck-tale if the
+Hairibee of the guillotine had caught him and given him a merciful
+chance. Voltaire in Marmontel, and Rousseau in Bernardin de
+Saint-Pierre, were more fortunate, though both the juniors considerably
+transformed their masters' fashions; and Marmontel was always more or
+less, and latterly altogether, an apostate from the principle that the
+first and last duty of man is summed up in _écrasons l'infâme_.
+
+This latter writer has had vicissitudes both in English and French
+appreciation. We translated him early, and he had an immense influence
+on the general Edgeworthian school, and on Miss Edgeworth herself. Much
+later Mr. Ruskin "took him up."[386] But neither his good nor his bad
+points have, for a long time, been such as greatly to commend
+themselves, either to the major part of the nineteenth century, or to
+what has yet passed of the twentieth, on either side of the channel.
+
+He was, no doubt, only a second-class man of letters, and though he
+ranks really high in this class, he was unfortunately much influenced by
+more or less passing fashions, fads, and fancies of his
+time--_sensibilité_ (see next chapter) philosophism,
+politico-philanthropic economy, and what not. He was also much of a
+"polygraph," and naturally a good deal of his polygraphy does not
+concern us, though parts of his _Memoirs_, especially the rather
+well-known accounts of his sufferings as a new-comer[387] in the
+atrocious Bastille, show capital tale-telling faculty. His unequal
+criticism, sometimes very acute, hardly concerns us at all; his _Essai
+sur les Romans_ being very disappointing.[388] But he wrote not a little
+which must, in different ways and "strengths," be classed as actual
+fiction, and this concerns us pretty nearly, both as evidencing that
+general set towards the novel which is so important, and also in detail.
+
+[Sidenote: His "Telemachic" imitations worth little.]
+
+It divides itself quite obviously into two classes, the almost didactic
+matter of _Bélisaire_ and _Les Incas_, and the still partly didactic,
+but much more "fictionised" _Contes Moraux_. The first part (which is
+evidently of the family of _Télémaque_) may be rapidly dismissed. Except
+for its good French and good intentions, it has long had, and is likely
+always to have, very little to say for itself. We have seen that Prévost
+attempted a sort of quasi-historical novel. Of actual history there is
+little in _Bélisaire_, rather more in _Les Incas_. But historical fact
+and story-telling art are entirely subordinated in both to moral
+purpose, endless talk about virtue and the affections and justice and
+all the rest of it--the sort of thing, in short, which provoked the
+immortal outburst, "In the name of the Devil and his grandmother, _be_
+virtuous and have done with it!" There is, as has just been said, a
+great deal of this in the _Contes_ also; but fortunately there is
+something else.
+
+[Sidenote: The best of his _Contes Moraux_ worth a good deal.]
+
+The something else is not to be found in the "Sensibility" parts,[389]
+and could not be expected to be. They do, indeed, contain perhaps the
+most absolutely ludicrous instance of the absurdest side of that
+remarkable thing, except Mackenzie's great _trouvaille_ of the
+press-gang who unanimously melted into tears[390] at the plea of an
+affectionate father. Marmontel's masterpiece is not so very far removed
+in subject from this. It represents a good young man, who stirs up the
+timorous captain and crew of a ship against an Algerine pirate, and in
+the ensuing engagement, sabre in hand, makes a terrible carnage: "As
+soon as he sees an African coming on board, he runs to him and cuts him
+in half, crying, 'My poor mother!'" The filial hero varies this a
+little, when "disembowelling" the Algerine commander, by requesting the
+Deity to "have pity on" his parent--a proceeding faintly suggestive of a
+survival in his mind of the human-sacrifice period.
+
+Fortunately, as has been said, it is not always thus: and some of the
+tales are amusing in almost the highest degree, being nearly as witty as
+Voltaire's, and entirely free from ill-nature and sculduddery. Not that
+Marmontel--though a great advocate for marriage, and even (for a
+Frenchman of his time) wonderfully favourable to falling in love
+_before_ marriage--pretends to be altogether superior to the customs of
+his own day. We still sometimes have the "Prendre-Avoir-Quitter" series
+of Crébillon,[391] though with fewer details; and Mrs. Newcome would
+have been almost more horrified than she was at _Joseph Andrews_ by the
+perusal of one of Marmontel's most well-intentioned things, _Annette et
+Lubin_. But he never lays himself out for attractions of a doubtful
+kind, and none of his best stories, even when they may sometimes involve
+bowing in the house of Ashtoreth as well as that of Rimmon, derive their
+bait from this kind. Indeed they rather "assume and pass it by" as a
+fashion of the time.
+
+[Sidenote: _Alcibiade ou le Moi._]
+
+We may take three or four of them as examples. One is the very first of
+the collection, _Alcibiade ou le Moi_. Hardly anybody need be told that
+the Alcibiades of the tale, though nominally, is not in the least really
+the Alcibiades of history, or that his Athens is altogether Paris; while
+his Socrates is a kind of _philosophe_, the good points of Voltaire,
+Rousseau, and Diderot being combined with the faults of none of them,
+and his ladies are persons who--with one exception--simply could not
+have existed in Greece. This Alcibiades wishes to be loved "for
+himself," and is (not without reason) very doubtful whether he ever has
+been, though he is the most popular and "successful" man in Athens. His
+_avoir_, for the moment, is concerned with a "Prude." (Were there prudes
+in Greece? I think Diogenes would have gladly lent his lantern for the
+search.) He is desperately afraid that she only loves him for _her_self.
+He determines to try her; takes her, not at her deeds, but at her words,
+which are, of course, such as would have made the Greeks laugh as
+inextinguishably as their gods once did. She expresses gratitude for his
+unselfishness, but is anything but pleased. Divers experiments are tried
+by her, and when at last he hopes she will not tempt him any more,
+exclaiming that he is really "l'amant le plus fidèle, le plus tendre et
+le plus respectueux" ... "et le plus sot," adds she, sharply, concluding
+the conversation and shutting her, let us say, doors[392] on him.
+
+He is furious, and tries "Glicerie" (the form might be more Greek), an
+_ingénue_ of fifteen, who was "like a rose," who had attracted already
+the vows of the most gallant youths, etc. The most brilliant of these
+youths instantly retire before the invincible Alcibiades. But in the
+first place she wishes that before "explanations"[393] take place, a
+marriage shall be arranged; while he, oddly enough, wishes that the
+explanations should precede the hymen. Also she is particular about the
+consent of her parents: and, finally, when he asks her whether she will
+swear constancy against every trial, to be his, and his only, whatever
+happens, she replies, with equal firmness and point, "Never!" So he is
+furious again. But there is a widow, and, as we have seen in former
+cases, there was not, in the French eighteenth century, the illiberal
+prejudice against widows expressed by Mr. Weller. She is, of course,
+inconsolable for her dear first, but admits, after a time, the
+possibility of a dear second. Only it must be kept secret as yet. For a
+time Alcibiades behaves nobly, but somehow or other he finds that
+everybody knows the fact; he is treated by his lady-love with obvious
+superiority; and breaks with her. An interlude with a "magistrate's"
+wife, on less proper and more Crébillonish lines, is not more
+successful. So one day meeting by the seashore a beautiful courtesan,
+Erigone, he determines, in the not contemptible language of that
+single-speech poetess, Maria del Occidente, to "descend and sip a lower
+draught." He is happy after a fashion with her for two whole months: but
+at the end of that time he is beaten in a chariot race, and, going to
+Erigone for consolation, finds the winner's vehicle at her door.
+Socrates, on being consulted, recommends Glicerie as, after all, the
+best of them, in a rather sensible discourse. But the concluding words
+of the sage and the story are, as indeed might be expected from
+Xanthippe's husband, not entirely optimist: "If your wife is well
+conducted and amiable, you will be a happy man; if she is ill-tempered
+and a coquette, you will become a philosopher--so you must gain in any
+case." An "obvious," perhaps, but a neat and uncommonly well-told story.
+
+[Sidenote: _Soliman the Second._]
+
+_Soliman the Second_ is probably the best known of Marmontel's tales,
+and it certainly has great merits. It is hardly inferior in wit to
+Voltaire, and is entirely free from the smears of uncomeliness and the
+sniggers of bad taste which he would have been sure to put in. The
+subject is, of course, partly historical, though the reader of Knollys
+(and one knows more unhappy persons) will look in vain there, not,
+indeed, for Roxelana, but for the _nez retroussé_, which is the
+important point of the story. The great Sultan tires of his Asiatic
+harem, complaisant but uninteresting, and orders European damsels to be
+caught or bought for him. The most noteworthy of the catch or batch are
+Elmire, Delia, and Roxelane. Elmire comes first to Soliman's notice,
+charms him by her sentimental ways, and reigns for a time, but loses her
+piquancy, and (by no means wholly to her satisfaction) is able to avail
+herself of the conditional enfranchisement, and return to her country,
+which his magnanimity has granted her. Her immediate supplanter, Delia,
+is an admirable singer, and possessed of many of the qualifications of
+an accomplished _hetæra_. But for that very reason the Sultan tires of
+her likewise; and for the same, she is not inconsolable or restive:
+indeed she acts as a sort of Lady Pandara, if not to introduce, at any
+rate to tame, the third, Roxelane, a French girl of no very regular
+beauty, but with infinite attractions, and in particular possessed of
+what Mr. Dobson elegantly calls "a madding ineffable nose" of the
+_retroussé_ type.
+
+The first thing the Sultan hears of this damsel is that the Master of
+the Eunuchs cannot in the least manage her; for she merely laughs at all
+he says. The Sultan, out of curiosity, orders her to be brought to him,
+and she immediately cries: "Thank Heaven! here is a face like a man's.
+Of course you are the sublime Sultan whose slave I have the honour to
+be? Please cashier this disgusting old rascal." To which extremely
+irreverent address Soliman makes a dignified reply of the proper kind,
+including due reference to "obedience" and his "will." This brings down
+a small pageful of raillery from the young person, who asks "whether
+this is Turkish gallantry?" suggests that the restrictions of the
+seraglio involve a fear that "the skies should rain men," and more than
+hints that she should be very glad if they did. For the moment Soliman,
+though much taken with her, finds no way of saving his dignity except by
+a retreat. The next time he sends for her, or rather announces his own
+arrival, she tells the messenger to pack himself off: and when the
+Commander of the Faithful does visit her and gives a little good advice,
+she is still incorrigible. She will, once more, have nothing to do with
+the words _dois_ and _devoir_. When asked if she knows what he is and
+what _she_ is, she answers with perfect _aplomb_, "What we are? You are
+powerful, and I am pretty; so we are quite on an equality." In the most
+painfully confidential and at the same time quite decent manner, she
+asks him what he can possibly do with five hundred wives? and, still
+more intolerably, tells him that she likes his looks, and has already
+loved people who were not worth him. The horror with which this Turkish
+soldan, himself so full of sin, ejaculates, "Vous _avez_ aimé?" may be
+easily imagined, and again she simply puts him to flight. When he gets
+over it a little, he sends Delia to negotiate. But Roxelane tells the
+go-between to stay to supper, declaring that she herself does not feel
+inclined for a _tête-à-tête_ yet, and finally sends him off with this
+obliging predecessor and substitute, presenting her with the legendary
+handkerchief, which she has actually borrowed from the guileless
+Padishah. There is some, but not too much more of it; there can but be
+one end; and as he takes her to the Mosque to make her legitimate
+Sultana, quite contrary to proper Mussulman usage, he says to himself,
+"Is it really possible that a little _retroussé_ nose should upset the
+laws of an empire?" Probably, though Marmontel does not say so, he
+looked down at the said nose, as he communed with himself, and decided
+that cause and effect were not unworthy of each other. There is hardly a
+righter and better hit-off tale of the kind, even in French.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Four Flasks._]
+
+"The Four Flasks" or "The Adventures of Alcidonis of Megara," a sort of
+outside fairy tale, is good, but not quite so good as either of the
+former. Alcidonis has a fairy protectress, if not exactly godmother, who
+gives him the flasks in question to use in amatory adventures. One, with
+purple liquor in it, sets the drinker in full tide of passion; the
+second (rose-coloured) causes a sort of flirtation; the third (blue)
+leads to sentimental and moderate affection; and the last (pure white)
+recovers the experimenter from the effects of any of the others. He
+tries all, and all but the last are unsatisfactory, though, much as in
+the case of Alcibiades and Glicerie, the blue has a second chance, the
+results of which are not revealed. This is the least important of the
+group, but is well told.
+
+[Sidenote: _Heureusement._]
+
+There is also much good in _Heureusement_, the nearest to a
+"Crébillonnade" of all, though the Crébillonesque situations are
+ingeniously broken off short. It is told by an old marquise[394] to an
+almost equally old abbé, her crony, who only at the last discovers that,
+long ago, he himself was very nearly the shepherd of the proverbial
+hour. And _Le Mari Sylphe_, which is still more directly connected with
+one of Crébillon's actual pieces, and with some of the weaker stories
+(_v. sup._) of the _Cabinet des Fées_, would be good if it were not much
+too long. Others might be mentioned, but my own favourite, though it has
+nothing quite so magnetic in it as the _nez de Roxelane_, is _Le
+Philosophe Soi-disant_, a sort of apology for his own clan, in a satire
+on its less worthy members, which may seem to hit rather unfairly at
+Rousseau, but which is exceedingly amusing.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Philosophe Soi-disant._]
+
+Clarice--one of those so useful young widows of whom the novelists of
+this time might have pleaded that they took their ideas of them from the
+Apostle St. Paul--has for some time been anxious to know a _philosophe_,
+though she has been warned that there are _philosophes_ and
+_philosophes_, and that the right kind is neither common nor very fond
+of society. She expresses surprise, and says that she has always heard a
+_philosophe_ defined as an odd creature who makes it his business to be
+like nobody else. "Oh," she is told, "there is no difficulty about
+_that_ kind," and one, by name Ariste, is shortly added to her
+country-house party. She politely asks him whether he is not a
+_philosophe_, and whether philosophy is not a very beautiful thing? He
+replies (his special line being sententiousness) that it is simply the
+knowledge of good and evil, or, if she prefers it, Wisdom. "Only that?"
+says wicked Doris; but Clarice helps him from replying to the scoffer by
+going on to ask whether the fruit of Wisdom is not happiness? "And,
+Madame, the making others happy." "Dear me," says naïve Lucinde, half
+under her breath, "I must be a _philosophe_, for I have been told a
+hundred times that it only depended on myself to be happy by making
+others happy." There is more wickedness from Doris; but Ariste, with a
+contemptuous smile, explains that the word "happiness" has more than one
+meaning, and that the _philosophe_ kind is different from that at the
+disposal and dispensation of a pretty woman. Clarice, admitting this,
+asks what _his_ kind of happiness is? The company then proceeds, in the
+most reprehensible fashion, to "draw" the sage: and they get from him,
+among other things, an admission that he despises everybody, and an
+unmistakable touch of disgust when somebody speaks of "his
+_semblables_."[395]
+
+Clarice, however, still plays the amiable and polite hostess, lets him
+take her to dinner, and says playfully that she means to reconcile him
+to humanity. He altogether declines. Man is a vicious beast, who
+persecutes and devours others, he says, making all the time a
+particularly good dinner while denouncing the slaughter of animals, and
+eulogising the "sparkling brook" while getting slightly drunk. He
+declaims against the folly and crime of the modern world in not making
+philosophers kings, and announces his intention of seeking complete
+solitude. But Clarice, still polite, decides that he must stay with them
+a little while, in order to enlighten and improve the company.
+
+After this, Ariste, in an alley alone, to digest his dinner and walk off
+his wine, persuades himself that Clarice has fallen in love with him,
+and that, to secure her face and her fortune, he has only got to go on
+playing the misanthrope and give her a chance of "taming the bear." The
+company, perfectly well knowing his thoughts, determine to play up to
+them--not for his greater glory; and Clarice, not quite willingly,
+agrees to take the principal part. In a long _tête-à-tête_ he makes his
+clumsy court, airs his cheap philosophy, and lets by no means the mere
+suggestion of a cloven foot appear, on the subject of virtue and vice.
+However, she stands it, though rather disgusted, and confesses to him
+that people are suggesting a certain Cléon, a member of the party, as
+her second husband; whereon he decries marriage, but proposes himself as
+a lover. She reports progress, and is applauded; but the Présidente de
+Ponval, another widow, fat, fifty, fond of good fare, possessed of a
+fine fortune, but very far from foolish, vows that _she_ will make the
+greatest fool of Ariste. Cléon, however, accepts his part; and appears
+to be much disturbed at Clarice's attentions to Ariste, who, being shown
+to his room, declaims against its luxuries, but avails himself of them
+very cheerfully. In the morning he, though rather doubtfully, accepts a
+bath; but on his appearance in company Clarice makes remonstrances on
+his dress, etc., and actually prevails on him to let a valet curl his
+hair. This is an improvement; but she does not like his brown
+coat.[396] He must write to Paris and order a suit of _gris-de-lin
+clair_, and after some wrangling he consents. But now the Présidente
+takes up the running. After expressing the extremest admiration for his
+coiffure, she makes a dead set at him, tells him she wants a second
+husband whom she can love for himself, and goes off with a passionate
+glance, the company letting him casually know that she has ten thousand
+crowns a year. He affects to despise this, which is duly reported to her
+next morning. She vows vengeance; but he dreams of her (and the crowns)
+meanwhile, and with that morning the new suit arrives. He is admiring
+himself in it when Cléon comes in, and throws himself on his mercy. He
+adores Clarice; Ariste is evidently gaining fatally on her affections;
+will he not be generous and abstain from using his advantages? But if
+_he_ is really in love Cléon will give her up.
+
+The hook is, of course, more than singly baited and barbed. Ariste can
+at once play the magnanimous man, and be rewarded by the Présidente's
+ten thousand a year. He will be off with Clarice and on with Mme. de
+Ponval, whom he visits in his new splendour. She admires it hugely, but
+is alarmed at seeing him in Clarice's favourite colour. An admirable
+conversation follows, in which she constantly draws her ill-bred,
+ill-blooded, and self-besotted suitor into addressing her with insults,
+under the guise of compliments, and affects to enjoy them. He next
+visits Clarice, with whom he finds Cléon, in the depths of despair. She
+begins to admire the coat, and to pride herself on her choice, when he
+interrupts her, and solemnly resigns her to Cléon. Doris and Lucinde
+come in, and everybody is astounded at Ariste's generosity as he takes
+Clarice's hand and places it in that of his rival. Then he goes to the
+Présidente, and tells her what he has done. She expresses her delight,
+and he falls at her feet. Thereupon she throws round his neck a
+rose-coloured ribbon (_her_ colours), calls him "her Charming man,"[397]
+and insists on showing him to the public as her conquest and captive. He
+has no time to refuse, for the door opens and they all appear. "Le
+voilà," says she, "cet homme si fier qui soupire à mes genoux pour les
+beaux yeux de ma cassette! Je vous le livre. Mon rôle est joué." So
+Ariste, tearing his curled hair, and the _gris-de-lin clair_ coat, and,
+doubtless, the Présidente's "red rose chain," cursing also terribly,
+goes off to write a book against the age, and to prove that nobody is
+wise but himself.
+
+I can hardly imagine more than one cavil being made against this by the
+most carping of critics and the most wedded to the crotchet of
+"kinds"--that it is too dramatic for a _story_, and that we ought to
+have had it as a drama. If this were further twisted into an accusation
+of plagiarism from the actual theatre, I think it could be rebutted at
+once. The situations separately might be found in many dramas; the
+characters in more; but I at least am not aware of any one in which they
+had been similarly put together. Of course most if not all of us have
+seen actresses who would make Clarice charming, Madame de Ponval
+amusing, and Doris and Lucinde very delectable adjuncts; as well as
+actors by whom the parts of Cléon and Ariste would be very effectively
+worked out. But why we should be troubled to dress, journey, waste time
+and money, and get a headache, by going to the theatre, when we can
+enjoy all this "in some close corner of [our] brain," I cannot see. As I
+read the story in some twenty minutes, I can see _my_ Clarice, _my_
+Madame de Ponval, _my_ Doris and Lucinde and Cléon and Ariste and
+Jasmin--the silent but doubtless highly appreciative valet,--and I
+rather doubt whether the best company in the world could give me quite
+that.
+
+[Sidenote: A real advance in these.]
+
+But, even in saying this, full justice has not yet been done to
+Marmontel. He has, from our special point of view, made a real further
+progress towards the ideal of the ordinary novel--the presentation of
+ordinary life. He has borrowed no supernatural aid;[398] he has laid
+under contribution no "fie-fie" seasonings; he has sacrificed nothing,
+or next to nothing, in these best pieces, whatever he may have done
+elsewhere, to purpose and crotchet. He has discarded stuffing,
+digression, episode, and other things which weighed on and hampered his
+predecessors. In fact there are times when it seems almost unjust, in
+this part of his work, to "second" him in the way we have done; though
+it must be admitted that if you take his production as a whole he
+relapses into the second order.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.]
+
+The actual books, in anything that can be called fiction, of Bernardin
+de Saint-Pierre are of far less merit than Marmontel's; but most people
+who have even the slightest knowledge of French literature know why he
+cannot be excluded here. Personally, he seems to have been an
+ineffectual sort of creature, and in a large part of his rather
+voluminous work he is (when he ceases to produce a sort of languid
+amusement) a distinctly boring one.[399] He appears to have been
+unlucky, but to have helped his own bad luck with the only signs of
+effectualness that he ever showed. It is annoying, no doubt, to get
+remonstrances from headquarters as to your not sending any work (plans,
+reports, etc.) as an engineer, and to find, or think you find, that
+your immediate C.O. has suppressed them. But when you charge him with
+his disgraceful proceeding, and he, as any French officer in his
+position at his time was likely to do, puts his hand on his sword, it is
+undiplomatic to rush on another officer who happens to be present, grab
+at and draw his weapon (you are apparently not entitled to one), and
+attack your chief. Nor when, after some more unsuccessful experiences at
+home and abroad, you are on half or no pay, and want employment, would
+it seem to be exactly the wisdom of Solomon to give a minister the
+choice of employing you on (1) the civilisation of Corsica, (2) the
+exploration of the unknown parts of the Western Continent, (3) the
+discovery of the sources of the Nile, and (4) a pedestrian tour
+throughout India. But, except in the first instance (for the "Citizen of
+Geneva" did not meddle much with cold steel), it was all very like a
+pupil, and (in the Citizen's later years) a friend, of Rousseau,
+carrying out his master's ideas with a stronger dose of Christianity,
+but with quite as little common sense. I have not seen (or remembered)
+any more exact account of Saint-Pierre's relations with Napoleon than
+that given by the excellent Aimé-Martin, an academic euphemiser of the
+French kind. But, even reading between his lines, they must have been
+very funny.[400]
+
+_Paul et Virginie_, however, is one of those books which, having
+attained and long kept a European reputation, cannot be neglected, and
+it may be added that it does deserve, though for one thing only, never
+to be entirely forgotten. It is chock-full of _sensibilité_, the
+characters have no real character, and all healthy-minded persons have
+long ago agreed that the concomitant facts, if not causes, of Virginie's
+fate are more nasty than the nastiest thing in Diderot or Rabelais.[401]
+But the descriptions of the scenery of Mauritius, as sets-off to a
+novel, are something new, and something immensely important. _La
+Chaumière Indienne_, though less of a story in size and general texture,
+is much better from the point of view of taste. It has touches of real
+irony, and almost of humour, though its hero, the good pariah, is a
+creature nearly as uninteresting as he is impossible. Yet his "black and
+polished" baby is a vivid property, and the descriptions are again
+famous. The shorter pieces, _Le Café de Surate_, etc., require little
+notice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It will, however, have been seen by anybody who can "seize points," that
+this _philosophe_ novel, as such, is a really important agent in
+bringing on the novel itself to its state of full age. That men like the
+three chiefs should take up the form is a great thing; that men who are
+not quite chiefs, like Marmontel and Saint-Pierre, should carry it on,
+is not a small one. They all do something to get it out of the rough; to
+discard--if sometimes also they add--irrelevances; to modernise this one
+kind which is perhaps the predestined and acceptable literary product of
+modernity. Voltaire originates little, but puts his immense power and
+_diable au corps_ into the body of fiction. Rousseau enchains passion in
+its service, as Madame de la Fayette, as even Prévost, had not been able
+to do before. Diderot indicates, in whatever questionable material, the
+vast possibilities of psychological analysis. Marmontel--doing, like
+other second-rate talents, almost more _useful_ work than his
+betters--rescues the _conte_ from the "demi-rep" condition into which it
+had fallen, and, owing to the multifariousness of his examples, does not
+entirely subjugate it even to honest purpose; while Bernardin de
+Saint-Pierre carries the suggestions of Rousseau still further in the
+invaluable department of description. No one, except on the small
+scale, is great in plot; no one produces a really individual
+character;[402] and it can hardly be said that any one provides
+thoroughly achieved novel dialogue. But they have inspired and enlivened
+the whole thing as a whole; and if, against this, is to be set the crime
+of purpose, that is one not difficult to discard.[403]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[351] His _verse_ tales, even if stories in verse had not by this time
+fallen out of our proper range, require little notice. The faculty of
+"telling" did not remain with him here, perhaps because it was
+prejudicially affected by the "dryness" and unpoetical quality of his
+poetry, and of the French poetry of the time generally, perhaps for
+other reasons. At any rate, as compared with La Fontaine or Prior, he
+hardly counts. _Le Mondain_, _Le Pauvre Diable_, etc., are skits or
+squibs in verse, not tales. The opening one of the usual collection, _Ce
+qui plaît aux Dames_,--in itself a flat rehandling of Chaucer and
+Dryden,--is saved by its charming last line--
+
+    Ah! croyez-moi, l'erreur a son mérite,
+
+a rede which he himself might well have recked.
+
+[352] In justice to Voltaire it ought to be remembered that no less
+great, virtuous, and religious a person than Milton ranked as one of the
+two objects to which "all mortals most aspire," "to offend your
+enemies."
+
+[353] It has been noted above (see p. 266, _note_), how some have
+directly traced _Zadig_ to the work of a person so much inferior to
+Hamilton as Gueulette.
+
+[354] _Micromégas_ and one or two other things avowed--in fact,
+Voltaire, if not "great," was "big" enough to make as a rule little
+secret of his levies on others; and he had, if not adequate, a
+considerable, respect for the English Titan.
+
+[355] Cacambo was not a savage, but he had savage or, at least,
+non-European blood in him.
+
+[356] Not in the Grandisonian sense, thank heaven! But as has been
+hinted, he is a _little_ of a prig.
+
+[357] He has been allowed a great deal of credit for the Calas and some
+other similar businesses. It is unlucky that the injustices he combated
+were somehow always _clerical_, in this or that fashion.
+
+[358] It was said of them at their appearance "[cet] ouvrage est sans
+goût, sans finesse, sans invention, un rabâchage de toutes les vieilles
+polissonneries que l'auteur a débitées sur Moïse, et Jésus-Christ, les
+prophètes et les apôtres, l'Église, les papes, les cardinaux, les
+prêtres et les moines; nul intêret, nulle chaleur, nulle vraisemblance,
+force ordures, une grosse gaieté.... Je n'aime pas la religion: mais je
+ne la hais pas assez pour trouver cela bon." The authorship, added to
+the justice of it, makes this one of the most crushing censures ever
+committed to paper; for the writer was Diderot (_Oeuvres_, Ed. Assézat,
+vi. 36).
+
+[359] It is a singular coincidence that this was exactly the sum which
+Johnson mentioned to Boswell as capable of affording decent subsistence
+in London during the early middle eighteenth century.
+
+[360] _Songe de Platon_, _Bababec et les Fakirs_, _Aventure de la
+Mémoire_, _Les Aveugles Juges des Conteurs_, _Aventure Indienne_, and
+_Voyage de la Raison_.
+
+[361] It is only fair to mention in this place, and in justice to a much
+abused institution, that this Babylonian story is said to be the only
+thing of its kind and its author that escaped the Roman censorship. If
+this is true, the unfeathered _perroquets_ were not so spiteful as the
+feathered ones too often are. Or perhaps each chuckled at the satire on
+his brethren.
+
+[362] As with other controverted points, not strictly relevant, it is
+permissible for us to neglect protests about _la légende des
+philosophes_ and the like. Of course Rousseau was not only, at one time
+or another, the personal enemy of Voltaire and Diderot--he was, at one
+time or another, the personal enemy of everybody, including (not at any
+one but at all times) himself--but held principles very different from
+theirs. Yet their names will always be found together: and for our
+object the junction is real.
+
+[363] Not the Abbé, who had been dead for some years, but a Genevese
+professor who saw a good deal of Jean-Jacques in his later days.
+
+[364] "For short" _La Nouvelle Héloïse_ has been usually adopted. I
+prefer _Julie_ as actually the first title, and for other reasons with
+which it is unnecessary to trouble the reader.
+
+[365] She dies after slipping into the lake in a successful attempt to
+rescue one of her children; but neither is drowned, and she does not
+succumb rapidly enough for "shock" to account for it, or slowly enough
+for any other intelligible malady to hold its course.
+
+[366] There is another curious anticipation of Dickens here: for Julie,
+as Dora does with Agnes, entreats Claire to "fill her vacant
+place"--though, by the way, not with her husband. And a third parallel,
+between Saint-Preux and Bradley Headstone, need not be quite farcical.
+
+[367] You _may_ tear out Introductions, if you do it neatly; and this I
+say, having written many.
+
+[368] Also Rousseau, without meaning it, has made him by no means a
+fool. When, on learning from his wife and daughter that Saint-Preux had
+been officiating as "coach," he asked if this genius was a gentleman,
+and on hearing that he was not, replied, "What have you paid him, then?"
+it was not, as the novelist and his hero took it, in their vanity, to
+be, mere insolence of caste. M. d'Étange knew perfectly well that though
+he could not trust a French gentleman with his wife, there was not
+nearly so much danger with his daughter--while a _roturier_ was not only
+entitled to be paid, and might accept pay without derogation, but was
+not unlikely, as the old North Country saying goes, to take it in malt
+if he did not receive it in meal.
+
+[369] I observe that I have not yet fulfilled the promise of saying
+something of Wolmar, but the less said of him the better. He belongs
+wholly to that latter portion which has been wished away; he is a
+respectable Deist--than which it is essentially impossible, one would
+suppose, for orthodoxy and unorthodoxy alike to imagine anything more
+uninteresting; and his behaviour to Saint-Preux appears to me to be
+simply nauseous. He cannot, like Rowena, "forgive as a Christian,"
+because he is not one, and any other form of forgiveness or even of
+tolerance is, in the circumstances, disgusting. But it was Rousseau's
+way to be disgusting sometimes.
+
+[370] We have spoken of his attempt at the fairy tale; _qui_ Gomersal
+_non odit_ in English verse, _amet Le Lévite d'Ephraïm_ in French prose,
+etc. etc.
+
+[371] He did not even, as Rousseau did with his human offspring,
+habitually take them to the Foundling Hospital--that is to say, in the
+case of literature, the anonymous press. He left them in MS., gave them
+away, and in some cases behaved to them in such an incomprehensible
+fashion that one wonders how they ever came to light.
+
+[372] Carlyle's _Essay_ and Lord Morley of Blackburn's book are
+excepted. But Carlyle had not the whole before him, and Lord Morley was
+principally dealing with the _Encyclopédie_.
+
+[373] Especially as Génin, like Carlyle, did not know all. There is, I
+believe, a later selection, but I have not seen it.
+
+[374] Even the long, odd, and sometimes tedious _Rêve de D'Alembert_,
+which Carlyle thought "we could have done without," but which others
+have extolled, has vivid narrative touches, though one is not much
+surprised at Mlle. de Lespinasse having been by no means grateful for
+the part assigned to her.
+
+[375] The cleansing effect of war is an old _cliché_. It has been
+curiously illustrated in this case: for the first proof of the present
+passage reached me on the very same day with the news of the expulsion
+of the Germans from the village of Puisieux. So the name got
+"_red_-washed" from its old reproach.
+
+[376] There really are touches of resemblance in it to Browning,
+especially in things like _Mr. Sludge the Medium_.
+
+[377] The corporal's wound in the knee.
+
+[378] Of course, there _are_ exceptions, and with one of the chief of
+them, Xavier de Maistre, we may have, before long, to deal.
+
+[379] His longest, most avowed, and most famous, the _Paradoxe sur le
+Comédien_, has been worthily Englished by Mr. Walter H. Pollock.
+
+[380] Its heroine, Suzanne Simonin, was, as far as the attempt to
+relieve herself of her vows went, a real person; and a benevolent
+nobleman, the Marquis de Croixmare, actually interested himself in this
+attempt--which failed. But Diderot and his evil angel Grimm got up sham
+letters between themselves and her patron, which are usually printed
+with the book.
+
+[381] _Mon père, je suis damnée_ ... the opening words, and the only
+ones given, of the confession of the half-mad abbess.
+
+[382] Evangelical Protestantism has more than once adopted the principle
+that the Devil should not be allowed to have all the best tunes: and I
+remember in my youth an English religious novel of ultra-anti-Roman
+purpose, which, though, of course, dropping the "scabrousness," had, as
+I long afterwards recognised when I came to read _La Religieuse_, almost
+certainly borrowed a good deal from our most unsaintly Denis of Langres.
+
+[383] She seems to have been, in many ways, far too good for her
+society, and altogether a lady.--The opinions of the late M. Brunetière
+and mine on French literature were often very different--though he was
+good enough not to disapprove of some of my work on it. But with the
+terms of his expression of mere opinion one had seldom to quarrel. I
+must, however, take exception to his attribution of _grossièreté_ to _La
+Religieuse_. Diderot, as has been fully admitted, _was_ too often
+_grossier_: sometimes when it was almost irrelevant to the subject. But
+here, "scabrous" as the subject might be, the treatment is scrupulously
+_not_ coarse. Nor do I think, after intimate and long familiarity with
+the whole of his work, that he was ever a _faux bonhomme_.
+
+[384] They have hardly had a fair opportunity of comparison with
+Voltaire's _Dictionnaire Philosophique_; but they can stand it.
+
+[385] Unless Dulaurens' not quite stupid, but formless and
+discreditable, _Compère Mathieu_ be excepted.
+
+[386] In consequence of which Mr. Ruskin's favourite publisher, the late
+Mr. George Allen, asked the present writer, some twenty years ago, to
+revise and "introduce" the old translation of his _Contes Moraux_. The
+volume had, at least, the advantage of very charming illustrations by
+Miss Chris. Hammond.
+
+[387] They were even worse than Leigh Hunt's in the strictly English
+counterpart torture-house for the victims of tyranny--consisting, for
+instance, in the supply of so good a dinner, at His Most Christian
+Majesty's expense, for the prisoner's servant, that the prisoner ate it
+himself, and had afterwards, on the principles of rigid virtue and
+distributive justice, to resign, to the minion who accompanied him, his
+own still better one which came later, also supplied by the tyrant.
+
+[388] One expects something of value from the part-contemporary,
+part-successor of the novelists from Lesage to Rousseau. But where it is
+not mere blether about virtue and vice, and _le coeur humain_ and so on,
+it has some of the worst faults of eighteenth-century criticism. He
+thinks it would have been more "moral" if Mme. de Clèves had actually
+succumbed as a punishment for her self-reliance (certainly one of the
+most remarkable topsyturvifications of morality ever crotcheted); is, of
+course, infinitely shocked at being asked and induced to "interest
+himself in a prostitute and a card-sharper" by _Manon Lescaut_; and,
+equally of course, extols Richardson, though it is fair to say that he
+speaks well of _Tom Jones_.
+
+[389] See next chapter.
+
+[390] I wonder whether any one else has noticed that Thackeray, in the
+very agreeable illustration to one of not quite his greatest
+"letterpress" things, _A New Naval Drama_ (Oxford Ed. vol. viii. p.
+421), makes the press-gang weep ostentatiously in the picture, though
+not in the text, where they only wave their cutlasses. It may be merely
+a coincidence: but it may not.
+
+[391] There are reasons for thinking that Marmontel was deliberately
+"antidoting the _fanfreluches_" of the older tale-teller.
+
+[392] In the original, suiting the rest of the setting, it is _rideaux_.
+
+[393] "Explanations" is quite admirable, and, I think, neither borrowed
+from, nor, which is more surprising, by others.
+
+[394] She declares that she has never actually "stooped to folly"; but
+admits that on more than one occasion it was only an accidental
+interruption which "luckily" (_heureusement_) saved her.
+
+[395] It is necessary to retain the French here: for our "likes" is
+ambiguous.
+
+[396] Cf. the stories, contradictory of each other, as to _our_
+brown-coated philosopher's appearance in France. (Boswell, p. 322, Globe
+ed.)
+
+[397] Cf. again the bestowal of this title by Horace Walpole, in his
+later days, on Edward Jerningham, playwright, poetaster, and _petit
+maître_, who, unluckily for himself, lived into the more roughly
+satirical times of the Revolutionary War.
+
+[398] "The _sylph_ishness of _Le Mari Sylphe_ is only an ingenious and
+defensible fraud; and the philtre-flasks of _Alcidonis_ are little more
+than "properties.""
+
+[399] Here is a specimen of his largest and most ambitious production,
+the _Études de la Nature_. "La femelle du tigre, exhalant l'odeur du
+carnage, fait retentir les solitudes de l'Afrique de ses miaulements
+affreux, et paraît remplie d'attraits à ses cruels amants." By an odd
+chance, I once saw a real scene contrasting remarkably with
+Saint-Pierre's sentimental melodrama. It was in the Clifton Zoological
+Gardens, which, as possibly some readers may know, were at one time
+regarded as particularly home-like by the larger carnivora. It was a
+very fine day, and an equally fine young tigress was endeavouring to
+attract the attention of her cruel lover. She rolled delicately about,
+like a very large, very pretty, and exceptionally graceful cat; she made
+fantastic gestures with her paws and tail; and she purred literally "as
+gently as any sucking dove"--_roucoulement_ was the only word for it.
+But her "lover," though he certainly looked "cruel" and as if he would
+very much like to eat _me_, appeared totally indifferent to her
+attractions.
+
+[400] So, also, when one is told that he called his son Paul and his
+daughter Virginie, it is cheerful to remember, with a pleasant sense of
+contrast, Scott's good-humoured contempt for the tourists who wanted to
+know whether Abbotsford was to be called Tullyveolan or Tillietudlem.
+
+[401] As the story is not now, I believe, the universal school-book it
+once was, something more than mere allusion may be desirable. The ship
+in which Virginie is returning to the Isle of France gets into shallows
+during a hurricane, and is being beaten to pieces close to land. One
+stalwart sailor, stripped to swim for his life, approaches Virginie,
+imploring her to strip likewise and let him try to pilot her through the
+surf. But she (like the lady in the coach, at an early part of _Joseph
+Andrews_) won't so much as look at a naked man, clasps her arms round
+her own garments, and is very deservedly drowned. The sailor, to one's
+great relief, is not.
+
+[402] Julie herself is an intense type rather than individual.
+
+[403] I have not thought it necessary, except in regard to those of them
+who have been touched in treating of the _Cabinet des Fées_, to speak at
+any length of the minor tale-tellers of the century. They are sometimes
+not bad reading; but as a whole minor in almost all senses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS.
+
+THE FRENCH NOVEL, _C._ 1800
+
+
+[Sidenote: "Sensibility."]
+
+Frequent reference has been made, in the last two chapters, to the
+curious phenomenon called in French _sensibilité_ (with a derivative of
+contempt, _sensiblerie_), the exact English form of which supplies part
+of the title, and the meaning an even greater part of the subject, of
+one of Miss Austen's novels. The thing itself appears first
+definitely[404] in Madame de la Fayette, largely, though not unmixedly,
+in Marivaux, and to some extent in Prévost and Marmontel, while it is,
+as it were, sublimed in Rousseau, and present very strongly in
+Saint-Pierre. There are, however, some minor writers and books
+displaying it in some cases even more extensively and intensively; and
+in this final chapter of the present volume they may appropriately find
+a place, not merely because some of them are late, but because
+Sensibility is not confined to any part of the century, but, beginning
+before its birth, continued till after its end. We may thus have to
+encroach on the nineteenth a little, but more in appearance than in
+reality. In quintessence, and as a reigning fashion, Sensibility was the
+property of the eighteenth century.[405]
+
+[Sidenote: A glance at Miss Austen.]
+
+To recur for a moment to Miss Austen and _Sense and Sensibility_,
+everybody has laughed, let us hope not unkindly, over Marianne
+Dashwood's woes. But she herself was only an example, exaggerated in the
+genial fashion of her creatress, of the proper and recognised standard
+of feminine feeling in and long before her time. The "man of feeling"
+was admitted as something out of the way--on which side of the way
+opinions might differ. But the woman of feeling was emphatically the
+accepted type--a type which lasted far into the next century, though it
+was obsolete at least by the Mid-Victorian period, of which some do so
+vainly talk. The extraordinary development of emotion which was expected
+from women need not be illustrated merely from love-stories. The
+wonderful transports of Miss Ferrier's heroines at sight of their
+long-lost mothers; even those of sober Fanny Price in _Mansfield Park_,
+at the recovery of her estimable but not particularly interesting
+brother William, give the keynote much better than any more questionable
+ecstasies. "Sensibility, so charming," was the pet affectation of the
+period--an affectation carried on till it became quite natural, and was
+only cured by the half-caricature, half-reaction of Byronism.
+
+[Sidenote: The thing essentially French.]
+
+The thing, however, was not English in origin, and never was thoroughly
+English at all. The main current of the Sensibility novelists, who
+impressed their curious morals or manners on all men and women in
+civilised Europe, was French in unbroken succession, from the day when
+Madame de la Fayette first broke ground against the ponderous romances
+of Madeleine de Scudéry, to the day when Benjamin Constant forged, in
+_Adolphe_, the link between eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century
+romance, between the novel of sentiment and the novel of analysis.
+
+[Sidenote: Its history.]
+
+Of the relations to it of the greater novelists of the main century we
+have already spoken: and as for the two greatest of the extreme close,
+Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël, they mix too many secondary purposes
+with their philandering, and moreover do not form part of the plan of
+the present volume. For the true Sensibility, the odd quintessence of
+conventional feeling, played at steadily till it is half real, if not
+wholly so, which ends in the peculiarities of two such wholesome young
+Britonesses as Marianne Dashwood and Fanny Price, we must look
+elsewhere. After Madame de la Fayette, and excluding with her other
+names already treated, we come to Madame de Fontaines, Madame de Tencin
+(most heartless and therefore naturally not least sentimental of women),
+Madame Riccoboni, the group of lady-novelists of whom Mesdames de Souza
+and de Duras are the chief, and, finally, the two really remarkable
+names of Xavier de Maistre and Benjamin Constant. These are our
+"documents." Even the minor subjects of this inquiry are pleasant pieces
+of literary _bric-à-brac_; perhaps they are something a little more than
+that. For Sensibility was actually once a great power in the world.
+Transformed a little, it did wonderful things in the hands of Rousseau
+and Goethe and Chateaubriand and Byron. It lingers in odd nooks and
+corners even at the present day, when it is usually and irreverently
+called "gush," and Heaven only knows whether it may not be resuscitated
+in full force before some of us are dead.[406] For it has exactly the
+peculiarities which characterise all recurrent fashions--the appeal to
+something which is genuine connected with the suggestion of a great deal
+that is not.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de Tencin and _Le Comte de Comminge_.]
+
+In the followers of Madame de la Fayette[407] we find that a good many
+years have passed by. The jargon appropriated to the subject has grown
+still more official; and instead of using it to express genuine
+sentiments, which in another language might deserve expression well
+enough, the characters are constantly suspected by the callous modern
+reader or elaborately, though perhaps unconsciously, feigning the
+sentiments which the jargon seems to imply that they ought to have. This
+is somewhat less noticeable in the work of Madame de Tencin than
+elsewhere, because d'Alembert's mother was so very much cleverer a
+person than the generality of the novel-writers of her day that she
+could hardly fail to hide defects more cunningly. But it is evident
+enough in the _Comte de Comminge_ and in the _Malheurs de l'Amour_.
+Having as questionable morals as any lady of the time (the time of the
+Regency), Madame de Tencin of course always had a moral purpose in her
+writings, and this again gives her books a certain difference. But, like
+the former, this difference only exposes, all the more clearly, the
+defects of the style, and the drawbacks from which it was almost
+impossible that those who practised it should escape.
+
+Madame de Tencin tried to escape by several gates. Besides her moral
+purposes and her _esprit_, she indulged in a good deal of rather
+complicated and sometimes extravagant incident. _M. de Comminge_, which
+is very short, contains, not to mention other things, the rather
+startling detail of a son who, out of chivalrous affection for his
+lady-love, burns certain of his father's title-deeds which he has been
+charged to recover, and the still more startling incident of the heroine
+living for some years in disguise as a monk. The following epistle,
+however, from the heroine to the hero, will show better than anything
+else the topsy-turvy condition which sensibility had already reached.
+All that need be said in explanation of it is that the father (who is
+furious with his son, and not unreasonably so) has shut him up in a
+dungeon, in order to force him to give up his beloved Adelaide.[408]
+
+     Your father's fury has told me all I owe you: I know what
+     your generosity had concealed from me. I know, too, the
+     terrible situation in which you are, and I have no means of
+     extracting you therefrom save one. This will perhaps make
+     you more unhappy still. But I shall be as unhappy as
+     yourself, _and this gives me the courage to do what I am
+     required to do_. They would have me, by engaging myself to
+     another, give a pledge never to be yours: 'tis at this price
+     that M. de Comminge sets your liberty. It will cost me
+     perhaps my life, certainly my peace. But I am resolved. I
+     shall in a few days be married to the Marquis de Bénavidés.
+     What I know of his character forewarns me of what I shall
+     have to suffer; _but I owe you at least so much constancy as
+     to make only misery for myself in the engagement I am
+     contracting_.
+
+The extremity of calculated absurdity indicated by the italicised
+passages was reached, let it be remembered, by one of the cleverest
+women of the century: and the chief excuse for it is that the
+restrictions of the La Fayette novel, confined as it was to the upper
+classes and to a limited number of elaborately distressing situations,
+were very embarrassing.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. Riccoboni and _Le Marquis de Cressy_.]
+
+Madame Riccoboni, mentioned earlier as continuing _Marianne_, shows the
+completed product very fairly. Her _Histoire du Marquis de Cressy_ is a
+capital example of the kind. The Marquis is beloved by a charming girl
+of sixteen and by a charming widow of six-and-twenty. An envious rival
+betrays his attentions to Adelaide de Bugei, and her father makes her
+write an epistle which pretty clearly gives him the option of a
+declaration in form or a rupture. For a Sensible man, it must be
+confessed, the Marquis does not get out of the difficulty too well. She
+has slipped into her father's formal note the highly Sensible
+postscript, "Vous dire de m'oublier? Ah! Jamais. On m'a forcé de
+l'écrire; rien ne peut m'obliger à le penser ni le désirer." Apparently
+it was not leap-year, for the Marquis replied in a letter nearly as bad
+as Willoughby's celebrated epistle in _Sense and Sensibility_.
+
+     MADEMOISELLE,--Nothing can console me for having been the
+     innocent cause of fault being found with the conduct of a
+     person so worthy of respect as you. I shall approve whatever
+     you may think proper to do, without considering myself
+     entitled to ask the reason of your behaviour. How happy
+     should I be, mademoiselle, if my fortune, and the
+     arrangements which it forces me to make, did not deprive me
+     of the sweet hope of an honour of which my respect and my
+     sentiments would perhaps make me worthy, but which my
+     present circumstances permit me not to seek.
+
+Sensibility does not seem to have seen anything very unhandsome in this
+broad refusal to throw the handkerchief; but though not unhandsome, it
+could not be considered satisfactory to the heart. So M. de Cressy
+despatches this private note to Adelaide by "Machiavel the
+waiting-maid"--
+
+     Is it permitted to a wretch who has deprived himself of the
+     greatest of blessings, to dare to ask your pardon and your
+     pity? Never did love kindle a flame purer and more ardent
+     than that with which my heart burns for the amiable
+     Adelaide. Why have I not been able to give her those proofs
+     of it which she had the right to expect? Ah! mademoiselle,
+     how could I bind you to the lot of a wretch all whose wishes
+     even you perhaps would not fulfil? who, when he possessed
+     you, though master of so dear, so precious a blessing, might
+     regret others less estimable, but which have been the object
+     of his hope and desire, etc. etc.
+
+This means that M. de Cressy is ambitious, and wants a wife who will
+assist his views. The compliment is doubtful, and Adelaide receives it
+in approved fashion. She opens it "with a violent emotion," and her
+"trouble was so great in reading it through, that she had to begin it
+again many times before she understood it." The exceedingly dubious
+nature of the compliment, however, strikes her, and "tears of regret and
+indignation rise to her eyes"--tears which indeed are excusable even
+from a different point of view than that of Sensibility. She is far,
+however, from blaming that sacred emotion. "Ce n'est pas," she says; "de
+notre sensibilité, mais de l'objet qui l'a fait naître, que nous devons
+nous plaindre." This point seems arguable if it were proper to argue
+with a lady.
+
+The next letter to be cited is from Adelaide's unconscious rival, whose
+conduct is--translated into the language of Sensibility, and adjusted
+to the manners of the time and class--a ludicrous anticipation of the
+Pickwickian widow. She buys a handsome scarf, and sends it anonymously
+to the victorious Marquis just before a Court ball, with this letter--
+
+     A sentiment, tender, timid, and shy of making itself known,
+     gives me an interest in penetrating the secrets of your
+     heart. You are thought indifferent; you seem to me
+     insensible. Perhaps you are happy, and discreet in your
+     happiness. Deign to tell me the secret of your soul, and be
+     sure that I am not unworthy of your confidence. If you have
+     no love for any one, wear this scarf at the ball. Your
+     compliance may lead you to a fate which others envy. She who
+     feels inclined to prefer you is worthy of your attentions,
+     and the step she takes to let you know it is the first
+     weakness which she has to confess.
+
+The modesty of this perhaps leaves something to desire, but its
+Sensibility is irreproachable. There is no need to analyse the story of
+the _Marquis de Cressy_, which is a very little book[409] and not
+extremely edifying. But it supplies us with another _locus classicus_ on
+sentimental manners. M. de Cressy has behaved very badly to Adelaide,
+and has married the widow with the scarf. He receives a letter from
+Adelaide on the day on which she takes the black veil--
+
+     'Tis from the depths of an asylum, where I fear no more the
+     perfidy of your sex, that I bid you an eternal adieu. Birth,
+     wealth, honours, all vanish from my sight. My youth withered
+     by grief, my power of enjoyment destroyed, love past, memory
+     present, and regret still too deeply felt, all combine to
+     bury me in this retreat.
+
+And so forth, all of which, if a little high-flown, is not specially
+unnatural; but the oddity of the passage is to come. Most men would be a
+little embarrassed at receiving such a letter as this in presence of
+their wives (it is to be observed that the unhappy Adelaide is profuse
+of pardons to Madame as well as to Monsieur de Cressy), and most wives
+would not be pleased when they read it. But Madame de Cressy has the
+finest Sensibility of the amiable kind. She reads it, and then--
+
+     The Marquise, having finished this letter, cast herself into
+     the arms of her husband, and clasping him with an
+     inexpressible tenderness, "Weep, sir, weep," she cried,
+     bathing him with her own tears; "you cannot show too much
+     sensibility for a heart so noble, so constant in its love.
+     Amiable and dear Adelaide! 'Tis done, then, and we have lost
+     you for ever. Ah! why must I reproach myself with having
+     deprived you of the only possession which excited your
+     desires? Can I not enjoy this sweet boon without telling
+     myself that my happiness has destroyed yours?"
+
+[Sidenote: Her other work--_Milady Catesby_.]
+
+All Madame Riccoboni's work is, with a little good-will, more or less
+interesting. Much of it is full of italics, which never were used so
+freely in France as in England, but which seem to suit the queer,
+exaggerated, topsy-turvyfied sentiments and expressions very well. The
+_Histoire d'Ernestine_ in particular is a charming little novelette. But
+if it were possible to give an abstract of any of her work here, _Milady
+Catesby_, which does us the honour to take its scene and personages from
+England, would be the one to choose. _Milady Catesby_ is well worth
+comparing with _Evelina_, which is some twenty years its junior, and the
+sentimental parts of which are quite in the same tone with it. Lord
+Ossery is indeed even more "sensible" than Lord Orville, but then he is
+described in French. Lady Catesby herself is, however, a model of the
+style, as when she writes--
+
+     Oh! my dear Henrietta! What agitation in my senses! what
+     trouble in my soul!... I have seen him.... He has spoken to
+     me.... Himself.... He was at the ball.... Yes! he. Lord
+     Ossery.... Ah! tell me not again to see him.... Bid me not
+     hear him once more.
+
+That will do for Lady Catesby, who really had no particular occasion or
+excuse for all this excitement except Sensibility. But Sensibility was
+getting more and more exacting. The hero of a novel must always be in
+the heroics, the heroine in a continual state of palpitation. We are
+already a long way from Madame de la Fayette's stately passions, from
+Marianne's whimsical _minauderies_. All the resources of
+typography--exclamations, points, dashes--have to be called in to
+express the generally disturbed state of things. Now unfortunately this
+sort of perpetual tempest in a teacup (for it generally is in a teacup)
+requires unusual genius to make it anything but ludicrous. I myself have
+not the least desire to laugh when I read such a book as _La Nouvelle
+Héloïse_, and I venture to think that any one who does laugh must have
+something of the fool and something of the brute in his composition. But
+then Rousseau is Rousseau, and there are not many like him. At the
+Madame Riccobonis of this world, however clever they may be, it is
+difficult not to laugh, when they have to dance on such extraordinary
+tight ropes as those which Sensibility prescribed.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de Beaumont--_Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_.]
+
+The writers who were contemporary with Madame Riccoboni's later days,
+and who followed her, pushed the thing, if it were possible, even
+farther. In Madame de Genlis's tiny novelette of _Mademoiselle de
+Clermont_, the amount of tears shed, the way in which the knees of the
+characters knock together, their palenesses, blushes, tears, sighs, and
+other performances of the same kind, are surprising. In the _Lettres du
+Marquis de Roselle_ of Madame Élie de Beaumont (wife of the young
+advocate who defended the Calas family), a long scene between a brother
+and sister, in which the sister seeks to deter the brother from what she
+regards as a misalliance, ends (or at least almost ends, for the usual
+flood of tears is the actual conclusion) in this remarkable passage.
+
+     "And I," cried he suddenly with a kind of fury, "I suppose
+     that a sister who loves her brother, pities and does not
+     insult him; that the Marquis de Roselle knows better what
+     can make him happy than the Countess of St. Séver; and that
+     he is free, independent, able to dispose of himself, in
+     spite of all opposition." With these words he turned to
+     leave the room brusquely. I run to him, I stop him, he
+     resists. "My brother!" "I have no sister." He makes a
+     movement to free himself: he was about to escape me. "Oh, my
+     father!" I cried. "Oh, my mother! come to my help." At these
+     sacred names he started, stopped, and _allowed himself to be
+     conducted to a sofa_.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de Souza.]
+
+This unlucky termination might be paralleled from many other places,
+even from the agreeable writings of Madame de Souza. This writer, by the
+way, when the father of one of her heroes refuses to consent to his
+son's marriage, makes the stern parent yield to a representation that by
+not doing so he will "authorise by anticipation a want of filial
+attachment and respect" in the grandchildren who do not as yet exist.
+These excursions into the preposterous in search of something new in the
+way of noble sentiment or affecting emotion--these whippings and
+spurrings of the feelings and the fancy--characterise all the later work
+of the school.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Xavier de Maistre.]
+
+Two names of great literary value and interest close the list of the
+novelists of Sensibility in France, and show at once its Nemesis and its
+caricature. They were almost contemporaries, and by a curious
+coincidence neither was a Frenchman by birth. It would be impossible to
+imagine a greater contrast than existed personally between Xavier de
+Maistre and Henri Benjamin de Constant-Rebecque, commonly called
+Benjamin Constant. But their personalities, interesting as both are, are
+not the matter of principal concern here. The _Voyage autour de ma
+Chambre_, its sequel the _Expédition Nocturne_, and the _Lépreux de la
+Cité d'Aoste_, exhibit one branch of the river of Sensibility (if one
+may be permitted to draw up a new Carte de Tendre), losing itself in
+agreeable trifling with the surface of life, and in generous, but
+fleeting, and slightly, though not consciously, insincere indulgence of
+the emotions. In _Adolphe_ the river rushes violently down a steep
+place, and _in nigras lethargi mergitur undas_. It is to be hoped that
+most people who will read these pages know Xavier de Maistre's charming
+little books; it is probable that at least some of them do not know
+_Adolphe_. Constant is the more strictly original of the two authors,
+for Xavier de Maistre owes a heavy debt to Sterne, though he employs the
+borrowed capital so well that he makes it his own, while _Adolphe_ can
+only be said to come after _Werther_ and _René_ in time, not in the
+least to follow them in nature.
+
+The _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_ (readers may be informed or reminded)
+is a whimsical description of the author's meditations and experiences
+when confined to barracks for some military peccadillo. After a fashion
+which has found endless imitators since, the prisoner contemplates the
+various objects in his room, spins little romances to himself about them
+and about his beloved Madame de Hautcastel, moralises on the
+faithfulness of his servant Joannetti, and so forth. The _Expédition
+Nocturne_, a less popular sequel, is not very different in plan. The
+_Lépreux de la Cité d'Aoste_ is a very short story, telling how the
+narrator finds a sufferer from the most terrible of all diseases lodged
+in a garden-house, and of their dialogue. The chief merit of these
+works, as of the less mannerised and more direct _Prisonnier du Caucase_
+and _Jeune Sibérienne_, resides in their dainty style, in their singular
+narrative power (Sainte-Beuve says justly enough that the _Prisonnier du
+Caucase_ has been equalled by no other writer except Mérimée), and in
+the remarkable charm of the personality of the author, which escapes at
+every moment from the work. The pleasant picture of the Chevalier de
+B---- in the _Soirées de St. Pétersbourg_, which Joseph de Maistre is
+said to have drawn from his less formidable brother, often suggests
+itself as one follows the whimsicalities of the _Voyage_ and the
+_Expédition_. The affectation is so natural, the mannerism so simple,
+that it is some time before one realises how great in degree both are.
+
+[Sidenote: His illustrations on the lighter side of Sensibility.]
+
+Looked at from a certain point of view, Xavier de Maistre illustrates
+the effect of the Sensibility theory on a thoroughly good-natured,
+cultivated, and well-bred man of no particular force or character or
+strength of emotion. He has not the least intention of taking
+Sensibility seriously, but it is the proper thing to take it somehow or
+other. So he sets himself to work to be a man of feeling and a humorist
+at the same time. His encounter with the leper is so freshly and simply
+told, there is such an air of genuineness about it, that it seems at
+first sight not merely harsh, but unappreciative, to compare it to
+Sterne's account of his proceedings with his monks and donkeys, his
+imaginary prisoners, and his fictitious ensigns. Yet there is a real
+contact between them. Both have the chief note of Sensibility, the
+taking an emotion as a thing to be savoured and degusted
+deliberately--to be dealt with on scientific principles and strictly
+according to the rules of the game. One result of this proceeding, when
+pursued for a considerable time, is unavoidably a certain amount of
+frivolity, especially in dealing with emotions directly affecting the
+player. Sympathy such as that displayed with the leper may be strong and
+genuine, because there is no danger about it; there is the _suave mari
+magno_ preservative from the risk of a too deep emotion. But in matters
+which directly affect the interest of the individual it does not do to
+be too serious. The tear of Sensibility must not be dropped in a manner
+giving real pain to the dropper. Hence the humoristic attitude. When
+Xavier de Maistre informs us that "le grand art de l'homme de génie est
+de savoir bien élever sa bête," he means a great deal more than he
+supposes himself to mean. The great art of an easy-going person, who
+believes it to be his duty to be "sensible," is to arrange for a series
+of emotions which can be taken gently.
+
+The author of the _Voyage_ takes his without any extravagance. He takes
+good care not to burn his fingers metaphorically in this matter, though
+he tells us that in a fit of absence he did so literally. His affection
+for Madame de Hautcastel is certainly not a very passionate kind of
+affection, for all his elaborately counted and described heartbeats as
+he is dusting her portrait. Indeed, with his usual candour, he leaves us
+in no doubt about the matter. "La froide raison," he says, "reprit
+bientôt son empire." Of course it did; the intelligent, and in the other
+sense sensible, person who wishes to preserve his repose must take care
+of that. We do not even believe that he really dropped a tear of
+repentance on his left shoe when he had unreasonably rated his servant;
+it is out of keeping with his own part. He borrowed that tear, either
+ironically or by oversight, from Sterne, just as he did "Ma chère
+Jenny." He is much more in his element when he proves that a lover is to
+his mistress, when she is about to go to a ball, only a "decimal of a
+lover," a kind of amatory tailor or ninth part of man; or when, in the
+_Expédition_, he meditates on a lady's slipper in the balcony fathoms
+below his garret.
+
+[Sidenote: A sign of decadence.]
+
+All this illustrates what may be called the attempt to get rid of
+Sensibility by the humorist gate of escape. Supposing no such attempt
+consciously to exist, it is, at any rate, the sign of an approaching
+downfall of Sensibility, of a feeling, on the part of those who have to
+do with it, that it is an edged tool, and an awkward one to handle. In
+comparing Xavier de Maistre with his master Sterne, it is very
+noticeable that while the one in disposition is thoroughly insincere,
+and the other thoroughly sincere, yet the insincere man is a true
+believer in Sensibility, and the sincere one evidently a semi-heretic.
+How far Sterne consciously simulated his droppings of warm tears, and
+how far he really meant them, may be a matter of dispute. But he was
+quite sincere in believing that they were very creditable things, and
+very admirable ones. Xavier de Maistre does not seem by any means so
+well convinced of this. He is, at times, not merely evidently pretending
+and making believe, but laughing at himself for pretending and making
+believe. He still thinks Sensibility a _gratissimus error_, a very
+pretty game for persons of refinement to play at, and he plays at it
+with a great deal of industry and with a most exquisite skill. But the
+spirit of Voltaire, who himself did his _sensibilité_ (in real life, if
+not in literature) as sincerely as Sterne, has affected Xavier de
+Maistre "with a difference." The Savoyard gentleman is entirely and
+unexceptionably orthodox in religion; it may be doubted whether a severe
+inquisition in matters of Sensibility would let him off scatheless. It
+is not merely that he jests--as, for instance, that when he is imagining
+the scene at the Rape of the Sabines, he suddenly fancies that he hears
+a cry of despair from one of the visitors. "Dieux immortels! Pourquoi
+n'ai-je amené ma femme à la fête?" That is quite proper and allowable.
+It is the general tone of levity in the most sentimental moments, the
+undercurrent of mockery at his own feelings in this man of feeling,
+which is so shocking to Sensibility, and yet it was precisely this that
+was inevitable.
+
+Sensibility, to carry it out properly, required, like other elaborate
+games, a very peculiar and elaborate arrangement of conditions. The
+parties must be in earnest so far as not to have the slightest suspicion
+that they were making themselves ridiculous, and yet not in earnest
+enough to make themselves really miserable. They must have plenty of
+time to spare, and not be distracted by business, serious study,
+political excitement, or other disturbing causes. On the other hand, to
+get too much absorbed, and arrive at Werther's end, was destructive not
+only to the individual player, but to the spirit of the game. As the
+century grew older, and this danger of absorption grew stronger, that
+game became more and more difficult to play seriously enough, and yet
+not too seriously. When the players did not blow their brains out, they
+often fell into the mere libertinism from which Sensibility, properly so
+called, is separated by a clear enough line. Two such examples in real
+life as Rousseau and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, one such demonstration
+of the same moral in fiction as _Werther_, were enough to discourage the
+man of feeling. Therefore, when he still exists, he takes to motley,
+the only wear for the human race in troublesome circumstances which
+beset it with unpleasant recurrence. When you cannot exactly believe
+anything in religion, in politics, in literature, in art, and yet
+neither wish nor know how to do without it, the safe way is to make a
+not too grotesque joke of it. This is a text on which a long sermon
+might be hung were it worth while. But as it is, it is sufficient to
+point out that Xavier de Maistre is an extremely remarkable illustration
+of the fact in the particular region of sentimental fiction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Benjamin Constant--_Adolphe_.]
+
+Benjamin Constant's masterpiece, which (the sequel to it never having
+appeared, though it was in existence in manuscript less than a century
+ago) is also his only purely literary work, is a very small book, but it
+calls here for something more than a very small mention. The books which
+make an end are almost fewer in literature than those which make a
+beginning, and this is one of them. Like most such books, it made a
+beginning also, showing the way to Beyle, and through Beyle to all the
+analytic school of the nineteenth century. Space would not here suffice
+to discuss the singular character of its author, to whom Sainte-Beuve
+certainly did some injustice, as the letters to Madame Recamier show,
+but whose political and personal experiences as certainly call for a
+large allowance of charity. The theory of _Adolphe's_ best editor, M. de
+Lescure (which also was the accepted theory long before M. de Lescure's
+time), that the heroine of the novel was Madame de Staël, will not, I
+think, hold water. In every characteristic, personal and mental,
+Ellénore and Madame de Staël are at opposite poles. Ellénore was
+beautiful, Madame de Staël was very nearly hideous; Ellénore was
+careless of her social position, Corinne was as great a slave to society
+as any one who ever lived; Ellénore was somewhat uncultivated, had
+little _esprit_, was indifferent to flattery, took not much upon herself
+in any way except in exacting affection where no affection existed; the
+good Corinne was one of the cleverest women of her time, and thought
+herself one of the cleverest of all times, could not endure that any one
+in company should be of a different opinion on this point, and insisted
+on general admiration and homage.
+
+However, this is a very minor matter, and anybody is at liberty to
+regard the differences as deliberate attempts to disguise the truth.
+What is important is that Madame de Staël was almost the last genuine
+devotee of Sensibility, and that _Adolphe_ was certainly written by a
+lover of Madame de Staël, who had, from his youth up, been a Man of
+Feeling of a singularly unfeeling kind. When Constant wrote the book he
+had run through the whole gamut of Sensibility. He had been instructed
+as a youth[410] by ancient women of letters; he had married and got rid
+of his wife _à la mode Germanorum_; he had frequently taken a hint from
+_Werther_, and threatened suicide with the best possible results; he had
+given, perhaps, the most atrocious example of the atrocious want of
+taste which accompanied the decadence of Sensibility, by marrying
+Charlotte von Hardenburg out of pique, because Madame de Staël would not
+marry him, then going to live with his bride near Coppet, and finally
+deserting her, newly married as she was, for her very uncomely but
+intellectually interesting rival. In short, according to the theory of a
+certain ethical school, that the philosopher who discusses virtue should
+be thoroughly conversant with vice, Benjamin Constant was a past master
+in Sensibility. It was at a late period in his career, and when he had
+only one trial to go through (the trial of, as it seems to me, a sincere
+and hopeless affection for Madame Recamier), that he wrote _Adolphe_.
+But the book has nothing whatever to do with 1815, the date which it
+bears. It is, as has been said, the history of the Nemesis of
+Sensibility, the prose commentary by anticipation on Mr. Swinburne's
+admirable "Stage Love"--
+
+    Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh and cry,
+    They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die;
+    Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow,
+    Till he died for good in play and rose in sorrow.
+
+That is a history, in one stanza, of Sensibility, and no better account
+than _Adolphe_ exists of the rising in sorrow.
+
+The story of the book opens in full eighteenth century. A young man,
+fresh from the University of Göttingen, goes to finish his education at
+the _residenz_ of D----. Here he finds much society, courtly and other.
+His chief resort is the house of a certain Count de P----, who lives,
+unmarried, with a Polish lady named Ellénore. In the easy-going days of
+Sensibility the _ménage_ holds a certain place in society, though it is
+looked upon a little askance. But Ellénore is, on her own theory,
+thoroughly respectable, and the Count de P----, though in danger of his
+fortune, is a man of position and rank. As for Adolphe, he is the result
+of the struggle between Sensibility, an unquiet and ironic nature, and
+the teaching of a father who, though not unquiet, is more ironically
+given than himself. His main character is all that a young man's should
+be from the point of view of Sensibility. "Je ne demandais alors qu'à me
+livrer à ces impressions primitives et fougueuses," etc. But his father
+snubs the primitive and fiery impressions, and the son, feeling that
+they are a mistake, is only more determined to experience them.
+Alternately expanding himself as Sensibility demands, and making ironic
+jests as his own nature and his father's teaching suggest, he acquires
+the character of "un homme immoral, un homme peu sûr," the last of which
+expressions may be paralleled from the British repertory by "an
+ill-regulated young man," or "a young man on whom you can never depend."
+
+All this time Adolphe is not in love, and as the dominant teaching of
+Sensibility lays it down that he ought to be, he feels that he is wrong.
+"'Je veux être aimé,' me dis-je, et je regardai autour de moi. Je ne
+voyais personne qui m'inspirait de l'amour; personne qui me parut
+susceptible d'en prendre." In parallel case the ordinary man would
+resign himself as easily as if he were in face of the two conditions of
+having no appetite and no dinner ready. But this will not do for the
+pupil of Sensibility. He must make what he does not find, and so Adolphe
+pitches on the luckless Ellénore, who "me parut une conquête digne de
+moi." To do Sensibility justice, it would not, at an earlier time, have
+used language so crude as this, but it had come to it now. Here is the
+portrait of the victim, drawn by her ten years younger lover.
+
+     Ellénore's wits were not above the ordinary, but her
+     thoughts were just, and her expression, simple as it was,
+     was sometimes striking by reason of the nobility and
+     elevation of the thought. She was full of prejudices, but
+     she was always prejudiced against her own interest. There
+     was nothing she set more value on than regularity of
+     conduct, precisely because her own conduct was
+     conventionally irregular.[411] She was very religious,
+     because religion rigidly condemned her mode of life. In
+     conversation she frowned on pleasantries which would have
+     seemed quite innocent to other women, because she feared
+     that her circumstances might encourage the use of such as
+     were not innocent. She would have liked to admit to her
+     society none but men of the highest rank and most
+     irreproachable reputation, because those women with whom she
+     shuddered at the thought of being classed usually tolerate
+     mixed society, and, giving up the hope of respect, seek only
+     amusement. In short, Ellénore and her destiny were at
+     daggers drawn; every word, every action of hers was a kind
+     of protest against her social position. And as she felt that
+     facts were too strong for her, and that the situation could
+     be changed by no efforts of hers, she was exceedingly
+     miserable.... The struggle between her feelings and her
+     circumstances had affected her temper. She was often silent
+     and dreamy: sometimes, however, she spoke with impetuosity.
+     Beset as she was by a constant preoccupation, she was never
+     quite calm in the midst of the most miscellaneous
+     conversation, and for this very reason her manner had an
+     unrest and an air of surprise about it which made her more
+     piquant than she was by nature. Her strange position, in
+     short, took the place of new and original ideas in her.
+
+The difference of note from the earlier eighteenth century will strike
+everybody here. If we are still some way from Emma Bovary, it is only
+in point of language: we are poles asunder from Marianne. But the hero
+is still, in his own belief, acting under the influence of Sensibility.
+He is not in the least impassioned, he is not a mere libertine, but he
+has a "besoin d'amour." He wants a "conquête." He is still actuated by
+the odd mixture of vanity, convention, sensuality, which goes by the
+name of our subject. But his love is a "dessin de lui plaire"; he has
+taken an "engagement envers son amour propre." In other words, he is
+playing the game from the lower point of view--the mere point of view of
+winning. It does not take him very long to win. Ellénore at first
+behaves unexceptionably, refuses to receive him after his first
+declaration, and retires to the country. But she returns, and the
+exemplary Adolphe has recourse to the threat which, if his creator's
+biographers may be believed, Constant himself was very fond of employing
+in similar cases, and which the great popularity of _Werther_ made
+terrible to the compassionate and foolish feminine mind. He will kill
+himself. She hesitates, and very soon she does not hesitate any longer.
+The reader feels that Adolphe is quite worthless, that nothing but the
+fact of his having been brought up in a time when Sensibility was
+dominant saves him. But the following passage, from the point of view
+alike of nature and of expression, again pacifies the critic:[412]
+
+     I passed several hours at her feet, declaring myself the
+     happiest of men, lavishing on her assurances of eternal
+     affection, devotion, and respect. She told me what she had
+     suffered in trying to keep me at a distance, how often she
+     had hoped that I should detect her notwithstanding her
+     efforts, how at every sound that fell on her ears she had
+     hoped for my arrival; what trouble, joy, and fear she had
+     felt on seeing me again; how she had distrusted herself, and
+     how, to unite prudence and inclination, she had sought once
+     more the distractions of society and the crowds which she
+     formerly avoided. I made her repeat the smallest details,
+     and this history of a few weeks seemed to us the history of
+     a whole life. Love makes up, as it were by magic, for the
+     absence of far-reaching memory. All other affections have
+     need of the past: love, as by enchantment, makes its own
+     past and throws it round us. It gives us the feeling of
+     having lived for years with one who yesterday was all but a
+     stranger. Itself a mere point of light, it dominates and
+     illuminates all time. A little while and it was not: a
+     little while and it will be no more: but, as long as it
+     exists, its light is reflected alike on the past and on the
+     future.
+
+This calm, he goes on to say, lasted but a short time; and, indeed, no
+one who has read the book so far is likely to suppose that it did.
+Adolphe has entered into the _liaison_ to play the game, Ellénore
+(unluckily for herself) to be loved. The difference soon brings discord.
+In the earlier Sensibility days men and women were nearly on equal
+terms. It was only in the most strictly metaphorical way that the
+unhappy lover was bound to expire, and his beloved rarely took the
+method of wringing his bosom recommended by Goldsmith, when anybody else
+of proper Sensibility was there to console her. But the game had become
+unequal between the Charlottes and the Werthers, the Adolphes and the
+Ellénores. The Count de P---- naturally perceives the state of affairs
+before long, and as naturally does not like it. Adolphe, having played
+his game and won it, does not care to go on playing for love merely.
+"Ellénore était sans doute un vif plaisir dans mon existence, mais elle
+n'était pas plus un but--elle était devenue un lien." But Ellénore does
+not see this accurate distinction. After many vicissitudes and a few
+scenes ("Nous vécûmes ainsi quatre mois dans des rapports forcés,
+quelque fois doux, jamais complétement libres, y rencontrant encore du
+plaisir mais n'y trouvant plus de charme") a crisis comes. The Count
+forbids Ellénore to receive Adolphe any more: and she thereupon breaks
+the ten years old union, and leaves her children and home.
+
+Her young lover receives this riveting of his chains with consternation,
+but he does his best. He defends her in public, he fights with a man who
+speaks lightly of her, but this is not what she wants.
+
+     Of course I ought to have consoled her. I ought to have
+     pressed her to my heart and said, "Let us live for each
+     other; let us forget the misjudgments of men; let us be
+     happy in our mutual regard and our mutual love." I tried to
+     do so, but what can a resolution made out of duty do to
+     revive a sentiment that is extinct? Ellénore and I each
+     concealed something from the other. She dared not tell me
+     her troubles, arising from a sacrifice which she knew I had
+     not asked of her. I had accepted that sacrifice; I dared not
+     complain of ills which I had foreseen, and which I had not
+     had courage enough to forestall. We were therefore silent on
+     the very subject which occupied us both incessantly. We were
+     prodigal of caresses, we babbled of love, but when we spoke
+     of it we spoke for fear of speaking of something else.
+
+Here is the full Nemesis of the sentiment that, to use Constant's own
+words, is "neither passion nor duty," and has the strength of neither,
+when it finds itself in presence of a stronger than itself. There were
+none of these unpleasant meetings in Sensibility proper. There sentiment
+met sentiment, and "exchanged itself," in Chamfort's famous phrase. When
+the rate of exchange became unsatisfactory it sought some other
+customer--a facile and agreeable process, which was quite consistent in
+practice with all the sighs and flames. Adolphe is not to be quit so
+easily of his conquest. He is recalled by his father, and his
+correspondence with Ellénore is described in one of the astonishingly
+true passages which make the book so remarkable.
+
+     During my absence I wrote regularly to Ellénore. I was
+     divided between the desire of not hurting her feelings and
+     the desire of truthfully representing my own. I should have
+     liked her to guess what I felt, but to guess it without
+     being hurt by it. I felt a certain satisfaction when I had
+     substituted the words "affection," "friendship," "devotion,"
+     for the word "love." Then suddenly I saw poor Ellénore
+     sitting sad and solitary, with nothing but my letters for
+     consolation: and at the end of two cold and artificial pages
+     I added in a hurry a few phrases of ardour or of tenderness
+     suited to deceive her afresh. In this way, never saying
+     enough to satisfy her, I always said enough to mislead her,
+     a species of double-dealing the very success of which was
+     against my wishes and prolonged my misery.
+
+This situation, however, does not last. Unable to bear his absence, and
+half puzzled, half pained by his letters, Ellénore follows him, and his
+father for the first time expresses displeasure at this compromising
+step. Ellénore being threatened with police measures, Adolphe is once
+more perforce thrown on her side, and elopes with her to neutral
+territory. Then events march quickly. Her father's Polish property, long
+confiscated, is restored to him and left to her. She takes Adolphe
+(still struggling between his obligations to her and his desire to be
+free) to Warsaw, rejects an offer of semi-reconciliation from the Count
+de P----, grows fonder and more exacting the more weary of her yoke her
+lover becomes; and at last, discovering his real sentiments from a
+correspondence of his with an artful old diplomatic friend of his
+father's, falls desperately ill and dies in his arms. A prologue and
+epilogue, which hint that Adolphe, far from taking his place in the
+world (from which he had thought his _liaison_ debarred him), wandered
+about in aimless remorse, might perhaps be cut away with advantage,
+though they are defensible, not merely on the old theory of political
+justice, but on sound critical grounds.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de Duras's "postscript."]
+
+[Sidenote: _Sensibilité_ and _engouement_.]
+
+This was the end of sensibility in more senses than one. It is true
+that, five years later than _Adolphe_, appeared Madame de Duras's
+agreeable novelettes of _Ourika_ and _Édouard_, in which something of
+the old tone revives. But they were written late in their author's life,
+and avowedly as a reminiscence of a past state of sentiment and of
+society. "Le ton de cette société," says Madame de Duras herself, "était
+l'engouement." As happy a sentence, perhaps, as can be anywhere found to
+describe what has been much written about, and, perhaps it may be said
+without presumption, much miswritten about. _Engouement_ itself is a
+nearly untranslatable word.[413] It may be clumsily but not inaccurately
+defined as a state of fanciful interest in persons and things which is
+rather more serious than mere caprice, and a good deal less serious
+than genuine enthusiasm. The word expresses exactly the attitude of
+French polite society in the eighteenth century to a vast number of
+subjects, and, what is more, it helps to explain the _sensibilité_ which
+dominated that society. The two terms mutually involve each other, and
+_sensibilité_ stands to mere flirtation on the one hand, and genuine
+passion on the other, exactly as _engouement_ does to caprice and
+enthusiasm. People flirted admirably in the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries, and the art was, I fancy, recovered in the nineteenth with
+some success, but I do not think they flirted, properly speaking, in the
+eighteenth.[414] Sensibility (and its companion "sensuality") prevented
+that. Yet, on the other hand, they did not, till the society itself and
+its sentiments with it were breaking up, indulge in anything that can be
+called real passion. Sensibility prevented that also. The kind of
+love-making which was popular may be compared without much fancifulness
+to the favourite card-game of the period, quadrille. You changed
+partners pretty often, and the stakes were not very serious; but the
+rules of the game were elaborate and precise, and it did not admit of
+being treated with levity.
+
+[Sidenote: Some final words on the matter.]
+
+Only a small part, though the most original and not the least remarkable
+part, of the representation of this curious phenomenon in literature has
+been attempted in this discussion. The English and German developments
+of it are interesting and famous, and, merely as literature, contain
+perhaps better work than the French, but they are not so original, and
+they are out of our province. Marivaux[415] served directly as model to
+both English and German novelists, though the peculiarity of the
+national temperament quickly made itself felt in both cases. In England
+the great and healthy genius of Fielding applied the humour cure to
+Sensibility at a very early period; in Germany the literature of
+Sensibility rapidly became the literature of suicide--a consummation
+than which nothing could be more alien from the original conception. It
+is true that there is a good deal of dying in the works of Madame de la
+Fayette and her imitators. But it is quite transparent stage-dying, and
+the virtuous Prince of Clèves and the penitent Adelaide in the _Comte de
+Comminge_ do not disturb the mind at all. We know that, as soon as the
+curtain has dropped, they will get up again and go home to supper quite
+comfortably. It is otherwise with Werther and Adolphe. With all the
+first-named young man's extravagance, four generations have known
+perfectly well that there is something besides absurdity in him, while
+in Adolphe there is no extravagance at all. The wind of Sensibility had
+been sown, in literature and in life, for many a long year, and the
+whirlwind had begun to be reaped.[416]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Its importance here.]
+
+This, however, is the moral side of the matter, with which we have not
+much to do. As a division of literature these sentimental novels,
+artificial as they are, have a good deal of interest; and in a _History_
+such as the present they have very great importance. They are so
+entirely different in atmosphere from the work of later times, that
+reading them has all the refreshing effect of a visit to a strange
+country; and yet one feels that they themselves have opened that
+country for coming writers as well as readers. They are often
+extraordinarily ingenious, and the books to which in form they set the
+example, though the power of the writers made them something very
+different in matter--_Julie_, _La Religieuse_, _Paul et Virginie_,[417]
+_Corinne_, _René_--give their progenitors not a little importance, or at
+least not a little interest of curiosity. Besides, it was in the school
+of Sensibility that the author of _Manon Lescaut_ somehow or other
+developed that wonderful little book. I do not know that it would be
+prudent to recommend modern readers to study Sensibility for themselves
+in the original documents just surveyed. Disappointment and possibly
+maledictions would probably be the result of any such attempt, except in
+the case of Xavier de Maistre and Constant. But these others are just
+the cases in which the office of historical critic justifies itself. It
+is often said (and nobody knows the truth of it better than critics
+themselves) that a diligent perusal of all the studies and _causeries_
+that have ever been written, on any one of the really great writers,
+will not give as much knowledge of them as half an hour's reading of
+their own work. But then in that case the metal is virgin, and to be had
+on the surface and for the picking up. The case is different where tons
+of ore have to be crushed and smelted, in order to produce a few
+pennyweights of metal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Whatever fault may be found with the "Sensibility" novel, it is, as a
+rule, "written by gentlemen [and ladies] for [ladies and] gentlemen." Of
+the work of two curious writers, who may furnish the last detailed
+notices of this volume, as much cannot, unfortunately, be said.
+
+[Sidenote: Restif de la Bretonne.]
+
+It may, from different points of view, surprise different classes of
+readers to find Restif de la Bretonne (or as some would call him, Rétif)
+mentioned here at all--at any rate to find him taken seriously, and not
+entirely without a certain respect. One of these classes, consisting of
+those who know nothing about him save at second-hand, may ground their
+surprise on the notion that his work is not only matter for the _Index
+Expurgatorius_, but also vulgar and unliterary, such as a French Ned
+Ward, without even Ned's gutter-wit, might have written. And these might
+derive some support from the stock ticket-jingle _Rousseau du ruisseau_,
+which, though not without some real pertinency, is directly misleading.
+Another class, consisting of some at least, if not most, of those who
+have read him to some extent, may urge that Decency--taking her revenge
+for the axiom of the boatswain in _Mr. Midshipman Easy_--forbids Duty to
+let him in. And yet others, less under the control of any Mrs. Grundy,
+literary or moral, may ask why he is let in, and Choderlos de
+Laclos[418] and Louvet de Courray, with some more, kept out, as they
+most assuredly will be.
+
+In the first place, there is no vulgarity in Restif. If he had had a
+more regular education and society, literary or other, and could have
+kept his mind, which was to a certainty slightly unhinged, off the
+continual obsession of morbid subjects, he might have been a very
+considerable man of letters, and he is no mean one, so far as style
+goes,[419] as it is. He avails himself duly of the obscurity of a
+learned language when he has to use (which is regrettably often) words
+that do not appear in the dictionary of the Academy: and there is not
+the slightest evidence of his having taken to pornography for money, as
+Louvet and Laclos--as, one must regretfully add, Diderot, if not even
+Crébillon--certainly did. When a certain subject, or group of subjects,
+gets hold of a man--especially one of those whom a rather celebrated
+French lady called _les cérébraux_--he can think of nothing else: and
+though this is not absolutely true of Restif (for he had several minor
+crazes), it is very nearly true of him, and perhaps more true than of
+any one else who can be called a man of letters.
+
+Probably no one has read all he wrote;[420] even the late M. Assézat,
+who knew more about him than anybody else, does not, I think, pretend to
+have done so. He was himself a printer, and therefore found exceptional
+means of getting the mischief, which his by no means idle hands found to
+do, into publicity of a kind, though even their subject does not seem to
+have made his books popular.[421] His largest work, _Les
+Contemporaines_, is in forty-two volumes, and contains some three
+hundred different sections, reminding one vaguely, though the
+differences in detail are very great, of Amory's plan, at least, for the
+_Memoirs of Several Ladies_. His most remarkable by far, the
+quasi-autobiographical _Monsieur Nicolas_,[422] in fourteen. He could
+write with positive moral purpose, as in the protest against _Le Paysan
+Parvenu_, above referred to; in _La Vie de Mon Père_ (a book agreeably
+free from any variety of that sin of Ham which some biographical
+writings of sons about their fathers display); and in the unpleasantly
+titled _Pornographe_, which is also morally intended, and dull enough to
+be as moral as Mrs. Trimmer or Dr. Forsyth.
+
+Indeed, this moral intention, so often idly and offensively put forward
+by those who are themselves mere pornographers, pervades Restif
+throughout, and, while it certainly sometimes does carry dulness with
+it, undoubtedly contributes at others a kind of piquancy, because of its
+evident sincerity, and the quaint contrast with the subjects the author
+is handling. These subjects make explicit dealing with himself
+difficult, if not impossible: but his _differentia_ as regards them may,
+with the aid of a little dexterity, be put without offence. In the first
+place, as regards the comparison with Rousseau, Restif is almost a
+gentleman: and he could not possibly have been guilty of Rousseau's
+blackguard tale-telling in the cases of Madame de Warens (or, as I
+believe, we are now told to spell it "Vuarrens") or Madame de Larnage.
+The way in which he speaks of his one idealised mistress, Madame
+"Parangon," is almost romantic. He is, indeed, savage in respect to his
+wife--whom he seems to have married in a sort of _clairvoyant_ mixture
+of knowledge of her evil nature and fascination by her personal charms
+and allurements, though he had had no difficulty in enjoying these
+without marriage. But into none other of his scores and hundreds of
+actual loves in some cases and at least passing intimacies in
+others,[423] does he ever appear to have taken either the Restoration
+and Regency tone on the one hand, or that of "sickly sentimentality" on
+the other. Against commerce for money he lifts up his testimony
+unceasingly; he has, as his one editor has put it, a _manie de
+paternité_, and denounces any vice disconnected with it. With the
+privileges of Solomon or Haroun al Raschid, Restif would have been
+perfectly contented: and he never would have availed himself of that of
+Schahriar before the two divine sisters put a stop to it.
+
+All this, however, strictly speaking, is outside our present subject,
+and is merely intended as a sort of excuse for the introduction of a
+writer who has been unfairly ostracised, not as a passport for Restif to
+the young person. But his actual qualities as tale-teller are very
+remarkable. The second title of _Monsieur Nicolas_--_Le Coeur Humain
+Dévoilé_--ambitious as it is, is not fatuous. It is a human heart in a
+singularly morbid condition which is unveiled: but as, if I remember
+rightly, either Goethe or Schiller, or both, saw and said near the time,
+there is no charlatanery about the unveiling, and no bungling about the
+autopsy. Restif has been compared, and not unfairly, to Defoe, as well
+as to Rousseau; in a certain way he may be likened to Pepys; and all
+four share an intense and unaffected reality, combined, however, in the
+Frenchman's case with a sort of exaggeration of a dreamy kind, and with
+other dream-character, which reminds one of Borrow, and even of De
+Quincey. His absolute shamelessness is less unconnected with this
+dream-quality than may at first appear, and, as in all such cases, is
+made much less offensive by it. Could he ever have taken holiday from
+his day-long and night-long devotion to
+
+        Cotytto or Venus
+    Astarte or Ashtoreth,
+
+he might have been a most remarkable novelist, and as it is his _mere_
+narrative faculty is such as by no means every novelist possesses.
+Moreover, he counts, once more, in the advance towards real things in
+fiction. "A pretty kind of reality!" cries Mrs. Grundy. But the real is
+not always the pretty, and the pretty is not always the real.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Pigault-Lebrun--the difference of his positive and relative
+importance.]
+
+There is also a good deal that is curious, as well as many things that
+are disgusting, for the student of the novel in Pigault-Lebrun.[424] In
+the first place, one is constantly reminded of that redeeming point
+which the benevolent Joe Gargery found in Mr. Pumblechook--
+
+    And, wotsume'er the failings on his part,
+    He were a corn-and-seedsman in his hart.
+
+If Pigault cannot exactly be said to have been a good novelist, he
+"were" a novelist "in his hart." Beside his _polissonneries_, his
+frequent dulness, his singular gropings and failures at anything like
+good novelist _faire_, one constantly finds what might be pedantically
+and barbarously called a "novelistic velleity." His much too ambitiously
+titled _Mélanges Littéraires_ turn to stories, though stories touched
+with the _polisson_ brush. His _Nouvelles_ testify at least to his
+ambition and his industry in the craft of fiction. "Je ne suis pas
+Voltaire," he says somewhere, in reference, I think, to his plays, not
+his tales. He most certainly is not; neither is he Marmontel, as far as
+the tale is concerned. But as for the longer novel, in a blind and
+blundering way, constantly trapped and hindered by his want of genius
+and his want of taste, by his literary ill-breeding and other faults, he
+seems to have more of a "glimmering" of the real business than they
+have, or than any other Frenchman had before him.
+
+[Sidenote: His general characteristics.]
+
+Pigault-Lebrun[425] spent nearly half of his long life in the nineteenth
+century, and did not die till Scott was dead in England, and the great
+series of novel-romances had begun, with Hugo and others, in France. But
+he was a man of nearly fifty in 1800, and the character of his work,
+except in one all-important point, or group of points, is thoroughly of
+the eighteenth, while even the excepted characteristics are of a more
+really transitional kind than anything in Chateaubriand and Madame de
+Staël, whom we have postponed, as well as in Constant and Xavier de
+Maistre, whom we have admitted. He has no high reputation in literature,
+and, except from our own special point of view, he does not deserve even
+a demi-reputation. Although he is not deliberately pornographic, he is
+exceedingly coarse, with a great deal of the nastiness which is not even
+naughty, but nastiness pure and simple. There is, in fact, and in more
+ways than one, something in him of an extremely inferior Smollett.
+Comparing him with his elder contemporary, Restif de la Bretonne, he is
+vulgar, which Restif never is. Passing to more purely literary matters,
+it would be difficult, from the side of literature as an art--I do not
+say as a craft--to say anything for him whatever. His style[426] is, I
+should suppose (for I think no foreigner has any business to do more
+than "suppose" in that matter), simply wretched; he has sentences as
+long as Milton's or Clarendon's or Mr. Ruskin's, not merely without the
+grandeur of the first, the beauty of the last, and the weighty sense of
+the second, but lacking any flash of graceful, pithy, or witty phrase;
+character of the model-theatre and cut-out paper kind; a mere
+accumulation of incidents instead of a plot; hardly an attempt at
+dialogue, and, where description is attempted at all, utter
+ineffectiveness or sheer rhyparography.[427]
+
+It is a fair _riposte_ to the last paragraph to ask, "Then why do you
+drag him in here at all?" But the counter-parry is easy. The excepted
+points above supply it. With all his faults--admitting, too, that every
+generation since his time has supplied some, and most much better,
+examples of his kind--the fact remains that he was the first
+considerable representative, in his own country, of that variety of
+professional novelist who can spin yarns, of the sort that his audience
+or public[428] wants, with unwearied industry, in great volume, and of a
+quality which, such as it is, does not vary very much. He is, in short,
+the first notable French novelist-tradesman--the first who gives us
+notice that novel-production is established as a business. There is even
+a little more than this to be said for him. He has really made
+considerable progress, if we compare him with his predecessors and
+contemporaries, in the direction of the novel of ordinary life, as that
+life was in his own day. There are extravagances of course, but they are
+scarcely flagrant. His atmosphere is what the cooks, housemaids,
+footmen, what the grocers and small- or middle-class persons who, I
+suppose, chiefly read him, were, or would have liked to be, accustomed
+to. His scene is not a paradise in either the common or the Greek sense;
+it is a sort of cabbage-garden, with a cabbage-garden's lack of beauty,
+of exquisiteness in any form, with its presence of untidiness, and
+sometimes of evil odour, but with its own usefulness, and with a
+cultivator of the most sedulous. Pigault-Lebrun, for France, may be said
+to be the first author-in-chief of the circulating library. It may not
+be a position of exceeding honour; but it is certainly one which gives
+him a place in the story of the novel, and which justifies not merely
+these general remarks on him, but some analysis (not too abundant) of
+his particular works. As for translating him, a Frenchman might as well
+spend his time in translating the English newspaper _feuilletons_ of
+"family" papers in the earlier and middle nineteenth century. Indeed
+that _Minnigrey_, which I remember reading as a boy, and which long
+afterwards my friend, the late Mr. Henley, used to extol as one of the
+masterpieces of literature, is worth all Pigault put together and a
+great deal more.
+
+[Sidenote: _L'Enfant du Carnaval and Les Barons de Felsheim._]
+
+The worst of it is, that to be amused by him--to be, except as a
+student, even interested in a large part of his work--you must be almost
+as ill-bred in literature as he himself is. He is like a person who has
+had before him no models for imitation or avoidance in behaviour: and
+this is where his successor, Paul de Kock, by the mere fact of being his
+successor, had a great advantage over him. But to the student he _is_
+interesting, and the interest has nothing factitious in it, and nothing
+to be ashamed of. There is something almost pathetic in his struggles to
+master his art: and his frequent remonstrances with critics and readers
+appear to show a genuine consciousness of his state, which is not always
+the case with such things.
+
+The book which stands first in his Works, _L'Enfant du Carnaval_, starts
+with an ultra-Smollettian[429] passage of coarseness, and relapses now
+and then. The body of it--occupied with the history of a base-born
+child, who tumbles into the good graces of a Milord and his little
+daughter, is named by them "Happy," and becomes first the girl's lover
+and then her husband--is a heap of extravagances, which, nevertheless,
+bring the picaresque pattern, from which they are in part evidently
+traced, to a point, not of course anywhere approaching in genius _Don
+Quixote_ or _Gil Blas_, but somehow or other a good deal nearer general
+modern life. _Les Barons de Felsheim_, which succeeds it, seems to have
+taken its origin from a suggestion of the opening of _Candide_, and
+continues with a still wilder series of adventures, satirising German
+ways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Very
+commonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, with
+frequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffably
+dreary persons who knock each others' hats off on the music-hall stage.
+There is even something dreamlike about him, though of a very low order
+of dream; he has at any rate the dream-habit of constantly attempting
+something and finding that he cannot bring it off.
+
+At the close of one of his most extravagant, most indecent, and
+stupidest novels, _La Folie Espagnole_--a supposed tale of chivalry,
+which of course shows utter ignorance of time, place, and circumstance,
+and is, in fact, only a sort of travestied _Gil Blas_, with a rank
+infusion of further vulgarised Voltairianism[430]--the author has a
+rather curious note to the reader, whom he imagines (with considerable
+probability) to be throwing the book away with a suggested cry of
+"Quelles misères! quel fatras!" He had, he says, previously offered
+_Angélique et Jeanneton_, a little work of a very different kind, and
+the public would neither buy nor read it. His publisher complained, and
+he must try to please. As for _La Folie_, everybody, including his cook,
+can understand _this_. One remembers similar expostulations from more
+respectable authors; but it is quite certain that Pigault-Lebrun--a
+Lebrun so different from his contemporary "Pindare" of that
+name--thoroughly meant what he said. He was drawing a bow, always at a
+venture, with no higher aim than to hit his public, and he did hit it
+oftener than he missed. So much the worse, perhaps, both for him and for
+his public; but the fact is a fact, and it is in the observation and
+correlation of facts that history consists.
+
+[Sidenote: _Angélique et Jeanneton._]
+
+_Angélique et Jeanneton_ itself, as might be expected from the above
+reference, is, among its author's works, something like _Le Rêve_ among
+Zola's; it is his endeavour to be strictly proper. But, as it is also
+one of his most Sternian exercises, the propriety is chequered. It
+begins in sufficiently startling fashion; a single gentleman of easy
+fortune and amiable disposition, putting his latchkey in the door of his
+chambers one night, is touched and accosted by an interesting young
+person with an "argentine" voice. This may look _louche_; but the
+silvery accents appeal only for relief of needs, which, as it shortly
+appears, are those most properly to be supplied by a maternity hospital.
+It is to be understood that the suppliant is an entire stranger to the
+hero. He behaves in the most amiable and, indeed, noble fashion, instals
+her in his rooms, turns himself and his servant out to the nearest
+hotel, fetches the proper ministress, and, not content with this Good
+Samaritanism, effects a legitimate union between Jeanneton and her
+lover, half gives and half procures them a comfortable maintenance,
+resists temptation of repayment (_not_ in coin) on more than one
+occasion, and sets out, on foot, to Caudebec, to see about a heritage
+which has come to Jeanneton's husband. On the way he falls in with
+Angélique (a lady this time), falls also in love with her, and marries
+her. The later part of the story, as is rather the way with Pigault,
+becomes more "accidented." There are violent scenes, jealousies, not
+surprising, between the two heroines, etc. But the motto-title of
+Marmontel's _Heureusement_ governs all, and the end is peace, though not
+without some spots in its sun. That the public of 1799 did not like the
+book and did like _La Folie Espagnole_ is not surprising; but the
+bearing of this double attempt on the growth of novel-writing as a
+regular craft is important.
+
+[Sidenote: _Mon Oncle Thomas._]
+
+Perhaps on the whole _Mon Oncle Thomas_, which seems to have been one of
+the most popular, is also one of the most representative, if not the
+best, of Pigault-Lebrun's novels. Its opening, and not its opening only,
+is indeed full of that mere nastiness which we, with Smollett and others
+to our _dis_credit, cannot disclaim for our own parallel period, and
+which was much worse among the French, who have a choice selection of
+epithets for it. But the fortunes of the youthful Thomas--child of a
+prostitute of the lowest class, though a very good mother, who
+afterwards marries a miserly and ruffianly corporal of police--are told
+with a good deal of spirit--one even thinks of _Colonel Jack_--and the
+author shows his curious vulgar common sense, and his knowledge of
+human nature of a certain kind, pretty frequently, at least in the
+earlier part of the book.
+
+[Sidenote: _Jérôme._]
+
+_Jérôme_ is another of Pigault's favourite studies of boys--distinctly
+blackguard boys as a rule--from their mischievous, or, as the early
+English eighteenth century would have put it, "unlucky" childhood, to
+their most undeserved reward with a good and pretty wife (whom one
+sincerely pities), and more or less of a fortune. There is, however,
+more vigour in _Jérôme_ than in most, and, if one has the knack of
+"combing out" the silly and stale Voltairianism, and paying little
+attention to the far from exciting sculduddery, the book may be read. It
+contains, in particular, one of the most finished of its author's
+sketches, of a type which he really did something to introduce into his
+country's literature--that of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic _routier_
+or professional soldier--brave as you like, and--at least at some times
+when neither drunk nor under the influence of the garden god--not
+ungenerous; with a certain simplicity too: but as braggart as he is
+brave; a mere brute beast as regards the other sex; utterly ignorant,
+save of military matters, and in fact a kind of caricature of the older
+type, which the innocent Rymer was so wrath with Shakespeare for
+neglecting in Iago.
+
+[Sidenote: The redeeming points of these.]
+
+It may seem that too much space is being given to a reprobate and often
+dull author; but something has been said already to rebut the complaint,
+and something more may be added now and again. French literature, from
+the death of Chénier to the appearance of Lamartine, has generally been
+held to contain hardly more than two names--those of Chateaubriand and
+Madame de Staël--which can even "seem to be" those of "pillars"; and it
+may appear fantastic and almost insulting to mention one, who in long
+stretches of his work might almost be called a mere muckheap-raker, in
+company with them. Yet, in respect to the progress of his own
+department, it may be doubted whether he is not even more than their
+equal. _René_ and _Corinne_ contain great suggestions, but they are
+suggestions rather for literature generally than for the novel proper.
+Pigault used the improperest materials; he lacked not merely taste, but
+that humour which sometimes excuses taste's absence; power of creating
+real character, decency almost always, sense very often.[431] But all
+the same, he made the novel _march_, as it had not marched, save in
+isolated instances of genius, before.
+
+[Sidenote: Others--_Adélaïde de Méran_ and _Tableaux de Société_.]
+
+[Sidenote: _L'Officieux._]
+
+Yet Pigault could hardly have deserved even the very modified praise
+which has been given to him, if he had been constant to the muckheap. He
+could never quite help approaching it now and then; but as time went on
+and the Empire substituted a sort of modified decency for the Feasts of
+Republican Reason and ribaldry, he tried things less uncomely. _Adélaïde
+de Méran_ (his longest single book), _Tableaux de Société_,
+_L'Officieux_, and others, are of this class; and without presenting a
+single masterpiece in their own kind, they all, more or less, give
+evidence of that advance in the kind generally with which their author
+has been credited. _Adélaïde_ is very strongly reminiscent of
+Richardson, and more than reminiscent of "Sensibility"; it is written in
+letters--though all by and to the same persons, except a few
+extracts--and there is no individuality of character. Pigault, it has
+been said, never has any, though he has some of type. But by exercising
+the most violent constraint upon himself, he indulges only in one rape
+(though there have been narrow escapes before), in not more than two or
+three questionable incidents, and in practically no "improper"
+details--conduct almost deserving the description of magnanimity and
+self-denial. Moreover, the thing really is a modern novel, though a bad
+and rickety one; the indefinable _naturaleza_ is present in it after a
+strange fashion. There is less perhaps in the very inappropriately named
+_Tableaux de Société_--the autobiography of a certain Fanchette de
+Francheville, who, somewhat originally for a French heroine, starts by
+being in the most frantic state of mutual passion with her husband,
+though this is soon to be succeeded by an infatuation (for some time
+virtuously resisted) on her side for a handsome young naval officer, and
+by several others (not at all virtuously resisted) for divers ladies on
+the husband's. With his usual unskilfulness in managing character,
+Pigault makes very little of the opportunities given by his heroine's
+almost unconscious transference of her affections to Sainte-Luce; while
+he turns the uxorious husband, not out of jealousy merely, into a
+faithless one, and something like a general ruffian, after a very clumsy
+and "unconvincing" fashion. As for his throwing in, at the end, another
+fatal passion on part of their daughter for her mother's lover, it is,
+though managed with what is for the author, perfect cleanliness,
+entirely robbed of its always doubtful effect by the actual marriage of
+Fanchette and her sailor, and that immediately after the poor girl's
+death. If he had had the pluck to make this break off the whole thing,
+the book might have been a striking novel, as it is actually an attempt
+at one; but Pigault, like his friends of the gallery, was almost
+inviolably constant to happy endings.[432] _L'Officieux_, if he had only
+had a little humour, might have been as good comically as the Tableaux
+might have been tragically; for it is the history, sometimes not
+ill-sketched as far as action goes, of a _parvenu_ rich, but brave and
+extremely well-intentioned marquis, who is perpetually getting into
+fearful scrapes from his incorrigible habit of meddling with other
+people's affairs to do them good. The situations--as where the marquis,
+having, through an extravagance of officiousness, got himself put under
+arrest by his commanding officer, and at the same time insulted by a
+comrade, insists on fighting the necessary duel in his own drawing-room,
+and thereby reconciling duty and honour, to the great terror of a lady
+with whom he has been having a tender interview in the adjoining
+apartment--are sometimes good farce, and almost good comedy; but
+Pigault, like Shadwell, has neither the pen nor the wits to make the
+most of them.
+
+_La Famille Luceval_--something of an expanded and considerably
+Pigaultified story _à la_ Marmontel--is duller than any of these, and
+the opening is marred by an exaggerated study of a classical mania on
+the part of the hero; but still the novel quality is not quite absent
+from it.
+
+[Sidenote: Further examples.]
+
+Of the rest, _M. Botte_, which seems to have been a favourite, is a
+rather conventional extravaganza with a rich, testy, but occasionally
+generous uncle; a nephew who falls in love with the charming but
+penniless daughter of an _émigré_; a noble rustic, who manages to keep
+some of his exiled landlord's property together, etc. _M. de Roberval_,
+though in its original issue not so long as _Adélaïde de Méran_, becomes
+longer by a _suite_ of another full volume, and is a rather tedious
+chronicle of ups and downs. There may be silence about the remainder.
+
+[Sidenote: Last words on him.]
+
+The stock and, as it may be called, "semi-official" ticket for
+Pigault-Lebrun in such French literary history as takes notice of him,
+appears to be _verve_: and the recognised dictionary-sense of _verve_ is
+"heat of imagination, which animates the artist in his composition." In
+the higher sense in which the word imagination is used with us, it could
+never be applied here; but he certainly has a good deal of "go," which
+is perhaps not wholly improper as a colloquial Anglicising of the label.
+These semi-official descriptions, which have always pleased the Latin
+races, are of more authority in France than in England, though as long
+as we go on calling Chaucer "the father of English poetry" and Wyclif
+"the father of English prose" we need not boast ourselves too much. But
+Pigault has this "go"--never perhaps for a whole book, but sometimes for
+passages of considerable length, which possess "carrying" power. It
+undoubtedly gave him his original popularity, and we need not despise it
+now, inasmuch as it makes less tedious the task of ascertaining and
+justifying his true place in the further "domestication"--if only in
+domesticities too often mean and grimy--of the French novel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The French novel in 1800.]
+
+There are more reasons than the convenience of furnishing a separately
+published first volume with an interim conclusion, for making, at the
+close of this, a few remarks on the general state of the French novel at
+the end of the eighteenth century. No thoroughly similar point is
+reached in the literary history of France, or of any country known to
+me, in regard to a particular department of literature. In England--the
+only place, which can, in this same department, be even considered in
+comparison, although at this very time two novelists, vastly superior to
+any of whom France has to boast, were just writing, or just about to
+write, and were a little later to revolutionise the novel itself--the
+general state and history of the kind had, for nearly two generations,
+reached a stage far beyond anything that France could claim. She had
+made earlier "running"; on the whole period of some seven hundred years
+she had always, till very recently, been in front. But in the novel, as
+distinguished from the romance, she had absolutely nothing to show like
+our great quartette of the mid-eighteenth century, and hardly anything
+to match the later developments of Miss Burney and others in domestic,
+of Mrs. Radcliffe and others still in revived romantic fiction. Very
+great Frenchmen or French writers had written novels; but, with the
+exceptions of Lesage in _Gil Blas_, Prévost in that everlastingly
+wonderful "single-speech" of his, and Rousseau in _La Nouvelle Héloïse_,
+none had written a great novel. No single writer of any greatness had
+been a novelist pure and simple. No species[433] of fiction, except the
+short tale, in which, through varying forms, France held an age-long
+mastery, had been thoroughly developed in her literature.
+
+The main point, where England went right and France went wrong--to be
+only in the most equivocal way corrected by such a writer as
+Pigault-Lebrun--was the recognition of the connection--the intimate and
+all but necessary connection--of the completed novel with ordinary life.
+Look over the long history of fiction which we have surveyed in the last
+three or four or five chapters. There is much and sometimes great
+literary talent; sometimes, again, even genius; there are episodes of
+reality; there are most artful adjustments of type and convention and
+the like, of fashion in morals (or immorals) and sentiments. But a real
+objective novel of ordinary life, such as _Tom Jones_, or even _Humphry
+Clinker_, nay, such inferior approaches to it as exist elsewhere in
+English, you will not find. Of the Scudéry romances we need not speak
+again; for all their key-references to persons, and their abstention
+from the supernatural, etc., they are, as wholes, hardly more real than
+_Amadis_ and its family themselves. Scarron has some and Furetière more
+objectivity that may be argued for, but the Spanish picaresque has
+become a convention, and they, especially Scarron, are aiming more at
+the pattern than at the life-model. Madame de la Fayette has much, and
+some of her followers a little, real passion; but her manners,
+descriptions, etc., are all conventional, though of another kind. The
+fairy tales are of course not "real." Marivaux is aiming directly at
+Sensibility, preciousness, "psychology," if you like, but not at holding
+up the glass to any ordinary nature as such.[434] And though Crébillon
+might plead that his convention was actually the convention of hundreds
+and almost thousands of accomplished ladies and gentlemen, no one can
+deny that it was almost as much a convention as the historical or
+legendary acting of the _Comédie Humaine_ by living persons a hundred
+years later at Venice.
+
+No writer perhaps illustrates what is being said better than Prévost. No
+one of his books, voluminous as they are, has the very slightest
+reality, except _Manon Lescaut_; and that, like _La Princesse de
+Clèves_, though with much more intensity and fortunately with no alloy
+of convention whatever, is simply a study of passion, not of life at
+large at all. With the greater men the case alters to some extent in
+proportion to their greatness, but, again with one exception, not to
+such an extent as to affect the general rule. Voltaire avowedly never
+attempts ordinary representation of ordinary life--save as the merest
+by-work, it is all "purpose," satire, fancy. Rousseau may not, in one
+sense, go beyond that life in _Julie_, but in touching it he is almost
+as limited and exclusive as Prévost in his masterpiece. Diderot has to
+get hold of the abnormal, if not the unreal, before he can give you
+something like a true novel. Marmontel is half-fanciful, and though he
+does touch reality, subordinates it constantly to half-allegorical and
+wholly moral purpose. All the minor "Sensibility" folk follow their
+leaders, and so do all the minor _conteurs_.
+
+The people (believed to be a numerous folk) who are uncomfortable with a
+fact unless some explanation of it is given, may be humoured here. The
+failure of a very literary nation--applying the most disciplined
+literary language in Europe to a department, in the earlier stages of
+which they had led Europe itself--to get out of the trammels which we
+had easily discarded, is almost demonstrably connected with the very
+nature of their own literary character. Until the most recent years, if
+not up to the very present day, few Frenchmen have ever been happy
+without a type, a "kind," a set of type-and kind-rules, a classification
+and specification, as it were, which has to be filled up and worked
+over. Of all this the novel had nothing in ancient times, while in
+modern it had only been wrestling and struggling towards something of
+the sort, and had only in one country discovered, and not quite
+consciously there, that the beauty of the novel lies in having no type,
+no kind, no rules, no limitations, no general precept or motto for the
+craftsman except "Here is the whole of human life before you. Copy it,
+or, better, recreate it--with variation and decoration _ad libitum_--as
+faithfully, but as freely, as you can." Of this great fact even
+Fielding, the creator of the modern novel, was perhaps not wholly aware
+as a matter of theory, though he made no error about it in practice.
+Indeed the "comic prose epic" notion _might_ reduce to rules like those
+of the verse. Both Scott and Miss Austen abstained likewise from
+formalising it. But every really great novel has illustrated it; and
+attempts, such as have been recently made, to contest it and draw up a
+novelists' code, have certainly not yet justified themselves according
+to the Covenant of Works, and have at least not disposed some of us to
+welcome them as a Covenant of Faith. It is because Pigault-Lebrun,
+though a low kind of creature from every point of view, except that of
+mere craftsmanship, did, like his betters, recognise the fact in
+practice, that he has been allowed here a place of greater consideration
+than perhaps has ever fallen to his lot before in literary history.
+
+Still, even putting out of sight the new developments which had shown
+the irrepressible vitality of the French _conte_, the seven hundred
+years had not been wasted. The product of the first half of them
+remained, indeed, at this time sealed up in the "gazophile" of the older
+age, or was popularised only by well-meaning misinterpreters like the
+Comte de Tressan;[435] but the treasure-house was very soon to be broken
+open and utilised. It is open to any one to contend--it is, indeed,
+pretty much the opinion of the present writer--that it was this very
+neglect which had made the progress of the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries themselves so slow and so imperfect in its total results. For
+those who like to look for literary causes outside literature, there may
+be other explanations. But any intelligent reader can do something for
+himself if he has the facts before him. It is these facts that it has
+been and will be our business to give and to summarise here.
+
+They have been given; let us attempt to summarise them in the briefest
+possible way. France possibly did not invent Romance; no man or men
+could do that; it was a sort of deferred heritage which Humankind, like
+the Heir of Lynne, discovered when it was ready to hang itself (speaking
+in terms of literature) during the Dark Ages. But she certainly grew the
+seed for all other countries, and dispersed the growth to the ends of
+the earth. Very much the same was the case with the short tale in the
+"Middle" period. From the fifteenth century to the eighteenth (both
+included) she entered upon a curious kind of wilderness, studded with
+oases of a more curious character still. In one of them Rabelais was
+born, and found Quintessence, and of that finding--more fortunate than
+the result of True Thomas finding the Elf Queen--was born Pantagruelism.
+In another came Lesage, and though his work was scarcely original, it
+was consummate. None of these happy sojourns produced a _Don Quixote_ or
+a _Tom Jones_, but divers smaller things resulted. And again and again,
+as had happened in the Middle Ages themselves, but on a smaller scale,
+what France did found development and improvement in other lands; while
+her own miniature masterpieces, from the best of the _Cent Nouvelles
+Nouvelles_ and the _Heptameron_, through all others that we noticed down
+to _Adolphe_, showed the enormous power which was working half blindly.
+How the strength got eyes, and the eyes found the right objects to fix
+upon, must be left, if fortune favour, for the next volume to tell.[436]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[404] We have seen above how things were "shaping for" it, in the
+Pastoral and Heroic romances. But the shape was not definitely taken in
+them.
+
+[405] In the following pages, and here only in this volume, the author
+has utilised, though with very considerable alterations, some previously
+published work, _A Study of Sensibility_, which appeared originally in
+the _Fortnightly Review_ for September 1882, and was republished in a
+volume (_Essays on French Novelists_, London, 1891) which has been for
+some years out of print. Much of the original essay, dealing with
+Marivaux and others already treated here, has been removed, and the
+whole has been cut down, revised, and adjusted to its new contexts. But
+it seemed unnecessary to waste time in an endeavour to say the same
+thing differently about matters which, though as a whole indispensable,
+are, with perhaps one exception, individually not of the first
+importance.
+
+[406] These words were originally written more than thirty years ago. I
+am not sure that there was not something prophetic in them.
+
+[407] Madame de Fontaines in _La Comtesse de Savoie_ and _Amenophis_
+"follows her leader" in more senses than one--including a sort of
+pseudo-historical setting or insetting which became almost a habit. But
+she is hardly important.
+
+[408] Readers of Thackeray may remember in _The Paris Sketch Book_ ("On
+the French School of Painting," p. 52, Oxford ed.) some remarks on
+Jacquand's picture, "The Death of Adelaide de Comminge," which he
+thought "neither more nor less than beautiful." But from his "it
+appears," in reference to the circumstances, it would seem that he did
+not know the book, save perhaps from a catalogue-extract or summary.
+
+[409] The extreme shortness of all these books may be just worth
+noticing. Reaction from the enormous romances of the preceding century
+may have had something to do with it; and the popularity of the "tale"
+something more. But the _causa verissima_ was probably the impossibility
+of keeping up sentiment at high pressure for any length of time,
+incident, or talk.
+
+[410] _Vide_ on the process Crébillon's _Les Égarements du Coeur et de
+l'Esprit_, as above, pp. 371, 372.
+
+[411] The parallel with "George Eliot" will strike most people.
+
+[412] But for uniformity's sake I should not have translated this, for
+fear of doing it injustice. "Not presume to dictate," in Mr. Jingle's
+constantly useful phrase, but it seems to me one of the finest in French
+prose.
+
+[413] "Craze" has been suggested; but is, I think, hardly an exact
+synonym.
+
+[414] This may seem to contradict, or at any rate to be inconsistent
+with, a passage above (p. 367) on the "flirtations" of Crébillon's
+personages. It is, however, only a more strictly accurate use of the
+word.
+
+[415] Two remarkable and short passages of his, not quoted in the
+special notice of him, may be given--one in English, because of its
+remarkable anticipation of the state of mind of Catherine Morland in
+_Northanger Abbey_; the other in French, as a curious "conclusion of the
+whole matter." They are both from _Marianne_.
+
+"I had resolved not to sleep another night in the house. I cannot indeed
+tell you what was the exact object of my fear, or why it was so lively.
+All that I know is that I constantly beheld before me the countenance of
+my landlord, to which I had hitherto paid no particular attention, and
+then I began to find terrible things in this countenance His wife's
+face, too, seemed to be gloomy and dark; the servants looked like
+scoundrels; all their faces made me in a state of unbearable alarm. I
+saw before me swords, daggers, murders, thefts, insults. My blood grew
+cold at the perils I imagined."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Enfin ces agitations, tant agréables que pénibles, s'affaiblirent et se
+passèrent. L'âme s'accoutume à tout; sa sensibilité s'use: et je me
+familiarisais avec mes espérances et mes inquiétudes."
+
+[416] Since, long ago, I formed the opinion of _Adolphe_ embodied above,
+I have, I think, seen French criticisms which took it rather
+differently--as a personal confession of the "confusions of a wasted
+youth," misled by passion. The reader must judge which is the juster
+view.
+
+[417] By a little allowance for influence, if not for intrinsic value.
+
+[418] On representations from persons of distinction I have given Laclos
+a place in an outhouse (see "Add. and Corr."). But I have made this
+place as much of a penitentiary as I could.
+
+[419] I must apologise by anticipation to the _official_ French critic.
+To him, I know, even if he is no mere minor Malherbe, Restif's style is
+very faulty; but I should not presume to take his point of view, either
+for praise or blame.
+
+[420] There is a separate bibliography by Cubières-Palmézeaux (1875).
+The useful _Dictionnaire des Littératures_ of Vapereau contains a list
+of between thirty and forty separate works of Restif's, divided into
+nearer two than one hundred volumes. He followed Prévost in _Nouveaux
+Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité_ as he had followed Marivaux in the
+_Paysan Perverti_. He completed this work of his own with _La Paysanne
+Pervertie_; he wrote, besides the _Pornographe_, numerous books of
+social, general, and would-be philosophical reform--_Le Mimographe_,
+dealing with the stage; _Les Gynographes_, with a general plan for
+rearranging the status of women; _L'Andrographe_, a "whole duty of man"
+of a very novel kind; _Le Thesmographe_, etc.,--besides, close upon the
+end and after the autobiography above described, a _Philosophie de M.
+Nicolas_. His more or less directly narrative pieces, _Le Pied de
+Fanchette_, _Lucile_, _Adèle_, _La Femme Infidèle_, _Ingénue Saxancour_,
+are nearly always more or less tinged with biography of himself and of
+persons closely connected with him, as _La Vie de Mon Père_, his most
+respectable book, is wholly. It may be added, perhaps, that the notice
+in Vapereau, while not bearing very hard on Restif on the whole, repeats
+the words _cynisme_ and _cynique_ in regard to him. Unless the term is
+in part limited and in part extended, so as to mean nothing but
+"exposure of things generally kept secret without apparent shame," it is
+entirely misplaced. Not merely outside of, but actually in his
+erotomania, Restif was a sentimental philanthropist of the all but most
+genuine kind, tainted indeed with the vanity and self-centredness which
+had reached their acme in Rousseau, but very much more certainly
+sincere, and of a temperament as different as possible from what is
+commonly called cynicism.
+
+[421] There are, however, contradictory statements on this point.
+
+[422] Nicolas [Edme] Restif being apparently his baptismal name, and "de
+la Bretonne" merely one of the self-bestowed agnominal nourishes so
+common in the French eighteenth century. He chose to consider the
+surname evidence of descent from the Emperor Pertinax; and as for his
+Christian name he seems to have varied it freely. Rose Lambelin, one of
+his harem, and a _soubrette_ of some literature, used to address him as
+"Anne-Augustin," Anne being, as no doubt most readers know, a masculine
+as well as a feminine _prénom_ in French.
+
+[423] Some, and perhaps not a few of their objects, may have been
+imaginary "dream-mistresses," created by Morpheus in an impurer mood
+than when he created Lamb's "dream-children." But some, I believe, have
+been identified; and others of the singular "Calendar" affixed to
+_Monsieur Nicolas_ have probably escaped identification.
+
+[Sidenote: His life and the reasons for giving it.]
+
+[424]
+It has not been necessary (and this is fortunate, for even if it had
+been necessary, it would have been scarcely possible) to give
+biographies of the various authors mentioned in this book, except in
+special cases. Something was generally known of most of them in the days
+before education received a large E, with laws and rates to suit: and
+something is still in a way, supposed to be known since. But of the life
+of Pigault, who called himself Lebrun, it may be desirable to say
+something, for more reasons than one. In the first place, this life had
+rather more to do with his work than is always the case; in the second,
+very little will be found about him in most histories of French
+literature; in the third, there will be found assigned to him, in the
+text--not out of crotchet, or contumacy, or desire to innovate, but as a
+result of rather painful reading--a considerably higher place in the
+history of the novel than he has usually occupied. His correct
+name--till, by one of the extremest eccentricities of the French
+_Chats-Fourrés_, he was formally unbegot by his Roman father, and the
+unbegetting (plus declaration of death) confirmed by the Parlement of
+Paris--was the imposing one of Charles Antoine Guillaume Pigault de
+L'Épinoy. The paternal Pigault, as may be guessed from his proceedings,
+was himself a lawyer, but of an old Calais family tracing itself to
+Queen Philippa's _protégé_, Eustache de Saint-Pierre; and, besides the
+mysterious life-in-death or death-in-life, Charles Antoine Guillaume had
+to suffer from him, while such things existed, several _lettres de
+cachet_. The son certainly did his best to deserve them. Having been
+settled, on leaving school as a clerk in an English commercial house, he
+seduced his master's daughter, ran away with her, and would no doubt
+have married her--for Pigault was never a really bad fellow--if she had
+not been drowned in the vessel which carried the pair back to France. He
+escaped--one hopes not without trying to save her. After another
+scandal--not the second only--of the same kind, he did marry the victim,
+and the marriage was the occasion of the singular exertion of _patria
+potestas_ referred to above. At least two _lettres de cachet_ had
+preceded it, and it is said that only the taking of the Bastille
+prevented the issue, or at least the effect, of a third. Meanwhile, he
+had been a gentleman-trooper in the _gendarmerie d'élite de la petite
+maison du roi_, which, seeing that the _roi_ was Louis Quinze, probably
+did not conduct itself after the fashion of the Thundering Legion, or of
+Cromwell's Ironsides, or even of Captain Steele's "Christian Hero." The
+life of this establishment, though as probably merry, was not long, and
+Pigault became an actor--a very bad but rather popular actor, it was
+said. Like other bad actors he wrote plays, which, if not good (they are
+certainly not very cheerful to read), were far from unsuccessful. But it
+was not till after the Revolution, and till he was near forty, that he
+undertook prose fiction; his first book being _L'Enfant du Carnaval_ in
+1792 (noticed in text). The revolutionary fury, however, of which there
+are so many traces in his writings, caught him; he went back to
+soldiering and fought at Valmy. He did not stay long in the army, but
+went on novel-writing, his success having the rather unexpected, and
+certainly very unusual, effect of reconciling his father. Indeed, this
+arbitrary parent wished not only to recall him to life, which was
+perhaps superfluous, but to "make an eldest son of him." This, Pigault,
+who was a loose fish and a vulgar fellow, but, as was said above, not a
+scoundrel, could not suffer; and he shared and shared alike with his
+brothers and sisters. Under the Empire he obtained a place in the
+customs, and held it under succeeding reigns till 1824, dying eleven
+years later at over eighty, and having written novels continuously till
+a short time before his death, and till the very eve of 1830. This odd
+career was crowned by an odd accident, for his daughter's son was Émile
+Augier. I never knew this fact till after the death of my friend, the
+late Mr. H. D. Traill. If I had, I should certainly have asked him to
+write an Imaginary Conversation between grandfather and grandson. Some
+years (1822-1824) before his last novel, a complete edition of novels,
+plays, and very valueless miscellanies had been issued in twenty octavo
+volumes. The reader, like the river Iser in Campbell's great poem, will
+be justified for the most part in "rolling rapidly" through them. But he
+will find his course rather unexpectedly delayed sometimes, and it is
+the fact and the reasons of these delays which must form the subject of
+the text.--There is no doubt that Pigault was very largely read abroad
+as well as at home. We know that Miss Matilda Crawley read him before
+Waterloo. She must have inherited from her father, Sir Walpole, a strong
+stomach: and must have been less affected by the change of times than
+was the case with her contemporary, Scott's old friend, who having
+enjoyed "your bonny Mrs. Behn" in her youth, could not read her in age.
+For our poor maligned Afra (in her prose stories at any rate, and most
+of her verse, if not in her plays) is an anticipated model of Victorian
+prudery and nicety compared with Pigault. I cannot help thinking that
+Marryat knew him too. Chapter and verse may not be forthcoming, and the
+resemblance may be accounted for by common likeness to Smollett: but
+not, to my thinking, quite sufficiently.
+
+[425] He had a younger brother, in a small way also a novelist, and,
+apparently, in the Radcliffian style, who extra-named himself rather in
+the manner of 1830--Pigault-_Maubaillarck_. I have not yet come across
+this junior's work.--For remarks of Hugo himself on Pigault and Restif,
+see note at end of chapter.
+
+[426] At least in his early books; it improves a little later. But see
+note on p. 453.
+
+[427] For a defence of this word, _v. sup._ p. 280, _note_.
+
+[428] It may be objected, "Did not the Scudérys and others do this?" The
+answer is that their public was not, strictly speaking, a "public" at
+all--it was a larger or smaller coterie.
+
+[429] It has been said that Pigault spent some time in England, and he
+shows more knowledge of English things and books than was common with
+Frenchmen before, and for a long time after, his day. Nor does he, even
+during the Great War, exhibit any signs of acute Anglophobia.
+
+[430] Pigault's adoration for Voltaire reaches the ludicrous, though we
+can seldom laugh _with_ him. It led him once to compose one of the very
+dullest books in literature, _Le Citateur_, a string of anti-Christian
+gibes and arguments from his idol and others.
+
+[431] Yet sometimes--when, for instance, one thinks of the
+rottenness-to-the-core of Dean Farrar's _Eric_, or the _spiritus
+vulgaritatis fortissimus_ of Mark Twain's _A Yankee at the Court of King
+Arthur_--one feels a little ashamed of abusing Pigault.
+
+[432] There was, of course, a milder and perhaps more effective
+possibility--to make the young turn to the young, and leave Madame de
+Francheville no solace for her sin. But for this also Pigault would have
+lacked audacity.
+
+[433] For the story "species" of _Gil Blas_ was not new, was of foreign
+origin, and was open to some objection; while the other two books just
+named derived their attraction, in the one case to a very small extent,
+in the other to hardly any at all, from the story itself.
+
+[434] Not that Jacob and Marianne are unnatural--quite the contrary--but
+that their situations are conventionalised.
+
+[435] _Corps d'Extraits de Romans de Chevalerie._ 4 vols. Paris, 1782.
+
+[436] The link between the two suggested at p. 458, _note_, is as
+follows. That Victor Hugo should, as he does in the Preface to _Han
+d'Islande_ and elsewhere, sneer at Pigault, is not very wonderful: for,
+besides the difference between _canaille_ and _caballería_, the author
+of _M. Botte_ was the most popular novelist of Hugo's youth. But why he
+has, in Part IV. Book VII. of _Les Misérables_ selected Restif as
+"undermining the masses in the most unwholesome way of all" is not
+nearly so clear, especially as he opposes this way to the
+"wholesomeness" of, among others--Diderot!
+
+
+
+
+APPENDICES
+
+
+
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRENCH FICTION
+NOTICED IN THIS VOLUME
+
+
+11TH CENTURY
+
+_Vie de Saint Alexis_ (probably).
+
+_Roland_ and one or two other _Chansons_ (possibly).
+
+
+12TH CENTURY
+
+Most of the older _Chansons_.
+
+_Arthurian Legend_ (in some of its forms).
+
+_Roman de Troie_, _Romans d'Alexandre_ (older forms).
+
+
+13TH CENTURY
+
+Rest of the more genuine _Chansons_.
+
+Rest of ditto Arthuriad and "Matter of Rome."
+
+_Romans d'Aventures_ (many).
+
+Early Fabliaux (probably).
+
+_Roman de la Rose_ and _Roman de Renart_ (older parts).
+
+Prose Stories (_Aucassin et Nicolette_), etc.
+
+
+14TH CENTURY
+
+Rehandlings, and younger examples, of all kinds above mentioned.
+
+
+15TH CENTURY
+
+Ditto, but only latest forms of all but Prose Stories, and many of the
+others rendered into prose.
+
+_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles._ First _edition_, 1480, but written much
+earlier.
+
+_Petit Jehan de Saintré_, about 1459, or earlier.
+
+_Jehan de Paris._ Uncertain, but before 1500.
+
+
+16TH CENTURY
+
+Rabelais. First Book of _Pantagruel_ Second of the whole, 1533;
+_Gargantua_, 1535; rest of _Pantagruel_ at intervals, to the
+(posthumous) Fifth Book in 1564.
+
+Marguerite de Navarre. _Heptameron._ Written before (probably some time
+before) Marguerite's death in 1549. Imperfectly published as _Les Amants
+Fortunés_, etc., in 1558; completely, under its permanent title, next
+year.
+
+Bonaventure Despériers. _Cymbalum Mundi_, 1537; _Contes et Joyeux
+Devis_, 1558, but written at least fourteen years earlier, as the author
+died in 1544.
+
+Hélisenne de Crenne. _Les Angoisses_, etc., 1538.
+
+_Amadis_ Romances. Date of Spanish or Portuguese originals uncertain.
+Herberay published the first part of his French translation of _Amadis_
+itself in 1540.
+
+Many of the small pastoral and adventurous stories noticed at the
+beginning of Chapter VIII. appeared in the last fifteen years of the
+sixteenth century, the remainder in the first quarter of the
+seventeenth. But of the Greek and Spanish compositions, which had so
+great an influence on them and on the subsequent "Heroic" School, the
+work of Heliodorus had been translated as early as 1546, and the _Diana_
+of Montemayor in 1578.
+
+
+17TH CENTURY
+
+Honoré d'Urfé. _L'Astrée_, 1607-19. (First three parts in Urfé's
+lifetime, fourth and fifth after his death in 1625.)
+
+"Heroic" Romance, 1622-60, as regards its principal examples, the exact
+dates of which are given in a note to p. 176. Madame de Villedieu wrote
+almost up to her death in 1683.
+
+Fairy Tales, etc. The common idea that Perrault not only produced the
+masterpieces but set the fashion of the kind is inexact. Madame
+d'Aulnoy's _Contes des Fées_ appeared in 1682, whereas Perrault's
+_Contes de ma Mère L'Oye_ did not come till fifteen years later, in
+1697. The precise dates of the writing of Hamilton's Tales are not, I
+think, known. They must, for the most part, have been between the
+appearance of Galland's _Arabian Nights_, 1704, and the author's death
+in 1720. As for the _Cabinet_ and its later constituents, see below on
+the eighteenth century.
+
+Sorel, Ch. _Francion_, 1622; _Le Berger Extravagant_, 1627.
+
+Scarron, P. _Le Roman Comique_, 1651.
+
+Cyrano de Bergerac. _Histoire Comique_, etc., 1655.
+
+Furetière, A. _Le Roman Bourgeois_, 1666.
+
+La Fayette, Madame de. _La Princesse de Clèves_, 1678. Her first book,
+_La Princesse de Montpensier_ (much slighter but well written), had
+appeared eighteen years earlier, and _Zaïde_ or _Zayde_ in 1670,
+fathered by Segrais.
+
+Fénelon. _Télémaque_, 1699.
+
+
+18TH CENTURY
+
+_Cabinet des Fées_, containing not only the authors or translators
+mentioned under the head of the preceding century, but a series of later
+writings down to the eve of the Revolution. Gueulette's adaptations and
+imitations ranged from the _Soirées Bretonnes_, published in 1712 during
+Hamilton's lifetime, to the _Thousand and One Hours_, 1733, the other
+collections mentioned in the text coming between. It may be worth
+mentioning that, being an industrious editor as well as tale-teller and
+playwright, he reprinted _Le Petit Jehan de Saintré_ in 1724 and
+Rabelais in 1732. Caylus's tales seem to have been scattered over the
+middle third of the century from about 1730 to his death in 1765.
+Cazotte's _Diable Amoureux_ (not in the _Cabinet_) is of 1772--he had
+written very inferior things of the tale kind full thirty years earlier.
+Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont (who was long an actual governess in England)
+wrote her numerous "books for the young" for the most part between 1757
+(_Le Magazin des Enfants_) and 1774 (_Contes Moraux_).
+
+Lesage. _Le Diable Boiteux_, 1707; _Gil Blas de Santillane_, 1715-35.
+
+Marivaux. _Les Effets Surprenants_, 1713-14; _Marianne_, 1731-36; _Le
+Paysan Parvenu_, 1735.
+
+Prévost. _Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité_, 1728-32, followed by _Manon
+Lescaut_, 1733; _Cléveland_, 1732-39; _Le Doyen de Killérine_, 1735;
+_Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne_, 1741.
+
+(It may not be impertinent to draw attention to the fact that Prévost,
+like Defoe--though not quite to the same extent, and in the middle, not
+towards the end of his career--concentrated the novel-part of an
+enormous polygraphic production upon a few years.)
+
+Crébillon _fils_. _Lettres de la Marquise_, 1732; _Tanzaï et Néadarné_,
+1734; _Les Égarements_, 1736; _Le Sopha_, 1745; _La Nuit et le Moment_,
+1755; _Le Hasard au Coin du Feu_, 1763; _Ah! Quel Conte!_ 1764.
+
+Voltaire's _Tales_ were distributed over a large part of his long and
+insatiably busy life; but none of his best are very early. _Zadig_ is of
+1747; _Micromégas_ of 1752; _Candide_ of 1759; _L'Ingénu_ and _La
+Princesse de Babylone_ of 1767 and 1768 respectively.
+
+Rousseau. _La Nouvelle Héloïse_, 1760; _Émile_, 1762.
+
+Diderot. _Les Bijoux Indiscrets_, 1748. _Jacques le Fataliste_ and _La
+Religieuse_ were posthumously published, but must have been written much
+earlier than their author's death in 1784.
+
+Marmontel. _Contes Moraux_ appeared in the official or semi-official
+_Mercure de France_, with which the author was connected from 1753-60,
+being its manager or editor for the last two of these years. _Bélisaire_
+came out in 1767.
+
+Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. _Paul et Virginie_, 1787; _La Chaumière
+Indienne_, 1790.
+
+"Sensibility" Novels:--
+
+Madame de Tencin. _Le Comte de Comminge_, 1735; _Les Malheurs de
+l'Amour_, 1747.
+
+Madame Riccoboni. _Le Marquis de Cressy_, 1758; _Lettres de Julie
+Catesby_, 1759; _Ernestine_, 1762.
+
+Madame Élie de Beaumont. _Le Marquis de Roselle_, 1764.
+
+Madame de Souza. _Adèle de Senanges_, 1794.
+
+Madame de Genlis. _Mlle. de Clermont_, 1802.
+
+Madame de Duras. _Ourika_, 1823; _Édouard_, 1825.
+
+Xavier de Maistre. _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_, 1794; _Le Lépreux de
+la Cité d'Aoste_, 1812; _Les Prisonniers du Caucase, La Jeune
+Sibérienne_, 1825.
+
+Benjamin Constant. _Adolphe_, 1815.
+
+Restif de la Bretonne. _Le Pied de Fanchette_, 1769; _Adèle_, 1772; _Le
+Paysan Perverti_, 1775-76; _Les Contemporaines_, 1780-85; _Ingénue
+Saxancour_, 1789; _Monsieur Nicolas_, 1794-97.
+
+Pigault-Lebrun. _L'Enfant du Carnaval_, 1792; _Les Barons de Felsheim_,
+1798; _Angélique et Jeanneton_, _Mon Oncle Thomas_, _La Folie
+Espagnole_, 1799; _M. Botte_, 1802; _Jérôme_, 1804; _Tableaux de
+Société_, 1813; _Adélaïde de Méran_, 1815; M. de Roberval,
+_L'Officieux_, 1818.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
+
+
+(Although it is probably idle to attempt to satisfy or placate the
+contemporary _helluo_ of bibliography, it may be respectful to other
+readers to observe that this is not intended to deal with the whole
+subject, but only as a companion, or chrestomathic guide, to this book
+itself.)
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_Apollonius of Tyre._ Ed. Thorpe. London, 1834.
+
+_English Novel, The._ By the present writer. London (Dent), 1913.
+
+_French Literature, A Short History of._ By the present writer. Oxford,
+1882, and often reprinted.
+
+_Greek Romances, The._ Most convenient editions of originals--Didot's
+_Erotici Graeci_, Paris, 1856, or Teubner's, ed. Herscher, Leipzig,
+1858. English translations in Bohn's Library. For those who prefer books
+about things to the things themselves, there is a very good English
+monograph by Wolff (Columbia University Series, New York).
+
+_Hymn of St. Eulalia._ Quoted in most histories of French literature,
+_e.g._ that entered above, pp. 4, 5.
+
+_Life of St. Alexis._ Ed. G. Paris and L. Pannier. Paris, 1872-87.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_Alexander Legends_ ("Matter of Rome"). The most important editions of
+romances concerning Alexander are Michelant's of the great poem from
+which, according to the most general theory, the "Alexandrine" or
+twelve-syllabled verse takes its name (Stuttgart, 1846), and M. Paul
+Meyer's _Alexandre le Grand dans la Littérature Française au moyen âge_
+(2 vols., Paris, 1886), a monograph of the very first order, with
+plentiful reproduction of texts.
+
+_Arthurian Legend, The._ No complete bibliography of this is possible
+here--a note of some fulness will be found in the writer's _Short
+History_ (see above on Chapter I.). The most important books for an
+English reader who wishes to supplement Malory are M. Paulin Paris's
+abstract of the whole, _Les Romans de la Table Ronde_ (5 vols., Paris,
+1869-77), a very charming set of handy volumes, beautifully printed and
+illustrated; and, now at last, Dr. Sommer's stately edition of the
+"Vulgate" texts, completed recently, I believe (Carnegie Institution,
+Washington, U.S.A.).
+
+_Chansons de Gestes._ The first sentence of the last entry applies here
+with greater fulness. The editions of _Roland_ are very numerous; and
+those of other _chansons_, though there are not often two or more of the
+same, run to scores of volumes. The most important books about them are
+M. Léon Gautier's _Les Épopées Françaises_ (4 vols., Paris, 1892) and M.
+Bédier's _Les Légendes Épiques_ (4 vols., Paris, 1908-13).
+
+Sainte-More, B. de. _Roman de Troie._ Ed. Joly. Rouen, 1870. Edited a
+second time in the series of the Société des Anciens Textes Français.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The bibliography of the _Romans d'Aventures_ generally is again too
+complicated and voluminous to be attempted here. A fair amount of
+information will be found, as regards the two sides, French and English,
+of the matter, in the writer's _Short Histories_ of the two
+literatures--_French_ as above, _English_ (Macmillan, 9th ed., London,
+1914), and in his _Romance and Allegory_, referred to in the text. Short
+of the texts themselves, but for fuller information than general
+histories contain, Dunlop's well-known book, reprinted in Bohn's Library
+with valuable additions, and Ellis's _Early English Romances_,
+especially the latter, will be found of greatest value.
+
+_Partenopeus de Blois._ 2 vols. Paris, 1834.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_Nouvelles du 13'e et du 14'me Siècle._ Ed. L. Moland et Ch.
+d'Héricault. Bibliothèque Elzévirienne. 2 vols. Paris, 1856.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, Les._ Numerous editions in the cheap
+collections of French classics.
+
+_Fabliaux._ Ed. A. de Montaiglon et G. Raynaud. 6 vols. Paris, 1872-88.
+
+_Jehan de Paris._ Ed. Montaiglon. Paris, 1874.
+
+_Petit Jehan de Saintré._ Ed. Guichard. Paris, 1843.
+
+_Roman de la Rose._ Ed. F. Michel. Paris, 1864.
+
+_Roman de Renart._ The completest (but not a complete) edition of the
+different parts is that of Méon and Chabaille (5 vols., Paris, 1826-35).
+The main or "Ancien" Renart was re-edited by E. Martin (3 vols., Paris
+and Strasbourg, 1882-87).
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Rabelais. Editions of the original very numerous: and of Urquhart's
+famous English translation more than one or two recently. The cheapest
+and handiest of the former, _without_ commentary, is that in the
+Collection Garnier. Of commentaries and books _on_ Rabelais there is no
+end.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_Amadis_ Romances. No modern reprints of Herberay and his followers.
+Southey's English versions of _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ are not difficult
+to obtain.
+
+Despériers, B. _Contes et Joyeuse Devis_, etc. Ed. Lacour. 2 vols.
+Paris, 1866.
+
+Marguerite de Navarre, The _Heptameron_. Editions again numerous,
+including cheap ones in the collections.
+
+_Moyen de Parvenir, Le._ Ed. Jacob. Paris, 1860. (For Hélisenne de
+Crenne see text, and Reynier--_v. inf._ on next chapter.)
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The general histories and bibliographies of M. Reynier and Herr Körting,
+as well as the monographs of MM. Chatenay, Magne, and Reure, will be
+found registered in the notes to text, and references to them in the
+index. The original editions are also given in text or note. Modern
+reprints--except of the fairy stories and one or two others--are almost
+entirely wanting. For the Greek Romances see above under Chapter I. The
+_Astrée_, after its first issues, appeared as a whole in 1637 and 1647,
+the latter being the edition referred to in "Add. and Corr." But the
+later eighteenth-century (1733) version of the Abbé Souchay is said to
+be "doctored." I have not thought it worth while to look up either this
+or the earlier abridgment (_La Nouvelle Astrée_ of 1713), though this
+latter is not ill spoken of. For the _Cabinet des Fées_ (41 vols.,
+Geneva, 1785-89) see text.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Sorel. _Francion_ is in the Collection Garnier, _Le Berger Extravagant_
+and _Polyandre_ only in the originals.
+
+Scarron. _Le Roman Comique._ The 1752 edition (3 vols.) is useful, but
+there are reprints.
+
+Furetière. _Le Roman Bourgeois._ Collection Jannet et Picard, 1854.
+
+Cyrano de Bergerac. _Voyages_, etc. Ed. Jacob. Paris, 1858.
+
+Mme. de la Fayette. _La Princesse de Clèves._ Paris, 1881.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+For those who wish to study Lesage and Prévost at large, the combined
+Dutch _Oeuvres Choisies_, in 54 vols. (Amsterdam, 1783), will offer a
+convenient, if not exactly handy, opportunity. Separate editions of the
+_Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_ are very, and of _Manon Lescaut_ fairly,
+numerous.
+
+Marivaux. _Oeuvres._ 12 vols. Paris, 1781.
+
+Crébillon _fils_. _Oeuvres Complètes._ 7 vols. Londres, 1772.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+The work, in novel, of Voltaire and Rousseau is in all the cheap
+collections of Didot, Garnier, etc. Of that of Diderot there have
+recently been several partial collections, but I think no complete one.
+It is better to take the _Oeuvres_, by Assézat and Tourneux, mentioned
+in the text (20 vols., Paris, 1875-77).
+
+Marmontel's _Oeuvres_ appeared in 19 vols. (Paris, 1818), and I have
+used, and once possessed, a more modern and compacter issue in 7 vols.
+(Paris, 1820?). The _Contes Moraux_ appeared together in 1770 and later.
+
+Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. _Oeuvres_. 12 vols. 1834. Very numerous
+separate editions (or sometimes with _La Chaumière Indienne_) of _Paul
+et Virginie_.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Minor "Sensibility" novels. Most of them in a handsome 7-vol. edition
+(Paris, _n.d._) in Garnier's _Bibliothèque Amusante_. This also includes
+Marivaux.
+
+X. de Maistre. Editions numerous.
+
+B. Constant. _Adolphe._ Paris, 1842; and with Introduction by M. Anatole
+France (1889); besides M. de Lescure's noticed in text.
+
+Restif de la Bretonne. Selection of _Les Contemporaines_, by Assézat. 3
+vols. Paris, 1875-76.
+
+Pigault-Lebrun. Edition mentioned in text.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+(The dates given in this Index are confined to _persons_ directly dealt
+with in this volume. Those of the more important _books_ noticed will be
+found in the Chronological Conspectus. In other respects I have made it
+as full as possible, in an _Index nominum_, as regards both authors and
+titles.)
+
+_Abbot, The_, xiii
+
+_Abdalla, Les Aventures d'_, 258, 259
+
+_Acajou et Zirphile_, 267
+
+Achilles Tatius, 37, 157 _note_, 220 _note_, 350
+
+Addison, 107, 232, 339
+
+_Adélaïde de Méran_, 465
+
+_Adolphe_, 372 _note_, 429, 437, 438, 442-451, 472
+
+Ælfric, 73 _note_
+
+_Aeneid, The_, 2 _note_
+
+_Ah! Quel Conte!_ 371 _sq._
+
+Aimé-Martin, 425
+
+Aïssé, Mlle., 355 _note_
+
+_Alcandre Frustré_, 243
+
+_Alcibiade ou le moi_, 415, 416
+
+_Alcidamie_, 242
+
+_Alcidiane_, 236
+
+"Alcidonis of Megara," 419, 424 _note_
+
+_Alciphron_, 389
+
+Alexander, Romances of, 19, 20, 473
+
+_Alexis, Vie de Saint_, 6-8, 475, 479
+
+_Aliscans_, 14
+
+Allen, Mr. George, 412 _note_
+
+_Almahide_, 176 _note_, 225, 226
+
+_Amadas et Idoine_, 71
+
+_Amadis of Gaul_, 42 _note_, 57, 134, 145-150, 171, 175, 197, 201,
+220, 221, 236, 287 _note_, 353, 409, 476, 481
+
+_Amenophis_, 430 _note_
+
+_Amis et Amiles_, 13, 14, 77, 146
+
+Amory (author of _John Buncle_), 277, 454
+
+_Amours Galantes_, 243-245
+
+Amyot, Jacques (1513-1593), 133, 144
+
+Anacharsis, 212 _sq._
+
+_Anastasius_, 290
+
+_Anatomy_ (Burton's), 206 _note_
+
+_Angélique et Jeanneton_, 462, 463
+
+_Angoisses, Les._ _See_ H. de Crenne
+
+_Annette et Lubin_, 415
+
+_Apollonius of Tyre_, 3, 479
+
+_Apollonius Rhodius_, 1 _note_, 2 _note_, 37, 274
+
+_Apologie pour Hérodote_, 143
+
+_Apology_, the Platonic, 388
+
+Apuleius, 2, 251 _note_
+
+_Arabian Nights, The_, 246 _sq._, 258 _sq._, 305, 313 _sq._, 318, 371 _sq._, 476
+
+_Arcadia_, the, 103, 165, 166, 174
+
+_Argenis_, 152 _note_
+
+Aristaenetus, _Letters_ of, 327
+
+Aristides (of Smyrna), 350 _note_
+
+Aristophanes, 136
+
+Aristotle, 331
+
+_Arnalte and Lucenda_, 145 _note_
+
+Arnold, Mr. Matthew, vi, 156, 364, 385
+
+_Arnoult et Clarimonde_, 161, 162
+
+_Artamène._ See _Grand Cyrus, Le_
+
+Arthurian Legend, The, 3, 20-54, 73, 104, 105
+
+_Arthur of Little Britain_, 146, 147
+
+Ascham, 26 _note_, 61
+
+_Asseneth_, 80, 81, 87
+
+Assézat, M., 454
+
+_Astrée_, the, xii, xiii, 152-157, 162, 167-175, 197, 212 _note_,
+218 _note_, 220, 226 _note_, 229, 234, 277 _note_, 476, 481
+
+_As You Like It_, 48, 174
+
+Aubignac (F. Hédelin, Abbé d', 1604-1676), 238, 239
+
+_Aucassin et Nicolette_, 24, 59, 61, 74, 79, 87, 475
+
+Augier, E., 458 _note_
+
+Aulnoy (Marie Catherine le Jumel de Barneville, Comtesse d', 1650?-1705), 154,
+246 _sq._, 273, 476
+
+Auneuil, Mme. d', 258
+
+Austen, Miss, 287, 428-434, 471
+
+Avellaneda, 327
+
+_Aventures de Floride, Les_, 162
+
+
+_Babouc_, 383
+
+Bacon, 298
+
+Bailey, Mr. P. J., 384
+
+Balfour, Mr. A. J., 115
+
+Balzac, H. de, 288, 353
+
+Barclay (author of _Argenis_), 152 _note_
+
+_Barons de Felsheim, Les_, 461
+
+_Bassa, L'Illustre_, 223-225, 281
+
+Baudelaire, xiv
+
+Beaconsfield, Lord, 306
+
+Beauchamps, P. F. G. de (1689-1761), 265 _note_, 266
+
+Beauvau, P. de, 81
+
+Beckford, 306
+
+Bédier, M., 13 _note_, 480
+
+Behn, Afra, 242, 458 _note_
+
+_Bélier, Le_, 308 _sq._
+
+_Bélisaire_, 413
+
+Bellaston, Lady, 343
+
+_Belle et la Bête, La_, 253
+
+Bentley, 194
+
+_Beowulf_, 11
+
+_Berger Extravagant, Le_, 277, 278, 476, 482
+
+Bergerac. _See_ Cyrano de B.
+
+_Bergeries de Juliette, Les_, 157, 159, 160
+
+Berkeley, 389
+
+Berners, Lord, 146
+
+Béroalde de Verville (François, 1558-1612), 111, 162, 163
+
+_Berte aux grands Piés_, 15
+
+Besant, Sir W., 121
+
+_Bevis of Hampton_, 71
+
+Beyle, 442
+
+_Bibliothèque Universelle des Romans_, 206 _note_
+
+_Biche au Bois, La_, 254
+
+_Bijoux Indiscrets, Les_, 403, 405, 411
+
+_Black Arrow, The_, 82
+
+Blair, H., 71
+
+_Blancandin et l'Orgueilleuse d'Amours_, 71
+
+_Blonde d'Oxford_, 102 _note_
+
+Boccaccio, 16, 18, 81, 93
+
+Boileau-Despréaux (Nicolas, 1636-1711), 175, 240, 295, 330, 331
+
+Bonhomme, M. H., 257 _note_
+
+Borrow, 456
+
+Bors, Sir, 53
+
+Bossuet, 40 _note_
+
+Boswell, 386 _note_, 422 _note_
+
+_Botte, M._, 467, 472 _note_
+
+Bouchet, G. (1526-1606), 143
+
+Bouchet, J. (1475-1550), 143 _note_
+
+_Bovary, Madame_, 446
+
+Brantôme (Pierre de Bourdeilles, 1540?-1614), 135, 136, 140
+
+Brown, Tom, 281
+
+Browne, W., 236
+
+Browning, R., 52, 74, 234, 404 _note_
+
+Brunetière, M., 161 _note_, 274 _note_, 410 _note_
+
+_Buncle, John_, 277
+
+Burney, Miss, 347, 468
+
+Burton (of the _Anatomy_), 206 _note_
+
+Bussy-Rabutin, Roger, Comte de (1618-1693), 243
+
+Butler, Mr. A. J., xi
+
+Butler, S., 139 _note_
+
+Byron, 393
+
+
+_Cabinet de Minerve, Le_, 163
+
+_Cabinet des Fées, Le_, 246-272, 419, 427 _note_, 476, 477, 481
+
+_Cabinet d'un Philosophe, Le_, 339
+
+_Café de Surate, Le_, 426
+
+Callisthenes, the pseudo-, 17
+
+Campanella, 298
+
+Camus (de Pontcarré), Jean (1584-1653), 153, 237, 238
+
+_Candide_, 379 _sq._, 461, 477
+
+_Capitaine Fracasse, Le_, 279-280
+
+_Caritée, La_, 176 _note_, 235, 236
+
+Carlyle, 130, 139 _note_, 243, 402 _notes_, 403 and _note_, 414
+
+_Carmente_, 244, 245
+
+"Carte de Tendre," the, 226
+
+_Cassandre_, 176 _note_, 233-234
+
+Catullus, 176 _note_, 220
+
+Caylus, Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières de Grimoard de Pestels de Lévi, Comte
+de (1692-1765), 262-264, 477
+
+Cazotte, Jacques (1720-1792), 270 _note_, 477
+
+_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_, 92-100, 472, 475, 480
+
+_Ce qui plaît aux Dames_, 377 _note_
+
+Cervantes, 124, 284 _note_
+
+_Chanson de Geste, The_, 9-16
+
+Chapelain, 178
+
+_Chat Botté, Le_, 254
+
+Chateaubriand, 234 _note_, 430, 459, 464
+
+_Château de la Misère, Le_, 280
+
+Chatenet, M. H. E., 243 _note_
+
+Chaucer, 16, 18, 22, 61 _note_, 81, 91, 103, 220, 319, 351 _note_,
+377 _note_, 467
+
+_Chaumière Indienne, La_, 426
+
+_Cheminées de Madrid, Les_, 328
+
+Chénier, A., 464
+
+_Chevalier à la Charette_, 24-28
+
+_Chevalier au Lyon_, 24, 25
+
+Cholières, 143
+
+Chrestien de Troyes (12th cent.), 21-29, 37, 106
+
+_Citateur, Le_, 462 _note_
+
+_Citherée_, 176 _note_
+
+Clarendon, 459
+
+_Clélie_, 176 _note_, 226-229
+
+_Cléopatre_, 176 _note_, 230-232
+
+_Cléveland_, 353-357
+
+_Clidamant et Marilinde_, 160, 161
+
+_Cligès_, 24
+
+Coleridge, 31 _note_
+
+Collins, Wilkie, 294 _note_
+
+_Colonel Jack_, 463
+
+Colvin, Sir Sidney, 239 _note_
+
+_Comédie Humaine_, the, 469, 470
+
+_Compère Mathieu, Le_, 412 _note_
+
+_Comte de Comminge, Le_, 431, 451
+
+"Comte de Gabalis," the, 257 _note_
+
+_Comtesse de Savoie, La_, 430 _note_
+
+_Confessions_, Rousseau's, 391 _sq._
+
+Congreve, xiv, 376 _note_
+
+_Conquest of Granada, The_, 225
+
+Conrart, 201
+
+Constant-Rebecque, Henri Benjamin de (1767-1830), 429, 430, 437, 438,
+442-452,482
+
+_Contemporaines, Les_, 454
+
+_Contes et Joyeux Devis_, 141, 142, 476, 481
+
+_Contes Moraux_ (Marmontel's), 414-424
+
+_Conversation du maréchal d'Hocquincourt avec le Père Canaye_, 307 _note_
+
+Corbin, J., 162
+
+_Corinne_, 452, 465
+
+Corneille, 219, 278 _note_, 296, 318 _note_
+
+_Cosi-Sancta_, 387
+
+_Courtebotte, Le Prince_, 262, 263
+
+Courthope, Mr. W. J., xi
+
+Courtils de Sandras, 153
+
+Cousin, V., 177 and _note_
+
+Crawley, Miss Matilda, 458 _note_
+
+Crébillon _fils_, Claude Prosper Jolyot de (1707-1777), xiv, 325, 350
+_note_, 353, 354, 364, 376, 403, 406, 415, 419, 450 _note_, 453,
+459, 469, 477, 482
+
+Crébillon _père_, Prosper Jolyot de, 365
+
+Crenne, H. de (16th cent.), 150 _note_, 476
+
+_Cressy, Le Marquis de._ See _Histoire du Marquis de Cressy_
+
+_Crispin Rival de son Maître_, 329
+
+_Crocheteur Borgne, Le_, 387
+
+Croxall, 244
+
+Ctesias, 179
+
+_Cupid and Psyche_, 58, 59
+
+_Cymbalum Mundi_, 140, 141, 476
+
+Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien (1609-1655), 275, 286 _note_, 295-298,
+476, 482
+
+_Cyropaedia_, 187 _note_, 197 _note_
+
+_Cyrus_. See _Grand Cyrus_
+
+
+Dante, xi, xii, 45, 49, 119 _notes_, 150 _note_, 179, 274 _note_
+
+_Daphnis and Chloe_, 155, 159
+
+Davenant, 393
+
+_Decameron_, the, 93
+
+Defoe, 292, 329, 358, 456
+
+Dekker, 275
+
+De Launay, Mlle. _See_ Staal-Delaunay, Mme.
+
+De Quincey, 399, 456
+
+Despériers, Bonaventure (?-1544?), 137, 140-142, 380, 476, 481
+
+_Deux Amis de Bourbonne, Les_, 403
+
+_Diable Amoureux, Le_, 270, 271 _notes_, 477
+
+_Diable Boiteux, Le_, 326 _sq._, 477
+
+_Diablo Cojuelo, El_, 329
+
+_Diana_ (Montemayor's), 157, 165, 476
+
+Dickens, 15, 245, 262 and _note_, 285, 326, 348 _note_, 364, 394,
+395 _note_
+
+_Dictionnaire Philosophique_ (Voltaire's), 411 _note_
+
+Diderot, Denis (1713-1784), 225, 375, 386 _note_, 391 _note_,
+400-411, 425, 426, 453, 470, 472 _note_, 482
+
+Disraeli, Mr., 37
+
+Dobson, Mr. A., 246, 317 _note_, 417
+
+Donne, 150 _note_, 206 _note_, 220
+
+_Don Quixote_, 57, 277, 333, 461, 472
+
+_Don Silvia de Rosalva_, 269
+
+_Doon de Mayence_, 15
+
+_Doyen de Killérine, Le_, 353-357
+
+Dryden, 44 _note_, 200, 203, 215, 226, 230, 377 _note_, 393
+
+Duclos, Charles Pinot (1704-1772), 267
+
+Du Croset (_c._ 1600), 162
+
+Du Fail, Noël (16th cent.), 143
+
+Dulaurens, H. J. (1719-1797), 412 _note_
+
+Dumas, 98, 181, 245, 279, 286
+
+Dunlop, 165
+
+Du Périer (_c._ 1600), 161
+
+Duras, Mme. de (Claire de Kersaint, 1778-1844), 430, 449, 450
+
+Du Souhait (_c._ 1600), 160 _note_
+
+
+_Earthly Paradise, The_, 14
+
+Edgeworth, Miss, 237, 386, 412
+
+_Édouard_, 449
+
+_Effets de la Sympathie, Les_, 338, 340
+
+_Égarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit, Les_, 371 _sq._, 443 _note_
+
+Elie de Beaumont, Mme. (Marie Louise Morin Dumesnil, ?-1783), 436
+
+Ellis, G., 57, 480
+
+Elton, Prof., ix _note_
+
+_Émile_, 392, 393, 478
+
+_Encyclopædia Britannica_, vii
+
+_Encyclopédie, The_, 411
+
+_Endimion_, Gombauld's, 229
+
+_Endymion_, Keats's, 239
+
+"_Engouement_," 449, 450
+
+_Epistle to the Pisos_, 219
+
+_Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_, 116, 124
+
+_Erec et Énide_, 24, 25
+
+_Eric_ (Dean Farrar's), 465 _note_
+
+_Ernestine_, 435
+
+Escuteaux, Sieur des (_c._ 1600), 157 _note_, 160, 161
+
+Esmond, Beatrix, 49
+
+_Essai sur les Romans_ (Marmontel's), 413
+
+_Essay on Criticism_ (Pope's), 327
+
+_Estévanille Gonzales_, 328
+
+_Études de la Nature_, 424 _note_
+
+Eulalia, Legend of St., 4, 5, 479
+
+_Euphues_, 103, 116
+
+Eustathius (Macrembolites or -ta, sometimes called Eu_m_athius, 12th
+cent.), 18, 350
+
+_Evelina_, 435
+
+_Evènemens Singuliers_, 237, 238
+
+_Expédition Nocturne_, 437 _sq._
+
+
+_Fabliaux_, The, 91, 92
+
+_Facardins, Les Quatre_, 262, 308, 313, 316-320
+
+_Famille Luceval, La_, 467
+
+_Faramond_, 176 _note_, 234, 235
+
+Farrar, Dean, 465 _note_
+
+_Fausses Confidences, Les_, 339
+
+Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe, (1651-1715), 153, 237, 260,
+323, 324, 477
+
+Ferrier, Miss, 429
+
+_Festus_, 384
+
+Fielding, 285, 326, 349, 375, 451, 471
+
+_Finette_, 251, 252
+
+FitzGerald, E., 118, 176 _note_
+
+Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Prof., ix _note_
+
+_Fleur d'Épine_, 308 _sq._
+
+_Floire et Blanchefleur_, 3, 59, 71
+
+Folengo, 124
+
+_Folie Espagnole, La_, 462, 463
+
+Fontaines, Mme. de (Marie Louise Charlotte de Pelard de Givry, ?-1730),
+430 _note_
+
+Fontenelle, 350 _note_, 384
+
+Forsyth, Dr., 455
+
+_Fortnightly Review_, vii, 306 _note_, 428 _note_
+
+_Fortunes of Nigel, The_, 361
+
+_Foulques Fitzwarin_, 81-87
+
+_Four Flasks, The_, 419
+
+France, M. A., 328
+
+_Francion_, 275-277, 476
+
+Froissart, 135
+
+_Fuerres de Gadres_, xi, 20
+
+Fuller, 320
+
+_Funestine_, 265, 266
+
+Furetière, Antoine (1620-1688), 154, 275, 277, 286-295, 469, 482
+
+
+Galland, Antoine (1646-1715), 246 _sq._, 476
+
+_Gargantua_ (and _Pantagruel_), Chap. VI., _passim_
+
+Gautier, M. Léon, 279, 280, 286, 296, 480
+
+_Gawain and the Green Knight_, 56
+
+Génin, F., 402 and _note_
+
+Genlis, Mme. de (Stéphanie Félicité du Crest de St. Aubin, 1746-1830),
+436
+
+Geoffrey of Monmouth, 17
+
+George Eliot, 445 _note_
+
+_Gesta Romanorum_, 89
+
+Gilbert, Sir W., 172 _note_, 181, 329, 393
+
+_Gil Blas_, 325 _sq._, 374, 461, 462, 468, 457
+
+Gladstone, Mr., 176 _note_
+
+Godfrey de Lagny (12th cent.), 24 _note_, 29
+
+Goethe, 456
+
+Gombauld, J. Ogier de (1570-1666), 229, 239-241
+
+Gomberville, Marin le Roy de (1600-1674), 176 _note_, 177 _note_,
+229, 235-237
+
+Gomersal, 399 _note_
+
+Gongora, 159 _note_
+
+_Gracieuse et Percinet_, 250, 251
+
+_Grand Cyrus, The_, 154 _note_, 170, 176-223, 280, 281, 284, 318
+
+Grantley, Archdeacon, xii, 121
+
+Graves, 277, 333
+
+Gray, 276, 365, 375
+
+_Grecque moderne, Histoire d'une_, 353-358
+
+Greek Romances. _See_ Romances, Greek
+
+Greg, Mr., 155 _note_
+
+Grimm, F. M., 408 _note_, 410
+
+_Grotesques, Les_, 296
+
+Gueulette, Thomas Simon (1683-1766), 258-266, 379, 477
+
+Guevara, 329, 372
+
+Guido de Columnis, or delle Colonne, 18, 87
+
+_Guillaume d'Angleterre_, 24
+
+Guinevere, Queen (character of), xi, xii, 25-54 _passim_, 182 _note_
+
+_Gulliver's Travels_, 110, 384
+
+_Guzman d'Alfarache_, 328
+
+
+Hamilton, Anthony (1646?-1720), 153, 154, 248, 264, 266 _note_, 275 and
+_note_, 305-325, 369 _note_, 371 _note_, 378, 379 _note_,
+380, 385, 476
+
+Hamilton, Gerard, 275 _note_
+
+_Hamlet_, 331
+
+Hammond, Miss Chris., 412 _note_
+
+Hardy, Mr. Thomas, 272, 348
+
+_Hasard au Coin du Feu, Le_, 366 _sq._
+
+Hawker, 41 and _note_
+
+Hegel, 139 _note_
+
+Heliodorus, 179, 476
+
+_Héloïse, La Nouvelle_, see _Julie_
+
+Henley, Mr. W. E., 259 _note_, 460
+
+Henryson, 18, 156 _note_
+
+_Heptameron, The_, 136-143, 472, 476, 481
+
+Herberay des Essarts, Nicolas (?-1552?), 145 _sq._, 476, 481
+
+Herodotus, 1, 2, 178
+
+_Heureusement_, 419, 463
+
+_Heureux Orphelins, Les_, 373
+
+Heywood, J., 192 _note_
+
+_Histoire de Jenni_, 386
+
+_Histoire du Marquis de Cressy_, 432, 433
+
+_Histoire Véritable_ (B. de Verville's), 163
+
+Holbach, Mme. d', 408, 410 and _note_
+
+Homer, 1, 71, 274, 275
+
+Hope, T., 290
+
+Hudgiadge, Sultan, 260 _note_, 262
+
+Hugo, Victor, xiii, 228, 458, 472 _note_
+
+Hume, 207 _note_
+
+_Humphrey Clinker_, 469
+
+Hunt, Leigh, 91, 413 _note_
+
+Hunt, Rev. W., ix _note_, xiii
+
+_Huon de Bordeaux_, 14
+
+_Hysminias and Hyasmine_, 18, 37, 157 _note_, 220 _note_, 265 _note_
+
+
+_Ibrahim_, 176 _note_, 223-225
+
+Ibsen, 39 _note_, 362
+
+_Idylls of the King_, Chap. II. _passim_
+
+_Iliad, The_, 11, 71
+
+_Illustres Fées, Les_, 257
+
+_Incas, Les_, 413
+
+_Interlude of Love_, 192 _note_
+
+
+_Jacques le Fataliste_, 404-407
+
+James, G. P. R., 233
+
+_Jeannot et Colin_, 386
+
+_Jehan de Paris_, 101-103, 475, 480
+
+Jerningham, E., 423 _note_
+
+_Jérôme_, 464
+
+_Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard, Le_, 339
+
+Johnson, Dr., 107, 139 _note_, 155, 178, 218 _note_, 265 and
+_note_, 276, 377, 381, 386 _note_
+
+Joinville, 135
+
+_Jonathan Wild_, xv, 101
+
+_Joseph Andrews_, 375, 415, 426 _note_
+
+Joubert, 412
+
+_Jourdains de Blaivies_, 14
+
+_Journée des Parques, La_, 328
+
+_Julie_, 393-400, 436, 452, 468, 470, 477
+
+
+"Katherine and Gerard," story of, 94-99
+
+Ker, Mr. W. P., ix _note_, xii, 119 _note_
+
+Kinglake, 306 _note_
+
+Kingsley, Charles, xii, 52, 244
+
+Kipling, Mr., 195, 208, 380
+
+_Knight of the Sun, The_, 147
+
+Knollys, 417
+
+Kock, Paul de, 461
+
+Körting, H., 133 _note_, 165 _sq._, 236 _notes_, 274 _note_
+
+
+La Calprenède, Gauthier de Costes de (1610?-1633), 176 _note_, 197
+_note_, 227, 230-235
+
+Laclos (Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de, 1741-1803), xiv, xv, 453
+
+_La Comtesse de Ponthieu_, 77-80, 86
+
+La Croix, Pétro de, 259 _note_
+
+"Lady of the Lake," The, 30 _note_
+
+La Fayette, Mme. de (Marie Madeleine Pioche de Lavergne, 1634-1693), 154,
+273, 298-300, 318, 325, 376, 426, 428, 429, 436, 451, 469, 477, 482
+
+La Fontaine, 92, 175
+
+La Force, Mlle. de (Charlotte Rose de Caumont de, 1654?-1724), 257
+
+La Harpe, 240
+
+_La Jeune Sibérienne_, 437 _sq._
+
+Lamartine, 464
+
+Lamb, Charles, 28, 320, 455 _note_
+
+Lamoracke, Sir, 53
+
+La Morlière (Charles Louis Auguste de La Rochette Chevalier de, 1719-1785),
+vi _note_
+
+Lancelot, Sir (character of), xi, xii, 25-54 _passim_, 182 _note_
+
+Landor, 331
+
+Lang, Mr. A., 246
+
+Lannoi, J. de, 162
+
+_La Princesse de Clèves_, 223, 244, 298-300, 470
+
+La Rochefoucauld, 299 and _note_
+
+Larroumet, M. G., 339 _note_
+
+La Salle, Antoine de (1398-1462?), 93, 101, 102, 106
+
+_Latin Stories_ (Wright's), 73 _note_
+
+Lavington, Argemone, 49
+
+Lawrence, G., 51 _note_
+
+_Le Blanc et le Noir_, 385, 386
+
+Le Breton, M., 274 _note_
+
+Le Brun "Pindare," 462
+
+_L'Écumoire_, 371 _sq._
+
+_Legend of the Rhine, A_, 339 _note_
+
+Leigh Hunt, 413 _note_
+
+_L'Empereur Constant_, 74, 75, 86
+
+_L'Enchanteur Faustus_, 308 _sq._
+
+_L'Enfant du Carnaval_, 457 _note_, 461
+
+_Lépreux de la Cité d'Aoste, Le_, 437 _sq._
+
+Le Prince de Beaumont, Marie, Mme. (1711-1780), 268, 477
+
+_Le Prisonnier de Caucase_, 437 _sq._
+
+_Le Roi Flore et La Belle Jehane_, 75, 76, 86
+
+Lesage, Alain René (1668-1747), 259 and _note_, 325-337, 374, 375, 468,
+472, 477, 482
+
+Lescure, M. de, 442
+
+_Le Sot Chevalier_, 91
+
+Lespinasse, Mlle. de, 257, 403 _note_, 441
+
+_Lettres d'Amabed_, 386
+
+_Lettres Athéniennes_, 373, 374
+
+_Lettres de la Marquise de M----_, 372
+
+_Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_, 437
+
+Lévis, Pierre Marc Gaston Duc de (1755-1830), 313 _note_
+
+_Lévite d'Ephraïm, Le_, 399 _note_
+
+Lewis, "Monk," 271 _note_
+
+_L'Homme aux Quarante Écus_, 385
+
+_Liaisons Dangereuses, Les_, xiv, xv
+
+_L'Ingénu_, 385, 475
+
+Livy, 2
+
+_L'Officieux_, 465-467
+
+Longinus, 328
+
+Longus, 172 _note_
+
+Louis XI., 92
+
+Louvet de Coudray, 453
+
+Lubert, Mlle. de. (1710-1779), 266
+
+Lucian, 2, 141, 142, 298, 328, 380
+
+Lucius of Patrae, 2
+
+Lussan, Mlle. de (1682-1758), xiii, 265
+
+_Lycidas_, 156
+
+Lyndsay, Sir D., 100 _note_
+
+Lyonne, the Abbé de, 328
+
+
+_Macarise_, 238
+
+Macaulay, 265 and _note_, 311 _note_
+
+Macdonald, G., 52
+
+Mackenzie, H., 414
+
+_M. de Beauchesne_, 329
+
+_Mlle. de Clermont_, 436
+
+Magne, M. E., 241
+
+Maintenon, Mme. de, 279, 342 _note_
+
+Mairet, 167
+
+Maistre, Joseph de, 126, 438
+
+Maistre, Xavier de (1763-1852), 405 _note_, 430, 437-441, 452, 459
+
+_Malachi's Cove_, 41 _note_
+
+Malory, 26 _sq._
+
+_Man Born to be King, The_, 74
+
+_Manon Lescaut_, 304, 325, 352-364, 372 _note_, 374, 389, 413
+_note_, 470, 477, 482
+
+_Mansfield Park_, 429
+
+Map or Mapes, Walter, 23 _sq._, 29, 106, 226 _note_
+
+Marguerite de Valois (the eldest) (1491-1549), 126, 136-143, 475, 481
+
+---- (the middle), 299
+
+---- (the youngest) (1553-1615), 158, 159
+
+Maria del Occidente, 416
+
+_Marianne_, 340, 342 _note_, 345-352, 374, 436, 446, 450 _note_, 477
+
+Marini, 159 _note_
+
+"Marion de la Brière and Sir Ernault de Lyls," story of, 84-86
+
+_Mari Sylphe, Le_, 419, 424 _note_
+
+Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de (1688-1763), 318, 325, 326,
+337-352, 365 _note_, 366, 374, 375, 428, 450, 454 _note_, 469, 477, 482
+
+Marlowe, xiv
+
+_Marmion_, 83
+
+Marmontel, Jean François (1723-1799), 375, 377, 412-424, 428, 458, 463,
+470, 482
+
+Marot, 137, 138, 155
+
+_Marquis des Arcis, Le_, 403, 406, 407
+
+_Marriage à la Mode_ (Dryden's), 200
+
+_Marriage of Kitty, The_, 191 _note_
+
+Marryat, 336
+
+Martial, 136
+
+"Matter of Britain, France, and Rome," the, 3, Chap. II. _passim_
+
+Maupassant, 2
+
+_Mélanges Littéraires_ (Pigault-Lebrun's), 458
+
+_Memnon_, 384
+
+_Mémoires de Grammont_, 306
+
+_Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité_, 353-358
+
+_Memoirs_ (Marmontel's), 413
+
+_Memoirs of Several Ladies_, 454
+
+_Méraugis de Portlesguez_, 71
+
+Meredith, Mr. George, 2, 37, 49, 91, 350 _note_
+
+Mérimée, 438
+
+Meyer, M. Paul, 479
+
+_Micromégas_, 380 _note_, 384, 477
+
+Middleton, 275
+
+_Midsummer Night's Dream, A_, 26
+
+_Milady Catesby_, 435
+
+Mill, J. S., 400
+
+Milton, 30 _note_, 139, 155, 274, 275, 378 _note_, 459
+
+_Minnigrey_, 460
+
+Molière, F. de (?-1623?), 161
+
+_Molière, Henriette de_, 242, 243
+
+Molière, J. B. P. de, 219, 282, 296, 330, 368
+
+_Mon Oncle Thomas_, 463, 464
+
+_Monsieur Nicolas_, 454, 456
+
+Montaigne, 133, 136 _note_, 184
+
+Montemayor, 157, 165, 476
+
+Montreux, N. de (c. 1600), 157-160
+
+Moore, T., 241
+
+Mordred, Sir, 50 _note_
+
+More, M. F., 298
+
+Morgane-la-Fée, 39
+
+Morley of Blackburn, Lord, 402 _note_
+
+Morris, Mr. Mowbray, 265 _note_, 385
+
+Morris, Mr. W., 14, 38 _note_, 52, 74
+
+_Mort d'Agrippine, La_, 296
+
+_Moyen de Parvenir_, 111, 162, 276, 481
+
+_Mr. Midshipman Easy_, 453
+
+_Mr. Sludge the Medium_, 404 _note_
+
+_Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy_, 180 _note_
+
+_Muguet, Le Prince_, 264
+
+Murat, Mme. de (Henriette Julie de Castelnau, 1670-1716), 257 _note_
+
+
+Naigeon, 412
+
+Nennius, 17
+
+Nerval, G. de, 271 _note_
+
+Nervèze, A. de (c. 1600), 157 _note_, 160
+
+_Neveu de Rameau, Le_, 403, 404
+
+_Newton Forster_, 189
+
+Nonnus, 274
+
+_Northanger Abbey_, 450 _note_
+
+_Nouveaux Contes Orientaux_, 260 _note_, 261
+
+_Nouvelle Héloïse, La._ See _Julie_.
+
+_Nuit et le Moment, La_, 366 _sq._, 477
+
+
+_Odyssey, The_, 1, 11, 71
+
+_Ogier de Danemarche_, 14
+
+_Old Mortality_, 176
+
+"Ollenix du Mont Sacré." _See_ Montreux, N. de
+
+_Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield, Les_, 386
+
+_Othello_, 364
+
+_Ourika_, 449
+
+Ovid, 2
+
+
+Pajon, xiii, 267
+
+_Palerne, Guillaume de (William of)_, 60
+
+_Palmerin of England_, 146-150
+
+_Palombe_, 237
+
+Palomides, Sir, 53
+
+_Pantagruel_, Chap. VI. _passim_
+
+_Paradoxe sur le Comédien_, 408 _note_
+
+Paris, M. Gaston, 22, 23
+
+Paris, M. Paulin, 22, 23, 38, 480
+
+_Partenopeus (-pex) de Blois_, 3, 57-71, 480
+
+Pasquier, 150 _note_
+
+_Pathelin_, 101
+
+_Paul et Virginie_, 425, 426-452
+
+_Paysan Parvenu, Le_, 340-345, 454
+
+_Paysan Perverti, Le_, 340, 454
+
+_Peau d'Âne_, 252
+
+_Pédant Joué, Le_, 296
+
+_Pensées_ (Joubert's), 412
+
+Pepys, 135, 317 _note_, 456
+
+_Percevale le Gallois_, 24
+
+Perrault, Charles (1628-1703), 154, 246 _sq._, 273
+
+_Petit Jehan de Saintré_, 100-102, 475, 480
+
+Petronius, 2
+
+_Phèdre_, 331
+
+_Philocalie_, 162
+
+_Philocaste_, 162
+
+_Philosophe Soi-distant, Le_, 419-423
+
+Pigault-Lebrun, Charles Antoine Guillaume P. de L'Épinoy (1753-1835),
+456-471, 472 _note_, 482
+
+Pigault-_Maubaillarck_, 458 _note_
+
+Planche, G., 353, 360
+
+Plato, 1 _note_, 82, 165, 166, 387, 388
+
+Plutarch, 234
+
+_Polexandre_, 176 _note_, 236, 237
+
+_Polite Conversation_, 110
+
+Pollock, Mr. W. H., 408 _note_
+
+_Polyandre_, 277, 278, 482
+
+_Polyxène_, 161
+
+Pope, 29, 37, 194, 327
+
+_Pornographe, Le_, 454 _note_, 455
+
+_Pour et Contre, Le_, 352
+
+Praed, 187 _note_
+
+_Prècieuses Ridicules, Les_, 220
+
+Preschac, Sieur de (early 18th cent.), 258
+
+Prévost (Antoine François P. d'Exilles, 1697-1763), 325, 352-364, 366,
+373, 375, 426, 428, 468, 470, 477
+
+Prévost, Pierre, 394
+
+_Pride and Prejudice_, 287
+
+_Prince Chéri, Le_, 253
+
+_Princesse de Babylone, La_, 385, 389, 390, 478
+
+_Princesse de Clèves, La_, 275, 298-305, 308, 364, 413 _note_, 482
+
+Prior, 91
+
+Prudentius, 5
+
+Puisieux, Mme. de, 403
+
+Pyramus, Denis (early 13th cent.), 58
+
+
+_Quatre Facardins, Les._ See _Facardins_
+
+_Quatre Fils d'Aymon, Les_, 15
+
+_Queenhoo Hall_, 291 _note_
+
+_Quentin Durward_, 94 _note_
+
+_Quinze Joies de Mariage, Les_, 101
+
+
+Rabelais, François (1495?-1553?), xii, Chap. VI., 134-144 _passim_, 276,
+298, 307, 321, 425, 372, 476, 481
+
+Racine, 219, 272, 288, 296
+
+Radcliffe, Mrs., 468
+
+_Rasselas_, 377, 381
+
+Reade, Charles, 98
+
+_Rebecca and Rowena_, 339 _note_
+
+Recamier, Mme., 442, 443
+
+Regnard, 330 _note_
+
+_Regrets sur ma Vieille Robe de Chambre_, 403
+
+_Reine Fantasque, La_, 265
+
+_Relations_ (A. Hamilton's), 306 _note_
+
+_Religieuse, Histoire d'une_ (Marivaux's), 347
+
+_Religieuse, La_ (Diderot's), 407-411, 452
+
+_René_, 452, 464
+
+Restif de la Bretonne (Nicolas Edmé, 1734-1806), 340, 452-456, 459, 472
+_note_, 482
+
+Reure, the Abbé, 163 _sq._
+
+_Rêve de D'Alembert_, 403 _note_
+
+_Rêve, Le_ (Zola's), 462
+
+Reynier, M. G., 145 _note_, 150, 150 _note_, 157-163
+
+_Rhodanthe and Dosicles_, 265 _note_
+
+Rhys, Sir John, 31
+
+Riccoboni, Mme. (Marie Jeanne Laboras de Mézières, 1714-1792), 340, 430,
+432-436
+
+Richardson, xvi, 26, 208, 225, 349, 356 _note_, 375, 395, 398, 404, 465
+
+_Robene and Makyne_, 156 _note_
+
+_Roberval, M. de_, 467
+
+_Robin Hood_, 82
+
+Rochechouart, Isabel de (c. 1600), 162, 163 and _note_
+
+_Roland, Chanson de_, 12 _sq._, 147
+
+_Roman Bourgeois_, 275, 277, 286-295, 476, 482
+
+_Roman Comique_, 275, 279-287, 476, 482
+
+_Roman de la Rose_, 89, 90, 106, 475, 481
+
+_Roman de Renart_, 90, 106, 475
+
+_Roman de Troie_, 17, 475
+
+_Roman Satirique_, 162
+
+_Roman Sentimental avant l'Astrée, Le._ _See_ Reynier
+
+Romances, Greek, 2, 3, 18, 153, 154 _note_, 204, 476, 479
+
+_Romans de la Table Ronde, Les_, 480
+
+_Rosanie_, 263
+
+Ross, Alexander, 139 _note_
+
+Rostand, M., 297
+
+Rousseau, J. J. (1712-1778), 160, 175, 265, 375, 382, 390-400, 401
+_note_, 412, 426, 428, 436, 441, 455, 456, 457, 468, 470, 482
+
+Ruskin, Mr., 405, 412 _note_, 459, 481
+
+Rymer, 464
+
+
+Saint-Évremond, 296 _note_, 317 and _note_, 321, 378
+
+Saint-Foix, M. de, story of, 270 _note_
+
+Saint-Marc-Girardin, 175
+
+Saint-Pierre (Jacques Henri Bernardin de, 1737-1814), 377, 412, 424-427,
+428, 478
+
+Saint-Simon, 222
+
+Sainte-Beuve, 154 _note_, 353 _sq._, 438, 442
+
+_Sainte-Eulalie_, the, 4-6
+
+Sainte-More (or Maure), Benoît de (12th cent.), 17, 87, 480
+
+"Saint's Life," the, 3-8
+
+_Sandford and Merton_, 392
+
+San Pedro, Diego de, 145 _note_
+
+_Sans Merci_, 51 _note_
+
+_Sappho_, 176 _note_, 195 _note_, 215
+
+_Saturday Review_, vii
+
+_Savoisiade_ (Urfé's), 167
+
+Scarron, Paul (1610-1660), 275, 278-287, 292, 325, 469, 476, 482
+
+Schiller, 456
+
+Scott, Sir W., xiii, 15, 93, 94, 98, 135, 176, 181, 186 _note_, 225,
+287, 291 _note_, 326, 471
+
+Scudéry, Georges (1601-1667) and Madeleine de (1607-1701) de, 154,
+176-229, 287, 309, 318, 429, 460 _note_, 469
+
+Selis, Nicolas Joseph (1737-1802), 268, 269
+
+Sens, the Archbishop of, 337, 338
+
+_Sense and Sensibility_, 429, 432
+
+"Sensibility," 428-452
+
+_Serpentin Vert_, 251 _note_
+
+_Seven Wise Masters, The_, 89, 93
+
+Sévigné, Mme. de, 153, 173, 175, 230, 298
+
+Shakespeare, 26, 122, 150, 150 _note_, 218, 220, 274, 275, 364, 464
+
+Sharp, Becky, xv
+
+Shelley, 150 _note_, 156, 218, 274, 275
+
+Sidney, Sir Philip, 165
+
+_Silvanire_ (Urfé's), 167
+
+_Sireine_ (Urfé's), 167
+
+_Sir Isumbras_, 4, 24
+
+Smith, Prof. Gregory, ix _note_, 26 _note_
+
+Smith, Sydney, 321
+
+Smollett, 458 _note_, 459, 463
+
+Socrates, 1 _note_
+
+_Soirées Bretonnes, Les_, 266
+
+_Soirées de St. Pétersbourg, Les_, 438
+
+_Soliman the Second_, 417-419
+
+Sommer, Dr., 27, 30 _note_, 480
+
+_Songe de Platon_, 387, 388
+
+_Sopha, Le_, 366 _sq._
+
+Sorel, Charles (1597-1674), 273, 275-278, 288 _note_, 476, 482
+
+Southey, xii, 60 _note_, 93, 121, 150, 273, 481
+
+Souza, Mme. de (Adélaïde-Marie Émilie-Filleul, 1761-1836), 430, 437
+
+_Spectateur, Le_ (Marivaux's), 339
+
+Spenser, 21, 26 _note_, 31 _note_, 61 _note_, 65, 155, 220
+
+_Spiritual Quixote, The_, 277
+
+_St. Alexis, The_, 6-8, 100
+
+_St. Leger, The_, 6
+
+Staal-Delaunay, Mme. de, 355 _note_
+
+Staël, Mme. de, 430, 442, 443, 459, 464
+
+_Stage Love_ (Mr. Swinburne's), 443, 444
+
+Sterne, 132 _note_, 133, 276, 321, 369, 375, 401, 404, 438-441
+
+Stevenson, J. H., 91
+
+---- R. L., 6, 101 _note_
+
+Straparola, 258 _note_
+
+Strutt, 291 _note_
+
+Suckling, Sir J., 241
+
+_Sultanes de Gujerate, Les_, 261
+
+Swift, 109, 110, 115, 125 _note_, 132, 321, 369, 378, 380, 390
+
+Swinburne, Mr., 33, 52, 254, 443
+
+_Système de la Nature_, 411
+
+
+_Tableaux de Société_ (Pigault-Lebrun's), 465, 466
+
+Tabourot des Accords (1549-1590), 143
+
+_Tales of the Genii_, 258 _note_
+
+Tallemant des Réaux, Gédéon (1619-1692), 136 _note_, 140, 230, 296
+_note_, 330 _note_
+
+Talleyrand, 341 _note_
+
+_Tanzaï et Néadarné_, 371 _sq._, 477
+
+_Taureau Blanc, Le_, 387
+
+_Télémaque_, 318, 323, 324, 477
+
+_Tempest, The_, 393
+
+Temple, Henrietta, 37
+
+Tencin, Mme. de (Claudine Alexandrine Guérin, 1681-1749), 430-432
+
+Tennyson, 30 _note_ and _sq._, 54
+
+Thackeray, 15, 125, 150, 153, 218, 241, 257, 278, 279, 314, 321, 349,
+358, 414 _note_, 431 _note_
+
+_Theagenes and Chariclea_, 157 _note_
+
+_Théâtre de la Foire_ (Lesage's), 329
+
+Theocritus, 36 _note_
+
+Theodorus Prodromus, 266 _note_
+
+_Thierry and Theodoret_, 234
+
+Thoms, Mr., 103
+
+_Thousand and One Days_, 259
+
+_Thousand and One Nights_, 259
+
+_Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour_, 259
+
+_Three Clerks, The_, 373
+
+Thucydides, 1
+
+Tilley, Mr. A., 138
+
+_Titi, Le Prince_, 265 and _note_
+
+_Tom Jones_, 413 _note_, 469, 472
+
+Toplady, 176 _note_
+
+Tory, G. (1480?-1533), 124
+
+Toyabee, Mr. Paget, xii
+
+Traill, Mr. H. D., 164, 385, 458 _note_
+
+Tressan (Louis Élisabeth de Lavergne, Comte de, 1705-1783), 471
+
+Trimmer, Mrs., 455
+
+_Troilus_ (B. de Sainte-More's). See _Roman de Troie_
+
+_Troilus_ (1st cent. prose), 81, 87
+
+Trollope, A., 41 _note_, 373
+
+_Turcaret_, 329, 330
+
+Twain, Mark, 465 _note_
+
+
+Urfé, Honoré d' (1568-1625), 152-154, 157, 162-175, 179, 206 _note_, 476
+
+Urquhart, Sir T., 114
+
+
+_Valise Trouvée, La_, 328
+
+_Vathek_, 262, 306 _note_
+
+_Vicar of Wakefield, The_, 353
+
+Vida, 232
+
+_Vie de Mon Père, La_, 454
+
+Villedieu, Mme. de (Marie Catherine Hortense des Jardins, 1631-1683),
+241-245, 472
+
+Villehardouin, 135
+
+Villeneuve, Mme. de, 265
+
+Villon, F., 128, 129
+
+_Vingt Ans Après_, 114, 279
+
+Virgil, 2 _note_, 155
+
+Voisenon, Claude Henri de Fusée de (1708-1775), vi _note_
+
+Voltaire (Francis Marie Arouet de, 1694-1778), 153, 307, 321, 369, 375,
+377-390, 391 _note_, 393, 400, 401, 412, 414, 426, 441, 458, 462 _note_,
+470, 477, 482
+
+_Volupté, La_ (A. Hamilton's), 322 _note_
+
+_Voyage à Constantinoble_, 13
+
+_Voyage autour de ma Chambre_, 438 _sq._
+
+_Voyages à la Lune et au Soleil_, 275, 295-298, 482
+
+_Voyages de Scarmentado, Les_, 384
+
+
+Wall, Professor, 331
+
+Walpole, H., 401 _note_, 423 _note_
+
+Walton, I., 286
+
+Ward, Ned, 453
+
+_Water Babies, The_, xii
+
+_Waverley_, 287
+
+Webster, xiv, 275
+
+_Werther_, 441, 443, 446, 451
+
+Wieland, 269, 270
+
+_Wild Duck, The_, 39 _note_, 362
+
+Williams, Sir C. H., 91
+
+Winchelsea, Lady, 245
+
+_Woman Killed with Kindness, A_, 364
+
+Wright, Dr. Hagbert, xii
+
+---- T., 73 _note_
+
+Wycherley, 288
+
+Wyclif, 467
+
+
+Xenophon, 1, 2, 178
+
+
+_Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, A_, 465 _note_
+
+_Yellow Dwarf, The_, 248
+
+_Ywain and Gawain_, 56
+
+
+_Zadig_, 379 _note_, 382, 383, 477
+
+_Zaïde_, 299, 318
+
+_Zaza, La Princesse_, 264
+
+_Zénéyde_, 308 _sq._
+
+_Zibeline, La Princesse_, 262, 263
+
+Zola, 462
+
+_Zulma, Les Voyages de_, 259, 260
+
+
+THE END
+
+PRINTED BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY
+
+FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
+
+By DR. GEORGE SAINTSBURY
+
+Three Vols. 8vo.
+
+    VOL. I. FROM THE ORIGINS TO SPENSER. 10s. net.
+    VOL. II. FROM SHAKESPEARE TO CRABBE. 15s. net.
+    VOL. III. FROM BLAKE TO SWINBURNE. 15s. net.
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME I.
+
+_THE ATHENÆUM._--"A thing complete and convincing beyond any former work
+from the same hand. 'Hardly any one who takes a sufficient interest in
+prosody to induce him to read this book' will fail to find it absorbing,
+and even entertaining, as only one other book on the subject of
+versification is: the _Petit Traité de poésie française_ of Théodore de
+Banville.... We await the second and third volumes of this admirable
+undertaking with impatience. To stop reading it at the end of the first
+volume leaves one in just such a state of suspense as if it had been a
+novel of adventure, and not the story of the adventures of prosody. 'I
+am myself quite sure,' says Prof. Saintsbury, 'that English prosody is,
+and has been, a living thing for seven hundred years at least.' That he
+sees it living is his supreme praise, and such praise belongs to him
+only among historians of English verse."
+
+_THE TIMES._--"To Professor Saintsbury English prosody is a living
+thing, and not an abstraction. He has read poetry for pleasure long
+before he began to read it with a scientific purpose, and so he has
+learnt what poetry is before making up his mind what it ought to be. It
+is a common fault of writers upon prosody that they set out to discover
+the laws of music without ever training their ears to apprehend music.
+They theorise very plausibly at large, but they betray their incapacity
+so soon as they proceed to scan a difficult line. Professor Saintsbury
+never fails in this way. He knows a good line from a bad one, and he
+knows how a good line ought to be read, even though he may sometimes be
+doubtful how it ought to be scanned. He has, therefore, the knowledge
+most essential to a writer upon prosody.... His object, as he constantly
+insists, is to write a history, to tell us what has happened to our
+prosody from the time when it began to be English and ceased to be
+Anglo-Saxon; not to tell us whether it has happened rightly or wrongly,
+nor even to be too ready to tell us why or how it has happened."
+
+Professor W. P. KER in the _SCOTTISH HISTORICAL REVIEW_.--"The history
+of verse, as Mr. Saintsbury takes it, is one aspect of the history of
+poetry; that is to say, the minute examination of structure does not
+leave out of account the nature of the living thing; we are not kept all
+the time at the microscope. This is the great beauty of his book; it is
+a history of English poetry in one particular form or mode.... The
+author perceives that the form of verse is not separable from the soul
+of poetry; poetry 'has neither kernel nor husk, but is all one,' to
+adapt the phrase of another critic."
+
+
+A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY
+
+By DR. GEORGE SAINTSBURY
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME II.
+
+_THE ATHENÆUM._--"We have read this volume with as eager an impatience
+as that with which we read the first, for the author is in love with his
+subject; he sees 'that English prosody is and has been a living thing
+for seven hundred years at least,' and, knowing that metre, verse pure
+and simple, is a means of expressing emotion, he here sets out to show
+us its development and variety during the most splendid years of our
+national consciousness."
+
+_THE STANDARD._--"The second volume of Professor Saintsbury's elaborate
+work on English prosody is even more interesting than his former volume.
+Extending as it does from Shakespeare to Crabbe, it covers the great
+period of English poetry and deals with the final development of the
+prosodic system. It reveals the encyclopædic knowledge of English
+literature and the minute scholarship which render the Edinburgh
+professor so eminently suited to this inquiry, which is, we think, the
+most important literary adventure he has undertaken.... It is certainly
+the best book on the subject of which it treats, and it will be long
+indeed before it is likely to be superseded."
+
+_THE CAMBRIDGE REVIEW._--"It is the capacity of being able to depart
+from traditional opinion, the evidence shown on every page of
+independent thought based upon a first-hand study of documents, which
+make the present volume one of the most stimulating that even Professor
+Saintsbury has written. The work, as a whole, is a fine testimony to his
+lack of pedantry, to his catholicity of taste, to his sturdy common
+sense, and it exhibits a virtue rare among prosodists (dare we say among
+scholars generally?)--courtesy to opponents."
+
+_THE PALL MALL GAZETTE._--"This volume is even more fascinating than was
+the first. For here there are even greater names concerned--Shakespeare
+and Milton.... It appears to us that Professor Saintsbury hardly writes
+a page in which he does not advance by some degree his view of the right
+laws of verse. We cannot imagine any one seriously defending, after this
+majestical work, the old syllabic notion of scansion.... The book is
+written with all the liveliness of style, richness of argument, and
+wealth of material that we expect. Not only is it a history of prosody;
+but it is full of acute judgments on poetry and poets."
+
+
+
+
+OTHER WORKS
+
+BY
+
+DR. GEORGE SAINTSBURY
+
+
+A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM. 8vo. 14s. net
+
+A HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
+
+A HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE (1780-1900). Crown 8vo. 7s.
+6d.
+
+A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. Also in five
+parts. 2s. each.
+
+HISTORICAL MANUAL OF ENGLISH PROSODY. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+A FIRST BOOK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Globe 8vo. 1s. 6d.
+
+DRYDEN. Library Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. net. Popular Edition, Crown 8vo,
+1s. 6d. Sewed, 1s. Pocket Edition, Fcap. 8vo, 1s. net. [_English Men of
+Letters._
+
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1, by 
+George Saintsbury
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FRENCH NOVEL, VOL. 1 ***
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1, by 
+George Saintsbury
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1
+       From the Beginning to 1800
+
+Author: George Saintsbury
+
+Release Date: October 8, 2008 [EBook #26838]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FRENCH NOVEL, VOL. 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lee Dawei, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL</h1>
+
+<p class="center">
+MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br />
+<br />
+LONDON  BOMBAY  CALCUTTA  MADRAS  MELBOURNE<br />
+<br />
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+<br />
+NEW YORK  BOSTON  CHICAGO<br />
+DALLAS  SAN FRANCISCO<br />
+<br />
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br />
+TORONTO<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL</h2>
+
+<h4>(TO THE CLOSE OF THE 19TH CENTURY)</h4>
+
+<h2>BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY</h2>
+
+<h3>M.A. AND HON. D.LITT. OXON.; HON. LL.D. ABERD.; HON. D.LITT. DURH.;
+FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY; HON. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD;
+LATE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
+EDINBURGH</h3>
+
+<h3>VOL. I</h3>
+
+<h3>FROM THE BEGINNING TO 1800</h3>
+
+<h4>MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1917</h4>
+
+<h5>COPYRIGHT</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>In beginning what, if it ever gets finished, must in all probability be
+the last of some already perhaps too numerous studies of literary
+history, I should like to point out that the plan of it is somewhat
+different from that of most, if not all, of its predecessors. I have
+usually gone on the principle (which I still think a sound one) that, in
+studying the literature of a country, or in dealing with such general
+characteristics of parts of literature as prosody, or such coefficients
+of all literature as criticism, minorities are, sometimes at least, of
+as much importance as majorities, and that to omit them altogether is to
+risk, or rather to assure, an imperfect&mdash;and dangerously
+imperfect&mdash;product.</p>
+
+<p>In the present instance, however, I am attempting something that I have
+never, at such length, attempted before&mdash;the history of a Kind, and a
+Kind which has distinguished itself, as few others have done, by
+communicating to readers the <i>pleasure</i> of literature. I might almost
+say that it is the history of that pleasure, quite as much as the
+history of the kind itself, that I wish to trace. In doing so it is
+obviously superfluous to include inferiorities and failures, unless they
+have some very special lesson or interest, or have been (as in the case
+of the minorities on the bridge of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries) for the most part, and unduly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> neglected, though they are
+important as experiments and links.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> We really do want here&mdash;what the
+reprehensible hedonism of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and his submission to what
+some one has called "the eternal enemy, Caprice," wanted in all
+cases&mdash;"only the chief and principal things." I wish to give a full
+history of how what is commonly called the French Novel came into being
+and kept itself in being; but I do not wish to give an exhaustive,
+though I hope to give a pretty full, account of its practitioners.</p>
+
+<p>In another point, however, I have kept to my old ways, and that is the
+way of beginning at the beginning. I disagree utterly with any Balbus
+who would build an absolute wall between romance and novel, or a wall
+hardly less absolute between verse- and prose-fiction. I think the
+French have (what is not common in their language) an advantage over us
+in possessing the general term <i>Roman</i>, and I have perhaps taken a
+certain liberty with my own title in order to keep the noun-part of it
+to a single word. I shall extend the meaning of "novel"&mdash;that of <i>roman</i>
+would need no extension&mdash;to include, not only the prose books, old and
+new, which are more generally called "romance," but the verse romances
+of the earlier period.</p>
+
+<p>The subject is one with which I can at least plead almost lifelong
+familiarity. I became a subscriber to "Rolandi's," I think, during my
+holidays as a senior schoolboy, and continued the subscriptions during
+my vacations when I was at Oxford. In the very considerable leisure
+which I enjoyed during the six years when I was Classical Master at
+Elizabeth College, Guernsey,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span> I read more French than any other
+literature, and more novels than anything else in French. In the late
+'seventies and early 'eighties, as well as more recently, I had to round
+off and fill in my knowledge of the older matter, for an elaborate
+account of French literature in the <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>, for a
+long series of articles on French novelists in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>,
+and for the <i>Primer</i> and <i>Short History</i> of the subject which I wrote
+for the Clarendon Press; while from 1880 to 1894, as a <i>Saturday
+Review</i>er, I received, every month, almost everything notable (and a
+great deal hardly worth noting) that had appeared in France.</p>
+
+<p>Since then, the cutting off of this supply, and the extreme and constant
+urgency of quite different demands on my time, have made my cultivation
+of the once familiar field "<i>parc</i> and infrequent." But I doubt whether
+any really good judge would say that this was a serious drawback in
+itself; and it ceases to be one, even relatively, by the restriction of
+the subject to the close of the last century. It will be time to write
+of the twentieth-century novel when the twentieth century itself has
+gone more than a little farther.</p>
+
+<p>For the abundance of translation, in the earlier part especially, I
+need, I think, make no apology. I shall hardly, by any one worth
+hearing, be accused of laziness or scamping in consequence of it, for
+translation is much more troublesome, and takes a great deal more time,
+than comment or history. The advantage, from all other points of view,
+should need no exposition: nor, I think, should that of pretty full
+story-abstract now and then.</p>
+
+<p>There is one point on which, at the risk of being thought to "talk too
+much of my matters," I should like to say a further word. All my books,
+before the present volume, have been composed with the aid of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>
+library, not very large, but constantly growing, and always reinforced
+with special reference to the work in hand; while I was able also, on
+all necessary occasions, to visit Oxford or London (after I left the
+latter as a residence), and for twenty years the numerous public or
+semi-public libraries of Edinburgh were also open to me. This present
+<i>History</i> has been outlined in expectation for a very long time; and has
+been actually laid down for two or three years. But I had not been able
+to put much of it on paper when circumstances, while they gave me
+greater, indeed almost entire, leisure for writing, obliged me to part
+with my own library (save a few books with a reserve <i>pretium
+affectionis</i> on them), and, though they brought me nearer both to Oxford
+and to London, made it less easy for me to visit either. The London
+Library, that Providence of unbooked authors, came indeed to my aid, for
+without it I should have had to leave the book alone altogether; and I
+have been "munitioned" sometimes, by kindness or good luck, in other
+ways. But I have had to rely much more on memory, and of course in some
+cases on previous writing of my own, than ever before, though, except in
+one special case,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> there will be found, I think, not a single page of
+mere "rehashing." I mention this without the slightest desire to beg
+off, in one sense, from any omissions or mistakes which may be found
+here, but merely to assure my readers that such mistakes and omissions
+are not due to idle and careless bookmaking. That "books have fates" is
+an accepted proposition. In respect to one of these&mdash;possession of
+materials and authorities&mdash;mine have been exceptionally fortunate
+hitherto, and if they had any merit it was no doubt largely due to this.
+I have, in the present, endeavoured to make the best of what was not
+quite such good fortune. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span>And if anybody still says, "Why did you not
+wait till you could supply deficiencies?" I can only reply that, after
+seventy, &#957;&#965;&#958; &#947;&#945;&#961; &#949;&#961;&#967;&#949;&#964;&#945;&#953; is a more insistent warrant, and
+warning, than ever.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">GEORGE SAINTSBURY.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">[<i>Edinburgh, 1914-15; Southampton, 1915-16</i>]<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">1 <span class="smcap">Royal Crescent, Bath</span>, <i>May 31, 1917</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
+<h2>ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA</h2>
+
+
+<p>P. 3, <i>note</i>.&mdash;This note was originally left vague, because, in the
+first place, to perform public and personal fantasias with one's spear
+on the shield of a champion, with whom one does not intend to fight out
+the quarrel, seems to me bad chivalry, and secondly, because those
+readers who were likely to be interested could hardly mistake the
+reference. The regretted death, a short time after the page was sent to
+press, of Mr. W. J. Courthope may give occasion to an acknowledgment,
+coupled with a sincere <i>ave atque vale</i>. Mr. Courthope was never an
+intimate friend of mine, and our agreement was greater in political than
+in literary matters: but for more than thirty years we were on the best
+terms of acquaintance, and I had a thorough respect for his
+accomplishments.</p>
+
+<p>P. 20, l. 5.&mdash;<i>Fuerres de Gadres.</i> I wonder how many people thought of
+this when Englishmen "forayed Gaza" just before Easter, 1917?</p>
+
+<p>P. 46, mid-page.&mdash;It so happened that, some time after having passed
+this sheet for press, I was re-reading Dante (as is my custom every year
+or two), and came upon that other passage (in the <i>Paradiso</i>, and
+therefore not known to more than a few of the thousands who know the
+Francesca one) in which the poet refers to the explanation between
+Lancelot and the Queen. It had escaped my memory (though I think I may
+say honestly that I knew it well enough) when I passed the sheet: but it
+seemed to me that perhaps some readers, who do not care much for
+"parallel passages" in the pedantic sense, might, like myself, feel
+pleasure in having the great things of literature, in different places,
+brought together. Moreover, the <i>Paradiso</i> allusion seems to have
+puzzled or misled most of the commentators, including the late Mr. A. J.
+Butler, who, by his translation and edition of the <i>Purgatorio</i> in 1880,
+was my Virgil to lead me through the <i>Commedia</i>, after I had sinfully
+neglected it for exactly half a life-time. He did not know, and might
+easily not have known, the Vulgate <i>Lancelot</i>: but some of those whom he
+cites, and who evidently <i>did</i> know it, do not seem to have recognised
+the full significance of the passage in Dante. The text will give the
+original: the <i>Paradiso</i> (xvi. 13-15) reference tells how Beatrice
+(after Cacciaguida's biographical and historical recital, and when
+Dante, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> a confessed outburst of family pride, addresses his ancestor
+with the stately <i>Voi</i>), "smiling, appeared like her who coughed at the
+first fault which is written of Guinevere." This, of course (see text
+once more), is the Lady of Malahault, though Dante does not name her as
+he does Prince Galahault in the other <i>locus</i>. The older commentators
+(who, as has been said, <i>did</i> know the original) do not seem to have
+seen in the reference much more than that both ladies noticed, and
+perhaps approved, what was happening. But I think there is more in it.
+The Lady of Malahault (see note in text) had previously been aware that
+Lancelot was deeply in love, though he would not tell her with whom. Her
+cough therefore meant: "Ah! I have found you out." Now Beatrice, well as
+she knew Dante's propensity to love, knew as well that <i>pride</i> was even
+more of a besetting weakness of his. This was quite a harmless instance
+of it: but still it <i>was</i> an instance&mdash;and the "smile" which is <i>not</i>
+recorded of the Arthurian lady meant: "Ah! I have <i>caught</i> you out."
+Even if this be excessive "reading into" the texts, the juxtaposition of
+them may not be unsatisfactory to some who are not least worth
+satisfying. (Since writing this, I have been reminded that Mr. Paget
+Toynbee did make the "juxtaposition" in his Clarendon Press <i>Specimens
+of Old French</i> (October, 1892), printing there the "Lady of Malahault"
+passage from MSS. copied by Professor Ker. But there can be no harm in
+duplicating it.)</p>
+
+<p>P. 121, ll. 8-10. Perhaps instead of, or at least beside, Archdeacon
+Grantly I should have mentioned a more real dignitary (as some count
+reality) of the Church, Charles Kingsley. The Archdeacon and the Canon
+would have fought on many ecclesiastical and some political grounds, but
+they might have got on as being, in Dr. Grantly's own words at a
+memorable moment "both gentlemen." At any rate, Kingsley was soaked in
+Rabelais, and one of the real curiosities of literature is the way in
+which the strength of <i>Gargantua</i> and <i>Pantagruel</i> helped to beget the
+sweetness of <i>The Water Babies</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Chap. viii. pp. 163-175.&mdash;After I had "made my" own "siege" of the
+<i>Astr&eacute;e</i> on the basis of notes recording a study of it at the B.M., Dr.
+Hagbert Wright of the London Library was good enough to let me know that
+his many years' quest of the book had been at last successful, and to
+give me the first reading of it. (It was Southey's copy, with his own
+unmistakable autograph and an inserted note, while it also contained a
+cover of a letter addressed to him, which had evidently been used as a
+book-mark.) Although not more than four months had passed since the
+previous reading, I found it quite as appetising as (in the text itself)
+I had expressed my conviction that it would be: and things not noticed
+before cropped up most agreeably. There is no space to notice all or
+many of them here. But one of the earliest, due to Hylas, cannot be
+omitted, for it is the completest and most sententious vindication of
+polyerotism ever phrased: "Ce n'&eacute;tait pas que je n'aimasse les autres:
+mais j'avais encore, outre leur place, celle-ci vide dans mon &acirc;me." And
+the soul of Hylas, like Nature herself, abhorred a vacuum! (This
+approximation is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span> intended as "new and original": but it was some
+time after making it that I recovered, in <i>Notre Dame de Paris</i>, a
+forgotten anticipation of it by Victor Hugo.)</p>
+
+<p>Another early point of interest was that the frontispiece portrait of
+Astr&eacute;e (the edition, see <i>Bibliography</i>, appears to be the latest of the
+original and ungarbled ones, <i>imprim&eacute;e &agrave; Rouen, et se vend &agrave; Paris</i>
+(1647, 10 vols.)) is evidently a portrait, though not an identical one,
+of the same face given in the Abb&eacute; Reure's engraving of Diane de
+Ch&acirc;teaumorand herself. The nose, especially, is hardly mistakable, but
+the eyes have rather less expression, and the mouth less character,
+though the whole face (naturally) looks younger.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the portrait here&mdash;not of C&eacute;ladon, but admittedly of
+Honor&eacute; d'Urf&eacute; himself&mdash;is much less flattering than that in the Abb&eacute;'s
+book.</p>
+
+<p>Things specially noted in the second reading would (it has been said)
+overflow all bounds here possible: but we may perhaps find room for
+three lines from about the best of the very numerous but not very
+poetical verses, at the beginning of the sixth (<i>i.e.</i> the middle of the
+original <i>third</i>) volume:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Le prix d'Amour c'est l'Amour m&ecirc;me.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Change d'humeur qui s'y plaira,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jamais Hylas ne changera,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the two last being the continuous refrain of a "villanelle" in which
+this bad man boasts his constancy in inconstancy.</p>
+
+<p>P. 265, <i>note</i> 1.&mdash;It ought perhaps to be mentioned that Mlle. de
+Lussan's paternity is also, and somewhat more probably, attributed to
+Eugene's elder brother, Thomas of Savoy, Comte de Soissons. The lady is
+said to have been born in 1682, when Eugene (b. 1663) was barely
+nineteen; but of course this is not decisive. His brother Thomas
+<i>Am&eacute;d&eacute;e</i> (b. 1656) was twenty-six at the time. The attribution above
+mentioned gave no second name, and did not specify the relationship to
+Eugene: so I had some difficulty in identifying the person, as there
+were, in the century, three Princes Thomas of Savoy, and I had few books
+of reference. But my old friend and constant helper in matters
+historical, the Rev. William Hunt, D.Litt., cleared the point up for me.
+Of the other two&mdash;Thomas <i>Fran&ccedil;ois</i>, who was by marriage Comte de
+Soissons and was grandfather of Eugene and Thomas Am&eacute;d&eacute;e, died in the
+same year in which Thomas Am&eacute;d&eacute;e was born, therefore twenty-six before
+Mlle. de Lussan's birth: while the third, Thomas <i>Joseph</i>, Eugene's
+cousin, was not born till 1796, fourteen years after the lady. The
+matter is, of course, of no literary importance: but as I had passed the
+sheet for press before noticing the diversity of statements, I thought
+it better to settle it.</p>
+
+<p>P. 267. Pajon. I ought not to have forgotten to mention that he bears
+the medal of Sir Walter Scott (Introduction to <i>The Abbot</i>) as "a
+pleasing writer of French Fairy Tales."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Page 453.&mdash;Choderlos de Laclos. Some surprise has been expressed by a
+friend of great competence at my leaving out <i>Les Liaisons Dangereuses</i>.
+I am, of course, aware that "persons of distinction" have taken an
+interest in it; and I understand that, not many years ago, the
+unfortunate author of the beautiful lines <i>To Cynara</i> wasted his time
+and talent on translating the thing. To make sure that my former
+rejection was not unjustified, I have accordingly read it with care
+since the greater part of this book was passed for press; and it shall
+have a judgment here, if not in the text. I am unable to find any
+redeeming point in it, except that some ingenuity is shown in bringing
+about the <i>d&eacute;nouement</i> by a rupture between the villain-hero and the
+villainess-heroine, M. le Vicomte de Valmont and Mme. la Marquise de
+Merteuil. Even this, though fairly craftsmanlike in treatment, is banal
+enough in idea&mdash;that idea being merely that jealousy, in both sexes,
+survives love, shame, and everything else, even community in
+scoundrelism&mdash;in other words, that the green-eyed monster (like "Vernon"
+and unlike "Ver") <i>semper viret</i>. But it is scarcely worth one's while
+to read six hundred pages of very small print in order to learn this. Of
+amusement, as apart from this very elementary instruction, I at least
+can find nothing. The pair above mentioned, on whom practically hangs
+the whole appeal, are merely disgusting. Their very voluptuousness is
+accidental: the sum and substance, the property and business of their
+lives and natures, are compact of mischief, malice, treachery, and the
+desire of "getting the better of somebody." Nor has this diabolism
+anything grand or impressive about it&mdash;anything that "intends greatly"
+and glows, as has been said, with a black splendour, in Marlowesque or
+Websterian fashion. Nor, again, is it a "Fleur du Mal" of the
+Baudelairian kind, but only an ugly as well as noxious weed. It is
+prosaic and suburban. There is neither tragedy nor comedy, neither
+passion nor humour, nor even wit, except a little horse-play. Congreve
+and Cr&eacute;billon are as far off as Marlowe and Webster; in fact, the
+descent from Cr&eacute;billon's M. de Cl&eacute;rval to Laclos' M. de Valmont is
+almost inexpressible. And, once more, there is nothing to console one
+but the dull and obvious moral that to adopt love-making as an
+"occupation" (<i>vide</i> text, p. 367) is only too likely to result in the
+&#964;&#949;&#967;&#957;&#951; becoming, in vulgar hands, very &#946;&#945;&#957;&#945;&#965;&#963;&#959;&#962;
+indeed.</p>
+
+<p>The victims and <i>comparses</i> of the story do nothing to atone for the
+principals. The lacrimose stoop-to-folly-and-wring-his-bosom Mme. de
+Tourvel is merely a bore; the <i>ing&eacute;nue</i> C&eacute;cile de Volanges is, as Mme.
+de Merteuil says, a <i>petite imb&eacute;cile</i> throughout, and becomes no better
+than she should be with the facility of a predestined strumpet; her
+lover, Valmont's rival, and Mme. de Merteuil's plaything, M. le
+Chevalier Danceny, is not so very much better than <i>he</i> should be, and
+nearly as much an imbecile in the masculine way as C&eacute;cile in the
+feminine; her respectable mother and Valmont's respectable aunt are not
+merely as blind as owls are, but as stupid as owls are not. Finally, the
+book, which in many particular points, as well as in the general<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span>
+letter-scheme, follows Richardson closely (adding clumsy notes to
+explain the letters, apologise for their style, etc.), exhibits most of
+the faults of its original with hardly any of that original's merits.
+Valmont, for instance, is that intolerable creature, a pattern Bad
+Man&mdash;a Grandison-Lovelace&mdash;a prig of vice. Indeed, I cannot see how any
+interest can be taken in the book, except that derived from its
+background of <i>tacenda</i>; and though no one, I think, who has read the
+present volume will accuse me of squeamishness, <i>I</i> can find in it no
+interest at all. The final situations referred to above, if artistically
+led up to and crisply told in a story of twenty to fifty pages, might
+have some; but ditchwatered out as they are, I have no use for them. The
+letter-form is particularly unfortunate, because, at least as used, it
+excludes the ironic presentation which permits one almost to fall in
+love with Becky Sharp, and quite to enjoy <i>Jonathan Wild</i>. Of course, if
+anybody says (and apologists <i>do</i> say that Laclos was, as a man, proper
+in morals and mild in manners) that to hold up the wicked to mere
+detestation is a worthy work, I am not disposed to argue the point.
+Only, for myself, I prefer to take moral diatribes from the clergy and
+aesthetic delectation from the artist. The avenging duel between
+Lovelace and Colonel Morden is finely done; that between Valmont and
+Danceny is an obvious copy of it, and not finely done at all. Some,
+again, of the riskiest passages in subject are made simply dull by a
+Richardsonian particularity which has no seasoning either of humour or
+of excitement. Now, a Richardson <i>de mauvais lieu</i> is more than a
+bore&mdash;it is a nuisance, not pure and simple, but impure and complex.</p>
+
+<p>I have in old days given to a few novels (though, of course, only when
+they richly deserved it) what is called a "slating"&mdash;an
+<i>&eacute;reintement</i>&mdash;as I once had the honour of translating that word in
+conversation, at the request of a distinguished English novelist, for
+the benefit of a distinguished French one. Perhaps an example of the
+process is not utterly out of place in a <i>History</i> of the novel itself.
+But I have long given up reviewing fiction, and I do not remember any
+book of which I shall have to speak as I have just spoken. So <i>hic
+caestus</i>, etc.&mdash;though I am not such a coxcomb as to include <i>victor</i> in
+the quotation.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> For the opposite or corresponding reasons, it has seemed
+unnecessary to dwell on such persons, a hundred and more years later, as
+Voisenon and La Morli&egrave;re, who are merely "corrupt followers" of
+Cr&eacute;billon <i>fils</i>; or, between the two groups, on the numerous failures
+of the quasi-historical kind which derived partly from Mlle. de Scud&eacute;ry
+and partly from Mme. de la Fayette.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> That of the minor "Sensibility" novelists in the last
+chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> I have once more to thank Professors Ker, Elton, and
+Gregory Smith for their kindness in reading my proofs and making most
+valuable suggestions; as well as Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly and the
+Rev. William Hunt for information on particular points.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER I<br />
+<span class='pagenum'>PAGE</span><br /></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Introductory</span>                                               <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The early history of prose fiction&mdash;The late classical stage&mdash;A <i>nexus</i>
+of
+Greek and French romance?&mdash;the facts about the matter&mdash;The
+power and influence of the "Saint's Life"&mdash;The Legend of St.
+Eulalia&mdash;The <i>St. Alexis</i>.</p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER II</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Matters of France, Rome, and Britain</span>                   <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_9">9</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The <i>Chanson de Geste</i>&mdash;The proportions of history and fiction in
+them&mdash;The
+part played by language, prosody, and manners&mdash;Some
+drawbacks&mdash;But a fair balance of actual story merit&mdash;Some instances
+of this&mdash;The classical borrowings: Troy and
+Alexander&mdash;<i>Troilus</i>&mdash;<i>Alexander</i>&mdash;The
+Arthurian Legend&mdash;Chrestien de Troyes
+and the theories about him&mdash;His unquestioned work&mdash;Comparison
+of the <i>Chevalier &agrave; la Charette</i> and the prose <i>Lancelot</i>&mdash;The
+constitution
+of the Arthuriad&mdash;Its approximation to the novel proper&mdash;Especially
+in the characters and relations of Lancelot and
+Guinevere&mdash;Lancelot&mdash;Guinevere&mdash;Some
+minor points&mdash;Illustrative extracts
+translated from the "Vulgate": the youth of Lancelot&mdash;The
+first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere&mdash;The scene of the kiss&mdash;Some
+further remarks on the novel-character of the story&mdash;And
+the personages&mdash;Books.</p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER III</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Romans D'Aventures</span>                                        <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_55">55</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Variety of the present group&mdash;Different views held of it&mdash;<i>Partenopeus
+of Blois</i> selected for analysis and translation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER IV</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Beginnings of Prose Fiction</span>                           <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_73">73</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Prose novelettes of the thirteenth century: <i>Aucassin et Nicolette</i> not
+quite typical&mdash;<i>L'Empereur Constant</i> more so&mdash;<i>Le Roi Flore et la
+Belle Jehane</i>&mdash;<i>La Comtesse de Ponthieu</i>&mdash;Those of the fourteenth:
+<i>Asseneth</i>&mdash;<i>Troilus</i>&mdash;<i>Foulques Fitzwarin</i>&mdash;Something on
+these&mdash;And
+on the short story generally.</p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER V</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Allegory, Fabliau, and Prose Story of Common Life</span>         <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_89">89</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The connection with prose fiction of allegory&mdash;And of the <i>fabliaux</i>&mdash;The
+rise of the <i>nouvelle</i> itself&mdash;<i>Les Cent Nouvelles
+Nouvelles</i>&mdash;Analysis
+of "La Demoiselle Cavali&egrave;re"&mdash;The interest of <i>namea</i>
+personages&mdash;<i>Petit Jehan de Saintr&eacute;</i>&mdash;<i>Jehan de Paris.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER VI</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Rabelais</span>                                                 <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_105">105</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The anonymity, or at least impersonality, of authorship up to this
+point&mdash;Rabelais
+unquestionably the first very great known writer&mdash;But the
+first great novelist?&mdash;Some objections considered&mdash;And dismissed
+as affecting the general attraction of the book&mdash;Which lies, largely
+if not wholly, in its story-interest&mdash;Contrast of the <i>Moyen de
+Parvenir</i>&mdash;A
+general theme possible&mdash;A reference, to be taken up
+later, to the last Book&mdash;Running survey of the whole&mdash;<i>Gargantua</i>&mdash;The
+birth and education&mdash;The war&mdash;The Counsel to Picrochole&mdash;The
+peace and the Abbey of Thelema&mdash;<i>Pantagruel</i> I. The contrasted
+youth&mdash;Panurge&mdash;Short view of the sequels in Book II.&mdash;<i>Pantagruel</i>
+II. (Book III.) The marriage of Panurge and the
+consultations on it&mdash;<i>Pantagruel</i> III. (Book IV.) The first part of
+the voyage&mdash;<i>Pantagruel</i> IV. (Book V.) The second part of the
+voyage: the "Isle Sonnante"&mdash;"La Quinte"&mdash;The conclusion
+and The Bottle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER VII</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Successors of Rabelais and the Influence of The
+"Amadis" Romances</span>                                            <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_134">134</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Subsidiary importance of Brant&ocirc;me and other character-mongers&mdash;The
+<i>Heptameron</i>&mdash;Note on Montaigne&mdash;Character and "problems"&mdash;Parlamente
+on human and divine love&mdash;Desp&eacute;riers&mdash;<i>Contes et Joyeux
+Devis</i>&mdash;Other tale-collections&mdash;The "provincial" character of these&mdash;The
+<i>Amadis</i> romances&mdash;Their characteristics&mdash;Extravagance in
+incident, nomenclature, etc.&mdash;The "cruel" heroine&mdash;Note on
+H&eacute;lisenne de Crenne.</p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER VIII</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Seventeenth-century Novel</span>&mdash;I.                <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_152">152</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>The Pastoral and Heroic Romance, and the Fairy Story.</i></p>
+
+<p>Immense importance of the seventeenth century in our subject&mdash;The
+divisions of its contribution&mdash;Note on marked influence of Greek
+Romance&mdash;The Pastoral in general&mdash;Its beginnings in France&mdash;Minor
+romances preceding the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>&mdash;Their general character&mdash;Examples
+of their style&mdash;Montreux and the <i>Bergeries de Juliette</i>&mdash;Des
+Escuteaux and his <i>Amours Diverses</i>&mdash;Fran&ccedil;ois de Moli&egrave;re:
+<i>Polyx&eacute;ne</i>&mdash;Du P&eacute;rier: <i>Arnoult et Clarimonde</i>&mdash;Du Croset:
+<i>Philocalie</i>&mdash;Corbin:
+<i>Philocaste</i>&mdash;Jean de Lannoi and his <i>Roman Satirique</i>&mdash;B&eacute;roalde
+de Verville outside the <i>Moyen de Parvenir</i>&mdash;The <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>:
+its author&mdash;The book&mdash;Its likeness to the <i>Arcadia</i>&mdash;Its philosophy
+and its general temper&mdash;Its appearance and its author's other work&mdash;Its
+character and appeals&mdash;Hylas and Stella and their Convention&mdash;Narrative
+skill frequent&mdash;The Fountain of the Truth of Love&mdash;Some
+drawbacks: awkward history&mdash;But attractive on the whole&mdash;The
+general importance and influence&mdash;The <i>Grand Cyrus</i>&mdash;Its
+preface to Madame de Longueville&mdash;The "Address to the Reader"&mdash;The
+opening of the "business"&mdash;The ups and downs of the
+general conduct of the story&mdash;Extracts: the introduction of Cyrus
+to Mandane&mdash;His soliloquy in the pavilion&mdash;The Fight of the Four
+Hundred&mdash;The abstract resumed&mdash;The oracle to Philidaspes&mdash;The
+advent of Araminta&mdash;Her correspondence with Spithridates&mdash;Some
+interposed comments&mdash;Analysis resumed&mdash;The statue in the gallery
+at Sardis&mdash;The judgment of Cyrus in a court of love&mdash;Thomyris
+on the warpath&mdash;General remarks on the book and its class&mdash;The
+other Scud&eacute;ry romances:
+<i>Ibrahim</i>&mdash;<i>Almahide</i>&mdash;<i>Cl&eacute;lie</i>&mdash;Perhaps the
+liveliest of the set&mdash;Rough outline of it&mdash;La Calpren&egrave;de:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span>
+his comparative cheerfulness&mdash;<i>Cl&eacute;opatre</i>: the Cypassis and Arminius
+episode&mdash;The
+book generally&mdash;<i>Cassandre</i>&mdash;<i>Faramond</i>&mdash;Gomberville: <i>La
+Carit&eacute;e</i>&mdash;<i>Polexandre</i>&mdash;Camus: <i>Palombe</i>, etc.&mdash;H&eacute;delin
+d'Aubignac:
+<i>Macarise</i>&mdash;Gombauld: <i>Endimion</i>&mdash;Mme. de Villedieu&mdash;<i>Le Grand
+Alcandre Frustr&eacute;</i>&mdash;The collected love-stories&mdash;Their historic
+liberties&mdash;<i>Carmente</i>,
+etc.&mdash;Her value on the whole&mdash;The fairy tale&mdash;Its
+<i>general</i> characteristics: the happy ending&mdash;Perrault and Mme.
+d'Aulnoy&mdash;Commented examples: <i>Gracieuse et Percinet</i>&mdash;<i>L'Adroite
+Princesse</i>&mdash;The danger of the "moral"&mdash;Yet often redeemed&mdash;The
+main <i>Cabinet des F&eacute;es</i>: more on Mme. d'Aulnoy&mdash;Warning against
+disappointment&mdash;Mlle. de la Force and others&mdash;The large proportion
+of Eastern Tales&mdash;<i>Les Voyages de Zulma</i>&mdash;F&eacute;nelon&mdash;Caylus&mdash;<i>Prince
+Courtebotte et Princesse Zibeline</i>&mdash;<i>Rosanie</i>&mdash;<i>Prince Muguet et
+Princesse Zaza</i>&mdash;Note on <i>Le Diable Amoureux</i>.</p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER IX</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Seventeenth-Century Novel&mdash;II.</span>      <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_274">274</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves"&mdash;Anthony Hamilton.</i></p>
+
+<p>The material of the chapter&mdash;Sorel and <i>Francion</i>&mdash;The <i>Berger
+Extravagant</i>
+and <i>Polyandre</i>&mdash;Scarron and the <i>Roman Comique</i>&mdash;The opening
+scene of this&mdash;Fureti&egrave;re and the <i>Roman Bourgeois</i>&mdash;Nicod&egrave;me takes
+Javotte home from church&mdash;Cyrano de Bergerac and his <i>Voyages</i>&mdash;Mme.
+de la Fayette and <i>La Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i>&mdash;Its central scene&mdash;Hamilton
+and the Nymph&mdash;The opening of <i>Fleur d'&Eacute;pine</i>&mdash;<i>Les
+Quatre Facardins</i>.</p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER X</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lesage, Marivaux, Pr&eacute;vost, Cr&eacute;billon</span>      <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_325">325</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The subjects of the chapter&mdash;Lesage: his Spanish connections&mdash;Peculiarity
+of his work generally&mdash;And its variety&mdash;<i>Le Diable Boiteux</i>&mdash;Lesage
+and Boileau&mdash;<i>Gil Blas</i>: its peculiar cosmopolitanism&mdash;And
+its adoption of the <i>homme sensuel moyen</i> fashion&mdash;Its inequality,
+in the Second and Fourth Books especially&mdash;Lesage's quality:
+not requiring many words, but indisputable&mdash;Marivaux: <i>Les Effets
+de la Sympathie</i> (?)&mdash;His work in general&mdash;<i>Le Paysan
+Parvenu</i>&mdash;<i>Marianne</i>:
+outline of the story&mdash;Importance of Marianne herself&mdash;Marivaux
+and Richardson: "Marivaudage"&mdash;Examples: Marianne
+on the <i>physique</i> and <i>moral</i> of Prioresses and Nuns&mdash;She returns
+the
+gift-clothes&mdash;Pr&eacute;vost&mdash;His minor novels: the opinions on them of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[Pg xxi]</a></span>
+Sainte-Beuve&mdash;And of Planche&mdash;The books themselves: <i>Histoire
+d'une Grecque Moderne</i>&mdash;<i>Cl&eacute;veland</i>&mdash;<i>Le Doyen de
+Kill&eacute;rine</i>&mdash;<i>The
+M&eacute;moires d'un Homme de Qualit&eacute;</i>&mdash;Its miscellaneous curiosities&mdash;<i>Manon
+Lescaut</i>&mdash;Its uniqueness&mdash;The character of its heroine&mdash;And
+that of the hero&mdash;The inevitableness of both and the inestimableness
+of their history&mdash;Cr&eacute;billon <i>fils</i>&mdash;The case against him&mdash;For the
+defendant:
+the veracity of his artificiality and his consummate cleverness&mdash;The
+Cr&eacute;billonesque atmosphere and method&mdash;Inequality of
+his general work; a survey of it.</p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER XI</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The <i>Philosophe</i> Novel</span>                              <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_377">377</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The use of the novel for "purpose"; Voltaire&mdash;General characteristics
+of his tales&mdash;<i>Candide</i>&mdash;<i>Zadig</i> and its
+satellites&mdash;<i>Microm&eacute;gas</i>&mdash;<i>L'Ing&eacute;nu</i>&mdash;<i>La
+Princesse de Babylone</i>&mdash;Some minors&mdash;Voltaire, the
+Kehl edition, and Plato&mdash;An attempt at different evaluation of
+himself&mdash;Rousseau: the novel character of the <i>Confessions</i>&mdash;The
+ambiguous position of <i>&Eacute;mile</i>&mdash;<i>La Nouvelle H&eacute;lo&iuml;se</i>&mdash;Its numerous
+and grave faults&mdash;The minor characters&mdash;The delinquencies of
+Saint-Preux&mdash;And the less charming points of Julie; her redemption&mdash;And
+the better side of the book generally&mdash;But little
+probability of more good work in novel from its author&mdash;The
+different case of Diderot&mdash;His gifts and the waste of them&mdash;The
+various display of them&mdash;<i>Le Neveu de Rameau</i>&mdash;<i>Jacques le
+Fataliste</i>&mdash;Its
+"Arcis-Pommeraye" episode&mdash;<i>La Religieuse</i>&mdash;Its story&mdash;A
+hardly missed, if missed, masterpiece&mdash;The successors&mdash;Marmontel&mdash;His
+"Telemachic" imitations worth little&mdash;The best
+of his <i>Contes Moraux</i> worth a good deal&mdash;<i>Alcibiade ou le
+Moi</i>&mdash;<i>Soliman
+the Second</i>&mdash;<i>The Four Flasks</i>&mdash;<i>Heureusement</i>&mdash;<i>Le Philosophe
+Soi-disant</i>&mdash;A real advance in these&mdash;Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.</p>
+
+
+<p>CHAPTER XII</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">"Sensibility." Minor and Later Novelists. The French
+Novel</span>, <i>c.</i> 1800                                        <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_428">428</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sensibility"&mdash;A glance at Miss Austen&mdash;The thing essentially French&mdash;Its
+history&mdash;Mme. de Tencin and <i>Le Comte de Comminge</i>&mdash;Mme.
+Riccoboni and <i>Le Marquis de Cressy</i>&mdash;Her other work: <i>Milady
+Catesby</i>&mdash;Mme. de Beaumont: <i>Lettres du Marquis de Roselle</i>&mdash;Mme.
+de Souza&mdash;Xavier de Maistre&mdash;His illustrations of the lighter side<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[Pg xxii]</a></span>
+of Sensibility&mdash;A sign of decadence&mdash;Benjamin Constant: <i>Adolphe</i>&mdash;Mme.
+de Duras's "postscript"&mdash;<i>Sensibilit&eacute;</i> and <i>engouement</i>&mdash;Some
+final words on the matter&mdash;Its importance here&mdash;Restif de
+la Bretonne&mdash;Pigault-Lebrun: the difference of his positive and
+relative importance&mdash;His life and the reasons for giving it&mdash;His
+general characteristics&mdash;<i>L'Enfant du Carnaval</i> and <i>Les Barons de
+Felsheim</i>&mdash;<i>Ang&eacute;lique et Jeanneton</i>&mdash;<i>Mon Oncle
+Thomas</i>&mdash;<i>J&eacute;r&ocirc;me</i>&mdash;The
+redeeming points of these&mdash;Others: <i>Ad&eacute;la&iuml;de de M&eacute;ran and
+Tableaux de Soci&eacute;t&eacute;</i>&mdash;<i>L'Officieux</i>&mdash;Further examples&mdash;Last words
+on him&mdash;The French novel in 1800.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Chronological Conspectus of the Principal Works of French
+Fiction noticed in this Volume</span>                               <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_475">475</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Bibliographical Notes</span>                                    <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_479">479</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Index</span>                                                    <span class='pagenum'><a href="#Page_483">483</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>INTRODUCTORY</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The early history of prose fiction.</div>
+
+<p>Although I have already, in two places,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> given a somewhat precise
+account of the manner in which fiction in the modern sense of the term,
+and especially prose fiction, came to occupy a province in modern
+literature which had been so scantily and infrequently cultivated in
+ancient, it would hardly be proper to enter upon the present subject
+with a mere reference to these other treatments. It is matter of
+practically no controversy (or at least of none in which it is worth
+while to take a part) that the history of prose fiction, before the
+Christian era, is very nearly a blank, and that, in the fortunately
+still fairly abundant remains of poetic fiction, "the story is the least
+part" (as Dryden says in another sense), or at least the <i>telling</i> of
+the story, in our modern sense, is so. Homer (in the <i>Odyssey</i> at any
+rate), Herodotus (in what was certainly not intentional fiction at all),
+and Xenophon<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> are about the only Greek writers who can tell a story,
+for the magnificent narrative of Thucydides in such cases as those of
+the Plague and the Syracusan cataclysm shows all the "headstrong"
+<i>ethos</i> of the author in its positive refusal to assume a "story"
+character. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> Latin there is nothing before Livy and Ovid;<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> of whom
+the one falls into the same category with Herodotus and Xenophon, and
+the other, admirable <i>raconteur</i> as he is, thinks first of his poetry.
+Scattered tales we have: "mimes" and other things there are some, and
+may have been more. But on the whole the schedule is not filled: there
+are no entries for the competition.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The late classical stage.</div>
+
+<p>In later classical literature, both Greek and Latin, the state of things
+alters considerably, though even then it cannot be said that fiction
+proper&mdash;that is to say, either prose or verse in which the
+accomplishment of the form is distinctly subordinate to the interesting
+treatment of the subject&mdash;constitutes a very large department, or even
+any regular department at all. If Lucius of Patrae was a real person,
+and much before Lucian, he may dispute with Petronius&mdash;that
+first-century Maupassant or Meredith, or both combined&mdash;the actual
+foundation of the novel as we have it; but Lucian himself and Apuleius
+(strangely enough handling the same subject in the two languages) give
+securer and more solid starting-places. Yet nothing follows Apuleius;
+though some time after Lucian the Greek romance, of which we have still
+a fair number of examples (spread, however, over a still larger number
+of centuries), establishes itself in a fashion. It does one thing,
+indeed, which in a way refounds or even founds the whole conception&mdash;it
+establishes the heroine. There are certainly feminine persons, sometimes
+not disagreeable, who play conspicuous and by no means mute or
+unpractical parts in both Greek and Latin versions of the Ass-Legend;
+but one can hardly call them heroines. There need be no chicane about
+the application of that title to Chloe or to Chariclea, to Leucippe or
+to her very remarkable rival, to Anthia or to Hysmine. Without the
+heroine you can hardly have romance: the novel without her (though her
+individuality may be put in commission) is an absolute impossibility.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A <i>nexus</i> of Greek and French romance? The facts about the
+matter.</div>
+
+<p>The connection between these curious performances (with the much larger
+number of things like them which we know to have existed) on the one
+side, and the Western mediaeval romance on the other, has been at
+various times matter of considerable controversy; but it need not
+trouble us much here. The Greek romance was to have very great influence
+on the French novel later: on the earlier composition, generally called
+by the same name as itself, it would seem<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> to have had next to none.
+Until we come to <i>Floire et Blanchefleur</i> and perhaps <i>Parthenopex</i>,
+things of a comparatively late stage, obviously post-Crusade, and so
+necessarily exposed to, and pretty clearly patient of, Greek-Eastern
+influence, there is nothing in Old French which shows even the same
+kinship to the Greek stories as the Old English <i>Apollonius of Tyre</i>,
+which was probably or rather certainly in the original Greek itself. The
+sources of French "romance"&mdash;I must take leave to request a "truce of
+God" as to the application of that term and of "epic" for present
+purposes&mdash;appear to have been two&mdash;the Saint's Life and the patriotic or
+family <i>saga</i>, the latter in the first place indelibly affected by the
+Mahometan incursions of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. The
+story-telling instinct&mdash;kindled by, or at first devoted to, these
+subjects&mdash;subsequently fastened on numerous others. In fact almost all
+was fish that came to the magic net of Romance; and though two great
+subjects of ours, the "Matter of Britain" (the Arthurian Legend) and the
+"Matter of Rome" (classical story generally, including the Tale of
+Troy), came traditionally to rank themselves with the "Matter of France"
+and with the great range of hagiology which it might have been dangerous
+to proclaim a fourth "matter" (even if anybody had been likely to take
+the view that it was so), these classifications are, like most of their
+kind, more specious than satisfactory.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+<div class="sidenote">The power and influence of the "Saint's Life."</div>
+
+<p>Any person&mdash;though indeed it is to be feared that the number of such
+persons is not very large&mdash;who has some knowledge of hagiology <i>and</i>
+some of literature will admit at once that the popular notion of a
+Saint's Life being necessarily a dull and "goody" thing is one of the
+foolishest pieces of presumptuous ignorance, and one of the most
+ignorant pieces of foolish presumption. Not only have modern novelists
+sometimes been better informed and better inspired&mdash;as in the case of
+more than one version of the Legends of St. Mary of Egypt, of St.
+Julian, of Saint Christopher, and others&mdash;but there remain scores if not
+hundreds of beautiful things that have been wholly or all but wholly
+neglected. It is impossible to imagine a better romance, either in verse
+or in prose, than might have been made by William Morris if he had kept
+his earliest loves and faiths and had taken the <i>variorum</i> Legend of St.
+Mary Magdalene, as we have it in divers forms from quite early French
+and English to the fifteenth-century English Miracle Play on the
+subject. That of St. Eustace ("Sir Isumbras"), though old letters and
+modern art have made something of it, has also never been fully
+developed in the directions which it opens up; and one could name many
+others. But it has to be admitted that the French (whether, as some
+would say, naturally enough or not) never gave the Saint's Life pure and
+simple the development which it received in English. It started them&mdash;I
+at least believe this&mdash;in the story-telling way; but cross-roads, to
+them more attractive, soon presented themselves.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Legend of St. Eulalia.</div>
+
+<p>Still, it started them. I hope it is neither intolerably fanciful nor
+the mere device of a compiler anxious to make his arrows of all wood, to
+suggest that there is something noteworthy in the nature of the very
+first piece of actual French which we possess. The Legend of St. Eulalia
+can be tried pretty high; for we have<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> the third hymn of the
+<i>Peristephanon</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> of Prudentius to compare it with. The metre of this</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Germine nobilis Eulalia<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is not one of the best, and contrasts ill with the stately
+decasyllables&mdash;perhaps the very earliest examples of that mighty metre
+that we have&mdash;which the infant daughter-tongue somehow devised for
+itself some centuries later. But Prudentius is almost always a poet, if
+a poet of the decadence, and he had as instruments a language and a
+prosody which were like a match rifle to a bow and arrows&mdash;<i>not</i> of yew
+and <i>not</i> cloth-yard shafts&mdash;when contrasted with the dialect and
+speech-craft of the unknown tenth-century Frenchman. Yet from some
+points of view, and especially from ours, the Anonymus of the Dark Ages
+wins. Prudentius spins out the story into two hundred and fifteen lines,
+with endless rhetorical and poetical amplification. He wants to say that
+Eulalia was twelve years old; but he actually informs us that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Curriculis tribus atque novem,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tres hyemes quater attigerat,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the whole history of the martyrdom is attitudinised and bedizened in
+the same fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Now listen to the noble simplicity of the first French poet and
+tale-teller:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A good maiden was Eulalia: fair had she the body, but the
+soul fairer. The enemies of God would fain conquer
+her&mdash;would fain make her serve the fiend. She listened not
+to the evil counsellors, that she should deny God, who
+abideth in Heaven aloft&mdash;neither for gold, nor for silver,
+nor for garments; for the royal threatenings, nor for
+entreaties. Nothing could ever bend the damsel so that she
+should not love the service of God. And for that reason she
+was brought before Maximian, who was the King in those days
+over the pagans. And he exhorted her&mdash;whereof she took no
+care&mdash;that she should flee from the name of Christian. But
+she assembled all her strength that she might rather sustain
+the torments than lose her virginity: for which reason she
+died in great honour. They cast her in the fire when it
+burnt fiercely: but she had no fault in her, and so it
+pained her [<i>or</i> she burnt<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>] not.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To this would not trust the pagan king: but with a sword he
+bade them take off her head. The damsel did not gainsay this
+thing: she would fain let go this worldly life if Christ
+gave command. And in shape of a dove she flew to heaven. Let
+us all pray that she may deign to intercede for us; that
+Christ may upon us have mercy after death, and of His
+clemency may allow us to come to Him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>St. Alexis</i>.</div>
+
+<p>Of course this is story-telling in its simplest form and on its smallest
+scale: but the essentials are there, and the non-essentials can be
+easily supplied&mdash;as indeed they are to some extent in the <i>Life of St.
+Leger</i> and to a greater in the <i>Life of St. Alexis</i>, which almost follow
+the <i>Sainte-Eulalie</i> in the making of French literature. The <i>St.
+Alexis</i> indeed provides something like a complete scheme of romance
+interest, and should be, though not translated (for it runs to between
+600 and 700 lines), in some degree analysed and discussed. It had, of
+course, a Latin original, and was rehandled more than once or twice. But
+we have the (apparently) first French form, probably of the eleventh
+century. The theme is one of the commonest and one of the least
+sympathetic in hagiology. Alexis is forced by his father, a rich Roman
+"count," to marry; and after (not before) the marriage, though of course
+before its consummation, he deserts his wife, flies to Syria, and
+becomes a beggar at Edessa. After a time, long enough to prevent
+recognition, he goes back to Rome, and obtains from his own family alms
+enough to live on, though these alms are dispensed to him by the
+servants with every mark of contempt. At last he dies, and is recognised
+forthwith as a saint. This hackneyed and somewhat repulsive <i>donn&eacute;e</i>
+(there is nothing repulsive to the present writer, let it be observed,
+either in Stylites or in Galahad) the French poet takes and makes a
+rather surprising best of it. He is not despicable even as a poet, all
+things considered; but he is something very different indeed from
+despicable as a tale-teller. To begin, or, strictly speaking, to end
+with (R. L. Stevenson never said a wiser thing than that the end must be
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> necessary result of, and as it were foretold in, the beginning), he
+has lessened if not wholly destroyed the jar of the situation by (most
+unusually and considering the mad chastity-worship of the time rather
+audaciously) associating the deserted wife directly with the Saint's
+"gustation of God" above:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Without doubt is St. Alexis in Heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With him has he God in the company of the Angels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>With him the maiden to whom he made himself strange,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Now he has her close to him&mdash;together are their souls,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I know not how to tell you how great their joy is.</i><a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But there are earlier touches of that life which makes all literature,
+and tale-telling most of all. An opening on Degeneracy is scarcely one
+of these, for this was, of course, a commonplace millenniums earlier,
+and it had the recent belief about the approaching end of the world at
+the actual <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1000 to prompt it. The maiden is "bought" for Alexis
+from her father or mother. Instead of the not unusual and rather
+distasteful sermons on virginity which later versions have, the future
+saint has at least the grace to accompany the return of the ring<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+with only a few words of renunciation of his spouse to Christ, and of
+declaration that in this world "love is imperfect, life frail, and joy
+mutable." A far more vivid touch is given by the mother who, when search
+for the fugitive has proved futile, ruins the nuptial chamber, destroys
+its decorations, and hangs it with rags and sackcloth,<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> and who, when
+the final discovery is made, reproaches the dead saint in a fashion
+which is not easy to reply to: "My son, why hadst thou no pity of <i>us</i>?
+Why hast thou not spoken to me <i>once</i>?" The bride has neither forgotten
+nor resented: she only weeps her deserter's former beauty, and swears to
+have no other spouse but God. The poem ends&mdash;or all but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> ends&mdash;in a
+hurly-burly of popular enthusiasm, which will hardly resign its new
+saint to Pope or Emperor, till at last, after the usual miracles of
+healing, the body is allowed to rest, splendidly entombed, in the Church
+of St. Boniface.</p>
+
+<p>Now the man who could thus, and by many other touches not mentioned, run
+blood into the veins of mummies,<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> could, with larger range of subject
+and wider choice of treatment, have done no small things in fiction.</p>
+
+<p>But enough talk of might-have-beens: let us come to the things that were
+done.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The article "Romance" in the <i>Encyclopaedia Britannica</i>,
+11th ed.; and the volume on <i>The English Novel</i> in Messrs. Dent's series
+"Channels of English Literature," London, 1913.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Plato (or Socrates?) does it only on a small scale and
+partially, though there are the makings of a great novelist in the
+<i>Dialogues</i>. Apollonius Rhodius is the next verse-tale teller to Homer
+among the prae-Christian Greeks.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Virgil, in the only parts of the <i>Aeneid</i> that make a good
+story, is following either Homer or Apollonius.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> To me at least the seeming seems to approach demonstration;
+and I can only speak as I find, with all due apologies to those who find
+differently.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> There is, of course, a Latin "sequence" on the Saint which
+is nearer to the French poem; but that does not affect our present
+point.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The literal "cooked," with no burlesque intention, was used
+of punitory burning quite early; but it is not certain that the
+transferred sense of <i>cuire</i>, "to <i>pain</i>," is not nearly or quite as
+old.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Not the least interesting part of this is that it is
+almost sufficient by itself to establish the connection between Saint's
+Life and Romance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> By a very curious touch he gives her also "les renges de
+s'espide," <i>i.e.</i> either the other ring by which the sword is attached
+to the sword-belt, or the belt itself. The meaning is, of course, that
+with her he renounces knighthood and all worldly rank.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> She addresses the room itself, dramatically enough:
+"Chamber! never more shalt thou bear ornament: never shall any joy in
+thee be enjoyed."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Let me repeat that I mean no despite to the "Communion of
+Saints" or to their records&mdash;much the reverse. But the hand of any
+<i>purpose</i>, Religious, Scientific, Political, what not, is apt to mummify
+story.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MATTERS OF FRANCE, ROME, AND BRITAIN</h3>
+
+
+<p>It has been said already that the Saint's Life, as it seems most
+probable to the present writer, started the romance in France; but of
+course we must allow considerable reinforcement of one kind or another
+from local, traditional, and literary sources. The time-honoured
+distribution, also given already, of the "matter" of this romance does
+not concern us so much here as it would in a history of French
+literature, but it concerns us. We shall indeed probably find that the
+home-grown or home-fed <i>Chanson de Geste</i> did least for the novel in the
+wide sense&mdash;that the "Matter of Rome" chiefly gave it variety, change of
+atmosphere to some extent, and an invaluable connection with older
+literatures, but that the central division or "Matter of Britain," with
+the immense fringes of miscellaneous <i>romans d'aventures</i>&mdash;which are
+sometimes more or less directly connected with it, and are always
+moulded more or less on its patterns&mdash;gave most of all.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>Chanson de Geste</i>.</div>
+
+<p>Of these, however, what has been called the family or patriotic part was
+undoubtedly the earliest and for a long time the most influential. There
+is, fortunately, not the least need here to fight out the old battle of
+the <i>cantilenae</i> or supposed <i>ballad</i>-originals. I see no reason to
+alter the doubt with which I have always regarded their existence; but
+it really does not matter, <i>to us</i>, whether they existed or not,
+especially since we have not got them now. What we have got is a vast
+mass of narrative poetry, which latterly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> took actual prose form, and
+which&mdash;as early certainly as the eleventh century and perhaps
+earlier&mdash;turns the French faculty for narrative (whether it was actually
+or entirely fictitious narrative or not does not again matter) into
+channels of a very promising kind.</p>
+
+<p>The novel-reader who has his wits and his memory about him may perhaps
+say, "Promising perhaps; but paying?" The answer must be that the
+promise may have taken some time to be fully liquidated, but that the
+immediate or short-dated payment was great. The fault of the <i>Chansons
+de Geste</i>&mdash;a fault which in some degree is to be found in French
+literature as a whole, and to a greater extent in all mediaeval
+literature&mdash;is that the class and the type are rather too prominent. The
+central conception of Charlemagne as a generally dignified but too
+frequently irascible and rather petulant monarch, surrounded by valiant
+and in a way faithful but exceedingly touchy or ticklish paladins, is no
+doubt true enough to the early stages of feudalism&mdash;in fact, to adapt
+the tag, there is too much human nature in it for it to be false. But it
+communicates a certain sameness to the chansons which stick closest to
+the model.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The proportions of history and fiction in them.</div>
+
+<p>The exact relation of the <i>Chansons de Geste</i> to the subsequent history
+of French fiction is thus an extremely important one, and one that
+requires, not only a good deal of reading on which to base any opinion
+that shall not be worthless, but a considerable exercise of critical
+discretion in order to form that opinion competently. The present writer
+can at least plead no small acquaintance with the subject, and a full if
+possibly over-generous acknowledgment of his dealings with it on the
+part of some French authorities, living and dead, of the highest
+competence. But the attractions of the vast and strangely long ignored
+body of <i>chanson</i> literature are curiously various in kind, and they
+cannot be indiscriminately drawn upon as evidence of an early mastery of
+tale-telling proper on the part of the French as a nation.</p>
+
+<p>There is indeed one solid fact, the importance of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> can hardly be
+exaggerated in some ways, though it may be wrongly estimated in others.
+Here is not merely the largest part proportionately, but a very large
+bulk positively, of the very earliest part of a literature, devoted to a
+kind of narrative which, though some of it may be historic originally,
+is pretty certainly worked up into its concrete and extant state by
+fiction. The comparison with the two literatures which on the whole bear
+such comparison with French best&mdash;English and Greek&mdash;is here very
+striking. People say that there "must have been" many <i>Beowulfs</i>: it can
+hardly be said that we have so much as a positive assertion of the
+existence of even one other, though we have allusions and glances which
+have been amplified in the usual fashion. We have positive and not
+reasonably doubtful assertion of the existence of a very large body of
+more or less early Greek epic; but we have nothing existing except the
+<i>Iliad</i> and the <i>Odyssey</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The part played by language, prosody, and manners.</div>
+
+<p>On this fact, be it repeated, if we observe the canons of sound
+criticism in the process, too much stress in general cannot be laid.
+There must have been some more than ordinary <i>nisus</i> towards
+story-telling in a people and a language which produced, and for three
+or four centuries cherished, something like a hundred legends, sometimes
+of great length, on the single general<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> subject of the exploits,
+sufferings, and what not of the great half-historical, half-legendary
+emperor <i>&agrave; la barbe florie</i>, of his son, and of the more legendary than
+historical peers, rebels, subjects, descendants, and "those about both"
+generally. And though the assertion requires a little more justification
+and allowance, there must have been some extraordinary gifts for more or
+less fictitious composition when such a vast body of spirited
+fictitious, or even half-fictitious, narrative is turned out.</p>
+
+<p>But in this justification as to the last part of the contention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> a good
+deal of care has to be observed. It will not necessarily follow, because
+the metal is attractive, that its attractiveness is always of the kind
+purely belonging to fiction; and, as a matter of fact, a large part of
+it is not. Much is due to the singular sonority and splendour of the
+language, which is much more like Spanish than modern French, and which
+only a few poets of exceptional power have been able to reproduce in
+modern French itself. Much more is imparted by the equally peculiar
+character of the metre&mdash;the long <i>tirades</i> or <i>laisses</i>, assonanced or
+mono-rhymed paragraphs in decasyllables or alexandrines, which, to those
+who have once caught their harmony, have an indescribable and
+unparalleled charm. Yet further, these attractions come from the strange
+unfamiliar world of life and character described and displayed; from the
+brilliant stock epithets and phrases that stud the style as if with a
+stiff but glittering embroidery; and from other sources too many to
+mention here.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Some drawbacks.</div>
+
+<p>Yet one must draw attention to the fact that all the named sources of
+the attraction, and may perhaps ask the reader to take it on trust that
+most of the unnamed, are not essentially or exclusively attractions of
+fiction&mdash;that they are attractions of poetry. And, on the other hand,
+while the weaving of so vast a web of actual fiction remains "to
+credit," there are not a few things to be set on the other side of the
+account. The sameness of the <i>chanson</i> story, the almost invariable
+recurrence of the stock motives and frameworks&mdash;of rebellion, treason,
+paynim invasion, petulance of a King's son, somewhat too "coming"
+affection of a King's daughter, tyrannical and Lear-like <i>impotentia</i> of
+the King himself, etc.&mdash;may be exaggerated, but cannot be denied. In the
+greatest of all by general acknowledgment, the far-famed <i>Roland</i>, the
+economy of pure story interest is pushed to a point which in a less
+unsophisticated age&mdash;say the twentieth instead of the twelfth or
+eleventh century&mdash;might be put down to deliberate theory or crotchet.
+The very incidents,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> stirring as they are, are put as it were in
+skeleton argument or summary rather than amplified into full story-flesh
+and blood; we see such heroine as there is only to see her die; even the
+great moment of the horn is given as if it had been "censored" by
+somebody. People, I believe, have called this brevity Homeric; but that
+is not how I read Homer.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, so jealous are some of those who well and wisely love the
+<i>chansons</i>, that I have known objections taken to ranking as pure
+examples, despite their undoubted age and merit, such pieces as <i>Amis et
+Amiles</i> (for passion and pathos and that just averted tragedy which is
+so difficult to manage, one of the finest of all) and the <i>Voyage &agrave;
+Constantinoble</i>, the single early specimen of mainly or purely comic
+donn&eacute;e.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> This seems to me, I confess, mere prudery or else mistaken
+logic, starting from the quite unjustifiable proposition that nothing
+that is not found in the <i>Chanson de Roland</i> ought to be found in any
+<i>chanson</i>. But we may admit that the "bones"&mdash;the simplest terms of the
+<i>chanson</i>-formula&mdash;hardly include varied interests, though they allow
+such interests to be clothed upon and added to them.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">But a fair balance of actual story merit.</div>
+
+<p>Despite this admission, however, and despite the further one that it is
+to the "romances" proper&mdash;Arthurian, classical, and adventurous&mdash;rather
+than to the <i>chansons</i> that one must look for the first satisfactory
+examples of such clothing and addition, it is not to be denied that the
+<i>chansons</i> themselves provide a great deal of it&mdash;whether because of
+adulteration with strictly "romance" matter is a question for debate in
+another place and not here. But it would be a singularly ungrateful
+memory which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> should, in this place, leave the reader with the idea that
+the <i>Chanson de Geste</i> as such is merely monotonous and dull. The
+intensity of the appeal of <i>Roland</i> is no doubt helped by that approach
+to bareness&mdash;even by a certain tautology&mdash;which has been mentioned.
+<i>Aliscans</i>, which few could reject as faithless to the type, contains,
+even without the family of dependent poems which cluster round it, a
+vivid picture of the valiant insubordinate warrior in William of Orange,
+with touches of comedy or at least horse-play.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Some instances of this.</div>
+
+<p>The striking, and to all but unusually dull or hopelessly "modern"
+imaginations as unusually beautiful, centre-point of <i>Amis et
+Amiles</i>,&mdash;where one of the heroes, who has sworn a "white" perjury to
+save his friend and is punished for it by the terror, "white" in the
+other sense, of leprosy, is abandoned by his wife, and only healed by
+the blood of the friend's children, is the crowning instance of another
+set of appeals. The catholicity of a man's literary taste, and his more
+special capacity of appreciating things mediaeval, may perhaps be better
+estimated by his opinion of <i>Amis et Amiles</i> than by any other
+touchstone; for it has more appeals than this almost tragic one&mdash;a much
+greater development of the love-motive than either <i>Roland</i> or
+<i>Aliscans</i>, and a more varied interest generally. Its continuation,
+<i>Jourdains de Blaivies</i>, takes the hero abroad, as do many other
+<i>chansons</i>, especially two of the most famous, <i>Huon de Bordeaux</i> and
+<i>Ogier de Danemarche</i>. These two are also good&mdash;perhaps the
+best&mdash;examples of a process very much practised in the Middle Ages and
+leaving its mark on future fiction&mdash;that of expansion and continuation.
+In the case of Ogier, indeed, this process was carried so far that
+enquiring students have been known to be sadly disappointed in the
+almost total disconnection between William Morris's beautiful section of
+<i>The Earthly Paradise</i> and the original French, as edited by Barrois in
+the first attempt to collect the <i>chansons</i> seventy or eighty years ago.
+The great "Orange" subcycle, of which <i>Aliscans</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> is the most famous,
+extends in many directions, but is apt in all its branches to cling more
+to "war and politics." William of Orange is in this respect partly
+matched by Garin of Lorraine. No <i>chanson</i> retained its popularity, in
+every sense of that word, better than the <i>Quatre Fils d'Aymon</i>&mdash;the
+history of Renaut de Montauban and his brothers and cousin, the famous
+enchanter-knight Maugis. As a "boy's book" there is perhaps none better,
+and the present writer remembers an extensive and apparently modern
+English translation which was a favourite "sixty years since." <i>Berte
+aux grands Pi&eacute;s</i>, the earliest form of a well-known legend, has the
+extrinsic charm of being mentioned by Villon; while there is no more
+agreeable love-story, on a small scale and in a simple tone, than that
+of Doon and Nicolette<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> in <i>Doon de Mayence</i>. And not to make a mere
+catalogue which, if supported by full abstracts of all the pieces, would
+be inordinately bulky and would otherwise convey little idea to readers,
+it may be said that the general <i>chanson</i> practice of grouping together
+or branching out the poems (whichever metaphor be preferred) after the
+fashion of a family-tree involves of itself no inconsiderable call on
+the tale-telling faculties. That the writers pay little or no attention
+to chronological and other possibilities is hardly much to say against
+them; if this be an unforgivable sin it is not clear how either Dickens
+or Thackeray is to escape damnation, with Sir Walter to greet them in
+their uncomfortable sojourn.</p>
+
+<p>But it is undoubtedly true that the almost exclusive concentration of
+the attention on war prevents the attainment of much detailed
+novel-interest. Love affairs&mdash;some glanced at above&mdash;do indeed make, in
+some of the <i>chansons</i>, a fuller appearance than the flashlight view of
+lost tragedy which we have in <i>Roland</i>. But until the reflex influence
+of the Arthurian romance begins to work, they are, though not always
+disagreeable or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> ungraceful, of a very simple and primitive kind, as
+indeed are the delineations of manners generally.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">The classical borrowings&mdash;Troy and Alexander.</div>
+
+<p>The "matter of Rome the Great," as the original text has it (though, in
+fact, Rome proper has little to do with the most important examples of
+the class), adds very importantly to the development of romance, and
+through that, of novel. Its bulk is considerable, and its examples have
+interest of various kinds. But for us this interest is concentrated
+upon, if not exclusively confined to, the two great groups (undertaken
+by, and illustrated in, the three great literary languages of the
+earlier Middle Ages, and, as usual, most remarkably and originally in
+French) of the Siege of Troy and the life of Alexander. It should be
+almost enough to say of the former that it introduced,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> with
+practically nothing but the faintest suggestion from really classical
+sources, the great romance-novel of the loves of Troilus and Cressida to
+the world's literature; and of the second, that it gives us the first
+instance of the infusion of Oriental mystery and marvel that we can
+discern in the literature of the West. For details about the books which
+contain these things, their authors and their probable sources and
+development, the reader must, as in other cases, look elsewhere.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> It
+is only our business here to say something about the general nature of
+the things themselves and about the additions that they made to the
+capital, and in some cases almost to the "plant," of fiction.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Troilus.</i></div>
+
+<p>That the Troilus and Cressida romance, with its large provision and its
+more large suggestion of the accomplished love-story, evolved from older
+tale-tellers by Boccaccio and Chaucer and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> Henryson and Shakespeare, is
+not a pure creation of the earlier Middle Ages, few people who patiently
+attend to evidence can now believe. Even in the wretched summaries of
+the Tale of Troy by Dictys and Dares (which again no such person as the
+one just described can put very early), the real novel-interest&mdash;even
+the most slender romance-interest&mdash;is hardly present at all. Beno&icirc;t de
+Sainte-More in the twelfth century may not have actually invented this;
+it is one of the principles of this book, as of all that its writer has
+written, that the quest of the inventor of a story is itself the vainest
+of inventions. But it is certain that nobody hitherto has been able to
+"get behind him," and it is still more certain that he has given enough
+base for the greater men who followed to build upon. If he cannot be
+credited with the position of the pseudo-Callisthenes (see below) in
+reference to the Alexander story, he may fairly share that of his
+contemporary Geoffrey of Monmouth, if not even of Nennius, as regards
+that of Arthur. The situation, or rather the group of situations, is of
+the most promising and suggestive kind, negatively and positively. In
+the first place the hero and heroine are persons about whom the great
+old poets of the subject have said little or nothing; and what an
+immense advantage this is all students of the historical novel of the
+last hundred years know. In the second, the way in which they are put in
+action (or ready for action) is equally satisfactory, or let us say
+stimulating. In a great war a prince loves a noble lady, who by birth
+and connections belongs to the enemy, and after vicissitudes, which can
+be elaborated according to the taste and powers of the romancer, gains
+her love. But the course of this love is interrupted by her surrender or
+exchange to the enemy themselves; her beauty attracts, nay has already
+attracted, the fancy of one of the enemy's leaders, and being not merely
+a coquette but a light-o'-love<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> she admits his addresses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> Her
+punishment follows or does not follow, is accomplished during the life
+of her true lover or not, according again to the taste and fancy of the
+person who handles the story. But the scheme, even at its simplest, is
+novel-soil: marked out, matured, manured, and ready for cultivation, and
+the crops which can be grown on it depend entirely upon the skill of the
+cultivator.</p>
+
+<p>For all this some would, as has been said above, see sufficient
+suggestion in the Greek Romance. I have myself known the examples of
+that Romance for a very long time and have always had a high opinion of
+it; but except what has been already noticed&mdash;the prominence of the
+heroine&mdash;I can see little or nothing that the Mediaeval romance could
+possibly owe to it, and as a matter of fact hardly anything else in
+common between the two. In the last, and to some extent the most
+remarkable (though very far from the best if not nearly the worst), of
+the Greek Romances, the <i>Hysminias and Hysmine</i> of Eustathius, we have
+indeed got to a point in advance, taking that word in a peculiar sense,
+even of Troilus at its most accomplished, that is to say, the Marinism
+or Marivaudage, if not even the Meredithese, of language and sentiment.
+But <i>Hysminias and Hysmine</i> is probably not older than Beno&icirc;t de
+Sainte-More's story, and as has just been said, Renaissance, nay
+post-Renaissance, not Mediaeval in character. We must, of course,
+abstain from "reading back" Chaucer or even Boccaccio into Beno&icirc;t or
+into his probable plagiarist Guido de Columnis; but there is nothing
+uncritical or wrong in "reading forward" from these to the later
+writers. The hedge-rose is there, which will develop into, and serve as
+a support for, the hybrid perpetual&mdash;a term which could itself be
+developed in application, after the fashion of a mediaeval <i>moralitas</i>.
+And when we have actually come to Pandaro and Deiphobus, to the "verse
+of society," as it may be called in a new sense, of the happier part of
+Chaucer and to the intense tragedy of the later part of Henryson, then
+we are in the workshop, if not in the actual show-room, of the completed
+novel. It would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> be easy, as it was not in the case of the <i>chansons</i>,
+to illustrate directly by a translation, either here from Beno&icirc;t or
+later from the shortened prose version of the fourteenth century, which
+we also possess; but it is not perhaps necessary, and would require much
+space.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Alexander.</i></div>
+
+<p>The influence of the Alexander story, though scarcely less, is of a
+widely different kind. In <i>Troilus</i>, as has been said, the Middle Age is
+working on scarcely more than the barest hints of antiquity, which it
+amplifies and supplements out of its own head and its own heart&mdash;a head
+which can dream dream-webs of subtlest texture unknown to the ancients,
+and a heart which can throb and bleed in a fashion hardly shown by any
+ancient except Sappho. With the Alexander group we find it much more
+passively recipient, though here also exercising its talent for varying
+and amplification. The controversies over the pseudo-Callisthenes,
+"Julius Valerius," the <i>Historia de Praeliis</i>, etc., are once more not
+for us; but results of them, which have almost or quite emerged from the
+state of controversy, are. It is certain that the appearance, in the
+classical languages, of the wilder legends about Alexander was as early
+at least as the third century after Christ&mdash;that is to say, long before
+even "Dark" let alone "Middle" Ages were thought of&mdash;and perhaps
+earlier. There seems to be very little doubt that these legends were of
+Egyptian or Asiatic origin, and so what we vaguely call "Oriental." They
+long anticipated the importing afresh of such influences by the
+Crusades, and they must, with all except Christians and Jews (that is to
+say, with the majority), have actually forestalled the Oriental
+influence of the Scriptures. Furthermore, when Mediaeval France began to
+create a new body of European literature, the Crusades had taken place;
+the appetite for things Oriental and perhaps we should say the
+half-imaginative power of appreciating them, had become active; and a
+considerable amount of literature in the vernacular had already been
+composed. It was not wonderful, therefore, that the <i>trouv&egrave;res</i> should
+fly upon this spoil. By not the least notable of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> curiosities of
+literature in its own class, they picked out a historical but not very
+important episode&mdash;the siege of Gaza and Alexander's disgraceful cruelty
+to its brave defender&mdash;and made of this a regular <i>Chanson de Geste</i> (in
+all but "Family" connection), the <i>Fuerres de Gadres</i>, a poem of several
+thousand lines. But the most generally popular (though sometimes
+squabbled over) parts of the story, were the supposed perversion of
+Olympias, not by the God Ammon but by the magician-king Nectanabus
+personating the God and becoming thereby father of the Hero; the Indian
+and some other real campaigns (the actual conquest of Persia was very
+slightly treated), and, far above all, the pure Oriental wonder-tales of
+the descent into the sea, the march to the Fountain of Youth, and other
+myths of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>Few things can be more different than the story-means used in these two
+legends; yet it must be personal taste rather than strict critical
+evaluation which pronounces one more important to the development of the
+novel than the other. There is a little love interest in the Alexander
+poems&mdash;the heroine of this part being Queen Candace&mdash;but it is slight,
+episodic, and rudimentary beside the complex and all-absorbing passions
+which, when genius took the matter in hand, were wrought out of the
+truth of Troilus and the faithlessness of Cressid. The joys of fighting
+or roaming, of adventure and quest, and above all those of marvel, are
+the attractions which the Alexander legend offers, and who shall say
+that they are insufficient? At any rate no one can deny that they have
+been made the seasoning, if not the stuff and substance, of an enormous
+slice of the romance interest, and of a very large part of that of the
+novel.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Arthurian Legend.</div>
+
+<p>It is scarcely necessary to speak of other classical romances, and it is
+of course very desirable to keep in mind that the Alexander story, in no
+form in which we have it, attempts any <i>strictly</i> novel interest; while
+though that interest is rife in some forms of "Troilus," those forms are
+not exactly of the period, and are in no case of the language, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+which we are dealing. It was an Italian, an Englishman, and a Scot who
+each in his own speech&mdash;one in the admirable vulgar tongue, of which at
+that time and as a finished thing, Italian was alone in Europe as
+possessor; the others in the very best of Middle English, and, as some
+think, almost the best of Middle Scots verse&mdash;displayed the full
+possibilities of Beno&icirc;t's story. But the third "matter," the matter of
+Britain or (in words better understanded of most people) the Arthurian
+Legend, after starting in Latin, was, as far as language went, for some
+time almost wholly French, though it is exceedingly possible that at
+least one, if not more, of its main authors was no Frenchman. And in
+this "matter" the exhibition of the powers of fiction&mdash;prose as well as
+verse&mdash;was carried to a point almost out of sight of that reached by the
+<i>Chansons</i>, and very far ahead of any contemporary treatment even of the
+Troilus story.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Chrestien de Troyes and the theories about him.</div>
+
+<p>Before, however, dealing with this great Arthurian story as a stage in
+the history of the Novel-Romance in and by itself, we must come to a
+figure which, though we have very little substantial knowledge of it,
+there is some reason for admitting as one of the first named and "coted"
+figures in French literature, at least as regards fiction in verse. It
+is well known that the action of modern criticism is in some respects
+strikingly like that of the sea in one of the most famous and vivid
+passages<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> of Spenser's unequalled scene-painting in words with
+musical accompaniment of them. It delights in nothing so much as in
+stripping one part of the shore of its belongings, and hurrying them off
+to heap upon another part. Chrestien de Troyes is one of the lucky
+personages who have benefited, not least and most recently, by this
+fancy. It is true that the actual works attributed to him have remained
+the same&mdash;his part of the shore has not been actually extended like part
+of that of the Humber. But it has had new riches, honours, and
+decorations heaped upon it till it has become, in the actual Spenserian
+language<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> of another but somewhat similar passage (111. iv. 20), a "rich
+strond" indeed. Until a comparatively recent period, the opinion
+entertained of Chrestien, by most if not all competent students of him,
+was pretty uniform, and, though quite favourable, not extraordinarily
+high. He was recognised as a past-master of the verse <i>roman
+d'aventures</i> in octosyllabic couplet, who probably took his
+heterogeneous materials wherever he found them; "did not invent much"
+(as Thackeray says of Smollett), but treated whatever he did treat in a
+singularly light and pleasant manner, not indeed free from the somewhat
+undistinguished fluency to which this "light and lewed" couplet, as
+Chaucer calls it, is liable, and showing no strong grasp either of
+character or of plot, but on the whole a very agreeable writer, and a
+quite capital example of the better class of <i>trouv&egrave;re</i>, far above the
+<i>improvisatore</i> on the one hand and the dull compiler on the other; but
+below, if not quite so far below, the definitely poetic poet.</p>
+
+<p>To an opinion something like this the present writer, who formed it long
+ago, not at second hand but from independent study of originals, and who
+has kept up and extended his acquaintance with Chrestien, still adheres.</p>
+
+<p>Of late, however, as above suggested, "Chrestiens" have gone up in the
+market to a surprising extent. Some twenty years ago the late M. Gaston
+Paris<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> announced and, with all his distinguished ability and his
+great knowledge elaborately supported, his conclusions, that the great
+French prose Arthurian romances (which had hitherto been considered by
+the best authorities, including his own no less admirable father, M.
+Paulin Paris, slightly anterior to the poet of Troyes, and in all
+probability the source of part at least of his work) were posterior and
+probably derivative. Now this, of itself, would of course to some extent
+put up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> Chrestien's value. But it, and the necessary corollaries from
+it, as originality and so forth, by no means exhaust the additional
+honours and achievements which have been heaped upon Chrestien by M.
+Paris and by others who have followed, more or less accepted, and in
+some cases bettered his ascriptions. In the first and principal place,
+there has been a tendency, almost general, to dethrone Walter Map from
+his old position as the real begetter of the completed Arthurian
+romance, and to substitute the Troyan. Then, partly in support, but also
+to some extent, I think, independently of this immense ennoblement,
+discoveries have been made of gifts and graces in Chrestien himself,
+which had entirely escaped the eyes of so excellent a critic, so erudite
+a scholar, and so passionate a lover of Old French literature as the
+elder M. Paris, and which continue to be invisible to the far inferior
+gifts and knowledge, but if I may dare to say so, the equal good will
+and the not inconsiderable critical experience, of the present
+historian.</p>
+
+<p>Now with large parts of this matter we have, fortunately enough, nothing
+to do, and the actual authorship of the great Arthurian conception,
+namely, the interweaving of the Graal story on the one hand and the
+loves of Lancelot and Guinevere on the other, with the Geoffrey of
+Monmouth matter, concerns us hardly at all. But some have gone even
+further than has been yet hinted in the exaltation of Chrestien. They
+have discovered in him&mdash;"him-by-himself-him"&mdash;as the author of his
+actual extant works and not as putative author of the real Arthuriad,
+not merely a pattern example of the court <i>trouv&egrave;re</i>&mdash;as much as this,
+or nearly as much, has been admitted here&mdash;but almost the inventor of
+romance and even of something very like novel, a kind of mediaeval
+Scott-Bulwer-Meredith, equally great at adventure, fashion, and
+character-analysis; subject only, and that not much, to the limitations
+of the time. In fact, if I do not do some of these panegyrists
+injustice, we ought to have a fancy bust of Chrestien, with the titles
+of his works gracefully inscribed on the pedestal, as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> frontispiece to
+this book, if not even a full-length statue, robed like a small St.
+Ursula, and like her in Memling's presentation at Bruges, sheltering in
+its ample folds the child-like figures of future French novelists and
+romancers, from the author of <i>Aucassin et Nicolette</i> to M. Anatole
+France.</p>
+
+<p>Again, some fifty years of more or less critical reading of novels of
+all ages and more than one or two languages, combined with nearly forty
+years reading of Chrestien himself and a passion for Old French, leave
+the present writer quite unable to rise to this beatific vision. But let
+us, before saying any more what Chrestien could or could not do, see, in
+the usual cold-blooded way, what he <i>did</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His unquestioned work.</div>
+
+<p>The works attributed to this very differently, though never
+unfavourably, estimated tale-teller&mdash;at least those which concern
+us&mdash;are <i>Percevale le Gallois</i>, <i>Le Chevalier &agrave;<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> la Charette</i>, <i>Le
+Chevalier au Lyon</i>, <i>Erec et Enide</i>, <i>Clig&egrave;s</i>, and a much shorter
+<i>Guillaume d'Angleterre</i>. This last has nothing to do with the Conqueror
+(though the title has naturally deceived some), and is a semi-mystical
+romance of the group derived from the above-mentioned legend of St.
+Eustace, and represented in English by the beautiful story of <i>Sir
+Isumbras</i>. It is very doubtfully Chrestien's, and in any case very
+unlike his other work; but those who think him the Arthurian magician
+might make something of it, as being nearer the tone of the older Graal
+stories than the rest of his compositions, even <i>Percevale</i> itself. Of
+these, all, except the <i>Charette</i>, deal with what may be called outliers
+of the Arthurian story. <i>Percevale</i> is the longest, but its immense
+length required, by common confession, several continuators;<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> the
+others have a rather uniform allowance of some six or seven thousand
+lines. <i>Clig&egrave;s</i> is one of the most "outside" of all, for the hero,
+though knighted by Arthur, is the disinherited heir of Constantinople,
+and the story is that of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> recovery of his kingdom. <i>Erec</i>, as the
+second part of the title will truly suggest, though the first may
+disguise it, gives us the story of the first of Tennyson's original
+<i>Idylls</i>. The <i>Chevalier au Lyon</i> is a delightful romance of the Gawain
+group, better represented by its English adaptation, <i>Ywain</i>, than any
+other French example. <i>Percevale</i> and the <i>Charette</i> touch closest on
+the central Arthurian story, and the latter has been the chief
+battlefield as to Chrestien's connection therewith, some even begging
+the question to the extent of adopting for it the title <i>Lancelot</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Comparison of the <i>Chevalier &agrave; la Charette</i> and the prose
+<i>Lancelot</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The subject is the episode, well known to English readers from Malory,
+of the abduction of Guinevere by Meleagraunce, the son of King
+Bagdemagus; of the inability of all knights but Lancelot (who has been
+absent from Court in one of the lovers' quarrels) to rescue her; and of
+his undertaking the task, though hampered in various ways, one of the
+earliest of which compelled him to ride in a cart&mdash;a thing regarded, by
+one of the odd<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> conventions of chivalry, as disgraceful to a knight.
+Meleagraunce, though no coward, is treacherous and "felon," and all
+sorts of mishaps befall Lancelot before he is able for the second time
+to conquer his antagonist, and finally to take his over and over again
+forfeited life. But long before this he has arrived at the castle where
+Guinevere is imprisoned; and has been enabled to arrange a meeting with
+her at night, which is accomplished by wrenching out the bars of her
+window. The ill chances and <i>quiproquos</i> which result from his having
+cut his hands in the proceeding (though the actual visit is not
+discovered), and the arts by which Meleagraunce ensnares the destined
+avenger for a time, lengthen out the story till, by the final contest,
+Meleagraunce goes to his own place and the Queen is restored to hers.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+<p>Unfortunately the blots of constant tautology and verbiage, with not
+infrequent flatness, are on all this gracious story as told by
+Chrestien.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> Among the traps and temptations which are thrown in
+Lancelot's way to the Queen is one of a highly "sensational" nature. In
+the night Lancelot hears a damsel, who is his hostess, though he has
+refused her most thorough hospitality, shrieking for assistance; and on
+coming to the spot finds her in a situation demanding instant help,
+which she begs, if the irreparable is not to happen. But the poet not
+only gives us a heavily figured description of the men-at-arms who bar
+the way to rescue, but puts into the mouth of the intending rescuer a
+speech (let us be exact) of twenty-eight lines and a quarter, during
+which the just mentioned irreparable, if it had been seriously meant,
+might have happened with plenty of time to spare. So, in the crowning
+scene (excellently told in Malory), where the lover forces his way
+through iron bars to his love, reckless of the tell-tale witness of his
+bleeding hands, the circumlocutions are <i>plusquam</i> Richardsonian&mdash;and do
+not fall far short of a serious anticipation of Shakespeare's burlesque
+in <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i>. The mainly gracious description is
+spoilt by terrible bathetics from time to time. Guinevere in her white
+nightdress and mantle of scarlet and <i>camus</i><a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> on one side of the
+bars, Lancelot outside, exchanging sweet salutes, "for much was he fain
+of her and she of him," are excellent. The next couplet, or quatrain,
+almost approaches the best poetry. "Of villainy or annoy make they no
+parley or complaint; but draw near each other so much at least that they
+hold each other hand by hand." But what follows? That they cannot come
+together vexes them so immeasurably that&mdash;what? They blame the iron work
+for it. This certainly shows an acute understanding<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> and a very
+creditable sense of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> the facts of the situation on the part of both
+lovers; but it might surely have been taken for granted. Also, it takes
+Lancelot forty lines to convince his lady that when bars are in your way
+there is nothing like pulling them out of it. So in the actual
+pulling-out there is the idlest exaggeration and surplusage; the first
+bar splits one of Lancelot's fingers to the sinews and cuts off the top
+joint of the next. The actual embraces are prettily and gracefully told
+(though again with otiose observations about silence), and the whole,
+from the knight's coming to the window to his leaving it, takes 150
+lines. Now hear the prose of the so-called "Vulgate <i>Lancelot</i>."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"And he came to the window: and the Queen, who waited for
+him, slept not, but came thither. And the one threw to the
+other their arms, and they felt each other as much as they
+could reach. "Lady," said Lancelot, "if I could enter
+yonder, would it please you?" "Enter," said she, "fair sweet
+friend? How could this happen?" "Lady," said he, "if it
+please you, it could happen lightly." "Certainly," said she,
+"I should wish it willingly above everything." "Then, in
+God's name," said he, "that shall well happen. For the iron
+will never hold." "Wait, then," said she, "till I have gone
+to bed." Then he drew the irons from their sockets so softly
+that no noise was made and no bar broke."</p></div>
+
+<p>In this simple prose, sensuous and passionate for all its simplicity, is
+told the rest of the story. There are eighteen lines of it altogether in
+Dr. Sommer's reprint, but as these are long quarto lines, let us
+multiply them by some three to get the equivalent of the "skipping
+octosyllables." There will remain fifty to a hundred and fifty, with, in
+the prose, some extra matter not in the verse. But the acme of the
+contrast is reached in these words of the prose, which answer to some
+forty lines of the poet's watering-out. "Great was the joy that they
+made each other that night, for long had each suffered for the other.
+And when the day came, they parted." Beat that who can!</p>
+
+<p>Many years ago, and not a few before M. Gaston Paris had published his
+views, I read these two forms of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> the story in the valuable joint
+edition, verse and prose, of M. Jonckbloet, which some ruffian (may
+Heaven <i>not</i> assoil him!) has since stolen or hidden from me. And I said
+then to myself, "There is no doubt which of these is the original."
+Thirty years later, with an unbroken critical experience of imaginative
+work in prose and verse during the interval, I read them again in Dr.
+Forster's edition of the verse and Dr. Sommer's of the prose, and said,
+"There is less doubt than ever." That the prose should have been
+prettified and platitudinised, decorated and diluted into the verse is a
+possibility which we know to be not only possible but likely, from a
+thousand more unfortunate examples. That the contrary process should
+have taken place is practically unexampled and, especially at that time,
+largely unthinkable. At any rate, whosoever did it had a much greater
+genius than Chrestien's.</p>
+
+<p>This is no place to argue out the whole question, but a single
+particular may be dealt with. The curiously silly passage about the bars
+above given is a characteristic example of unlucky and superfluous
+amplification of the perfectly natural question and answer of the prose,
+"May I come to you?" "Yes, but how?" an example to be paralleled by
+thousands of others at the time and by many more later. Taken the other
+way it would be a miracle. Prose abridgers of poetry did not go to work
+like that in the twelfth-thirteenth century&mdash;nor, even in the case of
+Charles Lamb, have they often done so since.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, very disagreeable to have to speak disrespectfully of a
+writer so agreeable in himself and so really important in our story as
+Chrestien. His own gifts and performances are, as it seems to me, clear
+enough. He took from this or that source&mdash;his selection of the <i>Erec</i>
+and <i>Percivale</i> matters, if not also that of <i>Yvain</i>, suggests others
+besides the, by that time as I think, concentrated Arthurian story&mdash;and
+from the Arthuriad itself the substance of the <i>Chevalier &agrave; la
+Charette</i>. He varied and dressed them up with pleasant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> etceteras, and
+in especial, sometimes, though not always, embroidered the already
+introduced love-motive with courtly fantasies and with a great deal of
+detail. I should not be at all disposed to object if somebody says that
+he, before any one else, set the type of the regular verse <i>Roman
+d'aventures</i>. It seems likely, again, from the pieces referred to above,
+that he may have had originals more definitely connected with Celtic
+sources, if not actually Celtic themselves, than those which have given
+us the mighty architectonic of the "Vulgate" <i>Arthur</i>. In his own way
+and place he is a great and an attractive figure&mdash;not least in the
+history of the novel. But I can see nothing in him that makes me think
+him likely, and much that makes me think him utterly unlikely, to be the
+author of what I conceive to be the greatest, the most epoch-making, and
+almost the originating conception of the novel-romance itself. Who it
+was that did conceive this great thing I do not positively know. All
+external evidence points to Walter Map; no internal evidence, that I
+have seen, seems to me really to point away from him. But if any one
+likes let us leave him a mere Eidolon, an earlier "Great Unknown." Our
+business is, once more, with what he, whoever he was, did.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The constitution of the Arthuriad.</div>
+
+<p>The multiplicity of things done, whether by "him" or "them," is
+astonishing; and it is quite possible, indeed likely, that they were not
+all done by the same person. Mediaeval continuators (as has been seen in
+the case of Chrestien) worked after and into the work of each other in a
+rather uncanny fashion; and the present writer frankly confesses that he
+no more knows where Godfrey de Lagny took up the <i>Charette</i>, or the
+various other sequelists the <i>Percevale</i>, from Chrestien than he would
+have known, without confession, the books of the <i>Odyssey</i> done by Mr.
+Broome and Mr. Fenton from those done by Mr. Pope. The <i>grand-&oelig;uvre</i>
+is the combination of Lancelot as (1) lover of the Queen; (2) descendant
+of the Graalwards; (3) author, in consequence of his sin, of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+general failure of the Round Table Graal-Quest; (4) father of its one
+successful but half-unearthly Seeker; (5) bringer-about (in more ways
+than one<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a>) of the intestine dissension which facilitates the invasion
+of Mordred and the foreigners and so the Passing of Arthur, of his own
+rejection by the repentant Queen, and of his death. As regards minor
+details of plot and incident there have to be added the bringing in of
+the pre-Round Table part of the story by Lancelot's descent from King
+Ban and his connections with King Bors, both Arthur's old allies, and
+both, as we may call them, "Graal-heirs"; the further connection with
+the Merlin legend by Lancelot's fostering under the Lady of the
+Lake;<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> the exaltation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> inspiring, and, as it were, unification of
+the scattered knight-adventures through Lancelot's constant presence as
+partaker, rescuer, and avenger;<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> the human interest given to the
+Graal-Quest (the earlier histories being strikingly lacking in this) by
+his failure, and a good many more. But above all there are the general
+characters of the knight and the Queen to make flesh and blood of the
+whole.</p>
+
+<p>Not merely the exact author or authors, but even the exact source or
+sources of this complicated, fateful, and exquisite imagination are,
+once more, not known. Years ago it was laid down finally by the most
+competent of possible authorities (the late Sir John Rhys) that "the
+love of Lancelot and Guinevere is unknown to Welsh literature."
+Originals for the "greatest knight" have been sought by guesswork, by
+idle play on words and names, if not also by positive forgery, in that
+Breton literature which does not exist. There do exist versions of the
+story in which Lancelot plays no very prominent part, and there is even
+one singular version&mdash;certainly late and probably devised by a proper
+moral man afraid of scandal&mdash;which makes Lancelot outlive the Queen,
+quite comfortably continuing his adventurous career (this is perhaps the
+"furthest" of the Unthinkable in literature), and (not, it may be owned,
+quite inconsistently) hints that the connection was merely Platonic
+throughout. These things are explicable, but better negligible. For my
+own part I have always thought that the loves of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> Tristram and Iseult
+(which, as has been said, were originally un-Arthurian) suggested the
+main idea to the author of it, being taken together with Guinevere's
+falseness with Mordred in the old quasi-chronicle, and perhaps the story
+of the abduction by Melvas (Meleagraunce), which seems to be possibly a
+genuine Welsh legend. There are in the Tristram-Iseult-Mark trio quite
+sufficient suggestions of Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur; while the far
+higher plane on which the novice-novelist sets his lovers, and even the
+very interesting subsequent exaltation of Tristram and Iseult themselves
+to familiarity and to some extent equality with the other pair, has
+nothing critically difficult in it.</p>
+
+<p>But this idea, great and promising as it was, required further
+fertilisation, and got it from another. The Graal story is (once more,
+according to authority of the greatest competence, and likely if
+anything to be biassed the other way) pretty certainly not Welsh in
+origin, and there is no reason to think that it originally had anything
+to do with Arthur. Even after it obeyed the strange "suck" of legends
+towards this centre whirlpool, or Loadstone Rock, of romance, it yielded
+nothing intimately connected with the Arthurian Legend itself at first,
+and such connection as succeeded seems pretty certainly<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> to be that
+of which Percevale is the hero, and an outlier, not an integral part.
+But either the same genius (as one would fain hope) as that which
+devised the profane romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, or another,
+further grafted or inarched the sacred romance of the Graal and its
+Quest with the already combined love-and-chivalry story. Lancelot, the
+greatest of knights, and of the true blood of the Graal-guardians, ought
+to accomplish the mysteries; but he cannot through sin, and that sin is
+this very love for Guinevere. The Quest, in which (despite warning and
+indeed previous experience) he takes part, not merely gives occasion for
+adventures, half-mystical, half-chivalrous, which far exceed in
+interest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> the earlier ones, but directly leads to the dispersion and
+weakening of the Round Table. And so the whole draws together to an end
+identical in part with that of the Chronicle story, but quite infinitely
+improved upon it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its approximation to the novel proper.</div>
+
+<p>Now not only is there in this the creation of the novel <i>in posse</i>, of
+the romance <i>in esse</i>, but it is brought about in a curiously noteworthy
+fashion. A hundred years and more later the greatest known writer of the
+Middle Ages, and one of the three or four greatest of the world, defined
+the subjects of poetry as Love, War, and Religion, or in words which we
+may not unfairly translate by these. The earlier master recognised
+(practically for the first time) that the romance&mdash;that allotropic form
+(as the chemists might say) of poetry&mdash;must deal with the same. Now in
+these forms of the Arthurian legend, which are certainly anterior to the
+latter part of the twelfth century, there is a great deal of war and a
+good deal of religion, but these motives are mostly separated from each
+other, the earlier forms of the Arthur story having nothing to do with
+the Graal, and the earlier forms of the Graal story&mdash;so far as we can
+see&mdash;nothing, or extremely little, to do with Arthur. Nor had Love, in
+any proper and passionate sense of the word, anything to do with either.
+Women and marriage and breaches of marriage appear indeed; but the
+earlier Graal stories are dominated by the most ascetic
+virginity-worship, and the earlier Arthur-stories show absolutely
+nothing of the passion which is the subject of the magnificent overture
+of Mr. Swinburne's <i>Tristram</i>. Even this story of Tristram himself,
+afterwards fired and coloured by passion, seems at first to have shown
+nothing but the mixture of animalism, cruelty, and magic which is
+characteristic of the Celts.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> Our magician of a very different
+gramarye, were he Walter or Chrestien or some third&mdash;Norman, Champenois,
+Breton,<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> or Englishman (Welshman or Irishman he pretty certainly was
+<i>not</i>)&mdash;had therefore before him, if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> not exactly dry bones, yet the
+half-vivified material of a chronicle of events on the one hand and a
+mystical dream-sermon on the other. He, or a French or English Pallas
+for him, had to "think of another thing."</p>
+
+<p>And so he called in Love to reinforce War and Religion and to do its
+proper office of uniting, inspiring, and producing Humanity. He
+effected, by the union of the three motives, the transformation of a
+mere dull record of confused fighting into a brilliant pageant of
+knightly adventure. He made the long-winded homilies and genealogies of
+the earlier Graal-legend at once take colour from the amorous and
+war-like adventures, raise these to a higher and more spiritual plane,
+and provide the due punishment for the sins of his erring characters.
+The whole story&mdash;at least all of it that he chose to touch and all that
+he chose to add&mdash;became alive. The bones were clothed with flesh and
+blood, the "wastable country verament" (as the dullest of the Graal
+chroniclers says in a phrase that applies capitally to his own work)
+blossomed with flower and fruit. Wars of Arthur with unwilling subjects
+or Saxons and Romans; treachery of his wife and nephew and his own
+death; miracle-history of the Holy Vessel and pedigree of its
+custodians; Round Table; these and many other things had lain as mere
+scraps and orts, united by no real plot, yielding no real characters,
+satisfying no real interest that could not have been equally satisfied
+by an actual chronicle or an actual religious-mystical discourse. And
+then the whole was suddenly knit into a seamless and shimmering web of
+romance, from the fancy of Uther for Igerne to the "departing of them
+all" in Lyonnesse and at Amesbury and at Joyous Gard. A romance
+undoubtedly, but also incidentally providing the first real novel-hero
+and the first real novel-heroine in the persons of the lovers who, as in
+the passage above translated, sometimes "made great joy of each other
+for that they had long caused each other much sorrow," and finally
+expiated in sorrow what was unlawful in their joy.</p>
+
+<p>Let us pass to these persons themselves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Especially in the characters and relations of Lancelot and
+Guinevere.</div>
+
+<p>The first point to note about Lancelot is the singular fashion in which
+he escapes one of the dangers of the hero. Aristotle had never said that
+a hero must be faultless; indeed, he had definitely said exactly the
+contrary, of at least the tragic hero. But one of the worst of the many
+misunderstandings of his dicta brought the wrong notion about, and
+Virgil&mdash;that exquisite craftsman in verse and phrase, but otherwise,
+perhaps, not great poet and very dangerous pattern&mdash;had confirmed this
+notion by his deplorable figurehead. It is also fair to confess that all
+except morbid tastes do like to see the hero win. But if he is to be a
+hero of Rymer, not merely</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like Paris handsome<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> and like Hector brave,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but as pious as Aeneas; "a rich fellow enough," with blood hopelessly
+blue and morals spotlessly copy-bookish&mdash;in other words, a Sir Charles
+Grandison&mdash;he will duly meet with the detestation and "conspuing" of the
+elect. Almost the only just one of the numerous and generally silly
+charges latterly brought against Tennyson's Arthurian handling is that
+his conception of the blameless king does a little smack of this false
+idea, does something grow to it. It is one of the chief points in which
+he departed, not merely from the older stories (which he probably did
+not know), but from Malory's astonishing redaction of them (which he
+certainly did).</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lancelot.</div>
+
+<p>But Lancelot escapes this worst of fates in the <i>Idylls</i> themselves, and
+much more does he escape it in the originals. In the first place, though
+he invariably (or always till the Graal Quest) "wins through," he
+constantly does not do so without intermediate hairbreadth escapes, and
+even not a few adventures which are at first not escapes at all. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+just as his perpetual bafflement in the Quest salts and seasons his
+triumphs in the saddle, so does the ruling passion of his sin save, from
+anything approaching mawkishness,<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> his innumerable and yet
+inoffensive virtues; his chastity, save in this instance, which chastity
+itself, by a further stroke of art, is saved from <i>niaiserie</i> by the
+plotted adventures with Elaine; his courtesy, his mercifulness, his
+wonderfully early notion of a gentleman (<i>v. inf.</i>), his invariable
+disregard of self, and yet his equally invariable naturalness. Pious
+Aeneas had not the least objection to bringing about the death of Dido,
+as he might have known he was doing (unless he was as great a fool as he
+is a prig); and he is probably never more disgusting or Pecksniffian
+than when he looks back on the flames of Dido's pyre and is really
+afraid that something unpleasant must have happened, though he can't
+think what the matter can be. But <i>he</i>, one feels sure, would never have
+lifted up his hand against a woman, unless she had richly deserved it on
+the strictest patriotic scores, as in the case of Helen, when his mamma
+fortunately interfered. On the other hand, Lancelot was "of the Asra who
+die when they love" and love till they die&mdash;nay, who would die if they
+did not love. But it is certain (for there is a very nice miniature of
+it reproduced from the MS. in M. Paulin Paris's abstract) that, for a
+moment, he drew his sword on Elaine to punish the deceit which made him
+unwittingly false to Guinevere. It is very shocking, no doubt, but
+exceedingly natural; and of course he did not kill or even (like
+Philaster) wound her, though nobody interfered to prevent him. Many of
+the incidents which bring out his character are well known to moderns by
+poem and picture, though others, as well worth knowing, are not. But the
+human contrasts of success and failure, of merit and sin, have never, I
+think, been quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> brought out, and to bring them out completely here
+would take too much room. We may perhaps leave this other&mdash;quite
+other&mdash;"<i>First</i> Gentleman in Europe" with the remark that Chrestien de
+Troyes gives only one side of him, and therefore does not give him at
+all. The Lancelot of board and bower, of travel and tournament, he does
+very fairly. But of the Lancelot of the woods and the hermitage, of the
+dream at the foot of the cross, of the mystic voyage and the just
+failing (if failing) effort of Carbonek, he gives, because he knows,
+nothing.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Guinevere.</div>
+
+<p>Completed as he was, no matter for the moment by whom, he is thus the
+first hero of romance and nearly the greatest; but his lady is worthy of
+him, and she is almost more original as an individual. It is true that
+she is not the first heroine, as he is, if not altogether, almost the
+first hero. Helen was that, though very imperfectly revealed and
+gingerly handled. Calypso (hardly Circe) <i>might</i> have been. Medea is
+perhaps nearer still, especially in Apollonius. But the Greek romancers
+were the first who had really busied themselves with the heroine: they
+took her up seriously and gave her a considerable position. But they did
+not succeed in giving her much character. The naughty <i>not</i>-heroine of
+Achilles Tatius, though she has less than none in Mr. Pope's supposed
+innuendo sense, alone has an approach to some in the other. As for the
+accomplished Guinevere's probable contemporary, the Ismene or Hysmine of
+Eustathius Macrembolites (<i>v. sup.</i> p. 18), she is a sort of
+Greek-mediaeval Henrietta Temple, with Mr. Meredith and Mr. Disraeli by
+turns holding the pen, though with neither of them supplying the brains.
+But Guinevere is a very different person; or rather, she <i>is</i> a person,
+and the first. To appreciate her she must be compared with herself in
+earlier presentations, and then considered fully as she appears in the
+Vulgate&mdash;for Malory, though he has given much, has not given the whole
+of her, and Tennyson has painted only the last panel of the polyptych
+wholly, and has rather over-coloured that.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+<p>In what we may call the earliest representations of her, she has hardly
+any colour at all. She is a noble Roman lady, and very beautiful. For a
+time she is apparently very happy with her husband, and he with her; and
+if she seems to make not the slightest scruple about "taking up with"
+her nephew, co-regent and fellow rebel, why, noble Roman ladies thought
+nothing of divorce and not much of adultery. The only old Welsh story
+(the famous Melvas one so often referred to) that we have about her in
+much detail merely establishes the fact, pleasantly formulated by M.
+Paulin Paris, that she was "tr&egrave;s sujette &agrave; &ecirc;tre enlev&eacute;e," but in itself
+(unless we admit the Peacockian triad of the "Three Fatal Slaps of the
+Isle of Britain" as evidence) again says nothing about her character.
+If, as seems probable if not certain, the <i>Launfal</i> legend, with its
+libel on her, is of Breton origin, it makes her an ordinary Celtic
+princess, a spiritual sister of Iseult when she tried to kill Brengwain,
+and a cross between Potiphar's wife and Catherine of Russia, without any
+of the good nature and "gentlemanliness" of the last named. The real
+Guinevere, the Guinevere of the Vulgate and partly of Malory, is freed
+from the colourlessness and the discreditable end of Geoffrey's queen,
+transforms the promiscuous and rather <i>louche</i> Melvas incident into an
+important episode of her epic or romantic existence, and gives the lie,
+even in her least creditable or least charming moments, to the <i>Launfal</i>
+libel. As before in Lancelot's case, details of her presentation had in
+some cases best be either translated in full or omitted, but I cannot
+refuse myself the pleasure of attempting, with however clumsy a hand, a
+portrait of our, as I believe, English Helen, who gave in French
+language to French, and not only French literature, the pattern of a
+heroine.</p>
+
+<p>There is not, I think, any ancient authority for the rather commonplace
+suggestion, unwisely adopted by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> Tennyson, that Guinevere fell in love
+with Lancelot when he was sent as an ambassador to fetch her; thus
+merely repeating Iseult and Tristram, and anticipating Suffolk and
+Margaret. In fact, according to the best evidence, Lancelot could not
+have been old enough, if he was even born. On the contrary, nothing
+could be better than the presentation of her introduction to Arthur and
+the course of the wooing in the Vulgate&mdash;the other "blessed original."
+She first sees Arthur as a foe from the walls of besieged Carmelide, and
+admires his valour; she has further occasion to admire it when, as a
+friend, he rescues her father, showing himself, as what he really was in
+his youth, his own best knight. The pair are genuinely in love with each
+other, and the betrothal and parting for fresh fight are the most
+gracious passages of the <i>Merlin</i> book, except the better version (<i>v.
+sup.</i>) of the love of Merlin himself and the afterwards libelled
+Viviane. Anyhow, she was married because she fell in love with him, and
+there is no evidence to show that she and Arthur lived otherwise than
+happily together. But, if all tales were true, she had no reason to
+regard him as a very faithful husband or a blameless man. She may not
+have known (for nobody but Merlin apparently did know) the early and
+unwitting incest of the King and his half-sister Margause; but the
+extreme ease with which he adopted her own treacherous foster-sister,
+the "false Guinevere," and his proceedings with the Saxon enchantress
+Camilla, were very strong "sets off" to her own conduct. Also she had a
+most disagreeable<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> sister-in-law in Morgane-la-F&eacute;e. These are not in
+the least offered as excuses, but merely as "lights." Indeed Guinevere
+never seems to have hated or disliked her husband, though he often gave
+her cause; and if, until the great repentance, she thought more lightly
+of "spouse-breach" than Lancelot did, that is not uncharacteristic of
+women.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> In fact, she is a very perfect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> (not of course in the moral
+sense) gentlewoman. She is at once popular with the knights, and loses
+that popularity rather by Lancelot's fault than by her own, while
+Gawain, who remains faithful to her to the bitter end, or at least till
+the luckless slaughter of his brethren, declares at the beginning that
+she is the fairest and most gracious, and will be the wisest and best of
+queens. She shows something very like humour in the famous and fateful
+remark (uttered, it would seem, without the slightest ill or double
+meaning at the time) as to Gawain's estimate of Lancelot.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> She seems
+to have had an agreeable petulance (notice, for instance, the rebuke of
+Kay at the opening of the <i>Ywain</i> story and elsewhere), which sometimes,
+as it naturally would, rises to passionate injustice, as Lancelot
+frequently discovered. She is, in fact, always passionate in one or
+other sense of that great and terrible and infinite<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> word, but never
+tragedy-queenish or vixenish. She falls in love with Lancelot because he
+falls in love with her, and because she cannot help it. False as she is
+to husband and to lover, to her court and her country,<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> it can hardly
+be said that any act of hers, except the love itself and its
+irresistible consequences, is faulty. She is not capricious,
+extravagant, or tyrannical; in her very jealousy she is not cruel or
+revengeful (the original Iseult would certainly have had Elaine poisoned
+or poniarded, for which there was ample opportunity). If she torments
+her lover, that is because she loves him. If she is unjust to him, that
+is because she is a woman. Her last speech to Lancelot after the
+catastrophe&mdash;Tennyson should have, as has been said, paraphrased this as
+he paraphrased the passing of her husband, and from the same texts, and
+we should then have had another of the greatest things of English
+poetry&mdash;shows a noble nature with the &#7937;&#956;&#945;&#961;&#964;&#953;&#945; present, but
+repented in a strange and great mixture of classical and Christian
+tragedy. There is little told in a trustworthy fashion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> about her
+personal appearance. But if Glastonbury traditions about her bones be
+true, she was certainly (again like Helen) "divinely tall." And if the
+suggestions of Hawker's "Queen Gwennyvar's Round"<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> in the sea round
+Tintagel be worked out a little, it will follow that her eyes were
+divinely blue.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Some minor points.</div>
+
+<p>When such very high praise is given to the position of the (further)
+accomplished Arthur-story, it is of course not intended to bestow that
+praise on any particular MS. or printed version that exists. It is in
+the highest degree improbable that, whether the original magician was
+Map, or Chrestien, or anybody else (to repeat a useful formula), we
+possess an exact and exclusive copy of the form into which he himself
+threw the story. Independently of the fact that no MS., verse or prose,
+of anything like the complete story seems old enough, independently of
+the enormous and almost innumerable separable accretions, the so-called
+Vulgate cycle of
+"<i>Graal-Merlin-Arthur-Lancelot-Graal-Quest-Arthur's-Death</i>" has
+considerable variants&mdash;the most important and remarkable of which by far
+is the large alteration or sequel of the "Vulgate" <i>Merlin</i> which Malory
+preferred. In the "Vulgate" itself, too, there are things which were
+certainly written either by the great contriver in nodding moods, or by
+somebody else,&mdash;in fact no one can hope to understand mediaeval
+literature who forgets that no mediaeval writer could ever "let a thing
+alone": he simply <i>must</i> add or shorten, paraphrase or alter. I rather
+doubt whether the Great Unknown himself meant <i>both</i> the amours of
+Arthur with Camilla and the complete episode of the false Guinevere to
+stand side by side. The first is (as such justifications go) a
+sufficient justification of Guinevere by itself; and the conduct of
+Arthur in the second is such a combination of folly, cruelty, and all
+sorts of despicable behaviour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> that it overdoes the thing. So, too,
+Lancelot's "abscondences," with or without madness, are too many and too
+prolonged.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> The long and totally uninteresting campaign against
+Claudas, during the greater part of which Lancelot (who is most of all
+concerned) is absent, and in which he takes no part or interest when
+present, is another great blot. Some of these things, but not all,
+Malory remedied by omission.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up, and even repeat a little, in speaking so highly of this
+development&mdash;French beyond all doubt as a part of literature, whatever
+the nationality, domicile, and temper of the person or persons who
+brought it about&mdash;I do not desire more to emphasise what I believe to be
+a great and not too well appreciated truth than to guard against that
+exaggeration which dogs and discredits literary criticism. Of course no
+single redaction of the legend in the late twelfth or earliest
+thirteenth century contains the story, the whole story, and nothing but
+the story as I have just outlined it. Of course the words used do not
+apply fully to Malory's English redaction of three centuries later&mdash;work
+of genius as this appears to me to be. Yet further, I should be fully
+disposed to allow that it is only by reading the <i>posse</i> into the
+<i>esse</i>, under the guidance of later developments of the novel itself,
+that the estimate which I have given can be entirely justified. But this
+process seems to me to be perfectly legitimate, and to be, in fact, the
+only process capable of giving us literary-historical criticism that is
+worth having. The writer or writers, known or unknown, whose work we
+have been discussing, have got the plot, have got the characters, have
+got the narrative faculty required for a complete novel-romance. If they
+do not quite know what to do with these things it is only because the
+time is not yet. But how much they did, and of how much more they
+foreshadowed the doing, the extracts following should show better than
+any "talk about it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>Lancelot, still under the tutelage of the Lady of the Lake
+and ignorant of his own parentage, has met his cousins,
+Lionel and Bors, and has been greatly drawn to them.</i>]</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Illustrative extracts translated from the
+"Vulgate." The youth of Lancelot.</div>
+
+<p>Now turns herself the Lady back to the Lake, and takes the
+children with her. And when she had gone<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> a good way, she
+called Lancelot a little way off the road and said to him
+very kindly, "King's son,<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> how wast thou so bold as to
+call Lionel thy cousin? for he <i>is</i> a king's son, and of not
+a little more worth and gentry than men think." "Lady," said
+he, who was right ashamed, "so came the word into my mouth
+by adventure that I never took any heed of it." "Now tell
+me," said she, "by the faith thou owest me, which thinkest
+thou to be the greater gentleman, thyself or him?" "Lady,"
+said he, "you have adjured me strongly, for I owe no one
+such faith as I owe you, my lady and my mother: nor know I
+how much of a gentleman I am by lineage. But, by the faith I
+owe you, I would not myself deign to be abashed at that for
+which I saw him weep.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> And they have told me that all men
+have sprung from one man and one woman: nor know I for what
+reason one has more gentry than another, unless he win it by
+prowess, even as lands and other honours. But know you for
+very truth that if greatness of heart made a gentleman I
+would think yet to be one of the greatest." "Verily, fair
+son," said the Lady, "it shall appear. And I say to you that
+you lose nothing of being one of the best gentlemen in the
+world, if your heart fail you not." "How, Lady!" said he,
+"say you this truly, <i>as</i> my lady?" And she said, "Yes,
+without fail." "Lady," said he, "blessed be you of God, that
+you said it to me so soon [<i>or</i> as soon as you have said
+it]. For to that will you make me come which I never thought
+to attain. Nor had I so much desire of anything as of
+possessing gentry."</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere. The Lady of
+the Lake has prevailed upon the King to dub Lancelot on St.
+John's Day (Midsummer, not Christmas). His protectress
+departing, he is committed to the care of Ywain, and a
+conversation arises about him. The Queen asks to see him.</i>]</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere.</div>
+
+<p>Then bid he [the King] Monseigneur<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> Ywain that he should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+go and look for Lancelot. "And let him be equipped as
+handsomely as you know is proper: for well know I that he
+has plenty." Then the King himself told the Queen how the
+Lady of the Lake had requested that he would not make
+Lancelot knight save in his own arms and dress. And the
+Queen marvelled much at this, and thought long till she saw
+him. So Messire Ywain went to the Childe [<i>vallet</i>] and had
+him clothed and equipped in the best way he could: and when
+he saw that nothing could be bettered, he led him to Court
+on his own horse, which was right fair. But he brought him
+not quietly. For there was so much people about that the
+whole street was full: and the news was spread through all
+the town that the fair Childe who came yester eve should be
+a knight to-morrow, and was now coming to Court in knightly
+garb. Then sprang to the windows they of the town, both men
+and women. And when they saw him pass they said that never
+had they seen so fair a Childe-knight. So he came to the
+Court and alighted from his horse: and the news of him
+spread through hall and chamber; and knights and dames and
+damsels hurried forth. And even the King and the Queen went
+to the windows. So when the Childe had dismounted, Messire
+Ywain took him by the hand, and led him by it up to the
+Hall.</p>
+
+
+<p>The King and the Queen came to meet him: and both took him
+by his two hands and went to seat themselves on a couch:
+while the Childe seated himself before them on the fresh
+green grass with which the Hall was spread. And the King
+gazed on him right willingly: for if he had seemed fair at
+his first coming, it was nothing to the beauty that he now
+had. And the King thought he had mightily grown in stature
+and thews.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> So the Queen prayed that God might make him a
+man of worth, "for right plenty of beauty has He given him,"
+and she looked at the Childe very sweetly: and so did he at
+her as often as he could covertly direct his eyes towards
+her. Also marvelled he much how such great beauty as he saw
+appear in her could come: for neither that of his lady, the
+Lady of the Lake, nor of any woman that he had ever seen,
+did he prize aught as compared with hers. And no wrong had
+he if he valued no other lady against the Queen: for she was
+the Lady of Ladies and the Fountain of Beauty. But if he had
+known the great worthiness that was in her he would have
+been still more fain to gaze on her. For none, neither poor
+nor rich, was her equal.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+So she asked Monseigneur Ywain what was the Childe's name,
+and he answered that he knew not. "And know you," said she,
+"whose son he is and of what birth?" "Lady," said he, "nay,
+except I know so much as that he is of the land of Gaul. For
+his speech bewrayeth him."<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> Then the Queen took him by
+the hand and asked him of whom he came. And when he felt it
+[the touch] he shuddered as though roused from sleep, and
+thought of her so hard that he knew not what she said to
+him. And she perceived that he was much abashed, and so
+asked him a second time, "Tell me whence you come." So he
+looked at her very sheepishly and said, with a sigh, that he
+knew not. And she asked him what was his name; and he
+answered that he knew not that. So now the Queen saw well
+that he was abashed and <i>overthought</i>.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> But she dared not
+think that it was for her: and nevertheless she had some
+suspicion of it, and so dropped the talk. But that she might
+not make the disorder of his mind worse, she rose from her
+seat and, in order that no one might think any evil or
+perceive what she suspected, said that the Childe seemed to
+her not very wise, and whether wise or not had been ill
+brought up. "Lady," said Messire Ywain, "between you and me,
+we know nothing about him: and perchance he is forbidden<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>
+to tell his name or who he is." And she said, "It may well
+be so," but she said it so low that the Childe heard her
+not.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>Here follows (with a very little surplusage removed
+perhaps) the scene which Dante has made world-famous, but
+which Malory (I think for reasons) has "cut." I trust it is
+neither Philistinism nor perversity which makes me think of
+it a little, though only a little, less highly than some
+have done. There is (and after all this makes it all the
+more interesting for us historians) the least little bit of
+anticipation of</i> Marivaudage <i>about it, and less of the
+adorable simplicity such as that (a little subsequent to the
+last extract given) where Lancelot, having forgotten to take
+leave of the Queen on going to his first adventure, and
+having returned to do so, kneels to her, receives her hand
+to raise him from the ground, "and much was his joy to feel
+it bare in his." But the beauty of what follows is
+incontestable, and that Guinevere was "exceeding wise in
+love" is certain.</i>]</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The scene of the kiss.</div>
+
+<p>"Ha!" said she then, "I know who you are&mdash;Lancelot of the
+Lake is your name." And he was silent. "They know it at
+court," said she, "this sometime. Messire Gawain was the
+first to bring your name there...." Then she asked him why
+he had allowed the worst man in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> the world to lead him by
+the bridle. "Lady," said he, "as one who had command neither
+of his heart nor of his body." "Now tell me," said she,
+"were you at last year's assembly?" "Yes, Lady," said he.
+"And what arms did you bear?" "Lady, they were all of
+vermilion." "By my head," said she, "you say true. And why
+did you do such deeds at the meeting the day before
+yesterday?" Then he began to sigh very very deeply. And the
+Queen cut him short as well, knowing how it was with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," she said, "plainly, how it is. I will never
+betray you. But I know that you did it for some lady. Now,
+tell me, by the faith you owe me, who she is." "Ah, Lady,"
+said he, "I see well that it behoves me to speak. Lady, it
+is you." "I!" said she. "It was not for me you took the
+spears that my maiden brought you. For I took care to put
+myself out of the commission." "Lady," said he, "I did for
+others what I ought, and for you what I could." "Tell me,
+then, for whom have you done all the things that you <i>have</i>
+done?" "Lady," said he, "for you." "How," said she, "do you
+love me so much?" "So much, Lady, as I love neither myself
+nor any other." "And since when have you loved me thus?"
+"Since the hour when I was called knight and yet was not
+one."<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> "Then, by the faith you owe me, whence came this
+love that you have set upon me?" Now as the Queen said these
+words it happened that the Lady of the Puy of Malahault<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a>
+coughed on purpose, and lifted her head, which she had held
+down. And he understood her now, having oft heard her
+before: and looked at her and knew her, and felt in his
+heart such fear and anguish that he could not answer the
+Queen. Then began he to sigh right deeply, and the tears
+fell from his eyes so thick, that the garment he wore was
+wet to the knees. And the more he looked at the Lady of
+Malahault the more ill at ease was his heart. Now the Queen
+noticed this and saw that he looked sadly towards the place
+where her ladies were, and she reasoned with him. "Tell me,"
+she said, "whence comes this love that I am asking you
+about?" and he tried as hard as he could to speak, and said,
+"Lady, from the time I have said." "How?" "Lady, you did it,
+when you made me your friend, if your mouth lied not." "My
+friend?" she said; "and how?" "I came before you when I had
+taken leave of my Lord the King all armed except my head and
+my hands. And then I commended you to God, and said that,
+wherever I was, I was your knight: and you said that you
+would have me to be your knight and your friend. And then I
+said, 'Adieu, Lady,' and you said, 'Adieu,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> fair sweet
+friend.' And never has that word left my heart, and it is
+that word that has made me a good knight and valiant&mdash;if I
+be so: nor ever have I been so ill-bested as not to remember
+that word. That word comforts me in all my annoys. That word
+has kept me from all harm, and freed me from all peril, and
+fills me whenever I hunger. Never have I been so poor but
+that word has made me rich." "By my faith," said the Queen,
+"that word was spoken in a good hour, and God be praised
+when He made me speak it. Still, I did not set it as high as
+you did: and to many a knight have I said it, when I gave no
+more thought to the saying. But <i>your</i> thought was no base
+one, but gentle and debonair; wherefore joy has come to you
+of it, and it has made you a good knight. Yet, nevertheless,
+this way is not that of knights who make great matter to
+many a lady of many a thing which they have little at heart.
+And your seeming shows me that you love one or other of
+these ladies better than you love me. For you wept for fear
+and dared not look straight at them: so that I well see that
+your thought is not so much of me as you pretend. So, by the
+faith you owe the thing you love best in the world, tell me
+which one of the three you love so much?" "Ah! Lady," said
+he, "for the mercy of God, as God shall keep me, never had
+one of them my heart in her keeping." "This will not do,"
+said the Queen, "you cannot dissemble. For many another such
+thing have I seen, and I know that your heart is there as
+surely as your body is here." And this she said that she
+might well see how she might put him ill at ease. For she
+thought surely enough that he meant no love save to her, or
+ill would it have gone on the day of the Black Arms.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> And
+she took a keen delight in seeing and considering his
+discomfort. But he was in such anguish that he wanted little
+of swooning, save that fear of the ladies before him kept
+him back. And the Queen herself perceived it at the sight of
+his changes of colour, and caught him by the shoulder that
+he might not fall, and called to Galahault. Then the prince
+sprang forward and ran to his friend, and saw that he was
+disturbed thus, and had great pain in his own heart for it,
+and said, "Ah, Lady! tell me, for God's sake, what has
+happened." And the Queen told him the conversation. "Ah,
+Lady!" said Galahault, "mercy, for God's sake, or you may
+lose me him by such wrath, and it would be too great pity."
+"Certes," said she, "that is true. But know you why he has
+done such feats of arms?" "Nay, surely, Lady," said he.
+"Sir," said she, "if what he tells me is true, it was for
+me." "Lady," said he, "as God shall keep me, I can believe
+it. For just as he is more valiant than other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> men, so is
+his heart truer than all theirs." "Verily," said she, "you
+would say well that he is valiant if you knew what deeds he
+has done since he was made knight," and then she told him
+all the chivalry of Lancelot ... and how he had done it all
+for a single word of hers [<i>Galahault tells her more, and
+begs mercy for L.</i>]. "He could ask me nothing," sighed she,
+"that I could fairly refuse him, but he will ask me nothing
+at all."... "Lady," said Galahault, "certainly he has no
+power to do so. For one loves nothing that one does not
+fear." [<i>And then comes the immortal kiss, asked by the
+Prince, delayed a moment by the Queen's demur as to time and
+place, brought on by the "Galeotto"-speech.</i> "Let us three
+corner close together as if we were talking secrets,"
+<i>vouchsafed by Guinevere in the words</i>, "Why should I make
+me longer prayer for what I wish more than you or he?"
+<i>Lancelot still hangs back, but the Queen</i> "takes him by the
+chin and kisses him before Galahault with a kiss long
+enough" so that the Lady of Malahault knows it.] And then
+said the Queen, who was a right wise and gracious lady,
+"Fair sweet friend, so much have you done that I am yours,
+and right great joy have I thereof. Now see to it that the
+thing be kept secret, as it should be. For I am one of the
+ladies of the world who have the fairest fame, and if my
+praise grew worse through you, then it would be a foul and
+shameful thing."</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Some further remarks on the novel character of the story.</div>
+
+<p>A little more comment on this cento, and especially on the central
+passage of it, can hardly be, and ought certainly not to be, avoided in
+such a work as this, even if, like most summaries, it be something of a
+repetition. It must surely be obvious to any careful reader that here is
+something much more than&mdash;unless his reading has been as wide elsewhere
+as it is careful here&mdash;he expected from Romance in the commoner and
+half-contemptuous acceptation of that word. Lancelot he may, though he
+should not, still class as a mere <i>amoureux transi</i>&mdash;a nobler and
+pluckier Silvius in an earlier <i>As Yon Like It</i>, and with a greater than
+Phoebe for idol. Malory ought to be enough to set him right there: he
+need even not go much beyond Tennyson, who has comprehended Lancelot
+pretty correctly, if not indeed pretty adequately. But Malory has left
+out a great deal of the information which would have enabled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> his
+readers to comprehend Guinevere; and Tennyson, only presenting her in
+parts, has allowed those parts, especially the final and only full
+presentation, great as it is, to be too much influenced by his certainly
+unfortunate other presentation of Arthur as a blameless king.</p>
+
+<p>I do not say that the actual creator of the Vulgate Guinevere, whoever
+he was, has wrought her into a novel-character of the first class. It
+would have been not merely a miracle (for miracles often happen), but
+something more, if he had. If you could take Beatrix Esmond at a better
+time, Argemone Lavington raised to a higher power, and the spirit of all
+that is best and strongest and least purely paradoxical in Meredith's
+heroines, and work these three graces into one woman, adding the passion
+of Tennyson's own Fatima and the queenliness of Helen herself, it might
+be something like the achieved Guinevere who is still left to the
+reader's imagination to achieve. But the Unknown has given the hints of
+all this; and curiously enough it is only of <i>English</i> novel-heroines
+that I can think in comparison and continuation of her. This book, if it
+is ever finished, will show, I hope, some knowledge of French ones: I
+can remember none possessing any touch of Guineveresque quality. Dante,
+if his poetic nature had taken a different bent, and Shakespeare, if he
+had only chosen, could have been her portrayers singly; no others that I
+can think of, and certainly no Frenchman.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">And the personages.</div>
+
+<p>But here Guinevere's creator or expounder has done more for her than
+merely indicate her charm. Her "fear for name and fame" is not exactly
+"crescent"&mdash;it is there from the first, and seems to have nothing either
+cowardly or merely selfish in it, but only that really "last infirmity
+of noble minds," the shame of shame even in doing things shameful or
+shameless. I have seldom seen justice done to her magnificent
+fearlessness in all her dangers. Her graciousness as a Queen has been
+more generally admitted, but, once again, the composition and complexity
+of her fits of jealousy have never, I think, been fully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> rationalised.
+Here, once more, we must take into account that difference of age which
+is so important. <i>He</i> thinks nothing of it; <i>she</i> never forgets it. And
+in almost all the circumstances where this rankling kindles into
+wrath&mdash;whether with no cause at all, as in most cases, or with cause
+more apparent than real, as in the Elaine business&mdash;study of particulars
+will show how easily they might be wrought out into the great character
+scenes of which they already contain the suggestion. <i>This</i> Guinevere
+would never have "taken up" (to use purposely a vulgar phrase for what
+would have been a vulgar thing) with Mordred,<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> either for himself or
+for the kingdom that he was trying to steal. And I am bound to say again
+that much as I have read of purely French romance&mdash;that is to say,
+French not merely in language but in certain origin&mdash;I know nothing and
+nobody like her in it.</p>
+
+<p>That Guinevere, like Charlotte, was "a married lady," that, unlike
+Charlotte, she forgot the fact, and that Lancelot, though somewhat
+Wertheresque in some of his features, was not quite so "moral" as that
+very dull young man, are facts which I wish neither to suppress nor to
+dwell upon. We may cry "Agreed" here to the indictment, and all its
+consequences. They are not the question.</p>
+
+<p>The question is the suggesting of novel-romance elements which forms the
+aesthetic solace of this ethical sin. It should be seen at once that the
+Guinevere of the Vulgate, and her fault or fate, provide a character and
+career of no small complexity. It has been already said that to
+represent her as after a fashion intercepted by love for Lancelot on her
+way to Arthur, like Iseult of Ireland or Margaret of Anjou, is, so to
+speak, as unhistorical as it is insufficiently artistic. We cannot,
+indeed, borrow Diderot's speech to Rousseau and say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> "C'est le pont aux
+&acirc;nes," but it certainly would not have been the way of the Walter whom I
+favour, though I think it might have been the way of the Chrestien that
+I know. Guinevere, when she meets her lover, rescuer, and doomsman, is
+no longer a girl, and Lancelot is almost a boy. It is not, in the common
+and cheap misuse of the term, the most "romantic" arrangement, but some
+not imperfect in love-lore have held that a woman's love is never so
+strong as when she is past girlhood and well approaching age, and that
+man's is never stronger than when he is just not a boy. Lancelot himself
+has loved no woman (except his quasi-mother, the Lady of the Lake), and
+will love none after he has fulfilled the Dead Shepherd's "saw of
+might." She <i>has</i> loved; dispute this and you not only cancel gracious
+scenes of the text, but spoil the story; but she has, though probably
+she does not yet know it, ceased to love,<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> and not without some
+reason. To say no more about Arthur's technical "blamelessness," he has,
+by the coming of Lancelot, ceased to be altogether heroic. Though never
+a mere petulant and ferocious dotard as the <i>Chansons</i> too often
+represent Charlemagne, he is very far from being a wise ruler or even
+baron. He makes rash promises and vows, accepts charges on very slight
+evidence, and seems to have his knights by no means "in hand." So, too,
+though never a coward or weakling, he seems pretty nearly to have lost
+the pluck and prowess which had won Guinevere's love under the walls of
+Carmelide, and of which the last display is in the great fight with his
+sister's lover, Sir Accolon. All this may not excuse Guinevere's conduct
+to the moralist; it certainly makes that conduct artistically probable
+and legitimate to the critic, as a foundation for novel-character.</p>
+
+<p>Her lover may look less promising, at least at the moment of
+presentation; and indeed it is true that while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> "la donna &egrave; <i>im</i>mobile,"
+in essentials and possibilities alike, forms of man, though never losing
+reality and possibility, pass at times out of possible or at least easy
+recognition. Anybody who sees in the Lancelot of the foregoing scene
+only a hobbledehoy and milksop who happens to have a big chest, strong
+arms, and plenty of mere fighting spirit, will never grasp him. Hardly
+better off will be he who takes him&mdash;as the story <i>does</i> give some
+handles for taking him&mdash;to be merely one of the too common examples of
+humanity who sin and repent, repent and sin, with a sort of
+Americanesque notion of spending dollars in this world and laying them
+up in another. Malory has on the whole done more justice to the
+possibilities of the Vulgate Lancelot than he has to Guinevere, and
+Tennyson has here improved on Malory. He has, indeed, very nearly "got"
+Lancelot, but not quite. To get him wholly would have required Tennyson
+for form and Browning for analysis of character; while even this
+<i>mistura mirabilis</i> would have been improved for the purpose by touches
+not merely of Morris and Swinburne, but of lesser men like Kingsley and
+even George Macdonald. To understand Lancelot you must previously
+understand, or by some kind of intuition divine, the mystical element
+which his descent from the Graal-Wardens confers; the essential or
+quintessential chivalric quality which his successive creators agreed in
+imparting to him; the all-conquering gift so strangely tempered by an
+entire freedom from the boasting and the rudeness of the <i>chanson</i> hero;
+the actual checks and disasters which his cross stars bring on him; his
+utter loyalty in all things save one to the king; and last and mightiest
+of all, his unquenchable and unchangeable passion for the Queen.</p>
+
+<p>Hence what they said to him in one of his early adventures, with no
+great ill following, "Fair Knight, thou art unhappy," was always true in
+a higher sense. He may have been Lord of Joyous Gard, in title and fact;
+but his own heart was always a Garde Douloureuse&mdash;a <i>cor
+luctificabile</i>&mdash;pillowed on idle triumphs and fearful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> hopes and
+poisoned satisfactions, and bafflements where he would most fain have
+succeeded. He has almost had to have the first kiss forced on him; he is
+refused the last on grounds of which he himself cannot deny the
+validity. Guinevere is a tragic figure in the truest and deepest sense
+of the term, and, as we have tried to show, she is amply complex in
+character and temperament. But it is questionable whether Lancelot is
+not more tragic and more complex still.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Books.</div>
+
+<p>It may perhaps without impropriety be repeated that these are not mere
+fancies of the writer, but things reasonably suggested by and solidly
+based upon "the French books," when these later are collated and, so to
+speak, "checked" by Malory and the romances of adventure branching off
+from them. But Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot by no means exhaust the
+material for advanced and complicated novel-work&mdash;in character as well
+as incident&mdash;provided by the older forms of the Legend. There is Gawain,
+who has to be put together from the sort of first draft of Lancelot
+which he shows in the earlier versions, and the light-o'-love opposite
+which he becomes in the later, a contrast continued in the Amadis and
+Galaor figures of the Spanish romances and their descendants. There is
+the already glanced at group of Arthur's sisters or half-sisters, left
+mere sketches and hints, but most interesting. Not to be tedious, we
+need not dwell on Palomides, a very promising Lancelot unloved; on
+Lamoracke, left provokingly obscure, but shadowing a most important
+possibility in the unwritten romance of one of those very sisters; Bors,
+of whom Tennyson has made something, but not enough, in the later
+<i>Idylls</i>; and others. But it is probably unnecessary to carry the
+discussion of this matter further. It has been discussed and illustrated
+at some length, because it shows how early the elements, not merely of
+romance but of the novel in the fullest sense, existed in French
+literature.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[<i>Here follows the noble passage above referred to between
+Lancelot and King Bagdemagus after the death of
+Meleagraunce, whose cousin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> Lancelot has just slain in
+single combat for charging him with treason. He has kept his
+helm on, but doffs it at the King's request.</i>]</p></div>
+
+<p>And when the King saw him he ran to kiss him, and began to make such joy
+of him as none could overgo. But Lancelot said, "Ah, Sir! for God's
+sake, make no joy or feast for me. Certainly you should make none, for
+if you knew the evil I have done you, you would hate me above all men in
+the world." "Oh! Lancelot," said he, "tell it me not, for I
+understand[57] too well what you would say; but I will know<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> nothing
+of it, because it might be such a thing" as would part them for ever.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> The subdivision of the <i>gestes</i> does not matter: they were
+all connected closely or loosely&mdash;except the Crusading section, and even
+that falls under the Christian <i>v.</i> Saracen grouping if not under the
+Carlovingian. The real "outside" members are few, late, and in almost
+every case unimportant.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> There are comic <i>episodes</i> elsewhere; but almost the whole
+of this poem turns on the <i>gabz</i> or burlesque boasts of the
+paladins.&mdash;It may be wise here to anticipate an objection which may be
+taken to these remarks on the <i>chansons</i>. I have been asked whether I
+know M. B&eacute;dier's handling of them; and, by an odd coincidence, within a
+few hours of the question I saw an American statement that this
+excellent scholar's researches "have revised our conceptions" of the
+matter. No one can exceed me in respect for perhaps the foremost of
+recent scholars in Old French. But my "conception" of the <i>chansons</i> was
+formed long before he wrote, not from that of any of his predecessors,
+but from the <i>chansons</i> themselves. It is therefore not subject to
+"revisal" except from my own re-reading, and such re-reading has only
+confirmed it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> It is not of course intended to be preferred to the far
+more widely known tale in which the heroine bears the same name, and
+which will be mentioned below. But if it is less beautiful such beauty
+as it has is free from the slightest <i>morbidezza</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> And to this introduction our dealings with it here may be
+confined. The accounts of the siege itself are of much less interest,
+especially in connection with our special subject.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> A sort of companion handbook to the first part of this
+volume will be found in the present writer's sketch of twelfth and
+thirteenth century European literature, under the title of <i>The
+Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory</i>, in Messrs. Blackwood's
+<i>Periods of European Literature</i> (Edinburgh and London, 1897), and
+another in his <i>Short History of French Literature</i> (Oxford, 7th ed. at
+press).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> It is scarcely rash to say that Cressid is the first
+representative of this dread and delightful entity, and the ancestress
+of all its embodiments since in fiction, as Cleopatra seems to have been
+in history. No doubt "it" was of the beginning, but it lacked its
+<i>vates</i>. Helen was different.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Faerie Queene</i>, v. iv. 1-20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> I hope I may be allowed to emphasise the disclaimer, which
+I have already made more than once elsewhere, of the very slightest
+disrespect to this admirable scholar. The presumption and folly of such
+disrespect would be only inferior to its ingratitude, for the indulgence
+with which M. Paris consistently treated my own somewhat rash adventures
+in Old French was extraordinary. But as one's word is one's word so
+one's opinion is one's opinion.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Sometimes <i>de</i>, but <i>&agrave;</i> seems more analogical.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Chrestien was rather like Chaucer in being apt not to
+finish. Even the <i>Charette</i> owes its completion (in an extent not
+exactly determinable) to a certain Godfrey de Lagny (Laigny, etc.).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Of course it is easy enough to assign explanations of it,
+from the vehicle of criminals to the scaffold downwards; but it remains
+a convention&mdash;very much of the same kind as that which ordains (or used
+to ordain) that a gentleman may not carry a parcel done up in newspaper,
+though no other form of wrapping really stains his honour.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Neither he nor Malory gives one of the most gracious parts
+of it&mdash;the interview between Lancelot and King Bagdemagus, <i>v. inf.</i> p.
+54.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Material (chamois skin)? or garment? Not common in O.F., I
+think, for <i>camisia</i>; but Spenser (<i>Faerie Queene</i>, <span class="smcap">ii</span>. iii. xxvi.) has
+(as Prof. Gregory Smith reminds me) "a silken <i>camus</i> lilly whight."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> As does Pyramus's&mdash;or Bottom's&mdash;objection to the wall.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> This part of the matter has received too little attention
+in modern studies of the subject: partly because it was clumsily handled
+by some of the probably innumerable and certainly undiscoverable
+meddlers with the Vulgate. The unpopularity of Lancelot and his kin is
+not due merely to his invincibility and their not always discreet
+partisanship. The older "Queen's knights" must have naturally felt her
+devotion to him; his "undependableness"&mdash;in consequence not merely of
+his fits of madness but of his chivalrously permissible but very
+inconvenient habit of disguising himself and taking the other side&mdash;must
+have annoyed the whole Table. Yet these very things, properly managed,
+help to create and complicate the "novel" character. For one of the most
+commonly and not the least justly charged faults of the average romance
+is its deficiency in combined plot and character-interest&mdash;the presence
+in it, at most, of a not too well-jointed series of episodes, possibly
+leading to a death or a marriage, but of little more than chronicle
+type. This fault has been exaggerated, but it exists. Now it will be one
+main purpose of the pages which follow to show that there is, in the
+completed Arthuriad, something quite different from and far beyond
+this&mdash;something perhaps imperfectly realised by any one writer, and
+overlaid and disarranged by the interpolations or misinterpretations of
+others, but still a "mind" at work that keeps the "mass" alive, and may,
+or rather surely will, quicken it yet further and into higher forms
+hereafter. (Those who know will not, I hope, be insulted if I mention
+for the benefit of those who do not, that the term "Vulgate" is applied
+to those forms of the parts of the story which, with slighter or more
+important variations, are common to many MSS. The term itself is most
+specially applied to the <i>Lancelot</i> which, in consequence of this
+popularity throughout the later Middle Ages, actually got itself printed
+early in the French Renaissance. The whole has been (or is being) at
+last most fortunately reprinted by Dr. Sommer. See Bibliography.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> This is another point which, not, I suppose, having been
+clearly and completely evolved by the first handler, got messed and
+muddled by successive copyists and continuators. In what seems to be the
+oldest, and is certainly the most consistent and satisfactory, story
+there is practically nothing evil about Viviane&mdash;Nimiane&mdash;Nimue, who is
+also indisputably identical with the foster-mother of Lancelot, the
+occasional Egeria (always for good) of Arthur himself, and the
+benefactress (this is probably a later addition though in the right key)
+of Sir Pelleas. For anybody who possesses the Power of the Sieve she
+remains as Milton saw her, and not as Tennyson mis-saw part of her. The
+bewitching of Merlin (who, let it be remembered, was an ambiguous person
+in several ways, and whose magic, if never exactly black, was sometimes
+a rather greyish or magpied white) was not an unmixed loss to the world;
+she seems to have really loved him, and to have faithfully kept her word
+by being with him often. He "could not get out" certainly, but are there
+many more desirable things in the outside world than lying with your
+head in the lap of the Lady of the Lake while she caresses and talks to
+you? "J'en connais des plus malheureux" as the French poet observed of
+some one in less delectable case. The author of the <i>Suite de Merlin</i>
+seems to have been her first maligner. Tennyson, seduced by contrast,
+followed and exaggerated the worst view. But I am not sure that the most
+"irreligious" thing (as Coleridge would have said) was not the
+transformation of her into a mere married lady (with a ch&acirc;teau in
+Brittany, and an ordinary knight for her husband) which astounds us in
+one of the dullest parts of the Vulgate about Lancelot&mdash;the wars with
+Claudas.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> I have always thought that Spenser (whose dealings with
+Arthuriana are very curious, and have never, I think, been fully
+studied) took this function of Lancelot to suggest the presentation of
+his Arthur. But Lancelot has no&mdash;at least no continuous&mdash;fairy aid; he
+is not invariably victorious, and he is thoroughly human. Spenser's
+Prince began the "blamelessness" which grew more trying still in
+Tennyson's King. (In the few remarks of this kind made here I am not, I
+need hardly say, "going back upon" my lifelong estimate of Tennyson as
+an almost impeccable poet. But an impeccable poet is not necessarily an
+impeccable plot- and character-monger either in tale-telling or in
+drama.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Of this we have unusually strong evidence in the shape of
+MS. interlineations, where the name "Percevale" is actually struck out
+and that of "Gala[h]ad" substituted above it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> I do not say that this is their <i>only</i> character.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Brittany had much earlier and much more tradition of
+chivalry than Wales.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> The only fault alleged against Lancelot's person by
+carpers was that he was something "pigeon"&mdash;or "guardsman"&mdash;chested. But
+Guinevere showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at
+least on this occasion we may translate <i>vaillant</i>) by retorting that
+such a chest was only big enough&mdash;and hardly big enough&mdash;for such a
+heart.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Some of the later "redactors" of the Vulgate may perhaps
+have unduly multiplied his madnesses, and have exaggerated his early
+shyness a little. But I am not sure of the latter point. It is not only
+"beasts" that, as in the great Theocritean place, "go timidly because
+they fear Cythera"; and a love charged with such dread consequences was
+not to be lightly embarked upon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> The early <i>Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere</i>, though only
+external, is perfect. Many touches in the <i>Idylls</i> other than the
+title-one are suitable and even subtle; but the convertite in that one
+is (as they say now) "unconvincing." The simpler attitude of the
+rejection of Lancelot in the verse <i>Morte</i> and in Malory is infinitely
+better. As for Morris's two pieces, they could hardly be better in
+themselves as poems&mdash;but they are scarcely great on the novel side.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Disagreeable, that is to say, as a sister and
+sister-in-law. There must have been something attractive about her in
+other relations.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Compare one of the not so very many real examples of
+Ibsen's vaunted psychology, the placid indifference to her own past of
+Gina in the <i>Wild Duck</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> He had said that if he were a woman he would give Lancelot
+anything he asked; and the Queen, following, observes that Gawain had
+left nothing for a woman to say.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Nos passions ont quelque chose d'infini</i>, says Bossuet.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> &#7953;&#955;&#945;&#957;&#948;&#961;&#959;&#962;, &#7953;&#955;&#7953;&#960;&#964;&#959;&#955;&#953;&#962;. She had no opportunity of
+being &#7953;&#955;&#945;&#957;&#945;&#965;&#962;.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Hawker's security as to Cornish men and things is, I
+admit, a little Bardolphian. But did he not write about the Quest? (This
+sort of argument simply swarms in Arthurian controversy; so I may surely
+use it once.) Besides there is no doubt about the blueness of the sea in
+question; though Anthony Trollope, in <i>Malachi's Cove</i>, has most falsely
+and incomprehensibly denied it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> That this is a real sign of decadence and unoriginality,
+the further exaggeration of it in the case of the knights of the
+<i>Amadis</i> cycle proves almost to demonstration.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> After the opening sentence I have dropped the historic
+present, which, for a continuance, is very irritating in English.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Lancelot himself has told us earlier (<i>op. cit.</i> i. 38)
+that, though he neither knew nor thought himself to be a king's son, he
+was commonly addressed as such.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Lionel (very young at the time) had wept because some one
+mentioned the loss of his inheritance, and Lancelot (young as he too
+was) had bidden him not cry for fear of landlessness. "There would be
+plenty for him, if he had heart to gain it."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> This technical title is usually if not
+invariably given to Ywain and Gawain as eldest sons of
+recognised kings. "Prince" is not used in this sense by the
+older Romancers, but only for distinguished knights like
+Galahault, who is really a king.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> There is one admirable word here, <i>enbarnis</i>,>
+which has so long been lost to French that it is not even in
+Littr&eacute;. But Dryden's "<i>burnish</i> into man" probably preserves
+it in English; for this is certainly not the other "burnish"
+from <i>brunir</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> "Car moult en parole diroit la parole."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Puzzled by the number of new thoughts and emotions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Ywain suggests one of the commonest things in Romance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Arthur had, by a set of chances, not actually girded on
+Lancelot's sword.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Whose prisoner Lancelot had been, who had been ready to
+fall in love with him, and to whom he had expressly refused to tell his
+own love. Hence his confusion.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> The day when Lancelot, at her request, had turned against
+the side of his friend Galahault and brought victory to Arthur's.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> By the way, the Vulgate Mordred is a more subtle
+conception than the early stories gave, or than Malory transfers. He is
+no mere traitor or felon knight, much less a coward, from the first; but
+at that first shows a mixture of good and bad qualities in which the
+"dram of eale" does its usual office. Here once more is a subject made
+to the hand of a novelist of the first class.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> Some poet or pundit, whether of East or West, or of what
+place, from Santiago to Samarcand, I know not, has laid it down, that
+men can love many, but without ceasing to love any; that women love only
+one at once, but can (to borrow, at fifty years' memory, a phrase of
+George Lawrence's in <i>Sans Merci</i>) "drop their lovers down <i>oubliettes</i>"
+with comparative ease.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> It is excusable to use two words for the single verb
+<i>savoir</i> to bring out the meaning. King Bagdemagus does not "know" as a
+fact that Lancelot has slain his son, though he fears it and feels
+almost sure of it.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>ROMANS D'AVENTURES</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Variety of the present groups.</div>
+
+<p>On the whole, however, the most important influence in the development
+of the novel originally&mdash;that of the <i>nouvelle</i> or <i>novella</i> in French,
+and Italian taking the second place in order of time&mdash;must be assigned
+to the very numerous and very delightful body of compositions (not very
+long as a rule,<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> but also never exactly short) to which the name
+<i>Romans d'aventures</i> has been given with a limited connotation. They
+exist in all languages; our own English Romances, though sometimes
+derived from the <i>chansons</i> and the Arthurian Legend, are practically
+all of this class, and in every case but one it is true that they have
+actual French originals. These <i>Romans d'aventures</i> have a habit, not
+universal but prevailing, of "keying themselves on" to the Arthurian
+story itself; but they rarely, if ever, have much to do with the
+principal parts of it. It is as if their public wanted the connection as
+a sort of guarantee; but a considerable proportion keep independence.
+They are so numerous, so various, and with rare exceptions so
+interesting, that it is difficult to know which to select for elaborate
+analysis and translated selection; but almost the entire <i>corpus</i> gives
+us the important fact of the increased <i>freedom</i> of fiction. Even the
+connection with the Arthurian matter is, as has been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> said, generally of
+the loosest kind; that with the Charlemagne cycle hardly exists. The
+Graal (or things connected with its legends) may appear: Gawain is a
+frequent hero; other, as one might call them, sociable features as
+regards the older stories present themselves. But as a rule the man has
+got his own story which he wants to tell; his own special hero and
+heroine whom he wants to present. Furthermore, the old community of
+handling, which is so noticeable in the <i>chansons</i> more particularly,
+disappears almost entirely. Nothing has yet been discovered in French,
+though it may be any day, to serve as the origin of our <i>Gawain and the
+Green Knight</i>, and some special features of this are almost certainly
+the work of an Englishman. Our English <i>Ywain and Gawain</i> is, as has
+been said, rather better than Chrestien's original. But, as a rule, the
+form, which is French form in language (by no means always certainly or
+probably French in nationality of author), is not only the original, but
+better; and besides, it is with it that we are busied here, though in
+not a few cases English readers can obtain an idea, fairly sufficient,
+of these originals from the English versions. As these, however, with
+the exception of one or two remarkable individuals or even groups, were
+seldom written by men of genius, it is best to go to the sources to see
+the power and the variety of fictitious handling which have been
+mentioned.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Different views held of it.</div>
+
+<p>The richness, indeed, of these <i>Romans d'aventures</i> is surprising, and
+they very seldom display the flatness and triviality which mar by no
+means all but too many of their English imitations. Some of the faults
+which are part cause of these others they indeed have&mdash;the apparently
+irrational catalogues of birds and beasts, stuffs and vegetables; the
+long moralisings; the religious passages sometimes (as it may seem to
+mere moderns) interposed in very odd contexts; the endless descriptions
+of battles and single combats; the absence of striking characterisation
+and varied incident. Their interest is a peculiar interest, yet one can
+hardly call the taste for it "an acquired<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> taste," because the very
+large majority of healthy and intelligent children delight in these
+stories under whatever form they are presented to them, and at least a
+considerable number of grown-up persons never lose the enjoyment. The
+disapproval which rested on "romances of chivalry" for a long time was
+admittedly ignorant and absurd; and the reasons why this disapproval, at
+least in its somewhat milder form of neglect, has never been wholly
+removed, are not very difficult to discover. It is to be feared that
+<i>Don Quixote</i>, great as it is, has done not a little mischief, and by
+virtue of its greatness is likely to do not a little more, though the
+<i>Amadis</i> group, which it specially satirises, has faults not found in
+the older tales. The texts, though in most cases easily enough
+accessible now, are not what may be called obviously and yet
+unobtrusively so. They are to a very large extent issued by learned
+societies: and the public, not too unreasonably, is rather suspicious,
+and not at all avid, of the products of learned societies. They are
+accompanied by introductions and notes and glossaries&mdash;things the public
+(again not wholly to be blamed) regards without cordiality. Latterly
+they have been used for educational purposes, and anything used for
+educational purposes acquires an evil&mdash;or at least an
+unappetising&mdash;reputation. In some cases they have been messed and
+meddled in <i>usum vulgi</i>. But their worst enemy recently has been, it may
+be feared, the irreconcilable opposition of their spirit to what is
+called the modern spirit&mdash;though this latter sometimes takes them up and
+plays with them in a fashion of maudlin mysticism.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Partenopeus of Blois</i> selected for analysis and
+translation.</div>
+
+<p>To treat them at large here as Ellis treated some of the English
+imitations would be impossible in point of scale and dangerous as a
+competition; for Ellis, though a little too prone to Voltairianise or at
+least Hamiltonise things sometimes too good for that kind of treatment,
+was a very clever man indeed. For somewhat full abstract and translation
+we may take one of the most famous, but perhaps not one of the most
+generally and thoroughly known,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> <i>Partenopeus</i> (or -<i>pex</i><a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a>) <i>of
+Blois</i>, which, though it exists in English, and though the French was
+very probably written by an Englishman, is not now one of the most
+widely read and is in parts very charming. That it is one of the
+romances on which, from the fact of the resemblance of its central
+incident to the story of Cupid and Psyche, the good defenders of the bad
+theory of the classical origin of romance generally have based one of
+their few plausible arguments, need not occupy us. For the question is
+not whether Denis Pyramus or any one else (modernity would not be
+modernity if his claims were not challenged) told it, but <i>how</i> he told
+it. Still less need we treat the other question before indicated. Here
+is one of the central stories of the world&mdash;one of those which Eve told
+to her children in virtue of the knowledge communicated by the apple,
+one with which the sons of God courted the daughters of men, or, at
+latest, one of those which were yarned in the Ark. It is the story of
+the unwise lover&mdash;in this case the man, not as in Psyche's the
+woman&mdash;who will not be content to enjoy an unseen, but by every other
+sense enjoyable and adorable love, even though (in this case) the single
+deprivation is expressly to be terminated. We have it, of course, in all
+sorts of forms, languages, and differing conditions. But we are only
+concerned with it here as with a gracious example of that kind of
+romance which, though not exactly a "fairy tale" in the Western sense,
+is pretty obviously influenced by the Eastern fairy tale itself, and
+still more obviously influences the modern kind in which "the
+supernatural" is definitely prominent.</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps excusable in the good M. Robert, who wrote the
+Introduction to Crapelet's edition of this poem eighty years ago, to
+"protest too much" in favour of the author whom he was now presenting
+practically for the first time&mdash;to a changed audience; but it was
+unnecessary and a little unfortunate. Except in one point or group of
+points, it is vain to try to put <i>Partenopeus</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> above <i>Cupid and
+Psyche</i>: but it can perfectly well stand by itself in its own place, and
+that no low one. Except in <i>Floire et Blanchefleur</i> and of course in
+<i>Aucassin et Nicolette</i>, the peculiar grace and delicacy of romance are
+nowhere so well shown; and <i>Partenopeus</i>, besides the advantage of
+length, has that of personages interesting, besides the absolute hero
+and heroine. The Count of Blois himself is, no doubt, despite his
+beauty, and his bravery, and his good nature, rather of a feeble folk.
+Psyche has the excuse of her sex, besides the evil counsel of her
+sisters, for her curiosity. But Partenopeus has not the former; nor has
+he even that weaker but still not quite invalid one which lost Agib, the
+son of Cassib, his many-Houried Paradise on Earth. He is supposed to be
+a Frenchman&mdash;the somewhat excessive fashion in which Frenchmen make
+obedience to the second clause<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> of the Fifth Commandment atone for
+some neglect of other parts of the decalogue is well known, or at least
+traditionally believed. But most certainly a man is not justified in
+obeying his mother to the extent of disobeying&mdash;and that in the
+shabbiest of ways&mdash;his lady and mistress, who is, in fact, according to
+mediaeval ideas, virtually, if not virtuously, his wife. But Melior
+herself, the heroine, is an absolutely delightful person from her first
+appearance (or rather <i>non</i>-appearance) as a sweet dream come true, to
+her last in the more orthodox and public spousals. The grace of her
+Dian-like surrender of herself to her love; the constancy with which she
+holds to the betrothal theory of the time; the unselfishness with which
+she not only permits but actually advises the lover, whom she would so
+fain, but cannot yet, make her acknowledged husband, to leave her; her
+frank forgiveness of his only-just-in-time repented and prevented, but
+intended, infidelity; her sorrow at and after the separation enforced by
+his breach of pact; her interviews with her sister, naturally chequered
+by conflicting feelings of love and pride and the rest&mdash;are all
+charming. But she is not the only charming figure.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+<p>The "second heroine," a sister or cousin who plays a sort of superior
+confidante's part, is by no means uncommon in Romance. Alexandrine, for
+instance, who plays this in <i>William of Palerne</i>, is a very nice girl.
+But Urraque or Urraca,<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> the sister of Melior&mdash;whether full and
+legitimate, or "half" illegitimate, versions differ&mdash;is much more
+elaborately dealt with, and is, in fact, the chief <i>character</i> of the
+piece, and a character rather unusually strong for Romance. She plays
+the part of reconciler after Partenopeus' fatal folly has estranged him
+from her sister, and plays it at great length, but with much less tedium
+than might be expected. But the author is an "incurable feminist," as
+some one else was once described with a mixture of pity and admiration:
+and he is not contented with two heroines. There is a third, Persewis,
+maid of honour to Urraque, and also a fervent admirer of the
+incomparable Partenopeus, on whose actual beauty great stress is laid,
+and who in romance, other than his own, is quoted as a modern paragon
+thereof, worthy to rank with ancient patterns, sacred and profane.
+Persewis, however, is very young&mdash;a "flapper" or a
+"[bread-and-]buttercup," as successive generations have irreverently
+called the immature but agreeable creature. The poet lays much emphasis
+on this youth. She did not "kiss and embrace," he says, just because she
+was too young, and not because of any foolish prudery or propriety,
+things which he does not hesitate to pronounce appropriate only to ugly
+girls. His own attitude to "the fair" is unflinchingly put in one of the
+most notable and best known passages of the poem (l. 7095 <i>sq.</i>):</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>When God made all creation, and devised their forms for his
+creatures, He distributed beauties and good qualities to
+each in proportion as He loved it. He loved ladies above all
+things, and therefore made for them the best qualities and
+beauties. Of mere earth made He everything [else] under
+Heaven: but the hearts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> of ladies He made of honey, and gave
+to them more courtesy than to any other living creature. And
+as God loves them, therefore I love them: hunger and thirst
+are nothing to me as regards them: and I cry "Quits" to Him
+for His Paradise if the bright faces of ladies enter not
+therein.</p></div>
+
+<p>It will be observed, of course, how like this is to the most famous
+passage of <i>Aucassin et Nicolette</i>. It is less dreamily beautiful, but
+there is a certain spirit and downrightness about it which is agreeable;
+nor do I know anywhere a more forcible statement of the doctrine, often
+held by no bad people, that beauty is a personal testimonial of the
+Divinity&mdash;a scarcely parabolic command to love and admire its
+possessors.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
+
+<p>If, however, our poet has something of that Romantic morality to which
+Ascham&mdash;in a conjoined fit<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> of pedantry, prudery, and
+Protestantism&mdash;gave such an ugly name, he may excuse it to less
+strait-laced judges by other traits. Even the "retainer" of an editor
+ought not to have induced M. Robert to say that Melior's original
+surrender was "against her will," though she certainly did make a
+protest of a kind.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> But the enchanted and enchanting Empress's
+constancy is inviolable. Even after she has been obliged to banish her
+foolish lover, or rather after he has banished himself, she avows
+herself his only. She will die, she says, before she takes another lord;
+and for this reason objects for some time to the proposed tourney for
+her hand, in which the already proven invincibility of the Count of
+Blois makes him almost a certain victor, because it involves a
+conditional consent to admit another mate. To her scrupulousness, a kind
+of blunt common-sense, tempering the amiability of Urraca, is a pleasant
+set-off, and the freshness of Persewis completes the effect.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, there are little bits of almost Chaucerian vividness and
+terseness here and there, contrasting oddly with the <i>chevilles</i>&mdash;the
+stock phrases and epithets&mdash;elsewhere.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> When the tourney actually comes
+off and Partenopeus is supposed to be prisoner of a felon knight afar
+off, the two sisters and Persewis take their places at the entrance of
+the tower crossing the bridge at Melior's capital, "Chef d'Oire."<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a>
+Melior is labelled only "whom all the world loves and prizes," but
+Urraca and her damsel "have their faces pale and discoloured&mdash;for they
+have lost much of their beauty&mdash;so sorely have they wept Partenopeus."
+On the contrary, when, at the close of the first day's tourney, the
+usual "unknown knights" (in this case the Count of Blois himself and his
+friend Gaudins) ride off triumphant, they "go joyfully to their hostel
+with lifted lances, helmets on head, hauberks on back, and shields held
+proudly as if to begin jousting."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bel i vinrent et bel s'en vont,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>says King Corsols, one of the judges of the tourney, but not in the
+least aware of their identity. This may occur elsewhere, but it is by no
+means one of the commonplaces of Romance, and a well hit-off picture is
+motived by a sharply cut phrase.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is this sudden enlivening of the commonplaces of Romance with vivid
+picture and phrase which puts <i>Partenopeus</i> high among its fellows. The
+story is very simple, and the variation and multiplication of episodic
+adventure unusually scanty; while the too common genealogical preface is
+rather exceptionally superfluous. That the Count of Blois is the nephew
+of Clovis can interest&mdash;outside of a peculiar class of antiquarian
+commentator&mdash;no mortal; and the identification of "Chef-d'Oire,"
+Melior's enchanted capital, with Constantinople, though likely enough,
+is not much more important. Clovis and Byzantium (of which the
+enchantress is Empress) were well-known names and suited the <i>abonn&eacute;</i> of
+those times. The actual "argument" is of the slightest. One of Spenser's
+curious doggerel common measures&mdash;say:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A fairy queen grants bliss and troth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On terms, unto the knight:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His mother makes him break his oath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her sister puts it right&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>would almost do; the following prose abstract is practically exhaustive.</p>
+
+<p>Partenopeus, Count of Blois, nephew of King Clovis of France, and
+descendant of famous heroes of antiquity, including Hector, the most
+beautiful and one of the most valiant of men, after displaying his
+prowess in a war with the Saracen Sornagur, loses his way while hunting
+in the Ardennes. He at last comes to the seashore, and finds a ship
+which in fifteen days takes him to a strange country, where all is
+beautiful but entirely solitary. He finds a magnificent palace, where he
+is splendidly guested by unseen hands, and at last conducted to a
+gorgeous bedchamber. In the dark he, not unnaturally, lies awake
+speculating on the marvel; and after a time light footsteps approach the
+bed, and a form, invisible but tangible, lies down beside him. He
+touches it, and finds it warm and soft and smooth, and though it
+protests a little, the natural consequences follow. Then the lady
+confesses that she had heard of him, had (incognita) seen him at the
+Court of France, and had, being a white witch as well as an Empress,
+brought him to "Chef d'Oire," her capital, though she denies having
+intentionally or knowingly arranged the shepherd's hour itself.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> She
+is, however, as frank as Juliet and Miranda combined. She will be his
+wife (she makes a most interesting and accurate profession of Christian
+orthodoxy) if he will marry her; but it is impossible for the remainder
+of a period of which two and a half years have still to run, and at the
+end of which, and not till then, she has promised her vassals to choose
+a husband. Meanwhile, Partenopeus must submit to an ordeal not quite so
+painful as hot ploughshares. He must never see her or attempt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> see
+her, and he must not, during his stay at Chef d'Oire, see or speak to
+any other human being. At the same time, hunting, exploring the palace
+and the city and the country, and all other pastimes independent of
+visible human companionship, are freely at his disposal by day.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Et moi aur&egrave;s cascune nuit<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>says Melior, with the exquisite simplicity which is the charm of the
+whole piece.</p>
+
+<p>One must be very inquisitive, exceedingly virtuous (the mediaeval value
+of consummated betrothal being reckoned), superfluously fond of the
+company of one's miscellaneous fellow-creatures, and a person of very
+bad taste<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> to boot, in order to decline the bargain. Partenopeus does
+not dream of doing so, and for a whole year thinks of nothing but his
+fairy love and her bounties to him. Then he remembers his uncle-king and
+his country, and asks leave to visit them, but not with the faintest
+intention of running away. Melior gives it with the same frankness and
+kindness with which she has given herself&mdash;informing him, in fact, that
+he <i>ought</i> to go, for his uncle is dead and his country in danger. Only,
+she reminds him of his pledges, and warns him of the misfortunes which
+await his breach of them. He is then magically wafted back on ship-board
+as he came.</p>
+
+<p>He has, once more, no intention of playing the truant or traitor, and
+does his duty bravely and successfully. But the new King has a niece and
+the Count himself has a mother, who, motherlike, is convinced that her
+son's mysterious love is a very bad person, if not an actual <i>mauf&egrave;s</i> or
+devil, and is very anxious that he shall marry the niece. She has
+clerical and chemical resources to help her, and Partenopeus has
+actually consented, in a fit of aberration, when, with one of the odd
+Wemmick-like flashes of reflection,<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> not uncommon with knights, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+remembers Melior, and unceremoniously makes off to her. He confesses
+(for he is a good creature though foolish) and is forgiven, Melior
+being, though not in the least insipid or of a put-up-with-anything
+disposition, full of "loving <i>mercy</i>" in every sense. But the situation
+is bound to recur, and now, though the time of probation (probation very
+much tempered!) is nearly over, the mother wins her way. Partenopeus is
+deluded into accepting an enchanted lantern, which he tries on his
+unsuspecting mistress at the first possible moment. What he sees, of
+course, is only a very lovely woman&mdash;a woman in the condition best
+fitted to show her loveliness&mdash;whom he has offended irreparably, and
+lost.</p>
+
+<p>Melior is no scold, but she is also no milksop. She will have nothing
+more to do with him, for he has shamed her with her people (who now
+appear), broken her magic power, and, above all, been false to her wish
+and his word. The entreaties of her sister Urraca (whose gracious figure
+is now elaborately introduced) are for the time useless, and Partenopeus
+is only saved from the vengeance of the courtiers and the household by
+Urraca's protection.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+<p>To halt for a moment, the scene of the treason and discovery is another
+of those singular vividnesses which distinguish this poem and story. The
+long darkness suddenly flashing into light, and the startled Melior's
+beauty framed in the splendour of the couch and the bedchamber&mdash;the
+offender at once realising his folly and his crime, and dashing the
+instrument of his treachery (useless, for all is daylight now, the charm
+being counter-charmed) against the wall&mdash;the half-frightened,
+half-curious Court ladies and Court servants thronging in&mdash;the
+apparition of Urraca,&mdash;all this gives a picture of extraordinarily
+dramatic power. It reminds one a little of Spenser's famous portrayal of
+Britomart disturbed at night, and the comparison of the two brings out
+all sorts of "excellent differences."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But to return to the story itself. Although the invariable
+cut-and-driedness of romance incidents has been grossly exaggerated,
+there is one situation which is almost always treated in the same way.
+The knight who has, with or without his own fault, incurred the
+displeasure of his mistress, "doth [<i>always</i>] to the green wood go," and
+there, whether in complete sanity or not, lives for a time a half or
+wholly savage life, discarding knightly and sometimes any other dress,
+eating very little, and in considerable danger of being eaten himself.
+Everybody, from Lancelot to Amadis, does it; and Partenopeus does it
+too, but in his own way. Reaching Blois and utterly rejecting his
+mother's attempts to excuse herself and console him, he drags out a
+miserable time in continual penance and self-neglect, till at last,
+availing himself of (and rather shabbily if piously tricking) a Saracen
+page,<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> he succeeds in getting off incognito to the vague "Ardennes,"
+where his sadly ended adventure had begun. These particular Ardennes
+appear to be reachable by sea (on which they have a coast), and to
+contain not only ordinary beasts of chase, not only wolves and bears,
+but lions, tigers, wyverns, dragons, etc. A single unarmed man has
+practically no chance there, and the Count determines to condemn himself
+to the fate of the Roman arena. As a preliminary, he dismounts and turns
+loose his horse, who is presently attacked by a lion and wounded, but
+luckily gets a fair blow with his hoof between his enemy's eyes, and
+kills him. Then comes another of the flashes (and something more) of the
+piece. Stung by the pain of his wound and dripping with blood, the
+animal dashes at full speed, and whinnying at the top of his powers, to
+the seashore and along it. The passage is worth translating:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>He [<i>the horse after he has killed the lion</i>] lifts his
+tail, and takes to flight down a valley towards nightfall.
+Much he looks about him and much he whinnies. By night-time
+he has got out of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> wood and has fled to the sea: but he
+will not stop there. He makes the pebbles fly as he gallops
+and never stops whinnying. Now the moon has mounted high in
+the heavens, all clear and bright and shining: there is not
+a dark cloud in all the sky, nor any movement on the sea:
+sweet and serene is the weather, and fair and clear and
+lightened up. And the palfrey whinnies so loudly that he can
+be heard far off at sea.</p></div>
+
+<p>He <i>is</i> heard at sea, for a ship is waiting there in the calm, and on
+board that ship is Urraca, with a wise captain named Maruc and a stout
+crew. The singularity of the event induces them to land (Maruc knows the
+dangers of the region, but Urraca has no fears; the captain also knows
+how to enchant the beasts), and the horse's bloodmarks guide them up the
+valley. At last they come upon a miserable creature, in rags,
+dishevelled, half-starved, and altogether unrecognisable. After a little
+time, however, Urraca does recognise him, and, despite his forlorn and
+repulsive condition, takes him in her arms.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Si le descouvre un poi le vis.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Yet another of the uncommon "flashlight" sketches, where in two short
+lines one sees the damsel as she has been described not so long before,
+"tall and graceful, her fair hair (which, untressed, reached her feet
+[now, no doubt, more suitably arranged]), with forehead broad and high,
+and smooth; grey eyes, large and <i>seignorous</i>" (an admirable word for
+eyes), "all her face one kiss"; one sees her with one arm round the
+tottering wretch, and with the "long fingers" of her other white hand
+clearing the matted hair from his visage till she can recognise him.</p>
+
+<p>They take him on board, of course, though to induce him to go this
+delightful creature has to give an account of her sister's feelings
+(which, to put it mildly, anticipates the truth very considerably), and
+also to cry over him a little.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> She takes him to Saleuces,<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> an
+island principality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> of her own, and there she and her maid-of-honour,
+Persewis (see above), proceed to cocker and cosset him up exactly as one
+imagines two such girls would do to "a dear, silly, nice, handsome
+thing," as a favourite modern actress used to bring down the house by
+saying, with a sort of shake, half of tears and half of laughter, in her
+voice. Indeed the phrase fits Partenopeus precisely. We are told that
+Urraca would have been formally in love with him if it had not been
+unsportsgirl-like towards her sister; and as for Persewis, there is once
+more a windfall in the description of the "butter-cup's" delight when
+Urraca, going to see Melior, has to leave her alone with the Count. The
+Princess is of course very sorry to go. "But Persewis would not have
+minded if she had stayed forty days, or till August," and she "glories
+greatly" when her rival departs. No mischief, however, comes of it; for
+the child is "too young," as we are earnestly assured, and Partenopeus,
+to do him justice, is both too much of a gentleman, and too dolefully in
+earnest about recovering Melior, to dream of any.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Urraca is most unselfishly doing her very best to reconcile
+the lovers, not neglecting the employment of white fibs as before, and
+occasionally indulging, not merely in satiric observation on poor
+Melior's irresolution and conflict of feeling, but in decidedly sisterly
+plainness of speech, reminding the Empress that after all she had
+entrapped Partenopeus into loving her, and that he had, for two whole
+years, devoted himself entirely to her love and its conditions. At last
+a rather complicated and not always quite consistently told provisional
+settlement is arrived at, carrying out, in a manner, the undertakings
+referred to by Melior in her first interview with her lover. An immense
+tourney for the hand of Melior is to be held, with a jury of kings to
+judge it: and everybody, Christian or pagan, from emperor to vavasour is
+invited to compete. But in case of no single victor, a kind of
+"election" by what may be called the States of Byzantium&mdash;kings, dukes,
+counts, and simple fief-holders&mdash;is to decide, and it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> seems sometimes
+as if Melior retained something of a personal veto at last. Of the
+incidents and episodes before this actually comes off, the most
+noteworthy are a curious instance of the punctilio of chivalry (the
+Count having once promised Melior that no one but herself shall gird on
+his sword, makes a difficulty when Urraca and Persewis arm him), and a
+misfortune by which he, rowing carelessly by himself, falls into the
+power of a felon knight, Armans of Thenodon. This last incident,
+however, though it alarms his two benefactresses, is not really unlucky.
+For, in the first place, Armans is not at home, and his wife, falling a
+victim, like every woman, to Partenopeus' extraordinary beauty, allows
+him his parole; while the accident enables him to appear at the
+tournament incognito&mdash;a practice always affected, if possible, by the
+knights of romance, and in this case possessing some obvious and special
+advantages.</p>
+
+<p>On his way he meets another knight, Gaudin le Blond, with whom he gladly
+strikes up brotherhood-in-arms. The three days of the mellay are not
+<i>very</i> different from the innumerable similar scenes elsewhere, nor can
+the author be said to be specially happy at this kind of business. But
+any possible tedium is fairly relieved by the shrewd and sometimes
+jovial remarks made by one of the judging kings, the before-quoted
+Corsols&mdash;met by grumbles from another, Clarin, and by the fears and
+interest of the three ladies, of whom the ever-faithful and shrewd
+Urraca is the first to discover Partenopeus. He and Gaudin perform the
+usual exploits and suffer the usual inconveniences, but at the end it is
+still undecided whether the Count of Blois or the Soldan of Persia&mdash;a
+good knight, though a pagan, and something of a braggart&mdash;deserves the
+priceless prize of Melior's hand with the empire of Byzantium to boot.
+The "election" follows, and after some doubt goes right, while Melior
+now offers no objection. But the Soldan, in his <i>outrecuidance</i>, demands
+single combat. He has, of course, no right to do this, and the Council
+and the Empress object strongly. But Partenopeus will have no stain on
+his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> honour; consents to the fight; deliberately refuses to take
+advantage of the Soldan when he is unhorsed and pinned down by the
+animal; assists him to get free; and only after an outrageous menace
+from the Persian justifies his own claim to belong to the class of
+champions</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who <i>always</i> cleave their foe<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To the waist<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;indeed excels them, by entirely bisecting the Soldan.</p>
+
+<p>An episodic restoration of parole to the widow of Armans (who has
+actually taken part in the tourney and been killed) should be noticed,
+and the piece ends, or rather comes close to an end, with the marriages
+which appropriately follow these well-deserved murders. Marriages&mdash;not a
+marriage only&mdash;for King "Lohier" of France most sensibly insists on
+espousing the delightful Urraca: and Persewis is consoled for the loss
+of Partenopeus by the suit&mdash;refused at first and then granted, with the
+obviously intense enjoyment of both processes likely in a novice&mdash;of his
+brother-in-arms, to whom the "Emperor of Byzantium" abandons his own two
+counties in France, adding a third in his new empire, and winning by
+this generosity almost more popularity than by his prowess.</p>
+
+<p>But, as was hinted, the story does not actually end. There is a great
+deal about the festivities, and though the author says encouragingly
+that he "will not devise much of breeches," he <i>does</i>&mdash;and of many other
+garments. Indeed the last of his liveliest patches is a mischievous
+picture of the Court ladies at their toilette: "Let me see that mirror;
+make my head-dress higher; let me show my mouth more; drop the pleat
+over the eyes;<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> alter my eyebrows," etc. etc. But beyond the washing
+of hands before the feast, this French book that Crapelet printed
+fourscore years ago goeth not. Perhaps it was a mere accident; perhaps
+the writer had a shrewd notion that whatever he wrote would seem but
+stale in its reminder of the night when Partenopeus lay awake, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+seemingly alone, in the enchanted palace&mdash;now merely an ordinary place
+of splendour and festivity&mdash;and when something came to the bed, "step by
+step, little by little," and laid itself beside him.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the contents and such some of the special traits and features
+of one of the most famous of those romances of chivalry, the reading of
+which with anything like the same interest as that taken in Homer,
+seemed to the Reverend Professor Hugh Blair to be the most suitable
+instance he could hit upon of a total lack of taste. This is a point, of
+course, on which each age, and each reader in each age, must judge for
+itself and himself. I think the author of the <i>Odyssey</i> (the <i>Iliad</i>
+comes rather in competition with the chansons than with these romances)
+was a better poet than the author of <i>Partenopeus</i>, and I also think
+that he was a better story-teller; but I do not think that the latter
+was a bad story-teller; and I can read him with plenty of interest. So I
+can most of his fellows, no one of whom, I think, ever quite approaches
+the insipidity of their worst English imitators. The knights do not
+weary me with their exploits, and I confess that I am hyperbolical
+enough to like reading and thinking as well as talking of the ladies
+very much. They are of various sorts; but they are generally lovable.
+There is no better for affection and faithfulness and pluck than the
+Josiane of <i>Bevis</i>, whose husband and her at one time faithful guardian,
+but at another would-be ravisher, Ascapart, guard a certain gate not
+more than a furlong or two from where I am writing. It is good to think
+of the (to some extent justified) indignation of l'Orgueilleuse d'Amours
+when Sir Blancandin rides up and audaciously kisses her in the midst of
+her train; and the companion picture of the tomb where Idoine apparently
+sleeps in death (while her true knight Amadas fights with a ghostly foe
+above) makes a fitting pendant. If her near namesake with an L prefixed,
+the Lidoine of <i>M&eacute;raugis de Portlesguez</i>, interests me less, it is
+because its author, Raoul de Houdenc, was one of the first to mix love
+and moral allegory&mdash;a "wanity" which is not my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> favourite "wanity." To
+the Alexandrine of <i>Guillaume de Palerne</i> reference has already been
+made. Blanchefleur&mdash;known all over Europe with her lover Floire (Floris,
+etc.)&mdash;the Saracen slave who charms a Christian prince, and is rescued
+by him from the Emir of Babylon, to whom she has been sold in hopes of
+weaning Floris from his attachment, more than deserved her vogue. But,
+as in the case of the <i>chansons</i>, mere cataloguing would be dull and
+unprofitable, and analysis on the scale accorded to <i>Partenopeus</i>
+impossible. One must only take up once more the note of this whole early
+part of our history, and impress again on the reader the evident
+<i>desire</i> for the accomplished novel which these numerous romances show;
+the inevitable <i>practice</i>, in tale-telling of a kind, which the
+production of them might have given; and, above all, the openings,
+germs, suggestions of new devices in fiction which are observable in
+them, and which remained for others to develop if the first finders left
+them unimproved.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> That is, of nothing like the length of the latest forms of
+the <i>Chansons de Geste</i> or the Arthurian Romances proper. Some of the
+late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Adventure stories, before they
+dropped into prose, are indeed long enough, and a great deal too long;
+but they show degeneracy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> The <i>h</i> (Part<i>h</i>-) does occur in both forms, and there are
+other variation, as "Part<i>o</i>nopeus," etc. But these are trifles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Taking honour to the mother as separate from that to the
+father.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> The Spanish-English form is perhaps the prettier. I am
+sorry to say that the poet, to get a rhyme, sometimes spells it
+"Urra<i>cle</i>," which is <i>not</i> pretty. Southey's "Queen <i>O</i>rraca" seems to
+me to have changed her vowel to disadvantage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> The original author of the <i>Court of Love</i>, whether
+Chaucer or another, pretty certainly knew it; and Spenser spiritualised
+the doctrine itself in the <i>Four Hymns</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> I think the medical people (borrowing, as Science so often
+does, the language which she would fain banish from human knowledge)
+call this sort of thing <i>a syndrome</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> See below on Urraca's plain speaking.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> Not too commentatorially identified with Constantinople.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> It may be worth noting that in this context appears the
+original form of an English word quite common recently, but almost
+unknown a very short time ago&mdash;"grouse" in the sense of "complain,"
+"grumble": "Ce dist Corsols et nul n'en <i>grouce</i>."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> No one will be rude enough to disbelieve her, and, as will
+be seen, her supernatural powers had limits; but it was odd, though
+fortunate, that they should have broken down exactly at this important
+juncture. Who made those rebellious candles take him to that chamber and
+couch, unknown to her?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> For Melior, though of invisible beauty, is represented as
+delightful in every other way, as wise and witty and gracious in speech
+as becomes a white witch. And when her lover on one occasion thanks her
+for her <i>sermon</i>, there is no satire; he only means <i>sermo</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Like Guy of Warwick; still more like Mr. Jaggers's clerk,
+though the circumstances are reversed. <i>He</i> almost says in so many
+words, "Hullo! here's an engagement ring on my finger. We <i>can't</i> have a
+marriage."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> The author, <i>more suo</i>, intimates that the Court <i>ladies</i>
+by no means shared these hostile feelings, and would have willingly been
+in Melior's place.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> He induces him to turn Christian on the supposition of
+being his companion; and then gives him the slip. The neophyte's
+expressions on the occasion are not wholly edifying.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> The good palfrey is found and in a state to carry his
+master, who is quite unable to walk. One hopes they did not leave the
+beast to the lions, tigers, wyverns, etc., for he could hardly hope for
+such a literal "stroke of luck" again.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> The name will suggest, to those who have some wine-lore,
+no less a vintage than Ch&acirc;teau Yquem. Nothing could be better for a
+person in the Count's condition as a restorative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> These two directions obviously refer to the common
+mediaeval "wimple" arrangement.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE FICTION</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Prose novelettes of the thirteenth century. <i>Aucassin et
+Nicolette</i> not quite typical.</div>
+
+<p>The title of this chapter may seem an oversight or an impertinence,
+considering that large parts of an earlier one have been occupied with
+discussions and translations of the prose Arthurian Romances. It was,
+however, expressly pointed out that the priority of these is a matter of
+opinion, not of judgment; and it may be here quite frankly admitted that
+one of the most serious arguments against that priority is the extreme
+lateness of Old French Prose in any finished literary form. The excuse,
+however, if excuse be needed, does not turn on any such hinge as this.
+It was desired to treat, in the last two chapters, romance matter proper
+of the larger kind, whether that matter took the form of prose or of
+verse. Here, on the other hand, the object is to deal with the smaller
+but more miscellaneous body of fictitious matter (part, no doubt, of a
+larger) which presents it tolerably early, and in character foretells
+the immense development of the kind which French was to see later.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> A
+portion of this body, sufficient for us, is contained in two little
+volumes of the <i>Biblioth&egrave;que Elz&eacute;virienne</i>, published rather less than
+sixty years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> ago (1856 and 1858) by MM. L. Moland and Ch. d'H&eacute;ricault,
+the first devoted to thirteenth-, the second to fourteenth-century work.
+One of these, the now world-famous <i>Aucassin et Nicolette</i>, has been so
+much written about and so often translated already that it cannot be
+necessary to say a great deal about it here. It is, moreover, of a mixed
+kind, a <i>cante-fable</i> or blend of prose and verse, with a considerable
+touch of the dramatic in it. Its extraordinary charm is a thing long ago
+settled; but it is, on the whole, more of a dramatic and lyrical
+romance&mdash;to recouple or releash kinds which Mr. Browning had perhaps
+best never have put asunder&mdash;than of a pure prose tale.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>L'Empereur Constant</i> more so.</div>
+
+<p>Its companions in the thirteenth-century volume are four in number, and
+if none of them has the peculiar charm, so none has the technical
+disqualification (if that be not too strong a word) of <i>Aucassin et
+Nicolette</i>. The first, shortest, and, save for one or two points, least
+remarkable, <i>L'Empereur Constant</i>, is a very much abbreviated and in
+more than one sense prosaic version of the story out of which Mr.
+William Morris made his delightful <i>The Man Born to be King</i>. Probably
+of Greek or Greek-Eastern origin, it begins with an astrological passage
+in which the Emperor, childless except for a girl, becomes informed of
+the imminent birth of a man-child, who shall marry his daughter and
+succeed him. He discovers the, as it seems, luckless baby; has it
+brought to him, and with his own hand attempts to disembowel it, but
+allows himself, most improbably,<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> to be dissuaded from finishing the
+operation. The benevolent knight who has prevented the completion of the
+crime takes the infant to a monastery, where (after a quaint scene of
+haggling about fees with the surgeon) the victim is patched up, grows to
+be a fine youth, and comes across the Emperor, to whom the abbot
+guilelessly, but in this case naturally enough,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> betrays the secret.
+The Emperor's murderous thoughts as naturally revive, and the
+frustration of them by means of the Princess's falling in love with the
+youth, the changing of "the letters of Bellerophon," and the Emperor's
+resignation to the inevitable, follow the same course as in the English
+poem. The latter part is better than the earlier; and the writer is
+evidently (as how should he not be?) a novice; but his work is the kind
+of experiment from which better things will come.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane.</i></div>
+
+<p>These marks of the novice are even more noticeable in a much longer
+story, <i>Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane</i>, which is found not only in the
+same printed volume, but in the same original MS. The fault of this is
+curious, and&mdash;if not to a mere reader for pastime, to a student of
+fiction&mdash;extremely interesting. It is one not at all unknown at the
+present day, and capable of being used as an argument in favour of the
+doctrine of the Unities: that is to say, the mixture, by arbitrary and
+violent process, of two stories which have nothing whatever to do with
+each other, except that they are, wilfully and with no reason, buckled
+together at the end. The first, thin and uninteresting enough, is of a
+certain King Florus, who has a wife, dearly beloved, but barren. After
+some years and some very unmanly shilly-shallyings, he puts her away,
+and marries another, with whom (one is feebly glad to find) he is no
+more lucky, but who has herself the luck to die after some years.
+Meanwhile, King Florus being left "in a cool barge for future use," the
+second item, a really interesting story, is, with some intervals,
+carried on. A Count of high rank and great possessions has an only
+daughter, whom, after experience of the valour and general worthiness of
+one of his vassals of no great "having," he bestows on this knight,
+Robert, the pair being really in love with each other. But another
+vassal knight of greater wealth, Raoul, plots with one of the wicked old
+women who abound in these stories, and engages Robert in a rash wager of
+all his possessions, that during one of those pilgrimages to "St.
+James,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> which come in so handy, and are generally so unreasonable, he
+will dishonour the lady. He fails, but, in a manner not distantly
+related to the Imogen-Iachimo scene, acquires what seems to be damning
+acquaintance with the young Countess's person-marks. Robert and Jehane
+are actually married; but the felon knight immediately afterwards brings
+his charge, and Robert pays his debt, and flies, a ruined man, from, as
+he thinks, his faithless wife, though he takes no vengeance on her.
+Jehane disguises herself as a man, joins him on his journey, supports
+him with her own means for a time, and enters into partnership with him
+in merchandise at Marseilles, he remaining ignorant of her sex and
+relation to him. At last things come right: the felon knight is forced
+in single combat (a long and good one) to acknowledge his lie and give
+up his plunder, and the excellent but somewhat obtuse Robert recovers
+his wife as well. A good end if ever there was one, and not a badly told
+tale in parts. But, from some utterly mistaken idea of craftsmanship,
+the teller must needs kill Robert for no earthly reason, except in order
+that Jehane may become the third wife of Florus and bear him children. A
+more disastrous "sixth act" has seldom been imagined; for most readers
+will have forgotten all about Florus, who has had neither art nor part
+in the main story; few can care whether the King has children or not;
+and still fewer can be other than disgusted at the notion of Jehane,
+brave, loving, and clever, being, as a widow, made a mere child-bearing
+machine to an oldish and rather contemptible second husband. But, once
+more, the mistake is interesting, and is probably the first example of
+that fatal error of not knowing when to leave off, which is even worse
+than the commoner one (to be found in some great artists) of "huddling
+up the story." The only thing to be said in excuse is that you could cut
+his majesty Florus out of the title and tale at once without even the
+slightest difficulty, and with no need to mend or meddle in any other
+way.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining stories of the thirteenth-century volume<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> are curiously
+contrasted. One is a short prose version of that exquisite <i>chanson de
+geste</i>, <i>Amis et Amiles</i>, of which it has been said above that any one
+who cannot "taste" it need never hope to understand mediaeval
+literature. The full beauty of the verse story does not appear in the
+prose; but some does.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Le Comtesse de Ponthieu.</i></div>
+
+<p>Of the other, the so-called "Comtesse de Ponthieu" (though she is not
+really this, being only the Count's daughter and the wife of a vassal),
+I thought rather badly when I first read it thirty or forty years ago,
+and till the present occasion I have never read it since. Now I think
+better of it, especially as a story suggestive in story-telling art. The
+original stumbling-block, which I still see, though I can get over or
+round it better now, was, I think, the character of the heroine, who
+inherits not merely the tendency to play fast and loose with successive
+husbands, which is observable in both <i>chanson</i> and <i>roman</i> heroines,
+but something of the very unlovely savagery which is also sometimes
+characteristic of them; while the hero also is put in "unpleasant"
+circumstances. He is a gentleman and a good knight, and though only a
+vassal of the Count of Ponthieu, he, as has been said, marries the
+Count's daughter, entirely to her and her father's satisfaction. But
+they are childless, and the inevitable "monseigneur Saint <i>Jakeme</i>" (St.
+James of Compostella) suggests himself for pilgrimage. Thiebault, the
+knight, obtains leave from his lady to go, and she, by a device not
+unprettily told, gets from him leave to go too. Unfortunately and
+unwisely they send their suite on one morning, and ride alone through a
+forest, where they are set upon by eight banditti. Thiebault fights
+these odds without flinching, and actually kills three, but is
+overpowered by sheer numbers. They do not kill him, but bind and toss
+him into a thicket, after which they take vengeance of outrage on the
+lady and depart, fearing the return of the meyney. Thiebault feels that
+his unhappy wife is guiltless, but unluckily does not assure her of
+this, merely asking her to deliver him. So she, seeing a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> sword of one
+of the slain robbers, picks it up, and, "full of great ire and evil
+will," cries, "I will deliver you, sir," and, instead of cutting his
+bonds, tries to run him through. But she only grazes him, and actually
+cuts the thongs, so that he shakes himself free, starts up, and wrests
+the sword from her with the simple words, "Lady, it is not to-day that
+you will kill me." To which she replies, "And right sorry I am
+therefor."<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> Their followers come up; the pair are clothed and set out
+again on their journey. But Thiebault, though treating his wife with the
+greatest attention, leaves her at a monastery, accomplishes his
+pilgrimage alone, and on his return escorts her to Ponthieu as if
+nothing had happened. Still&mdash;though no one knows this or indeed anything
+about her actual misfortune and intended crime&mdash;he does not live with
+her as his wife. After a time the Count, who is, as another story has
+it, a "<i>h</i>arbitrary" Count, insists that Thiebault shall tell him some
+incident of his voyage, and the husband (here is the weak point of the
+whole) recounts the actual adventure, though not as of himself and his
+lady. The Count will not stand ambiguity, and at last extorts the truth,
+which the lady confirms, repeating her sorrow that she had <i>not</i> slain
+her husband. Now the Count is, as has been said, an arbitrary Count, and
+one day, his county having, as our Harold knew to his cost, a sea-coast
+to it, somewhat less disputable than those of Bohemia and the Ardennes,
+embarks, with only his daughter, son-in-law, son, and a few retainers,
+taking with him a nice new cask. Into this, despite the prayers of her
+husband and brother, he puts the lady, and flings it overboard. She is
+picked up half-suffocated by mariners, who carry her to "Aymarie" and
+sell her to the Sultan. She is very beautiful, and the Sultan promptly
+proposes conversion and marriage. She makes no difficulty, bears him two
+children, and is apparently quite happy. But meanwhile the Count of
+Ponthieu begins&mdash;his son and son-in-law have never ceased&mdash;to feel that
+he has exercised the paternal rights<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> rather harshly; the Archbishop of
+Rheims very properly confirms his ideas on this point, and all three go
+<i>outremer</i> on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They are captured by the
+Saracens of Aymarie, imprisoned, starved, and finally in immediate
+danger of being shot to death as an amusement for the Sultan's
+bodyguard. But the Sultaness has found out who they are, visits them in
+prison, and "reconciliations and forgivenesses of injuries" follow.</p>
+
+<p>After this, things go in an easily guessable manner. The
+Countess-Sultana beguiles her easy-going lord into granting her the
+lives of the prisoners one after another, for which she rewards him by
+carrying them off, with her son by the second marriage, to Italy, where
+the boy is baptized. "The Apostle" (as the Pope is usually called in
+Romance), by a rather extensive exercise of his Apostleship, gives
+everybody absolution, confirms the original marriage of Thiebault and
+the lady who had been so obstinately sorry that she had not killed him,
+and who had suffered the paynim spousals so easily; and all goes
+merrily. There is a postscript which tells how the daughter of the
+Sultan and the Countess, who is termed <i>La Bele Caitive</i>, captivates and
+marries a Turk of great rank, and becomes the mother of no less a person
+than the great Saladin himself&mdash;a consummation no doubt very
+satisfactory to the Miss Martha Buskbodies of the mediaeval world.</p>
+
+<p>Now this story might seem to one who read it hastily, carelessly, or as
+"not in the vein," to be partly extravagant, partly disagreeable, and,
+despite its generous allowance of incident, rather dull, especially if
+contrasted with its next neighbour in the printed volume, <i>Aucassin et
+Nicolette</i> itself. I am afraid there may have been some of these
+uncritical conditions about my own first reading. But a little study
+shows some remarkable points in it, though the original writer has not
+known how to manage them. The central and most startling one&mdash;the
+attempt of the Countess to murder her husband&mdash;is, when you think of it,
+not at all unnatural. The lady is half mad with her shame; the witness,
+victim, and, as she thinks,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> probable avenger of that shame is helpless
+before her, and in his first words at any rate seems to think merely of
+himself and not of her. Whether this violent outburst of feeling was not
+likely to result in as violent a revulsion of tenderness is rather a
+psychological probability than artistically certain. And Thiebault,
+though an excellent fellow, is a clumsy one. His actual behaviour is
+somewhat of that "killing-with-kindness" order which exasperates when it
+does not itself kill or actually reconcile; and, whether out of delicacy
+or not, he does not give his wife the only proof that he acknowledges
+the involuntariness of her actual misfortune, and forgives the
+voluntariness of her intended crime. His telling the story is
+inexcusable: and neither his preference of his allegiance as a vassal to
+his duty as knight, lover, and husband in the case of the Count's
+cruelty, nor his final acceptance of so many and such peculiar bygones
+can be called very pretty. But there are possibilities in the story, if
+they are not exactly made into good gifts.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Those of the fourteenth. <i>Asseneth</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The contents of the fourteenth-century volume are, with one exception,
+much less interesting in themselves; but from the point of view of the
+present enquiry they hardly yield to their predecessors. They are three
+in number: <i>Asseneth</i>, <i>Foulques Fitzwarin</i>, and <i>Troilus</i>. The first,
+which is very short, is an account of Joseph's courtship of his future
+wife, in which entirely guiltless proceeding he behaves at first very
+much as if the daughter of Potipherah were fruit as much forbidden as
+the wife of Potiphar. For on her being proposed to him (he has come to
+her father, splendidly dressed and brilliantly handsome, on a mission
+from Pharaoh) he at first replies that he will love her as his sister.
+This, considering the Jewish habit of exchanging the names, might not be
+ominous. But when the damsel, at her father's bidding, offers to kiss
+him, Joseph puts his hand on her chest and pushes her back, accompanying
+the action with words (even more insulting in detail than in substance)
+to the effect that it is not for God-fearing man to kiss an idolatress.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+(At this point one would rather like to kick Joseph.) However, when,
+naturally enough, she cries with vexation, the irreproachable but most
+unlikable patriarch condescends to pat her on the head and bless her.
+This she takes humbly and thankfully; deplores his absence, for he is
+compelled to return to his master; renounces her gods; is consoled by an
+angel, who feeds her with a miraculous honeycomb possessing a sort of
+sacramental force, and announces her marriage to Joseph, which takes
+place almost immediately.</p>
+
+<p>It will be at once seen, by those who know something of the matter, that
+this is entirely in the style of large portions of the Graal romances;
+and so it gives us a fresh and interesting division of the new short
+prose tale, allying itself to some extent with the allegory which was to
+be so fruitful both in verse and in prose. It is not particularly
+attractive in substance; but is not badly told, and would have made
+(what it was very likely used as) a good sermon-story.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Troilus.</i></div>
+
+<p>As <i>Asseneth</i>, the first of the three, is by far the shortest, so
+<i>Troilus</i>, the last, is by far the longest. It is, in fact, nearly
+twenty times the length of the history of Joseph's pious impoliteness,
+and makes up something like two-thirds of the whole collection. But,
+except as a variant of one of the famous stories of the world (<i>v. sup.</i>
+Chap. IV.), it has little interest, and is not even directly taken from
+Beno&icirc;t de Sainte-Maure, but from Guido delle Colonne and Boccaccio, of
+whose <i>Filostrato</i> it is, in fact, a mere translation, made apparently
+by a known person of high station, Pierre de Beauvau, one of the chief
+nobles of Anjou, at the close of the fourteenth and the beginning of the
+fifteenth century. It thus brings itself into direct connection with
+Chaucer's poem, and has some small importance for literary history
+generally. But it has not much for us. It was not Boccaccio's verse but
+his prose that was really to influence the French Novel.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Foulques Fitzwarin.</i></div>
+
+<p>With the middle piece of the volume, <i>Foulques Fitzwarin</i>, it is very
+different. It is true that the present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> writer was once "smitten
+friendly" by a disciple of the modern severe historical school, who
+declared that the adventures of Fitzwarin, though of course adulterated,
+were an important historical document, and nothing so frivolous as a
+novel. One has, however, a reed-like faculty of getting up again from
+such smitings: and for my part I do not hesitate once more to call
+<i>Foulques Fitzwarin</i> the first historical prose novel in modern
+literature. French in language, as we have it, it is thoroughly English
+in subject, and, beyond all doubt, in the original place of composition,
+while there is no reason to doubt the assertion that there were older
+verse-renderings of the story both in English and French. In fact, they
+may turn up yet. But the thing as it stands is a very desirable and even
+delectable thing, and well deserved its actual publication, not merely
+in the French collection, of which we are speaking, but in the papers of
+the too short-lived English Warton Club.</p>
+
+<p>For it is not only our first historical novel, but also the first, as
+far as England is concerned, of those outlaw stories which have always
+delighted worthy English youth from <i>Robin Hood</i> to <i>The Black Arrow</i>.
+The Fitzwarins, as concerns their personalities and genealogies, may be
+surrendered without a pang to the historian, though he shall not have
+the marrow of the story. They never seem to have been quite happy except
+when they were in a state of "utlagation," and it was not only John
+against whom they rebelled, for one of them died on the Barons' side at
+Lewes.</p>
+
+<p>The compiler, whoever he was&mdash;it has been said already and cannot be
+said too often, that every recompiler in the Middle Ages felt it (like
+the man in that "foolish" writer, as some call him, Plato) a sacred duty
+to add something to the common stock,&mdash;was not exactly a master of his
+craft, but certainly showed admirable zeal. There never was a more
+curious <i>mac&eacute;doine</i> than this story. Part of it is, beyond all doubt,
+traditional history, with place-names all right, though distorted by
+that curious inability to transpronounce or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> trans-spell which made the
+French of the thirteenth century call Lincoln "Nicole," and their
+descendants of the seventeenth call Kensington "Stintinton." Part is
+mere stock or common-form Romance, as when Foulques goes to sea and has
+adventures with the usual dragons and their usual captive princesses.
+Part, though not quite dependent on the general stock, is indebted to
+that of a particular kind, as in the repeated catching of the King by
+the outlaws. But it is all more or less good reading; and there are two
+episodes in the earlier part which (one of them especially) merit more
+detailed account.</p>
+
+<p>The first still has something of a general character about it. It is the
+story of a certain Payn Peveril (for we meet many familiar names), who
+seems to have been a real person though wrongly dated here, and has one
+of those nocturnal combats with demon knights, the best known examples
+of which are those recounted in <i>Marmion</i> and its notes. Peveril's
+antagonist, however&mdash;or rather the mask which the antagonist
+takes,&mdash;connects with the oldest legendary history of the island, for he
+reanimates the body of Gogmagog, the famous Cornish giant, whom Corineus
+slew. The diabolic Gogmagog, however, seems neither to have stayed in
+Cornwall nor gone to Cambridgeshire, though (oddly enough the French
+editors do not seem to have noticed this) Payn Peveril actually held
+fiefs in the neighbourhood of those exalted mountains called now by the
+name of his foe. He had a hard fight; but luckily his arms were <i>or</i>
+with a cross <i>&eacute;dent&eacute;e azure</i>, and this cross constantly turned the
+giant-devil's mace-strokes, while it also weakened him, and he had
+besides to bear the strokes of Peveril's sword. So he gave in, remarking
+with as much truth as King Padella in similar circumstances, that it was
+no good fighting under these conditions. Then he tells a story of some
+length about the original Gogmagog and his treasure. The secret of this
+he will not reveal, but tells Peveril that he will be lord of
+Blanche-lande in Shropshire, and vanishes with the usual unpleasant
+accompaniment&mdash;<i>tiel pueur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> dont Payn quida devier</i>. He left his mace,
+which the knight kept as a testimony to anybody who did not believe the
+story.</p>
+
+<p>This is not bad; but the other, which is either true or extraordinarily
+well invented, is far finer, and, with some omissions, must be analysed
+and partly translated. Those who know the singular beauty of Ludlow Town
+and Castle will be able to "stage" it to advantage, but this is not
+absolutely necessary to its appreciation as a story.</p>
+
+<p>The Peverils have died out by this time, and the honour and lands have
+gone by marriage to Guarin of Metz, whose son, Foulques Fitzguarin or
+Warin, starts the subjects of the general story. When the first Foulkes
+is eighteen, there is war between Sir Joce of Dinan (the name then given
+to Ludlow) and the Lacies. In one of their skirmishes Sir Walter de Lacy
+is wounded and captured, with a young knight of his party, Sir Ernault
+de Lyls. They have courteous treatment in Ludlow Castle, and Ernault
+makes love to Marion de la Bri&egrave;re, a most gentle damsel, who is the
+chief maid of the lady of the castle, and as such, of course, herself a
+lady. He promises her marriage, and she provides him and his chief with
+means of escape. Whether Lisle (as his name probably was) had at this
+time any treacherous intentions is not said or hinted. But Lacy,
+naturally enough, resents his defeat, and watches for an opportunity of
+<i>revanche</i>; while Sir Joce[lyn], on the other hand, takes his prisoners'
+escape philosophically, and does not seem to make any enquiry into its
+cause. At first Lacy thinks of bringing over his Irish vassals to aid
+him; but his English neighbours not unnaturally regard this step with
+dislike, and a sort of peace is made between the enemies. A match is
+arranged between Sir Joce's daughter Hawyse and Foulques Fitzwarin. Joce
+then quits Ludlow for a time, leaving, however, a strong garrison there.
+Marion, who feigns illness, is also left. And now begins the tragic and
+striking part of the story.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The next day after Joce had gone, Marion sent a message to
+Sir Ernault de Lyls, begging him, for the great love that
+there was between them, not to forget the pledges they had
+exchanged, but to come quickly to speak with her at the
+castle of Dinan, because the lord and the lady and the bulk
+of the servants had gone to Hertilande&mdash;also to come to the
+same place by which he had left the castle. [<i>He replies
+asking her to send him the exact height of the wall (which
+she unsuspiciously does by the usual means of a silk thread)
+and also the number of the household left. Then he seeks his
+chief, and tells him, with a mixture of some truth, that the
+object of the Hertilande journey is to gather strength
+against Lacy, capture his castle of Ewyas, and kill
+himself&mdash;intelligence which he falsely attributes to Marion.
+He has, of course, little difficulty in persuading Lacy to
+take the initiative. Sir Ernault is entrusted with a
+considerable mixed force, and comes by night to the
+castle.</i>] The night was very dark, so that no sentinel saw
+them. Sir Ernault took a squire to carry the ladder of hide,
+and they went to the window where Marion was waiting for
+them. And when she saw them, never was any so joyful: so she
+dropped a cord right down and drew up the hide ladder and
+fastened it to a battlement. Then Ernault lightly scaled the
+tower, and took his love in his arms and kissed her: and
+they made great joy of each other and went into another room
+and supped, and then went to their couch, and left the
+ladder hanging.</p>
+
+<p>But the squire who had carried it went to the forces hidden
+in the garden and elsewhere, and took them to the ladder.
+And one hundred men, well armed, mounted by it and descended
+by the Pendover tower and went by the wall behind the
+chapel, and found the sentinel too heavy with sleep to
+defend himself: and the knights and the sergeants were cut
+to pieces crying for mercy in their beds. But Sir Ernault's
+companions were pitiless, and many a white sheet was dyed
+red with blood. And at last they tossed the watchman into
+the deep fosse and broke his neck.</p>
+
+<p>Now Marion de la Bri&egrave;re lay by her lover Sir Ernault and
+knew nothing of the treason he had done. But she heard a
+great noise in the castle and rose from her bed, and looked
+out and heard more clearly the cry of the massacred, and saw
+knights in white armour. Wherefore she understood that Sir
+Ernault had deceived and betrayed her, and began to weep
+bitterly and said, "Ah! that I was ever of mother born: for
+that by my crime I have lost my lord Sir Joce, who bred me
+so gently, his castle, and his good folk. Had I not been,
+nothing had been lost. Alas! that I ever believed this
+knight! for by his lies he has ruined me, and what is worse,
+my lord too." Then, all weeping, she drew Sir Ernault's
+sword and said, "Sir knight! awake, for you have brought
+strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> company into my lord's castle without his leave. I
+brought in only you and your squire. And since you have
+deceived me you cannot rightly blame me if I give you your
+deserts&mdash;at least you shall never boast to any other
+mistress that by deceiving me you conquered the castle and
+the land of Dinan!" The knight started up, but Marion, with
+the sword she held drawn, ran him straight through the body,
+and he died at once. She herself, knowing that if she were
+taken, ill were the death she should die, and knowing not
+what to do, let herself fall from a window and broke her
+neck.</p></div>
+
+<p>Now this, I venture to think, is not an ordinary story. Tales of
+treachery, onslaught, massacre, are not rare in the Middle Ages, nor
+need we go as far as the Middle Ages for them. But the almost heroic
+insouciance with which the traitor knight forgets everything except his
+immediate enjoyment, and, provided he has his mistress at his will,
+concerns himself not in the slightest degree as to what becomes of his
+companions, is not an every-day touch. Nor is the strong contrast of the
+chambers of feast and dalliance&mdash;undisturbed, voluptuous,
+terrestrial-paradisaic&mdash;with "the horror and the hell" in the courts
+below. Nor, last of all, the picture of the more than half innocent
+Marion, night-garbed or ungarbed, but with sword drawn, first hanging
+over her slumbering betrayer, then dealing the stroke of vengeance, and
+then falling&mdash;white against the dark towers and the darker ravines at
+their base&mdash;to her self-doomed judgment.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Something on these,</div>
+
+<p>Even more, however, than in individual points of interest or excitement,
+the general survey of these two volumes gives matter for thought on our
+subject. Here are some half-dozen stories or a little more. It is not
+much, some one may say, for the produce of two hundred years. But what
+it lacks in volume (and that will be soon made up in French, while it is
+to be remembered that we have practically nothing to match it in
+English) it makes up in variety. The peculiarity, some would say the
+defect, of mediaeval literature&mdash;its sheep-like tendency to go in
+flocks&mdash;is quite absent. Not more than two of the eight, <i>Le Roi Flore</i>
+and <i>La Comtesse de Ponthieu</i>, can be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> said to be of the same class,
+even giving the word class a fairly elastic sense. They are short prose
+<i>Romans d'aventures</i>. But <i>Asseneth</i> is a mystical allegory; <i>Aucassin
+et Nicolette</i> is a sort of idyll, almost a lyric, in which the adventure
+is entirely subordinated to the emotional and poetical interest;
+<i>L'Empereur Constant</i>, though with something of the <i>Roman d'aventures</i>
+in it, has a tendency towards a <i>moralitas</i> ("there is no armour against
+fate") which never appears in the pure adventurous kind; <i>Troilus</i> is an
+abridgment of a classical romance; and <i>Foulques Fitzwarin</i> is, as has
+been said, an embryonic historical novel. Most, if not all, moreover,
+give openings for, and one or two even proceed into, character- and even
+"problem"-writing of the most advanced novel kind. In one or two also,
+no doubt, that aggression and encroachment of allegory (which is one of
+the chief notes of these two centuries) makes itself felt, though not to
+the extent which we shall notice in the next chapter. But almost
+everywhere a strong <i>nisus</i> towards actual tale-telling and the rapid
+acquisition of proper "plant" for such telling, become evident. In
+particular, conversation&mdash;a thing difficult to bring anyhow into
+verse-narrative, and impossible there to keep up satisfactorily in
+various moods&mdash;begins to find its way. We may turn, in the next chapter,
+to matter mostly or wholly in verse forms. But prose fiction is started
+all the same.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">And on the short story generally.</div>
+
+<p>Before we do so, however, it may not be improper to point out that the
+short story undoubtedly holds&mdash;of itself&mdash;a peculiar and almost
+prerogative place in the history and morphology or the novel. After a
+long and rather unintelligible unpopularity in English&mdash;it never
+suffered in this way in French&mdash;it has been, according to the way of the
+world, a little over-exalted of late perhaps. It is undoubtedly a very
+difficult thing to do well, and it would be absurd to pretend that any
+of the foregoing examples is done thoroughly well. The Italian <i>novella</i>
+had to come and show the way.<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> But the short story, even of the
+rudimentary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> sort which we have been considering, cannot help being a
+powerful schoolmaster to bring folk to good practice in the larger kind.
+The faults and the merits of that kind, as such, appear in it after a
+fashion which can hardly fail to be instructive and suggestive. The
+faults so frequently charged against that "dear defunct" in our own
+tongue, the three-volume novel&mdash;the faults of long-windedness, of otiose
+padding, of unnecessary episodes, etc., are almost mechanically or
+mathematically impossible in the <i>nouvelle</i>. The long book provides
+pastime in its literal sense, and if it is not obvious in the other the
+accustomed reader, unless outraged by some extraordinary dulness or
+silences, goes on, partly like the Pickwickian horse because he can't
+well help it, and partly because he hopes that something <i>may</i> turn up.
+In the case of the short he sees almost at once whether it is going to
+have any interest, and if there is none such apparent he throws it
+aside.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, as in almost every other case, the shortness is appropriate to
+<i>exercise</i>; while the prose form does not encourage those terrible
+<i>chevilles</i>&mdash;repetitions of stock adjective and substantive and verb and
+phrase generally&mdash;which are so common in verse, and especially in
+octosyllabic verse. It is therefore in many ways healthy, and the space
+allotted to these early examples of it will not, it is hoped, seem to
+any impartial reader excessive.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> The position of "origin" assigned already to the sacred
+matter of the Saint's Life may perhaps be continued here as regards the
+Sermon. It was, as ought to be pretty generally known, the not ungenial
+habit of the mediaeval preacher to tell stories freely. We have them in
+&AElig;lfric's and other English homilies long before there was any regular
+French prose; and we have, later, large and numerous collections of
+them&mdash;compiled more or less expressly for the use of the clergy&mdash;in
+Latin, English, and French. The Latin story is, in fact, very
+wide-ranging and sometimes quite of the novel (at least <i>nouvelle</i>)
+kind, as any one may see in Wright's <i>Latin Stories</i>, Percy Society,
+1842.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> This is one, and one of the most glaring, of the <i>b&ecirc;tises</i>
+which at some times have been urged against Romance at large. They are
+not, as a matter of fact, very frequent; but their occurrence certainly
+does show the essentially uncritical character of the time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> For of course the knight did not tell the <i>whole</i> story.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> <i>I.e.</i> not sorry for having tried to kill him, but sorry
+that she had not done so.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> In <i>prose</i>. For the very important part played by the home
+verse <i>fabliaux</i> see next chapter.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>ALLEGORY, FABLIAU, AND PROSE STORY OF COMMON LIFE</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The connection with prose fiction of allegory.</div>
+
+<p>It was shown in the last chapter that fiction, and even prose fiction,
+of very varied character began to develop itself in French during the
+thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By the fifteenth the development
+was very much greater, and the "disrhyming" of romances, the beginnings
+of which were very early, came to be a regular, not an occasional,
+process; while, by its latter part, verse had become not the usual, but
+the exceptional vehicle of romance, and prose romances of enormous
+length were popular. But earlier there had still been some obstacles in
+the way of the prose novel proper. It was the period of the rise and
+reign of Allegory, and France, preceptress of almost all Europe in most
+literary kinds, proved herself such in this with the unparalleled
+example of the <i>Roman de la Rose</i>. But the <i>Roman de la Rose</i> was itself
+in verse&mdash;the earlier part of it at least in real poetry&mdash;and most of
+its innumerable imitations were in verse likewise. Moreover, though
+France again had been the first to receive and to turn to use the riches
+of Eastern apologue, the most famous example of which is <i>The Seven Wise
+Masters</i>, these rather serious matters do not seem to have especially
+commended themselves to the French people. The place of composition of
+the most famous of all, the <i>Gesta Romanorum</i>, has been fairly settled
+to be England, though the original language of composition is not likely
+to have been other than Latin. At any rate, the style of serious
+allegory, in prose which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> should also be literature, never really caught
+hold of the French taste.</p>
+
+<p>Comic tale-telling, on the other hand, was germane to the very soul of
+the race, and had shown itself in <i>chanson</i> and <i>roman</i> episodes at a
+very early date. But it had been so abundantly, and in so popular a
+manner, associated with verse as a vehicle in those pieces, in the great
+beast-epic of <i>Renart</i>, and above all in the <i>fabliaux</i> and in the
+earliest farces, that the connection was hard to separate. None of the
+stories discussed in the last chapter has, it may be noticed, the least
+comic touch or turn.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">And of the <i>fabliaux</i>.</div>
+
+<p>As we go on we must disengage ourselves more and more (though with
+occasional returns to it) from attention to verse; and the two great
+compositions in that form, the <i>Romance of the Rose</i> and the <i>Story of
+the Fox</i>, especially the former, hardly require much writing about to
+any educated person. They are indeed most strongly contrasted examples
+of two modes of tale-telling, both in a manner allegoric, but in other
+respects utterly different. The mere story of the <i>Rose</i>, apart from the
+dreamy or satiric digressions and developments of its two parts and the
+elaborate descriptions of the first, can be told in a page or two. An
+abstract of the various <i>Renart</i> books, to give any idea of their real
+character, would, on the other hand, have to be nearly as long as the
+less spun-out versions themselves. But the verse <i>fabliaux</i> can hardly
+be passed over so lightly. Many of them formed the actual bases of the
+prose <i>nouvelles</i> that succeeded them; not a few have found repeated
+presentation in literature; and, above all, they deserve the immense
+praise of having deliberately introduced ordinary life, and not
+conventionalised manners, into literary treatment. We have taken some
+pains to point out touches of that life which are observable in Saint's
+Life and Romance, in <i>chanson</i> and early prose tale. But here the case
+is altered. Almost everything is real; a good deal is what is called, in
+one of the senses of a rather misused word, downright "realism."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Few people who have ever heard of the <i>fabliaux</i> can need to be told
+that this realism in their case implies extreme freedom of treatment,
+extending very commonly to the undoubtedly coarse and not seldom to the
+merely dirty. There are some&mdash;most of them well known by modern
+imitations such as Leigh Hunt's "Palfrey"&mdash;which are quite guiltless in
+this respect; but the great majority deal with the usual comic farrago
+of satire on women, husbands, monks, and other stock subjects of
+raillery, all of which at the time invited "sculduddery." To translate
+some of the more amusing, one would require not merely Chaucerian
+licence of treatment but Chaucerian peculiarities of dialect in order to
+avoid mere vulgarity. Even Prior, who is our only modern English
+<i>fabliau</i>-writer of real literary merit&mdash;the work of people like Hanbury
+Williams and Hall Stevenson being mostly mere pornography&mdash;could hardly
+have managed such a piece as "Le Sot Chevalier"&mdash;a riotously "improper"
+but excessively funny example&mdash;without running the risk of losing that
+recommendation of being "a lady's book" with which Johnson rather
+capriciously tempered his more general undervaluation. Sometimes, on the
+other hand, the joke is trivial enough, as in the English-French
+word-play of <i>anel</i> for <i>agnel</i> (or <i>-neau</i>), which substitutes "donkey"
+for "lamb"; or, in the other, on the comparison of a proper name,
+"Estula," with its component syllables "es tu l&agrave;?" But the important
+point on the whole is that, proper or improper, romantic or trivial,
+they all exhibit a constant improvement in the mere art of telling; in
+discarding of the stock phrases, the long-winded speeches, and the
+general <i>paraphernalia</i> of verse; in sticking and leading up smartly to
+the point; in coining sharp, lively phrase; in the co-ordination of
+incident and the excision of superfluities. Often they passed without
+difficulty into direct dramatic presentation in short farces. But on the
+whole their obvious destiny was to be "unrhymed" and to make their
+appearance in the famous form of the <i>nouvelle</i> or <i>novella</i>, in regard
+to which it is hard to say whether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> Italy was most indebted to France
+for substance, or France to Italy for form.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The rise of the <i>nouvelle</i> itself.</div>
+
+<p>It was not, however, merely the intense conservatism of the Middle Ages
+as to literary form which kept back the prose <i>nouvelle</i> to such an
+extent that, as we have seen, only a few examples survive from the two
+whole centuries between 1200 and 1400, while not one of these is of the
+kind most characteristic ever since, or at least until quite recent
+days, of French tale-telling. The French octosyllabic couplet, in which
+the <i>fabliaux</i> were without exception or with hardly an exception
+composed, can, in a long story, become very tiresome because of its want
+of weight and grasp, and the temptations it offers to a weak rhymester
+to stuff it with endless tags. But for a short tale in deft hands it can
+apply its lightness in the best fashion, and put its points with no lack
+of sting. The <i>fabliau</i>-writer or reciter was not required&mdash;one imagines
+that he would have found scant audiences if he had tried it&mdash;to spin a
+long yarn; he had got to come to his jokes and his business pretty
+rapidly; and, as La Fontaine has shown to thousands who have never
+known&mdash;perhaps have never heard of&mdash;his early masters, he had an
+instrument which would answer to his desires perfectly if only he knew
+how to finger it.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, both the lover of poetry and the lover of tale must
+acknowledge that, though alliance between them is not in the least an
+unholy one, and has produced great and charming children, the best of
+the poetry is always a sort of extra bonus or solace to the tale, and
+the tale not unfrequently seems as if it could get on better without the
+poetry. The one can only aspire somewhat irrelevantly; the other can
+never attain quite its full development. So it was no ill day when the
+prose <i>nouvelle</i> came to its own in France.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles.</i></div>
+
+<p>The first remarkable collection was the famous <i>Cent Nouvelles
+Nouvelles</i>, traditionally attributed to Louis XI. when Dauphin and an
+exile in Brabant, with the assistance of friends and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> courtiers, but
+more recently selected by critics that way minded as part of the baggage
+they have "commandeered" for Antoine de la Salle. The question of
+authorship is of scarcely the slightest importance to us; though the
+point last mentioned is worth mentioning, because we shall have to
+notice the favoured candidate in this history again. There are certainly
+some of the hundred that he might have written.</p>
+
+<p>In the careless way in which literary history used to be dealt with, the
+<i>Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles</i> were held to be mere imitation of the
+<i>Decameron</i> and other Italian things. It is, of course, much more than
+probable that the Italian <i>novella</i> had not a little to do with the
+precipitation of the French <i>nouvelle</i> from its state of solution in the
+<i>fabliau</i>. But the person or persons who, in imitating the <i>Decameron</i>,
+produced the <i>Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles</i> had a great deal more to do&mdash;and
+did a great deal less&mdash;than this mere imitation of their original. As
+for a group of included tales, the already-mentioned <i>Seven Wise
+Masters</i><a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> was known in France much before Boccaccio's time. The title
+was indeed admittedly Italian, but such an obvious one as to require no
+positive borrowing, and there is in the French book no story-framework
+like that of the plague and the country-house visit; no cheerful
+personalities like Fiammetta or Dioneo make not merely the intervals but
+the stories themselves alive with a special interest. Above all, there
+is nothing like the extraordinary mixture of unity and variety&mdash;a pure
+gift of genius&mdash;which succeeds in making the <i>Decameron</i> a real book as
+well as a bundle of narratives. Nor is there anything like the literary
+brilliancy of the actual style and handling.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, <i>Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles</i> is a book of great interest
+and value, despite serious defects due to its time generally and to its
+place in the history of fiction in particular. Its obscenity, on which
+even Sir Walter Scott, the least censorious or prudish-prurient of men,
+and with Southey, the great witness against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> false squeamishness, has
+been severe,<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> is unfortunately undeniable. But it is to be doubted
+whether Sir Walter knew much of the <i>fabliaux</i>; if he had he would have
+seen first, that this sort of thing had become an almost indispensable
+fashion in the short story, and secondly, that there is here
+considerable improvement on the <i>fabliaux</i> themselves, there being much
+less mere schoolboy crudity of dirty detail and phrase, though the
+situations may remain the same. It suffers occasionally from the heavy
+and rhetorical style which beset all European literature (except
+Italian, which itself did not wholly escape) in the fifteenth century.
+But still one can see in it that improvement of narrative method and
+diction which has been referred to: and occasionally, amid the crowd of
+tricky wives, tricked husbands, too obliging and too hardly treated
+chambermaids, ribald priests and monks, and the like, one comes across
+quite different things and persons, which are, as the phrase goes,
+almost startlingly modern, with a mixture of the <i>un</i>modern heightening
+the appeal. One of the most striking of these&mdash;not very likely to be
+detected or suspected by a careless reader under its sub-title of "La
+Demoiselle Cavali&egrave;re," and by no means fully summarised in the quaint
+short argument which is in all cases subjoined&mdash;may be briefly analysed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Analysis of "La Demoiselle Cavali&egrave;re".</div>
+
+<p>In one of the great baronial households of Brabant there lived, after
+the usual condition of gentle servitude, a youth named Gerard, who fell
+in love, after quite honourable and seemly fashion, with Katherine, the
+daughter of the house&mdash;a fact which, naturally, they thought known only
+to themselves, when, as naturally, everybody in the Court had become
+aware of it. "For the better prevention of scandal," an immediate
+marriage being apparently out of the question because of Gerard's
+inferiority in rank to his mistress, it is decided by the intervention
+of friends that Gerard shall take his leave of the Brabantine "family."
+There is a parting of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> most laudable kind, in which Katherine
+bestows on her lover a ring, and a pledge that she will never marry any
+one else, and he responds suitably. Then he sets out, and on arriving at
+Bar has no difficulty in establishing himself in another great
+household. Katherine meanwhile is beset with suitors of the best rank
+and fortune; but will have nothing to say to any of them, till one day
+comes the formidable moment when a mediaeval father determines that his
+daughter shall marry a certain person, will she nill she. But if
+mediaeval fatherhood was arbitrary, mediaeval religion was supreme, and
+a demand to go on pilgrimage before an important change of life could
+hardly be refused. In fact, the parents, taking the proposal as a mere
+preliminary of obedience, consent joyfully, and offer a splendid suite
+of knights and damsels, "Nous lui baillerons ung tel gentilhomme et une
+telle demoiselle, Ysabeau et Marguerite et Jehanneton." But "no," says
+Mistress Katherine sagely. The road to St. Nicolas of Warengeville is
+not too safe for people travelling with a costly outfit and a train of
+women. Let her, dressed as a man, and a bastard uncle of hers (who is
+evidently the "Will Wimble" of the house) go quietly on little horses,
+and it will save time, trouble, money, and danger. This the innocent
+parents consider to show "great sense and good will," and the pair start
+in German dress&mdash;Katherine as master, the uncle as man,&mdash;comfortably,
+too, as one may imagine (for uncles and nieces generally get on well
+together, and the bend sinister need do no harm). They accomplish their
+pilgrimage (a touch worth noticing in Katherine's character), and then
+only does she reveal her plan to her companion. She tells him, not
+without a little bribery, that she wants to go and see Gerard <i>en
+Barrois</i>, and to stay there for a short time; but he is to have no doubt
+of her keeping her honour safe. He consents, partly with an eye to the
+future main chance (for she is her father's sole heir), and partly
+because <i>elle est si bonne qu'il n'y fault gu&egrave;re guet sur elle</i>.
+Katherine, taking the name of Conrad, finds the place, presents herself
+to the <i>ma&icirc;tre</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> <i>d'ostel</i>, an ancient squire, as desirous of
+entertainment or <i>re</i>tainment, and is very handsomely received. After
+dinner and due service done to the master, the old squire having heard
+that Katherine&mdash;Conrad&mdash;is of Brabant, naturally introduces her
+countryman Gerard to her. He does not in the least recognise her, and
+what strikes her as stranger, neither during their own dinner nor after
+says a word about Brabant itself. Conrad is regularly admitted to
+Monseigneur's service, and, as a countryman, is to share Gerard's room.
+They are perfectly good friends, go to see their horses together, etc.,
+but still the formerly passionate lover says not a word of Brabant or
+his Braban&ccedil;onian love, and poor Katherine concludes that she has been
+"put with forgotten sins"&mdash;not a bad phrase, though it might be
+misconstrued. Being, however, as has been already seen, both a plucky
+girl and a clever one, she determines to carry her part through. At
+last, when they go to their respective couches in the same chamber, she
+herself faces the subject, and asks him if he knows any persons in
+Brabant. "Oh yes." "Does he know" her own father, his former master?
+"Yes." "They say," said she, "that there are pretty girls there: did you
+not know any?" "Precious few," quoth he, "and I cared nothing about
+them. Do let me go to sleep! I am dead tired." "What!" said she, "can
+you sleep when there is talk of pretty girls? <i>You</i> are not much of a
+lover." But he slept "like a pig."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Katherine does not give up hope, though the next day
+things are much the same, Gerard talking of nothing but hounds and
+hawks, Conrad of pretty girls. At last the visitor declares that he
+[she] does not care for the Barrois, and will go back to Brabant. "Why?"
+says Gerard, "what better hunting, etc., can you get there than here?"
+"It has nothing," says Conrad, "like the women of Brabant," adding, in
+reply to a jest of his, an ambiguous declaration that she is actually in
+love. "Then why did you leave her?" says Gerard&mdash;about the first
+sensible word he has uttered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> She makes a fiery answer as to Love
+sometimes banishing from his servants all sense and reason. But for the
+time the subject again drops. It is, however, reopened at night, and
+some small pity comes on one for the recreant Gerard, inasmuch as she
+keeps him awake by wailing about her love. At last she "draws" the
+sluggard to some extent. "Has not <i>he</i> been in love, and does not he
+know all about it? But he was never such a fool as Conrad, and he is
+sure that Conrad's lady is not such either." Another try, and she gets
+the acknowledgment of treason out of him. He tells her (what she knows
+too well) how he loved a noble damsel in Brabant and had to leave her,
+and it really annoyed him for a few days (it is good to imagine
+Katherine's face, even in the dark, at this), though of course he never
+lost his appetite or committed any folly of that sort. But he knew his
+Ovid (he tells her), and as soon as he came to Bar he made love to a
+pretty girl there who was quite amiable to him, and now he never thinks
+of the other. There is more talk, and Katherine insists that he shall
+introduce her to his new lady, that she may try this remedy of
+counter-love. He consents with perfect nonchalance, and is at last
+allowed to go to sleep. No details are given of the conversation with
+the rival,<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> except the bitterness of Katherine's heart at the fact,
+and at seeing the ring she had given to Gerard on his hand. This she
+actually has the pluck to play with, and, securing it, to slip on her
+own. But the man being obviously past praying or caring for, she
+arranges with her uncle to depart early in the morning, writes a letter
+telling Gerard of the whole thing and renouncing him, passes the night
+silently, leaves the letter, rises quietly and early, and departs, yet
+"weeping tenderly," not for the man, but for her own lost love. The pair
+reach home safely, and says the tale-teller, with an agreeable dryness
+often found here,<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> "There were some who asked them the adventures of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+their journey, but whatever they answered they did not boast of the
+chief one." The conclusion is so spirited and at the very end so scenic
+and even modern (or, much better, universal), that it must be given in
+direct translation, with a few <i>chevilles</i> (or pieces of padding) left
+out.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>As for Gerard, when he woke and found his companion gone, he
+thought it must be late, jumped up in haste, and seized his
+jerkin: but, as he thrust his hand in one of the sleeves,
+there dropped out a letter which surprised him, for he
+certainly did not remember having put any there. He picked
+it up and saw it subscribed "To the disloyal Gerard." If he
+was startled before he was more so now: but he opened it at
+last, and saw the signature "Katherine, surnamed Conrad."
+Even yet he knew not what to think of it: but as he read the
+blood rose to his face and his heart fluttered, and his
+whole manner was changed. Still, he read it through, and
+learnt how his disloyalty had come to the knowledge of her
+who had wished him so well; and that not at second hand, but
+from himself to herself; what trouble she had taken to find
+him; and how (which stung him most) he had slept three
+nights in her company after all. [<i>After thinking some time
+he decides to follow her, and arrives in Brabant on the very
+day of her marriage: for she has, in the circumstances, kept
+her word to her parents.</i>] Then he tried to go up to her and
+salute her, and make some wretched excuse for his fault. But
+he was not allowed, for she turned her shoulder on him, and
+he could never manage to speak to her all through the day.
+He even stepped forward once to lead her out to dance, but
+she refused him flatly before all the company, many of whom
+heard her. And immediately afterwards another gentleman
+came, who bade the minstrels strike up, and she stepped down
+from her dais in full view of Gerard and went to dance with
+him. And so did the disloyal lover lose his lady.</p></div>
+
+<p>Now whether this, as the book asserts and as is not at all improbable,
+is a true story or not, cannot matter to any sensible person one
+farthing. What does matter is that it is a by no means badly told story,
+that it resorts to no illegitimate sources or seasonings of interest,
+and that it offers opportunities for amplification and "diversity of
+administration" to almost any extent. One can fancy it told, at much
+greater length and with more or less adjustment to different times, by
+great novelists of the most widely varying classes&mdash;by Scott and by
+Dumas, by Charles Reade and by George Meredith, to mention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> no living
+writer, as might easily be done. Both hero and heroine have more
+character between them than you could extract out of fifty of the usual
+<i>nouvelles</i>, and each lends him or herself to endless further
+development. Not a few of the separate scenes&mdash;the good parents fussing
+over their daughter's intended cavalcade and her thrifty and ingenious
+objections; the journey of the uncle and niece (any of the first three
+of the great novelists mentioned above would have made chapters of
+this); the dramatic and risky passages at the castle <i>en Barrois</i>; the
+contrast of Katherine's passion and Gerard's sluggishness; and the
+fashion in which this latter at once brings on the lout's defeat and
+saves the lady from danger at his hands&mdash;all this is novel-matter of
+almost the first class as regards incident, with no lack of
+character-openings to boot. Nor could anybody want a better "curtain"
+than the falling back of the scorned and baffled false lover, the
+concert of the minstrels, and Katherine's stately stepping down the dais
+to complete the insult by dancing with another.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The interest of <i>named</i> personages.</div>
+
+<p>One more general point may be noticed in connection with the superiority
+of this story, and that is the accession of interest, at first sight
+trivial but really important, which comes from the <i>naming</i> of the
+personages. Both in the earlier <i>fabliaux</i> and in these <i>Nouvelles</i>
+themselves, by far the larger number of the actors are simply called by
+class-names&mdash;a "knight," a "damsel," a "merchant and his wife," a
+"priest," a "varlet." It may seem childish to allow the mere addition of
+a couple of names like Gerard and Katherine to make this difference of
+interest, but the fact is that there is a good deal of childishness in
+human nature, and especially in the enjoyment of story.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> Only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> by
+very slow degrees were writers of fiction to learn the great difference
+that small matters of this kind make, and how the mere "anecdote," the
+dry argument or abstract of incident, can be amplified, varied,
+transformed from a remainder biscuit to an abundant and almost
+inexhaustible feast, by touches of individual character, setting of
+interiors, details of conversation, description, nomenclature, and what
+not. Quite early, as we saw in the case of the <i>St. Alexis</i>, persons of
+narrative gift stumbled upon things of the kind; but it was only after
+long delays, and hints of many half-conscious kinds, that they became
+part of recognised craft. Even with such a master of that craft as
+Boccaccio before them, not all the Italian novelists could catch the
+pattern; and the French, perhaps naturally enough, were slower still.</p>
+
+<p>It must be remembered, in judging the fifteenth-century French tale,
+that just as it was to some extent hampered by the long continuing
+popularity of the verse <i>fabliau</i> on the one hand, so it was, as we may
+say, "bled" on the other by the growing popularity of the farce, which
+consists of exactly the same material as the <i>fabliaux</i> and the
+<i>nouvelles</i> themselves, with the additional liveliness of voice and
+action. These later additions imposed not the smallest restraint on the
+license which had characterised and was to characterise the plain verse
+and prose forms,<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> and no doubt the result was all the more welcome to
+the taste of the time. But for that very reason the appetites and
+tastes, which could glut themselves with the full dramatic
+representation, might care less for the mere narrative, on the famous
+principle of <i>segnius irritant</i>. Nor was the political state of France
+during the time very favourable to letters. There are, however, two
+separate fifteenth-century stories which deserve notice. One of them is
+the rather famous, though probably not widely read, <i>Petit Jehan de
+Saintr&eacute;</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> of the already mentioned Antoine de la Salle, a certain work
+of his this time. The other is the pleasant, though to Englishmen
+intentionally uncomplimentary, <i>Jehan de Paris</i> of an unknown writer. La
+Salle's book must belong to the later middle of the century, though, if
+he died in or about 1461, not to a very late middle. <i>Jehan de Paris</i>
+has been put by M. de Montaiglon nearer the close.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Petit Jehan de Saintr&eacute;.</i></div>
+
+<p>The history of "little John of Saintr&eacute; and the Lady of the Beautiful
+Cousins"<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> has not struck all judges, even all English judges,<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> in
+the same way. Some have thought it mawkish, rhetorical, clumsily
+imitative of the manners of dead chivalry, and the like. Others,
+admitting it to be a late and "literary" presentation of the stately
+society it describes, rank it much higher as such. Its author was a
+bitter enough satirist if he wrote, as he most probably did, the famous
+<i>Quinze Joyes de Mariage</i>, one of the most unmitigated pieces of
+unsweetened irony&mdash;next to <i>A Tale of a Tub</i> and <i>Jonathan Wild</i>&mdash;to be
+found in literature; but not couched in narrative form. The same quality
+appears of course in the still more famous farce of <i>Pathelin</i>, which
+few good judges deny very stoutly to him, though there is little
+positive evidence. In the <i>Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles</i> again, as has been
+said, he certainly had a hand, and possibly a great hand, as well as
+perhaps elsewhere. The satiric touch appears even in <i>Petit Jehan</i>
+itself; for, after all the gracious courtship of the earlier part, the
+<i>dame des belles Cousines</i>, during an absence of her lover on service,
+falls a by no means, as it would seem, very reluctant victim to the
+vulgar viciousness of a rich churchman, just like the innominatas of the
+<i>nouvelles</i> themselves. But the earlier part <i>is</i> gracious&mdash;a word
+specifically and intensively applicable to it. It may be a little
+unreal; does not the secondary form and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> sense which has been fastened
+upon reality&mdash;"realism"&mdash;show that, in the opinion of many people at
+least, reality is <i>not</i> gracious? The Foozles of this world who "despise
+all your kickshaws," the Dry-as-dusts who point out&mdash;not in the least
+seeing the real drift of their argument&mdash;that the fifteenth century was,
+in the greater part of Europe if not the whole, at a new point of morals
+and manners, may urge these things. But the best part of <i>Petit Jehan</i>
+remains a gracious sort of dream for gracious dreamers&mdash;a picture of a
+kind of Utopia of Feminism, when Feminism did not mean votes or anything
+foolish, but only adoration of the adorable.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Jehan de Paris.</i></div>
+
+<p>It would be impossible to find or even to imagine anything more
+different than the not much later <i>Jehan de Paris</i>, an evident
+folk-tale<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> of uncertain origin, which very quickly became a popular
+chapbook and lasted long in that condition. Although we Englishmen
+provide the fun, he is certainly no Englishman who resents the fact or
+fails to enjoy the result, not to mention that we "could tell them tales
+with other endings." It is, for instance, not quite historically
+demonstrable that in crossing a river many English horsemen would be
+likely to be drowned, while all the French cavaliers got safe through;
+nor that, in scouring a country, the Frenchmen would score all the game
+and all the best beasts and poultry, while the English bag would consist
+of starvelings and offal. But no matter for that. The actual tale tells
+(with the agreeable introductory "How," which has not yet lost its zest
+for the right palates in chapter-headings) the story of a King and Queen
+of Spain who have, in recompense for help given them against turbulent
+barons, contracted their daughter to the King of France for his son; how
+they forgot this later, and betrothed her to the King of England, and
+how that King set out with his train, through France itself, to fetch
+his bride. As soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> as the Dauphin (now king, for his father is dead)
+hears of their coming, he disguises himself under the name of John of
+Paris, with a splendid train of followers, much more gorgeous than the
+English (the "foggy islander" of course cannot make this out), and sets
+of <i>quiproquos</i> follow, in each of which the Englishman is outdone and
+baffled generally, till at last "John of Paris" enters Burgos in state,
+reveals himself, and carries off the Englishman's bride, with the
+natural effect of making him <i>bien marry et courrouc&eacute;</i>, though no fight
+comes off.</p>
+
+<p>The tale is smartly and succinctly told (there are not many more than a
+hundred of the small-sized and large-printed pages of the <i>Collection
+Jannet-Picard</i>), and there is a zest and <i>verve</i> about it which ought to
+please any mood that is for the time in harmony with the much talked of
+Comic Spirit. But it certainly does not lose attraction, and it as
+certainly does not fail to lend some, when it is considered side by side
+with the other "John," especially if both are again compared with the
+certainly not earlier and probably later "Prose Romances" in English, to
+which that rather ambitious title was given by Mr. Thoms. There is
+nothing in these in the very remotest degree resembling <i>Jehan de
+Saintr&eacute;</i>: you must get on to the <i>Arcadia</i> or at least to <i>Euphues</i>
+before you come anywhere near that. There is, on the other hand, in our
+stuff, a sort of distant community of spirit with <i>Jehan de Paris</i>; but
+it works in an altogether lower and less imaginative sphere and fashion;
+no sense of art being present, and very little of craft. It is
+astonishing that a language which had had, if only in verse, such an
+unsurpassable tale-teller as Chaucer, should have been so backward. But
+then the whole conditions of the fifteenth century, especially in
+England, become only the more puzzling the longer one studies them. Even
+in France, it will be observed, the output of Tale is by no means
+large.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> Nor shall we find it very greatly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> increased even in the next
+age, though there is one masterpiece in quantity as well as quality.
+But, for our purpose, the <i>Cent Nouvelles</i> and the two separate pieces
+just discussed continue, and in more and more striking manner, to show
+the vast possibilities when the way shall have been clearly found and
+the feet of the wayfarers firmly set in it.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Prose as well as verse.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> In the very delightful imaginative introduction to
+<i>Quentin Durward</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> This is one of the points which a modern novelist would
+certainly have seized; but whether to advantage or not is another
+question.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> And of course recognised by the "Antonians" as peculiar to
+La Salle.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Only contrast "<i>Tom, Tom</i>, the piper's son," with "<i>There
+was once</i> a piper's son," or think how comparatively uninteresting the
+enormities of another hero or not-hero would have been if he had been
+anonymous instead of being called "Georgy-Porgy Pudding-and-Pie!"
+["Puddenum" is, or used to be, the preferred if corrupt nursery form.]
+In more elaborate and adorned narrative the influence, not merely of the
+name but of the beautiful name, comes in, and that of the name itself
+remains. In that tragic story of Ludlow Castle which was given above
+(Chap. iv. pp. 84-6), something, for the present writer at least, would
+have been lost if the traitor had been merely "a knight" instead of Sir
+Ernault Lisle and the victim merely "a damsel" instead of Marion de la
+Bri&egrave;re. And would the <i>bocca bacciata</i> of Alaciel itself be as gracious
+if it was merely anybody's?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> The amazing farce-insets of Lyndsay's <i>Satire of the Three
+Estates</i> could be paralleled, and were no doubt suggested, by French
+farces of older date.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Nobody seems to be entirely certain what this odd title
+means: though there have been some obvious and some far-fetched guesses.
+But it has, like other <i>rh&eacute;toriqueur</i> names of 1450-1550, such as
+"Traverser of Perilous Ways" and the like, a kind of fantastic
+attraction for some people.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> If I remember rightly, my friend the late R. L. Stevenson
+was wont to abuse it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> As such, the substance is found in other languages. But
+the French itself has been traced by some to an earlier <i>roman
+d'aventure</i>, <i>Blonde d'Oxford</i>, in which an English heiress is carried
+off by a French squire.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Perhaps one should guard against a possible repetition of
+a not uncommon critical mistake&mdash;that of inferring ignorance from
+absence of mention. I am quite aware that no exhaustive catalogue of
+known French stories in prose has been given; and the failure to
+supplement a former glance at the late prose versions of romance is
+intentional. They have nothing new in romance-, still less in
+novel-<i>character</i> for us. The <i>Biblioth&egrave;que Elz&eacute;virienne</i> volumes have
+been dwelt upon, not as a <i>corpus</i>, but because they appear to
+represent, without any unfair manipulation or "window-dressing," the
+kind at the time with a remarkable combination of interest both
+individual and contrasted.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>RABELAIS</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The anonymity, or at least impersonality, of authorship up to
+this point.</div>
+
+<p>Although&mdash;as it is hoped the foregoing chapters may have shown&mdash;the
+amount of energy and of talent, thrown into the department of French
+fiction, had from almost the earliest times been remarkably great;
+although French, if not France, had been the mother of almost all
+literatures in things fictitious, it can hardly be said that any writer
+of undeniable genius, entitling him to the first class in the Art of
+Letters, had shown himself therein. A hundred <i>chansons de geste</i> and as
+many romances <i>d'aventures</i> had displayed dispersed talent of a very
+high kind, and in the best of them, as the present writer has tried to
+point out, a very "extensive assortment" of the various attractions of
+the novel had from time to time made its appearance. But this again had
+been done "dispersedly," as the Shakespearean stage-direction has it.
+The story is sometimes well told, but the telling is constantly
+interrupted; the great art of novel-conversation is, as yet, almost
+unborn; the descriptions, though sometimes very striking, as in the case
+of those given from <i>Partenopeus</i>&mdash;the fatal revelation of Melior's
+charms and the galloping of the maddened palfrey along the seashore,
+with the dark monster-haunted wood behind and the bright moonlit sea and
+galley in front&mdash;are more often stock and lifeless; while, above all,
+the characters are rarely more than sketched, if even that. The one
+exception&mdash;the great Arthurian history, as liberated from its
+Graal-legend swaddling clothes, and its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> kite-and-crow battles with
+Saxons and rival knights, but retaining the mystical motive of the
+Graal-search itself and the adventures of Lancelot and other knights;
+combining all this into a single story, and storing it with incident for
+a time, and bringing it to a full and final tragic close by the loves of
+Lancelot himself and Guinevere&mdash;this great achievement, it has been
+frankly confessed, is so much muddled and distracted with episode which
+becomes positive digression, that some have even dismissed its
+pretensions to be a whole. Even those who reject this dismissal are not
+at one as to any single author of the conception, still less of the
+execution. The present writer has stated his humble, but ever more and
+more firm conviction that Chrestien did not do it and could not have
+done it; others of more note, perhaps of closer acquaintance with MS.
+sources, but also perhaps not uniting knowledge of the subject with more
+experience in general literary criticism and in special study of the
+Novel, will not allow Mapes to have done it.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Roman de la Rose</i>, beautiful as is its earlier part and ingenious
+as is (sometimes) its later, is, as a <i>story</i>, of the thinnest kind. The
+<i>Roman de Renart</i> is a vast collection of small stories of a special
+class, and the <i>Fabliaux</i> are almost a vaster collection (if you do not
+exclude the "waterings out" of <i>Renart</i>) of kinds more general. There is
+abundance of amusement and some charm; but nowhere are we much beyond
+very simple forms of fiction itself. None of the writers of <i>nouvelles</i>,
+except Antoine de la Salle, can be said to be a known personality.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Rabelais unquestionably the first very great known writer.</div>
+
+<p>There has always been a good deal of controversy about Rabelais, not all
+of which perhaps can we escape, though it certainly will not be invited,
+and we have no very extensive knowledge of his life. But we have some:
+and that, as a man of genius, he is superior to any single person named
+and known in earlier French literature, can hardly be contested by any
+one who is neither a silly paradoxer nor a mere dullard, nor affected by
+some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> extra-literary prejudice&mdash;religious, moral, or whatever it may be.
+But perhaps not every one who would admit the greatness of Master
+Francis as a man of letters, his possession not merely of consummate
+wit, but of that precious thing, so much rarer in French, actual humour;
+his wonderful influence on the future word-book and phrase-book of his
+own language, nay, not every one who would go almost the whole length of
+the most uncompromising Pantagruelist, and would allow him profound
+wisdom, high aspirations for humanity, something of a complete
+world-philosophy&mdash;would at once admit him as a very great novelist. For
+my own part I have no hesitation in doing so, and to make the admission
+good must be the object of this chapter.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">But the first great novelist?</div>
+
+<p>It may almost be said that his very excellence in this way has "stood in
+its own light." The readableness of Rabelais is extraordinary. The
+present writer, after for years making of him almost an Addison
+according to Johnson's prescription, fell, by mere accident and
+occupation with other matters, into a way of <i>not</i> reading him, except
+for purposes of mere literary reference, during a long time. On three
+different occasions more recently, one ten or a dozen years ago, one six
+or seven, and the third for the purposes of this very book, he put
+himself again under the Master, and read him right through. It is
+difficult to imagine a severer test, and I am bound to confess (though I
+am not bound to specify) that in some, though not many, instances I have
+found famous and once favourite classics fail to stand it. Not so Master
+Francis. I do not think that I ever read him with greater interest than
+at this last time. Indeed I doubt whether I have ever felt the
+<i>catholicon</i>&mdash;the pervading virtue of his book&mdash;quite so strongly as I
+have in the days preceding that on which I write these words.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Some objections considered.</div>
+
+<p>Of course Momus may find handles&mdash;he generally can. "You are suffering
+from morbid senile relapse into puerile enjoyment of indecency," he or
+Mrs. Momus (whom later ages have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> called Grundy) may be kind enough to
+say. "You were a member of the Rabelais Club of pleasant memory, and
+think it necessary to live up to your earlier profession." "You have
+said this in print before [I have not exactly done so] and are bound to
+stick to it," etc. etc. etc., down to that final, "You are a bad critic,
+and it doesn't matter what you say," which certainly, in a sense, does
+leave nothing to be replied. But whether this is because the accused is
+guilty, or because the Court does not call upon him, is a question which
+one may leave to others.</p>
+
+<p>Laying it down, then, as a point of fact that Rabelais <i>has</i> this
+curious "holding" quality, whence does he get it? As everybody ought to
+know, many good people, admitting the fact, have, as he would himself
+have said, gone about with lanterns to seek for out-of-the-way reasons
+and qualities; while some people, not so good, but also accepting the
+fact in a way, have grasped at the above-mentioned indecency itself for
+an explanation. This trick requires little effort to kick it into its
+native gutter. The greater proportion of the "<i>Indexable</i>" part of
+Rabelais is mere nastiness, which is only attractive to a very small
+minority of persons at any age, while to expert readers it is but a
+time-deodorised dunghill by the roadside, not beautiful, but negligible.
+Of the other part of this kind&mdash;the "naughty" part which is not nasty
+and may be somewhat nice&mdash;there is, when you come to consider it
+dispassionately, not really so very much, and it is seldom used in a
+seductive fashion. It may tickle, but it does not excite; may create
+laughter, but never passion or even desire. Therefore it cannot be this
+which "holds" any reader but a mere novice or a glutton for garbage.</p>
+
+<p>Less easily dismissible, but, it will seem, not less inadequate is the
+alleged "key"-interest of the book. Of course there are some people, and
+more than a person who wishes to think nobly of humanity might desire to
+find, who seem never to be tired of identifying Grandgousier, Gargantua,
+and Pantagruel himself with French kings to whom they bear not the
+slightest resemblance;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> of obliging us English by supposing us to be the
+Macr&eacute;ons (who seem to have been very respectable people, but who inhabit
+an island singularly unlike England in or anywhere near the time of
+Rabelais), and so on. But to a much larger number of persons&mdash;and one
+dares say to all true Pantagruelists&mdash;these interpretations are either
+things that the Master himself would have delighted to satirise, and
+would have satirised unsurpassably, or, at best, mere superfluities and
+supererogations. At any rate there is no possibility of finding in them
+the magic spell&mdash;the "Fastrada's ring," which binds youth and age alike
+to the unique "Alcofribas Nasier."</p>
+
+<p>One must, it is supposed, increase the dose of respect (though some
+people, in some cases, find it hard) when considering a further quality
+or property&mdash;the Riddle-attraction of Rabelais. This
+riddle-attraction&mdash;or attractions, for it might be better spoken of in a
+very large plural&mdash;is of course quite undeniable in itself. There are as
+many second intentions in the ordinary sense, apparently obvious in
+<i>Gargantua</i> and <i>Pantagruel</i>, as there can have been in the scholastic
+among the dietary of La Quinte, or of any possible Chimaera buzzing at
+greatest intensity in the extremest vacuum. On the other hand, some of
+us are haunted by the consideration, "Was there ever any human being
+more likely than Fran&ccedil;ois Rabelais to echo (with the slightest change)
+the words ascribed to Divinity in that famous piece which is taken, on
+good external and ultra-internal evidence, to be Swift's?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>I</i> to such block-heads set my wit!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I</i> [<i>pose</i>] such fools! Go, go&mdash;you're bit."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And there is not wanting, amongst us sceptics, a further section who are
+quite certain that a not inconsiderable proportion of the book is not
+allegory at all, but sheer "bamming," while others again would transfer
+the hackneyed death-bed saying from author to book, and say that the
+whole Chronicle is "a great perhaps."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">And dismissed as affecting the general attraction of the
+book.</div>
+
+<p>These things&mdash;or at least elaborate discussions of them&mdash;lie somewhat,
+though not so far as may at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> first seem, outside our proper business. It
+must, however, once more be evident, from the facts and very nature of
+the case, that the puzzles, the riddles, the allegories cannot
+constitute the main and, so to speak, "universal" part of the attraction
+of the book. They may be a seasoning to some, a solid cut-and-come-again
+to others, but certainly not to the majority. Even in <i>Gulliver</i>&mdash;the
+Great Book's almost, perhaps quite, as great descendant&mdash;these
+attractions, though more universal in appeal and less evasively
+presented, certainly do not hold any such position. The fact is that
+both Rabelais and Swift were consummate tellers of a story, and
+(especially if you take the <i>Polite Conversation</i> into Swift's claim)
+consummate originators of the Novel or larger story, with more than
+"incidental" attraction itself. But we are not now busied with Swift.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Which lies, largely if not wholly, in its story-interest.</div>
+
+<p>Not much serious objection will probably be taken to the place allotted
+to Master Francis as a tale-teller pure and simple, although it cannot
+be said that all his innumerable critics and commentators have laid
+sufficient stress on this. From the uncomfortable birth of Gargantua to
+the triumphant recessional scene from the Oracle of the Bottle, proofs
+are to be found in every book, every chapter almost, and indeed almost
+every page; and a little more detail may be given on this head later.
+But the presentation of Rabelais as a novelist-before-novels may cause
+more demur, and even suggest the presence of the now hopelessly
+discredited thing&mdash;paradox itself. Of course, if anybody requires
+regular plot as a necessary constituent, only paradox could contend for
+that. It <i>has</i> been contended&mdash;and rightly enough&mdash;that in the general
+scheme and the two (or if you take in Grandgousier, three) generations
+of histories of the good giants, Rabelais is doing nothing more than
+parody&mdash;is, indeed, doing little more than simply follow the traditions
+of Romance&mdash;Amiles and Jourdains, Guy and Rembrun, and many others. But
+some of us regard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> plot as at best a full-dress garment, at the absence
+of which the good-natured God or Muse of fiction is quite willing to
+wink. Character, if seldom elaborately presented, except in the case of
+Panurge, is showered, in scraps and sketches, all over the book, and
+description and dialogue abound.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Contrast of the <i>Moyen de Parvenir</i>.</div>
+
+<p>But it is not on such beggarly special pleading as this that the claim
+shall be founded. It must rest on the unceasing, or practically
+unceasing, impetus of story-interest which carries the reader through. A
+remarkably useful contrast-parallel in this respect, may be found in
+that strange book, the <i>Moyen de Parvenir</i>. I am of those who think that
+it had something to do with Rabelais, that there is some of his stuff in
+it, even that he may have actually planned something like it. But the
+"make-up" is not more inferior in merit to that of <i>Gargantua</i> and
+<i>Pantagruel</i> than it is different in kind. The <i>Moyen de Parvenir</i> is
+full of separate stories of the <i>fabliau</i> kind, often amusing and well
+told, though exceedingly gross as a rule. These stories are "set" in a
+framework of promiscuous conversation, in which a large number of great
+real persons, ancient and modern, and a smaller one of invented
+characters, or rather names, take part. Most of this, though not quite
+all, is mere <i>fatrasie</i>, if not even mere jargon: and though there are
+glimmerings of something more than sense, they are, with evident
+deliberation, enveloped in clouds of nonsense. The thing is not a whole
+at all, and the stories have as little to do with each other or with any
+general drift as if they were professedly&mdash;what they are practically&mdash;a
+bundle of <i>fabliaux</i> or <i>nouvelles</i>. As always happens in such
+cases&mdash;and as the author, whether he was B&eacute;roalde or another, whether or
+not he worked on a canvas greater than he could fill, or tried to patch
+together things too good for him, no doubt intended&mdash;attempts have been
+made to interpret the puzzle here also; but they are quite obviously
+vain.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A general theme possible.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A reference&mdash;to be taken up later&mdash;to the last Book.</div>
+
+<p>Such a sentence, however, cannot be pronounced in any such degree or
+measure on the similar attempts in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> the case of <i>Gargantua</i> and
+<i>Pantagruel</i>; for a reason which some readers may find unexpected. The
+unbroken vigour&mdash;unbroken even by the obstacles which it throws in its
+own way, like the Catalogue of the Library of Saint-Victor and the
+burlesque lists of adjectives, etc., which fill up whole chapters&mdash;with
+which the story or string of stories is carried on, may naturally
+suggest that there <i>is</i> a story or at least a theme. It is a sort of
+quaint alteration or catachresis of <i>Possunt quia posse videntur</i>. There
+must be a general theme, because the writer is so obviously able to
+handle any theme he chooses. It may be wiser&mdash;it certainly seems so to
+the present writer&mdash;to disbelieve in anything but occasional
+sallies&mdash;episodes, as it were, or even digressions&mdash;of political,
+religious, moral, social and other satire. It is, on the other hand, a
+most important thing to admit the undoubted presence&mdash;now and then, and
+not unfrequently&mdash;of a deliberate dropping of the satiric and burlesque
+mask. This supplies the presentation of the serious, kindly, and human
+personality of the three princes (Grandgousier, Gargantua, and
+Pantagruel); this the schemes of education (giving so large a proportion
+of the small bulk of <i>not</i>-nonsense written on that matter). Above all,
+this permits, to one taste at least, the exquisite last Book,
+presentation of La Quinte and the fresh roses in her hand, the
+originality of which, not only in the whole book in one sense, but in
+the particular Book in the other, is, to that taste, and such
+argumentative powers as accompany it, an almost absolute proof of that
+Book's genuineness. For if it had been by another who, <i>un</i>like
+Rabelais, had a special tendency towards such graceful imagination, he
+could hardly have refrained from showing this elsewhere in this long
+book.<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
+<div class="sidenote">Running survey of the whole.</div>
+
+<p>But however this may be, it is certain that a critical reader,
+especially when he has reason to be startled by the external, if not
+actually extrinsic, oddities of and excesses of the book, will be
+justified in allowing&mdash;it may almost be said that he is likely to
+allow&mdash;the extraordinary volume of concatenated fictitious interest in
+the whole book or books. The usual and obvious "catenations" are indeed
+almost ostentatiously wanting. The absence of any real plot has been
+sufficiently commented on, with the temptations conferred by it to
+substitute a fancied unity of purpose. The birth, and what we may call
+the two educations, of Gargantua; the repetition, with sufficient
+differences, of the same plan in the opening of <i>Pantagruel</i>; the
+appearance of Panurge and the campaign against the Dipsodes; the great
+marriage debate; and the voyage to the Oracle of the Bottle, are
+connected merely in "chronicle" fashion. The character-links are hardly
+stronger, for though Friar John does play a more or less important part
+from almost the beginning to quite the end, Panurge, the most important
+and remarkable single figure, does not appear for a considerable time,
+and the rest are shadows. The scene is only in one or two chapters
+nominally placed in Nowhere; but as a whole it is Nowhere Else, or
+rather a bewildering mixture of topical assignments in a very small part
+of France, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> allegorical or fantastic descriptions of a multitude of
+Utopias. And yet, once more, it <i>is</i> a whole story. As you read it you
+almost forget what lies behind, you quite forget the breaches of
+continuity, and press on to what is before, almost as eagerly, if not
+quite in the same fashion, as if the incidents and the figures were not
+less exciting than those of <i>Vingt Ans Apr&egrave;s</i>. Let us hope it may not be
+excessive to expend a few pages on a sketch of this strange story that
+is no story, with, it may be, some fragments of translation or
+paraphrase (for, as even his greatest translator, Urquhart, found, a
+certain amount of his own <i>Fay ce que voudras</i> is necessary with
+Rabelais) here and there.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Gargantua.</i></div>
+
+<p>Master Francis does not exactly plunge into the middle of things; but he
+spends comparatively little time on the preliminaries of the ironical
+Prologue to the "very illustrious drinkers," on the traditionally
+necessary but equally ironical genealogy of the hero, on the elaborate
+verse <i>amphigouri</i> of the <i>Fanfreluches Antidot&eacute;es</i>, and on the mock
+scientific discussion of extraordinarily prolonged periods of pregnancy.
+Without these, however, he will not come to the stupendous banquet of
+tripe (properly washed down, and followed by pleasant revel on the
+"echoing green") which determined the advent of Gargantua into the
+world, which enabled Grandgousier, more fortunate than his son on a
+future occasion, to display his amiability as a husband and a father
+unchecked by any great sorrow, and which was, as it were, crowned and
+sealed by that son's first utterance&mdash;no miserable and ordinary infant's
+wail, but the stentorian barytone "<i>A boire!</i>" which rings through the
+book till it passes in the sharper, but not less delectable treble of
+"<i>Trinq!</i>" And then comes a brief piece, not narrative, but as
+characteristic perhaps of what we may call the ironical <i>moral</i> of the
+narrative as any&mdash;a grave remonstrance with those who will not believe
+in <i>ceste estrange nativit&eacute;</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The birth and education.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I doubt me ye believe not this strange birth assuredly. If
+ye disbelieve, I care not; but a respectable man&mdash;a man of
+good sense&mdash;<i>always</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> believes what people tell him and what
+he finds written. Does not Solomon say (Prov. xiv.), "The
+innocent [simple] believeth every word" etc.? And St. Paul
+(1 Cor. xiii.), "Charity believeth all things"? Why should
+you <i>not</i> believe it? "Because," says you, "there is no
+probability<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> in it." I tell you that for this very and
+only reason you ought to believe with a perfect faith. For
+the Sorbonists say that faith is the evidence of things of
+no probability.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> Is it against our law or our faith?
+against reason? against the Sacred Scriptures?<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> For my
+part I can find nothing written in the Holy Bible which is
+contrary thereto. But if the Will of God had been so, would
+you say that He could not have done it? Oh for grace' sake
+do not make a mess of your wits in such vain thoughts. For I
+tell you that nothing is impossible with God.</p></div>
+
+<p>And Divinity being done with, the Classics and pure fantasy are drawn
+upon; the incredulous being finally knocked down by a citation from
+Pliny, and a polite request not to bother any more.</p>
+
+<p>This is, of course, the kind of passage which has been brought against
+Rabelais, as similar ones have been brought against Swift, to justify
+charges of impiety. But, again, it is not necessary to bother
+(<i>tabuster</i>) about that. Any one who cannot see that it is the foolish
+use of reverend things and not the things themselves that the satire
+hits, is hardly worth argument. But there is no doubt that this sort of
+mortar, framework, menstruum, canvas, or whatever way it may be best
+metaphored, helps the apparent continuity of the work marvellously,
+leaving, as it were, no rough edges or ill-mended joints. It is, to use
+an admirable phrase of Mr. Balfour's about a greater matter, "the
+logical glue which holds together and makes intelligible the
+multiplicity" of the narrative units, or perhaps instead of
+"intelligible" one should here say "appreciable."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p><p>Sometimes the "glue" of ironic comment rather saturates these units of
+narrative than surrounds or interjoins them, and this is the case with
+what follows. The infantine peculiarities of Gargantua; his dress and
+the mystery of its blue and white colours (the blue of heaven and the
+white of the joy of earth); how his governesses and he played together;
+what smart answers he made; how he became early both a poet and an
+experimental philosopher&mdash;all this is recounted with a marvellous
+mixture of wisdom and burlesque, though sometimes, no doubt, with rather
+too much of <i>haut go&ucirc;t</i> seasoning. Then comes the, in Renaissance books,
+inevitable "Education" section, and it has been already noted briefly
+how different this is from most of its group (the corresponding part of
+<i>Euphues</i> may be suggested for comparison). Even Rabelais does not
+escape the main danger&mdash;he neglects a little to listen to the wisest
+voice, "Can't you let him alone?" But the contrasts in the case of
+Gargantua, the general tenor (that good prince profiting by his own
+experience for his son's benefit) in that of Pantagruel, are not too
+"improving," and are made by their historian's "own sauce" exceedingly
+piquant. Much as has been written on the subject, it is not easy to be
+quite certain how far the "Old" Learning was fairly treated by the
+"New." Rabelais and Erasmus and the authors of the <i>Epistolae Obscurorum
+Virorum</i> are such a tremendous overmatch for any one on the other side,
+that the most judicial as well as judicious of critics must be rather
+puzzled as to the real merits of the case. But luckily there is no need
+to decide. Enjoyment, not decision, is the point, and there is no
+difficulty in <i>that</i>. How Gargantua was transferred from the learned but
+somewhat, as the vulgar would say, "stick-in-the-mud" tutorship of
+Master Thubal Holofernes, who spent eighteen years in reading <i>De Modis
+Significandi</i> with his pupil, and Master Jobelin Brid&eacute;, who has "become
+a name"&mdash;not exactly of honour; how he was transferred to the less
+antiquated guidance of Ponocrates, and set out for Paris on the famous
+dappled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> mare, whose exploits in field and town were so alarming, and
+who had the bells of Notre Dame hung round her neck, till they were
+replaced rather after than because of the remonstrance of Master Janotus
+de Bragmardo; how for a time, and under Sorbonic direction, he wasted
+that time in short and useless study, with long intervals of
+card-playing, sleeping, etc. etc., and of course a great deal of eating
+and drinking, "not as he ought and as he ought not"&mdash;all this leads up
+to the moment when the sage Ponocrates takes him again in hand, and
+institutes a strenuous drill in manners, studies, manly exercises, and
+the like, ending with one of those extraordinary flashes of perfect
+style and noble meaning which it pleases Rabelais to emit from what some
+call his "dunghill" and others his "marine-store."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Also they prayed to God the Creator, adoring Him, and
+solemnly repledging to Him their faith, and glorifying Him
+for His boundless goodness; while, giving Him thanks for all
+time past, they commended themselves to His divine mercy for
+all the future. This done, they turned to their rest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The war.</div>
+
+<p>It is only after this serious training that the first important division
+of what may be called the action begins&mdash;the "War of the Cakes," in
+which certain outrageous bakers, subjects of King Picrochole of Lern&eacute;,
+first refuse the custom of the good Grandgousier's shepherds, and then
+violently assault them, the incident being turned by the choleric
+monarch into a <i>casus belli</i> against the peaceful one. Invasion, the
+early triumph of the aggressor, the triumphant appearance of the
+invincible Friar John, and the complete turning of the tables by the
+advent of Gargantua and his terrible mare, follow each other in rapid
+and brilliant telling, and perhaps no parts of the book are better
+known. The extraordinary felicity with which Rabelaisian irony&mdash;here
+kept in quieter but intenser activity than almost anywhere else&mdash;seizes
+and renders the common causes, excuses, manners, etc., of war can never
+have escaped competent readers; but it must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> have struck more persons of
+late than perhaps at any former time. It would be impertinent to
+particularise largely; but if the famous adaptation and amplification of
+the old Pyrrhus story in the counsel of Spadassin and Merdaille to
+Picrochole were printed in small type as the centre of a fathom-square
+sheet, the whole margin could be more than filled with extracts, from
+German books and newspapers, of advice to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Nor is
+there anything, in literature touching history, where irony has bitten
+more deeply and lastingly into Life and Time than the brief record of
+Picrochole's latter days after his downfall.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>He was informed by an old hag that his kingdom would be
+restored to him at the coming of the Cocqsigrues: since then
+it is not certainly known what has become of him. However, I
+have been told that he now works for his poor living at
+Lyons, and is as choleric as ever. And always he bemoans
+himself to strangers about the Cocqsigrues&mdash;yet with a
+certain hope, according to the old woman's prophecy, that at
+their coming he will be reinstated in his kingdom.</p></div>
+
+<p>Edward FitzGerald would have called this "terrible"; and perhaps it is.</p>
+
+<p>But there is much more humour than terror in the rest, and sometimes
+there are qualities different from either. The rescue of the sacred
+precincts of the Abbey of Seuill&eacute; from the invaders by that glorious
+monk (a personage at no great remove from our own Friar Tuck, to the
+later portraits of whom he has lent some of his own traits) pleases the
+soul well, as do the feats of Gymnast against Tripet, and the fate of
+the unlucky Touquedillon, and the escalade of La Roche Clermande, and (a
+little less perhaps) the pure burlesque of the eating of the pilgrims,
+and the combing out of the cannon balls, and the contrasted sweet
+reasonableness of the amiable though not at all cowardly Grandgousier.
+But the advice of the Evil Counsellors to Picrochole is still perhaps
+the pearl:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Counsel to Picrochole.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Then there appeared before Picrochole the Duke of Mennail,
+Count Spadassin, and Captain Merdaille, and said to him,
+"Sire,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> this day we make you the most happy and chivalrous
+prince that ever has been since the death of Alexander of
+Macedon." "Be covered, be covered," said Picrochole.
+"Gramercy, sire", said they, "but we know our duty. The
+means are as follows. You will leave here in garrison some
+captain with a small band of men to hold the place, which
+seems to us pretty strong, both by nature and by the
+fortifications you have contrived. You will, as you know
+well, divide your army in half. One half will fall upon this
+fellow Grandgousier and his people, and easily discomfit him
+at the first assault. There we shall gain money in heaps,
+for the rascal has plenty. (Rascal we call him, because a
+really noble prince never has a penny. To hoard is the mark
+of a rascal.)</p>
+
+<p>"The other part will meanwhile draw towards Aunis,
+Saintonge, Angoumois, and Gascony, as well as Perigord,
+Medoc, and Elanes. Without any resistance they will take
+towns, castles, and fortresses. At Bayonne, at St. Jean de
+Luz, and at Fontarabia you will seize all the ships, and
+coasting towards Galicia and Portugal, will plunder all the
+seaside places as far as Lisbon, where you will be
+reinforced with all the supplies necessary to a conqueror:
+<i>Corbleu!</i> Spain will surrender, for they are all poltroons.
+You will pass the Straits of Seville,<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> and will there
+erect two columns more magnificent than those of Hercules
+for the perpetual memory of your name. And that Strait shall
+thenceforward be named the Sea of Picrochole.</p>
+
+<p>"When that sea has been passed, lo! comes Barbarossa<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> to
+surrender as your slave." "I," said Picrochole, "will extend
+mercy to him." "Very well," said they, "on condition that he
+is baptized. And then you will assault the kingdoms of
+Tunis, of Hippo,<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> of Argier, of Bona, of Corona&mdash;to cut
+it short, all Barbary. Going further,<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> you will keep in
+your hands Majorca, Minorca, Sardinia, Corsica, and the
+other islands of the Ligurian and Balearic sea. Coasting to
+the left<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> you will dominate all Narbonese Gaul, Provence,
+the Allobroges, Genoa, Florence, Lucca, and, begad! Rome.
+Poor master Pope is already dying for fear of you." "I will
+never kiss his slipper," said Picrochole.</p>
+
+<p>"Italy being taken, behold Naples, Calabria, Apulia, and
+Sicily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> all at your mercy, and Malta into the bargain. I
+should like to see those funny knights, formerly of Rhodes,
+resist you! if it were only to examine their water." "I
+should like," said Picrochole, "to go to Loretto." "No, no,"
+said they, "that will be on the way back. Thence we shall
+take Candia, Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, and make a
+set at Morea. We shall get it at once. By St. Treignan, God
+keep Jerusalem! for the soldan is nothing in power to you."
+"Shall I," said he, "then rebuild the Temple of Solomon?"
+"Not yet," said they, "wait a little. Be not so hasty in
+your enterprises."</p></div>
+
+<p>And so with the most meticulous exactness (Rabelais' geography is
+irreproachable, and he carefully avoids the cheap expedient of making
+Spadassin and Merdaille blunder) and the sagest citations of <i>Festina
+lente</i>, they take him through Asia Minor to the Euphrates and Arabia,
+while the other army (that which has annihilated Grandgousier) comes
+round by the northern route, sweeping all Europe from Brittany and the
+British Isles to Constantinople, where the great rendezvous is made and
+the universal empire established, Picrochole graciously giving his
+advisers Syria and Palestine as their fiefs.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty much like our own days," said Mr. Rigmarole. Have we not heard
+something very like this lately, as "Berlin to Baghdad," if not "Calais
+to Calcutta"? And even if we had not, would not the sense and the satire
+of it be delectable? A great deal has been left out: the chapter is, for
+Rabelais, rather a long one. The momentary doubt of the usually
+undoubting Picrochole as to what they shall drink in the desert, allayed
+at once by a beautiful scheme of commissariat camels and elephants,<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a>
+which would have done credit to the most modern A.S.C., is very capital.
+There is, indeed, an unpleasant Echephron<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> who points the old moral
+of Cineas to Pyrrhus himself. But Picrochole rebuffs him with the
+invaluable <i>Passons oultre</i>, and closes the discussion by anticipating
+Henri Quatre (who, no doubt, learnt the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> phrase from him), crying, "<i>Qui
+m'aime, si me suive!</i>" and ordering all haste in the war.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that, here or earlier, the
+not-quite-so-gentle-as-he-is-traditionally-called reader may ejaculate,
+"This is all true enough; but it is all very well known, and does not
+need recapitulation." Is this quite so certain? No doubt at one time
+Englishmen did know their Rabelais well. Southey did, for instance, and
+so, according to the historian of Barsetshire, did, in the next
+generation, Archdeacon Grantly. More recently my late friend Sir Walter
+Besant spent a great deal of pains on Master Francis, and mainly owing
+to his efforts there existed for some years a Rabelais Club (already
+referred to), which left some pleasant memories. But <i>is</i> it quite so
+certain that the average educated Englishman can at once distinguish
+Eudemon from Epistemon, give a correct list of the various answers to
+Panurge's enquiries as to the probable results of his marriage, relate
+what happened when (as glanced at above and returned to later) <i>nous
+passasmes oultre</i>, and say what the adorable Quintessence admitted to
+her dainty lips besides second intentions? I doubt it very much. Even
+special students of the Great Book, as in other cases, have too often
+allowed themselves to be distracted from the pure enjoyment of it by
+idle questions of the kinds above mentioned and others&mdash;questions of
+dates and names and places, of origins and borrowings and
+imitations&mdash;questions the sole justification of which, from the genuine
+Pantagruelian point of view, is that their utter dryness inevitably
+suggests the cries&mdash;the Morning Hymn and the Evening Voluntary of the
+book itself&mdash;<i>&Agrave; boire!</i> and <i>Trinq</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But, even were this not so, a person who has undertaken, wisely or
+unwisely, to write the history of the French Novel is surely entitled to
+lay some stress on what seems to him the importance of this its first
+eminent example. At any rate he proposes <i>not</i> to <i>passer oultre</i>, but
+to stick to the line struck out, and exhibit, in reasonable detail, the
+varieties of novel-matter and manner contained in the book.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The peace and the Abbey of Thelema.</div>
+
+<p>The conclusion of <i>Gargantua</i>&mdash;after the victor has addressed a <i>concio</i>
+to the vanquished, has mildly punished the originators of the trouble or
+those he could catch (Spadassin and Merdaille having run away "six hours
+before the battle") by setting them to work at his newly established
+printing-press, and has distributed gifts and estates to his
+followers&mdash;may be one of the best known parts of the whole book, but is
+not of the most strictly novel character, though it has suggested at
+least one whole novel and parts or passages of others. The "Abbey of
+Thelema"&mdash;the home of the order of <i>Fay ce que vouldras</i>&mdash;is, if not a
+devout, a grandiose imagination, and it gives occasion for some
+admirable writing. But it is one of the purest exercises of "purpose,"
+and one of the least furnished with incident or character, to be found
+in Rabelais. In order to introduce it, he may even be thought guilty of
+what is extremely rare with him, a fault of "keeping." He avoids this
+fault surprisingly in the contrasted burlesque and serious chronicles of
+Grandgousier and Gargantua himself, as well as in the expanded contrast
+of Pantagruel and Panurge. Yet the heartiest admirer of "Friar John of
+the Funnels" (or "Collops," for there is a schism on this point) may
+fail to see in him a suitable or even a possible Head for an assemblage
+of gallant gentlemen and stately ladies (both groups being also
+accomplished scholars) like the Thelemites. But Rabelais, like
+Shakespeare, had small care for small objections. He wanted to sketch a
+Paradise of Anti-Monkery, and for this he wanted an Anti-Abbot. Friar
+John was the handiest person, and he took him. But it is worth noting
+that the Abbot of Thelema never afterwards appears as such, or in the
+slightest relation to this miniature but most curious and interesting
+example of the Renaissance fancy for imaginary countries, cities,
+institutions, with its splendours of architecture and decoration, its
+luxurious but not loose living, its gallantry and its learning, its
+gorgeous dress, its polished manners (the Abbot must have had some
+trouble to learn them), and its "inscriptions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> and enigmas" in verse
+which is not quite so happy as the prose. One would not cut it out of
+the book for anything, and parallels to it (not merely of the kind above
+referred to) have found and may find place in other books of fiction.
+But it is only a sort of chantry, in the Court of the Gentiles too, of
+the mighty Temple of the Novel.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Pantagruel</i> I. The contrasted youth.</div>
+
+<p>What it was exactly that made Rabelais "double," as it were, on
+<i>Gargantua</i> in the early books of <i>Pantagruel</i><a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> it would probably be
+idle to enquire. His deliberate mention in the Prologue of some of the
+most famous romances (with certain others vainly to be sought now or at
+any time) might of course most easily be a mere red herring. It may be,
+that as <i>Gargantua</i> was not entirely of his own creation, he determined
+to "begin at the beginning" in his original composition. But it matters
+little or nothing. We have, once more, a burlesque genealogy with known
+persons&mdash;Nimrod, Goliath, Polyphemus, etc. etc.&mdash;entangled in a chain of
+imaginaries, one of the latter, Hurtaly, forming the subject of a solemn
+discussion of the question why he is not received among the crew of the
+Ark. The unfortunate concomitants of the birth of Pantagruel&mdash;which is
+fatal to his mother Badebec&mdash;contrast with the less chequered history of
+Gargantua and Gargamelle, while the mixed sorrow and joy of Gargantua at
+his wife's death and his son's birth completes this contrast.
+Pantagruel, though quite as amiable as his father, if not more so, has
+in infancy the natural awkwardnesses of a giant, and a hairy giant
+too&mdash;devouring cows whole instead of merely milking them, and tearing to
+pieces an unfortunate bear who only licked his infant chops. As was said
+above, he has no wild-oats period of education like his father's, but
+his company is less carefully chosen than that of Gargantua in the days
+of his reformation, and gives his biographer opportunities for his
+sharpest satire.</p>
+
+<p>First we have (taken, as everybody is supposed now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> to know, from
+Geoffrey Tory, but improved) the episode of the Limousin scholar with
+his "pedantesque"<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> deformation of French and Latin at once, till the
+giant takes him by the throat and he cries for mercy in the strongest
+meridional brogue.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> Then comes the famous catalogue of the Library
+of Saint Victor, a fresh attack on scholastic and monastic degeneracy,
+and a kind of joining hands (Ortuinus figures) with the German guerrilla
+against the <i>Obscuri</i>, and then a long and admirable letter from
+Gargantua, whence we learn that Grandgousier is dead, and that his son
+is now the sagest of monarchs, who has taken to read Greek, and shows no
+memory of his governesses or his earlier student days. And then again
+comes Panurge.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Panurge.</div>
+
+<p>Many doubtful things have been said about this most remarkable
+personage. He has been fathered upon the Cingar of Folengo, which is too
+much of a compliment to that creation of the great Macaronic, and
+Falstaff has been fathered upon him, which is distinctly unfair to
+Falstaff. Sir John has absolutely nothing of the ill-nature which
+characterises both Cingar and Panurge; and Panurge is an actual and
+contemptible coward, while many good wits have doubted whether Falstaff
+is, in the true sense, a coward at all. But Panurge is certainly one
+thing&mdash;the first distinct and striking <i>character</i> in prose fiction.
+Morally, of course, there is little to be said for him, except that,
+when he has no temptations to the contrary, he is a "good fellow"
+enough. As a human example of <i>mimesis</i> in the true Greek sense, not of
+"imitation" but of "fictitious creation," he is, once more, the first
+real character in prose fiction&mdash;the ancestor, in the literary sense, of
+the mighty company in which he has been followed by the similar
+creations of the masters from Cervantes to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> Thackeray. The fantastic
+colouring, and more than colouring, of the whole book affects him, of
+course, more than superficially. One could probably give some not quite
+absurd guesses why Rabelais shaped him as he did&mdash;presented him as a
+very naughty but intensely clever child, with the monkey element in
+humanity thrown into utmost prominence. But it is better not to do so.
+Panurge has some Yahooish characteristics, but he is not a Yahoo&mdash;in
+fact, there is no misanthropy in Rabelais.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> He is not merely impish
+(as in his vengeance on the lady of Paris), but something worse than
+impish (as in that on Dindenault); and yet one cannot call him diabolic,
+because he is so intensely human. It is customary, and fairly correct,
+to describe his ethos as that of understanding and wit wholly divorced
+from morality, chivalry, or religion; yet he is never Mephistophelian.
+If one of the hundred touches which make him a masterpiece is to be
+singled out, it might perhaps be the series of rapturous invitations to
+his wedding which he gives to his advisers while he thinks their advice
+favourable, and the limitations of enforced politeness which he appends
+when the unpleasant side of their opinions turns up. And it may perhaps
+be added that one of the chief reasons for believing heartily in the
+last Book is the delectable and unimprovable contrast which La Quinte
+and her court of intellectual fantastry present to this picture of
+intellectual materialism.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Short view of the sequels in Book II.</div>
+
+<p>It was impossible that such a figure should not to a certain extent
+dwarf others; but Rabelais, unlike some modern character-mongers, never
+lets his psychology interfere with his story. After a few episodes, the
+chief of which is the great sign-duel of Thaumast and Panurge himself,
+the campaign against the Dipsodes at once enables Pantagruel to display
+himself as a war-like hero of romance, permits him fantastic exploits
+parallel to his father's, and, by installing Panurge in a lordship of
+the conquered country and determining him, after "eating his corn in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+the blade," to "marry and settle," introduces the larger and most
+original part of the whole work&mdash;the debates and counsellings on the
+marriage in the Third Book, and, after the failure of this, the voyage
+to settle the matter at the Oracle of the Bottle in the Fourth and
+Fifth. This "plot," if it may be called so, is fairly central and
+continuous throughout, but it gives occasion for the most surprising
+"alarums and excursions," variations and divagations, of the author's
+inexhaustible humour, learning, inventive fertility, and never-failing
+faculty of telling a tale. If the book does sometimes in a fashion "hop
+forty paces in the public street," and at others gambade in a less
+decorous fashion even than hopping, it is also Cleopatresque in its
+absolute freedom from staleness and from tedium.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Pantagruel</i> II. (Book III.)<br />
+
+The marriage of Panurge and the consultations on it.</div>
+
+<p>The Third Book has less of apparent variety in it, and less of what
+might be called striking incident, than any of the others, being all but
+wholly occupied by the enquiries respecting the marriage of Panurge. But
+this gives it a "unity" which is of itself attractive to some tastes,
+while the delightful sonnet to the spirit Of Marguerite,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Esprit abstraict, ravy et ecstatique,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>(perhaps the best example of <i>rh&eacute;toriqueur</i> poetry), at the beginning,
+and the last sight (except in letters) of Gargantua at the end, with the
+curious <i>coda</i> on the "herb Pantagruelion" (the ancestor of Joseph de
+Maistre's famous eulogy of the Executioner), give, as it were, handle
+and top to it in unique fashion. But the body of it is the thing. The
+preliminary outrunning of the constable&mdash;had there been constables in
+Salmigondin, but they probably knew the story of the Seigneur of Basch&eacute;
+too well&mdash;and the remarkable difference between the feudatory and his
+superior on the subject of debt, serve but as a whet to the project of
+matrimony which the debtor conceives. Of course, Panurge is the very
+last man whom a superficial observer of humanity&mdash;the very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> first whom a
+somewhat profounder student thereof&mdash;would take as a marrying one. He is
+"a little failed"; he thinks to rest himself while not foregoing his
+former delights, and he shuts eyes and ears to the proverb, as old as
+Greek in words and as old as the world in fact, that "the doer shall
+suffer." That he should consult Pantagruel is in the circumstances
+almost a necessity, and Pantagruel's conduct is exactly what one would
+expect from that good-natured, learned, admirable, but rather enigmatic
+personage. Merely "aleatory" decision&mdash;by actual use of dice&mdash;he rejects
+as illicit, though towards the close of the book one of its most
+delectable episodes ends in his excusing Mr. Justice Bridoye for
+settling law cases in that way. But he recommends the <i>sortes
+Virgilianae</i>, and he, others, and Panurge himself add the experiment of
+dreams, and the successive consultation of the Sibyl of Panzoust, the
+dumb Nazdecabre, the poet Raminagrobis, Epistemon, "Her Trippa," Friar
+John himself, the theologian Hippothad&eacute;e, the doctor Rondibilis, the
+philosopher Trouillogan, and the professional fool Triboulet. No reader
+of the most moderate intelligence can need to be told that the
+counsellors opine all in the same sense (unfavourable), though with more
+or less ambiguity, and that Panurge, with equal obstinacy and ingenuity,
+invariably twists the oracles according to his own wishes. But what no
+reader, who came fresh to Rabelais and fasting from criticism on him,
+could anticipate, is the astonishing spontaneity of the various dealings
+with the same problem, the zest and vividness of the whole thing, and
+the unceasing shower of satire on everything human&mdash;general,
+professional, and individual&mdash;which is kept up throughout. There is less
+pure extravagance, less mere farce, and (despite the subject) even less
+"sculduddery" than in any other Book; but also in no other does Rabelais
+"keep up with humanity" (somewhat, indeed, in the fashion in which a
+carter keeps up with his animal, running and lashing at the same time)
+so triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>In no book, moreover, are the curious intervals&mdash;or,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> as it were, prose
+choric odes&mdash;of interruption more remarkable. Pantagruel's own serious
+wisdom supplies not a few of them, and the long and very characteristic
+episode of Judge Bridoye and his decision by throw of dice is very
+loosely connected with the main subject. But the most noteworthy of
+these excursions comes, as has been said, at the end&mdash;the last personal
+appearance of the good Gargantua, and the famous discourse, several
+chapters long, on the Herb Pantagruelion, otherwise Hemp.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Pantagruel</i> III. (IV.) The first part of the voyage.</div>
+
+<p>The Fourth Book (Third of <i>Pantagruel</i>) starts the voyage, and begins to
+lead the commentator who insists on fixing and interpreting the
+innumerable real or apparent double, treble, and almost centuple
+meanings, into a series of dances almost illimitable. As has been
+suggested more than once, the most reasonable way is probably to regard
+the whole as an intentional mixture of covert satire, pure fooling, not
+a little deliberate leading astray, and (serving as vehicle and
+impelling force at once) the irresistible narrative impulse animating
+the writer and carrying the reader on to the end&mdash;any end, if it be only
+the Other End of Nowhere. The "curios," living and other, of Medamothi
+(Nowhere to begin with!), and the mysterious appearance of a shipful of
+travellers coming back from the Land of Lanterns, whither the
+Pantagruelian party is itself bound; the rather too severely punished
+ill-manners of the sheep-dealer Dindenault; the strange isles of various
+nature&mdash;such, especially, as the abode of the bailiffs and
+process-servers, which gives occasion to the admirably told story of
+Fran&ccedil;ois Villon and the Seigneur of Basch&eacute;; the great storm&mdash;another of
+the most famous passages of the book&mdash;with the cowardice of Panurge and
+the safe landing in the curious country of the Macr&eacute;ons (long-livers);
+the evil island where reigns Quaresmeprenant, and the elaborate analysis
+of that personage by the learned Xenomanes; the alarming Physeter
+(blowing whale) and his defeat by Pantagruel; the land of the
+Chitterlings, the battle with them, and the interview and peace-making
+with their Queen Niphleseth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> (a passage at which the sculduddery-hunters
+have worked their hardest), and then the islands of the Papefigues and
+the Papimanes, where Rabelais begins his most obvious and boldest
+meddling with the great ecclesiastical-political questions of the
+day&mdash;all these things and others flit past the reader as if in an actual
+voyage. Even here, however, he rather skirts than actually invades the
+most dangerous ground. It is the Decretals, not the doctrines, that are
+satirised, and Homenas, bishop of Papimania, despite his adoration of
+these forgeries, and the slightly suspicious number and prettiness of
+the damsels who wait upon him, is a very good fellow and an excellent
+host. There is something very soothing in his metaphorical way of
+demanding wine from his Hebes, "<i>Clerice</i>, esclaire icy," the necessary
+illumination being provided by a charming girl with a hanap of
+"extravagant" wine. These agreeable if satiric experiences&mdash;for the
+Decretals do no harm beyond exciting the bile of Master Epistemon (who,
+it is to be feared, was a little of a pedant)&mdash;are followed by the once
+more almost universally known passage of the "Frozen Words" and the
+visit to "Messer Gaster, the world's first Master of Arts"; by the
+islands (once more mysterious) of Chaneph (hypocrisy) and Ganabin
+(thieves); the book concluding abruptly with an ultra-farcical
+<i>cochonnerie</i> of the lower kind, relieved partially by a libellous but
+impossible story about our Edward the <i>Fifth</i> and the poet Villon again,
+as well as by the appearance of an interesting but not previously
+mentioned member of the crew of the <i>Thalam&eacute;ge</i> (Pantagruel's flagship),
+the great cat Rodilardus.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Pantagruel</i> IV. (Book V.) The second part of the voyage. The
+"Isle Sonnante."</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The "Chats Fourr&eacute;s."</div>
+
+<p>One of the peculiarities of the Fifth Book, and perhaps one of those
+which have aroused that suspicion about it which, after what has been
+said above, it is not necessary further to discuss, is that it is more
+"in blocks" than the others.<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> The eight chapters of the <i>Isle
+Sonnante</i> take up the satire of the Fourth Book on Papimania<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> and on the
+"Papegaut," who is here introduced in a much fiercer tone&mdash;a tone which,
+if one cared for hypothetical criticism, might be attributed with about
+equal probability to a genuine deepening of hostile feeling, to absence
+of revision, and to possible sophistication by some one into whose hands
+it fell between the author's death and its publication. But a perfectly
+impartial critic, who, on the one hand, does not, in Carlyle's admirable
+phrase, "regard the Universe as a hunting-field from which it were good
+and pleasant to drive the Pope," and, on the other, is content to regard
+the extremer Protestants as singularly unpleasant persons without
+pronouncing Ernulphus-curses on them, may perhaps fail to find in it
+either the cleverest or the most amusing part of the voyage. The episode
+of the next Isle&mdash;that <i>des Ferrements</i>&mdash;is obscure, whether it is or is
+not (as the commentators were sure to suggest) something else beginning
+with "obsc-," and the succeeding one, with its rocks fashioned like
+gigantic dice, is not very amusing. But the terrible country of the
+<i>Chats Fourr&eacute;s</i> and their chief Grippeminaud&mdash;an attack on the Law as
+unsparing as, and much more vivid than that on the Church in the
+overture&mdash;may rank with the best things in Rabelais. The tyrant's
+ferocious and double-meaning catchword of <i>Or &ccedil;&agrave;!</i> and the power at his
+back, which even Pantagruel thinks it better rather to run away from
+than to fight openly, which Panurge frankly bribes, and over which even
+the reckless and invincible Friar John obtains not much triumph, except
+that of cutting up, after buying it, an old woman's bed&mdash;these and the
+rest have a grim humour not quite like anything else.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">"La Quinte."</div>
+
+<p>The next section&mdash;that of the Apedeftes or Uneducated Ones<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a>&mdash;has
+been a special object of suspicion; it is certainly a little difficult,
+and perhaps a little dull. One is not sorry when the explorers, in the
+ambiguous way already noted, "<i>passent</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> <i>Oultre</i>," and, after
+difficulties with the wind, come to "the kingdom of Quintessence, named
+Entelechy." Something has been said more than once of this already, and
+it is perhaps unnecessary to say more, or indeed anything, except to
+those who themselves "hold of La Quinte," and who for that very reason
+require no talking about her. "We" (if one may enrol oneself in their
+company) would almost rather give up Rabelais altogether than sacrifice
+this delightful episode, and abandon the idea of having the ladies of
+the Queen for our partners in Emmelie, and Calabrisme, and the thousand
+other dances, of watching the wonderful cures by music, and the
+interesting process of throwing, not the house out of the window, but
+the window out of the house, and the miraculous and satisfactory
+transformation of old ladies into young girls, with very slight
+alteration of their former youthful selves, and all the charming
+topsyturvifications of Entelechy. Not to mention the gracious if
+slightly unintelligible speeches of the exquisite princess, when clear
+Hesperus shone once more, and her supper of pure nectar and ambrosia
+(not grudging more solid viands to her visitors), and the great
+after-supper chess-tournament with living pieces, and the "invisible
+disparition" of the lady, and the departure of the fortunate visitors
+themselves, duly inscribed and registered as Abstractors of
+Quintessence. The whole is like a good dream, and is told so as almost
+to be one.</p>
+
+<p>Between this and the final goal of the Country of Lanterns the interest
+falls a little. The island of "Odes" (not "poems" but "ways"), where the
+"walks walk" (<i>les chemins cheminent</i>); that of "Esclots" ("clogs"),
+where dwell the Fr&egrave;res Fredonnants, and where the attack on monkery is
+renewed in a rather unsavoury and rather puerile fashion; and that of
+Satin, which is a sort of Medamothi rehandled, are not first-rate&mdash;they
+would have been done better, or cut out, had the book ever been issued
+by Master Francis. But the arrival at and the sojourn in Lanternia
+itself recovers the full powers of Rabelais at his best, though one may
+once more think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> that some of the treatment might have been altered in
+the case just mentioned.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The conclusion and The Bottle.</div>
+
+<p>Apart from the usual mixture of serious and purely jocular satire, of
+learning and licence, of jargonic catalogues, of local references to
+Western France and the general topography of Utopia, this conclusion
+consists of two main parts&mdash;first, a most elaborate description of the
+Temple, containing underground the Oracle of the Bottle, to which the
+pilgrims are conducted by a select "Lantern," and of its priestess
+Bacbuc, its <i>adytum</i> with a fountain, and, in the depth and centre of
+all, the sacred Bottle itself; and secondly, the ceremonies of the
+delivery of the Oracle; the divine utterance, <i>Trinq!</i> its
+interpretation by Bacbuc; the very much <i>ad libitum</i> reinterpretations
+of the interpretation by Panurge and Friar John, and the dismissal of
+the pilgrims by the priestess, <i>Or allez de par Dieu, qui vous
+conduise!</i><a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>What, it may be asked, is the object of this cumbrous analysis of
+certainly one of the most famous and (as it at least should be) one of
+the best known books of the world? That object has been partly indicated
+already; but it may be permissible to set it forth more particularly
+before ending this chapter. Of the importance, on the one hand, of the
+acquisition by the novel of the greatest known and individual writer of
+French up to his date, and of the enormous popularity of this example of
+it, enough may have been said. But the abstract has been given, and the
+further comment is now added, with the purpose of showing, in a little
+detail, how immensely the resources and inspirations of future
+practitioners were enriched and strengthened, varied and multiplied, by
+<i>Gargantua</i> and <i>Pantagruel</i>. The book as a whole is to be classed, no
+doubt, as "Eccentric" fiction. But if you compare with Rabelais that one
+of his followers<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> who possessed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> most genius and who worked at his
+following with most deliberation, you will find an immense falling off
+in richness and variety as well as in strength. The inferiority of
+Sterne to Master Francis in his serious pieces, whether he is whimpering
+over dead donkeys and dying lieutenants, or simulating honest
+indignation against critics, is too obvious to need insistence. Nor can
+one imagine any one&mdash;unless, like Mackenzie and other misguided
+contemporaries or juniors, he himself wanted to whimper, or unless he
+also aimed at the <i>fatrasie</i>&mdash;going to Sterne for pattern or
+inspiration. Now Rabelais is a perpetual fount of inspiration, an
+inexhaustible magazine of patterns to the most "serious" novelist whose
+seriousness is not of the kind designated by that term in dissenting
+slang. That abounding narrative faculty which has been so much dwelt on
+touches so many subjects, and manages to carry along with it so many
+moods, thoughts, and even feelings, that it could not but suggest to any
+subsequent writer who had in him the germ of the novelist's art, how to
+develop and work out such schemes as might occur to him. While, for his
+own countrymen at least, the vast improvement which he made in French
+prose, and which, with the accomplishment of his younger contemporaries
+Amyot and Montaigne, established the greatness of that prose itself, was
+a gain, the extent of which cannot be exaggerated. Therefore it has
+seemed not improper to give him a chapter to himself, and to treat his
+book with a minuteness not often to be paralleled in this
+<i>History</i>.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> A complete argument on this much vexed subject can hardly
+be wished for here: but it may be permitted to say that nearly fifty
+years' consideration of the matter has left less and less doubt in my
+mind as to the genuineness of the "<i>Quart</i>" or "<i>Quint</i>" <i>Livre</i> as it
+is variously called&mdash;according as <i>Gargantua</i> is numbered separately or
+not. One of the apparently strongest arguments against its
+genuineness&mdash;the constant presence of "<i>Je</i>" in the narrative&mdash;really
+falls, with the others&mdash;the fiercer and more outspoken character of the
+satire, the somewhat lessened prominence of Pantagruel, etc.
+etc.&mdash;before one simple consideration. We know from the dates of
+publication of the other books that Rabelais was by no means a rapid
+writer, or at any rate that, if he wrote rapidly, he "held up" what he
+did write long, and pretty certainly rewrote a good deal. Now the
+previous Book had appeared only a short time before what must have been
+the date of his death; and this could not, according to analogy and
+precedent, have been ready, or anything like ready, when he died. On the
+other hand, time enough passed between his death and the publication
+(even of the <i>Ile Sonnante</i> fragment) for the MS. to have passed through
+other hands and to have been adulterated, even if it was not, when the
+Master's hands left it, in various, as well as not finally finished
+form. I can see nothing in it really inconsistent with the earlier
+Books; nothing unworthy of them (especially if on the one hand possible
+meddling, and on the other imperfect revision be allowed for); and much,
+especially the <i>Chats Fourr&eacute;s</i>, the Quintessence part, and the
+Conclusion, without which the whole book would be not only incomplete
+but terribly impoverished. I may add that, having a tolerably full
+knowledge of sixteenth-century French literature, and a great admiration
+of it, I know no single other writer or group of other writers who
+could, in my critical judgment, by any reasonable possibility have
+written this Book. Fran&ccedil;ois Rabelais could have done it, and I have no
+doubt that he did it; though whether we have it as he left it no man can
+say.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> It is perhaps hardly necessary, but may not be quite idle,
+to observe that our Abstractor of Quintessence takes good care not to
+quote the other half of the parallelism, "but the prudent looketh well
+to his going."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> It is possible, but not certain, that he is playing on the
+two senses of the word <i>apparence</i>, the ambiguity of which is not so
+great in English. The A. V., "evidence of things <i>not seen</i>," would not
+have suited his turn.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> In which, it will be remembered, the "liquor called
+punch," which one notes with sorrow that Rabelais knew not, but which he
+certainly would have approved, is also "nowhere spoken against."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Original "Sibyle." I owe to Prof. Ker an
+important reminder (which I ought not to have needed) of
+Dante's "Sibilia" in the famous "Ulysses" passage, <i>Inf.</i>
+xxvi. 110.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> The Turkish corsair, not the German Emperor.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Probably erected into a kingdom in honour of
+St. Augustine.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> <i>Passant oultre</i>&mdash;one of Rabelais' favourite
+and most <i>polymorphic</i> expressions. It has nearly always an
+ironical touch in it; and it enjoys a chapter all to itself
+in that mood&mdash;V. xvii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Perhaps this <i>&agrave; gauche</i> might make as good a
+short test as any of a reader's sense of humour. But here
+also a possible Dantean reminiscence (not suggested to me
+this time) comes in; for in the lines already quoted "dalla
+man <i>destra</i>" occurs.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> The King is, however, more difficult to satisfy on this
+point than on others; and objects with a delightful <i>preterite</i>, "Yes:
+but we <i>did not get</i> our wine fresh and cool"; whereat they rebuke him
+with a respectful reminder that great conquerors cannot be always
+entirely comfortable.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> "Suspender of judgment."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Of course the first book of the son <i>preceded</i> the
+reconstructed history of the father; but this is immaterial.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> The correct opposition of this term (Latin or Greek words
+vernacularised) to "Macaronic" (vernacular words turned into Latin or
+Greek form) is not always observed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> It is very seldom, after his infantine and innocent
+excesses, that Pantagruel behaves thus. He is for the most part a quiet
+and somewhat reserved prince, very generous, very wise, very devout,
+and, though tolerating the eccentricities of Panurge and Friar John,
+never taking part in them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> If Swift had drunk more wine and had not put water in
+what he did drink, possibly this quality might have been lessened in
+<i>him</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> The first of these, the <i>Isle Sonnante</i>, as is well
+enough known to all students, appeared separately and before the rest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> A sort of dependency or province of the <i>Chats Fourr&eacute;s</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> A MS. "addition" unknown to the old printed forms,
+appears in some modern ones. It is a mere disfigurement: and is hardly
+likely even to have been a rejected draft.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Not Swift here, but Sterne. There is far higher genius in
+<i>Gulliver</i> than in <i>Shandy</i>; but the former is not <i>fatrasie</i>, the
+latter is.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> That the not quite unknown device of setting up a man of
+straw in order to knock him down has not been followed in this chapter,
+a single piece of evidence out of many may be cited. H. K&ouml;rting in his
+justly well reputed <i>Geschichte des Franz. Romans im XVII. Jahrh.</i>
+(Oppeln u. Leipzig, 1891, i. 133 <i>note</i>) would rule Rabelais out of the
+history of the novel altogether. This book, which will be quoted again
+with gratitude later, displays a painstaking erudition not necessitating
+any make-weight of sympathy for its author's early death after great
+suffering. It is extremely useful; but it does not escape, in this and
+other places, the censure which, ten years before the war of 1914, the
+present writer felt it his duty to express on modern German critics and
+literary historians generally (<i>History of Criticism</i>, London, 1904,
+vol. iii. Bks. viii. and ix.), that on points of literary appreciation,
+as distinguished from mere philology, "enumeration," bibliographical
+research, and the like, they are "sadly to seek." It may not be
+impertinent to add that Herr K&ouml;rting's history happened never to have
+been read by me till after the above chapter of the present book was
+written.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SUCCESSORS OF RABELAIS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE "AMADIS" ROMANCES</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the present chapter we shall endeavour to treat two divisions of
+actual novel- or at least fiction-writing&mdash;strikingly opposed to each
+other in character; and a third subject, to include which in the title
+would have made that title too long, and which is not strictly a branch
+of novel-<i>writing</i>, but which had perhaps as important an influence on
+the progress of the novel itself as anything mentioned or to be
+mentioned in all this <i>History</i>. The first division is composed of the
+followers&mdash;sometimes in the full, always in the chronological sense&mdash;of
+Rabelais, a not very strong folk as a rule, but including one brilliant
+example of co-operative work, and two interesting, if in some degree
+problematical, persons. The second, strikingly contrasting with the
+general if not the universal tendency of the first, is the great
+translated group of <i>Amadis</i> romances, which at once revived romance of
+the older kind itself, and exercised a most powerful, if not an actually
+generative, influence on newer forms which were themselves to pass into
+the novel proper. The third is the increasing body of memoir- and
+anecdote-writers who, with Brant&ocirc;me at their head, make actual
+personages and actual events the subjects of a kind of story-telling,
+not perhaps invariably of unexceptionable historic accuracy, but
+furnishing remarkable situations of plot and suggestions of character,
+together with abundant new examples of the "telling" faculty itself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Subsidiary importance of Brant&ocirc;me and other
+character-mongers.</div>
+
+<p>The last point, as an apparent digression but really a most important
+contribution to the History, may perhaps be discussed and dismissed
+first. All persons who have even a slight knowledge of French literature
+must be aware how early and how remarkable are its possessions in what
+is vaguely called the "Memoir" department. There is nothing at the time,
+in any modern literature known to the present writer, similar to
+Villehardouin, or a little later to Joinville,&mdash;one might almost say
+that there is nothing in any literature at any time superior, if there
+be anything equal, in its kind to Froissart. In the first two cases
+there is pure personal experience; in the third there is, of course, a
+certain amount of precedent writing on the subject for guidance, and a
+large gathering of information by word of mouth. But in all these, and
+to a less extent in others up to the close of the fifteenth century,
+there is the indefinable gift of treatment&mdash;of "telling a story." In
+Villehardouin this gift may be almost wholly, and in principle very
+mainly, limited to the two great subjects which made the mediaeval end
+as far as profane matters were concerned&mdash;fighting and counselling; but
+this is by no means the case in Froissart, whom one is sometimes tempted
+to regard as a Sir Walter Scott thrown away upon base reality.</p>
+
+<p>With the sixteenth century this gift once more burgeoned and spread
+itself out&mdash;dealing, indeed, very mainly with the somewhat ungrateful
+subject of the religious disputes and wars, but flowering or fruiting
+into the unsurpassable gossip&mdash;though gossip is too undignified a
+word&mdash;of Pierre de Bourdeilles, Abb&eacute; de Brant&ocirc;me, that Froissart and
+Pepys in one, with the noble delight in noble things of the first,
+inextricably united to the almost innocent shamelessness of the second,
+and a narrative gift equal to that of either in idiosyncrasy, and
+ranging beyond the subjects of both. Himself a soldier and a courtier
+(his abbacy, like many others, was purely titular and profitable&mdash;not
+professional in the least), his favourite subjects in literature, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+obviously his idols in life, were great soldiers and fair ladies,
+"Bayard and the two Marguerites," as some one has put it. And his vivid
+irregular fashion of writing adapts itself with equal ease to a gallant
+feat of arms and a ferocious, half-cut-throat duel, to an exquisite
+piece of sentimental passion like that which tells us the story how the
+elder Queen of Navarre rebuked the lover carelessly stepping over the
+grave of his dead mistress, and to an unquotable anecdote to parallel
+the details of which, in literature of high rank, one must go to
+Rabelais himself, to Martial, or to Aristophanes. But, whatever the
+subject, the faculty of lively communication remains unaltered, and the
+suggestion of its transference from fact (possibly a little coloured) to
+pure fiction becomes more and more possible and powerful.<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>Heptameron</i>.</div>
+
+<p>No book has been more subject to the "insupportable advances" of the
+"key"-monger than the <i>Heptameron</i>, and the rage for identifying has
+gone so far that the pretty old name of "Emarsuite" for one of the
+characters has been discarded for an alleged and much uglier
+"Ennasuite," which is indeed said to have MS. authority, but which is
+avowedly preferred because it can be twisted into "<i>Anne</i> &agrave; Suite"
+("Anne in Waiting"), and so can be fastened to an actual Maid of Honour
+of Marguerite's. It is only fair, however, to admit that something of
+the kind is at least suggested by the book itself. Even by those who do
+not trouble themselves in the least about the personages who may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> or may
+not have been disguised under the names of Nomerfide (the Neifile of
+this group) and Longarine, Saffredent and Dagoucin and Gebron (Geb<i>u</i>ron
+they call him now), admit the extreme probability of the Queen having
+invited identification of herself with Parlamente, the younger matron of
+the party, and of Hircan her husband with the King of Navarre.<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> But
+some (among whom is the present writer) think that this delightful and
+not too well-fated type of Renaissance amorousness, letteredness, and
+piety combined made a sort of dichotomy of herself here, and intended
+the personage of Oisille, the elder duenna (though by no means a very
+stern one) of the party, to stand for her as well as Parlamente&mdash;to whom
+one really must give the Italian pronunciation to get her out of the
+abominable suggestion of our "talking-machine."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Character and "problems."</div>
+
+<p>A much more genuinely literary question has been raised and discussed as
+to the exact authorship of the book. That it is entirely Marguerite's,
+not the most jealous admirers of the Queen need for a moment contend.
+She is known to have had a sort of literary court from Marot and
+Rabelais downwards, some of the members of which were actually resident
+with her, and not a few of whom&mdash;such as Boaistuau and Le Ma&ccedil;on, the
+translators of Bandello and Boccaccio, and Bonaventure Desp&eacute;riers (<i>v.
+inf.</i>)&mdash;were positive experts in the short story. Moreover, the custom
+of distributing these collections among different<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> speakers positively
+invited collaboration in writing. The present critic and his friend, Mr.
+Arthur Tilley of King's College, Cambridge, who has long been our chief
+specialist in the literature of the French Renaissance, are in an
+amicable difference as to the part which Desp&eacute;riers in particular may
+have played in the <i>Heptameron</i>; but this is of no great importance
+here, and though Marguerite's other literary work is distinctly inferior
+in style, it is not impossible that the peculiar tone of the best parts
+of it, especially as regards the religious-amorous flavour, was infused
+by her or under her direct influence. The enthusiasm of Rabelais and
+Marot; the striking anecdote already mentioned which Brant&ocirc;me, whose
+mother had been one of Marguerite's maids of honour, tells us, and one
+or two other things, suggest this; for Desp&eacute;riers was more of a satirist
+than of an amorist, and though the charges of atheism brought against
+him are (<i>v. inf.</i> again) scarcely supported by his work, he was
+certainly no pietist. I should imagine that he revised a good deal and
+sometimes imparted his nervous and manly, but, in his own <i>Contes</i>,
+sometimes too much summarised style. But some striking phrases, such as
+"<i>l'impossibilit&eacute;</i> de nostre chair,"<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> may be hers, and the following
+remarkable speech of Parlamente probably expresses her own sentiments
+pretty exactly. It is very noteworthy that Hircan, who is generally
+represented as "taking up" his wife's utterances with a certain sarcasm,
+is quite silent here.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class="sidenote">Parlamente on human and divine love.</div>
+
+<p>"Also," said Parlamente, "I have an opinion that never will
+a man love God perfectly if he has not perfectly loved some
+of God's creatures in this world." "But what do you call
+'perfect loving'?" said Saffredent. "Do you reckon as
+perfect lovers those who are <i>transis</i>,<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> and who adore
+ladies at a distance, without daring to make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> their wishes
+known?" "I call perfect lovers," answered Parlamente, "those
+who seek in what they love some perfection&mdash;be it beauty,
+kindness, or good grace,&mdash;always striving towards virtue;
+and such as have so high and honourable a heart, that they
+would not, were they to die for it, take for their object
+the base things which honour and conscience disapprove: for
+the soul, which is only created that it may return to its
+Sovereign Good, does naught while it is in the body but long
+for the attainment of this. But because the senses by which
+alone it can acquire information are darkened and made
+carnal by the sin of our first father, they can only show
+her the visible things which approach closest to
+perfection&mdash;and after these the soul runs, thinking to find
+in outward beauty, in visible grace, and in moral virtue,
+grace, beauty, and virtue in sovereign degree. But when she
+has sought them and tried them, and finds not in them Him
+whom she loves, she leaves them alone,<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> just as a child,
+according to his age, likes dolls and other trivialities,
+the prettiest he sees, and thinks a collection of pebbles
+actual riches, but as he grows up prefers his dolls alive,
+and gets together the goods necessary for human life. Yet
+when he knows, by still wider experience, that in earthly
+things there is neither perfection nor felicity, he desires
+to seek the Creator and the Source of these. Nevertheless,
+if God open not the eye of faith in him he would be in
+danger of becoming, instead of a merely ignorant man, an
+infidel philosopher.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> For Faith alone can demonstrate
+and make receivable the good that the carnal and animal man
+cannot understand."</p></div>
+
+<p>This gives the better Renaissance temper perhaps as well as anything to
+be found, and may, or should in fairness, be set against the worser tone
+of mere libertinage in which some even of the ladies indulge here, and
+still more against that savagery which has been noticed above. This
+undoubtedly was in Milton's mind when he talked of "Lust hard by Hate,"
+and it makes Hircan coolly observe, after a story has been told in which
+an old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> woman successfully interferes to save a girl's chastity, that in
+the place of the hero he should certainly have killed the hag and
+enjoyed the girl. This is obviously said in no bravado, and not in the
+least humorously: and the spirit of it is exemplified in divers not in
+the least incredible anecdotes of Brant&ocirc;me's in the generation
+immediately following, and of Tallemant des R&eacute;aux in the next. The
+religiosity displayed is of a high temper of Christian Platonism, and we
+cannot, as we can elsewhere, say what the song says of something else,
+that "it certainly looks very queer." The knights and ladies do go to
+mass and vespers; but to say that they go punctually would be altogether
+erroneous, for Hircan makes wicked jokes on his and Parlamente's being
+late for the morning office, and, on one occasion at least, they keep
+the unhappy monks of the convent where they are staying (who do not seem
+to dare to begin vespers without them) waiting a whole hour while they
+are finishing not particularly edifying stories. The less complaisant
+casuists, even of the Roman Church, would certainly look askance at the
+piety of the distinguished person (said by tradition to have been King
+Francis himself) who always paid his respects to Our Lady on his way to
+illegitimate assignations, and found himself the better therefor on one
+occasion of danger. But the tone of our extract is invariably that of
+Oisille and Parlamente. The purer love part of the matter is a little,
+as the French themselves say, "alembicated." But still the whole is
+graceful and fascinating, except for a few pieces of mere passionless
+coarseness, which Oisille generally reproves. And it is scarcely
+necessary to say what large opportunities these tones and colours of
+fashion and "quality," of passion and manners, give to the future
+novelist, whose treatment shall stand to them very much as they stand to
+the shorter and sometimes almost shorthand written tales of Desp&eacute;riers
+himself.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Desp&eacute;riers.</div>
+
+<p>With the <i>Cymbalum Mundi</i> of this rather mysterious person we need have
+little to do. It is, down to the dialogue-form, an obvious imitation of
+Lucian&mdash;a story<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> about the ancient divinities (especially Mercury) and a
+certain "Book of Destiny" and talking animals, and a good deal of often
+rather too transparent allegory. It has had, both in its own day and
+since, a very bad reputation as being atheistical or at least
+anti-Christian, and seems really to have had something to do with the
+author's death, by suicide or otherwise. There need, however, be very
+little harm in it; and there is not very much good as a story, nor,
+therefore, much for us. It does not carry the art of its particular kind
+of fiction any further than Lucian himself, who is, being much more of a
+genius, on the whole a much better model, even taking him at that rather
+inferior rate. The <i>Contes et Joyeux Devis</i>, on the other hand, though
+the extreme brevity of some has perhaps sometimes prejudiced readers
+against them, have always seemed to the present writer to form the most
+remarkable book, as literature, of all the department at the time except
+<i>Gargantua</i> and <i>Pantagruel</i> and the <i>Heptameron</i>, and to supply a
+strong presumption that their author had more than a minor hand in the
+<i>Heptameron</i> itself. It must, of course, be admitted that the fashion in
+which they are delivered may not only offend in one direction, but may
+possibly mislead in another. One may read too much into the brevity, and
+so fall into the error of that other Englishman who was beguiled by the
+mysterious signs of Desp&eacute;riers' greatest contemporary's most original
+creation. But a very large and long experience of literary weighing and
+measuring ought to be some safeguard against the mistake of Thaumast.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Contes et Joyeux Devis.</i></div>
+
+<p>One remarkable difference which may seem, at first sight, to be against
+the theory of Desp&eacute;riers having had a large share in the <i>Heptameron</i> is
+the contrasted and, as it may seem again at first sight, antagonistic
+tone of the two. There are purely comic and even farcical passages in
+Marguerite's book, but the general colour, as has been said, is
+religious-sentimental or courtly-amatory, with by no means infrequent
+excursions into the purely tragical. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> <i>Contes et Joyeux Devis</i>, on
+the other hand, in the main continue the wholly jocular tone of the old
+<i>fabliaux</i>. But Desp&eacute;riers must have been, not only <i>not</i> the great man
+of letters which the somewhat exaggerated zeal of his editor, M. Louis
+Lacour, ranked him as being, but a very weak and feeble writer, if he
+could not in this way write comedy in one book and tragedy in another.
+In fact Rabelais gives us (as the greatest writers so often do) what is
+in more senses than one a master-key to the contrast. Desp&eacute;riers has in
+the <i>Contes</i> constant ironic qualifications and asides which may even
+have been directly imitated from his elder and greater contemporary;
+Marguerite has others which pair off in the same way with the most
+serious Rabelaisian "intervals," to which attention has been drawn in
+the last chapter. One point, however, does seem, at least to me, to
+emerge from the critical consideration of these two books with the other
+works of the Queen on the one hand and the other works of
+Desp&eacute;riers<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> on the other. It is that the latter had a much crisper
+and stronger style than Marguerite's own, and that he had a faculty of
+grave ironic satire, going deeper and ranging wider than her
+"sensibility" would allow. There is one on the fatal and irremediable
+effects of disappointing ladies in their expectations, wherein there is
+something more than the mere <i>grivoiserie</i>, which in other hands it
+might easily have remained. The very curious Novel XIII.&mdash;on King
+Solomon and the philosopher's stone and the reason of the failure of
+alchemy&mdash;is of quite a different type from most things in these
+story-collections, and makes one regret that there is not more of it,
+and others of the same kind. For sheer amusement, which need not be
+shocking to any but the straitest-laced of persons, the story (XXXIV.)
+of a curate completely "scoring off" his bishop (who did not observe the
+caution given by Ophelia to Laertes) has not many superiors in its
+particular kind.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+<div class="sidenote">Other tale-collections.</div>
+
+<p>The fancy for these collections of tales spread widely in the sixteenth
+century, and a respectable number of them have found a home in histories
+of literature. Sometimes they present themselves honestly as what they
+are, and sometimes under a variety of disguises, the most extravagant of
+which is the title of the rather famous work of Henri Estienne,
+<i>Apologie pour H&eacute;rodote</i>. Others, more or less fantastic, are the
+<i>Propos Rustiques</i> and <i>Baliverneries</i> of No&euml;l Du Fail, a Breton squire
+(as we should say), and his later <i>Contes d'Eutrapel</i>; the <i>Escraignes
+Dijonnaises</i> and other books of Tabourot des Accords; the <i>Matin&eacute;es</i> and
+<i>Apr&egrave;s Din&eacute;es</i> of Choli&egrave;res, and, the largest collection of all, the
+<i>S&eacute;rees</i> [Soir&eacute;es] of the Angevin Guillaume Bouchet,<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> while after
+the close of the actual century, but probably representing earlier work,
+appeared the above-mentioned <i>Moyen de Parvenir</i>, by turns attributed
+and denied to B&eacute;roalde de Verville. In all these, without exception, the
+imitation of Rabelais, in different but unmistakable ways, is to be
+found; and in not a few, that of the <i>Heptameron</i> and of Desp&eacute;riers;
+while not unfrequently the same tales are found in more than one
+collection. The <i>fatrasie</i> character&mdash;that is to say, the stuffing
+together of all sorts of incongruous matter in more or less burlesque
+style&mdash;is common to all of them; the licence of subject and language to
+most; and there are hardly any, except a few mere modernisings of old
+<i>fabliaux</i>, in which you will not find the famous farrago of the
+Renaissance&mdash;learning, religious partisanship, war, law, love, almost
+everything. All the writers are far below their great master,<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> and
+none of them has the appeal of the <i>Heptameron</i>. But the spirit of
+tale-telling pervades the whole shelf-ful, and there is one more special
+point of importance "for us."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The "provincial" character of these.</div>
+
+<p>It will be observed that some of them actually display<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> in their titles
+(such as that of Tabouret's book as quoted) the fact that they have a
+definite provinciality in no bad sense: while Bouchet is as clearly
+Angevin and Du Fail as distinctly Breton as Des Accords is Burgundian
+and as the greatest of all had been Tourangeau. It can scarcely be
+necessary to point out at great length what a reinforcement of vigour
+and variety must have been brought by this plantation in the different
+soils of those provinces which have counted for so much&mdash;and nearly
+always for so much good<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a>&mdash;in French literature and French things
+generally. The great danger and defect of mediaeval writing had been its
+tendency to fall into schools and ruts, and the "printed book"
+(especially such a printed book as Rabelais) was, at least in one way,
+by no means unlikely to exercise this bad influence afresh. To this the
+provincial differences opposed a salutary variety of manners, speech,
+local colour, almost everything. Moreover, manners themselves
+generally&mdash;one of the fairest and most fertile fields of the
+novel-kingdom&mdash;became thus more fully and freely the object and subject
+of the tale-teller. Character, in the best and most extensive and
+intensive sense of the word, still lagged behind; and as the drama
+necessarily took that up, it was for more reasons than one encouraged,
+as we may say, in its lagging. But meanwhile Amyot and Calvin<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> and
+Montaigne were getting the language more fully ready for the
+prose-writer's use, and the constant "sophistication" of literature with
+religion, politics, knowledge of the physical world in all ways,
+commerce, familiarity with foreign nations&mdash;everything almost that
+touched on life&mdash;helped to bring on the slow but inevitable appearance
+of the novel itself. But it had more influences to assimilate and more
+steps to go through before it could take full form.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p><div class="sidenote">The <i>Amadis</i> romances.</div>
+
+<p>No more curious contrast (except, perhaps, the not very dissimilar one
+which will meet us in the next chapter) is to be found in the present
+<i>History</i>, or perhaps in any other, than that of the matter just
+discussed with the great body of <i>Amadis</i> romance which, at this same
+time, was introduced into French literature by the translation or
+adaptation of Nicolas Herberay des Essarts and his continuators. That
+Herberay<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> deserves, according to the best and most catholic students
+of French, a place with the just-mentioned writers among the formers or
+reformers of the French tongue, is a point of some importance, but, for
+us, minor. Of the controversial part of the <i>Amadis</i> subject it must, as
+in other cases, be once more unnecessary for us to say much. It may be
+laid down as certain, on every principle of critical logic and research,
+that the old idea of the Peninsular cycle being borrowed direct from any
+French original is hopelessly absurd. There is, notoriously, no external
+evidence of any such original ever having existed, and there is an
+immense improbability against any such original ever having existed.
+Further, the internal characteristics of the Spanish romances, though,
+undoubtedly, they might never have come into existence at all but for
+the French, and though there is a very slight "catch-on" of <i>Amadis</i>
+itself to the universally popular Arthurian legend, are not in the least
+like those of French or English. How the actual texts came into that
+existence; whether, as used to be thought at first, after some expert
+criticism was turned on them, the actual original was Portuguese, and
+the refashioned and prolific form Spanish, is again a question utterly
+beyond bounds for us. The quality of the romances themselves&mdash;their huge
+vogue being a matter of fact&mdash;and the influence which they exercised on
+the future development of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> novel,&mdash;these are the things that concern
+us, and they are quite interesting and important enough to deserve a
+little attention.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Their characteristics.</div>
+
+<p>What is certain is that these Spanish romances themselves&mdash;which, as
+some readers at any rate may be presumed to know, branch out into
+endless genealogies in the <i>Amadis</i> and <i>Palmerin</i> lines, besides the
+more or less outside developments which fared so hardly with the censors
+of Don Quixote's library&mdash;as well as the later French examples of a not
+dissimilar type, the capital instance of which, for literature, is Lord
+Berners's translation of <i>Arthur of Little Britain</i>&mdash;do show the most
+striking differences, not merely from the original twelfth- and
+thirteenth-century Charlemagne and Arthur productions, but also from
+intermediate variants and expansions of these. The most obvious of these
+discrepancies is the singular amplification of the supernatural
+elements. Of course these were not absent in the older romance
+literature, especially in the Arthurian cycle. But there they had
+certain characteristics which might almost deserve the adjective
+"critical"&mdash;little criticism proper as there was in the Middle Ages.
+They were very generally religious, and they almost always had what may
+be called a poetic restraint about them. The whole Graal-story is
+deliberately modelled on Scriptural suggestions; the miracle of
+reconciliation and restoration which concludes <i>Amis and Amiles</i> is the
+work of a duly commissioned angel. There are giants, but they are
+introduced moderately and equipped in consonance. The Saint's Life,
+which, as it has been contended, exercised so large an influence on the
+earlier romance, carried the nature, the poetry, the charm of its
+supernatural elements into the romance itself.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Extravagance in incident, nomenclature, etc.</div>
+
+<p>In the <i>Amadis</i> cycle and in romances like <i>Arthur of Little Britain</i>
+all this undergoes a change&mdash;not by any means for the better. What has
+been unkindly, but not perhaps unjustly, called the "conjuror's
+supernatural" takes the place of the poet's variety. One of the
+personages of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> the <i>Knight of the Sun</i> is a "Bedevilled Faun," and it is
+really too much not to say that most of such personages are bedevilled.
+In <i>Arthur of</i> (so much the Lesser) <i>Britain</i> there is, if I remember
+rightly, a giant whose formidability partly consists in his spinning
+round on a sort of bedevilled music-stool: and his class can seldom be
+met with without three or seven heads, a similarly large number of legs
+and hands, and the like. This sort of thing has been put down, not
+without probability, to the Oriental suggestion which would come so
+readily into Spain. It may be so or it may not. But it certainly imports
+an element of puerility into romance, which is regrettable, and it
+diminishes the dignity and the poetry of the things rather lamentably.
+Whether it diminishes, and still more whether it originally diminished
+the <i>readability</i> of these same things, is quite another question.</p>
+
+<p>Closely connected with it is the fancy for barbaric names of great
+length and formidable sound, such as Famongomadan, Pintiquinestra, and
+the like&mdash;a trait which, if anybody pleases, may be put down to the
+distorted echo of more musical<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> appellations in Arabic and other
+Eastern tongues, or to a certain childishness, for there is no doubt
+that the youthful mind delights, and always has delighted, in such
+things. The immense length of these romances even in themselves, and
+still more with continuations from father to son and grandson, and
+trains of descendants sometimes alternately named, can be less charged
+as an innovation, though there is no doubt that it established a rule
+which had only been an exception before. But, as will have been seen
+earlier, the continuation of romance genealogically had been not
+uncommon, and there had been a constant tendency to lengthen from the
+positively terse <i>Roland</i> to the prolix fifteenth-century forms. In fact
+this went on till the extravagant length of the Scud&eacute;ry group made
+itself impossible, and even afterwards, as all readers of Richardson
+know, there was reluctance to shorten.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The "cruel" heroine.</div>
+
+<p>We have, however, still to notice another peculiarity, and the most
+important by far as concerns the history of the novel: this is the
+ever-increasing tendency to exaggerate the "cruelty" of the heroine and
+the sufferings of the lovers. This peculiarity is not specially
+noticeable in the earliest and best of the group itself. Amadis suffers
+plentifully; yet Oriana can hardly be called "cruel." But of the two
+heroines of <i>Palmerin</i>, Polisarda does play the part to some extent, and
+Miraguarda (whose name it is not perhaps fantastic to interpret as
+"Admire her but beware of her") is positively ill-natured. Of course the
+thing was no more a novelty in literature than it was in life. The
+lines&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And cruel in the New<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As in the Old one,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>may certainly be transferred from the geographical world to the
+historical. But in classical literature "cruelty" is attributed rather
+indiscriminately to both sexes. The cliff of Leucas knew no distinction
+of sex, and Sappho can be set against Anaxarete. Indeed, it was safer
+for men to be cruel than for women, inasmuch as Aphrodite, among her
+innumerable good qualities, was very severe upon unkind girls, while one
+regrets to have to admit that no particular male deity was regularly
+"affected" to the business of punishing light o' love men, though
+Eros-Cupid may sometimes have done so. The Eastern mistress, for obvious
+reasons, had not much chance of playing the Miraguarda part as a rule,
+though there seems to me more chance of the convention coming from Arab
+and Hebrew poetry than from any other source. But in the <i>Arabian
+Nights</i> at least, though there are lustful murderesses&mdash;eastern
+Margarets of Burgundy, like Queen Lab&eacute; of the Magicians,&mdash;there is
+seldom any "cruelty," or even any tantalising, on the part of the
+heroines.</p>
+
+<p>A hasty rememberer of the sufferings of Lancelot and one or two other
+heroes of the early and genuine romance might say, "Why go further than
+this?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> But on a little examination the cases will be found very
+different. Neither Iseult nor Guinevere is cruel to her lover;
+Orgueilleuse has a fair excuse in difference of rank and slight
+acquaintance; persons like Tennyson's Ettarre, still more his Vivien,
+are "sophisticated"&mdash;as we have pointed out already. Besides, Vivien and
+Ettarre are frankly bad women, which is by no means the case with the
+Polisardas and Miraguardas. They, if they did not introduce the
+thing&mdash;which is, after all, as the old waterman in <i>Jacob Faithful</i>
+says, "Human natur',"&mdash;established and conventionalised the Silvius and
+Phoebe relation of lover and mistress. If Lancelot is banished more than
+once or twice, it is because of Guinevere's real though unfounded
+jealousy, not of any coquettish "cruelty" on her part; if Partenopeus
+nearly perishes in his one similar banishment, it is because of his own
+fault&mdash;his fault great and inexcusable. But the Amadisian heroes, as a
+rule&mdash;unless they belong to the light o' love Galaor type, which would
+not mind cruelty if it were exercised, but would simply laugh and ride
+away&mdash;are almost painfully faithful and deserving; and their sojourns in
+Tenebrous Isles, their encounters with Bedevilled Fauns, and the like,
+are either pure misfortunes or the deliberate results of capricious
+tyranny on the part of their mistresses.</p>
+
+<p>Now of course this is the sort of thing which may be (and as a matter of
+fact it no doubt was) tediously abused; but it is equally evident that
+in the hands of a novelist of genius, or even of fair talent and
+craftsmanship, it gives opportunity for extensive and ingenious
+character-drawing, and for not a little "polite conversation." If <i>la
+donna &egrave; mobile</i> generally, she has very special opportunities of
+exhibiting her mobility in the exercise of her caprice: and if it is the
+business of the lover (as it is of minorities, according to a Right
+Honourable politician) to suffer, the <i>amoureux transi</i> who has some
+wits and some power of expression can suffer to the genteelest of tunes
+with the most ingenious fugues and variations. A great deal of the
+actual charm of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> poetry in all
+languages comes from the rendering in verse of this very relation of
+woman and man. We owe to the "dear Lady Disdain" idea not merely
+Beatrice, but Beatrix long after her, and many another good thing both
+in verse and in prose between Shakespeare and Thackeray.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Amadis</i> group (as in its slightly modernised successor, that of
+the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>), the handling is so preposterously long and the
+reliefs of dialogue and other things frequently managed with so little
+skill, that, except for sheer passing of time, the books have been found
+difficult to read. The present writer's knowledge of Spanish is too
+sketchy to enable him to read them in the original with full comfort.
+<i>Amadis</i> and <i>Palmerin</i> are legible enough in Southey's translations,
+made, as one would expect from him, with all due effort to preserve the
+language of the old English versions where possible. But Herberay's
+sixteenth-century French is a very attractive and perfectly easy
+language, thoroughly well suited to the matter. And if anything that has
+been said is read as despite to these romances, the reading is wrong.
+They have grave faults, but also real delights, and they have no small
+"place i' the story."<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="sidenote">Note on Montaigne.</div><p>
+This suggestive influence may be found almost as strongly, though shown
+with less literary craftsmanship, in Brant&ocirc;me's successor and to some
+extent overlapper, Tallemant des R&eacute;aux. And it is almost needless to say
+that in both <i>subjects</i> for novel treatment "foison," as both French and
+English would have said in their time. Nor may it be improper to add
+that Montaigne himself, though more indirectly, assisted in speeding the
+novel. The actual telling of a story is indeed not his strongest point:
+the dulness of the <i>Travels</i>, if they were really his (on which point
+the present writer cannot help entertaining a possibly unorthodox
+doubt), would sufficiently show this. But the great effect which he
+produced on French prose could not, as in the somewhat similar case of
+Dryden in English a century later, but prove of immense aid to the
+novelist. Except in the deliberately eccentric style, as in Rabelais'
+own case, or in periods such as the Elizabethan and our own, where there
+is a coterie ready to admire jargon, you cannot write novels, to
+interest and satisfy readers, without a style, or a group of styles,
+providing easy and clear narrative media. We shall see how, in the next
+century, writers in forms apparently still more alien from the novel
+helped it in the same way.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> The character of this Bourbon prince seems to have been
+very faithfully though not maliciously drawn by Margaret (for the name,
+<i>Gallic&eacute; pulchrum</i>, is <i>Anglic&eacute; pulchrius</i>, and our form may be
+permitted in a note) as not ungenial, not exactly ungentlemanly, and by
+no means hating his wife or being at all unkind to her, but constantly
+"hard" on her in speech, openly regarding infidelity to her as a matter
+of course, and not a little tinged by the savagery which (one is afraid)
+the English wars had helped to introduce among the French nobility;
+which the religious wars were deepening, and which, in the times of the
+Fronde, came almost to its very worst, and, though somewhat tamed later,
+lasted, and was no mean cause, if not so great a one as some think, of
+the French Revolution. Margaret's love for her brother was ill rewarded
+in many ways&mdash;among others by brutal scandal&mdash;and her later days were
+embittered by failure to protect the new learning and the new faith she
+had patronised earlier. But one never forgets Rabelais' address to her,
+or the different but still delightful piece in which Marot is supposed
+to have commemorated her Platonic graciousness; while her portrait,
+though drawn in the hard, dry manner of the time, and with the tendency
+of that time to "make a girl's nose a proboscis," is by no means
+unsuggestive of actual physical charm.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> This phrase, though Biblical, of course, in spirit, is
+not, so far as I remember, anywhere found textually in Holy Writ. It may
+be patristic; in which case I shall be glad of learned information. It
+sounds rather like St. Augustine. But I do not think it occurs earlier
+in French, and the word <i>impossibilit&eacute;</i> is not banal in the connection.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> The famous phrase "amoureux <i>transi</i>" is simply
+untranslatable by any single word in English for the adjective, or
+rather participle. Its unmetaphorical use is, of course, commonest in
+the combination <i>transi de froid</i>, "frozen," and so suggests in the
+other a lover shivering actually under his mistress's shut window, or,
+metaphorically, under her disdain.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> The expression (<i>passe oultre</i>) commented on in speaking
+of Rabelais, and again one which has no English equivalent.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> A very early example of the special sense given to this
+word in French increasingly during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
+eighteenth centuries, of "freethinker" deepening to "atheist." Johnson's
+friend, it will be remembered, regarded Philosophy as something to which
+the irruption of Cheerfulness was fatal; Butler, as something acquirable
+by reading Alexander Ross; a famous ancient saying, as the remembrancer
+of death; and a modern usage, as something which has brass and glass
+"instruments." But it was Hegel, was it not? or Carlyle? who summarised
+the French view and its time of prevalence in the phrase, "When every
+one was a philosopher who did not believe in the Devil."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> His translations of the <i>Andria</i> and of Plato's <i>Lysis</i>;
+and his verses, the chief charm of which is to be found in his adoption
+of the "cut and broken" stanzas which the French Renaissance loved.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> Not to be confused with <i>Jehan</i> Bouchet the poet, a much
+older man, indeed some twenty years older than Rabelais, and as dull as
+Raminagrobis Cr&eacute;tin himself, but the inventor or discoverer of that
+agreeable <i>agnomen</i> "Traverseur des Voies P&eacute;rilleuses" which has been
+noted above.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> Choli&egrave;res, I think, deserves the prize for sinking
+lowest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> From all the endless welter of abuse of God's great gift
+of speech [and writing] about the French Revolution, perhaps nothing has
+emerged more clearly than that its evils were mainly due to the
+sterilisation of the regular Provincial assemblies under the later
+monarchy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> A person not bad of blood will always be glad to mention
+one of the few good sides of a generally detestable character; and a
+person of humour must always chuckle at some of the ways in which
+Calvin's services to French prose were utilised.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> He did not confine his good offices to romances of
+<i>caballer&iacute;a</i>. In 1539 he turned into French the <i>Arnalte and Lucenda</i> of
+Diego de San Pedro (author of the more widely known <i>Carcel de Amor</i>), a
+very curious if also rather tedious-brief love-story which had great
+influence in France (see Reynier, <i>op. cit. inf.</i> pp. 66-73). This
+(though M. Reynier did not know it) was afterwards versified in English
+by one of our minor Carolines, and will appear in the third volume of
+the collected edition of them now in course of publication by the
+Clarendon Press.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> Not always. Nouzhatoul-aouadat is certainly not as
+musical as Pintiquinestra, though Nouronnihar as certainly is.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a>
+<div class="sidenote">Note on H&eacute;lisenne de Crenne.</div><p>
+There should be added here a very curious, and now, if not in its own
+time, very rare book, my first knowledge of which I owed to a work
+already mentioned, M. Gustave Reynier's <i>Le Roman Sentimental avant
+l'Astr&eacute;e</i> (Paris, 1908), though I was able, after this chapter was
+composed, to find and read the original in the British Museum. It was
+first printed in 1538, and bears, like other books of its time, a
+disproportionately long title, which may, however, be easily shortened,
+"<i>Les Angoisses douloureuses qui proc&egrave;dent d'Amour</i> ... compos&eacute;es par
+dame H&eacute;lisenne de Crenne." This H&eacute;lisenne or H&eacute;lisaine seems to have
+been a real person: and not the least of the remarkable group of women
+authors who illustrate her time in France, though M. Reynier himself
+admits that "it is difficult to know exactly <i>who</i> she was." She appears
+to have been of Picardy, and other extant and non-extant works are
+attributed to her. Like almost everybody of her time she wrote in the
+extreme <i>rh&eacute;toriqueur</i> style&mdash;so much so indeed as to lead even Pasquier
+into the blunder of supposing that Rabelais hit at her in the dialect of
+the "Limousin scholar." The <i>Angoisses</i>, which M. Reynier's acute
+examination shows to have been written by some one who must have known
+Boccaccio's <i>Fiammetta</i> (more than once Frenched about this time), is,
+or gives itself out to be, the autobiography of a girl of noble birth
+who, married at eleven years old and at first very fond of her husband,
+becomes at thirteen the object of much courtship from many gallants. Of
+these she selects, entirely on the love-at-first-sight principle, a very
+handsome young man who passes in the street. She is well read and tries
+to keep herself in order by stock examples, classical and romantic, of
+ill-placed and ill-fated affection. Her husband (who seems to have been
+a very good fellow for his time) gives her unconsciously what should
+have been the best help of all, by praising her self-selected lover's
+good looks and laughing at the young man's habit of staring at her. But
+she has already spoken frankly of her own <i>app&eacute;tit sensuel</i>, and she
+proceeds to show this in the fashion which makes the fifteenth century
+and the early sixteenth a sort of trough of animalism between the
+altitudes of Mediaeval and Renaissance passion. Her lover turns out to
+be an utter cad, boastful, blabbing, and almost cowardly (he tells her
+in the usual stolen church interview, <i>Je crains merveilleusement
+monsieur votre mari</i>). But it makes not the slightest difference; nor
+does the at last awakened wrath of an at last not merely threatened but
+wideawake husband. Apparently she never has the chance of being actually
+guilty, for her husband finally, and very properly, shuts her up in a
+country house under strong duennaship. This finishes the first part, but
+there are two more, which return to more ancient ways. The lover
+Guen&eacute;lic goes off to seek adventures, which he himself recounts, and
+acquires considerable improvement in them. He comes back, endeavours to
+free his mistress from her captivity, and does actually fly with her;
+but they are pursued; and though the lover and a friend of his with the
+rather Amadisian name of "Quezinstra" do their best, the heroine dies of
+weariness and shock, to be followed by her lover.
+</p><p>
+This latter part is comparatively commonplace. M. Reynier thinks very
+highly of the first. It is possible to go with him a certain part of the
+way, but not, I think, the whole, except from a purely "naturalist" and
+not at all "sentimental" point of view. Some bold bad men have, of
+course, maintained that when the other sex is possessed by an <i>app&eacute;tit
+sensuel</i> this overcomes everything else, and seems, if not actually to
+exclude, at any rate by no means always or often to excite, that
+accompanying transcendentalism which is not uncommon with men, and
+which, comprised with the appetite, makes the love of the great lovers,
+whether they are represented by Dante or by Donne, by Shakespeare or by
+Shelley. Whether this be truth or libel <i>non nostrum est</i>. But it is
+certain that H&eacute;lisenne, as she represents herself, does not make the
+smallest attempt to spiritualise (even in the lowest sense) or inspirit
+the animality of her affection. She wants her lover as she might want a
+pork chop instead of a mutton one; and if she is sometimes satisfied
+with seeing him, it is as if she were looking at that pork chop through
+a restaurateur's window and finding it better than not seeing it at all
+and contenting herself with the mutton. Still this result is probably
+the result at least as much of want of art as of original <i>mis</i>feeling;
+and the book certainly does deserve notice here.
+</p><p>
+The original <i>&OElig;uvres</i> of H&eacute;lisenne form a rather appetising little
+volume, fat, and close and small printed, as indeed is the case with
+most, but not quite all, of the books now under notice. The
+complementary pieces are mainly moralities, as indeed are, in intention,
+the <i>Angoisses</i> themselves. These latter seem to me better worth
+reprinting than most other things as yet not reprinted, from the
+<i>Heptameron</i> (H&eacute;lisenne, be it remembered, preceded Marguerite) for
+nearly a hundred years. The later parts, though (or perhaps even
+because) they contrast curiously with the first, are by no means
+destitute of interest; and M. Reynier, I think, is a little hard on them
+if he has perhaps been a little kind to their predecessor. The lingo is
+indeed almost always stupendous and occasionally terrible. The printer
+aids sometimes; for it was not at once that I could emend the
+description of the B. V. M. as "M&egrave;re et Fille de <i>l'alilton&acirc;t</i> [ant]
+plasmateur" into "<i>altitonant</i>" ("loud-thundering"), while <i>plasmateur</i>
+itself, though perfectly intelligible and legitimate, a favourite with
+the <i>rh&eacute;toriqueurs</i>, and borrowed from them even in Middle Scots, is not
+exactly everybody's word. But from her very exordium she may be fairly
+judged. "Au temps que la D&eacute;esse Cib&eacute;l&eacute; despouilla son glacial et g&eacute;lide
+habit, et vestit sa verdoyante robe, tapiss&eacute;e de diverses couleurs, je
+fus procr&eacute;&eacute;, de noblesse." And, after all, there <i>is</i> a certain nobility
+in this fashion of speech and of literary presentation.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL&mdash;I</h3>
+
+<h4><i>The Pastoral and Heroic Romance, and the Fairy Story</i></h4>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Immense importance of the seventeenth century in our
+subject.</div>
+
+<p>The seventeenth century, almost if not quite from its beginning, ranks
+in French literature as the eighteenth does with us, that is to say, as
+the time of origin of novels or romances which can be called, in any
+sense, modern. In its first decade appeared the epoch-making
+pastoral-heroic <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> of Honor&eacute; d'Urf&eacute;;<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> its middle period, from
+1620 to 1670, was the principal birth-time of the famous "Heroic"
+variety, pure and simple; while, from that division into the last third,
+the curiously contrasted kind of the fairy tale came to add its quota of
+influence. At various periods, too, individuals of more or less note
+(and sometimes of much more than almost any of the "school-writers" just
+mentioned) helped mightily in strengthening and diversifying the
+subjects and manners of tales. To this period also belongs the
+continuance and prominence of that element of actual "lived" anecdote
+and personal history which has been mentioned more than once before. The
+<i>Historiettes</i> of Tallemant contain short suggestions for a hundred
+novels and romances; the memoirs, genuine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> or forged, of public and
+private persons have not seldom, in more modern times, formed the actual
+basis of some of the greatest fiction. Everybody ought long to have
+known Thackeray's perhaps rather whimsical declaration that he
+positively preferred the forged D'Artagnan memoirs of Courtils de
+Sandras (as far at least as the Gascon himself was concerned) to the
+work of that Alexander, the truly Great, of which he was nevertheless
+such a generous admirer: and recently mere English readers have had the
+opportunity of seeing whether they agree with him. In fact, as the
+century went on, almost all kinds of literature began to be more or less
+pervaded with the novel appeal and quality.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The divisions of its contribution.</div>
+
+<p>The letters of "Notre Dame des Rochers" constantly read like parts or
+scenes of a novel, and so do various compositions of her ill-conditioned
+but not unintelligent cousin Bussy-Rabutin. Camus de Pontcarr&eacute; in the
+earlier and F&eacute;nelon in the later century determined that the Devil
+should not have this good prose to himself, and our own Anthony Hamilton
+showed the way to Voltaire in a kind, of which, though the Devil had
+nothing immediately to do with it, he might perhaps make use later. In
+fact, the whole century teems with the spirit of tale-telling, <i>plus</i>
+character-analysis; and in the eighteenth itself, with a few notable
+exceptions, there was rather a falling-off from, than a further advance
+towards, the full blossoming of the aloe in the nineteenth.</p>
+
+<p>It will probably, therefore, not be excessive to give two chapters (and
+two not short ones) to this period. In the first of them we may take the
+two apparently opposite, but by no means irreconcilable schools of
+Pastoral and Heroic Romance<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> and of Fairy Tale, including perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+only four persons, if so many, of first-rate literary rank&mdash;Urf&eacute;,<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a>
+Madeleine de Scud&eacute;ry, Madame d'Aulnoy, and Perrault; in the second, the
+more isolated but in some cases not unimportant names and works of
+Sorel, Scarron, Fureti&egrave;re, and the capital ones of Madame de la Fayette
+and Hamilton. According to the plan previously pursued, less attempt
+will be made to give exhaustive or even full lists of practitioners than
+to illustrate their practice thoroughly by example, translated or
+abstracted, and by criticism; and it is necessary that this latter
+course should be used without mercy to readers or to the historian
+himself in this first chapter. For there is hardly any department of
+literature which has been more left to the rather treacherous care of
+traditional and second- or seventh-hand judgment than the Heroic
+romance.<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Pastoral in general.</div>
+
+<p>The Pastoral, as being of the most ancient and in a literary sense of
+the highest formal rank, may occupy us first, but by no means longest. A
+great deal of attention (perhaps a great deal more than was at all
+necessary) has been paid to the pastoral element in various kinds of
+literature. The thing is certainly curious, and inevitably invited
+comment;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> but unfortunately it has peculiar temptations to a kind of
+comment which, though very fashionable for some time past, is rarely
+profitable. Pastorals of the most interesting kind actually exist in
+literature: "pastoralism" in the abstract, unless treated in the pure
+historical manner, is apt, like all similar criticism and discussion of
+"kinds" in general, to tend to &#966;&#955;&#965;&#945;&#961;&#953;&#945;.<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> For a history in
+a nutshell there is perhaps room even here, because the relations of the
+thing to fiction cannot be well understood without it. That the
+association of shepherds,<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> with songs, and with the telling of
+"tales" in both senses, is immensely old, is a fact which the Hebrew
+Scriptures establish, and almost the earliest Greek mythology and poetry
+confirm; but the wiser mind, here as elsewhere, will probably be content
+with the fact, and not enquire too busybodily into the reason. The
+connection between Sicily&mdash;apparently a land of actual pastoral
+life&mdash;and Alexandria&mdash;the home of the first professional man-of-letters
+school, as it may be called&mdash;perhaps supplies something more; the actual
+beauty of the Sicilian-Alexandrian poems, more still; the adoption of
+the form by Virgil, who was revered at Rome, renowned somewhat
+heterodoxically in the Middle Ages, and simply adored by the
+Renaissance, most of all. So, in English, Spenser and Milton, in French,
+Marot and others niched it solidly in the nation's poetry; and the
+certainly charming <i>Daphnis and Chloe</i>, when vernacularised, transferred
+its influence from verse to prose in almost all the countries of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>To what may be called "common-sense" criticism, there is, of course, no
+form of literature, in either prose or verse, which is more utterly
+abhorrent and more helplessly exposed. Unsympathetic, and in some points
+unfair and even unintelligent, as Johnson's criticism of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> <i>Lycidas</i> may
+seem, to the censure of its actual "pastorality" there is no answer,
+except that "these things are an allegory" as well as a convention. To
+go further out of mere common-sense objections, and yet stick to the
+Devil's-Advocate line, there is no form which lends itself to&mdash;which,
+indeed, insists upon&mdash;conventions of the most glaring unreality more
+than the pastoral, and none in which the decorations, unless managed
+with extraordinary genius, have such a tendency to be tawdry at best,
+draggled and withered at worst. Nevertheless, the fact remains that at
+almost all times, both in ancient literature and since the revival of
+letters, as well as in some probably more spontaneous forms during the
+Middle Ages themselves,<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> pastorals have been popular with the
+vulgar, and practised by the elect; while within the very last hundred
+years such a towering genius as Shelley's, and such a manifold and
+effectual talent as Mr. Arnold's, have selected it for some of their
+very best work.</p>
+
+<p>Such adoption, moreover, had, for the writer of prose fiction, some
+peculiar and pretty obvious inducements. It has been noticed by all
+careful students of fiction that one of the initial difficulties in its
+way, and one of those which do not seem to get out of that way very
+quickly, is diffidence on the writer's part "how to begin." It may be
+said that this is not peculiar to fiction; but extends from the poet who
+never can get beyond the first lines of his epic to the journalist who
+sits for an hour gazing at the blank paper for his article, and returns
+home at midnight, if not like Miss Bolo "in a flood of tears and a sedan
+chair," at any rate in a tornado of swearing at himself and (while there
+were such things) a hansom cab. Pastoral gives both easy beginning and
+supporting framework.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its beginnings in France.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Minor romances preceding the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The transformation of the older pastoral form into the newer began,
+doubtless, with the rendering into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> French of <i>Daphnis and Chloe</i>,<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a>
+which appeared in the same year with the complete <i>Heptameron</i> (1559).
+Twelve years later, in 1571, Belleforest's <i>La Pyr&eacute;nee et Pastorale
+Amoureuse</i> rather took the title than exemplified the kind; but in 1578
+the translation of Montemayor's <i>Diana</i> definitely turned the current
+into the new-old channel. It was not, however, till seven years later
+still that "<i>Les Bergeries de Juliette</i>, de l'invention d'Ollenix du
+Mont Sacr&eacute;" (a rather exceptionally foolish anagram of Nicolas de
+Montreux) essayed something original in the style. Montreux issued his
+work, of which more presently, again and again in five instalments, the
+last of which appeared thirteen years later than the first. And it has
+been proved with immense bibliographical labour by M. Reynier,<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> that
+though the last decade of the sixteenth century in France was almost as
+fertile in short love-romances<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> as ours was in sonnet-cycles, the
+pastoral form was, whether deliberately or not, for the most part
+eschewed, though there were one or two exceptions of little if any
+consequence. It is indeed noteworthy that (only four years before the
+first part of the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>) a second translation or the <i>Diana</i> came
+out. But it was not till 1607 that this first part actually appeared,
+and in the opinion of its own time generally, and our own time for the
+most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> part, though not in that of the interval, made a new epoch in the
+history of French fiction.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Their general character.</div>
+
+<p>The general characteristics of this curious and numerous, but almost
+forgotten, body of work&mdash;which must, be it remembered, have exercised
+influence, more or less, on the progress of the novel by the ways of
+supply, demand, and reaction alike&mdash;have been carefully analysed by M.
+Reynier, with whom, in regard to one or two points of opinion, one may
+differ, but whose statements of fact are certainly trustworthy. Short as
+they usually are, and small as is the literary power displayed in most
+of them, it is clear that they, long before Rambouillet and the
+<i>pr&eacute;cieuses</i>, indicate a distinct reaction against merely brutal and
+ferocious manners, with a standard of "courtiership" in both senses. Our
+dear Reine Margot herself in one case prescribes, what one hopes she
+found not merely in La Mole, but in others of those transitorily happy
+ones whose desiccated hearts did or did not distend the pockets of her
+farthingale as live Persian kittens do those of their merchants. To be a
+lover you must have "a stocking void of holes, a ruff, a sword, a plume,
+<i>and a knowledge how to talk</i>." This last point is illustrated in these
+miniature romances after a fashion on which one of the differences of
+opinion above hinted at may arise. It is not, as in the later "Heroics,"
+shown merely in lengthy harangues, but in short and almost dramatised
+dialogue. No doubt this is often clumsy, but it may seem to have been
+not a whole mistake in itself&mdash;only an abortive attempt at something
+which, much later again, had to come before real novel-writing could be
+achieved, and which the harangues of the Scud&eacute;ry type could never have
+provided. There is a little actual history in them&mdash;not the
+key-cryptograms of the "Heroics" or their adoption of ancient and
+distant historic frames. In a very large proportion, forced marriages,
+proposed and escaped from, supply the plot; in not a few, forced
+"vocations" to the conventual life. Elopements are as common as
+abductions in the next stage, and are generally conducted with as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> much
+propriety. Courtships of married women, and lapses by them, are very
+rare.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Examples of their style.</div>
+
+<p>No one will be surprised to hear that the "Ph&eacute;bus" or systematised
+conceit, for which the period is famous, and which the beloved
+Marguerite herself did not a little favour, is abundant in them. From a
+large selection of M. Reynier's, I cull, as perhaps the most delightful
+of all these, if not also of all known to me in any language, the
+following:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>During this task, Love, who had ambushed himself, plunged
+his wings in the tears of the lover, and dried them in the
+burning breast of the maiden.</p></div>
+
+<p>"A squadron of sighs" is unambitious, but neat, terse, and very tempting
+to the imagination. More complicated is a lady "floating on the sea of
+the persecution of her Prince, who would fain give her up to the
+shipwreck of his own concupiscence."</p>
+
+<p>And I like this:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The grafts of our desires being inarched long since in the
+tree of our loves, the branches thereof bore the lovely
+bouquets of our hopes.</p></div>
+
+<p>And this is fine:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Paper! that the rest of your white surface may not blush at
+my shame, suffer me to blacken it with my sorrow!</p></div>
+
+<p>It has always been a sad mystery to me why rude and dull intelligences
+should sneer at, or denounce, these delightful fantastries, the very
+stuff of which dreams and love and poetry&mdash;the three best things of
+life&mdash;are made.<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Montreux and the <i>Bergeries de Juliette</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The British Museum possesses not very many of the, I believe, numerous
+works of Nicolas de Montreux, <i>alias</i>, as has been said, Ollenix du Mont
+Sacr&eacute;, a "gentleman of Maine," as he scrupulously designates himself.
+But it does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> possess two parts (the first two) of the <i>Bergeries de
+Juliette</i>, and I am not in the least surprised that no reader of them
+should have worried any librarian into completing the set. Each of these
+parts is a stout volume of some five hundred pages,<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> not very small,
+of close small print, filled with stuff of the most deadly dulness. For
+instance, Ollenix is desirous to illustrate the magnificence and the
+danger of those professional persons of the other sex at Venice who have
+filled no small place in literature from Coryat to Rousseau. So he tells
+us, without a gleam or suspicion of humour, that one customer was so
+astonied at the decorations of the bedroom, the bed, etc., that he
+remained for two whole hours considering them, and forgetting to pay any
+attention to the lady. It is satisfactory to know that she revenged
+herself by raising the fee to an inordinate amount, and insisting on her
+absurd client's lackey being sent to fetch it before the actual
+conference took place. But the silliness of the story itself is a fair
+sample of Montreux' wits, and these wits manage to make anything they
+deal with duller by their way of telling it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Des Escuteaux and his <i>Amours Diverses</i>.</div>
+
+<p>It is still more unfortunate that our national collection has none of
+the numerous fictions<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> of A(ntoine?) de Nerv&egrave;ze. His <i>Amours
+Diverses</i> (1606), in which he collected no less than seven love-stories,
+published separately earlier, would be useful. But it luckily does
+provide the similarly titled book of Des Escuteaux, who is perhaps the
+most representative and prolific writer, next to Montreux and Nerv&egrave;ze,
+of the whole, and who seems to me, from what I have read of the first
+and what others say of the second, to be their superior. The collections
+consist of (<i>Amours de</i> in every case) <i>Filiris et Isolia</i>, dedicated to
+Isabel (not "-bel<i>le</i>") de Rochechouart; <i>Clarimond et Antoinette</i> (to
+Lucresse [<i>sic</i>] de Bouill&eacute;); <i>Clidamant et Marilinde</i> (to <i>Jane</i> de la
+Bruneti&egrave;re), and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> <i>Ipsilis et Alix&eacute;e</i> (to Ren&eacute;e de Coss&eacute;, Amirale de
+France!).<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a></p>
+
+<p>Some readers may be a little "put off" by a habit which Des Escuteaux
+has, especially in the first story of the volume, of prefixing, as in
+drama, the names of the speakers&mdash;<i>Le Prince</i>, <i>La Princesse</i>, etc.&mdash;to
+the first paragraphs of the harangues and <i>histoires</i> of which these
+books so largely consist.<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> But it is not universal. The most
+interesting of the four is, I think, <i>Clidamant et Marilinde</i>, for it
+introduces the religious wars, a sojourn of the lovers on a desert
+island, which M. Reynier<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> not unjustly calls Crusoe-like, and other
+"varieties."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Fran&ccedil;ois de Moli&egrave;re&mdash;<i>Polyx&egrave;ne.</i></div>
+
+<p>I have not seen the other&mdash;quite other, and Fran&ccedil;ois&mdash;Moli&egrave;re's <i>Semaine
+Amoureuse</i>, which belongs to this class, though later than most; but his
+still later <i>Polyx&egrave;ne</i>, a sort of half-way house between these shorter
+novels and the ever-enlarged "Heroics," is a very fat duodecimo of 1100
+pages. The heroine has two lovers&mdash;one with the singular name of
+Cloryman,&mdash;but love does not run smooth with either, and she ends by
+taking the (pagan) veil. The bathos of the thought and style may be
+judged from the heroine's affecting mention of an entertainment as "the
+last <i>ballet</i> my unhappy father ever saw."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Du P&eacute;rier&mdash;<i>Arnoult et Clarimonde.</i></div>
+
+<p>Not one of the worst of these four or five score minors, though scarcely
+in itself a positively good thing, is the Sieur du P&eacute;rier's <i>La Haine et
+l'Amour d'Arnoult et de Clarimonde</i>. It begins with a singularly banal
+exordium, gravely announcing that Hate and Love <i>are</i> among the most
+important passions, with other statements of a similar kind couched in
+commonplace language. But it does something to bring the novel from an
+uninteresting cloudland to earth by dealing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> with the recent and still
+vividly felt League wars: and there is some ingenuity shown in plotting
+the conversion of the pair from more than "a little aversion" at the
+beginning to nuptial union&mdash;<i>not</i> at the end. For it is one of the
+points about the book which are not commonplace, though it may be a
+survival or atavism from mediaeval practice&mdash;that the latter part of it
+is occupied mainly, not with Arnoult and Clarimonde, but with the loves,
+fortunes, and misfortunes of their daughter Claride.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Du Croset&mdash;<i>Philocalie.</i> Corbin&mdash;<i>Philocaste.</i></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Philocalie</i> of Du Croset (1593) derives its principal interest from
+its being not merely a <i>Bergerie</i> before the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, but, like it, the
+work of a For&eacute;zian gentleman who proudly asserts his territoriality, and
+dedicates his book to the "Chevalier D'Urf&eacute;." And its part name-fellow,
+the <i>Philocaste</i> of Jean Corbin&mdash;a very tiny book, the heroine of which
+is (one would hardly have thought it from her name) a Princess of
+England&mdash;is almost entirely composed of letters, discourse on them, and
+a few interspersed verses. It belongs to the division of
+backward-looking novels, semi-chivalrous in type, and its hero is as
+often called "The Black Knight" as by his name.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Jean de Lannoi and his <i>Roman Satirique</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The <i>Roman Satirique</i> (1624) of Jean de Lannoi is another example of the
+curious inability to "hit it off" which has been mentioned so often as
+characterising the period. Its 1100 pages are far too many, though it is
+fair to say that the print is exceptionally large and loose. Much of it
+is not in any sense "satiric," and it seems to have derived what
+popularity it had almost wholly from the "key" interest.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">B&eacute;roalde de Verville outside the <i>Moyen de Parvenir</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The minor works&mdash;if the term may be used when the attribution of the
+major is by no means certain&mdash;of B&eacute;roalde de Verville have, as is usual,
+been used both ways as arguments for and against his authorship of the
+<i>Moyen de Parvenir</i>. <i>Les Aventures de Floride</i> is simply an attempt,
+and a big one in size, to <i>amadigauliser</i>, as the literary slang of the
+time went. The <i>Histoire V&eacute;ritable</i>, owing nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> but its title and
+part of its idea to Lucian, and sub-titled <i>Les Princes Fortun&eacute;s</i>, is
+less conventional. It has a large fancy map for a frontispiece; there
+are fairies in it, and a sort of <i>pot-pourri</i> of queernesses which might
+not impossibly have come from the author or editor of the <i>Moyen</i> in his
+less inconveniently ultra-Pantagruelist moments. <i>Le Cabinet de Minerve</i>
+is actually a glorification of "honest" love. In fact, B&eacute;roalde is one
+of the oddest of "polygraphers," and there is nobody quite like him in
+English, though some of his fellows may be matched, after a fashion,
+with our Elizabethan pamphleteers. I have long wished to read the whole
+of him, but I suppose I never shall.</p>
+
+<p>And it is time to leave these very minor stars and come to the full and
+gracious moon of the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> itself.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>&mdash;its author.</div>
+
+<p>Honor&eacute; D'Urf&eacute;, who was three years younger than Shakespeare, and died in
+the year in which Charles I. came to the throne, was a cadet of a very
+ancient family in the district or minor province of Forez, where his own
+famous Lignon runs into the Loire. He was a pupil of the Jesuits and
+early <i>fort en th&egrave;me</i>, was a strenuous <i>ligueur</i>, and, though (or
+perhaps also because) he was very good friends with Henri's estranged
+wife, Margot, for some time decidedly suspect to Henri IV. For this
+reason, and others of property, etc., he became almost a naturalised
+Savoyard, but died in the service of his own country at the beginning of
+Richelieu's Valtelline war. The most noteworthy thing in his rather
+eventful life was, however, his marriage. This also has a direct
+literary interest, at least in tradition, which will have his wife,
+Diane de Ch&acirc;teaumorand, to be Astr&eacute;e herself, and so the heroine of "the
+first [great] sentimental romance." The circumstances of the union,
+however, were scarcely sentimental, much less romantic. They were even,
+as people used to say yesterday, "not quite nice," and the Abb&eacute; Reure, a
+devotee of both parties to it, admits that they "<i>heurte[nt] violemment
+nos id&eacute;es</i>." In fact Diane was not only eight years older than Honor&eacute;
+and thirty-eight years of age, but she had been for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> quarter of a
+century the wife of his elder brother, Anne, while he himself was a
+knight of Malta, and vowed to celibacy. Of course (as the Canon points
+out with irrefragably literal accuracy in logic and law) the marriage
+being declared null <i>ab initio</i> (for the cause most likely to suggest
+itself, though alleged after extraordinary delay), Diane and Honor&eacute; were
+not sister- and brother-in-law at all, and no "divorce" or even
+"dispensation" was needed. In the same way, Honor&eacute;, having been
+introduced into the Order of St. John irregularly in various ways, never
+was a knight of it at all, and could not be bound by its rules. Q.E.D.
+Wicked people, of course, on the other hand, said that it was a device
+to retain Diane's great wealth (for Honor&eacute; was quite poor in comparison)
+in the family; sentimental ones that it was a fortunate and blameless
+crowning of a long and pure attachment. As a matter of fact, no
+"permanent children" (to adopt an excellent phrase of the late Mr.
+Traill's) resulted; Diane outlived her husband, though but for a short
+time, and left all her property to her relations of the L&eacute;vis family.
+The pair are also said not to have been the most united of couples. In
+connection with the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> their portraits are interesting. Honor&eacute;
+d'Urf&eacute;, though he had the benefit of Van Dyck's marvellous art of
+cavalier creation, must have been a very handsome man. Diane's portrait,
+by a much harder and dryer hand, purports to have been taken at the age
+of sixty-four. At first sight there is no beauty in it; but on
+reinspection one admits possibilities&mdash;a high forehead, rather
+"enigmatic" eyes, not at all "extinguished," a nose prominent and rather
+large, but straight and with well, but not too much, developed "wings,"
+and, above all, a full and rather voluptuous mouth. Such may have been
+the first identified novel-heroine. It is a popular error to think that
+sixty-four and beauty are incompatibles, but one certainly would have
+liked to see her at sixteen, or better still and perhaps best of all, at
+six and twenty.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The book.</div>
+
+<p>The <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> itself is not the easiest of subjects to deal with. It is
+indeed not so huge as the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> it is much more difficult
+to get at&mdash;a very rare flower except in the "grey old gardens" of
+secular libraries. It and its author have indeed for a few years past
+had the benefit (as a result partly of another doubtful thing, an
+<i>x</i>-centenary) of one<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> of the rather-to-seek good specimens among
+the endless number of modern literary monographs. But it has never been
+reprinted&mdash;even extracts of it, with the exception of a few stock
+passages, are not common or extensive; and though a not small library
+has been written about it in successive waves of eulogy, reaction,
+mostly ignorant contempt, rehabilitation, and mere bookmaking; though
+there have been (as noted) recent anniversaries and celebrations, and so
+forth; though it is one of the not numerous books which have given a
+name-type&mdash;Celadon,&mdash;and a place&mdash;"les bords du Lignon,"&mdash;to their own,
+if not to universal literature, it seems to be "as a book" very little
+known. The faithful monographer above cited admits merit in Dunlop; but
+Dunlop does not say very much about it. Herr K&ouml;rting (<i>v. sup.</i>)
+analyses it. Possibly there may be, also in German, a comparison,
+tempting to those who like such things, between it and its twenty years'
+predecessor, Sidney's <i>Arcadia</i>, the first French translation of which,
+in 1625, just after Urf&eacute;'s death, was actually dedicated to his widow.
+But I suspect that few English writers about Sidney have known much of
+the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, and I feel sure that still fewer French writers<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> on
+this have known anything of Sidney save perhaps his name. Of course the
+indebtedness of both books to Montemayor's <i>Diana</i> is a commonplace.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its likeness to the <i>Arcadia</i>.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its philosophy and its general temper.</div>
+
+<p>One of the numerous resemblances between the two, and one which,
+considering their respective positions in the history of the French and
+English novel, is most interesting, is the strong philosophical and
+specially Platonic influence which the Renaissance exercised on
+both.<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> Sidney, however full<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> of it elsewhere, put less of it in his
+actual novel; while, on the other hand, nothing did so much to create
+and spread the rather rococo notion of pseudo-platonic love in France,
+and from France throughout Europe, as the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> itself. The further
+union of the philosophic mind with an eminently cavalier
+temperament&mdash;the united <i>ethos</i> of scholar, soldier, lover, and
+courtier&mdash;fills out the comparison: and dwarfs such merely mechanical
+things as the mixed use of prose and verse (which both may have taken,
+nay pretty certainly did take, from Montemayor) and the pastoralities,
+for which they in the same way owed royalty to the Spaniard, to Tasso,
+to Sannazar, and to the Greek romances, let alone Theocritus and Virgil.
+And, to confine ourselves henceforward to our own special subject, it is
+this double infusion of idealism&mdash;of spiritual and intellectual
+enthusiasm on the one hand and practical fire of life and act on the
+other&mdash;which makes the great difference, not merely between the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>
+and its predecessors of the <i>Amadis</i> class, but between it and its
+successors the strictly "Heroic" romances, though these owe it so much.
+The first&mdash;except in some points of passion&mdash;hardly touch reality at
+all; the last are perpetually endeavouring to simulate and insinuate a
+sort of reality under cover of adventures and conventions which, though
+fictitious, are hardly at all fantastic. But the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> might almost
+be called a French prose <i>Faerie Queene</i>, allowing for the difference of
+the two nations, languages, vehicles, and <i>milieux</i> generally, in its
+representation of the above-mentioned cavalier-philosophic <i>ethos</i>&mdash;a
+thing never so well realised in France as in England or in Spain, but of
+which Honor&eacute; d'Urf&eacute;, from many traits in life and book, seems to have
+been a real example, and which certainly vindicates its place in history
+and literature.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+<div class="sidenote">Its appearance and its author's other work.</div>
+
+<p>The <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> appeared in five instalments, 1607-10-12-19 and
+posthumously, the several parts being frequently printed: and it is said
+to be almost impossible to find a copy, all the parts of which are of
+the first issue in each case. The two later parts probably, the last
+certainly, were collaborated in, if not wholly written by, the author's
+secretary Baro. But it was by no means Honor&eacute;'s only work; indeed the
+Urf&eacute;s up to his time were an unusually literary family; and, while his
+grandfather Claude collected a remarkable library (whence, at its
+dispersion in the evil days of the house<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> during the eighteenth
+century, came some of not the least precious possessions of French
+public and private collections), his unfortunate brother Anne was a
+poet. Honor&eacute; himself, besides school exercises, wrote <i>Epistres Morales</i>
+which were rather popular, and display qualities useful in appreciating
+the novel itself; a poem in octosyllables, usually and perhaps naturally
+called "<i>La</i> Sireine," but really entitled in the masculine, and having
+nothing to do with a mermaid; a curious thing, semi-dramatic in form and
+in irregular blank verse, entitled <i>Silvanire ou La Morte Vive</i>, which
+was rehandled soon after his death by Corneille's most dangerous rival
+Mairet; and an epic called <i>La Savoisiade</i>, which seems to have no
+merit, and all but a very small portion of which is still unprinted.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its character and appeals.</div>
+
+<p>He remains, therefore, the author of the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, and, taking things on
+the whole (a mighty whole, beyond contest, as far as bulk goes), there
+are not so many authors of the second rank (for one of the first he can
+hardly be called) who would lose very much by an exchange with him.
+One's estimates of the book are apt to vary in different places, even
+as, though not in the same degree as, the estimates of others have
+varied at different times; but I myself have found that the more I read
+of it the more I liked and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> esteemed it; and I believe that, if I had a
+copy of my own and could turn it over in the proper diurnal and
+nocturnal fashion, not as duty- but as pleasure-reading, I should like
+it better still. Certain points that have appealed to me have been
+noticed already&mdash;its combination of sensuous and ideal passion is
+perhaps the most important of them; but there are not a few others,
+themselves by no means void of importance. One is the union, not common
+in French books between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century, of
+sentiment and seriousness with something very like humour. Hylas, the
+not exactly "comic man," but light-o'-love and inconstant shepherd, was
+rather a bone of contention among critics of the book's own century. But
+he certainly seasons it well; and there is one almost Shakespearean
+scene in which he is concerned&mdash;a scene which Benedick and Beatrice, who
+may have read it not so very many years after their own marriage, must
+have enjoyed considerably. Hylas and the shepherdess Stella (who is
+something of a girl-counterpart of his, as in the case just cited) draw
+up a convention of love<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> between them. The tables, though they are
+not actually numbered in the original, are twelve, and, shortened a
+little, run as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hylas and Stella and their Convention.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. Neither is to be sovereign over the other.</p>
+
+<p>2. Both are to be at once Lover and Beloved. [They knew
+something about the matter, these two, for all their
+jesting.]</p>
+
+<p>3. There is to be no constraint of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>4. They are to love for as long or as short a time as they
+please.</p>
+
+<p>5. No charge of infidelity is ever to be brought on either
+side.</p>
+
+<p>6. It is quite permitted to either or both to love somebody
+else, and yet to continue loving each other.</p>
+
+<p>7. There is to be no jealousy, no complaints, no sulks.</p>
+
+<p>8. They are to do and say exactly what they please.</p>
+
+<p>9. Words like "faithfulness," etc., are taboo.</p>
+
+<p>10. They may leave off playing whenever they like.</p>
+
+<p>11. And begin again ditto.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>12. They are to forget both the favours they receive from
+each other and the offences they may commit against each
+other.</p></div>
+
+<p>Now, of course, any one may say of the Land where such a code might be
+realised, in the very words of one of the most charming of songs, set to
+one of the happiest of tunes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cette rive, ma ch&egrave;re,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On ne la conna&icirc;t gu&egrave;re<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Au pays des amours!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But that is not the question, and if it <i>were</i> possible it undoubtedly
+would be a very agreeable Utopia, combining the transcendental charms of
+the country of Quintessence with the material ones of the Pays de
+Cocagne. From its own point of view there seems to be no fault to find
+with it, except, perhaps, with the first part of the Twelfth
+Commandment; for the remembrance of former favours heightens the
+enjoyment of later ones, and the danger of <i>nessun maggior dolore</i> is
+excluded by the hypothesis of indifference after breach. But a sort of
+umpire, or at any rate thirdsman, the shepherd Silvandre,<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> when
+asked his opinion, makes an ingenious objection. To carry out Article
+Three, he says, there ought to be a Thirteenth:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>13. That they may break any of these rules just as they
+please.</p></div>
+
+<p>For what comes of this further the reader may go to the book, but enough
+of it should have been given to show that there is no want of salt,
+though there is no (or very little) <i>gros sel</i><a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a> in the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Narrative skill frequent.</div>
+
+<p>Yet again there is very considerable narrative power. Abstracts may be
+found, not merely in older books mentioned or to be mentioned, but in
+the recent publications of K&ouml;rting and the Abb&eacute; Reure, and there is
+neither room nor need for a fresh one here. As some one (or more than
+one) has said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> the book is really a sort of half-allegorical tableau of
+honourable Love worked out in a crowd of couples (some I believe, have
+counted as many as sixty), from Celadon and Astr&eacute;e themselves downwards.
+The course of these loves is necessarily "accidented," and the accidents
+are well enough managed from the first, and naturally enough best known,
+where Celadon flings himself into the river and is rescued, insensible
+but alive, by nymphs, who all admire him very much, though none of them
+can affect his passion for Astr&eacute;e. But one cares&mdash;at least I have found
+myself caring&mdash;less for the story than for the way in which it is
+told&mdash;a state of things exactly contrary, as will be seen, to that
+produced with or in me by the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>. There we have a really
+well, if too intricately, engineered plot, in the telling of which it is
+difficult to take much interest. Here it is just the reverse. And one of
+the consequences is that you can dip in the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> much more
+refreshingly than in its famous follower, where, if you do so, you
+constantly "don't know where you are."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Fountain of the Truth of Love.</div>
+
+<p>One of the most famous things in the book, and one of the most important
+to its conduct, is the "Fountain of the Truth of Love," a few words on
+which will illustrate the general handling very fairly. This Fountain
+(presided over by a Druid, a very important personage otherwise, who is
+a sort of high priest thereof) has nothing in common with the more usual
+waters which are philtres or anti-philtres, etc. Its function is to be
+gazed in rather than to be drunk, and if you look into it, loving
+somebody, you see your mistress. If she loves you, you see yourself as
+well, beside her, and (which is not so nice) if she loves some one else
+you see <i>him</i>; while if she is fancy-free you see her only. Clidaman,
+one of the numerous lovers above mentioned, tries the water; and his
+love, Silvie, presents herself again and again as he looks, "almost
+setting on fire with her lovely eyes the wave which seemed to laugh
+around her." But she is quite alone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The presiding Druid interprets, not merely in the sense already given,
+but with one of the philosophic commentaries, which, as has been said,
+are distinctive of the book. The nature of the fountain is to reflect
+not body but spirit. Spirit includes Will, Memory, and Judgment, and
+when a man loves, his spirit transforms itself through all these ways
+into the thing loved. Therefore when he looks into the fountain he sees
+Her. In the same way She is changed into Him or some one else whom she
+loves, and He sees that image also; but if she loves no one He sees her
+image alone.</p>
+
+<p>"This is very satisfactory" (as Lady Kew would say) to the inquiring
+mind, but not so much so to the lover. He wants to have the fountain
+shut up, I suppose (for my notes and memory do not cover this point
+exactly), that no rival may have the chance denied to himself. He would
+even destroy it, but that&mdash;the Druid tells and shows him&mdash;is quite
+impossible. What can be done shall be. And here comes in another of the
+agreeable things (to me) in the book&mdash;its curious fairy-tale character,
+which is shown by numerous supernaturalities, much more <i>humanised</i> than
+those of the <i>Amadis</i> group, and probably by no means without effect on
+the fairy-tale proper which was to follow. Clidaman himself happens, in
+the most natural way in the world, to "keep"&mdash;as an ordinary man keeps
+cats and dogs&mdash;a couple of extraordinary big and savage lions and
+another couple of unicorns to fight, not with each other, but with
+miscellaneous animals. The lions and the unicorns are forthwith
+extra-enchanted, so as to guard the fountain&mdash;an excellent arrangement,
+but subject to some awkwardnesses in the sequel. For the lions take
+turns to seek their meat in the ordinary way, and though they can hurt
+nobody who does not meddle with the fountain, and have no wish to be
+man-eaters, complications naturally supervene. And sometimes, besides
+fighting,<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> and love-making, and love casuistry, and fairy-tales, and
+oracles, and the finer comedy above mentioned, "Messire d'Urf&eacute;" (for he
+did not live<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> too late to have that most gracious of all designations of
+a gentleman used in regard to him) did not disdain, and could not ill
+manage, sheer farce. The scene with Cryseide and Arimant and Clorine and
+the nurse and the ointment in Part III. Book VII., though it contains
+little or nothing to <i>effaroucher la pudeur</i>, is like one of the broader
+but not broadest tales of the Fabliaux and their descendants.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Some drawbacks&mdash;awkward history.</div>
+
+<p>The book, therefore, has not merely a variety, but a certain liveliness,
+neither of which is commonplace; but it would of course be uncritical to
+suppress its drawbacks. It is far too long: and while bowing to those to
+the manner born who say that Baro carried out his master's plan well in
+point of style, and acknowledging that I have paid less attention to
+Parts IV. and V. than to the others, it seems to me that we could spare
+a good deal of them. One error, common to almost the whole century in
+fiction, is sometimes flagrant. Nobody except a pedant need object to
+the establishment, in the time of the early fifth century and the place
+of Gaul, of a non-historical kinglet- or queenletdom of Forez or
+"S&eacute;guse" under Amasis (here a feminine name<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a>), etc.; nor, though (as
+may perhaps be remarked again later) things Merovingian bring little
+luck in literature, need we absolutely bar Chilperics and Alarics, or a
+reference to "all the beauties of Neustria." But why, in the midst of
+the generally gracious <i>mac&eacute;doine</i> of serious and comic loves, and
+jokes, and adventures, should we have thrust in the entirely
+unnecessary, however historical, crime whereby Valentinian the Third
+lost his worthless life and his decaying Empire? It has, however, been
+remarked, perhaps often enough, by those who have busied themselves with
+the history of the novel, how curious it is that the historical variety,
+though it never succeeded in being born for two thousand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> years after
+the <i>Cyropaedia</i> and more, constantly strove to be so. At no time were
+the throes more frequent than during the seventeenth century in France;
+at no time, there or anywhere else, were they more abortive.<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">But attractive on the whole.</div>
+
+<p>But it remains on the whole an attractive book, and the secret of at
+least part of this attractiveness is no doubt to be found stated in a
+sentence of Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute;'s, which has startled some people, that
+"everything in it is natural and true." To the startled persons this may
+seem either a deliberate paradox, or a mere extravagance of affection,
+or even downright bad taste and folly. But the Lady of all Beautiful
+Letter-writers was almost of the family of Neverout in literary
+criticism. If she had been a professional critic (which is perhaps
+impossible), she might have safeguarded her dictum by the addition,
+"according to its own scheme and division." It is the neglect of this
+implication which has caused the demurs. "'Natural!'" and "'true!'" they
+say, "why, the Pastoral is the most frankly and in fact outrageously
+unnatural and false of all literary kinds. Does not Urf&eacute; himself warn us
+that we are not to expect ordinary shepherds and shepherdesses at all?"
+Or perhaps they go more to detail. "The whole book is unabashedly
+occupied with love-making; and love is not the whole, it is even a very
+small part, of life, that is to say, of truth and nature." Or, to come
+still closer to particulars, "Where, for instance, did Celadon, who is
+represented as having been reduced to utter destitution when, <i>more
+heroum</i>, he started a quasi-hermit life in the wood, get the
+decorations, etc., of the Temple he erected to Love and Astr&eacute;e?" One
+almost blushes at having to explain, in a popular style, the
+mistakenness, to use the mildest word, of these objections. The present
+writer, in a book less ambitious than the present on the sister subject
+of the English novel, once ventured to point out that if you ask "where
+Sir Guyon got that particularly convenient padlock with which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+fastened Occasion's tongue, and still more the hundred iron chains with
+which he bound Furor?" that is to say, if you ask such a question
+seriously, you have no business to read romance at all. As to the Love
+matter, of that it is still less use to talk. There are some who would
+go so far as to deny the major; even short of that hardiness it may be
+safely urged that in poetry and romance Love <i>is</i> the chief and
+principal thing, and that the poet and the romancer are only acting up
+to their commission in representing it as such. But the source of all
+these errors is best reached, and if it may be, stopped, by dealing with
+the first article of the indictment in the same way. What if Pastoral
+<i>is</i> artificial? That may be an argument against the kind as a whole,
+but it cannot lie against a particular example of it, because that
+example is bound to act up to its kind's law. And I think it not
+extravagant to contend that the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> acts up to its law in the most
+inoffensive fashion possible&mdash;in such a fashion, in fact, as is hardly
+ever elsewhere found in the larger specimens, and by no means very often
+in the smaller. Hardly even in <i>As You Like It</i>, certainly not in the
+<i>Arcadia</i>, do the crook and the pipe get less in the way than they do
+here. A minor cavil has been urged&mdash;that the "shepherds" and the
+"knights," the "shepherdesses" and the "nymphs" are very little
+distinguishable from each other; but why should they be? Urf&eacute; had
+sufficient art to throw over all these things an air of glamour which,
+to those who can themselves take the benefit of the spell, banishes all
+inconsistencies, all improbabilities, all specks and knots and the like.
+It has been said that the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> has in it something of the genuine
+fairy-tale element. And the objections taken to it are really not much
+more reasonable than would be the poser whether even the cleverest of
+wolves, with or without a whole human grandmother inside it, would find
+it easy to wrap itself up in bedclothes, or whether, seeing that even
+walnut shells subject cats to such extreme discomfort, top-boots would
+not be even more intolerable to the most faithful of feline retainers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The general importance and influence.</div>
+
+<p>The literary influence and importance of the book have never been denied
+by any competent criticism which had taken the trouble to inform itself
+of the facts. It can be pointed out that while the "Heroics," great as
+was their popularity for a time, did not keep it very long, and lost it
+by sharp and long continued&mdash;indeed never reversed&mdash;reaction, the
+influence of the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> on this later school itself was great, was not
+effaced by that of its pupils, and worked in directions different, as
+well as conjoint. It begat or helped to beget the <i>Pr&eacute;cieuses</i>; it did a
+great deal, if not exactly to set, to continue that historical character
+which, though we have not been able to speak very favourably of its
+immediate exercise, was at last to be so important. Above all, it
+reformed and reinforced the "sentimental" novel, as it is called. We
+have tried to show that there was much more of this in the mediaeval
+romance proper than it has been the fashion in recent times to allow.
+There was a great deal in the <i>Amadis</i> class, but extravaganzaed out of
+reason as well as out of rhyme. To us, or some of us, the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> type
+may still seem extravagant, but in comparison it brings things back to
+that truth and nature which were granted it by Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute;. Its
+charms actually soothed the savage breast of Boileau, and it is not
+surprising that La Fontaine loved it. Few things of the kind are more
+creditable to the better side of Jean Jacques a full century later, than
+that he was not indifferent to its beauty; and there were few greater
+omissions on the part of <i>mil-huit-cent-trente</i> (which, however, had so
+much to do!) than its comparative neglect to stray on to the gracious
+banks of the Lignon. All honour to Saint-Marc Girardin (not exactly the
+man from whom one would have expected it) for having been, as it seems,
+though in a kind of <i>palinodic</i> fashion, the first to render serious
+attention, and to do fair justice, to this vast and curious wilderness
+of delights.<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>Grand Cyrus</i>.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its preface to Madame de Longueville.</div>
+
+<p>To turn from the Pastoral to the Heroic, the actual readers, English or
+other, of <i>Artam&egrave;ne ou le Grand Cyrus</i><a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> in late years, have probably
+been reckonable rather as single spies (a phrase in this connection of
+some rather special appropriateness) than in battalions. And it is to be
+feared that many or most, if not nearly all of them, have opened it with
+little expectation of pleasure. The traditional estimates are dead
+against it as a rule; it has constantly served as an example&mdash;produced
+by wiseacres for wiseacres&mdash;of the <i>un</i>wisdom of our ancestors; and,
+generous as were Sir Walter's estimates of all literature, and
+especially of his fellow-craftsmen's and craftswomen's work, the lively
+passage in <i>Old Mortality</i> where Edith Bellenden's reference to the book
+excites the (in the circumstances justifiable) wrath of the
+Major&mdash;perhaps the only <i>locus</i> of ordinary reading that touches
+<i>Artam&egrave;ne</i> with anything but vagueness&mdash;is not entirely calculated to
+make readers read eagerly. But on turning honestly to the book itself,
+it is possible that considerable relief and even a little astonishment
+may result. Whether this satisfaction will arise at the very dedication
+by that vainglorious and yet redoubtable cavalier, Georges de Scud&eacute;ry,
+in which he characteristically takes to himself the credit due mainly,
+if not wholly, to his plain little sister Madeleine, will depend upon
+taste. It is addressed to Anne Genevi&egrave;ve de Bourbon, Duchess of
+Longueville, sister of Cond&eacute;, and adored mistress of many noteworthy
+persons&mdash;the most noteworthy perhaps being the Prince de Marcillac,
+better<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> known, as from his later title, as Duc de la Rochefoucauld, and
+a certain Aramis&mdash;not so good a man as three friends of his, but a very
+accomplished, valiant, and ingenious gentleman. The blue eyes of Madame
+de Longueville (M. de Scud&eacute;ry takes the liberty to mention specially
+their charm, if not their colour) were among the most victorious in that
+time of the "raining" and reigning influence of such things: and somehow
+one succumbs a little even now to her as the Queen of that bevy of fair,
+frail, and occasionally rather ferocious ladies of the Fronde feminine.
+(The femininity was perhaps most evident in Madame de Chevreuse, and the
+ferocity in Madame de Montbazon.) Did not Madame de Longueville&mdash;did not
+they all&mdash;figuratively speaking, draw that great philosopher Victor
+Cousin<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> up in a basket two centuries after her death, even as had
+been done, literally if mythically, to that greater philosopher,
+Aristotle, ages before? But the governor of Our Lady of the Guard<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a>
+says to her many of these things which that very Aramis delighted to
+hear (though not perhaps from the lips of rivals) and described,
+rebuking the callousness of Porthos to them, as fine and worthy of being
+said by gentlemen. The Great Cyrus himself "comes to lay at her
+Highness's feet his palms and his trophies." His historian, achieving at
+once advertisement and epigram, is sure that as she listened kindly to
+the <i>Death of Caesar</i> (his own play), she will do the same to the Life
+of Cyrus. Anne Genevi&egrave;ve herself will become the example of all
+Princesses (the Reverend Abraham Adams might have groaned a little
+here), just as Cyrus was the pattern of all Princes. She is not the
+moon, but the sun<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> of the Court. The mingled blood of Bourbon and
+Montmorency gives her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> such an <i>&eacute;clat</i> that it is almost unapproachable.
+He then digresses a little to glorify her brother, her husband, and
+Chapelain, the famous author of <i>La Pucelle</i>, who had the good fortune
+to be a friend of the Scud&eacute;rys, as well as, like them, a strong "Heroic"
+theorist. After which he comes to that personal inventory which has been
+referred to, decides that her beauty is of a celestial splendour, and,
+in fact, a ray of Divinity itself; goes into raptures, not merely over
+her eyes, but over her hair (which simply effaces sunbeams); the
+brightness and whiteness of her complexion; the just proportion of her
+features; and, above all, her singularly blended air of modesty and
+gallantry; her intellectual and spiritual match; her bodily graces; and
+he is finally sure that though somebody's misplaced acuteness may
+discover faults which nobody else will perceive (Georges would like to
+see them, no doubt), her extreme kindness will pardon them. A
+commonplace example of flattery this? Well, perhaps not. One somehow
+sees, across the rhetoric, the blue eyes of Anne Genevi&egrave;ve and the
+bristling mustachios and "swashing outside" and mighty rapier of
+Georges; and the thing becomes alive with the life of a not ungracious
+past, the ills of which were, after all, more or less common to all
+times, and its charms (like the charms of all things and persons
+charming) its own.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The "Address to the Reader."</div>
+
+<p>But the Address to the Reader, though it discards those "temptations of
+young ladies" (Madame de Longueville can never have been old) which Dr.
+Johnson recognised, and also the companion attractions of Cape and
+Sword, is of perhaps directly greater importance for our special and
+legitimate purpose. Here the brother and sister (probably the sister
+chiefly) develop some of the principles of their bold adventure, and
+they are of no small interest. It is allowed that the varying accounts
+of Cyrus (in which, as almost every one with the slightest tincture of
+education<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> must be aware, doctors differ remarkably), at least those
+of Herodotus and Xenophon (they do not, or she does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> not, seem to have
+known Ctesias), are confounded, and selected <i>ad libitum</i> and <i>secundum
+artem</i> only. Further "lights" are given by the selection of the
+"Immortal Heliodorus" and "the great Urf&eacute;" as patterns and patrons of
+the work. In fact, to any expert in the reading and criticism of novels
+it is clear that a great principle has been&mdash;imperfectly but
+somehow&mdash;laid hold of.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The opening of the "business."</div>
+
+<p>Perhaps, however, "laid hold of" is too strong; we should do better by
+borrowing from Dante and saying that the author or authors have
+"glimpsed the Panther,"&mdash;have seen that a novel ought not to be a mere
+chronicle, unselected and miscellaneous, but a work which, whether it
+has actual unity of plot or not, has unity of interest, and will deal
+with its facts so as to secure that interest. At first, indeed, they
+plunge us into the middle of matters quite excitingly, though perhaps
+not without more definite suggestion, both to them and to us, of the
+"immortal" Heliodorus. The hero, who still bears his false name of
+Artam&egrave;ne,<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> appears at the head of a small army, the troops of
+Cyaxares of Media; and, at the mouth of a twisting valley, suddenly sees
+before him the town of Sinope in flames, the shipping in the harbour
+blazing likewise, all but one bark, which seems to be flying from more
+than the conflagration. A fine comic-opera situation follows; for while
+Artam&egrave;ne is trying to subdue the fire he is attacked by the traitor
+Arib&eacute;e, general under the King of Assyria, who is himself shut up in a
+tower and seems to be hopelessly cut off from rescue by the fire. The
+invincible hero, however, subdues at once the rebel and the destroying
+element; captures the Assyrian, who is not only his enemy and that of
+his master Cyaxares, but his Rival (the word has immense importance in
+these romances, and is always honoured with a capital there), and learns
+that the escaping galley carried with it his beloved Mandane, daughter
+of Cyaxares, of whom he is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> in quest, and who has been abducted from her
+abductor and lover by another, Prince Mazare of Sacia.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The ups and downs of the general conduct of the story.</div>
+
+<p>All this is lively and business-like enough, and one feels rather a
+brute in making the observation (necessary, however) that Artam&egrave;ne talks
+too much and not in the right way. When things in general are "on the
+edge of a razor" and one is a tried and skilful soldier, one does not,
+except on the stage, pause to address the unjust Gods, and inquire
+whether they have consented to the destruction of the most beautiful
+princess in the world; discuss with one's friends the reduction into
+cinders<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> of the adorable Mandane, and further enquire, without the
+slightest chance of answer, "Alas! unjust Rival! hast thou not thought
+rather of thine own preservation than of hers?" However, for a time, the
+incidents do carry off the verbiage, and for nearly a hundred small
+pages there is no great cause for complaint. It is the style of the
+book; and if you do not like it you must "seek another inn." But what
+succeeds, for the major part of the first of the twenty volumes,<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a> is
+open to severer criticisms. We fall into interminable discussions,
+<i>r&eacute;cits</i>, and the like, on the subject of the identity of Artam&egrave;ne and
+Cyrus, and we see at once the imperfect fashion in which the nature of
+the novel is conceived. That elaborate explanation&mdash;necessary in
+history, philosophy, and other "serious" works&mdash;cannot be cut down too
+much in fiction, is one truth that has not been learnt.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a> That the
+stuffing of the story with large patches of solid history or
+pseudo-history is wrong and disenchanting has not been learnt either;
+and this is the less surprising and the more pardonable in that very
+few, if indeed any, of the masters and mistresses of the novel, later
+and greater than Georges and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> Madeleine de Scud&eacute;ry, have not refused to
+learn it or have not carelessly forgotten the learning. Even Scott
+committed the fault sometimes, though never in his very best work.
+Dumas&mdash;when he went out and left the "young men" to fill in, and stayed
+too long, and made them fill in too much&mdash;did it constantly. Yet again,
+that mixture of excess and defect in talking, which has been noted
+already, becomes more and more trying in connection with the previously
+mentioned faults and others. Of <i>mere</i> talk there is enough and
+immensely to spare; but it is practically never real dialogue, still
+less real conversation. It is harangue, narrative, soliloquy, what you
+will, in the less lively theatrical forms of speech watered out in
+prose, with "passing of compliments" in the most gentlefolkly manner,
+and a spice of "Ph&eacute;bus" or Euphuism now and then. But it is never real
+personal talk,<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> while as for conveying the action <i>by</i> the talk as
+the two great masters above mentioned and nearly all others of their
+kind do, there is no vestige of even an attempt at the feat, or a
+glimpse of its desirableness.</p>
+
+<p>Again, one sees before long that of one priceless quality&mdash;a sense of
+humour&mdash;we shall find, though there is a little mild wit, especially in
+the words of the ladies named in the note, no trace in the book, but a
+"terrible <i>minus</i> quantity." I do not know that the late Sir William
+Gilbert was a great student of literature&mdash;of classical literature, to
+judge from the nomenclature of <i>Pygmalion and Galatea</i> mentioned above,
+he certainly was not. But his eyes would surely have glistened at the
+unconscious and serious anticipation of his own methods at their most
+Gilbertian, had he ever read pp. 308 <i>sqq.</i> of this first volume. Here
+not only do Cyrus and a famous pirate, by boarding with irresistible
+valour on each side, "exchange ships," and so find themselves at once to
+have gained the enemy's and lost their own, but this remarkable
+man&oelig;uvre is repeated more than twenty times without advantage on
+either side&mdash;or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> without apparently any sensible losses on either side.
+From which it would appear that both contented themselves with displays
+of agility in climbing from vessel to vessel, and did nothing so
+impolite as to use their "javelins, arrows, and cutlasses" (of which,
+nevertheless, we hear) against the persons of their competitors in such
+agility on the other side. It did come to an end somehow after some
+time; but one is quite certain that if Mr. Crummles had had the means of
+presenting such an admirable spectacle on any boards, he never would
+have contented himself without several encores of the whole twenty
+operations.</p>
+
+<p>An experienced reader, therefore, will not need to spend many hours
+before he appreciates pretty thoroughly what he has to expect&mdash;of good,
+of bad, and of indifferent&mdash;from this famous book. It is, though in a
+different sense from Montaigne's, a <i>livre de bonne foi</i>. And we must
+remember that the readers whom it directly addressed expected from books
+of this kind "pastime" in the most literal and generous, if also
+humdrum, sense of the word; noble sentiments, perhaps a little learning,
+possibly a few hidden glances at great people not of antiquity only. All
+these they got here, most faithfully supplied according to their demand.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Extracts&mdash;the introduction of Cyrus to Mandane.</div>
+
+<p>Probably nothing will give the reader, who does not thus read for
+himself, a better idea of the book than some extract translations,
+beginning with Artam&egrave;ne's first interview with Mandane,<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a> going on to
+his reflections thereon, and adding a perhaps slightly shortened version
+of the great fight recounted later, in which again some evidence of the
+damaging absence of humour, and some suggestions as to the originals of
+divers well-known parodies, will be found. (It must be remembered that
+these are all parts of an enormous <i>r&eacute;cit</i> by Chrisante, one of
+Artam&egrave;ne's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> confidants and captains, to the King of Hircania, a monarch
+doubtless inured to hardships in the chase of his native tigers, or
+requiring some sedative as a change from it.)</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>No sooner had the Princess seen my Master than she rose, and
+prepared to receive him with much kindness and much joy,
+having already heard, by Arbaces, the service he had done to
+the King, her father. Artam&egrave;ne then made her two deep bows,
+and coming closer to her, but with all the respect due to a
+person of her condition, he kissed [<i>no doubt the hem of</i>]
+her robe, and presented to her the King's letter, which she
+read that very instant. When she had done, he was going to
+begin the conversation with a compliment, after telling her
+what had brought him; but the Princess anticipated him in
+the most obliging manner. "What Divinity, generous
+stranger," said she, "has brought you among us to save all
+Cappadocia by saving its King? and to render him a service
+which the whole of his servants could not have rendered?"
+"Madam," answered Artam&egrave;ne, "you are right in thinking that
+some Divinity has led me hither; and it must have been some
+one of those beneficent Divinities who do only good to men,
+since it has procured me the honour of being known to you,
+and the happiness of being chosen by Fortune to render to
+the King a slight service, which might, no doubt, have been
+better done him by any other man." "Modesty," said the
+Princess (smiling and turning towards the ladies who were
+nearest her), "is a virtue which belongs so essentially to
+our own sex, that I do not know whether I ought to allow
+this generous stranger so unjustly to rob us of it, or&mdash;not
+content with possessing eminently that valour to which we
+must make no pretension&mdash;to try to be as modest when he is
+spoken to of the fineness of his actions as reasonable women
+ought to be when they are praised for their beauty. For my
+part," she added, looking at Artam&egrave;ne, "I confess I find
+your proceeding a little unfair. And I do not think that I
+ought to allow it, or to deprive myself of the power of
+praising you infinitely, although you cannot endure it."
+"Persons like you," retorted Artam&egrave;ne, but with profound
+respect, "ought to receive praise from all the earth, and
+not to give it lightly. 'Tis a thing, Madam, of which it is
+not pleasant to have to repeat; for which reason I beg you
+not to expose yourself to such a danger. Wait, Madam, till I
+have the honour of being a little better known to you."</p></div>
+
+<p>There are several pages more of this <i>carte</i> and <i>tierce</i> of compliment;
+but perhaps a degenerate and impatient age may desire that we should
+pass to the next subject.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> Whether it is right or not in so desiring may
+perhaps be discussed when the three samples have been given.</p>
+
+<p>Artam&egrave;ne has been dismissed with every mark of favour, and lodged in a
+pavilion overlooking the garden. When he is alone&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class="sidenote">His soliloquy in the pavilion.</div>
+
+<p>After having passed and re-passed all these things over
+again in his imagination, "Ye gods!" said he, "if, when she
+is so lovable, it should chance that I cannot make her love
+me, what would become of the wretched Artam&egrave;ne? But," and he
+caught himself up suddenly, "since she seems capable of
+appreciating glory and services, let us continue to act as
+we have begun! and let us do such great deeds that, even if
+her inclination resisted, esteem may introduce us, against
+her will, into her heart! For, after all, whatever men may
+say, and whatever I may myself have said, one may give a
+little esteem to what one will never in the least love; but
+I do not think one can give much esteem to what will never
+earn a little love. Let us hope, then; let us hope! let us
+make ourselves worthy to be pitied if we are not worthy to
+be loved."</p></div>
+
+<p>After which somewhat philosophical meditation it is not surprising that
+he should be informed by one of his aides-de-camp that the Princess was
+in the garden. For what were Princesses made? and for what gardens?</p>
+
+<p>The third is a longer passage, but it shall be subjected to that kind of
+<i>cento</i>ing which has been found convenient earlier in this volume.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class="sidenote">The Fight of the Four Hundred.</div>
+
+<p>[<i>The dispute between the kings of Cappadocia on the one
+hand and of Pontus on the other has been referred to a
+select combat of two hundred men a side. Artam&egrave;ne, of
+course, obtains the command of the Cappadocians, to the
+despair of his explosive but not ungenerous rival, "Philip
+Dastus." After a very beautiful interview with Mandane
+(where, once more, the most elegant compliments pass between
+these gentlefolkliest of all heroes and heroines) and divers
+preliminaries, the fight comes off.</i>]<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> They began to
+advance with heads lowered, without cries or noise of any
+kind, but in a silence which struck terror. As soon as they
+were near enough to use their javelins, they launched them
+with such violence that [<i>a slight bathos</i>] these flying
+weapons had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> a pretty great effect on both sides, but much
+greater on that of the Cappadocians than on the other. Then,
+sword in hand and covered by their shields, they came to
+blows, and Artam&egrave;ne, as we were informed, immolated the
+first victim [<i>but how about the javelin "effect"?</i>] in this
+bloody sacrifice. For, having got in front of all his
+companions by some paces, he killed, with a mighty
+sword-stroke, the first who offered resistance. [<i>Despite
+this, the general struggle continues to go against the
+Cappadocians, though Artam&egrave;ne's exploits alarm one of the
+enemy, named Artane, so much that he skulks away to a
+neighbouring knoll. At last</i>] things came to such a point
+that Artam&egrave;ne found himself with fourteen others against
+forty; so I leave you to judge, Sir [<i>Chrisante parle
+toujours</i>], whether the party of the King of Pontus did not
+believe they had conquered, and whether the Cappadocians had
+not reason to think themselves beaten. But as, in this
+fight, it was not allowed either to ask or to give quarter,
+and was necessary either to win or to die, the most
+despairing became the most valiant. [<i>The next stage is,
+that in consequence of enormous efforts on his part, the
+hero finds himself and his party ten to ten, which
+"equality" naturally cheers them up. But the wounds of the
+Cappadocians are the severer; the ten on their side become
+seven, with no further loss to the enemy, and at last
+Artam&egrave;ne finds himself, after three hours' fighting, alone
+against three, though only slightly wounded. He wisely uses
+his great agility in retiring and dodging; separates one
+enemy from the other two, and kills him; attacks the two
+survivors, and, one luckily stumbling over a buckler, kills
+a second, so that at last the combat is single. During this
+time the coward Artane abstains from intervening, all the
+more because the one surviving champion of Pontus is a
+personal rival of his, and because, by a very ingenious
+piece of casuistry, he persuades himself that the two
+combatants are sure to kill each other, and he, Artane,
+surviving, will obtain the victory for self and country!</i>]</p></div>
+
+<p>He is nearly right; but not quite. For after Artam&egrave;ne has wounded the
+Pontic Pharnaces in six places, and Pharnaces Artam&egrave;ne in four (for we
+wound "by the card" here), the hero runs Pharnaces through the heart,
+receiving only a thigh-wound in return. He flourishes both swords, cries
+"I have conquered!" and falls in a faint from loss of blood. Artane
+thinks him dead, and without caring to come close and "mak sicker," goes
+off to claim the victory. But Artam&egrave;ne revives, finds himself alone,
+and, with what strength he has left, piles the arms of the dead
+together, writes with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> his own blood on a silver shield&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">TO<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">JUPITER<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">GUARDIAN OF TROPHIES,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and lies beside it as well as he can. The false news deceives for a
+short time, but when the stipulated advance to the field takes place on
+both sides, the discovery of the surviving victor introduces a new
+complication, from which we may for the moment abstain.</p>
+
+<p>The singlestick rattle of compliment in the interview first given, and
+the rather obvious and superfluous meditations of the second, may seem,
+if not exactly disgusting, tedious and jejune. But the "Fight of the
+Four Hundred" is not frigid; and it is only fair to say that, after the
+rather absurd passage of <i>chass&eacute; crois&eacute;</i> on ship-board quoted or at
+least summarised earlier, the capture of Artam&egrave;ne by numbers and his
+surrender to the generous corsair Thrasybulus are not ill told, while
+there are several other good fights before you come to the end of this
+very first volume. There is, moreover, an elaborate portrait of the
+Princess, evidently intended to "pick up" that vaguer one of Madame de
+Longueville in the Preface, but with the blue of the eyes here
+fearlessly specified. Here also does the celebrated Philidaspes (most
+improperly, if it had not been for the justification to be given later,
+transmogrified in the above-mentioned passage by Major Bellenden into
+"Philip Dastus? Philip Devil") make his appearance. The worst of it is
+that most, if not the whole, is done by the <i>r&eacute;cit</i> delivered, as noted
+above, by Chrisante, one of those representatives of the no less
+faithful than strong Gyas and Cloanthus, whom imitation of the ancients
+has imposed on Scud&eacute;ry and his sister, and inflicted on their readers.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The abstract resumed.</div>
+
+<p>The story of the Cappadocian-Pontic fight<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a> is continued in the
+second volume of the First Part by the expected delivery of harangues
+from the two claimants,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> and the obligatory, but to Artane very
+unwelcome, single combat. He is, of course, vanquished and pardoned by
+his foe,<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a> making, if not full, sufficient confession; and it is not
+surprising to hear that the King of Pontus requests to see no more of
+him. The rest&mdash;for it must never be forgotten that all this is "throwing
+back"&mdash;then turns to the rivalry of Artam&egrave;ne and Philidaspes for the
+love of Mandane, while she (again, of course) has not the faintest idea
+that either is in love with her. Philidaspes, who (still, of course) is
+not Philidaspes at all, is a rough customer&mdash;(in fact the Major hardly
+did him injustice in calling him "Philip Devil"&mdash;betraying also perhaps
+some knowledge of the text), and it comes to a tussle. This rather
+resembles what the contemptuous French early Romantics called <i>une
+boxade</i> than a formal duel, and Artam&egrave;ne stuns his man with a blow of
+the flat. Cyaxares<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> is very angry, and imprisons them both, not yet
+realising their actual fault. It does not matter much to Artam&egrave;ne, who
+in prison can think, aloud and in the most beautiful "Ph&eacute;bus," of
+Mandane. It matters perhaps a little more to the reader; for a courteous
+jailer, Aglatidas, takes the occasion to relate his own woes in a
+"History of Aglatidas and Amestris," which completes the second volume
+of the First Part in three hundred and fifty mortal pages to itself.</p>
+
+<p>The first volume of the Second Part returns to the main story, or rather
+the main series of <i>r&eacute;cits</i>; for, Chrisante being not unnaturally
+exhausted after talking for a thousand pages or so, Feraulas, another of
+Artam&egrave;ne's men, takes up the running. The prisoners are let out, and
+Mandane reconciles them, after which&mdash;as another but later contemporary
+remarks (again of other things, but probably with some reminiscence of
+this)&mdash;they become much more mortal enemies than before. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+reflections and soliloquies of Artam&egrave;ne recur; but a not unimportant,
+although subordinate, new character appears&mdash;not as the first example,
+but as the foremost representative, in the novel, of the great figure of
+the "confidante"&mdash;in Mart&eacute;sie, Mandane's chief maid of honour. Nobody,
+it is to be hoped, wants an elaborate account of the part she plays, but
+it should be said that she plays it with much more spirit and
+individuality than her mistress is allowed to show. Then, according to
+the general plan of all these books, in which fierce wars and faithful
+loves alternate, there is more fighting, and though Artam&egrave;ne is
+victorious (as how should he not be, save now and then to prevent
+monotony?) he disappears and is thought dead. Of course Mandane cries,
+and confesses to the confidante, being entirely "finished" by a very
+exquisite letter which Artam&egrave;ne has written before going into the
+doubtful battle. However, he is (yet once more, of course) not dead at
+all. What (as that most sagacious of men, the elder Mr. Weller, would
+have said)'d have become of the other seventeen volumes if he had been?
+There is one of the <i>quiproquos</i> or misunderstandings which are as
+necessary to this kind of novel as the flirtations and the fisticuffs,
+brought about by the persistence of an enemy princess in taking Artam&egrave;ne
+for her son Spithridates;<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a> but all comes right for the time, and the
+hero returns to his friends. The plot, however, thickens. An accident
+informs Artam&egrave;ne that Philidaspes is really Prince of Assyria, sure to
+become King when his mother, Nitocris, dies or abdicates, and that,
+being as he is, and as Artam&egrave;ne knows already, desperately in love with
+Mandane, he has formed a plot for carrying her off. The difficulties in
+the way of preventing this are great, because, though the hero is
+already aware that he is Cyrus, it is for many reasons undesirable to
+inform Cyaxares of the fact; and at last Philidaspes, helped by the
+traitor Arib&eacute;e (<i>v. sup.</i>), succeeds in the abduction, after an
+interlude in which a fresh Rival,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> with a still larger R, the King of
+Pontus himself, turns up; and an immense episode, in which Thomyris,
+Queen of Scythia, appears, not yet in her more or less historical part
+of victress of Cyrus. She is here only a young sovereign, widowed in her
+earliest youth, extremely beautiful (see a portrait of her <i>inf.</i>), who
+has never yet loved, but who falls instantly in love with Cyrus himself
+(when he is sent to her court), and is rather a formidable person to
+deal with, inasmuch as, besides having great wealth and power, she has
+established a diplomatic system of intrigue in other countries, which
+the newest German or other empire might envy. By the end of this volume,
+however, the Artam&egrave;ne-Cyrus confusion is partly cleared up (though
+Cyaxares is not yet made aware of the facts), and the hero is sent after
+Mandane, to be disappointed at Sinope, in the fashion recounted some
+thousand or two pages before.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The oracle to Philidaspes.</div>
+
+<p>With the beginning of vol. iv. (that is to say, part ii. vol. ii.) we
+return, though still in retrospect, to the direct fate of Mandane.
+Nitocris is dead, Philidaspes has succeeded to the crown of Assyria, and
+has carried Mandane off to his own dominions. The situation with so
+robustious a person as this prince may seem awkward, and indeed, as is
+observed in a later part of the book, the heroine's repeated sojourns
+(there are three if not four of them in all<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a>) in the complete power
+of one of the Rivals, with a large R, are very trying to Cyrus. However,
+such a shocking thing as violence is hardly hinted at, and the Princess
+always succeeds, as the Creole lady in <i>Newton Forster</i> said she did
+with the pirates, in "temporising," while her abductors confine
+themselves for the most part to the finest "Ph&eacute;bus." Even the fiery
+Philidaspes, though he breaks out sometimes, conveys his wish that
+Mandane should accompany him to Babylon by pointing out that "the
+Euphrates is jealous of the Tigris for having first had the honour of
+her presence,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> and that "the First City of the World ought clearly to
+possess the most illustrious princess of the Earth." Of course, if there
+is any base person who cannot derive an Aramisian satisfaction (<i>v.
+sup.</i>) from such things as this, he had better abstain from the <i>Cyrus</i>.
+But happier souls they please&mdash;not exquisitely, perhaps, or
+tumultuously, but still well&mdash;with a mild tickle which is not
+unvoluptuous. One is even a very little sorry for Philip Dastus when he
+begs his cruel idol to write to him the single word <span class="smcap">Esperez</span>, and
+meanwhile kindly puts it in capitals and a line to itself. Almost
+immediately afterwards an oracle juggles with him in fashion delightful
+to himself, and puzzling to everybody except the intelligent reader,
+who, it is hoped, will see the double meaning at once.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Il t'est permis d'esp&eacute;rer<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">De la faire soupirer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Malgr&eacute; sa haine:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Car un jour entre ses bras,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Tu rencontreras<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">La fin de ta peine.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Alas! without going further (upon honour and according to fact), one
+sees the <i>other</i> explanation&mdash;that Mandane will have to perform the
+uncomfortable duty&mdash;often assigned to heroines&mdash;of having Philidaspes
+die in her lap.</p>
+
+<p>For the present, however, only discomfiture, not death, awaits him. The
+Medes blockade Babylon to recover their princess; it suffers from
+hunger, and Philidaspes, with Mandane and the chivalrous Sacian Prince
+Mazare, whom we have heard of before, escapes to Sinope. Then the events
+recorded in the very beginning happen, and Mandane, after escaping the
+flames of Sinope through Mazare's abduction of her by sea, and suffering
+shipwreck, falls into the power of the King of Pontus. This calls a halt
+in the main story; and, as before, a "Troisi&egrave;me Livre" consists of
+another huge inset&mdash;the hugest yet&mdash;of seven hundred pages this time,
+describing an unusually, if not entirely, independent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> subject&mdash;the
+loves and fates of a certain Philosipe and a certain Polisante. This
+volume contains a rather forcible boating-scene, which supplies the
+theme for the old frontispiece.</p>
+
+<p>Refreshed as usual by this excursion,<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a> the author returns (in vol.
+v., bk. i., chap. iii.) to Cyrus, who is once more in peril, and in a
+worse one than ever. Cyaxares, arriving at Sinope, does not find his
+daughter, but does discover that Artam&egrave;ne, whom he does not yet know to
+be Cyrus and heir to Persia, is in love with her. Owing chiefly to the
+wiles of a villain, M&eacute;trobate, he arrests the Prince, and is on the
+point of having him executed, despite the protests of the allied kings.
+But the whole army, with the Persian contingent at its head, assaults
+the castle, and rescues Cyrus, after the traitor M&eacute;trobate has tried to
+double his treachery and get Cyaxares assassinated. Nobody who remembers
+the <i>Letter of Advice</i> already quoted will doubt what the conduct of
+Cyrus is. He only accepts the rescue in order that he may post himself
+at the castle gate, and threaten to kill anybody who attacks Cyaxares.</p>
+
+<p>After this burst, which is really exciting in a way, we must expect
+something more soporific. Mart&eacute;sie takes the place of her absent
+mistress to some extent, and a good deal of what might be mistaken for
+"Passerelle"<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> flirtation takes place, or would do so, if it were not
+that Cyrus would, of course, die rather than pay attention to anybody
+but Mandane herself, and that Feraulas, already mentioned as one of the
+Faithful Companions, is detailed as Mart&eacute;sie's lover. She is, however,
+installed as a sort of Vice-Queen of a wordy tourney between four
+unhappy lovers, who fill up the rest of the volume with their stories of
+"Amants<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> <i>In</i>fortun&eacute;s" (cf. the original title of the <i>Heptameron</i>),
+dealing respectively with and told by&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>(1) A lover who is loved, but separated from his mistress.</p>
+
+<p>(2) One who is unloved.</p>
+
+<p>(3) A jealous one.</p>
+
+<p>(4) One whose love is dead.<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p>
+
+<p>They do it moderately, in rather less than five hundred pages, and
+Mart&eacute;sie sums up in a manner worthy of any Mistress of the Rolls,
+contrasting their fates, and deciding very cleverly against the jealous
+man.</p>
+
+<p>The first twenty pages or so of the sixth volume (nominally iii. 2)
+afford a good example of the fashion in which, as may be observed more
+fully below, even an analysis of the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>, though a great
+advance on mere general description of it, must be still (unless it be
+itself intolerably voluminous) insufficient. Not very much actually
+"happens"; but if you simply skip, you miss a fresh illustration of
+magnanimity not only in Cyrus, but in a formerly mentioned character,
+Aglatidas, with reference to the heroine Amestris earlier inset in the
+tale (<i>v. sup.</i>). And this is an example of the new and sometimes very
+ingenious fashion in which these apparent excursions are turned into
+something like real episodes, or at any rate supply connecting threads
+of the whole, in a manner not entirely unlike that which some critics
+have so hastily and unjustly overlooked in Spenser. Then we have an
+imbroglio about forged letters, and a clearing-up of a former charge
+against the hero, and (still within the twenty pages) a very curious
+scene&mdash;the last for the time&mdash;of that flirtation-without-flirtation
+between Cyrus and Mart&eacute;sie. She wants to have back a picture of Mandane,
+which she has lent him to worship; and he replies, looking at her
+"attentively" (one wonders whether Mandane, if present, would have been
+entirely satisfied with his "attention"), addresses her as "Cruel
+Person," and asks her (he is just setting out for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> Armenian war) how
+she thinks he can conquer when she takes away what should make him
+invincible. To which replies Miss Mart&eacute;sie, "You have gained so many
+victories [<i>ahem!</i>] without this help, that it would seem you have no
+need of it." This is very nice, and Mart&eacute;sie, who is herself, as
+previously observed, quite nice throughout, lets him have the picture
+after all. But Cyrus, for once rather ungraciously, will not allow her
+lover, and his henchman, Feraulas to escort her home; first, because he
+wants Feraulas's services himself, and secondly, because it is unjust
+that Feraulas should be happy with Mart&eacute;sie when Cyrus is miserable
+without Mandane&mdash;an argument which, whether slightly selfish or not, is
+at any rate in complete keeping with the whole atmosphere of the book.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The advent of Araminta.</div>
+
+<p>Now, as this is by no means a very exceptional, certainly not a unique,
+score of pages, and as it has taken almost a whole one of ours to give a
+rather imperfect notion of its contents, it follows that it would take
+about six hundred, if not more, to do justice to the ten or twelve
+thousand of the original. Which (in one of the most immortal of
+formulas) "is impossible." We must fall back, therefore, on the system
+already pursued for the rest of this volume, and perhaps even contract
+its application in some cases. A rash promise of the now entirely, if
+not also rather insanely,<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> generous Prince not to marry Mandane
+without fighting Philidaspes, or rather the King of Assyria, beforehand,
+is important; and an at last minute description of Cyrus's person and
+equipment as he sets out (on one of the proudest and finest horses that
+ever was, with a war-dress the superbest that can be imagined, and with
+Mandane's magnificent scarf put on for the first time) is not quite
+omissible. But then things become intricate. Our old friend Spithridates
+comes back, and has first love affairs and afterwards an enormous
+<i>r&eacute;cit</i>-episode<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> with a certain Princess of Pontus, whom Cyrus,
+reminding one slightly of Bentley on Mr. Pope's <i>Homer</i> and Tommy Merton
+on Cider, pronounces to be <i>belle, blonde, blanche et bien faite</i>, but
+not Mandane; and who has the further charm of possessing, for the first
+time in literature if one mistakes not, the renowned name of Araminta. A
+pair of letters between these two will be useful as specimens, and to
+some, it may be hoped, agreeable in themselves.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Spithridates to the Princess Araminta</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Her correspondence with Spithridates.</div>
+
+<p>I depart, Madam, because you wish it: but, in departing, I
+am the most unhappy of all men. I know not whither I go; nor
+when I shall return; nor even if you wish that I <i>should</i>
+return; and yet they tell me I must live and hope. But I
+should not know how to do either the one or the other,
+unless you order me to do both by two lines in your own
+hand. Therefore I beg them of you, divine Princess&mdash;in the
+name of an illustrious person, now no more, [<i>her brother
+Sinnesis, who had been a great friend of his</i>], but who will
+live for ever in the memory of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Spithridates</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>[<i>He can hardly have hoped for anything better than the
+following answer, which is much more "downright Dunstable"
+than is usual here.</i>]</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Araminta to Spithridates</span></p>
+
+<p>Live as long as it shall please the Gods to allow you. Hope
+as long as Araminta lives&mdash;she begs you: and even if you
+yourself wish to live, she orders you to do so.</p>
+
+<p>[<i>In other words he says, "My own Araminta, say 'Yes'!" and
+she does. This attitude necessarily involves the despair of
+a Rival, who writes thus:</i>]</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pharnaces to the Princess Araminta</span></p>
+
+<p>If Fortune seconds my designs, I go to a place where I shall
+conquer <i>and</i> die&mdash;where I shall make known, by my generous
+despair, that if I could not deserve your affection by my
+services, I shall have at least not made myself unworthy of
+your compassion by my death.</p>
+
+<p>[<i>And, to do him justice, he "goes and does it."</i>]</p></div>
+
+<p>This episode, however, did not induce Mademoiselle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> Madeleine to break
+her queer custom of having something of the same kind in the Third Book
+of every Part. For though there is some "business," it slips into
+another regular "History," this time of Prince Thrasybulus, a naval
+hero, of whom we have often heard, and his Alcionide, not a bad name for
+a sailor's mistress.<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a> Finally, we come back to more events of a
+rather troublesome kind: for the <i>ci-devant</i> Philidaspes most
+inconveniently insists in taking part in the rescuing expedition,
+which&mdash;saving scandal of great ones&mdash;is very much as if Mr. William
+Sikes should insist in helping to extract booty from Mr. Tobias Crackit.
+And we finally leave Cyrus in a decidedly awkward situation morally, and
+the middle of a dark wood physically.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Some interposed comments.</div>
+
+<p>Here, according to that paulo-post-future precedent which she did so
+much to create, the authoress was quite justified in leaving him at the
+end of a volume; and perhaps the present historian is, to compare small
+things with great, equally justified in heaving-to (to borrow from Mr.
+Kipling) and addressing a small critical sermon to such crew as he may
+have attracted. We have surveyed not quite a third of the book; but this
+ought in any case&mdash;<i>teste</i> the loved and lost "three-decker" which the
+allusion just made concerns&mdash;to give us a notion of the author's quality
+and of his or her <i>faire</i>. It should not be very difficult for anybody,
+unless the foregoing analysis has been very clumsily done, to discern
+considerable method in Madeleine's mild madness, and, what is more, not
+a little originality. The method has, no doubt, as it was certain to
+have in the circumstances, a regular irregularity, which is, or would be
+in anybody but a novice, a little clumsy: and the originality may want
+some precedent study to discover it. But both are there. The skeleton of
+this vast work may perhaps be fairly constructed from what has already
+been dissected of the body; and the method of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> clothing the skeleton
+reveals itself without much difficulty. You have the central idea in the
+loves of Cyrus and Mandane, which are to be made as true as possible,
+but also running as roughly as may be. Moreover, whether they run rough
+or smooth, you are to keep them in suspense as long as you possibly can.
+The means of doing this are laboriously varied and multiplied. The
+clumsiest of them&mdash;the perpetual intercalation or interpolation of
+"side-shows" in the way of <i>Histoires</i>&mdash;annoys modern readers
+particularly, and has, as a rule, since been itself beautifully and
+beneficently lessened, in some cases altogether discarded, or
+changed&mdash;in emancipation from the influence of the "Unities"&mdash;to the
+form of second plots, not ostentatiously severed from the main one. But,
+as has been pointed out, a great deal of trouble is at any rate taken to
+knit them to the main plot itself, if not actually and invariably to
+incorporate them therewith; and the means of this are again not
+altogether uncraftsmanlike. Sometimes, as in the case of Spithridates,
+the person, or one of the persons, is introduced first in the main
+history; his own particular concerns are dealt with later, and, for good
+or for evil, he returns to the central scheme. Sometimes, as in that of
+Amestris, you have the <i>Histoire</i> before the personage enters the main
+story. Then there is the other device of varying direct narrative, as to
+this main story itself, with <i>R&eacute;cit</i>; and always you have a careful
+peppering in of new characters, by <i>histoire</i>, by <i>r&eacute;cit</i>, or by the
+main story, to create fresh interests. Again, there is the contrast of
+"business," as we have called it&mdash;fighting and politics&mdash;with
+love-making and miscellaneous fine talk. And, lastly, there are&mdash;what,
+if they were not whelmed in such an ocean of other things, would attract
+more notice&mdash;the not unfrequent individual phrases and situations which
+have interest in themselves. It must surely be obvious that in these
+things are great possibilities for future use, even if the actual
+inventor has not made the most of them.</p>
+
+<p>Their originality may perhaps deserve a little more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> comment.<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> The
+mixture of secondary plots might, by a person more given to theorise
+than the present historian&mdash;who pays his readers the compliment of
+supposing that that excessively easy and therefore somewhat negligible
+business can be done by themselves if they wish&mdash;be traced to an
+accidental feature of the later mediaeval romances. In these the
+congeries of earlier texts, which the compiler had not the wits, or at
+least the desire, to systematise, provided something like it; but
+required the genius of a Spenser, or the considerable craft of a
+Scud&eacute;ry, to throw it into shape and add the connecting links. Many of
+the other things are to be found in the Scud&eacute;ry romance practically for
+the first time. And the suffusion of the whole with a new tone and
+colour of at least courtly manners is something more to be counted, as
+well as the constant exclusion of the clumsy "conjuror's supernatural"
+of the <i>Amadis</i> group. That the fairy story sprung up, to supply the
+always graceful supernatural element in a better form, is a matter which
+will be dealt with later in this chapter. The oracles, etc., of the
+<i>Cyrus</i> belong, of course, to the historical, not the imaginative side
+of the presentation; but may be partly due to the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, the
+influence of which was, we saw, admitted.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Analysis resumed.</div>
+
+<p>It may seem unjust that the more this complication of interests
+increases, the less complete should be the survey of them; and yet a
+moment's thought will show that this is almost a necessity. Moreover,
+the methods do not vary much; it is only that they are applied to a
+larger and larger mass of accumulating material. The first volume of the
+Fourth Part, the seventh of the twenty, follows&mdash;though with that
+absence of slavish repetition which has been allowed as one of the
+graces of the book&mdash;the general scheme. Cyrus gets out of the wood
+literally, but not figuratively; for when he and the King of Assyria
+have joined forces, to pursue that rather paradoxical alliance which is
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> run in couple with rivalry for love and to end in a personal combat,
+they see on the other side of a river a chariot, in which Mandane
+probably or certainly is. But the river is unbridged and unfordable, and
+no boats can be had; so that, after trying to swim it and nearly getting
+drowned, they have to relinquish the game that had been actually in
+sight. Next, two things happen. First, Mart&eacute;sie appears (as usually to
+our satisfaction), and in consequence of a series of accidents, shares
+and solaces Mandane's captivity. Then, on the other side, Panthea, Queen
+of Susiana, and wife of one of the enemy princes, falls into Cyrus's
+hands, and with Araminta (who is, it should have, if it has not been,
+said earlier, sister of the King of Pontus) furnishes valuable hostage
+for good treatment of Mandane and other Medo-Persian-Phrygian-Hircanian
+prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>Things having thus been fairly bustled up for a time, a <i>Histoire</i> is,
+of course, imminent, and we have it, of about usual length, concerning
+the Lydian Princess Palmis and a certain Cl&eacute;andre; while, even when this
+is done, we fall back, not on the main story, but once more on that of
+Aglatidas and Amestris, which is in a sad plight, for Amestris (who has
+been married against her will and is <i>maumari&eacute;e</i> too) thinks she is a
+widow, and finds she is not.</p>
+
+<p>It has just been mentioned that Palmis is a Lydian Princess; and before
+the end of this Part Croesus comes personally into the story, being the
+head of a formidable combination to supplant the King of Pontus, detain
+Mandane, and, if possible (as the well-known oracle, in the usual
+ambiguity (<i>v. inf.</i>), encourages him to hope), conquer the Medo-Persian
+empire and make it his own. But the <i>Histoire</i> mania&mdash;now further
+excited by consistence in working the personages so obtained in
+generally&mdash;is in great evidence, and "Lygdamis and Cl&eacute;onice" supply a
+large proportion of the early and all the middle of the eighth volume,
+the second of the Fourth Part. There is, however, much more business
+than usual at the end to make up for any slackness at the beginning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> In
+a side-action with the Lydians both Cyrus and the King of Assyria are
+captured by force of numbers, though the former is at once released by
+the Princess Palmis, as well as Artames, son of Cyrus's Phrygian ally,
+whom Croesus chooses to consider as a rebel, and intends to put to
+death. Here, however, the captive Queen and Princess, Panthea and
+Araminta, come into good play, and exercise strong and successful
+influence through the husband of the one and the brother of the other.
+But at the end of book, volume, and part we leave Cyrus once more in the
+dismals. For though he has actually seen Mandane he cannot get at her,
+and he has heard three apparently most unfavourable oracles; the
+Babylonian one, which was quoted above, and which he, like everybody
+else, takes as a promise of success to Philidaspes; the ambiguous
+Delphic forecast of "the fall of <i>an</i> Empire" to Croesus; and that of
+his own death at the hands of a hostile queen, the only one which,
+historically, was to be fulfilled in its apparent sense, while the
+others were not. He cares, indeed, not much about the two last, but
+infinitely about the first.</p>
+
+<p>At the opening of the Fifth Part (ninth volume) there is a short but
+curious "Address to the Reader," announcing the fulfilment of the first
+half of the promised production, and bidding him not be downhearted, for
+the first of the second half (the Sixth Part or eleventh volume of the
+whole) is actually at Press. It may be noticed that there is a swagger
+about these <i>avis</i> and such like things, which probably <i>is</i>
+attributable to Georges, and not to Madeleine.<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a></p>
+
+<p>The inevitable <i>Histoire</i> comes earlier than usual in this division, and
+is of unusual importance; for it deals with two persons of great
+distinction, and already introduced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> in the story, Queen Panthea and her
+husband Abradates. It is also one of the longer batch, running to some
+four hundred pages; and a notable part in it and in the future main
+story is played by one Doralise&mdash;a pretty name, which Dryden, making it
+prettier still by substituting a <i>c</i> for the <i>s</i>, borrowed for his most
+original and (with that earlier Florimel of <i>The Maiden Queen</i>, who is
+said to have been studied directly off Nell Gwyn) perhaps his most
+attractive heroine, the Doralice of <i>Marriage &agrave; la Mode</i>. Another
+important character, the villain of the sub-plot, is one Mexaris.<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a>
+At the end of the first instalment we leave Cyrus preparing elaborate
+machines of war to crush the Lydians.</p>
+
+<p>Early in Book II. we hear of a mysterious warrior on the enemy side whom
+nobody knows, who calls himself Telephanes, and whom Cyrus is very
+anxious to meet in battle, but for the time cannot. He is also
+frustrated in his challenge of the King of Pontus to fight for
+Mandane&mdash;a challenge of which Croesus will not hear. At last Telephanes
+turns out to be no less a person than Mazare, Prince of Sacia, whom we
+know already as one of the ever-multiplying lovers and abductors of the
+heroine; while, after a good deal of confused fighting, another inset
+<i>Histoire</i> of him closes the tenth volume (V. ii.). It is, however, only
+two hundred pages long&mdash;a mere parenthesis compared to others, and it
+leads up to his giving Cyrus a letter from Mandane&mdash;an act of generosity
+which Philidaspes, otherwise King of Assyria, frankly confesses that he,
+as another Rival, could never have done. After yet another <i>Histoire</i>
+(now a "four-some") of Belesis, Hermogenes, Cl&eacute;odare, and L&eacute;onice,
+Abradates changes sides, carrying us on to an "intricate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> impeach" of
+old and new characters, especially Araminta and Spithridates, and to the
+death in battle of the generous King of Susiana himself, and the grief
+of Panthea. There is, at the close of this volume, a rather interesting
+<i>Privil&egrave;ge du Roi</i>, signed by Conrart ("<i>le silencieux Conrart</i>"),
+sealed with "the great seal of yellow wax in a simple tail" (one ribbon
+or piece of ferret only?), and bestowing its rights "nonobstant Clameur
+de Haro, Charte Normande, et autres lettres contraires."</p>
+
+<p>The first volume of the Sixth Part (the eleventh of the whole and the
+first of what, as so many words of the kind are required, we may call
+the Second Division) has plenty of business&mdash;showing that the author or
+her adviser was also a business-like person&mdash;to commence the new
+venture. Cyrus, after being victorious in the field and just about to
+besiege Sardis in form, receives a "bolt from the blue" in the shape of
+a letter "From the unhappy Mandane to the faithless"&mdash;himself! She has
+learnt, she tells him, that his feelings towards her are changed,
+requests that she may no longer serve as a pretext for his ambition,
+and&mdash;rather straining the prerogatives assumed even by her nearest
+ancestresses in literature, the Polisardas and Miraguardas of the
+<i>Amadis</i> group, but scarcely dreamt of by the heroines of ancient Greek
+Romance&mdash;desires that he will send back to her father Cyaxares all the
+troops that he is, as she implies, commanding on false pretences.</p>
+
+<p>Now one half expects that Cyrus, in a transport of
+Amadisian-Euphuist-heroism, will comply with this very modest request.
+In fact it is open to any one to contend that, according to the
+strictest rules of the game, he ought to have done so and gone mad, or
+at least marooned himself in some desert island, in consequence. The
+sophistication, however, of the stage appears here. After a very natural
+sort of "Well, I never!" translated into proper heroic language, he sets
+to work to identify the person whom Mandane suspects to be her
+rival&mdash;for she has carefully abstained from naming anybody. And he
+asks&mdash;with an ingenious touch of self-confession which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> does the author
+great credit, if it was consciously laid on&mdash;whether it can be Panthea
+or Araminta, with both of whom he has, in fact, been, if not exactly
+flirting, carrying on (as the time itself would have said) a "commerce
+of respectful and obliging admiration." He has a long talk with his
+confidant Feraulas (whose beloved and really lovable Mart&eacute;sie is,
+unluckily, not at hand to illuminate the mystery), and then he writes as
+"The Unfortunate Cyrus to the Unjust Mandane," tells her pretty roundly,
+though, of course, still respectfully, that if she knew how things
+really were "she would think herself the cruellest and most unjust
+person in the world." [I should have added, "just as she is, in fact,
+the most beautiful."] She is, he says, his first and last passion, and
+he has never been more than polite to any one else. But she will kindly
+excuse his not complying with her request to send back his army until he
+has vanquished all his Rivals&mdash;where, no doubt, in the original, the
+capital was bigger and more menacing than ever, and was written with an
+appropriate gnashing of teeth.</p>
+
+<p>The traditional balance of luck and love, however, holds; and the armies
+of Croesus and the King of Pontus begin to melt away; so that, after a
+short but curious pastoral episode, they have to shut themselves up in
+the capital. The dead body of Abradates is now found, and his widow
+Panthea stabs herself upon it. This removes one of Mandane's possible
+causes of jealousy, but Araminta remains; and, as a matter of fact, it
+<i>is</i> this Princess on whom her suspicion has been cast, arising partly,
+though helped by makebates, from the often utilised personal resemblance
+between her actual lover, Prince Spithridates, and Cyrus. The
+treacherous King of Pontus has, in fact, shown her a letter from
+Araminta (his sister, be it remembered) which seems to encourage the
+idea.</p>
+
+<p>All this, however, and more fills but a hundred pages or so, and then we
+are as usual whelmed in a <i>Histoire de Timar&egrave;te et de Parth&eacute;nie</i>, which
+takes up four times the space, and finishes the First Book. The Second
+opens<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> smartly enough with the actual siege of Sardis; but we cannot get
+rid of Araminta (it is sad to have to wish that she was not "our own
+Araminta" quite so often) and Spithridates. Conversations between the
+still prejudiced Mandane and the Lydian Princess Palmis&mdash;a sensible and
+agreeable girl&mdash;are better; but from them we are hurled into a <i>Histoire
+de S&eacute;sostre</i> (the Egyptian prince, son of Amasis, who is now an ally of
+Cyrus) <i>et de Timar&egrave;te</i>, which not only fills the whole of the rest of
+the volume, but swells over into the next, being much occupied with the
+villainies of a certain Heracleon, who is at the time a wounded prisoner
+in Cyrus's Camp. The siege is kept up briskly, but Cyrus's courteous
+release of certain captives adds fuel to Mandane's wrath as having been
+procured by Araminta. He will do anything for Araminta! The releases
+themselves give rise to fresh "alarums and excursions," among which we
+again meet a pretty name (Candiope), borrowed by Dryden. Doralise is
+also much to the fore; and we have a regular <i>Histoire</i>, though a
+shorter one than usual, of <i>Arpalice and Thrasim&egrave;de</i>, which will, as
+some say, "bulk largely" later. The length of this part is, indeed,
+enormous, the double volume running to over fourteen hundred pages,
+instead of the usual ten or twelve. But its close is spirited and
+sufficiently interim-catastrophic. Cyrus discovers in the <i>enceinte</i> of
+Sardis the usual weak point&mdash;an apparently impregnable scarped rock,
+which has been weakly fortified and garrisoned&mdash;takes it by escalade in
+person with his best paladins, and after it the city.</p>
+
+<p>But of course he cannot expect to have it all his own way when not quite
+twelve-twentieths of the book are gone, and he finds that Mandane is
+gone likewise; the King of Pontus, who has practically usurped the
+authority of Croesus, having once more carried her off&mdash;perhaps not so
+entirely unwilling as before. Cyrus pursues, and while he is absent the
+King of Assyria (Philidaspes) shows himself even more of a "Philip
+Devil" than usual by putting the captive Lydian prince on a pyre,
+threatening to burn him if he will not reveal the place of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+Princess's flight, and actually having the torch applied. Of course
+Cyrus turns up at the nick of time, has the fire put out, rates the King
+of Assyria soundly for his violence, and apologises handsomely to
+Croesus. The notion of an apology for nearly roasting a man may appear
+to have its ludicrous side, but the way in which the historic pyre and
+the mention of Solon are brought in without discrediting the hero is
+certainly ingenious. The Mandane-hunt is renewed, but fruitlessly.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of Part VII. there are&mdash;according to the habit noticed,
+and in rather extra measure as regards "us" if not "them"&mdash;some
+interesting things. The first is an example&mdash;perhaps the best in the
+book&mdash;of the elaborate description (called in Greek rhetorical technique
+<i>ecphrasis</i>) which is so common in the Greek Romances. The subject is an
+extraordinarily beautiful statue of a woman which Cyrus sees in
+Croesus's gallery, and which will have sequels later. It, or part of it,
+may be given:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class="sidenote">The statue in the gallery at Sardis.</div>
+
+<p>But, among all these figures of gold, there was to be seen
+one of marble, so wonderful, that it obliged Cyrus to stay
+longer in admiring it than in contemplating any of the
+others, though it was not of such precious material. It is
+true that it was executed with such art, and represented
+such a beautiful person, as to prevent any strangeness in
+its charming a Prince whose eyes were so delicate and so
+capable of judging all beautiful objects. This statue was of
+life-size, placed upon a pedestal of gold, on the four sides
+of which were bas-reliefs of an admirable beauty. On each
+were seen captives, chained in all sorts of fashions, but
+chained only by little Loves, unsurpassably executed. As for
+the figure itself, it represented a girl about eighteen
+years old, but one of surprising and perfect beauty. Every
+feature of the face was marvellously fine;<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> her figure
+was at once so noble and so graceful that nothing more
+elegant<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a> could be seen; and her dress was at once so
+handsome and so unusual, that it had something of each of
+the usual garbs of Tyrian ladies, of nymphs, and of
+goddesses; but more particularly that of the Wingless
+Victory, as represented by the Athenians,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> with a simple
+laurel crown on her head. This statue was so well set on its
+base, and had such lively action, that it seemed actually
+animated; the face, the throat, the arms, and the hands were
+of white marble, as were the legs and feet, which were
+partly visible between the laces of the buskins she wore,
+and which were to be seen because, with her left hand, she
+lifted her gown a little, as if to walk more easily. With
+her right she held back a veil, fastened behind her head
+under the crown of laurel, as though to prevent its being
+carried away by the breeze, which seemed to agitate it. The
+whole of the drapery of the figure was made of
+divers-coloured marbles and jaspers; and, in particular, the
+gown of this fair Phoenician, falling in a thousand graceful
+folds, which still did not hide the exact proportion of her
+body, was of jasper, of a colour so deep that it almost
+rivalled Tyrian purple itself. A scarf, which passed
+negligently round her neck, and was fastened on the
+shoulder, was of a kind of marble, streaked with blue and
+white, which was very agreeable to the eye. The veil was of
+the same substance; but sculptured so artfully that it
+seemed as soft as mere gauze. The laurel crown was of green
+jasper, and the buskins, as well as the sash she wore, were,
+again of different hues. This sash brought together all the
+folds of the gown over the hips; below, they fell again more
+carelessly, and still showed the beauty of her figure. But
+what was most worthy of admiration in the whole piece was
+the spirit which animated it, and almost persuaded the
+spectators that she was just about to walk and talk. There
+was even a touch of art in her face, and a certain
+haughtiness in her attitude which made her seem to scorn the
+captives chained beneath her feet: while the sculptor had so
+perfectly realised the indefinable freshness, tenderness,
+and <i>embonpoint</i> of beautiful girls, that one almost knew
+her age.</p></div>
+
+<p>Then come two more startling events. A wicked Prince Phraortes bolts
+with the unwilling Araminta, and the King of Assyria (<i>alias</i>
+Philidaspes) slips away in search of Mandane on his own account&mdash;two
+things inconvenient to Cyrus in some ways, but balancing themselves in
+others. For if it is unpleasant to have a very violent and rather
+unscrupulous Rival hunting the beloved on the one hand, that beloved's
+jealousy, if not cured, is at least not likely to be increased by the
+disappearance of its object. This last, however, hits Spithridates, who
+is, as it has been and will be seen, the <i>souffre-douleur</i> of the book,
+much harder. And the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> double situation illustrates once more the
+extraordinary care taken in systematising&mdash;and as one might almost say
+<i>syllabising</i>&mdash;the book. It is almost impossible that there should not
+somewhere exist an actual syllabus of the whole, though, my habit being
+rather to read books themselves than books about them, I am not aware of
+one as a fact.<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a></p>
+
+<p>Another characteristic is also well illustrated in this context, and a
+further translated extract will show the curious, if not very recondite,
+love-casuistry which plays so large a part. But these French writers of
+the seventeenth century<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> did not know one-tenth of the matter that
+was known by their or others' mediaeval ancestors, by their English and
+perhaps Spanish contemporaries, or by writers in the nineteenth century.
+They were not "perfect in love-lore"; their <i>Liber Amoris</i> was, after
+all, little more than a fashion-book in divers senses of "fashion." But
+let them speak for themselves:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class="sidenote">The judgment of Cyrus in a court of love.</div>
+
+<p>[<i>M&eacute;n&eacute;crate and Thrasim&egrave;de are going to fight, and have,
+according to the unqualified legal theory<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> and very
+occasional actual practice of seventeenth-century France, if
+not of the Medes and Persians, been arrested, though in
+honourable fashion. The "dependence" is a certain Arpalice,
+who loves Thrasim&egrave;de and is loved by him. But she is ordered
+by her father's will to marry M&eacute;n&eacute;crate, who is now quite
+willing to marry her, though she hates him, and though he
+has previously been in love with Androcl&eacute;e, to whom he has
+promised that he will not marry the other. A sort of
+informal</i> Cour d'Amour <i>is held on the subject, the
+President being Cyrus himself, and the judges Princesses
+Timar&egrave;te and Palmis, Princes Sesostris and Myrsilus, with
+"Toute la compagnie" as assessors and assessoresses. After
+much discussion, it is decided to disregard the dead
+father's injunction and the living inconstant's wishes, and
+to unite Thrasim&egrave;de and Arpalice. But the chief points of
+interest lie in the following remarks:</i>]<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"As it seems to me," said Cyrus, "what we ought most to
+consider in this matter is the endeavour to make the fewest
+possible persons unhappy, and to prevent a combat between
+two gentlemen of such gallantry, that to whichever side
+victory inclines, we should have cause to regret the
+vanquished. For although M&eacute;n&eacute;crate is inconstant and a
+little capricious, he has, for all that, both wits and a
+heart. We must, then, if you please," added he, turning to
+the two princesses, "consider that if Arpalice were forced
+to carry out her father's testament and marry M&eacute;n&eacute;crate,
+everybody would be unhappy, and he would have to fight two
+duels,<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> one against Thrasim&egrave;de and one against
+Philistion (<i>Androcl&eacute;e's brother</i>), the one fighting for his
+mistress, the other for his sister." "No doubt," said
+Lycaste, "several people will be unhappy, but, methinks, not
+all; for at any rate M&eacute;n&eacute;crate will possess <i>his</i> mistress."
+"'Tis true," said Cyrus, "that he will possess Arpalice's
+beauty; but I am sure that as he would not possess her
+heart, he could not call himself satisfied; and his greatest
+happiness in this situation would be having prevented the
+happiness of his Rival. As for the rest of it, after the
+first days of his marriage, he would be in despair at having
+wedded a person who hated him, and whom he, perhaps, would
+have ceased to love; for, considering M&eacute;n&eacute;crate's humour, I
+am the most deceived of all men if the possession of what he
+loves is not the very thing to kill all love in his heart.
+As for Arpalice, it is easy to see that, marrying M&eacute;n&eacute;crate,
+whom she hates, and <i>not</i> marrying Thrasim&egrave;de, whom she
+loves, she would be very unhappy indeed; nor could
+Androcl&eacute;e, on her side, be particularly satisfied to see a
+man like M&eacute;n&eacute;crate, whom she loves passionately, the husband
+of another. Philistion could hardly be any more pleased to
+see M&eacute;n&eacute;crate, after promising to marry his sister, actually
+marrying another. As for Thrasim&egrave;de, it is again easy to
+perceive that, being as much in love with Arpalice as he is,
+and knowing that she loves him, he would have good reason
+for thinking himself one of the unhappiest lovers in the
+world if his Rival possessed his mistress. Therefore, from
+what I have said, you will see that by giving Arpalice to
+M&eacute;n&eacute;crate, everybody concerned is made miserable; for even
+Parmenides [<i>not the philosopher, but a friend of M&eacute;n&eacute;crate,
+whose sister, however, has rejected him</i>], though he may
+make a show of being still attached to the interests of
+M&eacute;n&eacute;crate, will be, unless I mistake, well enough pleased
+that his sister should not marry the brother of a person
+whom he never wishes to see again, and by whom he has been
+ill-treated. Then, if we look at the matter from the other
+side and propose to give Arpalice to Thrasim&egrave;de, it remains<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+an unalterable fact that these two people will be happy;
+that Philistion will be satisfied; that justice will be done
+to Androcl&eacute;e; that nothing disobliging will be done to
+Parmenides, and that M&eacute;n&eacute;crate will be made by force more
+happy than he wishes to be; for we shall give him a wife by
+whom he is loved, and take from him one by whom he is hated.
+Moreover, things being so, even if he refuses to subject his
+whim to his reason, he can wish to come to blows with
+Thrasim&egrave;de alone, and would have nothing to ask of
+Philistion; besides which, his sentiments will change as
+soon as Thrasim&egrave;de is Arpalice's husband. One often fights
+with a Rival, thinking to profit by his defeat, when he has
+not married the beloved object; but one does not so readily
+fight the husband of one's mistress, as being her
+lover.<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a>"</p></div>
+
+<p>Much about the "Good Rival" (as we may call him) Mazare follows, and
+there is an illuminative sentence about our favourite Doralise's <i>humeur
+enjou&eacute;e et critique</i>, which, as the rest of her part does, gives us a
+"light" as to the origin of those sadly vulgarised lively heroines of
+Richardson's whom Lady Mary very justly wanted to "slipper." Doralise
+and Mart&eacute;sie are ladies, which the others, unfortunately, are not. And
+then we pay for our <i>ecphrasis</i> by an immense <i>Histoire</i> of the Tyrian
+&Eacute;lise, its original.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of VII. ii. Cyrus is in the doldrums. Many of his
+heroes have got their heroines&mdash;the personages of bygone
+<i>histoires</i>&mdash;and are honeymooning and (to borrow again from Mr. Kipling)
+"dancing on the deck." He is not. Moreover, the army, like all
+seventeenth-century armies after victory and in comfortable quarters, is
+getting rather out of hand; and he learns that the King of Pontus has
+carried Mandane off to Cumae&mdash;not the famous Italian Cumae, home of the
+Sibyl whom Sir Edward Burne-Jones has fixed for us, and of many
+classical memories, but a place somewhere near Miletus, defended by
+unpleasant marshes on land, and open to the sea itself, the element on
+which Cyrus is weakest, and by which the endlessly carried off Mandane
+may readily be carried off again. He sends about for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> help to Phoenicia
+and elsewhere; but when, after a smart action by land against the town,
+a squadron does appear off the port, he is for a time quite uncertain
+whether it is friend or foe. Fortunately Cl&eacute;obuline, Queen of Corinth, a
+young widow of surpassing beauty and the noblest sentiments, who has
+sworn never to marry again, has conceived a Platonic-romantic admiration
+for him, and has sent her fleet to his aid. She deserves, of course, and
+still more of course has, a <i>Histoire de Cl&eacute;obuline</i>. Also the
+inestimable Mart&eacute;sie writes to say that Mandane has been dispossessed of
+her suspicions, and that the King of Pontus is, in the race for her
+favour, nowhere. The city falls, and the lovers meet. But if anybody
+thinks for a moment that they are to be happy ever afterwards,
+Arithmetic, Logic, and Literary History will combine to prove to him
+that he is very much mistaken. In order to make these two lovers happy
+at all, not only time and space, but six extremely solid volumes would
+have to be annihilated.</p>
+
+<p>The close of VII. ii. and the whole of VIII. i. are occupied with
+imbroglios of the most characteristic kind. There is a certain Anaxaris,
+who has been instrumental in preventing Mandane from being, according to
+her almost invariable custom, carried off from Cumae also. To whom,
+though he is one of the numerous "unknowns" of the book, Cyrus rashly
+confides not only the captainship of the Princess's guards, but various
+and too many other things, especially when "Philip Devil" turns up once
+more, and, seeing the lovers in apparent harmony, claims the fulfilment
+of Cyrus's rash promise to fight him before marrying. This gets wind in
+a way, and watch is kept on Cyrus by his friends; but he, thinking of
+the parlous state of his mistress if both her principal lovers were
+killed&mdash;for Prince Mazare is, so to speak, out of the running, while the
+King of Pontus is still lying <i>perdu</i> somewhere&mdash;entrusts the secret to
+Anaxaris, and begs him to take care of her. Now Anaxaris&mdash;as is so
+usual&mdash;is not Anaxaris at all, but Aryante, Prince of the Massagetae and
+actually brother of the redoubtable Queen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> Thomyris; and he also has
+fallen a victim to Mandane's fascinations, which appear to be
+irresistible, though they are, mercifully perhaps, rather taken for
+granted than made evident to the reader. One would certainly rather have
+one Doralise or Mart&eacute;sie than twenty Mandanes. However, again in the now
+expected manner, the fight does not immediately come off. For "Philip
+Devil," in his usual headlong violence, has provoked another duel with
+the Assyrian Prince Intaphernes,<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> and has been badly worsted and
+wounded by his foe, who is unhurt. This puts everything off, and for a
+long time the main story drops again (except as far as the struggles of
+Anaxaris between honour and love are depicted), first to a great deal of
+miscellaneous talk about the quarrel of King and Prince, and then to a
+regular <i>Histoire</i> of the King, Intaphernes, Atergatis, Princess
+Istrine, and the Princess of Bithynia, Spithridates's sister and
+daughter of a very robustious and rather usurping King Arsamones, who is
+a deadly enemy of Cyrus. The dead Queen Nitocris, and the passion for
+her of a certain Gadates, Intaphernes's father, and also sometimes, if
+not always, called a "Prince," come in here. The story again introduces
+the luckless Spithridates himself, who is first, owing to his likeness
+to Cyrus, persecuted by Thomyris, and then imprisoned by his father
+Arsamones because he will not give up Araminta and marry Istrine, whom
+Nitocris had wanted to marry her own son Philidaspes&mdash;a good instance of
+the extraordinary complications and contrarieties in which the book
+indulges, and of which, if Dickens had been a more "literary" person, he
+might have thought when he made the unfortunate Augustus Moddle observe
+that "everybody appears to be somebody else's." Finally, the volume ends
+with an account of the leisurely progress of Mandane and Cyrus to
+Ecbatana<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> and Cyaxares, while the King of Assyria recovers as best he
+can. But at certain "tombs" on the route evidence is found that the King
+of Pontus has been recently in the land of the living, and is by no
+means disposed to give up Mandane.</p>
+
+<p>The second volume of this part is one of the most eventless of all, and
+is mainly occupied by a huge <i>Histoire</i> of Puranius, Prince of Phocaea,
+his love Cl&eacute;onisbe, and others, oddly topped by a passage of the main
+story, describing Cyrus's emancipation of the captive Jews. He is for a
+time separated from the Princess.</p>
+
+<p>The first pages of IX. i. are lively, though they are partly a <i>r&eacute;cit</i>.
+Prince Intaphernes tells Cyrus all about Anaxaris (Aryante), and how by
+representing Cyrus as dead and the King of Assyria in full pursuit of
+her, he has succeeded in carrying off Mandane; how also he has had the
+cunning, by availing himself of the passion of another high officer,
+Andramite, for Doralise, to induce him to join, in order that the maid
+of honour may accompany her mistress. Accordingly Cyrus, the King of
+Assyria himself, and others start off in fresh pursuit; but the King has
+at first the apparent luck. He overtakes the fugitives, and a sharp
+fight follows. But the guards whom Cyrus has placed over the Princess,
+and who, in the belief of his death, have followed the ravishers, are
+too much for Philidaspes, and he is fatally wounded; fulfilling the
+oracle, as we anticipated long ago, by dying in Mandane's arms, and
+honoured with a sigh from her as for her intended rescuer.</p>
+
+<p>She herself, therefore, is in no better plight, for Aryante and
+Andramite continue the flight, with her and her ladies, to a port on the
+Euxine, destroying, that they may not be followed, all the shipping save
+one craft they select, and making for the northern shore. Here after a
+time Aryante surrenders Mandane to his sister Thomyris, as he cannot
+well help doing, though he knows her violent temper and her tigress-like
+passion for Cyrus, and though, also, he is on rather less than brotherly
+terms with her, and has a party among the Massagetae<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> who would gladly
+see him king. Meanwhile the King of Pontus and Phraortes, Araminta's
+carrier-off, fight and kill each other, and Araminta is given up&mdash;a loss
+for Mandane, for they have been companions in quasi-captivity, and there
+is no longer any subject of jealousy between them.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus created a sort of "deadlock" situation such as she loves,
+and in the interval, while Cyrus is gathering forces to attack Thomyris,
+the author, as is her fashion likewise, surrenders herself to the joys
+of digression. We have a great deal of retrospective history of Aryante,
+and at last the famous Scythian philosopher, Anacharsis, is introduced,
+bringing with him the rest of the Seven Ancient Sages&mdash;with whom we
+could dispense, but are not allowed to do so. There is a Banquet of them
+all at the end of the first volume of the Part; and they overflow into
+the second, telling stories about Pisistratus and others, and discussing
+"love in the <i>aib</i>-stract," as frigidly as might be expected, on such
+points as, "Can you love the same person <i>twice</i>?"<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> But the last
+half of this IX. ii. is fortunately business again. There is much hard
+fighting with Thomyris, who on one occasion wishes to come to actual
+sword-play with Cyrus, and of whom we have the liveliest <i>ecphrasis</i>, or
+set description, in the whole romance.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class="sidenote">Thomyris on the warpath.</div>
+
+<p>As for Thomyris, she was so beautiful that day that there
+was no one in the world save Mandane, who could have
+disputed a heart with her<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> without the risk of losing.
+This Princess was mounted on a fine black horse, trapped
+with gold; her dress was of cloth of gold, with green panels
+shot with a little carnation, and was of the shape of that
+of Pallas when she is represented as armed. The skirt was
+caught up on the hip with diamond clasps, and showed buskins
+of lions' muzzles made to correspond with the rest. Her
+head-dress was adorned with jewels, and a great number of
+feathers&mdash;carnation, white and green&mdash;hung over her
+beautiful fair tresses, while these, fluttering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> at the
+wind's will, mixed themselves with the plumes as she turned
+her head, and with their careless curls gave a marvellous
+lustre to her beauty. Besides, as her sleeves were turned
+up, and caught on the shoulder, while she held the bridle of
+her horse with one hand and her sword with the other, she
+showed the loveliest arms in the world. Anger had flushed
+her complexion, so that she was more beautiful than usual;
+and the joy of once more seeing Cyrus, and seeing him also
+in an action respectful towards her,<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> effaced the marks
+of her immediately preceding fury so completely that he
+could see nothing but what was amiable and charming.</p></div>
+
+<p>Thomyris, however, is as treacherous and cruel as she is beautiful; and
+part of her reason for seeming milder is that more of her troops may
+turn up and seize him.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion, owing to false generalship and disorderly advance
+on the part of the King of Hyrcania, Cyrus is in no small danger, but he
+"makes good," though at a disastrous expense, and with still greater
+dangers to meet. Thomyris's youthful son (for young and beautiful widow
+as she is, she has been an early married wife and a mother),
+Spargapises, just of military age, is captured in battle, suffers from
+his captors' ignorance what has been called "the indelible insult of
+bonds," and though almost instantly released as soon as he is known,
+stabs himself as disgraced. His body is sent to his mother with all
+sorts of honours, apologies, and regrets, but she, partly out of natural
+feeling, partly from her excited state, and partly because her mind is
+poisoned by false insinuations, sends, after transports of maternal and
+other rage, a message to Cyrus to the effect that if he does not put
+himself unreservedly in her hands, she will send him back Mandane dead,
+in the coffin of Spargapises. And so the last double-volume but one ends
+with a suitable "fourth act" curtain, as we may perhaps call it.</p>
+
+<p>The last of all, X. i. and ii., exhibits, in a remarkable degree, the
+general defects and the particular merits and promise of this curious
+and (it cannot be too often<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> repeated) epoch-making book. In the latter
+respect more especially it shows the "laborious orient ivory sphere in
+sphere" fashion in which the endless and, it may sometimes seem, aimless
+episodes, and digressions, and insets are worked into the general theme.
+The defects will hardly startle, though they may still annoy, any one
+who has worked through the whole. But if another wickedly contented
+himself with a sketch of the story up to this point, and thought to make
+up by reading this Part of two volumes carefully, he would probably feel
+these defects very strongly indeed. We&mdash;we corrupt moderns&mdash;do expect a
+quickening up for the run-in. The usual beginning may seem to the
+non-experts to promise this, or at least to give hopes of it; for though
+there is a vast deal of talking&mdash;with Anacharsis as a go-between and
+G&eacute;lonide (a good confidante), endeavouring to soften Thomyris, one can
+but expect it&mdash;the situation itself is at once difficult and exciting.
+The position of Aryante in particular is really novel-dramatic. As he is
+in love with Mandane, he of course does not want his sister to murder
+her. But inasmuch as he fears Cyrus's rivalry, he does not want him to
+be near Mandane for two obvious reasons: first, the actual proximity,
+and, secondly, the danger of Thomyris's temper getting the better (or
+worse) of her when both the lovers are in her power. So he sends private
+messengers to the Persian Prince, begging him <i>not</i> to surrender. Cyrus,
+however, still thinks of exchanging himself for Mandane. At this point
+the neophyte's rage may be excited by being asked to plunge into the
+regular four-hundred page <i>Histoire</i> of a certain Arpasie, who has two
+lovers&mdash;a Persian nobleman Hidaspe, and a supposed Assyrian champion
+M&eacute;liante, who has come with reinforcements for Thomyris. And no doubt
+the proportion <i>is</i> outrageous. But "wait and see," a phrase, it may be
+observed, which was not, as some seem to think, invented by Mr. Asquith.</p>
+
+<p>At last the business does begin again, and a tremendous battle takes
+place for the possession of certain forests which lie between the two
+armies, and are at first held by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> the Scythians. Cyrus, however, avails
+himself of the services of an engineer who has a secret of combustibles,
+sets the forests ablaze, and forces his way through one or two open
+defiles, with little loss to himself and very heavy loss to the enemy,
+whose main body, however, is still unbroken. This affords a fine subject
+for one of the curious frontispieces known to all readers of seventeenth
+century books. A further wait for reinforcements takes place, and the
+author basely avails herself of it for a no doubt to herself very
+congenial (they actually called her in "precious" circles by the name of
+the great poetess) and enormous <i>Histoire</i> of no less a person than
+Sappho, which fills the last 250 pages of the first (nineteenth) volume
+and about as much of the second (twentieth) or last. It has very little
+connection with the text, save that Sappho and Phaon (for the
+self-precipitation at Leucas is treated as a fable) retire to the
+country of the Sauromatae, to live there a happy, united, but unwed and
+purely Platonic (in the silly sense) existence. The foolish side of the
+<i>pr&eacute;cieuse</i> system comes out here, and the treatment confirms one's
+suspicion that the author's classical knowledge was not very deep.</p>
+
+<p>It does come to an end at last, however, and at last also we do get our
+"run-in," such as it is. The chief excuse for its existence is that it
+brings in a certain M&eacute;r&eacute;onte, who, like his quasi-assonant M&eacute;liante, is
+to be useful later, and that the tame conclusion is excused by a Sapphic
+theory&mdash;certainly not to be found in her too fragmentary works&mdash;that
+"possession ruins love," a doctrine remembered and better put by Dryden
+in a speech of that very agreeable Doralice, whose name, though not
+originally connected with this part of it, he also, as has been noted,
+borrowed from the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The actual finale begins (so to speak) antithetically with the last
+misfortune of the unlucky Spithridates. His ill-starred likeness to
+Cyrus, assisted by a suit of armour which Cyrus has given to him, make
+the enemy certain that he is Cyrus himself, and he is furiously
+assaulted in an off-action, surrounded, and killed. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> head is taken
+to Thomyris, who, herself deceived, executes upon it the famous
+"blood-bath" of history or legend.<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> Unfortunately it is not only in
+the Scythian army that the error spreads. Cyrus's troops are terrified
+and give way, so that he is overpowered by numbers and captured.
+Fortunately he falls into the hands, not of Thomyris's own people or of
+her savage allies, the Geloni (it is a Gelonian captain who has acted as
+executioner in Spithridates's case), but of the supposed Assyrian leader
+M&eacute;liante, who is an independent person, admires Cyrus, and, further
+persuaded by his friend M&eacute;r&eacute;onte (<i>v. sup.</i>), resolves to let him
+escape. The difficulties, however, are great, and the really safest,
+though apparently the most dangerous way, seems to lie through the
+"Royal Tents" (the nomad capital of Thomyris) themselves. Meanwhile,
+Aryante is making interest against his sister; some of Cyrus's special
+friends, disguised as Massagetae, are trying to discover and rescue him,
+and the Sauromatae are ready to desert the Scythian Queen. One of her
+transports of rage brings on the catastrophe. She orders the Gelonian
+bravo to poniard Mandane, and he actually stabs by mistake her
+maid-of-honour H&eacute;sionide&mdash;the least interesting one, luckily. Cyrus
+himself, after escaping notice for a time, is identified, attacked, and
+nearly slain, when the whole finishes in a general chaos of rebellion,
+arrival of friends, flight of Thomyris, and a hairbreadth escape of
+Cyrus himself, which unluckily partakes more of the possible-improbable
+than of the impossible-probable. The murders being done, the marriages
+would appear to have nothing to delay them; but an evil habit, the
+origin of which is hard to trace, and which is not quite extinct, still
+puts them off. M&eacute;liante has got to be rewarded with the hand of Arpasie,
+which is accomplished after he has been discovered, in a manner not
+entirely romantic, to be the son of the King of Hyrcania, and both his
+marriage and that of Cyrus are interfered with by a supposed Law of the
+Medes and of certain minor Asiatic peoples,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> that a Prince or Princess
+may not marry a foreigner. Fresh discoveries get rid of this in
+M&eacute;liante's case, while in that of Cyrus a convenient Oracle declares
+that he who has conquered every kingdom in Asia cannot be considered a
+foreigner in any. So at last the long chart is finished, Doralise
+retaining her character as lightener of this rather solid entertainment
+by declaring that she cannot say she loves her suitor, Prince Myrsilus,
+because every phrase that occurs to her is either too strong or too
+weak. So we bless her, and stop the water channels&mdash;or, as the Limousin
+student might have more excellently said, "claud the rives."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">General remarks on the book and its class.</div>
+
+<p>If the reader, having tolerated this long analysis (it is perhaps most
+probable that he will <i>not</i> have done so), asks what game one pretends
+to have shown for so much expenditure or candle, it is, no doubt, not
+easy to answer him without a fresh, though a lesser, trial of his
+patience. You cannot "ticket" the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>, or any of its fellows,
+or the whole class, with any complimentary short description, such as a
+certain school of ancient criticism loved, and corresponding to our
+modern advertisement labels&mdash;"grateful and comforting," "necessary in
+every travelling bag," and the like. They are, indeed, as I have
+endeavoured to indicate indirectly as well as directly, by no means so
+destitute of interest of the ordinary kind as it has generally been the
+fashion to think them. From the charge of inordinate length it is, of
+course, impossible to clear the whole class, and <i>Artam&egrave;ne</i> more
+particularly.<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a> Length "no more than reason" is in some judgments a
+positive advantage in a novel; but this <i>is</i> more than reason. I believe
+(the <i>moi</i>, I trust, is not utterly <i>ha&iuml;ssable</i> when it is necessary)
+that I myself am a rather unusually rapid, without being a careless or
+unfaithful, reader; and that I have by nature a very little of that
+faculty with which some much greater persons have been credited, of
+being able to see at a glance whether anything on a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> page needs more
+than that glance or not, a faculty not likely to have been rendered
+abortive (though also not, I hope, rendered morbid) by infinite practice
+in reviewing. I do not say that, even now, I have read every word of
+this <i>Artam&egrave;ne</i> as I should read every word of a sonnet of Shakespeare
+or a lyric of Shelley, even as I should read every word of a page of
+Thackeray. I have even skimmed many pages. But I have never found, even
+in a time of "retired leisure," that I could get through more than
+three, or at the very utmost four, of the twenty volumes or half-volumes
+without a day or two of rest or other work between. On the other hand,
+the book is not significantly piquant in detail to enable me to read
+attentively fifty or a hundred pages and then lay it down.<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> You do,
+in a lazy sort of way, want to know what happened&mdash;a tribute, no doubt,
+to Mlle. Madeleine&mdash;and so you have to go on ploughing the furrow. But
+several weeks' collar-work<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> is a great deal to spend on a single
+book of what is supposed to be pastime; and the pastime becomes
+occasionally one of doubtful pleasure now and then. In fact, it is, as
+has been said, best to read in shifts. Secondly, there may, no doubt, be
+charged a certain unreality about the whole: and a good many other
+criticisms may be, as some indeed have been already, made without
+injustice.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is that not only was the time not yet, but something which was
+very specially of the time stood in the way of the other thing coming,
+despite the strong <i>nisus</i> in its favour excited by various influences
+spoken of at the beginning of this chapter. This was the
+devotion&mdash;French at almost all times, and specially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> French at this&mdash;to
+the type. There are some "desperate willins" (as Sam Weller called the
+greengrocer at the swarry) who fail to see much more than types in
+Racine, though there is something more in Corneille, and a very great
+deal more in Moli&egrave;re. In the romances which charmed at home the
+audiences and spectators of these three great men's work abroad, there
+is nothing, or next to nothing, else at all. The spirit of the <i>Epistle
+to the Pisos</i>, which acted on the Tragedians in verse, which acted on
+Boileau in criticism and poetry, was heavier on the novelist than on any
+of them. Take sufficient generosity, magnanimity, adoration, bravery,
+courtesy, and so forth, associate the mixture with handsome flesh and
+royal blood, clothe the body thus formed with brilliant scarfs and
+shining armour, put it on the best horse that was ever foaled, or kneel
+it at the feet of the most beautiful princess that ever existed, and you
+have Cyrus. For the princess herself take beauty, dignity, modesty,
+graciousness, etc., <i>quant. suff.</i>, clothe <i>them</i> in garments again
+magnificent, and submit the total to extreme inconveniences, some
+dangers, and an immense amount of involuntary travelling, but nothing
+"irreparable," and you have Mandane. For the rest, with the rare and
+slight exceptions mentioned, they flit like shadows ticketed with more
+or less beautiful names. Even Philidaspes, the most prominent male
+character after the hero by far, is, whether he be "in cog" as that
+personage or "out of cog" as Prince and King of Assyria, merely a
+petulant hero&mdash;a sort of cheap Achilles, with no idiosyncrasy at all. It
+is the fault, and in a way the very great fault, of all the kind: and
+there is nothing more to do with it but to admit it and look for
+something to set against it.</p>
+
+<p>How great a thing the inception (to use a favourite word of the present
+day, though it be no favourite of the writer's) of the "psychological"
+treatment of Love<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> may, of course, be variously estimated. The
+good conceit of itself in which that day so innocently and amusingly
+indulges will have it, indeed, that the twentieth century has invented
+this among other varieties of the great and venerable art of extracting
+nourishment from eggs. "We have," somebody wrote not long ago&mdash;the exact
+words may not be given, but the sense is guaranteed&mdash;"perceived that
+Love is not merely a sentiment, an appetite, or a passion, but a great
+means of intellectual development." Of course Solomon did not know this,
+nor Sappho, nor Catullus, nor the fashioners of those "sentiments" of
+the Middle Ages which brought about the half-fabulous Courts of Love
+itself, nor Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor Shakespeare, nor Donne. It was
+reserved for&mdash;but one never names contemporaries except <i>honoris caus&acirc;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is&mdash;an "of course" of another kind&mdash;undeniable that the fashion of
+love-philosophy which supplies so large a part of the "yarn" of
+Madeleine de Scud&eacute;ry's endless rope or web is not <i>our</i> fashion. But it
+is, in a way, a new variety of yarn as compared with anything used
+before in prose, even in the Greek romances<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a> and the <i>Amadis</i> group
+(nay, even in the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> itself). Among other things, it connects
+itself more with the actual society, manners, fashions of its day than
+had ever been the case before, and this is the only interesting side of
+the "key" part of it. This was the way that they did to some extent talk
+and act then, though, to be sure, they also talked and acted very
+differently. It is all very well to say that the H&ocirc;tel de Rambouillet is
+a sort of literary-historical fiction, and the <i>Pr&eacute;cieuses Ridicules</i> a
+delightful farce. The fiction was not wholly a fiction, and the farce
+was very much more than a farce&mdash;would have been, indeed, not a farce at
+all if it had not satirised a fact.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, in relation to the general history and development of
+the novel, and therefore in equally important relation to the present
+<i>History</i>, that the importance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> of the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>, or rather of the
+class of which it was by far the most popular and noteworthy member, is
+most remarkable. Indeed this importance can hardly be exaggerated, and
+is much more likely to be&mdash;indeed has nearly always been&mdash;undervalued.
+Even the jejune and partial analysis which has been given must have
+shown how many of the elements of the modern novel are here&mdash;sometimes,
+as it were, "in solution," sometimes actually crystallised. For any one
+who demands plot there is one&mdash;of such gigantic dimensions, indeed, that
+it is not easy to grasp it, but seen to be singularly well articulated
+and put together when it is once grasped. Huge as it is, it is not in
+the least formless, and, as has been several times pointed out, hardly
+the most (as it may at first appear) wanton and unpardonable episode,
+digression, or inset lacks its due connection with and "orientation"
+towards the end. The contrast of this with the more or less formless
+chronicle-fashion, the "overthwart and endlong" conduct, of almost all
+the romances from the Carlovingian and Arthurian<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a> to the <i>Amadis</i>
+type, is of the most unmistakable kind.</p>
+
+<p>Again, though character, as has been admitted, in any real live sense,
+is terribly wanting still; though description is a little general and
+wants more "streaks in the tulip"; and though conversation is formal and
+stilted, there is evident, perhaps even in the first, certainly in the
+second and third cases, an effort to treat them at any rate
+systematically, in accordance with some principles of art, and perhaps
+even not without some eye to the actual habits, manners, demands of the
+time&mdash;things which again were quite new in prose fiction, and, in fact,
+could hardly be said to be anywhere present in literature outside of
+drama.</p>
+
+<p>To set against these not so very small merits in the present, and very
+considerable seeds of promise for the future, there are, of course,
+serious faults or defects&mdash;defaults<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> which need, however, less
+insistence, because they are much more generally known, much more
+obvious, and have been already admitted. The charge of excessive length
+need hardly be dealt with at all. It has already been said that the most
+interesting point about it is the opportunity of discovering how it was,
+in part, a regular, and, in fact, almost the furthest possible,
+development of a characteristic which had been more or less observable
+throughout the progress of romance. But it may be added that the law of
+supply and demand helped; for people evidently were not in the least
+bored by bulk, and that the fancy for having a book "on hand" has only
+lately, if it has actually, died out.<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> Now such a "book on hand" as
+the <i>Grand Cyrus</i> exists, as far as my knowledge goes, in no Western
+literature, unless you count collections of letters, which is not fair,
+or such memoirs as Saint-Simon's, which do not appeal to quite the same
+class of readers.</p>
+
+<p>A far more serious default or defect&mdash;not exactly blameworthy, <i>because</i>
+the time was not yet, but certainly to be taken account of&mdash;is the
+almost utter want of character just referred to. From Cyrus and Mandane
+downwards the people have qualities; but qualities, though they are
+necessary to character, do not constitute it. Very faint approaches may
+be discerned, by very benevolent criticism, in such a personage as
+Mart&eacute;sie with her shrewdness, her maid-of-honour familiarity with the
+ways and manners of courtly human beings, and that very pardonable,
+indeed agreeable, tendency, which has been noticed or imagined, to flirt
+in respectful fashion with Cyrus, while carrying on more regular
+business with Feraulas. But it is little more than a suggestion, and it
+has been frankly admitted that it is perhaps not even that, but an
+imagination merely. And the same observation may apply to her "second
+string," Doralise. No others of the women have any character at all, and
+we have already spoken of the men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now these things, in a book very widely read and immensely admired,
+could not, and did not, fail to have their effect. Nobody&mdash;we shall see
+this more in detail in the next chapter&mdash;can fail to perceive that the
+<i>Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i> itself is, from one point of view, only a
+<i>histoire</i> of the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>, taken out of its preposterous <i>matrix</i>
+of other matter, polished, charged with a great addition of internal
+fire of character and passion, and left to take its chance alone and
+unencumbered. Nobody, on the other hand, who knows Richardson and
+Mademoiselle de Scud&eacute;ry can doubt the influence of the French book&mdash;a
+century old as it was&mdash;on the "father of the English novel." Now any
+influence exerted on these two was, beyond controversy, an influence
+exerted on the whole future course of the kind, and it is as exercising
+such an influence that we have given to the <i>Great Cyrus</i> so great a
+space.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">The other Scud&eacute;ry romances&mdash;<i>Ibrahim</i>.</div>
+
+<p>After the exhaustive account given of <i>Artam&egrave;ne</i>, it is probably not
+necessary to apologise for dealing with the rest of Mlle. de Scud&eacute;ry's
+novel work, and with that of her comrades in the Heroic romance, at no
+very great length. <i>Ibrahim ou L'Illustre Bassa</i> has sometimes been
+complimented as showing more endeavour, if not exactly at "local
+colour," at technical accuracy, than the rest. It is true that the
+French were, at this time, rather amusingly proud of being the only
+Western nation treated on something like equal terms by the Sublime
+Porte, and that the Scud&eacute;rys (possibly Georges, whose work the
+Dedication to Mlle. de Rohan, daughter of the famous soldier, pretty
+certainly is) may have taken some pains to acquire knowledge. "Sandjak"
+(or "Sanjiac"), not for a district but for its governor, is a little
+unlucky perhaps; but "Aderbion" is much nearer "Azerbaijan" than one
+generally expects in such cases from French writers of the seventeenth
+or even of other centuries. The Oriental character of the story,
+however, is but partial. The Illustrious Pasha himself, though First<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+Vizir and "victorious" general of Soliman the Second, is not a Turk at
+all, but a "Justinian" or Giustiniani of Genoa, whose beloved Isabelle
+is a Princess of Monaco, and who at the end, after necessary
+dangers,<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a> retires with her to that Principality, with a punctilious
+explanation from the author about the Grimaldis. The scene is partly
+there and at Genoa&mdash;the best Genoese families, including the Dorias,
+appearing&mdash;partly at Constantinople: and the business at the latter
+place is largely concerned with the intrigues, jealousies, and cruelties
+of Roxelane, who is drawn much more (one regrets to say) as history
+paints her than as the agreeable creature of Marmontel's subsequent
+fancy. The book is a mere cockboat beside the mighty argosy of the
+<i>Cyrus</i>, running only to four volumes and some two thousand pages. But
+though smaller, it is much "stodgier." The <i>Histoires</i> break out at once
+with the story of a certain Alibech&mdash;much more proper for the young
+person than that connected with the same name by Boccaccio,&mdash;and those
+who have acquired some knowledge of Mlle. Madeleine's ways will know
+what it means when, adopting the improper but defensible practice of
+"looking at the end," they find that not merely "Justinian" and
+Isabelle, but a Horace and a Hypolite, a Doria and a Sophronie, an
+Alphonse and a L&eacute;onide are all married on the same day, while a "French
+Marquis" and an Emilie vow inviolable but celibate constancy to each
+other; they will know, that is to say, that in the course of the book
+all these will have been duly "historiated." To encourage them, a single
+hint that L&eacute;onide sometimes plays a little of the parts of Mart&eacute;sie and
+Doralise in the <i>Cyrus</i> may be thrown in.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, one sentence in the second volume of <i>Ibrahim</i> which
+is worth quotation and brief comment, because it is a text for the whole
+management and system of these novels, and accounts for much in their
+successors almost to the present day. Emilie is telling the <i>Histoire</i>
+of Isabelle, and excuses herself for not beginning at the beginning:
+"Puisque je sais que vous n'ignorez pas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> l'amour du Prince de Masseran,
+les violences et les artifices de Julie, la trahison de F&eacute;liciane, le
+g&eacute;n&eacute;reux ressentiment de Doria [this is another Doria], la mort de cet
+amant infortun&eacute;, et ensuite celle de Julie." In other words, all these
+things have been the subject of previous histories or of the main text.
+And so it is always. Diderot admired, or at least excused, that
+procedure of Richardson's which involved the telling of the conversation
+of an average dinner-party in something like a small volume. But the
+"Heroic" method would have made it necessary to tell the previous
+experiences of the lady you took down to dinner, and the man that you
+talked to afterwards, while, if extended from aristocratic to democratic
+ideas, it would have justified a few remarks on the cabmen who brought
+both, and the butcher and fishmonger who supplied the feast. The
+inconvenience of this earlier practice made itself felt, and by degrees
+it dropped off; but it was succeeded by a somewhat similar habit of
+giving the subsequent history of personages introduced&mdash;a thing which,
+though Scott satirised it in Mrs. Martha Buskbody's insistence on
+information about the later history of Guse Gibbie,<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> by no means
+ceased with his time. Both were, in fact, part of the general refusal to
+accept the conditions of ordinary life. If "tout <i>passe</i>" is an
+exaggeration, it is an exaggeration of the truth: and in fiction, as in
+fact, the minor shapes must dissolve as well as arise without too much
+fuss being made about them.<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Almahide.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>Almahide</i> is, I think, more readable than <i>Ibrahim</i>; but the <i>English</i>
+reader must disabuse himself of the idea (if he entertains it) that he
+will find much of the original of <i>The Conquest of Granada</i>. The book
+does, indeed, open like the play, with the faction-fights of
+Abencerrages and Zegrys, and it ends with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> Boabdelin's jealousy of his
+wife Almahide, while a few of the other names in both are identical. But
+<i>Almahide</i> contains nothing, or hardly anything, of the character of
+Almanzor, and Dryden has not attempted to touch a hundredth part of the
+copious matter of the French novel, the early history of Almahide, the
+usual immense digressions and side-<i>histoires</i>, the descriptions (which,
+as in <i>Ibrahim</i>, play, I think, a larger relative part than in the
+<i>Cyrus</i>), and what not.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Cl&eacute;lie.</i></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Perhaps the liveliest of the set.</div>
+
+<p>Copious as these are, however, in both books, they do not fill them out
+to anything like the length of the <i>Cyrus</i> itself, or of its rival in
+size, and perhaps superior in attraction, the <i>Cl&eacute;lie</i>. I do not plead
+guilty to inconsistency or change of opinion in this "perhaps" when it
+is compared with the very much larger space given to the earlier novel.
+<i>Le Grand Cyrus</i> has been estated too firmly, as the type and
+representative of the whole class, to be dislodged, and there is, as we
+shall see presently, a good deal of repetition from it in <i>Cl&eacute;lie</i>
+itself. But this latter is the more amusing book of the two; it is,
+though equally or nearly as big, less labyrinthine; there is somewhat
+livelier movement in it, and at the same time this is contrasted with a
+set or series of interludes of love-casuistry, which are better, I
+think, than anything of the kind in the <i>Cyrus</i>.<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a> The most famous
+feature of these is, of course, the well-known but constantly misnamed
+"Carte de Tendre" ("Map of the Country of Tenderness"&mdash;not of
+"Tenderness in the <i>aib</i>stract," as <i>du</i> Tendre would be). The
+discussion of what constitutes Tenderness comes quite early; there is
+later a notable discourse on the respective attractions of Love and of
+Glory or Ambition; a sort of Code and Anti-code of lovers<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a> occurs as
+"The Love-Morality of Tiramus," with a set of (not always) contrary
+criticism thereof; and a debate of an almost mediaeval kind as to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> the
+respective merits of merry and melancholy mistresses. Moreover, there is
+a rather remarkable "Vision of Poets"&mdash;past, present, and to come&mdash;which
+should be taken in connection with the appearance, as an actual
+personage, of Anacreon. All this, taken in conjunction with the
+"business" of the story, helps to give it the superior liveliness with
+which it has, rightly or wrongly, been credited here.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Rough outline of it.</div>
+
+<p>Of that business itself a complete account cannot, for reasons given
+more than once, be attempted; though anybody who wants such a thing,
+without going to the book itself, may find it in the places also above
+mentioned. There is no such trick played upon the educated but not
+wideawake person as (<i>v. inf.</i>) in La Calpren&egrave;de's chief books. Cl&eacute;lie
+is the real Clelia, if the modern historical student will pass "real"
+without sniffing, or even if he will not. Her lover, "Aronce," although
+he probably may be a little disguised from the English reader by his
+spelling, is so palpably the again real "Aruns," son of Porsena, that
+one rather wonders how his identity can have been so long concealed in
+French (where the pronunciations would be practically the same) from the
+readers of the story. The book begins with a proceeding not quite so
+like that of the <i>Cyrus</i> as some to be mentioned later, but still pretty
+close to the elder overture. "The illustrious Aronce and the adorable
+Clelia" are actually going to be married, when there is a fearful storm,
+an earthquake, and a disappearance of the heroine. She has, of course,
+been carried off; one might say, without flippancy, of any heroine of
+Madeleine de Scud&eacute;ry's not only that she was, as in a famous and already
+quoted saying, "very liable to be carried off," but that it was not in
+nature that she should not be carried off as early and as often as
+possible. And her abductor is no less a person than Horatius&mdash;our own
+Horatius Cocles&mdash;the one who kept the bridge in some of the best known
+of English verses, not he who provoked, from the sister whom he
+murdered, the greatest speech in all French tragedy before, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> perhaps
+not merely before, Victor Hugo. Horatius is the Philidaspes of <i>Cl&eacute;lie</i>,
+but, as he was bound to be, an infinitely better fellow and of a better
+fate. Of course the end knits straight on to the beginning. Cl&eacute;lie and
+Aronce are united without an earthquake, and Porsena, with obliging
+gallantry, resigns the crown of Clusium (from which he has himself long
+been kept out by a "Mezentius," who will hardly work in with Virgil's),
+not to Aronce, but to Cl&eacute;lie herself. The enormous interval between (the
+book is practically as long as the <i>Cyrus</i>) is occupied by the same, or
+(<i>v. sup.</i>) nearly the same tissue of delays, digressions, and other
+maze-like devices for setting you off on a new quest when you seem to be
+quite close to the goal. A large part of the scene is in Carthage,
+where, reversing the process in regard to Mezentius, Asdrubals and
+Amilcars make their appearance in a very "mixedly" historical fashion. A
+Prince of Numidia (who had heard of Numidia in Tarquin's days?) fights a
+lively water-combat with Horatius actually as he is carrying Cl&eacute;lie off,
+over the Lake of Thrasymene. All the stock legends of the Porsena siege
+and others are duly brought in: and the atrocious Sextus, not contented
+with his sin against Lucr&egrave;ce, tries to carry off Cl&eacute;lie likewise, but is
+fortunately or wisely prevented. Otherwise the invariable propriety
+which from the time of the small love-novels (<i>v. sup.</i> pp. 157-162) had
+distinguished these abductions might possibly have been broken through.
+These outlines might be expanded (and the process would not be very
+painful to me) into an abstract quite as long as that of Cyrus; but "It
+Cannot Be."</p>
+
+<p>One objection, foreshadowed, and perhaps a little more, already, must be
+allowed against <i>Cl&eacute;lie</i>. That tendency to resort to repetition of
+situations and movements&mdash;which has shown itself so often, and which
+practically distinguishes the very great novelists from those not so
+great by its absence or presence&mdash;is obvious here, though the huge size
+of the book may conceal it from mere dippers, unless they be experts.
+The similarity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> of the openings is, comparatively speaking, a usual
+thing. It should not happen, and does not in really great writers; but
+it is tempting, and is to some extent excused by the brocard about <i>le
+premier pas</i>. It is so nice to put yourself in front of your
+beginning&mdash;to have made sure of it! But this charity will hardly extend
+to such a thing as the repetition of Cyrus's foolish promise to fight
+Philidaspes before he marries Mandane in the case of Aronce, Horatius,
+and Cl&eacute;lie. The way in which Aronce is kept an "unknown" for some time,
+and that in which his actual relationship to Porsena is treated, have
+also too much of the <i>replica</i>; and though a lively skirmish with a
+pirate which occurs is not quite so absurd as that ready-made series of
+encores which was described above (pp. 181-2), there is something a
+little like it in the way in which the hero and his men alternately
+reduce the enemy to extremity, and run over the deck to rescue friends
+who are in the pirates' power from being butchered or flung overboard.
+"Sapho's" invention, though by no means sterile, was evidently somewhat
+indiscriminate, and she would seem to have thought it rather a pity that
+a good thing should be used only once.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless the compliment given above may be repeated. If I were sent
+to twelve months' imprisonment of a mild description, and allowed to
+choose a library, I should include in it, from the heroic or semi-heroic
+division, <i>Cl&eacute;lie</i>, La Calpren&egrave;de's two chief books, Gomberville's
+<i>Polexandre</i>, and Gombauld's <i>Endimion</i> (this partly for the pictures),
+with, as a matter of course, the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, and a choice of one other. By
+reading slowly and "savouring" the process, I should imagine that, with
+one's memories of other things, they might be able to last for a year.
+And it would be one of the best kind of fallows for the brain. In
+anticipation, let us see something of these others now.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">La Calpren&egrave;de: his comparative cheerfulness.</div>
+
+<p>It has seemed, as was said, desirable to follow the common opinion of
+literary history in giving Madeleine de Scud&eacute;ry the place of honour, and
+the largest as well as the foremost share in our account of this
+curious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> stage in the history of the novel. But if, to alter slightly a
+famous quotation, I might "give a short hint to an impartial <i>reader</i>,"
+I should very strongly advise him to begin his studies (or at least his
+enjoyment) thereof, not with "Sapho," but with Gauthier de Costes,
+Seigneur de la Calpren&egrave;de, himself according to Tallemant almost the
+proverbial "Gascon <i>et demi</i>"; a tragic dramatist, as well as a romantic
+writer; a favourite of Mme. de S&eacute;vign&eacute;, who seldom went wrong in her
+preferences, except when she preferred her very disagreeable daughter to
+her very agreeable son; and more than any one else the inventor, or at
+least perfecter, of the hectoring heroic style which we associate with
+Dryden's plays. Indeed the Artaban of <i>Cl&eacute;opatre</i> is much more the
+original of Almanzor and Drawcansir than anything in Madeleine, though
+<i>Almahide</i> was actually the source of Dryden's story, or heroine.
+Besides this, though La Calpren&egrave;de has rather less of the
+intricate-impeach character than his she-rival, there is much more
+bustle and "go" in him; he has, though his books are proper enough, much
+less fear of dealing with "the kissing and that sort of thing," as it
+was once discreetly put; and he is sometimes positively exciting in his
+imbroglios, as when the beautiful Amazon princess Menalippe fights a
+real duel on horseback with Prince, afterwards King, Alcamenes of
+Scythia, under the impression that he has killed a certain Alcimedon,
+who was her lover; discovers, after no small time and considerable
+damage, that he is Alcimedon himself; and, like a sensible and agreeable
+girl, embraces him heartily in the sight of men and angels.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Cl&eacute;opatre</i>&mdash;the Cypassis and Arminius episode.</div>
+
+<p>This is among the numerous <i>divertissements</i> of <i>Cl&eacute;opatre</i> (not the
+earliest, but perhaps the chief of its author's novels<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a>), the
+heroine of which is not</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>herself, but her daughter by Antony, who historically married Juba of
+Mauretania, and is here courted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> by him under the name of Coriolanus,
+while he is in disgrace with Augustus. La Calpren&egrave;de (all these
+romancers are merciful men and women to the historically unlucky, and
+cruel only, or for the most part, to fictitious characters) saves her
+half-brother Caesarion from his actual death, and, after the due
+thousands of pages, unites him happily to Queen Candace of &AElig;thiopia.
+There is the same odd muddle (which made a not unintelligent Jesuit
+label this class of books "historia <i>mixta</i>") with many other persons.
+Perhaps the most curious of all episodes of this kind is the use made of
+Ovid's "fusca Cypassis." If Mrs. Grundy could be supposed ever to have
+read the <i>Amores</i>, the mere sight of the name of that dusky handmaid&mdash;to
+whom Ovid behaved, by his own confession, in such an exceedingly shabby
+as well as improper fashion&mdash;would make her shudder, if not shriek. But
+La Calpren&egrave;de's Cypassis, though actually a maid of honour to Julia, as
+her original was a handmaid to Corinna, is of unblemished morality,
+flirted with certainly by Ovid, but really a German princess, Ismenia,
+in disguise, and beloved by, betrothed to, and in the end united with no
+less a compatriot than Arminius. This union gives also an illustration
+of the ingenious fashion in which these writers reconcile and yet omit.
+La Calpren&egrave;de, as we have seen, does not give Arminius's wife her usual
+name of Thusnelda, but, to obviate a complaint from readers who have
+heard of Varus, he invents a protest on "Herman sla lerman" part against
+that general, who has trepanned him into captivity and gladiatorship,
+and makes him warn Augustus that he will be true to the Romans <i>unless</i>
+Varus is sent into his country.<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The book generally.</div>
+
+<p>This episode is, in many ways, so curious and characteristic, that it
+seemed worth while to dwell on it for a little; but the account itself
+must have shown how impossible it is to repeat the process of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> general
+abstract. There are, I think, in the book (which took twelve years to
+publish and fills as many volumes in French, while the English
+translation is an immense folio of nearly a thousand pages in double
+column, also entitled <i>Hymen's Praeludia</i><a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a>) fewer separate
+<i>Histoires</i>, though there are a good many, than in the <i>Cyrus</i>, but the
+intertwined love-plots are almost more complicated. For instance, the
+Herod-and-Mariamne tragedy is brought in with a strictly "proper" lover,
+Tiridates, whom Salome uses to provoke Herod's patience, and who has, at
+the very opening of the book, proved himself both a natural philosopher
+of no mean order by seeing a fire at sea, and "judging with much
+likelihood that it comes from a ship," and a brave fellow by rescuing
+from the billows no less a person than the above-mentioned Queen
+Candace. From her, however, he exacts immediate, and, as some moderns
+might think, excessive, payment by making her listen to his own
+<i>Histoire</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Not the least attractive part of <i>Cl&eacute;opatre</i> to some people will be that
+very "Ph&eacute;bus," or amatory conceit, which made the next ages scorn it.
+When one of the numerous "unknowns" of both sexes (in this case a girl)
+is discovered (rather prettily) lying on a river bank and playing with
+the surface of the water, "the earth which sustained this fair body
+seemed to produce new grass to receive her more agreeably"&mdash;a phrase
+which would have shocked good Bishop Vida many years before, as much as
+it would have provoked the greater scorn of Mr. Addison about as many
+after. There are many "ecphrases" or set descriptions of this kind, and
+they show a good deal of stock convention. For instance, the wind is
+always "most discreetly, most discreetly" ready, as indeed it was in
+Mlle. de Scud&eacute;ry's own chaste stories, to blow up sleeves or skirts a
+little, and achieve the distraction of the beholders by what it reveals.
+But on the whole, as was hinted above, Gauthier de Costes de La
+Calpren&egrave;de is the most natural creature of the heroic band.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Cassandre.</i></div>
+
+<p>His earlier <i>Cassandre</i> is not much inferior to <i>Cl&eacute;opatre</i>, and has a
+little more eccentricity about it. The author begins his Second Part by
+making the ghost of Cassandra herself (who is not the Trojan Cassandra
+at all) address a certain Calista, whom she mildly accuses of "dragging
+her from her grave two thousand years after date," adding, as a boast of
+his own in a Preface, that the very name "Cassandre" has never occurred
+in the <i>First</i> Part&mdash;a huge cantle of the work. The fact is that it is
+an <i>alias</i> for Statira, the daughter of Darius and wife of Alexander,
+and is kept by her during the whole of her later married life with her
+lover Oroondates, King of Scythia, who has vainly wooed her in early
+days before her union with the great Emathian conqueror. Here, again,
+the mere student of "unmixed" history may start up and say, "Why! this
+Statira, who was also called Barsine [an independent personage here] was
+murdered by Roxana after Alexander's death!" But, as was also said,
+these romancers exercise the privilege of mercy freely; and though La
+Calpren&egrave;de's Roxana is naughty enough for anything (she makes, of
+course, the most shameless love to Oroondates), she is not allowed to
+kill her rival, who is made happy, after another series of endless
+adventures of her own, her lover's, and other people's. The book opens
+with a lively interest to students of the English novel; for the famous
+two cavaliers of G. P. R. James appear, though they are not actually
+riding at the moment, but have been, and, after resting, see two others
+in mortal combat. Throughout there is any amount of good fighting, as,
+for the matter of that, there is in <i>Cl&eacute;opatre</i> also; and there is less
+duplication of detail here than in some other respects, for La
+Calpren&egrave;de is rather apt to repeat his characters and situations. For
+instance, the fight between Lysimachus and Thalestris (La Calpren&egrave;de is
+fond of Amazons), though <i>not</i> in the details, is of course in the idea
+a replica of that between Alcamenes and Menalippe in <i>Cl&eacute;opatre</i>; and
+names recur freely. Moreover, in the less famous story, the whole
+situation of hero and heroine is exactly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> duplicated in respect of the
+above-mentioned Lysimachus and Parisatis, Cassandra's younger sister,
+who is made to marry Hephaestion at first, and only awarded, in the same
+fashion as her elder sister, at last to her true lover.</p>
+
+<p>By the way, the already-mentioned "harmonising" is in few places more
+oddly shown than by the remark that Plutarch's error in representing
+Statira as killed was due to the fact that he did not recognise her
+under her later name of Cassandra&mdash;a piece of Gascon half-na&iuml;vet&eacute;,
+half-jest which Mlle. de Scud&eacute;ry's Norman shrewdness<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a> would hardly
+have allowed. There is also much more of the supernatural in these books
+than in hers, and the characters are much less prim. Roxana, who, of
+course, is meant to be naughty, actually sends a bracelet of her hair to
+Oroondates! which, however, that faithful lover of another instantly
+returns.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Faramond.</i></div>
+
+<p>La Calpren&egrave;de's third novel, <i>Faramond</i>, is unfinished as his work, and
+the continuation seems to have more than one claimant to its authorship.
+If the "eminent hand" was one Vaumori&egrave;re, who independently accomplished
+a minor "heroic" in <i>Le Grand Scipion</i>, he was not likely to infuse much
+fire into the ashes of his predecessor. As it stands in La Calpren&egrave;de's
+own part, <i>Faramond</i> is a much duller book than <i>Cassandre</i> or
+<i>Cl&eacute;opatre</i>. It must, of course, be remembered that, though patriotism
+has again and again prompted the French to attack these misty
+Merovingian times (the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> itself deals with them in the liberal
+fashion in which it deals with everything), the result has rarely, if
+ever, been a success. Indeed I can hardly think of any one&mdash;except our
+own "Twin Brethren" in <i>Thierry and Theodoret</i>&mdash;who has made anything
+good out of French history before Charlemagne.<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> The reader,
+therefore, unless he be a very thorough and conscientious student, had
+better let <i>Faramond</i> alone; but its elder sisters are much pleasanter
+company. Indeed the impolite thought will occur that it is much more
+like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> Scud&eacute;ry novels, part of which it succeeded, and may possibly
+have been the result&mdash;not by any means the only one in literature&mdash;of an
+unlucky attempt to beat a rival by copying him or her.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Gomberville&mdash;<i>La Carit&eacute;e</i>.</div>
+
+<p>If any one, seeking acquaintance with the works of Marin le Roy,
+Seigneur de Gomberville, begins at the beginning with his earliest work,
+and one of the earliest of the whole class, <i>La Carit&eacute;e</i> (not
+"Carit<i>ie</i>," as in some reference books), he may not be greatly
+appetised by the addition to the title, "contenant, sous des temps, des
+personnes, et des noms suppos&eacute;s, plusieurs rares et v&eacute;ritables histoires
+de notre temps." For this is a proclamation, as Urf&eacute; had <i>not</i>
+proclaimed it,<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a> of the wearisome "key" system, which, though
+undoubtedly it has had its partisans at all times, is loathsome as well
+as wearisome to true lovers of true literature. To such persons every
+lovable heroine of romance is, more or less, suggestive of more or fewer
+women of history, other romance, or experience; every hero, more or
+less, though to a smaller extent, recognisable or realisable in the same
+way; and every event, one in which such readers have been, might have
+been, or would have liked to be engaged themselves; but they do not care
+the scrape of a match whether the author originally intended her for the
+Princess of Kennaquhair or for Polly Jones, him and it for corresponding
+realities. Nor is the sequel particularly ravishing, though it is
+dedicated to "all fair and virtuous shepherdesses, all generous and
+perfect shepherds." Perhaps it is because one is not a generous and
+perfect shepherd that one finds the "Great Pan is Dead" story less
+impressive in Gomberville's prose than in Milton's verse at no distant
+period; is not much refreshed by getting to Rome about the death of
+Germanicus, and hearing a great deal about his life; or later still by
+Egyptian <i>bergeries</i>&mdash;things in which somehow one does not see a
+concatenation accordingly; and is not consoled by having the Phoenix
+business done&mdash;oh!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> so differently from the fashion of Shakespeare or
+even of Darley. And when it finishes with a solemn function for the rise
+of the Nile, the least exclusively modern of readers may prefer Moore or
+Gautier.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Polexandre.</i></div>
+
+<p>But if any one, deeming not unjustly that he had drunk enough of
+<i>Carit&eacute;e</i>, were to conclude that he would drink no more of any of the
+waters of Gomberville, he would make a mistake. <i>Cyth&eacute;r&eacute;e</i>[1] I cannot
+yet myself judge of, except at second-hand; but the first part of
+<i>Polexandre</i>, if not also the continuation, <i>Le Jeune Alcidiane</i>,<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a>
+may be very well spoken of. It, that is to say the first part of it, was
+translated into English by no less a person than William Browne, just at
+the close of his life; and, perhaps for this reason, the British Museum
+does not contain the French original; but those who cannot attain to
+this lose the less, because the substance of the book is the principal
+thing. This makes it one of the liveliest of the whole group, and one
+does not feel it an idle vaunt when at the end the author observes
+cheerfully of his at last united hero and heroine, "Since we have so
+long enjoyed <i>them</i>, let us have so much justice as to think it fitting
+now that <i>they</i> should likewise enjoy each other." Yet the unresting and
+unerring spirit of criticism may observe that even here the verbosity
+which is the fault of the whole division makes its appearance. For why
+not suppress most of the words after "them," and merely add, "let them
+now enjoy each other"?</p>
+
+<p>The book is, in fact, rather like a modernised "number" of the <i>Amadis</i>
+series,<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a>, and the author has had the will and the audacity to
+exchange the stale old Greeks and Romans&mdash;not the real Greeks, who can
+never be stale, or the real Romans, who can stand a good deal of
+staling, but the conventional classics&mdash;as well as the impossible
+shadows of the Dark Ages, for Lepanto and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> the Western Main, Turks and
+Spaniards and Mexicans, and a Prince of Scotland. Here also we find in
+the hero something more like Almanzor than Artam&egrave;ne, if not than
+Artaban: and of the whole one may say vulgarly that "the pot boils."
+Now, with the usual Heroic it too often fails to attain even a gentle
+simmer.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Camus&mdash;<i>Palombe</i>, etc.</div>
+
+<p>Jean Camus [de Pontcarr&eacute;?],<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> Bishop of Belley and of Arras&mdash;friend
+of St. Francis of Sales and of Honor&eacute; d'Urf&eacute;; author of many "Christian"
+romances to counteract the bad effects of the others, of a famous
+<i>Esprit de Saint Fran&ccedil;ois de S.</i>, and of a very great number of
+miscellaneous works,&mdash;seems to have been a rather remarkable person,
+and, with less power and more eccentricity, a sort of F&eacute;nelon of the
+first half of the century. His best known novel, <i>Palombe</i>, stands
+practically alone in its group as having had the honour of a modern
+reprint in the middle of the nineteenth century.<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a> The title-giver is
+a female, not a male, human dove, and of course a married one. Camus was
+a divine of views which one does not call "liberal," because the word
+has been almost more sullied by ignoble use in this connection than in
+any other&mdash;but unconventional and independent; and he provoked great
+wrath among his brethren by reflecting on the abuses of the conventual
+system. <i>Palombe</i> appears to be not uninteresting, but after all it is
+but one of those parasitic exercises which have rarely been great except
+in the hands of very great genius. Historically, perhaps, the much less
+famous <i>Ev&egrave;nemens Singuliers</i> (2 vols., 1628) are more important, though
+they cannot be said to be very amusing. For (to the surprise, perhaps,
+of a reader who comes to the book without knowing anything about it) it
+is composed of pure Marmontel-and-Miss-Edgeworth Moral Tales<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> about
+<i>L'Ami Desloyal</i>, <i>La Prudente M&egrave;re</i>, <i>L'Amour et la Mort</i>,
+<i>L'Impr&eacute;cation Maternelle</i>, and the like. Of course, as one would expect
+from the time, and the profession of the author, the meal of the
+morality is a little above the malt of the tale; but the very titles are
+"germinal."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">H&eacute;delin d'Aubignac&mdash;<i>Macarise.</i></div>
+
+<p>Fran&ccedil;ois H&eacute;delin, Abb&eacute; d'Aubignac, is one of those unfortunate but
+rarely quite guiltless persons who live in literary history much more by
+the fact of their having attacked or lectured greater men than
+themselves, and by witticisms directed against them, than by their own
+actual work, which is sometimes not wholly contemptible. He concerns us
+here only as the author of a philosophical-heroic romance, rather
+agreeably entitled <i>Macarise ou La Reine des Iles Fortun&eacute;es</i>, where the
+bland na&iuml;vet&eacute; of the pedantry would almost disarm the present members of
+that Critical Regiment, of which the Abb&eacute;, in his turn, was not so much
+a chaplain as a most combatant officer. The very title goes on to
+neutralise its attractiveness by explaining&mdash;with that benignant
+condescension which is natural to at least some of its author's
+class&mdash;that it "contains the Moral Philosophy of the Stoics under the
+veil of several agreeable adventures in the form of a Romance"; and that
+we may not forget this, various side-notes refer to passages in an
+<i>Abr&eacute;g&eacute;</i> of that philosophy. The net is thus quite frankly set in the
+sight of the bird, and if he chooses to walk into it, he has only
+himself to blame. The opening is a fine example of that plunge into the
+middle of things which H&eacute;delin had learnt from his classical masters to
+think proper: "Les cruels pers&eacute;cuteurs d'Arianax l'ayant r&eacute;duit &agrave; la
+n&eacute;cessit&eacute; de se pr&eacute;cipiter<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a> dans les eaux de la Sennat&egrave;le avec son
+fr&egrave;re Dinazel...." The fact that the presupposed gentle reader knows
+nothing of the persons or the places mentioned is supposed to arouse in
+him an inextinguishable desire to find out. That he should be at once
+gratified is, of course, unthinkable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> In fact his attention will soon
+be diverted from Arianax and Dinazel and the banks of the Sennat&egrave;le
+altogether by the very tragical adventures of a certain Cl&eacute;arte. He,
+with a company of friends, visits the country of a tyrant, who is
+accustomed to welcome strangers and heap them with benefits, till a time
+comes (the allegory is something obvious) when he demands it all back,
+with their lives, through a cruel minister (again something "speakingly"
+named) "Thanate." The head of this company, Cl&eacute;arte, on receiving the
+sentence, talks Stoicism for many pages, and when he is exhausted,
+somebody else takes up the running in such a fascinating manner that it
+"seemed as if he had only to go on talking to make the victims
+immortal!" But the atrocious Thanate cuts, at the same moment, the
+thread of the discourse and the throat of Cl&eacute;arte&mdash;who is, however,
+transported to the dominions of Macarise,&mdash;and <i>histoires</i> and
+"ecphrases" and interspersions of verse follow as usual. But the Abb&eacute; is
+nowise infirm of purpose; and the book ends with the strangest mixture
+of love-letters and not very short discourses on the various schools of
+philosophy, together with a Glossary or Onomasticon interpreting the
+proper names which have been used after the following fashion:
+"Alcarinte. <i>La Crainte</i>, du mot fran&ccedil;ais par anagramme sans aucun
+changement," though how you can have an anagram without a change is not
+explained.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Gombauld&mdash;<i>Endimion.</i></div>
+
+<p>Perhaps one may class, if, indeed, classification is necessary, with the
+religious romances of Camus and the philosophical romance of H&eacute;delin
+d'Aubignac, the earlier allegorical ones of the poet Gombauld,
+<i>Endimion</i> and <i>Amaranthe</i>. The latter I have not yet seen. <i>Endimion</i>
+is rather interesting; there was an early English translation of it; and
+I have always been of those who believe that Keats, somehow or other,
+was more directly acquainted with seventeenth-century literature than
+has generally been allowed.<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a> The wanderings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> of the hero are as
+different as possible in detail; but the fact that there <i>are</i>
+wanderings at all is remarkable, and there are other coincidences with
+Keats and differences from any classical form, which it might be out of
+place to dwell on here. Endymion is waked from his Latmian sleep by the
+infernal clatter of the dwellers at the base of the mountain, who use
+all the loudest instruments they possess to dispel an eclipse of the
+moon: and is discovered by his friend Pyzandre, to whom he tells the
+vicissitudes of his love and sleep. The early revealings of herself by
+Diana are told with considerable grace, and the whole, which is not too
+long, is readable. But there are many of the <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;s</i> and
+awkwardnesses of expression which attracted to the writers of this time
+the scorn of Boileau and others down to La Harpe. The Dedication to the
+Queen may perhaps be excused for asserting, in its first words, that as
+Endymion was put to sleep by the Moon, so he has been reawakened by the
+Sun,<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> <i>i.e.</i> her Majesty. But a Nemesis of this Ph&eacute;bus follows. For,
+later, it is laid down that "La Lune doit <i>toujours</i> sa lumi&egrave;re au
+Soleil." From which it will follow that Diana owed her splendour to Anne
+of Austria, or was it Marie de Medicis?<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a> It was fortunate for
+Gombauld that he did not live under the older dispensation. Artemis was
+not a forgiving goddess like Aphrodite.</p>
+
+<p>Again, when Diana has disappeared after one of her graciousnesses, her
+lover makes the following reflection&mdash;that the gods apparently can
+depart <i>sans &ecirc;tre en peine de porter n&eacute;cessairement les pieds l'un
+devant l'autre</i>&mdash;an observation proper enough in burlesque, for the idea
+of a divine goose-step or marking time, instead of the <i>incessus</i>, is
+ludicrous enough. But there is not the slightest sign of humour anywhere
+in the book. Yet, again, this is a thing one would rather not have said,
+"Diane cessant de m'&ecirc;tre favorable, Ism&egrave;ne<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a> <i>me pouvait tenir lieu
+de D&eacute;esse</i>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> Now it is sadly true that the human race does occasionally
+entertain, and act upon, reflections of this kind: and persons like Mr.
+Thomas Moore and Gombauld's own younger contemporary, Sir John Suckling,
+have put the idea into light and lively verse. But you do not expect it
+in a serious romance.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless it may be repeated that <i>Endimion</i> is one of the most
+readable of the two classes of books&mdash;the smaller sentimental and the
+longer heroic&mdash;between which it stands in scope and character. The
+author's practice in the "other harmony" makes the obligatory
+verse-insertions rather less clumsy than usual; and it may be permitted
+to add that the illustrations of the original edition, which are
+unusually numerous and elaborate, are also rather unusually effective.
+"Peggy's face" is too often as "wretched" as Thackeray confessed his own
+attempts were; but the compositions are not, as such, despicable&mdash;even
+in the case of the immortal and immortalising kiss-scene itself. The
+"delicious event," to quote the same author in another passage, is not
+actually coming off&mdash;but it is very near. But it was perhaps a pity that
+either Gombauld or Keats ever <i>waked</i> Endymion.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mme. de Villedieu.</div>
+
+<p>The most recent book<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a> but one about Mme. de Villedieu contains (and,
+oddly enough, confesses itself to contain) very little about her novels,
+which the plain man might have thought the only reason for writing about
+her at all. It tells (partly after Tallemant) the little that is known
+about her (adding a great deal more about other people, things, and
+places, and a vast amount of conjecture), and not only takes the very
+dubious "letters" published by herself for gospel, but attributes to
+her, on the slightest evidence, if any, the anonymous <i>M&eacute;moires sur la
+Vie de Henriette Sylvie de Moli&egrave;re</i>, and, what is more, accepts them as
+autobiographic; quotes a good deal of her very valueless verse and that
+of others, and relates the whole in a most marvellous style, the
+smallest and most modest effervescences<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> of which are things like this:
+"La religion arrose son &acirc;me d'une eau parfum&eacute;e, et les fleurs noirs du
+r&eacute;pentir &eacute;closent" or "Soixante ans pesaient sur son cr&acirc;ne ennuag&eacute; d'une
+perruque."<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a> A good bibliography of the actual work, and not a little
+useful information about books and MS. relating to the period, may
+reconcile one class of readers to it, and a great deal of scandal
+another; but as far as the subject of this history goes no one will be
+much wiser when he closes the volume than he was when he opened it.</p>
+
+<p>The novelist-heroine's actual name was Marie Catherine Hortense des
+Jardins, and she never was really Mme. de Villedieu at all, though there
+was a real M. de Villedieu whom she loved, went through a marriage
+ceremony and lived with, left, according to some, or was left by,
+according to others. But he was already married, and this marriage was
+never dissolved. Very late in life she seems actually to have married a
+Marquis de Chaste, who died soon. But most of the time was spent in
+rather scandalous adventures, wherein Fouquet's friend Gourville, the
+minister Lyonne, and others figure. In fact she seems to have been a
+counterpart as well as a contemporary of our own Afra, though she never
+came near Mrs. Behn in poetry or perhaps in fiction. Her first novel,
+<i>Alcidamie</i>, not to be confounded with the earlier <i>Alcidiane</i>, was a
+scarcely concealed utilising of the famous scandal about Tancr&egrave;de de
+Rohan (Mlle. des Jardins' mother had been a dependant on the Rohan
+family, and she herself was much befriended by that formidable and
+sombre-fated enchantress, Mme. de Montbazon). In fact, common as is the
+real or imputed "key"-interest in these romances from the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>
+onwards, none seems to have borrowed more from at least gossip than
+this. Her later performances, <i>Les Annales Galantes de la Gr&egrave;ce</i> (said
+to be very rare), <i>Carmente</i>, <i>Les Amours des Grands Hommes</i>, <i>Les
+D&eacute;sordres de l'Amour</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> and some smaller pieces, all rely more or less
+on this or that kind of scandal. Collections appeared three or four
+times in the earlier eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Le Grand Alcandre Frustr&eacute;.</i></div>
+
+<p>Since M. Magne wrote (and it is fair to say that the main purpose of his
+book was frankly avowed by its appearance as a member of a series
+entitled <i>Femmes Galantes</i>), a somewhat more sober account, definitely
+devoted in part to the novels, has appeared.<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> But even this is not
+exhaustive from our point of view. The collected editions (of which that
+of 1702, in 10 vols., said to be the best, is the one I have used) must
+be consulted if one really wishes to attain a fair knowledge of what
+"this questionable Hortense" (as Mr. Carlyle would probably have called
+her) really did in literature; and no one, even of these, appears to
+contain the whole of her ascribed compositions. What used sometimes to
+be quoted as her principal work, <i>Le Grand Alcandre Frustr&eacute;</i> (the last
+word being often omitted), is, in fact, a very small book, containing a
+bit of scandal about the Grand Monarque, of the same kind as those which
+myriad anonyms of the time printed in Holland, and of which any one who
+wants them may find specimens enough in the <i>Biblioth&egrave;que Elz&eacute;virienne</i>
+edition of Bussy-Rabutin. Its chief&mdash;if not its only&mdash;attraction is an
+exceedingly quaint frontispiece&mdash;a cavalier and lady standing with
+joined hands under a chandelier, the torches of which are held by a ring
+of seven Cupids, so that the lower one hangs downwards, and the
+disengaged hand of the cavalier, which is raised, seems to be grabbing
+at him.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The collected love-stories.</div>
+
+<p>Most of the rest, putting aside the doubtful <i>Henriette de Moli&egrave;re</i>
+already referred to, are collections of love-stories, which their
+titles, rather than their contents, would seem to have represented to
+the ordinary commentator as loose. There is really very little
+impropriety, except of the mildest kind, in any of them,<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a> and they
+chiefly consist of the kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> quasi-historic anecdote (only better
+told) which is not uncommon in English, as, for instance, in Croxall's
+<i>Novelist</i>. They are rather well written, but for the most part consist
+of very "public" material, scarcely made "private" by any striking
+merit, and distinguished by curious liberties with history, if not with
+morals.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Their historic liberties.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Carmente</i>, etc.</div>
+
+<p>For instance, in one of her <i>Amours Galantes</i> the
+Elfrida-Ethelwold-Edgar story is told, not only with "<i>Edward I.</i> of
+England" for the deceived and revengeful king, but with a further and
+more startling intrusion of Eleanor of Guyenne! That of Inez de Castro
+is treated in a still more audacious manner. Also (with what previous
+example I know not, but Hortense was exceedingly apt to have previous
+examples) the names of the heretic to whom Dante was not merciful and of
+his beloved Margaret&mdash;names to which Charles Kingsley made the atonement
+of two of the most charming of his neglected poems&mdash;appear as "Dulcin"
+and "Marguerite," King and Queen of Lombardy, but guilty of more
+offensive lubricity than the sternest inquisitor ever charged on the
+historical Dolcino and his sect. For this King and Queen set up, in cold
+blood, two courts of divorce, in one of which each is judge, with the
+direct purpose of providing themselves with a supply of temporary wives
+and husbands. Some have maintained that no less a thing than the
+<i>Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i> itself was suggested by something of Mme. de
+Villedieu's; but this seems to me merely the usual plagiarism-hunter's
+blunder of forgetting that the treatment, not the subject, is the <i>crux</i>
+of originality. Of her longer books, <i>Alcidamie</i>, the first, has been
+spoken of. The <i>Amours des Grandes Hommes</i> and <i>Cl&eacute;onice ou le Roman
+Galant</i> belong to the "keyed" Heroics; while the <i>Journal Amoureux</i>,
+which runs to nearly five hundred pages, has Diane de Poitiers for its
+chief heroine. Lastly, <i>Carmente</i> (or, as it was reprinted, <i>Carmante</i>)
+is a sort of mixed pastoral, with Theocritus himself introduced, after a
+fashion noted more than once before.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Her value on the whole.</div>
+
+<p>Her most praised things, recently, have been the story of the loves of
+Henri IV. and Mme. de Sauve (lightly touched on, perhaps "after" her in
+both senses, by Dumas) in the <i>Amours Galantes</i>, and a doubtful story
+(also attributed to the obscure M. de Preschac of the <i>Cabinet des
+F&eacute;es</i><a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a>) entitled <i>L'Illustre Parisienne</i>, over which folk have
+quarrelled as to whether it is to be labelled "realist" or not. One
+regrets, however, to have to say that&mdash;except for fresh, if not very
+strong, evidence of that "questing" character which we find all over the
+subjects of these two chapters&mdash;the interest of Mme. de Villedieu's work
+can hardly be called great. By a long chapter of accidents, the present
+writer, who had meant to read her some five-and-thirty years ago, never
+read her actually till the other day&mdash;with all good will, with no
+extravagant expectation beforehand, but with some disappointment at the
+result. She is not a bookmaker of the worst kind; she evidently had wits
+and literary velleities; and she does illustrate the blind <i>nisus</i> of
+the time as already indicated. But beyond the bookmaking class she
+never, I think, gets. Her mere writing is by no means contemptible, and
+we may end by pointing out two little points of interest in <i>Carmente</i>.
+One is the appearance of the name "Ard&eacute;lie," which our own Lady
+Winchelsea took and anglicised as her coterie title. It may occur
+elsewhere, but I do not recollect it. The other is yet a fresh
+anticipation of that bold figure of speech which has been cited before
+from Dickens&mdash;one of the characters appearing "in a very clean
+shepherd's dress <i>and a profound melancholy</i>." Mme. de Villedieu (it is
+about the only place she has held hitherto, if she has held any, in
+ordinary Histories of French Literature) has usually been regarded as
+closing the Heroic school. We may therefore most properly turn from her
+directly to the last and most cheerful division of the subjects of this
+chapter&mdash;the Fairy Tale.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">The fairy tale.</div>
+
+<p>One of the greatest solaces of the writer of this book,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> and, he would
+fain hope, something of a consolation to its readers, has been the
+possibility, and indeed advisability, of abstention from certain stock
+literary controversies, or at worst of dismissing them with very brief
+mention. This solace recurs in reference to the large, vague, and hotly
+debated subject of folklore and fairy stories, their connection, and the
+origin of the latter. It is true that "the pleasure gives way to a
+savour of sorrow," to adopt a charming phrase of Mr. Dobson's, when I
+think of the amiable indignation which the absence of what I shall not
+say, and perhaps still more the presence of some things that I shall
+say, would have caused in my friend, and his friend, the late Mr. Andrew
+Lang.<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a> But the irreparable is always with us. Despite the undoubted
+omnipresence of the folk-story, with its "fairy" character in the
+general sense, I have always wanted more proof than I have ever
+received, that the thing is of Western rather than of Eastern origin,
+and that our Western stories of the kind, in so far as they affected
+literature before a very recent period, are independent. But I attach no
+particular value to this opinion, and it will influence nothing that I
+say here. So with a few more half-words to the wise, as that Mme.
+d'Aulnoy had been in Spain, that the Crusades took place in the eleventh
+century, that, independently thereof, Scandinavians had been
+"Varangians" very early at Constantinople, etc. etc., let us come to the
+two great literary facts&mdash;the chorus of fairy tale-telling proper at the
+end of the century (of which the coryphaei are the lady already
+mentioned and Perrault), and the epoch-making translation of <i>The
+Arabian Nights</i> by Galland.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its <i>general</i> characteristics&mdash;the happy ending.</div>
+
+<p>In a certain sense, no doubt, the fairy tale may be said to be merely a
+variety of the age-old <i>fabliau</i> and <i>nouvelle</i>. But it is, for literary
+purposes, a distinctly and importantly new variety&mdash;new not merely in
+subject,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> even in the widest possible sense of that rather disputable
+(or at least disputed) word, but in that <i>nescio quid</i> between subject
+and treatment for which I know no better term than the somewhat vague
+one "atmosphere." It has the priceless quality of what may be called
+good childishness; it gives not merely Fancy but Imagination the freest
+play, and, till it has itself created one, it is free from any
+convention. It continued, indeed, always free from those "previous"
+conventions which are so intolerable. For it is constantly forgotten
+that a convention in its youth is often positively healthy, and a
+convention in the prime of its life a very tolerable thing. It is the
+<i>old</i> conventions which, as Mahomet rashly acknowledged about something
+else (saving himself, however, most dexterously afterwards), cannot be
+tolerated in Paradise. Moreover, besides creating of necessity a sort of
+fresh dialect in which it had to be told, and producing a set of
+personages entirely unhackneyed, it did an immense service by
+introducing a sort of etiquette, quite different from the conventions
+above noticed,&mdash;a set of manners, as it may almost be called, which had
+the strongest and most beneficial influence&mdash;though, like all strong and
+good things, it might be perverted&mdash;on fiction generally. In this all
+sorts of nice things, as in the original prescription for what girls are
+made of, were included&mdash;variety, gaiety, colour, surprise, a complete
+contempt of the contemptible, or of that large part of it which contains
+priggishness, propriety, "prunes, and prism" generally. Moreover (and
+here I fear that the above promised abstinence from the contentious must
+be for a little time waived) it confirmed a great principle of novel and
+romance alike, that if you can you should "make a good end," as, <i>teste</i>
+Romance herself, Guinevere did, though the circumstances were
+melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>The termination of a fairy tale rarely is, and never should be, anything
+but happy. For this reason I have always disliked&mdash;and though some of
+the mighty have left their calm seats and endeavoured to annihilate me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+for it, I still continue to dislike&mdash;that old favourite of some part of
+the public, <i>The Yellow Dwarf</i>. That detestable creature (who does not
+even amuse me) had no business to triumph; and, what is more, I don't
+believe he did. Not being an original writer, I cannot tell the true
+history as it might be told; but I can criticise the false. I do not
+object to this version because of its violation of poetical justice&mdash;in
+which, again, I don't believe. But this is neither poetical, nor just,
+nor amusing. It is a sort of police report, and I have never much cared
+for police reports. I should like to have set Maimoune at the Yellow
+Dwarf: and then there would have been some fun.</p>
+
+<p>It is probably unnecessary to offer any translations here, because the
+matter is so generally known, and because the books edited by that
+regretted friend of mine above mentioned have spread it (with much other
+matter of the same kind) more widely than ever. But the points mentioned
+above, and perhaps some others, can never be put too firmly to the
+credit of the fairy tale as regards its influence on fiction, and on
+French fiction particularly. It remains to be seen, in the next chapter,
+how what a few purists may call its contamination by, but what we may
+surely be permitted to call its alliance with, "polite literature" was
+started, or practically started, through the direct agency of no
+Frenchman, but of a man who can be claimed by England in the larger and
+national sense, by Scotland and Ireland and England again in the
+narrower and more parochial&mdash;by Anthony Hamilton. His work, however,
+must be left till that next chapter, though in this we may, after the
+"blessed originals" just mentioned, take in their sometimes degenerate
+successors for nearly a hundred years after Perrault's time.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Perrault and Mme. d'Aulnoy.</div>
+
+<p>Well, however, as the simpler and purer fairy-tales may be known to all
+but twentieth-century children (who are said not to like them), it is
+doubtful whether many people have considered them in the light in which
+we have to regard them here, so as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> to see in them both a link in the
+somewhat complicated chain of novel development, and also one which is
+not dead metal, but serves as a medium for introducing powerful currents
+of influence on the chain itself. We have dwelt on one point&mdash;the
+desirableness, if not necessity, of shortness in them&mdash;as specially
+valuable at the time. No doubt they need not all be as short as
+Perrault's, though even among his there are instances (not to mention
+<i>L'Adroite Princesse</i> for the moment), such as <i>Peau d'&Acirc;ne</i>, of more
+than twenty pages, as against the five of the <i>Chaperon Rouge</i> and the
+ten of <i>Barbe Bleue</i>, <i>Le Chat Bott&eacute;</i>, and <i>Cendrillon</i>. Mme. d'Aulnoy's
+run longer; but of course the longest<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> of all are mites to the
+mammoths of the Scud&eacute;ry romance. A fairy story must never "drag," and in
+its better, and indeed all its genuine, forms it never does. Further (it
+must be remembered that "Little Red Riding Hood," in its unadulterated
+and "<i>un</i>happy ending" form, is not a fairy story at all, for talking
+animals are not peculiar to that), "fairiness," the actual presence of
+these gracious or ungracious but always
+between-human-and-divine-creatures, is necessary,<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a> and their agency
+must be necessary too. In this and other ways it is interesting to
+contrast two stories (which are neighbours to each other, with <i>Peau
+d'&Acirc;ne</i> between them, in the convenient one-volume collection of French
+Fairy Tale classics published by Gamier), Mme. d'Aulnoy's <i>Gracieuse et
+Percinet</i> and <i>L'Adroite Princesse ou Les Aventures de Finette</i>, which
+appeared with Perrault's, but which I can hardly believe to be his. They
+are about the same length, but the one is one of the best and the other
+one of the worst examples of its author and of the general style. It may
+be worth while to analyse both very briefly. As for Perrault's better
+work, such analysis should be as unnecessary as it would be irreverent.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p><div class="sidenote">Commented examples&mdash;<i>Gracieuse et Percinet</i>.</div>
+
+<p>That <i>Gracieuse et Percinet</i> is of an essentially "stock" character is
+not in the least against it, for so it ought to be: and the "stock"
+company that plays its parts plays them well. The father is perhaps
+rather excessively foolish and unnatural, but then he almost had to be.
+The wicked and ugly stepmother tops, but does not overtop, <i>her</i> part,
+and her punishment is not commonplace. Gracieuse herself deserves her
+name, not only "by her comely face and by her fair bodie," but by her
+good but not oppressive wits, and her amiable but not faultless
+disposition. She ought not to have looked into the box; but then we
+should not have liked her nearly as much if she had not done so. She was
+foolishly good in refusing to stay with Percinet; but we are by no means
+certain that we should like her better if she had thrown herself into
+his arms at the first or second time of asking. Besides, where would
+have been the story? As for Percinet, he escapes in a wonderful fashion,
+though partly by help of his lady's little wilfulnesses, the dangers of
+the handsome, amiable, in a small way always successful, and almost
+omnipotent hero. There is a sort of ironic tenderness, in his letting
+Gracieuse again and again go her wilful way and show her foolish
+filiality, which saves him. He is always ready, and does his spiriting
+in the politest and best manner, particularly when he shepherds all
+those amusing but rebellious little people into their box again&mdash;a feat
+which some great novelists have achieved but awkwardly in their own
+cases. There is even pathos in the apparently melancholy statement that
+the fairy palace is dead, and that Gracieuse will never see it till she
+is buried. I should like to have been Percinet, and I should
+particularly like to have married Gracieuse.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the thing is full of small additional seasonings of incident
+and phrase to the solid feast of fairy working which it provides.
+Gracieuse's "collation," with its more than twenty pots of different
+jams, has a delightful realty (which is slightly different from reality)
+even for those to whom jam has never been the very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> highest of human
+delights, because they prefer savouries to sweets. Even the abominable
+duchess seems to have had a splendid cellar, before she took to filling
+the casks with mere gold and jewels to catch the foolish king. It is
+impossible to imagine a scene more agreeably compounded of politeness
+and affection than Percinet's first introduction of himself to the
+Princess: and it is extraordinarily nice to find that they knew all
+about each other before, though we have had not the slightest previous
+information as to the acquaintance. I am very much afraid that he made
+his famous horse kick and plunge when Grognon was on him; but it must be
+remembered that he had been made to lead that animal against his will.
+The description of the hag's flogging Gracieuse with feathers instead of
+scourges is a quite admirable adaptation of some martyrological stories;
+and when, in her dilapidated condition, she remarks that she wishes he
+would go away, because she has always been told that she must not be
+alone with young gentlemen, one feels that the martyrdom must have been
+transferred, in no mock sense, to Percinet himself. If she borrows
+Psyche's trials, what good story is not another good story
+refreshed?<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>L'Adroite Princesse.</i></div>
+
+<p>But if almost everything is good and well managed in <i>Gracieuse</i>, it may
+also be said that almost everything is badly managed in <i>Finette</i>.<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a>
+To begin with, there is that capital error which has been noticed above,
+that it is not really a fairy tale at all. Except the magic
+<i>quenouilles</i>, which themselves are of the smallest importance in the
+story, there is nothing in it beyond the ways of an ordinary adventurous
+<i>nouvelle</i>. The touch of <i>grivoiserie</i> by which the Princesses
+Nonchalante and Babillarde allow the weaknesses ticketed in their names
+to hand them over as a prey to the cunning and blackguard Prince
+Riche-Caut&egrave;le, under pretence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> of entirely unceremonised and unwitnessed
+"marriage," is in no way amusing. Finette's escapes from the same fate
+are a little better, but the whole is told (as its author seems to have
+felt) at much too great length; and the dragging in of an actual fairy
+at the end, to communicate to the heroine the exceedingly novel and
+recondite maxim that "Prudence is the mother of safety," is almost
+idiotic. If the thing has any value, it is as an example, not of a real
+fairy tale nor of a satire on fairy tales (for which it is much too much
+"out of the rules" and much too stupid), but of something which may save
+an ordinary reader, or even student, from attacking, as I fear we shall
+have to do, the <i>Cabinet des F&eacute;es</i> at large, and discovering, by painful
+experience, how excessively silly and tedious the corruption of this
+wise and delightful kind may be.</p>
+
+<p>One might, of course, draw lessons from others of the original batches,
+but this may suffice for the specimen batch under immediate review.
+<i>Peau d'&Acirc;ne</i>, one of the most interesting to "folklorists" and
+origin-hunters, is, of course, also in itself interesting to students of
+literature. Its combination of the old theme of the incestuous passion
+of a father for his daughter, with the special but not invariable shadow
+of excuse in the selfish vanity of the mother's dying request, is quite
+out of the usual way of these things. So is the curious series of fairy
+failures&mdash;things apparently against the whole set of the game&mdash;beginning
+with the unimaginative conception of dresses, weather-, or sky-, moon-,
+and sun-colour, rendered futile by the success of the artists, and
+ending in the somewhat banal device of making yourself ugly and running
+away, with the odd conclusion-contrast of Peau d'&Acirc;ne's squalid
+appearance in public and her private splendour in the fairy garments.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The danger of the "moral."</div>
+
+<p>Still, the lessons of correction, warning, and instruction to be drawn
+from these gracious little things, for the benefit of their younger and
+more elaborate successors, are not easily exhausted. They are, on the
+whole, very moral, and it is well that morality, rightly understood,
+should animate fiction.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> But they are occasionally much <i>too</i> moral, and
+then they warn off instead of cheering on. Take, for instance, two other
+neighbours in the collection just quoted, <i>Le Prince Ch&eacute;ri</i> and the
+ever-delightful <i>La Belle et La B&ecirc;te</i>. Both of these are moral; but the
+latter is just moral enough, while <i>Ch&eacute;ri</i>, with one or two alleviations
+(of which, perhaps, more presently), is hardly anything if <i>not</i> moral,
+and therefore disgusts, or at any rate bores. On the other hand,
+"Beauty" is as <i>bonne</i> as she is <i>belle</i>; her only fault, that of
+overstaying her time, is the result of family affection, and her reward
+and the punishment of the wicked sisters are quite copy-book. But it is
+not for this part that we love what is perhaps the most engaging of all
+the tales. It is for Beauty's own charm, which is subtly conveyed; for
+the brisk and artistic "revolutions and discoveries"; above all, for the
+far from merely sentimental pathos of the Beast's all but death <i>for</i>
+love, and the not in the least mawkish bringing of him to life again
+<i>by</i> love.<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Yet often redeemed.</div>
+
+<p>One may perhaps also make amends to Prince Ch&eacute;ri for the abuse just
+bestowed on him. His story has at least one touch which is sovereign for
+a fiction-fault common in the past, and only too probable in the future,
+at whatever time one takes the "present" of the story. When he is not
+unjustly turned into a monster of the most allegorical-composite order
+of monster architecture&mdash;a monster to whom dragons and wyverns and
+chimaeras dire are as ordinary as kittens&mdash;what do they do with him?
+They put him "with the other monsters." <i>Ce n'est pas plus raide que
+&ccedil;a.</i> The present writer need hardly fear to be thought an
+anti-mediaevalist, but he is very much afraid that an average mediaeval
+romancer might have thought it necessary to catalogue these other
+monsters with the aid of a Bestiary. On the other hand, there have been
+times&mdash;no matter which&mdash;when this abrupt introduction and dismissal of
+monsters as common objects (for which any respectable community will
+have proper stables or cages) would have been disallowed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> or explained
+away, or apologised for, or, worst of all, charged with a sort of wink
+or sneer to let the reader know that the author knew what he was about.
+Here there is nothing of this superfluous or offensive sort. The
+appropriate and undoubting logic of the style prevails over all too
+reasonable difficulties. There are monsters, or how could Ch&eacute;ri be made
+into one? If there are monsters there must, or in the highest
+probability may, be other monsters. Put him with them, and make no fuss
+about it. If all novelists had had this <i>aplomb</i>, we should have been
+spared a great deal of tediousness, some positive failures, and the
+spoiling, or at least the blotting and marring, of many excellent
+situations. But to praise the good points of fairy stories, from the
+brief consummateness of <i>Le Chat Bott&eacute;</i> to the longer drawn but still
+perfectly golden matter of <i>La Biche au Bois</i>, would really be
+superfluous. One loathes leaving them; but one has to do it, so far as
+the more unsophisticated part of them is concerned. Yet the duty of the
+historian will not let him be content with these, and, to vary "The
+Brave Lord Willoughby" a little, "turning to the [<i>others</i>] a thousand
+more," he must "slay," or at least criticise.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The main <i>Cabinet des F&eacute;es</i>&mdash;more on Mme. d'Aulnoy.</div>
+
+<p>He who ventures on the complete <i>Cabinet des F&eacute;es</i><a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a> in its more than
+forty volumes, will provide himself with "cabin furniture" of nearly as
+good pastime-quality, at least to my fancy (and yet I may claim to be
+something of a Balzacian), as the slightly larger shelf-ful which
+suggested itself to the fancy of Mr. Browning and provoked (<i>as</i> "cabin
+furniture") the indignation of Mr. Swinburne. But he had better look
+over the contents before he takes it on board, or he will find himself,
+if his travelling library is anything like as large as that of the
+patriarch Photius, in danger of duplication. For the <i>Cabinet</i> holds,
+not merely the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> <i>Arabian Nights</i> in the original translation of Galland,
+but also Hamilton: as well, of course, as much of what we may call the
+classical fairy matter proper on which we have already dwelt, and which
+is known to all decent people. Still, he will find more of Mme. d'Aulnoy
+than, unless he is already something of an expert, he already knows, and
+perhaps he will not be entirely rejoiced at the amplification. She wrote
+more or less regular heroic romances,<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a> which are very inferior to
+her fairy tales; and though these are not in the <i>Cabinet</i>, she
+sometimes "mixes the kinds" rather disastrously in shorter pieces. The
+framework of <i>Don Gabriel Ponce de Leon</i>, which enshrines the sad but
+charming "Golden Sheep," and a variant of <i>Cendrillon</i>, is poor stuff;
+and <i>Les Chevaliers Errans</i> only shows what we knew before, that the
+junction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is not the time or
+the place in which to find the loved one, if that loved one is
+mediaeval. Still, this invaluable lady does generally reck and exemplify
+her own immortal rede. "Il me semble," says Prince Marcassin to the
+fairies, "&agrave; vous entendre, qu'il ne faut pas m&ecirc;me croire ce qu'on voit."
+And they reply, "La r&egrave;gle n'est pas toujours g&eacute;n&eacute;rale; <i>mais il est
+indubitable que l'on doit suspendre son jugement sur bien des choses, et
+penser qu'il peut entrer quelque chose de F&eacute;erie dans ce que nous paro&icirc;t
+de plus certain</i>."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Warning against disappointment.</div>
+
+<p>Alas! it was precisely this <i>quelque chose de F&eacute;erie</i> which is wanting
+in the majority of the minor fairy-tale writers. That they should attain
+the wonderful simplicity, freshness, and charm of Perrault at his best
+was not to be expected; hardly that they should reach the more
+sophisticated grace of Hamilton; but it might have been hoped that some
+would come more or less near the lower, and much more unequal, but
+occasionally very successful art or luck of Mme. d'Aulnoy herself.
+Unfortunately very few of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> them do. It was easy enough to begin <i>Il
+&eacute;tait autrefois un roi et une reine</i>, to put in a Prince Charming and a
+Princess Graciosa, and good fairies and bad fairies, and magicians and
+ogres and talking beasts, and the like. It was not so easy to make all
+these things work together to produce the peculiar spell which belongs
+to the true land of Faery, and to that land alone. Still more
+unfortunately, wrong ways of attempting the object (or some other
+object) were as easy as the right ways were difficult. They cannot avoid
+muddling the fairy tale with the heroic romance: and with the
+half-historical sub-variety of this latter which Mme. de La Fayette
+introduced. The worst enchanter that ever fairies had to fight with is
+not such an enemy of theirs as History and Geography&mdash;two most
+respectable persons in their proper places, but fatal here. They will
+make King Richard of England tell fairy tales to Blondel out of the
+Austrian tower, and muddle up things about his wicked brother the Count
+of Mortagne. They will talk of Lemnos and Memphis and other <i>patatis</i>
+and <i>patatas</i> of the classical dictionary and the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>. In a
+fashion not perhaps so instantly suicidal, but in a sufficiently
+annoying fashion, they will invent clumsy "speaking" names, or dog-Latin
+and cat-Greek ones. And, perhaps worst of all, they prostitute the
+delicate charms of the fairy tale to clumsy adulation of the reigning
+monarch, and tedious half-veiled flattery or satire of less exalted
+persons, or, if "prostitute" be too harsh a word here, attempt to force
+a marriage between these charms and the dullest moralising. In fact, it
+is scarcely extravagant to say that, in regard to too many of them&mdash;to
+some of them at least&mdash;everything that ought not to be, such as the
+things just mentioned and others, is there, and everything that ought to
+be&mdash;lightness, brightness, the sense of the impossible in which it is
+delightful to believe, the dream-feeling, the magic of gratified wish
+and realised ideal&mdash;is not.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mlle. de la Force and others.</div>
+
+<p>Of course, in these other and minor writers that the <i>Cabinet</i> has to
+give, all these disappointments do not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> always occur, and the crop is
+mixed. Mlle. de la Force<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a> was one of those <i>dames</i> or <i>demoiselles
+de compagnie</i> who figure so largely in the literary history of the
+French eighteenth century, and whose group is illustrated by such names
+as those of Mlle. Delaunay and Mlle. de Lespinasse. Her full name was
+Charlotte Rose de Caumont de la Force, and she was, if not an
+adventuress, a person of adventures, who also wrote many
+quasi-historical romances in the <i>Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i> manner. Her fairy
+tales are thin, and marred by weak allegory of the "Carte de Tendre"
+kind. A "Pays des D&eacute;lices," very difficult to reach, and constantly
+personated by a "Pays des Avances," promises little and performs less.</p>
+
+<p>The eleven (it is an exact eleven) called <i>Les Illustres F&eacute;es</i> is
+scarcely so illustrious as the All England and the United were, in the
+memory of some of us, in another and better played kind of cricket. The
+stories are not very long; they run to a bare eighteen small pages
+apiece; but few readers are likely to wish them longer. <i>Blanche-Belle</i>
+introduces the <i>sylphes</i>&mdash;an adulteration<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a> which generally produces
+the effect that Thackeray deplored when his misguided friend would have
+<i>pur&eacute;e</i> mixed with <i>julienne</i>. <i>Le Roi Magicien</i> is painfully destitute
+of personality; we want names, and pretty names, for a fairy tale. <i>Le
+Prince Roger</i> is a descendant of M&eacute;lusine, and one does not think she
+would be proud of him. <i>Fortunio</i> is better, and <i>Quiribirini</i>, one of
+the numerous stories which turn on remembering or failing to remember an
+odd name,<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> perhaps better still; but the rest deserve little praise,
+and the last, <i>L'Ile Inaccessible</i>, appears to be, if it is anything but
+pure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> dulness, a flat political allegory about England and France.</p>
+
+<p>The style picks up a little in the miscellany called (not without a
+touch of piquancy) <i>La Tyrannie des F&eacute;es D&eacute;truite</i>, by a Mme.
+d'<i>Auneuil</i>, whom persons of a sceptical turn might imagine to be a sort
+of factitious rival to Mme. d'Aulnoy.<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a> It returns to the Greek or
+pseudo-Greek names of the heroic romance, and to its questionable device
+of <i>histoires</i> stuck like plums in a pudding. Nor are the <i>Sans
+Parangon</i> and the <i>F&eacute;e des F&eacute;es</i> of the Sieur de Preschac utterly bad.
+But <i>Les Aventures d'Abdalla</i>, besides rashly incurring the danger (to
+be exemplified and commented on more fully a little later) of vying with
+the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, substitutes for the genuine local colour and
+speech the <i>fade</i> jargon of French eighteenth-century
+"sensibility"&mdash;<i>autels</i> and <i>flammes</i> and all the rest of the trumpery.
+But it does worse still&mdash;it tries to be instructive, and informs us of
+the difference between male and female <i>dives</i> and <i>peris</i>, of the
+custom of suttee, and of the fact that there are many professional
+singers and dancers among Indian girls. This is simply intolerable.<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The large proportion of Eastern Tales.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Les Voyages de Zulma.</i></div>
+
+<p>The great prominence of the Eastern Tale, indeed, in this collection is
+likely to be one of the most striking things in it to a new-comer. He
+would know, of course, that such tales are not uncommon in contemporary
+English; he would certainly be acquainted with Addison's, Johnson's,
+Goldsmith's experiments in them, perhaps with those of Hawkesworth and
+others.<a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> He could see for himself that the "accaparation" by France
+of the peerless <i>Arabian Nights</i> themselves must have led to a still
+greater fancy for them there; and he might possibly have heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> the
+tradition (which the present writer<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> never traced to its source, or
+connected with any real evidence either way) that no less a person than
+Lesage assisted Galland in his task. But though the <i>Nights</i> themselves
+form the most considerable single group in the <i>Cabinet</i>, the united
+bulk of their congeners or imitations occupies a still larger space.
+There are the rather pale and "moon-like" but sometimes not
+uninteresting <i>Thousand and One Days</i>, and the obviously and rather
+foolishly pastiched <i>Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour</i>. There are
+Persian Tales&mdash;origin of a famous and characteristic jibe at "Namby
+Pamby" Philips&mdash;and Turkish Tales which are a fragment of one of the
+numerous versions of the <i>Seven Sages</i> scheme. The just mentioned
+<i>Adventures of Abdallah</i> betray their source and their nature at once;
+the hoary fables of Bidpai and Lokman are modernised to keep company
+with these "fakings," and there are more definitely literary attempts to
+follow. <i>Les Voyages de Zulma</i>, again an incomplete thing which actually
+tails off towards its failure of an end, shows some ingenuity in its
+conception, but suffers, even in the beginning, from that mixing of
+kinds which has been pointed out and reprobated. An attempt is made to
+systematise the fairy idea by representing these gracious creatures as
+offspring of Destiny and the Earth, with a cruel brother Time, and an
+offset of mischievous sisters who exactly correspond to the good
+ones&mdash;Disgracieuse to Gracieuse, and so on&mdash;and have a queen
+Laide-des-Laides, who answers to the good fairy princess,
+Belle-des-Belles. A mortal&mdash;Zulma&mdash;is, for paternal rather than personal
+merits, chosen by Destiny to enjoy the privilege of entering and
+understanding the fairy world, and Gracieuse is the fairy assigned as
+his guide. The idea is, as has been said, rather ingenious; but it is
+too systematic,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> and like other things in other parts of the collection,
+"loses the grace and liberty of the composition" in system. Moreover,
+the morality, as is rather the wont of these imitators when they are not
+(as a few of the partly non-cabinetted ones are) deliberately naughty,
+is much too scrupulous.<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a> It is clear that Zulma is in love with
+Gracieuse, that she responds to some extent, and that Her Majesty Queen
+Belle-des-Belles is a little jealous and inclined to cut Gracieuse out.
+But nothing in the finished part of the story gives us any of the nice
+love-making that we want.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">F&eacute;nelon.</div>
+
+<p>Madame le Marchand's <i>Boca</i> is a story which begins in Peru but finishes
+in an "Isle of Ebony," where the names of Zobeide and Abdelazis seem
+rather more at home; it is not without merit. As for the fables and
+stories which F&eacute;nelon composed for that imperfect Marcellus, the Duke of
+Burgundy, they have all the merits of style, sense, and good feeling
+which they might be expected to have, and it would be absurd to ask of
+them qualities which, in the circumstances, they could not display.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Chinese Tales</i> are about as little Chinese as may be, consisting of
+accounts of his punitive metempsychoses by the Mandarin Fum Hoam (a name
+afterwards borrowed in better known work), who seems to have been
+excluded from the knowledge of anything particularly Celestial.<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a> But
+they are rather smartly told. On the other hand, <i>Florine ou la Belle
+Italienne</i>, which is included in the same volume with the sham
+<i>Chinoiseries</i>, is one of the worst instances of the confusion of kinds
+noted above. It honestly prepares one for what is coming by a reference
+in the Preface to F&eacute;nelon; but a list of <i>dramatis</i> (or <i>fabulae</i>)
+<i>personae</i>, which follows, would have tried the saintliness even of him
+of Cambrai almost as much as a German occupation of his archiepiscopal
+see. "Agatonphisie," for a personage who represents, we are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> told, "Le
+Bon Sens," might break the heart of Clenardus, if not the head of
+Priscian.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Thousand and One Quarter Hours</i>, or <i>Contes Tartares</i>, have as
+little of the Tartar as those above mentioned of the Chinese, but if
+somewhat verbose, they are not wholly devoid of literary quality. The
+substance is, as in nearly all these cases, <i>Arabian Nights</i> rehashed;
+but the hashing is not seldom done <i>secundum artem</i>, and they have, with
+the <i>Les Sultanes de Gujerate</i> and <i>Nouveaux Contes Orientaux</i>, which
+follow them, the faculty of letting themselves be read.</p>
+
+<p>The best of these<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a> (except the French translation of the so-called
+Sir Charles Morell's (really James Ridley's) <i>Tales of the Genii</i> (see
+above)) is perhaps, on the whole, <i>Les Sultanes de Gujerate</i>, where not
+only are some of the separate tales good, but the frame-story is far
+more artistically worked in and round and out than is usually the case.
+But taking them all together, there is one general and obvious, as well
+as another local and particular objection to them. Although the
+sub-title (<i>v. sup.</i> again) lets them in, the main one regards them
+with, at best, an oblique countenance. The differences between the
+Western fairy and the Eastern <i>peri</i>, <i>dive</i>, <i>djin</i>, or whatever one
+chooses to call her, him, or it, though not at all easy to define, are
+exceedingly easy to feel. The magicians and enchanters of the two kinds
+are nearer to each other, but still not the same. On the other hand, it
+is impossible for any one who has once felt the strange charm of the
+<i>Arabian Nights</i> not to feel the immense inferiority of these rehashes
+and <i>croquettes</i> and <i>rissoles</i>, and so forth, of the noble old haunch
+or sirloin. Yet again, from the special point of view of this book,
+though they cannot be simply passed over, they supply practically
+nothing which marks, or causes, or even promises an advance in the
+general development of fiction. They may be said to be simply a
+continuation of, or a relapse upon, the pure romance of adventure, with
+different dress, manners, and nomenclature. There is hardly a single
+touch of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> character in any one; their very morals (and no shame to them)
+are arch-known; and they do not possess style enough to confer
+distinction of the kind open to such things. If you take <i>Les Quatre
+Facardins</i>, before most of them, and <i>Vathek</i><a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a> (itself, remember,
+originally French in language), after them all, the want of any kind of
+genius in their composers becomes almost disgustingly apparent. Yet even
+these masterpieces are masterpieces outside the main run of the novel.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Caylus.</div>
+
+<p>Although, therefore, it would be very ungrateful not to acknowledge that
+they do sometimes comply with the demands of that sensible tyrant
+already mentioned, Sultan Hudgiadge, and "either amuse us or send us to
+sleep," it must be admitted to be with some relief that one turns once
+more, at about the five and twentieth volume, to something like the
+fairy tale proper, if to a somewhat artificial and sophisticated form of
+it. The Comte de Caylus was a scholar and a man of unusual brains;
+Moncrif showed his mixture of Scotch and French blood in a corresponding
+blend of quaintness and <i>esprit</i>; others, such as Voisenon in one sex
+and Voltaire's pet Mlle. de Lubert in the other, whatever they were,
+were at any rate not stupid.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Prince Courtebotte et Princesse Zibeline.</i></div>
+
+<p>To Anne Claude Philippe de Tubi&egrave;res de Grimoard de Pestels de L&eacute;vi,
+Comte de Caylus, one owes particular thanks, at least when one comes to
+the history of <i>Le Prince Courtebotte</i>, after wrestling with the
+<i>mac&eacute;doine</i> of orientalities just discussed. It is not, of course,
+Perrault, and it is not the best Madame D'Aulnoy. But you are never "put
+out" by it; the hero, if rather a hero of Scott in the uniform propriety
+of his conduct, or of Virgil in his success, is not like Waverley,
+partly a simpleton, nor like Aeneas, wholly a cad. One likes the
+Princess Zibeline both before she had a heart and afterwards; it can be
+very agreeable to know a nice girl in both states. Perhaps it was not
+quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> cricket of the good fairy to play that trick<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a> on the
+ambassador of King Brandatimor, but it was washed out in fair fight; and
+King Biby and his people of poodles are delightful. One wonders whether
+Dickens, who was better read in this kind of literature than in most,
+consciously or unconsciously borrowed from Caylus one of his not least
+known touches.<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Rosanie.</i></div>
+
+<p>In the next of the Caylus stories there is an Idea&mdash;the capital seems
+due because the Count was a man of Science, as science (perhaps better)
+went then, and because one or his other tales (not the best) is actually
+called <i>Le Palais des Id&eacute;es</i>. The idea of <i>Rosanie</i> is questionable,
+though the carrying of it out is all right. Two fairies are fighting for
+the (fairy) crown, and the test is who shall produce the most perfect
+specimen of the special fairy art of education of mortals. (I may, as a
+<i>ci-devant</i> member of this craft, be permitted to regret that the
+business has been so largely taken over by persons who are neither
+fairies in one sex, though there may be some exceptions here, nor
+enchanters in the other, where exceptions are very rare indeed.) The
+tutoress of the Princess Rosanie pursues her task, and pursues it
+triumphantly, by dividing the child into twelve <i>interim</i> personalities,
+each of whom has a special characteristic&mdash;beauty, gentleness, vivacity,
+discretion, and what not. At the close of the prescribed period they are
+reunited, and their fortunate lover, who has hitherto been distracted
+between the twelve <i>eidola</i>, is blessed with the compound Rosanie.
+Although it is well known to be the rashest of things for a man to say
+anything about women&mdash;although certainly sillier things have been said
+by men about women than about any other subject, except, of course,
+education itself&mdash;I venture to demur to the fairy method. Both <i>a
+priori</i> and from experience, I should say that unmixed Beauty would
+become intolerably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> vain; that Discretion would grow into a hypocritical
+and unpleasant prude; that Vivacity would develop into Vulgarity; and
+that the reincarnation of the twelve would be one of the most
+intolerable creatures ever known, if it were not that the impossibility
+of the concentrated essences being united in one person, after
+separation in several, would save the situation by annihilating her.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Prince Muguet et Princesse Zaza.</i></div>
+
+<p>Caylus, however, makes up in the third tale, <i>Le Prince Muguet et la
+Princesse Zaza</i>, where, though the principal fairy, she of the <i>H&ecirc;tre</i>,
+is rather silly for one of the kind, Muguet is a not quite intolerable
+coxcomb, and Zaza is positively charming. Her sufferings with a wicked
+old woman are common; but her distress when the fairy makes her seem
+ugly to the Prince, who has actually fallen in love with her true
+portrait, and the scenes where the two meet under this spell, are among
+the best in the whole <i>Cabinet</i>&mdash;which is a bold word. The others,
+though naturally unequal, never or very seldom lack charm, for the
+reason that Caylus knew what one has ventured to call the secret of
+Fairyland&mdash;that it is the land of the attained Wish&mdash;and that he has the
+art of scattering rememberable and generative phrases and fancies.
+<i>Tourlou et Rirette</i>, one of the lightest of all, may not
+impossibly&mdash;indeed probably&mdash;have suggested Jean Ingelow's great
+single-speech poem of <i>Divided</i>; the Princesses Pimprenelle and
+Lumineuse are the right sort of Princesses; <i>Nonchalante et Papillon</i>,
+<i>Bleuette et Coquelicot</i> come and take their places unpretentiously but
+certainly; Mignonette and Minutieuse are not "out." Caylus is not
+Hamilton by a long way; but he has something that Hamilton has not. He
+is still less Perrault or Madame d'Aulnoy, but he has a sufficient
+difference from either. With these predecessors he makes the select
+quartette of the fairy-tale tellers of France.</p>
+
+<p>After him one expects&mdash;and meets&mdash;a drop. No reasonable person would
+look for a really great fairy tale from Jean Jacques, because you must
+forget yourself to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> write one; and <i>La Reine Fantasque</i>, though not bad,
+is not good. Madame de Villeneuve may, for ought I know, have been an
+excellent person in other ways, but she deserves one of the worst
+bolgias in the Inferno of literature for lengthening, muddling, and
+altogether spoiling the ever-beloved "Beauty and the Beast." Mlle. de
+Lussan, they say,<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a> was too fond of eating, and died of indigestion.
+A more indigestible thing than her own <i>Les Veill&eacute;es de Thessalie</i>,
+which figure here (she wrote a great deal more), the present writer has
+never come across. And as for <i>Prince Titi</i>, which fills a volume and a
+half, it might have been passed without any remark at all if it had not
+become famous in connection with the Battle of Croker and Macaulay over
+the body of Boswell's <i>Johnson</i>.<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a></p>
+
+<p>A break takes place at the thirtieth volume of the <i>Cabinet</i>, and a
+fresh instalment, later than the first batch, follows, with more
+particulars about authors. Here we find the attributions of the very
+large series of imitative Eastern tales already noticed, and to be
+followed in this new parcel by <i>Soir&eacute;es Bretonnes</i>, to Thomas Simon
+Gueulette. The thirty-first opens with the <i>Funestine</i> of
+Beauchamps<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a>&mdash;an ingenious title and heroine-name, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> it avoids the
+unnatural sounds so common, is a quite possible feminine appellation,
+and though a "speaking" one, is only so to those who understand the
+learned languages, and so deserve to be spoken to. Moreover, the idea,
+though not startlingly original or a mark of genius, is good&mdash;that of an
+unlucky child who attracts the malignity of <i>all</i> fairies, and is ugly,
+stupid, ill-natured, and everything that is detestable. Her reformation
+by the genie Clair-Obscur would not be bad if it were cut a great deal
+shorter.</p>
+
+<p>It is followed by a series of short tales, beginning with <i>The Little
+Green Frog</i>, and not of the first class, which in turn are succeeded by
+two (or, as the latter is in two parts, three) longer stories, sometimes
+attributed to Caylus&mdash;<i>Le Loup Galeux</i> and <i>Bellinette et Belline</i>. The
+<i>Soir&eacute;es Bretonnes</i> themselves, though apparently the earliest, are not
+the happiest of Gueulette's <i>pastiches</i>; the speaking names<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a>
+especially are irritating. A certain Madame de Lintot, who does not seem
+to have had anything to do with the hero of Pope's famous "Ride with a
+Bookseller," is what may be called "neutral," with <i>Timandre et
+Bleuette</i> and others; nor does a fresh instalment of Moncrif's efforts
+show the historian of cats at his best. But in vol. xxxiii. Mlle. de
+Lubert, glanced at before, raises the standard. She should have cut her
+tales down; it is the mischief of these later things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> that they extend
+too much. But <i>Lionnette et Coqu&eacute;rico</i> is good; <i>Le Prince Glac&eacute; et la
+Princesse Etincelante</i> is not bad; and <i>La Princesse Camion</i> attracts,
+by dint of extravagance in the literal sense. Fairy trials had gone far;
+but the necessity of either marrying a beautiful sort of mermaid or else
+of <i>flaying</i> her, and the subsequent trial, not of flaying, but braying
+her in a mortar as a shrimp, show at least a lively fancy. Nor is the
+anonymous <i>Nourjahad</i>&mdash;an extremely moral but not dull tale, which
+follows&mdash;at all contemptible.</p>
+
+<p>The French Bar, inexhaustible in such things, gave another tale-teller
+in one Pajon, who, besides the obligatory <i>polissonneries</i>, not included
+in the <i>Cabinet</i>, composed not a few harmless things of some merit. The
+first, <i>Eritzine et Paretin</i>, is perhaps the best. Nor is the complement
+of vol. xxxiv., the <i>Biblioth&egrave;que des F&eacute;es et des G&eacute;nies</i> (the title of
+which was that of a larger collection, containing much the same matter
+as the <i>Cabinet</i>, and probably in Johnson's mind when he jotted down
+<i>Prince Titi</i>), quite barren. <i>La Princesse Minon-Minette et le Prince
+Souci</i>, <i>Apranor et Bellanire</i>, <i>Grisdelin et Charmante</i>, are none of
+them unreadable. The next volume, too, is better as a whole than any we
+have had for a long time. Mme. Fagnan's <i>Minet Bleu et Louvette</i>
+contains, in its fifteen pages, a good situation by no means
+ill-treated. The pair are under the same spell&mdash;that of being ugly and
+witty for part of the week, handsome, stupid, and disagreeable for the
+other part, and of having the times so arranged that each sees the other
+at his or her most repulsive to her or his actual state. The way in
+which "Love unconquered in battle" proves, though not without fairy
+assistance, victorious here also, is very ingeniously managed.</p>
+
+<p>One of the cleverest of all the later fairy tales is the <i>Acajou et
+Zirphile</i> of Duclos, who, indeed, had sufficient wits to do anything
+well, and was a novelist, though not a very distinguished one, on a
+larger scale. The tale itself (which is said to have been written "up
+to" illustrations of Boucher designed for something else) has,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> indeed,
+a smatch of vulgarity, but a purely superfluous and easily removable
+one. It is almost as cleverly written as any thing of Voltaire's: and
+the final situation, where the hero, who has gone through all the
+mischiefs and triumphs of one of Cr&eacute;billon's, recovers his only real
+love, Zirphile, in a torment and tornado of heads separated from bodies
+and hands separated from arms, is rather capital.</p>
+
+<p>Not much less so, in the different way of a pretty sentimentality, is
+the <i>Agla&eacute; ou Naboline</i> of the painter Coypel; while the batch of short
+stories from Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont's <i>Magasin des Enfants</i> have had
+a curious fate. They are rather pooh-poohed by French editors and
+critics, and they are certainly <i>very</i> moral, too much so, in fact, as
+has been already objected to one of them, <i>Le Prince Ch&eacute;ri</i>. But
+allowances have been allowed even there, and, somehow or other, <i>Fatal
+et Fortun&eacute;</i>, <i>Le Prince Charmant</i>, <i>Joliette</i>, and the rest have
+recovered more of the root of the matter than most others, and have
+established a just popularity in translation.</p>
+
+<p>And then comes the shortest, I think, of all the stories in the one and
+forty volumes; the silliest as a composition; the most contemptibly
+<i>thought</i>&mdash;but by the accidents of fate endowed later with a
+tragic-satiric <i>moralitas</i> almost if not quite unrivalled in literature.
+Its author was a certain M. Selis, apparently a very respectable
+schoolmaster, professor, and bookmaker of not the lowest
+class&mdash;employments and occupations in respect of all of which not a few
+of us have earned our bread and paid our income-tax. Unluckily for him,
+there was born in his time a Dauphin, and he wrote a little adulatory
+tale of the birth, and the editors of the <i>Cabinet</i> Appendix thanked him
+much for giving it them. It is not four pages long; it tells how an
+ancestral genie&mdash;a great king named Louis&mdash;blessed the child, and said
+that he would be called "the father of his people," and another followed
+suit with "the father of letters," and a third swore <i>Ventre Saint
+Gris!</i> and named the baby's uncle as "Joseph," and a still greater Louis
+said other things, and a fairy named<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> Maria Theresa crowned the
+blessings. Then came an ogre mounted on a leopard and eating raw meat,
+who was of Albion, and said he was king of the country, and observed
+"<i>God ham</i>" [<i>sic</i>], and was told that he would be beaten and made to
+lay down his arms by the child.</p>
+
+<p>And the Dauphin, unless this <i>signalement</i> is strangely delusive, lived
+to know the worst ogres in the world (their chief was named Simon), who
+were of his own people, and to die the most unhappy prince or king in
+that world. And he of the Leopard who said <i>God ham</i>, would have saved
+that Dauphin if he could, and did slay many of his less guiltless
+relations and subjects, and beat the rest "thorough and thorough," and
+restored (could they have had the will and wit to profit by it) the race
+of Louis and Francis, and of the genie who said "Ventre Saint Gris!" to
+their throne. And this was the end of the vaticinations of M. Selis, and
+such are the tears of things.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of this volume is occupied by a baker's dozen of <i>Contes
+Choisis</i>, the first of which, <i>Les Trois Epreuves</i>, seems to imitate
+Voltaire, and is smartly written, while some of the others are not bad.</p>
+
+<p>Volume xxxvi. is occupied (not too appositely, though inoffensively in
+itself) by a translation of Wieland's <i>Don Silvia de Rosalva</i>, which is
+a German <i>Sir Launcelot Greaves</i> or <i>Spiritual Quixote</i>, with fairy
+tales substituted for romances of chivalry. The author of <i>Oberon</i> was
+seldom, if ever, unreadable, and he is not so here; but the thing is
+neither a tale proper (seeing that it fills a whole volume), nor a real
+fairy tale, nor French, so we may let it alone.</p>
+
+<p>Then this curious collection once more comes to an end, which is not an
+end, with a very useful though not too absolutely trustworthy volume of
+<i>Notices des Auteurs</i>, containing not only "bio-bibliographical"
+articles on the actual writers collected, but references to others,
+great and small, from Marivaux, Lesage, Pr&eacute;vost, and Voltaire downwards,
+and glances, sometimes with actual <i>comptes rendus</i>, at pieces of the
+class not included. That it is conducted on the somewhat irresponsible
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> indolent principles of its time might be anticipated from previous
+things, such as the clause in the Preface to Wieland's just noticed
+book, that the author had "gone to Weimar, where perhaps he is still,"
+an observation which, from the context, seems not to be so much an
+attempt at <i>persiflage</i> as a pure piece of lazy <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>. The volume,
+however, contains a great deal of information such as it is; some
+sketches, ingeniously draped or Bowdlerised, of the "naughty" tales
+excluded from the collection itself, and a few amusing stories.<a name="FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a></p>
+
+<p>As, however, has been said, there was to be still another joint to this
+crocodile, and the four last volumes, xxxviii. to xli. (<i>not</i>, as is
+wrongly said by some, xxxvii. to xl.), contain a somewhat rash
+continuation of the <i>Arabian Nights</i> themselves, with which Cazotte<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a>
+appears to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> had a good deal to do, though an actual Arab monk of
+the name of Chavis is said to have been mainly concerned. They are not
+bad reading; but even less of fairy tales than Gueulette's
+orientalities.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Not much apology is needed, it may be hoped, for the space given to this
+curious kind; the bulk of its production, the length of its popularity,
+and the intrinsic merit of some few of its better examples vindicate its
+position here. But a confession should take the place of the unnecessary
+excuse already partly made. The artificial fairy tale of the more
+regular kind was not, by the law of its being, prevented almost
+unavoidably from doing service to the novel at large, as the Eastern
+story was; but, as a matter of fact, it did little except what will be
+mentioned in the next paragraph. That it helped to exemplify afresh what
+had been shown over and over again for centuries, the singular
+recreative faculty of the nation and the language, was about all. But
+another national characteristic, the as yet incurable set of the French
+mind towards types&mdash;which, if the second volume of this work ever
+appears, will, it is hoped, be shown to have spared the later
+novel&mdash;seized on these tales. They are "as like as my fingers to my
+fingers," and they are not very pretty fingers as a rule. Incidentally
+they served as frameworks to some of the worst verse in the world, nor,
+for the most part, did they even encourage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> very good prose. You may get
+some good out of them; but unless you like hunting, and are not vexed by
+frequent failures to "draw," the <i>Cabinet des F&eacute;es</i> is best left to
+exploration at second-hand.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>To collect the results of this long chapter, we may observe that in
+these three departments&mdash;Pastoral, Heroic, and Fairy&mdash;various important
+elements of <i>general</i> novel material and construction are provided in a
+manner not yet noticed. The Pastoral may seem to be the most obsolete,
+the most of a mere curiosity. But the singular persistence and, in a
+way, universality of this apparently fossil convention has been already
+pointed out; and it is perhaps only necessary to shift the pointer to
+the fact that the novels with which one of the most modern, in perhaps
+the truest sense of that word, of modern novelists, though one of the
+eldest, Mr. Thomas Hardy, began to make his mark&mdash;<i>Under the Greenwood
+Tree</i> and <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>&mdash;may be claimed by the pastoral
+with some reason. And it has another and a wider claim&mdash;that it keeps
+up, in its own way, the element of the imaginative, of the fanciful&mdash;let
+us say even of the unreal&mdash;without which romance cannot live, without
+which novel is almost repulsive, and which the increasing advances of
+realism itself were to render more than ever indispensable. As for the
+Heroic, we have already shown how much, with all its faults, it did for
+the novel generally in construction and in other ways. It has been shown
+likewise, it is hoped, how the Fairy story, besides that additional
+provision of imagination, fancy, and dream which has just been said to
+be so important&mdash;mingled with this a kind of realism which was totally
+lacking in the others, and which showed itself especially in one
+immensely important department wherein they had been so much to seek.
+Fairies may be (they are not to my mind) things that "do not happen";
+but the best of these fairies are fifty times more natural, not merely
+than the characters of Scud&eacute;ry and Gomberville, but than those (I hold
+to my old blasphemy) of Racine. Animals may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> not talk; but the animals
+of Perrault and even of Madame d'Aulnoy talk divinely well, and, what is
+more, in a way most humanly probable and interesting. Never was there
+such a triumph of the famous impossible-probable as a good fairy story.
+Except to the mere scientist and to (of course, quite a different
+person) the unmitigated fool, these stories, at least the best of them,
+fully deserve the delightful phrase which Southey attributes to a friend
+of his. They are "necessary and voluptuous and right." They were, to the
+French eighteenth century and to French prose, almost what the ballad
+was to the English eighteenth century and to English verse; almost what
+the <i>M&auml;rchen</i> was to the prose and verse alike of yet un-Prussianised
+Germany. They were more than twice blessed: for they were charming in
+themselves; they exercised good influence on other literary productions;
+and they served as precious antidotes to bad things that they could not
+improve, and almost as precious alternatives to things good in
+themselves but of a different kind from theirs.</p>
+
+<p>What, however, none of the kinds discussed in this chapter gave
+entirely, while only the fairy story gave in part, and that in strong
+contrast to another part of itself, was a history of ordinary
+life&mdash;high, low, or middle&mdash;dealing with characters more or less
+representing live and individual personages; furnished with incidents of
+a possible and probable character more or less regularly constructed;
+furnished further with effective description of the usual scenery,
+manners, and general accessories of living; and, finally, giving such
+conversation as might be thought necessary in forms suitable to "men of
+this world," in the Shakespearian phrase. In other words, none of them
+attained, or even attempted to fulfil, the full definition of the novel.
+The scattered books to be mentioned in the next chapter did not,
+perhaps, in any one case&mdash;even Madame de la Fayette's&mdash;quite achieve
+this; but in all of them, even in Sorel's, we see more or less conscious
+or unconscious attempt at it.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> Herr K&ouml;rting (<i>v. sup.</i> p. 133) gave considerable space
+to Barclay's famous <i>Argenis</i>, which also appeared fairly early in the
+century. To treat, however, a Latin book, written by a Scotsman, with
+admittedly large if not main reference to European politics, as a
+"French novel," seems a literary solecism. I do not know whether it is
+rash to add that the <i>Argenis</i> itself seems to me to have been wildly
+overpraised. It is at any rate one of the few books&mdash;one of the still
+fewer romances&mdash;which have defied my own powers of reading at more than
+one attempt.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="sidenote">Note on marked influence of Greek Romance.</div><p>
+The repetition, in the seventeenth century, of something very like a
+phenomenon which we noticed in the twelfth, is certainly striking, and
+may seem at first sight rather uncanny. But those who have made some
+attempt to "find the whole" in literature, and in that attempt have at
+least found out something about the curious laws of revolution and
+recurrence which take the place of any progress in a straight line, will
+deem the thing natural enough. We declined, in the earlier case, to
+admit much, if any, direct influence of the accomplished Greek Romance
+on the Romance of the West; but we showed how classical subjects,
+whether pure or tinctured with Oriental influence, induced an immensely
+important development of this same Western Romance in two
+directions&mdash;that of manners, character, and passion, and that of marvel.
+In the later period classical influences of all sorts are again at work;
+but infinitely the larger part of that work is done by the Greek
+Romances themselves&mdash;pastoral, adventurous, and sentimental,&mdash;the dates
+of the translations of which will be given presently. And the newer
+Oriental kind&mdash;coming considerably later still and sharing its nature
+certainly, and perhaps its origin, not now with classical mythology, but
+again, in the most curious way, with Western folk stories&mdash;supplements
+and diversifies the reinforcement.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> Scud&eacute;ry writes "Urf&eacute;," and this confirms the <i>obiter
+dictum</i> of Sainte-Beuve, that with the Christian name, the "Monsieur,"
+or some other title you must use the "<i>de</i>," otherwise not. But in this
+particular instance I think most French writers give the particle.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> I myself, in writing a <i>Short History of French
+Literature</i> many years ago, had to apologise for incomplete knowledge;
+and I will not undertake even now to have read every romance cursorily
+mentioned in this chapter&mdash;indeed, some are not very easy to get at. But
+I have done my best to extend my knowledge, assisted by a rather minute
+study of the contemporary English heroic romance in prose and verse; and
+I believe I may say that I do now really know the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>, though
+even now I will again not say that I have read every one of its perhaps
+two million words, or even the whole of every one of its more than
+12,000 pages. In regard to the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> I have been less fortunately
+situated; but "I have been there and still would go."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> The above remarks are most emphatically <i>not</i> intended to
+refer to the work of Mr. Greg.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> The sheep, whether as a beast of most multitude or for
+more recondite reasons, has, of course, the preference; but it may be
+permissible to say that no guardian of animals is excluded. Goat-herds
+in the Greek ran the shepherd hard; neat-herds and swine-herds abound
+everywhere except, as concerns the last, in Jewry; even the goose-girl
+figures, and has in Proven&ccedil;al at least a very pretty name&mdash;<i>auquiera</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> The mediaeval <i>pastourelle</i> is no doubt to some extent
+conventional and "made in moulds." But it is by no means so unreal as
+(whether Greek was so or not) Roman pastoral pretty certainly was, and
+as modern has been beyond possibility of doubt. How good it could be,
+without any convention at all, Henryson showed once for all in our own
+language by <i>Robene and Makyne</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> <i>Theagenes and Chariclea</i> had preceded it by thirteen
+years, though a fresh translation appeared in the same year, as did the
+first of <i>Hysminias and Hysmine</i>. Achilles Tatius (<i>Cleitophon and
+Leucippe</i>) had been partly done in 1545, but waited till 1568 for
+completion.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> <i>Op. cit. sup.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> They are almost always <i>Amours</i> after their Greek
+prototypes, sometimes simple, often qualified, and these most frequently
+by such adjectives as "Infortun&eacute;es et chastes," "Constantes et
+infortun&eacute;es," "Chastes et heureuses," "Pudiques," etc. etc. Not a few
+are taken direct from episodes of Ariosto or other elders; otherwise
+they are "loves" of Laoniphile, Lozie, Poliphile and Mellonimphe, P&eacute;gase
+(who has somehow or other become a nymph) and L&eacute;andre, Dachmion and
+Deflore (a rather unlucky heroine-name), etc. etc. Their authors are
+nearly as numerous as their titles; but the chief were a certain Sieur
+de Nerv&egrave;ze, whose numerous individual efforts were collected more than
+once to the number at least of a good baker's dozen, and a Sieur des
+Escuteaux, who had the same fortune. Sometimes the Hellenism went rather
+to seed in such titles as <i>Erocaligen&egrave;se</i>, which supposed itself to be
+Greek for "Naissance d'un bel amour." It is only (at least in England)
+in the very largest libraries, perhaps in the British Museum alone, that
+there is any chance of examining these things directly; some of them
+escaped even the mighty hunt of M. Reynier himself. What the present
+writer has found is treated shortly in the text.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> M. Reynier (most justly, but of course after many
+predecessors) points out that the common filiation of these things on
+Marini and Gongora is chronologically impossible. We could, equally of
+course, supply older examples still in English; and persons of any
+reading can carry the thing back through sixteenth- and
+fifteenth-century examples to the Dark Ages and the late Greek
+classics&mdash;if no further.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> It is fair to say that the first is "make-weighted" with
+a pastoral play entitled <i>Athlette</i>, from the heroine's rather curious
+name.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> It <i>has</i> two poems and some miscellanea. Something like
+this is the case with another bookmaker of the class, Du Souhait.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> It may be childish, but the association in this group of
+ladies&mdash;three of them bearing some of the greatest historic names of
+France, and the fourth that of the admirable critic with no other
+namesake of whom I ever met&mdash;seemed to me interesting. It is perhaps
+worth adding that Isabel de Rochechouart seems to have been not merely
+dedicatee but part author of the first tale.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> The habit is common with these authors.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> He gives more analysis than usual, but complains of the
+author's "affectation and bad taste." I venture to think this relatively
+rather harsh, though it is positively too true of the whole group.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> <i>La Vie et les &OElig;uvres de Honor&eacute; d'Urf&eacute;.</i> Par le
+Chanoine O. C. Reure, Paris, 1910.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> The Abb&eacute; Reure, to whom I owe my own knowledge of the
+translation and dedication, says nothing more.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> M. Reynier, in the useful book so often quoted, has shown
+that, as one would expect, this influence is not absent from the smaller
+French love-novels which preceded the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>; indeed, as we saw, it is
+obvious, though in a form of more religiosity, as early as the
+<i>Heptameron</i>. But it was not till the seventeenth century in France, or
+till a little before it in some cases with us, that "Love in fantastic
+triumph sat" between the shadowing wings of sensual and intellectual
+passion.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> They had, indeed, neither luck nor distinction after
+Honor&eacute;'s death: and the last of the family died, like others of the
+renegade nobles of France, by his own hand, to escape the guillotine
+which he himself had helped to establish.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> The more orthodox "laws of love" which Celadon puts up in
+his "Temple of Astraea" are less amusing.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> He constantly plays this part of referee and moraliser.
+But he is by no means exempt from the pleasing fever of the place, and
+some have been profane enough to think his mistress, Diane, more
+attractive than the divine Astr&eacute;e herself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> Very delicate persons have been shocked by the advantages
+afforded to Celadon in his disguise as the Druid's daughter, and the
+consequent familiarity with the innocent unrecognising heroine. But
+<i>honi soit</i> will cover them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> There is plenty of this, including a regular siege of the
+capital, Marcilly.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> The constant confusion, in these quasi-classical
+romances, of masculine and feminine names is a rather curious feature.
+But the late Sir W. Gilbert played some tricks of the kind in <i>Pygmalion
+and Galatea</i>, and I remember an English novelist, with more pretensions
+to scholarship than Gilbert, making the particularly unfortunate blunder
+of attributing to Longus a book called "<i>Doris</i> and Chloe."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> It is fair to say that Urf&eacute; has been praised for these
+historical excursions or incursions of his.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> Its difficulty of access in the French has been noted.
+The English translation may be less rare, but it is not a good one even
+of its kind. And, in face of the most false and misleading statements,
+never more frequent than at the present moment, about the efficacy of
+translations, it may be well to insist on the truth. For science,
+history philosophy (though in a descending ratio through these three)
+translations may serve. The man who knows Greek or Latin or any other
+<i>literature</i> only through them knows next to nothing of that literature
+as such, and in its literary quality. The version may be, as in the
+leading case of FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam, literature itself of the
+highest class; but it is quite other literature than the original, and
+is, in fact, a new original itself. It may, while keeping closer, be as
+good as Catullus on Sappho or as bad as Mr. Gladstone on Toplady in
+form; but the form, even if copied, is always again other.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> Some reasons will be given later for taking this
+first&mdash;not the least being the juxtaposition with the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>. The
+actual order of the chief "Heroic" authors and books is as follows:
+Gomberville, <i>La Carit&eacute;e</i>, 1622; <i>Polexandre</i>, 1632; <i>Cither&eacute;e</i>,
+1640-42. <i>La Calpren&egrave;de</i>, <i>Cassandre</i>, 1642; <i>Cl&eacute;op&acirc;tre</i>, 1648;
+<i>Faramond</i>, 1662. Mlle. de Scud&eacute;ry, <i>Ibrahim</i>, 1641; <i>Artam&egrave;ne</i>, 1649;
+<i>Cl&eacute;lie</i>, 1656; <i>Almahide</i>, 1660.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> Cousin relieved his work on "The True, the Good, and the
+Beautiful" not only with elaborate disquisitions on the ladies of the
+Fronde who, though certainly beautiful were not very very good, but with
+a long exposition of French society as revealed in the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>
+itself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> Scud&eacute;ry bore, and evidently rejoiced in, this sounding
+title, which can never have had a titular to whom it was more
+appropriate. The place seems to have been an actual fortress, though a
+small one, near Marseilles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> I blushed for my namesake when I found, some time
+afterwards, that he had copied this unusual (save in German)
+feminisation of the sun from Gomberville (<i>v. inf.</i> p. 240).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> That is classical education: in comparison with which
+"all others is cagmaggers."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> I have wavered a little between adopting French or Greek
+forms of names. But as the authors are not consistent, and as some of
+their more fanciful compounds classicalise badly, I have finally decided
+to stick to the text in every case, except in those of historical
+persons where French forms such as "Pisistrate" would jar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> Like Robina in <i>Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> There are ten parts, each divisible into two <i>volumes</i>
+and three books. There is also a division at the end of the fifth "part"
+and the tenth volume, the first five (ten) having apparently been issued
+together. The "parts" are continuously paged&mdash;running never, I think, to
+less than 1000 pages and more than once to a little over 1400.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> Drama may have done harm here, if those dramatic critics
+who say that you must never "puzzle the audience" are right. The happy
+novel-reader is of less captious mood and mould: he trusts his author
+and hopes his author will pull him through.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> Some exception in the way of occasional flashes may be
+made for two lively maids of honour to be mentioned later, Mart&eacute;sie and
+Doralise.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> There is an immense "throw-back" after the Sinope affair,
+in which the previous history of Artam&egrave;ne and the circumstances of
+Mandane's abduction are recounted up to date&mdash;I hope that some readers
+at least will not have forgotten the introduction of Lancelot to
+Guinevere. We have here the Middle Age and the <i>Grand Si&egrave;cle</i> like
+philippines in a nutshell.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> To understand the account, it must be remembered that the
+combat takes place in a position secluded from the two armies and
+strictly forbidden to lookers-on; also that it is to be absolutely <i>&agrave;
+outrance</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> It is not perhaps extravagant to suggest that Sir Walter
+had something of this fight, as well as of the <i>Combat des Trente</i>, in
+his mind when he composed the famous record of the Clan Chattan and Clan
+Quhele battle.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> Praed's delightful Medora might have found the practice
+of the <i>Grand Cyrus</i> rather oppressive; but she would have thoroughly
+approved its principles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> He is King of Cappadocia now, Astyages being alive; and
+only succeeds to Media later. It must never be forgotten that the
+<i>Cyropaedia</i>, not Herodotus, is the chief authority relied upon by the
+authors, though they sometimes mix the two.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> There is a very great physical resemblance between the
+two, and this plays an important and repeated part in the book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> The King of Assyria, the King of Pontus, and the later
+Aryante (<i>v. inf.</i>). The fourth is the "good Rival" Mazare, who, though
+he also is at one time in possession of the prize, and though he never
+is weary of "loving unloved," is too honourable a gentleman to force his
+attentions on an unwilling mistress.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> It is probably, however, not quite fair to leave the
+reader, even for a time, under the impression that it is <i>merely</i> an
+excursion. Of all the huge and numerous loop-lines, backwaters,
+ramifications, reticulations, episodes, or whatever they may be called,
+there is hardly one which has not a real connection with the general
+plot; and the appearance of Thomyris here has such connection (as will
+be duly seen) in a capital and vital degree.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> Some readers no doubt will not need to be reminded that
+this is the original title of <i>The Marriage of Kitty</i>,&mdash;literally
+"gangway," but in the sense of "makeshift" or "<i>locum tenens</i>."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> Cf. John Heywood's Interlude of <i>Love</i>. These stories
+also remind one of the short romances noticed above.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> No gentleman, of course, could refuse a challenge pure
+and simple, unless in very peculiar circumstances; but hardly Sir Lucius
+O'Trigger or Captain M'Turk would oblige a friend to enter into this
+curious kind of bargain.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> Another instance of the astonishing interweaving of the
+book occurs here; for here is the first mention of Sappho and other
+persons and things to be caught up sooner or later.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> Such knowledge as I have of the other romances of the
+"heroic" group shows them to be, with the possible exception of those of
+La Calpren&egrave;de, inferior in this respect, even allowing for the influence
+of the <i>Cyropaedia</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> An extract may be worth giving in a note: "For the rest,
+if there is anybody who is not acquainted enough with all my authors
+[<i>this is a very delightful sweep over literature</i>] to know what was the
+Ring of Gyges which is spoken of in this volume, let him not imagine
+that it is Angelica's, with which I chose to adorn Artam&egrave;ne; and let
+him, on the contrary, know that it was Ariosto who stole this famous
+ring which gave his Paladins so much trouble; that <i>he</i> took it from
+those great men whom I am obliged to follow" [<i>a sweep of George's
+plumed hat in the best Moli&egrave;resque marquis style to Herodotus, Xenophon,
+and Cicero (who comes in shortly) and the others</i>].</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> The opening sentences of this <i>Histoire</i> give a curious
+picture of the etiquette of these spoken narrative episodes, which, from
+the letters and memoirs of the time, we can see to have been actually
+practised in the days of <i>Pr&eacute;cieuse</i> society. [<i>The story is not of
+course delivered in the presence of Panthea herself; but she sends a
+confidante, Pherenice, to tell it.</i>] "They were no sooner in Araminta's
+apartment than, after having made Cyrus sit down, and placed Pherenice
+on a seat opposite to them, she begged her to begin her narrative and
+not to hide from them, if it were possible, the smallest thought of
+Abradates and Panthea. Accordingly this agreeable person, having made
+them a compliment so as to ask their pardon for the scanty art she
+brought to the story she was going to tell, actually began as follows:"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> Observe how <i>vague</i> what follows is. A scholar and a
+<i>modiste</i>, working in happiest conjunction, might possibly "create" the
+dress; but as for the face it might be any one out of those on one
+hundred chocolate-boxes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> This passage gives a key to the degradation of the word
+"elegant." It has kept the connotation of "grace," but lost that of
+"nobility."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> <i>Abstracts</i> of all the principal members of this group
+and others occurred in the <i>Biblioth&egrave;que Universelle des Romans</i>, which
+appeared as a periodical at Paris in 1778. But what I do not know is
+whether any one ever arranged an elaborate tabular syllabus of the book
+like that of Burton's <i>Anatomy</i>. It would lend itself admirably to the
+process if any one had time and inclination to do the thing.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> With the exception, already noted, of Urf&eacute;; and even he
+is far below Donne.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> There were, though not many, actual instances of capital
+punishment for disregard of the edicts against duelling, and
+imprisonment was common. But the deterrent effect was very small.
+Montmorency-Bouteville was the best-known victim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> It is amusing, as one reads this, to remember Hume's
+essay in which he lays stress on the <i>contrast</i> between Greek and French
+ideas in this very matter of the duel.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> A curious and rather doubtful position; well worth the
+consideration of anybody who wishes to write the much-wanted <i>History
+and Philosophy of Duelling</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> The author uses "Prince," as indeed one might expect,
+rather in the Continental than in the English way, and the persons who
+bear it are not always sons of kings or members of reigning families.
+The two most agreeable <i>quiproquos</i> arising from this difference are
+probably the fictitious unwillingness of the excellent Miss Higgs to
+descend from "Princesse de Montcontour" to "Duchesse d'Ivry," and the,
+it is said, historical contempt of a comparatively recent Papal
+dignitary for an English Roman Catholic document which had no Princes
+among the signatories.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> Nobody, unless I forget, has the wisdom to put the
+counter-question, "Can you ever cease loving if you have once really
+loved?" which is to be carefully distinguished from a third, "Can you
+love more than once?" But there are more approaches to these <i>arcana</i> in
+the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> than in Mlle. de Scud&eacute;ry.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> A very nice phrase.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> He had refused to cross swords with her, and had lowered
+his own in salute.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> Compare the not quite so ingenious adjustment of the
+intended burning of Croesus.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> <i>Cl&eacute;lie</i> is about as bad in this respect, <i>v. inf.</i>: the
+others less so.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> I have said that you <i>can</i> do this with the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, and
+that this makes for superiority in it: but there also I think absolutely
+continuous reading of the whole would become "collar-work."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> That is to say, several weeks occupied in the manner
+above indicated. You may sometimes read two of the volumes in a day, but
+much oftener you will find one enough; in the actual process for the
+present history some intervals must be allowed for digestion and
+<i>pr&eacute;cis</i>; and, as above remarked, if other forms of "cheerfulness," in
+Dr. Johnson's friend Mr. Edwards's phrase, do not "break in" of
+themselves, you must make them, to keep any freshness in the task. I
+fancy the twenty volumes were, if not "my <i>sole</i> occupation" (like that
+more cheerful and charitable one of the head-waiter at Limmer's), my
+main one for nearly twice twenty days.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> In this respect the remarks above extend backwards to the
+<i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, and even to some of the smaller and earlier novels mentioned
+in connection with it. But the "Heroics," especially Mlle. de Scud&eacute;ry,
+<i>modernise</i> the treatment not inconsiderably.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> Achilles Tatius and the author of <i>Hysminias and Hysmine</i>
+come nearest. But the first is too ancient and the last too modern.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> We have indeed endeavoured to discover a "form" of the
+greatest and best kind in the Arthurian, but it has been acknowledged
+that it may not have been deliberately reached&mdash;or approached&mdash;by even a
+single artist, and that, if it was, the identity of that artist is not
+quite certain.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> The intolerance of anything but scraps is one of the
+numerous arms and legs of the twentieth century Baal. There are some who
+have not bowed down to it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> For Soliman is not indisposed to fall in love with his
+illustrious Bassa's beloved.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> At the close of <i>Old Mortality</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> One is lost if one begins quoting from these books. But
+there is another passage at the end of the same volume worth glancing at
+for its oddity. It is an elaborate chronological "checking" of the age
+of the different characters; and, odd as it is, one cannot help
+remembering that not a few authors from Walter Map (or whoever it was)
+to Thackeray might have been none the worse for similar calculations.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> It is not, I hope, frivolous or pusillanimous, but merely
+honest, to add that, as I have spent much less time on <i>Cl&eacute;lie</i> than on
+the other book, it has had less opportunity of boring me.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> Cf. the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> as noted above.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> He also wrote several plays.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> This would supply the ghost of Varus with a crushing
+answer to "Give me back my legions!" in such form as "Why did you send
+me with them?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> At another time there might have been a little gentle
+satire in this, but hardly then.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> It would seem, however, that the Scud&eacute;rys were not
+originally Norman.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> Chateaubriand hardly counts in strictness.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> Although some say that almost every one of the numerous
+<i>personae</i> of the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i> had a live original.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> These books, having been constantly referred to in this
+fashion, offer a good many traps, into some of which I have fallen in
+the past, and may have done so even now. For instance, K&ouml;rting rightly
+points out that almost every one calls this "<i>La</i> Jeune Alcidiane,"
+whereas A. is the hero, who bears his mother's name.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> I had made this remark before I knew that K&ouml;rting had
+anticipated it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> The more recent books which refer to him, and (I think)
+the British Museum Catalogue, drop this addition. But he was admittedly
+of the Pontcarr&eacute; family.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> Neither the original, however, nor this revision seems to
+have enjoyed the further honour of a place in the British Museum. Other
+books of his which at least sound novelish were <i>Darie</i>, <i>Aristandre</i>,
+<i>Diotr&egrave;phe</i>, <i>Cl&eacute;oreste</i> (of which as well as of <i>Palombe</i> analyses may
+be found in K&ouml;rting). The last would seem to be the most interesting.
+But in the bibliography of the Bishop's writings there are at least a
+dozen more titles of the same kind.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> Cf. the "self-precipitation" of C&eacute;ladon. Perhaps no class
+of writers has ever practised "imitation," in the wrong sense, more than
+these "heroic" romancers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> I am glad to find the high authority of my friend Sir
+Sidney Colvin on my side here as to the wider position&mdash;though he tells
+me that he was not, when he read <i>Endimion</i>, conscious of any positive
+indebtedness on Keats' part.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> <i>V. sup.</i> p. 177, note 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> Gombauld seems to have been a devotee of both Queens: and
+commentators will have it that this whole book is courtship as well as
+courtiership in disguise.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> A kind of intermediary nymph&mdash;an enchantress indeed&mdash;who
+has assisted and advised him in his quests for the goddess.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> &Eacute;mile Magne, <i>Mme. de V.</i>, Paris, 1907.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> This sometimes causes positive obscurity as to fact. Thus
+it is impossible to make out from M. Magne whether Hortense, in her last
+days, actually married the cousin with whom she had been intimate in
+youth, or merely lived with him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> By M. H. E. Chatenet, Paris, 1911.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> There is a little in the verse, most of which belongs to
+the "flying" kind so common in the century.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> <i>V. inf.</i> upon it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> His own admirable introduction to Perrault in the
+Clarendon Press series will, as far as our subject is directly
+concerned, supply whatever a reader, within reason further curious, can
+want: and his well-known rainbow series of Fairy Books will give
+infinite illustration.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> The longest of all, in the useful collection referred to
+in the text, are the <i>Oiseau Bleu</i> and the charming <i>Biche au Bois</i>,
+each of which runs to nearly sixty pages. But both, though very
+agreeable, are distinctly "sophisticated," and for that very reason
+useful as gangways, as it were, from the simpler fairy tale to the
+complete novel.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> Enchanters, ogres, etc. "count" as fairies.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> Apuleius, who has a good deal of the "fairy" element in
+him, was naturally drawn upon in this group. The <i>Psyche</i> indebtedness
+reappears, with frank acknowledgment, in <i>Serpentin Vert</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> If Perrault really wrote this, the Muses, rewarding him
+elsewhere for the good things he said in "The Quarrel," must have
+punished him here for the silly ones. It has, in fact, most of the
+faults which <i>neo</i>-classicism attributed to its opposite.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> For a spoiling of this delightful story <i>v. inf.</i> on the
+<i>Cabinet</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> Its full title, "ou Collection Choisie des C. des F. <i>et
+autres Contes Merveilleux</i>," should in justice be remembered, when one
+feels inclined to grumble at some of the contents.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> This indeed was the case, in one or other kind of longer
+fiction writing, with most of the authors to be mentioned. The total of
+this in the French eighteenth century was enormous.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> She is even preceded by a Mme. de Murat, a friend of Mme.
+de Parab&egrave;re, but a respectable fairy-tale writer. It does not seem
+necessary, according to the plan of this book, to give many particulars
+about these writers; for it is their writings, not themselves, that our
+subject regards. The curious may be referred to Walckenaer on the Fairy
+Tale in general, and Honor&eacute; Bonhomme on the <i>Cabinet</i> in particular, as
+well as (<i>v. inf.</i>) to the thirty-seventh volume of the collection
+itself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> There is sometimes alliance and sometimes jealousy on
+this subject. In one tale the "Comte de Gabalis" is solemnly "had up,"
+tried, and condemned as an impostor.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> <i>Ricdin-Ricdon</i>, one of those which pass between C&oelig;ur
+de Lion and Blondel, is of the same kind, is also good, and is longer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> She seems, however (see vol. 37 as above), to have been a
+real person.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> The would-be anonymous compiler (he was really Gueulette,
+on whom <i>v. inf.</i>) of this and the other collections now to be noticed,
+when acknowledging his sufficiently evident <i>supercherie</i> and some of
+his indebtednesses (<i>e.g.</i> to Straparola), defends this on Edgeworthian
+principles. But though it is quite true that a healthy curiosity as to
+such things may be aroused by tales, it should be left to satisfy
+itself, not forestalled and spoilt and stunted by immediate
+information.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> The once very popular <i>Tales of the Genii</i> (<i>v. inf.</i>)
+which are often referred to by Scott and other men of his generation,
+seem to have dropped out of notice comparatively. We shall meet them
+here in French.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> The late Mr. Henley was at one time much interested in
+this point, and consulted me about it. But I could tell him nothing; and
+I do not know whether he ever satisfied himself on the subject. Lesage
+<i>is</i> said (though I am not sure that the evidence goes beyond <i>on dit</i>)
+to have revised the work of P&eacute;tis de La Croix in the <i>Days</i>; and some of
+his own certainly corresponds to it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> Or, as it was once put, with easy epigram, when the
+artificial fairy tale is not dreadfully improper it is apt to be
+dreadfully proper.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> Nothing suits the entire group better than the reply of
+the ferocious and sleepless but not unintelligent Sultan Hudgiadge, in
+the <i>Nouveaux Contes Orientaux</i>, when his little benefactress Moradbak
+says that she will have the honour to-morrow of telling him a <i>histoire
+Mongole</i>. "Le pays n'y fait rien," says he. And it doesn't.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> All of them, be it remembered, the work of Gueulette (<i>v.
+inf.</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> The recently recovered "episodes" of this are rather more
+like the <i>Cabinet</i> stories than <i>Vathek</i> itself; and perhaps a sense of
+this may have been part of the reason why Beckford never published
+them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> He came to ask, or rather demand, Zibeline's hand for his
+master: and the fairy made his magnificence appear rags and rubbish.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> Mr. Toots's "I'm a-a-fraid you must have got very wet."
+When Courtebotte returns from his expedition, across six months of snow,
+to the Ice Mountain on the top of which rests Zibeline's heart, "many
+thousand persons" ask him, "<i>Vous avez donc eu bien froid?</i>"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> She is also said to have been a "love-child" of no less a
+father than Prince Eugene.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> Anybody who is curious as to this should look up the
+matter, as may be done most conveniently in an <i>excursus</i> of Napier's
+edition, where my "friend of" [more than] "forty years," the late Mr.
+Mowbray Morris, in a note to his own admirable one-volume "Globe" issue,
+thought that Macaulay was "proved to be absolutely right." Morris,
+though his published and signed writings were few, and though he pushed
+to its very furthest the hatred of personal advertisement natural to
+most English "<i>gentlemen</i> of the press," was a man of the world and of
+letters in most unusual combination; of a true Augustan taste both in
+criticism and in composition; of wit and of <i>savoir vivre</i> such as few
+possess. But, like all men who are good for anything, he had some
+crazes: and one of them was Macaulay. I own that I do not think all the
+honours were on T. B. M.'s side in this mellay: but this is not the
+place to reason out the matter. What is quite certain is that in this
+long-winded and mostly trivial performance there is a great deal of
+intended, or at least suggested, political satire. But Johnson, though
+he might well think little of <i>Titi</i>, need not have despised the whole
+<i>Cabinet</i> (or as he calls it, perhaps using the real title of another
+issue, <i>Biblioth&egrave;que</i>), and would not on another occasion. Indeed the
+diary-notes in which the thing occurs are too much in shorthand to be
+trustworthy texts.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> Pierre Fran&ccedil;ois Godard de Beauchamps seems to have been
+another fair example of the half-scholarly bookmakers of the eighteenth
+century. He wrote a few light plays and some serious <i>Recherches sur les
+Th&eacute;&acirc;tres de France</i> which are said to have merit. He translated the late
+and coxcombical but not uninteresting Greek prose romance of <i>Hysminias
+and Hysmine</i>, as well as that painful verse-novel, the <i>Rhodanthe and
+Dosicles</i> of Theodoras Prodromus: and he composed, under a pseudonym, of
+course, a naughty <i>Histoire du Prince Apprius</i> to match his good
+<i>Funestine</i>. The contrasted ways and works of such bookmakers at various
+times would make a not uninteresting essay of the Hayward type.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> "Engageant," "Adresse," "Parlepeu," etc. The
+<i>Avertissement de l'Auteur</i> is possibly a joke, but more probably an
+awkward and miss-fire <i>supercherie</i> revealing the usual ignorance of the
+time as to matters mediaeval. "Alienore" (though it would be better
+without the final <i>e</i>) is a pretty as well as historic form of one of
+the most beautiful and protean of girl's names: but how did her father,
+a "seigneur <i>anglais</i>," come to be called "Rivalon Murmasson"? And did
+they know much about Arabia Felix in Brittany when "Daniel Dremruz"
+reigned there between <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 680 and 720? Gueulette himself was a
+barrister and Procureur-Substitut at the Ch&acirc;telet. He seems to have
+imitated Hamilton, to whom the editors of the Cabinet rather idly think
+him "equal," though, inconsistently, they admit that Hamilton "stands
+alone" and Gueulette does not. On the other hand, they charge Voltaire
+with actually "tracing" over Gueulette. ("<i>Zadig</i> est calqu&eacute; sur les
+<i>Soir&eacute;es Bretonnes</i>.") This is again an exaggeration; but Gueulette had,
+undoubtedly, a pleasant and exceedingly fertile fancy, and a good knack
+of narrative.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a> The best perhaps is of a certain peppery Breton,
+Saint-Foix, who was successively a mousquetaire, a lieutenant of
+cavalry, aide-de-camp to "Broglie the War-god," and a long-lived
+<i>litt&eacute;rateur</i> in Paris. M. de Saint-Foix picked a quarrel in the <i>foyer</i>
+of the opera with an unknown country gentleman, as it seemed, and "gave
+him a rendezvous." But the other party replied coolly that it "was his
+custom" to be called on if people had business with him, and gave his
+address. Saint-Foix goes next morning, and is received with the utmost
+politeness and asked to breakfast. "That's not the question," says the
+indignant Breton. "Let us go out." "I never go out without breakfasting;
+<i>it is my custom</i>," says the provincial, and does as he says, politely
+repeating invitations from time to time to his fretting adversary. At
+last they do go out, to Saint-Foix's great relief; but they pass a
+<i>caf&eacute;</i>, and it is once more the stranger's sacred custom to play a game
+of chess or draughts after breakfast. The same thing happens with a
+"turn" in the Tuileries, at which Saint-Foix does not fume quite so
+much, because it is on the way to the Champs &Eacute;lys&eacute;es, where fighting is
+possible. The "turn" achieved, he himself proposes to adjourn there.
+"What for?" says the stranger innocently. "What <i>for</i>? A pretty question
+<i>pardieu</i>! To fight, of course! Have you forgotten it?" "<i>Fight!</i> Why,
+sir, what are you thinking of? What would people say of me? A
+magistrate, a treasurer of France, put sword in hand? They would take us
+for a couple of fools." Which argument being unanswerable, according to
+the etiquette of the time, Saint-Foix leaves the dignitary&mdash;who himself
+takes good care to tell the story. It must be remembered&mdash;first that no
+actual <i>challenge</i> had passed, merely an ambiguous demand for addresses;
+secondly, that the treasurer, as the superior by far in rank, had a
+right to suppose himself known to his inferiors; and thirdly, that to
+challenge a "magistrate" was in France equivalent to being, in the words
+of a lampoon quoted by Macaulay, "'Gainst ladies and bishops excessively
+valiant" in England.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> Although there is a good deal of merit in some of these
+tales, none of them approaches the charming <i>Diable Amoureux</i> which
+Cazotte produced in 1772, twenty years before his famous and tragical
+death after once escaping the Revolutionary fangs. This little story,
+which is at least as much of a fairy tale as many things "cabinetted,"
+would be nearly perfect if Cazotte had not unluckily botched it with a
+double ending, neither of the actual closes being quite satisfactory.
+If, in one of them, he had had the pluck to stop at the outcry of the
+succubus Biondetta when she has at last attained her object,
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Je suis le diable! mon cher Alvare, je suis le diable!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+and let the rest be "wrop in mystery," it would probably have been the
+best way. But the bulk of the book is beyond improvement: and there is a
+fluid grace about the autobiographical <i>r&eacute;cit</i> which is very rare
+indeed, at least in French, except in the unfortunate G&eacute;rard de Nerval,
+who was akin to Cazotte in many ways, and actually edited him. A very
+carping critic may object to the not obvious nor afterwards explained
+interposition of a pretty little spaniel between the original diabolic
+avatar of the hideous camel's head and the subsequent incarnation of the
+beautiful Biondetto-Biondetta; especially as the later employment of
+another dog, to prevent Alvare's succumbing to temptation earlier than
+he did, is confusing. But this would be "seeking a knot in a reed."
+Perhaps the greatest merit of the story, next to the pure tale-telling
+charm above noted, is the singular taste and skill with which Biondetta,
+except for her repugnance to the marriage ceremony, is prevented from
+showing the slightest diabolic character during her long cohabitation
+with Alvare, and her very "comingnesses" are arranged so as to give the
+idea, not in the least of a temptress, but of an extra-innocent but
+quite natural <i>ing&eacute;nue</i>. Monk Lewis, of course, knew Cazotte, but he has
+coarsened his original woefully. It may perhaps be added that the first
+illustrations, reproduced in G&eacute;rard's edition as curiosities, are such
+in the highest degree. They are ushered with an ironic Preface: and they
+sometimes make one rub one's eyes and wonder whether Futurism and Cubism
+are not, like so many other things, merely recooked cabbage.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL&mdash;II</h3>
+
+<h4><i>From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves"</i>&mdash;<i>Anthony Hamilton</i><a name="FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a></h4>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The material of the chapter.</div>
+
+<p>Justice has, it is hoped, been done to the great classes of fictitious
+work which, during the seventeenth century, made fiction, as such,
+popular with high and of low in France. But it is one of the not very
+numerous safe generalisations or inductions which may be fished out from
+the wide and treacherous Syrtes of the history of literature, that it is
+not as a rule from "classes" that the best work comes; and that, when it
+does so come, it generally represents a sort of outside and uncovenanted
+element or constituent of the class. We have, unfortunately, lost the
+Greek epic, as a class; but we know enough about it, with its few
+specimens, such as Apollonius Rhodius earlier and Nonnus later, to warn
+us that, if we had more, we should find Homer not merely better, but
+different, and this though probably every practitioner was at least
+trying to imitate or surpass Homer. Dante stands in no class at all, nor
+does Milton, nor does Shelley; and though Shakespeare indulgently
+permits himself to be classed as an "Elizabethan dramatist," what
+strikes true critics most is again hardly more his "betterness" than
+his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> difference. The very astonishment with which we sometimes say of
+Webster, Dekker, Middleton, that they come near Shakespeare, is not due,
+as foolish people say, to any only less foolish idolatry, but to a true
+critical surprise at the approximation of things usually so very
+distinct.</p>
+
+<p>The examples in higher forms of literature just chosen for comparison do
+not, of course, show any wish in the chooser to even any French
+seventeenth-century novelist with Homer or Shakespeare, with Dante or
+Milton or Shelley. But the work noticed in the last chapter certainly
+includes nothing of strong idiosyncrasy. In other books scattered, in
+point of time of production, over great part of the period, such
+idiosyncrasy is to be found, though in very various measure. Now,
+idiosyncrasy is, if not the only difference or property, the inseparable
+accident of all great literature, and it may exist where literature is
+not exactly great. Moreover, like other abysses, it calls to, and calls
+into existence, yet more abysses of its own kind or not-kind; while
+school- and class-work, however good, can never produce anything but
+more class- and school-work, except by exciting the always dubious and
+sometimes very dangerous desire "to be different." The instances of this
+idiosyncrasy with which we shall now deal are the <i>Francion</i> of Charles
+Sorel; the <i>Roman Comique</i> of Paul Scarron; the <i>Roman Bourgeois</i> of
+Antoine Fureti&egrave;re; the <i>Voyages</i>, as they are commonly called (though
+the proper title is different<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a>), <i>&agrave; la Lune et au Soleil</i>, of Cyrano
+de Bergerac, and the <i>Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i> of Mme. de La Fayette; while
+last of all will come the remarkable figure of Anthony Hamilton, less
+"single-speech"<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id="FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a> than the others and than his namesake later, but
+possessor of greater genius than any.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sorel and <i>Francion</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The present writer has long ago been found fault with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> for paying too
+much attention to <i>Francion</i>, and he may possibly (if any one thinks it
+worth while) be found fault with again for placing it here. But he does
+so from no mere childish desire to persist in some rebuked naughtiness,
+but from a sincere belief in the possession by the book of some
+historical importance. Any one who, on Arnoldian principles, declines to
+take the historic estimate into account at all, is, on those principles,
+justified in neglecting it altogether; whether, on the other hand, such
+neglect does not justify a suspicion of the soundness of the principles
+themselves, is another question. Charles Sorel, historiographer of
+France, was a very voluminous and usually a very dull writer. His
+voluminousness, though beside the enormous compositions of the last
+chapter it is but a small thing, is not absent from <i>Francion</i>, nor is
+his dulness. Probably few people have read the book through, and I am
+not going to recommend anybody to do so. But the author does to some
+extent deserve the cruel praise of being "dull in a new way" (or at
+least of being evidently in quest of a new way to be dull in), as
+Johnson wrongfully said of Gray. His book is not a direct imitation of
+any one thing, though an attempt to adapt the Spanish picaresque style
+to French realities and fantasies is obvious enough, as it is likewise
+in Scarron and others. But this is mixed with all sorts of other
+adumbrations, if not wholly original, yet showing that quest of
+originality which has been commended. It is an almost impossible book to
+analyse, either in short or long measure. The hero wanders about France,
+and has all sorts of adventures, the recounting of which is not without
+touches of Rabelais, of the <i>Moyen de Parvenir</i>, perhaps of the rising
+fancies about the occult, which generated Rosicrucianism and "astral
+spirits" and the rest of it&mdash;a whole farrago, in short, of matters
+decent and indecent, congruous seldom and incongruous often. It is not
+like Sterne, because it is dull, and at the same time quasi-romantic;
+while "sensibility" had not come in, though we shall see it do so within
+the limits of this chapter. It has a resemblance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> though not very much
+of one, to the rather later work of Cyrano. But it is most like two
+English novels of far higher merit which were not to appear for a
+century or a century and a half&mdash;Amory's <i>John Buncle</i> and Graves's
+<i>Spiritual Quixote</i>. As it is well to mention things together without
+the danger of misleading those who run as they read, and mind the
+running rather than the reading, let me observe that the liveliest part
+of <i>Francion</i> is duller than the dullest of <i>Buncle</i>, and duller still
+than the least lively thing in Graves. The points of resemblance are in
+pillar-to-postness, in the endeavour (here almost entirely a failure,
+but still an endeavour) to combine fancy with realism, and above all in
+freedom from following the rules of any "school." Realism in the good
+sense and originality were the two things that the novel had to achieve.
+Sorel missed the first and only achieved a sort of "distanced" position
+in the second. But he tried&mdash;or groped&mdash;for both.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>Berger Extravagant</i> and <i>Polyandre</i>.</div>
+
+<p>I am bound to say that in Sorel's other chief works of fiction, the
+<i>Berger Extravagant</i> and <i>Polyandre</i>, I find the same curious mixture of
+qualities which have made me more lenient than most critics to
+<i>Francion</i>. And I do not think it unfair to add that they also incline
+me still more to think that there was perhaps a little of the <i>Pereant
+qui ante nos</i> feeling in Fureti&egrave;re's attack (<i>v. inf.</i> p. 288). Neither
+could possibly be called by any sane judge a good book, and both display
+the uncritical character,<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id="FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a> the "pillar-to-postness," the
+marine-store and almost rubbish-heap promiscuity, of the more famous
+book. Like it, they are much too big.<a name="FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> But the <i>Berger Extravagant</i>,
+in applying (very early) the <i>Don Quixote</i> method, as far as Sorel could
+manage it, to the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, is sometimes amusing and by no means always
+unjust. <i>Polyandre</i> is, in part, by no means unlike an awkward first
+draft of a <i>Roman Bourgeois</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> The scene in the former, where Lysis&mdash;the
+Extravagant Shepherd and the Don Quixote of the piece,&mdash;making an
+all-night sitting over a poem in honour of his mistress Charit&eacute; (the
+Dulcinea), disturbs the unfortunate Clarimond&mdash;a sort of "bachelor," the
+sensible man of the book, and a would-be reformer of Lysis&mdash;by constant
+demands for a rhyme<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a> or an epithet, is not bad. The victim revenges
+himself by giving the most ludicrous words he can think of, which Lysis
+duly works in, and at last allows Clarimond to go to sleep. But he is
+quickly waked by the poet running about and shouting, "I've got it! I've
+found it. The finest <i>reprise</i> [= refrain] ever made!" And in
+<i>Polyandre</i> there is a sentence (not the only one by many) which not
+only gives a <i>point de rep&egrave;re</i> of an interesting kind in itself, but
+marks the beginning of the "<i>farrago libelli</i> moderni": "Ils ont des
+mets qu'ils nomment des <i>bisques</i>; je doute si c'est potage ou
+fricass&eacute;e."</p>
+
+<p>Here we have (1) Evidence that Sorel was a man of observation, and took
+an interest in really interesting things.</p>
+
+<p>(2) A date for the appearance, or the coming into fashion, of an
+important dish.</p>
+
+<p>(3) An instance of the furnishing of fiction with something more than
+conventional adventure on the one hand, and conventional harangues or
+descriptions on the other.</p>
+
+<p>(4) An interesting literary parallel; for here is the libelled
+"Charroselles" (<i>v. inf.</i> p. 288) two centuries beforehand, feeling a
+doubt, exactly similar to Thackeray's, as to whether a <i>bouillabaisse</i>
+should be called soup or broth, brew or stew. Those who understand the
+art and pastime of "book-fishing" will not go away with empty baskets
+from either of these neglected ponds.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Scarron and the <i>Roman Comique</i>.</div>
+
+<p>Almost as different a person as can possibly be conceived from Sorel was
+Paul Scarron, Abb&eacute;, "Invalid to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> the Queen," husband of the future Mme.
+de Maintenon, author of burlesques which did him no particular honour,
+of plays which, if not bad, were never first rate, of witticisms
+innumerable, most of which have perished, and of other things, besides
+being a hero of some facts and more legends; but author also of one book
+in our own subject of much intrinsic and more historical interest, and
+original also of passages in later books more interesting still to all
+good wits. Not a lucky man in life (except for the possession of a
+lively wit and an imperturbable temper), he was never rich, and he
+suffered long and terribly from disease&mdash;one of the main subjects of his
+legend, but, after all discussions and carpings, looking most like
+rheumatoid arthritis, one of the most painful and incurable of ailments.
+But Scarron was, and has been since, by no means unlucky in literature.
+He had, though of course not an unvaried, a great popularity in a
+troubled and unscrupulous time: and long after his death two of the
+foremost novelists of his country selected him for honourable treatment
+of curiously different kinds. Somehow or other the introduction of men
+of letters of old time into modern books has not been usually very
+fortunate, except in the hands of Thackeray and a very few more. Among
+these latter instances may certainly be ranked the pleasant picture of
+Scarron's house, and of the attention paid to him by the as yet
+unmarried Fran&ccedil;oise d'Aubign&eacute;, in Dumas's <i>Vingt Ans Apr&egrave;s</i>. Nor is it
+easy to think of any literary following that, while no doubt bettering,
+abstains so completely from robbing, insulting, or obscuring its model
+as does Gautier's <i>Capitaine Fracasse</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, with this pleasant book itself that we are concerned.
+Here again, of course, the picaresque model comes in, and there is a
+good deal of directly borrowed matter. But a much greater talent, and
+especially a much more acute and critical wit than Sorel's, brings to
+that scheme the practical-artistic French gift, the application of which
+to the novel is, in fact, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> subject of this whole chapter. Not
+unkindly judges have, it is true, pronounced it not very amusing; and an
+uncritical comparer may find it injured by Gautier's book. The older
+novel has, indeed, nothing of the magnificent style of the overture of
+this latter. <i>Le Ch&acirc;teau de la Mis&egrave;re</i> is one of the finest things of
+the kind in French; for exciting incident there is no better duel in
+literature than that of Sigognac and Lampourde; and the delicate
+pastel-like costumes and manners and love-making of Gautier's longest
+and most ambitious romance are not to be expected in the rough
+"rhyparography"<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a> of the seventeenth century. But in itself the
+<i>Roman Comique</i> is no small performance, and historically it is almost
+great. We have in it, indeed, got entirely out of the pure romance; but
+we have also got out of the <i>fatrasie</i>&mdash;the mingle-mangle of story,
+jargon, nonsense, and what not,&mdash;out of the mere tale of adventure, out
+of the mere tale of <i>grivoiserie</i>. We have borrowed the comic
+dramatist's mirror&mdash;the "Muses' Looking-glass"&mdash;and are holding it up to
+nature without the intervention of the conventionalities of the stage.
+The company to which we are introduced is, no doubt, pursuing a somewhat
+artificial vocation; but it is pursuing it in the way of real life, as
+many live men and women have pursued it. The mask itself may be of their
+trade and class; but it is taken off them, and they are not merely
+<i>personae</i>, they are persons.</p>
+
+<p>To re-read the <i>Roman Comique</i> just after reading the <i>Grand Cyrus</i> came
+into the present plan partly by design and partly by accident; but I had
+not fully anticipated the advantage of doing so. The contrast of the
+two, and the general relation between them could, indeed, escape no one;
+but an interval of a great many years since the last reading of
+Scarron's work had not unnaturally caused forgetfulness of the
+deliberate and minute manner in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> which he himself points that contrast,
+and even now and then satirises the <i>Cyrus</i> by name. The system of inset
+<i>Histoires</i>,<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a> beginning with the well-told if borrowed story of Don
+Carlos of Aragon and his "Invisible Mistress," is, indeed, hardly a
+contrast except in point of the respective lengths of the digressions,
+nor does it seem to be meant as a parody. It has been said that this
+"inset" system, whether borrowed from the episodes of the ancients or
+descended from the constant divagations of the mediaeval romances, is
+very old, and proved itself uncommonly tenacious of life. But the
+difference between the opening of the two books can hardly have been
+other than intentional on the part of the later writer; and it is a very
+memorable one, showing nothing less than the difference between romance
+and novel, between academic generalities and "realist" particularism,
+and between not a few other pairs of opposites. It has been fully
+allowed that the overture of the <i>Grand Cyrus</i> is by no means devoid of
+action, even of bustle, and that it is well done of its kind. But that
+kind is strongly marked in the very fact that there is a sort of
+faintness in it. The burning of Sinope, the distant vessel, the
+street-fighting that follows, are what may be called "cartoonish"&mdash;large
+washes of pale colour. The talk, such as there is, is stage-talk of the
+pseudo-grand style. It is curious that Scarron himself speaks of the
+<i>Cyrus</i> as being the most "furnitured" romance, <i>le roman le plus
+meubl&eacute;</i>, that he knows. To a modern eye the interiors are anything but
+distinct, despite the elaborate <i>ecphrases</i>, some of which have been
+quoted.<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a></p>
+
+<p>Now turn to the opening passage of the <i>Roman Comique</i>, which strikes
+the new note most sharply. It is rather well known, probably even to
+some who have not read the original or Tom Brown's congenial translation
+of it; for it has been largely laid under contribution by the
+innumerable writers about a much greater person<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> than Scarron, Moli&egrave;re.
+The experiences of the <i>Illustre Th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i> were a little later, and
+apparently not so sordid as those of the company of which Scarron
+constituted himself historiographer; but they cannot have been very
+dissimilar in general kind, and many of the characteristics, such as the
+assumption now of fantastic names, "Le Destin," "La Rancune," etc., now
+of rococo-romantic ones, such as "Mademoiselle de l'&Eacute;toile," remained
+long unaltered. But perhaps a fresh translation may be attempted, and
+the attempt permitted. For though the piece, of course, has recent
+Spanish and even older Italian examples of a kind, still the change in
+what may be called "particular universality" is remarkable.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class="sidenote">The opening scene of this.</div>
+
+<p>The sun had finished more than half his course, and his
+chariot, having reached the slope of the world, was running
+quicker than he wished. If his horses had chosen to avail
+themselves of the drop of the road, they would have got
+through what remained of the day in less than half or
+quarter of an hour; but instead of pulling at full strength,
+they merely amused themselves by curvetting, as they drew in
+a salt air, which told them the sea, wherein men say their
+master goes to bed every night, was close at hand. To speak
+more like a man of this world, and more intelligibly, it was
+between five and six o'clock, when a cart came into the
+market-place of Le Mans. This cart was drawn by four very
+lean oxen, with, for leader, a brood-mare, whose foal
+scampered about round the cart, like a silly little thing as
+it was. The cart was full of boxes and trunks, and of great
+bundles of painted canvas, which made a sort of pyramid, on
+the top of which appeared a damsel, dressed partly as for
+town, partly for country. By the side of the cart walked a
+young man, as ill-dressed as he was good-looking. He had on
+his face a great patch, which covered one eye and half his
+cheek, and he carried a large fowling-piece on his shoulder.
+With this he had slain divers magpies, jays, and crows; and
+they made a sort of bandoleer round him, from the bottom
+whereof hung a pullet and a gosling, looking very like the
+result of a plundering expedition. Instead of a hat he had
+only a night-cap, with garters of divers colours twisted
+round it, which headgear looked like a very unfinished
+sketch of a turban. His coat was a jacket of grey stuff,
+girt with a strap, which served also as a sword-belt, the
+sword being so long that it wanted a fork to draw it neatly
+for use. He wore breeches trussed, with stockings attached
+to them, as actors do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> when they play an ancient hero; and
+he had, instead of shoes, buskins of a classical pattern,
+muddied up to the ankle. An old man, more ordinarily but
+still very ill-dressed, walked beside him. He carried on his
+shoulders a bass-viol, and as he stooped a little in
+walking, one might, at a distance, have taken him for a
+large tortoise walking on its hind legs. Some critic may
+perhaps murmur at this comparison; but I am speaking of the
+big tortoises they have in the Indies, and besides I use it
+at my own risk. Let us return to our caravan.</p>
+
+<p>It passed in front of the tennis-court called the Doe, at
+the door of which were gathered a number of the topping
+citizens of the town. The novel appearance of the conveyance
+and team, and the noise of the mob who had gathered round
+the cart, induced these honourable burgomasters to cast an
+eye upon the strangers; and among others a Deputy-Provost
+named La Rappini&egrave;re came up, accosted them, and, with the
+authority of a magistrate, asked who they were. The young
+man of whom I have just spoken replied, and without touching
+his turban (inasmuch as with one of his hands he held his
+gun and with the other the hilt of his sword, lest it should
+get between his legs) told the Provost that they were French
+by birth, actors by profession, that his stage-name was Le
+Destin, that of his old comrade La Rancune, and that of the
+lady who was perched like a hen on the top of their baggage,
+La Caverne. This odd name made some of the company laugh;
+whereat the young actor added that it ought not to seem
+stranger to men with their wits about them than "La
+Montagne," "La Vall&eacute;e," "La Rose," or "L'&Eacute;pine." The talk
+was interrupted by certain sounds of blows and oaths which
+were heard from the front of the cart. It was the
+tennis-court attendant, who had struck the carter without
+warning, because the oxen and the mare were making too free
+with a heap of hay which lay before the door. The row was
+stopped, and the mistress of the court, who was fonder of
+plays than of sermons or vespers, gave leave, with a
+generosity unheard of in her kind, to the carter to bait his
+beasts to their fill. He accepted her offer, and, while the
+beasts ate, the author rested for a time, and set to work to
+think what he should say in the next chapter.</p></div>
+
+<p>The sally in the last sentence, with the other about the tortoise, and
+the mock solemnity of the opening, illustrate two special
+characteristics, which will be noticed below, and which may be taken in
+each case as a sort of revulsion from, or parody of, the solemn ways of
+the regular romance. There may be even a special reference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> to the
+"<i>Ph&eacute;bus</i>" the technical name or nickname of the "high language" in
+these repeated burlesque introductions of the sun. And the almost pert
+flings and cabrioles of the narrator form a still more obvious and
+direct Declaration of Independence. But these are mere details, almost
+trivial compared with the striking contrast of the whole presentation
+and <i>faire</i> of the piece, when taken together with most of the subjects
+of the last chapter.</p>
+
+<p>It may require a little, but it should not require much, knowledge of
+literary history to see how modern this is; it should surely require
+none to see how vivid it is&mdash;how the sharpness of an etching and the
+colour of a bold picture take the place of the shadowy "academies" of
+previous French writers.<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id="FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a> There may be a very little exaggeration
+even here&mdash;in other parts of the book there is certainly some&mdash;and
+Scarron never could forget his tendency to that form of exaggeration
+which is called burlesque. But the stuff and substance of the piece is
+reality.</p>
+
+<p>An important item of the same change is to be found in the management of
+the insets, or some of them. One of the longest and most important is
+the autobiographical history of Le Destin or Destin (the article is
+often dropped), the tall young man with the patch on his face. But this
+is not thrust bodily into the other body of the story, <i>Cyrus</i>-fashion;
+it is alternated with the passages of that story itself, and that in a
+comparatively natural manner&mdash;night or some startling accident
+interrupting it; while how even courtiers could find breath to tell, or
+patience and time to hear, some of the interludes of the <i>Cyrus</i> and its
+fellows is altogether past comprehension. There is some coarseness in
+Scarron&mdash;he would not be a comic writer of the seventeenth century if
+there were none. Not very long after the beginning the tale is
+interrupted by a long account of an unseemly practical joke which surely
+could amuse no mortal after a certain stage of schoolboyhood. But there
+is little or no positive indecency:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> the book contrasts not more
+remarkably with the Aristophanic indulgence of the sixteenth century
+than with the sniggering suggestiveness of the eighteenth. Some remnants
+of the Heroic convention (which, after all, did to a great extent
+reflect the actual manners of the time) remain, such as the obligatory
+"compliment." Le Destin is ready to hang himself because, at his first
+meeting with the beautiful L&eacute;onore, his shyness prevents his getting a
+proper "compliment" out. On the other hand, the demand for <i>esprit</i>,
+which was confined in the Heroics to a few privileged characters, now
+becomes almost universal. There are tricks, but fairly novel
+tricks&mdash;affectations like "I don't know what they did next" and the
+others noted above: while the famous rhetorical beginnings of chapters
+appear not only at the very outset, but at the opening of the second
+volume, "Le Soleil donnant aplomb sur les antipodes,"&mdash;things which a
+century later Fielding, and two centuries later Dickens, did not disdain
+to imitate.</p>
+
+<p>Scarron did not live to finish the book, and the third part or volume,
+which was tinkered&mdash;still more the <i>Suite</i>, which was added&mdash;by somebody
+else, are very inferior. The somewhat unfavourable opinions referred to
+above may be partly based on the undoubted fact that the story is rather
+formless; that its most important machinery is dependent, after all, on
+the old <i>rapt</i> or abduction, the heroines of which are Mademoiselle de
+l'&Eacute;toile (nominally Le Destin's sister, really his love, and at the end
+his wife) and Ang&eacute;lique, daughter of La Caverne, who is provided with a
+lover and husband of 12,000 (<i>livres</i>) a year in the person of L&eacute;andre,
+one of the stock theatrical names, professedly "valet" to Le Destin, but
+really a country gentleman's son. Thus everybody is somebody else, again
+in the old way. Another, and to some tastes a more serious, blot may be
+found in the everlasting practical jokes of the knock-about kind,
+inflicted on the unfortunate Ragotin, a sort of amateur member of the
+troupe. But again these "<i>low</i> jinks" were an obvious reaction from
+(just as the ceremonies were followings of)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> the solemnity of the
+Heroics; and they continued to be popular for nearly two hundred years,
+as English readers full well do know. Nevertheless these defects merely
+accompany&mdash;they do not mar or still less destroy&mdash;the striking
+characteristics of progress which appear with them, and which, without
+any elaborate abstract of the book, have been set forth somewhat
+carefully in the preceding pages. Above all, there is a real and
+considerable attempt at character, a trifle <i>typy</i> and stagy perhaps,
+but still aiming at something better; and the older <i>nouvelle</i>-fashion
+is not merely drawn upon, but improved upon, for curious anecdotes,
+striking situations, effective names. Under the latter heads it is
+noteworthy that Gautier simply "lifted" the name Sigognac from Scarron,
+though he attached it to a very different personage; and that Dumas got,
+from the same source, the startling incident of Aramis suddenly
+descending on the crupper of D'Artagnan's horse. The jokes may, of
+course, amuse or not different persons, and even different moods of the
+same person; the practical ones, as has been hinted, may pall, even when
+they are not merely vulgar. Practical joking had a long hold of
+literature, as of life; and it would be sanguine to think that it is
+dead. Izaak Walton, a curious contemporary&mdash;"disparate," as the French
+say, of Scarron, would not quite have liked the quarrel between the
+dying inn-keeper, who insists on being buried in his oldest sheet, full
+of holes and stains, and his wife, who asks him, from a sense rather of
+decency than of affection, how he can possibly think of appearing thus
+clad in the Valley of Jehoshaphat? But there is something in the book
+for many tastes, and a good deal more for the student of the history of
+the novel.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Fureti&egrave;re and the <i>Roman Bourgeois</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The couplet-contrast of the Comic Romance of Scarron and the "Bourgeois"
+Romance of Fureti&egrave;re<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a> is one of the most curious among the minor
+phenomena of literary history; but it repeats itself in that history<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> so
+often that it becomes, by accumulation, hardly minor. There is a vast
+difference between Fureti&egrave;re and Miss Austen, and a still vaster one
+between Scarron and Scott; but the two French books stand to each other,
+on however much lower a step of the stair, very much as <i>Waverley</i>
+stands to <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, and they carry on a common revulsion
+against their forerunners and a common quest for newer and better
+developments. The <i>Roman Bourgeois</i>, indeed, is more definitely, more
+explicitly, and in further ways of exodus, a departure from the subjects
+and treatment of most of the books noticed in the last chapter. It is
+true that its author attributes to the reading of the regular romances
+the conversion of his pretty idiot Javotte from a mere idiot to
+something that can, at any rate, hold her own in conversation, and take
+an interest in life.<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> But he also adds the consequence of her
+elopement, without apparently any prospect of marriage, but with an
+accomplished gentleman who has helped her to <i>esprit</i> by introducing her
+to those very same romances; and he has numerous distinct girds at his
+predecessors, including one at the multiplied abductions of Mandane
+herself. Moreover his inset tale <i>L'Amour &Eacute;gar&eacute;</i> (itself something of a
+parody), which contains most of the "key"-matter, includes a satirical
+account (not uncomplimentary to her intellectual, but exceedingly so to
+her physical characteristics) of "Sapho" herself. For after declining to
+give a full description of poor Madeleine, for fear of disgusting his
+readers, he tells us, in mentioning the extravagant compliments
+addressed to her in verse, that she only resembled the Sun in having a
+complexion yellowed by jaundice; the Moon in being freckled; and the
+Dawn in having a red tip to her nose!</p>
+
+<p>But this last ill-mannered particularity illustrates the character, and
+in its way the value, of the whole book. A romance, or indeed in the
+proper sense a story&mdash;that is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> to say, <i>one</i> story,&mdash;it certainly is
+not: the author admits the fact frankly, not to say boisterously, and
+his title seems to have been definitely suggested by Scarron's. The two
+parts have absolutely no connection with one another, except that a
+single personage, who has played a very subordinate part in the first,
+plays a prominent but entirely different one in the second. This second
+is wholly occupied by legal matters (Fureti&egrave;re had been "bred to the
+law"), and the humours and amours of a certain female litigant,
+Collantine, to whom Racine and Wycherley owe something, with the unlucky
+author "Charroselles"<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id="FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a> and a subordinate judge, Belastre, who has
+been pitch-forked by interest into a place which he finally loses by his
+utter incapacity and misconduct. To understand it requires even more
+knowledge of old French law terms generally than parts of Balzac do of
+specially commercial and financial lingo.</p>
+
+<p>This "specialising" of the novel is perhaps of more importance than
+interest; but interest itself may be found in the First Part, where
+there is, if not much, rather more of a story, some positive
+character-drawing, a fair amount of smart phrase, and a great deal of
+lively painting of manners. There is still a good deal of law, to which
+profession most of the male characters belong, but there are plentiful
+compensations.</p>
+
+<p>As far as there is any real story or history, it is that of two girls,
+both of the legal <i>bourgeoisie</i> by rank. The prettier, Javotte, has been
+briefly described above. She is the daughter of a rich attorney, and
+has, before her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> emancipation and elopement, two suitors, both
+advocates; the one, Nicod&egrave;me, young, handsome, well dressed, and a great
+flirt, but feather-headed; the other, Bedout, a middle-aged sloven,
+collector, and at the same time miser, but very well off. The second
+heroine, Lucr&egrave;ce, is also handsome, though rather less so than Javotte:
+but she has plenty of wits. She is, however, in an unfortunate position,
+being an orphan with no fortune, and living with an uncle and aunt, the
+latter of whom has a passion for gaming, and keeps open house for it, so
+that Lucr&egrave;ce sees rather undesirable society. Despite her wits, she
+falls a victim to a rascally marquis, who first gives her a written
+promise of marriage, and afterwards, by one of the dirtiest tricks ever
+imagined by a novelist&mdash;a trick which, strange to say, the present
+writer does not remember to have seen in any other book, obvious though
+it is&mdash;steals it.<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a> Fortunately for her, Nicod&egrave;me, who is of her
+acquaintance, and a general lover, has also given her, though not in
+earnest and for no serious "consideration," a similar promise: and by
+the help of a busybody legal friend she gets 2000 crowns out of him to
+prevent an action for breach. And, finally, Bedout, after displacing the
+unlucky Nicod&egrave;me (thus left doubly in the cold), and being himself
+thrown over by Javotte's elopement, takes to wife, being induced to do
+so by a cousin, Lucr&egrave;ce herself, in blissful ignorance (which is never
+removed) of her past. The cousin, Laurence, has also been the link of
+these parts of the tale with an episode of <i>pr&eacute;cieuse</i> society in which
+the above-mentioned inset is told; a fourth feminine character,
+Hyppolyte (<i>vice</i> Philipote), of some individuality, is introduced;
+Javotte makes a greater fool of herself than ever; and her future
+seducer, Pancrace, makes his appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Thus reduced to "argument" form, the story may seem even more modern
+than it really is, and the censures, apologies, etc., put forward above
+may appear rather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> unjust. But few people will continue to think so
+after reading the book. The materials, especially with the "trimmings"
+to be mentioned presently, would have made a very good novel of the
+completest kind. But, once more, the time had not come, though Fureti&egrave;re
+was, however unconsciously, doing his best to bring it on. One fault,
+not quite so easy to define as to feel, is prominent, and continued to
+be so in all the best novels, or parts of novels, till nearly the middle
+of the nineteenth century. There is far too much mere <i>narration</i>&mdash;the
+things being not smartly brought before the mind's eye as <i>being</i> done,
+and to the mind's ear as <i>being</i> said, but recounted, sometimes not even
+as present things, but as things that <i>have been</i> said or done already.
+This gives a flatness, which is further increased by the habit of not
+breaking up even the conversation into fresh paragraphs and lines, but
+running the whole on in solid page-blocks for several pages together.
+Yet even if this mechanical mistake were as mechanically redressed,<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a>
+the original fault would remain and others would still appear. A scene
+between Javotte and Lucr&egrave;ce, to give one instance only, would enliven
+the book enormously; while, on the other hand, we could very well spare
+one of the few passages in which Nicod&egrave;me is allowed to be more than the
+subject of a <i>r&eacute;cit</i>, and which partakes of the knock-about character so
+long popular, the young man and Javotte bumping each other's foreheads
+by an awkward slip in saluting, after which he first upsets a piece of
+porcelain and then drags a mirror down upon himself. There is "action"
+enough here; while, on the other hand, the important and promising
+situations of the two promises to Lucr&egrave;ce, and the stealing by the
+Marquis of his, are left in the flattest fashion of "recount." But it
+was very long indeed before novelists understood this matter, and as
+late as Hope's famous <i>Anastasius</i> the fault is present, apparently to
+the author's knowledge, though he has not removed it.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+<p>To a reader of the book who does not know, or care to pay attention to,
+the history of the matter, the opening of the <i>Roman Bourgeois</i> may seem
+to promise something quite free, or at any rate much more free than is
+actually the case, from this fault. But, as we have seen, they generally
+took some care of their openings, and Fureti&egrave;re availed himself of a
+custom possibly, to present readers, especially those not of the Roman
+Church, possessing an air of oddity, and therefore of freshness, which
+it certainly had not to those of his own day. This was the curious
+fashion of <i>qu&ecirc;te</i> or collection at church&mdash;not by a commonplace verger,
+or by respectable churchwardens and sidesmen, but by the prettiest girl
+whom the <i>cur&eacute;</i> could pitch upon, dressed in her best, and lavishing
+smiles upon the congregation to induce them to give as lavishly, and to
+enable her to make a "record" amount.</p>
+
+<p>The original meeting of Nicod&egrave;me and the fair Javotte takes place in
+this wise, and enables the author to enlighten us further as to matters
+quite proper for novel treatment.<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a> The device of keeping gold and
+large silver pieces uppermost in the open "plate"; the counter-balancing
+mischief of covering them with a handful of copper; the licensed habit,
+a rather dangerous one surely, of taking "change" out of that plate,
+which enables the aspirant for the girl's favour to clear away the
+obnoxious <i>sous</i> as change for a whole pistole&mdash;all this has a kind of
+attraction for which you may search the more than myriad pages of
+<i>Artam&egrave;ne</i> without finding it. The daughter of a citizen's family, in
+the French seventeenth century, was kept with a strictness which perhaps
+explains a good deal in the conduct of an Agnes or an Isabelle in
+comedy. She was almost always tied to her mother's apron-strings, and
+even an accepted lover had to carry on his courtship under the very
+superfluous number of <i>six</i> eyes at least. But the Church was
+misericordious.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> The custom of giving and receiving holy water could be
+improved by the resources of amatory science; but this of the <i>qu&ecirc;te</i>
+was, it would seem, still more full of opportunity. Apparently (perhaps
+because in these city parishes the church was always close by, and the
+whole proceedings public) the fair <i>qu&ecirc;teuse</i> was allowed to walk home
+alone; and in this instance Nicod&egrave;me, having ground-baited with his
+pistole, is permitted to accompany Javotte Vollichon to her father's
+door&mdash;her extreme beauty making up for the equally extreme silliness of
+her replies to his observations.</p>
+
+<p>The possible objection that these things, fresh and interesting to us,
+were ordinary and banal to them, would be a rather shallow one. The
+point is that, in previous fiction, circumstantial verisimilitude of
+this kind had hardly been tried at all. So it is with the incident of
+Nicod&egrave;me sending a rabbit (supposed to be from his own estate, but
+really from the market&mdash;a joke not peculiar to Paris, but specially
+favoured there), or losing at bowls a capon, to old Vollichon, and on
+the strength of each inviting himself to dinner; the fresh girds at the
+extraordinary and still not quite accountable plenty of marquises
+(Scarron, if I remember rightly, has the verb <i>se marquiser</i>); and the
+contributory (or, as the ancients would have said, symbolic) dinners&mdash;as
+it were, picnics at home&mdash;of <i>bourgeois</i> society at each other's houses,
+with not a few other things. A curious plan of a fashion-review, with
+patterns for the benefit of ladies, is specially noticeable at a period
+so early in the history of periodicals generally, and is one of the not
+few points in which there is a certain resemblance between Fureti&egrave;re and
+Defoe.</p>
+
+<p>It is in this daring to be quotidian and contemporary that his claim to
+a position in the history of the novel mainly consists. Some might add a
+third audacity, that of being "middle-class." Scarron had dealt with
+barn-mummers and innkeepers and some mere riff-raff; but he had included
+not a few nobles, and had indulged in fighting and other "noble"
+subjects. There is no fighting in Fureti&egrave;re, and his chief "noble"
+figure&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> rascal who robbed Lucr&egrave;ce of her virtue and her keys&mdash;is
+the sole figure of his class, except Pancrace and the <i>pr&eacute;cieuse</i>
+Ang&eacute;lique. This is at once a practical protest against the common
+interpretation and extension of Aristotle's prescription of
+"distinguished" subjects, and an unmistakable relinquishment of mere
+picaresque squalor. Above all, it points the way in practice, indirectly
+perhaps but inevitably, to the selection of subjects that the author
+really <i>knows</i>, and that he can treat with the small vivifying details
+given by such knowledge, and by such knowledge alone. There is an
+advance in character, an advance in "interior" description&mdash;the
+Vollichon family circle, the banter and the gambling at Lucr&egrave;ce's home,
+the humour of a <i>pr&eacute;cieuse</i> meeting, etc. In fact, whatever be the
+defects<a name="FNanchor_263_263" id="FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a> in the book, it may almost be called an advance all round.
+A specimen of this, as of other pioneer novels, may not be superfluous;
+it is the first conversation, after the collection, between Nicod&egrave;me and
+Javotte.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class="sidenote">Nicod&egrave;me takes Javotte home from church.</div>
+
+<p>This new kind of gallantry [<i>his removing the offensive
+copper coins as pretended "change" for his pistole</i>] was
+noticed by Javotte, who was privately pleased with it, and
+really thought herself under an obligation to him.
+Wherefore, on their leaving the church, she allowed him to
+accost her with a compliment which he had been meditating
+all the time he was waiting for her. This chance favoured
+him much, for Javotte never went out without her mother, who
+kept her in such a strait fashion of living that she never
+allowed her to speak to a man either abroad or at home. Had
+it not been so, he would have had easy access to her; for as
+she was a solicitor's daughter and he was an advocate, they
+were in relations of close affinity and sympathy&mdash;such as
+allow as prompt acquaintance as that of a servant-maid with
+a <i>valet-de-chambre</i>.<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id="FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>As soon as the service was over and he could join her, he
+said, as though with the most delicate attention,
+"Mademoiselle, as far as I can judge, you cannot have failed
+to be lucky in your collection, being so deserving and so
+beautiful." "Alas! Sir,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> replied Javotte in the most
+ingenuous fashion, "you must excuse me. I have just been
+counting it up with the Father Sacristan, and I have only
+made 65 livres 5 sous. Now, Mademoiselle Henriette made 90
+livres a little time since; 'tis true she collected all
+through the forty hours'<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id="FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a> service, and in a place where
+there was the finest Paradise ever seen." "When I spoke,"
+said Nicod&egrave;me, "of the luck of your collection, I was not
+only speaking of the charity you got for the poor and the
+church; I meant as well what you gained for yourself." "Oh,
+Sir!" replied Javotte, "I assure you I gained nothing. There
+was not a farthing more than I told you; and besides, can
+you think I would butter my own bread<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id="FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a> on such an
+occasion? 'Twould be a great sin even to think of it." "I
+was not speaking," said Nicod&egrave;me, "of gold or silver. I only
+meant that nobody can have given you his alms without at the
+same time giving you his heart." "I don't know," quoth
+Javotte, "what you mean by hearts; I didn't see one in the
+plate." "I meant," added Nicod&egrave;me, "that everybody before
+whom you stopped must, when he saw such beauty, have vowed
+to love and serve you, and have given you his heart. For my
+own part I could not possibly refuse you mine." Javotte
+answered him na&iuml;vely, "Well! Sir, if you gave it me I must
+have replied at once, 'God give it back to you.'"<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id="FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a>
+"What!" cried Nicod&egrave;me rather angrily, "can you jest with me
+when I am so much in earnest, and treat in such a way the
+most passionate of all your lovers?" Whereat Javotte blushed
+as she answered, "Sir, pray be careful how you speak. I am
+an honest girl. I have no lovers. Mamma has expressly
+forbidden me to have any." "I have said nothing to shock
+you," replied Nicod&egrave;me. "My passion for you is perfectly
+honest and pure, and its end is only a lawful suit." "Then,
+Sir," answered Javotte, "you want to marry me? You must ask
+my papa and mamma for that; for indeed I do not know what
+they are going to give me when I marry." "We have not got
+quite so far yet," said Nicod&egrave;me. "I must be assured
+beforehand of your esteem, and know that you have admitted
+me to the honour of being your servant." "Sir," said
+Javotte, "I am quite satisfied with being my own servant,
+and I know how to do everything I want."</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p><p>Now this, of course, is not extraordinarily brilliant; but it is an
+early&mdash;a <i>very</i> early&mdash;beginning of the right sort of
+thing&mdash;conversation of a natural kind transferred from the boards to the
+book, sketches of character, touches of manners and of life generally,
+individual, national, local. The cross-purposes of the almost idiotic
+<i>ing&eacute;nue</i> and the philandering gallant are already very well done; and
+if Javotte had been as clever as she was stupid she could hardly have
+set forth the inwardness of French marriages more neatly than by the
+blunt reference to her <i>dot</i>, or have at the same moment more thoroughly
+disconcerted Nicod&egrave;me's regularly laid-out approaches for a flirtation
+in form, with only a possible, but in any case distant, termination in
+anything so prosaic as marriage.<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id="FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a> The thing as a whole is, in
+familiar phrase, "all right" in kind and in scheme. It requires some
+perfecting in detail; but it is in every reasonable sense perfectible.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cyrano de Bergerac and his <i>Voyages</i>.</div>
+
+<p>It has been possible to speak of one of the pioneer books mentioned in
+this chapter with more allowance than most of the few critics and
+historians who have discussed or mentioned it have given it, and to
+recommend the others, not uncritically but quite cheerfully. This
+satisfactory state of things hardly persists when we reach what seems
+perhaps, to those who have never read it, not the least considerable of
+the batch&mdash;the <i>Voyage &agrave; la Lune</i> of Cyrano de Bergerac, as his name is
+in literary history, though he never called himself so.<a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a> Cyrano,
+though he does not seem to have had a very fortunate life, and died
+young, yet was not all unblest, and has since been rather blessed than
+banned. Even in his own day Boileau<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> spoke of him with what, in the
+"Bollevian" fashion, was comparative compliment&mdash;that is to say, he said
+that he did not think Cyrano so bad as somebody else. But long
+afterwards, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Gautier took him up
+among his <i>Grotesques</i> and embalmed him in the caressing and
+immortalising amber of his marvellous style and treatment; while at the
+end of the same century one of the chief living poets and playwrights of
+France made him the subject of a popular and really pathetic drama. His
+<i>Pedant Jou&eacute;</i> is not a stupid comedy, and had the honour of furnishing
+Moli&egrave;re with some of that "property" which he was, quite rightly, in the
+habit of commandeering wherever he found it. <i>La Mort d'Agrippine</i> is by
+no means the worst of that curious school of tragedy, so like and so
+unlike to that of our own "University wits," which was partly
+exemplified and then transcended by Corneille, and which some of us are
+abandoned enough to enjoy more as readers, though as critics we may find
+more faults with it, than we find it possible to do with Racine. But the
+<i>Voyage &agrave; la Lune</i>, as well as, though rather less than, its
+complementary dealing with the Sun, has been praised with none of these
+allowances. On the contrary, it has had ascribed to it the credit of
+having furnished, not scraps of dialogue or incident, but a solid
+suggestion to an even greater than Moli&egrave;re&mdash;to Swift; remarkable
+intellectual and scientific anticipations have been discovered in it,
+and in comparatively recent times versions of it have been published to
+serve as proofs that Cyrano was actually a father<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a> of French
+eighteenth-century <i>philosophie</i>&mdash;a different thing, once more, from
+philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, however, use the utmost possible combination of critical
+magnanimity with critical justice: and allow these precious additions,
+which did not form part of the "classical" or "received" text of the
+author,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> not to count against him. <i>For</i> him they can only count with
+those who still think the puerile and now hopelessly stale jests about
+Enoch and Elijah and that sort of thing clever. But they can be either
+disregarded or at least left out of the judgment, and it will yet remain
+true that the so-called <i>Voyage</i> is a very disappointing book indeed. As
+this is one of the cases where the record of personal experience is not
+impertinent, I may say that I first read it some forty years ago, when
+fresh from reading about it and its author in "Th&eacute;o's" prose; that I
+therefore came to it with every prepossession in its favour, and strove
+to like it, or to think I did. I read it again, if I remember rightly,
+about the time of the excitement about M. Rostand's <i>Cyrano</i>, and liked
+it less still; while when I re-read it carefully for this chapter, I
+liked it least of all. There is, of course, a certain fancifulness about
+the main idea of a man fastening bottles of dew round him in the
+expectation (which is justified) that the sun's heat will convert the
+dew into steam and raise him from the ground. But the reader (it is not
+necessary to pay him the bad compliment of explaining the reasons) will
+soon see that the scheme is aesthetically awkward, if not positively
+ludicrous, and scientifically absurd. Throwing off bottles to lower your
+level has a superficial resemblance to the actual principles and
+practice of ballooning; but in the same way it will not here "work" at
+all.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, would be a matter of no consequence whatever if the
+actual results of the experiment were amusing. Unfortunately they are
+not. That the aeronaut's first miss of the Moon drops him into the new
+French colony of Canada may have given Cyrano some means of interesting
+people then; but, reversing the process noticed in the cases of Scarron
+and Fureti&egrave;re, it does not in the least do so now. We get nothing out of
+it except some very uninteresting gibes at the Jesuits, and, connected
+with these, some equally uninteresting discussions whether the flight to
+the Moon is possible or not.</p>
+
+<p>Still one hopes, like the child or fool of popular saying, for the Moon
+itself to atone for Canada, and tolerates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> disappointment till one
+actually gets there. Alas! of all Utopias that have ever been Utopiated,
+Cyrano's is the most uninteresting, even when its negative want of
+interest does not change into something positively disagreeable. The
+Lunarians, though probably intended to be, are hardly at all a satire on
+us Earth-dwellers. They are bigger, and, as far as the male sex is
+concerned, apparently more awkward and uglier; and their ideas in
+religion, morals, taste, etc., are a monotonously direct reversal of our
+orthodoxies. There is at least one passage which the absence of all
+"naughty niceness" and the presence of the indescribably nasty make a
+good "try" for the acme of the disgusting. More of it is less but still
+nasty; much of it is silly; all of it is dull.<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id="FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a></p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless it is not quite omissible in such a history as this, or in
+any history of French literature. For it is a notable instance of the
+coming and, indeed, actual invasion, by fiction, of regions which had
+hitherto been the province of more serious kinds; and it is a link, not
+unimportant if not particularly meritorious, in the chain of the
+eccentric novel. Lucian of course had started it long ago, and Rabelais
+had in a fashion taken it up but a century before. But the fashioners of
+new commonwealths and societies, More, Campanella, Bacon, had been as a
+rule very serious. Cyrano, in his way, was serious too; but the way
+itself was not one of those for which the ticket has been usually
+reserved.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mme. de la Fayette and <i>La Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i>.</div>
+
+<p>But the last of this batch is the most important and the best of the
+whole. This is <i>La Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i>, by Marie Madeleine Pioche de
+Lavergne, Comtesse de la Fayette, friend of Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute; and of
+Huet; more or less Platonic, and at any rate last, love of La
+Rochefoucauld; a woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> evidently of great charm as well as of great
+ability, and apparently of what was then irreproachable character. She
+wrote, besides other matter of no small literary value and historical
+interest, four novels, the minor ones, which require no special notice
+here, being <i>Za&iuml;de</i>, <i>La Comtesse de Tende</i>, and (her opening piece)
+<i>Madame de Montpensier</i>. Their motives and methods are much the same as
+those of the <i>Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i>, but this is much more effectively
+treated. In fact, it is one of the very few highly praised books, at the
+beginnings of departments of literature, which ought not to disappoint
+candid and not merely studious readers.</p>
+
+<p>It begins with a sketch, very cleverly done, of the Court of Henri II.,
+with the various prominent personages there&mdash;the King and the Queen,
+Diane de Poitiers, Queen Mary of Scotland ("La Reine Dauphine"),
+"Madame, s&oelig;ur du Roi" (the second Margaret of Valois&mdash;not so clever
+as her aunt and niece namesakes, and not so beautiful as the latter,
+but, like both of them, a patroness of men of letters, especially
+Ronsard, and apparently a very amiable person, though rude things were
+said of her marriage, rather late in life, to the Duke of Savoy), with
+many others of, or just below, royal blood. Of these latter there are
+Mademoiselle de Chartres, the Prince de Cl&egrave;ves, whom she marries, and
+the Duc de Nemours, who completes the usual "triangle."<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a> As is also
+usual&mdash;in a way not unconnected in its usuality with that of triangular
+sequences&mdash;the Princess has more <i>amiti&eacute;</i> and <i>estime</i> than <i>amour</i> for
+her husband, though he, less usually, is desperately in love with her.
+So, very shortly, is Nemours, who is represented as an almost
+irresistible lady-killer, though no libertine, and of the "respectful"
+order. His conduct is not quite that of the Elizabethan or Victorian
+ideal gentleman; for he steals his mistress's portrait while it is being
+shown to a mixed company; eavesdrops (as will be seen presently) in the
+most atrocious manner; chatters about his love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> affairs in a way almost
+worse; and skulks round the Princess's country garden at night in a
+manner exceedingly unlikely to do his passion any good, and nearly
+certain to do (as it does) her reputation much harm. Still, if not an
+Amadis, he is not in the least a Lovelace, and that is saying a good
+deal for a French noble of his time. The Princess slowly falls in love
+with him (she has seen him steal the portrait, though he does not know
+this and she dares say nothing for fear of scandal); and divers Court
+and other affairs conduct this concealed <i>amourette</i> (for she prevents
+all "declaration") in a manner very cleverly and not too tediously told,
+to a point when, though perfectly virtuous in intention, she feels that
+she is in danger of losing self-control.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its central scene.</div>
+
+<p>Probably, though it is the best known part of the book, it may be well
+to give the central scene, where M. de Nemours plays the eavesdropper to
+M. and Mme. de Cl&egrave;ves, and overhears the conversation which, with equal
+want of manners and of sense, he afterwards (it is true, without names)
+retails to the Vidame de Chartres, a relation of Mme. de Cl&egrave;ves herself,
+and a well-known gossip, with a strong additional effect on the fatal
+consequences above described. It is pretty long, and some "cutting" will
+be necessary.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>He<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a> heard M. de Cl&egrave;ves say to his wife, "But why do you
+wish not to return to Paris? What can keep you in the
+country? For some time past you have shown a taste for
+solitude which surprises me and pains me, because it keeps
+us apart. In fact, I find you sadder than usual, and I am
+afraid that something is annoying you." "I have no
+mind-trouble," she answered with an embarrassed air; "but
+the tumult of the Court is so great, and there is always so
+much company at home, that both body and mind must needs
+grow weary, and one wants only rest." "Rest," replied he,
+"is not the proper thing for a person of your age. Your
+position is not, either at home or at Court, a fatiguing
+one, and I am rather afraid that you do not like to be with
+me." "You would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> do me a great injustice if you thought so,"
+said she with ever-increasing embarrassment, "but I entreat
+you to leave me here. If you would stay too, I should be
+delighted&mdash;if you would stay here alone and be good enough
+to do without the endless number of people who never leave
+you." "Oh! Madam," cried M. de Cl&egrave;ves, "your looks and your
+words show me that you have reasons for wishing to be alone
+which I do not know, and which I beg you to tell me." He
+pressed her a long time to do so without being able to
+induce her, and after excusing herself in a manner which
+increased the curiosity of her husband, she remained in deep
+silence with downcast eyes. Then suddenly recovering her
+speech, and looking at him, "Do not force me," said she, "to
+a confession which I am not strong enough to make, though I
+have several times intended to do so. Think only that
+prudence forbids a woman of my age, who is her own
+mistress,<a name="FNanchor_274_274" id="FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a> to remain exposed to the trials<a name="FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a> of a
+Court." "What do you suggest, Madame?" cried M. de Cl&egrave;ves.
+"I dare not put it in words for fear of offence." She made
+no answer, and her silence confirming her husband in his
+thought, he went on: "You tell me nothing, and that tells me
+that I do not deceive myself." "Well then, Sir!" she
+answered, throwing herself at his feet, "I will confess to
+you what never wife has confessed to her husband; but the
+innocence of my conduct and my intentions gives me strength
+to do it. It is the truth that I have reasons for quitting
+the Court, and that I would fain shun the perils in which
+people of my age sometimes find themselves. I have never
+shown any sign of weakness, and I am not afraid of allowing
+any to appear if you will allow me to retire from the Court,
+or if I still had Mme. de Chartres to aid in guarding me.
+However risky may be the step I am taking, I take it
+joyfully, as a way to keep myself worthy of being yours. I
+ask your pardon a thousand times if my sentiments are
+disagreeable to you; at least my actions shall never
+displease you. Think how&mdash;to do as I am doing&mdash;I must have
+more friendship and more esteem for you than any wife has
+ever had for any husband. Guide me, pity me, and, if you
+can, love me still." M. de Cl&egrave;ves had remained, all the time
+she was speaking, with his head buried in his hands, almost
+beside himself; and it had not occurred to him to raise his
+wife from her position. When she finished, he cast his eyes
+upon her and saw her at his knees, her face bathed in tears,
+and so admirably lovely that he was ready<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> to die of grief.
+But he kissed her as he raised her up, and said:</p></div>
+
+<p>[<i>The speech which follows is itself admirable as an expression of
+despairing love, without either anger or mawkishness; but it is rather
+long, and the rest of the conversation is longer. The husband naturally,
+though, as no doubt he expects, vainly, tries to know who it is that
+thus threatens his wife's peace and his own, and for a time the
+eavesdropper (one wishes for some one behind him with a jack-boot on) is
+hardly less on thorns than M. de Cl&egrave;ves himself. At last a reference to
+the portrait-episode (see above) enlightens Nemours, and gives, if not
+an immediate, a future clue to the unfortunate husband.</i>]</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen at once that this is far different from anything we have
+had before&mdash;a much further importation of the methods and subjects of
+poetry and drama into the scheme of prose fiction.</p>
+
+<p>We need only return briefly to the main story, the course of which, as
+one looks back to it through some 250 years of novels, cannot be very
+difficult to "<i>pro</i>ticipate." A continuance of Court interviews and
+gossip, with the garrulity of Nemours himself and the Vidame, as well as
+the dropping of a letter by the latter, brings a complete
+<i>&eacute;claircissement</i> nearer and nearer. The Countess, though more and more
+in love, remains virtuous, and indeed hardly exposes herself to direct
+temptation. But her husband, becoming aware that Nemours is the lover,
+and also that he is haunting the grounds at Coulommiers by night when
+the Princess is alone, falls, though his suspicion of actual infidelity
+is removed too late, into hopeless melancholy and positive illness, till
+the "broken heart" of fact or fiction releases him. Nemours is only too
+anxious to marry the widow, but she refuses him, and after a few years
+of "pious works" in complete retirement, herself dies early.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that, even in this brief sketch, some faults of the book
+may appear; it is certain that actual reading of it will not utterly
+deprive the fault-finder of his prey. The positive history&mdash;of which
+there is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> good deal, very well told in itself,<a name="FNanchor_276_276" id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a> and the appearance
+of which at all is interesting&mdash;is introduced in too great proportions,
+so as to be largely irrelevant. Although we know that this extremely
+artificial world of love-making with your neighbours' wives was also
+real, in a way and at a time, the reality fails to make up for the
+artifice, at least as a novel-subject. It is like golf, or acting, or
+bridge&mdash;amusing enough to the participants, no doubt, but very tedious
+to hear or read about.<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a> Another point, again true to the facts of
+the time, no doubt, but somewhat repulsive in reading, is the almost
+entire absence of Christian names. The characters always speak to each
+other as "Monsieur" and "Madame," and are spoken of accordingly. I do
+not think we are ever told either of M. or of Mme. de Cl&egrave;ves's name. Now
+there is one person at least who cannot "see" a heroine without knowing
+her Christian name. More serious, in different senses of that word, is
+the fact that there is still ground for the complaint made above as to
+the too <i>solid</i> character of the narrative. There is, indeed, more
+positive dialogue, and this is one of the "advances" of the book. But
+even there the writer has not had the courage to break it up into
+actual, not "reported," talk, and the "said he's" and "said she's,"
+"replied so and so's" and "observed somebody's" perpetually get in the
+way of smooth reading.</p>
+
+<p>So much in the way of alms for Momus. Fortunately a much fuller
+collection of points for admiration offers itself. It has been admitted
+that the historical element<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id="FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a> is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> perhaps, in the circumstances and
+for the story, a trifle irrelevant and even "in the way." But its
+presence at all is the important point. Some, at any rate, of the
+details&mdash;the relations of that Henri II., with whom, it seems, we may
+<i>not</i> connect the very queer, very rare, but not very beautiful
+<i>fa&iuml;ence</i> once called "Henri Deux" ware,<a name="FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a> with his wife and his
+mistress; his accidental death at the hands of Montgomery; the history
+of Henry VIII.'s matrimonial career, and the courtship of his daughter
+by a French prince (if not <i>this</i> French prince)&mdash;are historical enough
+to present a sharp contrast with the cloudy pseudo-classical canvas of
+the Scud&eacute;ry romances, or the mere fable-land of others. Any critical
+Brown ought to have discovered "great capabilities" in it; and though it
+was not for more than another century that the true historical novel got
+itself born, this was almost the nearest experiment to it. But the other
+side&mdash;the purely sentimental&mdash;let us not say psychological&mdash;side, is of
+far more consequence; for here we have not merely aspiration or
+chance-medley, we have attainment.</p>
+
+<p>There is a not wholly discreditable prejudice against abridgments,
+especially of novels, and more especially against what are called
+condensations. But one may think that the simple knife, without any
+artful or artless aid of interpolated summaries, could carve out of <i>La
+Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i>, as it stands, a much shorter but fully
+intelligible presentation of its passionate, pitiful subject. A slight
+want of <i>individual</i> character may still be desiderated; it is hardly
+till <i>Manon Lescaut</i> that we get that, but it was not to be expected.
+Scarcely more to be expected, but present and in no small force, is that
+truth to life; that "knowledge of the human heart" which had been
+hitherto attempted by&mdash;we may almost say permitted to&mdash;the poet, the
+dramatist, the philosopher, the divine; but which few, if any, romancers
+had aimed at. This knowledge is not elaborately but sufficiently "set"
+with the halls and <i>ruelles</i> of the Court, the gardens and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> woods of
+Coulommiers; it is displayed with the aid of conversation, which, if it
+seems stilted to us, was not so then; and the machinery employed for
+working out the simple plot&mdash;as, for instance, in the case of the
+dropped letter, which, having originally nothing whatever to do with any
+of the chief characters, becomes an important instrument&mdash;is sometimes
+far from rudimentary in conception, and very effectively used.</p>
+
+<p>It is therefore no wonder that the book did two things&mdash;things of
+unequal value indeed, but very important for us. In the first place, it
+started the School of "Sensibility"<a name="FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a> in the novel, and so provided a
+large and influential portion of eighteenth-century fiction. In the
+second&mdash;small as it is&mdash;it almost started the novel proper, the class of
+prose fiction which, though it may take on a great variety of forms and
+colours, though it may specialise here and "extravagate" there, yet in
+the main distinguishes itself from the romance by being first of all
+subjective&mdash;by putting behaviour, passion, temperament, character,
+motive before incident and action in the commoner sense&mdash;which had had
+few if any representatives in ancient times, had not been disentangled
+from the romantic envelope in mediaeval, but was to be the chief new
+development of modern literature.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There seemed to be several reasons for separating Hamilton from the
+other fairy-tale writers. The best of all is that he has the same
+qualification for the present chapter as that which has installed in it
+the novelists already noticed&mdash;that of idiosyncrasy. This leads to, or
+rather is founded on, the consideration that his tales are fairy-tales
+only "after a sort," and testify rather to a prevalent fashion than to a
+natural affection for the kind.<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id="FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a> Thirdly, he exhibits, in his
+supernatural matter, a new and powerful influence on fiction
+generally&mdash;that of the first translated <i>Arabian Nights</i>. Lastly, he is
+in turn himself the head of two considerable though widely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> different
+sub-departments of fiction&mdash;the decadent and often worthless but largely
+cultivated department of what we may call the fairy-tale
+<i>improper</i>,<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id="FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a> and the very important and sometimes consummately
+excellent "ironic tale," to be often referred to, and sometimes fully
+discussed, hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>The singularity of Hamilton's position has always been recognised; but
+until comparatively recently, his history and family relations were very
+little understood. Since the present writer discussed him in a
+paper<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id="FNanchor_283_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a> now a quarter of a century old in print, and older in
+composition, further light has been thrown on his life and surroundings
+in the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>, and more still in a monograph
+by a lady<a name="FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a> whose researches will, it is hoped, sooner or later be
+published. A very little, too, of the unprinted work which was held back
+at his death has been recovered. But this, it seems, includes nothing of
+importance; and his fame will probably always rest, as it has so long
+and so securely rested, on the <i>M&eacute;moires de Grammont</i>, the few but
+sometimes charming independent verses, some miscellanies not generally
+enough appreciated, and the admirable group of ironic tales which set a
+fashion hardly more admirably illustrated since by Voltaire and
+Beckford<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a> and Lord Beaconsfield, to name no others. Of these things
+the verses,[286] unfortunately, do not concern us at all; and the
+<i>M&eacute;moires</i> and miscellanies<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id="FNanchor_286_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a> only in so far as they add another, and
+one of the very best, to the brilliant examples of personal narrative of
+which the century is so full, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> which have so close a connection with
+the novel itself. But the <i>Tales</i> are, of course, ours of most obvious
+right; and they form one of the most important <i>points de rep&egrave;re</i> in our
+story.</p>
+
+<p>To discuss, on the one hand, how Hamilton's singularly mixed conditions
+and circumstances of birth<a name="FNanchor_287_287" id="FNanchor_287_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a> and life<a name="FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_288_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> influenced his literary
+production would be interesting, but in strictness rather irrelevant. To
+attempt, on the other, at any great length to consider the influences
+which produced the kind of tale he wrote would have more relevance, but
+would, if pursued in similar cases elsewhere, lengthen the book
+enormously. Two main ancestor or progenitor forces, as they may be
+called, though both were of very recent date and one actually
+contemporary, may be specified. The one was the newborn fancy for
+fairy-tales, and Eastern tales in particular. The other was the now
+ingrained disposition towards ironic writing which, begun by Rabelais,
+as a most notable origin, varied and increased by Montaigne and others,
+had, just before Hamilton, received fresh shaping and tempering from not
+a few writers, especially Saint-&Eacute;vremond. There is indeed no doubt that
+this last remarkable and now far too little read writer,<a name="FNanchor_289_289" id="FNanchor_289_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a> who, let
+it be remembered, was, like Hamilton, and even more so, an intimate
+friend of Grammont and also an inmate of Charles's court, was Hamilton's
+direct and immediate model so far as he had any such&mdash;his "master" in
+the general tone of <i>persiflage</i>. But master and pupil chose, as a rule,
+different subjects, and the idiosyncrasy of each was intense; it must be
+remembered, too, that both were of Norman blood, though that of the
+Hamiltons had long been transfused into the veins of a new nationality,
+while Saint-&Eacute;vremond was actually born in Normandy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> The Norman (that is
+to say, the English, with a special intention of difference<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id="FNanchor_290_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a>) in
+each could be very easily pointed out if such things were our business.
+But it is the application of this, and of other things in relation to
+the development of the novel, that we have to deal with.</p>
+
+<p>It is said, and there is good reason for believing it to be true, that
+all the stories have a more or less pervading vein of "key" application
+in them. But this, except for persons particularly interested in such
+things, has now very little attraction. It has been admitted that it
+probably exists, as indeed it does in almost everything of the day, from
+the big as well as "great" <i>Cyrus</i> to the little, but certainly not much
+less great, <i>Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i>. But our subject is what Hamilton
+writes about these people, not the people about whom he may or may not
+be writing.</p>
+
+<p>What we have left of Hamilton's tales, as far as they have been printed
+(and, as was said above, not much more seems to exist), consists of five
+stories of very unequal length, and in two cases out of the five
+unfinished. One of the finished pieces, <i>Fleur d'&Eacute;pine</i>, and one of the
+unfinished&mdash;although unfinished it is not only one of the longest, but,
+unluckily in a way, by far the best of all&mdash;<i>Les Quatre Facardins</i>, are
+"framework" stories, and avowedly attach themselves, in an irreverent
+sort of attachment, to the <i>Arabian Nights</i>; the others, <i>Le B&eacute;lier</i>,
+<i>Z&eacute;n&eacute;yde</i> (unfinished), and <i>L'Enchanteur Faustus</i>, are independent, and
+written in the mixed verse-and-prose style which had been made popular
+by various writers, especially Chapelle, but which cannot be said to be
+very acceptable in itself. Taken together, they fill a volume of just
+over 500 average octavo pages in the standard edition of 1812; but their
+individual length is very unequal. The two longest, the fragmentary
+<i>Quatre Facardins</i> and the finished <i>Le B&eacute;lier</i>, run each of them to 142
+pages; the shortest, <i>L'Enchanteur Faustus</i>, has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> just five-and-twenty;
+while <i>Fleur d'&Eacute;pine</i>, in its completeness, has 114, and <i>Z&eacute;n&eacute;yde</i>, in
+its incompleteness, runs to 78, and might have run, for aught one can
+tell&mdash;in the mixed tangle of Roman and Merovingian history in which the
+author (possibly in ridicule of Madeleine de Scud&eacute;ry's classical
+chronicling) has chosen to plunge it&mdash;to 780 or 7800, which latter
+figure would, after all, have been little more than half the length of
+the <i>Grand Cyrus</i> itself.</p>
+
+<p>We may take <i>L'Enchanteur Faustus</i> first, as it requires the shortest
+notice. In fact, if it had not been Hamilton's, it would hardly require
+any. Written to a "charmante Daphn&eacute;" (evidently one of the English
+Jacobite exiles, from a reference to a great-great-grandfather of hers
+who was "admiral in Ireland" during Queen Elizabeth's time), it is
+occupied by a story of the great Queen herself, who is treated with the
+mixture of admiration (for her intelligence and spirit) with "scandal"
+(about her person and morals) that might be expected at St. Germains.
+The subject is the usual exhibition of dead beauties (here by, not to,
+Faustus), with Elizabeth's affected depreciation of Helen, Cleopatra,
+and Mariamne, and her equally affected admiration of Fair Rosamond,<a name="FNanchor_291_291" id="FNanchor_291_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a>
+whom she insists on summoning <i>twice</i>, despite Faustus's warning, and
+with disastrous consequences. Hamilton's irony is so pervading that one
+does not know whether ignorance, carelessness, or intention made him not
+only introduce Sidney and Essex as contemporary favourites of Elizabeth,
+but actually attribute Rosamond's end to poor Jane Shore instead of to
+Queen Eleanor! This would matter little if the tale had been stronger;
+but though it is told with Hamilton's usual easy fluency, the Queen's
+depreciations, the flattery of the courtiers, and the rest of it, are
+rather slightly and obviously handled. One would give half a dozen like
+it for that <i>Second</i> (but not necessarily <i>Last</i>) <i>Part</i> of the
+<i>Facardins</i>, which Cr&eacute;billon the younger is said to have actually seen
+and had the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> opportunity of saving, a chance which he neglected till too
+late.</p>
+
+<p>As <i>L'Enchanteur Faustus</i> is the shortest of the completed tales, so <i>Le
+B&eacute;lier</i> is the longest; indeed, as indicated above, it is the same
+length as what we have of <i>Les Quatre Facardins</i>. It is also&mdash;in that
+unsatisfactory and fragmentary way of knowledge with which literature
+often has to content itself&mdash;much the best known, because of the
+celebrated address of the giant Moulineau to the hero-beast "B&eacute;lier, mon
+ami,... si tu voulais bien commencer par le commencement, tu me ferais
+plaisir." There are many other agreeable things in it; but it has on the
+whole a double or more than double portion of the drawback which attends
+these "key" stories. It was written to please his sister, Madame de
+Grammont, who had established herself in a country-house, near
+Versailles. This she transformed from a mere cottage, called Moulineau,
+into an elegant villa to which she gave the name of Pontalie. There were
+apparently some difficulties with rustic neighbours, and Anthony wove
+the whole matter into this story, with the giant and the (of course
+enchanted) ram just mentioned; and the beautiful Alie who hates all men
+(or nearly all); and her father, a powerful druid, who is the giant's
+enemy; and the Prince de Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse, and other
+personages of the environs of Paris, who were no doubt recognisable and
+interesting once, but who, whether recognisable or not, are not
+specially interesting now. To repeat that there are good scenes and
+piquant remarks is merely to say once more that the thing is Hamilton's.
+But, on the whole, the present writer at any rate has always found it
+the least interesting (next to <i>L'Enchanteur Faustus</i>) of all.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, <i>Z&eacute;n&eacute;yde</i>&mdash;though unfinished, and though containing,
+in its ostensibly main story, things compared to which the Prince de
+Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse excite to palpitation&mdash;has points of
+remarkable interest about it. One of these&mdash;a prefatory sketch of the
+melancholy court of exiles at St. Germains&mdash;is like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> nothing else in
+Hamilton and like very few things anywhere else. This is in no sense
+fiction&mdash;it is, in fact, a historical document of the most striking
+kind; but it makes background and canvas for fiction itself,<a name="FNanchor_292_292" id="FNanchor_292_292"></a><a href="#Footnote_292_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a> and it
+gives us, besides, a most vivid picture of the priest-ridden, caballing
+little crowd of folk who had made great renunciations but could not make
+small. It also shows us in Hamilton a somewhat darker but also a
+stronger side of satiric powers, differently nuanced from the quiet
+<i>persiflage</i> of the <i>Contes</i> themselves. This, however, though easily
+"cobbled on" to the special tale, and possibly not unconnected with it
+key-fashion, is entirely separable, and might just as well have formed
+part of an actual letter to the "Madame de P.," to whom it is addressed.</p>
+
+<p>The tale itself, like some if not all the others, but in a much more
+strikingly contrasted fashion, again consists of two strands, interwoven
+so intimately, however, that it is almost impossible to separate them,
+though it is equally impossible to conceive two things more different
+from each other. The ostensible theme is a history of herself, given by
+the Nymph of the Seine to the author&mdash;a history of which more presently.
+But this is introduced at considerable length, and interrupted more than
+once, by scenes and dialogues, between the nymph and her distinctly
+unwilling auditor, which are of the most whimsically humorous character
+to be found even in Hamilton himself.</p>
+
+<p>The whole account of the self-introduction of the nymph to the narrator
+is extremely quaint, but rather long to give here as a whole. It is
+enough to say that Hamilton represents himself as by no means an ardent
+nympholept, or even as flattered by demi-goddess-like advances, which
+are of the most obliging description; and that the lady has not only to
+make fuller and fuller<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> revelations of her beauty, but at last to exert
+her supernatural power to some extent in order to carry the recreant
+into her "cool grot," not, indeed, under water, but invisibly situated
+on land. What there takes place is, unfortunately, as has been said,
+mainly the telling of a very dull story with one not so dull episode.
+But the conclusion of the preface exemplifies the whimsicality even of
+the writer, and points to the existence of a commodity in the fashion of
+wig-wearing which few who glory in "their own hair," and despise their
+periwigged forefathers, are likely to have thought of:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class="sidenote">Hamilton and the Nymph.</div>
+
+<p>At these words [<i>her own</i>] raising her eyes to heaven, she
+sighed several times; and though she tried to keep them
+back, I saw, coursing the length of her cheeks and falling
+on her beautiful neck, tears so natural, in the midst of a
+silence so touching, that I was just about to follow her
+example.<a name="FNanchor_293_293" id="FNanchor_293_293"></a><a href="#Footnote_293_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a> But she soon recovered herself; and having
+shown me by a languishing look that she was not insensible
+to my sympathetic emotion ... [<i>she enjoins discretion, and
+then</i>:&mdash;] After having looked at me attentively for some
+time she came closer to me, and as she gently pulled one
+side of my wig in order to whisper in my ear, I had to lean
+over her in a rather familiar manner.<a name="FNanchor_294_294" id="FNanchor_294_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a> Her face touched
+mine, and it seemed to me animated by a lively warmth, very
+different from the insensibility which I had accused[295]
+her of shedding upon me when she came out of the water. Her
+breath was pure and fresh, and her goddess-ship, which I had
+suspected of being something marshy, had no taint of mud
+about it. If only I might reveal all that she said to me in
+a confidence which I could have wished longer![295] But
+apparently she got tired of it<a name="FNanchor_295_295" id="FNanchor_295_295"></a><a href="#Footnote_295_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a> and let go my wig.
+"'Twould be too tiresome," she said, "to go on talking like
+this. Go out there, and leave us alone!" I turned round, and
+seeing no one in the room, I thought this order was
+addressed to me, so I was just rising....</p></div>
+
+<p>This quaint presentation of a craven swain is perhaps as good an example
+as could be found of the curious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> mixture of French and English in
+Hamilton. Hardly any Frenchman could have borne to put even a fictitious
+eidolon of himself in such a contemptible light; very few Englishmen,
+though they might easily have done this, would have done it so neatly,
+and with so quaint a travesty of romantic situation. But the main story,
+as admitted above, is <i>assommant</i>, though, just before the breach, a
+substitution of three agreeable damsels for the nymph herself promises
+something better.</p>
+
+<p>This combination of the dullest with some of the finest and most
+characteristic work of the author, would be rather a puzzle in a more
+"serious" writer than Hamilton; but in his case there is no need to
+distress, or in any way to cumber, oneself about the matter. The whole
+thing was a "compliment," as the age would have said, to Fantasy; and
+the rules of the Court of Quintessence, though not non-existent as dull
+fools suppose, are singularly elastic to skilled players.</p>
+
+<p>We are left with what, even as it exists, is by far his most ambitious
+attempt, and with one in which, considering all its actual features, one
+need not be taking things too seriously if one decides that he had an
+aim at something like a whole&mdash;even if the legends<a name="FNanchor_296_296" id="FNanchor_296_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a> about further
+parts, actually seen and destroyed by a more than Byzantine pudibundity,
+are not taken as wholly gospel.</p>
+
+<p>The completed <i>Fleur d'&Eacute;pine</i> and the uncompleted <i>Quatre
+Facardins</i><a name="FNanchor_297_297" id="FNanchor_297_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a> are in effect continuous parts (and to all appearance
+incomplete in more than the finishing of the second story) of an
+untitled but intelligibly sketched continuation of the <i>Arabian Nights</i>
+themselves. Hamilton, like others since, had evidently conceived an
+affection for Dinarzade: and a considerable contempt for Schahriar's
+notion of the advantages of matrimony. It is less certain,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> but I think
+possible, that he had anticipated the ideas of those who think that the
+unmarried sister went at least halves in the composition or remembrance
+of the stories themselves, or she could not have varied her timing at
+dawn so adroitly. He had, at any rate, an Irish-Englishman's sense of
+honest if humorous indignation at the part which she has to play (or
+rather endure) in these "two years" (much nearer three!), and the sequel
+in a way revenges her.</p>
+
+<p>I should imagine that Thackeray must have been reminiscent of Hamilton
+when he devised the part of "Sister Anne" in <i>Bluebeard's Ghost</i>. Like
+her, Hamilton's Dinarzade is slightly flippant; she would most certainly
+have observed "Dolly Codlins is the matter" in Anne's place. Like her,
+she is not unprovided with lovers; she actually, at the beginning,
+"takes a night off" that she may entertain the Prince of Trebizond; and
+it is the Prince himself who relates the great, but, alas! torsoed epic
+of the Facardins,<a name="FNanchor_298_298" id="FNanchor_298_298"></a><a href="#Footnote_298_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a> of whom he is himself one. But as there are only
+two stories, there is no room for much framework, and we see much less
+of the "resurrected" Dinarzade<a name="FNanchor_299_299" id="FNanchor_299_299"></a><a href="#Footnote_299_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a> than we could wish from what we do
+see and hear.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fleur d'&Eacute;pine</i>, which she herself tells, is a capital story, somewhat
+closer to the usual norm of the <i>Nights</i> than is usual with Hamilton. It
+bases itself on the well-known legends of the Princess with the
+literally murderous eyes; but this Princess Luisante is not really the
+heroine, and is absent from the greater part of the tale, though she is
+finally provided with the hero's brother, who is a reigning prince, and
+has everything handsome about him. The actual hero Tarare (French for
+"Fiddlestick!" or something of that sort, and of course an assumed
+name), in order to cure Luisante's eyes of their lethal quality, has to
+liberate a still more attractive damsel&mdash;the title-heroine&mdash;putative
+daughter of a good fairy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> actual victim of a bad one, quite in the
+orthodox style. He does this chiefly by the aid of a very amiable mare,
+who makes music wherever she goes, and can do wonderful things when her
+ears are duly manipulated. It is a good and pleasant story, with plenty
+of the direct relish of the fairy-tale, Eastern and Western, and plenty
+also of satirical parody of the serious romance. But it is not quite
+consummate. The opening, however, as a fair specimen of Hamilton's
+style, may be given.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><div class="sidenote">The opening of <i>Fleur d'&Eacute;pine</i>.</div>
+
+<p>Two thousand four hundred and fifty-three leagues from here
+there is an extraordinarily fine country called Cashmere. In
+this country reigned a Caliph; that Caliph had a daughter,
+and that daughter had a face; but people wished more than
+once that she had never had any. Her beauty was not
+insupportable till she was fifteen; but at that age it
+became impossible to endure it. She had the most beautiful
+mouth in the world; her nose was a masterpiece; the lilies
+of Cashmere&mdash;a thousand times whiter than ours&mdash;were
+discoloured beside her complexion; and it seemed impertinent
+of the fresh-blown rose to show itself beside the carnation
+of her cheek. Her forehead was unmatchable for shape and
+brilliancy; its whiteness was contrasted with a Vandyke
+point of hair blacker and more shining than jet&mdash;whence she
+took her name of "Luisante"; the shape of her face seemed
+made to frame so many wonders. But her eyes spoilt
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>No one had ever been able to look at them long enough to
+distinguish their exact colour; for as soon as one met her
+glance it was like a stroke of lightning. When she was eight
+years old her father, the Caliph, was in the habit of
+sending for her, to admire his offspring and give the
+courtiers the opportunity of paying a thousand feeble
+compliments to her youthful beauty; for even then they used
+to put out the candles at midnight, no other light being
+necessary except that of the little one's eyes. Yet all this
+was nothing but&mdash;in the literal sense, and the
+other&mdash;child's play; it was when her eyes had acquired full
+strength that they became no joking matter.</p></div>
+
+<p>[<i>The fatal effects&mdash;killing men in twenty-four hours, and blinding
+women&mdash;are then told, with the complaints of the nobility whose sons
+have fallen victims, and the various suggestions for remedying the evil
+made at a committee, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>which is presided over by the Seneschal of the
+kingdom ... "the silliest man who had ever held such an office&mdash;so much
+so that the caliph could not possibly think of choosing any one less
+silly." Tarare happens to be in this pundit-potentate's service; and so
+the story starts.</i>]</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Les Quatre Facardins.</i></div>
+
+<p>But&mdash;and indeed the writer's opinion on this point has already been
+indicated&mdash;Hamilton's masterpiece, unfinished as it is, is <i>Les Quatre
+Facardins</i>. Indeed, though unfinished in one sense, it is, in another,
+the most finished of all. Beside it the completed <i>Faustus</i> is a mere
+trifle, and not a very interesting trifle. It has no dull parts like
+<i>Z&eacute;n&eacute;yde</i> and even <i>Le B&eacute;lier</i>. It has much greater complication of
+interest and variety of treatment than <i>Fleur d'&Eacute;pine</i>, in which, after
+the opening, Hamilton's peculiar <i>persiflage</i>, though not absent, is
+much less noticeable. It at least suggests, tantalising as the
+suggestion is, that the author for once really intended to wind up all
+his threads into a compact ball, or (which is the better image) to weave
+them into a new and definite pattern. Moreover&mdash;this may not be a
+recommendation to everybody, but it is a very strong one to the present
+historian,&mdash;it has no obvious or insistent "key"-element whatsoever. It
+is, indeed, not at all unlikely that there <i>is</i> one, for the trick was
+ingrained in the literature and the society of the time. But if so, it
+is a sleeping dog that neither bites nor barks; and if you let it alone
+it will stay in its kennel, and not even obtrude itself upon your view.</p>
+
+<p>To these partly, if not wholly, negative merits it adds positive ones of
+a very considerable and delectable kind. The connection with the
+<i>Arabian Nights</i> is brought closer still in the fact that it is not only
+told (as of himself) by the Prince of Trebizond, Dinarzade's
+servant-cavalier, but is linked&mdash;to an important extent, and not at all
+to Schahriar's unmixed satisfaction&mdash;with one of the earliest incidents
+of the <i>Nights</i> themselves, the remarkable story how the Lady from the
+Sea increases her store of rings at the cost of some exertion and
+alarm&mdash;not to mention the value of the rings themselves&mdash;to the Sultan
+and his brother, the King of Tartary. This lady, with her genie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> and her
+glass box, reappears as "Cristalline la Curieuse"&mdash;one of the two
+heroines. The other, of whose actual adventures we hear only the
+beginning, and that at the very close of the story, is Mousseline la
+S&eacute;rieuse, who never laughs, and who, later, escaping literally by the
+loss of her last garment, twitched off by the jaws of an enormous
+crocodile, afterwards the pest of the country, finds herself under a
+mysterious weird. She is never able to get a similar vestment made for
+her, either of day- or night-fashion. Three hundred and seventy-four
+dozen of such things, which formed her wardrobe, had disappeared<a name="FNanchor_300_300" id="FNanchor_300_300"></a><a href="#Footnote_300_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a>
+after the death (actually crocodile-devoured) of her Mistress of the
+Robes; and although she used up all the linen-drapers' stocks of the
+capital in trying to get new ones, they were all somewhat milder
+varieties of the shirt of Nessus. For the day-shifts deprived her of all
+appetite for food or drink, and the night ones made it impossible for
+her to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>This particular incident comes, as has been said, just at the end of
+what we have of the book; indeed there is nothing more, save a burlesque
+embassy, amply provided with painted cloth<a name="FNanchor_301_301" id="FNanchor_301_301"></a><a href="#Footnote_301_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a> and monkeys, to the
+great enchanter Caramoussal (who has already figured in the book), and
+the announcement, by one of the other Facardins, of its result&mdash;a new
+adventure for champions, who must either make the Princess laugh or kill
+the crocodile. "It is indifferent," we learn from a most Hamiltonian
+sentence, "whether you begin with the crocodile or with the Princess."
+Indeed there is yet another means of restoring peace in the Kingdom of
+Astrachan, according to the enchanter himself, who modestly disclaims
+being an enchanter, observing (again in a thoroughly Hamiltonian manner)
+that as he lives on the top of a mountain close to the stars, they
+probably tell him more than they tell other people. It is to collect
+three spinning-wheels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_302_302" id="FNanchor_302_302"></a><a href="#Footnote_302_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a> which are scattered over the universe, but
+of some of which we have heard earlier in the story.</p>
+
+<p>One takes perhaps a certain pleasure in outraging the feelings of the
+giant Moulineau, so hateful to Madame de Grammont, by beginning not
+merely in the middle but at the end&mdash;an end, alas! due, if we believe
+all the legends, to her own mistaken zeal when she became a <i>d&eacute;vote</i>&mdash;a
+variety of person for whom her brother<a name="FNanchor_303_303" id="FNanchor_303_303"></a><a href="#Footnote_303_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a> certainly had small
+affection, though he did not avenge himself on it in novel-form quite so
+cruelly as did Marivaux later. It is, however, quite good to begin at
+the beginning, though the verse-preface needs perhaps to be read with
+eyes of understanding. Ostensibly, it is a sort of historical
+condemnation of all the species of fiction which had been popular for
+half a century or so, and is thus very much to our purpose, though, like
+almost all the verses included in these tales, it does not show the
+poetic power which the author of <i>Celle que j'adore</i><a name="FNanchor_304_304" id="FNanchor_304_304"></a><a href="#Footnote_304_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a> undoubtedly
+possessed. Mere tales, he says, have quite banished from court favour
+romances, celebrated for their sentiments, from <i>Cyrus</i> to <i>Za&iuml;de</i>,
+<i>i.e.</i> from Mlle. de Scud&eacute;ry to Mme. de la Fayette. <i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i> had no
+better fate</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On courut au Palais<a name="FNanchor_305_305" id="FNanchor_305_305"></a><a href="#Footnote_305_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a> le rendre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et l'on s'empressa d'y reprendre<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Le Rameau d'Or et l'Oiseau Bleu.<a name="FNanchor_306_306" id="FNanchor_306_306"></a><a href="#Footnote_306_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then came the "Arabian tales," of which he speaks with a harshness, the
+sincerity or design of which may be left to the reader; and then he
+himself took up the running, of course obliged by request of
+irresistible friends of the other sex. All which may or may not be read
+with grains of salt&mdash;the salt-merchant of which everybody is at liberty
+to choose for himself. Something may be said on the subject when we, in
+all modesty, try to sum up Hamilton and the period.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p><p>But we must now give some more account of the "Four Facardins"
+themselves. He of Trebizond is a tributary Prince of Schahriar's, much
+after the fashion (it is to be feared here burlesqued) of the
+innumerable second- and third-class heroes whom one meets in the
+<i>Cyrus</i>. He begins, like Dinarzade,<a name="FNanchor_307_307" id="FNanchor_307_307"></a><a href="#Footnote_307_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a> by "cheeking" the Sultan on his
+views of matrimony; and then he tells how he set out from his dominions
+in quest of adventures, and met another bearer of the remarkable name
+which his mother had insisted on giving him. This second adventurer
+happened to be bearer also of a helmet with a strange bird, apparently
+all made of gems, as its crest. They exchange confidences, which are to
+the effect that the Trebizondian Facardin is a lady-killer of the most
+extravagant success, while the other (who is afterwards called Facardin
+of the Mountain) is always unfortunate in love; notwithstanding which he
+proposes to undertake the adventure (to be long afterwards defined) of
+Mousseline la S&eacute;rieuse. For the present he contents himself with two or
+three more stories (or, rather, one in several "fyttes"), which reduce
+the wildest of the <i>Nights</i> to simple village tales&mdash;of an island where
+lions are hunted with a provision of virgins, chanticleers, and small
+deer on an elaborately ruled system; of a mountain full of wild beasts,
+witches, lovely nymphs, savages, and an enchanter at the top. After an
+interruption very much in the style of Chaucer's Host and <i>Sir Thopas</i>,
+from Dinarzade, who is properly rebuked by the Sultan, Facardin of the
+Mountain (he has quite early in the story received the celebrated
+scratch from a lion's claw, "from his right shoulder to his left heel")
+recounts a shorter adventure with Princess Sapinelle of Denmark, and at
+last, after a fresh outburst from Dinarzade, the Prince of Trebizond
+comes to his own affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Then it is that (after some details about the Prince of Ophir, who has a
+minim mouth and an enormous nose, and the Princess of Bactria, whose
+features were just the reverse) we recover Cristalline. It is perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+only here that even Mrs. Grundy, though she may have been uncomfortable
+elsewhere, can feel really shocked at Hamilton; others than Mrs. Grundy
+need not be so even here. The genie has discovered his Lady's little
+ways, and has resolved to avenge himself on her by strict custody, and
+by a means of delivery which, if possible, might not have entirely
+displeased her. The hundred rings are bewitched to their chain, and are
+only to be recovered by the same process which strung them on it. But
+this process must be applied by one person in the space of twelve hours,
+and the conditions are only revealed to him after he has been kidnapped
+or cajoled within the genie's power. If he refuses to try, he is clad as
+Omphale clad Hercules, and set to work. If he tries and fails, he is to
+be flayed alive and burnt. Facardin, to the despair of his secretary,
+enters&mdash;beguiled by a black ambassadress, who merely informs him that a
+lady wants help&mdash;the enchanted boat which takes him to the fatal scene.
+But when he is to be introduced to the lady he entirely declines to part
+with his sword; and when the whole secret is revealed he, with the help
+of Cristalline, who is really a good-natured creature in more senses
+than one, slays the three chief minions of the tyrant&mdash;a watchmaker who
+sets the clock, a locksmith who is to count the detached rings, and a
+kind of Executioner High-priest who is to do the flaying and
+burning,&mdash;cuts his way with Cristalline herself to the enchanted boat,
+regaining <i>terra firma</i> and (relatively speaking) <i>terra</i> not too much
+enchanted. But at his very landing at the mouth of the crocodile river
+he again meets Facardin of the Mountain (who has figured in
+Cristalline's history earlier) with the two others, whose stories we
+shall never hear; and is told about Mousseline; whereat we and the tale
+"join our ends" as far as is permitted.</p>
+
+<p>It would be easy to pick from this story alone a sort of nosegay of
+Hamiltonisms like that from Fuller, which Charles Lamb selected so
+convincingly that some have thought them simply invented. But it would
+be unjust<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> to Anthony, because, unless each was given in a <i>matrix</i> of
+context, nobody could, in most cases at any rate, do justice to this
+curious glancing genius of his. It exists in Sydney Smith to some
+extent&mdash;in Thackeray to more&mdash;among Englishmen. There is, in French,
+something of it in Lesage, who possibly learnt it directly from him; and
+of course a good deal, though of a lower kind, in Voltaire, who
+certainly did learn it from him. But it is, with that slight
+indebtedness to Saint-&Eacute;vremond noticed above, essentially new and
+original. It is a mixture of English-Irish (that is to say,
+Anglo-Norman) humour with French wit, almost unattainable at that day
+except by a man who, in addition to his natural gifts, had the mixed
+advantages and disadvantages of his exile position.</p>
+
+<p>Frenchmen at the time&mdash;there is abundance, not of mere anecdote, but of
+solid evidence to prove it&mdash;knew practically nothing of English
+literature. Englishmen knew a good deal more of French, and imitated and
+translated it, sometimes more eagerly than wisely. But they had not as
+yet assimilated or appreciated it: that was left for the eighteenth
+century to do. Meanwhile Hamilton brought the double influence to bear,
+not merely on the French novel, but on the novel in general and on the
+eccentric novel in particular. To appreciate him properly, he ought to
+be compared with Rabelais before him and with Voltaire or Sterne&mdash;with
+both, perhaps, as a counsel of perfection&mdash;after him. He is a smaller
+man, both in literature and in humanity, than Master Francis; but the
+phrase which Voltaire himself rather absurdly used of Swift might be
+used without any absurdity in reference to him. He <i>is</i> a "Rabelais de
+bonne compagnie," and from the exactly opposite point of view he might
+be called a Voltaire or a Sterne <i>de bonne compagnie</i> likewise. That is
+to say, he is a gentleman pretty certainly as well as a genius, which
+Rabelais might have been, at any rate in other circumstances, but did
+not choose to be, and which neither Fran&ccedil;ois Arouet nor Laurence Sterne
+could have been, however much either had tried, though the metamorphosis
+is not quite so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> utterly inconceivable in Sterne's case as in the
+other's. Hamilton, it has been confessed, is sometimes "naughty"; but
+his naughtiness is neither coarse nor sniggering,<a name="FNanchor_308_308" id="FNanchor_308_308"></a><a href="#Footnote_308_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a> and he depends
+upon it so little&mdash;a very important point&mdash;that he is sometimes most
+amusing when he is not naughty at all. In other words, he has no need of
+it, but simply takes it as one of the infinite functions of human
+comedy. Against which let Mrs. Grundy say what she likes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is conceivable that objection may be taken, or at any rate surprise
+felt, at the fulness with which a group of mostly little books&mdash;no one
+of them produced by an author of the first magnitude as usual estimates
+run&mdash;has been here handled. But the truth is that the actual birth of
+the French novel took a much longer time than that of the English&mdash;a
+phenomenon explicable, without any national vainglory, by the fact that
+it came first and gave us patterns and stimulants. The writers surveyed
+in this chapter, and those who will take their places in the next&mdash;at
+least Scarron, Fureti&egrave;re, Madame de La Fayette and Hamilton, Lesage,
+Marivaux, and Pr&eacute;vost&mdash;whatever objections or limitations may be brought
+against them, form the central group of the originators of the modern
+novel. They open the book of life, as distinguished from that of
+factitious and rather stale literature; they point out the varieties of
+incident and character; the manners and interiors and fantastic
+adjustments; the sentiment rising to passion&mdash;which are to determine the
+developments and departments of the fiction of the future. They leave,
+as far as we have seen them, great opportunities for improvement to
+those immediate followers to whom we shall now turn. Hamilton is,
+indeed, not yet much followed, but Lesage far outgoes Scarron in the
+raising of the picaresque; Marivaux distances Fureti&egrave;re in painting of
+manners and in what some people call psychology; <i>Manon Lescaut</i> throws
+<i>La Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> into the shade as regards the greatest and
+most novel-breeding of the passions. But the whole are really a <i>bloc</i>,
+the continental sense of which is rather different from our "block." And
+perhaps we shall find that, though none of them was equal in genius to
+some who succeeded them in novel-writing, the novel itself made little
+progress, and some backsliding, during nearly a hundred years after they
+ceased to write.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Note on <i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i></span></h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>It may not perhaps be superfluous to give the rest of that
+criticism of Hamilton's on <i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i>, the conclusion of
+which has been quoted above. "In vain, from the famous
+coasts of Ithaca, the wise and renowned Mentor came to
+enrich us with those treasures of his which his <i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i>
+contains. In vain the art of the teacher delicately
+displays, in this romance of a rare kind, the usefulness and
+the deceitfulness of politics and of love, as well as that
+fatal sweetness&mdash;frail daughter of luxury&mdash;which intoxicates
+a conquering hero at the feet of a young mistress or of a
+skilful enchantress, such as in each case this Mentor
+depicts them. But, well-versed as he was in human weakness,
+and elaborately as he imitated the style and the stories of
+Greece, the vogue that he had was of short duration. Weary
+of inability to understand the mysteries which he unfolded,
+men ran to the Palais to give back the volume," etc., etc.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton, no doubt intentionally, has himself made this
+criticism rather "mysterious." It is well known that, if not
+quite at first, very soon after its appearance, the fact
+that the politics, if not also the morals, of F&eacute;nelon's book
+were directly at variance with Court standards was
+recognised. At a time when Court favour and fashion were the
+very breath of the upper circles, and directly or indirectly
+ruled the middle, the popularity of this curious
+romance-exhortation was, at any rate for a time, nipped in
+the bud, to revive only in the permanent but not altogether
+satisfactory conditions of a school-book. Whether Hamilton
+dealt discreetly with the matter by purposely confining
+himself to the record of a fact, or at least mixing praise
+to which no exception could be taken, with what might be
+taken for blame, one cannot say. By dotting a few i's,
+crossing the t's, and perhaps touching up some hidden
+letters with the requisite reagent, one can, however, get a
+not unfair or unshrewd criticism of the book out of this
+envelope. <i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i>, if it is not, as one of Thackeray's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+"thorn" correspondents suggested, superior to "<i>Lovel
+Parsonage</i> and <i>Framley the Widower</i>," has, or with some
+easy suppressions and a very few additions and developments
+might have, much more pure romance interest than its
+centuries of scholastic use allow it to have for most
+people. Eucharis is capable of being much more than she is
+allowed to show herself; and some Mrs. Grundys, with more
+intelligence than the average member of the clan, have
+hinted that Calypso might be dangerous if the persons who
+read about her were not likely to consider her as too old to
+be interesting. The style is, of course, admirable&mdash;there
+has hardly ever been a better writer of French than F&eacute;nelon,
+who was also a first-rate narrator and no mean critic.
+Whether by the "mysteries" Hamilton himself meant politics,
+morals, religion, or all three and other "serious" things,
+is a point which, once more, is impossible to settle. But it
+is quite certain that, whether there is any difficulty in
+comprehending them or not, a great many&mdash;probably the huge
+majority&mdash;of novel readers would not care to take the
+trouble to comprehend them, and might, even if they found
+little difficulty, resent being asked to do so. And so we
+have here not the first&mdash;for, as has been said, the Heroic
+romance itself had much earlier been "conscripted" into the
+service of didactics&mdash;but the first brilliant, or almost
+brilliant, example of that novel of purpose which will meet
+us so often hereafter. It may be said to have at once
+revealed (for the earlier examples were, as a rule, too dull
+to be fair tests) the ineradicable defects of the species.
+Even when the purpose does not entirely preclude the
+possibility of enjoyment, it always gets in the way thereof;
+and when the enjoyable matter does not absorb attention to
+the disregard of the purpose altogether, it seldom&mdash;perhaps
+never&mdash;really helps that purpose to get itself fulfilled.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> It is perhaps not quite superfluous to point out that the
+principle of separation in these chapters is quite different from that
+(between "idealist" and "realist") pursued by K&ouml;rting and others, and
+reprobated, partially or wholly, by MM. Le Breton and Bruneti&egrave;re.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> <i>L'Autre Monde: ou Histoire Comique des &Eacute;tats et Empires
+de la Lune</i>, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> It must be remembered that even Gerard Hamilton made many
+more speeches, but only one good one, while the novelists discussed here
+wrote in most cases many other books. But their goodness shows itself in
+hardly more than a single work in each case. Anthony Hamilton's is in
+all his.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> It has been noted, I think, by all who have written about
+the <i>Berger</i>, that Sorel is a sort of Balak and Balaam in one. He calls
+on himself to curse the <i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, but he, sometimes at least, blesses
+it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> The <i>Berger</i> fills two volumes of some nine hundred
+pages; <i>Polyandre</i>, two of six hundred each! But it must be admitted
+that the print is very large and widely spaced.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> One remembers the story of the greater Corneille calling
+to the lesser down a trap between their two houses, "Sans-Souci!&mdash;une
+rime!"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> I have known this word more than once objected to as
+pedantic. But pedantry in this kind consists in using out-of-the-way
+terms when common ones are ready to hand. There is no single word in
+English to express the lower kind of "Dutch-painting" as this Greek word
+does. And Greek is a recognised and standing source of words for
+English. If geography, why not rhyparography?&mdash;or, if any one prefers
+it, "rhypography," which, however, is not, I think, so good a form.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> There is, no doubt, significance in the fact that they
+are definitely called <i>nouvelles</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> <i>V. sup.</i> p. 204. The habit of these continues in all the
+books. <i>L'Illustre Bassa</i> opens with a most elaborate, but still not
+very much "alive," procession and sham fight.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> Of course Cervantes is not shadowy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> As far as mere chronology goes, Cyrano, <i>v. inf.</i>, should
+come between; but it would split the parallel.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> Scarron had, in Le Destin's account of himself, made a
+distinction between the pastoral and heroic groups and the "old"
+romances, meaning thereby not the true mediaeval specimens but the
+<i>Amadis</i> cycle. Fureti&egrave;re definitely classes all of them together.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> The time is well known to have been fond of anagrams, and
+"Charroselles" is such an obvious one for "Charles Sorel" that for once
+there is no need to gainsay or neglect the interpreters. The thing, if
+really meant for a real person, is a distinct lampoon, and may perhaps
+explain the expulsion and persecution of Fureti&egrave;re, by his colleagues of
+the Academy, almost as well as the ostensible cause thereof&mdash;his
+compiling, in competition with the Academy itself, of a French
+Dictionary, and a very good one, which was not printed till after his
+death, and ultimately became the famous <i>Dictionnaire de Tr&eacute;voux</i>. Not
+that Sorel himself was of much importance, but that the thing shows the
+irritable and irritating literary failing in the highest degree.
+Fureti&egrave;re had friends of position, from Boileau, Racine, and Bossuet
+downwards; and the king himself, though he did not interfere, seems to
+have disapproved the Academy's action. But the <i>Roman</i> was heavily
+"slated" for many years, though it had a curious revival in the earlier
+part of the next century; and for the rest of that century and the first
+part of the nineteenth it was almost wholly forgotten.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> She falls in love with an ebony cabinet at a fair which
+they visit together, and he gives it her. But, anticipating that she
+will use it for her most precious things, he privately gets a second set
+of keys from the seller, and in her absence achieves the theft of the
+promise.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a> Any one who has, as the present writer has had,
+opportunities of actually doing this, will find it a not uninteresting
+operation, and one which "amply repays the expense" of time and
+trouble.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a> This is a point of importance. Details of a life-like
+character are most valuable in the novel; but if they are not "material"
+in the transferred sense they are simply a bore. Scott undoubtedly
+learnt this lesson from his prentice work in finishing Strutt's
+<i>Queenhoo Hall</i>, where the story is simply a clumsy vehicle for
+conveying information about sports and pastimes and costumes and
+such-like "antiqu<i>ar</i>ities."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a> To us small, as are not those of its predecessors.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a> Not a bad instance of the subacid touches
+which make the book lively, and which probably supply some
+explanation of its author's unpopularity. The "furred
+law-cats" of all kinds were always a prevailing party in Old
+France, and required stout gloves to touch them with.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a> This (often called by its Italian name of Quarant' ore)
+is a "Devotion" during an exposure of the Sacrament for that time, in
+memory of the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of
+Our Lord. It is a public service, and, I suppose, collections were made
+<i>at intervals</i>. No one, especially no girl, could stand the time
+straight through. The "Paradise" was, of course, a "decoration."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a> Javotte says "shoe the mule"&mdash;"ferrer la mule"&mdash;one of
+the phrases like "faire danser l'anse du panier" and others, for taking
+"self-presented testimonials," as Wilkie Collins's Captain Wragge more
+elegantly and less cryptically calls it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a> Of course the regular "thanks" of a collector for pious
+purposes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a> He does later seek this, and only loses her (if she can
+be called a loss) by his own folly. But his main objective is to
+<i>conter</i> (or as Fureti&egrave;re himself has it, <i>d&eacute;biter</i>) <i>la fleurette</i>. It
+ought, perhaps, to be mentioned, as a possible counterweight or
+drawback, that the novelist breaks off to discuss the too great
+matter-of-factness of bourgeois girls and women. But he was to have
+great followers in this also.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a> He was born and baptised Savinien de Cyrano, and called
+himself de Cyrano-Bergerac. The sound of the additional designation and
+some of his legendary peculiarities probably led to his being taken for
+a Gascon; but there is no evidence of meridional extraction or seat, and
+there appears to be some of Breton or other Western connection.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a> There is nothing in the least astonishing in his having
+been this&mdash;if he was. The tendency of the Renaissance towards what is
+called "free thought" is quite well known; and the existence, in the
+seventeenth century, of a sort of school of boisterous and rather vulgar
+infidelity is familiar&mdash;with the names of Bardouville, and Saint-Ibal or
+Saint-Ibar, as members of it&mdash;to all readers of Saint-&Eacute;vremond,
+Tallemant, the <i>Ana</i>, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a> Perhaps the dullest part is where (save the mark!) the
+Demon of Socrates is brought in to talk sometimes mere platitudes,
+sometimes tame paradoxes which might as well be put in the mouth of any
+pupil-teacher, or any popular journalist or dramatist, of the present
+day.&mdash;Of the attempt to make Swift Cyrano's debtor one need say little:
+but among predecessors, if not creditors, Ben Jonson, for his <i>News from
+the New World discovered in the Moon</i>, may at least be mentioned.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a> The key-mongers, of course, identify the three with the
+author, her own husband, and La Rochefoucauld.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a> He has ensconced himself in one of the smaller rooms of a
+garden pavilion outside of which they are sitting, having left their
+suite at some distance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a> <i>Ma&icirc;tresse de sa conduite</i>, a curious but not difficult
+text as to French ideas of marriage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a> I have been obliged to insert "trials" to bring out the
+meaning of "<i>expos&eacute;e au milieu</i>." "<i>Expos&eacute;e</i>" has a fuller sense than
+the simple English verb, and almost equals the legal "exposed for
+sale."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a> Mme. de la Fayette was a very accomplished woman, and,
+possibly from her familiarity with Queen Henrietta Maria, well
+acquainted with English as well as French history. But our proper names,
+as usual, vanquish her, and she makes Henry VIII. marry Jane <i>Seimer</i>
+and Catherine <i>Havart</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a> This does not apply to the <i>main</i> love story but to the
+atmosphere generally. The Vidame de Chartres, for instance, is
+represented as in love with (1) Queen Catherine; (2) a Mme. de Themines,
+with whom he is not quite satisfied; (3) a Mme. de Martignes, with whom
+he is; (4) a lady unnamed, with whom he has <i>tromp&eacute;</i> them all. This may
+be true enough to life; but it is difficult to make it into good matter
+of fiction, especially with a crowd of other people doing much the
+same.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a> It ought, perhaps, to be added that though manners, etc.,
+altered not a little between Henri II. and Louis XIV., the alteration
+was much less than in most other histories at most other periods. It
+would be easy to find two persons in Tallemant whose actual experience
+covered the whole time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a> You <i>had</i> to call it so when I first saw it; when I last
+did so it was "Oiron." No doubt it is something else now.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a> For that, see Chapter XII.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a> See below on the version Introduction to the <i>Quatre
+Facardins</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a> Including miscellaneous imbecility and unsuitableness as
+well as moral indecorum.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a> Written for the <i>Fortnightly Review</i> in 1882, but by a
+chapter of accidents not printed till 1890. Reprinted next year in
+<i>Essays on French Novelists</i> (London, 1891).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a> Miss Ruth Clark.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a> The conclusion of <i>Vathek</i> is of course undoubtedly more
+"admirable" than anything of Hamilton's; but it is in a quite different
+genus.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_286_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a> The piece <i>Celle que j'adore</i> is the best of the casual
+verses, though there are other good songs, etc. Those which alternate
+with the prose of some of the tales are too often (as in the case of the
+<i>Cabinet</i> insets, <i>v. sup.</i>) rather prosaic. Of the prose miscellanies
+the so-called <i>Relations</i> "of different places in Europe," and "of a
+voyage to Mauritania," contain some of the cream of Hamilton's almost
+uniquely ironic narrative and commentary. When that great book, "The
+Nature and History of Irony," which has to be written is written&mdash;the
+last man died with the last century and the next hour seems far off&mdash;a
+contrast of Hamilton and Kinglake will probably form part of it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a> As a member, though a cadet, of a cadet branch of one of
+the noblest families of Great Britain and Ireland.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a> As a soldier, a courtier of Charles II., and a Jacobite
+exile in France.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a> I may perhaps be allowed to refer to another essay of
+mine on him in <i>Miscellaneous Essays</i> (London, 1892). It contains a full
+account, and some translation, of the <i>Conversation du mar&eacute;chal
+d'Hocquincourt avec le P&egrave;re Canaye</i>, which is at once the author's
+masterpiece of quiet irony, his greatest pattern for the novelist, and
+his clearest evidence of influence on Hamilton.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a> There are some who hold that <i>the</i> "English" differentia,
+whether shown in letters or in life, whether south or north of Tweed,
+east or west of St. George's Channel is always Anglo-Norman.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a> The "Marian" and Roman comparison of Anne Boleyn's
+position to Rosamond's is interesting.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_292_292" id="Footnote_292_292"></a><a href="#FNanchor_292_292"><span class="label">[292]</span></a> It is a sort of brief lift and drop of the curtain which
+still concealed the true historical novel; it has even got a further
+literary interest as giving the seamy side of the texture of Macaulay's
+admirable <i>Jacobite's Epitaph</i>. The account would be rather out of place
+here, but may be found translated at length (pp. 44-46) in the volume of
+<i>Essays on French Novelists</i> more than once referred to.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_293_293" id="Footnote_293_293"></a><a href="#FNanchor_293_293"><span class="label">[293]</span></a> The most unexpected bathos of these last three words is
+of course intentional, and is Hamilton all over.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_294_294" id="Footnote_294_294"></a><a href="#FNanchor_294_294"><span class="label">[294]</span></a> The nymph is lying on a couch, and her companion (who has
+been recalcitrant even to this politeness) is sitting beside her.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_295_295" id="Footnote_295_295"></a><a href="#FNanchor_295_295"><span class="label">[295]</span></a> This is as impudent as the other passages below are
+imbecile&mdash;of course in each case (as before) with a calculated impudence
+and imbecility. The miserable creature had himself obliged her to "come
+out of the water" by declining to join her there on the plea that he was
+never good for an assignation when he was wet!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_296_296" id="Footnote_296_296"></a><a href="#FNanchor_296_296"><span class="label">[296]</span></a> If they are true, and if Madame de Grammont was the
+culprit, it is a sad confirmation of the old gibe, "Skittish in youth,
+prudish in age." It can only be pleaded in extenuation that some youth
+which was not skittish, such as Sarah Marlborough's, matured or turned
+into something worse than "devotion." And Elizabeth Hamilton was so very
+pretty!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_297_297" id="Footnote_297_297"></a><a href="#FNanchor_297_297"><span class="label">[297]</span></a> "Completions" of both <i>Z&eacute;n&eacute;yde</i> and <i>Les Quatre
+Facardins</i>, by the Duke de L&eacute;vis, are included in some editions, but
+they are, after the fashions of such things, very little good.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_298_298" id="Footnote_298_298"></a><a href="#FNanchor_298_298"><span class="label">[298]</span></a> The name is not, like "Tarare," a direct burlesque; but
+it suggests a burlesque intention when taken with "facond" and others
+including, perhaps, even <i>faquin</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_299_299" id="Footnote_299_299"></a><a href="#FNanchor_299_299"><span class="label">[299]</span></a> The Sultaness is almost <i>persona muta</i>&mdash;and indeed her
+tongue must have required a rest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_300_300" id="Footnote_300_300"></a><a href="#FNanchor_300_300"><span class="label">[300]</span></a> As Hamilton's satiric intention is as sleepless as poor
+Princess Mousseline herself, it is not impossible that he remembered the
+incident recorded by Pepys, or somebody, how King Charles the Second
+could not get a sheet of letter paper to write on for all the Royal
+Households and Stationery Offices and such-like things in the English
+world.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_301_301" id="Footnote_301_301"></a><a href="#FNanchor_301_301"><span class="label">[301]</span></a> <i>I.e.</i> colour-printed cotton from India&mdash;a novelty
+"fashionable" and, therefore, satirisable in France.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_302_302" id="Footnote_302_302"></a><a href="#FNanchor_302_302"><span class="label">[302]</span></a> Or "distaffs and spindles"?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_303_303" id="Footnote_303_303"></a><a href="#FNanchor_303_303"><span class="label">[303]</span></a> She is indeed said to have "converted" both him and
+Grammont, the latter perhaps the most remarkable achievement of its
+kind.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_304_304" id="Footnote_304_304"></a><a href="#FNanchor_304_304"><span class="label">[304]</span></a> Mr. Austin Dobson's charming translation of this was
+originally intended to appear in the present writer's essay above
+mentioned.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_305_305" id="Footnote_305_305"></a><a href="#FNanchor_305_305"><span class="label">[305]</span></a> The chief region of bookselling. Cf. Corneille's early
+comedy, <i>La Galerie du Palais</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_306_306" id="Footnote_306_306"></a><a href="#FNanchor_306_306"><span class="label">[306]</span></a> For note on <i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i> see end of chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_307_307" id="Footnote_307_307"></a><a href="#FNanchor_307_307"><span class="label">[307]</span></a> Who is here herself an improved Doralise.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_308_308" id="Footnote_308_308"></a><a href="#FNanchor_308_308"><span class="label">[308]</span></a> To put it otherwise in technical French, there is a
+little <i>grivoiserie</i> in him, but absolutely no <i>polissonnerie</i>, still
+less any <i>cochonnerie</i>. Or it may be put, best of all, in his own words
+when, in a short French-Greek dialogue, called <i>La Volupt&eacute;</i>, he makes
+Aspasia say to Agathon, "Je vous crois fort voluptueux, sans vous croire
+d&eacute;bauch&eacute;."</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PR&Eacute;VOST, CR&Eacute;BILLON</h3>
+
+
+<p>The words which closed the last chapter should make it unnecessary to
+prefix much of the same kind to this, though at the end we may have
+again to summarise rather more fully.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The subjects of the chapter.</div>
+
+<p>As was there observed, our figures here are, with the possible exception
+of Cr&eacute;billon <i>Fils</i>, "larger" persons than those dealt with before them;
+and they also mark a further transition towards the condition&mdash;the
+"employment or vocation"&mdash;of the novelist proper, though the polygraphic
+habit which has grown upon all modern literature, and which began in
+France almost earlier than anywhere else, affects them. Scarron was even
+more of a dramatist than of a novelist; and though this was also the
+case with Lesage and Marivaux&mdash;while Pr&eacute;vost was, save for his
+masterpiece, a polygraph of the polygraphs&mdash;their work in fiction was
+far larger, both positively and comparatively, than his. <i>Gil Blas</i> for
+general popularity, and <i>Manon Lescaut</i> for enthusiastic admiration of
+the elect, rank almost, if not quite, among the greatest novels of the
+world. Marivaux, for all his irritating habit of leaving things
+unfinished, and the almost equally irritating affectation of phrase, in
+which he anticipated some English novelists of the late nineteenth and
+earliest twentieth century, is almost the first "psychologist" of prose
+fiction; that is to say, where Madame de la Fayette had taken the
+soul-analysis of hardly more than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> two persons (Nemours scarcely counts)
+in a single situation, Marivaux gives us an almost complete dissection
+of the temperament and character of a girl and of a man under many
+ordinary life-circumstances for a considerable time.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lesage&mdash;his Spanish connections.</div>
+
+<p>But we must begin, not with him but with Lesage, not merely as the older
+man by twenty years, but in virtue of that comparative "greatness" of
+his greatest work which has been glanced at. There is perhaps a doubt
+whether <i>Gil Blas</i> is as much read now as it used to be; it is pretty
+certain that <i>Le Diable Boiteux</i> is not. The certainty is a pity; and if
+the doubt be true, it is a greater pity still. For more than a century
+<i>Gil Blas</i> was almost as much<a name="FNanchor_309_309" id="FNanchor_309_309"></a><a href="#Footnote_309_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a> a classic, either in the original or
+in translation, in England as it was in France; and the delight which it
+gave to thousands of readers was scarcely more important to the history
+of fiction generally than the influence it exerted upon generation after
+generation of novelists, not merely in its own country, but on the far
+greater artists in fiction of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
+century in England from Fielding to Scott, if not to Dickens. Now, I
+suppose, that we are told to start with the axiom that even Fielding's
+structure of humanity is a simple toy-like thing, how much more is
+Lesage's? But for those of us who have not bowed the knee to foolish
+modern Baals, "They reconciled us; we embraced, and we have since been
+mortal enemies"; and the trout; and the soul of the licentiate; and Dr.
+Sangrado; and the Archbishop of Granada&mdash;to mention only the most famous
+and hackneyed matters&mdash;are still things a little larger, a little more
+complex, a little more eternal and true, than webs of uninteresting
+analysis told in phrase to which Marivaudage itself is golden and
+honeyed Atticism.</p>
+
+<p>Yet once more we can banish, with a joyful and quiet mind, a crowd of
+idle fancies and disputes, apparently but not really affecting our
+subjects. The myth of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> direct Spanish origin for <i>Gil Blas</i> is almost
+as easily dispersible by the clear sun of criticism as the exaggeration
+of the debt of the smaller book to Guevara. On the other hand, the
+<i>general</i> filiation of Lesage on his Spanish predecessors is undeniable,
+and not worth even shading off and toning down. A man is not ashamed of
+having good fathers and grandfathers, whose property he now enjoys,
+before him in life; and why should he be in literature?</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Peculiarity of his work generally.</div>
+
+<p>Lesage's work, in fiction and out of it, is considerable in bulk, but it
+is affected (to what extent disadvantageously different judges may judge
+differently) by some of the peculiarities of the time which have been
+already mentioned, and by some which have not. It is partly original,
+partly mere translation, and partly also a mixture of the strangest
+kind. Further, its composition took place in a way difficult to adjust
+to later ideas. Lesage was not, like Marivaux, a professed and shameless
+"<i>un</i>finisher," but he took a great deal of time to finish his
+work.<a name="FNanchor_310_310" id="FNanchor_310_310"></a><a href="#Footnote_310_310" class="fnanchor">[310]</a> He was not an early-writing author; and when he did begin, he
+showed something of that same strange need of a suggestion, a
+"send-off," or whatever anybody likes to call it, which appears even in
+his greatest work. He began with the <i>Letters</i> of Aristaenetus, which,
+though perhaps they have been abused more than they deserve by people
+who have never read them, and would never have heard of them if it had
+not been for Alain Ren&eacute;, are certainly not the things that most
+scholars, with the whole range of Greek literature before them to choose
+from, would have selected. His second venture was almost worse than his
+first; for there <i>are</i> some prettinesses in Aristaenetus, and except for
+the one famous passage enshrined by Pope in the <i>Essay on Criticism</i>,
+there is, I believe,<a name="FNanchor_311_311" id="FNanchor_311_311"></a><a href="#Footnote_311_311" class="fnanchor">[311]</a> nothing good in the continuation of <i>Don
+Quixote</i> by the so-called Avellaneda.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> But at any rate this job, which
+is attributed to the suggestion of the Abb&eacute; de Lyonne, "put" Lesage on
+Spanish, and never did fitter seed fall on more fertile soil.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">And its variety.</div>
+
+<p>Longinus would, I think, have liked <i>Gil Blas</i>, and indeed Lesage, very
+much. You might kill ten asses, of the tallest Poitou standard in size
+and the purest Zoilus or Momus sub-variety in breed, under you while
+going through his "faults." He translates; he borrows; he "plagiarises"
+about as much as is possible for anybody who is not a mere dullard to
+do. Of set plot there is nothing in his work, whether you take the two
+famous pieces, or the major adaptations like <i>Est&eacute;vanille Gonzales</i> and
+<i>Guzman d'Alfarache</i>, or the lesser things, more Lucianic than anything
+else, such as the <i>Chemin&eacute;es de Madrid</i><a name="FNanchor_312_312" id="FNanchor_312_312"></a><a href="#Footnote_312_312" class="fnanchor">[312]</a> and the <i>Journ&eacute;e des
+Parques</i> and the <i>Valise Trouv&eacute;e</i>. "He worked for his living" (as M.
+Anatole France long ago began a paper about him which is not quite the
+best of its very admirable author's work), and though the pot never
+boiled quite so merrily as the cook deserved, the fact of the
+pot-boiling makes itself constantly felt. <i>Les cha&icirc;nes de l'esclavage</i>
+must have cut deep into his soul, and the result of the cutting is
+evident enough in his work. But the vital marks on that work are such as
+many perfectly free men, who have wished to take literature as a
+mistress only, have never been able to impress on theirs. He died full
+of years, but scarcely of the honours due to him, failing in power, and
+after a life<a name="FNanchor_313_313" id="FNanchor_313_313"></a><a href="#Footnote_313_313" class="fnanchor">[313]</a> of very little luck, except as regards possession of a
+wife who seems to have been beautiful in youth and amiable always, with
+at least one son who observed the Fifth Commandment to the utmost. But
+he lives among the immortals, and there are few names in our present
+history which are of more importance to it than his.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p><p>Some of his best and least unequal work is indeed denied us. We have
+nothing to do with his drama, though <i>Turcaret</i> is something like a
+masterpiece in comedy, and <i>Crispin Rival de son Ma&icirc;tre</i> a capital
+farce. We cannot even discuss that remarkable <i>Th&eacute;&acirc;tre de la Foire</i>,
+which, though a mere collection of the lightest Harlequinades, has more
+readable matter of literature in it than the whole English comic drama
+since Sheridan, with the exception of the productions of the late Sir
+William Gilbert.</p>
+
+<p>Nor must much be said even of his minor novel work. The later
+translations and adaptations from the Spanish need hardly any notice for
+obvious reasons; whatever is good in them being either not his, or
+better exemplified in the <i>Devil</i> and in <i>Gil</i>. The extremely curious
+and very Defoe-like book&mdash;almost if not quite his last&mdash;<i>Vie et
+Aventures de M. de Beauchesne, Capitaine de Flibustiers</i>, is rather a
+subject for a separate essay than for even a paragraph here. But Lesage,
+from our point of view, is <i>Le Diable Boiteux</i> and <i>Gil Blas</i>, and to
+the <i>Diable Boiteux</i> and <i>Gil Blas</i> let us accordingly turn.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Le Diable Boiteux.</i></div>
+
+<p>The relations of the earlier and shorter book to the <i>Diablo Cojuelo</i> of
+Luis Velez de Guevara are among the most open secrets of literature. The
+Frenchman, in a sort of prefatory address to his Spanish parent and
+original, has put the matter fairly enough; anybody who will take the
+trouble can "control" or check the statement, by comparing the two books
+themselves. The idea&mdash;the rescuing of an obliging demon from the grasp
+of an enchanter, and his unroofing the houses of Madrid to amuse his
+liberator&mdash;is entirely Guevara's, and for a not inconsiderable space of
+time the French follows the Spanish closely. But then it breaks off, and
+the remainder of the book is, except for the carrying out of the general
+idea, practically original. The unroofing and revealing of secrets, from
+being merely casual and confined to a particular neighbourhood, becomes
+systematised: a lunatic asylum and a prison are subjected to the
+process; a set of dreamers are obliged to deliver up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> what Queen Mab is
+doing with them; and, as an incident, the student Don Cleofas, who has
+freed Asmodeus,<a name="FNanchor_314_314" id="FNanchor_314_314"></a><a href="#Footnote_314_314" class="fnanchor">[314]</a> gains through the friendly spirit's means a rich
+and pretty bride whom the demon&mdash;naturally immune from fire&mdash;has rescued
+in Cleofas's likeness from a burning house.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lesage and Boileau.</div>
+
+<p>The thing therefore neither has, nor could possibly pretend to have, any
+merit as a plotted and constructed whole in fiction. It is merely a
+variety of the old "framed" tale-collection, except that the frame is of
+the thinnest; and the individual stories, with a few exceptions, are
+extremely short, in fact little more than anecdotes. The power and
+attraction of the book lie simply in the crispness of the style, the
+ease and flow of the narrative, and the unfailing satiric knowledge of
+human nature which animates the whole. As it stands, it is double its
+original length; for Lesage, finding it popular, and never being under
+the trammels of a fixed design, very wisely, and for a wonder not
+unsuccessfully, gave it a continuation. And, except the equally obvious
+and arbitrary one of the recapture of the spirit by the magician, it has
+and could have no end. The most famous of the anecdotes about it is that
+Boileau&mdash;in 1707 a very old man&mdash;found his page reading it, and declared
+that such a book and such a critic as he should never pass a night under
+the same roof. Boileau, though he often said rude, unjust, and
+uncritical things, did not often say merely silly ones; and it has been
+questioned what was his reason for objecting to a book by no means
+shocking to anybody but Mrs. Grundy Grundified to the very <i>n</i>th,
+excellently written, and quite free from the bombast and the
+whimsicality which he loathed. Jealousy for Moli&egrave;re,<a name="FNanchor_315_315" id="FNanchor_315_315"></a><a href="#Footnote_315_315" class="fnanchor">[315]</a> to whom, in
+virtue of <i>Turcaret</i>, Lesage had been set up as a sort of rival; mere
+senile ill-temper,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> and other things have been suggested; but the matter
+is of no real importance even if it is true. Boileau was one of the
+least catholic and the most arbitrary critics who ever lived; he had
+long made up and colophoned the catalogue of his approved library; he
+did not see his son's coat on the new-comer, and so he cursed him. It is
+not the only occasion on which we may bless what Boileau cursed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Gil Blas</i>&mdash;its peculiar cosmopolitanism.</div>
+
+<p><i>Gil Blas</i>, of course, is in every sense a "bigger" book of literature.
+That it has, from the point of view of the straitest sect of the
+Unitarians&mdash;and not of that sect only&mdash;much more unity than the
+<i>Diable</i>, would require mere cheap paradox to contend. It has neither
+the higher unity, say, of <i>Hamlet</i>, where every smallest scene and
+almost personage is connected with the general theme; nor the lower
+unity of such a thing as <i>Ph&egrave;dre</i>, where everything is pared down, or,
+as Landor put it in his own case, "boiled off" to a meagre residuum of
+theme special. It has, at the very most, that species of unity which
+Aristotle did not like even in epic, that of a succession of events
+happening to an individual; and while most of these might be omitted, or
+others substituted for them, without much or any loss, they exist
+without prejudice to mere additions to themselves. As the excellent Mr.
+Wall, sometime Professor of Logic at Oxford, and now with God, used to
+say, "Gentlemen, I can conceive an elephant," so one may conceive a <i>Gil
+Blas</i>, not merely in five instead of four, but in fifty or five hundred
+volumes. But, on the other hand, it has that still different unity (of
+which Aristotle does not seem to have thought highly, even if he thought
+of it at all), that all these miscellaneous experiences do not merely
+happen to a person with the same name&mdash;they happen to the same
+person.<a name="FNanchor_316_316" id="FNanchor_316_316"></a><a href="#Footnote_316_316" class="fnanchor">[316]</a> And they have themselves yet another unity, which I hardly
+remember any critic duly insisting on and discussing, in the fact that
+they all are possibly human accidents or incidents. Though he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> a
+native of one of the most idiosyncratic provinces of not the least
+idiosyncratic country in Europe, Lesage is a citizen not of Brittany,
+not of France, not of Europe even, but of the world itself, in far more
+than the usual sense of cosmopolitanism. He has indeed coloured
+background and costume, incident and even personage itself so deeply
+with essence of "things of Spain," that, as has been said, the
+Spaniards, the most jealous of all nationalities except the smaller
+Celtic tribes, have claimed his work for themselves. Yet though Spain
+has one of the noblest languages, one of the greatest literatures in
+quality if not in bulk, one of the most striking histories, and one of
+the most intensely national characters in the world, it is&mdash;perhaps for
+the very reason last mentioned&mdash;as little cosmopolitan as any country,
+and Lesage, as has been said, is inwardly and utterly cosmopolitan or
+nothing.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At Paris, at Rome, at the Hague he's at home;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and though he seems to have known little of England, and, as most
+Frenchmen of his time had reason to do, to have disliked us, he has
+certainly never been anywhere more at home than in London. In fact&mdash;and
+it bears out what has been said&mdash;there is perhaps no capital in Europe
+where, in the two hundred years he has had to nationalise himself,
+Lesage has been less at home than at Paris itself. The French are of
+course proud of him in a way, but there is hardly one of their great
+writers about whom they have been less enthusiastic. The technical, and
+especially the neo-classically technical, shortcomings which have been
+pointed out may have had something to do with this; but the
+cosmopolitanism has perhaps more.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">And its adoption of the <i>homme sensuel moyen</i> fashion.</div>
+
+<p>For us Lesage occupies a position of immense importance in the history
+of the French novel; but if we were writing a history of the novel at
+large it would scarcely be lessened, and might even be relatively
+larger. He had come to it perhaps by rather strange ways; but it is no
+novelty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> to find that conjunction of road and goal. The Spanish
+picaresque romance was not in itself a very great literary kind; but it
+had in it a great faculty of <i>emancipation</i>. Outside the drama<a name="FNanchor_317_317" id="FNanchor_317_317"></a><a href="#Footnote_317_317" class="fnanchor">[317]</a> it
+was about the first division of literature to proclaim boldly the
+refusal to consider anything human as alien from human literary
+interest. But, as nearly always happens, it had exaggerated its
+protests, and become sordid, merely in revolt from the high-flown
+non-sordidness of previous romance. Lesage took the principle and
+rejected the application. He dared, practically for the first time, to
+take the average man of unheroic stamp, the <i>homme sensuel moyen</i> of a
+later French phrase, for his subject. <i>Gil Blas</i> is not a virtuous
+person,<a name="FNanchor_318_318" id="FNanchor_318_318"></a><a href="#Footnote_318_318" class="fnanchor">[318]</a> but he is not very often an actual scoundrel.<a name="FNanchor_319_319" id="FNanchor_319_319"></a><a href="#Footnote_319_319" class="fnanchor">[319]</a> (Is
+there any of us who has never been a scoundrel at all at all?) He is
+clever after his fashion, but he is not a genius; he is a little bit of
+a coward, but can face it out fairly at a pinch; he has some luck and
+ill-luck; but he does not come in for <i>montes et maria</i>, either of gold
+or of misery. I have no doubt that the comparison of <i>Gil Blas</i> and <i>Don
+Quixote</i> has often been made, and it would be rather an <i>excursus</i> here.
+But inferior as Lesage's work is in not a few ways, it has, like other
+non-quintessential things, much more virtue as model and pattern.
+Imitations of <i>Don Quixote</i> (except Graves's capital book, where the
+following is of the freest character) have usually been failures. It is
+hardly an extravagance to say that every novel of miscellaneous
+adventure since its date owes something, directly or indirectly, to <i>Gil
+Blas</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One of the "faults"&mdash;it must be understood that between "faults" with
+inverted commas and faults without them there is a wide and sometimes an
+unbridgeable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> gulf&mdash;lies in the fact that the book is after all not much
+more of a whole, in any sense but that noted above, than <i>Le Diable
+Boiteux</i> itself. The innumerable incidents are to a very large extent
+episodes merely, and episodes in the loose, not the precise, sense of
+the term. That is to say, they are not merely detachable; they might be
+reattached to almost any number of other stories. But the redeeming
+feature&mdash;which is very much more than a <i>mere</i> redeeming feature&mdash;is the
+personality of the hero which has been already referred to. Lesage's
+scrip and staff, to apply the old images exactly enough, are his
+inexhaustible fertility in well-told stories and his faculty of
+delineating a possible and interesting human character.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its inequality&mdash;in the Second and Fourth Books especially.</div>
+
+<p>The characteristics of the successive parts of <i>Gil Blas</i> are distinct
+and interesting, the distinctions themselves being also rather curious.
+The anecdote cited above as to the Fourth and last volume is certainly
+confirmed by, and does not seem, as so many anecdotes of the kind do, to
+have been even possibly drawn from, the volume itself. Although the old
+power is by no means gone, the marks of its failing are pretty obvious.
+A glance has been given already to the unnecessary and disgusting
+repetition of the Pandar business&mdash;made, as it is, more disgusting by
+the distinctly tragic touch infused into it. The actual <i>finale</i> is, on
+the other hand, a good comedy ending of a commonplace kind, except that
+a comic author, such as Lesage once had been on and off the stage, would
+certainly have made <i>Gil Blas</i> suffer in his second marriage for his
+misdeeds of various kinds earlier, instead of leaving him in the not too
+clean cotton or clover of an old rip with a good young wife. If he had
+wanted a happy ending of a still conventional but satisfactory kind, he
+should have married Gil to Laure or Estelle (they were, in modern slang,
+sufficiently "shop-worn goods" not to be ill-mated, and Laure is perhaps
+the most attractive character in the whole book); have legitimated
+Lucr&egrave;ce, as by some odd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> crotchet he definitely refuses to do;<a name="FNanchor_320_320" id="FNanchor_320_320"></a><a href="#Footnote_320_320" class="fnanchor">[320]</a> have
+dropped the later Leporello business, in which his old love and her
+daughter are concerned, altogether, and have left us in a mild sunset of
+"reconciliation." If anybody scorns this suggestion as evidence of a
+futile liking for "rose-pink," let him remember that Gil Blas,
+<i>ci-devant picaro</i> and other ugly things, is actually left lapped in an
+Elysium not less improbable and much more undeserved than this. But it
+is disagreeable to dwell on the shortcomings of age, and it has only
+been done to show that this is a criticism and not a mere panegyric.</p>
+
+<p>Oddly enough, the Second volume is also open to much exception of
+something, though not quite, the same kind; it seems as if Lesage, after
+making strong running, had a habit of nursing himself and even going to
+sleep for a while. The more than questionable habit of
+<i>histoire</i>-insertions revives; that of the rascal-hermit <i>picaro</i>, "Don
+Raphael," is, as the author admits, rather long, and, as he might have
+admitted, and as any one else may be allowed to say, very tiresome. Gil
+Blas himself goes through a long period of occultation, and the whole
+rather drags.</p>
+
+<p>The First and the Third are the pillars of the house; and the Third,
+though (with the exception of the episode of the Archbishop, and that
+eternal sentence governing the relations of author and critic that "the
+homily which has the misfortune not to be approved" by the one is the
+very best ever produced by the other) not so well known, is perhaps even
+better than anything in the First. But the later part has, of course,
+not quite so much freshness; and nobody need want anything better than
+the successive scenes, slightly glanced at already, in which Gil Blas is
+taught, by no means finally,<a name="FNanchor_321_321" id="FNanchor_321_321"></a><a href="#Footnote_321_321" class="fnanchor">[321]</a> the ways of the world; the pure
+adventure interest of the robbers' cave, so admirably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> managed and so
+little over-dwelt on; the experiences of travel and of the capital; the
+vivid pictures of <i>petit ma&icirc;tre</i> and actress life; the double
+deception&mdash;thoroughly Spanish this, but most freshly and universally
+handled&mdash;by Laure and Gil; many other well-known things; all deserve the
+knowledge and the admiration that they have won. But the Third, in which
+the hero is hardly ever off the scene from first to last, is my own
+favourite. He shows himself&mdash;not at his best, but humanly enough&mdash;in the
+affair with the ill-fated Loren&ccedil;a, on which the Leyva family might have
+looked less excusingly if the culprit had been anybody but Gil. The
+Granada scenes, however, and not by any means merely those with the
+Archbishop, are of the very first class; and the reappearance of Laure,
+with the admirable coolness by which she hoodwinks her "keeper"
+Marialva, yields to nothing in the book. For fifty pages it is all
+novel-gold; and though Gil Blas, in decamping from the place, and
+leaving Laure to bear the brunt of a possible discovery, commits one of
+his least heroic deeds, it is so characteristic that one forgives, not
+indeed him, but his creator. The whole of the Lerma part is excellent
+and not in the least improbably impossible; there is infinitely more
+"human natur'" in it, as Marryat's waterman would have said, than in the
+<i>r&eacute;chauff&eacute;</i> of the situation with Olivares.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lesage's quality&mdash;not requiring many words, but
+indisputable.</div>
+
+<p>The effect indeed which is produced, in re-reading, by <i>Le Diable
+Boiteux</i> and <i>Gil Blas</i>, but especially by the latter, is of that
+especial kind which is a sort of "<i>a posteriori</i> intuition," if such a
+phrase may be permitted, of "classical" quality.<a name="FNanchor_322_322" id="FNanchor_322_322"></a><a href="#Footnote_322_322" class="fnanchor">[322]</a> This sensation,
+which appears, unfortunately, to be unknown to a great many people, is
+sometimes set down by the more critical or, let us say, the more
+censorious of them, to a sort of childish prepossession&mdash;akin to that
+which makes a not ill-conditioned child fail to discover any
+uncomeliness in his mother's or a favourite nurse's face. There is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> no
+retort to such a proposition as this so proper as the argument not <i>ad
+hominem</i>, but <i>ab</i> or <i>ex homine</i>. The present writer did not read the
+<i>Devil</i> till he had reached quite critical years; and though he read
+<i>Gil Blas</i> much earlier, he was not (for what reason he cannot say)
+particularly fond of it until the same period was reached. And yet its
+attractions cannot possibly be said to be of any recondite or artificial
+kind, and its defects are likely to be more, not less, recognised as the
+critical faculty acquires strength and practice. Nevertheless, recent
+reperusal has made him more conscious than ever of the existence of this
+quality of a classic in both, but especially in the larger and more
+famous book. And this is a mere pailful added to an ocean of previous
+and more important testimony. <i>Gil Blas</i> has certainly "classed" itself
+in the most various instances, of essentially critical, not specially
+critical but generally acute and appreciative, and more or less
+unsophisticated and ordinary judgments, as a thing that is past all
+question, equally enjoyable for its incidents, its character-sketches,
+and its phrasing&mdash;though the first are (for time and country) in no
+sense out of the way, the second scarcely go beyond the individualised
+type, and the third is neither gorgeous nor "alambicated," as the French
+say, nor in any way peculiar, except for its saturation with a sharp,
+shrewd, salt wit which may be described as the spirit of the popular
+proverb, somehow bodied and clothed with more purely literary form. It
+is true that, in the last few clauses, plenty of ground has been
+indicated for ascription of classicality in the best sense; and perhaps
+Lesage himself has summed the whole thing up when, in the "Declaration"
+of the author at the beginning of <i>Gil Blas</i>, he claims "to have set
+before himself only the representation of human life as it is." He has
+said it; and in saying and doing it he has said and done everything for
+his merits as a novelist and his place in the history of the novel.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Marivaux&mdash;<i>Les Effets de la Sympathie (?)</i></div>
+
+<p>The Archbishop of Sens, who had the duty of "answering" Marivaux's
+"discourse of reception" into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> Academy in the usual <i>aigre-doux</i>
+manner, informed him, with Academic frankness and Archiepiscopal
+propriety, that "in the small part of your work which I have run
+through, I soon recognised that the reading of these agreeable romances
+did not suit the austere dignity with which I am invested, or the purity
+of the ideas which religion prescribes me." This was all in the game,
+both for an Academician and for an Archbishop, and it probably did not
+discompose the novelist much. But if his Grace had read <i>Les Effets de
+la Sympathie</i>, and had chosen to criticise it, he might have made its
+author (always supposing that Marivaux <i>was</i> its author, which does not
+seem to be at all certain) much more uncomfortable. Although there is
+plenty of incident, it is but a dull book, and it contains not a trace
+of "Marivaudage" in style. A hero's father, who dies of poison in the
+first few pages, and is shown to have been brought round by an obliging
+gaoler in the last few; a hero himself, who thinks he has fallen in love
+with a beautiful and rich widow, playing good Samaritaness to him after
+he has fallen in among thieves, but a page or two later really does fall
+in love with a fair unknown looking languishingly out of a window; a
+<i>corsaire</i>,<a name="FNanchor_323_323" id="FNanchor_323_323"></a><a href="#Footnote_323_323" class="fnanchor">[323]</a> with the appropriate name of Turcam&egrave;ne, who is
+robustious almost from the very beginning, and receives at the end a
+fatal stab with his own poniard from the superfluous widow, herself also
+fatally wounded at the same moment by the same weapon (an economy of
+time, incident, and munitions uncommon off the stage); an intermediate
+personage who, straying&mdash;without any earthly business there&mdash;into one of
+those park "pavilions" which play so large a part in these romances,
+finds a lady asleep on the sofa, with her hand invitingly dropped,
+promptly kneels down, and kisses it: these and many other things fill up
+a Spanish kind of story, not uningeniously though rather improbably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+engineered, but dependent for its interest almost wholly on incident;
+for though it is not devoid of conversation, this conversation is
+without spirit or sparkle. It is, in fact, a "circulating library" novel
+before&mdash;at any rate at an early period of&mdash;circulating libraries: not
+unworkmanlike, probably not very unsatisfactory to its actual readers,
+and something of a document as to the kind of satisfaction they
+demanded; but not intrinsically important.</p>
+
+<p>One has not seen much, in English,<a name="FNanchor_324_324" id="FNanchor_324_324"></a><a href="#Footnote_324_324" class="fnanchor">[324]</a> about Marivaux, despite the
+existence, in French, of one of the best<a name="FNanchor_325_325" id="FNanchor_325_325"></a><a href="#Footnote_325_325" class="fnanchor">[325]</a> of those monographs which
+assist the foreign critic so much, and sometimes perhaps help to beget
+his own lucubrations. Yet he is one of the most interesting writers of
+France, one of the most curious, and, one may almost say, one of the
+most puzzling. This latter quality he owes, in part at least, to a
+"skiey influence" of the time, which he shares with Lesage and Pr&eacute;vost,
+and indeed to some extent with most French writers of the eighteenth
+century&mdash;the influence of the polygraphic habit.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His work in general.</div>
+
+<p>He was a dramatist, and a voluminous one, long before he was a novelist:
+and some of his thirty or forty plays, especially <i>Les Fausses
+Confidences</i> and <i>Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard</i>, still rank among at
+least the second-class classics of the French comic stage. He tried, for
+a time, one of the worst kinds of merely fashionable literature, the
+travesty-burlesque.<a name="FNanchor_326_326" id="FNanchor_326_326"></a><a href="#Footnote_326_326" class="fnanchor">[326]</a> He was a journalist, following Addison openly
+in the title, and to some extent in the manner, of <i>Le Spectateur</i>,
+which he afterwards followed by <i>Le Cabinet d'un Philosophe</i>, showing,
+however, here, as he was more specially tempted to do, his curious, and
+it would seem unconquerable, habit of leaving things unfinished, which
+only does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> appear in his plays, for the simple and obvious reason
+that managers will not put an unfinished play on the stage, and that, if
+they did, the afterpiece would be premature and of a very lively
+character. But the completeness of his very plays is incomplete; they
+"run huddling" to their conclusion, and are rather bundles of good or
+not so good acts and scenes than entire dramas. We are, however, only
+concerned with the stories, of which there are three: the early,
+complete, but doubtful <i>Effets de la Sympathie</i>, already discussed; the
+central in every way, but endlessly dawdled over, <i>Marianne</i>, which
+never got finished at all (though Mme. Riccoboni continued it in
+Marivaux's own lifetime, and with his placid approval, and somebody
+afterwards botched a clumsy <i>Fin</i>); and <i>Le Paysan Parvenu</i>, the latter
+part of which is not likely to be genuine, and, even if so, is not a
+real conclusion. We may, however, with some, advantage, take it before
+<i>Marianne</i>, if only because it is not the book generally connected with
+its author's name.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Le Paysan Parvenu.</i></div>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding this comparative oblivion, <i>Le Paysan Parvenu</i> is an
+almost astonishingly clever and original book, at least as far as the
+five of its eight parts, which are certainly Marivaux's, go. I have read
+the three last twice critically, at a long interval of time, and I feel
+sure that the positive internal evidence confirms, against their
+authenticity, the negative want of external for it. In any case they add
+nothing&mdash;they do not, as has been said, even really "conclude"&mdash;and we
+may, therefore, without any more apology, confine ourselves to the part
+which is certain. Some readers may possibly know that when that
+strangest of strange persons, Restif de la Bretonne (see the last
+chapter of this book), took up the title with the slight change or gloss
+of <i>Parvenu</i> to <i>Perverti</i>, he was at least partly actuated by his own
+very peculiar, but distinctly existing, variety of moral indignation.
+And though Pierre Carlet (which was Marivaux's real name) and "Monsieur
+Nicolas" (which was as near a real name as any that Restif had) were,
+the one a quite respectable person on ordinary standards, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> the other
+an infinitely disreputable creature, still the later novelist was
+perhaps ethically justified. Marivaux's successful rustic does not, so
+far as we are told, actually do anything that contravenes popular
+morality, though he is more than once on the point of doing so. He is
+not a bad-blooded person either; and he has nothing of the wild-beast
+element in the French peasantry which history shows us from the
+Jacquerie to the Revolution, and which some folk try to excuse as the
+result of aristocratic tyranny. But he is an elaborate and exceedingly
+able portrait of another side of the peasant, and, if we may trust
+literature, even with some administration of salt, of the French peasant
+more particularly. He is what we may perhaps be allowed to call
+unconsciously determined to get on, though he does not go quite to the
+length of the <i>quocunque modo</i>, and has, as far as men are concerned,
+some scruples. But in relation to the other sex he has few if any,
+though he is never brutal. He is, as we may say, first "perverted,"
+though not as yet <i>parvenu</i>,<a name="FNanchor_327_327" id="FNanchor_327_327"></a><a href="#Footnote_327_327" class="fnanchor">[327]</a> in the house of a Parisian, himself a
+<i>nouveau riche</i> and <i>novus homo</i>, on whose property in Champagne his own
+father is a wine-farmer. He is early selected for the beginnings of
+Lady-Booby-like attentions by "Madame," while he, as far as he is
+capable of the proceeding, falls in love with one of Madame's maids,
+Genevi&egrave;ve. It does not appear that, if the lady's part of the matter had
+gone further, Jacob (that is his name) would have been at all like
+Joseph. But when he finds that the maid is also the object of
+"Monsieur's" attentions, and when he is asked to take the profits of
+this affair (the attitude<a name="FNanchor_328_328" id="FNanchor_328_328"></a><a href="#Footnote_328_328" class="fnanchor">[328]</a> of the girl herself is very skilfully
+delineated) and marry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> her, his own <i>point d'honneur</i> is reached.<a name="FNanchor_329_329" id="FNanchor_329_329"></a><a href="#Footnote_329_329" class="fnanchor">[329]</a>
+Everything is, however, cut short by the sudden death, in hopelessly
+embarrassed circumstances, of Monsieur, and the consequent cessation of
+Madame's attraction for a young man who wishes to better himself. He
+leaves both her and Genevi&egrave;ve with perfect nonchalance; though he has
+good reason for believing that the girl really loves him, however she
+may have made a peculiar sort of hay when the sun shone, and that both
+she and his lady are penniless, or almost so.</p>
+
+<p>He has, however, the luck which makes the <i>parvenu</i>, if in this instance
+he can hardly be said to deserve it. On the Pont Neuf he sees an elderly
+lady, apparently about to swoon. He supports her home, and finds that
+she is the younger and more attractive of two old-maid and <i>d&eacute;vote</i>
+sisters. The irresistibleness to this class of the feminine sex (and
+indeed by no means to this class only) of a strapping and handsome
+footman is a commonplace of satire with eighteenth-century writers, both
+French and English. It is exercised possibly on both sisters, though the
+elder is a shrew; certainly on the younger, and also on their elderly
+<i>bonne</i>, Catherine. But it necessarily leads to trouble. The younger,
+Mlle. Habert (the curious hiding of Christian names reappears here),
+wants to retain Jacob in the joint service, and Catherine at least makes
+no objection, for obvious reasons. But the elder sister recalcitrates
+violently, summoning to her aid her "director," and the younger, who is
+financially independent,<a name="FNanchor_330_330" id="FNanchor_330_330"></a><a href="#Footnote_330_330" class="fnanchor">[330]</a> determines to leave the house. She does so
+(<i>not</i> taking Catherine with her, though the <i>bonne</i> would willingly
+have shared Jacob's society), and having secured lodgings, regularly
+proposes to her (the word<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> may be used almost accurately) "swain." Jacob
+has no scruples of delicacy here, though the nymph is thirty years older
+than himself, and though he has, if no dislike, no particular affection
+for her. But it is an obvious step upwards, and he makes no
+difficulties. The elder sister, however, makes strong efforts to forbid
+the banns, and her interest prevails on a "President" (the half-regular
+power of the French <i>noblesse de robe</i>, though perhaps less violently
+exercised, must have been almost as galling as the irresponsibleness of
+men of birth and "sword") to interpose and actually stop the arranged
+ceremony. But Jacob appears in person, and states his case convincingly;
+the obstacle is removed, and the pair are made happy at an extraordinary
+hour (two or three in the morning), which seems to have been then
+fashionable for marriages. The conventional phrase is fairly justified;
+for the bride is completely satisfied, and Jacob is not displeased.</p>
+
+<p>His marriage, however, interferes not in the very least with his
+intention to "get on" by dint of his handsome face and brawny figure. On
+the very day of his wedding he goes to visit a lady of position, and
+also of devoutness, who is a great friend of the President and his wife,
+has been present at the irregular enquiry, and has done something for
+him. This quickly results in a regular assignation, which, however, is
+comically broken off. Moreover this lady introduces him to another of
+the same temperament&mdash;which indeed seems to have been common with French
+ladies (the Bellaston type being not the exception, but the rule). <i>She</i>
+is to introduce him to her brother-in-law, an influential financier, and
+she quickly makes plain the kind of gratitude she expects. This also is,
+as far as we are told, rather comically interfered with&mdash;Marivaux's
+dramatic practice made him good at these disappointments. She does give
+the introduction, and her brother-in-law, though a curmudgeon, is at
+first disposed to honour her draft. But here an unexpected change is
+made by the presentation of Jacob as a man of noble sentiment. The place
+he is to have is one taken from an invalid holder of it, whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> wife
+comes to beg mercy: whereat Jacob, magnanimously and to the financier's
+great wrath, declines to profit by another's misfortune. Whether the
+fact that the lady is very pretty has anything to do with the matter
+need not be discussed. His&mdash;let us call it at least&mdash;good nature,
+however, indirectly makes his fortune. Going to visit the husband and
+wife whom he has obliged, he sees a young man attacked by three enemies
+and ill-bested. Jacob (who is no coward, and, thanks to his wife
+insisting on his being a gentleman and "M. de la Vall&eacute;e," has a sword)
+draws and uses it on the weaker side, with no skill whatever, but in the
+downright, swash-and-stab, short- and tall-sailor fashion, which (in
+novels at least) is almost always effective. The assailants decamp, and
+the wounded but rescued person, who is of very high rank, conceives a
+strong friendship for his rescuer, and, as was said above, makes his
+fortune. The last and doubtful three-eighths of the book kill off poor
+Mlle. Habert (who, although Jacob would never have been unkind to her,
+was already beginning to be very jealous and by no means happy), and
+marry him again to a younger lady of rank, beauty, fashion, and fortune,
+in the imparted possession of all of which we leave him. But, except to
+the insatiables of "what happened next," these parts are as questionably
+important as they are decidedly doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>The really important points of the book are, in the first place, the
+ease and narrative skill with which the story is told in the difficult
+form of autobiography, and, secondly, the vivacity of the characters.
+Jacob himself is, as will have been seen already, a piebald sort of
+personage, entirely devoid of scruple in some ways, but not ill-natured,
+and with his own points of honour. He is perfectly natural, and so are
+all the others (not half of whom have been mentioned) as far as they go.
+The cross sister and the "kind" one; the false prude and false <i>devot&eacute;</i>
+Mme. de Ferval, and the jolly, reckless, rather coarse Mme. de F&eacute;cour;
+the tyrannical, corrupt, and licentious financier, with others more
+slightly drawn, are seldom, if ever, out of drawing. The contemporary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>
+wash of colour passes, as it should, into something "fast"; you are in
+the Paris of the Regency, but you are at the same time in general human
+time and place, if not in eternity and infinity.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Marianne</i>&mdash;outline of the story.</div>
+
+<p>The general selection, however, of <i>Marianne</i> as Marivaux's masterpiece
+is undoubtedly right, though in more ways than one it has less engaging
+power than the <i>Paysan</i>, and forebodes to some extent, if it does not
+actually display, the boring qualities which novels of combined analysis
+and jargon have developed since. The opening is odd: the author having
+apparently transplanted to the beginning of a novel the promiscuous
+slaughter with which we are familiar at the end of a play. Marianne (let
+us hail the appearance of a Christian-named heroine at last), a small
+child of the tenderest years, is, with the exception of an ecclesiastic,
+who takes to his heels and gets off, the sole survivor of a coachful of
+travellers who are butchered by a gang of footpads,<a name="FNanchor_331_331" id="FNanchor_331_331"></a><a href="#Footnote_331_331" class="fnanchor">[331]</a> because two of
+the passengers have rashly endeavoured to defend themselves. Nothing can
+be found out about the child&mdash;an initial improbability, for the party
+has consisted of father, mother, and servants, as well as Marianne. But
+the good <i>cur&eacute;</i> of the place and his sister take charge of her, and
+bring her up carefully (they are themselves "gentle-people," as the good
+old phrase, now doubtless difficult of application, went) till she is
+fifteen, is very pretty, and evidently must be disposed of in some way,
+for her guardians are poor and have no influential relations. The
+sister, however, takes her to Paris&mdash;whither she herself goes to secure,
+if possible, the succession of a relative&mdash;to try to obtain some
+situation. But the inheritance proves illusory; the sister falls ill at
+Paris and dies there; while the brother is disabled, and his living has
+to be, if not transferred to, provided with, a substitute. This second
+massacre (for the brother dies soon) provides Marivaux with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>
+situation he requires&mdash;that of a pretty girl, alone in the capital, and
+absolutely unfriended. Fortunately a benevolent Director knows a pious
+gentleman, M. de Climal, who is fond of doing good, and also, as it
+appears shortly by the story, of pretty girls. Marianne, with the
+earliest touch of distinct "snobbishness"&mdash;let it be proudly pointed out
+that the example is not English,<a name="FNanchor_332_332" id="FNanchor_332_332"></a><a href="#Footnote_332_332" class="fnanchor">[332]</a>&mdash;declines to go into service, but
+does not so much mind being a shop-girl, and M. de Climal establishes
+her with his <i>ling&egrave;re</i>, a certain Mme. Dutour.</p>
+
+<p>This good lady is no procuress, but her morals are of a somewhat
+accommodating kind, and she sets to work, experiencing very little
+difficulty in the process, to remove Marianne's scruples about accepting
+presents from M. de Climal&mdash;pointing out, very logically, that there is
+no obligation to (as Chesterfield put it not long after) <i>payer de sa
+personne</i>; though she is naturally somewhat disgusted when the gifts
+take the form of handsome <i>lingerie</i> bought at another shop. When this,
+and a dress to match, are made up, Marianne as naturally goes to church
+to show them: and indulges in very shrewd if not particularly amiable
+remarks on her "even-Christians"&mdash;a delightful English archaism, which
+surely needs no apology for its revival. Coming out, she slips and
+sprains her ankle, whereupon, still naturally, appears the inevitable
+young man, a M. de Valville, who, after endless amicable wrangling,
+procures her a coach, but not without an awkward meeting. For M. de
+Valville turns out to be the nephew of M. de Climal; and the uncle, with
+a lady, comes upon the nephew and Marianne; while, a little later, each
+finds the other in turn at the girl's feet. Result: of course more than
+suspicion on the younger man's part, and a mixture of wrath and desire
+to hurry matters on the elder's. He offers Marianne a regular (or
+irregular) "establishment" at a dependent's of his own, with a small
+income settled upon her, etc. She refuses indignantly, the indignation
+being rather suspiciously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> divided between her two lovers; is "planted
+there" by the old sinner Climal, and of course requested to leave by
+Mme. Dutour; returns all the presents, much to her landlady's disgust,
+and once more seeks, though in a different mood, the shelter of the
+Church. Her old helper the priest for some time absolutely declines to
+admit the notion of Climal's rascality; but fortunately a charitable
+lady is more favourable, and Marianne gets taken in as a <i>pensionnaire</i>
+at a convent. Climal, whose sister and Valville's mother the lady turns
+out to be, falls ill, repents, confesses, and leaves Marianne a
+comfortable annuity. Union with Valville is not opposed by the mother;
+but other members of the family are less obliging, and Valville himself
+wanders after an English girl of a Jacobite exiled family, Miss Warton
+(Varthon). The story then waters itself out, before suddenly collapsing,
+with a huge and uninteresting <i>Histoire d'une Religieuse</i>. Whereat some
+folk may grumble; but others, more philosophically, may be satisfied, in
+no uncomplimentary sense, without hearing what finally made Marianne
+Countess of Three Stars, or indeed knowing any more of her actual
+history.</p>
+
+<p>For in fact the entire interest of <i>Marianne</i> is concentrated in and on
+Marianne herself, and the fact that this is so at once makes
+continuation superfluous, and gives the novel its place in the history
+of fiction. We have quite enough, as it is, to show us&mdash;as the Princess
+Augusta said to Fanny Burney of the ill-starred last of French "Mesdames
+Royales"&mdash;"what sort of a girl she is." And her biographer has made her
+a very interesting sort of girl, and himself in making her so, a very
+interesting, and almost entirely novel, sort of novelist. To say that
+she is a wholly attractive character would be entirely false, except
+from the point of view of the pure student of art. She is technically
+virtuous, which is, of course, greatly to her credit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_333_333" id="FNanchor_333_333"></a><a href="#Footnote_333_333" class="fnanchor">[333]</a> She is not
+bad-blooded, but if there were such a word as "good-blooded" it could
+hardly be applied to her. With all her preserving borax- or
+formalin-like touch of "good form," she is something of a minx. She is
+vain, selfish&mdash;in fact wrapped up in self&mdash;without any sense of other
+than technical honour. But she is very pretty (which covers a multitude
+of sins), and she is really clever.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Importance of Marianne herself.</div>
+
+<p>Yet the question at issue is not whether one can approve of Marianne,
+nor whether one can like her, nor even whether, approving and liking her
+or not, one could fall in love with her "for her comely face and for her
+fair bodie," as King Honour did in the ballad, and as <i>homo rationalis</i>
+usually, though not invariably, does fall in love. The question is
+whether Marivaux has, in her, created a live girl, and to what extent he
+has mastered the details of his creation. The only critical answer, I
+think, must be that he has created such a girl, and that he has not left
+her a mere outline or type, but has furnished the house as well as built
+it. She is, in the particular meaning on which Mr. Hardy's defenders
+insist, as "pure" a "woman" as Tess herself. And if there is a good deal
+missing from her which fortunately some women have, there is nothing in
+her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> which some women have not, and not so very much which the majority
+of women have not, in this or that degree. It is difficult not to smile
+when one compares her quintessence with the complicated and elusive
+caricatures of womanhood which some modern novel-writers&mdash;noisily hailed
+as <i>gyno</i>sophists&mdash;have put together, and been complimented on putting
+together. What is more, she is perhaps the first nearly complete
+character of the kind that had been presented in novel at her date. This
+is a great thing to say for Marivaux, and it can be said without the
+slightest fear of inability to support the saying.<a name="FNanchor_334_334" id="FNanchor_334_334"></a><a href="#Footnote_334_334" class="fnanchor">[334]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Marivaux and Richardson&mdash;"Marivaudage."</div>
+
+<p>Although, therefore, we may not care much to enter into calculations as
+to the details of the indebtedness of Richardson to Marivaux, some
+approximations of the two, for critical purposes, may be useful. One may
+even see, without too much folly of the Thaumast kind, an explanation,
+beyond that of mere idleness, in the Frenchman's inveterate habit of not
+completing. He did not want you to read him "for the story"; and
+therefore he cared little for the story itself, and nothing at all for
+the technical finishing of it. The stories of both his characteristic
+novels are, as has been fairly shown, of the very thinnest. What he did
+want to do was to analyse and "display," in a half-technical sense of
+that word, his characters; and he did this as no man had done before
+him, and as few have done since, though many, quite ignorant of their
+indebtedness, have taken the method from him indirectly. In the second
+place, his combination of method and phrase is for infinite thoughts.
+This combination is not necessary; there is, to take up the comparative
+line, nothing of it in Richardson, nothing in Fielding, nothing in
+Thackeray. A few French eighteenth-century writers have it in direct
+imitation of Marivaux himself; but it dies out in France, and in the
+greatest novel-period there is nothing of it. It revives in the later
+nineteenth century, especially with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> us, and, curiously enough, if we
+look back to the beginnings of Romance in Greek, there is a good deal
+there, the crown and flower being, as has been before remarked, in
+Eustathius Macrembolita, but something being noticeable in earlier folk,
+especially Achilles Tatius, and the trick having evidently come from
+those rhetoricians<a name="FNanchor_335_335" id="FNanchor_335_335"></a><a href="#Footnote_335_335" class="fnanchor">[335]</a> of whose class the romancers were a kind of
+offshoot. It is, however, only fair to say that, if Marivaux thought in
+intricate and sometimes startling ways, his actual expression is never
+obscure. It is a maze, but a maze with an unbroken clue of speech
+guiding you through it.<a name="FNanchor_336_336" id="FNanchor_336_336"></a><a href="#Footnote_336_336" class="fnanchor">[336]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Examples:&mdash;Marianne on the <i>physique</i> and <i>moral</i> of
+Prioresses and Nuns.</div>
+
+<p>A few examples of method and style may now be given. Here is Marianne's
+criticism&mdash;rather uncannily shrewd and very characteristic both of her
+subject and of herself&mdash;of that peculiar placid plumpness which has been
+observed by the profane in devout persons, especially in the Roman
+Church and in certain dissenting sects (Anglicanism does not seem to be
+so favourable to it), and in "persons of religion" (in the technical
+sense) most of all.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This Prioress was a short little person, round and white,
+with a double chin, and a complexion at once fresh and
+placid. You never see faces like that in worldly persons: it
+is a kind of <i>embonpoint</i> quite different from others&mdash;one
+which has been formed more quietly and more
+methodically&mdash;that is to say, something into which there
+enters more art, more fashioning, nay, more self-love, than
+into that of such as we.<a name="FNanchor_337_337" id="FNanchor_337_337"></a><a href="#Footnote_337_337" class="fnanchor">[337]</a></p>
+
+<p>As a rule, it is either temperament, or feeding, or laziness
+and luxury, which give <i>us</i> such of it as we have. But in
+order to acquire the kind of which I am speaking, it is
+necessary to have given oneself up with a saintlike
+earnestness to the task. It can only be the result<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> of
+delicate, loving, and devout attention to the comfort and
+well-being of the body. It shows not only that life&mdash;and a
+healthy life&mdash;is an object of desire, but that it is wanted
+soft, undisturbed, and dainty; and that, while enjoying the
+pleasures of good health, the person enjoying it bestows on
+herself all the pettings and the privileges of a perpetual
+convalescence.</p>
+
+<p>Also this religious plumpness is different in outward form
+from ours, which is profane of aspect; it does not so much
+make a face fat, as it makes it grave and decent; and so it
+gives the countenance an air, not so much joyous, as
+tranquil and contented.</p>
+
+<p>Further, when you look at these good ladies, you find in
+them an affable exterior; but perhaps, for all that, an
+interior indifference. Their faces, and not their souls,
+give you sympathy and tenderness; they are comely images,
+which seem to possess sensibility, and which yet have merely
+a surface of kindness and sentiment.<a name="FNanchor_338_338" id="FNanchor_338_338"></a><a href="#Footnote_338_338" class="fnanchor">[338]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Acute as this is, it may be said to be somewhat displaced&mdash;though it
+must be remembered that it is the Marianne of fifty, "Mme. la Comtesse
+de * * *," who is supposed to be writing, not the Marianne of fifteen.
+No such objection can be taken to what follows.</p>
+
+<p>[<i>She is, after the breach with Climal, and after Valville has earlier
+discovered his wicked uncle on his knees before her, packing up
+the&mdash;well! not wages of iniquity, but baits for it&mdash;to send back to the
+giver. A little "cutting" may be made.</i>]</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">She returns the gift-clothes.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Thereupon I opened my trunk to take out first the newly
+bought linen. "Yes, M. de Valville, yes!" said I, pulling it
+out, "you shall learn to know me and to think of me as you
+ought." This thought spurred me on, so that, without my
+exactly thinking of it, it was rather to him than to his
+uncle that I was returning the whole, all the more so that
+the return of linen, dress, and money, with a note I should
+write, could not fail to disabuse Valville, and make him
+regret the loss of me. He had seemed to me to possess a
+generous soul; and I applauded myself beforehand on the
+sorrow which he would feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> at having treated so
+outrageously a girl so worthy of respectful treatment as I
+was&mdash;for I saw in myself, confessedly, I don't know how many
+titles to respect.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place I put my bad luck, which was unique; to
+add to this bad luck I had virtue, and they went so well
+together! Then I was young, and on the top of it all I was
+pretty, and what more do you want? If I had arranged matters
+designedly to render myself an object of sympathy, to make a
+generous lover sigh at having maltreated me, I could not
+have succeeded better; and, provided I hurt Valville's
+feelings, I was satisfied. My little plan was never to see
+him again in my lifetime; and this seemed to me a very fair
+and proud one; for I loved him, and I was even very glad to
+have loved him, because he had perceived my love, and,
+seeing me break with him, notwithstanding, would see also
+what a heart he had had to do with.</p></div>
+
+<p>The little person goes on very delectably describing the packing, and
+how she grudged getting rid of the pretty things, and at last sighed and
+wept&mdash;whether for herself, or Valville, or the beautiful gown, she
+didn't know. But, alas! there is no more room, except to salute her as
+the agreeable ancestress of all the beloved coquettes and piquant minxes
+in prose fiction since. Could anything handsomer be said of her creator?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Pr&eacute;vost.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His minor novels&mdash;the opinions on them of Sainte-Beuve.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">And of Planche.</div>
+
+<p>It is, though an absolute and stereotyped commonplace, an almost equally
+absolute necessity, to begin any notice of the Abb&eacute; Pr&eacute;vost by remarking
+that nothing of his voluminous work is now, or has been for a long time,
+read, except <i>Manon Lescaut</i>. It may be added, though one is here
+repeating predecessors to not quite the same extent, that nothing else
+of his, in fiction at least, is worth reading. The faithful few who do
+not dislike old criticism may indeed turn over his <i>Le Pour et [le]
+Contre</i> not without reward. But his historical and other
+compilations<a name="FNanchor_339_339" id="FNanchor_339_339"></a><a href="#Footnote_339_339" class="fnanchor">[339]</a>&mdash;his total production in volumes is said to run over
+the hundred, and the standard edition of his <i>&OElig;uvres Choisies</i>
+extends to thirty-nine not small ones&mdash;are admittedly worthless. As to
+his minor novels&mdash;if one may use that term, albeit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> they are as major in
+bulk as they are minor in merit&mdash;opinions of importance, and presumably
+founded on actual knowledge, have differed somewhat strangely.
+Sainte-Beuve made something of a fight for them, but it was the
+Sainte-Beuve of almost the earliest years (1831), when, according to a
+weakness of beginners in criticism, he was a little inclined "to be
+different," for the sake of difference. Against <i>Cl&eacute;veland</i> even he
+lifts up his heel, though in a rather unfortunate manner, declaring the
+reading of the greater part to be "aussi fade que celle d'<i>Amadis</i>." Now
+to some of us the reading of <i>Amadis</i> is not "fade" at all. But he finds
+some philosophical and psychological passages of merit. Over the
+<i>M&eacute;moires d'un Homme de Qualit&eacute;</i>&mdash;that huge and unwieldy galleon to
+which the frail shallop of <i>Manon</i> was originally attached, and which
+has long been stranded on the reefs of oblivion, while its fly-boat
+sails for ever more&mdash;he is quite enthusiastic, finds it, though with a
+certain relativity, "natural," "frank," and "well-preserved," gives it a
+long analysis, actually discovers in it "an inexpressible savour"
+surpassing modern "local colour," and thinks the handling of it
+comparable in some respects to that of <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i>! The
+<i>Doyen de Kill&eacute;rine</i>&mdash;the third of Pr&eacute;vost's long books&mdash;is "infinitely
+agreeable," "si l'on y met un peu de complaisance." (The Sainte-Beuve of
+later years would have noticed that an infinity which has to be made
+infinite by a little complaisance is curiously finite). The later and
+shorter <i>Histoire d'une Grecque moderne</i> is a <i>joli roman</i>, and
+<i>gracieux</i>, though it is not so charming and subtle as Cr&eacute;billon <i>fils</i>
+would have made it, and is "knocked off rather haphazardly." Another
+critic of 1830, now perhaps too much forgotten, Gustave Planche, does
+not mention the <i>Grecque</i>, and brushes aside the three earlier and
+bigger books rather hastily, though he allows "interest" to both
+<i>Cl&eacute;veland</i> and the <i>Doyen</i>. Perhaps, before "coming to real things" (as
+Balzac once said of his own work) in <i>Manon</i>, some remarks, not long,
+but first-hand, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> based on actual reading at more than one time of
+life, as to her very unreal family, may be permitted here, though they
+may differ in opinion from the judgment of these two redoubtable
+critics.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The books themselves&mdash;<i>Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne</i>.</div>
+
+<p>I do not think that when I first wrote about Pr&eacute;vost (I had read <i>Manon</i>
+long before) more than thirty years ago, in a <i>Short History of French
+Literature</i>, I paid very much attention to these books. I evidently had
+not read the <i>Grecque Moderne</i>, for I said nothing about it. Of the
+others I said only that they are "romances of adventure, occupying a
+middle place between those of Lesage and Marivaux." It is perfectly
+true, but of course not very "in-going," and whatever reading I then
+gave any of them had not left very much impression on my mind, when
+recently, and for the purpose of the present work, I took them up again,
+and the <i>Histoire</i> as well. This last is the story of a young modern
+Greek slave named Th&eacute;oph&eacute; (a form of which the last syllable seems more
+modern than Greek), who is made visible in full harem by her
+particularly complaisant master, a Turkish pasha, to a young Frenchman,
+admired and bought by this Frenchman (the relater of the story), and
+freed by him. He does not at first think of making her his mistress, but
+later does propose it, only to meet a refusal of a somewhat
+sentimental-romantic character, though she protests not merely
+gratitude, but love for him. The latter part of the book is occupied by
+what Sainte-Beuve calls "delicate" ambiguities, which leave us in doubt
+whether her "cruelty" is shown to others as well, or whether it is not.
+In suggesting that Cr&eacute;billon would have made it charming, the great
+critic has perhaps made another of those slips which show the novitiate.
+The fact is that it is an exceedingly dull book: and that to have made
+it anything else, while retaining anything like its present "propriety,"
+either an entire metamorphosis of spirit, which might have made it as
+passionate as <i>Manon</i> itself, or the sort of filigree play with thought
+and phrase which Marivaux would have given, would be required. As a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>
+"Cr&eacute;billonnade" (<i>v. inf.</i>) it might have been both pleasant and subtle,
+but it could only have been made so by becoming exceedingly indecent.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Cl&eacute;veland.</i></div>
+
+<p>Still, its comparative (though only comparative) shortness, and a
+certain possibility rather than actuality of interest in the
+situation,<a name="FNanchor_340_340" id="FNanchor_340_340"></a><a href="#Footnote_340_340" class="fnanchor">[340]</a> may recommend this novel at least to mercy. If the
+present writer were on a jury trying <i>Cl&eacute;veland</i>, no want of food or
+fire should induce him to endorse any such recommendation in regard to
+that intolerable book. It is, to speak frankly, one of the very few
+books&mdash;one of the still fewer novels&mdash;which I have found it practically
+impossible to read even in the "skim and skip and dip" fashion which
+should, no doubt, be only practised as a work of necessity (<i>i.e.</i> duty
+to others) and of mercy (to oneself) on extraordinary occasions, but
+which nobody but a prig and a pedant will absolutely disallow. Almost
+the only good thing I can find to say about it is that Pr&eacute;vost, who
+lived indeed for some time in England, is now and then, if not always,
+miraculously correct in his proper names. He can actually spell
+Hammersmith! Other merit&mdash;and this is not constant (in the dips which I
+have actually made, to rise exhausted from each, and skip rather than
+even skim to the rest)&mdash;I can find none. The beginning is absurd and
+rather offensive, the hero being a natural son of Cromwell by a woman
+who has previously been the mistress of Charles I. The continuation is a
+mish-mash of adventure, sometimes sanguinary, but never exciting, travel
+(in fancy parts of the West Indies, etc.), and the philosophical
+disputations which Sainte-Beuve found interesting. As for the end, no
+two persons seem quite agreed what <i>is</i> the end. Sainte-Beuve speaks of
+it as an attempted suicide of the hero&mdash;the most justifiable of all his
+actions, if he had succeeded. Pr&eacute;vost himself, in the Preface to the
+<i>Doyen de Kill&eacute;rine</i>, repeats<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> an earlier disavowal (which he says he
+had previously made in Holland) of a fifth volume, and says that his own
+work ended with the murder of Cl&eacute;veland by one of the characters. Again,
+this is a comprehensible and almost excusable action, and might have
+followed, though it could not have preceded, the other. But if it was
+the end, the other was not. A certain kind of critic may say that it is
+my duty to search and argue this out. But, for my part, I say as a
+reader to <i>Cl&eacute;veland</i>, "No more <i>in</i> thee my steps shall be, For ever
+and for ever."<a name="FNanchor_341_341" id="FNanchor_341_341"></a><a href="#Footnote_341_341" class="fnanchor">[341]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Le Doyen de Kill&eacute;rine.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>Le Doyen de Kill&eacute;rine</i> is not perhaps so utterly to be excommunicated
+as <i>Cl&eacute;veland</i>, and, as has been said above, some have found real
+interest in it. It is not, however, free either from the
+preposterousness or from the dulness of the earlier book, though the
+first characteristic is less preposterous as such preposterousness goes.
+The Dean of Kill&eacute;rine (Coleraine) is a Roman Catholic dean, just after
+the expulsion of James II., when, we learn with some surprise, that
+neighbourhood was rather specially full of his co-religionists. He is a
+sort of <i>lusus naturae</i>, being bow-legged, humpbacked, potbellied, and
+possessing warts on his brows, which make him a sort of later horned
+Moses. The eccentricity of his appearance is equalled by that of his
+conduct. He is the eldest son of an Irish gentleman (nobleman, it would
+sometimes seem), and his father finds a pretty girl who is somehow
+willing to marry him. But, feeling no vocation for marriage, he suggests
+to her (a suggestion perhaps unique in fiction if not in fact) that she
+should marry his father instead. This singular match comes off, and a
+second family results, the members of which are, fortunately, not <i>lusus
+naturae</i>, but a brace of very handsome and accomplished boys, George and
+Patrick, and an extremely pretty girl, Rosa. Of these three, their
+parents dying when they are something short of full age, the excellent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>
+dean becomes a sort of guardian. He takes them to the exiled court of
+Versailles, and his very hen-like anxieties over the escapades of these
+most lively ducklings supply the main subject of the book. It might have
+been made amusing by humorous treatment, but Pr&eacute;vost had no humour in
+him: and it might have been made thrilling by passion, but he never,
+except in the one great little instance, compressed or distilled his
+heaps and floods of sensibility and sensationalism into that. The scene
+where a wicked Mme. de S&mdash;&mdash; plays, and almost outplays, Potiphar's wife
+to the good but hideous Dean's Joseph is one of the most curious in
+novel-literature, though one of the least amusing.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The <i>M&eacute;moires d'un Homme de Qualit&eacute;</i>.</div>
+
+<p>We may now go back to the <i>M&eacute;moires</i>, partly in compliment to the master
+of all mid-nineteenth-century critics, but more because of their almost
+fortuitous good luck in ushering <i>Manon</i> into the world. There is
+something in them of both their successors, <i>Cl&eacute;veland</i> and the <i>Doyen</i>,
+but it may be admitted that they are less unreadable than the first, and
+less trivial than the second. The plan&mdash;if it deserve that name&mdash;is odd,
+one marquis first telling his own fortunes and voyages and whatnots, and
+then serving as Mentor (the application, though of course not original,
+is inevitable) to another marquis in further voyages and adventures.
+There are Turkish brides and Spanish murdered damsels; English politics
+and literature, where, unfortunately, the spelling <i>does</i> sometimes
+break down; glances backward, in "Histoires" of the <i>Grand Si&egrave;cle</i>, at
+meetings with Charles de S&eacute;vign&eacute;, Racine, etc.; mysterious remedies, a
+great deal of moralising, and a great deal more of weeping. Indeed the
+whole of Pr&eacute;vost, like the whole of that "Sensibility Novel" of which he
+is a considerable though rather an outside practitioner, is pervaded
+with a gentle rain of tears wherein the personages seem to revel&mdash;indeed
+admit that they do so&mdash;in the midst of their woes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its miscellaneous curiosities.</div>
+
+<p>On the whole, however, the youthful&mdash;or almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> youthful&mdash;half-wisdom of
+Sainte-Beuve is better justified of its preference for the <i>M&eacute;moires</i>
+than of other things in the same article. I found it, reading it later
+on purpose and with "preventions" rather the other way, very much more
+readable than any of its companions (<i>Manon</i> is not its companion, but
+in a way its constituent), without being exactly readable <i>simpliciter</i>.
+All sorts of curious things might be dug out of it: for instance, quite
+at the beginning, a more definite declaration than I know elsewhere of
+that curious French title-system which has always been such a puzzle to
+Englishmen. "Il <i>se fit</i> appeler le Comte de ... et, se voyant un fils,
+il <i>lui donna</i> celui de Marquis de ..." There is a good deal in it which
+makes us think that Pr&eacute;vost had read Defoe, and something which makes it
+not extravagant to fancy that Thackeray had read Pr&eacute;vost. But once more
+"let us come to the real things&mdash;let us speak of" <i>Manon Lescaut</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Manon Lescaut.</i></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its uniqueness.</div>
+
+<p>It would be a very interesting question in that study of
+literature&mdash;rather unacademic, or perhaps academic in the best sense
+only&mdash;which might be so near and is so far&mdash;whether the man is most to
+be envied who reads <i>Manon Lescaut</i> for the first time in blissful
+ignorance of these other things, and even of what has been said of them;
+or he who has, by accident or design, toiled through the twenty volumes
+of the others and comes upon Her. My own case is the former: and I am
+far from quarrelling with it. But I sometimes like to fancy&mdash;now that I
+have reversed the proceeding&mdash;what it would have been like to dare the
+voices&mdash;the endless, dull, half-meaningless, though not threatening
+voices&mdash;of those other books&mdash;to refrain even from the appendix to the
+<i>M&eacute;moires</i> as such, and never, till the <i>Modern Greekess</i> has been
+dispatched, return to and possess the entire and perfect jewel of
+<i>Manon</i>. I used to wonder, when, for nearer five and twenty than twenty
+years, I read for review hundreds of novels, English and French, whether
+anybody would ever repeat Pr&eacute;vost's extraordinary spurt and "sport" in
+this wonderful little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> book. I am bound to say that I never knew an
+instance. The "first book" which gives a promise&mdash;dubious it may be, but
+still promising&mdash;and is never followed by anything that fulfils this, is
+not so very uncommon, though less common in prose fiction than in
+poetry. The not so very rare "single-speech" poems are also not real
+parallels. It is of the essence of poetry, according to almost every
+theory, that it should be, occasionally at least, inexplicable and
+unaccountable. I believe that every human being is capable of poetry,
+though I should admit that the exhibition of the capability would be in
+most cases&mdash;I am sure it would be in my own&mdash;"highly to be deprecated."
+But with a sober prose fiction of some scope and room and verge it is
+different. The face of Helen; the taste of nectar; the vision of the
+clouds or of the sea; the passion of a great action in oneself or
+others; the infinite poignancy of suffering or of pleasure, may
+draw&mdash;once and never again&mdash;immortal verse from an exceedingly mortal
+person. Such things might also draw a phrase or a paragraph of prose.
+But they could not extract a systematic and organised prose tale of some
+two hundred pages, each of them much fuller than those of our average
+six-shilling stuff; and yet leave the author, who had never shown
+himself capable of producing anything similar before, unable to produce
+anything in the least like it again. I wonder that the usual literary
+busybodies have never busied themselves&mdash;perhaps they have, for during a
+couple of decades I have not had the opportunity of knowing everything
+that goes on in French literature as I once did&mdash;with Pr&eacute;vost,
+demonstrating that <i>Manon</i> was a posthumous work of the Regent (who was
+a clever man), or an expression of a real passion which lay at the back
+of Richelieu's debauchery, or written by some unknown author from whom
+the Abb&eacute; bought it, and who died early, or something else of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>There does not, however, appear to be the slightest chance or hope or
+fear (whichever expression be preferred) of the kind. Although Pr&eacute;vost
+elsewhere indulges&mdash;as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> everybody else for a long time in France and
+England alike did, save creative geniuses like Fielding&mdash;in
+transparently feigned talk about the origins of his stories, he was a
+very respectable man in his way, and not at all likely to father or to
+steal any one else's work in a disreputable fashion. There are no other
+claimants for the book: and though it may be difficult for a foreigner
+to find the faults of style that Gustave Planche rebukes in Pr&eacute;vost
+generally, there is nothing in the mere style of <i>Manon</i> which sets it
+above the others.</p>
+
+<p>For once one may concede that the whole attraction of the piece, barring
+one or two transient but almost Shakespearian flashes of
+expression&mdash;such as the famous "Perfide Manon! Perfide!" when she and
+Des Grieux first meet after her earliest treason&mdash;is to be found in its
+marvellous humanity, its equally marvellous grasp of character, and the
+intense, the absolutely shattering pathos of the relations of the hero
+and heroine. There are those, of course, who make much of the <i>persona
+tertia</i>, Tiberge, the virtuous and friendly priest, who has a remarkable
+command of money for a not highly placed ecclesiastic, lends it with
+singular want of circumspection, and then meddles with the best of
+intentions and the most futile or mischievous of results. Very
+respectable man, Tiberge; but one with whom <i>on n'a que faire</i>. Manon
+and Des Grieux; Des Grieux and Manon&mdash;these are as all-sufficient to the
+reader as Manon was more than sufficient to Des Grieux, and as he, alas!
+was, if only in some ways, <i>in</i>sufficient to Manon.</p>
+
+<p>One of the things which are nuisances in Pr&eacute;vost's other books becomes
+pardonable, almost admirable, in this. His habit of incessant,
+straight-on narration by a single person, his avoidance of dialogue
+properly so called, is, as has been noted, a habit common to all these
+early novels, and, to our taste if not to that of their early readers,
+often disastrous. Here it is a positive advantage. Manon speaks very
+little; and so much the better. Her "comely face and her fair bodie" (to
+repeat once more a beloved quotation) speak for her to the ruin of her
+lover<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> and herself&mdash;to the age-long delectation of readers. On the other
+hand, the whole speech is Des Grieux', and never was a monologue better
+suited or justified. The worst of such things is usually that there are
+in them all sorts of second thoughts of the author. There is none of
+this littleness in the speech of Des Grieux. He is a gentle youth in the
+very best sense of the term, and as we gather&mdash;not from anything he says
+of himself, but from the general tenor&mdash;by no means a "wild gallant";
+affectionate, respectful to his parents, altogether "douce," and,
+indeed, rather (to start with) like Lord Glenvarloch in <i>The Fortunes of
+Nigel</i>. He meets Manon (Pr&eacute;vost has had the wits to make her a little
+older than her lover), and <i>actum est de</i> both of them.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The character of its heroine.</div>
+
+<p>But Manon herself? She talks (it has been said) very little, and it was
+not necessary that she should talk much. If she had talked as Marianne
+talks, we should probably hate her, unless, as is equally probable, we
+ceased to take any interest in her. She is a girl not of talk but of
+deeds: and her deeds are of course quite inexcusable. But still that
+great and long unknown verse of Prior, which tells how a more harmless
+heroine did various things&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As answered the end of her being created,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>fits her, and the deeds create her in their process, according to the
+wonderful magic of the novelist's art. Manon is not in the least a
+Messalina; it is not what Messalina wanted that she wants at all, though
+she may have no physical objection to it, and may rejoice in it when it
+is shared by her lover. Still less is she a Margaret of Burgundy, or one
+of the tigress-enchantresses of the Fronde, who would kill their lovers
+after enjoying their love. It has been said often, and is beyond all
+doubt true, that she would have been perfectly happy with Des Grieux if
+he had fulfilled the expostulations of George the Fourth as to Mr.
+Turveydrop, and had not only been known to the King, but had had twenty
+thousand a year. She wants nobody and nothing but him, as far as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>
+"Him" is concerned: but she does not want him in a cottage. And here the
+subtlety comes in. She does not in the least mind giving to others what
+she gives him, provided that they will give her what he cannot give. The
+possibility of this combination is of course not only shocking to Mrs.
+Grundy, but deniable by persons who are not Mrs. Grundy at all. Its
+existence is not really doubtful, though hardly anybody, except Pr&eacute;vost
+and (I repeat it, little as I am of an Ibsenite) Ibsen in the <i>Wild
+Duck</i>, has put it into real literature. Manon, like Gina and probably
+like others, does not really think what she gives of immense, or of any
+great, importance. People will give her, in exchange for it, what she
+does think of great, of immense importance; the person to whom she would
+quite honestly prefer to give it cannot give her these other things. And
+she concludes her bargain as composedly as any <i>bonne</i> who takes the
+basket to the shops and "makes its handle dance"&mdash;to use the French
+idiom&mdash;for her own best advantage. It does annoy her when she has to
+part from Des Grieux, and it does annoy her that Des Grieux should be
+annoyed at what she does. But she is made of no nun's flesh, and such
+soul as she has is filled with much desire for luxury and pleasure. The
+desire of the soul will have its way, and the flesh lends itself readily
+enough to the satisfaction thereof.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">And that of the hero.</div>
+
+<p>So, too, there is no such instance known to me of the presentation of
+two different characters, in two different ways, so complete and yet so
+idiosyncratic in each. Sainte-Beuve showed what he was going to become
+(as well, perhaps, as something which he was going to lose) in his
+slight but suggestive remarks on the relation of Des Grieux to the
+average <i>rou&eacute;</i> hero of that most <i>rou&eacute;</i> time. It is only a suggestion;
+he does not work it out. But it is worth working out a little. Des
+Grieux is <i>ab initio</i>, and in some ways <i>usque ad finem</i>, a sort of
+<i>ing&eacute;nu</i>. He seems to have no vicious tendencies whatever; and had Manon
+not supervened, might have been a very much more exemplary Chevalier de
+Malte than the usual run of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> dignitaries, who differed chiefly
+from their uncrossed comrades and brethren in having no wife to be
+unfaithful to. He is never false to Manon&mdash;the incident of one of
+Manon's lovers trying vainly to tempt his rival, with a pretty cast-off
+mistress of his own, is one of the most striking features of the book.
+He positively reveres, not his mother, who is dead, and reverence for
+whom would be nothing in a Frenchman, but his father, and even, it would
+seem, his elder brother&mdash;a last stretch of reverence quite unknown to
+many young English gentlemen who certainly would not do things that Des
+Grieux did. Except when Manon is concerned, it would seem that he might
+have been a kind of saint&mdash;as good at least as Tiberge. But his love for
+her and his desire for her entirely saturate and transform him. That he
+disobeys his father and disregards his brother is nothing: we all do
+that in less serious cases than his, and there is almost warrant for it
+in Scripture. But he cheats at play (let us frankly allow, remembering
+Grammont and others, that this was not in France the unpardonable sin
+that it has&mdash;for many generations, fortunately&mdash;been with us), at the
+suggestion of his rascally left-hand brother-in-law, in order to supply
+Manon's wants. He commits an almost deliberate (though he makes some
+excuses on this point) and almost cowardly murder, on an unarmed
+lay-brother of Saint-Sulpice, to get to Manon. And, worst of all, he
+consents to the stealing of moneys given to her by his supplanters in
+order to feed her extravagance. After this his suborning the King's
+soldiers to attack the King's constabulary on the King's highway to
+rescue Manon is nothing. But observe that, though it is certainly not
+"All for God," it <i>is</i> "All for Her." And observe further that all these
+things&mdash;even the murder&mdash;were quite common among the rank and file of
+that French aristocracy which was so busily hurrying on the French
+Revolution. Only, Des Grieux himself would pretty certainly not have
+done them if She had never come in his way. And he tells it all with a
+limpid and convincing clarity (as they would say now) which puts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> the
+whole thing before us. No apology is made, and no apology is needed. It
+is written in the books of the chronicles of Manon and Des Grieux; in
+the lives of Des Grieux and Manon, suppose them ever to have existed or
+to exist, it could not but happen.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The inevitableness of both and the inestimableness of their
+history.</div>
+
+<p>It is surely not profane (and perhaps it has been done already) to
+borrow for these luckless, and, if you will, somewhat graceless persons,
+the words of the mighty colophon of Matthew Arnold's most unequal but in
+parts almost finest poem, at least the first and last lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So rest, for ever rest, immortal pair,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The rustle of the eternal rain of love.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nor is it perhaps extravagant to claim for their creator&mdash;even for their
+reporter&mdash;the position of the first person who definitely vindicated for
+the novel the possibility of creating a passionate masterpiece,
+outstripping <i>La Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i> as <i>Othello</i> outstrips <i>A Woman
+Killed with Kindness</i>. As for the enormous remainder of him, if it is
+very frankly negligible by the mere reader, it is not quite so by the
+student. He was very popular, and, careless bookmaker as he was in a
+very critical time, his popularity scarcely failed him till his horrible
+death.<a name="FNanchor_342_342" id="FNanchor_342_342"></a><a href="#Footnote_342_342" class="fnanchor">[342]</a> It can scarcely be said that, except in the one great cited
+instance, he heightened or intensified the French novel, but he enlarged
+its scope, varied its interests, and combined new objectives with its
+already existing schemes, even in his less good work. In <i>Manon Lescaut</i>
+itself he gave a masterpiece, not only to the novel, not only to France,
+but to all literature and all the world.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cr&eacute;billon <i>fils</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The unfortunate nobleman as to whom Dickens has left us in doubt whether
+he was a peer in his own right or the younger son or a Marquis or Duke,
+pronounced Shakespeare "a clayver man."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> It was perhaps, in the
+particular instance, inadequate though true. I hardly know any one in
+literature of whom it is truer and more adequate than it is of Claude
+Prosper Jolyot de Cr&eacute;billon the younger, commonly called Cr&eacute;billon
+<i>fils</i>.<a name="FNanchor_343_343" id="FNanchor_343_343"></a><a href="#Footnote_343_343" class="fnanchor">[343]</a> His very name is an abomination to Mrs. Grundy, who
+probably never read, or even attempted to read, one of his naughty
+books. Gray's famous tribute<a name="FNanchor_344_344" id="FNanchor_344_344"></a><a href="#Footnote_344_344" class="fnanchor">[344]</a> to him&mdash;also known to a large number
+who are in much the same case with Mrs. Grundy&mdash;is distinctly
+patronising. But he is a very clever man indeed, and the cleverness of
+some of his books&mdash;especially those in dialogue&mdash;is positively amazing.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The case against him.</div>
+
+<p>At the same time it is of the first importance to make the due provisos
+and allowances, the want of which so frequently causes disappointment,
+if not positive disgust, when readers have been induced by unbalanced
+laudation to take up works of the literature of other days. There are,
+undoubtedly, things&mdash;many and heavy things&mdash;to be said against
+Cr&eacute;billon. A may say, "I am not, I think, <i>Mr.</i> Grundy: but I cannot
+stand your Cr&eacute;billon. I do not like a world where all the men are
+apparently atheists, and all the women are certainly the other thing
+mentioned in Donne's famous line. It disgusts and sickens me: and I will
+have none of it, however clever it may be." B, not quite agreeing with
+A, may take another tone, and observe, "He <i>is</i> clever and he <i>is</i>
+amusing: but he is terribly monotonous. I do not mind a visit to the
+'oyster-bearing shores' now and then, but I do not want to live in
+Lampsacus. After all, even in a pagan Pantheon, there are other
+divinities besides a cleverly palliated Priapus and a comparatively
+ladylike Cotytto. Seven volumes of however delicately veiled
+'sculduddery' are nearly as bad as a whole evening's golf-talk in a St.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>
+Andrews hotel, or a long men's dinner, where everybody but yourself is a
+member of an Amateur Dramatic Society." The present writer is not far
+from agreeing with B, while he has for A a respect which disguises no
+shadow of a sneer. Cr&eacute;billon does harp far too much on one string, and
+that one of no pure tone: and even the individual handlings of the
+subject are chargeable throughout his work with <i>longueurs</i>, in the
+greater part of it with sheer tedium. It is very curious, and for us of
+the greatest importance, to notice how this curse of long-windedness,
+episodic and hardly episodic "inset," endless talk "about it and about
+it," besets these pioneers of the modern novel. Whether it was a legacy
+of the "Heroics" or not it is difficult to say. I think it was&mdash;to some
+extent. But, as we have seen, it exists even in Lesage; it is found
+conspicuously in Marivaux; it "advances insupportably" in Pr&eacute;vost,
+except when some God intervenes to make him write (and to stop him
+writing) <i>Manon</i>; and it rests heavily even on Cr&eacute;billon, one of the
+lightest, if not one of the purest, of literary talents. It is
+impossible to deny that he suffers from monotony of general theme: and
+equally impossible to deny that he suffers from spinning out of
+particular pieces. There is perhaps not a single thing of his which
+would not have been better if it had been shorter: and two of his
+liveliest if also most risky pieces, <i>La Nuit et le Moment</i> and <i>Le
+Hasard au Coin du Feu</i>, might have been cut down to one half with
+advantage, and to a quarter with greater advantage still.</p>
+
+<p>There are, however, excuses for Cr&eacute;billon: and though it may seem a rash
+thing to say, and even one which gives the case away, there is, at least
+in these two and parts of <i>Le Sopha</i>, hardly a page&mdash;even of the parts
+which, if "cut," would improve the work as a whole&mdash;that does not in
+itself prove the almost elfish cleverness now assigned to him.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">For the defendant&mdash;The veracity of his artificiality and his
+consummate cleverness.</div>
+
+<p>The great excuse for him, from the non-literary point of view, is that
+this world of his&mdash;narrow though crowded as it is, corrupt,
+preposterous, inviting the Judgment that came after it as no period
+perhaps has ever done,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> except that immediately before the Deluge, that
+of the earlier Roman empire, and one other&mdash;was a real world in its day,
+and left, as all real things do, an abiding mark and influence on what
+followed. One of the scores and almost hundreds of sayings which
+distinguish him, trivial as he seems to some and no doubt disgusting as
+he seems to others, is made by one of his most characteristic and most
+impudent but not most offensive heroes <i>&agrave; la</i> Richelieu, who says, not
+in soliloquy nor to a brother <i>rou&eacute;</i>, but to the mistress of the moment:
+"If love-making is not always a pleasure, at any rate it is always a
+kind of occupation." That is the keynote of the Cr&eacute;billon novel: it is
+the handbook, with illustrative examples, of the business, employment,
+or vocation of flirting, in the most extensive and intensive meanings of
+that term comprehensible to the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Cr&eacute;billonesque atmosphere and method.</div>
+
+<p>Now you should never scamp or hurry over business: and Cr&eacute;billon
+observes this doctrine in the most praiseworthy fashion. With the
+thorough practicality of his century and of his nation (which has always
+been in reality the most practical of all nations) he sets to work to
+give us the ways and manners of his world. It is an odd world at first
+sight, but one gets used to its conventions. It is a world of what they
+used to call, in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century,
+"high fellers" and of great ladies, all of whom&mdash;saving for glimpses of
+military and other appointments for the men, which sometimes take them
+away and are useful for change of scene, of theatres, balls,
+gaming-tables for men and women both&mdash;"have nothing in the world to do"
+but carry on that occupation which Clitandre of "The Night and the
+Moment," at an extremely suitable time and in equally appropriate
+circumstances, refers to in the words quoted above. There are some other
+oddities about this world. In some parts of it nobody seems to be
+married. Mrs. Grundy, and even persons more exercised in actual fact
+than Mrs. Grundy, would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> expect them all to be, and to neglect the tie.
+But sometimes Cr&eacute;billon finds it easier to mask this fact. Often his
+ladies are actual widows, which is of course very convenient, and might
+be taken as a sign of grace in him by Mrs. G.: oftener it is difficult
+to say what they are legally. They are nearly all duchesses or
+marchionesses or countesses, just as the men hold corresponding ranks:
+and they all seem to be very well off. But their sole occupation is that
+conducted under the three great verbs, <i>Prendre</i>; <i>Avoir</i>; <i>Quitter</i>.
+These verbs are used rather more frequently, but by no means
+exclusively, of and by the men. Taking the stage nomenclature familiar
+to everybody from Moli&egrave;re, which Cr&eacute;billon also uses in some of his
+books, though he exchanges it for proper names elsewhere, let us suppose
+a society composed of Oronte, Clitandre, Eraste, Damis (men), and
+Cydalise, C&eacute;lie, Lucinde, Julie (ladies). Oronte "takes" Lucinde,
+"possesses" her for a time, and "quits" her for Julie, who has been
+meanwhile "taken," "possessed," and "quitted" by Eraste. Eraste passes
+to the conjugation of the three verbs with Cydalise, who, however, takes
+the initiative of "quitting" and conjugates "take" in joint active and
+passive with Damis. Meanwhile C&eacute;lie and Clitandre are similarly occupied
+with each other, and ready to "cut in" with the rest at fresh
+arrangements. These processes require much serious conversation, and
+this is related with the same mixture of gravity and irony which is
+bestowed on the livelier passages of action.</p>
+
+<p>The thing, in short, is most like an intensely intricate dance, with
+endless figures&mdash;with elaborate, innumerable, and sometimes
+indescribable stage directions. And the whole of it is written down
+carefully by M. Claude Prosper Jolyot de Cr&eacute;billon.</p>
+
+<p>He might have occupied his time much better? Perhaps, as to the subject
+of occupation. But with that we have, if not nothing, very little to do.
+The point is, How did he handle these better-let-alone subjects? and
+what contribution, in so handling them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> did he make to the general
+development of the novel?</p>
+
+<p>I am bound to say that I think, with the caution given above, he handled
+them, when he was at his best, singularly well, and gave hints, to be
+taken or left as they chose, to handlers of less disputable subjects
+than his.</p>
+
+<p>One at least of the most remarkable things about him is connected with
+this very disputableness. Voltaire and Sterne were no doubt greater men
+than Cr&eacute;billon <i>fils</i>: and though both of them dealt with the same class
+of subject, they also dealt with others, while he did not. But,
+curiously enough, the reproach of sniggering, which lies so heavily on
+Laurence Sterne and Fran&ccedil;ois Arouet, does not lie on Cr&eacute;billon. He has
+an audacity of grave persiflage<a name="FNanchor_345_345" id="FNanchor_345_345"></a><a href="#Footnote_345_345" class="fnanchor">[345]</a> which is sometimes almost Swiftian
+in a lower sphere: and it saves him from the unpardonable sin of the
+snigger. He has also&mdash;as, to have this grave persiflage, he almost
+necessarily must have&mdash;a singularly clear and flexible style, which is
+only made more piquant by the "-assiez's" and "-ussiez's" of the older
+language. Further, and of still greater importance for the novelist, he
+has a pretty wit, which sometimes almost approaches humour, and, if not
+a diabolically, a <i>diablotin</i>ically acute perception of human nature as
+it affects his subject. This perception rarely fails: and conventional,
+and very unhealthily conventional, as the Cr&eacute;billon world is, the people
+who inhabit it are made real people. He is, in those best things of his
+at least, never "out." We can see the ever-victorious duke (M. de
+Clerval of the <i>Hasard</i> is perhaps the closest to the Richelieu model of
+all Cr&eacute;billon's coxcomb-gallants), who, even after a lady has given him
+most unequivocal proofs of her affection, refuses for a long time, if
+not finally, to say that he loves her, because he has himself a
+graduated scheme of values in that direction, and though she may have
+touched his heart, etc., she has not quite come up to his "love"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>
+standard.<a name="FNanchor_346_346" id="FNanchor_346_346"></a><a href="#Footnote_346_346" class="fnanchor">[346]</a> And we know, too, though she is less common, the
+philosophical Marquise herself, who, "possessing" the most notoriously
+inconstant lover in all Paris (this same M. de Clerval, it happens),
+maintains her comparative indifference to the circumstance, alleging
+that even when he is most inconstant he is always "very affectionate,
+though a little <i>extinguished</i>." And in fact he goes off to her from the
+very fireside, where such curious things have chanced. Extravagant as
+are the situations in <i>La Nuit et le Moment</i>, the other best thing, they
+are, but for the <i>longueurs</i> already censured, singularly verisimilar on
+their own postulates. The trusty coachman, who always drives
+particularly slowly when a lady accompanies his master in the carriage,
+but would never think of obeying the check-string if his master's own
+voice did not authorise it; the invaluable <i>soubrette</i> who will sit up
+to any hour to play propriety, when her mistress is according a
+<i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>, but who, most naturally, always falls asleep&mdash;these
+complete, at the lower end of the scale, what the dukes and the
+countesses have begun at the upper. And Cr&eacute;billon, despite his
+verbosity, is never at a loss for pointed sayings to relieve and froth
+it up. Nor are these mere <i>mots</i> or <i>pointes</i> or conceits&mdash;there is a
+singular amount of life-wisdom in them, and a short anthology might be
+made here, if there were room for it, which would entirely vindicate the
+assertion.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Inequality of his general work&mdash;a survey of it.</div>
+
+<p>It is true that the praises just given to Cr&eacute;billon do not (as was
+indeed hinted above) apply to the whole of his work, or even to the
+larger part of it. An unfavourable critic might indeed say that, in
+strictness, they only apply to parts of <i>Le Sopha</i> and to the two little
+dialogue-stories just referred to. The method is, no doubt, one by no
+means easy to apply on the great scale, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> restriction of the
+subject adds to the difficulty. The longest regular stories of all, <i>Ah!
+Quel Conte!</i> and <i>Le Sopha</i> itself, though they should have been
+mentioned in reverse order, are resumptions of the Hamiltonian idea<a name="FNanchor_347_347" id="FNanchor_347_347"></a><a href="#Footnote_347_347" class="fnanchor">[347]</a>
+of chaining things on to the <i>Arabian Nights</i>. Cr&eacute;billon, however, does
+not actually resuscitate Shahriar and the sisters, but substitutes a
+later Caliph, Shah Baham, and his Sultana. The Sultan is exceedingly
+stupid, but also very talkative, and fond of interrupting his vizier and
+the other tale-tellers with wiseacreries; the Sultana is an acute enough
+lady, who governs her tongue in order to save her neck. The framework is
+not bad for a short story, but becomes a little tedious when it is made
+to enshrine two volumes, one of them pretty big. It is better in <i>Le
+Sopha</i> than in <i>Ah! Quel Conte!</i> and some of the tales that it gives us
+in the former are almost equal to the two excepted dialogues. Moreover,
+it is unluckily true that <i>Ah! Quel Conte!</i> (an ejaculation of the
+Sultana's at the beginning) might be, as Cr&eacute;billon himself doubtless
+foresaw, repeated with a sinister meaning by a reader at the end.
+<i>Tanza&iuml; et N&eacute;adarn&eacute;</i> or <i>L'&Eacute;cumoire</i>, another fairy story, though
+livelier in its incidents than <i>Ah! Quel Conte!</i>&mdash;nay, though it
+contains some of Cr&eacute;billon's smartest sayings, and has perhaps his
+nicest heroine,&mdash;is heavy on the whole, and in it, the author's
+<i>gauffre</i>-like lightness of "impropriety" being absent, the tone
+approaches nearer to that dismallest form of literature or
+non-literature&mdash;the deliberate obscene.</p>
+
+<p><i>Les &Eacute;garements du C&oelig;ur et de l'Esprit</i>, on the other hand&mdash;one of
+the author's earliest books&mdash;is the furthest from that most undesirable
+consummation, and one of the most curious, if not of the most amusing,
+of all. It recounts, from the mouth of the neophyte himself, the
+"forming" of a very young man&mdash;almost a boy&mdash;to this strange kind of
+commerce, by an elderly, but not yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> old, and still attractive
+coquette, Madame de Lursay, whose earlier life has scandalised even the
+not easily scandalisable society of her time (we are not told quite
+how), but who has recovered a reputation very slightly tarnished. The
+hero is flattered, but for a long time too timid and innocent to avail
+himself of the advantages offered to him; while, before very long,
+Madame de Lursay's wiles are interfered with by an "Inconnue-Ing&eacute;nue,"
+with whom he falls in deep calf-love of a quasi-genuine kind. The book
+includes sketches of the half-bravo gallants of the time, and is not
+negligible: but it is not vividly interesting.</p>
+
+<p>Still less so, though they contain some very lively passages, and are
+the chief <i>locus</i> for Cr&eacute;billon's treatment of the actual trio of
+husband, wife, and lover, are the <i>Lettres de la Marquise de M&mdash;&mdash; au
+Comte de P&mdash;&mdash;</i>. The scene in which the husband&mdash;unfaithful, peevish,
+and a <i>petit ma&icirc;tre</i>&mdash;enters his wife's room to find an ancient, gouty
+Marquis, who cannot get off his knees quick enough, and terminates the
+situation with all the <i>aplomb</i> of the Regency, is rather nice: and the
+gradual "slide" of the at first quite virtuous writer (the wife herself,
+of course) is well depicted. But love-letters which are neither
+half-badinage&mdash;which these are not&mdash;nor wholly passionate&mdash;which these
+never are till the last,<a name="FNanchor_348_348" id="FNanchor_348_348"></a><a href="#Footnote_348_348" class="fnanchor">[348]</a> when the writer is describing a state of
+things which Cr&eacute;billon could not manage at all&mdash;are very difficult
+things to bring off, and Claude Prosper is not quite equal to the
+situation.</p>
+
+<p>It will thus be seen that the objectors whom we have called A and B&mdash;or
+at least B&mdash;will find that they or he need not read all the pages of all
+the seven volumes to justify their views: and some other work, still to
+be mentioned, completes the exhibition. I confess, indeed, once more
+unblushingly, that I have not read every page of them myself. Had they
+fallen in my way forty years ago I should, no doubt, have done so; but
+forty years of critical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> experience and exercise give one the power, and
+grant one the right, of a more summary procedure in respect of matter
+thus postponed, unless it is perceived to be of very exceptional
+quality. These larger works of Cr&eacute;billon's are not good, though they are
+not by any means so bad as those of Pr&eacute;vost. There are nuggets, of the
+shrewd sense and the neat phrase with which he has been credited, in
+nearly all of them: and these the skilled prospector of reading gold
+will always detect and profit by. But, barring the possibility of a
+collection of such, the <i>&OElig;uvres Choisies</i> of Cr&eacute;billon need not
+contain more than the best parts of <i>Le Sopha</i>, the two comparatively
+short dialogue-tales, and a longer passage or two from <i>Tanza&iuml; et
+N&eacute;adarn&eacute;</i>. It would constitute (I was going to say a respectable, but as
+that is hardly the right word, I will say rather) a tolerable volume.
+Even in a wider representation <i>Les Heureux Orphelins</i> and <i>Lettres
+Ath&eacute;niennes</i> would yield very little.</p>
+
+<p>The first begins sensationally with the discovery, by a young English
+squire in his own park, of a foundling girl and boy&mdash;<i>not</i> of his own
+production&mdash;whom he brings up; and it ends with a tedious description of
+how somebody founded the first <i>petite maison</i> in England&mdash;a worthy work
+indeed. It is also noteworthy for a piece of bad manners, which, one
+regrets to say, French writers have too often committed; lords and
+ladies of the best known names and titles in or near Cr&eacute;billon's own
+day&mdash;such as Oxford, Suffolk, Pembroke&mdash;being introduced with the utmost
+nonchalance.<a name="FNanchor_349_349" id="FNanchor_349_349"></a><a href="#Footnote_349_349" class="fnanchor">[349]</a> Our novelists have many faults to charge themselves
+with, and Anthony Trollope, in <i>The Three Clerks</i>, produced a Frenchman
+with perhaps as impossible a name as any English travesty in French
+literature. But I do not remember any one introducing, in a <i>not</i>
+historical novel, a Duc de la Tremoille or a member of any of the
+branches of Rohan, at a time when actual bearers of these titles existed
+in France. As for the <i>Lettres Ath&eacute;niennes</i>, if it were not for
+completeness, I should scarcely even mention them. Alcibiades is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>
+chief male writer; Aspasia the chief female; but all of them, male and
+female, are equally destitute of Atticism and of interest. The contrast
+of the contrasts between Cr&eacute;billon's and Pr&eacute;vost's best and worst work
+is one of the oddest things in letters. One wonders how Pr&eacute;vost came to
+write anything so admirable as <i>Manon Lescaut</i>; one wonders how
+Cr&eacute;billon came to write anything so insufficient as the two books just
+criticised, and even others.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said, "This being so, why have you given half a chapter to
+these two writers, even with Lesage and Marivaux to carry it off?" The
+reason is that this is (or attempts to be) a history of the French
+novel, and that, in such a history, the canons of importance are not the
+same as those of the novel itself. <i>Gil Blas</i>, <i>Marianne</i>, <i>Manon
+Lescaut</i>, and perhaps even <i>Le Hasard au Coin du Feu</i> are interesting in
+themselves; but the whole work of their authors is important, and
+therefore interesting, to the historical student. For these authors
+carried further&mdash;a great deal further&mdash;the process of laying the
+foundations and providing the materials and plant for what was to come.
+Of actual masterpieces they only achieved the great, but not <i>equally</i>
+great, one of <i>Gil Blas</i> and the little one of <i>Manon Lescaut</i>. But it
+is not by masterpieces alone that the world of literature lives in the
+sense of prolonging its life. One may even say&mdash;touching the unclean
+thing paradox for a moment, and purifying oneself with incense, and
+salt, and wine&mdash;that the masterpieces of literature are more beautiful
+and memorable and delectable in themselves than fertile in results. They
+catch up the sum of their own possibilities, and utter it in such a
+fashion that there is no more to say in that fashion. The dreary
+imitation <i>Iliads</i>, the impossible sham <i>Divina Commedias</i>, the
+Sheridan-Knowles Shakespearian plays, rise up and terrify or bore us.
+Whereas these second-rate experimenters, these adventurers in quest of
+what they themselves hardly know, strike out paths, throw seed, sketch
+designs which others afterwards pursue, and plant out, and fill up.
+There are probably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> not many persons now who would echo Gray's wish for
+eternal romances of either Marivaux or Cr&eacute;billon; and the accompanying
+remarks in the same letter on <i>Joseph Andrews</i>, though they show some
+appreciation of the best characters, are quite inappreciative of the
+merit of the novel as a whole. For eternal variations of <i>Joseph
+Andrews</i>, "<i>Passe!</i>" as a French Gray might have said.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, I am myself pretty sure that Marivaux at least helped
+Richardson and Fielding, and there can be no doubt that Cr&eacute;billon helped
+Sterne. And what is more important to our present purpose, they and
+their companions in this chapter helped the novel in general, and the
+French novel in particular, to an extent far more considerable. We may
+not, of course, take the course of literary history&mdash;general or
+particular&mdash;which has been, as the course which in any case must have
+been. But at the same time we cannot neglect the facts. And it is a
+quite certain fact that, for the whole of the last half of the
+eighteenth century, and nearly the whole of the first quarter of the
+nineteenth, the French novel, as a novel, made singularly little
+progress. We shall have to deal in the next chapter, if not in the next
+two chapters, with at least two persons of far greater powers than any
+one mentioned in the last two. But we shall perhaps be able to show
+cause why even Voltaire and Rousseau, why certainly Diderot, why
+Marmontel and almost every one else till we come, not in this volume, to
+Chateaubriand, whose own position is a little doubtful, somehow failed
+to attain the position of a great advancer of the novel.</p>
+
+<p>These others, whatever their shortcomings, <i>had</i> advanced it by bringing
+it, in various ways, a great deal nearer to its actual ideal of a
+completed picture of real human life. Lesage had blended with his
+representation a good deal of the conventional picaresque; Marivaux had
+abused preciousness of language and petty psychology; Pr&eacute;vost, save in
+that marvellous windfall of his and the Muses which the historian of
+novels can hardly mention without taking off his hat if he has one on,
+or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> making his best bow if he has not, had gone wandering after
+impossible and uninteresting will-o'-the-wisps; Cr&eacute;billon had done worse
+than "abide in his inn," he had abided almost always in his polite<a name="FNanchor_350_350" id="FNanchor_350_350"></a><a href="#Footnote_350_350" class="fnanchor">[350]</a>
+bordello. But all of them had meant to be real; and all of them had, if
+only now and then, to an extent which even Madame de la Fayette had
+scarcely achieved before, attained reality.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_309_309" id="Footnote_309_309"></a><a href="#FNanchor_309_309"><span class="label">[309]</span></a> In fact it has been said, and may be said again, that
+Lesage is one of the prophets who have never had so much justice done
+them in their own countries as abroad.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_310_310" id="Footnote_310_310"></a><a href="#FNanchor_310_310"><span class="label">[310]</span></a> The first part of <i>Gil Blas</i> appeared in 1715; and nearly
+twenty years later gossip said that the fourth was not ready, though the
+author had been paid in advance for it six or seven years earlier.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_311_311" id="Footnote_311_311"></a><a href="#FNanchor_311_311"><span class="label">[311]</span></a> I have never read it in the original, being, though a
+great admirer of Spanish, but slightly versed therein.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_312_312" id="Footnote_312_312"></a><a href="#FNanchor_312_312"><span class="label">[312]</span></a> This, which is a sort of Appendix to the <i>Diable
+Boiteux</i>, is much the best of these <i>opera minora</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_313_313" id="Footnote_313_313"></a><a href="#FNanchor_313_313"><span class="label">[313]</span></a> He had a temper of the most <i>Breton-Bretonnant</i> type&mdash;not
+ill-natured but sturdy and independent, recalcitrant alike to
+ill-treatment and to patronage. He got on neither at the Bar, his first
+profession, nor with the regular actors, and he took vengeance in his
+books on both; while at least one famous anecdote shows his way of
+treating a patron&mdash;indeed, as it happened, a patroness&mdash;who presumed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_314_314" id="Footnote_314_314"></a><a href="#FNanchor_314_314"><span class="label">[314]</span></a> Asmodeus, according to his usual station in the infernal
+hierarchy, is <i>d&eacute;mon de la luxure</i>: but any fears or hopes which may be
+aroused by this description, and the circumstances of the action, will
+be disappointed. Lesage has plenty of risky situations, but his language
+is strictly "proper."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_315_315" id="Footnote_315_315"></a><a href="#FNanchor_315_315"><span class="label">[315]</span></a> Against this may be cited his equally anecdotic
+acceptance of Regnard, who was also "run" against Moli&egrave;re. But Regnard
+was a "classic" and orthodox in his way; Lesage was a free-lance, and
+even a Romantic before Romanticism. Boileau knew that evil, as evil
+seemed to him, <i>had</i> come from Spain; he saw more coming in this, and if
+he anticipated more still in the future, 1830 proved him no false
+prophet.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_316_316" id="Footnote_316_316"></a><a href="#FNanchor_316_316"><span class="label">[316]</span></a> In other words, there is a unity of personality in the
+attitude which the hero takes to and in them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_317_317" id="Footnote_317_317"></a><a href="#FNanchor_317_317"><span class="label">[317]</span></a> And in it too, of course; as well as in Spain's
+remarkable but too soon re-enslaved criticism.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_318_318" id="Footnote_318_318"></a><a href="#FNanchor_318_318"><span class="label">[318]</span></a> As he says of himself (vii. x.): <i>Enfin, apr&egrave;s un s&eacute;v&egrave;re
+examen je tombais d'accord avec moi-m&ecirc;me, que si je n'&eacute;tais pas un
+fripon, il ne s'en fallait gu&egrave;re.</i> And the Duke of Lerma tells him
+later, "<i>M. de Santillane, &agrave; ce que je vois, vous avez &eacute;t&eacute; tant soit
+peu</i> picaro."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_319_319" id="Footnote_319_319"></a><a href="#FNanchor_319_319"><span class="label">[319]</span></a> The two most undoubted cases&mdash;his ugly and, unluckily,
+repeated acceptance of the part of Pandarus-Leporello&mdash;were only too
+ordinary rascalities in the seventeenth century. The books of the
+chronicles of England and France show us not merely clerks and valets
+but gentlemen of every rank, from esquire to duke, eagerly accepting
+this office.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_320_320" id="Footnote_320_320"></a><a href="#FNanchor_320_320"><span class="label">[320]</span></a> In a curious passage of Bk. XII. Chap. I. in which Gil
+disclaims paternity and resigns it to Marialva. This may have been
+prompted by a desire to lessen the turpitude of the go-between business;
+but it is a clumsy device, and makes Gil look a fool as well as a
+knave.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_321_321" id="Footnote_321_321"></a><a href="#FNanchor_321_321"><span class="label">[321]</span></a> One of Lesage's triumphs is the way in which, almost to
+the last, "M. de Santillane," despite the rogueries practised often on
+and sometimes by him, retains a certain gullibility, or at least
+ingenuousness.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_322_322" id="Footnote_322_322"></a><a href="#FNanchor_322_322"><span class="label">[322]</span></a> Not of course as opposed to "romantic," but as = "chief
+and principal."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_323_323" id="Footnote_323_323"></a><a href="#FNanchor_323_323"><span class="label">[323]</span></a> The reader must not forget that this formidable word
+means "privateer" rather than "pirate" in French, and that this was the
+golden age of the business in that country.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_324_324" id="Footnote_324_324"></a><a href="#FNanchor_324_324"><span class="label">[324]</span></a> Those who are curious may find something on him by the
+present writer, not identical with the above account, in an essay
+entitled <i>A Study of Sensibility</i>, reprinted in <i>Essays on French
+Novelists</i> (London, 1891), and partly, but outside of the Marivaux part,
+reproduced in Chap. XII. of the present volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_325_325" id="Footnote_325_325"></a><a href="#FNanchor_325_325"><span class="label">[325]</span></a> By M. Gustave Larroumet. Paris, 1882.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_326_326" id="Footnote_326_326"></a><a href="#FNanchor_326_326"><span class="label">[326]</span></a> I need hardly say that I am not referring to things like
+<i>Rebecca and Rowena</i> or <i>A Legend of the Rhine</i>, which "burst the outer
+shell of sin," and, like Mrs. Martha Gwynne in the epitaph, "hatch
+themselves a cherubin" in each case.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_327_327" id="Footnote_327_327"></a><a href="#FNanchor_327_327"><span class="label">[327]</span></a> The reader will perhaps excuse the reminder that the
+sense in which we (almost exclusively) use this word, and which it had
+gained in French itself by the time of Talleyrand's famous double-edged
+sarcasm on person and world (<i>Il n'est pas parvenu: il est arriv&eacute;</i>), was
+not quite original. The <i>parvenu</i> was simply a person who <i>had</i> "got
+on": the disobliging slur of implication on his former position, and
+perhaps on his means of freeing himself from it, came later. It is
+doubtful whether there is much, if indeed there is any, of this slur in
+Marivaux's title.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_328_328" id="Footnote_328_328"></a><a href="#FNanchor_328_328"><span class="label">[328]</span></a> It is the acme of what may be called innocent corruption.
+She does not care for her master, nor apparently for vicious pleasure,
+nor&mdash;certainly&mdash;for money as such. She does care for Jacob, and wants to
+marry him; the money will make this possible; so she earns it by the
+means that present themselves, and puts it at his disposal.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_329_329" id="Footnote_329_329"></a><a href="#FNanchor_329_329"><span class="label">[329]</span></a> He is proof against his master's threats if he refuses;
+as well as against the money if he accepts. Unluckily for Genevi&egrave;ve,
+when he breaks away she faints. Her door and the money-box are both left
+open, and the latter disappears.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_330_330" id="Footnote_330_330"></a><a href="#FNanchor_330_330"><span class="label">[330]</span></a> Here and elsewhere the curious cheapness of French living
+(despite what history tells of crushing taxation, etc.) appears. The
+<i>locus classicus</i> for this is generally taken to be Mme. de Maintenon's
+well-known letter about her brother's housekeeping. But here, well into
+another century, Mlle. Habert's 4000 <i>livres</i> a year are supposed to be
+at least relative affluence, while in <i>Marianne</i> (<i>v. inf.</i>) M. de
+Climal thinks 500 or 600 enough to tempt her, and his final bequest of
+double that annuity is represented as making a far from despicable <i>dot</i>
+even for a good marriage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_331_331" id="Footnote_331_331"></a><a href="#FNanchor_331_331"><span class="label">[331]</span></a> The much greater blood-thirstiness of the French
+highwayman, as compared with the English, has been sometimes attributed
+by humanitarians to the "wheel"&mdash;and has often been considered by
+persons of sense as justifying that implement.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_332_332" id="Footnote_332_332"></a><a href="#FNanchor_332_332"><span class="label">[332]</span></a> The Devil's Advocate may say that Marianne turns out to
+be of English extraction after all&mdash;but it is not Marivaux who tells us
+so.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_333_333" id="Footnote_333_333"></a><a href="#FNanchor_333_333"><span class="label">[333]</span></a> To question or qualify Marianne's virtue, even in the
+slightest degree, may seem ungracious; for it certainly withstands what
+to some girls would have been the hardest test of all&mdash;that is to say,
+not so much the offer of riches if she consents, as the apparent
+certainty of utter destitution if she refuses. At the same time, the
+Devil's Advocate need not be a Kelly or a Cockburn to make out some
+damaging suggestions. Her vague, and in no way solidly justified, but
+decided family pride seems to have a good deal to do with her refusal;
+and though this shows the value of the said family pride, it is not
+exactly virtue in itself. Still more would appear to be due to the
+character of the suit and the suitor. M. de Climal is not only old and
+unattractive; not only a sneak and a libertine; but he is a clumsy
+person, and he has not, as he might have done, taken Marianne's measure.
+The mere shock of his sudden transformation from a pious protector into
+a prospective "keeper," who is making a bid for a new concubine, has
+evidently an immense effect on her quick nervous temperament. She is not
+at all the kind of girl to like to be the plaything of an old man; and
+she is perfectly shrewd enough to see that vengeance, and fear as
+regards his nephew, have as much as anything else, or more, to do with
+the way in which he brusques his addresses and hurries his gift.
+Further, she has already conceived a fancy, at least, for that nephew
+himself; and one sees the "jury droop," as Dickens has put it, with
+which the Counsel of the Prince of the Air would hint that, if the
+offers had come in a more seductive fashion from Valville himself, they
+might not have been so summarily rejected. But let it be observed that
+these considerations, while possibly unfair to Marianne, are not in the
+least derogatory to Marivaux himself. On the contrary, it is greatly to
+his credit that he should have created a character of sufficient
+lifelikeness and sufficient complexity to serve as basis for
+"problem"-discussions of the kind.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_334_334" id="Footnote_334_334"></a><a href="#FNanchor_334_334"><span class="label">[334]</span></a> To put the drift of the above in other words, we do not
+need to hear any more of Marianne in any position, because we have had
+enough shown us to know generally what she would do, say, and think, in
+all positions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_335_335" id="Footnote_335_335"></a><a href="#FNanchor_335_335"><span class="label">[335]</span></a> It has been observed that there is actually a Meredithian
+quality in Aristides of Smyrna, though he wrote no novel. A tale in
+Greek, to illustrate the parallel, would be an admirable subject for a
+University Prize.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_336_336" id="Footnote_336_336"></a><a href="#FNanchor_336_336"><span class="label">[336]</span></a> Two descriptions of "Marivaudage" (which, by the way, was
+partly anticipated by Fontenelle)&mdash;both, if I do not mistake, by
+Cr&eacute;billon <i>fils</i>&mdash;are famous: "Putting down not only everything you said
+and thought, but also everything you would like to have thought and
+said, but did not," and, "Introducing to each other words which never
+had thought of being acquainted." Both of these perhaps hit the modern
+forms of the phenomenon even harder than they hit their original butt.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_337_337" id="Footnote_337_337"></a><a href="#FNanchor_337_337"><span class="label">[337]</span></a> It is only fair to the poor Prioress to say that there is
+hardly a heroine in fiction who is more deeply in love with her own
+pretty little self than Marianne.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_338_338" id="Footnote_338_338"></a><a href="#FNanchor_338_338"><span class="label">[338]</span></a> One does not know whether it was prudence, or that
+materialism which, though he was no <i>philosophe</i>, he shared with most of
+his contemporaries, which prevented Marivaux from completing this sharp
+though mildly worded criticism. The above-mentioned profane have hinted
+that both the placidity and the indifference of the persons concerned,
+whether Catholic or Calvinist, arise from their certainty of their own
+safety in another world, and their looking down on less "guaranteed"
+creatures in this. It may be just permissible to add that a comparison
+of Chaucer's and Marivaux's prioresses will suggest itself to many
+persons, and should be found delectable by all fit ones.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_339_339" id="Footnote_339_339"></a><a href="#FNanchor_339_339"><span class="label">[339]</span></a> His books on Margaret of Anjou and William the Conqueror
+are odd crosses between actual historical essays and the still unborn
+historical novel.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_340_340" id="Footnote_340_340"></a><a href="#FNanchor_340_340"><span class="label">[340]</span></a> Mlle. de Launay, better known as Mme. de Staal-Delaunay,
+saw, as most would have seen, a resemblance in this to the famous Mlle.
+A&iuml;ss&eacute;'s. But the latter was bought as a little child by her provident
+"protector," M. de Ferr&eacute;ol. Mlle. A&iuml;ss&eacute; herself had earlier read the
+<i>M&eacute;moires d'un Homme de Qualit&eacute;</i> and did not think much of them. But
+this was the earlier part. It would be odd if she had not appreciated
+Manon had she read it: but she died in the year of its appearance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_341_341" id="Footnote_341_341"></a><a href="#FNanchor_341_341"><span class="label">[341]</span></a> The excellent but rather stupid editor of the [Dutch]
+<i>&OElig;uvres Choisies</i> above noticed has given abstracts of Pr&eacute;vost's
+novels as well as of Richardson's, which the Abb&eacute; translated. These,
+with Sainte-Beuve's of the <i>M&eacute;moires</i>, will help those who want
+something more than what is in the text, while declining the Sahara of
+the original. But, curiously enough, the Dutchman does not deal with the
+end of <i>Cl&eacute;veland</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_342_342" id="Footnote_342_342"></a><a href="#FNanchor_342_342"><span class="label">[342]</span></a> He had a fit of apoplexy when walking, and instead of
+being bled was actually cut open by a village super-Sangrado, who
+thought him dead and only brought him to life&mdash;to expire actually in
+torment.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_343_343" id="Footnote_343_343"></a><a href="#FNanchor_343_343"><span class="label">[343]</span></a> Cr&eacute;billon <i>p&egrave;re</i>, tragedian and academician, is one of
+the persons who have never had justice done to them: perhaps because
+they never quite did justice to themselves. His plays are unequal,
+rhetorical, and as over-heavy as his son's work is over-light. But, if
+we want to find the true tragic touch of verse in the French eighteenth
+century, we must go to him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_344_344" id="Footnote_344_344"></a><a href="#FNanchor_344_344"><span class="label">[344]</span></a> "Be it mine to read endless romances of Marivaux and
+Cr&eacute;billon."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_345_345" id="Footnote_345_345"></a><a href="#FNanchor_345_345"><span class="label">[345]</span></a> Learnt, no doubt, to a great extent from Anthony
+Hamilton, with whose family, as has been noticed, he had early
+relations.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_346_346" id="Footnote_346_346"></a><a href="#FNanchor_346_346"><span class="label">[346]</span></a> He goes further, and points out that, as she is his
+<i>really</i> beloved Marquise's most intimate friend, she surely wouldn't
+wish him to declare himself false to that other lady?&mdash;having also
+previously observed that, after what has occurred, he could never think
+of deceiving his C&eacute;lie herself by false declarations. These
+topsy-turvinesses are among Cr&eacute;billon's best points, and infinitely
+superior to the silly "platitudes reversed" which have tried to produce
+the same effect in more recent times.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_347_347" id="Footnote_347_347"></a><a href="#FNanchor_347_347"><span class="label">[347]</span></a> It has been said more than once that Cr&eacute;billon had early
+access to Hamilton's MSS. He refers directly to the Facardins in <i>Ah!
+Quel Conte!</i> and makes one of his characters claim to be grand-daughter
+of Cristalline la Curieuse herself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_348_348" id="Footnote_348_348"></a><a href="#FNanchor_348_348"><span class="label">[348]</span></a> Nor perhaps even then, for passion is absolutely unknown
+to our author. One touch of it would send the curious Rupert's drop of
+his microcosm to shivers, as <i>Manon Lescaut</i> itself in his time, and
+<i>Adolphe</i> long after, show.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_349_349" id="Footnote_349_349"></a><a href="#FNanchor_349_349"><span class="label">[349]</span></a> Some remarks are made by "Madame <i>H&eacute;penny</i>"&mdash;a very
+pleasing phoneticism, and, though an actual name, not likely to offend
+any actual person.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_350_350" id="Footnote_350_350"></a><a href="#FNanchor_350_350"><span class="label">[350]</span></a> No sneer is intended in this adjective. Except in one or
+two of the personages of <i>Les &Eacute;garements</i>, Cr&eacute;billon's intended
+gentlemen are nearly always well-bred, however ill-moralled they may be,
+and his ladies (with the same caution) are ladies. It is with him, in
+this last point at any rate, as with our own Congreve, whom he rather
+closely resembles in some ways: though I was amused the other day to
+find some twentieth-century critical objections to actresses' rendering
+of <i>Love for Love</i> as "too well-bred." The fact is that the tradition of
+"breeding" never broke down in France till the <i>philosophe</i> period,
+while with us it lasted till&mdash;when shall we say?</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE <i>PHILOSOPHE</i> NOVEL</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">The use of the novel for "purpose"&mdash;Voltaire.</div>
+
+<p>It has been for some time a commonplace&mdash;though, like most commonplaces,
+it is probably much more often simply borrowed than an actual and (even
+in the sense of <i>communis</i>) original perception of the borrowers&mdash;that
+nothing shows the comparative inevitableness of the novel in the
+eighteenth century better than the use of it by persons who would, at
+other times, have used quite different forms to subserve similar
+purposes. The chief instance of this with us is, of course, Johnson in
+<i>Rasselas</i>, but it is much more variously and voluminously, if not in
+any single instance much better, illustrated in France by the three
+great leaders of the <i>philosophe</i> movement; by considerable, if
+second-rate figures, more or less connected with that movement, like
+Marmontel and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; and by many lesser writers.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no question that, in more ways than one, Voltaire<a name="FNanchor_351_351" id="FNanchor_351_351"></a><a href="#Footnote_351_351" class="fnanchor">[351]</a>
+deserves the first place in this chapter, not only by age, by volume,
+and by variety of general literary ability, but because he, perhaps more
+than any of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> others, is a tale-teller born. That he owes a good deal
+to Hamilton, and something directly to Hamilton's master,
+Saint-&Eacute;vremond, has been granted elsewhere; but that he is dependent on
+these models to such an extent as to make his actual production unlikely
+if the models had not been ready for him, may be roundly denied. There
+are in literature some things which must have existed, and of which it
+is not frivolous to say that if their actual authors had not been there,
+or had declined to write them, they would have found somebody else to do
+it. Of these, <i>Candide</i> is evidently one, and more than one of
+<i>Candide's</i> smaller companions have at least something of the same
+characteristic. Yet one may also say that if Voltaire himself had not
+written these, he must have written other things of the kind. The
+mordant wit, the easy, fluent, rippling style, so entirely free from
+boisterousness yet with constant "wap" of wavelet and bursting of
+foam-bubble; above all, the pure unadulterated faculty of tale-telling,
+must have found vent and play somehow. It had been well if the
+playfulness had not been, as playfulness too often is, of what
+contemporary English called an "unlucky" (that is, a "mischievous")
+kind; and if the author had not been constantly longing to make somebody
+or many bodies uncomfortable,<a name="FNanchor_352_352" id="FNanchor_352_352"></a><a href="#Footnote_352_352" class="fnanchor">[352]</a> to damage and defile shrines, to
+exhibit a misanthropy more really misanthropic, because less passionate
+and tragical, than Swift's, and, in fact, as his patron, persecutor, and
+counterpart, Frederick the Jonathan-Wildly Great, most justly observed
+of him, to "play monkey-tricks," albeit monkey-tricks of immense talent,
+if not actually of genius. If the recent attempts to interpret
+monkey-speech were to come to something, and if, as a consequence,
+monkeys were taught to write, one may be sure that prose fiction would
+be their favourite department, and that their productions would be,
+though almost certainly disreputable, quite certainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> amusing. In fact
+there would probably be some among these which would be claimed, by
+critics of a certain type, as hitherto unknown works of Voltaire
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Yet if the straightforward tale had not, owing to the influences
+discussed in the foregoing chapters, acquired a firm hold, it is at
+least possible that he would not have adopted it (for originality of
+form was not Voltaire's <i>forte</i>), but would have taken the dialogue, or
+something else capable of serving his purpose. As it was, the particular
+field or garden had already been marked out and hedged after a fashion;
+tools and methods of cultivation had been prepared; and he set to work
+to cultivate it with the application and intelligence recommended in the
+famous moral of his most famous tale&mdash;a moral which, it is only fair to
+say, he did carry out almost invariably. A garden of very questionable
+plants was his, it may be; but that is another matter. The fact and the
+success of the cultivation are both undeniable.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">General characteristics of his tales.</div>
+
+<p>At the same time, Voltaire&mdash;if indeed, as was doubted just now, he be a
+genius at all&mdash;is not a genius, or even a djinn, of the kind that
+creates and leaves something Melchisedec-like; alone and isolated from
+what comes before and what comes after. He is an immense talent&mdash;perhaps
+the greatest talent-but-not-genius ever known&mdash;who utilises and improves
+and develops rather than invents. It is from this that his faculty of
+never boring, except when he has got upon the Scriptures, comes; it is
+because of this also that he never conceives anything really, simply,
+absolutely <i>great</i>. His land is never exactly weary, but there is no
+imposing and sheltering and refreshing rock in it. These <i>romans</i> and
+<i>contes</i> and <i>nouvelles</i> of his stimulate, but they do not either rest
+or refresh. They have what is, to some persons at any rate, the
+theatrical quality, not the poetical or best-prosaic. But as nearly
+consummate works of art, or at least craft, they stand almost alone.</p>
+
+<p>He had seen<a name="FNanchor_353_353" id="FNanchor_353_353"></a><a href="#Footnote_353_353" class="fnanchor">[353]</a> the effect of which the fairy tale of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>
+sophisticated kind was capable, and the attraction which it had for both
+vulgars, the great and the small: and he made the most of it. He kept
+and heightened its <i>haut go&ucirc;t</i>; he discarded the limitations to a very
+partial and conventional society which Cr&eacute;billon put on it; but he
+limited it in other ways to commonplace and rather vulgar fancy, without
+the touches of imagination which Hamilton had imparted. Yet he infused
+an even more accurate appreciation of certain phases of human nature
+than those predecessors or partial contemporaries of his who were
+discussed in the last chapter had introduced; he <i>practicalised</i> it to
+the <i>n</i>th, and he made it almost invariably subordinate to a direct,
+though a sometimes more or less ignoble, purpose. There is no doubt that
+he had learnt a great deal from Lucian and from Lucian's French
+imitators, perhaps as far back as Bonaventure des P&eacute;riers; there is, I
+think, little that he had added as much as he could add from Swift.<a name="FNanchor_354_354" id="FNanchor_354_354"></a><a href="#Footnote_354_354" class="fnanchor">[354]</a>
+His stolen or borrowed possessions from these sources, and especially
+this last, remind one in essence rather of the pilferings of a "light
+horseman," or river-pirate who has hung round an "old three-decker,"
+like that celebrated in Mr. Kipling's admirable poem, and has caught
+something even of the light from "her tall poop-lanterns shining so far
+above him," besides picking up overboard trifles, and cutting loose
+boats and cables. But when he gets to shore and to his own workshop, his
+almost unequalled power of sheer wit, and his general craftsmanship,
+bring out of these lootings something admirable in its own way.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Candide.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>Candide</i> is almost "great," and though the breed of Dr. Pangloss in its
+original kind is nearly extinct, the England which suffered the
+approach, and has scarcely yet allowed itself to comprehend the reality,
+of the war of 1914, ought to know that there have been and are
+Pangloss<i>otins</i> of almost appalling variety. The book does not really
+require the smatches of sculduddery,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> which he has smeared over it, to
+be amusing; for its lifelikeness carries it through. As is well known,
+Johnson admitted the parallel with <i>Rasselas</i>, which is among the most
+extraordinary coincidences of literature. I have often wondered whether
+anybody ever took the trouble to print the two together. There would be
+many advantages in doing so; but they might perhaps be counter-balanced
+by the fact that some of the most fervent admirers of <i>Rasselas</i> would
+be infinitely shocked by <i>Candide</i>, and that perhaps more of the special
+lovers of <i>Candide</i> would find themselves bored to extinction by
+<i>Rasselas</i>. Let those who can not only value but enjoy both be thankful,
+but not proud.</p>
+
+<p>Many people have written about the Consolations of Old Age, not seldom,
+it is to be feared, in a "Who's afraid?" sort of spirit. But there are a
+few, an apple or two by the banks of Ulai, which we may pluck as the
+night approaches. One is almost necessarily accidental, for it would be
+rash and somewhat cold-blooded to plan it. It consists in the reading,
+after many years, of a book once familiar almost to the point of knowing
+by heart, and then laid aside, not from weariness or disgust, but merely
+as things happened. This, as in some other books mentioned in this
+history, was the case with the present writer in respect of <i>Candide</i>.
+From twenty to forty, or thereabouts, I must have read it over and over
+again; the sentences drop into their places almost without exercising
+any effort of memory to recognise them. From forty to seventy I do not
+think I read it at all; because no reason made reading necessary, and
+chance left it untouched on the shelf. Sometimes, as everybody knows,
+the result of renewed acquaintance in such cases is more or less severe
+disappointment; in a few of the happiest, increased pleasure. But it is
+perhaps the severest test of a classic (in the exact but limited sense
+of that word) that its effect shall be practically unchanged, shall have
+been established in the mind and taste with such a combination of
+solidity and <i>nettet&eacute;</i>, that no change is possible. I do not think I
+have ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> found this to be more the case than with the history of
+Candide (who was such a good fellow, without being in the least a prig,
+as I am afraid Zadig was, that one wonders how Voltaire came to think of
+him) and of Mademoiselle Cun&eacute;gonde (nobody will ever know anything about
+style who does not feel what the continual repetition in Candide's mouth
+of the "Mademoiselle" does) of the indomitable Pangloss, and the
+detestable baron, and the forgivable Paquette, and that philosopher
+Martin, who did <i>not</i> "let cheerfulness break in," and the admirable
+Cacambo, who shows that, much as he hated Rousseau, Voltaire himself was
+not proof against the noble savage mania.<a name="FNanchor_355_355" id="FNanchor_355_355"></a><a href="#Footnote_355_355" class="fnanchor">[355]</a></p>
+
+<p>As a piece (<i>v. sup.</i>) of art or craft, the thing is beyond praise or
+pay. It could not be improved, on its own specification, except that
+perhaps the author might have told us how Mademoiselle Cun&eacute;gonde, who
+had kept her beauty through some very severe experiences, suddenly lost
+it. It is idle as literary, though not as historical, criticism to say,
+as has been often said about the Byng passage, that Voltaire's smartness
+rather "goes off through the touch-hole," seeing that the admiral's
+execution did very considerably "encourage the others." It is
+superfluous to urge the unnecessary "smuts," which are sometimes not in
+the least amusing. All these and other sought-for knots are lost in the
+admirable smoothness of this reed, which waves in the winds of time with
+unwitherable greenness, and slips through the hand, as you stroke it,
+with a coaxing tickle. To praise its detail would again be idle&mdash;nobody
+ought to read such praise who can read itself; and if anybody, having
+read its first page, fails to see that it is, and how it is,
+praiseworthy, he never will or would be converted if all the eulogies of
+the most golden-mouthed critics of the world were poured upon him in a
+steady shower. As a whole it is undoubtedly the best, and (except part
+of <i>Zadig</i>) it is nowhere else matched in the book of the romances of
+Voltaire, while for those who demand "purposes" and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> "morals," it stands
+almost alone. It is the comic "Vanity of Human Wishes" in prose, as
+<i>Rasselas</i> is the tragic or, at least, serious version: and, as has been
+said, the two make an unsurpassable sandwich, or, at least, <i>tartine</i>.
+Nor could it have been told, in any other way than by prose fiction,
+with anything like the same effect, either as regards critical judgment
+or popular acceptance.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Zadig</i> and its satellites.</div>
+
+<p><i>Zadig</i>, as has been indicated already, probably ranks in point of merit
+next to <i>Candide</i>. If it had stopped about half-way, there could be no
+doubt about the matter. The reader is caught at once by one of the most
+famous and one of the most Voltairian of phrases, "Il savait de la
+m&eacute;taphysique ce qu'on a su dans tous les &acirc;ges, c'est-&agrave;-dire fort peu de
+chose," a little more discussion of which saying, and of others like it,
+may perhaps be given later. The successive disappointments of the almost
+too perfect<a name="FNanchor_356_356" id="FNanchor_356_356"></a><a href="#Footnote_356_356" class="fnanchor">[356]</a> hero are given with the simplicity just edged with
+irony which is Voltaire's when he is at his best, though he undoubtedly
+learnt it from the masters already assigned, and&mdash;the suggestion would
+have made him very angry, and would probably have attracted one of his
+most Yahoo-like descents on this humble and devoted head&mdash;from Lesage.
+But though the said head has no objection&mdash;much the reverse&mdash;to "happy
+endings," the romance-finish of <i>Zadig</i> has always seemed to it a
+mistake. Still, how many mistakes would one pardon if they came after
+such a success? <i>Babouc</i>, the first of those miniature <i>contes</i> (they
+are hardly "tales" in one sense), which Voltaire managed so admirably,
+has the part-advantage part-disadvantage of being likewise the first of
+a series of satires on French society, which, piquant as they are, would
+certainly have been both more piquant and more weighty if there had been
+fewer of them. It is full of the perfect, if not great, Voltairian
+phrases,&mdash;the involuntary <i>Mene Tekel</i>, "Babouc conclut qu'une telle
+soci&eacute;t&eacute; ne pouvait subsister"; the palinode after a fashion, "Il
+s'affectionnait<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> &agrave; la ville, dont le peuple &eacute;tait doux [oh! Nemesis!]
+poli et bien-faisant, quoique l&eacute;ger, m&eacute;disant et plein de vanit&eacute;"; and
+the characteristic collection of parallel between Babouc and Jonah,
+surely not objectionable even to the most orthodox, "Mais quand on a &eacute;t&eacute;
+trois jours dans le corps d'une baleine on n'est pas de si bonne humeur
+que quand on a &eacute;t&eacute; &agrave; l'op&eacute;ra, &agrave; la com&eacute;die et qu'on a soup&eacute; en bonne
+compagnie."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Microm&eacute;gas.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>Memnon, ou La Sagesse Humaine</i> is still less of a tale, only a lively
+sarcastic apologue; but he would be a strange person who would quarrel
+with its half-dozen pages, and much the same may be said of the <i>Voyages
+de Scarmentado</i>. Still, one feels in both of them, and in many of the
+others, that they are after all not much more than chips of an inferior
+rehandling of <i>Gulliver</i>. <i>Microm&eacute;gas</i>, as has been said, does not
+disguise its composition as something of the kind; but the desire to
+annoy Fontenelle, while complimenting him after a fashion as the "dwarf
+of Saturn," and perhaps other strokes of personal scratching, have put
+Voltaire on his mettle. You will not easily find a better Voltairism of
+its particular class than, "Il faut bien citer ce qu'on ne comprend
+point du tout, dans la langue qu'on entend le moins." But, as so often
+happens, the cracker in the tail is here the principal point.
+Microm&eacute;gas, the native of Sirius, who may be Voltaire himself, or
+anybody else&mdash;after his joint tour through the universes (much more
+amusing than that of the late Mr. Bailey's Festus), with the smaller but
+still gigantic Saturnian&mdash;writes a philosophical treatise to instruct us
+poor microbes of the earth, and it is taken to Paris, to the secretary
+of the Academy of Science (Fontenelle himself). "Quand le s&eacute;cretaire
+l'eut ouvert il ne vit rien qu'un livre tout blanc. 'Ah!' dit-il, 'je
+m'en &eacute;tais bien dout&eacute;.'" Voltaire did a great deal of harm in the world,
+and perhaps no solid good;<a name="FNanchor_357_357" id="FNanchor_357_357"></a><a href="#Footnote_357_357" class="fnanchor">[357]</a> but it is things like this which make
+one feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> that it would have been, a loss had there been no Voltaire.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>L'Ing&eacute;nu.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>L'Ing&eacute;nu</i>, which follows <i>Candide</i> in the regular editions, falls
+perhaps as a whole below all these, and <i>L'Homme aux Quarante &Eacute;cus</i>,
+which follows it, hardly concerns us at all, being mere political
+economy of a sort in dialogue. <i>L'Ing&eacute;nu</i> is a story, and has many
+amusing things in it. But it is open to the poser that if Voltaire
+really accepted the noble savage business he was rather silly, and that
+if he did not, the piece is a stale and not very biting satire. It is,
+moreover, somewhat exceptionally full (there is only one to beat it) of
+the vulgar little sniggers which suggest the eunuch even more than the
+schoolboy, and the conclusion is abominable. The seducer and,
+indirectly, murderer Saint-Pouange may only have done after his kind in
+regard to Mlle. de Saint-Yves; but the Ing&eacute;nu himself neither acted up
+to his Huron education, nor to his extraction as a French gentleman, in
+forgiving the man and taking service under him.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>La Princesse de Babylone.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>La Princesse de Babylone</i> is more like Hamilton than almost any other
+of the tales, and this, it need hardly be said here, is high praise,
+even for a work of Voltaire. For it means that it has what we commonly
+find in that work, and also something that we do not. But it has that
+defect which has been noticed already in <i>Zadig</i>, and which, by its
+absence, constitutes the supremacy of <i>Candide</i>. There is in it a sort
+of "break in the middle." The earlier stages of the courtship of
+Formosante are quite interesting; but when she and her lover begin
+separately to wander over the world, in order that their chronicler may
+make satiric observations on the nations thereof, one feels inclined to
+say, as Mr. Mowbray Morris said to Mr. Matthew Arnold (who thought it
+was Mr. Traill):</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Can't you give us something new?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Some minors.</div>
+
+<p><i>Le Blanc et le Noir</i> rises yet again, and though it has perhaps not
+many of Voltaire's <i>mots de flamme</i>, it is more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> of a fairy moral
+tale&mdash;neither a merely fantastic mow, nor sicklied over with its
+morality&mdash;than almost any other. It is noteworthy, too, that the author
+has hardly any recourse to his usual clove of garlic to give seasoning.
+<i>Jeannot et Colin</i> might have been Marmontel's or Miss Edgeworth's,
+being merely the usual story of two rustic lads, one of whom becomes
+rich and corrupt till, later, he is succoured by the other. Now
+Marmontel and Miss Edgeworth are excellent persons and writers; but
+their work is not work for Voltaire.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Lettres d'Amabed</i><a name="FNanchor_358_358" id="FNanchor_358_358"></a><a href="#Footnote_358_358" class="fnanchor">[358]</a> are the dirtiest and the dullest of the
+whole batch, and the <i>Histoire de Jenni</i>, though not particularly dirty,
+is very dull indeed, being the "History of a Good Deist," a thing
+without which (as Mr. Carlyle used to say) we could do. The same sort of
+"purpose" mars <i>Les Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield</i>, in which, after
+the first page, there is practically nothing about Lord Chesterfield or
+his deafness, but which contains a good deal of Voltaire's crispest
+writing, especially the definition of that English freedom which he
+sometimes used to extol. With thirty guineas a year,<a name="FNanchor_359_359" id="FNanchor_359_359"></a><a href="#Footnote_359_359" class="fnanchor">[359]</a> the
+materialist doctor Sidrac informs the unfortunate Goudman, who has lost
+a living by the said deafness, "on peut dire tout ce qu'on pense de la
+compagnie des Indes, du parlement, de nos colonies, du roi, de l'&eacute;tat en
+g&eacute;n&eacute;ral, de l'homme et de Dieu&mdash;ce qui est un grand amusement." But the
+piece itself would be more amusing if Voltaire could let the Bible
+alone, though he does not here come under the stroke of Diderot's
+sledge-hammer as he does in <i>Amabed</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One seldom, however, echoes this last wish, and remembers the stroke
+referred to, more than in reference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> to <i>Le Taureau Blanc</i>. Here, if
+there were nobody who reverenced the volume which begins with <i>Genesis</i>
+and ends with <i>Revelation</i>, the whole thing would be utterly dead and
+stupid: except for a few crispnesses of the Egyptian Mambr&egrave;s, which
+could, almost without a single exception, have been uttered on any other
+theme. The identification of Nebuchadnezzar with the bull Apis is not
+precisely an effort of genius; but the assembling, and putting through
+their paces, of Balaam's ass and Jonah's whale, the serpent of Eden, and
+the raven of the Ark, with the three prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and
+Daniel, and with an historical King Amasis and an unhistorical Princess
+Amaside thrown in, is less a <i>conte &agrave; dormir debout</i>, as Voltaire's
+countrymen and he himself would say, than a tale to make a man sleep
+when he is running at full speed&mdash;a very dried poppy-head of the garden
+of tales. On the other hand, the very short and very early <i>Le
+Crocheteur Borgne</i>, which, curiously enough, Voltaire never printed, and
+the not much longer <i>Cosi-Sancta</i>, which he printed in his queer
+ostrich-like manner, are, though a little naughty, quite nice; and have
+a freshness and demure grace about their naughtiness which contrasts
+remarkably with the ugly and wearisome snigger of later work.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Voltaire&mdash;the Kehl edition&mdash;and Plato.</div>
+
+<p>The half-dozen others,<a name="FNanchor_360_360" id="FNanchor_360_360"></a><a href="#Footnote_360_360" class="fnanchor">[360]</a> filling scarce twenty pages between them,
+which conclude the usual collection, need little comment; but a "Kehl"
+note to the first of them is for considerable thoughts:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>M. de Voltaire s'est &eacute;gay&eacute; quelquefois sur Platon, dont le
+galimatias, regard&eacute; autrefois comme sublime, a fait plus de
+mal au genre humain qu'on ne le croit commun&eacute;ment.</p></div>
+
+<p>One should not hurry over this, but muse a little. In copying the note,
+I felt almost inclined to write "<i>M. de</i> Platon" in order to put the
+whole thing in a consistent key; for somehow "Plato" by itself, even in
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> French form, transports one into such a very different world that
+adjustment of clocks and compasses becomes at once necessary and
+difficult. "Galimatias" is good, "autrefois" is possibly better, the
+"evils inflicted on the human race" better still, but <i>&eacute;gay&eacute;</i> perhaps
+best of all. The monkey, we know, makes itself gay with the elephant,
+and probably would do so with the lion and the tiger if these animals
+had not an unpleasant way of dealing with jokers. And the tomtit and
+canary have, no doubt, at least private agreement that the utterances of
+the nightingale are <i>galimatias</i>, while the carrion crow thinks the
+eagle a fool for dwelling so high and flying so much higher. But as for
+the other side of the matter, how thin and poor and puerile even those
+smartest things of Voltaire's, some of which have been quoted and
+praised, sound, if one attempts to read them after the last sentence of
+the <i>Apology</i>, or after passage on passage of the rest of the
+"galimatias" of Plato!</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, though you may answer a fool according to his folly, you
+should not, especially when he is not a fool absolute, judge him solely
+thereby. When Voltaire was making himself gay with Plato, with the
+Bible, and with some other things, he was talking, not merely of
+something which he did not completely understand, but of something
+altogether outside the range of his comprehension. But in the judgment
+of literature the process of "cancelling" does not exist. A quality is
+not destroyed or neutralised by a defect, and, properly speaking (though
+it is hard for the critic to observe this), to strike a balance between
+the two is impossible. It is right to enter the non-values; but the
+values remain and require chief attention.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">An attempt at different evaluation of himself.</div>
+
+<p>From what has been already said, it will be clear that there is no
+disposition here to give Voltaire anything short of the fullest credit,
+both as an individual writer of prose fiction and as a link in the chain
+of its French producers. He worked for the most part in miniature, and
+even <i>Candide</i> runs but to its bare hundred pages. But these are of the
+first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> quality in their own way, and give the book the same position for
+the century, in satiric and comic fiction, which <i>Manon Lescaut</i> holds
+in that of passion. That both should have taken this form, while,
+earlier, <i>Manon</i>, if written at all, would probably have been a poem,
+and <i>Candide</i> would have been a treatise, shows on the one side the
+importance of the position which the novel had assumed, and on the other
+the immense advantages which it gave, as a kind, to the artist in
+literature. I like poetry better than anything, but though the subject
+could have been, and often has been, treated satirically in verse, a
+verse <i>narrative</i> could hardly have avoided inferiority, while even
+Berkeley (who himself borrowed a little of novel-form for <i>Alciphron</i>)
+could not have made <i>Candide</i> more effective than it is. It is of course
+true that Voltaire's powers as a "fictionist" were probably limited in
+fact, to the departments, or the department, which he actually occupied,
+and out of which he wisely did not go. He must have a satiric purpose,
+and he must be allowed a very free choice of subject and seasoning. In
+particular, it may be noted that he has no grasp whatever of individual
+character. Even Candide is but a "humour," and Pangloss a very decided
+one; as are Martin, Gordon in <i>L'Ing&eacute;nu</i>, and others. His women are all
+slightly varied outline-sketches of what he thought women in general
+were, not persons. Plot he never attempted; and racy as his dialogue
+often is, it is on the whole merely a setting for these very sparkles of
+wit some of which have been quoted.</p>
+
+<p>It is in these scintillations, after all, that the chief delight of his
+tales consists; and though, as has been honestly confessed and shown, he
+learnt this to some extent from others, he made the thing definitely his
+own. When the Babylonian public has been slightly "elevated" by the
+refreshments distributed at the great tournament for the hand of the
+Princess Formosante, it decides that war, etc., is folly, and that the
+essence of human nature is to enjoy itself, "Cette excellente morale,"
+says Voltaire gravely, "n'a jamais &eacute;t&eacute; d&eacute;mentie" (the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> words really
+should be made to come at the foot of a page so that you might have to
+turn over before coming to the conclusion of the sentence) "que par les
+faits." Again, in the description of the Utopia of the Gangarides (same
+story), where not only men but beasts and birds are all perfectly wise,
+well conducted, and happy, a paragraph of quite sober description,
+without any flinging up of heels or thrusting of tongue in cheek, ends,
+"Nous avons surtout des perroquets qui pr&ecirc;chent &agrave; merveille," and for
+once Voltaire exercises on himself the Swiftian control, which he too
+often neglected, and drops his beloved satire of clerics after this
+gentle touch at it.<a name="FNanchor_361_361" id="FNanchor_361_361"></a><a href="#Footnote_361_361" class="fnanchor">[361]</a></p>
+
+<p>He is of course not constantly at his best; but he is so often enough to
+make him, as was said at the beginning, very delectable reading,
+especially for the second time and later, which will be admitted to be
+no common praise. When you read him for the first time his bad taste,
+his obsession with certain subjects, his repetition of the same gibes,
+and other things which have been duly mentioned, strike and may
+disgust&mdash;will certainly more or less displease anybody but a partisan on
+the same side. On a second or later reading you are prepared for them,
+and either skip them altogether or pass them by without special notice,
+repeating the enjoyment of what is better in an unalloyed fashion. And
+so doth the excellent old chestnut-myth, which probably most of us have
+heard told with all innocence as an original witticism, justify itself,
+and one should "prefer the second hour" of the reading to the first. But
+if there is a first there will almost certainly be a second, and it will
+be a very great pity if there is no reading at all.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Rousseau&mdash;the novel-character of the <i>Confessions</i>.</div>
+
+<p>According to the estimate of the common or vulgate (I do not say
+"vulgar," though in the best English there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> is little or no difference)
+literary history, Rousseau<a name="FNanchor_362_362" id="FNanchor_362_362"></a><a href="#Footnote_362_362" class="fnanchor">[362]</a> ranks far higher in the scale of
+novel-writing than Voltaire, having left long and ambitious books of the
+kind against Voltaire's handful of short, shorter, and shortest stories.
+It might be possible to accept this in one sense, but in one which would
+utterly disconcert the usual valuers. The <i>Confessions</i>, if it were not
+an autobiography, would be one of the great novels of the world. A large
+part of it is probably or certainly "fictionised"; if the whole were
+fictitious, it would lose much of its repulsiveness, retain (except for
+a few very matter-of-fact judges) all its interest, and gain the
+enormous advantage of art over mere <i>reportage</i> of fact. Of course
+Rousseau's art of another kind, his mere mastery of style and
+presentation, does redeem this <i>reportage</i> to some extent; but this
+would remain if the thing were wholly fiction, and the other art of
+invention, divination, <i>mimesis</i>&mdash;call it what you will&mdash;would come in.
+Yet it is not worth while to be idly unlike other people and claim it as
+an actual novel. It may be worth while to point out how it displays some
+of the great gifts of the novel-writer. The first of these&mdash;the greatest
+and, in fact, the mother of all the rest&mdash;is the sheer faculty, so often
+mentioned but not, alas! so invariably found, of telling the tale and
+holding the reader, not with any glittering eye or any enchantment,
+white or black, but with the pure grasping&mdash;or, as French admirably has
+it, "enfisting"&mdash;power of the tale itself. Round this there cluster&mdash;or,
+rather, in this necessarily abide&mdash;the subsidiary arts of managing the
+various parts of the story, of constructing characters sufficient to
+carry it on, of varnishing it with description, and to some extent,
+though naturally to a lesser one than if it had been fiction pure and
+simple, "lacing" it, in both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> senses of the word, with dialogue.
+Commonplace (but not the best commonplace) taste often cries "Oh! if
+this were only true!" The wiser mind is fain sometimes&mdash;not often, for
+things are not often good enough&mdash;to say, "Oh! if this were only
+<i>false</i>!"</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The ambiguous position of <i>&Eacute;mile</i>.</div>
+
+<p>But if a severe auditor were to strike the <i>Confessions</i> out of
+Rousseau's novel-account to the good, on the score of technical
+insufficiency or disqualification, he could hardly refuse to do the same
+with <i>&Eacute;mile</i> on the other side of the sheet. In fact its second title
+(<i>de l'&Eacute;ducation</i>), its opening remarks, and the vastly larger part of
+the text, not only do not pretend to be a novel but frankly decline to
+be one. In what way exactly the treatise, from the mere assumption of a
+supposed "soaring human boy" named &Eacute;mile, who serves as the victim of a
+few <i>Sandford-and-Merton</i>-like illustrations, burgeoned into the romance
+of actual novel-kind with Sophie in the Fifth Book, and the purely
+novel-natured, but unfinished and hardly begun, sequel of <i>&Eacute;mile et
+Sophie ou Les Solitaires</i>, it is impossible to say. From the sketch of
+the intended conclusion of this latter given by Pr&eacute;vost<a name="FNanchor_363_363" id="FNanchor_363_363"></a><a href="#Footnote_363_363" class="fnanchor">[363]</a> it would
+seem that we have not lost much, though with Rousseau the treatment is
+so constantly above the substance that one cannot tell. As it is, the
+novel part is nearly worthless. Neither &Eacute;mile nor Sophie is made in the
+least a live person; the catastrophe of their at first ideal union might
+be shown, by an advocate of very moderate skill, to be largely if not
+wholly due to the meddlesome, muddle-headed, and almost inevitably
+mischievous advice given to them just after their marriage by their
+foolish Mentor; and one neither finds nor foresees any real novel
+interest whatever. Anilities in the very worst style of the eighteenth
+century&mdash;such as the story how &Eacute;mile instigated mutiny in an Algerian
+slave-gang, failed, made a noble protest, and instead of being impaled,
+flayed, burnt alive, or otherwise taught not to do so, was made overseer
+of his own projects<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> of reformed discipline&mdash;are sufficiently
+unrefreshing in fact. And the sort of "double arrangement" foreshadowed
+in the professorial programme of the unwritten part, where, in something
+like Davenant and Dryden's degradation of <i>The Tempest</i>, &Eacute;mile and
+Sophie, she still refusing to be pardoned her fault, are brought
+together after all, and are married, in an actual though not consummated
+cross-bigamy, with a mysterious couple, also marooned on a desert
+island, is the sort of thing that Rousseau never could have managed,
+though Voltaire, probably to the discontent of Mrs. Grundy, could have
+done it in one way, and Sir William Gilbert would have done it
+delightfully in another. But Jean-Jacques's absolute lack of humour
+would have ensured a rather ghastly failure, relieved, it may be, by a
+few beautiful passages.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>La Nouvelle H&eacute;lo&iuml;se.</i></div>
+
+<p>If, therefore, Rousseau had nothing but <i>&Eacute;mile</i>, or even nothing but
+<i>&Eacute;mile</i> and the <i>Confessions</i> to put to his credit, he could but obtain
+a position in our "utmost, last, provincial band," and that more because
+of his general literary powers than of special right. But, as everybody
+knows, there is a third book among his works which, whether universally
+or only by a majority, whether in whole or in part, whether with heavy
+deductions and allowances or with light ones, has been reckoned among
+the greatest and most epoch-making novels of the world. The full title
+of it is <i>Julie, ou la Nouvelle H&eacute;lo&iuml;se, ou Lettres de deux Amans,
+habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes, recueillies et publi&eacute;es,
+par J. J. Rousseau</i>.<a name="FNanchor_364_364" id="FNanchor_364_364"></a><a href="#Footnote_364_364" class="fnanchor">[364]</a> Despite its immense fame, direct and at
+second-hand&mdash;for Byron's famous outburst, though scarcely less
+rhetorical, is decidedly more poetical than most things of his, and has
+inscribed itself in the general memory&mdash;one rather doubts whether the
+book is as much read as it once was. Quotations, references, and those
+half-unconscious reminiscences of borrowing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> which are more eloquent
+than anything else, have not recently been very common either in English
+or in French. It has had the fate&mdash;elsewhere, I think, alluded to&mdash;of
+one of the two kinds of great literature, that it has in a manner seeded
+itself out. An intense love-novel&mdash;it is some time since we have seen
+one till the other day&mdash;would be a descendant of Rousseau's book, but
+would not bear more than a family likeness to it. Yet this, of itself,
+is a great testimony.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its numerous and grave faults.</div>
+
+<p>Except in rhetoric or rhapsody, the allowances and deductions above
+referred to must be heavy; and, according to a custom honoured both by
+time and good result, it is well to get them off first. That peculiarity
+of being a novelist only <i>par interim</i>, much more than Aramis was a
+mousquetaire, appears, even in <i>Julie</i>, so glaringly as to be dangerous
+and almost fatal. The book fills, in the ordinary one-volume editions,
+nearly five hundred pages of very small and very close print. Of these
+the First Part contains rather more than a hundred, and it would be
+infinitely better if the whole of the rest, except a few passages (which
+would be almost equally good as fragments), were in the bosom of the
+ocean buried. Large parts of them are mere discussions of some of
+Rousseau's own fads; clumsy parodies of Voltaire's satiric
+manners-painting; waterings out of the least good traits in the hero and
+heroine; uninteresting and superfluous appearances of the third and only
+other real person, Claire; a dreary account of Julie's married life;
+tedious eccentricities of the impossible and not very agreeable Lord
+Edward Bomston, who shares with Dickens's Lord Frederick Verisopht the
+peculiarity of being alternately a peer and a person with a courtesy
+"Lord"-ship; a rather silly end for the heroine herself;<a name="FNanchor_365_365" id="FNanchor_365_365"></a><a href="#Footnote_365_365" class="fnanchor">[365]</a> and
+finally, a rather repulsive and quite incongruous acknowledgment of
+affection for the creature Saint-Preux, with a refusal to "implement"
+it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> (as they say in Scotland) matrimonially, by Claire, who is by this
+time a widow.<a name="FNanchor_366_366" id="FNanchor_366_366"></a><a href="#Footnote_366_366" class="fnanchor">[366]</a> If mutilating books<a name="FNanchor_367_367" id="FNanchor_367_367"></a><a href="#Footnote_367_367" class="fnanchor">[367]</a> were not a crime deserving
+terrible retribution in this life or after it, one could be excused for
+tearing off the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Parts, with the
+<i>Amours de Lord &Eacute;douard</i> which follow. If one was rich, one would be
+amply justified in having a copy of Part I., and the fragments above
+indicated, printed for oneself on vellum.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The minor characters.</div>
+
+<p>But this is not all. Even the First Part&mdash;even the presentation of the
+three protagonists&mdash;is open to some, and even to severe, criticism. The
+most guiltless, but necessarily much the least important, is Claire. She
+is, of course, an obvious "borrow" from Richardson's lively second
+heroines; but she is infinitely superior to them. It is at first sight,
+though not perhaps for long, curious&mdash;and it is certainly a very great
+compliment to Madame de Warens or Vuarrens and Madame d'Houdetot, and
+perhaps other objects of his affections&mdash;that Rousseau, cad as he was,
+and impossible as it was for him to draw a gentleman, could and did draw
+ladies. It was horribly bad taste in both Julie and Claire to love such
+a creature as Saint-Preux; but then <i>cela s'est vu</i> from the time of the
+Lady of the Strachy downwards, if not from that of Princess Michal. But
+Claire is faithful and true as steel, and she is lively without being,
+as Charlotte Grandison certainly is, vulgar. She is very much more a
+really "reasonable woman," even putting passion aside, than the somewhat
+sermonising and syllogising Julie; and it would have been both agreeable
+and tormenting to be M. d'Orbe. (Tormenting because she only half-loved
+him, and agreeable because she did love him a little, and, whether it
+was little or much, allowed herself to be his.) He himself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> slight and
+rather "put upon" as he is, is also much the most agreeable of the
+"second" male characters. Of Bomston and Wolmar we shall speak
+presently; and there is so little of the Baron d'&Eacute;tange that one really
+does not know whether he was or was not something more than the
+tyrannical husband and father, and the ill-mannered specimen of the
+lesser nobility, that it pleased Saint-Preux or Rousseau to represent
+him as being. He had provocation enough, even in the case of his
+otherwise hardly pardonable insolence to Bomston.<a name="FNanchor_368_368" id="FNanchor_368_368"></a><a href="#Footnote_368_368" class="fnanchor">[368]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The delinquencies of Saint-Preux.</div>
+
+<p>But Saint-Preux himself? How early was the obvious jest made that he is
+about as little of a <i>preux</i> as he is of a saint? I have heard, or
+dreamt, of a schoolboy who, being accidentally somewhat precocious in
+French, and having read the book, ejaculated, "<i>What</i> a sweep he is!"
+and I remember no time of my life at which I should not have heartily
+agreed with that youth. I do not suppose that either of us&mdash;though
+perhaps we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for not doing so&mdash;founded
+our condemnation on Saint-Preux's "forgetfulness of all but love." That
+is a "forfeit," in French and English sense alike, which has itself
+registered and settled in various tariffs and codes, none of which
+concerns the present history. It is not even that he is a most
+unreasonable creature now and then; that can be pardoned, being
+understood, though he really does strain the benefit of <i>amare et
+sapere</i> etc. It is that, except when he is in the altitudes of passion,
+and not always then, he never "knows how to behave," as the simple and
+sufficient old phrase had it. If M. d'&Eacute;tange had had the wits, and had
+deigned to do it, he might even, without knowing his deepest cause of
+quarrel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> with the treacherous tutor, have pointed out that Saint-Preux's
+claim to be one of God Almighty's gentlemen was as groundless as his
+"proofs," in the French technical sense of gentility, were non-existent.
+It is impossible to imagine anything in worse taste than his reply to
+the Baron's no doubt offensive letter, and Julie's enclosed
+renunciation. Even the adoring Julie herself, and the hardly less
+adoring Claire&mdash;the latter not in the least a prude, nor given to giving
+herself "airs"&mdash;are constantly obliged to pull him up for his want of
+<i>d&eacute;licatesse</i>. He is evidently a coxcomb, still more evidently a prig;
+selfish beyond even that selfishness which is venial in a lover; not in
+the least, though he can exceed in wine, a "good fellow," and in many
+ways thoroughly unmanly. A good English school and college might have
+made him tolerable: but it is rather to be doubted, and it is certain
+that his way as a transgressor would have been hard at both. As it is,
+he is very largely the embodiment&mdash;and it is more charitable than
+uncharitable to regard him as largely the cause&mdash;of the faults of the
+worst kind of French, and not quite only French, novel-hero ever since.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">And the less charming points of Julie. Her redemption.</div>
+
+<p>One approaches Julie herself, in critical intent, with mixed feelings.
+One would rather say nothing but good of her, and there is plenty of
+good to say: how much will be seen in a moment. Most of what is not so
+good belongs, in fact, to the dreary bulk of sequel tacked on by
+mistaken judgment to that more than true history of a hundred pages,
+which leaves her in despair, and might well have left her altogether.
+Even here she is not faultless, quite independently of her sins
+according to Mrs. Grundy and the Pharisees. If she had not been, as
+Claire herself fondly but truly calls her, such a <i>pr&ecirc;cheresse</i>, she
+might not have fallen a victim to such a prig. One never can quite
+forgive her for loving him, except on the all-excusing ground that she
+loved him so much; and though she is perhaps not far beyond the licence
+of "All's fair, in certain conditions," there is no doubt that, like her
+part-pattern Clarissa, she is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> passionately attached to the truth.
+It might be possible to add some cavils, but for the irresistible plea
+just glanced at, which stops one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Quia multum amavit!</i> Nobody&mdash;at least no woman&mdash;had loved like that in
+a prose novel before; nobody at all except Des Grieux, and he is but as
+a sketch to an elaborate picture. She will wander after Pallas, and
+would like to think that she would like to be of the train of Dian (one
+shudders at imagining the scowl and the shrug and the twist of the skirt
+of the goddess!). But the kiss of Aphrodite has been on her, and has
+mastered her whole nature. How the thing could be done, out of poetry,
+has always been a marvel to me; but I have explained it by the
+supposition that the absolute impossibility of writing poetry at this
+time in French necessitated the break-out in prose. Rousseau's wonderful
+style&mdash;so impossible to analyse, but so irresistible&mdash;does much; the
+animating sense of his native scenery something. But, after all, what
+gives the thing its irresistibleness is the strange command he had of
+Passion and of Sorrow&mdash;two words, the first of which is actually, in the
+original sense, a synonym of the second, though it has been expanded to
+cover the very opposite.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">And the better side of the book generally.</div>
+
+<p>But it would be unfair to Rousseau, especially in such a place as this,
+to confine the praise of <i>Julie</i> as a novel to its exhibition of
+passion, or even to the charm of Julie herself. Within its proper
+limits&mdash;which are, let it be repeated, almost if not quite exactly those
+of the First Part&mdash;many other gifts of the particular class of artist
+are shown. The dangerous letter-scheme, which lends itself so easily,
+and in the other parts surrenders itself so helplessly and hopelessly,
+to mere "piffle" about this and that, is kept well in hand. Much as
+Rousseau owes to Richardson, he has steered entirely clear of that
+system of word-for-word and incident-for-incident reporting which makes
+the Englishman's work so sickening to some. You have enough of each and
+no more, this happy mean affecting both dialogue and description. The
+plot (or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> rather the action) is constantly present, probably managed,
+always enlivened by the imminence of disastrous discovery. As has been
+already pointed out, one may dislike&mdash;or feel little interest in&mdash;some
+of the few characters; but it is impossible to say that they are out of
+drawing or keeping. Saint-Preux, objectionable and almost loathsome as
+he may be sometimes, is a thoroughly human creature, and is undoubtedly
+what Rousseau meant him to be, for the very simple reason that he is
+(like the Byronic hero who followed) what Rousseau wished to be, if not
+exactly what he was, himself. Bomston is more of a lay figure; but then
+the <i>Anglais philosophe de qualit&eacute;</i> of the French imagination in the
+eighteenth century was a lay figure, and, as has been excellently said
+by De Quincey in another matter, nothing can be wrong which conforms to
+the principles of its own ideal. As for Julie and Claire, they once more</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Answer the ends of their being created.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Even the "talking-book" is here hardly excessive, and comes legitimately
+under the excuse of showing how the relations between the hero and
+heroine originally got themselves established.<a name="FNanchor_369_369" id="FNanchor_369_369"></a><a href="#Footnote_369_369" class="fnanchor">[369]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">But little probability of more good work in novel from its
+author.</div>
+
+<p>Are we, then, from the excellence of the "Confessions" <i>in pari materia</i>
+and <i>in ipsa</i> of <i>Julie</i>, to lament that Rousseau did not take to
+novel-writing as a special and serious occupation? Probably not. The
+extreme weakness and almost <i>fadeur</i> of the strictly novel part of
+<i>&Eacute;mile</i>, and the going-off of <i>Julie</i> itself, are very open warnings;
+the mere absence of any other attempts worth mentioning<a name="FNanchor_370_370" id="FNanchor_370_370"></a><a href="#Footnote_370_370" class="fnanchor">[370]</a> is evidence
+of a kind; and the character of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> all the rest of the work, and of all
+this part of the work but the opening of <i>Julie</i>, and even of that
+opening itself, counsel abstention, here as everywhere, from quarrelling
+with Providence. Rousseau's superhuman concentration on himself, while
+it has inspired the relevant parts of the <i>Confessions</i> and of <i>Julie</i>,
+has spoilt a good deal else that we have, and would assuredly have
+spoilt other things that we have not. It has been observed, by all acute
+students of the novel, that the egotistic variety will not bear heavy
+crops of fruit by itself; and that it is incapable, or capable with very
+great difficulty, of letting the observed and so far altruistic kind
+grow from the same stool. Of what is sometimes called the dramatic
+faculty (though, in fact, it is only one side of that),&mdash;the faculty
+which in different guise and with different means the general novelist
+must also possess,&mdash;Rousseau had nothing. He could put himself in no
+other man's skin, being so absolutely wrapped up in his own, which was
+itself much too sensitive to be disturbed, much less shed. Anything or
+anybody that was (to use Mill's language) a permanent or even a
+temporary possibility of sensation to him was within his power; anything
+out of immediate or closely impending contact was not. Now some of the
+great novelists have the external power&mdash;or at least the will to use
+that power&mdash;alone, others have had both; but Rousseau had the internal
+only, and so was, except by miracle of intensive exercise, incapable of
+further range.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">The different case of Diderot.</div>
+
+<p>Neither of the disabilities which weighed on Voltaire and Rousseau&mdash;the
+incapacity of the former to construct any complex character, and of the
+latter to portray any but his own, or some other brought into intensest
+communion, actually or as a matter of wish, with his own&mdash;weighed upon
+the third of the great trio of <i>philosophe</i> leaders. There is every
+probability that Diderot might have been a very great novelist if he had
+lived a hundred years later; and not a little evidence that he only
+missed being such, even as it was, because of that mysterious curse
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> was epigrammatically expressed about him long ago (I really
+forget who said it first), "Good pages, no good book." So far from being
+self-centred or of limited interests, he could, as hardly any other man
+ever could, claim the hackneyed <i>Homo sum</i>, etc., as his rightful motto.
+He had, when he allowed himself to give it fair play, an admirable gift
+of tale-telling; he could create character, and set it to work, almost
+after the fashion of the very greatest novelists; his universal interest
+and "curiosity" included such vivid appreciation of literature, and of
+art, and of other things useful to the novel-writer, that he never could
+have been at a loss for various kinds of "seasoning." He had keen
+observation, an admittedly marvellous flow of ideas, and a style which
+(though, like everything else about him, careless) was of singular
+vigour and freshness when, once more, he let it have fair play. But his
+time, his nature, and his circumstances combined to throw in his way
+traps and snares and nets which he could not, or would not, avoid. His
+anti-religiosity, though sometimes greatly exaggerated, was a bad
+stumbling-block; although he was free from the snigger of Voltaire and
+of Sterne, you could not prevent him, as Horace Walpole complains of his
+distinguished sire, from blurting out the most improper remarks and
+stories at the most inconvenient times and in the most unsuitable
+companies; while his very multiscience, and his fertility of thought and
+imagination, kept him in a whirl which hindered his "settling" to
+anything. Although in one sense he had the finest and wisest critical
+taste of any man then living&mdash;I do not bar even Gray or even
+Lessing&mdash;his taste in some other ways was utterly untrustworthy and
+sometimes horribly bad; while even his strictly critical faculty seems
+never to have been exercised on his own books&mdash;a failure forming part of
+the "ostrich-like indifference" with which he produced and abandoned
+them.<a name="FNanchor_371_371" id="FNanchor_371_371"></a><a href="#Footnote_371_371" class="fnanchor">[371]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span></p>
+<div class="sidenote">His gifts and the waste of them.</div>
+
+<p>It is sometimes contended, and in many cases, no doubt, is the fact,
+that "Selections" are disgraceful and unscholarly. But what has been
+said will show that this is an exceptional case. The present writer
+waded through the whole of twenty-volume edition of Ass&eacute;zat and Tourneux
+when it first appeared, and is very glad he did; nor is there perhaps
+one volume (he does not say one page, chapter, or even work) which he
+has not revisited more or fewer times during the forty years in which
+(alas! for the preterite) they remained on his shelves. But it is
+scarcely to be expected that every one, that many, or that more than a
+very few readers, have done or will do the same. It so happens, however,
+that G&eacute;nin's <i>&OElig;uvres Choisies</i>&mdash;though it has been abused by some
+anti-Ydgrunites as too much Bowdlerised&mdash;gives a remarkably full and
+satisfactory idea of this great and seldom<a name="FNanchor_372_372" id="FNanchor_372_372"></a><a href="#Footnote_372_372" class="fnanchor">[372]</a> quite rightly valued
+writer. It must have cost much, besides use of paste and scissors, to
+do; for the extracts are often very short, and the bulk of matter to be
+thoroughly searched for extraction is, as has just been said, huge. A
+third volume might perhaps be added;<a name="FNanchor_373_373" id="FNanchor_373_373"></a><a href="#Footnote_373_373" class="fnanchor">[373]</a> but the actual two are far
+from unrepresentative, while the Bowdlerising is by no means
+ultra-Bowdlerish.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The various display of them.</div>
+
+<p>The reader, even of this selection, will see how, in quite miscellaneous
+or heterogeneous writing, Diderot bubbles out into a perfectly told tale
+or anecdote, no matter what the envelope (as we may call it) of this
+tale or anecdote may be. All his work is more or less like conversation:
+and these excursus are like the stories which, if good, are among the
+best, just as, if bad, they are the worst, sets-off to conversation
+itself. Next to these come the longer <i>histoires</i>&mdash;as one would call
+them in the Heroic novel and its successors&mdash;things sometimes found by
+themselves,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> sometimes ensconced in larger work<a name="FNanchor_374_374" id="FNanchor_374_374"></a><a href="#Footnote_374_374" class="fnanchor">[374]</a>&mdash;the story of
+Desroches and Mme. de la Carli&egrave;re, <i>Les Deux Amis de Bourbonne</i>, the
+almost famous <i>Le Marquis des Arcis et Mme. de la Pommeraye</i>, of which
+more may be said presently; and things which are not exactly tales, but
+which have the tale-quality in part, like the charming <i>Regrets sur ma
+Vieille Robe de Chambre, Ceci n'est pas un conte</i>, etc. Thirdly, and to
+be spoken of in more detail, come the things that are nearest actual
+novels, and in some cases are called so, <i>Le Neveu de Rameau</i>, the
+"unspeakable" <i>Bijoux Indiscrets</i>, <i>Jacques le Fataliste</i> (the matrix of
+<i>Le Marquis des Arcis</i>) and <i>La Religieuse</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The "unspeakable" one does not need much speaking from any point of
+view. If it is not positively what Carlyle called it, "the beastliest of
+all dull novels, past, present, or to come," it really would require a
+most unpleasant apprenticeship to scavenging in order to discover a
+dirtier and duller. The framework is a flat imitation of Cr&eacute;billon, the
+"insets" are sometimes mere pornography, and the whole thing is
+evidently scribbled at a gallop&mdash;it was actually a few days' work, to
+get money, from some French Curll or Drybutter, to give (the
+appropriateness of the thing at least is humorous) to the mistress of
+the moment, a Madame de Puisieux,<a name="FNanchor_375_375" id="FNanchor_375_375"></a><a href="#Footnote_375_375" class="fnanchor">[375]</a> who, if she was like Cr&eacute;billon's
+heroines in morals, cannot have been like the best of them in manners.
+Its existence shows, of course, Diderot's worst side, that is to say,
+the combination of want of breeding with readiness to get money anyhow.
+If it is worth reading at all, which may be doubted, it is to show the
+real, if equivocal, value of Cr&eacute;billon himself. For it is vulgar, which
+he never is.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Le Neveu de Rameau.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>Le Neveu de Rameau</i>, has only touches of obscenity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> and it has been
+enormously praised by great persons. It is very clever, but it seems to
+me that, as a notable critic is said to have observed of something else,
+"it has been praised quite enough." It is a sketch, worked out in a sort
+of monologue,<a name="FNanchor_376_376" id="FNanchor_376_376"></a><a href="#Footnote_376_376" class="fnanchor">[376]</a> of something like Diderot's own character without his
+genius and without his good fellowship&mdash;a gutter-snipe of art and
+letters possessed of some talent and of infinite impudence. It shows
+Diderot's own power of observation and easy fluid representation of
+character and manners, but not, as I venture to think, much more.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Jacques le Fataliste.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>Jacques le Fataliste</i> is what may be called, without pedantry or
+preciousness, eminently a "document." It is a document of Diderot's
+genius only indirectly (save in part), and to those who can read not
+only in the lines but between them: it is a document, directly, of the
+insatiable and restless energy of the man, and of the damage which this
+restlessness, with its accompanying and inevitable want of
+self-criticism, imposed upon that genius. Diderot, though he did not
+rhapsodise about Sterne as he rhapsodised about Richardson, was, like
+most of his countrymen then, a great admirer of "Tristram," and in an
+evil hour he took it into his head to Shandyise. The book starts with an
+actual adaptation of Sterne,<a name="FNanchor_377_377" id="FNanchor_377_377"></a><a href="#Footnote_377_377" class="fnanchor">[377]</a> which is more than once repeated; its
+scheme&mdash;of a master (who is as different as possible from my Uncle Toby,
+except that when not in a passion he is rather good-natured, and at
+almost all times very easily humbugged) and a man (who is what Trim
+never is, both insolent and indecent)&mdash;is at least partially the same.
+But the most constant and the most unfortunate imitation is of Sterne's
+literally eccentric, or rather zigzag and pillar-to-post, fashion of
+narration. In the Englishman's own hands, by some prestidigitation of
+genius, this never becomes boring, though it probably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> would have become
+so if either book had been finished; for which reason we may be quite
+certain that it was not only his death which left both in fragments. In
+the hands of his imitators the boredom&mdash;simple or in the form of
+irritation&mdash;has been almost invariable;<a name="FNanchor_378_378" id="FNanchor_378_378"></a><a href="#Footnote_378_378" class="fnanchor">[378]</a> and with all his great
+intellectual power, his tale-telling faculty, his <i>bonhomie</i>, and other
+good qualities, Diderot has not escaped it&mdash;has, in fact, rushed upon it
+and compelled it to come in. It is comparatively of little moment that
+the main ostensible theme&mdash;the very unedifying account of the loves, or
+at least the erotic exercises, of Jacques and his master&mdash;is
+deliberately, tediously, inartistically interrupted and "put off." The
+great feature of the book, which has redeemed it with some who would
+otherwise condemn it entirely, the Arcis and La Pommeraye episode (<i>v.
+inf.</i>), is handled after a fashion which suggests Mr. Ruskin's famous
+denunciation in another art. The <i>ink</i>pot is "flung in the face of the
+public" by a purely farcical series of interruptions, occasioned by the
+affairs of the inn-landlady, who tells the story, by her servants, dog,
+customers, and Heaven only knows what else; while the minor incidents
+and accidents of the book are treated in the same way, in and out of
+proportion to their own importance; the author's "simple plan," though
+by no means "good old rule," being that <i>everything</i> shall be
+interrupted. Although, in the erotic part, the author never returns
+quite to his worst <i>Bijoux Indiscrets</i> style, he once or twice goes very
+near it, except that he is not quite so dull; and when the book comes to
+an end in a very lame and impotent fashion (the farce being kept up to
+the last, and even this end being "recounted" and not made part of the
+mainly dialogic action), one is rather relieved at there being no more.
+One has seen talent; one has almost glimpsed genius; but what one has
+been most impressed with is the glaring fashion in which both the
+certainty and the possibility have been thrown away.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span></p><div class="sidenote">Its "Arcis-Pommeraye" episode.</div>
+
+<p>The story which has been referred to in passing as muddled, or, to adopt
+a better French word, for which we have no exact equivalent, <i>affubl&eacute;</i>
+(travestied and overlaid) with eccentricities and interruptions, the
+<i>Histoire</i> of the Marquis des Arcis and the Marquise de la Pommeraye,
+has received a great deal of praise, most of which it deserves. The
+Marquis and the Marquise have entered upon one of the fashionable
+<i>liaisons</i> which Cr&eacute;billon described in his own way. Diderot describes
+this one in another. The Marquis gets tired&mdash;it is fair to say that he
+has offered marriage at the very first, but Madame de la Pommeraye, a
+widow with an unpleasant first experience of the state, has declined it.
+He shows his tiredness in a gentlemanly manner, but not very mistakably.
+His mistress, who is not at first <i>femina furens</i>, but who possesses
+some feminine characteristics in a dangerous degree, as he might perhaps
+have found out earlier if he had been a different person, determines to
+make sure of it. She intimates <i>her</i> tiredness, and the Marquis makes
+his first step downwards by jumping at the release. They are&mdash;the old,
+old hopeless folly!&mdash;to remain friends, but friends only. But she really
+loves him, and after almost assuring herself that he has really ceased
+to love her (which, in the real language of love, means that he has
+never loved her at all), devises a further, a very clever, but a rather
+diabolical system of last proof, involving vengeance if it fails. She
+has known, in exercises of charity (the <i>femme du monde</i> has seldom
+quite abandoned these), a mother and daughter who, having lost their
+means, have taken to a questionable, or rather a very unquestionable
+manner of life, keeping a sort of private gaming-house, and extending to
+those frequenters of it who choose, what the late George Augustus Sala
+not inelegantly called, in an actual police-court instance, "the
+thorough hospitality characteristic of their domicile." She prevails on
+them to leave the house, get rid of all their belongings (down to
+clothes) which could possibly be identified, change their name, move to
+another quarter of Paris, and set up as <i>d&eacute;votes</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> under the full
+protection of the local clergy. Then she manages an introduction, of an
+apparently accidental kind, to the Marquis. He falls in love at once
+with the daughter, who is very pretty, and with masculine (or at least
+<i>some</i> masculine) fatuity, makes Madame de la Pommeraye his confidante.
+She gives him rope, but he uses it, of course, only to hang himself. He
+tries the usual temptations; but though the mother at least would not
+refuse them, Madame de la Pommeraye's hand on the pair is too tight. At
+last he offers marriage, and&mdash;with her at least apparent consent&mdash;is
+married. The next day she tells him the truth. But her diabolism fails.
+At first there is of course a furious outburst. But the girl is
+beautiful, affectionate, and humble; the mother is pensioned off; the
+Marquis and Marquise des Arcis retire for some years to those invaluable
+<i>terres</i>, after a sojourn at which everything is forgotten; and the
+story ends. Diderot, by not too skilfully throwing in casuistical
+attacks and defences of the two principal characters, but telling us
+nothing of Madame de la Pommeraye's subsequent feelings or history, does
+what he can, unluckily after his too frequent fashion, to spoil or at
+least to blunt his tale. It is not necessary to imitate him by
+discussing the <i>pros</i> and <i>cons</i> at length. I think myself that the
+Marquis, both earlier and later, is made rather too much of a <i>ben&ecirc;t</i>,
+or, in plain English, a nincompoop. But nincompoops exist: in fact how
+many of us are not nincompoops in certain circumstances? Madame de la
+Pommeraye is, I fear, rather true, and is certainly sketched with
+extraordinary ability. On a larger scale the thing would probably, at
+that time and by so hasty and careless a workman, have been quite
+spoilt. But it is obviously the skeleton&mdash;and something more&mdash;of a
+really great novel.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>La Religieuse.</i></div>
+
+<p>It may seem that a critic who speaks in this fashion, after an initial
+promise of laudation, is a sort of Balaam topsyturvied, and merely
+curses where he is expected to bless. But ample warning was given of the
+peculiar position of Diderot, and when we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> come to his latest known and
+by far his best novel, <i>La Religieuse</i>, the paradox (he was himself very
+fond of paradoxes,<a name="FNanchor_379_379" id="FNanchor_379_379"></a><a href="#Footnote_379_379" class="fnanchor">[379]</a> though not of the wretched things which now
+disgrace the name) remains. The very subject of the book, or of the
+greatest part of it, was for a long time, if it is not still, taboo; and
+even if this had not been the case, it has other drawbacks. It
+originated in, and to some extent still retains traces of, one of the
+silly and ill-bred "mystifications" in which the eighteenth and early
+nineteenth century delighted.<a name="FNanchor_380_380" id="FNanchor_380_380"></a><a href="#Footnote_380_380" class="fnanchor">[380]</a> It is, at least in appearance, badly
+tainted with purpose; and while it is actually left unfinished, the last
+pages of it, as they stand, are utterly unworthy of the earlier part,
+and in fact quite uninteresting. Momus or Zoilus must be allowed to say
+so much: but having heard him, let us cease to listen to the half-god or
+the whole philologist.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its story.</div>
+
+<p>Yet <i>La Religieuse</i>, for all its drawbacks, is almost a great, and might
+conceivably have been a very great book. Madame d'Holbach is credited by
+Diderot's own generosity with having suggested its crowning <i>mot</i>,<a name="FNanchor_381_381" id="FNanchor_381_381"></a><a href="#Footnote_381_381" class="fnanchor">[381]</a>
+and her influence may have been in other ways good by governing the
+force and fire, so often wasted or ill-directed, of Diderot's genius.
+S&oelig;ur Sainte-Suzanne is the youngest daughter of a respectable
+middle-class family. She perceives, or half-perceives (for, though no
+fool, she is a guileless and unsuspicious creature), that she is
+unwelcome there; the most certain sign of which is that, while her
+sisters are married and dowered handsomely, she is condemned to be a
+nun. She has, though quite real piety, no "vocation," and though she
+allows herself to be coaxed through her novitiate, she at last, in face
+of almost insuperable difficulties, summons up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> courage enough to
+refuse, at the very altar, the final profession. There is, of course, a
+terrible scandal; she has more black looks in the family than ever, and
+at last her mother confesses that she is an illegitimate child, and
+therefore hated by her putative father, whose love for his wife,
+however, has induced him to forgive her, and not actually renounce (as
+indeed, by French law, he could not) the child. Broken in heart and
+spirit, Suzanne at last accepts her doom. She is fortunate in one
+abbess, but the next persecutes her, brings all sorts of false
+accusations against her, strips, starves, imprisons, and actually
+tortures her by means of the <i>amende honorable</i>. She manages to get her
+complaints known and to secure a counsel, and though she cannot obtain
+liberation from her vows, the priest who conducts the ecclesiastical
+part of the enquiry is a just man, and utterly repudiates the methods of
+persecution, while he and her lay lawyer procure her transference to
+another convent. Here her last trial (except those of the foolish
+post-<i>scrap</i>, as we may call it) begins, as well as the most equivocal
+and the greatest part of the book. Her new superior is in every respect
+different from any she has known&mdash;of a luxurious temperament,
+good-natured, though capricious, and inclined to be very much too
+affectionate. Her temptation of the innocent Suzanne is defeated by this
+very innocence, and by timely revelation, though the revealer does not
+know what she reveals, to a "director"; and the wayward and corrupted
+fancy turns by degrees to actual madness, which proves fatal, Suzanne
+remaining unharmed, though a piece of not inexcusable eavesdropping
+removes the ignorance of her innocence.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A hardly missed, if missed, masterpiece.</div>
+
+<p>If the subject be not simply ruled out, and the book indexed for
+silence, it is practically impossible to suggest that it could have been
+treated better. Even the earlier parts, which could easily have been
+made dull, are not so; and it is noteworthy that, anti-religionist as
+Diderot was, and directly as the book is aimed at the conventual
+system,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_382_382" id="FNanchor_382_382"></a><a href="#Footnote_382_382" class="fnanchor">[382]</a> all the priests who are introduced are men of honour,
+justice, and humanity. But the wonder is in the treatment of the
+"scabrous" part of the matter by the author of Diderot's other books.
+Whether Madame d'Holbach's<a name="FNanchor_383_383" id="FNanchor_383_383"></a><a href="#Footnote_383_383" class="fnanchor">[383]</a> influence, as has been suggested, was
+more widely and subtly extended than we know, or whatever else may be
+the cause, there is not a coarse word, not even a coarsely drawn
+situation, in the whole. Suzanne's innocence is, in the subtlest manner,
+prevented from being in the least <i>b&ecirc;te</i>. The fluctuations and
+ficklenesses of the abbess's passion, and in a less degree of that of
+another young nun, whom Suzanne has partially ousted from her favour,
+are marvellously and almost inoffensively drawn, and the stages by which
+erotomania passes into mania general and mortal, are sketched slightly,
+but with equal power. There is, I suppose, hardly a book which one ought
+to discommend to the young person more than <i>La Religieuse</i>. There are
+not many in which the powers required by the novelist, in delineating
+morbid, and not only morbid, character, are more brilliantly shown.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the least remarkable thing about this remarkable book, and not
+the least characteristic of its most remarkable author, that its very
+survival has something extraordinary about it. Grimm, who was more
+likely than any one else to know, apparently thought it was destroyed or
+lost; it never appeared at all during Diderot's life, nor for a dozen
+years after his death, nor till seven after the outbreak of the
+Revolution, and six<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> after the suppression of the religious orders in
+France. That it might have brought its author into difficulties is more
+than probable; but the undisguised editor of the <i>Encyclop&eacute;die</i>, the
+author, earlier, of the actually disgraceful <i>Bijoux Indiscrets</i>, and
+the much more than suspected principal begetter of the <i>Syst&egrave;me de la
+Nature</i>, could not have been much influenced by this. The true cause of
+its abscondence, as in so much else of his work, was undoubtedly that
+ultra-Bohemian quality of indifference which distinguished Diderot&mdash;the
+first in a way, probably for ever the greatest, and, above all, the most
+altruistic of literary Bohemians. Ask him to do something definite,
+especially for somebody else's profit, to be done off-hand, and it was
+done. Ask him to bear the brunt of a dangerous, laborious, by no means
+lucrative, but rather exciting adventure, and he would, one cannot quite
+say consecrate, but devote (which has two senses) his life to it. But
+set him to elaborate artistic creation, confine him to it, and expect
+him to finish it, and you were certain to be disappointed. At another
+time, even at this time, if his surroundings and his society, his
+education and his breeding had been less unfortunate, he might, as it
+seems to me, have become a very great novelist indeed. As it is, he is a
+great possibility of novel and of much other writing, with occasional
+outbursts of actuality. The <i>Encyclop&eacute;die</i> itself, for aught I care,
+might have gone in all its copies, and with all possibility of
+recovering or remembering it on earth, to the place where so many people
+at the time would have liked to send it. But in the rest of him, and
+even in some of his own Encyclop&aelig;dia articles,<a name="FNanchor_384_384" id="FNanchor_384_384"></a><a href="#Footnote_384_384" class="fnanchor">[384]</a> there is much of
+quite different stuff. And among the various gifts, critical and
+creative, which this stuff shows, not the least, I think, was the
+half-used and mostly ill-used gift of novel-writing.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">The successors&mdash;Marmontel.</div>
+
+<p>What has been called the second generation of the <i>philosophes</i>, who
+were naturally the pupils of the first,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> "were not like [that] first,"
+that is to say, they did not reproduce the special talents of their
+immediate masters in this department of ours, save in two instances.
+Diderot's genius did not propagate itself in the novel way at all<a name="FNanchor_385_385" id="FNanchor_385_385"></a><a href="#Footnote_385_385" class="fnanchor">[385]</a>:
+indeed, as has been said, his best novel was not known till this second
+generation itself was waning. The most brilliant of his direct hearers,
+Joubert, took to another department; or rather, in his famous <i>Pens&eacute;es</i>,
+isolated and perfected the utterances scattered through the master's
+immense and disorderly work. Naigeon, the most devoted, who might have
+taken for his motto a slight alteration of the Mahometan confession of
+faith, "There is no God; but there is only one Diderot, and I am his
+prophet," was a dull fellow, and also, to adopt a Carlylian epithet, a
+"dull-snuffling" one, who could not have told a neck-tale if the
+Hairibee of the guillotine had caught him and given him a merciful
+chance. Voltaire in Marmontel, and Rousseau in Bernardin de
+Saint-Pierre, were more fortunate, though both the juniors considerably
+transformed their masters' fashions; and Marmontel was always more or
+less, and latterly altogether, an apostate from the principle that the
+first and last duty of man is summed up in <i>&eacute;crasons l'inf&acirc;me</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This latter writer has had vicissitudes both in English and French
+appreciation. We translated him early, and he had an immense influence
+on the general Edgeworthian school, and on Miss Edgeworth herself. Much
+later Mr. Ruskin "took him up."<a name="FNanchor_386_386" id="FNanchor_386_386"></a><a href="#Footnote_386_386" class="fnanchor">[386]</a> But neither his good nor his bad
+points have, for a long time, been such as greatly to commend
+themselves, either to the major part of the nineteenth century, or to
+what has yet passed of the twentieth, on either side of the channel.</p>
+
+<p>He was, no doubt, only a second-class man of letters,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> and though he
+ranks really high in this class, he was unfortunately much influenced by
+more or less passing fashions, fads, and fancies of his
+time&mdash;<i>sensibilit&eacute;</i> (see next chapter) philosophism,
+politico-philanthropic economy, and what not. He was also much of a
+"polygraph," and naturally a good deal of his polygraphy does not
+concern us, though parts of his <i>Memoirs</i>, especially the rather
+well-known accounts of his sufferings as a new-comer<a name="FNanchor_387_387" id="FNanchor_387_387"></a><a href="#Footnote_387_387" class="fnanchor">[387]</a> in the
+atrocious Bastille, show capital tale-telling faculty. His unequal
+criticism, sometimes very acute, hardly concerns us at all; his <i>Essai
+sur les Romans</i> being very disappointing.<a name="FNanchor_388_388" id="FNanchor_388_388"></a><a href="#Footnote_388_388" class="fnanchor">[388]</a> But he wrote not a little
+which must, in different ways and "strengths," be classed as actual
+fiction, and this concerns us pretty nearly, both as evidencing that
+general set towards the novel which is so important, and also in detail.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His "Telemachic" imitations worth little.</div>
+
+<p>It divides itself quite obviously into two classes, the almost didactic
+matter of <i>B&eacute;lisaire</i> and <i>Les Incas</i>, and the still partly didactic,
+but much more "fictionised" <i>Contes Moraux</i>. The first part (which is
+evidently of the family of <i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i>) may be rapidly dismissed. Except
+for its good French and good intentions, it has long had, and is likely
+always to have, very little to say for itself. We have seen that Pr&eacute;vost
+attempted a sort of quasi-historical novel. Of actual history there is
+little in <i>B&eacute;lisaire</i>, rather more in <i>Les Incas</i>. But historical fact
+and story-telling art are entirely subordinated in both to moral
+purpose,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> endless talk about virtue and the affections and justice and
+all the rest of it&mdash;the sort of thing, in short, which provoked the
+immortal outburst, "In the name of the Devil and his grandmother, <i>be</i>
+virtuous and have done with it!" There is, as has just been said, a
+great deal of this in the <i>Contes</i> also; but fortunately there is
+something else.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The best of his <i>Contes Moraux</i> worth a good deal.</div>
+
+<p>The something else is not to be found in the "Sensibility" parts,<a name="FNanchor_389_389" id="FNanchor_389_389"></a><a href="#Footnote_389_389" class="fnanchor">[389]</a>
+and could not be expected to be. They do, indeed, contain perhaps the
+most absolutely ludicrous instance of the absurdest side of that
+remarkable thing, except Mackenzie's great <i>trouvaille</i> of the
+press-gang who unanimously melted into tears<a name="FNanchor_390_390" id="FNanchor_390_390"></a><a href="#Footnote_390_390" class="fnanchor">[390]</a> at the plea of an
+affectionate father. Marmontel's masterpiece is not so very far removed
+in subject from this. It represents a good young man, who stirs up the
+timorous captain and crew of a ship against an Algerine pirate, and in
+the ensuing engagement, sabre in hand, makes a terrible carnage: "As
+soon as he sees an African coming on board, he runs to him and cuts him
+in half, crying, 'My poor mother!'" The filial hero varies this a
+little, when "disembowelling" the Algerine commander, by requesting the
+Deity to "have pity on" his parent&mdash;a proceeding faintly suggestive of a
+survival in his mind of the human-sacrifice period.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, as has been said, it is not always thus: and some of the
+tales are amusing in almost the highest degree, being nearly as witty as
+Voltaire's, and entirely free from ill-nature and sculduddery. Not that
+Marmontel&mdash;though a great advocate for marriage, and even (for a
+Frenchman of his time) wonderfully favourable to falling in love
+<i>before</i> marriage&mdash;pretends to be altogether superior to the customs of
+his own day. We still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> sometimes have the "Prendre-Avoir-Quitter" series
+of Cr&eacute;billon,<a name="FNanchor_391_391" id="FNanchor_391_391"></a><a href="#Footnote_391_391" class="fnanchor">[391]</a> though with fewer details; and Mrs. Newcome would
+have been almost more horrified than she was at <i>Joseph Andrews</i> by the
+perusal of one of Marmontel's most well-intentioned things, <i>Annette et
+Lubin</i>. But he never lays himself out for attractions of a doubtful
+kind, and none of his best stories, even when they may sometimes involve
+bowing in the house of Ashtoreth as well as that of Rimmon, derive their
+bait from this kind. Indeed they rather "assume and pass it by" as a
+fashion of the time.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Alcibiade ou le Moi.</i></div>
+
+<p>We may take three or four of them as examples. One is the very first of
+the collection, <i>Alcibiade ou le Moi</i>. Hardly anybody need be told that
+the Alcibiades of the tale, though nominally, is not in the least really
+the Alcibiades of history, or that his Athens is altogether Paris; while
+his Socrates is a kind of <i>philosophe</i>, the good points of Voltaire,
+Rousseau, and Diderot being combined with the faults of none of them,
+and his ladies are persons who&mdash;with one exception&mdash;simply could not
+have existed in Greece. This Alcibiades wishes to be loved "for
+himself," and is (not without reason) very doubtful whether he ever has
+been, though he is the most popular and "successful" man in Athens. His
+<i>avoir</i>, for the moment, is concerned with a "Prude." (Were there prudes
+in Greece? I think Diogenes would have gladly lent his lantern for the
+search.) He is desperately afraid that she only loves him for <i>her</i>self.
+He determines to try her; takes her, not at her deeds, but at her words,
+which are, of course, such as would have made the Greeks laugh as
+inextinguishably as their gods once did. She expresses gratitude for his
+unselfishness, but is anything but pleased. Divers experiments are tried
+by her, and when at last he hopes she will not tempt him any more,
+exclaiming that he is really "l'amant le plus fid&egrave;le, le <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>plus tendre et
+le plus respectueux" ... "et le plus sot," adds she, sharply, concluding
+the conversation and shutting her, let us say, doors<a name="FNanchor_392_392" id="FNanchor_392_392"></a><a href="#Footnote_392_392" class="fnanchor">[392]</a> on him.</p>
+
+<p>He is furious, and tries "Glicerie" (the form might be more Greek), an
+<i>ing&eacute;nue</i> of fifteen, who was "like a rose," who had attracted already
+the vows of the most gallant youths, etc. The most brilliant of these
+youths instantly retire before the invincible Alcibiades. But in the
+first place she wishes that before "explanations"<a name="FNanchor_393_393" id="FNanchor_393_393"></a><a href="#Footnote_393_393" class="fnanchor">[393]</a> take place, a
+marriage shall be arranged; while he, oddly enough, wishes that the
+explanations should precede the hymen. Also she is particular about the
+consent of her parents: and, finally, when he asks her whether she will
+swear constancy against every trial, to be his, and his only, whatever
+happens, she replies, with equal firmness and point, "Never!" So he is
+furious again. But there is a widow, and, as we have seen in former
+cases, there was not, in the French eighteenth century, the illiberal
+prejudice against widows expressed by Mr. Weller. She is, of course,
+inconsolable for her dear first, but admits, after a time, the
+possibility of a dear second. Only it must be kept secret as yet. For a
+time Alcibiades behaves nobly, but somehow or other he finds that
+everybody knows the fact; he is treated by his lady-love with obvious
+superiority; and breaks with her. An interlude with a "magistrate's"
+wife, on less proper and more Cr&eacute;billonish lines, is not more
+successful. So one day meeting by the seashore a beautiful courtesan,
+Erigone, he determines, in the not contemptible language of that
+single-speech poetess, Maria del Occidente, to "descend and sip a lower
+draught." He is happy after a fashion with her for two whole months: but
+at the end of that time he is beaten in a chariot race, and, going to
+Erigone for consolation, finds the winner's vehicle at her door.
+Socrates, on being consulted, recommends Glicerie as, after all, the
+best of them, in a rather sensible discourse. But the concluding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> words
+of the sage and the story are, as indeed might be expected from
+Xanthippe's husband, not entirely optimist: "If your wife is well
+conducted and amiable, you will be a happy man; if she is ill-tempered
+and a coquette, you will become a philosopher&mdash;so you must gain in any
+case." An "obvious," perhaps, but a neat and uncommonly well-told story.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Soliman the Second.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>Soliman the Second</i> is probably the best known of Marmontel's tales,
+and it certainly has great merits. It is hardly inferior in wit to
+Voltaire, and is entirely free from the smears of uncomeliness and the
+sniggers of bad taste which he would have been sure to put in. The
+subject is, of course, partly historical, though the reader of Knollys
+(and one knows more unhappy persons) will look in vain there, not,
+indeed, for Roxelana, but for the <i>nez retrouss&eacute;</i>, which is the
+important point of the story. The great Sultan tires of his Asiatic
+harem, complaisant but uninteresting, and orders European damsels to be
+caught or bought for him. The most noteworthy of the catch or batch are
+Elmire, Delia, and Roxelane. Elmire comes first to Soliman's notice,
+charms him by her sentimental ways, and reigns for a time, but loses her
+piquancy, and (by no means wholly to her satisfaction) is able to avail
+herself of the conditional enfranchisement, and return to her country,
+which his magnanimity has granted her. Her immediate supplanter, Delia,
+is an admirable singer, and possessed of many of the qualifications of
+an accomplished <i>het&aelig;ra</i>. But for that very reason the Sultan tires of
+her likewise; and for the same, she is not inconsolable or restive:
+indeed she acts as a sort of Lady Pandara, if not to introduce, at any
+rate to tame, the third, Roxelane, a French girl of no very regular
+beauty, but with infinite attractions, and in particular possessed of
+what Mr. Dobson elegantly calls "a madding ineffable nose" of the
+<i>retrouss&eacute;</i> type.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing the Sultan hears of this damsel is that the Master of
+the Eunuchs cannot in the least manage her; for she merely laughs at all
+he says. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> Sultan, out of curiosity, orders her to be brought to him,
+and she immediately cries: "Thank Heaven! here is a face like a man's.
+Of course you are the sublime Sultan whose slave I have the honour to
+be? Please cashier this disgusting old rascal." To which extremely
+irreverent address Soliman makes a dignified reply of the proper kind,
+including due reference to "obedience" and his "will." This brings down
+a small pageful of raillery from the young person, who asks "whether
+this is Turkish gallantry?" suggests that the restrictions of the
+seraglio involve a fear that "the skies should rain men," and more than
+hints that she should be very glad if they did. For the moment Soliman,
+though much taken with her, finds no way of saving his dignity except by
+a retreat. The next time he sends for her, or rather announces his own
+arrival, she tells the messenger to pack himself off: and when the
+Commander of the Faithful does visit her and gives a little good advice,
+she is still incorrigible. She will, once more, have nothing to do with
+the words <i>dois</i> and <i>devoir</i>. When asked if she knows what he is and
+what <i>she</i> is, she answers with perfect <i>aplomb</i>, "What we are? You are
+powerful, and I am pretty; so we are quite on an equality." In the most
+painfully confidential and at the same time quite decent manner, she
+asks him what he can possibly do with five hundred wives? and, still
+more intolerably, tells him that she likes his looks, and has already
+loved people who were not worth him. The horror with which this Turkish
+soldan, himself so full of sin, ejaculates, "Vous <i>avez</i> aim&eacute;?" may be
+easily imagined, and again she simply puts him to flight. When he gets
+over it a little, he sends Delia to negotiate. But Roxelane tells the
+go-between to stay to supper, declaring that she herself does not feel
+inclined for a <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> yet, and finally sends him off with this
+obliging predecessor and substitute, presenting her with the legendary
+handkerchief, which she has actually borrowed from the guileless
+Padishah. There is some, but not too much more of it; there can but be
+one end; and as he takes her to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> Mosque to make her legitimate
+Sultana, quite contrary to proper Mussulman usage, he says to himself,
+"Is it really possible that a little <i>retrouss&eacute;</i> nose should upset the
+laws of an empire?" Probably, though Marmontel does not say so, he
+looked down at the said nose, as he communed with himself, and decided
+that cause and effect were not unworthy of each other. There is hardly a
+righter and better hit-off tale of the kind, even in French.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>The Four Flasks.</i></div>
+
+<p>"The Four Flasks" or "The Adventures of Alcidonis of Megara," a sort of
+outside fairy tale, is good, but not quite so good as either of the
+former. Alcidonis has a fairy protectress, if not exactly godmother, who
+gives him the flasks in question to use in amatory adventures. One, with
+purple liquor in it, sets the drinker in full tide of passion; the
+second (rose-coloured) causes a sort of flirtation; the third (blue)
+leads to sentimental and moderate affection; and the last (pure white)
+recovers the experimenter from the effects of any of the others. He
+tries all, and all but the last are unsatisfactory, though, much as in
+the case of Alcibiades and Glicerie, the blue has a second chance, the
+results of which are not revealed. This is the least important of the
+group, but is well told.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Heureusement.</i></div>
+
+<p>There is also much good in <i>Heureusement</i>, the nearest to a
+"Cr&eacute;billonnade" of all, though the Cr&eacute;billonesque situations are
+ingeniously broken off short. It is told by an old marquise<a name="FNanchor_394_394" id="FNanchor_394_394"></a><a href="#Footnote_394_394" class="fnanchor">[394]</a> to an
+almost equally old abb&eacute;, her crony, who only at the last discovers that,
+long ago, he himself was very nearly the shepherd of the proverbial
+hour. And <i>Le Mari Sylphe</i>, which is still more directly connected with
+one of Cr&eacute;billon's actual pieces, and with some of the weaker stories
+(<i>v. sup.</i>) of the <i>Cabinet des F&eacute;es</i>, would be good if it were not much
+too long. Others might be mentioned, but my own favourite, though it has
+nothing quite so magnetic in it as the <i>nez de Roxelane</i>, is <i>Le
+Philosophe Soi-disant</i>, a sort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> of apology for his own clan, in a satire
+on its less worthy members, which may seem to hit rather unfairly at
+Rousseau, but which is exceedingly amusing.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Le Philosophe Soi-disant.</i></div>
+
+<p>Clarice&mdash;one of those so useful young widows of whom the novelists of
+this time might have pleaded that they took their ideas of them from the
+Apostle St. Paul&mdash;has for some time been anxious to know a <i>philosophe</i>,
+though she has been warned that there are <i>philosophes</i> and
+<i>philosophes</i>, and that the right kind is neither common nor very fond
+of society. She expresses surprise, and says that she has always heard a
+<i>philosophe</i> defined as an odd creature who makes it his business to be
+like nobody else. "Oh," she is told, "there is no difficulty about
+<i>that</i> kind," and one, by name Ariste, is shortly added to her
+country-house party. She politely asks him whether he is not a
+<i>philosophe</i>, and whether philosophy is not a very beautiful thing? He
+replies (his special line being sententiousness) that it is simply the
+knowledge of good and evil, or, if she prefers it, Wisdom. "Only that?"
+says wicked Doris; but Clarice helps him from replying to the scoffer by
+going on to ask whether the fruit of Wisdom is not happiness? "And,
+Madame, the making others happy." "Dear me," says na&iuml;ve Lucinde, half
+under her breath, "I must be a <i>philosophe</i>, for I have been told a
+hundred times that it only depended on myself to be happy by making
+others happy." There is more wickedness from Doris; but Ariste, with a
+contemptuous smile, explains that the word "happiness" has more than one
+meaning, and that the <i>philosophe</i> kind is different from that at the
+disposal and dispensation of a pretty woman. Clarice, admitting this,
+asks what <i>his</i> kind of happiness is? The company then proceeds, in the
+most reprehensible fashion, to "draw" the sage: and they get from him,
+among other things, an admission that he despises everybody, and an
+unmistakable touch of disgust when somebody speaks of "his
+<i>semblables</i>."<a name="FNanchor_395_395" id="FNanchor_395_395"></a><a href="#Footnote_395_395" class="fnanchor">[395]</a></p>
+
+<p>Clarice, however, still plays the amiable and polite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> hostess, lets him
+take her to dinner, and says playfully that she means to reconcile him
+to humanity. He altogether declines. Man is a vicious beast, who
+persecutes and devours others, he says, making all the time a
+particularly good dinner while denouncing the slaughter of animals, and
+eulogising the "sparkling brook" while getting slightly drunk. He
+declaims against the folly and crime of the modern world in not making
+philosophers kings, and announces his intention of seeking complete
+solitude. But Clarice, still polite, decides that he must stay with them
+a little while, in order to enlighten and improve the company.</p>
+
+<p>After this, Ariste, in an alley alone, to digest his dinner and walk off
+his wine, persuades himself that Clarice has fallen in love with him,
+and that, to secure her face and her fortune, he has only got to go on
+playing the misanthrope and give her a chance of "taming the bear." The
+company, perfectly well knowing his thoughts, determine to play up to
+them&mdash;not for his greater glory; and Clarice, not quite willingly,
+agrees to take the principal part. In a long <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> he makes his
+clumsy court, airs his cheap philosophy, and lets by no means the mere
+suggestion of a cloven foot appear, on the subject of virtue and vice.
+However, she stands it, though rather disgusted, and confesses to him
+that people are suggesting a certain Cl&eacute;on, a member of the party, as
+her second husband; whereon he decries marriage, but proposes himself as
+a lover. She reports progress, and is applauded; but the Pr&eacute;sidente de
+Ponval, another widow, fat, fifty, fond of good fare, possessed of a
+fine fortune, but very far from foolish, vows that <i>she</i> will make the
+greatest fool of Ariste. Cl&eacute;on, however, accepts his part; and appears
+to be much disturbed at Clarice's attentions to Ariste, who, being shown
+to his room, declaims against its luxuries, but avails himself of them
+very cheerfully. In the morning he, though rather doubtfully, accepts a
+bath; but on his appearance in company Clarice makes remonstrances on
+his dress, etc., and actually prevails on him to let a valet curl his
+hair. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> is an improvement; but she does not like his brown
+coat.<a name="FNanchor_396_396" id="FNanchor_396_396"></a><a href="#Footnote_396_396" class="fnanchor">[396]</a> He must write to Paris and order a suit of <i>gris-de-lin
+clair</i>, and after some wrangling he consents. But now the Pr&eacute;sidente
+takes up the running. After expressing the extremest admiration for his
+coiffure, she makes a dead set at him, tells him she wants a second
+husband whom she can love for himself, and goes off with a passionate
+glance, the company letting him casually know that she has ten thousand
+crowns a year. He affects to despise this, which is duly reported to her
+next morning. She vows vengeance; but he dreams of her (and the crowns)
+meanwhile, and with that morning the new suit arrives. He is admiring
+himself in it when Cl&eacute;on comes in, and throws himself on his mercy. He
+adores Clarice; Ariste is evidently gaining fatally on her affections;
+will he not be generous and abstain from using his advantages? But if
+<i>he</i> is really in love Cl&eacute;on will give her up.</p>
+
+<p>The hook is, of course, more than singly baited and barbed. Ariste can
+at once play the magnanimous man, and be rewarded by the Pr&eacute;sidente's
+ten thousand a year. He will be off with Clarice and on with Mme. de
+Ponval, whom he visits in his new splendour. She admires it hugely, but
+is alarmed at seeing him in Clarice's favourite colour. An admirable
+conversation follows, in which she constantly draws her ill-bred,
+ill-blooded, and self-besotted suitor into addressing her with insults,
+under the guise of compliments, and affects to enjoy them. He next
+visits Clarice, with whom he finds Cl&eacute;on, in the depths of despair. She
+begins to admire the coat, and to pride herself on her choice, when he
+interrupts her, and solemnly resigns her to Cl&eacute;on. Doris and Lucinde
+come in, and everybody is astounded at Ariste's generosity as he takes
+Clarice's hand and places it in that of his rival. Then he goes to the
+Pr&eacute;sidente, and tells her what he has done. She expresses her delight,
+and he falls at her feet. Thereupon she throws round his neck a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>
+rose-coloured ribbon (<i>her</i> colours), calls him "her Charming man,"<a name="FNanchor_397_397" id="FNanchor_397_397"></a><a href="#Footnote_397_397" class="fnanchor">[397]</a>
+and insists on showing him to the public as her conquest and captive. He
+has no time to refuse, for the door opens and they all appear. "Le
+voil&agrave;," says she, "cet homme si fier qui soupire &agrave; mes genoux pour les
+beaux yeux de ma cassette! Je vous le livre. Mon r&ocirc;le est jou&eacute;." So
+Ariste, tearing his curled hair, and the <i>gris-de-lin clair</i> coat, and,
+doubtless, the Pr&eacute;sidente's "red rose chain," cursing also terribly,
+goes off to write a book against the age, and to prove that nobody is
+wise but himself.</p>
+
+<p>I can hardly imagine more than one cavil being made against this by the
+most carping of critics and the most wedded to the crotchet of
+"kinds"&mdash;that it is too dramatic for a <i>story</i>, and that we ought to
+have had it as a drama. If this were further twisted into an accusation
+of plagiarism from the actual theatre, I think it could be rebutted at
+once. The situations separately might be found in many dramas; the
+characters in more; but I at least am not aware of any one in which they
+had been similarly put together. Of course most if not all of us have
+seen actresses who would make Clarice charming, Madame de Ponval
+amusing, and Doris and Lucinde very delectable adjuncts; as well as
+actors by whom the parts of Cl&eacute;on and Ariste would be very effectively
+worked out. But why we should be troubled to dress, journey, waste time
+and money, and get a headache, by going to the theatre, when we can
+enjoy all this "in some close corner of [our] brain," I cannot see. As I
+read the story in some twenty minutes, I can see <i>my</i> Clarice, <i>my</i>
+Madame de Ponval, <i>my</i> Doris and Lucinde and Cl&eacute;on and Ariste and
+Jasmin&mdash;the silent but doubtless highly appreciative valet,&mdash;and I
+rather doubt whether the best company in the world could give me quite
+that.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A real advance in these.</div>
+
+<p>But, even in saying this, full justice has not yet been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> done to
+Marmontel. He has, from our special point of view, made a real further
+progress towards the ideal of the ordinary novel&mdash;the presentation of
+ordinary life. He has borrowed no supernatural aid;<a name="FNanchor_398_398" id="FNanchor_398_398"></a><a href="#Footnote_398_398" class="fnanchor">[398]</a> he has laid
+under contribution no "fie-fie" seasonings; he has sacrificed nothing,
+or next to nothing, in these best pieces, whatever he may have done
+elsewhere, to purpose and crotchet. He has discarded stuffing,
+digression, episode, and other things which weighed on and hampered his
+predecessors. In fact there are times when it seems almost unjust, in
+this part of his work, to "second" him in the way we have done; though
+it must be admitted that if you take his production as a whole he
+relapses into the second order.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.</div>
+
+<p>The actual books, in anything that can be called fiction, of Bernardin
+de Saint-Pierre are of far less merit than Marmontel's; but most people
+who have even the slightest knowledge of French literature know why he
+cannot be excluded here. Personally, he seems to have been an
+ineffectual sort of creature, and in a large part of his rather
+voluminous work he is (when he ceases to produce a sort of languid
+amusement) a distinctly boring one.<a name="FNanchor_399_399" id="FNanchor_399_399"></a><a href="#Footnote_399_399" class="fnanchor">[399]</a> He appears to have been
+unlucky, but to have helped his own bad luck with the only signs of
+effectualness that he ever showed. It is annoying, no doubt, to get
+remonstrances from headquarters as to your not sending any work (plans,
+reports, etc.) as an engineer, and to find, or think you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> find, that
+your immediate C.O. has suppressed them. But when you charge him with
+his disgraceful proceeding, and he, as any French officer in his
+position at his time was likely to do, puts his hand on his sword, it is
+undiplomatic to rush on another officer who happens to be present, grab
+at and draw his weapon (you are apparently not entitled to one), and
+attack your chief. Nor when, after some more unsuccessful experiences at
+home and abroad, you are on half or no pay, and want employment, would
+it seem to be exactly the wisdom of Solomon to give a minister the
+choice of employing you on (1) the civilisation of Corsica, (2) the
+exploration of the unknown parts of the Western Continent, (3) the
+discovery of the sources of the Nile, and (4) a pedestrian tour
+throughout India. But, except in the first instance (for the "Citizen of
+Geneva" did not meddle much with cold steel), it was all very like a
+pupil, and (in the Citizen's later years) a friend, of Rousseau,
+carrying out his master's ideas with a stronger dose of Christianity,
+but with quite as little common sense. I have not seen (or remembered)
+any more exact account of Saint-Pierre's relations with Napoleon than
+that given by the excellent Aim&eacute;-Martin, an academic euphemiser of the
+French kind. But, even reading between his lines, they must have been
+very funny.<a name="FNanchor_400_400" id="FNanchor_400_400"></a><a href="#Footnote_400_400" class="fnanchor">[400]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Paul et Virginie</i>, however, is one of those books which, having
+attained and long kept a European reputation, cannot be neglected, and
+it may be added that it does deserve, though for one thing only, never
+to be entirely forgotten. It is chock-full of <i>sensibilit&eacute;</i>, the
+characters have no real character, and all healthy-minded persons have
+long ago agreed that the concomitant facts, if not causes, of Virginie's
+fate are more nasty than the nastiest thing in Diderot or Rabelais.<a name="FNanchor_401_401" id="FNanchor_401_401"></a><a href="#Footnote_401_401" class="fnanchor">[401]</a>
+But the descriptions of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> the scenery of Mauritius, as sets-off to a
+novel, are something new, and something immensely important. <i>La
+Chaumi&egrave;re Indienne</i>, though less of a story in size and general texture,
+is much better from the point of view of taste. It has touches of real
+irony, and almost of humour, though its hero, the good pariah, is a
+creature nearly as uninteresting as he is impossible. Yet his "black and
+polished" baby is a vivid property, and the descriptions are again
+famous. The shorter pieces, <i>Le Caf&eacute; de Surate</i>, etc., require little
+notice.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It will, however, have been seen by anybody who can "seize points," that
+this <i>philosophe</i> novel, as such, is a really important agent in
+bringing on the novel itself to its state of full age. That men like the
+three chiefs should take up the form is a great thing; that men who are
+not quite chiefs, like Marmontel and Saint-Pierre, should carry it on,
+is not a small one. They all do something to get it out of the rough; to
+discard&mdash;if sometimes also they add&mdash;irrelevances; to modernise this one
+kind which is perhaps the predestined and acceptable literary product of
+modernity. Voltaire originates little, but puts his immense power and
+<i>diable au corps</i> into the body of fiction. Rousseau enchains passion in
+its service, as Madame de la Fayette, as even Pr&eacute;vost, had not been able
+to do before. Diderot indicates, in whatever questionable material, the
+vast possibilities of psychological analysis. Marmontel&mdash;doing, like
+other second-rate talents, almost more <i>useful</i> work than his
+betters&mdash;rescues the <i>conte</i> from the "demi-rep" condition into which it
+had fallen, and, owing to the multifariousness of his examples, does not
+entirely subjugate it even to honest purpose; while Bernardin de
+Saint-Pierre carries the suggestions of Rousseau still further in the
+invaluable department of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> description. No one, except on the small
+scale, is great in plot; no one produces a really individual
+character;<a name="FNanchor_402_402" id="FNanchor_402_402"></a><a href="#Footnote_402_402" class="fnanchor">[402]</a> and it can hardly be said that any one provides
+thoroughly achieved novel dialogue. But they have inspired and enlivened
+the whole thing as a whole; and if, against this, is to be set the crime
+of purpose, that is one not difficult to discard.<a name="FNanchor_403_403" id="FNanchor_403_403"></a><a href="#Footnote_403_403" class="fnanchor">[403]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_351_351" id="Footnote_351_351"></a><a href="#FNanchor_351_351"><span class="label">[351]</span></a> His <i>verse</i> tales, even if stories in verse had not by
+this time fallen out of our proper range, require little notice. The
+faculty of "telling" did not remain with him here, perhaps because it
+was prejudicially affected by the "dryness" and unpoetical quality of
+his poetry, and of the French poetry of the time generally, perhaps for
+other reasons. At any rate, as compared with La Fontaine or Prior, he
+hardly counts. <i>Le Mondain</i>, <i>Le Pauvre Diable</i>, etc., are skits or
+squibs in verse, not tales. The opening one of the usual collection, <i>Ce
+qui pla&icirc;t aux Dames</i>,&mdash;in itself a flat rehandling of Chaucer and
+Dryden,&mdash;is saved by its charming last line&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! croyez-moi, l'erreur a son m&eacute;rite,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+a rede which he himself might well have recked.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_352_352" id="Footnote_352_352"></a><a href="#FNanchor_352_352"><span class="label">[352]</span></a> In justice to Voltaire it ought to be remembered that no
+less great, virtuous, and religious a person than Milton ranked as one
+of the two objects to which "all mortals most aspire," "to offend your
+enemies."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_353_353" id="Footnote_353_353"></a><a href="#FNanchor_353_353"><span class="label">[353]</span></a> It has been noted above (see p. 266, <i>note</i>), how some
+have directly traced <i>Zadig</i> to the work of a person so much inferior to
+Hamilton as Gueulette.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_354_354" id="Footnote_354_354"></a><a href="#FNanchor_354_354"><span class="label">[354]</span></a> <i>Microm&eacute;gas</i> and one or two other things avowed&mdash;in fact,
+Voltaire, if not "great," was "big" enough to make as a rule little
+secret of his levies on others; and he had, if not adequate, a
+considerable, respect for the English Titan.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_355_355" id="Footnote_355_355"></a><a href="#FNanchor_355_355"><span class="label">[355]</span></a> Cacambo was not a savage, but he had savage or, at least,
+non-European blood in him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_356_356" id="Footnote_356_356"></a><a href="#FNanchor_356_356"><span class="label">[356]</span></a> Not in the Grandisonian sense, thank heaven! But as has
+been hinted, he is a <i>little</i> of a prig.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_357_357" id="Footnote_357_357"></a><a href="#FNanchor_357_357"><span class="label">[357]</span></a> He has been allowed a great deal of credit for the Calas
+and some other similar businesses. It is unlucky that the injustices he
+combated were somehow always <i>clerical</i>, in this or that fashion.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_358_358" id="Footnote_358_358"></a><a href="#FNanchor_358_358"><span class="label">[358]</span></a> It was said of them at their appearance "[cet] ouvrage
+est sans go&ucirc;t, sans finesse, sans invention, un rab&acirc;chage de toutes les
+vieilles polissonneries que l'auteur a d&eacute;bit&eacute;es sur Mo&iuml;se, et
+J&eacute;sus-Christ, les proph&egrave;tes et les ap&ocirc;tres, l'&Eacute;glise, les papes, les
+cardinaux, les pr&ecirc;tres et les moines; nul int&ecirc;ret, nulle chaleur, nulle
+vraisemblance, force ordures, une grosse gaiet&eacute;.... Je n'aime pas la
+religion: mais je ne la hais pas assez pour trouver cela bon." The
+authorship, added to the justice of it, makes this one of the most
+crushing censures ever committed to paper; for the writer was Diderot
+(<i>&OElig;uvres</i>, Ed. Ass&eacute;zat, vi. 36).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_359_359" id="Footnote_359_359"></a><a href="#FNanchor_359_359"><span class="label">[359]</span></a> It is a singular coincidence that this was exactly the
+sum which Johnson mentioned to Boswell as capable of affording decent
+subsistence in London during the early middle eighteenth century.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_360_360" id="Footnote_360_360"></a><a href="#FNanchor_360_360"><span class="label">[360]</span></a> <i>Songe de Platon</i>, <i>Bababec et les Fakirs</i>, <i>Aventure de
+la M&eacute;moire</i>, <i>Les Aveugles Juges des Conteurs</i>, <i>Aventure Indienne</i>, and
+<i>Voyage de la Raison</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_361_361" id="Footnote_361_361"></a><a href="#FNanchor_361_361"><span class="label">[361]</span></a> It is only fair to mention in this place, and in justice
+to a much abused institution, that this Babylonian story is said to be
+the only thing of its kind and its author that escaped the Roman
+censorship. If this is true, the unfeathered <i>perroquets</i> were not so
+spiteful as the feathered ones too often are. Or perhaps each chuckled
+at the satire on his brethren.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_362_362" id="Footnote_362_362"></a><a href="#FNanchor_362_362"><span class="label">[362]</span></a> As with other controverted points, not strictly relevant,
+it is permissible for us to neglect protests about <i>la l&eacute;gende des
+philosophes</i> and the like. Of course Rousseau was not only, at one time
+or another, the personal enemy of Voltaire and Diderot&mdash;he was, at one
+time or another, the personal enemy of everybody, including (not at any
+one but at all times) himself&mdash;but held principles very different from
+theirs. Yet their names will always be found together: and for our
+object the junction is real.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_363_363" id="Footnote_363_363"></a><a href="#FNanchor_363_363"><span class="label">[363]</span></a> Not the Abb&eacute;, who had been dead for some years, but a
+Genevese professor who saw a good deal of Jean-Jacques in his later
+days.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_364_364" id="Footnote_364_364"></a><a href="#FNanchor_364_364"><span class="label">[364]</span></a> "For short" <i>La Nouvelle H&eacute;lo&iuml;se</i> has been usually
+adopted. I prefer <i>Julie</i> as actually the first title, and for other
+reasons with which it is unnecessary to trouble the reader.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_365_365" id="Footnote_365_365"></a><a href="#FNanchor_365_365"><span class="label">[365]</span></a> She dies after slipping into the lake in a successful
+attempt to rescue one of her children; but neither is drowned, and she
+does not succumb rapidly enough for "shock" to account for it, or slowly
+enough for any other intelligible malady to hold its course.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_366_366" id="Footnote_366_366"></a><a href="#FNanchor_366_366"><span class="label">[366]</span></a> There is another curious anticipation of Dickens here:
+for Julie, as Dora does with Agnes, entreats Claire to "fill her vacant
+place"&mdash;though, by the way, not with her husband. And a third parallel,
+between Saint-Preux and Bradley Headstone, need not be quite farcical.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_367_367" id="Footnote_367_367"></a><a href="#FNanchor_367_367"><span class="label">[367]</span></a> You <i>may</i> tear out Introductions, if you do it neatly;
+and this I say, having written many.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_368_368" id="Footnote_368_368"></a><a href="#FNanchor_368_368"><span class="label">[368]</span></a> Also Rousseau, without meaning it, has made him by no
+means a fool. When, on learning from his wife and daughter that
+Saint-Preux had been officiating as "coach," he asked if this genius was
+a gentleman, and on hearing that he was not, replied, "What have you
+paid him, then?" it was not, as the novelist and his hero took it, in
+their vanity, to be, mere insolence of caste. M. d'&Eacute;tange knew perfectly
+well that though he could not trust a French gentleman with his wife,
+there was not nearly so much danger with his daughter&mdash;while a
+<i>roturier</i> was not only entitled to be paid, and might accept pay
+without derogation, but was not unlikely, as the old North Country
+saying goes, to take it in malt if he did not receive it in meal.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_369_369" id="Footnote_369_369"></a><a href="#FNanchor_369_369"><span class="label">[369]</span></a> I observe that I have not yet fulfilled the promise of
+saying something of Wolmar, but the less said of him the better. He
+belongs wholly to that latter portion which has been wished away; he is
+a respectable Deist&mdash;than which it is essentially impossible, one would
+suppose, for orthodoxy and unorthodoxy alike to imagine anything more
+uninteresting; and his behaviour to Saint-Preux appears to me to be
+simply nauseous. He cannot, like Rowena, "forgive as a Christian,"
+because he is not one, and any other form of forgiveness or even of
+tolerance is, in the circumstances, disgusting. But it was Rousseau's
+way to be disgusting sometimes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_370_370" id="Footnote_370_370"></a><a href="#FNanchor_370_370"><span class="label">[370]</span></a> We have spoken of his attempt at the fairy tale; <i>qui</i>
+Gomersal <i>non odit</i> in English verse, <i>amet Le L&eacute;vite d'Ephra&iuml;m</i> in
+French prose, etc. etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_371_371" id="Footnote_371_371"></a><a href="#FNanchor_371_371"><span class="label">[371]</span></a> He did not even, as Rousseau did with his human
+offspring, habitually take them to the Foundling Hospital&mdash;that is to
+say, in the case of literature, the anonymous press. He left them in
+MS., gave them away, and in some cases behaved to them in such an
+incomprehensible fashion that one wonders how they ever came to light.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_372_372" id="Footnote_372_372"></a><a href="#FNanchor_372_372"><span class="label">[372]</span></a> Carlyle's <i>Essay</i> and Lord Morley of Blackburn's book are
+excepted. But Carlyle had not the whole before him, and Lord Morley was
+principally dealing with the <i>Encyclop&eacute;die</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_373_373" id="Footnote_373_373"></a><a href="#FNanchor_373_373"><span class="label">[373]</span></a> Especially as G&eacute;nin, like Carlyle, did not know all.
+There is, I believe, a later selection, but I have not seen it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_374_374" id="Footnote_374_374"></a><a href="#FNanchor_374_374"><span class="label">[374]</span></a> Even the long, odd, and sometimes tedious <i>R&ecirc;ve de
+D'Alembert</i>, which Carlyle thought "we could have done without," but
+which others have extolled, has vivid narrative touches, though one is
+not much surprised at Mlle. de Lespinasse having been by no means
+grateful for the part assigned to her.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_375_375" id="Footnote_375_375"></a><a href="#FNanchor_375_375"><span class="label">[375]</span></a> The cleansing effect of war is an old <i>clich&eacute;</i>. It has
+been curiously illustrated in this case: for the first proof of the
+present passage reached me on the very same day with the news of the
+expulsion of the Germans from the village of Puisieux. So the name got
+"<i>red</i>-washed" from its old reproach.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_376_376" id="Footnote_376_376"></a><a href="#FNanchor_376_376"><span class="label">[376]</span></a> There really are touches of resemblance in it to
+Browning, especially in things like <i>Mr. Sludge the Medium</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_377_377" id="Footnote_377_377"></a><a href="#FNanchor_377_377"><span class="label">[377]</span></a> The corporal's wound in the knee.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_378_378" id="Footnote_378_378"></a><a href="#FNanchor_378_378"><span class="label">[378]</span></a> Of course, there <i>are</i> exceptions, and with one of the
+chief of them, Xavier de Maistre, we may have, before long, to deal.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_379_379" id="Footnote_379_379"></a><a href="#FNanchor_379_379"><span class="label">[379]</span></a> His longest, most avowed, and most famous, the <i>Paradoxe
+sur le Com&eacute;dien</i>, has been worthily Englished by Mr. Walter H. Pollock.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_380_380" id="Footnote_380_380"></a><a href="#FNanchor_380_380"><span class="label">[380]</span></a> Its heroine, Suzanne Simonin, was, as far as the attempt
+to relieve herself of her vows went, a real person; and a benevolent
+nobleman, the Marquis de Croixmare, actually interested himself in this
+attempt&mdash;which failed. But Diderot and his evil angel Grimm got up sham
+letters between themselves and her patron, which are usually printed
+with the book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_381_381" id="Footnote_381_381"></a><a href="#FNanchor_381_381"><span class="label">[381]</span></a> <i>Mon p&egrave;re, je suis damn&eacute;e</i> ... the opening words, and the
+only ones given, of the confession of the half-mad abbess.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_382_382" id="Footnote_382_382"></a><a href="#FNanchor_382_382"><span class="label">[382]</span></a> Evangelical Protestantism has more than once adopted the
+principle that the Devil should not be allowed to have all the best
+tunes: and I remember in my youth an English religious novel of
+ultra-anti-Roman purpose, which, though, of course, dropping the
+"scabrousness," had, as I long afterwards recognised when I came to read
+<i>La Religieuse</i>, almost certainly borrowed a good deal from our most
+unsaintly Denis of Langres.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_383_383" id="Footnote_383_383"></a><a href="#FNanchor_383_383"><span class="label">[383]</span></a> She seems to have been, in many ways, far too good for
+her society, and altogether a lady.&mdash;The opinions of the late M.
+Bruneti&egrave;re and mine on French literature were often very
+different&mdash;though he was good enough not to disapprove of some of my
+work on it. But with the terms of his expression of mere opinion one had
+seldom to quarrel. I must, however, take exception to his attribution of
+<i>grossi&egrave;ret&eacute;</i> to <i>La Religieuse</i>. Diderot, as has been fully admitted,
+<i>was</i> too often <i>grossier</i>: sometimes when it was almost irrelevant to
+the subject. But here, "scabrous" as the subject might be, the treatment
+is scrupulously <i>not</i> coarse. Nor do I think, after intimate and long
+familiarity with the whole of his work, that he was ever a <i>faux
+bonhomme</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_384_384" id="Footnote_384_384"></a><a href="#FNanchor_384_384"><span class="label">[384]</span></a> They have hardly had a fair opportunity of comparison
+with Voltaire's <i>Dictionnaire Philosophique</i>; but they can stand it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_385_385" id="Footnote_385_385"></a><a href="#FNanchor_385_385"><span class="label">[385]</span></a> Unless Dulaurens' not quite stupid, but formless and
+discreditable, <i>Comp&egrave;re Mathieu</i> be excepted.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_386_386" id="Footnote_386_386"></a><a href="#FNanchor_386_386"><span class="label">[386]</span></a> In consequence of which Mr. Ruskin's favourite publisher,
+the late Mr. George Allen, asked the present writer, some twenty years
+ago, to revise and "introduce" the old translation of his <i>Contes
+Moraux</i>. The volume had, at least, the advantage of very charming
+illustrations by Miss Chris. Hammond.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_387_387" id="Footnote_387_387"></a><a href="#FNanchor_387_387"><span class="label">[387]</span></a> They were even worse than Leigh Hunt's in the strictly
+English counterpart torture-house for the victims of
+tyranny&mdash;consisting, for instance, in the supply of so good a dinner, at
+His Most Christian Majesty's expense, for the prisoner's servant, that
+the prisoner ate it himself, and had afterwards, on the principles of
+rigid virtue and distributive justice, to resign, to the minion who
+accompanied him, his own still better one which came later, also
+supplied by the tyrant.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_388_388" id="Footnote_388_388"></a><a href="#FNanchor_388_388"><span class="label">[388]</span></a> One expects something of value from the
+part-contemporary, part-successor of the novelists from Lesage to
+Rousseau. But where it is not mere blether about virtue and vice, and
+<i>le c&oelig;ur humain</i> and so on, it has some of the worst faults of
+eighteenth-century criticism. He thinks it would have been more "moral"
+if Mme. de Cl&egrave;ves had actually succumbed as a punishment for her
+self-reliance (certainly one of the most remarkable topsyturvifications
+of morality ever crotcheted); is, of course, infinitely shocked at being
+asked and induced to "interest himself in a prostitute and a
+card-sharper" by <i>Manon Lescaut</i>; and, equally of course, extols
+Richardson, though it is fair to say that he speaks well of <i>Tom
+Jones</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_389_389" id="Footnote_389_389"></a><a href="#FNanchor_389_389"><span class="label">[389]</span></a> See next chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_390_390" id="Footnote_390_390"></a><a href="#FNanchor_390_390"><span class="label">[390]</span></a> I wonder whether any one else has noticed that Thackeray,
+in the very agreeable illustration to one of not quite his greatest
+"letterpress" things, <i>A New Naval Drama</i> (Oxford Ed. vol. viii. p.
+421), makes the press-gang weep ostentatiously in the picture, though
+not in the text, where they only wave their cutlasses. It may be merely
+a coincidence: but it may not.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_391_391" id="Footnote_391_391"></a><a href="#FNanchor_391_391"><span class="label">[391]</span></a> There are reasons for thinking that Marmontel was
+deliberately "antidoting the <i>fanfreluches</i>" of the older tale-teller.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_392_392" id="Footnote_392_392"></a><a href="#FNanchor_392_392"><span class="label">[392]</span></a> In the original, suiting the rest of the setting, it is
+<i>rideaux</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_393_393" id="Footnote_393_393"></a><a href="#FNanchor_393_393"><span class="label">[393]</span></a> "Explanations" is quite admirable, and, I think, neither
+borrowed from, nor, which is more surprising, by others.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_394_394" id="Footnote_394_394"></a><a href="#FNanchor_394_394"><span class="label">[394]</span></a> She declares that she has never actually "stooped to
+folly"; but admits that on more than one occasion it was only an
+accidental interruption which "luckily" (<i>heureusement</i>) saved her.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_395_395" id="Footnote_395_395"></a><a href="#FNanchor_395_395"><span class="label">[395]</span></a> It is necessary to retain the French here: for our
+"likes" is ambiguous.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_396_396" id="Footnote_396_396"></a><a href="#FNanchor_396_396"><span class="label">[396]</span></a> Cf. the stories, contradictory of each other, as to <i>our</i>
+brown-coated philosopher's appearance in France. (Boswell, p. 322, Globe
+ed.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_397_397" id="Footnote_397_397"></a><a href="#FNanchor_397_397"><span class="label">[397]</span></a> Cf. again the bestowal of this title by Horace Walpole,
+in his later days, on Edward Jerningham, playwright, poetaster, and
+<i>petit ma&icirc;tre</i>, who, unluckily for himself, lived into the more roughly
+satirical times of the Revolutionary War.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_398_398" id="Footnote_398_398"></a><a href="#FNanchor_398_398"><span class="label">[398]</span></a> "The <i>sylph</i>ishness of <i>Le Mari Sylphe</i> is only an
+ingenious and defensible fraud; and the philtre-flasks of <i>Alcidonis</i>
+are little more than "properties.""</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_399_399" id="Footnote_399_399"></a><a href="#FNanchor_399_399"><span class="label">[399]</span></a> Here is a specimen of his largest and most ambitious
+production, the <i>&Eacute;tudes de la Nature</i>. "La femelle du tigre, exhalant
+l'odeur du carnage, fait retentir les solitudes de l'Afrique de ses
+miaulements affreux, et para&icirc;t remplie d'attraits &agrave; ses cruels amants."
+By an odd chance, I once saw a real scene contrasting remarkably with
+Saint-Pierre's sentimental melodrama. It was in the Clifton Zoological
+Gardens, which, as possibly some readers may know, were at one time
+regarded as particularly home-like by the larger carnivora. It was a
+very fine day, and an equally fine young tigress was endeavouring to
+attract the attention of her cruel lover. She rolled delicately about,
+like a very large, very pretty, and exceptionally graceful cat; she made
+fantastic gestures with her paws and tail; and she purred literally "as
+gently as any sucking dove"&mdash;<i>roucoulement</i> was the only word for it.
+But her "lover," though he certainly looked "cruel" and as if he would
+very much like to eat <i>me</i>, appeared totally indifferent to her
+attractions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_400_400" id="Footnote_400_400"></a><a href="#FNanchor_400_400"><span class="label">[400]</span></a> So, also, when one is told that he called his son Paul
+and his daughter Virginie, it is cheerful to remember, with a pleasant
+sense of contrast, Scott's good-humoured contempt for the tourists who
+wanted to know whether Abbotsford was to be called Tullyveolan or
+Tillietudlem.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_401_401" id="Footnote_401_401"></a><a href="#FNanchor_401_401"><span class="label">[401]</span></a> As the story is not now, I believe, the universal
+school-book it once was, something more than mere allusion may be
+desirable. The ship in which Virginie is returning to the Isle of France
+gets into shallows during a hurricane, and is being beaten to pieces
+close to land. One stalwart sailor, stripped to swim for his life,
+approaches Virginie, imploring her to strip likewise and let him try to
+pilot her through the surf. But she (like the lady in the coach, at an
+early part of <i>Joseph Andrews</i>) won't so much as look at a naked man,
+clasps her arms round her own garments, and is very deservedly drowned.
+The sailor, to one's great relief, is not.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_402_402" id="Footnote_402_402"></a><a href="#FNanchor_402_402"><span class="label">[402]</span></a> Julie herself is an intense type rather than individual.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_403_403" id="Footnote_403_403"></a><a href="#FNanchor_403_403"><span class="label">[403]</span></a> I have not thought it necessary, except in regard to
+those of them who have been touched in treating of the <i>Cabinet des
+F&eacute;es</i>, to speak at any length of the minor tale-tellers of the century.
+They are sometimes not bad reading; but as a whole minor in almost all
+senses.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>"SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS.</h3>
+
+<h4>THE FRENCH NOVEL, <i>C.</i> 1800</h4>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">"Sensibility."</div>
+
+<p>Frequent reference has been made, in the last two chapters, to the
+curious phenomenon called in French <i>sensibilit&eacute;</i> (with a derivative of
+contempt, <i>sensiblerie</i>), the exact English form of which supplies part
+of the title, and the meaning an even greater part of the subject, of
+one of Miss Austen's novels. The thing itself appears first
+definitely<a name="FNanchor_404_404" id="FNanchor_404_404"></a><a href="#Footnote_404_404" class="fnanchor">[404]</a> in Madame de la Fayette, largely, though not unmixedly,
+in Marivaux, and to some extent in Pr&eacute;vost and Marmontel, while it is,
+as it were, sublimed in Rousseau, and present very strongly in
+Saint-Pierre. There are, however, some minor writers and books
+displaying it in some cases even more extensively and intensively; and
+in this final chapter of the present volume they may appropriately find
+a place, not merely because some of them are late, but because
+Sensibility is not confined to any part of the century, but, beginning
+before its birth, continued till after its end. We may thus have to
+encroach on the nineteenth a little, but more in appearance than in
+reality. In quintessence, and as a reigning fashion, Sensibility was the
+property of the eighteenth century.<a name="FNanchor_405_405" id="FNanchor_405_405"></a><a href="#Footnote_405_405" class="fnanchor">[405]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span></p><div class="sidenote">A glance at Miss Austen.</div>
+
+<p>To recur for a moment to Miss Austen and <i>Sense and Sensibility</i>,
+everybody has laughed, let us hope not unkindly, over Marianne
+Dashwood's woes. But she herself was only an example, exaggerated in the
+genial fashion of her creatress, of the proper and recognised standard
+of feminine feeling in and long before her time. The "man of feeling"
+was admitted as something out of the way&mdash;on which side of the way
+opinions might differ. But the woman of feeling was emphatically the
+accepted type&mdash;a type which lasted far into the next century, though it
+was obsolete at least by the Mid-Victorian period, of which some do so
+vainly talk. The extraordinary development of emotion which was expected
+from women need not be illustrated merely from love-stories. The
+wonderful transports of Miss Ferrier's heroines at sight of their
+long-lost mothers; even those of sober Fanny Price in <i>Mansfield Park</i>,
+at the recovery of her estimable but not particularly interesting
+brother William, give the keynote much better than any more questionable
+ecstasies. "Sensibility, so charming," was the pet affectation of the
+period&mdash;an affectation carried on till it became quite natural, and was
+only cured by the half-caricature, half-reaction of Byronism.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The thing essentially French.</div>
+
+<p>The thing, however, was not English in origin, and never was thoroughly
+English at all. The main current of the Sensibility novelists, who
+impressed their curious morals or manners on all men and women in
+civilised Europe, was French in unbroken succession, from the day when
+Madame de la Fayette first broke ground against the ponderous romances
+of Madeleine de Scud&eacute;ry, to the day when Benjamin Constant forged, in
+<i>Adolphe</i>, the link between eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century
+romance, between the novel of sentiment and the novel of analysis.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its history.</div>
+
+<p>Of the relations to it of the greater novelists of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> main century we
+have already spoken: and as for the two greatest of the extreme close,
+Chateaubriand and Madame de Sta&euml;l, they mix too many secondary purposes
+with their philandering, and moreover do not form part of the plan of
+the present volume. For the true Sensibility, the odd quintessence of
+conventional feeling, played at steadily till it is half real, if not
+wholly so, which ends in the peculiarities of two such wholesome young
+Britonesses as Marianne Dashwood and Fanny Price, we must look
+elsewhere. After Madame de la Fayette, and excluding with her other
+names already treated, we come to Madame de Fontaines, Madame de Tencin
+(most heartless and therefore naturally not least sentimental of women),
+Madame Riccoboni, the group of lady-novelists of whom Mesdames de Souza
+and de Duras are the chief, and, finally, the two really remarkable
+names of Xavier de Maistre and Benjamin Constant. These are our
+"documents." Even the minor subjects of this inquiry are pleasant pieces
+of literary <i>bric-&agrave;-brac</i>; perhaps they are something a little more than
+that. For Sensibility was actually once a great power in the world.
+Transformed a little, it did wonderful things in the hands of Rousseau
+and Goethe and Chateaubriand and Byron. It lingers in odd nooks and
+corners even at the present day, when it is usually and irreverently
+called "gush," and Heaven only knows whether it may not be resuscitated
+in full force before some of us are dead.<a name="FNanchor_406_406" id="FNanchor_406_406"></a><a href="#Footnote_406_406" class="fnanchor">[406]</a> For it has exactly the
+peculiarities which characterise all recurrent fashions&mdash;the appeal to
+something which is genuine connected with the suggestion of a great deal
+that is not.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mme. de Tencin and <i>Le Comte de Comminge</i>.</div>
+
+<p>In the followers of Madame de la Fayette<a name="FNanchor_407_407" id="FNanchor_407_407"></a><a href="#Footnote_407_407" class="fnanchor">[407]</a> we find that a good many
+years have passed by. The jargon appropriated to the subject has grown
+still more official; and instead of using it to express genuine
+sentiments,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> which in another language might deserve expression well
+enough, the characters are constantly suspected by the callous modern
+reader or elaborately, though perhaps unconsciously, feigning the
+sentiments which the jargon seems to imply that they ought to have. This
+is somewhat less noticeable in the work of Madame de Tencin than
+elsewhere, because d'Alembert's mother was so very much cleverer a
+person than the generality of the novel-writers of her day that she
+could hardly fail to hide defects more cunningly. But it is evident
+enough in the <i>Comte de Comminge</i> and in the <i>Malheurs de l'Amour</i>.
+Having as questionable morals as any lady of the time (the time of the
+Regency), Madame de Tencin of course always had a moral purpose in her
+writings, and this again gives her books a certain difference. But, like
+the former, this difference only exposes, all the more clearly, the
+defects of the style, and the drawbacks from which it was almost
+impossible that those who practised it should escape.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Tencin tried to escape by several gates. Besides her moral
+purposes and her <i>esprit</i>, she indulged in a good deal of rather
+complicated and sometimes extravagant incident. <i>M. de Comminge</i>, which
+is very short, contains, not to mention other things, the rather
+startling detail of a son who, out of chivalrous affection for his
+lady-love, burns certain of his father's title-deeds which he has been
+charged to recover, and the still more startling incident of the heroine
+living for some years in disguise as a monk. The following epistle,
+however, from the heroine to the hero, will show better than anything
+else the topsy-turvy condition which sensibility had already reached.
+All that need be said in explanation of it is that the father (who is
+furious with his son, and not unreasonably so) has shut him up in a
+dungeon, in order to force him to give up his beloved Adelaide.<a name="FNanchor_408_408" id="FNanchor_408_408"></a><a href="#Footnote_408_408" class="fnanchor">[408]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span></p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Your father's fury has told me all I owe you: I know what
+your generosity had concealed from me. I know, too, the
+terrible situation in which you are, and I have no means of
+extracting you therefrom save one. This will perhaps make
+you more unhappy still. But I shall be as unhappy as
+yourself, <i>and this gives me the courage to do what I am
+required to do</i>. They would have me, by engaging myself to
+another, give a pledge never to be yours: 'tis at this price
+that M. de Comminge sets your liberty. It will cost me
+perhaps my life, certainly my peace. But I am resolved. I
+shall in a few days be married to the Marquis de B&eacute;navid&eacute;s.
+What I know of his character forewarns me of what I shall
+have to suffer; <i>but I owe you at least so much constancy as
+to make only misery for myself in the engagement I am
+contracting</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>The extremity of calculated absurdity indicated by the italicised
+passages was reached, let it be remembered, by one of the cleverest
+women of the century: and the chief excuse for it is that the
+restrictions of the La Fayette novel, confined as it was to the upper
+classes and to a limited number of elaborately distressing situations,
+were very embarrassing.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mme. Riccoboni and <i>Le Marquis de Cressy</i>.</div>
+
+<p>Madame Riccoboni, mentioned earlier as continuing <i>Marianne</i>, shows the
+completed product very fairly. Her <i>Histoire du Marquis de Cressy</i> is a
+capital example of the kind. The Marquis is beloved by a charming girl
+of sixteen and by a charming widow of six-and-twenty. An envious rival
+betrays his attentions to Adelaide de Bugei, and her father makes her
+write an epistle which pretty clearly gives him the option of a
+declaration in form or a rupture. For a Sensible man, it must be
+confessed, the Marquis does not get out of the difficulty too well. She
+has slipped into her father's formal note the highly Sensible
+postscript, "Vous dire de m'oublier? Ah! Jamais. On m'a forc&eacute; de
+l'&eacute;crire; rien ne peut m'obliger &agrave; le penser ni le d&eacute;sirer." Apparently
+it was not leap-year, for the Marquis replied in a letter nearly as bad
+as Willoughby's celebrated epistle in <i>Sense and Sensibility</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Mademoiselle</span>,&mdash;Nothing can console me for having been the
+innocent cause of fault being found with the conduct of a
+person so worthy of respect as you. I shall approve whatever
+you may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> think proper to do, without considering myself
+entitled to ask the reason of your behaviour. How happy
+should I be, mademoiselle, if my fortune, and the
+arrangements which it forces me to make, did not deprive me
+of the sweet hope of an honour of which my respect and my
+sentiments would perhaps make me worthy, but which my
+present circumstances permit me not to seek.</p></div>
+
+<p>Sensibility does not seem to have seen anything very unhandsome in this
+broad refusal to throw the handkerchief; but though not unhandsome, it
+could not be considered satisfactory to the heart. So M. de Cressy
+despatches this private note to Adelaide by "Machiavel the
+waiting-maid"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Is it permitted to a wretch who has deprived himself of the
+greatest of blessings, to dare to ask your pardon and your
+pity? Never did love kindle a flame purer and more ardent
+than that with which my heart burns for the amiable
+Adelaide. Why have I not been able to give her those proofs
+of it which she had the right to expect? Ah! mademoiselle,
+how could I bind you to the lot of a wretch all whose wishes
+even you perhaps would not fulfil? who, when he possessed
+you, though master of so dear, so precious a blessing, might
+regret others less estimable, but which have been the object
+of his hope and desire, etc. etc.</p></div>
+
+<p>This means that M. de Cressy is ambitious, and wants a wife who will
+assist his views. The compliment is doubtful, and Adelaide receives it
+in approved fashion. She opens it "with a violent emotion," and her
+"trouble was so great in reading it through, that she had to begin it
+again many times before she understood it." The exceedingly dubious
+nature of the compliment, however, strikes her, and "tears of regret and
+indignation rise to her eyes"&mdash;tears which indeed are excusable even
+from a different point of view than that of Sensibility. She is far,
+however, from blaming that sacred emotion. "Ce n'est pas," she says; "de
+notre sensibilit&eacute;, mais de l'objet qui l'a fait na&icirc;tre, que nous devons
+nous plaindre." This point seems arguable if it were proper to argue
+with a lady.</p>
+
+<p>The next letter to be cited is from Adelaide's unconscious rival, whose
+conduct is&mdash;translated into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> language of Sensibility, and adjusted
+to the manners of the time and class&mdash;a ludicrous anticipation of the
+Pickwickian widow. She buys a handsome scarf, and sends it anonymously
+to the victorious Marquis just before a Court ball, with this letter&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A sentiment, tender, timid, and shy of making itself known,
+gives me an interest in penetrating the secrets of your
+heart. You are thought indifferent; you seem to me
+insensible. Perhaps you are happy, and discreet in your
+happiness. Deign to tell me the secret of your soul, and be
+sure that I am not unworthy of your confidence. If you have
+no love for any one, wear this scarf at the ball. Your
+compliance may lead you to a fate which others envy. She who
+feels inclined to prefer you is worthy of your attentions,
+and the step she takes to let you know it is the first
+weakness which she has to confess.</p></div>
+
+<p>The modesty of this perhaps leaves something to desire, but its
+Sensibility is irreproachable. There is no need to analyse the story of
+the <i>Marquis de Cressy</i>, which is a very little book<a name="FNanchor_409_409" id="FNanchor_409_409"></a><a href="#Footnote_409_409" class="fnanchor">[409]</a> and not
+extremely edifying. But it supplies us with another <i>locus classicus</i> on
+sentimental manners. M. de Cressy has behaved very badly to Adelaide,
+and has married the widow with the scarf. He receives a letter from
+Adelaide on the day on which she takes the black veil&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Tis from the depths of an asylum, where I fear no more the
+perfidy of your sex, that I bid you an eternal adieu. Birth,
+wealth, honours, all vanish from my sight. My youth withered
+by grief, my power of enjoyment destroyed, love past, memory
+present, and regret still too deeply felt, all combine to
+bury me in this retreat.</p></div>
+
+<p>And so forth, all of which, if a little high-flown, is not specially
+unnatural; but the oddity of the passage is to come. Most men would be a
+little embarrassed at receiving such a letter as this in presence of
+their wives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span> (it is to be observed that the unhappy Adelaide is profuse
+of pardons to Madame as well as to Monsieur de Cressy), and most wives
+would not be pleased when they read it. But Madame de Cressy has the
+finest Sensibility of the amiable kind. She reads it, and then&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The Marquise, having finished this letter, cast herself into
+the arms of her husband, and clasping him with an
+inexpressible tenderness, "Weep, sir, weep," she cried,
+bathing him with her own tears; "you cannot show too much
+sensibility for a heart so noble, so constant in its love.
+Amiable and dear Adelaide! 'Tis done, then, and we have lost
+you for ever. Ah! why must I reproach myself with having
+deprived you of the only possession which excited your
+desires? Can I not enjoy this sweet boon without telling
+myself that my happiness has destroyed yours?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Her other work&mdash;<i>Milady Catesby</i>.</div>
+
+<p>All Madame Riccoboni's work is, with a little good-will, more or less
+interesting. Much of it is full of italics, which never were used so
+freely in France as in England, but which seem to suit the queer,
+exaggerated, topsy-turvyfied sentiments and expressions very well. The
+<i>Histoire d'Ernestine</i> in particular is a charming little novelette. But
+if it were possible to give an abstract of any of her work here, <i>Milady
+Catesby</i>, which does us the honour to take its scene and personages from
+England, would be the one to choose. <i>Milady Catesby</i> is well worth
+comparing with <i>Evelina</i>, which is some twenty years its junior, and the
+sentimental parts of which are quite in the same tone with it. Lord
+Ossery is indeed even more "sensible" than Lord Orville, but then he is
+described in French. Lady Catesby herself is, however, a model of the
+style, as when she writes&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Oh! my dear Henrietta! What agitation in my senses! what
+trouble in my soul!... I have seen him.... He has spoken to
+me.... Himself.... He was at the ball.... Yes! he. Lord
+Ossery.... Ah! tell me not again to see him.... Bid me not
+hear him once more.</p></div>
+
+<p>That will do for Lady Catesby, who really had no particular occasion or
+excuse for all this excitement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span> except Sensibility. But Sensibility was
+getting more and more exacting. The hero of a novel must always be in
+the heroics, the heroine in a continual state of palpitation. We are
+already a long way from Madame de la Fayette's stately passions, from
+Marianne's whimsical <i>minauderies</i>. All the resources of
+typography&mdash;exclamations, points, dashes&mdash;have to be called in to
+express the generally disturbed state of things. Now unfortunately this
+sort of perpetual tempest in a teacup (for it generally is in a teacup)
+requires unusual genius to make it anything but ludicrous. I myself have
+not the least desire to laugh when I read such a book as <i>La Nouvelle
+H&eacute;lo&iuml;se</i>, and I venture to think that any one who does laugh must have
+something of the fool and something of the brute in his composition. But
+then Rousseau is Rousseau, and there are not many like him. At the
+Madame Riccobonis of this world, however clever they may be, it is
+difficult not to laugh, when they have to dance on such extraordinary
+tight ropes as those which Sensibility prescribed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mme. de Beaumont&mdash;<i>Lettres du Marquis de Roselle</i>.</div>
+
+<p>The writers who were contemporary with Madame Riccoboni's later days,
+and who followed her, pushed the thing, if it were possible, even
+farther. In Madame de Genlis's tiny novelette of <i>Mademoiselle de
+Clermont</i>, the amount of tears shed, the way in which the knees of the
+characters knock together, their palenesses, blushes, tears, sighs, and
+other performances of the same kind, are surprising. In the <i>Lettres du
+Marquis de Roselle</i> of Madame &Eacute;lie de Beaumont (wife of the young
+advocate who defended the Calas family), a long scene between a brother
+and sister, in which the sister seeks to deter the brother from what she
+regards as a misalliance, ends (or at least almost ends, for the usual
+flood of tears is the actual conclusion) in this remarkable passage.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"And I," cried he suddenly with a kind of fury, "I suppose
+that a sister who loves her brother, pities and does not
+insult him; that the Marquis de Roselle knows better what
+can make him happy than the Countess of St. S&eacute;ver; and that
+he is free, independent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> able to dispose of himself, in
+spite of all opposition." With these words he turned to
+leave the room brusquely. I run to him, I stop him, he
+resists. "My brother!" "I have no sister." He makes a
+movement to free himself: he was about to escape me. "Oh, my
+father!" I cried. "Oh, my mother! come to my help." At these
+sacred names he started, stopped, and <i>allowed himself to be
+conducted to a sofa</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mme. de Souza.</div>
+
+<p>This unlucky termination might be paralleled from many other places,
+even from the agreeable writings of Madame de Souza. This writer, by the
+way, when the father of one of her heroes refuses to consent to his
+son's marriage, makes the stern parent yield to a representation that by
+not doing so he will "authorise by anticipation a want of filial
+attachment and respect" in the grandchildren who do not as yet exist.
+These excursions into the preposterous in search of something new in the
+way of noble sentiment or affecting emotion&mdash;these whippings and
+spurrings of the feelings and the fancy&mdash;characterise all the later work
+of the school.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Xavier de Maistre.</div>
+
+<p>Two names of great literary value and interest close the list of the
+novelists of Sensibility in France, and show at once its Nemesis and its
+caricature. They were almost contemporaries, and by a curious
+coincidence neither was a Frenchman by birth. It would be impossible to
+imagine a greater contrast than existed personally between Xavier de
+Maistre and Henri Benjamin de Constant-Rebecque, commonly called
+Benjamin Constant. But their personalities, interesting as both are, are
+not the matter of principal concern here. The <i>Voyage autour de ma
+Chambre</i>, its sequel the <i>Exp&eacute;dition Nocturne</i>, and the <i>L&eacute;preux de la
+Cit&eacute; d'Aoste</i>, exhibit one branch of the river of Sensibility (if one
+may be permitted to draw up a new Carte de Tendre), losing itself in
+agreeable trifling with the surface of life, and in generous, but
+fleeting, and slightly, though not consciously, insincere indulgence of
+the emotions. In <i>Adolphe</i> the river rushes violently down a steep
+place, and <i>in nigras lethargi mergitur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> undas</i>. It is to be hoped that
+most people who will read these pages know Xavier de Maistre's charming
+little books; it is probable that at least some of them do not know
+<i>Adolphe</i>. Constant is the more strictly original of the two authors,
+for Xavier de Maistre owes a heavy debt to Sterne, though he employs the
+borrowed capital so well that he makes it his own, while <i>Adolphe</i> can
+only be said to come after <i>Werther</i> and <i>Ren&eacute;</i> in time, not in the
+least to follow them in nature.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Voyage autour de ma Chambre</i> (readers may be informed or reminded)
+is a whimsical description of the author's meditations and experiences
+when confined to barracks for some military peccadillo. After a fashion
+which has found endless imitators since, the prisoner contemplates the
+various objects in his room, spins little romances to himself about them
+and about his beloved Madame de Hautcastel, moralises on the
+faithfulness of his servant Joannetti, and so forth. The <i>Exp&eacute;dition
+Nocturne</i>, a less popular sequel, is not very different in plan. The
+<i>L&eacute;preux de la Cit&eacute; d'Aoste</i> is a very short story, telling how the
+narrator finds a sufferer from the most terrible of all diseases lodged
+in a garden-house, and of their dialogue. The chief merit of these
+works, as of the less mannerised and more direct <i>Prisonnier du Caucase</i>
+and <i>Jeune Sib&eacute;rienne</i>, resides in their dainty style, in their singular
+narrative power (Sainte-Beuve says justly enough that the <i>Prisonnier du
+Caucase</i> has been equalled by no other writer except M&eacute;rim&eacute;e), and in
+the remarkable charm of the personality of the author, which escapes at
+every moment from the work. The pleasant picture of the Chevalier de
+B&mdash;&mdash; in the <i>Soir&eacute;es de St. P&eacute;tersbourg</i>, which Joseph de Maistre is
+said to have drawn from his less formidable brother, often suggests
+itself as one follows the whimsicalities of the <i>Voyage</i> and the
+<i>Exp&eacute;dition</i>. The affectation is so natural, the mannerism so simple,
+that it is some time before one realises how great in degree both are.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His illustrations on the lighter side of Sensibility.</div>
+
+<p>Looked at from a certain point of view, Xavier de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> Maistre illustrates
+the effect of the Sensibility theory on a thoroughly good-natured,
+cultivated, and well-bred man of no particular force or character or
+strength of emotion. He has not the least intention of taking
+Sensibility seriously, but it is the proper thing to take it somehow or
+other. So he sets himself to work to be a man of feeling and a humorist
+at the same time. His encounter with the leper is so freshly and simply
+told, there is such an air of genuineness about it, that it seems at
+first sight not merely harsh, but unappreciative, to compare it to
+Sterne's account of his proceedings with his monks and donkeys, his
+imaginary prisoners, and his fictitious ensigns. Yet there is a real
+contact between them. Both have the chief note of Sensibility, the
+taking an emotion as a thing to be savoured and degusted
+deliberately&mdash;to be dealt with on scientific principles and strictly
+according to the rules of the game. One result of this proceeding, when
+pursued for a considerable time, is unavoidably a certain amount of
+frivolity, especially in dealing with emotions directly affecting the
+player. Sympathy such as that displayed with the leper may be strong and
+genuine, because there is no danger about it; there is the <i>suave mari
+magno</i> preservative from the risk of a too deep emotion. But in matters
+which directly affect the interest of the individual it does not do to
+be too serious. The tear of Sensibility must not be dropped in a manner
+giving real pain to the dropper. Hence the humoristic attitude. When
+Xavier de Maistre informs us that "le grand art de l'homme de g&eacute;nie est
+de savoir bien &eacute;lever sa b&ecirc;te," he means a great deal more than he
+supposes himself to mean. The great art of an easy-going person, who
+believes it to be his duty to be "sensible," is to arrange for a series
+of emotions which can be taken gently.</p>
+
+<p>The author of the <i>Voyage</i> takes his without any extravagance. He takes
+good care not to burn his fingers metaphorically in this matter, though
+he tells us that in a fit of absence he did so literally. His affection<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span>
+for Madame de Hautcastel is certainly not a very passionate kind of
+affection, for all his elaborately counted and described heartbeats as
+he is dusting her portrait. Indeed, with his usual candour, he leaves us
+in no doubt about the matter. "La froide raison," he says, "reprit
+bient&ocirc;t son empire." Of course it did; the intelligent, and in the other
+sense sensible, person who wishes to preserve his repose must take care
+of that. We do not even believe that he really dropped a tear of
+repentance on his left shoe when he had unreasonably rated his servant;
+it is out of keeping with his own part. He borrowed that tear, either
+ironically or by oversight, from Sterne, just as he did "Ma ch&egrave;re
+Jenny." He is much more in his element when he proves that a lover is to
+his mistress, when she is about to go to a ball, only a "decimal of a
+lover," a kind of amatory tailor or ninth part of man; or when, in the
+<i>Exp&eacute;dition</i>, he meditates on a lady's slipper in the balcony fathoms
+below his garret.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A sign of decadence.</div>
+
+<p>All this illustrates what may be called the attempt to get rid of
+Sensibility by the humorist gate of escape. Supposing no such attempt
+consciously to exist, it is, at any rate, the sign of an approaching
+downfall of Sensibility, of a feeling, on the part of those who have to
+do with it, that it is an edged tool, and an awkward one to handle. In
+comparing Xavier de Maistre with his master Sterne, it is very
+noticeable that while the one in disposition is thoroughly insincere,
+and the other thoroughly sincere, yet the insincere man is a true
+believer in Sensibility, and the sincere one evidently a semi-heretic.
+How far Sterne consciously simulated his droppings of warm tears, and
+how far he really meant them, may be a matter of dispute. But he was
+quite sincere in believing that they were very creditable things, and
+very admirable ones. Xavier de Maistre does not seem by any means so
+well convinced of this. He is, at times, not merely evidently pretending
+and making believe, but laughing at himself for pretending and making
+believe. He still thinks Sensibility a <i>gratissimus error</i>, a very
+pretty game for persons of refinement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> to play at, and he plays at it
+with a great deal of industry and with a most exquisite skill. But the
+spirit of Voltaire, who himself did his <i>sensibilit&eacute;</i> (in real life, if
+not in literature) as sincerely as Sterne, has affected Xavier de
+Maistre "with a difference." The Savoyard gentleman is entirely and
+unexceptionably orthodox in religion; it may be doubted whether a severe
+inquisition in matters of Sensibility would let him off scatheless. It
+is not merely that he jests&mdash;as, for instance, that when he is imagining
+the scene at the Rape of the Sabines, he suddenly fancies that he hears
+a cry of despair from one of the visitors. "Dieux immortels! Pourquoi
+n'ai-je amen&eacute; ma femme &agrave; la f&ecirc;te?" That is quite proper and allowable.
+It is the general tone of levity in the most sentimental moments, the
+undercurrent of mockery at his own feelings in this man of feeling,
+which is so shocking to Sensibility, and yet it was precisely this that
+was inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>Sensibility, to carry it out properly, required, like other elaborate
+games, a very peculiar and elaborate arrangement of conditions. The
+parties must be in earnest so far as not to have the slightest suspicion
+that they were making themselves ridiculous, and yet not in earnest
+enough to make themselves really miserable. They must have plenty of
+time to spare, and not be distracted by business, serious study,
+political excitement, or other disturbing causes. On the other hand, to
+get too much absorbed, and arrive at Werther's end, was destructive not
+only to the individual player, but to the spirit of the game. As the
+century grew older, and this danger of absorption grew stronger, that
+game became more and more difficult to play seriously enough, and yet
+not too seriously. When the players did not blow their brains out, they
+often fell into the mere libertinism from which Sensibility, properly so
+called, is separated by a clear enough line. Two such examples in real
+life as Rousseau and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, one such demonstration
+of the same moral in fiction as <i>Werther</i>, were enough to discourage the
+man of feeling. Therefore,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span> when he still exists, he takes to motley,
+the only wear for the human race in troublesome circumstances which
+beset it with unpleasant recurrence. When you cannot exactly believe
+anything in religion, in politics, in literature, in art, and yet
+neither wish nor know how to do without it, the safe way is to make a
+not too grotesque joke of it. This is a text on which a long sermon
+might be hung were it worth while. But as it is, it is sufficient to
+point out that Xavier de Maistre is an extremely remarkable illustration
+of the fact in the particular region of sentimental fiction.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Benjamin Constant&mdash;<i>Adolphe</i>.</div>
+
+<p>Benjamin Constant's masterpiece, which (the sequel to it never having
+appeared, though it was in existence in manuscript less than a century
+ago) is also his only purely literary work, is a very small book, but it
+calls here for something more than a very small mention. The books which
+make an end are almost fewer in literature than those which make a
+beginning, and this is one of them. Like most such books, it made a
+beginning also, showing the way to Beyle, and through Beyle to all the
+analytic school of the nineteenth century. Space would not here suffice
+to discuss the singular character of its author, to whom Sainte-Beuve
+certainly did some injustice, as the letters to Madame Recamier show,
+but whose political and personal experiences as certainly call for a
+large allowance of charity. The theory of <i>Adolphe's</i> best editor, M. de
+Lescure (which also was the accepted theory long before M. de Lescure's
+time), that the heroine of the novel was Madame de Sta&euml;l, will not, I
+think, hold water. In every characteristic, personal and mental,
+Ell&eacute;nore and Madame de Sta&euml;l are at opposite poles. Ell&eacute;nore was
+beautiful, Madame de Sta&euml;l was very nearly hideous; Ell&eacute;nore was
+careless of her social position, Corinne was as great a slave to society
+as any one who ever lived; Ell&eacute;nore was somewhat uncultivated, had
+little <i>esprit</i>, was indifferent to flattery, took not much upon herself
+in any way except in exacting affection where no affection<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> existed; the
+good Corinne was one of the cleverest women of her time, and thought
+herself one of the cleverest of all times, could not endure that any one
+in company should be of a different opinion on this point, and insisted
+on general admiration and homage.</p>
+
+<p>However, this is a very minor matter, and anybody is at liberty to
+regard the differences as deliberate attempts to disguise the truth.
+What is important is that Madame de Sta&euml;l was almost the last genuine
+devotee of Sensibility, and that <i>Adolphe</i> was certainly written by a
+lover of Madame de Sta&euml;l, who had, from his youth up, been a Man of
+Feeling of a singularly unfeeling kind. When Constant wrote the book he
+had run through the whole gamut of Sensibility. He had been instructed
+as a youth<a name="FNanchor_410_410" id="FNanchor_410_410"></a><a href="#Footnote_410_410" class="fnanchor">[410]</a> by ancient women of letters; he had married and got rid
+of his wife <i>&agrave; la mode Germanorum</i>; he had frequently taken a hint from
+<i>Werther</i>, and threatened suicide with the best possible results; he had
+given, perhaps, the most atrocious example of the atrocious want of
+taste which accompanied the decadence of Sensibility, by marrying
+Charlotte von Hardenburg out of pique, because Madame de Sta&euml;l would not
+marry him, then going to live with his bride near Coppet, and finally
+deserting her, newly married as she was, for her very uncomely but
+intellectually interesting rival. In short, according to the theory of a
+certain ethical school, that the philosopher who discusses virtue should
+be thoroughly conversant with vice, Benjamin Constant was a past master
+in Sensibility. It was at a late period in his career, and when he had
+only one trial to go through (the trial of, as it seems to me, a sincere
+and hopeless affection for Madame Recamier), that he wrote <i>Adolphe</i>.
+But the book has nothing whatever to do with 1815, the date which it
+bears. It is, as has been said, the history of the Nemesis of
+Sensibility, the prose commentary by anticipation on Mr. Swinburne's
+admirable "Stage Love"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh and cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till he died for good in play and rose in sorrow.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That is a history, in one stanza, of Sensibility, and no better account
+than <i>Adolphe</i> exists of the rising in sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the book opens in full eighteenth century. A young man,
+fresh from the University of G&ouml;ttingen, goes to finish his education at
+the <i>residenz</i> of D&mdash;&mdash;. Here he finds much society, courtly and other.
+His chief resort is the house of a certain Count de P&mdash;&mdash;, who lives,
+unmarried, with a Polish lady named Ell&eacute;nore. In the easy-going days of
+Sensibility the <i>m&eacute;nage</i> holds a certain place in society, though it is
+looked upon a little askance. But Ell&eacute;nore is, on her own theory,
+thoroughly respectable, and the Count de P&mdash;&mdash;, though in danger of his
+fortune, is a man of position and rank. As for Adolphe, he is the result
+of the struggle between Sensibility, an unquiet and ironic nature, and
+the teaching of a father who, though not unquiet, is more ironically
+given than himself. His main character is all that a young man's should
+be from the point of view of Sensibility. "Je ne demandais alors qu'&agrave; me
+livrer &agrave; ces impressions primitives et fougueuses," etc. But his father
+snubs the primitive and fiery impressions, and the son, feeling that
+they are a mistake, is only more determined to experience them.
+Alternately expanding himself as Sensibility demands, and making ironic
+jests as his own nature and his father's teaching suggest, he acquires
+the character of "un homme immoral, un homme peu s&ucirc;r," the last of which
+expressions may be paralleled from the British repertory by "an
+ill-regulated young man," or "a young man on whom you can never depend."</p>
+
+<p>All this time Adolphe is not in love, and as the dominant teaching of
+Sensibility lays it down that he ought to be, he feels that he is wrong.
+"'Je veux &ecirc;tre aim&eacute;,' me dis-je, et je regardai autour de moi. Je ne
+voyais personne qui m'inspirait de l'amour; personne qui me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> parut
+susceptible d'en prendre." In parallel case the ordinary man would
+resign himself as easily as if he were in face of the two conditions of
+having no appetite and no dinner ready. But this will not do for the
+pupil of Sensibility. He must make what he does not find, and so Adolphe
+pitches on the luckless Ell&eacute;nore, who "me parut une conqu&ecirc;te digne de
+moi." To do Sensibility justice, it would not, at an earlier time, have
+used language so crude as this, but it had come to it now. Here is the
+portrait of the victim, drawn by her ten years younger lover.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Ell&eacute;nore's wits were not above the ordinary, but her
+thoughts were just, and her expression, simple as it was,
+was sometimes striking by reason of the nobility and
+elevation of the thought. She was full of prejudices, but
+she was always prejudiced against her own interest. There
+was nothing she set more value on than regularity of
+conduct, precisely because her own conduct was
+conventionally irregular.<a name="FNanchor_411_411" id="FNanchor_411_411"></a><a href="#Footnote_411_411" class="fnanchor">[411]</a> She was very religious,
+because religion rigidly condemned her mode of life. In
+conversation she frowned on pleasantries which would have
+seemed quite innocent to other women, because she feared
+that her circumstances might encourage the use of such as
+were not innocent. She would have liked to admit to her
+society none but men of the highest rank and most
+irreproachable reputation, because those women with whom she
+shuddered at the thought of being classed usually tolerate
+mixed society, and, giving up the hope of respect, seek only
+amusement. In short, Ell&eacute;nore and her destiny were at
+daggers drawn; every word, every action of hers was a kind
+of protest against her social position. And as she felt that
+facts were too strong for her, and that the situation could
+be changed by no efforts of hers, she was exceedingly
+miserable.... The struggle between her feelings and her
+circumstances had affected her temper. She was often silent
+and dreamy: sometimes, however, she spoke with impetuosity.
+Beset as she was by a constant preoccupation, she was never
+quite calm in the midst of the most miscellaneous
+conversation, and for this very reason her manner had an
+unrest and an air of surprise about it which made her more
+piquant than she was by nature. Her strange position, in
+short, took the place of new and original ideas in her.</p></div>
+
+<p>The difference of note from the earlier eighteenth century will strike
+everybody here. If we are still some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> way from Emma Bovary, it is only
+in point of language: we are poles asunder from Marianne. But the hero
+is still, in his own belief, acting under the influence of Sensibility.
+He is not in the least impassioned, he is not a mere libertine, but he
+has a "besoin d'amour." He wants a "conqu&ecirc;te." He is still actuated by
+the odd mixture of vanity, convention, sensuality, which goes by the
+name of our subject. But his love is a "dessin de lui plaire"; he has
+taken an "engagement envers son amour propre." In other words, he is
+playing the game from the lower point of view&mdash;the mere point of view of
+winning. It does not take him very long to win. Ell&eacute;nore at first
+behaves unexceptionably, refuses to receive him after his first
+declaration, and retires to the country. But she returns, and the
+exemplary Adolphe has recourse to the threat which, if his creator's
+biographers may be believed, Constant himself was very fond of employing
+in similar cases, and which the great popularity of <i>Werther</i> made
+terrible to the compassionate and foolish feminine mind. He will kill
+himself. She hesitates, and very soon she does not hesitate any longer.
+The reader feels that Adolphe is quite worthless, that nothing but the
+fact of his having been brought up in a time when Sensibility was
+dominant saves him. But the following passage, from the point of view
+alike of nature and of expression, again pacifies the critic:<a name="FNanchor_412_412" id="FNanchor_412_412"></a><a href="#Footnote_412_412" class="fnanchor">[412]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I passed several hours at her feet, declaring myself the
+happiest of men, lavishing on her assurances of eternal
+affection, devotion, and respect. She told me what she had
+suffered in trying to keep me at a distance, how often she
+had hoped that I should detect her notwithstanding her
+efforts, how at every sound that fell on her ears she had
+hoped for my arrival; what trouble, joy, and fear she had
+felt on seeing me again; how she had distrusted herself, and
+how, to unite prudence and inclination, she had sought once
+more the distractions of society and the crowds which she
+formerly avoided. I made her repeat the smallest details,
+and this history of a few weeks seemed to us the history of
+a whole life. Love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span> makes up, as it were by magic, for the
+absence of far-reaching memory. All other affections have
+need of the past: love, as by enchantment, makes its own
+past and throws it round us. It gives us the feeling of
+having lived for years with one who yesterday was all but a
+stranger. Itself a mere point of light, it dominates and
+illuminates all time. A little while and it was not: a
+little while and it will be no more: but, as long as it
+exists, its light is reflected alike on the past and on the
+future.</p></div>
+
+<p>This calm, he goes on to say, lasted but a short time; and, indeed, no
+one who has read the book so far is likely to suppose that it did.
+Adolphe has entered into the <i>liaison</i> to play the game, Ell&eacute;nore
+(unluckily for herself) to be loved. The difference soon brings discord.
+In the earlier Sensibility days men and women were nearly on equal
+terms. It was only in the most strictly metaphorical way that the
+unhappy lover was bound to expire, and his beloved rarely took the
+method of wringing his bosom recommended by Goldsmith, when anybody else
+of proper Sensibility was there to console her. But the game had become
+unequal between the Charlottes and the Werthers, the Adolphes and the
+Ell&eacute;nores. The Count de P&mdash;&mdash; naturally perceives the state of affairs
+before long, and as naturally does not like it. Adolphe, having played
+his game and won it, does not care to go on playing for love merely.
+"Ell&eacute;nore &eacute;tait sans doute un vif plaisir dans mon existence, mais elle
+n'&eacute;tait pas plus un but&mdash;elle &eacute;tait devenue un lien." But Ell&eacute;nore does
+not see this accurate distinction. After many vicissitudes and a few
+scenes ("Nous v&eacute;c&ucirc;mes ainsi quatre mois dans des rapports forc&eacute;s,
+quelque fois doux, jamais compl&eacute;tement libres, y rencontrant encore du
+plaisir mais n'y trouvant plus de charme") a crisis comes. The Count
+forbids Ell&eacute;nore to receive Adolphe any more: and she thereupon breaks
+the ten years old union, and leaves her children and home.</p>
+
+<p>Her young lover receives this riveting of his chains with consternation,
+but he does his best. He defends her in public, he fights with a man who
+speaks lightly of her, but this is not what she wants.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Of course I ought to have consoled her. I ought to have
+pressed her to my heart and said, "Let us live for each
+other; let us forget the misjudgments of men; let us be
+happy in our mutual regard and our mutual love." I tried to
+do so, but what can a resolution made out of duty do to
+revive a sentiment that is extinct? Ell&eacute;nore and I each
+concealed something from the other. She dared not tell me
+her troubles, arising from a sacrifice which she knew I had
+not asked of her. I had accepted that sacrifice; I dared not
+complain of ills which I had foreseen, and which I had not
+had courage enough to forestall. We were therefore silent on
+the very subject which occupied us both incessantly. We were
+prodigal of caresses, we babbled of love, but when we spoke
+of it we spoke for fear of speaking of something else.</p></div>
+
+<p>Here is the full Nemesis of the sentiment that, to use Constant's own
+words, is "neither passion nor duty," and has the strength of neither,
+when it finds itself in presence of a stronger than itself. There were
+none of these unpleasant meetings in Sensibility proper. There sentiment
+met sentiment, and "exchanged itself," in Chamfort's famous phrase. When
+the rate of exchange became unsatisfactory it sought some other
+customer&mdash;a facile and agreeable process, which was quite consistent in
+practice with all the sighs and flames. Adolphe is not to be quit so
+easily of his conquest. He is recalled by his father, and his
+correspondence with Ell&eacute;nore is described in one of the astonishingly
+true passages which make the book so remarkable.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>During my absence I wrote regularly to Ell&eacute;nore. I was
+divided between the desire of not hurting her feelings and
+the desire of truthfully representing my own. I should have
+liked her to guess what I felt, but to guess it without
+being hurt by it. I felt a certain satisfaction when I had
+substituted the words "affection," "friendship," "devotion,"
+for the word "love." Then suddenly I saw poor Ell&eacute;nore
+sitting sad and solitary, with nothing but my letters for
+consolation: and at the end of two cold and artificial pages
+I added in a hurry a few phrases of ardour or of tenderness
+suited to deceive her afresh. In this way, never saying
+enough to satisfy her, I always said enough to mislead her,
+a species of double-dealing the very success of which was
+against my wishes and prolonged my misery.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This situation, however, does not last. Unable to bear his absence, and
+half puzzled, half pained by his letters, Ell&eacute;nore follows him, and his
+father for the first time expresses displeasure at this compromising
+step. Ell&eacute;nore being threatened with police measures, Adolphe is once
+more perforce thrown on her side, and elopes with her to neutral
+territory. Then events march quickly. Her father's Polish property, long
+confiscated, is restored to him and left to her. She takes Adolphe
+(still struggling between his obligations to her and his desire to be
+free) to Warsaw, rejects an offer of semi-reconciliation from the Count
+de P&mdash;&mdash;, grows fonder and more exacting the more weary of her yoke her
+lover becomes; and at last, discovering his real sentiments from a
+correspondence of his with an artful old diplomatic friend of his
+father's, falls desperately ill and dies in his arms. A prologue and
+epilogue, which hint that Adolphe, far from taking his place in the
+world (from which he had thought his <i>liaison</i> debarred him), wandered
+about in aimless remorse, might perhaps be cut away with advantage,
+though they are defensible, not merely on the old theory of political
+justice, but on sound critical grounds.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mme. de Duras's "postscript."</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Sensibilit&eacute;</i> and <i>engouement</i>.</div>
+
+<p>This was the end of sensibility in more senses than one. It is true
+that, five years later than <i>Adolphe</i>, appeared Madame de Duras's
+agreeable novelettes of <i>Ourika</i> and <i>&Eacute;douard</i>, in which something of
+the old tone revives. But they were written late in their author's life,
+and avowedly as a reminiscence of a past state of sentiment and of
+society. "Le ton de cette soci&eacute;t&eacute;," says Madame de Duras herself, "&eacute;tait
+l'engouement." As happy a sentence, perhaps, as can be anywhere found to
+describe what has been much written about, and, perhaps it may be said
+without presumption, much miswritten about. <i>Engouement</i> itself is a
+nearly untranslatable word.<a name="FNanchor_413_413" id="FNanchor_413_413"></a><a href="#Footnote_413_413" class="fnanchor">[413]</a> It may be clumsily but not inaccurately
+defined as a state of fanciful interest in persons and things which is
+rather more serious than mere caprice, and a good deal less serious
+than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> genuine enthusiasm. The word expresses exactly the attitude of
+French polite society in the eighteenth century to a vast number of
+subjects, and, what is more, it helps to explain the <i>sensibilit&eacute;</i> which
+dominated that society. The two terms mutually involve each other, and
+<i>sensibilit&eacute;</i> stands to mere flirtation on the one hand, and genuine
+passion on the other, exactly as <i>engouement</i> does to caprice and
+enthusiasm. People flirted admirably in the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries, and the art was, I fancy, recovered in the nineteenth with
+some success, but I do not think they flirted, properly speaking, in the
+eighteenth.<a name="FNanchor_414_414" id="FNanchor_414_414"></a><a href="#Footnote_414_414" class="fnanchor">[414]</a> Sensibility (and its companion "sensuality") prevented
+that. Yet, on the other hand, they did not, till the society itself and
+its sentiments with it were breaking up, indulge in anything that can be
+called real passion. Sensibility prevented that also. The kind of
+love-making which was popular may be compared without much fancifulness
+to the favourite card-game of the period, quadrille. You changed
+partners pretty often, and the stakes were not very serious; but the
+rules of the game were elaborate and precise, and it did not admit of
+being treated with levity.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Some final words on the matter.</div>
+
+<p>Only a small part, though the most original and not the least remarkable
+part, of the representation of this curious phenomenon in literature has
+been attempted in this discussion. The English and German developments
+of it are interesting and famous, and, merely as literature, contain
+perhaps better work than the French, but they are not so original, and
+they are out of our province. Marivaux<a name="FNanchor_415_415" id="FNanchor_415_415"></a><a href="#Footnote_415_415" class="fnanchor">[415]</a> served<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> directly as model to
+both English and German novelists, though the peculiarity of the
+national temperament quickly made itself felt in both cases. In England
+the great and healthy genius of Fielding applied the humour cure to
+Sensibility at a very early period; in Germany the literature of
+Sensibility rapidly became the literature of suicide&mdash;a consummation
+than which nothing could be more alien from the original conception. It
+is true that there is a good deal of dying in the works of Madame de la
+Fayette and her imitators. But it is quite transparent stage-dying, and
+the virtuous Prince of Cl&egrave;ves and the penitent Adelaide in the <i>Comte de
+Comminge</i> do not disturb the mind at all. We know that, as soon as the
+curtain has dropped, they will get up again and go home to supper quite
+comfortably. It is otherwise with Werther and Adolphe. With all the
+first-named young man's extravagance, four generations have known
+perfectly well that there is something besides absurdity in him, while
+in Adolphe there is no extravagance at all. The wind of Sensibility had
+been sown, in literature and in life, for many a long year, and the
+whirlwind had begun to be reaped.<a name="FNanchor_416_416" id="FNanchor_416_416"></a><a href="#Footnote_416_416" class="fnanchor">[416]</a></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Its importance here.</div>
+
+<p>This, however, is the moral side of the matter, with which we have not
+much to do. As a division of literature these sentimental novels,
+artificial as they are, have a good deal of interest; and in a <i>History</i>
+such as the present they have very great importance. They are so
+entirely different in atmosphere from the work of later times, that
+reading them has all the refreshing effect of a visit to a strange
+country; and yet one feels that they themselves have opened that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span>
+country for coming writers as well as readers. They are often
+extraordinarily ingenious, and the books to which in form they set the
+example, though the power of the writers made them something very
+different in matter&mdash;<i>Julie</i>, <i>La Religieuse</i>, <i>Paul et Virginie</i>,<a name="FNanchor_417_417" id="FNanchor_417_417"></a><a href="#Footnote_417_417" class="fnanchor">[417]</a>
+<i>Corinne</i>, <i>Ren&eacute;</i>&mdash;give their progenitors not a little importance, or at
+least not a little interest of curiosity. Besides, it was in the school
+of Sensibility that the author of <i>Manon Lescaut</i> somehow or other
+developed that wonderful little book. I do not know that it would be
+prudent to recommend modern readers to study Sensibility for themselves
+in the original documents just surveyed. Disappointment and possibly
+maledictions would probably be the result of any such attempt, except in
+the case of Xavier de Maistre and Constant. But these others are just
+the cases in which the office of historical critic justifies itself. It
+is often said (and nobody knows the truth of it better than critics
+themselves) that a diligent perusal of all the studies and <i>causeries</i>
+that have ever been written, on any one of the really great writers,
+will not give as much knowledge of them as half an hour's reading of
+their own work. But then in that case the metal is virgin, and to be had
+on the surface and for the picking up. The case is different where tons
+of ore have to be crushed and smelted, in order to produce a few
+pennyweights of metal.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Whatever fault may be found with the "Sensibility" novel, it is, as a
+rule, "written by gentlemen [and ladies] for [ladies and] gentlemen." Of
+the work of two curious writers, who may furnish the last detailed
+notices of this volume, as much cannot, unfortunately, be said.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Restif de la Bretonne.</div>
+
+<p>It may, from different points of view, surprise different classes of
+readers to find Restif de la Bretonne (or as some would call him, R&eacute;tif)
+mentioned here at all&mdash;at any rate to find him taken seriously, and not
+entirely without a certain respect. One of these classes, consisting of
+those who know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> nothing about him save at second-hand, may ground their
+surprise on the notion that his work is not only matter for the <i>Index
+Expurgatorius</i>, but also vulgar and unliterary, such as a French Ned
+Ward, without even Ned's gutter-wit, might have written. And these might
+derive some support from the stock ticket-jingle <i>Rousseau du ruisseau</i>,
+which, though not without some real pertinency, is directly misleading.
+Another class, consisting of some at least, if not most, of those who
+have read him to some extent, may urge that Decency&mdash;taking her revenge
+for the axiom of the boatswain in <i>Mr. Midshipman Easy</i>&mdash;forbids Duty to
+let him in. And yet others, less under the control of any Mrs. Grundy,
+literary or moral, may ask why he is let in, and Choderlos de
+Laclos<a name="FNanchor_418_418" id="FNanchor_418_418"></a><a href="#Footnote_418_418" class="fnanchor">[418]</a> and Louvet de Courray, with some more, kept out, as they
+most assuredly will be.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, there is no vulgarity in Restif. If he had had a
+more regular education and society, literary or other, and could have
+kept his mind, which was to a certainty slightly unhinged, off the
+continual obsession of morbid subjects, he might have been a very
+considerable man of letters, and he is no mean one, so far as style
+goes,<a name="FNanchor_419_419" id="FNanchor_419_419"></a><a href="#Footnote_419_419" class="fnanchor">[419]</a> as it is. He avails himself duly of the obscurity of a
+learned language when he has to use (which is regrettably often) words
+that do not appear in the dictionary of the Academy: and there is not
+the slightest evidence of his having taken to pornography for money, as
+Louvet and Laclos&mdash;as, one must regretfully add, Diderot, if not even
+Cr&eacute;billon&mdash;certainly did. When a certain subject, or group of subjects,
+gets hold of a man&mdash;especially one of those whom a rather celebrated
+French lady called <i>les c&eacute;r&eacute;braux</i>&mdash;he can think of nothing else: and
+though this is not absolutely true of Restif (for he had several minor
+crazes), it is very nearly true of him, and perhaps more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> true than of
+any one else who can be called a man of letters.</p>
+
+<p>Probably no one has read all he wrote;<a name="FNanchor_420_420" id="FNanchor_420_420"></a><a href="#Footnote_420_420" class="fnanchor">[420]</a> even the late M. Ass&eacute;zat,
+who knew more about him than anybody else, does not, I think, pretend to
+have done so. He was himself a printer, and therefore found exceptional
+means of getting the mischief, which his by no means idle hands found to
+do, into publicity of a kind, though even their subject does not seem to
+have made his books popular.<a name="FNanchor_421_421" id="FNanchor_421_421"></a><a href="#Footnote_421_421" class="fnanchor">[421]</a> His largest work, <i>Les
+Contemporaines</i>, is in forty-two volumes, and contains some three
+hundred different sections, reminding one vaguely, though the
+differences in detail are very great, of Amory's plan, at least, for the
+<i>Memoirs of Several Ladies</i>. His most remarkable by far, the
+quasi-autobiographical <i>Monsieur Nicolas</i>,<a name="FNanchor_422_422" id="FNanchor_422_422"></a><a href="#Footnote_422_422" class="fnanchor">[422]</a> in fourteen. He could
+write with positive moral purpose, as in the protest against <i>Le Paysan
+Parvenu</i>, above referred to; in <i>La Vie de Mon P&egrave;re</i> (a book agreeably
+free from any variety of that sin of Ham which some biographical
+writings of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span> sons about their fathers display); and in the unpleasantly
+titled <i>Pornographe</i>, which is also morally intended, and dull enough to
+be as moral as Mrs. Trimmer or Dr. Forsyth.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, this moral intention, so often idly and offensively put forward
+by those who are themselves mere pornographers, pervades Restif
+throughout, and, while it certainly sometimes does carry dulness with
+it, undoubtedly contributes at others a kind of piquancy, because of its
+evident sincerity, and the quaint contrast with the subjects the author
+is handling. These subjects make explicit dealing with himself
+difficult, if not impossible: but his <i>differentia</i> as regards them may,
+with the aid of a little dexterity, be put without offence. In the first
+place, as regards the comparison with Rousseau, Restif is almost a
+gentleman: and he could not possibly have been guilty of Rousseau's
+blackguard tale-telling in the cases of Madame de Warens (or, as I
+believe, we are now told to spell it "Vuarrens") or Madame de Larnage.
+The way in which he speaks of his one idealised mistress, Madame
+"Parangon," is almost romantic. He is, indeed, savage in respect to his
+wife&mdash;whom he seems to have married in a sort of <i>clairvoyant</i> mixture
+of knowledge of her evil nature and fascination by her personal charms
+and allurements, though he had had no difficulty in enjoying these
+without marriage. But into none other of his scores and hundreds of
+actual loves in some cases and at least passing intimacies in
+others,<a name="FNanchor_423_423" id="FNanchor_423_423"></a><a href="#Footnote_423_423" class="fnanchor">[423]</a> does he ever appear to have taken either the Restoration
+and Regency tone on the one hand, or that of "sickly sentimentality" on
+the other. Against commerce for money he lifts up his testimony
+unceasingly; he has, as his one editor has put it, a <i>manie de
+paternit&eacute;</i>, and denounces any vice disconnected with it. With the
+privileges of Solomon or Haroun al Raschid, Restif would have been
+perfectly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> contented: and he never would have availed himself of that of
+Schahriar before the two divine sisters put a stop to it.</p>
+
+<p>All this, however, strictly speaking, is outside our present subject,
+and is merely intended as a sort of excuse for the introduction of a
+writer who has been unfairly ostracised, not as a passport for Restif to
+the young person. But his actual qualities as tale-teller are very
+remarkable. The second title of <i>Monsieur Nicolas</i>&mdash;<i>Le C&oelig;ur Humain
+D&eacute;voil&eacute;</i>&mdash;ambitious as it is, is not fatuous. It is a human heart in a
+singularly morbid condition which is unveiled: but as, if I remember
+rightly, either Goethe or Schiller, or both, saw and said near the time,
+there is no charlatanery about the unveiling, and no bungling about the
+autopsy. Restif has been compared, and not unfairly, to Defoe, as well
+as to Rousseau; in a certain way he may be likened to Pepys; and all
+four share an intense and unaffected reality, combined, however, in the
+Frenchman's case with a sort of exaggeration of a dreamy kind, and with
+other dream-character, which reminds one of Borrow, and even of De
+Quincey. His absolute shamelessness is less unconnected with this
+dream-quality than may at first appear, and, as in all such cases, is
+made much less offensive by it. Could he ever have taken holiday from
+his day-long and night-long devotion to</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Cotytto or Venus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Astarte or Ashtoreth,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>he might have been a most remarkable novelist, and as it is his <i>mere</i>
+narrative faculty is such as by no means every novelist possesses.
+Moreover, he counts, once more, in the advance towards real things in
+fiction. "A pretty kind of reality!" cries Mrs. Grundy. But the real is
+not always the pretty, and the pretty is not always the real.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">Pigault-Lebrun&mdash;the difference of his positive and relative
+importance.</div>
+
+<p>There is also a good deal that is curious, as well as many things that
+are disgusting, for the student of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span> novel in Pigault-Lebrun.<a name="FNanchor_424_424" id="FNanchor_424_424"></a><a href="#Footnote_424_424" class="fnanchor">[424]</a> In
+the first place, one is constantly reminded of that redeeming point
+which the benevolent Joe Gargery found in Mr. Pumblechook&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And, wotsume'er the failings on his part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He were a corn-and-seedsman in his hart.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If Pigault cannot exactly be said to have been a good novelist, he
+"were" a novelist "in his hart."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span> Beside his <i>polissonneries</i>, his
+frequent dulness, his singular gropings and failures at anything like
+good novelist <i>faire</i>, one constantly finds what might be pedantically
+and barbarously called a "novelistic velleity." His much too ambitiously
+titled <i>M&eacute;langes Litt&eacute;raires</i> turn to stories, though stories touched
+with the <i>polisson</i> brush. His <i>Nouvelles</i> testify at least to his
+ambition and his industry in the craft of fiction. "Je ne suis pas
+Voltaire," he says somewhere, in reference, I think, to his plays, not
+his tales. He most certainly is not; neither is he Marmontel, as far as
+the tale is concerned. But as for the longer novel, in a blind and
+blundering way, constantly trapped and hindered by his want of genius
+and his want of taste, by his literary ill-breeding and other faults, he
+seems to have more of a "glimmering" of the real business than they
+have, or than any other Frenchman had before him.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His general characteristics.</div>
+
+<p>Pigault-Lebrun<a name="FNanchor_425_425" id="FNanchor_425_425"></a><a href="#Footnote_425_425" class="fnanchor">[425]</a> spent nearly half of his long life in the nineteenth
+century, and did not die till Scott was dead in England, and the great
+series of novel-romances had begun, with Hugo and others, in France. But
+he was a man of nearly fifty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span> in 1800, and the character of his work,
+except in one all-important point, or group of points, is thoroughly of
+the eighteenth, while even the excepted characteristics are of a more
+really transitional kind than anything in Chateaubriand and Madame de
+Sta&euml;l, whom we have postponed, as well as in Constant and Xavier de
+Maistre, whom we have admitted. He has no high reputation in literature,
+and, except from our own special point of view, he does not deserve even
+a demi-reputation. Although he is not deliberately pornographic, he is
+exceedingly coarse, with a great deal of the nastiness which is not even
+naughty, but nastiness pure and simple. There is, in fact, and in more
+ways than one, something in him of an extremely inferior Smollett.
+Comparing him with his elder contemporary, Restif de la Bretonne, he is
+vulgar, which Restif never is. Passing to more purely literary matters,
+it would be difficult, from the side of literature as an art&mdash;I do not
+say as a craft&mdash;to say anything for him whatever. His style<a name="FNanchor_426_426" id="FNanchor_426_426"></a><a href="#Footnote_426_426" class="fnanchor">[426]</a> is, I
+should suppose (for I think no foreigner has any business to do more
+than "suppose" in that matter), simply wretched; he has sentences as
+long as Milton's or Clarendon's or Mr. Ruskin's, not merely without the
+grandeur of the first, the beauty of the last, and the weighty sense of
+the second, but lacking any flash of graceful, pithy, or witty phrase;
+character of the model-theatre and cut-out paper kind; a mere
+accumulation of incidents instead of a plot; hardly an attempt at
+dialogue, and, where description is attempted at all, utter
+ineffectiveness or sheer rhyparography.<a name="FNanchor_427_427" id="FNanchor_427_427"></a><a href="#Footnote_427_427" class="fnanchor">[427]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is a fair <i>riposte</i> to the last paragraph to ask, "Then why do you
+drag him in here at all?" But the counter-parry is easy. The excepted
+points above supply it. With all his faults&mdash;admitting, too, that every
+generation since his time has supplied some, and most much better,
+examples of his kind&mdash;the fact remains that he was the first
+considerable representative, in his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> country, of that variety of
+professional novelist who can spin yarns, of the sort that his audience
+or public<a name="FNanchor_428_428" id="FNanchor_428_428"></a><a href="#Footnote_428_428" class="fnanchor">[428]</a> wants, with unwearied industry, in great volume, and of a
+quality which, such as it is, does not vary very much. He is, in short,
+the first notable French novelist-tradesman&mdash;the first who gives us
+notice that novel-production is established as a business. There is even
+a little more than this to be said for him. He has really made
+considerable progress, if we compare him with his predecessors and
+contemporaries, in the direction of the novel of ordinary life, as that
+life was in his own day. There are extravagances of course, but they are
+scarcely flagrant. His atmosphere is what the cooks, housemaids,
+footmen, what the grocers and small- or middle-class persons who, I
+suppose, chiefly read him, were, or would have liked to be, accustomed
+to. His scene is not a paradise in either the common or the Greek sense;
+it is a sort of cabbage-garden, with a cabbage-garden's lack of beauty,
+of exquisiteness in any form, with its presence of untidiness, and
+sometimes of evil odour, but with its own usefulness, and with a
+cultivator of the most sedulous. Pigault-Lebrun, for France, may be said
+to be the first author-in-chief of the circulating library. It may not
+be a position of exceeding honour; but it is certainly one which gives
+him a place in the story of the novel, and which justifies not merely
+these general remarks on him, but some analysis (not too abundant) of
+his particular works. As for translating him, a Frenchman might as well
+spend his time in translating the English newspaper <i>feuilletons</i> of
+"family" papers in the earlier and middle nineteenth century. Indeed
+that <i>Minnigrey</i>, which I remember reading as a boy, and which long
+afterwards my friend, the late Mr. Henley, used to extol as one of the
+masterpieces of literature, is worth all Pigault put together and a
+great deal more.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>L'Enfant du Carnaval and Les Barons de Felsheim.</i></div>
+
+<p>The worst of it is, that to be amused by him&mdash;to be,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span> except as a
+student, even interested in a large part of his work&mdash;you must be almost
+as ill-bred in literature as he himself is. He is like a person who has
+had before him no models for imitation or avoidance in behaviour: and
+this is where his successor, Paul de Kock, by the mere fact of being his
+successor, had a great advantage over him. But to the student he <i>is</i>
+interesting, and the interest has nothing factitious in it, and nothing
+to be ashamed of. There is something almost pathetic in his struggles to
+master his art: and his frequent remonstrances with critics and readers
+appear to show a genuine consciousness of his state, which is not always
+the case with such things.</p>
+
+<p>The book which stands first in his Works, <i>L'Enfant du Carnaval</i>, starts
+with an ultra-Smollettian<a name="FNanchor_429_429" id="FNanchor_429_429"></a><a href="#Footnote_429_429" class="fnanchor">[429]</a> passage of coarseness, and relapses now
+and then. The body of it&mdash;occupied with the history of a base-born
+child, who tumbles into the good graces of a Milord and his little
+daughter, is named by them "Happy," and becomes first the girl's lover
+and then her husband&mdash;is a heap of extravagances, which, nevertheless,
+bring the picaresque pattern, from which they are in part evidently
+traced, to a point, not of course anywhere approaching in genius <i>Don
+Quixote</i> or <i>Gil Blas</i>, but somehow or other a good deal nearer general
+modern life. <i>Les Barons de Felsheim</i>, which succeeds it, seems to have
+taken its origin from a suggestion of the opening of <i>Candide</i>, and
+continues with a still wilder series of adventures, satirising German
+ways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Very
+commonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, with
+frequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffably
+dreary persons who knock each others' hats off on the music-hall stage.
+There is even something dreamlike about him, though of a very low order
+of dream; he has at any rate the dream-habit of constantly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span> attempting
+something and finding that he cannot bring it off.</p>
+
+<p>At the close of one of his most extravagant, most indecent, and
+stupidest novels, <i>La Folie Espagnole</i>&mdash;a supposed tale of chivalry,
+which of course shows utter ignorance of time, place, and circumstance,
+and is, in fact, only a sort of travestied <i>Gil Blas</i>, with a rank
+infusion of further vulgarised Voltairianism<a name="FNanchor_430_430" id="FNanchor_430_430"></a><a href="#Footnote_430_430" class="fnanchor">[430]</a>&mdash;the author has a
+rather curious note to the reader, whom he imagines (with considerable
+probability) to be throwing the book away with a suggested cry of
+"Quelles mis&egrave;res! quel fatras!" He had, he says, previously offered
+<i>Ang&eacute;lique et Jeanneton</i>, a little work of a very different kind, and
+the public would neither buy nor read it. His publisher complained, and
+he must try to please. As for <i>La Folie</i>, everybody, including his cook,
+can understand <i>this</i>. One remembers similar expostulations from more
+respectable authors; but it is quite certain that Pigault-Lebrun&mdash;a
+Lebrun so different from his contemporary "Pindare" of that
+name&mdash;thoroughly meant what he said. He was drawing a bow, always at a
+venture, with no higher aim than to hit his public, and he did hit it
+oftener than he missed. So much the worse, perhaps, both for him and for
+his public; but the fact is a fact, and it is in the observation and
+correlation of facts that history consists.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Ang&eacute;lique et Jeanneton.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>Ang&eacute;lique et Jeanneton</i> itself, as might be expected from the above
+reference, is, among its author's works, something like <i>Le R&ecirc;ve</i> among
+Zola's; it is his endeavour to be strictly proper. But, as it is also
+one of his most Sternian exercises, the propriety is chequered. It
+begins in sufficiently startling fashion; a single gentleman of easy
+fortune and amiable disposition, putting his latchkey in the door of his
+chambers one night, is touched and accosted by an interesting young
+person with an "argentine" voice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span> This may look <i>louche</i>; but the
+silvery accents appeal only for relief of needs, which, as it shortly
+appears, are those most properly to be supplied by a maternity hospital.
+It is to be understood that the suppliant is an entire stranger to the
+hero. He behaves in the most amiable and, indeed, noble fashion, instals
+her in his rooms, turns himself and his servant out to the nearest
+hotel, fetches the proper ministress, and, not content with this Good
+Samaritanism, effects a legitimate union between Jeanneton and her
+lover, half gives and half procures them a comfortable maintenance,
+resists temptation of repayment (<i>not</i> in coin) on more than one
+occasion, and sets out, on foot, to Caudebec, to see about a heritage
+which has come to Jeanneton's husband. On the way he falls in with
+Ang&eacute;lique (a lady this time), falls also in love with her, and marries
+her. The later part of the story, as is rather the way with Pigault,
+becomes more "accidented." There are violent scenes, jealousies, not
+surprising, between the two heroines, etc. But the motto-title of
+Marmontel's <i>Heureusement</i> governs all, and the end is peace, though not
+without some spots in its sun. That the public of 1799 did not like the
+book and did like <i>La Folie Espagnole</i> is not surprising; but the
+bearing of this double attempt on the growth of novel-writing as a
+regular craft is important.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>Mon Oncle Thomas.</i></div>
+
+<p>Perhaps on the whole <i>Mon Oncle Thomas</i>, which seems to have been one of
+the most popular, is also one of the most representative, if not the
+best, of Pigault-Lebrun's novels. Its opening, and not its opening only,
+is indeed full of that mere nastiness which we, with Smollett and others
+to our <i>dis</i>credit, cannot disclaim for our own parallel period, and
+which was much worse among the French, who have a choice selection of
+epithets for it. But the fortunes of the youthful Thomas&mdash;child of a
+prostitute of the lowest class, though a very good mother, who
+afterwards marries a miserly and ruffianly corporal of police&mdash;are told
+with a good deal of spirit&mdash;one even thinks of <i>Colonel Jack</i>&mdash;and the
+author shows his curious vulgar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> common sense, and his knowledge of
+human nature of a certain kind, pretty frequently, at least in the
+earlier part of the book.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>J&eacute;r&ocirc;me.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>J&eacute;r&ocirc;me</i> is another of Pigault's favourite studies of boys&mdash;distinctly
+blackguard boys as a rule&mdash;from their mischievous, or, as the early
+English eighteenth century would have put it, "unlucky" childhood, to
+their most undeserved reward with a good and pretty wife (whom one
+sincerely pities), and more or less of a fortune. There is, however,
+more vigour in <i>J&eacute;r&ocirc;me</i> than in most, and, if one has the knack of
+"combing out" the silly and stale Voltairianism, and paying little
+attention to the far from exciting sculduddery, the book may be read. It
+contains, in particular, one of the most finished of its author's
+sketches, of a type which he really did something to introduce into his
+country's literature&mdash;that of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic <i>routier</i>
+or professional soldier&mdash;brave as you like, and&mdash;at least at some times
+when neither drunk nor under the influence of the garden god&mdash;not
+ungenerous; with a certain simplicity too: but as braggart as he is
+brave; a mere brute beast as regards the other sex; utterly ignorant,
+save of military matters, and in fact a kind of caricature of the older
+type, which the innocent Rymer was so wrath with Shakespeare for
+neglecting in Iago.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The redeeming points of these.</div>
+
+<p>It may seem that too much space is being given to a reprobate and often
+dull author; but something has been said already to rebut the complaint,
+and something more may be added now and again. French literature, from
+the death of Ch&eacute;nier to the appearance of Lamartine, has generally been
+held to contain hardly more than two names&mdash;those of Chateaubriand and
+Madame de Sta&euml;l&mdash;which can even "seem to be" those of "pillars"; and it
+may appear fantastic and almost insulting to mention one, who in long
+stretches of his work might almost be called a mere muckheap-raker, in
+company with them. Yet, in respect to the progress of his own
+department, it may be doubted whether he is not even more than their
+equal. <i>Ren&eacute;</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> and <i>Corinne</i> contain great suggestions, but they are
+suggestions rather for literature generally than for the novel proper.
+Pigault used the improperest materials; he lacked not merely taste, but
+that humour which sometimes excuses taste's absence; power of creating
+real character, decency almost always, sense very often.<a name="FNanchor_431_431" id="FNanchor_431_431"></a><a href="#Footnote_431_431" class="fnanchor">[431]</a> But all
+the same, he made the novel <i>march</i>, as it had not marched, save in
+isolated instances of genius, before.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Others&mdash;<i>Ad&eacute;la&iuml;de de M&eacute;ran</i> and <i>Tableaux de Soci&eacute;t&eacute;</i>.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>L'Officieux.</i></div>
+
+<p>Yet Pigault could hardly have deserved even the very modified praise
+which has been given to him, if he had been constant to the muckheap. He
+could never quite help approaching it now and then; but as time went on
+and the Empire substituted a sort of modified decency for the Feasts of
+Republican Reason and ribaldry, he tried things less uncomely. <i>Ad&eacute;la&iuml;de
+de M&eacute;ran</i> (his longest single book), <i>Tableaux de Soci&eacute;t&eacute;</i>,
+<i>L'Officieux</i>, and others, are of this class; and without presenting a
+single masterpiece in their own kind, they all, more or less, give
+evidence of that advance in the kind generally with which their author
+has been credited. <i>Ad&eacute;la&iuml;de</i> is very strongly reminiscent of
+Richardson, and more than reminiscent of "Sensibility"; it is written in
+letters&mdash;though all by and to the same persons, except a few
+extracts&mdash;and there is no individuality of character. Pigault, it has
+been said, never has any, though he has some of type. But by exercising
+the most violent constraint upon himself, he indulges only in one rape
+(though there have been narrow escapes before), in not more than two or
+three questionable incidents, and in practically no "improper"
+details&mdash;conduct almost deserving the description of magnanimity and
+self-denial. Moreover, the thing really is a modern novel, though a bad
+and rickety one; the indefinable <i>naturaleza</i> is present in it after a
+strange fashion. There is less perhaps in the very inappropriately named
+<i>Tableaux de Soci&eacute;t&eacute;</i>&mdash;the autobiography of a certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> Fanchette de
+Francheville, who, somewhat originally for a French heroine, starts by
+being in the most frantic state of mutual passion with her husband,
+though this is soon to be succeeded by an infatuation (for some time
+virtuously resisted) on her side for a handsome young naval officer, and
+by several others (not at all virtuously resisted) for divers ladies on
+the husband's. With his usual unskilfulness in managing character,
+Pigault makes very little of the opportunities given by his heroine's
+almost unconscious transference of her affections to Sainte-Luce; while
+he turns the uxorious husband, not out of jealousy merely, into a
+faithless one, and something like a general ruffian, after a very clumsy
+and "unconvincing" fashion. As for his throwing in, at the end, another
+fatal passion on part of their daughter for her mother's lover, it is,
+though managed with what is for the author, perfect cleanliness,
+entirely robbed of its always doubtful effect by the actual marriage of
+Fanchette and her sailor, and that immediately after the poor girl's
+death. If he had had the pluck to make this break off the whole thing,
+the book might have been a striking novel, as it is actually an attempt
+at one; but Pigault, like his friends of the gallery, was almost
+inviolably constant to happy endings.<a name="FNanchor_432_432" id="FNanchor_432_432"></a><a href="#Footnote_432_432" class="fnanchor">[432]</a> <i>L'Officieux</i>, if he had only
+had a little humour, might have been as good comically as the Tableaux
+might have been tragically; for it is the history, sometimes not
+ill-sketched as far as action goes, of a <i>parvenu</i> rich, but brave and
+extremely well-intentioned marquis, who is perpetually getting into
+fearful scrapes from his incorrigible habit of meddling with other
+people's affairs to do them good. The situations&mdash;as where the marquis,
+having, through an extravagance of officiousness, got himself put under
+arrest by his commanding officer, and at the same time insulted by a
+comrade, insists on fighting the necessary duel in his own drawing-room,
+and thereby reconciling duty and honour,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> to the great terror of a lady
+with whom he has been having a tender interview in the adjoining
+apartment&mdash;are sometimes good farce, and almost good comedy; but
+Pigault, like Shadwell, has neither the pen nor the wits to make the
+most of them.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Famille Luceval</i>&mdash;something of an expanded and considerably
+Pigaultified story <i>&agrave; la</i> Marmontel&mdash;is duller than any of these, and
+the opening is marred by an exaggerated study of a classical mania on
+the part of the hero; but still the novel quality is not quite absent
+from it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Further examples.</div>
+
+<p>Of the rest, <i>M. Botte</i>, which seems to have been a favourite, is a
+rather conventional extravaganza with a rich, testy, but occasionally
+generous uncle; a nephew who falls in love with the charming but
+penniless daughter of an <i>&eacute;migr&eacute;</i>; a noble rustic, who manages to keep
+some of his exiled landlord's property together, etc. <i>M. de Roberval</i>,
+though in its original issue not so long as <i>Ad&eacute;la&iuml;de de M&eacute;ran</i>, becomes
+longer by a <i>suite</i> of another full volume, and is a rather tedious
+chronicle of ups and downs. There may be silence about the remainder.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Last words on him.</div>
+
+<p>The stock and, as it may be called, "semi-official" ticket for
+Pigault-Lebrun in such French literary history as takes notice of him,
+appears to be <i>verve</i>: and the recognised dictionary-sense of <i>verve</i> is
+"heat of imagination, which animates the artist in his composition." In
+the higher sense in which the word imagination is used with us, it could
+never be applied here; but he certainly has a good deal of "go," which
+is perhaps not wholly improper as a colloquial Anglicising of the label.
+These semi-official descriptions, which have always pleased the Latin
+races, are of more authority in France than in England, though as long
+as we go on calling Chaucer "the father of English poetry" and Wyclif
+"the father of English prose" we need not boast ourselves too much. But
+Pigault has this "go"&mdash;never perhaps for a whole book, but sometimes for
+passages of considerable length, which possess "carrying"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span> power. It
+undoubtedly gave him his original popularity, and we need not despise it
+now, inasmuch as it makes less tedious the task of ascertaining and
+justifying his true place in the further "domestication"&mdash;if only in
+domesticities too often mean and grimy&mdash;of the French novel.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="sidenote">The French novel in 1800.</div>
+
+<p>There are more reasons than the convenience of furnishing a separately
+published first volume with an interim conclusion, for making, at the
+close of this, a few remarks on the general state of the French novel at
+the end of the eighteenth century. No thoroughly similar point is
+reached in the literary history of France, or of any country known to
+me, in regard to a particular department of literature. In England&mdash;the
+only place, which can, in this same department, be even considered in
+comparison, although at this very time two novelists, vastly superior to
+any of whom France has to boast, were just writing, or just about to
+write, and were a little later to revolutionise the novel itself&mdash;the
+general state and history of the kind had, for nearly two generations,
+reached a stage far beyond anything that France could claim. She had
+made earlier "running"; on the whole period of some seven hundred years
+she had always, till very recently, been in front. But in the novel, as
+distinguished from the romance, she had absolutely nothing to show like
+our great quartette of the mid-eighteenth century, and hardly anything
+to match the later developments of Miss Burney and others in domestic,
+of Mrs. Radcliffe and others still in revived romantic fiction. Very
+great Frenchmen or French writers had written novels; but, with the
+exceptions of Lesage in <i>Gil Blas</i>, Pr&eacute;vost in that everlastingly
+wonderful "single-speech" of his, and Rousseau in <i>La Nouvelle H&eacute;lo&iuml;se</i>,
+none had written a great novel. No single writer of any greatness had
+been a novelist pure and simple. No species<a name="FNanchor_433_433" id="FNanchor_433_433"></a><a href="#Footnote_433_433" class="fnanchor">[433]</a> of fiction,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span> except the
+short tale, in which, through varying forms, France held an age-long
+mastery, had been thoroughly developed in her literature.</p>
+
+<p>The main point, where England went right and France went wrong&mdash;to be
+only in the most equivocal way corrected by such a writer as
+Pigault-Lebrun&mdash;was the recognition of the connection&mdash;the intimate and
+all but necessary connection&mdash;of the completed novel with ordinary life.
+Look over the long history of fiction which we have surveyed in the last
+three or four or five chapters. There is much and sometimes great
+literary talent; sometimes, again, even genius; there are episodes of
+reality; there are most artful adjustments of type and convention and
+the like, of fashion in morals (or immorals) and sentiments. But a real
+objective novel of ordinary life, such as <i>Tom Jones</i>, or even <i>Humphry
+Clinker</i>, nay, such inferior approaches to it as exist elsewhere in
+English, you will not find. Of the Scud&eacute;ry romances we need not speak
+again; for all their key-references to persons, and their abstention
+from the supernatural, etc., they are, as wholes, hardly more real than
+<i>Amadis</i> and its family themselves. Scarron has some and Fureti&egrave;re more
+objectivity that may be argued for, but the Spanish picaresque has
+become a convention, and they, especially Scarron, are aiming more at
+the pattern than at the life-model. Madame de la Fayette has much, and
+some of her followers a little, real passion; but her manners,
+descriptions, etc., are all conventional, though of another kind. The
+fairy tales are of course not "real." Marivaux is aiming directly at
+Sensibility, preciousness, "psychology," if you like, but not at holding
+up the glass to any ordinary nature as such.<a name="FNanchor_434_434" id="FNanchor_434_434"></a><a href="#Footnote_434_434" class="fnanchor">[434]</a> And though Cr&eacute;billon
+might plead that his convention was actually the convention of hundreds
+and almost thousands of accomplished ladies and gentlemen, no one can
+deny that it was almost as much a convention as the historical or
+legendary acting of the <i>Com&eacute;die<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span> Humaine</i> by living persons a hundred
+years later at Venice.</p>
+
+<p>No writer perhaps illustrates what is being said better than Pr&eacute;vost. No
+one of his books, voluminous as they are, has the very slightest
+reality, except <i>Manon Lescaut</i>; and that, like <i>La Princesse de
+Cl&egrave;ves</i>, though with much more intensity and fortunately with no alloy
+of convention whatever, is simply a study of passion, not of life at
+large at all. With the greater men the case alters to some extent in
+proportion to their greatness, but, again with one exception, not to
+such an extent as to affect the general rule. Voltaire avowedly never
+attempts ordinary representation of ordinary life&mdash;save as the merest
+by-work, it is all "purpose," satire, fancy. Rousseau may not, in one
+sense, go beyond that life in <i>Julie</i>, but in touching it he is almost
+as limited and exclusive as Pr&eacute;vost in his masterpiece. Diderot has to
+get hold of the abnormal, if not the unreal, before he can give you
+something like a true novel. Marmontel is half-fanciful, and though he
+does touch reality, subordinates it constantly to half-allegorical and
+wholly moral purpose. All the minor "Sensibility" folk follow their
+leaders, and so do all the minor <i>conteurs</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The people (believed to be a numerous folk) who are uncomfortable with a
+fact unless some explanation of it is given, may be humoured here. The
+failure of a very literary nation&mdash;applying the most disciplined
+literary language in Europe to a department, in the earlier stages of
+which they had led Europe itself&mdash;to get out of the trammels which we
+had easily discarded, is almost demonstrably connected with the very
+nature of their own literary character. Until the most recent years, if
+not up to the very present day, few Frenchmen have ever been happy
+without a type, a "kind," a set of type-and kind-rules, a classification
+and specification, as it were, which has to be filled up and worked
+over. Of all this the novel had nothing in ancient times, while in
+modern it had only been wrestling and struggling towards something of
+the sort, and had only in one country<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span> discovered, and not quite
+consciously there, that the beauty of the novel lies in having no type,
+no kind, no rules, no limitations, no general precept or motto for the
+craftsman except "Here is the whole of human life before you. Copy it,
+or, better, recreate it&mdash;with variation and decoration <i>ad libitum</i>&mdash;as
+faithfully, but as freely, as you can." Of this great fact even
+Fielding, the creator of the modern novel, was perhaps not wholly aware
+as a matter of theory, though he made no error about it in practice.
+Indeed the "comic prose epic" notion <i>might</i> reduce to rules like those
+of the verse. Both Scott and Miss Austen abstained likewise from
+formalising it. But every really great novel has illustrated it; and
+attempts, such as have been recently made, to contest it and draw up a
+novelists' code, have certainly not yet justified themselves according
+to the Covenant of Works, and have at least not disposed some of us to
+welcome them as a Covenant of Faith. It is because Pigault-Lebrun,
+though a low kind of creature from every point of view, except that of
+mere craftsmanship, did, like his betters, recognise the fact in
+practice, that he has been allowed here a place of greater consideration
+than perhaps has ever fallen to his lot before in literary history.</p>
+
+<p>Still, even putting out of sight the new developments which had shown
+the irrepressible vitality of the French <i>conte</i>, the seven hundred
+years had not been wasted. The product of the first half of them
+remained, indeed, at this time sealed up in the "gazophile" of the older
+age, or was popularised only by well-meaning misinterpreters like the
+Comte de Tressan;<a name="FNanchor_435_435" id="FNanchor_435_435"></a><a href="#Footnote_435_435" class="fnanchor">[435]</a> but the treasure-house was very soon to be broken
+open and utilised. It is open to any one to contend&mdash;it is, indeed,
+pretty much the opinion of the present writer&mdash;that it was this very
+neglect which had made the progress of the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries themselves so slow and so imperfect in its total results. For
+those who like to look for literary causes outside literature, there may
+be other explanations. But any intelligent reader can do something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span> for
+himself if he has the facts before him. It is these facts that it has
+been and will be our business to give and to summarise here.</p>
+
+<p>They have been given; let us attempt to summarise them in the briefest
+possible way. France possibly did not invent Romance; no man or men
+could do that; it was a sort of deferred heritage which Humankind, like
+the Heir of Lynne, discovered when it was ready to hang itself (speaking
+in terms of literature) during the Dark Ages. But she certainly grew the
+seed for all other countries, and dispersed the growth to the ends of
+the earth. Very much the same was the case with the short tale in the
+"Middle" period. From the fifteenth century to the eighteenth (both
+included) she entered upon a curious kind of wilderness, studded with
+oases of a more curious character still. In one of them Rabelais was
+born, and found Quintessence, and of that finding&mdash;more fortunate than
+the result of True Thomas finding the Elf Queen&mdash;was born Pantagruelism.
+In another came Lesage, and though his work was scarcely original, it
+was consummate. None of these happy sojourns produced a <i>Don Quixote</i> or
+a <i>Tom Jones</i>, but divers smaller things resulted. And again and again,
+as had happened in the Middle Ages themselves, but on a smaller scale,
+what France did found development and improvement in other lands; while
+her own miniature masterpieces, from the best of the <i>Cent Nouvelles
+Nouvelles</i> and the <i>Heptameron</i>, through all others that we noticed down
+to <i>Adolphe</i>, showed the enormous power which was working half blindly.
+How the strength got eyes, and the eyes found the right objects to fix
+upon, must be left, if fortune favour, for the next volume to tell.<a name="FNanchor_436_436" id="FNanchor_436_436"></a><a href="#Footnote_436_436" class="fnanchor">[436]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_404_404" id="Footnote_404_404"></a><a href="#FNanchor_404_404"><span class="label">[404]</span></a> We have seen above how things were "shaping for" it, in
+the Pastoral and Heroic romances. But the shape was not definitely taken
+in them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_405_405" id="Footnote_405_405"></a><a href="#FNanchor_405_405"><span class="label">[405]</span></a> In the following pages, and here only in this volume, the
+author has utilised, though with very considerable alterations, some
+previously published work, <i>A Study of Sensibility</i>, which appeared
+originally in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i> for September 1882, and was
+republished in a volume (<i>Essays on French Novelists</i>, London, 1891)
+which has been for some years out of print. Much of the original essay,
+dealing with Marivaux and others already treated here, has been removed,
+and the whole has been cut down, revised, and adjusted to its new
+contexts. But it seemed unnecessary to waste time in an endeavour to say
+the same thing differently about matters which, though as a whole
+indispensable, are, with perhaps one exception, individually not of the
+first importance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_406_406" id="Footnote_406_406"></a><a href="#FNanchor_406_406"><span class="label">[406]</span></a> These words were originally written more than thirty
+years ago. I am not sure that there was not something prophetic in
+them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_407_407" id="Footnote_407_407"></a><a href="#FNanchor_407_407"><span class="label">[407]</span></a> Madame de Fontaines in <i>La Comtesse de Savoie</i> and
+<i>Amenophis</i> "follows her leader" in more senses than one&mdash;including a
+sort of pseudo-historical setting or insetting which became almost a
+habit. But she is hardly important.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_408_408" id="Footnote_408_408"></a><a href="#FNanchor_408_408"><span class="label">[408]</span></a> Readers of Thackeray may remember in <i>The Paris Sketch
+Book</i> ("On the French School of Painting," p. 52, Oxford ed.) some
+remarks on Jacquand's picture, "The Death of Adelaide de Comminge,"
+which he thought "neither more nor less than beautiful." But from his
+"it appears," in reference to the circumstances, it would seem that he
+did not know the book, save perhaps from a catalogue-extract or
+summary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_409_409" id="Footnote_409_409"></a><a href="#FNanchor_409_409"><span class="label">[409]</span></a> The extreme shortness of all these books may be just
+worth noticing. Reaction from the enormous romances of the preceding
+century may have had something to do with it; and the popularity of the
+"tale" something more. But the <i>causa verissima</i> was probably the
+impossibility of keeping up sentiment at high pressure for any length of
+time, incident, or talk.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_410_410" id="Footnote_410_410"></a><a href="#FNanchor_410_410"><span class="label">[410]</span></a> <i>Vide</i> on the process Cr&eacute;billon's <i>Les &Eacute;garements du
+C&oelig;ur et de l'Esprit</i>, as above, pp. 371, 372.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_411_411" id="Footnote_411_411"></a><a href="#FNanchor_411_411"><span class="label">[411]</span></a> The parallel with "George Eliot" will strike most
+people.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_412_412" id="Footnote_412_412"></a><a href="#FNanchor_412_412"><span class="label">[412]</span></a> But for uniformity's sake I should not have translated
+this, for fear of doing it injustice. "Not presume to dictate," in Mr.
+Jingle's constantly useful phrase, but it seems to me one of the finest
+in French prose.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_413_413" id="Footnote_413_413"></a><a href="#FNanchor_413_413"><span class="label">[413]</span></a> "Craze" has been suggested; but is, I think, hardly an
+exact synonym.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_414_414" id="Footnote_414_414"></a><a href="#FNanchor_414_414"><span class="label">[414]</span></a> This may seem to contradict, or at any rate to be
+inconsistent with, a passage above (p. 367) on the "flirtations" of
+Cr&eacute;billon's personages. It is, however, only a more strictly accurate
+use of the word.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_415_415" id="Footnote_415_415"></a><a href="#FNanchor_415_415"><span class="label">[415]</span></a> Two remarkable and short passages of his, not quoted in
+the special notice of him, may be given&mdash;one in English, because of its
+remarkable anticipation of the state of mind of Catherine Morland in
+<i>Northanger Abbey</i>; the other in French, as a curious "conclusion of the
+whole matter." They are both from <i>Marianne</i>.
+</p><p>
+"I had resolved not to sleep another night in the house. I cannot indeed
+tell you what was the exact object of my fear, or why it was so lively.
+All that I know is that I constantly beheld before me the countenance of
+my landlord, to which I had hitherto paid no particular attention, and
+then I began to find terrible things in this countenance His wife's
+face, too, seemed to be gloomy and dark; the servants looked like
+scoundrels; all their faces made me in a state of unbearable alarm. I
+saw before me swords, daggers, murders, thefts, insults. My blood grew
+cold at the perils I imagined."
+</p>
+<hr style='width: 30%;' />
+<p>
+"Enfin ces agitations, tant agr&eacute;ables que p&eacute;nibles, s'affaiblirent et se
+pass&egrave;rent. L'&acirc;me s'accoutume &agrave; tout; sa sensibilit&eacute; s'use: et je me
+familiarisais avec mes esp&eacute;rances et mes inqui&eacute;tudes."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_416_416" id="Footnote_416_416"></a><a href="#FNanchor_416_416"><span class="label">[416]</span></a> Since, long ago, I formed the opinion of <i>Adolphe</i>
+embodied above, I have, I think, seen French criticisms which took it
+rather differently&mdash;as a personal confession of the "confusions of a
+wasted youth," misled by passion. The reader must judge which is the
+juster view.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_417_417" id="Footnote_417_417"></a><a href="#FNanchor_417_417"><span class="label">[417]</span></a> By a little allowance for influence, if not for intrinsic
+value.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_418_418" id="Footnote_418_418"></a><a href="#FNanchor_418_418"><span class="label">[418]</span></a> On representations from persons of distinction I have
+given Laclos a place in an outhouse (see "Add. and Corr."). But I have
+made this place as much of a penitentiary as I could.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_419_419" id="Footnote_419_419"></a><a href="#FNanchor_419_419"><span class="label">[419]</span></a> I must apologise by anticipation to the <i>official</i> French
+critic. To him, I know, even if he is no mere minor Malherbe, Restif's
+style is very faulty; but I should not presume to take his point of
+view, either for praise or blame.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_420_420" id="Footnote_420_420"></a><a href="#FNanchor_420_420"><span class="label">[420]</span></a> There is a separate bibliography by Cubi&egrave;res-Palm&eacute;zeaux
+(1875). The useful <i>Dictionnaire des Litt&eacute;ratures</i> of Vapereau contains
+a list of between thirty and forty separate works of Restif's, divided
+into nearer two than one hundred volumes. He followed Pr&eacute;vost in
+<i>Nouveaux M&eacute;moires d'un Homme de Qualit&eacute;</i> as he had followed Marivaux in
+the <i>Paysan Perverti</i>. He completed this work of his own with <i>La
+Paysanne Pervertie</i>; he wrote, besides the <i>Pornographe</i>, numerous books
+of social, general, and would-be philosophical reform&mdash;<i>Le Mimographe</i>,
+dealing with the stage; <i>Les Gynographes</i>, with a general plan for
+rearranging the status of women; <i>L'Andrographe</i>, a "whole duty of man"
+of a very novel kind; <i>Le Thesmographe</i>, etc.,&mdash;besides, close upon the
+end and after the autobiography above described, a <i>Philosophie de M.
+Nicolas</i>. His more or less directly narrative pieces, <i>Le Pied de
+Fanchette</i>, <i>Lucile</i>, <i>Ad&egrave;le</i>, <i>La Femme Infid&egrave;le</i>, <i>Ing&eacute;nue Saxancour</i>,
+are nearly always more or less tinged with biography of himself and of
+persons closely connected with him, as <i>La Vie de Mon P&egrave;re</i>, his most
+respectable book, is wholly. It may be added, perhaps, that the notice
+in Vapereau, while not bearing very hard on Restif on the whole, repeats
+the words <i>cynisme</i> and <i>cynique</i> in regard to him. Unless the term is
+in part limited and in part extended, so as to mean nothing but
+"exposure of things generally kept secret without apparent shame," it is
+entirely misplaced. Not merely outside of, but actually in his
+erotomania, Restif was a sentimental philanthropist of the all but most
+genuine kind, tainted indeed with the vanity and self-centredness which
+had reached their acme in Rousseau, but very much more certainly
+sincere, and of a temperament as different as possible from what is
+commonly called cynicism.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_421_421" id="Footnote_421_421"></a><a href="#FNanchor_421_421"><span class="label">[421]</span></a> There are, however, contradictory statements on this
+point.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_422_422" id="Footnote_422_422"></a><a href="#FNanchor_422_422"><span class="label">[422]</span></a> Nicolas [Edme] Restif being apparently his baptismal
+name, and "de la Bretonne" merely one of the self-bestowed agnominal
+nourishes so common in the French eighteenth century. He chose to
+consider the surname evidence of descent from the Emperor Pertinax; and
+as for his Christian name he seems to have varied it freely. Rose
+Lambelin, one of his harem, and a <i>soubrette</i> of some literature, used
+to address him as "Anne-Augustin," Anne being, as no doubt most readers
+know, a masculine as well as a feminine <i>pr&eacute;nom</i> in French.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_423_423" id="Footnote_423_423"></a><a href="#FNanchor_423_423"><span class="label">[423]</span></a> Some, and perhaps not a few of their objects, may have
+been imaginary "dream-mistresses," created by Morpheus in an impurer
+mood than when he created Lamb's "dream-children." But some, I believe,
+have been identified; and others of the singular "Calendar" affixed to
+<i>Monsieur Nicolas</i> have probably escaped identification.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_424_424" id="Footnote_424_424"></a><a href="#FNanchor_424_424"><span class="label">[424]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="sidenote">His life and the reasons for giving it.</div><p>
+It has not been necessary (and this is fortunate, for even if it had
+been necessary, it would have been scarcely possible) to give
+biographies of the various authors mentioned in this book, except in
+special cases. Something was generally known of most of them in the days
+before education received a large E, with laws and rates to suit: and
+something is still in a way, supposed to be known since. But of the life
+of Pigault, who called himself Lebrun, it may be desirable to say
+something, for more reasons than one. In the first place, this life had
+rather more to do with his work than is always the case; in the second,
+very little will be found about him in most histories of French
+literature; in the third, there will be found assigned to him, in the
+text&mdash;not out of crotchet, or contumacy, or desire to innovate, but as a
+result of rather painful reading&mdash;a considerably higher place in the
+history of the novel than he has usually occupied. His correct
+name&mdash;till, by one of the extremest eccentricities of the French
+<i>Chats-Fourr&eacute;s</i>, he was formally unbegot by his Roman father, and the
+unbegetting (plus declaration of death) confirmed by the Parlement of
+Paris&mdash;was the imposing one of Charles Antoine Guillaume Pigault de
+L'&Eacute;pinoy. The paternal Pigault, as may be guessed from his proceedings,
+was himself a lawyer, but of an old Calais family tracing itself to
+Queen Philippa's <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;</i>, Eustache de Saint-Pierre; and, besides the
+mysterious life-in-death or death-in-life, Charles Antoine Guillaume had
+to suffer from him, while such things existed, several <i>lettres de
+cachet</i>. The son certainly did his best to deserve them. Having been
+settled, on leaving school as a clerk in an English commercial house, he
+seduced his master's daughter, ran away with her, and would no doubt
+have married her&mdash;for Pigault was never a really bad fellow&mdash;if she had
+not been drowned in the vessel which carried the pair back to France. He
+escaped&mdash;one hopes not without trying to save her. After another
+scandal&mdash;not the second only&mdash;of the same kind, he did marry the victim,
+and the marriage was the occasion of the singular exertion of <i>patria
+potestas</i> referred to above. At least two <i>lettres de cachet</i> had
+preceded it, and it is said that only the taking of the Bastille
+prevented the issue, or at least the effect, of a third. Meanwhile, he
+had been a gentleman-trooper in the <i>gendarmerie d'&eacute;lite de la petite
+maison du roi</i>, which, seeing that the <i>roi</i> was Louis Quinze, probably
+did not conduct itself after the fashion of the Thundering Legion, or of
+Cromwell's Ironsides, or even of Captain Steele's "Christian Hero." The
+life of this establishment, though as probably merry, was not long, and
+Pigault became an actor&mdash;a very bad but rather popular actor, it was
+said. Like other bad actors he wrote plays, which, if not good (they are
+certainly not very cheerful to read), were far from unsuccessful. But it
+was not till after the Revolution, and till he was near forty, that he
+undertook prose fiction; his first book being <i>L'Enfant du Carnaval</i> in
+1792 (noticed in text). The revolutionary fury, however, of which there
+are so many traces in his writings, caught him; he went back to
+soldiering and fought at Valmy. He did not stay long in the army, but
+went on novel-writing, his success having the rather unexpected, and
+certainly very unusual, effect of reconciling his father. Indeed, this
+arbitrary parent wished not only to recall him to life, which was
+perhaps superfluous, but to "make an eldest son of him." This, Pigault,
+who was a loose fish and a vulgar fellow, but, as was said above, not a
+scoundrel, could not suffer; and he shared and shared alike with his
+brothers and sisters. Under the Empire he obtained a place in the
+customs, and held it under succeeding reigns till 1824, dying eleven
+years later at over eighty, and having written novels continuously till
+a short time before his death, and till the very eve of 1830. This odd
+career was crowned by an odd accident, for his daughter's son was &Eacute;mile
+Augier. I never knew this fact till after the death of my friend, the
+late Mr. H. D. Traill. If I had, I should certainly have asked him to
+write an Imaginary Conversation between grandfather and grandson. Some
+years (1822-1824) before his last novel, a complete edition of novels,
+plays, and very valueless miscellanies had been issued in twenty octavo
+volumes. The reader, like the river Iser in Campbell's great poem, will
+be justified for the most part in "rolling rapidly" through them. But he
+will find his course rather unexpectedly delayed sometimes, and it is
+the fact and the reasons of these delays which must form the subject of
+the text.&mdash;There is no doubt that Pigault was very largely read abroad
+as well as at home. We know that Miss Matilda Crawley read him before
+Waterloo. She must have inherited from her father, Sir Walpole, a strong
+stomach: and must have been less affected by the change of times than
+was the case with her contemporary, Scott's old friend, who having
+enjoyed "your bonny Mrs. Behn" in her youth, could not read her in age.
+For our poor maligned Afra (in her prose stories at any rate, and most
+of her verse, if not in her plays) is an anticipated model of Victorian
+prudery and nicety compared with Pigault. I cannot help thinking that
+Marryat knew him too. Chapter and verse may not be forthcoming, and the
+resemblance may be accounted for by common likeness to Smollett: but
+not, to my thinking, quite sufficiently.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_425_425" id="Footnote_425_425"></a><a href="#FNanchor_425_425"><span class="label">[425]</span></a> He had a younger brother, in a small way also a novelist,
+and, apparently, in the Radcliffian style, who extra-named himself
+rather in the manner of 1830&mdash;Pigault-<i>Maubaillarck</i>. I have not yet
+come across this junior's work.&mdash;For remarks of Hugo himself on Pigault
+and Restif, see note at end of chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_426_426" id="Footnote_426_426"></a><a href="#FNanchor_426_426"><span class="label">[426]</span></a> At least in his early books; it improves a little later.
+But see note on p. 453.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_427_427" id="Footnote_427_427"></a><a href="#FNanchor_427_427"><span class="label">[427]</span></a> For a defence of this word, <i>v. sup.</i> p. 280, <i>note</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_428_428" id="Footnote_428_428"></a><a href="#FNanchor_428_428"><span class="label">[428]</span></a> It may be objected, "Did not the Scud&eacute;rys and others do
+this?" The answer is that their public was not, strictly speaking, a
+"public" at all&mdash;it was a larger or smaller coterie.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_429_429" id="Footnote_429_429"></a><a href="#FNanchor_429_429"><span class="label">[429]</span></a> It has been said that Pigault spent some time in England,
+and he shows more knowledge of English things and books than was common
+with Frenchmen before, and for a long time after, his day. Nor does he,
+even during the Great War, exhibit any signs of acute Anglophobia.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_430_430" id="Footnote_430_430"></a><a href="#FNanchor_430_430"><span class="label">[430]</span></a> Pigault's adoration for Voltaire reaches the ludicrous,
+though we can seldom laugh <i>with</i> him. It led him once to compose one of
+the very dullest books in literature, <i>Le Citateur</i>, a string of
+anti-Christian gibes and arguments from his idol and others.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_431_431" id="Footnote_431_431"></a><a href="#FNanchor_431_431"><span class="label">[431]</span></a> Yet sometimes&mdash;when, for instance, one thinks of the
+rottenness-to-the-core of Dean Farrar's <i>Eric</i>, or the <i>spiritus
+vulgaritatis fortissimus</i> of Mark Twain's <i>A Yankee at the Court of King
+Arthur</i>&mdash;one feels a little ashamed of abusing Pigault.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_432_432" id="Footnote_432_432"></a><a href="#FNanchor_432_432"><span class="label">[432]</span></a> There was, of course, a milder and perhaps more effective
+possibility&mdash;to make the young turn to the young, and leave Madame de
+Francheville no solace for her sin. But for this also Pigault would have
+lacked audacity.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_433_433" id="Footnote_433_433"></a><a href="#FNanchor_433_433"><span class="label">[433]</span></a> For the story "species" of <i>Gil Blas</i> was not new, was of
+foreign origin, and was open to some objection; while the other two
+books just named derived their attraction, in the one case to a very
+small extent, in the other to hardly any at all, from the story itself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_434_434" id="Footnote_434_434"></a><a href="#FNanchor_434_434"><span class="label">[434]</span></a> Not that Jacob and Marianne are unnatural&mdash;quite the
+contrary&mdash;but that their situations are conventionalised.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_435_435" id="Footnote_435_435"></a><a href="#FNanchor_435_435"><span class="label">[435]</span></a> <i>Corps d'Extraits de Romans de Chevalerie.</i> 4 vols.
+Paris, 1782.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_436_436" id="Footnote_436_436"></a><a href="#FNanchor_436_436"><span class="label">[436]</span></a> The link between the two suggested at p. 458, <i>note</i>, is
+as follows. That Victor Hugo should, as he does in the Preface to <i>Han
+d'Islande</i> and elsewhere, sneer at Pigault, is not very wonderful: for,
+besides the difference between <i>canaille</i> and <i>caballer&iacute;a</i>, the author
+of <i>M. Botte</i> was the most popular novelist of Hugo's youth. But why he
+has, in Part IV. Book VII. of <i>Les Mis&eacute;rables</i> selected Restif as
+"undermining the masses in the most unwholesome way of all" is not
+nearly so clear, especially as he opposes this way to the
+"wholesomeness" of, among others&mdash;Diderot!</p></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span></p>
+<h2>APPENDICES</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRENCH FICTION
+NOTICED IN THIS VOLUME</h2>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">11th Century</span></h4>
+
+<p><i>Vie de Saint Alexis</i> (probably).</p>
+
+<p><i>Roland</i> and one or two other <i>Chansons</i> (possibly).</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">12th Century</span></h4>
+
+<p>Most of the older <i>Chansons</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Arthurian Legend</i> (in some of its forms).</p>
+
+<p><i>Roman de Troie</i>, <i>Romans d'Alexandre</i> (older forms).</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">13th Century</span></h4>
+
+<p>Rest of the more genuine <i>Chansons</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Rest of ditto Arthuriad and "Matter of Rome."</p>
+
+<p><i>Romans d'Aventures</i> (many).</p>
+
+<p>Early Fabliaux (probably).</p>
+
+<p><i>Roman de la Rose</i> and <i>Roman de Renart</i> (older parts).</p>
+
+<p>Prose Stories (<i>Aucassin et Nicolette</i>), etc.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">14th Century</span></h4>
+
+<p>Rehandlings, and younger examples, of all kinds above mentioned.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">15th Century</span></h4>
+
+<p>Ditto, but only latest forms of all but Prose Stories, and many of the
+others rendered into prose.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles.</i> First <i>edition</i>, 1480, but written much
+earlier.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petit Jehan de Saintr&eacute;</i>, about 1459, or earlier.</p>
+
+<p><i>Jehan de Paris.</i> Uncertain, but before 1500.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">16th Century</span></h4>
+
+<p>Rabelais. First Book of <i>Pantagruel</i> Second of the whole, 1533;
+<i>Gargantua</i>, 1535; rest of <i>Pantagruel</i> at intervals, to the
+(posthumous) Fifth Book in 1564.</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite de Navarre. <i>Heptameron.</i> Written before (probably some time
+before) Marguerite's death in 1549. Imperfectly published as <i>Les Amants
+Fortun&eacute;s</i>, etc., in 1558; completely, under its permanent title, next
+year.</p>
+
+<p>Bonaventure Desp&eacute;riers. <i>Cymbalum Mundi</i>, 1537; <i>Contes et Joyeux
+Devis</i>, 1558, but written at least fourteen years earlier, as the author
+died in 1544.</p>
+
+<p>H&eacute;lisenne de Crenne. <i>Les Angoisses</i>, etc., 1538.</p>
+
+<p><i>Amadis</i> Romances. Date of Spanish or Portuguese originals uncertain.
+Herberay published the first part of his French translation of <i>Amadis</i>
+itself in 1540.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the small pastoral and adventurous stories noticed at the
+beginning of Chapter VIII. appeared in the last fifteen years of the
+sixteenth century, the remainder in the first quarter of the
+seventeenth. But of the Greek and Spanish compositions, which had so
+great an influence on them and on the subsequent "Heroic" School, the
+work of Heliodorus had been translated as early as 1546, and the <i>Diana</i>
+of Montemayor in 1578.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">17th Century</span></h4>
+
+<p>Honor&eacute; d'Urf&eacute;. <i>L'Astr&eacute;e</i>, 1607-19. (First three parts in Urf&eacute;'s
+lifetime, fourth and fifth after his death in 1625.)</p>
+
+<p>"Heroic" Romance, 1622-60, as regards its principal examples, the exact
+dates of which are given in a note to p. 176. Madame de Villedieu wrote
+almost up to her death in 1683.</p>
+
+<p>Fairy Tales, etc. The common idea that Perrault not only produced the
+masterpieces but set the fashion of the kind is inexact. Madame
+d'Aulnoy's <i>Contes des F&eacute;es</i> appeared in 1682, whereas Perrault's
+<i>Contes de ma M&egrave;re L'Oye</i> did not come till fifteen years later, in
+1697. The precise dates of the writing of Hamilton's Tales are not, I
+think, known. They must, for the most part, have been between the
+appearance of Galland's <i>Arabian Nights</i>, 1704, and the author's death
+in 1720. As for the <i>Cabinet</i> and its later constituents, see below on
+the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Sorel, Ch. <i>Francion</i>, 1622; <i>Le Berger Extravagant</i>, 1627.</p>
+
+<p>Scarron, P. <i>Le Roman Comique</i>, 1651.</p>
+
+<p>Cyrano de Bergerac. <i>Histoire Comique</i>, etc., 1655.</p>
+
+<p>Fureti&egrave;re, A. <i>Le Roman Bourgeois</i>, 1666.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>La Fayette, Madame de. <i>La Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i>, 1678. Her first book,
+<i>La Princesse de Montpensier</i> (much slighter but well written), had
+appeared eighteen years earlier, and <i>Za&iuml;de</i> or <i>Zayde</i> in 1670,
+fathered by Segrais.</p>
+
+<p>F&eacute;nelon. <i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i>, 1699.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">18th Century</span></h4>
+
+<p><i>Cabinet des F&eacute;es</i>, containing not only the authors or translators
+mentioned under the head of the preceding century, but a series of later
+writings down to the eve of the Revolution. Gueulette's adaptations and
+imitations ranged from the <i>Soir&eacute;es Bretonnes</i>, published in 1712 during
+Hamilton's lifetime, to the <i>Thousand and One Hours</i>, 1733, the other
+collections mentioned in the text coming between. It may be worth
+mentioning that, being an industrious editor as well as tale-teller and
+playwright, he reprinted <i>Le Petit Jehan de Saintr&eacute;</i> in 1724 and
+Rabelais in 1732. Caylus's tales seem to have been scattered over the
+middle third of the century from about 1730 to his death in 1765.
+Cazotte's <i>Diable Amoureux</i> (not in the <i>Cabinet</i>) is of 1772&mdash;he had
+written very inferior things of the tale kind full thirty years earlier.
+Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont (who was long an actual governess in England)
+wrote her numerous "books for the young" for the most part between 1757
+(<i>Le Magazin des Enfants</i>) and 1774 (<i>Contes Moraux</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Lesage. <i>Le Diable Boiteux</i>, 1707; <i>Gil Blas de Santillane</i>, 1715-35.</p>
+
+<p>Marivaux. <i>Les Effets Surprenants</i>, 1713-14; <i>Marianne</i>, 1731-36; <i>Le
+Paysan Parvenu</i>, 1735.</p>
+
+<p>Pr&eacute;vost. <i>M&eacute;moires d'un Homme de Qualit&eacute;</i>, 1728-32, followed by <i>Manon
+Lescaut</i>, 1733; <i>Cl&eacute;veland</i>, 1732-39; <i>Le Doyen de Kill&eacute;rine</i>, 1735;
+<i>Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne</i>, 1741.</p>
+
+<p>(It may not be impertinent to draw attention to the fact that Pr&eacute;vost,
+like Defoe&mdash;though not quite to the same extent, and in the middle, not
+towards the end of his career&mdash;concentrated the novel-part of an
+enormous polygraphic production upon a few years.)</p>
+
+<p>Cr&eacute;billon <i>fils</i>. <i>Lettres de la Marquise</i>, 1732; <i>Tanza&iuml; et N&eacute;adarn&eacute;</i>,
+1734; <i>Les &Eacute;garements</i>, 1736; <i>Le Sopha</i>, 1745; <i>La Nuit et le Moment</i>,
+1755; <i>Le Hasard au Coin du Feu</i>, 1763; <i>Ah! Quel Conte!</i> 1764.</p>
+
+<p>Voltaire's <i>Tales</i> were distributed over a large part of his long and
+insatiably busy life; but none of his best are very early. <i>Zadig</i> is of
+1747; <i>Microm&eacute;gas</i> of 1752; <i>Candide</i> of 1759;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span> <i>L'Ing&eacute;nu</i> and <i>La
+Princesse de Babylone</i> of 1767 and 1768 respectively.</p>
+
+<p>Rousseau. <i>La Nouvelle H&eacute;lo&iuml;se</i>, 1760; <i>&Eacute;mile</i>, 1762.</p>
+
+<p>Diderot. <i>Les Bijoux Indiscrets</i>, 1748. <i>Jacques le Fataliste</i> and <i>La
+Religieuse</i> were posthumously published, but must have been written much
+earlier than their author's death in 1784.</p>
+
+<p>Marmontel. <i>Contes Moraux</i> appeared in the official or semi-official
+<i>Mercure de France</i>, with which the author was connected from 1753-60,
+being its manager or editor for the last two of these years. <i>B&eacute;lisaire</i>
+came out in 1767.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. <i>Paul et Virginie</i>, 1787; <i>La Chaumi&egrave;re
+Indienne</i>, 1790.</p>
+
+<p>"Sensibility" Novels:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Tencin. <i>Le Comte de Comminge</i>, 1735; <i>Les Malheurs de
+l'Amour</i>, 1747.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Riccoboni. <i>Le Marquis de Cressy</i>, 1758; <i>Lettres de Julie
+Catesby</i>, 1759; <i>Ernestine</i>, 1762.</p>
+
+<p>Madame &Eacute;lie de Beaumont. <i>Le Marquis de Roselle</i>, 1764.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Souza. <i>Ad&egrave;le de Senanges</i>, 1794.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Genlis. <i>Mlle. de Clermont</i>, 1802.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Duras. <i>Ourika</i>, 1823; <i>&Eacute;douard</i>, 1825.</p>
+
+<p>Xavier de Maistre. <i>Voyage autour de ma Chambre</i>, 1794; <i>Le L&eacute;preux de
+la Cit&eacute; d'Aoste</i>, 1812; <i>Les Prisonniers du Caucase, La Jeune
+Sib&eacute;rienne</i>, 1825.</p>
+
+<p>Benjamin Constant. <i>Adolphe</i>, 1815.</p>
+
+<p>Restif de la Bretonne. <i>Le Pied de Fanchette</i>, 1769; <i>Ad&egrave;le</i>, 1772; <i>Le
+Paysan Perverti</i>, 1775-76; <i>Les Contemporaines</i>, 1780-85; <i>Ing&eacute;nue
+Saxancour</i>, 1789; <i>Monsieur Nicolas</i>, 1794-97.</p>
+
+<p>Pigault-Lebrun. <i>L'Enfant du Carnaval</i>, 1792; <i>Les Barons de Felsheim</i>,
+1798; <i>Ang&eacute;lique et Jeanneton</i>, <i>Mon Oncle Thomas</i>, <i>La Folie
+Espagnole</i>, 1799; <i>M. Botte</i>, 1802; <i>J&eacute;r&ocirc;me</i>, 1804; <i>Tableaux de
+Soci&eacute;t&eacute;</i>, 1813; <i>Ad&eacute;la&iuml;de de M&eacute;ran</i>, 1815; M. de Roberval,
+<i>L'Officieux</i>, 1818.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span></p>
+<h2>BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES</h2>
+
+
+<p>(Although it is probably idle to attempt to satisfy or placate the
+contemporary <i>helluo</i> of bibliography, it may be respectful to other
+readers to observe that this is not intended to deal with the whole
+subject, but only as a companion, or chrestomathic guide, to this book
+itself.)</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter I</span></h4>
+
+<p><i>Apollonius of Tyre.</i> Ed. Thorpe. London, 1834.</p>
+
+<p><i>English Novel, The.</i> By the present writer. London (Dent), 1913.</p>
+
+<p><i>French Literature, A Short History of.</i> By the present writer. Oxford,
+1882, and often reprinted.</p>
+
+<p><i>Greek Romances, The.</i> Most convenient editions of originals&mdash;Didot's
+<i>Erotici Graeci</i>, Paris, 1856, or Teubner's, ed. Herscher, Leipzig,
+1858. English translations in Bohn's Library. For those who prefer books
+about things to the things themselves, there is a very good English
+monograph by Wolff (Columbia University Series, New York).</p>
+
+<p><i>Hymn of St. Eulalia.</i> Quoted in most histories of French literature,
+<i>e.g.</i> that entered above, pp. 4, 5.</p>
+
+<p><i>Life of St. Alexis.</i> Ed. G. Paris and L. Pannier. Paris, 1872-87.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter II</span></h4>
+
+<p><i>Alexander Legends</i> ("Matter of Rome"). The most important editions of
+romances concerning Alexander are Michelant's of the great poem from
+which, according to the most general theory, the "Alexandrine" or
+twelve-syllabled verse takes its name (Stuttgart, 1846), and M. Paul
+Meyer's <i>Alexandre le Grand dans la Litt&eacute;rature Fran&ccedil;aise au moyen &acirc;ge</i>
+(2 vols., Paris, 1886), a monograph of the very first order, with
+plentiful reproduction of texts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Arthurian Legend, The.</i> No complete bibliography of this is possible
+here&mdash;a note of some fulness will be found in the writer's <i>Short
+History</i> (see above on Chapter I.). The most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span> important books for an
+English reader who wishes to supplement Malory are M. Paulin Paris's
+abstract of the whole, <i>Les Romans de la Table Ronde</i> (5 vols., Paris,
+1869-77), a very charming set of handy volumes, beautifully printed and
+illustrated; and, now at last, Dr. Sommer's stately edition of the
+"Vulgate" texts, completed recently, I believe (Carnegie Institution,
+Washington, U.S.A.).</p>
+
+<p><i>Chansons de Gestes.</i> The first sentence of the last entry applies here
+with greater fulness. The editions of <i>Roland</i> are very numerous; and
+those of other <i>chansons</i>, though there are not often two or more of the
+same, run to scores of volumes. The most important books about them are
+M. L&eacute;on Gautier's <i>Les &Eacute;pop&eacute;es Fran&ccedil;aises</i> (4 vols., Paris, 1892) and M.
+B&eacute;dier's <i>Les L&eacute;gendes &Eacute;piques</i> (4 vols., Paris, 1908-13).</p>
+
+<p>Sainte-More, B. de. <i>Roman de Troie.</i> Ed. Joly. Rouen, 1870. Edited a
+second time in the series of the Soci&eacute;t&eacute; des Anciens Textes Fran&ccedil;ais.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter III</span></h4>
+
+<p>The bibliography of the <i>Romans d'Aventures</i> generally is again too
+complicated and voluminous to be attempted here. A fair amount of
+information will be found, as regards the two sides, French and English,
+of the matter, in the writer's <i>Short Histories</i> of the two
+literatures&mdash;<i>French</i> as above, <i>English</i> (Macmillan, 9th ed., London,
+1914), and in his <i>Romance and Allegory</i>, referred to in the text. Short
+of the texts themselves, but for fuller information than general
+histories contain, Dunlop's well-known book, reprinted in Bohn's Library
+with valuable additions, and Ellis's <i>Early English Romances</i>,
+especially the latter, will be found of greatest value.</p>
+
+<p><i>Partenopeus de Blois.</i> 2 vols. Paris, 1834.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter IV</span></h4>
+
+<p><i>Nouvelles du 13<sup>e</sup> et du 14<sup>me</sup> Si&egrave;cle.</i> Ed. L. Moland et Ch.
+d'H&eacute;ricault. Biblioth&egrave;que Elz&eacute;virienne. 2 vols. Paris, 1856.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter V</span></h4>
+
+<p><i>Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, Les.</i> Numerous editions in the cheap
+collections of French classics.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fabliaux.</i> Ed. A. de Montaiglon et G. Raynaud. 6 vols. Paris, 1872-88.</p>
+
+<p><i>Jehan de Paris.</i> Ed. Montaiglon. Paris, 1874.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Petit Jehan de Saintr&eacute;.</i> Ed. Guichard. Paris, 1843.</p>
+
+<p><i>Roman de la Rose.</i> Ed. F. Michel. Paris, 1864.</p>
+
+<p><i>Roman de Renart.</i> The completest (but not a complete) edition of the
+different parts is that of M&eacute;on and Chabaille (5 vols., Paris, 1826-35).
+The main or "Ancien" Renart was re-edited by E. Martin (3 vols., Paris
+and Strasbourg, 1882-87).</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter VI</span></h4>
+
+<p>Rabelais. Editions of the original very numerous: and of Urquhart's
+famous English translation more than one or two recently. The cheapest
+and handiest of the former, <i>without</i> commentary, is that in the
+Collection Garnier. Of commentaries and books <i>on</i> Rabelais there is no
+end.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter VII</span></h4>
+
+<p><i>Amadis</i> Romances. No modern reprints of Herberay and his followers.
+Southey's English versions of <i>Amadis</i> and <i>Palmerin</i> are not difficult
+to obtain.</p>
+
+<p>Desp&eacute;riers, B. <i>Contes et Joyeuse Devis</i>, etc. Ed. Lacour. 2 vols.
+Paris, 1866.</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite de Navarre, The <i>Heptameron</i>. Editions again numerous,
+including cheap ones in the collections.</p>
+
+<p><i>Moyen de Parvenir, Le.</i> Ed. Jacob. Paris, 1860. (For H&eacute;lisenne de
+Crenne see text, and Reynier&mdash;<i>v. inf.</i> on next chapter.)</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter VIII</span></h4>
+
+<p>The general histories and bibliographies of M. Reynier and Herr K&ouml;rting,
+as well as the monographs of MM. Chatenay, Magne, and Reure, will be
+found registered in the notes to text, and references to them in the
+index. The original editions are also given in text or note. Modern
+reprints&mdash;except of the fairy stories and one or two others&mdash;are almost
+entirely wanting. For the Greek Romances see above under Chapter I. The
+<i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, after its first issues, appeared as a whole in 1637 and 1647,
+the latter being the edition referred to in "Add. and Corr." But the
+later eighteenth-century (1733) version of the Abb&eacute; Souchay is said to
+be "doctored." I have not thought it worth while to look up either this
+or the earlier abridgment (<i>La Nouvelle Astr&eacute;e</i> of 1713), though this
+latter is not ill spoken of. For the <i>Cabinet des F&eacute;es</i> (41 vols.,
+Geneva, 1785-89) see text.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter IX</span></h4>
+
+<p>Sorel. <i>Francion</i> is in the Collection Garnier, <i>Le Berger Extravagant</i>
+and <i>Polyandre</i> only in the originals.</p>
+
+<p>Scarron. <i>Le Roman Comique.</i> The 1752 edition (3 vols.) is useful, but
+there are reprints.</p>
+
+<p>Fureti&egrave;re. <i>Le Roman Bourgeois.</i> Collection Jannet et Picard, 1854.</p>
+
+<p>Cyrano de Bergerac. <i>Voyages</i>, etc. Ed. Jacob. Paris, 1858.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. de la Fayette. <i>La Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves.</i> Paris, 1881.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter X</span></h4>
+
+<p>For those who wish to study Lesage and Pr&eacute;vost at large, the combined
+Dutch <i>&OElig;uvres Choisies</i>, in 54 vols. (Amsterdam, 1783), will offer a
+convenient, if not exactly handy, opportunity. Separate editions of the
+<i>Diable Boiteux</i> and <i>Gil Blas</i> are very, and of <i>Manon Lescaut</i> fairly,
+numerous.</p>
+
+<p>Marivaux. <i>&OElig;uvres.</i> 12 vols. Paris, 1781.</p>
+
+<p>Cr&eacute;billon <i>fils</i>. <i>&OElig;uvres Compl&egrave;tes.</i> 7 vols. Londres, 1772.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter XI</span></h4>
+
+<p>The work, in novel, of Voltaire and Rousseau is in all the cheap
+collections of Didot, Garnier, etc. Of that of Diderot there have
+recently been several partial collections, but I think no complete one.
+It is better to take the <i>&OElig;uvres</i>, by Ass&eacute;zat and Tourneux, mentioned
+in the text (20 vols., Paris, 1875-77).</p>
+
+<p>Marmontel's <i>&OElig;uvres</i> appeared in 19 vols. (Paris, 1818), and I have
+used, and once possessed, a more modern and compacter issue in 7 vols.
+(Paris, 1820?). The <i>Contes Moraux</i> appeared together in 1770 and later.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. <i>&OElig;uvres</i>. 12 vols. 1834. Very numerous
+separate editions (or sometimes with <i>La Chaumi&egrave;re Indienne</i>) of <i>Paul
+et Virginie</i>.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter XII</span></h4>
+
+<p>Minor "Sensibility" novels. Most of them in a handsome 7-vol. edition
+(Paris, <i>n.d.</i>) in Garnier's <i>Biblioth&egrave;que Amusante</i>. This also includes
+Marivaux.</p>
+
+<p>X. de Maistre. Editions numerous.</p>
+
+<p>B. Constant. <i>Adolphe.</i> Paris, 1842; and with Introduction by M. Anatole
+France (1889); besides M. de Lescure's noticed in text.</p>
+
+<p>Restif de la Bretonne. Selection of <i>Les Contemporaines</i>, by Ass&eacute;zat. 3
+vols. Paris, 1875-76.</p>
+
+<p>Pigault-Lebrun. Edition mentioned in text.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<p>(The dates given in this Index are confined to <i>persons</i> directly dealt
+with in this volume. Those of the more important <i>books</i> noticed will be
+found in the Chronological Conspectus. In other respects I have made it
+as full as possible, in an <i>Index nominum</i>, as regards both authors and
+titles.)</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Abbot, The</i>, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Abdalla, Les Aventures d'</i>, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Acajou et Zirphile</i>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a><br />
+<br />
+Achilles Tatius, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_350'>350</a><br />
+<br />
+Addison, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ad&eacute;la&iuml;de de M&eacute;ran</i>, <a href='#Page_465'>465</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Adolphe</i>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#Page_437'>437</a>, <a href='#Page_438'>438</a>, <a href='#Page_442'>442</a>-451, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a><br />
+<br />
+&AElig;lfric, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Aeneid, The</i>, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ah! Quel Conte!</i> <a href='#Page_371'>371</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+Aim&eacute;-Martin, <a href='#Page_425'>425</a><br />
+<br />
+A&iuml;ss&eacute;, Mlle., <a href='#Page_355'>355</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Alcandre Frustr&eacute;</i>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Alcibiade ou le moi</i>, <a href='#Page_415'>415</a>, <a href='#Page_416'>416</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Alcidamie</i>, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Alcidiane</i>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a><br />
+<br />
+"Alcidonis of Megara," <a href='#Page_419'>419</a>, <a href='#Page_424'>424</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Alciphron</i>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a><br />
+<br />
+Alexander, Romances of, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_473'>473</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Alexis, Vie de Saint</i>, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>-8, <a href='#Page_475'>475</a>, <a href='#Page_479'>479</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Aliscans</i>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a><br />
+<br />
+Allen, Mr. George, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Almahide</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Amadas et Idoine</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Amadis of Gaul</i>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>-150, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a>, <a href='#Page_409'>409</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Amenophis</i>, <a href='#Page_430'>430</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Amis et Amiles</i>, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a><br />
+<br />
+Amory (author of <i>John Buncle</i>), <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_454'>454</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Amours Galantes</i>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>-245<br />
+<br />
+Amyot, Jacques (1513-1593), <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a><br />
+<br />
+Anacharsis, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Anastasius</i>, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Anatomy</i> (Burton's), <a href='#Page_206'>206</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ang&eacute;lique et Jeanneton</i>, <a href='#Page_462'>462</a>, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Angoisses, Les.</i> <i>See</i> H. de Crenne<br />
+<br />
+<i>Annette et Lubin</i>, <a href='#Page_415'>415</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Apollonius of Tyre</i>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_479'>479</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Apollonius Rhodius</i>, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Apologie pour H&eacute;rodote</i>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Apology</i>, the Platonic, <a href='#Page_388'>388</a><br />
+<br />
+Apuleius, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Arabian Nights, The</i>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Arcadia</i>, the, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Argenis</i>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Aristaenetus, <i>Letters</i> of, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a><br />
+<br />
+Aristides (of Smyrna), <a href='#Page_350'>350</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Aristophanes, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a><br />
+<br />
+Aristotle, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Arnalte and Lucenda</i>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Arnold, Mr. Matthew, vi, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Arnoult et Clarimonde</i>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Artam&egrave;ne.</i> See <i>Grand Cyrus, Le</i><br />
+<br />
+Arthurian Legend, The, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>-54, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Arthur of Little Britain</i>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a><br />
+<br />
+Ascham, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Asseneth</i>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a><br />
+<br />
+Ass&eacute;zat, M., <a href='#Page_454'>454</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Astr&eacute;e</i>, the, xii, xiii, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>-157, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a>-175, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a>, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>As You Like It</i>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a><br />
+<br />
+Aubignac (F. H&eacute;delin, Abb&eacute; d', 1604-1676), <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Aucassin et Nicolette</i>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_475'>475</a><br />
+<br />
+Augier, E., <a href='#Page_458'>458</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Aulnoy (Marie Catherine le Jumel de Barneville, Comtesse d', 1650?-1705), <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+Auneuil, Mme. d', <a href='#Page_258'>258</a><br />
+<br />
+Austen, Miss, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>, <a href='#Page_428'>428</a>-434, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a><br />
+<br />
+Avellaneda, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span><i>Aventures de Floride, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Babouc</i>, <a href='#Page_383'>383</a><br />
+<br />
+Bacon, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a><br />
+<br />
+Bailey, Mr. P. J., <a href='#Page_384'>384</a><br />
+<br />
+Balfour, Mr. A. J., <a href='#Page_115'>115</a><br />
+<br />
+Balzac, H. de, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a><br />
+<br />
+Barclay (author of <i>Argenis</i>), <a href='#Page_152'>152</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Barons de Felsheim, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_461'>461</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Bassa, L'Illustre</i>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>-225, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a><br />
+<br />
+Baudelaire, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a><br />
+<br />
+Beaconsfield, Lord, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a><br />
+<br />
+Beauchamps, P. F. G. de (1689-1761), <a href='#Page_265'>265</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a><br />
+<br />
+Beauvau, P. de, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a><br />
+<br />
+Beckford, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a><br />
+<br />
+B&eacute;dier, M., <a href='#Page_13'>13</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+Behn, Afra, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>B&eacute;lier, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>B&eacute;lisaire</i>, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a><br />
+<br />
+Bellaston, Lady, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Belle et la B&ecirc;te, La</i>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a><br />
+<br />
+Bentley, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Beowulf</i>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Berger Extravagant, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Bergerac. <i>See</i> Cyrano de B.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Bergeries de Juliette, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a><br />
+<br />
+Berkeley, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a><br />
+<br />
+Berners, Lord, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a><br />
+<br />
+B&eacute;roalde de Verville (Fran&ccedil;ois, 1558-1612), <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Berte aux grands Pi&eacute;s</i>, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a><br />
+<br />
+Besant, Sir W., <a href='#Page_121'>121</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Bevis of Hampton</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a><br />
+<br />
+Beyle, <a href='#Page_442'>442</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Biblioth&egrave;que Universelle des Romans</i>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Biche au Bois, La</i>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Bijoux Indiscrets, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a>, <a href='#Page_405'>405</a>, <a href='#Page_411'>411</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Black Arrow, The</i>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a><br />
+<br />
+Blair, H., <a href='#Page_71'>71</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Blancandin et l'Orgueilleuse d'Amours</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Blonde d'Oxford</i>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Boccaccio, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a><br />
+<br />
+Boileau-Despr&eacute;aux (Nicolas, 1636-1711), <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a><br />
+<br />
+Bonhomme, M. H., <a href='#Page_257'>257</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Borrow, <a href='#Page_456'>456</a><br />
+<br />
+Bors, Sir, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a><br />
+<br />
+Bossuet, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Boswell, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_422'>422</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Botte, M.</i>, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a>, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Bouchet, G. (1526-1606), <a href='#Page_143'>143</a><br />
+<br />
+Bouchet, J. (1475-1550), <a href='#Page_143'>143</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Bovary, Madame</i>, <a href='#Page_446'>446</a><br />
+<br />
+Brant&ocirc;me (Pierre de Bourdeilles, 1540?-1614), <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a><br />
+<br />
+Brown, Tom, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a><br />
+<br />
+Browne, W., <a href='#Page_236'>236</a><br />
+<br />
+Browning, R., <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_404'>404</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Bruneti&egrave;re, M., <a href='#Page_161'>161</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_410'>410</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Buncle, John</i>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a><br />
+<br />
+Burney, Miss, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>, <a href='#Page_468'>468</a><br />
+<br />
+Burton (of the <i>Anatomy</i>), <a href='#Page_206'>206</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Bussy-Rabutin, Roger, Comte de (1618-1693), <a href='#Page_243'>243</a><br />
+<br />
+Butler, Mr. A. J., <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a><br />
+<br />
+Butler, S., <a href='#Page_139'>139</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Byron, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cabinet de Minerve, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cabinet des F&eacute;es, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>-272, <a href='#Page_419'>419</a>, <a href='#Page_427'>427</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cabinet d'un Philosophe, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Caf&eacute; de Surate, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a><br />
+<br />
+Callisthenes, the pseudo-, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a><br />
+<br />
+Campanella, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a><br />
+<br />
+Camus (de Pontcarr&eacute;), Jean (1584-1653), <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Candide</i>, <a href='#Page_379'>379</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_461'>461</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Capitaine Fracasse, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>-280<br />
+<br />
+<i>Carit&eacute;e, La</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a><br />
+<br />
+Carlyle, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a> <i>notes</i>, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a> and <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_414'>414</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Carmente</i>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a><br />
+<br />
+"Carte de Tendre," the, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cassandre</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>-234<br />
+<br />
+Catullus, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a><br />
+<br />
+Caylus, Anne Claude Philippe de Tubi&egrave;res de Grimoard de Pestels de L&eacute;vi, Comte de (1692-1765), <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>-264, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+Cazotte, Jacques (1720-1792), <a href='#Page_270'>270</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles</i>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>-100, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a>, <a href='#Page_475'>475</a>, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ce qui pla&icirc;t aux Dames</i>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Cervantes, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Chanson de Geste, The</i>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>-16<br />
+<br />
+Chapelain, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Chat Bott&eacute;, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a><br />
+<br />
+Chateaubriand, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ch&acirc;teau de la Mis&egrave;re, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a><br />
+<br />
+Chatenet, M. H. E., <a href='#Page_243'>243</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Chaucer, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Chaumi&egrave;re Indienne, La</i>, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Chemin&eacute;es de Madrid, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a><br />
+<br />
+Ch&eacute;nier, A., <a href='#Page_464'>464</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Chevalier &agrave; la Charette</i>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>-28<br />
+<br />
+<i>Chevalier au Lyon</i>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a><br />
+<br />
+Choli&egrave;res, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a><br />
+<br />
+Chrestien de Troyes (12th cent.), <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>-29, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Citateur, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_462'>462</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cither&eacute;e</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Clarendon, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cl&eacute;lie</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>-229<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cl&eacute;opatre</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>-232<br />
+<br />
+<i>Cl&eacute;veland</i>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a>-357<br />
+<br />
+<i>Clidamant et Marilinde</i>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span><i>Clig&egrave;s</i>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a><br />
+<br />
+Coleridge, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Collins, Wilkie, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Colonel Jack</i>, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a><br />
+<br />
+Colvin, Sir Sidney, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Com&eacute;die Humaine</i>, the, <a href='#Page_469'>469</a>, <a href='#Page_470'>470</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Comp&egrave;re Mathieu, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Comte de Comminge, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_431'>431</a>, <a href='#Page_451'>451</a><br />
+<br />
+"Comte de Gabalis," the, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Comtesse de Savoie, La</i>, <a href='#Page_430'>430</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Confessions</i>, Rousseau's, <a href='#Page_391'>391</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+Congreve, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href='#Page_376'>376</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Conquest of Granada, The</i>, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a><br />
+<br />
+Conrart, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a><br />
+<br />
+Constant-Rebecque, Henri Benjamin de (1767-1830), <a href='#Page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>, <a href='#Page_437'>437</a>, <a href='#Page_438'>438</a>, <a href='#Page_442'>442</a>-452, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Contemporaines, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_454'>454</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Contes et Joyeux Devis</i>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Contes Moraux</i> (Marmontel's), <a href='#Page_414'>414</a>-424<br />
+<br />
+<i>Conversation du mar&eacute;chal d'Hocquincourt avec le P&egrave;re Canaye</i>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Corbin, J., <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Corinne</i>, <a href='#Page_452'>452</a>, <a href='#Page_465'>465</a><br />
+<br />
+Corneille, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cosi-Sancta</i>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Courtebotte, Le Prince</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a><br />
+<br />
+Courthope, Mr. W. J., <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a><br />
+<br />
+Courtils de Sandras, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a><br />
+<br />
+Cousin, V., <a href='#Page_177'>177</a> and <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Crawley, Miss Matilda, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Cr&eacute;billon <i>fils</i>, Claude Prosper Jolyot de (1707-1777), <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>, <a href='#Page_350'>350</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a>, <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_376'>376</a>, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a>, <a href='#Page_406'>406</a>, <a href='#Page_415'>415</a>, <a href='#Page_419'>419</a>, <a href='#Page_450'>450</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_453'>453</a>, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a>, <a href='#Page_469'>469</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Cr&eacute;billon <i>p&egrave;re</i>, Prosper Jolyot de, <a href='#Page_365'>365</a><br />
+<br />
+Crenne, H. de (16th cent.), <a href='#Page_150'>150</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cressy, Le Marquis de.</i> See <i>Histoire du Marquis de Cressy</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Crispin Rival de son Ma&icirc;tre</i>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Crocheteur Borgne, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a><br />
+<br />
+Croxall, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a><br />
+<br />
+Ctesias, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cupid and Psyche</i>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cymbalum Mundi</i>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien (1609-1655), <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>-298, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cyropaedia</i>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Cyrus</i>. See <i>Grand Cyrus</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Dante, xi, xii, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a> <i>notes</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Daphnis and Chloe</i>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a><br />
+<br />
+Davenant, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Decameron</i>, the, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a><br />
+<br />
+Defoe, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>, <a href='#Page_456'>456</a><br />
+<br />
+Dekker, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a><br />
+<br />
+De Launay, Mlle. <i>See</i> Staal-Delaunay, Mme.<br />
+<br />
+De Quincey, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>, <a href='#Page_456'>456</a><br />
+<br />
+Desp&eacute;riers, Bonaventure (?-1544?), <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>-142, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Deux Amis de Bourbonne, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Diable Amoureux, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a> <i>notes</i>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Diable Boiteux, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Diablo Cojuelo, El</i>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Diana</i> (Montemayor's), <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+Dickens, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a> and <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_394'>394</a>, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Dictionnaire Philosophique</i> (Voltaire's), <a href='#Page_411'>411</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Diderot, Denis (1713-1784), <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_391'>391</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>-411, <a href='#Page_425'>425</a>, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a>, <a href='#Page_453'>453</a>, <a href='#Page_470'>470</a>, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Disraeli, Mr., <a href='#Page_37'>37</a><br />
+<br />
+Dobson, Mr. A., <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_417'>417</a><br />
+<br />
+Donne, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Don Quixote</i>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>, <a href='#Page_461'>461</a>, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Don Silvia de Rosalva</i>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Doon de Mayence</i>, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Doyen de Kill&eacute;rine, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a>-357<br />
+<br />
+Dryden, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a><br />
+<br />
+Duclos, Charles Pinot (1704-1772), <a href='#Page_267'>267</a><br />
+<br />
+Du Croset (<i>c.</i> 1600), <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br />
+<br />
+Du Fail, No&euml;l (16th cent.), <a href='#Page_143'>143</a><br />
+<br />
+Dulaurens, H. J. (1719-1797), <a href='#Page_412'>412</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Dumas, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a><br />
+<br />
+Dunlop, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a><br />
+<br />
+Du P&eacute;rier (<i>c.</i> 1600), <a href='#Page_161'>161</a><br />
+<br />
+Duras, Mme. de (Claire de Kersaint, 1778-1844), <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>, <a href='#Page_449'>449</a>, <a href='#Page_450'>450</a><br />
+<br />
+Du Souhait (<i>c.</i> 1600), <a href='#Page_160'>160</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Earthly Paradise, The</i>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a><br />
+<br />
+Edgeworth, Miss, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a>, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>&Eacute;douard</i>, <a href='#Page_449'>449</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Effets de la Sympathie, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>, <a href='#Page_340'>340</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>&Eacute;garements du C&oelig;ur et de l'Esprit, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_443'>443</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Elie de Beaumont, Mme. (Marie Louise Morin Dumesnil, ?-1783), <a href='#Page_436'>436</a><br />
+<br />
+Ellis, G., <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+Elton, Prof., <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>&Eacute;mile</i>, <a href='#Page_392'>392</a>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>, <a href='#Page_478'>478</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>, <a href="#Page_vii">vii</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Encyclop&eacute;die, The</i>, <a href='#Page_411'>411</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Endimion</i>, Gombauld's, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Endymion</i>, Keats's, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a><br />
+<br />
+"<i>Engouement</i>," <a href='#Page_449'>449</a>, <a href='#Page_450'>450</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Epistle to the Pisos</i>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum</i>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Erec et &Eacute;nide</i>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Eric</i> (Dean Farrar's), <a href='#Page_465'>465</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ernestine</i>, <a href='#Page_435'>435</a><br />
+<br />
+Escuteaux, Sieur des (<i>c.</i> 1600), <a href='#Page_157'>157</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a><br />
+<br />
+Esmond, Beatrix, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span><i>Essai sur les Romans</i> (Marmontel's), <a href='#Page_413'>413</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Essay on Criticism</i> (Pope's), <a href='#Page_327'>327</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Est&eacute;vanille Gonzales</i>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>&Eacute;tudes de la Nature</i>, <a href='#Page_424'>424</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Eulalia, Legend of St., <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_479'>479</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Euphues</i>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a><br />
+<br />
+Eustathius (Macrembolites or -ta, sometimes called Eu<i>m</i>athius, 12th cent.), <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_350'>350</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Evelina</i>, <a href='#Page_435'>435</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ev&egrave;nemens Singuliers</i>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Exp&eacute;dition Nocturne</i>, <a href='#Page_437'>437</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Fabliaux</i>, The, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Facardins, Les Quatre</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>-320<br />
+<br />
+<i>Famille Luceval, La</i>, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Faramond</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a><br />
+<br />
+Farrar, Dean, <a href='#Page_465'>465</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Fausses Confidences, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a><br />
+<br />
+F&eacute;nelon, Fran&ccedil;ois de Salignac de la Mothe, (1651-1715), <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+Ferrier, Miss, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Festus</i>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a><br />
+<br />
+Fielding, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>, <a href='#Page_451'>451</a>, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Finette</i>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a><br />
+<br />
+FitzGerald, E., <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Prof., <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Fleur d'&Eacute;pine</i>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Floire et Blanchefleur</i>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a><br />
+<br />
+Folengo, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Folie Espagnole, La</i>, <a href='#Page_462'>462</a>, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a><br />
+<br />
+Fontaines, Mme. de (Marie Louise Charlotte de Pelard de Givry, ?-1730), <a href='#Page_430'>430</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Fontenelle, <a href='#Page_350'>350</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a><br />
+<br />
+Forsyth, Dr., <a href='#Page_455'>455</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Fortnightly Review</i>, <a href="#Page_vii">vii</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_428'>428</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Fortunes of Nigel, The</i>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Foulques Fitzwarin</i>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>-87<br />
+<br />
+<i>Four Flasks, The</i>, <a href='#Page_419'>419</a><br />
+<br />
+France, M. A., <a href='#Page_328'>328</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Francion</i>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>-277, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+Froissart, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Fuerres de Gadres</i>, <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a><br />
+<br />
+Fuller, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Funestine</i>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a><br />
+<br />
+Fureti&egrave;re, Antoine (1620-1688), <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>-295, <a href='#Page_469'>469</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Galland, Antoine (1646-1715), <a href='#Page_246'>246</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Gargantua</i> (and <i>Pantagruel</i>), Chap. VI., <i>passim</i><br />
+<br />
+Gautier, M. L&eacute;on, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Gawain and the Green Knight</i>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a><br />
+<br />
+G&eacute;nin, F., <a href='#Page_402'>402</a> and <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Genlis, Mme. de (St&eacute;phanie F&eacute;licit&eacute; du Crest de St. Aubin, 1746-1830), <a href='#Page_436'>436</a><br />
+<br />
+Geoffrey of Monmouth, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a><br />
+<br />
+George Eliot, <a href='#Page_445'>445</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Gesta Romanorum</i>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a><br />
+<br />
+Gilbert, Sir W., <a href='#Page_172'>172</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Gil Blas</i>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a>, <a href='#Page_461'>461</a>, <a href='#Page_462'>462</a>, <a href='#Page_468'>468</a>, <a href='#Page_457'>457</a><br />
+<br />
+Gladstone, Mr., <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Godfrey de Lagny (12th cent.), <a href='#Page_24'>24</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a><br />
+<br />
+Goethe, <a href='#Page_456'>456</a><br />
+<br />
+Gombauld, J. Ogier de (1570-1666), <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>-241<br />
+<br />
+Gomberville, Marin le Roy de (1600-1674), <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>-237<br />
+<br />
+Gomersal, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Gongora, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Gracieuse et Percinet</i>, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Grand Cyrus, The</i>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>-223, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a><br />
+<br />
+Grantley, Archdeacon, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a><br />
+<br />
+Graves, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a><br />
+<br />
+Gray, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>, <a href='#Page_365'>365</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Grecque moderne, Histoire d'une</i>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a>-358<br />
+<br />
+Greek Romances. <i>See</i> Romances, Greek<br />
+<br />
+Greg, Mr., <a href='#Page_155'>155</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Grimm, F. M., <a href='#Page_408'>408</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_410'>410</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Grotesques, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a><br />
+<br />
+Gueulette, Thomas Simon (1683-1766), <a href='#Page_258'>258</a>-266, <a href='#Page_379'>379</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+Guevara, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a><br />
+<br />
+Guido de Columnis, or delle Colonne, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Guillaume d'Angleterre</i>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a><br />
+<br />
+Guinevere, Queen (character of), <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>-54 <i>passim</i>, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Gulliver's Travels</i>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Guzman d'Alfarache</i>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Hamilton, Anthony (1646?-1720), <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a> and <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>-325, <a href='#Page_369'>369</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_378'>378</a>, <a href='#Page_379'>379</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+Hamilton, Gerard, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Hamlet</i>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a><br />
+<br />
+Hammond, Miss Chris., <a href='#Page_412'>412</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Hardy, Mr. Thomas, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Hasard au Coin du Feu, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+Hawker, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a> and <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Hegel, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Heliodorus, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>H&eacute;lo&iuml;se, La Nouvelle</i>, see <i>Julie</i><br />
+<br />
+Henley, Mr. W. E., <a href='#Page_259'>259</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_460'>460</a><br />
+<br />
+Henryson, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Heptameron, The</i>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>-143, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+Herberay des Essarts, Nicolas (?-1552?), <a href='#Page_145'>145</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+Herodotus, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Heureusement</i>, <a href='#Page_419'>419</a>, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Heureux Orphelins, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a><br />
+<br />
+Heywood, J., <a href='#Page_192'>192</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span><i>Histoire de Jenni</i>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Histoire du Marquis de Cressy</i>, <a href='#Page_432'>432</a>, <a href='#Page_433'>433</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Histoire V&eacute;ritable</i> (B. de Verville's), <a href='#Page_163'>163</a><br />
+<br />
+Holbach, Mme. d', <a href='#Page_408'>408</a>, <a href='#Page_410'>410</a> and <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Homer, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a><br />
+<br />
+Hope, T., <a href='#Page_290'>290</a><br />
+<br />
+Hudgiadge, Sultan, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a><br />
+<br />
+Hugo, Victor, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href='#Page_228'>228</a>, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a>, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Hume, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Humphrey Clinker</i>, <a href='#Page_469'>469</a><br />
+<br />
+Hunt, Leigh, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Hunt, Rev. W., <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a> <i>note</i>, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Huon de Bordeaux</i>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Hysminias and Hyasmine</i>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Ibrahim</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>-225<br />
+<br />
+Ibsen, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_362'>362</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Idylls of the King</i>, Chap. II. <i>passim</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Iliad, The</i>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Illustres F&eacute;es, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Incas, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Interlude of Love</i>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Jacques le Fataliste</i>, <a href='#Page_404'>404</a>-407<br />
+<br />
+James, G. P. R., <a href='#Page_233'>233</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Jeannot et Colin</i>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Jehan de Paris</i>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>-103, <a href='#Page_475'>475</a>, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+Jerningham, E., <a href='#Page_423'>423</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>J&eacute;r&ocirc;me</i>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a><br />
+<br />
+Johnson, Dr., <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a> and <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_381'>381</a>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Joinville, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Jonathan Wild</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Joseph Andrews</i>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>, <a href='#Page_415'>415</a>, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Joubert, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Jourdains de Blaivies</i>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Journ&eacute;e des Parques, La</i>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Julie</i>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>-400, <a href='#Page_436'>436</a>, <a href='#Page_452'>452</a>, <a href='#Page_468'>468</a>, <a href='#Page_470'>470</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+"Katherine and Gerard," story of, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>-99<br />
+<br />
+Ker, Mr. W. P., <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a> <i>note</i>, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Kinglake, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Kingsley, Charles, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a><br />
+<br />
+Kipling, Mr., <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Knight of the Sun, The</i>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a><br />
+<br />
+Knollys, <a href='#Page_417'>417</a><br />
+<br />
+Kock, Paul de, <a href='#Page_461'>461</a><br />
+<br />
+K&ouml;rting, H., <a href='#Page_133'>133</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a> <i>notes</i>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+La Calpren&egrave;de, Gauthier de Costes de (1610?-1633), <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>-235<br />
+<br />
+Laclos (Pierre Ambroise Fran&ccedil;ois Choderlos de, 1741-1803), <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a>, <a href='#Page_453'>453</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>La Comtesse de Ponthieu</i>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>-80, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a><br />
+<br />
+La Croix, P&eacute;tro de, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+"Lady of the Lake," The, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+La Fayette, Mme. de (Marie Madeleine Pioche de Lavergne, 1634-1693), <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>-300, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>, <a href='#Page_376'>376</a>, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a>, <a href='#Page_428'>428</a>, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#Page_436'>436</a>, <a href='#Page_451'>451</a>, <a href='#Page_469'>469</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+La Fontaine, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a><br />
+<br />
+La Force, Mlle. de (Charlotte Rose de Caumont de, 1654?-1724), <a href='#Page_257'>257</a><br />
+<br />
+La Harpe, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>La Jeune Sib&eacute;rienne</i>, <a href='#Page_437'>437</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+Lamartine, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a><br />
+<br />
+Lamb, Charles, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>, <a href='#Page_455'>455</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Lamoracke, Sir, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a><br />
+<br />
+La Morli&egrave;re (Charles Louis Auguste de La Rochette Chevalier de, 1719-1785), <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Lancelot, Sir (character of), <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>-54 <i>passim</i>, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Landor, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a><br />
+<br />
+Lang, Mr. A., <a href='#Page_246'>246</a><br />
+<br />
+Lannoi, J. de, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>La Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves</i>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>-300, <a href='#Page_470'>470</a><br />
+<br />
+La Rochefoucauld, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a> and <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Larroumet, M. G., <a href='#Page_339'>339</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+La Salle, Antoine de (1398-1462?), <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Latin Stories</i> (Wright's), <a href='#Page_73'>73</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Lavington, Argemone, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a><br />
+<br />
+Lawrence, G., <a href='#Page_51'>51</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Le Blanc et le Noir</i>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a><br />
+<br />
+Le Breton, M., <a href='#Page_274'>274</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Le Brun "Pindare," <a href='#Page_462'>462</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>L'&Eacute;cumoire</i>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Legend of the Rhine, A</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Leigh Hunt, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>L'Empereur Constant</i>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>L'Enchanteur Faustus</i>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>L'Enfant du Carnaval</i>, <a href='#Page_457'>457</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_461'>461</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>L&eacute;preux de la Cit&eacute; d'Aoste, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_437'>437</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+Le Prince de Beaumont, Marie, Mme. (1711-1780), <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Le Prisonnier de Caucase</i>, <a href='#Page_437'>437</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Le Roi Flore et La Belle Jehane</i>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a><br />
+<br />
+Lesage, Alain Ren&eacute; (1668-1747), <a href='#Page_259'>259</a> and <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>-337, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>, <a href='#Page_468'>468</a>, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Lescure, M. de, <a href='#Page_442'>442</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Le Sot Chevalier</i>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a><br />
+<br />
+Lespinasse, Mlle. de, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_441'>441</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Lettres d'Amabed</i>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Lettres Ath&eacute;niennes</i>, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a>, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Lettres de la Marquise de M&mdash;&mdash;</i>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Lettres du Marquis de Roselle</i>, <a href='#Page_437'>437</a><br />
+<br />
+L&eacute;vis, Pierre Marc Gaston Duc de (1755-1830), <a href='#Page_313'>313</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>L&eacute;vite d'Ephra&iuml;m, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Lewis, "Monk," <a href='#Page_271'>271</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>L'Homme aux Quarante &Eacute;cus</i>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Liaisons Dangereuses, Les</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span><i>L'Ing&eacute;nu</i>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>, <a href='#Page_475'>475</a><br />
+<br />
+Livy, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>L'Officieux</i>, <a href='#Page_465'>465</a>-467<br />
+<br />
+Longinus, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a><br />
+<br />
+Longus, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Louis XI., <a href='#Page_92'>92</a><br />
+<br />
+Louvet de Coudray, <a href='#Page_453'>453</a><br />
+<br />
+Lubert, Mlle. de. (1710-1779), <a href='#Page_266'>266</a><br />
+<br />
+Lucian, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a><br />
+<br />
+Lucius of Patrae, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a><br />
+<br />
+Lussan, Mlle. de (1682-1758), <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Lycidas</i>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a><br />
+<br />
+Lyndsay, Sir D., <a href='#Page_100'>100</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Lyonne, the Abb&eacute; de, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Macarise</i>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a><br />
+<br />
+Macaulay, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a> and <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Macdonald, G., <a href='#Page_52'>52</a><br />
+<br />
+Mackenzie, H., <a href='#Page_414'>414</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>M. de Beauchesne</i>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Mlle. de Clermont</i>, <a href='#Page_436'>436</a><br />
+<br />
+Magne, M. E., <a href='#Page_241'>241</a><br />
+<br />
+Maintenon, Mme. de, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Mairet, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a><br />
+<br />
+Maistre, Joseph de, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>, <a href='#Page_438'>438</a><br />
+<br />
+Maistre, Xavier de (1763-1852), <a href='#Page_405'>405</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>, <a href='#Page_437'>437</a>-441, <a href='#Page_452'>452</a>, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Malachi's Cove</i>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Malory, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Man Born to be King, The</i>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Manon Lescaut</i>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>, <a href='#Page_352'>352</a>-364, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_470'>470</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Mansfield Park</i>, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a><br />
+<br />
+Map or Mapes, Walter, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Marguerite de Valois (the eldest) (1491-1549), <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>-143, <a href='#Page_475'>475</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+---- (the middle), <a href='#Page_299'>299</a><br />
+<br />
+---- (the youngest) (1553-1615), <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a><br />
+<br />
+Maria del Occidente, <a href='#Page_416'>416</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Marianne</i>, <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>, <a href='#Page_342'>342</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a>-352, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a>, <a href='#Page_436'>436</a>, <a href='#Page_446'>446</a>, <a href='#Page_450'>450</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+Marini, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+"Marion de la Bri&egrave;re and Sir Ernault de Lyls," story of, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>-86<br />
+<br />
+<i>Mari Sylphe, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_419'>419</a>, <a href='#Page_424'>424</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de (1688-1763), <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>-352, <a href='#Page_365'>365</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a>, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>, <a href='#Page_428'>428</a>, <a href='#Page_450'>450</a>, <a href='#Page_454'>454</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_469'>469</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Marlowe, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Marmion</i>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a><br />
+<br />
+Marmontel, Jean Fran&ccedil;ois (1723-1799), <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a>-424, <a href='#Page_428'>428</a>, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a>, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>, <a href='#Page_470'>470</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Marot, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Marquis des Arcis, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a>, <a href='#Page_406'>406</a>, <a href='#Page_407'>407</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Marriage &agrave; la Mode</i> (Dryden's), <a href='#Page_200'>200</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Marriage of Kitty, The</i>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Marryat, <a href='#Page_336'>336</a><br />
+<br />
+Martial, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a><br />
+<br />
+"Matter of Britain, France, and Rome," the, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, Chap. II. <i>passim</i><br />
+<br />
+Maupassant, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>M&eacute;langes Litt&eacute;raires</i> (Pigault-Lebrun's), <a href='#Page_458'>458</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Memnon</i>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>M&eacute;moires de Grammont</i>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>M&eacute;moires d'un Homme de Qualit&eacute;</i>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a>-358<br />
+<br />
+<i>Memoirs</i> (Marmontel's), <a href='#Page_413'>413</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Memoirs of Several Ladies</i>, <a href='#Page_454'>454</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>M&eacute;raugis de Portlesguez</i>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a><br />
+<br />
+Meredith, Mr. George, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_350'>350</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+M&eacute;rim&eacute;e, <a href='#Page_438'>438</a><br />
+<br />
+Meyer, M. Paul, <a href='#Page_479'>479</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Microm&eacute;gas</i>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+Middleton, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Midsummer Night's Dream, A</i>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Milady Catesby</i>, <a href='#Page_435'>435</a><br />
+<br />
+Mill, J. S., <a href='#Page_400'>400</a><br />
+<br />
+Milton, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_378'>378</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Minnigrey</i>, <a href='#Page_460'>460</a><br />
+<br />
+Moli&egrave;re, F. de (?-1623?), <a href='#Page_161'>161</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Moli&egrave;re, Henriette de</i>, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a><br />
+<br />
+Moli&egrave;re, J. B. P. de, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>, <a href='#Page_368'>368</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Mon Oncle Thomas</i>, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Monsieur Nicolas</i>, <a href='#Page_454'>454</a>, <a href='#Page_456'>456</a><br />
+<br />
+Montaigne, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a><br />
+<br />
+Montemayor, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+Montreux, N. de (c. 1600), <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>-160<br />
+<br />
+Moore, T., <a href='#Page_241'>241</a><br />
+<br />
+Mordred, Sir, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+More, M. F., <a href='#Page_298'>298</a><br />
+<br />
+Morgane-la-F&eacute;e, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a><br />
+<br />
+Morley of Blackburn, Lord, <a href='#Page_402'>402</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Morris, Mr. Mowbray, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a><br />
+<br />
+Morris, Mr. W., <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Mort d'Agrippine, La</i>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Moyen de Parvenir</i>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Mr. Midshipman Easy</i>, <a href='#Page_453'>453</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Mr. Sludge the Medium</i>, <a href='#Page_404'>404</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy</i>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Muguet, Le Prince</i>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a><br />
+<br />
+Murat, Mme. de (Henriette Julie de Castelnau, 1670-1716), <a href='#Page_257'>257</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Naigeon, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a><br />
+<br />
+Nennius, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a><br />
+<br />
+Nerval, G. de, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Nerv&egrave;ze, A. de (c. 1600), <a href='#Page_157'>157</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Neveu de Rameau, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a>, <a href='#Page_404'>404</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Newton Forster</i>, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a><br />
+<br />
+Nonnus, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Northanger Abbey</i>, <a href='#Page_450'>450</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Nouveaux Contes Orientaux</i>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Nouvelle H&eacute;lo&iuml;se, La.</i> See <i>Julie</i>.<br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span><i>Nuit et le Moment, La</i>, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Odyssey, The</i>, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ogier de Danemarche</i>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Old Mortality</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a><br />
+<br />
+"Ollenix du Mont Sacr&eacute;." <i>See</i> Montreux, N. de<br />
+<br />
+<i>Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Othello</i>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ourika</i>, <a href='#Page_449'>449</a><br />
+<br />
+Ovid, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Pajon, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Palerne, Guillaume de (William of)</i>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Palmerin of England</i>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>-150<br />
+<br />
+<i>Palombe</i>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a><br />
+<br />
+Palomides, Sir, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pantagruel</i>, Chap. VI. <i>passim</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Paradoxe sur le Com&eacute;dien</i>, <a href='#Page_408'>408</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Paris, M. Gaston, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a><br />
+<br />
+Paris, M. Paulin, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Partenopeus (-pex) de Blois</i>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>-71, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+Pasquier, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pathelin</i>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Paul et Virginie</i>, <a href='#Page_425'>425</a>, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a>-452<br />
+<br />
+<i>Paysan Parvenu, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>-345, <a href='#Page_454'>454</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Paysan Perverti, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>, <a href='#Page_454'>454</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Peau d'&Acirc;ne</i>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>P&eacute;dant Jou&eacute;, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pens&eacute;es</i> (Joubert's), <a href='#Page_412'>412</a><br />
+<br />
+Pepys, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_456'>456</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Percevale le Gallois</i>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a><br />
+<br />
+Perrault, Charles (1628-1703), <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Petit Jehan de Saintr&eacute;</i>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>-102, <a href='#Page_475'>475</a>, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+Petronius, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ph&egrave;dre</i>, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Philocalie</i>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Philocaste</i>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Philosophe Soi-distant, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_419'>419</a>-423<br />
+<br />
+Pigault-Lebrun, Charles Antoine Guillaume P. de L'&Eacute;pinoy (1753-1835), <a href='#Page_456'>456</a>-471, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Pigault-<i>Maubaillarck</i>, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Planche, G., <a href='#Page_353'>353</a>, <a href='#Page_360'>360</a><br />
+<br />
+Plato, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>, <a href='#Page_388'>388</a><br />
+<br />
+Plutarch, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Polexandre</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Polite Conversation</i>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a><br />
+<br />
+Pollock, Mr. W. H., <a href='#Page_408'>408</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Polyandre</i>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Polyx&egrave;ne</i>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a><br />
+<br />
+Pope, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pornographe, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_454'>454</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_455'>455</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pour et Contre, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_352'>352</a><br />
+<br />
+Praed, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pr&egrave;cieuses Ridicules, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a><br />
+<br />
+Preschac, Sieur de (early 18th cent.), <a href='#Page_258'>258</a><br />
+<br />
+Pr&eacute;vost (Antoine Fran&ccedil;ois P. d'Exilles, 1697-1763), <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>, <a href='#Page_352'>352</a>-364, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a>, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a>, <a href='#Page_428'>428</a>, <a href='#Page_468'>468</a>, <a href='#Page_470'>470</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+Pr&eacute;vost, Pierre, <a href='#Page_394'>394</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Prince Ch&eacute;ri, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Princesse de Babylone, La</i>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>, <a href='#Page_390'>390</a>, <a href='#Page_478'>478</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Princesse de Cl&egrave;ves, La</i>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>-305, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Prior, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a><br />
+<br />
+Prudentius, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a><br />
+<br />
+Puisieux, Mme. de, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a><br />
+<br />
+Pyramus, Denis (early 13th cent.), <a href='#Page_58'>58</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Quatre Facardins, Les.</i> See <i>Facardins</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Quatre Fils d'Aymon, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Queenhoo Hall</i>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Quentin Durward</i>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Quinze Joies de Mariage, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Rabelais, Fran&ccedil;ois (1495?-1553?), <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, Chap. VI., <a href='#Page_134'>134</a>-144 <i>passim</i>, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_425'>425</a>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+Racine, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a><br />
+<br />
+Radcliffe, Mrs., <a href='#Page_468'>468</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Rasselas</i>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_381'>381</a><br />
+<br />
+Reade, Charles, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Rebecca and Rowena</i>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Recamier, Mme., <a href='#Page_442'>442</a>, <a href='#Page_443'>443</a><br />
+<br />
+Regnard, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Regrets sur ma Vieille Robe de Chambre</i>, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Reine Fantasque, La</i>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Relations</i> (A. Hamilton's), <a href='#Page_306'>306</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Religieuse, Histoire d'une</i> (Marivaux's), <a href='#Page_347'>347</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Religieuse, La</i> (Diderot's), <a href='#Page_407'>407</a>-411, <a href='#Page_452'>452</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ren&eacute;</i>, <a href='#Page_452'>452</a>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a><br />
+<br />
+Restif de la Bretonne (Nicolas Edm&eacute;, 1734-1806), <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>, <a href='#Page_452'>452</a>-456, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a>, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Reure, the Abb&eacute;, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>R&ecirc;ve de D'Alembert</i>, <a href='#Page_403'>403</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>R&ecirc;ve, Le</i> (Zola's), <a href='#Page_462'>462</a><br />
+<br />
+Reynier, M. G., <a href='#Page_145'>145</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>-163<br />
+<br />
+<i>Rhodanthe and Dosicles</i>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Rhys, Sir John, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a><br />
+<br />
+Riccoboni, Mme. (Marie Jeanne Laboras de M&eacute;zi&egrave;res, 1714-1792), <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>, <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>, <a href='#Page_432'>432</a>-436<br />
+<br />
+Richardson, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>, <a href='#Page_398'>398</a>, <a href='#Page_404'>404</a>, <a href='#Page_465'>465</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Robene and Makyne</i>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Roberval, M. de</i>, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Robin Hood</i>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a><br />
+<br />
+Rochechouart, Isabel de (c. 1600), <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a> and <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Roland, Chanson de</i>, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Roman Bourgeois</i>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>-295, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Roman Comique</i>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>-287, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Roman de la Rose</i>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_475'>475</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Roman de Renart</i>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_475'>475</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span><i>Roman de Troie</i>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_475'>475</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Roman Satirique</i>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Roman Sentimental avant l'Astr&eacute;e, Le.</i> <i>See</i> Reynier<br />
+<br />
+Romances, Greek, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_479'>479</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Romans de la Table Ronde, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Rosanie</i>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a><br />
+<br />
+Ross, Alexander, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Rostand, M., <a href='#Page_297'>297</a><br />
+<br />
+Rousseau, J. J. (1712-1778), <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a>, <a href='#Page_390'>390</a>-400, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a>, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a>, <a href='#Page_428'>428</a>, <a href='#Page_436'>436</a>, <a href='#Page_441'>441</a>, <a href='#Page_455'>455</a>, <a href='#Page_456'>456</a>, <a href='#Page_457'>457</a>, <a href='#Page_468'>468</a>, <a href='#Page_470'>470</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Ruskin, Mr., <a href='#Page_405'>405</a>, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+Rymer, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Saint-&Eacute;vremond, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a> and <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_378'>378</a><br />
+<br />
+Saint-Foix, M. de, story of, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Saint-Marc-Girardin, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a><br />
+<br />
+Saint-Pierre (Jacques Henri Bernardin de, 1737-1814), <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a>, <a href='#Page_424'>424</a>-427, <a href='#Page_428'>428</a>, <a href='#Page_478'>478</a><br />
+<br />
+Saint-Simon, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a><br />
+<br />
+Sainte-Beuve, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_438'>438</a>, <a href='#Page_442'>442</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sainte-Eulalie</i>, the, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>-6<br />
+<br />
+Sainte-More (or Maure), Beno&icirc;t de (12th cent.), <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+"Saint's Life," the, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>-8<br />
+<br />
+<i>Sandford and Merton</i>, <a href='#Page_392'>392</a><br />
+<br />
+San Pedro, Diego de, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sans Merci</i>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sappho</i>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Saturday Review</i>, <a href="#Page_vii">vii</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Savoisiade</i> (Urf&eacute;'s), <a href='#Page_167'>167</a><br />
+<br />
+Scarron, Paul (1610-1660), <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>-287, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>, <a href='#Page_469'>469</a>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Schiller, <a href='#Page_456'>456</a><br />
+<br />
+Scott, Sir W., <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a>, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a><br />
+<br />
+Scud&eacute;ry, Georges (1601-1667) and Madeleine de (1607-1701) de, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>-229, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#Page_460'>460</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_469'>469</a><br />
+<br />
+Selis, Nicolas Joseph (1737-1802), <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a><br />
+<br />
+Sens, the Archbishop of, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sense and Sensibility</i>, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#Page_432'>432</a><br />
+<br />
+"Sensibility," <a href='#Page_428'>428</a>-452<br />
+<br />
+<i>Serpentin Vert</i>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Seven Wise Masters, The</i>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a><br />
+<br />
+S&eacute;vign&eacute;, Mme. de, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a><br />
+<br />
+Shakespeare, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a><br />
+<br />
+Sharp, Becky, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a><br />
+<br />
+Shelley, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a><br />
+<br />
+Sidney, Sir Philip, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Silvanire</i> (Urf&eacute;'s), <a href='#Page_167'>167</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sireine</i> (Urf&eacute;'s), <a href='#Page_167'>167</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sir Isumbras</i>, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, Prof. Gregory, <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Smith, Sydney, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a><br />
+<br />
+Smollett, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a>, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a><br />
+<br />
+Socrates, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Soir&eacute;es Bretonnes, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Soir&eacute;es de St. P&eacute;tersbourg, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_438'>438</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Soliman the Second</i>, <a href='#Page_417'>417</a>-419<br />
+<br />
+Sommer, Dr., <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_480'>480</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Songe de Platon</i>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a>, <a href='#Page_388'>388</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sopha, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+Sorel, Charles (1597-1674), <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>-278, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+Southey, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a><br />
+<br />
+Souza, Mme. de (Ad&eacute;la&iuml;de-Marie &Eacute;milie-Filleul, 1761-1836), <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>, <a href='#Page_437'>437</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Spectateur, Le</i> (Marivaux's), <a href='#Page_339'>339</a><br />
+<br />
+Spenser, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Spiritual Quixote, The</i>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>St. Alexis, The</i>, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>-8, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>St. Leger, The</i>, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a><br />
+<br />
+Staal-Delaunay, Mme. de, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Sta&euml;l, Mme. de, <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>, <a href='#Page_442'>442</a>, <a href='#Page_443'>443</a>, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Stage Love</i> (Mr. Swinburne's), <a href='#Page_443'>443</a>, <a href='#Page_444'>444</a><br />
+<br />
+Sterne, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_369'>369</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a>, <a href='#Page_404'>404</a>, <a href='#Page_438'>438</a>-441<br />
+<br />
+Stevenson, J. H., <a href='#Page_91'>91</a><br />
+<br />
+---- R. L., <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Straparola, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Strutt, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Suckling, Sir J., <a href='#Page_241'>241</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sultanes de Gujerate, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a><br />
+<br />
+Swift, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_369'>369</a>, <a href='#Page_378'>378</a>, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a>, <a href='#Page_390'>390</a><br />
+<br />
+Swinburne, Mr., <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>, <a href='#Page_443'>443</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Syst&egrave;me de la Nature</i>, <a href='#Page_411'>411</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Tableaux de Soci&eacute;t&eacute;</i> (Pigault-Lebrun's), <a href='#Page_465'>465</a>, <a href='#Page_466'>466</a><br />
+<br />
+Tabourot des Accords (1549-1590), <a href='#Page_143'>143</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Tales of the Genii</i>, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Tallemant des R&eacute;aux, G&eacute;d&eacute;on (1619-1692), <a href='#Page_136'>136</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Talleyrand, <a href='#Page_341'>341</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Tanza&iuml; et N&eacute;adarn&eacute;</i>, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a> <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Taureau Blanc, Le</i>, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Tempest, The</i>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a><br />
+<br />
+Temple, Henrietta, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a><br />
+<br />
+Tencin, Mme. de (Claudine Alexandrine Gu&eacute;rin, 1681-1749), <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>-432<br />
+<br />
+Tennyson, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a> <i>note</i> and <i>sq.</i>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a><br />
+<br />
+Thackeray, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_349'>349</a>, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>, <a href='#Page_414'>414</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_431'>431</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Theagenes and Chariclea</i>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span><i>Th&eacute;&acirc;tre de la Foire</i> (Lesage's), <a href='#Page_329'>329</a><br />
+<br />
+Theocritus, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Theodorus Prodromus, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Thierry and Theodoret</i>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a><br />
+<br />
+Thoms, Mr., <a href='#Page_103'>103</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Thousand and One Days</i>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Thousand and One Nights</i>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour</i>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Three Clerks, The</i>, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a><br />
+<br />
+Thucydides, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a><br />
+<br />
+Tilley, Mr. A., <a href='#Page_138'>138</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Titi, Le Prince</i>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a> and <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Tom Jones</i>, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_469'>469</a>, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a><br />
+<br />
+Toplady, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Tory, G. (1480?-1533), <a href='#Page_124'>124</a><br />
+<br />
+Toyabee, Mr. Paget, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a><br />
+<br />
+Traill, Mr. H. D., <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_385'>385</a>, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Tressan (Louis &Eacute;lisabeth de Lavergne, Comte de, 1705-1783), <a href='#Page_471'>471</a><br />
+<br />
+Trimmer, Mrs., <a href='#Page_455'>455</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Troilus</i> (B. de Sainte-More's). See <i>Roman de Troie</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Troilus</i> (1st cent. prose), <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a><br />
+<br />
+Trollope, A., <a href='#Page_41'>41</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Turcaret</i>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a><br />
+<br />
+Twain, Mark, <a href='#Page_465'>465</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Urf&eacute;, Honor&eacute; d' (1568-1625), <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>-154, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>-175, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+Urquhart, Sir T., <a href='#Page_114'>114</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Valise Trouv&eacute;e, La</i>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Vathek</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Vicar of Wakefield, The</i>, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a><br />
+<br />
+Vida, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Vie de Mon P&egrave;re, La</i>, <a href='#Page_454'>454</a><br />
+<br />
+Villedieu, Mme. de (Marie Catherine Hortense des Jardins, 1631-1683), <a href='#Page_241'>241</a>-245, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a><br />
+<br />
+Villehardouin, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a><br />
+<br />
+Villeneuve, Mme. de, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a><br />
+<br />
+Villon, F., <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Vingt Ans Apr&egrave;s</i>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a><br />
+<br />
+Virgil, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a><br />
+<br />
+Voisenon, Claude Henri de Fus&eacute;e de (1708-1775), <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Voltaire (Francis Marie Arouet de, 1694-1778), <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>, <a href='#Page_369'>369</a>, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>,377-390, <a href='#Page_391'>391</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>, <a href='#Page_401'>401</a>, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a>, <a href='#Page_414'>414</a>, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a>, <a href='#Page_441'>441</a>, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a>, <a href='#Page_462'>462</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_470'>470</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Volupt&eacute;, La</i> (A. Hamilton's), <a href='#Page_322'>322</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Voyage &agrave; Constantinoble</i>, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Voyage autour de ma Chambre</i>, <a href='#Page_438'>438</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Voyages &agrave; la Lune et au Soleil</i>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>-298, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Voyages de Scarmentado, Les</i>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Wall, Professor, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a><br />
+<br />
+Walpole, H., <a href='#Page_401'>401</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_423'>423</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Walton, I., <a href='#Page_286'>286</a><br />
+<br />
+Ward, Ned, <a href='#Page_453'>453</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Water Babies, The</i>, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Waverley</i>, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a><br />
+<br />
+Webster, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Werther</i>, <a href='#Page_441'>441</a>, <a href='#Page_443'>443</a>, <a href='#Page_446'>446</a>, <a href='#Page_451'>451</a><br />
+<br />
+Wieland, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Wild Duck, The</i>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_362'>362</a><br />
+<br />
+Williams, Sir C. H., <a href='#Page_91'>91</a><br />
+<br />
+Winchelsea, Lady, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Woman Killed with Kindness, A</i>, <a href='#Page_364'>364</a><br />
+<br />
+Wright, Dr. Hagbert, <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a><br />
+<br />
+---- T., <a href='#Page_73'>73</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+Wycherley, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a><br />
+<br />
+Wyclif, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Xenophon, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, A</i>, <a href='#Page_465'>465</a> <i>note</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Yellow Dwarf, The</i>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Ywain and Gawain</i>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>Zadig</i>, <a href='#Page_379'>379</a> <i>note</i>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a>, <a href='#Page_383'>383</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Za&iuml;de</i>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Zaza, La Princesse</i>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Z&eacute;n&eacute;yde</i>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a> <i>sq.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Zibeline, La Princesse</i>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a><br />
+<br />
+Zola, <a href='#Page_462'>462</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Zulma, Les Voyages de</i>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+<h5><span class="smcap">Printed by R. &amp; R. Clark, Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY</h2>
+
+<h3>FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY</h3>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Dr. GEORGE SAINTSBURY</span></h3>
+
+<h4>Three Vols. 8vo.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Vol. I. From the Origins To Spenser.</span> 10s. net.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Vol. II. From Shakespeare To Crabbe.</span> 15s. net.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Vol. III. From Blake To Swinburne.</span> 15s. net.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<h4>SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME I.</h4>
+
+<p><i>THE ATHEN&AElig;UM.</i>&mdash;"A thing complete and convincing beyond any former work
+from the same hand. 'Hardly any one who takes a sufficient interest in
+prosody to induce him to read this book' will fail to find it absorbing,
+and even entertaining, as only one other book on the subject of
+versification is: the <i>Petit Trait&eacute; de po&eacute;sie fran&ccedil;aise</i> of Th&eacute;odore de
+Banville.... We await the second and third volumes of this admirable
+undertaking with impatience. To stop reading it at the end of the first
+volume leaves one in just such a state of suspense as if it had been a
+novel of adventure, and not the story of the adventures of prosody. 'I
+am myself quite sure,' says Prof. Saintsbury, 'that English prosody is,
+and has been, a living thing for seven hundred years at least.' That he
+sees it living is his supreme praise, and such praise belongs to him
+only among historians of English verse."</p>
+
+<p><i>THE TIMES.</i>&mdash;"To Professor Saintsbury English prosody is a living
+thing, and not an abstraction. He has read poetry for pleasure long
+before he began to read it with a scientific purpose, and so he has
+learnt what poetry is before making up his mind what it ought to be. It
+is a common fault of writers upon prosody that they set out to discover
+the laws of music without ever training their ears to apprehend music.
+They theorise very plausibly at large, but they betray their incapacity
+so soon as they proceed to scan a difficult line. Professor Saintsbury
+never fails in this way. He knows a good line from a bad one, and he
+knows how a good line ought to be read, even though he may sometimes be
+doubtful how it ought to be scanned. He has, therefore, the knowledge
+most essential to a writer upon prosody.... His object, as he constantly
+insists, is to write a history, to tell us what has happened to our
+prosody from the time when it began to be English and ceased to be
+Anglo-Saxon; not to tell us whether it has happened rightly or wrongly,
+nor even to be too ready to tell us why or how it has happened."</p>
+
+<p>Professor <span class="smcap">W. P. Ker</span> in the <i>SCOTTISH HISTORICAL REVIEW</i>.&mdash;"The history
+of verse, as Mr. Saintsbury takes it, is one aspect of the history of
+poetry; that is to say, the minute examination of structure does not
+leave out of account the nature of the living thing; we are not kept all
+the time at the microscope. This is the great beauty of his book; it is
+a history of English poetry in one particular form or mode.... The
+author perceives that the form of verse is not separable from the soul
+of poetry; poetry 'has neither kernel nor husk, but is all one,' to
+adapt the phrase of another critic."</p>
+
+
+<h3>A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY</h3>
+
+<h3>By <span class="smcap">Dr. GEORGE SAINTSBURY</span></h3>
+
+<h4>SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME II.</h4>
+
+<p><i>THE ATHEN&AElig;UM.</i>&mdash;"We have read this volume with as eager an impatience
+as that with which we read the first, for the author is in love with his
+subject; he sees 'that English prosody is and has been a living thing
+for seven hundred years at least,' and, knowing that metre, verse pure
+and simple, is a means of expressing emotion, he here sets out to show
+us its development and variety during the most splendid years of our
+national consciousness."</p>
+
+<p><i>THE STANDARD.</i>&mdash;"The second volume of Professor Saintsbury's elaborate
+work on English prosody is even more interesting than his former volume.
+Extending as it does from Shakespeare to Crabbe, it covers the great
+period of English poetry and deals with the final development of the
+prosodic system. It reveals the encyclop&aelig;dic knowledge of English
+literature and the minute scholarship which render the Edinburgh
+professor so eminently suited to this inquiry, which is, we think, the
+most important literary adventure he has undertaken.... It is certainly
+the best book on the subject of which it treats, and it will be long
+indeed before it is likely to be superseded."</p>
+
+<p><i>THE CAMBRIDGE REVIEW.</i>&mdash;"It is the capacity of being able to depart
+from traditional opinion, the evidence shown on every page of
+independent thought based upon a first-hand study of documents, which
+make the present volume one of the most stimulating that even Professor
+Saintsbury has written. The work, as a whole, is a fine testimony to his
+lack of pedantry, to his catholicity of taste, to his sturdy common
+sense, and it exhibits a virtue rare among prosodists (dare we say among
+scholars generally?)&mdash;courtesy to opponents."</p>
+
+<p><i>THE PALL MALL GAZETTE.</i>&mdash;"This volume is even more fascinating than was
+the first. For here there are even greater names concerned&mdash;Shakespeare
+and Milton.... It appears to us that Professor Saintsbury hardly writes
+a page in which he does not advance by some degree his view of the right
+laws of verse. We cannot imagine any one seriously defending, after this
+majestical work, the old syllabic notion of scansion.... The book is
+written with all the liveliness of style, richness of argument, and
+wealth of material that we expect. Not only is it a history of prosody;
+but it is full of acute judgments on poetry and poets."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>OTHER WORKS</h2>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h3>DR. GEORGE SAINTSBURY</h3>
+
+
+<p>A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM. 8vo. 14s. net</p>
+
+<p>A HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>A HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE (1780-1900). Crown 8vo. 7s.
+6d.</p>
+
+<p>A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. Also in five
+parts. 2s. each.</p>
+
+<p>HISTORICAL MANUAL OF ENGLISH PROSODY. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.</p>
+
+<p>A FIRST BOOK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Globe 8vo. 1s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>DRYDEN. Library Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. net. Popular Edition, Crown 8vo,
+1s. 6d. Sewed, 1s. Pocket Edition, Fcap. 8vo, 1s. net. [<i>English Men of
+Letters.</i></p>
+
+
+<h5><span class="smcap">MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.</span></h5>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1, by 
+George Saintsbury
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,21092 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1, by
+George Saintsbury
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1
+       From the Beginning to 1800
+
+Author: George Saintsbury
+
+Release Date: October 8, 2008 [EBook #26838]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FRENCH NOVEL, VOL. 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Lee Dawei, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+LONDON  BOMBAY  CALCUTTA  MADRAS  MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+NEW YORK  BOSTON  CHICAGO
+DALLAS  SAN FRANCISCO
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. LTD.
+TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL
+
+(TO THE CLOSE OF THE 19TH CENTURY)
+
+BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY
+
+M.A. AND HON. D.LITT. OXON.; HON. LL.D. ABERD.; HON. D.LITT. DURH.;
+FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY; HON. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD;
+LATE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
+EDINBURGH
+
+VOL. I
+
+FROM THE BEGINNING TO 1800
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1917
+
+COPYRIGHT
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In beginning what, if it ever gets finished, must in all probability be
+the last of some already perhaps too numerous studies of literary
+history, I should like to point out that the plan of it is somewhat
+different from that of most, if not all, of its predecessors. I have
+usually gone on the principle (which I still think a sound one) that, in
+studying the literature of a country, or in dealing with such general
+characteristics of parts of literature as prosody, or such coefficients
+of all literature as criticism, minorities are, sometimes at least, of
+as much importance as majorities, and that to omit them altogether is to
+risk, or rather to assure, an imperfect--and dangerously
+imperfect--product.
+
+In the present instance, however, I am attempting something that I have
+never, at such length, attempted before--the history of a Kind, and a
+Kind which has distinguished itself, as few others have done, by
+communicating to readers the _pleasure_ of literature. I might almost
+say that it is the history of that pleasure, quite as much as the
+history of the kind itself, that I wish to trace. In doing so it is
+obviously superfluous to include inferiorities and failures, unless they
+have some very special lesson or interest, or have been (as in the case
+of the minorities on the bridge of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries) for the most part, and unduly, neglected, though they are
+important as experiments and links.[1] We really do want here--what the
+reprehensible hedonism of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and his submission to what
+some one has called "the eternal enemy, Caprice," wanted in all
+cases--"only the chief and principal things." I wish to give a full
+history of how what is commonly called the French Novel came into being
+and kept itself in being; but I do not wish to give an exhaustive,
+though I hope to give a pretty full, account of its practitioners.
+
+In another point, however, I have kept to my old ways, and that is the
+way of beginning at the beginning. I disagree utterly with any Balbus
+who would build an absolute wall between romance and novel, or a wall
+hardly less absolute between verse- and prose-fiction. I think the
+French have (what is not common in their language) an advantage over us
+in possessing the general term _Roman_, and I have perhaps taken a
+certain liberty with my own title in order to keep the noun-part of it
+to a single word. I shall extend the meaning of "novel"--that of _roman_
+would need no extension--to include, not only the prose books, old and
+new, which are more generally called "romance," but the verse romances
+of the earlier period.
+
+The subject is one with which I can at least plead almost lifelong
+familiarity. I became a subscriber to "Rolandi's," I think, during my
+holidays as a senior schoolboy, and continued the subscriptions during
+my vacations when I was at Oxford. In the very considerable leisure
+which I enjoyed during the six years when I was Classical Master at
+Elizabeth College, Guernsey, I read more French than any other
+literature, and more novels than anything else in French. In the late
+'seventies and early 'eighties, as well as more recently, I had to round
+off and fill in my knowledge of the older matter, for an elaborate
+account of French literature in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, for a
+long series of articles on French novelists in the _Fortnightly Review_,
+and for the _Primer_ and _Short History_ of the subject which I wrote
+for the Clarendon Press; while from 1880 to 1894, as a _Saturday
+Review_er, I received, every month, almost everything notable (and a
+great deal hardly worth noting) that had appeared in France.
+
+Since then, the cutting off of this supply, and the extreme and constant
+urgency of quite different demands on my time, have made my cultivation
+of the once familiar field "_parc_ and infrequent." But I doubt whether
+any really good judge would say that this was a serious drawback in
+itself; and it ceases to be one, even relatively, by the restriction of
+the subject to the close of the last century. It will be time to write
+of the twentieth-century novel when the twentieth century itself has
+gone more than a little farther.
+
+For the abundance of translation, in the earlier part especially, I
+need, I think, make no apology. I shall hardly, by any one worth
+hearing, be accused of laziness or scamping in consequence of it, for
+translation is much more troublesome, and takes a great deal more time,
+than comment or history. The advantage, from all other points of view,
+should need no exposition: nor, I think, should that of pretty full
+story-abstract now and then.
+
+There is one point on which, at the risk of being thought to "talk too
+much of my matters," I should like to say a further word. All my books,
+before the present volume, have been composed with the aid of a
+library, not very large, but constantly growing, and always reinforced
+with special reference to the work in hand; while I was able also, on
+all necessary occasions, to visit Oxford or London (after I left the
+latter as a residence), and for twenty years the numerous public or
+semi-public libraries of Edinburgh were also open to me. This present
+_History_ has been outlined in expectation for a very long time; and has
+been actually laid down for two or three years. But I had not been able
+to put much of it on paper when circumstances, while they gave me
+greater, indeed almost entire, leisure for writing, obliged me to part
+with my own library (save a few books with a reserve _pretium
+affectionis_ on them), and, though they brought me nearer both to Oxford
+and to London, made it less easy for me to visit either. The London
+Library, that Providence of unbooked authors, came indeed to my aid, for
+without it I should have had to leave the book alone altogether; and I
+have been "munitioned" sometimes, by kindness or good luck, in other
+ways. But I have had to rely much more on memory, and of course in some
+cases on previous writing of my own, than ever before, though, except in
+one special case,[2] there will be found, I think, not a single page of
+mere "rehashing." I mention this without the slightest desire to beg
+off, in one sense, from any omissions or mistakes which may be found
+here, but merely to assure my readers that such mistakes and omissions
+are not due to idle and careless bookmaking. That "books have fates" is
+an accepted proposition. In respect to one of these--possession of
+materials and authorities--mine have been exceptionally fortunate
+hitherto, and if they had any merit it was no doubt largely due to this.
+I have, in the present, endeavoured to make the best of what was not
+quite such good fortune. And if anybody still says, "Why did you not
+wait till you could supply deficiencies?" I can only reply that, after
+seventy, [Greek: nyx gar erchetai] is a more insistent warrant, and
+warning, than ever.[3]
+
+                          GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
+
+    [_Edinburgh, 1914-15; Southampton, 1915-16_]
+    1 ROYAL CRESCENT, BATH, _May 31, 1917_.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA
+
+
+P. 3, _note_.--This note was originally left vague, because, in the
+first place, to perform public and personal fantasias with one's spear
+on the shield of a champion, with whom one does not intend to fight out
+the quarrel, seems to me bad chivalry, and secondly, because those
+readers who were likely to be interested could hardly mistake the
+reference. The regretted death, a short time after the page was sent to
+press, of Mr. W. J. Courthope may give occasion to an acknowledgment,
+coupled with a sincere _ave atque vale_. Mr. Courthope was never an
+intimate friend of mine, and our agreement was greater in political than
+in literary matters: but for more than thirty years we were on the best
+terms of acquaintance, and I had a thorough respect for his
+accomplishments.
+
+P. 20, l. 5.--_Fuerres de Gadres._ I wonder how many people thought of
+this when Englishmen "forayed Gaza" just before Easter, 1917?
+
+P. 46, mid-page.--It so happened that, some time after having passed
+this sheet for press, I was re-reading Dante (as is my custom every year
+or two), and came upon that other passage (in the _Paradiso_, and
+therefore not known to more than a few of the thousands who know the
+Francesca one) in which the poet refers to the explanation between
+Lancelot and the Queen. It had escaped my memory (though I think I may
+say honestly that I knew it well enough) when I passed the sheet: but it
+seemed to me that perhaps some readers, who do not care much for
+"parallel passages" in the pedantic sense, might, like myself, feel
+pleasure in having the great things of literature, in different places,
+brought together. Moreover, the _Paradiso_ allusion seems to have
+puzzled or misled most of the commentators, including the late Mr. A. J.
+Butler, who, by his translation and edition of the _Purgatorio_ in 1880,
+was my Virgil to lead me through the _Commedia_, after I had sinfully
+neglected it for exactly half a life-time. He did not know, and might
+easily not have known, the Vulgate _Lancelot_: but some of those whom he
+cites, and who evidently _did_ know it, do not seem to have recognised
+the full significance of the passage in Dante. The text will give the
+original: the _Paradiso_ (xvi. 13-15) reference tells how Beatrice
+(after Cacciaguida's biographical and historical recital, and when
+Dante, in a confessed outburst of family pride, addresses his ancestor
+with the stately _Voi_), "smiling, appeared like her who coughed at the
+first fault which is written of Guinevere." This, of course (see text
+once more), is the Lady of Malahault, though Dante does not name her as
+he does Prince Galahault in the other _locus_. The older commentators
+(who, as has been said, _did_ know the original) do not seem to have
+seen in the reference much more than that both ladies noticed, and
+perhaps approved, what was happening. But I think there is more in it.
+The Lady of Malahault (see note in text) had previously been aware that
+Lancelot was deeply in love, though he would not tell her with whom. Her
+cough therefore meant: "Ah! I have found you out." Now Beatrice, well as
+she knew Dante's propensity to love, knew as well that _pride_ was even
+more of a besetting weakness of his. This was quite a harmless instance
+of it: but still it _was_ an instance--and the "smile" which is _not_
+recorded of the Arthurian lady meant: "Ah! I have _caught_ you out."
+Even if this be excessive "reading into" the texts, the juxtaposition of
+them may not be unsatisfactory to some who are not least worth
+satisfying. (Since writing this, I have been reminded that Mr. Paget
+Toynbee did make the "juxtaposition" in his Clarendon Press _Specimens
+of Old French_ (October, 1892), printing there the "Lady of Malahault"
+passage from MSS. copied by Professor Ker. But there can be no harm in
+duplicating it.)
+
+P. 121, ll. 8-10. Perhaps instead of, or at least beside, Archdeacon
+Grantly I should have mentioned a more real dignitary (as some count
+reality) of the Church, Charles Kingsley. The Archdeacon and the Canon
+would have fought on many ecclesiastical and some political grounds, but
+they might have got on as being, in Dr. Grantly's own words at a
+memorable moment "both gentlemen." At any rate, Kingsley was soaked in
+Rabelais, and one of the real curiosities of literature is the way in
+which the strength of _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ helped to beget the
+sweetness of _The Water Babies_.
+
+Chap. viii. pp. 163-175.--After I had "made my" own "siege" of the
+_Astree_ on the basis of notes recording a study of it at the B.M., Dr.
+Hagbert Wright of the London Library was good enough to let me know that
+his many years' quest of the book had been at last successful, and to
+give me the first reading of it. (It was Southey's copy, with his own
+unmistakable autograph and an inserted note, while it also contained a
+cover of a letter addressed to him, which had evidently been used as a
+book-mark.) Although not more than four months had passed since the
+previous reading, I found it quite as appetising as (in the text itself)
+I had expressed my conviction that it would be: and things not noticed
+before cropped up most agreeably. There is no space to notice all or
+many of them here. But one of the earliest, due to Hylas, cannot be
+omitted, for it is the completest and most sententious vindication of
+polyerotism ever phrased: "Ce n'etait pas que je n'aimasse les autres:
+mais j'avais encore, outre leur place, celle-ci vide dans mon ame." And
+the soul of Hylas, like Nature herself, abhorred a vacuum! (This
+approximation is not intended as "new and original": but it was some
+time after making it that I recovered, in _Notre Dame de Paris_, a
+forgotten anticipation of it by Victor Hugo.)
+
+Another early point of interest was that the frontispiece portrait of
+Astree (the edition, see _Bibliography_, appears to be the latest of the
+original and ungarbled ones, _imprimee a Rouen, et se vend a Paris_
+(1647, 10 vols.)) is evidently a portrait, though not an identical one,
+of the same face given in the Abbe Reure's engraving of Diane de
+Chateaumorand herself. The nose, especially, is hardly mistakable, but
+the eyes have rather less expression, and the mouth less character,
+though the whole face (naturally) looks younger.
+
+On the other hand, the portrait here--not of Celadon, but admittedly of
+Honore d'Urfe himself--is much less flattering than that in the Abbe's
+book.
+
+Things specially noted in the second reading would (it has been said)
+overflow all bounds here possible: but we may perhaps find room for
+three lines from about the best of the very numerous but not very
+poetical verses, at the beginning of the sixth (_i.e._ the middle of the
+original _third_) volume:
+
+    _Le prix d'Amour c'est l'Amour meme._
+    Change d'humeur qui s'y plaira,
+    Jamais Hylas ne changera,
+
+the two last being the continuous refrain of a "villanelle" in which
+this bad man boasts his constancy in inconstancy.
+
+P. 265, _note_ 1.--It ought perhaps to be mentioned that Mlle. de
+Lussan's paternity is also, and somewhat more probably, attributed to
+Eugene's elder brother, Thomas of Savoy, Comte de Soissons. The lady is
+said to have been born in 1682, when Eugene (b. 1663) was barely
+nineteen; but of course this is not decisive. His brother Thomas
+_Amedee_ (b. 1656) was twenty-six at the time. The attribution above
+mentioned gave no second name, and did not specify the relationship to
+Eugene: so I had some difficulty in identifying the person, as there
+were, in the century, three Princes Thomas of Savoy, and I had few books
+of reference. But my old friend and constant helper in matters
+historical, the Rev. William Hunt, D.Litt., cleared the point up for me.
+Of the other two--Thomas _Francois_, who was by marriage Comte de
+Soissons and was grandfather of Eugene and Thomas Amedee, died in the
+same year in which Thomas Amedee was born, therefore twenty-six before
+Mlle. de Lussan's birth: while the third, Thomas _Joseph_, Eugene's
+cousin, was not born till 1796, fourteen years after the lady. The
+matter is, of course, of no literary importance: but as I had passed the
+sheet for press before noticing the diversity of statements, I thought
+it better to settle it.
+
+P. 267. Pajon. I ought not to have forgotten to mention that he bears
+the medal of Sir Walter Scott (Introduction to _The Abbot_) as "a
+pleasing writer of French Fairy Tales."
+
+Page 453.--Choderlos de Laclos. Some surprise has been expressed by a
+friend of great competence at my leaving out _Les Liaisons Dangereuses_.
+I am, of course, aware that "persons of distinction" have taken an
+interest in it; and I understand that, not many years ago, the
+unfortunate author of the beautiful lines _To Cynara_ wasted his time
+and talent on translating the thing. To make sure that my former
+rejection was not unjustified, I have accordingly read it with care
+since the greater part of this book was passed for press; and it shall
+have a judgment here, if not in the text. I am unable to find any
+redeeming point in it, except that some ingenuity is shown in bringing
+about the _denouement_ by a rupture between the villain-hero and the
+villainess-heroine, M. le Vicomte de Valmont and Mme. la Marquise de
+Merteuil. Even this, though fairly craftsmanlike in treatment, is banal
+enough in idea--that idea being merely that jealousy, in both sexes,
+survives love, shame, and everything else, even community in
+scoundrelism--in other words, that the green-eyed monster (like "Vernon"
+and unlike "Ver") _semper viret_. But it is scarcely worth one's while
+to read six hundred pages of very small print in order to learn this. Of
+amusement, as apart from this very elementary instruction, I at least
+can find nothing. The pair above mentioned, on whom practically hangs
+the whole appeal, are merely disgusting. Their very voluptuousness is
+accidental: the sum and substance, the property and business of their
+lives and natures, are compact of mischief, malice, treachery, and the
+desire of "getting the better of somebody." Nor has this diabolism
+anything grand or impressive about it--anything that "intends greatly"
+and glows, as has been said, with a black splendour, in Marlowesque or
+Websterian fashion. Nor, again, is it a "Fleur du Mal" of the
+Baudelairian kind, but only an ugly as well as noxious weed. It is
+prosaic and suburban. There is neither tragedy nor comedy, neither
+passion nor humour, nor even wit, except a little horse-play. Congreve
+and Crebillon are as far off as Marlowe and Webster; in fact, the
+descent from Crebillon's M. de Clerval to Laclos' M. de Valmont is
+almost inexpressible. And, once more, there is nothing to console one
+but the dull and obvious moral that to adopt love-making as an
+"occupation" (_vide_ text, p. 367) is only too likely to result in the
+[Greek: techne] becoming, in vulgar hands, very [Greek: banausos]
+indeed.
+
+The victims and _comparses_ of the story do nothing to atone for the
+principals. The lacrimose stoop-to-folly-and-wring-his-bosom Mme. de
+Tourvel is merely a bore; the _ingenue_ Cecile de Volanges is, as Mme.
+de Merteuil says, a _petite imbecile_ throughout, and becomes no better
+than she should be with the facility of a predestined strumpet; her
+lover, Valmont's rival, and Mme. de Merteuil's plaything, M. le
+Chevalier Danceny, is not so very much better than _he_ should be, and
+nearly as much an imbecile in the masculine way as Cecile in the
+feminine; her respectable mother and Valmont's respectable aunt are not
+merely as blind as owls are, but as stupid as owls are not. Finally, the
+book, which in many particular points, as well as in the general
+letter-scheme, follows Richardson closely (adding clumsy notes to
+explain the letters, apologise for their style, etc.), exhibits most of
+the faults of its original with hardly any of that original's merits.
+Valmont, for instance, is that intolerable creature, a pattern Bad
+Man--a Grandison-Lovelace--a prig of vice. Indeed, I cannot see how any
+interest can be taken in the book, except that derived from its
+background of _tacenda_; and though no one, I think, who has read the
+present volume will accuse me of squeamishness, _I_ can find in it no
+interest at all. The final situations referred to above, if artistically
+led up to and crisply told in a story of twenty to fifty pages, might
+have some; but ditchwatered out as they are, I have no use for them. The
+letter-form is particularly unfortunate, because, at least as used, it
+excludes the ironic presentation which permits one almost to fall in
+love with Becky Sharp, and quite to enjoy _Jonathan Wild_. Of course, if
+anybody says (and apologists _do_ say that Laclos was, as a man, proper
+in morals and mild in manners) that to hold up the wicked to mere
+detestation is a worthy work, I am not disposed to argue the point.
+Only, for myself, I prefer to take moral diatribes from the clergy and
+aesthetic delectation from the artist. The avenging duel between
+Lovelace and Colonel Morden is finely done; that between Valmont and
+Danceny is an obvious copy of it, and not finely done at all. Some,
+again, of the riskiest passages in subject are made simply dull by a
+Richardsonian particularity which has no seasoning either of humour or
+of excitement. Now, a Richardson _de mauvais lieu_ is more than a
+bore--it is a nuisance, not pure and simple, but impure and complex.
+
+I have in old days given to a few novels (though, of course, only when
+they richly deserved it) what is called a "slating"--an
+_ereintement_--as I once had the honour of translating that word in
+conversation, at the request of a distinguished English novelist, for
+the benefit of a distinguished French one. Perhaps an example of the
+process is not utterly out of place in a _History_ of the novel itself.
+But I have long given up reviewing fiction, and I do not remember any
+book of which I shall have to speak as I have just spoken. So _hic
+caestus_, etc.--though I am not such a coxcomb as to include _victor_ in
+the quotation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] For the opposite or corresponding reasons, it has seemed unnecessary
+to dwell on such persons, a hundred and more years later, as Voisenon
+and La Morliere, who are merely "corrupt followers" of Crebillon _fils_;
+or, between the two groups, on the numerous failures of the
+quasi-historical kind which derived partly from Mlle. de Scudery and
+partly from Mme. de la Fayette.
+
+[2] That of the minor "Sensibility" novelists in the last chapter.
+
+[3] I have once more to thank Professors Ker, Elton, and Gregory Smith
+for their kindness in reading my proofs and making most valuable
+suggestions; as well as Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly and the Rev. William
+Hunt for information on particular points.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+                                                             PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTORY                                                    1
+
+The early history of prose fiction--The late classical
+stage--A _nexus_ of Greek and French romance?--the facts
+about the matter--The power and influence of the "Saint's
+Life"--The Legend of St. Eulalia--The _St. Alexis_.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MATTERS OF FRANCE, ROME, AND BRITAIN                        9
+
+The _Chanson de Geste_--The proportions of history and
+fiction in them--The part played by language, prosody, and
+manners--Some drawbacks--But a fair balance of actual story
+merit--Some instances of this--The classical borrowings:
+Troy and Alexander--_Troilus_--_Alexander_--The Arthurian
+Legend--Chrestien de Troyes and the theories about him--His
+unquestioned work--Comparison of the _Chevalier a la
+Charette_ and the prose _Lancelot_--The constitution of the
+Arthuriad--Its approximation to the novel proper--Especially
+in the characters and relations of Lancelot and
+Guinevere--Lancelot--Guinevere--Some minor
+points--Illustrative extracts translated from the "Vulgate":
+the youth of Lancelot--The first meeting of Lancelot and
+Guinevere--The scene of the kiss--Some further remarks on
+the novel-character of the story--And the personages--Books.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ROMANS D'AVENTURES                                             55
+
+Variety of the present group--Different views held of
+it--_Partenopeus of Blois_ selected for analysis and
+translation.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE FICTION                                73
+
+Prose novelettes of the thirteenth century: _Aucassin et
+Nicolette_ not quite typical--_L'Empereur Constant_ more
+so--_Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane_--_La Comtesse de
+Ponthieu_--Those of the fourteenth:
+_Asseneth_--_Troilus_--_Foulques Fitzwarin_--Something on
+these--And on the short story generally.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ALLEGORY, FABLIAU, AND PROSE STORY OF COMMON LIFE              89
+
+The connection with prose fiction of allegory--And of the
+_fabliaux_--The rise of the _nouvelle_ itself--_Les Cent
+Nouvelles Nouvelles_--Analysis of "La Demoiselle
+Cavaliere"--The interest of _namea_ personages--_Petit Jehan
+de Saintre_--_Jehan de Paris._
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RABELAIS                                                      105
+
+The anonymity, or at least impersonality, of authorship up
+to this point--Rabelais unquestionably the first very great
+known writer--But the first great novelist?--Some objections
+considered--And dismissed as affecting the general
+attraction of the book--Which lies, largely if not wholly,
+in its story-interest--Contrast of the _Moyen de
+Parvenir_--A general theme possible--A reference, to be
+taken up later, to the last Book--Running survey of the
+whole--_Gargantua_--The birth and education--The war--The
+Counsel to Picrochole--The peace and the Abbey of
+Thelema--_Pantagruel_ I. The contrasted
+youth--Panurge--Short view of the sequels in Book
+II.--_Pantagruel_ II. (Book III.) The marriage of Panurge
+and the consultations on it--_Pantagruel_ III. (Book IV.)
+The first part of the voyage--_Pantagruel_ IV. (Book V.) The
+second part of the voyage: the "Isle Sonnante"--"La
+Quinte"--The conclusion and The Bottle.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SUCCESSORS OF RABELAIS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE
+"AMADIS" ROMANCES                                             134
+
+Subsidiary importance of Brantome and other
+character-mongers--The _Heptameron_--Note on
+Montaigne--Character and "problems"--Parlamente on human and
+divine love--Desperiers--_Contes et Joyeux Devis_--Other
+tale-collections--The "provincial" character of these--The
+_Amadis_ romances--Their characteristics--Extravagance in
+incident, nomenclature, etc.--The "cruel" heroine--Note on
+Helisenne de Crenne.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--I.                             152
+
+_The Pastoral and Heroic Romance, and the Fairy Story._
+
+Immense importance of the seventeenth century in our
+subject--The divisions of its contribution--Note on marked
+influence of Greek Romance--The Pastoral in general--Its
+beginnings in France--Minor romances preceding the
+_Astree_--Their general character--Examples of their
+style--Montreux and the _Bergeries de Juliette_--Des
+Escuteaux and his _Amours Diverses_--Francois de Moliere:
+_Polyxene_--Du Perier: _Arnoult et Clarimonde_--Du Croset:
+_Philocalie_--Corbin: _Philocaste_--Jean de Lannoi and his
+_Roman Satirique_--Beroalde de Verville outside the _Moyen
+de Parvenir_--The _Astree_: its author--The book--Its
+likeness to the _Arcadia_--Its philosophy and its general
+temper--Its appearance and its author's other work--Its
+character and appeals--Hylas and Stella and their
+Convention--Narrative skill frequent--The Fountain of the
+Truth of Love--Some drawbacks: awkward history--But
+attractive on the whole--The general importance and
+influence--The _Grand Cyrus_--Its preface to Madame de
+Longueville--The "Address to the Reader"--The opening of the
+"business"--The ups and downs of the general conduct of the
+story--Extracts: the introduction of Cyrus to Mandane--His
+soliloquy in the pavilion--The Fight of the Four
+Hundred--The abstract resumed--The oracle to
+Philidaspes--The advent of Araminta--Her correspondence with
+Spithridates--Some interposed comments--Analysis
+resumed--The statue in the gallery at Sardis--The judgment
+of Cyrus in a court of love--Thomyris on the
+warpath--General remarks on the book and its class--The
+other Scudery romances:
+_Ibrahim_--_Almahide_--_Clelie_--Perhaps the liveliest of
+the set--Rough outline of it--La Calprenede: his
+comparative cheerfulness--_Cleopatre_: the Cypassis and
+Arminius episode--The book
+generally--_Cassandre_--_Faramond_--Gomberville: _La
+Caritee_--_Polexandre_--Camus: _Palombe_, etc.--Hedelin
+d'Aubignac: _Macarise_--Gombauld: _Endimion_--Mme. de
+Villedieu--_Le Grand Alcandre Frustre_--The collected
+love-stories--Their historic liberties--_Carmente_,
+etc.--Her value on the whole--The fairy tale--Its _general_
+characteristics: the happy ending--Perrault and Mme.
+d'Aulnoy--Commented examples: _Gracieuse et
+Percinet_--_L'Adroite Princesse_--The danger of the
+"moral"--Yet often redeemed--The main _Cabinet des Fees_:
+more on Mme. d'Aulnoy--Warning against disappointment--Mlle.
+de la Force and others--The large proportion of Eastern
+Tales--_Les Voyages de Zulma_--Fenelon--Caylus--_Prince
+Courtebotte et Princesse Zibeline_--_Rosanie_--_Prince
+Muguet et Princesse Zaza_--Note on _Le Diable Amoureux_.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--II.                            274
+
+_From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Cleves"--Anthony Hamilton._
+
+The material of the chapter--Sorel and _Francion_--The
+_Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_--Scarron and the _Roman
+Comique_--The opening scene of this--Furetiere and the
+_Roman Bourgeois_--Nicodeme takes Javotte home from
+church--Cyrano de Bergerac and his _Voyages_--Mme. de la
+Fayette and _La Princesse de Cleves_--Its central
+scene--Hamilton and the Nymph--The opening of _Fleur
+d'Epine_--_Les Quatre Facardins_.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST, CREBILLON                          325
+
+The subjects of the chapter--Lesage: his Spanish
+connections--Peculiarity of his work generally--And its
+variety--_Le Diable Boiteux_--Lesage and Boileau--_Gil
+Blas_: its peculiar cosmopolitanism--And its adoption of the
+_homme sensuel moyen_ fashion--Its inequality, in the Second
+and Fourth Books especially--Lesage's quality: not requiring
+many words, but indisputable--Marivaux: _Les Effets de la
+Sympathie_ (?)--His work in general--_Le Paysan
+Parvenu_--_Marianne_: outline of the story--Importance of
+Marianne herself--Marivaux and Richardson:
+"Marivaudage"--Examples: Marianne on the _physique_ and
+_moral_ of Prioresses and Nuns--She returns the
+gift-clothes--Prevost--His minor novels: the opinions on
+them of Sainte-Beuve--And of Planche--The books themselves:
+_Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne_--_Cleveland_--_Le Doyen de
+Killerine_--_The Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_--Its
+miscellaneous curiosities--_Manon Lescaut_--Its
+uniqueness--The character of its heroine--And that of the
+hero--The inevitableness of both and the inestimableness of
+their history--Crebillon _fils_--The case against him--For
+the defendant: the veracity of his artificiality and his
+consummate cleverness--The Crebillonesque atmosphere and
+method--Inequality of his general work; a survey of it.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE _PHILOSOPHE_ NOVEL                                        377
+
+The use of the novel for "purpose"; Voltaire--General
+characteristics of his tales--_Candide_--_Zadig_ and its
+satellites--_Micromegas_--_L'Ingenu_--_La Princesse de
+Babylone_--Some minors--Voltaire, the Kehl edition, and
+Plato--An attempt at different evaluation of
+himself--Rousseau: the novel character of the
+_Confessions_--The ambiguous position of _Emile_--_La
+Nouvelle Heloise_--Its numerous and grave faults--The minor
+characters--The delinquencies of Saint-Preux--And the less
+charming points of Julie; her redemption--And the better
+side of the book generally--But little probability of more
+good work in novel from its author--The different case of
+Diderot--His gifts and the waste of them--The various
+display of them--_Le Neveu de Rameau_--_Jacques le
+Fataliste_--Its "Arcis-Pommeraye" episode--_La
+Religieuse_--Its story--A hardly missed, if missed,
+masterpiece--The successors--Marmontel--His "Telemachic"
+imitations worth little--The best of his _Contes Moraux_
+worth a good deal--_Alcibiade ou le Moi_--_Soliman the
+Second_--_The Four Flasks_--_Heureusement_--_Le Philosophe
+Soi-disant_--A real advance in these--Bernardin de
+Saint-Pierre.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS. THE FRENCH
+NOVEL, _c._ 1800                                              428
+
+"Sensibility"--A glance at Miss Austen--The thing
+essentially French--Its history--Mme. de Tencin and _Le
+Comte de Comminge_--Mme. Riccoboni and _Le Marquis de
+Cressy_--Her other work: _Milady Catesby_--Mme. de Beaumont:
+_Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_--Mme. de Souza--Xavier de
+Maistre--His illustrations of the lighter side of
+Sensibility--A sign of decadence--Benjamin Constant:
+_Adolphe_--Mme. de Duras's "postscript"--_Sensibilite_ and
+_engouement_--Some final words on the matter--Its importance
+here--Restif de la Bretonne--Pigault-Lebrun: the difference
+of his positive and relative importance--His life and the
+reasons for giving it--His general
+characteristics--_L'Enfant du Carnaval_ and _Les Barons de
+Felsheim_--_Angelique et Jeanneton_--_Mon Oncle
+Thomas_--_Jerome_--The redeeming points of these--Others:
+_Adelaide de Meran and Tableaux de
+Societe_--_L'Officieux_--Further examples--Last words on
+him--The French novel in 1800.
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRENCH
+FICTION NOTICED IN THIS VOLUME                                475
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES                                         479
+
+INDEX                                                         483
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+[Sidenote: The early history of prose fiction.]
+
+Although I have already, in two places,[4] given a somewhat precise
+account of the manner in which fiction in the modern sense of the term,
+and especially prose fiction, came to occupy a province in modern
+literature which had been so scantily and infrequently cultivated in
+ancient, it would hardly be proper to enter upon the present subject
+with a mere reference to these other treatments. It is matter of
+practically no controversy (or at least of none in which it is worth
+while to take a part) that the history of prose fiction, before the
+Christian era, is very nearly a blank, and that, in the fortunately
+still fairly abundant remains of poetic fiction, "the story is the least
+part" (as Dryden says in another sense), or at least the _telling_ of
+the story, in our modern sense, is so. Homer (in the _Odyssey_ at any
+rate), Herodotus (in what was certainly not intentional fiction at all),
+and Xenophon[5] are about the only Greek writers who can tell a story,
+for the magnificent narrative of Thucydides in such cases as those of
+the Plague and the Syracusan cataclysm shows all the "headstrong"
+_ethos_ of the author in its positive refusal to assume a "story"
+character. In Latin there is nothing before Livy and Ovid;[6] of whom
+the one falls into the same category with Herodotus and Xenophon, and
+the other, admirable _raconteur_ as he is, thinks first of his poetry.
+Scattered tales we have: "mimes" and other things there are some, and
+may have been more. But on the whole the schedule is not filled: there
+are no entries for the competition.
+
+[Sidenote: The late classical stage.]
+
+In later classical literature, both Greek and Latin, the state of things
+alters considerably, though even then it cannot be said that fiction
+proper--that is to say, either prose or verse in which the
+accomplishment of the form is distinctly subordinate to the interesting
+treatment of the subject--constitutes a very large department, or even
+any regular department at all. If Lucius of Patrae was a real person,
+and much before Lucian, he may dispute with Petronius--that
+first-century Maupassant or Meredith, or both combined--the actual
+foundation of the novel as we have it; but Lucian himself and Apuleius
+(strangely enough handling the same subject in the two languages) give
+securer and more solid starting-places. Yet nothing follows Apuleius;
+though some time after Lucian the Greek romance, of which we have still
+a fair number of examples (spread, however, over a still larger number
+of centuries), establishes itself in a fashion. It does one thing,
+indeed, which in a way refounds or even founds the whole conception--it
+establishes the heroine. There are certainly feminine persons, sometimes
+not disagreeable, who play conspicuous and by no means mute or
+unpractical parts in both Greek and Latin versions of the Ass-Legend;
+but one can hardly call them heroines. There need be no chicane about
+the application of that title to Chloe or to Chariclea, to Leucippe or
+to her very remarkable rival, to Anthia or to Hysmine. Without the
+heroine you can hardly have romance: the novel without her (though her
+individuality may be put in commission) is an absolute impossibility.
+
+[Sidenote: A _nexus_ of Greek and French romance? The facts about the
+matter.]
+
+The connection between these curious performances (with the much larger
+number of things like them which we know to have existed) on the one
+side, and the Western mediaeval romance on the other, has been at
+various times matter of considerable controversy; but it need not
+trouble us much here. The Greek romance was to have very great influence
+on the French novel later: on the earlier composition, generally called
+by the same name as itself, it would seem[7] to have had next to none.
+Until we come to _Floire et Blanchefleur_ and perhaps _Parthenopex_,
+things of a comparatively late stage, obviously post-Crusade, and so
+necessarily exposed to, and pretty clearly patient of, Greek-Eastern
+influence, there is nothing in Old French which shows even the same
+kinship to the Greek stories as the Old English _Apollonius of Tyre_,
+which was probably or rather certainly in the original Greek itself. The
+sources of French "romance"--I must take leave to request a "truce of
+God" as to the application of that term and of "epic" for present
+purposes--appear to have been two--the Saint's Life and the patriotic or
+family _saga_, the latter in the first place indelibly affected by the
+Mahometan incursions of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. The
+story-telling instinct--kindled by, or at first devoted to, these
+subjects--subsequently fastened on numerous others. In fact almost all
+was fish that came to the magic net of Romance; and though two great
+subjects of ours, the "Matter of Britain" (the Arthurian Legend) and the
+"Matter of Rome" (classical story generally, including the Tale of
+Troy), came traditionally to rank themselves with the "Matter of France"
+and with the great range of hagiology which it might have been dangerous
+to proclaim a fourth "matter" (even if anybody had been likely to take
+the view that it was so), these classifications are, like most of their
+kind, more specious than satisfactory.
+
+[Sidenote: The power and influence of the "Saint's Life."]
+
+Any person--though indeed it is to be feared that the number of such
+persons is not very large--who has some knowledge of hagiology _and_
+some of literature will admit at once that the popular notion of a
+Saint's Life being necessarily a dull and "goody" thing is one of the
+foolishest pieces of presumptuous ignorance, and one of the most
+ignorant pieces of foolish presumption. Not only have modern novelists
+sometimes been better informed and better inspired--as in the case of
+more than one version of the Legends of St. Mary of Egypt, of St.
+Julian, of Saint Christopher, and others--but there remain scores if not
+hundreds of beautiful things that have been wholly or all but wholly
+neglected. It is impossible to imagine a better romance, either in verse
+or in prose, than might have been made by William Morris if he had kept
+his earliest loves and faiths and had taken the _variorum_ Legend of St.
+Mary Magdalene, as we have it in divers forms from quite early French
+and English to the fifteenth-century English Miracle Play on the
+subject. That of St. Eustace ("Sir Isumbras"), though old letters and
+modern art have made something of it, has also never been fully
+developed in the directions which it opens up; and one could name many
+others. But it has to be admitted that the French (whether, as some
+would say, naturally enough or not) never gave the Saint's Life pure and
+simple the development which it received in English. It started them--I
+at least believe this--in the story-telling way; but cross-roads, to
+them more attractive, soon presented themselves.
+
+[Sidenote: The Legend of St. Eulalia.]
+
+Still, it started them. I hope it is neither intolerably fanciful nor
+the mere device of a compiler anxious to make his arrows of all wood, to
+suggest that there is something noteworthy in the nature of the very
+first piece of actual French which we possess. The Legend of St. Eulalia
+can be tried pretty high; for we have[8] the third hymn of the
+_Peristephanon_ of Prudentius to compare it with. The metre of this
+
+    Germine nobilis Eulalia
+
+is not one of the best, and contrasts ill with the stately
+decasyllables--perhaps the very earliest examples of that mighty metre
+that we have--which the infant daughter-tongue somehow devised for
+itself some centuries later. But Prudentius is almost always a poet, if
+a poet of the decadence, and he had as instruments a language and a
+prosody which were like a match rifle to a bow and arrows--_not_ of yew
+and _not_ cloth-yard shafts--when contrasted with the dialect and
+speech-craft of the unknown tenth-century Frenchman. Yet from some
+points of view, and especially from ours, the Anonymus of the Dark Ages
+wins. Prudentius spins out the story into two hundred and fifteen lines,
+with endless rhetorical and poetical amplification. He wants to say that
+Eulalia was twelve years old; but he actually informs us that
+
+    Curriculis tribus atque novem,
+    Tres hyemes quater attigerat,
+
+and the whole history of the martyrdom is attitudinised and bedizened in
+the same fashion.
+
+Now listen to the noble simplicity of the first French poet and
+tale-teller:
+
+     A good maiden was Eulalia: fair had she the body, but the
+     soul fairer. The enemies of God would fain conquer
+     her--would fain make her serve the fiend. She listened not
+     to the evil counsellors, that she should deny God, who
+     abideth in Heaven aloft--neither for gold, nor for silver,
+     nor for garments; for the royal threatenings, nor for
+     entreaties. Nothing could ever bend the damsel so that she
+     should not love the service of God. And for that reason she
+     was brought before Maximian, who was the King in those days
+     over the pagans. And he exhorted her--whereof she took no
+     care--that she should flee from the name of Christian. But
+     she assembled all her strength that she might rather sustain
+     the torments than lose her virginity: for which reason she
+     died in great honour. They cast her in the fire when it
+     burnt fiercely: but she had no fault in her, and so it
+     pained her [_or_ she burnt[9]] not.
+
+     To this would not trust the pagan king: but with a sword he
+     bade them take off her head. The damsel did not gainsay this
+     thing: she would fain let go this worldly life if Christ
+     gave command. And in shape of a dove she flew to heaven. Let
+     us all pray that she may deign to intercede for us; that
+     Christ may upon us have mercy after death, and of His
+     clemency may allow us to come to Him.
+
+[Sidenote: The _St. Alexis_.]
+
+Of course this is story-telling in its simplest form and on its smallest
+scale: but the essentials are there, and the non-essentials can be
+easily supplied--as indeed they are to some extent in the _Life of St.
+Leger_ and to a greater in the _Life of St. Alexis_, which almost follow
+the _Sainte-Eulalie_ in the making of French literature. The _St.
+Alexis_ indeed provides something like a complete scheme of romance
+interest, and should be, though not translated (for it runs to between
+600 and 700 lines), in some degree analysed and discussed. It had, of
+course, a Latin original, and was rehandled more than once or twice. But
+we have the (apparently) first French form, probably of the eleventh
+century. The theme is one of the commonest and one of the least
+sympathetic in hagiology. Alexis is forced by his father, a rich Roman
+"count," to marry; and after (not before) the marriage, though of course
+before its consummation, he deserts his wife, flies to Syria, and
+becomes a beggar at Edessa. After a time, long enough to prevent
+recognition, he goes back to Rome, and obtains from his own family alms
+enough to live on, though these alms are dispensed to him by the
+servants with every mark of contempt. At last he dies, and is recognised
+forthwith as a saint. This hackneyed and somewhat repulsive _donnee_
+(there is nothing repulsive to the present writer, let it be observed,
+either in Stylites or in Galahad) the French poet takes and makes a
+rather surprising best of it. He is not despicable even as a poet, all
+things considered; but he is something very different indeed from
+despicable as a tale-teller. To begin, or, strictly speaking, to end
+with (R. L. Stevenson never said a wiser thing than that the end must be
+the necessary result of, and as it were foretold in, the beginning), he
+has lessened if not wholly destroyed the jar of the situation by (most
+unusually and considering the mad chastity-worship of the time rather
+audaciously) associating the deserted wife directly with the Saint's
+"gustation of God" above:
+
+    Without doubt is St. Alexis in Heaven,
+    With him has he God in the company of the Angels,
+    _With him the maiden to whom he made himself strange,_
+    _Now he has her close to him--together are their souls,_
+    _I know not how to tell you how great their joy is._[10]
+
+But there are earlier touches of that life which makes all literature,
+and tale-telling most of all. An opening on Degeneracy is scarcely one
+of these, for this was, of course, a commonplace millenniums earlier,
+and it had the recent belief about the approaching end of the world at
+the actual A.D. 1000 to prompt it. The maiden is "bought" for Alexis
+from her father or mother. Instead of the not unusual and rather
+distasteful sermons on virginity which later versions have, the future
+saint has at least the grace to accompany the return of the ring[11]
+with only a few words of renunciation of his spouse to Christ, and of
+declaration that in this world "love is imperfect, life frail, and joy
+mutable." A far more vivid touch is given by the mother who, when search
+for the fugitive has proved futile, ruins the nuptial chamber, destroys
+its decorations, and hangs it with rags and sackcloth,[12] and who, when
+the final discovery is made, reproaches the dead saint in a fashion
+which is not easy to reply to: "My son, why hadst thou no pity of _us_?
+Why hast thou not spoken to me _once_?" The bride has neither forgotten
+nor resented: she only weeps her deserter's former beauty, and swears to
+have no other spouse but God. The poem ends--or all but ends--in a
+hurly-burly of popular enthusiasm, which will hardly resign its new
+saint to Pope or Emperor, till at last, after the usual miracles of
+healing, the body is allowed to rest, splendidly entombed, in the Church
+of St. Boniface.
+
+Now the man who could thus, and by many other touches not mentioned, run
+blood into the veins of mummies,[13] could, with larger range of subject
+and wider choice of treatment, have done no small things in fiction.
+
+But enough talk of might-have-beens: let us come to the things that were
+done.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] The article "Romance" in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 11th ed.;
+and the volume on _The English Novel_ in Messrs. Dent's series "Channels
+of English Literature," London, 1913.
+
+[5] Plato (or Socrates?) does it only on a small scale and partially,
+though there are the makings of a great novelist in the _Dialogues_.
+Apollonius Rhodius is the next verse-tale teller to Homer among the
+prae-Christian Greeks.
+
+[6] Virgil, in the only parts of the _Aeneid_ that make a good story, is
+following either Homer or Apollonius.
+
+[7] To me at least the seeming seems to approach demonstration; and I
+can only speak as I find, with all due apologies to those who find
+differently.
+
+[8] There is, of course, a Latin "sequence" on the Saint which is nearer
+to the French poem; but that does not affect our present point.
+
+[9] The literal "cooked," with no burlesque intention, was used of
+punitory burning quite early; but it is not certain that the transferred
+sense of _cuire_, "to _pain_," is not nearly or quite as old.
+
+[10] Not the least interesting part of this is that it is almost
+sufficient by itself to establish the connection between Saint's Life
+and Romance.
+
+[11] By a very curious touch he gives her also "les renges de s'espide,"
+_i.e._ either the other ring by which the sword is attached to the
+sword-belt, or the belt itself. The meaning is, of course, that with her
+he renounces knighthood and all worldly rank.
+
+[12] She addresses the room itself, dramatically enough: "Chamber! never
+more shalt thou bear ornament: never shall any joy in thee be enjoyed."
+
+[13] Let me repeat that I mean no despite to the "Communion of Saints"
+or to their records--much the reverse. But the hand of any _purpose_,
+Religious, Scientific, Political, what not, is apt to mummify story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MATTERS OF FRANCE, ROME, AND BRITAIN
+
+
+It has been said already that the Saint's Life, as it seems most
+probable to the present writer, started the romance in France; but of
+course we must allow considerable reinforcement of one kind or another
+from local, traditional, and literary sources. The time-honoured
+distribution, also given already, of the "matter" of this romance does
+not concern us so much here as it would in a history of French
+literature, but it concerns us. We shall indeed probably find that the
+home-grown or home-fed _Chanson de Geste_ did least for the novel in the
+wide sense--that the "Matter of Rome" chiefly gave it variety, change of
+atmosphere to some extent, and an invaluable connection with older
+literatures, but that the central division or "Matter of Britain," with
+the immense fringes of miscellaneous _romans d'aventures_--which are
+sometimes more or less directly connected with it, and are always
+moulded more or less on its patterns--gave most of all.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Chanson de Geste_.]
+
+Of these, however, what has been called the family or patriotic part was
+undoubtedly the earliest and for a long time the most influential. There
+is, fortunately, not the least need here to fight out the old battle of
+the _cantilenae_ or supposed _ballad_-originals. I see no reason to
+alter the doubt with which I have always regarded their existence; but
+it really does not matter, _to us_, whether they existed or not,
+especially since we have not got them now. What we have got is a vast
+mass of narrative poetry, which latterly took actual prose form, and
+which--as early certainly as the eleventh century and perhaps
+earlier--turns the French faculty for narrative (whether it was actually
+or entirely fictitious narrative or not does not again matter) into
+channels of a very promising kind.
+
+The novel-reader who has his wits and his memory about him may perhaps
+say, "Promising perhaps; but paying?" The answer must be that the
+promise may have taken some time to be fully liquidated, but that the
+immediate or short-dated payment was great. The fault of the _Chansons
+de Geste_--a fault which in some degree is to be found in French
+literature as a whole, and to a greater extent in all mediaeval
+literature--is that the class and the type are rather too prominent. The
+central conception of Charlemagne as a generally dignified but too
+frequently irascible and rather petulant monarch, surrounded by valiant
+and in a way faithful but exceedingly touchy or ticklish paladins, is no
+doubt true enough to the early stages of feudalism--in fact, to adapt
+the tag, there is too much human nature in it for it to be false. But it
+communicates a certain sameness to the chansons which stick closest to
+the model.
+
+[Sidenote: The proportions of history and fiction in them.]
+
+The exact relation of the _Chansons de Geste_ to the subsequent history
+of French fiction is thus an extremely important one, and one that
+requires, not only a good deal of reading on which to base any opinion
+that shall not be worthless, but a considerable exercise of critical
+discretion in order to form that opinion competently. The present writer
+can at least plead no small acquaintance with the subject, and a full if
+possibly over-generous acknowledgment of his dealings with it on the
+part of some French authorities, living and dead, of the highest
+competence. But the attractions of the vast and strangely long ignored
+body of _chanson_ literature are curiously various in kind, and they
+cannot be indiscriminately drawn upon as evidence of an early mastery of
+tale-telling proper on the part of the French as a nation.
+
+There is indeed one solid fact, the importance of which can hardly be
+exaggerated in some ways, though it may be wrongly estimated in others.
+Here is not merely the largest part proportionately, but a very large
+bulk positively, of the very earliest part of a literature, devoted to a
+kind of narrative which, though some of it may be historic originally,
+is pretty certainly worked up into its concrete and extant state by
+fiction. The comparison with the two literatures which on the whole bear
+such comparison with French best--English and Greek--is here very
+striking. People say that there "must have been" many _Beowulfs_: it can
+hardly be said that we have so much as a positive assertion of the
+existence of even one other, though we have allusions and glances which
+have been amplified in the usual fashion. We have positive and not
+reasonably doubtful assertion of the existence of a very large body of
+more or less early Greek epic; but we have nothing existing except the
+_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_.
+
+[Sidenote: The part played by language, prosody, and manners.]
+
+On this fact, be it repeated, if we observe the canons of sound
+criticism in the process, too much stress in general cannot be laid.
+There must have been some more than ordinary _nisus_ towards
+story-telling in a people and a language which produced, and for three
+or four centuries cherished, something like a hundred legends, sometimes
+of great length, on the single general[14] subject of the exploits,
+sufferings, and what not of the great half-historical, half-legendary
+emperor _a la barbe florie_, of his son, and of the more legendary than
+historical peers, rebels, subjects, descendants, and "those about both"
+generally. And though the assertion requires a little more justification
+and allowance, there must have been some extraordinary gifts for more or
+less fictitious composition when such a vast body of spirited
+fictitious, or even half-fictitious, narrative is turned out.
+
+But in this justification as to the last part of the contention a good
+deal of care has to be observed. It will not necessarily follow, because
+the metal is attractive, that its attractiveness is always of the kind
+purely belonging to fiction; and, as a matter of fact, a large part of
+it is not. Much is due to the singular sonority and splendour of the
+language, which is much more like Spanish than modern French, and which
+only a few poets of exceptional power have been able to reproduce in
+modern French itself. Much more is imparted by the equally peculiar
+character of the metre--the long _tirades_ or _laisses_, assonanced or
+mono-rhymed paragraphs in decasyllables or alexandrines, which, to those
+who have once caught their harmony, have an indescribable and
+unparalleled charm. Yet further, these attractions come from the strange
+unfamiliar world of life and character described and displayed; from the
+brilliant stock epithets and phrases that stud the style as if with a
+stiff but glittering embroidery; and from other sources too many to
+mention here.
+
+[Sidenote: Some drawbacks.]
+
+Yet one must draw attention to the fact that all the named sources of
+the attraction, and may perhaps ask the reader to take it on trust that
+most of the unnamed, are not essentially or exclusively attractions of
+fiction--that they are attractions of poetry. And, on the other hand,
+while the weaving of so vast a web of actual fiction remains "to
+credit," there are not a few things to be set on the other side of the
+account. The sameness of the _chanson_ story, the almost invariable
+recurrence of the stock motives and frameworks--of rebellion, treason,
+paynim invasion, petulance of a King's son, somewhat too "coming"
+affection of a King's daughter, tyrannical and Lear-like _impotentia_ of
+the King himself, etc.--may be exaggerated, but cannot be denied. In the
+greatest of all by general acknowledgment, the far-famed _Roland_, the
+economy of pure story interest is pushed to a point which in a less
+unsophisticated age--say the twentieth instead of the twelfth or
+eleventh century--might be put down to deliberate theory or crotchet.
+The very incidents, stirring as they are, are put as it were in
+skeleton argument or summary rather than amplified into full story-flesh
+and blood; we see such heroine as there is only to see her die; even the
+great moment of the horn is given as if it had been "censored" by
+somebody. People, I believe, have called this brevity Homeric; but that
+is not how I read Homer.
+
+In fact, so jealous are some of those who well and wisely love the
+_chansons_, that I have known objections taken to ranking as pure
+examples, despite their undoubted age and merit, such pieces as _Amis et
+Amiles_ (for passion and pathos and that just averted tragedy which is
+so difficult to manage, one of the finest of all) and the _Voyage a
+Constantinoble_, the single early specimen of mainly or purely comic
+donnee.[15] This seems to me, I confess, mere prudery or else mistaken
+logic, starting from the quite unjustifiable proposition that nothing
+that is not found in the _Chanson de Roland_ ought to be found in any
+_chanson_. But we may admit that the "bones"--the simplest terms of the
+_chanson_-formula--hardly include varied interests, though they allow
+such interests to be clothed upon and added to them.
+
+[Sidenote: But a fair balance of actual story merit.]
+
+Despite this admission, however, and despite the further one that it is
+to the "romances" proper--Arthurian, classical, and adventurous--rather
+than to the _chansons_ that one must look for the first satisfactory
+examples of such clothing and addition, it is not to be denied that the
+_chansons_ themselves provide a great deal of it--whether because of
+adulteration with strictly "romance" matter is a question for debate in
+another place and not here. But it would be a singularly ungrateful
+memory which should, in this place, leave the reader with the idea that
+the _Chanson de Geste_ as such is merely monotonous and dull. The
+intensity of the appeal of _Roland_ is no doubt helped by that approach
+to bareness--even by a certain tautology--which has been mentioned.
+_Aliscans_, which few could reject as faithless to the type, contains,
+even without the family of dependent poems which cluster round it, a
+vivid picture of the valiant insubordinate warrior in William of Orange,
+with touches of comedy or at least horse-play.
+
+[Sidenote: Some instances of this.]
+
+The striking, and to all but unusually dull or hopelessly "modern"
+imaginations as unusually beautiful, centre-point of _Amis et
+Amiles_,--where one of the heroes, who has sworn a "white" perjury to
+save his friend and is punished for it by the terror, "white" in the
+other sense, of leprosy, is abandoned by his wife, and only healed by
+the blood of the friend's children, is the crowning instance of another
+set of appeals. The catholicity of a man's literary taste, and his more
+special capacity of appreciating things mediaeval, may perhaps be better
+estimated by his opinion of _Amis et Amiles_ than by any other
+touchstone; for it has more appeals than this almost tragic one--a much
+greater development of the love-motive than either _Roland_ or
+_Aliscans_, and a more varied interest generally. Its continuation,
+_Jourdains de Blaivies_, takes the hero abroad, as do many other
+_chansons_, especially two of the most famous, _Huon de Bordeaux_ and
+_Ogier de Danemarche_. These two are also good--perhaps the
+best--examples of a process very much practised in the Middle Ages and
+leaving its mark on future fiction--that of expansion and continuation.
+In the case of Ogier, indeed, this process was carried so far that
+enquiring students have been known to be sadly disappointed in the
+almost total disconnection between William Morris's beautiful section of
+_The Earthly Paradise_ and the original French, as edited by Barrois in
+the first attempt to collect the _chansons_ seventy or eighty years ago.
+The great "Orange" subcycle, of which _Aliscans_ is the most famous,
+extends in many directions, but is apt in all its branches to cling more
+to "war and politics." William of Orange is in this respect partly
+matched by Garin of Lorraine. No _chanson_ retained its popularity, in
+every sense of that word, better than the _Quatre Fils d'Aymon_--the
+history of Renaut de Montauban and his brothers and cousin, the famous
+enchanter-knight Maugis. As a "boy's book" there is perhaps none better,
+and the present writer remembers an extensive and apparently modern
+English translation which was a favourite "sixty years since." _Berte
+aux grands Pies_, the earliest form of a well-known legend, has the
+extrinsic charm of being mentioned by Villon; while there is no more
+agreeable love-story, on a small scale and in a simple tone, than that
+of Doon and Nicolette[16] in _Doon de Mayence_. And not to make a mere
+catalogue which, if supported by full abstracts of all the pieces, would
+be inordinately bulky and would otherwise convey little idea to readers,
+it may be said that the general _chanson_ practice of grouping together
+or branching out the poems (whichever metaphor be preferred) after the
+fashion of a family-tree involves of itself no inconsiderable call on
+the tale-telling faculties. That the writers pay little or no attention
+to chronological and other possibilities is hardly much to say against
+them; if this be an unforgivable sin it is not clear how either Dickens
+or Thackeray is to escape damnation, with Sir Walter to greet them in
+their uncomfortable sojourn.
+
+But it is undoubtedly true that the almost exclusive concentration of
+the attention on war prevents the attainment of much detailed
+novel-interest. Love affairs--some glanced at above--do indeed make, in
+some of the _chansons_, a fuller appearance than the flashlight view of
+lost tragedy which we have in _Roland_. But until the reflex influence
+of the Arthurian romance begins to work, they are, though not always
+disagreeable or ungraceful, of a very simple and primitive kind, as
+indeed are the delineations of manners generally.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The classical borrowings--Troy and Alexander.]
+
+The "matter of Rome the Great," as the original text has it (though, in
+fact, Rome proper has little to do with the most important examples of
+the class), adds very importantly to the development of romance, and
+through that, of novel. Its bulk is considerable, and its examples have
+interest of various kinds. But for us this interest is concentrated
+upon, if not exclusively confined to, the two great groups (undertaken
+by, and illustrated in, the three great literary languages of the
+earlier Middle Ages, and, as usual, most remarkably and originally in
+French) of the Siege of Troy and the life of Alexander. It should be
+almost enough to say of the former that it introduced,[17] with
+practically nothing but the faintest suggestion from really classical
+sources, the great romance-novel of the loves of Troilus and Cressida to
+the world's literature; and of the second, that it gives us the first
+instance of the infusion of Oriental mystery and marvel that we can
+discern in the literature of the West. For details about the books which
+contain these things, their authors and their probable sources and
+development, the reader must, as in other cases, look elsewhere.[18] It
+is only our business here to say something about the general nature of
+the things themselves and about the additions that they made to the
+capital, and in some cases almost to the "plant," of fiction.
+
+[Sidenote: _Troilus._]
+
+That the Troilus and Cressida romance, with its large provision and its
+more large suggestion of the accomplished love-story, evolved from older
+tale-tellers by Boccaccio and Chaucer and Henryson and Shakespeare, is
+not a pure creation of the earlier Middle Ages, few people who patiently
+attend to evidence can now believe. Even in the wretched summaries of
+the Tale of Troy by Dictys and Dares (which again no such person as the
+one just described can put very early), the real novel-interest--even
+the most slender romance-interest--is hardly present at all. Benoit de
+Sainte-More in the twelfth century may not have actually invented this;
+it is one of the principles of this book, as of all that its writer has
+written, that the quest of the inventor of a story is itself the vainest
+of inventions. But it is certain that nobody hitherto has been able to
+"get behind him," and it is still more certain that he has given enough
+base for the greater men who followed to build upon. If he cannot be
+credited with the position of the pseudo-Callisthenes (see below) in
+reference to the Alexander story, he may fairly share that of his
+contemporary Geoffrey of Monmouth, if not even of Nennius, as regards
+that of Arthur. The situation, or rather the group of situations, is of
+the most promising and suggestive kind, negatively and positively. In
+the first place the hero and heroine are persons about whom the great
+old poets of the subject have said little or nothing; and what an
+immense advantage this is all students of the historical novel of the
+last hundred years know. In the second, the way in which they are put in
+action (or ready for action) is equally satisfactory, or let us say
+stimulating. In a great war a prince loves a noble lady, who by birth
+and connections belongs to the enemy, and after vicissitudes, which can
+be elaborated according to the taste and powers of the romancer, gains
+her love. But the course of this love is interrupted by her surrender or
+exchange to the enemy themselves; her beauty attracts, nay has already
+attracted, the fancy of one of the enemy's leaders, and being not merely
+a coquette but a light-o'-love[19] she admits his addresses. Her
+punishment follows or does not follow, is accomplished during the life
+of her true lover or not, according again to the taste and fancy of the
+person who handles the story. But the scheme, even at its simplest, is
+novel-soil: marked out, matured, manured, and ready for cultivation, and
+the crops which can be grown on it depend entirely upon the skill of the
+cultivator.
+
+For all this some would, as has been said above, see sufficient
+suggestion in the Greek Romance. I have myself known the examples of
+that Romance for a very long time and have always had a high opinion of
+it; but except what has been already noticed--the prominence of the
+heroine--I can see little or nothing that the Mediaeval romance could
+possibly owe to it, and as a matter of fact hardly anything else in
+common between the two. In the last, and to some extent the most
+remarkable (though very far from the best if not nearly the worst), of
+the Greek Romances, the _Hysminias and Hysmine_ of Eustathius, we have
+indeed got to a point in advance, taking that word in a peculiar sense,
+even of Troilus at its most accomplished, that is to say, the Marinism
+or Marivaudage, if not even the Meredithese, of language and sentiment.
+But _Hysminias and Hysmine_ is probably not older than Benoit de
+Sainte-More's story, and as has just been said, Renaissance, nay
+post-Renaissance, not Mediaeval in character. We must, of course,
+abstain from "reading back" Chaucer or even Boccaccio into Benoit or
+into his probable plagiarist Guido de Columnis; but there is nothing
+uncritical or wrong in "reading forward" from these to the later
+writers. The hedge-rose is there, which will develop into, and serve as
+a support for, the hybrid perpetual--a term which could itself be
+developed in application, after the fashion of a mediaeval _moralitas_.
+And when we have actually come to Pandaro and Deiphobus, to the "verse
+of society," as it may be called in a new sense, of the happier part of
+Chaucer and to the intense tragedy of the later part of Henryson, then
+we are in the workshop, if not in the actual show-room, of the completed
+novel. It would be easy, as it was not in the case of the _chansons_,
+to illustrate directly by a translation, either here from Benoit or
+later from the shortened prose version of the fourteenth century, which
+we also possess; but it is not perhaps necessary, and would require much
+space.
+
+[Sidenote: _Alexander._]
+
+The influence of the Alexander story, though scarcely less, is of a
+widely different kind. In _Troilus_, as has been said, the Middle Age is
+working on scarcely more than the barest hints of antiquity, which it
+amplifies and supplements out of its own head and its own heart--a head
+which can dream dream-webs of subtlest texture unknown to the ancients,
+and a heart which can throb and bleed in a fashion hardly shown by any
+ancient except Sappho. With the Alexander group we find it much more
+passively recipient, though here also exercising its talent for varying
+and amplification. The controversies over the pseudo-Callisthenes,
+"Julius Valerius," the _Historia de Praeliis_, etc., are once more not
+for us; but results of them, which have almost or quite emerged from the
+state of controversy, are. It is certain that the appearance, in the
+classical languages, of the wilder legends about Alexander was as early
+at least as the third century after Christ--that is to say, long before
+even "Dark" let alone "Middle" Ages were thought of--and perhaps
+earlier. There seems to be very little doubt that these legends were of
+Egyptian or Asiatic origin, and so what we vaguely call "Oriental." They
+long anticipated the importing afresh of such influences by the
+Crusades, and they must, with all except Christians and Jews (that is to
+say, with the majority), have actually forestalled the Oriental
+influence of the Scriptures. Furthermore, when Mediaeval France began to
+create a new body of European literature, the Crusades had taken place;
+the appetite for things Oriental and perhaps we should say the
+half-imaginative power of appreciating them, had become active; and a
+considerable amount of literature in the vernacular had already been
+composed. It was not wonderful, therefore, that the _trouveres_ should
+fly upon this spoil. By not the least notable of the curiosities of
+literature in its own class, they picked out a historical but not very
+important episode--the siege of Gaza and Alexander's disgraceful cruelty
+to its brave defender--and made of this a regular _Chanson de Geste_ (in
+all but "Family" connection), the _Fuerres de Gadres_, a poem of several
+thousand lines. But the most generally popular (though sometimes
+squabbled over) parts of the story, were the supposed perversion of
+Olympias, not by the God Ammon but by the magician-king Nectanabus
+personating the God and becoming thereby father of the Hero; the Indian
+and some other real campaigns (the actual conquest of Persia was very
+slightly treated), and, far above all, the pure Oriental wonder-tales of
+the descent into the sea, the march to the Fountain of Youth, and other
+myths of the kind.
+
+Few things can be more different than the story-means used in these two
+legends; yet it must be personal taste rather than strict critical
+evaluation which pronounces one more important to the development of the
+novel than the other. There is a little love interest in the Alexander
+poems--the heroine of this part being Queen Candace--but it is slight,
+episodic, and rudimentary beside the complex and all-absorbing passions
+which, when genius took the matter in hand, were wrought out of the
+truth of Troilus and the faithlessness of Cressid. The joys of fighting
+or roaming, of adventure and quest, and above all those of marvel, are
+the attractions which the Alexander legend offers, and who shall say
+that they are insufficient? At any rate no one can deny that they have
+been made the seasoning, if not the stuff and substance, of an enormous
+slice of the romance interest, and of a very large part of that of the
+novel.
+
+[Sidenote: The Arthurian Legend.]
+
+It is scarcely necessary to speak of other classical romances, and it is
+of course very desirable to keep in mind that the Alexander story, in no
+form in which we have it, attempts any _strictly_ novel interest; while
+though that interest is rife in some forms of "Troilus," those forms are
+not exactly of the period, and are in no case of the language, with
+which we are dealing. It was an Italian, an Englishman, and a Scot who
+each in his own speech--one in the admirable vulgar tongue, of which at
+that time and as a finished thing, Italian was alone in Europe as
+possessor; the others in the very best of Middle English, and, as some
+think, almost the best of Middle Scots verse--displayed the full
+possibilities of Benoit's story. But the third "matter," the matter of
+Britain or (in words better understanded of most people) the Arthurian
+Legend, after starting in Latin, was, as far as language went, for some
+time almost wholly French, though it is exceedingly possible that at
+least one, if not more, of its main authors was no Frenchman. And in
+this "matter" the exhibition of the powers of fiction--prose as well as
+verse--was carried to a point almost out of sight of that reached by the
+_Chansons_, and very far ahead of any contemporary treatment even of the
+Troilus story.
+
+[Sidenote: Chrestien de Troyes and the theories about him.]
+
+Before, however, dealing with this great Arthurian story as a stage in
+the history of the Novel-Romance in and by itself, we must come to a
+figure which, though we have very little substantial knowledge of it,
+there is some reason for admitting as one of the first named and "coted"
+figures in French literature, at least as regards fiction in verse. It
+is well known that the action of modern criticism is in some respects
+strikingly like that of the sea in one of the most famous and vivid
+passages[20] of Spenser's unequalled scene-painting in words with
+musical accompaniment of them. It delights in nothing so much as in
+stripping one part of the shore of its belongings, and hurrying them off
+to heap upon another part. Chrestien de Troyes is one of the lucky
+personages who have benefited, not least and most recently, by this
+fancy. It is true that the actual works attributed to him have remained
+the same--his part of the shore has not been actually extended like part
+of that of the Humber. But it has had new riches, honours, and
+decorations heaped upon it till it has become, in the actual Spenserian
+language of another but somewhat similar passage (111. iv. 20), a "rich
+strond" indeed. Until a comparatively recent period, the opinion
+entertained of Chrestien, by most if not all competent students of him,
+was pretty uniform, and, though quite favourable, not extraordinarily
+high. He was recognised as a past-master of the verse _roman
+d'aventures_ in octosyllabic couplet, who probably took his
+heterogeneous materials wherever he found them; "did not invent much"
+(as Thackeray says of Smollett), but treated whatever he did treat in a
+singularly light and pleasant manner, not indeed free from the somewhat
+undistinguished fluency to which this "light and lewed" couplet, as
+Chaucer calls it, is liable, and showing no strong grasp either of
+character or of plot, but on the whole a very agreeable writer, and a
+quite capital example of the better class of _trouvere_, far above the
+_improvisatore_ on the one hand and the dull compiler on the other; but
+below, if not quite so far below, the definitely poetic poet.
+
+To an opinion something like this the present writer, who formed it long
+ago, not at second hand but from independent study of originals, and who
+has kept up and extended his acquaintance with Chrestien, still adheres.
+
+Of late, however, as above suggested, "Chrestiens" have gone up in the
+market to a surprising extent. Some twenty years ago the late M. Gaston
+Paris[21] announced and, with all his distinguished ability and his
+great knowledge elaborately supported, his conclusions, that the great
+French prose Arthurian romances (which had hitherto been considered by
+the best authorities, including his own no less admirable father, M.
+Paulin Paris, slightly anterior to the poet of Troyes, and in all
+probability the source of part at least of his work) were posterior and
+probably derivative. Now this, of itself, would of course to some extent
+put up Chrestien's value. But it, and the necessary corollaries from
+it, as originality and so forth, by no means exhaust the additional
+honours and achievements which have been heaped upon Chrestien by M.
+Paris and by others who have followed, more or less accepted, and in
+some cases bettered his ascriptions. In the first and principal place,
+there has been a tendency, almost general, to dethrone Walter Map from
+his old position as the real begetter of the completed Arthurian
+romance, and to substitute the Troyan. Then, partly in support, but also
+to some extent, I think, independently of this immense ennoblement,
+discoveries have been made of gifts and graces in Chrestien himself,
+which had entirely escaped the eyes of so excellent a critic, so erudite
+a scholar, and so passionate a lover of Old French literature as the
+elder M. Paris, and which continue to be invisible to the far inferior
+gifts and knowledge, but if I may dare to say so, the equal good will
+and the not inconsiderable critical experience, of the present
+historian.
+
+Now with large parts of this matter we have, fortunately enough, nothing
+to do, and the actual authorship of the great Arthurian conception,
+namely, the interweaving of the Graal story on the one hand and the
+loves of Lancelot and Guinevere on the other, with the Geoffrey of
+Monmouth matter, concerns us hardly at all. But some have gone even
+further than has been yet hinted in the exaltation of Chrestien. They
+have discovered in him--"him-by-himself-him"--as the author of his
+actual extant works and not as putative author of the real Arthuriad,
+not merely a pattern example of the court _trouvere_--as much as this,
+or nearly as much, has been admitted here--but almost the inventor of
+romance and even of something very like novel, a kind of mediaeval
+Scott-Bulwer-Meredith, equally great at adventure, fashion, and
+character-analysis; subject only, and that not much, to the limitations
+of the time. In fact, if I do not do some of these panegyrists
+injustice, we ought to have a fancy bust of Chrestien, with the titles
+of his works gracefully inscribed on the pedestal, as a frontispiece to
+this book, if not even a full-length statue, robed like a small St.
+Ursula, and like her in Memling's presentation at Bruges, sheltering in
+its ample folds the child-like figures of future French novelists and
+romancers, from the author of _Aucassin et Nicolette_ to M. Anatole
+France.
+
+Again, some fifty years of more or less critical reading of novels of
+all ages and more than one or two languages, combined with nearly forty
+years reading of Chrestien himself and a passion for Old French, leave
+the present writer quite unable to rise to this beatific vision. But let
+us, before saying any more what Chrestien could or could not do, see, in
+the usual cold-blooded way, what he _did_.
+
+[Sidenote: His unquestioned work.]
+
+The works attributed to this very differently, though never
+unfavourably, estimated tale-teller--at least those which concern
+us--are _Percevale le Gallois_, _Le Chevalier a[22] la Charette_, _Le
+Chevalier au Lyon_, _Erec et Enide_, _Cliges_, and a much shorter
+_Guillaume d'Angleterre_. This last has nothing to do with the Conqueror
+(though the title has naturally deceived some), and is a semi-mystical
+romance of the group derived from the above-mentioned legend of St.
+Eustace, and represented in English by the beautiful story of _Sir
+Isumbras_. It is very doubtfully Chrestien's, and in any case very
+unlike his other work; but those who think him the Arthurian magician
+might make something of it, as being nearer the tone of the older Graal
+stories than the rest of his compositions, even _Percevale_ itself. Of
+these, all, except the _Charette_, deal with what may be called outliers
+of the Arthurian story. _Percevale_ is the longest, but its immense
+length required, by common confession, several continuators;[23] the
+others have a rather uniform allowance of some six or seven thousand
+lines. _Cliges_ is one of the most "outside" of all, for the hero,
+though knighted by Arthur, is the disinherited heir of Constantinople,
+and the story is that of the recovery of his kingdom. _Erec_, as the
+second part of the title will truly suggest, though the first may
+disguise it, gives us the story of the first of Tennyson's original
+_Idylls_. The _Chevalier au Lyon_ is a delightful romance of the Gawain
+group, better represented by its English adaptation, _Ywain_, than any
+other French example. _Percevale_ and the _Charette_ touch closest on
+the central Arthurian story, and the latter has been the chief
+battlefield as to Chrestien's connection therewith, some even begging
+the question to the extent of adopting for it the title _Lancelot_.
+
+[Sidenote: Comparison of the _Chevalier a la Charette_ and the prose
+_Lancelot_.]
+
+The subject is the episode, well known to English readers from Malory,
+of the abduction of Guinevere by Meleagraunce, the son of King
+Bagdemagus; of the inability of all knights but Lancelot (who has been
+absent from Court in one of the lovers' quarrels) to rescue her; and of
+his undertaking the task, though hampered in various ways, one of the
+earliest of which compelled him to ride in a cart--a thing regarded, by
+one of the odd[24] conventions of chivalry, as disgraceful to a knight.
+Meleagraunce, though no coward, is treacherous and "felon," and all
+sorts of mishaps befall Lancelot before he is able for the second time
+to conquer his antagonist, and finally to take his over and over again
+forfeited life. But long before this he has arrived at the castle where
+Guinevere is imprisoned; and has been enabled to arrange a meeting with
+her at night, which is accomplished by wrenching out the bars of her
+window. The ill chances and _quiproquos_ which result from his having
+cut his hands in the proceeding (though the actual visit is not
+discovered), and the arts by which Meleagraunce ensnares the destined
+avenger for a time, lengthen out the story till, by the final contest,
+Meleagraunce goes to his own place and the Queen is restored to hers.
+
+Unfortunately the blots of constant tautology and verbiage, with not
+infrequent flatness, are on all this gracious story as told by
+Chrestien.[25] Among the traps and temptations which are thrown in
+Lancelot's way to the Queen is one of a highly "sensational" nature. In
+the night Lancelot hears a damsel, who is his hostess, though he has
+refused her most thorough hospitality, shrieking for assistance; and on
+coming to the spot finds her in a situation demanding instant help,
+which she begs, if the irreparable is not to happen. But the poet not
+only gives us a heavily figured description of the men-at-arms who bar
+the way to rescue, but puts into the mouth of the intending rescuer a
+speech (let us be exact) of twenty-eight lines and a quarter, during
+which the just mentioned irreparable, if it had been seriously meant,
+might have happened with plenty of time to spare. So, in the crowning
+scene (excellently told in Malory), where the lover forces his way
+through iron bars to his love, reckless of the tell-tale witness of his
+bleeding hands, the circumlocutions are _plusquam_ Richardsonian--and do
+not fall far short of a serious anticipation of Shakespeare's burlesque
+in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. The mainly gracious description is
+spoilt by terrible bathetics from time to time. Guinevere in her white
+nightdress and mantle of scarlet and _camus_[26] on one side of the
+bars, Lancelot outside, exchanging sweet salutes, "for much was he fain
+of her and she of him," are excellent. The next couplet, or quatrain,
+almost approaches the best poetry. "Of villainy or annoy make they no
+parley or complaint; but draw near each other so much at least that they
+hold each other hand by hand." But what follows? That they cannot come
+together vexes them so immeasurably that--what? They blame the iron work
+for it. This certainly shows an acute understanding[27] and a very
+creditable sense of the facts of the situation on the part of both
+lovers; but it might surely have been taken for granted. Also, it takes
+Lancelot forty lines to convince his lady that when bars are in your way
+there is nothing like pulling them out of it. So in the actual
+pulling-out there is the idlest exaggeration and surplusage; the first
+bar splits one of Lancelot's fingers to the sinews and cuts off the top
+joint of the next. The actual embraces are prettily and gracefully told
+(though again with otiose observations about silence), and the whole,
+from the knight's coming to the window to his leaving it, takes 150
+lines. Now hear the prose of the so-called "Vulgate _Lancelot_."
+
+     "And he came to the window: and the Queen, who waited for
+     him, slept not, but came thither. And the one threw to the
+     other their arms, and they felt each other as much as they
+     could reach. "Lady," said Lancelot, "if I could enter
+     yonder, would it please you?" "Enter," said she, "fair sweet
+     friend? How could this happen?" "Lady," said he, "if it
+     please you, it could happen lightly." "Certainly," said she,
+     "I should wish it willingly above everything." "Then, in
+     God's name," said he, "that shall well happen. For the iron
+     will never hold." "Wait, then," said she, "till I have gone
+     to bed." Then he drew the irons from their sockets so softly
+     that no noise was made and no bar broke."
+
+In this simple prose, sensuous and passionate for all its simplicity, is
+told the rest of the story. There are eighteen lines of it altogether in
+Dr. Sommer's reprint, but as these are long quarto lines, let us
+multiply them by some three to get the equivalent of the "skipping
+octosyllables." There will remain fifty to a hundred and fifty, with, in
+the prose, some extra matter not in the verse. But the acme of the
+contrast is reached in these words of the prose, which answer to some
+forty lines of the poet's watering-out. "Great was the joy that they
+made each other that night, for long had each suffered for the other.
+And when the day came, they parted." Beat that who can!
+
+Many years ago, and not a few before M. Gaston Paris had published his
+views, I read these two forms of the story in the valuable joint
+edition, verse and prose, of M. Jonckbloet, which some ruffian (may
+Heaven _not_ assoil him!) has since stolen or hidden from me. And I said
+then to myself, "There is no doubt which of these is the original."
+Thirty years later, with an unbroken critical experience of imaginative
+work in prose and verse during the interval, I read them again in Dr.
+Forster's edition of the verse and Dr. Sommer's of the prose, and said,
+"There is less doubt than ever." That the prose should have been
+prettified and platitudinised, decorated and diluted into the verse is a
+possibility which we know to be not only possible but likely, from a
+thousand more unfortunate examples. That the contrary process should
+have taken place is practically unexampled and, especially at that time,
+largely unthinkable. At any rate, whosoever did it had a much greater
+genius than Chrestien's.
+
+This is no place to argue out the whole question, but a single
+particular may be dealt with. The curiously silly passage about the bars
+above given is a characteristic example of unlucky and superfluous
+amplification of the perfectly natural question and answer of the prose,
+"May I come to you?" "Yes, but how?" an example to be paralleled by
+thousands of others at the time and by many more later. Taken the other
+way it would be a miracle. Prose abridgers of poetry did not go to work
+like that in the twelfth-thirteenth century--nor, even in the case of
+Charles Lamb, have they often done so since.
+
+It is, however, very disagreeable to have to speak disrespectfully of a
+writer so agreeable in himself and so really important in our story as
+Chrestien. His own gifts and performances are, as it seems to me, clear
+enough. He took from this or that source--his selection of the _Erec_
+and _Percivale_ matters, if not also that of _Yvain_, suggests others
+besides the, by that time as I think, concentrated Arthurian story--and
+from the Arthuriad itself the substance of the _Chevalier a la
+Charette_. He varied and dressed them up with pleasant etceteras, and
+in especial, sometimes, though not always, embroidered the already
+introduced love-motive with courtly fantasies and with a great deal of
+detail. I should not be at all disposed to object if somebody says that
+he, before any one else, set the type of the regular verse _Roman
+d'aventures_. It seems likely, again, from the pieces referred to above,
+that he may have had originals more definitely connected with Celtic
+sources, if not actually Celtic themselves, than those which have given
+us the mighty architectonic of the "Vulgate" _Arthur_. In his own way
+and place he is a great and an attractive figure--not least in the
+history of the novel. But I can see nothing in him that makes me think
+him likely, and much that makes me think him utterly unlikely, to be the
+author of what I conceive to be the greatest, the most epoch-making, and
+almost the originating conception of the novel-romance itself. Who it
+was that did conceive this great thing I do not positively know. All
+external evidence points to Walter Map; no internal evidence, that I
+have seen, seems to me really to point away from him. But if any one
+likes let us leave him a mere Eidolon, an earlier "Great Unknown." Our
+business is, once more, with what he, whoever he was, did.
+
+[Sidenote: The constitution of the Arthuriad.]
+
+The multiplicity of things done, whether by "him" or "them," is
+astonishing; and it is quite possible, indeed likely, that they were not
+all done by the same person. Mediaeval continuators (as has been seen in
+the case of Chrestien) worked after and into the work of each other in a
+rather uncanny fashion; and the present writer frankly confesses that he
+no more knows where Godfrey de Lagny took up the _Charette_, or the
+various other sequelists the _Percevale_, from Chrestien than he would
+have known, without confession, the books of the _Odyssey_ done by Mr.
+Broome and Mr. Fenton from those done by Mr. Pope. The _grand-oeuvre_
+is the combination of Lancelot as (1) lover of the Queen; (2) descendant
+of the Graalwards; (3) author, in consequence of his sin, of the
+general failure of the Round Table Graal-Quest; (4) father of its one
+successful but half-unearthly Seeker; (5) bringer-about (in more ways
+than one[28]) of the intestine dissension which facilitates the invasion
+of Mordred and the foreigners and so the Passing of Arthur, of his own
+rejection by the repentant Queen, and of his death. As regards minor
+details of plot and incident there have to be added the bringing in of
+the pre-Round Table part of the story by Lancelot's descent from King
+Ban and his connections with King Bors, both Arthur's old allies, and
+both, as we may call them, "Graal-heirs"; the further connection with
+the Merlin legend by Lancelot's fostering under the Lady of the
+Lake;[29] the exaltation, inspiring, and, as it were, unification of
+the scattered knight-adventures through Lancelot's constant presence as
+partaker, rescuer, and avenger;[30] the human interest given to the
+Graal-Quest (the earlier histories being strikingly lacking in this) by
+his failure, and a good many more. But above all there are the general
+characters of the knight and the Queen to make flesh and blood of the
+whole.
+
+Not merely the exact author or authors, but even the exact source or
+sources of this complicated, fateful, and exquisite imagination are,
+once more, not known. Years ago it was laid down finally by the most
+competent of possible authorities (the late Sir John Rhys) that "the
+love of Lancelot and Guinevere is unknown to Welsh literature."
+Originals for the "greatest knight" have been sought by guesswork, by
+idle play on words and names, if not also by positive forgery, in that
+Breton literature which does not exist. There do exist versions of the
+story in which Lancelot plays no very prominent part, and there is even
+one singular version--certainly late and probably devised by a proper
+moral man afraid of scandal--which makes Lancelot outlive the Queen,
+quite comfortably continuing his adventurous career (this is perhaps the
+"furthest" of the Unthinkable in literature), and (not, it may be owned,
+quite inconsistently) hints that the connection was merely Platonic
+throughout. These things are explicable, but better negligible. For my
+own part I have always thought that the loves of Tristram and Iseult
+(which, as has been said, were originally un-Arthurian) suggested the
+main idea to the author of it, being taken together with Guinevere's
+falseness with Mordred in the old quasi-chronicle, and perhaps the story
+of the abduction by Melvas (Meleagraunce), which seems to be possibly a
+genuine Welsh legend. There are in the Tristram-Iseult-Mark trio quite
+sufficient suggestions of Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur; while the far
+higher plane on which the novice-novelist sets his lovers, and even the
+very interesting subsequent exaltation of Tristram and Iseult themselves
+to familiarity and to some extent equality with the other pair, has
+nothing critically difficult in it.
+
+But this idea, great and promising as it was, required further
+fertilisation, and got it from another. The Graal story is (once more,
+according to authority of the greatest competence, and likely if
+anything to be biassed the other way) pretty certainly not Welsh in
+origin, and there is no reason to think that it originally had anything
+to do with Arthur. Even after it obeyed the strange "suck" of legends
+towards this centre whirlpool, or Loadstone Rock, of romance, it yielded
+nothing intimately connected with the Arthurian Legend itself at first,
+and such connection as succeeded seems pretty certainly[31] to be that
+of which Percevale is the hero, and an outlier, not an integral part.
+But either the same genius (as one would fain hope) as that which
+devised the profane romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, or another,
+further grafted or inarched the sacred romance of the Graal and its
+Quest with the already combined love-and-chivalry story. Lancelot, the
+greatest of knights, and of the true blood of the Graal-guardians, ought
+to accomplish the mysteries; but he cannot through sin, and that sin is
+this very love for Guinevere. The Quest, in which (despite warning and
+indeed previous experience) he takes part, not merely gives occasion for
+adventures, half-mystical, half-chivalrous, which far exceed in
+interest the earlier ones, but directly leads to the dispersion and
+weakening of the Round Table. And so the whole draws together to an end
+identical in part with that of the Chronicle story, but quite infinitely
+improved upon it.
+
+[Sidenote: Its approximation to the novel proper.]
+
+Now not only is there in this the creation of the novel _in posse_, of
+the romance _in esse_, but it is brought about in a curiously noteworthy
+fashion. A hundred years and more later the greatest known writer of the
+Middle Ages, and one of the three or four greatest of the world, defined
+the subjects of poetry as Love, War, and Religion, or in words which we
+may not unfairly translate by these. The earlier master recognised
+(practically for the first time) that the romance--that allotropic form
+(as the chemists might say) of poetry--must deal with the same. Now in
+these forms of the Arthurian legend, which are certainly anterior to the
+latter part of the twelfth century, there is a great deal of war and a
+good deal of religion, but these motives are mostly separated from each
+other, the earlier forms of the Arthur story having nothing to do with
+the Graal, and the earlier forms of the Graal story--so far as we can
+see--nothing, or extremely little, to do with Arthur. Nor had Love, in
+any proper and passionate sense of the word, anything to do with either.
+Women and marriage and breaches of marriage appear indeed; but the
+earlier Graal stories are dominated by the most ascetic
+virginity-worship, and the earlier Arthur-stories show absolutely
+nothing of the passion which is the subject of the magnificent overture
+of Mr. Swinburne's _Tristram_. Even this story of Tristram himself,
+afterwards fired and coloured by passion, seems at first to have shown
+nothing but the mixture of animalism, cruelty, and magic which is
+characteristic of the Celts.[32] Our magician of a very different
+gramarye, were he Walter or Chrestien or some third--Norman, Champenois,
+Breton,[33] or Englishman (Welshman or Irishman he pretty certainly was
+_not_)--had therefore before him, if not exactly dry bones, yet the
+half-vivified material of a chronicle of events on the one hand and a
+mystical dream-sermon on the other. He, or a French or English Pallas
+for him, had to "think of another thing."
+
+And so he called in Love to reinforce War and Religion and to do its
+proper office of uniting, inspiring, and producing Humanity. He
+effected, by the union of the three motives, the transformation of a
+mere dull record of confused fighting into a brilliant pageant of
+knightly adventure. He made the long-winded homilies and genealogies of
+the earlier Graal-legend at once take colour from the amorous and
+war-like adventures, raise these to a higher and more spiritual plane,
+and provide the due punishment for the sins of his erring characters.
+The whole story--at least all of it that he chose to touch and all that
+he chose to add--became alive. The bones were clothed with flesh and
+blood, the "wastable country verament" (as the dullest of the Graal
+chroniclers says in a phrase that applies capitally to his own work)
+blossomed with flower and fruit. Wars of Arthur with unwilling subjects
+or Saxons and Romans; treachery of his wife and nephew and his own
+death; miracle-history of the Holy Vessel and pedigree of its
+custodians; Round Table; these and many other things had lain as mere
+scraps and orts, united by no real plot, yielding no real characters,
+satisfying no real interest that could not have been equally satisfied
+by an actual chronicle or an actual religious-mystical discourse. And
+then the whole was suddenly knit into a seamless and shimmering web of
+romance, from the fancy of Uther for Igerne to the "departing of them
+all" in Lyonnesse and at Amesbury and at Joyous Gard. A romance
+undoubtedly, but also incidentally providing the first real novel-hero
+and the first real novel-heroine in the persons of the lovers who, as in
+the passage above translated, sometimes "made great joy of each other
+for that they had long caused each other much sorrow," and finally
+expiated in sorrow what was unlawful in their joy.
+
+Let us pass to these persons themselves.
+
+[Sidenote: Especially in the characters and relations of Lancelot and
+Guinevere.]
+
+The first point to note about Lancelot is the singular fashion in which
+he escapes one of the dangers of the hero. Aristotle had never said that
+a hero must be faultless; indeed, he had definitely said exactly the
+contrary, of at least the tragic hero. But one of the worst of the many
+misunderstandings of his dicta brought the wrong notion about, and
+Virgil--that exquisite craftsman in verse and phrase, but otherwise,
+perhaps, not great poet and very dangerous pattern--had confirmed this
+notion by his deplorable figurehead. It is also fair to confess that all
+except morbid tastes do like to see the hero win. But if he is to be a
+hero of Rymer, not merely
+
+    Like Paris handsome[34] and like Hector brave,
+
+but as pious as Aeneas; "a rich fellow enough," with blood hopelessly
+blue and morals spotlessly copy-bookish--in other words, a Sir Charles
+Grandison--he will duly meet with the detestation and "conspuing" of the
+elect. Almost the only just one of the numerous and generally silly
+charges latterly brought against Tennyson's Arthurian handling is that
+his conception of the blameless king does a little smack of this false
+idea, does something grow to it. It is one of the chief points in which
+he departed, not merely from the older stories (which he probably did
+not know), but from Malory's astonishing redaction of them (which he
+certainly did).
+
+[Sidenote: Lancelot.]
+
+But Lancelot escapes this worst of fates in the _Idylls_ themselves, and
+much more does he escape it in the originals. In the first place, though
+he invariably (or always till the Graal Quest) "wins through," he
+constantly does not do so without intermediate hairbreadth escapes, and
+even not a few adventures which are at first not escapes at all. And
+just as his perpetual bafflement in the Quest salts and seasons his
+triumphs in the saddle, so does the ruling passion of his sin save, from
+anything approaching mawkishness,[35] his innumerable and yet
+inoffensive virtues; his chastity, save in this instance, which chastity
+itself, by a further stroke of art, is saved from _niaiserie_ by the
+plotted adventures with Elaine; his courtesy, his mercifulness, his
+wonderfully early notion of a gentleman (_v. inf._), his invariable
+disregard of self, and yet his equally invariable naturalness. Pious
+Aeneas had not the least objection to bringing about the death of Dido,
+as he might have known he was doing (unless he was as great a fool as he
+is a prig); and he is probably never more disgusting or Pecksniffian
+than when he looks back on the flames of Dido's pyre and is really
+afraid that something unpleasant must have happened, though he can't
+think what the matter can be. But _he_, one feels sure, would never have
+lifted up his hand against a woman, unless she had richly deserved it on
+the strictest patriotic scores, as in the case of Helen, when his mamma
+fortunately interfered. On the other hand, Lancelot was "of the Asra who
+die when they love" and love till they die--nay, who would die if they
+did not love. But it is certain (for there is a very nice miniature of
+it reproduced from the MS. in M. Paulin Paris's abstract) that, for a
+moment, he drew his sword on Elaine to punish the deceit which made him
+unwittingly false to Guinevere. It is very shocking, no doubt, but
+exceedingly natural; and of course he did not kill or even (like
+Philaster) wound her, though nobody interfered to prevent him. Many of
+the incidents which bring out his character are well known to moderns by
+poem and picture, though others, as well worth knowing, are not. But the
+human contrasts of success and failure, of merit and sin, have never, I
+think, been quite brought out, and to bring them out completely here
+would take too much room. We may perhaps leave this other--quite
+other--"_First_ Gentleman in Europe" with the remark that Chrestien de
+Troyes gives only one side of him, and therefore does not give him at
+all. The Lancelot of board and bower, of travel and tournament, he does
+very fairly. But of the Lancelot of the woods and the hermitage, of the
+dream at the foot of the cross, of the mystic voyage and the just
+failing (if failing) effort of Carbonek, he gives, because he knows,
+nothing.
+
+[Sidenote: Guinevere.]
+
+Completed as he was, no matter for the moment by whom, he is thus the
+first hero of romance and nearly the greatest; but his lady is worthy of
+him, and she is almost more original as an individual. It is true that
+she is not the first heroine, as he is, if not altogether, almost the
+first hero. Helen was that, though very imperfectly revealed and
+gingerly handled. Calypso (hardly Circe) _might_ have been. Medea is
+perhaps nearer still, especially in Apollonius. But the Greek romancers
+were the first who had really busied themselves with the heroine: they
+took her up seriously and gave her a considerable position. But they did
+not succeed in giving her much character. The naughty _not_-heroine of
+Achilles Tatius, though she has less than none in Mr. Pope's supposed
+innuendo sense, alone has an approach to some in the other. As for the
+accomplished Guinevere's probable contemporary, the Ismene or Hysmine of
+Eustathius Macrembolites (_v. sup._ p. 18), she is a sort of
+Greek-mediaeval Henrietta Temple, with Mr. Meredith and Mr. Disraeli by
+turns holding the pen, though with neither of them supplying the brains.
+But Guinevere is a very different person; or rather, she _is_ a person,
+and the first. To appreciate her she must be compared with herself in
+earlier presentations, and then considered fully as she appears in the
+Vulgate--for Malory, though he has given much, has not given the whole
+of her, and Tennyson has painted only the last panel of the polyptych
+wholly, and has rather over-coloured that.[36]
+
+In what we may call the earliest representations of her, she has hardly
+any colour at all. She is a noble Roman lady, and very beautiful. For a
+time she is apparently very happy with her husband, and he with her; and
+if she seems to make not the slightest scruple about "taking up with"
+her nephew, co-regent and fellow rebel, why, noble Roman ladies thought
+nothing of divorce and not much of adultery. The only old Welsh story
+(the famous Melvas one so often referred to) that we have about her in
+much detail merely establishes the fact, pleasantly formulated by M.
+Paulin Paris, that she was "tres sujette a etre enlevee," but in itself
+(unless we admit the Peacockian triad of the "Three Fatal Slaps of the
+Isle of Britain" as evidence) again says nothing about her character.
+If, as seems probable if not certain, the _Launfal_ legend, with its
+libel on her, is of Breton origin, it makes her an ordinary Celtic
+princess, a spiritual sister of Iseult when she tried to kill Brengwain,
+and a cross between Potiphar's wife and Catherine of Russia, without any
+of the good nature and "gentlemanliness" of the last named. The real
+Guinevere, the Guinevere of the Vulgate and partly of Malory, is freed
+from the colourlessness and the discreditable end of Geoffrey's queen,
+transforms the promiscuous and rather _louche_ Melvas incident into an
+important episode of her epic or romantic existence, and gives the lie,
+even in her least creditable or least charming moments, to the _Launfal_
+libel. As before in Lancelot's case, details of her presentation had in
+some cases best be either translated in full or omitted, but I cannot
+refuse myself the pleasure of attempting, with however clumsy a hand, a
+portrait of our, as I believe, English Helen, who gave in French
+language to French, and not only French literature, the pattern of a
+heroine.
+
+There is not, I think, any ancient authority for the rather commonplace
+suggestion, unwisely adopted by Tennyson, that Guinevere fell in love
+with Lancelot when he was sent as an ambassador to fetch her; thus
+merely repeating Iseult and Tristram, and anticipating Suffolk and
+Margaret. In fact, according to the best evidence, Lancelot could not
+have been old enough, if he was even born. On the contrary, nothing
+could be better than the presentation of her introduction to Arthur and
+the course of the wooing in the Vulgate--the other "blessed original."
+She first sees Arthur as a foe from the walls of besieged Carmelide, and
+admires his valour; she has further occasion to admire it when, as a
+friend, he rescues her father, showing himself, as what he really was in
+his youth, his own best knight. The pair are genuinely in love with each
+other, and the betrothal and parting for fresh fight are the most
+gracious passages of the _Merlin_ book, except the better version (_v.
+sup._) of the love of Merlin himself and the afterwards libelled
+Viviane. Anyhow, she was married because she fell in love with him, and
+there is no evidence to show that she and Arthur lived otherwise than
+happily together. But, if all tales were true, she had no reason to
+regard him as a very faithful husband or a blameless man. She may not
+have known (for nobody but Merlin apparently did know) the early and
+unwitting incest of the King and his half-sister Margause; but the
+extreme ease with which he adopted her own treacherous foster-sister,
+the "false Guinevere," and his proceedings with the Saxon enchantress
+Camilla, were very strong "sets off" to her own conduct. Also she had a
+most disagreeable[37] sister-in-law in Morgane-la-Fee. These are not in
+the least offered as excuses, but merely as "lights." Indeed Guinevere
+never seems to have hated or disliked her husband, though he often gave
+her cause; and if, until the great repentance, she thought more lightly
+of "spouse-breach" than Lancelot did, that is not uncharacteristic of
+women.[38] In fact, she is a very perfect (not of course in the moral
+sense) gentlewoman. She is at once popular with the knights, and loses
+that popularity rather by Lancelot's fault than by her own, while
+Gawain, who remains faithful to her to the bitter end, or at least till
+the luckless slaughter of his brethren, declares at the beginning that
+she is the fairest and most gracious, and will be the wisest and best of
+queens. She shows something very like humour in the famous and fateful
+remark (uttered, it would seem, without the slightest ill or double
+meaning at the time) as to Gawain's estimate of Lancelot.[39] She seems
+to have had an agreeable petulance (notice, for instance, the rebuke of
+Kay at the opening of the _Ywain_ story and elsewhere), which sometimes,
+as it naturally would, rises to passionate injustice, as Lancelot
+frequently discovered. She is, in fact, always passionate in one or
+other sense of that great and terrible and infinite[40] word, but never
+tragedy-queenish or vixenish. She falls in love with Lancelot because he
+falls in love with her, and because she cannot help it. False as she is
+to husband and to lover, to her court and her country,[41] it can hardly
+be said that any act of hers, except the love itself and its
+irresistible consequences, is faulty. She is not capricious,
+extravagant, or tyrannical; in her very jealousy she is not cruel or
+revengeful (the original Iseult would certainly have had Elaine poisoned
+or poniarded, for which there was ample opportunity). If she torments
+her lover, that is because she loves him. If she is unjust to him, that
+is because she is a woman. Her last speech to Lancelot after the
+catastrophe--Tennyson should have, as has been said, paraphrased this as
+he paraphrased the passing of her husband, and from the same texts, and
+we should then have had another of the greatest things of English
+poetry--shows a noble nature with the [Greek: hamartia] present, but
+repented in a strange and great mixture of classical and Christian
+tragedy. There is little told in a trustworthy fashion about her
+personal appearance. But if Glastonbury traditions about her bones be
+true, she was certainly (again like Helen) "divinely tall." And if the
+suggestions of Hawker's "Queen Gwennyvar's Round"[42] in the sea round
+Tintagel be worked out a little, it will follow that her eyes were
+divinely blue.
+
+[Sidenote: Some minor points.]
+
+When such very high praise is given to the position of the (further)
+accomplished Arthur-story, it is of course not intended to bestow that
+praise on any particular MS. or printed version that exists. It is in
+the highest degree improbable that, whether the original magician was
+Map, or Chrestien, or anybody else (to repeat a useful formula), we
+possess an exact and exclusive copy of the form into which he himself threw
+the story. Independently of the fact that no MS., verse or prose, of anything
+like the complete story seems old enough, independently of the enormous and
+almost innumerable separable accretions, the so-called Vulgate cycle of
+"_Graal-Merlin-Arthur-Lancelot-Graal-Quest-Arthur's-Death_" has
+considerable variants--the most important and remarkable of which by far
+is the large alteration or sequel of the "Vulgate" _Merlin_ which Malory
+preferred. In the "Vulgate" itself, too, there are things which were
+certainly written either by the great contriver in nodding moods, or by
+somebody else,--in fact no one can hope to understand mediaeval
+literature who forgets that no mediaeval writer could ever "let a thing
+alone": he simply _must_ add or shorten, paraphrase or alter. I rather
+doubt whether the Great Unknown himself meant _both_ the amours of
+Arthur with Camilla and the complete episode of the false Guinevere to
+stand side by side. The first is (as such justifications go) a
+sufficient justification of Guinevere by itself; and the conduct of
+Arthur in the second is such a combination of folly, cruelty, and all
+sorts of despicable behaviour that it overdoes the thing. So, too,
+Lancelot's "abscondences," with or without madness, are too many and too
+prolonged.[43] The long and totally uninteresting campaign against
+Claudas, during the greater part of which Lancelot (who is most of all
+concerned) is absent, and in which he takes no part or interest when
+present, is another great blot. Some of these things, but not all,
+Malory remedied by omission.
+
+To sum up, and even repeat a little, in speaking so highly of this
+development--French beyond all doubt as a part of literature, whatever
+the nationality, domicile, and temper of the person or persons who
+brought it about--I do not desire more to emphasise what I believe to be
+a great and not too well appreciated truth than to guard against that
+exaggeration which dogs and discredits literary criticism. Of course no
+single redaction of the legend in the late twelfth or earliest
+thirteenth century contains the story, the whole story, and nothing but
+the story as I have just outlined it. Of course the words used do not
+apply fully to Malory's English redaction of three centuries later--work
+of genius as this appears to me to be. Yet further, I should be fully
+disposed to allow that it is only by reading the _posse_ into the
+_esse_, under the guidance of later developments of the novel itself,
+that the estimate which I have given can be entirely justified. But this
+process seems to me to be perfectly legitimate, and to be, in fact, the
+only process capable of giving us literary-historical criticism that is
+worth having. The writer or writers, known or unknown, whose work we
+have been discussing, have got the plot, have got the characters, have
+got the narrative faculty required for a complete novel-romance. If they
+do not quite know what to do with these things it is only because the
+time is not yet. But how much they did, and of how much more they
+foreshadowed the doing, the extracts following should show better than
+any "talk about it."
+
+     [_Lancelot, still under the tutelage of the Lady of the Lake
+     and ignorant of his own parentage, has met his cousins,
+     Lionel and Bors, and has been greatly drawn to them._]
+
+     [Sidenote: Illustrative extracts translated from the
+     "Vulgate." The youth of Lancelot.]
+
+     Now turns herself the Lady back to the Lake, and takes the
+     children with her. And when she had gone[44] a good way, she
+     called Lancelot a little way off the road and said to him
+     very kindly, "King's son,[45] how wast thou so bold as to
+     call Lionel thy cousin? for he _is_ a king's son, and of not
+     a little more worth and gentry than men think." "Lady," said
+     he, who was right ashamed, "so came the word into my mouth
+     by adventure that I never took any heed of it." "Now tell
+     me," said she, "by the faith thou owest me, which thinkest
+     thou to be the greater gentleman, thyself or him?" "Lady,"
+     said he, "you have adjured me strongly, for I owe no one
+     such faith as I owe you, my lady and my mother: nor know I
+     how much of a gentleman I am by lineage. But, by the faith I
+     owe you, I would not myself deign to be abashed at that for
+     which I saw him weep.[46] And they have told me that all men
+     have sprung from one man and one woman: nor know I for what
+     reason one has more gentry than another, unless he win it by
+     prowess, even as lands and other honours. But know you for
+     very truth that if greatness of heart made a gentleman I
+     would think yet to be one of the greatest." "Verily, fair
+     son," said the Lady, "it shall appear. And I say to you that
+     you lose nothing of being one of the best gentlemen in the
+     world, if your heart fail you not." "How, Lady!" said he,
+     "say you this truly, _as_ my lady?" And she said, "Yes,
+     without fail." "Lady," said he, "blessed be you of God, that
+     you said it to me so soon [_or_ as soon as you have said
+     it]. For to that will you make me come which I never thought
+     to attain. Nor had I so much desire of anything as of
+     possessing gentry."
+
+     [_The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere. The Lady of
+     the Lake has prevailed upon the King to dub Lancelot on St.
+     John's Day (Midsummer, not Christmas). His protectress
+     departing, he is committed to the care of Ywain, and a
+     conversation arises about him. The Queen asks to see him._]
+
+     [Sidenote: The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere.]
+
+     Then bid he [the King] Monseigneur[47] Ywain that he should
+     go and look for Lancelot. "And let him be equipped as
+     handsomely as you know is proper: for well know I that he
+     has plenty." Then the King himself told the Queen how the
+     Lady of the Lake had requested that he would not make
+     Lancelot knight save in his own arms and dress. And the
+     Queen marvelled much at this, and thought long till she saw
+     him. So Messire Ywain went to the Childe [_vallet_] and had
+     him clothed and equipped in the best way he could: and when
+     he saw that nothing could be bettered, he led him to Court
+     on his own horse, which was right fair. But he brought him
+     not quietly. For there was so much people about that the
+     whole street was full: and the news was spread through all
+     the town that the fair Childe who came yester eve should be
+     a knight to-morrow, and was now coming to Court in knightly
+     garb. Then sprang to the windows they of the town, both men
+     and women. And when they saw him pass they said that never
+     had they seen so fair a Childe-knight. So he came to the
+     Court and alighted from his horse: and the news of him
+     spread through hall and chamber; and knights and dames and
+     damsels hurried forth. And even the King and the Queen went
+     to the windows. So when the Childe had dismounted, Messire
+     Ywain took him by the hand, and led him by it up to the
+     Hall.
+
+     The King and the Queen came to meet him: and both took him
+     by his two hands and went to seat themselves on a couch:
+     while the Childe seated himself before them on the fresh
+     green grass with which the Hall was spread. And the King
+     gazed on him right willingly: for if he had seemed fair at
+     his first coming, it was nothing to the beauty that he now
+     had. And the King thought he had mightily grown in stature
+     and thews.[48] So the Queen prayed that God might make him a
+     man of worth, "for right plenty of beauty has He given him,"
+     and she looked at the Childe very sweetly: and so did he at
+     her as often as he could covertly direct his eyes towards
+     her. Also marvelled he much how such great beauty as he saw
+     appear in her could come: for neither that of his lady, the
+     Lady of the Lake, nor of any woman that he had ever seen,
+     did he prize aught as compared with hers. And no wrong had
+     he if he valued no other lady against the Queen: for she was
+     the Lady of Ladies and the Fountain of Beauty. But if he had
+     known the great worthiness that was in her he would have
+     been still more fain to gaze on her. For none, neither poor
+     nor rich, was her equal.
+
+     So she asked Monseigneur Ywain what was the Childe's name,
+     and he answered that he knew not. "And know you," said she,
+     "whose son he is and of what birth?" "Lady," said he, "nay,
+     except I know so much as that he is of the land of Gaul. For
+     his speech bewrayeth him."[49] Then the Queen took him by
+     the hand and asked him of whom he came. And when he felt it
+     [the touch] he shuddered as though roused from sleep, and
+     thought of her so hard that he knew not what she said to
+     him. And she perceived that he was much abashed, and so
+     asked him a second time, "Tell me whence you come." So he
+     looked at her very sheepishly and said, with a sigh, that he
+     knew not. And she asked him what was his name; and he
+     answered that he knew not that. So now the Queen saw well
+     that he was abashed and _overthought_.[50] But she dared not
+     think that it was for her: and nevertheless she had some
+     suspicion of it, and so dropped the talk. But that she might
+     not make the disorder of his mind worse, she rose from her
+     seat and, in order that no one might think any evil or
+     perceive what she suspected, said that the Childe seemed to
+     her not very wise, and whether wise or not had been ill
+     brought up. "Lady," said Messire Ywain, "between you and me,
+     we know nothing about him: and perchance he is forbidden[51]
+     to tell his name or who he is." And she said, "It may well
+     be so," but she said it so low that the Childe heard her
+     not.
+
+     [_Here follows (with a very little surplusage removed
+     perhaps) the scene which Dante has made world-famous, but
+     which Malory (I think for reasons) has "cut." I trust it is
+     neither Philistinism nor perversity which makes me think of
+     it a little, though only a little, less highly than some
+     have done. There is (and after all this makes it all the
+     more interesting for us historians) the least little bit of
+     anticipation of_ Marivaudage _about it, and less of the
+     adorable simplicity such as that (a little subsequent to the
+     last extract given) where Lancelot, having forgotten to take
+     leave of the Queen on going to his first adventure, and
+     having returned to do so, kneels to her, receives her hand
+     to raise him from the ground, "and much was his joy to feel
+     it bare in his." But the beauty of what follows is
+     incontestable, and that Guinevere was "exceeding wise in
+     love" is certain._]
+
+     [Sidenote: The scene of the kiss.]
+
+     "Ha!" said she then, "I know who you are--Lancelot of the
+     Lake is your name." And he was silent. "They know it at
+     court," said she, "this sometime. Messire Gawain was the
+     first to bring your name there...." Then she asked him why
+     he had allowed the worst man in the world to lead him by
+     the bridle. "Lady," said he, "as one who had command neither
+     of his heart nor of his body." "Now tell me," said she,
+     "were you at last year's assembly?" "Yes, Lady," said he.
+     "And what arms did you bear?" "Lady, they were all of
+     vermilion." "By my head," said she, "you say true. And why
+     did you do such deeds at the meeting the day before
+     yesterday?" Then he began to sigh very very deeply. And the
+     Queen cut him short as well, knowing how it was with him.
+
+     "Tell me," she said, "plainly, how it is. I will never
+     betray you. But I know that you did it for some lady. Now,
+     tell me, by the faith you owe me, who she is." "Ah, Lady,"
+     said he, "I see well that it behoves me to speak. Lady, it
+     is you." "I!" said she. "It was not for me you took the
+     spears that my maiden brought you. For I took care to put
+     myself out of the commission." "Lady," said he, "I did for
+     others what I ought, and for you what I could." "Tell me,
+     then, for whom have you done all the things that you _have_
+     done?" "Lady," said he, "for you." "How," said she, "do you
+     love me so much?" "So much, Lady, as I love neither myself
+     nor any other." "And since when have you loved me thus?"
+     "Since the hour when I was called knight and yet was not
+     one."[52] "Then, by the faith you owe me, whence came this
+     love that you have set upon me?" Now as the Queen said these
+     words it happened that the Lady of the Puy of Malahault[53]
+     coughed on purpose, and lifted her head, which she had held
+     down. And he understood her now, having oft heard her
+     before: and looked at her and knew her, and felt in his
+     heart such fear and anguish that he could not answer the
+     Queen. Then began he to sigh right deeply, and the tears
+     fell from his eyes so thick, that the garment he wore was
+     wet to the knees. And the more he looked at the Lady of
+     Malahault the more ill at ease was his heart. Now the Queen
+     noticed this and saw that he looked sadly towards the place
+     where her ladies were, and she reasoned with him. "Tell me,"
+     she said, "whence comes this love that I am asking you
+     about?" and he tried as hard as he could to speak, and said,
+     "Lady, from the time I have said." "How?" "Lady, you did it,
+     when you made me your friend, if your mouth lied not." "My
+     friend?" she said; "and how?" "I came before you when I had
+     taken leave of my Lord the King all armed except my head and
+     my hands. And then I commended you to God, and said that,
+     wherever I was, I was your knight: and you said that you
+     would have me to be your knight and your friend. And then I
+     said, 'Adieu, Lady,' and you said, 'Adieu, fair sweet
+     friend.' And never has that word left my heart, and it is
+     that word that has made me a good knight and valiant--if I
+     be so: nor ever have I been so ill-bested as not to remember
+     that word. That word comforts me in all my annoys. That word
+     has kept me from all harm, and freed me from all peril, and
+     fills me whenever I hunger. Never have I been so poor but
+     that word has made me rich." "By my faith," said the Queen,
+     "that word was spoken in a good hour, and God be praised
+     when He made me speak it. Still, I did not set it as high as
+     you did: and to many a knight have I said it, when I gave no
+     more thought to the saying. But _your_ thought was no base
+     one, but gentle and debonair; wherefore joy has come to you
+     of it, and it has made you a good knight. Yet, nevertheless,
+     this way is not that of knights who make great matter to
+     many a lady of many a thing which they have little at heart.
+     And your seeming shows me that you love one or other of
+     these ladies better than you love me. For you wept for fear
+     and dared not look straight at them: so that I well see that
+     your thought is not so much of me as you pretend. So, by the
+     faith you owe the thing you love best in the world, tell me
+     which one of the three you love so much?" "Ah! Lady," said
+     he, "for the mercy of God, as God shall keep me, never had
+     one of them my heart in her keeping." "This will not do,"
+     said the Queen, "you cannot dissemble. For many another such
+     thing have I seen, and I know that your heart is there as
+     surely as your body is here." And this she said that she
+     might well see how she might put him ill at ease. For she
+     thought surely enough that he meant no love save to her, or
+     ill would it have gone on the day of the Black Arms.[54] And
+     she took a keen delight in seeing and considering his
+     discomfort. But he was in such anguish that he wanted little
+     of swooning, save that fear of the ladies before him kept
+     him back. And the Queen herself perceived it at the sight of
+     his changes of colour, and caught him by the shoulder that
+     he might not fall, and called to Galahault. Then the prince
+     sprang forward and ran to his friend, and saw that he was
+     disturbed thus, and had great pain in his own heart for it,
+     and said, "Ah, Lady! tell me, for God's sake, what has
+     happened." And the Queen told him the conversation. "Ah,
+     Lady!" said Galahault, "mercy, for God's sake, or you may
+     lose me him by such wrath, and it would be too great pity."
+     "Certes," said she, "that is true. But know you why he has
+     done such feats of arms?" "Nay, surely, Lady," said he.
+     "Sir," said she, "if what he tells me is true, it was for
+     me." "Lady," said he, "as God shall keep me, I can believe
+     it. For just as he is more valiant than other men, so is
+     his heart truer than all theirs." "Verily," said she, "you
+     would say well that he is valiant if you knew what deeds he
+     has done since he was made knight," and then she told him
+     all the chivalry of Lancelot ... and how he had done it all
+     for a single word of hers [_Galahault tells her more, and
+     begs mercy for L._]. "He could ask me nothing," sighed she,
+     "that I could fairly refuse him, but he will ask me nothing
+     at all."... "Lady," said Galahault, "certainly he has no
+     power to do so. For one loves nothing that one does not
+     fear." [_And then comes the immortal kiss, asked by the
+     Prince, delayed a moment by the Queen's demur as to time and
+     place, brought on by the "Galeotto"-speech._ "Let us three
+     corner close together as if we were talking secrets,"
+     _vouchsafed by Guinevere in the words_, "Why should I make
+     me longer prayer for what I wish more than you or he?"
+     _Lancelot still hangs back, but the Queen_ "takes him by the
+     chin and kisses him before Galahault with a kiss long
+     enough" so that the Lady of Malahault knows it.] And then
+     said the Queen, who was a right wise and gracious lady,
+     "Fair sweet friend, so much have you done that I am yours,
+     and right great joy have I thereof. Now see to it that the
+     thing be kept secret, as it should be. For I am one of the
+     ladies of the world who have the fairest fame, and if my
+     praise grew worse through you, then it would be a foul and
+     shameful thing."
+
+[Sidenote: Some further remarks on the novel character of the story.]
+
+A little more comment on this cento, and especially on the central
+passage of it, can hardly be, and ought certainly not to be, avoided in
+such a work as this, even if, like most summaries, it be something of a
+repetition. It must surely be obvious to any careful reader that here is
+something much more than--unless his reading has been as wide elsewhere
+as it is careful here--he expected from Romance in the commoner and
+half-contemptuous acceptation of that word. Lancelot he may, though he
+should not, still class as a mere _amoureux transi_--a nobler and
+pluckier Silvius in an earlier _As Yon Like It_, and with a greater than
+Phoebe for idol. Malory ought to be enough to set him right there: he
+need even not go much beyond Tennyson, who has comprehended Lancelot
+pretty correctly, if not indeed pretty adequately. But Malory has left
+out a great deal of the information which would have enabled his
+readers to comprehend Guinevere; and Tennyson, only presenting her in
+parts, has allowed those parts, especially the final and only full
+presentation, great as it is, to be too much influenced by his certainly
+unfortunate other presentation of Arthur as a blameless king.
+
+I do not say that the actual creator of the Vulgate Guinevere, whoever
+he was, has wrought her into a novel-character of the first class. It
+would have been not merely a miracle (for miracles often happen), but
+something more, if he had. If you could take Beatrix Esmond at a better
+time, Argemone Lavington raised to a higher power, and the spirit of all
+that is best and strongest and least purely paradoxical in Meredith's
+heroines, and work these three graces into one woman, adding the passion
+of Tennyson's own Fatima and the queenliness of Helen herself, it might
+be something like the achieved Guinevere who is still left to the
+reader's imagination to achieve. But the Unknown has given the hints of
+all this; and curiously enough it is only of _English_ novel-heroines
+that I can think in comparison and continuation of her. This book, if it
+is ever finished, will show, I hope, some knowledge of French ones: I
+can remember none possessing any touch of Guineveresque quality. Dante,
+if his poetic nature had taken a different bent, and Shakespeare, if he
+had only chosen, could have been her portrayers singly; no others that I
+can think of, and certainly no Frenchman.
+
+[Sidenote: And the personages.]
+
+But here Guinevere's creator or expounder has done more for her than
+merely indicate her charm. Her "fear for name and fame" is not exactly
+"crescent"--it is there from the first, and seems to have nothing either
+cowardly or merely selfish in it, but only that really "last infirmity
+of noble minds," the shame of shame even in doing things shameful or
+shameless. I have seldom seen justice done to her magnificent
+fearlessness in all her dangers. Her graciousness as a Queen has been
+more generally admitted, but, once again, the composition and complexity
+of her fits of jealousy have never, I think, been fully rationalised.
+Here, once more, we must take into account that difference of age which
+is so important. _He_ thinks nothing of it; _she_ never forgets it. And
+in almost all the circumstances where this rankling kindles into
+wrath--whether with no cause at all, as in most cases, or with cause
+more apparent than real, as in the Elaine business--study of particulars
+will show how easily they might be wrought out into the great character
+scenes of which they already contain the suggestion. _This_ Guinevere
+would never have "taken up" (to use purposely a vulgar phrase for what
+would have been a vulgar thing) with Mordred,[55] either for himself or
+for the kingdom that he was trying to steal. And I am bound to say again
+that much as I have read of purely French romance--that is to say,
+French not merely in language but in certain origin--I know nothing and
+nobody like her in it.
+
+That Guinevere, like Charlotte, was "a married lady," that, unlike
+Charlotte, she forgot the fact, and that Lancelot, though somewhat
+Wertheresque in some of his features, was not quite so "moral" as that
+very dull young man, are facts which I wish neither to suppress nor to
+dwell upon. We may cry "Agreed" here to the indictment, and all its
+consequences. They are not the question.
+
+The question is the suggesting of novel-romance elements which forms the
+aesthetic solace of this ethical sin. It should be seen at once that the
+Guinevere of the Vulgate, and her fault or fate, provide a character and
+career of no small complexity. It has been already said that to
+represent her as after a fashion intercepted by love for Lancelot on her
+way to Arthur, like Iseult of Ireland or Margaret of Anjou, is, so to
+speak, as unhistorical as it is insufficiently artistic. We cannot,
+indeed, borrow Diderot's speech to Rousseau and say, "C'est le pont aux
+anes," but it certainly would not have been the way of the Walter whom I
+favour, though I think it might have been the way of the Chrestien that
+I know. Guinevere, when she meets her lover, rescuer, and doomsman, is
+no longer a girl, and Lancelot is almost a boy. It is not, in the common
+and cheap misuse of the term, the most "romantic" arrangement, but some
+not imperfect in love-lore have held that a woman's love is never so
+strong as when she is past girlhood and well approaching age, and that
+man's is never stronger than when he is just not a boy. Lancelot himself
+has loved no woman (except his quasi-mother, the Lady of the Lake), and
+will love none after he has fulfilled the Dead Shepherd's "saw of
+might." She _has_ loved; dispute this and you not only cancel gracious
+scenes of the text, but spoil the story; but she has, though probably
+she does not yet know it, ceased to love,[56] and not without some
+reason. To say no more about Arthur's technical "blamelessness," he has,
+by the coming of Lancelot, ceased to be altogether heroic. Though never
+a mere petulant and ferocious dotard as the _Chansons_ too often
+represent Charlemagne, he is very far from being a wise ruler or even
+baron. He makes rash promises and vows, accepts charges on very slight
+evidence, and seems to have his knights by no means "in hand." So, too,
+though never a coward or weakling, he seems pretty nearly to have lost
+the pluck and prowess which had won Guinevere's love under the walls of
+Carmelide, and of which the last display is in the great fight with his
+sister's lover, Sir Accolon. All this may not excuse Guinevere's conduct
+to the moralist; it certainly makes that conduct artistically probable
+and legitimate to the critic, as a foundation for novel-character.
+
+Her lover may look less promising, at least at the moment of
+presentation; and indeed it is true that while "la donna e _im_mobile,"
+in essentials and possibilities alike, forms of man, though never losing
+reality and possibility, pass at times out of possible or at least easy
+recognition. Anybody who sees in the Lancelot of the foregoing scene
+only a hobbledehoy and milksop who happens to have a big chest, strong
+arms, and plenty of mere fighting spirit, will never grasp him. Hardly
+better off will be he who takes him--as the story _does_ give some
+handles for taking him--to be merely one of the too common examples of
+humanity who sin and repent, repent and sin, with a sort of
+Americanesque notion of spending dollars in this world and laying them
+up in another. Malory has on the whole done more justice to the
+possibilities of the Vulgate Lancelot than he has to Guinevere, and
+Tennyson has here improved on Malory. He has, indeed, very nearly "got"
+Lancelot, but not quite. To get him wholly would have required Tennyson
+for form and Browning for analysis of character; while even this
+_mistura mirabilis_ would have been improved for the purpose by touches
+not merely of Morris and Swinburne, but of lesser men like Kingsley and
+even George Macdonald. To understand Lancelot you must previously
+understand, or by some kind of intuition divine, the mystical element
+which his descent from the Graal-Wardens confers; the essential or
+quintessential chivalric quality which his successive creators agreed in
+imparting to him; the all-conquering gift so strangely tempered by an
+entire freedom from the boasting and the rudeness of the _chanson_ hero;
+the actual checks and disasters which his cross stars bring on him; his
+utter loyalty in all things save one to the king; and last and mightiest
+of all, his unquenchable and unchangeable passion for the Queen.
+
+Hence what they said to him in one of his early adventures, with no
+great ill following, "Fair Knight, thou art unhappy," was always true in
+a higher sense. He may have been Lord of Joyous Gard, in title and fact;
+but his own heart was always a Garde Douloureuse--a _cor
+luctificabile_--pillowed on idle triumphs and fearful hopes and
+poisoned satisfactions, and bafflements where he would most fain have
+succeeded. He has almost had to have the first kiss forced on him; he is
+refused the last on grounds of which he himself cannot deny the
+validity. Guinevere is a tragic figure in the truest and deepest sense
+of the term, and, as we have tried to show, she is amply complex in
+character and temperament. But it is questionable whether Lancelot is
+not more tragic and more complex still.
+
+[Sidenote: Books.]
+
+It may perhaps without impropriety be repeated that these are not mere
+fancies of the writer, but things reasonably suggested by and solidly
+based upon "the French books," when these later are collated and, so to
+speak, "checked" by Malory and the romances of adventure branching off
+from them. But Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot by no means exhaust the
+material for advanced and complicated novel-work--in character as well
+as incident--provided by the older forms of the Legend. There is Gawain,
+who has to be put together from the sort of first draft of Lancelot
+which he shows in the earlier versions, and the light-o'-love opposite
+which he becomes in the later, a contrast continued in the Amadis and
+Galaor figures of the Spanish romances and their descendants. There is
+the already glanced at group of Arthur's sisters or half-sisters, left
+mere sketches and hints, but most interesting. Not to be tedious, we
+need not dwell on Palomides, a very promising Lancelot unloved; on
+Lamoracke, left provokingly obscure, but shadowing a most important
+possibility in the unwritten romance of one of those very sisters; Bors,
+of whom Tennyson has made something, but not enough, in the later
+_Idylls_; and others. But it is probably unnecessary to carry the
+discussion of this matter further. It has been discussed and illustrated
+at some length, because it shows how early the elements, not merely of
+romance but of the novel in the fullest sense, existed in French
+literature.
+
+     [_Here follows the noble passage above referred to between
+     Lancelot and King Bagdemagus after the death of
+     Meleagraunce, whose cousin Lancelot has just slain in
+     single combat for charging him with treason. He has kept his
+     helm on, but doffs it at the King's request._]
+
+And when the King saw him he ran to kiss him, and began to make such joy
+of him as none could overgo. But Lancelot said, "Ah, Sir! for God's
+sake, make no joy or feast for me. Certainly you should make none, for
+if you knew the evil I have done you, you would hate me above all men in
+the world." "Oh! Lancelot," said he, "tell it me not, for I
+understand[57] too well what you would say; but I will know[57] nothing
+of it, because it might be such a thing" as would part them for ever.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[14] The subdivision of the _gestes_ does not matter: they were all
+connected closely or loosely--except the Crusading section, and even
+that falls under the Christian _v._ Saracen grouping if not under the
+Carlovingian. The real "outside" members are few, late, and in almost
+every case unimportant.
+
+[15] There are comic _episodes_ elsewhere; but almost the whole of this
+poem turns on the _gabz_ or burlesque boasts of the paladins.--It may be
+wise here to anticipate an objection which may be taken to these remarks
+on the _chansons_. I have been asked whether I know M. Bedier's handling
+of them; and, by an odd coincidence, within a few hours of the question
+I saw an American statement that this excellent scholar's researches
+"have revised our conceptions" of the matter. No one can exceed me in
+respect for perhaps the foremost of recent scholars in Old French. But
+my "conception" of the _chansons_ was formed long before he wrote, not
+from that of any of his predecessors, but from the _chansons_
+themselves. It is therefore not subject to "revisal" except from my own
+re-reading, and such re-reading has only confirmed it.
+
+[16] It is not of course intended to be preferred to the far more widely
+known tale in which the heroine bears the same name, and which will be
+mentioned below. But if it is less beautiful such beauty as it has is
+free from the slightest _morbidezza_.
+
+[17] And to this introduction our dealings with it here may be confined.
+The accounts of the siege itself are of much less interest, especially
+in connection with our special subject.
+
+[18] A sort of companion handbook to the first part of this volume will
+be found in the present writer's sketch of twelfth and thirteenth
+century European literature, under the title of _The Flourishing of
+Romance and the Rise of Allegory_, in Messrs. Blackwood's _Periods of
+European Literature_ (Edinburgh and London, 1897), and another in his
+_Short History of French Literature_ (Oxford, 7th ed. at press).
+
+[19] It is scarcely rash to say that Cressid is the first representative
+of this dread and delightful entity, and the ancestress of all its
+embodiments since in fiction, as Cleopatra seems to have been in
+history. No doubt "it" was of the beginning, but it lacked its _vates_.
+Helen was different.
+
+[20] _Faerie Queene_, v. iv. 1-20.
+
+[21] I hope I may be allowed to emphasise the disclaimer, which I have
+already made more than once elsewhere, of the very slightest disrespect
+to this admirable scholar. The presumption and folly of such disrespect
+would be only inferior to its ingratitude, for the indulgence with which
+M. Paris consistently treated my own somewhat rash adventures in Old
+French was extraordinary. But as one's word is one's word so one's
+opinion is one's opinion.
+
+[22] Sometimes _de_, but _a_ seems more analogical.
+
+[23] Chrestien was rather like Chaucer in being apt not to finish. Even
+the _Charette_ owes its completion (in an extent not exactly
+determinable) to a certain Godfrey de Lagny (Laigny, etc.).
+
+[24] Of course it is easy enough to assign explanations of it, from the
+vehicle of criminals to the scaffold downwards; but it remains a
+convention--very much of the same kind as that which ordains (or used to
+ordain) that a gentleman may not carry a parcel done up in newspaper,
+though no other form of wrapping really stains his honour.
+
+[25] Neither he nor Malory gives one of the most gracious parts of
+it--the interview between Lancelot and King Bagdemagus, _v. inf._ p. 54.
+
+[26] Material (chamois skin)? or garment? Not common in O.F., I think,
+for _camisia_; but Spenser (_Faerie Queene_, II. iii. xxvi.) has (as
+Prof. Gregory Smith reminds me) "a silken _camus_ lilly whight."
+
+[27] As does Pyramus's--or Bottom's--objection to the wall.
+
+[28] This part of the matter has received too little attention in modern
+studies of the subject: partly because it was clumsily handled by some
+of the probably innumerable and certainly undiscoverable meddlers with
+the Vulgate. The unpopularity of Lancelot and his kin is not due merely
+to his invincibility and their not always discreet partisanship. The
+older "Queen's knights" must have naturally felt her devotion to him;
+his "undependableness"--in consequence not merely of his fits of madness
+but of his chivalrously permissible but very inconvenient habit of
+disguising himself and taking the other side--must have annoyed the
+whole Table. Yet these very things, properly managed, help to create and
+complicate the "novel" character. For one of the most commonly and not
+the least justly charged faults of the average romance is its deficiency
+in combined plot and character-interest--the presence in it, at most, of
+a not too well-jointed series of episodes, possibly leading to a death
+or a marriage, but of little more than chronicle type. This fault has
+been exaggerated, but it exists. Now it will be one main purpose of the
+pages which follow to show that there is, in the completed Arthuriad,
+something quite different from and far beyond this--something perhaps
+imperfectly realised by any one writer, and overlaid and disarranged by
+the interpolations or misinterpretations of others, but still a "mind"
+at work that keeps the "mass" alive, and may, or rather surely will,
+quicken it yet further and into higher forms hereafter. (Those who know
+will not, I hope, be insulted if I mention for the benefit of those who
+do not, that the term "Vulgate" is applied to those forms of the parts
+of the story which, with slighter or more important variations, are
+common to many MSS. The term itself is most specially applied to the
+_Lancelot_ which, in consequence of this popularity throughout the later
+Middle Ages, actually got itself printed early in the French
+Renaissance. The whole has been (or is being) at last most fortunately
+reprinted by Dr. Sommer. See Bibliography.)
+
+[29] This is another point which, not, I suppose, having been clearly
+and completely evolved by the first handler, got messed and muddled by
+successive copyists and continuators. In what seems to be the oldest,
+and is certainly the most consistent and satisfactory, story there is
+practically nothing evil about Viviane--Nimiane--Nimue, who is also
+indisputably identical with the foster-mother of Lancelot, the
+occasional Egeria (always for good) of Arthur himself, and the
+benefactress (this is probably a later addition though in the right key)
+of Sir Pelleas. For anybody who possesses the Power of the Sieve she
+remains as Milton saw her, and not as Tennyson mis-saw part of her. The
+bewitching of Merlin (who, let it be remembered, was an ambiguous person
+in several ways, and whose magic, if never exactly black, was sometimes
+a rather greyish or magpied white) was not an unmixed loss to the world;
+she seems to have really loved him, and to have faithfully kept her word
+by being with him often. He "could not get out" certainly, but are there
+many more desirable things in the outside world than lying with your
+head in the lap of the Lady of the Lake while she caresses and talks to
+you? "J'en connais des plus malheureux" as the French poet observed of
+some one in less delectable case. The author of the _Suite de Merlin_
+seems to have been her first maligner. Tennyson, seduced by contrast,
+followed and exaggerated the worst view. But I am not sure that the most
+"irreligious" thing (as Coleridge would have said) was not the
+transformation of her into a mere married lady (with a chateau in
+Brittany, and an ordinary knight for her husband) which astounds us in
+one of the dullest parts of the Vulgate about Lancelot--the wars with
+Claudas.
+
+[30] I have always thought that Spenser (whose dealings with Arthuriana
+are very curious, and have never, I think, been fully studied) took this
+function of Lancelot to suggest the presentation of his Arthur. But
+Lancelot has no--at least no continuous--fairy aid; he is not invariably
+victorious, and he is thoroughly human. Spenser's Prince began the
+"blamelessness" which grew more trying still in Tennyson's King. (In the
+few remarks of this kind made here I am not, I need hardly say, "going
+back upon" my lifelong estimate of Tennyson as an almost impeccable
+poet. But an impeccable poet is not necessarily an impeccable plot- and
+character-monger either in tale-telling or in drama.)
+
+[31] Of this we have unusually strong evidence in the shape of MS.
+interlineations, where the name "Percevale" is actually struck out and
+that of "Gala[h]ad" substituted above it.
+
+[32] I do not say that this is their _only_ character.
+
+[33] Brittany had much earlier and much more tradition of chivalry than
+Wales.
+
+[34] The only fault alleged against Lancelot's person by carpers was
+that he was something "pigeon"--or "guardsman"--chested. But Guinevere
+showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at least on this
+occasion we may translate _vaillant_) by retorting that such a chest was
+only big enough--and hardly big enough--for such a heart.
+
+[35] Some of the later "redactors" of the Vulgate may perhaps have
+unduly multiplied his madnesses, and have exaggerated his early shyness
+a little. But I am not sure of the latter point. It is not only "beasts"
+that, as in the great Theocritean place, "go timidly because they fear
+Cythera"; and a love charged with such dread consequences was not to be
+lightly embarked upon.
+
+[36] The early _Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere_, though only external,
+is perfect. Many touches in the _Idylls_ other than the title-one are
+suitable and even subtle; but the convertite in that one is (as they say
+now) "unconvincing." The simpler attitude of the rejection of Lancelot
+in the verse _Morte_ and in Malory is infinitely better. As for Morris's
+two pieces, they could hardly be better in themselves as poems--but they
+are scarcely great on the novel side.
+
+[37] Disagreeable, that is to say, as a sister and sister-in-law. There
+must have been something attractive about her in other relations.
+
+[38] Compare one of the not so very many real examples of Ibsen's
+vaunted psychology, the placid indifference to her own past of Gina in
+the _Wild Duck_.
+
+[39] He had said that if he were a woman he would give Lancelot anything
+he asked; and the Queen, following, observes that Gawain had left
+nothing for a woman to say.
+
+[40] _Nos passions ont quelque chose d'infini_, says Bossuet.
+
+[41] [Greek: helandros, heleptolis]. She had no opportunity of being
+[Greek: helenaus].
+
+[42] Hawker's security as to Cornish men and things is, I admit, a
+little Bardolphian. But did he not write about the Quest? (This sort of
+argument simply swarms in Arthurian controversy; so I may surely use it
+once.) Besides there is no doubt about the blueness of the sea in
+question; though Anthony Trollope, in _Malachi's Cove_, has most falsely
+and incomprehensibly denied it.
+
+[43] That this is a real sign of decadence and unoriginality, the
+further exaggeration of it in the case of the knights of the _Amadis_
+cycle proves almost to demonstration.
+
+[44] After the opening sentence I have dropped the historic present,
+which, for a continuance, is very irritating in English.
+
+[45] Lancelot himself has told us earlier (_op. cit._ i. 38) that,
+though he neither knew nor thought himself to be a king's son, he was
+commonly addressed as such.
+
+[46] Lionel (very young at the time) had wept because some one mentioned
+the loss of his inheritance, and Lancelot (young as he too was) had
+bidden him not cry for fear of landlessness. "There would be plenty for
+him, if he had heart to gain it."
+
+[47] This technical title is usually if not invariably given to Ywain
+and Gawain as eldest sons of recognised kings. "Prince" is not used in
+this sense by the older Romancers, but only for distinguished knights
+like Galahault, who is really a king.
+
+[48] There is one admirable word here, _enbarnis_, which has so long
+been lost to French that it is not even in Littre. But Dryden's
+"_burnish_ into man" probably preserves it in English; for this is
+certainly not the other "burnish" from _brunir_.
+
+[49] "Car moult en parole diroit la parole."
+
+[50] Puzzled by the number of new thoughts and emotions.
+
+[51] Ywain suggests one of the commonest things in Romance.
+
+[52] Arthur had, by a set of chances, not actually girded on Lancelot's
+sword.
+
+[53] Whose prisoner Lancelot had been, who had been ready to fall in
+love with him, and to whom he had expressly refused to tell his own
+love. Hence his confusion.
+
+[54] The day when Lancelot, at her request, had turned against the side
+of his friend Galahault and brought victory to Arthur's.
+
+[55] By the way, the Vulgate Mordred is a more subtle conception than
+the early stories gave, or than Malory transfers. He is no mere traitor
+or felon knight, much less a coward, from the first; but at that first
+shows a mixture of good and bad qualities in which the "dram of eale"
+does its usual office. Here once more is a subject made to the hand of a
+novelist of the first class.
+
+[56] Some poet or pundit, whether of East or West, or of what place,
+from Santiago to Samarcand, I know not, has laid it down, that men can
+love many, but without ceasing to love any; that women love only one at
+once, but can (to borrow, at fifty years' memory, a phrase of George
+Lawrence's in _Sans Merci_) "drop their lovers down _oubliettes_" with
+comparative ease.
+
+[57] It is excusable to use two words for the single verb _savoir_ to
+bring out the meaning. King Bagdemagus does not "know" as a fact that
+Lancelot has slain his son, though he fears it and feels almost sure of
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ROMANS D'AVENTURES
+
+
+[Sidenote: Variety of the present groups.]
+
+On the whole, however, the most important influence in the development
+of the novel originally--that of the _nouvelle_ or _novella_ in French,
+and Italian taking the second place in order of time--must be assigned
+to the very numerous and very delightful body of compositions (not very
+long as a rule,[58] but also never exactly short) to which the name
+_Romans d'aventures_ has been given with a limited connotation. They
+exist in all languages; our own English Romances, though sometimes
+derived from the _chansons_ and the Arthurian Legend, are practically
+all of this class, and in every case but one it is true that they have
+actual French originals. These _Romans d'aventures_ have a habit, not
+universal but prevailing, of "keying themselves on" to the Arthurian
+story itself; but they rarely, if ever, have much to do with the
+principal parts of it. It is as if their public wanted the connection as
+a sort of guarantee; but a considerable proportion keep independence.
+They are so numerous, so various, and with rare exceptions so
+interesting, that it is difficult to know which to select for elaborate
+analysis and translated selection; but almost the entire _corpus_ gives
+us the important fact of the increased _freedom_ of fiction. Even the
+connection with the Arthurian matter is, as has been said, generally of
+the loosest kind; that with the Charlemagne cycle hardly exists. The
+Graal (or things connected with its legends) may appear: Gawain is a
+frequent hero; other, as one might call them, sociable features as
+regards the older stories present themselves. But as a rule the man has
+got his own story which he wants to tell; his own special hero and
+heroine whom he wants to present. Furthermore, the old community of
+handling, which is so noticeable in the _chansons_ more particularly,
+disappears almost entirely. Nothing has yet been discovered in French,
+though it may be any day, to serve as the origin of our _Gawain and the
+Green Knight_, and some special features of this are almost certainly
+the work of an Englishman. Our English _Ywain and Gawain_ is, as has
+been said, rather better than Chrestien's original. But, as a rule, the
+form, which is French form in language (by no means always certainly or
+probably French in nationality of author), is not only the original, but
+better; and besides, it is with it that we are busied here, though in
+not a few cases English readers can obtain an idea, fairly sufficient,
+of these originals from the English versions. As these, however, with
+the exception of one or two remarkable individuals or even groups, were
+seldom written by men of genius, it is best to go to the sources to see
+the power and the variety of fictitious handling which have been
+mentioned.
+
+[Sidenote: Different views held of it.]
+
+The richness, indeed, of these _Romans d'aventures_ is surprising, and
+they very seldom display the flatness and triviality which mar by no
+means all but too many of their English imitations. Some of the faults
+which are part cause of these others they indeed have--the apparently
+irrational catalogues of birds and beasts, stuffs and vegetables; the
+long moralisings; the religious passages sometimes (as it may seem to
+mere moderns) interposed in very odd contexts; the endless descriptions
+of battles and single combats; the absence of striking characterisation
+and varied incident. Their interest is a peculiar interest, yet one can
+hardly call the taste for it "an acquired taste," because the very
+large majority of healthy and intelligent children delight in these
+stories under whatever form they are presented to them, and at least a
+considerable number of grown-up persons never lose the enjoyment. The
+disapproval which rested on "romances of chivalry" for a long time was
+admittedly ignorant and absurd; and the reasons why this disapproval, at
+least in its somewhat milder form of neglect, has never been wholly
+removed, are not very difficult to discover. It is to be feared that
+_Don Quixote_, great as it is, has done not a little mischief, and by
+virtue of its greatness is likely to do not a little more, though the
+_Amadis_ group, which it specially satirises, has faults not found in
+the older tales. The texts, though in most cases easily enough
+accessible now, are not what may be called obviously and yet
+unobtrusively so. They are to a very large extent issued by learned
+societies: and the public, not too unreasonably, is rather suspicious,
+and not at all avid, of the products of learned societies. They are
+accompanied by introductions and notes and glossaries--things the
+public (again not wholly to be blamed) regards without cordiality.
+Latterly they have been used for educational purposes, and anything
+used for educational purposes acquires an evil--or at least an
+unappetising--reputation. In some cases they have been messed and
+meddled in _usum vulgi_. But their worst enemy recently has been, it may
+be feared, the irreconcilable opposition of their spirit to what is
+called the modern spirit--though this latter sometimes takes them up and
+plays with them in a fashion of maudlin mysticism.
+
+[Sidenote: _Partenopeus of Blois_ selected for analysis and
+translation.]
+
+To treat them at large here as Ellis treated some of the English
+imitations would be impossible in point of scale and dangerous as a
+competition; for Ellis, though a little too prone to Voltairianise or at
+least Hamiltonise things sometimes too good for that kind of treatment,
+was a very clever man indeed. For somewhat full abstract and translation
+we may take one of the most famous, but perhaps not one of the most
+generally and thoroughly known, _Partenopeus_ (or -_pex_[59]) _of
+Blois_, which, though it exists in English, and though the French was
+very probably written by an Englishman, is not now one of the most
+widely read and is in parts very charming. That it is one of the
+romances on which, from the fact of the resemblance of its central
+incident to the story of Cupid and Psyche, the good defenders of the bad
+theory of the classical origin of romance generally have based one of
+their few plausible arguments, need not occupy us. For the question is
+not whether Denis Pyramus or any one else (modernity would not be
+modernity if his claims were not challenged) told it, but _how_ he told
+it. Still less need we treat the other question before indicated. Here
+is one of the central stories of the world--one of those which Eve told
+to her children in virtue of the knowledge communicated by the apple,
+one with which the sons of God courted the daughters of men, or, at
+latest, one of those which were yarned in the Ark. It is the story of
+the unwise lover--in this case the man, not as in Psyche's the
+woman--who will not be content to enjoy an unseen, but by every other
+sense enjoyable and adorable love, even though (in this case) the single
+deprivation is expressly to be terminated. We have it, of course, in all
+sorts of forms, languages, and differing conditions. But we are only
+concerned with it here as with a gracious example of that kind of
+romance which, though not exactly a "fairy tale" in the Western sense,
+is pretty obviously influenced by the Eastern fairy tale itself, and
+still more obviously influences the modern kind in which "the
+supernatural" is definitely prominent.
+
+It was perhaps excusable in the good M. Robert, who wrote the
+Introduction to Crapelet's edition of this poem eighty years ago, to
+"protest too much" in favour of the author whom he was now presenting
+practically for the first time--to a changed audience; but it was
+unnecessary and a little unfortunate. Except in one point or group of
+points, it is vain to try to put _Partenopeus_ above _Cupid and
+Psyche_: but it can perfectly well stand by itself in its own place, and
+that no low one. Except in _Floire et Blanchefleur_ and of course in
+_Aucassin et Nicolette_, the peculiar grace and delicacy of romance are
+nowhere so well shown; and _Partenopeus_, besides the advantage of
+length, has that of personages interesting, besides the absolute hero
+and heroine. The Count of Blois himself is, no doubt, despite his
+beauty, and his bravery, and his good nature, rather of a feeble folk.
+Psyche has the excuse of her sex, besides the evil counsel of her
+sisters, for her curiosity. But Partenopeus has not the former; nor has
+he even that weaker but still not quite invalid one which lost Agib, the
+son of Cassib, his many-Houried Paradise on Earth. He is supposed to be
+a Frenchman--the somewhat excessive fashion in which Frenchmen make
+obedience to the second clause[60] of the Fifth Commandment atone for
+some neglect of other parts of the decalogue is well known, or at least
+traditionally believed. But most certainly a man is not justified in
+obeying his mother to the extent of disobeying--and that in the
+shabbiest of ways--his lady and mistress, who is, in fact, according to
+mediaeval ideas, virtually, if not virtuously, his wife. But Melior
+herself, the heroine, is an absolutely delightful person from her first
+appearance (or rather _non_-appearance) as a sweet dream come true, to
+her last in the more orthodox and public spousals. The grace of her
+Dian-like surrender of herself to her love; the constancy with which she
+holds to the betrothal theory of the time; the unselfishness with which
+she not only permits but actually advises the lover, whom she would so
+fain, but cannot yet, make her acknowledged husband, to leave her; her
+frank forgiveness of his only-just-in-time repented and prevented, but
+intended, infidelity; her sorrow at and after the separation enforced by
+his breach of pact; her interviews with her sister, naturally chequered
+by conflicting feelings of love and pride and the rest--are all
+charming. But she is not the only charming figure.
+
+The "second heroine," a sister or cousin who plays a sort of superior
+confidante's part, is by no means uncommon in Romance. Alexandrine, for
+instance, who plays this in _William of Palerne_, is a very nice girl.
+But Urraque or Urraca,[61] the sister of Melior--whether full and
+legitimate, or "half" illegitimate, versions differ--is much more
+elaborately dealt with, and is, in fact, the chief _character_ of the
+piece, and a character rather unusually strong for Romance. She plays
+the part of reconciler after Partenopeus' fatal folly has estranged him
+from her sister, and plays it at great length, but with much less tedium
+than might be expected. But the author is an "incurable feminist," as
+some one else was once described with a mixture of pity and admiration:
+and he is not contented with two heroines. There is a third, Persewis,
+maid of honour to Urraque, and also a fervent admirer of the
+incomparable Partenopeus, on whose actual beauty great stress is
+laid, and who in romance, other than his own, is quoted as a modern
+paragon thereof, worthy to rank with ancient patterns, sacred and
+profane. Persewis, however, is very young--a "flapper" or a
+"[bread-and-]buttercup," as successive generations have irreverently
+called the immature but agreeable creature. The poet lays much emphasis
+on this youth. She did not "kiss and embrace," he says, just because she
+was too young, and not because of any foolish prudery or propriety,
+things which he does not hesitate to pronounce appropriate only to ugly
+girls. His own attitude to "the fair" is unflinchingly put in one of the
+most notable and best known passages of the poem (l. 7095 _sq._):
+
+     When God made all creation, and devised their forms for his
+     creatures, He distributed beauties and good qualities to
+     each in proportion as He loved it. He loved ladies above all
+     things, and therefore made for them the best qualities and
+     beauties. Of mere earth made He everything [else] under
+     Heaven: but the hearts of ladies He made of honey, and gave
+     to them more courtesy than to any other living creature. And
+     as God loves them, therefore I love them: hunger and thirst
+     are nothing to me as regards them: and I cry "Quits" to Him
+     for His Paradise if the bright faces of ladies enter not
+     therein.
+
+It will be observed, of course, how like this is to the most famous
+passage of _Aucassin et Nicolette_. It is less dreamily beautiful, but
+there is a certain spirit and downrightness about it which is agreeable;
+nor do I know anywhere a more forcible statement of the doctrine, often
+held by no bad people, that beauty is a personal testimonial of the
+Divinity--a scarcely parabolic command to love and admire its
+possessors.[62]
+
+If, however, our poet has something of that Romantic morality to which
+Ascham--in a conjoined fit[63] of pedantry, prudery, and
+Protestantism--gave such an ugly name, he may excuse it to less
+strait-laced judges by other traits. Even the "retainer" of an editor
+ought not to have induced M. Robert to say that Melior's original
+surrender was "against her will," though she certainly did make a
+protest of a kind.[64] But the enchanted and enchanting Empress's
+constancy is inviolable. Even after she has been obliged to banish her
+foolish lover, or rather after he has banished himself, she avows
+herself his only. She will die, she says, before she takes another lord;
+and for this reason objects for some time to the proposed tourney for
+her hand, in which the already proven invincibility of the Count of
+Blois makes him almost a certain victor, because it involves a
+conditional consent to admit another mate. To her scrupulousness, a kind
+of blunt common-sense, tempering the amiability of Urraca, is a pleasant
+set-off, and the freshness of Persewis completes the effect.
+
+Moreover, there are little bits of almost Chaucerian vividness and
+terseness here and there, contrasting oddly with the _chevilles_--the
+stock phrases and epithets--elsewhere. When the tourney actually comes
+off and Partenopeus is supposed to be prisoner of a felon knight afar
+off, the two sisters and Persewis take their places at the entrance of
+the tower crossing the bridge at Melior's capital, "Chef d'Oire."[65]
+Melior is labelled only "whom all the world loves and prizes," but
+Urraca and her damsel "have their faces pale and discoloured--for they
+have lost much of their beauty--so sorely have they wept Partenopeus."
+On the contrary, when, at the close of the first day's tourney, the
+usual "unknown knights" (in this case the Count of Blois himself and his
+friend Gaudins) ride off triumphant, they "go joyfully to their hostel
+with lifted lances, helmets on head, hauberks on back, and shields held
+proudly as if to begin jousting."
+
+    Bel i vinrent et bel s'en vont,
+
+says King Corsols, one of the judges of the tourney, but not in the
+least aware of their identity. This may occur elsewhere, but it is by no
+means one of the commonplaces of Romance, and a well hit-off picture is
+motived by a sharply cut phrase.[66]
+
+It is this sudden enlivening of the commonplaces of Romance with vivid
+picture and phrase which puts _Partenopeus_ high among its fellows. The
+story is very simple, and the variation and multiplication of episodic
+adventure unusually scanty; while the too common genealogical preface is
+rather exceptionally superfluous. That the Count of Blois is the nephew
+of Clovis can interest--outside of a peculiar class of antiquarian
+commentator--no mortal; and the identification of "Chef-d'Oire,"
+Melior's enchanted capital, with Constantinople, though likely enough,
+is not much more important. Clovis and Byzantium (of which the
+enchantress is Empress) were well-known names and suited the _abonne_ of
+those times. The actual "argument" is of the slightest. One of Spenser's
+curious doggerel common measures--say:
+
+    A fairy queen grants bliss and troth
+      On terms, unto the knight:
+    His mother makes him break his oath,
+      Her sister puts it right--
+
+would almost do; the following prose abstract is practically exhaustive.
+
+Partenopeus, Count of Blois, nephew of King Clovis of France, and
+descendant of famous heroes of antiquity, including Hector, the most
+beautiful and one of the most valiant of men, after displaying his
+prowess in a war with the Saracen Sornagur, loses his way while hunting
+in the Ardennes. He at last comes to the seashore, and finds a ship
+which in fifteen days takes him to a strange country, where all is
+beautiful but entirely solitary. He finds a magnificent palace, where he
+is splendidly guested by unseen hands, and at last conducted to a
+gorgeous bedchamber. In the dark he, not unnaturally, lies awake
+speculating on the marvel; and after a time light footsteps approach the
+bed, and a form, invisible but tangible, lies down beside him. He
+touches it, and finds it warm and soft and smooth, and though it
+protests a little, the natural consequences follow. Then the lady
+confesses that she had heard of him, had (incognita) seen him at the
+Court of France, and had, being a white witch as well as an Empress,
+brought him to "Chef d'Oire," her capital, though she denies having
+intentionally or knowingly arranged the shepherd's hour itself.[67] She
+is, however, as frank as Juliet and Miranda combined. She will be his
+wife (she makes a most interesting and accurate profession of Christian
+orthodoxy) if he will marry her; but it is impossible for the remainder
+of a period of which two and a half years have still to run, and at the
+end of which, and not till then, she has promised her vassals to choose
+a husband. Meanwhile, Partenopeus must submit to an ordeal not quite so
+painful as hot ploughshares. He must never see her or attempt to see
+her, and he must not, during his stay at Chef d'Oire, see or speak to
+any other human being. At the same time, hunting, exploring the palace
+and the city and the country, and all other pastimes independent of
+visible human companionship, are freely at his disposal by day.
+
+    Et moi aures cascune nuit
+
+says Melior, with the exquisite simplicity which is the charm of the
+whole piece.
+
+One must be very inquisitive, exceedingly virtuous (the mediaeval value
+of consummated betrothal being reckoned), superfluously fond of the
+company of one's miscellaneous fellow-creatures, and a person of very
+bad taste[68] to boot, in order to decline the bargain. Partenopeus does
+not dream of doing so, and for a whole year thinks of nothing but his
+fairy love and her bounties to him. Then he remembers his uncle-king and
+his country, and asks leave to visit them, but not with the faintest
+intention of running away. Melior gives it with the same frankness and
+kindness with which she has given herself--informing him, in fact, that
+he _ought_ to go, for his uncle is dead and his country in danger. Only,
+she reminds him of his pledges, and warns him of the misfortunes which
+await his breach of them. He is then magically wafted back on ship-board
+as he came.
+
+He has, once more, no intention of playing the truant or traitor, and
+does his duty bravely and successfully. But the new King has a niece and
+the Count himself has a mother, who, motherlike, is convinced that her
+son's mysterious love is a very bad person, if not an actual _maufes_ or
+devil, and is very anxious that he shall marry the niece. She has
+clerical and chemical resources to help her, and Partenopeus has
+actually consented, in a fit of aberration, when, with one of the odd
+Wemmick-like flashes of reflection,[69] not uncommon with knights, he
+remembers Melior, and unceremoniously makes off to her. He confesses
+(for he is a good creature though foolish) and is forgiven, Melior
+being, though not in the least insipid or of a put-up-with-anything
+disposition, full of "loving _mercy_" in every sense. But the situation
+is bound to recur, and now, though the time of probation (probation very
+much tempered!) is nearly over, the mother wins her way. Partenopeus is
+deluded into accepting an enchanted lantern, which he tries on his
+unsuspecting mistress at the first possible moment. What he sees, of
+course, is only a very lovely woman--a woman in the condition best
+fitted to show her loveliness--whom he has offended irreparably, and
+lost.
+
+Melior is no scold, but she is also no milksop. She will have nothing
+more to do with him, for he has shamed her with her people (who now
+appear), broken her magic power, and, above all, been false to her wish
+and his word. The entreaties of her sister Urraca (whose gracious figure
+is now elaborately introduced) are for the time useless, and Partenopeus
+is only saved from the vengeance of the courtiers and the household by
+Urraca's protection.[70]
+
+To halt for a moment, the scene of the treason and discovery is another
+of those singular vividnesses which distinguish this poem and story. The
+long darkness suddenly flashing into light, and the startled Melior's
+beauty framed in the splendour of the couch and the bedchamber--the
+offender at once realising his folly and his crime, and dashing the
+instrument of his treachery (useless, for all is daylight now, the charm
+being counter-charmed) against the wall--the half-frightened,
+half-curious Court ladies and Court servants thronging in--the
+apparition of Urraca,--all this gives a picture of extraordinarily
+dramatic power. It reminds one a little of Spenser's famous portrayal of
+Britomart disturbed at night, and the comparison of the two brings out
+all sorts of "excellent differences."
+
+But to return to the story itself. Although the invariable
+cut-and-driedness of romance incidents has been grossly exaggerated,
+there is one situation which is almost always treated in the same way.
+The knight who has, with or without his own fault, incurred the
+displeasure of his mistress, "doth [_always_] to the green wood go," and
+there, whether in complete sanity or not, lives for a time a half or
+wholly savage life, discarding knightly and sometimes any other dress,
+eating very little, and in considerable danger of being eaten himself.
+Everybody, from Lancelot to Amadis, does it; and Partenopeus does it
+too, but in his own way. Reaching Blois and utterly rejecting his
+mother's attempts to excuse herself and console him, he drags out a
+miserable time in continual penance and self-neglect, till at last,
+availing himself of (and rather shabbily if piously tricking) a Saracen
+page,[71] he succeeds in getting off incognito to the vague "Ardennes,"
+where his sadly ended adventure had begun. These particular Ardennes
+appear to be reachable by sea (on which they have a coast), and to
+contain not only ordinary beasts of chase, not only wolves and bears,
+but lions, tigers, wyverns, dragons, etc. A single unarmed man has
+practically no chance there, and the Count determines to condemn himself
+to the fate of the Roman arena. As a preliminary, he dismounts and turns
+loose his horse, who is presently attacked by a lion and wounded, but
+luckily gets a fair blow with his hoof between his enemy's eyes, and
+kills him. Then comes another of the flashes (and something more) of the
+piece. Stung by the pain of his wound and dripping with blood, the
+animal dashes at full speed, and whinnying at the top of his powers, to
+the seashore and along it. The passage is worth translating:
+
+     He [_the horse after he has killed the lion_] lifts his
+     tail, and takes to flight down a valley towards nightfall.
+     Much he looks about him and much he whinnies. By night-time
+     he has got out of the wood and has fled to the sea: but he
+     will not stop there. He makes the pebbles fly as he gallops
+     and never stops whinnying. Now the moon has mounted high in
+     the heavens, all clear and bright and shining: there is not
+     a dark cloud in all the sky, nor any movement on the sea:
+     sweet and serene is the weather, and fair and clear and
+     lightened up. And the palfrey whinnies so loudly that he can
+     be heard far off at sea.
+
+He _is_ heard at sea, for a ship is waiting there in the calm, and on
+board that ship is Urraca, with a wise captain named Maruc and a stout
+crew. The singularity of the event induces them to land (Maruc knows the
+dangers of the region, but Urraca has no fears; the captain also knows
+how to enchant the beasts), and the horse's bloodmarks guide them up the
+valley. At last they come upon a miserable creature, in rags,
+dishevelled, half-starved, and altogether unrecognisable. After a little
+time, however, Urraca does recognise him, and, despite his forlorn and
+repulsive condition, takes him in her arms.
+
+    Si le descouvre un poi le vis.
+
+Yet another of the uncommon "flashlight" sketches, where in two short
+lines one sees the damsel as she has been described not so long before,
+"tall and graceful, her fair hair (which, untressed, reached her feet
+[now, no doubt, more suitably arranged]), with forehead broad and high,
+and smooth; grey eyes, large and _seignorous_" (an admirable word for
+eyes), "all her face one kiss"; one sees her with one arm round the
+tottering wretch, and with the "long fingers" of her other white hand
+clearing the matted hair from his visage till she can recognise him.
+
+They take him on board, of course, though to induce him to go this
+delightful creature has to give an account of her sister's feelings
+(which, to put it mildly, anticipates the truth very considerably), and
+also to cry over him a little.[72] She takes him to Saleuces,[73] an
+island principality of her own, and there she and her maid-of-honour,
+Persewis (see above), proceed to cocker and cosset him up exactly as one
+imagines two such girls would do to "a dear, silly, nice, handsome
+thing," as a favourite modern actress used to bring down the house by
+saying, with a sort of shake, half of tears and half of laughter, in her
+voice. Indeed the phrase fits Partenopeus precisely. We are told that
+Urraca would have been formally in love with him if it had not been
+unsportsgirl-like towards her sister; and as for Persewis, there is once
+more a windfall in the description of the "butter-cup's" delight when
+Urraca, going to see Melior, has to leave her alone with the Count. The
+Princess is of course very sorry to go. "But Persewis would not have
+minded if she had stayed forty days, or till August," and she "glories
+greatly" when her rival departs. No mischief, however, comes of it; for
+the child is "too young," as we are earnestly assured, and Partenopeus,
+to do him justice, is both too much of a gentleman, and too dolefully in
+earnest about recovering Melior, to dream of any.
+
+Meanwhile, Urraca is most unselfishly doing her very best to reconcile
+the lovers, not neglecting the employment of white fibs as before, and
+occasionally indulging, not merely in satiric observation on poor
+Melior's irresolution and conflict of feeling, but in decidedly sisterly
+plainness of speech, reminding the Empress that after all she had
+entrapped Partenopeus into loving her, and that he had, for two whole
+years, devoted himself entirely to her love and its conditions. At last
+a rather complicated and not always quite consistently told provisional
+settlement is arrived at, carrying out, in a manner, the undertakings
+referred to by Melior in her first interview with her lover. An immense
+tourney for the hand of Melior is to be held, with a jury of kings to
+judge it: and everybody, Christian or pagan, from emperor to vavasour is
+invited to compete. But in case of no single victor, a kind of
+"election" by what may be called the States of Byzantium--kings, dukes,
+counts, and simple fief-holders--is to decide, and it seems sometimes
+as if Melior retained something of a personal veto at last. Of the
+incidents and episodes before this actually comes off, the most
+noteworthy are a curious instance of the punctilio of chivalry (the
+Count having once promised Melior that no one but herself shall gird on
+his sword, makes a difficulty when Urraca and Persewis arm him), and a
+misfortune by which he, rowing carelessly by himself, falls into the
+power of a felon knight, Armans of Thenodon. This last incident,
+however, though it alarms his two benefactresses, is not really unlucky.
+For, in the first place, Armans is not at home, and his wife, falling a
+victim, like every woman, to Partenopeus' extraordinary beauty, allows
+him his parole; while the accident enables him to appear at the
+tournament incognito--a practice always affected, if possible, by the
+knights of romance, and in this case possessing some obvious and special
+advantages.
+
+On his way he meets another knight, Gaudin le Blond, with whom he gladly
+strikes up brotherhood-in-arms. The three days of the mellay are not
+_very_ different from the innumerable similar scenes elsewhere, nor can
+the author be said to be specially happy at this kind of business. But
+any possible tedium is fairly relieved by the shrewd and sometimes
+jovial remarks made by one of the judging kings, the before-quoted
+Corsols--met by grumbles from another, Clarin, and by the fears and
+interest of the three ladies, of whom the ever-faithful and shrewd
+Urraca is the first to discover Partenopeus. He and Gaudin perform the
+usual exploits and suffer the usual inconveniences, but at the end it is
+still undecided whether the Count of Blois or the Soldan of Persia--a
+good knight, though a pagan, and something of a braggart--deserves the
+priceless prize of Melior's hand with the empire of Byzantium to boot.
+The "election" follows, and after some doubt goes right, while Melior
+now offers no objection. But the Soldan, in his _outrecuidance_, demands
+single combat. He has, of course, no right to do this, and the Council
+and the Empress object strongly. But Partenopeus will have no stain on
+his honour; consents to the fight; deliberately refuses to take
+advantage of the Soldan when he is unhorsed and pinned down by the
+animal; assists him to get free; and only after an outrageous menace
+from the Persian justifies his own claim to belong to the class of
+champions
+
+    Who _always_ cleave their foe
+        To the waist
+
+--indeed excels them, by entirely bisecting the Soldan.
+
+An episodic restoration of parole to the widow of Armans (who has
+actually taken part in the tourney and been killed) should be noticed,
+and the piece ends, or rather comes close to an end, with the marriages
+which appropriately follow these well-deserved murders. Marriages--not a
+marriage only--for King "Lohier" of France most sensibly insists on
+espousing the delightful Urraca: and Persewis is consoled for the loss
+of Partenopeus by the suit--refused at first and then granted, with the
+obviously intense enjoyment of both processes likely in a novice--of his
+brother-in-arms, to whom the "Emperor of Byzantium" abandons his own two
+counties in France, adding a third in his new empire, and winning by
+this generosity almost more popularity than by his prowess.
+
+But, as was hinted, the story does not actually end. There is a great
+deal about the festivities, and though the author says encouragingly
+that he "will not devise much of breeches," he _does_--and of many other
+garments. Indeed the last of his liveliest patches is a mischievous
+picture of the Court ladies at their toilette: "Let me see that mirror;
+make my head-dress higher; let me show my mouth more; drop the pleat
+over the eyes;[74] alter my eyebrows," etc. etc. But beyond the washing
+of hands before the feast, this French book that Crapelet printed
+fourscore years ago goeth not. Perhaps it was a mere accident; perhaps
+the writer had a shrewd notion that whatever he wrote would seem but
+stale in its reminder of the night when Partenopeus lay awake, and
+seemingly alone, in the enchanted palace--now merely an ordinary place
+of splendour and festivity--and when something came to the bed, "step by
+step, little by little," and laid itself beside him.
+
+Such are the contents and such some of the special traits and features
+of one of the most famous of those romances of chivalry, the reading of
+which with anything like the same interest as that taken in Homer,
+seemed to the Reverend Professor Hugh Blair to be the most suitable
+instance he could hit upon of a total lack of taste. This is a point, of
+course, on which each age, and each reader in each age, must judge for
+itself and himself. I think the author of the _Odyssey_ (the _Iliad_
+comes rather in competition with the chansons than with these romances)
+was a better poet than the author of _Partenopeus_, and I also think
+that he was a better story-teller; but I do not think that the latter
+was a bad story-teller; and I can read him with plenty of interest. So I
+can most of his fellows, no one of whom, I think, ever quite approaches
+the insipidity of their worst English imitators. The knights do not
+weary me with their exploits, and I confess that I am hyperbolical
+enough to like reading and thinking as well as talking of the ladies
+very much. They are of various sorts; but they are generally lovable.
+There is no better for affection and faithfulness and pluck than the
+Josiane of _Bevis_, whose husband and her at one time faithful guardian,
+but at another would-be ravisher, Ascapart, guard a certain gate not
+more than a furlong or two from where I am writing. It is good to think
+of the (to some extent justified) indignation of l'Orgueilleuse d'Amours
+when Sir Blancandin rides up and audaciously kisses her in the midst of
+her train; and the companion picture of the tomb where Idoine apparently
+sleeps in death (while her true knight Amadas fights with a ghostly foe
+above) makes a fitting pendant. If her near namesake with an L prefixed,
+the Lidoine of _Meraugis de Portlesguez_, interests me less, it is
+because its author, Raoul de Houdenc, was one of the first to mix love
+and moral allegory--a "wanity" which is not my favourite "wanity." To
+the Alexandrine of _Guillaume de Palerne_ reference has already been
+made. Blanchefleur--known all over Europe with her lover Floire (Floris,
+etc.)--the Saracen slave who charms a Christian prince, and is rescued
+by him from the Emir of Babylon, to whom she has been sold in hopes of
+weaning Floris from his attachment, more than deserved her vogue. But,
+as in the case of the _chansons_, mere cataloguing would be dull and
+unprofitable, and analysis on the scale accorded to _Partenopeus_
+impossible. One must only take up once more the note of this whole early
+part of our history, and impress again on the reader the evident
+_desire_ for the accomplished novel which these numerous romances show;
+the inevitable _practice_, in tale-telling of a kind, which the
+production of them might have given; and, above all, the openings,
+germs, suggestions of new devices in fiction which are observable in
+them, and which remained for others to develop if the first finders left
+them unimproved.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[58] That is, of nothing like the length of the latest forms of the
+_Chansons de Geste_ or the Arthurian Romances proper. Some of the late
+fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Adventure stories, before they dropped
+into prose, are indeed long enough, and a great deal too long; but they
+show degeneracy.
+
+[59] The _h_ (Part_h_-) does occur in both forms, and there are other
+variation, as "Part_o_nopeus," etc. But these are trifles.
+
+[60] Taking honour to the mother as separate from that to the father.
+
+[61] The Spanish-English form is perhaps the prettier. I am sorry to say
+that the poet, to get a rhyme, sometimes spells it "Urra_cle_," which is
+_not_ pretty. Southey's "Queen _O_rraca" seems to me to have changed her
+vowel to disadvantage.
+
+[62] The original author of the _Court of Love_, whether Chaucer or
+another, pretty certainly knew it; and Spenser spiritualised the
+doctrine itself in the _Four Hymns_.
+
+[63] I think the medical people (borrowing, as Science so often does,
+the language which she would fain banish from human knowledge) call this
+sort of thing _a syndrome_.
+
+[64] See below on Urraca's plain speaking.
+
+[65] Not too commentatorially identified with Constantinople.
+
+[66] It may be worth noting that in this context appears the original
+form of an English word quite common recently, but almost unknown a very
+short time ago--"grouse" in the sense of "complain," "grumble": "Ce dist
+Corsols et nul n'en _grouce_."
+
+[67] No one will be rude enough to disbelieve her, and, as will be seen,
+her supernatural powers had limits; but it was odd, though fortunate,
+that they should have broken down exactly at this important juncture.
+Who made those rebellious candles take him to that chamber and couch,
+unknown to her?
+
+[68] For Melior, though of invisible beauty, is represented as
+delightful in every other way, as wise and witty and gracious in speech
+as becomes a white witch. And when her lover on one occasion thanks her
+for her _sermon_, there is no satire; he only means _sermo_.
+
+[69] Like Guy of Warwick; still more like Mr. Jaggers's clerk, though
+the circumstances are reversed. _He_ almost says in so many words,
+"Hullo! here's an engagement ring on my finger. We _can't_ have a
+marriage."
+
+[70] The author, _more suo_, intimates that the Court _ladies_ by no
+means shared these hostile feelings, and would have willingly been in
+Melior's place.
+
+[71] He induces him to turn Christian on the supposition of being his
+companion; and then gives him the slip. The neophyte's expressions on
+the occasion are not wholly edifying.
+
+[72] The good palfrey is found and in a state to carry his master, who
+is quite unable to walk. One hopes they did not leave the beast to the
+lions, tigers, wyverns, etc., for he could hardly hope for such a
+literal "stroke of luck" again.
+
+[73] The name will suggest, to those who have some wine-lore, no less a
+vintage than Chateau Yquem. Nothing could be better for a person in the
+Count's condition as a restorative.
+
+[74] These two directions obviously refer to the common mediaeval
+"wimple" arrangement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE FICTION
+
+
+[Sidenote: Prose novelettes of the thirteenth century. _Aucassin et
+Nicolette_ not quite typical.]
+
+The title of this chapter may seem an oversight or an impertinence,
+considering that large parts of an earlier one have been occupied with
+discussions and translations of the prose Arthurian Romances. It was,
+however, expressly pointed out that the priority of these is a matter of
+opinion, not of judgment; and it may be here quite frankly admitted that
+one of the most serious arguments against that priority is the extreme
+lateness of Old French Prose in any finished literary form. The excuse,
+however, if excuse be needed, does not turn on any such hinge as this.
+It was desired to treat, in the last two chapters, romance matter proper
+of the larger kind, whether that matter took the form of prose or of
+verse. Here, on the other hand, the object is to deal with the smaller
+but more miscellaneous body of fictitious matter (part, no doubt, of a
+larger) which presents it tolerably early, and in character foretells
+the immense development of the kind which French was to see later.[75] A
+portion of this body, sufficient for us, is contained in two little
+volumes of the _Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_, published rather less than
+sixty years ago (1856 and 1858) by MM. L. Moland and Ch. d'Hericault,
+the first devoted to thirteenth-, the second to fourteenth-century work.
+One of these, the now world-famous _Aucassin et Nicolette_, has been so
+much written about and so often translated already that it cannot be
+necessary to say a great deal about it here. It is, moreover, of a mixed
+kind, a _cante-fable_ or blend of prose and verse, with a considerable
+touch of the dramatic in it. Its extraordinary charm is a thing long ago
+settled; but it is, on the whole, more of a dramatic and lyrical
+romance--to recouple or releash kinds which Mr. Browning had perhaps
+best never have put asunder--than of a pure prose tale.
+
+[Sidenote: _L'Empereur Constant_ more so.]
+
+Its companions in the thirteenth-century volume are four in number, and
+if none of them has the peculiar charm, so none has the technical
+disqualification (if that be not too strong a word) of _Aucassin et
+Nicolette_. The first, shortest, and, save for one or two points, least
+remarkable, _L'Empereur Constant_, is a very much abbreviated and in
+more than one sense prosaic version of the story out of which Mr.
+William Morris made his delightful _The Man Born to be King_. Probably
+of Greek or Greek-Eastern origin, it begins with an astrological passage
+in which the Emperor, childless except for a girl, becomes informed of
+the imminent birth of a man-child, who shall marry his daughter and
+succeed him. He discovers the, as it seems, luckless baby; has it
+brought to him, and with his own hand attempts to disembowel it, but
+allows himself, most improbably,[76] to be dissuaded from finishing the
+operation. The benevolent knight who has prevented the completion of the
+crime takes the infant to a monastery, where (after a quaint scene of
+haggling about fees with the surgeon) the victim is patched up, grows to
+be a fine youth, and comes across the Emperor, to whom the abbot
+guilelessly, but in this case naturally enough,[77] betrays the secret.
+The Emperor's murderous thoughts as naturally revive, and the
+frustration of them by means of the Princess's falling in love with the
+youth, the changing of "the letters of Bellerophon," and the Emperor's
+resignation to the inevitable, follow the same course as in the English
+poem. The latter part is better than the earlier; and the writer is
+evidently (as how should he not be?) a novice; but his work is the kind
+of experiment from which better things will come.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane._]
+
+These marks of the novice are even more noticeable in a much longer
+story, _Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane_, which is found not only in the
+same printed volume, but in the same original MS. The fault of this is
+curious, and--if not to a mere reader for pastime, to a student of
+fiction--extremely interesting. It is one not at all unknown at the
+present day, and capable of being used as an argument in favour of the
+doctrine of the Unities: that is to say, the mixture, by arbitrary and
+violent process, of two stories which have nothing whatever to do with
+each other, except that they are, wilfully and with no reason, buckled
+together at the end. The first, thin and uninteresting enough, is of a
+certain King Florus, who has a wife, dearly beloved, but barren. After
+some years and some very unmanly shilly-shallyings, he puts her away,
+and marries another, with whom (one is feebly glad to find) he is no
+more lucky, but who has herself the luck to die after some years.
+Meanwhile, King Florus being left "in a cool barge for future use," the
+second item, a really interesting story, is, with some intervals,
+carried on. A Count of high rank and great possessions has an only
+daughter, whom, after experience of the valour and general worthiness of
+one of his vassals of no great "having," he bestows on this knight,
+Robert, the pair being really in love with each other. But another
+vassal knight of greater wealth, Raoul, plots with one of the wicked old
+women who abound in these stories, and engages Robert in a rash wager of
+all his possessions, that during one of those pilgrimages to "St.
+James," which come in so handy, and are generally so unreasonable, he
+will dishonour the lady. He fails, but, in a manner not distantly
+related to the Imogen-Iachimo scene, acquires what seems to be damning
+acquaintance with the young Countess's person-marks. Robert and Jehane
+are actually married; but the felon knight immediately afterwards brings
+his charge, and Robert pays his debt, and flies, a ruined man, from, as
+he thinks, his faithless wife, though he takes no vengeance on her.
+Jehane disguises herself as a man, joins him on his journey, supports
+him with her own means for a time, and enters into partnership with him
+in merchandise at Marseilles, he remaining ignorant of her sex and
+relation to him. At last things come right: the felon knight is forced
+in single combat (a long and good one) to acknowledge his lie and give
+up his plunder, and the excellent but somewhat obtuse Robert recovers
+his wife as well. A good end if ever there was one, and not a badly told
+tale in parts. But, from some utterly mistaken idea of craftsmanship,
+the teller must needs kill Robert for no earthly reason, except in order
+that Jehane may become the third wife of Florus and bear him children. A
+more disastrous "sixth act" has seldom been imagined; for most readers
+will have forgotten all about Florus, who has had neither art nor part
+in the main story; few can care whether the King has children or not;
+and still fewer can be other than disgusted at the notion of Jehane,
+brave, loving, and clever, being, as a widow, made a mere child-bearing
+machine to an oldish and rather contemptible second husband. But, once
+more, the mistake is interesting, and is probably the first example of
+that fatal error of not knowing when to leave off, which is even worse
+than the commoner one (to be found in some great artists) of "huddling
+up the story." The only thing to be said in excuse is that you could cut
+his majesty Florus out of the title and tale at once without even the
+slightest difficulty, and with no need to mend or meddle in any other
+way.
+
+The remaining stories of the thirteenth-century volume are curiously
+contrasted. One is a short prose version of that exquisite _chanson de
+geste_, _Amis et Amiles_, of which it has been said above that any one
+who cannot "taste" it need never hope to understand mediaeval
+literature. The full beauty of the verse story does not appear in the
+prose; but some does.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Comtesse de Ponthieu._]
+
+Of the other, the so-called "Comtesse de Ponthieu" (though she is not
+really this, being only the Count's daughter and the wife of a vassal),
+I thought rather badly when I first read it thirty or forty years ago,
+and till the present occasion I have never read it since. Now I think
+better of it, especially as a story suggestive in story-telling art. The
+original stumbling-block, which I still see, though I can get over or
+round it better now, was, I think, the character of the heroine, who
+inherits not merely the tendency to play fast and loose with successive
+husbands, which is observable in both _chanson_ and _roman_ heroines,
+but something of the very unlovely savagery which is also sometimes
+characteristic of them; while the hero also is put in "unpleasant"
+circumstances. He is a gentleman and a good knight, and though only a
+vassal of the Count of Ponthieu, he, as has been said, marries the
+Count's daughter, entirely to her and her father's satisfaction. But
+they are childless, and the inevitable "monseigneur Saint _Jakeme_" (St.
+James of Compostella) suggests himself for pilgrimage. Thiebault, the
+knight, obtains leave from his lady to go, and she, by a device not
+unprettily told, gets from him leave to go too. Unfortunately and
+unwisely they send their suite on one morning, and ride alone through a
+forest, where they are set upon by eight banditti. Thiebault fights
+these odds without flinching, and actually kills three, but is
+overpowered by sheer numbers. They do not kill him, but bind and toss
+him into a thicket, after which they take vengeance of outrage on the
+lady and depart, fearing the return of the meyney. Thiebault feels that
+his unhappy wife is guiltless, but unluckily does not assure her of
+this, merely asking her to deliver him. So she, seeing a sword of one
+of the slain robbers, picks it up, and, "full of great ire and evil
+will," cries, "I will deliver you, sir," and, instead of cutting his
+bonds, tries to run him through. But she only grazes him, and actually
+cuts the thongs, so that he shakes himself free, starts up, and wrests
+the sword from her with the simple words, "Lady, it is not to-day that
+you will kill me." To which she replies, "And right sorry I am
+therefor."[78] Their followers come up; the pair are clothed and set out
+again on their journey. But Thiebault, though treating his wife with the
+greatest attention, leaves her at a monastery, accomplishes his
+pilgrimage alone, and on his return escorts her to Ponthieu as if
+nothing had happened. Still--though no one knows this or indeed anything
+about her actual misfortune and intended crime--he does not live with
+her as his wife. After a time the Count, who is, as another story has
+it, a "_h_arbitrary" Count, insists that Thiebault shall tell him some
+incident of his voyage, and the husband (here is the weak point of the
+whole) recounts the actual adventure, though not as of himself and his
+lady. The Count will not stand ambiguity, and at last extorts the truth,
+which the lady confirms, repeating her sorrow that she had _not_ slain
+her husband. Now the Count is, as has been said, an arbitrary Count, and
+one day, his county having, as our Harold knew to his cost, a sea-coast
+to it, somewhat less disputable than those of Bohemia and the Ardennes,
+embarks, with only his daughter, son-in-law, son, and a few retainers,
+taking with him a nice new cask. Into this, despite the prayers of her
+husband and brother, he puts the lady, and flings it overboard. She is
+picked up half-suffocated by mariners, who carry her to "Aymarie" and
+sell her to the Sultan. She is very beautiful, and the Sultan promptly
+proposes conversion and marriage. She makes no difficulty, bears him two
+children, and is apparently quite happy. But meanwhile the Count of
+Ponthieu begins--his son and son-in-law have never ceased--to feel that
+he has exercised the paternal rights rather harshly; the Archbishop of
+Rheims very properly confirms his ideas on this point, and all three go
+_outremer_ on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They are captured by the
+Saracens of Aymarie, imprisoned, starved, and finally in immediate
+danger of being shot to death as an amusement for the Sultan's
+bodyguard. But the Sultaness has found out who they are, visits them in
+prison, and "reconciliations and forgivenesses of injuries" follow.
+
+After this, things go in an easily guessable manner. The
+Countess-Sultana beguiles her easy-going lord into granting her the
+lives of the prisoners one after another, for which she rewards him by
+carrying them off, with her son by the second marriage, to Italy, where
+the boy is baptized. "The Apostle" (as the Pope is usually called in
+Romance), by a rather extensive exercise of his Apostleship, gives
+everybody absolution, confirms the original marriage of Thiebault and
+the lady who had been so obstinately sorry that she had not killed him,
+and who had suffered the paynim spousals so easily; and all goes
+merrily. There is a postscript which tells how the daughter of the
+Sultan and the Countess, who is termed _La Bele Caitive_, captivates and
+marries a Turk of great rank, and becomes the mother of no less a person
+than the great Saladin himself--a consummation no doubt very
+satisfactory to the Miss Martha Buskbodies of the mediaeval world.
+
+Now this story might seem to one who read it hastily, carelessly, or as
+"not in the vein," to be partly extravagant, partly disagreeable, and,
+despite its generous allowance of incident, rather dull, especially if
+contrasted with its next neighbour in the printed volume, _Aucassin et
+Nicolette_ itself. I am afraid there may have been some of these
+uncritical conditions about my own first reading. But a little study
+shows some remarkable points in it, though the original writer has not
+known how to manage them. The central and most startling one--the
+attempt of the Countess to murder her husband--is, when you think of it,
+not at all unnatural. The lady is half mad with her shame; the witness,
+victim, and, as she thinks, probable avenger of that shame is helpless
+before her, and in his first words at any rate seems to think merely of
+himself and not of her. Whether this violent outburst of feeling was not
+likely to result in as violent a revulsion of tenderness is rather a
+psychological probability than artistically certain. And Thiebault,
+though an excellent fellow, is a clumsy one. His actual behaviour is
+somewhat of that "killing-with-kindness" order which exasperates when it
+does not itself kill or actually reconcile; and, whether out of delicacy
+or not, he does not give his wife the only proof that he acknowledges
+the involuntariness of her actual misfortune, and forgives the
+voluntariness of her intended crime. His telling the story is
+inexcusable: and neither his preference of his allegiance as a vassal to
+his duty as knight, lover, and husband in the case of the Count's
+cruelty, nor his final acceptance of so many and such peculiar bygones
+can be called very pretty. But there are possibilities in the story, if
+they are not exactly made into good gifts.
+
+[Sidenote: Those of the fourteenth. _Asseneth._]
+
+The contents of the fourteenth-century volume are, with one exception,
+much less interesting in themselves; but from the point of view of the
+present enquiry they hardly yield to their predecessors. They are three
+in number: _Asseneth_, _Foulques Fitzwarin_, and _Troilus_. The first,
+which is very short, is an account of Joseph's courtship of his future
+wife, in which entirely guiltless proceeding he behaves at first very
+much as if the daughter of Potipherah were fruit as much forbidden as
+the wife of Potiphar. For on her being proposed to him (he has come to
+her father, splendidly dressed and brilliantly handsome, on a mission
+from Pharaoh) he at first replies that he will love her as his sister.
+This, considering the Jewish habit of exchanging the names, might not be
+ominous. But when the damsel, at her father's bidding, offers to kiss
+him, Joseph puts his hand on her chest and pushes her back, accompanying
+the action with words (even more insulting in detail than in substance)
+to the effect that it is not for God-fearing man to kiss an idolatress.
+(At this point one would rather like to kick Joseph.) However, when,
+naturally enough, she cries with vexation, the irreproachable but most
+unlikable patriarch condescends to pat her on the head and bless her.
+This she takes humbly and thankfully; deplores his absence, for he is
+compelled to return to his master; renounces her gods; is consoled by an
+angel, who feeds her with a miraculous honeycomb possessing a sort of
+sacramental force, and announces her marriage to Joseph, which takes
+place almost immediately.
+
+It will be at once seen, by those who know something of the matter, that
+this is entirely in the style of large portions of the Graal romances;
+and so it gives us a fresh and interesting division of the new short
+prose tale, allying itself to some extent with the allegory which was to
+be so fruitful both in verse and in prose. It is not particularly
+attractive in substance; but is not badly told, and would have made
+(what it was very likely used as) a good sermon-story.
+
+[Sidenote: _Troilus._]
+
+As _Asseneth_, the first of the three, is by far the shortest, so
+_Troilus_, the last, is by far the longest. It is, in fact, nearly
+twenty times the length of the history of Joseph's pious impoliteness,
+and makes up something like two-thirds of the whole collection. But,
+except as a variant of one of the famous stories of the world (_v. sup._
+Chap. IV.), it has little interest, and is not even directly taken from
+Benoit de Sainte-Maure, but from Guido delle Colonne and Boccaccio, of
+whose _Filostrato_ it is, in fact, a mere translation, made apparently
+by a known person of high station, Pierre de Beauvau, one of the chief
+nobles of Anjou, at the close of the fourteenth and the beginning of the
+fifteenth century. It thus brings itself into direct connection with
+Chaucer's poem, and has some small importance for literary history
+generally. But it has not much for us. It was not Boccaccio's verse but
+his prose that was really to influence the French Novel.
+
+[Sidenote: _Foulques Fitzwarin._]
+
+With the middle piece of the volume, _Foulques Fitzwarin_, it is very
+different. It is true that the present writer was once "smitten
+friendly" by a disciple of the modern severe historical school, who
+declared that the adventures of Fitzwarin, though of course adulterated,
+were an important historical document, and nothing so frivolous as a
+novel. One has, however, a reed-like faculty of getting up again from
+such smitings: and for my part I do not hesitate once more to call
+_Foulques Fitzwarin_ the first historical prose novel in modern
+literature. French in language, as we have it, it is thoroughly English
+in subject, and, beyond all doubt, in the original place of composition,
+while there is no reason to doubt the assertion that there were older
+verse-renderings of the story both in English and French. In fact, they
+may turn up yet. But the thing as it stands is a very desirable and even
+delectable thing, and well deserved its actual publication, not merely
+in the French collection, of which we are speaking, but in the papers of
+the too short-lived English Warton Club.
+
+For it is not only our first historical novel, but also the first, as
+far as England is concerned, of those outlaw stories which have always
+delighted worthy English youth from _Robin Hood_ to _The Black Arrow_.
+The Fitzwarins, as concerns their personalities and genealogies, may be
+surrendered without a pang to the historian, though he shall not have
+the marrow of the story. They never seem to have been quite happy except
+when they were in a state of "utlagation," and it was not only John
+against whom they rebelled, for one of them died on the Barons' side at
+Lewes.
+
+The compiler, whoever he was--it has been said already and cannot be
+said too often, that every recompiler in the Middle Ages felt it (like
+the man in that "foolish" writer, as some call him, Plato) a sacred duty
+to add something to the common stock,--was not exactly a master of his
+craft, but certainly showed admirable zeal. There never was a more
+curious _macedoine_ than this story. Part of it is, beyond all doubt,
+traditional history, with place-names all right, though distorted by
+that curious inability to transpronounce or trans-spell which made the
+French of the thirteenth century call Lincoln "Nicole," and their
+descendants of the seventeenth call Kensington "Stintinton." Part is
+mere stock or common-form Romance, as when Foulques goes to sea and has
+adventures with the usual dragons and their usual captive princesses.
+Part, though not quite dependent on the general stock, is indebted to
+that of a particular kind, as in the repeated catching of the King by
+the outlaws. But it is all more or less good reading; and there are two
+episodes in the earlier part which (one of them especially) merit more
+detailed account.
+
+The first still has something of a general character about it. It is the
+story of a certain Payn Peveril (for we meet many familiar names), who
+seems to have been a real person though wrongly dated here, and has one
+of those nocturnal combats with demon knights, the best known examples
+of which are those recounted in _Marmion_ and its notes. Peveril's
+antagonist, however--or rather the mask which the antagonist
+takes,--connects with the oldest legendary history of the island, for he
+reanimates the body of Gogmagog, the famous Cornish giant, whom Corineus
+slew. The diabolic Gogmagog, however, seems neither to have stayed in
+Cornwall nor gone to Cambridgeshire, though (oddly enough the French
+editors do not seem to have noticed this) Payn Peveril actually held
+fiefs in the neighbourhood of those exalted mountains called now by the
+name of his foe. He had a hard fight; but luckily his arms were _or_
+with a cross _edentee azure_, and this cross constantly turned the
+giant-devil's mace-strokes, while it also weakened him, and he had
+besides to bear the strokes of Peveril's sword. So he gave in, remarking
+with as much truth as King Padella in similar circumstances, that it was
+no good fighting under these conditions. Then he tells a story of some
+length about the original Gogmagog and his treasure. The secret of this
+he will not reveal, but tells Peveril that he will be lord of
+Blanche-lande in Shropshire, and vanishes with the usual unpleasant
+accompaniment--_tiel pueur dont Payn quida devier_. He left his mace,
+which the knight kept as a testimony to anybody who did not believe the
+story.
+
+This is not bad; but the other, which is either true or extraordinarily
+well invented, is far finer, and, with some omissions, must be analysed
+and partly translated. Those who know the singular beauty of Ludlow Town
+and Castle will be able to "stage" it to advantage, but this is not
+absolutely necessary to its appreciation as a story.
+
+The Peverils have died out by this time, and the honour and lands have
+gone by marriage to Guarin of Metz, whose son, Foulques Fitzguarin or
+Warin, starts the subjects of the general story. When the first Foulkes
+is eighteen, there is war between Sir Joce of Dinan (the name then given
+to Ludlow) and the Lacies. In one of their skirmishes Sir Walter de Lacy
+is wounded and captured, with a young knight of his party, Sir Ernault
+de Lyls. They have courteous treatment in Ludlow Castle, and Ernault
+makes love to Marion de la Briere, a most gentle damsel, who is the
+chief maid of the lady of the castle, and as such, of course, herself a
+lady. He promises her marriage, and she provides him and his chief with
+means of escape. Whether Lisle (as his name probably was) had at this
+time any treacherous intentions is not said or hinted. But Lacy,
+naturally enough, resents his defeat, and watches for an opportunity of
+_revanche_; while Sir Joce[lyn], on the other hand, takes his prisoners'
+escape philosophically, and does not seem to make any enquiry into its
+cause. At first Lacy thinks of bringing over his Irish vassals to aid
+him; but his English neighbours not unnaturally regard this step with
+dislike, and a sort of peace is made between the enemies. A match is
+arranged between Sir Joce's daughter Hawyse and Foulques Fitzwarin. Joce
+then quits Ludlow for a time, leaving, however, a strong garrison there.
+Marion, who feigns illness, is also left. And now begins the tragic and
+striking part of the story.
+
+     The next day after Joce had gone, Marion sent a message to
+     Sir Ernault de Lyls, begging him, for the great love that
+     there was between them, not to forget the pledges they had
+     exchanged, but to come quickly to speak with her at the
+     castle of Dinan, because the lord and the lady and the bulk
+     of the servants had gone to Hertilande--also to come to the
+     same place by which he had left the castle. [_He replies
+     asking her to send him the exact height of the wall (which
+     she unsuspiciously does by the usual means of a silk thread)
+     and also the number of the household left. Then he seeks his
+     chief, and tells him, with a mixture of some truth, that the
+     object of the Hertilande journey is to gather strength
+     against Lacy, capture his castle of Ewyas, and kill
+     himself--intelligence which he falsely attributes to Marion.
+     He has, of course, little difficulty in persuading Lacy to
+     take the initiative. Sir Ernault is entrusted with a
+     considerable mixed force, and comes by night to the
+     castle._] The night was very dark, so that no sentinel saw
+     them. Sir Ernault took a squire to carry the ladder of hide,
+     and they went to the window where Marion was waiting for
+     them. And when she saw them, never was any so joyful: so she
+     dropped a cord right down and drew up the hide ladder and
+     fastened it to a battlement. Then Ernault lightly scaled the
+     tower, and took his love in his arms and kissed her: and
+     they made great joy of each other and went into another room
+     and supped, and then went to their couch, and left the
+     ladder hanging.
+
+     But the squire who had carried it went to the forces hidden
+     in the garden and elsewhere, and took them to the ladder.
+     And one hundred men, well armed, mounted by it and descended
+     by the Pendover tower and went by the wall behind the
+     chapel, and found the sentinel too heavy with sleep to
+     defend himself: and the knights and the sergeants were cut
+     to pieces crying for mercy in their beds. But Sir Ernault's
+     companions were pitiless, and many a white sheet was dyed
+     red with blood. And at last they tossed the watchman into
+     the deep fosse and broke his neck.
+
+     Now Marion de la Briere lay by her lover Sir Ernault and
+     knew nothing of the treason he had done. But she heard a
+     great noise in the castle and rose from her bed, and looked
+     out and heard more clearly the cry of the massacred, and saw
+     knights in white armour. Wherefore she understood that Sir
+     Ernault had deceived and betrayed her, and began to weep
+     bitterly and said, "Ah! that I was ever of mother born: for
+     that by my crime I have lost my lord Sir Joce, who bred me
+     so gently, his castle, and his good folk. Had I not been,
+     nothing had been lost. Alas! that I ever believed this
+     knight! for by his lies he has ruined me, and what is worse,
+     my lord too." Then, all weeping, she drew Sir Ernault's
+     sword and said, "Sir knight! awake, for you have brought
+     strange company into my lord's castle without his leave. I
+     brought in only you and your squire. And since you have
+     deceived me you cannot rightly blame me if I give you your
+     deserts--at least you shall never boast to any other
+     mistress that by deceiving me you conquered the castle and
+     the land of Dinan!" The knight started up, but Marion, with
+     the sword she held drawn, ran him straight through the body,
+     and he died at once. She herself, knowing that if she were
+     taken, ill were the death she should die, and knowing not
+     what to do, let herself fall from a window and broke her
+     neck.
+
+Now this, I venture to think, is not an ordinary story. Tales of
+treachery, onslaught, massacre, are not rare in the Middle Ages, nor
+need we go as far as the Middle Ages for them. But the almost heroic
+insouciance with which the traitor knight forgets everything except his
+immediate enjoyment, and, provided he has his mistress at his will,
+concerns himself not in the slightest degree as to what becomes of his
+companions, is not an every-day touch. Nor is the strong contrast of the
+chambers of feast and dalliance--undisturbed, voluptuous,
+terrestrial-paradisaic--with "the horror and the hell" in the courts
+below. Nor, last of all, the picture of the more than half innocent
+Marion, night-garbed or ungarbed, but with sword drawn, first hanging
+over her slumbering betrayer, then dealing the stroke of vengeance, and
+then falling--white against the dark towers and the darker ravines at
+their base--to her self-doomed judgment.
+
+[Sidenote: Something on these,]
+
+Even more, however, than in individual points of interest or excitement,
+the general survey of these two volumes gives matter for thought on our
+subject. Here are some half-dozen stories or a little more. It is not
+much, some one may say, for the produce of two hundred years. But what
+it lacks in volume (and that will be soon made up in French, while it is
+to be remembered that we have practically nothing to match it in
+English) it makes up in variety. The peculiarity, some would say the
+defect, of mediaeval literature--its sheep-like tendency to go in
+flocks--is quite absent. Not more than two of the eight, _Le Roi Flore_
+and _La Comtesse de Ponthieu_, can be said to be of the same class,
+even giving the word class a fairly elastic sense. They are short prose
+_Romans d'aventures_. But _Asseneth_ is a mystical allegory; _Aucassin
+et Nicolette_ is a sort of idyll, almost a lyric, in which the adventure
+is entirely subordinated to the emotional and poetical interest;
+_L'Empereur Constant_, though with something of the _Roman d'aventures_
+in it, has a tendency towards a _moralitas_ ("there is no armour against
+fate") which never appears in the pure adventurous kind; _Troilus_ is an
+abridgment of a classical romance; and _Foulques Fitzwarin_ is, as has
+been said, an embryonic historical novel. Most, if not all, moreover,
+give openings for, and one or two even proceed into, character- and even
+"problem"-writing of the most advanced novel kind. In one or two also,
+no doubt, that aggression and encroachment of allegory (which is one of
+the chief notes of these two centuries) makes itself felt, though not to
+the extent which we shall notice in the next chapter. But almost
+everywhere a strong _nisus_ towards actual tale-telling and the rapid
+acquisition of proper "plant" for such telling, become evident. In
+particular, conversation--a thing difficult to bring anyhow into
+verse-narrative, and impossible there to keep up satisfactorily in
+various moods--begins to find its way. We may turn, in the next chapter,
+to matter mostly or wholly in verse forms. But prose fiction is started
+all the same.
+
+[Sidenote: And on the short story generally.]
+
+Before we do so, however, it may not be improper to point out that the
+short story undoubtedly holds--of itself--a peculiar and almost
+prerogative place in the history and morphology or the novel. After a
+long and rather unintelligible unpopularity in English--it never
+suffered in this way in French--it has been, according to the way of the
+world, a little over-exalted of late perhaps. It is undoubtedly a very
+difficult thing to do well, and it would be absurd to pretend that any
+of the foregoing examples is done thoroughly well. The Italian _novella_
+had to come and show the way.[79] But the short story, even of the
+rudimentary sort which we have been considering, cannot help being a
+powerful schoolmaster to bring folk to good practice in the larger kind.
+The faults and the merits of that kind, as such, appear in it after a
+fashion which can hardly fail to be instructive and suggestive. The
+faults so frequently charged against that "dear defunct" in our own
+tongue, the three-volume novel--the faults of long-windedness, of otiose
+padding, of unnecessary episodes, etc., are almost mechanically or
+mathematically impossible in the _nouvelle_. The long book provides
+pastime in its literal sense, and if it is not obvious in the other the
+accustomed reader, unless outraged by some extraordinary dulness or
+silences, goes on, partly like the Pickwickian horse because he can't
+well help it, and partly because he hopes that something _may_ turn up.
+In the case of the short he sees almost at once whether it is going to
+have any interest, and if there is none such apparent he throws it
+aside.
+
+Moreover, as in almost every other case, the shortness is appropriate to
+_exercise_; while the prose form does not encourage those terrible
+_chevilles_--repetitions of stock adjective and substantive and verb and
+phrase generally--which are so common in verse, and especially in
+octosyllabic verse. It is therefore in many ways healthy, and the space
+allotted to these early examples of it will not, it is hoped, seem to
+any impartial reader excessive.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[75] The position of "origin" assigned already to the sacred matter of
+the Saint's Life may perhaps be continued here as regards the Sermon. It
+was, as ought to be pretty generally known, the not ungenial habit of
+the mediaeval preacher to tell stories freely. We have them in AElfric's
+and other English homilies long before there was any regular French
+prose; and we have, later, large and numerous collections of
+them--compiled more or less expressly for the use of the clergy--in
+Latin, English, and French. The Latin story is, in fact, very
+wide-ranging and sometimes quite of the novel (at least _nouvelle_)
+kind, as any one may see in Wright's _Latin Stories_, Percy Society,
+1842.
+
+[76] This is one, and one of the most glaring, of the _betises_ which at
+some times have been urged against Romance at large. They are not, as a
+matter of fact, very frequent; but their occurrence certainly does show
+the essentially uncritical character of the time.
+
+[77] For of course the knight did not tell the _whole_ story.
+
+[78] _I.e._ not sorry for having tried to kill him, but sorry that she
+had not done so.
+
+[79] In _prose_. For the very important part played by the home verse
+_fabliaux_ see next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ALLEGORY, FABLIAU, AND PROSE STORY OF COMMON LIFE
+
+
+[Sidenote: The connection with prose fiction of allegory.]
+
+It was shown in the last chapter that fiction, and even prose fiction,
+of very varied character began to develop itself in French during the
+thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By the fifteenth the development
+was very much greater, and the "disrhyming" of romances, the beginnings
+of which were very early, came to be a regular, not an occasional,
+process; while, by its latter part, verse had become not the usual, but
+the exceptional vehicle of romance, and prose romances of enormous
+length were popular. But earlier there had still been some obstacles in
+the way of the prose novel proper. It was the period of the rise and
+reign of Allegory, and France, preceptress of almost all Europe in most
+literary kinds, proved herself such in this with the unparalleled
+example of the _Roman de la Rose_. But the _Roman de la Rose_ was itself
+in verse--the earlier part of it at least in real poetry--and most of
+its innumerable imitations were in verse likewise. Moreover, though
+France again had been the first to receive and to turn to use the riches
+of Eastern apologue, the most famous example of which is _The Seven Wise
+Masters_, these rather serious matters do not seem to have especially
+commended themselves to the French people. The place of composition of
+the most famous of all, the _Gesta Romanorum_, has been fairly settled
+to be England, though the original language of composition is not likely
+to have been other than Latin. At any rate, the style of serious
+allegory, in prose which should also be literature, never really caught
+hold of the French taste.
+
+Comic tale-telling, on the other hand, was germane to the very soul of
+the race, and had shown itself in _chanson_ and _roman_ episodes at a
+very early date. But it had been so abundantly, and in so popular a
+manner, associated with verse as a vehicle in those pieces, in the great
+beast-epic of _Renart_, and above all in the _fabliaux_ and in the
+earliest farces, that the connection was hard to separate. None of the
+stories discussed in the last chapter has, it may be noticed, the least
+comic touch or turn.
+
+[Sidenote: And of the _fabliaux_.]
+
+As we go on we must disengage ourselves more and more (though with
+occasional returns to it) from attention to verse; and the two great
+compositions in that form, the _Romance of the Rose_ and the _Story of
+the Fox_, especially the former, hardly require much writing about to
+any educated person. They are indeed most strongly contrasted examples
+of two modes of tale-telling, both in a manner allegoric, but in other
+respects utterly different. The mere story of the _Rose_, apart from the
+dreamy or satiric digressions and developments of its two parts and the
+elaborate descriptions of the first, can be told in a page or two. An
+abstract of the various _Renart_ books, to give any idea of their real
+character, would, on the other hand, have to be nearly as long as the
+less spun-out versions themselves. But the verse _fabliaux_ can hardly
+be passed over so lightly. Many of them formed the actual bases of the
+prose _nouvelles_ that succeeded them; not a few have found repeated
+presentation in literature; and, above all, they deserve the immense
+praise of having deliberately introduced ordinary life, and not
+conventionalised manners, into literary treatment. We have taken some
+pains to point out touches of that life which are observable in Saint's
+Life and Romance, in _chanson_ and early prose tale. But here the case
+is altered. Almost everything is real; a good deal is what is called, in
+one of the senses of a rather misused word, downright "realism."
+
+Few people who have ever heard of the _fabliaux_ can need to be told
+that this realism in their case implies extreme freedom of treatment,
+extending very commonly to the undoubtedly coarse and not seldom to the
+merely dirty. There are some--most of them well known by modern
+imitations such as Leigh Hunt's "Palfrey"--which are quite guiltless in
+this respect; but the great majority deal with the usual comic farrago
+of satire on women, husbands, monks, and other stock subjects of
+raillery, all of which at the time invited "sculduddery." To translate
+some of the more amusing, one would require not merely Chaucerian
+licence of treatment but Chaucerian peculiarities of dialect in order to
+avoid mere vulgarity. Even Prior, who is our only modern English
+_fabliau_-writer of real literary merit--the work of people like Hanbury
+Williams and Hall Stevenson being mostly mere pornography--could hardly
+have managed such a piece as "Le Sot Chevalier"--a riotously "improper"
+but excessively funny example--without running the risk of losing that
+recommendation of being "a lady's book" with which Johnson rather
+capriciously tempered his more general undervaluation. Sometimes, on the
+other hand, the joke is trivial enough, as in the English-French
+word-play of _anel_ for _agnel_ (or _-neau_), which substitutes "donkey"
+for "lamb"; or, in the other, on the comparison of a proper name,
+"Estula," with its component syllables "es tu la?" But the important
+point on the whole is that, proper or improper, romantic or trivial,
+they all exhibit a constant improvement in the mere art of telling; in
+discarding of the stock phrases, the long-winded speeches, and the
+general _paraphernalia_ of verse; in sticking and leading up smartly to
+the point; in coining sharp, lively phrase; in the co-ordination of
+incident and the excision of superfluities. Often they passed without
+difficulty into direct dramatic presentation in short farces. But on the
+whole their obvious destiny was to be "unrhymed" and to make their
+appearance in the famous form of the _nouvelle_ or _novella_, in regard
+to which it is hard to say whether Italy was most indebted to France
+for substance, or France to Italy for form.
+
+[Sidenote: The rise of the _nouvelle_ itself.]
+
+It was not, however, merely the intense conservatism of the Middle Ages
+as to literary form which kept back the prose _nouvelle_ to such an
+extent that, as we have seen, only a few examples survive from the two
+whole centuries between 1200 and 1400, while not one of these is of the
+kind most characteristic ever since, or at least until quite recent
+days, of French tale-telling. The French octosyllabic couplet, in which
+the _fabliaux_ were without exception or with hardly an exception
+composed, can, in a long story, become very tiresome because of its want
+of weight and grasp, and the temptations it offers to a weak rhymester
+to stuff it with endless tags. But for a short tale in deft hands it can
+apply its lightness in the best fashion, and put its points with no lack
+of sting. The _fabliau_-writer or reciter was not required--one imagines
+that he would have found scant audiences if he had tried it--to spin a
+long yarn; he had got to come to his jokes and his business pretty
+rapidly; and, as La Fontaine has shown to thousands who have never
+known--perhaps have never heard of--his early masters, he had an
+instrument which would answer to his desires perfectly if only he knew
+how to finger it.
+
+At the same time, both the lover of poetry and the lover of tale must
+acknowledge that, though alliance between them is not in the least an
+unholy one, and has produced great and charming children, the best of
+the poetry is always a sort of extra bonus or solace to the tale, and
+the tale not unfrequently seems as if it could get on better without the
+poetry. The one can only aspire somewhat irrelevantly; the other can
+never attain quite its full development. So it was no ill day when the
+prose _nouvelle_ came to its own in France.
+
+[Sidenote: _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles._]
+
+The first remarkable collection was the famous _Cent Nouvelles
+Nouvelles_, traditionally attributed to Louis XI. when Dauphin and an
+exile in Brabant, with the assistance of friends and courtiers, but
+more recently selected by critics that way minded as part of the baggage
+they have "commandeered" for Antoine de la Salle. The question of
+authorship is of scarcely the slightest importance to us; though the
+point last mentioned is worth mentioning, because we shall have to
+notice the favoured candidate in this history again. There are certainly
+some of the hundred that he might have written.
+
+In the careless way in which literary history used to be dealt with, the
+_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ were held to be mere imitation of the
+_Decameron_ and other Italian things. It is, of course, much more than
+probable that the Italian _novella_ had not a little to do with the
+precipitation of the French _nouvelle_ from its state of solution in the
+_fabliau_. But the person or persons who, in imitating the _Decameron_,
+produced the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ had a great deal more to do--and
+did a great deal less--than this mere imitation of their original. As
+for a group of included tales, the already-mentioned _Seven Wise
+Masters_[80] was known in France much before Boccaccio's time. The title
+was indeed admittedly Italian, but such an obvious one as to require no
+positive borrowing, and there is in the French book no story-framework
+like that of the plague and the country-house visit; no cheerful
+personalities like Fiammetta or Dioneo make not merely the intervals but
+the stories themselves alive with a special interest. Above all, there
+is nothing like the extraordinary mixture of unity and variety--a pure
+gift of genius--which succeeds in making the _Decameron_ a real book as
+well as a bundle of narratives. Nor is there anything like the literary
+brilliancy of the actual style and handling.
+
+Nevertheless, _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ is a book of great interest
+and value, despite serious defects due to its time generally and to its
+place in the history of fiction in particular. Its obscenity, on which
+even Sir Walter Scott, the least censorious or prudish-prurient of men,
+and with Southey, the great witness against false squeamishness, has
+been severe,[81] is unfortunately undeniable. But it is to be doubted
+whether Sir Walter knew much of the _fabliaux_; if he had he would have
+seen first, that this sort of thing had become an almost indispensable
+fashion in the short story, and secondly, that there is here
+considerable improvement on the _fabliaux_ themselves, there being much
+less mere schoolboy crudity of dirty detail and phrase, though the
+situations may remain the same. It suffers occasionally from the heavy
+and rhetorical style which beset all European literature (except
+Italian, which itself did not wholly escape) in the fifteenth century.
+But still one can see in it that improvement of narrative method and
+diction which has been referred to: and occasionally, amid the crowd of
+tricky wives, tricked husbands, too obliging and too hardly treated
+chambermaids, ribald priests and monks, and the like, one comes across
+quite different things and persons, which are, as the phrase goes,
+almost startlingly modern, with a mixture of the _un_modern heightening
+the appeal. One of the most striking of these--not very likely to be
+detected or suspected by a careless reader under its sub-title of "La
+Demoiselle Cavaliere," and by no means fully summarised in the quaint
+short argument which is in all cases subjoined--may be briefly analysed.
+
+[Sidenote: Analysis of "La Demoiselle Cavaliere".]
+
+In one of the great baronial households of Brabant there lived, after
+the usual condition of gentle servitude, a youth named Gerard, who fell
+in love, after quite honourable and seemly fashion, with Katherine, the
+daughter of the house--a fact which, naturally, they thought known only
+to themselves, when, as naturally, everybody in the Court had become
+aware of it. "For the better prevention of scandal," an immediate
+marriage being apparently out of the question because of Gerard's
+inferiority in rank to his mistress, it is decided by the intervention
+of friends that Gerard shall take his leave of the Brabantine "family."
+There is a parting of the most laudable kind, in which Katherine
+bestows on her lover a ring, and a pledge that she will never marry any
+one else, and he responds suitably. Then he sets out, and on arriving at
+Bar has no difficulty in establishing himself in another great
+household. Katherine meanwhile is beset with suitors of the best rank
+and fortune; but will have nothing to say to any of them, till one day
+comes the formidable moment when a mediaeval father determines that his
+daughter shall marry a certain person, will she nill she. But if
+mediaeval fatherhood was arbitrary, mediaeval religion was supreme, and
+a demand to go on pilgrimage before an important change of life could
+hardly be refused. In fact, the parents, taking the proposal as a mere
+preliminary of obedience, consent joyfully, and offer a splendid suite
+of knights and damsels, "Nous lui baillerons ung tel gentilhomme et une
+telle demoiselle, Ysabeau et Marguerite et Jehanneton." But "no," says
+Mistress Katherine sagely. The road to St. Nicolas of Warengeville is
+not too safe for people travelling with a costly outfit and a train of
+women. Let her, dressed as a man, and a bastard uncle of hers (who is
+evidently the "Will Wimble" of the house) go quietly on little horses,
+and it will save time, trouble, money, and danger. This the innocent
+parents consider to show "great sense and good will," and the pair start
+in German dress--Katherine as master, the uncle as man,--comfortably,
+too, as one may imagine (for uncles and nieces generally get on well
+together, and the bend sinister need do no harm). They accomplish their
+pilgrimage (a touch worth noticing in Katherine's character), and then
+only does she reveal her plan to her companion. She tells him, not
+without a little bribery, that she wants to go and see Gerard _en
+Barrois_, and to stay there for a short time; but he is to have no doubt
+of her keeping her honour safe. He consents, partly with an eye to the
+future main chance (for she is her father's sole heir), and partly
+because _elle est si bonne qu'il n'y fault guere guet sur elle_.
+Katherine, taking the name of Conrad, finds the place, presents herself
+to the _maitre_ _d'ostel_, an ancient squire, as desirous of
+entertainment or _re_tainment, and is very handsomely received. After
+dinner and due service done to the master, the old squire having heard
+that Katherine--Conrad--is of Brabant, naturally introduces her
+countryman Gerard to her. He does not in the least recognise her, and
+what strikes her as stranger, neither during their own dinner nor after
+says a word about Brabant itself. Conrad is regularly admitted to
+Monseigneur's service, and, as a countryman, is to share Gerard's room.
+They are perfectly good friends, go to see their horses together, etc.,
+but still the formerly passionate lover says not a word of Brabant or
+his Brabanconian love, and poor Katherine concludes that she has been
+"put with forgotten sins"--not a bad phrase, though it might be
+misconstrued. Being, however, as has been already seen, both a plucky
+girl and a clever one, she determines to carry her part through. At
+last, when they go to their respective couches in the same chamber, she
+herself faces the subject, and asks him if he knows any persons in
+Brabant. "Oh yes." "Does he know" her own father, his former master?
+"Yes." "They say," said she, "that there are pretty girls there: did you
+not know any?" "Precious few," quoth he, "and I cared nothing about
+them. Do let me go to sleep! I am dead tired." "What!" said she, "can
+you sleep when there is talk of pretty girls? _You_ are not much of a
+lover." But he slept "like a pig."
+
+Nevertheless, Katherine does not give up hope, though the next day
+things are much the same, Gerard talking of nothing but hounds and
+hawks, Conrad of pretty girls. At last the visitor declares that he
+[she] does not care for the Barrois, and will go back to Brabant. "Why?"
+says Gerard, "what better hunting, etc., can you get there than here?"
+"It has nothing," says Conrad, "like the women of Brabant," adding, in
+reply to a jest of his, an ambiguous declaration that she is actually in
+love. "Then why did you leave her?" says Gerard--about the first
+sensible word he has uttered. She makes a fiery answer as to Love
+sometimes banishing from his servants all sense and reason. But for the
+time the subject again drops. It is, however, reopened at night, and
+some small pity comes on one for the recreant Gerard, inasmuch as she
+keeps him awake by wailing about her love. At last she "draws" the
+sluggard to some extent. "Has not _he_ been in love, and does not he
+know all about it? But he was never such a fool as Conrad, and he is
+sure that Conrad's lady is not such either." Another try, and she gets
+the acknowledgment of treason out of him. He tells her (what she knows
+too well) how he loved a noble damsel in Brabant and had to leave her,
+and it really annoyed him for a few days (it is good to imagine
+Katherine's face, even in the dark, at this), though of course he never
+lost his appetite or committed any folly of that sort. But he knew his
+Ovid (he tells her), and as soon as he came to Bar he made love to a
+pretty girl there who was quite amiable to him, and now he never thinks
+of the other. There is more talk, and Katherine insists that he shall
+introduce her to his new lady, that she may try this remedy of
+counter-love. He consents with perfect nonchalance, and is at last
+allowed to go to sleep. No details are given of the conversation with
+the rival,[82] except the bitterness of Katherine's heart at the fact,
+and at seeing the ring she had given to Gerard on his hand. This she
+actually has the pluck to play with, and, securing it, to slip on her
+own. But the man being obviously past praying or caring for, she
+arranges with her uncle to depart early in the morning, writes a letter
+telling Gerard of the whole thing and renouncing him, passes the night
+silently, leaves the letter, rises quietly and early, and departs, yet
+"weeping tenderly," not for the man, but for her own lost love. The pair
+reach home safely, and says the tale-teller, with an agreeable dryness
+often found here,[83] "There were some who asked them the adventures of
+their journey, but whatever they answered they did not boast of the
+chief one." The conclusion is so spirited and at the very end so scenic
+and even modern (or, much better, universal), that it must be given in
+direct translation, with a few _chevilles_ (or pieces of padding) left
+out.
+
+     As for Gerard, when he woke and found his companion gone, he
+     thought it must be late, jumped up in haste, and seized his
+     jerkin: but, as he thrust his hand in one of the sleeves,
+     there dropped out a letter which surprised him, for he
+     certainly did not remember having put any there. He picked
+     it up and saw it subscribed "To the disloyal Gerard." If he
+     was startled before he was more so now: but he opened it at
+     last, and saw the signature "Katherine, surnamed Conrad."
+     Even yet he knew not what to think of it: but as he read the
+     blood rose to his face and his heart fluttered, and his
+     whole manner was changed. Still, he read it through, and
+     learnt how his disloyalty had come to the knowledge of her
+     who had wished him so well; and that not at second hand, but
+     from himself to herself; what trouble she had taken to find
+     him; and how (which stung him most) he had slept three
+     nights in her company after all. [_After thinking some time
+     he decides to follow her, and arrives in Brabant on the very
+     day of her marriage: for she has, in the circumstances, kept
+     her word to her parents._] Then he tried to go up to her and
+     salute her, and make some wretched excuse for his fault. But
+     he was not allowed, for she turned her shoulder on him, and
+     he could never manage to speak to her all through the day.
+     He even stepped forward once to lead her out to dance, but
+     she refused him flatly before all the company, many of whom
+     heard her. And immediately afterwards another gentleman
+     came, who bade the minstrels strike up, and she stepped down
+     from her dais in full view of Gerard and went to dance with
+     him. And so did the disloyal lover lose his lady.
+
+Now whether this, as the book asserts and as is not at all improbable,
+is a true story or not, cannot matter to any sensible person one
+farthing. What does matter is that it is a by no means badly told story,
+that it resorts to no illegitimate sources or seasonings of interest,
+and that it offers opportunities for amplification and "diversity of
+administration" to almost any extent. One can fancy it told, at much
+greater length and with more or less adjustment to different times, by
+great novelists of the most widely varying classes--by Scott and by
+Dumas, by Charles Reade and by George Meredith, to mention no living
+writer, as might easily be done. Both hero and heroine have more
+character between them than you could extract out of fifty of the usual
+_nouvelles_, and each lends him or herself to endless further
+development. Not a few of the separate scenes--the good parents fussing
+over their daughter's intended cavalcade and her thrifty and ingenious
+objections; the journey of the uncle and niece (any of the first three
+of the great novelists mentioned above would have made chapters of
+this); the dramatic and risky passages at the castle _en Barrois_; the
+contrast of Katherine's passion and Gerard's sluggishness; and the
+fashion in which this latter at once brings on the lout's defeat and
+saves the lady from danger at his hands--all this is novel-matter of
+almost the first class as regards incident, with no lack of
+character-openings to boot. Nor could anybody want a better "curtain"
+than the falling back of the scorned and baffled false lover, the
+concert of the minstrels, and Katherine's stately stepping down the dais
+to complete the insult by dancing with another.
+
+[Sidenote: The interest of _named_ personages.]
+
+One more general point may be noticed in connection with the superiority
+of this story, and that is the accession of interest, at first sight
+trivial but really important, which comes from the _naming_ of the
+personages. Both in the earlier _fabliaux_ and in these _Nouvelles_
+themselves, by far the larger number of the actors are simply called by
+class-names--a "knight," a "damsel," a "merchant and his wife," a
+"priest," a "varlet." It may seem childish to allow the mere addition of
+a couple of names like Gerard and Katherine to make this difference of
+interest, but the fact is that there is a good deal of childishness in
+human nature, and especially in the enjoyment of story.[84] Only by
+very slow degrees were writers of fiction to learn the great difference
+that small matters of this kind make, and how the mere "anecdote," the
+dry argument or abstract of incident, can be amplified, varied,
+transformed from a remainder biscuit to an abundant and almost
+inexhaustible feast, by touches of individual character, setting of
+interiors, details of conversation, description, nomenclature, and what
+not. Quite early, as we saw in the case of the _St. Alexis_, persons of
+narrative gift stumbled upon things of the kind; but it was only after
+long delays, and hints of many half-conscious kinds, that they became
+part of recognised craft. Even with such a master of that craft as
+Boccaccio before them, not all the Italian novelists could catch the
+pattern; and the French, perhaps naturally enough, were slower still.
+
+It must be remembered, in judging the fifteenth-century French tale,
+that just as it was to some extent hampered by the long continuing
+popularity of the verse _fabliau_ on the one hand, so it was, as we may
+say, "bled" on the other by the growing popularity of the farce, which
+consists of exactly the same material as the _fabliaux_ and the
+_nouvelles_ themselves, with the additional liveliness of voice and
+action. These later additions imposed not the smallest restraint on the
+license which had characterised and was to characterise the plain verse
+and prose forms,[85] and no doubt the result was all the more welcome to
+the taste of the time. But for that very reason the appetites and
+tastes, which could glut themselves with the full dramatic
+representation, might care less for the mere narrative, on the famous
+principle of _segnius irritant_. Nor was the political state of France
+during the time very favourable to letters. There are, however, two
+separate fifteenth-century stories which deserve notice. One of them is
+the rather famous, though probably not widely read, _Petit Jehan de
+Saintre_ of the already mentioned Antoine de la Salle, a certain work
+of his this time. The other is the pleasant, though to Englishmen
+intentionally uncomplimentary, _Jehan de Paris_ of an unknown writer. La
+Salle's book must belong to the later middle of the century, though, if
+he died in or about 1461, not to a very late middle. _Jehan de Paris_
+has been put by M. de Montaiglon nearer the close.
+
+[Sidenote: _Petit Jehan de Saintre._]
+
+The history of "little John of Saintre and the Lady of the Beautiful
+Cousins"[86] has not struck all judges, even all English judges,[87] in
+the same way. Some have thought it mawkish, rhetorical, clumsily
+imitative of the manners of dead chivalry, and the like. Others,
+admitting it to be a late and "literary" presentation of the stately
+society it describes, rank it much higher as such. Its author was a
+bitter enough satirist if he wrote, as he most probably did, the famous
+_Quinze Joyes de Mariage_, one of the most unmitigated pieces of
+unsweetened irony--next to _A Tale of a Tub_ and _Jonathan Wild_--to be
+found in literature; but not couched in narrative form. The same quality
+appears of course in the still more famous farce of _Pathelin_, which
+few good judges deny very stoutly to him, though there is little
+positive evidence. In the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ again, as has been
+said, he certainly had a hand, and possibly a great hand, as well as
+perhaps elsewhere. The satiric touch appears even in _Petit Jehan_
+itself; for, after all the gracious courtship of the earlier part, the
+_dame des belles Cousines_, during an absence of her lover on service,
+falls a by no means, as it would seem, very reluctant victim to the
+vulgar viciousness of a rich churchman, just like the innominatas of the
+_nouvelles_ themselves. But the earlier part _is_ gracious--a word
+specifically and intensively applicable to it. It may be a little
+unreal; does not the secondary form and sense which has been fastened
+upon reality--"realism"--show that, in the opinion of many people at
+least, reality is _not_ gracious? The Foozles of this world who "despise
+all your kickshaws," the Dry-as-dusts who point out--not in the least
+seeing the real drift of their argument--that the fifteenth century was,
+in the greater part of Europe if not the whole, at a new point of morals
+and manners, may urge these things. But the best part of _Petit Jehan_
+remains a gracious sort of dream for gracious dreamers--a picture of a
+kind of Utopia of Feminism, when Feminism did not mean votes or anything
+foolish, but only adoration of the adorable.
+
+[Sidenote: _Jehan de Paris._]
+
+It would be impossible to find or even to imagine anything more
+different than the not much later _Jehan de Paris_, an evident
+folk-tale[88] of uncertain origin, which very quickly became a popular
+chapbook and lasted long in that condition. Although we Englishmen
+provide the fun, he is certainly no Englishman who resents the fact or
+fails to enjoy the result, not to mention that we "could tell them tales
+with other endings." It is, for instance, not quite historically
+demonstrable that in crossing a river many English horsemen would be
+likely to be drowned, while all the French cavaliers got safe through;
+nor that, in scouring a country, the Frenchmen would score all the game
+and all the best beasts and poultry, while the English bag would consist
+of starvelings and offal. But no matter for that. The actual tale tells
+(with the agreeable introductory "How," which has not yet lost its zest
+for the right palates in chapter-headings) the story of a King and Queen
+of Spain who have, in recompense for help given them against turbulent
+barons, contracted their daughter to the King of France for his son; how
+they forgot this later, and betrothed her to the King of England, and
+how that King set out with his train, through France itself, to fetch
+his bride. As soon as the Dauphin (now king, for his father is dead)
+hears of their coming, he disguises himself under the name of John of
+Paris, with a splendid train of followers, much more gorgeous than the
+English (the "foggy islander" of course cannot make this out), and sets
+of _quiproquos_ follow, in each of which the Englishman is outdone and
+baffled generally, till at last "John of Paris" enters Burgos in state,
+reveals himself, and carries off the Englishman's bride, with the
+natural effect of making him _bien marry et courrouce_, though no fight
+comes off.
+
+The tale is smartly and succinctly told (there are not many more than a
+hundred of the small-sized and large-printed pages of the _Collection
+Jannet-Picard_), and there is a zest and _verve_ about it which ought to
+please any mood that is for the time in harmony with the much talked of
+Comic Spirit. But it certainly does not lose attraction, and it as
+certainly does not fail to lend some, when it is considered side by side
+with the other "John," especially if both are again compared with the
+certainly not earlier and probably later "Prose Romances" in English, to
+which that rather ambitious title was given by Mr. Thoms. There is
+nothing in these in the very remotest degree resembling _Jehan de
+Saintre_: you must get on to the _Arcadia_ or at least to _Euphues_
+before you come anywhere near that. There is, on the other hand, in our
+stuff, a sort of distant community of spirit with _Jehan de Paris_; but
+it works in an altogether lower and less imaginative sphere and fashion;
+no sense of art being present, and very little of craft. It is
+astonishing that a language which had had, if only in verse, such an
+unsurpassable tale-teller as Chaucer, should have been so backward. But
+then the whole conditions of the fifteenth century, especially in
+England, become only the more puzzling the longer one studies them. Even
+in France, it will be observed, the output of Tale is by no means
+large.[89] Nor shall we find it very greatly increased even in the next
+age, though there is one masterpiece in quantity as well as quality.
+But, for our purpose, the _Cent Nouvelles_ and the two separate pieces
+just discussed continue, and in more and more striking manner, to show
+the vast possibilities when the way shall have been clearly found and
+the feet of the wayfarers firmly set in it.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[80] Prose as well as verse.
+
+[81] In the very delightful imaginative introduction to _Quentin
+Durward_.
+
+[82] This is one of the points which a modern novelist would certainly
+have seized; but whether to advantage or not is another question.
+
+[83] And of course recognised by the "Antonians" as peculiar to La
+Salle.
+
+[84] Only contrast "_Tom, Tom_, the piper's son," with "_There was once_
+a piper's son," or think how comparatively uninteresting the enormities
+of another hero or not-hero would have been if he had been anonymous
+instead of being called "Georgy-Porgy Pudding-and-Pie!" ["Puddenum" is,
+or used to be, the preferred if corrupt nursery form.] In more elaborate
+and adorned narrative the influence, not merely of the name but of the
+beautiful name, comes in, and that of the name itself remains. In that
+tragic story of Ludlow Castle which was given above (Chap. iv. pp.
+84-6), something, for the present writer at least, would have been lost
+if the traitor had been merely "a knight" instead of Sir Ernault Lisle
+and the victim merely "a damsel" instead of Marion de la Briere. And
+would the _bocca bacciata_ of Alaciel itself be as gracious if it was
+merely anybody's?
+
+[85] The amazing farce-insets of Lyndsay's _Satire of the Three Estates_
+could be paralleled, and were no doubt suggested, by French farces of
+older date.
+
+[86] Nobody seems to be entirely certain what this odd title means:
+though there have been some obvious and some far-fetched guesses. But it
+has, like other _rhetoriqueur_ names of 1450-1550, such as "Traverser of
+Perilous Ways" and the like, a kind of fantastic attraction for some
+people.
+
+[87] If I remember rightly, my friend the late R. L. Stevenson was wont
+to abuse it.
+
+[88] As such, the substance is found in other languages. But the French
+itself has been traced by some to an earlier _roman d'aventure_, _Blonde
+d'Oxford_, in which an English heiress is carried off by a French
+squire.
+
+[89] Perhaps one should guard against a possible repetition of a not
+uncommon critical mistake--that of inferring ignorance from absence of
+mention. I am quite aware that no exhaustive catalogue of known French
+stories in prose has been given; and the failure to supplement a former
+glance at the late prose versions of romance is intentional. They have
+nothing new in romance-, still less in novel-_character_ for us. The
+_Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_ volumes have been dwelt upon, not as a
+_corpus_, but because they appear to represent, without any unfair
+manipulation or "window-dressing," the kind at the time with a
+remarkable combination of interest both individual and contrasted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RABELAIS
+
+
+[Sidenote: The anonymity, or at least impersonality, of authorship up to
+this point.]
+
+Although--as it is hoped the foregoing chapters may have shown--the
+amount of energy and of talent, thrown into the department of French
+fiction, had from almost the earliest times been remarkably great;
+although French, if not France, had been the mother of almost all
+literatures in things fictitious, it can hardly be said that any writer
+of undeniable genius, entitling him to the first class in the Art of
+Letters, had shown himself therein. A hundred _chansons de geste_ and as
+many romances _d'aventures_ had displayed dispersed talent of a very
+high kind, and in the best of them, as the present writer has tried to
+point out, a very "extensive assortment" of the various attractions of
+the novel had from time to time made its appearance. But this again had
+been done "dispersedly," as the Shakespearean stage-direction has it.
+The story is sometimes well told, but the telling is constantly
+interrupted; the great art of novel-conversation is, as yet, almost
+unborn; the descriptions, though sometimes very striking, as in the case
+of those given from _Partenopeus_--the fatal revelation of Melior's
+charms and the galloping of the maddened palfrey along the seashore,
+with the dark monster-haunted wood behind and the bright moonlit sea and
+galley in front--are more often stock and lifeless; while, above all,
+the characters are rarely more than sketched, if even that. The one
+exception--the great Arthurian history, as liberated from its
+Graal-legend swaddling clothes, and its kite-and-crow battles with
+Saxons and rival knights, but retaining the mystical motive of the
+Graal-search itself and the adventures of Lancelot and other knights;
+combining all this into a single story, and storing it with incident for
+a time, and bringing it to a full and final tragic close by the loves of
+Lancelot himself and Guinevere--this great achievement, it has been
+frankly confessed, is so much muddled and distracted with episode which
+becomes positive digression, that some have even dismissed its
+pretensions to be a whole. Even those who reject this dismissal are not
+at one as to any single author of the conception, still less of the
+execution. The present writer has stated his humble, but ever more and
+more firm conviction that Chrestien did not do it and could not have
+done it; others of more note, perhaps of closer acquaintance with MS.
+sources, but also perhaps not uniting knowledge of the subject with more
+experience in general literary criticism and in special study of the
+Novel, will not allow Mapes to have done it.
+
+The _Roman de la Rose_, beautiful as is its earlier part and ingenious
+as is (sometimes) its later, is, as a _story_, of the thinnest kind. The
+_Roman de Renart_ is a vast collection of small stories of a special
+class, and the _Fabliaux_ are almost a vaster collection (if you do not
+exclude the "waterings out" of _Renart_) of kinds more general. There is
+abundance of amusement and some charm; but nowhere are we much beyond
+very simple forms of fiction itself. None of the writers of _nouvelles_,
+except Antoine de la Salle, can be said to be a known personality.
+
+[Sidenote: Rabelais unquestionably the first very great known writer.]
+
+There has always been a good deal of controversy about Rabelais, not all
+of which perhaps can we escape, though it certainly will not be invited,
+and we have no very extensive knowledge of his life. But we have some:
+and that, as a man of genius, he is superior to any single person named
+and known in earlier French literature, can hardly be contested by any
+one who is neither a silly paradoxer nor a mere dullard, nor affected by
+some extra-literary prejudice--religious, moral, or whatever it may be.
+But perhaps not every one who would admit the greatness of Master
+Francis as a man of letters, his possession not merely of consummate
+wit, but of that precious thing, so much rarer in French, actual humour;
+his wonderful influence on the future word-book and phrase-book of his
+own language, nay, not every one who would go almost the whole length of
+the most uncompromising Pantagruelist, and would allow him profound
+wisdom, high aspirations for humanity, something of a complete
+world-philosophy--would at once admit him as a very great novelist. For
+my own part I have no hesitation in doing so, and to make the admission
+good must be the object of this chapter.
+
+[Sidenote: But the first great novelist?]
+
+It may almost be said that his very excellence in this way has "stood in
+its own light." The readableness of Rabelais is extraordinary. The
+present writer, after for years making of him almost an Addison
+according to Johnson's prescription, fell, by mere accident and
+occupation with other matters, into a way of _not_ reading him, except
+for purposes of mere literary reference, during a long time. On three
+different occasions more recently, one ten or a dozen years ago, one six
+or seven, and the third for the purposes of this very book, he put
+himself again under the Master, and read him right through. It is
+difficult to imagine a severer test, and I am bound to confess (though I
+am not bound to specify) that in some, though not many, instances I have
+found famous and once favourite classics fail to stand it. Not so Master
+Francis. I do not think that I ever read him with greater interest than
+at this last time. Indeed I doubt whether I have ever felt the
+_catholicon_--the pervading virtue of his book--quite so strongly as I
+have in the days preceding that on which I write these words.
+
+[Sidenote: Some objections considered.]
+
+Of course Momus may find handles--he generally can. "You are suffering
+from morbid senile relapse into puerile enjoyment of indecency," he or
+Mrs. Momus (whom later ages have called Grundy) may be kind enough to
+say. "You were a member of the Rabelais Club of pleasant memory, and
+think it necessary to live up to your earlier profession." "You have
+said this in print before [I have not exactly done so] and are bound to
+stick to it," etc. etc. etc., down to that final, "You are a bad critic,
+and it doesn't matter what you say," which certainly, in a sense, does
+leave nothing to be replied. But whether this is because the accused is
+guilty, or because the Court does not call upon him, is a question which
+one may leave to others.
+
+Laying it down, then, as a point of fact that Rabelais _has_ this
+curious "holding" quality, whence does he get it? As everybody ought to
+know, many good people, admitting the fact, have, as he would himself
+have said, gone about with lanterns to seek for out-of-the-way reasons
+and qualities; while some people, not so good, but also accepting the
+fact in a way, have grasped at the above-mentioned indecency itself for
+an explanation. This trick requires little effort to kick it into its
+native gutter. The greater proportion of the "_Indexable_" part of
+Rabelais is mere nastiness, which is only attractive to a very small
+minority of persons at any age, while to expert readers it is but a
+time-deodorised dunghill by the roadside, not beautiful, but negligible.
+Of the other part of this kind--the "naughty" part which is not nasty
+and may be somewhat nice--there is, when you come to consider it
+dispassionately, not really so very much, and it is seldom used in a
+seductive fashion. It may tickle, but it does not excite; may create
+laughter, but never passion or even desire. Therefore it cannot be this
+which "holds" any reader but a mere novice or a glutton for garbage.
+
+Less easily dismissible, but, it will seem, not less inadequate is the
+alleged "key"-interest of the book. Of course there are some people, and
+more than a person who wishes to think nobly of humanity might desire to
+find, who seem never to be tired of identifying Grandgousier, Gargantua,
+and Pantagruel himself with French kings to whom they bear not the
+slightest resemblance; of obliging us English by supposing us to be the
+Macreons (who seem to have been very respectable people, but who inhabit
+an island singularly unlike England in or anywhere near the time of
+Rabelais), and so on. But to a much larger number of persons--and one
+dares say to all true Pantagruelists--these interpretations are either
+things that the Master himself would have delighted to satirise, and
+would have satirised unsurpassably, or, at best, mere superfluities and
+supererogations. At any rate there is no possibility of finding in them
+the magic spell--the "Fastrada's ring," which binds youth and age alike
+to the unique "Alcofribas Nasier."
+
+One must, it is supposed, increase the dose of respect (though
+some people, in some cases, find it hard) when considering a further
+quality or property--the Riddle-attraction of Rabelais. This
+riddle-attraction--or attractions, for it might be better spoken of in a
+very large plural--is of course quite undeniable in itself. There are as
+many second intentions in the ordinary sense, apparently obvious in
+_Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_, as there can have been in the scholastic
+among the dietary of La Quinte, or of any possible Chimaera buzzing at
+greatest intensity in the extremest vacuum. On the other hand, some of
+us are haunted by the consideration, "Was there ever any human being
+more likely than Francois Rabelais to echo (with the slightest change)
+the words ascribed to Divinity in that famous piece which is taken, on
+good external and ultra-internal evidence, to be Swift's?
+
+    _I_ to such block-heads set my wit!
+    _I_ [_pose_] such fools! Go, go--you're bit."
+
+And there is not wanting, amongst us sceptics, a further section who are
+quite certain that a not inconsiderable proportion of the book is not
+allegory at all, but sheer "bamming," while others again would transfer
+the hackneyed death-bed saying from author to book, and say that the
+whole Chronicle is "a great perhaps."
+
+[Sidenote: And dismissed as affecting the general attraction of the
+book.]
+
+These things--or at least elaborate discussions of them--lie somewhat,
+though not so far as may at first seem, outside our proper business. It
+must, however, once more be evident, from the facts and very nature of
+the case, that the puzzles, the riddles, the allegories cannot
+constitute the main and, so to speak, "universal" part of the attraction
+of the book. They may be a seasoning to some, a solid cut-and-come-again
+to others, but certainly not to the majority. Even in _Gulliver_--the
+Great Book's almost, perhaps quite, as great descendant--these
+attractions, though more universal in appeal and less evasively
+presented, certainly do not hold any such position. The fact is that
+both Rabelais and Swift were consummate tellers of a story, and
+(especially if you take the _Polite Conversation_ into Swift's claim)
+consummate originators of the Novel or larger story, with more than
+"incidental" attraction itself. But we are not now busied with Swift.
+
+[Sidenote: Which lies, largely if not wholly, in its story-interest.]
+
+Not much serious objection will probably be taken to the place allotted
+to Master Francis as a tale-teller pure and simple, although it cannot
+be said that all his innumerable critics and commentators have laid
+sufficient stress on this. From the uncomfortable birth of Gargantua to
+the triumphant recessional scene from the Oracle of the Bottle, proofs
+are to be found in every book, every chapter almost, and indeed almost
+every page; and a little more detail may be given on this head later.
+But the presentation of Rabelais as a novelist-before-novels may cause
+more demur, and even suggest the presence of the now hopelessly
+discredited thing--paradox itself. Of course, if anybody requires
+regular plot as a necessary constituent, only paradox could contend for
+that. It _has_ been contended--and rightly enough--that in the general
+scheme and the two (or if you take in Grandgousier, three) generations
+of histories of the good giants, Rabelais is doing nothing more than
+parody--is, indeed, doing little more than simply follow the traditions
+of Romance--Amiles and Jourdains, Guy and Rembrun, and many others. But
+some of us regard plot as at best a full-dress garment, at the absence
+of which the good-natured God or Muse of fiction is quite willing to
+wink. Character, if seldom elaborately presented, except in the case of
+Panurge, is showered, in scraps and sketches, all over the book, and
+description and dialogue abound.
+
+[Sidenote: Contrast of the _Moyen de Parvenir_.]
+
+But it is not on such beggarly special pleading as this that the claim
+shall be founded. It must rest on the unceasing, or practically
+unceasing, impetus of story-interest which carries the reader through. A
+remarkably useful contrast-parallel in this respect, may be found in
+that strange book, the _Moyen de Parvenir_. I am of those who think that
+it had something to do with Rabelais, that there is some of his stuff in
+it, even that he may have actually planned something like it. But the
+"make-up" is not more inferior in merit to that of _Gargantua_ and
+_Pantagruel_ than it is different in kind. The _Moyen de Parvenir_ is
+full of separate stories of the _fabliau_ kind, often amusing and well
+told, though exceedingly gross as a rule. These stories are "set" in a
+framework of promiscuous conversation, in which a large number of great
+real persons, ancient and modern, and a smaller one of invented
+characters, or rather names, take part. Most of this, though not quite
+all, is mere _fatrasie_, if not even mere jargon: and though there are
+glimmerings of something more than sense, they are, with evident
+deliberation, enveloped in clouds of nonsense. The thing is not a whole
+at all, and the stories have as little to do with each other or with any
+general drift as if they were professedly--what they are practically--a
+bundle of _fabliaux_ or _nouvelles_. As always happens in such
+cases--and as the author, whether he was Beroalde or another, whether or
+not he worked on a canvas greater than he could fill, or tried to patch
+together things too good for him, no doubt intended--attempts have been
+made to interpret the puzzle here also; but they are quite obviously
+vain.
+
+[Sidenote: A general theme possible.]
+
+[Sidenote: A reference--to be taken up later--to the last Book.]
+
+Such a sentence, however, cannot be pronounced in any such degree or
+measure on the similar attempts in the case of _Gargantua_ and
+_Pantagruel_; for a reason which some readers may find unexpected. The
+unbroken vigour--unbroken even by the obstacles which it throws in its
+own way, like the Catalogue of the Library of Saint-Victor and the
+burlesque lists of adjectives, etc., which fill up whole chapters--with
+which the story or string of stories is carried on, may naturally
+suggest that there _is_ a story or at least a theme. It is a sort of
+quaint alteration or catachresis of _Possunt quia posse videntur_. There
+must be a general theme, because the writer is so obviously able to
+handle any theme he chooses. It may be wiser--it certainly seems so to
+the present writer--to disbelieve in anything but occasional
+sallies--episodes, as it were, or even digressions--of political,
+religious, moral, social and other satire. It is, on the other hand, a
+most important thing to admit the undoubted presence--now and then, and
+not unfrequently--of a deliberate dropping of the satiric and burlesque
+mask. This supplies the presentation of the serious, kindly, and human
+personality of the three princes (Grandgousier, Gargantua, and
+Pantagruel); this the schemes of education (giving so large a proportion
+of the small bulk of _not_-nonsense written on that matter). Above all,
+this permits, to one taste at least, the exquisite last Book,
+presentation of La Quinte and the fresh roses in her hand, the
+originality of which, not only in the whole book in one sense, but in
+the particular Book in the other, is, to that taste, and such
+argumentative powers as accompany it, an almost absolute proof of that
+Book's genuineness. For if it had been by another who, _un_like
+Rabelais, had a special tendency towards such graceful imagination, he
+could hardly have refrained from showing this elsewhere in this long
+book.[90]
+
+[Sidenote: Running survey of the whole.]
+
+But however this may be, it is certain that a critical reader,
+especially when he has reason to be startled by the external, if not
+actually extrinsic, oddities of and excesses of the book, will be
+justified in allowing--it may almost be said that he is likely to
+allow--the extraordinary volume of concatenated fictitious interest in
+the whole book or books. The usual and obvious "catenations" are indeed
+almost ostentatiously wanting. The absence of any real plot has been
+sufficiently commented on, with the temptations conferred by it to
+substitute a fancied unity of purpose. The birth, and what we may call
+the two educations, of Gargantua; the repetition, with sufficient
+differences, of the same plan in the opening of _Pantagruel_; the
+appearance of Panurge and the campaign against the Dipsodes; the great
+marriage debate; and the voyage to the Oracle of the Bottle, are
+connected merely in "chronicle" fashion. The character-links are hardly
+stronger, for though Friar John does play a more or less important part
+from almost the beginning to quite the end, Panurge, the most important
+and remarkable single figure, does not appear for a considerable time,
+and the rest are shadows. The scene is only in one or two chapters
+nominally placed in Nowhere; but as a whole it is Nowhere Else, or
+rather a bewildering mixture of topical assignments in a very small part
+of France, and allegorical or fantastic descriptions of a multitude of
+Utopias. And yet, once more, it _is_ a whole story. As you read it you
+almost forget what lies behind, you quite forget the breaches of
+continuity, and press on to what is before, almost as eagerly, if not
+quite in the same fashion, as if the incidents and the figures were not
+less exciting than those of _Vingt Ans Apres_. Let us hope it may not be
+excessive to expend a few pages on a sketch of this strange story that
+is no story, with, it may be, some fragments of translation or
+paraphrase (for, as even his greatest translator, Urquhart, found, a
+certain amount of his own _Fay ce que voudras_ is necessary with
+Rabelais) here and there.
+
+[Sidenote: _Gargantua._]
+
+Master Francis does not exactly plunge into the middle of things; but he
+spends comparatively little time on the preliminaries of the ironical
+Prologue to the "very illustrious drinkers," on the traditionally
+necessary but equally ironical genealogy of the hero, on the elaborate
+verse _amphigouri_ of the _Fanfreluches Antidotees_, and on the mock
+scientific discussion of extraordinarily prolonged periods of pregnancy.
+Without these, however, he will not come to the stupendous banquet of
+tripe (properly washed down, and followed by pleasant revel on the
+"echoing green") which determined the advent of Gargantua into the
+world, which enabled Grandgousier, more fortunate than his son on a
+future occasion, to display his amiability as a husband and a father
+unchecked by any great sorrow, and which was, as it were, crowned and
+sealed by that son's first utterance--no miserable and ordinary infant's
+wail, but the stentorian barytone "_A boire!_" which rings through the
+book till it passes in the sharper, but not less delectable treble of
+"_Trinq!_" And then comes a brief piece, not narrative, but as
+characteristic perhaps of what we may call the ironical _moral_ of the
+narrative as any--a grave remonstrance with those who will not believe
+in _ceste estrange nativite_.
+
+[Sidenote: The birth and education.]
+
+     I doubt me ye believe not this strange birth assuredly. If
+     ye disbelieve, I care not; but a respectable man--a man of
+     good sense--_always_ believes what people tell him and what
+     he finds written. Does not Solomon say (Prov. xiv.), "The
+     innocent [simple] believeth every word" etc.? And St. Paul
+     (1 Cor. xiii.), "Charity believeth all things"? Why should
+     you _not_ believe it? "Because," says you, "there is no
+     probability[91] in it." I tell you that for this very and
+     only reason you ought to believe with a perfect faith. For
+     the Sorbonists say that faith is the evidence of things of
+     no probability.[92] Is it against our law or our faith?
+     against reason? against the Sacred Scriptures?[93] For my
+     part I can find nothing written in the Holy Bible which is
+     contrary thereto. But if the Will of God had been so, would
+     you say that He could not have done it? Oh for grace' sake
+     do not make a mess of your wits in such vain thoughts. For I
+     tell you that nothing is impossible with God.
+
+And Divinity being done with, the Classics and pure fantasy are drawn
+upon; the incredulous being finally knocked down by a citation from
+Pliny, and a polite request not to bother any more.
+
+This is, of course, the kind of passage which has been brought against
+Rabelais, as similar ones have been brought against Swift, to justify
+charges of impiety. But, again, it is not necessary to bother
+(_tabuster_) about that. Any one who cannot see that it is the foolish
+use of reverend things and not the things themselves that the satire
+hits, is hardly worth argument. But there is no doubt that this sort of
+mortar, framework, menstruum, canvas, or whatever way it may be best
+metaphored, helps the apparent continuity of the work marvellously,
+leaving, as it were, no rough edges or ill-mended joints. It is, to use
+an admirable phrase of Mr. Balfour's about a greater matter, "the
+logical glue which holds together and makes intelligible the
+multiplicity" of the narrative units, or perhaps instead of
+"intelligible" one should here say "appreciable."
+
+Sometimes the "glue" of ironic comment rather saturates these units of
+narrative than surrounds or interjoins them, and this is the case with
+what follows. The infantine peculiarities of Gargantua; his dress and
+the mystery of its blue and white colours (the blue of heaven and the
+white of the joy of earth); how his governesses and he played together;
+what smart answers he made; how he became early both a poet and an
+experimental philosopher--all this is recounted with a marvellous
+mixture of wisdom and burlesque, though sometimes, no doubt, with rather
+too much of _haut gout_ seasoning. Then comes the, in Renaissance books,
+inevitable "Education" section, and it has been already noted briefly
+how different this is from most of its group (the corresponding part of
+_Euphues_ may be suggested for comparison). Even Rabelais does not
+escape the main danger--he neglects a little to listen to the wisest
+voice, "Can't you let him alone?" But the contrasts in the case of
+Gargantua, the general tenor (that good prince profiting by his own
+experience for his son's benefit) in that of Pantagruel, are not too
+"improving," and are made by their historian's "own sauce" exceedingly
+piquant. Much as has been written on the subject, it is not easy to be
+quite certain how far the "Old" Learning was fairly treated by the
+"New." Rabelais and Erasmus and the authors of the _Epistolae Obscurorum
+Virorum_ are such a tremendous overmatch for any one on the other side,
+that the most judicial as well as judicious of critics must be rather
+puzzled as to the real merits of the case. But luckily there is no need
+to decide. Enjoyment, not decision, is the point, and there is no
+difficulty in _that_. How Gargantua was transferred from the learned but
+somewhat, as the vulgar would say, "stick-in-the-mud" tutorship of
+Master Thubal Holofernes, who spent eighteen years in reading _De Modis
+Significandi_ with his pupil, and Master Jobelin Bride, who has "become
+a name"--not exactly of honour; how he was transferred to the less
+antiquated guidance of Ponocrates, and set out for Paris on the famous
+dappled mare, whose exploits in field and town were so alarming, and
+who had the bells of Notre Dame hung round her neck, till they were
+replaced rather after than because of the remonstrance of Master Janotus
+de Bragmardo; how for a time, and under Sorbonic direction, he wasted
+that time in short and useless study, with long intervals of
+card-playing, sleeping, etc. etc., and of course a great deal of eating
+and drinking, "not as he ought and as he ought not"--all this leads up
+to the moment when the sage Ponocrates takes him again in hand, and
+institutes a strenuous drill in manners, studies, manly exercises, and
+the like, ending with one of those extraordinary flashes of perfect
+style and noble meaning which it pleases Rabelais to emit from what some
+call his "dunghill" and others his "marine-store."
+
+     Also they prayed to God the Creator, adoring Him, and
+     solemnly repledging to Him their faith, and glorifying Him
+     for His boundless goodness; while, giving Him thanks for all
+     time past, they commended themselves to His divine mercy for
+     all the future. This done, they turned to their rest.
+
+[Sidenote: The war.]
+
+It is only after this serious training that the first important division
+of what may be called the action begins--the "War of the Cakes," in
+which certain outrageous bakers, subjects of King Picrochole of Lerne,
+first refuse the custom of the good Grandgousier's shepherds, and then
+violently assault them, the incident being turned by the choleric
+monarch into a _casus belli_ against the peaceful one. Invasion, the
+early triumph of the aggressor, the triumphant appearance of the
+invincible Friar John, and the complete turning of the tables by the
+advent of Gargantua and his terrible mare, follow each other in rapid
+and brilliant telling, and perhaps no parts of the book are better
+known. The extraordinary felicity with which Rabelaisian irony--here
+kept in quieter but intenser activity than almost anywhere else--seizes
+and renders the common causes, excuses, manners, etc., of war can never
+have escaped competent readers; but it must have struck more persons of
+late than perhaps at any former time. It would be impertinent to
+particularise largely; but if the famous adaptation and amplification of
+the old Pyrrhus story in the counsel of Spadassin and Merdaille to
+Picrochole were printed in small type as the centre of a fathom-square
+sheet, the whole margin could be more than filled with extracts, from
+German books and newspapers, of advice to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Nor is
+there anything, in literature touching history, where irony has bitten
+more deeply and lastingly into Life and Time than the brief record of
+Picrochole's latter days after his downfall.
+
+     He was informed by an old hag that his kingdom would be
+     restored to him at the coming of the Cocqsigrues: since then
+     it is not certainly known what has become of him. However, I
+     have been told that he now works for his poor living at
+     Lyons, and is as choleric as ever. And always he bemoans
+     himself to strangers about the Cocqsigrues--yet with a
+     certain hope, according to the old woman's prophecy, that at
+     their coming he will be reinstated in his kingdom.
+
+Edward FitzGerald would have called this "terrible"; and perhaps it is.
+
+But there is much more humour than terror in the rest, and sometimes
+there are qualities different from either. The rescue of the sacred
+precincts of the Abbey of Seuille from the invaders by that glorious
+monk (a personage at no great remove from our own Friar Tuck, to the
+later portraits of whom he has lent some of his own traits) pleases the
+soul well, as do the feats of Gymnast against Tripet, and the fate of
+the unlucky Touquedillon, and the escalade of La Roche Clermande, and (a
+little less perhaps) the pure burlesque of the eating of the pilgrims,
+and the combing out of the cannon balls, and the contrasted sweet
+reasonableness of the amiable though not at all cowardly Grandgousier.
+But the advice of the Evil Counsellors to Picrochole is still perhaps
+the pearl:
+
+[Sidenote: The Counsel to Picrochole.]
+
+     Then there appeared before Picrochole the Duke of Mennail,
+     Count Spadassin, and Captain Merdaille, and said to him,
+     "Sire, this day we make you the most happy and chivalrous
+     prince that ever has been since the death of Alexander of
+     Macedon." "Be covered, be covered," said Picrochole.
+     "Gramercy, sire", said they, "but we know our duty. The
+     means are as follows. You will leave here in garrison some
+     captain with a small band of men to hold the place, which
+     seems to us pretty strong, both by nature and by the
+     fortifications you have contrived. You will, as you know
+     well, divide your army in half. One half will fall upon this
+     fellow Grandgousier and his people, and easily discomfit him
+     at the first assault. There we shall gain money in heaps,
+     for the rascal has plenty. (Rascal we call him, because a
+     really noble prince never has a penny. To hoard is the mark
+     of a rascal.)
+
+     "The other part will meanwhile draw towards Aunis,
+     Saintonge, Angoumois, and Gascony, as well as Perigord,
+     Medoc, and Elanes. Without any resistance they will take
+     towns, castles, and fortresses. At Bayonne, at St. Jean de
+     Luz, and at Fontarabia you will seize all the ships, and
+     coasting towards Galicia and Portugal, will plunder all the
+     seaside places as far as Lisbon, where you will be
+     reinforced with all the supplies necessary to a conqueror:
+     _Corbleu!_ Spain will surrender, for they are all poltroons.
+     You will pass the Straits of Seville,[94] and will there
+     erect two columns more magnificent than those of Hercules
+     for the perpetual memory of your name. And that Strait shall
+     thenceforward be named the Sea of Picrochole.
+
+     "When that sea has been passed, lo! comes Barbarossa[95] to
+     surrender as your slave." "I," said Picrochole, "will extend
+     mercy to him." "Very well," said they, "on condition that he
+     is baptized. And then you will assault the kingdoms of
+     Tunis, of Hippo,[96] of Argier, of Bona, of Corona--to cut
+     it short, all Barbary. Going further,[97] you will keep in
+     your hands Majorca, Minorca, Sardinia, Corsica, and the
+     other islands of the Ligurian and Balearic sea. Coasting to
+     the left[98] you will dominate all Narbonese Gaul, Provence,
+     the Allobroges, Genoa, Florence, Lucca, and, begad! Rome.
+     Poor master Pope is already dying for fear of you." "I will
+     never kiss his slipper," said Picrochole.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+     "Italy being taken, behold Naples, Calabria, Apulia, and
+     Sicily all at your mercy, and Malta into the bargain. I
+     should like to see those funny knights, formerly of Rhodes,
+     resist you! if it were only to examine their water." "I
+     should like," said Picrochole, "to go to Loretto." "No, no,"
+     said they, "that will be on the way back. Thence we shall
+     take Candia, Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, and make a
+     set at Morea. We shall get it at once. By St. Treignan, God
+     keep Jerusalem! for the soldan is nothing in power to you."
+     "Shall I," said he, "then rebuild the Temple of Solomon?"
+     "Not yet," said they, "wait a little. Be not so hasty in
+     your enterprises."
+
+And so with the most meticulous exactness (Rabelais' geography is
+irreproachable, and he carefully avoids the cheap expedient of making
+Spadassin and Merdaille blunder) and the sagest citations of _Festina
+lente_, they take him through Asia Minor to the Euphrates and Arabia,
+while the other army (that which has annihilated Grandgousier) comes
+round by the northern route, sweeping all Europe from Brittany and the
+British Isles to Constantinople, where the great rendezvous is made and
+the universal empire established, Picrochole graciously giving his
+advisers Syria and Palestine as their fiefs.
+
+"Pretty much like our own days," said Mr. Rigmarole. Have we not heard
+something very like this lately, as "Berlin to Baghdad," if not "Calais
+to Calcutta"? And even if we had not, would not the sense and the satire
+of it be delectable? A great deal has been left out: the chapter is, for
+Rabelais, rather a long one. The momentary doubt of the usually
+undoubting Picrochole as to what they shall drink in the desert, allayed
+at once by a beautiful scheme of commissariat camels and elephants,[99]
+which would have done credit to the most modern A.S.C., is very capital.
+There is, indeed, an unpleasant Echephron[100] who points the old moral
+of Cineas to Pyrrhus himself. But Picrochole rebuffs him with the
+invaluable _Passons oultre_, and closes the discussion by anticipating
+Henri Quatre (who, no doubt, learnt the phrase from him), crying, "_Qui
+m'aime, si me suive!_" and ordering all haste in the war.
+
+It is possible that, here or earlier, the
+not-quite-so-gentle-as-he-is-traditionally-called reader may ejaculate,
+"This is all true enough; but it is all very well known, and does not
+need recapitulation." Is this quite so certain? No doubt at one time
+Englishmen did know their Rabelais well. Southey did, for instance, and
+so, according to the historian of Barsetshire, did, in the next
+generation, Archdeacon Grantly. More recently my late friend Sir Walter
+Besant spent a great deal of pains on Master Francis, and mainly owing
+to his efforts there existed for some years a Rabelais Club (already
+referred to), which left some pleasant memories. But _is_ it quite so
+certain that the average educated Englishman can at once distinguish
+Eudemon from Epistemon, give a correct list of the various answers to
+Panurge's enquiries as to the probable results of his marriage, relate
+what happened when (as glanced at above and returned to later) _nous
+passasmes oultre_, and say what the adorable Quintessence admitted to
+her dainty lips besides second intentions? I doubt it very much. Even
+special students of the Great Book, as in other cases, have too often
+allowed themselves to be distracted from the pure enjoyment of it by
+idle questions of the kinds above mentioned and others--questions of
+dates and names and places, of origins and borrowings and
+imitations--questions the sole justification of which, from the genuine
+Pantagruelian point of view, is that their utter dryness inevitably
+suggests the cries--the Morning Hymn and the Evening Voluntary of the
+book itself--_A boire!_ and _Trinq_.
+
+But, even were this not so, a person who has undertaken, wisely or
+unwisely, to write the history of the French Novel is surely entitled to
+lay some stress on what seems to him the importance of this its first
+eminent example. At any rate he proposes _not_ to _passer oultre_, but
+to stick to the line struck out, and exhibit, in reasonable detail, the
+varieties of novel-matter and manner contained in the book.
+
+[Sidenote: The peace and the Abbey of Thelema.]
+
+The conclusion of _Gargantua_--after the victor has addressed a _concio_
+to the vanquished, has mildly punished the originators of the trouble or
+those he could catch (Spadassin and Merdaille having run away "six hours
+before the battle") by setting them to work at his newly established
+printing-press, and has distributed gifts and estates to his
+followers--may be one of the best known parts of the whole book, but is
+not of the most strictly novel character, though it has suggested at
+least one whole novel and parts or passages of others. The "Abbey of
+Thelema"--the home of the order of _Fay ce que vouldras_--is, if not a
+devout, a grandiose imagination, and it gives occasion for some
+admirable writing. But it is one of the purest exercises of "purpose,"
+and one of the least furnished with incident or character, to be found
+in Rabelais. In order to introduce it, he may even be thought guilty of
+what is extremely rare with him, a fault of "keeping." He avoids this
+fault surprisingly in the contrasted burlesque and serious chronicles of
+Grandgousier and Gargantua himself, as well as in the expanded contrast
+of Pantagruel and Panurge. Yet the heartiest admirer of "Friar John of
+the Funnels" (or "Collops," for there is a schism on this point) may
+fail to see in him a suitable or even a possible Head for an assemblage
+of gallant gentlemen and stately ladies (both groups being also
+accomplished scholars) like the Thelemites. But Rabelais, like
+Shakespeare, had small care for small objections. He wanted to sketch a
+Paradise of Anti-Monkery, and for this he wanted an Anti-Abbot. Friar
+John was the handiest person, and he took him. But it is worth noting
+that the Abbot of Thelema never afterwards appears as such, or in the
+slightest relation to this miniature but most curious and interesting
+example of the Renaissance fancy for imaginary countries, cities,
+institutions, with its splendours of architecture and decoration, its
+luxurious but not loose living, its gallantry and its learning, its
+gorgeous dress, its polished manners (the Abbot must have had some
+trouble to learn them), and its "inscriptions and enigmas" in verse
+which is not quite so happy as the prose. One would not cut it out of
+the book for anything, and parallels to it (not merely of the kind above
+referred to) have found and may find place in other books of fiction.
+But it is only a sort of chantry, in the Court of the Gentiles too, of
+the mighty Temple of the Novel.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ I. The contrasted youth.]
+
+What it was exactly that made Rabelais "double," as it were, on
+_Gargantua_ in the early books of _Pantagruel_[101] it would probably be
+idle to enquire. His deliberate mention in the Prologue of some of the
+most famous romances (with certain others vainly to be sought now or at
+any time) might of course most easily be a mere red herring. It may be,
+that as _Gargantua_ was not entirely of his own creation, he determined
+to "begin at the beginning" in his original composition. But it matters
+little or nothing. We have, once more, a burlesque genealogy with known
+persons--Nimrod, Goliath, Polyphemus, etc. etc.--entangled in a chain of
+imaginaries, one of the latter, Hurtaly, forming the subject of a solemn
+discussion of the question why he is not received among the crew of the
+Ark. The unfortunate concomitants of the birth of Pantagruel--which is
+fatal to his mother Badebec--contrast with the less chequered history of
+Gargantua and Gargamelle, while the mixed sorrow and joy of Gargantua at
+his wife's death and his son's birth completes this contrast.
+Pantagruel, though quite as amiable as his father, if not more so, has
+in infancy the natural awkwardnesses of a giant, and a hairy giant
+too--devouring cows whole instead of merely milking them, and tearing to
+pieces an unfortunate bear who only licked his infant chops. As was said
+above, he has no wild-oats period of education like his father's, but
+his company is less carefully chosen than that of Gargantua in the days
+of his reformation, and gives his biographer opportunities for his
+sharpest satire.
+
+First we have (taken, as everybody is supposed now to know, from
+Geoffrey Tory, but improved) the episode of the Limousin scholar with
+his "pedantesque"[102] deformation of French and Latin at once, till the
+giant takes him by the throat and he cries for mercy in the strongest
+meridional brogue.[103] Then comes the famous catalogue of the Library
+of Saint Victor, a fresh attack on scholastic and monastic degeneracy,
+and a kind of joining hands (Ortuinus figures) with the German guerrilla
+against the _Obscuri_, and then a long and admirable letter from
+Gargantua, whence we learn that Grandgousier is dead, and that his son
+is now the sagest of monarchs, who has taken to read Greek, and shows no
+memory of his governesses or his earlier student days. And then again
+comes Panurge.
+
+[Sidenote: Panurge.]
+
+Many doubtful things have been said about this most remarkable
+personage. He has been fathered upon the Cingar of Folengo, which is too
+much of a compliment to that creation of the great Macaronic, and
+Falstaff has been fathered upon him, which is distinctly unfair to
+Falstaff. Sir John has absolutely nothing of the ill-nature which
+characterises both Cingar and Panurge; and Panurge is an actual and
+contemptible coward, while many good wits have doubted whether Falstaff
+is, in the true sense, a coward at all. But Panurge is certainly one
+thing--the first distinct and striking _character_ in prose fiction.
+Morally, of course, there is little to be said for him, except that,
+when he has no temptations to the contrary, he is a "good fellow"
+enough. As a human example of _mimesis_ in the true Greek sense, not of
+"imitation" but of "fictitious creation," he is, once more, the first
+real character in prose fiction--the ancestor, in the literary sense, of
+the mighty company in which he has been followed by the similar
+creations of the masters from Cervantes to Thackeray. The fantastic
+colouring, and more than colouring, of the whole book affects him, of
+course, more than superficially. One could probably give some not quite
+absurd guesses why Rabelais shaped him as he did--presented him as a
+very naughty but intensely clever child, with the monkey element in
+humanity thrown into utmost prominence. But it is better not to do so.
+Panurge has some Yahooish characteristics, but he is not a Yahoo--in
+fact, there is no misanthropy in Rabelais.[104] He is not merely impish
+(as in his vengeance on the lady of Paris), but something worse than
+impish (as in that on Dindenault); and yet one cannot call him diabolic,
+because he is so intensely human. It is customary, and fairly correct,
+to describe his ethos as that of understanding and wit wholly divorced
+from morality, chivalry, or religion; yet he is never Mephistophelian.
+If one of the hundred touches which make him a masterpiece is to be
+singled out, it might perhaps be the series of rapturous invitations to
+his wedding which he gives to his advisers while he thinks their advice
+favourable, and the limitations of enforced politeness which he appends
+when the unpleasant side of their opinions turns up. And it may perhaps
+be added that one of the chief reasons for believing heartily in the
+last Book is the delectable and unimprovable contrast which La Quinte
+and her court of intellectual fantastry present to this picture of
+intellectual materialism.
+
+[Sidenote: Short view of the sequels in Book II.]
+
+It was impossible that such a figure should not to a certain extent
+dwarf others; but Rabelais, unlike some modern character-mongers, never
+lets his psychology interfere with his story. After a few episodes, the
+chief of which is the great sign-duel of Thaumast and Panurge himself,
+the campaign against the Dipsodes at once enables Pantagruel to display
+himself as a war-like hero of romance, permits him fantastic exploits
+parallel to his father's, and, by installing Panurge in a lordship of
+the conquered country and determining him, after "eating his corn in
+the blade," to "marry and settle," introduces the larger and most
+original part of the whole work--the debates and counsellings on the
+marriage in the Third Book, and, after the failure of this, the voyage
+to settle the matter at the Oracle of the Bottle in the Fourth and
+Fifth. This "plot," if it may be called so, is fairly central and
+continuous throughout, but it gives occasion for the most surprising
+"alarums and excursions," variations and divagations, of the author's
+inexhaustible humour, learning, inventive fertility, and never-failing
+faculty of telling a tale. If the book does sometimes in a fashion "hop
+forty paces in the public street," and at others gambade in a less
+decorous fashion even than hopping, it is also Cleopatresque in its
+absolute freedom from staleness and from tedium.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ II. (Book III.)
+
+The marriage of Panurge and the consultations on it.]
+
+The Third Book has less of apparent variety in it, and less of what
+might be called striking incident, than any of the others, being all but
+wholly occupied by the enquiries respecting the marriage of Panurge. But
+this gives it a "unity" which is of itself attractive to some tastes,
+while the delightful sonnet to the spirit Of Marguerite,
+
+    Esprit abstraict, ravy et ecstatique,
+
+(perhaps the best example of _rhetoriqueur_ poetry), at the beginning,
+and the last sight (except in letters) of Gargantua at the end, with the
+curious _coda_ on the "herb Pantagruelion" (the ancestor of Joseph de
+Maistre's famous eulogy of the Executioner), give, as it were, handle
+and top to it in unique fashion. But the body of it is the thing. The
+preliminary outrunning of the constable--had there been constables in
+Salmigondin, but they probably knew the story of the Seigneur of Basche
+too well--and the remarkable difference between the feudatory and his
+superior on the subject of debt, serve but as a whet to the project of
+matrimony which the debtor conceives. Of course, Panurge is the very
+last man whom a superficial observer of humanity--the very first whom a
+somewhat profounder student thereof--would take as a marrying one. He is
+"a little failed"; he thinks to rest himself while not foregoing his
+former delights, and he shuts eyes and ears to the proverb, as old as
+Greek in words and as old as the world in fact, that "the doer shall
+suffer." That he should consult Pantagruel is in the circumstances
+almost a necessity, and Pantagruel's conduct is exactly what one would
+expect from that good-natured, learned, admirable, but rather enigmatic
+personage. Merely "aleatory" decision--by actual use of dice--he rejects
+as illicit, though towards the close of the book one of its most
+delectable episodes ends in his excusing Mr. Justice Bridoye for
+settling law cases in that way. But he recommends the _sortes
+Virgilianae_, and he, others, and Panurge himself add the experiment of
+dreams, and the successive consultation of the Sibyl of Panzoust, the
+dumb Nazdecabre, the poet Raminagrobis, Epistemon, "Her Trippa," Friar
+John himself, the theologian Hippothadee, the doctor Rondibilis, the
+philosopher Trouillogan, and the professional fool Triboulet. No reader
+of the most moderate intelligence can need to be told that the
+counsellors opine all in the same sense (unfavourable), though with more
+or less ambiguity, and that Panurge, with equal obstinacy and ingenuity,
+invariably twists the oracles according to his own wishes. But what no
+reader, who came fresh to Rabelais and fasting from criticism on him,
+could anticipate, is the astonishing spontaneity of the various dealings
+with the same problem, the zest and vividness of the whole thing, and
+the unceasing shower of satire on everything human--general,
+professional, and individual--which is kept up throughout. There is less
+pure extravagance, less mere farce, and (despite the subject) even less
+"sculduddery" than in any other Book; but also in no other does Rabelais
+"keep up with humanity" (somewhat, indeed, in the fashion in which a
+carter keeps up with his animal, running and lashing at the same time)
+so triumphantly.
+
+In no book, moreover, are the curious intervals--or, as it were, prose
+choric odes--of interruption more remarkable. Pantagruel's own serious
+wisdom supplies not a few of them, and the long and very characteristic
+episode of Judge Bridoye and his decision by throw of dice is very
+loosely connected with the main subject. But the most noteworthy of
+these excursions comes, as has been said, at the end--the last personal
+appearance of the good Gargantua, and the famous discourse, several
+chapters long, on the Herb Pantagruelion, otherwise Hemp.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ III. (IV.) The first part of the voyage.]
+
+The Fourth Book (Third of _Pantagruel_) starts the voyage, and begins to
+lead the commentator who insists on fixing and interpreting the
+innumerable real or apparent double, treble, and almost centuple
+meanings, into a series of dances almost illimitable. As has been
+suggested more than once, the most reasonable way is probably to regard
+the whole as an intentional mixture of covert satire, pure fooling, not
+a little deliberate leading astray, and (serving as vehicle and
+impelling force at once) the irresistible narrative impulse animating
+the writer and carrying the reader on to the end--any end, if it be only
+the Other End of Nowhere. The "curios," living and other, of Medamothi
+(Nowhere to begin with!), and the mysterious appearance of a shipful of
+travellers coming back from the Land of Lanterns, whither the
+Pantagruelian party is itself bound; the rather too severely punished
+ill-manners of the sheep-dealer Dindenault; the strange isles of various
+nature--such, especially, as the abode of the bailiffs and
+process-servers, which gives occasion to the admirably told story of
+Francois Villon and the Seigneur of Basche; the great storm--another of
+the most famous passages of the book--with the cowardice of Panurge and
+the safe landing in the curious country of the Macreons (long-livers);
+the evil island where reigns Quaresmeprenant, and the elaborate analysis
+of that personage by the learned Xenomanes; the alarming Physeter
+(blowing whale) and his defeat by Pantagruel; the land of the
+Chitterlings, the battle with them, and the interview and peace-making
+with their Queen Niphleseth (a passage at which the sculduddery-hunters
+have worked their hardest), and then the islands of the Papefigues and
+the Papimanes, where Rabelais begins his most obvious and boldest
+meddling with the great ecclesiastical-political questions of the
+day--all these things and others flit past the reader as if in an actual
+voyage. Even here, however, he rather skirts than actually invades the
+most dangerous ground. It is the Decretals, not the doctrines, that are
+satirised, and Homenas, bishop of Papimania, despite his adoration of
+these forgeries, and the slightly suspicious number and prettiness of
+the damsels who wait upon him, is a very good fellow and an excellent
+host. There is something very soothing in his metaphorical way of
+demanding wine from his Hebes, "_Clerice_, esclaire icy," the necessary
+illumination being provided by a charming girl with a hanap of
+"extravagant" wine. These agreeable if satiric experiences--for the
+Decretals do no harm beyond exciting the bile of Master Epistemon (who,
+it is to be feared, was a little of a pedant)--are followed by the once
+more almost universally known passage of the "Frozen Words" and the
+visit to "Messer Gaster, the world's first Master of Arts"; by the
+islands (once more mysterious) of Chaneph (hypocrisy) and Ganabin
+(thieves); the book concluding abruptly with an ultra-farcical
+_cochonnerie_ of the lower kind, relieved partially by a libellous but
+impossible story about our Edward the _Fifth_ and the poet Villon again,
+as well as by the appearance of an interesting but not previously
+mentioned member of the crew of the _Thalamege_ (Pantagruel's flagship),
+the great cat Rodilardus.
+
+[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ IV. (Book V.) The second part of the voyage. The
+"Isle Sonnante."]
+
+[Sidenote: The "Chats Fourres."]
+
+One of the peculiarities of the Fifth Book, and perhaps one of those
+which have aroused that suspicion about it which, after what has been
+said above, it is not necessary further to discuss, is that it is more
+"in blocks" than the others.[105] The eight chapters of the _Isle
+Sonnante_ take up the satire of the Fourth Book on Papimania and on the
+"Papegaut," who is here introduced in a much fiercer tone--a tone which,
+if one cared for hypothetical criticism, might be attributed with about
+equal probability to a genuine deepening of hostile feeling, to absence
+of revision, and to possible sophistication by some one into whose hands
+it fell between the author's death and its publication. But a perfectly
+impartial critic, who, on the one hand, does not, in Carlyle's admirable
+phrase, "regard the Universe as a hunting-field from which it were good
+and pleasant to drive the Pope," and, on the other, is content to regard
+the extremer Protestants as singularly unpleasant persons without
+pronouncing Ernulphus-curses on them, may perhaps fail to find in it
+either the cleverest or the most amusing part of the voyage. The episode
+of the next Isle--that _des Ferrements_--is obscure, whether it is or is
+not (as the commentators were sure to suggest) something else beginning
+with "obsc-," and the succeeding one, with its rocks fashioned like
+gigantic dice, is not very amusing. But the terrible country of the
+_Chats Fourres_ and their chief Grippeminaud--an attack on the Law as
+unsparing as, and much more vivid than that on the Church in the
+overture--may rank with the best things in Rabelais. The tyrant's
+ferocious and double-meaning catchword of _Or ca!_ and the power at his
+back, which even Pantagruel thinks it better rather to run away from
+than to fight openly, which Panurge frankly bribes, and over which even
+the reckless and invincible Friar John obtains not much triumph, except
+that of cutting up, after buying it, an old woman's bed--these and the
+rest have a grim humour not quite like anything else.
+
+[Sidenote: "La Quinte."]
+
+The next section--that of the Apedeftes or Uneducated Ones[106]--has
+been a special object of suspicion; it is certainly a little difficult,
+and perhaps a little dull. One is not sorry when the explorers, in the
+ambiguous way already noted, "_passent_ _Oultre_," and, after
+difficulties with the wind, come to "the kingdom of Quintessence, named
+Entelechy." Something has been said more than once of this already, and
+it is perhaps unnecessary to say more, or indeed anything, except to
+those who themselves "hold of La Quinte," and who for that very reason
+require no talking about her. "We" (if one may enrol oneself in their
+company) would almost rather give up Rabelais altogether than sacrifice
+this delightful episode, and abandon the idea of having the ladies of
+the Queen for our partners in Emmelie, and Calabrisme, and the thousand
+other dances, of watching the wonderful cures by music, and the
+interesting process of throwing, not the house out of the window, but
+the window out of the house, and the miraculous and satisfactory
+transformation of old ladies into young girls, with very slight
+alteration of their former youthful selves, and all the charming
+topsyturvifications of Entelechy. Not to mention the gracious if
+slightly unintelligible speeches of the exquisite princess, when clear
+Hesperus shone once more, and her supper of pure nectar and ambrosia
+(not grudging more solid viands to her visitors), and the great
+after-supper chess-tournament with living pieces, and the "invisible
+disparition" of the lady, and the departure of the fortunate visitors
+themselves, duly inscribed and registered as Abstractors of
+Quintessence. The whole is like a good dream, and is told so as almost
+to be one.
+
+Between this and the final goal of the Country of Lanterns the interest
+falls a little. The island of "Odes" (not "poems" but "ways"), where the
+"walks walk" (_les chemins cheminent_); that of "Esclots" ("clogs"),
+where dwell the Freres Fredonnants, and where the attack on monkery is
+renewed in a rather unsavoury and rather puerile fashion; and that of
+Satin, which is a sort of Medamothi rehandled, are not first-rate--they
+would have been done better, or cut out, had the book ever been issued
+by Master Francis. But the arrival at and the sojourn in Lanternia
+itself recovers the full powers of Rabelais at his best, though one may
+once more think that some of the treatment might have been altered in
+the case just mentioned.
+
+[Sidenote: The conclusion and The Bottle.]
+
+Apart from the usual mixture of serious and purely jocular satire, of
+learning and licence, of jargonic catalogues, of local references to
+Western France and the general topography of Utopia, this conclusion
+consists of two main parts--first, a most elaborate description of the
+Temple, containing underground the Oracle of the Bottle, to which the
+pilgrims are conducted by a select "Lantern," and of its priestess
+Bacbuc, its _adytum_ with a fountain, and, in the depth and centre of
+all, the sacred Bottle itself; and secondly, the ceremonies of the
+delivery of the Oracle; the divine utterance, _Trinq!_ its
+interpretation by Bacbuc; the very much _ad libitum_ reinterpretations
+of the interpretation by Panurge and Friar John, and the dismissal of
+the pilgrims by the priestess, _Or allez de par Dieu, qui vous
+conduise!_[107]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What, it may be asked, is the object of this cumbrous analysis of
+certainly one of the most famous and (as it at least should be) one of
+the best known books of the world? That object has been partly indicated
+already; but it may be permissible to set it forth more particularly
+before ending this chapter. Of the importance, on the one hand, of the
+acquisition by the novel of the greatest known and individual writer of
+French up to his date, and of the enormous popularity of this example of
+it, enough may have been said. But the abstract has been given, and the
+further comment is now added, with the purpose of showing, in a little
+detail, how immensely the resources and inspirations of future
+practitioners were enriched and strengthened, varied and multiplied, by
+_Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_. The book as a whole is to be classed, no
+doubt, as "Eccentric" fiction. But if you compare with Rabelais that one
+of his followers[108] who possessed most genius and who worked at his
+following with most deliberation, you will find an immense falling off
+in richness and variety as well as in strength. The inferiority of
+Sterne to Master Francis in his serious pieces, whether he is whimpering
+over dead donkeys and dying lieutenants, or simulating honest
+indignation against critics, is too obvious to need insistence. Nor can
+one imagine any one--unless, like Mackenzie and other misguided
+contemporaries or juniors, he himself wanted to whimper, or unless he
+also aimed at the _fatrasie_--going to Sterne for pattern or
+inspiration. Now Rabelais is a perpetual fount of inspiration, an
+inexhaustible magazine of patterns to the most "serious" novelist whose
+seriousness is not of the kind designated by that term in dissenting
+slang. That abounding narrative faculty which has been so much dwelt on
+touches so many subjects, and manages to carry along with it so many
+moods, thoughts, and even feelings, that it could not but suggest to any
+subsequent writer who had in him the germ of the novelist's art, how to
+develop and work out such schemes as might occur to him. While, for his
+own countrymen at least, the vast improvement which he made in French
+prose, and which, with the accomplishment of his younger contemporaries
+Amyot and Montaigne, established the greatness of that prose itself, was
+a gain, the extent of which cannot be exaggerated. Therefore it has
+seemed not improper to give him a chapter to himself, and to treat his
+book with a minuteness not often to be paralleled in this
+_History_.[109]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[90] A complete argument on this much vexed subject can hardly be wished
+for here: but it may be permitted to say that nearly fifty years'
+consideration of the matter has left less and less doubt in my mind as
+to the genuineness of the "_Quart_" or "_Quint_" _Livre_ as it is
+variously called--according as _Gargantua_ is numbered separately or
+not. One of the apparently strongest arguments against its
+genuineness--the constant presence of "_Je_" in the narrative--really
+falls, with the others--the fiercer and more outspoken character of the
+satire, the somewhat lessened prominence of Pantagruel, etc.
+etc.--before one simple consideration. We know from the dates of
+publication of the other books that Rabelais was by no means a rapid
+writer, or at any rate that, if he wrote rapidly, he "held up" what he
+did write long, and pretty certainly rewrote a good deal. Now the
+previous Book had appeared only a short time before what must have been
+the date of his death; and this could not, according to analogy and
+precedent, have been ready, or anything like ready, when he died. On the
+other hand, time enough passed between his death and the publication
+(even of the _Ile Sonnante_ fragment) for the MS. to have passed through
+other hands and to have been adulterated, even if it was not, when the
+Master's hands left it, in various, as well as not finally finished
+form. I can see nothing in it really inconsistent with the earlier
+Books; nothing unworthy of them (especially if on the one hand possible
+meddling, and on the other imperfect revision be allowed for); and much,
+especially the _Chats Fourres_, the Quintessence part, and the
+Conclusion, without which the whole book would be not only incomplete
+but terribly impoverished. I may add that, having a tolerably full
+knowledge of sixteenth-century French literature, and a great admiration
+of it, I know no single other writer or group of other writers who
+could, in my critical judgment, by any reasonable possibility have
+written this Book. Francois Rabelais could have done it, and I have no
+doubt that he did it; though whether we have it as he left it no man can
+say.
+
+[91] It is perhaps hardly necessary, but may not be quite idle, to
+observe that our Abstractor of Quintessence takes good care not to quote
+the other half of the parallelism, "but the prudent looketh well to his
+going."
+
+[92] It is possible, but not certain, that he is playing on the two
+senses of the word _apparence_, the ambiguity of which is not so great
+in English. The A. V., "evidence of things _not seen_," would not have
+suited his turn.
+
+[93] In which, it will be remembered, the "liquor called punch," which
+one notes with sorrow that Rabelais knew not, but which he certainly
+would have approved, is also "nowhere spoken against."
+
+[94] Original "Sibyle." I owe to Prof. Ker an important reminder (which
+I ought not to have needed) of Dante's "Sibilia" in the famous "Ulysses"
+passage, _Inf._ xxvi. 110.
+
+[95] The Turkish corsair, not the German Emperor.
+
+[96] Probably erected into a kingdom in honour of St. Augustine.
+
+[97] _Passant oultre_--one of Rabelais' favourite and most _polymorphic_
+expressions. It has nearly always an ironical touch in it; and it enjoys
+a chapter all to itself in that mood--V. xvii.
+
+[98] Perhaps this _a gauche_ might make as good a short test as any of a
+reader's sense of humour. But here also a possible Dantean reminiscence
+(not suggested to me this time) comes in; for in the lines already
+quoted "dalla man _destra_" occurs.
+
+[99] The King is, however, more difficult to satisfy on this point than
+on others; and objects with a delightful _preterite_, "Yes: but we _did
+not get_ our wine fresh and cool"; whereat they rebuke him with a
+respectful reminder that great conquerors cannot be always entirely
+comfortable.
+
+[100] "Suspender of judgment."
+
+[101] Of course the first book of the son _preceded_ the reconstructed
+history of the father; but this is immaterial.
+
+[102] The correct opposition of this term (Latin or Greek words
+vernacularised) to "Macaronic" (vernacular words turned into Latin or
+Greek form) is not always observed.
+
+[103] It is very seldom, after his infantine and innocent excesses, that
+Pantagruel behaves thus. He is for the most part a quiet and somewhat
+reserved prince, very generous, very wise, very devout, and, though
+tolerating the eccentricities of Panurge and Friar John, never taking
+part in them.
+
+[104] If Swift had drunk more wine and had not put water in what he did
+drink, possibly this quality might have been lessened in _him_.
+
+[105] The first of these, the _Isle Sonnante_, as is well enough known
+to all students, appeared separately and before the rest.
+
+[106] A sort of dependency or province of the _Chats Fourres_.
+
+[107] A MS. "addition" unknown to the old printed forms, appears in some
+modern ones. It is a mere disfigurement: and is hardly likely even to
+have been a rejected draft.
+
+[108] Not Swift here, but Sterne. There is far higher genius in
+_Gulliver_ than in _Shandy_; but the former is not _fatrasie_, the
+latter is.
+
+[109] That the not quite unknown device of setting up a man of straw in
+order to knock him down has not been followed in this chapter, a single
+piece of evidence out of many may be cited. H. Koerting in his justly
+well reputed _Geschichte des Franz. Romans im XVII. Jahrh._ (Oppeln u.
+Leipzig, 1891, i. 133 _note_) would rule Rabelais out of the history of
+the novel altogether. This book, which will be quoted again with
+gratitude later, displays a painstaking erudition not necessitating any
+make-weight of sympathy for its author's early death after great
+suffering. It is extremely useful; but it does not escape, in this and
+other places, the censure which, ten years before the war of 1914, the
+present writer felt it his duty to express on modern German critics and
+literary historians generally (_History of Criticism_, London, 1904,
+vol. iii. Bks. viii. and ix.), that on points of literary appreciation,
+as distinguished from mere philology, "enumeration," bibliographical
+research, and the like, they are "sadly to seek." It may not be
+impertinent to add that Herr Koerting's history happened never to have
+been read by me till after the above chapter of the present book was
+written.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SUCCESSORS OF RABELAIS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE "AMADIS" ROMANCES
+
+
+In the present chapter we shall endeavour to treat two divisions of
+actual novel- or at least fiction-writing--strikingly opposed to each
+other in character; and a third subject, to include which in the title
+would have made that title too long, and which is not strictly a branch
+of novel-_writing_, but which had perhaps as important an influence on
+the progress of the novel itself as anything mentioned or to be
+mentioned in all this _History_. The first division is composed of the
+followers--sometimes in the full, always in the chronological sense--of
+Rabelais, a not very strong folk as a rule, but including one brilliant
+example of co-operative work, and two interesting, if in some degree
+problematical, persons. The second, strikingly contrasting with the
+general if not the universal tendency of the first, is the great
+translated group of _Amadis_ romances, which at once revived romance of
+the older kind itself, and exercised a most powerful, if not an actually
+generative, influence on newer forms which were themselves to pass into
+the novel proper. The third is the increasing body of memoir- and
+anecdote-writers who, with Brantome at their head, make actual
+personages and actual events the subjects of a kind of story-telling,
+not perhaps invariably of unexceptionable historic accuracy, but
+furnishing remarkable situations of plot and suggestions of character,
+together with abundant new examples of the "telling" faculty itself.
+
+[Sidenote: Subsidiary importance of Brantome and other
+character-mongers.]
+
+The last point, as an apparent digression but really a most important
+contribution to the History, may perhaps be discussed and dismissed
+first. All persons who have even a slight knowledge of French literature
+must be aware how early and how remarkable are its possessions in what
+is vaguely called the "Memoir" department. There is nothing at the time,
+in any modern literature known to the present writer, similar to
+Villehardouin, or a little later to Joinville,--one might almost say
+that there is nothing in any literature at any time superior, if there
+be anything equal, in its kind to Froissart. In the first two cases
+there is pure personal experience; in the third there is, of course, a
+certain amount of precedent writing on the subject for guidance, and a
+large gathering of information by word of mouth. But in all these, and
+to a less extent in others up to the close of the fifteenth century,
+there is the indefinable gift of treatment--of "telling a story." In
+Villehardouin this gift may be almost wholly, and in principle very
+mainly, limited to the two great subjects which made the mediaeval end
+as far as profane matters were concerned--fighting and counselling; but
+this is by no means the case in Froissart, whom one is sometimes tempted
+to regard as a Sir Walter Scott thrown away upon base reality.
+
+With the sixteenth century this gift once more burgeoned and spread
+itself out--dealing, indeed, very mainly with the somewhat ungrateful
+subject of the religious disputes and wars, but flowering or fruiting
+into the unsurpassable gossip--though gossip is too undignified a
+word--of Pierre de Bourdeilles, Abbe de Brantome, that Froissart and
+Pepys in one, with the noble delight in noble things of the first,
+inextricably united to the almost innocent shamelessness of the second,
+and a narrative gift equal to that of either in idiosyncrasy, and
+ranging beyond the subjects of both. Himself a soldier and a courtier
+(his abbacy, like many others, was purely titular and profitable--not
+professional in the least), his favourite subjects in literature, and
+obviously his idols in life, were great soldiers and fair ladies,
+"Bayard and the two Marguerites," as some one has put it. And his vivid
+irregular fashion of writing adapts itself with equal ease to a gallant
+feat of arms and a ferocious, half-cut-throat duel, to an exquisite
+piece of sentimental passion like that which tells us the story how the
+elder Queen of Navarre rebuked the lover carelessly stepping over the
+grave of his dead mistress, and to an unquotable anecdote to parallel
+the details of which, in literature of high rank, one must go to
+Rabelais himself, to Martial, or to Aristophanes. But, whatever the
+subject, the faculty of lively communication remains unaltered, and the
+suggestion of its transference from fact (possibly a little coloured) to
+pure fiction becomes more and more possible and powerful.[110]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Heptameron_.]
+
+No book has been more subject to the "insupportable advances" of the
+"key"-monger than the _Heptameron_, and the rage for identifying has
+gone so far that the pretty old name of "Emarsuite" for one of the
+characters has been discarded for an alleged and much uglier
+"Ennasuite," which is indeed said to have MS. authority, but which is
+avowedly preferred because it can be twisted into "_Anne_ a Suite"
+("Anne in Waiting"), and so can be fastened to an actual Maid of Honour
+of Marguerite's. It is only fair, however, to admit that something of
+the kind is at least suggested by the book itself. Even by those who do
+not trouble themselves in the least about the personages who may or may
+not have been disguised under the names of Nomerfide (the Neifile of
+this group) and Longarine, Saffredent and Dagoucin and Gebron (Geb_u_ron
+they call him now), admit the extreme probability of the Queen having
+invited identification of herself with Parlamente, the younger matron of
+the party, and of Hircan her husband with the King of Navarre.[111] But
+some (among whom is the present writer) think that this delightful and
+not too well-fated type of Renaissance amorousness, letteredness, and
+piety combined made a sort of dichotomy of herself here, and intended
+the personage of Oisille, the elder duenna (though by no means a very
+stern one) of the party, to stand for her as well as Parlamente--to whom
+one really must give the Italian pronunciation to get her out of the
+abominable suggestion of our "talking-machine."
+
+[Sidenote: Character and "problems."]
+
+A much more genuinely literary question has been raised and discussed as
+to the exact authorship of the book. That it is entirely Marguerite's,
+not the most jealous admirers of the Queen need for a moment contend.
+She is known to have had a sort of literary court from Marot and
+Rabelais downwards, some of the members of which were actually resident
+with her, and not a few of whom--such as Boaistuau and Le Macon, the
+translators of Bandello and Boccaccio, and Bonaventure Desperiers (_v.
+inf._)--were positive experts in the short story. Moreover, the custom
+of distributing these collections among different speakers positively
+invited collaboration in writing. The present critic and his friend, Mr.
+Arthur Tilley of King's College, Cambridge, who has long been our chief
+specialist in the literature of the French Renaissance, are in an
+amicable difference as to the part which Desperiers in particular may
+have played in the _Heptameron_; but this is of no great importance
+here, and though Marguerite's other literary work is distinctly inferior
+in style, it is not impossible that the peculiar tone of the best parts
+of it, especially as regards the religious-amorous flavour, was infused
+by her or under her direct influence. The enthusiasm of Rabelais and
+Marot; the striking anecdote already mentioned which Brantome, whose
+mother had been one of Marguerite's maids of honour, tells us, and one
+or two other things, suggest this; for Desperiers was more of a satirist
+than of an amorist, and though the charges of atheism brought against
+him are (_v. inf._ again) scarcely supported by his work, he was
+certainly no pietist. I should imagine that he revised a good deal and
+sometimes imparted his nervous and manly, but, in his own _Contes_,
+sometimes too much summarised style. But some striking phrases, such as
+"_l'impossibilite_ de nostre chair,"[112] may be hers, and the following
+remarkable speech of Parlamente probably expresses her own sentiments
+pretty exactly. It is very noteworthy that Hircan, who is generally
+represented as "taking up" his wife's utterances with a certain sarcasm,
+is quite silent here.
+
+     [Sidenote: Parlamente on human and divine love.]
+
+     "Also," said Parlamente, "I have an opinion that never will
+     a man love God perfectly if he has not perfectly loved some
+     of God's creatures in this world." "But what do you call
+     'perfect loving'?" said Saffredent. "Do you reckon as
+     perfect lovers those who are _transis_,[113] and who adore
+     ladies at a distance, without daring to make their wishes
+     known?" "I call perfect lovers," answered Parlamente, "those
+     who seek in what they love some perfection--be it beauty,
+     kindness, or good grace,--always striving towards virtue;
+     and such as have so high and honourable a heart, that they
+     would not, were they to die for it, take for their object
+     the base things which honour and conscience disapprove: for
+     the soul, which is only created that it may return to its
+     Sovereign Good, does naught while it is in the body but long
+     for the attainment of this. But because the senses by which
+     alone it can acquire information are darkened and made
+     carnal by the sin of our first father, they can only show
+     her the visible things which approach closest to
+     perfection--and after these the soul runs, thinking to find
+     in outward beauty, in visible grace, and in moral virtue,
+     grace, beauty, and virtue in sovereign degree. But when she
+     has sought them and tried them, and finds not in them Him
+     whom she loves, she leaves them alone,[114] just as a child,
+     according to his age, likes dolls and other trivialities,
+     the prettiest he sees, and thinks a collection of pebbles
+     actual riches, but as he grows up prefers his dolls alive,
+     and gets together the goods necessary for human life. Yet
+     when he knows, by still wider experience, that in earthly
+     things there is neither perfection nor felicity, he desires
+     to seek the Creator and the Source of these. Nevertheless,
+     if God open not the eye of faith in him he would be in
+     danger of becoming, instead of a merely ignorant man, an
+     infidel philosopher.[115] For Faith alone can demonstrate
+     and make receivable the good that the carnal and animal man
+     cannot understand."
+
+This gives the better Renaissance temper perhaps as well as anything to
+be found, and may, or should in fairness, be set against the worser tone
+of mere libertinage in which some even of the ladies indulge here, and
+still more against that savagery which has been noticed above. This
+undoubtedly was in Milton's mind when he talked of "Lust hard by Hate,"
+and it makes Hircan coolly observe, after a story has been told in which
+an old woman successfully interferes to save a girl's chastity, that in
+the place of the hero he should certainly have killed the hag and
+enjoyed the girl. This is obviously said in no bravado, and not in the
+least humorously: and the spirit of it is exemplified in divers not in
+the least incredible anecdotes of Brantome's in the generation
+immediately following, and of Tallemant des Reaux in the next. The
+religiosity displayed is of a high temper of Christian Platonism, and we
+cannot, as we can elsewhere, say what the song says of something else,
+that "it certainly looks very queer." The knights and ladies do go to
+mass and vespers; but to say that they go punctually would be altogether
+erroneous, for Hircan makes wicked jokes on his and Parlamente's being
+late for the morning office, and, on one occasion at least, they keep
+the unhappy monks of the convent where they are staying (who do not seem
+to dare to begin vespers without them) waiting a whole hour while they
+are finishing not particularly edifying stories. The less complaisant
+casuists, even of the Roman Church, would certainly look askance at the
+piety of the distinguished person (said by tradition to have been King
+Francis himself) who always paid his respects to Our Lady on his way to
+illegitimate assignations, and found himself the better therefor on one
+occasion of danger. But the tone of our extract is invariably that of
+Oisille and Parlamente. The purer love part of the matter is a little,
+as the French themselves say, "alembicated." But still the whole is
+graceful and fascinating, except for a few pieces of mere passionless
+coarseness, which Oisille generally reproves. And it is scarcely
+necessary to say what large opportunities these tones and colours of
+fashion and "quality," of passion and manners, give to the future
+novelist, whose treatment shall stand to them very much as they stand to
+the shorter and sometimes almost shorthand written tales of Desperiers
+himself.
+
+[Sidenote: Desperiers.]
+
+With the _Cymbalum Mundi_ of this rather mysterious person we need have
+little to do. It is, down to the dialogue-form, an obvious imitation of
+Lucian--a story about the ancient divinities (especially Mercury) and a
+certain "Book of Destiny" and talking animals, and a good deal of often
+rather too transparent allegory. It has had, both in its own day and
+since, a very bad reputation as being atheistical or at least
+anti-Christian, and seems really to have had something to do with the
+author's death, by suicide or otherwise. There need, however, be very
+little harm in it; and there is not very much good as a story, nor,
+therefore, much for us. It does not carry the art of its particular kind
+of fiction any further than Lucian himself, who is, being much more of a
+genius, on the whole a much better model, even taking him at that rather
+inferior rate. The _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, on the other hand, though
+the extreme brevity of some has perhaps sometimes prejudiced readers
+against them, have always seemed to the present writer to form the most
+remarkable book, as literature, of all the department at the time except
+_Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ and the _Heptameron_, and to supply a
+strong presumption that their author had more than a minor hand in the
+_Heptameron_ itself. It must, of course, be admitted that the fashion in
+which they are delivered may not only offend in one direction, but may
+possibly mislead in another. One may read too much into the brevity, and
+so fall into the error of that other Englishman who was beguiled by the
+mysterious signs of Desperiers' greatest contemporary's most original
+creation. But a very large and long experience of literary weighing and
+measuring ought to be some safeguard against the mistake of Thaumast.
+
+[Sidenote: _Contes et Joyeux Devis._]
+
+One remarkable difference which may seem, at first sight, to be against
+the theory of Desperiers having had a large share in the _Heptameron_ is
+the contrasted and, as it may seem again at first sight, antagonistic
+tone of the two. There are purely comic and even farcical passages in
+Marguerite's book, but the general colour, as has been said, is
+religious-sentimental or courtly-amatory, with by no means infrequent
+excursions into the purely tragical. The _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, on
+the other hand, in the main continue the wholly jocular tone of the old
+_fabliaux_. But Desperiers must have been, not only _not_ the great man
+of letters which the somewhat exaggerated zeal of his editor, M. Louis
+Lacour, ranked him as being, but a very weak and feeble writer, if he
+could not in this way write comedy in one book and tragedy in another.
+In fact Rabelais gives us (as the greatest writers so often do) what is
+in more senses than one a master-key to the contrast. Desperiers has in
+the _Contes_ constant ironic qualifications and asides which may even
+have been directly imitated from his elder and greater contemporary;
+Marguerite has others which pair off in the same way with the most
+serious Rabelaisian "intervals," to which attention has been drawn in
+the last chapter. One point, however, does seem, at least to me, to
+emerge from the critical consideration of these two books with the other
+works of the Queen on the one hand and the other works of
+Desperiers[116] on the other. It is that the latter had a much crisper
+and stronger style than Marguerite's own, and that he had a faculty of
+grave ironic satire, going deeper and ranging wider than her
+"sensibility" would allow. There is one on the fatal and irremediable
+effects of disappointing ladies in their expectations, wherein there is
+something more than the mere _grivoiserie_, which in other hands it
+might easily have remained. The very curious Novel XIII.--on King
+Solomon and the philosopher's stone and the reason of the failure of
+alchemy--is of quite a different type from most things in these
+story-collections, and makes one regret that there is not more of it,
+and others of the same kind. For sheer amusement, which need not be
+shocking to any but the straitest-laced of persons, the story (XXXIV.)
+of a curate completely "scoring off" his bishop (who did not observe the
+caution given by Ophelia to Laertes) has not many superiors in its
+particular kind.
+
+[Sidenote: Other tale-collections.]
+
+The fancy for these collections of tales spread widely in the sixteenth
+century, and a respectable number of them have found a home in histories
+of literature. Sometimes they present themselves honestly as what they
+are, and sometimes under a variety of disguises, the most extravagant of
+which is the title of the rather famous work of Henri Estienne,
+_Apologie pour Herodote_. Others, more or less fantastic, are the
+_Propos Rustiques_ and _Baliverneries_ of Noel Du Fail, a Breton squire
+(as we should say), and his later _Contes d'Eutrapel_; the _Escraignes
+Dijonnaises_ and other books of Tabourot des Accords; the _Matinees_ and
+_Apres Dinees_ of Cholieres, and, the largest collection of all, the
+_Serees_ [Soirees] of the Angevin Guillaume Bouchet,[117] while after
+the close of the actual century, but probably representing earlier work,
+appeared the above-mentioned _Moyen de Parvenir_, by turns attributed
+and denied to Beroalde de Verville. In all these, without exception, the
+imitation of Rabelais, in different but unmistakable ways, is to be
+found; and in not a few, that of the _Heptameron_ and of Desperiers;
+while not unfrequently the same tales are found in more than one
+collection. The _fatrasie_ character--that is to say, the stuffing
+together of all sorts of incongruous matter in more or less burlesque
+style--is common to all of them; the licence of subject and language to
+most; and there are hardly any, except a few mere modernisings of old
+_fabliaux_, in which you will not find the famous farrago of the
+Renaissance--learning, religious partisanship, war, law, love, almost
+everything. All the writers are far below their great master,[118] and
+none of them has the appeal of the _Heptameron_. But the spirit of
+tale-telling pervades the whole shelf-ful, and there is one more special
+point of importance "for us."
+
+[Sidenote: The "provincial" character of these.]
+
+It will be observed that some of them actually display in their titles
+(such as that of Tabouret's book as quoted) the fact that they have a
+definite provinciality in no bad sense: while Bouchet is as clearly
+Angevin and Du Fail as distinctly Breton as Des Accords is Burgundian
+and as the greatest of all had been Tourangeau. It can scarcely be
+necessary to point out at great length what a reinforcement of vigour
+and variety must have been brought by this plantation in the different
+soils of those provinces which have counted for so much--and nearly
+always for so much good[119]--in French literature and French things
+generally. The great danger and defect of mediaeval writing had been its
+tendency to fall into schools and ruts, and the "printed book"
+(especially such a printed book as Rabelais) was, at least in one way,
+by no means unlikely to exercise this bad influence afresh. To this the
+provincial differences opposed a salutary variety of manners, speech,
+local colour, almost everything. Moreover, manners themselves
+generally--one of the fairest and most fertile fields of the
+novel-kingdom--became thus more fully and freely the object and subject
+of the tale-teller. Character, in the best and most extensive and
+intensive sense of the word, still lagged behind; and as the drama
+necessarily took that up, it was for more reasons than one encouraged,
+as we may say, in its lagging. But meanwhile Amyot and Calvin[120] and
+Montaigne were getting the language more fully ready for the
+prose-writer's use, and the constant "sophistication" of literature with
+religion, politics, knowledge of the physical world in all ways,
+commerce, familiarity with foreign nations--everything almost that
+touched on life--helped to bring on the slow but inevitable appearance
+of the novel itself. But it had more influences to assimilate and more
+steps to go through before it could take full form.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Amadis_ romances.]
+
+No more curious contrast (except, perhaps, the not very dissimilar one
+which will meet us in the next chapter) is to be found in the present
+_History_, or perhaps in any other, than that of the matter just
+discussed with the great body of _Amadis_ romance which, at this same
+time, was introduced into French literature by the translation or
+adaptation of Nicolas Herberay des Essarts and his continuators. That
+Herberay[121] deserves, according to the best and most catholic students
+of French, a place with the just-mentioned writers among the formers or
+reformers of the French tongue, is a point of some importance, but, for
+us, minor. Of the controversial part of the _Amadis_ subject it must, as
+in other cases, be once more unnecessary for us to say much. It may be
+laid down as certain, on every principle of critical logic and research,
+that the old idea of the Peninsular cycle being borrowed direct from any
+French original is hopelessly absurd. There is, notoriously, no external
+evidence of any such original ever having existed, and there is an
+immense improbability against any such original ever having existed.
+Further, the internal characteristics of the Spanish romances, though,
+undoubtedly, they might never have come into existence at all but for
+the French, and though there is a very slight "catch-on" of _Amadis_
+itself to the universally popular Arthurian legend, are not in the least
+like those of French or English. How the actual texts came into that
+existence; whether, as used to be thought at first, after some expert
+criticism was turned on them, the actual original was Portuguese, and
+the refashioned and prolific form Spanish, is again a question utterly
+beyond bounds for us. The quality of the romances themselves--their huge
+vogue being a matter of fact--and the influence which they exercised on
+the future development of the novel,--these are the things that concern
+us, and they are quite interesting and important enough to deserve a
+little attention.
+
+[Sidenote: Their characteristics.]
+
+What is certain is that these Spanish romances themselves--which, as
+some readers at any rate may be presumed to know, branch out into
+endless genealogies in the _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ lines, besides the
+more or less outside developments which fared so hardly with the censors
+of Don Quixote's library--as well as the later French examples of a not
+dissimilar type, the capital instance of which, for literature, is Lord
+Berners's translation of _Arthur of Little Britain_--do show the most
+striking differences, not merely from the original twelfth- and
+thirteenth-century Charlemagne and Arthur productions, but also from
+intermediate variants and expansions of these. The most obvious of these
+discrepancies is the singular amplification of the supernatural
+elements. Of course these were not absent in the older romance
+literature, especially in the Arthurian cycle. But there they had
+certain characteristics which might almost deserve the adjective
+"critical"--little criticism proper as there was in the Middle Ages.
+They were very generally religious, and they almost always had what may
+be called a poetic restraint about them. The whole Graal-story is
+deliberately modelled on Scriptural suggestions; the miracle of
+reconciliation and restoration which concludes _Amis and Amiles_ is the
+work of a duly commissioned angel. There are giants, but they are
+introduced moderately and equipped in consonance. The Saint's Life,
+which, as it has been contended, exercised so large an influence on the
+earlier romance, carried the nature, the poetry, the charm of its
+supernatural elements into the romance itself.
+
+[Sidenote: Extravagance in incident, nomenclature, etc.]
+
+In the _Amadis_ cycle and in romances like _Arthur of Little Britain_
+all this undergoes a change--not by any means for the better. What has
+been unkindly, but not perhaps unjustly, called the "conjuror's
+supernatural" takes the place of the poet's variety. One of the
+personages of the _Knight of the Sun_ is a "Bedevilled Faun," and it is
+really too much not to say that most of such personages are bedevilled.
+In _Arthur of_ (so much the Lesser) _Britain_ there is, if I remember
+rightly, a giant whose formidability partly consists in his spinning
+round on a sort of bedevilled music-stool: and his class can seldom be
+met with without three or seven heads, a similarly large number of legs
+and hands, and the like. This sort of thing has been put down, not
+without probability, to the Oriental suggestion which would come so
+readily into Spain. It may be so or it may not. But it certainly imports
+an element of puerility into romance, which is regrettable, and it
+diminishes the dignity and the poetry of the things rather lamentably.
+Whether it diminishes, and still more whether it originally diminished
+the _readability_ of these same things, is quite another question.
+
+Closely connected with it is the fancy for barbaric names of great
+length and formidable sound, such as Famongomadan, Pintiquinestra, and
+the like--a trait which, if anybody pleases, may be put down to the
+distorted echo of more musical[122] appellations in Arabic and other
+Eastern tongues, or to a certain childishness, for there is no doubt
+that the youthful mind delights, and always has delighted, in such
+things. The immense length of these romances even in themselves, and
+still more with continuations from father to son and grandson, and
+trains of descendants sometimes alternately named, can be less charged
+as an innovation, though there is no doubt that it established a rule
+which had only been an exception before. But, as will have been seen
+earlier, the continuation of romance genealogically had been not
+uncommon, and there had been a constant tendency to lengthen from the
+positively terse _Roland_ to the prolix fifteenth-century forms. In fact
+this went on till the extravagant length of the Scudery group made
+itself impossible, and even afterwards, as all readers of Richardson
+know, there was reluctance to shorten.
+
+[Sidenote: The "cruel" heroine.]
+
+We have, however, still to notice another peculiarity, and the most
+important by far as concerns the history of the novel: this is the
+ever-increasing tendency to exaggerate the "cruelty" of the heroine and
+the sufferings of the lovers. This peculiarity is not specially
+noticeable in the earliest and best of the group itself. Amadis suffers
+plentifully; yet Oriana can hardly be called "cruel." But of the two
+heroines of _Palmerin_, Polisarda does play the part to some extent, and
+Miraguarda (whose name it is not perhaps fantastic to interpret as
+"Admire her but beware of her") is positively ill-natured. Of course the
+thing was no more a novelty in literature than it was in life. The
+lines--
+
+    And cruel in the New
+    As in the Old one,
+
+may certainly be transferred from the geographical world to the
+historical. But in classical literature "cruelty" is attributed rather
+indiscriminately to both sexes. The cliff of Leucas knew no distinction
+of sex, and Sappho can be set against Anaxarete. Indeed, it was safer
+for men to be cruel than for women, inasmuch as Aphrodite, among her
+innumerable good qualities, was very severe upon unkind girls, while one
+regrets to have to admit that no particular male deity was regularly
+"affected" to the business of punishing light o' love men, though
+Eros-Cupid may sometimes have done so. The Eastern mistress, for obvious
+reasons, had not much chance of playing the Miraguarda part as a rule,
+though there seems to me more chance of the convention coming from Arab
+and Hebrew poetry than from any other source. But in the _Arabian
+Nights_ at least, though there are lustful murderesses--eastern
+Margarets of Burgundy, like Queen Labe of the Magicians,--there is
+seldom any "cruelty," or even any tantalising, on the part of the
+heroines.
+
+A hasty rememberer of the sufferings of Lancelot and one or two other
+heroes of the early and genuine romance might say, "Why go further than
+this?" But on a little examination the cases will be found very
+different. Neither Iseult nor Guinevere is cruel to her lover;
+Orgueilleuse has a fair excuse in difference of rank and slight
+acquaintance; persons like Tennyson's Ettarre, still more his Vivien,
+are "sophisticated"--as we have pointed out already. Besides, Vivien and
+Ettarre are frankly bad women, which is by no means the case with the
+Polisardas and Miraguardas. They, if they did not introduce the
+thing--which is, after all, as the old waterman in _Jacob Faithful_
+says, "Human natur',"--established and conventionalised the Silvius and
+Phoebe relation of lover and mistress. If Lancelot is banished more than
+once or twice, it is because of Guinevere's real though unfounded
+jealousy, not of any coquettish "cruelty" on her part; if Partenopeus
+nearly perishes in his one similar banishment, it is because of his own
+fault--his fault great and inexcusable. But the Amadisian heroes, as a
+rule--unless they belong to the light o' love Galaor type, which would
+not mind cruelty if it were exercised, but would simply laugh and ride
+away--are almost painfully faithful and deserving; and their sojourns in
+Tenebrous Isles, their encounters with Bedevilled Fauns, and the like,
+are either pure misfortunes or the deliberate results of capricious
+tyranny on the part of their mistresses.
+
+Now of course this is the sort of thing which may be (and as a matter of
+fact it no doubt was) tediously abused; but it is equally evident that
+in the hands of a novelist of genius, or even of fair talent and
+craftsmanship, it gives opportunity for extensive and ingenious
+character-drawing, and for not a little "polite conversation." If _la
+donna e mobile_ generally, she has very special opportunities of
+exhibiting her mobility in the exercise of her caprice: and if it is the
+business of the lover (as it is of minorities, according to a Right
+Honourable politician) to suffer, the _amoureux transi_ who has some
+wits and some power of expression can suffer to the genteelest of tunes
+with the most ingenious fugues and variations. A great deal of the
+actual charm of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry in all
+languages comes from the rendering in verse of this very relation of
+woman and man. We owe to the "dear Lady Disdain" idea not merely
+Beatrice, but Beatrix long after her, and many another good thing both
+in verse and in prose between Shakespeare and Thackeray.
+
+In the _Amadis_ group (as in its slightly modernised successor, that of
+the _Grand Cyrus_), the handling is so preposterously long and the
+reliefs of dialogue and other things frequently managed with so little
+skill, that, except for sheer passing of time, the books have been found
+difficult to read. The present writer's knowledge of Spanish is too
+sketchy to enable him to read them in the original with full comfort.
+_Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ are legible enough in Southey's translations,
+made, as one would expect from him, with all due effort to preserve the
+language of the old English versions where possible. But Herberay's
+sixteenth-century French is a very attractive and perfectly easy
+language, thoroughly well suited to the matter. And if anything that has
+been said is read as despite to these romances, the reading is wrong.
+They have grave faults, but also real delights, and they have no small
+"place i' the story."[123]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[110]
+
+[Sidenote: Note on Montaigne.]
+
+This suggestive influence may be found almost as strongly, though shown
+with less literary craftsmanship, in Brantome's successor and to some
+extent overlapper, Tallemant des Reaux. And it is almost needless to say
+that in both _subjects_ for novel treatment "foison," as both French and
+English would have said in their time. Nor may it be improper to add
+that Montaigne himself, though more indirectly, assisted in speeding the
+novel. The actual telling of a story is indeed not his strongest point:
+the dulness of the _Travels_, if they were really his (on which point
+the present writer cannot help entertaining a possibly unorthodox
+doubt), would sufficiently show this. But the great effect which he
+produced on French prose could not, as in the somewhat similar case of
+Dryden in English a century later, but prove of immense aid to the
+novelist. Except in the deliberately eccentric style, as in Rabelais'
+own case, or in periods such as the Elizabethan and our own, where there
+is a coterie ready to admire jargon, you cannot write novels, to
+interest and satisfy readers, without a style, or a group of styles,
+providing easy and clear narrative media. We shall see how, in the next
+century, writers in forms apparently still more alien from the novel
+helped it in the same way.
+
+[111] The character of this Bourbon prince seems to have been very
+faithfully though not maliciously drawn by Margaret (for the name,
+_Gallice pulchrum_, is _Anglice pulchrius_, and our form may be
+permitted in a note) as not ungenial, not exactly ungentlemanly, and by
+no means hating his wife or being at all unkind to her, but constantly
+"hard" on her in speech, openly regarding infidelity to her as a matter
+of course, and not a little tinged by the savagery which (one is afraid)
+the English wars had helped to introduce among the French nobility;
+which the religious wars were deepening, and which, in the times of the
+Fronde, came almost to its very worst, and, though somewhat tamed later,
+lasted, and was no mean cause, if not so great a one as some think, of
+the French Revolution. Margaret's love for her brother was ill rewarded
+in many ways--among others by brutal scandal--and her later days were
+embittered by failure to protect the new learning and the new faith she
+had patronised earlier. But one never forgets Rabelais' address to her,
+or the different but still delightful piece in which Marot is supposed
+to have commemorated her Platonic graciousness; while her portrait,
+though drawn in the hard, dry manner of the time, and with the tendency
+of that time to "make a girl's nose a proboscis," is by no means
+unsuggestive of actual physical charm.
+
+[112] This phrase, though Biblical, of course, in spirit, is not, so far
+as I remember, anywhere found textually in Holy Writ. It may be
+patristic; in which case I shall be glad of learned information. It
+sounds rather like St. Augustine. But I do not think it occurs earlier
+in French, and the word _impossibilite_ is not banal in the connection.
+
+[113] The famous phrase "amoureux _transi_" is simply untranslatable by
+any single word in English for the adjective, or rather participle. Its
+unmetaphorical use is, of course, commonest in the combination _transi
+de froid_, "frozen," and so suggests in the other a lover shivering
+actually under his mistress's shut window, or, metaphorically, under her
+disdain.
+
+[114] The expression (_passe oultre_) commented on in speaking of
+Rabelais, and again one which has no English equivalent.
+
+[115] A very early example of the special sense given to this word in
+French increasingly during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
+centuries, of "freethinker" deepening to "atheist." Johnson's friend, it
+will be remembered, regarded Philosophy as something to which the
+irruption of Cheerfulness was fatal; Butler, as something acquirable by
+reading Alexander Ross; a famous ancient saying, as the remembrancer of
+death; and a modern usage, as something which has brass and glass
+"instruments." But it was Hegel, was it not? or Carlyle? who summarised
+the French view and its time of prevalence in the phrase, "When every
+one was a philosopher who did not believe in the Devil."
+
+[116] His translations of the _Andria_ and of Plato's _Lysis_; and his
+verses, the chief charm of which is to be found in his adoption of the
+"cut and broken" stanzas which the French Renaissance loved.
+
+[117] Not to be confused with _Jehan_ Bouchet the poet, a much older
+man, indeed some twenty years older than Rabelais, and as dull as
+Raminagrobis Cretin himself, but the inventor or discoverer of that
+agreeable _agnomen_ "Traverseur des Voies Perilleuses" which has been
+noted above.
+
+[118] Cholieres, I think, deserves the prize for sinking lowest.
+
+[119] From all the endless welter of abuse of God's great gift of speech
+[and writing] about the French Revolution, perhaps nothing has emerged
+more clearly than that its evils were mainly due to the sterilisation of
+the regular Provincial assemblies under the later monarchy.
+
+[120] A person not bad of blood will always be glad to mention one of
+the few good sides of a generally detestable character; and a person of
+humour must always chuckle at some of the ways in which Calvin's
+services to French prose were utilised.
+
+[121] He did not confine his good offices to romances of _caballeria_.
+In 1539 he turned into French the _Arnalte and Lucenda_ of Diego de San
+Pedro (author of the more widely known _Carcel de Amor_), a very curious
+if also rather tedious-brief love-story which had great influence in
+France (see Reynier, _op. cit. inf._ pp. 66-73). This (though M. Reynier
+did not know it) was afterwards versified in English by one of our minor
+Carolines, and will appear in the third volume of the collected edition
+of them now in course of publication by the Clarendon Press.
+
+[122] Not always. Nouzhatoul-aouadat is certainly not as musical as
+Pintiquinestra, though Nouronnihar as certainly is.
+
+[123]
+
+[Sidenote: Note on Helisenne de Crenne.]
+
+There should be added here a very curious, and now, if not in its own
+time, very rare book, my first knowledge of which I owed to a work
+already mentioned, M. Gustave Reynier's _Le Roman Sentimental avant
+l'Astree_ (Paris, 1908), though I was able, after this chapter was
+composed, to find and read the original in the British Museum. It was
+first printed in 1538, and bears, like other books of its time, a
+disproportionately long title, which may, however, be easily shortened,
+"_Les Angoisses douloureuses qui procedent d'Amour_ ... composees par
+dame Helisenne de Crenne." This Helisenne or Helisaine seems to have
+been a real person: and not the least of the remarkable group of women
+authors who illustrate her time in France, though M. Reynier himself
+admits that "it is difficult to know exactly _who_ she was." She appears
+to have been of Picardy, and other extant and non-extant works are
+attributed to her. Like almost everybody of her time she wrote in the
+extreme _rhetoriqueur_ style--so much so indeed as to lead even Pasquier
+into the blunder of supposing that Rabelais hit at her in the dialect of
+the "Limousin scholar." The _Angoisses_, which M. Reynier's acute
+examination shows to have been written by some one who must have known
+Boccaccio's _Fiammetta_ (more than once Frenched about this time), is,
+or gives itself out to be, the autobiography of a girl of noble birth
+who, married at eleven years old and at first very fond of her husband,
+becomes at thirteen the object of much courtship from many gallants. Of
+these she selects, entirely on the love-at-first-sight principle, a very
+handsome young man who passes in the street. She is well read and tries
+to keep herself in order by stock examples, classical and romantic, of
+ill-placed and ill-fated affection. Her husband (who seems to have been
+a very good fellow for his time) gives her unconsciously what should
+have been the best help of all, by praising her self-selected lover's
+good looks and laughing at the young man's habit of staring at her. But
+she has already spoken frankly of her own _appetit sensuel_, and she
+proceeds to show this in the fashion which makes the fifteenth century
+and the early sixteenth a sort of trough of animalism between the
+altitudes of Mediaeval and Renaissance passion. Her lover turns out to
+be an utter cad, boastful, blabbing, and almost cowardly (he tells her
+in the usual stolen church interview, _Je crains merveilleusement
+monsieur votre mari_). But it makes not the slightest difference; nor
+does the at last awakened wrath of an at last not merely threatened but
+wideawake husband. Apparently she never has the chance of being actually
+guilty, for her husband finally, and very properly, shuts her up in a
+country house under strong duennaship. This finishes the first part, but
+there are two more, which return to more ancient ways. The lover
+Guenelic goes off to seek adventures, which he himself recounts, and
+acquires considerable improvement in them. He comes back, endeavours to
+free his mistress from her captivity, and does actually fly with her;
+but they are pursued; and though the lover and a friend of his with the
+rather Amadisian name of "Quezinstra" do their best, the heroine dies of
+weariness and shock, to be followed by her lover.
+
+This latter part is comparatively commonplace. M. Reynier thinks very
+highly of the first. It is possible to go with him a certain part of the
+way, but not, I think, the whole, except from a purely "naturalist" and
+not at all "sentimental" point of view. Some bold bad men have, of
+course, maintained that when the other sex is possessed by an _appetit
+sensuel_ this overcomes everything else, and seems, if not actually to
+exclude, at any rate by no means always or often to excite, that
+accompanying transcendentalism which is not uncommon with men, and
+which, comprised with the appetite, makes the love of the great lovers,
+whether they are represented by Dante or by Donne, by Shakespeare or by
+Shelley. Whether this be truth or libel _non nostrum est_. But it is
+certain that Helisenne, as she represents herself, does not make the
+smallest attempt to spiritualise (even in the lowest sense) or inspirit
+the animality of her affection. She wants her lover as she might want a
+pork chop instead of a mutton one; and if she is sometimes satisfied
+with seeing him, it is as if she were looking at that pork chop through
+a restaurateur's window and finding it better than not seeing it at all
+and contenting herself with the mutton. Still this result is probably
+the result at least as much of want of art as of original _mis_feeling;
+and the book certainly does deserve notice here.
+
+The original _Oeuvres_ of Helisenne form a rather appetising little
+volume, fat, and close and small printed, as indeed is the case with
+most, but not quite all, of the books now under notice. The
+complementary pieces are mainly moralities, as indeed are, in intention,
+the _Angoisses_ themselves. These latter seem to me better worth
+reprinting than most other things as yet not reprinted, from the
+_Heptameron_ (Helisenne, be it remembered, preceded Marguerite) for
+nearly a hundred years. The later parts, though (or perhaps even
+because) they contrast curiously with the first, are by no means
+destitute of interest; and M. Reynier, I think, is a little hard on them
+if he has perhaps been a little kind to their predecessor. The lingo is
+indeed almost always stupendous and occasionally terrible. The printer
+aids sometimes; for it was not at once that I could emend the
+description of the B. V. M. as "Mere et Fille de _l'aliltonat_ [ant]
+plasmateur" into "_altitonant_" ("loud-thundering"), while _plasmateur_
+itself, though perfectly intelligible and legitimate, a favourite with
+the _rhetoriqueurs_, and borrowed from them even in Middle Scots, is not
+exactly everybody's word. But from her very exordium she may be fairly
+judged. "Au temps que la Deesse Cibele despouilla son glacial et gelide
+habit, et vestit sa verdoyante robe, tapissee de diverses couleurs, je
+fus procree, de noblesse." And, after all, there _is_ a certain nobility
+in this fashion of speech and of literary presentation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--I
+
+_The Pastoral and Heroic Romance, and the Fairy Story_
+
+
+[Sidenote: Immense importance of the seventeenth century in our
+subject.]
+
+The seventeenth century, almost if not quite from its beginning, ranks
+in French literature as the eighteenth does with us, that is to say, as
+the time of origin of novels or romances which can be called, in any
+sense, modern. In its first decade appeared the epoch-making
+pastoral-heroic _Astree_ of Honore d'Urfe;[124] its middle period, from
+1620 to 1670, was the principal birth-time of the famous "Heroic"
+variety, pure and simple; while, from that division into the last third,
+the curiously contrasted kind of the fairy tale came to add its quota of
+influence. At various periods, too, individuals of more or less note
+(and sometimes of much more than almost any of the "school-writers" just
+mentioned) helped mightily in strengthening and diversifying the
+subjects and manners of tales. To this period also belongs the
+continuance and prominence of that element of actual "lived" anecdote
+and personal history which has been mentioned more than once before. The
+_Historiettes_ of Tallemant contain short suggestions for a hundred
+novels and romances; the memoirs, genuine or forged, of public and
+private persons have not seldom, in more modern times, formed the actual
+basis of some of the greatest fiction. Everybody ought long to have
+known Thackeray's perhaps rather whimsical declaration that he
+positively preferred the forged D'Artagnan memoirs of Courtils de
+Sandras (as far at least as the Gascon himself was concerned) to the
+work of that Alexander, the truly Great, of which he was nevertheless
+such a generous admirer: and recently mere English readers have had the
+opportunity of seeing whether they agree with him. In fact, as the
+century went on, almost all kinds of literature began to be more or less
+pervaded with the novel appeal and quality.
+
+[Sidenote: The divisions of its contribution.]
+
+The letters of "Notre Dame des Rochers" constantly read like parts or
+scenes of a novel, and so do various compositions of her ill-conditioned
+but not unintelligent cousin Bussy-Rabutin. Camus de Pontcarre in the
+earlier and Fenelon in the later century determined that the Devil
+should not have this good prose to himself, and our own Anthony Hamilton
+showed the way to Voltaire in a kind, of which, though the Devil had
+nothing immediately to do with it, he might perhaps make use later. In
+fact, the whole century teems with the spirit of tale-telling, _plus_
+character-analysis; and in the eighteenth itself, with a few notable
+exceptions, there was rather a falling-off from, than a further advance
+towards, the full blossoming of the aloe in the nineteenth.
+
+It will probably, therefore, not be excessive to give two chapters (and
+two not short ones) to this period. In the first of them we may take the
+two apparently opposite, but by no means irreconcilable schools of
+Pastoral and Heroic Romance[125] and of Fairy Tale, including perhaps
+only four persons, if so many, of first-rate literary rank--Urfe,[126]
+Madeleine de Scudery, Madame d'Aulnoy, and Perrault; in the second, the
+more isolated but in some cases not unimportant names and works of
+Sorel, Scarron, Furetiere, and the capital ones of Madame de la Fayette
+and Hamilton. According to the plan previously pursued, less attempt
+will be made to give exhaustive or even full lists of practitioners than
+to illustrate their practice thoroughly by example, translated or
+abstracted, and by criticism; and it is necessary that this latter
+course should be used without mercy to readers or to the historian
+himself in this first chapter. For there is hardly any department of
+literature which has been more left to the rather treacherous care of
+traditional and second- or seventh-hand judgment than the Heroic
+romance.[127]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The Pastoral in general.]
+
+The Pastoral, as being of the most ancient and in a literary sense of
+the highest formal rank, may occupy us first, but by no means longest. A
+great deal of attention (perhaps a great deal more than was at all
+necessary) has been paid to the pastoral element in various kinds of
+literature. The thing is certainly curious, and inevitably invited
+comment; but unfortunately it has peculiar temptations to a kind of
+comment which, though very fashionable for some time past, is rarely
+profitable. Pastorals of the most interesting kind actually exist in
+literature: "pastoralism" in the abstract, unless treated in the pure
+historical manner, is apt, like all similar criticism and discussion of
+"kinds" in general, to tend to [Greek: phlyaria].[128] For a history in
+a nutshell there is perhaps room even here, because the relations of the
+thing to fiction cannot be well understood without it. That the
+association of shepherds,[129] with songs, and with the telling of
+"tales" in both senses, is immensely old, is a fact which the Hebrew
+Scriptures establish, and almost the earliest Greek mythology and poetry
+confirm; but the wiser mind, here as elsewhere, will probably be content
+with the fact, and not enquire too busybodily into the reason. The
+connection between Sicily--apparently a land of actual pastoral
+life--and Alexandria--the home of the first professional man-of-letters
+school, as it may be called--perhaps supplies something more; the actual
+beauty of the Sicilian-Alexandrian poems, more still; the adoption of
+the form by Virgil, who was revered at Rome, renowned somewhat
+heterodoxically in the Middle Ages, and simply adored by the
+Renaissance, most of all. So, in English, Spenser and Milton, in French,
+Marot and others niched it solidly in the nation's poetry; and the
+certainly charming _Daphnis and Chloe_, when vernacularised, transferred
+its influence from verse to prose in almost all the countries of Europe.
+
+To what may be called "common-sense" criticism, there is, of course, no
+form of literature, in either prose or verse, which is more utterly
+abhorrent and more helplessly exposed. Unsympathetic, and in some points
+unfair and even unintelligent, as Johnson's criticism of _Lycidas_ may
+seem, to the censure of its actual "pastorality" there is no answer,
+except that "these things are an allegory" as well as a convention. To
+go further out of mere common-sense objections, and yet stick to the
+Devil's-Advocate line, there is no form which lends itself to--which,
+indeed, insists upon--conventions of the most glaring unreality more
+than the pastoral, and none in which the decorations, unless managed
+with extraordinary genius, have such a tendency to be tawdry at best,
+draggled and withered at worst. Nevertheless, the fact remains that at
+almost all times, both in ancient literature and since the revival of
+letters, as well as in some probably more spontaneous forms during the
+Middle Ages themselves,[130] pastorals have been popular with the
+vulgar, and practised by the elect; while within the very last hundred
+years such a towering genius as Shelley's, and such a manifold and
+effectual talent as Mr. Arnold's, have selected it for some of their
+very best work.
+
+Such adoption, moreover, had, for the writer of prose fiction, some
+peculiar and pretty obvious inducements. It has been noticed by all
+careful students of fiction that one of the initial difficulties in its
+way, and one of those which do not seem to get out of that way very
+quickly, is diffidence on the writer's part "how to begin." It may be
+said that this is not peculiar to fiction; but extends from the poet who
+never can get beyond the first lines of his epic to the journalist who
+sits for an hour gazing at the blank paper for his article, and returns
+home at midnight, if not like Miss Bolo "in a flood of tears and a sedan
+chair," at any rate in a tornado of swearing at himself and (while there
+were such things) a hansom cab. Pastoral gives both easy beginning and
+supporting framework.
+
+[Sidenote: Its beginnings in France.]
+
+[Sidenote: Minor romances preceding the _Astree_.]
+
+The transformation of the older pastoral form into the newer began,
+doubtless, with the rendering into French of _Daphnis and Chloe_,[131]
+which appeared in the same year with the complete _Heptameron_ (1559).
+Twelve years later, in 1571, Belleforest's _La Pyrenee et Pastorale
+Amoureuse_ rather took the title than exemplified the kind; but in 1578
+the translation of Montemayor's _Diana_ definitely turned the current
+into the new-old channel. It was not, however, till seven years later
+still that "_Les Bergeries de Juliette_, de l'invention d'Ollenix du
+Mont Sacre" (a rather exceptionally foolish anagram of Nicolas de
+Montreux) essayed something original in the style. Montreux issued his
+work, of which more presently, again and again in five instalments, the
+last of which appeared thirteen years later than the first. And it has
+been proved with immense bibliographical labour by M. Reynier,[132] that
+though the last decade of the sixteenth century in France was almost as
+fertile in short love-romances[133] as ours was in sonnet-cycles, the
+pastoral form was, whether deliberately or not, for the most part
+eschewed, though there were one or two exceptions of little if any
+consequence. It is indeed noteworthy that (only four years before the
+first part of the _Astree_) a second translation or the _Diana_ came
+out. But it was not till 1607 that this first part actually appeared,
+and in the opinion of its own time generally, and our own time for the
+most part, though not in that of the interval, made a new epoch in the
+history of French fiction.
+
+[Sidenote: Their general character.]
+
+The general characteristics of this curious and numerous, but almost
+forgotten, body of work--which must, be it remembered, have exercised
+influence, more or less, on the progress of the novel by the ways of
+supply, demand, and reaction alike--have been carefully analysed by M.
+Reynier, with whom, in regard to one or two points of opinion, one may
+differ, but whose statements of fact are certainly trustworthy. Short as
+they usually are, and small as is the literary power displayed in most
+of them, it is clear that they, long before Rambouillet and the
+_precieuses_, indicate a distinct reaction against merely brutal and
+ferocious manners, with a standard of "courtiership" in both senses. Our
+dear Reine Margot herself in one case prescribes, what one hopes she
+found not merely in La Mole, but in others of those transitorily happy
+ones whose desiccated hearts did or did not distend the pockets of her
+farthingale as live Persian kittens do those of their merchants. To be a
+lover you must have "a stocking void of holes, a ruff, a sword, a plume,
+_and a knowledge how to talk_." This last point is illustrated in these
+miniature romances after a fashion on which one of the differences of
+opinion above hinted at may arise. It is not, as in the later "Heroics,"
+shown merely in lengthy harangues, but in short and almost dramatised
+dialogue. No doubt this is often clumsy, but it may seem to have been
+not a whole mistake in itself--only an abortive attempt at something
+which, much later again, had to come before real novel-writing could be
+achieved, and which the harangues of the Scudery type could never have
+provided. There is a little actual history in them--not the
+key-cryptograms of the "Heroics" or their adoption of ancient and
+distant historic frames. In a very large proportion, forced marriages,
+proposed and escaped from, supply the plot; in not a few, forced
+"vocations" to the conventual life. Elopements are as common as
+abductions in the next stage, and are generally conducted with as much
+propriety. Courtships of married women, and lapses by them, are very
+rare.
+
+[Sidenote: Examples of their style.]
+
+No one will be surprised to hear that the "Phebus" or systematised
+conceit, for which the period is famous, and which the beloved
+Marguerite herself did not a little favour, is abundant in them. From a
+large selection of M. Reynier's, I cull, as perhaps the most delightful
+of all these, if not also of all known to me in any language, the
+following:
+
+     During this task, Love, who had ambushed himself, plunged
+     his wings in the tears of the lover, and dried them in the
+     burning breast of the maiden.
+
+"A squadron of sighs" is unambitious, but neat, terse, and very tempting
+to the imagination. More complicated is a lady "floating on the sea of
+the persecution of her Prince, who would fain give her up to the
+shipwreck of his own concupiscence."
+
+And I like this:
+
+     The grafts of our desires being inarched long since in the
+     tree of our loves, the branches thereof bore the lovely
+     bouquets of our hopes.
+
+And this is fine:
+
+     Paper! that the rest of your white surface may not blush at
+     my shame, suffer me to blacken it with my sorrow!
+
+It has always been a sad mystery to me why rude and dull intelligences
+should sneer at, or denounce, these delightful fantastries, the very
+stuff of which dreams and love and poetry--the three best things of
+life--are made.[134]
+
+[Sidenote: Montreux and the _Bergeries de Juliette_.]
+
+The British Museum possesses not very many of the, I believe, numerous
+works of Nicolas de Montreux, _alias_, as has been said, Ollenix du Mont
+Sacre, a "gentleman of Maine," as he scrupulously designates himself.
+But it does possess two parts (the first two) of the _Bergeries de
+Juliette_, and I am not in the least surprised that no reader of them
+should have worried any librarian into completing the set. Each of these
+parts is a stout volume of some five hundred pages,[135] not very small,
+of close small print, filled with stuff of the most deadly dulness. For
+instance, Ollenix is desirous to illustrate the magnificence and the
+danger of those professional persons of the other sex at Venice who have
+filled no small place in literature from Coryat to Rousseau. So he tells
+us, without a gleam or suspicion of humour, that one customer was so
+astonied at the decorations of the bedroom, the bed, etc., that he
+remained for two whole hours considering them, and forgetting to pay any
+attention to the lady. It is satisfactory to know that she revenged
+herself by raising the fee to an inordinate amount, and insisting on her
+absurd client's lackey being sent to fetch it before the actual
+conference took place. But the silliness of the story itself is a fair
+sample of Montreux' wits, and these wits manage to make anything they
+deal with duller by their way of telling it.
+
+[Sidenote: Des Escuteaux and his _Amours Diverses_.]
+
+It is still more unfortunate that our national collection has none of
+the numerous fictions[136] of A(ntoine?) de Nerveze. His _Amours
+Diverses_ (1606), in which he collected no less than seven love-stories,
+published separately earlier, would be useful. But it luckily does
+provide the similarly titled book of Des Escuteaux, who is perhaps the
+most representative and prolific writer, next to Montreux and Nerveze,
+of the whole, and who seems to me, from what I have read of the first
+and what others say of the second, to be their superior. The collections
+consist of (_Amours de_ in every case) _Filiris et Isolia_, dedicated to
+Isabel (not "-bel_le_") de Rochechouart; _Clarimond et Antoinette_ (to
+Lucresse [_sic_] de Bouille); _Clidamant et Marilinde_ (to _Jane_ de la
+Brunetiere), and _Ipsilis et Alixee_ (to Renee de Cosse, Amirale de
+France!).[137]
+
+Some readers may be a little "put off" by a habit which Des Escuteaux
+has, especially in the first story of the volume, of prefixing, as in
+drama, the names of the speakers--_Le Prince_, _La Princesse_, etc.--to
+the first paragraphs of the harangues and _histoires_ of which these
+books so largely consist.[138] But it is not universal. The most
+interesting of the four is, I think, _Clidamant et Marilinde_, for it
+introduces the religious wars, a sojourn of the lovers on a desert
+island, which M. Reynier[139] not unjustly calls Crusoe-like, and other
+"varieties."
+
+[Sidenote: Francois de Moliere--_Polyxene._]
+
+I have not seen the other--quite other, and Francois--Moliere's _Semaine
+Amoureuse_, which belongs to this class, though later than most; but his
+still later _Polyxene_, a sort of half-way house between these shorter
+novels and the ever-enlarged "Heroics," is a very fat duodecimo of 1100
+pages. The heroine has two lovers--one with the singular name of
+Cloryman,--but love does not run smooth with either, and she ends by
+taking the (pagan) veil. The bathos of the thought and style may be
+judged from the heroine's affecting mention of an entertainment as "the
+last _ballet_ my unhappy father ever saw."
+
+[Sidenote: Du Perier--_Arnoult et Clarimonde._]
+
+Not one of the worst of these four or five score minors, though scarcely
+in itself a positively good thing, is the Sieur du Perier's _La Haine et
+l'Amour d'Arnoult et de Clarimonde_. It begins with a singularly banal
+exordium, gravely announcing that Hate and Love _are_ among the most
+important passions, with other statements of a similar kind couched in
+commonplace language. But it does something to bring the novel from an
+uninteresting cloudland to earth by dealing with the recent and still
+vividly felt League wars: and there is some ingenuity shown in plotting
+the conversion of the pair from more than "a little aversion" at the
+beginning to nuptial union--_not_ at the end. For it is one of the
+points about the book which are not commonplace, though it may be a
+survival or atavism from mediaeval practice--that the latter part of it
+is occupied mainly, not with Arnoult and Clarimonde, but with the loves,
+fortunes, and misfortunes of their daughter Claride.
+
+[Sidenote: Du Croset--_Philocalie._ Corbin--_Philocaste._]
+
+The _Philocalie_ of Du Croset (1593) derives its principal interest from
+its being not merely a _Bergerie_ before the _Astree_, but, like it, the
+work of a Forezian gentleman who proudly asserts his territoriality, and
+dedicates his book to the "Chevalier D'Urfe." And its part name-fellow,
+the _Philocaste_ of Jean Corbin--a very tiny book, the heroine of which
+is (one would hardly have thought it from her name) a Princess of
+England--is almost entirely composed of letters, discourse on them, and
+a few interspersed verses. It belongs to the division of
+backward-looking novels, semi-chivalrous in type, and its hero is as
+often called "The Black Knight" as by his name.
+
+[Sidenote: Jean de Lannoi and his _Roman Satirique_.]
+
+The _Roman Satirique_ (1624) of Jean de Lannoi is another example of the
+curious inability to "hit it off" which has been mentioned so often as
+characterising the period. Its 1100 pages are far too many, though it is
+fair to say that the print is exceptionally large and loose. Much of it
+is not in any sense "satiric," and it seems to have derived what
+popularity it had almost wholly from the "key" interest.
+
+[Sidenote: Beroalde de Verville outside the _Moyen de Parvenir_.]
+
+The minor works--if the term may be used when the attribution of the
+major is by no means certain--of Beroalde de Verville have, as is usual,
+been used both ways as arguments for and against his authorship of the
+_Moyen de Parvenir_. _Les Aventures de Floride_ is simply an attempt,
+and a big one in size, to _amadigauliser_, as the literary slang of the
+time went. The _Histoire Veritable_, owing nothing but its title and
+part of its idea to Lucian, and sub-titled _Les Princes Fortunes_, is
+less conventional. It has a large fancy map for a frontispiece; there
+are fairies in it, and a sort of _pot-pourri_ of queernesses which might
+not impossibly have come from the author or editor of the _Moyen_ in his
+less inconveniently ultra-Pantagruelist moments. _Le Cabinet de Minerve_
+is actually a glorification of "honest" love. In fact, Beroalde is one
+of the oddest of "polygraphers," and there is nobody quite like him in
+English, though some of his fellows may be matched, after a fashion,
+with our Elizabethan pamphleteers. I have long wished to read the whole
+of him, but I suppose I never shall.
+
+And it is time to leave these very minor stars and come to the full and
+gracious moon of the _Astree_ itself.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Astree_--its author.]
+
+Honore D'Urfe, who was three years younger than Shakespeare, and died in
+the year in which Charles I. came to the throne, was a cadet of a very
+ancient family in the district or minor province of Forez, where his own
+famous Lignon runs into the Loire. He was a pupil of the Jesuits and
+early _fort en theme_, was a strenuous _ligueur_, and, though (or
+perhaps also because) he was very good friends with Henri's estranged
+wife, Margot, for some time decidedly suspect to Henri IV. For this
+reason, and others of property, etc., he became almost a naturalised
+Savoyard, but died in the service of his own country at the beginning of
+Richelieu's Valtelline war. The most noteworthy thing in his rather
+eventful life was, however, his marriage. This also has a direct
+literary interest, at least in tradition, which will have his wife,
+Diane de Chateaumorand, to be Astree herself, and so the heroine of "the
+first [great] sentimental romance." The circumstances of the union,
+however, were scarcely sentimental, much less romantic. They were even,
+as people used to say yesterday, "not quite nice," and the Abbe Reure, a
+devotee of both parties to it, admits that they "_heurte[nt] violemment
+nos idees_." In fact Diane was not only eight years older than Honore
+and thirty-eight years of age, but she had been for a quarter of a
+century the wife of his elder brother, Anne, while he himself was a
+knight of Malta, and vowed to celibacy. Of course (as the Canon points
+out with irrefragably literal accuracy in logic and law) the marriage
+being declared null _ab initio_ (for the cause most likely to suggest
+itself, though alleged after extraordinary delay), Diane and Honore were
+not sister- and brother-in-law at all, and no "divorce" or even
+"dispensation" was needed. In the same way, Honore, having been
+introduced into the Order of St. John irregularly in various ways, never
+was a knight of it at all, and could not be bound by its rules. Q.E.D.
+Wicked people, of course, on the other hand, said that it was a device
+to retain Diane's great wealth (for Honore was quite poor in comparison)
+in the family; sentimental ones that it was a fortunate and blameless
+crowning of a long and pure attachment. As a matter of fact, no
+"permanent children" (to adopt an excellent phrase of the late Mr.
+Traill's) resulted; Diane outlived her husband, though but for a short
+time, and left all her property to her relations of the Levis family.
+The pair are also said not to have been the most united of couples. In
+connection with the _Astree_ their portraits are interesting. Honore
+d'Urfe, though he had the benefit of Van Dyck's marvellous art of
+cavalier creation, must have been a very handsome man. Diane's portrait,
+by a much harder and dryer hand, purports to have been taken at the age
+of sixty-four. At first sight there is no beauty in it; but on
+reinspection one admits possibilities--a high forehead, rather
+"enigmatic" eyes, not at all "extinguished," a nose prominent and rather
+large, but straight and with well, but not too much, developed "wings,"
+and, above all, a full and rather voluptuous mouth. Such may have been
+the first identified novel-heroine. It is a popular error to think that
+sixty-four and beauty are incompatibles, but one certainly would have
+liked to see her at sixteen, or better still and perhaps best of all, at
+six and twenty.
+
+[Sidenote: The book.]
+
+The _Astree_ itself is not the easiest of subjects to deal with. It is
+indeed not so huge as the _Grand Cyrus_, but it is much more difficult
+to get at--a very rare flower except in the "grey old gardens" of
+secular libraries. It and its author have indeed for a few years past
+had the benefit (as a result partly of another doubtful thing, an
+_x_-centenary) of one[140] of the rather-to-seek good specimens among
+the endless number of modern literary monographs. But it has never been
+reprinted--even extracts of it, with the exception of a few stock
+passages, are not common or extensive; and though a not small library
+has been written about it in successive waves of eulogy, reaction,
+mostly ignorant contempt, rehabilitation, and mere bookmaking; though
+there have been (as noted) recent anniversaries and celebrations, and so
+forth; though it is one of the not numerous books which have given a
+name-type--Celadon,--and a place--"les bords du Lignon,"--to their own,
+if not to universal literature, it seems to be "as a book" very little
+known. The faithful monographer above cited admits merit in Dunlop; but
+Dunlop does not say very much about it. Herr Koerting (_v. sup._)
+analyses it. Possibly there may be, also in German, a comparison,
+tempting to those who like such things, between it and its twenty years'
+predecessor, Sidney's _Arcadia_, the first French translation of which,
+in 1625, just after Urfe's death, was actually dedicated to his widow.
+But I suspect that few English writers about Sidney have known much of
+the _Astree_, and I feel sure that still fewer French writers[141] on
+this have known anything of Sidney save perhaps his name. Of course the
+indebtedness of both books to Montemayor's _Diana_ is a commonplace.
+
+[Sidenote: Its likeness to the _Arcadia_.]
+
+[Sidenote: Its philosophy and its general temper.]
+
+One of the numerous resemblances between the two, and one which,
+considering their respective positions in the history of the French and
+English novel, is most interesting, is the strong philosophical and
+specially Platonic influence which the Renaissance exercised on
+both.[142] Sidney, however full of it elsewhere, put less of it in his
+actual novel; while, on the other hand, nothing did so much to create
+and spread the rather rococo notion of pseudo-platonic love in France,
+and from France throughout Europe, as the _Astree_ itself. The further
+union of the philosophic mind with an eminently cavalier
+temperament--the united _ethos_ of scholar, soldier, lover, and
+courtier--fills out the comparison: and dwarfs such merely mechanical
+things as the mixed use of prose and verse (which both may have taken,
+nay pretty certainly did take, from Montemayor) and the pastoralities,
+for which they in the same way owed royalty to the Spaniard, to Tasso,
+to Sannazar, and to the Greek romances, let alone Theocritus and Virgil.
+And, to confine ourselves henceforward to our own special subject, it is
+this double infusion of idealism--of spiritual and intellectual
+enthusiasm on the one hand and practical fire of life and act on the
+other--which makes the great difference, not merely between the _Astree_
+and its predecessors of the _Amadis_ class, but between it and its
+successors the strictly "Heroic" romances, though these owe it so much.
+The first--except in some points of passion--hardly touch reality at
+all; the last are perpetually endeavouring to simulate and insinuate a
+sort of reality under cover of adventures and conventions which, though
+fictitious, are hardly at all fantastic. But the _Astree_ might almost
+be called a French prose _Faerie Queene_, allowing for the difference of
+the two nations, languages, vehicles, and _milieux_ generally, in its
+representation of the above-mentioned cavalier-philosophic _ethos_--a
+thing never so well realised in France as in England or in Spain, but of
+which Honore d'Urfe, from many traits in life and book, seems to have
+been a real example, and which certainly vindicates its place in history
+and literature.
+
+[Sidenote: Its appearance and its author's other work.]
+
+The _Astree_ appeared in five instalments, 1607-10-12-19 and
+posthumously, the several parts being frequently printed: and it is said
+to be almost impossible to find a copy, all the parts of which are of
+the first issue in each case. The two later parts probably, the last
+certainly, were collaborated in, if not wholly written by, the author's
+secretary Baro. But it was by no means Honore's only work; indeed the
+Urfes up to his time were an unusually literary family; and, while his
+grandfather Claude collected a remarkable library (whence, at its
+dispersion in the evil days of the house[143] during the eighteenth
+century, came some of not the least precious possessions of French
+public and private collections), his unfortunate brother Anne was a
+poet. Honore himself, besides school exercises, wrote _Epistres Morales_
+which were rather popular, and display qualities useful in appreciating
+the novel itself; a poem in octosyllables, usually and perhaps naturally
+called "_La_ Sireine," but really entitled in the masculine, and having
+nothing to do with a mermaid; a curious thing, semi-dramatic in form and
+in irregular blank verse, entitled _Silvanire ou La Morte Vive_, which
+was rehandled soon after his death by Corneille's most dangerous rival
+Mairet; and an epic called _La Savoisiade_, which seems to have no
+merit, and all but a very small portion of which is still unprinted.
+
+[Sidenote: Its character and appeals.]
+
+He remains, therefore, the author of the _Astree_, and, taking things on
+the whole (a mighty whole, beyond contest, as far as bulk goes), there
+are not so many authors of the second rank (for one of the first he can
+hardly be called) who would lose very much by an exchange with him.
+One's estimates of the book are apt to vary in different places, even
+as, though not in the same degree as, the estimates of others have
+varied at different times; but I myself have found that the more I read
+of it the more I liked and esteemed it; and I believe that, if I had a
+copy of my own and could turn it over in the proper diurnal and
+nocturnal fashion, not as duty- but as pleasure-reading, I should like
+it better still. Certain points that have appealed to me have been
+noticed already--its combination of sensuous and ideal passion is
+perhaps the most important of them; but there are not a few others,
+themselves by no means void of importance. One is the union, not common
+in French books between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century, of
+sentiment and seriousness with something very like humour. Hylas, the
+not exactly "comic man," but light-o'-love and inconstant shepherd, was
+rather a bone of contention among critics of the book's own century. But
+he certainly seasons it well; and there is one almost Shakespearean
+scene in which he is concerned--a scene which Benedick and Beatrice, who
+may have read it not so very many years after their own marriage, must
+have enjoyed considerably. Hylas and the shepherdess Stella (who is
+something of a girl-counterpart of his, as in the case just cited) draw
+up a convention of love[144] between them. The tables, though they are
+not actually numbered in the original, are twelve, and, shortened a
+little, run as follows:
+
+[Sidenote: Hylas and Stella and their Convention.]
+
+     1. Neither is to be sovereign over the other.
+
+     2. Both are to be at once Lover and Beloved. [They knew
+     something about the matter, these two, for all their
+     jesting.]
+
+     3. There is to be no constraint of any kind.
+
+     4. They are to love for as long or as short a time as they
+     please.
+
+     5. No charge of infidelity is ever to be brought on either
+     side.
+
+     6. It is quite permitted to either or both to love somebody
+     else, and yet to continue loving each other.
+
+     7. There is to be no jealousy, no complaints, no sulks.
+
+     8. They are to do and say exactly what they please.
+
+     9. Words like "faithfulness," etc., are taboo.
+
+     10. They may leave off playing whenever they like.
+
+     11. And begin again ditto.
+
+     12. They are to forget both the favours they receive from
+     each other and the offences they may commit against each
+     other.
+
+Now, of course, any one may say of the Land where such a code might be
+realised, in the very words of one of the most charming of songs, set to
+one of the happiest of tunes:
+
+    Cette rive, ma chere,
+    On ne la connait guere
+        Au pays des amours!
+
+But that is not the question, and if it _were_ possible it undoubtedly
+would be a very agreeable Utopia, combining the transcendental charms of
+the country of Quintessence with the material ones of the Pays de
+Cocagne. From its own point of view there seems to be no fault to find
+with it, except, perhaps, with the first part of the Twelfth
+Commandment; for the remembrance of former favours heightens the
+enjoyment of later ones, and the danger of _nessun maggior dolore_ is
+excluded by the hypothesis of indifference after breach. But a sort of
+umpire, or at any rate thirdsman, the shepherd Silvandre,[145] when
+asked his opinion, makes an ingenious objection. To carry out Article
+Three, he says, there ought to be a Thirteenth:
+
+     13. That they may break any of these rules just as they
+     please.
+
+For what comes of this further the reader may go to the book, but enough
+of it should have been given to show that there is no want of salt,
+though there is no (or very little) _gros sel_[146] in the _Astree_.
+
+[Sidenote: Narrative skill frequent.]
+
+Yet again there is very considerable narrative power. Abstracts may be
+found, not merely in older books mentioned or to be mentioned, but in
+the recent publications of Koerting and the Abbe Reure, and there is
+neither room nor need for a fresh one here. As some one (or more than
+one) has said, the book is really a sort of half-allegorical tableau of
+honourable Love worked out in a crowd of couples (some I believe, have
+counted as many as sixty), from Celadon and Astree themselves downwards.
+The course of these loves is necessarily "accidented," and the accidents
+are well enough managed from the first, and naturally enough best known,
+where Celadon flings himself into the river and is rescued, insensible
+but alive, by nymphs, who all admire him very much, though none of them
+can affect his passion for Astree. But one cares--at least I have found
+myself caring--less for the story than for the way in which it is
+told--a state of things exactly contrary, as will be seen, to that
+produced with or in me by the _Grand Cyrus_. There we have a really
+well, if too intricately, engineered plot, in the telling of which it is
+difficult to take much interest. Here it is just the reverse. And one of
+the consequences is that you can dip in the _Astree_ much more
+refreshingly than in its famous follower, where, if you do so, you
+constantly "don't know where you are."
+
+[Sidenote: The Fountain of the Truth of Love.]
+
+One of the most famous things in the book, and one of the most important
+to its conduct, is the "Fountain of the Truth of Love," a few words on
+which will illustrate the general handling very fairly. This Fountain
+(presided over by a Druid, a very important personage otherwise, who is
+a sort of high priest thereof) has nothing in common with the more usual
+waters which are philtres or anti-philtres, etc. Its function is to be
+gazed in rather than to be drunk, and if you look into it, loving
+somebody, you see your mistress. If she loves you, you see yourself as
+well, beside her, and (which is not so nice) if she loves some one else
+you see _him_; while if she is fancy-free you see her only. Clidaman,
+one of the numerous lovers above mentioned, tries the water; and his
+love, Silvie, presents herself again and again as he looks, "almost
+setting on fire with her lovely eyes the wave which seemed to laugh
+around her." But she is quite alone.
+
+The presiding Druid interprets, not merely in the sense already given,
+but with one of the philosophic commentaries, which, as has been said,
+are distinctive of the book. The nature of the fountain is to reflect
+not body but spirit. Spirit includes Will, Memory, and Judgment, and
+when a man loves, his spirit transforms itself through all these ways
+into the thing loved. Therefore when he looks into the fountain he sees
+Her. In the same way She is changed into Him or some one else whom she
+loves, and He sees that image also; but if she loves no one He sees her
+image alone.
+
+"This is very satisfactory" (as Lady Kew would say) to the inquiring
+mind, but not so much so to the lover. He wants to have the fountain
+shut up, I suppose (for my notes and memory do not cover this point
+exactly), that no rival may have the chance denied to himself. He would
+even destroy it, but that--the Druid tells and shows him--is quite
+impossible. What can be done shall be. And here comes in another of the
+agreeable things (to me) in the book--its curious fairy-tale character,
+which is shown by numerous supernaturalities, much more _humanised_ than
+those of the _Amadis_ group, and probably by no means without effect on
+the fairy-tale proper which was to follow. Clidaman himself happens, in
+the most natural way in the world, to "keep"--as an ordinary man keeps
+cats and dogs--a couple of extraordinary big and savage lions and
+another couple of unicorns to fight, not with each other, but with
+miscellaneous animals. The lions and the unicorns are forthwith
+extra-enchanted, so as to guard the fountain--an excellent arrangement,
+but subject to some awkwardnesses in the sequel. For the lions take
+turns to seek their meat in the ordinary way, and though they can hurt
+nobody who does not meddle with the fountain, and have no wish to be
+man-eaters, complications naturally supervene. And sometimes, besides
+fighting,[147] and love-making, and love casuistry, and fairy-tales, and
+oracles, and the finer comedy above mentioned, "Messire d'Urfe" (for he
+did not live too late to have that most gracious of all designations of
+a gentleman used in regard to him) did not disdain, and could not ill
+manage, sheer farce. The scene with Cryseide and Arimant and Clorine and
+the nurse and the ointment in Part III. Book VII., though it contains
+little or nothing to _effaroucher la pudeur_, is like one of the broader
+but not broadest tales of the Fabliaux and their descendants.
+
+[Sidenote: Some drawbacks--awkward history.]
+
+The book, therefore, has not merely a variety, but a certain liveliness,
+neither of which is commonplace; but it would of course be uncritical to
+suppress its drawbacks. It is far too long: and while bowing to those to
+the manner born who say that Baro carried out his master's plan well in
+point of style, and acknowledging that I have paid less attention to
+Parts IV. and V. than to the others, it seems to me that we could spare
+a good deal of them. One error, common to almost the whole century in
+fiction, is sometimes flagrant. Nobody except a pedant need object to
+the establishment, in the time of the early fifth century and the place
+of Gaul, of a non-historical kinglet- or queenletdom of Forez or
+"Seguse" under Amasis (here a feminine name[148]), etc.; nor, though (as
+may perhaps be remarked again later) things Merovingian bring little
+luck in literature, need we absolutely bar Chilperics and Alarics, or a
+reference to "all the beauties of Neustria." But why, in the midst of
+the generally gracious _macedoine_ of serious and comic loves, and
+jokes, and adventures, should we have thrust in the entirely
+unnecessary, however historical, crime whereby Valentinian the Third
+lost his worthless life and his decaying Empire? It has, however, been
+remarked, perhaps often enough, by those who have busied themselves with
+the history of the novel, how curious it is that the historical variety,
+though it never succeeded in being born for two thousand years after
+the _Cyropaedia_ and more, constantly strove to be so. At no time were
+the throes more frequent than during the seventeenth century in France;
+at no time, there or anywhere else, were they more abortive.[149]
+
+[Sidenote: But attractive on the whole.]
+
+But it remains on the whole an attractive book, and the secret of at
+least part of this attractiveness is no doubt to be found stated in a
+sentence of Madame de Sevigne's, which has startled some people, that
+"everything in it is natural and true." To the startled persons this may
+seem either a deliberate paradox, or a mere extravagance of affection,
+or even downright bad taste and folly. But the Lady of all Beautiful
+Letter-writers was almost of the family of Neverout in literary
+criticism. If she had been a professional critic (which is perhaps
+impossible), she might have safeguarded her dictum by the addition,
+"according to its own scheme and division." It is the neglect of this
+implication which has caused the demurs. "'Natural!'" and "'true!'" they
+say, "why, the Pastoral is the most frankly and in fact outrageously
+unnatural and false of all literary kinds. Does not Urfe himself warn us
+that we are not to expect ordinary shepherds and shepherdesses at all?"
+Or perhaps they go more to detail. "The whole book is unabashedly
+occupied with love-making; and love is not the whole, it is even a very
+small part, of life, that is to say, of truth and nature." Or, to come
+still closer to particulars, "Where, for instance, did Celadon, who is
+represented as having been reduced to utter destitution when, _more
+heroum_, he started a quasi-hermit life in the wood, get the
+decorations, etc., of the Temple he erected to Love and Astree?" One
+almost blushes at having to explain, in a popular style, the
+mistakenness, to use the mildest word, of these objections. The present
+writer, in a book less ambitious than the present on the sister subject
+of the English novel, once ventured to point out that if you ask "where
+Sir Guyon got that particularly convenient padlock with which he
+fastened Occasion's tongue, and still more the hundred iron chains with
+which he bound Furor?" that is to say, if you ask such a question
+seriously, you have no business to read romance at all. As to the Love
+matter, of that it is still less use to talk. There are some who would
+go so far as to deny the major; even short of that hardiness it may be
+safely urged that in poetry and romance Love _is_ the chief and
+principal thing, and that the poet and the romancer are only acting up
+to their commission in representing it as such. But the source of all
+these errors is best reached, and if it may be, stopped, by dealing with
+the first article of the indictment in the same way. What if Pastoral
+_is_ artificial? That may be an argument against the kind as a whole,
+but it cannot lie against a particular example of it, because that
+example is bound to act up to its kind's law. And I think it not
+extravagant to contend that the _Astree_ acts up to its law in the most
+inoffensive fashion possible--in such a fashion, in fact, as is hardly
+ever elsewhere found in the larger specimens, and by no means very often
+in the smaller. Hardly even in _As You Like It_, certainly not in the
+_Arcadia_, do the crook and the pipe get less in the way than they do
+here. A minor cavil has been urged--that the "shepherds" and the
+"knights," the "shepherdesses" and the "nymphs" are very little
+distinguishable from each other; but why should they be? Urfe had
+sufficient art to throw over all these things an air of glamour which,
+to those who can themselves take the benefit of the spell, banishes all
+inconsistencies, all improbabilities, all specks and knots and the like.
+It has been said that the _Astree_ has in it something of the genuine
+fairy-tale element. And the objections taken to it are really not much
+more reasonable than would be the poser whether even the cleverest of
+wolves, with or without a whole human grandmother inside it, would find
+it easy to wrap itself up in bedclothes, or whether, seeing that even
+walnut shells subject cats to such extreme discomfort, top-boots would
+not be even more intolerable to the most faithful of feline retainers.
+
+[Sidenote: The general importance and influence.]
+
+The literary influence and importance of the book have never been denied
+by any competent criticism which had taken the trouble to inform itself
+of the facts. It can be pointed out that while the "Heroics," great as
+was their popularity for a time, did not keep it very long, and lost it
+by sharp and long continued--indeed never reversed--reaction, the
+influence of the _Astree_ on this later school itself was great, was not
+effaced by that of its pupils, and worked in directions different, as
+well as conjoint. It begat or helped to beget the _Precieuses_; it did a
+great deal, if not exactly to set, to continue that historical character
+which, though we have not been able to speak very favourably of its
+immediate exercise, was at last to be so important. Above all, it
+reformed and reinforced the "sentimental" novel, as it is called. We
+have tried to show that there was much more of this in the mediaeval
+romance proper than it has been the fashion in recent times to allow.
+There was a great deal in the _Amadis_ class, but extravaganzaed out of
+reason as well as out of rhyme. To us, or some of us, the _Astree_ type
+may still seem extravagant, but in comparison it brings things back to
+that truth and nature which were granted it by Madame de Sevigne. Its
+charms actually soothed the savage breast of Boileau, and it is not
+surprising that La Fontaine loved it. Few things of the kind are more
+creditable to the better side of Jean Jacques a full century later, than
+that he was not indifferent to its beauty; and there were few greater
+omissions on the part of _mil-huit-cent-trente_ (which, however, had so
+much to do!) than its comparative neglect to stray on to the gracious
+banks of the Lignon. All honour to Saint-Marc Girardin (not exactly the
+man from whom one would have expected it) for having been, as it seems,
+though in a kind of _palinodic_ fashion, the first to render serious
+attention, and to do fair justice, to this vast and curious wilderness
+of delights.[150]
+
+[Sidenote: The _Grand Cyrus_.]
+
+[Sidenote: Its preface to Madame de Longueville.]
+
+To turn from the Pastoral to the Heroic, the actual readers, English or
+other, of _Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus_[151] in late years, have probably
+been reckonable rather as single spies (a phrase in this connection of
+some rather special appropriateness) than in battalions. And it is to be
+feared that many or most, if not nearly all of them, have opened it with
+little expectation of pleasure. The traditional estimates are dead
+against it as a rule; it has constantly served as an example--produced
+by wiseacres for wiseacres--of the _un_wisdom of our ancestors; and,
+generous as were Sir Walter's estimates of all literature, and
+especially of his fellow-craftsmen's and craftswomen's work, the lively
+passage in _Old Mortality_ where Edith Bellenden's reference to the book
+excites the (in the circumstances justifiable) wrath of the
+Major--perhaps the only _locus_ of ordinary reading that touches
+_Artamene_ with anything but vagueness--is not entirely calculated to
+make readers read eagerly. But on turning honestly to the book itself,
+it is possible that considerable relief and even a little astonishment
+may result. Whether this satisfaction will arise at the very dedication
+by that vainglorious and yet redoubtable cavalier, Georges de Scudery,
+in which he characteristically takes to himself the credit due mainly,
+if not wholly, to his plain little sister Madeleine, will depend upon
+taste. It is addressed to Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, Duchess of
+Longueville, sister of Conde, and adored mistress of many noteworthy
+persons--the most noteworthy perhaps being the Prince de Marcillac,
+better known, as from his later title, as Duc de la Rochefoucauld, and
+a certain Aramis--not so good a man as three friends of his, but a very
+accomplished, valiant, and ingenious gentleman. The blue eyes of Madame
+de Longueville (M. de Scudery takes the liberty to mention specially
+their charm, if not their colour) were among the most victorious in that
+time of the "raining" and reigning influence of such things: and somehow
+one succumbs a little even now to her as the Queen of that bevy of fair,
+frail, and occasionally rather ferocious ladies of the Fronde feminine.
+(The femininity was perhaps most evident in Madame de Chevreuse, and the
+ferocity in Madame de Montbazon.) Did not Madame de Longueville--did not
+they all--figuratively speaking, draw that great philosopher Victor
+Cousin[152] up in a basket two centuries after her death, even as had
+been done, literally if mythically, to that greater philosopher,
+Aristotle, ages before? But the governor of Our Lady of the Guard[153]
+says to her many of these things which that very Aramis delighted to
+hear (though not perhaps from the lips of rivals) and described,
+rebuking the callousness of Porthos to them, as fine and worthy of being
+said by gentlemen. The Great Cyrus himself "comes to lay at her
+Highness's feet his palms and his trophies." His historian, achieving at
+once advertisement and epigram, is sure that as she listened kindly to
+the _Death of Caesar_ (his own play), she will do the same to the Life
+of Cyrus. Anne Genevieve herself will become the example of all
+Princesses (the Reverend Abraham Adams might have groaned a little
+here), just as Cyrus was the pattern of all Princes. She is not the
+moon, but the sun[154] of the Court. The mingled blood of Bourbon and
+Montmorency gives her such an _eclat_ that it is almost unapproachable.
+He then digresses a little to glorify her brother, her husband, and
+Chapelain, the famous author of _La Pucelle_, who had the good fortune
+to be a friend of the Scuderys, as well as, like them, a strong "Heroic"
+theorist. After which he comes to that personal inventory which has been
+referred to, decides that her beauty is of a celestial splendour, and,
+in fact, a ray of Divinity itself; goes into raptures, not merely over
+her eyes, but over her hair (which simply effaces sunbeams); the
+brightness and whiteness of her complexion; the just proportion of her
+features; and, above all, her singularly blended air of modesty and
+gallantry; her intellectual and spiritual match; her bodily graces; and
+he is finally sure that though somebody's misplaced acuteness may
+discover faults which nobody else will perceive (Georges would like to
+see them, no doubt), her extreme kindness will pardon them. A
+commonplace example of flattery this? Well, perhaps not. One somehow
+sees, across the rhetoric, the blue eyes of Anne Genevieve and the
+bristling mustachios and "swashing outside" and mighty rapier of
+Georges; and the thing becomes alive with the life of a not ungracious
+past, the ills of which were, after all, more or less common to all
+times, and its charms (like the charms of all things and persons
+charming) its own.
+
+[Sidenote: The "Address to the Reader."]
+
+But the Address to the Reader, though it discards those "temptations of
+young ladies" (Madame de Longueville can never have been old) which Dr.
+Johnson recognised, and also the companion attractions of Cape and
+Sword, is of perhaps directly greater importance for our special and
+legitimate purpose. Here the brother and sister (probably the sister
+chiefly) develop some of the principles of their bold adventure, and
+they are of no small interest. It is allowed that the varying accounts
+of Cyrus (in which, as almost every one with the slightest tincture of
+education[155] must be aware, doctors differ remarkably), at least those
+of Herodotus and Xenophon (they do not, or she does not, seem to have
+known Ctesias), are confounded, and selected _ad libitum_ and _secundum
+artem_ only. Further "lights" are given by the selection of the
+"Immortal Heliodorus" and "the great Urfe" as patterns and patrons of
+the work. In fact, to any expert in the reading and criticism of novels
+it is clear that a great principle has been--imperfectly but
+somehow--laid hold of.
+
+[Sidenote: The opening of the "business."]
+
+Perhaps, however, "laid hold of" is too strong; we should do better by
+borrowing from Dante and saying that the author or authors have
+"glimpsed the Panther,"--have seen that a novel ought not to be a mere
+chronicle, unselected and miscellaneous, but a work which, whether it
+has actual unity of plot or not, has unity of interest, and will deal
+with its facts so as to secure that interest. At first, indeed, they
+plunge us into the middle of matters quite excitingly, though perhaps
+not without more definite suggestion, both to them and to us, of the
+"immortal" Heliodorus. The hero, who still bears his false name of
+Artamene,[156] appears at the head of a small army, the troops of
+Cyaxares of Media; and, at the mouth of a twisting valley, suddenly sees
+before him the town of Sinope in flames, the shipping in the harbour
+blazing likewise, all but one bark, which seems to be flying from more
+than the conflagration. A fine comic-opera situation follows; for while
+Artamene is trying to subdue the fire he is attacked by the traitor
+Aribee, general under the King of Assyria, who is himself shut up in a
+tower and seems to be hopelessly cut off from rescue by the fire. The
+invincible hero, however, subdues at once the rebel and the destroying
+element; captures the Assyrian, who is not only his enemy and that of
+his master Cyaxares, but his Rival (the word has immense importance in
+these romances, and is always honoured with a capital there), and learns
+that the escaping galley carried with it his beloved Mandane, daughter
+of Cyaxares, of whom he is in quest, and who has been abducted from her
+abductor and lover by another, Prince Mazare of Sacia.
+
+[Sidenote: The ups and downs of the general conduct of the story.]
+
+All this is lively and business-like enough, and one feels rather a
+brute in making the observation (necessary, however) that Artamene talks
+too much and not in the right way. When things in general are "on the
+edge of a razor" and one is a tried and skilful soldier, one does not,
+except on the stage, pause to address the unjust Gods, and inquire
+whether they have consented to the destruction of the most beautiful
+princess in the world; discuss with one's friends the reduction into
+cinders[157] of the adorable Mandane, and further enquire, without the
+slightest chance of answer, "Alas! unjust Rival! hast thou not thought
+rather of thine own preservation than of hers?" However, for a time, the
+incidents do carry off the verbiage, and for nearly a hundred small
+pages there is no great cause for complaint. It is the style of the
+book; and if you do not like it you must "seek another inn." But what
+succeeds, for the major part of the first of the twenty volumes,[158] is
+open to severer criticisms. We fall into interminable discussions,
+_recits_, and the like, on the subject of the identity of Artamene and
+Cyrus, and we see at once the imperfect fashion in which the nature of
+the novel is conceived. That elaborate explanation--necessary in
+history, philosophy, and other "serious" works--cannot be cut down too
+much in fiction, is one truth that has not been learnt.[159] That the
+stuffing of the story with large patches of solid history or
+pseudo-history is wrong and disenchanting has not been learnt either;
+and this is the less surprising and the more pardonable in that very
+few, if indeed any, of the masters and mistresses of the novel, later
+and greater than Georges and Madeleine de Scudery, have not refused to
+learn it or have not carelessly forgotten the learning. Even Scott
+committed the fault sometimes, though never in his very best work.
+Dumas--when he went out and left the "young men" to fill in, and stayed
+too long, and made them fill in too much--did it constantly. Yet again,
+that mixture of excess and defect in talking, which has been noted
+already, becomes more and more trying in connection with the previously
+mentioned faults and others. Of _mere_ talk there is enough and
+immensely to spare; but it is practically never real dialogue, still
+less real conversation. It is harangue, narrative, soliloquy, what you
+will, in the less lively theatrical forms of speech watered out in
+prose, with "passing of compliments" in the most gentlefolkly manner,
+and a spice of "Phebus" or Euphuism now and then. But it is never real
+personal talk,[160] while as for conveying the action _by_ the talk as
+the two great masters above mentioned and nearly all others of their
+kind do, there is no vestige of even an attempt at the feat, or a
+glimpse of its desirableness.
+
+Again, one sees before long that of one priceless quality--a sense of
+humour--we shall find, though there is a little mild wit, especially in
+the words of the ladies named in the note, no trace in the book, but a
+"terrible _minus_ quantity." I do not know that the late Sir William
+Gilbert was a great student of literature--of classical literature, to
+judge from the nomenclature of _Pygmalion and Galatea_ mentioned above,
+he certainly was not. But his eyes would surely have glistened at the
+unconscious and serious anticipation of his own methods at their most
+Gilbertian, had he ever read pp. 308 _sqq._ of this first volume. Here
+not only do Cyrus and a famous pirate, by boarding with irresistible
+valour on each side, "exchange ships," and so find themselves at once to
+have gained the enemy's and lost their own, but this remarkable
+manoeuvre is repeated more than twenty times without advantage on
+either side--or without apparently any sensible losses on either side.
+From which it would appear that both contented themselves with displays
+of agility in climbing from vessel to vessel, and did nothing so
+impolite as to use their "javelins, arrows, and cutlasses" (of which,
+nevertheless, we hear) against the persons of their competitors in such
+agility on the other side. It did come to an end somehow after some
+time; but one is quite certain that if Mr. Crummles had had the means of
+presenting such an admirable spectacle on any boards, he never would
+have contented himself without several encores of the whole twenty
+operations.
+
+An experienced reader, therefore, will not need to spend many hours
+before he appreciates pretty thoroughly what he has to expect--of good,
+of bad, and of indifferent--from this famous book. It is, though in a
+different sense from Montaigne's, a _livre de bonne foi_. And we must
+remember that the readers whom it directly addressed expected from books
+of this kind "pastime" in the most literal and generous, if also
+humdrum, sense of the word; noble sentiments, perhaps a little learning,
+possibly a few hidden glances at great people not of antiquity only. All
+these they got here, most faithfully supplied according to their demand.
+
+[Sidenote: Extracts--the introduction of Cyrus to Mandane.]
+
+Probably nothing will give the reader, who does not thus read for
+himself, a better idea of the book than some extract translations,
+beginning with Artamene's first interview with Mandane,[161] going on to
+his reflections thereon, and adding a perhaps slightly shortened version
+of the great fight recounted later, in which again some evidence of the
+damaging absence of humour, and some suggestions as to the originals of
+divers well-known parodies, will be found. (It must be remembered that
+these are all parts of an enormous _recit_ by Chrisante, one of
+Artamene's confidants and captains, to the King of Hircania, a monarch
+doubtless inured to hardships in the chase of his native tigers, or
+requiring some sedative as a change from it.)
+
+     No sooner had the Princess seen my Master than she rose, and
+     prepared to receive him with much kindness and much joy,
+     having already heard, by Arbaces, the service he had done to
+     the King, her father. Artamene then made her two deep bows,
+     and coming closer to her, but with all the respect due to a
+     person of her condition, he kissed [_no doubt the hem of_]
+     her robe, and presented to her the King's letter, which she
+     read that very instant. When she had done, he was going to
+     begin the conversation with a compliment, after telling her
+     what had brought him; but the Princess anticipated him in
+     the most obliging manner. "What Divinity, generous
+     stranger," said she, "has brought you among us to save all
+     Cappadocia by saving its King? and to render him a service
+     which the whole of his servants could not have rendered?"
+     "Madam," answered Artamene, "you are right in thinking that
+     some Divinity has led me hither; and it must have been some
+     one of those beneficent Divinities who do only good to men,
+     since it has procured me the honour of being known to you,
+     and the happiness of being chosen by Fortune to render to
+     the King a slight service, which might, no doubt, have been
+     better done him by any other man." "Modesty," said the
+     Princess (smiling and turning towards the ladies who were
+     nearest her), "is a virtue which belongs so essentially to
+     our own sex, that I do not know whether I ought to allow
+     this generous stranger so unjustly to rob us of it, or--not
+     content with possessing eminently that valour to which we
+     must make no pretension--to try to be as modest when he is
+     spoken to of the fineness of his actions as reasonable women
+     ought to be when they are praised for their beauty. For my
+     part," she added, looking at Artamene, "I confess I find
+     your proceeding a little unfair. And I do not think that I
+     ought to allow it, or to deprive myself of the power of
+     praising you infinitely, although you cannot endure it."
+     "Persons like you," retorted Artamene, but with profound
+     respect, "ought to receive praise from all the earth, and
+     not to give it lightly. 'Tis a thing, Madam, of which it is
+     not pleasant to have to repeat; for which reason I beg you
+     not to expose yourself to such a danger. Wait, Madam, till I
+     have the honour of being a little better known to you."
+
+There are several pages more of this _carte_ and _tierce_ of compliment;
+but perhaps a degenerate and impatient age may desire that we should
+pass to the next subject. Whether it is right or not in so desiring may
+perhaps be discussed when the three samples have been given.
+
+Artamene has been dismissed with every mark of favour, and lodged in a
+pavilion overlooking the garden. When he is alone--
+
+     [Sidenote: His soliloquy in the pavilion.]
+
+     After having passed and re-passed all these things over
+     again in his imagination, "Ye gods!" said he, "if, when she
+     is so lovable, it should chance that I cannot make her love
+     me, what would become of the wretched Artamene? But," and he
+     caught himself up suddenly, "since she seems capable of
+     appreciating glory and services, let us continue to act as
+     we have begun! and let us do such great deeds that, even if
+     her inclination resisted, esteem may introduce us, against
+     her will, into her heart! For, after all, whatever men may
+     say, and whatever I may myself have said, one may give a
+     little esteem to what one will never in the least love; but
+     I do not think one can give much esteem to what will never
+     earn a little love. Let us hope, then; let us hope! let us
+     make ourselves worthy to be pitied if we are not worthy to
+     be loved."
+
+After which somewhat philosophical meditation it is not surprising that
+he should be informed by one of his aides-de-camp that the Princess was
+in the garden. For what were Princesses made? and for what gardens?
+
+The third is a longer passage, but it shall be subjected to that kind of
+_cento_ing which has been found convenient earlier in this volume.
+
+     [Sidenote: The Fight of the Four Hundred.]
+
+     [_The dispute between the kings of Cappadocia on the one
+     hand and of Pontus on the other has been referred to a
+     select combat of two hundred men a side. Artamene, of
+     course, obtains the command of the Cappadocians, to the
+     despair of his explosive but not ungenerous rival, "Philip
+     Dastus." After a very beautiful interview with Mandane
+     (where, once more, the most elegant compliments pass between
+     these gentlefolkliest of all heroes and heroines) and divers
+     preliminaries, the fight comes off._][162] They began to
+     advance with heads lowered, without cries or noise of any
+     kind, but in a silence which struck terror. As soon as they
+     were near enough to use their javelins, they launched them
+     with such violence that [_a slight bathos_] these flying
+     weapons had a pretty great effect on both sides, but much
+     greater on that of the Cappadocians than on the other. Then,
+     sword in hand and covered by their shields, they came to
+     blows, and Artamene, as we were informed, immolated the
+     first victim [_but how about the javelin "effect"?_] in this
+     bloody sacrifice. For, having got in front of all his
+     companions by some paces, he killed, with a mighty
+     sword-stroke, the first who offered resistance. [_Despite
+     this, the general struggle continues to go against the
+     Cappadocians, though Artamene's exploits alarm one of the
+     enemy, named Artane, so much that he skulks away to a
+     neighbouring knoll. At last_] things came to such a point
+     that Artamene found himself with fourteen others against
+     forty; so I leave you to judge, Sir [_Chrisante parle
+     toujours_], whether the party of the King of Pontus did not
+     believe they had conquered, and whether the Cappadocians had
+     not reason to think themselves beaten. But as, in this
+     fight, it was not allowed either to ask or to give quarter,
+     and was necessary either to win or to die, the most
+     despairing became the most valiant. [_The next stage is,
+     that in consequence of enormous efforts on his part, the
+     hero finds himself and his party ten to ten, which
+     "equality" naturally cheers them up. But the wounds of the
+     Cappadocians are the severer; the ten on their side become
+     seven, with no further loss to the enemy, and at last
+     Artamene finds himself, after three hours' fighting, alone
+     against three, though only slightly wounded. He wisely uses
+     his great agility in retiring and dodging; separates one
+     enemy from the other two, and kills him; attacks the two
+     survivors, and, one luckily stumbling over a buckler, kills
+     a second, so that at last the combat is single. During this
+     time the coward Artane abstains from intervening, all the
+     more because the one surviving champion of Pontus is a
+     personal rival of his, and because, by a very ingenious
+     piece of casuistry, he persuades himself that the two
+     combatants are sure to kill each other, and he, Artane,
+     surviving, will obtain the victory for self and country!_]
+
+He is nearly right; but not quite. For after Artamene has wounded the
+Pontic Pharnaces in six places, and Pharnaces Artamene in four (for we
+wound "by the card" here), the hero runs Pharnaces through the heart,
+receiving only a thigh-wound in return. He flourishes both swords, cries
+"I have conquered!" and falls in a faint from loss of blood. Artane
+thinks him dead, and without caring to come close and "mak sicker," goes
+off to claim the victory. But Artamene revives, finds himself alone,
+and, with what strength he has left, piles the arms of the dead
+together, writes with his own blood on a silver shield--
+
+              TO
+            JUPITER
+    GUARDIAN OF TROPHIES,
+
+and lies beside it as well as he can. The false news deceives for a
+short time, but when the stipulated advance to the field takes place on
+both sides, the discovery of the surviving victor introduces a new
+complication, from which we may for the moment abstain.
+
+The singlestick rattle of compliment in the interview first given, and
+the rather obvious and superfluous meditations of the second, may seem,
+if not exactly disgusting, tedious and jejune. But the "Fight of the
+Four Hundred" is not frigid; and it is only fair to say that, after the
+rather absurd passage of _chasse croise_ on ship-board quoted or at
+least summarised earlier, the capture of Artamene by numbers and his
+surrender to the generous corsair Thrasybulus are not ill told, while
+there are several other good fights before you come to the end of this
+very first volume. There is, moreover, an elaborate portrait of the
+Princess, evidently intended to "pick up" that vaguer one of Madame de
+Longueville in the Preface, but with the blue of the eyes here
+fearlessly specified. Here also does the celebrated Philidaspes (most
+improperly, if it had not been for the justification to be given later,
+transmogrified in the above-mentioned passage by Major Bellenden into
+"Philip Dastus? Philip Devil") make his appearance. The worst of it is
+that most, if not the whole, is done by the _recit_ delivered, as noted
+above, by Chrisante, one of those representatives of the no less
+faithful than strong Gyas and Cloanthus, whom imitation of the ancients
+has imposed on Scudery and his sister, and inflicted on their readers.
+
+[Sidenote: The abstract resumed.]
+
+The story of the Cappadocian-Pontic fight[163] is continued in the
+second volume of the First Part by the expected delivery of harangues
+from the two claimants, and the obligatory, but to Artane very
+unwelcome, single combat. He is, of course, vanquished and pardoned by
+his foe,[164] making, if not full, sufficient confession; and it is not
+surprising to hear that the King of Pontus requests to see no more of
+him. The rest--for it must never be forgotten that all this is "throwing
+back"--then turns to the rivalry of Artamene and Philidaspes for the
+love of Mandane, while she (again, of course) has not the faintest idea
+that either is in love with her. Philidaspes, who (still, of course) is
+not Philidaspes at all, is a rough customer--(in fact the Major hardly
+did him injustice in calling him "Philip Devil"--betraying also perhaps
+some knowledge of the text), and it comes to a tussle. This rather
+resembles what the contemptuous French early Romantics called _une
+boxade_ than a formal duel, and Artamene stuns his man with a blow of
+the flat. Cyaxares[165] is very angry, and imprisons them both, not yet
+realising their actual fault. It does not matter much to Artamene, who
+in prison can think, aloud and in the most beautiful "Phebus," of
+Mandane. It matters perhaps a little more to the reader; for a courteous
+jailer, Aglatidas, takes the occasion to relate his own woes in a
+"History of Aglatidas and Amestris," which completes the second volume
+of the First Part in three hundred and fifty mortal pages to itself.
+
+The first volume of the Second Part returns to the main story, or rather
+the main series of _recits_; for, Chrisante being not unnaturally
+exhausted after talking for a thousand pages or so, Feraulas, another of
+Artamene's men, takes up the running. The prisoners are let out, and
+Mandane reconciles them, after which--as another but later contemporary
+remarks (again of other things, but probably with some reminiscence of
+this)--they become much more mortal enemies than before. The
+reflections and soliloquies of Artamene recur; but a not unimportant,
+although subordinate, new character appears--not as the first example,
+but as the foremost representative, in the novel, of the great figure of
+the "confidante"--in Martesie, Mandane's chief maid of honour. Nobody,
+it is to be hoped, wants an elaborate account of the part she plays, but
+it should be said that she plays it with much more spirit and
+individuality than her mistress is allowed to show. Then, according to
+the general plan of all these books, in which fierce wars and faithful
+loves alternate, there is more fighting, and though Artamene is
+victorious (as how should he not be, save now and then to prevent
+monotony?) he disappears and is thought dead. Of course Mandane cries,
+and confesses to the confidante, being entirely "finished" by a very
+exquisite letter which Artamene has written before going into the
+doubtful battle. However, he is (yet once more, of course) not dead at
+all. What (as that most sagacious of men, the elder Mr. Weller, would
+have said)'d have become of the other seventeen volumes if he had been?
+There is one of the _quiproquos_ or misunderstandings which are as
+necessary to this kind of novel as the flirtations and the fisticuffs,
+brought about by the persistence of an enemy princess in taking Artamene
+for her son Spithridates;[166] but all comes right for the time, and the
+hero returns to his friends. The plot, however, thickens. An accident
+informs Artamene that Philidaspes is really Prince of Assyria, sure to
+become King when his mother, Nitocris, dies or abdicates, and that,
+being as he is, and as Artamene knows already, desperately in love with
+Mandane, he has formed a plot for carrying her off. The difficulties in
+the way of preventing this are great, because, though the hero is
+already aware that he is Cyrus, it is for many reasons undesirable to
+inform Cyaxares of the fact; and at last Philidaspes, helped by the
+traitor Aribee (_v. sup._), succeeds in the abduction, after an
+interlude in which a fresh Rival, with a still larger R, the King of
+Pontus himself, turns up; and an immense episode, in which Thomyris,
+Queen of Scythia, appears, not yet in her more or less historical part
+of victress of Cyrus. She is here only a young sovereign, widowed in her
+earliest youth, extremely beautiful (see a portrait of her _inf._), who
+has never yet loved, but who falls instantly in love with Cyrus himself
+(when he is sent to her court), and is rather a formidable person to
+deal with, inasmuch as, besides having great wealth and power, she has
+established a diplomatic system of intrigue in other countries, which
+the newest German or other empire might envy. By the end of this volume,
+however, the Artamene-Cyrus confusion is partly cleared up (though
+Cyaxares is not yet made aware of the facts), and the hero is sent after
+Mandane, to be disappointed at Sinope, in the fashion recounted some
+thousand or two pages before.
+
+[Sidenote: The oracle to Philidaspes.]
+
+With the beginning of vol. iv. (that is to say, part ii. vol. ii.) we
+return, though still in retrospect, to the direct fate of Mandane.
+Nitocris is dead, Philidaspes has succeeded to the crown of Assyria, and
+has carried Mandane off to his own dominions. The situation with so
+robustious a person as this prince may seem awkward, and indeed, as is
+observed in a later part of the book, the heroine's repeated sojourns
+(there are three if not four of them in all[167]) in the complete power
+of one of the Rivals, with a large R, are very trying to Cyrus. However,
+such a shocking thing as violence is hardly hinted at, and the Princess
+always succeeds, as the Creole lady in _Newton Forster_ said she did
+with the pirates, in "temporising," while her abductors confine
+themselves for the most part to the finest "Phebus." Even the fiery
+Philidaspes, though he breaks out sometimes, conveys his wish that
+Mandane should accompany him to Babylon by pointing out that "the
+Euphrates is jealous of the Tigris for having first had the honour of
+her presence," and that "the First City of the World ought clearly to
+possess the most illustrious princess of the Earth." Of course, if there
+is any base person who cannot derive an Aramisian satisfaction (_v.
+sup._) from such things as this, he had better abstain from the _Cyrus_.
+But happier souls they please--not exquisitely, perhaps, or
+tumultuously, but still well--with a mild tickle which is not
+unvoluptuous. One is even a very little sorry for Philip Dastus when he
+begs his cruel idol to write to him the single word ESPEREZ, and
+meanwhile kindly puts it in capitals and a line to itself. Almost
+immediately afterwards an oracle juggles with him in fashion delightful
+to himself, and puzzling to everybody except the intelligent reader,
+who, it is hoped, will see the double meaning at once.
+
+      Il t'est permis d'esperer
+      De la faire soupirer,
+        Malgre sa haine:
+    Car un jour entre ses bras,
+        Tu rencontreras
+        La fin de ta peine.
+
+Alas! without going further (upon honour and according to fact), one
+sees the _other_ explanation--that Mandane will have to perform the
+uncomfortable duty--often assigned to heroines--of having Philidaspes
+die in her lap.
+
+For the present, however, only discomfiture, not death, awaits him. The
+Medes blockade Babylon to recover their princess; it suffers from
+hunger, and Philidaspes, with Mandane and the chivalrous Sacian Prince
+Mazare, whom we have heard of before, escapes to Sinope. Then the events
+recorded in the very beginning happen, and Mandane, after escaping the
+flames of Sinope through Mazare's abduction of her by sea, and suffering
+shipwreck, falls into the power of the King of Pontus. This calls a halt
+in the main story; and, as before, a "Troisieme Livre" consists of
+another huge inset--the hugest yet--of seven hundred pages this time,
+describing an unusually, if not entirely, independent subject--the
+loves and fates of a certain Philosipe and a certain Polisante. This
+volume contains a rather forcible boating-scene, which supplies the
+theme for the old frontispiece.
+
+Refreshed as usual by this excursion,[168] the author returns (in vol.
+v., bk. i., chap. iii.) to Cyrus, who is once more in peril, and in a
+worse one than ever. Cyaxares, arriving at Sinope, does not find his
+daughter, but does discover that Artamene, whom he does not yet know to
+be Cyrus and heir to Persia, is in love with her. Owing chiefly to the
+wiles of a villain, Metrobate, he arrests the Prince, and is on the
+point of having him executed, despite the protests of the allied kings.
+But the whole army, with the Persian contingent at its head, assaults
+the castle, and rescues Cyrus, after the traitor Metrobate has tried to
+double his treachery and get Cyaxares assassinated. Nobody who remembers
+the _Letter of Advice_ already quoted will doubt what the conduct of
+Cyrus is. He only accepts the rescue in order that he may post himself
+at the castle gate, and threaten to kill anybody who attacks Cyaxares.
+
+After this burst, which is really exciting in a way, we must expect
+something more soporific. Martesie takes the place of her absent
+mistress to some extent, and a good deal of what might be mistaken for
+"Passerelle"[169] flirtation takes place, or would do so, if it were not
+that Cyrus would, of course, die rather than pay attention to anybody
+but Mandane herself, and that Feraulas, already mentioned as one of the
+Faithful Companions, is detailed as Martesie's lover. She is, however,
+installed as a sort of Vice-Queen of a wordy tourney between four
+unhappy lovers, who fill up the rest of the volume with their stories of
+"Amants _In_fortunes" (cf. the original title of the _Heptameron_),
+dealing respectively with and told by--
+
+(1) A lover who is loved, but separated from his mistress.
+
+(2) One who is unloved.
+
+(3) A jealous one.
+
+(4) One whose love is dead.[170]
+
+They do it moderately, in rather less than five hundred pages, and
+Martesie sums up in a manner worthy of any Mistress of the Rolls,
+contrasting their fates, and deciding very cleverly against the jealous
+man.
+
+The first twenty pages or so of the sixth volume (nominally iii. 2)
+afford a good example of the fashion in which, as may be observed more
+fully below, even an analysis of the _Grand Cyrus_, though a great
+advance on mere general description of it, must be still (unless it be
+itself intolerably voluminous) insufficient. Not very much actually
+"happens"; but if you simply skip, you miss a fresh illustration of
+magnanimity not only in Cyrus, but in a formerly mentioned character,
+Aglatidas, with reference to the heroine Amestris earlier inset in the
+tale (_v. sup._). And this is an example of the new and sometimes very
+ingenious fashion in which these apparent excursions are turned into
+something like real episodes, or at any rate supply connecting threads
+of the whole, in a manner not entirely unlike that which some critics
+have so hastily and unjustly overlooked in Spenser. Then we have an
+imbroglio about forged letters, and a clearing-up of a former charge
+against the hero, and (still within the twenty pages) a very curious
+scene--the last for the time--of that flirtation-without-flirtation
+between Cyrus and Martesie. She wants to have back a picture of Mandane,
+which she has lent him to worship; and he replies, looking at her
+"attentively" (one wonders whether Mandane, if present, would have been
+entirely satisfied with his "attention"), addresses her as "Cruel
+Person," and asks her (he is just setting out for the Armenian war) how
+she thinks he can conquer when she takes away what should make him
+invincible. To which replies Miss Martesie, "You have gained so many
+victories [_ahem!_] without this help, that it would seem you have no
+need of it." This is very nice, and Martesie, who is herself, as
+previously observed, quite nice throughout, lets him have the picture
+after all. But Cyrus, for once rather ungraciously, will not allow her
+lover, and his henchman, Feraulas to escort her home; first, because he
+wants Feraulas's services himself, and secondly, because it is unjust
+that Feraulas should be happy with Martesie when Cyrus is miserable
+without Mandane--an argument which, whether slightly selfish or not, is
+at any rate in complete keeping with the whole atmosphere of the book.
+
+[Sidenote: The advent of Araminta.]
+
+Now, as this is by no means a very exceptional, certainly not a unique,
+score of pages, and as it has taken almost a whole one of ours to give a
+rather imperfect notion of its contents, it follows that it would take
+about six hundred, if not more, to do justice to the ten or twelve
+thousand of the original. Which (in one of the most immortal of
+formulas) "is impossible." We must fall back, therefore, on the system
+already pursued for the rest of this volume, and perhaps even contract
+its application in some cases. A rash promise of the now entirely, if
+not also rather insanely,[171] generous Prince not to marry Mandane
+without fighting Philidaspes, or rather the King of Assyria, beforehand,
+is important; and an at last minute description of Cyrus's person and
+equipment as he sets out (on one of the proudest and finest horses that
+ever was, with a war-dress the superbest that can be imagined, and with
+Mandane's magnificent scarf put on for the first time) is not quite
+omissible. But then things become intricate. Our old friend Spithridates
+comes back, and has first love affairs and afterwards an enormous
+_recit_-episode with a certain Princess of Pontus, whom Cyrus,
+reminding one slightly of Bentley on Mr. Pope's _Homer_ and Tommy Merton
+on Cider, pronounces to be _belle, blonde, blanche et bien faite_, but
+not Mandane; and who has the further charm of possessing, for the first
+time in literature if one mistakes not, the renowned name of Araminta. A
+pair of letters between these two will be useful as specimens, and to
+some, it may be hoped, agreeable in themselves.
+
+     SPITHRIDATES TO THE PRINCESS ARAMINTA
+
+     [Sidenote: Her correspondence with Spithridates.]
+
+     I depart, Madam, because you wish it: but, in departing, I
+     am the most unhappy of all men. I know not whither I go; nor
+     when I shall return; nor even if you wish that I _should_
+     return; and yet they tell me I must live and hope. But I
+     should not know how to do either the one or the other,
+     unless you order me to do both by two lines in your own
+     hand. Therefore I beg them of you, divine Princess--in the
+     name of an illustrious person, now no more, [_her brother
+     Sinnesis, who had been a great friend of his_], but who will
+     live for ever in the memory of
+
+                              SPITHRIDATES.
+
+     [_He can hardly have hoped for anything better than the
+     following answer, which is much more "downright Dunstable"
+     than is usual here._]
+
+
+     ARAMINTA TO SPITHRIDATES
+
+     Live as long as it shall please the Gods to allow you. Hope
+     as long as Araminta lives--she begs you: and even if you
+     yourself wish to live, she orders you to do so.
+
+     [_In other words he says, "My own Araminta, say 'Yes'!" and
+     she does. This attitude necessarily involves the despair of
+     a Rival, who writes thus:_]
+
+
+     PHARNACES TO THE PRINCESS ARAMINTA
+
+     If Fortune seconds my designs, I go to a place where I shall
+     conquer _and_ die--where I shall make known, by my generous
+     despair, that if I could not deserve your affection by my
+     services, I shall have at least not made myself unworthy of
+     your compassion by my death.
+
+     [_And, to do him justice, he "goes and does it."_]
+
+This episode, however, did not induce Mademoiselle Madeleine to break
+her queer custom of having something of the same kind in the Third Book
+of every Part. For though there is some "business," it slips into
+another regular "History," this time of Prince Thrasybulus, a naval
+hero, of whom we have often heard, and his Alcionide, not a bad name for
+a sailor's mistress.[172] Finally, we come back to more events of a
+rather troublesome kind: for the _ci-devant_ Philidaspes most
+inconveniently insists in taking part in the rescuing expedition,
+which--saving scandal of great ones--is very much as if Mr. William
+Sikes should insist in helping to extract booty from Mr. Tobias Crackit.
+And we finally leave Cyrus in a decidedly awkward situation morally, and
+the middle of a dark wood physically.
+
+[Sidenote: Some interposed comments.]
+
+Here, according to that paulo-post-future precedent which she did so
+much to create, the authoress was quite justified in leaving him at the
+end of a volume; and perhaps the present historian is, to compare small
+things with great, equally justified in heaving-to (to borrow from Mr.
+Kipling) and addressing a small critical sermon to such crew as he may
+have attracted. We have surveyed not quite a third of the book; but this
+ought in any case--_teste_ the loved and lost "three-decker" which the
+allusion just made concerns--to give us a notion of the author's quality
+and of his or her _faire_. It should not be very difficult for anybody,
+unless the foregoing analysis has been very clumsily done, to discern
+considerable method in Madeleine's mild madness, and, what is more, not
+a little originality. The method has, no doubt, as it was certain to
+have in the circumstances, a regular irregularity, which is, or would be
+in anybody but a novice, a little clumsy: and the originality may want
+some precedent study to discover it. But both are there. The skeleton of
+this vast work may perhaps be fairly constructed from what has already
+been dissected of the body; and the method of clothing the skeleton
+reveals itself without much difficulty. You have the central idea in the
+loves of Cyrus and Mandane, which are to be made as true as possible,
+but also running as roughly as may be. Moreover, whether they run rough
+or smooth, you are to keep them in suspense as long as you possibly can.
+The means of doing this are laboriously varied and multiplied. The
+clumsiest of them--the perpetual intercalation or interpolation of
+"side-shows" in the way of _Histoires_--annoys modern readers
+particularly, and has, as a rule, since been itself beautifully and
+beneficently lessened, in some cases altogether discarded, or
+changed--in emancipation from the influence of the "Unities"--to the
+form of second plots, not ostentatiously severed from the main one. But,
+as has been pointed out, a great deal of trouble is at any rate taken to
+knit them to the main plot itself, if not actually and invariably to
+incorporate them therewith; and the means of this are again not
+altogether uncraftsmanlike. Sometimes, as in the case of Spithridates,
+the person, or one of the persons, is introduced first in the main
+history; his own particular concerns are dealt with later, and, for good
+or for evil, he returns to the central scheme. Sometimes, as in that of
+Amestris, you have the _Histoire_ before the personage enters the main
+story. Then there is the other device of varying direct narrative, as to
+this main story itself, with _Recit_; and always you have a careful
+peppering in of new characters, by _histoire_, by _recit_, or by the
+main story, to create fresh interests. Again, there is the contrast of
+"business," as we have called it--fighting and politics--with
+love-making and miscellaneous fine talk. And, lastly, there are--what,
+if they were not whelmed in such an ocean of other things, would attract
+more notice--the not unfrequent individual phrases and situations which
+have interest in themselves. It must surely be obvious that in these
+things are great possibilities for future use, even if the actual
+inventor has not made the most of them.
+
+Their originality may perhaps deserve a little more comment.[173] The
+mixture of secondary plots might, by a person more given to theorise
+than the present historian--who pays his readers the compliment of
+supposing that that excessively easy and therefore somewhat negligible
+business can be done by themselves if they wish--be traced to an
+accidental feature of the later mediaeval romances. In these the
+congeries of earlier texts, which the compiler had not the wits, or at
+least the desire, to systematise, provided something like it; but
+required the genius of a Spenser, or the considerable craft of a
+Scudery, to throw it into shape and add the connecting links. Many of
+the other things are to be found in the Scudery romance practically for
+the first time. And the suffusion of the whole with a new tone and
+colour of at least courtly manners is something more to be counted, as
+well as the constant exclusion of the clumsy "conjuror's supernatural"
+of the _Amadis_ group. That the fairy story sprung up, to supply the
+always graceful supernatural element in a better form, is a matter which
+will be dealt with later in this chapter. The oracles, etc., of the
+_Cyrus_ belong, of course, to the historical, not the imaginative side
+of the presentation; but may be partly due to the _Astree_, the
+influence of which was, we saw, admitted.
+
+[Sidenote: Analysis resumed.]
+
+It may seem unjust that the more this complication of interests
+increases, the less complete should be the survey of them; and yet a
+moment's thought will show that this is almost a necessity. Moreover,
+the methods do not vary much; it is only that they are applied to a
+larger and larger mass of accumulating material. The first volume of the
+Fourth Part, the seventh of the twenty, follows--though with that
+absence of slavish repetition which has been allowed as one of the
+graces of the book--the general scheme. Cyrus gets out of the wood
+literally, but not figuratively; for when he and the King of Assyria
+have joined forces, to pursue that rather paradoxical alliance which is
+to run in couple with rivalry for love and to end in a personal combat,
+they see on the other side of a river a chariot, in which Mandane
+probably or certainly is. But the river is unbridged and unfordable, and
+no boats can be had; so that, after trying to swim it and nearly getting
+drowned, they have to relinquish the game that had been actually in
+sight. Next, two things happen. First, Martesie appears (as usually to
+our satisfaction), and in consequence of a series of accidents, shares
+and solaces Mandane's captivity. Then, on the other side, Panthea, Queen
+of Susiana, and wife of one of the enemy princes, falls into Cyrus's
+hands, and with Araminta (who is, it should have, if it has not been,
+said earlier, sister of the King of Pontus) furnishes valuable hostage
+for good treatment of Mandane and other Medo-Persian-Phrygian-Hircanian
+prisoners.
+
+Things having thus been fairly bustled up for a time, a _Histoire_ is,
+of course, imminent, and we have it, of about usual length, concerning
+the Lydian Princess Palmis and a certain Cleandre; while, even when this
+is done, we fall back, not on the main story, but once more on that of
+Aglatidas and Amestris, which is in a sad plight, for Amestris (who has
+been married against her will and is _maumariee_ too) thinks she is a
+widow, and finds she is not.
+
+It has just been mentioned that Palmis is a Lydian Princess; and before
+the end of this Part Croesus comes personally into the story, being the
+head of a formidable combination to supplant the King of Pontus, detain
+Mandane, and, if possible (as the well-known oracle, in the usual
+ambiguity (_v. inf._), encourages him to hope), conquer the Medo-Persian
+empire and make it his own. But the _Histoire_ mania--now further
+excited by consistence in working the personages so obtained in
+generally--is in great evidence, and "Lygdamis and Cleonice" supply a
+large proportion of the early and all the middle of the eighth volume,
+the second of the Fourth Part. There is, however, much more business
+than usual at the end to make up for any slackness at the beginning. In
+a side-action with the Lydians both Cyrus and the King of Assyria are
+captured by force of numbers, though the former is at once released by
+the Princess Palmis, as well as Artames, son of Cyrus's Phrygian ally,
+whom Croesus chooses to consider as a rebel, and intends to put to
+death. Here, however, the captive Queen and Princess, Panthea and
+Araminta, come into good play, and exercise strong and successful
+influence through the husband of the one and the brother of the other.
+But at the end of book, volume, and part we leave Cyrus once more in the
+dismals. For though he has actually seen Mandane he cannot get at her,
+and he has heard three apparently most unfavourable oracles; the
+Babylonian one, which was quoted above, and which he, like everybody
+else, takes as a promise of success to Philidaspes; the ambiguous
+Delphic forecast of "the fall of _an_ Empire" to Croesus; and that of
+his own death at the hands of a hostile queen, the only one which,
+historically, was to be fulfilled in its apparent sense, while the
+others were not. He cares, indeed, not much about the two last, but
+infinitely about the first.
+
+At the opening of the Fifth Part (ninth volume) there is a short but
+curious "Address to the Reader," announcing the fulfilment of the first
+half of the promised production, and bidding him not be downhearted, for
+the first of the second half (the Sixth Part or eleventh volume of the
+whole) is actually at Press. It may be noticed that there is a swagger
+about these _avis_ and such like things, which probably _is_
+attributable to Georges, and not to Madeleine.[174]
+
+The inevitable _Histoire_ comes earlier than usual in this division, and
+is of unusual importance; for it deals with two persons of great
+distinction, and already introduced in the story, Queen Panthea and her
+husband Abradates. It is also one of the longer batch, running to some
+four hundred pages; and a notable part in it and in the future main
+story is played by one Doralise--a pretty name, which Dryden, making it
+prettier still by substituting a _c_ for the _s_, borrowed for his most
+original and (with that earlier Florimel of _The Maiden Queen_, who is
+said to have been studied directly off Nell Gwyn) perhaps his most
+attractive heroine, the Doralice of _Marriage a la Mode_. Another
+important character, the villain of the sub-plot, is one Mexaris.[175]
+At the end of the first instalment we leave Cyrus preparing elaborate
+machines of war to crush the Lydians.
+
+Early in Book II. we hear of a mysterious warrior on the enemy side whom
+nobody knows, who calls himself Telephanes, and whom Cyrus is very
+anxious to meet in battle, but for the time cannot. He is also
+frustrated in his challenge of the King of Pontus to fight for
+Mandane--a challenge of which Croesus will not hear. At last Telephanes
+turns out to be no less a person than Mazare, Prince of Sacia, whom we
+know already as one of the ever-multiplying lovers and abductors of the
+heroine; while, after a good deal of confused fighting, another inset
+_Histoire_ of him closes the tenth volume (V. ii.). It is, however, only
+two hundred pages long--a mere parenthesis compared to others, and it
+leads up to his giving Cyrus a letter from Mandane--an act of generosity
+which Philidaspes, otherwise King of Assyria, frankly confesses that he,
+as another Rival, could never have done. After yet another _Histoire_
+(now a "four-some") of Belesis, Hermogenes, Cleodare, and Leonice,
+Abradates changes sides, carrying us on to an "intricate impeach" of
+old and new characters, especially Araminta and Spithridates, and to the
+death in battle of the generous King of Susiana himself, and the grief
+of Panthea. There is, at the close of this volume, a rather interesting
+_Privilege du Roi_, signed by Conrart ("_le silencieux Conrart_"),
+sealed with "the great seal of yellow wax in a simple tail" (one ribbon
+or piece of ferret only?), and bestowing its rights "nonobstant Clameur
+de Haro, Charte Normande, et autres lettres contraires."
+
+The first volume of the Sixth Part (the eleventh of the whole and the
+first of what, as so many words of the kind are required, we may call
+the Second Division) has plenty of business--showing that the author or
+her adviser was also a business-like person--to commence the new
+venture. Cyrus, after being victorious in the field and just about to
+besiege Sardis in form, receives a "bolt from the blue" in the shape of
+a letter "From the unhappy Mandane to the faithless"--himself! She has
+learnt, she tells him, that his feelings towards her are changed,
+requests that she may no longer serve as a pretext for his ambition,
+and--rather straining the prerogatives assumed even by her nearest
+ancestresses in literature, the Polisardas and Miraguardas of the
+_Amadis_ group, but scarcely dreamt of by the heroines of ancient Greek
+Romance--desires that he will send back to her father Cyaxares all the
+troops that he is, as she implies, commanding on false pretences.
+
+Now one half expects that Cyrus, in a transport of
+Amadisian-Euphuist-heroism, will comply with this very modest request.
+In fact it is open to any one to contend that, according to the
+strictest rules of the game, he ought to have done so and gone mad, or
+at least marooned himself in some desert island, in consequence. The
+sophistication, however, of the stage appears here. After a very natural
+sort of "Well, I never!" translated into proper heroic language, he sets
+to work to identify the person whom Mandane suspects to be her
+rival--for she has carefully abstained from naming anybody. And he
+asks--with an ingenious touch of self-confession which does the author
+great credit, if it was consciously laid on--whether it can be Panthea
+or Araminta, with both of whom he has, in fact, been, if not exactly
+flirting, carrying on (as the time itself would have said) a "commerce
+of respectful and obliging admiration." He has a long talk with his
+confidant Feraulas (whose beloved and really lovable Martesie is,
+unluckily, not at hand to illuminate the mystery), and then he writes as
+"The Unfortunate Cyrus to the Unjust Mandane," tells her pretty roundly,
+though, of course, still respectfully, that if she knew how things
+really were "she would think herself the cruellest and most unjust
+person in the world." [I should have added, "just as she is, in fact,
+the most beautiful."] She is, he says, his first and last passion, and
+he has never been more than polite to any one else. But she will kindly
+excuse his not complying with her request to send back his army until he
+has vanquished all his Rivals--where, no doubt, in the original, the
+capital was bigger and more menacing than ever, and was written with an
+appropriate gnashing of teeth.
+
+The traditional balance of luck and love, however, holds; and the armies
+of Croesus and the King of Pontus begin to melt away; so that, after a
+short but curious pastoral episode, they have to shut themselves up in
+the capital. The dead body of Abradates is now found, and his widow
+Panthea stabs herself upon it. This removes one of Mandane's possible
+causes of jealousy, but Araminta remains; and, as a matter of fact, it
+_is_ this Princess on whom her suspicion has been cast, arising partly,
+though helped by makebates, from the often utilised personal resemblance
+between her actual lover, Prince Spithridates, and Cyrus. The
+treacherous King of Pontus has, in fact, shown her a letter from
+Araminta (his sister, be it remembered) which seems to encourage the
+idea.
+
+All this, however, and more fills but a hundred pages or so, and then we
+are as usual whelmed in a _Histoire de Timarete et de Parthenie_, which
+takes up four times the space, and finishes the First Book. The Second
+opens smartly enough with the actual siege of Sardis; but we cannot get
+rid of Araminta (it is sad to have to wish that she was not "our own
+Araminta" quite so often) and Spithridates. Conversations between the
+still prejudiced Mandane and the Lydian Princess Palmis--a sensible and
+agreeable girl--are better; but from them we are hurled into a _Histoire
+de Sesostre_ (the Egyptian prince, son of Amasis, who is now an ally of
+Cyrus) _et de Timarete_, which not only fills the whole of the rest of
+the volume, but swells over into the next, being much occupied with the
+villainies of a certain Heracleon, who is at the time a wounded prisoner
+in Cyrus's Camp. The siege is kept up briskly, but Cyrus's courteous
+release of certain captives adds fuel to Mandane's wrath as having been
+procured by Araminta. He will do anything for Araminta! The releases
+themselves give rise to fresh "alarums and excursions," among which we
+again meet a pretty name (Candiope), borrowed by Dryden. Doralise is
+also much to the fore; and we have a regular _Histoire_, though a
+shorter one than usual, of _Arpalice and Thrasimede_, which will, as
+some say, "bulk largely" later. The length of this part is, indeed,
+enormous, the double volume running to over fourteen hundred pages,
+instead of the usual ten or twelve. But its close is spirited and
+sufficiently interim-catastrophic. Cyrus discovers in the _enceinte_ of
+Sardis the usual weak point--an apparently impregnable scarped rock,
+which has been weakly fortified and garrisoned--takes it by escalade in
+person with his best paladins, and after it the city.
+
+But of course he cannot expect to have it all his own way when not quite
+twelve-twentieths of the book are gone, and he finds that Mandane is
+gone likewise; the King of Pontus, who has practically usurped the
+authority of Croesus, having once more carried her off--perhaps not so
+entirely unwilling as before. Cyrus pursues, and while he is absent the
+King of Assyria (Philidaspes) shows himself even more of a "Philip
+Devil" than usual by putting the captive Lydian prince on a pyre,
+threatening to burn him if he will not reveal the place of the
+Princess's flight, and actually having the torch applied. Of course
+Cyrus turns up at the nick of time, has the fire put out, rates the King
+of Assyria soundly for his violence, and apologises handsomely to
+Croesus. The notion of an apology for nearly roasting a man may appear
+to have its ludicrous side, but the way in which the historic pyre and
+the mention of Solon are brought in without discrediting the hero is
+certainly ingenious. The Mandane-hunt is renewed, but fruitlessly.
+
+At the beginning of Part VII. there are--according to the habit noticed,
+and in rather extra measure as regards "us" if not "them"--some
+interesting things. The first is an example--perhaps the best in the
+book--of the elaborate description (called in Greek rhetorical technique
+_ecphrasis_) which is so common in the Greek Romances. The subject is an
+extraordinarily beautiful statue of a woman which Cyrus sees in
+Croesus's gallery, and which will have sequels later. It, or part of it,
+may be given:
+
+     [Sidenote: The statue in the gallery at Sardis.]
+
+     But, among all these figures of gold, there was to be seen
+     one of marble, so wonderful, that it obliged Cyrus to stay
+     longer in admiring it than in contemplating any of the
+     others, though it was not of such precious material. It is
+     true that it was executed with such art, and represented
+     such a beautiful person, as to prevent any strangeness in
+     its charming a Prince whose eyes were so delicate and so
+     capable of judging all beautiful objects. This statue was of
+     life-size, placed upon a pedestal of gold, on the four sides
+     of which were bas-reliefs of an admirable beauty. On each
+     were seen captives, chained in all sorts of fashions, but
+     chained only by little Loves, unsurpassably executed. As for
+     the figure itself, it represented a girl about eighteen
+     years old, but one of surprising and perfect beauty. Every
+     feature of the face was marvellously fine;[176] her figure
+     was at once so noble and so graceful that nothing more
+     elegant[177] could be seen; and her dress was at once so
+     handsome and so unusual, that it had something of each of
+     the usual garbs of Tyrian ladies, of nymphs, and of
+     goddesses; but more particularly that of the Wingless
+     Victory, as represented by the Athenians, with a simple
+     laurel crown on her head. This statue was so well set on its
+     base, and had such lively action, that it seemed actually
+     animated; the face, the throat, the arms, and the hands were
+     of white marble, as were the legs and feet, which were
+     partly visible between the laces of the buskins she wore,
+     and which were to be seen because, with her left hand, she
+     lifted her gown a little, as if to walk more easily. With
+     her right she held back a veil, fastened behind her head
+     under the crown of laurel, as though to prevent its being
+     carried away by the breeze, which seemed to agitate it. The
+     whole of the drapery of the figure was made of
+     divers-coloured marbles and jaspers; and, in particular, the
+     gown of this fair Phoenician, falling in a thousand graceful
+     folds, which still did not hide the exact proportion of her
+     body, was of jasper, of a colour so deep that it almost
+     rivalled Tyrian purple itself. A scarf, which passed
+     negligently round her neck, and was fastened on the
+     shoulder, was of a kind of marble, streaked with blue and
+     white, which was very agreeable to the eye. The veil was of
+     the same substance; but sculptured so artfully that it
+     seemed as soft as mere gauze. The laurel crown was of green
+     jasper, and the buskins, as well as the sash she wore, were,
+     again of different hues. This sash brought together all the
+     folds of the gown over the hips; below, they fell again more
+     carelessly, and still showed the beauty of her figure. But
+     what was most worthy of admiration in the whole piece was
+     the spirit which animated it, and almost persuaded the
+     spectators that she was just about to walk and talk. There
+     was even a touch of art in her face, and a certain
+     haughtiness in her attitude which made her seem to scorn the
+     captives chained beneath her feet: while the sculptor had so
+     perfectly realised the indefinable freshness, tenderness,
+     and _embonpoint_ of beautiful girls, that one almost knew
+     her age.
+
+Then come two more startling events. A wicked Prince Phraortes bolts
+with the unwilling Araminta, and the King of Assyria (_alias_
+Philidaspes) slips away in search of Mandane on his own account--two
+things inconvenient to Cyrus in some ways, but balancing themselves in
+others. For if it is unpleasant to have a very violent and rather
+unscrupulous Rival hunting the beloved on the one hand, that beloved's
+jealousy, if not cured, is at least not likely to be increased by the
+disappearance of its object. This last, however, hits Spithridates, who
+is, as it has been and will be seen, the _souffre-douleur_ of the book,
+much harder. And the double situation illustrates once more the
+extraordinary care taken in systematising--and as one might almost say
+_syllabising_--the book. It is almost impossible that there should not
+somewhere exist an actual syllabus of the whole, though, my habit being
+rather to read books themselves than books about them, I am not aware of
+one as a fact.[178]
+
+Another characteristic is also well illustrated in this context, and a
+further translated extract will show the curious, if not very recondite,
+love-casuistry which plays so large a part. But these French writers of
+the seventeenth century[179] did not know one-tenth of the matter that
+was known by their or others' mediaeval ancestors, by their English and
+perhaps Spanish contemporaries, or by writers in the nineteenth century.
+They were not "perfect in love-lore"; their _Liber Amoris_ was, after
+all, little more than a fashion-book in divers senses of "fashion." But
+let them speak for themselves:
+
+     [Sidenote: The judgment of Cyrus in a court of love.]
+
+     [_Menecrate and Thrasimede are going to fight, and have,
+     according to the unqualified legal theory[180] and very
+     occasional actual practice of seventeenth-century France, if
+     not of the Medes and Persians, been arrested, though in
+     honourable fashion. The "dependence" is a certain Arpalice,
+     who loves Thrasimede and is loved by him. But she is ordered
+     by her father's will to marry Menecrate, who is now quite
+     willing to marry her, though she hates him, and though he
+     has previously been in love with Androclee, to whom he has
+     promised that he will not marry the other. A sort of
+     informal_ Cour d'Amour _is held on the subject, the
+     President being Cyrus himself, and the judges Princesses
+     Timarete and Palmis, Princes Sesostris and Myrsilus, with
+     "Toute la compagnie" as assessors and assessoresses. After
+     much discussion, it is decided to disregard the dead
+     father's injunction and the living inconstant's wishes, and
+     to unite Thrasimede and Arpalice. But the chief points of
+     interest lie in the following remarks:_]
+
+     "As it seems to me," said Cyrus, "what we ought most to
+     consider in this matter is the endeavour to make the fewest
+     possible persons unhappy, and to prevent a combat between
+     two gentlemen of such gallantry, that to whichever side
+     victory inclines, we should have cause to regret the
+     vanquished. For although Menecrate is inconstant and a
+     little capricious, he has, for all that, both wits and a
+     heart. We must, then, if you please," added he, turning to
+     the two princesses, "consider that if Arpalice were forced
+     to carry out her father's testament and marry Menecrate,
+     everybody would be unhappy, and he would have to fight two
+     duels,[181] one against Thrasimede and one against
+     Philistion (_Androclee's brother_), the one fighting for his
+     mistress, the other for his sister." "No doubt," said
+     Lycaste, "several people will be unhappy, but, methinks, not
+     all; for at any rate Menecrate will possess _his_ mistress."
+     "'Tis true," said Cyrus, "that he will possess Arpalice's
+     beauty; but I am sure that as he would not possess her
+     heart, he could not call himself satisfied; and his greatest
+     happiness in this situation would be having prevented the
+     happiness of his Rival. As for the rest of it, after the
+     first days of his marriage, he would be in despair at having
+     wedded a person who hated him, and whom he, perhaps, would
+     have ceased to love; for, considering Menecrate's humour, I
+     am the most deceived of all men if the possession of what he
+     loves is not the very thing to kill all love in his heart.
+     As for Arpalice, it is easy to see that, marrying Menecrate,
+     whom she hates, and _not_ marrying Thrasimede, whom she
+     loves, she would be very unhappy indeed; nor could
+     Androclee, on her side, be particularly satisfied to see a
+     man like Menecrate, whom she loves passionately, the husband
+     of another. Philistion could hardly be any more pleased to
+     see Menecrate, after promising to marry his sister, actually
+     marrying another. As for Thrasimede, it is again easy to
+     perceive that, being as much in love with Arpalice as he is,
+     and knowing that she loves him, he would have good reason
+     for thinking himself one of the unhappiest lovers in the
+     world if his Rival possessed his mistress. Therefore, from
+     what I have said, you will see that by giving Arpalice to
+     Menecrate, everybody concerned is made miserable; for even
+     Parmenides [_not the philosopher, but a friend of Menecrate,
+     whose sister, however, has rejected him_], though he may
+     make a show of being still attached to the interests of
+     Menecrate, will be, unless I mistake, well enough pleased
+     that his sister should not marry the brother of a person
+     whom he never wishes to see again, and by whom he has been
+     ill-treated. Then, if we look at the matter from the other
+     side and propose to give Arpalice to Thrasimede, it remains
+     an unalterable fact that these two people will be happy;
+     that Philistion will be satisfied; that justice will be done
+     to Androclee; that nothing disobliging will be done to
+     Parmenides, and that Menecrate will be made by force more
+     happy than he wishes to be; for we shall give him a wife by
+     whom he is loved, and take from him one by whom he is hated.
+     Moreover, things being so, even if he refuses to subject his
+     whim to his reason, he can wish to come to blows with
+     Thrasimede alone, and would have nothing to ask of
+     Philistion; besides which, his sentiments will change as
+     soon as Thrasimede is Arpalice's husband. One often fights
+     with a Rival, thinking to profit by his defeat, when he has
+     not married the beloved object; but one does not so readily
+     fight the husband of one's mistress, as being her
+     lover.[182]"
+
+Much about the "Good Rival" (as we may call him) Mazare follows, and
+there is an illuminative sentence about our favourite Doralise's _humeur
+enjouee et critique_, which, as the rest of her part does, gives us a
+"light" as to the origin of those sadly vulgarised lively heroines of
+Richardson's whom Lady Mary very justly wanted to "slipper." Doralise
+and Martesie are ladies, which the others, unfortunately, are not. And
+then we pay for our _ecphrasis_ by an immense _Histoire_ of the Tyrian
+Elise, its original.
+
+At the beginning of VII. ii. Cyrus is in the doldrums. Many of his
+heroes have got their heroines--the personages of bygone
+_histoires_--and are honeymooning and (to borrow again from Mr. Kipling)
+"dancing on the deck." He is not. Moreover, the army, like all
+seventeenth-century armies after victory and in comfortable quarters, is
+getting rather out of hand; and he learns that the King of Pontus has
+carried Mandane off to Cumae--not the famous Italian Cumae, home of the
+Sibyl whom Sir Edward Burne-Jones has fixed for us, and of many
+classical memories, but a place somewhere near Miletus, defended by
+unpleasant marshes on land, and open to the sea itself, the element on
+which Cyrus is weakest, and by which the endlessly carried off Mandane
+may readily be carried off again. He sends about for help to Phoenicia
+and elsewhere; but when, after a smart action by land against the town,
+a squadron does appear off the port, he is for a time quite uncertain
+whether it is friend or foe. Fortunately Cleobuline, Queen of Corinth, a
+young widow of surpassing beauty and the noblest sentiments, who has
+sworn never to marry again, has conceived a Platonic-romantic admiration
+for him, and has sent her fleet to his aid. She deserves, of course, and
+still more of course has, a _Histoire de Cleobuline_. Also the
+inestimable Martesie writes to say that Mandane has been dispossessed of
+her suspicions, and that the King of Pontus is, in the race for her
+favour, nowhere. The city falls, and the lovers meet. But if anybody
+thinks for a moment that they are to be happy ever afterwards,
+Arithmetic, Logic, and Literary History will combine to prove to him
+that he is very much mistaken. In order to make these two lovers happy
+at all, not only time and space, but six extremely solid volumes would
+have to be annihilated.
+
+The close of VII. ii. and the whole of VIII. i. are occupied with
+imbroglios of the most characteristic kind. There is a certain Anaxaris,
+who has been instrumental in preventing Mandane from being, according to
+her almost invariable custom, carried off from Cumae also. To whom,
+though he is one of the numerous "unknowns" of the book, Cyrus rashly
+confides not only the captainship of the Princess's guards, but various
+and too many other things, especially when "Philip Devil" turns up once
+more, and, seeing the lovers in apparent harmony, claims the fulfilment
+of Cyrus's rash promise to fight him before marrying. This gets wind in
+a way, and watch is kept on Cyrus by his friends; but he, thinking of
+the parlous state of his mistress if both her principal lovers were
+killed--for Prince Mazare is, so to speak, out of the running, while the
+King of Pontus is still lying _perdu_ somewhere--entrusts the secret to
+Anaxaris, and begs him to take care of her. Now Anaxaris--as is so
+usual--is not Anaxaris at all, but Aryante, Prince of the Massagetae and
+actually brother of the redoubtable Queen Thomyris; and he also has
+fallen a victim to Mandane's fascinations, which appear to be
+irresistible, though they are, mercifully perhaps, rather taken for
+granted than made evident to the reader. One would certainly rather have
+one Doralise or Martesie than twenty Mandanes. However, again in the now
+expected manner, the fight does not immediately come off. For "Philip
+Devil," in his usual headlong violence, has provoked another duel with
+the Assyrian Prince Intaphernes,[183] and has been badly worsted and
+wounded by his foe, who is unhurt. This puts everything off, and for a
+long time the main story drops again (except as far as the struggles of
+Anaxaris between honour and love are depicted), first to a great deal of
+miscellaneous talk about the quarrel of King and Prince, and then to a
+regular _Histoire_ of the King, Intaphernes, Atergatis, Princess
+Istrine, and the Princess of Bithynia, Spithridates's sister and
+daughter of a very robustious and rather usurping King Arsamones, who is
+a deadly enemy of Cyrus. The dead Queen Nitocris, and the passion for
+her of a certain Gadates, Intaphernes's father, and also sometimes, if
+not always, called a "Prince," come in here. The story again introduces
+the luckless Spithridates himself, who is first, owing to his likeness
+to Cyrus, persecuted by Thomyris, and then imprisoned by his father
+Arsamones because he will not give up Araminta and marry Istrine, whom
+Nitocris had wanted to marry her own son Philidaspes--a good instance of
+the extraordinary complications and contrarieties in which the book
+indulges, and of which, if Dickens had been a more "literary" person, he
+might have thought when he made the unfortunate Augustus Moddle observe
+that "everybody appears to be somebody else's." Finally, the volume ends
+with an account of the leisurely progress of Mandane and Cyrus to
+Ecbatana and Cyaxares, while the King of Assyria recovers as best he
+can. But at certain "tombs" on the route evidence is found that the King
+of Pontus has been recently in the land of the living, and is by no
+means disposed to give up Mandane.
+
+The second volume of this part is one of the most eventless of all, and
+is mainly occupied by a huge _Histoire_ of Puranius, Prince of Phocaea,
+his love Cleonisbe, and others, oddly topped by a passage of the main
+story, describing Cyrus's emancipation of the captive Jews. He is for a
+time separated from the Princess.
+
+The first pages of IX. i. are lively, though they are partly a _recit_.
+Prince Intaphernes tells Cyrus all about Anaxaris (Aryante), and how by
+representing Cyrus as dead and the King of Assyria in full pursuit of
+her, he has succeeded in carrying off Mandane; how also he has had the
+cunning, by availing himself of the passion of another high officer,
+Andramite, for Doralise, to induce him to join, in order that the maid
+of honour may accompany her mistress. Accordingly Cyrus, the King of
+Assyria himself, and others start off in fresh pursuit; but the King has
+at first the apparent luck. He overtakes the fugitives, and a sharp
+fight follows. But the guards whom Cyrus has placed over the Princess,
+and who, in the belief of his death, have followed the ravishers, are
+too much for Philidaspes, and he is fatally wounded; fulfilling the
+oracle, as we anticipated long ago, by dying in Mandane's arms, and
+honoured with a sigh from her as for her intended rescuer.
+
+She herself, therefore, is in no better plight, for Aryante and
+Andramite continue the flight, with her and her ladies, to a port on the
+Euxine, destroying, that they may not be followed, all the shipping save
+one craft they select, and making for the northern shore. Here after a
+time Aryante surrenders Mandane to his sister Thomyris, as he cannot
+well help doing, though he knows her violent temper and her tigress-like
+passion for Cyrus, and though, also, he is on rather less than brotherly
+terms with her, and has a party among the Massagetae who would gladly
+see him king. Meanwhile the King of Pontus and Phraortes, Araminta's
+carrier-off, fight and kill each other, and Araminta is given up--a loss
+for Mandane, for they have been companions in quasi-captivity, and there
+is no longer any subject of jealousy between them.
+
+Having thus created a sort of "deadlock" situation such as she loves,
+and in the interval, while Cyrus is gathering forces to attack Thomyris,
+the author, as is her fashion likewise, surrenders herself to the joys
+of digression. We have a great deal of retrospective history of Aryante,
+and at last the famous Scythian philosopher, Anacharsis, is introduced,
+bringing with him the rest of the Seven Ancient Sages--with whom we
+could dispense, but are not allowed to do so. There is a Banquet of them
+all at the end of the first volume of the Part; and they overflow into
+the second, telling stories about Pisistratus and others, and discussing
+"love in the _aib_-stract," as frigidly as might be expected, on such
+points as, "Can you love the same person _twice_?"[184] But the last
+half of this IX. ii. is fortunately business again. There is much hard
+fighting with Thomyris, who on one occasion wishes to come to actual
+sword-play with Cyrus, and of whom we have the liveliest _ecphrasis_, or
+set description, in the whole romance.
+
+     [Sidenote: Thomyris on the warpath.]
+
+     As for Thomyris, she was so beautiful that day that there
+     was no one in the world save Mandane, who could have
+     disputed a heart with her[185] without the risk of losing.
+     This Princess was mounted on a fine black horse, trapped
+     with gold; her dress was of cloth of gold, with green panels
+     shot with a little carnation, and was of the shape of that
+     of Pallas when she is represented as armed. The skirt was
+     caught up on the hip with diamond clasps, and showed buskins
+     of lions' muzzles made to correspond with the rest. Her
+     head-dress was adorned with jewels, and a great number of
+     feathers--carnation, white and green--hung over her
+     beautiful fair tresses, while these, fluttering at the
+     wind's will, mixed themselves with the plumes as she turned
+     her head, and with their careless curls gave a marvellous
+     lustre to her beauty. Besides, as her sleeves were turned
+     up, and caught on the shoulder, while she held the bridle of
+     her horse with one hand and her sword with the other, she
+     showed the loveliest arms in the world. Anger had flushed
+     her complexion, so that she was more beautiful than usual;
+     and the joy of once more seeing Cyrus, and seeing him also
+     in an action respectful towards her,[186] effaced the marks
+     of her immediately preceding fury so completely that he
+     could see nothing but what was amiable and charming.
+
+Thomyris, however, is as treacherous and cruel as she is beautiful; and
+part of her reason for seeming milder is that more of her troops may
+turn up and seize him.
+
+On another occasion, owing to false generalship and disorderly advance
+on the part of the King of Hyrcania, Cyrus is in no small danger, but he
+"makes good," though at a disastrous expense, and with still greater
+dangers to meet. Thomyris's youthful son (for young and beautiful widow
+as she is, she has been an early married wife and a mother),
+Spargapises, just of military age, is captured in battle, suffers from
+his captors' ignorance what has been called "the indelible insult of
+bonds," and though almost instantly released as soon as he is known,
+stabs himself as disgraced. His body is sent to his mother with all
+sorts of honours, apologies, and regrets, but she, partly out of natural
+feeling, partly from her excited state, and partly because her mind is
+poisoned by false insinuations, sends, after transports of maternal and
+other rage, a message to Cyrus to the effect that if he does not put
+himself unreservedly in her hands, she will send him back Mandane dead,
+in the coffin of Spargapises. And so the last double-volume but one ends
+with a suitable "fourth act" curtain, as we may perhaps call it.
+
+The last of all, X. i. and ii., exhibits, in a remarkable degree, the
+general defects and the particular merits and promise of this curious
+and (it cannot be too often repeated) epoch-making book. In the latter
+respect more especially it shows the "laborious orient ivory sphere in
+sphere" fashion in which the endless and, it may sometimes seem, aimless
+episodes, and digressions, and insets are worked into the general theme.
+The defects will hardly startle, though they may still annoy, any one
+who has worked through the whole. But if another wickedly contented
+himself with a sketch of the story up to this point, and thought to make
+up by reading this Part of two volumes carefully, he would probably feel
+these defects very strongly indeed. We--we corrupt moderns--do expect a
+quickening up for the run-in. The usual beginning may seem to the
+non-experts to promise this, or at least to give hopes of it; for though
+there is a vast deal of talking--with Anacharsis as a go-between and
+Gelonide (a good confidante), endeavouring to soften Thomyris, one can
+but expect it--the situation itself is at once difficult and exciting.
+The position of Aryante in particular is really novel-dramatic. As he is
+in love with Mandane, he of course does not want his sister to murder
+her. But inasmuch as he fears Cyrus's rivalry, he does not want him to
+be near Mandane for two obvious reasons: first, the actual proximity,
+and, secondly, the danger of Thomyris's temper getting the better (or
+worse) of her when both the lovers are in her power. So he sends private
+messengers to the Persian Prince, begging him _not_ to surrender. Cyrus,
+however, still thinks of exchanging himself for Mandane. At this point
+the neophyte's rage may be excited by being asked to plunge into the
+regular four-hundred page _Histoire_ of a certain Arpasie, who has two
+lovers--a Persian nobleman Hidaspe, and a supposed Assyrian champion
+Meliante, who has come with reinforcements for Thomyris. And no doubt
+the proportion _is_ outrageous. But "wait and see," a phrase, it may be
+observed, which was not, as some seem to think, invented by Mr. Asquith.
+
+At last the business does begin again, and a tremendous battle takes
+place for the possession of certain forests which lie between the two
+armies, and are at first held by the Scythians. Cyrus, however, avails
+himself of the services of an engineer who has a secret of combustibles,
+sets the forests ablaze, and forces his way through one or two open
+defiles, with little loss to himself and very heavy loss to the enemy,
+whose main body, however, is still unbroken. This affords a fine subject
+for one of the curious frontispieces known to all readers of seventeenth
+century books. A further wait for reinforcements takes place, and the
+author basely avails herself of it for a no doubt to herself very
+congenial (they actually called her in "precious" circles by the name of
+the great poetess) and enormous _Histoire_ of no less a person than
+Sappho, which fills the last 250 pages of the first (nineteenth) volume
+and about as much of the second (twentieth) or last. It has very little
+connection with the text, save that Sappho and Phaon (for the
+self-precipitation at Leucas is treated as a fable) retire to the
+country of the Sauromatae, to live there a happy, united, but unwed and
+purely Platonic (in the silly sense) existence. The foolish side of the
+_precieuse_ system comes out here, and the treatment confirms one's
+suspicion that the author's classical knowledge was not very deep.
+
+It does come to an end at last, however, and at last also we do get our
+"run-in," such as it is. The chief excuse for its existence is that it
+brings in a certain Mereonte, who, like his quasi-assonant Meliante, is
+to be useful later, and that the tame conclusion is excused by a Sapphic
+theory--certainly not to be found in her too fragmentary works--that
+"possession ruins love," a doctrine remembered and better put by Dryden
+in a speech of that very agreeable Doralice, whose name, though not
+originally connected with this part of it, he also, as has been noted,
+borrowed from the _Grand Cyrus_.
+
+The actual finale begins (so to speak) antithetically with the last
+misfortune of the unlucky Spithridates. His ill-starred likeness to
+Cyrus, assisted by a suit of armour which Cyrus has given to him, make
+the enemy certain that he is Cyrus himself, and he is furiously
+assaulted in an off-action, surrounded, and killed. His head is taken
+to Thomyris, who, herself deceived, executes upon it the famous
+"blood-bath" of history or legend.[187] Unfortunately it is not only in
+the Scythian army that the error spreads. Cyrus's troops are terrified
+and give way, so that he is overpowered by numbers and captured.
+Fortunately he falls into the hands, not of Thomyris's own people or of
+her savage allies, the Geloni (it is a Gelonian captain who has acted as
+executioner in Spithridates's case), but of the supposed Assyrian leader
+Meliante, who is an independent person, admires Cyrus, and, further
+persuaded by his friend Mereonte (_v. sup._), resolves to let him
+escape. The difficulties, however, are great, and the really safest,
+though apparently the most dangerous way, seems to lie through the
+"Royal Tents" (the nomad capital of Thomyris) themselves. Meanwhile,
+Aryante is making interest against his sister; some of Cyrus's special
+friends, disguised as Massagetae, are trying to discover and rescue him,
+and the Sauromatae are ready to desert the Scythian Queen. One of her
+transports of rage brings on the catastrophe. She orders the Gelonian
+bravo to poniard Mandane, and he actually stabs by mistake her
+maid-of-honour Hesionide--the least interesting one, luckily. Cyrus
+himself, after escaping notice for a time, is identified, attacked, and
+nearly slain, when the whole finishes in a general chaos of rebellion,
+arrival of friends, flight of Thomyris, and a hairbreadth escape of
+Cyrus himself, which unluckily partakes more of the possible-improbable
+than of the impossible-probable. The murders being done, the marriages
+would appear to have nothing to delay them; but an evil habit, the
+origin of which is hard to trace, and which is not quite extinct, still
+puts them off. Meliante has got to be rewarded with the hand of Arpasie,
+which is accomplished after he has been discovered, in a manner not
+entirely romantic, to be the son of the King of Hyrcania, and both his
+marriage and that of Cyrus are interfered with by a supposed Law of the
+Medes and of certain minor Asiatic peoples, that a Prince or Princess
+may not marry a foreigner. Fresh discoveries get rid of this in
+Meliante's case, while in that of Cyrus a convenient Oracle declares
+that he who has conquered every kingdom in Asia cannot be considered a
+foreigner in any. So at last the long chart is finished, Doralise
+retaining her character as lightener of this rather solid entertainment
+by declaring that she cannot say she loves her suitor, Prince Myrsilus,
+because every phrase that occurs to her is either too strong or too
+weak. So we bless her, and stop the water channels--or, as the Limousin
+student might have more excellently said, "claud the rives."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: General remarks on the book and its class.]
+
+If the reader, having tolerated this long analysis (it is perhaps most
+probable that he will _not_ have done so), asks what game one pretends
+to have shown for so much expenditure or candle, it is, no doubt, not
+easy to answer him without a fresh, though a lesser, trial of his
+patience. You cannot "ticket" the _Grand Cyrus_, or any of its fellows,
+or the whole class, with any complimentary short description, such as a
+certain school of ancient criticism loved, and corresponding to our
+modern advertisement labels--"grateful and comforting," "necessary in
+every travelling bag," and the like. They are, indeed, as I have
+endeavoured to indicate indirectly as well as directly, by no means so
+destitute of interest of the ordinary kind as it has generally been the
+fashion to think them. From the charge of inordinate length it is, of
+course, impossible to clear the whole class, and _Artamene_ more
+particularly.[188] Length "no more than reason" is in some judgments a
+positive advantage in a novel; but this _is_ more than reason. I believe
+(the _moi_, I trust, is not utterly _haissable_ when it is necessary)
+that I myself am a rather unusually rapid, without being a careless or
+unfaithful, reader; and that I have by nature a very little of that
+faculty with which some much greater persons have been credited, of
+being able to see at a glance whether anything on a page needs more
+than that glance or not, a faculty not likely to have been rendered
+abortive (though also not, I hope, rendered morbid) by infinite practice
+in reviewing. I do not say that, even now, I have read every word of
+this _Artamene_ as I should read every word of a sonnet of Shakespeare
+or a lyric of Shelley, even as I should read every word of a page of
+Thackeray. I have even skimmed many pages. But I have never found, even
+in a time of "retired leisure," that I could get through more than
+three, or at the very utmost four, of the twenty volumes or half-volumes
+without a day or two of rest or other work between. On the other hand,
+the book is not significantly piquant in detail to enable me to read
+attentively fifty or a hundred pages and then lay it down.[189] You do,
+in a lazy sort of way, want to know what happened--a tribute, no doubt,
+to Mlle. Madeleine--and so you have to go on ploughing the furrow. But
+several weeks' collar-work[190] is a great deal to spend on a single
+book of what is supposed to be pastime; and the pastime becomes
+occasionally one of doubtful pleasure now and then. In fact, it is, as
+has been said, best to read in shifts. Secondly, there may, no doubt, be
+charged a certain unreality about the whole: and a good many other
+criticisms may be, as some indeed have been already, made without
+injustice.
+
+The fact is that not only was the time not yet, but something which was
+very specially of the time stood in the way of the other thing coming,
+despite the strong _nisus_ in its favour excited by various influences
+spoken of at the beginning of this chapter. This was the
+devotion--French at almost all times, and specially French at this--to
+the type. There are some "desperate willins" (as Sam Weller called the
+greengrocer at the swarry) who fail to see much more than types in
+Racine, though there is something more in Corneille, and a very great
+deal more in Moliere. In the romances which charmed at home the
+audiences and spectators of these three great men's work abroad, there
+is nothing, or next to nothing, else at all. The spirit of the _Epistle
+to the Pisos_, which acted on the Tragedians in verse, which acted on
+Boileau in criticism and poetry, was heavier on the novelist than on any
+of them. Take sufficient generosity, magnanimity, adoration, bravery,
+courtesy, and so forth, associate the mixture with handsome flesh and
+royal blood, clothe the body thus formed with brilliant scarfs and
+shining armour, put it on the best horse that was ever foaled, or kneel
+it at the feet of the most beautiful princess that ever existed, and you
+have Cyrus. For the princess herself take beauty, dignity, modesty,
+graciousness, etc., _quant. suff._, clothe _them_ in garments again
+magnificent, and submit the total to extreme inconveniences, some
+dangers, and an immense amount of involuntary travelling, but nothing
+"irreparable," and you have Mandane. For the rest, with the rare and
+slight exceptions mentioned, they flit like shadows ticketed with more
+or less beautiful names. Even Philidaspes, the most prominent male
+character after the hero by far, is, whether he be "in cog" as that
+personage or "out of cog" as Prince and King of Assyria, merely a
+petulant hero--a sort of cheap Achilles, with no idiosyncrasy at all. It
+is the fault, and in a way the very great fault, of all the kind: and
+there is nothing more to do with it but to admit it and look for
+something to set against it.
+
+How great a thing the inception (to use a favourite word of the present
+day, though it be no favourite of the writer's) of the "psychological"
+treatment of Love[191] was may, of course, be variously estimated. The
+good conceit of itself in which that day so innocently and amusingly
+indulges will have it, indeed, that the twentieth century has invented
+this among other varieties of the great and venerable art of extracting
+nourishment from eggs. "We have," somebody wrote not long ago--the exact
+words may not be given, but the sense is guaranteed--"perceived that
+Love is not merely a sentiment, an appetite, or a passion, but a great
+means of intellectual development." Of course Solomon did not know this,
+nor Sappho, nor Catullus, nor the fashioners of those "sentiments" of
+the Middle Ages which brought about the half-fabulous Courts of Love
+itself, nor Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor Shakespeare, nor Donne. It was
+reserved for--but one never names contemporaries except _honoris causa_.
+
+It is--an "of course" of another kind--undeniable that the fashion of
+love-philosophy which supplies so large a part of the "yarn" of
+Madeleine de Scudery's endless rope or web is not _our_ fashion. But it
+is, in a way, a new variety of yarn as compared with anything used
+before in prose, even in the Greek romances[192] and the _Amadis_ group
+(nay, even in the _Astree_ itself). Among other things, it connects
+itself more with the actual society, manners, fashions of its day than
+had ever been the case before, and this is the only interesting side of
+the "key" part of it. This was the way that they did to some extent talk
+and act then, though, to be sure, they also talked and acted very
+differently. It is all very well to say that the Hotel de Rambouillet is
+a sort of literary-historical fiction, and the _Precieuses Ridicules_ a
+delightful farce. The fiction was not wholly a fiction, and the farce
+was very much more than a farce--would have been, indeed, not a farce at
+all if it had not satirised a fact.
+
+It is, however, in relation to the general history and development of
+the novel, and therefore in equally important relation to the present
+_History_, that the importance of the _Grand Cyrus_, or rather of the
+class of which it was by far the most popular and noteworthy member, is
+most remarkable. Indeed this importance can hardly be exaggerated, and
+is much more likely to be--indeed has nearly always been--undervalued.
+Even the jejune and partial analysis which has been given must have
+shown how many of the elements of the modern novel are here--sometimes,
+as it were, "in solution," sometimes actually crystallised. For any one
+who demands plot there is one--of such gigantic dimensions, indeed, that
+it is not easy to grasp it, but seen to be singularly well articulated
+and put together when it is once grasped. Huge as it is, it is not in
+the least formless, and, as has been several times pointed out, hardly
+the most (as it may at first appear) wanton and unpardonable episode,
+digression, or inset lacks its due connection with and "orientation"
+towards the end. The contrast of this with the more or less formless
+chronicle-fashion, the "overthwart and endlong" conduct, of almost all
+the romances from the Carlovingian and Arthurian[193] to the _Amadis_
+type, is of the most unmistakable kind.
+
+Again, though character, as has been admitted, in any real live sense,
+is terribly wanting still; though description is a little general and
+wants more "streaks in the tulip"; and though conversation is formal and
+stilted, there is evident, perhaps even in the first, certainly in the
+second and third cases, an effort to treat them at any rate
+systematically, in accordance with some principles of art, and perhaps
+even not without some eye to the actual habits, manners, demands of the
+time--things which again were quite new in prose fiction, and, in fact,
+could hardly be said to be anywhere present in literature outside of
+drama.
+
+To set against these not so very small merits in the present, and very
+considerable seeds of promise for the future, there are, of course,
+serious faults or defects--defaults which need, however, less
+insistence, because they are much more generally known, much more
+obvious, and have been already admitted. The charge of excessive length
+need hardly be dealt with at all. It has already been said that the most
+interesting point about it is the opportunity of discovering how it was,
+in part, a regular, and, in fact, almost the furthest possible,
+development of a characteristic which had been more or less observable
+throughout the progress of romance. But it may be added that the law of
+supply and demand helped; for people evidently were not in the least
+bored by bulk, and that the fancy for having a book "on hand" has only
+lately, if it has actually, died out.[194] Now such a "book on hand" as
+the _Grand Cyrus_ exists, as far as my knowledge goes, in no Western
+literature, unless you count collections of letters, which is not fair,
+or such memoirs as Saint-Simon's, which do not appeal to quite the same
+class of readers.
+
+A far more serious default or defect--not exactly blameworthy, _because_
+the time was not yet, but certainly to be taken account of--is the
+almost utter want of character just referred to. From Cyrus and Mandane
+downwards the people have qualities; but qualities, though they are
+necessary to character, do not constitute it. Very faint approaches may
+be discerned, by very benevolent criticism, in such a personage as
+Martesie with her shrewdness, her maid-of-honour familiarity with the
+ways and manners of courtly human beings, and that very pardonable,
+indeed agreeable, tendency, which has been noticed or imagined, to flirt
+in respectful fashion with Cyrus, while carrying on more regular
+business with Feraulas. But it is little more than a suggestion, and it
+has been frankly admitted that it is perhaps not even that, but an
+imagination merely. And the same observation may apply to her "second
+string," Doralise. No others of the women have any character at all, and
+we have already spoken of the men.
+
+Now these things, in a book very widely read and immensely admired,
+could not, and did not, fail to have their effect. Nobody--we shall see
+this more in detail in the next chapter--can fail to perceive that the
+_Princesse de Cleves_ itself is, from one point of view, only a
+_histoire_ of the _Grand Cyrus_, taken out of its preposterous _matrix_
+of other matter, polished, charged with a great addition of internal
+fire of character and passion, and left to take its chance alone and
+unencumbered. Nobody, on the other hand, who knows Richardson and
+Mademoiselle de Scudery can doubt the influence of the French book--a
+century old as it was--on the "father of the English novel." Now any
+influence exerted on these two was, beyond controversy, an influence
+exerted on the whole future course of the kind, and it is as exercising
+such an influence that we have given to the _Great Cyrus_ so great a
+space.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The other Scudery romances--_Ibrahim_.]
+
+After the exhaustive account given of _Artamene_, it is probably not
+necessary to apologise for dealing with the rest of Mlle. de Scudery's
+novel work, and with that of her comrades in the Heroic romance, at no
+very great length. _Ibrahim ou L'Illustre Bassa_ has sometimes been
+complimented as showing more endeavour, if not exactly at "local
+colour," at technical accuracy, than the rest. It is true that the
+French were, at this time, rather amusingly proud of being the only
+Western nation treated on something like equal terms by the Sublime
+Porte, and that the Scuderys (possibly Georges, whose work the
+Dedication to Mlle. de Rohan, daughter of the famous soldier, pretty
+certainly is) may have taken some pains to acquire knowledge. "Sandjak"
+(or "Sanjiac"), not for a district but for its governor, is a little
+unlucky perhaps; but "Aderbion" is much nearer "Azerbaijan" than one
+generally expects in such cases from French writers of the seventeenth
+or even of other centuries. The Oriental character of the story,
+however, is but partial. The Illustrious Pasha himself, though First
+Vizir and "victorious" general of Soliman the Second, is not a Turk at
+all, but a "Justinian" or Giustiniani of Genoa, whose beloved Isabelle
+is a Princess of Monaco, and who at the end, after necessary
+dangers,[195] retires with her to that Principality, with a punctilious
+explanation from the author about the Grimaldis. The scene is partly
+there and at Genoa--the best Genoese families, including the Dorias,
+appearing--partly at Constantinople: and the business at the latter
+place is largely concerned with the intrigues, jealousies, and cruelties
+of Roxelane, who is drawn much more (one regrets to say) as history
+paints her than as the agreeable creature of Marmontel's subsequent
+fancy. The book is a mere cockboat beside the mighty argosy of the
+_Cyrus_, running only to four volumes and some two thousand pages. But
+though smaller, it is much "stodgier." The _Histoires_ break out at once
+with the story of a certain Alibech--much more proper for the young
+person than that connected with the same name by Boccaccio,--and those
+who have acquired some knowledge of Mlle. Madeleine's ways will know
+what it means when, adopting the improper but defensible practice of
+"looking at the end," they find that not merely "Justinian" and
+Isabelle, but a Horace and a Hypolite, a Doria and a Sophronie, an
+Alphonse and a Leonide are all married on the same day, while a "French
+Marquis" and an Emilie vow inviolable but celibate constancy to each
+other; they will know, that is to say, that in the course of the book
+all these will have been duly "historiated." To encourage them, a single
+hint that Leonide sometimes plays a little of the parts of Martesie and
+Doralise in the _Cyrus_ may be thrown in.
+
+There is, however, one sentence in the second volume of _Ibrahim_ which
+is worth quotation and brief comment, because it is a text for the whole
+management and system of these novels, and accounts for much in their
+successors almost to the present day. Emilie is telling the _Histoire_
+of Isabelle, and excuses herself for not beginning at the beginning:
+"Puisque je sais que vous n'ignorez pas l'amour du Prince de Masseran,
+les violences et les artifices de Julie, la trahison de Feliciane, le
+genereux ressentiment de Doria [this is another Doria], la mort de cet
+amant infortune, et ensuite celle de Julie." In other words, all these
+things have been the subject of previous histories or of the main text.
+And so it is always. Diderot admired, or at least excused, that
+procedure of Richardson's which involved the telling of the conversation
+of an average dinner-party in something like a small volume. But the
+"Heroic" method would have made it necessary to tell the previous
+experiences of the lady you took down to dinner, and the man that you
+talked to afterwards, while, if extended from aristocratic to democratic
+ideas, it would have justified a few remarks on the cabmen who brought
+both, and the butcher and fishmonger who supplied the feast. The
+inconvenience of this earlier practice made itself felt, and by degrees
+it dropped off; but it was succeeded by a somewhat similar habit of
+giving the subsequent history of personages introduced--a thing which,
+though Scott satirised it in Mrs. Martha Buskbody's insistence on
+information about the later history of Guse Gibbie,[196] by no means
+ceased with his time. Both were, in fact, part of the general refusal to
+accept the conditions of ordinary life. If "tout _passe_" is an
+exaggeration, it is an exaggeration of the truth: and in fiction, as in
+fact, the minor shapes must dissolve as well as arise without too much
+fuss being made about them.[197]
+
+[Sidenote: _Almahide._]
+
+_Almahide_ is, I think, more readable than _Ibrahim_; but the _English_
+reader must disabuse himself of the idea (if he entertains it) that he
+will find much of the original of _The Conquest of Granada_. The book
+does, indeed, open like the play, with the faction-fights of
+Abencerrages and Zegrys, and it ends with Boabdelin's jealousy of his
+wife Almahide, while a few of the other names in both are identical. But
+_Almahide_ contains nothing, or hardly anything, of the character of
+Almanzor, and Dryden has not attempted to touch a hundredth part of the
+copious matter of the French novel, the early history of Almahide, the
+usual immense digressions and side-_histoires_, the descriptions (which,
+as in _Ibrahim_, play, I think, a larger relative part than in the
+_Cyrus_), and what not.
+
+[Sidenote: _Clelie._]
+
+[Sidenote: Perhaps the liveliest of the set.]
+
+Copious as these are, however, in both books, they do not fill them out
+to anything like the length of the _Cyrus_ itself, or of its rival in
+size, and perhaps superior in attraction, the _Clelie_. I do not plead
+guilty to inconsistency or change of opinion in this "perhaps" when it
+is compared with the very much larger space given to the earlier novel.
+_Le Grand Cyrus_ has been estated too firmly, as the type and
+representative of the whole class, to be dislodged, and there is, as we
+shall see presently, a good deal of repetition from it in _Clelie_
+itself. But this latter is the more amusing book of the two; it is,
+though equally or nearly as big, less labyrinthine; there is somewhat
+livelier movement in it, and at the same time this is contrasted with a
+set or series of interludes of love-casuistry, which are better, I
+think, than anything of the kind in the _Cyrus_.[198] The most famous
+feature of these is, of course, the well-known but constantly misnamed
+"Carte de Tendre" ("Map of the Country of Tenderness"--not of
+"Tenderness in the _aib_stract," as _du_ Tendre would be). The
+discussion of what constitutes Tenderness comes quite early; there is
+later a notable discourse on the respective attractions of Love and of
+Glory or Ambition; a sort of Code and Anti-code of lovers[199] occurs as
+"The Love-Morality of Tiramus," with a set of (not always) contrary
+criticism thereof; and a debate of an almost mediaeval kind as to the
+respective merits of merry and melancholy mistresses. Moreover, there is
+a rather remarkable "Vision of Poets"--past, present, and to come--which
+should be taken in connection with the appearance, as an actual
+personage, of Anacreon. All this, taken in conjunction with the
+"business" of the story, helps to give it the superior liveliness with
+which it has, rightly or wrongly, been credited here.
+
+[Sidenote: Rough outline of it.]
+
+Of that business itself a complete account cannot, for reasons given
+more than once, be attempted; though anybody who wants such a thing,
+without going to the book itself, may find it in the places also above
+mentioned. There is no such trick played upon the educated but not
+wideawake person as (_v. inf._) in La Calprenede's chief books. Clelie
+is the real Clelia, if the modern historical student will pass "real"
+without sniffing, or even if he will not. Her lover, "Aronce," although
+he probably may be a little disguised from the English reader by his
+spelling, is so palpably the again real "Aruns," son of Porsena, that
+one rather wonders how his identity can have been so long concealed in
+French (where the pronunciations would be practically the same) from the
+readers of the story. The book begins with a proceeding not quite so
+like that of the _Cyrus_ as some to be mentioned later, but still pretty
+close to the elder overture. "The illustrious Aronce and the adorable
+Clelia" are actually going to be married, when there is a fearful storm,
+an earthquake, and a disappearance of the heroine. She has, of course,
+been carried off; one might say, without flippancy, of any heroine of
+Madeleine de Scudery's not only that she was, as in a famous and already
+quoted saying, "very liable to be carried off," but that it was not in
+nature that she should not be carried off as early and as often as
+possible. And her abductor is no less a person than Horatius--our own
+Horatius Cocles--the one who kept the bridge in some of the best known
+of English verses, not he who provoked, from the sister whom he
+murdered, the greatest speech in all French tragedy before, and perhaps
+not merely before, Victor Hugo. Horatius is the Philidaspes of _Clelie_,
+but, as he was bound to be, an infinitely better fellow and of a better
+fate. Of course the end knits straight on to the beginning. Clelie and
+Aronce are united without an earthquake, and Porsena, with obliging
+gallantry, resigns the crown of Clusium (from which he has himself long
+been kept out by a "Mezentius," who will hardly work in with Virgil's),
+not to Aronce, but to Clelie herself. The enormous interval between (the
+book is practically as long as the _Cyrus_) is occupied by the same, or
+(_v. sup._) nearly the same tissue of delays, digressions, and other
+maze-like devices for setting you off on a new quest when you seem to be
+quite close to the goal. A large part of the scene is in Carthage,
+where, reversing the process in regard to Mezentius, Asdrubals and
+Amilcars make their appearance in a very "mixedly" historical fashion. A
+Prince of Numidia (who had heard of Numidia in Tarquin's days?) fights a
+lively water-combat with Horatius actually as he is carrying Clelie off,
+over the Lake of Thrasymene. All the stock legends of the Porsena siege
+and others are duly brought in: and the atrocious Sextus, not contented
+with his sin against Lucrece, tries to carry off Clelie likewise, but is
+fortunately or wisely prevented. Otherwise the invariable propriety
+which from the time of the small love-novels (_v. sup._ pp. 157-162) had
+distinguished these abductions might possibly have been broken through.
+These outlines might be expanded (and the process would not be very
+painful to me) into an abstract quite as long as that of Cyrus; but "It
+Cannot Be."
+
+One objection, foreshadowed, and perhaps a little more, already, must be
+allowed against _Clelie_. That tendency to resort to repetition of
+situations and movements--which has shown itself so often, and which
+practically distinguishes the very great novelists from those not so
+great by its absence or presence--is obvious here, though the huge size
+of the book may conceal it from mere dippers, unless they be experts.
+The similarity of the openings is, comparatively speaking, a usual
+thing. It should not happen, and does not in really great writers; but
+it is tempting, and is to some extent excused by the brocard about _le
+premier pas_. It is so nice to put yourself in front of your
+beginning--to have made sure of it! But this charity will hardly extend
+to such a thing as the repetition of Cyrus's foolish promise to fight
+Philidaspes before he marries Mandane in the case of Aronce, Horatius,
+and Clelie. The way in which Aronce is kept an "unknown" for some time,
+and that in which his actual relationship to Porsena is treated, have
+also too much of the _replica_; and though a lively skirmish with a
+pirate which occurs is not quite so absurd as that ready-made series of
+encores which was described above (pp. 181-2), there is something a
+little like it in the way in which the hero and his men alternately
+reduce the enemy to extremity, and run over the deck to rescue friends
+who are in the pirates' power from being butchered or flung overboard.
+"Sapho's" invention, though by no means sterile, was evidently somewhat
+indiscriminate, and she would seem to have thought it rather a pity that
+a good thing should be used only once.
+
+Nevertheless the compliment given above may be repeated. If I were sent
+to twelve months' imprisonment of a mild description, and allowed to
+choose a library, I should include in it, from the heroic or semi-heroic
+division, _Clelie_, La Calprenede's two chief books, Gomberville's
+_Polexandre_, and Gombauld's _Endimion_ (this partly for the pictures),
+with, as a matter of course, the _Astree_, and a choice of one other. By
+reading slowly and "savouring" the process, I should imagine that, with
+one's memories of other things, they might be able to last for a year.
+And it would be one of the best kind of fallows for the brain. In
+anticipation, let us see something of these others now.
+
+[Sidenote: La Calprenede: his comparative cheerfulness.]
+
+It has seemed, as was said, desirable to follow the common opinion of
+literary history in giving Madeleine de Scudery the place of honour, and
+the largest as well as the foremost share in our account of this
+curious stage in the history of the novel. But if, to alter slightly a
+famous quotation, I might "give a short hint to an impartial _reader_,"
+I should very strongly advise him to begin his studies (or at least his
+enjoyment) thereof, not with "Sapho," but with Gauthier de Costes,
+Seigneur de la Calprenede, himself according to Tallemant almost the
+proverbial "Gascon _et demi_"; a tragic dramatist, as well as a romantic
+writer; a favourite of Mme. de Sevigne, who seldom went wrong in her
+preferences, except when she preferred her very disagreeable daughter to
+her very agreeable son; and more than any one else the inventor, or at
+least perfecter, of the hectoring heroic style which we associate with
+Dryden's plays. Indeed the Artaban of _Cleopatre_ is much more the
+original of Almanzor and Drawcansir than anything in Madeleine, though
+_Almahide_ was actually the source of Dryden's story, or heroine.
+Besides this, though La Calprenede has rather less of the
+intricate-impeach character than his she-rival, there is much more
+bustle and "go" in him; he has, though his books are proper enough, much
+less fear of dealing with "the kissing and that sort of thing," as it
+was once discreetly put; and he is sometimes positively exciting in his
+imbroglios, as when the beautiful Amazon princess Menalippe fights a
+real duel on horseback with Prince, afterwards King, Alcamenes of
+Scythia, under the impression that he has killed a certain Alcimedon,
+who was her lover; discovers, after no small time and considerable
+damage, that he is Alcimedon himself; and, like a sensible and agreeable
+girl, embraces him heartily in the sight of men and angels.
+
+[Sidenote: _Cleopatre_--the Cypassis and Arminius episode.]
+
+This is among the numerous _divertissements_ of _Cleopatre_ (not the
+earliest, but perhaps the chief of its author's novels[200]), the
+heroine of which is not
+
+    The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands
+
+herself, but her daughter by Antony, who historically married Juba of
+Mauretania, and is here courted by him under the name of Coriolanus,
+while he is in disgrace with Augustus. La Calprenede (all these
+romancers are merciful men and women to the historically unlucky, and
+cruel only, or for the most part, to fictitious characters) saves her
+half-brother Caesarion from his actual death, and, after the due
+thousands of pages, unites him happily to Queen Candace of AEthiopia.
+There is the same odd muddle (which made a not unintelligent Jesuit
+label this class of books "historia _mixta_") with many other persons.
+Perhaps the most curious of all episodes of this kind is the use made of
+Ovid's "fusca Cypassis." If Mrs. Grundy could be supposed ever to have
+read the _Amores_, the mere sight of the name of that dusky handmaid--to
+whom Ovid behaved, by his own confession, in such an exceedingly shabby
+as well as improper fashion--would make her shudder, if not shriek. But
+La Calprenede's Cypassis, though actually a maid of honour to Julia, as
+her original was a handmaid to Corinna, is of unblemished morality,
+flirted with certainly by Ovid, but really a German princess, Ismenia,
+in disguise, and beloved by, betrothed to, and in the end united with no
+less a compatriot than Arminius. This union gives also an illustration
+of the ingenious fashion in which these writers reconcile and yet omit.
+La Calprenede, as we have seen, does not give Arminius's wife her usual
+name of Thusnelda, but, to obviate a complaint from readers who have
+heard of Varus, he invents a protest on "Herman sla lerman" part against
+that general, who has trepanned him into captivity and gladiatorship,
+and makes him warn Augustus that he will be true to the Romans _unless_
+Varus is sent into his country.[201]
+
+[Sidenote: The book generally.]
+
+This episode is, in many ways, so curious and characteristic, that it
+seemed worth while to dwell on it for a little; but the account itself
+must have shown how impossible it is to repeat the process of general
+abstract. There are, I think, in the book (which took twelve years to
+publish and fills as many volumes in French, while the English
+translation is an immense folio of nearly a thousand pages in double
+column, also entitled _Hymen's Praeludia_[202]) fewer separate
+_Histoires_, though there are a good many, than in the _Cyrus_, but the
+intertwined love-plots are almost more complicated. For instance, the
+Herod-and-Mariamne tragedy is brought in with a strictly "proper" lover,
+Tiridates, whom Salome uses to provoke Herod's patience, and who has, at
+the very opening of the book, proved himself both a natural philosopher
+of no mean order by seeing a fire at sea, and "judging with much
+likelihood that it comes from a ship," and a brave fellow by rescuing
+from the billows no less a person than the above-mentioned Queen
+Candace. From her, however, he exacts immediate, and, as some moderns
+might think, excessive, payment by making her listen to his own
+_Histoire_.
+
+Not the least attractive part of _Cleopatre_ to some people will be that
+very "Phebus," or amatory conceit, which made the next ages scorn it.
+When one of the numerous "unknowns" of both sexes (in this case a girl)
+is discovered (rather prettily) lying on a river bank and playing with
+the surface of the water, "the earth which sustained this fair body
+seemed to produce new grass to receive her more agreeably"--a phrase
+which would have shocked good Bishop Vida many years before, as much as
+it would have provoked the greater scorn of Mr. Addison about as many
+after. There are many "ecphrases" or set descriptions of this kind, and
+they show a good deal of stock convention. For instance, the wind is
+always "most discreetly, most discreetly" ready, as indeed it was in
+Mlle. de Scudery's own chaste stories, to blow up sleeves or skirts a
+little, and achieve the distraction of the beholders by what it reveals.
+But on the whole, as was hinted above, Gauthier de Costes de La
+Calprenede is the most natural creature of the heroic band.
+
+[Sidenote: _Cassandre._]
+
+His earlier _Cassandre_ is not much inferior to _Cleopatre_, and has a
+little more eccentricity about it. The author begins his Second Part by
+making the ghost of Cassandra herself (who is not the Trojan Cassandra
+at all) address a certain Calista, whom she mildly accuses of "dragging
+her from her grave two thousand years after date," adding, as a boast of
+his own in a Preface, that the very name "Cassandre" has never occurred
+in the _First_ Part--a huge cantle of the work. The fact is that it is
+an _alias_ for Statira, the daughter of Darius and wife of Alexander,
+and is kept by her during the whole of her later married life with her
+lover Oroondates, King of Scythia, who has vainly wooed her in early
+days before her union with the great Emathian conqueror. Here, again,
+the mere student of "unmixed" history may start up and say, "Why! this
+Statira, who was also called Barsine [an independent personage here] was
+murdered by Roxana after Alexander's death!" But, as was also said,
+these romancers exercise the privilege of mercy freely; and though La
+Calprenede's Roxana is naughty enough for anything (she makes, of
+course, the most shameless love to Oroondates), she is not allowed to
+kill her rival, who is made happy, after another series of endless
+adventures of her own, her lover's, and other people's. The book opens
+with a lively interest to students of the English novel; for the famous
+two cavaliers of G. P. R. James appear, though they are not actually
+riding at the moment, but have been, and, after resting, see two others
+in mortal combat. Throughout there is any amount of good fighting, as,
+for the matter of that, there is in _Cleopatre_ also; and there is less
+duplication of detail here than in some other respects, for La
+Calprenede is rather apt to repeat his characters and situations. For
+instance, the fight between Lysimachus and Thalestris (La Calprenede is
+fond of Amazons), though _not_ in the details, is of course in the idea
+a replica of that between Alcamenes and Menalippe in _Cleopatre_; and
+names recur freely. Moreover, in the less famous story, the whole
+situation of hero and heroine is exactly duplicated in respect of the
+above-mentioned Lysimachus and Parisatis, Cassandra's younger sister,
+who is made to marry Hephaestion at first, and only awarded, in the same
+fashion as her elder sister, at last to her true lover.
+
+By the way, the already-mentioned "harmonising" is in few places more
+oddly shown than by the remark that Plutarch's error in representing
+Statira as killed was due to the fact that he did not recognise her
+under her later name of Cassandra--a piece of Gascon half-naivete,
+half-jest which Mlle. de Scudery's Norman shrewdness[203] would hardly
+have allowed. There is also much more of the supernatural in these books
+than in hers, and the characters are much less prim. Roxana, who, of
+course, is meant to be naughty, actually sends a bracelet of her hair to
+Oroondates! which, however, that faithful lover of another instantly
+returns.
+
+[Sidenote: _Faramond._]
+
+La Calprenede's third novel, _Faramond_, is unfinished as his work, and
+the continuation seems to have more than one claimant to its authorship.
+If the "eminent hand" was one Vaumoriere, who independently accomplished
+a minor "heroic" in _Le Grand Scipion_, he was not likely to infuse much
+fire into the ashes of his predecessor. As it stands in La Calprenede's
+own part, _Faramond_ is a much duller book than _Cassandre_ or
+_Cleopatre_. It must, of course, be remembered that, though patriotism
+has again and again prompted the French to attack these misty
+Merovingian times (the _Astree_ itself deals with them in the liberal
+fashion in which it deals with everything), the result has rarely, if
+ever, been a success. Indeed I can hardly think of any one--except our
+own "Twin Brethren" in _Thierry and Theodoret_--who has made anything
+good out of French history before Charlemagne.[204] The reader,
+therefore, unless he be a very thorough and conscientious student, had
+better let _Faramond_ alone; but its elder sisters are much pleasanter
+company. Indeed the impolite thought will occur that it is much more
+like the Scudery novels, part of which it succeeded, and may possibly
+have been the result--not by any means the only one in literature--of an
+unlucky attempt to beat a rival by copying him or her.
+
+[Sidenote: Gomberville--_La Caritee_.]
+
+If any one, seeking acquaintance with the works of Marin le Roy,
+Seigneur de Gomberville, begins at the beginning with his earliest work,
+and one of the earliest of the whole class, _La Caritee_ (not
+"Carit_ie_," as in some reference books), he may not be greatly
+appetised by the addition to the title, "contenant, sous des temps, des
+personnes, et des noms supposes, plusieurs rares et veritables histoires
+de notre temps." For this is a proclamation, as Urfe had _not_
+proclaimed it,[205] of the wearisome "key" system, which, though
+undoubtedly it has had its partisans at all times, is loathsome as well
+as wearisome to true lovers of true literature. To such persons every
+lovable heroine of romance is, more or less, suggestive of more or fewer
+women of history, other romance, or experience; every hero, more or
+less, though to a smaller extent, recognisable or realisable in the same
+way; and every event, one in which such readers have been, might have
+been, or would have liked to be engaged themselves; but they do not care
+the scrape of a match whether the author originally intended her for the
+Princess of Kennaquhair or for Polly Jones, him and it for corresponding
+realities. Nor is the sequel particularly ravishing, though it is
+dedicated to "all fair and virtuous shepherdesses, all generous and
+perfect shepherds." Perhaps it is because one is not a generous and
+perfect shepherd that one finds the "Great Pan is Dead" story less
+impressive in Gomberville's prose than in Milton's verse at no distant
+period; is not much refreshed by getting to Rome about the death of
+Germanicus, and hearing a great deal about his life; or later still by
+Egyptian _bergeries_--things in which somehow one does not see a
+concatenation accordingly; and is not consoled by having the Phoenix
+business done--oh! so differently from the fashion of Shakespeare or
+even of Darley. And when it finishes with a solemn function for the rise
+of the Nile, the least exclusively modern of readers may prefer Moore or
+Gautier.
+
+[Sidenote: _Polexandre._]
+
+But if any one, deeming not unjustly that he had drunk enough of
+_Caritee_, were to conclude that he would drink no more of any of the
+waters of Gomberville, he would make a mistake. _Cytheree_[1] I cannot
+yet myself judge of, except at second-hand; but the first part of
+_Polexandre_, if not also the continuation, _Le Jeune Alcidiane_,[206]
+may be very well spoken of. It, that is to say the first part of it, was
+translated into English by no less a person than William Browne, just at
+the close of his life; and, perhaps for this reason, the British Museum
+does not contain the French original; but those who cannot attain to
+this lose the less, because the substance of the book is the principal
+thing. This makes it one of the liveliest of the whole group, and one
+does not feel it an idle vaunt when at the end the author observes
+cheerfully of his at last united hero and heroine, "Since we have so
+long enjoyed _them_, let us have so much justice as to think it fitting
+now that _they_ should likewise enjoy each other." Yet the unresting and
+unerring spirit of criticism may observe that even here the verbosity
+which is the fault of the whole division makes its appearance. For why
+not suppress most of the words after "them," and merely add, "let them
+now enjoy each other"?
+
+The book is, in fact, rather like a modernised "number" of the _Amadis_
+series,[207], and the author has had the will and the audacity to
+exchange the stale old Greeks and Romans--not the real Greeks, who can
+never be stale, or the real Romans, who can stand a good deal of
+staling, but the conventional classics--as well as the impossible
+shadows of the Dark Ages, for Lepanto and the Western Main, Turks and
+Spaniards and Mexicans, and a Prince of Scotland. Here also we find in
+the hero something more like Almanzor than Artamene, if not than
+Artaban: and of the whole one may say vulgarly that "the pot boils."
+Now, with the usual Heroic it too often fails to attain even a gentle
+simmer.
+
+[Sidenote: Camus--_Palombe_, etc.]
+
+Jean Camus [de Pontcarre?],[208] Bishop of Belley and of Arras--friend
+of St. Francis of Sales and of Honore d'Urfe; author of many "Christian"
+romances to counteract the bad effects of the others, of a famous
+_Esprit de Saint Francois de S._, and of a very great number of
+miscellaneous works,--seems to have been a rather remarkable person,
+and, with less power and more eccentricity, a sort of Fenelon of the
+first half of the century. His best known novel, _Palombe_, stands
+practically alone in its group as having had the honour of a modern
+reprint in the middle of the nineteenth century.[209] The title-giver is
+a female, not a male, human dove, and of course a married one. Camus was
+a divine of views which one does not call "liberal," because the word
+has been almost more sullied by ignoble use in this connection than in
+any other--but unconventional and independent; and he provoked great
+wrath among his brethren by reflecting on the abuses of the conventual
+system. _Palombe_ appears to be not uninteresting, but after all it is
+but one of those parasitic exercises which have rarely been great except
+in the hands of very great genius. Historically, perhaps, the much less
+famous _Evenemens Singuliers_ (2 vols., 1628) are more important, though
+they cannot be said to be very amusing. For (to the surprise, perhaps,
+of a reader who comes to the book without knowing anything about it) it
+is composed of pure Marmontel-and-Miss-Edgeworth Moral Tales about
+_L'Ami Desloyal_, _La Prudente Mere_, _L'Amour et la Mort_,
+_L'Imprecation Maternelle_, and the like. Of course, as one would expect
+from the time, and the profession of the author, the meal of the
+morality is a little above the malt of the tale; but the very titles are
+"germinal."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Hedelin d'Aubignac--_Macarise._]
+
+Francois Hedelin, Abbe d'Aubignac, is one of those unfortunate but
+rarely quite guiltless persons who live in literary history much more by
+the fact of their having attacked or lectured greater men than
+themselves, and by witticisms directed against them, than by their own
+actual work, which is sometimes not wholly contemptible. He concerns us
+here only as the author of a philosophical-heroic romance, rather
+agreeably entitled _Macarise ou La Reine des Iles Fortunees_, where the
+bland naivete of the pedantry would almost disarm the present members of
+that Critical Regiment, of which the Abbe, in his turn, was not so much
+a chaplain as a most combatant officer. The very title goes on to
+neutralise its attractiveness by explaining--with that benignant
+condescension which is natural to at least some of its author's
+class--that it "contains the Moral Philosophy of the Stoics under the
+veil of several agreeable adventures in the form of a Romance"; and that
+we may not forget this, various side-notes refer to passages in an
+_Abrege_ of that philosophy. The net is thus quite frankly set in the
+sight of the bird, and if he chooses to walk into it, he has only
+himself to blame. The opening is a fine example of that plunge into the
+middle of things which Hedelin had learnt from his classical masters to
+think proper: "Les cruels persecuteurs d'Arianax l'ayant reduit a la
+necessite de se precipiter[210] dans les eaux de la Sennatele avec son
+frere Dinazel...." The fact that the presupposed gentle reader knows
+nothing of the persons or the places mentioned is supposed to arouse in
+him an inextinguishable desire to find out. That he should be at once
+gratified is, of course, unthinkable. In fact his attention will soon
+be diverted from Arianax and Dinazel and the banks of the Sennatele
+altogether by the very tragical adventures of a certain Clearte. He,
+with a company of friends, visits the country of a tyrant, who is
+accustomed to welcome strangers and heap them with benefits, till a time
+comes (the allegory is something obvious) when he demands it all back,
+with their lives, through a cruel minister (again something "speakingly"
+named) "Thanate." The head of this company, Clearte, on receiving the
+sentence, talks Stoicism for many pages, and when he is exhausted,
+somebody else takes up the running in such a fascinating manner that it
+"seemed as if he had only to go on talking to make the victims
+immortal!" But the atrocious Thanate cuts, at the same moment, the
+thread of the discourse and the throat of Clearte--who is, however,
+transported to the dominions of Macarise,--and _histoires_ and
+"ecphrases" and interspersions of verse follow as usual. But the Abbe is
+nowise infirm of purpose; and the book ends with the strangest mixture
+of love-letters and not very short discourses on the various schools of
+philosophy, together with a Glossary or Onomasticon interpreting the
+proper names which have been used after the following fashion:
+"Alcarinte. _La Crainte_, du mot francais par anagramme sans aucun
+changement," though how you can have an anagram without a change is not
+explained.
+
+[Sidenote: Gombauld--_Endimion._]
+
+Perhaps one may class, if, indeed, classification is necessary, with the
+religious romances of Camus and the philosophical romance of Hedelin
+d'Aubignac, the earlier allegorical ones of the poet Gombauld,
+_Endimion_ and _Amaranthe_. The latter I have not yet seen. _Endimion_
+is rather interesting; there was an early English translation of it; and
+I have always been of those who believe that Keats, somehow or other,
+was more directly acquainted with seventeenth-century literature than
+has generally been allowed.[211] The wanderings of the hero are as
+different as possible in detail; but the fact that there _are_
+wanderings at all is remarkable, and there are other coincidences with
+Keats and differences from any classical form, which it might be out of
+place to dwell on here. Endymion is waked from his Latmian sleep by the
+infernal clatter of the dwellers at the base of the mountain, who use
+all the loudest instruments they possess to dispel an eclipse of the
+moon: and is discovered by his friend Pyzandre, to whom he tells the
+vicissitudes of his love and sleep. The early revealings of herself by
+Diana are told with considerable grace, and the whole, which is not too
+long, is readable. But there are many of the _naivetes_ and
+awkwardnesses of expression which attracted to the writers of this time
+the scorn of Boileau and others down to La Harpe. The Dedication to the
+Queen may perhaps be excused for asserting, in its first words, that as
+Endymion was put to sleep by the Moon, so he has been reawakened by the
+Sun,[212] _i.e._ her Majesty. But a Nemesis of this Phebus follows. For,
+later, it is laid down that "La Lune doit _toujours_ sa lumiere au
+Soleil." From which it will follow that Diana owed her splendour to Anne
+of Austria, or was it Marie de Medicis?[213] It was fortunate for
+Gombauld that he did not live under the older dispensation. Artemis was
+not a forgiving goddess like Aphrodite.
+
+Again, when Diana has disappeared after one of her graciousnesses, her
+lover makes the following reflection--that the gods apparently can
+depart _sans etre en peine de porter necessairement les pieds l'un
+devant l'autre_--an observation proper enough in burlesque, for the idea
+of a divine goose-step or marking time, instead of the _incessus_, is
+ludicrous enough. But there is not the slightest sign of humour anywhere
+in the book. Yet, again, this is a thing one would rather not have said,
+"Diane cessant de m'etre favorable, Ismene[214] _me pouvait tenir lieu
+de Deesse_." Now it is sadly true that the human race does occasionally
+entertain, and act upon, reflections of this kind: and persons like Mr.
+Thomas Moore and Gombauld's own younger contemporary, Sir John Suckling,
+have put the idea into light and lively verse. But you do not expect it
+in a serious romance.
+
+Nevertheless it may be repeated that _Endimion_ is one of the most
+readable of the two classes of books--the smaller sentimental and the
+longer heroic--between which it stands in scope and character. The
+author's practice in the "other harmony" makes the obligatory
+verse-insertions rather less clumsy than usual; and it may be permitted
+to add that the illustrations of the original edition, which are
+unusually numerous and elaborate, are also rather unusually effective.
+"Peggy's face" is too often as "wretched" as Thackeray confessed his own
+attempts were; but the compositions are not, as such, despicable--even
+in the case of the immortal and immortalising kiss-scene itself. The
+"delicious event," to quote the same author in another passage, is not
+actually coming off--but it is very near. But it was perhaps a pity that
+either Gombauld or Keats ever _waked_ Endymion.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de Villedieu.]
+
+The most recent book[215] but one about Mme. de Villedieu contains (and,
+oddly enough, confesses itself to contain) very little about her novels,
+which the plain man might have thought the only reason for writing about
+her at all. It tells (partly after Tallemant) the little that is known
+about her (adding a great deal more about other people, things, and
+places, and a vast amount of conjecture), and not only takes the very
+dubious "letters" published by herself for gospel, but attributes to
+her, on the slightest evidence, if any, the anonymous _Memoires sur la
+Vie de Henriette Sylvie de Moliere_, and, what is more, accepts them as
+autobiographic; quotes a good deal of her very valueless verse and that
+of others, and relates the whole in a most marvellous style, the
+smallest and most modest effervescences of which are things like this:
+"La religion arrose son ame d'une eau parfumee, et les fleurs noirs du
+repentir eclosent" or "Soixante ans pesaient sur son crane ennuage d'une
+perruque."[216] A good bibliography of the actual work, and not a little
+useful information about books and MS. relating to the period, may
+reconcile one class of readers to it, and a great deal of scandal
+another; but as far as the subject of this history goes no one will be
+much wiser when he closes the volume than he was when he opened it.
+
+The novelist-heroine's actual name was Marie Catherine Hortense des
+Jardins, and she never was really Mme. de Villedieu at all, though there
+was a real M. de Villedieu whom she loved, went through a marriage
+ceremony and lived with, left, according to some, or was left by,
+according to others. But he was already married, and this marriage was
+never dissolved. Very late in life she seems actually to have married a
+Marquis de Chaste, who died soon. But most of the time was spent in
+rather scandalous adventures, wherein Fouquet's friend Gourville, the
+minister Lyonne, and others figure. In fact she seems to have been a
+counterpart as well as a contemporary of our own Afra, though she never
+came near Mrs. Behn in poetry or perhaps in fiction. Her first novel,
+_Alcidamie_, not to be confounded with the earlier _Alcidiane_, was a
+scarcely concealed utilising of the famous scandal about Tancrede de
+Rohan (Mlle. des Jardins' mother had been a dependant on the Rohan
+family, and she herself was much befriended by that formidable and
+sombre-fated enchantress, Mme. de Montbazon). In fact, common as is the
+real or imputed "key"-interest in these romances from the _Astree_
+onwards, none seems to have borrowed more from at least gossip than
+this. Her later performances, _Les Annales Galantes de la Grece_ (said
+to be very rare), _Carmente_, _Les Amours des Grands Hommes_, _Les
+Desordres de l'Amour_, and some smaller pieces, all rely more or less
+on this or that kind of scandal. Collections appeared three or four
+times in the earlier eighteenth century.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Grand Alcandre Frustre._]
+
+Since M. Magne wrote (and it is fair to say that the main purpose of his
+book was frankly avowed by its appearance as a member of a series
+entitled _Femmes Galantes_), a somewhat more sober account, definitely
+devoted in part to the novels, has appeared.[217] But even this is not
+exhaustive from our point of view. The collected editions (of which that
+of 1702, in 10 vols., said to be the best, is the one I have used) must
+be consulted if one really wishes to attain a fair knowledge of what
+"this questionable Hortense" (as Mr. Carlyle would probably have called
+her) really did in literature; and no one, even of these, appears to
+contain the whole of her ascribed compositions. What used sometimes to
+be quoted as her principal work, _Le Grand Alcandre Frustre_ (the last
+word being often omitted), is, in fact, a very small book, containing a
+bit of scandal about the Grand Monarque, of the same kind as those which
+myriad anonyms of the time printed in Holland, and of which any one who
+wants them may find specimens enough in the _Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_
+edition of Bussy-Rabutin. Its chief--if not its only--attraction is an
+exceedingly quaint frontispiece--a cavalier and lady standing with
+joined hands under a chandelier, the torches of which are held by a ring
+of seven Cupids, so that the lower one hangs downwards, and the
+disengaged hand of the cavalier, which is raised, seems to be grabbing
+at him.
+
+[Sidenote: The collected love-stories.]
+
+Most of the rest, putting aside the doubtful _Henriette de Moliere_
+already referred to, are collections of love-stories, which their
+titles, rather than their contents, would seem to have represented to
+the ordinary commentator as loose. There is really very little
+impropriety, except of the mildest kind, in any of them,[218] and they
+chiefly consist of the kind of quasi-historic anecdote (only better
+told) which is not uncommon in English, as, for instance, in Croxall's
+_Novelist_. They are rather well written, but for the most part consist
+of very "public" material, scarcely made "private" by any striking
+merit, and distinguished by curious liberties with history, if not with
+morals.
+
+[Sidenote: Their historic liberties.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Carmente_, etc.]
+
+For instance, in one of her _Amours Galantes_ the
+Elfrida-Ethelwold-Edgar story is told, not only with "_Edward I._ of
+England" for the deceived and revengeful king, but with a further and
+more startling intrusion of Eleanor of Guyenne! That of Inez de Castro
+is treated in a still more audacious manner. Also (with what previous
+example I know not, but Hortense was exceedingly apt to have previous
+examples) the names of the heretic to whom Dante was not merciful and of
+his beloved Margaret--names to which Charles Kingsley made the atonement
+of two of the most charming of his neglected poems--appear as "Dulcin"
+and "Marguerite," King and Queen of Lombardy, but guilty of more
+offensive lubricity than the sternest inquisitor ever charged on the
+historical Dolcino and his sect. For this King and Queen set up, in cold
+blood, two courts of divorce, in one of which each is judge, with the
+direct purpose of providing themselves with a supply of temporary wives
+and husbands. Some have maintained that no less a thing than the
+_Princesse de Cleves_ itself was suggested by something of Mme. de
+Villedieu's; but this seems to me merely the usual plagiarism-hunter's
+blunder of forgetting that the treatment, not the subject, is the _crux_
+of originality. Of her longer books, _Alcidamie_, the first, has been
+spoken of. The _Amours des Grandes Hommes_ and _Cleonice ou le Roman
+Galant_ belong to the "keyed" Heroics; while the _Journal Amoureux_,
+which runs to nearly five hundred pages, has Diane de Poitiers for its
+chief heroine. Lastly, _Carmente_ (or, as it was reprinted, _Carmante_)
+is a sort of mixed pastoral, with Theocritus himself introduced, after a
+fashion noted more than once before.
+
+[Sidenote: Her value on the whole.]
+
+Her most praised things, recently, have been the story of the loves of
+Henri IV. and Mme. de Sauve (lightly touched on, perhaps "after" her in
+both senses, by Dumas) in the _Amours Galantes_, and a doubtful story
+(also attributed to the obscure M. de Preschac of the _Cabinet des
+Fees_[219]) entitled _L'Illustre Parisienne_, over which folk have
+quarrelled as to whether it is to be labelled "realist" or not. One
+regrets, however, to have to say that--except for fresh, if not very
+strong, evidence of that "questing" character which we find all over the
+subjects of these two chapters--the interest of Mme. de Villedieu's work
+can hardly be called great. By a long chapter of accidents, the present
+writer, who had meant to read her some five-and-thirty years ago, never
+read her actually till the other day--with all good will, with no
+extravagant expectation beforehand, but with some disappointment at the
+result. She is not a bookmaker of the worst kind; she evidently had wits
+and literary velleities; and she does illustrate the blind _nisus_ of
+the time as already indicated. But beyond the bookmaking class she
+never, I think, gets. Her mere writing is by no means contemptible, and
+we may end by pointing out two little points of interest in _Carmente_.
+One is the appearance of the name "Ardelie," which our own Lady
+Winchelsea took and anglicised as her coterie title. It may occur
+elsewhere, but I do not recollect it. The other is yet a fresh
+anticipation of that bold figure of speech which has been cited before
+from Dickens--one of the characters appearing "in a very clean
+shepherd's dress _and a profound melancholy_." Mme. de Villedieu (it is
+about the only place she has held hitherto, if she has held any, in
+ordinary Histories of French Literature) has usually been regarded as
+closing the Heroic school. We may therefore most properly turn from her
+directly to the last and most cheerful division of the subjects of this
+chapter--the Fairy Tale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The fairy tale.]
+
+One of the greatest solaces of the writer of this book, and, he would
+fain hope, something of a consolation to its readers, has been the
+possibility, and indeed advisability, of abstention from certain stock
+literary controversies, or at worst of dismissing them with very brief
+mention. This solace recurs in reference to the large, vague, and hotly
+debated subject of folklore and fairy stories, their connection, and the
+origin of the latter. It is true that "the pleasure gives way to a
+savour of sorrow," to adopt a charming phrase of Mr. Dobson's, when I
+think of the amiable indignation which the absence of what I shall not
+say, and perhaps still more the presence of some things that I shall
+say, would have caused in my friend, and his friend, the late Mr. Andrew
+Lang.[220] But the irreparable is always with us. Despite the undoubted
+omnipresence of the folk-story, with its "fairy" character in the
+general sense, I have always wanted more proof than I have ever
+received, that the thing is of Western rather than of Eastern origin,
+and that our Western stories of the kind, in so far as they affected
+literature before a very recent period, are independent. But I attach no
+particular value to this opinion, and it will influence nothing that I
+say here. So with a few more half-words to the wise, as that Mme.
+d'Aulnoy had been in Spain, that the Crusades took place in the eleventh
+century, that, independently thereof, Scandinavians had been
+"Varangians" very early at Constantinople, etc. etc., let us come to the
+two great literary facts--the chorus of fairy tale-telling proper at the
+end of the century (of which the coryphaei are the lady already
+mentioned and Perrault), and the epoch-making translation of _The
+Arabian Nights_ by Galland.
+
+[Sidenote: Its _general_ characteristics--the happy ending.]
+
+In a certain sense, no doubt, the fairy tale may be said to be merely a
+variety of the age-old _fabliau_ and _nouvelle_. But it is, for literary
+purposes, a distinctly and importantly new variety--new not merely in
+subject, even in the widest possible sense of that rather disputable
+(or at least disputed) word, but in that _nescio quid_ between subject
+and treatment for which I know no better term than the somewhat vague
+one "atmosphere." It has the priceless quality of what may be called
+good childishness; it gives not merely Fancy but Imagination the freest
+play, and, till it has itself created one, it is free from any
+convention. It continued, indeed, always free from those "previous"
+conventions which are so intolerable. For it is constantly forgotten
+that a convention in its youth is often positively healthy, and a
+convention in the prime of its life a very tolerable thing. It is the
+_old_ conventions which, as Mahomet rashly acknowledged about something
+else (saving himself, however, most dexterously afterwards), cannot be
+tolerated in Paradise. Moreover, besides creating of necessity a sort of
+fresh dialect in which it had to be told, and producing a set of
+personages entirely unhackneyed, it did an immense service by
+introducing a sort of etiquette, quite different from the conventions
+above noticed,--a set of manners, as it may almost be called, which had
+the strongest and most beneficial influence--though, like all strong and
+good things, it might be perverted--on fiction generally. In this all
+sorts of nice things, as in the original prescription for what girls are
+made of, were included--variety, gaiety, colour, surprise, a complete
+contempt of the contemptible, or of that large part of it which contains
+priggishness, propriety, "prunes, and prism" generally. Moreover (and
+here I fear that the above promised abstinence from the contentious must
+be for a little time waived) it confirmed a great principle of novel and
+romance alike, that if you can you should "make a good end," as, _teste_
+Romance herself, Guinevere did, though the circumstances were
+melancholy.
+
+The termination of a fairy tale rarely is, and never should be, anything
+but happy. For this reason I have always disliked--and though some of
+the mighty have left their calm seats and endeavoured to annihilate me
+for it, I still continue to dislike--that old favourite of some part of
+the public, _The Yellow Dwarf_. That detestable creature (who does not
+even amuse me) had no business to triumph; and, what is more, I don't
+believe he did. Not being an original writer, I cannot tell the true
+history as it might be told; but I can criticise the false. I do not
+object to this version because of its violation of poetical justice--in
+which, again, I don't believe. But this is neither poetical, nor just,
+nor amusing. It is a sort of police report, and I have never much cared
+for police reports. I should like to have set Maimoune at the Yellow
+Dwarf: and then there would have been some fun.
+
+It is probably unnecessary to offer any translations here, because the
+matter is so generally known, and because the books edited by that
+regretted friend of mine above mentioned have spread it (with much other
+matter of the same kind) more widely than ever. But the points mentioned
+above, and perhaps some others, can never be put too firmly to the
+credit of the fairy tale as regards its influence on fiction, and on
+French fiction particularly. It remains to be seen, in the next chapter,
+how what a few purists may call its contamination by, but what we may
+surely be permitted to call its alliance with, "polite literature" was
+started, or practically started, through the direct agency of no
+Frenchman, but of a man who can be claimed by England in the larger and
+national sense, by Scotland and Ireland and England again in the
+narrower and more parochial--by Anthony Hamilton. His work, however,
+must be left till that next chapter, though in this we may, after the
+"blessed originals" just mentioned, take in their sometimes degenerate
+successors for nearly a hundred years after Perrault's time.
+
+[Sidenote: Perrault and Mme. d'Aulnoy.]
+
+Well, however, as the simpler and purer fairy-tales may be known to all
+but twentieth-century children (who are said not to like them), it is
+doubtful whether many people have considered them in the light in which
+we have to regard them here, so as to see in them both a link in the
+somewhat complicated chain of novel development, and also one which is
+not dead metal, but serves as a medium for introducing powerful currents
+of influence on the chain itself. We have dwelt on one point--the
+desirableness, if not necessity, of shortness in them--as specially
+valuable at the time. No doubt they need not all be as short as
+Perrault's, though even among his there are instances (not to mention
+_L'Adroite Princesse_ for the moment), such as _Peau d'Ane_, of more
+than twenty pages, as against the five of the _Chaperon Rouge_ and the
+ten of _Barbe Bleue_, _Le Chat Botte_, and _Cendrillon_. Mme. d'Aulnoy's
+run longer; but of course the longest[221] of all are mites to the
+mammoths of the Scudery romance. A fairy story must never "drag,"
+and in its better, and indeed all its genuine, forms it never does.
+Further (it must be remembered that "Little Red Riding Hood,"
+in its unadulterated and "_un_happy ending" form, is not a fairy
+story at all, for talking animals are not peculiar to that), "fairiness,"
+the actual presence of these gracious or ungracious but always
+between-human-and-divine-creatures, is necessary,[222] and their agency
+must be necessary too. In this and other ways it is interesting to
+contrast two stories (which are neighbours to each other, with _Peau
+d'Ane_ between them, in the convenient one-volume collection of French
+Fairy Tale classics published by Gamier), Mme. d'Aulnoy's _Gracieuse et
+Percinet_ and _L'Adroite Princesse ou Les Aventures de Finette_, which
+appeared with Perrault's, but which I can hardly believe to be his. They
+are about the same length, but the one is one of the best and the other
+one of the worst examples of its author and of the general style. It may
+be worth while to analyse both very briefly. As for Perrault's better
+work, such analysis should be as unnecessary as it would be irreverent.
+
+[Sidenote: Commented examples--_Gracieuse et Percinet_.]
+
+That _Gracieuse et Percinet_ is of an essentially "stock" character is
+not in the least against it, for so it ought to be: and the "stock"
+company that plays its parts plays them well. The father is perhaps
+rather excessively foolish and unnatural, but then he almost had to be.
+The wicked and ugly stepmother tops, but does not overtop, _her_ part,
+and her punishment is not commonplace. Gracieuse herself deserves her
+name, not only "by her comely face and by her fair bodie," but by her
+good but not oppressive wits, and her amiable but not faultless
+disposition. She ought not to have looked into the box; but then we
+should not have liked her nearly as much if she had not done so. She was
+foolishly good in refusing to stay with Percinet; but we are by no means
+certain that we should like her better if she had thrown herself into
+his arms at the first or second time of asking. Besides, where would
+have been the story? As for Percinet, he escapes in a wonderful fashion,
+though partly by help of his lady's little wilfulnesses, the dangers of
+the handsome, amiable, in a small way always successful, and almost
+omnipotent hero. There is a sort of ironic tenderness, in his letting
+Gracieuse again and again go her wilful way and show her foolish
+filiality, which saves him. He is always ready, and does his spiriting
+in the politest and best manner, particularly when he shepherds all
+those amusing but rebellious little people into their box again--a feat
+which some great novelists have achieved but awkwardly in their own
+cases. There is even pathos in the apparently melancholy statement that
+the fairy palace is dead, and that Gracieuse will never see it till she
+is buried. I should like to have been Percinet, and I should
+particularly like to have married Gracieuse.
+
+Moreover, the thing is full of small additional seasonings of incident
+and phrase to the solid feast of fairy working which it provides.
+Gracieuse's "collation," with its more than twenty pots of different
+jams, has a delightful realty (which is slightly different from reality)
+even for those to whom jam has never been the very highest of human
+delights, because they prefer savouries to sweets. Even the abominable
+duchess seems to have had a splendid cellar, before she took to filling
+the casks with mere gold and jewels to catch the foolish king. It is
+impossible to imagine a scene more agreeably compounded of politeness
+and affection than Percinet's first introduction of himself to the
+Princess: and it is extraordinarily nice to find that they knew all
+about each other before, though we have had not the slightest previous
+information as to the acquaintance. I am very much afraid that he made
+his famous horse kick and plunge when Grognon was on him; but it must be
+remembered that he had been made to lead that animal against his will.
+The description of the hag's flogging Gracieuse with feathers instead of
+scourges is a quite admirable adaptation of some martyrological stories;
+and when, in her dilapidated condition, she remarks that she wishes he
+would go away, because she has always been told that she must not be
+alone with young gentlemen, one feels that the martyrdom must have been
+transferred, in no mock sense, to Percinet himself. If she borrows
+Psyche's trials, what good story is not another good story
+refreshed?[223]
+
+[Sidenote: _L'Adroite Princesse._]
+
+But if almost everything is good and well managed in _Gracieuse_, it may
+also be said that almost everything is badly managed in _Finette_.[224]
+To begin with, there is that capital error which has been noticed above,
+that it is not really a fairy tale at all. Except the magic
+_quenouilles_, which themselves are of the smallest importance in the
+story, there is nothing in it beyond the ways of an ordinary adventurous
+_nouvelle_. The touch of _grivoiserie_ by which the Princesses
+Nonchalante and Babillarde allow the weaknesses ticketed in their names
+to hand them over as a prey to the cunning and blackguard Prince
+Riche-Cautele, under pretence of entirely unceremonised and unwitnessed
+"marriage," is in no way amusing. Finette's escapes from the same fate
+are a little better, but the whole is told (as its author seems to have
+felt) at much too great length; and the dragging in of an actual fairy
+at the end, to communicate to the heroine the exceedingly novel and
+recondite maxim that "Prudence is the mother of safety," is almost
+idiotic. If the thing has any value, it is as an example, not of a real
+fairy tale nor of a satire on fairy tales (for which it is much too much
+"out of the rules" and much too stupid), but of something which may save
+an ordinary reader, or even student, from attacking, as I fear we shall
+have to do, the _Cabinet des Fees_ at large, and discovering, by painful
+experience, how excessively silly and tedious the corruption of this
+wise and delightful kind may be.
+
+One might, of course, draw lessons from others of the original batches,
+but this may suffice for the specimen batch under immediate review.
+_Peau d'Ane_, one of the most interesting to "folklorists" and
+origin-hunters, is, of course, also in itself interesting to students of
+literature. Its combination of the old theme of the incestuous passion
+of a father for his daughter, with the special but not invariable shadow
+of excuse in the selfish vanity of the mother's dying request, is quite
+out of the usual way of these things. So is the curious series of fairy
+failures--things apparently against the whole set of the game--beginning
+with the unimaginative conception of dresses, weather-, or sky-, moon-,
+and sun-colour, rendered futile by the success of the artists, and
+ending in the somewhat banal device of making yourself ugly and running
+away, with the odd conclusion-contrast of Peau d'Ane's squalid
+appearance in public and her private splendour in the fairy garments.
+
+[Sidenote: The danger of the "moral."]
+
+Still, the lessons of correction, warning, and instruction to be drawn
+from these gracious little things, for the benefit of their younger and
+more elaborate successors, are not easily exhausted. They are, on the
+whole, very moral, and it is well that morality, rightly understood,
+should animate fiction. But they are occasionally much _too_ moral, and
+then they warn off instead of cheering on. Take, for instance, two other
+neighbours in the collection just quoted, _Le Prince Cheri_ and the
+ever-delightful _La Belle et La Bete_. Both of these are moral; but the
+latter is just moral enough, while _Cheri_, with one or two alleviations
+(of which, perhaps, more presently), is hardly anything if _not_ moral,
+and therefore disgusts, or at any rate bores. On the other hand,
+"Beauty" is as _bonne_ as she is _belle_; her only fault, that of
+overstaying her time, is the result of family affection, and her reward
+and the punishment of the wicked sisters are quite copy-book. But it is
+not for this part that we love what is perhaps the most engaging of all
+the tales. It is for Beauty's own charm, which is subtly conveyed; for
+the brisk and artistic "revolutions and discoveries"; above all, for the
+far from merely sentimental pathos of the Beast's all but death _for_
+love, and the not in the least mawkish bringing of him to life again
+_by_ love.[225]
+
+[Sidenote: Yet often redeemed.]
+
+One may perhaps also make amends to Prince Cheri for the abuse just
+bestowed on him. His story has at least one touch which is sovereign for
+a fiction-fault common in the past, and only too probable in the future,
+at whatever time one takes the "present" of the story. When he is not
+unjustly turned into a monster of the most allegorical-composite order
+of monster architecture--a monster to whom dragons and wyverns and
+chimaeras dire are as ordinary as kittens--what do they do with him?
+They put him "with the other monsters." _Ce n'est pas plus raide que
+ca._ The present writer need hardly fear to be thought an
+anti-mediaevalist, but he is very much afraid that an average mediaeval
+romancer might have thought it necessary to catalogue these other
+monsters with the aid of a Bestiary. On the other hand, there have been
+times--no matter which--when this abrupt introduction and dismissal of
+monsters as common objects (for which any respectable community will
+have proper stables or cages) would have been disallowed, or explained
+away, or apologised for, or, worst of all, charged with a sort of wink
+or sneer to let the reader know that the author knew what he was about.
+Here there is nothing of this superfluous or offensive sort. The
+appropriate and undoubting logic of the style prevails over all too
+reasonable difficulties. There are monsters, or how could Cheri be made
+into one? If there are monsters there must, or in the highest
+probability may, be other monsters. Put him with them, and make no fuss
+about it. If all novelists had had this _aplomb_, we should have been
+spared a great deal of tediousness, some positive failures, and the
+spoiling, or at least the blotting and marring, of many excellent
+situations. But to praise the good points of fairy stories, from the
+brief consummateness of _Le Chat Botte_ to the longer drawn but still
+perfectly golden matter of _La Biche au Bois_, would really be
+superfluous. One loathes leaving them; but one has to do it, so far as
+the more unsophisticated part of them is concerned. Yet the duty of the
+historian will not let him be content with these, and, to vary "The
+Brave Lord Willoughby" a little, "turning to the [_others_] a thousand
+more," he must "slay," or at least criticise.
+
+[Sidenote: The main _Cabinet des Fees_--more on Mme. d'Aulnoy.]
+
+He who ventures on the complete _Cabinet des Fees_[226] in its more than
+forty volumes, will provide himself with "cabin furniture" of nearly as
+good pastime-quality, at least to my fancy (and yet I may claim to be
+something of a Balzacian), as the slightly larger shelf-ful which
+suggested itself to the fancy of Mr. Browning and provoked (_as_ "cabin
+furniture") the indignation of Mr. Swinburne. But he had better look
+over the contents before he takes it on board, or he will find himself,
+if his travelling library is anything like as large as that of the
+patriarch Photius, in danger of duplication. For the _Cabinet_ holds,
+not merely the _Arabian Nights_ in the original translation of Galland,
+but also Hamilton: as well, of course, as much of what we may call the
+classical fairy matter proper on which we have already dwelt, and which
+is known to all decent people. Still, he will find more of Mme. d'Aulnoy
+than, unless he is already something of an expert, he already knows, and
+perhaps he will not be entirely rejoiced at the amplification. She wrote
+more or less regular heroic romances,[227] which are very inferior to
+her fairy tales; and though these are not in the _Cabinet_, she
+sometimes "mixes the kinds" rather disastrously in shorter pieces. The
+framework of _Don Gabriel Ponce de Leon_, which enshrines the sad but
+charming "Golden Sheep," and a variant of _Cendrillon_, is poor stuff;
+and _Les Chevaliers Errans_ only shows what we knew before, that the
+junction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is not the time or
+the place in which to find the loved one, if that loved one is
+mediaeval. Still, this invaluable lady does generally reck and exemplify
+her own immortal rede. "Il me semble," says Prince Marcassin to the
+fairies, "a vous entendre, qu'il ne faut pas meme croire ce qu'on voit."
+And they reply, "La regle n'est pas toujours generale; _mais il est
+indubitable que l'on doit suspendre son jugement sur bien des choses, et
+penser qu'il peut entrer quelque chose de Feerie dans ce que nous paroit
+de plus certain_."
+
+[Sidenote: Warning against disappointment.]
+
+Alas! it was precisely this _quelque chose de Feerie_ which is wanting
+in the majority of the minor fairy-tale writers. That they should attain
+the wonderful simplicity, freshness, and charm of Perrault at his best
+was not to be expected; hardly that they should reach the more
+sophisticated grace of Hamilton; but it might have been hoped that some
+would come more or less near the lower, and much more unequal, but
+occasionally very successful art or luck of Mme. d'Aulnoy herself.
+Unfortunately very few of them do. It was easy enough to begin _Il
+etait autrefois un roi et une reine_, to put in a Prince Charming and a
+Princess Graciosa, and good fairies and bad fairies, and magicians and
+ogres and talking beasts, and the like. It was not so easy to make all
+these things work together to produce the peculiar spell which belongs
+to the true land of Faery, and to that land alone. Still more
+unfortunately, wrong ways of attempting the object (or some other
+object) were as easy as the right ways were difficult. They cannot avoid
+muddling the fairy tale with the heroic romance: and with the
+half-historical sub-variety of this latter which Mme. de La Fayette
+introduced. The worst enchanter that ever fairies had to fight with is
+not such an enemy of theirs as History and Geography--two most
+respectable persons in their proper places, but fatal here. They will
+make King Richard of England tell fairy tales to Blondel out of the
+Austrian tower, and muddle up things about his wicked brother the Count
+of Mortagne. They will talk of Lemnos and Memphis and other _patatis_
+and _patatas_ of the classical dictionary and the _Grand Cyrus_. In a
+fashion not perhaps so instantly suicidal, but in a sufficiently
+annoying fashion, they will invent clumsy "speaking" names, or dog-Latin
+and cat-Greek ones. And, perhaps worst of all, they prostitute the
+delicate charms of the fairy tale to clumsy adulation of the reigning
+monarch, and tedious half-veiled flattery or satire of less exalted
+persons, or, if "prostitute" be too harsh a word here, attempt to force
+a marriage between these charms and the dullest moralising. In fact, it
+is scarcely extravagant to say that, in regard to too many of them--to
+some of them at least--everything that ought not to be, such as the
+things just mentioned and others, is there, and everything that ought to
+be--lightness, brightness, the sense of the impossible in which it is
+delightful to believe, the dream-feeling, the magic of gratified wish
+and realised ideal--is not.
+
+[Sidenote: Mlle. de la Force and others.]
+
+Of course, in these other and minor writers that the _Cabinet_ has to
+give, all these disappointments do not always occur, and the crop is
+mixed. Mlle. de la Force[228] was one of those _dames_ or _demoiselles
+de compagnie_ who figure so largely in the literary history of the
+French eighteenth century, and whose group is illustrated by such names
+as those of Mlle. Delaunay and Mlle. de Lespinasse. Her full name was
+Charlotte Rose de Caumont de la Force, and she was, if not an
+adventuress, a person of adventures, who also wrote many
+quasi-historical romances in the _Princesse de Cleves_ manner. Her fairy
+tales are thin, and marred by weak allegory of the "Carte de Tendre"
+kind. A "Pays des Delices," very difficult to reach, and constantly
+personated by a "Pays des Avances," promises little and performs less.
+
+The eleven (it is an exact eleven) called _Les Illustres Fees_ is
+scarcely so illustrious as the All England and the United were, in the
+memory of some of us, in another and better played kind of cricket. The
+stories are not very long; they run to a bare eighteen small pages
+apiece; but few readers are likely to wish them longer. _Blanche-Belle_
+introduces the _sylphes_--an adulteration[229] which generally produces
+the effect that Thackeray deplored when his misguided friend would have
+_puree_ mixed with _julienne_. _Le Roi Magicien_ is painfully destitute
+of personality; we want names, and pretty names, for a fairy tale. _Le
+Prince Roger_ is a descendant of Melusine, and one does not think she
+would be proud of him. _Fortunio_ is better, and _Quiribirini_, one of
+the numerous stories which turn on remembering or failing to remember an
+odd name,[230] perhaps better still; but the rest deserve little praise,
+and the last, _L'Ile Inaccessible_, appears to be, if it is anything but
+pure dulness, a flat political allegory about England and France.
+
+The style picks up a little in the miscellany called (not without a
+touch of piquancy) _La Tyrannie des Fees Detruite_, by a Mme.
+d'_Auneuil_, whom persons of a sceptical turn might imagine to be a sort
+of factitious rival to Mme. d'Aulnoy.[231] It returns to the Greek or
+pseudo-Greek names of the heroic romance, and to its questionable device
+of _histoires_ stuck like plums in a pudding. Nor are the _Sans
+Parangon_ and the _Fee des Fees_ of the Sieur de Preschac utterly bad.
+But _Les Aventures d'Abdalla_, besides rashly incurring the danger (to
+be exemplified and commented on more fully a little later) of vying with
+the _Arabian Nights_, substitutes for the genuine local colour
+and speech the _fade_ jargon of French eighteenth-century
+"sensibility"--_autels_ and _flammes_ and all the rest of the trumpery.
+But it does worse still--it tries to be instructive, and informs us of
+the difference between male and female _dives_ and _peris_, of the
+custom of suttee, and of the fact that there are many professional
+singers and dancers among Indian girls. This is simply intolerable.[232]
+
+[Sidenote: The large proportion of Eastern Tales.]
+
+[Sidenote: _Les Voyages de Zulma._]
+
+The great prominence of the Eastern Tale, indeed, in this collection is
+likely to be one of the most striking things in it to a new-comer. He
+would know, of course, that such tales are not uncommon in contemporary
+English; he would certainly be acquainted with Addison's, Johnson's,
+Goldsmith's experiments in them, perhaps with those of Hawkesworth and
+others.[233] He could see for himself that the "accaparation" by France
+of the peerless _Arabian Nights_ themselves must have led to a still
+greater fancy for them there; and he might possibly have heard the
+tradition (which the present writer[234] never traced to its source, or
+connected with any real evidence either way) that no less a person than
+Lesage assisted Galland in his task. But though the _Nights_ themselves
+form the most considerable single group in the _Cabinet_, the united
+bulk of their congeners or imitations occupies a still larger space.
+There are the rather pale and "moon-like" but sometimes not
+uninteresting _Thousand and One Days_, and the obviously and rather
+foolishly pastiched _Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour_. There are
+Persian Tales--origin of a famous and characteristic jibe at "Namby
+Pamby" Philips--and Turkish Tales which are a fragment of one of the
+numerous versions of the _Seven Sages_ scheme. The just mentioned
+_Adventures of Abdallah_ betray their source and their nature at once;
+the hoary fables of Bidpai and Lokman are modernised to keep company
+with these "fakings," and there are more definitely literary attempts to
+follow. _Les Voyages de Zulma_, again an incomplete thing which actually
+tails off towards its failure of an end, shows some ingenuity in its
+conception, but suffers, even in the beginning, from that mixing of
+kinds which has been pointed out and reprobated. An attempt is made to
+systematise the fairy idea by representing these gracious creatures as
+offspring of Destiny and the Earth, with a cruel brother Time, and an
+offset of mischievous sisters who exactly correspond to the good
+ones--Disgracieuse to Gracieuse, and so on--and have a queen
+Laide-des-Laides, who answers to the good fairy princess,
+Belle-des-Belles. A mortal--Zulma--is, for paternal rather than personal
+merits, chosen by Destiny to enjoy the privilege of entering and
+understanding the fairy world, and Gracieuse is the fairy assigned as
+his guide. The idea is, as has been said, rather ingenious; but it is
+too systematic, and like other things in other parts of the collection,
+"loses the grace and liberty of the composition" in system. Moreover,
+the morality, as is rather the wont of these imitators when they are not
+(as a few of the partly non-cabinetted ones are) deliberately naughty,
+is much too scrupulous.[235] It is clear that Zulma is in love with
+Gracieuse, that she responds to some extent, and that Her Majesty Queen
+Belle-des-Belles is a little jealous and inclined to cut Gracieuse out.
+But nothing in the finished part of the story gives us any of the nice
+love-making that we want.
+
+[Sidenote: Fenelon.]
+
+Madame le Marchand's _Boca_ is a story which begins in Peru but finishes
+in an "Isle of Ebony," where the names of Zobeide and Abdelazis seem
+rather more at home; it is not without merit. As for the fables and
+stories which Fenelon composed for that imperfect Marcellus, the Duke of
+Burgundy, they have all the merits of style, sense, and good feeling
+which they might be expected to have, and it would be absurd to ask of
+them qualities which, in the circumstances, they could not display.
+
+The _Chinese Tales_ are about as little Chinese as may be, consisting of
+accounts of his punitive metempsychoses by the Mandarin Fum Hoam (a name
+afterwards borrowed in better known work), who seems to have been
+excluded from the knowledge of anything particularly Celestial.[236] But
+they are rather smartly told. On the other hand, _Florine ou la Belle
+Italienne_, which is included in the same volume with the sham
+_Chinoiseries_, is one of the worst instances of the confusion of kinds
+noted above. It honestly prepares one for what is coming by a reference
+in the Preface to Fenelon; but a list of _dramatis_ (or _fabulae_)
+_personae_, which follows, would have tried the saintliness even of him
+of Cambrai almost as much as a German occupation of his archiepiscopal
+see. "Agatonphisie," for a personage who represents, we are told, "Le
+Bon Sens," might break the heart of Clenardus, if not the head of
+Priscian.
+
+_The Thousand and One Quarter Hours_, or _Contes Tartares_, have as
+little of the Tartar as those above mentioned of the Chinese, but if
+somewhat verbose, they are not wholly devoid of literary quality. The
+substance is, as in nearly all these cases, _Arabian Nights_ rehashed;
+but the hashing is not seldom done _secundum artem_, and they have, with
+the _Les Sultanes de Gujerate_ and _Nouveaux Contes Orientaux_, which
+follow them, the faculty of letting themselves be read.
+
+The best of these[237] (except the French translation of the so-called
+Sir Charles Morell's (really James Ridley's) _Tales of the Genii_ (see
+above)) is perhaps, on the whole, _Les Sultanes de Gujerate_, where not
+only are some of the separate tales good, but the frame-story is far
+more artistically worked in and round and out than is usually the case.
+But taking them all together, there is one general and obvious, as well
+as another local and particular objection to them. Although the
+sub-title (_v. sup._ again) lets them in, the main one regards them
+with, at best, an oblique countenance. The differences between the
+Western fairy and the Eastern _peri_, _dive_, _djin_, or whatever one
+chooses to call her, him, or it, though not at all easy to define, are
+exceedingly easy to feel. The magicians and enchanters of the two kinds
+are nearer to each other, but still not the same. On the other hand, it
+is impossible for any one who has once felt the strange charm of the
+_Arabian Nights_ not to feel the immense inferiority of these rehashes
+and _croquettes_ and _rissoles_, and so forth, of the noble old haunch
+or sirloin. Yet again, from the special point of view of this book,
+though they cannot be simply passed over, they supply practically
+nothing which marks, or causes, or even promises an advance in the
+general development of fiction. They may be said to be simply a
+continuation of, or a relapse upon, the pure romance of adventure, with
+different dress, manners, and nomenclature. There is hardly a single
+touch of character in any one; their very morals (and no shame to them)
+are arch-known; and they do not possess style enough to confer
+distinction of the kind open to such things. If you take _Les Quatre
+Facardins_, before most of them, and _Vathek_[238] (itself, remember,
+originally French in language), after them all, the want of any kind of
+genius in their composers becomes almost disgustingly apparent. Yet even
+these masterpieces are masterpieces outside the main run of the novel.
+
+[Sidenote: Caylus.]
+
+Although, therefore, it would be very ungrateful not to acknowledge that
+they do sometimes comply with the demands of that sensible tyrant
+already mentioned, Sultan Hudgiadge, and "either amuse us or send us to
+sleep," it must be admitted to be with some relief that one turns once
+more, at about the five and twentieth volume, to something like the
+fairy tale proper, if to a somewhat artificial and sophisticated form of
+it. The Comte de Caylus was a scholar and a man of unusual brains;
+Moncrif showed his mixture of Scotch and French blood in a corresponding
+blend of quaintness and _esprit_; others, such as Voisenon in one sex
+and Voltaire's pet Mlle. de Lubert in the other, whatever they were,
+were at any rate not stupid.
+
+[Sidenote: _Prince Courtebotte et Princesse Zibeline._]
+
+To Anne Claude Philippe de Tubieres de Grimoard de Pestels de Levi,
+Comte de Caylus, one owes particular thanks, at least when one comes to
+the history of _Le Prince Courtebotte_, after wrestling with the
+_macedoine_ of orientalities just discussed. It is not, of course,
+Perrault, and it is not the best Madame D'Aulnoy. But you are never "put
+out" by it; the hero, if rather a hero of Scott in the uniform propriety
+of his conduct, or of Virgil in his success, is not like Waverley,
+partly a simpleton, nor like Aeneas, wholly a cad. One likes the
+Princess Zibeline both before she had a heart and afterwards; it can be
+very agreeable to know a nice girl in both states. Perhaps it was not
+quite cricket of the good fairy to play that trick[239] on the
+ambassador of King Brandatimor, but it was washed out in fair fight; and
+King Biby and his people of poodles are delightful. One wonders whether
+Dickens, who was better read in this kind of literature than in most,
+consciously or unconsciously borrowed from Caylus one of his not least
+known touches.[240]
+
+[Sidenote: _Rosanie._]
+
+In the next of the Caylus stories there is an Idea--the capital seems
+due because the Count was a man of Science, as science (perhaps better)
+went then, and because one or his other tales (not the best) is actually
+called _Le Palais des Idees_. The idea of _Rosanie_ is questionable,
+though the carrying of it out is all right. Two fairies are fighting for
+the (fairy) crown, and the test is who shall produce the most perfect
+specimen of the special fairy art of education of mortals. (I may, as a
+_ci-devant_ member of this craft, be permitted to regret that the
+business has been so largely taken over by persons who are neither
+fairies in one sex, though there may be some exceptions here, nor
+enchanters in the other, where exceptions are very rare indeed.) The
+tutoress of the Princess Rosanie pursues her task, and pursues it
+triumphantly, by dividing the child into twelve _interim_ personalities,
+each of whom has a special characteristic--beauty, gentleness, vivacity,
+discretion, and what not. At the close of the prescribed period they are
+reunited, and their fortunate lover, who has hitherto been distracted
+between the twelve _eidola_, is blessed with the compound Rosanie.
+Although it is well known to be the rashest of things for a man to say
+anything about women--although certainly sillier things have been said
+by men about women than about any other subject, except, of course,
+education itself--I venture to demur to the fairy method. Both _a
+priori_ and from experience, I should say that unmixed Beauty would
+become intolerably vain; that Discretion would grow into a hypocritical
+and unpleasant prude; that Vivacity would develop into Vulgarity; and
+that the reincarnation of the twelve would be one of the most
+intolerable creatures ever known, if it were not that the impossibility
+of the concentrated essences being united in one person, after
+separation in several, would save the situation by annihilating her.
+
+[Sidenote: _Prince Muguet et Princesse Zaza._]
+
+Caylus, however, makes up in the third tale, _Le Prince Muguet et la
+Princesse Zaza_, where, though the principal fairy, she of the _Hetre_,
+is rather silly for one of the kind, Muguet is a not quite intolerable
+coxcomb, and Zaza is positively charming. Her sufferings with a wicked
+old woman are common; but her distress when the fairy makes her seem
+ugly to the Prince, who has actually fallen in love with her true
+portrait, and the scenes where the two meet under this spell, are among
+the best in the whole _Cabinet_--which is a bold word. The others,
+though naturally unequal, never or very seldom lack charm, for the
+reason that Caylus knew what one has ventured to call the secret of
+Fairyland--that it is the land of the attained Wish--and that he has the
+art of scattering rememberable and generative phrases and fancies.
+_Tourlou et Rirette_, one of the lightest of all, may not
+impossibly--indeed probably--have suggested Jean Ingelow's great
+single-speech poem of _Divided_; the Princesses Pimprenelle and
+Lumineuse are the right sort of Princesses; _Nonchalante et Papillon_,
+_Bleuette et Coquelicot_ come and take their places unpretentiously but
+certainly; Mignonette and Minutieuse are not "out." Caylus is not
+Hamilton by a long way; but he has something that Hamilton has not. He
+is still less Perrault or Madame d'Aulnoy, but he has a sufficient
+difference from either. With these predecessors he makes the select
+quartette of the fairy-tale tellers of France.
+
+After him one expects--and meets--a drop. No reasonable person would
+look for a really great fairy tale from Jean Jacques, because you must
+forget yourself to write one; and _La Reine Fantasque_, though not bad,
+is not good. Madame de Villeneuve may, for ought I know, have been an
+excellent person in other ways, but she deserves one of the worst
+bolgias in the Inferno of literature for lengthening, muddling, and
+altogether spoiling the ever-beloved "Beauty and the Beast." Mlle. de
+Lussan, they say,[241] was too fond of eating, and died of indigestion.
+A more indigestible thing than her own _Les Veillees de Thessalie_,
+which figure here (she wrote a great deal more), the present writer has
+never come across. And as for _Prince Titi_, which fills a volume and a
+half, it might have been passed without any remark at all if it had not
+become famous in connection with the Battle of Croker and Macaulay over
+the body of Boswell's _Johnson_.[242]
+
+A break takes place at the thirtieth volume of the _Cabinet_, and a
+fresh instalment, later than the first batch, follows, with more
+particulars about authors. Here we find the attributions of the very
+large series of imitative Eastern tales already noticed, and to be
+followed in this new parcel by _Soirees Bretonnes_, to Thomas Simon
+Gueulette. The thirty-first opens with the _Funestine_ of
+Beauchamps[243]--an ingenious title and heroine-name, for it avoids the
+unnatural sounds so common, is a quite possible feminine appellation,
+and though a "speaking" one, is only so to those who understand the
+learned languages, and so deserve to be spoken to. Moreover, the idea,
+though not startlingly original or a mark of genius, is good--that of an
+unlucky child who attracts the malignity of _all_ fairies, and is ugly,
+stupid, ill-natured, and everything that is detestable. Her reformation
+by the genie Clair-Obscur would not be bad if it were cut a great deal
+shorter.
+
+It is followed by a series of short tales, beginning with _The Little
+Green Frog_, and not of the first class, which in turn are succeeded by
+two (or, as the latter is in two parts, three) longer stories, sometimes
+attributed to Caylus--_Le Loup Galeux_ and _Bellinette et Belline_. The
+_Soirees Bretonnes_ themselves, though apparently the earliest, are not
+the happiest of Gueulette's _pastiches_; the speaking names[244]
+especially are irritating. A certain Madame de Lintot, who does not seem
+to have had anything to do with the hero of Pope's famous "Ride with a
+Bookseller," is what may be called "neutral," with _Timandre et
+Bleuette_ and others; nor does a fresh instalment of Moncrif's efforts
+show the historian of cats at his best. But in vol. xxxiii. Mlle. de
+Lubert, glanced at before, raises the standard. She should have cut her
+tales down; it is the mischief of these later things that they extend
+too much. But _Lionnette et Coquerico_ is good; _Le Prince Glace et la
+Princesse Etincelante_ is not bad; and _La Princesse Camion_ attracts,
+by dint of extravagance in the literal sense. Fairy trials had gone far;
+but the necessity of either marrying a beautiful sort of mermaid or else
+of _flaying_ her, and the subsequent trial, not of flaying, but braying
+her in a mortar as a shrimp, show at least a lively fancy. Nor is the
+anonymous _Nourjahad_--an extremely moral but not dull tale, which
+follows--at all contemptible.
+
+The French Bar, inexhaustible in such things, gave another tale-teller
+in one Pajon, who, besides the obligatory _polissonneries_, not included
+in the _Cabinet_, composed not a few harmless things of some merit. The
+first, _Eritzine et Paretin_, is perhaps the best. Nor is the complement
+of vol. xxxiv., the _Bibliotheque des Fees et des Genies_ (the title of
+which was that of a larger collection, containing much the same matter
+as the _Cabinet_, and probably in Johnson's mind when he jotted down
+_Prince Titi_), quite barren. _La Princesse Minon-Minette et le Prince
+Souci_, _Apranor et Bellanire_, _Grisdelin et Charmante_, are none of
+them unreadable. The next volume, too, is better as a whole than any we
+have had for a long time. Mme. Fagnan's _Minet Bleu et Louvette_
+contains, in its fifteen pages, a good situation by no means
+ill-treated. The pair are under the same spell--that of being ugly and
+witty for part of the week, handsome, stupid, and disagreeable for the
+other part, and of having the times so arranged that each sees the other
+at his or her most repulsive to her or his actual state. The way in
+which "Love unconquered in battle" proves, though not without fairy
+assistance, victorious here also, is very ingeniously managed.
+
+One of the cleverest of all the later fairy tales is the _Acajou et
+Zirphile_ of Duclos, who, indeed, had sufficient wits to do anything
+well, and was a novelist, though not a very distinguished one, on a
+larger scale. The tale itself (which is said to have been written "up
+to" illustrations of Boucher designed for something else) has, indeed,
+a smatch of vulgarity, but a purely superfluous and easily removable
+one. It is almost as cleverly written as any thing of Voltaire's: and
+the final situation, where the hero, who has gone through all the
+mischiefs and triumphs of one of Crebillon's, recovers his only real
+love, Zirphile, in a torment and tornado of heads separated from bodies
+and hands separated from arms, is rather capital.
+
+Not much less so, in the different way of a pretty sentimentality, is
+the _Aglae ou Naboline_ of the painter Coypel; while the batch of short
+stories from Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont's _Magasin des Enfants_ have had
+a curious fate. They are rather pooh-poohed by French editors and
+critics, and they are certainly _very_ moral, too much so, in fact, as
+has been already objected to one of them, _Le Prince Cheri_. But
+allowances have been allowed even there, and, somehow or other, _Fatal
+et Fortune_, _Le Prince Charmant_, _Joliette_, and the rest have
+recovered more of the root of the matter than most others, and have
+established a just popularity in translation.
+
+And then comes the shortest, I think, of all the stories in the one and
+forty volumes; the silliest as a composition; the most contemptibly
+_thought_--but by the accidents of fate endowed later with a
+tragic-satiric _moralitas_ almost if not quite unrivalled in literature.
+Its author was a certain M. Selis, apparently a very respectable
+schoolmaster, professor, and bookmaker of not the lowest
+class--employments and occupations in respect of all of which not a few
+of us have earned our bread and paid our income-tax. Unluckily for him,
+there was born in his time a Dauphin, and he wrote a little adulatory
+tale of the birth, and the editors of the _Cabinet_ Appendix thanked him
+much for giving it them. It is not four pages long; it tells how an
+ancestral genie--a great king named Louis--blessed the child, and said
+that he would be called "the father of his people," and another followed
+suit with "the father of letters," and a third swore _Ventre Saint
+Gris!_ and named the baby's uncle as "Joseph," and a still greater Louis
+said other things, and a fairy named Maria Theresa crowned the
+blessings. Then came an ogre mounted on a leopard and eating raw meat,
+who was of Albion, and said he was king of the country, and observed
+"_God ham_" [_sic_], and was told that he would be beaten and made to
+lay down his arms by the child.
+
+And the Dauphin, unless this _signalement_ is strangely delusive, lived
+to know the worst ogres in the world (their chief was named Simon), who
+were of his own people, and to die the most unhappy prince or king in
+that world. And he of the Leopard who said _God ham_, would have saved
+that Dauphin if he could, and did slay many of his less guiltless
+relations and subjects, and beat the rest "thorough and thorough," and
+restored (could they have had the will and wit to profit by it) the race
+of Louis and Francis, and of the genie who said "Ventre Saint Gris!" to
+their throne. And this was the end of the vaticinations of M. Selis, and
+such are the tears of things.
+
+The rest of this volume is occupied by a baker's dozen of _Contes
+Choisis_, the first of which, _Les Trois Epreuves_, seems to imitate
+Voltaire, and is smartly written, while some of the others are not bad.
+
+Volume xxxvi. is occupied (not too appositely, though inoffensively in
+itself) by a translation of Wieland's _Don Silvia de Rosalva_, which is
+a German _Sir Launcelot Greaves_ or _Spiritual Quixote_, with fairy
+tales substituted for romances of chivalry. The author of _Oberon_ was
+seldom, if ever, unreadable, and he is not so here; but the thing is
+neither a tale proper (seeing that it fills a whole volume), nor a real
+fairy tale, nor French, so we may let it alone.
+
+Then this curious collection once more comes to an end, which is not an
+end, with a very useful though not too absolutely trustworthy volume of
+_Notices des Auteurs_, containing not only "bio-bibliographical"
+articles on the actual writers collected, but references to others,
+great and small, from Marivaux, Lesage, Prevost, and Voltaire downwards,
+and glances, sometimes with actual _comptes rendus_, at pieces of the
+class not included. That it is conducted on the somewhat irresponsible
+and indolent principles of its time might be anticipated from previous
+things, such as the clause in the Preface to Wieland's just noticed
+book, that the author had "gone to Weimar, where perhaps he is still,"
+an observation which, from the context, seems not to be so much an
+attempt at _persiflage_ as a pure piece of lazy _naivete_. The volume,
+however, contains a great deal of information such as it is; some
+sketches, ingeniously draped or Bowdlerised, of the "naughty" tales
+excluded from the collection itself, and a few amusing stories.[245]
+
+As, however, has been said, there was to be still another joint to this
+crocodile, and the four last volumes, xxxviii. to xli. (_not_, as is
+wrongly said by some, xxxvii. to xl.), contain a somewhat rash
+continuation of the _Arabian Nights_ themselves, with which Cazotte[246]
+appears to have had a good deal to do, though an actual Arab monk of
+the name of Chavis is said to have been mainly concerned. They are not
+bad reading; but even less of fairy tales than Gueulette's
+orientalities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not much apology is needed, it may be hoped, for the space given to this
+curious kind; the bulk of its production, the length of its popularity,
+and the intrinsic merit of some few of its better examples vindicate its
+position here. But a confession should take the place of the unnecessary
+excuse already partly made. The artificial fairy tale of the more
+regular kind was not, by the law of its being, prevented almost
+unavoidably from doing service to the novel at large, as the Eastern
+story was; but, as a matter of fact, it did little except what will be
+mentioned in the next paragraph. That it helped to exemplify afresh what
+had been shown over and over again for centuries, the singular
+recreative faculty of the nation and the language, was about all. But
+another national characteristic, the as yet incurable set of the French
+mind towards types--which, if the second volume of this work ever
+appears, will, it is hoped, be shown to have spared the later
+novel--seized on these tales. They are "as like as my fingers to my
+fingers," and they are not very pretty fingers as a rule. Incidentally
+they served as frameworks to some of the worst verse in the world, nor,
+for the most part, did they even encourage very good prose. You may get
+some good out of them; but unless you like hunting, and are not vexed by
+frequent failures to "draw," the _Cabinet des Fees_ is best left to
+exploration at second-hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To collect the results of this long chapter, we may observe that in
+these three departments--Pastoral, Heroic, and Fairy--various important
+elements of _general_ novel material and construction are provided in a
+manner not yet noticed. The Pastoral may seem to be the most obsolete,
+the most of a mere curiosity. But the singular persistence and, in a
+way, universality of this apparently fossil convention has been already
+pointed out; and it is perhaps only necessary to shift the pointer to
+the fact that the novels with which one of the most modern, in perhaps
+the truest sense of that word, of modern novelists, though one of the
+eldest, Mr. Thomas Hardy, began to make his mark--_Under the Greenwood
+Tree_ and _Far from the Madding Crowd_--may be claimed by the pastoral
+with some reason. And it has another and a wider claim--that it keeps
+up, in its own way, the element of the imaginative, of the fanciful--let
+us say even of the unreal--without which romance cannot live, without
+which novel is almost repulsive, and which the increasing advances of
+realism itself were to render more than ever indispensable. As for the
+Heroic, we have already shown how much, with all its faults, it did for
+the novel generally in construction and in other ways. It has been shown
+likewise, it is hoped, how the Fairy story, besides that additional
+provision of imagination, fancy, and dream which has just been said to
+be so important--mingled with this a kind of realism which was totally
+lacking in the others, and which showed itself especially in one
+immensely important department wherein they had been so much to seek.
+Fairies may be (they are not to my mind) things that "do not happen";
+but the best of these fairies are fifty times more natural, not merely
+than the characters of Scudery and Gomberville, but than those (I hold
+to my old blasphemy) of Racine. Animals may not talk; but the animals
+of Perrault and even of Madame d'Aulnoy talk divinely well, and, what is
+more, in a way most humanly probable and interesting. Never was there
+such a triumph of the famous impossible-probable as a good fairy story.
+Except to the mere scientist and to (of course, quite a different
+person) the unmitigated fool, these stories, at least the best of them,
+fully deserve the delightful phrase which Southey attributes to a friend
+of his. They are "necessary and voluptuous and right." They were, to the
+French eighteenth century and to French prose, almost what the ballad
+was to the English eighteenth century and to English verse; almost what
+the _Maerchen_ was to the prose and verse alike of yet un-Prussianised
+Germany. They were more than twice blessed: for they were charming in
+themselves; they exercised good influence on other literary productions;
+and they served as precious antidotes to bad things that they could not
+improve, and almost as precious alternatives to things good in
+themselves but of a different kind from theirs.
+
+What, however, none of the kinds discussed in this chapter gave
+entirely, while only the fairy story gave in part, and that in strong
+contrast to another part of itself, was a history of ordinary
+life--high, low, or middle--dealing with characters more or less
+representing live and individual personages; furnished with incidents of
+a possible and probable character more or less regularly constructed;
+furnished further with effective description of the usual scenery,
+manners, and general accessories of living; and, finally, giving such
+conversation as might be thought necessary in forms suitable to "men of
+this world," in the Shakespearian phrase. In other words, none of them
+attained, or even attempted to fulfil, the full definition of the novel.
+The scattered books to be mentioned in the next chapter did not,
+perhaps, in any one case--even Madame de la Fayette's--quite achieve
+this; but in all of them, even in Sorel's, we see more or less conscious
+or unconscious attempt at it.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[124] Herr Koerting (_v. sup._ p. 133) gave considerable space to
+Barclay's famous _Argenis_, which also appeared fairly early in the
+century. To treat, however, a Latin book, written by a Scotsman, with
+admittedly large if not main reference to European politics, as a
+"French novel," seems a literary solecism. I do not know whether it is
+rash to add that the _Argenis_ itself seems to me to have been wildly
+overpraised. It is at any rate one of the few books--one of the still
+fewer romances--which have defied my own powers of reading at more than
+one attempt.
+
+[125]
+
+[Sidenote: Note on marked influence of Greek Romance.]
+
+The repetition, in the seventeenth century, of something very like a
+phenomenon which we noticed in the twelfth, is certainly striking, and
+may seem at first sight rather uncanny. But those who have made some
+attempt to "find the whole" in literature, and in that attempt have at
+least found out something about the curious laws of revolution and
+recurrence which take the place of any progress in a straight line, will
+deem the thing natural enough. We declined, in the earlier case, to
+admit much, if any, direct influence of the accomplished Greek Romance
+on the Romance of the West; but we showed how classical subjects,
+whether pure or tinctured with Oriental influence, induced an immensely
+important development of this same Western Romance in two
+directions--that of manners, character, and passion, and that of marvel.
+In the later period classical influences of all sorts are again at work;
+but infinitely the larger part of that work is done by the Greek
+Romances themselves--pastoral, adventurous, and sentimental,--the dates
+of the translations of which will be given presently. And the newer
+Oriental kind--coming considerably later still and sharing its nature
+certainly, and perhaps its origin, not now with classical mythology, but
+again, in the most curious way, with Western folk stories--supplements
+and diversifies the reinforcement.
+
+[126] Scudery writes "Urfe," and this confirms the _obiter dictum_ of
+Sainte-Beuve, that with the Christian name, the "Monsieur," or some
+other title you must use the "_de_," otherwise not. But in this
+particular instance I think most French writers give the particle.
+
+[127] I myself, in writing a _Short History of French Literature_ many
+years ago, had to apologise for incomplete knowledge; and I will not
+undertake even now to have read every romance cursorily mentioned in
+this chapter--indeed, some are not very easy to get at. But I have done
+my best to extend my knowledge, assisted by a rather minute study of the
+contemporary English heroic romance in prose and verse; and I believe I
+may say that I do now really know the _Grand Cyrus_, though even now I
+will again not say that I have read every one of its perhaps two million
+words, or even the whole of every one of its more than 12,000 pages. In
+regard to the _Astree_ I have been less fortunately situated; but "I
+have been there and still would go."
+
+[128] The above remarks are most emphatically _not_ intended to refer to
+the work of Mr. Greg.
+
+[129] The sheep, whether as a beast of most multitude or for more
+recondite reasons, has, of course, the preference; but it may be
+permissible to say that no guardian of animals is excluded. Goat-herds
+in the Greek ran the shepherd hard; neat-herds and swine-herds abound
+everywhere except, as concerns the last, in Jewry; even the goose-girl
+figures, and has in Provencal at least a very pretty name--_auquiera_.
+
+[130] The mediaeval _pastourelle_ is no doubt to some extent
+conventional and "made in moulds." But it is by no means so unreal as
+(whether Greek was so or not) Roman pastoral pretty certainly was, and
+as modern has been beyond possibility of doubt. How good it could be,
+without any convention at all, Henryson showed once for all in our own
+language by _Robene and Makyne_.
+
+[131] _Theagenes and Chariclea_ had preceded it by thirteen years,
+though a fresh translation appeared in the same year, as did the first
+of _Hysminias and Hysmine_. Achilles Tatius (_Cleitophon and Leucippe_)
+had been partly done in 1545, but waited till 1568 for completion.
+
+[132] _Op. cit. sup._
+
+[133] They are almost always _Amours_ after their Greek prototypes,
+sometimes simple, often qualified, and these most frequently by such
+adjectives as "Infortunees et chastes," "Constantes et infortunees,"
+"Chastes et heureuses," "Pudiques," etc. etc. Not a few are taken direct
+from episodes of Ariosto or other elders; otherwise they are "loves" of
+Laoniphile, Lozie, Poliphile and Mellonimphe, Pegase (who has somehow or
+other become a nymph) and Leandre, Dachmion and Deflore (a rather
+unlucky heroine-name), etc. etc. Their authors are nearly as numerous as
+their titles; but the chief were a certain Sieur de Nerveze, whose
+numerous individual efforts were collected more than once to the number
+at least of a good baker's dozen, and a Sieur des Escuteaux, who had the
+same fortune. Sometimes the Hellenism went rather to seed in such titles
+as _Erocaligenese_, which supposed itself to be Greek for "Naissance
+d'un bel amour." It is only (at least in England) in the very largest
+libraries, perhaps in the British Museum alone, that there is any chance
+of examining these things directly; some of them escaped even the mighty
+hunt of M. Reynier himself. What the present writer has found is treated
+shortly in the text.
+
+[134] M. Reynier (most justly, but of course after many predecessors)
+points out that the common filiation of these things on Marini and
+Gongora is chronologically impossible. We could, equally of course,
+supply older examples still in English; and persons of any reading can
+carry the thing back through sixteenth- and fifteenth-century examples
+to the Dark Ages and the late Greek classics--if no further.
+
+[135] It is fair to say that the first is "make-weighted" with a
+pastoral play entitled _Athlette_, from the heroine's rather curious
+name.
+
+[136] It _has_ two poems and some miscellanea. Something like this is
+the case with another bookmaker of the class, Du Souhait.
+
+[137] It may be childish, but the association in this group of
+ladies--three of them bearing some of the greatest historic names of
+France, and the fourth that of the admirable critic with no other
+namesake of whom I ever met--seemed to me interesting. It is perhaps
+worth adding that Isabel de Rochechouart seems to have been not merely
+dedicatee but part author of the first tale.
+
+[138] The habit is common with these authors.
+
+[139] He gives more analysis than usual, but complains of the author's
+"affectation and bad taste." I venture to think this relatively rather
+harsh, though it is positively too true of the whole group.
+
+[140] _La Vie et les Oeuvres de Honore d'Urfe._ Par le Chanoine O. C.
+Reure, Paris, 1910.
+
+[141] The Abbe Reure, to whom I owe my own knowledge of the translation
+and dedication, says nothing more.
+
+[142] M. Reynier, in the useful book so often quoted, has shown that, as
+one would expect, this influence is not absent from the smaller French
+love-novels which preceded the _Astree_; indeed, as we saw, it is
+obvious, though in a form of more religiosity, as early as the
+_Heptameron_. But it was not till the seventeenth century in France, or
+till a little before it in some cases with us, that "Love in fantastic
+triumph sat" between the shadowing wings of sensual and intellectual
+passion.
+
+[143] They had, indeed, neither luck nor distinction after Honore's
+death: and the last of the family died, like others of the renegade
+nobles of France, by his own hand, to escape the guillotine which he
+himself had helped to establish.
+
+[144] The more orthodox "laws of love" which Celadon puts up in his
+"Temple of Astraea" are less amusing.
+
+[145] He constantly plays this part of referee and moraliser. But he is
+by no means exempt from the pleasing fever of the place, and some have
+been profane enough to think his mistress, Diane, more attractive than
+the divine Astree herself.
+
+[146] Very delicate persons have been shocked by the advantages afforded
+to Celadon in his disguise as the Druid's daughter, and the consequent
+familiarity with the innocent unrecognising heroine. But _honi soit_
+will cover them.
+
+[147] There is plenty of this, including a regular siege of the capital,
+Marcilly.
+
+[148] The constant confusion, in these quasi-classical romances, of
+masculine and feminine names is a rather curious feature. But the late
+Sir W. Gilbert played some tricks of the kind in _Pygmalion and
+Galatea_, and I remember an English novelist, with more pretensions to
+scholarship than Gilbert, making the particularly unfortunate blunder of
+attributing to Longus a book called "_Doris_ and Chloe."
+
+[149] It is fair to say that Urfe has been praised for these historical
+excursions or incursions of his.
+
+[150] Its difficulty of access in the French has been noted. The English
+translation may be less rare, but it is not a good one even of its kind.
+And, in face of the most false and misleading statements, never more
+frequent than at the present moment, about the efficacy of translations,
+it may be well to insist on the truth. For science, history philosophy
+(though in a descending ratio through these three) translations may
+serve. The man who knows Greek or Latin or any other _literature_ only
+through them knows next to nothing of that literature as such, and in
+its literary quality. The version may be, as in the leading case of
+FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam, literature itself of the highest class; but
+it is quite other literature than the original, and is, in fact, a new
+original itself. It may, while keeping closer, be as good as Catullus on
+Sappho or as bad as Mr. Gladstone on Toplady in form; but the form, even
+if copied, is always again other.
+
+[151] Some reasons will be given later for taking this first--not the
+least being the juxtaposition with the _Astree_. The actual order of the
+chief "Heroic" authors and books is as follows: Gomberville, _La
+Caritee_, 1622; _Polexandre_, 1632; _Citheree_, 1640-42. _La
+Calprenede_, _Cassandre_, 1642; _Cleopatre_, 1648; _Faramond_, 1662.
+Mlle. de Scudery, _Ibrahim_, 1641; _Artamene_, 1649; _Clelie_, 1656;
+_Almahide_, 1660.
+
+[152] Cousin relieved his work on "The True, the Good, and the
+Beautiful" not only with elaborate disquisitions on the ladies of the
+Fronde who, though certainly beautiful were not very very good, but with
+a long exposition of French society as revealed in the _Grand Cyrus_
+itself.
+
+[153] Scudery bore, and evidently rejoiced in, this sounding title,
+which can never have had a titular to whom it was more appropriate. The
+place seems to have been an actual fortress, though a small one, near
+Marseilles.
+
+[154] I blushed for my namesake when I found, some time afterwards, that
+he had copied this unusual (save in German) feminisation of the sun from
+Gomberville (_v. inf._ p. 240).
+
+[155] That is classical education: in comparison with which "all others
+is cagmaggers."
+
+[156] I have wavered a little between adopting French or Greek forms of
+names. But as the authors are not consistent, and as some of their more
+fanciful compounds classicalise badly, I have finally decided to stick
+to the text in every case, except in those of historical persons where
+French forms such as "Pisistrate" would jar.
+
+[157] Like Robina in _Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy_.
+
+[158] There are ten parts, each divisible into two _volumes_ and three
+books. There is also a division at the end of the fifth "part" and the
+tenth volume, the first five (ten) having apparently been issued
+together. The "parts" are continuously paged--running never, I think, to
+less than 1000 pages and more than once to a little over 1400.
+
+[159] Drama may have done harm here, if those dramatic critics who say
+that you must never "puzzle the audience" are right. The happy
+novel-reader is of less captious mood and mould: he trusts his author
+and hopes his author will pull him through.
+
+[160] Some exception in the way of occasional flashes may be made for
+two lively maids of honour to be mentioned later, Martesie and Doralise.
+
+[161] There is an immense "throw-back" after the Sinope affair, in which
+the previous history of Artamene and the circumstances of Mandane's
+abduction are recounted up to date--I hope that some readers at least
+will not have forgotten the introduction of Lancelot to Guinevere. We
+have here the Middle Age and the _Grand Siecle_ like philippines in a
+nutshell.
+
+[162] To understand the account, it must be remembered that the combat
+takes place in a position secluded from the two armies and strictly
+forbidden to lookers-on; also that it is to be absolutely _a outrance_.
+
+[163] It is not perhaps extravagant to suggest that Sir Walter had
+something of this fight, as well as of the _Combat des Trente_, in his
+mind when he composed the famous record of the Clan Chattan and Clan
+Quhele battle.
+
+[164] Praed's delightful Medora might have found the practice of the
+_Grand Cyrus_ rather oppressive; but she would have thoroughly approved
+its principles.
+
+[165] He is King of Cappadocia now, Astyages being alive; and only
+succeeds to Media later. It must never be forgotten that the
+_Cyropaedia_, not Herodotus, is the chief authority relied upon by the
+authors, though they sometimes mix the two.
+
+[166] There is a very great physical resemblance between the two, and
+this plays an important and repeated part in the book.
+
+[167] The King of Assyria, the King of Pontus, and the later Aryante
+(_v. inf._). The fourth is the "good Rival" Mazare, who, though he also
+is at one time in possession of the prize, and though he never is weary
+of "loving unloved," is too honourable a gentleman to force his
+attentions on an unwilling mistress.
+
+[168] It is probably, however, not quite fair to leave the reader, even
+for a time, under the impression that it is _merely_ an excursion. Of
+all the huge and numerous loop-lines, backwaters, ramifications,
+reticulations, episodes, or whatever they may be called, there is hardly
+one which has not a real connection with the general plot; and the
+appearance of Thomyris here has such connection (as will be duly seen)
+in a capital and vital degree.
+
+[169] Some readers no doubt will not need to be reminded that this is
+the original title of _The Marriage of Kitty_,--literally "gangway," but
+in the sense of "makeshift" or "_locum tenens_."
+
+[170] Cf. John Heywood's Interlude of _Love_. These stories also remind
+one of the short romances noticed above.
+
+[171] No gentleman, of course, could refuse a challenge pure and simple,
+unless in very peculiar circumstances; but hardly Sir Lucius O'Trigger
+or Captain M'Turk would oblige a friend to enter into this curious kind
+of bargain.
+
+[172] Another instance of the astonishing interweaving of the book
+occurs here; for here is the first mention of Sappho and other persons
+and things to be caught up sooner or later.
+
+[173] Such knowledge as I have of the other romances of the "heroic"
+group shows them to be, with the possible exception of those of La
+Calprenede, inferior in this respect, even allowing for the influence of
+the _Cyropaedia_.
+
+[174] An extract may be worth giving in a note: "For the rest, if there
+is anybody who is not acquainted enough with all my authors [_this is a
+very delightful sweep over literature_] to know what was the Ring of
+Gyges which is spoken of in this volume, let him not imagine that it is
+Angelica's, with which I chose to adorn Artamene; and let him, on the
+contrary, know that it was Ariosto who stole this famous ring which gave
+his Paladins so much trouble; that _he_ took it from those great men
+whom I am obliged to follow" [_a sweep of George's plumed hat in the
+best Molieresque marquis style to Herodotus, Xenophon, and Cicero (who
+comes in shortly) and the others_].
+
+[175] The opening sentences of this _Histoire_ give a curious picture of
+the etiquette of these spoken narrative episodes, which, from the
+letters and memoirs of the time, we can see to have been actually
+practised in the days of _Precieuse_ society. [_The story is not of
+course delivered in the presence of Panthea herself; but she sends a
+confidante, Pherenice, to tell it._] "They were no sooner in Araminta's
+apartment than, after having made Cyrus sit down, and placed Pherenice
+on a seat opposite to them, she begged her to begin her narrative and
+not to hide from them, if it were possible, the smallest thought of
+Abradates and Panthea. Accordingly this agreeable person, having made
+them a compliment so as to ask their pardon for the scanty art she
+brought to the story she was going to tell, actually began as follows:"
+
+[176] Observe how _vague_ what follows is. A scholar and a _modiste_,
+working in happiest conjunction, might possibly "create" the dress; but
+as for the face it might be any one out of those on one hundred
+chocolate-boxes.
+
+[177] This passage gives a key to the degradation of the word "elegant."
+It has kept the connotation of "grace," but lost that of "nobility."
+
+[178] _Abstracts_ of all the principal members of this group and others
+occurred in the _Bibliotheque Universelle des Romans_, which appeared as
+a periodical at Paris in 1778. But what I do not know is whether any one
+ever arranged an elaborate tabular syllabus of the book like that of
+Burton's _Anatomy_. It would lend itself admirably to the process if any
+one had time and inclination to do the thing.
+
+[179] With the exception, already noted, of Urfe; and even he is far
+below Donne.
+
+[180] There were, though not many, actual instances of capital
+punishment for disregard of the edicts against duelling, and
+imprisonment was common. But the deterrent effect was very small.
+Montmorency-Bouteville was the best-known victim.
+
+[181] It is amusing, as one reads this, to remember Hume's essay in
+which he lays stress on the _contrast_ between Greek and French ideas in
+this very matter of the duel.
+
+[182] A curious and rather doubtful position; well worth the
+consideration of anybody who wishes to write the much-wanted _History
+and Philosophy of Duelling_.
+
+[183] The author uses "Prince," as indeed one might expect, rather in
+the Continental than in the English way, and the persons who bear it are
+not always sons of kings or members of reigning families. The two most
+agreeable _quiproquos_ arising from this difference are probably the
+fictitious unwillingness of the excellent Miss Higgs to descend from
+"Princesse de Montcontour" to "Duchesse d'Ivry," and the, it is said,
+historical contempt of a comparatively recent Papal dignitary for an
+English Roman Catholic document which had no Princes among the
+signatories.
+
+[184] Nobody, unless I forget, has the wisdom to put the
+counter-question, "Can you ever cease loving if you have once really
+loved?" which is to be carefully distinguished from a third, "Can you
+love more than once?" But there are more approaches to these _arcana_ in
+the _Astree_ than in Mlle. de Scudery.
+
+[185] A very nice phrase.
+
+[186] He had refused to cross swords with her, and had lowered his own
+in salute.
+
+[187] Compare the not quite so ingenious adjustment of the intended
+burning of Croesus.
+
+[188] _Clelie_ is about as bad in this respect, _v. inf._: the others
+less so.
+
+[189] I have said that you _can_ do this with the _Astree_, and that
+this makes for superiority in it: but there also I think absolutely
+continuous reading of the whole would become "collar-work."
+
+[190] That is to say, several weeks occupied in the manner above
+indicated. You may sometimes read two of the volumes in a day, but much
+oftener you will find one enough; in the actual process for the present
+history some intervals must be allowed for digestion and _precis_; and,
+as above remarked, if other forms of "cheerfulness," in Dr. Johnson's
+friend Mr. Edwards's phrase, do not "break in" of themselves, you must
+make them, to keep any freshness in the task. I fancy the twenty volumes
+were, if not "my _sole_ occupation" (like that more cheerful and
+charitable one of the head-waiter at Limmer's), my main one for nearly
+twice twenty days.
+
+[191] In this respect the remarks above extend backwards to the
+_Astree_, and even to some of the smaller and earlier novels mentioned
+in connection with it. But the "Heroics," especially Mlle. de Scudery,
+_modernise_ the treatment not inconsiderably.
+
+[192] Achilles Tatius and the author of _Hysminias and Hysmine_ come
+nearest. But the first is too ancient and the last too modern.
+
+[193] We have indeed endeavoured to discover a "form" of the greatest
+and best kind in the Arthurian, but it has been acknowledged that it may
+not have been deliberately reached--or approached--by even a single
+artist, and that, if it was, the identity of that artist is not quite
+certain.
+
+[194] The intolerance of anything but scraps is one of the numerous arms
+and legs of the twentieth century Baal. There are some who have not
+bowed down to it.
+
+[195] For Soliman is not indisposed to fall in love with his illustrious
+Bassa's beloved.
+
+[196] At the close of _Old Mortality_.
+
+[197] One is lost if one begins quoting from these books. But there is
+another passage at the end of the same volume worth glancing at for its
+oddity. It is an elaborate chronological "checking" of the age of the
+different characters; and, odd as it is, one cannot help remembering
+that not a few authors from Walter Map (or whoever it was) to Thackeray
+might have been none the worse for similar calculations.
+
+[198] It is not, I hope, frivolous or pusillanimous, but merely honest,
+to add that, as I have spent much less time on _Clelie_ than on the
+other book, it has had less opportunity of boring me.
+
+[199] Cf. the _Astree_ as noted above.
+
+[200] He also wrote several plays.
+
+[201] This would supply the ghost of Varus with a crushing answer to
+"Give me back my legions!" in such form as "Why did you send me with
+them?"
+
+[202] At another time there might have been a little gentle satire in
+this, but hardly then.
+
+[203] It would seem, however, that the Scuderys were not originally
+Norman.
+
+[204] Chateaubriand hardly counts in strictness.
+
+[205] Although some say that almost every one of the numerous _personae_
+of the _Astree_ had a live original.
+
+[206] These books, having been constantly referred to in this fashion,
+offer a good many traps, into some of which I have fallen in the past,
+and may have done so even now. For instance, Koerting rightly points out
+that almost every one calls this "_La_ Jeune Alcidiane," whereas A. is
+the hero, who bears his mother's name.
+
+[207] I had made this remark before I knew that Koerting had anticipated
+it.
+
+[208] The more recent books which refer to him, and (I think) the
+British Museum Catalogue, drop this addition. But he was admittedly of
+the Pontcarre family.
+
+[209] Neither the original, however, nor this revision seems to have
+enjoyed the further honour of a place in the British Museum. Other books
+of his which at least sound novelish were _Darie_, _Aristandre_,
+_Diotrephe_, _Cleoreste_ (of which as well as of _Palombe_ analyses may
+be found in Koerting). The last would seem to be the most interesting.
+But in the bibliography of the Bishop's writings there are at least a
+dozen more titles of the same kind.
+
+[210] Cf. the "self-precipitation" of Celadon. Perhaps no class of
+writers has ever practised "imitation," in the wrong sense, more than
+these "heroic" romancers.
+
+[211] I am glad to find the high authority of my friend Sir Sidney
+Colvin on my side here as to the wider position--though he tells me that
+he was not, when he read _Endimion_, conscious of any positive
+indebtedness on Keats' part.
+
+[212] _V. sup._ p. 177, note 3.
+
+[213] Gombauld seems to have been a devotee of both Queens: and
+commentators will have it that this whole book is courtship as well as
+courtiership in disguise.
+
+[214] A kind of intermediary nymph--an enchantress indeed--who has
+assisted and advised him in his quests for the goddess.
+
+[215] Emile Magne, _Mme. de V._, Paris, 1907.
+
+[216] This sometimes causes positive obscurity as to fact. Thus it is
+impossible to make out from M. Magne whether Hortense, in her last days,
+actually married the cousin with whom she had been intimate in youth, or
+merely lived with him.
+
+[217] By M. H. E. Chatenet, Paris, 1911.
+
+[218] There is a little in the verse, most of which belongs to the
+"flying" kind so common in the century.
+
+[219] _V. inf._ upon it.
+
+[220] His own admirable introduction to Perrault in the Clarendon Press
+series will, as far as our subject is directly concerned, supply
+whatever a reader, within reason further curious, can want: and his
+well-known rainbow series of Fairy Books will give infinite
+illustration.
+
+[221] The longest of all, in the useful collection referred to in the
+text, are the _Oiseau Bleu_ and the charming _Biche au Bois_, each of
+which runs to nearly sixty pages. But both, though very agreeable, are
+distinctly "sophisticated," and for that very reason useful as gangways,
+as it were, from the simpler fairy tale to the complete novel.
+
+[222] Enchanters, ogres, etc. "count" as fairies.
+
+[223] Apuleius, who has a good deal of the "fairy" element in him, was
+naturally drawn upon in this group. The _Psyche_ indebtedness reappears,
+with frank acknowledgment, in _Serpentin Vert_.
+
+[224] If Perrault really wrote this, the Muses, rewarding him elsewhere
+for the good things he said in "The Quarrel," must have punished him
+here for the silly ones. It has, in fact, most of the faults which
+_neo_-classicism attributed to its opposite.
+
+[225] For a spoiling of this delightful story _v. inf._ on the
+_Cabinet_.
+
+[226] Its full title, "ou Collection Choisie des C. des F. _et autres
+Contes Merveilleux_," should in justice be remembered, when one feels
+inclined to grumble at some of the contents.
+
+[227] This indeed was the case, in one or other kind of longer fiction
+writing, with most of the authors to be mentioned. The total of this in
+the French eighteenth century was enormous.
+
+[228] She is even preceded by a Mme. de Murat, a friend of Mme. de
+Parabere, but a respectable fairy-tale writer. It does not seem
+necessary, according to the plan of this book, to give many particulars
+about these writers; for it is their writings, not themselves, that our
+subject regards. The curious may be referred to Walckenaer on the Fairy
+Tale in general, and Honore Bonhomme on the _Cabinet_ in particular, as
+well as (_v. inf._) to the thirty-seventh volume of the collection
+itself.
+
+[229] There is sometimes alliance and sometimes jealousy on this
+subject. In one tale the "Comte de Gabalis" is solemnly "had up," tried,
+and condemned as an impostor.
+
+[230] _Ricdin-Ricdon_, one of those which pass between Coeur de Lion and
+Blondel, is of the same kind, is also good, and is longer.
+
+[231] She seems, however (see vol. 37 as above), to have been a real
+person.
+
+[232] The would-be anonymous compiler (he was really Gueulette, on whom
+_v. inf._) of this and the other collections now to be noticed, when
+acknowledging his sufficiently evident _supercherie_ and some of his
+indebtednesses (_e.g._ to Straparola), defends this on Edgeworthian
+principles. But though it is quite true that a healthy curiosity as to
+such things may be aroused by tales, it should be left to satisfy
+itself, not forestalled and spoilt and stunted by immediate information.
+
+[233] The once very popular _Tales of the Genii_ (_v. inf._) which are
+often referred to by Scott and other men of his generation, seem to have
+dropped out of notice comparatively. We shall meet them here in French.
+
+[234] The late Mr. Henley was at one time much interested in this point,
+and consulted me about it. But I could tell him nothing; and I do not
+know whether he ever satisfied himself on the subject. Lesage _is_ said
+(though I am not sure that the evidence goes beyond _on dit_) to have
+revised the work of Petis de La Croix in the _Days_; and some of his own
+certainly corresponds to it.
+
+[235] Or, as it was once put, with easy epigram, when the artificial
+fairy tale is not dreadfully improper it is apt to be dreadfully proper.
+
+[236] Nothing suits the entire group better than the reply of the
+ferocious and sleepless but not unintelligent Sultan Hudgiadge, in the
+_Nouveaux Contes Orientaux_, when his little benefactress Moradbak says
+that she will have the honour to-morrow of telling him a _histoire
+Mongole_. "Le pays n'y fait rien," says he. And it doesn't.
+
+[237] All of them, be it remembered, the work of Gueulette (_v. inf._).
+
+[238] The recently recovered "episodes" of this are rather more like the
+_Cabinet_ stories than _Vathek_ itself; and perhaps a sense of this may
+have been part of the reason why Beckford never published them.
+
+[239] He came to ask, or rather demand, Zibeline's hand for his master:
+and the fairy made his magnificence appear rags and rubbish.
+
+[240] Mr. Toots's "I'm a-a-fraid you must have got very wet." When
+Courtebotte returns from his expedition, across six months of snow, to
+the Ice Mountain on the top of which rests Zibeline's heart, "many
+thousand persons" ask him, "_Vous avez donc eu bien froid?_"
+
+[241] She is also said to have been a "love-child" of no less a father
+than Prince Eugene.
+
+[242] Anybody who is curious as to this should look up the matter, as
+may be done most conveniently in an _excursus_ of Napier's edition,
+where my "friend of" [more than] "forty years," the late Mr. Mowbray
+Morris, in a note to his own admirable one-volume "Globe" issue, thought
+that Macaulay was "proved to be absolutely right." Morris, though his
+published and signed writings were few, and though he pushed to its very
+furthest the hatred of personal advertisement natural to most English
+"_gentlemen_ of the press," was a man of the world and of letters in
+most unusual combination; of a true Augustan taste both in criticism and
+in composition; of wit and of _savoir vivre_ such as few possess. But,
+like all men who are good for anything, he had some crazes: and one of
+them was Macaulay. I own that I do not think all the honours were on T.
+B. M.'s side in this mellay: but this is not the place to reason out the
+matter. What is quite certain is that in this long-winded and mostly
+trivial performance there is a great deal of intended, or at least
+suggested, political satire. But Johnson, though he might well think
+little of _Titi_, need not have despised the whole _Cabinet_ (or as he
+calls it, perhaps using the real title of another issue,
+_Bibliotheque_), and would not on another occasion. Indeed the
+diary-notes in which the thing occurs are too much in shorthand to be
+trustworthy texts.
+
+[243] Pierre Francois Godard de Beauchamps seems to have been another
+fair example of the half-scholarly bookmakers of the eighteenth century.
+He wrote a few light plays and some serious _Recherches sur les Theatres
+de France_ which are said to have merit. He translated the late and
+coxcombical but not uninteresting Greek prose romance of _Hysminias and
+Hysmine_, as well as that painful verse-novel, the _Rhodanthe and
+Dosicles_ of Theodoras Prodromus: and he composed, under a pseudonym, of
+course, a naughty _Histoire du Prince Apprius_ to match his good
+_Funestine_. The contrasted ways and works of such bookmakers at various
+times would make a not uninteresting essay of the Hayward type.
+
+[244] "Engageant," "Adresse," "Parlepeu," etc. The _Avertissement de
+l'Auteur_ is possibly a joke, but more probably an awkward and miss-fire
+_supercherie_ revealing the usual ignorance of the time as to matters
+mediaeval. "Alienore" (though it would be better without the final _e_)
+is a pretty as well as historic form of one of the most beautiful and
+protean of girl's names: but how did her father, a "seigneur _anglais_,"
+come to be called "Rivalon Murmasson"? And did they know much about
+Arabia Felix in Brittany when "Daniel Dremruz" reigned there between
+A.D. 680 and 720? Gueulette himself was a barrister and
+Procureur-Substitut at the Chatelet. He seems to have imitated Hamilton,
+to whom the editors of the Cabinet rather idly think him "equal,"
+though, inconsistently, they admit that Hamilton "stands alone" and
+Gueulette does not. On the other hand, they charge Voltaire with
+actually "tracing" over Gueulette. ("_Zadig_ est calque sur les _Soirees
+Bretonnes_.") This is again an exaggeration; but Gueulette had,
+undoubtedly, a pleasant and exceedingly fertile fancy, and a good knack
+of narrative.
+
+[245] The best perhaps is of a certain peppery Breton, Saint-Foix, who
+was successively a mousquetaire, a lieutenant of cavalry, aide-de-camp
+to "Broglie the War-god," and a long-lived _litterateur_ in Paris. M. de
+Saint-Foix picked a quarrel in the _foyer_ of the opera with an unknown
+country gentleman, as it seemed, and "gave him a rendezvous." But the
+other party replied coolly that it "was his custom" to be called on if
+people had business with him, and gave his address. Saint-Foix goes next
+morning, and is received with the utmost politeness and asked to
+breakfast. "That's not the question," says the indignant Breton. "Let us
+go out." "I never go out without breakfasting; _it is my custom_," says
+the provincial, and does as he says, politely repeating invitations from
+time to time to his fretting adversary. At last they do go out, to
+Saint-Foix's great relief; but they pass a _cafe_, and it is once more
+the stranger's sacred custom to play a game of chess or draughts after
+breakfast. The same thing happens with a "turn" in the Tuileries, at
+which Saint-Foix does not fume quite so much, because it is on the way
+to the Champs Elysees, where fighting is possible. The "turn" achieved,
+he himself proposes to adjourn there. "What for?" says the stranger
+innocently. "What _for_? A pretty question _pardieu_! To fight, of
+course! Have you forgotten it?" "_Fight!_ Why, sir, what are you
+thinking of? What would people say of me? A magistrate, a treasurer of
+France, put sword in hand? They would take us for a couple of fools."
+Which argument being unanswerable, according to the etiquette of the
+time, Saint-Foix leaves the dignitary--who himself takes good care to
+tell the story. It must be remembered--first that no actual _challenge_
+had passed, merely an ambiguous demand for addresses; secondly, that the
+treasurer, as the superior by far in rank, had a right to suppose
+himself known to his inferiors; and thirdly, that to challenge a
+"magistrate" was in France equivalent to being, in the words of a
+lampoon quoted by Macaulay, "'Gainst ladies and bishops excessively
+valiant" in England.
+
+[246] Although there is a good deal of merit in some of these tales,
+none of them approaches the charming _Diable Amoureux_ which Cazotte
+produced in 1772, twenty years before his famous and tragical death
+after once escaping the Revolutionary fangs. This little story, which is
+at least as much of a fairy tale as many things "cabinetted," would be
+nearly perfect if Cazotte had not unluckily botched it with a double
+ending, neither of the actual closes being quite satisfactory. If, in
+one of them, he had had the pluck to stop at the outcry of the succubus
+Biondetta when she has at last attained her object,
+
+    "Je suis le diable! mon cher Alvare, je suis le diable!"
+
+and let the rest be "wrop in mystery," it would probably have been the
+best way. But the bulk of the book is beyond improvement: and there is a
+fluid grace about the autobiographical _recit_ which is very rare
+indeed, at least in French, except in the unfortunate Gerard de Nerval,
+who was akin to Cazotte in many ways, and actually edited him. A very
+carping critic may object to the not obvious nor afterwards explained
+interposition of a pretty little spaniel between the original diabolic
+avatar of the hideous camel's head and the subsequent incarnation of the
+beautiful Biondetto-Biondetta; especially as the later employment of
+another dog, to prevent Alvare's succumbing to temptation earlier than
+he did, is confusing. But this would be "seeking a knot in a reed."
+Perhaps the greatest merit of the story, next to the pure tale-telling
+charm above noted, is the singular taste and skill with which Biondetta,
+except for her repugnance to the marriage ceremony, is prevented from
+showing the slightest diabolic character during her long cohabitation
+with Alvare, and her very "comingnesses" are arranged so as to give the
+idea, not in the least of a temptress, but of an extra-innocent but
+quite natural _ingenue_. Monk Lewis, of course, knew Cazotte, but he has
+coarsened his original woefully. It may perhaps be added that the first
+illustrations, reproduced in Gerard's edition as curiosities, are such
+in the highest degree. They are ushered with an ironic Preface: and they
+sometimes make one rub one's eyes and wonder whether Futurism and Cubism
+are not, like so many other things, merely recooked cabbage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--II
+
+_From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Cleves"_--_Anthony Hamilton_[247]
+
+
+[Sidenote: The material of the chapter.]
+
+Justice has, it is hoped, been done to the great classes of fictitious
+work which, during the seventeenth century, made fiction, as such,
+popular with high and of low in France. But it is one of the not very
+numerous safe generalisations or inductions which may be fished out from
+the wide and treacherous Syrtes of the history of literature, that it is
+not as a rule from "classes" that the best work comes; and that, when it
+does so come, it generally represents a sort of outside and uncovenanted
+element or constituent of the class. We have, unfortunately, lost the
+Greek epic, as a class; but we know enough about it, with its few
+specimens, such as Apollonius Rhodius earlier and Nonnus later, to warn
+us that, if we had more, we should find Homer not merely better, but
+different, and this though probably every practitioner was at least
+trying to imitate or surpass Homer. Dante stands in no class at all, nor
+does Milton, nor does Shelley; and though Shakespeare indulgently
+permits himself to be classed as an "Elizabethan dramatist," what
+strikes true critics most is again hardly more his "betterness" than
+his difference. The very astonishment with which we sometimes say of
+Webster, Dekker, Middleton, that they come near Shakespeare, is not due,
+as foolish people say, to any only less foolish idolatry, but to a true
+critical surprise at the approximation of things usually so very
+distinct.
+
+The examples in higher forms of literature just chosen for comparison do
+not, of course, show any wish in the chooser to even any French
+seventeenth-century novelist with Homer or Shakespeare, with Dante or
+Milton or Shelley. But the work noticed in the last chapter certainly
+includes nothing of strong idiosyncrasy. In other books scattered, in
+point of time of production, over great part of the period, such
+idiosyncrasy is to be found, though in very various measure. Now,
+idiosyncrasy is, if not the only difference or property, the inseparable
+accident of all great literature, and it may exist where literature is
+not exactly great. Moreover, like other abysses, it calls to, and calls
+into existence, yet more abysses of its own kind or not-kind; while
+school- and class-work, however good, can never produce anything but
+more class- and school-work, except by exciting the always dubious and
+sometimes very dangerous desire "to be different." The instances of this
+idiosyncrasy with which we shall now deal are the _Francion_ of Charles
+Sorel; the _Roman Comique_ of Paul Scarron; the _Roman Bourgeois_ of
+Antoine Furetiere; the _Voyages_, as they are commonly called (though
+the proper title is different[248]), _a la Lune et au Soleil_, of Cyrano
+de Bergerac, and the _Princesse de Cleves_ of Mme. de La Fayette; while
+last of all will come the remarkable figure of Anthony Hamilton, less
+"single-speech"[249] than the others and than his namesake later, but
+possessor of greater genius than any.
+
+[Sidenote: Sorel and _Francion_.]
+
+The present writer has long ago been found fault with for paying too
+much attention to _Francion_, and he may possibly (if any one thinks it
+worth while) be found fault with again for placing it here. But he does
+so from no mere childish desire to persist in some rebuked naughtiness,
+but from a sincere belief in the possession by the book of some
+historical importance. Any one who, on Arnoldian principles, declines to
+take the historic estimate into account at all, is, on those principles,
+justified in neglecting it altogether; whether, on the other hand, such
+neglect does not justify a suspicion of the soundness of the principles
+themselves, is another question. Charles Sorel, historiographer of
+France, was a very voluminous and usually a very dull writer. His
+voluminousness, though beside the enormous compositions of the last
+chapter it is but a small thing, is not absent from _Francion_, nor is
+his dulness. Probably few people have read the book through, and I am
+not going to recommend anybody to do so. But the author does to some
+extent deserve the cruel praise of being "dull in a new way" (or at
+least of being evidently in quest of a new way to be dull in), as
+Johnson wrongfully said of Gray. His book is not a direct imitation of
+any one thing, though an attempt to adapt the Spanish picaresque style
+to French realities and fantasies is obvious enough, as it is likewise
+in Scarron and others. But this is mixed with all sorts of other
+adumbrations, if not wholly original, yet showing that quest of
+originality which has been commended. It is an almost impossible book to
+analyse, either in short or long measure. The hero wanders about France,
+and has all sorts of adventures, the recounting of which is not without
+touches of Rabelais, of the _Moyen de Parvenir_, perhaps of the rising
+fancies about the occult, which generated Rosicrucianism and "astral
+spirits" and the rest of it--a whole farrago, in short, of matters
+decent and indecent, congruous seldom and incongruous often. It is not
+like Sterne, because it is dull, and at the same time quasi-romantic;
+while "sensibility" had not come in, though we shall see it do so within
+the limits of this chapter. It has a resemblance, though not very much
+of one, to the rather later work of Cyrano. But it is most like two
+English novels of far higher merit which were not to appear for a
+century or a century and a half--Amory's _John Buncle_ and Graves's
+_Spiritual Quixote_. As it is well to mention things together without
+the danger of misleading those who run as they read, and mind the
+running rather than the reading, let me observe that the liveliest part
+of _Francion_ is duller than the dullest of _Buncle_, and duller still
+than the least lively thing in Graves. The points of resemblance are in
+pillar-to-postness, in the endeavour (here almost entirely a failure,
+but still an endeavour) to combine fancy with realism, and above all in
+freedom from following the rules of any "school." Realism in the good
+sense and originality were the two things that the novel had to achieve.
+Sorel missed the first and only achieved a sort of "distanced" position
+in the second. But he tried--or groped--for both.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_.]
+
+I am bound to say that in Sorel's other chief works of fiction, the
+_Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_, I find the same curious mixture of
+qualities which have made me more lenient than most critics to
+_Francion_. And I do not think it unfair to add that they also incline
+me still more to think that there was perhaps a little of the _Pereant
+qui ante nos_ feeling in Furetiere's attack (_v. inf._ p. 288). Neither
+could possibly be called by any sane judge a good book, and both display
+the uncritical character,[250] the "pillar-to-postness," the
+marine-store and almost rubbish-heap promiscuity, of the more famous
+book. Like it, they are much too big.[251] But the _Berger Extravagant_,
+in applying (very early) the _Don Quixote_ method, as far as Sorel could
+manage it, to the _Astree_, is sometimes amusing and by no means always
+unjust. _Polyandre_ is, in part, by no means unlike an awkward first
+draft of a _Roman Bourgeois_. The scene in the former, where Lysis--the
+Extravagant Shepherd and the Don Quixote of the piece,--making an
+all-night sitting over a poem in honour of his mistress Charite (the
+Dulcinea), disturbs the unfortunate Clarimond--a sort of "bachelor," the
+sensible man of the book, and a would-be reformer of Lysis--by constant
+demands for a rhyme[252] or an epithet, is not bad. The victim revenges
+himself by giving the most ludicrous words he can think of, which Lysis
+duly works in, and at last allows Clarimond to go to sleep. But he is
+quickly waked by the poet running about and shouting, "I've got it! I've
+found it. The finest _reprise_ [= refrain] ever made!" And in
+_Polyandre_ there is a sentence (not the only one by many) which not
+only gives a _point de repere_ of an interesting kind in itself, but
+marks the beginning of the "_farrago libelli_ moderni": "Ils ont des
+mets qu'ils nomment des _bisques_; je doute si c'est potage ou
+fricassee."
+
+Here we have (1) Evidence that Sorel was a man of observation, and took
+an interest in really interesting things.
+
+(2) A date for the appearance, or the coming into fashion, of an
+important dish.
+
+(3) An instance of the furnishing of fiction with something more than
+conventional adventure on the one hand, and conventional harangues or
+descriptions on the other.
+
+(4) An interesting literary parallel; for here is the libelled
+"Charroselles" (_v. inf._ p. 288) two centuries beforehand, feeling a
+doubt, exactly similar to Thackeray's, as to whether a _bouillabaisse_
+should be called soup or broth, brew or stew. Those who understand the
+art and pastime of "book-fishing" will not go away with empty baskets
+from either of these neglected ponds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Scarron and the _Roman Comique_.]
+
+Almost as different a person as can possibly be conceived from Sorel was
+Paul Scarron, Abbe, "Invalid to the Queen," husband of the future Mme.
+de Maintenon, author of burlesques which did him no particular honour,
+of plays which, if not bad, were never first rate, of witticisms
+innumerable, most of which have perished, and of other things, besides
+being a hero of some facts and more legends; but author also of one book
+in our own subject of much intrinsic and more historical interest, and
+original also of passages in later books more interesting still to all
+good wits. Not a lucky man in life (except for the possession of a
+lively wit and an imperturbable temper), he was never rich, and he
+suffered long and terribly from disease--one of the main subjects of his
+legend, but, after all discussions and carpings, looking most like
+rheumatoid arthritis, one of the most painful and incurable of ailments.
+But Scarron was, and has been since, by no means unlucky in literature.
+He had, though of course not an unvaried, a great popularity in a
+troubled and unscrupulous time: and long after his death two of the
+foremost novelists of his country selected him for honourable treatment
+of curiously different kinds. Somehow or other the introduction of men
+of letters of old time into modern books has not been usually very
+fortunate, except in the hands of Thackeray and a very few more. Among
+these latter instances may certainly be ranked the pleasant picture of
+Scarron's house, and of the attention paid to him by the as yet
+unmarried Francoise d'Aubigne, in Dumas's _Vingt Ans Apres_. Nor is it
+easy to think of any literary following that, while no doubt bettering,
+abstains so completely from robbing, insulting, or obscuring its model
+as does Gautier's _Capitaine Fracasse_.
+
+It is, however, with this pleasant book itself that we are concerned.
+Here again, of course, the picaresque model comes in, and there is a
+good deal of directly borrowed matter. But a much greater talent, and
+especially a much more acute and critical wit than Sorel's, brings to
+that scheme the practical-artistic French gift, the application of which
+to the novel is, in fact, the subject of this whole chapter. Not
+unkindly judges have, it is true, pronounced it not very amusing; and an
+uncritical comparer may find it injured by Gautier's book. The older
+novel has, indeed, nothing of the magnificent style of the overture of
+this latter. _Le Chateau de la Misere_ is one of the finest things of
+the kind in French; for exciting incident there is no better duel in
+literature than that of Sigognac and Lampourde; and the delicate
+pastel-like costumes and manners and love-making of Gautier's longest
+and most ambitious romance are not to be expected in the rough
+"rhyparography"[253] of the seventeenth century. But in itself the
+_Roman Comique_ is no small performance, and historically it is almost
+great. We have in it, indeed, got entirely out of the pure romance; but
+we have also got out of the _fatrasie_--the mingle-mangle of story,
+jargon, nonsense, and what not,--out of the mere tale of adventure, out
+of the mere tale of _grivoiserie_. We have borrowed the comic
+dramatist's mirror--the "Muses' Looking-glass"--and are holding it up to
+nature without the intervention of the conventionalities of the stage.
+The company to which we are introduced is, no doubt, pursuing a somewhat
+artificial vocation; but it is pursuing it in the way of real life, as
+many live men and women have pursued it. The mask itself may be of their
+trade and class; but it is taken off them, and they are not merely
+_personae_, they are persons.
+
+To re-read the _Roman Comique_ just after reading the _Grand Cyrus_ came
+into the present plan partly by design and partly by accident; but I had
+not fully anticipated the advantage of doing so. The contrast of the
+two, and the general relation between them could, indeed, escape no one;
+but an interval of a great many years since the last reading of
+Scarron's work had not unnaturally caused forgetfulness of the
+deliberate and minute manner in which he himself points that contrast,
+and even now and then satirises the _Cyrus_ by name. The system of inset
+_Histoires_,[254] beginning with the well-told if borrowed story of Don
+Carlos of Aragon and his "Invisible Mistress," is, indeed, hardly a
+contrast except in point of the respective lengths of the digressions,
+nor does it seem to be meant as a parody. It has been said that this
+"inset" system, whether borrowed from the episodes of the ancients or
+descended from the constant divagations of the mediaeval romances, is
+very old, and proved itself uncommonly tenacious of life. But the
+difference between the opening of the two books can hardly have been
+other than intentional on the part of the later writer; and it is a very
+memorable one, showing nothing less than the difference between romance
+and novel, between academic generalities and "realist" particularism,
+and between not a few other pairs of opposites. It has been fully
+allowed that the overture of the _Grand Cyrus_ is by no means devoid of
+action, even of bustle, and that it is well done of its kind. But that
+kind is strongly marked in the very fact that there is a sort of
+faintness in it. The burning of Sinope, the distant vessel, the
+street-fighting that follows, are what may be called "cartoonish"--large
+washes of pale colour. The talk, such as there is, is stage-talk of the
+pseudo-grand style. It is curious that Scarron himself speaks of the
+_Cyrus_ as being the most "furnitured" romance, _le roman le plus
+meuble_, that he knows. To a modern eye the interiors are anything but
+distinct, despite the elaborate _ecphrases_, some of which have been
+quoted.[255]
+
+Now turn to the opening passage of the _Roman Comique_, which strikes
+the new note most sharply. It is rather well known, probably even to
+some who have not read the original or Tom Brown's congenial translation
+of it; for it has been largely laid under contribution by the
+innumerable writers about a much greater person than Scarron, Moliere.
+The experiences of the _Illustre Theatre_ were a little later, and
+apparently not so sordid as those of the company of which Scarron
+constituted himself historiographer; but they cannot have been very
+dissimilar in general kind, and many of the characteristics, such as the
+assumption now of fantastic names, "Le Destin," "La Rancune," etc., now
+of rococo-romantic ones, such as "Mademoiselle de l'Etoile," remained
+long unaltered. But perhaps a fresh translation may be attempted, and
+the attempt permitted. For though the piece, of course, has recent
+Spanish and even older Italian examples of a kind, still the change in
+what may be called "particular universality" is remarkable.
+
+     [Sidenote: The opening scene of this.]
+
+     The sun had finished more than half his course, and his
+     chariot, having reached the slope of the world, was running
+     quicker than he wished. If his horses had chosen to avail
+     themselves of the drop of the road, they would have got
+     through what remained of the day in less than half or
+     quarter of an hour; but instead of pulling at full strength,
+     they merely amused themselves by curvetting, as they drew in
+     a salt air, which told them the sea, wherein men say their
+     master goes to bed every night, was close at hand. To speak
+     more like a man of this world, and more intelligibly, it was
+     between five and six o'clock, when a cart came into the
+     market-place of Le Mans. This cart was drawn by four very
+     lean oxen, with, for leader, a brood-mare, whose foal
+     scampered about round the cart, like a silly little thing as
+     it was. The cart was full of boxes and trunks, and of great
+     bundles of painted canvas, which made a sort of pyramid, on
+     the top of which appeared a damsel, dressed partly as for
+     town, partly for country. By the side of the cart walked a
+     young man, as ill-dressed as he was good-looking. He had on
+     his face a great patch, which covered one eye and half his
+     cheek, and he carried a large fowling-piece on his shoulder.
+     With this he had slain divers magpies, jays, and crows; and
+     they made a sort of bandoleer round him, from the bottom
+     whereof hung a pullet and a gosling, looking very like the
+     result of a plundering expedition. Instead of a hat he had
+     only a night-cap, with garters of divers colours twisted
+     round it, which headgear looked like a very unfinished
+     sketch of a turban. His coat was a jacket of grey stuff,
+     girt with a strap, which served also as a sword-belt, the
+     sword being so long that it wanted a fork to draw it neatly
+     for use. He wore breeches trussed, with stockings attached
+     to them, as actors do when they play an ancient hero; and
+     he had, instead of shoes, buskins of a classical pattern,
+     muddied up to the ankle. An old man, more ordinarily but
+     still very ill-dressed, walked beside him. He carried on his
+     shoulders a bass-viol, and as he stooped a little in
+     walking, one might, at a distance, have taken him for a
+     large tortoise walking on its hind legs. Some critic may
+     perhaps murmur at this comparison; but I am speaking of the
+     big tortoises they have in the Indies, and besides I use it
+     at my own risk. Let us return to our caravan.
+
+     It passed in front of the tennis-court called the Doe, at
+     the door of which were gathered a number of the topping
+     citizens of the town. The novel appearance of the conveyance
+     and team, and the noise of the mob who had gathered round
+     the cart, induced these honourable burgomasters to cast an
+     eye upon the strangers; and among others a Deputy-Provost
+     named La Rappiniere came up, accosted them, and, with the
+     authority of a magistrate, asked who they were. The young
+     man of whom I have just spoken replied, and without touching
+     his turban (inasmuch as with one of his hands he held his
+     gun and with the other the hilt of his sword, lest it should
+     get between his legs) told the Provost that they were French
+     by birth, actors by profession, that his stage-name was Le
+     Destin, that of his old comrade La Rancune, and that of the
+     lady who was perched like a hen on the top of their baggage,
+     La Caverne. This odd name made some of the company laugh;
+     whereat the young actor added that it ought not to seem
+     stranger to men with their wits about them than "La
+     Montagne," "La Vallee," "La Rose," or "L'Epine." The talk
+     was interrupted by certain sounds of blows and oaths which
+     were heard from the front of the cart. It was the
+     tennis-court attendant, who had struck the carter without
+     warning, because the oxen and the mare were making too free
+     with a heap of hay which lay before the door. The row was
+     stopped, and the mistress of the court, who was fonder of
+     plays than of sermons or vespers, gave leave, with a
+     generosity unheard of in her kind, to the carter to bait his
+     beasts to their fill. He accepted her offer, and, while the
+     beasts ate, the author rested for a time, and set to work to
+     think what he should say in the next chapter.
+
+The sally in the last sentence, with the other about the tortoise, and
+the mock solemnity of the opening, illustrate two special
+characteristics, which will be noticed below, and which may be taken in
+each case as a sort of revulsion from, or parody of, the solemn ways of
+the regular romance. There may be even a special reference to the
+"_Phebus_" the technical name or nickname of the "high language" in
+these repeated burlesque introductions of the sun. And the almost pert
+flings and cabrioles of the narrator form a still more obvious and
+direct Declaration of Independence. But these are mere details, almost
+trivial compared with the striking contrast of the whole presentation
+and _faire_ of the piece, when taken together with most of the subjects
+of the last chapter.
+
+It may require a little, but it should not require much, knowledge of
+literary history to see how modern this is; it should surely require
+none to see how vivid it is--how the sharpness of an etching and the
+colour of a bold picture take the place of the shadowy "academies" of
+previous French writers.[256] There may be a very little exaggeration
+even here--in other parts of the book there is certainly some--and
+Scarron never could forget his tendency to that form of exaggeration
+which is called burlesque. But the stuff and substance of the piece is
+reality.
+
+An important item of the same change is to be found in the management of
+the insets, or some of them. One of the longest and most important is
+the autobiographical history of Le Destin or Destin (the article is
+often dropped), the tall young man with the patch on his face. But this
+is not thrust bodily into the other body of the story, _Cyrus_-fashion;
+it is alternated with the passages of that story itself, and that in a
+comparatively natural manner--night or some startling accident
+interrupting it; while how even courtiers could find breath to tell, or
+patience and time to hear, some of the interludes of the _Cyrus_ and its
+fellows is altogether past comprehension. There is some coarseness in
+Scarron--he would not be a comic writer of the seventeenth century if
+there were none. Not very long after the beginning the tale is
+interrupted by a long account of an unseemly practical joke which surely
+could amuse no mortal after a certain stage of schoolboyhood. But there
+is little or no positive indecency: the book contrasts not more
+remarkably with the Aristophanic indulgence of the sixteenth century
+than with the sniggering suggestiveness of the eighteenth. Some remnants
+of the Heroic convention (which, after all, did to a great extent
+reflect the actual manners of the time) remain, such as the obligatory
+"compliment." Le Destin is ready to hang himself because, at his first
+meeting with the beautiful Leonore, his shyness prevents his getting a
+proper "compliment" out. On the other hand, the demand for _esprit_,
+which was confined in the Heroics to a few privileged characters, now
+becomes almost universal. There are tricks, but fairly novel
+tricks--affectations like "I don't know what they did next" and the
+others noted above: while the famous rhetorical beginnings of chapters
+appear not only at the very outset, but at the opening of the second
+volume, "Le Soleil donnant aplomb sur les antipodes,"--things which a
+century later Fielding, and two centuries later Dickens, did not disdain
+to imitate.
+
+Scarron did not live to finish the book, and the third part or volume,
+which was tinkered--still more the _Suite_, which was added--by somebody
+else, are very inferior. The somewhat unfavourable opinions referred to
+above may be partly based on the undoubted fact that the story is rather
+formless; that its most important machinery is dependent, after all, on
+the old _rapt_ or abduction, the heroines of which are Mademoiselle de
+l'Etoile (nominally Le Destin's sister, really his love, and at the end
+his wife) and Angelique, daughter of La Caverne, who is provided with a
+lover and husband of 12,000 (_livres_) a year in the person of Leandre,
+one of the stock theatrical names, professedly "valet" to Le Destin, but
+really a country gentleman's son. Thus everybody is somebody else, again
+in the old way. Another, and to some tastes a more serious, blot may be
+found in the everlasting practical jokes of the knock-about kind,
+inflicted on the unfortunate Ragotin, a sort of amateur member of the
+troupe. But again these "_low_ jinks" were an obvious reaction from
+(just as the ceremonies were followings of) the solemnity of the
+Heroics; and they continued to be popular for nearly two hundred years,
+as English readers full well do know. Nevertheless these defects merely
+accompany--they do not mar or still less destroy--the striking
+characteristics of progress which appear with them, and which, without
+any elaborate abstract of the book, have been set forth somewhat
+carefully in the preceding pages. Above all, there is a real and
+considerable attempt at character, a trifle _typy_ and stagy perhaps,
+but still aiming at something better; and the older _nouvelle_-fashion
+is not merely drawn upon, but improved upon, for curious anecdotes,
+striking situations, effective names. Under the latter heads it is
+noteworthy that Gautier simply "lifted" the name Sigognac from Scarron,
+though he attached it to a very different personage; and that Dumas got,
+from the same source, the startling incident of Aramis suddenly
+descending on the crupper of D'Artagnan's horse. The jokes may, of
+course, amuse or not different persons, and even different moods of the
+same person; the practical ones, as has been hinted, may pall, even when
+they are not merely vulgar. Practical joking had a long hold of
+literature, as of life; and it would be sanguine to think that it is
+dead. Izaak Walton, a curious contemporary--"disparate," as the French
+say, of Scarron, would not quite have liked the quarrel between the
+dying inn-keeper, who insists on being buried in his oldest sheet, full
+of holes and stains, and his wife, who asks him, from a sense rather of
+decency than of affection, how he can possibly think of appearing thus
+clad in the Valley of Jehoshaphat? But there is something in the book
+for many tastes, and a good deal more for the student of the history of
+the novel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Furetiere and the _Roman Bourgeois_.]
+
+The couplet-contrast of the Comic Romance of Scarron and the "Bourgeois"
+Romance of Furetiere[257] is one of the most curious among the minor
+phenomena of literary history; but it repeats itself in that history so
+often that it becomes, by accumulation, hardly minor. There is a vast
+difference between Furetiere and Miss Austen, and a still vaster one
+between Scarron and Scott; but the two French books stand to each other,
+on however much lower a step of the stair, very much as _Waverley_
+stands to _Pride and Prejudice_, and they carry on a common revulsion
+against their forerunners and a common quest for newer and better
+developments. The _Roman Bourgeois_, indeed, is more definitely, more
+explicitly, and in further ways of exodus, a departure from the subjects
+and treatment of most of the books noticed in the last chapter. It is
+true that its author attributes to the reading of the regular romances
+the conversion of his pretty idiot Javotte from a mere idiot to
+something that can, at any rate, hold her own in conversation, and take
+an interest in life.[258] But he also adds the consequence of her
+elopement, without apparently any prospect of marriage, but with an
+accomplished gentleman who has helped her to _esprit_ by introducing her
+to those very same romances; and he has numerous distinct girds at his
+predecessors, including one at the multiplied abductions of Mandane
+herself. Moreover his inset tale _L'Amour Egare_ (itself something of a
+parody), which contains most of the "key"-matter, includes a satirical
+account (not uncomplimentary to her intellectual, but exceedingly so to
+her physical characteristics) of "Sapho" herself. For after declining to
+give a full description of poor Madeleine, for fear of disgusting his
+readers, he tells us, in mentioning the extravagant compliments
+addressed to her in verse, that she only resembled the Sun in having a
+complexion yellowed by jaundice; the Moon in being freckled; and the
+Dawn in having a red tip to her nose!
+
+But this last ill-mannered particularity illustrates the character, and
+in its way the value, of the whole book. A romance, or indeed in the
+proper sense a story--that is to say, _one_ story,--it certainly is
+not: the author admits the fact frankly, not to say boisterously, and
+his title seems to have been definitely suggested by Scarron's. The two
+parts have absolutely no connection with one another, except that a
+single personage, who has played a very subordinate part in the first,
+plays a prominent but entirely different one in the second. This second
+is wholly occupied by legal matters (Furetiere had been "bred to the
+law"), and the humours and amours of a certain female litigant,
+Collantine, to whom Racine and Wycherley owe something, with the unlucky
+author "Charroselles"[259] and a subordinate judge, Belastre, who has
+been pitch-forked by interest into a place which he finally loses by his
+utter incapacity and misconduct. To understand it requires even more
+knowledge of old French law terms generally than parts of Balzac do of
+specially commercial and financial lingo.
+
+This "specialising" of the novel is perhaps of more importance than
+interest; but interest itself may be found in the First Part, where
+there is, if not much, rather more of a story, some positive
+character-drawing, a fair amount of smart phrase, and a great deal of
+lively painting of manners. There is still a good deal of law, to which
+profession most of the male characters belong, but there are plentiful
+compensations.
+
+As far as there is any real story or history, it is that of two girls,
+both of the legal _bourgeoisie_ by rank. The prettier, Javotte, has been
+briefly described above. She is the daughter of a rich attorney, and
+has, before her emancipation and elopement, two suitors, both
+advocates; the one, Nicodeme, young, handsome, well dressed, and a great
+flirt, but feather-headed; the other, Bedout, a middle-aged sloven,
+collector, and at the same time miser, but very well off. The second
+heroine, Lucrece, is also handsome, though rather less so than Javotte:
+but she has plenty of wits. She is, however, in an unfortunate position,
+being an orphan with no fortune, and living with an uncle and aunt, the
+latter of whom has a passion for gaming, and keeps open house for it, so
+that Lucrece sees rather undesirable society. Despite her wits, she
+falls a victim to a rascally marquis, who first gives her a written
+promise of marriage, and afterwards, by one of the dirtiest tricks ever
+imagined by a novelist--a trick which, strange to say, the present
+writer does not remember to have seen in any other book, obvious though
+it is--steals it.[260] Fortunately for her, Nicodeme, who is of her
+acquaintance, and a general lover, has also given her, though not in
+earnest and for no serious "consideration," a similar promise: and by
+the help of a busybody legal friend she gets 2000 crowns out of him to
+prevent an action for breach. And, finally, Bedout, after displacing the
+unlucky Nicodeme (thus left doubly in the cold), and being himself
+thrown over by Javotte's elopement, takes to wife, being induced to do
+so by a cousin, Lucrece herself, in blissful ignorance (which is never
+removed) of her past. The cousin, Laurence, has also been the link of
+these parts of the tale with an episode of _precieuse_ society in which
+the above-mentioned inset is told; a fourth feminine character,
+Hyppolyte (_vice_ Philipote), of some individuality, is introduced;
+Javotte makes a greater fool of herself than ever; and her future
+seducer, Pancrace, makes his appearance.
+
+Thus reduced to "argument" form, the story may seem even more modern
+than it really is, and the censures, apologies, etc., put forward above
+may appear rather unjust. But few people will continue to think so
+after reading the book. The materials, especially with the "trimmings"
+to be mentioned presently, would have made a very good novel of the
+completest kind. But, once more, the time had not come, though Furetiere
+was, however unconsciously, doing his best to bring it on. One fault,
+not quite so easy to define as to feel, is prominent, and continued to
+be so in all the best novels, or parts of novels, till nearly the middle
+of the nineteenth century. There is far too much mere _narration_--the
+things being not smartly brought before the mind's eye as _being_ done,
+and to the mind's ear as _being_ said, but recounted, sometimes not even
+as present things, but as things that _have been_ said or done already.
+This gives a flatness, which is further increased by the habit of not
+breaking up even the conversation into fresh paragraphs and lines, but
+running the whole on in solid page-blocks for several pages together.
+Yet even if this mechanical mistake were as mechanically redressed,[261]
+the original fault would remain and others would still appear. A scene
+between Javotte and Lucrece, to give one instance only, would enliven
+the book enormously; while, on the other hand, we could very well spare
+one of the few passages in which Nicodeme is allowed to be more than the
+subject of a _recit_, and which partakes of the knock-about character so
+long popular, the young man and Javotte bumping each other's foreheads
+by an awkward slip in saluting, after which he first upsets a piece of
+porcelain and then drags a mirror down upon himself. There is "action"
+enough here; while, on the other hand, the important and promising
+situations of the two promises to Lucrece, and the stealing by the
+Marquis of his, are left in the flattest fashion of "recount." But it
+was very long indeed before novelists understood this matter, and as
+late as Hope's famous _Anastasius_ the fault is present, apparently to
+the author's knowledge, though he has not removed it.
+
+To a reader of the book who does not know, or care to pay attention to,
+the history of the matter, the opening of the _Roman Bourgeois_ may seem
+to promise something quite free, or at any rate much more free than is
+actually the case, from this fault. But, as we have seen, they generally
+took some care of their openings, and Furetiere availed himself of a
+custom possibly, to present readers, especially those not of the Roman
+Church, possessing an air of oddity, and therefore of freshness, which
+it certainly had not to those of his own day. This was the curious
+fashion of _quete_ or collection at church--not by a commonplace verger,
+or by respectable churchwardens and sidesmen, but by the prettiest girl
+whom the _cure_ could pitch upon, dressed in her best, and lavishing
+smiles upon the congregation to induce them to give as lavishly, and to
+enable her to make a "record" amount.
+
+The original meeting of Nicodeme and the fair Javotte takes place in
+this wise, and enables the author to enlighten us further as to matters
+quite proper for novel treatment.[262] The device of keeping gold and
+large silver pieces uppermost in the open "plate"; the counter-balancing
+mischief of covering them with a handful of copper; the licensed habit,
+a rather dangerous one surely, of taking "change" out of that plate,
+which enables the aspirant for the girl's favour to clear away the
+obnoxious _sous_ as change for a whole pistole--all this has a kind of
+attraction for which you may search the more than myriad pages of
+_Artamene_ without finding it. The daughter of a citizen's family, in
+the French seventeenth century, was kept with a strictness which perhaps
+explains a good deal in the conduct of an Agnes or an Isabelle in
+comedy. She was almost always tied to her mother's apron-strings, and
+even an accepted lover had to carry on his courtship under the very
+superfluous number of _six_ eyes at least. But the Church was
+misericordious. The custom of giving and receiving holy water could be
+improved by the resources of amatory science; but this of the _quete_
+was, it would seem, still more full of opportunity. Apparently (perhaps
+because in these city parishes the church was always close by, and the
+whole proceedings public) the fair _queteuse_ was allowed to walk home
+alone; and in this instance Nicodeme, having ground-baited with his
+pistole, is permitted to accompany Javotte Vollichon to her father's
+door--her extreme beauty making up for the equally extreme silliness of
+her replies to his observations.
+
+The possible objection that these things, fresh and interesting to us,
+were ordinary and banal to them, would be a rather shallow one. The
+point is that, in previous fiction, circumstantial verisimilitude of
+this kind had hardly been tried at all. So it is with the incident of
+Nicodeme sending a rabbit (supposed to be from his own estate, but
+really from the market--a joke not peculiar to Paris, but specially
+favoured there), or losing at bowls a capon, to old Vollichon, and on
+the strength of each inviting himself to dinner; the fresh girds at the
+extraordinary and still not quite accountable plenty of marquises
+(Scarron, if I remember rightly, has the verb _se marquiser_); and the
+contributory (or, as the ancients would have said, symbolic) dinners--as
+it were, picnics at home--of _bourgeois_ society at each other's houses,
+with not a few other things. A curious plan of a fashion-review, with
+patterns for the benefit of ladies, is specially noticeable at a period
+so early in the history of periodicals generally, and is one of the not
+few points in which there is a certain resemblance between Furetiere and
+Defoe.
+
+It is in this daring to be quotidian and contemporary that his claim to
+a position in the history of the novel mainly consists. Some might add a
+third audacity, that of being "middle-class." Scarron had dealt with
+barn-mummers and innkeepers and some mere riff-raff; but he had included
+not a few nobles, and had indulged in fighting and other "noble"
+subjects. There is no fighting in Furetiere, and his chief "noble"
+figure--the rascal who robbed Lucrece of her virtue and her keys--is
+the sole figure of his class, except Pancrace and the _precieuse_
+Angelique. This is at once a practical protest against the common
+interpretation and extension of Aristotle's prescription of
+"distinguished" subjects, and an unmistakable relinquishment of mere
+picaresque squalor. Above all, it points the way in practice, indirectly
+perhaps but inevitably, to the selection of subjects that the author
+really _knows_, and that he can treat with the small vivifying details
+given by such knowledge, and by such knowledge alone. There is an
+advance in character, an advance in "interior" description--the
+Vollichon family circle, the banter and the gambling at Lucrece's home,
+the humour of a _precieuse_ meeting, etc. In fact, whatever be the
+defects[263] in the book, it may almost be called an advance all round.
+A specimen of this, as of other pioneer novels, may not be superfluous;
+it is the first conversation, after the collection, between Nicodeme and
+Javotte.
+
+     [Sidenote: Nicodeme takes Javotte home from church.]
+
+     This new kind of gallantry [_his removing the offensive
+     copper coins as pretended "change" for his pistole_] was
+     noticed by Javotte, who was privately pleased with it, and
+     really thought herself under an obligation to him.
+     Wherefore, on their leaving the church, she allowed him to
+     accost her with a compliment which he had been meditating
+     all the time he was waiting for her. This chance favoured
+     him much, for Javotte never went out without her mother, who
+     kept her in such a strait fashion of living that she never
+     allowed her to speak to a man either abroad or at home. Had
+     it not been so, he would have had easy access to her; for as
+     she was a solicitor's daughter and he was an advocate, they
+     were in relations of close affinity and sympathy--such as
+     allow as prompt acquaintance as that of a servant-maid with
+     a _valet-de-chambre_.[264]
+
+
+     As soon as the service was over and he could join her, he
+     said, as though with the most delicate attention,
+     "Mademoiselle, as far as I can judge, you cannot have failed
+     to be lucky in your collection, being so deserving and so
+     beautiful." "Alas! Sir," replied Javotte in the most
+     ingenuous fashion, "you must excuse me. I have just been
+     counting it up with the Father Sacristan, and I have only
+     made 65 livres 5 sous. Now, Mademoiselle Henriette made 90
+     livres a little time since; 'tis true she collected all
+     through the forty hours'[265] service, and in a place where
+     there was the finest Paradise ever seen." "When I spoke,"
+     said Nicodeme, "of the luck of your collection, I was not
+     only speaking of the charity you got for the poor and the
+     church; I meant as well what you gained for yourself." "Oh,
+     Sir!" replied Javotte, "I assure you I gained nothing. There
+     was not a farthing more than I told you; and besides, can
+     you think I would butter my own bread[266] on such an
+     occasion? 'Twould be a great sin even to think of it." "I
+     was not speaking," said Nicodeme, "of gold or silver. I only
+     meant that nobody can have given you his alms without at the
+     same time giving you his heart." "I don't know," quoth
+     Javotte, "what you mean by hearts; I didn't see one in the
+     plate." "I meant," added Nicodeme, "that everybody before
+     whom you stopped must, when he saw such beauty, have vowed
+     to love and serve you, and have given you his heart. For my
+     own part I could not possibly refuse you mine." Javotte
+     answered him naively, "Well! Sir, if you gave it me I must
+     have replied at once, 'God give it back to you.'"[267]
+     "What!" cried Nicodeme rather angrily, "can you jest with me
+     when I am so much in earnest, and treat in such a way the
+     most passionate of all your lovers?" Whereat Javotte blushed
+     as she answered, "Sir, pray be careful how you speak. I am
+     an honest girl. I have no lovers. Mamma has expressly
+     forbidden me to have any." "I have said nothing to shock
+     you," replied Nicodeme. "My passion for you is perfectly
+     honest and pure, and its end is only a lawful suit." "Then,
+     Sir," answered Javotte, "you want to marry me? You must ask
+     my papa and mamma for that; for indeed I do not know what
+     they are going to give me when I marry." "We have not got
+     quite so far yet," said Nicodeme. "I must be assured
+     beforehand of your esteem, and know that you have admitted
+     me to the honour of being your servant." "Sir," said
+     Javotte, "I am quite satisfied with being my own servant,
+     and I know how to do everything I want."
+
+Now this, of course, is not extraordinarily brilliant; but it
+is an early--a _very_ early--beginning of the right sort of
+thing--conversation of a natural kind transferred from the boards to the
+book, sketches of character, touches of manners and of life generally,
+individual, national, local. The cross-purposes of the almost idiotic
+_ingenue_ and the philandering gallant are already very well done; and
+if Javotte had been as clever as she was stupid she could hardly have
+set forth the inwardness of French marriages more neatly than by the
+blunt reference to her _dot_, or have at the same moment more thoroughly
+disconcerted Nicodeme's regularly laid-out approaches for a flirtation
+in form, with only a possible, but in any case distant, termination in
+anything so prosaic as marriage.[268] The thing as a whole is, in
+familiar phrase, "all right" in kind and in scheme. It requires some
+perfecting in detail; but it is in every reasonable sense perfectible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Cyrano de Bergerac and his _Voyages_.]
+
+It has been possible to speak of one of the pioneer books mentioned in
+this chapter with more allowance than most of the few critics and
+historians who have discussed or mentioned it have given it, and to
+recommend the others, not uncritically but quite cheerfully. This
+satisfactory state of things hardly persists when we reach what seems
+perhaps, to those who have never read it, not the least considerable of
+the batch--the _Voyage a la Lune_ of Cyrano de Bergerac, as his name is
+in literary history, though he never called himself so.[269] Cyrano,
+though he does not seem to have had a very fortunate life, and died
+young, yet was not all unblest, and has since been rather blessed than
+banned. Even in his own day Boileau spoke of him with what, in the
+"Bollevian" fashion, was comparative compliment--that is to say, he said
+that he did not think Cyrano so bad as somebody else. But long
+afterwards, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Gautier took him up
+among his _Grotesques_ and embalmed him in the caressing and
+immortalising amber of his marvellous style and treatment; while at the
+end of the same century one of the chief living poets and playwrights of
+France made him the subject of a popular and really pathetic drama. His
+_Pedant Joue_ is not a stupid comedy, and had the honour of furnishing
+Moliere with some of that "property" which he was, quite rightly, in the
+habit of commandeering wherever he found it. _La Mort d'Agrippine_ is by
+no means the worst of that curious school of tragedy, so like and so
+unlike to that of our own "University wits," which was partly
+exemplified and then transcended by Corneille, and which some of us are
+abandoned enough to enjoy more as readers, though as critics we may find
+more faults with it, than we find it possible to do with Racine. But the
+_Voyage a la Lune_, as well as, though rather less than, its
+complementary dealing with the Sun, has been praised with none of these
+allowances. On the contrary, it has had ascribed to it the credit of
+having furnished, not scraps of dialogue or incident, but a solid
+suggestion to an even greater than Moliere--to Swift; remarkable
+intellectual and scientific anticipations have been discovered in it,
+and in comparatively recent times versions of it have been published to
+serve as proofs that Cyrano was actually a father[270] of French
+eighteenth-century _philosophie_--a different thing, once more, from
+philosophy.
+
+Let us, however, use the utmost possible combination of critical
+magnanimity with critical justice: and allow these precious additions,
+which did not form part of the "classical" or "received" text of the
+author, not to count against him. _For_ him they can only count with
+those who still think the puerile and now hopelessly stale jests about
+Enoch and Elijah and that sort of thing clever. But they can be either
+disregarded or at least left out of the judgment, and it will yet remain
+true that the so-called _Voyage_ is a very disappointing book indeed. As
+this is one of the cases where the record of personal experience is not
+impertinent, I may say that I first read it some forty years ago, when
+fresh from reading about it and its author in "Theo's" prose; that I
+therefore came to it with every prepossession in its favour, and strove
+to like it, or to think I did. I read it again, if I remember rightly,
+about the time of the excitement about M. Rostand's _Cyrano_, and liked
+it less still; while when I re-read it carefully for this chapter, I
+liked it least of all. There is, of course, a certain fancifulness about
+the main idea of a man fastening bottles of dew round him in the
+expectation (which is justified) that the sun's heat will convert the
+dew into steam and raise him from the ground. But the reader (it is not
+necessary to pay him the bad compliment of explaining the reasons) will
+soon see that the scheme is aesthetically awkward, if not positively
+ludicrous, and scientifically absurd. Throwing off bottles to lower your
+level has a superficial resemblance to the actual principles and
+practice of ballooning; but in the same way it will not here "work" at
+all.
+
+This, however, would be a matter of no consequence whatever if the
+actual results of the experiment were amusing. Unfortunately they are
+not. That the aeronaut's first miss of the Moon drops him into the new
+French colony of Canada may have given Cyrano some means of interesting
+people then; but, reversing the process noticed in the cases of Scarron
+and Furetiere, it does not in the least do so now. We get nothing out of
+it except some very uninteresting gibes at the Jesuits, and, connected
+with these, some equally uninteresting discussions whether the flight to
+the Moon is possible or not.
+
+Still one hopes, like the child or fool of popular saying, for the Moon
+itself to atone for Canada, and tolerates disappointment till one
+actually gets there. Alas! of all Utopias that have ever been Utopiated,
+Cyrano's is the most uninteresting, even when its negative want of
+interest does not change into something positively disagreeable. The
+Lunarians, though probably intended to be, are hardly at all a satire on
+us Earth-dwellers. They are bigger, and, as far as the male sex is
+concerned, apparently more awkward and uglier; and their ideas in
+religion, morals, taste, etc., are a monotonously direct reversal of our
+orthodoxies. There is at least one passage which the absence of all
+"naughty niceness" and the presence of the indescribably nasty make a
+good "try" for the acme of the disgusting. More of it is less but still
+nasty; much of it is silly; all of it is dull.[271]
+
+Nevertheless it is not quite omissible in such a history as this, or in
+any history of French literature. For it is a notable instance of the
+coming and, indeed, actual invasion, by fiction, of regions which had
+hitherto been the province of more serious kinds; and it is a link, not
+unimportant if not particularly meritorious, in the chain of the
+eccentric novel. Lucian of course had started it long ago, and Rabelais
+had in a fashion taken it up but a century before. But the fashioners of
+new commonwealths and societies, More, Campanella, Bacon, had been as a
+rule very serious. Cyrano, in his way, was serious too; but the way
+itself was not one of those for which the ticket has been usually
+reserved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de la Fayette and _La Princesse de Cleves_.]
+
+But the last of this batch is the most important and the best of the
+whole. This is _La Princesse de Cleves_, by Marie Madeleine Pioche de
+Lavergne, Comtesse de la Fayette, friend of Madame de Sevigne and of
+Huet; more or less Platonic, and at any rate last, love of La
+Rochefoucauld; a woman evidently of great charm as well as of great
+ability, and apparently of what was then irreproachable character. She
+wrote, besides other matter of no small literary value and historical
+interest, four novels, the minor ones, which require no special notice
+here, being _Zaide_, _La Comtesse de Tende_, and (her opening piece)
+_Madame de Montpensier_. Their motives and methods are much the same as
+those of the _Princesse de Cleves_, but this is much more effectively
+treated. In fact, it is one of the very few highly praised books, at the
+beginnings of departments of literature, which ought not to disappoint
+candid and not merely studious readers.
+
+It begins with a sketch, very cleverly done, of the Court of Henri II.,
+with the various prominent personages there--the King and the Queen,
+Diane de Poitiers, Queen Mary of Scotland ("La Reine Dauphine"),
+"Madame, soeur du Roi" (the second Margaret of Valois--not so clever
+as her aunt and niece namesakes, and not so beautiful as the latter,
+but, like both of them, a patroness of men of letters, especially
+Ronsard, and apparently a very amiable person, though rude things were
+said of her marriage, rather late in life, to the Duke of Savoy), with
+many others of, or just below, royal blood. Of these latter there are
+Mademoiselle de Chartres, the Prince de Cleves, whom she marries, and
+the Duc de Nemours, who completes the usual "triangle."[272] As is also
+usual--in a way not unconnected in its usuality with that of triangular
+sequences--the Princess has more _amitie_ and _estime_ than _amour_ for
+her husband, though he, less usually, is desperately in love with her.
+So, very shortly, is Nemours, who is represented as an almost
+irresistible lady-killer, though no libertine, and of the "respectful"
+order. His conduct is not quite that of the Elizabethan or Victorian
+ideal gentleman; for he steals his mistress's portrait while it is being
+shown to a mixed company; eavesdrops (as will be seen presently) in the
+most atrocious manner; chatters about his love affairs in a way almost
+worse; and skulks round the Princess's country garden at night in a
+manner exceedingly unlikely to do his passion any good, and nearly
+certain to do (as it does) her reputation much harm. Still, if not an
+Amadis, he is not in the least a Lovelace, and that is saying a good
+deal for a French noble of his time. The Princess slowly falls in love
+with him (she has seen him steal the portrait, though he does not know
+this and she dares say nothing for fear of scandal); and divers Court
+and other affairs conduct this concealed _amourette_ (for she prevents
+all "declaration") in a manner very cleverly and not too tediously told,
+to a point when, though perfectly virtuous in intention, she feels that
+she is in danger of losing self-control.
+
+[Sidenote: Its central scene.]
+
+Probably, though it is the best known part of the book, it may be well
+to give the central scene, where M. de Nemours plays the eavesdropper to
+M. and Mme. de Cleves, and overhears the conversation which, with equal
+want of manners and of sense, he afterwards (it is true, without names)
+retails to the Vidame de Chartres, a relation of Mme. de Cleves herself,
+and a well-known gossip, with a strong additional effect on the fatal
+consequences above described. It is pretty long, and some "cutting" will
+be necessary.
+
+     He[273] heard M. de Cleves say to his wife, "But why do you
+     wish not to return to Paris? What can keep you in the
+     country? For some time past you have shown a taste for
+     solitude which surprises me and pains me, because it keeps
+     us apart. In fact, I find you sadder than usual, and I am
+     afraid that something is annoying you." "I have no
+     mind-trouble," she answered with an embarrassed air; "but
+     the tumult of the Court is so great, and there is always so
+     much company at home, that both body and mind must needs
+     grow weary, and one wants only rest." "Rest," replied he,
+     "is not the proper thing for a person of your age. Your
+     position is not, either at home or at Court, a fatiguing
+     one, and I am rather afraid that you do not like to be with
+     me." "You would do me a great injustice if you thought so,"
+     said she with ever-increasing embarrassment, "but I entreat
+     you to leave me here. If you would stay too, I should be
+     delighted--if you would stay here alone and be good enough
+     to do without the endless number of people who never leave
+     you." "Oh! Madam," cried M. de Cleves, "your looks and your
+     words show me that you have reasons for wishing to be alone
+     which I do not know, and which I beg you to tell me." He
+     pressed her a long time to do so without being able to
+     induce her, and after excusing herself in a manner which
+     increased the curiosity of her husband, she remained in deep
+     silence with downcast eyes. Then suddenly recovering her
+     speech, and looking at him, "Do not force me," said she, "to
+     a confession which I am not strong enough to make, though I
+     have several times intended to do so. Think only that
+     prudence forbids a woman of my age, who is her own
+     mistress,[274] to remain exposed to the trials[275] of a
+     Court." "What do you suggest, Madame?" cried M. de Cleves.
+     "I dare not put it in words for fear of offence." She made
+     no answer, and her silence confirming her husband in his
+     thought, he went on: "You tell me nothing, and that tells me
+     that I do not deceive myself." "Well then, Sir!" she
+     answered, throwing herself at his feet, "I will confess to
+     you what never wife has confessed to her husband; but the
+     innocence of my conduct and my intentions gives me strength
+     to do it. It is the truth that I have reasons for quitting
+     the Court, and that I would fain shun the perils in which
+     people of my age sometimes find themselves. I have never
+     shown any sign of weakness, and I am not afraid of allowing
+     any to appear if you will allow me to retire from the Court,
+     or if I still had Mme. de Chartres to aid in guarding me.
+     However risky may be the step I am taking, I take it
+     joyfully, as a way to keep myself worthy of being yours. I
+     ask your pardon a thousand times if my sentiments are
+     disagreeable to you; at least my actions shall never
+     displease you. Think how--to do as I am doing--I must have
+     more friendship and more esteem for you than any wife has
+     ever had for any husband. Guide me, pity me, and, if you
+     can, love me still." M. de Cleves had remained, all the time
+     she was speaking, with his head buried in his hands, almost
+     beside himself; and it had not occurred to him to raise his
+     wife from her position. When she finished, he cast his eyes
+     upon her and saw her at his knees, her face bathed in tears,
+     and so admirably lovely that he was ready to die of grief.
+     But he kissed her as he raised her up, and said:
+
+[_The speech which follows is itself admirable as an expression of
+despairing love, without either anger or mawkishness; but it is rather
+long, and the rest of the conversation is longer. The husband naturally,
+though, as no doubt he expects, vainly, tries to know who it is that
+thus threatens his wife's peace and his own, and for a time the
+eavesdropper (one wishes for some one behind him with a jack-boot on) is
+hardly less on thorns than M. de Cleves himself. At last a reference to
+the portrait-episode (see above) enlightens Nemours, and gives, if not
+an immediate, a future clue to the unfortunate husband._]
+
+It will be seen at once that this is far different from anything we have
+had before--a much further importation of the methods and subjects of
+poetry and drama into the scheme of prose fiction.
+
+We need only return briefly to the main story, the course of which, as
+one looks back to it through some 250 years of novels, cannot be very
+difficult to "_pro_ticipate." A continuance of Court interviews and
+gossip, with the garrulity of Nemours himself and the Vidame, as well as
+the dropping of a letter by the latter, brings a complete
+_eclaircissement_ nearer and nearer. The Countess, though more and more
+in love, remains virtuous, and indeed hardly exposes herself to direct
+temptation. But her husband, becoming aware that Nemours is the lover,
+and also that he is haunting the grounds at Coulommiers by night when
+the Princess is alone, falls, though his suspicion of actual infidelity
+is removed too late, into hopeless melancholy and positive illness, till
+the "broken heart" of fact or fiction releases him. Nemours is only too
+anxious to marry the widow, but she refuses him, and after a few years
+of "pious works" in complete retirement, herself dies early.
+
+It is possible that, even in this brief sketch, some faults of the book
+may appear; it is certain that actual reading of it will not utterly
+deprive the fault-finder of his prey. The positive history--of which
+there is a good deal, very well told in itself,[276] and the appearance
+of which at all is interesting--is introduced in too great proportions,
+so as to be largely irrelevant. Although we know that this extremely
+artificial world of love-making with your neighbours' wives was also
+real, in a way and at a time, the reality fails to make up for the
+artifice, at least as a novel-subject. It is like golf, or acting, or
+bridge--amusing enough to the participants, no doubt, but very tedious
+to hear or read about.[277] Another point, again true to the facts of
+the time, no doubt, but somewhat repulsive in reading, is the almost
+entire absence of Christian names. The characters always speak to each
+other as "Monsieur" and "Madame," and are spoken of accordingly. I do
+not think we are ever told either of M. or of Mme. de Cleves's name. Now
+there is one person at least who cannot "see" a heroine without knowing
+her Christian name. More serious, in different senses of that word, is
+the fact that there is still ground for the complaint made above as to
+the too _solid_ character of the narrative. There is, indeed, more
+positive dialogue, and this is one of the "advances" of the book. But
+even there the writer has not had the courage to break it up into
+actual, not "reported," talk, and the "said he's" and "said she's,"
+"replied so and so's" and "observed somebody's" perpetually get in the
+way of smooth reading.
+
+So much in the way of alms for Momus. Fortunately a much fuller
+collection of points for admiration offers itself. It has been admitted
+that the historical element[278] is perhaps, in the circumstances and
+for the story, a trifle irrelevant and even "in the way." But its
+presence at all is the important point. Some, at any rate, of the
+details--the relations of that Henri II., with whom, it seems, we may
+_not_ connect the very queer, very rare, but not very beautiful
+_faience_ once called "Henri Deux" ware,[279] with his wife and his
+mistress; his accidental death at the hands of Montgomery; the history
+of Henry VIII.'s matrimonial career, and the courtship of his daughter
+by a French prince (if not _this_ French prince)--are historical enough
+to present a sharp contrast with the cloudy pseudo-classical canvas of
+the Scudery romances, or the mere fable-land of others. Any critical
+Brown ought to have discovered "great capabilities" in it; and though it
+was not for more than another century that the true historical novel got
+itself born, this was almost the nearest experiment to it. But the other
+side--the purely sentimental--let us not say psychological--side, is of
+far more consequence; for here we have not merely aspiration or
+chance-medley, we have attainment.
+
+There is a not wholly discreditable prejudice against abridgments,
+especially of novels, and more especially against what are called
+condensations. But one may think that the simple knife, without any
+artful or artless aid of interpolated summaries, could carve out of _La
+Princesse de Cleves_, as it stands, a much shorter but fully
+intelligible presentation of its passionate, pitiful subject. A slight
+want of _individual_ character may still be desiderated; it is hardly
+till _Manon Lescaut_ that we get that, but it was not to be expected.
+Scarcely more to be expected, but present and in no small force, is that
+truth to life; that "knowledge of the human heart" which had been
+hitherto attempted by--we may almost say permitted to--the poet, the
+dramatist, the philosopher, the divine; but which few, if any, romancers
+had aimed at. This knowledge is not elaborately but sufficiently "set"
+with the halls and _ruelles_ of the Court, the gardens and woods of
+Coulommiers; it is displayed with the aid of conversation, which, if it
+seems stilted to us, was not so then; and the machinery employed for
+working out the simple plot--as, for instance, in the case of the
+dropped letter, which, having originally nothing whatever to do with any
+of the chief characters, becomes an important instrument--is sometimes
+far from rudimentary in conception, and very effectively used.
+
+It is therefore no wonder that the book did two things--things of
+unequal value indeed, but very important for us. In the first place, it
+started the School of "Sensibility"[280] in the novel, and so provided a
+large and influential portion of eighteenth-century fiction. In the
+second--small as it is--it almost started the novel proper, the class of
+prose fiction which, though it may take on a great variety of forms and
+colours, though it may specialise here and "extravagate" there, yet in
+the main distinguishes itself from the romance by being first of all
+subjective--by putting behaviour, passion, temperament, character,
+motive before incident and action in the commoner sense--which had had
+few if any representatives in ancient times, had not been disentangled
+from the romantic envelope in mediaeval, but was to be the chief new
+development of modern literature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There seemed to be several reasons for separating Hamilton from the
+other fairy-tale writers. The best of all is that he has the same
+qualification for the present chapter as that which has installed in it
+the novelists already noticed--that of idiosyncrasy. This leads to, or
+rather is founded on, the consideration that his tales are fairy-tales
+only "after a sort," and testify rather to a prevalent fashion than to a
+natural affection for the kind.[281] Thirdly, he exhibits, in his
+supernatural matter, a new and powerful influence on fiction
+generally--that of the first translated _Arabian Nights_. Lastly, he is
+in turn himself the head of two considerable though widely different
+sub-departments of fiction--the decadent and often worthless but largely
+cultivated department of what we may call the fairy-tale
+_improper_,[282] and the very important and sometimes consummately
+excellent "ironic tale," to be often referred to, and sometimes fully
+discussed, hereafter.
+
+The singularity of Hamilton's position has always been recognised; but
+until comparatively recently, his history and family relations were very
+little understood. Since the present writer discussed him in a
+paper[283] now a quarter of a century old in print, and older in
+composition, further light has been thrown on his life and surroundings
+in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and more still in a monograph
+by a lady[284] whose researches will, it is hoped, sooner or later be
+published. A very little, too, of the unprinted work which was held back
+at his death has been recovered. But this, it seems, includes nothing of
+importance; and his fame will probably always rest, as it has so long
+and so securely rested, on the _Memoires de Grammont_, the few but
+sometimes charming independent verses, some miscellanies not generally
+enough appreciated, and the admirable group of ironic tales which set a
+fashion hardly more admirably illustrated since by Voltaire and
+Beckford[285] and Lord Beaconsfield, to name no others. Of these things
+the verses,[286] unfortunately, do not concern us at all; and the
+_Memoires_ and miscellanies[286] only in so far as they add another, and
+one of the very best, to the brilliant examples of personal narrative of
+which the century is so full, and which have so close a connection with
+the novel itself. But the _Tales_ are, of course, ours of most obvious
+right; and they form one of the most important _points de repere_ in our
+story.
+
+To discuss, on the one hand, how Hamilton's singularly mixed conditions
+and circumstances of birth[287] and life[288] influenced his literary
+production would be interesting, but in strictness rather irrelevant. To
+attempt, on the other, at any great length to consider the influences
+which produced the kind of tale he wrote would have more relevance, but
+would, if pursued in similar cases elsewhere, lengthen the book
+enormously. Two main ancestor or progenitor forces, as they may be
+called, though both were of very recent date and one actually
+contemporary, may be specified. The one was the newborn fancy for
+fairy-tales, and Eastern tales in particular. The other was the now
+ingrained disposition towards ironic writing which, begun by Rabelais,
+as a most notable origin, varied and increased by Montaigne and others,
+had, just before Hamilton, received fresh shaping and tempering from not
+a few writers, especially Saint-Evremond. There is indeed no doubt that
+this last remarkable and now far too little read writer,[289] who, let
+it be remembered, was, like Hamilton, and even more so, an intimate
+friend of Grammont and also an inmate of Charles's court, was Hamilton's
+direct and immediate model so far as he had any such--his "master" in
+the general tone of _persiflage_. But master and pupil chose, as a rule,
+different subjects, and the idiosyncrasy of each was intense; it must be
+remembered, too, that both were of Norman blood, though that of the
+Hamiltons had long been transfused into the veins of a new nationality,
+while Saint-Evremond was actually born in Normandy. The Norman (that is
+to say, the English, with a special intention of difference[290]) in
+each could be very easily pointed out if such things were our business.
+But it is the application of this, and of other things in relation to
+the development of the novel, that we have to deal with.
+
+It is said, and there is good reason for believing it to be true, that
+all the stories have a more or less pervading vein of "key" application
+in them. But this, except for persons particularly interested in such
+things, has now very little attraction. It has been admitted that it
+probably exists, as indeed it does in almost everything of the day, from
+the big as well as "great" _Cyrus_ to the little, but certainly not much
+less great, _Princesse de Cleves_. But our subject is what Hamilton
+writes about these people, not the people about whom he may or may not
+be writing.
+
+What we have left of Hamilton's tales, as far as they have been printed
+(and, as was said above, not much more seems to exist), consists of five
+stories of very unequal length, and in two cases out of the five
+unfinished. One of the finished pieces, _Fleur d'Epine_, and one of the
+unfinished--although unfinished it is not only one of the longest, but,
+unluckily in a way, by far the best of all--_Les Quatre Facardins_, are
+"framework" stories, and avowedly attach themselves, in an irreverent
+sort of attachment, to the _Arabian Nights_; the others, _Le Belier_,
+_Zeneyde_ (unfinished), and _L'Enchanteur Faustus_, are independent, and
+written in the mixed verse-and-prose style which had been made popular
+by various writers, especially Chapelle, but which cannot be said to be
+very acceptable in itself. Taken together, they fill a volume of just
+over 500 average octavo pages in the standard edition of 1812; but their
+individual length is very unequal. The two longest, the fragmentary
+_Quatre Facardins_ and the finished _Le Belier_, run each of them to 142
+pages; the shortest, _L'Enchanteur Faustus_, has just five-and-twenty;
+while _Fleur d'Epine_, in its completeness, has 114, and _Zeneyde_, in
+its incompleteness, runs to 78, and might have run, for aught one can
+tell--in the mixed tangle of Roman and Merovingian history in which the
+author (possibly in ridicule of Madeleine de Scudery's classical
+chronicling) has chosen to plunge it--to 780 or 7800, which latter
+figure would, after all, have been little more than half the length of
+the _Grand Cyrus_ itself.
+
+We may take _L'Enchanteur Faustus_ first, as it requires the shortest
+notice. In fact, if it had not been Hamilton's, it would hardly require
+any. Written to a "charmante Daphne" (evidently one of the English
+Jacobite exiles, from a reference to a great-great-grandfather of hers
+who was "admiral in Ireland" during Queen Elizabeth's time), it is
+occupied by a story of the great Queen herself, who is treated with the
+mixture of admiration (for her intelligence and spirit) with "scandal"
+(about her person and morals) that might be expected at St. Germains.
+The subject is the usual exhibition of dead beauties (here by, not to,
+Faustus), with Elizabeth's affected depreciation of Helen, Cleopatra,
+and Mariamne, and her equally affected admiration of Fair Rosamond,[291]
+whom she insists on summoning _twice_, despite Faustus's warning, and
+with disastrous consequences. Hamilton's irony is so pervading that one
+does not know whether ignorance, carelessness, or intention made him not
+only introduce Sidney and Essex as contemporary favourites of Elizabeth,
+but actually attribute Rosamond's end to poor Jane Shore instead of to
+Queen Eleanor! This would matter little if the tale had been stronger;
+but though it is told with Hamilton's usual easy fluency, the Queen's
+depreciations, the flattery of the courtiers, and the rest of it, are
+rather slightly and obviously handled. One would give half a dozen like
+it for that _Second_ (but not necessarily _Last_) _Part_ of the
+_Facardins_, which Crebillon the younger is said to have actually seen
+and had the opportunity of saving, a chance which he neglected till too
+late.
+
+As _L'Enchanteur Faustus_ is the shortest of the completed tales, so _Le
+Belier_ is the longest; indeed, as indicated above, it is the same
+length as what we have of _Les Quatre Facardins_. It is also--in that
+unsatisfactory and fragmentary way of knowledge with which literature
+often has to content itself--much the best known, because of the
+celebrated address of the giant Moulineau to the hero-beast "Belier, mon
+ami,... si tu voulais bien commencer par le commencement, tu me ferais
+plaisir." There are many other agreeable things in it; but it has on the
+whole a double or more than double portion of the drawback which attends
+these "key" stories. It was written to please his sister, Madame de
+Grammont, who had established herself in a country-house, near
+Versailles. This she transformed from a mere cottage, called Moulineau,
+into an elegant villa to which she gave the name of Pontalie. There were
+apparently some difficulties with rustic neighbours, and Anthony wove
+the whole matter into this story, with the giant and the (of course
+enchanted) ram just mentioned; and the beautiful Alie who hates all men
+(or nearly all); and her father, a powerful druid, who is the giant's
+enemy; and the Prince de Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse, and other
+personages of the environs of Paris, who were no doubt recognisable and
+interesting once, but who, whether recognisable or not, are not
+specially interesting now. To repeat that there are good scenes and
+piquant remarks is merely to say once more that the thing is Hamilton's.
+But, on the whole, the present writer at any rate has always found it
+the least interesting (next to _L'Enchanteur Faustus_) of all.
+
+On the other hand, _Zeneyde_--though unfinished, and though containing,
+in its ostensibly main story, things compared to which the Prince de
+Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse excite to palpitation--has points of
+remarkable interest about it. One of these--a prefatory sketch of the
+melancholy court of exiles at St. Germains--is like nothing else in
+Hamilton and like very few things anywhere else. This is in no sense
+fiction--it is, in fact, a historical document of the most striking
+kind; but it makes background and canvas for fiction itself,[292] and it
+gives us, besides, a most vivid picture of the priest-ridden, caballing
+little crowd of folk who had made great renunciations but could not make
+small. It also shows us in Hamilton a somewhat darker but also a
+stronger side of satiric powers, differently nuanced from the quiet
+_persiflage_ of the _Contes_ themselves. This, however, though easily
+"cobbled on" to the special tale, and possibly not unconnected with it
+key-fashion, is entirely separable, and might just as well have formed
+part of an actual letter to the "Madame de P.," to whom it is addressed.
+
+The tale itself, like some if not all the others, but in a much more
+strikingly contrasted fashion, again consists of two strands, interwoven
+so intimately, however, that it is almost impossible to separate them,
+though it is equally impossible to conceive two things more different
+from each other. The ostensible theme is a history of herself, given by
+the Nymph of the Seine to the author--a history of which more presently.
+But this is introduced at considerable length, and interrupted more than
+once, by scenes and dialogues, between the nymph and her distinctly
+unwilling auditor, which are of the most whimsically humorous character
+to be found even in Hamilton himself.
+
+The whole account of the self-introduction of the nymph to the narrator
+is extremely quaint, but rather long to give here as a whole. It is
+enough to say that Hamilton represents himself as by no means an ardent
+nympholept, or even as flattered by demi-goddess-like advances, which
+are of the most obliging description; and that the lady has not only to
+make fuller and fuller revelations of her beauty, but at last to exert
+her supernatural power to some extent in order to carry the recreant
+into her "cool grot," not, indeed, under water, but invisibly situated
+on land. What there takes place is, unfortunately, as has been said,
+mainly the telling of a very dull story with one not so dull episode.
+But the conclusion of the preface exemplifies the whimsicality even of
+the writer, and points to the existence of a commodity in the fashion of
+wig-wearing which few who glory in "their own hair," and despise their
+periwigged forefathers, are likely to have thought of:
+
+     [Sidenote: Hamilton and the Nymph.]
+
+     At these words [_her own_] raising her eyes to heaven, she
+     sighed several times; and though she tried to keep them
+     back, I saw, coursing the length of her cheeks and falling
+     on her beautiful neck, tears so natural, in the midst of a
+     silence so touching, that I was just about to follow her
+     example.[293] But she soon recovered herself; and having
+     shown me by a languishing look that she was not insensible
+     to my sympathetic emotion ... [_she enjoins discretion, and
+     then_:--] After having looked at me attentively for some
+     time she came closer to me, and as she gently pulled one
+     side of my wig in order to whisper in my ear, I had to lean
+     over her in a rather familiar manner.[294] Her face touched
+     mine, and it seemed to me animated by a lively warmth, very
+     different from the insensibility which I had accused[295]
+     her of shedding upon me when she came out of the water. Her
+     breath was pure and fresh, and her goddess-ship, which I had
+     suspected of being something marshy, had no taint of mud
+     about it. If only I might reveal all that she said to me in
+     a confidence which I could have wished longer![295] But
+     apparently she got tired of it[295] and let go my wig.
+     "'Twould be too tiresome," she said, "to go on talking like
+     this. Go out there, and leave us alone!" I turned round, and
+     seeing no one in the room, I thought this order was
+     addressed to me, so I was just rising....
+
+This quaint presentation of a craven swain is perhaps as good an example
+as could be found of the curious mixture of French and English in
+Hamilton. Hardly any Frenchman could have borne to put even a fictitious
+eidolon of himself in such a contemptible light; very few Englishmen,
+though they might easily have done this, would have done it so neatly,
+and with so quaint a travesty of romantic situation. But the main story,
+as admitted above, is _assommant_, though, just before the breach, a
+substitution of three agreeable damsels for the nymph herself promises
+something better.
+
+This combination of the dullest with some of the finest and most
+characteristic work of the author, would be rather a puzzle in a more
+"serious" writer than Hamilton; but in his case there is no need to
+distress, or in any way to cumber, oneself about the matter. The whole
+thing was a "compliment," as the age would have said, to Fantasy; and
+the rules of the Court of Quintessence, though not non-existent as dull
+fools suppose, are singularly elastic to skilled players.
+
+We are left with what, even as it exists, is by far his most ambitious
+attempt, and with one in which, considering all its actual features, one
+need not be taking things too seriously if one decides that he had an
+aim at something like a whole--even if the legends[296] about further
+parts, actually seen and destroyed by a more than Byzantine pudibundity,
+are not taken as wholly gospel.
+
+The completed _Fleur d'Epine_ and the uncompleted _Quatre
+Facardins_[297] are in effect continuous parts (and to all appearance
+incomplete in more than the finishing of the second story) of an
+untitled but intelligibly sketched continuation of the _Arabian Nights_
+themselves. Hamilton, like others since, had evidently conceived an
+affection for Dinarzade: and a considerable contempt for Schahriar's
+notion of the advantages of matrimony. It is less certain, but I think
+possible, that he had anticipated the ideas of those who think that the
+unmarried sister went at least halves in the composition or remembrance
+of the stories themselves, or she could not have varied her timing at
+dawn so adroitly. He had, at any rate, an Irish-Englishman's sense of
+honest if humorous indignation at the part which she has to play (or
+rather endure) in these "two years" (much nearer three!), and the sequel
+in a way revenges her.
+
+I should imagine that Thackeray must have been reminiscent of Hamilton
+when he devised the part of "Sister Anne" in _Bluebeard's Ghost_. Like
+her, Hamilton's Dinarzade is slightly flippant; she would most certainly
+have observed "Dolly Codlins is the matter" in Anne's place. Like her,
+she is not unprovided with lovers; she actually, at the beginning,
+"takes a night off" that she may entertain the Prince of Trebizond; and
+it is the Prince himself who relates the great, but, alas! torsoed epic
+of the Facardins,[298] of whom he is himself one. But as there are only
+two stories, there is no room for much framework, and we see much less
+of the "resurrected" Dinarzade[299] than we could wish from what we do
+see and hear.
+
+_Fleur d'Epine_, which she herself tells, is a capital story, somewhat
+closer to the usual norm of the _Nights_ than is usual with Hamilton. It
+bases itself on the well-known legends of the Princess with the
+literally murderous eyes; but this Princess Luisante is not really the
+heroine, and is absent from the greater part of the tale, though she is
+finally provided with the hero's brother, who is a reigning prince, and
+has everything handsome about him. The actual hero Tarare (French for
+"Fiddlestick!" or something of that sort, and of course an assumed
+name), in order to cure Luisante's eyes of their lethal quality, has to
+liberate a still more attractive damsel--the title-heroine--putative
+daughter of a good fairy and actual victim of a bad one, quite in the
+orthodox style. He does this chiefly by the aid of a very amiable mare,
+who makes music wherever she goes, and can do wonderful things when her
+ears are duly manipulated. It is a good and pleasant story, with plenty
+of the direct relish of the fairy-tale, Eastern and Western, and plenty
+also of satirical parody of the serious romance. But it is not quite
+consummate. The opening, however, as a fair specimen of Hamilton's
+style, may be given.
+
+     [Sidenote: The opening of _Fleur d'Epine_.]
+
+     Two thousand four hundred and fifty-three leagues from here
+     there is an extraordinarily fine country called Cashmere. In
+     this country reigned a Caliph; that Caliph had a daughter,
+     and that daughter had a face; but people wished more than
+     once that she had never had any. Her beauty was not
+     insupportable till she was fifteen; but at that age it
+     became impossible to endure it. She had the most beautiful
+     mouth in the world; her nose was a masterpiece; the lilies
+     of Cashmere--a thousand times whiter than ours--were
+     discoloured beside her complexion; and it seemed impertinent
+     of the fresh-blown rose to show itself beside the carnation
+     of her cheek. Her forehead was unmatchable for shape and
+     brilliancy; its whiteness was contrasted with a Vandyke
+     point of hair blacker and more shining than jet--whence she
+     took her name of "Luisante"; the shape of her face seemed
+     made to frame so many wonders. But her eyes spoilt
+     everything.
+
+     No one had ever been able to look at them long enough to
+     distinguish their exact colour; for as soon as one met her
+     glance it was like a stroke of lightning. When she was eight
+     years old her father, the Caliph, was in the habit of
+     sending for her, to admire his offspring and give the
+     courtiers the opportunity of paying a thousand feeble
+     compliments to her youthful beauty; for even then they used
+     to put out the candles at midnight, no other light being
+     necessary except that of the little one's eyes. Yet all this
+     was nothing but--in the literal sense, and the
+     other--child's play; it was when her eyes had acquired full
+     strength that they became no joking matter.
+
+[_The fatal effects--killing men in twenty-four hours, and blinding
+women--are then told, with the complaints of the nobility whose sons
+have fallen victims, and the various suggestions for remedying the evil
+made at a committee, which is presided over by the Seneschal of the
+kingdom ... "the silliest man who had ever held such an office--so much
+so that the caliph could not possibly think of choosing any one less
+silly." Tarare happens to be in this pundit-potentate's service; and so
+the story starts._]
+
+[Sidenote: _Les Quatre Facardins._]
+
+But--and indeed the writer's opinion on this point has already been
+indicated--Hamilton's masterpiece, unfinished as it is, is _Les Quatre
+Facardins_. Indeed, though unfinished in one sense, it is, in another,
+the most finished of all. Beside it the completed _Faustus_ is a mere
+trifle, and not a very interesting trifle. It has no dull parts like
+_Zeneyde_ and even _Le Belier_. It has much greater complication of
+interest and variety of treatment than _Fleur d'Epine_, in which, after
+the opening, Hamilton's peculiar _persiflage_, though not absent, is
+much less noticeable. It at least suggests, tantalising as the
+suggestion is, that the author for once really intended to wind up all
+his threads into a compact ball, or (which is the better image) to weave
+them into a new and definite pattern. Moreover--this may not be a
+recommendation to everybody, but it is a very strong one to the present
+historian,--it has no obvious or insistent "key"-element whatsoever. It
+is, indeed, not at all unlikely that there _is_ one, for the trick was
+ingrained in the literature and the society of the time. But if so, it
+is a sleeping dog that neither bites nor barks; and if you let it alone
+it will stay in its kennel, and not even obtrude itself upon your view.
+
+To these partly, if not wholly, negative merits it adds positive ones of
+a very considerable and delectable kind. The connection with the
+_Arabian Nights_ is brought closer still in the fact that it is not only
+told (as of himself) by the Prince of Trebizond, Dinarzade's
+servant-cavalier, but is linked--to an important extent, and not at all
+to Schahriar's unmixed satisfaction--with one of the earliest incidents
+of the _Nights_ themselves, the remarkable story how the Lady from the
+Sea increases her store of rings at the cost of some exertion and
+alarm--not to mention the value of the rings themselves--to the Sultan
+and his brother, the King of Tartary. This lady, with her genie and her
+glass box, reappears as "Cristalline la Curieuse"--one of the two
+heroines. The other, of whose actual adventures we hear only the
+beginning, and that at the very close of the story, is Mousseline la
+Serieuse, who never laughs, and who, later, escaping literally by the
+loss of her last garment, twitched off by the jaws of an enormous
+crocodile, afterwards the pest of the country, finds herself under a
+mysterious weird. She is never able to get a similar vestment made for
+her, either of day- or night-fashion. Three hundred and seventy-four
+dozen of such things, which formed her wardrobe, had disappeared[300]
+after the death (actually crocodile-devoured) of her Mistress of the
+Robes; and although she used up all the linen-drapers' stocks of the
+capital in trying to get new ones, they were all somewhat milder
+varieties of the shirt of Nessus. For the day-shifts deprived her of all
+appetite for food or drink, and the night ones made it impossible for
+her to sleep.
+
+This particular incident comes, as has been said, just at the end of
+what we have of the book; indeed there is nothing more, save a burlesque
+embassy, amply provided with painted cloth[301] and monkeys, to the
+great enchanter Caramoussal (who has already figured in the book), and
+the announcement, by one of the other Facardins, of its result--a new
+adventure for champions, who must either make the Princess laugh or kill
+the crocodile. "It is indifferent," we learn from a most Hamiltonian
+sentence, "whether you begin with the crocodile or with the Princess."
+Indeed there is yet another means of restoring peace in the Kingdom of
+Astrachan, according to the enchanter himself, who modestly disclaims
+being an enchanter, observing (again in a thoroughly Hamiltonian manner)
+that as he lives on the top of a mountain close to the stars, they
+probably tell him more than they tell other people. It is to collect
+three spinning-wheels[302] which are scattered over the universe, but
+of some of which we have heard earlier in the story.
+
+One takes perhaps a certain pleasure in outraging the feelings of the
+giant Moulineau, so hateful to Madame de Grammont, by beginning not
+merely in the middle but at the end--an end, alas! due, if we believe
+all the legends, to her own mistaken zeal when she became a _devote_--a
+variety of person for whom her brother[303] certainly had small
+affection, though he did not avenge himself on it in novel-form quite so
+cruelly as did Marivaux later. It is, however, quite good to begin at
+the beginning, though the verse-preface needs perhaps to be read with
+eyes of understanding. Ostensibly, it is a sort of historical
+condemnation of all the species of fiction which had been popular for
+half a century or so, and is thus very much to our purpose, though, like
+almost all the verses included in these tales, it does not show the
+poetic power which the author of _Celle que j'adore_[304] undoubtedly
+possessed. Mere tales, he says, have quite banished from court favour
+romances, celebrated for their sentiments, from _Cyrus_ to _Zaide_,
+_i.e._ from Mlle. de Scudery to Mme. de la Fayette. _Telemaque_ had no
+better fate
+
+    On courut au Palais[305] le rendre,
+    Et l'on s'empressa d'y reprendre
+    Le Rameau d'Or et l'Oiseau Bleu.[306]
+
+Then came the "Arabian tales," of which he speaks with a harshness, the
+sincerity or design of which may be left to the reader; and then he
+himself took up the running, of course obliged by request of
+irresistible friends of the other sex. All which may or may not be read
+with grains of salt--the salt-merchant of which everybody is at liberty
+to choose for himself. Something may be said on the subject when we, in
+all modesty, try to sum up Hamilton and the period.
+
+But we must now give some more account of the "Four Facardins"
+themselves. He of Trebizond is a tributary Prince of Schahriar's, much
+after the fashion (it is to be feared here burlesqued) of the
+innumerable second- and third-class heroes whom one meets in the
+_Cyrus_. He begins, like Dinarzade,[307] by "cheeking" the Sultan on his
+views of matrimony; and then he tells how he set out from his dominions
+in quest of adventures, and met another bearer of the remarkable name
+which his mother had insisted on giving him. This second adventurer
+happened to be bearer also of a helmet with a strange bird, apparently
+all made of gems, as its crest. They exchange confidences, which are to
+the effect that the Trebizondian Facardin is a lady-killer of the most
+extravagant success, while the other (who is afterwards called Facardin
+of the Mountain) is always unfortunate in love; notwithstanding which he
+proposes to undertake the adventure (to be long afterwards defined) of
+Mousseline la Serieuse. For the present he contents himself with two or
+three more stories (or, rather, one in several "fyttes"), which reduce
+the wildest of the _Nights_ to simple village tales--of an island where
+lions are hunted with a provision of virgins, chanticleers, and small
+deer on an elaborately ruled system; of a mountain full of wild beasts,
+witches, lovely nymphs, savages, and an enchanter at the top. After an
+interruption very much in the style of Chaucer's Host and _Sir Thopas_,
+from Dinarzade, who is properly rebuked by the Sultan, Facardin of the
+Mountain (he has quite early in the story received the celebrated
+scratch from a lion's claw, "from his right shoulder to his left heel")
+recounts a shorter adventure with Princess Sapinelle of Denmark, and at
+last, after a fresh outburst from Dinarzade, the Prince of Trebizond
+comes to his own affairs.
+
+Then it is that (after some details about the Prince of Ophir, who has a
+minim mouth and an enormous nose, and the Princess of Bactria, whose
+features were just the reverse) we recover Cristalline. It is perhaps
+only here that even Mrs. Grundy, though she may have been uncomfortable
+elsewhere, can feel really shocked at Hamilton; others than Mrs. Grundy
+need not be so even here. The genie has discovered his Lady's little
+ways, and has resolved to avenge himself on her by strict custody, and
+by a means of delivery which, if possible, might not have entirely
+displeased her. The hundred rings are bewitched to their chain, and are
+only to be recovered by the same process which strung them on it. But
+this process must be applied by one person in the space of twelve hours,
+and the conditions are only revealed to him after he has been kidnapped
+or cajoled within the genie's power. If he refuses to try, he is clad as
+Omphale clad Hercules, and set to work. If he tries and fails, he is to
+be flayed alive and burnt. Facardin, to the despair of his secretary,
+enters--beguiled by a black ambassadress, who merely informs him that a
+lady wants help--the enchanted boat which takes him to the fatal scene.
+But when he is to be introduced to the lady he entirely declines to part
+with his sword; and when the whole secret is revealed he, with the help
+of Cristalline, who is really a good-natured creature in more senses
+than one, slays the three chief minions of the tyrant--a watchmaker who
+sets the clock, a locksmith who is to count the detached rings, and a
+kind of Executioner High-priest who is to do the flaying and
+burning,--cuts his way with Cristalline herself to the enchanted boat,
+regaining _terra firma_ and (relatively speaking) _terra_ not too much
+enchanted. But at his very landing at the mouth of the crocodile river
+he again meets Facardin of the Mountain (who has figured in
+Cristalline's history earlier) with the two others, whose stories we
+shall never hear; and is told about Mousseline; whereat we and the tale
+"join our ends" as far as is permitted.
+
+It would be easy to pick from this story alone a sort of nosegay of
+Hamiltonisms like that from Fuller, which Charles Lamb selected so
+convincingly that some have thought them simply invented. But it would
+be unjust to Anthony, because, unless each was given in a _matrix_ of
+context, nobody could, in most cases at any rate, do justice to this
+curious glancing genius of his. It exists in Sydney Smith to some
+extent--in Thackeray to more--among Englishmen. There is, in French,
+something of it in Lesage, who possibly learnt it directly from him; and
+of course a good deal, though of a lower kind, in Voltaire, who
+certainly did learn it from him. But it is, with that slight
+indebtedness to Saint-Evremond noticed above, essentially new and
+original. It is a mixture of English-Irish (that is to say,
+Anglo-Norman) humour with French wit, almost unattainable at that day
+except by a man who, in addition to his natural gifts, had the mixed
+advantages and disadvantages of his exile position.
+
+Frenchmen at the time--there is abundance, not of mere anecdote, but of
+solid evidence to prove it--knew practically nothing of English
+literature. Englishmen knew a good deal more of French, and imitated and
+translated it, sometimes more eagerly than wisely. But they had not as
+yet assimilated or appreciated it: that was left for the eighteenth
+century to do. Meanwhile Hamilton brought the double influence to bear,
+not merely on the French novel, but on the novel in general and on the
+eccentric novel in particular. To appreciate him properly, he ought to
+be compared with Rabelais before him and with Voltaire or Sterne--with
+both, perhaps, as a counsel of perfection--after him. He is a smaller
+man, both in literature and in humanity, than Master Francis; but the
+phrase which Voltaire himself rather absurdly used of Swift might be
+used without any absurdity in reference to him. He _is_ a "Rabelais de
+bonne compagnie," and from the exactly opposite point of view he might
+be called a Voltaire or a Sterne _de bonne compagnie_ likewise. That is
+to say, he is a gentleman pretty certainly as well as a genius, which
+Rabelais might have been, at any rate in other circumstances, but did
+not choose to be, and which neither Francois Arouet nor Laurence Sterne
+could have been, however much either had tried, though the metamorphosis
+is not quite so utterly inconceivable in Sterne's case as in the
+other's. Hamilton, it has been confessed, is sometimes "naughty"; but
+his naughtiness is neither coarse nor sniggering,[308] and he depends
+upon it so little--a very important point--that he is sometimes most
+amusing when he is not naughty at all. In other words, he has no need of
+it, but simply takes it as one of the infinite functions of human
+comedy. Against which let Mrs. Grundy say what she likes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is conceivable that objection may be taken, or at any rate surprise
+felt, at the fulness with which a group of mostly little books--no one
+of them produced by an author of the first magnitude as usual estimates
+run--has been here handled. But the truth is that the actual birth of
+the French novel took a much longer time than that of the English--a
+phenomenon explicable, without any national vainglory, by the fact that
+it came first and gave us patterns and stimulants. The writers surveyed
+in this chapter, and those who will take their places in the next--at
+least Scarron, Furetiere, Madame de La Fayette and Hamilton, Lesage,
+Marivaux, and Prevost--whatever objections or limitations may be brought
+against them, form the central group of the originators of the modern
+novel. They open the book of life, as distinguished from that of
+factitious and rather stale literature; they point out the varieties of
+incident and character; the manners and interiors and fantastic
+adjustments; the sentiment rising to passion--which are to determine the
+developments and departments of the fiction of the future. They leave,
+as far as we have seen them, great opportunities for improvement to
+those immediate followers to whom we shall now turn. Hamilton is,
+indeed, not yet much followed, but Lesage far outgoes Scarron in the
+raising of the picaresque; Marivaux distances Furetiere in painting of
+manners and in what some people call psychology; _Manon Lescaut_ throws
+_La Princesse de Cleves_ into the shade as regards the greatest and
+most novel-breeding of the passions. But the whole are really a _bloc_,
+the continental sense of which is rather different from our "block." And
+perhaps we shall find that, though none of them was equal in genius to
+some who succeeded them in novel-writing, the novel itself made little
+progress, and some backsliding, during nearly a hundred years after they
+ceased to write.
+
+
+NOTE ON _TELEMAQUE_
+
+     It may not perhaps be superfluous to give the rest of that
+     criticism of Hamilton's on _Telemaque_, the conclusion of
+     which has been quoted above. "In vain, from the famous
+     coasts of Ithaca, the wise and renowned Mentor came to
+     enrich us with those treasures of his which his _Telemaque_
+     contains. In vain the art of the teacher delicately
+     displays, in this romance of a rare kind, the usefulness and
+     the deceitfulness of politics and of love, as well as that
+     fatal sweetness--frail daughter of luxury--which intoxicates
+     a conquering hero at the feet of a young mistress or of a
+     skilful enchantress, such as in each case this Mentor
+     depicts them. But, well-versed as he was in human weakness,
+     and elaborately as he imitated the style and the stories of
+     Greece, the vogue that he had was of short duration. Weary
+     of inability to understand the mysteries which he unfolded,
+     men ran to the Palais to give back the volume," etc., etc.
+
+     Hamilton, no doubt intentionally, has himself made this
+     criticism rather "mysterious." It is well known that, if not
+     quite at first, very soon after its appearance, the fact
+     that the politics, if not also the morals, of Fenelon's book
+     were directly at variance with Court standards was
+     recognised. At a time when Court favour and fashion were the
+     very breath of the upper circles, and directly or indirectly
+     ruled the middle, the popularity of this curious
+     romance-exhortation was, at any rate for a time, nipped in
+     the bud, to revive only in the permanent but not altogether
+     satisfactory conditions of a school-book. Whether Hamilton
+     dealt discreetly with the matter by purposely confining
+     himself to the record of a fact, or at least mixing praise
+     to which no exception could be taken, with what might be
+     taken for blame, one cannot say. By dotting a few i's,
+     crossing the t's, and perhaps touching up some hidden
+     letters with the requisite reagent, one can, however, get a
+     not unfair or unshrewd criticism of the book out of this
+     envelope. _Telemaque_, if it is not, as one of Thackeray's
+     "thorn" correspondents suggested, superior to "_Lovel
+     Parsonage_ and _Framley the Widower_," has, or with some
+     easy suppressions and a very few additions and developments
+     might have, much more pure romance interest than its
+     centuries of scholastic use allow it to have for most
+     people. Eucharis is capable of being much more than she is
+     allowed to show herself; and some Mrs. Grundys, with more
+     intelligence than the average member of the clan, have
+     hinted that Calypso might be dangerous if the persons who
+     read about her were not likely to consider her as too old to
+     be interesting. The style is, of course, admirable--there
+     has hardly ever been a better writer of French than Fenelon,
+     who was also a first-rate narrator and no mean critic.
+     Whether by the "mysteries" Hamilton himself meant politics,
+     morals, religion, or all three and other "serious" things,
+     is a point which, once more, is impossible to settle. But it
+     is quite certain that, whether there is any difficulty in
+     comprehending them or not, a great many--probably the huge
+     majority--of novel readers would not care to take the
+     trouble to comprehend them, and might, even if they found
+     little difficulty, resent being asked to do so. And so we
+     have here not the first--for, as has been said, the Heroic
+     romance itself had much earlier been "conscripted" into the
+     service of didactics--but the first brilliant, or almost
+     brilliant, example of that novel of purpose which will meet
+     us so often hereafter. It may be said to have at once
+     revealed (for the earlier examples were, as a rule, too dull
+     to be fair tests) the ineradicable defects of the species.
+     Even when the purpose does not entirely preclude the
+     possibility of enjoyment, it always gets in the way thereof;
+     and when the enjoyable matter does not absorb attention to
+     the disregard of the purpose altogether, it seldom--perhaps
+     never--really helps that purpose to get itself fulfilled.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[247] It is perhaps not quite superfluous to point out that the
+principle of separation in these chapters is quite different from that
+(between "idealist" and "realist") pursued by Koerting and others, and
+reprobated, partially or wholly, by MM. Le Breton and Brunetiere.
+
+[248] _L'Autre Monde: ou Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la
+Lune_, etc.
+
+[249] It must be remembered that even Gerard Hamilton made many more
+speeches, but only one good one, while the novelists discussed here
+wrote in most cases many other books. But their goodness shows itself in
+hardly more than a single work in each case. Anthony Hamilton's is in
+all his.
+
+[250] It has been noted, I think, by all who have written about the
+_Berger_, that Sorel is a sort of Balak and Balaam in one. He calls on
+himself to curse the _Astree_, but he, sometimes at least, blesses it.
+
+[251] The _Berger_ fills two volumes of some nine hundred pages;
+_Polyandre_, two of six hundred each! But it must be admitted that the
+print is very large and widely spaced.
+
+[252] One remembers the story of the greater Corneille calling to the
+lesser down a trap between their two houses, "Sans-Souci!--une rime!"
+
+[253] I have known this word more than once objected to as pedantic. But
+pedantry in this kind consists in using out-of-the-way terms when common
+ones are ready to hand. There is no single word in English to express
+the lower kind of "Dutch-painting" as this Greek word does. And Greek is
+a recognised and standing source of words for English. If geography, why
+not rhyparography?--or, if any one prefers it, "rhypography," which,
+however, is not, I think, so good a form.
+
+[254] There is, no doubt, significance in the fact that they are
+definitely called _nouvelles_.
+
+[255] _V. sup._ p. 204. The habit of these continues in all the books.
+_L'Illustre Bassa_ opens with a most elaborate, but still not very much
+"alive," procession and sham fight.
+
+[256] Of course Cervantes is not shadowy.
+
+[257] As far as mere chronology goes, Cyrano, _v. inf._, should come
+between; but it would split the parallel.
+
+[258] Scarron had, in Le Destin's account of himself, made a distinction
+between the pastoral and heroic groups and the "old" romances, meaning
+thereby not the true mediaeval specimens but the _Amadis_ cycle.
+Furetiere definitely classes all of them together.
+
+[259] The time is well known to have been fond of anagrams, and
+"Charroselles" is such an obvious one for "Charles Sorel" that for once
+there is no need to gainsay or neglect the interpreters. The thing, if
+really meant for a real person, is a distinct lampoon, and may perhaps
+explain the expulsion and persecution of Furetiere, by his colleagues of
+the Academy, almost as well as the ostensible cause thereof--his
+compiling, in competition with the Academy itself, of a French
+Dictionary, and a very good one, which was not printed till after his
+death, and ultimately became the famous _Dictionnaire de Trevoux_. Not
+that Sorel himself was of much importance, but that the thing shows the
+irritable and irritating literary failing in the highest degree.
+Furetiere had friends of position, from Boileau, Racine, and Bossuet
+downwards; and the king himself, though he did not interfere, seems to
+have disapproved the Academy's action. But the _Roman_ was heavily
+"slated" for many years, though it had a curious revival in the earlier
+part of the next century; and for the rest of that century and the first
+part of the nineteenth it was almost wholly forgotten.
+
+[260] She falls in love with an ebony cabinet at a fair which they visit
+together, and he gives it her. But, anticipating that she will use it
+for her most precious things, he privately gets a second set of keys
+from the seller, and in her absence achieves the theft of the promise.
+
+[261] Any one who has, as the present writer has had, opportunities of
+actually doing this, will find it a not uninteresting operation, and one
+which "amply repays the expense" of time and trouble.
+
+[262] This is a point of importance. Details of a life-like character
+are most valuable in the novel; but if they are not "material" in the
+transferred sense they are simply a bore. Scott undoubtedly learnt this
+lesson from his prentice work in finishing Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_,
+where the story is simply a clumsy vehicle for conveying information
+about sports and pastimes and costumes and such-like "antiqu_ar_ities."
+
+[263] To us small, as are not those of its predecessors.
+
+[264] Not a bad instance of the subacid touches which make the book
+lively, and which probably supply some explanation of its author's
+unpopularity. The "furred law-cats" of all kinds were always a
+prevailing party in Old France, and required stout gloves to touch them
+with.
+
+[265] This (often called by its Italian name of Quarant' ore) is a
+"Devotion" during an exposure of the Sacrament for that time, in memory
+of the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Our
+Lord. It is a public service, and, I suppose, collections were made _at
+intervals_. No one, especially no girl, could stand the time straight
+through. The "Paradise" was, of course, a "decoration."
+
+[266] Javotte says "shoe the mule"--"ferrer la mule"--one of the phrases
+like "faire danser l'anse du panier" and others, for taking
+"self-presented testimonials," as Wilkie Collins's Captain Wragge more
+elegantly and less cryptically calls it.
+
+[267] Of course the regular "thanks" of a collector for pious purposes.
+
+[268] He does later seek this, and only loses her (if she can be called
+a loss) by his own folly. But his main objective is to _conter_ (or as
+Furetiere himself has it, _debiter_) _la fleurette_. It ought, perhaps,
+to be mentioned, as a possible counterweight or drawback, that the
+novelist breaks off to discuss the too great matter-of-factness of
+bourgeois girls and women. But he was to have great followers in this
+also.
+
+[269] He was born and baptised Savinien de Cyrano, and called himself de
+Cyrano-Bergerac. The sound of the additional designation and some of his
+legendary peculiarities probably led to his being taken for a Gascon;
+but there is no evidence of meridional extraction or seat, and there
+appears to be some of Breton or other Western connection.
+
+[270] There is nothing in the least astonishing in his having been
+this--if he was. The tendency of the Renaissance towards what is called
+"free thought" is quite well known; and the existence, in the
+seventeenth century, of a sort of school of boisterous and rather vulgar
+infidelity is familiar--with the names of Bardouville, and Saint-Ibal or
+Saint-Ibar, as members of it--to all readers of Saint-Evremond,
+Tallemant, the _Ana_, etc.
+
+[271] Perhaps the dullest part is where (save the mark!) the Demon of
+Socrates is brought in to talk sometimes mere platitudes, sometimes tame
+paradoxes which might as well be put in the mouth of any pupil-teacher,
+or any popular journalist or dramatist, of the present day.--Of the
+attempt to make Swift Cyrano's debtor one need say little: but among
+predecessors, if not creditors, Ben Jonson, for his _News from the New
+World discovered in the Moon_, may at least be mentioned.
+
+[272] The key-mongers, of course, identify the three with the author,
+her own husband, and La Rochefoucauld.
+
+[273] He has ensconced himself in one of the smaller rooms of a garden
+pavilion outside of which they are sitting, having left their suite at
+some distance.
+
+[274] _Maitresse de sa conduite_, a curious but not difficult text as to
+French ideas of marriage.
+
+[275] I have been obliged to insert "trials" to bring out the meaning of
+"_exposee au milieu_." "_Exposee_" has a fuller sense than the simple
+English verb, and almost equals the legal "exposed for sale."
+
+[276] Mme. de la Fayette was a very accomplished woman, and, possibly
+from her familiarity with Queen Henrietta Maria, well acquainted with
+English as well as French history. But our proper names, as usual,
+vanquish her, and she makes Henry VIII. marry Jane _Seimer_ and
+Catherine _Havart_.
+
+[277] This does not apply to the _main_ love story but to the atmosphere
+generally. The Vidame de Chartres, for instance, is represented as in
+love with (1) Queen Catherine; (2) a Mme. de Themines, with whom he is
+not quite satisfied; (3) a Mme. de Martignes, with whom he is; (4) a
+lady unnamed, with whom he has _trompe_ them all. This may be true
+enough to life; but it is difficult to make it into good matter of
+fiction, especially with a crowd of other people doing much the same.
+
+[278] It ought, perhaps, to be added that though manners, etc., altered
+not a little between Henri II. and Louis XIV., the alteration was much
+less than in most other histories at most other periods. It would be
+easy to find two persons in Tallemant whose actual experience covered
+the whole time.
+
+[279] You _had_ to call it so when I first saw it; when I last did so it
+was "Oiron." No doubt it is something else now.
+
+[280] For that, see Chapter XII.
+
+[281] See below on the version Introduction to the _Quatre Facardins_.
+
+[282] Including miscellaneous imbecility and unsuitableness as well as
+moral indecorum.
+
+[283] Written for the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1882, but by a chapter of
+accidents not printed till 1890. Reprinted next year in _Essays on
+French Novelists_ (London, 1891).
+
+[284] Miss Ruth Clark.
+
+[285] The conclusion of _Vathek_ is of course undoubtedly more
+"admirable" than anything of Hamilton's; but it is in a quite different
+genus.
+
+[286] The piece _Celle que j'adore_ is the best of the casual verses,
+though there are other good songs, etc. Those which alternate with the
+prose of some of the tales are too often (as in the case of the
+_Cabinet_ insets, _v. sup._) rather prosaic. Of the prose miscellanies
+the so-called _Relations_ "of different places in Europe," and "of a
+voyage to Mauritania," contain some of the cream of Hamilton's almost
+uniquely ironic narrative and commentary. When that great book, "The
+Nature and History of Irony," which has to be written is written--the
+last man died with the last century and the next hour seems far off--a
+contrast of Hamilton and Kinglake will probably form part of it.
+
+[287] As a member, though a cadet, of a cadet branch of one of the
+noblest families of Great Britain and Ireland.
+
+[288] As a soldier, a courtier of Charles II., and a Jacobite exile in
+France.
+
+[289] I may perhaps be allowed to refer to another essay of mine on him
+in _Miscellaneous Essays_ (London, 1892). It contains a full account,
+and some translation, of the _Conversation du marechal d'Hocquincourt
+avec le Pere Canaye_, which is at once the author's masterpiece of quiet
+irony, his greatest pattern for the novelist, and his clearest evidence
+of influence on Hamilton.
+
+[290] There are some who hold that _the_ "English" differentia, whether
+shown in letters or in life, whether south or north of Tweed, east or
+west of St. George's Channel is always Anglo-Norman.
+
+[291] The "Marian" and Roman comparison of Anne Boleyn's position to
+Rosamond's is interesting.
+
+[292] It is a sort of brief lift and drop of the curtain which still
+concealed the true historical novel; it has even got a further literary
+interest as giving the seamy side of the texture of Macaulay's admirable
+_Jacobite's Epitaph_. The account would be rather out of place here, but
+may be found translated at length (pp. 44-46) in the volume of _Essays
+on French Novelists_ more than once referred to.
+
+[293] The most unexpected bathos of these last three words is of course
+intentional, and is Hamilton all over.
+
+[294] The nymph is lying on a couch, and her companion (who has been
+recalcitrant even to this politeness) is sitting beside her.
+
+[295] This is as impudent as the other passages below are imbecile--of
+course in each case (as before) with a calculated impudence and
+imbecility. The miserable creature had himself obliged her to "come out
+of the water" by declining to join her there on the plea that he was
+never good for an assignation when he was wet!
+
+[296] If they are true, and if Madame de Grammont was the culprit, it is
+a sad confirmation of the old gibe, "Skittish in youth, prudish in age."
+It can only be pleaded in extenuation that some youth which was not
+skittish, such as Sarah Marlborough's, matured or turned into something
+worse than "devotion." And Elizabeth Hamilton was so very pretty!
+
+[297] "Completions" of both _Zeneyde_ and _Les Quatre Facardins_, by the
+Duke de Levis, are included in some editions, but they are, after the
+fashions of such things, very little good.
+
+[298] The name is not, like "Tarare," a direct burlesque; but it
+suggests a burlesque intention when taken with "facond" and others
+including, perhaps, even _faquin_.
+
+[299] The Sultaness is almost _persona muta_--and indeed her tongue must
+have required a rest.
+
+[300] As Hamilton's satiric intention is as sleepless as poor Princess
+Mousseline herself, it is not impossible that he remembered the incident
+recorded by Pepys, or somebody, how King Charles the Second could not
+get a sheet of letter paper to write on for all the Royal Households and
+Stationery Offices and such-like things in the English world.
+
+[301] _I.e._ colour-printed cotton from India--a novelty "fashionable"
+and, therefore, satirisable in France.
+
+[302] Or "distaffs and spindles"?
+
+[303] She is indeed said to have "converted" both him and Grammont, the
+latter perhaps the most remarkable achievement of its kind.
+
+[304] Mr. Austin Dobson's charming translation of this was originally
+intended to appear in the present writer's essay above mentioned.
+
+[305] The chief region of bookselling. Cf. Corneille's early comedy, _La
+Galerie du Palais_.
+
+[306] For note on _Telemaque_ see end of chapter.
+
+[307] Who is here herself an improved Doralise.
+
+[308] To put it otherwise in technical French, there is a little
+_grivoiserie_ in him, but absolutely no _polissonnerie_, still less any
+_cochonnerie_. Or it may be put, best of all, in his own words when, in
+a short French-Greek dialogue, called _La Volupte_, he makes Aspasia say
+to Agathon, "Je vous crois fort voluptueux, sans vous croire debauche."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST, CREBILLON
+
+
+The words which closed the last chapter should make it unnecessary to
+prefix much of the same kind to this, though at the end we may have
+again to summarise rather more fully.
+
+[Sidenote: The subjects of the chapter.]
+
+As was there observed, our figures here are, with the possible exception
+of Crebillon _Fils_, "larger" persons than those dealt with before them;
+and they also mark a further transition towards the condition--the
+"employment or vocation"--of the novelist proper, though the polygraphic
+habit which has grown upon all modern literature, and which began in
+France almost earlier than anywhere else, affects them. Scarron was even
+more of a dramatist than of a novelist; and though this was also the
+case with Lesage and Marivaux--while Prevost was, save for his
+masterpiece, a polygraph of the polygraphs--their work in fiction was
+far larger, both positively and comparatively, than his. _Gil Blas_ for
+general popularity, and _Manon Lescaut_ for enthusiastic admiration of
+the elect, rank almost, if not quite, among the greatest novels of the
+world. Marivaux, for all his irritating habit of leaving things
+unfinished, and the almost equally irritating affectation of phrase, in
+which he anticipated some English novelists of the late nineteenth and
+earliest twentieth century, is almost the first "psychologist" of prose
+fiction; that is to say, where Madame de la Fayette had taken the
+soul-analysis of hardly more than two persons (Nemours scarcely counts)
+in a single situation, Marivaux gives us an almost complete dissection
+of the temperament and character of a girl and of a man under many
+ordinary life-circumstances for a considerable time.
+
+[Sidenote: Lesage--his Spanish connections.]
+
+But we must begin, not with him but with Lesage, not merely as the older
+man by twenty years, but in virtue of that comparative "greatness" of
+his greatest work which has been glanced at. There is perhaps a doubt
+whether _Gil Blas_ is as much read now as it used to be; it is pretty
+certain that _Le Diable Boiteux_ is not. The certainty is a pity; and if
+the doubt be true, it is a greater pity still. For more than a century
+_Gil Blas_ was almost as much[309] a classic, either in the original or
+in translation, in England as it was in France; and the delight which it
+gave to thousands of readers was scarcely more important to the history
+of fiction generally than the influence it exerted upon generation after
+generation of novelists, not merely in its own country, but on the far
+greater artists in fiction of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
+century in England from Fielding to Scott, if not to Dickens. Now, I
+suppose, that we are told to start with the axiom that even Fielding's
+structure of humanity is a simple toy-like thing, how much more is
+Lesage's? But for those of us who have not bowed the knee to foolish
+modern Baals, "They reconciled us; we embraced, and we have since been
+mortal enemies"; and the trout; and the soul of the licentiate; and Dr.
+Sangrado; and the Archbishop of Granada--to mention only the most famous
+and hackneyed matters--are still things a little larger, a little more
+complex, a little more eternal and true, than webs of uninteresting
+analysis told in phrase to which Marivaudage itself is golden and
+honeyed Atticism.
+
+Yet once more we can banish, with a joyful and quiet mind, a crowd of
+idle fancies and disputes, apparently but not really affecting our
+subjects. The myth of a direct Spanish origin for _Gil Blas_ is almost
+as easily dispersible by the clear sun of criticism as the exaggeration
+of the debt of the smaller book to Guevara. On the other hand, the
+_general_ filiation of Lesage on his Spanish predecessors is undeniable,
+and not worth even shading off and toning down. A man is not ashamed of
+having good fathers and grandfathers, whose property he now enjoys,
+before him in life; and why should he be in literature?
+
+[Sidenote: Peculiarity of his work generally.]
+
+Lesage's work, in fiction and out of it, is considerable in bulk, but it
+is affected (to what extent disadvantageously different judges may judge
+differently) by some of the peculiarities of the time which have been
+already mentioned, and by some which have not. It is partly original,
+partly mere translation, and partly also a mixture of the strangest
+kind. Further, its composition took place in a way difficult to adjust
+to later ideas. Lesage was not, like Marivaux, a professed and shameless
+"_un_finisher," but he took a great deal of time to finish his
+work.[310] He was not an early-writing author; and when he did begin, he
+showed something of that same strange need of a suggestion, a
+"send-off," or whatever anybody likes to call it, which appears even in
+his greatest work. He began with the _Letters_ of Aristaenetus, which,
+though perhaps they have been abused more than they deserve by people
+who have never read them, and would never have heard of them if it had
+not been for Alain Rene, are certainly not the things that most
+scholars, with the whole range of Greek literature before them to choose
+from, would have selected. His second venture was almost worse than his
+first; for there _are_ some prettinesses in Aristaenetus, and except for
+the one famous passage enshrined by Pope in the _Essay on Criticism_,
+there is, I believe,[311] nothing good in the continuation of _Don
+Quixote_ by the so-called Avellaneda. But at any rate this job, which
+is attributed to the suggestion of the Abbe de Lyonne, "put" Lesage on
+Spanish, and never did fitter seed fall on more fertile soil.
+
+[Sidenote: And its variety.]
+
+Longinus would, I think, have liked _Gil Blas_, and indeed Lesage, very
+much. You might kill ten asses, of the tallest Poitou standard in size
+and the purest Zoilus or Momus sub-variety in breed, under you while
+going through his "faults." He translates; he borrows; he "plagiarises"
+about as much as is possible for anybody who is not a mere dullard to
+do. Of set plot there is nothing in his work, whether you take the two
+famous pieces, or the major adaptations like _Estevanille Gonzales_ and
+_Guzman d'Alfarache_, or the lesser things, more Lucianic than anything
+else, such as the _Cheminees de Madrid_[312] and the _Journee des
+Parques_ and the _Valise Trouvee_. "He worked for his living" (as M.
+Anatole France long ago began a paper about him which is not quite the
+best of its very admirable author's work), and though the pot never
+boiled quite so merrily as the cook deserved, the fact of the
+pot-boiling makes itself constantly felt. _Les chaines de l'esclavage_
+must have cut deep into his soul, and the result of the cutting is
+evident enough in his work. But the vital marks on that work are such as
+many perfectly free men, who have wished to take literature as a
+mistress only, have never been able to impress on theirs. He died full
+of years, but scarcely of the honours due to him, failing in power, and
+after a life[313] of very little luck, except as regards possession of a
+wife who seems to have been beautiful in youth and amiable always, with
+at least one son who observed the Fifth Commandment to the utmost. But
+he lives among the immortals, and there are few names in our present
+history which are of more importance to it than his.
+
+Some of his best and least unequal work is indeed denied us. We have
+nothing to do with his drama, though _Turcaret_ is something like a
+masterpiece in comedy, and _Crispin Rival de son Maitre_ a capital
+farce. We cannot even discuss that remarkable _Theatre de la Foire_,
+which, though a mere collection of the lightest Harlequinades, has more
+readable matter of literature in it than the whole English comic drama
+since Sheridan, with the exception of the productions of the late Sir
+William Gilbert.
+
+Nor must much be said even of his minor novel work. The later
+translations and adaptations from the Spanish need hardly any notice for
+obvious reasons; whatever is good in them being either not his, or
+better exemplified in the _Devil_ and in _Gil_. The extremely curious
+and very Defoe-like book--almost if not quite his last--_Vie et
+Aventures de M. de Beauchesne, Capitaine de Flibustiers_, is rather a
+subject for a separate essay than for even a paragraph here. But Lesage,
+from our point of view, is _Le Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_, and to
+the _Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_ let us accordingly turn.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Diable Boiteux._]
+
+The relations of the earlier and shorter book to the _Diablo Cojuelo_ of
+Luis Velez de Guevara are among the most open secrets of literature. The
+Frenchman, in a sort of prefatory address to his Spanish parent and
+original, has put the matter fairly enough; anybody who will take the
+trouble can "control" or check the statement, by comparing the two books
+themselves. The idea--the rescuing of an obliging demon from the grasp
+of an enchanter, and his unroofing the houses of Madrid to amuse his
+liberator--is entirely Guevara's, and for a not inconsiderable space of
+time the French follows the Spanish closely. But then it breaks off, and
+the remainder of the book is, except for the carrying out of the general
+idea, practically original. The unroofing and revealing of secrets, from
+being merely casual and confined to a particular neighbourhood, becomes
+systematised: a lunatic asylum and a prison are subjected to the
+process; a set of dreamers are obliged to deliver up what Queen Mab is
+doing with them; and, as an incident, the student Don Cleofas, who has
+freed Asmodeus,[314] gains through the friendly spirit's means a rich
+and pretty bride whom the demon--naturally immune from fire--has rescued
+in Cleofas's likeness from a burning house.
+
+[Sidenote: Lesage and Boileau.]
+
+The thing therefore neither has, nor could possibly pretend to have, any
+merit as a plotted and constructed whole in fiction. It is merely a
+variety of the old "framed" tale-collection, except that the frame is of
+the thinnest; and the individual stories, with a few exceptions, are
+extremely short, in fact little more than anecdotes. The power and
+attraction of the book lie simply in the crispness of the style, the
+ease and flow of the narrative, and the unfailing satiric knowledge of
+human nature which animates the whole. As it stands, it is double its
+original length; for Lesage, finding it popular, and never being under
+the trammels of a fixed design, very wisely, and for a wonder not
+unsuccessfully, gave it a continuation. And, except the equally obvious
+and arbitrary one of the recapture of the spirit by the magician, it has
+and could have no end. The most famous of the anecdotes about it is that
+Boileau--in 1707 a very old man--found his page reading it, and declared
+that such a book and such a critic as he should never pass a night under
+the same roof. Boileau, though he often said rude, unjust, and
+uncritical things, did not often say merely silly ones; and it has been
+questioned what was his reason for objecting to a book by no means
+shocking to anybody but Mrs. Grundy Grundified to the very _n_th,
+excellently written, and quite free from the bombast and the
+whimsicality which he loathed. Jealousy for Moliere,[315] to whom, in
+virtue of _Turcaret_, Lesage had been set up as a sort of rival; mere
+senile ill-temper, and other things have been suggested; but the matter
+is of no real importance even if it is true. Boileau was one of the
+least catholic and the most arbitrary critics who ever lived; he had
+long made up and colophoned the catalogue of his approved library; he
+did not see his son's coat on the new-comer, and so he cursed him. It is
+not the only occasion on which we may bless what Boileau cursed.
+
+[Sidenote: _Gil Blas_--its peculiar cosmopolitanism.]
+
+_Gil Blas_, of course, is in every sense a "bigger" book of literature.
+That it has, from the point of view of the straitest sect of the
+Unitarians--and not of that sect only--much more unity than the
+_Diable_, would require mere cheap paradox to contend. It has neither
+the higher unity, say, of _Hamlet_, where every smallest scene and
+almost personage is connected with the general theme; nor the lower
+unity of such a thing as _Phedre_, where everything is pared down, or,
+as Landor put it in his own case, "boiled off" to a meagre residuum of
+theme special. It has, at the very most, that species of unity which
+Aristotle did not like even in epic, that of a succession of events
+happening to an individual; and while most of these might be omitted, or
+others substituted for them, without much or any loss, they exist
+without prejudice to mere additions to themselves. As the excellent Mr.
+Wall, sometime Professor of Logic at Oxford, and now with God, used to
+say, "Gentlemen, I can conceive an elephant," so one may conceive a _Gil
+Blas_, not merely in five instead of four, but in fifty or five hundred
+volumes. But, on the other hand, it has that still different unity (of
+which Aristotle does not seem to have thought highly, even if he thought
+of it at all), that all these miscellaneous experiences do not merely
+happen to a person with the same name--they happen to the same
+person.[316] And they have themselves yet another unity, which I hardly
+remember any critic duly insisting on and discussing, in the fact that
+they all are possibly human accidents or incidents. Though he was a
+native of one of the most idiosyncratic provinces of not the least
+idiosyncratic country in Europe, Lesage is a citizen not of Brittany,
+not of France, not of Europe even, but of the world itself, in far more
+than the usual sense of cosmopolitanism. He has indeed coloured
+background and costume, incident and even personage itself so deeply
+with essence of "things of Spain," that, as has been said, the
+Spaniards, the most jealous of all nationalities except the smaller
+Celtic tribes, have claimed his work for themselves. Yet though Spain
+has one of the noblest languages, one of the greatest literatures in
+quality if not in bulk, one of the most striking histories, and one of
+the most intensely national characters in the world, it is--perhaps for
+the very reason last mentioned--as little cosmopolitan as any country,
+and Lesage, as has been said, is inwardly and utterly cosmopolitan or
+nothing.
+
+    At Paris, at Rome, at the Hague he's at home;
+
+and though he seems to have known little of England, and, as most
+Frenchmen of his time had reason to do, to have disliked us, he has
+certainly never been anywhere more at home than in London. In fact--and
+it bears out what has been said--there is perhaps no capital in Europe
+where, in the two hundred years he has had to nationalise himself,
+Lesage has been less at home than at Paris itself. The French are of
+course proud of him in a way, but there is hardly one of their great
+writers about whom they have been less enthusiastic. The technical, and
+especially the neo-classically technical, shortcomings which have been
+pointed out may have had something to do with this; but the
+cosmopolitanism has perhaps more.
+
+[Sidenote: And its adoption of the _homme sensuel moyen_ fashion.]
+
+For us Lesage occupies a position of immense importance in the history
+of the French novel; but if we were writing a history of the novel at
+large it would scarcely be lessened, and might even be relatively
+larger. He had come to it perhaps by rather strange ways; but it is no
+novelty to find that conjunction of road and goal. The Spanish
+picaresque romance was not in itself a very great literary kind; but it
+had in it a great faculty of _emancipation_. Outside the drama[317] it
+was about the first division of literature to proclaim boldly the
+refusal to consider anything human as alien from human literary
+interest. But, as nearly always happens, it had exaggerated its
+protests, and become sordid, merely in revolt from the high-flown
+non-sordidness of previous romance. Lesage took the principle and
+rejected the application. He dared, practically for the first time, to
+take the average man of unheroic stamp, the _homme sensuel moyen_ of a
+later French phrase, for his subject. _Gil Blas_ is not a virtuous
+person,[318] but he is not very often an actual scoundrel.[319] (Is
+there any of us who has never been a scoundrel at all at all?) He is
+clever after his fashion, but he is not a genius; he is a little bit of
+a coward, but can face it out fairly at a pinch; he has some luck and
+ill-luck; but he does not come in for _montes et maria_, either of gold
+or of misery. I have no doubt that the comparison of _Gil Blas_ and _Don
+Quixote_ has often been made, and it would be rather an _excursus_ here.
+But inferior as Lesage's work is in not a few ways, it has, like other
+non-quintessential things, much more virtue as model and pattern.
+Imitations of _Don Quixote_ (except Graves's capital book, where the
+following is of the freest character) have usually been failures. It is
+hardly an extravagance to say that every novel of miscellaneous
+adventure since its date owes something, directly or indirectly, to _Gil
+Blas_.
+
+One of the "faults"--it must be understood that between "faults" with
+inverted commas and faults without them there is a wide and sometimes an
+unbridgeable gulf--lies in the fact that the book is after all not much
+more of a whole, in any sense but that noted above, than _Le Diable
+Boiteux_ itself. The innumerable incidents are to a very large extent
+episodes merely, and episodes in the loose, not the precise, sense of
+the term. That is to say, they are not merely detachable; they might be
+reattached to almost any number of other stories. But the redeeming
+feature--which is very much more than a _mere_ redeeming feature--is the
+personality of the hero which has been already referred to. Lesage's
+scrip and staff, to apply the old images exactly enough, are his
+inexhaustible fertility in well-told stories and his faculty of
+delineating a possible and interesting human character.
+
+[Sidenote: Its inequality--in the Second and Fourth Books especially.]
+
+The characteristics of the successive parts of _Gil Blas_ are distinct
+and interesting, the distinctions themselves being also rather curious.
+The anecdote cited above as to the Fourth and last volume is certainly
+confirmed by, and does not seem, as so many anecdotes of the kind do, to
+have been even possibly drawn from, the volume itself. Although the old
+power is by no means gone, the marks of its failing are pretty obvious.
+A glance has been given already to the unnecessary and disgusting
+repetition of the Pandar business--made, as it is, more disgusting by
+the distinctly tragic touch infused into it. The actual _finale_ is, on
+the other hand, a good comedy ending of a commonplace kind, except that
+a comic author, such as Lesage once had been on and off the stage, would
+certainly have made _Gil Blas_ suffer in his second marriage for his
+misdeeds of various kinds earlier, instead of leaving him in the not too
+clean cotton or clover of an old rip with a good young wife. If he had
+wanted a happy ending of a still conventional but satisfactory kind, he
+should have married Gil to Laure or Estelle (they were, in modern slang,
+sufficiently "shop-worn goods" not to be ill-mated, and Laure is perhaps
+the most attractive character in the whole book); have legitimated
+Lucrece, as by some odd crotchet he definitely refuses to do;[320] have
+dropped the later Leporello business, in which his old love and her
+daughter are concerned, altogether, and have left us in a mild sunset of
+"reconciliation." If anybody scorns this suggestion as evidence of a
+futile liking for "rose-pink," let him remember that Gil Blas,
+_ci-devant picaro_ and other ugly things, is actually left lapped in an
+Elysium not less improbable and much more undeserved than this. But it
+is disagreeable to dwell on the shortcomings of age, and it has only
+been done to show that this is a criticism and not a mere panegyric.
+
+Oddly enough, the Second volume is also open to much exception of
+something, though not quite, the same kind; it seems as if Lesage, after
+making strong running, had a habit of nursing himself and even
+going to sleep for a while. The more than questionable habit of
+_histoire_-insertions revives; that of the rascal-hermit _picaro_, "Don
+Raphael," is, as the author admits, rather long, and, as he might have
+admitted, and as any one else may be allowed to say, very tiresome. Gil
+Blas himself goes through a long period of occultation, and the whole
+rather drags.
+
+The First and the Third are the pillars of the house; and the Third,
+though (with the exception of the episode of the Archbishop, and that
+eternal sentence governing the relations of author and critic that "the
+homily which has the misfortune not to be approved" by the one is the
+very best ever produced by the other) not so well known, is perhaps even
+better than anything in the First. But the later part has, of course,
+not quite so much freshness; and nobody need want anything better than
+the successive scenes, slightly glanced at already, in which Gil Blas is
+taught, by no means finally,[321] the ways of the world; the pure
+adventure interest of the robbers' cave, so admirably managed and so
+little over-dwelt on; the experiences of travel and of the capital; the
+vivid pictures of _petit maitre_ and actress life; the double
+deception--thoroughly Spanish this, but most freshly and universally
+handled--by Laure and Gil; many other well-known things; all deserve the
+knowledge and the admiration that they have won. But the Third, in which
+the hero is hardly ever off the scene from first to last, is my own
+favourite. He shows himself--not at his best, but humanly enough--in the
+affair with the ill-fated Lorenca, on which the Leyva family might have
+looked less excusingly if the culprit had been anybody but Gil. The
+Granada scenes, however, and not by any means merely those with the
+Archbishop, are of the very first class; and the reappearance of Laure,
+with the admirable coolness by which she hoodwinks her "keeper"
+Marialva, yields to nothing in the book. For fifty pages it is all
+novel-gold; and though Gil Blas, in decamping from the place, and
+leaving Laure to bear the brunt of a possible discovery, commits one of
+his least heroic deeds, it is so characteristic that one forgives, not
+indeed him, but his creator. The whole of the Lerma part is excellent
+and not in the least improbably impossible; there is infinitely more
+"human natur'" in it, as Marryat's waterman would have said, than in the
+_rechauffe_ of the situation with Olivares.
+
+[Sidenote: Lesage's quality--not requiring many words, but
+indisputable.]
+
+The effect indeed which is produced, in re-reading, by _Le Diable
+Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_, but especially by the latter, is of that
+especial kind which is a sort of "_a posteriori_ intuition," if such a
+phrase may be permitted, of "classical" quality.[322] This sensation,
+which appears, unfortunately, to be unknown to a great many people, is
+sometimes set down by the more critical or, let us say, the more
+censorious of them, to a sort of childish prepossession--akin to that
+which makes a not ill-conditioned child fail to discover any
+uncomeliness in his mother's or a favourite nurse's face. There is no
+retort to such a proposition as this so proper as the argument not _ad
+hominem_, but _ab_ or _ex homine_. The present writer did not read the
+_Devil_ till he had reached quite critical years; and though he read
+_Gil Blas_ much earlier, he was not (for what reason he cannot say)
+particularly fond of it until the same period was reached. And yet its
+attractions cannot possibly be said to be of any recondite or artificial
+kind, and its defects are likely to be more, not less, recognised as the
+critical faculty acquires strength and practice. Nevertheless, recent
+reperusal has made him more conscious than ever of the existence of this
+quality of a classic in both, but especially in the larger and more
+famous book. And this is a mere pailful added to an ocean of previous
+and more important testimony. _Gil Blas_ has certainly "classed" itself
+in the most various instances, of essentially critical, not specially
+critical but generally acute and appreciative, and more or less
+unsophisticated and ordinary judgments, as a thing that is past all
+question, equally enjoyable for its incidents, its character-sketches,
+and its phrasing--though the first are (for time and country) in no
+sense out of the way, the second scarcely go beyond the individualised
+type, and the third is neither gorgeous nor "alambicated," as the French
+say, nor in any way peculiar, except for its saturation with a sharp,
+shrewd, salt wit which may be described as the spirit of the popular
+proverb, somehow bodied and clothed with more purely literary form. It
+is true that, in the last few clauses, plenty of ground has been
+indicated for ascription of classicality in the best sense; and perhaps
+Lesage himself has summed the whole thing up when, in the "Declaration"
+of the author at the beginning of _Gil Blas_, he claims "to have set
+before himself only the representation of human life as it is." He has
+said it; and in saying and doing it he has said and done everything for
+his merits as a novelist and his place in the history of the novel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Marivaux--_Les Effets de la Sympathie (?)_]
+
+The Archbishop of Sens, who had the duty of "answering" Marivaux's
+"discourse of reception" into the Academy in the usual _aigre-doux_
+manner, informed him, with Academic frankness and Archiepiscopal
+propriety, that "in the small part of your work which I have run
+through, I soon recognised that the reading of these agreeable romances
+did not suit the austere dignity with which I am invested, or the purity
+of the ideas which religion prescribes me." This was all in the game,
+both for an Academician and for an Archbishop, and it probably did not
+discompose the novelist much. But if his Grace had read _Les Effets de
+la Sympathie_, and had chosen to criticise it, he might have made its
+author (always supposing that Marivaux _was_ its author, which does not
+seem to be at all certain) much more uncomfortable. Although there is
+plenty of incident, it is but a dull book, and it contains not a trace
+of "Marivaudage" in style. A hero's father, who dies of poison in the
+first few pages, and is shown to have been brought round by an obliging
+gaoler in the last few; a hero himself, who thinks he has fallen in love
+with a beautiful and rich widow, playing good Samaritaness to him after
+he has fallen in among thieves, but a page or two later really does fall
+in love with a fair unknown looking languishingly out of a window; a
+_corsaire_,[323] with the appropriate name of Turcamene, who is
+robustious almost from the very beginning, and receives at the end a
+fatal stab with his own poniard from the superfluous widow, herself also
+fatally wounded at the same moment by the same weapon (an economy of
+time, incident, and munitions uncommon off the stage); an intermediate
+personage who, straying--without any earthly business there--into one of
+those park "pavilions" which play so large a part in these romances,
+finds a lady asleep on the sofa, with her hand invitingly dropped,
+promptly kneels down, and kisses it: these and many other things fill up
+a Spanish kind of story, not uningeniously though rather improbably
+engineered, but dependent for its interest almost wholly on incident;
+for though it is not devoid of conversation, this conversation is
+without spirit or sparkle. It is, in fact, a "circulating library" novel
+before--at any rate at an early period of--circulating libraries: not
+unworkmanlike, probably not very unsatisfactory to its actual readers,
+and something of a document as to the kind of satisfaction they
+demanded; but not intrinsically important.
+
+One has not seen much, in English,[324] about Marivaux, despite the
+existence, in French, of one of the best[325] of those monographs which
+assist the foreign critic so much, and sometimes perhaps help to beget
+his own lucubrations. Yet he is one of the most interesting writers of
+France, one of the most curious, and, one may almost say, one of the
+most puzzling. This latter quality he owes, in part at least, to a
+"skiey influence" of the time, which he shares with Lesage and Prevost,
+and indeed to some extent with most French writers of the eighteenth
+century--the influence of the polygraphic habit.
+
+[Sidenote: His work in general.]
+
+He was a dramatist, and a voluminous one, long before he was a novelist:
+and some of his thirty or forty plays, especially _Les Fausses
+Confidences_ and _Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard_, still rank among at
+least the second-class classics of the French comic stage. He tried, for
+a time, one of the worst kinds of merely fashionable literature, the
+travesty-burlesque.[326] He was a journalist, following Addison openly
+in the title, and to some extent in the manner, of _Le Spectateur_,
+which he afterwards followed by _Le Cabinet d'un Philosophe_, showing,
+however, here, as he was more specially tempted to do, his curious, and
+it would seem unconquerable, habit of leaving things unfinished, which
+only does not appear in his plays, for the simple and obvious reason
+that managers will not put an unfinished play on the stage, and that, if
+they did, the afterpiece would be premature and of a very lively
+character. But the completeness of his very plays is incomplete; they
+"run huddling" to their conclusion, and are rather bundles of good or
+not so good acts and scenes than entire dramas. We are, however, only
+concerned with the stories, of which there are three: the early,
+complete, but doubtful _Effets de la Sympathie_, already discussed; the
+central in every way, but endlessly dawdled over, _Marianne_, which
+never got finished at all (though Mme. Riccoboni continued it in
+Marivaux's own lifetime, and with his placid approval, and somebody
+afterwards botched a clumsy _Fin_); and _Le Paysan Parvenu_, the latter
+part of which is not likely to be genuine, and, even if so, is not a
+real conclusion. We may, however, with some, advantage, take it before
+_Marianne_, if only because it is not the book generally connected with
+its author's name.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Paysan Parvenu._]
+
+Notwithstanding this comparative oblivion, _Le Paysan Parvenu_ is an
+almost astonishingly clever and original book, at least as far as the
+five of its eight parts, which are certainly Marivaux's, go. I have read
+the three last twice critically, at a long interval of time, and I feel
+sure that the positive internal evidence confirms, against their
+authenticity, the negative want of external for it. In any case they add
+nothing--they do not, as has been said, even really "conclude"--and we
+may, therefore, without any more apology, confine ourselves to the part
+which is certain. Some readers may possibly know that when that
+strangest of strange persons, Restif de la Bretonne (see the last
+chapter of this book), took up the title with the slight change or gloss
+of _Parvenu_ to _Perverti_, he was at least partly actuated by his own
+very peculiar, but distinctly existing, variety of moral indignation.
+And though Pierre Carlet (which was Marivaux's real name) and "Monsieur
+Nicolas" (which was as near a real name as any that Restif had) were,
+the one a quite respectable person on ordinary standards, and the other
+an infinitely disreputable creature, still the later novelist was
+perhaps ethically justified. Marivaux's successful rustic does not, so
+far as we are told, actually do anything that contravenes popular
+morality, though he is more than once on the point of doing so. He is
+not a bad-blooded person either; and he has nothing of the wild-beast
+element in the French peasantry which history shows us from the
+Jacquerie to the Revolution, and which some folk try to excuse as the
+result of aristocratic tyranny. But he is an elaborate and exceedingly
+able portrait of another side of the peasant, and, if we may trust
+literature, even with some administration of salt, of the French peasant
+more particularly. He is what we may perhaps be allowed to call
+unconsciously determined to get on, though he does not go quite to the
+length of the _quocunque modo_, and has, as far as men are concerned,
+some scruples. But in relation to the other sex he has few if any,
+though he is never brutal. He is, as we may say, first "perverted,"
+though not as yet _parvenu_,[327] in the house of a Parisian, himself a
+_nouveau riche_ and _novus homo_, on whose property in Champagne his own
+father is a wine-farmer. He is early selected for the beginnings of
+Lady-Booby-like attentions by "Madame," while he, as far as he is
+capable of the proceeding, falls in love with one of Madame's maids,
+Genevieve. It does not appear that, if the lady's part of the matter had
+gone further, Jacob (that is his name) would have been at all like
+Joseph. But when he finds that the maid is also the object of
+"Monsieur's" attentions, and when he is asked to take the profits of
+this affair (the attitude[328] of the girl herself is very skilfully
+delineated) and marry her, his own _point d'honneur_ is reached.[329]
+Everything is, however, cut short by the sudden death, in hopelessly
+embarrassed circumstances, of Monsieur, and the consequent cessation of
+Madame's attraction for a young man who wishes to better himself. He
+leaves both her and Genevieve with perfect nonchalance; though he has
+good reason for believing that the girl really loves him, however she
+may have made a peculiar sort of hay when the sun shone, and that both
+she and his lady are penniless, or almost so.
+
+He has, however, the luck which makes the _parvenu_, if in this instance
+he can hardly be said to deserve it. On the Pont Neuf he sees an elderly
+lady, apparently about to swoon. He supports her home, and finds that
+she is the younger and more attractive of two old-maid and _devote_
+sisters. The irresistibleness to this class of the feminine sex (and
+indeed by no means to this class only) of a strapping and handsome
+footman is a commonplace of satire with eighteenth-century writers, both
+French and English. It is exercised possibly on both sisters, though the
+elder is a shrew; certainly on the younger, and also on their elderly
+_bonne_, Catherine. But it necessarily leads to trouble. The younger,
+Mlle. Habert (the curious hiding of Christian names reappears here),
+wants to retain Jacob in the joint service, and Catherine at least makes
+no objection, for obvious reasons. But the elder sister recalcitrates
+violently, summoning to her aid her "director," and the younger, who is
+financially independent,[330] determines to leave the house. She does so
+(_not_ taking Catherine with her, though the _bonne_ would willingly
+have shared Jacob's society), and having secured lodgings, regularly
+proposes to her (the word may be used almost accurately) "swain." Jacob
+has no scruples of delicacy here, though the nymph is thirty years older
+than himself, and though he has, if no dislike, no particular affection
+for her. But it is an obvious step upwards, and he makes no
+difficulties. The elder sister, however, makes strong efforts to forbid
+the banns, and her interest prevails on a "President" (the half-regular
+power of the French _noblesse de robe_, though perhaps less violently
+exercised, must have been almost as galling as the irresponsibleness of
+men of birth and "sword") to interpose and actually stop the arranged
+ceremony. But Jacob appears in person, and states his case convincingly;
+the obstacle is removed, and the pair are made happy at an extraordinary
+hour (two or three in the morning), which seems to have been then
+fashionable for marriages. The conventional phrase is fairly justified;
+for the bride is completely satisfied, and Jacob is not displeased.
+
+His marriage, however, interferes not in the very least with his
+intention to "get on" by dint of his handsome face and brawny figure. On
+the very day of his wedding he goes to visit a lady of position, and
+also of devoutness, who is a great friend of the President and his wife,
+has been present at the irregular enquiry, and has done something for
+him. This quickly results in a regular assignation, which, however, is
+comically broken off. Moreover this lady introduces him to another of
+the same temperament--which indeed seems to have been common with French
+ladies (the Bellaston type being not the exception, but the rule). _She_
+is to introduce him to her brother-in-law, an influential financier, and
+she quickly makes plain the kind of gratitude she expects. This also is,
+as far as we are told, rather comically interfered with--Marivaux's
+dramatic practice made him good at these disappointments. She does give
+the introduction, and her brother-in-law, though a curmudgeon, is at
+first disposed to honour her draft. But here an unexpected change is
+made by the presentation of Jacob as a man of noble sentiment. The place
+he is to have is one taken from an invalid holder of it, whose wife
+comes to beg mercy: whereat Jacob, magnanimously and to the financier's
+great wrath, declines to profit by another's misfortune. Whether the
+fact that the lady is very pretty has anything to do with the matter
+need not be discussed. His--let us call it at least--good nature,
+however, indirectly makes his fortune. Going to visit the husband and
+wife whom he has obliged, he sees a young man attacked by three enemies
+and ill-bested. Jacob (who is no coward, and, thanks to his wife
+insisting on his being a gentleman and "M. de la Vallee," has a sword)
+draws and uses it on the weaker side, with no skill whatever, but in the
+downright, swash-and-stab, short- and tall-sailor fashion, which (in
+novels at least) is almost always effective. The assailants decamp, and
+the wounded but rescued person, who is of very high rank, conceives a
+strong friendship for his rescuer, and, as was said above, makes his
+fortune. The last and doubtful three-eighths of the book kill off poor
+Mlle. Habert (who, although Jacob would never have been unkind to her,
+was already beginning to be very jealous and by no means happy), and
+marry him again to a younger lady of rank, beauty, fashion, and fortune,
+in the imparted possession of all of which we leave him. But, except to
+the insatiables of "what happened next," these parts are as questionably
+important as they are decidedly doubtful.
+
+The really important points of the book are, in the first place, the
+ease and narrative skill with which the story is told in the difficult
+form of autobiography, and, secondly, the vivacity of the characters.
+Jacob himself is, as will have been seen already, a piebald sort of
+personage, entirely devoid of scruple in some ways, but not ill-natured,
+and with his own points of honour. He is perfectly natural, and so are
+all the others (not half of whom have been mentioned) as far as they go.
+The cross sister and the "kind" one; the false prude and false _devote_
+Mme. de Ferval, and the jolly, reckless, rather coarse Mme. de Fecour;
+the tyrannical, corrupt, and licentious financier, with others more
+slightly drawn, are seldom, if ever, out of drawing. The contemporary
+wash of colour passes, as it should, into something "fast"; you are in
+the Paris of the Regency, but you are at the same time in general human
+time and place, if not in eternity and infinity.
+
+[Sidenote: _Marianne_--outline of the story.]
+
+The general selection, however, of _Marianne_ as Marivaux's masterpiece
+is undoubtedly right, though in more ways than one it has less engaging
+power than the _Paysan_, and forebodes to some extent, if it does not
+actually display, the boring qualities which novels of combined analysis
+and jargon have developed since. The opening is odd: the author having
+apparently transplanted to the beginning of a novel the promiscuous
+slaughter with which we are familiar at the end of a play. Marianne (let
+us hail the appearance of a Christian-named heroine at last), a small
+child of the tenderest years, is, with the exception of an ecclesiastic,
+who takes to his heels and gets off, the sole survivor of a coachful of
+travellers who are butchered by a gang of footpads,[331] because two of
+the passengers have rashly endeavoured to defend themselves. Nothing can
+be found out about the child--an initial improbability, for the party
+has consisted of father, mother, and servants, as well as Marianne. But
+the good _cure_ of the place and his sister take charge of her, and
+bring her up carefully (they are themselves "gentle-people," as the good
+old phrase, now doubtless difficult of application, went) till she is
+fifteen, is very pretty, and evidently must be disposed of in some way,
+for her guardians are poor and have no influential relations. The
+sister, however, takes her to Paris--whither she herself goes to secure,
+if possible, the succession of a relative--to try to obtain some
+situation. But the inheritance proves illusory; the sister falls ill at
+Paris and dies there; while the brother is disabled, and his living has
+to be, if not transferred to, provided with, a substitute. This second
+massacre (for the brother dies soon) provides Marivaux with the
+situation he requires--that of a pretty girl, alone in the capital, and
+absolutely unfriended. Fortunately a benevolent Director knows a pious
+gentleman, M. de Climal, who is fond of doing good, and also, as it
+appears shortly by the story, of pretty girls. Marianne, with the
+earliest touch of distinct "snobbishness"--let it be proudly pointed out
+that the example is not English,[332]--declines to go into service, but
+does not so much mind being a shop-girl, and M. de Climal establishes
+her with his _lingere_, a certain Mme. Dutour.
+
+This good lady is no procuress, but her morals are of a somewhat
+accommodating kind, and she sets to work, experiencing very little
+difficulty in the process, to remove Marianne's scruples about accepting
+presents from M. de Climal--pointing out, very logically, that there is
+no obligation to (as Chesterfield put it not long after) _payer de sa
+personne_; though she is naturally somewhat disgusted when the gifts
+take the form of handsome _lingerie_ bought at another shop. When this,
+and a dress to match, are made up, Marianne as naturally goes to church
+to show them: and indulges in very shrewd if not particularly amiable
+remarks on her "even-Christians"--a delightful English archaism, which
+surely needs no apology for its revival. Coming out, she slips and
+sprains her ankle, whereupon, still naturally, appears the inevitable
+young man, a M. de Valville, who, after endless amicable wrangling,
+procures her a coach, but not without an awkward meeting. For M. de
+Valville turns out to be the nephew of M. de Climal; and the uncle, with
+a lady, comes upon the nephew and Marianne; while, a little later, each
+finds the other in turn at the girl's feet. Result: of course more than
+suspicion on the younger man's part, and a mixture of wrath and desire
+to hurry matters on the elder's. He offers Marianne a regular (or
+irregular) "establishment" at a dependent's of his own, with a small
+income settled upon her, etc. She refuses indignantly, the indignation
+being rather suspiciously divided between her two lovers; is "planted
+there" by the old sinner Climal, and of course requested to leave by
+Mme. Dutour; returns all the presents, much to her landlady's disgust,
+and once more seeks, though in a different mood, the shelter of the
+Church. Her old helper the priest for some time absolutely declines to
+admit the notion of Climal's rascality; but fortunately a charitable
+lady is more favourable, and Marianne gets taken in as a _pensionnaire_
+at a convent. Climal, whose sister and Valville's mother the lady turns
+out to be, falls ill, repents, confesses, and leaves Marianne a
+comfortable annuity. Union with Valville is not opposed by the mother;
+but other members of the family are less obliging, and Valville himself
+wanders after an English girl of a Jacobite exiled family, Miss Warton
+(Varthon). The story then waters itself out, before suddenly collapsing,
+with a huge and uninteresting _Histoire d'une Religieuse_. Whereat some
+folk may grumble; but others, more philosophically, may be satisfied, in
+no uncomplimentary sense, without hearing what finally made Marianne
+Countess of Three Stars, or indeed knowing any more of her actual
+history.
+
+For in fact the entire interest of _Marianne_ is concentrated in and on
+Marianne herself, and the fact that this is so at once makes
+continuation superfluous, and gives the novel its place in the history
+of fiction. We have quite enough, as it is, to show us--as the Princess
+Augusta said to Fanny Burney of the ill-starred last of French "Mesdames
+Royales"--"what sort of a girl she is." And her biographer has made her
+a very interesting sort of girl, and himself in making her so, a very
+interesting, and almost entirely novel, sort of novelist. To say that
+she is a wholly attractive character would be entirely false, except
+from the point of view of the pure student of art. She is technically
+virtuous, which is, of course, greatly to her credit.[333] She is not
+bad-blooded, but if there were such a word as "good-blooded" it could
+hardly be applied to her. With all her preserving borax- or
+formalin-like touch of "good form," she is something of a minx. She is
+vain, selfish--in fact wrapped up in self--without any sense of other
+than technical honour. But she is very pretty (which covers a multitude
+of sins), and she is really clever.
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of Marianne herself.]
+
+Yet the question at issue is not whether one can approve of Marianne,
+nor whether one can like her, nor even whether, approving and liking her
+or not, one could fall in love with her "for her comely face and for her
+fair bodie," as King Honour did in the ballad, and as _homo rationalis_
+usually, though not invariably, does fall in love. The question is
+whether Marivaux has, in her, created a live girl, and to what extent he
+has mastered the details of his creation. The only critical answer, I
+think, must be that he has created such a girl, and that he has not left
+her a mere outline or type, but has furnished the house as well as built
+it. She is, in the particular meaning on which Mr. Hardy's defenders
+insist, as "pure" a "woman" as Tess herself. And if there is a good deal
+missing from her which fortunately some women have, there is nothing in
+her which some women have not, and not so very much which the majority
+of women have not, in this or that degree. It is difficult not to smile
+when one compares her quintessence with the complicated and elusive
+caricatures of womanhood which some modern novel-writers--noisily hailed
+as _gyno_sophists--have put together, and been complimented on putting
+together. What is more, she is perhaps the first nearly complete
+character of the kind that had been presented in novel at her date. This
+is a great thing to say for Marivaux, and it can be said without the
+slightest fear of inability to support the saying.[334]
+
+[Sidenote: Marivaux and Richardson--"Marivaudage."]
+
+Although, therefore, we may not care much to enter into calculations as
+to the details of the indebtedness of Richardson to Marivaux, some
+approximations of the two, for critical purposes, may be useful. One may
+even see, without too much folly of the Thaumast kind, an explanation,
+beyond that of mere idleness, in the Frenchman's inveterate habit of not
+completing. He did not want you to read him "for the story"; and
+therefore he cared little for the story itself, and nothing at all for
+the technical finishing of it. The stories of both his characteristic
+novels are, as has been fairly shown, of the very thinnest. What he did
+want to do was to analyse and "display," in a half-technical sense of
+that word, his characters; and he did this as no man had done before
+him, and as few have done since, though many, quite ignorant of their
+indebtedness, have taken the method from him indirectly. In the second
+place, his combination of method and phrase is for infinite thoughts.
+This combination is not necessary; there is, to take up the comparative
+line, nothing of it in Richardson, nothing in Fielding, nothing in
+Thackeray. A few French eighteenth-century writers have it in direct
+imitation of Marivaux himself; but it dies out in France, and in the
+greatest novel-period there is nothing of it. It revives in the later
+nineteenth century, especially with us, and, curiously enough, if we
+look back to the beginnings of Romance in Greek, there is a good deal
+there, the crown and flower being, as has been before remarked, in
+Eustathius Macrembolita, but something being noticeable in earlier folk,
+especially Achilles Tatius, and the trick having evidently come from
+those rhetoricians[335] of whose class the romancers were a kind of
+offshoot. It is, however, only fair to say that, if Marivaux thought in
+intricate and sometimes startling ways, his actual expression is never
+obscure. It is a maze, but a maze with an unbroken clue of speech
+guiding you through it.[336]
+
+[Sidenote: Examples:--Marianne on the _physique_ and _moral_ of
+Prioresses and Nuns.]
+
+A few examples of method and style may now be given. Here is Marianne's
+criticism--rather uncannily shrewd and very characteristic both of her
+subject and of herself--of that peculiar placid plumpness which has been
+observed by the profane in devout persons, especially in the Roman
+Church and in certain dissenting sects (Anglicanism does not seem to be
+so favourable to it), and in "persons of religion" (in the technical
+sense) most of all.
+
+     This Prioress was a short little person, round and white,
+     with a double chin, and a complexion at once fresh and
+     placid. You never see faces like that in worldly persons: it
+     is a kind of _embonpoint_ quite different from others--one
+     which has been formed more quietly and more
+     methodically--that is to say, something into which there
+     enters more art, more fashioning, nay, more self-love, than
+     into that of such as we.[337]
+
+     As a rule, it is either temperament, or feeding, or laziness
+     and luxury, which give _us_ such of it as we have. But in
+     order to acquire the kind of which I am speaking, it is
+     necessary to have given oneself up with a saintlike
+     earnestness to the task. It can only be the result of
+     delicate, loving, and devout attention to the comfort and
+     well-being of the body. It shows not only that life--and a
+     healthy life--is an object of desire, but that it is wanted
+     soft, undisturbed, and dainty; and that, while enjoying the
+     pleasures of good health, the person enjoying it bestows on
+     herself all the pettings and the privileges of a perpetual
+     convalescence.
+
+     Also this religious plumpness is different in outward form
+     from ours, which is profane of aspect; it does not so much
+     make a face fat, as it makes it grave and decent; and so it
+     gives the countenance an air, not so much joyous, as
+     tranquil and contented.
+
+     Further, when you look at these good ladies, you find in
+     them an affable exterior; but perhaps, for all that, an
+     interior indifference. Their faces, and not their souls,
+     give you sympathy and tenderness; they are comely images,
+     which seem to possess sensibility, and which yet have merely
+     a surface of kindness and sentiment.[338]
+
+Acute as this is, it may be said to be somewhat displaced--though it
+must be remembered that it is the Marianne of fifty, "Mme. la Comtesse
+de * * *," who is supposed to be writing, not the Marianne of fifteen.
+No such objection can be taken to what follows.
+
+[_She is, after the breach with Climal, and after Valville has earlier
+discovered his wicked uncle on his knees before her, packing up
+the--well! not wages of iniquity, but baits for it--to send back to the
+giver. A little "cutting" may be made._]
+
+[Sidenote: She returns the gift-clothes.]
+
+     Thereupon I opened my trunk to take out first the newly
+     bought linen. "Yes, M. de Valville, yes!" said I, pulling it
+     out, "you shall learn to know me and to think of me as you
+     ought." This thought spurred me on, so that, without my
+     exactly thinking of it, it was rather to him than to his
+     uncle that I was returning the whole, all the more so that
+     the return of linen, dress, and money, with a note I should
+     write, could not fail to disabuse Valville, and make him
+     regret the loss of me. He had seemed to me to possess a
+     generous soul; and I applauded myself beforehand on the
+     sorrow which he would feel at having treated so
+     outrageously a girl so worthy of respectful treatment as I
+     was--for I saw in myself, confessedly, I don't know how many
+     titles to respect.
+
+     In the first place I put my bad luck, which was unique; to
+     add to this bad luck I had virtue, and they went so well
+     together! Then I was young, and on the top of it all I was
+     pretty, and what more do you want? If I had arranged matters
+     designedly to render myself an object of sympathy, to make a
+     generous lover sigh at having maltreated me, I could not
+     have succeeded better; and, provided I hurt Valville's
+     feelings, I was satisfied. My little plan was never to see
+     him again in my lifetime; and this seemed to me a very fair
+     and proud one; for I loved him, and I was even very glad to
+     have loved him, because he had perceived my love, and,
+     seeing me break with him, notwithstanding, would see also
+     what a heart he had had to do with.
+
+The little person goes on very delectably describing the packing, and
+how she grudged getting rid of the pretty things, and at last sighed and
+wept--whether for herself, or Valville, or the beautiful gown, she
+didn't know. But, alas! there is no more room, except to salute her as
+the agreeable ancestress of all the beloved coquettes and piquant minxes
+in prose fiction since. Could anything handsomer be said of her creator?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Prevost.]
+
+[Sidenote: His minor novels--the opinions on them of Sainte-Beuve.]
+
+[Sidenote: And of Planche.]
+
+It is, though an absolute and stereotyped commonplace, an almost equally
+absolute necessity, to begin any notice of the Abbe Prevost by remarking
+that nothing of his voluminous work is now, or has been for a long time,
+read, except _Manon Lescaut_. It may be added, though one is here
+repeating predecessors to not quite the same extent, that nothing else
+of his, in fiction at least, is worth reading. The faithful few who do
+not dislike old criticism may indeed turn over his _Le Pour et [le]
+Contre_ not without reward. But his historical and other
+compilations[339]--his total production in volumes is said to run over
+the hundred, and the standard edition of his _Oeuvres Choisies_
+extends to thirty-nine not small ones--are admittedly worthless. As to
+his minor novels--if one may use that term, albeit they are as major in
+bulk as they are minor in merit--opinions of importance, and presumably
+founded on actual knowledge, have differed somewhat strangely.
+Sainte-Beuve made something of a fight for them, but it was the
+Sainte-Beuve of almost the earliest years (1831), when, according to a
+weakness of beginners in criticism, he was a little inclined "to be
+different," for the sake of difference. Against _Cleveland_ even he
+lifts up his heel, though in a rather unfortunate manner, declaring the
+reading of the greater part to be "aussi fade que celle d'_Amadis_." Now
+to some of us the reading of _Amadis_ is not "fade" at all. But he finds
+some philosophical and psychological passages of merit. Over the
+_Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_--that huge and unwieldy galleon to
+which the frail shallop of _Manon_ was originally attached, and which
+has long been stranded on the reefs of oblivion, while its fly-boat
+sails for ever more--he is quite enthusiastic, finds it, though with a
+certain relativity, "natural," "frank," and "well-preserved," gives it a
+long analysis, actually discovers in it "an inexpressible savour"
+surpassing modern "local colour," and thinks the handling of it
+comparable in some respects to that of _The Vicar of Wakefield_! The
+_Doyen de Killerine_--the third of Prevost's long books--is "infinitely
+agreeable," "si l'on y met un peu de complaisance." (The Sainte-Beuve of
+later years would have noticed that an infinity which has to be made
+infinite by a little complaisance is curiously finite). The later and
+shorter _Histoire d'une Grecque moderne_ is a _joli roman_, and
+_gracieux_, though it is not so charming and subtle as Crebillon _fils_
+would have made it, and is "knocked off rather haphazardly." Another
+critic of 1830, now perhaps too much forgotten, Gustave Planche, does
+not mention the _Grecque_, and brushes aside the three earlier and
+bigger books rather hastily, though he allows "interest" to both
+_Cleveland_ and the _Doyen_. Perhaps, before "coming to real things" (as
+Balzac once said of his own work) in _Manon_, some remarks, not long,
+but first-hand, and based on actual reading at more than one time of
+life, as to her very unreal family, may be permitted here, though they
+may differ in opinion from the judgment of these two redoubtable
+critics.
+
+[Sidenote: The books themselves--_Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne_.]
+
+I do not think that when I first wrote about Prevost (I had read _Manon_
+long before) more than thirty years ago, in a _Short History of French
+Literature_, I paid very much attention to these books. I evidently had
+not read the _Grecque Moderne_, for I said nothing about it. Of the
+others I said only that they are "romances of adventure, occupying a
+middle place between those of Lesage and Marivaux." It is perfectly
+true, but of course not very "in-going," and whatever reading I then
+gave any of them had not left very much impression on my mind, when
+recently, and for the purpose of the present work, I took them up again,
+and the _Histoire_ as well. This last is the story of a young modern
+Greek slave named Theophe (a form of which the last syllable seems more
+modern than Greek), who is made visible in full harem by her
+particularly complaisant master, a Turkish pasha, to a young Frenchman,
+admired and bought by this Frenchman (the relater of the story), and
+freed by him. He does not at first think of making her his mistress, but
+later does propose it, only to meet a refusal of a somewhat
+sentimental-romantic character, though she protests not merely
+gratitude, but love for him. The latter part of the book is occupied by
+what Sainte-Beuve calls "delicate" ambiguities, which leave us in doubt
+whether her "cruelty" is shown to others as well, or whether it is not.
+In suggesting that Crebillon would have made it charming, the great
+critic has perhaps made another of those slips which show the novitiate.
+The fact is that it is an exceedingly dull book: and that to have made
+it anything else, while retaining anything like its present "propriety,"
+either an entire metamorphosis of spirit, which might have made it as
+passionate as _Manon_ itself, or the sort of filigree play with thought
+and phrase which Marivaux would have given, would be required. As a
+"Crebillonnade" (_v. inf._) it might have been both pleasant and subtle,
+but it could only have been made so by becoming exceedingly indecent.
+
+[Sidenote: _Cleveland._]
+
+Still, its comparative (though only comparative) shortness, and a
+certain possibility rather than actuality of interest in the
+situation,[340] may recommend this novel at least to mercy. If the
+present writer were on a jury trying _Cleveland_, no want of food or
+fire should induce him to endorse any such recommendation in regard to
+that intolerable book. It is, to speak frankly, one of the very few
+books--one of the still fewer novels--which I have found it practically
+impossible to read even in the "skim and skip and dip" fashion which
+should, no doubt, be only practised as a work of necessity (_i.e._ duty
+to others) and of mercy (to oneself) on extraordinary occasions, but
+which nobody but a prig and a pedant will absolutely disallow. Almost
+the only good thing I can find to say about it is that Prevost, who
+lived indeed for some time in England, is now and then, if not always,
+miraculously correct in his proper names. He can actually spell
+Hammersmith! Other merit--and this is not constant (in the dips which I
+have actually made, to rise exhausted from each, and skip rather than
+even skim to the rest)--I can find none. The beginning is absurd and
+rather offensive, the hero being a natural son of Cromwell by a woman
+who has previously been the mistress of Charles I. The continuation is a
+mish-mash of adventure, sometimes sanguinary, but never exciting, travel
+(in fancy parts of the West Indies, etc.), and the philosophical
+disputations which Sainte-Beuve found interesting. As for the end, no
+two persons seem quite agreed what _is_ the end. Sainte-Beuve speaks of
+it as an attempted suicide of the hero--the most justifiable of all his
+actions, if he had succeeded. Prevost himself, in the Preface to the
+_Doyen de Killerine_, repeats an earlier disavowal (which he says he
+had previously made in Holland) of a fifth volume, and says that his own
+work ended with the murder of Cleveland by one of the characters. Again,
+this is a comprehensible and almost excusable action, and might have
+followed, though it could not have preceded, the other. But if it was
+the end, the other was not. A certain kind of critic may say that it is
+my duty to search and argue this out. But, for my part, I say as a
+reader to _Cleveland_, "No more _in_ thee my steps shall be, For ever
+and for ever."[341]
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Doyen de Killerine._]
+
+_Le Doyen de Killerine_ is not perhaps so utterly to be excommunicated
+as _Cleveland_, and, as has been said above, some have found real
+interest in it. It is not, however, free either from the
+preposterousness or from the dulness of the earlier book, though the
+first characteristic is less preposterous as such preposterousness goes.
+The Dean of Killerine (Coleraine) is a Roman Catholic dean, just after
+the expulsion of James II., when, we learn with some surprise, that
+neighbourhood was rather specially full of his co-religionists. He is a
+sort of _lusus naturae_, being bow-legged, humpbacked, potbellied, and
+possessing warts on his brows, which make him a sort of later horned
+Moses. The eccentricity of his appearance is equalled by that of his
+conduct. He is the eldest son of an Irish gentleman (nobleman, it would
+sometimes seem), and his father finds a pretty girl who is somehow
+willing to marry him. But, feeling no vocation for marriage, he suggests
+to her (a suggestion perhaps unique in fiction if not in fact) that she
+should marry his father instead. This singular match comes off, and a
+second family results, the members of which are, fortunately, not _lusus
+naturae_, but a brace of very handsome and accomplished boys, George and
+Patrick, and an extremely pretty girl, Rosa. Of these three, their
+parents dying when they are something short of full age, the excellent
+dean becomes a sort of guardian. He takes them to the exiled court of
+Versailles, and his very hen-like anxieties over the escapades of these
+most lively ducklings supply the main subject of the book. It might have
+been made amusing by humorous treatment, but Prevost had no humour in
+him: and it might have been made thrilling by passion, but he never,
+except in the one great little instance, compressed or distilled his
+heaps and floods of sensibility and sensationalism into that. The scene
+where a wicked Mme. de S---- plays, and almost outplays, Potiphar's wife
+to the good but hideous Dean's Joseph is one of the most curious in
+novel-literature, though one of the least amusing.
+
+[Sidenote: The _Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_.]
+
+We may now go back to the _Memoires_, partly in compliment to the master
+of all mid-nineteenth-century critics, but more because of their almost
+fortuitous good luck in ushering _Manon_ into the world. There is
+something in them of both their successors, _Cleveland_ and the _Doyen_,
+but it may be admitted that they are less unreadable than the first, and
+less trivial than the second. The plan--if it deserve that name--is odd,
+one marquis first telling his own fortunes and voyages and whatnots, and
+then serving as Mentor (the application, though of course not original,
+is inevitable) to another marquis in further voyages and adventures.
+There are Turkish brides and Spanish murdered damsels; English politics
+and literature, where, unfortunately, the spelling _does_ sometimes
+break down; glances backward, in "Histoires" of the _Grand Siecle_, at
+meetings with Charles de Sevigne, Racine, etc.; mysterious remedies, a
+great deal of moralising, and a great deal more of weeping. Indeed the
+whole of Prevost, like the whole of that "Sensibility Novel" of which he
+is a considerable though rather an outside practitioner, is pervaded
+with a gentle rain of tears wherein the personages seem to revel--indeed
+admit that they do so--in the midst of their woes.
+
+[Sidenote: Its miscellaneous curiosities.]
+
+On the whole, however, the youthful--or almost youthful--half-wisdom of
+Sainte-Beuve is better justified of its preference for the _Memoires_
+than of other things in the same article. I found it, reading it later
+on purpose and with "preventions" rather the other way, very much more
+readable than any of its companions (_Manon_ is not its companion, but
+in a way its constituent), without being exactly readable _simpliciter_.
+All sorts of curious things might be dug out of it: for instance, quite
+at the beginning, a more definite declaration than I know elsewhere of
+that curious French title-system which has always been such a puzzle to
+Englishmen. "Il _se fit_ appeler le Comte de ... et, se voyant un fils,
+il _lui donna_ celui de Marquis de ..." There is a good deal in it which
+makes us think that Prevost had read Defoe, and something which makes it
+not extravagant to fancy that Thackeray had read Prevost. But once more
+"let us come to the real things--let us speak of" _Manon Lescaut_.
+
+[Sidenote: _Manon Lescaut._]
+
+[Sidenote: Its uniqueness.]
+
+It would be a very interesting question in that study of
+literature--rather unacademic, or perhaps academic in the best sense
+only--which might be so near and is so far--whether the man is most to
+be envied who reads _Manon Lescaut_ for the first time in blissful
+ignorance of these other things, and even of what has been said of them;
+or he who has, by accident or design, toiled through the twenty volumes
+of the others and comes upon Her. My own case is the former: and I am
+far from quarrelling with it. But I sometimes like to fancy--now that I
+have reversed the proceeding--what it would have been like to dare the
+voices--the endless, dull, half-meaningless, though not threatening
+voices--of those other books--to refrain even from the appendix to the
+_Memoires_ as such, and never, till the _Modern Greekess_ has been
+dispatched, return to and possess the entire and perfect jewel of
+_Manon_. I used to wonder, when, for nearer five and twenty than twenty
+years, I read for review hundreds of novels, English and French, whether
+anybody would ever repeat Prevost's extraordinary spurt and "sport" in
+this wonderful little book. I am bound to say that I never knew an
+instance. The "first book" which gives a promise--dubious it may be, but
+still promising--and is never followed by anything that fulfils this, is
+not so very uncommon, though less common in prose fiction than in
+poetry. The not so very rare "single-speech" poems are also not real
+parallels. It is of the essence of poetry, according to almost every
+theory, that it should be, occasionally at least, inexplicable and
+unaccountable. I believe that every human being is capable of poetry,
+though I should admit that the exhibition of the capability would be in
+most cases--I am sure it would be in my own--"highly to be deprecated."
+But with a sober prose fiction of some scope and room and verge it is
+different. The face of Helen; the taste of nectar; the vision of the
+clouds or of the sea; the passion of a great action in oneself or
+others; the infinite poignancy of suffering or of pleasure, may
+draw--once and never again--immortal verse from an exceedingly mortal
+person. Such things might also draw a phrase or a paragraph of prose.
+But they could not extract a systematic and organised prose tale of some
+two hundred pages, each of them much fuller than those of our average
+six-shilling stuff; and yet leave the author, who had never shown
+himself capable of producing anything similar before, unable to produce
+anything in the least like it again. I wonder that the usual literary
+busybodies have never busied themselves--perhaps they have, for during a
+couple of decades I have not had the opportunity of knowing everything
+that goes on in French literature as I once did--with Prevost,
+demonstrating that _Manon_ was a posthumous work of the Regent (who was
+a clever man), or an expression of a real passion which lay at the back
+of Richelieu's debauchery, or written by some unknown author from whom
+the Abbe bought it, and who died early, or something else of the kind.
+
+There does not, however, appear to be the slightest chance or hope or
+fear (whichever expression be preferred) of the kind. Although Prevost
+elsewhere indulges--as everybody else for a long time in France and
+England alike did, save creative geniuses like Fielding--in
+transparently feigned talk about the origins of his stories, he was a
+very respectable man in his way, and not at all likely to father or to
+steal any one else's work in a disreputable fashion. There are no other
+claimants for the book: and though it may be difficult for a foreigner
+to find the faults of style that Gustave Planche rebukes in Prevost
+generally, there is nothing in the mere style of _Manon_ which sets it
+above the others.
+
+For once one may concede that the whole attraction of the piece, barring
+one or two transient but almost Shakespearian flashes of
+expression--such as the famous "Perfide Manon! Perfide!" when she and
+Des Grieux first meet after her earliest treason--is to be found in its
+marvellous humanity, its equally marvellous grasp of character, and the
+intense, the absolutely shattering pathos of the relations of the hero
+and heroine. There are those, of course, who make much of the _persona
+tertia_, Tiberge, the virtuous and friendly priest, who has a remarkable
+command of money for a not highly placed ecclesiastic, lends it with
+singular want of circumspection, and then meddles with the best of
+intentions and the most futile or mischievous of results. Very
+respectable man, Tiberge; but one with whom _on n'a que faire_. Manon
+and Des Grieux; Des Grieux and Manon--these are as all-sufficient to the
+reader as Manon was more than sufficient to Des Grieux, and as he, alas!
+was, if only in some ways, _in_sufficient to Manon.
+
+One of the things which are nuisances in Prevost's other books becomes
+pardonable, almost admirable, in this. His habit of incessant,
+straight-on narration by a single person, his avoidance of dialogue
+properly so called, is, as has been noted, a habit common to all these
+early novels, and, to our taste if not to that of their early readers,
+often disastrous. Here it is a positive advantage. Manon speaks very
+little; and so much the better. Her "comely face and her fair bodie" (to
+repeat once more a beloved quotation) speak for her to the ruin of her
+lover and herself--to the age-long delectation of readers. On the other
+hand, the whole speech is Des Grieux', and never was a monologue better
+suited or justified. The worst of such things is usually that there are
+in them all sorts of second thoughts of the author. There is none of
+this littleness in the speech of Des Grieux. He is a gentle youth in the
+very best sense of the term, and as we gather--not from anything he says
+of himself, but from the general tenor--by no means a "wild gallant";
+affectionate, respectful to his parents, altogether "douce," and,
+indeed, rather (to start with) like Lord Glenvarloch in _The Fortunes of
+Nigel_. He meets Manon (Prevost has had the wits to make her a little
+older than her lover), and _actum est de_ both of them.
+
+[Sidenote: The character of its heroine.]
+
+But Manon herself? She talks (it has been said) very little, and it was
+not necessary that she should talk much. If she had talked as Marianne
+talks, we should probably hate her, unless, as is equally probable, we
+ceased to take any interest in her. She is a girl not of talk but of
+deeds: and her deeds are of course quite inexcusable. But still that
+great and long unknown verse of Prior, which tells how a more harmless
+heroine did various things--
+
+    As answered the end of her being created,
+
+fits her, and the deeds create her in their process, according to the
+wonderful magic of the novelist's art. Manon is not in the least a
+Messalina; it is not what Messalina wanted that she wants at all, though
+she may have no physical objection to it, and may rejoice in it when it
+is shared by her lover. Still less is she a Margaret of Burgundy, or one
+of the tigress-enchantresses of the Fronde, who would kill their lovers
+after enjoying their love. It has been said often, and is beyond all
+doubt true, that she would have been perfectly happy with Des Grieux if
+he had fulfilled the expostulations of George the Fourth as to Mr.
+Turveydrop, and had not only been known to the King, but had had twenty
+thousand a year. She wants nobody and nothing but him, as far as the
+"Him" is concerned: but she does not want him in a cottage. And here the
+subtlety comes in. She does not in the least mind giving to others what
+she gives him, provided that they will give her what he cannot give. The
+possibility of this combination is of course not only shocking to Mrs.
+Grundy, but deniable by persons who are not Mrs. Grundy at all. Its
+existence is not really doubtful, though hardly anybody, except Prevost
+and (I repeat it, little as I am of an Ibsenite) Ibsen in the _Wild
+Duck_, has put it into real literature. Manon, like Gina and probably
+like others, does not really think what she gives of immense, or of any
+great, importance. People will give her, in exchange for it, what she
+does think of great, of immense importance; the person to whom she would
+quite honestly prefer to give it cannot give her these other things. And
+she concludes her bargain as composedly as any _bonne_ who takes the
+basket to the shops and "makes its handle dance"--to use the French
+idiom--for her own best advantage. It does annoy her when she has to
+part from Des Grieux, and it does annoy her that Des Grieux should be
+annoyed at what she does. But she is made of no nun's flesh, and such
+soul as she has is filled with much desire for luxury and pleasure. The
+desire of the soul will have its way, and the flesh lends itself readily
+enough to the satisfaction thereof.
+
+[Sidenote: And that of the hero.]
+
+So, too, there is no such instance known to me of the presentation of
+two different characters, in two different ways, so complete and yet so
+idiosyncratic in each. Sainte-Beuve showed what he was going to become
+(as well, perhaps, as something which he was going to lose) in his
+slight but suggestive remarks on the relation of Des Grieux to the
+average _roue_ hero of that most _roue_ time. It is only a suggestion;
+he does not work it out. But it is worth working out a little. Des
+Grieux is _ab initio_, and in some ways _usque ad finem_, a sort of
+_ingenu_. He seems to have no vicious tendencies whatever; and had Manon
+not supervened, might have been a very much more exemplary Chevalier de
+Malte than the usual run of those dignitaries, who differed chiefly
+from their uncrossed comrades and brethren in having no wife to be
+unfaithful to. He is never false to Manon--the incident of one of
+Manon's lovers trying vainly to tempt his rival, with a pretty cast-off
+mistress of his own, is one of the most striking features of the book.
+He positively reveres, not his mother, who is dead, and reverence for
+whom would be nothing in a Frenchman, but his father, and even, it would
+seem, his elder brother--a last stretch of reverence quite unknown to
+many young English gentlemen who certainly would not do things that Des
+Grieux did. Except when Manon is concerned, it would seem that he might
+have been a kind of saint--as good at least as Tiberge. But his love for
+her and his desire for her entirely saturate and transform him. That he
+disobeys his father and disregards his brother is nothing: we all do
+that in less serious cases than his, and there is almost warrant for it
+in Scripture. But he cheats at play (let us frankly allow, remembering
+Grammont and others, that this was not in France the unpardonable sin
+that it has--for many generations, fortunately--been with us), at the
+suggestion of his rascally left-hand brother-in-law, in order to supply
+Manon's wants. He commits an almost deliberate (though he makes some
+excuses on this point) and almost cowardly murder, on an unarmed
+lay-brother of Saint-Sulpice, to get to Manon. And, worst of all, he
+consents to the stealing of moneys given to her by his supplanters in
+order to feed her extravagance. After this his suborning the King's
+soldiers to attack the King's constabulary on the King's highway to
+rescue Manon is nothing. But observe that, though it is certainly not
+"All for God," it _is_ "All for Her." And observe further that all these
+things--even the murder--were quite common among the rank and file of
+that French aristocracy which was so busily hurrying on the French
+Revolution. Only, Des Grieux himself would pretty certainly not have
+done them if She had never come in his way. And he tells it all with a
+limpid and convincing clarity (as they would say now) which puts the
+whole thing before us. No apology is made, and no apology is needed. It
+is written in the books of the chronicles of Manon and Des Grieux; in
+the lives of Des Grieux and Manon, suppose them ever to have existed or
+to exist, it could not but happen.
+
+[Sidenote: The inevitableness of both and the inestimableness of their
+history.]
+
+It is surely not profane (and perhaps it has been done already) to
+borrow for these luckless, and, if you will, somewhat graceless persons,
+the words of the mighty colophon of Matthew Arnold's most unequal but in
+parts almost finest poem, at least the first and last lines:
+
+    So rest, for ever rest, immortal pair,
+
+and
+
+    The rustle of the eternal rain of love.
+
+Nor is it perhaps extravagant to claim for their creator--even for their
+reporter--the position of the first person who definitely vindicated for
+the novel the possibility of creating a passionate masterpiece,
+outstripping _La Princesse de Cleves_ as _Othello_ outstrips _A Woman
+Killed with Kindness_. As for the enormous remainder of him, if it is
+very frankly negligible by the mere reader, it is not quite so by the
+student. He was very popular, and, careless bookmaker as he was in a
+very critical time, his popularity scarcely failed him till his horrible
+death.[342] It can scarcely be said that, except in the one great cited
+instance, he heightened or intensified the French novel, but he enlarged
+its scope, varied its interests, and combined new objectives with its
+already existing schemes, even in his less good work. In _Manon Lescaut_
+itself he gave a masterpiece, not only to the novel, not only to France,
+but to all literature and all the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Crebillon _fils_.]
+
+The unfortunate nobleman as to whom Dickens has left us in doubt whether
+he was a peer in his own right or the younger son or a Marquis or Duke,
+pronounced Shakespeare "a clayver man." It was perhaps, in the
+particular instance, inadequate though true. I hardly know any one in
+literature of whom it is truer and more adequate than it is of Claude
+Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon the younger, commonly called Crebillon
+_fils_.[343] His very name is an abomination to Mrs. Grundy, who
+probably never read, or even attempted to read, one of his naughty
+books. Gray's famous tribute[344] to him--also known to a large number
+who are in much the same case with Mrs. Grundy--is distinctly
+patronising. But he is a very clever man indeed, and the cleverness of
+some of his books--especially those in dialogue--is positively amazing.
+
+[Sidenote: The case against him.]
+
+At the same time it is of the first importance to make the due provisos
+and allowances, the want of which so frequently causes disappointment,
+if not positive disgust, when readers have been induced by unbalanced
+laudation to take up works of the literature of other days. There are,
+undoubtedly, things--many and heavy things--to be said against
+Crebillon. A may say, "I am not, I think, _Mr._ Grundy: but I cannot
+stand your Crebillon. I do not like a world where all the men are
+apparently atheists, and all the women are certainly the other thing
+mentioned in Donne's famous line. It disgusts and sickens me: and I will
+have none of it, however clever it may be." B, not quite agreeing with
+A, may take another tone, and observe, "He _is_ clever and he _is_
+amusing: but he is terribly monotonous. I do not mind a visit to the
+'oyster-bearing shores' now and then, but I do not want to live in
+Lampsacus. After all, even in a pagan Pantheon, there are other
+divinities besides a cleverly palliated Priapus and a comparatively
+ladylike Cotytto. Seven volumes of however delicately veiled
+'sculduddery' are nearly as bad as a whole evening's golf-talk in a St.
+Andrews hotel, or a long men's dinner, where everybody but yourself is a
+member of an Amateur Dramatic Society." The present writer is not far
+from agreeing with B, while he has for A a respect which disguises no
+shadow of a sneer. Crebillon does harp far too much on one string, and
+that one of no pure tone: and even the individual handlings of the
+subject are chargeable throughout his work with _longueurs_, in the
+greater part of it with sheer tedium. It is very curious, and for us of
+the greatest importance, to notice how this curse of long-windedness,
+episodic and hardly episodic "inset," endless talk "about it and about
+it," besets these pioneers of the modern novel. Whether it was a legacy
+of the "Heroics" or not it is difficult to say. I think it was--to some
+extent. But, as we have seen, it exists even in Lesage; it is found
+conspicuously in Marivaux; it "advances insupportably" in Prevost,
+except when some God intervenes to make him write (and to stop him
+writing) _Manon_; and it rests heavily even on Crebillon, one of the
+lightest, if not one of the purest, of literary talents. It is
+impossible to deny that he suffers from monotony of general theme: and
+equally impossible to deny that he suffers from spinning out of
+particular pieces. There is perhaps not a single thing of his which
+would not have been better if it had been shorter: and two of his
+liveliest if also most risky pieces, _La Nuit et le Moment_ and _Le
+Hasard au Coin du Feu_, might have been cut down to one half with
+advantage, and to a quarter with greater advantage still.
+
+There are, however, excuses for Crebillon: and though it may seem a rash
+thing to say, and even one which gives the case away, there is, at least
+in these two and parts of _Le Sopha_, hardly a page--even of the parts
+which, if "cut," would improve the work as a whole--that does not in
+itself prove the almost elfish cleverness now assigned to him.
+
+[Sidenote: For the defendant--The veracity of his artificiality and his
+consummate cleverness.]
+
+The great excuse for him, from the non-literary point of view, is that
+this world of his--narrow though crowded as it is, corrupt,
+preposterous, inviting the Judgment that came after it as no period
+perhaps has ever done, except that immediately before the Deluge, that
+of the earlier Roman empire, and one other--was a real world in its day,
+and left, as all real things do, an abiding mark and influence on what
+followed. One of the scores and almost hundreds of sayings which
+distinguish him, trivial as he seems to some and no doubt disgusting as
+he seems to others, is made by one of his most characteristic and most
+impudent but not most offensive heroes _a la_ Richelieu, who says, not
+in soliloquy nor to a brother _roue_, but to the mistress of the moment:
+"If love-making is not always a pleasure, at any rate it is always a
+kind of occupation." That is the keynote of the Crebillon novel: it is
+the handbook, with illustrative examples, of the business, employment,
+or vocation of flirting, in the most extensive and intensive meanings of
+that term comprehensible to the eighteenth century.
+
+[Sidenote: The Crebillonesque atmosphere and method.]
+
+Now you should never scamp or hurry over business: and Crebillon
+observes this doctrine in the most praiseworthy fashion. With the
+thorough practicality of his century and of his nation (which has always
+been in reality the most practical of all nations) he sets to work to
+give us the ways and manners of his world. It is an odd world at first
+sight, but one gets used to its conventions. It is a world of what they
+used to call, in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century,
+"high fellers" and of great ladies, all of whom--saving for glimpses of
+military and other appointments for the men, which sometimes take them
+away and are useful for change of scene, of theatres, balls,
+gaming-tables for men and women both--"have nothing in the world to do"
+but carry on that occupation which Clitandre of "The Night and the
+Moment," at an extremely suitable time and in equally appropriate
+circumstances, refers to in the words quoted above. There are some other
+oddities about this world. In some parts of it nobody seems to be
+married. Mrs. Grundy, and even persons more exercised in actual fact
+than Mrs. Grundy, would expect them all to be, and to neglect the tie.
+But sometimes Crebillon finds it easier to mask this fact. Often his
+ladies are actual widows, which is of course very convenient, and might
+be taken as a sign of grace in him by Mrs. G.: oftener it is difficult
+to say what they are legally. They are nearly all duchesses or
+marchionesses or countesses, just as the men hold corresponding ranks:
+and they all seem to be very well off. But their sole occupation is that
+conducted under the three great verbs, _Prendre_; _Avoir_; _Quitter_.
+These verbs are used rather more frequently, but by no means
+exclusively, of and by the men. Taking the stage nomenclature familiar
+to everybody from Moliere, which Crebillon also uses in some of his
+books, though he exchanges it for proper names elsewhere, let us suppose
+a society composed of Oronte, Clitandre, Eraste, Damis (men), and
+Cydalise, Celie, Lucinde, Julie (ladies). Oronte "takes" Lucinde,
+"possesses" her for a time, and "quits" her for Julie, who has been
+meanwhile "taken," "possessed," and "quitted" by Eraste. Eraste passes
+to the conjugation of the three verbs with Cydalise, who, however, takes
+the initiative of "quitting" and conjugates "take" in joint active and
+passive with Damis. Meanwhile Celie and Clitandre are similarly occupied
+with each other, and ready to "cut in" with the rest at fresh
+arrangements. These processes require much serious conversation, and
+this is related with the same mixture of gravity and irony which is
+bestowed on the livelier passages of action.
+
+The thing, in short, is most like an intensely intricate dance, with
+endless figures--with elaborate, innumerable, and sometimes
+indescribable stage directions. And the whole of it is written down
+carefully by M. Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon.
+
+He might have occupied his time much better? Perhaps, as to the subject
+of occupation. But with that we have, if not nothing, very little to do.
+The point is, How did he handle these better-let-alone subjects? and
+what contribution, in so handling them, did he make to the general
+development of the novel?
+
+I am bound to say that I think, with the caution given above, he handled
+them, when he was at his best, singularly well, and gave hints, to be
+taken or left as they chose, to handlers of less disputable subjects
+than his.
+
+One at least of the most remarkable things about him is connected with
+this very disputableness. Voltaire and Sterne were no doubt greater men
+than Crebillon _fils_: and though both of them dealt with the same class
+of subject, they also dealt with others, while he did not. But,
+curiously enough, the reproach of sniggering, which lies so heavily on
+Laurence Sterne and Francois Arouet, does not lie on Crebillon. He has
+an audacity of grave persiflage[345] which is sometimes almost Swiftian
+in a lower sphere: and it saves him from the unpardonable sin of the
+snigger. He has also--as, to have this grave persiflage, he almost
+necessarily must have--a singularly clear and flexible style, which is
+only made more piquant by the "-assiez's" and "-ussiez's" of the older
+language. Further, and of still greater importance for the novelist, he
+has a pretty wit, which sometimes almost approaches humour, and, if not
+a diabolically, a _diablotin_ically acute perception of human nature as
+it affects his subject. This perception rarely fails: and conventional,
+and very unhealthily conventional, as the Crebillon world is, the people
+who inhabit it are made real people. He is, in those best things of his
+at least, never "out." We can see the ever-victorious duke (M. de
+Clerval of the _Hasard_ is perhaps the closest to the Richelieu model of
+all Crebillon's coxcomb-gallants), who, even after a lady has given him
+most unequivocal proofs of her affection, refuses for a long time, if
+not finally, to say that he loves her, because he has himself a
+graduated scheme of values in that direction, and though she may have
+touched his heart, etc., she has not quite come up to his "love"
+standard.[346] And we know, too, though she is less common, the
+philosophical Marquise herself, who, "possessing" the most notoriously
+inconstant lover in all Paris (this same M. de Clerval, it happens),
+maintains her comparative indifference to the circumstance, alleging
+that even when he is most inconstant he is always "very affectionate,
+though a little _extinguished_." And in fact he goes off to her from the
+very fireside, where such curious things have chanced. Extravagant as
+are the situations in _La Nuit et le Moment_, the other best thing, they
+are, but for the _longueurs_ already censured, singularly verisimilar on
+their own postulates. The trusty coachman, who always drives
+particularly slowly when a lady accompanies his master in the carriage,
+but would never think of obeying the check-string if his master's own
+voice did not authorise it; the invaluable _soubrette_ who will sit up
+to any hour to play propriety, when her mistress is according a
+_tete-a-tete_, but who, most naturally, always falls asleep--these
+complete, at the lower end of the scale, what the dukes and the
+countesses have begun at the upper. And Crebillon, despite his
+verbosity, is never at a loss for pointed sayings to relieve and froth
+it up. Nor are these mere _mots_ or _pointes_ or conceits--there is a
+singular amount of life-wisdom in them, and a short anthology might be
+made here, if there were room for it, which would entirely vindicate the
+assertion.
+
+[Sidenote: Inequality of his general work--a survey of it.]
+
+It is true that the praises just given to Crebillon do not (as was
+indeed hinted above) apply to the whole of his work, or even to the
+larger part of it. An unfavourable critic might indeed say that, in
+strictness, they only apply to parts of _Le Sopha_ and to the two little
+dialogue-stories just referred to. The method is, no doubt, one by no
+means easy to apply on the great scale, and the restriction of the
+subject adds to the difficulty. The longest regular stories of all, _Ah!
+Quel Conte!_ and _Le Sopha_ itself, though they should have been
+mentioned in reverse order, are resumptions of the Hamiltonian idea[347]
+of chaining things on to the _Arabian Nights_. Crebillon, however, does
+not actually resuscitate Shahriar and the sisters, but substitutes a
+later Caliph, Shah Baham, and his Sultana. The Sultan is exceedingly
+stupid, but also very talkative, and fond of interrupting his vizier and
+the other tale-tellers with wiseacreries; the Sultana is an acute enough
+lady, who governs her tongue in order to save her neck. The framework is
+not bad for a short story, but becomes a little tedious when it is made
+to enshrine two volumes, one of them pretty big. It is better in _Le
+Sopha_ than in _Ah! Quel Conte!_ and some of the tales that it gives us
+in the former are almost equal to the two excepted dialogues. Moreover,
+it is unluckily true that _Ah! Quel Conte!_ (an ejaculation of the
+Sultana's at the beginning) might be, as Crebillon himself doubtless
+foresaw, repeated with a sinister meaning by a reader at the end.
+_Tanzai et Neadarne_ or _L'Ecumoire_, another fairy story, though
+livelier in its incidents than _Ah! Quel Conte!_--nay, though it
+contains some of Crebillon's smartest sayings, and has perhaps his
+nicest heroine,--is heavy on the whole, and in it, the author's
+_gauffre_-like lightness of "impropriety" being absent, the tone
+approaches nearer to that dismallest form of literature or
+non-literature--the deliberate obscene.
+
+_Les Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit_, on the other hand--one of
+the author's earliest books--is the furthest from that most undesirable
+consummation, and one of the most curious, if not of the most amusing,
+of all. It recounts, from the mouth of the neophyte himself, the
+"forming" of a very young man--almost a boy--to this strange kind of
+commerce, by an elderly, but not yet old, and still attractive
+coquette, Madame de Lursay, whose earlier life has scandalised even the
+not easily scandalisable society of her time (we are not told quite
+how), but who has recovered a reputation very slightly tarnished. The
+hero is flattered, but for a long time too timid and innocent to avail
+himself of the advantages offered to him; while, before very long,
+Madame de Lursay's wiles are interfered with by an "Inconnue-Ingenue,"
+with whom he falls in deep calf-love of a quasi-genuine kind. The book
+includes sketches of the half-bravo gallants of the time, and is not
+negligible: but it is not vividly interesting.
+
+Still less so, though they contain some very lively passages, and are
+the chief _locus_ for Crebillon's treatment of the actual trio of
+husband, wife, and lover, are the _Lettres de la Marquise de M---- au
+Comte de P----_. The scene in which the husband--unfaithful, peevish,
+and a _petit maitre_--enters his wife's room to find an ancient, gouty
+Marquis, who cannot get off his knees quick enough, and terminates the
+situation with all the _aplomb_ of the Regency, is rather nice: and the
+gradual "slide" of the at first quite virtuous writer (the wife herself,
+of course) is well depicted. But love-letters which are neither
+half-badinage--which these are not--nor wholly passionate--which these
+never are till the last,[348] when the writer is describing a state of
+things which Crebillon could not manage at all--are very difficult
+things to bring off, and Claude Prosper is not quite equal to the
+situation.
+
+It will thus be seen that the objectors whom we have called A and B--or
+at least B--will find that they or he need not read all the pages of all
+the seven volumes to justify their views: and some other work, still to
+be mentioned, completes the exhibition. I confess, indeed, once more
+unblushingly, that I have not read every page of them myself. Had they
+fallen in my way forty years ago I should, no doubt, have done so; but
+forty years of critical experience and exercise give one the power, and
+grant one the right, of a more summary procedure in respect of matter
+thus postponed, unless it is perceived to be of very exceptional
+quality. These larger works of Crebillon's are not good, though they are
+not by any means so bad as those of Prevost. There are nuggets, of the
+shrewd sense and the neat phrase with which he has been credited, in
+nearly all of them: and these the skilled prospector of reading gold
+will always detect and profit by. But, barring the possibility of a
+collection of such, the _Oeuvres Choisies_ of Crebillon need not
+contain more than the best parts of _Le Sopha_, the two comparatively
+short dialogue-tales, and a longer passage or two from _Tanzai et
+Neadarne_. It would constitute (I was going to say a respectable, but as
+that is hardly the right word, I will say rather) a tolerable volume.
+Even in a wider representation _Les Heureux Orphelins_ and _Lettres
+Atheniennes_ would yield very little.
+
+The first begins sensationally with the discovery, by a young English
+squire in his own park, of a foundling girl and boy--_not_ of his own
+production--whom he brings up; and it ends with a tedious description of
+how somebody founded the first _petite maison_ in England--a worthy work
+indeed. It is also noteworthy for a piece of bad manners, which, one
+regrets to say, French writers have too often committed; lords and
+ladies of the best known names and titles in or near Crebillon's own
+day--such as Oxford, Suffolk, Pembroke--being introduced with the utmost
+nonchalance.[349] Our novelists have many faults to charge themselves
+with, and Anthony Trollope, in _The Three Clerks_, produced a Frenchman
+with perhaps as impossible a name as any English travesty in French
+literature. But I do not remember any one introducing, in a _not_
+historical novel, a Duc de la Tremoille or a member of any of the
+branches of Rohan, at a time when actual bearers of these titles existed
+in France. As for the _Lettres Atheniennes_, if it were not for
+completeness, I should scarcely even mention them. Alcibiades is the
+chief male writer; Aspasia the chief female; but all of them, male and
+female, are equally destitute of Atticism and of interest. The contrast
+of the contrasts between Crebillon's and Prevost's best and worst work
+is one of the oddest things in letters. One wonders how Prevost came to
+write anything so admirable as _Manon Lescaut_; one wonders how
+Crebillon came to write anything so insufficient as the two books just
+criticised, and even others.
+
+It may be said, "This being so, why have you given half a chapter to
+these two writers, even with Lesage and Marivaux to carry it off?" The
+reason is that this is (or attempts to be) a history of the French
+novel, and that, in such a history, the canons of importance are not the
+same as those of the novel itself. _Gil Blas_, _Marianne_, _Manon
+Lescaut_, and perhaps even _Le Hasard au Coin du Feu_ are interesting in
+themselves; but the whole work of their authors is important, and
+therefore interesting, to the historical student. For these authors
+carried further--a great deal further--the process of laying the
+foundations and providing the materials and plant for what was to come.
+Of actual masterpieces they only achieved the great, but not _equally_
+great, one of _Gil Blas_ and the little one of _Manon Lescaut_. But it
+is not by masterpieces alone that the world of literature lives in the
+sense of prolonging its life. One may even say--touching the unclean
+thing paradox for a moment, and purifying oneself with incense, and
+salt, and wine--that the masterpieces of literature are more beautiful
+and memorable and delectable in themselves than fertile in results. They
+catch up the sum of their own possibilities, and utter it in such a
+fashion that there is no more to say in that fashion. The dreary
+imitation _Iliads_, the impossible sham _Divina Commedias_, the
+Sheridan-Knowles Shakespearian plays, rise up and terrify or bore us.
+Whereas these second-rate experimenters, these adventurers in quest of
+what they themselves hardly know, strike out paths, throw seed, sketch
+designs which others afterwards pursue, and plant out, and fill up.
+There are probably not many persons now who would echo Gray's wish for
+eternal romances of either Marivaux or Crebillon; and the accompanying
+remarks in the same letter on _Joseph Andrews_, though they show some
+appreciation of the best characters, are quite inappreciative of the
+merit of the novel as a whole. For eternal variations of _Joseph
+Andrews_, "_Passe!_" as a French Gray might have said.
+
+Nevertheless, I am myself pretty sure that Marivaux at least helped
+Richardson and Fielding, and there can be no doubt that Crebillon helped
+Sterne. And what is more important to our present purpose, they and
+their companions in this chapter helped the novel in general, and the
+French novel in particular, to an extent far more considerable. We may
+not, of course, take the course of literary history--general or
+particular--which has been, as the course which in any case must have
+been. But at the same time we cannot neglect the facts. And it is a
+quite certain fact that, for the whole of the last half of the
+eighteenth century, and nearly the whole of the first quarter of the
+nineteenth, the French novel, as a novel, made singularly little
+progress. We shall have to deal in the next chapter, if not in the next
+two chapters, with at least two persons of far greater powers than any
+one mentioned in the last two. But we shall perhaps be able to show
+cause why even Voltaire and Rousseau, why certainly Diderot, why
+Marmontel and almost every one else till we come, not in this volume, to
+Chateaubriand, whose own position is a little doubtful, somehow failed
+to attain the position of a great advancer of the novel.
+
+These others, whatever their shortcomings, _had_ advanced it by bringing
+it, in various ways, a great deal nearer to its actual ideal of a
+completed picture of real human life. Lesage had blended with his
+representation a good deal of the conventional picaresque; Marivaux had
+abused preciousness of language and petty psychology; Prevost, save in
+that marvellous windfall of his and the Muses which the historian of
+novels can hardly mention without taking off his hat if he has one on,
+or making his best bow if he has not, had gone wandering after
+impossible and uninteresting will-o'-the-wisps; Crebillon had done worse
+than "abide in his inn," he had abided almost always in his polite[350]
+bordello. But all of them had meant to be real; and all of them had, if
+only now and then, to an extent which even Madame de la Fayette had
+scarcely achieved before, attained reality.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[309] In fact it has been said, and may be said again, that Lesage is
+one of the prophets who have never had so much justice done them in
+their own countries as abroad.
+
+[310] The first part of _Gil Blas_ appeared in 1715; and nearly twenty
+years later gossip said that the fourth was not ready, though the author
+had been paid in advance for it six or seven years earlier.
+
+[311] I have never read it in the original, being, though a great
+admirer of Spanish, but slightly versed therein.
+
+[312] This, which is a sort of Appendix to the _Diable Boiteux_, is much
+the best of these _opera minora_.
+
+[313] He had a temper of the most _Breton-Bretonnant_ type--not
+ill-natured but sturdy and independent, recalcitrant alike to
+ill-treatment and to patronage. He got on neither at the Bar, his first
+profession, nor with the regular actors, and he took vengeance in his
+books on both; while at least one famous anecdote shows his way of
+treating a patron--indeed, as it happened, a patroness--who presumed.
+
+[314] Asmodeus, according to his usual station in the infernal
+hierarchy, is _demon de la luxure_: but any fears or hopes which may be
+aroused by this description, and the circumstances of the action, will
+be disappointed. Lesage has plenty of risky situations, but his language
+is strictly "proper."
+
+[315] Against this may be cited his equally anecdotic acceptance of
+Regnard, who was also "run" against Moliere. But Regnard was a "classic"
+and orthodox in his way; Lesage was a free-lance, and even a Romantic
+before Romanticism. Boileau knew that evil, as evil seemed to him, _had_
+come from Spain; he saw more coming in this, and if he anticipated more
+still in the future, 1830 proved him no false prophet.
+
+[316] In other words, there is a unity of personality in the attitude
+which the hero takes to and in them.
+
+[317] And in it too, of course; as well as in Spain's remarkable but too
+soon re-enslaved criticism.
+
+[318] As he says of himself (vii. x.): _Enfin, apres un severe examen je
+tombais d'accord avec moi-meme, que si je n'etais pas un fripon, il ne
+s'en fallait guere._ And the Duke of Lerma tells him later, "_M. de
+Santillane, a ce que je vois, vous avez ete tant soit peu_ picaro."
+
+[319] The two most undoubted cases--his ugly and, unluckily, repeated
+acceptance of the part of Pandarus-Leporello--were only too ordinary
+rascalities in the seventeenth century. The books of the chronicles of
+England and France show us not merely clerks and valets but gentlemen of
+every rank, from esquire to duke, eagerly accepting this office.
+
+[320] In a curious passage of Bk. XII. Chap. I. in which Gil disclaims
+paternity and resigns it to Marialva. This may have been prompted by a
+desire to lessen the turpitude of the go-between business; but it is a
+clumsy device, and makes Gil look a fool as well as a knave.
+
+[321] One of Lesage's triumphs is the way in which, almost to the last,
+"M. de Santillane," despite the rogueries practised often on and
+sometimes by him, retains a certain gullibility, or at least
+ingenuousness.
+
+[322] Not of course as opposed to "romantic," but as = "chief and
+principal."
+
+[323] The reader must not forget that this formidable word means
+"privateer" rather than "pirate" in French, and that this was the golden
+age of the business in that country.
+
+[324] Those who are curious may find something on him by the present
+writer, not identical with the above account, in an essay entitled _A
+Study of Sensibility_, reprinted in _Essays on French Novelists_
+(London, 1891), and partly, but outside of the Marivaux part, reproduced
+in Chap. XII. of the present volume.
+
+[325] By M. Gustave Larroumet. Paris, 1882.
+
+[326] I need hardly say that I am not referring to things like _Rebecca
+and Rowena_ or _A Legend of the Rhine_, which "burst the outer shell of
+sin," and, like Mrs. Martha Gwynne in the epitaph, "hatch themselves a
+cherubin" in each case.
+
+[327] The reader will perhaps excuse the reminder that the sense in
+which we (almost exclusively) use this word, and which it had gained in
+French itself by the time of Talleyrand's famous double-edged sarcasm on
+person and world (_Il n'est pas parvenu: il est arrive_), was not quite
+original. The _parvenu_ was simply a person who _had_ "got on": the
+disobliging slur of implication on his former position, and perhaps on
+his means of freeing himself from it, came later. It is doubtful whether
+there is much, if indeed there is any, of this slur in Marivaux's title.
+
+[328] It is the acme of what may be called innocent corruption. She does
+not care for her master, nor apparently for vicious pleasure,
+nor--certainly--for money as such. She does care for Jacob, and wants to
+marry him; the money will make this possible; so she earns it by the
+means that present themselves, and puts it at his disposal.
+
+[329] He is proof against his master's threats if he refuses; as well as
+against the money if he accepts. Unluckily for Genevieve, when he breaks
+away she faints. Her door and the money-box are both left open, and the
+latter disappears.
+
+[330] Here and elsewhere the curious cheapness of French living (despite
+what history tells of crushing taxation, etc.) appears. The _locus
+classicus_ for this is generally taken to be Mme. de Maintenon's
+well-known letter about her brother's housekeeping. But here, well into
+another century, Mlle. Habert's 4000 _livres_ a year are supposed to be
+at least relative affluence, while in _Marianne_ (_v. inf._) M. de
+Climal thinks 500 or 600 enough to tempt her, and his final bequest of
+double that annuity is represented as making a far from despicable _dot_
+even for a good marriage.
+
+[331] The much greater blood-thirstiness of the French highwayman, as
+compared with the English, has been sometimes attributed by
+humanitarians to the "wheel"--and has often been considered by persons
+of sense as justifying that implement.
+
+[332] The Devil's Advocate may say that Marianne turns out to be of
+English extraction after all--but it is not Marivaux who tells us so.
+
+[333] To question or qualify Marianne's virtue, even in the slightest
+degree, may seem ungracious; for it certainly withstands what to some
+girls would have been the hardest test of all--that is to say, not so
+much the offer of riches if she consents, as the apparent certainty of
+utter destitution if she refuses. At the same time, the Devil's Advocate
+need not be a Kelly or a Cockburn to make out some damaging suggestions.
+Her vague, and in no way solidly justified, but decided family pride
+seems to have a good deal to do with her refusal; and though this shows
+the value of the said family pride, it is not exactly virtue in itself.
+Still more would appear to be due to the character of the suit and the
+suitor. M. de Climal is not only old and unattractive; not only a sneak
+and a libertine; but he is a clumsy person, and he has not, as he might
+have done, taken Marianne's measure. The mere shock of his sudden
+transformation from a pious protector into a prospective "keeper," who
+is making a bid for a new concubine, has evidently an immense effect on
+her quick nervous temperament. She is not at all the kind of girl to
+like to be the plaything of an old man; and she is perfectly shrewd
+enough to see that vengeance, and fear as regards his nephew, have as
+much as anything else, or more, to do with the way in which he brusques
+his addresses and hurries his gift. Further, she has already conceived a
+fancy, at least, for that nephew himself; and one sees the "jury droop,"
+as Dickens has put it, with which the Counsel of the Prince of the Air
+would hint that, if the offers had come in a more seductive fashion from
+Valville himself, they might not have been so summarily rejected. But
+let it be observed that these considerations, while possibly unfair to
+Marianne, are not in the least derogatory to Marivaux himself. On the
+contrary, it is greatly to his credit that he should have created a
+character of sufficient lifelikeness and sufficient complexity to serve
+as basis for "problem"-discussions of the kind.
+
+[334] To put the drift of the above in other words, we do not need to
+hear any more of Marianne in any position, because we have had enough
+shown us to know generally what she would do, say, and think, in all
+positions.
+
+[335] It has been observed that there is actually a Meredithian quality
+in Aristides of Smyrna, though he wrote no novel. A tale in Greek, to
+illustrate the parallel, would be an admirable subject for a University
+Prize.
+
+[336] Two descriptions of "Marivaudage" (which, by the way, was partly
+anticipated by Fontenelle)--both, if I do not mistake, by Crebillon
+_fils_--are famous: "Putting down not only everything you said and
+thought, but also everything you would like to have thought and said,
+but did not," and, "Introducing to each other words which never had
+thought of being acquainted." Both of these perhaps hit the modern forms
+of the phenomenon even harder than they hit their original butt.
+
+[337] It is only fair to the poor Prioress to say that there is hardly a
+heroine in fiction who is more deeply in love with her own pretty little
+self than Marianne.
+
+[338] One does not know whether it was prudence, or that materialism
+which, though he was no _philosophe_, he shared with most of his
+contemporaries, which prevented Marivaux from completing this sharp
+though mildly worded criticism. The above-mentioned profane have hinted
+that both the placidity and the indifference of the persons concerned,
+whether Catholic or Calvinist, arise from their certainty of their own
+safety in another world, and their looking down on less "guaranteed"
+creatures in this. It may be just permissible to add that a comparison
+of Chaucer's and Marivaux's prioresses will suggest itself to many
+persons, and should be found delectable by all fit ones.
+
+[339] His books on Margaret of Anjou and William the Conqueror are odd
+crosses between actual historical essays and the still unborn historical
+novel.
+
+[340] Mlle. de Launay, better known as Mme. de Staal-Delaunay, saw, as
+most would have seen, a resemblance in this to the famous Mlle. Aisse's.
+But the latter was bought as a little child by her provident
+"protector," M. de Ferreol. Mlle. Aisse herself had earlier read the
+_Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_ and did not think much of them. But
+this was the earlier part. It would be odd if she had not appreciated
+Manon had she read it: but she died in the year of its appearance.
+
+[341] The excellent but rather stupid editor of the [Dutch] _Oeuvres
+Choisies_ above noticed has given abstracts of Prevost's novels as well
+as of Richardson's, which the Abbe translated. These, with
+Sainte-Beuve's of the _Memoires_, will help those who want something
+more than what is in the text, while declining the Sahara of the
+original. But, curiously enough, the Dutchman does not deal with the end
+of _Cleveland_.
+
+[342] He had a fit of apoplexy when walking, and instead of being bled
+was actually cut open by a village super-Sangrado, who thought him dead
+and only brought him to life--to expire actually in torment.
+
+[343] Crebillon _pere_, tragedian and academician, is one of the persons
+who have never had justice done to them: perhaps because they never
+quite did justice to themselves. His plays are unequal, rhetorical, and
+as over-heavy as his son's work is over-light. But, if we want to find
+the true tragic touch of verse in the French eighteenth century, we must
+go to him.
+
+[344] "Be it mine to read endless romances of Marivaux and Crebillon."
+
+[345] Learnt, no doubt, to a great extent from Anthony Hamilton, with
+whose family, as has been noticed, he had early relations.
+
+[346] He goes further, and points out that, as she is his _really_
+beloved Marquise's most intimate friend, she surely wouldn't wish him to
+declare himself false to that other lady?--having also previously
+observed that, after what has occurred, he could never think of
+deceiving his Celie herself by false declarations. These
+topsy-turvinesses are among Crebillon's best points, and infinitely
+superior to the silly "platitudes reversed" which have tried to produce
+the same effect in more recent times.
+
+[347] It has been said more than once that Crebillon had early access to
+Hamilton's MSS. He refers directly to the Facardins in _Ah! Quel Conte!_
+and makes one of his characters claim to be grand-daughter of
+Cristalline la Curieuse herself.
+
+[348] Nor perhaps even then, for passion is absolutely unknown to our
+author. One touch of it would send the curious Rupert's drop of his
+microcosm to shivers, as _Manon Lescaut_ itself in his time, and
+_Adolphe_ long after, show.
+
+[349] Some remarks are made by "Madame _Hepenny_"--a very pleasing
+phoneticism, and, though an actual name, not likely to offend any actual
+person.
+
+[350] No sneer is intended in this adjective. Except in one or two of
+the personages of _Les Egarements_, Crebillon's intended gentlemen are
+nearly always well-bred, however ill-moralled they may be, and his
+ladies (with the same caution) are ladies. It is with him, in this last
+point at any rate, as with our own Congreve, whom he rather closely
+resembles in some ways: though I was amused the other day to find some
+twentieth-century critical objections to actresses' rendering of _Love
+for Love_ as "too well-bred." The fact is that the tradition of
+"breeding" never broke down in France till the _philosophe_ period,
+while with us it lasted till--when shall we say?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE _PHILOSOPHE_ NOVEL
+
+
+[Sidenote: The use of the novel for "purpose"--Voltaire.]
+
+It has been for some time a commonplace--though, like most commonplaces,
+it is probably much more often simply borrowed than an actual and (even
+in the sense of _communis_) original perception of the borrowers--that
+nothing shows the comparative inevitableness of the novel in the
+eighteenth century better than the use of it by persons who would, at
+other times, have used quite different forms to subserve similar
+purposes. The chief instance of this with us is, of course, Johnson in
+_Rasselas_, but it is much more variously and voluminously, if not in
+any single instance much better, illustrated in France by the three
+great leaders of the _philosophe_ movement; by considerable, if
+second-rate figures, more or less connected with that movement, like
+Marmontel and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; and by many lesser writers.
+
+There can be no question that, in more ways than one, Voltaire[351]
+deserves the first place in this chapter, not only by age, by volume,
+and by variety of general literary ability, but because he, perhaps more
+than any of the others, is a tale-teller born. That he owes a good deal
+to Hamilton, and something directly to Hamilton's master,
+Saint-Evremond, has been granted elsewhere; but that he is dependent on
+these models to such an extent as to make his actual production unlikely
+if the models had not been ready for him, may be roundly denied. There
+are in literature some things which must have existed, and of which it
+is not frivolous to say that if their actual authors had not been there,
+or had declined to write them, they would have found somebody else to do
+it. Of these, _Candide_ is evidently one, and more than one of
+_Candide's_ smaller companions have at least something of the same
+characteristic. Yet one may also say that if Voltaire himself had not
+written these, he must have written other things of the kind. The
+mordant wit, the easy, fluent, rippling style, so entirely free from
+boisterousness yet with constant "wap" of wavelet and bursting of
+foam-bubble; above all, the pure unadulterated faculty of tale-telling,
+must have found vent and play somehow. It had been well if the
+playfulness had not been, as playfulness too often is, of what
+contemporary English called an "unlucky" (that is, a "mischievous")
+kind; and if the author had not been constantly longing to make somebody
+or many bodies uncomfortable,[352] to damage and defile shrines, to
+exhibit a misanthropy more really misanthropic, because less passionate
+and tragical, than Swift's, and, in fact, as his patron, persecutor, and
+counterpart, Frederick the Jonathan-Wildly Great, most justly observed
+of him, to "play monkey-tricks," albeit monkey-tricks of immense talent,
+if not actually of genius. If the recent attempts to interpret
+monkey-speech were to come to something, and if, as a consequence,
+monkeys were taught to write, one may be sure that prose fiction would
+be their favourite department, and that their productions would be,
+though almost certainly disreputable, quite certainly amusing. In fact
+there would probably be some among these which would be claimed, by
+critics of a certain type, as hitherto unknown works of Voltaire
+himself.
+
+Yet if the straightforward tale had not, owing to the influences
+discussed in the foregoing chapters, acquired a firm hold, it is at
+least possible that he would not have adopted it (for originality of
+form was not Voltaire's _forte_), but would have taken the dialogue, or
+something else capable of serving his purpose. As it was, the particular
+field or garden had already been marked out and hedged after a fashion;
+tools and methods of cultivation had been prepared; and he set to work
+to cultivate it with the application and intelligence recommended in the
+famous moral of his most famous tale--a moral which, it is only fair to
+say, he did carry out almost invariably. A garden of very questionable
+plants was his, it may be; but that is another matter. The fact and the
+success of the cultivation are both undeniable.
+
+[Sidenote: General characteristics of his tales.]
+
+At the same time, Voltaire--if indeed, as was doubted just now, he be a
+genius at all--is not a genius, or even a djinn, of the kind that
+creates and leaves something Melchisedec-like; alone and isolated from
+what comes before and what comes after. He is an immense talent--perhaps
+the greatest talent-but-not-genius ever known--who utilises and improves
+and develops rather than invents. It is from this that his faculty of
+never boring, except when he has got upon the Scriptures, comes; it is
+because of this also that he never conceives anything really, simply,
+absolutely _great_. His land is never exactly weary, but there is no
+imposing and sheltering and refreshing rock in it. These _romans_ and
+_contes_ and _nouvelles_ of his stimulate, but they do not either rest
+or refresh. They have what is, to some persons at any rate, the
+theatrical quality, not the poetical or best-prosaic. But as nearly
+consummate works of art, or at least craft, they stand almost alone.
+
+He had seen[353] the effect of which the fairy tale of the
+sophisticated kind was capable, and the attraction which it had for both
+vulgars, the great and the small: and he made the most of it. He kept
+and heightened its _haut gout_; he discarded the limitations to a very
+partial and conventional society which Crebillon put on it; but he
+limited it in other ways to commonplace and rather vulgar fancy, without
+the touches of imagination which Hamilton had imparted. Yet he infused
+an even more accurate appreciation of certain phases of human nature
+than those predecessors or partial contemporaries of his who were
+discussed in the last chapter had introduced; he _practicalised_ it to
+the _n_th, and he made it almost invariably subordinate to a direct,
+though a sometimes more or less ignoble, purpose. There is no doubt that
+he had learnt a great deal from Lucian and from Lucian's French
+imitators, perhaps as far back as Bonaventure des Periers; there is, I
+think, little that he had added as much as he could add from Swift.[354]
+His stolen or borrowed possessions from these sources, and especially
+this last, remind one in essence rather of the pilferings of a "light
+horseman," or river-pirate who has hung round an "old three-decker,"
+like that celebrated in Mr. Kipling's admirable poem, and has caught
+something even of the light from "her tall poop-lanterns shining so far
+above him," besides picking up overboard trifles, and cutting loose
+boats and cables. But when he gets to shore and to his own workshop, his
+almost unequalled power of sheer wit, and his general craftsmanship,
+bring out of these lootings something admirable in its own way.
+
+[Sidenote: _Candide._]
+
+_Candide_ is almost "great," and though the breed of Dr. Pangloss in its
+original kind is nearly extinct, the England which suffered the
+approach, and has scarcely yet allowed itself to comprehend the reality,
+of the war of 1914, ought to know that there have been and are
+Pangloss_otins_ of almost appalling variety. The book does not really
+require the smatches of sculduddery, which he has smeared over it, to
+be amusing; for its lifelikeness carries it through. As is well known,
+Johnson admitted the parallel with _Rasselas_, which is among the most
+extraordinary coincidences of literature. I have often wondered whether
+anybody ever took the trouble to print the two together. There would be
+many advantages in doing so; but they might perhaps be counter-balanced
+by the fact that some of the most fervent admirers of _Rasselas_ would
+be infinitely shocked by _Candide_, and that perhaps more of the special
+lovers of _Candide_ would find themselves bored to extinction by
+_Rasselas_. Let those who can not only value but enjoy both be thankful,
+but not proud.
+
+Many people have written about the Consolations of Old Age, not seldom,
+it is to be feared, in a "Who's afraid?" sort of spirit. But there are a
+few, an apple or two by the banks of Ulai, which we may pluck as the
+night approaches. One is almost necessarily accidental, for it would be
+rash and somewhat cold-blooded to plan it. It consists in the reading,
+after many years, of a book once familiar almost to the point of knowing
+by heart, and then laid aside, not from weariness or disgust, but merely
+as things happened. This, as in some other books mentioned in this
+history, was the case with the present writer in respect of _Candide_.
+From twenty to forty, or thereabouts, I must have read it over and over
+again; the sentences drop into their places almost without exercising
+any effort of memory to recognise them. From forty to seventy I do not
+think I read it at all; because no reason made reading necessary, and
+chance left it untouched on the shelf. Sometimes, as everybody knows,
+the result of renewed acquaintance in such cases is more or less severe
+disappointment; in a few of the happiest, increased pleasure. But it is
+perhaps the severest test of a classic (in the exact but limited sense
+of that word) that its effect shall be practically unchanged, shall have
+been established in the mind and taste with such a combination of
+solidity and _nettete_, that no change is possible. I do not think I
+have ever found this to be more the case than with the history of
+Candide (who was such a good fellow, without being in the least a prig,
+as I am afraid Zadig was, that one wonders how Voltaire came to think of
+him) and of Mademoiselle Cunegonde (nobody will ever know anything about
+style who does not feel what the continual repetition in Candide's mouth
+of the "Mademoiselle" does) of the indomitable Pangloss, and the
+detestable baron, and the forgivable Paquette, and that philosopher
+Martin, who did _not_ "let cheerfulness break in," and the admirable
+Cacambo, who shows that, much as he hated Rousseau, Voltaire himself was
+not proof against the noble savage mania.[355]
+
+As a piece (_v. sup._) of art or craft, the thing is beyond praise or
+pay. It could not be improved, on its own specification, except that
+perhaps the author might have told us how Mademoiselle Cunegonde, who
+had kept her beauty through some very severe experiences, suddenly lost
+it. It is idle as literary, though not as historical, criticism to say,
+as has been often said about the Byng passage, that Voltaire's smartness
+rather "goes off through the touch-hole," seeing that the admiral's
+execution did very considerably "encourage the others." It is
+superfluous to urge the unnecessary "smuts," which are sometimes not in
+the least amusing. All these and other sought-for knots are lost in the
+admirable smoothness of this reed, which waves in the winds of time with
+unwitherable greenness, and slips through the hand, as you stroke it,
+with a coaxing tickle. To praise its detail would again be idle--nobody
+ought to read such praise who can read itself; and if anybody, having
+read its first page, fails to see that it is, and how it is,
+praiseworthy, he never will or would be converted if all the eulogies of
+the most golden-mouthed critics of the world were poured upon him in a
+steady shower. As a whole it is undoubtedly the best, and (except part
+of _Zadig_) it is nowhere else matched in the book of the romances of
+Voltaire, while for those who demand "purposes" and "morals," it stands
+almost alone. It is the comic "Vanity of Human Wishes" in prose, as
+_Rasselas_ is the tragic or, at least, serious version: and, as has been
+said, the two make an unsurpassable sandwich, or, at least, _tartine_.
+Nor could it have been told, in any other way than by prose fiction,
+with anything like the same effect, either as regards critical judgment
+or popular acceptance.
+
+[Sidenote: _Zadig_ and its satellites.]
+
+_Zadig_, as has been indicated already, probably ranks in point of merit
+next to _Candide_. If it had stopped about half-way, there could be no
+doubt about the matter. The reader is caught at once by one of the most
+famous and one of the most Voltairian of phrases, "Il savait de la
+metaphysique ce qu'on a su dans tous les ages, c'est-a-dire fort peu de
+chose," a little more discussion of which saying, and of others like it,
+may perhaps be given later. The successive disappointments of the almost
+too perfect[356] hero are given with the simplicity just edged with
+irony which is Voltaire's when he is at his best, though he undoubtedly
+learnt it from the masters already assigned, and--the suggestion would
+have made him very angry, and would probably have attracted one of his
+most Yahoo-like descents on this humble and devoted head--from Lesage.
+But though the said head has no objection--much the reverse--to "happy
+endings," the romance-finish of _Zadig_ has always seemed to it a
+mistake. Still, how many mistakes would one pardon if they came after
+such a success? _Babouc_, the first of those miniature _contes_ (they
+are hardly "tales" in one sense), which Voltaire managed so admirably,
+has the part-advantage part-disadvantage of being likewise the first of
+a series of satires on French society, which, piquant as they are, would
+certainly have been both more piquant and more weighty if there had been
+fewer of them. It is full of the perfect, if not great, Voltairian
+phrases,--the involuntary _Mene Tekel_, "Babouc conclut qu'une telle
+societe ne pouvait subsister"; the palinode after a fashion, "Il
+s'affectionnait a la ville, dont le peuple etait doux [oh! Nemesis!]
+poli et bien-faisant, quoique leger, medisant et plein de vanite"; and
+the characteristic collection of parallel between Babouc and Jonah,
+surely not objectionable even to the most orthodox, "Mais quand on a ete
+trois jours dans le corps d'une baleine on n'est pas de si bonne humeur
+que quand on a ete a l'opera, a la comedie et qu'on a soupe en bonne
+compagnie."
+
+[Sidenote: _Micromegas._]
+
+_Memnon, ou La Sagesse Humaine_ is still less of a tale, only a lively
+sarcastic apologue; but he would be a strange person who would quarrel
+with its half-dozen pages, and much the same may be said of the _Voyages
+de Scarmentado_. Still, one feels in both of them, and in many of the
+others, that they are after all not much more than chips of an inferior
+rehandling of _Gulliver_. _Micromegas_, as has been said, does not
+disguise its composition as something of the kind; but the desire to
+annoy Fontenelle, while complimenting him after a fashion as the "dwarf
+of Saturn," and perhaps other strokes of personal scratching, have put
+Voltaire on his mettle. You will not easily find a better Voltairism of
+its particular class than, "Il faut bien citer ce qu'on ne comprend
+point du tout, dans la langue qu'on entend le moins." But, as so often
+happens, the cracker in the tail is here the principal point.
+Micromegas, the native of Sirius, who may be Voltaire himself, or
+anybody else--after his joint tour through the universes (much more
+amusing than that of the late Mr. Bailey's Festus), with the smaller but
+still gigantic Saturnian--writes a philosophical treatise to instruct us
+poor microbes of the earth, and it is taken to Paris, to the secretary
+of the Academy of Science (Fontenelle himself). "Quand le secretaire
+l'eut ouvert il ne vit rien qu'un livre tout blanc. 'Ah!' dit-il, 'je
+m'en etais bien doute.'" Voltaire did a great deal of harm in the world,
+and perhaps no solid good;[357] but it is things like this which make
+one feel that it would have been, a loss had there been no Voltaire.
+
+[Sidenote: _L'Ingenu._]
+
+_L'Ingenu_, which follows _Candide_ in the regular editions, falls
+perhaps as a whole below all these, and _L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus_,
+which follows it, hardly concerns us at all, being mere political
+economy of a sort in dialogue. _L'Ingenu_ is a story, and has many
+amusing things in it. But it is open to the poser that if Voltaire
+really accepted the noble savage business he was rather silly, and that
+if he did not, the piece is a stale and not very biting satire. It is,
+moreover, somewhat exceptionally full (there is only one to beat it) of
+the vulgar little sniggers which suggest the eunuch even more than the
+schoolboy, and the conclusion is abominable. The seducer and,
+indirectly, murderer Saint-Pouange may only have done after his kind in
+regard to Mlle. de Saint-Yves; but the Ingenu himself neither acted up
+to his Huron education, nor to his extraction as a French gentleman, in
+forgiving the man and taking service under him.
+
+[Sidenote: _La Princesse de Babylone._]
+
+_La Princesse de Babylone_ is more like Hamilton than almost any other
+of the tales, and this, it need hardly be said here, is high praise,
+even for a work of Voltaire. For it means that it has what we commonly
+find in that work, and also something that we do not. But it has that
+defect which has been noticed already in _Zadig_, and which, by its
+absence, constitutes the supremacy of _Candide_. There is in it a sort
+of "break in the middle." The earlier stages of the courtship of
+Formosante are quite interesting; but when she and her lover begin
+separately to wander over the world, in order that their chronicler may
+make satiric observations on the nations thereof, one feels inclined to
+say, as Mr. Mowbray Morris said to Mr. Matthew Arnold (who thought it
+was Mr. Traill):
+
+    Can't you give us something new?
+
+[Sidenote: Some minors.]
+
+_Le Blanc et le Noir_ rises yet again, and though it has perhaps not
+many of Voltaire's _mots de flamme_, it is more of a fairy moral
+tale--neither a merely fantastic mow, nor sicklied over with its
+morality--than almost any other. It is noteworthy, too, that the author
+has hardly any recourse to his usual clove of garlic to give seasoning.
+_Jeannot et Colin_ might have been Marmontel's or Miss Edgeworth's,
+being merely the usual story of two rustic lads, one of whom becomes
+rich and corrupt till, later, he is succoured by the other. Now
+Marmontel and Miss Edgeworth are excellent persons and writers; but
+their work is not work for Voltaire.
+
+The _Lettres d'Amabed_[358] are the dirtiest and the dullest of the
+whole batch, and the _Histoire de Jenni_, though not particularly dirty,
+is very dull indeed, being the "History of a Good Deist," a thing
+without which (as Mr. Carlyle used to say) we could do. The same sort of
+"purpose" mars _Les Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield_, in which, after
+the first page, there is practically nothing about Lord Chesterfield or
+his deafness, but which contains a good deal of Voltaire's crispest
+writing, especially the definition of that English freedom which he
+sometimes used to extol. With thirty guineas a year,[359] the
+materialist doctor Sidrac informs the unfortunate Goudman, who has lost
+a living by the said deafness, "on peut dire tout ce qu'on pense de la
+compagnie des Indes, du parlement, de nos colonies, du roi, de l'etat en
+general, de l'homme et de Dieu--ce qui est un grand amusement." But the
+piece itself would be more amusing if Voltaire could let the Bible
+alone, though he does not here come under the stroke of Diderot's
+sledge-hammer as he does in _Amabed_.
+
+One seldom, however, echoes this last wish, and remembers the stroke
+referred to, more than in reference to _Le Taureau Blanc_. Here, if
+there were nobody who reverenced the volume which begins with _Genesis_
+and ends with _Revelation_, the whole thing would be utterly dead and
+stupid: except for a few crispnesses of the Egyptian Mambres, which
+could, almost without a single exception, have been uttered on any other
+theme. The identification of Nebuchadnezzar with the bull Apis is not
+precisely an effort of genius; but the assembling, and putting through
+their paces, of Balaam's ass and Jonah's whale, the serpent of Eden, and
+the raven of the Ark, with the three prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and
+Daniel, and with an historical King Amasis and an unhistorical Princess
+Amaside thrown in, is less a _conte a dormir debout_, as Voltaire's
+countrymen and he himself would say, than a tale to make a man sleep
+when he is running at full speed--a very dried poppy-head of the garden
+of tales. On the other hand, the very short and very early _Le
+Crocheteur Borgne_, which, curiously enough, Voltaire never printed, and
+the not much longer _Cosi-Sancta_, which he printed in his queer
+ostrich-like manner, are, though a little naughty, quite nice; and have
+a freshness and demure grace about their naughtiness which contrasts
+remarkably with the ugly and wearisome snigger of later work.
+
+[Sidenote: Voltaire--the Kehl edition--and Plato.]
+
+The half-dozen others,[360] filling scarce twenty pages between them,
+which conclude the usual collection, need little comment; but a "Kehl"
+note to the first of them is for considerable thoughts:
+
+     M. de Voltaire s'est egaye quelquefois sur Platon, dont le
+     galimatias, regarde autrefois comme sublime, a fait plus de
+     mal au genre humain qu'on ne le croit communement.
+
+One should not hurry over this, but muse a little. In copying the note,
+I felt almost inclined to write "_M. de_ Platon" in order to put the
+whole thing in a consistent key; for somehow "Plato" by itself, even in
+the French form, transports one into such a very different world that
+adjustment of clocks and compasses becomes at once necessary and
+difficult. "Galimatias" is good, "autrefois" is possibly better, the
+"evils inflicted on the human race" better still, but _egaye_ perhaps
+best of all. The monkey, we know, makes itself gay with the elephant,
+and probably would do so with the lion and the tiger if these animals
+had not an unpleasant way of dealing with jokers. And the tomtit and
+canary have, no doubt, at least private agreement that the utterances of
+the nightingale are _galimatias_, while the carrion crow thinks the
+eagle a fool for dwelling so high and flying so much higher. But as for
+the other side of the matter, how thin and poor and puerile even those
+smartest things of Voltaire's, some of which have been quoted and
+praised, sound, if one attempts to read them after the last sentence of
+the _Apology_, or after passage on passage of the rest of the
+"galimatias" of Plato!
+
+Nevertheless, though you may answer a fool according to his folly, you
+should not, especially when he is not a fool absolute, judge him solely
+thereby. When Voltaire was making himself gay with Plato, with the
+Bible, and with some other things, he was talking, not merely of
+something which he did not completely understand, but of something
+altogether outside the range of his comprehension. But in the judgment
+of literature the process of "cancelling" does not exist. A quality is
+not destroyed or neutralised by a defect, and, properly speaking (though
+it is hard for the critic to observe this), to strike a balance between
+the two is impossible. It is right to enter the non-values; but the
+values remain and require chief attention.
+
+[Sidenote: An attempt at different evaluation of himself.]
+
+From what has been already said, it will be clear that there is no
+disposition here to give Voltaire anything short of the fullest credit,
+both as an individual writer of prose fiction and as a link in the chain
+of its French producers. He worked for the most part in miniature, and
+even _Candide_ runs but to its bare hundred pages. But these are of the
+first quality in their own way, and give the book the same position for
+the century, in satiric and comic fiction, which _Manon Lescaut_ holds
+in that of passion. That both should have taken this form, while,
+earlier, _Manon_, if written at all, would probably have been a poem,
+and _Candide_ would have been a treatise, shows on the one side the
+importance of the position which the novel had assumed, and on the other
+the immense advantages which it gave, as a kind, to the artist in
+literature. I like poetry better than anything, but though the subject
+could have been, and often has been, treated satirically in verse, a
+verse _narrative_ could hardly have avoided inferiority, while even
+Berkeley (who himself borrowed a little of novel-form for _Alciphron_)
+could not have made _Candide_ more effective than it is. It is of course
+true that Voltaire's powers as a "fictionist" were probably limited in
+fact, to the departments, or the department, which he actually occupied,
+and out of which he wisely did not go. He must have a satiric purpose,
+and he must be allowed a very free choice of subject and seasoning. In
+particular, it may be noted that he has no grasp whatever of individual
+character. Even Candide is but a "humour," and Pangloss a very decided
+one; as are Martin, Gordon in _L'Ingenu_, and others. His women are all
+slightly varied outline-sketches of what he thought women in general
+were, not persons. Plot he never attempted; and racy as his dialogue
+often is, it is on the whole merely a setting for these very sparkles of
+wit some of which have been quoted.
+
+It is in these scintillations, after all, that the chief delight of his
+tales consists; and though, as has been honestly confessed and shown, he
+learnt this to some extent from others, he made the thing definitely his
+own. When the Babylonian public has been slightly "elevated" by the
+refreshments distributed at the great tournament for the hand of the
+Princess Formosante, it decides that war, etc., is folly, and that the
+essence of human nature is to enjoy itself, "Cette excellente morale,"
+says Voltaire gravely, "n'a jamais ete dementie" (the words really
+should be made to come at the foot of a page so that you might have to
+turn over before coming to the conclusion of the sentence) "que par les
+faits." Again, in the description of the Utopia of the Gangarides (same
+story), where not only men but beasts and birds are all perfectly wise,
+well conducted, and happy, a paragraph of quite sober description,
+without any flinging up of heels or thrusting of tongue in cheek, ends,
+"Nous avons surtout des perroquets qui prechent a merveille," and for
+once Voltaire exercises on himself the Swiftian control, which he too
+often neglected, and drops his beloved satire of clerics after this
+gentle touch at it.[361]
+
+He is of course not constantly at his best; but he is so often enough to
+make him, as was said at the beginning, very delectable reading,
+especially for the second time and later, which will be admitted to be
+no common praise. When you read him for the first time his bad taste,
+his obsession with certain subjects, his repetition of the same gibes,
+and other things which have been duly mentioned, strike and may
+disgust--will certainly more or less displease anybody but a partisan on
+the same side. On a second or later reading you are prepared for them,
+and either skip them altogether or pass them by without special notice,
+repeating the enjoyment of what is better in an unalloyed fashion. And
+so doth the excellent old chestnut-myth, which probably most of us have
+heard told with all innocence as an original witticism, justify itself,
+and one should "prefer the second hour" of the reading to the first. But
+if there is a first there will almost certainly be a second, and it will
+be a very great pity if there is no reading at all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Rousseau--the novel-character of the _Confessions_.]
+
+According to the estimate of the common or vulgate (I do not say
+"vulgar," though in the best English there is little or no difference)
+literary history, Rousseau[362] ranks far higher in the scale of
+novel-writing than Voltaire, having left long and ambitious books of the
+kind against Voltaire's handful of short, shorter, and shortest stories.
+It might be possible to accept this in one sense, but in one which would
+utterly disconcert the usual valuers. The _Confessions_, if it were not
+an autobiography, would be one of the great novels of the world. A large
+part of it is probably or certainly "fictionised"; if the whole were
+fictitious, it would lose much of its repulsiveness, retain (except for
+a few very matter-of-fact judges) all its interest, and gain the
+enormous advantage of art over mere _reportage_ of fact. Of course
+Rousseau's art of another kind, his mere mastery of style and
+presentation, does redeem this _reportage_ to some extent; but this
+would remain if the thing were wholly fiction, and the other art of
+invention, divination, _mimesis_--call it what you will--would come in.
+Yet it is not worth while to be idly unlike other people and claim it as
+an actual novel. It may be worth while to point out how it displays some
+of the great gifts of the novel-writer. The first of these--the greatest
+and, in fact, the mother of all the rest--is the sheer faculty, so often
+mentioned but not, alas! so invariably found, of telling the tale and
+holding the reader, not with any glittering eye or any enchantment,
+white or black, but with the pure grasping--or, as French admirably has
+it, "enfisting"--power of the tale itself. Round this there cluster--or,
+rather, in this necessarily abide--the subsidiary arts of managing the
+various parts of the story, of constructing characters sufficient to
+carry it on, of varnishing it with description, and to some extent,
+though naturally to a lesser one than if it had been fiction pure and
+simple, "lacing" it, in both senses of the word, with dialogue.
+Commonplace (but not the best commonplace) taste often cries "Oh! if
+this were only true!" The wiser mind is fain sometimes--not often, for
+things are not often good enough--to say, "Oh! if this were only
+_false_!"
+
+[Sidenote: The ambiguous position of _Emile_.]
+
+But if a severe auditor were to strike the _Confessions_ out of
+Rousseau's novel-account to the good, on the score of technical
+insufficiency or disqualification, he could hardly refuse to do the same
+with _Emile_ on the other side of the sheet. In fact its second title
+(_de l'Education_), its opening remarks, and the vastly larger part of
+the text, not only do not pretend to be a novel but frankly decline to
+be one. In what way exactly the treatise, from the mere assumption of a
+supposed "soaring human boy" named Emile, who serves as the victim of a
+few _Sandford-and-Merton_-like illustrations, burgeoned into the romance
+of actual novel-kind with Sophie in the Fifth Book, and the purely
+novel-natured, but unfinished and hardly begun, sequel of _Emile et
+Sophie ou Les Solitaires_, it is impossible to say. From the sketch of
+the intended conclusion of this latter given by Prevost[363] it would
+seem that we have not lost much, though with Rousseau the treatment is
+so constantly above the substance that one cannot tell. As it is, the
+novel part is nearly worthless. Neither Emile nor Sophie is made in the
+least a live person; the catastrophe of their at first ideal union might
+be shown, by an advocate of very moderate skill, to be largely if not
+wholly due to the meddlesome, muddle-headed, and almost inevitably
+mischievous advice given to them just after their marriage by their
+foolish Mentor; and one neither finds nor foresees any real novel
+interest whatever. Anilities in the very worst style of the eighteenth
+century--such as the story how Emile instigated mutiny in an Algerian
+slave-gang, failed, made a noble protest, and instead of being impaled,
+flayed, burnt alive, or otherwise taught not to do so, was made overseer
+of his own projects of reformed discipline--are sufficiently
+unrefreshing in fact. And the sort of "double arrangement" foreshadowed
+in the professorial programme of the unwritten part, where, in something
+like Davenant and Dryden's degradation of _The Tempest_, Emile and
+Sophie, she still refusing to be pardoned her fault, are brought
+together after all, and are married, in an actual though not consummated
+cross-bigamy, with a mysterious couple, also marooned on a desert
+island, is the sort of thing that Rousseau never could have managed,
+though Voltaire, probably to the discontent of Mrs. Grundy, could have
+done it in one way, and Sir William Gilbert would have done it
+delightfully in another. But Jean-Jacques's absolute lack of humour
+would have ensured a rather ghastly failure, relieved, it may be, by a
+few beautiful passages.
+
+[Sidenote: _La Nouvelle Heloise._]
+
+If, therefore, Rousseau had nothing but _Emile_, or even nothing but
+_Emile_ and the _Confessions_ to put to his credit, he could but obtain
+a position in our "utmost, last, provincial band," and that more because
+of his general literary powers than of special right. But, as everybody
+knows, there is a third book among his works which, whether universally
+or only by a majority, whether in whole or in part, whether with heavy
+deductions and allowances or with light ones, has been reckoned among
+the greatest and most epoch-making novels of the world. The full title
+of it is _Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise, ou Lettres de deux Amans,
+habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes, recueillies et publiees,
+par J. J. Rousseau_.[364] Despite its immense fame, direct and at
+second-hand--for Byron's famous outburst, though scarcely less
+rhetorical, is decidedly more poetical than most things of his, and has
+inscribed itself in the general memory--one rather doubts whether the
+book is as much read as it once was. Quotations, references, and those
+half-unconscious reminiscences of borrowing which are more eloquent
+than anything else, have not recently been very common either in English
+or in French. It has had the fate--elsewhere, I think, alluded to--of
+one of the two kinds of great literature, that it has in a manner seeded
+itself out. An intense love-novel--it is some time since we have seen
+one till the other day--would be a descendant of Rousseau's book, but
+would not bear more than a family likeness to it. Yet this, of itself,
+is a great testimony.
+
+[Sidenote: Its numerous and grave faults.]
+
+Except in rhetoric or rhapsody, the allowances and deductions above
+referred to must be heavy; and, according to a custom honoured both by
+time and good result, it is well to get them off first. That peculiarity
+of being a novelist only _par interim_, much more than Aramis was a
+mousquetaire, appears, even in _Julie_, so glaringly as to be dangerous
+and almost fatal. The book fills, in the ordinary one-volume editions,
+nearly five hundred pages of very small and very close print. Of these
+the First Part contains rather more than a hundred, and it would be
+infinitely better if the whole of the rest, except a few passages (which
+would be almost equally good as fragments), were in the bosom of the
+ocean buried. Large parts of them are mere discussions of some of
+Rousseau's own fads; clumsy parodies of Voltaire's satiric
+manners-painting; waterings out of the least good traits in the hero and
+heroine; uninteresting and superfluous appearances of the third and only
+other real person, Claire; a dreary account of Julie's married life;
+tedious eccentricities of the impossible and not very agreeable Lord
+Edward Bomston, who shares with Dickens's Lord Frederick Verisopht the
+peculiarity of being alternately a peer and a person with a courtesy
+"Lord"-ship; a rather silly end for the heroine herself;[365] and
+finally, a rather repulsive and quite incongruous acknowledgment of
+affection for the creature Saint-Preux, with a refusal to "implement"
+it (as they say in Scotland) matrimonially, by Claire, who is by this
+time a widow.[366] If mutilating books[367] were not a crime deserving
+terrible retribution in this life or after it, one could be excused for
+tearing off the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Parts, with the
+_Amours de Lord Edouard_ which follow. If one was rich, one would be
+amply justified in having a copy of Part I., and the fragments above
+indicated, printed for oneself on vellum.
+
+[Sidenote: The minor characters.]
+
+But this is not all. Even the First Part--even the presentation of the
+three protagonists--is open to some, and even to severe, criticism. The
+most guiltless, but necessarily much the least important, is Claire. She
+is, of course, an obvious "borrow" from Richardson's lively second
+heroines; but she is infinitely superior to them. It is at first sight,
+though not perhaps for long, curious--and it is certainly a very great
+compliment to Madame de Warens or Vuarrens and Madame d'Houdetot, and
+perhaps other objects of his affections--that Rousseau, cad as he was,
+and impossible as it was for him to draw a gentleman, could and did draw
+ladies. It was horribly bad taste in both Julie and Claire to love such
+a creature as Saint-Preux; but then _cela s'est vu_ from the time of the
+Lady of the Strachy downwards, if not from that of Princess Michal. But
+Claire is faithful and true as steel, and she is lively without being,
+as Charlotte Grandison certainly is, vulgar. She is very much more a
+really "reasonable woman," even putting passion aside, than the somewhat
+sermonising and syllogising Julie; and it would have been both agreeable
+and tormenting to be M. d'Orbe. (Tormenting because she only half-loved
+him, and agreeable because she did love him a little, and, whether it
+was little or much, allowed herself to be his.) He himself, slight and
+rather "put upon" as he is, is also much the most agreeable of the
+"second" male characters. Of Bomston and Wolmar we shall speak
+presently; and there is so little of the Baron d'Etange that one really
+does not know whether he was or was not something more than the
+tyrannical husband and father, and the ill-mannered specimen of the
+lesser nobility, that it pleased Saint-Preux or Rousseau to represent
+him as being. He had provocation enough, even in the case of his
+otherwise hardly pardonable insolence to Bomston.[368]
+
+[Sidenote: The delinquencies of Saint-Preux.]
+
+But Saint-Preux himself? How early was the obvious jest made that he is
+about as little of a _preux_ as he is of a saint? I have heard, or
+dreamt, of a schoolboy who, being accidentally somewhat precocious in
+French, and having read the book, ejaculated, "_What_ a sweep he is!"
+and I remember no time of my life at which I should not have heartily
+agreed with that youth. I do not suppose that either of us--though
+perhaps we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for not doing so--founded
+our condemnation on Saint-Preux's "forgetfulness of all but love." That
+is a "forfeit," in French and English sense alike, which has itself
+registered and settled in various tariffs and codes, none of which
+concerns the present history. It is not even that he is a most
+unreasonable creature now and then; that can be pardoned, being
+understood, though he really does strain the benefit of _amare et
+sapere_ etc. It is that, except when he is in the altitudes of passion,
+and not always then, he never "knows how to behave," as the simple and
+sufficient old phrase had it. If M. d'Etange had had the wits, and had
+deigned to do it, he might even, without knowing his deepest cause of
+quarrel with the treacherous tutor, have pointed out that Saint-Preux's
+claim to be one of God Almighty's gentlemen was as groundless as his
+"proofs," in the French technical sense of gentility, were non-existent.
+It is impossible to imagine anything in worse taste than his reply to
+the Baron's no doubt offensive letter, and Julie's enclosed
+renunciation. Even the adoring Julie herself, and the hardly less
+adoring Claire--the latter not in the least a prude, nor given to giving
+herself "airs"--are constantly obliged to pull him up for his want of
+_delicatesse_. He is evidently a coxcomb, still more evidently a prig;
+selfish beyond even that selfishness which is venial in a lover; not in
+the least, though he can exceed in wine, a "good fellow," and in many
+ways thoroughly unmanly. A good English school and college might have
+made him tolerable: but it is rather to be doubted, and it is certain
+that his way as a transgressor would have been hard at both. As it is,
+he is very largely the embodiment--and it is more charitable than
+uncharitable to regard him as largely the cause--of the faults of the
+worst kind of French, and not quite only French, novel-hero ever since.
+
+[Sidenote: And the less charming points of Julie. Her redemption.]
+
+One approaches Julie herself, in critical intent, with mixed feelings.
+One would rather say nothing but good of her, and there is plenty of
+good to say: how much will be seen in a moment. Most of what is not so
+good belongs, in fact, to the dreary bulk of sequel tacked on by
+mistaken judgment to that more than true history of a hundred pages,
+which leaves her in despair, and might well have left her altogether.
+Even here she is not faultless, quite independently of her sins
+according to Mrs. Grundy and the Pharisees. If she had not been, as
+Claire herself fondly but truly calls her, such a _precheresse_, she
+might not have fallen a victim to such a prig. One never can quite
+forgive her for loving him, except on the all-excusing ground that she
+loved him so much; and though she is perhaps not far beyond the licence
+of "All's fair, in certain conditions," there is no doubt that, like her
+part-pattern Clarissa, she is not passionately attached to the truth.
+It might be possible to add some cavils, but for the irresistible plea
+just glanced at, which stops one.
+
+_Quia multum amavit!_ Nobody--at least no woman--had loved like that in
+a prose novel before; nobody at all except Des Grieux, and he is but as
+a sketch to an elaborate picture. She will wander after Pallas, and
+would like to think that she would like to be of the train of Dian (one
+shudders at imagining the scowl and the shrug and the twist of the skirt
+of the goddess!). But the kiss of Aphrodite has been on her, and has
+mastered her whole nature. How the thing could be done, out of poetry,
+has always been a marvel to me; but I have explained it by the
+supposition that the absolute impossibility of writing poetry at this
+time in French necessitated the break-out in prose. Rousseau's wonderful
+style--so impossible to analyse, but so irresistible--does much; the
+animating sense of his native scenery something. But, after all, what
+gives the thing its irresistibleness is the strange command he had of
+Passion and of Sorrow--two words, the first of which is actually, in the
+original sense, a synonym of the second, though it has been expanded to
+cover the very opposite.
+
+[Sidenote: And the better side of the book generally.]
+
+But it would be unfair to Rousseau, especially in such a place as this,
+to confine the praise of _Julie_ as a novel to its exhibition of
+passion, or even to the charm of Julie herself. Within its proper
+limits--which are, let it be repeated, almost if not quite exactly those
+of the First Part--many other gifts of the particular class of artist
+are shown. The dangerous letter-scheme, which lends itself so easily,
+and in the other parts surrenders itself so helplessly and hopelessly,
+to mere "piffle" about this and that, is kept well in hand. Much as
+Rousseau owes to Richardson, he has steered entirely clear of that
+system of word-for-word and incident-for-incident reporting which makes
+the Englishman's work so sickening to some. You have enough of each and
+no more, this happy mean affecting both dialogue and description. The
+plot (or rather the action) is constantly present, probably managed,
+always enlivened by the imminence of disastrous discovery. As has been
+already pointed out, one may dislike--or feel little interest in--some
+of the few characters; but it is impossible to say that they are out of
+drawing or keeping. Saint-Preux, objectionable and almost loathsome as
+he may be sometimes, is a thoroughly human creature, and is undoubtedly
+what Rousseau meant him to be, for the very simple reason that he is
+(like the Byronic hero who followed) what Rousseau wished to be, if not
+exactly what he was, himself. Bomston is more of a lay figure; but then
+the _Anglais philosophe de qualite_ of the French imagination in the
+eighteenth century was a lay figure, and, as has been excellently said
+by De Quincey in another matter, nothing can be wrong which conforms to
+the principles of its own ideal. As for Julie and Claire, they once more
+
+    Answer the ends of their being created.
+
+Even the "talking-book" is here hardly excessive, and comes legitimately
+under the excuse of showing how the relations between the hero and
+heroine originally got themselves established.[369]
+
+[Sidenote: But little probability of more good work in novel from its
+author.]
+
+Are we, then, from the excellence of the "Confessions" _in pari materia_
+and _in ipsa_ of _Julie_, to lament that Rousseau did not take to
+novel-writing as a special and serious occupation? Probably not. The
+extreme weakness and almost _fadeur_ of the strictly novel part of
+_Emile_, and the going-off of _Julie_ itself, are very open warnings;
+the mere absence of any other attempts worth mentioning[370] is evidence
+of a kind; and the character of all the rest of the work, and of all
+this part of the work but the opening of _Julie_, and even of that
+opening itself, counsel abstention, here as everywhere, from quarrelling
+with Providence. Rousseau's superhuman concentration on himself, while
+it has inspired the relevant parts of the _Confessions_ and of _Julie_,
+has spoilt a good deal else that we have, and would assuredly have
+spoilt other things that we have not. It has been observed, by all acute
+students of the novel, that the egotistic variety will not bear heavy
+crops of fruit by itself; and that it is incapable, or capable with very
+great difficulty, of letting the observed and so far altruistic kind
+grow from the same stool. Of what is sometimes called the dramatic
+faculty (though, in fact, it is only one side of that),--the faculty
+which in different guise and with different means the general novelist
+must also possess,--Rousseau had nothing. He could put himself in no
+other man's skin, being so absolutely wrapped up in his own, which was
+itself much too sensitive to be disturbed, much less shed. Anything or
+anybody that was (to use Mill's language) a permanent or even a
+temporary possibility of sensation to him was within his power; anything
+out of immediate or closely impending contact was not. Now some of the
+great novelists have the external power--or at least the will to use
+that power--alone, others have had both; but Rousseau had the internal
+only, and so was, except by miracle of intensive exercise, incapable of
+further range.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The different case of Diderot.]
+
+Neither of the disabilities which weighed on Voltaire and Rousseau--the
+incapacity of the former to construct any complex character, and of the
+latter to portray any but his own, or some other brought into intensest
+communion, actually or as a matter of wish, with his own--weighed upon
+the third of the great trio of _philosophe_ leaders. There is every
+probability that Diderot might have been a very great novelist if he had
+lived a hundred years later; and not a little evidence that he only
+missed being such, even as it was, because of that mysterious curse
+which was epigrammatically expressed about him long ago (I really
+forget who said it first), "Good pages, no good book." So far from being
+self-centred or of limited interests, he could, as hardly any other man
+ever could, claim the hackneyed _Homo sum_, etc., as his rightful motto.
+He had, when he allowed himself to give it fair play, an admirable gift
+of tale-telling; he could create character, and set it to work, almost
+after the fashion of the very greatest novelists; his universal interest
+and "curiosity" included such vivid appreciation of literature, and of
+art, and of other things useful to the novel-writer, that he never could
+have been at a loss for various kinds of "seasoning." He had keen
+observation, an admittedly marvellous flow of ideas, and a style which
+(though, like everything else about him, careless) was of singular
+vigour and freshness when, once more, he let it have fair play. But his
+time, his nature, and his circumstances combined to throw in his way
+traps and snares and nets which he could not, or would not, avoid. His
+anti-religiosity, though sometimes greatly exaggerated, was a bad
+stumbling-block; although he was free from the snigger of Voltaire and
+of Sterne, you could not prevent him, as Horace Walpole complains of his
+distinguished sire, from blurting out the most improper remarks and
+stories at the most inconvenient times and in the most unsuitable
+companies; while his very multiscience, and his fertility of thought and
+imagination, kept him in a whirl which hindered his "settling" to
+anything. Although in one sense he had the finest and wisest critical
+taste of any man then living--I do not bar even Gray or even
+Lessing--his taste in some other ways was utterly untrustworthy and
+sometimes horribly bad; while even his strictly critical faculty seems
+never to have been exercised on his own books--a failure forming part of
+the "ostrich-like indifference" with which he produced and abandoned
+them.[371]
+
+[Sidenote: His gifts and the waste of them.]
+
+It is sometimes contended, and in many cases, no doubt, is the fact,
+that "Selections" are disgraceful and unscholarly. But what has been
+said will show that this is an exceptional case. The present writer
+waded through the whole of twenty-volume edition of Assezat and Tourneux
+when it first appeared, and is very glad he did; nor is there perhaps
+one volume (he does not say one page, chapter, or even work) which he
+has not revisited more or fewer times during the forty years in which
+(alas! for the preterite) they remained on his shelves. But it is
+scarcely to be expected that every one, that many, or that more than a
+very few readers, have done or will do the same. It so happens, however,
+that Genin's _Oeuvres Choisies_--though it has been abused by some
+anti-Ydgrunites as too much Bowdlerised--gives a remarkably full and
+satisfactory idea of this great and seldom[372] quite rightly valued
+writer. It must have cost much, besides use of paste and scissors, to
+do; for the extracts are often very short, and the bulk of matter to be
+thoroughly searched for extraction is, as has just been said, huge. A
+third volume might perhaps be added;[373] but the actual two are far
+from unrepresentative, while the Bowdlerising is by no means
+ultra-Bowdlerish.
+
+[Sidenote: The various display of them.]
+
+The reader, even of this selection, will see how, in quite miscellaneous
+or heterogeneous writing, Diderot bubbles out into a perfectly told tale
+or anecdote, no matter what the envelope (as we may call it) of this
+tale or anecdote may be. All his work is more or less like conversation:
+and these excursus are like the stories which, if good, are among the
+best, just as, if bad, they are the worst, sets-off to conversation
+itself. Next to these come the longer _histoires_--as one would call
+them in the Heroic novel and its successors--things sometimes found by
+themselves, sometimes ensconced in larger work[374]--the story of
+Desroches and Mme. de la Carliere, _Les Deux Amis de Bourbonne_, the
+almost famous _Le Marquis des Arcis et Mme. de la Pommeraye_, of which
+more may be said presently; and things which are not exactly tales, but
+which have the tale-quality in part, like the charming _Regrets sur ma
+Vieille Robe de Chambre, Ceci n'est pas un conte_, etc. Thirdly, and to
+be spoken of in more detail, come the things that are nearest actual
+novels, and in some cases are called so, _Le Neveu de Rameau_, the
+"unspeakable" _Bijoux Indiscrets_, _Jacques le Fataliste_ (the matrix of
+_Le Marquis des Arcis_) and _La Religieuse_.
+
+The "unspeakable" one does not need much speaking from any point of
+view. If it is not positively what Carlyle called it, "the beastliest of
+all dull novels, past, present, or to come," it really would require a
+most unpleasant apprenticeship to scavenging in order to discover a
+dirtier and duller. The framework is a flat imitation of Crebillon, the
+"insets" are sometimes mere pornography, and the whole thing is
+evidently scribbled at a gallop--it was actually a few days' work, to
+get money, from some French Curll or Drybutter, to give (the
+appropriateness of the thing at least is humorous) to the mistress of
+the moment, a Madame de Puisieux,[375] who, if she was like Crebillon's
+heroines in morals, cannot have been like the best of them in manners.
+Its existence shows, of course, Diderot's worst side, that is to say,
+the combination of want of breeding with readiness to get money anyhow.
+If it is worth reading at all, which may be doubted, it is to show the
+real, if equivocal, value of Crebillon himself. For it is vulgar, which
+he never is.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Neveu de Rameau._]
+
+_Le Neveu de Rameau_, has only touches of obscenity, and it has been
+enormously praised by great persons. It is very clever, but it seems to
+me that, as a notable critic is said to have observed of something else,
+"it has been praised quite enough." It is a sketch, worked out in a sort
+of monologue,[376] of something like Diderot's own character without his
+genius and without his good fellowship--a gutter-snipe of art and
+letters possessed of some talent and of infinite impudence. It shows
+Diderot's own power of observation and easy fluid representation of
+character and manners, but not, as I venture to think, much more.
+
+[Sidenote: _Jacques le Fataliste._]
+
+_Jacques le Fataliste_ is what may be called, without pedantry or
+preciousness, eminently a "document." It is a document of Diderot's
+genius only indirectly (save in part), and to those who can read not
+only in the lines but between them: it is a document, directly, of the
+insatiable and restless energy of the man, and of the damage which this
+restlessness, with its accompanying and inevitable want of
+self-criticism, imposed upon that genius. Diderot, though he did not
+rhapsodise about Sterne as he rhapsodised about Richardson, was, like
+most of his countrymen then, a great admirer of "Tristram," and in an
+evil hour he took it into his head to Shandyise. The book starts with an
+actual adaptation of Sterne,[377] which is more than once repeated; its
+scheme--of a master (who is as different as possible from my Uncle Toby,
+except that when not in a passion he is rather good-natured, and at
+almost all times very easily humbugged) and a man (who is what Trim
+never is, both insolent and indecent)--is at least partially the same.
+But the most constant and the most unfortunate imitation is of Sterne's
+literally eccentric, or rather zigzag and pillar-to-post, fashion of
+narration. In the Englishman's own hands, by some prestidigitation of
+genius, this never becomes boring, though it probably would have become
+so if either book had been finished; for which reason we may be quite
+certain that it was not only his death which left both in fragments. In
+the hands of his imitators the boredom--simple or in the form of
+irritation--has been almost invariable;[378] and with all his great
+intellectual power, his tale-telling faculty, his _bonhomie_, and other
+good qualities, Diderot has not escaped it--has, in fact, rushed upon it
+and compelled it to come in. It is comparatively of little moment that
+the main ostensible theme--the very unedifying account of the loves, or
+at least the erotic exercises, of Jacques and his master--is
+deliberately, tediously, inartistically interrupted and "put off." The
+great feature of the book, which has redeemed it with some who would
+otherwise condemn it entirely, the Arcis and La Pommeraye episode (_v.
+inf._), is handled after a fashion which suggests Mr. Ruskin's famous
+denunciation in another art. The _ink_pot is "flung in the face of the
+public" by a purely farcical series of interruptions, occasioned by the
+affairs of the inn-landlady, who tells the story, by her servants, dog,
+customers, and Heaven only knows what else; while the minor incidents
+and accidents of the book are treated in the same way, in and out of
+proportion to their own importance; the author's "simple plan," though
+by no means "good old rule," being that _everything_ shall be
+interrupted. Although, in the erotic part, the author never returns
+quite to his worst _Bijoux Indiscrets_ style, he once or twice goes very
+near it, except that he is not quite so dull; and when the book comes to
+an end in a very lame and impotent fashion (the farce being kept up to
+the last, and even this end being "recounted" and not made part of the
+mainly dialogic action), one is rather relieved at there being no more.
+One has seen talent; one has almost glimpsed genius; but what one has
+been most impressed with is the glaring fashion in which both the
+certainty and the possibility have been thrown away.
+
+[Sidenote: Its "Arcis-Pommeraye" episode.]
+
+The story which has been referred to in passing as muddled, or, to adopt
+a better French word, for which we have no exact equivalent, _affuble_
+(travestied and overlaid) with eccentricities and interruptions, the
+_Histoire_ of the Marquis des Arcis and the Marquise de la Pommeraye,
+has received a great deal of praise, most of which it deserves. The
+Marquis and the Marquise have entered upon one of the fashionable
+_liaisons_ which Crebillon described in his own way. Diderot describes
+this one in another. The Marquis gets tired--it is fair to say that he
+has offered marriage at the very first, but Madame de la Pommeraye, a
+widow with an unpleasant first experience of the state, has declined it.
+He shows his tiredness in a gentlemanly manner, but not very mistakably.
+His mistress, who is not at first _femina furens_, but who possesses
+some feminine characteristics in a dangerous degree, as he might perhaps
+have found out earlier if he had been a different person, determines to
+make sure of it. She intimates _her_ tiredness, and the Marquis makes
+his first step downwards by jumping at the release. They are--the old,
+old hopeless folly!--to remain friends, but friends only. But she really
+loves him, and after almost assuring herself that he has really ceased
+to love her (which, in the real language of love, means that he has
+never loved her at all), devises a further, a very clever, but a rather
+diabolical system of last proof, involving vengeance if it fails. She
+has known, in exercises of charity (the _femme du monde_ has seldom
+quite abandoned these), a mother and daughter who, having lost their
+means, have taken to a questionable, or rather a very unquestionable
+manner of life, keeping a sort of private gaming-house, and extending to
+those frequenters of it who choose, what the late George Augustus Sala
+not inelegantly called, in an actual police-court instance, "the
+thorough hospitality characteristic of their domicile." She prevails on
+them to leave the house, get rid of all their belongings (down to
+clothes) which could possibly be identified, change their name, move to
+another quarter of Paris, and set up as _devotes_ under the full
+protection of the local clergy. Then she manages an introduction, of an
+apparently accidental kind, to the Marquis. He falls in love at once
+with the daughter, who is very pretty, and with masculine (or at least
+_some_ masculine) fatuity, makes Madame de la Pommeraye his confidante.
+She gives him rope, but he uses it, of course, only to hang himself. He
+tries the usual temptations; but though the mother at least would not
+refuse them, Madame de la Pommeraye's hand on the pair is too tight. At
+last he offers marriage, and--with her at least apparent consent--is
+married. The next day she tells him the truth. But her diabolism fails.
+At first there is of course a furious outburst. But the girl is
+beautiful, affectionate, and humble; the mother is pensioned off; the
+Marquis and Marquise des Arcis retire for some years to those invaluable
+_terres_, after a sojourn at which everything is forgotten; and the
+story ends. Diderot, by not too skilfully throwing in casuistical
+attacks and defences of the two principal characters, but telling us
+nothing of Madame de la Pommeraye's subsequent feelings or history, does
+what he can, unluckily after his too frequent fashion, to spoil or at
+least to blunt his tale. It is not necessary to imitate him by
+discussing the _pros_ and _cons_ at length. I think myself that the
+Marquis, both earlier and later, is made rather too much of a _benet_,
+or, in plain English, a nincompoop. But nincompoops exist: in fact how
+many of us are not nincompoops in certain circumstances? Madame de la
+Pommeraye is, I fear, rather true, and is certainly sketched with
+extraordinary ability. On a larger scale the thing would probably, at
+that time and by so hasty and careless a workman, have been quite
+spoilt. But it is obviously the skeleton--and something more--of a
+really great novel.
+
+[Sidenote: _La Religieuse._]
+
+It may seem that a critic who speaks in this fashion, after an initial
+promise of laudation, is a sort of Balaam topsyturvied, and merely
+curses where he is expected to bless. But ample warning was given of the
+peculiar position of Diderot, and when we come to his latest known and
+by far his best novel, _La Religieuse_, the paradox (he was himself very
+fond of paradoxes,[379] though not of the wretched things which now
+disgrace the name) remains. The very subject of the book, or of the
+greatest part of it, was for a long time, if it is not still, taboo; and
+even if this had not been the case, it has other drawbacks. It
+originated in, and to some extent still retains traces of, one of the
+silly and ill-bred "mystifications" in which the eighteenth and early
+nineteenth century delighted.[380] It is, at least in appearance, badly
+tainted with purpose; and while it is actually left unfinished, the last
+pages of it, as they stand, are utterly unworthy of the earlier part,
+and in fact quite uninteresting. Momus or Zoilus must be allowed to say
+so much: but having heard him, let us cease to listen to the half-god or
+the whole philologist.
+
+[Sidenote: Its story.]
+
+Yet _La Religieuse_, for all its drawbacks, is almost a great, and might
+conceivably have been a very great book. Madame d'Holbach is credited by
+Diderot's own generosity with having suggested its crowning _mot_,[381]
+and her influence may have been in other ways good by governing the
+force and fire, so often wasted or ill-directed, of Diderot's genius.
+Soeur Sainte-Suzanne is the youngest daughter of a respectable
+middle-class family. She perceives, or half-perceives (for, though no
+fool, she is a guileless and unsuspicious creature), that she is
+unwelcome there; the most certain sign of which is that, while her
+sisters are married and dowered handsomely, she is condemned to be a
+nun. She has, though quite real piety, no "vocation," and though she
+allows herself to be coaxed through her novitiate, she at last, in face
+of almost insuperable difficulties, summons up courage enough to
+refuse, at the very altar, the final profession. There is, of course, a
+terrible scandal; she has more black looks in the family than ever, and
+at last her mother confesses that she is an illegitimate child, and
+therefore hated by her putative father, whose love for his wife,
+however, has induced him to forgive her, and not actually renounce (as
+indeed, by French law, he could not) the child. Broken in heart and
+spirit, Suzanne at last accepts her doom. She is fortunate in one
+abbess, but the next persecutes her, brings all sorts of false
+accusations against her, strips, starves, imprisons, and actually
+tortures her by means of the _amende honorable_. She manages to get her
+complaints known and to secure a counsel, and though she cannot obtain
+liberation from her vows, the priest who conducts the ecclesiastical
+part of the enquiry is a just man, and utterly repudiates the methods of
+persecution, while he and her lay lawyer procure her transference to
+another convent. Here her last trial (except those of the foolish
+post-_scrap_, as we may call it) begins, as well as the most equivocal
+and the greatest part of the book. Her new superior is in every respect
+different from any she has known--of a luxurious temperament,
+good-natured, though capricious, and inclined to be very much too
+affectionate. Her temptation of the innocent Suzanne is defeated by this
+very innocence, and by timely revelation, though the revealer does not
+know what she reveals, to a "director"; and the wayward and corrupted
+fancy turns by degrees to actual madness, which proves fatal, Suzanne
+remaining unharmed, though a piece of not inexcusable eavesdropping
+removes the ignorance of her innocence.
+
+[Sidenote: A hardly missed, if missed, masterpiece.]
+
+If the subject be not simply ruled out, and the book indexed for
+silence, it is practically impossible to suggest that it could have been
+treated better. Even the earlier parts, which could easily have been
+made dull, are not so; and it is noteworthy that, anti-religionist as
+Diderot was, and directly as the book is aimed at the conventual
+system,[382] all the priests who are introduced are men of honour,
+justice, and humanity. But the wonder is in the treatment of the
+"scabrous" part of the matter by the author of Diderot's other books.
+Whether Madame d'Holbach's[383] influence, as has been suggested, was
+more widely and subtly extended than we know, or whatever else may be
+the cause, there is not a coarse word, not even a coarsely drawn
+situation, in the whole. Suzanne's innocence is, in the subtlest manner,
+prevented from being in the least _bete_. The fluctuations and
+ficklenesses of the abbess's passion, and in a less degree of that of
+another young nun, whom Suzanne has partially ousted from her favour,
+are marvellously and almost inoffensively drawn, and the stages by which
+erotomania passes into mania general and mortal, are sketched slightly,
+but with equal power. There is, I suppose, hardly a book which one ought
+to discommend to the young person more than _La Religieuse_. There are
+not many in which the powers required by the novelist, in delineating
+morbid, and not only morbid, character, are more brilliantly shown.
+
+It is not the least remarkable thing about this remarkable book, and not
+the least characteristic of its most remarkable author, that its very
+survival has something extraordinary about it. Grimm, who was more
+likely than any one else to know, apparently thought it was destroyed or
+lost; it never appeared at all during Diderot's life, nor for a dozen
+years after his death, nor till seven after the outbreak of the
+Revolution, and six after the suppression of the religious orders in
+France. That it might have brought its author into difficulties is more
+than probable; but the undisguised editor of the _Encyclopedie_, the
+author, earlier, of the actually disgraceful _Bijoux Indiscrets_, and
+the much more than suspected principal begetter of the _Systeme de la
+Nature_, could not have been much influenced by this. The true cause of
+its abscondence, as in so much else of his work, was undoubtedly that
+ultra-Bohemian quality of indifference which distinguished Diderot--the
+first in a way, probably for ever the greatest, and, above all, the most
+altruistic of literary Bohemians. Ask him to do something definite,
+especially for somebody else's profit, to be done off-hand, and it was
+done. Ask him to bear the brunt of a dangerous, laborious, by no means
+lucrative, but rather exciting adventure, and he would, one cannot quite
+say consecrate, but devote (which has two senses) his life to it. But
+set him to elaborate artistic creation, confine him to it, and expect
+him to finish it, and you were certain to be disappointed. At another
+time, even at this time, if his surroundings and his society, his
+education and his breeding had been less unfortunate, he might, as it
+seems to me, have become a very great novelist indeed. As it is, he is a
+great possibility of novel and of much other writing, with occasional
+outbursts of actuality. The _Encyclopedie_ itself, for aught I care,
+might have gone in all its copies, and with all possibility of
+recovering or remembering it on earth, to the place where so many people
+at the time would have liked to send it. But in the rest of him, and
+even in some of his own Encyclopaedia articles,[384] there is much of
+quite different stuff. And among the various gifts, critical and
+creative, which this stuff shows, not the least, I think, was the
+half-used and mostly ill-used gift of novel-writing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The successors--Marmontel.]
+
+What has been called the second generation of the _philosophes_, who
+were naturally the pupils of the first, "were not like [that] first,"
+that is to say, they did not reproduce the special talents of their
+immediate masters in this department of ours, save in two instances.
+Diderot's genius did not propagate itself in the novel way at all[385]:
+indeed, as has been said, his best novel was not known till this second
+generation itself was waning. The most brilliant of his direct hearers,
+Joubert, took to another department; or rather, in his famous _Pensees_,
+isolated and perfected the utterances scattered through the master's
+immense and disorderly work. Naigeon, the most devoted, who might have
+taken for his motto a slight alteration of the Mahometan confession of
+faith, "There is no God; but there is only one Diderot, and I am his
+prophet," was a dull fellow, and also, to adopt a Carlylian epithet, a
+"dull-snuffling" one, who could not have told a neck-tale if the
+Hairibee of the guillotine had caught him and given him a merciful
+chance. Voltaire in Marmontel, and Rousseau in Bernardin de
+Saint-Pierre, were more fortunate, though both the juniors considerably
+transformed their masters' fashions; and Marmontel was always more or
+less, and latterly altogether, an apostate from the principle that the
+first and last duty of man is summed up in _ecrasons l'infame_.
+
+This latter writer has had vicissitudes both in English and French
+appreciation. We translated him early, and he had an immense influence
+on the general Edgeworthian school, and on Miss Edgeworth herself. Much
+later Mr. Ruskin "took him up."[386] But neither his good nor his bad
+points have, for a long time, been such as greatly to commend
+themselves, either to the major part of the nineteenth century, or to
+what has yet passed of the twentieth, on either side of the channel.
+
+He was, no doubt, only a second-class man of letters, and though he
+ranks really high in this class, he was unfortunately much influenced by
+more or less passing fashions, fads, and fancies of his
+time--_sensibilite_ (see next chapter) philosophism,
+politico-philanthropic economy, and what not. He was also much of a
+"polygraph," and naturally a good deal of his polygraphy does not
+concern us, though parts of his _Memoirs_, especially the rather
+well-known accounts of his sufferings as a new-comer[387] in the
+atrocious Bastille, show capital tale-telling faculty. His unequal
+criticism, sometimes very acute, hardly concerns us at all; his _Essai
+sur les Romans_ being very disappointing.[388] But he wrote not a little
+which must, in different ways and "strengths," be classed as actual
+fiction, and this concerns us pretty nearly, both as evidencing that
+general set towards the novel which is so important, and also in detail.
+
+[Sidenote: His "Telemachic" imitations worth little.]
+
+It divides itself quite obviously into two classes, the almost didactic
+matter of _Belisaire_ and _Les Incas_, and the still partly didactic,
+but much more "fictionised" _Contes Moraux_. The first part (which is
+evidently of the family of _Telemaque_) may be rapidly dismissed. Except
+for its good French and good intentions, it has long had, and is likely
+always to have, very little to say for itself. We have seen that Prevost
+attempted a sort of quasi-historical novel. Of actual history there is
+little in _Belisaire_, rather more in _Les Incas_. But historical fact
+and story-telling art are entirely subordinated in both to moral
+purpose, endless talk about virtue and the affections and justice and
+all the rest of it--the sort of thing, in short, which provoked the
+immortal outburst, "In the name of the Devil and his grandmother, _be_
+virtuous and have done with it!" There is, as has just been said, a
+great deal of this in the _Contes_ also; but fortunately there is
+something else.
+
+[Sidenote: The best of his _Contes Moraux_ worth a good deal.]
+
+The something else is not to be found in the "Sensibility" parts,[389]
+and could not be expected to be. They do, indeed, contain perhaps the
+most absolutely ludicrous instance of the absurdest side of that
+remarkable thing, except Mackenzie's great _trouvaille_ of the
+press-gang who unanimously melted into tears[390] at the plea of an
+affectionate father. Marmontel's masterpiece is not so very far removed
+in subject from this. It represents a good young man, who stirs up the
+timorous captain and crew of a ship against an Algerine pirate, and in
+the ensuing engagement, sabre in hand, makes a terrible carnage: "As
+soon as he sees an African coming on board, he runs to him and cuts him
+in half, crying, 'My poor mother!'" The filial hero varies this a
+little, when "disembowelling" the Algerine commander, by requesting the
+Deity to "have pity on" his parent--a proceeding faintly suggestive of a
+survival in his mind of the human-sacrifice period.
+
+Fortunately, as has been said, it is not always thus: and some of the
+tales are amusing in almost the highest degree, being nearly as witty as
+Voltaire's, and entirely free from ill-nature and sculduddery. Not that
+Marmontel--though a great advocate for marriage, and even (for a
+Frenchman of his time) wonderfully favourable to falling in love
+_before_ marriage--pretends to be altogether superior to the customs of
+his own day. We still sometimes have the "Prendre-Avoir-Quitter" series
+of Crebillon,[391] though with fewer details; and Mrs. Newcome would
+have been almost more horrified than she was at _Joseph Andrews_ by the
+perusal of one of Marmontel's most well-intentioned things, _Annette et
+Lubin_. But he never lays himself out for attractions of a doubtful
+kind, and none of his best stories, even when they may sometimes involve
+bowing in the house of Ashtoreth as well as that of Rimmon, derive their
+bait from this kind. Indeed they rather "assume and pass it by" as a
+fashion of the time.
+
+[Sidenote: _Alcibiade ou le Moi._]
+
+We may take three or four of them as examples. One is the very first of
+the collection, _Alcibiade ou le Moi_. Hardly anybody need be told that
+the Alcibiades of the tale, though nominally, is not in the least really
+the Alcibiades of history, or that his Athens is altogether Paris; while
+his Socrates is a kind of _philosophe_, the good points of Voltaire,
+Rousseau, and Diderot being combined with the faults of none of them,
+and his ladies are persons who--with one exception--simply could not
+have existed in Greece. This Alcibiades wishes to be loved "for
+himself," and is (not without reason) very doubtful whether he ever has
+been, though he is the most popular and "successful" man in Athens. His
+_avoir_, for the moment, is concerned with a "Prude." (Were there prudes
+in Greece? I think Diogenes would have gladly lent his lantern for the
+search.) He is desperately afraid that she only loves him for _her_self.
+He determines to try her; takes her, not at her deeds, but at her words,
+which are, of course, such as would have made the Greeks laugh as
+inextinguishably as their gods once did. She expresses gratitude for his
+unselfishness, but is anything but pleased. Divers experiments are tried
+by her, and when at last he hopes she will not tempt him any more,
+exclaiming that he is really "l'amant le plus fidele, le plus tendre et
+le plus respectueux" ... "et le plus sot," adds she, sharply, concluding
+the conversation and shutting her, let us say, doors[392] on him.
+
+He is furious, and tries "Glicerie" (the form might be more Greek), an
+_ingenue_ of fifteen, who was "like a rose," who had attracted already
+the vows of the most gallant youths, etc. The most brilliant of these
+youths instantly retire before the invincible Alcibiades. But in the
+first place she wishes that before "explanations"[393] take place, a
+marriage shall be arranged; while he, oddly enough, wishes that the
+explanations should precede the hymen. Also she is particular about the
+consent of her parents: and, finally, when he asks her whether she will
+swear constancy against every trial, to be his, and his only, whatever
+happens, she replies, with equal firmness and point, "Never!" So he is
+furious again. But there is a widow, and, as we have seen in former
+cases, there was not, in the French eighteenth century, the illiberal
+prejudice against widows expressed by Mr. Weller. She is, of course,
+inconsolable for her dear first, but admits, after a time, the
+possibility of a dear second. Only it must be kept secret as yet. For a
+time Alcibiades behaves nobly, but somehow or other he finds that
+everybody knows the fact; he is treated by his lady-love with obvious
+superiority; and breaks with her. An interlude with a "magistrate's"
+wife, on less proper and more Crebillonish lines, is not more
+successful. So one day meeting by the seashore a beautiful courtesan,
+Erigone, he determines, in the not contemptible language of that
+single-speech poetess, Maria del Occidente, to "descend and sip a lower
+draught." He is happy after a fashion with her for two whole months: but
+at the end of that time he is beaten in a chariot race, and, going to
+Erigone for consolation, finds the winner's vehicle at her door.
+Socrates, on being consulted, recommends Glicerie as, after all, the
+best of them, in a rather sensible discourse. But the concluding words
+of the sage and the story are, as indeed might be expected from
+Xanthippe's husband, not entirely optimist: "If your wife is well
+conducted and amiable, you will be a happy man; if she is ill-tempered
+and a coquette, you will become a philosopher--so you must gain in any
+case." An "obvious," perhaps, but a neat and uncommonly well-told story.
+
+[Sidenote: _Soliman the Second._]
+
+_Soliman the Second_ is probably the best known of Marmontel's tales,
+and it certainly has great merits. It is hardly inferior in wit to
+Voltaire, and is entirely free from the smears of uncomeliness and the
+sniggers of bad taste which he would have been sure to put in. The
+subject is, of course, partly historical, though the reader of Knollys
+(and one knows more unhappy persons) will look in vain there, not,
+indeed, for Roxelana, but for the _nez retrousse_, which is the
+important point of the story. The great Sultan tires of his Asiatic
+harem, complaisant but uninteresting, and orders European damsels to be
+caught or bought for him. The most noteworthy of the catch or batch are
+Elmire, Delia, and Roxelane. Elmire comes first to Soliman's notice,
+charms him by her sentimental ways, and reigns for a time, but loses her
+piquancy, and (by no means wholly to her satisfaction) is able to avail
+herself of the conditional enfranchisement, and return to her country,
+which his magnanimity has granted her. Her immediate supplanter, Delia,
+is an admirable singer, and possessed of many of the qualifications of
+an accomplished _hetaera_. But for that very reason the Sultan tires of
+her likewise; and for the same, she is not inconsolable or restive:
+indeed she acts as a sort of Lady Pandara, if not to introduce, at any
+rate to tame, the third, Roxelane, a French girl of no very regular
+beauty, but with infinite attractions, and in particular possessed of
+what Mr. Dobson elegantly calls "a madding ineffable nose" of the
+_retrousse_ type.
+
+The first thing the Sultan hears of this damsel is that the Master of
+the Eunuchs cannot in the least manage her; for she merely laughs at all
+he says. The Sultan, out of curiosity, orders her to be brought to him,
+and she immediately cries: "Thank Heaven! here is a face like a man's.
+Of course you are the sublime Sultan whose slave I have the honour to
+be? Please cashier this disgusting old rascal." To which extremely
+irreverent address Soliman makes a dignified reply of the proper kind,
+including due reference to "obedience" and his "will." This brings down
+a small pageful of raillery from the young person, who asks "whether
+this is Turkish gallantry?" suggests that the restrictions of the
+seraglio involve a fear that "the skies should rain men," and more than
+hints that she should be very glad if they did. For the moment Soliman,
+though much taken with her, finds no way of saving his dignity except by
+a retreat. The next time he sends for her, or rather announces his own
+arrival, she tells the messenger to pack himself off: and when the
+Commander of the Faithful does visit her and gives a little good advice,
+she is still incorrigible. She will, once more, have nothing to do with
+the words _dois_ and _devoir_. When asked if she knows what he is and
+what _she_ is, she answers with perfect _aplomb_, "What we are? You are
+powerful, and I am pretty; so we are quite on an equality." In the most
+painfully confidential and at the same time quite decent manner, she
+asks him what he can possibly do with five hundred wives? and, still
+more intolerably, tells him that she likes his looks, and has already
+loved people who were not worth him. The horror with which this Turkish
+soldan, himself so full of sin, ejaculates, "Vous _avez_ aime?" may be
+easily imagined, and again she simply puts him to flight. When he gets
+over it a little, he sends Delia to negotiate. But Roxelane tells the
+go-between to stay to supper, declaring that she herself does not feel
+inclined for a _tete-a-tete_ yet, and finally sends him off with this
+obliging predecessor and substitute, presenting her with the legendary
+handkerchief, which she has actually borrowed from the guileless
+Padishah. There is some, but not too much more of it; there can but be
+one end; and as he takes her to the Mosque to make her legitimate
+Sultana, quite contrary to proper Mussulman usage, he says to himself,
+"Is it really possible that a little _retrousse_ nose should upset the
+laws of an empire?" Probably, though Marmontel does not say so, he
+looked down at the said nose, as he communed with himself, and decided
+that cause and effect were not unworthy of each other. There is hardly a
+righter and better hit-off tale of the kind, even in French.
+
+[Sidenote: _The Four Flasks._]
+
+"The Four Flasks" or "The Adventures of Alcidonis of Megara," a sort of
+outside fairy tale, is good, but not quite so good as either of the
+former. Alcidonis has a fairy protectress, if not exactly godmother, who
+gives him the flasks in question to use in amatory adventures. One, with
+purple liquor in it, sets the drinker in full tide of passion; the
+second (rose-coloured) causes a sort of flirtation; the third (blue)
+leads to sentimental and moderate affection; and the last (pure white)
+recovers the experimenter from the effects of any of the others. He
+tries all, and all but the last are unsatisfactory, though, much as in
+the case of Alcibiades and Glicerie, the blue has a second chance, the
+results of which are not revealed. This is the least important of the
+group, but is well told.
+
+[Sidenote: _Heureusement._]
+
+There is also much good in _Heureusement_, the nearest to a
+"Crebillonnade" of all, though the Crebillonesque situations are
+ingeniously broken off short. It is told by an old marquise[394] to an
+almost equally old abbe, her crony, who only at the last discovers that,
+long ago, he himself was very nearly the shepherd of the proverbial
+hour. And _Le Mari Sylphe_, which is still more directly connected with
+one of Crebillon's actual pieces, and with some of the weaker stories
+(_v. sup._) of the _Cabinet des Fees_, would be good if it were not much
+too long. Others might be mentioned, but my own favourite, though it has
+nothing quite so magnetic in it as the _nez de Roxelane_, is _Le
+Philosophe Soi-disant_, a sort of apology for his own clan, in a satire
+on its less worthy members, which may seem to hit rather unfairly at
+Rousseau, but which is exceedingly amusing.
+
+[Sidenote: _Le Philosophe Soi-disant._]
+
+Clarice--one of those so useful young widows of whom the novelists of
+this time might have pleaded that they took their ideas of them from the
+Apostle St. Paul--has for some time been anxious to know a _philosophe_,
+though she has been warned that there are _philosophes_ and
+_philosophes_, and that the right kind is neither common nor very fond
+of society. She expresses surprise, and says that she has always heard a
+_philosophe_ defined as an odd creature who makes it his business to be
+like nobody else. "Oh," she is told, "there is no difficulty about
+_that_ kind," and one, by name Ariste, is shortly added to her
+country-house party. She politely asks him whether he is not a
+_philosophe_, and whether philosophy is not a very beautiful thing? He
+replies (his special line being sententiousness) that it is simply the
+knowledge of good and evil, or, if she prefers it, Wisdom. "Only that?"
+says wicked Doris; but Clarice helps him from replying to the scoffer by
+going on to ask whether the fruit of Wisdom is not happiness? "And,
+Madame, the making others happy." "Dear me," says naive Lucinde, half
+under her breath, "I must be a _philosophe_, for I have been told a
+hundred times that it only depended on myself to be happy by making
+others happy." There is more wickedness from Doris; but Ariste, with a
+contemptuous smile, explains that the word "happiness" has more than one
+meaning, and that the _philosophe_ kind is different from that at the
+disposal and dispensation of a pretty woman. Clarice, admitting this,
+asks what _his_ kind of happiness is? The company then proceeds, in the
+most reprehensible fashion, to "draw" the sage: and they get from him,
+among other things, an admission that he despises everybody, and an
+unmistakable touch of disgust when somebody speaks of "his
+_semblables_."[395]
+
+Clarice, however, still plays the amiable and polite hostess, lets him
+take her to dinner, and says playfully that she means to reconcile him
+to humanity. He altogether declines. Man is a vicious beast, who
+persecutes and devours others, he says, making all the time a
+particularly good dinner while denouncing the slaughter of animals, and
+eulogising the "sparkling brook" while getting slightly drunk. He
+declaims against the folly and crime of the modern world in not making
+philosophers kings, and announces his intention of seeking complete
+solitude. But Clarice, still polite, decides that he must stay with them
+a little while, in order to enlighten and improve the company.
+
+After this, Ariste, in an alley alone, to digest his dinner and walk off
+his wine, persuades himself that Clarice has fallen in love with him,
+and that, to secure her face and her fortune, he has only got to go on
+playing the misanthrope and give her a chance of "taming the bear." The
+company, perfectly well knowing his thoughts, determine to play up to
+them--not for his greater glory; and Clarice, not quite willingly,
+agrees to take the principal part. In a long _tete-a-tete_ he makes his
+clumsy court, airs his cheap philosophy, and lets by no means the mere
+suggestion of a cloven foot appear, on the subject of virtue and vice.
+However, she stands it, though rather disgusted, and confesses to him
+that people are suggesting a certain Cleon, a member of the party, as
+her second husband; whereon he decries marriage, but proposes himself as
+a lover. She reports progress, and is applauded; but the Presidente de
+Ponval, another widow, fat, fifty, fond of good fare, possessed of a
+fine fortune, but very far from foolish, vows that _she_ will make the
+greatest fool of Ariste. Cleon, however, accepts his part; and appears
+to be much disturbed at Clarice's attentions to Ariste, who, being shown
+to his room, declaims against its luxuries, but avails himself of them
+very cheerfully. In the morning he, though rather doubtfully, accepts a
+bath; but on his appearance in company Clarice makes remonstrances on
+his dress, etc., and actually prevails on him to let a valet curl his
+hair. This is an improvement; but she does not like his brown
+coat.[396] He must write to Paris and order a suit of _gris-de-lin
+clair_, and after some wrangling he consents. But now the Presidente
+takes up the running. After expressing the extremest admiration for his
+coiffure, she makes a dead set at him, tells him she wants a second
+husband whom she can love for himself, and goes off with a passionate
+glance, the company letting him casually know that she has ten thousand
+crowns a year. He affects to despise this, which is duly reported to her
+next morning. She vows vengeance; but he dreams of her (and the crowns)
+meanwhile, and with that morning the new suit arrives. He is admiring
+himself in it when Cleon comes in, and throws himself on his mercy. He
+adores Clarice; Ariste is evidently gaining fatally on her affections;
+will he not be generous and abstain from using his advantages? But if
+_he_ is really in love Cleon will give her up.
+
+The hook is, of course, more than singly baited and barbed. Ariste can
+at once play the magnanimous man, and be rewarded by the Presidente's
+ten thousand a year. He will be off with Clarice and on with Mme. de
+Ponval, whom he visits in his new splendour. She admires it hugely, but
+is alarmed at seeing him in Clarice's favourite colour. An admirable
+conversation follows, in which she constantly draws her ill-bred,
+ill-blooded, and self-besotted suitor into addressing her with insults,
+under the guise of compliments, and affects to enjoy them. He next
+visits Clarice, with whom he finds Cleon, in the depths of despair. She
+begins to admire the coat, and to pride herself on her choice, when he
+interrupts her, and solemnly resigns her to Cleon. Doris and Lucinde
+come in, and everybody is astounded at Ariste's generosity as he takes
+Clarice's hand and places it in that of his rival. Then he goes to the
+Presidente, and tells her what he has done. She expresses her delight,
+and he falls at her feet. Thereupon she throws round his neck a
+rose-coloured ribbon (_her_ colours), calls him "her Charming man,"[397]
+and insists on showing him to the public as her conquest and captive. He
+has no time to refuse, for the door opens and they all appear. "Le
+voila," says she, "cet homme si fier qui soupire a mes genoux pour les
+beaux yeux de ma cassette! Je vous le livre. Mon role est joue." So
+Ariste, tearing his curled hair, and the _gris-de-lin clair_ coat, and,
+doubtless, the Presidente's "red rose chain," cursing also terribly,
+goes off to write a book against the age, and to prove that nobody is
+wise but himself.
+
+I can hardly imagine more than one cavil being made against this by the
+most carping of critics and the most wedded to the crotchet of
+"kinds"--that it is too dramatic for a _story_, and that we ought to
+have had it as a drama. If this were further twisted into an accusation
+of plagiarism from the actual theatre, I think it could be rebutted at
+once. The situations separately might be found in many dramas; the
+characters in more; but I at least am not aware of any one in which they
+had been similarly put together. Of course most if not all of us have
+seen actresses who would make Clarice charming, Madame de Ponval
+amusing, and Doris and Lucinde very delectable adjuncts; as well as
+actors by whom the parts of Cleon and Ariste would be very effectively
+worked out. But why we should be troubled to dress, journey, waste time
+and money, and get a headache, by going to the theatre, when we can
+enjoy all this "in some close corner of [our] brain," I cannot see. As I
+read the story in some twenty minutes, I can see _my_ Clarice, _my_
+Madame de Ponval, _my_ Doris and Lucinde and Cleon and Ariste and
+Jasmin--the silent but doubtless highly appreciative valet,--and I
+rather doubt whether the best company in the world could give me quite
+that.
+
+[Sidenote: A real advance in these.]
+
+But, even in saying this, full justice has not yet been done to
+Marmontel. He has, from our special point of view, made a real further
+progress towards the ideal of the ordinary novel--the presentation of
+ordinary life. He has borrowed no supernatural aid;[398] he has laid
+under contribution no "fie-fie" seasonings; he has sacrificed nothing,
+or next to nothing, in these best pieces, whatever he may have done
+elsewhere, to purpose and crotchet. He has discarded stuffing,
+digression, episode, and other things which weighed on and hampered his
+predecessors. In fact there are times when it seems almost unjust, in
+this part of his work, to "second" him in the way we have done; though
+it must be admitted that if you take his production as a whole he
+relapses into the second order.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.]
+
+The actual books, in anything that can be called fiction, of Bernardin
+de Saint-Pierre are of far less merit than Marmontel's; but most people
+who have even the slightest knowledge of French literature know why he
+cannot be excluded here. Personally, he seems to have been an
+ineffectual sort of creature, and in a large part of his rather
+voluminous work he is (when he ceases to produce a sort of languid
+amusement) a distinctly boring one.[399] He appears to have been
+unlucky, but to have helped his own bad luck with the only signs of
+effectualness that he ever showed. It is annoying, no doubt, to get
+remonstrances from headquarters as to your not sending any work (plans,
+reports, etc.) as an engineer, and to find, or think you find, that
+your immediate C.O. has suppressed them. But when you charge him with
+his disgraceful proceeding, and he, as any French officer in his
+position at his time was likely to do, puts his hand on his sword, it is
+undiplomatic to rush on another officer who happens to be present, grab
+at and draw his weapon (you are apparently not entitled to one), and
+attack your chief. Nor when, after some more unsuccessful experiences at
+home and abroad, you are on half or no pay, and want employment, would
+it seem to be exactly the wisdom of Solomon to give a minister the
+choice of employing you on (1) the civilisation of Corsica, (2) the
+exploration of the unknown parts of the Western Continent, (3) the
+discovery of the sources of the Nile, and (4) a pedestrian tour
+throughout India. But, except in the first instance (for the "Citizen of
+Geneva" did not meddle much with cold steel), it was all very like a
+pupil, and (in the Citizen's later years) a friend, of Rousseau,
+carrying out his master's ideas with a stronger dose of Christianity,
+but with quite as little common sense. I have not seen (or remembered)
+any more exact account of Saint-Pierre's relations with Napoleon than
+that given by the excellent Aime-Martin, an academic euphemiser of the
+French kind. But, even reading between his lines, they must have been
+very funny.[400]
+
+_Paul et Virginie_, however, is one of those books which, having
+attained and long kept a European reputation, cannot be neglected, and
+it may be added that it does deserve, though for one thing only, never
+to be entirely forgotten. It is chock-full of _sensibilite_, the
+characters have no real character, and all healthy-minded persons have
+long ago agreed that the concomitant facts, if not causes, of Virginie's
+fate are more nasty than the nastiest thing in Diderot or Rabelais.[401]
+But the descriptions of the scenery of Mauritius, as sets-off to a
+novel, are something new, and something immensely important. _La
+Chaumiere Indienne_, though less of a story in size and general texture,
+is much better from the point of view of taste. It has touches of real
+irony, and almost of humour, though its hero, the good pariah, is a
+creature nearly as uninteresting as he is impossible. Yet his "black and
+polished" baby is a vivid property, and the descriptions are again
+famous. The shorter pieces, _Le Cafe de Surate_, etc., require little
+notice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It will, however, have been seen by anybody who can "seize points," that
+this _philosophe_ novel, as such, is a really important agent in
+bringing on the novel itself to its state of full age. That men like the
+three chiefs should take up the form is a great thing; that men who are
+not quite chiefs, like Marmontel and Saint-Pierre, should carry it on,
+is not a small one. They all do something to get it out of the rough; to
+discard--if sometimes also they add--irrelevances; to modernise this one
+kind which is perhaps the predestined and acceptable literary product of
+modernity. Voltaire originates little, but puts his immense power and
+_diable au corps_ into the body of fiction. Rousseau enchains passion in
+its service, as Madame de la Fayette, as even Prevost, had not been able
+to do before. Diderot indicates, in whatever questionable material, the
+vast possibilities of psychological analysis. Marmontel--doing, like
+other second-rate talents, almost more _useful_ work than his
+betters--rescues the _conte_ from the "demi-rep" condition into which it
+had fallen, and, owing to the multifariousness of his examples, does not
+entirely subjugate it even to honest purpose; while Bernardin de
+Saint-Pierre carries the suggestions of Rousseau still further in the
+invaluable department of description. No one, except on the small
+scale, is great in plot; no one produces a really individual
+character;[402] and it can hardly be said that any one provides
+thoroughly achieved novel dialogue. But they have inspired and enlivened
+the whole thing as a whole; and if, against this, is to be set the crime
+of purpose, that is one not difficult to discard.[403]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[351] His _verse_ tales, even if stories in verse had not by this time
+fallen out of our proper range, require little notice. The faculty of
+"telling" did not remain with him here, perhaps because it was
+prejudicially affected by the "dryness" and unpoetical quality of his
+poetry, and of the French poetry of the time generally, perhaps for
+other reasons. At any rate, as compared with La Fontaine or Prior, he
+hardly counts. _Le Mondain_, _Le Pauvre Diable_, etc., are skits or
+squibs in verse, not tales. The opening one of the usual collection, _Ce
+qui plait aux Dames_,--in itself a flat rehandling of Chaucer and
+Dryden,--is saved by its charming last line--
+
+    Ah! croyez-moi, l'erreur a son merite,
+
+a rede which he himself might well have recked.
+
+[352] In justice to Voltaire it ought to be remembered that no less
+great, virtuous, and religious a person than Milton ranked as one of the
+two objects to which "all mortals most aspire," "to offend your
+enemies."
+
+[353] It has been noted above (see p. 266, _note_), how some have
+directly traced _Zadig_ to the work of a person so much inferior to
+Hamilton as Gueulette.
+
+[354] _Micromegas_ and one or two other things avowed--in fact,
+Voltaire, if not "great," was "big" enough to make as a rule little
+secret of his levies on others; and he had, if not adequate, a
+considerable, respect for the English Titan.
+
+[355] Cacambo was not a savage, but he had savage or, at least,
+non-European blood in him.
+
+[356] Not in the Grandisonian sense, thank heaven! But as has been
+hinted, he is a _little_ of a prig.
+
+[357] He has been allowed a great deal of credit for the Calas and some
+other similar businesses. It is unlucky that the injustices he combated
+were somehow always _clerical_, in this or that fashion.
+
+[358] It was said of them at their appearance "[cet] ouvrage est sans
+gout, sans finesse, sans invention, un rabachage de toutes les vieilles
+polissonneries que l'auteur a debitees sur Moise, et Jesus-Christ, les
+prophetes et les apotres, l'Eglise, les papes, les cardinaux, les
+pretres et les moines; nul interet, nulle chaleur, nulle vraisemblance,
+force ordures, une grosse gaiete.... Je n'aime pas la religion: mais je
+ne la hais pas assez pour trouver cela bon." The authorship, added to
+the justice of it, makes this one of the most crushing censures ever
+committed to paper; for the writer was Diderot (_Oeuvres_, Ed. Assezat,
+vi. 36).
+
+[359] It is a singular coincidence that this was exactly the sum which
+Johnson mentioned to Boswell as capable of affording decent subsistence
+in London during the early middle eighteenth century.
+
+[360] _Songe de Platon_, _Bababec et les Fakirs_, _Aventure de la
+Memoire_, _Les Aveugles Juges des Conteurs_, _Aventure Indienne_, and
+_Voyage de la Raison_.
+
+[361] It is only fair to mention in this place, and in justice to a much
+abused institution, that this Babylonian story is said to be the only
+thing of its kind and its author that escaped the Roman censorship. If
+this is true, the unfeathered _perroquets_ were not so spiteful as the
+feathered ones too often are. Or perhaps each chuckled at the satire on
+his brethren.
+
+[362] As with other controverted points, not strictly relevant, it is
+permissible for us to neglect protests about _la legende des
+philosophes_ and the like. Of course Rousseau was not only, at one time
+or another, the personal enemy of Voltaire and Diderot--he was, at one
+time or another, the personal enemy of everybody, including (not at any
+one but at all times) himself--but held principles very different from
+theirs. Yet their names will always be found together: and for our
+object the junction is real.
+
+[363] Not the Abbe, who had been dead for some years, but a Genevese
+professor who saw a good deal of Jean-Jacques in his later days.
+
+[364] "For short" _La Nouvelle Heloise_ has been usually adopted. I
+prefer _Julie_ as actually the first title, and for other reasons with
+which it is unnecessary to trouble the reader.
+
+[365] She dies after slipping into the lake in a successful attempt to
+rescue one of her children; but neither is drowned, and she does not
+succumb rapidly enough for "shock" to account for it, or slowly enough
+for any other intelligible malady to hold its course.
+
+[366] There is another curious anticipation of Dickens here: for Julie,
+as Dora does with Agnes, entreats Claire to "fill her vacant
+place"--though, by the way, not with her husband. And a third parallel,
+between Saint-Preux and Bradley Headstone, need not be quite farcical.
+
+[367] You _may_ tear out Introductions, if you do it neatly; and this I
+say, having written many.
+
+[368] Also Rousseau, without meaning it, has made him by no means a
+fool. When, on learning from his wife and daughter that Saint-Preux had
+been officiating as "coach," he asked if this genius was a gentleman,
+and on hearing that he was not, replied, "What have you paid him, then?"
+it was not, as the novelist and his hero took it, in their vanity, to
+be, mere insolence of caste. M. d'Etange knew perfectly well that though
+he could not trust a French gentleman with his wife, there was not
+nearly so much danger with his daughter--while a _roturier_ was not only
+entitled to be paid, and might accept pay without derogation, but was
+not unlikely, as the old North Country saying goes, to take it in malt
+if he did not receive it in meal.
+
+[369] I observe that I have not yet fulfilled the promise of saying
+something of Wolmar, but the less said of him the better. He belongs
+wholly to that latter portion which has been wished away; he is a
+respectable Deist--than which it is essentially impossible, one would
+suppose, for orthodoxy and unorthodoxy alike to imagine anything more
+uninteresting; and his behaviour to Saint-Preux appears to me to be
+simply nauseous. He cannot, like Rowena, "forgive as a Christian,"
+because he is not one, and any other form of forgiveness or even of
+tolerance is, in the circumstances, disgusting. But it was Rousseau's
+way to be disgusting sometimes.
+
+[370] We have spoken of his attempt at the fairy tale; _qui_ Gomersal
+_non odit_ in English verse, _amet Le Levite d'Ephraim_ in French prose,
+etc. etc.
+
+[371] He did not even, as Rousseau did with his human offspring,
+habitually take them to the Foundling Hospital--that is to say, in the
+case of literature, the anonymous press. He left them in MS., gave them
+away, and in some cases behaved to them in such an incomprehensible
+fashion that one wonders how they ever came to light.
+
+[372] Carlyle's _Essay_ and Lord Morley of Blackburn's book are
+excepted. But Carlyle had not the whole before him, and Lord Morley was
+principally dealing with the _Encyclopedie_.
+
+[373] Especially as Genin, like Carlyle, did not know all. There is, I
+believe, a later selection, but I have not seen it.
+
+[374] Even the long, odd, and sometimes tedious _Reve de D'Alembert_,
+which Carlyle thought "we could have done without," but which others
+have extolled, has vivid narrative touches, though one is not much
+surprised at Mlle. de Lespinasse having been by no means grateful for
+the part assigned to her.
+
+[375] The cleansing effect of war is an old _cliche_. It has been
+curiously illustrated in this case: for the first proof of the present
+passage reached me on the very same day with the news of the expulsion
+of the Germans from the village of Puisieux. So the name got
+"_red_-washed" from its old reproach.
+
+[376] There really are touches of resemblance in it to Browning,
+especially in things like _Mr. Sludge the Medium_.
+
+[377] The corporal's wound in the knee.
+
+[378] Of course, there _are_ exceptions, and with one of the chief of
+them, Xavier de Maistre, we may have, before long, to deal.
+
+[379] His longest, most avowed, and most famous, the _Paradoxe sur le
+Comedien_, has been worthily Englished by Mr. Walter H. Pollock.
+
+[380] Its heroine, Suzanne Simonin, was, as far as the attempt to
+relieve herself of her vows went, a real person; and a benevolent
+nobleman, the Marquis de Croixmare, actually interested himself in this
+attempt--which failed. But Diderot and his evil angel Grimm got up sham
+letters between themselves and her patron, which are usually printed
+with the book.
+
+[381] _Mon pere, je suis damnee_ ... the opening words, and the only
+ones given, of the confession of the half-mad abbess.
+
+[382] Evangelical Protestantism has more than once adopted the principle
+that the Devil should not be allowed to have all the best tunes: and I
+remember in my youth an English religious novel of ultra-anti-Roman
+purpose, which, though, of course, dropping the "scabrousness," had, as
+I long afterwards recognised when I came to read _La Religieuse_, almost
+certainly borrowed a good deal from our most unsaintly Denis of Langres.
+
+[383] She seems to have been, in many ways, far too good for her
+society, and altogether a lady.--The opinions of the late M. Brunetiere
+and mine on French literature were often very different--though he was
+good enough not to disapprove of some of my work on it. But with the
+terms of his expression of mere opinion one had seldom to quarrel. I
+must, however, take exception to his attribution of _grossierete_ to _La
+Religieuse_. Diderot, as has been fully admitted, _was_ too often
+_grossier_: sometimes when it was almost irrelevant to the subject. But
+here, "scabrous" as the subject might be, the treatment is scrupulously
+_not_ coarse. Nor do I think, after intimate and long familiarity with
+the whole of his work, that he was ever a _faux bonhomme_.
+
+[384] They have hardly had a fair opportunity of comparison with
+Voltaire's _Dictionnaire Philosophique_; but they can stand it.
+
+[385] Unless Dulaurens' not quite stupid, but formless and
+discreditable, _Compere Mathieu_ be excepted.
+
+[386] In consequence of which Mr. Ruskin's favourite publisher, the late
+Mr. George Allen, asked the present writer, some twenty years ago, to
+revise and "introduce" the old translation of his _Contes Moraux_. The
+volume had, at least, the advantage of very charming illustrations by
+Miss Chris. Hammond.
+
+[387] They were even worse than Leigh Hunt's in the strictly English
+counterpart torture-house for the victims of tyranny--consisting, for
+instance, in the supply of so good a dinner, at His Most Christian
+Majesty's expense, for the prisoner's servant, that the prisoner ate it
+himself, and had afterwards, on the principles of rigid virtue and
+distributive justice, to resign, to the minion who accompanied him, his
+own still better one which came later, also supplied by the tyrant.
+
+[388] One expects something of value from the part-contemporary,
+part-successor of the novelists from Lesage to Rousseau. But where it is
+not mere blether about virtue and vice, and _le coeur humain_ and so on,
+it has some of the worst faults of eighteenth-century criticism. He
+thinks it would have been more "moral" if Mme. de Cleves had actually
+succumbed as a punishment for her self-reliance (certainly one of the
+most remarkable topsyturvifications of morality ever crotcheted); is, of
+course, infinitely shocked at being asked and induced to "interest
+himself in a prostitute and a card-sharper" by _Manon Lescaut_; and,
+equally of course, extols Richardson, though it is fair to say that he
+speaks well of _Tom Jones_.
+
+[389] See next chapter.
+
+[390] I wonder whether any one else has noticed that Thackeray, in the
+very agreeable illustration to one of not quite his greatest
+"letterpress" things, _A New Naval Drama_ (Oxford Ed. vol. viii. p.
+421), makes the press-gang weep ostentatiously in the picture, though
+not in the text, where they only wave their cutlasses. It may be merely
+a coincidence: but it may not.
+
+[391] There are reasons for thinking that Marmontel was deliberately
+"antidoting the _fanfreluches_" of the older tale-teller.
+
+[392] In the original, suiting the rest of the setting, it is _rideaux_.
+
+[393] "Explanations" is quite admirable, and, I think, neither borrowed
+from, nor, which is more surprising, by others.
+
+[394] She declares that she has never actually "stooped to folly"; but
+admits that on more than one occasion it was only an accidental
+interruption which "luckily" (_heureusement_) saved her.
+
+[395] It is necessary to retain the French here: for our "likes" is
+ambiguous.
+
+[396] Cf. the stories, contradictory of each other, as to _our_
+brown-coated philosopher's appearance in France. (Boswell, p. 322, Globe
+ed.)
+
+[397] Cf. again the bestowal of this title by Horace Walpole, in his
+later days, on Edward Jerningham, playwright, poetaster, and _petit
+maitre_, who, unluckily for himself, lived into the more roughly
+satirical times of the Revolutionary War.
+
+[398] "The _sylph_ishness of _Le Mari Sylphe_ is only an ingenious and
+defensible fraud; and the philtre-flasks of _Alcidonis_ are little more
+than "properties.""
+
+[399] Here is a specimen of his largest and most ambitious production,
+the _Etudes de la Nature_. "La femelle du tigre, exhalant l'odeur du
+carnage, fait retentir les solitudes de l'Afrique de ses miaulements
+affreux, et parait remplie d'attraits a ses cruels amants." By an odd
+chance, I once saw a real scene contrasting remarkably with
+Saint-Pierre's sentimental melodrama. It was in the Clifton Zoological
+Gardens, which, as possibly some readers may know, were at one time
+regarded as particularly home-like by the larger carnivora. It was a
+very fine day, and an equally fine young tigress was endeavouring to
+attract the attention of her cruel lover. She rolled delicately about,
+like a very large, very pretty, and exceptionally graceful cat; she made
+fantastic gestures with her paws and tail; and she purred literally "as
+gently as any sucking dove"--_roucoulement_ was the only word for it.
+But her "lover," though he certainly looked "cruel" and as if he would
+very much like to eat _me_, appeared totally indifferent to her
+attractions.
+
+[400] So, also, when one is told that he called his son Paul and his
+daughter Virginie, it is cheerful to remember, with a pleasant sense of
+contrast, Scott's good-humoured contempt for the tourists who wanted to
+know whether Abbotsford was to be called Tullyveolan or Tillietudlem.
+
+[401] As the story is not now, I believe, the universal school-book it
+once was, something more than mere allusion may be desirable. The ship
+in which Virginie is returning to the Isle of France gets into shallows
+during a hurricane, and is being beaten to pieces close to land. One
+stalwart sailor, stripped to swim for his life, approaches Virginie,
+imploring her to strip likewise and let him try to pilot her through the
+surf. But she (like the lady in the coach, at an early part of _Joseph
+Andrews_) won't so much as look at a naked man, clasps her arms round
+her own garments, and is very deservedly drowned. The sailor, to one's
+great relief, is not.
+
+[402] Julie herself is an intense type rather than individual.
+
+[403] I have not thought it necessary, except in regard to those of them
+who have been touched in treating of the _Cabinet des Fees_, to speak at
+any length of the minor tale-tellers of the century. They are sometimes
+not bad reading; but as a whole minor in almost all senses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS.
+
+THE FRENCH NOVEL, _C._ 1800
+
+
+[Sidenote: "Sensibility."]
+
+Frequent reference has been made, in the last two chapters, to the
+curious phenomenon called in French _sensibilite_ (with a derivative of
+contempt, _sensiblerie_), the exact English form of which supplies part
+of the title, and the meaning an even greater part of the subject, of
+one of Miss Austen's novels. The thing itself appears first
+definitely[404] in Madame de la Fayette, largely, though not unmixedly,
+in Marivaux, and to some extent in Prevost and Marmontel, while it is,
+as it were, sublimed in Rousseau, and present very strongly in
+Saint-Pierre. There are, however, some minor writers and books
+displaying it in some cases even more extensively and intensively; and
+in this final chapter of the present volume they may appropriately find
+a place, not merely because some of them are late, but because
+Sensibility is not confined to any part of the century, but, beginning
+before its birth, continued till after its end. We may thus have to
+encroach on the nineteenth a little, but more in appearance than in
+reality. In quintessence, and as a reigning fashion, Sensibility was the
+property of the eighteenth century.[405]
+
+[Sidenote: A glance at Miss Austen.]
+
+To recur for a moment to Miss Austen and _Sense and Sensibility_,
+everybody has laughed, let us hope not unkindly, over Marianne
+Dashwood's woes. But she herself was only an example, exaggerated in the
+genial fashion of her creatress, of the proper and recognised standard
+of feminine feeling in and long before her time. The "man of feeling"
+was admitted as something out of the way--on which side of the way
+opinions might differ. But the woman of feeling was emphatically the
+accepted type--a type which lasted far into the next century, though it
+was obsolete at least by the Mid-Victorian period, of which some do so
+vainly talk. The extraordinary development of emotion which was expected
+from women need not be illustrated merely from love-stories. The
+wonderful transports of Miss Ferrier's heroines at sight of their
+long-lost mothers; even those of sober Fanny Price in _Mansfield Park_,
+at the recovery of her estimable but not particularly interesting
+brother William, give the keynote much better than any more questionable
+ecstasies. "Sensibility, so charming," was the pet affectation of the
+period--an affectation carried on till it became quite natural, and was
+only cured by the half-caricature, half-reaction of Byronism.
+
+[Sidenote: The thing essentially French.]
+
+The thing, however, was not English in origin, and never was thoroughly
+English at all. The main current of the Sensibility novelists, who
+impressed their curious morals or manners on all men and women in
+civilised Europe, was French in unbroken succession, from the day when
+Madame de la Fayette first broke ground against the ponderous romances
+of Madeleine de Scudery, to the day when Benjamin Constant forged, in
+_Adolphe_, the link between eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century
+romance, between the novel of sentiment and the novel of analysis.
+
+[Sidenote: Its history.]
+
+Of the relations to it of the greater novelists of the main century we
+have already spoken: and as for the two greatest of the extreme close,
+Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, they mix too many secondary purposes
+with their philandering, and moreover do not form part of the plan of
+the present volume. For the true Sensibility, the odd quintessence of
+conventional feeling, played at steadily till it is half real, if not
+wholly so, which ends in the peculiarities of two such wholesome young
+Britonesses as Marianne Dashwood and Fanny Price, we must look
+elsewhere. After Madame de la Fayette, and excluding with her other
+names already treated, we come to Madame de Fontaines, Madame de Tencin
+(most heartless and therefore naturally not least sentimental of women),
+Madame Riccoboni, the group of lady-novelists of whom Mesdames de Souza
+and de Duras are the chief, and, finally, the two really remarkable
+names of Xavier de Maistre and Benjamin Constant. These are our
+"documents." Even the minor subjects of this inquiry are pleasant pieces
+of literary _bric-a-brac_; perhaps they are something a little more than
+that. For Sensibility was actually once a great power in the world.
+Transformed a little, it did wonderful things in the hands of Rousseau
+and Goethe and Chateaubriand and Byron. It lingers in odd nooks and
+corners even at the present day, when it is usually and irreverently
+called "gush," and Heaven only knows whether it may not be resuscitated
+in full force before some of us are dead.[406] For it has exactly the
+peculiarities which characterise all recurrent fashions--the appeal to
+something which is genuine connected with the suggestion of a great deal
+that is not.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de Tencin and _Le Comte de Comminge_.]
+
+In the followers of Madame de la Fayette[407] we find that a good many
+years have passed by. The jargon appropriated to the subject has grown
+still more official; and instead of using it to express genuine
+sentiments, which in another language might deserve expression well
+enough, the characters are constantly suspected by the callous modern
+reader or elaborately, though perhaps unconsciously, feigning the
+sentiments which the jargon seems to imply that they ought to have. This
+is somewhat less noticeable in the work of Madame de Tencin than
+elsewhere, because d'Alembert's mother was so very much cleverer a
+person than the generality of the novel-writers of her day that she
+could hardly fail to hide defects more cunningly. But it is evident
+enough in the _Comte de Comminge_ and in the _Malheurs de l'Amour_.
+Having as questionable morals as any lady of the time (the time of the
+Regency), Madame de Tencin of course always had a moral purpose in her
+writings, and this again gives her books a certain difference. But, like
+the former, this difference only exposes, all the more clearly, the
+defects of the style, and the drawbacks from which it was almost
+impossible that those who practised it should escape.
+
+Madame de Tencin tried to escape by several gates. Besides her moral
+purposes and her _esprit_, she indulged in a good deal of rather
+complicated and sometimes extravagant incident. _M. de Comminge_, which
+is very short, contains, not to mention other things, the rather
+startling detail of a son who, out of chivalrous affection for his
+lady-love, burns certain of his father's title-deeds which he has been
+charged to recover, and the still more startling incident of the heroine
+living for some years in disguise as a monk. The following epistle,
+however, from the heroine to the hero, will show better than anything
+else the topsy-turvy condition which sensibility had already reached.
+All that need be said in explanation of it is that the father (who is
+furious with his son, and not unreasonably so) has shut him up in a
+dungeon, in order to force him to give up his beloved Adelaide.[408]
+
+     Your father's fury has told me all I owe you: I know what
+     your generosity had concealed from me. I know, too, the
+     terrible situation in which you are, and I have no means of
+     extracting you therefrom save one. This will perhaps make
+     you more unhappy still. But I shall be as unhappy as
+     yourself, _and this gives me the courage to do what I am
+     required to do_. They would have me, by engaging myself to
+     another, give a pledge never to be yours: 'tis at this price
+     that M. de Comminge sets your liberty. It will cost me
+     perhaps my life, certainly my peace. But I am resolved. I
+     shall in a few days be married to the Marquis de Benavides.
+     What I know of his character forewarns me of what I shall
+     have to suffer; _but I owe you at least so much constancy as
+     to make only misery for myself in the engagement I am
+     contracting_.
+
+The extremity of calculated absurdity indicated by the italicised
+passages was reached, let it be remembered, by one of the cleverest
+women of the century: and the chief excuse for it is that the
+restrictions of the La Fayette novel, confined as it was to the upper
+classes and to a limited number of elaborately distressing situations,
+were very embarrassing.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. Riccoboni and _Le Marquis de Cressy_.]
+
+Madame Riccoboni, mentioned earlier as continuing _Marianne_, shows the
+completed product very fairly. Her _Histoire du Marquis de Cressy_ is a
+capital example of the kind. The Marquis is beloved by a charming girl
+of sixteen and by a charming widow of six-and-twenty. An envious rival
+betrays his attentions to Adelaide de Bugei, and her father makes her
+write an epistle which pretty clearly gives him the option of a
+declaration in form or a rupture. For a Sensible man, it must be
+confessed, the Marquis does not get out of the difficulty too well. She
+has slipped into her father's formal note the highly Sensible
+postscript, "Vous dire de m'oublier? Ah! Jamais. On m'a force de
+l'ecrire; rien ne peut m'obliger a le penser ni le desirer." Apparently
+it was not leap-year, for the Marquis replied in a letter nearly as bad
+as Willoughby's celebrated epistle in _Sense and Sensibility_.
+
+     MADEMOISELLE,--Nothing can console me for having been the
+     innocent cause of fault being found with the conduct of a
+     person so worthy of respect as you. I shall approve whatever
+     you may think proper to do, without considering myself
+     entitled to ask the reason of your behaviour. How happy
+     should I be, mademoiselle, if my fortune, and the
+     arrangements which it forces me to make, did not deprive me
+     of the sweet hope of an honour of which my respect and my
+     sentiments would perhaps make me worthy, but which my
+     present circumstances permit me not to seek.
+
+Sensibility does not seem to have seen anything very unhandsome in this
+broad refusal to throw the handkerchief; but though not unhandsome, it
+could not be considered satisfactory to the heart. So M. de Cressy
+despatches this private note to Adelaide by "Machiavel the
+waiting-maid"--
+
+     Is it permitted to a wretch who has deprived himself of the
+     greatest of blessings, to dare to ask your pardon and your
+     pity? Never did love kindle a flame purer and more ardent
+     than that with which my heart burns for the amiable
+     Adelaide. Why have I not been able to give her those proofs
+     of it which she had the right to expect? Ah! mademoiselle,
+     how could I bind you to the lot of a wretch all whose wishes
+     even you perhaps would not fulfil? who, when he possessed
+     you, though master of so dear, so precious a blessing, might
+     regret others less estimable, but which have been the object
+     of his hope and desire, etc. etc.
+
+This means that M. de Cressy is ambitious, and wants a wife who will
+assist his views. The compliment is doubtful, and Adelaide receives it
+in approved fashion. She opens it "with a violent emotion," and her
+"trouble was so great in reading it through, that she had to begin it
+again many times before she understood it." The exceedingly dubious
+nature of the compliment, however, strikes her, and "tears of regret and
+indignation rise to her eyes"--tears which indeed are excusable even
+from a different point of view than that of Sensibility. She is far,
+however, from blaming that sacred emotion. "Ce n'est pas," she says; "de
+notre sensibilite, mais de l'objet qui l'a fait naitre, que nous devons
+nous plaindre." This point seems arguable if it were proper to argue
+with a lady.
+
+The next letter to be cited is from Adelaide's unconscious rival, whose
+conduct is--translated into the language of Sensibility, and adjusted
+to the manners of the time and class--a ludicrous anticipation of the
+Pickwickian widow. She buys a handsome scarf, and sends it anonymously
+to the victorious Marquis just before a Court ball, with this letter--
+
+     A sentiment, tender, timid, and shy of making itself known,
+     gives me an interest in penetrating the secrets of your
+     heart. You are thought indifferent; you seem to me
+     insensible. Perhaps you are happy, and discreet in your
+     happiness. Deign to tell me the secret of your soul, and be
+     sure that I am not unworthy of your confidence. If you have
+     no love for any one, wear this scarf at the ball. Your
+     compliance may lead you to a fate which others envy. She who
+     feels inclined to prefer you is worthy of your attentions,
+     and the step she takes to let you know it is the first
+     weakness which she has to confess.
+
+The modesty of this perhaps leaves something to desire, but its
+Sensibility is irreproachable. There is no need to analyse the story of
+the _Marquis de Cressy_, which is a very little book[409] and not
+extremely edifying. But it supplies us with another _locus classicus_ on
+sentimental manners. M. de Cressy has behaved very badly to Adelaide,
+and has married the widow with the scarf. He receives a letter from
+Adelaide on the day on which she takes the black veil--
+
+     'Tis from the depths of an asylum, where I fear no more the
+     perfidy of your sex, that I bid you an eternal adieu. Birth,
+     wealth, honours, all vanish from my sight. My youth withered
+     by grief, my power of enjoyment destroyed, love past, memory
+     present, and regret still too deeply felt, all combine to
+     bury me in this retreat.
+
+And so forth, all of which, if a little high-flown, is not specially
+unnatural; but the oddity of the passage is to come. Most men would be a
+little embarrassed at receiving such a letter as this in presence of
+their wives (it is to be observed that the unhappy Adelaide is profuse
+of pardons to Madame as well as to Monsieur de Cressy), and most wives
+would not be pleased when they read it. But Madame de Cressy has the
+finest Sensibility of the amiable kind. She reads it, and then--
+
+     The Marquise, having finished this letter, cast herself into
+     the arms of her husband, and clasping him with an
+     inexpressible tenderness, "Weep, sir, weep," she cried,
+     bathing him with her own tears; "you cannot show too much
+     sensibility for a heart so noble, so constant in its love.
+     Amiable and dear Adelaide! 'Tis done, then, and we have lost
+     you for ever. Ah! why must I reproach myself with having
+     deprived you of the only possession which excited your
+     desires? Can I not enjoy this sweet boon without telling
+     myself that my happiness has destroyed yours?"
+
+[Sidenote: Her other work--_Milady Catesby_.]
+
+All Madame Riccoboni's work is, with a little good-will, more or less
+interesting. Much of it is full of italics, which never were used so
+freely in France as in England, but which seem to suit the queer,
+exaggerated, topsy-turvyfied sentiments and expressions very well. The
+_Histoire d'Ernestine_ in particular is a charming little novelette. But
+if it were possible to give an abstract of any of her work here, _Milady
+Catesby_, which does us the honour to take its scene and personages from
+England, would be the one to choose. _Milady Catesby_ is well worth
+comparing with _Evelina_, which is some twenty years its junior, and the
+sentimental parts of which are quite in the same tone with it. Lord
+Ossery is indeed even more "sensible" than Lord Orville, but then he is
+described in French. Lady Catesby herself is, however, a model of the
+style, as when she writes--
+
+     Oh! my dear Henrietta! What agitation in my senses! what
+     trouble in my soul!... I have seen him.... He has spoken to
+     me.... Himself.... He was at the ball.... Yes! he. Lord
+     Ossery.... Ah! tell me not again to see him.... Bid me not
+     hear him once more.
+
+That will do for Lady Catesby, who really had no particular occasion or
+excuse for all this excitement except Sensibility. But Sensibility was
+getting more and more exacting. The hero of a novel must always be in
+the heroics, the heroine in a continual state of palpitation. We are
+already a long way from Madame de la Fayette's stately passions, from
+Marianne's whimsical _minauderies_. All the resources of
+typography--exclamations, points, dashes--have to be called in to
+express the generally disturbed state of things. Now unfortunately this
+sort of perpetual tempest in a teacup (for it generally is in a teacup)
+requires unusual genius to make it anything but ludicrous. I myself have
+not the least desire to laugh when I read such a book as _La Nouvelle
+Heloise_, and I venture to think that any one who does laugh must have
+something of the fool and something of the brute in his composition. But
+then Rousseau is Rousseau, and there are not many like him. At the
+Madame Riccobonis of this world, however clever they may be, it is
+difficult not to laugh, when they have to dance on such extraordinary
+tight ropes as those which Sensibility prescribed.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de Beaumont--_Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_.]
+
+The writers who were contemporary with Madame Riccoboni's later days,
+and who followed her, pushed the thing, if it were possible, even
+farther. In Madame de Genlis's tiny novelette of _Mademoiselle de
+Clermont_, the amount of tears shed, the way in which the knees of the
+characters knock together, their palenesses, blushes, tears, sighs, and
+other performances of the same kind, are surprising. In the _Lettres du
+Marquis de Roselle_ of Madame Elie de Beaumont (wife of the young
+advocate who defended the Calas family), a long scene between a brother
+and sister, in which the sister seeks to deter the brother from what she
+regards as a misalliance, ends (or at least almost ends, for the usual
+flood of tears is the actual conclusion) in this remarkable passage.
+
+     "And I," cried he suddenly with a kind of fury, "I suppose
+     that a sister who loves her brother, pities and does not
+     insult him; that the Marquis de Roselle knows better what
+     can make him happy than the Countess of St. Sever; and that
+     he is free, independent, able to dispose of himself, in
+     spite of all opposition." With these words he turned to
+     leave the room brusquely. I run to him, I stop him, he
+     resists. "My brother!" "I have no sister." He makes a
+     movement to free himself: he was about to escape me. "Oh, my
+     father!" I cried. "Oh, my mother! come to my help." At these
+     sacred names he started, stopped, and _allowed himself to be
+     conducted to a sofa_.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de Souza.]
+
+This unlucky termination might be paralleled from many other places,
+even from the agreeable writings of Madame de Souza. This writer, by the
+way, when the father of one of her heroes refuses to consent to his
+son's marriage, makes the stern parent yield to a representation that by
+not doing so he will "authorise by anticipation a want of filial
+attachment and respect" in the grandchildren who do not as yet exist.
+These excursions into the preposterous in search of something new in the
+way of noble sentiment or affecting emotion--these whippings and
+spurrings of the feelings and the fancy--characterise all the later work
+of the school.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Xavier de Maistre.]
+
+Two names of great literary value and interest close the list of the
+novelists of Sensibility in France, and show at once its Nemesis and its
+caricature. They were almost contemporaries, and by a curious
+coincidence neither was a Frenchman by birth. It would be impossible to
+imagine a greater contrast than existed personally between Xavier de
+Maistre and Henri Benjamin de Constant-Rebecque, commonly called
+Benjamin Constant. But their personalities, interesting as both are, are
+not the matter of principal concern here. The _Voyage autour de ma
+Chambre_, its sequel the _Expedition Nocturne_, and the _Lepreux de la
+Cite d'Aoste_, exhibit one branch of the river of Sensibility (if one
+may be permitted to draw up a new Carte de Tendre), losing itself in
+agreeable trifling with the surface of life, and in generous, but
+fleeting, and slightly, though not consciously, insincere indulgence of
+the emotions. In _Adolphe_ the river rushes violently down a steep
+place, and _in nigras lethargi mergitur undas_. It is to be hoped that
+most people who will read these pages know Xavier de Maistre's charming
+little books; it is probable that at least some of them do not know
+_Adolphe_. Constant is the more strictly original of the two authors,
+for Xavier de Maistre owes a heavy debt to Sterne, though he employs the
+borrowed capital so well that he makes it his own, while _Adolphe_ can
+only be said to come after _Werther_ and _Rene_ in time, not in the
+least to follow them in nature.
+
+The _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_ (readers may be informed or reminded)
+is a whimsical description of the author's meditations and experiences
+when confined to barracks for some military peccadillo. After a fashion
+which has found endless imitators since, the prisoner contemplates the
+various objects in his room, spins little romances to himself about them
+and about his beloved Madame de Hautcastel, moralises on the
+faithfulness of his servant Joannetti, and so forth. The _Expedition
+Nocturne_, a less popular sequel, is not very different in plan. The
+_Lepreux de la Cite d'Aoste_ is a very short story, telling how the
+narrator finds a sufferer from the most terrible of all diseases lodged
+in a garden-house, and of their dialogue. The chief merit of these
+works, as of the less mannerised and more direct _Prisonnier du Caucase_
+and _Jeune Siberienne_, resides in their dainty style, in their singular
+narrative power (Sainte-Beuve says justly enough that the _Prisonnier du
+Caucase_ has been equalled by no other writer except Merimee), and in
+the remarkable charm of the personality of the author, which escapes at
+every moment from the work. The pleasant picture of the Chevalier de
+B---- in the _Soirees de St. Petersbourg_, which Joseph de Maistre is
+said to have drawn from his less formidable brother, often suggests
+itself as one follows the whimsicalities of the _Voyage_ and the
+_Expedition_. The affectation is so natural, the mannerism so simple,
+that it is some time before one realises how great in degree both are.
+
+[Sidenote: His illustrations on the lighter side of Sensibility.]
+
+Looked at from a certain point of view, Xavier de Maistre illustrates
+the effect of the Sensibility theory on a thoroughly good-natured,
+cultivated, and well-bred man of no particular force or character or
+strength of emotion. He has not the least intention of taking
+Sensibility seriously, but it is the proper thing to take it somehow or
+other. So he sets himself to work to be a man of feeling and a humorist
+at the same time. His encounter with the leper is so freshly and simply
+told, there is such an air of genuineness about it, that it seems at
+first sight not merely harsh, but unappreciative, to compare it to
+Sterne's account of his proceedings with his monks and donkeys, his
+imaginary prisoners, and his fictitious ensigns. Yet there is a real
+contact between them. Both have the chief note of Sensibility, the
+taking an emotion as a thing to be savoured and degusted
+deliberately--to be dealt with on scientific principles and strictly
+according to the rules of the game. One result of this proceeding, when
+pursued for a considerable time, is unavoidably a certain amount of
+frivolity, especially in dealing with emotions directly affecting the
+player. Sympathy such as that displayed with the leper may be strong and
+genuine, because there is no danger about it; there is the _suave mari
+magno_ preservative from the risk of a too deep emotion. But in matters
+which directly affect the interest of the individual it does not do to
+be too serious. The tear of Sensibility must not be dropped in a manner
+giving real pain to the dropper. Hence the humoristic attitude. When
+Xavier de Maistre informs us that "le grand art de l'homme de genie est
+de savoir bien elever sa bete," he means a great deal more than he
+supposes himself to mean. The great art of an easy-going person, who
+believes it to be his duty to be "sensible," is to arrange for a series
+of emotions which can be taken gently.
+
+The author of the _Voyage_ takes his without any extravagance. He takes
+good care not to burn his fingers metaphorically in this matter, though
+he tells us that in a fit of absence he did so literally. His affection
+for Madame de Hautcastel is certainly not a very passionate kind of
+affection, for all his elaborately counted and described heartbeats as
+he is dusting her portrait. Indeed, with his usual candour, he leaves us
+in no doubt about the matter. "La froide raison," he says, "reprit
+bientot son empire." Of course it did; the intelligent, and in the other
+sense sensible, person who wishes to preserve his repose must take care
+of that. We do not even believe that he really dropped a tear of
+repentance on his left shoe when he had unreasonably rated his servant;
+it is out of keeping with his own part. He borrowed that tear, either
+ironically or by oversight, from Sterne, just as he did "Ma chere
+Jenny." He is much more in his element when he proves that a lover is to
+his mistress, when she is about to go to a ball, only a "decimal of a
+lover," a kind of amatory tailor or ninth part of man; or when, in the
+_Expedition_, he meditates on a lady's slipper in the balcony fathoms
+below his garret.
+
+[Sidenote: A sign of decadence.]
+
+All this illustrates what may be called the attempt to get rid of
+Sensibility by the humorist gate of escape. Supposing no such attempt
+consciously to exist, it is, at any rate, the sign of an approaching
+downfall of Sensibility, of a feeling, on the part of those who have to
+do with it, that it is an edged tool, and an awkward one to handle. In
+comparing Xavier de Maistre with his master Sterne, it is very
+noticeable that while the one in disposition is thoroughly insincere,
+and the other thoroughly sincere, yet the insincere man is a true
+believer in Sensibility, and the sincere one evidently a semi-heretic.
+How far Sterne consciously simulated his droppings of warm tears, and
+how far he really meant them, may be a matter of dispute. But he was
+quite sincere in believing that they were very creditable things, and
+very admirable ones. Xavier de Maistre does not seem by any means so
+well convinced of this. He is, at times, not merely evidently pretending
+and making believe, but laughing at himself for pretending and making
+believe. He still thinks Sensibility a _gratissimus error_, a very
+pretty game for persons of refinement to play at, and he plays at it
+with a great deal of industry and with a most exquisite skill. But the
+spirit of Voltaire, who himself did his _sensibilite_ (in real life, if
+not in literature) as sincerely as Sterne, has affected Xavier de
+Maistre "with a difference." The Savoyard gentleman is entirely and
+unexceptionably orthodox in religion; it may be doubted whether a severe
+inquisition in matters of Sensibility would let him off scatheless. It
+is not merely that he jests--as, for instance, that when he is imagining
+the scene at the Rape of the Sabines, he suddenly fancies that he hears
+a cry of despair from one of the visitors. "Dieux immortels! Pourquoi
+n'ai-je amene ma femme a la fete?" That is quite proper and allowable.
+It is the general tone of levity in the most sentimental moments, the
+undercurrent of mockery at his own feelings in this man of feeling,
+which is so shocking to Sensibility, and yet it was precisely this that
+was inevitable.
+
+Sensibility, to carry it out properly, required, like other elaborate
+games, a very peculiar and elaborate arrangement of conditions. The
+parties must be in earnest so far as not to have the slightest suspicion
+that they were making themselves ridiculous, and yet not in earnest
+enough to make themselves really miserable. They must have plenty of
+time to spare, and not be distracted by business, serious study,
+political excitement, or other disturbing causes. On the other hand, to
+get too much absorbed, and arrive at Werther's end, was destructive not
+only to the individual player, but to the spirit of the game. As the
+century grew older, and this danger of absorption grew stronger, that
+game became more and more difficult to play seriously enough, and yet
+not too seriously. When the players did not blow their brains out, they
+often fell into the mere libertinism from which Sensibility, properly so
+called, is separated by a clear enough line. Two such examples in real
+life as Rousseau and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, one such demonstration
+of the same moral in fiction as _Werther_, were enough to discourage the
+man of feeling. Therefore, when he still exists, he takes to motley,
+the only wear for the human race in troublesome circumstances which
+beset it with unpleasant recurrence. When you cannot exactly believe
+anything in religion, in politics, in literature, in art, and yet
+neither wish nor know how to do without it, the safe way is to make a
+not too grotesque joke of it. This is a text on which a long sermon
+might be hung were it worth while. But as it is, it is sufficient to
+point out that Xavier de Maistre is an extremely remarkable illustration
+of the fact in the particular region of sentimental fiction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Benjamin Constant--_Adolphe_.]
+
+Benjamin Constant's masterpiece, which (the sequel to it never having
+appeared, though it was in existence in manuscript less than a century
+ago) is also his only purely literary work, is a very small book, but it
+calls here for something more than a very small mention. The books which
+make an end are almost fewer in literature than those which make a
+beginning, and this is one of them. Like most such books, it made a
+beginning also, showing the way to Beyle, and through Beyle to all the
+analytic school of the nineteenth century. Space would not here suffice
+to discuss the singular character of its author, to whom Sainte-Beuve
+certainly did some injustice, as the letters to Madame Recamier show,
+but whose political and personal experiences as certainly call for a
+large allowance of charity. The theory of _Adolphe's_ best editor, M. de
+Lescure (which also was the accepted theory long before M. de Lescure's
+time), that the heroine of the novel was Madame de Stael, will not, I
+think, hold water. In every characteristic, personal and mental,
+Ellenore and Madame de Stael are at opposite poles. Ellenore was
+beautiful, Madame de Stael was very nearly hideous; Ellenore was
+careless of her social position, Corinne was as great a slave to society
+as any one who ever lived; Ellenore was somewhat uncultivated, had
+little _esprit_, was indifferent to flattery, took not much upon herself
+in any way except in exacting affection where no affection existed; the
+good Corinne was one of the cleverest women of her time, and thought
+herself one of the cleverest of all times, could not endure that any one
+in company should be of a different opinion on this point, and insisted
+on general admiration and homage.
+
+However, this is a very minor matter, and anybody is at liberty to
+regard the differences as deliberate attempts to disguise the truth.
+What is important is that Madame de Stael was almost the last genuine
+devotee of Sensibility, and that _Adolphe_ was certainly written by a
+lover of Madame de Stael, who had, from his youth up, been a Man of
+Feeling of a singularly unfeeling kind. When Constant wrote the book he
+had run through the whole gamut of Sensibility. He had been instructed
+as a youth[410] by ancient women of letters; he had married and got rid
+of his wife _a la mode Germanorum_; he had frequently taken a hint from
+_Werther_, and threatened suicide with the best possible results; he had
+given, perhaps, the most atrocious example of the atrocious want of
+taste which accompanied the decadence of Sensibility, by marrying
+Charlotte von Hardenburg out of pique, because Madame de Stael would not
+marry him, then going to live with his bride near Coppet, and finally
+deserting her, newly married as she was, for her very uncomely but
+intellectually interesting rival. In short, according to the theory of a
+certain ethical school, that the philosopher who discusses virtue should
+be thoroughly conversant with vice, Benjamin Constant was a past master
+in Sensibility. It was at a late period in his career, and when he had
+only one trial to go through (the trial of, as it seems to me, a sincere
+and hopeless affection for Madame Recamier), that he wrote _Adolphe_.
+But the book has nothing whatever to do with 1815, the date which it
+bears. It is, as has been said, the history of the Nemesis of
+Sensibility, the prose commentary by anticipation on Mr. Swinburne's
+admirable "Stage Love"--
+
+    Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh and cry,
+    They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die;
+    Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow,
+    Till he died for good in play and rose in sorrow.
+
+That is a history, in one stanza, of Sensibility, and no better account
+than _Adolphe_ exists of the rising in sorrow.
+
+The story of the book opens in full eighteenth century. A young man,
+fresh from the University of Goettingen, goes to finish his education at
+the _residenz_ of D----. Here he finds much society, courtly and other.
+His chief resort is the house of a certain Count de P----, who lives,
+unmarried, with a Polish lady named Ellenore. In the easy-going days of
+Sensibility the _menage_ holds a certain place in society, though it is
+looked upon a little askance. But Ellenore is, on her own theory,
+thoroughly respectable, and the Count de P----, though in danger of his
+fortune, is a man of position and rank. As for Adolphe, he is the result
+of the struggle between Sensibility, an unquiet and ironic nature, and
+the teaching of a father who, though not unquiet, is more ironically
+given than himself. His main character is all that a young man's should
+be from the point of view of Sensibility. "Je ne demandais alors qu'a me
+livrer a ces impressions primitives et fougueuses," etc. But his father
+snubs the primitive and fiery impressions, and the son, feeling that
+they are a mistake, is only more determined to experience them.
+Alternately expanding himself as Sensibility demands, and making ironic
+jests as his own nature and his father's teaching suggest, he acquires
+the character of "un homme immoral, un homme peu sur," the last of which
+expressions may be paralleled from the British repertory by "an
+ill-regulated young man," or "a young man on whom you can never depend."
+
+All this time Adolphe is not in love, and as the dominant teaching of
+Sensibility lays it down that he ought to be, he feels that he is wrong.
+"'Je veux etre aime,' me dis-je, et je regardai autour de moi. Je ne
+voyais personne qui m'inspirait de l'amour; personne qui me parut
+susceptible d'en prendre." In parallel case the ordinary man would
+resign himself as easily as if he were in face of the two conditions of
+having no appetite and no dinner ready. But this will not do for the
+pupil of Sensibility. He must make what he does not find, and so Adolphe
+pitches on the luckless Ellenore, who "me parut une conquete digne de
+moi." To do Sensibility justice, it would not, at an earlier time, have
+used language so crude as this, but it had come to it now. Here is the
+portrait of the victim, drawn by her ten years younger lover.
+
+     Ellenore's wits were not above the ordinary, but her
+     thoughts were just, and her expression, simple as it was,
+     was sometimes striking by reason of the nobility and
+     elevation of the thought. She was full of prejudices, but
+     she was always prejudiced against her own interest. There
+     was nothing she set more value on than regularity of
+     conduct, precisely because her own conduct was
+     conventionally irregular.[411] She was very religious,
+     because religion rigidly condemned her mode of life. In
+     conversation she frowned on pleasantries which would have
+     seemed quite innocent to other women, because she feared
+     that her circumstances might encourage the use of such as
+     were not innocent. She would have liked to admit to her
+     society none but men of the highest rank and most
+     irreproachable reputation, because those women with whom she
+     shuddered at the thought of being classed usually tolerate
+     mixed society, and, giving up the hope of respect, seek only
+     amusement. In short, Ellenore and her destiny were at
+     daggers drawn; every word, every action of hers was a kind
+     of protest against her social position. And as she felt that
+     facts were too strong for her, and that the situation could
+     be changed by no efforts of hers, she was exceedingly
+     miserable.... The struggle between her feelings and her
+     circumstances had affected her temper. She was often silent
+     and dreamy: sometimes, however, she spoke with impetuosity.
+     Beset as she was by a constant preoccupation, she was never
+     quite calm in the midst of the most miscellaneous
+     conversation, and for this very reason her manner had an
+     unrest and an air of surprise about it which made her more
+     piquant than she was by nature. Her strange position, in
+     short, took the place of new and original ideas in her.
+
+The difference of note from the earlier eighteenth century will strike
+everybody here. If we are still some way from Emma Bovary, it is only
+in point of language: we are poles asunder from Marianne. But the hero
+is still, in his own belief, acting under the influence of Sensibility.
+He is not in the least impassioned, he is not a mere libertine, but he
+has a "besoin d'amour." He wants a "conquete." He is still actuated by
+the odd mixture of vanity, convention, sensuality, which goes by the
+name of our subject. But his love is a "dessin de lui plaire"; he has
+taken an "engagement envers son amour propre." In other words, he is
+playing the game from the lower point of view--the mere point of view of
+winning. It does not take him very long to win. Ellenore at first
+behaves unexceptionably, refuses to receive him after his first
+declaration, and retires to the country. But she returns, and the
+exemplary Adolphe has recourse to the threat which, if his creator's
+biographers may be believed, Constant himself was very fond of employing
+in similar cases, and which the great popularity of _Werther_ made
+terrible to the compassionate and foolish feminine mind. He will kill
+himself. She hesitates, and very soon she does not hesitate any longer.
+The reader feels that Adolphe is quite worthless, that nothing but the
+fact of his having been brought up in a time when Sensibility was
+dominant saves him. But the following passage, from the point of view
+alike of nature and of expression, again pacifies the critic:[412]
+
+     I passed several hours at her feet, declaring myself the
+     happiest of men, lavishing on her assurances of eternal
+     affection, devotion, and respect. She told me what she had
+     suffered in trying to keep me at a distance, how often she
+     had hoped that I should detect her notwithstanding her
+     efforts, how at every sound that fell on her ears she had
+     hoped for my arrival; what trouble, joy, and fear she had
+     felt on seeing me again; how she had distrusted herself, and
+     how, to unite prudence and inclination, she had sought once
+     more the distractions of society and the crowds which she
+     formerly avoided. I made her repeat the smallest details,
+     and this history of a few weeks seemed to us the history of
+     a whole life. Love makes up, as it were by magic, for the
+     absence of far-reaching memory. All other affections have
+     need of the past: love, as by enchantment, makes its own
+     past and throws it round us. It gives us the feeling of
+     having lived for years with one who yesterday was all but a
+     stranger. Itself a mere point of light, it dominates and
+     illuminates all time. A little while and it was not: a
+     little while and it will be no more: but, as long as it
+     exists, its light is reflected alike on the past and on the
+     future.
+
+This calm, he goes on to say, lasted but a short time; and, indeed, no
+one who has read the book so far is likely to suppose that it did.
+Adolphe has entered into the _liaison_ to play the game, Ellenore
+(unluckily for herself) to be loved. The difference soon brings discord.
+In the earlier Sensibility days men and women were nearly on equal
+terms. It was only in the most strictly metaphorical way that the
+unhappy lover was bound to expire, and his beloved rarely took the
+method of wringing his bosom recommended by Goldsmith, when anybody else
+of proper Sensibility was there to console her. But the game had become
+unequal between the Charlottes and the Werthers, the Adolphes and the
+Ellenores. The Count de P---- naturally perceives the state of affairs
+before long, and as naturally does not like it. Adolphe, having played
+his game and won it, does not care to go on playing for love merely.
+"Ellenore etait sans doute un vif plaisir dans mon existence, mais elle
+n'etait pas plus un but--elle etait devenue un lien." But Ellenore does
+not see this accurate distinction. After many vicissitudes and a few
+scenes ("Nous vecumes ainsi quatre mois dans des rapports forces,
+quelque fois doux, jamais completement libres, y rencontrant encore du
+plaisir mais n'y trouvant plus de charme") a crisis comes. The Count
+forbids Ellenore to receive Adolphe any more: and she thereupon breaks
+the ten years old union, and leaves her children and home.
+
+Her young lover receives this riveting of his chains with consternation,
+but he does his best. He defends her in public, he fights with a man who
+speaks lightly of her, but this is not what she wants.
+
+     Of course I ought to have consoled her. I ought to have
+     pressed her to my heart and said, "Let us live for each
+     other; let us forget the misjudgments of men; let us be
+     happy in our mutual regard and our mutual love." I tried to
+     do so, but what can a resolution made out of duty do to
+     revive a sentiment that is extinct? Ellenore and I each
+     concealed something from the other. She dared not tell me
+     her troubles, arising from a sacrifice which she knew I had
+     not asked of her. I had accepted that sacrifice; I dared not
+     complain of ills which I had foreseen, and which I had not
+     had courage enough to forestall. We were therefore silent on
+     the very subject which occupied us both incessantly. We were
+     prodigal of caresses, we babbled of love, but when we spoke
+     of it we spoke for fear of speaking of something else.
+
+Here is the full Nemesis of the sentiment that, to use Constant's own
+words, is "neither passion nor duty," and has the strength of neither,
+when it finds itself in presence of a stronger than itself. There were
+none of these unpleasant meetings in Sensibility proper. There sentiment
+met sentiment, and "exchanged itself," in Chamfort's famous phrase. When
+the rate of exchange became unsatisfactory it sought some other
+customer--a facile and agreeable process, which was quite consistent in
+practice with all the sighs and flames. Adolphe is not to be quit so
+easily of his conquest. He is recalled by his father, and his
+correspondence with Ellenore is described in one of the astonishingly
+true passages which make the book so remarkable.
+
+     During my absence I wrote regularly to Ellenore. I was
+     divided between the desire of not hurting her feelings and
+     the desire of truthfully representing my own. I should have
+     liked her to guess what I felt, but to guess it without
+     being hurt by it. I felt a certain satisfaction when I had
+     substituted the words "affection," "friendship," "devotion,"
+     for the word "love." Then suddenly I saw poor Ellenore
+     sitting sad and solitary, with nothing but my letters for
+     consolation: and at the end of two cold and artificial pages
+     I added in a hurry a few phrases of ardour or of tenderness
+     suited to deceive her afresh. In this way, never saying
+     enough to satisfy her, I always said enough to mislead her,
+     a species of double-dealing the very success of which was
+     against my wishes and prolonged my misery.
+
+This situation, however, does not last. Unable to bear his absence, and
+half puzzled, half pained by his letters, Ellenore follows him, and his
+father for the first time expresses displeasure at this compromising
+step. Ellenore being threatened with police measures, Adolphe is once
+more perforce thrown on her side, and elopes with her to neutral
+territory. Then events march quickly. Her father's Polish property, long
+confiscated, is restored to him and left to her. She takes Adolphe
+(still struggling between his obligations to her and his desire to be
+free) to Warsaw, rejects an offer of semi-reconciliation from the Count
+de P----, grows fonder and more exacting the more weary of her yoke her
+lover becomes; and at last, discovering his real sentiments from a
+correspondence of his with an artful old diplomatic friend of his
+father's, falls desperately ill and dies in his arms. A prologue and
+epilogue, which hint that Adolphe, far from taking his place in the
+world (from which he had thought his _liaison_ debarred him), wandered
+about in aimless remorse, might perhaps be cut away with advantage,
+though they are defensible, not merely on the old theory of political
+justice, but on sound critical grounds.
+
+[Sidenote: Mme. de Duras's "postscript."]
+
+[Sidenote: _Sensibilite_ and _engouement_.]
+
+This was the end of sensibility in more senses than one. It is true
+that, five years later than _Adolphe_, appeared Madame de Duras's
+agreeable novelettes of _Ourika_ and _Edouard_, in which something of
+the old tone revives. But they were written late in their author's life,
+and avowedly as a reminiscence of a past state of sentiment and of
+society. "Le ton de cette societe," says Madame de Duras herself, "etait
+l'engouement." As happy a sentence, perhaps, as can be anywhere found to
+describe what has been much written about, and, perhaps it may be said
+without presumption, much miswritten about. _Engouement_ itself is a
+nearly untranslatable word.[413] It may be clumsily but not inaccurately
+defined as a state of fanciful interest in persons and things which is
+rather more serious than mere caprice, and a good deal less serious
+than genuine enthusiasm. The word expresses exactly the attitude of
+French polite society in the eighteenth century to a vast number of
+subjects, and, what is more, it helps to explain the _sensibilite_ which
+dominated that society. The two terms mutually involve each other, and
+_sensibilite_ stands to mere flirtation on the one hand, and genuine
+passion on the other, exactly as _engouement_ does to caprice and
+enthusiasm. People flirted admirably in the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries, and the art was, I fancy, recovered in the nineteenth with
+some success, but I do not think they flirted, properly speaking, in the
+eighteenth.[414] Sensibility (and its companion "sensuality") prevented
+that. Yet, on the other hand, they did not, till the society itself and
+its sentiments with it were breaking up, indulge in anything that can be
+called real passion. Sensibility prevented that also. The kind of
+love-making which was popular may be compared without much fancifulness
+to the favourite card-game of the period, quadrille. You changed
+partners pretty often, and the stakes were not very serious; but the
+rules of the game were elaborate and precise, and it did not admit of
+being treated with levity.
+
+[Sidenote: Some final words on the matter.]
+
+Only a small part, though the most original and not the least remarkable
+part, of the representation of this curious phenomenon in literature has
+been attempted in this discussion. The English and German developments
+of it are interesting and famous, and, merely as literature, contain
+perhaps better work than the French, but they are not so original, and
+they are out of our province. Marivaux[415] served directly as model to
+both English and German novelists, though the peculiarity of the
+national temperament quickly made itself felt in both cases. In England
+the great and healthy genius of Fielding applied the humour cure to
+Sensibility at a very early period; in Germany the literature of
+Sensibility rapidly became the literature of suicide--a consummation
+than which nothing could be more alien from the original conception. It
+is true that there is a good deal of dying in the works of Madame de la
+Fayette and her imitators. But it is quite transparent stage-dying, and
+the virtuous Prince of Cleves and the penitent Adelaide in the _Comte de
+Comminge_ do not disturb the mind at all. We know that, as soon as the
+curtain has dropped, they will get up again and go home to supper quite
+comfortably. It is otherwise with Werther and Adolphe. With all the
+first-named young man's extravagance, four generations have known
+perfectly well that there is something besides absurdity in him, while
+in Adolphe there is no extravagance at all. The wind of Sensibility had
+been sown, in literature and in life, for many a long year, and the
+whirlwind had begun to be reaped.[416]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Its importance here.]
+
+This, however, is the moral side of the matter, with which we have not
+much to do. As a division of literature these sentimental novels,
+artificial as they are, have a good deal of interest; and in a _History_
+such as the present they have very great importance. They are so
+entirely different in atmosphere from the work of later times, that
+reading them has all the refreshing effect of a visit to a strange
+country; and yet one feels that they themselves have opened that
+country for coming writers as well as readers. They are often
+extraordinarily ingenious, and the books to which in form they set the
+example, though the power of the writers made them something very
+different in matter--_Julie_, _La Religieuse_, _Paul et Virginie_,[417]
+_Corinne_, _Rene_--give their progenitors not a little importance, or at
+least not a little interest of curiosity. Besides, it was in the school
+of Sensibility that the author of _Manon Lescaut_ somehow or other
+developed that wonderful little book. I do not know that it would be
+prudent to recommend modern readers to study Sensibility for themselves
+in the original documents just surveyed. Disappointment and possibly
+maledictions would probably be the result of any such attempt, except in
+the case of Xavier de Maistre and Constant. But these others are just
+the cases in which the office of historical critic justifies itself. It
+is often said (and nobody knows the truth of it better than critics
+themselves) that a diligent perusal of all the studies and _causeries_
+that have ever been written, on any one of the really great writers,
+will not give as much knowledge of them as half an hour's reading of
+their own work. But then in that case the metal is virgin, and to be had
+on the surface and for the picking up. The case is different where tons
+of ore have to be crushed and smelted, in order to produce a few
+pennyweights of metal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Whatever fault may be found with the "Sensibility" novel, it is, as a
+rule, "written by gentlemen [and ladies] for [ladies and] gentlemen." Of
+the work of two curious writers, who may furnish the last detailed
+notices of this volume, as much cannot, unfortunately, be said.
+
+[Sidenote: Restif de la Bretonne.]
+
+It may, from different points of view, surprise different classes of
+readers to find Restif de la Bretonne (or as some would call him, Retif)
+mentioned here at all--at any rate to find him taken seriously, and not
+entirely without a certain respect. One of these classes, consisting of
+those who know nothing about him save at second-hand, may ground their
+surprise on the notion that his work is not only matter for the _Index
+Expurgatorius_, but also vulgar and unliterary, such as a French Ned
+Ward, without even Ned's gutter-wit, might have written. And these might
+derive some support from the stock ticket-jingle _Rousseau du ruisseau_,
+which, though not without some real pertinency, is directly misleading.
+Another class, consisting of some at least, if not most, of those who
+have read him to some extent, may urge that Decency--taking her revenge
+for the axiom of the boatswain in _Mr. Midshipman Easy_--forbids Duty to
+let him in. And yet others, less under the control of any Mrs. Grundy,
+literary or moral, may ask why he is let in, and Choderlos de
+Laclos[418] and Louvet de Courray, with some more, kept out, as they
+most assuredly will be.
+
+In the first place, there is no vulgarity in Restif. If he had had a
+more regular education and society, literary or other, and could have
+kept his mind, which was to a certainty slightly unhinged, off the
+continual obsession of morbid subjects, he might have been a very
+considerable man of letters, and he is no mean one, so far as style
+goes,[419] as it is. He avails himself duly of the obscurity of a
+learned language when he has to use (which is regrettably often) words
+that do not appear in the dictionary of the Academy: and there is not
+the slightest evidence of his having taken to pornography for money, as
+Louvet and Laclos--as, one must regretfully add, Diderot, if not even
+Crebillon--certainly did. When a certain subject, or group of subjects,
+gets hold of a man--especially one of those whom a rather celebrated
+French lady called _les cerebraux_--he can think of nothing else: and
+though this is not absolutely true of Restif (for he had several minor
+crazes), it is very nearly true of him, and perhaps more true than of
+any one else who can be called a man of letters.
+
+Probably no one has read all he wrote;[420] even the late M. Assezat,
+who knew more about him than anybody else, does not, I think, pretend to
+have done so. He was himself a printer, and therefore found exceptional
+means of getting the mischief, which his by no means idle hands found to
+do, into publicity of a kind, though even their subject does not seem to
+have made his books popular.[421] His largest work, _Les
+Contemporaines_, is in forty-two volumes, and contains some three
+hundred different sections, reminding one vaguely, though the
+differences in detail are very great, of Amory's plan, at least, for the
+_Memoirs of Several Ladies_. His most remarkable by far, the
+quasi-autobiographical _Monsieur Nicolas_,[422] in fourteen. He could
+write with positive moral purpose, as in the protest against _Le Paysan
+Parvenu_, above referred to; in _La Vie de Mon Pere_ (a book agreeably
+free from any variety of that sin of Ham which some biographical
+writings of sons about their fathers display); and in the unpleasantly
+titled _Pornographe_, which is also morally intended, and dull enough to
+be as moral as Mrs. Trimmer or Dr. Forsyth.
+
+Indeed, this moral intention, so often idly and offensively put forward
+by those who are themselves mere pornographers, pervades Restif
+throughout, and, while it certainly sometimes does carry dulness with
+it, undoubtedly contributes at others a kind of piquancy, because of its
+evident sincerity, and the quaint contrast with the subjects the author
+is handling. These subjects make explicit dealing with himself
+difficult, if not impossible: but his _differentia_ as regards them may,
+with the aid of a little dexterity, be put without offence. In the first
+place, as regards the comparison with Rousseau, Restif is almost a
+gentleman: and he could not possibly have been guilty of Rousseau's
+blackguard tale-telling in the cases of Madame de Warens (or, as I
+believe, we are now told to spell it "Vuarrens") or Madame de Larnage.
+The way in which he speaks of his one idealised mistress, Madame
+"Parangon," is almost romantic. He is, indeed, savage in respect to his
+wife--whom he seems to have married in a sort of _clairvoyant_ mixture
+of knowledge of her evil nature and fascination by her personal charms
+and allurements, though he had had no difficulty in enjoying these
+without marriage. But into none other of his scores and hundreds of
+actual loves in some cases and at least passing intimacies in
+others,[423] does he ever appear to have taken either the Restoration
+and Regency tone on the one hand, or that of "sickly sentimentality" on
+the other. Against commerce for money he lifts up his testimony
+unceasingly; he has, as his one editor has put it, a _manie de
+paternite_, and denounces any vice disconnected with it. With the
+privileges of Solomon or Haroun al Raschid, Restif would have been
+perfectly contented: and he never would have availed himself of that of
+Schahriar before the two divine sisters put a stop to it.
+
+All this, however, strictly speaking, is outside our present subject,
+and is merely intended as a sort of excuse for the introduction of a
+writer who has been unfairly ostracised, not as a passport for Restif to
+the young person. But his actual qualities as tale-teller are very
+remarkable. The second title of _Monsieur Nicolas_--_Le Coeur Humain
+Devoile_--ambitious as it is, is not fatuous. It is a human heart in a
+singularly morbid condition which is unveiled: but as, if I remember
+rightly, either Goethe or Schiller, or both, saw and said near the time,
+there is no charlatanery about the unveiling, and no bungling about the
+autopsy. Restif has been compared, and not unfairly, to Defoe, as well
+as to Rousseau; in a certain way he may be likened to Pepys; and all
+four share an intense and unaffected reality, combined, however, in the
+Frenchman's case with a sort of exaggeration of a dreamy kind, and with
+other dream-character, which reminds one of Borrow, and even of De
+Quincey. His absolute shamelessness is less unconnected with this
+dream-quality than may at first appear, and, as in all such cases, is
+made much less offensive by it. Could he ever have taken holiday from
+his day-long and night-long devotion to
+
+        Cotytto or Venus
+    Astarte or Ashtoreth,
+
+he might have been a most remarkable novelist, and as it is his _mere_
+narrative faculty is such as by no means every novelist possesses.
+Moreover, he counts, once more, in the advance towards real things in
+fiction. "A pretty kind of reality!" cries Mrs. Grundy. But the real is
+not always the pretty, and the pretty is not always the real.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Pigault-Lebrun--the difference of his positive and relative
+importance.]
+
+There is also a good deal that is curious, as well as many things that
+are disgusting, for the student of the novel in Pigault-Lebrun.[424] In
+the first place, one is constantly reminded of that redeeming point
+which the benevolent Joe Gargery found in Mr. Pumblechook--
+
+    And, wotsume'er the failings on his part,
+    He were a corn-and-seedsman in his hart.
+
+If Pigault cannot exactly be said to have been a good novelist, he
+"were" a novelist "in his hart." Beside his _polissonneries_, his
+frequent dulness, his singular gropings and failures at anything like
+good novelist _faire_, one constantly finds what might be pedantically
+and barbarously called a "novelistic velleity." His much too ambitiously
+titled _Melanges Litteraires_ turn to stories, though stories touched
+with the _polisson_ brush. His _Nouvelles_ testify at least to his
+ambition and his industry in the craft of fiction. "Je ne suis pas
+Voltaire," he says somewhere, in reference, I think, to his plays, not
+his tales. He most certainly is not; neither is he Marmontel, as far as
+the tale is concerned. But as for the longer novel, in a blind and
+blundering way, constantly trapped and hindered by his want of genius
+and his want of taste, by his literary ill-breeding and other faults, he
+seems to have more of a "glimmering" of the real business than they
+have, or than any other Frenchman had before him.
+
+[Sidenote: His general characteristics.]
+
+Pigault-Lebrun[425] spent nearly half of his long life in the nineteenth
+century, and did not die till Scott was dead in England, and the great
+series of novel-romances had begun, with Hugo and others, in France. But
+he was a man of nearly fifty in 1800, and the character of his work,
+except in one all-important point, or group of points, is thoroughly of
+the eighteenth, while even the excepted characteristics are of a more
+really transitional kind than anything in Chateaubriand and Madame de
+Stael, whom we have postponed, as well as in Constant and Xavier de
+Maistre, whom we have admitted. He has no high reputation in literature,
+and, except from our own special point of view, he does not deserve even
+a demi-reputation. Although he is not deliberately pornographic, he is
+exceedingly coarse, with a great deal of the nastiness which is not even
+naughty, but nastiness pure and simple. There is, in fact, and in more
+ways than one, something in him of an extremely inferior Smollett.
+Comparing him with his elder contemporary, Restif de la Bretonne, he is
+vulgar, which Restif never is. Passing to more purely literary matters,
+it would be difficult, from the side of literature as an art--I do not
+say as a craft--to say anything for him whatever. His style[426] is, I
+should suppose (for I think no foreigner has any business to do more
+than "suppose" in that matter), simply wretched; he has sentences as
+long as Milton's or Clarendon's or Mr. Ruskin's, not merely without the
+grandeur of the first, the beauty of the last, and the weighty sense of
+the second, but lacking any flash of graceful, pithy, or witty phrase;
+character of the model-theatre and cut-out paper kind; a mere
+accumulation of incidents instead of a plot; hardly an attempt at
+dialogue, and, where description is attempted at all, utter
+ineffectiveness or sheer rhyparography.[427]
+
+It is a fair _riposte_ to the last paragraph to ask, "Then why do you
+drag him in here at all?" But the counter-parry is easy. The excepted
+points above supply it. With all his faults--admitting, too, that every
+generation since his time has supplied some, and most much better,
+examples of his kind--the fact remains that he was the first
+considerable representative, in his own country, of that variety of
+professional novelist who can spin yarns, of the sort that his audience
+or public[428] wants, with unwearied industry, in great volume, and of a
+quality which, such as it is, does not vary very much. He is, in short,
+the first notable French novelist-tradesman--the first who gives us
+notice that novel-production is established as a business. There is even
+a little more than this to be said for him. He has really made
+considerable progress, if we compare him with his predecessors and
+contemporaries, in the direction of the novel of ordinary life, as that
+life was in his own day. There are extravagances of course, but they are
+scarcely flagrant. His atmosphere is what the cooks, housemaids,
+footmen, what the grocers and small- or middle-class persons who, I
+suppose, chiefly read him, were, or would have liked to be, accustomed
+to. His scene is not a paradise in either the common or the Greek sense;
+it is a sort of cabbage-garden, with a cabbage-garden's lack of beauty,
+of exquisiteness in any form, with its presence of untidiness, and
+sometimes of evil odour, but with its own usefulness, and with a
+cultivator of the most sedulous. Pigault-Lebrun, for France, may be said
+to be the first author-in-chief of the circulating library. It may not
+be a position of exceeding honour; but it is certainly one which gives
+him a place in the story of the novel, and which justifies not merely
+these general remarks on him, but some analysis (not too abundant) of
+his particular works. As for translating him, a Frenchman might as well
+spend his time in translating the English newspaper _feuilletons_ of
+"family" papers in the earlier and middle nineteenth century. Indeed
+that _Minnigrey_, which I remember reading as a boy, and which long
+afterwards my friend, the late Mr. Henley, used to extol as one of the
+masterpieces of literature, is worth all Pigault put together and a
+great deal more.
+
+[Sidenote: _L'Enfant du Carnaval and Les Barons de Felsheim._]
+
+The worst of it is, that to be amused by him--to be, except as a
+student, even interested in a large part of his work--you must be almost
+as ill-bred in literature as he himself is. He is like a person who has
+had before him no models for imitation or avoidance in behaviour: and
+this is where his successor, Paul de Kock, by the mere fact of being his
+successor, had a great advantage over him. But to the student he _is_
+interesting, and the interest has nothing factitious in it, and nothing
+to be ashamed of. There is something almost pathetic in his struggles to
+master his art: and his frequent remonstrances with critics and readers
+appear to show a genuine consciousness of his state, which is not always
+the case with such things.
+
+The book which stands first in his Works, _L'Enfant du Carnaval_, starts
+with an ultra-Smollettian[429] passage of coarseness, and relapses now
+and then. The body of it--occupied with the history of a base-born
+child, who tumbles into the good graces of a Milord and his little
+daughter, is named by them "Happy," and becomes first the girl's lover
+and then her husband--is a heap of extravagances, which, nevertheless,
+bring the picaresque pattern, from which they are in part evidently
+traced, to a point, not of course anywhere approaching in genius _Don
+Quixote_ or _Gil Blas_, but somehow or other a good deal nearer general
+modern life. _Les Barons de Felsheim_, which succeeds it, seems to have
+taken its origin from a suggestion of the opening of _Candide_, and
+continues with a still wilder series of adventures, satirising German
+ways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Very
+commonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, with
+frequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffably
+dreary persons who knock each others' hats off on the music-hall stage.
+There is even something dreamlike about him, though of a very low order
+of dream; he has at any rate the dream-habit of constantly attempting
+something and finding that he cannot bring it off.
+
+At the close of one of his most extravagant, most indecent, and
+stupidest novels, _La Folie Espagnole_--a supposed tale of chivalry,
+which of course shows utter ignorance of time, place, and circumstance,
+and is, in fact, only a sort of travestied _Gil Blas_, with a rank
+infusion of further vulgarised Voltairianism[430]--the author has a
+rather curious note to the reader, whom he imagines (with considerable
+probability) to be throwing the book away with a suggested cry of
+"Quelles miseres! quel fatras!" He had, he says, previously offered
+_Angelique et Jeanneton_, a little work of a very different kind, and
+the public would neither buy nor read it. His publisher complained, and
+he must try to please. As for _La Folie_, everybody, including his cook,
+can understand _this_. One remembers similar expostulations from more
+respectable authors; but it is quite certain that Pigault-Lebrun--a
+Lebrun so different from his contemporary "Pindare" of that
+name--thoroughly meant what he said. He was drawing a bow, always at a
+venture, with no higher aim than to hit his public, and he did hit it
+oftener than he missed. So much the worse, perhaps, both for him and for
+his public; but the fact is a fact, and it is in the observation and
+correlation of facts that history consists.
+
+[Sidenote: _Angelique et Jeanneton._]
+
+_Angelique et Jeanneton_ itself, as might be expected from the above
+reference, is, among its author's works, something like _Le Reve_ among
+Zola's; it is his endeavour to be strictly proper. But, as it is also
+one of his most Sternian exercises, the propriety is chequered. It
+begins in sufficiently startling fashion; a single gentleman of easy
+fortune and amiable disposition, putting his latchkey in the door of his
+chambers one night, is touched and accosted by an interesting young
+person with an "argentine" voice. This may look _louche_; but the
+silvery accents appeal only for relief of needs, which, as it shortly
+appears, are those most properly to be supplied by a maternity hospital.
+It is to be understood that the suppliant is an entire stranger to the
+hero. He behaves in the most amiable and, indeed, noble fashion, instals
+her in his rooms, turns himself and his servant out to the nearest
+hotel, fetches the proper ministress, and, not content with this Good
+Samaritanism, effects a legitimate union between Jeanneton and her
+lover, half gives and half procures them a comfortable maintenance,
+resists temptation of repayment (_not_ in coin) on more than one
+occasion, and sets out, on foot, to Caudebec, to see about a heritage
+which has come to Jeanneton's husband. On the way he falls in with
+Angelique (a lady this time), falls also in love with her, and marries
+her. The later part of the story, as is rather the way with Pigault,
+becomes more "accidented." There are violent scenes, jealousies, not
+surprising, between the two heroines, etc. But the motto-title of
+Marmontel's _Heureusement_ governs all, and the end is peace, though not
+without some spots in its sun. That the public of 1799 did not like the
+book and did like _La Folie Espagnole_ is not surprising; but the
+bearing of this double attempt on the growth of novel-writing as a
+regular craft is important.
+
+[Sidenote: _Mon Oncle Thomas._]
+
+Perhaps on the whole _Mon Oncle Thomas_, which seems to have been one of
+the most popular, is also one of the most representative, if not the
+best, of Pigault-Lebrun's novels. Its opening, and not its opening only,
+is indeed full of that mere nastiness which we, with Smollett and others
+to our _dis_credit, cannot disclaim for our own parallel period, and
+which was much worse among the French, who have a choice selection of
+epithets for it. But the fortunes of the youthful Thomas--child of a
+prostitute of the lowest class, though a very good mother, who
+afterwards marries a miserly and ruffianly corporal of police--are told
+with a good deal of spirit--one even thinks of _Colonel Jack_--and the
+author shows his curious vulgar common sense, and his knowledge of
+human nature of a certain kind, pretty frequently, at least in the
+earlier part of the book.
+
+[Sidenote: _Jerome._]
+
+_Jerome_ is another of Pigault's favourite studies of boys--distinctly
+blackguard boys as a rule--from their mischievous, or, as the early
+English eighteenth century would have put it, "unlucky" childhood, to
+their most undeserved reward with a good and pretty wife (whom one
+sincerely pities), and more or less of a fortune. There is, however,
+more vigour in _Jerome_ than in most, and, if one has the knack of
+"combing out" the silly and stale Voltairianism, and paying little
+attention to the far from exciting sculduddery, the book may be read. It
+contains, in particular, one of the most finished of its author's
+sketches, of a type which he really did something to introduce into his
+country's literature--that of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic _routier_
+or professional soldier--brave as you like, and--at least at some times
+when neither drunk nor under the influence of the garden god--not
+ungenerous; with a certain simplicity too: but as braggart as he is
+brave; a mere brute beast as regards the other sex; utterly ignorant,
+save of military matters, and in fact a kind of caricature of the older
+type, which the innocent Rymer was so wrath with Shakespeare for
+neglecting in Iago.
+
+[Sidenote: The redeeming points of these.]
+
+It may seem that too much space is being given to a reprobate and often
+dull author; but something has been said already to rebut the complaint,
+and something more may be added now and again. French literature, from
+the death of Chenier to the appearance of Lamartine, has generally been
+held to contain hardly more than two names--those of Chateaubriand and
+Madame de Stael--which can even "seem to be" those of "pillars"; and it
+may appear fantastic and almost insulting to mention one, who in long
+stretches of his work might almost be called a mere muckheap-raker, in
+company with them. Yet, in respect to the progress of his own
+department, it may be doubted whether he is not even more than their
+equal. _Rene_ and _Corinne_ contain great suggestions, but they are
+suggestions rather for literature generally than for the novel proper.
+Pigault used the improperest materials; he lacked not merely taste, but
+that humour which sometimes excuses taste's absence; power of creating
+real character, decency almost always, sense very often.[431] But all
+the same, he made the novel _march_, as it had not marched, save in
+isolated instances of genius, before.
+
+[Sidenote: Others--_Adelaide de Meran_ and _Tableaux de Societe_.]
+
+[Sidenote: _L'Officieux._]
+
+Yet Pigault could hardly have deserved even the very modified praise
+which has been given to him, if he had been constant to the muckheap. He
+could never quite help approaching it now and then; but as time went on
+and the Empire substituted a sort of modified decency for the Feasts of
+Republican Reason and ribaldry, he tried things less uncomely. _Adelaide
+de Meran_ (his longest single book), _Tableaux de Societe_,
+_L'Officieux_, and others, are of this class; and without presenting a
+single masterpiece in their own kind, they all, more or less, give
+evidence of that advance in the kind generally with which their author
+has been credited. _Adelaide_ is very strongly reminiscent of
+Richardson, and more than reminiscent of "Sensibility"; it is written in
+letters--though all by and to the same persons, except a few
+extracts--and there is no individuality of character. Pigault, it has
+been said, never has any, though he has some of type. But by exercising
+the most violent constraint upon himself, he indulges only in one rape
+(though there have been narrow escapes before), in not more than two or
+three questionable incidents, and in practically no "improper"
+details--conduct almost deserving the description of magnanimity and
+self-denial. Moreover, the thing really is a modern novel, though a bad
+and rickety one; the indefinable _naturaleza_ is present in it after a
+strange fashion. There is less perhaps in the very inappropriately named
+_Tableaux de Societe_--the autobiography of a certain Fanchette de
+Francheville, who, somewhat originally for a French heroine, starts by
+being in the most frantic state of mutual passion with her husband,
+though this is soon to be succeeded by an infatuation (for some time
+virtuously resisted) on her side for a handsome young naval officer, and
+by several others (not at all virtuously resisted) for divers ladies on
+the husband's. With his usual unskilfulness in managing character,
+Pigault makes very little of the opportunities given by his heroine's
+almost unconscious transference of her affections to Sainte-Luce; while
+he turns the uxorious husband, not out of jealousy merely, into a
+faithless one, and something like a general ruffian, after a very clumsy
+and "unconvincing" fashion. As for his throwing in, at the end, another
+fatal passion on part of their daughter for her mother's lover, it is,
+though managed with what is for the author, perfect cleanliness,
+entirely robbed of its always doubtful effect by the actual marriage of
+Fanchette and her sailor, and that immediately after the poor girl's
+death. If he had had the pluck to make this break off the whole thing,
+the book might have been a striking novel, as it is actually an attempt
+at one; but Pigault, like his friends of the gallery, was almost
+inviolably constant to happy endings.[432] _L'Officieux_, if he had only
+had a little humour, might have been as good comically as the Tableaux
+might have been tragically; for it is the history, sometimes not
+ill-sketched as far as action goes, of a _parvenu_ rich, but brave and
+extremely well-intentioned marquis, who is perpetually getting into
+fearful scrapes from his incorrigible habit of meddling with other
+people's affairs to do them good. The situations--as where the marquis,
+having, through an extravagance of officiousness, got himself put under
+arrest by his commanding officer, and at the same time insulted by a
+comrade, insists on fighting the necessary duel in his own drawing-room,
+and thereby reconciling duty and honour, to the great terror of a lady
+with whom he has been having a tender interview in the adjoining
+apartment--are sometimes good farce, and almost good comedy; but
+Pigault, like Shadwell, has neither the pen nor the wits to make the
+most of them.
+
+_La Famille Luceval_--something of an expanded and considerably
+Pigaultified story _a la_ Marmontel--is duller than any of these, and
+the opening is marred by an exaggerated study of a classical mania on
+the part of the hero; but still the novel quality is not quite absent
+from it.
+
+[Sidenote: Further examples.]
+
+Of the rest, _M. Botte_, which seems to have been a favourite, is a
+rather conventional extravaganza with a rich, testy, but occasionally
+generous uncle; a nephew who falls in love with the charming but
+penniless daughter of an _emigre_; a noble rustic, who manages to keep
+some of his exiled landlord's property together, etc. _M. de Roberval_,
+though in its original issue not so long as _Adelaide de Meran_, becomes
+longer by a _suite_ of another full volume, and is a rather tedious
+chronicle of ups and downs. There may be silence about the remainder.
+
+[Sidenote: Last words on him.]
+
+The stock and, as it may be called, "semi-official" ticket for
+Pigault-Lebrun in such French literary history as takes notice of him,
+appears to be _verve_: and the recognised dictionary-sense of _verve_ is
+"heat of imagination, which animates the artist in his composition." In
+the higher sense in which the word imagination is used with us, it could
+never be applied here; but he certainly has a good deal of "go," which
+is perhaps not wholly improper as a colloquial Anglicising of the label.
+These semi-official descriptions, which have always pleased the Latin
+races, are of more authority in France than in England, though as long
+as we go on calling Chaucer "the father of English poetry" and Wyclif
+"the father of English prose" we need not boast ourselves too much. But
+Pigault has this "go"--never perhaps for a whole book, but sometimes for
+passages of considerable length, which possess "carrying" power. It
+undoubtedly gave him his original popularity, and we need not despise it
+now, inasmuch as it makes less tedious the task of ascertaining and
+justifying his true place in the further "domestication"--if only in
+domesticities too often mean and grimy--of the French novel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The French novel in 1800.]
+
+There are more reasons than the convenience of furnishing a separately
+published first volume with an interim conclusion, for making, at the
+close of this, a few remarks on the general state of the French novel at
+the end of the eighteenth century. No thoroughly similar point is
+reached in the literary history of France, or of any country known to
+me, in regard to a particular department of literature. In England--the
+only place, which can, in this same department, be even considered in
+comparison, although at this very time two novelists, vastly superior to
+any of whom France has to boast, were just writing, or just about to
+write, and were a little later to revolutionise the novel itself--the
+general state and history of the kind had, for nearly two generations,
+reached a stage far beyond anything that France could claim. She had
+made earlier "running"; on the whole period of some seven hundred years
+she had always, till very recently, been in front. But in the novel, as
+distinguished from the romance, she had absolutely nothing to show like
+our great quartette of the mid-eighteenth century, and hardly anything
+to match the later developments of Miss Burney and others in domestic,
+of Mrs. Radcliffe and others still in revived romantic fiction. Very
+great Frenchmen or French writers had written novels; but, with the
+exceptions of Lesage in _Gil Blas_, Prevost in that everlastingly
+wonderful "single-speech" of his, and Rousseau in _La Nouvelle Heloise_,
+none had written a great novel. No single writer of any greatness had
+been a novelist pure and simple. No species[433] of fiction, except the
+short tale, in which, through varying forms, France held an age-long
+mastery, had been thoroughly developed in her literature.
+
+The main point, where England went right and France went wrong--to be
+only in the most equivocal way corrected by such a writer as
+Pigault-Lebrun--was the recognition of the connection--the intimate and
+all but necessary connection--of the completed novel with ordinary life.
+Look over the long history of fiction which we have surveyed in the last
+three or four or five chapters. There is much and sometimes great
+literary talent; sometimes, again, even genius; there are episodes of
+reality; there are most artful adjustments of type and convention and
+the like, of fashion in morals (or immorals) and sentiments. But a real
+objective novel of ordinary life, such as _Tom Jones_, or even _Humphry
+Clinker_, nay, such inferior approaches to it as exist elsewhere in
+English, you will not find. Of the Scudery romances we need not speak
+again; for all their key-references to persons, and their abstention
+from the supernatural, etc., they are, as wholes, hardly more real than
+_Amadis_ and its family themselves. Scarron has some and Furetiere more
+objectivity that may be argued for, but the Spanish picaresque has
+become a convention, and they, especially Scarron, are aiming more at
+the pattern than at the life-model. Madame de la Fayette has much, and
+some of her followers a little, real passion; but her manners,
+descriptions, etc., are all conventional, though of another kind. The
+fairy tales are of course not "real." Marivaux is aiming directly at
+Sensibility, preciousness, "psychology," if you like, but not at holding
+up the glass to any ordinary nature as such.[434] And though Crebillon
+might plead that his convention was actually the convention of hundreds
+and almost thousands of accomplished ladies and gentlemen, no one can
+deny that it was almost as much a convention as the historical or
+legendary acting of the _Comedie Humaine_ by living persons a hundred
+years later at Venice.
+
+No writer perhaps illustrates what is being said better than Prevost. No
+one of his books, voluminous as they are, has the very slightest
+reality, except _Manon Lescaut_; and that, like _La Princesse de
+Cleves_, though with much more intensity and fortunately with no alloy
+of convention whatever, is simply a study of passion, not of life at
+large at all. With the greater men the case alters to some extent in
+proportion to their greatness, but, again with one exception, not to
+such an extent as to affect the general rule. Voltaire avowedly never
+attempts ordinary representation of ordinary life--save as the merest
+by-work, it is all "purpose," satire, fancy. Rousseau may not, in one
+sense, go beyond that life in _Julie_, but in touching it he is almost
+as limited and exclusive as Prevost in his masterpiece. Diderot has to
+get hold of the abnormal, if not the unreal, before he can give you
+something like a true novel. Marmontel is half-fanciful, and though he
+does touch reality, subordinates it constantly to half-allegorical and
+wholly moral purpose. All the minor "Sensibility" folk follow their
+leaders, and so do all the minor _conteurs_.
+
+The people (believed to be a numerous folk) who are uncomfortable with a
+fact unless some explanation of it is given, may be humoured here. The
+failure of a very literary nation--applying the most disciplined
+literary language in Europe to a department, in the earlier stages of
+which they had led Europe itself--to get out of the trammels which we
+had easily discarded, is almost demonstrably connected with the very
+nature of their own literary character. Until the most recent years, if
+not up to the very present day, few Frenchmen have ever been happy
+without a type, a "kind," a set of type-and kind-rules, a classification
+and specification, as it were, which has to be filled up and worked
+over. Of all this the novel had nothing in ancient times, while in
+modern it had only been wrestling and struggling towards something of
+the sort, and had only in one country discovered, and not quite
+consciously there, that the beauty of the novel lies in having no type,
+no kind, no rules, no limitations, no general precept or motto for the
+craftsman except "Here is the whole of human life before you. Copy it,
+or, better, recreate it--with variation and decoration _ad libitum_--as
+faithfully, but as freely, as you can." Of this great fact even
+Fielding, the creator of the modern novel, was perhaps not wholly aware
+as a matter of theory, though he made no error about it in practice.
+Indeed the "comic prose epic" notion _might_ reduce to rules like those
+of the verse. Both Scott and Miss Austen abstained likewise from
+formalising it. But every really great novel has illustrated it; and
+attempts, such as have been recently made, to contest it and draw up a
+novelists' code, have certainly not yet justified themselves according
+to the Covenant of Works, and have at least not disposed some of us to
+welcome them as a Covenant of Faith. It is because Pigault-Lebrun,
+though a low kind of creature from every point of view, except that of
+mere craftsmanship, did, like his betters, recognise the fact in
+practice, that he has been allowed here a place of greater consideration
+than perhaps has ever fallen to his lot before in literary history.
+
+Still, even putting out of sight the new developments which had shown
+the irrepressible vitality of the French _conte_, the seven hundred
+years had not been wasted. The product of the first half of them
+remained, indeed, at this time sealed up in the "gazophile" of the older
+age, or was popularised only by well-meaning misinterpreters like the
+Comte de Tressan;[435] but the treasure-house was very soon to be broken
+open and utilised. It is open to any one to contend--it is, indeed,
+pretty much the opinion of the present writer--that it was this very
+neglect which had made the progress of the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries themselves so slow and so imperfect in its total results. For
+those who like to look for literary causes outside literature, there may
+be other explanations. But any intelligent reader can do something for
+himself if he has the facts before him. It is these facts that it has
+been and will be our business to give and to summarise here.
+
+They have been given; let us attempt to summarise them in the briefest
+possible way. France possibly did not invent Romance; no man or men
+could do that; it was a sort of deferred heritage which Humankind, like
+the Heir of Lynne, discovered when it was ready to hang itself (speaking
+in terms of literature) during the Dark Ages. But she certainly grew the
+seed for all other countries, and dispersed the growth to the ends of
+the earth. Very much the same was the case with the short tale in the
+"Middle" period. From the fifteenth century to the eighteenth (both
+included) she entered upon a curious kind of wilderness, studded with
+oases of a more curious character still. In one of them Rabelais was
+born, and found Quintessence, and of that finding--more fortunate than
+the result of True Thomas finding the Elf Queen--was born Pantagruelism.
+In another came Lesage, and though his work was scarcely original, it
+was consummate. None of these happy sojourns produced a _Don Quixote_ or
+a _Tom Jones_, but divers smaller things resulted. And again and again,
+as had happened in the Middle Ages themselves, but on a smaller scale,
+what France did found development and improvement in other lands; while
+her own miniature masterpieces, from the best of the _Cent Nouvelles
+Nouvelles_ and the _Heptameron_, through all others that we noticed down
+to _Adolphe_, showed the enormous power which was working half blindly.
+How the strength got eyes, and the eyes found the right objects to fix
+upon, must be left, if fortune favour, for the next volume to tell.[436]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[404] We have seen above how things were "shaping for" it, in the
+Pastoral and Heroic romances. But the shape was not definitely taken in
+them.
+
+[405] In the following pages, and here only in this volume, the author
+has utilised, though with very considerable alterations, some previously
+published work, _A Study of Sensibility_, which appeared originally in
+the _Fortnightly Review_ for September 1882, and was republished in a
+volume (_Essays on French Novelists_, London, 1891) which has been for
+some years out of print. Much of the original essay, dealing with
+Marivaux and others already treated here, has been removed, and the
+whole has been cut down, revised, and adjusted to its new contexts. But
+it seemed unnecessary to waste time in an endeavour to say the same
+thing differently about matters which, though as a whole indispensable,
+are, with perhaps one exception, individually not of the first
+importance.
+
+[406] These words were originally written more than thirty years ago. I
+am not sure that there was not something prophetic in them.
+
+[407] Madame de Fontaines in _La Comtesse de Savoie_ and _Amenophis_
+"follows her leader" in more senses than one--including a sort of
+pseudo-historical setting or insetting which became almost a habit. But
+she is hardly important.
+
+[408] Readers of Thackeray may remember in _The Paris Sketch Book_ ("On
+the French School of Painting," p. 52, Oxford ed.) some remarks on
+Jacquand's picture, "The Death of Adelaide de Comminge," which he
+thought "neither more nor less than beautiful." But from his "it
+appears," in reference to the circumstances, it would seem that he did
+not know the book, save perhaps from a catalogue-extract or summary.
+
+[409] The extreme shortness of all these books may be just worth
+noticing. Reaction from the enormous romances of the preceding century
+may have had something to do with it; and the popularity of the "tale"
+something more. But the _causa verissima_ was probably the impossibility
+of keeping up sentiment at high pressure for any length of time,
+incident, or talk.
+
+[410] _Vide_ on the process Crebillon's _Les Egarements du Coeur et de
+l'Esprit_, as above, pp. 371, 372.
+
+[411] The parallel with "George Eliot" will strike most people.
+
+[412] But for uniformity's sake I should not have translated this, for
+fear of doing it injustice. "Not presume to dictate," in Mr. Jingle's
+constantly useful phrase, but it seems to me one of the finest in French
+prose.
+
+[413] "Craze" has been suggested; but is, I think, hardly an exact
+synonym.
+
+[414] This may seem to contradict, or at any rate to be inconsistent
+with, a passage above (p. 367) on the "flirtations" of Crebillon's
+personages. It is, however, only a more strictly accurate use of the
+word.
+
+[415] Two remarkable and short passages of his, not quoted in the
+special notice of him, may be given--one in English, because of its
+remarkable anticipation of the state of mind of Catherine Morland in
+_Northanger Abbey_; the other in French, as a curious "conclusion of the
+whole matter." They are both from _Marianne_.
+
+"I had resolved not to sleep another night in the house. I cannot indeed
+tell you what was the exact object of my fear, or why it was so lively.
+All that I know is that I constantly beheld before me the countenance of
+my landlord, to which I had hitherto paid no particular attention, and
+then I began to find terrible things in this countenance His wife's
+face, too, seemed to be gloomy and dark; the servants looked like
+scoundrels; all their faces made me in a state of unbearable alarm. I
+saw before me swords, daggers, murders, thefts, insults. My blood grew
+cold at the perils I imagined."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Enfin ces agitations, tant agreables que penibles, s'affaiblirent et se
+passerent. L'ame s'accoutume a tout; sa sensibilite s'use: et je me
+familiarisais avec mes esperances et mes inquietudes."
+
+[416] Since, long ago, I formed the opinion of _Adolphe_ embodied above,
+I have, I think, seen French criticisms which took it rather
+differently--as a personal confession of the "confusions of a wasted
+youth," misled by passion. The reader must judge which is the juster
+view.
+
+[417] By a little allowance for influence, if not for intrinsic value.
+
+[418] On representations from persons of distinction I have given Laclos
+a place in an outhouse (see "Add. and Corr."). But I have made this
+place as much of a penitentiary as I could.
+
+[419] I must apologise by anticipation to the _official_ French critic.
+To him, I know, even if he is no mere minor Malherbe, Restif's style is
+very faulty; but I should not presume to take his point of view, either
+for praise or blame.
+
+[420] There is a separate bibliography by Cubieres-Palmezeaux (1875).
+The useful _Dictionnaire des Litteratures_ of Vapereau contains a list
+of between thirty and forty separate works of Restif's, divided into
+nearer two than one hundred volumes. He followed Prevost in _Nouveaux
+Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_ as he had followed Marivaux in the
+_Paysan Perverti_. He completed this work of his own with _La Paysanne
+Pervertie_; he wrote, besides the _Pornographe_, numerous books of
+social, general, and would-be philosophical reform--_Le Mimographe_,
+dealing with the stage; _Les Gynographes_, with a general plan for
+rearranging the status of women; _L'Andrographe_, a "whole duty of man"
+of a very novel kind; _Le Thesmographe_, etc.,--besides, close upon the
+end and after the autobiography above described, a _Philosophie de M.
+Nicolas_. His more or less directly narrative pieces, _Le Pied de
+Fanchette_, _Lucile_, _Adele_, _La Femme Infidele_, _Ingenue Saxancour_,
+are nearly always more or less tinged with biography of himself and of
+persons closely connected with him, as _La Vie de Mon Pere_, his most
+respectable book, is wholly. It may be added, perhaps, that the notice
+in Vapereau, while not bearing very hard on Restif on the whole, repeats
+the words _cynisme_ and _cynique_ in regard to him. Unless the term is
+in part limited and in part extended, so as to mean nothing but
+"exposure of things generally kept secret without apparent shame," it is
+entirely misplaced. Not merely outside of, but actually in his
+erotomania, Restif was a sentimental philanthropist of the all but most
+genuine kind, tainted indeed with the vanity and self-centredness which
+had reached their acme in Rousseau, but very much more certainly
+sincere, and of a temperament as different as possible from what is
+commonly called cynicism.
+
+[421] There are, however, contradictory statements on this point.
+
+[422] Nicolas [Edme] Restif being apparently his baptismal name, and "de
+la Bretonne" merely one of the self-bestowed agnominal nourishes so
+common in the French eighteenth century. He chose to consider the
+surname evidence of descent from the Emperor Pertinax; and as for his
+Christian name he seems to have varied it freely. Rose Lambelin, one of
+his harem, and a _soubrette_ of some literature, used to address him as
+"Anne-Augustin," Anne being, as no doubt most readers know, a masculine
+as well as a feminine _prenom_ in French.
+
+[423] Some, and perhaps not a few of their objects, may have been
+imaginary "dream-mistresses," created by Morpheus in an impurer mood
+than when he created Lamb's "dream-children." But some, I believe, have
+been identified; and others of the singular "Calendar" affixed to
+_Monsieur Nicolas_ have probably escaped identification.
+
+[Sidenote: His life and the reasons for giving it.]
+
+[424]
+It has not been necessary (and this is fortunate, for even if it had
+been necessary, it would have been scarcely possible) to give
+biographies of the various authors mentioned in this book, except in
+special cases. Something was generally known of most of them in the days
+before education received a large E, with laws and rates to suit: and
+something is still in a way, supposed to be known since. But of the life
+of Pigault, who called himself Lebrun, it may be desirable to say
+something, for more reasons than one. In the first place, this life had
+rather more to do with his work than is always the case; in the second,
+very little will be found about him in most histories of French
+literature; in the third, there will be found assigned to him, in the
+text--not out of crotchet, or contumacy, or desire to innovate, but as a
+result of rather painful reading--a considerably higher place in the
+history of the novel than he has usually occupied. His correct
+name--till, by one of the extremest eccentricities of the French
+_Chats-Fourres_, he was formally unbegot by his Roman father, and the
+unbegetting (plus declaration of death) confirmed by the Parlement of
+Paris--was the imposing one of Charles Antoine Guillaume Pigault de
+L'Epinoy. The paternal Pigault, as may be guessed from his proceedings,
+was himself a lawyer, but of an old Calais family tracing itself to
+Queen Philippa's _protege_, Eustache de Saint-Pierre; and, besides the
+mysterious life-in-death or death-in-life, Charles Antoine Guillaume had
+to suffer from him, while such things existed, several _lettres de
+cachet_. The son certainly did his best to deserve them. Having been
+settled, on leaving school as a clerk in an English commercial house, he
+seduced his master's daughter, ran away with her, and would no doubt
+have married her--for Pigault was never a really bad fellow--if she had
+not been drowned in the vessel which carried the pair back to France. He
+escaped--one hopes not without trying to save her. After another
+scandal--not the second only--of the same kind, he did marry the victim,
+and the marriage was the occasion of the singular exertion of _patria
+potestas_ referred to above. At least two _lettres de cachet_ had
+preceded it, and it is said that only the taking of the Bastille
+prevented the issue, or at least the effect, of a third. Meanwhile, he
+had been a gentleman-trooper in the _gendarmerie d'elite de la petite
+maison du roi_, which, seeing that the _roi_ was Louis Quinze, probably
+did not conduct itself after the fashion of the Thundering Legion, or of
+Cromwell's Ironsides, or even of Captain Steele's "Christian Hero." The
+life of this establishment, though as probably merry, was not long, and
+Pigault became an actor--a very bad but rather popular actor, it was
+said. Like other bad actors he wrote plays, which, if not good (they are
+certainly not very cheerful to read), were far from unsuccessful. But it
+was not till after the Revolution, and till he was near forty, that he
+undertook prose fiction; his first book being _L'Enfant du Carnaval_ in
+1792 (noticed in text). The revolutionary fury, however, of which there
+are so many traces in his writings, caught him; he went back to
+soldiering and fought at Valmy. He did not stay long in the army, but
+went on novel-writing, his success having the rather unexpected, and
+certainly very unusual, effect of reconciling his father. Indeed, this
+arbitrary parent wished not only to recall him to life, which was
+perhaps superfluous, but to "make an eldest son of him." This, Pigault,
+who was a loose fish and a vulgar fellow, but, as was said above, not a
+scoundrel, could not suffer; and he shared and shared alike with his
+brothers and sisters. Under the Empire he obtained a place in the
+customs, and held it under succeeding reigns till 1824, dying eleven
+years later at over eighty, and having written novels continuously till
+a short time before his death, and till the very eve of 1830. This odd
+career was crowned by an odd accident, for his daughter's son was Emile
+Augier. I never knew this fact till after the death of my friend, the
+late Mr. H. D. Traill. If I had, I should certainly have asked him to
+write an Imaginary Conversation between grandfather and grandson. Some
+years (1822-1824) before his last novel, a complete edition of novels,
+plays, and very valueless miscellanies had been issued in twenty octavo
+volumes. The reader, like the river Iser in Campbell's great poem, will
+be justified for the most part in "rolling rapidly" through them. But he
+will find his course rather unexpectedly delayed sometimes, and it is
+the fact and the reasons of these delays which must form the subject of
+the text.--There is no doubt that Pigault was very largely read abroad
+as well as at home. We know that Miss Matilda Crawley read him before
+Waterloo. She must have inherited from her father, Sir Walpole, a strong
+stomach: and must have been less affected by the change of times than
+was the case with her contemporary, Scott's old friend, who having
+enjoyed "your bonny Mrs. Behn" in her youth, could not read her in age.
+For our poor maligned Afra (in her prose stories at any rate, and most
+of her verse, if not in her plays) is an anticipated model of Victorian
+prudery and nicety compared with Pigault. I cannot help thinking that
+Marryat knew him too. Chapter and verse may not be forthcoming, and the
+resemblance may be accounted for by common likeness to Smollett: but
+not, to my thinking, quite sufficiently.
+
+[425] He had a younger brother, in a small way also a novelist, and,
+apparently, in the Radcliffian style, who extra-named himself rather in
+the manner of 1830--Pigault-_Maubaillarck_. I have not yet come across
+this junior's work.--For remarks of Hugo himself on Pigault and Restif,
+see note at end of chapter.
+
+[426] At least in his early books; it improves a little later. But see
+note on p. 453.
+
+[427] For a defence of this word, _v. sup._ p. 280, _note_.
+
+[428] It may be objected, "Did not the Scuderys and others do this?" The
+answer is that their public was not, strictly speaking, a "public" at
+all--it was a larger or smaller coterie.
+
+[429] It has been said that Pigault spent some time in England, and he
+shows more knowledge of English things and books than was common with
+Frenchmen before, and for a long time after, his day. Nor does he, even
+during the Great War, exhibit any signs of acute Anglophobia.
+
+[430] Pigault's adoration for Voltaire reaches the ludicrous, though we
+can seldom laugh _with_ him. It led him once to compose one of the very
+dullest books in literature, _Le Citateur_, a string of anti-Christian
+gibes and arguments from his idol and others.
+
+[431] Yet sometimes--when, for instance, one thinks of the
+rottenness-to-the-core of Dean Farrar's _Eric_, or the _spiritus
+vulgaritatis fortissimus_ of Mark Twain's _A Yankee at the Court of King
+Arthur_--one feels a little ashamed of abusing Pigault.
+
+[432] There was, of course, a milder and perhaps more effective
+possibility--to make the young turn to the young, and leave Madame de
+Francheville no solace for her sin. But for this also Pigault would have
+lacked audacity.
+
+[433] For the story "species" of _Gil Blas_ was not new, was of foreign
+origin, and was open to some objection; while the other two books just
+named derived their attraction, in the one case to a very small extent,
+in the other to hardly any at all, from the story itself.
+
+[434] Not that Jacob and Marianne are unnatural--quite the contrary--but
+that their situations are conventionalised.
+
+[435] _Corps d'Extraits de Romans de Chevalerie._ 4 vols. Paris, 1782.
+
+[436] The link between the two suggested at p. 458, _note_, is as
+follows. That Victor Hugo should, as he does in the Preface to _Han
+d'Islande_ and elsewhere, sneer at Pigault, is not very wonderful: for,
+besides the difference between _canaille_ and _caballeria_, the author
+of _M. Botte_ was the most popular novelist of Hugo's youth. But why he
+has, in Part IV. Book VII. of _Les Miserables_ selected Restif as
+"undermining the masses in the most unwholesome way of all" is not
+nearly so clear, especially as he opposes this way to the
+"wholesomeness" of, among others--Diderot!
+
+
+
+
+APPENDICES
+
+
+
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRENCH FICTION
+NOTICED IN THIS VOLUME
+
+
+11TH CENTURY
+
+_Vie de Saint Alexis_ (probably).
+
+_Roland_ and one or two other _Chansons_ (possibly).
+
+
+12TH CENTURY
+
+Most of the older _Chansons_.
+
+_Arthurian Legend_ (in some of its forms).
+
+_Roman de Troie_, _Romans d'Alexandre_ (older forms).
+
+
+13TH CENTURY
+
+Rest of the more genuine _Chansons_.
+
+Rest of ditto Arthuriad and "Matter of Rome."
+
+_Romans d'Aventures_ (many).
+
+Early Fabliaux (probably).
+
+_Roman de la Rose_ and _Roman de Renart_ (older parts).
+
+Prose Stories (_Aucassin et Nicolette_), etc.
+
+
+14TH CENTURY
+
+Rehandlings, and younger examples, of all kinds above mentioned.
+
+
+15TH CENTURY
+
+Ditto, but only latest forms of all but Prose Stories, and many of the
+others rendered into prose.
+
+_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles._ First _edition_, 1480, but written much
+earlier.
+
+_Petit Jehan de Saintre_, about 1459, or earlier.
+
+_Jehan de Paris._ Uncertain, but before 1500.
+
+
+16TH CENTURY
+
+Rabelais. First Book of _Pantagruel_ Second of the whole, 1533;
+_Gargantua_, 1535; rest of _Pantagruel_ at intervals, to the
+(posthumous) Fifth Book in 1564.
+
+Marguerite de Navarre. _Heptameron._ Written before (probably some time
+before) Marguerite's death in 1549. Imperfectly published as _Les Amants
+Fortunes_, etc., in 1558; completely, under its permanent title, next
+year.
+
+Bonaventure Desperiers. _Cymbalum Mundi_, 1537; _Contes et Joyeux
+Devis_, 1558, but written at least fourteen years earlier, as the author
+died in 1544.
+
+Helisenne de Crenne. _Les Angoisses_, etc., 1538.
+
+_Amadis_ Romances. Date of Spanish or Portuguese originals uncertain.
+Herberay published the first part of his French translation of _Amadis_
+itself in 1540.
+
+Many of the small pastoral and adventurous stories noticed at the
+beginning of Chapter VIII. appeared in the last fifteen years of the
+sixteenth century, the remainder in the first quarter of the
+seventeenth. But of the Greek and Spanish compositions, which had so
+great an influence on them and on the subsequent "Heroic" School, the
+work of Heliodorus had been translated as early as 1546, and the _Diana_
+of Montemayor in 1578.
+
+
+17TH CENTURY
+
+Honore d'Urfe. _L'Astree_, 1607-19. (First three parts in Urfe's
+lifetime, fourth and fifth after his death in 1625.)
+
+"Heroic" Romance, 1622-60, as regards its principal examples, the exact
+dates of which are given in a note to p. 176. Madame de Villedieu wrote
+almost up to her death in 1683.
+
+Fairy Tales, etc. The common idea that Perrault not only produced the
+masterpieces but set the fashion of the kind is inexact. Madame
+d'Aulnoy's _Contes des Fees_ appeared in 1682, whereas Perrault's
+_Contes de ma Mere L'Oye_ did not come till fifteen years later, in
+1697. The precise dates of the writing of Hamilton's Tales are not, I
+think, known. They must, for the most part, have been between the
+appearance of Galland's _Arabian Nights_, 1704, and the author's death
+in 1720. As for the _Cabinet_ and its later constituents, see below on
+the eighteenth century.
+
+Sorel, Ch. _Francion_, 1622; _Le Berger Extravagant_, 1627.
+
+Scarron, P. _Le Roman Comique_, 1651.
+
+Cyrano de Bergerac. _Histoire Comique_, etc., 1655.
+
+Furetiere, A. _Le Roman Bourgeois_, 1666.
+
+La Fayette, Madame de. _La Princesse de Cleves_, 1678. Her first book,
+_La Princesse de Montpensier_ (much slighter but well written), had
+appeared eighteen years earlier, and _Zaide_ or _Zayde_ in 1670,
+fathered by Segrais.
+
+Fenelon. _Telemaque_, 1699.
+
+
+18TH CENTURY
+
+_Cabinet des Fees_, containing not only the authors or translators
+mentioned under the head of the preceding century, but a series of later
+writings down to the eve of the Revolution. Gueulette's adaptations and
+imitations ranged from the _Soirees Bretonnes_, published in 1712 during
+Hamilton's lifetime, to the _Thousand and One Hours_, 1733, the other
+collections mentioned in the text coming between. It may be worth
+mentioning that, being an industrious editor as well as tale-teller and
+playwright, he reprinted _Le Petit Jehan de Saintre_ in 1724 and
+Rabelais in 1732. Caylus's tales seem to have been scattered over the
+middle third of the century from about 1730 to his death in 1765.
+Cazotte's _Diable Amoureux_ (not in the _Cabinet_) is of 1772--he had
+written very inferior things of the tale kind full thirty years earlier.
+Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont (who was long an actual governess in England)
+wrote her numerous "books for the young" for the most part between 1757
+(_Le Magazin des Enfants_) and 1774 (_Contes Moraux_).
+
+Lesage. _Le Diable Boiteux_, 1707; _Gil Blas de Santillane_, 1715-35.
+
+Marivaux. _Les Effets Surprenants_, 1713-14; _Marianne_, 1731-36; _Le
+Paysan Parvenu_, 1735.
+
+Prevost. _Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_, 1728-32, followed by _Manon
+Lescaut_, 1733; _Cleveland_, 1732-39; _Le Doyen de Killerine_, 1735;
+_Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne_, 1741.
+
+(It may not be impertinent to draw attention to the fact that Prevost,
+like Defoe--though not quite to the same extent, and in the middle, not
+towards the end of his career--concentrated the novel-part of an
+enormous polygraphic production upon a few years.)
+
+Crebillon _fils_. _Lettres de la Marquise_, 1732; _Tanzai et Neadarne_,
+1734; _Les Egarements_, 1736; _Le Sopha_, 1745; _La Nuit et le Moment_,
+1755; _Le Hasard au Coin du Feu_, 1763; _Ah! Quel Conte!_ 1764.
+
+Voltaire's _Tales_ were distributed over a large part of his long and
+insatiably busy life; but none of his best are very early. _Zadig_ is of
+1747; _Micromegas_ of 1752; _Candide_ of 1759; _L'Ingenu_ and _La
+Princesse de Babylone_ of 1767 and 1768 respectively.
+
+Rousseau. _La Nouvelle Heloise_, 1760; _Emile_, 1762.
+
+Diderot. _Les Bijoux Indiscrets_, 1748. _Jacques le Fataliste_ and _La
+Religieuse_ were posthumously published, but must have been written much
+earlier than their author's death in 1784.
+
+Marmontel. _Contes Moraux_ appeared in the official or semi-official
+_Mercure de France_, with which the author was connected from 1753-60,
+being its manager or editor for the last two of these years. _Belisaire_
+came out in 1767.
+
+Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. _Paul et Virginie_, 1787; _La Chaumiere
+Indienne_, 1790.
+
+"Sensibility" Novels:--
+
+Madame de Tencin. _Le Comte de Comminge_, 1735; _Les Malheurs de
+l'Amour_, 1747.
+
+Madame Riccoboni. _Le Marquis de Cressy_, 1758; _Lettres de Julie
+Catesby_, 1759; _Ernestine_, 1762.
+
+Madame Elie de Beaumont. _Le Marquis de Roselle_, 1764.
+
+Madame de Souza. _Adele de Senanges_, 1794.
+
+Madame de Genlis. _Mlle. de Clermont_, 1802.
+
+Madame de Duras. _Ourika_, 1823; _Edouard_, 1825.
+
+Xavier de Maistre. _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_, 1794; _Le Lepreux de
+la Cite d'Aoste_, 1812; _Les Prisonniers du Caucase, La Jeune
+Siberienne_, 1825.
+
+Benjamin Constant. _Adolphe_, 1815.
+
+Restif de la Bretonne. _Le Pied de Fanchette_, 1769; _Adele_, 1772; _Le
+Paysan Perverti_, 1775-76; _Les Contemporaines_, 1780-85; _Ingenue
+Saxancour_, 1789; _Monsieur Nicolas_, 1794-97.
+
+Pigault-Lebrun. _L'Enfant du Carnaval_, 1792; _Les Barons de Felsheim_,
+1798; _Angelique et Jeanneton_, _Mon Oncle Thomas_, _La Folie
+Espagnole_, 1799; _M. Botte_, 1802; _Jerome_, 1804; _Tableaux de
+Societe_, 1813; _Adelaide de Meran_, 1815; M. de Roberval,
+_L'Officieux_, 1818.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
+
+
+(Although it is probably idle to attempt to satisfy or placate the
+contemporary _helluo_ of bibliography, it may be respectful to other
+readers to observe that this is not intended to deal with the whole
+subject, but only as a companion, or chrestomathic guide, to this book
+itself.)
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_Apollonius of Tyre._ Ed. Thorpe. London, 1834.
+
+_English Novel, The._ By the present writer. London (Dent), 1913.
+
+_French Literature, A Short History of._ By the present writer. Oxford,
+1882, and often reprinted.
+
+_Greek Romances, The._ Most convenient editions of originals--Didot's
+_Erotici Graeci_, Paris, 1856, or Teubner's, ed. Herscher, Leipzig,
+1858. English translations in Bohn's Library. For those who prefer books
+about things to the things themselves, there is a very good English
+monograph by Wolff (Columbia University Series, New York).
+
+_Hymn of St. Eulalia._ Quoted in most histories of French literature,
+_e.g._ that entered above, pp. 4, 5.
+
+_Life of St. Alexis._ Ed. G. Paris and L. Pannier. Paris, 1872-87.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_Alexander Legends_ ("Matter of Rome"). The most important editions of
+romances concerning Alexander are Michelant's of the great poem from
+which, according to the most general theory, the "Alexandrine" or
+twelve-syllabled verse takes its name (Stuttgart, 1846), and M. Paul
+Meyer's _Alexandre le Grand dans la Litterature Francaise au moyen age_
+(2 vols., Paris, 1886), a monograph of the very first order, with
+plentiful reproduction of texts.
+
+_Arthurian Legend, The._ No complete bibliography of this is possible
+here--a note of some fulness will be found in the writer's _Short
+History_ (see above on Chapter I.). The most important books for an
+English reader who wishes to supplement Malory are M. Paulin Paris's
+abstract of the whole, _Les Romans de la Table Ronde_ (5 vols., Paris,
+1869-77), a very charming set of handy volumes, beautifully printed and
+illustrated; and, now at last, Dr. Sommer's stately edition of the
+"Vulgate" texts, completed recently, I believe (Carnegie Institution,
+Washington, U.S.A.).
+
+_Chansons de Gestes._ The first sentence of the last entry applies here
+with greater fulness. The editions of _Roland_ are very numerous; and
+those of other _chansons_, though there are not often two or more of the
+same, run to scores of volumes. The most important books about them are
+M. Leon Gautier's _Les Epopees Francaises_ (4 vols., Paris, 1892) and M.
+Bedier's _Les Legendes Epiques_ (4 vols., Paris, 1908-13).
+
+Sainte-More, B. de. _Roman de Troie._ Ed. Joly. Rouen, 1870. Edited a
+second time in the series of the Societe des Anciens Textes Francais.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The bibliography of the _Romans d'Aventures_ generally is again too
+complicated and voluminous to be attempted here. A fair amount of
+information will be found, as regards the two sides, French and English,
+of the matter, in the writer's _Short Histories_ of the two
+literatures--_French_ as above, _English_ (Macmillan, 9th ed., London,
+1914), and in his _Romance and Allegory_, referred to in the text. Short
+of the texts themselves, but for fuller information than general
+histories contain, Dunlop's well-known book, reprinted in Bohn's Library
+with valuable additions, and Ellis's _Early English Romances_,
+especially the latter, will be found of greatest value.
+
+_Partenopeus de Blois._ 2 vols. Paris, 1834.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_Nouvelles du 13'e et du 14'me Siecle._ Ed. L. Moland et Ch.
+d'Hericault. Bibliotheque Elzevirienne. 2 vols. Paris, 1856.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, Les._ Numerous editions in the cheap
+collections of French classics.
+
+_Fabliaux._ Ed. A. de Montaiglon et G. Raynaud. 6 vols. Paris, 1872-88.
+
+_Jehan de Paris._ Ed. Montaiglon. Paris, 1874.
+
+_Petit Jehan de Saintre._ Ed. Guichard. Paris, 1843.
+
+_Roman de la Rose._ Ed. F. Michel. Paris, 1864.
+
+_Roman de Renart._ The completest (but not a complete) edition of the
+different parts is that of Meon and Chabaille (5 vols., Paris, 1826-35).
+The main or "Ancien" Renart was re-edited by E. Martin (3 vols., Paris
+and Strasbourg, 1882-87).
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Rabelais. Editions of the original very numerous: and of Urquhart's
+famous English translation more than one or two recently. The cheapest
+and handiest of the former, _without_ commentary, is that in the
+Collection Garnier. Of commentaries and books _on_ Rabelais there is no
+end.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_Amadis_ Romances. No modern reprints of Herberay and his followers.
+Southey's English versions of _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ are not difficult
+to obtain.
+
+Desperiers, B. _Contes et Joyeuse Devis_, etc. Ed. Lacour. 2 vols.
+Paris, 1866.
+
+Marguerite de Navarre, The _Heptameron_. Editions again numerous,
+including cheap ones in the collections.
+
+_Moyen de Parvenir, Le._ Ed. Jacob. Paris, 1860. (For Helisenne de
+Crenne see text, and Reynier--_v. inf._ on next chapter.)
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The general histories and bibliographies of M. Reynier and Herr Koerting,
+as well as the monographs of MM. Chatenay, Magne, and Reure, will be
+found registered in the notes to text, and references to them in the
+index. The original editions are also given in text or note. Modern
+reprints--except of the fairy stories and one or two others--are almost
+entirely wanting. For the Greek Romances see above under Chapter I. The
+_Astree_, after its first issues, appeared as a whole in 1637 and 1647,
+the latter being the edition referred to in "Add. and Corr." But the
+later eighteenth-century (1733) version of the Abbe Souchay is said to
+be "doctored." I have not thought it worth while to look up either this
+or the earlier abridgment (_La Nouvelle Astree_ of 1713), though this
+latter is not ill spoken of. For the _Cabinet des Fees_ (41 vols.,
+Geneva, 1785-89) see text.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Sorel. _Francion_ is in the Collection Garnier, _Le Berger Extravagant_
+and _Polyandre_ only in the originals.
+
+Scarron. _Le Roman Comique._ The 1752 edition (3 vols.) is useful, but
+there are reprints.
+
+Furetiere. _Le Roman Bourgeois._ Collection Jannet et Picard, 1854.
+
+Cyrano de Bergerac. _Voyages_, etc. Ed. Jacob. Paris, 1858.
+
+Mme. de la Fayette. _La Princesse de Cleves._ Paris, 1881.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+For those who wish to study Lesage and Prevost at large, the combined
+Dutch _Oeuvres Choisies_, in 54 vols. (Amsterdam, 1783), will offer a
+convenient, if not exactly handy, opportunity. Separate editions of the
+_Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_ are very, and of _Manon Lescaut_ fairly,
+numerous.
+
+Marivaux. _Oeuvres._ 12 vols. Paris, 1781.
+
+Crebillon _fils_. _Oeuvres Completes._ 7 vols. Londres, 1772.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+The work, in novel, of Voltaire and Rousseau is in all the cheap
+collections of Didot, Garnier, etc. Of that of Diderot there have
+recently been several partial collections, but I think no complete one.
+It is better to take the _Oeuvres_, by Assezat and Tourneux, mentioned
+in the text (20 vols., Paris, 1875-77).
+
+Marmontel's _Oeuvres_ appeared in 19 vols. (Paris, 1818), and I have
+used, and once possessed, a more modern and compacter issue in 7 vols.
+(Paris, 1820?). The _Contes Moraux_ appeared together in 1770 and later.
+
+Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. _Oeuvres_. 12 vols. 1834. Very numerous
+separate editions (or sometimes with _La Chaumiere Indienne_) of _Paul
+et Virginie_.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Minor "Sensibility" novels. Most of them in a handsome 7-vol. edition
+(Paris, _n.d._) in Garnier's _Bibliotheque Amusante_. This also includes
+Marivaux.
+
+X. de Maistre. Editions numerous.
+
+B. Constant. _Adolphe._ Paris, 1842; and with Introduction by M. Anatole
+France (1889); besides M. de Lescure's noticed in text.
+
+Restif de la Bretonne. Selection of _Les Contemporaines_, by Assezat. 3
+vols. Paris, 1875-76.
+
+Pigault-Lebrun. Edition mentioned in text.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+(The dates given in this Index are confined to _persons_ directly dealt
+with in this volume. Those of the more important _books_ noticed will be
+found in the Chronological Conspectus. In other respects I have made it
+as full as possible, in an _Index nominum_, as regards both authors and
+titles.)
+
+_Abbot, The_, xiii
+
+_Abdalla, Les Aventures d'_, 258, 259
+
+_Acajou et Zirphile_, 267
+
+Achilles Tatius, 37, 157 _note_, 220 _note_, 350
+
+Addison, 107, 232, 339
+
+_Adelaide de Meran_, 465
+
+_Adolphe_, 372 _note_, 429, 437, 438, 442-451, 472
+
+AElfric, 73 _note_
+
+_Aeneid, The_, 2 _note_
+
+_Ah! Quel Conte!_ 371 _sq._
+
+Aime-Martin, 425
+
+Aisse, Mlle., 355 _note_
+
+_Alcandre Frustre_, 243
+
+_Alcibiade ou le moi_, 415, 416
+
+_Alcidamie_, 242
+
+_Alcidiane_, 236
+
+"Alcidonis of Megara," 419, 424 _note_
+
+_Alciphron_, 389
+
+Alexander, Romances of, 19, 20, 473
+
+_Alexis, Vie de Saint_, 6-8, 475, 479
+
+_Aliscans_, 14
+
+Allen, Mr. George, 412 _note_
+
+_Almahide_, 176 _note_, 225, 226
+
+_Amadas et Idoine_, 71
+
+_Amadis of Gaul_, 42 _note_, 57, 134, 145-150, 171, 175, 197, 201,
+220, 221, 236, 287 _note_, 353, 409, 476, 481
+
+_Amenophis_, 430 _note_
+
+_Amis et Amiles_, 13, 14, 77, 146
+
+Amory (author of _John Buncle_), 277, 454
+
+_Amours Galantes_, 243-245
+
+Amyot, Jacques (1513-1593), 133, 144
+
+Anacharsis, 212 _sq._
+
+_Anastasius_, 290
+
+_Anatomy_ (Burton's), 206 _note_
+
+_Angelique et Jeanneton_, 462, 463
+
+_Angoisses, Les._ _See_ H. de Crenne
+
+_Annette et Lubin_, 415
+
+_Apollonius of Tyre_, 3, 479
+
+_Apollonius Rhodius_, 1 _note_, 2 _note_, 37, 274
+
+_Apologie pour Herodote_, 143
+
+_Apology_, the Platonic, 388
+
+Apuleius, 2, 251 _note_
+
+_Arabian Nights, The_, 246 _sq._, 258 _sq._, 305, 313 _sq._, 318, 371 _sq._, 476
+
+_Arcadia_, the, 103, 165, 166, 174
+
+_Argenis_, 152 _note_
+
+Aristaenetus, _Letters_ of, 327
+
+Aristides (of Smyrna), 350 _note_
+
+Aristophanes, 136
+
+Aristotle, 331
+
+_Arnalte and Lucenda_, 145 _note_
+
+Arnold, Mr. Matthew, vi, 156, 364, 385
+
+_Arnoult et Clarimonde_, 161, 162
+
+_Artamene._ See _Grand Cyrus, Le_
+
+Arthurian Legend, The, 3, 20-54, 73, 104, 105
+
+_Arthur of Little Britain_, 146, 147
+
+Ascham, 26 _note_, 61
+
+_Asseneth_, 80, 81, 87
+
+Assezat, M., 454
+
+_Astree_, the, xii, xiii, 152-157, 162, 167-175, 197, 212 _note_,
+218 _note_, 220, 226 _note_, 229, 234, 277 _note_, 476, 481
+
+_As You Like It_, 48, 174
+
+Aubignac (F. Hedelin, Abbe d', 1604-1676), 238, 239
+
+_Aucassin et Nicolette_, 24, 59, 61, 74, 79, 87, 475
+
+Augier, E., 458 _note_
+
+Aulnoy (Marie Catherine le Jumel de Barneville, Comtesse d', 1650?-1705), 154,
+246 _sq._, 273, 476
+
+Auneuil, Mme. d', 258
+
+Austen, Miss, 287, 428-434, 471
+
+Avellaneda, 327
+
+_Aventures de Floride, Les_, 162
+
+
+_Babouc_, 383
+
+Bacon, 298
+
+Bailey, Mr. P. J., 384
+
+Balfour, Mr. A. J., 115
+
+Balzac, H. de, 288, 353
+
+Barclay (author of _Argenis_), 152 _note_
+
+_Barons de Felsheim, Les_, 461
+
+_Bassa, L'Illustre_, 223-225, 281
+
+Baudelaire, xiv
+
+Beaconsfield, Lord, 306
+
+Beauchamps, P. F. G. de (1689-1761), 265 _note_, 266
+
+Beauvau, P. de, 81
+
+Beckford, 306
+
+Bedier, M., 13 _note_, 480
+
+Behn, Afra, 242, 458 _note_
+
+_Belier, Le_, 308 _sq._
+
+_Belisaire_, 413
+
+Bellaston, Lady, 343
+
+_Belle et la Bete, La_, 253
+
+Bentley, 194
+
+_Beowulf_, 11
+
+_Berger Extravagant, Le_, 277, 278, 476, 482
+
+Bergerac. _See_ Cyrano de B.
+
+_Bergeries de Juliette, Les_, 157, 159, 160
+
+Berkeley, 389
+
+Berners, Lord, 146
+
+Beroalde de Verville (Francois, 1558-1612), 111, 162, 163
+
+_Berte aux grands Pies_, 15
+
+Besant, Sir W., 121
+
+_Bevis of Hampton_, 71
+
+Beyle, 442
+
+_Bibliotheque Universelle des Romans_, 206 _note_
+
+_Biche au Bois, La_, 254
+
+_Bijoux Indiscrets, Les_, 403, 405, 411
+
+_Black Arrow, The_, 82
+
+Blair, H., 71
+
+_Blancandin et l'Orgueilleuse d'Amours_, 71
+
+_Blonde d'Oxford_, 102 _note_
+
+Boccaccio, 16, 18, 81, 93
+
+Boileau-Despreaux (Nicolas, 1636-1711), 175, 240, 295, 330, 331
+
+Bonhomme, M. H., 257 _note_
+
+Borrow, 456
+
+Bors, Sir, 53
+
+Bossuet, 40 _note_
+
+Boswell, 386 _note_, 422 _note_
+
+_Botte, M._, 467, 472 _note_
+
+Bouchet, G. (1526-1606), 143
+
+Bouchet, J. (1475-1550), 143 _note_
+
+_Bovary, Madame_, 446
+
+Brantome (Pierre de Bourdeilles, 1540?-1614), 135, 136, 140
+
+Brown, Tom, 281
+
+Browne, W., 236
+
+Browning, R., 52, 74, 234, 404 _note_
+
+Brunetiere, M., 161 _note_, 274 _note_, 410 _note_
+
+_Buncle, John_, 277
+
+Burney, Miss, 347, 468
+
+Burton (of the _Anatomy_), 206 _note_
+
+Bussy-Rabutin, Roger, Comte de (1618-1693), 243
+
+Butler, Mr. A. J., xi
+
+Butler, S., 139 _note_
+
+Byron, 393
+
+
+_Cabinet de Minerve, Le_, 163
+
+_Cabinet des Fees, Le_, 246-272, 419, 427 _note_, 476, 477, 481
+
+_Cabinet d'un Philosophe, Le_, 339
+
+_Cafe de Surate, Le_, 426
+
+Callisthenes, the pseudo-, 17
+
+Campanella, 298
+
+Camus (de Pontcarre), Jean (1584-1653), 153, 237, 238
+
+_Candide_, 379 _sq._, 461, 477
+
+_Capitaine Fracasse, Le_, 279-280
+
+_Caritee, La_, 176 _note_, 235, 236
+
+Carlyle, 130, 139 _note_, 243, 402 _notes_, 403 and _note_, 414
+
+_Carmente_, 244, 245
+
+"Carte de Tendre," the, 226
+
+_Cassandre_, 176 _note_, 233-234
+
+Catullus, 176 _note_, 220
+
+Caylus, Anne Claude Philippe de Tubieres de Grimoard de Pestels de Levi, Comte
+de (1692-1765), 262-264, 477
+
+Cazotte, Jacques (1720-1792), 270 _note_, 477
+
+_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_, 92-100, 472, 475, 480
+
+_Ce qui plait aux Dames_, 377 _note_
+
+Cervantes, 124, 284 _note_
+
+_Chanson de Geste, The_, 9-16
+
+Chapelain, 178
+
+_Chat Botte, Le_, 254
+
+Chateaubriand, 234 _note_, 430, 459, 464
+
+_Chateau de la Misere, Le_, 280
+
+Chatenet, M. H. E., 243 _note_
+
+Chaucer, 16, 18, 22, 61 _note_, 81, 91, 103, 220, 319, 351 _note_,
+377 _note_, 467
+
+_Chaumiere Indienne, La_, 426
+
+_Cheminees de Madrid, Les_, 328
+
+Chenier, A., 464
+
+_Chevalier a la Charette_, 24-28
+
+_Chevalier au Lyon_, 24, 25
+
+Cholieres, 143
+
+Chrestien de Troyes (12th cent.), 21-29, 37, 106
+
+_Citateur, Le_, 462 _note_
+
+_Citheree_, 176 _note_
+
+Clarendon, 459
+
+_Clelie_, 176 _note_, 226-229
+
+_Cleopatre_, 176 _note_, 230-232
+
+_Cleveland_, 353-357
+
+_Clidamant et Marilinde_, 160, 161
+
+_Cliges_, 24
+
+Coleridge, 31 _note_
+
+Collins, Wilkie, 294 _note_
+
+_Colonel Jack_, 463
+
+Colvin, Sir Sidney, 239 _note_
+
+_Comedie Humaine_, the, 469, 470
+
+_Compere Mathieu, Le_, 412 _note_
+
+_Comte de Comminge, Le_, 431, 451
+
+"Comte de Gabalis," the, 257 _note_
+
+_Comtesse de Savoie, La_, 430 _note_
+
+_Confessions_, Rousseau's, 391 _sq._
+
+Congreve, xiv, 376 _note_
+
+_Conquest of Granada, The_, 225
+
+Conrart, 201
+
+Constant-Rebecque, Henri Benjamin de (1767-1830), 429, 430, 437, 438,
+442-452,482
+
+_Contemporaines, Les_, 454
+
+_Contes et Joyeux Devis_, 141, 142, 476, 481
+
+_Contes Moraux_ (Marmontel's), 414-424
+
+_Conversation du marechal d'Hocquincourt avec le Pere Canaye_, 307 _note_
+
+Corbin, J., 162
+
+_Corinne_, 452, 465
+
+Corneille, 219, 278 _note_, 296, 318 _note_
+
+_Cosi-Sancta_, 387
+
+_Courtebotte, Le Prince_, 262, 263
+
+Courthope, Mr. W. J., xi
+
+Courtils de Sandras, 153
+
+Cousin, V., 177 and _note_
+
+Crawley, Miss Matilda, 458 _note_
+
+Crebillon _fils_, Claude Prosper Jolyot de (1707-1777), xiv, 325, 350
+_note_, 353, 354, 364, 376, 403, 406, 415, 419, 450 _note_, 453,
+459, 469, 477, 482
+
+Crebillon _pere_, Prosper Jolyot de, 365
+
+Crenne, H. de (16th cent.), 150 _note_, 476
+
+_Cressy, Le Marquis de._ See _Histoire du Marquis de Cressy_
+
+_Crispin Rival de son Maitre_, 329
+
+_Crocheteur Borgne, Le_, 387
+
+Croxall, 244
+
+Ctesias, 179
+
+_Cupid and Psyche_, 58, 59
+
+_Cymbalum Mundi_, 140, 141, 476
+
+Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien (1609-1655), 275, 286 _note_, 295-298,
+476, 482
+
+_Cyropaedia_, 187 _note_, 197 _note_
+
+_Cyrus_. See _Grand Cyrus_
+
+
+Dante, xi, xii, 45, 49, 119 _notes_, 150 _note_, 179, 274 _note_
+
+_Daphnis and Chloe_, 155, 159
+
+Davenant, 393
+
+_Decameron_, the, 93
+
+Defoe, 292, 329, 358, 456
+
+Dekker, 275
+
+De Launay, Mlle. _See_ Staal-Delaunay, Mme.
+
+De Quincey, 399, 456
+
+Desperiers, Bonaventure (?-1544?), 137, 140-142, 380, 476, 481
+
+_Deux Amis de Bourbonne, Les_, 403
+
+_Diable Amoureux, Le_, 270, 271 _notes_, 477
+
+_Diable Boiteux, Le_, 326 _sq._, 477
+
+_Diablo Cojuelo, El_, 329
+
+_Diana_ (Montemayor's), 157, 165, 476
+
+Dickens, 15, 245, 262 and _note_, 285, 326, 348 _note_, 364, 394,
+395 _note_
+
+_Dictionnaire Philosophique_ (Voltaire's), 411 _note_
+
+Diderot, Denis (1713-1784), 225, 375, 386 _note_, 391 _note_,
+400-411, 425, 426, 453, 470, 472 _note_, 482
+
+Disraeli, Mr., 37
+
+Dobson, Mr. A., 246, 317 _note_, 417
+
+Donne, 150 _note_, 206 _note_, 220
+
+_Don Quixote_, 57, 277, 333, 461, 472
+
+_Don Silvia de Rosalva_, 269
+
+_Doon de Mayence_, 15
+
+_Doyen de Killerine, Le_, 353-357
+
+Dryden, 44 _note_, 200, 203, 215, 226, 230, 377 _note_, 393
+
+Duclos, Charles Pinot (1704-1772), 267
+
+Du Croset (_c._ 1600), 162
+
+Du Fail, Noel (16th cent.), 143
+
+Dulaurens, H. J. (1719-1797), 412 _note_
+
+Dumas, 98, 181, 245, 279, 286
+
+Dunlop, 165
+
+Du Perier (_c._ 1600), 161
+
+Duras, Mme. de (Claire de Kersaint, 1778-1844), 430, 449, 450
+
+Du Souhait (_c._ 1600), 160 _note_
+
+
+_Earthly Paradise, The_, 14
+
+Edgeworth, Miss, 237, 386, 412
+
+_Edouard_, 449
+
+_Effets de la Sympathie, Les_, 338, 340
+
+_Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit, Les_, 371 _sq._, 443 _note_
+
+Elie de Beaumont, Mme. (Marie Louise Morin Dumesnil, ?-1783), 436
+
+Ellis, G., 57, 480
+
+Elton, Prof., ix _note_
+
+_Emile_, 392, 393, 478
+
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, vii
+
+_Encyclopedie, The_, 411
+
+_Endimion_, Gombauld's, 229
+
+_Endymion_, Keats's, 239
+
+"_Engouement_," 449, 450
+
+_Epistle to the Pisos_, 219
+
+_Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_, 116, 124
+
+_Erec et Enide_, 24, 25
+
+_Eric_ (Dean Farrar's), 465 _note_
+
+_Ernestine_, 435
+
+Escuteaux, Sieur des (_c._ 1600), 157 _note_, 160, 161
+
+Esmond, Beatrix, 49
+
+_Essai sur les Romans_ (Marmontel's), 413
+
+_Essay on Criticism_ (Pope's), 327
+
+_Estevanille Gonzales_, 328
+
+_Etudes de la Nature_, 424 _note_
+
+Eulalia, Legend of St., 4, 5, 479
+
+_Euphues_, 103, 116
+
+Eustathius (Macrembolites or -ta, sometimes called Eu_m_athius, 12th
+cent.), 18, 350
+
+_Evelina_, 435
+
+_Evenemens Singuliers_, 237, 238
+
+_Expedition Nocturne_, 437 _sq._
+
+
+_Fabliaux_, The, 91, 92
+
+_Facardins, Les Quatre_, 262, 308, 313, 316-320
+
+_Famille Luceval, La_, 467
+
+_Faramond_, 176 _note_, 234, 235
+
+Farrar, Dean, 465 _note_
+
+_Fausses Confidences, Les_, 339
+
+Fenelon, Francois de Salignac de la Mothe, (1651-1715), 153, 237, 260,
+323, 324, 477
+
+Ferrier, Miss, 429
+
+_Festus_, 384
+
+Fielding, 285, 326, 349, 375, 451, 471
+
+_Finette_, 251, 252
+
+FitzGerald, E., 118, 176 _note_
+
+Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Prof., ix _note_
+
+_Fleur d'Epine_, 308 _sq._
+
+_Floire et Blanchefleur_, 3, 59, 71
+
+Folengo, 124
+
+_Folie Espagnole, La_, 462, 463
+
+Fontaines, Mme. de (Marie Louise Charlotte de Pelard de Givry, ?-1730),
+430 _note_
+
+Fontenelle, 350 _note_, 384
+
+Forsyth, Dr., 455
+
+_Fortnightly Review_, vii, 306 _note_, 428 _note_
+
+_Fortunes of Nigel, The_, 361
+
+_Foulques Fitzwarin_, 81-87
+
+_Four Flasks, The_, 419
+
+France, M. A., 328
+
+_Francion_, 275-277, 476
+
+Froissart, 135
+
+_Fuerres de Gadres_, xi, 20
+
+Fuller, 320
+
+_Funestine_, 265, 266
+
+Furetiere, Antoine (1620-1688), 154, 275, 277, 286-295, 469, 482
+
+
+Galland, Antoine (1646-1715), 246 _sq._, 476
+
+_Gargantua_ (and _Pantagruel_), Chap. VI., _passim_
+
+Gautier, M. Leon, 279, 280, 286, 296, 480
+
+_Gawain and the Green Knight_, 56
+
+Genin, F., 402 and _note_
+
+Genlis, Mme. de (Stephanie Felicite du Crest de St. Aubin, 1746-1830),
+436
+
+Geoffrey of Monmouth, 17
+
+George Eliot, 445 _note_
+
+_Gesta Romanorum_, 89
+
+Gilbert, Sir W., 172 _note_, 181, 329, 393
+
+_Gil Blas_, 325 _sq._, 374, 461, 462, 468, 457
+
+Gladstone, Mr., 176 _note_
+
+Godfrey de Lagny (12th cent.), 24 _note_, 29
+
+Goethe, 456
+
+Gombauld, J. Ogier de (1570-1666), 229, 239-241
+
+Gomberville, Marin le Roy de (1600-1674), 176 _note_, 177 _note_,
+229, 235-237
+
+Gomersal, 399 _note_
+
+Gongora, 159 _note_
+
+_Gracieuse et Percinet_, 250, 251
+
+_Grand Cyrus, The_, 154 _note_, 170, 176-223, 280, 281, 284, 318
+
+Grantley, Archdeacon, xii, 121
+
+Graves, 277, 333
+
+Gray, 276, 365, 375
+
+_Grecque moderne, Histoire d'une_, 353-358
+
+Greek Romances. _See_ Romances, Greek
+
+Greg, Mr., 155 _note_
+
+Grimm, F. M., 408 _note_, 410
+
+_Grotesques, Les_, 296
+
+Gueulette, Thomas Simon (1683-1766), 258-266, 379, 477
+
+Guevara, 329, 372
+
+Guido de Columnis, or delle Colonne, 18, 87
+
+_Guillaume d'Angleterre_, 24
+
+Guinevere, Queen (character of), xi, xii, 25-54 _passim_, 182 _note_
+
+_Gulliver's Travels_, 110, 384
+
+_Guzman d'Alfarache_, 328
+
+
+Hamilton, Anthony (1646?-1720), 153, 154, 248, 264, 266 _note_, 275 and
+_note_, 305-325, 369 _note_, 371 _note_, 378, 379 _note_,
+380, 385, 476
+
+Hamilton, Gerard, 275 _note_
+
+_Hamlet_, 331
+
+Hammond, Miss Chris., 412 _note_
+
+Hardy, Mr. Thomas, 272, 348
+
+_Hasard au Coin du Feu, Le_, 366 _sq._
+
+Hawker, 41 and _note_
+
+Hegel, 139 _note_
+
+Heliodorus, 179, 476
+
+_Heloise, La Nouvelle_, see _Julie_
+
+Henley, Mr. W. E., 259 _note_, 460
+
+Henryson, 18, 156 _note_
+
+_Heptameron, The_, 136-143, 472, 476, 481
+
+Herberay des Essarts, Nicolas (?-1552?), 145 _sq._, 476, 481
+
+Herodotus, 1, 2, 178
+
+_Heureusement_, 419, 463
+
+_Heureux Orphelins, Les_, 373
+
+Heywood, J., 192 _note_
+
+_Histoire de Jenni_, 386
+
+_Histoire du Marquis de Cressy_, 432, 433
+
+_Histoire Veritable_ (B. de Verville's), 163
+
+Holbach, Mme. d', 408, 410 and _note_
+
+Homer, 1, 71, 274, 275
+
+Hope, T., 290
+
+Hudgiadge, Sultan, 260 _note_, 262
+
+Hugo, Victor, xiii, 228, 458, 472 _note_
+
+Hume, 207 _note_
+
+_Humphrey Clinker_, 469
+
+Hunt, Leigh, 91, 413 _note_
+
+Hunt, Rev. W., ix _note_, xiii
+
+_Huon de Bordeaux_, 14
+
+_Hysminias and Hyasmine_, 18, 37, 157 _note_, 220 _note_, 265 _note_
+
+
+_Ibrahim_, 176 _note_, 223-225
+
+Ibsen, 39 _note_, 362
+
+_Idylls of the King_, Chap. II. _passim_
+
+_Iliad, The_, 11, 71
+
+_Illustres Fees, Les_, 257
+
+_Incas, Les_, 413
+
+_Interlude of Love_, 192 _note_
+
+
+_Jacques le Fataliste_, 404-407
+
+James, G. P. R., 233
+
+_Jeannot et Colin_, 386
+
+_Jehan de Paris_, 101-103, 475, 480
+
+Jerningham, E., 423 _note_
+
+_Jerome_, 464
+
+_Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard, Le_, 339
+
+Johnson, Dr., 107, 139 _note_, 155, 178, 218 _note_, 265 and
+_note_, 276, 377, 381, 386 _note_
+
+Joinville, 135
+
+_Jonathan Wild_, xv, 101
+
+_Joseph Andrews_, 375, 415, 426 _note_
+
+Joubert, 412
+
+_Jourdains de Blaivies_, 14
+
+_Journee des Parques, La_, 328
+
+_Julie_, 393-400, 436, 452, 468, 470, 477
+
+
+"Katherine and Gerard," story of, 94-99
+
+Ker, Mr. W. P., ix _note_, xii, 119 _note_
+
+Kinglake, 306 _note_
+
+Kingsley, Charles, xii, 52, 244
+
+Kipling, Mr., 195, 208, 380
+
+_Knight of the Sun, The_, 147
+
+Knollys, 417
+
+Kock, Paul de, 461
+
+Koerting, H., 133 _note_, 165 _sq._, 236 _notes_, 274 _note_
+
+
+La Calprenede, Gauthier de Costes de (1610?-1633), 176 _note_, 197
+_note_, 227, 230-235
+
+Laclos (Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderlos de, 1741-1803), xiv, xv, 453
+
+_La Comtesse de Ponthieu_, 77-80, 86
+
+La Croix, Petro de, 259 _note_
+
+"Lady of the Lake," The, 30 _note_
+
+La Fayette, Mme. de (Marie Madeleine Pioche de Lavergne, 1634-1693), 154,
+273, 298-300, 318, 325, 376, 426, 428, 429, 436, 451, 469, 477, 482
+
+La Fontaine, 92, 175
+
+La Force, Mlle. de (Charlotte Rose de Caumont de, 1654?-1724), 257
+
+La Harpe, 240
+
+_La Jeune Siberienne_, 437 _sq._
+
+Lamartine, 464
+
+Lamb, Charles, 28, 320, 455 _note_
+
+Lamoracke, Sir, 53
+
+La Morliere (Charles Louis Auguste de La Rochette Chevalier de, 1719-1785),
+vi _note_
+
+Lancelot, Sir (character of), xi, xii, 25-54 _passim_, 182 _note_
+
+Landor, 331
+
+Lang, Mr. A., 246
+
+Lannoi, J. de, 162
+
+_La Princesse de Cleves_, 223, 244, 298-300, 470
+
+La Rochefoucauld, 299 and _note_
+
+Larroumet, M. G., 339 _note_
+
+La Salle, Antoine de (1398-1462?), 93, 101, 102, 106
+
+_Latin Stories_ (Wright's), 73 _note_
+
+Lavington, Argemone, 49
+
+Lawrence, G., 51 _note_
+
+_Le Blanc et le Noir_, 385, 386
+
+Le Breton, M., 274 _note_
+
+Le Brun "Pindare," 462
+
+_L'Ecumoire_, 371 _sq._
+
+_Legend of the Rhine, A_, 339 _note_
+
+Leigh Hunt, 413 _note_
+
+_L'Empereur Constant_, 74, 75, 86
+
+_L'Enchanteur Faustus_, 308 _sq._
+
+_L'Enfant du Carnaval_, 457 _note_, 461
+
+_Lepreux de la Cite d'Aoste, Le_, 437 _sq._
+
+Le Prince de Beaumont, Marie, Mme. (1711-1780), 268, 477
+
+_Le Prisonnier de Caucase_, 437 _sq._
+
+_Le Roi Flore et La Belle Jehane_, 75, 76, 86
+
+Lesage, Alain Rene (1668-1747), 259 and _note_, 325-337, 374, 375, 468,
+472, 477, 482
+
+Lescure, M. de, 442
+
+_Le Sot Chevalier_, 91
+
+Lespinasse, Mlle. de, 257, 403 _note_, 441
+
+_Lettres d'Amabed_, 386
+
+_Lettres Atheniennes_, 373, 374
+
+_Lettres de la Marquise de M----_, 372
+
+_Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_, 437
+
+Levis, Pierre Marc Gaston Duc de (1755-1830), 313 _note_
+
+_Levite d'Ephraim, Le_, 399 _note_
+
+Lewis, "Monk," 271 _note_
+
+_L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus_, 385
+
+_Liaisons Dangereuses, Les_, xiv, xv
+
+_L'Ingenu_, 385, 475
+
+Livy, 2
+
+_L'Officieux_, 465-467
+
+Longinus, 328
+
+Longus, 172 _note_
+
+Louis XI., 92
+
+Louvet de Coudray, 453
+
+Lubert, Mlle. de. (1710-1779), 266
+
+Lucian, 2, 141, 142, 298, 328, 380
+
+Lucius of Patrae, 2
+
+Lussan, Mlle. de (1682-1758), xiii, 265
+
+_Lycidas_, 156
+
+Lyndsay, Sir D., 100 _note_
+
+Lyonne, the Abbe de, 328
+
+
+_Macarise_, 238
+
+Macaulay, 265 and _note_, 311 _note_
+
+Macdonald, G., 52
+
+Mackenzie, H., 414
+
+_M. de Beauchesne_, 329
+
+_Mlle. de Clermont_, 436
+
+Magne, M. E., 241
+
+Maintenon, Mme. de, 279, 342 _note_
+
+Mairet, 167
+
+Maistre, Joseph de, 126, 438
+
+Maistre, Xavier de (1763-1852), 405 _note_, 430, 437-441, 452, 459
+
+_Malachi's Cove_, 41 _note_
+
+Malory, 26 _sq._
+
+_Man Born to be King, The_, 74
+
+_Manon Lescaut_, 304, 325, 352-364, 372 _note_, 374, 389, 413
+_note_, 470, 477, 482
+
+_Mansfield Park_, 429
+
+Map or Mapes, Walter, 23 _sq._, 29, 106, 226 _note_
+
+Marguerite de Valois (the eldest) (1491-1549), 126, 136-143, 475, 481
+
+---- (the middle), 299
+
+---- (the youngest) (1553-1615), 158, 159
+
+Maria del Occidente, 416
+
+_Marianne_, 340, 342 _note_, 345-352, 374, 436, 446, 450 _note_, 477
+
+Marini, 159 _note_
+
+"Marion de la Briere and Sir Ernault de Lyls," story of, 84-86
+
+_Mari Sylphe, Le_, 419, 424 _note_
+
+Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de (1688-1763), 318, 325, 326,
+337-352, 365 _note_, 366, 374, 375, 428, 450, 454 _note_, 469, 477, 482
+
+Marlowe, xiv
+
+_Marmion_, 83
+
+Marmontel, Jean Francois (1723-1799), 375, 377, 412-424, 428, 458, 463,
+470, 482
+
+Marot, 137, 138, 155
+
+_Marquis des Arcis, Le_, 403, 406, 407
+
+_Marriage a la Mode_ (Dryden's), 200
+
+_Marriage of Kitty, The_, 191 _note_
+
+Marryat, 336
+
+Martial, 136
+
+"Matter of Britain, France, and Rome," the, 3, Chap. II. _passim_
+
+Maupassant, 2
+
+_Melanges Litteraires_ (Pigault-Lebrun's), 458
+
+_Memnon_, 384
+
+_Memoires de Grammont_, 306
+
+_Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_, 353-358
+
+_Memoirs_ (Marmontel's), 413
+
+_Memoirs of Several Ladies_, 454
+
+_Meraugis de Portlesguez_, 71
+
+Meredith, Mr. George, 2, 37, 49, 91, 350 _note_
+
+Merimee, 438
+
+Meyer, M. Paul, 479
+
+_Micromegas_, 380 _note_, 384, 477
+
+Middleton, 275
+
+_Midsummer Night's Dream, A_, 26
+
+_Milady Catesby_, 435
+
+Mill, J. S., 400
+
+Milton, 30 _note_, 139, 155, 274, 275, 378 _note_, 459
+
+_Minnigrey_, 460
+
+Moliere, F. de (?-1623?), 161
+
+_Moliere, Henriette de_, 242, 243
+
+Moliere, J. B. P. de, 219, 282, 296, 330, 368
+
+_Mon Oncle Thomas_, 463, 464
+
+_Monsieur Nicolas_, 454, 456
+
+Montaigne, 133, 136 _note_, 184
+
+Montemayor, 157, 165, 476
+
+Montreux, N. de (c. 1600), 157-160
+
+Moore, T., 241
+
+Mordred, Sir, 50 _note_
+
+More, M. F., 298
+
+Morgane-la-Fee, 39
+
+Morley of Blackburn, Lord, 402 _note_
+
+Morris, Mr. Mowbray, 265 _note_, 385
+
+Morris, Mr. W., 14, 38 _note_, 52, 74
+
+_Mort d'Agrippine, La_, 296
+
+_Moyen de Parvenir_, 111, 162, 276, 481
+
+_Mr. Midshipman Easy_, 453
+
+_Mr. Sludge the Medium_, 404 _note_
+
+_Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy_, 180 _note_
+
+_Muguet, Le Prince_, 264
+
+Murat, Mme. de (Henriette Julie de Castelnau, 1670-1716), 257 _note_
+
+
+Naigeon, 412
+
+Nennius, 17
+
+Nerval, G. de, 271 _note_
+
+Nerveze, A. de (c. 1600), 157 _note_, 160
+
+_Neveu de Rameau, Le_, 403, 404
+
+_Newton Forster_, 189
+
+Nonnus, 274
+
+_Northanger Abbey_, 450 _note_
+
+_Nouveaux Contes Orientaux_, 260 _note_, 261
+
+_Nouvelle Heloise, La._ See _Julie_.
+
+_Nuit et le Moment, La_, 366 _sq._, 477
+
+
+_Odyssey, The_, 1, 11, 71
+
+_Ogier de Danemarche_, 14
+
+_Old Mortality_, 176
+
+"Ollenix du Mont Sacre." _See_ Montreux, N. de
+
+_Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield, Les_, 386
+
+_Othello_, 364
+
+_Ourika_, 449
+
+Ovid, 2
+
+
+Pajon, xiii, 267
+
+_Palerne, Guillaume de (William of)_, 60
+
+_Palmerin of England_, 146-150
+
+_Palombe_, 237
+
+Palomides, Sir, 53
+
+_Pantagruel_, Chap. VI. _passim_
+
+_Paradoxe sur le Comedien_, 408 _note_
+
+Paris, M. Gaston, 22, 23
+
+Paris, M. Paulin, 22, 23, 38, 480
+
+_Partenopeus (-pex) de Blois_, 3, 57-71, 480
+
+Pasquier, 150 _note_
+
+_Pathelin_, 101
+
+_Paul et Virginie_, 425, 426-452
+
+_Paysan Parvenu, Le_, 340-345, 454
+
+_Paysan Perverti, Le_, 340, 454
+
+_Peau d'Ane_, 252
+
+_Pedant Joue, Le_, 296
+
+_Pensees_ (Joubert's), 412
+
+Pepys, 135, 317 _note_, 456
+
+_Percevale le Gallois_, 24
+
+Perrault, Charles (1628-1703), 154, 246 _sq._, 273
+
+_Petit Jehan de Saintre_, 100-102, 475, 480
+
+Petronius, 2
+
+_Phedre_, 331
+
+_Philocalie_, 162
+
+_Philocaste_, 162
+
+_Philosophe Soi-distant, Le_, 419-423
+
+Pigault-Lebrun, Charles Antoine Guillaume P. de L'Epinoy (1753-1835),
+456-471, 472 _note_, 482
+
+Pigault-_Maubaillarck_, 458 _note_
+
+Planche, G., 353, 360
+
+Plato, 1 _note_, 82, 165, 166, 387, 388
+
+Plutarch, 234
+
+_Polexandre_, 176 _note_, 236, 237
+
+_Polite Conversation_, 110
+
+Pollock, Mr. W. H., 408 _note_
+
+_Polyandre_, 277, 278, 482
+
+_Polyxene_, 161
+
+Pope, 29, 37, 194, 327
+
+_Pornographe, Le_, 454 _note_, 455
+
+_Pour et Contre, Le_, 352
+
+Praed, 187 _note_
+
+_Precieuses Ridicules, Les_, 220
+
+Preschac, Sieur de (early 18th cent.), 258
+
+Prevost (Antoine Francois P. d'Exilles, 1697-1763), 325, 352-364, 366,
+373, 375, 426, 428, 468, 470, 477
+
+Prevost, Pierre, 394
+
+_Pride and Prejudice_, 287
+
+_Prince Cheri, Le_, 253
+
+_Princesse de Babylone, La_, 385, 389, 390, 478
+
+_Princesse de Cleves, La_, 275, 298-305, 308, 364, 413 _note_, 482
+
+Prior, 91
+
+Prudentius, 5
+
+Puisieux, Mme. de, 403
+
+Pyramus, Denis (early 13th cent.), 58
+
+
+_Quatre Facardins, Les._ See _Facardins_
+
+_Quatre Fils d'Aymon, Les_, 15
+
+_Queenhoo Hall_, 291 _note_
+
+_Quentin Durward_, 94 _note_
+
+_Quinze Joies de Mariage, Les_, 101
+
+
+Rabelais, Francois (1495?-1553?), xii, Chap. VI., 134-144 _passim_, 276,
+298, 307, 321, 425, 372, 476, 481
+
+Racine, 219, 272, 288, 296
+
+Radcliffe, Mrs., 468
+
+_Rasselas_, 377, 381
+
+Reade, Charles, 98
+
+_Rebecca and Rowena_, 339 _note_
+
+Recamier, Mme., 442, 443
+
+Regnard, 330 _note_
+
+_Regrets sur ma Vieille Robe de Chambre_, 403
+
+_Reine Fantasque, La_, 265
+
+_Relations_ (A. Hamilton's), 306 _note_
+
+_Religieuse, Histoire d'une_ (Marivaux's), 347
+
+_Religieuse, La_ (Diderot's), 407-411, 452
+
+_Rene_, 452, 464
+
+Restif de la Bretonne (Nicolas Edme, 1734-1806), 340, 452-456, 459, 472
+_note_, 482
+
+Reure, the Abbe, 163 _sq._
+
+_Reve de D'Alembert_, 403 _note_
+
+_Reve, Le_ (Zola's), 462
+
+Reynier, M. G., 145 _note_, 150, 150 _note_, 157-163
+
+_Rhodanthe and Dosicles_, 265 _note_
+
+Rhys, Sir John, 31
+
+Riccoboni, Mme. (Marie Jeanne Laboras de Mezieres, 1714-1792), 340, 430,
+432-436
+
+Richardson, xvi, 26, 208, 225, 349, 356 _note_, 375, 395, 398, 404, 465
+
+_Robene and Makyne_, 156 _note_
+
+_Roberval, M. de_, 467
+
+_Robin Hood_, 82
+
+Rochechouart, Isabel de (c. 1600), 162, 163 and _note_
+
+_Roland, Chanson de_, 12 _sq._, 147
+
+_Roman Bourgeois_, 275, 277, 286-295, 476, 482
+
+_Roman Comique_, 275, 279-287, 476, 482
+
+_Roman de la Rose_, 89, 90, 106, 475, 481
+
+_Roman de Renart_, 90, 106, 475
+
+_Roman de Troie_, 17, 475
+
+_Roman Satirique_, 162
+
+_Roman Sentimental avant l'Astree, Le._ _See_ Reynier
+
+Romances, Greek, 2, 3, 18, 153, 154 _note_, 204, 476, 479
+
+_Romans de la Table Ronde, Les_, 480
+
+_Rosanie_, 263
+
+Ross, Alexander, 139 _note_
+
+Rostand, M., 297
+
+Rousseau, J. J. (1712-1778), 160, 175, 265, 375, 382, 390-400, 401
+_note_, 412, 426, 428, 436, 441, 455, 456, 457, 468, 470, 482
+
+Ruskin, Mr., 405, 412 _note_, 459, 481
+
+Rymer, 464
+
+
+Saint-Evremond, 296 _note_, 317 and _note_, 321, 378
+
+Saint-Foix, M. de, story of, 270 _note_
+
+Saint-Marc-Girardin, 175
+
+Saint-Pierre (Jacques Henri Bernardin de, 1737-1814), 377, 412, 424-427,
+428, 478
+
+Saint-Simon, 222
+
+Sainte-Beuve, 154 _note_, 353 _sq._, 438, 442
+
+_Sainte-Eulalie_, the, 4-6
+
+Sainte-More (or Maure), Benoit de (12th cent.), 17, 87, 480
+
+"Saint's Life," the, 3-8
+
+_Sandford and Merton_, 392
+
+San Pedro, Diego de, 145 _note_
+
+_Sans Merci_, 51 _note_
+
+_Sappho_, 176 _note_, 195 _note_, 215
+
+_Saturday Review_, vii
+
+_Savoisiade_ (Urfe's), 167
+
+Scarron, Paul (1610-1660), 275, 278-287, 292, 325, 469, 476, 482
+
+Schiller, 456
+
+Scott, Sir W., xiii, 15, 93, 94, 98, 135, 176, 181, 186 _note_, 225,
+287, 291 _note_, 326, 471
+
+Scudery, Georges (1601-1667) and Madeleine de (1607-1701) de, 154,
+176-229, 287, 309, 318, 429, 460 _note_, 469
+
+Selis, Nicolas Joseph (1737-1802), 268, 269
+
+Sens, the Archbishop of, 337, 338
+
+_Sense and Sensibility_, 429, 432
+
+"Sensibility," 428-452
+
+_Serpentin Vert_, 251 _note_
+
+_Seven Wise Masters, The_, 89, 93
+
+Sevigne, Mme. de, 153, 173, 175, 230, 298
+
+Shakespeare, 26, 122, 150, 150 _note_, 218, 220, 274, 275, 364, 464
+
+Sharp, Becky, xv
+
+Shelley, 150 _note_, 156, 218, 274, 275
+
+Sidney, Sir Philip, 165
+
+_Silvanire_ (Urfe's), 167
+
+_Sireine_ (Urfe's), 167
+
+_Sir Isumbras_, 4, 24
+
+Smith, Prof. Gregory, ix _note_, 26 _note_
+
+Smith, Sydney, 321
+
+Smollett, 458 _note_, 459, 463
+
+Socrates, 1 _note_
+
+_Soirees Bretonnes, Les_, 266
+
+_Soirees de St. Petersbourg, Les_, 438
+
+_Soliman the Second_, 417-419
+
+Sommer, Dr., 27, 30 _note_, 480
+
+_Songe de Platon_, 387, 388
+
+_Sopha, Le_, 366 _sq._
+
+Sorel, Charles (1597-1674), 273, 275-278, 288 _note_, 476, 482
+
+Southey, xii, 60 _note_, 93, 121, 150, 273, 481
+
+Souza, Mme. de (Adelaide-Marie Emilie-Filleul, 1761-1836), 430, 437
+
+_Spectateur, Le_ (Marivaux's), 339
+
+Spenser, 21, 26 _note_, 31 _note_, 61 _note_, 65, 155, 220
+
+_Spiritual Quixote, The_, 277
+
+_St. Alexis, The_, 6-8, 100
+
+_St. Leger, The_, 6
+
+Staal-Delaunay, Mme. de, 355 _note_
+
+Stael, Mme. de, 430, 442, 443, 459, 464
+
+_Stage Love_ (Mr. Swinburne's), 443, 444
+
+Sterne, 132 _note_, 133, 276, 321, 369, 375, 401, 404, 438-441
+
+Stevenson, J. H., 91
+
+---- R. L., 6, 101 _note_
+
+Straparola, 258 _note_
+
+Strutt, 291 _note_
+
+Suckling, Sir J., 241
+
+_Sultanes de Gujerate, Les_, 261
+
+Swift, 109, 110, 115, 125 _note_, 132, 321, 369, 378, 380, 390
+
+Swinburne, Mr., 33, 52, 254, 443
+
+_Systeme de la Nature_, 411
+
+
+_Tableaux de Societe_ (Pigault-Lebrun's), 465, 466
+
+Tabourot des Accords (1549-1590), 143
+
+_Tales of the Genii_, 258 _note_
+
+Tallemant des Reaux, Gedeon (1619-1692), 136 _note_, 140, 230, 296
+_note_, 330 _note_
+
+Talleyrand, 341 _note_
+
+_Tanzai et Neadarne_, 371 _sq._, 477
+
+_Taureau Blanc, Le_, 387
+
+_Telemaque_, 318, 323, 324, 477
+
+_Tempest, The_, 393
+
+Temple, Henrietta, 37
+
+Tencin, Mme. de (Claudine Alexandrine Guerin, 1681-1749), 430-432
+
+Tennyson, 30 _note_ and _sq._, 54
+
+Thackeray, 15, 125, 150, 153, 218, 241, 257, 278, 279, 314, 321, 349,
+358, 414 _note_, 431 _note_
+
+_Theagenes and Chariclea_, 157 _note_
+
+_Theatre de la Foire_ (Lesage's), 329
+
+Theocritus, 36 _note_
+
+Theodorus Prodromus, 266 _note_
+
+_Thierry and Theodoret_, 234
+
+Thoms, Mr., 103
+
+_Thousand and One Days_, 259
+
+_Thousand and One Nights_, 259
+
+_Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour_, 259
+
+_Three Clerks, The_, 373
+
+Thucydides, 1
+
+Tilley, Mr. A., 138
+
+_Titi, Le Prince_, 265 and _note_
+
+_Tom Jones_, 413 _note_, 469, 472
+
+Toplady, 176 _note_
+
+Tory, G. (1480?-1533), 124
+
+Toyabee, Mr. Paget, xii
+
+Traill, Mr. H. D., 164, 385, 458 _note_
+
+Tressan (Louis Elisabeth de Lavergne, Comte de, 1705-1783), 471
+
+Trimmer, Mrs., 455
+
+_Troilus_ (B. de Sainte-More's). See _Roman de Troie_
+
+_Troilus_ (1st cent. prose), 81, 87
+
+Trollope, A., 41 _note_, 373
+
+_Turcaret_, 329, 330
+
+Twain, Mark, 465 _note_
+
+
+Urfe, Honore d' (1568-1625), 152-154, 157, 162-175, 179, 206 _note_, 476
+
+Urquhart, Sir T., 114
+
+
+_Valise Trouvee, La_, 328
+
+_Vathek_, 262, 306 _note_
+
+_Vicar of Wakefield, The_, 353
+
+Vida, 232
+
+_Vie de Mon Pere, La_, 454
+
+Villedieu, Mme. de (Marie Catherine Hortense des Jardins, 1631-1683),
+241-245, 472
+
+Villehardouin, 135
+
+Villeneuve, Mme. de, 265
+
+Villon, F., 128, 129
+
+_Vingt Ans Apres_, 114, 279
+
+Virgil, 2 _note_, 155
+
+Voisenon, Claude Henri de Fusee de (1708-1775), vi _note_
+
+Voltaire (Francis Marie Arouet de, 1694-1778), 153, 307, 321, 369, 375,
+377-390, 391 _note_, 393, 400, 401, 412, 414, 426, 441, 458, 462 _note_,
+470, 477, 482
+
+_Volupte, La_ (A. Hamilton's), 322 _note_
+
+_Voyage a Constantinoble_, 13
+
+_Voyage autour de ma Chambre_, 438 _sq._
+
+_Voyages a la Lune et au Soleil_, 275, 295-298, 482
+
+_Voyages de Scarmentado, Les_, 384
+
+
+Wall, Professor, 331
+
+Walpole, H., 401 _note_, 423 _note_
+
+Walton, I., 286
+
+Ward, Ned, 453
+
+_Water Babies, The_, xii
+
+_Waverley_, 287
+
+Webster, xiv, 275
+
+_Werther_, 441, 443, 446, 451
+
+Wieland, 269, 270
+
+_Wild Duck, The_, 39 _note_, 362
+
+Williams, Sir C. H., 91
+
+Winchelsea, Lady, 245
+
+_Woman Killed with Kindness, A_, 364
+
+Wright, Dr. Hagbert, xii
+
+---- T., 73 _note_
+
+Wycherley, 288
+
+Wyclif, 467
+
+
+Xenophon, 1, 2, 178
+
+
+_Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, A_, 465 _note_
+
+_Yellow Dwarf, The_, 248
+
+_Ywain and Gawain_, 56
+
+
+_Zadig_, 379 _note_, 382, 383, 477
+
+_Zaide_, 299, 318
+
+_Zaza, La Princesse_, 264
+
+_Zeneyde_, 308 _sq._
+
+_Zibeline, La Princesse_, 262, 263
+
+Zola, 462
+
+_Zulma, Les Voyages de_, 259, 260
+
+
+THE END
+
+PRINTED BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY
+
+FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
+
+By DR. GEORGE SAINTSBURY
+
+Three Vols. 8vo.
+
+    VOL. I. FROM THE ORIGINS TO SPENSER. 10s. net.
+    VOL. II. FROM SHAKESPEARE TO CRABBE. 15s. net.
+    VOL. III. FROM BLAKE TO SWINBURNE. 15s. net.
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME I.
+
+_THE ATHENAEUM._--"A thing complete and convincing beyond any former work
+from the same hand. 'Hardly any one who takes a sufficient interest in
+prosody to induce him to read this book' will fail to find it absorbing,
+and even entertaining, as only one other book on the subject of
+versification is: the _Petit Traite de poesie francaise_ of Theodore de
+Banville.... We await the second and third volumes of this admirable
+undertaking with impatience. To stop reading it at the end of the first
+volume leaves one in just such a state of suspense as if it had been a
+novel of adventure, and not the story of the adventures of prosody. 'I
+am myself quite sure,' says Prof. Saintsbury, 'that English prosody is,
+and has been, a living thing for seven hundred years at least.' That he
+sees it living is his supreme praise, and such praise belongs to him
+only among historians of English verse."
+
+_THE TIMES._--"To Professor Saintsbury English prosody is a living
+thing, and not an abstraction. He has read poetry for pleasure long
+before he began to read it with a scientific purpose, and so he has
+learnt what poetry is before making up his mind what it ought to be. It
+is a common fault of writers upon prosody that they set out to discover
+the laws of music without ever training their ears to apprehend music.
+They theorise very plausibly at large, but they betray their incapacity
+so soon as they proceed to scan a difficult line. Professor Saintsbury
+never fails in this way. He knows a good line from a bad one, and he
+knows how a good line ought to be read, even though he may sometimes be
+doubtful how it ought to be scanned. He has, therefore, the knowledge
+most essential to a writer upon prosody.... His object, as he constantly
+insists, is to write a history, to tell us what has happened to our
+prosody from the time when it began to be English and ceased to be
+Anglo-Saxon; not to tell us whether it has happened rightly or wrongly,
+nor even to be too ready to tell us why or how it has happened."
+
+Professor W. P. KER in the _SCOTTISH HISTORICAL REVIEW_.--"The history
+of verse, as Mr. Saintsbury takes it, is one aspect of the history of
+poetry; that is to say, the minute examination of structure does not
+leave out of account the nature of the living thing; we are not kept all
+the time at the microscope. This is the great beauty of his book; it is
+a history of English poetry in one particular form or mode.... The
+author perceives that the form of verse is not separable from the soul
+of poetry; poetry 'has neither kernel nor husk, but is all one,' to
+adapt the phrase of another critic."
+
+
+A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY
+
+By DR. GEORGE SAINTSBURY
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME II.
+
+_THE ATHENAEUM._--"We have read this volume with as eager an impatience
+as that with which we read the first, for the author is in love with his
+subject; he sees 'that English prosody is and has been a living thing
+for seven hundred years at least,' and, knowing that metre, verse pure
+and simple, is a means of expressing emotion, he here sets out to show
+us its development and variety during the most splendid years of our
+national consciousness."
+
+_THE STANDARD._--"The second volume of Professor Saintsbury's elaborate
+work on English prosody is even more interesting than his former volume.
+Extending as it does from Shakespeare to Crabbe, it covers the great
+period of English poetry and deals with the final development of the
+prosodic system. It reveals the encyclopaedic knowledge of English
+literature and the minute scholarship which render the Edinburgh
+professor so eminently suited to this inquiry, which is, we think, the
+most important literary adventure he has undertaken.... It is certainly
+the best book on the subject of which it treats, and it will be long
+indeed before it is likely to be superseded."
+
+_THE CAMBRIDGE REVIEW._--"It is the capacity of being able to depart
+from traditional opinion, the evidence shown on every page of
+independent thought based upon a first-hand study of documents, which
+make the present volume one of the most stimulating that even Professor
+Saintsbury has written. The work, as a whole, is a fine testimony to his
+lack of pedantry, to his catholicity of taste, to his sturdy common
+sense, and it exhibits a virtue rare among prosodists (dare we say among
+scholars generally?)--courtesy to opponents."
+
+_THE PALL MALL GAZETTE._--"This volume is even more fascinating than was
+the first. For here there are even greater names concerned--Shakespeare
+and Milton.... It appears to us that Professor Saintsbury hardly writes
+a page in which he does not advance by some degree his view of the right
+laws of verse. We cannot imagine any one seriously defending, after this
+majestical work, the old syllabic notion of scansion.... The book is
+written with all the liveliness of style, richness of argument, and
+wealth of material that we expect. Not only is it a history of prosody;
+but it is full of acute judgments on poetry and poets."
+
+
+
+
+OTHER WORKS
+
+BY
+
+DR. GEORGE SAINTSBURY
+
+
+A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM. 8vo. 14s. net
+
+A HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
+
+A HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE (1780-1900). Crown 8vo. 7s.
+6d.
+
+A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. Also in five
+parts. 2s. each.
+
+HISTORICAL MANUAL OF ENGLISH PROSODY. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+A FIRST BOOK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Globe 8vo. 1s. 6d.
+
+DRYDEN. Library Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. net. Popular Edition, Crown 8vo,
+1s. 6d. Sewed, 1s. Pocket Edition, Fcap. 8vo, 1s. net. [_English Men of
+Letters._
+
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1, by
+George Saintsbury
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FRENCH NOVEL, VOL. 1 ***
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