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. L. L. 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 OFEDINBURGH VOL. II FROM 1800 TO 1900 MACMILLAN AND CO. , LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1919 Sólo á veces, con un dejo de zozobra y de ansiedad, timido tiembla en sus labios un viejo y triste cantar, copla que vibre en el aire como un toque funeral: _La Noche Buena se viene, la Noche Buena se va! Y nosotros nos iremos y no volveremos más. _ CARLOS FERNANDEZ SHAW, _La Balada de los Viejos. _ COPYRIGHT PREFACE "The second chantry" (for it would be absurd to keep "temple") of thiswork "is not like the first"; in one respect especially, which seems todeserve notice in its Preface or porch--if a chantry may be permitted aporch. In Volume I. --though many of its subjects (not quite all) hadbeen handled by me before in more or less summary fashion, or in reviewsof individual books, or in other connections than that of thenovel--only Hamilton, Lesage, Marivaux, and the minor "Sensibility" menand women had formed the subjects of separate and somewhat detailedstudies, wholly or mainly as novelists. The case is altered in respectof the present volume. The _Essays on French Novelists_, to which Ithere referred, contain a larger number of such studies appertaining tothe present division--studies busied with Charles de Bernard, Gautier, Murger, Flaubert, Dumas, Sandeau, Cherbuliez, Feuillet. On Balzac I havepreviously written two papers of some length, one as an Introduction toMessrs. Dent's almost complete translation of the _Comédie_, withshorter sequels for each book, the other an article in the _QuarterlyReview_ for 1907. Some dozen or more years ago I contributed to anAmerican edition[1] of translations of Mérimée by various hands, a long"Introduction" to that most remarkable writer, and I had, somewhatearlier, written on Maupassant for the _Fortnightly Review_. One or twoadditional dealings of some substance with the subject might bementioned, such as another Introduction to _Corinne_, but not to_Delphine_. These, however, and passages in more general _Histories_, hardly need specification. On the other hand, I have never dealt, substantively and in detail, withChateaubriand, Paul de Kock, Victor Hugo, Beyle, George Sand, or Zola[2]as novelists, nor with any of the very large number of minors notalready mentioned, including some, such as Nodier and Gérard de Nerval, whom, for one thing or another, I should myself very decidedly put aboveminority. And, further, my former dealings with the authors in the firstlist given above having been undertaken without any view to a generalhistory of the French novel, it became not merely proper but easy for meto "triangulate" them anew. So that though there may be more previouswork of mine in print on the subjects of the present volume than onthose of the last, there will, I hope, be found here actually less, andvery considerably less, _réchauffé_--hardly any, in fact (save a fewtranslations[3] and some passages on Gautier and Maupassant)--of theamount and character which seemed excusable, and more than excusable, inthe case of the "Sensibility" chapter there. The book, if not actually a"Pisgah-sight reversed, " taken from Lebanon instead of Pisgah aftermore than forty years' journey, not in the wilderness, but in thePromised Land itself, attempts to be so; and uses no more than fairly"reminiscential" (as Sir Thomas Browne would say) notes, taken on thatjourney itself. It was very naturally, and by persons of weight, put to me whether Icould not extend this history to, or nearer to, the present day. I putmy negative to this briefly in the earlier preface: it may be perhapscourteous to others, who may be disposed to regret the refusal, to giveit somewhat more fully here. One reason--perhaps sufficient initself--can be very frankly stated. I do not _know_ enough of the Frenchnovel of the last twenty years or so. During the whole of that time Ihave had no reasons, of duty or profit, to oblige such knowledge. I havehad a great many other things to do, and I have found greater recreationin re-reading old books than in experimenting on new ones. I might, nodoubt, in the last year or two have made up the deficiency to someextent, but I was indisposed to do so for two, yea, three reasons, whichseemed to me sufficient. In the first place, I have found, both by some actual experiment of myown, and, as it seems to me, by a considerable examination of theexperiments of other people, that to co-ordinate satisfactorily accountsof contemporary or very recent work with accounts of older is sodifficult as to be nearly impossible. The _foci_ are too different to beeasily adjusted, and the result is almost always out of composition, ifnot of drawing. Secondly, though I know I am here kicking against certain pricks, itdoes not appear to me, either from what I have read or from criticismson what I have not, that any definitely new and decisively illustratedschool of novels has arisen since the death of M. Zola. Thirdly, it would be impossible to deal with the subject, save in anabsurdly incomplete fashion, without discussing living persons. To doingthis, in a book, I have an unfashionable but unalterable objection. Theproductions of such persons, as they appear, are, by now establishedcustom, proper subjects for "reviewing" in accordance with the decenciesof literature, and such reviews may sometimes, with the same proviso, beextended to studies of their work up to date. But even these lattershould, I think, be reserved for very exceptional cases. A slight difference of method may be observed in the treatment ofauthors in Chapter X. And onwards, this treatment being not onlysomewhat less judicial and more "impressionist, " but also more generaland less buckrammed out with abstracts of particular works. [4] Thereappeared to me to be more than one reason for this, all such reasonsbeing independent of, though by no means ignoring, the mechanicalpressure of ever-lessening space. In the first place, a very much largernumber of readers may be presumed to be more or less familiar with thesubjects of discussion, thus not only making elaborate "statement ofcase" and production of supporting evidence unnecessary, but exposingthe purely judicial attitude to the charge of "no jurisdiction. "Moreover, there is behind all this, as it seems to me, a reallyimportant principle, which is not a mere repetition, but a noteworthyextension, of that recently laid down. I rather doubt whether theabsolute historico-critical verdict and sentence can ever be pronouncedon work that is, even in the widest sense, contemporary. The "firmperspective of the past" can in very few instances be acquired: andthose few, who by good luck have acquired something of it, should notpresume too much on this gift of fortune. General opinion of a man isduring his lifetime often wrong, for some time after his death almostalways so: and the absolute balance is very seldom reached till a fullgeneration--something more than the conventional thirty years--haspassed. Meanwhile, though all readers who have anything critical in themwill be constantly revising their impressions, it is well not to putone's own out as more than impressions. It is only a very few yearssince I myself came to what I may call a provisionally final estimate ofZola, and I find that there is some slight alteration even in thatwhich, from the first, I formed of Maupassant. I can hardly hope thatreaders of this part of the work will not be brought into collision withexpressions of mine, more frequently than was the case in the firstvolume or even the first part of this. But I can at least assure themthat I have no intention of playing Sir Oracle, or of trailing my coat. The actual arrangement of this volume has been the subject of a gooddeal of "pondering and deliberation, " almost as much as Sir ThomasBertram gave to a matter no doubt of more importance. There was aconsiderable temptation to recur to the system on which I have writtensome other literary histories--that of "Books" and "Interchapters. " ThisI had abandoned, in the first volume, because it was not so muchdifficult of application as hardly relevant. Here the relevance is muchgreater. The single century divides itself, without the slightestviolence offered, into four parts, which, if I had that capacity orpartiality for flowery writing, the absence of which in me some criticshave deplored, I might almost call Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. There is the season, of little positive crop but importantseed-sowing, --the season in which the greater writers, Chateaubriand andMme. De Staël, perform their office. Here, too, quite humblefolk--Pigault-Lebrun completing what has been already dealt with, Ducray-Duminil and others doing work to be dealt with here, and Paul deKock most of all, get the novel of ordinary life ready in various ways:while others still, Nodier, Hugo, Vigny, Mérimée, and, with howeverdifferent literary value, Arlincourt, implant the New Romance. There isthe sudden, magnificent, and long-continued outburst of all the kinds inand after 1830. There is the autumn of the Second Empire, continuing andadding to the fruits and flowers of summer: and there is the gradualdecadence of the last quarter of the century, with some late blossomingand second-crop fruitage--the medlars of the novel--and the dying off ofthe great producers of the past. But the breach of uniformity in formalarrangement of the divisions would perhaps be too great to the eyewithout being absolutely necessary to the sense, and I have endeavouredto make the necessary recapitulation with a single "halt" ofchapter-length[5] at the exact middle. It will readily be understoodthat the loss of my own library has been even more severely felt in thisvolume than in the earlier one, while circumstances, public and private, have made access to larger collections more difficult. But I haveendeavoured to "make good" as much as possible, and grumbling orcomplaining supplies worse than no armour against Fate. I have sometimes, perhaps rashly, during the writing of this bookwondered "What next"? By luck for myself--whether also for my readers itwould be ill even to wonder--I have been permitted to execute all theliterary schemes I ever formed, save two. The first of these (omitting awork on "Transubstantiation" which I planned at the age of thirteen butdid not carry far) was a _History of the English Scholastics_, which Ithought of some ten years later, which was not unfavoured by goodauthority, and which I should certainly have attempted, if other peopleat Oxford in my time had not been so much cleverer than myself that Icould not get a fellowship. It has, strangely enough, never been doneyet by anybody; it would be a useful corrective to the exoteric chatterwhich has sometimes recently gone by the name of philosophy; and perhapsit might shake Signor Benedetto Croce (whom it is hardly necessary tosay I do _not_ include among the "chatterers") in his opinion thatthough, as he once too kindly said, I am a _valente letterato_, I amsadly _digiúno di filosofia_. [6] But it is "too late a week" for this. And I have lost my library. Then there was a _History of Wine_, which was actually commissioned, planned, and begun just before I was appointed to my Chair at Edinburgh, and which I gave up, not from any personal pusillanimity or loss ofinterest in the subject, but partly because I had too much else to do, and because I thought it unfair to expose that respectable institutionto the venom of the most unscrupulous of all fanatics--those ofteetotalism. I could take this up with pleasure: but I have lost mycellar. What I should really like to do would be to translate _in extenso_ Dr. Sommer's re-edition of the Vulgate Arthuriad. But I should probably diebefore I had done half of it; no publisher would undertake the risk ofit; and if any did, "Dora, " reluctant to die, would no doubt put us bothin 'prison for using so much paper. Therefore I had better be contentwith the divine suggestion, and not spoil it by my human failure toexecute. And so I may say, for good, _Valete_ to the public, abandoning the restof the leave-taking to their discretion. [7] GEORGE SAINTSBURY. 1 ROYAL CRESCENT, BATH, _Christmas_, 1918. FOOTNOTES: [1] It is perhaps worth while to observe that I did not "edit" this, andthat I had nothing whatever to do with any part of it except the_Introduction_ and my earlier translation of the _Chronique de CharlesIX_, which was, I believe, reprinted in it. [2] In very great strictness an exception should perhaps be made fornotice of him, and of some others, in _The Later Nineteenth Century_(Edinburgh and London, 1907). [3] There will, for pretty obvious reasons, be fewer of these than inthe former volume. The texts are much more accessible; there is nodifficulty about the language, such as people, however unnecessarily, sometimes feel about French up to the sixteenth century; and the spaceis wanted for other things. If I have kept one or two of my old ones itis because they have won approval from persons whose approval is worthhaving, and are now out of print: while I have added one or twoothers--to please myself. Translations--in some cases more than one ortwo--already exist, for those who read English only, of nearly the wholeof Balzac, of all Victor Hugo's novels, of a great many of Dumas's, andof others almost innumerable. [4] The chief exceptions are Dumas _fils_, the earliest, and Maupassant, the greatest except Flaubert and far more voluminous than Flauberthimself. [5] The most unexpected chorus of approval with which Volume I. Wasreceived by reviewers, and which makes me think, in regard to this, ofthat unpleasant song of the Koreish "After Bedr, Ohod, " leaves littlenecessity for defending points attacked. I have made a few addenda andcorrigenda to Volume I. To cover exceptions, and the "Interchapter" orits equivalent should contain something on one larger matter--the smallaccount taken here of French _criticism_ of the novel. [6] I wonder whether he was right, or whether the late Edward Caird waswhen he said, "I don't think I ever had a pupil [and he was among thefirst inter-collegiate-lecturers] with more of the philosophical _ethos_than you have. But you're too fond of getting into logical coaches andletting yourself be carried away in them. " I think this was provoked bya very undergraduate essay arguing that Truth, as actually realised, wasuninteresting, while the possible forms of Falsehood, as conceivablyrealisable in other circumstances, were of the highest interest. [7] I have to give, not only my usual thanks to Professors Elton, Ker, and Gregory Smith for reading my proofs, and making most valuablesuggestions, but a special acknowledgment to Professor Ker, at whoserequest Miss Elsie Hitchcock most kindly looked up for me, at theBritish Museum, the exact title of that striking novel of M. H. Cochin(_v. Inf. _ p. 554 _note_). I have, in the proper places, already thankedthe authorities of the _Reviews_ above mentioned; but I should like alsoto recognise here the liberality of Messrs. Rivington in putting thecontents of my _Essays on French Novelists_ entirely at my disposal. AndI am under another special obligation to Dr. Hagbert Wright for givingme, of his own motion, knowledge and reading of the fresh batch ofseventeenth-century novels noticed below (pp. Xiv-xvi). ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA FOR VOL. I P. 13. --"The drawback of explanations is that they almost always requireto be explained. " Somebody, or several somebodies, must have said this;and many more people than have ever said it--at least in print--musthave felt it. The dictum applies to my note on this page. An entirelywell-willing reviewer thought me "piqued" at the American remark, andproceeded to intimate a doubt whether I knew M. Bédier's work, partly onlines (as to the _Cantilenae_) which I had myself anticipated, andpartly on the question of the composition of the _chansons_ by this orthat person or class, in this or that place, at that or the other time. But I had felt no "pique" whatever in the matter, and these latterpoints fall entirely outside my own conception of the _chansons_. I lookat them simply as pieces of accomplished literature, no matter how, where, in what circumstances, or even exactly when, they became so. AndI could therefore by no possibility feel anything but pleasure at praisebestowed on this most admirable work in a different part of the field. P. 38, l. 27. --A protest was made, not inexcusably, at thecharacterisation of _Launfal_ as "libellous. " The fault was only one ofphrasing, or rather of incompleteness. That beautiful story of a knightand his fairy love is one which I should be the last man in the world toabuse _as such_. But it contains a libel on Guinevere which isunnecessary and offensive, besides being absolutely unjustified by anyother legend, and inconsistent with her whole character. It is of thisonly that I spoke the evil which it deserves. If I had not, by mereoversight, omitted notice of Marie de France (for which I can offer noexcuse except the usual one of hesitation in which place to put it andso putting it nowhere), I should certainly have left no doubt as to myopinion of Thomas Chester likewise. Anybody who wants this may find itin my _Short History of English Literature_, p. 194. P. 55, l. 3. --_Delete_ comma at "French. " P. 60, l. 6. --Insert "and" between "half" and "illegitimate. " P. 72, l. 4. --I have been warned of the "change-over" in "Saracen" and"Christian"--a slip of the pen which I am afraid I have been guilty ofbefore now, though I have known the story for full forty years. ButFloire, though a "paynim, " was not exactly a "Saracen. " P. 75, l. 2 from bottom. --_For_ "his" _read_ "their. " Pp. 158-163. --When the first proofs of the present volume had alreadybegun to come in, Dr. Hagbert Wright informed me that the London Libraryhad just secured at Sotheby's (I believe partly from the sale of LordEllesmere's books) a considerable parcel of early seventeenth-centuryFrench novels. He also very kindly allowed me perusal of such of theseas I had not already noticed (from reading at the B. M. ) in Vol. I. Ofsome, if not all of them, on the principle stated in the Preface of thatvol. , I may say something here. There is the _Histoire des Amours deLysandre et de Caliste; avec figures_, in an Amsterdam edition of 1679, but of necessity some sixty years older, since its author, the Sieurd'Audiguier, was killed in 1624. He says he wrote it in six months, during three and a half of which he was laid up with eightsword-wounds--things of which it is itself full, with the appurtenantcombats on sea and land and in private houses, and all sorts of otherdivertisements (he uses the word himself of himself) including a veryagreeable ghost-host--a ghost quite free from the tautology andgrandiloquence which ghosts too often affect, though not so poetical asFletcher's. "They told me you were dead, " says his guest andinterlocutor, consciously or unconsciously quoting the _Anthology_. "SoI am, " quoth the ghost sturdily. But he wants, as they so often do, tobe buried. This is done, and he comes back to return thanks, which isnot equally the game, and in fact rather bores his guest, who, to stopthis jack-in-the-box proceeding, begins to ask favours, such as that theghost will give him three days' warning of his own death. "I will, _if Ican_, " says the Appearance pointedly. The fault of the book, as of mostof the novels of the period, is the almost complete absence ofcharacter. But there is plenty of adventure, in England as well as inFrance, and it must be one of the latest stories in which the actualtourney figures, for Audiguier writes as of things contemporary anddedicates his book to Marie de Medicis. _Cléon ou le Parfait Confidant_ (Paris, 1665), and _Hattigé ou LesAmours au Roy de Tamaran_ (Cologne, 1676), the first anonymous, thesecond written by a certain G. De Brimond, and dedicated to anEnglishman of whom we are not specially proud--Harry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans--are two very little books, of intrinsic importance and interestnot disproportioned to their size. They have, however, a little of bothfor the student, in reference to the extension of the novel _kind_. For_Cléon_ is rather like a "fictionising" of an inferior play of Moliere'stime; and _Hattigé_, with its privateering Chevalier de Malte for a heroand its Turkish heroine who coolly remarks "L'infidélité a des charmes, "might have been better if the author had known how to make it so. Boththese books have, as has been said, the merit of shortness. Puget de laSerre's _La Clytié de la Cour_ (2 vols. , Paris, 1635) cannot plead eventhis; for it fills two fat volumes of some 1500 pages. I have sometimesbeen accused, both in France and in England, of unfairness to Boileau, but I should certainly never quarrel with him for including La Serre(not, however, in respect of this book, I think) among his herd ofdunces. Like most of the novels of its time, though it has not muchactual _bergerie_ about it, it suggests the _Astrée_, but the contrastis glaring. Even among the group, I have seldom read, or attempted toread, anything duller. _Le Mélante du Sieur Vidal_ (Paris, 1624), thoughalso somewhat wordy (it has 1000 pages), is much more Astréean, andtherefore, perhaps, better. Things do happen in it: among otherincidents a lover is introduced into a garden in a barrow of clothes, though he has not Sir John Falstaff's fate. There are fresh laws oflove, and discussions of them; a new debate on the old Blonde _v. _Brunette theme, which might be worse, etc. Etc. The same year broughtforth _Les Chastes Amours d'Armonde_ by a certain Damiron, which, as itstitle may show, belongs rather to the pre-Astréean group (_v. Sup. _ Vol. I. P. 157 _note_), and contains a great deal of verse and (by licence ofits title) a good deal of kissing; but is flatly told, despite not alittle _Phébus_. It is a sort of combat of Spiritual and Fleshly Love;and Armonde ends as a kind of irregular anchorite, having previously"spent several days in deliberating the cut of his vestments. " _Les Caprices Héroïques_ (Paris, 1644) is a translation, byChateaunières de Grenaille, from the Italian of Loredano. It consists ofvariations on classical stories, treated rather in the declamationmanner, and ranging in subject from Achilles to "Friné. " How manyreaders (at least among those who read with their eyes only) will affirmon their honour that they identified "Friné" at first reading? InItalian there would, of course, be less hesitation. The book is notprecisely a novel, but it has merits as a collection of rhetoricalexercises. Of a somewhat similar kind, though even further from thestrict novel standard, is the _Diverses Affections de Minerve_ (Paris, 1625) of the above-mentioned Audiguier, where the heroine is _not_ thegoddess, and all sorts of places and personages, mythological, classical, historic, and modern, compose a miraculous _macédoine_, Brasidas jostling Gracchus, and Chabrias living in the FaubourgSaint-Martin. This _is_ a sort of story, but the greatest part of thevolume as it lies before me is composed of _Lettres Espagnoles_, _Epîtres Françaises_, _Libres Discours_, etc. We can apparently return to the stricter romance, such as it is, withthe _Histoire Asiatique_ of the Sieur de Gerzan (Paris, 1633), but it isnoteworthy that the title-page of this ballasts itself by an "Avec unTraité du Trésor de la Vie Humaine et La Philosophie des Dames. " Iconfess that, as in the case of most of the books here mentioned, I havenot read it with the care I bestowed on the _Cyrus_. But I perceive init ladies who love corsairs, universal medicines, poodles who aresacrificed to save their owners, and other things which may tempt some. And I can, by at least sampling, rather recommend _Les Travaux du PrinceInconnu_ (Paris, 1633) by the Sieur de Logeas. It calls itself, and its700 pages, the completion of two earlier performances, the _RomanHistorique_ and the _Histoire des Trois Frères Princes deConstantinople_, which have not come in my way. There is, however, probably no cause to regret this, for the author assures us that his newwork is "as far above the two former in beauty as the sun is above thestars. " If any light-minded person be disposed to scoff at him for this, let it be added that he has the grace to abstract the whole in the _Avisau Lecteur_ which contains the boast, and to give full chapter-headings, things too often wanting in the group. The hero is named Rosidor, theheroine Floralinde; and they are married with "la réjouissance généralede toute la Chrétienté. " What can mortals ask for more? _Polémire ou l'Illustre Polonais_ (Paris, 1647), is dedicated to no lessa person than Madame de Montbazon, and contains much piety, a good dealof fighting, and some verse. _L'Amour Aventureux_ (Paris, 1623), by thenot unknown Du Verdier, is a book with _Histoires_, and I am not surethat the volume I have seen contains the whole of it. _L'Empire del'Inconstance_ (Paris, 1635), by the Sieur de Ville, and published "atthe entry of the little gallery of Prisoners under the sign of theVermilion Roses, " has a most admirable title to start with, and a tableof over thirty _Histoires_, a dozen letters, and two "amorous judgments"at the end. _Les Fortunes Diverses de Chrysomire et de Kalinde_ (Paris, 1635), by a certain Humbert, blazons "love and war" on its verytitle-page, while _Celandre_ (Paris, 1671), a much later book than mostof these, has the rather uncommon feature of a single name for title. Thirty or forty years ago I should have taken some pleasure in "cooking"this batch of mostly early romances into a twenty-page article which, unless it had been unlucky, would have found its way into some magazineor review. Somebody might do so now. But I think it sufficient, and notsuperfluous, to add this brief sketch here to the notices of similarthings in the last volume, in order to show how abundant the crop ofFrench romance--of which even these are only further samples--was at thetime. P. 231, l. 9 from bottom. --_Add_ 's (Herman sla lerman's). P. 237, _note_ 2, l. 1. --_For_ "revision" _read_ "revisal. " P. 241, 2nd par. , last line but two. --_For_ "But" _read_ "Still. " P. 278, l. 7 from bottom. --Delete comma at "Thackeray's. " P. 286, l. 18. --It occurred to me (among the usual discoveries which onemakes in reading one's book after it has passed the irremeable press)that I ought to have said "Planchet's" horse, not "D'Artagnan's. " True, as a kindly fellow-Alexandrian (who had not noticed the slip) consoledmy remorse by saying, the horse was D'Artagnan's _property_; but thephrase usually implies riding at the moment. And Aramis, brave as hewas, would have been sure to reflect that to play a feat of possiblyhostile acrobatism on the Gascon, without notice, might be a littledangerous. P. 304, ll. 4 and 7. --Shift "with his wife and mistress" to l. 4, reading "the relations with his wife and mistress of that Henri II. , "etc. P. 314, l. 12 from bottom. --_For_ "usual" _read_ "common" (commonnorm. ) P. 338, l. 21. --Delete "in" before "among. " P. 381. --One or two reviewers and some private correspondents haveexpressed surprise at my not knowing, or at any rate not mentioning, thelate Professor Morley's publication of _Rasselas_ and a translation of_Candide_ together. I cannot say positively whether I knew of it or not, though I must have done so, having often gone over the lists of thateditor's numerous "libraries" to secure for my students texts notoverlaid with commentary. But I can say very truthfully that no slightwhatever was intended, in regard to a scholar who did more than almostany other single man to "vulgarise" (in the wholly laudable sense ofthat too often degraded word) the body of English literature. Only, sucha book would not have been what I was thinking of. To bring out the fullcontrast-complement of these two strangely coincident masterpieces, bothmust be read in the originals. Paradoxically, one might even say that aFrench translation of Johnson, with the original of Voltaire, would showit better than the converse presentment. _Candide_ is so intenselyFrench--it is even to such an extent an embodiment of one side ofFrenchness--that you cannot receive its virtues except through theoriginal tongue. I am personally fond of translating; I have had somepractice in it; and some good wits have not disapproved some of myefforts. But, unless I knew that in case of refusal I should be rankedas a Conscientious Objector, I would not attempt _Candide_. The Frenchwould ring in my ears too reproachfully. P. 396, last line. --Shift comma from after to before "even. " P. 399, l. 10. --_For_ "Rousseau" _read_ "his author. " P. 424, _note_, first line. --Delete quotes before "The. " P. 453, l. 15. --_For_ "Courray" _read_ "Cou_v_ray. " P. 468, l. 17. --_For_ "France has" _read_ "France had. " P. 477. --In the original preface I apologised--not in the idle hope ofconciliating one kind of critic, but out of respect for a very differentclass--for slips due to the loss of my own library, and to thedifficulty (a difficulty which has now increased owing to circumstancesof no public interest, in respect of the present volume) of consultingothers in regard to small matters of fact. I have very gratefully toacknowledge that I found the latter class very much larger than theformer. Such a note as that at Vol. I. P. Xiii, will show that I havenot spared trouble to ensure accuracy. The charge of _in_accuracy canalways be made by anybody who cares to take "the other authority. " Thishas been done in reference to the dates of Prévost's books. But I mayperhaps say, without _outrecuidance_, that there is an _Art de négligerles dates_ as well as one _de les verifier_. For the purposes of such ahistory as this it is very rarely of the slightest importance, whether abook was published in the year one or the year three: though theimportance of course increases when units pass into decades, and becomesgrave where decades pass into half-centuries. Unless you can collateactual first editions in every case (and sometimes even then) dates ofbooks as given are always second-hand. In reference to the same subjectI have also been rebuked for not taking account of M. Harrisse'scorrection of the legend of Prévost's death. As a matter of fact I knewbut had forgotten it, and it has not the slightest importance inconnection with Prévost's work. Besides, somebody will probably, sooneror later, correct M. Harrisse. These things pass: _Manon Lescaut_remains. ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA FOR VOL. II P. 65. --A reviewer of my first volume, who objected to my omission thereof Madame de Charrières, may possibly think that omission made moresinful by the admission of Madame de Montolieu. But there seems to me tobe a sufficient distinction between the two cases. Isabella AgnesElizabeth Van Tuyll (or, as she liked to call herself, Belle de Zuylen), subsequently Madame de Saint-Hyacinthe de Charrières (how mellifluouslythese names pass over one's tongue!), was a very interesting person, andhighly characteristic of the later eighteenth century. I first met withher long ago (see Vol. I. P. 443) in my "Sensibility" researches, ashaving, in her maturer years, played that curious, but at the time notuncommon, part of "Governess in erotics" to Benjamin Constant, who wasthen quite young, and with whose uncle, Constant d'Hermenches, she had, years earlier and before her own marriage, carried on a long and veryintimate but platonic correspondence. This is largely occupied withoddly business-like discussions of marriage schemes for herself, one ofthe _prétendants_ being no less a person than our own precious Bozzy, who met her on the Continental tour for which Johnson started him atHarwich. But--and let this always be a warning to literary lovers--thetwo fell out over a translation of the Corsica book which she began. Boswell was not the wisest of men, especially where women wereconcerned. But even he might have known that, if you trust thebluest-eyed of gazelles to do such things for you, she will probablymarry a market-gardener. (He seems also to have been a little afraid ofher superiority of talent, _v. _ his letters to Temple and his _Johnson_, pp. 192-3, Globe Ed. ) Besides these, and other genuine letters, she wrote not a few novels, concocted often, if not always, in epistolary form. Their French was sogood that it attracted Sainte-Beuve's attention and praise, while quiterecently she has had a devoted panegyrist and editor in Switzerland, where, after her marriage, she was domiciled. But (and here come thereasons for the former exclusion) she learnt her French as a foreignlanguage. She was French neither by birth nor by extraction, nor, if Ido not mistake, by even temporary residence, though she did stay inEngland for a considerable time. Some of these points distinguish herfrom Hamilton as others do from Madame de Montolieu. If I put her in, Ido not quite see how I could leave Beckford out. P. 400, ll. 2, 3. --_For_ "1859 ... 1858" _read_ "1857--a year, with itssuccessors 1858 and 1859, " CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE MADAME DE STAËL AND CHATEAUBRIAND 1 Reasons for beginning with Mme. De Staël--_Delphine_--Thetone--The story--_Corinne_--Its improved conditions--Anillustrated edition of it--The story--The character ofNelvil--And the book's absurdities--Compensations: Corinneherself--Nelvil again--Its aesthetics--The author's positionin the History of the Novel--Chateaubriand: his peculiarposition as a novelist--And the remarkable interconnectionof his works in fiction--_Atala_--_René_--Difference betweenits importance and its merit--_Les Natchez_--_LesMartyrs_--The story--Its "panoramic" quality--And itsremarkable advance in style--Chateaubriand's Janus-positionin this--Illustrated. CHAPTER II PAUL DE KOCK, OTHER MINORS OF 1800-1830, AND NODIER 39 The fate of popular minor novelists--Examples ofthem--Paul de Kock--_L'Enfant de ma Femme_--_Petits Tableauxde Moeurs_--_Gustave_--The caricatured _Anglais_--_Edmond etsa Cousine_--_André le Savoyard_--_Jean_--_La Femme_, _leMari et l'Amant_--_Mon Voisin Raymond_--_Le Barbier deParis_--The Pauline grisette--Others--The minors before1830--Mme. De Montolieu: _Caroline de Lichtfield_--Itsadvance on "Sensibility"--Madame de Genlis _iterum_--Theminor popular novel--Ducray-Duminil: _Le PetitCarillonneur_--V. Ducange--_L'Artiste et leSoldat_--_Ludovica_--Auguste Ricard: _L'Ouvreuse deLoges_--The importance of these minors notinconsiderable--The Vicomte d'Arlincourt: _LeSolitaire_--Nodier--His short stories--_Trilby_--_Le Songed'Or_--The minors--_La Fée aux Miettes_--_Smarra_ and _SoeurBéatrix_--_Inès de las Sierras_--Nodier's special quality. CHAPTER III VICTOR HUGO 96 Limitations--_Han d'Islande_--_Bug-Jargal_--_Le Dernier Jourd'un Condamné_--_Claude Gueux_--_Notre-Dame de Paris_--Thestory easy to anticipate--Importance of the actual_title_--The working out of the one under the other--Thestory recovers itself latterly--But the characters?--Thethirty years' interval--_Les Misérables_--_Les Travailleursde la Mer_--The _genius loci_--Guernsey at thetime--_L'Homme Qui Rit_--_Quatre-Vingt-Treize_--Finalremarks. CHAPTER IV BEYLE AND BALZAC 133 Beyle: his peculiarity--_Armance_--_La Chartreuse deParme_--The Waterloo episode--The subject and generalcolour--_L'Abbesse de Castro_, etc. --_Le Rouge et leNoir_--Beyle's masterpiece, and why--Julien Sorel andMathilde de la Mole--The resuscitated work: _Lamiel_--The_Nouvelles Inédites_--_Le Chasseur Vert_--Beyle's place inthe story--Balzac: conditions of the presentdealing--Limitations of subject--And of Balzachimself--Balzac's "general ideas"--Abstinence fromabstract--The _Oeuvres de Jeunesse_--_Les Chouans_--_La Peaude Chagrin_--The short stories--The _ContesDrolatiques_--Notes on select larger books: _EugénieGrandet_--_Le Père Goriot_ and _Les ParentsPauvres_--Others: the general "scenic"division--"Balzacity": its constitution--Its effect onsuccessors--And its own character--The "occult" element--Itsaction and reaction--Peculiarity of the conversation--And ofthe "story" interest. CHAPTER V GEORGE SAND 176 George Sand: generalities about her--Note on _Elle etLui_, etc. , and on _Un Hiver à Majorque_--Phases of herwork--_Indiana_--_Valentine_--_Lélia_--The moral of thegroup and its tragi-comedy--_Consuelo_--Much better inparts--The degeneration--Recovery; but not maintained quiteto the end--_La Comtesse de Rudolstadt_--The "making good"of _Lucrezia Floriani_--The story--Its balance of power--The"Idylls": _La Petite Fadette_--_La Mare auDiable_--_François le Champi_--Others: _Mauprat_--_LaDaniella_--_Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Doré_--_Le Marquisde Villemer_--_Mlle. La Quintinie_--_Flamarande_--Summaryand judgment--Style--Conversation and description. CHAPTER VI THE NOVEL OF STYLE--GAUTIER, MÉRIMÉE, GÉRARD DE NERVAL, MUSSET, VIGNY 208 Gautier: his burden of "style"--Abstract (with translations)of _La Morte Amoureuse_--Criticism thereof--A parallel frompainting--The reality--And the passion of it--Other shortstories--Gautier's humour: _Les Jeune-France_--Return to_Fortunio_--And others--Longer books: _Le CapitaineFracasse_ and others--_Mlle. DeMaupin_--Mérimée--Carmen--_Colomba_--Its smaller companions:_Mateo Falcone_, etc. --Those of _Carmen_; _ArsèneGuillot_--And _L'Abbé Aubain_--_La Prise de la Redoute_--The_Dernières Nouvelles_; _Il Viccolo di MadamaLucrezia_--_Djoumane_--_Lokis_--_La Chambre Bleue_--The_Chronique de Charles IX_--The semi-dramatic stories: _LaJacquerie_--_Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement_, etc. --Musset:charm of his dramatised stories; his pure narrationunsuccessful--_Frédéric et Bernerette_--_Les DeuxMaîtresses_, _Le Fils du Titien_, etc. --_Emmeline_--Gérardde Nerval: his peculiar position--_La Bohême Galante_, _LesFilles du Feu_, and _Le Rêve et la Vie_--Their generalcharacter--Particular examples--_Aurélia_--And especially_Sylvie_--Alfred de Vigny: _Cinq-Mars_--The faults in itsgeneral scheme--And in its details--_Stello_ less of anovel, but containing better novel-stuff--Its framework and"anecdotes"--The death of Gilbert--The satiric episode:contrast--The Chatterton part--The tragedy of AndréChénier--_Servitude et Grandeur Militaires_--The firststory--The second--and third--The moral of the three--Noteon Fromentin's _Dominique_: its altogether exceptionalcharacter. CHAPTER VII THE MINORS OF 1830 281 Sainte-Beuve: _Volupté_--Its "puff-book"--Itself--Itscharacter in various aspects--Jules Sandeau and Charles deBernard--Sandeau's work--Bernard's--Sue, Soulié, and thenovel of melodrama: _Le Juif Errant_, etc. --Melodramaticfiction generally--_Le Château des Pyrénées_--_Les Mémoiresdu Diable_--Later writers and writings of theclass--Murger--The _Vie de Bohême_--_Les Buveurs d'Eau_ andthe Miscellanies--Reybaud: _Jérôme Paturot_, and Thackerayon its earlier part--The windfall of Malvina--The differenceof the Second Part--Not much of a novel--But an invaluabledocument--Méry--_Les Nuits Anglaises_--The minorstories--_Histoire d'une Colline_--The "Manchester"article--Karr--Roger de Beauvoir: _Les Cabaret desMorts_--Ourliac: _Contes du Bocage_--Achard--Souvestre, Féval, etc. --Borel's _Champavert_. CHAPTER VIII DUMAS THE ELDER 323 The case of Dumas--Charge anddischarge--Morality--Plagiarism and devilling--Thecollaborators?--The positive value as fiction and asliterature of the books: the less worthy works--Theworthier: treatment of them not so much individually asunder heads--His attitude to plot--To character--Todescription (and "style")--To conversation. CHAPTER IX THE FRENCH NOVEL IN 1850 343 The peculiarity of the moment--A political nadir--And almosta literary zenith--The performance of the time in novel--The_personnel_--The kinds: the historical novel--Appearance ofnew classes: the historical--Other kinds and classes--TheNovel of Romanticism generally--The "ordinary"--Discussionon a point of general novel criticism. CHAPTER X DUMAS THE YOUNGER 365 Division of future subjects--A confession--His generalcharacter--_La Dame aux Camélias_--_Tristan leRoux_--_Antonine_--_La Vie à Vingt Ans_--_Aventures deQuatre Femmes_--_Trois Hommes Forts_--_Diane deLys_--Shorter stories: _Une Loge à Camille_--_Le DocteurServans_--_Le Roman d'une Femme_--The habit of quickening upat the end--_Contes etNouvelles_--_Ilka_--_Revenants_--_SophiePrintemps_--_Affaire Clémenceau_--Story of it--Criticism ofit and of its author's work generally--Note on Dumas _fils'_drama, etc. --Reflections. CHAPTER XI GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 397 The contrast of Flaubert and Dumas _fils_--Some formerdealings with him--His style--The books: _MadameBovary_--_Salammbô_--_L'Éducation Sentimentale_--_LaTentation de Saint-Antoine_--_Trois Contes_--_Bouvard etPécuchet_--General considerations. CHAPTER XII THE OTHER "NON-NATURALS" OF THE SECOND EMPIRE 414 Feuillet--His novels generally--Brief notes on some: _LeRoman d'un jeune homme pauvre_--_M. De Camors_--Otherbooks--_La Petite Comtesse_--_Julia de Trécoeur_--_Honneurd'Artiste_--_La Morte_--Misters the assassins--AlphonseDaudet and his curious position--His "personality"--Hisbooks from this point of view and others--His"plagiarisms"--His merits--About: _Le Roi desMontagnes_--_Tolla_--_Germaine_--_Madelon_--_Maître Pierre_, etc. --Summing up--Ponson du Terrail and Gaboriau--The first:his general character--The second--_L'AffaireLerouge_--Feydeau: _Sylvie_--_Fanny_--Others:_Daniel_--Droz--_Mr. , Mme. Et Bébé_ and _EntreNous_--Cherbuliez--His general characteristics--Short surveyof his books--Three eccentrics--Léon Cladel: _LesVa-nu-pieds_, etc. --Barbey d'Aurevilly: his criticism ofnovels--His novels themselves: _Les Diaboliques_ andothers--His merits--And defects--Especially as shown in_L'Ensorcelée_--Champfleury--_Les Excentriques_. CHAPTER XIII NATURALISM--THE GONCOURTS, ZOLA, AND MAUPASSANT 459 The beginnings--"Les deux Goncourts"--Their work--Thenovels--_Germinie Lacerteux_ and _Chérie_ taken asspecimens--The impression produced by them--The rottennessof their theory--And the unattractiveness of theirstyle--Émile Zola to be treated differently--Some points inhis personality: literary and other--The Pillars ofNaturalism--"Document" and "detail" beforeNaturalism--General stages traced--Some individual pioneers;especially Hugo--Survey of books: the short stories--"LesRougon-Macquart"--"Les Trois Villes"--"Les QuatreÉvangiles"--General considerations--Especially in regard tocharacter--[Maupassant]--_Bel-Ami_--_Une Vie_--_Fort commela Mort_--_Pierre et Jean_--_Notre Coeur_--_Les Dimanches_, etc. --_Yvette_--Short stories: the variouscollections--Classes: stories of 1870-71--Normanstories--Algerian and Sporting--Purely comic--Tragic--Talesof Life's Irony--Oddments--Generalconsiderations--Huysmans--Belot and others. CHAPTER XIV OTHER NOVELISTS OF 1870-1900 518 The last stage--Ferdinand Fabre--_L'Abbé Tigrane_--_Norine_, etc. --_Le Marquis de Pierrerue_--_Mon OncleCélestin_--_Lucifer_--_Sylviane_ and_Taillevent_--_Toussaint Galabru_--AndréTheuriet--_Sauvageonne_--_Le Fils Maugars_--_Le Don Juan deVireloup_ and _Raymonde_--General characteristics--GeorgesOhnet--_Serge Panine_--_Le Maître de Forges_--_Le DocteurRameau_--_La Grande Marnière_--Reflections--Édouard Rod--_LaVie Privée de Michel Teissier_--_La Sacrifiée_--Note on _LaSeconde Vie de M. T. _--_Le Silence_--_Là-Haut_--_La Course àla Mort_--_Le Ménage du Pasteur Naudié_--_MademoiselleAnnette_--_L'Eau Courante_--_Scènes de la VieCosmopolite_--Catulle Mendès. CONCLUSION 556 APPENDIX 571 INDEX 577 CHAPTER I MADAME DE STAËL AND CHATEAUBRIAND [Sidenote: Reasons for beginning with Mme. De Staël. ] It has often been thought, and sometimes said, that the period of theFrench Revolution and of the Napoleonic wars--extending as it doesstrictly to more than a quarter of a century, while four decades weremore than completed before a distinct turn of tide--is, for France, theleast individual and least satisfactorily productive time in all hergreat literature. And it is, to a large extent, true. But the loss ofindividuality implies the presence of indiscernibility; and not to goout of our own department, there are at least three writers who, if butpartially, cancel this entry to discredit. Of one of them--the lowest ingeneral literature, if not quite in our division ofit--Pigault-Lebrun--we have spoken in the last volume. The othertwo--much less craftsmanlike novelists merely as such, but immeasurablygreater as man and woman of letters--remain for discussion in the firstchapter of this. In pure chronological order Chateaubriand should comefirst, as well as in other "ranks" of various kinds. But History, thoughit may never neglect, may sometimes overrule Chronology by help of alarger and higher point of view: sex and birth hardly count here, andthe departmental primes the intrinsic literary importance. Chateaubriand, too, was a little younger than Madame de Staël in years, though his actual publication, in anything like our kind, came beforehers. And he reached much farther than she did, though curiously enoughsome of his worst faults were more of the eighteenth century than hers. She helped to finish "Sensibility"; she transformed "Philosophism" intosomething more modern; she borrowed a good deal (especially in theregion of aesthetics) that was to be importantly germinal from Germany. But she had practically nothing of that sense of the past and of thestrange which was to rejuvenate all literature, and which he had; whileshe died before the great French Romantic outburst began. So let usbegin with her. [8] [Sidenote: _Delphine. _] "This dismal trash, which has nearly dislocated the jaws of every criticwho has read it, " was the extremely rude judgment pronounced by SydneySmith on Madame de Staël's _Delphine_. Sydney was a good-natured personand a gentleman, nor had he, merely as a Whig, any reason to quarrelwith the lady's general attitude to politics--a circumstance which, oneregrets to say, did in those days, on both sides, rather improperlyqualify the attitude of gentlemen to literary ladies as well as to eachother. It is true that the author of _Corinne_ and of _Delphine_ itselfhad been rather a thorn in the side of the English Whigs by dint of someof her opinions, by much of her conduct, and, above all, by certainpeculiarities which may be noticed presently. But Sydney, though a Whig, was not "a _vile_ Whig, " for which reason the Upper Powers, in his lateryears, made him something rather indistinguishable from a Tory. And thatblunt common sense, which in his case cohabited with the finest_un_common wit, must have found itself, in this instance, by no meansat variance with its housemate in respect of Anne Germaine Necker. There are many _worse_ books than _Delphine_. It is excellently written;there is no bad blood in it; there is no intentional licentiousness; onthe contrary, there are the most desperate attempts to live up to a NewMorality by no means entirely of the Wiggins kind. But there is anabsence of humour which is perfectly devastating: and there is apresence of the most disastrous atmosphere of sham sentiment, shammorality, sham almost everything, that can be imagined. It was hinted inthe last volume that Madame de Staël's lover, Benjamin Constant, showsin one way the Nemesis of Sensibility; so does she herself in another. But the difference! In _Adolphe_ a coal from the altar of true passionhas touched lips in themselves polluted enough, and the result is whatit always is in such, alas! rare cases, whether the lips were pollutedor not. In _Delphine_ there is a desperate pother to strike some sort oflight and get some sort of heat; but the steel is naught, the flint isclay, the tinder is mouldy, and the wood is damp and rotten. No glow ofbrand or charcoal follows, and the lips, untouched by it, utter nothingbut rhetoric and fustian and, as the Sydneian sentence speaks it, "trash. "[9] [Sidenote: The tone. ] In fact, to get any appropriate metaphorical description of it one hasto change the terminology altogether. In a very great line Mr. Kiplinghas spoken of a metaphorical ship-- With a drogue of dead convictions to keep her head to gale. Madame de Staël has cast off not only that drogue, but even the otherand perhaps commoner floating ballast and steadier of dead_conventions_, and is trying to beat up against the gale by help of allsorts of jury-masts and extemporised try-sails of other new conventionsthat are mostly blowing out of the bolt-ropes. We said that Crébillon'sworld was an artificial one, and one of not very respectable artifice. But it worked after a fashion; it was founded on some real, howeverunrespectable, facts of humanity; and it was at least amusing to thenaughty players on its stage to begin with, and long afterwards to theguiltless spectators of the commonty. In _Delphine_ there is not aglimmer of amusement from first to last, and the whole story is compact(if that word were not totally inapplicable) of windbags of sentiment, copy-book headings, and the strangest husks of neo-classic type-worship, stock character, and hollow generalisation. An Italian is necessarily aperson of volcanic passions; an Englishman or an American (at this timethe identification was particularly unlucky) has, of equal necessity, agrave and reserved physiognomy. Orthodox religion is a mistake, but akind of moral-philosophical Deism (something of the Wolmar type) ishighly extolled. You must be technically "virtuous" yourself, even ifyou bring a whole second volume of tedious tortures on you by being so;but you may play Lady Pandara to a friend who is a devout adulteress, may force yourself into her husband's carriage when he is carrying heroff from one assignation, and may bring about his death by contrivinganother in your own house. In fact, the whole thing is topsy-turvy, without the slightest touch of that animation and interested curiositywhich topsy-turviness sometimes contributes. But perhaps one should givea more regular account of it. [Sidenote: The story. ] Delphine d'Albémar is a young, beautiful, rich, clever, generous, and, in the special and fashionable sense, extravagantly "sensible" widow, who opens the story (it is in the troublesome epistolary form) byhanding over about a third of her fortune to render possible themarriage of a cousin of her deceased husband. This cousin, Matilde deVernon, is also beautiful and accomplished, but a _dévote_, altogetherwell-regulated and well-conducted, and (though it turns out that she hasstrong and permanent affections) the reverse of "sensible"--in factrather hard and disagreeable--in manner. She has a scheming mother, whohas run herself deeply, though privately, into debt, and the intendedhusband and son-in-law, Léonce de Mandeville, also has a mother, who ishalf Spanish by blood and residence, and wholly so (according to thetype-theory above glanced at) in family pride, personal _morgue_, and soforth. A good deal of this has descended to her son, with whom, in spiteor because of it, Delphine (she has not seen him before her rashgenerosity) proceeds to fall frantically in love, as he does with her. The marriage, however, partly by trickery on Madame de Vernon's part, and partly owing to Delphine's more than indiscreet furthering of herfriend Madame d'Ervin's intrigue with the Italian M. De Serbellane, doestake place, and Mme. De Staël's idea of a nice heroine makes her stationDelphine in a white veil, behind a pillar of the church, mutteringreproaches at the bridegroom. No open family rupture, however, iscaused; on the contrary, a remarkable and inevitably disastrous "triplearrangement" follows (as mentioned above), for an entire volume, inwhich the widow and the bridegroom make despairing love to each other, refraining, however, from any impropriety, and the wife, thoughsuffering (for she, in her apparently frigid way, really loves herhusband), tolerates the proceeding after a fashion. This impossible andpreposterous situation is at last broken up by the passion and violenceof another admirer of Delphine--a certain M. De Valorbe. These bringabout duels, wounds, and Delphine's flight to Switzerland, where sheputs up in a convent with a most superfluous and in every wayunrefreshing new personage, a widowed sister of Madame de Mandeville. Valorbe follows, and, to get hold of Delphine, machinates one of themost absurd scenes in the whole realm of fiction. He lures her intoAustrian territory and a chamber with himself alone, locks the door andthrows the key out of the window, [10] storms, rants, threatens, butproceeds to no _voie de fait_, and merely gets himself and the object ofhis desires arrested by the Austrians! He thus succeeds, while procuringno gratification for himself, in entirely demolishing the last shred ofreputation which, virtuous as she is in her own way, Delphine's variouseccentricities and escapades have left her; and she takes the veil. Inthe first form the authoress crowned this mass of absurdities with thesuicide of the heroine and the judicial shooting of the hero. Somebodyremonstrated, and she made Delphine throw off her vows, engage herselfto Léonce (whose unhappy wife has died from too much carrying out of theduty of a mother to her child), and go with him to his estates in LaVendée, where he is to take up arms for the king. Unfortunately, theVendéans by no means "see" their _seigneur_ marrying an apostate nun, and strong language is used. So Delphine dies, not actually by her ownhand, and Léonce gets shot, more honourably than he deserves, on thepatriot-royalist side. Among the minor characters not yet referred to are an old-maidsister-in-law of Delphine's, who, though tolerably sensible in thebetter sense, plays the part of confidante to her brother's _mijaurée_of a widow much too indulgently; a M. Barton, Léonce's mentor, who, despite his English-looking name, is not (one is glad to find) English, but is, to one's sorrow, one of the detestable "parsons-in-tie-wigs"whom French Anglomania at this time foisted on us as characteristic ofEngland; a sort of double of his, M. De Lerensei, a Protestantfree-thinker, who, with his _divorcée_ wife, puts up grass altars intheir garden with inscriptions recording the happiness of their queerunion; an ill-natured Mme. Du Marset and her old cicisbeo, M. DeFierville, who suggest, in the dismallest way, the weakest wine ofMarmontel gone stale and filtered through the dullest, though not thedirtiest, part of Laclos. Yet the thing, "dismal trash" as Sydney almost justly called it, isperhaps worth reading once (nothing but the sternest voice of dutycould have made me read it twice) because of the existence of _Corinne_, and because also of the undoubted fact that, here as there, though muchmore surprisingly, a woman of unusual ability was drawing a picture ofwhat she would have liked to be--if not of what she actually thoughtherself. [11] The borrowed beauty goes for nothing--it were indeed hardif one did not, in the case of a woman of letters, "let her make herdream All that she would, " like Tennyson's Prince, but in this otherrespect. The generosity, less actually exaggerated, might also pass. That Delphine makes a frantic fool of herself for a lover whoseattractions can only make male readers shrug their shoulders--for thoughwe are _told_ that Léonce is clever, brave, charming, and what not, wesee nothing of it in speech or action--may be matter of taste; but thather heroine's part should seem to any woman one worth playing is indeedwonderful. Delphine behaves throughout like a child, and by no meansalways like a very well-brought-up child; she never seems to have thevery slightest idea that "things are as they are and that theirconsequences will be what they will be"; and though, once more, we are_told_ of passion carrying all before it, we are never _shown_ it. It isall "words, words. " To speak of her love in the same breath with Julie'sis to break off the speech in laughter; to consider her woes andremember Clarissa's is to be ready to read another seven or eightvolumes of Richardson in lieu of these three of Madame de Staël's. And yet this lady could do something in the novel way, and, when thetime came, she did it. [Sidenote: _Corinne. _] Between _Delphine_ and _Corinne_ Madame de Staël had, in the fullestsense of a banal phrase, "seen a great of the world. " She had lost theillusions which the Duessa Revolution usually spreads among clever butnot wise persons at her first appearance, and had not left her bones, as too many[12] such persons do, in the _pieuvre_-caves which themonster keeps ready. She had seen England, being "coached" byCrabb-Robinson and others, so as to give some substance to the vague_philosophe-Anglomane_ flimsiness of her earlier fancy. She had seenRepublicanism turn to actual Tyranny, and had made exceedinglyunsuccessful attempts to captivate the tyrant. She had seen Germany, andhad got something of its then not by any means poisonous, if somewhatwindy, "culture"; a little romance of a kind, though she was never areal Romantic; some aesthetics; some very exoteric philosophy, etc. Shehad done a great deal of not very happy love-making; had been a woman ofletters, a patroness of men of letters, and--most important of all--hadnever dismounted from her old hobby "Sensibility, " though she had learnthow to put it through new paces. A critical reader of _Corinne_ must remember all this, and he mustremember something else, though the reminder has been thought to savourof brutality. It is perfectly clear to me, and always has been so fromreading (in and between the lines) of her own works, of LadyBlennerhassett's monumental book on her, of M. Sorel's excellentmonograph, and of scores of longer and shorter studies on and referencesto her English and German and Swiss and French--from her own timedownwards, that the central secret, mainspring, or whatever any one maychoose to call it, of Madame de Staël's life was a frantic desire forthe physical beauty which she did not possess, [13] and a persistentattempt, occasionally successful, to delude herself into believing thatshe had achieved a sufficient substitute by literary, philosophical, political, and other exertion. [Sidenote: Its improved conditions. ] This partly pathetic, partly, alas! ridiculous, but on the whole (with alittle charity) quite commiserable endeavour, attained some success, though probably with not a little extraneous help, in _De l'Allemagne_, and the posthumous _Considérations_ on the Revolution; but these booksdo not concern us, and illustrate only part of the writer's character, temperament, and talent, if not genius. _Corinne_ gives us the rest, andnearly, if not quite, the whole. The author had no doubt tried to dothis in _Delphine_, but had then had neither art nor equipment for thetask, and she had failed utterly. She was now well, if not perfectly, equipped, and had learnt not a little of the art to use heracquisitions. _Delphine_ had been dull, absurd, preposterous; _Corinne_, if it has dull patches, saves them from being intolerable. If itssentiment is extravagant, it is never exactly preposterous or exactlyabsurd; for the truth and reality of passion which are absent from theother book are actually present here, though sometimes in unintentionalmasquerade. In fact, _Corinne_, though the sisterhood of the two books is obviousenough, has almost, though not quite, all the faults of _Delphine_removed and some merits added, of which in the earlier novel there isnot the slightest trace. The history of my own acquaintance with it is, I hope, not quite irrelevant. I read it--a very rare thing for me with aFrench novel (in fact I can hardly recollect another instance, except, aquaint contrast, Paul de Kock's _André le Savoyard_)--first in English, and at a very early period of life, and I then thought it nearly asgreat "rot" as I have always thought its predecessor. But though I had, I hope, sense enough to see its faults, I had neither age nor experiencenor literature enough to appreciate its merits. I read it a good deallater in French, and, being then better qualified, _did_ perceive thesemerits, though it still did not greatly "arride" me. Later still--infact, only some twenty years ago--I was asked to re-edit and "introduce"the English translation. It is a popular mistake to think that aneditor, like an advocate, is entitled, if not actually bound, to makethe best case for his client, quite apart from his actual opinions; butin this instance my opinion of the book mounted considerably. And it hascertainly not declined since, though this _History_ has necessitated afourth study of the original, and though I shall neither repeat what Isaid in the Introduction referred to, nor give the impression thererecorded in merely altered words. Indeed, the very purpose of thepresent notice, forming part, as it should, of a connected history ofthe whole department to which the book belongs, requires differenttreatment, and an application of what may be called critical"triangulation" from different stand-points. [Sidenote: An illustrated edition of it. ] By an odd chance and counter-chance, the edition which served for thislast perusal, after threatening to disserve its text, had an exactlycontrary result. It was the handsome two-volume issue of 1841 copiouslyadorned with all sorts of ingenious initial-devices, _culs-de-lampe_, etc. , and with numerous illustrative "cuts" beautifully engraved (forthe most part by English engravers, such as Orrin Smith, the Williamses, etc. ), excellently drawn and composed by French artists from Grosdownwards, but costumed in what is now perhaps the least tolerable styleof dress even to the most catholic taste--that of the Empire in Franceand the Regency in England--and most comically "thought. "[14] At firstsight this might seem to be a disadvantage, as calling attention to, andaggravating, certain defects of the text itself. I found it just thereverse. One was slightly distracted from, and half inclined to makeallowances for, Nelvil's performances in the novel when one saw him--ina Tom-and-Jerry early chimneypot hat, a large coachman's coat flung offhis shoulders and hanging down to his heels, a swallow-tail, tightpantaloons, and Hessian boots--extracting from his bosom his father'sportrait and expressing filial sentiments to it. One was less likely toaccuse Corinne of peevishness when one beheld the delineation of familyworship in the Edgermond household from which she fled. And thefaithful eyes remonstrated with the petulant brain for scoffing atexcessive sentiment, when they saw how everybody was always at somebodyelse's feet, or supporting somebody else in a fainting condition, orresting his or her burning brow on a hand, the elbow of which rested, inits turn, on a pedestal like that of Mr. Poseidon Hicks in _Mrs. Perkins's Ball_. The plates gave a safety-valve to the letterpress in acuriously anodyne fashion which I hardly ever remember to haveexperienced before. Or rather, one transferred to them part, if not thewhole, of the somewhat contemptuous amusement which the manners hadexcited, and had one's more appreciative faculties clear for the bookitself. [Sidenote: The story. ] The story of _Corinne_, though not extraordinarily "accidented" and, aswill be seen, adulterated, or at least mixed, with a good many thingsthat are not story at all, is fairly solid, much more so than that of_Delphine_. It turns--though the reader is not definitely informed ofthis till the book is half over--on the fact of an English nobleman, Lord Edgermond (dead at _temp. _ of tale), having had two wives, thefirst an Italian. By her he had one daughter, whose actual Christianname (unless I forget) we are never told, and he lived with them inItaly till his wife's death. Then he went home and married a secondwife, an English or Scotch woman (for her name seems to have beenMaclinson--a well-known clan) of very prudish disposition. By her he hadanother daughter, Lucile--younger by a good many years than her sister. To that sister Lady Edgermond the second does not behave exactly in thetraditionally novercal fashion, but she is scandalised by the girl'sItalian ways, artistic and literary temperament, desire for society, etc. After Lord Edgermond's death the discord of the two becomesintolerable, and the elder Miss Edgermond, coming of age and into anindependent fortune, breaks loose and returns to Italy, her stepmotherstipulating that she shall drop her family name altogether and allowherself to be given out as dead. She consents (unwisely, but perhapsnot unnaturally), appears in Italy under the name of "Corinne, " andestablishes herself without difficulty in the best Roman society as alady of means, great beauty, irreproachable character, but given toprivate displays of her talents as singer, improvisatrice, actress, andwhat not. But before she has thus thrown a still respectable bonnet over a not toodisreputable mill, something has happened which has, in the long run, fatal consequences. Lord Edgermond has a friend, Lord Nelvil, who has ason rather younger than Corinne. Both fathers think that a marriagewould be a good thing, and the elder Nelvil comes to stay with theEdgermonds to propose it. Corinne (or whatever her name was then) laysherself out in a perfectly innocent but, as he thinks, forward manner toplease him, and he, being apparently (we never see him in person) not alittle of an old fool, cries off this project, but tells Edgermond thathe should like his son to marry Lucile when she grows up. Without an intolerable dose of "argument, " it is only possible to sayhere that Nelvil, after his father's death, journeys to the Continent(where he has been already engaged in a questionable _liaison_), meetsCorinne, and, not at first knowing in the least who she is, falls, orthinks he falls, frantically in love with her, while she really doesfall more frantically in love with him. After a sojourn, of which alittle more presently, circumstances make him (or he thinks they makehim) return home, and he falls, or thinks he falls, [15] out of love withCorinne and into it (after a fashion) with Lucile. Corinne undertakes anincognito journey to England to find out what is happening, but (this, though not impossible in itself, is, as told, the weakest part of thestory) never makes herself known till too late, and Nelvil, partly outof respect for his father's wishes, and partly, one fears, becauseLucile is very pretty and Corinne seems to be very far off, marries theyounger sister. It would have greatly improved the book if, with or even without a"curtain, " it had ended here. But Madame de Staël goes on to tell us howNelvil, who is a soldier by profession, [16] leaves his wife and a littledaughter, Juliette, and goes to "Les Iles" on active service for fouryears; how Lucile, not unnaturally, suspects hankering after the sistershe has not seen since her childhood; how, Nelvil being invalided home, they all go to Italy, and find Corinne in a dying condition; how Lucileat first refuses to see her, but, communications being opened by thechild Juliette, reconciliations follow; and how Corinne dies with Nelviland Lucile duly kneeling at her bedside. The minor personages of any importance are not numerous. Besides LadyEdgermond, they consist of the Comte d'Erfeuil, a French travellingcompanion of Nelvil's; the Prince of Castel-Forte, an Italian of thehighest rank; a Mr. Edgermond, who does not make much appearance, but ismore like a real Englishman in his ways and manners than Nelvil; an oldScotch nincompoop named Dickson, who, unintentionally, makes mischiefwherever he goes as surely as the personage in the song made music. LadyEdgermond, though she is neither bad nor exactly ill-natured, is theevil genius of the story. Castel-Forte, a most honourable and excellentgentleman, has so little of typical Italianism in him that, findingCorinne will not have him, he actually serves as common friend, confidant, and almost as honourable go-between, to her and Nelvil. On the other hand, French critics have justly complained, and criticsnot French may endorse the complaint, that the Comte d'Erfeuil is a merecaricature of the "frivolous" French type too commonly accepted out ofFrance. He is well-mannered, not ill-natured, and even not, personally, very conceited, but utterly shallow, incapable of a serious interest inart, letters, or anything else, blandly convinced that everything Frenchis superlative and that nothing not French is worthy of attention. Although he appears rather frequently, he plays no real part in thestory, and, unless there was some personal grudge to pay off (which isnot unlikely), it is difficult to imagine why Madame de Staël shouldhave introduced a character which certainly does her skill as acharacter-drawer very little credit. [Sidenote: The character of Nelvil. ] It is, however, quite possible that she was led astray by awill-o'-the-wisp, which has often misled artists not of the very firstclass--the chance of an easy contrast. The light-hearted, light-mindedErfeuil was to set off the tense and serious Nelvil--a type again, as hewas evidently intended to be, but a somewhat new type of Englishman. Shewas a devotee of Rousseau, and she undoubtedly had the egregious Bomstonbefore her. But, though her sojourn in England had not taught her verymuch about actual Englishman, she had probably read Mackenzie, and knewthat the "Man of Feeling" touch had to some extent affected us. Shetried to combine the two, with divers hints of hearsay and a good dealof pure fancy, and the result was Oswald, Lord Nelvil. As with thatother curious contemporary of hers with whom we deal in this chapter, the result was startlingly powerful in literature. There is no doubtthat the Byronic hero, whose importance of a kind is unmistakable andundeniable, is Schedoni, René, and Nelvil sliced up, pounded in amortar, and made into a rissole with Byron's own sauce of style inrhetoric or (if anybody will have it so) poetry, but with very littlemore substantial ingredients. As for the worthy peer of Scotland orEngland, more recent estimates have seldom been favourable, and neverought to have been so. M. Sorel calls him a "snob"; but that is only oneof the numerous and, according to amiable judgments, creditableinstances of the inability of the French to discern exactly what"snobbishness" is. [17] My Lord Nelvil has many faults and very fewmerits, but among the former I do not perceive any snobbishness. He isnot in the least attracted by Corinne's popularity, either with thegreat vulgar or the small, and his hesitations about marrying her do notarise from any doubt (while he is still ignorant on the subject) of hersocial worthiness to be his wife. He _is_ a prig doubtless, but he is aprig of a very peculiar character--a sort of passionate prig, or, to putit in another way, one of Baudelaire's "Enfants de la lune, " who, notcontent with always pining after the place where he is not and the lovethat he has not, is constantly making not merely himself, but the placewhere he is and the love whom he has, uncomfortable and miserable. Therecan, I think, be little doubt that Madame de Staël, who frequentlyinsists on his "irresolution" (remember that she had been in Germany andheard the Weimar people talk), meant him for a sort of modern Hamlet invery different circumstances as well as times. But it takes yourShakespeare to manage your Hamlet, and Madame de Staël was notShakespeare, even in petticoats. [Sidenote: And the book's absurdities. ] The absurdities of the book are sufficiently numerous. Lord Nelvil, whohas not apparently had any special experience of the sea, "advises" thesailors, and takes the helm during a storm on his passage from Harwichto Emden; while these English mariners, unworthy professionaldescendants of that admirable man, the boatswain of the opening scenesof _The Tempest_, are actually grateful to him, and when he goes 'ashore"press themselves round him" to take leave of him (that is to say, theydo this in the book; what in all probability they actually _said_ wouldnot be fit for these pages). He is always saving people--imprisonedJews and lunatics at a fire in Ancona; aged lazzaroni who getcaught in a sudden storm-wave at Naples; and this in spite of theconvenient-inconvenient blood-vessels which break when it is necessary, but still make it quite easy for him to perform these Herculean featsand resume his rather interim military duties when he pleases. As forCorinne, her exploits with her "schall" (a vestment of which Madame deStaël also was fond), and her crowning in the Capitol, where the crowntumbles off--an incident which in real life would be slightly comical, but which here only gives Nelvil an opportunity of picking it up--form asimilar prelude to a long series of extravagances. The culmination ofthem is that altogether possible-improbable visit to England, whichmight have put everything right and does put everything wrong, and theincurable staginess which makes her, as above related, refuse to seeOswald and Lucile _together_ till she is actually in _articulo mortis_. And yet--"for all this and all this and twice as much as all this"--Ishould be sorry for any one who regards Corinne as merely a tedious andnot at all brief subject for laughter. One solid claim which itpossesses has been, and is still for a moment, definitely postponed; butin another point there is, if not exactly a defence, an immensecounterpoise to the faults and follies just mentioned. Corinne to fartoo great an extent, and Oswald to an extent nearly but not quite fatal, are loaded (_affublés_, to use the word we borrowed formerly) with amass of corporal and spiritual wiglomeration (as Mr. Carlyle usedexpressively and succinctly to call it) in costume and fashion andsentiment and action and speech. But when we have stripped this off, _manet res_--reality of truth and fact and nature. [Sidenote: Compensations--Corinne herself. ] There should be no doubt of this in Corinne's own case. It has been saidfrom the very first that she is, as Delphine had been, if not what hercreatress was, what she would have liked to be. The ideal in the formercase was more than questionable, and the execution was very bad. Herethe ideal is far from flawless, but it is greatly improved, and theexecution is improved far more than in proportion. Corinne is not "areasonable woman"; but reason, though very heartily to be welcomed onits rare occurrences in that division of humanity, when it does notexclude other things more to be welcomed still, is very decidedly not tobe preferred to the other things themselves. Corinne has these--or mostof them. She is beautiful; she is amiable; she is unselfish; without theslightest touch of prudery she has the true as well as the technicalchastity; and she is really the victim of inauspicious stars, and of themisconduct of other people--the questionable wisdom of her own father;the folly of Nelvil's; the wilfulness in the bad sense, and the weaknessof will in the good, of her lover; the sour virtue and _borné_temperament of Lady Edgermond. Almost all her faults and not a few ofher misfortunes are due to the "sensibility" of her time, or the time alittle before her; for, as has been more than hinted already, _Corinne_, though a book of far less genius, strength, and concentration than_Adolphe_, is, like it, though from the other side, and on a far largerscale, the history of the Nemesis of Sensibility. [Sidenote: Nelvil again. ] But Nelvil? He is, it has been said, a deplorable kind of creature--akind of creature (to vary Dr. Johnson's doom on the unlucky mutton)ill-_bred_, ill-educated, ill- (though not quite in the ordinary sense)natured, ill-fated to an extent which he could partly, but only partly, have helped; and ill-conducted to an extent which he might have helpedalmost altogether. But is he unnatural? I fear--I trow--not. He is, Ithink, rather more natural than Edgar of Ravenswood, who is something ofthe same class, and who may perhaps owe a very little to him. At anyrate, though he has more to do with the theatre, he is less purelytheatrical than that black-plumed Master. And it seems to me that he ismore differentiated from the Sensibility heroes than even Corinneherself is from the Sensibility heroines, though one sympathises withher much more than with him. _Homo est_, though scarcely _vir_. Now itis humanity which we have been always seeking, but not always finding, in the long and often brilliant list of French novels before his day. And we have found it here once more. [Sidenote: Its aesthetics. ] But we find also something more; and this something more gives it notmerely an additional but even to some extent a fresh hold upon thehistory of the novel itself. To say that it is in great part a"guide-book novel, " as indeed its second title[18] honestly declares, may seem nowadays a doubtful testimonial. It is not really so. For itwas, with certain exceptions in German, the _first_ "guide-book" novel:and though some of those exceptions may have shown greater 'literarygenius than Madame de Staël's, the Germans, though they have, in certainlines, had no superiors as producers of tales, have never produced agood novel yet. [19] Moreover, the guide-book element is a great set-offto the novel. It is not--or at any rate it is not necessarily--liable tothe objections to "purpose, " for it is ornamental and not structural. Ittakes a new and important and almost illimitably fresh province ofnature and of art, which is a part of nature, to be its appanage. Itwould be out of place here to trace the development of this system ofreinforcing the novel beyond France, in Scott more particularly. It isnot out of place to remind the reader that even Rousseau (to whom Madamede Staël owed so much) to some extent, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre andChateaubriand to more, as far as what we may call scenery-guide-bookinggoes, had preceded her. But for the "art, " the aesthetic addition, shewas indebted only to the Germans; and almost all her French successorswere indebted to her. [20] [Sidenote: The author's position in the History of the Novel. ] Although, therefore, it is hardly possible to call Madame de Staël agood novelist, she occupies a very important position in the history ofthe novel. She sees, or helps to see, the "sensibility" novel out, withforcible demonstration of the inconveniences of its theory. She helps tosee the aesthetic novel--or the novel highly seasoned and evensandwiched with aesthetics--in. She manages to create at least onecharacter to whom the epithets of "noble" and "pathetic" can hardly berefused; and at least one other to which that of "only too natural, " ifwith an exceptional and faulty kind of nature, must be accorded. At atime when the most popular, prolific, and in a way craftsmanlikepractitioner of the kind, Pigault-Lebrun, was dragging it throughvulgarity, she keeps it at any rate clear of that. Her description isadequate: and her society-and-manners painting (not least in the _récit_giving Corinne's trials in Northumberland) is a good deal more thanadequate. Moreover, she preserves the tradition of the great_philosophe_ group by showing that the writer of novels can also be theauthor of serious and valuable literature of another kind. These are nosmall things to have done: and when one thinks of them one is almostable to wipe off the slate of memory that awful picture of a turbaned or"schalled" Blowsalind, with arms[21] like a "daughter of the plough, "which a cruel tradition has perpetuated as frontispiece to some cheapeditions of her works. * * * * * [Sidenote: Chateaubriand--his peculiar position as a novelist. ] There is perhaps no more difficult person to appraise in all Frenchliterature--there are not many in the literature of the world--thanFrançois René, Vicomte de Chateaubriand. It is almost more difficultthan in the case of his two great disciples, Byron and Hugo, to keep hispersonality out of the record: and it is a not wholly agreeablepersonality. Old experience may perhaps attain to this, and leave toghouls and large or small coffin-worms the business of investigating andpossibly fattening on the thing. But even the oldest experience dealingwith his novels (which were practically all early) may find itselfconsiderably _tabusté_, as Rabelais has it, that is to say, "bothered"with faults which are mitigated in the _Génie du Christianisme_, comparatively (not quite) unimportant in the _Voyages_, and almostentirely whelmed in the _Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe_. These faults are ofsuch a complicated and various kind that the whole armour of criticismis necessary to deal with them, on the defensive in the sense of notbeing too much influenced by them, and on the offensive in the sense ofbeing severe but not too severe on them. [Sidenote: And the remarkable interconnection of his works in fiction. ] The mere reader of Chateaubriand's novels generally begins with _Atala_and _René_, and not uncommonly stops there. In a certain sense thisreader is wise in his generation. But he will never understand hisauthor as a novelist if he does so; and his appreciation of the books orbooklets themselves will be very incomplete. They are both notunfrequently spoken of as detached episodes of the _Génie duChristianisme_; and so they are, in the illustrative sense. They areactually, and in the purely constitutive way, episodes of another book, _Les Natchez_, while this book itself is also a novel "after a sort. "The author's work in the kind is completed by the later _Les Martyrs_, which has nothing to do, in persons or time, with the others, beingoccupied with the end of the third century, while they deal (throwingback a little in _Atala_) with the beginning of the eighteenth. But thisalso is an illustrative companion or reinforcement of the _Génie_. Withthat book the whole body of Chateaubriand's fiction[22] is thus directlyconnected; and the entire collection, not a little supported by the_Voyages_, constitutes a deliberate "literary offensive, " intended tocounter-work the proceedings of the _philosophes_, though with aid drawnfrom one of them--Rousseau, --and only secondarily designed to providepure novel-interest. If this is forgotten, the student will find himselfat sea without a rudder; and the mere reader will be in danger ofexaggerating very greatly, because he does not in the least understand, the faults just referred to, and of failing altogether to appreciate thereal success and merit of the work as judged on that only criterion, "Has the author done what he meant to do, and done it well, on the lineshe chose?" Of course, if our reader says, "I don't care about all this, I merely want to be amused and interested, " one cannot prevent him. Hehad, in fact, as was hinted just now, better read nothing but _Atala_and _René_, if not, indeed, _Atala_ only, immense as is the literaryimportance of its companion. But in a history of the novel one isentitled to hope, at any rate to wish, for a somewhat better kind ofcustomer or client. According to Chateaubriand's own account, when he quitted England afterhis not altogether cheerful experiences there as an almost penniless_émigré_, he left behind him, in the charge of his landlady, exactly2383 folio pages of MSS. Enclosed in a trunk, and (by a combination ofmerit on the custodian's part and luck on his own) recovered themfifteen years afterwards, _Atala_, _René_, and a few other fragmentshaving alone accompanied him. These were published independently, the_Génie_ following. _Les Martyrs_ was a later composition altogether, while _Les Natchez_, the _matrix_ of both the shorter stories, andincluded, as one supposes, in the 2383 waifs, was partly rewritten andwholly published later still. A body of fiction of such a singularcharacter is, as has been said, not altogether easy to treat; but, without much change in the method usually pursued in this _History_, wemay perhaps do best by first giving a brief argument of the variouscontents and then taking up the censure, in no evil sense, of thewhole. [Sidenote: _Atala. _] _Atala_ is short and almost entirely to the point. The heroine is ahalf-breed girl with a Spanish father and for mother an Indian of somerank in her tribe, who has subsequently married a benevolent chief. Sheis regarded as a native princess, and succeeds in rescuing from theusual torture and death, and fleeing with, a captive chief of another"nation. " This is Chactas, important in _René_ and also in the _Natchez_framework. They direct their flight northwards to the French settlements(it is late seventeenth or early eighteenth century throughout), and ofcourse fall in love with each other. But Atala's mother, a Christian, has, in the tumult of her early misfortunes, vowed her daughter'svirginity or death; and when, just before the crucial moment, amissionary opportunely or inopportunely occurs, Atala has already takenpoison, with the object, it would appear, not so much of preventing asof avenging, of her own free will, a breach of the vow. The rest of thestory is supplied by the vain attempts of the good father to save her, his evangelising efforts towards the pair, and the sorrows of Chactasafter his beloved's death. The piece, of course, shows that exaggeratedand somewhat morbid pathos of circumstance which is the common form ofthe early romantic efforts, whether in England, Germany, or France. Butthe pathos _is_ pathos; the unfamiliar scenery, unlike that of Bernardinde Saint-Pierre (to whom, of course, Chateaubriand is much indebted, though he had actually seen what he describes), is not overdone, andsuits the action and characters very well indeed. Chactas here is thebest of all the "noble savages, " and (what hardly any other of them is)positively good. Atala is really tragic and really gracious. Themissionary stands to other fictitious, and perhaps some real, missionaries very much as Chactas does to other savages of story, if notof life. The proportion of the whole is good, and in the humble opinionof the present critic it is by far Chateaubriand's best thing in allperhaps but mere writing. And even in this it is bad to beat, in him or out of him. The smallspace forbids mere surplusage of description, and the plot--as all plotsshould do, but, alas! as few succeed in doing--acts as a bellows tokindle the flame and intensify the heat of something far better thandescription itself--passionate character. There are many finethings--mixed, no doubt, with others not so fine--in the tempestuousscene of the death of Atala, which should have been the conclusion ofthe story. But this, in its own way, seems to me little short ofmagnificent: "I implored you to fly; and yet I knew I should die if you were not with me. I longed for the shadow of the forest; and yet I feared to be with you in a desert place. Ah! if the cost had only been that of quitting parents, friends, country! if--terrible as it is to say it--there had been nothing at stake but the loss of my own soul. [23] But, O my mother! thy shade was always there--thy shade reproaching me with the torments it would suffer. I heard thy complaints; I saw the flames of Hell ready to consume thee. My nights were dry places full of ghosts; my days were desolate; the dew of the evening dried up as it touched my burning skin. I opened my lips to the breeze; and the breeze, instead of cooling me, was itself set aglow by the fire of my breath. What torment, Chactas! to see you always near me, far from all other humankind in the deepest solitude, and yet to feel that between us there was an insuperable barrier! To pass my life at your feet, to serve you as a slave, to bring you food and lay your couch in some secret corner of the universe, would have been for me supremest happiness; and this happiness was within my touch, yet I could not enjoy it. Of what plans did I not dream? What vision did not arise from this sad heart? Sometimes, as I gazed on you, I went so far as to form desires as mad as they were guilty: sometimes I could have wished that there were no living creatures on earth but you and me; sometimes, feeling that there was a divinity mocking my wicked transports, I could have wished that divinity annihilated, if only, locked in your arms, I might have sunk from abyss to abyss with the ruins of God and of the world. Even now--shall I say it?--even now, when eternity waits to engulf me, when I am about to appear before the inexorable Judge--at the very moment when my mother may be rejoicing to see my virginity devour my life--even now, by a terrible contradiction, I carry with me the regret that I have not been yours!" At this let who will laugh or sneer, yawn or cavil. But as literature itlooks back to Sappho and Catullus and the rest, and forward to all greatlove-poetry since, while as something that is even greater thanliterature--life--it carries us up to the highest Heaven and down to thenethermost Hell. [Sidenote: _René. _] _René_[24] has greater fame and no doubt exercised far more influence;indeed in this respect _Atala_ could not do much, for it is not theeternal, but the temporal, which "influences. " But, in the same humbleopinion, it is extremely inferior. The French Werther[25] (for theattempt to rival Goethe on his own lines is hardly, if at all, veiled)is a younger son of a gentle family in France, whose father dies. Helives for a time with an elder brother, who seems to be "more kin thankind, " and a sister Amélie, to whom he is fondly, but fraternally, attached. René has begun the trick of disappointment early, and, after atime, determines to travel, fancying when he leaves home that his sisteris actually glad to get rid of him. Of course it is a case of _coelumnon animum_. When he returns he is half-surprised but (for him) whollyglad to be at first warmly welcomed by Amélie; but after a little whileshe leaves him, takes the veil, and lets him know at the last momentthat it is because her affection for him is more than sisterly, thatthis was the reason of her apparent joy when he left her, and thatassociation with him is too much for her passion. [26] _She_ makes anexemplary nun in a sea-side convent, and dies early of disease caughtwhile nursing others. _He_, his wretchedness and hatred of life reachingtheir acme, exiles himself to Louisiana, and gets himself adopted by thetribe of the Natchez, where Chactas is a (though not _the_) chief. [Sidenote: Difference between its importance and its merit. ] Now, of course, if we are content to take a bill and write down Byronand Lamartine, Senancour and _Jacopo Ortis_ (otherwise Ugo Foscolo), Musset, Matthew Arnold, and _tutti quanti_, as debtors to _René_, wegive the tale or episode a historical value which cannot be denied;while its positive aesthetic quality, though it may vary very much indifferent estimates, cannot be regarded as merely worthless. Also, oncemore, there is real pathos, especially as far as Amélie is concerned, though the entire unexpectedness of the revelation of her fatal passion, and the absolute lack of any details as to its origin, rise, andcircumstances, injure sympathy to some extent. But that sympathy, as faras the present writer is concerned, fails altogether with regard to Renéhimself. If his melancholy were traceable to _mutual_ passion of theforbidden kind, or if it had arisen from the stunning effect of therevelation thereof on his sister's side, there would be no difficulty. But, though these circumstances may to some extent accentuate, they havenothing to do with causing the _weltschmerz_ or _selbst-schmerz_, orwhatever it is to be called, of this not very heroic hero. Nor hasChateaubriand taken the trouble--which Goethe, with his more criticalsense of art, _did_ take--to make René go through the whole course ofthe Preacher, or great part of it, before discovering that all wasvanity. He is merely, from the beginning, a young gentleman affectedwith mental jaundice, who cannot or will not discover or takepsychological calomel enough to cure him. It does not seem in the leastlikely that if Amélie had been content to live with him as merely "inall good, all honour" a loving and comforting sister, he would havereally been able to say, like Geraldine in Coleridge's original draft of_Christabel_, "I'm better now. " He is, in fact, what Werther is not--though his own followers to a largeextent are--mainly if not merely a Sulky Young Man: and one cannot helpimagining that if, in pretty early days, some one had been good enoughto apply to him that Herb Pantagruelion, in form not exactly of a halterbut of a rope's end, with which O'Brien cured Peter Simple's _mal demer_, his _mal du siècle_ would have been cured likewise. Of course it is possible for any one to say, "You are a Philistine and aVulgarian. You wish to regard life through a horse-collar, " etc. , etc. But these reproaches would leave my withers quite ungalled. I think_Ecclesiastes_ one of the very greatest books in the world's literature, and _Hamlet_ the greatest play, with the possible exception of the_Agamemnon_. It is the abysmal sadness quite as much as the _furorarduus_ of Lucretius that makes me think him the mightiest of Latinpoets. I would not give the mystical melancholy of certain poems ofDonne's for half a hundred of the liveliest love-songs of the time, andcould extend the list page-long and more if it would not savour ofostentation in more ways than one. But mere temperamental [Greek:heôlokrasia] or [Greek: kraipalê] (next-day nausea), without even theexaltation of a previous orgy to ransom it, --mere spleen and sulks andnaughty-childishness, --seem to me not great things at all. You may notbe able to help your spleen, but you can "cook" it; you may have qualmand headache, but in work of some sort, warlike or peaceful, there isalways small beer, or brandy and soda (with even, if necessary, capsicum or bromide), for the ailment. The Renés who can do nothing butsulk, except when they blunder themselves and make other peopleuncomfortable in attempting to do something, who "never do a [manly]thing and never say a [kind] one, " are, I confess, not to my taste. [27] [Sidenote: _Les Natchez. _] Both these stories, as will have been seen, have a distinctly religiouselement; in fact, a distinctly religious purpose. The largernovel-romance of which they form episodes, as well as its later andgreater successor, _Les Martyrs_, increase the element in both cases, the purpose in the latter; but one of the means by which this increaseis effected has certainly lost--whether it may or may not everrecover--its attraction, except to a student of literary history who iswell out of his novitiate. Such a person should see at once thatChateaubriand's elaborate adoption, from Tasso and Milton, of the systemof interspersed scenes of Divine and diabolic conclaves andinterferences with the story, is an important, if not a wholly happy, instance of that general Romantic _reversion_ to earlier literarydevices, and even atmospheres, of which the still rather enigmaticpersonage who rests enisled off Saint-Malo was so great an apostle. Andit was probably effectual for its time. Classicists could not quarrelwith it, for it had its precedents, indeed its origin, in Homer andVirgil; Romanticists (of that less exclusive class who admitted theRenaissance as well as the Dark and Middle Ages) could not but welcomeit for its great modern defenders and examples. I cannot say that Ienjoy it: but I can tolerate it, and there is no doubt at all, odd as itmay seem to the merely twentieth-century reader, that it did somethingto revive the half-extinct religiosity which had been starved andpoisoned in the later days of the _ancien régime_, forcibly suppressedunder the Republic, and only officially licensed by the Napoleonicsystem. In _Les Martyrs_ it has even a certain "grace of congruity, "[28]but in regard to _Les Natchez_, with which we are for the momentconcerned, almost enough (with an example or two to come presently) hasbeen said about it. The book, as a whole, suffers, unquestionably and considerably, from theresults of two defects in its author. He was not born, as Scott was alittle later, to get the historical novel at last into full life andactivity; and it would not be unfair to question whether he was a bornnovelist at all, though he had not a few of the qualifications necessaryto the kind, and exercised, coming as and when he did, an immenseinfluence upon it. The subject is too obscure. Its only original_vates_, Charlevoix, though always a respectable name to persons of someacquaintance with literature and history, has never been much more, either in France or in England. The French, unluckily for themselves, never took much interest in their transatlantic possessions while theyhad them; and their dealings with the Indians then, and ours afterwards, and those of the Americans since, have never been exactly of the kindthat give on both sides a subject such as may be found in all mediaevaland most Renaissance matters; in the Fronde; in the English Civil War;in the great struggles of France and England from 1688 to 1815; in theJacobite risings; in La Vendée; and in other historical periods andprovinces too many to mention. On the other hand, the abstract "noblesavage" is a faded object of exhausted _engouement_, than which thereare few things less exhilarating. The Indian _ingénu_ (a very differentone from Voltaire's) Outougamiz and his _ingénue_ Mila are rather nice;but Celuta (the ill-fated girl who loves René and whom he marries, because in a sort of way he cannot help it) is an eminent example ofthat helpless kind of quiet misfortune the unprofitableness of which Mr. Arnold has confessed and registered in a famous passage. Chactasmaintains a respectable amount of interest, and his visit to the courtof Louis XIV. Takes very fair rank among a well-known group of things ofwhich it is not Philistine to speak as old-fashioned, because they neverpossessed much attraction, except as being new- or regular-fashioned. But the villain Ondouré has almost as little of the fire of Hell as ofthat of Heaven, and his paramour and accomplice Akansie carries verylittle "conviction" with her. In short, the merit of the book, besidesthe faint one of having been the original framework of _Atala_ and_René_, is almost limited to its atmosphere, and the alterativequalities thereof--things now in a way ancient history--requiring even aconsiderable dose of the not-universally-possessed historic sense todiscern and appreciate them. Outside the "Histoire de Chactas" (which might, like _Atala_ and _René_themselves, have been isolated with great advantage), and exceptinglikewise the passages concerning Outougamiz and Mila--which possess, inconsiderable measure and gracious fashion, what some call the "idyllic"quality--I have found it, on more than one attempt, difficult to takemuch interest in _Les Natchez_, not merely for the reasons alreadygiven, but chiefly owing to them. René's appearances (and he isgenerally in background or foreground) serve better than anything in anyother book, perhaps, to explain and justify the old notion that_accidia_[29] of his kind is not only a fault in the individual, but apositive ill omen and nuisance[30] to others. Neither in the Indiancharacters (with the exceptions named) nor among the French and creoledoes one find relief: and when one passes from them to the "machinery"parts--where, for instance, a "perverse couple, " Satan and La Renommée(_not_ the ship that Trunnion took), embark on a journey in a car withwinged horses--it must be an odd taste which finds things improved. InGreek verse, in Latin verse, or even in Milton's English one could standNight, docile to the orders of Satan, condescending to deflect a hatchetwhich is whistling unpleasantly close to René's ear, not that he may bebenefited, but preserved for more sufferings. In comparatively plainFrench prose--the qualification is intentional, as will be seen a littlelater--with a scene and time barely two hundred years off now and not ahundred then, though in a way unfamiliar--the thing won't do. "Time, " atthe orders of the Prince of Darkness, cutting down trees to make astockade for the Natchez in the eighteenth century, alas! contributesagain the touch of weak allegory, in neither case helping the effect;while, although the plot is by no means badly evolved, the want ofinterest in the characters renders it ineffective. [Sidenote: _Les Martyrs. _] The defects of _Les Martyrs_[31] are fewer in number and less in degree, while its merits are far more than proportionally greater and morenumerous. Needing less historical reinforcement, it enjoys much more. _Les Natchez_ is almost the last, certainly the last important novel ofsavage life, as distinguished from "boys' books" about savages. _LesMartyrs_ is the first of a line of remarkable if not always successfulclassical novels from Lockhart's _Valerius_ to Gissing's _Veranilda_. Ithas nothing really in common with the kind of classical story whichlasted from _Télémaque_ to _Belisarius_ and later. And what is more, itis perhaps better than any of its followers except Kingsley's_Hypatia_, which is admittedly of a mixed kind--a nineteenth-centurynovel, with events, scenes, and _décor_ of the fifth century. If it hasnot the spectacular and popular appeal of _The Last Days of Pompeii_, itescapes, as that does not, the main drawback of almost all theothers--the "classical-dictionary" element: and if, on the other, itsauthor knew less about Christianity than Cardinals Wiseman and Newman, he knew more about lay "humans" than the authors of _Fabiola_ and_Callista_. It is probably unnecessary to point out at any great length that some ofthe drawbacks of _Les Natchez_ disappear almost automatically in _LesMartyrs_. The supernatural machinery is, on the hypothesis and at thetime of the book, strictly congruous and proper; while, as a matter offact, it is in proportion rather less than more used. The time andevents--those of the persecution under Diocletian--are familiar, interesting, and, in a French term for which we have no exactequivalent, _dignes_. There is no sulky spider of a René crawlingabout the piece; and though history is a little strained toprovide incidents, [32] "that's not much, " and they are not inthemselves improbable in any bad sense or degree. Moreover, theclassical-dictionary element, which, as has been said, is so awkward tohandle, is, at least after the beginning, not too much drawn upon. The book, in its later modern editions, is preceded not merely byseveral Prefaces, but by an _Examen_ in the old fashion, and fortifiedby those elaborate citation-notes[33] from authorities ancient andmodern which were a mania at the end of the eighteenth and the beginningof the nineteenth century, and which sometimes divert and sometimesenrage more modern readers in work so different as _Lalla Rookh_ and_The Pursuits of Literature_, while they provided at the time materialfor immortal jokes in such other work as the _Anti-Jacobin_ poems. Inthe Prefaces Chateaubriand discusses the prose epic, and puts himself, quite unnecessarily, under the protection of _Télémaque_: in the_Examen_ he deals systematically with the objections, religious, moral, and literary, which had been made against the earlier editions of thebook. But these things are now little more than curiosities for thestudent, though they retain some general historical importance. [Sidenote: The story. ] The book starts (after an "Invocation, " proper to its scheme but perhapsnot specially attractive "to us") with an account of the household ofDemodocus, a Homerid of Chios, who in Diocletian's earlier andunpersecuting days, after living happily but for too short a time inCrete with his wife Epicharis, loses her, though she leaves him onelittle daughter, Cymodocée, born in the sacred woods of Mount Idaitself. Demodocus is only too glad to accept an invitation to becomehigh priest of a new Temple of Homer in Messenia, on the slopes ofanother mountain, less, but not so much less, famous, Ithome. Cymodocéebecomes very beautiful, and receives, but rejects, the addresses ofHierocles, proconsul of Achaia, and a favourite of Galerius. One day, worshipping in the forest at a solitary Altar of the Nymphs, she meets ayoung stranger whom (she is of course still a pagan) she mistakes forEndymion, but who talks Christianity to her, and reveals himself asEudore, son of Lasthenes. As it turns out, her father knows this person, who has the renown of a distinguished soldier. From this almost any one who has read a few thousand novels--almost anyintelligent person who has read a few hundred--can lay out the probableplot. Love of Eudore and Cymodocée; conversion of the latter; jealousyand intrigues of Hierocles; adventures past and future of Eudore;transfer of scene to Rome; prevalence of Galerius over Diocletian;persecution, martyrdom, and supernatural triumph. But the "fillings up"are not banal; and the book is well worth reading from divers points ofview. In the earliest part there is a little too much Homer, [34]naturally enough perhaps. The ancient world changed slowly, and we knowthat at this particular time Greeks (if not also Romans) rather playedat archaising manners. Still, it is probably not quite safe to take thememorable, if not very resultful, journey in which Telemachus was, rather undeservedly, so lucky as to see Helen and drink Nepenthe[35] andto reproduce it with guide- and etiquette-book exactness, _c. _ A. D. 300. Yet this is, as has been said, very natural; and it arouses manypleasant reminiscences. [Sidenote: Its "panoramic" quality. ] The book, moreover, has two great qualities which were almost, if not quite, new in the novel. In the first place, it has acertain _panoramic_ element which admits--which indeednecessitates--picturesqueness. Much of it is, almost as necessarily, _récit_ (Eudore giving the history of his travels and campaigns); but itis _récit_ of a vividness which had never before been known in French, out of the most accomplished drama, and hardly at all in prose. Theadventures of Eudore require this most, of course, and they get it. Hisearly wild-oats at Rome, which earn him temporary excommunication; hisservice in the wars with the Franks, where, for almost the only time inliterature, Pharamond and Mérovée become living creatures; his captivitywith them; his triumphs in Britain and his official position inBrittany, where the entrance of the Druidess Velléda and the fatal lovebetween them provide perhaps the most famous and actually one of themost effective of the episodes of the book--all "stand out from thecanvas, " as the old phrase goes. Nor is the mastery lost when _récit_becomes direct action, in the scenes of the persecution, and the finalpurification of the hero and crowning of the heroine in theamphitheatre. "The work burns"; and, while it is practically certainthat the writer knew the Scudéry romances, the contrast of this"burning" quality becomes so striking as almost to justify, comparatively if not positively, the accusations of frigidity andlanguor which have been somewhat excessively brought against the earlierperformances. There is not the passion of _Atala_--it would have beenout of place: and there is not the soul-dissection of _René_, for thereis nothing morbid enough to require the scalpel. But, on the other hand, there is the bustle--if that be not too degrading a word--which iswanting in both; the vividness of action and of change; colour, variety, suspense, what may perhaps best be called in one word "pulse, " giving, as a necessary consequence, life. [Sidenote: And its remarkable advance in style. ] And this great advance is partly, if not mainly, achieved byanother--the novelty of _style_. Chateaubriand had set out to give--has, indeed, as far as his intention goes, maintained throughout--an effortat _le style noble_, the already familiar rhetoric, of which, in French, Corneille had been the Dryden and Racine the Pope, while it had, in hisown youth, sunk to the artifice of Delille in verse and the "emphasis"of Thomas in prose. He has sometimes achieved the best, and not seldomsomething that is by no means the worst, of this. But, consciously orunconsciously, he has more often put in the old bottles of form new wineof spirit, which has not only burst them, but by some very satisfactorymiracle of literature shed itself into new receptacles, this time not atall leathery but glass of iridescent colour and graceful shape. It wasalmost inevitable that such a process, at such a time, and with such alanguage--for Chateaubriand did not go to the real "ancient mother" ofpre-_grand siècle_ French--should be now and then merely magniloquent, that it should sometimes fall short of, or overleap, even magniloquenceand become bombast. But sometimes also, and not so seldom, it attainsmagnificence as well; and the promise, at least the opportunity, of suchmagnificence in capable followers can hardly be mistaken. As in hisyounger contemporary, compatriot, and, beyond all doubt, disciple, Lamennais, the results are often crude, unequal, disappointing;insufficiently smelted ore, insufficiently ripened and cellared wine. But the quantity and quality of pure metal--the inspiriting virtue ofthe vintage--in them is extraordinary: and once more it must beremembered that, for the novel, all this was absolutely new. In thisrespect, if in no other, though perhaps he was so in others also, Chateaubriand is a Columbus of prose fiction. Neither in French nor inEnglish, very imperfectly in German, and, so far as I know, not in anyother language to even the smallest degree, had "prose-poetry" beenattempted in this department. "Ossian" perhaps must have some of thecredit: the Bible still more. But wherever the capital was found it wasChateaubriand who put it into the business of novel-writing and turnedout the first specimens of that business with the new materials andplant procured by the funds. [Sidenote: Chateaubriand's Janus-position in this. ] Some difficulties, which hamper any attempt to illustrate and supportthis high praise, cannot require much explanation to make them obvious. It has not been the custom of this book to give large untranslatedextracts: and it is at least the opinion of its author that in mattersof style, translation, even if it be of a much higher quality than heconceives himself able to offer, is, if not quite worthless, veryinadequate. Moreover, it is (or should be) well known that the qualitiesof the old French _style noble_--which, as has been said, Chateaubrianddeliberately adopted, as his starting-point if nothing more--are, evenin their own language, and still more when reproduced in any other, fullof dangers for foreign appreciation. The no doubt largely ignorant andin any case mistaken contempt for French poetry and poetic prose whichso long prevailed among us, and from which even such a critic and such alover (to some extent) of French as Matthew Arnold was not free, wasmainly concerned with this very point. To take a single instance, thepart of De Quincey's "Essay on Rhetoric" which deals with French is madepositively worthless by the effects of this almost racial prejudice. Literal translation of the more _flamboyant_ kind of French writing hasbeen, even with some of our greatest, an effective, if a somewhatfacile, means of procuring a laugh. Furthermore, it has to be rememberedthat this application of ornate style to prose fiction is undoubtedly tosome extent an extraneous thing in the consideration of the novelitself. It is "a grand set off" (in the old phrase) to tale-telling; butit is not precisely of its essence. It deserves to be _constaté_, recorded and set to the credit of those who practise it, and especiallyof those who first introduced it. But it is a question whether, in thenecessarily limited space of a book like this, the consideration of itought to occupy a large room. Still, though the warning, "Be not too bold, " should never be forgotten, it should be remembered that it was given only once and its contraryreiterated: so here goes for one of the most perilous of all possibleadventures--a translation of Chateaubriand's own boldest undertaking, the description of the City of God, in which he was following not onlythe greatest of the Hebrew prophets, but the Vision of Patmos itself. (_"Les Martyrs, " Book III. , opening. The Prayer of Cyril, Bishop of Lacedaemon, has come before the Throne. _) [Sidenote: Illustrated. ] At the centre of all created worlds, in the midst of innumerable stars which serve as its bastions as well as avenues and roads to it, there floats the limitless City of God, the marvels whereof no mortal tongue can tell. The Eternal Himself laid its twelve foundations, and surrounded it with the wall of jasper that the beloved disciple saw measured by an angel with a rod of gold. Clothed with the glory of the Most High, the unseen Jerusalem is decked as a bride for her bridegroom. O monumental structures of earth! ye come not near these of the Holy City. There the richness of the matter rivals the perfection of the form. There hang, royally suspended, the galleries of diamond and sapphire feebly imitated by human skill in the gardens of Babylon. There rise triumphal arches, fashioned of brightest stars. There are linked together porticoes of suns extended across the spaces of the firmament, like the columns of Palmyra over the sands of the desert. This architecture is alive. The City of God has a soul of its own. There is no mere matter in the abiding places of the Spirit; no death in the locality of eternal existence. The grosser words which our muse is forced to employ deceive us, for they invest with body that which is only as a divine dream, in the passing of a blissful sleep. Gardens of delight extend round the radiant Jerusalem. A river flows from the throne of the Almighty, watering the Celestial Eden with floods of pure love and of the wisdom of God. The mystic wave divides into streams which entwine themselves, separate, rejoin, and part again, giving nourishment to the immortal vine, to the lily that is like unto the Bride, and to all the flowers which perfume the couch of the Spouse. The Tree of Life shoots up on the Hill of Incense; and, but a little farther, that of Knowledge spreads on all sides its deep-planted roots and its innumerable branches, carrying hidden in the golden leafage the secrets of the Godhead, the occult laws of Nature, the truths of morality and of the intellect, the immutable principles of good and of evil. The learning which intoxicates _us_ is the common food of the Elect; for in the empire of Sovereign Intelligence the fruit of science no longer brings death. Often do the two great ancestors of the human race come and shed such tears as the Just can still let flow in the shadow of the wondrous Tree. The light which lightens these abodes of bliss is compact of the rose of morning, of the flame of noon, of the purple of even; yet no star appears on the glowing horizon. No sun rises and no sun goes down on the country where nothing ends, where nothing begins. But an ineffable clearness, showering from all sides like a tender dew, maintains the unbroken[36] daylight in a delectable eternity. Of course any one who is so minded may belittle this as classicallycold; even as to some extent _neo_-classically bedizened; as more like, let us say, Moore's _Epicurean_ than like our greater "prose-poets" ofthe seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. The presence inChateaubriand of this dose of the style that was passing, and that hehelped to make pass, has been admitted already: but I confess I think itis only a dose. Those who care to look up the matter for themselvesmight, if they do not choose to read the whole, turn to the admirablepicture of camp-life on the Lower Rhine at the opening of Book VI. As ashort contrast, while the story is full of others. Nor should one forgetto add that Chateaubriand can, when he chooses, be epigrammatic as wellas declamatory. "Such is the ugliness of man when he bids farewell tohis soul and, so to speak, keeps house only with his body" is a phrasewhich might possibly shock La Harpe, but which is, as far as I remember, original, and is certainly crisp and effective enough. Reassembling, then, the various points which we have endeavoured to makein respect of his position as novelist, it may once more be urged thatif not precisely a great master of the complete art of novel-writing, byactual example, he shows no small expertness in various parts of it: andthat, as a teacher and experimenter in new developments of method andindication of new material, he has few superiors in his own country andnot very many elsewhere. That in this pioneer quality, as well as inmere contemporaneousness, he may, though a greater writer, be yoked withthe authoress of _Corinne_ need hardly be argued, for the accounts givenof the two should have sufficiently established it. FOOTNOTES: [8] Although, except in special cases, biographical notices are notgiven here, the reader may be reminded that she was born in 1766, thedaughter of Necker and of Gibbon's early love, Susanne Curchod; marriedat twenty the Swedish ambassador, Baron of Staël-Holstein; sympathisedat first with the Revolution, but was horrified at the murder of theking, and escaped, with some difficulty, from Paris to England, where, as well as in' Germany and at Coppet, her own house in Switzerland, shepassed the time till French things settled down under Napoleon. With himshe tried to get on, as a duplicate of himself in petticoats and therealm of mind. But this was clearly impossible, and she had once more toretire to Coppet. She had separated, though without positive quarrel, from her husband, whom, however, she attended on his death-bed; and theexact character of her _liaisons_ with others, especially M. De Narbonneand Benjamin Constant, is not easy to determine. In 1812 she married, privately, a young officer, Rocca by name, returned to Paris before andafter the Hundred Days, and died there in 1817. [9] I never can make up my mind whether I am more sorry that MadameNecker did not marry Gibbon or that Mademoiselle Necker did not, as wassubsequently on the cards, marry Pitt. The results in either case--both, alas! could hardly have come off--would have been most curious. [10] The most obvious if not the only possible reason for this would beintended outrage, murder, and suicide; but though Valorbe is arobustious kind of idiot, he does not seem to have made up such mind ashe has to this agreeable combination. [11] I forget whether other characters have been identified, but Léoncedoes not appear to have much in him of M. De Narbonne, Corinne's chieflover of the period, who seems to have been a sort of FrenchChesterfield, without the wit, which nobody denies our man, or the realgood-nature which he possessed. [12] Perhaps, after all, _not_ too many, for they all richly deserve it. [13] Eyes like the Ravenswing's, "as b-b-big as billiard balls" and ofsome brightness, are allowed her, but hardly any other good point. [14] I never pretended to be an art-critic, save as complying withBlake's negative injunction or qualification "not to be connoisseuredout of my senses, " and I do not know what is the technical word in thearts of design corresponding to [Greek: dianoia] in literature. [15] I hope this iteration may not seem too damnable. It is intended tobring before the reader's mind the utterly _willowish_ character ofOswald, Lord Nelvil. The slightest impact of accident will bend down, the weakest wind of circumstance blow about, his plans and preferences. [16] That he seems to have unlimited leave is not perhaps, for a peer inthe period, to be cavilled at; the manner in which he alternately breaksblood-vessels and is up to fighting in the tropics may be rather moreso. [17] As I may have remarked elsewhere, they often seem to confuse itwith "priggishness, " "cant, " and other amiable _cosas de Inglaterra_. (The late M. Jules Lemaître, as Professor Ker reminds me, even gave thepicturesque but quite inadequate description: "Le snob est un mouton dePanurge prétentieux, un mouton qui saute à la file, mais d'un airsuffisant. ") We cannot disclaim the general origin, but we may protestagainst confusion of the particular substance. [18] _Corinne, ou l'Italie. _ [19] If anybody thinks _Wilhelm Meister_ or the _Wahlverwandtschaften_ agood novel, I am his very humble servant in begging to differ. Freytag's_Soll und Haben_ is perhaps the nearest approach; but, on English orFrench standards, it could only get a fair second class. [20] Corinne "walks and talks" (as the lady in the song was asked to do, but without requiring the offer of a blue silk gown) with her Oswald allover the churches and palaces and monuments of Rome, "doing" alsoNaples, Venice, etc. [21] She was rather proud of these mighty members: and some readers mayrecall that not least Heinesque remark of the poet who so much shocksKaiser Wilhelm II. , "Those of the Venus of Milo are not more beautiful. " [22] Including also a third short story, _Le Dernier Abencérage_, whichbelongs, constructively, rather to the _Voyages_. It is in a way theliveliest (at least the most "incidented") of all, but not the mostinteresting, and with very little _temporal_ colour, though some local. It may, however, be taken as another proof of Chateaubriand's importancein the germinal way, for it starts the Romantic interest in Spanishthings. The contrast with the dirty rubbish of Pigault-Lebrun's _LaFolie Espagnole_ is also not negligible. [23] For the mother, in a fashion which the good Father-missionary mostrighteously and indignantly denounces as unchristian, had staked her ownsalvation on her daughter's obedience to the vow. [24] Its author, in the _Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe_, expressed a warm wishthat he had never written it, and hearty disgust at its puling admirersand imitators. This has been set down to hypocritical insincerity or thesourness of age: I see neither in it. It ought perhaps to be said thathe "cut" a good deal of the original version. The confession of Améliewas at first less abrupt and so less effective, but the newer form doesnot seem to me to better the state of René himself. [25] There had been a very early French imitation of _Werther_ itself(of the end especially), _Les dernières aventures du sieur d'Olban_, bya certain Ramond, published in 1777, only three years after Goethe. Ithad a great influence on Ch. Nodier (_v. Inf. _), who actuallyrepublished the thing in 1829. [26] This "out-of-bounds" passion will of course be recognised as aRomantic trait, though it had Classical suggestions. Chateaubriandappears to have been rather specially "obsessed" by this form of it, forhe not merely speaks constantly of René as _le frère d'Amélie_, but goesout of his way to make the good Father in _Atala_ refer, almostecstatically, to the happiness of the more immediate descendants of Adamwho were _compelled_ to marry their sisters, if they married anybody. AsI have never been able to take any interest in the discussions of theByron and Mrs. Leigh scandal, I am not sure whether this _tic_ ofChateaubriand's has been noticed therein. But his influence on Byron wasstrong and manifold, and Byron was particularly apt to do things, naughty and other, because somebody else had done or suggested them. Andof course it has, from very early days, been suggested that Amélie is anexperience of Chateaubriand's own. But this, like the investigations asto time and distance and possibility in his travels and much else also, is not for us. Once more I must be permitted to say that I am writingmuch about French novels, little about French novelists, and least ofall about those novelists' biographers, critics, and so forth. Exceptions may be admitted, but as exceptions only. [27] I once had to fight it out in public with a valued and valiantfriend for saying something like this in regard to Edgar ofRavenswood--no doubt, in some sort a child of René's or of Nelvil's; butI was not put to submission. And Edgar had truer causes for sulks thanhis spiritual ancestor had--at least before the tragedy of Amélie. [28] Not in the strict theological meaning of this phrase, of course;but the misuse of it has aesthetic justification. [29] _I. E. _ not mere "sloth, " but the black-blooded and sluggishmelancholy to which Dante pays so much attention in the _Inferno_. Thisdeadly sin we inadequately translate "sloth, " and (on one side of it) itis best defined in Dante's famous lines (_Inf. _ vii. 121-3): Tristi fummo Nell' aer dolce che dal sol s' allegra, Portando dentroaccidioso fummo. Had Amélie sinned and not repented she might have been found in theSecond circle, flying alone; René, except _speciali gratia_, must havesunk to the Fourth. [30] For instance, he goes a-beaver-hunting with the Natchez, but hisusual selfish moping prevents him from troubling to learn the laws ofthe sport, and he kills females--an act at once offensive to Indianreligion, sportsmanship, and etiquette, horrifying to the consciences ofhis adopted countrymen, and an actual _casus belli_ with theneighbouring tribes. [31] Its second title, _ou Le Triomphe de la Religion Chrétienne_, connects it still more closely than _Les Natchez_ with _Le Génie duChristianisme_, which it immediately succeeded in composition, thoughthis took a long time. No book (it would seem in consequence)exemplifies the mania for annotation and "justification" moreextensively. In vol. I. The proportion of notes to text is 112 to 270, in vol. Ii. 123 to 221, and in vol. Iii. , including some extracts fromthe Père Mambrun, 149 to 225. [32] Such as Eudore's early friendship at Rome, before the persecutionunder Diocletian, with Augustine, who was not born till twenty yearslater. [33] See note above. [34] There cannot be too much Homer in Homer; there may be too muchoutside Homer. [35] If one had only been Telemachus at this time! It would have been agood "Declamation" theme in the days of such things, "Should a man--forthis one experience--consent to be Telemachus for the rest of hislife--and after?" [36] In the original the word which I have translated "unbroken" is_éternel_, and with the adjacent _éternité_ illustrates (as do_tonnerre_ and _étonnante_ in Bossuet's famous passage on the death of"Madame") one of the minor but striking differences between French andEnglish rhetoric. Save for some very special purpose, we should considersuch repetition a jingle at best, a cacophony at worst: they think it abeauty. CHAPTER II PAUL DE KOCK, OTHER MINORS OF 1800-1830, AND NODIER [Sidenote: The fate of popular minor novelists. ] The mediocre poet has had a hard fate pronounced against him of old; butthe minor novelist, perhaps because he is much more likely to get somegood things in his own time, has usually a harder lot still, and in morethan one way, after physical or popular death. In fact it may be saidthat, the more popular he is in the one day, the more utterly forgottenhe is likely to be in the other. Besides the obvious facts that hispopularity must always have been gained by the adoption of some more orless ephemeral fashion, and that plenty of his own kind are always readyto take his place--doing, like the heir in the old story, all they canto substitute _Requiescat in Pace_ for _Resurgam_ on hishatchment--there is a more mechanical reason for his occultation. Themore widely he or she has been read the more certain either has been ofbeing "read to pieces. " [Sidenote: Examples of them. ] These fates, and especially the last, have weighed upon the minor Frenchnovelists of the early nineteenth century perhaps even more heavily thanupon our own: for the circulating library was an earlier and a morewidely spread institution in France than in England, and the lower andlowest middle classes were a good deal more given to reading, andespecially to "light" reading, there than here. Nor can it be said thatany of the writers to be now mentioned, with one possible and onecertain exception, is of importance to literature as literature. But all have their importance to literary--and especiallydepartmental-literary--history, in ways which it is hoped presently toshow: and there is still amusement in some. The chief, though not theonly, names that require notice here are those of Mesdames de Montolieuand (again) de Genlis, of Ducray-Duminil, born almost as early asPigault-Lebrun, even earlier a novelist, and yoked with him by VictorHugo in respect of his novel _Lolotte et Fanfan_ in the sneer noted inthe last volume;[37] the _other_ Ducange, again as much "other" as theother Molière;[38] the Vicomte d'Arlincourt; and--a comparative (if, according to some, blackish) swan among these not quite positivegeese--Paul de Kock. The eldest put in his work before the Revolutionand the youngest before Waterloo, but the most prolific time of all wasthat of the first two or three decades of the century with which we aredealing. With these, but not of them--a producer at last of real "letters" andmore than any one else except Chateaubriand (more "intensively" perhapseven than he was) a pioneer of Romanticism--comes Charles Nodier. [Sidenote: Paul de Kock. ] Major Pendennis, in a passage which will probably, at least in England, preserve the name of the author mentioned long after his own works areeven more forgotten with us than they are at present, allowed, whendisparaging novels generally, and wondering how his nephew could havegot so much money for one, that Paul de Kock "certainly made him laugh. "In his own country he had an enormous vogue, till the far greaterliterary powers and the wider range of the school of 1830 put the timesout of joint for him, and even much later. He actually survived theTerrible Year: but something like a lustrum earlier, when running over anot small collection of cheap novels in a French country inn, I do notremember coming across anything of his. And he had long been classed as"not a serious person" (which, indeed, he certainly was not) by Frenchcriticism, not merely of the most academic sort, but of all decidedlyliterary kinds. People allowed him _entrain_, a word even more difficultthan _verve_ to English exactly, though "go" does in a rough sort of wayfor both. They were of course not very much shocked at his indecorums, which sometimes gave occasion for not bad jokes. [39] But if anyforeigner made any great case of him they would probably have looked, ifthey did not speak their thoughts, very much as some of us have looked, if we have not spoken, when foreigners take certain popular scribes andplaywrights of our own time and country seriously. [40] Let us see what his work is really like to the eyes of impartial andcomparative, if not cosmopolitan, criticism. [Sidenote: _L'Enfant de ma Femme. _] Paul de Kock, whose father, a banker, was a victim, but must have been alate one, of the Terror, was born in 1794, and took very early toletters. If the date of his first book, _L'Enfant de ma Femme_, iscorrectly given as 1812, he must apparently have written it before hewas eighteen. There is certainly nothing either in the quantity or thequality of the performance which makes this incredible, for it does notfill quite two hundred pages of the ordinary 18mo size and not veryclosely packed type of the usual cheap French novel, and though it isnot unreadable, any tolerably clever boy might easily write it betweenthe time when he gets his scholarship in spring and the time when hegoes up in October. The author had evidently read his Pigault andadopted that writer's revised picaresque scheme. His most prominentcharacter (the hero, Henri de Framberg, is very "small doings"), thehussar-soldier-servant, and most oddly selected "governor" of this heroas a boy, Mullern, is obviously studied off those semi-savage "oldmoustaches" of whom we spoke in the last volume, though he is muchsoftened, if not in morals, in manners. In fact this softening processis quite obvious throughout. There is plenty of "impropriety" but nomere nastiness, and the impropriety itself is, so to speak, ratherindicated than described. As nearly the last sentence announces, "Hymenhides the faults of love" wherever it is possible, though it wouldrequire a most complicated system of polygamy and cross-unions to enablethat amiable divinity to cover them all. There is a villain, but he is avillain of straw, and outside of him there is no ill-nature. There seemsto be going to be a touch of "out-of-boundness" when Henri, just aboutto marry his beloved Pauline, is informed that she is his sister, andwhen the pair, separating in horror, meet again and, let us say, forgetto separate. But the information turns out to be false, and Hymen dulyuses the not uncomfortable extinguisher which, as noted above, issupplied to him as well as the more usual torch. To call the book good would be ridiculous, but a very large experienceof first novels of dates before, the same as, and after its own maywarrant allotment to it of possibilities of future good gifts. Thehistory, such as it is, runs currently; there are no hitches and stopsand stagnations, the plentiful improbabilities are managed in suchfashion that one does not trouble about them, and there is anatmosphere, sometimes of horseplay but almost always of good humour. [Sidenote: _Petits Tableaux de Moeurs. _] The matter which, by accident or design, goes with this in mid-centuryreprints of Paul, is of much later date, but it shows that, for sometime, its author had been exercising himself in a way valuable to thenovelist at any time but by no means as yet frequently practised. _Petits Tableaux de Moeurs_ consists of about sixty short sketches ofa very few pages each (usually two or three) and of almost exactly thesame kind as those with which Leigh Hunt, a little earlier in England, transformed the old _Spectator_ essay into the kind of thing taken upsoon afterwards by "Boz" and never disused since. They are sketches oftypes of men, of Parisian cafés, gardens, and restaurants; freshhandlings of old subjects, such as the person who insists on taking youhome to a very bad "pot-luck" dinner, and the like. Once more, there isno great brilliance in these. But they are lightly and pleasantly done;it must be obvious to every one that they are simply invaluable trainingfor a novelist who is to leave the beaten track of picaresque adventureand tackle real ordinary life. To which it may be added, as at leastpossible, that Thackeray himself may have had the creation of Woolseyand Eglantine in _The Ravenswing_ partly suggested by a conversationbetween a tailor and a hairdresser in Paul's "Le Banc de Pierre desTuileries. " As this is very short it may be worth giving: To finish our observations, my friend and I went and sat behind two young men dressed in the extreme of the fashion, who, with their feet placed on chairs as far as possible from those in which they were sitting, gracefully rocked themselves, and evidently hoped to attract general attention. In a minute we heard the following conversation: "Do you think my coat a success?" "Superb! delicious! an admirable cut!" "And the pantaloons?" "Ravishing! Your get up is really stunning. " "The governor told me to spend three hours in the Grand Alley, and put myself well forward. He wants people to take up this new shape and make it fashionable. He has already one order of some consequence. " "And, as for me, do you think my hair well done?" "Why, you look like a very Adonis. By the way, _my_ hair is falling off. Do give me something to stop that. " "You must give it nourishment. You see hairs are plants or flowers. If you don't water a flower, you can see it withering. " "Very true. Then must I use pommade?" "Yes, but in moderation; just as a tree too much watered stops growing. Hair is exactly like vegetables. " "And both want cutting?" "Why, yes; it's like a plantation; if you don't prune and thin the branches it kills the young shoots. Cutting helps the rise of the sap. " "Do you hold with false fronts?" "I believe you! Why, I make them; it's just like putting a new roof on a house. " "And that does no harm to one's head?" "Impossible! neither glue nor white of egg, which needs must hinder growth, are used. People who wear them mix their own hair with the front. They are two flocks, which unite to feed together, as M. Marty says so well in the _Solitaire_. "[41] "Two torrents which join in the valley: that is the image of life!" We had heard enough, and so we left the tailor's young man and the romantic hairdresser to themselves. [Sidenote: _Gustave. _] In _Gustave ou Le Mauvais Sujet_, a book still early but some yearslater than _L'Enfant_, Paul de Kock got nearer to his proper or impropersubject--bachelor life in Paris, in the sense of his contemporary PierceEgan's _Life in London_. [42] The hero may be called a French Tom Jonesin something (but not so much as in the original phrase) of the sense inwhich Klopstock was allowed to be a German Milton. He has his Allworthyin a benevolent uncle-colonel, peppery but placable; he is far moreplentifully supplied than even Tom was with persons of the other sex whoplay the parts of Black George's daughter and Mrs. Waters, if notexactly of Lady Bellaston. A Sophia could hardly enter into the Kockianplan, but her place in that scheme (with something, one regrets to add, of Lady Bellaston's) is put in commission, and held by a leash ofamiable persons--the erring Madame de Berly, who sacrifices honour andbeauty and very nearly life for the rascal Gustave; Eugénie Fonbelle, arich, accomplished, and almost wholly desirable widow, whom he isactually about to marry when, luckily for her, she discovers his_fredaines_, and "calls off"; and, lastly, a peasant girl, Suzon, whomhe seduces, whom he keeps for six weeks in his uncle's house, after afashion possibly just not impossible in a large Parisian establishment;who is detected at last by the uncle; who runs away when she hears thatGustave is going to marry Eugénie, and who is at the end produced, withan infant ready-made, for Paul's favourite "curtain" of Hymen, covering(like the curtain) all faults. The book has more "scabrous" detail than_L'Enfant de ma Femme_, and (worse still) it relapses intoSmollettian-Pigaultian dirt; but it displays a positive and even largeincrease of that singular readableness which has been noticed. One wouldhardly, except in cases of actual novel-famine, or after an immenseinterval, almost or quite involving oblivion, read a book of Paul'stwice, but there is seldom any difficulty in reading him once. Only, beware his moral moods! When he is immoral it is in the bargain; if youdo not want him you leave him, or do not go to him at all. But when, forinstance, the unfortunate Madame de Berly has been frightfully burnt anddisfigured for life by an act of her own, intended to save--andsuccessful in saving--her _vaurien_ of a lover, Paul moralises thus atthe end of a chapter-- Julie perdit en effet tous ses attraits: elle fut punie par où elle avait pêché. Juste retour des choses ici-bas. there being absolutely no such _retour_ for Gustave--one feels ratherinclined, as his countrymen would say, to "conspue" Paul. [43] It isfair, however, to say that these accesses of morality or moralising arenot very frequent. [Sidenote: The caricatured _Anglais_. ] But there is one thing of some interest about _Gustave_ which has notyet been noticed. Paul de Kock was certainly not the author, [44] but hemust have been one of the first, and he as certainly was one of the mosteffective and continuous, promoters of that curious caricature ofEnglishmen which everybody knows from French draughtsmen, and some fromFrench writers, of the first half of the nineteenth century. It is onlyfair to say that we had long preceded it by caricaturing Frenchmen. Butthey had been slow in retaliating, at least in anything like the samefashion. For a long time (as is again doubtless known to many people)French literature had mostly ignored foreigners. During the lateseventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries few, except thearistocracy, of either country knew much of the other, and there wascomparatively little (of course there was always some) differencebetween the manners and customs of the upper classes of both. Prévostand Crébillon, if not Marivaux, [45] knew something about England. Thenarose in France a caricature, no doubt, but almost a reverential one, due to the _philosophes_, in the drawing whereof the Englishman isindeed represented as eccentric and splenetic, but himself philosophicaland by no means ridiculous. Even in the severe period of nationalstruggle which preceded the Revolutionary war, and for some time afterthe beginning of that war itself, the scarecrow-comic _Anglais_ was slowto make his appearance. Pigault-Lebrun himself, as was noted in the lastvolume, indulges in him little if at all. But things soon changed. In the book of which we have been speaking, Gustave and a scapegracefriend of his determine to give a dinner to two young persons of theother sex, but find themselves penniless, and a fresh edition of one ofthe famous old _Repues Franches_ (which date in French literature backto Villon and no doubt earlier) follows. With this, as such, we need nottrouble ourselves. But Olivier, the friend, takes upon him the duty ofproviding the wine, and does so by persuading a luckless vintner that heis a "Milord. " In order to dress the part, he puts on a cravat well folded, a very longcoat, and a very short waistcoat. He combs down his hair till it isquite straight, rouges the tip of his nose, takes a whip, puts ongaiters and a little pointed hat, and studies himself in the glass inorder to give himself a stupid and insolent air, the result of themake-up being entirely successful. It may be difficult for the mostunbiassed Englishman of to-day to recognise himself in this portrait orto find it half-way somewhere about 1860, or even, going back to actual"_temp. _ of tale, " to discover anything much like it in physiognomiesso different as those of Castlereagh and Wellington, of Southey andLockhart, nay, even of Tom and Jerry. [46] But that it is the Englishmanof Daumier and Gavarni, _artistement complet_ already, nobody can deny. Later in the novel (before he comes to his very problematical "settlingdown" with Suzon and the ready-made child) Gustave is allowed a rathersuperfluous scattering of probably not final wild oats in Italy andGermany, in Poland and in England. But the English meesses are too_sentimentales_ (note the change from _sensibles_); he does not like thecourses of horses, the combats of cocks, the bets and the punches andthe plum-puddings. He is angry because people look at him when he pourshis tea into the saucer. But what annoys him most of all is the customof the ladies leaving the table after dinner, and that of preferringcemeteries for the purpose of taking the air and refreshing oneselfafter business. It may perhaps diminish surprise, but should increaseinterest, when one remembers that, after Frenchmen had got tired ofLocke, and before they took to Shakespeare, their idea of our literaturewas largely derived from "Les Nuits de Young" and Hervey's _Meditationsamong the Tombs_. Another bit of copy-book (to revert to the Pauline moralities) is at theend of the same very unedifying novel, when the benevolent andlong-suffering colonel, joining the hands of Gustave and Suzon, remarksto the latter that she has proved to him that "virtues, gentleness, wits, and beauty can serve as substitutes for birth and fortune. " Itwould be unkind to ask which of the "virtues" presided over Suzon'soriginal acquaintance with her future husband, or whether the same oranother undertook the charge of that wonderful six weeks' abscondence ofhers with him in this very uncle's house. [Sidenote: _Edmond et sa Cousine. _] But no doubt this capacity for "dropping into" morality stood Paul ingood stead when he undertook (as it was almost incumbent on such auniversal provider of popular fiction to do) what the French, amongother nicknames for them, call _berquinades_--stories for children andthe young person, more or less in the style of the _Ami des Enfants_. Hediversified his _gauloiseries_ with these not very seldom. An example isbound up with _Gustave_ itself in some editions, and they make a verychoice assortment of brimstone and treacle. The hero and heroine of_Edmond et sa Cousine_ are two young people who have been betrothed fromtheir youth up, and neither of whom objects to the situation, whileConstance, the "She-cosen" (as Pepys puts it) is deeply in love withEdmond. He also is really fond of her, but he is a bumptious andsuperficial snob, who, not content with the comfortable[47] income whichhe has, and which will be doubled at his marriage, wants to make fameand fortune in some way. He never will give sufficient scope andapplication to his moderate talents, and accordingly fails very plumplyin music, playwriting, and painting. Then he takes to stock-exchangegambling, and of course, after the usual "devil's _arles_" of success, completely ruins himself, owes double what he has, and is about to blowout his somewhat unimportant brains. But Constance, in the truest spiritof melodrama, and having long sought him in vain under the guidance of a_quarta persona_, of whom more presently, realises almost the whole ofher fortune, except a small pittance, dashes it down before him in thenick of time, and saves him for the moment. Perhaps the straitest sect of the Berquinaders would have finished thestory here, made the two marry on Constance's pittance, reconciledEdmond to honest work, and so on. Paul, however, had a soul both aboveand below this. Edmond, with the easy and cheap sham honour of his kind, will not "subject her to privations, " still hopes for something to turnup, and in society meets with a certain family of the name ofBringuesingue--a father who is a retired mustard-maker with some moneyand no brains, a mother who is a nonentity, and a daughter Clodora, [48]a not bad-looking and not unamiable girl, unfortunately dowered with thesilliness of her father and the nullity of her mother combined andintensified. There is some pretty bad stock farce about M. Bringuesingueand his valet, whom he pays to scratch his nose when his master iscommitting solecisms; and about Edmond's adroitness in saving thesituations. The result is that the Bringuesingues throw their notunwilling daughter at Edmond's head. To do him the only justice he everdeserves, he does not like to give up Constance; but she, moremelodramatic than ever, contrives to imbue him with the idea that she isfalse to him, and he marries Clodora. Again the thing might have beenstopped; but Paul once more goes on, and what, I fear, must be calledhis hopeless bad taste (there is no actual bad _blood_ in him), and theprecious stage notion that "Tom the young dog" may do anything and beforgiven, make him bring about a happy ending in a very shabby fashion. Edmond is bored by his stupid though quite harmless and affectionatewife, neglects her, and treats his parents-in-law with more contemptstill. Poor Clodora dies, but persuades her parents to hand over herfortune to Edmond, and with it he marries Constance. "Hide, blushinghonour! hide that wedding-day. " But, you see, the Paul-de-Kockian herowas not like Lord Welter. There was hardly anything that _this_ "fellowcouldn't do. " Paul, however, has kept his word with his subscribers by shutting outall sculduddery, even of the mildest kind, and has, if not reconciled, partly conciliated critics by throwing in some tolerable minorpersonages. Pélagie, Constance's lively friend, has a character which hecould somehow manage without Richardsonian vulgarity. Her amiablefather, an orchestra musician, who manages to find _des jolies choses_even in a damned piece, is not bad; and, above all, Pélagie's lover, and, till Edmond's misconduct, his friend, M. Ginguet--a modestGovernment clerk, who adores his mistress, is constantly snubbed by her, but has his flames crowned at last, --is, though not a particularly novelcharacter, a very well-played part. [Sidenote: _André le Savoyard. _] One of the author's longer books, _André le Savoyard_, is a curiousblend of the _berquinade_ with what some English critics have been kindenough to call the "candour" of the more usual French novel. Thecandour, however, is in very small proportion to the berquinity. This, Isuppose, helped it to pass the English censorship of the mid-nineteenthcentury; for I remember a translation (it was the first book of theauthor's I ever read) far away in the 'fifties, among a collection ofbooks where nothing flagrantly scabrous would have been admitted. Itbegins, and for the most part continues, in an almost completelyMarmontelish or Edgeworthian fashion. A selfish glutton and_petit-maître_ of a French count, M. De Francornard, loses his way (witha postilion, a valet, and his little daughter, whom he has carried offfrom her mother) in the hills of Savoy, and is rescued and guested by agood peasant, whom he rewards with a _petit écu_ (three _livres_, notfive or six). The peasant dies, and his two eldest boys set out forParis as chimney-sweeps. The elder (eleven-year-old) André himself isbefriended by a good Auvergnat water-carrier and his little daughterManette; after which he falls in with the Francornards--now, after afashion, a united family. He is taken into their household and made asort of protégé by the countess, the child Adolphine being also veryfond of him; while, though in another way, their _soubrette_ Lucile, apretty damsel of eighteen, is fonder still. Years pass, and thefortunate André distributes his affections between the three girls. Manette, though she ends as his wife, is more of a sister at first;Adolphine is an adored and unhoped-for idol; while Lucile (it is hardlynecessary to say that it is in the scenes with her that "candour" comesin) is at first a protectress, then a schoolmistress of the school ofCupid, in process of time a mistress in the other sense, and always avery good-natured and unselfish helper. In fact, Manette is sopreternaturally good (she can't even be jealous in a sufficiently humanway), Adolphine so prettily and at last tragically null, that one reallyfeels inclined to observe to André, if he were worth it, the reconditequotation Ne sit ancillae tibi amor pudori, though perhaps seven years _is_ a long interval in the first third oflife. [Sidenote: _Jean. _] A still better instance of the modified _berquinade_--indeed, except forthe absence of riotous fun, one of the best of all Paul de Kock'sbooks--is _Jean_, also an example of his middle and ripest period. Iftranslated into English it might have for second title "or, The Historyof a Good Lout. " The career of Jean Durand (one of the Frenchequivalents for John Brown or Jones or Robinson) we have from the momentof, and indeed a little before, his birth to that crowning of a virtuousyoung Frenchman's hopes, which consists in his marrying a pretty, amiable, sensible, and well-to-do young widow. [49] Jean is the son of aherbalist father who is an eccentric but not a fool, and a mother whois very much of a fool but not in the least eccentric. The child, who isborn in the actual presence (result of the usual farcical opening) of acorporal and four fusiliers, is put out to nurse at Saint-Germain in theway they did then, brought home and put out to school, but, inconsequence of his mother's absurd spoiling, allowed to learn absolutelynothing, and (though he is not exactly a bad fellow) to get into verybad company. With two of the choicest specimens of this he runs away(having, again by his mother's folly, been trusted with a round sum ingold) at the age of sixteen, and executes a sort of picaresque journeyin the environs of Paris, till he is brought to his senses through anactual robbery committed by the worst of his companions. He returns hometo find his father dead: and having had a substantial income left himalready by an aunt, with the practical control of his mother'sresources, he goes on living entirely _à sa guise_. This involves nopositive debauchery or ruination, but includes smoking (then, it must beremembered, almost as great a crime in French as in English middle-classcircles), playing at billiards (ditto), and a free use of strong drinkand strong language. He spends and gives money freely, but does not getinto debt; flirts with grisettes, but falls into no discreditableentanglement, etc. , etc. His most characteristic peculiarity, however, is his absolute refusal tolearn the rudiments of manners. He keeps his hat on in all companies;neglects all neatness in dress, etc. ; goes (when he _does_ go) amongladies with garments reeking of tobacco and a mouth full of strangeoaths, and generally remains ignorant of, or recalcitrant to, every formof conventional politeness in speech and behaviour. The only person of any sense with whom he has hitherto come in contact, an old hairdresser named Bellequeue (it must be remembered that thisprofession or vocation is not as traditionally ridiculous in Frenchliterature as in ours), persuades his mother that the one chance ofreforming Jean and making him like other people is to marry him off. They select an eligible _parti_, one Mademoiselle Adelaide Chopard, ayoung lady of great bodily height, some facial charms, not exactly afool, but not of the most amiable disposition, and possessed of noactual accomplishment (though she thinks herself almost a "blue") exceptthat of preserving different fruits in brandy, her father being aretired liqueur manufacturer. Jean, who has never been in the least "inlove, " has no particular objection to Adelaide, and none at all to thepreserved cherries, apricots, etc. , and the scenes of his introductionand, after a fashion, proposal to the damsel, with her first resentmentat his unceremonious behaviour and later positive attraction by it, arefar from bad. Luckily or unluckily--for the marriage might have turnedout at least as well as most marriages of the kind--before it is broughtabout, this French Cymon at last meets his real Iphigenia. Walkingrather late at night, he hears a cry, and a footpad (one of his own oldcomrades, as it happens) rushes past him with a shawl which he hassnatched from two ladies. Jean counter-snatches the shawl from him andsuccours the ladies, one of whom strikes his attention. They ask him toput them into a cab, and go off--grateful, but giving no address. However, he picks up a reticule, which the thief in his fright hasdropped, discovers in it the address he wants, and actually ventures tocall on Madame Caroline Derville, who possesses, in addition to viduity, all the other attractions catalogued above. Another scene of farce, which is not so far short of comedy, followsbetween the lout and the lady, the fun being, among other things, causedby Jean's unconventional strolling about the room, looking atengravings, etc. , and showing, by his remarks on things--"The Death ofTasso, " "The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis, " and the like--that he isutterly uneducated. There is about half the book to come, but no more abstract can benecessary. The way in which Jean is delivered from his Adelaide andrewarded with his Caroline, if not quite probable (for Adelaide is madeto blacken her own character to her rival), is not without ingenuity. And the narrative (which has Paul de Kock's curious "holding" qualityfor the hour or two one is likely to bestow on it) is diversified by theusual duel, by Jean's noble and rather rash conduct, in putting down hispistols to bestow sacks of five-franc pieces on his two old friends (whotry to burgle and--one of them at least--would rather like to murderhim), etc. , etc. [50] But the real value--for it has some--of the booklies in the vivid sketches of ordinary life which it gives. The curiousCockneydom, diversified by glimpses of a suburban Arcadia, in which theFrench _bourgeois_ of the first half of the nineteenth century seems tohave passed his time; the humours of a _coucou_ journey from Paris toSaint-Germain; all sorts of details of the Durand and Chopardhouseholds--supply these. And not the least of them is given by thebachelor ménage of Bellequeue with his eighteen-year-old _bonne_ Rose, the story whereof need not sadden or shock even Mrs. Grundy, unless shescents unrecounted, indeed not even hinted at, improprieties. Bellequeue, as noted above, is by no means a fool, and achieves as nearan approach to a successful "character" as Paul de Kock has ever drawn;while Rose plays the same part of piebald angel as Lucile in _André_, with a little more cleverness in her espièglerie and at least novouched-for unlawfulnesses. [Sidenote: _La Femme, le Mari et l'Amant. _] But perhaps if any one wants a single book to judge Paul de Kock by(with one possible exception, to follow this), he cannot do better thantake _La Femme, le Mari et l'Amant_, a novel again of his middle period, and one which, if it shows some of his less desirable points, shows themcharacteristically and with comparatively little offence, while itexhibits what the shopkeepers would, I believe, call "a range of hisbest lines. " The autobiographic hero, Paul Deligny, is one of hisnearest approaches to a gentleman, yet no one can call him insipid orpriggish; the heroine, Augustine Luceval, by marriage Jenneville, is inthe same way one of his nearest approaches to a lady, and, though notsuch a madcap as the similarly situated Frédérique of _Une Gaillarde_(_v. Inf. _), by no means mawkish. It is needless to say that these are"l'Amant" and "la Femme, " or that they are happily united at the end: itmay be more necessary to add that there is no scandal, but at the sametime no prunes and prism, earlier. "Le Mari, " M. Jenneville, is verymuch less of a success, being an exceedingly foolish as well asreprobate person, who not only deserts a beautiful, charming, andaffectionate wife, but treats his lower-class loves shabbily, and allowshimself to be swindled and fooled to the _n_th by an adventuress offashion and a plausible speculator. On the other hand, one of thisbook's rather numerous grisettes, Ninie, is of the more if not mostgracious of that questionable but not unappetising sisterhood. Dubois, the funny man, and Jolivet, the parsimonious reveller, who generallymanages to make his friends pay the bill, are not bad common form offarce. One of the best of Paul's own special scenes, the pancake party, with a bevy of grisettes, is perhaps the liveliest of all such things, and, but for one piece of quite unnecessary Smollettism or Pigaulterie, need only scandalise the "unco guid. " The whole has, in unusual measure, that curious _readableness_ which has been allowed to most of ourauthor's books. Almost inevitably there is a melodramatic end; but this, to speak rather Hibernically, is made up for by a minute and curiousaccount, at the beginning, of the actual presentation of a melodrama, with humours of pit, box, and gallery. If the reader does not like thebook he will hardly like anything else of its author's; if he does, hewill find plenty of the same sort of stuff, less concentrated perhaps, elsewhere. But if he be a student, as well as a consumer, of the novel, he can hardly fail to see that, at its time and in its kind, it is notso trivial a thing as its subjects and their treatment might, in theabstract, be pronounced to be by the grave and precise. [Sidenote: _Mon Voisin Raymond. _] Yet somebody may say, "This is all very well, but what was it that madeMajor Pendennis laugh?" Probably a good many things in a good manybooks; but I do not know any one more likely to have received that crownthan the exception above mentioned, _Mon Voisin Raymond_, which alsobears (to me) the recommendation of a very competent friend of mine. Myexperience is that you certainly do begin laughing at the verybeginning, and that the laughter is kept up, if not without cessation, with very few intervals, through a remarkable series of comic scenes. The book, in fact, is Paul de Kock's _Gilbert Gurney_, and I cannot sinkthe critic in the patriot to such an extent as to enable me to putTheodore, even in what is, I suppose, his best long story, above, oreven on a level with, Paul here. The central point, as one sees almost at once, is that this Raymond (Ithink we are never told his other name), a not entirely ill-meaningperson, but a _fâcheux_ of almost ultra-Molièresque strength, isperpetually spoiling his unlucky neighbour's, the autobiographic EugèneDorsan's, sport, and, though sometimes paid out in kind, bringingcalamities upon him, while at last he actually capots his friend andenemy by making him one of the _derniers_ already mentioned! This isvery bold of Paul, and I do not know any exact parallel to it. On theother hand, Eugène is consoled, not only by Raymond's death in the Alps(Paul de Kock is curiously fond of Switzerland as a place of punishmentfor his bad characters), but by the final possession of a certainNicette, the very pearl of the grisette kind. We meet her in the firstscene of the story, where Dorsan, having given the girl a guiltlesssojourn of rescue in his own rooms, is detected and exposed to themalice of a cast mistress by Raymond. I am afraid that Paul ratherforgot that final sentence of his own first book; for though Pélagie, Dorsan's erring and unpleasant wife, dies in the last chapter, I do notobserve that an actual Hymen with Nicette "covers the fault" which, after long innocence, she has at last committed or permitted. Butperhaps it would have been indecent to contract a second marriage sosoon, and it is only postponed to the unwritten first chapter of themissing fifth volume. [51] The interval between overture and finale is, as has been said or hinted, uncommonly lively, and for once, not only in the final retribution, Paulhas distributed the _peine du talion_ pretty equally between hispersonages. Dorsan has already lost another grisette mistress, Caroline(for whose sake he has neglected Nicette), and a _femme du monde_, withwhom he has for a short time intrigued; while in both cases Raymond, though not exactly the cause of the deprivation, has, in his meddlingway, been mixed up with it. In yet other scenes we have a travellingmagic-lantern exhibition in the Champs Élysées; a night in the TivoliGardens; an expedition to a party at a country house, which, of course, Raymond's folly upsets, literally as well as metaphorically; a long(rather too long) account of a musical evening at a verylower-middle-class house; a roaringly farcical interchange of dinners_en cabinet particulier_ at a restaurant, in which Raymond is thevictim. But, on the whole, he scores, and is a sort of double cause ofthe hero's last and greatest misfortune. For it is a lie of his aboutNicette which determines Dorsan to make a long-postponed visit to hissister in the country, and submit at last to her efforts to get himmarried to the exaggeratedly _ingénue_ Pélagie, and saddled with herdetestable aunt, Madame de Pontchartrain. The end of the book is notquite equal to some other parts of it. But there is abundance ofexcellent farce, and Nicette might reconcile the veriest sentimentalist. [Sidenote: _Le Barbier de Paris. _] At one time in England--I cannot speak for the times of his greatestpopularity in France--Paul de Kock's name, except for a vague knowledgeof his grisette and _mauvais sujet_ studies, was very mainly connectedwith _Le Barbier de Paris_. It was an instance of the constant mistakeswhich almost all countries make about foreign authors. I imagine, from afresh and recent reading of it, that he probably did take more troublewith it than with most of his books. But, unfortunately, instances oflost labour are not confined to literature. The subject and the authorare very ill matched. It is a romance of 1632, and so in a way competingwith the most successful efforts of the great Romantics. But for such atask Paul had no gifts, except his invariable one of concocting areadable story. As for style, imagination, atmosphere, and such highgraces, it would be not so much cruel as absurd to "enter" the book with_Notre-Dame de Paris_ or the _Contes Drolatiques_, _Le CapitaineFracasse_ or the _Chronique de Charles IX_. But even the lower ways hecould not tread here. He did not know anything about the time, and hiswicked Marquis de Villebelle is not early Louis Treize at all, butrather late Louis Quinze. He had not the gift (which Scott first showedand Dumas possessed in no small measure) of writing his conversations, if not in actual temporal colour of language, at any rate in a kind of_lingua franca_ suitable to, or at the worst not flagrantly discordantwith, _any_ particular time and _any_ particular state of manners. Hecould throw in types of the kind so much admired by no less a personthan Sir Philip Sidney--a garrulous old servant, an innocent young girl, a gasconading coward, a revengeful daughter of Italy, a this and thatand the other. But he could neither make individual character nor vividhistorical scene. And so the thing breaks down. The barber-hero-villain himself is the most "unconvincing" of barbers(who have profited fiction not so ill in other cases), of heroes (whoare too often unconvincing), and even of villains (who have rather ahabit of being so). [52] Why a man who is represented as being intensely, diabolically, wicked, but almost diabolically shrewd, should employ, andgo on employing, as his instrument a blundering poltroon like the GasconChaudoreille, is a question which recurs almost throughout the book, and, being unanswered, is almost sufficient to damn it. And at the endthe other question, why M. Le Marquis de Villebelle--represented as, though also a villain, a person of superior intelligence--when he hasdiscovered that the girl whom he has abducted and sought to ruin isreally his daughter; when he has run upstairs to tell her, has knockedat her locked door, and has heard a heavy body splashing into the lakeunder her window, --why, instead of making his way at once to the water, he should run about the house for keys, break into the room, and atlast, going to the window, draw from the fact that "an object showsitself at intervals on the surface, and appears to be still in a stateof agitation, " the no doubt quite logical inference that Blanche isdrowning--when, and only then, he precipitates himself after her, --thisquestion would achieve, if it were necessary, the damnation. [Sidenote: The Pauline grisette. ] The fact is, that Paul had no turn for melodrama, history, or tragicmatter of any kind. He wrote nearly a hundred novels, and I neitherpretend to have read the whole of them, nor, if I had done so, should Ifeel justified in inflicting abstracts on my readers. As always happensin such cases, the feast he offers us is "pot-luck, " but, as too seldomhappens, the luck of the pot is quite often good. With the grisette, towhom he did much to give a niche (one can hardly call it a shrine) inliterature, whom he celebrated so lovingly, and whose gradualdisappearance he has so touchingly bewailed, or with any feminine personof partly grisettish kind, such as the curious and already brieflymentioned heroine of _Une Gaillarde_, [53] he is almost invariably happy. The above-mentioned Lucile is not technically a grisette (who should bea girl living on her own resources or in a shop, not in service) nor isRose in _Jean_, but both have the requirements of the type--_minoischiffonné_ (including what is absolutely indispensable, a _nezretroussé_), inexhaustible gaiety, extreme though by no meanspromiscuous complaisance, thorough good-nature--all the gifts, in short, of Béranger's _bonne fille_, who laughs at everything, but is perfectlycapable of good sense and good service at need, and who not seldommarries and makes as good a wife as, "in a higher _spear_, " the English"garrison hack" has had the credit of being. Quite a late, but a verysuccessful example, with the complaisance limited to strictly legitimateextent, and the good-nature tempered by a shrewd determination to avengetwo sisters of hers who had been weaker than herself, is the Georgetteof _La Fille aux Trois Jupons_, who outwits in the cleverest way threewould-be gallants, two of them her sisters' actual seducers, andextracts thumping solatia from these for their victims. [54] [Sidenote: Others. ] On the other hand, the older and, I think, more famous book whichsuggested the title of this--_L'Homme aux Trois Culottes_, symbolisingand in a way giving a history of the times of the Revolution, theEmpire, and the Restoration, and finishing with "July"--seems to meagain a failure. As I have said, Paul could not manage history, least ofall spread-out history like this; and the characters, or ratherpersonages, though of the lower and lower-middle rank, which he _could_manage best, are to me totally uninteresting. Others may have been, ormay be, more fortunate with them. So, too, _Le Petit Fils de Cartouche_ (which I read before comingacross its first part, _Les Enfants du Boulevard_) did not inspire mewith any desire to look up this earlier novel; and _La Pucelle deBelleville_, another of Paul's attempts to depict the unconventional butvirtuous young person, has very slight interest as a story, and isdisfigured by some real examples of the "coarse vulgarity" which hasbeen somewhat excessively charged against its author generally. _FrèreJacques_ is a little better, but not much. [55] Something has been said of "periods"; but, after all, when Paul has once"got into his stride" there is little difference on the average. I haveread, for instance, in succession, _M. Dupont_, which, even in theBelgian piracy, is of 1838, and _Les Demoiselles de Magazin_, which mustbe some quarter of a century later--so late, indeed, that Madame Pattiis mentioned in it. The title-hero of the first--a most respectableman--has an _ingénue_, who loves somebody else, forced upon him, experiences more recalcitrance than is usually allowed in such cases, and at last, with Paul's usual unpoetical injustice, is butchered tomake way for the Adolphe of the piece, who does not so very distinctlydeserve his Eugénie. It contains also one Zélie, who is perhaps theauthor's most impudent, but by no means most unamusing or mostdisagreeable, grisette. _Les Demoiselles de Magazin_ gives us a wholeposy of these curious flower-weeds of the garden of girls--pretty, middling, and ugly, astonishingly virtuous, not virtuous at all, and_couci-couci_ (one of them, by the way, is nicknamed "Bouci-Boula, "because she is plump and plain), but all good-natured, and on occasionalmost noble-sentimented; a guileless provincial; his friend, who has amania for testing his wife's fidelity, and who accomplishes one ofPaul's favourite fairy-tale or rather pantomime endings by coming downwith fifteen thousand francs for an old mistress (she has lost herbeauty by the bite of a parrot, and is the mother of theextraordinarily virtuous Marie); a scapegrace "young first" orhalf-first; a superior ditto, who is an artist, who rejects the advancesof Marie's mother, and finally marries Marie herself, etc. Etc. Youmight change over some of the personages and scenes of the two books;but they are scarcely unequal in such merit as they possess, and bothlazily readable in the fashion so often noted. If any one asks where this readableness comes from, I do not think theanswer is very difficult to give, and it will of itself supply a fullerexplanation (the words apology or excuse are not really necessary) forthe space here allotted to its possessor. It comes, no doubt, in thefirst place, from sheer and unanalysable narrative faculty, the secretof the business, the mystery in one sense of the mystery in the other. But it also comes, as it seems to me, from the fact that Paul de Kock isthe very first of French novelists who, though he has no closely wovenplot, no striking character, no vivid conversation or arresting phrases, is thoroughly _real_, and in the good, not the bad, sense _quotidian_. The statement may surprise some people and shock others, but I believeit can be as fully sustained as that other statement about the mostdifferent subject possible, the _Astrée_, which was quoted from Madamede Sévigné in the last volume. Paul knew the world he dealt with as wellalmost as Dickens[56] knew his very different but somewhat correspondingone; and, unlike Dickens, the Frenchman had the good sense to meddlevery little[57] with worlds that he did not know. Of course it would besimply _bête_ to take it for granted that the majority of Parisian shop-and work- and servant-girls have or had either the beauty or theamiability or the less praiseworthy qualities of his grisettes. Butsomehow or other one feels that the general _ethos_ of the class hasbeen caught. [58] His _bourgeois_ interiors and outings have the samereal and not merely stagy quality; though his melodramatic or pantomimicendings may smack of "the boards" a little. The world to which he holdsup the mirror may be a rather vulgar sort of Vanity Fair, but there areunfortunately few places more real than Vanity Fair, and few things lessunreal than vulgarity. The last sentence may lead to a remark of a graver kind than has beenoften indulged in here. Thackeray defined his own plan in _Vanity Fair_itself as at least partly an attempt to show people "living without Godin the world. " There certainly is not much godliness in the book, but hecould not keep it out altogether; he would have been false to nature(which he never was) if he had. In Paul de Kock's extensive work, on theother hand, the exclusion is complete. It is not that there is anyexpressed Voltairianism as there is in Pigault. But though the peopleare married in church as well as at the _mairie_, and I remember onecasual remark about a mother and her daughter going to mass, the wholespiritual region--religious, theological, ecclesiastical, and whatnot--is left blank. I do not remember so much as a _curé_ figuringpersonally, though there may be one. And it is worth noting that Paulwas born in 1794, and therefore passed his earliest childhood in thetime when the Republic had actually gagged, if not stifled, religion inFrance--when children grew up, in some cases at any rate, without everhearing the name of God, except perhaps in phrases like _pardieu_ or_parbleu_. It is not my business or my intention to make reflections ordraw inferences; I merely indicate the fact. Another fact--perhaps so obvious already that it hardly needsstating--is that Paul de Kock is not exactly the person to "take acourse of, " unless under such conditions as those under which Mr. Carlyle took a course of a far superior writer, Marryat, and was (oneregrets to remember) very ungrateful for the good it did him. He is(what some of his too critical countrymen have so falsely called Dumas)a mere _amuseur_, and his amusement is somewhat lacking in variety. Nevertheless, few critical readers[59] of the present history will, Ithink, consider the space given to him here as wasted. He was a reallypowerful schoolmaster to bring the popular novel into still furtherpopularity; and he made a distinct advance upon such persons asPigault-Lebrun and Ducray-Duminil--upon the former in comparativedecency, if not of subject, of expression; upon the latter in gettingclose to actual life; and upon both in what may be called the_furniture_ of his novels--the scene-painting, property-arranging, andgeneral staging. This has been most unfairly assigned to Balzac asoriginator, not merely in France, but generally, whereas, not to mentionour own men, Paul began to write nearly a decade before the beginning ofthose curious efforts, half-prenatal, of Balzac's, which we shall dealwith later, and nearly two decades before _Les Chouans_. And, horrifyingas the statement may be to some, I venture to say that his mere _mise enscène_ is sometimes, if not always, better than Balzac's own, though hemay be to that younger contemporary of his as a China orange to LombardStreet in respect of plot, character, thought, conversation, and all thehigher elements, as they are commonly taken to be, of the novel. * * * * * [Sidenote: The minors before 1830. ] It has been said that the filling-up of this chapter, as to the rank andfile of the novelists of 1800-1830, has been a matter of some difficultyin the peculiar circumstances of the case. I have, however, been enabledto read, for the first time or afresh, examples not merely of thosewriters who have preserved any notoriety, but of some who have not, andto assure myself on fair grounds that I need not wait for furtherexploration. The authors now to be dealt with have already been named. But I may add another novelist on the very eve of 1830, Auguste Ricard, whose name I never saw in any history of literature, but whose work fellalmost by accident into my hands, and seems worth taking as "pot-luck. " * * * * * [Sidenote: Mme. De Montolieu--_Caroline de Lichtfield_. ] Isabelle de Montolieu--a Swiss by birth but a French-woman byextraction, and Madame de Crousaz by her first marriage--was a friend ofGibbon's friend Georges Deyverdun, and indeed of Gibbon himself, who, she says, actually offered to father her novel. Odd as this seems, therereally is in _Caroline de Lichtfield_[60] not merely something whichdistinguishes it from the ordinary "sensibility" tale of its time (itwas first printed at Lausanne in 1786), but a kind of crispness ofthought now and then which sometimes does suggest Gibbon, in somethingthe same way as that in which Fanny Burney suggests Johnson. This isindeed mixed with a certain amount of mere "sensibility" jargon, [61] aswhen a lover, making a surprisingly honest confession to his beloved, observes that he is going "to destroy those sentiments which had madehim forget how unworthy he was of them, " or when the lady (who has beenquite guiltless, and has at last fallen in love with her own husband)tells this latter of her weakness in these very engaging words: "Yes! Idid love Lindorf; _at least I think I recognise some relation betweenthe sentiments I had for him and those that I feel at present_!" [Sidenote: Its advance on "Sensibility. "] A kind of affection was avowed in the last volume for the "Phoebus" ofthe "heroics, " and something similar may be confessed for this "JupiterPluvius, " this mixture of tears and stateliness, in the Sentimentalists. But Madame de Montolieu has emerged from the most _larmoyante_ kind of"sensible" comedy. If her book had been cut a little shorter, and if(which can be easily done by the reader) the eccentric survival of a_histoire_, appended instead of episodically inserted, were lopped off, _Caroline de Lichtfield_ would not be a bad story. The heroine, havinglost her mother, has been brought up to the age of fifteen by an amiablecanoness, who (to speak rather Hibernically) ought to have been hermother but wasn't, because the actual mother was so much richer. Shebears no malice, however, even to the father who, well preserved inlooks, manners, and selfishness, is Great Chamberlain to Frederick theGreat. That very unsacred majesty has another favourite, a certain Count vonWalstein, who is ambassador of Prussia at St. Petersburg. It pleasesFrederick, and of course his chamberlain, that Caroline, young as sheis, shall marry Walstein. As the girl is told that her intended is notmore than thirty, and knows his position (she has, naturally, beenbrought up without the slightest idea of choosing for herself), she isnot displeased. She will be a countess and an ambassadress; she willhave infinite jewels; her husband will probably be handsome andagreeable; he will certainly dance with her, and may very possibly notobject to joining in innocent sports like butterfly-catching. So shesets off to Berlin quite cheerfully, and the meeting takes place. Alas!the count is a "civil count" (as Beatrice says) enough, but he is thereverse of handsome and charming. He has only one eye; he has a hugescar on his cheek; a wig (men, remember, were beginning to "wear theirown hair"), a bent figure, and a leaden complexion. Caroline, promptlyand not unnaturally, "screams and disappears like lightning. " Nor canany way be found out of this extremely awkward situation. The count (whois a thoroughly good fellow) would give Caroline up, though he hastaken a great fancy to her, and even the selfish Lichtfield tries (or_says_ he tries) to alter his master's determination. But Frederick ofcourse persists, and with a peculiarly Frederician enjoyment inconferring an ostensible honour which is in reality a punishment, seesthe marriage ceremony carried out under his own eye. Caroline, however, exemplifies in combination certain old adages to the effect that thereis "No will, no wit like a woman's. " She submits quite decently inpublic, but immediately after the ceremony writes a letter[62] to herhusband (whose character she has partly, though imperfectly, gauged)requesting permission to retire to the canoness till she is a littleolder, under a covert but quite clearly intelligible threat of suicidein case of refusal. There are of course difficulties, but the count, like a man and a gentleman, consents at once; the father, _bon gré malgré_, has to do so, and the King, a tyrant who has had his way, gives asulky and qualified acquiescence. What follows need only be very rapidlysketched. After a little time Caroline sees, at her old-new home, anengaging young man, a Herr von Lindorf; and matters, though she is quitevirtuous, are going far when she receives an enormous epistle[62] fromher lover, confessing that he himself is the author of her husband'sdisfigurement (under circumstances discreditable to himself andcreditable to Walstein), enclosing, too, a very handsome portrait of thecount _as he was_, and but for this disfigurement might be still. Whathappens then nobody ought to need, or if he does he does not deserve, tobe told. There is no greatness about this book, but to any one who hasan eye for consequences it will probably seem to have some future in it. It shows the breaking of the Sensibility mould and the running of thematerials into a new pattern as early as 1786. In 1886 M. Feuillet or M. Theuriet would of course have clothed the story-skeleton differently, but one can quite imagine either making use of a skeleton by no meansmuch altered. M. Rod would have given it an unhappy ending, but one cansee it in his form likewise. [63] [Sidenote: Madame de Genlis _iterum_. ] Of Stéphanie Félicité, Comtesse de Genlis, it were tempting to say agood deal personally if we did biographies here when they can easily befound elsewhere. How she became a canoness at six years old, and shortlyafterwards had for her ordinary dress (with something supplementary, onehopes) the costume of a Cupid, including quiver and wings; how shecombined the offices of governess to the Orleans children and mistressto their father; how she also combined the voluptuousness and thephilanthropy of her century by taking baths of milk and afterwardsgiving that milk to the poor;[64] how, rather late in life, she attainedthe very Crown-Imperial of governess-ship in being chosen by Napoleon toteach him and his Court how to behave; and how she wrote infinitebooks--many of them taking the form of fiction--on education, history, religion, everything, can only be summarised. The last item of thesummary alone concerns us, and that must be dealt with summarily too. _Mlle. De Clermont_--a sort of historico-"sensible" story in style, andevidently imitated from _La Princesse de Clèves_--is about the bestthing she did as literature; but we dealt with that in the lastvolume[65] among its congeners. In my youth all girls and some boys knew_Adèle et Théodore_ and _Les Veillées du Château_. From a later book, _Les Battuécas_, George Sand is said to have said that she learntSocialism: and the fact is that Stéphanie Félicité had seen so much, felt so much, read so much, and done so much that, having also a quickfeminine wit, she could put into her immense body of work all sorts ofcrude second-hand notions. The two last things that I read of hers tocomplete my idea of her were _Le Comte_ _de Corke_ and _Les Chevaliersdu Cygne_, books at least possessing an element of surprise in theirtitles. The first is a collection of short tales, the title-pieceinspired and prefaced by an account of the Boyle family, and all ratherlike a duller and more spun-out Miss Edgeworth, the common relation toMarmontel accounting for this. The concluding stories of each volume, "Les Amants sans Amour" and "Sanclair, " are about the best. _LesChevaliers du Cygne_ is a book likely to stir up the Old Adam in somepersons. It was, for some mysterious reason, intended as a sort ofappendix--for "grown-ups"--to the _Veillées du Château_, and is supposedto have incorporated parabolically many of the lessons of the FrenchRevolution (it appeared in 1795). But though its three volumes andeleven hundred pages deal with Charlemagne, and the Empress Irene, andthe Caliph "Aaron" (Haroun), and Oliver (Roland is dead at Roncevaux), and Ogier, and other great and beloved names; though the authoress, whowas an untiring picker-up of scraps of information, has actuallyconsulted (at least she quotes) Sainte-Palaye; there is no faintestflavour of anything really Carlovingian or Byzantine or Oriental aboutthe book, and the whole treatment is in the _pre_-historical-novelstyle. Indeed the writer of the _Veillées_ was altogether of the_veille_--the day just expired--or of the transitional andhalf-understood present--never of the past seen in some perspective, ofthe real new day, or, still less, of the morrow. [Sidenote: The minor popular novel--Ducray-Duminil--_Le PetitCarilloneur_. ] The batch of books into which we are now going to dip does not representthe height of society and the interests of education like Madame deGenlis; nor high society again and at least strivings after the new day, like the noble author of the _Solitaire_ who will follow them. They are, in fact, the minors of the class in which Pigault-Lebrun earlier andPaul de Kock later represent such "majority" as it possesses. But theyought not to be neglected here: and I am bound to say that the veryconsiderable trouble they cost me has not been wholly vain. [66] Themost noted of the whole group, and one of the earliest, Ducray-Duminil's_Lolotte et Fanfan_, escaped[67] a long search; but the possession andcareful study of the four volumes of his _Petit Carillonneur_ (1819)has, I think, enabled me to form a pretty clear notion of what notmerely _Lolotte_ (the second title of which is _Histoire de Deux Enfantsabandonnés dans une île déserte_), but _Victor ou L'Enfant de la Forêt_, _Cælina ou L'Enfant du Mystère_, _Jules ou le Toit paternel_, or anyother of the author's score or so of novels would be like. The book, I confess, was rather hard to read at first, forDucray-Duminil is a sort of Pigault-Lebrun _des enfants_; he writesrather kitchen French; the historic present (as in all these books)loses its one excuse by the wearisome abundance of it, and the firsthundred pages (in which little Dominique, having been unceremoniouslytumbled out of a cabriolet[68] by wicked men, and left to the chances ofdivine and human assistance, is made to earn his living byframed-bell-ringing in the streets of Paris) became something of a_corvée_. But the author is really a sort of deacon, though in no highdivision of his craft. He expands and duplicates his situations with noinconsiderable cunning, and the way in which new friends, new enemies, and new should-be-indifferent persons are perpetually trying to find outwhether the boy is really the Dominique d'Alinvil of Marseilles, whosefather and mother have been foully made away with, or not, shows commandof its own particular kind of ingenuity. Intrigues of all sorts--violentand other (for his wicked relative, the Comtesse d'Alinvil, is alwaystrying to play Potiphar's wife to him, and there is a certainMademoiselle Gothon who would not figure as she does here in a book byMr. Thomas Day)--beset him constantly; he is induced not merely totrust his enemies, but to distrust his friends; there is a good deal ofunderground work and of the explained supernatural; a benevolentmusician; an excellent curé; a rather "coming" but agreeable Adrienne deSurval, who, close to the end of the book, hides her trouble in thebosom of her aunt while Dominique presses her hand to his heart (theaunt seems here superfluous), etc. , etc. Altogether the book is, to thehistorian, a not unsatisfactory one, and joins its evidence to that ofPigault as showing that new sources of interest and new ways of dealingwith them are being asked for and found. In filling up the map ofgeneral novel-development and admitting English examples, we may assignto its author a place between Mrs. Radcliffe and the _Family Herald_:confining ourselves to French only, he has again, like Pigault, something of the credit of making a new start. He may appeal to thetaste of the vulgar (which is not quite the same sort of thing as "avulgar taste"), but he sees that the novel is capable of providinggeneral pastime, and he does his best to make it do so. [Sidenote: V. Ducange. ] [Sidenote: _L'Artiste et le Soldat. _] "The other Ducange, " whose patronymic appears to have been Brahain, andwho perhaps took the name of the great scholar[69] for the sake ofcontrast, was even more famous for his melodramas[70] than for hisfiction, one piece especially, "Trente Ans, ou La Vie d'un Joueur, "having been among the triumphs of the Porte-Saint-Martin and ofFrédérick Lemaître. As a novelist he did not write for children likeDucray-Duminil, and one of his novels contains a boastful prefacescoffing at and glorying in the accusations of impropriety broughtagainst him. I have found nothing very shocking in those books of hiswhich I have read, and I certainly have not thought it necessary toextend my acquaintance in search of it. He seems to have been aquarrelsome sort of person, for he got into trouble not only with themoralists, not only with the Restoration government, but with theAcademy, which he attacked; and he is rather fond of "scratchy"references such as "On peut mériter encore quelque intérêt sans être unAmadis, un Vic-van-Vor [poor Fergus!], un Han, ou un Vampire. " But hisintrinsic merit as a novelist did not at first seem to me great. A bookworse _charpenté_ than that just quoted from, _L'Artiste et le Soldat_, I have seldom read. The first of its five volumes is entirely occupiedwith the story (not badly, though much too voluminously told) of acaptain who has lost his leg at Waterloo, and though tended by a prettyand charming daughter, is in great straits till helped by a mysteriousBlack Nun, who loves _les militaires_, and has been entrusted with moneyto help them by the Empress Josephine. The second, "without with yourleave or by your leave" of any kind, [71] jumps back to give us, under adifferent name for a long time, the early history of this captain, whichoccupies two whole volumes and part of a third (the fourth of the book). Then another abrupt shift introduces us to the "artist, " the youngerbrother, who bears a _third_ name, itself explained by another jump backof great length. Then a lover turns up for Suzanne, the captain'sdaughter, and we end the fifth volume with a wedding procession in tendistinct carriages. [Sidenote: _Ludovica. _] _Ludovica ou Le Testament de Waterloo_, a much later book, was, theauthor tells us, finished in June 1830 under the fiendish tyranny of"all-powerful bigots, implacable Jesuits, and restored marquises"; butthe glorious days of July came; a new dynasty, "jeune, forte, sincère"(Louis Philippe "young and sincere"!), was on the throne; the ship ofstate entered the vast sea of liberty; France revived; all Europe seemedto start from its shroud--and _Ludovica_ got published. But the author'sjoy was a little dashed by the sense that, unlike its half-score offorerunners, the book had not to battle with the bigots and the Jesuitsand the "restored marquises"--the last a phrase which has considerablecharms of suggestion. All this, of course, has its absurd side; but it shows, by way ofredemption, that Ducange, in one of the many agreeable phrases of hiscountry, "did not go to it with a dead hand. " He seems, indeed, to havebeen a thoroughly "live" person, if not a very wise one: and _Ludovica_begins with a rousing situation--a crowd and block in the streets ofParis, brought about by nobody quite knows what, but ending in apistol-shot, a dead body, the flight of the assassin, the dispersal ofthe crowd by the _gendarmes_, and finally the discovery by a youngpainter, who has just returned from seeing his mother at Versailles, ofa very youthful, very pretty, and very terrified girl, speaking anunknown tongue, and not understanding French, who has fled for refugeinto a dark alley ending in a flight of cellar-steps. It is to the pointthat among the confused cries attending the disturbance have been someabout a girl being carried off. It must be admitted that this is not unpromising, and I really think_Ludovica_ (with a caution as to the excessive prolixity of its kind andtime) might be recommended to lovers of the detective novel, of which itis a rather early sample. I have confessed, in a later chapter, thatthis particular "wanity" is not my favourite; but I found myself gettingthrough M. Victor Ducange's six volumes--burdened rather than ballastedas they are by political outbursts, rather "thorn-crackling" attempts athumour, and the like--with considerably less effort than has sometimesattended similar excursions. If they had been three instead of six Ihardly think I should have felt the collar at all. The superiority to_L'Artiste et le Soldat_ is remarkable. When honest Jules Janinattributed to Ducange "une érudition peu commune, " he must either havebeen confusing Victor with Charles, or, which is more probable, exhibiting his own lack of the quality he refers to. Ducange does quotetags of Latin: but erudition which makes Proserpine the daughter of_Cybele_, though certainly _peu commune_ in one sense, is not so in theother. The purposes and the jokes, as has been said, may bore; andthough the style is better than Ducray's, it would not of itself"over-stimulate. " But the man is really almost prodigal of incident, anddoes not manage it badly. Here, you have Ludovica's father and mother (the former of whom has beencrimped to perform a marriage under the impression that he is a priest, whereas he is really a colonel of dragoons) escaping through a hole atthe back of a picture from a skylighted billiard-room. There, anenterprising young man, "sitting out" at a ball, to attend which he hasdisguised himself, kisses his partner, [72] and by that pleasingoperation dislodges half his borrowed moustache. It falls, alas! on herhand, she takes it for a spider, screams, and so attracts an unwelcomepublic. Later in the same evening he finds himself shut up in the younglady's bedroom, and hears her and her mother talking secrets which verynearly concern him. The carrying off of Ludovica from Poland to Paris isvery smartly managed (I am not sure that the great Alexander or one ofhis "young men" did not borrow some details from it for the arrest ofD'Artagnan and Porthos after their return from England), and the way inwhich she and a double of hers, Trinette van Poupenheim, are mixed up isreally clever. So is the general cross-purposing. Cabmen turn up justwhen they should; and though letters dropped out of pockets are ascommon as blackberries, I know few better excuses for such carelessnessthan the fact that you have pulled the letter out with a silk wrapper, which you proceed to fold tenderly round the beautiful neck of a damselin a cab somewhere about midnight. A holograph will made on the eve ofWaterloo and preserved for fifteen years by the faithful depositary; agood doctor, of course; many bad Jesuits, of course; another, and thistime virtuous, though very impudent, carrying-off of the _other_ youngwoman from the clutches of the hated _congréganistes_;[73] a boghei;[74]a jokei; a third _enlèvement_ of the real Ludovica, who escapes by acellar-trap; and many other agreeable things, end in the complete defeatof the wicked and the marriage of the good to the tune of _four_couples, the thing being thus done to the last in Ducange's usualhandsome manner. [75] I do not know whether _Ludovica_ wasmelodramatised. _Le Jésuite_ of the same year by Ducange and the greatPixérécourt looks rather like it; and so does _Il y a Seize Ans_ of ayear later, which he seems to have written alone. But if it was not itought to have been. The half-moustache-spider-kissing-screaming scene, and the brilliant youth retreating through the laughing crowd with theother half of his decoration, might have reconciled even me to thetheatre. [Sidenote: Auguste Ricard--_L'Ouvreuse de Loges_. ] A short account of the last novel (except _Le Solitaire_) mentionedabove must stand for sample, not merely of the dozen other works of itsauthor, Auguste Ricard, but for many more advertised on the fly-leavesof this time, and long since made "alms for oblivion. " Their titles, _LePortier_, _La Grisette_, _Le Marchand de Coco_, by Ricard himself, onone side, _L'Homme des Ruines_, _Bleack-_ (sic) _Beard_, _La ChambreRouge_ (by a certain Dinocourt) on the other, almost tell their wholestory--the story of a range (to use English terms once more) between thecheap followers of Anne Radcliffe and G. W. M. Reynolds. _L'Ouvreuse deLoges_, through which I have conscientiously worked, inclines to thelatter kind, being anti-monarchic, anti-clerical, anti-aristocratic(though it admits that these aristocrats are terrible fellows forbehaving in a way which the _roturier_ cannot imitate, however hard hetries), and anti-things-in-general. Its title-heroine is a bad oldwoman, who "keeps the door" in the Elizabethan sense as well astheatrically. Its real hero is a _ci-devant_ duke; malversator under theRepublic; supposed but not real victim of the Septembriseurs; atheist;winner and loser of several fortunes; and at last _particulier_ of Parisunder a feigned name, with an apartment full of _bric-à-brac_, a drawerfull of little packets of money, after the expenditure of the last ofwhich he proposes to blow his brains out; tall man of stature and of hishands, etc. , etc. The book is in a way one of purpose, inculcating thedanger of wooing opera-girls, and instancing it with three very weakyoung men, another duke, a rich young _parvenu_, and a musician. Ofthese the first and the last are, with their wives, rather arbitrarilysaved from the clutches into which they have fallen, by the mysterious"M. Luc, " while the other comes to a very bad end. The novel, which isin five volumes, is, like most of those mentioned in this section, notof the kind that one would read by preference. But it is a very fairspecimen of the "below stairs" romance which sometimes prepares the wayfor others, fit to take their places above stairs. And so it has itsplace here. [76] [Sidenote: The importance of these minors not inconsiderable. ] It has been pointed out more than once that though neglect of such booksas these may be perfectly natural and probable in the average reader, such neglect--and still more any contempt of them--is, though it may notbe unnatural, utterly unscholarly and uncritical from the point of viewof history. Their authors themselves learnt something from their ownmistaken experiments, and their successors learnt a good deal more. They found that "sculduddery" was not a necessary attraction. Ducraydoes not avail himself of it, and Ducange seems to have left it off. They did not give up, but they came less and less to depend upon, extravagant incident, violent peripeteias, cheap supernaturalities, etc. But the most important thing about them perhaps is the evidence theygive of learning what has been called their "business. " Already, to agreat extent if not wholly, that earliest obsession and preoccupation ofthe novelist--the idle anxiety to answer the question, "How do you knowall these things?"--has begun to disappear. This is rather less the casewith another foolish fancy--the belief that it is necessary to accountnot merely for what we call the consequents, but for the antecedents ofall the characters (at least those of any importance) that youintroduce. There can be no doubt that this was one of the objects, as itwas part of the original cause, of the mistaken _Histoire_ system, whichmade you, when or soon after you introduced a personage, "tell us allabout it, " as the children say, in a separate inset tale. You did notnow do this, but you made, as in the capital instance of Victor Ducange, huge diversions, retrospects, episodes, in the body of the story itself. This method, being much less skippable than the inset by those who didnot want it, was not likely to continue, and so applied the cure to itsown ill. And yet further, as novels multiplied, the supposed necessityof very great length tended to disappear. The seven or eight volumes ofthe eighteenth century, which had replaced the twelves and twenties ofthe seventeenth, shrank to six (_Ludovica_), five (_L'Artiste et LeSoldat_ and _l'Ouvreuse de Loges_), four (_Le Petit Carillonneur_), andthen three or two, though later the historical kind swelled again, andthe almost invariable single volume did not establish itself till themiddle of the century. As a consequence again of this, the enormousdelay over single situations tended, though very slowly, to disappear. It is one of the merits of Pigault-Lebrun that he is not a great sinnerin verbosity and prolixity: his contemporary minors of this volume arefar more peccant in this kind. [Sidenote: The Vicomte d'Arlincourt--_Le Solitaire_. ] _Le Solitaire_ is a book which I have been "going to read" for somefifty years, but by some accident did not till the present occasion. Iknew it generally as one of the vedettes of Romanticism, and asextremely popular in its own day: also as having been, with its author'sother work in poem and play and prose fiction, the subject of someridicule. But till I read it, and some things about it, I never knew howwell it deserved that ridicule and yet how very popular it was, and howreally important is its position in the history of the Romanticmovement, and so of the French novel and French literature generally. Itwas published at the end of January 1821, and at the end of November aseventh edition appeared, with an elaborate _Io Triumphe!_ from thepublisher. Not only had there been those seven editions (which, it mustbe remembered in fairness, represent at least seventy at the other endof the century[77]), but it had been translated into four foreignlanguages; _fourteen_ dramas had been based on it, some half of whichhad been at least conditionally accepted for performance; painters ofdistinction were at work on subjects from it; it had reached the stagesof Madrid and of London (where one critic had called it "a verybeautiful composition"), while French approval had been practicallyunanimous. Nay, a game had been founded thereon, and--crowning, butperhaps rather ominous honour--somebody had actually published aburlesque imitation. I have seldom read greater rubbish than _Le Solitaire_. It is ahistorical-romantic story (the idolatrous preface refers both to Scottand to Byron), and bears also strong, if sometimes distinctlyunfortunate, resemblances to Mrs. Radcliffe, the Germans, andChateaubriand. The scene is that of Charles the Bold's defeat at Morat:and the "Solitary" is Charles himself--the identification of his bodyafter the decisive overthrow at Nancy _was_ a little doubtful--who hashidden there partly to expiate, by good deeds, his crime of massacringthe monks of the adjoining Abbey of Underlach, and partly to availhimself of a local tradition as to a _Fantôme Sanglant_, who haunts theneighbourhood, and can be conveniently played by the aid of a crimsonmantle. The slaughter of the monks, however, is not the only event orcircumstance which links Underlach to the crimes of Charles, for it isnow inhabited by a Baron d'Herstall (whose daughter, seduced by theDuke, has died early) and his niece, Elodie de Saint-Maur, whose father, a former favourite of the Burgundian, that prince has killed in one ofhis fits of rage. Throw in a local priest, Anselm, and you have what maybe called the chief characters; but a good Count Ecbert de Norindall, awicked Prince of Palzo, and divers others figure. Everybody, includingthe mysterious Bleeding-Phantom-Solitary-Duke himself, falls in lovewith Elodie, [78] and she is literally "carried off" (that is to say, shouldered) several times, once by the alarming person in the crimsonshroud, but always rescued, till it is time for her to die and befollowed by him. There are endless "alarums and excursions"; some of the_not_ explained supernatural; woods, caves, ruins, undergroundpassages--entirely at discretion. Catherine Morland would have beenperfectly happy with it. It is not, however, because it contains these things that it has beencalled "rubbish. " A book might contain them all--Mrs. Radcliffe's owndo, with the aggravation of the explained wonders--and not be that. Itis because of the extraordinary silliness of the style and sentiments. Ishould imagine that M. D'Arlincourt was trying to write like his brotherviscount, the author of _Les Martyrs_, and a pretty mess he has made ofit. "Le char de la nuit roulait silencieux sur les plaines du ciel" (p. 3). "L'entrée du jour venait de s'élancer radieuse du palais del'Aurore. " "L'amante de l'Érèbe et la mère des Songes[79] avait achevéla moitié de sa course ténébreuse, " etc. , etc. The historic present isconstantly battling with the more ordinary tenses--the very samesentence sometimes contains both. And this half-blown bladder of a styleconveys sentiments as feebly pompous as itself. The actual story, thoughno great thing, is, if you could strip it of its froth and fustian, notso very bad: as told it is deplorable. At the same time its mere existence--much more the fury of acceptancewhich for the moment greeted it--shows what that moment wanted. Itwanted Romance, and in default of better it took _Le Solitaire_. * * * * * An occasional contrast of an almost violent kind may be permitted in awork requiring something more than merely catalogue-composition. It canhardly be found more appropriately than by concluding this chapter, which began with the account of Paul de Kock, by one of Charles Nodier. [Sidenote: Nodier. ] To the student and lover of literature there is scarcely a moreinteresting figure in French literary history, though there are manygreater. Except a few scraps (which, by one of the odd ways of thebook-world, actually do not appear in some editions of his _OeuvresChoisies_), he did nothing which had the quality of positive greatnessin it. But he was a considerable influence: and even more of a "sign. "Younger than Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël, but far older than anyof the men of 1830 proper, he may be said in a way to have, in hissingle person, played in France that part of schoolmaster toRomanticism, which had been distributed over two generations and manypersonalities in England; and which Germany, after a fashion, didwithout, at the cost of a few undisciplined and quickly overbloomedmaster-years. Although he was born in 1780, nine years before theRevolution itself, he underwent German and English influences early, "took" Wertherism, Terrorism, [80] and other maladies of that _fin desiècle_ with the utmost facility, and produced divers ultra-Romanticthings long before 1830 itself. But he had any number of literary andother avocations or distractions. He was a kind of entomologist andbotanist, a kind of philologist (one is a little astonished to find thatrather curious and very charlatanish person and parson Sir HerbertCroft, whose secretary Nodier was for a time, dignified in French booksby the name of "_philologue_ Anglais"), a good deal more than a kind ofbibliographer (he spent the last twenty years of his life as Librarianof the Arsenal), and an enthusiastic and stimulating, though not exactlytrustworthy, critic. But he concerns us here, of course, for his prosefiction, which, if not very bulky, is numerous in its individualexamples, and is animated in the best of them by a spirit almost new inFrench and, though often not sufficiently caught and concentrated, present to almost the highest degrees in at least three examples--thelast part of _La Fée aux Miettes_, _La Légende de Soeur Béatrix_, and, above all, _Inès de las Sierras_. For those who delight in literary filiations and genealogies, the kindof story in which Nodier excelled (and in which, though some of his ownwere written after 1830, he may truly be considered as "schoolmaster" toMérimée and Gautier and Gérard de Nerval and all their fellows), may be, without violence or exaggeration, said to be a new form of the Frenchfairy-tale, divested of common form, and readjusted with the help of theGerman _Märchen_ and fantasy-pieces. _Le Diable Amoureux_ had, no doubt, set the fashion of this kind earlier; but that story, charming as it is, is still scarcely "Romantic. " Nodier is so wholly; and it is fair toremember that Hoffmann himself was rather a contemporary of his, andsubject to the same influences, than a predecessor. [81] [Sidenote: His short stories. ] The best collection of Nodier's short tales contains nine pieces:_Trilby_, _Le Songe d'Or_, _Baptiste Montauban_, _La Fée aux Miettes_, _La Combe de l'Homme mort_, _Inès de las Sierras_, _Smarra_, _LaNeuvaine de la Chandeleur_, and _La Légende de Soeur Béatrix_. Ofthese I believe _Trilby_, _La Fée aux Miettes_, and _Smarra_ have beenthe greatest favourites, and were pretty certainly the most influentialin France. My own special delights are _Le Songe d'Or_, _Inès de lasSierras_, and _Soeur Béatrix_, with part of the _Fée_. But none iswithout its attractions, and the Preface to the _Fée aux Miettes_, whichis almost a separate piece, has something of the quintessential in thatcurious quality which Nodier possesses almost alone in French or withGérard de Nerval and Louis Bertrand only. English readers may "perceivea good deal of [Charles] Lamb in it, " with touches of Sterne and DeQuincey and Poe. [Sidenote: _Trilby. _] It is much to be feared that more people in England nowadays associatethe name of "Trilby" with the late Mr. Du Maurier than with Nodier, andthat more still associate it with the notion of a hat than with eitherof the men of genius who used it in literature. So mighty Byron, dead and turned to clay, Gave name to collars for full many a day; And Ramillies, grave of Gallic boasts so big, Found most perpetuation in a wig. [82] The original story united divers attractions for its first readers in1822, combining the older fashion of Ossian with the newer one of Scott, infusing the supernatural, which was one great bait of the comingRomanticism, and steeping the whole cake in the tears of the newerrather than the older "Sensibility. " "Trilby, le Lutin d'Argaïl"[83](Nodier himself explains that he alters the spelling here with purephonetic intent, so as to keep the pronunciation for French eyes _and_ears[84]), is a spirit who haunts the cabin of the fisherman Dougal tomake a sort of sylph-like love to his wife Jeannie. He means and does noharm, but he is naturally a nuisance to the husband, on whom he playstricks to keep him away from home, and at length rather frightens thewife. They procure, from a neighbouring monastery, a famous exorcistmonk, who, though he cannot directly punish Trilby, lays on him sentenceof exclusion from the home of the pair, unless one of them invites him, under penalty of imprisonment for a thousand years. How the story turnsto Jeannie's death and Trilby's duress can be easily imagined, and maybe read with pleasure. I confess that to me it seems pretty, but just alittle mawkish. [85] Perhaps I am a brute. [Sidenote: _Le Songe d'Or. _] _Le Songe d'Or_, on the other hand, though in a way tragic, and capableof being allegorised almost _ad infinitum_ in its sense of some of theriddles of the painful earth, is not in the least sentimental, and istold, till just upon the end, with a certain tender irony. The authorcalled it "Fable Levantine, " and the venerable Lo[c]kman is introducedin it. But I have read it several times without caring (perhaps this wasreprehensible) to ascertain whether it is in the recognised Lokman bunchor not. All I know is that here Nodier and not Lokman has told it, andthat the result is delightful. First a beautiful "kardouon, " theprettiest of lizards, all azure and ruby and gold, finds in the desert aheap of gold-pieces. He breaks his teeth on them, but is sure that suchnice-looking things must be good to eat--probably slices of a root whichsome careless person has left too long in the sun--and that, if properlytreated, they will make a famous winter provision. So he conveys themwith much care and exertion, one by one, to a soft bed of fresh moss, just the thing to catch the dew, under the shadow of a fine old tree. And, being naturally tired, he goes to sleep beside them. And this isthe history of the kardouon. Now there was in that neighbourhood a poor woodcutter namedXaïloun--deformed, and not much more than half-witted, but amiable--whohad taken a great fancy to the kardouon as being a beautiful beast, andlikely to make a charming friend. But the kardouon, after the manner ofshy lizards, had by no means reciprocated this affection, and tookshelter behind stones and tree-stumps when advances were made to him. Sothat the children, and even his own family, including his mother, usedto jeer at Xaïloun and tell him to go to his friend. On this particularoccasion, the day after the kardouon's _trouvaille_, Xaïloun actuallyfound the usually wide-awake animal sleeping. And as the place, with themoss and the great tree-shadow and a running stream close by, was veryattractive, Xaïloun lay down by the lizard to wait till he should wake. But as he himself might go to sleep, and the animal, accustomed to thesun, might get a chill in the shade, Xaïloun put his own coat over him. And he too slept, after thinking how nice the kardouon's friendshipwould be when they _both_ woke. And this is the history of Xaïloun. Next day again there came a fakir named Abhoc, who was on a pretendedpilgrimage, but really on the look-out for what he might get. He saw awindfall at once, was sure that neither of its sleeping guardians couldkeep it from him, and very piously thanked the Almighty for rewardinghis past devotion and self-sacrifice by opening a merry and splendidlife to him. But as, with such custodians, the treasure could be"lifted" without the slightest difficulty, he too lay down by it, andwent to sleep, dreaming of Schiraz wine in golden cups and a harempeopled with mortal houris. And this is the history of the fakir Abhoc. A day and a night passed, and the morrow came. Again there passed a wisedoctor of laws, Abhac by name, who was editing a text to which a hundredand thirty-two different interpretations had been given by Eastern Cokesand Littletons. He had just hit upon the hundred and thirty-third--ofcourse the true one--when the sight described already struck him and putthe discovery quite out of his head, to be lost for ever. As became ajurist, he was rather a more practical person than the woodcutter or thefakir, if not than the lizard. His human predecessors were, evidently, thieves, and must be brought to justice, but it would be well to secure"pieces of conviction. " So he began to wrap up the coins in his turbanand carry them away. But there were so many, and it was so heavy, thathe grew very weary. So he too laid him down and slept. And this is thehistory of the doctor Abhac. But on the fifth day there appeared a much more formidable person thanthe others, and also a much more criminous. This was the "King of theDesert"--bandit and blackmailer of caravans. Being apparently a banditof letters, he reflected that, though lizards, being, after all, miniature dragons, were immemorial guardians of treasure, they could nothave any right in it, but were most inconveniently likely to wake if anynoise were made. The others were three to one--too heavy odds bydaylight. But if he sat down by them till night came he could stab themone by one while they were asleep, and perhaps breakfast on thekardouon--said to be quite good meat. And he went to sleep himself. Andthis is the history of the King of the Desert. But next day again the venerable Lokman passed by, and _he_ saw that thetree was a upas tree and the sleepers were dead. And he understood itall, and he passed his hand through his beard and fell on his face, andgave glory to God. And then he buried the three covetous ones inseparate graves under the upas itself. But he put Xaïloun in a saferplace, that his friends might come and do right to him; and he buriedthe kardouon apart on a little slope facing the sun, such as lizardslove, and near Xaïloun. And, lastly, having stroked his beard again, heburied the treasure too. But he was very old: and he was very weary whenhe had finished this, and God took him. And on the seventh day there came an angel and promised XaïlounParadise, and made a mark on his tomb with a feather from his own wing. And he kissed the forehead of Lokman and made him rise from the dead, and took him to the seventh heaven itself. And this is the history ofthe angel. It all happened ages ago, and though the name of Lokman haslived always through them, so has the shadow of the upas tree. And this is the history of the world. Only a child's goody-goody tale? Possibly. But for my part I know nobetter philosophy and, at least as Nodier told it, not much betterliterature. [Sidenote: Minors. ] _Baptiste Montauban_ and _La Combe de l'Homme mort_ are, though scarcelyshorter than _Le Songe d'Or_, slighter. The first is a pathetic but notquite consummate story of "love and madness" in a much better sense thanthat in which Nodier's eccentric employer, Sir Herbert Croft, used thewords as his title for the history of Parson Hackman and Miss Ray. [86]The second ("combe, " the omission of which from the official Frenchdictionaries Nodier characteristically denounces, is our own "combe"--adeep valley; from, I suppose, the Celtic Cwm; and pronounced byDevonshire folk in a manner which no other Englishman, born east of theline between the mouths of the Parret and the Axe, can master) is agood but not supreme _diablerie_ of a not uncommon kind. _La Neuvaine dela Chandeleur_ is longer, and from some points of view the most patheticof all. A young man, hearing some girls talk of a much-elaboratedceremony like those of Hallowe'en in Scotland and of St. Agnes' Eve inKeats, by which (in this case) _both_ sexes can see their fated lovers, tries it, and discerns, in dream or vision, his ideal as well as hisfate. She turns out to be an actual girl whom he has never seen, butwhom both his father and her father--old friends--earnestly desire thathe should marry. He travels to her home, is enthusiastically greeted, and finds her even more bewitching than her wraith or whatever it is tobe called. But she is evidently in bad health, and dies the same nightof aneurism. Not guested in the house, but trysted in the morning, hegoes there, and seeing preparations in the street for a funeral, asks ofsome one, being only half alarmed, "_Qui est mort?_" The answer is, "Mademoiselle Cecile Savernier. " Had these words terminated the story it would have been nearly perfect. Two more pages of the luckless lover's progress to resignation fromdespair and projected suicide seem to me to blunt the poignancy. [Sidenote: _La Fée aux Miettes. _] In fact, acknowledging most humbly that I could not write even the worstand shortest of Nodier's stories, I am bound to say that I think he wasnot to be trusted with a long one. _La Fée aux Miettes_ is at once anawful and a delightful example. The story of the mad shipwright Michel, who fell in love with the old dwarf beggar--so unlike her of BednalGreen or King Cophetua's love--at the church door of Avranches; whofollowed her to Greenock and got inextricably mixed between her and theQueen of Sheba; who for some time passed his nights in making love toBelkis and his days in attending to the wisdom of the Fairy of theCrumbs (she always brought him his breakfast after the Sabaean Nights);who at last identified the two in one final rapture, after seeking for aSinging Mandrake; and who spent the rest (if not, indeed, the whole) ofhis days in the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum;--is at times so ineffablycharming that one is almost afraid oneself to repeat the refrain-- C'est moi, c'est moi, c'est moi! Je suis la Mandragore! La fille des beaux jours qui s'éveille à l'aurore-- Et qui chante pour toi! though, after all, every one whose life has been worth living haslistened for the song all that life--and has heard it sometimes. To find any fault with the matrix of this opal is probably blasphemous. But I own that I could do without the Shandean prologue and epilogue ofthe narrator and his man-servant Daniel Cameron. And though, as atomfool myself, I would fain not find any of the actions of my kindalien from me, I do find some of the tomfoolery with which Nodier hasseasoned the story superfluous. Why call a damsel "Folly Girlfree"? Whatwould a Frenchman say if an English story-teller christened some girl ofGaul "Sottise Librefille"? "Sir Jap Muzzleburn, " the Bailiff of the Isleof Man, and his black poodle-equerry, Master Blatt, amuse me but little;and Master Finewood, the shipbuilder, --whose rejected six sons-in-law, lairds of high estate, run away with his thirty thousand guineas, andare checkmated by six sturdy shipwrights, --less. I have no doubt it ismy fault, my very great fault, but I wish they would _go_, and leave mewith Michel and La Fée, or rather allow me to _be_ Michel _with_ La Fée. [Sidenote: _Smarra_ and _Soeur Béatrix_. ] _Smarra_--which made a great impression on its contemporaries and had astrong influence on the Romantic movement generally--is a fantasia ofnightmare based on the beginning of _The Golden Ass_, with, again, asort of prologue and epilogue of modern love. It is undoubtedly a finepiece of work of its kind and beautifully written. But in itself itseems to me a little too much of a _tour de force_, and its kind alittle rococo. Again, _mea maxima culpa_ perhaps. On the other hand, _Soeur Béatrix_ is a most charmingly told version of a verywide-spread story--that of Our Lady taking the place of an erring sisterduring her sojourn in the world, and restoring her to it without anyscandal when she returns repentant and miserable after years of absence. It could not be better done. [Sidenote: _Inès de las Sierras. _] But the jewel of the book, and of Nodier's work, to me, is _Inès de lasSierras_--at least its first and larger part; for Nodier, in one ofthose exasperatingly uncritical whims of his which have been noticed, and which probably prevented him from ever writing a really good novelof length, has attached an otiose explanation _à la_ Mrs. Radcliffe, which, if it may please the weakest kind of weak brethren, may almostdisgust another, and as to which I myself exercise the critic's_cadi_-rights by simply ignoring and banishing what I think superfluous. As for what remains, once more, it could not be done better. Three French officers, at the moment of disturbance of the Frenchgarrisons in the north of Spain, owing to Napoleon's Russian disasters(perhaps also to more local events, which it was not necessary forNodier to mention), are sent on remount duty from Gerona to Barcelona, where there is a great horse-fair on. They are delayed by bad weatherand other accidents, and are obliged to stop half-way after nightfall. But the halting-place is choke-full of other travellers on their way tothe same fair, and neither at inn nor in private house is there any roomwhatever, though there is no lack of "provant. " Everybody tells themthat they can only put up at "the castle of Ghismondo. " Taking this fora Spanish folkword, they get rather angry. But, finding that there _is_a place of the name close by in the hills--ruinous, haunted, butactual--they take plenty of food, wine, and torches, etc. , and persuade, with no little difficulty, their _arriero_ and even their companion andthe real hirer of the vehicle (a theatrical manager, who has allowedthem to accompany him, when they could get no other) to dare the nightadventure. On the way the _arriero_ tells them the legend, how, centuries before, Ghismondo de las Sierras, ruined by debauchery, established himself in this his last possession, with one squire, onepage (both of the worst characters), his beautiful niece Inès, whom hehas seduced, and a few desperate followers, who help him to live bybrigandage. Every night the three chiefs drank themselves senseless, andwere regularly dragged to bed by their men. But one Christmas Eve atmidnight, Inès, struck with remorse, entered the hall of orgies, andimplored them to repent, actually kneeling before Ghismondo, and placingher hand on his heart. To which the ruffian replied by stabbing her, andleaving her for the men-at-arms to find, a corpse, among the drunken butlive bodies. For a whole twelvemonth the three see, in dreams, theirvictim come and lay a burning hand on their hearts; and at its end, onthe same day and at the same hour, the dream comes true--the phantomappears, speaks _once_, "Here am I!" sits with them, eats and drinks, even sings and dances, but finally lays the flaming hand of the dream oneach heart; and they die in torture--the men-at-arms entering as usual, only to find _four_ corpses. (Now it is actually Christmas Eve--theSpanish _Noche Buena_--at "_temp. _ of tale. ") So far the story, though admirably told, in a fashion which mere summarycannot convey, is, it may be said, not more than "as per usual. " Not sowhat follows. The four travellers--the unnamed captain who tells the story; his twolieutenants, Boutraix, a bluff Voltairian, with an immense capacity forfood and drink, and Sergy, a young and romantic Celadon, _plus_ theactor-manager Bascara, who is orthodox--with the _arriero_, arrive atlast at the castle, which is Udolphish enough, and with some difficultyreach, over broken staircases and through ruined corridors, the greatbanqueting-hall. [87] Here--for it is less ruinous that the rest of the building and actuallycontains furniture and mouldering pictures--they make themselvestolerably comfortable with their torches, a huge fire made up frombroken stairs and panels, abundance of provisions, and two dozen ofwine, less a supply for the _arriero_, who prudently remains in thestables, alleging that the demons that haunt those places are fairlyfamiliar to him and not very mischievous. As the baggage has got verywet during the day, the dresses and properties of Bascara's company aretaken out and put to air. Well filled with food and drink, thefree-thinker Boutraix proposes that they shall equip themselves fromthese with costumes not unsuitable to the knight, squire, and page ofthe legend, and they do so, Bascara refusing to take part in the game, and protesting strongly against their irreverence. At last midnightcomes, and they cry, "Where is Inès de las Sierras?" lifting theirglasses to her health. Suddenly there sounds from the dark end of thegreat hall the fateful "Here am I!" and there comes forward a figure ina white shroud, which seats itself in the vacant place assigned bytradition to Inès herself. She is extraordinarily beautiful, and is, under the white covering, dressed in a fashion resembling the moulderingportrait which they have seen in the gallery. She speaks too, halfrallying them, as if surprised at _their_ surprise; she calls herselfInès de las Sierras; she throws on the table a bracelet with the familyarms, which they have also seen dimly emblazoned or sculptured about thecastle; she eats; and, as a final piece of conviction, she tears herdress open and shows the scar on her breast. Then she drinks response tothe toast they had in mockery proposed; she accepts graciously theadvances of the amorous Sergy; she sings divinely, and she dances moredivinely still. The whole scene is described supremely well, but thedescription of the dance is one of the very earliest and very finestpieces of Romantic French prose. One may try, however rashly, totranslate it: (_She has found a set of castanets in her girdle. _) She rose and made a beginning by grave and measured steps, displaying, with a mixture of grace and majesty, the perfection of her figure and the nobility of her attitudes. As she shifted her position and put herself in new aspects, our admiration turned to amazement, as though another and another beautiful woman had come within our view, so constantly did she surpass herself in the inexhaustible variety of her steps and her movements. First, in rapid transition, we saw her pass from a serious dignity to transports of pleasure, at first moderate, but growing more and more animated; then to soft and voluptuous languors; then to the delirium of joy, and then to some strange ecstasy more delirious still. Next, she disappeared in the far-off darkness of the huge hall, and the clash of the castanets grew feeble in proportion to the distance, and diminished ever till, as we ceased to see, so we ceased to hear her. But again it came back from the distance, increasing always by degrees, till it burst out full as she reappeared in a flood of light at the spot where we least expected her. And then she came so near that she touched us with her dress, clashing the castanets with a maddening volubility, till they weakened once more and twittered like cicalas, while now and then across their monotonous racket she uttered shrill yet tender cries which pierced to our own souls. Afterwards she retired once more, but plunged herself only half in the darkness, appearing and disappearing by turns, now flying from our gaze and now desiring to be seen, [88] while later still you neither saw nor heard her save for a far-off plaintive note like the sigh of a dying girl. And we remained aghast, throbbing with admiration and fear, longing for the moment when her veil, fluttering with the dance-movement, should be lighted up by the torches, when her voice should warn us of her return, with a joyful cry, to which we answered involuntarily, because it made us vibrate with a crowd of secret harmonies. Then she came back; she spun round like a flower stripped from its stalk by the wind; she sprang from the ground as if it rested only with her to quit earth for ever; she dropped again as if it was only her will which kept her from touching it at all; she did not bound from the floor--you would have thought that she shot from it--that some mysterious law of her destiny forbade her to touch it, save in order to fly from it. And her head, bent with an expression of caressing impatience, and her arms, gracefully opened, as though in appealing prayer, seemed to implore us to save her. The captain himself is on the point of yielding to the temptation, butis anticipated by Sergy, whose embrace she returns, but sinks into achair, and then, seeming to forget the presence of the othersaltogether, invites him to follow her through tortuous and ruinedpassages (which she describes) to a sepulchre, which she inhabits, withowls for her only live companions. Then she rises, picks up hershroud-like mantle, and vanishes in the darkness with a weird laugh andthe famous words, "_Qui m'aime me suive_. " The other three have the utmost difficulty in preventing Sergy (by mainforce at first) from obeying. And the captain tries rationalism, suggesting first that the pretended Inès is a bait for some gang ofassassins or at least brigands, then that the whole thing is a trick ofBascara's to "produce" a new cantatrice. But Boutraix, who has beenentirely converted from his Voltairianism by the shock, sets aside thefirst idea like a soldier, and Bascara rebuts the second like a sensibleman. Brigands certainly would give no such warning of their presence, and a wise manager does not expose his prima donna's throat tocohabitation in ruins with skeletons and owls. They finally agree onsilence, and shortly afterwards the three officers leave Spain. Sergy iskilled at Lutzen, murmuring the name of Inès. Boutraix, who has neverrelapsed, takes the cowl, and the captain retires after the war to hisown small estate, where he means to stay. He ends by saying _Voilàtout_. Alas! it is not all, and it is not the end. Some rather idle talk withthe auditors follows, and then there is the above-mentioned Radcliffianexplanation, telling how Inès was a real Las Sierras of a Mexicanbranch, who had actually made her début as an actress, had been, as wasat first thought, murdered by a worthless lover, but recovered. Herwits, however, were gone, and having escaped from the kind restraintunder which she was put, she had wandered to the castle of herancestors, afterwards completely recovering her senses and returning tothe profession in the company of Bascara himself. Now I think that, if I took the trouble to do so, I could point outimprobabilities in this second story sufficient to damn it on its ownshowing. [89] But, as has been said already, I prefer to leave it alone. I never admired George Vavasour in Trollope's _Can You Forgive Her?_ ButI own that I agree with him heartily in his opinion that "making aconjurer explain his tricks" is despicably poor fun. Still, the story, which ends at "Voilà tout" and which for me does soend "for good and all, " is simply magnificent. I have put it elsewherewith _Wandering Willie's Tale_, which it more specially resembles in theway in which the ordinary turns into the extraordinary. It falls shortof Scott in vividness, character, manners, and impressiveness, butsurpasses him in beauty[90] of style and imagery. In particular, Nodierhas here, in a manner which I hardly remember elsewhere, achieved theblending of two kinds of "terror"--the ordinary kind which, as it istrivially called, "frightens" one, and the other[91] terror whichaccompanies the intenser pleasures of sight and sound and feeling, andheightens them by force of contrast. The scene of Inès' actualappearance would have been the easiest thing in the world to spoil, andtherefore was the most difficult thing in the world to do right. But itis absolutely right. In particular, the way in which her conduct in atonce admitting Sergy's attentions, and finally inviting him to "follow, "is guarded from the very slightest suggestion of the professional"comingness" of a common courtesan, and made the spontaneous action of athing divine or diabolic, is really wonderful. At the same time, the adverse criticism made here, with that on _La Féeaux Miettes_ and a few other foregoing remarks, will probably preparethe reader for the repeated and final judgment that Nodier was veryunlikely to produce a good long story. And, though I have not read_quite_ all that he wrote, I certainly think that he never did. [Sidenote: Nodier's special quality. ] In adding new and important masterpieces to the glittering chain ofshort cameo-like narratives which form the peculiar glory of Frenchliterature, he did greatly. And his performance and example were greaterstill in respect of the _quality_ which he infused into those bestpieces of his work which have been examined here. It is hardly too muchto say that this quality had been almost dormant--a sleeping beautyamong the lively bevies of that literature's graces--ever since theMiddle Ages, with some touches of waking--hardly more than motions in adream--at the Renaissance. The comic Phantasy had been wakeful andactive enough; the graver and more serious tragic Imagination had been, though with some limitations, busy at times. But this third sister--OurLady of Dreams, one might call her in imitation of a famous fancy--hadnot shown herself much in French merriment or in French sadness: thelight of common day there had been too much for her. Yet in CharlesNodier she found the magician who could wake her from sleep: and shetold him what she had thought while sleeping. [92] FOOTNOTES: [37] Vol. I. Pp. 458, 472, _notes_. [38] Vol. I. P. 161. [39] When he published _Le Cocu_, it was set about that a pudibund ladyhad asked her book-seller for "Le Dernier de M. Paul de Kock. " And thiscircumlocution became for a time popular, as a new name for the poorcreature on the ornaments of whose head our Elizabethans joked sountiringly. [40] A short essay, or at least a "middle" article, might be written onthis way of regarding a prophet in his own country, coupling Bérangerwith Paul de Kock. Of course the former is by much a _major_ prophet inverse than Paul is in prose. But the attitude of the superior Frenchperson to both is, in different degrees, the same. (Thackeray in thearticle referred to below, p. 62 _note_, while declaring Paul to be_the_ French writer whose works are best known in England, says that hiseducated countrymen think him _pitoyable_. --_Works_, Oxford edition, vol. Ii p. 533. ) [41] A gibe at the Vicomte d'Arlincourt's very popular novel, to benoticed below. I have not, I confess, identified the passage: but it maybe in one of the plays. [42] It would _not_ be fair to compare the two as makers of literature. In that respect Theodore Hook is Paul's Plutarchian parallel, though hehas more literature and less life. [43] Charity, outrunning knowledge, may plead "Irony perhaps?"Unfortunately there is no chance of it. [44] I really do not know who was (see a little below). Parny in hisabsurd _Goddam!_ (1804) has something of it. [45] And _he_ knew something of it through Addison. [46] The straight hair is particularly curious, for, as everybody whoknows portraits of the early nineteenth century at all is aware, Englishmen of the time preferred brushed back and rather "tousled"locks. In Maclise's famous "Fraserians" there is hardly astraight-combed head among all the twenty or thirty. At the same time itis fair to say that our own book-illustrators and caricaturists, forsome strange reason, did a good deal to authorise the libels. Cruikshankwas no doubt a wonderful draughtsman, but I never saw (and I thank Godfor it) anything like many, if not most, of his faces. "Phiz" andCattermole in (for example) their illustrations to _The Old CuriosityShop_ and _Barnaby Rudge_ sometimes out-Cruikshank Cruikshank in thisrespect. [47] Paul's ideas of money are still very modest. An income of 6000francs (£240) represents ease if not affluence; with double the amountyou can "aspire to a duchess, " and even the dispendious Irish-FrenchViscount Edward de Sommerston in _La Fille aux Trois Jupons_ (_v. Inf. _)starts on his career with scarcely more than three thousand a year. [48] Paul's scholarship was very rudimentary, as is shown in not a fewscraps of ungrammatical Latin: he never, I think, ventures on Greek. Butwhether he was the first to _estropier_ the not ugly form "_Cleodora_, "I know not. Perhaps he muddled it with "Clotilde. " [49] This cult of the widow might form the subject of a notuninteresting excursus if we were not confining ourselves to theliterary sides of our matter. It has been noticed before (Vol. I. P. 368), and forms one of the most curious differences between the twocountries. For, putting Mr. Weller out of the question, I have known farfrom sentimental critics who thought Trollope's best book by no meansimproved by the previous experience of Eleanor Bold. Cherolatry inFrance, however, is not really old: it hardly appears before theeighteenth century. It may be partly due to a more or less consciousidea that perhaps the lady may have got over the obligatory adultery atthe expense of her "dear first" and may not think it necessary torepeat. A sort of "measles over. " [50] He also improves his neglected education in a manner notunsuggestive of Prince Giglio. In fact, I fancy there is a good deal ofhalf-latent parody of Paul in Thackeray. [51] There might have been fifteen or fifty, for the book is more asequence of scenes than a schematic composition: for which reason theabove account of it may seem somewhat _décousu_. [52] I think I have commented elsewhere on the difficulty of villains. It was agreeable to find confirmation, when this book was already in theprinter's hands, given at an exemption tribunal by a theatrical manager. For six weeks, he said, he had advertised and done everything possibleto supply the place of a good villain, with no success. And your badstage villain _may_ be comic: while your bad novel villain is only abore. [53] Frédérique, Madame Dauberny (who has, without legal sanction, relieved herself of a loathsome creature whom she has married, and livesa free though not at all immoral life), was not very easy to do, and isvery well done. [54] This, which is short and thoroughly lively, is, I imagine, thelatest of Paul's good books. It is indeed so late that instead of the_jupons_, striped and black and white, of which Georgette has madeirreproachable but profitable use, she appears at the _denouement_ in acrinoline! [55] The most interesting thing in it is a longish account by Jacques ofhis association with a travelling quack and fortune-teller, which atonce reminds one of _Japhet in Search of a Father_. The resemblances andthe differences are almost equally characteristic. [56] Of course I am not comparing him with Paul on any other point. [57] Except in regard to the historical and other matters noticed above, hardly at all. [58] For a picture of an actual grisette, drawn by perhaps the greatestmaster of artistic realism (adjective and substantive so seldom found incompany!) who ever lived, see that _Britannia_ article of Thackeray'sbefore referred to--an article, for a long time, unreprinted, andtherefore, till a comparatively short time ago, practically unknown. This and its companion articles from the _Britannia_ and the _Corsair_, all of 1840-41, but summarising ten or twelve years' knowledge of Paris, form, with the same author's _Paris Sketch Book_ (but as representing amore mature state of his genius), the best commentary on Paul de Kock. They may be found together in the third volume of the Oxford Thackerayedited by the present writer. [59] Unless they start from the position that an English writer on theFrench novel is bound to follow--or at least to pay express attentionto--French criticism of it. This position I respectfully but unalterablydecline to accept. A critical tub that has no bottom of its own is thevery worst Danaid's vessel in all the household gear of literature. [60] The scene and society are German, but the author knows the name tohave been originally English. [61] Such, perhaps, as Gibbon himself may have used while he "sighed asa lover" and before he "obeyed as a son. " It should perhaps be said thatMme. De Montolieu produced many other books, mostly translations--amongthe latter a French version of _The Swiss Family Robinson_. [62] In dealing with "Sensibility" earlier, it was pointed out howextensively things were dealt with by _letter_. In such cases as thesethe fashion came in rather usefully. [63] The treatment of the authors here mentioned, _infra_, will, I hope, show that the introduction of their names is not merely "promiscuous. " [64] I am quite prepared to be told that this was somebody else ornobody at all. "Moi, je dis Madame de Genlis. " [65] P. 436. [66] The kind endeavours of the Librarian of the London Library toobtain some in Paris itself were fruitless, but the old saying aboutneglecting things at your own door came true. My friend Mr. Kiplingurged me to try Mr. George Gregory of Bath, and Mr. Gregory procured mealmost all the books I am noticing in this division. [67] The British Museum (see Preface) being inaccessible to me. [68] Readers will doubtless remember that the too wild career of thiskind of vehicle, charioteered by wicked aristocrats, has been among thethousand-and-three causes assigned for the French Revolution. [69] Of course the author of the glossaries himself was, by actualsurname, Dufresne, Ducange being a seignory. [70] It should be observed that a very large number of these minornovels, besides those specially mentioned as having undergone theprocess, from Ducray's downwards, were melodramatised. [71] That is to say, in the text: the second title of the whole book, "_ou Les Enfants de Maître Jacques_, " does in some sort give a warning, though it is with Maître Jacques rather than with his children that thefresh start is made. [72] He has, though unknown and supposed to be an intruder, carried heroff from an English adorer--a sort of Lovelace-Byron, whose name is LordGousberycharipay (an advance on Paul de Kock and even Parny in thenomenclature of the English peerage), and who inserts h's before Frenchwords! [73] If novels do not exaggerate the unpopularity of these persons(strictly the lay members of the S. J. , but often used for the whole bodyof religious orders and their lay partisans), the success of "July"needs little further explanation. [74] That is to say, not a bogey, but a buggy. [75] Here is another instance. Ludovica's father and a badRusso-Prussian colonel have to be finished off at Waterloo. One mightsuppose that Waterloo itself would suffice. But no: they must engage insingle combat, and even then not kill each other, the Russian's headbeing carried off by some kind of a cannon-ball and the Frenchman'sbreast pierced by half a dozen Prussian lances. This is really "goodmeasure. " [76] Ousting others which deserved the place better? It may be so, butone may perhaps "find the whole" without particularising everything. Ofshort books especially, from Fiévée's _Dot de Suzette_ (1798), whichcharmed society in its day, to Eugénie Foa's _Petit Robinson de Paris_(1840), which amused _me_ when I was about ten years old, there were noend if one talked. [77] _V. Inf. _ on M. Ohnet's books. [78] Many people have probably noticed the frequency of this name--not avery pretty one in itself, and with no particular historical or otherattraction--in France and French of the earlier nineteenth century. Itwas certainly due to _Le Solitaire_. [79] If any proper moral reader is disturbed at this conjunction of_amante_ and _mère_, he will be glad to know that M. D'Arlincourtelsewhere regularises the situation and calls Night "_l'épouse_d'Érèbe. " [80] In the Radcliffian-literary not the Robespierrean-political sense. For the Wertherism, _v. Sup. _ on Chateaubriand, p. 24 note. [81] He was four years older than Nodier, but did not begin to writefiction nearly so early. The _Phantasiestücke_ are of 1814, while Nodierhad been writing stories, under German influence, as early as 1803. Itis, however, also fair to say that all those now to be noticed are laterthan 1814, and even than Hoffmann's later collections, the _Elixiere desTeufels_ and _Nachtstücke_. [82] The prudent as well as judicious poet who wrote these linesprovided a variant to suit those who, basing their position on"Ramillies _cock_, " maintain that it was a hat, not a wig, that wasnamed after Villeroy's defeat. For "grave--big" read "where Gallic hopesfell flat, " and for "wig" "hat" _simpliciter_, and the thing is done. But Thackeray has "Ramillies _wig_" and Scott implies it. [83] Nodier, who had been in Scotland and, as has been said, was aphilologist of the better class, is scrupulously exact in spellingproper names as a rule. Perhaps Loch Fyne is not exactly "Le Lac Beau"(I have not the Gaelic). But from Pentland to Solway (literally) hemakes no blunder, and he actually knows all about "Argyle's BowlingGreen. " [84] If phonetics had never done anything worse than this they would notbe as loathsome to literature as they sometimes are. [85] On the other hand, compared with its slightly elder contemporary, _Le Solitaire_ (_v. Sup. _), it is a masterpiece. [86] Two little passages towards the end are very precious. A certainbridegroom (I abridge a little) is "perfectly healthy, perfectlyself-possessed, a great talker, a successful man of business, with someknowledge of physics, chemistry, jurisprudence, politics, statistics, and phrenology; enjoying all the requirements of a deputy; and for therest, a liberal, an anti-romantic, a philanthropist, a very goodfellow--and absolutely intolerable. " This person later changes thehumble home of tragedy into a "school of mutual instruction, where thechildren learn to hate and envy each other and to read and write, whichwas all they needed to become detestable creatures. " These words "pleasethe soul well. " [87] The description is worth comparing with that of Gautier's _Châteaude la Misère_--the difference between all but complete ruin and mere, though extreme, disrepair being admirably, and by the later master inall probability designedly, worked out. [88] _Et fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri. _ [89] Note, too, a hint at a never filled in romance of the captain'sown. [90] I must ask for special emphasis on "beauty. " Nothing can be _finer_or _fitter_ than the style of Steenie's ghostly experiences. And thefamous Claverhouse passage _is_ beautiful. [91] As Rossetti saw it in "Sibylla Palmifera": "Under the arch of Life, where Love and Death, _Terror_ and Mystery guard her shrine, I saw Beauty enthroned. " [92] Perhaps there are few writers mentioned in this book to whoselovers exactly the same kind of apology is desirable as it is in thecase of Nodier. "Where, " I hear reproaching voices crying, "is _JeanSbogar_? Where is _Laure Ruthwen ou les Vampires_ in novel-plural or _LeVampire_ in melodrama-singular? Where are a score or a hundred otherbooks, pieces, pages, paragraphs, passages from five to fifty wordslong?" They are not here, and I could not find room for them here. "Butyou found more room for Paul de Kock?" Yes: and I have tried to showwhy. CHAPTER III VICTOR HUGO [Sidenote: Limitations. ] At the present day, and perhaps in all days hitherto, the greatestwriter of the nineteenth century in France for length of practice, diversity of administration of genius, height of intention, and (for along time at least) magnitude and altitude of fame, enjoys, and hasenjoyed, more popular repute in England for his work in prose fictionthan for any other part of it. With the comparative side of thisestimate the present writer can indeed nowise agree; and the reasons ofhis disagreement should be made good in the present chapter. But this isthe first opportunity he has had of considering, with fair room andverge, the justice of the latter part of Tennyson's compliment "Victor_in Romance_"; and it will pretty certainly be the last. As for ageneral judgment of the positive and relative value and qualities of thewonderful procession of work--certainly deserving that adjectivewhatever other or others may be added--which covers the space of a fullhalf-century from _Han d'Islande_ to _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, it would, according to the notions of criticism here followed, be improper toattempt that till after the procession itself has been carefullysurveyed. Nor will it be necessary to preface, to follow, or, except very rarelyand slightly, to accompany this survey with remarks on the non-literarycharacteristics of this French Titan of literature. The object often offrantic political and bitter personal abuse; for a long time of almostequally frantic and much sillier political and personal idolatry;himself the victim--in consequence partly of his own faults, partly ofignoble jealousy of greatness, but perhaps most of all of the inevitablereaction from this foolish cult--of the most unsparing rummage intothose faults, and the weaknesses which accompany them, that any poet orprose writer, even Pope, has experienced--Victor Hugo still, though hehas had many a _vates_ in both senses of _sacer_, may almost be allowed_carere_ critico _sacro_, [93] in the best sense, on the whole of hislife and work. I have no pretensions to fill or bridge the whole of thegap here. It will be quite task enough for the present, leaving the lifealmost alone, to attempt the part of the work which contains prosefiction. Nothing said of this will in the least affect what I have oftensaid elsewhere, and shall hold to as long as I hold anything, in regardto the poetry--that its author is the greatest poet of France, and oneof the great poets of the world. [Sidenote: _Han d'Islande. _] To deal with Hugo's first published, though not first written, novelrequires, in almost the highest degree, what Mr. Matthew Arnold called"a purged considerate mind. " There are, I believe, some people (I myselfknow at least one of great excellence) who, having had the good luck toread _Han d'Islande_ as schoolboys, and finding its vein congenial totheirs, have, as in such cases is not impossible, kept it unscathed intheir liking. But this does not happen to every one. I do not think, though I am not quite certain, that when I first read it myself I wasexactly what may be called a schoolboy pure and simple (that is to say, under fifteen). But if I did not read it in upper school-boyhood (thatis to say, before eighteen), I certainly did, not much later. I own thatat that time, whatever my exact age was, I found it so uninterestingthat I do not believe I read it through. Nor, except in the lastrespect, have I improved with it--for it would be presumptuous to say, "has it improved with me"--since. The author apologised for it in twosuccessive prefaces shortly after its appearance, and in yet anotherafter that of _Notre-Dame de Paris_, ten years later. None of them, itis to be feared, "touches the spot. " The first, indeed, is hardly anapology at all, but a sort of _goguenard_ "showing off" of the kind notuncommon with youth; the second, a little more serious, contains ratherinteresting hits[94] of again youthful jealousy at the popularity ofPigault-Lebrun and Ducray-Duminil; the third and much later one is avery early instance of the Victorian philosophising. "There must be, " weare told with the solemnity which for some sixty years excited such acurious mixture of amazement and amusement, "in every work of themind--drama or novel--there must be many things felt, many thingsobserved, and many things divined, " and while in _Han_ there is only onething felt--a young man's love--and one observed--a girl's ditto--therest is all divined, is "the fantastic imagination of an adolescent. " One impeticoses the gratility of the explanation, and refrains, as faras may be, from saying, "Words! words!" Unluckily, the book does verylittle indeed to supply deeds to match. The feeling and the observationfurnish forth a most unstimulating love-story; at least the presentcritic, who has an unabashed fondness for love-stories, has never beenable to feel the slightest interest either in Ordener Guldenlew or inEthel Schumacker, except in so far as the lady is probably the first ofthe since innumerable and sometimes agreeable heroines of her name infiction. As for the "divining, " the "intention, " and the "imagination, "they have been exerted to sadly little purpose. The absurd nomenclature, definitely excused in one of the prefaces, may have a slight historicinterest as the first attempt, almost a hopeless failure, at that_science des noms_ with which Hugo was later credited, and which hecertainly sometimes displayed. It is hardly necessary to say much aboutSpladgest and Oglypiglaf, Musdaemon and Orugix. They are pureschoolboyisms. But it is perhaps fair to relieve the author from thereproach, which has been thrown on him by some of his Englishtranslators, of having metamorphosed "Hans" into "Han. " He himselfexplains distinctly that the name was a nickname, taken from the gruntor growl (the word is in France applied to the well-known noise made bya paviour lifting and bringing down his rammer) of the monster. But that monster himself! A more impossible improbability and a moreimprobable impossibility never conceived itself in the brain of even anas yet failure of an artist. Han appears to have done all sorts of nastythings, such as eating the insides of babies when they were alive anddrinking the blood of enemies when they were not dead, out of the skullsof his own offspring, which he had extracted from _their_ dead bodies bya process like peeling a banana: also to have achieved some terribleones, such as burning cathedrals and barracks, upsetting rocks on wholebattalions, and so forth. But the only chances we have of seeing him atreal business show him to us as overcoming, with some trouble, an infirmold man, and _not_ overcoming at all, after a struggle of long duration, a not portentously powerful young one. His white bear, and not he, seemsto have had the chief merit of despatching six surely rather incompetenthunters who followed the rash "Kennybol": and of his two finalachievements, that of poniarding two men in a court of justice mighthave been brought about by anybody who was careless enough of his ownlife, and that of setting his gaol on fire by any one who, with the samecarelessness, had a corrupt gaoler to supply him with the means. It would be equally tedious and superfluous to go through the minorcharacters and incidents. The virtuous and imprisoned statesmanSchumacker, Ethel's father, excites no sympathy: his malignant andfinally defeated enemy, the Chancellor Ahlefeld, no interest. Thatenemy's most _un_virtuous wife and her paramour Musdaemon--_the_villain of the piece as Han is the monster--as to whom one wonderswhether he could ever have been as attractive as a lover as he isunattractive as a villain, are both puppets. Indeed, one would hardlypay any attention to the book at all if it did not hold a position inthe work of a man of the highest genius partly similar to, and partlycontrasted with, that of _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_. But _St. Irvyne_and _Zastrozzi_ are much shorter than _Han d'Islande_, and Shelley, whether by accident, wisdom (_nemo omnibus horis insanit_), or thedirect intervention of Apollo, never resumed the task for which hisgenius was so obviously unsuited. Still, it must be said for Hugo that, even at this time, he couldhave--in a manner actually had--put in evidence of not absoluteincompetence for the task. [Sidenote: _Bug-Jargal. _] _Bug-Jargal_ was, as glanced at above, written, according to itsauthor's own statement, two years before _Han_, when he was onlysixteen; was partially printed (in the _Constitutionnel_) and (in fearof a piracy) rewritten in fifteen days and published, seven years afterits composition, and almost as many before _Notre-Dame de Paris_appeared. Taking it as it stands, there is nothing of the sixteen yearsor of the fifteen days to be seen in it. It is altogether superior to_Han_, and though it has not the nightmare magnificence and thephantasmagoric variety of _Notre-Dame_, it is, not merely because it ismuch shorter, a far better told, more coherent, and more generally humanstory. The jester-obi Habibrah has indeed the caricature-grotesquery ofHan himself, and of Quasimodo, and long afterwards of Gwynplaine, aswell as the devilry of the first named and of Thénardier in _LesMisérables_; but we do not see too much of him, and nothing that he doesis exactly absurd or utterly improbable. The heroine--so far as there isa heroine in Marie d'Auverney, wife of the part-hero-narrator, butseparated from him on the very day of their marriage by the rebellion ofSan Domingo--is very slight; but then, according to the story, she isnot wanted to be anything more. The cruelty, treachery, etc. , of thehalf-caste Biassou are not overdone, nor is the tropical scenery, norindeed anything else. Even the character of Bug-Jargal himself, amodernised Oroonoko (whom probably Hugo did not know) and a more directdescendant of persons and things in Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and to some extent the "sensibility" novelists generally (whom hecertainly did know), is kept within bounds. And, what is perhaps mostextraordinary of all, the half-comic interludes in the narrative whereAuverney's comrades talk while he makes breaks in his story, contain fewof Hugo's usually disastrous attempts at humour. It is impossible to saythat the book is of any great importance or of any enthralling interest. But it is the most workmanlike of all Hugo's work in prose fiction, and, except _Les Travailleurs de La Mer_ and _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, whichhave greater faults as well as greater beauties, the most readable, ifnot, like them, the most likely to be re-read. [Sidenote: _Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné. _] Its merits are certainly not ill set off by the two shorter pieces, bothof fairly early date, but the one a little before and the other a littleafter _Notre-Dame de Paris_, which usually accompany it in the collectededitions. Of these _Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné_ is, with its tediouspreface, almost two-thirds as long as _Bug-Jargal_ itself; the other, _Claude Gueux_, contents itself with thirty pages. Both are pieces witha purpose--manifestos of one of Hugo's most consistent and mostirrational crazes--the objection to capital punishment. [95] There is noneed to argue against this, the immortal "Que MM. Les assassins, " etc. , being, though in fact the weakest of a thousand refutations, sufficient, once for all, to explode it. But it is not irrelevant to point out thatthe two pieces themselves are very battering-rams against their owntheory. We are not told--the objection to this omission was made at thetime, of course, and Hugo's would-be lofty waving-off of this is one ofthe earliest of many such--what the condemned person's crime was. Butthe upshot of his lucubrations during these latest hours of his is this, that such hours are almost more uncomfortable than the minutes of theactual execution can possibly be. As this is exactly one of the pointson which the advocates of the punishment, whether from the point of viewof deterrence or from that of retribution, chiefly rely, it seemssomething of a blunder to bring it out with all the power of a poet anda rhetorician. We _want_ "M. L'Assassin, " in fact, to be made veryuncomfortable--as uncomfortable as possible--and we want M. L'Assassin, in intention or deliberation, to be warned that he will be so made. "Serve him right" sums up the one view, "De te fabula" the other. Infact cheap copies of _Le Dernier Jour_, supplied to all about to commitmurder, would be highly valuable. Putting aside its purpose, the mereliterary power is of course considerable if not consummate; it hardlypretends to be a "furnished" _story_. [Sidenote: _Claude Gueux. _] The piece, however, is tragic enough: it could hardly fail to be so inthe hands of such a master of tragedy, just as it could hardly fail tobe illogical in the hands of such a paralogician. But _Claude Gueux_, though it ends with a murder and an attempt at suicide and an execution, is really, though far from intentionally, a farce. The hero, made (bythe "fault of society, " of course) a criminal, though not a serious one, thinks himself persecuted by the prison director, and murders thatofficial. The reader who does not know the book will suppose that he hasbeen treated as Charles Reade's wicked governor treated Josephs andRobinson and the other victims in _It is Never too Late to Mend_. Not atall. The redoubtable Claude had, like the great Victor himself and otherquite respectable men, an equally redoubtable appetite, and the prisonrations were not sufficient for him. As he was a sort of leader orprison shop-steward, and his fellow-convicts looked up to him, a youngfellow who was not a great eater used to give Claude part of hisallowance. The director, discovering this, removed the young man intoanother ward--an action possibly rather spiteful, possibly also only aslight excess, or no excess at all, of red-tapeism in discipline. Claudenot merely asks reasons for this, --which, of course, even ifrespectfully done, was an act of clear insubordination on any butanarchist principles, --but repeats the enquiry. The director more thanonce puts the question by, but inflicts no penalty. Whereupon Claudemakes a harangue to the shop (which appears, in some astounding fashion, to have been left without any supervision between the director'svisits), repeats once more, on the director's entrance, hisinsubordinate enquiry, again has it put by, and thereupon splits theunfortunate official's skull with a hatchet, digging also a pair ofscissors, which once belonged to his (left-handed) wife, into his ownthroat. And the wretches actually cure this hardly fallen angel, andthen guillotine him, which he takes most sweetly, placing at the lastmoment in the hand of the attendant priest, with the words _Pour lespauvres_, a five-franc piece, which one of the Sisters of the prisonhospital had given him! After this Hugo, not contented with the tragedyof the edacious murderer, gives us seven pages of his favourite rhetoricin _saccadé_ paragraphs on the general question. As so often with him, one hardly knows which particular question to askfirst, "Did ever such a genius make such a fool of himself?" or "Wasever such an artist given to such hopeless slips in the most rudimentaryprocesses of art?" [Sidenote: _Notre-Dame de Paris. _] But it is, of course, not till we come to _Notre-Dame de Paris_ that anyserious discussion of Hugo's claims as a novelist is possible. Hitherto, while in novel at least he has very doubtfully been an _enfant sublime_, he has most unquestionably been an _enfant_. Whatever faults may bechargeable on his third novel or romance proper, they include no morechildishness than he displayed throughout his life, and not nearly somuch as he often did later. The book, moreover, to adopt and adapt the language of another matter, whether disputably or indisputably great in itself, is unquestionably so"by position. " It is one of the chief manifestos--there are some whohave held, and perhaps would still hold, that it is _the_ chiefmanifesto and example--of one of the most remarkable and momentous ofliterary movements--the great French Romantic revolt of_mil-huit-cent-trente_. It had for a time enormous popularity, extendingto many who had not the slightest interest in it as such a manifesto; itaffected not merely its own literature, but others, and other artsbesides literature, both in its own and other countries. To whateverextent this popularity may have been affected--first by the transferenceof interest from the author's "letters" to his politics and sociology, and secondly, by the reaction in general esteem which followed hisdeath--it is not very necessary to enquire. One certainly sees fewer, indeed, positively few, references to it and to its contents now. But itwas so bright a planet when it first came into ken; it exercised itsinfluence so long and so largely; that even if it now glows fainter itis worth exploring, and the analysis of the composition of its light isworth putting on record. [Sidenote: The story easy to anticipate. ] In the case of a book which, whether it has or has not undergone someoccultation as suggested, is still kept on sale not merely in theoriginal, but in cheap translations into every European tongue, there isprobably no need to include an actual "argument" in this analysis. As anovel or at least romance, _Notre-Dame de Paris_ contains a story of thelate fifteenth century, the chief characters of which are the Spanishgipsy[96] dancing-girl Esmeralda, with her goat Djali; Quasimodo, thehunchbacked dwarf and bell-ringer of the cathedral; one of itsarchdeacons, Claude Frollo, theologian, philosopher, expert in, butcontemner of, physical and astrological science, and above all, alchemist, if not sorcerer; the handsome and gallant, but "notintelligent" and not very chivalrous soldier Phoebus de Chateaupers, with minors not a few, "supers" very many, and the dramatist PierreGringoire as a sort of half-chorus, half-actor throughout. The evolutionof this story could not be very difficult to anticipate in any case;almost any one who had even a slight knowledge of its actual author'sother work could make a guess at the _scenario_. The end must be tragic;the _beau cavalier_ must be the rather unworthy object of Esmeralda'saffection, and she herself that of the (one need hardly say verydifferent) affections of Frollo and Quasimodo; a charge of sorcery, based on the tricks she has taught Djali, must be fatal to her; andpoetic justice must overtake Frollo, who has instigated the persecutionbut has half exchanged it for, half-combined it with, later attempts ofa different kind upon her. Although this _scenario_ may not have beenthen quite so easy for any schoolboy to anticipate, as it has beenlater, the course of the romantic novel from Walpole to Scott inEnglish, not to mention German and other things, had made it open enoughto everybody to construct. The only thing to be done, and to do, nowwas, and is, to see, on the author's own famous critical principles, [97]how he availed himself of the _publica materies_. [Sidenote: Importance of the actual _title_. ] Perhaps the first impression of any reader who is not merely not anexpert in criticism, but who has not yet learnt its first, last, andhardest lesson, shirked by not a few who seem to be experts--to suspendjudgment till the case is fully heard--may be unfavourable. It is truethat the title _Notre-Dame de Paris_, so stupidly and unfairly disguisedby the addition-substitution of "_The Hunchback_ of Notre Dame" inEnglish translations--quite honestly and quite legitimately warns anyintelligent reader what to expect. It is the cathedral itself, itsvisible appearance and its invisible _aura_, atmosphere, history, spirit, inspiration which gives the author--and is taken by him asgiving--his real subject. Esmeralda and Quasimodo, Frollo and Gringoireare almost as much minors and supers in comparison with It or Her asPhoebus de Chateaupers and the younger Frollo and the rest are inrelation to the four protagonists themselves. The most ambitious pieceof _dianoia_--of thought as contrasted with incident, character, ordescription--is that embodied in the famous chapter, _Ceci tuera cela_, where the fatal effect of literature (at least printed literature) onarchitecture is inculcated. The situation, precincts, construction, constitution of the church form the centre of such action as there is, and supply by far the larger part of its scene. Therefore nobody has aright to complain of a very large proportion of purely architecturaldetail. [Sidenote: The working out of the one under the other. ] But the question is whether, in the actual employment, and still more inwhat we may call the administration, of this and other diluents orobstruents of story, the artist has or has not made blunders in his art;and it is very difficult not to answer this in the affirmative. Therewere many excuses for him. The "guide-book novel" had already, and notso very long before, been triumphantly introduced by _Corinne_. It hadbeen enormously popularised by Scott. The close alliance and almostassimilation of art and history with literature was one of the supremestarticles of faith of Romanticism, and "the Gothic" was a sort of symbol, shibboleth, and sacrament at once of Romanticism itself. But VictorHugo, like Falstaff, has, in this and other respects, abused his powerof pressing subjects into service almost, if not quite, damnably. Whether out of pure wilfulness, out of mistaken theory, or out of amixture[98] of these and other influences, he has made the first volumealmost as little of a story as it could possibly be, while remaining astory at all. Seventy mortal pages, pretty well packed in the standardtwo-volume edition, which in all contains less than six hundred, dawdleover the not particularly well-told business of Gringoire's interruptedmystery, the arrival of the Flemish ambassadors, and the election of thePope of Unreason. The vision of Esmeralda lightens the darkness andquickens the movement, and this brightness and liveliness continue tillshe saves her unlucky dramatist from the murderous diversions of theCour des Miracles. But the means by which she does this--the oldprivilege of matrimony--leads to nothing but a single scene, which mighthave been effective, but which Hugo only leaves flat, while it has nofurther importance in the story whatsoever. After it we hop or strugglefull forty pages through the public street of architecture pure andsimple. [Sidenote: The story recovers itself latterly. ] At first sight "Coup d'oeil impartial sur l'Ancienne Magistrature" mayseem to give even more promise of November than of May. But there _is_action here, and it really has something to do with the story. Also, thesubsequent treatment of the recluse or anchoress of the severest type inthe Place Notre-Dame itself (or practically so), though it is much toolong and is lengthened by matters with which Hugo knows least of all howto deal, has still more claim to attention, for it leads directly on notmerely to the parentage of Esmeralda, but to the tragedy of her fate. And almost the whole of the second volume is, whether the bestnovel-matter or not, at any rate genuine novel-matter. If almost thewhole of the first had been boiled down (as Scott at his best would haveboiled it) into a preliminary chapter or two, the position of the bookas qualified to stand in its kind could not have been questioned. Butits faults and merits in that kind would still have remained matters ofvery considerable question. [Sidenote: But the characters?] In respect of one fault, the side of the defence can surely be takenonly by generous, but hardly judicious or judicial devotees. Hugo'ssingular affection for the monster--he had Stephano to justify him, butunfortunately did not possess either the humour of that drunkenNeapolitan butler or the power of his and Caliban's creator--had made amere grotesque of _Han_, but had been reduced within more artisticlimits in _Bug_. In _Le Dernier Jour_ and _Claude Gueux_ it was excludedby the subjects and objects alike. [99] Here it is, if not an_intellectus_, at any rate _sibi permissus_; and, as it does not in theearlier cases, it takes the not extremely artistic form of violentcontrast which was to be made more violent later in _L'Homme Qui Rit_. If any one will consider Caliban and Miranda as they are presented in_The Tempest_, with Quasimodo and Esmeralda as _they_ are presentedhere, he will see at once the difference of great art and great failureof art. Then, too, there emerges another of our author's persistent obsessions, the exaggeration of what we may call the individual combat. He hadprobably intended something of this kind in _Han_, but the mistake therein telling about it instead of telling it has been already pointed out. Neither Bug-Jargal nor Habibrah does anything glaringly and longwindedlyimpossible. But the one-man defence of Notre-Dame by Quasimodo againstthe _truands_ is a tissue not so much of impossibilities--they, as ithas been said of old, hardly matter--as of the foolish-incredible. Whydid the numerous other denizens of the church and its cloisters donothing during all this time? Why did the _truands_, who, though theywere all scoundrels, were certainly not all fools, confine themselves tothis frontal assault of so huge a building? Why did the little rascalJean Frollo not take some one with him? These are not questions of meredull common sense; it is only dull absence of common sense which willthink them so. Scott, who, once more, was not too careful in stoppingloose places, managed the attacks of Tillietudlem and Torquilstonewithout giving any scope for objections of this kind. Hugo's strong point was never character, and it certainly is not sohere. Esmeralda is beautiful, amiable, pathetic, and unfortunate; butthe most uncharitable interpretation of Mr. Pope's famous libel neverwas more justified than in her case. Her salvage of Gringoire and itssequel give about the only situations in which she is a realperson, [100] and they are purely episodic. Gringoire himself is as muchout of place as any literary man who ever went into Parliament. Some maythink better of Claude Frollo, who may be said to be theMiltonic-Byronic-Satanic hero. I own I do not. His merespecification--that of the ascetic scholar assailed by physicaltemptation--will pass muster well enough, the working out of it hardly. His brother, the _vaurien_ Jean, has, I believe, been a favourite withothers or the same, and certainly a Villonesque student is not out ofplace in the fifteenth century. Nor is a turned-up nose, even if it beartificially and prematurely reddened, unpardonable. But at the sametime it is not in itself a passport, and Jean Frollo does not appear tohave left even the smallest _Testament_ or so much as a single line(though some snatches of song are assigned to him) reminding us of the"Dames des Temps Jadis" or the "Belle Heaulmière. " Perhaps even Victornever presumed more unfortunately on victory than in bringing in LouisXI. , especially in one scene, which directly challenges comparison with_Quentin Durward_. While, though Scott's _jeunes premiers_ are not, ashe himself well knew and frankly confessed, his greatest triumphs, hehas never given us anything of the kind so personally impersonal asPhoebus de Chateaupers. _Per contra_ there are of course to be set passages which are actuallyfine prose and some of which might have made magnificent poetry; a realor at least--what is as good as or better than a real--a fantasticresurrection of Old Paris; and, above all, an atmosphere of "sunset andeclipse, " of night and thunder and levin-flashes, which no one ofcatholic taste would willingly surrender. Only, ungrateful as it mayseem, uncritical as some may deem it, it is impossible not to sigh, "Oh! why were not the best things of this treated in verse, and why werenot the other things left alone altogether?" [Sidenote: The thirty years' interval. ] For a very long stretch of time--one that could hardly be paralleledexcept in a literary life so unusually extended as his--it might haveseemed that one of those _voix intérieures_, which he was during itscourse to celebrate in undying verse, had whispered to Hugo some suchwarning as that conveyed in the words of the close of the lastparagraph, and that he, usually the most indocile of men, had listenedto it. For all but three decades he confined his production--at least inthe sense of substantial publication[101]--to poetry almost invariablysplendid, drama always grandiose and sometimes grand, and prose-writingof a chiefly political kind, which even sympathisers (one would suppose)can hardly regard as of much value now if they have any criticalfaculty. Even the tremendous shock of disappointment, discomfiture, andexile which resulted from the success of Napoleon the Third, though itstarted a new wave and gust of oceanic and cyclonic force, range, andvolume in his soul, found little prose vent, except the wretched stuffof _Napoléon le Petit_, to chequer the fulgurant outburst of the_Châtiments_, the apocalyptic magnificence of the _Contemplations_, andthe almost unmatched vigour, variety, and vividness of the _Légende desSiècles_. At last, in 1862, a full decade after the cataclysm, his largest andprobably his most popular work of fiction made its appearance in thereturn to romance-writing, entitled _Les Misérables_. I daresaybiographies say when it was begun; it is at any rate clear that evenVictor Hugo must have taken some years, especially in view of his otherwork, to produce such a mass of matter. [102] Probably not very manypeople now living, at least in England, remember very clearly theimmense effect it produced even with us, who were then apt to regardHugo as at best a very chequered genius and at worst an almostcharlatanish rhetorician. [Sidenote: _Les Misérables. _] It was no doubt lucky for its popularity that it fell in with a generalmovement, in England as well as elsewhere, which had with us been, ifnot brought about, aided by influences in literature as different asthose of Dickens and Carlyle, through Kingsley and othersdownwards, --the movement which has been called perhaps more truly thansympathetically, "the cult of the lower [not to say the criminal]classes. " In France, if not in England, this cult had been oddlycombined with a dash of rather adulterated Romanticism, and long beforeHugo, Sues and Sands, as will be seen later, had in their differentmanner been priests and priestesses of it. In his own case the adoptionof the subject "keyed on" in no small degree to the mood in which hewrote the _Dernier Jour_ and _Claude Gueux_, while a good deal of the"Old Paris" mania (I use the word nowise contumeliously) of _Notre-Dame_survived, and even the "Cour des Miracles" found itself modernised. Whether the popularity above mentioned has kept itself up or not, Icannot say. Of one comparatively recent edition, not so far as I knowpublished at intervals, I have been told that the first volume is out ofprint, but none of the others, a thing rather voiceful to theunderstanding. I know that, to me, it is the hardest book to readthrough of any that I know by a great writer. _Le Grand Cyrus_ and_Clélie_ are certainly longer, _Clarissa_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_are probably so. _Le Vicomte de Bragelonne_ is almost as long. There arefiner things in it than in any of them, (except the deaths of Lovelaceand Porthos and the kidnapping of General Monk) from the pure novelpoint of view, and not a few passages which ought to have been verseand, even prose as they are, soar far over anything that Mademoiselle deScudéry or Samuel Richardson or Alexandre Dumas could possibly havewritten in either harmony. The Scudéry books are infinitely duller, andthe Richardson ones much less varied. But none of these others besets the path of the reader with things towhich the obstacles interposed by Quilp in the way of Sampson Brass weredown-pillows, as is the case with _Les Misérables_. It is as if VictorHugo had said, "You shall read this at your peril, " and had made goodthe threat by dint of every blunder in novel-writing which he couldpossibly commit. With his old and almost invariable fault (there is alittle of it even in _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_, and only_Quatre-Vingt-Treize_ avoids it entirely), he delays any real interesttill the book, huge as it is, is almost half way through. Twenty pageson Bishop Myriel--that rather piebald angel who makes the way impossiblefor any successor by his fantastic and indecent "apostolicism" inliving; who tells, _not_ like St. Athanasius, an allowable equivocationto save his valuable self, but a downright lie to save a worthlessrascal; and who admits defeat in argument by the stale sophisms of amoribund _conventionnel_--might have been tolerable. We have, in thecompactest edition I know, about a hundred and fifty. The ruin anddesertion of Fantine would have been worth twenty more. We have fromfifty to a hundred to tell us the story of four rather impossiblybeautiful _grisettes_, and as many, alas! too possible, but notinteresting, rascals of students. It is difficult to say how much iswasted on the wildly improbable transformation of Jean Valjean, convictand pauper, into "M. Madeleine, " _maire_ and (_nummis gallicis_)millionaire, through making sham jet. All this, by any one who reallyknew his craft, would have been sketched rapidly in fluent preliminary, and subsequent piecemeal retrospect, so as to start with Valjean'sescape from Thénardier and his adoption of Cosette. The actual matter of this purely preliminary kind extends, as has beenascertained by rough but sufficient calculation of the sort previouslyemployed, to at least three-quarters of an average novel of SirWalter's: it would probably run to two or three times the length of amodern "six-shilling. " But Hugo is not satisfied with it. A point, animportant point, doubtless, but one that could have been despatched in afew lines, connects the novel proper with the Battle of Waterloo. Tothat battle itself, even the preliminary matter in its earliest part issome years posterior: the main action, of course, is still more so. ButVictor must give us _his_ account of this great engagement, and he givesit in about a hundred pages of the most succinct reproduction. For mypart, I should be glad to have it "mixed with much wine, " even if thewine were of that luscious and headachy south-of-France character whichhe himself is said to have preferred to Bordeaux or Champagne, Sauterneor even Burgundy. Nay, without this I like it well enough and quarrelwith nothing in it, though it is in many respects (from the famoushollow way which nobody else ever heard of downwards) very much of adream-battle. Victor does quite as much justice as any one could expecthim to do--and, thank heaven, there are still some Englishmen who areperfectly indifferent whether justice is done to them or not in thesematters, leaving it to poorer persons in such ways who may be glad ofit--to English fighting; while if he represents Wellington as a merecalculator and Napoleon as a hero, we can murmur politely (like a RomanCatholic bishop, more real in many ways than His Greatness of Digue), "Perhaps so, my dear sir, perhaps so. " But what has it all got to dohere? Even when Montalais and her lover sat on the wall and talked forhalf a volume or so in the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_; even when HisMajesty Louis XIV. And his (one regrets to use the good old Englishword) pimp, M. Le Duc de Saint-Aignan, exhausted the resources ofcarpentry and the stores of printer's ink to gain access to theapartment of Mlle. De la Vallière, the superabundance, though trivial, was relevant: this is not. When Thénardier tried to rob and was no doubtquite ready to murder, but did, as a matter of fact, help toresuscitate, the gallant French Republican soldier, who was so glad toreceive the title of baron from an emperor who had by abdicationresigned any right to give it that he ever possessed, it might have beenMalplaquet or Leipsic, Fontenoy or Vittoria, for any relevance thedetails of the battle possessed to the course of the story. Now relevance (to make a short paragraph of the kind Hugo himself loved)is a mighty goddess in novelry. And so it continues, though, to be absolutely just, the later parts arenot exposed to quite the same objections as the earlier. Theseobjections transform themselves, however, into other varieties, and arereinforced by fresh faults. The most inexcusable digressions, onsubjects as remote from each other as convents and sewers, insist onpoking themselves in. The central, or what ought to be the central, interest itself turns on the ridiculous _émeute_ of Saint-Merry, a thing"without a purpose or an aim, " a mere caricature of a revolution. The_gamin_ Gavroche puts in a strong plea for mercy, and his sisterEponine, if Hugo had chosen to take more trouble with her, might havebeen a great, and is actually the most interesting, character. ButCosette--the cosseted Cosette--Hugo did not know our word or he wouldhave seen the danger--is merely a pretty and rather selfish little doll, and her precious lover Marius is almost ineffable. Novel-heroes who are failures throng my mind like ghosts on the othershore of the river whom Charon will not ferry over; but I can single outnone of them who is, without positively evil qualities, so absolutelyintolerable as Marius. [103] Others have more such qualities; but he hasno good ones. His very bravery is a sort of moral and intellectualrunning amuck because he thinks he shall not get Cosette. Having, apparently, for many years thought and cared nothing about his father, he becomes frantically filial on discovering that he has inherited fromhim, as above, a very doubtful and certainly most un-"citizen"-liketitle of Baron. Thereupon (taking care, however, to have cards printedwith the title on them) he becomes a violent republican. He then proceeds to be extremely rude to his indulgent but royalistgrandfather, retires to a mount of very peculiar sacredness, where hecomes in contact with the Thénardier family, discovers a plot againstValjean, appeals to the civil arm to protect the victim, but, forreasons which seem good to him, turns tail, breaks his arranged part, and is very nearly accessory to a murder. At the other end of the story, carrying out his general character of prig-pedant, as selfish asself-righteous, he meets Valjean's rather foolish and fantasticself-sacrifice with illiberal suspicion, and practically kills the poorold creature by separating him from Cosette. When the _éclaircissement_comes, it appears to me--as Mr. Carlyle said of Loyola that he ought tohave consented to be damned--that Marius ought to have consented atleast to be kicked. Of course it may be said, "You should not give judgments on things withwhich you are evidently out of sympathy. " But I do not acknowledge anypalpable hit. If certain purposes of the opposite kind were obtrudedhere in the same fashion--if Victor (as he might have done in earlierdays) had hymned Royalism instead of Republicanism, or (as perhaps hewould never have done) had indulged in praise of severe laws andrestricted education, [104] and other things, I should be "in sympathy, "but I hope and believe that I should not be "out of" criticism. Unlessstrictly adjusted to the scale and degree suitable to a novel--as SirWalter has, I think, restricted his Mariolatry and his Jacobitism, andso forth--I should bar them as I bar these. [105] And it is the fact thatthey are not so restricted, with the concomitant faults which, againpurely from the point of view of novel-criticism as such, I haveventured to find, that makes me consider _Les Misérables_ a failure as anovel. Once again, too, I find few of the really good and greatthings--which in so vast a book by such a writer are there, and couldnot fail to be there--to be essentially and specially good and greataccording to the novel standard. They are, with the rarest exceptions, the stuff of drama or of poetry, not of novel. That there are suchexceptions--the treacherous feast of the students to the mistresses theyare about to desert; the escapes of Valjean from the ambushes laid forhim by Thénardier and Javert; some of the Saint-Merry fighting; theguesting of the children by Gavroche in the elephant; and others--istrue. But they are oases in a desert; and, save when they would bebetter done in poetry, they do not after all seem to me to be muchbetter done than they might have been by others--the comparativeweakness of Hugo in conversation of the kind suitable for prose fictionmaking itself felt. That at least is what the present writer's notion ofcriticism puts into his mouth to say; and he can say no other. [Sidenote: _Les Travailleurs de la Mer. _] _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_, on the other hand, is, according to somepersons, among whom that present writer desires to be included, thesummit of Victor Hugo's achievements in prose fiction. It has his"signatures" of absurdity in fair measure. There is the celebrated"Bug-Pipe" which a Highlander of the garrison of Guernsey sold (I amafraid contrary to military law) to the hero, and on which that heroperformed the "_melancholy_ air" of "Bonny Dundee. "[106] There is theequally celebrated "First of the Fourth" (Première de la Quatrième), which is believed to be Hugonic for the Firth of Forth. There are someothers. There is an elaborate presentation of a quite impossibly namedclergyman, who is, it seems, an anticipator of "le Puseysme" and anactual high-churchman, who talks as never high-churchman talked fromLaud to Pusey himself, but rather like the Reverend GabrielKettledrummle (with whom Hugo was probably acquainted "in translations, Sir! in translations"). [107] Gilliatt, the hero, is a not very humanprig outside those extraordinary performances, of which more later, andhis consummate end. Déruchette, the heroine, is, like Cosette, a prettynullity. [108] As always, the author _will_ not "get under way"; andshort as the book is, and valuable as is its shortness, it could be cutdown to two-thirds at least with advantage. Clubin and Rantaine, thevillains, are pure melodrama; Mess Lethierry, the good old man, israther an old fool, and not so very good. The real business of thebook--the salvage by Gilliatt of the steamer wrecked on the Douvres--is, as a schoolboy would say, or would have said, "jolly impossible. " Butthe book as a whole is, despite or because of its tragic quality, almostimpossibly "jolly. " [Sidenote: The _genius loci. _] For here--as he did previously (by the help of the form that was morehis own and of Jersey) in the _Contemplations_--he had now got in prose, by that of the smaller, more isolated, and less contaminated[109]island, into his own proper country, the dominion of the Angel of theVisions of the Sea. He has told us in his own grandiloquent way, whichso often led him wrong, that when he settled to exile in the ChannelIslands, his son François observed, "Je traduirai Shakespeare, " and _he_said, "Je contemplerai l'océan. " He did; and good came of it. Studentsof his biography may know that in the dwelling which he calledHauteville House (a name which, I regret to say, already and properlybelonged to another) he slept and mainly lived in a high garret withmuch glass window, overlooking the strait between Guernsey and Sark. These "gazebos, " as they used to be called, are common in St. PeterPort, and I myself enjoyed the possession of a more modest and quiteunfamous one for some time. They are worth inhabiting and looking from, be the weather fair or foul. Moreover, he was, I believe, a very goodwalker, and in both the islands made the best of opportunities which areunmatched elsewhere. Whether he boated much I do not know. The profusionof nautical terms with which he "deaves" us (as the old Scotch word hasit) would rather lead me to think _not_. He was in this inferior toProspero; but I hope it is not blasphemy to say that, _mutatismutandis_, he had something of the banished Duke of Milan in him, andthat, in the one case as in the other, it was the island that brought itout. And he acknowledged it in his Dedication to "Guernesey--_sevère etdouce_. " [Sidenote: Guernsey at the time. ] _Sevère et Douce!_ I lived in Guernsey as a Master at Elizabeth Collegefrom 1868, two years after Victor Hugo wrote that dedication, to 1874, when he still kept house there, but had not, since the "Année Terrible, "occupied it much. I suppose the "severity" must be granted to an islandof solid granite and to the rocks and tides and sea-mists that surroundit. But in the ordinary life there in my time there was little to"asperate" the _douceur_. Perhaps it does not require so very much tosweeten things in general between the ages of twenty-three andtwenty-nine. But the things in general themselves were dulcet enough. The beauty of the place--extraordinarily varied in its triangle of somehalf-score miles or a little less on each side--was not then in theleast interfered with by the excessive commercial glass-housing which, Ibelieve, has come in since. For what my friend of many days, the lateMr. Reynolds of Brasenose and East Ham, a constant visitor in summer, used to call "necessary luxuries, " it was still unique. When I wentthere you could buy not undrinkable or poisonous Hollands at fourshillings a gallon, and brandy--not, of course, exactly cognac or _finechampagne_, but deserving the same epithets--for six. If you were aluxurious person, you paid half-a-crown a bottle for the genuine produceof the Charente, little or not at all inferior to Martell or Hennessy, and a florin for excellent Scotch or Irish whiskey. [110] Fourpencehalf-penny gave you a quarter-pound slab of gold-leaf tobacco, thanwhich I never wish to smoke better. But this easy supplying of the bodily needs of the "horse with wings"and his "heavy rider" was as nothing to other things which strengthenedthe wings of the spirit and lightened the weight of the burden it bore. I have not been a great traveller outside the kingdom of England: andyou may doubtless, in the whole of Europe or of the globe, find moremagnificent things than you can possibly find in an island of thedimensions given. But for a miniature and manageable assemblage ofamenities I do not think you can easily beat Guernsey. The town of St. Peter Port, and its two castles, Fort George above and Castle Cornetbelow, looking on the strait above mentioned, with the curiouslycontrasted islets of Herm and Jethou in its midst; the wonderful coast, first south- and then westward, set with tiny coves of perfection likeBec-du-Nez, and larger bays, across the mouth of which, after a stormand in calm sunny weather, you see lines of foam stretching fromheadland to headland, out of the white clots of which the weakestimagination can fancy Aphrodite rising and floating shorewards, tovanish as she touches the beach; the great western promontory ofPleinmont, a scarcely lessened Land's End, with the Hanois rocks beyond;the tamer but still not tame western, northern, and north-easterncoasts, with the Druid-haunted level of L'Ancresse and the minor port ofSt. Samson--all these furnish, even to the well-girt man, anextraordinary number[111] of walks, ranging from an hour's to a day'sand more there and back; while in the valleys of the interior you findscenery which might be as far from the sea as Warwickshire, or on theheights springs which tell you that they must have come from theneighbourhood of the Mount of Dol or the Forest of Broceliande. With such colour and form of locality to serve, not merely asinspiration but as actual scene and setting, such genius as Hugo's couldhardly fail. The thing is sad and delightful and great. As life, you maysay, it could not have happened; as literature it could not but havehappened, and has happened, at its best, divinely well. The contrast ofthe long agony of effort and its triumph on the Douvres, with the swiftcollapse of any possible reward at St. Samson, is simply a windfall ofthe Muses to this spoiled and, it must be confessed, often self-spoilingchild of theirs. There are, of course, absurdities still, and of adifferent kind from the bug-pipe. I have always wished to know what theexperiences of the fortunate and reverend but sheepish Ebenezer had beenat Oxford--he must certainly have held a King Charles scholarship in hisday--during that full-blooded time of the Regency. The circumstances ofthe marriage are almost purely Hugonian, though it does Hugo credit thathe admires the service which he travesties so remarkably. But the _Dieu_(not _diable_) _au corps_ which he now enjoys enables him to change intoa beauty (in the wholly natural gabble of Mess Lethierry on the recoveryof the _la Durande_) those long speeches which have been already notedas blots. And, beauty or blot, it would not have mattered. All is in thecontrast of the mighty but conquered Douvres and the comparativelyinsignificant rocklet--there are hundreds like it on every granitecoast--where Death the Consoler sets on Gilliatt's head the only crownpossible for his impossible feat, and where the dislike of the ignorantpeasantry, the brute resistance of machinery and material, the violenceof the storm, the devilish ambush of the _pieuvre_, and all other evilsare terminated and evaded and sanctified by the embrace and theeuthanasia of the sea. Perhaps it is poetry rather than novel or evenromance--in substance it is too abstract and elemental for either of theless majestical branches of inventive literature. But it is great. "ByGod! 'tis good, " and, to lengthen somewhat Ben's famous challenge, "ifyou like, you may" put it with, and not so far from, in whatever orderyou please--the deaths of Cleopatra and of Colonel Newcome. The book is therefore a success; but that success is an evident _tour deforce_, and it is nearly as evident to any student of the subject thatsuch a _tour de force_ was not likely to be repeated, and that the thingowed its actual salvage to a rather strict limitation of subject andtreatment--a limitation hitherto unknown in the writer and itselfunlikely to recur. Also that there were certain things in it--especiallythe travesties of names and subjects of which the author practicallyknew nothing--the repetition and extension of which _was_ likely to bedamaging, if not fatal. In two or three years the "fatality" of whichVictor Hugo himself was dangerously fond of talking (the warning ofHerodotus in the dawn about things which it is not lawful to mentionhas been too often neglected) had its revenge. [Sidenote: _L'Homme Qui Rit. _] _L'Homme Qui Rit_ is probably the maddest book in recognised literature;certainly the maddest written by an author of supreme genius without thefaintest notion that he was making himself ridiculous. The genius isstill there, and passage on passage shows us the real "prose-poetry, "that is to say, the prose which ought to have been written in verse. Thescheme of the quartette--Ursus, the misanthrope-Good-Samaritan; Homo, the amiable wolf; Gwynplaine, the tortured and guiltless child andyouth; Dea, the adorable maiden--is unexceptionable _per se_, and itcould have been worked out in verse or drama perfectly, though theactual termination--Gwynplaine's suicide in the sea after Dea'sdeath--is perhaps too close and too easy a "variation of the same thing"on Gilliatt's parallel self-immolation after Déruchette's marriage. [112]Not a few opening or episodic parts--the picture of the caravan; thestruggle of the child Gwynplaine with the elements to save not so muchhimself as the baby Dea; the revulsions of his temptations andpersecutions later; and yet others[113]--show the poet and the master. But the way in which these things are merged in and spoilt by a torrentof silliness, sciolism, and sheer nonsense is, even after one has knownthe book for forty years and more, still astounding. One could laugh almost indulgently over the "bug-pipe" and the "First ofthe Fourth"; one could, being of those who win, laugh quite indulgentlyover the little outbursts of spite in _Les Travailleurs_ at theinstitutions and ways of the country which had, despite some ratherunpardonable liberties, given its regular and royal asylum to theexiled republican and almost anarchist author. Certainly, also, one canlaugh over _L'Homme Qui Rit_ and its picture of the English aristocracy. But of such laughter, as of all carnal pleasures (to steal fromKingsley), cometh satiety, and the satiety is rather early reached inthis same book. One of the chief "persons of distinction" in many wayswhom I have ever come across, the late Mr. G. S. Venables--a lawyer ofno mean expertness; one of the earliest and one of the greatest of those"gentlemen of the Press" who at the middle of the nineteenth centurylifted journalism out of the gutter; a familiar of every kind of thebest society, and a person of infinite though somewhat saturninewit--had a phrase of contempt for absurd utterances by persons who oughtto have known better. "It was, " he said, "like a drunk child. " The majorpart of _L'Homme Qui Rit_ is like the utterance of a drunk child who hadsomething of the pseudo-Homeric Margites in him, who "knew a great manythings and knew them all badly. " I could fill fifty pages here easilyenough, and with a kind of low amusement to myself and perhaps others, by enumerating the absurdities of _L'Homme Qui Rit_. As far as Iremember, when the book appeared, divers good people (the bad peoplemerely sneered) took immense pains to discover how and why this greatman of letters made so much greater a fool of himself. This was quitelost labour; and without attempting the explanation at all, a very smallselection of the facts, being in a manner indispensable, may be given. The mysterious society of "Comprachicos" (Spanish for "child-buyers"), on whose malpractices the whole book is founded; the entirely falseconception of the English House of Lords, which gives much of thesuperstructure; the confusion of English and French times and seasons, manners and customs, which enables the writer to muddle up Henri-Troisand Louis-Quinze, Good Queen Bess and Good Queen Anne: these and otherthings of the kind can be passed over. For things like some of themoccur in much saner novelists than Hugo; and Sir Walter himself isnotoriously not free from indisputable anachronisms. [114] But you havebarely reached the fiftieth page when you come to a "Lord LinnæusClancharlie, Baron Clancharlie et Hunkerville, Marquis de Corleone enSicile, " whose English peerage dates from Edward _the Elder_ (the originof his Sicilian title is not stated, but it was probably conferred byHiero or Dionysius), and whose name "Clancharlie" has nothing whateverto do with Scotland or Ireland. This worthy peer (who, as a Cromwellian, exiled himself after the Restoration) had, like others of the godly, abastard son, enjoying at "_temp. _ of tale" the remarkable courtesy titleof "Lord David Dirry-Moir, " but called by the rabble, with whom hissporting tastes make him a great favourite, "Tom-Jim-Jack. " Most"love-children" of peers would be contented (if they ever had them) withcourtesy titles; but Lord David has been further favoured by Fortune andKing James II. , who has first induced the _comprachicos_ to trepan andmutilate Clancharlie's real heir (afterwards Gwynplaine, the eponymoushero of the book), and has then made Lord David a "_pairsubstitué_"[115] on condition that he marries one of the king's naturaldaughters, the Duchess Josiane, a duchess with no duchy ever mentioned. In regard to her Hugo proceeds to exhibit his etymological powers, ignoring entirely the agreeable heroine of _Bevis of Hampton_, andsuggesting either an abbreviation of "Josefa y Ana" (at this time, weare gravely informed, there was a prevalent English fashion of takingSpanish names) or else a feminine of "Josias. " Moreover, among dozens ofother instances of this Bedlam nomenclature, we have a "combat of box"between the Irishman "Phelem-ghe-Madone" (because Irishmen are oftenRoman Catholics?) and the Scotchman "Helmsgail" (there is a placecalled Helms_dale_ in Scotland, and if "gael" why not "gail"?), to thelatter of whom a knee is given by "Lord Desertum" (Desart? Dysart?what?). And so it goes on. There is the immortal scene (or rather half-volume)in which, Hugo having heard or read of _peine forte et dure_, we findsheriffs who discharge the duty of Old Bailey judges, fragments of LawLatin (it is really a pity that he did not get hold of our inimitableLaw _French_), and above all, and pervading all, that most fearfulwildfowl the "wapentake, " with his "iron weapon. " He, with his satellitethe justicier-quorum (but, one weeps to see, not "custalorum" or"rotalorum"), is concerned with the torture of Hardquanonne[116]--theoriginal malefactor[117] in Gwynplaine's case--and thereby restoresGwynplaine to his (unsubstituted) rank in the English peerage, when hehimself is anticipating similar treatment. There is the presentation bythe librarian of the House of Lords of a "little red book" which is thepassport to the House itself: and the very unmannerly reception by hisbrother peers, from which he is in a manner rescued by the chivalrousLord David Dirry-Moir at the price of a box on the ears for deprivinghim of his "substitution. " There is the misconduct of the DuchessJosiane, divinely beautiful and diabolically wicked, who covets themonster Gwynplaine as a lover, and discards him when, on hispeerification, he is commanded to her by Queen Anne as a husband. Andthen, after all this tedious insanity and a great deal more, there isthe finale of the despair of Gwynplaine, of his recovery of the dyingDea in a ship just starting for Holland, of her own death, and of hissuicide in the all-healing sea--a "reconciliation" not far short of thegreatest things in literature. Now I am not of those unhappy ones who cannot away with the mixture oftragedy and farce. I have not only read too much, but lived too long forthat. But then the farce must be in life conceivable and in literatureconscious. Shakespeare, and even men much inferior to Shakespeare, havebeen able to provide for this stipulation munificently. With Victor Hugo, generally more or less and intensively here, it wasunfortunately different. His irony was almost always his weakest point;or rather it was a kind of hit-or-miss weapon, with which he cut himselfas often as he cut his inimical objects or persons. The intenseabsurdity of his personified wapentakes, of his Tom-Jim-Jacks, of hiscourtesy-title bastards, he deliberately declined (as in the anecdoteabove given) to see. But these things, done and evidently thought fineby the doer, almost put to rout the most determined and expert sifter ofthe faults and merits of genius. You cannot enjoy a Garden of Eden whenat every other step you plunge into a morass of mire. You cannot drink adraught of nectar, arranged on the plan of certain glasses of liqueur, in superimposed layers of different savour and colour, when every otherlayer is "stummed" folly or nauseous bad taste. A novel is not like abook of poems, where, as you see that you have hit on a failure, youturn the page and find a success. To which it may be added finally thatwhile erudition of _any_ kind is a doubtful set-off to fiction, thepresentation of ragbag erudition of this kind is, to speak moderatelyand in his own words of something else, "a rather hideous thing. "[118] Still, with readers of a certain quality, the good omens may to someextent shame the ill even here. The death of Dea, with its sequel, isvery nearly perfect; it only wants the verse of which its author wassuch an absolute master, instead of the prose, where he alternatelytriumphed and bungled, to make it so. And one need not be a commonparadoxer to take either side on the question whether on the whole theomen, if not the actuality, of _L'Homme Qui Rit_ or that of _LesTravailleurs de la Mer_ was the happier. For, while the earlier andbetter book showed how faults were hardening and might grow worse still, the later showed how these very faults, attaining their utmost possibledevelopment, could not entirely stifle the rarer gifts. I do notremember that anybody in 1869 took this apparently aleatory side of theargument. If he did he was justified in 1874. [Sidenote: _Quatre-Vingt-Treize. _] One enormous advantage of _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_ over its immediatepredecessor lay on the surface--an advantage enormous in all cases, butalmost incalculable in this particular one. In _L'Homme Qui Rit_ VictorHugo had been dealing with a subject about which he knew practicallynothing, and about which he was prepared to believe, or even practise, anything. Here, though he was still prepared to believe a great deal, heyet knew a very great deal more. A little room for his eccentricitiesremained, and long after the truth had become a matter of registeredhistory, he could accept the legendary lies about the _Vengeur_; butthere was no danger of his giving us French wapentakes brandishingiron-weapons, or calling a French noble by any appellation comparable toLord Linnæus[119] Clancharlie. But, it may be said, is not the removal of these annoyances more thancompensated, in the bad sense, by things inseparable from such asubject, as treated by such an author?--the glorification of"Quatre-Vingt-Treize" itself, and, in particular, of theConvention--that remarkable assembly which seems to have made up itsmind to prove for all time that, in democracies, the scum comes to thetop?--that assembly in which Fabre d'Eglantine stood for poetry, Maratfor humanitarianism, Robespierre for justice, Hébert and Chaumette fordecency, Siéyès and Chabot for different forms of religion, thecomposers of the Republican Calendar[120] for common sense? where theonly suggestion of a great man was Danton, and the only substitutes foran honest one were the prigs and pedants of the Gironde? To which theonly critical answer must be, even when the critic does not contest thecorrectness of this description--"Why, no!" It is better, no doubt, that a novelist, and that everybody else, shouldbe a _bien-pensant_; but, as in the case of the poet, it will notnecessarily affect his goodness in his art if he is not. He had, indeed, best not air his opinions, whatever they are, at too great length; but_what_ they are matters little or nothing. A Tory critic who cannotadmire Shelley or Swinburne, Dickens or Thackeray, because of theirpolitics, is merely an ass, an animal unfortunately to be found in thestables or paddocks of every party. On the other hand, absurdities andfaults of taste matter very much. Now from these latter, which had nearly ruined _L'Homme Qui Rit_, _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, if not entirely free, suffers comparativelylittle. The early and celebrated incident of the carronade running amuckshows characteristic neglect of burlesque possibilities (and, as Ibelieve some experts have maintained, of actual ones), but it has thequalities of the Hugonian defects. An arm-chair critic may ask, Wherewas the English fleet in the Channel when a French one was allowed tocome out and slowly mob the _Claymore_ to destruction, without, as faras one sees, any interference or counter-effort, though the expeditionof that remarkable corvette formed part of an elaborate and carefullyprepared offensive?[121] Undoubtedly, the Convention scenes must beallowed--even by sympathisers with the Revolution--to be clumsystopgaps, unnecessary to the action and possessed of little intrinsicvalue in themselves. The old fault of verbosity and "watering out"recurs; and so does the reappearance, with very slight change, offigures and situations. Cimourdain in character is very much of a morerespectable Claude Frollo; and in conduct, _mutatis_ not so very many_mutandis_, almost as much of a less respectable Javert. The death ofGauvain is far less effective than that of Sydney Carton, which hadpreceded it; and the enormous harangue of the Marquis to the nephew whois about to liberate him, though it may be intended to heighten the_peripeteia_, merely gives fresh evidence of Hugo's want of proportionand of his flux of rhetoric. All this and more is true; yet _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_ is, "in its _fine_wrong way, " a great book, and with _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_, completes the pillars, such as they are, which support Hugo's positionas a novelist. The rescue of the children by Lantenac is superb, thoughyou may find twenty cavils against it easily: and the whole presentationof the Marquis, except perhaps the speech referred to, is one of thebest pictures of the _ancienne noblesse_ in literature, one which--toreverse the contrast just made--annihilates Dickens's caricature thereofin _A Tale of Two Cities_. The single-handed defence of La Tourgue by"L'Imanus" has of course a good deal of the hyperbole which began withQuasimodo's similar act in _Notre-Dame_; but the reader who cannot "lethimself go" with it is to be pitied. Nowhere is Hugo's child-worshipmore agreeably shown than in the three first chapters of the thirdvolume. And, sinking particulars for a more general view, one may saythat through the whole book, to an extent surpassing even _LesTravailleurs de la Mer_ as such, there is the great Victorian _souffle_and surge, the rush as of mighty winds and mightier waters, whichcarries the reader resistlessly through and over all obstacles. [Sidenote: Final remarks. ] Yet although Hugo thus terminated his career as a novelist, if not inthe odour of sanctity, at any rate in a comfortable cloud of incense dueto a comparative success; although he had (it is true on a much smallerscale) even transcended that success in _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_;although, as a mere novice, he had proved himself a more than tolerabletale-teller in _Bug-Jargal_, it is not possible, for any criticalhistorian of the novel as such, to pronounce him a great artist, or evena tolerable craftsman, in the kind as a whole. It has already beenseveral times remarked in detail, and may now be repeated in general, that the things which we enjoy in his books of this kind are seldomthings which it is the special business of the novelist to produce, andpractically never those which are his chief business. In no singleinstance perhaps, with the doubtful exception of Gilliatt's battle withbrute matter and elemental forces, is "the tale the thing" purely astale. Very seldom do we even want to know what is going to happen--thechildishly simple, but also childishly genuine demand of the reader ofromance as such, if not even of the novel also. Scarcely once do we--atleast do I--take that interest in the development of character which isthe special subject of appetite of readers of the novel, as such and byitself. The baits and the rewards are now splendour of style; nowmagnificence of imagery; sometimes grandeur of idea; often pathos; notseldom the delight of battle in this or that sense. These are allexcellent seasonings of novelry; but they are not the root of thematter, the _pièce de résistance_ of the feast. Unfortunately, too, Hugo not merely cannot, or at any rate does not, give the hungry sheep their proper food--an interesting story worked outby interesting characters--but will persist in giving them things assuitable (granting them to be in the abstract nourishing) as turnips tothe carnivora or legs of mutton to the sheep which walk on them. Itwould, of course, not be just to press too strongly the objections tothe novel of purpose, though to the present writer they seem almostinsuperable. But it is not merely purpose in the ordinary sense whichleads Victor astray, or rather (for he was much too wilful a person tobe led) which he invents for himself to follow, with his eyes open, andknowing perfectly well what he is doing. His digressions are not_parabases_ of the kind which some people object to in Fielding andstill more in Thackeray--addresses to the reader on points more or lessintimately connected with the subject itself. A certain exception hasbeen made in favour of some of the architectural parts of _Notre-Dame deParis_, but it has been admitted that this will not cover "Ceci TueraCela" nor much else. For the presence of the history of the sewers ofParis in _Les Misérables_ and any number of other things; for not alittle of the first volume of _Les Travailleurs_ itself; for about half, if not more, of _L'Homme Qui Rit_, starting from Ursus's Black-book offancy pleasances, palaces, and estates belonging to the fellow-peers ofLord Linnæus Clancharlie and Hunkerville; for not a few chapters even of_Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, there is no excuse at all. They are simplyrepulsive or at least unwelcome "pledgets" of unsucculent matter stuckinto the body of fiction, as (but with how different results!) _lardons_or pistachios or truffles are stuck into another kind of composition. It is partly, but not wholly, due to this deplorable habit of irrelevantdivagation that Hugo will never allow his stories to "march" (at leastto begin with marching), [122] _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_ being here the onlyexception among the longer romances, for even _Les Travailleurs de laMer_ never gets into stride till nearly the whole of the first volume ispassed. But the habit, however great a nuisance it may be to the reader, is of some interest to the student and the historian, for the veryreason that it does not seem to be wholly an outcome of the other habitof digression. It would thus be, in part at least, a survival of thatodd old "inability to begin" which we noticed several times in the lastvolume, aggravated by the irrepressible wilfulness of the writer, and byhis determination not to do like other people, who _had_ by this timemostly got over the difficulty. If any further "dull moral" is wanted it may be the obvious lesson thatoverpowering popularity of a particular form is sometimes a misfortune, as that of allegory was in the Middle Ages and that of didactics in theeighteenth century. If it had not been almost incumbent on any Frenchmanwho aimed at achieving popularity in the mid-nineteenth century toattempt the novel, it is not very likely that Hugo would have attemptedit. It may be doubted whether we should have lost any of the bestthings--we should only have had them in the compacter and higher shapeof more _Orientales_, more _Chants du Crépuscule_, more _Légendes_, andso forth. We should have lost the easily losable laugh over bug-pipe andwapentake--for though Hugo sometimes _thought_ sillily in verse he didnot often let silliness touch his expression in the more majesticalharmony--and we should have been spared an immensely greater body ofmatter which now provokes a yawn or a sigh. This is, it may be said, after all a question of taste. Perhaps. But itcan hardly be denied by any critical student of fiction that whileHugo's novel-work has added much splendid matter to literature, it haspractically nowhere advanced, nor even satisfactorily exemplified, theart of the novel. It is here as an exception--marvellous, magnificent, and as such to be fully treated; actually an honour to the art of whichit discards the requirements, but an exception merely and one whichproves, inasmuch as it justifies, the cautions it defies. [123] FOOTNOTES: [93] Mr. Swinburne's magnificent pæans are "vatical" certainly, butscarcely critical, save now and then. Mr. Stevenson wrote on theRomances, but not on "the whole. " [94] See note in Vol. I. P. 472 of this _History_, and in the presentvolume, _sup. _ p. 40. [95] These crazes were not in origin, though they probably were ininfluence, political: Hugo held more than one of them while he was stilla Royalist. [96] She is of course not really Spanish or a gipsy, but is presented assuch at first. [97] Stated in the Preface to _Cromwell_, the critical division of hisfourfold attack on neo-Classicism, as _Les Orientales_ were thepoetical, _Hernani_ was the dramatic, and _Notre-Dame_ itself theprose-narrative. [98] It is scarcely excessive to say that this mixture of wilful temperand unbridled theorising was the Saturnian influence, or the "infortuneof Mart, " in Hugo's horoscope throughout. [99] Unless anybody chooses to say that the gallows and the guillotineare Hugo's monsters here. [100] The failure of the riskiest and most important scene of the whole(where her surrender of herself to Phoebus is counteracted by Frollo'sstabbing the soldier, the act itself leading to Esmeralda'sincarceration) is glaring. [101] _Le Beau Pécopin_ in his _Rhine_-book is, of course, fairlysubstantial in one sense, but it is only an episode or inset-tale insomething else, which is neither novel or romance. [102] It must be four or five times the length of Scott's average, morethan twice that of the longest books with which Dickens and Thackerayused to occupy nearly two years in monthly instalments, and very nearly, if not quite, that of Dumas' longest and most "spun-out" achievements in_Monte Cristo_, the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_ and _La Comtesse de Charny_. [103] I am not forgetting or contradicting what was said above (page 26)of René. But René _does_ very little except when he kills theshe-beavers; Marius is always doing something, and doing it offensively. [104] The "Je ne sais pas lire" argument has more than once suggested tome a certain historical comparison. There have probably never been inall history two more abominable scoundrels for cold-blooded cruelty, theworst of all vices, than Eccelino da Romano and the late Mr. Broadhead, patron saint and great exemplar of Trade-Unionism. Broadhead couldcertainly read. Could Ezzelin? I do not know. But if he could not, theHugonic belief in the efficacy of reading is not strongly supported. Ifhe could, it is definitely damaged. [105] _Vide_ what is said below on _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_. [106] After the lapse of more than half a century some readers may haveforgotten, and more may never have heard, the anecdote connected withthis. It was rashly and somewhat foolishly pointed out to thepoet-romancer himself that the air of "Bonny Dundee" was the veryreverse of melancholy, and that he must have mistaken the name. Hisreply was the most categoric declaration possible of his generalattitude, in such cases, "Et moi, je l'appelle 'Bonny Dundee. '" _Victorlocutus est: causa finita est_ (he liked tags of not recondite Latinhimself). And the leading case governs those of the bug-pipe and the(later) wapentake and _justicier-quorum_, and all the other wondrousthings of which but a few can be mentioned here. [107] I do not know whether any one has ever attempted to estimate hisactual debt to Scott. There are better classics of inquiry, but in theclass many worse subjects. [108] In the opening scene she is something worse. If her writing"Gilliatt" in the snow had been a sort of rustic challenge of the "malome petit, et fugit ad salices" kind, there might have been something(not much) to say for her. But she did not know Gilliatt; she did notwant to know him; and the proceeding was either mere silly childishness, or else one of those pieces of bad taste of which her great creator wasunluckily by no means incapable. [109] I use this adjective in no contumelious sense, and certainly notbecause I have lived in Guernsey and only visited Jersey. To theimpartial denizen of either, the rivalry of the two is as amusing as isthat of Edinburgh and Glasgow, of Liverpool and Manchester, or ofBradford and Leeds. But, at any rate at the time of which I am speaking, Jersey was much more haunted by outsiders (in several senses of thatword) than Guernsey. Residents--whether for the purposes unblushinglyavowed by that sometime favourite of the stage, Mr. Eccles, or for thereasons less horrifying to the United Kingdom Alliance--found themselvesmore at home in "Caesarea" than in "Sarnia, " and the "five-pounder, " asthe summer tripper was despiteously called by natives, liked to go asfar as he could for his money, and found St. Helier's "livelier" thanSt. Peter Port. [110] Really good wines were proportionally cheap; but the little islewas not quite so good at beer, except some remarkable old ale, which onesmall brewery had ventured on, and which my friends of the 22nd Regimentdiscovered and (very wisely) drank up. --It may surprise honest fanaticsand annoy others to hear that, despite the cheapness and abundance oftheir bugbear, there was no serious crime of any kind in Guernsey duringthe six years I knew it, and no disorder worth speaking of, even amongsailors and newly arrived troops. [111] The shape of the island; the position of its only "residential"town of any size in the middle of one of the coasts, so that the roadsspread fan-wise from it; the absence of any large flat space except inthe northern parish of "The Vale"; the geological formation which tends, as in Devonshire, to sink the roads into deep and sometimes "water"lanes; lastly, perhaps, the extreme subdivision of property, whichmultiplies the ways of communication--these things contribute to this"_pedestrian_-paradise" character. There are many places where, withplenty of good walking "objectives, " you can get to none of them withouta disgusting repetition of the same initial grind. In Guernsey, exceptas regards the sea, which never wearies, there is no such even partialmonotony. [112] It is well known that even among great writers this habit ofduplication is often, though very far from always, present. Hugo isspecially liable to it. The oddest example I remember is that theapproach to the Dutch ship at the end of _L'Homme Qui Rit_ reproduces onthe Thames almost exactly the details of the iron gate of the sewers onthe Seine, where Thénardier treacherously exposes Valjean to theclutches of Javert, in _Les Misérables_, though of course the use madeof it is quite different. [113] It must be remembered that this also belongs to the ChannelIslands division: and the Angel of the Sea has still some part in it. [114] Those of _Ivanhoe_ and _Kenilworth_ have enraged pedants andamused the elect for a century. But I do not remember much notice beingtaken of that jump of half a millennium and one year more in _TheTalisman_, where Count Henry of Champagne "smiles like a sparklinggoblet of his own wine. " This was in 1192, while the ever-blessed DomPérignon did not make champagne "sparkle" till 1693. Idolatry maysuggest that "sparkling" is a perpetual epithet of wine; but I fear thiswill not do. [115] _Substitué_ means "entailed" in technical French. But I know noinstance of this kind of "contingent remainder" in England. [116] A compound (as Victor himself might suggest) of "Hardyknut" and"Sine qua non"? Or "Hardbake"? [117] He has been found out through the agency of one "Barkilphedro"(Barkis-Phaedrus?), an Irishman of familiar sept, who is "Decanter ofthe Bottles of the Sea, " and who finds, in one of his trovers, aderelict gourd of confession thrown overboard by the Comprachicos whenwrecked (in another half-volume earlier) all over the Channel fromPortland to Alderney. [118] Perhaps there is no more conspicuous instance of irritatingfutility in this way than the famous [Greek: anagkê] and [Greek:anagneia] of _Notre-Dame_. Of course anybody who knows no Greek can seethat the first four letters of the two words are the same. But anybodywho knows some Greek knows that the similarity is purely _literal_, suchas exists between "Chateaubriand" and "Chat Botté" and that the [Greek:an] has a different origin in the two cases. Moreover, [Greek:anagneia], "uncleanness, " is about the last word one would choose toexpress the _liaison_ of thought--"The dread constraint of physicalpassion" or "Lust is Fate"--which Hugo wishes to indicate. It is a merejingle, suggestive of a schoolboy turning over the dictionary. [119] That the only person at all likely to be "name-father" of thisname was not born till a considerable time after his name-child's deathwould perhaps be worth remarking in another writer. In Hugo it hardlycounts. [120] Let me do even _them_ one justice in this connection. They did notsuppose that the only way to make people get up earlier was to makethese people's clocks and watches tell lies. [121] There is a smaller point which might be taken up. Undoubtedlythere were many double traitors on both sides in the other Great War. But, like all their kind, they had a knack for being found out. Dumaswould, I think, have given us something satisfactory as to the"aristocrat" at Jersey who betrayed the _Claymore_ to the Revolutionaryauthorities. [122] It is impossible, with him, not to think of Baudelaire's greatline in _L'Albatros_ (which some may have read even before _LesTravailleurs_)-- "Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de _marcher_, " though the sense is not absolutely coextensive. [123] If I have spoken above "so that the Congregation be therebyoffended, " let me point out that there is no other way of dealing withthe subject critically, except perhaps by leaving a page blank save forsuch words, in the middle of it, as "Victor Hugo is Victor Hugo; and heis for each reader to take or to leave. " _He_ would, I think, haverather liked this; _I_ should not, as a person, dislike it; but I fearit might not suit with my duty as a critic and a historian. CHAPTER IV BEYLE AND BALZAC There may possibly be some readers who might prefer that the twonovelists whose names head this chapter should be treated each in achapter to himself. But after trying several plans (for I can assuresuch readers that the arrangement of this History has been the reverseof haphazard) I have thought it best to yoke them. That they have morein common with each other, not merely than either has with Hugo orDumas, or even George Sand, but than either of these three has with theothers, few will deny. And as a _practising_ novelist Beyle has hardlysubstance enough to stand by himself, though as an influence--for a timeand that no short one and still existing--scarcely any writer in ourwhole list has been more efficacious. It is not my purpose, nor, Ithink, my duty, to say much about their relations to each other; indeedBeyle delayed his novel-work so long, and Balzac codified his own socarefully and so early, that the examination of the question would needto be meticulous, and might even be a little futile in a generalhistory, though it is an interesting subject for a monograph. It isenough to say that, _generally_, both belong to the analytical ratherthan to the synthetical branch of novel-writing, and may almost be saidbetween them to have introduced the analytical romance; that theycompose their palettes of sombre and neutral rather than of brilliantcolours; that actual "story interest" is not what they, as a rule, [124]aim at. Finally--though this may be a proposition likely to be disputedwith some heat in one case if not in both--their conception of humanityhas a certain "other-worldliness" about it, though it is as far aspossible from being what is usually understood by the adjective"unworldly" and though the forms thereof in the two only partiallycoincide. [Sidenote: Beyle--his peculiarity. ] Of the books of Henri Beyle, otherwise Stendhal, [125] to say that theyare not like anything else will only seem banal to those who bring thebanality with them. To annoy these further by opposing pedantry tobanality, one might say that the aseity is quintessential. Therenever--to be a man of great power, almost genius, a commandinginfluence, and something like the founder of a characteristic school ofliterature--was such a _habitans in sicco_ as Beyle; indeed hissubstance and his atmosphere are not so much dry as _desiccated_. Thedryness is not like that which was attributed in the last volume toHamilton, which is the dryness of wine: it is almost the dryness ofashes. By bringing some humour of your own[126] you may confection asort of grim comedy out of parts of his work, but that is all. At thesame time, he has an astonishing command of such reality, and evenvitality, as will (one cannot say survive but) remain over the processof desiccation. That Beyle was not such a passionless person as he gave himself out tobe in his published works was of course always suspected, and more thansuspected, by readers with any knowledge of human nature. It was finallyproved by the autobiographic _Vie de Henri Brulard_, and the otherremains which were at last given to the world, nearly half a centuryafter the author's death, by M. Casimir Stryienski. But the great partwhich he played in producing a new kind of novel is properly concernedwith the earlier and larger division of the work, though the posthumousstuff reinforces this. [Sidenote: _Armance. _] Some one, I believe, has said--many people may have said--that you neverget a much truer notion, though you may afterwards get a clearer andfuller, of a writer than from his earliest work. [127] _Armance_, Beyle'sfirst published novel, [128] though by no means the one which hasreceived most attention, is certainly illuminating. Or rather, perhapsone should say that it poses the puzzle which Beyle himself put brieflyin the words quoted by his editor and biographer: "Qu'ai-j'été? quesuis-je? En vérité je serais bien embarrassé de le dire. " To tell equaltruth, it is but a dull book in itself, surcharged with a vaguepolitical spite, containing no personage whom we are permitted to like(it would be quite possible to like Armance de Zohiloff if we were onlytold less _about_ her and allowed to see and hear more _of_ her), andpossessing, for a hero, one of the most obnoxious and foolish prigs thatI can remember in any novel. Octave de Malivert unites varieties ofdetestableness in a way which might be interesting if (to speak withonly apparent flippancy) it were made so. He is commonplace in hisadoration of his mother and his neglect (though his historian calls it"respect") of his father; he is constantly a prig, as when he is shockedat people for paying more attention to him when they hear that hisparents are going to be indemnified to a large extent for the thefts oftheir property at the Revolution; he is such a sneak and such a snobthat he is always eavesdropping to hear what people say about him; sucha bounder that he disturbs his neighbours by talking loud at the play;such a brute that he deliberately kills a rather harmless coxcomb of amarquis who rebukes him for making this _tapage_; and such a stillgreater brute (for in the duel he had himself been wounded) that hethrows out of the window an unfortunate lackey who gets in his way at aparty where Octave has, as usual, lost his temper. Finally, he is acombination of prig, sneak, cad, brute, and fool when (having picked upand read a forged letter which is not addressed to him, though it hasbeen put by enemies in his way) he believes, without any enquiry, thathis unlucky cousin Armance, to whom he is at last engaged, is deceivinghim, but marries her all the same, lives with her (she loves himfrantically) for a few days, and then, pretending to go to the succourof the Greeks, poisons himself on board ship--rather more, as far as onecan make out, in order to annoy her than for any other reason. Thatthere are the elements, and something more than the elements, of apowerful story in this is of course evident; there nearly always aresuch elements in Beyle, and that is why he has his place here. But, ashas been said, the story is almost as dull as it is disagreeable. Unluckily, too, it is, like most of his other books, pervaded by anunpleasant suggestion that the disagreeableness is intimately connectedwith the author's own nature. As with Julien Sorel (_v. Inf. _) so withOctave de Malivert, one feels that, though Beyle would never havebehaved exactly like his book-child, that book-child has a great dealtoo much of the uncanny and semi-diabolical doubles of some occultstories in it--is, in fact, an incarnation of the bad Beyle, the seamyside of Beyle, the creature that Beyle might have been but for the graceof that God in whom he did not believe. Which things, however one mayhave schooled oneself not to let book and author interfere with eachother, are not comfortable. It ought, however, to be said that _Armance_ is an early and remarkableRomantic experiment in several ways, not least in the foreign mottoes, English, Portuguese, Spanish, and German, which are prefixed to thechapters. Unluckily some of them[129] are obviously retranslated fromFrench versions unverified by the originals, and once there is a mostcurious blunder. Pope's description of Belinda's neck and cross, notquite in the original words but otherwise exact, is attributedto--Schiller! [Sidenote: _La Chartreuse de Parme. _] I have read, I believe, as much criticism as most men, possibly, indeed, a little more than most, and I ought long ago to have been beyond thereach of shocking, startling, or any other movement of surprise at anycritical utterance whatsoever. But I own that an access of _fou rire_once came upon me when I was told in a printed page that _La Chartreusede Parme_ was a "very lively and very amusing book. " A book of great andpeculiar power it most undoubtedly is, a book standing out in theformidable genealogy of "psychological" novels as (_salva reverentia_)certain names stand out from the others in the greater list that opensthe first chapter of St. Matthew. But "lively"? and "amusing"? Wondroushot indeed is this snow, and more lustrous than any ebony are theclerestories towards the south-north of this structure. [Sidenote: The Waterloo episode. ] [Sidenote: The subject and general colour. ] To begin with, there rests on the whole book that oppression of _récit_which has been not unfrequently dwelt upon in the last volume, andsometimes this. Of the 440 pages, tightly printed, of the usual reprint, I should say that two-thirds at least are solid, or merely broken by oneor two paragraphs, which are seldom conversational. This, it may besaid, is a purely mechanical objection. But it is not so. Although theaction is laid in the time contemporary with the writer and writing, from the fall of Napoleon onwards, and in the country (Italy) that heknew best, the whole cast and scheme are historical, the method is thatof a lecturer at a panorama, who describes and points while the panoramaitself passes a long way off behind a screen of clear but thick glass. In two or perhaps three mostly minute parts or scenes this descriptionmay seem unjust. One, the first, the longest, and the best, is perhapsalso the best-known of all Beyle's work: it is the sketch of the_débâcle_ after Waterloo. (It is not wonderful that Beyle should knowsomething about retreats, for, though he was not at Waterloo, he hadcome through the Moscow trial. ) This is a really marvellous thing andintensely interesting, though, as is almost always the case with theauthor, strangely unexciting. The interest is purely intellectual, andis actually increased by comparison with Hugo's imaginative account ofthe battle itself; but you do not care the snap of a finger whether thehero, Fabrice, gets off or not. Another patch later, where this sameFabrice is attacked by, and after a rough-and-tumble struggle kills, hissaltimbanque rival in the affections of a low-class actress, and thenhas a series of escapes from the Austrian police on the banks of the Po, has a little more of the exciting about it. So perhaps for some--I amnot sure that it has for me--may have the final, or provisionally final, escape from the Farnese Tower. And there is, even outside of thesepassages, a good deal of scattered incident. But these interesting plums, such as even they are, are stuck in anenormous pudding of presentation of the intrigues and vicissitudes of apetty Italian court, [130] in which, and in the persons who take part inthem, I at least find it difficult to take the very slightest interest. Fabrice del Dongo himself, [131] with whom every woman falls in love, andwho candidly confesses that he does not know whether he has ever beenreally in love with any woman--though there is one possible exceptionprecedent, his aunt, the Duchess of Sanseverina, and one subsequent, Clélia Conti, who saves him from prison, as above--is depicted withextraordinary science of human nature. But it is a science which, oncemore, excludes passion, humour, gusto--all the _fluids_ of real orfictitious life. Fabrice is like (only "much more also") the simulacraof humanity that were popular in music-halls a few years ago. He walks, talks, fights, eats, drinks, _thinks_ even, and makes love if he doesnot feel it, exactly like a human being. Except the "fluids" justmentioned, it is impossible to mention anything human that he lacks. Buthe lacks these, and by not having them lacks everything that moves thereader. And so it is more or less with all of them: with the Duchess and Clélialeast perhaps, but even with them to some extent; with the Duchess'sfirst _cicisbeo_ and then husband, Count Mosca, prime minister of theDuke of Parma; with his master, the feebly cruel and feebly tyrannicalRanuce-Ernest IV. ; with the opposition intriguers at court; with theArchbishop, to whom Fabrice is made, by the influence of Count andDuchess, coadjutor and actual successor; with Clélia's father and hervery much belated husband--with all of them in short. You cannot saythey are "out"; on the contrary they do and say exactly what in thecircumstances they would do and say. Their creator's remarks about themare sometimes of a marvellous subtlety, expressed in a laconism whichseems to regard Marivaudage or Meredithese with an aristocratic disdain. But at other times this laconic letter literally killeth. Perhaps twoexamples of the two effects should be given: (_Fabrice has found favour in the eyes and arms of the actress Marietta_) The love of this pretty Marietta gave Fabrice all the charms of the sweetest friendship. _And this made him think of the happiness of the same kind which he might have found with the Duchess herself. _ If this is not "piercing to the accepted hells beneath" with adiamond-pointed plunger, I know not what is. But much later, quite towards the end of the book, the author has totell how Fabrice again and Clélia "forgot all but love" in one of theirstolen meetings to arrange his escape. (_He has, by the way, told a lie to make her think he is poisoned_) She was so beautiful--half-dressed and in a state of extreme passion as she was--that Fabrice could not resist an almost involuntary movement. No resistance was opposed. [132] Now I am not (see _Addenda and Corrigenda_ of the last volume) avid ofexpatiations of the Laclosian kind. But this is really a little too muchof the "Spanish-fleet-taken-and-burnt-as-per-margin" order. [Sidenote: _L'Abbesse de Castro_, etc. ] Much the same characteristics, but necessarily on a small scale, appearin the short stories usually found under the title of the first andlongest of them, _L'Abbesse de Castro_. Two of these, _Mina de Wangel_and _Le Philtre_, are _historiettes_ of the passion which is absent from_La Chartreuse de Parme_; but each is tainted with the _macabre_ touchwhich Beyle affected or which (for that word is hardly fair) was naturalto him. In one a German girl of high rank and great wealth falls in lovewith a married man, separates him from his wife by a gross deception, lives with him for a time; and when he leaves her on finding out thefraud, blows her brains out. In the other a Spanish lady, seduced andmaltreated by a creole circus-rider of the worst character, declares toa more honourable lover her incurable passion for the scoundrel andtakes the veil. The rest are stories of the Italian Renaissance, grimyand gory as usual. Vittoria Accoramboni herself figures, but there is noevidence that Beyle (although he had some knowledge of Englishliterature[133]) knew at the time our glorious "White Devil, " and hisstory dwells little on her faults and much on the punishment of hermurderers. _L'Abbesse de Castro_ itself, _La Duchesse de Palliano_, _SanFrancesco à Ripa_, _Vanina Vanini_ are all of the same type and all fullof the gloomier items seen by the Dreamer of Fair Women-- Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes, Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates, and blood everywhere. And these unmerry tales are always recounted _abextra_; in fact, many of them are real or pretended abstracts fromchronicles of the very kind which furnished Browning with the matter of_The Ring and the Book_. It is, however, more apt and more curious tocompare them with the scenes of Gerard's experiences with the princessin _The Cloister and the Hearth_, as instances of different handling ofthe same matter by two novelists of talent almost, if not quite, reaching genius. [Sidenote: _Le Rouge et le Noir. _] This singular aloofness, this separation of subject and spectator by avast and impenetrable though translucent wall, as in a museum or a_morgue_, is characteristic of all Beyle's books more or less. In fact, he somewhere confesses--the confession having, as always in persons ofanything like his stamp, the nature of a boast--that he cannot writeotherwise than in _récit_, that the broken conversational or dramaticmethod is impossible to him. But an almost startling change--or perhapsit would be more accurate to say reinforcement--of this method appearsin what seems to me by far the most remarkable and epoch-making of hisbooks, _Le Rouge et le Noir_. That there is a strong autobiographicelement in this, though vigorously and almost violently "transposed, "must have been evident to any critical reader long ago. It became notmerely evident but _evidenced_ by the fresh matter published thirtyyears since. [Sidenote: Beyle's masterpiece, and why. ] The book is a long one; it drags in parts; and, long as it is, there isstuff in it for a much longer--indeed preferably for two or three. It isnot only a _roman passionnel_, as Beyle understood passion, not only acollection of Parisian and Provincial scenes, but a romance of secretdiplomacy, and one of Seminarist life, with constant side-excursions ofVoltairianism, in religion, of the revolutionary element in politicswhich Voltaire did not ostensibly favour, however much he may have beenresponsible for it, of private cynicism, and above all and mostconsistently of all, of that psychological realism, which is perhaps amore different thing from psychological reality than our clever ones fortwo generations have been willing to admit, or, perhaps, able toperceive. That--to adopt a division which foolish folk have sneered at directlyand indirectly, but which is valuable and almost necessary in the caseof second-class literature--it is rather an unpleasant than a pleasantbook, must be pretty well apparent from what has been already said ofits author and itself. That it is a powerful one follows almost in thesame way. But what has to be said, for the first, if not also the last, time in reference to Beyle's fiction, is that it is interesting. [Sidenote: Julien Sorel and Mathilde de la Mole. ] The interest depends almost entirely--I really do not think it would berash to say entirely--upon the hero and one of the heroines. The otherpersonages are dramatically and psychologically competent, but Beylehas--perhaps save in one or two cases intentionally--made them somethingof _comparses_ or "supers. " There may be two opinions about the otherheroine, Madame de Rênal, Julien Sorel's first and last love, his victimin two senses and directly the cause of his death, though he was notdirectly the cause of hers. She seems to me merely what the French calla _femmelette_, feebly amorous, feebly fond of her children, feeblyestranged from and unfaithful to her husband, feebly though fatallyjealous of and a traitress to her lover--feebly everything. Shakespeareor Miss Austen[134] could have made such a character interesting, Beylecould not. Nor do the other "seconds"--Julien's brutal peasant fatherand brothers, the notables of Verrières, the husband, M. De Rênal(himself a _gentillâtre_, as well as a man of business, a bully, and ablockhead), and the hero's just failure of a father-in-law, the Marquisde la Mole--seem to me to come up to the mark. But, after all, theyfurnish forth the action, and are necessary in their various ways to setforth the character of that hero and his second love, almost in themediaeval sense his wife and his widow, Mathilde de la Mole, heiress, great lady, _fille folle de son corps_, and, in a kind of way, QueenWhims. Julien Sorel, allowance being made for his date, is one of the mostremarkable heroes of fiction. He is physically handsome, in factbeautiful, [135] intellectually very clever, and possessed, in especial, of a marvellous memory; also, though not well educated early, capable oflearning anything in a very short time--but presented in thesefavourable lights without any exaggeration. A distinguished Lord Justicewas said by his admirers, at the beginning of his manhood, to haveobtained more marks in examinations than any youthful person in theUnited Kingdom: and Julien, with equal opportunities, would probablyhave done the same in France. Morally, in no limited sense of the word, he does not possess a single good quality, and does possess most badones, with the possible exceptions of gluttony and avarice. That, beingin each case a family tutor or _employé_ under trust, he seduces thewife of his first employer and the daughter of the second, cannot, inthe peculiar circumstances, be said to count. This is, as it were, thestarting-point, the necessary handicap, in the competition of this kindof novel. It is as he is, and in reference to what he does, after thisis put aside, that he has to be considered. He is not a stage villain, though he has the peculiar, and in the circumstances important, ifhighly-to-be-deprecated habit of carrying pocket-pistols. He is not aByronic hero with a terrible but misty past. He is not like Valmont ofthe _Liaisons Dangereuses_, [136] a professional and passionlesslady-killer. He is not a swindler nor (though he sometimes comes near tothis also) a conspirator like Count Fosco of _The Woman in White_. Onemight make a long list of such negatives if it were worth while. He isonly an utterly selfish, arrogant, envious, and generallybad-blooded[137] young man, whom circumstances partly, and his ownmisdeeds helping them, first corrupt and then destroy. You neversympathise with him for one moment, except in a peculiar fashion to benoted presently; but at the same time he neither quite bores you norquite disgusts you. _Homo est_, and it is Beyle's having made him sothat makes Beyle a sort of genius and much more than a sort of novelist. But I am not certain that Mathilde is not even a greater creation, though again it is, except quite towards the end, equally impossible tolike her. _Femina est_, though sometimes _furens_, oftener still_furiosa_ (in a still wider sense than that in which Mr. Norris has[138]ingeniously "feminated" Orlando _Furioso_), and, in part of her conductalready alluded to, as destitute of any morality as Julien himself. Although there could hardly be (and no doubt had better not be) manylike her, she is real and true, and there are not a few redeemingfeatures in her artistically and even personally. She is, as has beensaid, both rich and noble, the famous lover of the third ValoisMarguerite being an (I suppose collateral) ancestor of hers. [139] Herfather is not merely a patrician but a Minister at the close of theFrench Restoration; she may marry any one she likes; and has, in fact, atrain of admirers whom she alternately cajoles and snubs. Julien istaken into the household as half private secretary, half librarian; isespecially favoured by her father, and treated by her brother (one ofBeyle's few thoroughly good fellows) almost on equal terms. But his badblood and his want of breeding make him stiff and mysterious, andMathilde takes a perverse fancy to him, the growth of which is skilfullydrawn. Although she is nothing so little as a Lélia or an Indiana or aValentine (_vide_ next chapter), she is idiosyncratically romantic, andat last it is a case of ladders up to the window, "the irreparable, " andvarious wild performances on her part and her lover's. But this is allcomparatively banal. Beyle's touch of genius only reappears later. Anextraordinary but (when one comes to think of it) not in the leastunnatural series of "ups and downs" follows. Julien's bad blood andvulgar nature make him presume on the advantage he has obtained;Mathilde's _morgue_ and hot-headedness make her feel degraded by whatshe has given. She neglects him and he becomes quite frantic about_her_; he takes sudden dudgeon and she becomes frantically desirous of_him_. This spiritual or emotional man-and-woman-in-the-weather-housebusiness continues; but at last, with ambages and minor peripeteiasimpossible to abstract, it so comes about that the great and proudMarquis de La Mole, startlingly but not quite improbably, chooses torecognise this traitor and seducer as a possible by-blow of nobility, gets him a commission, endows him handsomely, and all but gives hisconsent to a marriage. Then the final revolution comes. With again extraordinary but, as it istold, again not inconceivable audacity, Julien refers for character tohis first mistress in both senses, Madame de Rênal, and she "gives himaway. " The marquis breaks off the treaties, and Julien, leaving hisquarters, journeys down to Verrières and shoots Madame de Rênal (withthe pocket-pistols) in church. She does not die, and is not even veryseriously wounded; but he is tried, is (according, it would seem, to astate of French law, which contrasts most remarkably with one's recentknowledge of it) condemned, and after a time is executed for a murderwhich has not been committed. Mathilde (who is to bear him a child andalways considers herself his wife) and Madame de Rênal both visit him inprison, the former making immense efforts to save him. But Julien, consistently with his character all through, is now rather bored byMathilde and exceedingly fond of Madame de Rênal, who dies shortlyafter him. What becomes of Mathilde we are not told, except that shedevotes herself to her paulo-post-future infant. The mere summary mayseem rather preposterous; the book is in a way so. But it is also, in noordinary sense, once more real and true. It has sometimes been regardedas a childish, but I believe it to be a true, criterion of novels thatthe reader should feel as if he would like to have had personal dealingswith the personages. I should very much like to have shot[140] JulienSorel, though it would have been rather an honour for him. And I shouldvery much like to have made Mathilde fall in love with me. As for Madamede Rênal, she was only good for suckling fools and telling tales out ofschool. But I do not find fault with Beyle for drawing her, and she, too, is very human. In fact the book, pleasant or unpleasant, if we reflect on what theFrench novel was at the time, deserves a very high place. Compare itwith others, and nowhere, except in Balzac, will you find anything likeit for firm analysis of character, while I confess that it seems to meto be more strictly human of this world, and at the same time moreoriginal, [141] than a good deal of the _Comédie_. [Sidenote: The resuscitated work--_Lamiel_. ] The question, "Would a novelist in altered circumstances have given usmore or better novels?" is sometimes treated as _ultra vires_ or _nihilad rem_ on the critic's part. I myself have been accused rather oflimiting than of extending the province of the literary critic; yet Ithink this question is, sometimes at least, in place. If so, it canseldom be more in place than with Beyle, first because of the unusuallymperfect character of his actual published work; and secondly, becauseof the still more unusual abundance of half-done work, or of fragmentsof self-criticism, which what has been called the "Beyle resurrection"of the close of the last century has furnished. Indeed the unfinishedand scarcely more than half-drafted novel of _Lamiel_ almost by itselfsuggests the question and supplies the answer. That answer--except fromfavourers of the grime-novel which, oddly enough, whether by coincidenceor common causation became so popular at about the time of this"resurrection"--can hardly be favourable. _Lamiel_ is a very grubbylittle book. The eponymous heroine is adopted as a child by a parishbeadle and his wife, who do not at all maltreat her, except by bringingher up in ways of extreme propriety, which she detests, taking delightin the histories of Mandrin, Cartouche and Co. At early maidenhood sheis pitched upon as _lectrice_, and in a way favourite, by the great ladyof the neighbourhood, the Duchess of Miossens; and in this positionfirst attracts the attention of a peculiarly diabolical little dwarfdoctor, who, bar the comic[142] element, reminds one rather of Quilp. His designs are, however, baulked in a most Beylian manner; for Lamiel(who, by a pleasing chance, was at first called "Amiel"--a delightfully_other_ Amiel!) coolly bestows some money upon a peasant to "teach herwhat love is, " and literally asks the Gebirian question about the ocean, "Is this all?" after receiving the lesson. Further, in the more and moreunfinished parts of the book, she levants for a time with the youngduke, quits him, becomes a professional hetaera in Paris, but nevertakes any fancy to the business of her avocation till she meets anall-conquering criminal, Valbayre. [143] The scenario tells us that, Valbayre having been caught by justice, she sets fire to the Palacethereof, and her own bones are discovered in the ashes. This, though Beyle at least meant to season the misanthropy with irony(he might be compared with Meredith for some slightly cryptic views of"the Comic Spirit"), is rather poor stuff, and certainly shows noimprovement or likelihood of improvement on the earlier productions. Itis even somewhat lamentable, not so much for the presence of grime asbecause of the absence of any other attraction. _Le Rouge et le Noir_ isnot exactly rose-pink, but it derives hardly any, if any, interest fromits smirches of mud and blood and blackness. In _Lamiel_ there is littleelse. Moreover, that unchallengeable "possibility of humanity" whichredeems not merely _Le Rouge et le Noir_ but the less exciting books, iswanting here. Sansfin, the doctor, is a mere monstrosity in mind as wellas in body, and, except perhaps when she ejaculates (as more brieflyreported above), "Comment! ce fameux amour, _ce n'est que ça_?" Lamielherself is not made interesting. [Sidenote: The _Nouvelles Inédites_. ] The _Vie de Henri Brulard_, of high importance for a History ofNovelists, is in strictness outside the subject of a historian of theNovel, though it might be adduced to strengthen the remarks made onRousseau's _Confessions_. [144] And the rest of the "resurrected" matteris also more autobiographical, or at best illustrative of Beyle'srestless and "masterless" habit of pulling his work to pieces--of "neverbeing able to be ready" (as a deservedly unpopular language hasit)--than contributory to positive novel-achievement. But the first andby far the most substantive of the _Nouvelles Inédites_, which hisamiable but not very strong-minded literary executor, Colomb, publishedsoon after his death, needs a little notice. [Sidenote: _Le Chasseur Vert. _] _Le Chasseur Vert_[145] (which had three other titles, three successiveprefaces, and in its finished, or rather unfinished, form is the salvageof five folio volumes of MS. , the rest being at best sketched and atworst illegible) contains, in what we have of it, the account of thetribulations of a young sub-lieutenant of Lancers (with a great deal ofmoney, a cynical but rather agreeable banker-papa, an adoring mother, and the record of an expulsion from the Polytechnique for supposedRepublicanism) suddenly pitchforked into garrison, soon after theRevolution of July, at Nancy. Here, in the early years of the Julymonarchy, the whole of decent society is Legitimist; a very small butnot easily suppressible minority Republican; while officialdom, civiland military, forms a peculiar _juste milieu_, supporting itself byespionage and by what Their Majesties of the present moment, the TradeUnions, call "victimisation, " but in a constant state of alarm for itsposition, and "looking over its shoulder" with a sort of threefoldsquint, at the white flag, the eagles--and the guillotine. Nothingreally happens, but it takes 240 pages to bring us to an actual meetingbetween Lieutenant Lucien Leeuwen and his previously at distance adoredwidow, the Marquise de Chasteller. The book is not a _very_ good novel, even as a fragment, and probablynothing would ever have made it so as a whole. But there is goodnovel-stuff in it, and it is important to a student of the novel andalmost indispensable to a student of this novelist. Of the cynicalpapa--who, when his son comes to him in a "high-falutin" mood, requestshim to go to his (the papa's) opera-box, to replace his sire with someagreeable girl-officials of that same institution, and to spend at least200 francs on a supper for them at the Rocher--one would gladly seemore. Of the barrack (or rather _not_-barrack) society at Nancy, thesight given, though not agreeable, is interesting, and to any one whoknew something of our old army, especially before the abolition ofpurchase, very curious. There is no mess-room and apparently no commonlife at all, except on duty and at the "pension" hotel-meals, towhich, --rather, it would seem, at the arbitrary will of the colonel thanby "regulation, "--you have to subscribe, though you may, and indeedmust, live in lodgings exactly like a _particulier_. Of thesocial-political life of the place we see rather too much, for Beyle, not content with making the politics which he does not like makethemselves ridiculous--or perhaps not being able to do so--himself tellsus frequently that they _are_ ridiculous, which is not equallyeffective. So also, instead of putting severe or "spiritual" speeches inLucien's mouth, he tells us that they _were_ spiritual or severe, anassurance which, of course, we receive with due politeness, but whichdoes not give us as much personal delectation as might be supplied bythe other method. No doubt this and other things are almost directresults of that preference for _récit_ over semi-dramatic evolution ofthe story by deed and word, which has been noticed. But they aredamaging results all the same: and, after making the fairest allowancefor its incomplete condition, the thing may be said to support, evenmore than _Lamiel_ does, the conclusion already based upon theself-published stories (and most of all upon that best of them, _LeRouge et le Noir_) that Beyle could never have given us a thoroughlyhit-off novel. [Sidenote: Beyle's place in the story. ] Still, there is always something unfair in making use of "Remains, " andfor my part I do not think that, unless they are of extraordinary merit, they should ever be published. "Death _should_ clear all scores" in thisway as in others. Yet no really critical person will think the worse ofBeyle's published work because of these _anecdota_, though they may, asactually before us, be taken as throwing some light on what is not sogood in the _publicata_. There can be no doubt that Beyle occupies avery important position in the history of the novel, and not of theFrench novel only, as the first, or almost the first, analyst of theugly for fictitious purposes, and as showing singular power in hisanalysis. Unfortunately his synthetic gifts were not equally great. Hehad strange difficulty in making his stories _march_; he only now andthen got them to _run_; and though the real life of his characters hasbeen acknowledged, it is after all a sort of "Life-in-Death, " a newmanifestation of the evil power of that mysterious entity whomColeridge, if he did not discover, first named and produced inquasi-flesh, though he left us without any indication of more than onetiny and accidental part of her dread kingdom. He has thus the position of _père de famille_, whether (to repeat theold joke) of a _famille déplorable_ in the moral, not the sentimental, sense, must, I suppose, be left matter of opinion. The plentiful crop ofmonographs about him since M. Stryienski's Pompeian explorations andpublications is in a manner--if only in a manner--justified by thenumerous followers--not always or perhaps often conscious followers, andso even more important--in his footsteps. Nobody can say that thepicaresque novelists, whether in their original country or when thefashion had spread, were given to _berquinades_ or fairy-tales. Nobodycan say that the tale-writers who preceded and followed them wereapostles of virtue or painters of Golden-Age scenes. But, with someexceptions (chiefly Italian) among the latter, they did not, unlesstheir aim were definitely tragical--an epithet which one could show, onirrefragable Aristotelian principles, to be rarely if ever applicable toBeyle and his school--they did not, as the common phrase goes, "take agloomy view" only. There were cakes and ale; and the cakes did notalways give internal pains, nor the ale a bad headache. As even Hazlitt(who has been selected, not without reason, as in many ways like Beyle)said of himself on his death-bed, rather to some folks' surprise thoughnot to mine, most of the characters "had a happy life, " though thehappiness might be chequered: and some of them were "good. " It isscarcely an exaggeration to say that in Beyle's books happiness does notexist, and virtue has hardly a place. There are some characters who maybe said to be neutral or "on the line"; they may be not definitelyunhappy or definitely bad. But this is about as far as he ever goes inthat direction. And accordingly he and his followers have the fault ofone-sidedness; they may (he did) see life steadily, but they do not seeit whole. There is no need to preach a sermon on the text: in this bookthere is full need to record the fact. [146] * * * * * [Sidenote: Balzac--conditions of the present dealing. ] In dealing with Beyle's greater companion here there are certainthings--not exactly difficulties, but circumstances conditioning thetreatment--which should be stated. That it is well to know somethingabout your subject has been an accepted doctrine with all save veryyoung persons, idle paradoxers, and (according to Sir Walter Scott) theScottish Court of Session in former days. [147] That it is also well notto know too much about it has sometimes been maintained, without anyidleness in either sense of the word; the excess being thought likely tocause weariness, "staleness, " and absence of interest. If this werenecessarily so, it might be better for the writer once more to leavethis part of the chapter (since at least the heading of it could notpossibly be omitted in the history) a blank or a constellation ofasterisks in Sternian fashion. For it has fallen to his lot to translateone whole novel of Balzac's, [148] to edit a translation of the entire_Comédie_, [149] superintending some of the volumes in narrow detail, andstudying each in short, but (intentionally at least) thorough_Introductions_, with a very elaborate preface-study of the whole; toread all Balzac's rather voluminous miscellanea from the earlynovel-attempts to posthumous things, including letters; and, finally, todiscuss the subject once more, with the aid or burden of many previouscommentaries, in a long _Review_ article. [150] Nevertheless, he does notfeel that any disgust forbids while a clear duty calls: and he hopes toshow that it is not always necessary to weary of quails as in theBiblical, partridges as in the old _fabliau_, and pigeons in the Dumas_fils_ (_v. Inf. _) version of the Parable of Satiety. [Sidenote: Limitations of Subject. ] In no case, however, not even in that of Victor Hugo, is the easementgiven by the general plan of the book, in regard to biographical andother not strictly literary details, more welcome. We shall say nothingon the point whether the author of the _Comédie Humaine_ should becalled M. De Balzac or M. Balzac or M. Balssa; nothing about his family, his friends, his enemies, his strangely long-deferred, and, when itcame, as strangely ill-fated marriage; little, though somethingnecessarily, about his tastes, his commercial and other enterprises, andso forth; and not very much--something here also becoming obligatory--onhis manner of producing the immense and wonderful work which he has leftus. Those who are curious about such things will find ample satisfactionin the labours of M. Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, of MM. Christophe andCerfbeer, and of others. [151] Here he is, for us, Honoré de Balzac, author of the _Juvenilia_ (saved from, as it is understood, a largerbulk still) in ten volumes; of the mighty "Comedy" itself, and, moreincidentally, of the considerable epistolary and miscellaneousproduction referred to above. The manner in which this enormous outputwas put out has perhaps too much to do with its actual character to bepassed over in total silence. It represents thirty years' working timealmost entirely spent upon it, [152] the alternatives being theabove-mentioned commercial speculations (which were almost invariablyunfortunate, and involved him, during the whole of his career, incomplicated indebtedness) and a good deal of travel, very frequentlyconnected with these speculations. Of the society which formed so largea part of the life of the time and of which he wrote so often, Balzacsaw little. He worked at enormous stretches, and he rewrote his work, inMS. , in proof and in temporarily final print, with insatiable andindefatigable industry. To no writer could the commonplace extravaganceabout burning the candle at both ends be applied so truly as to Balzac. Only, his candle was shaped like a wheel with no felloes, and he burntit at the end of every spoke and at the nave as well. How he managed tolast, even to fifty, is one of the major curiosities of literarybiography. [Sidenote: And of Balzac himself. ] Of the three divisions of this vast but far from chaotic production, themiscellaneous, of course, concerns us least. It shows Balzac as afailure of a dramatist, a critic of very varying competence, [153] not aparticularly effective _writer_ merely as such, not possessed of muchlogical power, but having pretty wide interests and abundantly providedwith what we may call the odd tools of the novelist's workshop. As acorrespondent his writing has absolutely none of what may be called the"departmental" interest of great letter-writers--of Madame de Sévigné orLady Mary, of Horace Walpole or Cowper; its attraction is not epistolarybut wholly autobiographic. And it is only fair to say that, despiteBalzac's immense and intense self-centredness, it leaves one on thewhole with a much better opinion of him as a man than might be derivedfrom his books or from the anecdotes about him. To adapt one of the bestknown of these, there was, in fact, nothing real to him but Honoré deBalzac, Honoré de Balzac's works and schemes, and, in rare cases (ofwhich Madame Hanska was the chief), Honoré de Balzac's loves. Theseconstituted his subject, his universe of thought and feeling, of actionand passion. But at the same time he stands apart from all the othergreat egotists. He differs from those of whom Byron is the chief in thathe does not introduce himself prominently in his fictitious creations. He does not, like those who may take their representative in Goethe, regard everything merely as it relates to his personality. His chiefpeculiarity, his unique literary character, and, it may be added atonce, his greatness and his weakness, all consist in the fact that heevolves a new world out of himself. Now and then he may have taken anactual human model--George Sand, Madame d'Agoult, Madame de Castries, Liszt, Latouche, [154] Rémusat--as many others as anybody likes. Butalways these had not merely to receive the Balzacian image andsuperscription, but to be transmuted into creatures of a _BalzaciumSidus_. And it is the humanity of this planet or system, much more thanof our world, whereof his _Comédie_ is the Comedy--a _ComédieBalzacienne_. [Sidenote: Balzac's "general ideas. "] But, it has been said, and the saying has been attributed to no less acritic than M. Faguet, there are no "general ideas" in Balzac. [155] Onecan only reply, "Heavens! Why should there be?" The celebrated unreasonof "going to a gin-palace for a leg of mutton" (already quoted, andperhaps to be quoted again) is sound and sensible as compared withasking general ideas from a novelist. They are not quite absolutelyforbidden to him, though he will have to be very careful lest they getin his way. But they are most emphatically not his business, except asvery rare and very doubtful means to a quite different end, meansabsolutely insufficient by themselves and exceedingly difficult tocombine with the other means which--more or fewer of them--are not onlysufficient but necessary. The "slice of human life, " not necessarily, but preferably ordinary, presenting probable and interestingcharacters, connected by sufficient plot, diversified and adorned bydescriptive and other devices, and abundantly furnished with theconversation of men and women of this world, the whole forming such awhole as will amuse, thrill, affect, and in other ways, to use theall-important word once more, _interest_ the reader, --that is what iswanted. And this definition is as rigid at least as the Aristoteliandefinition of tragedy and perhaps more exhaustive, as concerns thenovel, including, with the necessary modifications, the romance--and theromance, including, with the necessary modifications, the novel. In it"general ideas, " unless a very special and not at all usual meaning isattached to the term, can have no right of place. They may be broughtin, as almost anything may be brought in if the writer is Samson enoughto bring it. But they cannot be demanded of him as facts, images, emotions, style, and a very large number of other things can or may be, not, of course, all at once, but in larger or smaller selection. Generalideas may and perhaps should be demanded from the philosopher, thehistorian, the political student. From the poet and the novelist theycannot be. And that they should be so demanded is one of the chiefinstances of what seems to the present writer to be the greatest mistakeof French novel, as of other, criticism--its persistent relapse upon therule-system and its refusal to judge by the result. [156] It is all the more unreasonable to demand general _ideas_ from Balzachimself, because he is so liberal of general _imagery_, and what ismore, general _prosopopoeia_. Be the Balzacian world real, as somewould have it to be, or be it removed from our mundane reality by thesubtle "other-planetary" influence which is apparent to others, itscomplexity, its fullness, its variety, its busy and by no meansunsystematic life and motion, cannot be denied. Why on earth cannotpeople be content with asking Platonism from Plato and Balzacity fromBalzac? At any rate, it is Balzacity which will be the subject of thefollowing pages, and if anybody wants anything else let him goelsewhere. [Sidenote: Abstinence from abstract. ] There is hardly likely to be much grumbling at the absence of suchdetailed abstract or survey of individual books as has been given incases of what may seem to be much less importance. To begin with, such asurvey as is possible[157] exists already from these hands in theIntroductions to the translated edition above referred to, and toparaphrase or refashion it here would probably occupy a hundred pages, if not more. Nor would the plan, elsewhere adopted, of analysing afreshone, or two, or more examples, as representative, be satisfactory. Although Balzac is in a sense one of the most intensely individual ofall novelists, his individuality, as in a very few others of thegreatest cases, cannot be elicited from particular works. Just as_Hamlet_ will give you no idea of the probable treatment of _As You LikeIt_, so _Eugénie Grandet_ contains no key to _La Cousine Bette_. Eventhe groups into which he himself rather empirically, if not quitearbitrarily, separated the _Comédie_, though they lend themselves alittle more to specification, do not yield very much to the classifier. The _Comédie_, once more, is a world--a world open to the reader, "allbefore him. " Chronological order may tell him a little about Balzac, butit will not tell him very much about Balzac's work that he cannot gainfrom the individual books, except in the very earliest stages. There isno doubt that the _Oeuvres de Jeunesse_, if not very delightful to thereader (I have myself read them not without pleasure), are veryinstructive; the instruction increases, while the pleasure is actuallymultiplied, when you come to _Les Chouans_ and the _Peau de Chagrin_. But it is, after a fashion, only beyond these that the true Balzacbegins, and the beginning is, to a large extent, a reaction fromprevious work in consequence of a discovery that the genius, withoutwhich he had acknowledged that it was all up with him, [158] did not liethat way, and that he had no hope of finding it there. Not that there isno genius in the two books mentioned; on the contrary, it is there firstto be found, and in _La Peau_ is of the first order. But their ways arenot the ways in which he was to find it--and himself--more specially. [Sidenote: The _Oeuvres de Jeunesse_. ] As to _Argow le Pirate_[159] and _Jane la Pâle_ (I have never ceasedlamenting that he did not keep the earlier title, _Wann-Chlore_) and therest, they have interest of various kinds. Some of it has been glancedat already--you cannot fully appreciate Balzac without them. But thereis another kind of interest, perhaps not of very general appeal, but notto be neglected by the historian. They are almost the only accessiblebody, except Pigault-Lebrun's latest and Paul de Kock's earliest, of thepopular fiction _before_ 1830, of the stuff of which, as previouslymentioned, Ducray-Duminil, the lesser Ducange, and many others arerepresentatives, but representatives difficult to get at. This class offiction, which arose in all parts of Europe during the last years of theeighteenth century and the earlier of the nineteenth, has very similarcharacteristics, though the examples differ very slightly in differentcountries. What are known with us as the Terror Novel, the MinervaPress, the Silver Fork school, etc. Etc. , all have their part in it, andeven higher influences, such as Scott's, are not wanting. _Hand'Islande_ and _Bug-Jargal_ themselves belong to some extent to theclass, and I am far from certain that the former is at all better thansome of these _juvenilia_ of Balzac's. But as a whole they are of courselittle more than curiosities. Whether these curiosities are more widely known than they were somefive-and-twenty, or thirty, years ago, when Mr. Louis Stevenson was theonly friend of mine who had read them, and when even special writers onBalzac sometimes unblushingly confessed that they had not, I cannot say. Although printed in the little fifty-five-volume[160] edition which forso many years represented Balzac, they were excluded, as noted above, from the statelier "Définitive, " and so may have once more "gone intoabscondence. " I do not want to read them again, but I no more repent thetime once spent on them than I did earlier. In fact I really do notthink any one ought to talk about Balzac who has not at least gainedsome knowledge of them, for many of their defects remained with him whenhe got rid of the others. These defects are numerous enough and seriousenough. The books are nothing if not uncritical, generally extravagant, and sometimes (especially in _Jean Louis_) appallingly dull. Scarf-pins, made of poisoned fish-bones (_Argow le Pirate_), extinction of virginsunder copper bells (_Le Centénaire_), attempts at fairy-tales (_LaDernière Fée_) jostle each other. The weaker historical kind figureslargely in _L'Excommunié_ (one of the least bad), _L'Israëlite_, _L'Héritière de Birague_, _Dom Gigadas_. There is a _Vicaire desArdennes_ (remarkably different from him of Wakefield), which is a kindof introduction to _Argow le Pirate_, and which, again, is not theworst. When I formerly wrote about these curious productions, afterreading them, I had not read Pigault-Lebrun, and therefore did notperceive, what I now see to be an undoubted fact, that Balzac was, sometimes at least, trying to follow in Pigault's popular footsteps. Buthe had not that writer's varied knowledge of actual life or his power oftelling a story, and though he for the most part avoided Pigault's_grossièreté_, the chaotic plots, the slovenly writing, and otherdefects of his model abode with him. [Sidenote: _Les Chouans. _] There are not many more surprising things, especially _in pari materia_, to be found in literary history than the sun-burst of _Les Chouans_after this darkness-that-can-be-felt of the early melodramas. Not that_Les Chouans_ is by any means a perfect novel, or even a great one. Itsnarrative drags, in some cases, almost intolerably; the grasp ofcharacter, though visible, is inchoate; the plot is rather a polyptychof separate scenes than a connected action; you see at once that theauthor has changed his model to Sir Walter and think how much better SirWalter would have done the thing. But there is a strange air of "comingalive" in some of the scenes, though they are too much separated, as inthe case of the finale and of the execution of the rather hardly usedtraitor earlier. These possess a character of thrill which may be lookedfor in vain through all the ten volumes of the _Oeuvres de Jeunesse_. Montauran _is_ a hero in more than one sense, and Mlle. De Verneuil isstill more a heroine. Had Balzac worked her out as he worked out others, who did not deserve it so well, later, she might have been one of thegreat characters in fiction. Even as it is, the "jour sans lendemain, "which in one sense unites, and in another parts, her and her lover forever, is one of the most really passionate things that the French novel, in its revival, had yet seen. Besides this, there is a sort of extrinsicappeal in the book, giving that curious atmosphere referred to already, and recalling the old prints of the earth yawning in patches and animalsrearing themselves from it at the Creation. The names and personages ofHulot and Corentin were to be well known later to readers of the "fiftyvolumes, " and even the ruffianly patriot[161] Marche-à-Terre had hisfuture. [Sidenote: _La Peau de Chagrin. _] The second[162] blast of the horn with which Balzac challenged admissionto the Inner Sanctuaries or strongholds of the novel, _La Peau deChagrin_, had that character of _difference_ which one notices notseldom in the first worthy works of great men of letters--the absence ofthe mould and the rut. _Les Chouans_ was a Waverley novel Gallicised andBalzacified; _La Peau de Chagrin_ is a cross between the supernaturalromance and the novel of psychology. It is one of the greatest ofBalzac's books. The idea of the skin--a new "wishing" talisman, whichshrinks with every exercise of the power it gives, and so threatensextinction at once of wishing and living--is of course not wholly novel, though refreshed in detail. But then nothing is wholly novel, and ifanything could be it would probably be worthless. The endless changes ofthe eternal substance make the law, the curse, and the blessing of life. In the working out of his theme it may possibly be objected that Balzachas not _interested_ the reader quite enough in his personages--that heseems in a way to be thinking more of the play than of the actors or theaudience. His "orgie" is certainly not much of a success; few orgies inprint are, except when they are burlesqued. But, on the other hand, thecuriosity-shop is splendid. Yet it is not on the details of the book, important as these have been allowed to be throughout Balzac, thatattention should be mainly concentrated. The point of it is the way inwhich the necessary atmosphere of bad dream is kept up throughout, yetwith an appropriate contrast of comparatively ordinary life. A competentcritic who read _Les Chouans_, knowing nothing about its author or hiswork, should have said, "Here is more than a promising craftsman";reading _La Peau de Chagrin_ in the same conditions he should have said, "Here is a great, though by no means a faultless, artist. " One who readboth ought to have had no doubt as to the coming of something andsomebody extraordinary. [Sidenote: The short stories. ] Thenceforward Balzac, though hardly ever faultless except in shortstories, was almost always great, and showed what may be called adiffused greatness, to which there are few parallels in the history ofthe novel. Some of the tales are simply wonderful. I cannot think ofany one else, even Mérimée, who could have done _La GrandeBretèche_--the story of a lover who, rather than betray his mistress, allows himself to suffer, without a word, the fate of a nun who hasbroken her vows--as Balzac has done it. _La Recherche de l'Absolu_ isone, and _Le Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu_ is another, of the greatest knownmasterpieces in the world of their kind. _La Fille aux Yeux d'Or_ and_Une Passion dans le Désert_ have not the least need of their"indexable" qualities to validate them. In the most opposite styles_Jésus Christ en Flandre_ and _La Messe de l'Athée_ have their warmestadmirers. In fact it is scarcely too much to say that, in the whole listof nearer two than one score--as they were published in the oldcollection from _Le Bal de Sceaux_ to _Maître Cornélius_--scarcely anyare bad or insignificant, few mediocre, and not a few equal, or hardlyinferior, to those specially pointed out just now. As so oftenhappens, the short story estopped Balzac from some of his usualdelinquencies--over-detail, lingering treatment, etc. , --and encouragedhis virtues--intensity, grandeur, and idiosyncratic tone. [Sidenote: The _Contes Drolatiques_. ] Of his one considerable collection of such stories--the _ContesDrolatiques_--it is not possible to speak quite so favourably as awhole; yet the reduction of favour need not be much. Of its greatestthing, _La Succube_, there have hardly been two opinions among competentand unprejudiced judges. "Pity and terror" are there well justified oftheir manipulator. The sham Old French, if not absolutely "according toCocker" (or such substitute for Cocker as may be made and provided byscholarly authority), is very much more effective than most such things. Not a few of the stories are good and amusing in themselves, though ofcourse the votaries of prunes and prism should keep clear of them. Thebook has perhaps only one serious fault, that of the inevitable and nodoubt invited suggestion of, and comparison with, Rabelais. In somepoints this will hold not so badly, for Balzac had narrative power ofthe first order when he gave it scope; the deficiencies of mere stylewhich sometimes affect his modern French do not appear so much in this_pastiche_, and he could make broad jokes well enough. But--and this"but" is rather a terrible one--the saving and crowning grace ofPantagruelist humour is not in him, except now and then in its grimmerand less catholic variety or manifestation. And this absence haunts onein these _Contes Drolatiques_, though it is to some extent compensatedby the presence of a "sentiment" rare elsewhere in Balzac. [Sidenote: Notes on select larger books: _Eugénie Grandet_. ] Turning to the longer books, the old double difficulty of selection andomission comes on one in full force. There are, I suppose, fewBalzacians who have not special favourites, but probably _EugénieGrandet_, _Le Père Goriot_, and the two divisions of _Les ParentsPauvres_ would unite most suffrages. If I myself--who am not exactly aBalzacian, though few can admire him more, and not very many, I think, have had occasion for knowing his work better--put _Eugénie Grandet_ atthe head of all the "scenes" of ordinary life, it is most certainly notbecause of its inoffensiveness. It _is_ perhaps partly because, in spiteof that inoffensiveness, it fixes on one a grasp superior to anything ofBeyle's and equal to anything of Flaubert's or Maupassant's. But thereal cause of admiration is the nature of the grasp itself. Here, andperhaps here only--certainly here in transcendence--Balzac grappleswith, and vanquishes, the bare, stern, unadorned, unbaited, ironic factsof life. It is not an intensely interesting book; it is certainly not adelightful one; you do not want to read it very often. Still, when youhave read it you have come to one of the ultimate things: the_flammantia moenia_ of the world of fiction forbid any one to gofurther at this particular point. And when this has been said of anovel, all has been said of the quality of the novelist's genius, thoughnot of its quantity or variety. [Sidenote: _Le Père Goriot_ and _Les Parents Pauvres_. ] The other three books selected have greater "interest" and, in the caseof the _Parents Pauvres_ at least, much greater variety; but they do notseem to me to possess equal consummateness. _Le Père Goriot_ is in itsown way as pathetic as _Eugénie Grandet_, and Balzac has saved itspathos from being as irritating as that of the all but idioticgrandfather in _The Old Curiosity Shop_. But the situation still has ashare of that fatal helpless ineffectiveness which Mr. Arnold so justlydenounced. Of the remaining pair, _La Cousine Bette_ is, I suppose, again the favourite; but I am not a backer. I have in other placesexpressed my opinion that if Valérie Marneffe is part-model[163] ofBecky Sharp, which is not, I believe, absolutely certain, the copyfar--indeed infinitely--exceeds the original, and not least in the factsthat Becky is attractive while Valérie is not, and that there is anyamount of possibility in her. I should not wonder if, some day, anovelist took it into his head to show Becky as she would have been ifshe had had those thousands a year for which, with their accompanyingchances of respectability, she so pathetically sighed. Now Valérie is, and always must have been, a _catin_, and nothing else. Lisbeth, again, though I admit her possibility, is not, to me, made quite probable. Hulot, very possible and probable indeed, does not interest or amuse me, and the angelic Adeline is good but dull. In fact the book, by its verypower, throws into disastrous eminence that absence of _delightfulness_which is Balzac's great want, uncompensated by the presence of themagnificence which is his great resource. _La Peau de Chagrin_ and someof the smaller things have this relief; _La Cousine Bette_ has not. Andtherefore I think that, on the whole, _Le Cousin Pons_ is the better ofthe two, though it may seem to some weaker, further "below proof. "Everything in it is possible and probable, and though the comedy israther rueful, it is comedy. It is a play; its companion is rather toomuch of a sermon. [Sidenote: Others--the general "scenic" division. ] The "Scènes de la Vie Privée" (to pass to a rapid general survey of the"Acts" of the Comedy) provide an especially large number of shortstories, almost the only ones of length being _Modeste Mignon_ and_Béatrix_, a strongly contrasted couple. _Modeste Mignon_ is perhaps oneof the best of Balzac's _second_ best. _Béatrix_, a book of more power, appeals chiefly to those who may be interested in the fact (whichapparently _is_ the fact) that the book contains, almost more than anyother, figures taken from real people, such as George Sand--the"Camille" of the novel--and some of those about her. The "Scènes de laVie de Province" are richer in "magnums. " _Eugénie Grandet_ is here, with a sort of companion, cheerfuller generally, in _Ursule Mirouet_. The shorter stories are grouped under the titles of _Les Parisiens enProvince_ (with the first appearance of _Gaudissart_) and _LesRivalités_. _Le Lys dans la Vallée_ (which one is sometimes anxiouslybegged to distinguish from "the lily _of_ the valley, " otherwise_muguet_) holds, for some, an almost entirely unique place in Balzac'swork, or one shared only in part by _Mémoires de Deux Jeunes Mariées_. Ihave never, I think, cared much for either. But there is more strengthin two pairs of volumes which contain some of the author'smasterpieces--_Les Célibataires_ with _Pierrette_, _Le Curé de Tours_, and the powerful, if not particularly pleasant, _Un Ménage deGarçon_;[164] and _Illusions Perdues_, running up well with _Un GrandHomme de Province à Paris_ and the semi-idyllic _Ève et David_. But I suppose the "Scenes of Parisian Life" seem to be the citadel tomost people. Here are three of the four books specially selected above, _Le Père Goriot_ and both the constituents of _Les Parents Pauvres_. Here are the _Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes_, which some rankamong the very first; not a few short stories in the volumes takingtheir titles from _La Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin_ and _La MaisonNucingen_; with _César Birotteau_ (_Balzac on Bankruptcy_, as it hasbeen profanely called) and the celebrated _Histoire des Treize_. This last, I confess frankly, has always bored me, even though thevolume contains _La Fille aux Yeux d'Or_. The idea of a secret societyin Society itself was not new; it was much more worthy of Sue or Souliéthan of Balzac, and it does not seem to me to have been interestinglyworked out. But perhaps this is due to my perverse and elsewhereconfessed objection to crime and conspiracy novels generally. Neither have I ever cared much for the group of "Scenes de la ViePolitique, " ranging from _Une Ténébreuse Affaire_ to _Le Députéd'Arcis_, the last being not entirely Balzac's own. The single volume, "Scènes de la Vie Militaire, " consisting merely of _Les Chouans_ and_Une Passion dans le Désert_, is much better, and the "Scènes de la Viede Campagne" reach a high level with _Le Médecin de Campagne_, _Le Curéde Village_, and the late, grim, but very noteworthy _Les Paysans_. None, however, of these sometimes rather arbitrary groups of Balzac'scontains such thoroughly satisfactory matter as that which he chose tocall "Études Philosophiques. " It includes only one full-volume novel, but that is the _Peau de Chagrin_ itself. [165] And here are most of theshort stories singled out at first, _La Recherche de l'Absolu_, _JésusChrist en Flandre_, _Le Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu_, with _MelmothRéconcilié_[166] in the same batch. The two volumes entitled _L'EnfantMaudit_ and _Les Marana_ contain all but a dozen remarkable tales. Here, too, is the curious treatise _Sur Cathérine de Médicis_, with another, to some people among the most interesting of all, the autobiographic_Louis Lambert_, and also the mystical, and in parts very beautiful, _Séraphita_. The "Études Analytiques, " which complete the original _Comédie_ with thetwo notorious volumes of _Physiologie du Marriage_ and _Petites Misèresde la Vie Conjugale_, are not novels or tales, and so do not concernus. They are not the only instance in literature showing that thesarcasm The _God_ you took from a printed book extends to other things besides divinity. The old conventional satireson marriage are merely rehashed with some extra garlic. Balzac had nopersonal experience of the subject till just before his death, and hissingular claustral habits of life could not give him much opportunityfor observation. [Sidenote: "Balzacity": its constitution. ] Experience, indeed, and observation (to speak with only apparentparadox), though they played an important, yet played only a subordinatepart at any time in the great Balzacian achievement. Victor Hugo, inwhat was in effect a funeral oration, described that achievement as "unlivre qui est l'Observation et qui est l'Imagination. " But no onefamiliar with the Victorian rhetoric will mistake the _clou_, thedominating and decisive word of that sentence. It is the conjunction. Hugo meant to draw attention to the astonishing _union_ of Imaginationwith Observation--two things which, except in the highest poetry, areapt to be rather strangers to each other--and by putting Imaginationlast he meant also doubtless that this was the dominating--themasculine--element in the marriage. In the immense volume of discussionof Balzac which the long lifetime succeeding his death has seen, andwhich thickened and multiplied towards the close of the last century anda little later--owing to the conclusion of the _Édition Définitive_ withits additions and illustrative matter--this point has perhaps been toofrequently lost sight of. The great critics who were his contemporariesand immediate survivors were rather too near. The greatest of the laterbatch, M. Brunetière, was a little too eager to use Balzac as a stick tobeat the Romantics with for one thing, and to make him out a pioneer ofall succeeding French fiction for another. But, quite early, PhilarèteChasles hit the white by calling him a _voyant_ (a word slightly varyingin signification from our "seer"), and recently a critic of less reputethan Brunetière, but a good one--M. Le Breton--though perhaps sometimesnot quite fair to Balzac, recognises his Romanticism, his _frénésie_, and so the Imagination of which the lunatic and the lover are--and ofwhich the devotee of Romance in verse and prose should be--compact. Nevertheless it would be of course highly improper, and in fact absurd, to deny the "observation"--at least in detail of all kinds. Although--aswe have seen and may see again when we come to Naturalism and lookback--M. Brunetière was quite wrong in thinking that Balzac _introduced_"interiors" to French, and still more wrong in thinking that heintroduced them to European, novel-writing, they undoubtedly make agreat show in his work--are, indeed, one of its chief characteristics. He actually overdoes them sometimes; the "dragging" of _Les Chouans_ isat least partly due to this, and he never got complete mastery of histendency that way. But undoubtedly this tendency was also a source ofpower. Yet, while this observation of _things_ is not to be denied, Balzac'sobservation of _persons_ is a matter much more debatable. To listen tosome of the more uncritical--especially among the older and now almosttraditional--estimates of him, an unwary reader who did not correctthese, judging for himself, might think that Balzac was as much of an"observational" realist in character as Fielding, as Scott when itserved his turn, as Miss Austen, or as Thackeray. Longer study andfurther perspective seem recently to have put more people in theposition which only a few held some years ago. The astonishing force, completeness, _relative_ reality of his creations is more and moreadmitted, but it is seen (M. Le Breton, for instance, admits it inalmost the very words) that the reality is often not _positive_. In factthe _Comédie_ may remind some of the old nautical laudation of a shipwhich cannot only sail close to the wind, but even a point or two on theother side of it. If even Frenchmen now confess that Balzac's charactersare very often not _des êtres réels_, no Englishman need be ashamed ofhaving always thought so. The fact is that this giant in novel-writing did actually succeed indoing what some of his brethren in _Hyperion_ would have liked to do--insetting up a new world for himself and getting out of the existinguniverse. His characters are never _in_human; they never fail to behuman; they are of the same flesh and blood, the same soul and spirit, as ourselves. But they have, as it were, colonised the fresh planet--theBalzacium Sidus--and taken new colour and form from itsidiosyncrasies. [167] [Sidenote: Its effect on successors. ] It is for this reason that one hesitates to endorse the opinions quotedabove as to the filiation of all or most subsequent French fiction uponBalzac. Of course he had a great influence on it; such a genius, in suchcircumstances, could not but have. The "interior" business was largelyfollowed and elaborated; it might be argued--though the contention wouldhave to be strictly limited and freely provisoed--that Naturalism ingeneral--as the "Rougon-Macquart" scheme certainly was inparticular--was a sort of bastard of the _Comédie_. Other points ofrelationship might be urged. But all this would leave the mostcharacteristic Balzacities untouched. In the most obvious andsuperficial quality--pessimistic psychology--the other novelist dealtwith in this chapter--Beyle--is far more of a real origin than Balzacis. If one takes the most brilliant of his successors outside theNaturalist school--Flaubert and Feuillet--very little that is reallyBalzacian will be found in either. At least _Madame Bovary_ and _M. DeCamors_--which, I suppose, most people would choose to represent thegreatest genius and the most flexible talent of the Second Empire innovel-writing--seem to me to show hardly anything that is like Balzac. The Goncourts have something of degraded Balzacianism on its lower sidein them, and Zola approaches, at least in his "apocalyptic" period, something like a similar though less offensive degradation of thehigher. But I can hardly conceive anything less like Balzac's work thanMaupassant's. [Sidenote: And its own character. ] For the fact is that the real Balzac lies--to and for me--almostentirely in that _aura_ of other-worldliness of which I have spoken. Itis in the revelation of this other world, so like ours and yet not thesame; in the exploration of its continents; in the frequentation of itsinhabitants; that the pleasure which he has to give consists. How hecame himself to discover it is as undiscoverable as how his in some sortanalogue Dickens, after pottering not unpleasantly with Bozeries, "thought of Mr. Pickwick, " and so of the rest of _his_ human (andextra-human) comedy. But the facts, in both cases fortunately, remain. And it may be possible to indicate at least some qualities andcharacteristics of the fashion in which he dealt with this world when he_had_ discovered it. In _Les Chouans_ he had found out not so much it, as the way to it; in the books between that and _La Peau de Chagrin_ hewas over the border, and with _La Peau_ itself he had "crossedJordan, "--it was all conquest and extension--as far as permitted--ofterritory afterwards. [Sidenote: The "occult" element. ] There can, I should suppose, be very little doubt that the fancy for theoccult, which played a great part, as far as bulk goes, in the_Juvenilia_, but produced nothing of value there, began to bear fruit atthis time. The Supernatural (as was remarked of woman to the indignationof Mr. Snodgrass) is a "rum creetur. " It is very difficult to deal with;to the last degree unsatisfactory when of bad quality and badly handled;but possessing almost infinite capabilities of exhibiting excellence, and conveying enjoyment. Of course, during the generation beforeBalzac's birth and also that between his birth and 1830, the TerrorNovel--from the _Castle of Otranto_ to Maturin--had circled throughEurope, and "Illuminism" of various kinds had taken particular hold ofFrance just before the Revolution. But Balzac's "Occult, " like Balzac'severything, was not the same as anybody else's. Whether you take it in_La Peau de Chagrin_ itself, or in _Séraphita_, or anywhere, itconsists, again, rather in atmosphere than in "figures. " A weaker geniuswould have attached to the skin of that terrible wild ass--gloomier, butmore formidable than even the beast in Job[168]--some attendant evilspirit, genie, or "person" of some sort. A bit of shagreen externally, shrinking--with age--perhaps? with weather?--what not?--a life shrinkingin mysterious sympathy--that is what was wanted and what you have, without ekings, or explanations, or other trumpery. [Sidenote: Its action and reaction. ] Nor is it only in the ostensibly "occult" or (as he was pleased to callthem) "philosophic" studies and and stories that you get thisatmosphere. It spreads practically everywhere--the very bankruptcies andthe sordid details of town and country life are overshadowed and in acertain sense _dis_-realised by it. Indeed that verb which, like mostnew words, has been condemned by some precisians, but which was muchwanted, applies to no prose writer quite so universally as to Balzac. Heis a _dis_-realiser, not by style as some are, but in thought--at thevery same time that he gives such impressions of realism. Sometimes, butnot often, he comes quite close to real mundane reality, sometimes, asin the most "philosophical" of the so-called philosophical works, hehardly attempts a show of it. But as a rule when he is at his very best, as in _La Peau de Chagrin_, in _La Recherche de l'Absolu_, in _LeChef-d'oeuvre Inconnu_, he attains a kind of point of unity betweendisrealising and realising--he disrealises the common and renders theuncommon real in a fashion actually carrying out what he can never haveknown--the great Coleridgian definition or description of poetry. Infact, if prose-poetry were not a contradiction in terms, Balzac wouldbe, except in style, [169] the greatest prose-poet of them all. [Sidenote: Peculiarity of the conversation. ] On[170] one remarkable characteristic of the _Comédie_ very little hasusually been said. It has been neglected wholly by most critics, thoughit is of the very first importance. And that is the astonishingly smalluse, _in proportion_, which Balzac makes of that great weapon of thenovelist, dialogue, and the almost smaller effect which it accordinglyhas in producing his results (whatever they are) on his readers. Withsome novelists dialogue is almost all-powerful. Dumas, for instance (asis pointed out elsewhere), does almost everything by it. In his bestbooks especially you may run the eye over dozens, scores, almosthundreds of pages without finding a single one printed "solid. " Theauthor seldom makes any reflections at all; and his descriptions, with, of course, some famous exceptions, are little more than longish stagedirections. Nor is this by any means merely due to early practice in thedrama itself; for something like it is to be found in writers who havehad no such practice. In Balzac, after making every allowance for thefact that he often prints his actual conversations without typographicalseparation of the speeches, the case is just the other way. Moreover, and this is still more noteworthy, it is not by what his characters dosay that we remember them. The situation perhaps most of all; thecharacter itself very often; the story sometimes (but of that morepresently)--these are the things for and by which we remember Balzac andthe vast army of his creations; while sometimes it is not even for anyof these things, but for "interiors, " "business, " and the like. When onethinks of single points in him, it is scarcely ever of such things asthe "He has got his discharge, by----!" of Dickens; as the "Adsum" ofThackeray; as the "Trop lourd!" of Porthos' last agony; as the longerbut hardly less quintessenced malediction of Habakkuk Mucklewrath onClaverhouse. It is of Eugénie Grandet shrinking in automatic repulsionfrom the little bench as she reads her cousin's letter; of Henri deMarsay's cigar (his enjoyment of it, that is to say, for his words arequite commonplace) as he leaves "la Fille aux Yeux d'Or"; of the loverallowing himself to be built up in "La Grande Bretèche. " Observe thatthere is not the slightest necessity to apportion the excellence impliedin these different kinds of reminiscence; as a matter of fact, each wayof fastening the interest and the appreciation of the reader isindifferently good. [171] But the distinction remains. [Sidenote: And of the "story" interest. ] There is another point on which, though no good critic can miss it, somecritics seem to dislike dwelling; and this is that, though Balzac'sseparate situations, as has just been said, are arresting in the highestdegree, it is often distinctly difficult to read him "for the story. "Even M. Brunetière lets slip an admission that "interest" of theordinary kind is not exactly Balzac's forte; while another admirer ofhis grants freely that his _affabulation_ is weak. Once more, we neednot and must not make too much of this; but it is important that itshould not be forgotten, and the extreme Balzacian is sometimes apt toforget it. That it comes sometimes from Balzac's mania for rehandlingand reshaping--that he has actually, like the hero of what is to somehis most unforgettable short story, daubed the masterpiece into ablur--is certain. But it probably comes more often, and is much moreinteresting as coming, from want of co-ordination between the observingand the imagining faculties which are (as Hugo meant) the yoked coursersof Balzac's car. The fact is that _exceptis excipiendis_, of which _Eugénie Grandet_ isthe chief solid example, it is not by the ordinary means, or in theordinary ways, that Balzac makes any considerable part of his appeal. Heis very much more _der Einzige_ in novel-writing than Jean Paul was innovel-writing or anything else; for a good deal of Richter's uniquenessdepended[172] upon eccentricities of style, etc. , from which Balzac isentirely free. And the same may be said, with the proper mutations, ofGeorge Meredith. No one ever made less use--despite his "details" and"interiors"--of what may be called intellectual or artistic costume andproperties than the author of the _Comédie Humaine_. The mostegotistical of men in certain ways, he never thrusts his _ego_ upon you. The most personal in his letters, he is almost as impersonal in most ofhis writings (_Louis Lambert_, etc. , being avowedly exceptional) asShakespeare. Now, though the personal interest may be not illegitimateand sometimes great, the impersonal is certainly greater. Thanks toindustrious prying, not always deserving the adjective impertinent, weknow a great deal about Balzac; and it is by no means difficult to applysome of the knowledge to aid the study of his creation. But in readingthe creation itself you never need this knowledge; it never forcesitself on you. The hundreds, and almost thousands, of persons who formthe company of the _Comédie_--their frequently recurring parts adjustedwith extraordinary, though by no means obtrusive or offensive, consistency to the enormous world of detail and scenery and general"surroundings" in which their parts are played--are never interferedwith by the pointing-stick or the prompter. They are _there_; they can'thelp being there, and you have to make the best or the worst of them asyou can. Considering the general complexion of this universe, itsinevitableness and apparent [Greek: autarkeia] may seem, in some moodsand to some persons, a little oppressive; it is always, perhaps, as hasbeen admitted, productive rather of admiration than of pleasure. Faultsof various kinds may be found with it. But it is almost alwayswonderful; it is often great, and it is sometimes of the greatest. [173] FOOTNOTES: [124] Of course there are exceptions, _Le Rouge et le Noir_ and _La Peaude Chagrin_ being perhaps the chief among long novels; while some ofBalzac's short stories possess the quality in almost the highest degree. [125] He tried several pseudonyms, but settled on this. Unfortunately, he sometimes (not always) made it "_De_ Stendhal, " without anythingbefore the "De, " and more unfortunately still, in the days of hisNapoleonic employment he, if he had not called himself, had allowedhimself to be called "M. _de_ Beyle"--an assumption which thoughdropped, was not forgotten in the days of his later anti-aristocratism. [126] Beyle himself recognized the necessity of the reader'scollaboration. [127] This does not apply to poets as much as to prose writers: a factfor which reasons could perhaps be given. And it certainly does notapply to Balzac. [128] He was now forty-four, and had published not a few volumes, mostlysmall, of other kinds--travel description (which he did uncommonlywell), and miscellaneous writing, and criticism, including the famous_Racine et Shakespeare_, an _avant-coureur_ of Romanticism whichcontained, besides matter on its title-subjects, some sound estimate ofScott as a writer and some very unsound abuse about him as a man. Thislast drew from Byron, who had met Beyle earlier at Milan, a letter ofexpostulation and vindication which did that noble poet infinite credit, but of which Beyle, by no means to _his_ credit, took notice. He wasonly too like Hazlitt in more ways than one: though few books withpractically the same title can be more different than _De l'Amour_ and_Liber Amoris_. [129] As for instance, those from Dekker and Massiger; Camoens andErcilla are allowed their native tongues "neat. " [130] The actual "Chartreuse" of Parma only makes its appearance on thevery last page of the book, when the hero, resigning his arch bishopric, retires to it. [131] He is the younger son of a rich and noble family, but his fatherdisowns and his older brother denounces him quite early. It ischaracteristic of Beyle that we hear very little of the father and arepractically never even introduced to the brother. [132] These four words somehow make me think of Samuel Newcome's commenton the unfortunate dinner where "Farintosh" did not appear: "Scarcelyanything was drank. " [133] See note above. [134] Both would have declined to meddle with her, I think, but fordifferent reasons. [135] Beyle, who had himself no good looks, is particularly lavish ofthem to his heroes. [136] Perhaps one of the rare biographical details which, as has beenexplained, may "force the _consigne_" here, is that Beyle in his youth, and almost up to middle age, was acquainted with an old lady who had thevery unenviable reputation of having actually "sat for" Madame deMerteuil. [137] This bad bloodedness, or [Greek: kakoêtheia], of Beyle's heroes isreally curious. It would have qualified them later to be Temperancefanatics or Trade Union demagogues. The special difference of all threeis an intense dislike of somebody else "having something. " [138] In that merry and wise book _Clarissa Furiosa_. [139] She keeps the anniversary of his execution, and imitatesMarguerite in procuring and treasuring, at the end of the story, Julien's severed head. (It may be well to note that Dumas had not yetwritten _La Reine Margot_. ) [140] In proper duel, of course; not as he shot his mistress. [141] Its great defect is the utter absence of any poetical element. But, as Mérimée (than whom there could hardly be, in this case, a criticmore competent or more friendly) said, poetry was, to Beyle, _lettreclose_. [142] It seems curiously enough, that Beyle did mean to make the book_gai_. It is a a very odd kind of gaiety! [143] This attraction of the _forçat_ is one of the most curiousfeatures in all French Romanticism. It was perhaps partly one of thegeneral results of the Revolutionary insanity earlier, partly a symptomor sequel of Byronism. But the way it raged not only among folks likeEugène Sue, but among men and women of great talent and sometimesgenius--George Sand, Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo--the last and greatestcarrying it on for nearly two generations--is a real curiousity ofliterature. (The later and different crime-novel of Gaboriau & Co. Willbe dealt with in its place. ) [144] _V. Sup. _ vol. I. P. 39. [145] A pseudonymous person has "reconstituted" the story under thetitle of _Lucien Leeuwen_ (the hero's name). But some not inconsiderableexperience of reconstitutions of this kind determined me to waste nofurther portion of my waning life on any one of them. [146] It may be desirable to glance at Beyle's avowed or obvious"intentions" in most if not all his novels--in the _Chartreuse_ todifferentiate Italian from French character, in _Le Rouge et le Noir_ toembody the Macchiavellian-Napoleonic principle which has been of late sotediously phrased (after the Germans) as "will to" something and thelike. These intentions may interest some: for me, I must confess, theydefinitely get in the way of the interest. For essays, "good": fornovels, "no. " [147] Vide _Guy Mannering_ as to the "macers. " [148] _Les Chouans. _ [149] Forty vols. London: 1895-8. [150] _Quarterly Review_ for January 1907. [151] I believe I may say, without fatuity, that the generalIntroduction and the _Quarterly_ article, above referred to, containmost things that anybody but a special student will need. [152] It is, however, important to remember that almost the whole of thefirst of these three decades was taken up with the tentatives, while theconcluding _lustrum_ was comparatively infertile. The _Comédie_ was, inthe main, the crop of fifteen years only. [153] It ought always to be, but has not always been, put as a round sumto his credit in this part of the account that he heartily recognisedthe value of Scott as a novelist. A hasty thinker might be surprised atthis; not so the wiser mind. [154] This remarkable person deserves at least a note here "for onething that he did"--the novel of _Fragoletta_ (1829), which many shouldknow _of_--though they may not know _it_--from Mr. Swinburne's poem, andsome perhaps from Balzac's own review. It is one of the followings of_La Religieuse_, and is a disappointing book, not from being too immoralnor from being not immoral enough, but because it does not "come off. "There is a certain promise, suggestion, "atmosphere, " but the actualcharacterisation is vague and obscure, and the story is told with nograsp. This habit of "flashing in the pan" is said to have beencharacteristic of all Latouche's work, which was fairly voluminous andof many different kinds, from journalism to poetry; and it may have beenpartly due to, partly the cause of, a cross-grained disposition. He had, however, a high repute for spoken if not written criticism, had a greatinfluence as a trainer or mentor on George Sand, and perhaps not alittle on Balzac himself. During the later years of his fairly long lifehe lived in retirement and produced nothing. [155] One of the friends who have read my proofs takes a moreAlexandrian way with this objection and says "But there _are_. " I do notknow that I disagree with him: but as he does not disagree with whatfollows in itself, both answers shall stand. [156] Cf. Maupassant's just protest against this, to which we shallcome. [157] An actual reduction of Balzac's books to smaller but stillnarrative scale is very seldom possible and would be still more rarelysatisfactory. The best substitute for it is the already glanced at_Répertoire_ of MM. Christophe and Cerfbeer, a curious but verysatisfactory Biographical Dictionary of the Comedy's _personae_. [158] "Sans génie je suis flambé, " as he wrote early to his sister. [159] This is about the best of the batch, and I agree with those whothink that it would not have disfigured the _Comédie_. Indeed theexclusion of these _juvenilia_ from the _Édition Définitive_ was acritical blunder. Even if Balzac did once wish it, the "dead hand" isnot to be too implicitly given way to, and he was so constantly changinghis views that he probably would have altered this also had he lived. [160] A certain kind of commentator would probably argue from Mr. Browning's well-known words "_fifty_ volumes long" that he _had_, andanother that he had _not_ read the _Oeuvres de Jeunesse_. [161] He would not have liked the name "patriot" because of itscorruption, but he was one. [162] Not a few things, some of them very good, came between--thepleasant _Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote_, several of the wonderful shortstories, and the beginning of the _Contes Drolatiques_. But none of themhad the "importance"--in the artistic sense of combined merit andscale--of the _Peau_. [163] I mean, of course, as far as books go. We have positive testimonythat there was a live Becky, and I would I had known her! [164] Originally and perhaps preferably called _La Rabouilleuse_ fromthe early occupation of its heroine, Flore Brazier, one of Balzac's mostnotable figures. [165] It is one of the strangest instances of the limitations of some ofthe best critics that M. Brunetière declined even to speak of this greatbook. [166] The immense influence of Maturin in France, and especially onBalzac, is an old story now, though it was not always so. [167] It is possible that some readers may miss a more extended survey, or at least sample, of these characters. But the plea made above as toabstract of the stories is valid here. There is simply not room to dojustice to say, Lucien de Rubempré, who pervades a whole block of novelsand stories, or to others from Rastignac to Corentin. [168] It has sometimes occurred to me that perhaps the skin _was_ thatof Job's onager. [169] He does try a sort of pseudo-poetical style sometimes; but it isseldom successful, and sometimes mere "fine-writing" of no very finekind. The close of _Peau de Chagrin_ and _Séraphita_ contain about thebest passages. [170] The two next paragraphs are, by the kind permission of the Editorand Publisher of the _Quarterly Review_, reprinted, with some slightalterations, from the article above referred to. [171] I have known this denied by persons of authority, who would exaltthe gift of conversation even above the pure narrative faculty. I shouldadmit the latter was commoner, but hardly that it was inferior. [172] I believe I may speak without rashness thus, for a copy of thesixteen-volume (was it not?) edition was a cherished possession of minefor years, and I even translated a certain amount for my ownamusement--especially _Die unsichtbare Loge_. [173] I have said nothing here on a point of considerable interest tomyself--the question whether Balzac can be said ever (or at least often)to have drawn a gentleman or a lady. It would require too much"justification" by analysis of particular characters. And this wouldpass into a more general enquiry whether these two species exist in theBalzacium Sidus itself. Which things open long vistas. (_V. Inf. _ onCharles de Bernard. ) CHAPTER V GEORGE SAND [Sidenote: George Sand--generalities about her. ] There is a Scotch proverb (not, I think, among those most generallyknown), "Never tell your foe when your foot sleeps"; and some have heldthat this applies specially to the revelation, by an author, of his ownweak points. I do not agree with them, having always had a fancy forplaying and seeing cards on table--except at cards themselves, where adummy seems to me only to spoil the game. Therefore I admit, in comingto George Sand, that this famous novelist has not, _as_ a novelist, everbeen a favourite of mine--that I have generally experienced some, andoccasionally great, difficulty in reading her. Even the "purgedconsiderate mind" (without, I venture to hope, much dulling of theliterary palate) which I have brought to the last readings necessary forthis book, has but partially removed this difficulty. The causes of it, and their soundness or unsoundness as reasons, must be postponed for alittle--till, as usual, sufficient survey and analysis of at leastspecimens (for here as elsewhere the immense bulk of the total workdefies anything more than "sampling") have supplied due evidence. But itmay be said at once that no kind of prejudice or dislike, arising fromthe pretty notorious history and character of Amantine (Amandine?Armandine?) Lucile Aurore Dupin or Dudevant, commonly called GeorgeSand, has anything to do with my want of affection or admiration for herwork. I do not recommend her conduct in her earlier days for imitation, and I am bound to say that I do not think it was ever excused by whatone may call real love. But she seems to have been an extremely goodfellow in her age, and not by any means a very bad fellow in her youth. She was at one time pretty, or at least good-looking;[174] she was atall times clever; and if she did not quite deserve that almostsuperhuman eulogy awarded in the Devonshire epitaph to Mary Sexton, Who pleased many a man and never vexed one, [175] she did fulfil the primal duty of her sex, and win its greatest triumph, by complying with the first half of the line, while, if she failed as tothe second, it was perhaps not entirely her fault. [176] Finally, Balzac's supposed picture of her as Camille in _Béatrix_ has the almostunique peculiarity, among its author's sketches of women, of beingpositively attractive--attractive, that is to say, not merely to thecritic as a powerful study and work of art; not perhaps at all to thesentimentalist as a victim or an adorable piece of _candeur_; not to thelover of physical beauty or passion, but to the reader--"sensible" inthe old sense as well as in the new--who feels that here is a woman heshould like to have known, even if he feels likewise that hisweather-eye would have had to be kept open during the knowledge. [Sidenote: Phases of her work. ] It has been customary--and though these customary things are sometimesdelusive and too often mechanical, there is also occasionally, and, Ithink, here, her work, something not negligible in them, if they be notapplied too rigidly--to divide George Sand's long period (nearly half acentury) of novel-production into four sub-periods, correspondingroughly with the four whole decades of the thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties. [177] The first, sometimes called, but, I think, misleadingly, "Romantic, " is the period of definite and mainly sexualrevolt, illustrated by such novels as _Indiana_, _Valentine_, _Lélia_, and _Jacques_. The second is that of _illuminé_ mysticism andsemi-political theorising, to which _Spiridion_, _Consuelo_, _LaComtesse de Rudolstadt_, and others belong. The third, one of a certain_apaisement_, when the author had finally settled at her country-houseof Nohant in Berry, turns to studies of rural life: _La Petite Fadette_, _François le Champi_, _La Mare au Diable_, etc. The last is representedby novels of no one particular, or at least single, scope or bent, _LesBeaux Messieurs de Bois-Doré_, _Le Marquis de Villemer_, _MademoiselleLa Quintinie, _ etc. , reaching to _Flamarande_ and its sequel shortlybefore her death. The thing, as has been hinted already, is one of thosefirst rough sketches of the ground which, if not too closely adhered to, are often useful. As a matter of fact, the divisions often--as one mightbe sure they would--run cross. There is a lot of occult or semi-occultstuff in _Lélia_, and the "period of appeasement" did not show muchreconciliation and forgiveness of injury in _Elle et Lui_, whether wetake this as by the injured or as by her who had done the wrong. But ifwe take the two first novels briefly and _Lélia_ itself more fully forPeriod I. ; _Consuelo_ and its sequel (_Spiridion_ has been "done anddone thoroughly"[178] by Thackeray in the _Paris Sketch-book_) for II. ;the three above-mentioned _berquinades_ for the Third, with _LucreziaFloriani_ thrown between as an all-important outsider, and _Les BeauxMessieurs de Bois-Doré_ for IV. , giving each some detailed criticism, with a few remarks on others, it ought to suffice as a fairly solidgroundwork for a general summing-up. [Sidenote: _Indiana_. ] To understand the _furore_ with which _Indiana_ and _Valentine_ werereceived, one must remember the time and the circumstance with even morecare than is usually desirable. They were--if not quite so well writtenas they seemed even to Thackeray--written very well; they expressed thefull outburst of the French _Sturm und Drang_ movement; there wasnothing like them either in French or in any other literature, thoughBulwer was beginning similar things with us. Essentially, and when taken_sub specie aeternitatis_, they are very nearly rubbish. The frail(extremely frail) and gentle Indiana, with her terrible husband, whosecrimes against her and nature even reach the abominable pitch ofdeclaring himself ready to shoot expected poachers and possibleburglars; her creole maid and foster-sister "Noun, " who disguisesherself in Indiana's garments and occupies her room, receives there alover who is afterwards her mistress's, but soon commits suicide; thelover himself, a most appalling "tiger, " as his own time would havecalled him; and the enigmatic English cousin, indifferently designatedas "Sir Rodolphe Brown, " "Sir Ralph, " "Sir Brown, " and "M. Brown, " withwhom Indiana makes a third trial of hitherto "incomprised" andunattained happiness--are all inhabitants of a sort of toy doll's-housepartaking of the lunatic-asylum. But the author's three prefaces, written at intervals of exactly ten years, passably inconsistent indetail, but all agreeing in contempt of critics and lofty anarchistsentiment, are great fun, and are almost a reward for reading the book. [Sidenote: _Valentine. _] _Valentine_ has more of the really admirable description of her belovedBerry with which the author so often honeys her drugs; but thenovel-part of it is largely composed of the same sort of violent boshwhich almost monopolises _Indiana_. In fact, the peasant-_bourgeois_hero Benedict, whom every woman loves; who is a conceited andill-mannered mixture of clown and prig; who is angry with his mistressValentine (Madame de Lansac) for "not knowing how to prefer him to herhonour, " though one would have said she had given ample proofs of thispreference; and who finally appeases the reader by tumbling on thepoints of a pitchfork placed in his way by an (as it happens) undulyjealous husband, is a more offensive creature than any one in theearlier book. [179] One is, on the other hand, a little sorry forValentine, while one is sorry for nobody in _Indiana_ except perhaps forthe husband, who has the sense to die early. [Sidenote: _Lélia. _] _Lélia_, some years younger than these and later than the Mussettragedy, is a good deal better, or at least less childish. It is beyondall question an extraordinary book, though it may be well to keep thehyphen in the adjective to prevent confusion of sense. It opens, and toa large extent continues, with a twist of the old epistolary stylewhich, if nothing else, is ingeniously novel. George Sand was in truth a"well of ingenuity" as D'Artagnan was a _puits de sagesse_, and thisaccounts, to some extent, for her popularity. You have not only no datesand no places, but no indication who writes the letters or to whom theyare written, though, unless you are very stupid, you soon find out. The_personae_ are Lélia--a _femme incomprise_, if not incomprehensible;Sténio, a young poet, who is, in the profoundest and saddest sense ofthe adverb, hopelessly in love with her; and a mysterious personage--asort of Solomon-Socrates-Senancour--who bears the Ossianesque name ofTrenmor, with a later and less provincially poetical _alias_ of"Valmarina. "[180] The history of the _preuves_ of Trenmor'snovel-nobility are soon laid before the reader. They are not, in theirearlier stages, engaging to the old-fashioned believer in "good form. " Trenmor is the sort of exaggeration of Childe Harold which a lively butrather vulgar mind might conceive. "He was born great; but theydeveloped the animal in him. " The greatness postponed its appearance, but the animality did credit to the development. "He used to love tobeat his dogs; before long he beat his prostitutes. " This harmlessdiversion accentuated itself in details, for which, till the acme, thereader must be referred to the original. The climacteric moment came. Hehad a mistress called "La Mantovana, " whom he rather preferred to theothers, because she was beautiful and impudent. "In a night of noise andwine" he struck her, and she drew a dagger. This made him love her for amoment; but unfortunately she made an improper observation; thereupon hetore off her pearl necklace and trod it under his feet. She wept. Thisannoyed Trenmor very much. "She had wished revenge for a personalinsult, and she cried for a toy!" Accordingly he had a "crispation ofnerves, " which obliged him to take a large cut-glass decanter and hither on the head with it. According to the natural perversity on suchoccasions of such persons, she died. The brutal justice of mankind--sohateful to Godwin and George Sand and Victor Hugo--sent Trenmor, not, indeed, to the gallows, as it should have done, but to the galleys. Yetthe incident made Lélia, who (she must have had a sweet set of friends)somehow knew him, very fond of Trenmor, though she certainly told himthat he might as well repent of what he had done, which seemsinconsistent. They let him out after five years (why, Heaven or the otherplace knows!) and he became a reformed character--theSolomon-Socrates-Senancour above mentioned _plus_ a sort of lay"director" to Lélia, with a carbonaro attitude of politicalrevolutionary and free-thinking _illuminé_. Now _corruptio pessimi_ isseldom _optima_. The main interest, however, shifts (with apparitions ofTrenmor-Valmarina) to the loves (if they may be called so) of thepitiable Sténio and the intolerable heroine. She is unable to loveanybody, and knows it; she can talk--ye Demons, how she can talk!--butshe can never behave like a woman of this world. She alternately hugsSténio, so that she nearly squeezes his breath out, and, when he drawsnatural conclusions from this process, pushes him away. But worse andmore preposterous things happen. Lélia has a sister, Pulchérie, who isvery like her (they are of course both impossibly beautiful) in body, and so far resembles her in mind and soul as to be unable to behavedecently or sensibly. But her want of decency and sense takes the morecommonplace line of becoming an actual courtesan of the "Imperia" kindin Italy. By a series of muddles for which Lélia is--as her plain-spokensister points out after the catastrophe--herself really responsible, Sténio is induced, during the excitement of an _al fresco_ fête at nightin the grounds of a sort of fairy palace, to take the "coming" sisterfor the recalcitrant one, and avail himself of her complaisance, _usquead finem_. Lélia reproaches him (which she has not the least right todo), and he devotes himself entirely to Pulchérie (La Zinzolina is herprofessional name) and her group of noble paramours. He gets, however, generally drunk and behaves with a brutal rudeness, which would, in theItaly of tradition, have finished things up very soon by a stilettothrust, and in honest England by a kicking into the street. There aremysterious plots, cardinals, and anything else you like or don't like. Lélia becomes an abbess, Sténio a suicide, the above-mentioned priest, Magnus, being much concerned in this. She admits her unfortunate loverto burial, and is degraded and imprisoned for it--or for having savedTrenmor-Valmarina from the law. Everybody else now dies, and thenightmare comes to an end. [Sidenote: The moral of the group and its tragi-comedy. ] The beauties of style which softened the savage breast of Thackerayhimself in the notice above mentioned, and which, such as they are, appear even in George Sand's earliest work, will receive attention whenthat work comes to be discussed as a whole. Meanwhile, at the risk ofany charge of Philistinism, I confess that this part of it seems to me, after fifty years and more of "corrected impression, " almost worthless_au fond_. It is, being in prose, and therefore destitute of theeasements or at least masquerades which poetry provides for nonsense, the most conspicuous and considerable example--despite the undoubtedtalent of the writer--of the mischief which Byronism did on theContinent. With us, though it made a great stir, it really did littleharm except to some "silly women" (as the apostle, in unkindly anduncourtly, but truly apostolic fashion, had called similar persons ofthe angelic sex ages before). Counter-jumpers like Thackeray's ownPogson worshipped "the noble poet"; boys of nobler stamp like Tennyson_thought_ they worshipped him, but if they were going to become men ofaffairs forgot all about him; if they were to be poets took to Keats andShelley as models, not to him. Critics hardly took him seriously, exceptfor non-literary reasons. There was, as I think somebody (perhapsThackeray himself) says upon something, "too much roast beef about" forus to fill our bellies with this worse than east wind of Sensibilitygone rotten. But abroad, for reasons which would be easy but irrelevantto dwell upon, Byron hit the many-winged bird of popular favour onnearly all its pinions. He ran strikingly and delightfully contrary tothe accepted _Anglais_, whether of the philosophical or the caricaturetype; he was noble, but revolutionary; he looked (he never was, exceptin non-essentials) Romantic; he was new, naughty, nice, all at once. Andthey went mad over him, and to a large extent and for a long timeremained so; indeed, Continental criticism, whether Latin, Teutonic, Scandinavian, or Slav, has never reached "the centre" about Byron. NowGeorge Sand was at no time exactly a silly woman, but she was for a longtime a woman off her balance. Byronism was exactly the -ism with whichshe could execute the wildest feats of half-voluntary andhalf-involuntary acrobatics, saltimbanquery, and chucking of her bonnetover all conceivable and inconceivable mills. Childe Harold, Manfred, Conrad, Lara, Don Juan, Sardanapalus--the shades of these caught herand waltzed with her and reversed and figured and gesticulated, With their Sentimentalibus lacrimae rorum, and pathos and bathos delightful to see, --or perhaps _not_ so very delightful? But let us pass to the next stage. [Sidenote: _Consuelo. _] Those persons (I think, without tempting Nemesis too much, I might saythose fortunate persons) to whom the world of books is almost as real asthe other two worlds of life and of dream, may or must have observedthat the conditions and sensations of the individual in all three arevery much the same. In particular, the change from a state of discomfortto one of comfort--or _vice versa_ unluckily, but with that we havenothing immediately to do--applies to all. In actual life you are hot, tired, bored, headachy, "spited with fools, " what not. A change ofatmosphere, a bath, a draught of some not unfermented liquor, the sightof a face, what not again, nay, sometimes a mere shift of clothing, willmake you cool, satisfied, at peace. In dreams you have generally towake, to shake off the "fierce vexation, " and to realise that it _is_ adream; but the relief comes sooner or later. If anybody wants toexperience this change from discomfort to comfort in the book-world of asingle author, I cannot commend anything better than the perusal, with ashort interval--but there should be some--of _Consuelo_ after _Lélia_. We may have some things to say against the later novel; but that doesnot matter. [Sidenote: Much better in parts. ] It opens with no tricks or _tours de force_; in no atmosphere ofdarkened footlights and smell of sawdust; but in frank and freenovel-fashion, with a Venetian church, a famous maestro (Porpora), achoir of mostly Italian girls, and the little Spanish gipsy Consuelo, the poorest, humblest, plainest (as most people think) of all the bevy, but the possessor of the rarest vocal faculties and the mosthappiness-producing-and-diffusing temper. There is nothing in the leastmilk-soppy or prudish about Consuelo, though she is perfectly "pure";nor is there anything tractified about her, though she is pious andgenerous. The contrast between her and her betrothed, the handsome butworthless Anzoleto, also a singer, is, at first, not overworked; and onescene--that in which, when Consuelo has got over the "scraggy" age andis developing actual beauty, she and Anzoleto debate, in the mostnatural manner, whether she _is_ pretty or not--is quite capital, one ofthe things that stick in one's memory and stamp the writer's genius, or, at any rate, consummate talent. [Sidenote: The degeneration. ] This happy state of affairs continues without much deterioration, thoughperhaps with some warnings to the experienced, for some two hundredpages. The situations and the other characters--the Professor Porporahimself; Count Zustiniani, _dilettante_, _impresario_ and of coursegallant; his _prima donna_ and (in the story at least) first mistress, La Corilla; her extravagances and seduction of the handsome Anzoleto;his irresolution between his still existing affection for Consuelo, whopasses through all these things (and Zustiniani's siege of her) "inmaiden meditation, fancy-free"--all discharge themselves or play theirparts quite as they ought to do. But this comparatively quiet, though byno means emotionless or unincidented, part of the story "ends in ablow-up, " or rather in a sink-down, for Anzoleto, on a stolen gondolatrip with Clorinda, third cantatrice and interim mistress of Zustiniani(beautiful, but stupid, and a bad singer), meets the Count in anothergondola with Corilla herself, and in his fury rams his rival and theperfidious one. Consuelo, who has at last had her eyes opened, quitsVenice and flees, with a testimonial from Porpora, to Germany. Even thenone hopes for the best, and acknowledges that at any rate something notfar from the best, something really good, has been given one for twohundred well-filled pages--more than the equivalent of the first deck ofone of our old average "three-deckers. " But in the mind of experience such hopes are always accompanied byfears, and alas! in this instance "the fears have it. " There is on theborder of Bohemia a "Castle of the Giants"; and oh! how one wishes thatmy Uncle Toby had allowed the sea to execute the ravages he deprecatedand sweep that castle into nothingness! When we get there Byronism isback--nay, its papa and mamma, Lewisism and Radcliffism, are backalso--with their cardboard turrets and precipices and grottos; theirpine-woods reminding one of the little bristly green things, on roundcinnamon-coloured bases, of one's youth; their floods and falls soobviously supplied at so much a thousand gallons by the nearest watercompany, and their mystery-men and dwarfs and catalepsies and all therest of the weary old "tremblement. " Count Christian of Rudolstadt isindeed a gentleman and an almost too affectionate father; his brother, Baron Frederick, a not disagreeable sportsman and _bon vivant_; theirsister, the Canoness, a not too theatrical old maid; and Frederick'sdaughter, Amélie, though pert and not too good-natured, the most humancreature of them all, albeit with the humanities of a soubrette ratherthan of a great lady. But what shall one say of Albert of Rudolstadt, the heir, the betrothed of Amélie (this fact excusing much in her), and, when Consuelo has joined the circle at Porpora's recommendation asmusic-mistress and companion in the higher kind to Amélie--_her_ slave, conqueror, tormentor, and in the long-run husband? He is perhaps themost intolerable hero[181] ever designed as a gentleman by a novelistwho has been classed as great, and who certainly has some qualitiesnecessary to greatness. In reading about him vague compunctions evencome over the mind at having spoken harshly of Sténio and Trenmor. Sténio was always a fool and latterly a cad; Trenmor first a brute andthen a bore. Albert is none of these (except perhaps the last), but heis madder than the Mad Hatter and the March Hare put together, and asdepressing as they are delightful. He has hallucinations whichobliterate the sense of time in him; he thinks himself one of hisancestors of the days of Ziska; he has second sight; he speaks Spanishto Consuelo and calls her by her name when he first sees her, though hehas not the faintest _sane_ idea who she is or whence she comes; and hereduces his family to abject misery by ensconcing himself for days in agrotto which can be isolated by means of a torrent turned on and off atpleasure by a dwarf gipsy called Zdenko, who is almost a greaternuisance than Albert himself. Consuelo discovers his retreat at the riskof being drowned; and various nightmarish scenes occur, resulting in theslight return to sanity on Albert's part involved in falling in lovewith her, and a very considerable advance towards _in_sanity on hers byfalling in love with him. But perhaps this give-and-take of lovers mayseem attractive to some. And when after a time we get into merehocus-pocus, and it seems to Consuelo that Albert's violin "speaks andutters words as through the mouth of Satan, " the same persons may thinkit fine. For myself, I believe that without fatuity I may claim to be, if not a _visionnaire_ (perhaps that also), at least a lover of visions, and of Isaiah and Ezekiel and the Revelation. Dante, Blake, Shelley, thebest of Lamennais and the best of Hugo excite in me nothing but apassionate reverence. I can walk day-long and night-long by Ulai andChebar and Lethe-Eunoe and have no thought of sneer or slumber, shrug orsatiety. But when you ask me to be agitated at Count Albert ofRudolstadt's violin ventriloquising Satan I really must decline. I doeven remember the poor creature Paul de Kock, and would fain turn to oneof the things he was writing at this very time. [Sidenote: Recovery; but not maintained quite to the end. ] _Consuelo_ is a very long book--it fills three of the tightly printedvolumes of the old Michel-Calmann-Lévy collection, with some three orfour hundred pages in each; and we have not got, in the above survey, tomore than the middle of the second. But in its afternoon and eveningthere is some light. The creature Anzoleto recurs; but his immediateeffect is good, [182] for it starts the heroine on a fresh elopement ofan innocent kind, and we get back to reality. The better side of GeorgeSand's Bohemianism revives in Bohemia itself; and she takes Consuelo tothe road, where she adopts male dress (a fancy with her creatresslikewise), and falls in with no less a person than the composer Haydn inhis youth. They meet some Prussian crimps, and escape them by help of acoxcombical but not wholly objectionable Austrian Count Hoditz and thebetter (Prussian) Trenck. They get to Vienna (meeting La Corilla in anodd but not badly managed maternity-scene half-way) and rejoin oldPorpora there. There are interviews with Kaunitz and Maria Theresa:[183]and a recrudescence of the Venetian musical jealousies. Consueloendeavours to reopen communications with the Rudolstadts, butPorpora--chiefly out of his desire to retain her on the stage, butpartly also from an honest and not wholly unsound belief that a unionbetween a gipsy girl and a German noble would itself be madness--playsfalse with the letters. She accepts a professional invitation fromHoditz to his castle in Moravia, meets there no less a person thanFrederic the Second _incognito_, and by his order (after she has savedhis life from the vengeance of the re-crimped deserter rescued with herby Hoditz and Trenck) is invited to sing at Berlin. The carrying out ofthe invitation, which has its Fredericianities[184] (as one may perhapsbe allowed to call them), is, however, interrupted. The mysteriousAlbert, who has mysteriously turned up in time to prevent an attempt ofthe other and worse (Austrian) Trenck on Consuelo, is taken with anapparently mortal illness at home, and Consuelo is implored to returnthere. She does so, and a marriage _in articulo mortis_ follows, thesupposed dead Zdenko (whom we did not at all want) turning up aliveafter his master's death. Consuelo, fully if not cheerfully adopted bythe family, is offered all the heirloom jewels and promised successionto the estates. She refuses, and the book ends--with fair warning thatit is no ending. [Sidenote: _La Comtesse de Rudolstadt. _] When her history begins again under the title she has "reneged, " thereader may for no short time think that the curse of the sequel--a curseonly too common, but not universal--is going to be averted. She is inBerlin alone (see note above); is successful, but not at allhappy--perhaps least of all happy because the king, partly out ofgratitude for his safety, partly out of something like a more naturalkind of affection than most authors have credited him with, pays hermarked attentions. For a time things are not unlively; and even the verydangerous experiment of a supper--one of those at which Frederic'sguests were supposed to have perfectly "free elbows" and availedthemselves of the supposition at their peril--a supper with Voltaire, LaMettrie, Algarotti, D'Argens, Pöllnitz, and "Quintus Icilius"present--comes off not so badly. One of the reasons of this is thatGeorge Sand has the sense to make Voltaire ill and silent, and puts thebulk of the "business" on La Mettrie--a person much cleverer than mostpeople who have only read book-notices of him may think, but notdangerously brilliant. Then Consuelo, or "La Porporina, " as her stagename is, gets mixed up--owing to no fault of her own in the first placeat any rate--with the intrigues of the Princess Amélie of Prussia andher lover, the less bad Trenck. This has two awkward results--forherself an imprisonment at Spandau, into which she is cast by Frederic'shalf jealous, half purely tyrannical wrath, and for us a revival of allthe _massacrant_ illuminism in which the Princess herself is dabbling. So we have on the scene not only (as the reader sees at once, thoughsome rather clumsy efforts are made to hide it) the resuscitated Albert, who passes as a certain Trismegistus, not only the historical charlatanSaint-Germain, but another charlatan at this time not at all historical(seeing that the whole story ends in 1760, and he never left Palermotill nine years later), Cagliostro. Even at Spandau Consuelo herself isnot quite uninteresting; but the Illuminati determine to rescue her, andfor the latter part of the first volume and the whole of the second theentire thing is, once more, Bosh. The most absurd "double-gangings" takeplace between an _inconnu_ named Liverani, whom Consuelo cannot helploving, and Albert himself, who _is_ Liverani, as everybody but herselfsees at once, interspersed between endless tracts of the usual rubbishabout underground tribunals, and judges in red cloaks, and skeletons, and museums of torture-implements, and all the Weishauptian trumpery ofmixed occultism and revolutionary sentiment. The author has even theinsufferable audacity to fling at us _another_ resuscitation--that ofthe Countess Wanda, Albert's mother, who appears to have transmitted tohim her abominable habit of catalepsy. So ends, unsatisfactorilyenough--unless anybody is satisfied by the fact that two solid childrenresult from the still mystifying married life of the pair--the storywhich had begun so well in the first volume of _Consuelo_, and which inthe major part of _Consuelo_ itself, though not throughout, maintainsthe satisfaction fairly. [Sidenote: The "making good" of _Lucrezia Floriani_. ] If any reader, in two ways gentle, has been good enough to take someinterest in the analysis of these books, but is also so soft-hearted asto feel slightly _froissé_ by it, as showing a disqualifying inabilityto sympathise with the author, I hope I may put myself right by what Iam going to say of another. _Lucrezia Floriani_ is to me the mostremarkable book that George Sand ever wrote; and the nearest to a greatone, if it be not actually that. I have read it, with no diminution ofinterest and no abatement of esteem, at very different times of my life, and I think that it is on the whole not only the most perfect revelationof what at any rate the author would have liked to be her owntemperament, but--a much greater thing--a presentment in possible andhuman form of a real temperament, and almost of a real character. Further, it is much the most achieved example of that peculiar style ofwhich more will be said in a general way presently, and it containscomparatively few blots. One always smiles, of course, at the picture ofLucrezia swinging in a hammock in the centre of a large room, the fourcorners of which are occupied by four bedsteads containing fourchildren, in the production of whom not exactly _four_ fathers, as theyought for perfect symmetry, but as a compromise _three_, have assisted. One always shudders at her notion of restoring a patient, sufferingunder a nervous ailment, by surrounding his couch with the cherubiccountenances and the balmy breaths of these infants. [185] Prince Karol, the hero (such as there is), is a poor creature, though not such a cadas Sténio; but then, according to Madame Dudevant, men as a rule _were_poor creatures, unless they were convicts or conjurors, so thepresentation is _ex hypothesi_ or _secundum hypothesin_ correct. And thewhole is firmly drawn and well, but neither gaudily nor pitchily, coloured. It ought to be remembered that, with the possible exception ofJane Austen, who has no peer or second among lady novelists, theseeither confine themselves to representation of manners, externalcharacter, _ton_, as was said of Fanny Burney, or else, like the other"George" and Charlotte Brontë, endeavour to represent themselves as theyare or as they would like to be on the canvas. They never create; ifthey "imitate" not in the degraded modern but the original classicalsense, and do it well, _punctum ferunt_--_suum_ if not _omne_. [Sidenote: The story. ] _Lucrezia Floriani_ does this higher imitation well--almost, if notquite, greatly. Had George Sand been more of a blue-stocking and of anaffected creature than she was, she might have called the book_Anteros-Nemesis_. The heroine, by her real name Antonietta Menapace, isthe daughter of a fisherman on the Lago d'Iseo, and in her earliestgirlhood the servant-maid of a rich neighbour's wife. As her father, aclose-fisted peasant, wants her to marry a well-to-do churl of her ownrank, she elopes with her employer's son and has two children by him;but develops a magnificent voice, with no small acting and managingcapacity. So she makes a fortune by the time she is thirty, acquiringthe two other children by two other lovers, and having so many more whodo not leave permanent memorials of their love and necessitate polygonalrooms, that, as she observes, "she cannot count them. "[186] At theabove-mentioned age, however, she becomes weary of this sort of life, retires to her native district, buys the very house in which she hadbeen a servant, and with the heir of which (now dead) she had eloped, and settles down to be a model mother, a Lady Bountiful, and a sort ofrecluse. No more "love" for her. In fact, in one of the most remarkablepassages of the book she gives a story of her chief attachments, showingthat, with brief accesses of physical excitement, it has always been_amour de tête_ and never _amour de coeur_. Things being so, there arrive one evening, at the only inn on the lake, a young German Prince, Karol von Roswald, and his friend the ItalianCount Salvator Albani. They are travelling for the Prince's health, hebeing a sort of spoilt child, pitiably nervous, imperfectly educated, and half paralysed by the recent death of his mother and the earlier oneof a _fiancée_. The inn is good to eat in (or rather out of), but fornothing else; and Salvator, hearing of Lucrezia, whose friend, thoughnot her lover, he has formerly been, determines to ask a hospitalitywhich she very cheerfully gives them. _Cetera quis nescit_, as GeorgeSand herself in other but often-repeated words admits. [187] Karol fallsin love at first sight, though he is horrified at his hostess's past. Healso falls ill, and she nurses him. Salvator leaves them for a time, and though Lucrezia plays quite the reverse of the part of temptress, the inevitable does not fail to happen. That they were _not_ married and that they did _not_ live happy everafter, everybody will of course be certain, though it is not Karol'sfault that actual marriage does not take place. There is, however, analmost literal, if unsanctified and irregular honeymoon; but long beforeSalvator's[188] return, it has "reddened" more than ominously. Karol isinsanely jealous, and it may be admitted that a more manly and lesschildishly selfish creature might be somewhat upset by the arrival ofLucrezia's last lover, the father of her youngest child, though it isquite evident that she has not a spark of love for this one left. But heis also jealous of Salvator; of an old artist named Beccaferri whom sheassists; of a bagman who calls to sell to her eldest boy a gun; of theaged peasant whom she had refused to marry, but whose death-bed shevisits; of the _curé_; of everybody. And his jealousy takes the form notmerely of rage, which is bad enough for Lucrezia's desire of peace, butof cold insult, which revolts her never extinguished independence andpride. He has, as noted, begged her to marry him in the time ofintoxication, but she has refused, and persists in the refusal. Afterone or two "scenes" she rows herself over to an olive wood on the otherside of the lake, and makes it a kind of "place of sacrifice"--of thesacrifice, that is to say, of all hopes of happiness with him or any onethenceforward. But she neither dismisses nor leaves him; on thecontrary, they live together, unmarried, but with no public scandal, forten years, his own passion for her in its peculiar kind never ceasing, while hers gradually dies under the stress of the various torments heinflicts, unintentionally if not quite unconsciously, upon her. At lastit is too much, and she dies of heart-failure at forty years of age. [Sidenote: Its balance of power. ] One might make a few cavils at this. The exact reason of what has beencalled the "sacrifice" is not made clear, despite Lucrezia's soliloquyin the olive wood. If it were meant as an atonement for her ill-spentyouth it would be intelligible. But there is no sign of this, and itwould not be in George Sand's way. Lucrezia merely resolves that shewill try to make everybody happy without trying or expecting to be happyherself. But she must know more and more that she is _not_ making Karolhappy, and that the cohabitation cannot, even in Italy, but beprejudicial to her children; though, to do him the very scanty justicehe deserves, he does not behave ill to them, little as he likes them. Again, this long self-martyrdom would need no explanation if shecontinued to love Karol. But it is very doubtful whether she had notceased to do so (she was admittedly good at "ceasing to love") when sheleft the Wood of Olives, and the cessation admittedly took place longbefore the ten years' torture came to an end. One is therefore, from more than one point of view, left with a sort of Fakirself-mortification, undertaken and "dreed" neither to atone foranything, nor to propitiate any Power, nor really to benefit any man. After all, however, such a thing is quite humanly possible. And these_aporiae_ hardly touch knots--only very small spots--in a reed ofadmirable strength and beauty. We know that George Sand did _not_sacrifice herself for her lovers--very much the reverse. But we knowalso that in her youth and early middle age she was very much of aLucrezia Floriani, something of a genius, if not so great a one as shemade her creature, something of a beauty, entirely negligent of ordinarysexual morality, but thoroughly, if somewhat heartlessly, good-natured, and (not merely at the times mentioned, but to the end of her life) anaffectionate mother, a delightful hostess, and a very satisfactoryfriend. No imaginary Sténio or Karol, no actual Sandeau or Musset orChopin could have caused her at any time of her life the misery whichthe Prince caused Lucrezia, because she would simply have "sent himwalking, " as the vigorous French idiom has it. But it pleased her tograft upon her actual nature something else that it lacked, and alife-like and tragical story resulted. It is not a bad "turn over of the leaf" from this, the strongest, and inthe best sense most faultless, of George Sand's novels of analysis, tothe "idyllic" group of her later middle and later period--the"prettiest" division, and in another grade of faultlessness the mostfree from faults, in ordinary estimation, of her entire production. [Sidenote: The "Idylls"--_La Petite Fadette_. ] The most popular of these, the prettiest again, the most of a_bergerie-berquinade-conte-de-fées_, is no doubt _La Petite Fadette_, the history of two twin-boys and a little girl--this last, of course, the heroine. The boys are devoted to each other and as like as two peasin person, but very different in character, one being manly, and theother, if not exactly effeminate, something like it. As for Fadette, she, though never exactly like the other girl of the saying "horrid, "but only (and with very considerable excuses) naughty and untidy andrude, becomes "so very, very good when she is good" as to awake slightrecalcitrances in those who have acquired the questionable knowledge ofgood and evil in actual life. But one does not want to cavil. It _is_ apretty book, and when the not exactly wicked but somewhat ill-famedgrandmother's stocking yields several thousand francs and facilitatesthe marriage of Landry, the manly brother, and Fadette, one can be verycheerfully cheerful, and anticipate a real ever-after happiness forboth. No doubt, too, the army did knock the girlishness out of the otherbrother, Sylvinet, and we hope that one of the village gossips was wrongwhen she said that he would never love any girl but one. For it ishardly necessary to say that his agreement with his twin extends to lovefor Fadette--love which is quite honourable, and quite kindlyextinguished by that agreeable materialisation of one of Titania'slower-class maids-of-honour. Only one slight piece of _malice_ (in the mitigated French sense) may bepermitted. We are told that Sylvinet, after the marriage, served for tenyears "in the Emperor Napoleon's glorious campaigns. " This will hardlyadmit of a later date for that marriage itself than the breach of thePeace of Amiens. And this, even if Landry was no more than eighteen ornineteen at that time (he could hardly be less), will throw the date ofhis and his brother's birth well before the Revolution. Now, to insiston chronological exactitude and draw inferences from its absence is--oneadmits most cheerfully, and more than admits--a mere curmudgeonlypedantry in most cases of great or good fiction, prose or verse. Oneknows what to think of people who make crimes of these things inShakespeare or Scott, in Dumas or Thackeray. But when a writer makes agreat point of Purpose and sets a high value on Questions, it is notunfair to expect him or her to mind their P's and Q's in other matters. George Sand is never tired, in other books, of insisting on theblessedness of the Revolution itself, on the immense and gloriousemancipation from feudal tyranny, etc. But how does it come about thatthere is not the very slightest sign of that tyranny in the earlier partof the story, or of any general disturbance in the middle and laterpart? _Glissons; n'appuyons pas_ on this point, but it may be permittedto put it. [Sidenote: _La Mare au Diable. _] In another book of this group--I think chronologically the earliest, also very popular, and quite "on the side of the angels"--the heroine, another divine little peasant-girl--who, if George Sand had been fond ofseries-titles, might have caused the book to be named _La PetiteMarie_--omits any, however slightly, "horrid" stage altogether. She is, if not "the whole" good--which, as Empedocles said long ago, few canboast to find, --good, and nothing but good, except pretty, and otherthings which are parts or forms of goodness. The piece really is, in theproper sense which so few people know, or at least use, an idyll, alittle picture of Arcadian life. Speaking precisely--that is to say in_précis_--it is nothing but the story of a journey in which thetravellers get benighted, and which ends in a marriage. Speakinganalytically, it consists of a prologue--one of the best examples ofGeorge Sand's style and of her power of description, dealing with theploughlands of Berry and the ways of their population; of theproposition to a young widower that he shall undertake re-marriage witha young widow, well-to-do, of another parish; of his going a-wooing withthe rather incongruous adjuncts of a pretty young servant girl, who isgoing to a "place, " and his own truant elder sonlet; of the benightingof them as above by the side of a mere or marsh of evil repute; of theinsult offered to Marie on the arrival at her new place; of thediscomfiture of Germain, the hero, at finding that the young widow keepsa sort of court of pretenders dangling about her; of his retirement andvengeance on Marie's insulter; and of the proper marriage-bells. Thereis also a rather unnecessary appendix, doubtless dear to the folklorist, of Berrichon wedding customs. Once more, to cavil at this would be contemptibly easy. To quote _LaTerre_ against it would be uncritical, for, as may be seen later, whatever M. Zola's books are, they are not evidence that can negativeanything. It would be as sensible to set against the night scene in thewood by the Devil's Pool the history of the amiable Dumollard, who, asfar as fifty years' memory serves me, used, some years before GeorgeSand's death, sometimes to escort and sometimes to lie in wait forservant-girls on the way to or from places, violate, murder, and robthem, in another country district of France. Nor would it be quitecritical, though a little more so, to compare George Sand's own friend, contemporary, and in some sort counterpart, Balzac's peasant scenesagainst her. If, at this time, she viewed all such things _en rose_, Balzac viewed them, at this and almost all times, _en noir_. Perhapseverybody (except the wicked farmer, who insults Marie) is a little toogood, and it seems rather surprising that somebody did not say somethingabout Germain and Marie arriving next morning instead of overnight. Butnever mind this. The scenery and the writing of the book have realcharm. The long conversation by the watch-fire in the wood, whereGermain tries to break off his suit to the widow already and transferhimself to Marie, with Marie's cool and (for she has loved him already)self-denying refusal on the most atrociously rational and business-likeprinciples, is first-rate. It may rank, with the above-mentioneddiscussion about Consuelo's beauty between herself and her lover, as oneof the best examples of George Sand's gift for the novel. [Sidenote: _François le Champi. _] The third in the order of mention of what is usually considered hertrilogy of idylls, _François le Champi_, if not the prettiest, is thestrongest, and the most varied in interest, of the three. The shadierside of human character lifts itself and says, _Et in Arcadia ego_, [189]much more decidedly than in the childish petulances of _La PetiteFadette_ and the merely "Third Murderer" appearance of the unprincipledfarmer in _La Mare au Diable_. Even the mostly blameless hero isallowed, towards the close, to exhibit the well-known _rusé_ or _madré_characteristics of the French peasant to the extent of more than one notquite white lie; the husband of the heroine is unfaithful, tyrannical asfar as he dare be, and a waster of his family's goods before hisfortunately rather early death; his pretty young sister, Mariette, is aselfish and spiteful minx; and his paramour (sarcastically named "LaSevère") is unchaste, malignant, and dishonest all at once--acombination which may be said to exclude any possible goodness in woman. The only thoroughly white sheep--though the "Champi" or foundling (hiscradle being the genial fields and not the steps of stone) has but thegrey patches noticed above, and those acquired with the bestintentions--is Madeleine Blanchet, his protectress for many years, andfinally, after difficulties and her widowhood, his wife. That she issome twelve years older than he is is a detail which need not in itselfbe of much importance. It lends itself to that combination of maternaland sexual affection of which George Sand is so fond, and of which wemay have to speak some harsh words elsewhere. But here it matterslittle. Arcady is a kind of Saturnian realm, and "mixtures" elsewhere"held a stain" may pass there. [Sidenote: Others--_Mauprat_. ] We may make a further _glissade_ (to return to some remarks made above), though of a different kind, over a few of the very large number ofnovels that we cannot discuss in detail. But _Mauprat_ adds just alittle support to the remarks there made. For this (which is a sort ofcrime-and-detection novel, and therefore appeals to some readers morethan to the present historian) turns wholly on the atrocious deeds of aseignorial family of the most melodramatic kind. Yet it is questionablewhether the wickedest of them ever did anything worse than the action oftheir last and renegade member, who actually, when he comes into theproperty, ruins his ancestral castle because naughty things have beendone there. Now, when Milton said, "As well kill a man as kill a goodbook, " though it was no doubt an intentional hyperbole, there was muchsound sense in what he said. Still, except in the case of such a book ashas been produced only a few times in the world's history, it may beurged that probably something as good might be written by somebody elseamong the numerous men that were not killed. But, on the same principle, one would be justified in saying, "Better kill a hundred men than ruin acastle with hundreds of years of memories, bad or good. " You can neverreplace _it_, while the hundred men will, at the very moment they arekilled, be replaced, just as good on the average, by the ordinaryoperations of nature. Besides, by partially ruining the castle, you givean opening to the sin of the restorer, for which there is, we know, _no_pardon, here or hereafter. [190] [Sidenote: _La Daniella. _] _La Daniella_ is a rather long book and a rather dull one. There is agood deal of talkee-talkee of the _Corinne_ kind in it: the heroine isan angelic Italian soubrette; the hero is one of the coxcombish heroesof French novels, who seem to have set themselves to confirm the mostunjust ideas of their nation entertained in foreign climes; there is a"Miss Medora, " who, as the hero informs us, "plays the coquetteclumsily, as English girls generally do, " etc. _Passons outre_, withoutinquiring how much George Sand knew about English girls. [Sidenote: _Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Doré. _] One of the best of her books to read, though it has neither the humaninterest of _Lucrezia Floriani_, nor the prettiness of the Idylls, northe style-colour of some other books, is _Les Beaux Messieurs deBois-Doré_. It is all the more agreeable that we may even "begin with alittle aversion. " It suggests itself as a sort of interloper in thegreat business of Dumas and Co. : it opens, indeed, only a few yearsbefore D'Artagnan rode up to the inn on the buttercup-coloured pony. And, in manner, it may look at first as if the writer were followinganother but much inferior example--our own G. P. R. James; for there are"two cavaliers, " and one tells the other a tale fit to make him fallasleep and off his saddle. But it improves remarkably, and before youhave read a hundred pages you are very fairly "enfisted. " The figure ofthe old Marquis de Bois-Doré--an aged dandy with divers absurditiesabout him, [191] but a gentleman to his by no means yet stiffened orstooping backbone; a heart of gold, and a wrist with a good core ofsteel left in it--might easily have been a failure. It is a success. Hisfirst guest and then adversary, the wicked Spaniard, Sciarra d'Alvimaror de Villareal, whom the old marquis runs through the body in amoonlight duel for very sufficient reason, [192] may not be thought quiteequally successful. Scoundrel as he is, George Sand has unwisely thrownover him a touch of _guignon_--of shadowing and resistless fate--whichcreates a certain sympathy; and she neglects the good old rule that yourvillain should always be allowed a certain run for his money--atemporary exercise of his villainy. Alvimar, though he does not feel themarquis's rapier till nearly the end of the first half, as it were, ofthe book, is "marked down" from the start, and never kills anythingwithin those limits except a poor little tame wolf-cub which is going(very sensibly) to fly at him. He is altogether too much in appearanceand too little in effectuality of the stage Spaniard--black garments, black upturned moustache, hook-nose, _navaja_, and all the rest of it. But he does not spoil the thing, though he hardly does it much good; andif he is badly treated he has his revenge on the author. For the book becomes very dull after his supposed death (he _does_ die, but not at once), and only revives when, some way into the secondvolume, an elaborate attempt to revenge him is made by his servant, Sanche, _âme damnée_ and also _damnante_ (if one may coin this variant), who is, as it turns out, his irregular father. This again rather stagycharacter organises a formidable body of wandering _reîtres_, gipsies, and miscellaneous ruffians to attack and sack the marquis's house--aplan which, though ultimately foiled, brings about a very refreshingseries of hurly-burlys and hullabaloos for some hundred and fifty pages. The narrative is full of improbable impossibilities, and contrastssingularly with the fashion in which Dumas, throughout all his greatbooks (and not a few of his not so great ones), manages to _escamoter_the difficulty. The boy Mario, [193] orphan of the murdered brother, leftunknown for many years, recognised by his uncle, avenger of his fatheron Sanche, as Bois-Doré himself had been on Alvimar, is altogether tooclever and effective for his age; and the conduct of Bellinde, Bois-Doré's cashiered _gouvernante_, is almost preposterous throughout. But it is what a schoolboy of the old days would have called a "jollygood scrimmage, " and restores the interest of the book for most of thesecond volume. The end--scarcely, one would think, very interesting toany one--is quite spoilt for some by another example of George Sand'sinveterate passion for "maternal" love-making and matches where the ladyis nearly double the age of her husband. Others--or the same--may not bepropitiated for this by the "horrors"[194] which the author hasliberally thrown in. But the larger part of the book, like the largerpart of _Consuelo_, is quite good stuff. [Sidenote: _Le Marquis de Villemer. _] It is, indeed, a really lively book. Two duller ones than the first twoallotted, at the beginning of this notice, to her last period I haveseldom read. They are both instances (and one at least contains anelaborate vindication) of the "novel of purpose, " and they are bythemselves almost enough to damn it. M. Le Marquis de Villemer is anappalling prig--virtuous, in the Devil-and-his-grandmother style, to the_n_th--who devotes his energies to writing a _History of the Patriciatesince the Christian Era_, the object being to reveal the sins ofaristocracy. He has a rather nice half-brother spend-thrift, Duqued'Aleria (Madame de Villemer the elder has first married a Spaniard), whose debts he virtuously pays, and after a great deal of scandal hemarries a poor but noble and noble-minded damsel, Caroline deSaint-Geneix, who has taken the position of companion to his mother inorder to help her widowed and four-childed sister. For the virtue ofGeorge Sand's virtuous people _is_ virtue and no mistake. The lively andamiable duke is fortunately fitted with a lively and amiable duchess, and they show a little light in the darkness of copy-book morality andrepublican principles. [Sidenote: _Mlle. La Quintinie. _] This kindly light is altogether wanting in _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_, where the purpose passes from politics to religion. The book is ratherfamous, and was, at the time, much read, because it is not merely anovel of purpose, but an instance of the duello fought, not with swordor pistol, not with quarter-staves or sand-bags, but with _feuilletons_of fiction. It, and Octave Feuillet's _Sibylle_, to which it is thecountercheck-quarrelsome, both appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. It should be seen at a further stage of this volume that I do not think_Sibylle_ a masterpiece, either of tale-telling or of argumentation, though it is more on my side than the reply is. But Feuillet, though nota genius, as some people would have George Sand to be, nor yetpossessing anything like the talent which no sane criticism can denyher, was a much better craftsman in the art of novel-writing. [Sidenote: _Flamarande. _] For a final notice--dealing also with the last, or almost the last, ofall her books--we may take _Flamarande_ and its sequel, _Les DeuxFrères_. They give the history of the unfounded jealousy of a husband inregard to his wife--a jealousy which is backed up by an equallyunfounded suspicion (supported by the most outrageous proceedings ofespionage and something like burglary) on the part of a confidentialservant, who, as we are informed at last, has himself had a secretpassion for his innocent mistress. It is more like a Feuillet book thana George Sand, and in this respect shows the curious faculty--possessedalso by some lady novelists of our own--of adapting itself to the changeof novel-fashion. But to me at least it appeals not. So turn we from particulars (for individual notice of the hundred booksis impossible) to generals. [Sidenote: Summary and judgment. ] [Sidenote: Style. ] It may be difficult to sum up the characteristics of such a writer asGeorge Sand shortly, but it has to be done. There is to be allowedher--of course and at once--an extraordinary fertility, and a hardlyless extraordinary escape from absolute sinking into the trivial. She ispreposterous early, somewhat facile and "journalistic" later, but she isnever exactly commonplace. She belongs to the school of immense andalmost mechanical producers who are represented in English by AnthonyTrollope as their "prior" and by Mrs. Oliphant[195] and Miss Braddon ascommandresses of the order. (I think she runs a good deal below thePrior but a good deal above the Commandresses. [196]) But, if she does sobelong, it is very mainly due, not to any pre-eminence of narrativefaculty, but to that gift of style which has been for nearly a hundredyears admitted. Now I have in this _History_ more than once, and by nomeans with tongue in cheek, expressed a diffidence about giving opinionson this point. I have, it is true, read French for more than sixtyyears, and I have been accustomed to "read for style" in it, and indivers other languages, for at least fifty. But I see such extraordinaryblunders made by foreigners in regard to this side of our ownliterature, that I can never be sure--being less conceited than thepious originator of the phrase--that even the Grace of God has preventedme from going the same way. Still, if I have any right to publish thisbook, I must have a little--I will not say "right, " but _venia_ orlicence--to say what seems to me to be the fact of the matter. Thatfact--or that seeming of fact--is that George Sand's style is _too_facile to be first-rate. By this I do not mean that it is too plain. Onthe contrary, it is sometimes, especially in her early books, ornate togorgeousness, and even to gaudiness. And it was a curious mistake of thelate Mr. Pater, in a quite honorific reference to me, to imply that Ipreferred the plain style--a mistake all the more curious that he knewand acknowledged (and was almost unduly grateful for) my admiration ofhis own. I like both forms: but for style--putting meaning out of thequestion--I would rather read Browne than Swift, and Lamennais thanFénelon. George Sand has both the plain and the ornate styles (and various shadesof "middle" between them) at command. But it seems to me that she hasthem--to use a financial phrase recently familiar--too much "on tap. "You see that the current of agreeable and, so to speak, faultlesslanguage is running, and might run volubly for any period of life thatmight be allotted to her. In fact it did so. Now no doubt there wassomething of Edmond de Goncourt's bad-blooded fatuity in his claim thathis and his brother's epithets were "personal, " while Flaubert's werenot. Research for more personal "out-of-the-wayness" in style willrarely result in anything but jargon. But, on the other hand, Gautier'sgreat injunction: Sculpte, lime, cisèle! is sound. You cannot reach the first class in any art by turning a tapand letting it run. [Sidenote: Conversation and description. ] The one point of what we may call the "furniture" of novels, in whichshe seems to me to have, occasionally at least, touched supremacy, isconversation. It has been observed by those capable of making theinduction that, close as drama and novel are in some ways, thedistinction between dramatic and non-dramatic talk is, though narrow, deeper than the very deepest Alpine crevasse from Dauphiné to Carinthia. Such specimens as those already more than once dwelt on--Consuelo's andAnzoleto's debate about her looks, and that of Germain and Marie in themidnight wood by the Devil's Mere--are first-rate, and there is no moreto say. Some of her descriptions, again, such as the opening of the booklast quoted (the wide, treeless, communal plain with its variouslabouring teams), or as some of the Lake touches in _Lucrezia Floriani_, or as the relieving patches in the otherwise monotonous grumble of _UnHiver à Majorque_, are unsurpassable. Nor is this gift limited to mere_paysage_. The famous account of Chopin's playing already mentioned forpraise is only first among many. But whether these things are supportedby sufficient strength of character, plot, incident, "thought, " and therest; whether that strange narrative power, so hard to define and soimpossible to mistake or to fail to distinguish from these otherelements, is present--these are great questions and not easy to answer. I am, as will have been seen throughout, rather inclined to answer themin the unfavourable way. In fact--impertinent, insolent, anything else as it may seem--I ventureto ask the question, "Was George Sand a very great craftswoman in thenovel?" and, what is more, to answer it in the negative. I understandthat an ingenious critic of her own sex has recently described hermethod as "rolling through the book, locked in the embraces of hersubject, " as distinguished from the aloofness and elaboration of a morerecent school. So far, perhaps, so good; but I could wish to find "theintricacies of Diego and Julia" more interesting to me than as a rulethey are. And it must be remembered that she is constantly detachingherself from the forlorn "subject, " leaving it _un_embraced andshivering, in order to sermonise it and her readers. I do not make thevery facile and somewhat futile criticism that she would have writtenbetter if she had written half or a quarter as much as she did. Shecould not have written little; it is as natural and suitable for Tweedto "rin wi' speed" as for Till to "rin slaw, " though perhaps theresult--parallel to but more cheerful than that recorded in the oldrhyme--may be that Till has the power not of drowning but ofintoxicating two men, where Tweed can only manage one. But thisengrained fecundity and facundity of hers inevitably make her worknovel-journalism rather than novel-literature in all points but in thatof style, which has been discussed already. [197] FOOTNOTES: [174] It is attested by the well-known story, more excusable in a manthan creditable to a gentleman, of her earliest or earliest known lover, Jules Sandeau (_v. Inf. _), seeing a photograph of her in later days, turning to a companion and saying, "Et je l'ai connue _belle_!" [175] It is possible that some readers may not know the delightfullyunexpected, and not improbably "more-expressive-than-volumes" _third_line-- "Not like the woman who lies under the next stone. " But tradition has, I believe, mercifully omitted to identify thisneighbouring antipode. [176] Details of personal scandal seldom claim notice here. But it maybe urged with some show of reason that _this_ scandal is too closelyconnected with the substance and the spirit of the novelist's wholework, from _Indiana_ to _Flamarande_, to permit total ignoring of it. _Lucrezia Floriani_, though perhaps more suggestive of Chopin than ofMusset, but with "tangency" on both, will be discussed in the text. Thatmost self-accusing of excuses, _Elle et Lui_, with its counterblast Paulde Musset's _Lui et Elle_, and a few remarks on _Un Hiver à Majorque_(conjoined for a purpose, which will be indicated) may be despatched ina note of some length. [Sidenote: Note on _Elle et Lui_, etc. , ] The rival novel-_plaidoyers_ on the subject of the loves and strifes ofGeorge Sand and Alfred de Musset are sufficiently disgusting, and ifthey be considered as novels, the evil effect of purpose--andparticularly of personal purpose--receives from them texts for a wholeseries of sermons. Reading them with the experience of a lifetime, notmerely in literary criticism, but (for large parts of that lifetime) instudy of evidence on historical, political, and even directly legalmatters, I cannot help coming to the conclusion that, though there is nodoubt a certain amount of _suggestio falsi_ in both, the _suppressioveri_ is infinitely greater in _Elle et Lui_. If the letters given inPaul de Musset's book were not written by George Sand they were writtenby Diabolus. And there is one retort made towards the finale by "Édouardde Falconey" (Musset) to "William Caze" (George Sand) which stigmatiseslike the lash of a whip, if not even like a hot iron, the whole face ofthe lady's novels. "Ma chère, " lui dit-il, "vous parlez si souvent de chasteté que celadevient indécent. Votre amitié n'est pas plus 'sainte' que celle desautres. " [If he had added "maternité" the stigma would have beencompleter still. ] And there is also a startling verisimilitude in thereply assigned to her: "Mon cher, trouvez bon que je console mes amis selon ma méthode. Vousvoyez qu'elle leur plaît assez, puisqu'ils y reviennent. " It was true: they did so, rather to their own discredit and wholly totheir discomfort. But she and her "method" must have pleased them enoughfor them to do it. It is not so pleasing a method for an outsider tocontemplate. He sees too much of the game, and has none of the pleasureof playing or the occasional winnings. Since I read Hélisenne de Crenne(_v. Sup. _ Vol. I, pp. 150-1) there has seemed to me to be some likenessbetween the earlier stage of her heroine (if not of herself) and that ofGeorge Sand in her "friendships. " They both display a good deal of meresensuality, and both seem to me to have been quite ignorant of passion. Hélisenne did not reach the stage of "maternal" affection, and perhapsit was well for her lover and not entirely bad for her readers. But thebest face that can be put on the "method" will be seen in _LucreziaFloriani_. [Sidenote: and on _Un Hiver à Majorque_. ] The bluntness of taste and the intense concentration on self, which wereshown most disagreeably in _Elle et Lui_, appear on a different side inanother book which is not a novel at all--not even a novel as far asmasque and domino are concerned, --though indirectly it touches anotherof George Sand's curious personal experiences--that with Chopin. _UnHiver à Majorque_ is perhaps the most ill-tempered book of travel, except Smollett's too famous production, ever written by a novelist oftalent or genius. The Majorcans certainly did not ask George Sand tovisit them. They did not advertise the advantages of Majorca, as is thefashion with "health resorts" nowadays. She went there of her ownaccord; she found magnificent scenery; she flouted the sentiments ofwhat she herself describes as the most priest-ridden country in Europeby never going to church, though and while she actually lived in adisestablished and disendowed monastery. To punish them for which (the_non sequitur_ is intentional) she does little but talk of dirt, discomfort, bad food, extortion, foul-smelling oil and garlic, varyingthe talk only to foul-smelling oil and garlic, extortion, bad food, discomfort, or dirt. The book no doubt yields some of her finestpassages of descriptive prose, both as regards landscape, and in thefamous record of Chopin's playing; but otherwise it is hardly worthreading. [177] She survived into the next decade and worked till the last with nodistinct declension, but she did not complete it, dying in 1876. Herfamous direction about her grave, _Laissez la verdure_, ischaracteristic of her odd mixture if theatricality and true nature. Butif any one wishes to come to her work with a comfortable preoccupationin favor of herself, he should begin with her _Letters_. Those of herold age especially are charming. [178] Cf. Mr. Alfred Lammle on his unpoetical justice to Mr. Fledgeby in_Our Mutual Friend_. [179] Valentine has an elder sister who has a son, irregularilyexistent, but is as much in love with Benedict as if she were a girl andhe were a gentleman; and this son marries the much older Athenais, alovely peasant girl who has been the unwilling _fiancée_ and wife of theingenious pitchforker. You have seldom to go far in George Sand for anunmarried lady with a child for chastity, and a widow who marries a boyfor maternal affection. [180] There is also an Irish priest called Magnus, who, like everybodyelse, is deeply and (in the proper sense of _sans espoir_) desperatelyin love with Lélia. He is, on the whole, quite the maddest--and perhapsthe most despicable--of the lot. [181] If any one says, "So, then, there are several 'mostintolerables, '" let me point out that intolerableness is a more than"twy-peaked" hill or range. Julien Sorel and Marius were not designed tobe gentlemen. [182] It is bad for Amélie, who, in a not unnatural revulsion from her_fiancé's_ neglects and eccentricities, lets herself be fooled by thehandsome Italian. [183] George Sand's treatment of the great Empress, Marie Antoinette'smother, is a curious mixture of half-reluctant admiration and Republicanbad-bloodedness. [184] Porpora is included, but the amiable monarch, who has heard thatthe old _maestro_ speaks freely of him, gives private orders that heshall be stopped at the frontier. [185] _Cow's_ breath has, I believe, been prescribed in such cases bythe faculty; hardly children's. [186] She does not make the delicate distinction once drawn by anotherof her sex: "I can tell you how many people I have kissed, but I cannottell you how many have kissed _me_. " [187] She is rather fond of taking her readers into confidence this way. I have no particular objection to it; but those who object toThackeray's _parabases_ ought to think this is a still moreobjectionable thing. [188] The Count Albani plays his difficult part of thirdsman very wellthroughout, though just at first he would make an advance on "auld langsyne" if Lucrezia would let him. But later he is on strict honour, andquarrels with the Prince for his tyranny. [189] It is very pleasing to see, as I have seen, this famous phrasequoted as if it had reference to the _joys_ of Arcadia. [190] If any among my congregation be offended by apparent flippancy inthis notice of a book which, to my profound astonishment, some peoplehave taken as the author's masterpiece, I apologise. But if I spoke moreseriously I should also speak more severely. [191] He is a frantic devotee of the _Astrée_, and George Sand brings ina good deal about the most agreeable book, without, however, showingvery intimate or accurate knowledge of it. [192] The Spaniard (rather his servant with his connivance) has murderedand robbed Bois-Doré's brother. [193] He is also very handsome, and so makes up for the plurality of thetitle. [194] Alvimar lies dying for hours with the infidel Bohemians androistering Protestant _reîtres_ not only disturbing his death-bed, butinterfering with the "consolation of religion"; the worst of the saidBohemians is buried alive (or rather stifled after he has been_half_-buried alive) by the little gipsy girl, Pilar, whom he hastormented; and Pilar herself is burnt alive on the last page but one, after she has poisoned Bellinde. [195] Taking her work on the whole. The earlier part of it ran evenTrollope hard. [196] Her points of likeness to her self-naming name-child, "GeorgeEliot, " are too obvious to need discussion. But it is a question whetherthe main points of _un_likeness--the facility and extreme fecundity ofthe French George, as contrasted with the laborious book-bearing of theEnglish--are not more important than the numerous but superficial and toa large extent non-literary resemblances. [197] I have said little or nothing of the short stories. They arefairly numerous, but I do not think that her _forte_ lay in them. CHAPTER VI THE NOVEL OF STYLE--GAUTIER, MÉRIMÉE, GÉRARD DE NERVAL, MUSSET, VIGNY In arranging this volume I have thought it worth while to include, in asingle chapter and _nominatim_ in the title thereof, five writers ofprose novels or tales; all belonging to "1830"; four of them at leastranking with all but the greatest of that great period; but no oneexclusively or even essentially a novelist as Balzac and George Sandwere in their different ways, and none of them attempting such imposingbulk-and-plan of novel-matter as that which makes up the prose fictionof Hugo. Gautier was an admirable, and Musset and Vigny at their bestwere each a consummate, poet; while the first-named was a "polygraph" ofthe polygraphs, in every kind of _belles-lettres_. Mérimée's novels ortales form a small part of his whole work. "Gérard" is perhaps onlyadmissible here by courtesy, though more than one or two readers, Ihope, would feel his absence as a dark gap in the book. Musset, again, not ill at short stories, is far better at short plays. _One_ novel ofVigny's has indeed enjoyed great fame; but, as will be seen, I amunluckily unable to admire it very much, and I include him here--partlybecause I do not wish to herd so clear a name with the Sues and theSouliés, even with the Sandeaus and Bernards--partly because, though hisstyle in prose is not so marked as that in verse, some of his minor workin fiction is extremely interesting. But though so much of their work, and in Musset's and Vigny's cases all their best work, lies outside ourprovince, and though they themselves, with the possible exception ofGérard and Gautier, who have strong affinities, are markedly differentfrom one another, there is one point which they all have in common, andthis point supplies the general title of this chapter. Style of the moreseparable and elaborate kind does not often make its appearance veryearly in literary departments; and there may be (_v. Inf. _) some specialreasons why it should not do so in prose fiction. With the exception ofMarivaux, who had carried his attention to it over the boundary-line ofmannerism, few earlier novelists, though some of them were greatwriters, had made a point of it, the chief exceptions being in theparticular line of "wit, " such as Hamilton, Crébillon _fils_, andVoltaire. Chateaubriand had been almost the first to attempt anovel-_rhetoric_; and it must be remembered that Chateaubriand was asort of human _magnus Apollo_ throughout the July monarchy. At any rate, it is a conspicuous feature in all these writers, and may serve as alink between them. * * * * * [Sidenote: Gautier--his burden of "style. "] Some readers may know (for I, and the others, which I shall probablyquote again, have quoted it before now) a remark of Émile de Girardinwhen Théophile Gautier asked him how people liked a story which "Théo"had prevailed on that experienced editor to insert as a _feuilleton_ inthe _Presse_: "Mon ami, l'abonné ne s'amuse pas _franchement_. Il estgêné par le style. " Girardin, though not exactly a genius, was anexceedingly clever man, and knew the foot of his public--perhaps of"_the_ public"--to a hundredth of an inch. But he could hardly haveanticipated the extent to which his criticism would reflect the attitudeof persons who would have been, and would be, not a little offended atbeing classed with _l'abonné_. The reproach of "over-styling" has beencast at Gautier by critics of the most different types, and--morecuriously at first sight than after a moment's reflection--by some whoare themselves style-mad, but whose favourite vanities in that matterare different from his. I can hardly think of any writer--Herrick astreated by Hazlitt is the chief exception that occurs to me at themoment--against whom this cheap and obvious, though, alas! not veryfrequently possible, charge of "bright far-shining emptiness, " ofglittering frigidity, of colour without flesh and blood, of art withoutmatter, etc. , etc. , has been cast so violently--or so unjustly. Inliterature, as in law and war, the favourite method of offensive defenceis to reserve your _triarii_, your "colophon" of arms or arguement, tothe last; but there are cases in all three where it is best to carry animportant point at once and hold it. I think that this is one of thesecases; and I do not think that the operation can be conducted withbetter chance of success than by inserting here that outline, [198] withspecimens, of _La Morte Amoureuse_ which has been already promised--orthreatened--in the Preface. For here the glamour--if it be onlyglamour--of the style will have disappeared; the matter will remain. [Sidenote: Abstract (with translations) of _La Morte Amoureuse_. ] You ask me, my brother, if I have ever loved. I answer "Yes. " But it is a wild and terrible story, a memory whose ashes, with all my sixty-six years, I hardly dare to disturb. To you I can refuse nothing, but I would not tell the tale to a less experienced soul. The facts are so strange that I myself cannot believe in their actual occurrence. For three years I was the victim of a diabolical delusion, and every night--God grant it was a dream--I, a poor country priest, led the life of the lost, the life of the worldling and the debauchee. A single chance of too great complacency went near to destroy my soul; but at last, with God's aid and my patron saint's, I exorcised the evil spirit which had gained possession of me. Till then my life was double, and the counterpart by night was utterly different from the life by day. By day I was a priest of the Lord, pure, and busied with holy things. By night, no sooner had I closed my eyes than I became a youthful gallant, critical in women, dogs, and horses, prompt with dice and bottle, free of hand and tongue; and when waking-time came at dawn of day, it seemed to me as if I then fell asleep and was a priest only in dreams. From this sleep-life I have kept the memory of words and things, which recur to me against my will; and though I have never quitted the walls of my parsonage, those who hear me talk would rather think me a man of the world and of many experiences, who has entered the religious life hoping to finish in God's bosom the evening of his stormy day, than a humble seminarist, whose life has been spent in an obscure parish, buried deep in woods, and far removed from the course of the world. Yes, I have loved--as no one else has loved, with a mad and wild passion so violent that I can hardly understand how it failed to break my heart. After rapidly sketching the history of the early seminary days of thepriest Romuald, his complete seclusion and ignorance almost of the verynames of world and woman, the tale goes on to the day of his ordination. He is in the church, almost in a trance of religious fervour; thebuilding itself, the gorgeously robed bishop, the stately ceremonies, seem to him a foretaste of heaven, when suddenly-- By chance I raised my head, which I had hitherto kept bowed, and saw before me, within arm's length as it seemed, but in reality at some distance and beyond the chancel rails, a woman of rare beauty and royally apparelled. At once, as it were, scales dropped from my eyes. I was in the case of a blind man whose sight is suddenly restored. The bishop, but now so dazzling to me, became dim, the tapers in their golden stands paled like the stars at morning, and darkness seemed to pervade the church. On this background of shade the lovely vision stood out like an angelic appearance, self-illumined, and giving rather than receiving light. I dropped my eyelids, firmly resolving not again to raise them, that so I might escape the distraction of outward things, for I felt the spell more and more, and I hardly knew what I did; but a minute afterwards I again looked up, for I perceived her beauty still shining across my dropped lashes as if with prismatic glory, and encircled by the crimson halo that, to the gazer, surrounds the sun. How beautiful she was! Painters, when in their chase of the ideal they have followed it to the skies and carried off therefrom the divine image of Our Lady, never drew near this fabulous reality. Nor are the poet's words more adequate than the colours of the limner. She was tall and goddess-like in shape and port. Her soft fair hair rolled on either side of her temples in golden streams that crowned her as with a queen's diadem. Her forehead, white and transparent, tinged only by blue vein-stains, stretched in calm amplitude over two dark eyebrows--a contrast enhanced still further by the sea-green lustre of her glittering and unfathomable eyes. Ah, what eyes! One flash of them was enough to settle the fate of a man. Never had I seen in human eyes such life, such clearness, such ardour, such humid brilliancy; and there shot from them glances like arrows, which went straight to my heart. Whether the flame which lit them came from hell or heaven I know not, but from one or the other it came, most surely. No daughter of Eve she, but an angel or a fiend, perhaps--who knows?--something of both. The quarrelets of pearl flashed through her scarlet smile, and as her mouth moved the dimples sank and filled by turns in the blush-rose softness of her exquisite cheek. Over the even smoothness of her half-uncovered shoulders played a floating gloss as of agate, and a river of large pearls, not greatly different in hue from her neck, descended towards her breast. Now and then she raised her head with a peacock-like gesture, and sent a quiver through the ruff which enshrined her like a frame of silver filigree. The strange vision causes on Romuald strange yet natural effects. Hisardent aspiration for the priesthood changes to loathing. He even triesto renounce his vows, to answer "No" to the questions to which he shouldanswer "Yes, " and thus to comply with the apparent demand of thestranger's eyes. But he cannot. The awe of the ceremony is yet toostrong on his soul, if not on his senses and imagination; and the fatalwords are spoken, the fatal rites gone through, despite the promises ofuntold bliss which the eyes, evermore caressing and entreating, thoughsadder, as the completion of the sacrifice approaches, continue to makehim. At last it was over--I was a priest. Never did face of woman wear an expression of such anguish as hers. The girl whose lover drops lifeless at her side, the mother by her dead child's cradle, Eve at the gate of paradise, the miser who finds his buried treasure replaced by a stone, the poet whose greatest work has perished in the flames, have not a more desolate air. The blood left her countenance, and it became as of marble; her arms fell by her side, as if their muscles had become flaccid; and she leant against a pillar, for her limbs refused to support her. As for me, with a livid face bathed as if in the dews of death, I bent my tottering steps towards the church door. The air seemed to stifle me, the vaulted roof settled on my shoulders, and on my head seemed to rest the whole crushing weight of the dome. As I was on the point of crossing the threshold a hand touched mine suddenly--a woman's hand--a touch how new to me! It was as cold as the skin of a serpent, yet the contact burnt like the brand of a hot iron. "Unhappy wretch! What have you done?" she said to me in a low voice, and then disappeared in the crowd. On the way to the seminary, whither a comrade has to support him, forhis emotion is evident to all, a page, unnoticed, slips into Romuald'shand a tablet with the simple words, "Clarimonde. At the ConciniPalace. " He passes some days in a state almost of delirium, now formingwild plans of escape, now shocked at his sinful desires, but alwaysregretting the world he has renounced, and still more Clarimonde. I do not know how long I remained in this condition, but, as in one of my furious writhings I turned on my bed, I saw the Father Serapion standing in the middle of the cell gazing steadily at me. Shame seized me, and I hid my face with my hands. "Romuald, " said he, at the end of a few minutes, "something extraordinary has come on you. Your conduct is inexplicable. You, so pious, so gentle, you pace your cell like a caged beast. Take heed, my brother, of the suggestions of the Evil One, for he is wroth that you have given yourself to the Lord, and lurks round you like a ravening wolf, if haply a last effort may make you his. " Then, bidding him redouble his pious exercises, and telling him that hehas been presented by the bishop to a country cure, and must be ready tostart on the morrow, Serapion leaves him. Romuald is in despair atquitting the neighbourhood of Clarimonde. But his seminaristinexperience makes him feel, more than ever, the impossibility even ofdiscovering her, and the hints of Serapion have in a manner reawakenedhis conscience. He departs on the morrow without protest. They quit thecity, and begin to climb the hills which surround it. At the top I turned round once more to give a last look to the place where dwelt Clarimonde. The city lay wholly in the shadow of a cloud; its blue and red roofs were blended in one general half-tint, above which here and there white flakes of the smoke of morning fires hovered. By some optical accident a single edifice stood out gilded by a ray of light, and more lofty than the mass of surrounding buildings. Though more than a league off, it seemed close to us. The smallest details were visible--the turrets, the terraces, the windows, and even the swallow-tailed vanes. "What is that sunlit palace yonder?" I asked of Serapion. He shaded his eyes with his hand, and after looking he answered, "It is the palace which Prince Concini gave to the courtesan Clarimonde. Terrible things are done there. " As he spoke, whether it were fact or fancy I know not, it seemed to me that I saw a slender white form glide out on the terrace, glitter there for a second, and then disappear. It was Clarimonde! Could she have known that at that moment, from the rugged heights of the hill which separated me from her, and which I was never more to descend, I was bending a restless and burning gaze on the palace of her abode, brought near me by a mocking play of light, as if to invite me to enter? Ah yes! she knew it doubtless, for her soul was bound to mine too nearly not to feel its least movements; and this it must have been which urged her to climb the terrace in the cold morning dews, wrapped only in her snowy nightgear. But the die is cast, and the journey continues. They reach the modestparsonage where Romuald is to pass the rest of his days, and he isinstalled in his cure, Serapion returning to the city. Romuald attackshis work desperately, hoping to find peace there, but he very partiallysucceeds. The words of Clarimonde and the touch of her hand haunt himconstantly, and sometimes even stranger things happen. He sees the flashof the sea-green eyes across his garden hedges; he seems to find theimprint of feet, which are assuredly not those of any inhabitant of thevillage, on the gravel walks. At last one night he is summoned late tothe bedside of a dying person, by a messenger of gorgeous dress andoutlandish aspect. The journey is made in the darkness on fiery steeds, through strange scenery, and in an unknown direction. A splendid palaceis at length reached--too late, for the priest is met by the news thathis penitent has already expired. But he is entreated, and consents, atleast to watch and pray by the body during the night. He is led into thechamber of death, and finds that the corpse is Clarimonde. At first hemechanically turns to prayer, but other thoughts inevitably occur. Hiseyes wander to the appearance and furniture of the boudoir suddenly putto so different use: the gorgeous hangings of crimson damask contrastingwith the white shroud, the faded rose by the bedside, the scatteredsigns of revelry, distract and disturb him. Strange fancies come thick. The air seems other than that to which he is accustomed in such chambersof the dead. The corpse appears from time to time to make slightmovements; even sighs seem to echo his own. At last he lifts the veilwhich covers her, and contemplates the exquisite features he had lastseen at the fatal moment of his sacrifice. He cannot believe that she isdead. The faint blush-rose tints are hardly dulled, the hand is notcolder than he recollects it. The night was now far spent. I felt that the moment of eternal separation was at hand, and I could not refuse myself the last sad pleasure of giving one kiss to the dead lips of her, who, living, had had all my love. Oh, wonder! A faint breath mingled with mine, the eyes opened and became once more brilliant. She sighed, and uncrossing her arms she clasped them round my neck with an air of ineffable contentment. "Ah!" she said, with a voice as faint and as sweet as the last dying vibrations of a harp, "is it you, Romuald? I have waited for you so long that now I am dead. But we are betrothed to one another from this moment, and I can see you and visit you henceforward. Romuald, I loved you! Farewell; this is all I have to say; and thus I restore the life you gave me for a minute with your kiss. We shall soon meet again. " Her head fell back, but she still held me encircled. A furious gust of wind forced in the window and swept into the room: the last leaflet of the white rose quivered for a minute on its stalk and then fell, and floated through the open casement, bearing with it the soul of Clarimonde. The lamp went out, and I sank in a swoon. He wakes in his own room, and hears from his ancient _gouvernante_ thatthe same strange escort which carried him off has brought him back. Soon afterwards his friend Serapion comes to visit him, not altogetherto his delight, for he, rightly suspects the father of some knowledge ofhis secret. Serapion announces to him, as a matter of general news, thatthe courtesan Clarimonde is dead, and mentions that strange rumours havebeen current respecting her--some declaring her to be a species ofvampire, and her lovers to have all perished mysteriously. As he saysthis he watches Romuald, who cannot altogether conceal his thoughts. Thereat Serapion-- "My son, " said he, "it is my duty to warn you that your feet are on the brink of an abyss; take heed of falling. Satan's hands reach far, and the grave is not always a faithful gaoler. Clarimonde's tombstone should be sealed with a triple seal, for it is not, say they, the first time she has died. May God watch over you. " Saying this, Serapion slowly went out, and I saw him no more. I soon recovered completely, and returned to my usual occupations; and though I never forgot the memory of Clarimonde and the words of the father, nothing extraordinary for a time occurred to confirm in any way his ill-omened forebodings, so that I began to believe that his apprehensions and my own terror were unfounded. But one night I had a dream. Scarcely had I fallen asleep when I heard my bed-curtains drawn, the rings grating sharply on the rods. I raised myself abruptly on my elbow and saw before me the shadowy figure of a woman. At once I recognised Clarimonde. She carried in her hand a small lamp of the shape of those which are placed in tombs, and the light of it gave to her tapering fingers a rosy transparency which, with gradually fainter tints, prolonged itself till it was lost in the milky whiteness of her naked arm. The only garment she had on was the linen shroud which covered her on her death-bed, and she tried to hold up its folds on her breast as if shame-stricken at her scanty clothing. But her little hand was not equal to the task; and so white was she that the lamplight failed to make distinction between the colour of the drapery and the hue of the flesh. Wrapped in this fine tissue, she was more like an antique marble statue of a bather than a live woman. Dead or alive, woman or statue, shadow or body, her beauty was unchangeable, but the green flash of her eyes was somewhat dulled, and her mouth, so red of old, was now tinted only with a faint rose-tint like that of her cheeks. The blue flowerets in her hair were withered and had lost almost all their petals; yet she was still all charming--so charming that, despite the strangeness of the adventure and the unexplained fashion of her entrance, no thought of fear occurred to me. She placed the lamp on the table and seated herself on the foot of my bed; then, bending towards me, she spoke in the soft and silvery voice that I have heard from none but her. "I have kept you waiting long, dear Romuald, and you must have thought that I had forgotten you. But I come from very far--from a place whence no traveller has yet returned. There is neither sun nor moon, nor aught but space and shadow; no road is there, nor pathway to guide the foot, nor air to uphold the wing; and yet here am I, for love is stronger than death, and is his master at the last. Ah! what sad faces, what sights of terror, I have met! With what pains has my soul, regaining this world by force of will, found again my body and reinstalled itself! With what effort have I lifted the heavy slab they laid upon me, even to the bruising of my poor feeble hands! Kiss them, dear love, and they will be cured. " She placed one by one the cold palms of her little hands against my mouth, and I kissed them again and again, while she watched me with her smile of ineffable content. I at once forgot Serapion's advice, I forgot my sacred office; I succumbed without resistance at the first summons, I did not even attempt to repulse the tempter. She tells him how she had dreamed of him long before she saw him; howshe had striven to prevent his sacrifice; how she was jealous of God, whom he preferred to her; and how, though she had forced the gates ofthe tomb to come to him, though he had given life back to her with akiss, though her recovery of it has no other end than to make him happy, she herself is still miserable because she has only half his heart. Inhis delirium he tells her, to console her, that he loves her "as much asGod. " "Instantly the glitter as of chrysoprase flashed once more from hereyes. 'Is that true?--as much as God?' cried she, winding her arms roundme. 'If 'tis so you can come with me; you can follow me whither Iwill. '" And fixing the next night for the rendezvous, she vanishes. Hewakes, and, considering it merely a dream, resumes his pious exercises. But the next night Clarimonde, faithful to her word, reappears--nolonger in ghostly attire, but radiant and splendidly dressed. She bringsher lover the full costume of a cavalier, and when he has donned itthey sally forth, taking first the fiery steeds of his earlier nocturnaladventure, then a carriage, in which he and Clarimonde, heart to heart, head on shoulder, hand in hand, journey through the night. Never had I been so happy. For the moment I had forgotten everything, and thought no more of my priesthood than of some previous state of life. From that night forward my existence was as it were doubled, and there were in me two men, strangers each to the other's existence. Sometimes I thought myself a priest who dreamt that he was a gallant, sometimes a gallant who dreamt that he was a priest.... I could not distinguish the reality from the illusion, and knew not which were my waking and which my sleeping moments. Two spirals, entangled without touching, form the nearest representation of this life. The young cavalier, the coxcomb, the debauchee, mocked the priest; the priest held the dissipations of the gallant in horror. Notwithstanding the strangeness of the situation, I do not think my reason was for a moment affected. The perceptions of my two existences were always firm and clear, and there was only one anomaly which I could not explain, and this was that the same unbroken sentiment of identity subsisted in two beings so different. Of this I could give myself no explanation, whether I thought myself to be really the vicar of a poor country village, or else Il Signor Romualdo, lover in possession of Clarimonde. The place, real or apparent, of Il Signor Romualdo's sojourn with hisbeloved is Venice, where they inhabit a gorgeous palace, and whereRomuald enters into all the follies and dissipations of the place. He isunalterably faithful to Clarimonde, and she to him; and the time passesin a perpetual delirium. But every night--as it now seems to him--hefinds himself once more a poor country priest, horrified at the misdeedsof his other personality, and seeking to atone for them by prayer andfasting and good works. Even in his Venetian moments he sometimes thinksof Serapion's words, and at length he has especial reason to rememberthem. For some time Clarimonde's health had not been very good; her complexion faded from day to day. The doctors who were called in could not discover the disease, and after useless prescriptions gave up the case. Day by day she grew paler and colder, till she was nearly as white and as corpse-like as on the famous night at the mysterious castle. I was in despair at this wasting away, but she, though touched by my sorrow, only smiled at me sweetly and sadly with the fatal smile of those who feel their death approaching. One morning I was sitting by her. In slicing some fruit it happened that I cut my finger somewhat deeply. The blood flowed in crimson streamlets, and some of it spurted on Clarimonde. Her eyes brightened at once, and over her face there passed a look of fierce joy which I had never before seen in her. She sprang from the bed with catlike activity and pounced on the wound, which she began to suck with an air of indescribable delight, swallowing the blood in sips, slowly and carefully, as an epicure tastes a costly vintage. Her eyelids were half closed, and the pupils of her sea-green eyes flattened and became oblong instead of round.... From time to time she interrupted herself to kiss my hand; then she began again to squeeze the edges of the wound with her lips in order to draw from it a few more crimson drops. When she saw that the blood ran no longer, she rose with bright and humid eyes, rosier than a May morning, her cheeks full, her hands warm, yet no longer parched, fairer in short than ever, and in perfect health. "I shall not die! I shall not die!" she said, clasping my neck in a frenzy of joy. "I can live long and love you. My life is in yours, my very existence comes from you. A few drops of your generous blood, more precious and sovereign than all the elixirs of the world, have given me back to life. " This scene gave me matter for much reflection, and put into my head some strange thoughts as to Clarimonde. That very evening, when sleep had transported me to my parsonage, I found there Father Serapion, graver and more careworn than ever. He looked at me attentively and said, "Not content with destroying your soul, are you bent also on destroying your body? Unhappy youth, into what snares have you fallen!" The tone in which he said this struck me much at the time; but, lively as the impression was, other thoughts soon drove it from my mind. However, one evening, with the aid of a glass, on whose tell-tale position Clarimonde had not counted, I saw her pouring a powder into the cup of spiced wine which she was wont to prepare after supper. I took the cup, and, putting it to my lips, I set it down, as if intending to finish it at leisure. But in reality I availed myself of a minute when her back was turned to empty it away, and I soon after went to bed, determined to remain awake and see what would happen. I had not long to wait. Clarimonde entered as soon as she had convinced herself that I slept. She uncovered my arm and drew from her hair a little gold pin; then she murmured under her breath, "Only one drop, one little crimson drop, one ruby just to tip the bodkin! As you love me still I must not die. Ah, poor love! I am going to drink his blood, his beautiful blood, so bright and so purple. Sleep, my only treasure; sleep, my darling, my deity; I will do you no harm; I will only take so much of your life as I need to save my own. Did I not love you so much I might resolve to have other lovers, whose veins I could drain; but since I have known you I hate all others. Ah, dear arm, how round it is, and how white! How shall I ever dare to pierce the sweet blue veins!" And while she spoke she wept, so that I felt her tears rain on the arm she held. At last she summoned courage; she pricked me slightly with the bodkin and began to suck out the blood. But she drank only a few drops, as if she feared to exhaust me, and then carefully bound up my arm after anointing it with an unguent which closed the wound at once. I could now doubt no longer: Serapion was right. Yet, in spite of this certainty, I could not help loving Clarimonde, and I would willingly have given her all the blood whereof she had need, to sustain her artificial life. Besides, I had not much to fear; the woman was my warrant against the vampire; and what I had heard and seen completely reassured me. I had then well-nourished veins, which were not to be soon drawn dry, nor had I reason to grudge and count their drops. I would have pierced my arm myself and bid her drink. I was careful to make not the slightest allusion to the narcotic she had given me, or to the scene that followed, and we lived in unbroken harmony. But my priestly scruples tormented me more than ever, and I knew not what new penance to invent to blunt my passion and mortify my flesh. Though my visions were wholly involuntary and my will had nothing to do with them, I shrank from touching the host with hands thus sullied and spirit defiled by debauchery, whether in act or in dream. To avoid falling into these harassing hallucinations, I tried to prevent myself sleeping; I held my eyelids open, and remained in a standing posture, striving with all my force against sleep. But soon the waves of slumber drowned my eyes, and seeing that the struggle was hopeless, I let my hands drop in weariness, and was once more carried to the shores of delusion.... Serapion exhorted me most fervently, and never ceased reproaching me with my weakness and my lack of zeal. One day, when I had been more agitated than usual, he said to me, "There is only one way to relieve you from this haunting plague, and, though it be extreme, we must try it. Great evils need heroic remedies. I know where Clarimonde was buried; we must disinter her, and you shall see the real state of your lady-love. You will hardly be tempted to risk your soul for a vile body, the prey of worms and ready to turn to dust. That, if anything, will restore you to yourself. " For my part, I was so weary of this double life that I closed with his offer. I longed to know once for all, which--priest or gallant--was the dupe of a delusion, and I was resolved to sacrifice one of my two lives for the good of the other--yea, if it were necessary, to sacrifice both, for such an existence as I was leading could not last.... Father Serapion procured a mattock, a crowbar, and a lantern, and at midnight we set out for the cemetery, whose plan and arrangements he knew well. After directing the rays of the dark lantern on the inscriptions of several graves, we came at last to a stone half buried under tall grass, and covered with moss and lichen, whereon we deciphered this epitaph, "Here lies Clarimonde, who in her lifetime was the fairest in the world. " "'Tis here, " said Serapion; and, placing his lantern on the ground, he slipped the crowbar into the chinks of the slab and essayed to lift it. The stone yielded, and he set to work with the spade. As for me, stiller and more gloomy than the night itself, I watched him at work, while he, bending over his ill-omened task, sweated and panted, his forced and heavy breath sounding like the gasps of the dying. The sight was strange, and lookers-on would rather have taken us for tomb-breakers and robbers of the dead than for God's priests. The zeal of Serapion was of so harsh and savage a cast, that it gave him a look more of the demon than of the apostle or the angel, and his face, with its severe features deeply marked by the glimmer of the lantern, was hardly reassuring. A cold sweat gathered on my limbs and my hair stood on end. In my heart I held Serapion's deed to be an abominable sacrilege, and I could have wished that a flash of lightning might issue from the womb of the heavy clouds, which rolled low above our heads, and burn him to ashes. The owls perched about the cypress trees, and, disturbed by the lantern, came and flapped its panes heavily with their dusty wings, the foxes barked in the distance, and a thousand sinister echoes troubled the silence. At length Serapion's spade struck the coffin with the terrible hollow sound that nothingness returns to those who intrude on it. He lifted the lid, and I saw Clarimonde, as pale as marble, and with her hands joined; there was no fold in her snow-white shroud from head to foot; at the corner of her blanched lips there shone one little rosy drop. At the sight Serapion broke into fury. "Ah! fiend, foul harlot, drinker of gold and blood, we have found you!" said he, and he scattered holy water over corpse and coffin, tracing the sign of the cross with his brush. No sooner had the blessed shower touched my Clarimonde than her fair body crumbled into dust, and became nought but a hideous mixture of ashes and half-burnt bones. "There, Signor Romuald, " said the inexorable priest, pointing to the remains, "there is your mistress. Are you still tempted to escort her to the Lido or to Fusina?" I bowed my head; a mighty ruin had taken place within me. I returned to my parsonage, and Il Signor Romualdo, the lover of Clarimonde, said farewell for ever to the poor priest whose strange companion he had been so long. Only the next night I again saw Clarimonde. She said to me, as at first in the church porch, "Poor wretch, what have you done? Why did you listen to that frantic priest? Were you not happy? And what harm had I done you that you should violate my grave, and shamefully expose the misery of my nothingness? Henceforward all communication between us, soul and body, is broken. Farewell, you will regret me. " She vanished in the air like a vapour, and I saw her no more. Alas! she spoke too truly. I have regretted her again and again. I regret her still. The repose of my soul has indeed been dearly bought, and the love of God itself has not been too much to replace the gap left by hers. This, my brother, is the history of my youth. Never look at woman, and let your eyes as you walk be fixed upon the ground; for, pure and calm as you may be, a single moment is sufficient to make you lose your eternal peace. [Sidenote: Criticism thereof. ] Now, though to see a thing in translation be always to see it "as in aglass darkly"; and though in this case the glass may be unduly flawedand clouded, my own critical faculties must not only now beunusually[199] enfeebled by age, but must always have been crippled bysome strange affection, if certain things are not visible here to anyintelligent and impartial reader. The story, of course, is not pureinvention; several versions of parts, if not the whole, of it will occurto any one who has some knowledge of literature; and I have recentlyread a variant of great beauty and "eeriness" from the Japanese. [200]But the merit of a story depends, not on its originality as matter, buton the manner in which it is told. It surely cannot be denied that thisis told excellently. That the part of Serapion (though somebody orsomething of the kind is almost necessary) is open to some criticism, may be granted. He seems to know too much and yet not enough: and if hewas to interfere at all, one does not see why he did not do it earlier. But this is the merest hole-picking, and the biggest hole it can makewill not catch the foot or the little finger of any worthy reader. As tothe beauty of the phrasing, even in another language, and as rendered byno consummate artist, there can be little question about that. Indeedthere we have consent about Gautier, though, as has been seen, theconsent has not always been thoroughly complimentary to him. To go astep further, the way in which the diction and imagery are made toprovide frame and shade and colour for the narrative leaves very littleroom for cavil. Without any undue or excessive "prose poetry, " thedescriptions are like those of the best imaginative-pictorial verseitself. The first appearance of Clarimonde; the scene at her death-bedand that of her dream-resurrection, have, I dare affirm it, never beensurpassed in verse or prose for their special qualities: while thebackward view of the city and the recital of what we may call Serapion'ssoul-murder of the enchantress come little behind them. But, it may be said, "You are still kicking at open doors. The degree ofyour estimate is, we think, extravagant, but that it is deserved to someextent nobody denies. In mere point of expression, and even to someextent, again, in conception of beauty, Gautier's manner, though toomuch of one kind, and that too old-fashioned, is admitted; it is hismatter which is questioned or denied. " [Sidenote: A parallel from painting. ] Here also, I think, the counter-attack can be completely barred orbroken to the satisfaction of all but those who cannot or will not see. In the first place one must make a distinction, which ought not to beregarded as over-subtilising, but which certainly seems to be ignored bymany people. There are in all arts, and more especially in the art ofliterature, two stages or sets of stages in the discharge of that dutyof every artist--the creation of beauty. The one is satisfied by theachievement of the beautiful in the presentation itself; the other givesyou, in your own interior collection or museum, the thing presented. This is not the common distinction between form and matter, betweenstyle and substance, between subject and treatment; it is something moreintimate and "metaphysical. " To illustrate it, let me take a pair ofinstances, not from letters, but from painting as produced by two deadmasters of our own, Rossetti and Albert Moore. I used to think thelast-named painter disgracefully undervalued both by the public and bycritics. One could look at those primrose-tinted ladies of his, withtheir gossamer films of raiment and their flowerage always suggestive ofthe asphodel mead, for hours: and if one's soul had had a substantialPalace of Art of her own, there would have been a corridor wholly AlbertMoorish--a corridor, for his things never looked well with otherpeople's and they could not, by themselves, have filled a hall. But their beauty, as has been untruly said of Gautier's representationin the other art, _was_ "their sole duty. " You never wanted to kiss eventhe most beautiful of them, or to talk to her, or even to sit at herfeet, except for purposes of looking at her, for which that position hasits own special advantages. And although by no means mere pastiches orreplicas of each other, they had little of the qualities whichconstitute personality. They were almost literally "dreams that wavedbefore the half-shut eye, " and dreams which you knew to be dreams at thetime; less even than dreams--shadows, and less even than shadows, forshadows imply substance, and these did not. If you loved them you lovedthem always, and could not be divorced from them. But it was an entirelycontemplative love; and if divorce was unthinkable it was because therewas no _thorus_ and no _mensa_ at which they could possibly havefigured. [201] They were the Eves of a Paradise of _two_ dimensions only. Now with Rossetti it was entirely different. His drawing may have beenas faulty as people said it was, and he may have been as fond as theyalso said of bestowing upon all his subjects exaggerated and almostungainly features, which possibly belonged to the Blessed Damozel, butwere not the most indisputable part of her blessedness. But they were, despite their similarity of type, all personal and individual, and allsuggestive to the mind and the emotions of real women, and of the thingswhich real women are and do and suffer. And they were all differentlysuggestive. Proserpine and Beata Beatrix; the devotional figures intheir quietude or their ecstasy, and the forlorn leaguer-lasses of thatlittle masterpiece of the novitiate, "Hesterna Rosa"; the Damozelherself and a Corsican lady whose portrait, unpublished and unexhibited, has been familiar to me for six-and-thirty years;--all these and all theothers would behave to you, and you would behave to them, if they couldbe vivified, in ways different individually but real and live. [Sidenote: The reality. ] Now it is beauty of reality as well as of presentation that I at leastfind in _La Morte Amoureuse_. Clarimonde alive is very much more than a"shadow on glass"; Clarimonde dead is more alive than many live women. [Sidenote: And the passion of it. ] But the audacity of infatuation need not stop here. I should claim for_La Morte Amoureuse_, and for Gautier as the author of it, more thanthis. It appears to me to be one of the very few expressions in Frenchprose of really passionate love. It is, with _Manon Lescaut_ and_Julie_, the most consummate utterance that I at least know, in thatdivision of literature, of the union of sensual with transcendentalenamourment. Why this is so rare in French is a question fitter fortreatment in a _History of the French Temperament_ than in one of theFrench Novel. That it is so I believe to be a simple fact, and simplefacts require little talking about. No prose literature has so muchlove-making in it as French, and none so much about different species oflove: _amour de tête_ and _amour des sens_ especially, but also notunfrequently _amour de coeur_, and even _amour d'âme_. But of thecombination that _we_ call "passionate love"--that fills our own latesixteenth, early seventeenth, and whole nineteenth century literature, and that requires love of the heart and the head, the soul and thesenses, together--it has (outside poetry of course)[202] only the threebooks just mentioned and a few passages such as Atala's dying speech, Adolphe's, alas! too soon obliterated reflections on his first successwith Ellénore, perhaps one or two more before _La Morte Amoureuse_, andeven since its day not many. Maupassant (_v. Inf. _) _could_ manage thecombination, but too often confined himself to exhibitions of theseparate and imperfect divisions, whereof, no doubt, the number isendless. That Gautier always or often maintained himself at this pitch, either ofwhat we may call power of projecting live personages or of exhibition ofgreat passions, it would be idle and uncritical to contend; that he didso here, and thereby put himself at once and for ever on the higher, nay, highest level of literature, I do, after fifty years' study of thething and of endless other things, impenitently and impavidly affirm. [Sidenote: Other short stories. ] What is more, in his shorter productions he was often not far below it, save in respect of intensity. If I do not admire _Fortunio_ quite somuch as some people do, it is not so much because of its comparativeheartlessness--a thing rare in Gautier--as because for once, and I thinkonce only in pieces of its scale, the malt of the description _does_ getabove the meal of the personal interest, though that personal interestexists. But _Jettatura_, with its combination of romantic and tragicalappeal; _Avatar_, with its extraordinary mixture of romance, again, withhumour, its "excitingness, " and its delicacy of taste; the equallyextraordinary felicity of the dealings with that too often unmanageableimplement the "classical dictionary" in _Arria Marcella_, _Une Nuit deCléopâtre_, and perhaps especially _Le Roi Candaule_; the tinysketches--half-_nouvelle_ and half-"middle" article--of _Le Pied de laMomie_, _La Pipe d'Opium_, and _Le Club des Haschischins_, --whatmarvellous consummateness in the various specifications and conditionsdo these afford us! Sometimes, however, I have thought that just as _La Morte Amoureuse_ isalmost or quite sufficient text for vindicating the greatness orgreaterness of "Théo, " so his earliest book of prose fiction, _LesJeune-France_, will serve the same purpose for another side of him, lesser if anybody likes, but exceptionally "complementary. " Inparticular it possesses a quality which up to his time was very rare inFrance, has not been extraordinarily common there even since, and isstill, even in its ancestral home with ourselves, sometimesinconceivably blundered about--the quality of Humour. [203] [Sidenote: Gautier's humour--_Les Jeune-France_. ] For wit, France can, of course, challenge the world; nay, she can domore, she can say to the world, "I have taught you this; and you are nomatch for your teacher. " But in Humour the case is notoriously altered. None of the Latin nations, except Spain, the least purely Latin of them, has ever achieved it, as the original or unoriginal Latins themselvesnever did, with the exception of the lighter forms of it in Catullus, ofthe grimmer in Lucretius--those greatest and most un-Roman of Romanpoets. [204] In all the wide and splendid literature of French before thenineteenth century only Rabelais and Molière[205] can lay claim to it. Romanticism brings humour in its train, as Classicism brings wit; but itis curious how slow was the Romanticisation of French in this respect, with one exception. There is no real humour in Hugo, Vigny, George Sand, Balzac, scarcely even in Musset. Dumas, though showing decidedly goodgifts of possibility in his novels, does not usually require it there;the absence of it in his dramas need hardly be dwelt on. Mérimée, onecannot but think, might have had it if he had chosen; but Mérimée didnot choose to have so many things! If Gérard de Nerval's failure of agreat genius had failed in the comic instead of the romantic-tragicaldirection, he would have had some too--in fact he had it in theembryonic and unachieved fashion in which the author of _Gaspard de laNuit_, and Baudelaire, and Paul Verlaine have had it since in verse andprose. But Gautier has it plump and plain, and without any help from thestrange counterfeiting fantasy of verse which sometimes confers it. Hehas it always; at all times of his life; in the hackwork which madeabortion of so much greater literature, and in his actually greatliterature, poems, novels, travels--what not. But he never has it morestrongly, vividly, and originally than in _Les Jeune-France_, acoming-of-age book almost as old as _mil-huit-cent-trente_, written inpart no doubt in the immortal _gilet rouge_ itself, if only as kept forstudy wear like Diderot's old dressing-gown. There are two dangers lying in wait for the reader of the book. One isthe ordinary and quite respectable putting-out-of-the-lip at itsjuvenile improprieties; the other, a little more subtle, is the notionthat the things, improper or not (and some of them are quite _not_), aremere _juvenilia_--clever undergraduate work. The first requires nospecial counterblast; the old monition, "Don't like it for itsimpropriety, but also don't let its impropriety hide its merits from youif it has any, " will suffice. The other is, as has been said, moreinsidious. I can only say that I have read much undergraduate or butslightly post-graduate literature of many generations--before the day of_Les Jeune-France_, about its date, between that day and my own seasonof passing through those "sweet hours and the fleetest of time, " andsince that season till the present moment. But many equals of this bookI have not read. It is of course necessary to remember that it is expressly subtitled"Romans Goguenards, " thereby preparing the reader for the reverse ofseriousness. That reverse, especially in young hands, is a difficultthing to manage. "Guffaw" and "yawn" are two words which have actuallytwo letters in common; _y_ and _g_ are notoriously interchangeable insome dialects and circumstances, while _n_ and _u_ are the despair ofthe copyist or the student of copies. There remain only "ff"--thelightest of literals. We need not cite _nominatim_ (indeed it might berash) the endless examples in French and English where the guffaw of thewriter excites the yawn of the reader. But this is hardly ever the case, at least as I find it, with Gautier. The _Preface_, in which the author presents himself in his unregenerateand un-"young-France" condition, is really a triumph; I wish I couldgive the whole of it here. And what is more, it is a sort of epitome byanticipation of the entire Gautier, though without, of course, themastery of artistry he attained in years of laborious prose and verse. For that quality of humour which his younger friend Taine was to definehappily, though by no means to his own comfort or approval, in thephrase devoted to one of our English masters of it, "Il se moque de sesémotions à l'instant même où il s'y livre, " you must go to Fielding orto Thackeray to beat it. He (the supposed author) _was_ the most ordinary and insignificantcreature in the world. He had never either killed a policeman norcommitted suicide; he possessed neither pipe, nor dagger, _ni quoi quece soit qui ait du caractère_. He _did_ like cats (which tastefortunately remained with Gautier himself throughout his life), and hisreflections on politics had arrived at a final result of zero (anotherabiding feature, by the way, with "Théo"). He never could learn to playat cards. He thought artists were merely mountebanks, etc. , etc. Butsome kind friends took him in hand and made him an accomplishedJeune-France. He took to himself a very long _nom de guerre_, a veryshort moustache, a middle parting to his hair (the history of themiddle parting would be worth writing), and a "delirious" waistcoat. Helearnt to smoke, and to get "Byronically" drunk. He bought an Italianstiletto (by great luck he had a sallow complexion naturally); a silkrope-ladder ("which is of the first importance"); several reams of paperfor love-letters, and a supply of rose-coloured and avanturine wax. [206]He is going to be, if he is not as yet, "fatal, " "vague, ""fallen-angelical, " "volcanic. " There is only one desirable qualitywhich unkind fate has put beyond his reach. He is not, and cannot makehimself, an illegitimate child! Now, I am sorry for any one who, havingread this, cannot lean back in his chair and follow it up for himself bya series of fancy pictures of Jeunes-something from 1830 to 1918. [207] Of the actual stories "Daniel Jovard" takes up the cue of the _Preface_directly, and describes the genesis of a _romantique à tous crins_. "Onuphrius" honestly sub-titles itself "Les Vexations Fantastiques d'unadmirateur d'Hoffmann, " and has, I think, sometimes been dismissed as aHoffmannesque _pastiche_. Far be it from me to hint the slightestdenigration of the author of the _Phantasiestücke_ and the_Nachtstücke_, of the _Serapion's-Brüder_ and the _Kater Murr_--not theleast pleasing features on the right side of the half-glorious, half-ghastly contrast between the Germany of a hundred years ago and theGermany of to-day. But "Onuphrius" is Hoffmann Gautierised, German"Franciolated, " a _Walpurgisnacht_ softened by Morgane la Fée. "EliasWildmanstadius, " one of the earliest, remains one of the mostagreeable, pictures of a fanatic of the mediaeval. The overture and thefinale, both pieces in which the great motto "Trinq!" is perhaps a verylittle abused, nevertheless contain a considerable amount of wisdom, andthe last not a little wit. [208] But the central story _Celle-ci etCelle-là_, which fills nearly half the book, is no doubt the article onwhich one must--as far as this essay-piece is concerned--judge Gautier'stale-telling gifts. It is "improper" in part; indeed, the thing, whichis largely dialogic, may be thought to have been a young romantic'schallenge to Crébillon. The points of the contest would require a verycareful judge to reckon them out. Although Gautier was no democrat, andcertainly no misogynist, his lady of quality, Madame de M. , is terriblybelow the Crébillonesque Marquises and Célies in every respect, exceptthe beauty, which we have to take on trust; while, if she is not quitesuch a fiend as Laclos's heroine, she is also unlike her in beingstupid. The hero, Rodolphe, though by no means a cad and possessed ofmuch more heart than M. De Clerval or Clitandre, has neither theirmanners nor their wit. But Mariette, the _servante-maîtresse_, thoughmuch less moral, is much more attractive than Pamela; the whole of thestory is hit off with a pleasant mixture of humour, narrative faculty, bright phrase, [209] and good nature, of which the first is simply absentin Crébillon and the last rather dubiously present. We may return very shortly to the later, longer, and, I suppose, moreaccomplished stories before relinquishing Gautier. [Sidenote: Return to _Fortunio_. ] I have known very good people who liked _Fortunio_; I care for it lessthan for any other of its author's tales. The fabulously rich andentirely heartless hero has not merely the extravagance but (which isvery rare with Gautier) the vulgarity of Byronism; the opening orgie, by an oversight so strange that it may almost seem to be no oversight atall, reminds one only too forcibly of the ironic treatment accorded tothat institution in _Les Jeune-France_, and suffers from thereminder; the blending of East and West and the _Arabian Night_ haremsin Paris, "unbeknown" to everybody, [210] almost attain that_plusquam_-Aristotelian state of reprobation, the impossible which isalso improbable; and the courtesan heroines--at least two of them, Musidora and Arabelle--are even more faulty in this respect. No doubt [Greek: pollai morphai tôn ouraniôn], and the forms of the Pandemic as well as of the Uranian Aphrodite arenumerous likewise. But among them one finds no probability orpossibility of Gautier's Musidora of eighteen, who might be a youngduchess gone to the bad. Neither is the end of the girl, suicide, inconsequence of the disappearance of her lover, though quite possible andeven probable, at all suitable to Gautier's own fashion of thinking andwriting. Mérimée could have done it perfectly well. Of almost no othersof the delectable contents of the two volumes of _Nouvelles_ and of_Romans et Contes_ has one to speak in this fashion, while some of themcome very nearly up to their companion _La Morte Amoureuse_ itself. How Gautier managed to keep all this comparatively serious, if not quiteso, in treatment, is perhaps less difficult to make out than why he tookthe trouble to do so. But it is the entire absences of irony on the oneside and on the other of the dream-quality--the pure imagination whichmakes the impossibilities of _La Morte_ and of _Arria Marcella_, andeven of the trifle _Omphale_, so delightful--that deprives _Fortunio_ ofattraction in my eyes. Such faint glimmerings of it as there are areconfined to two very minor characters:--one of the courtesans, Cinthia, a beautiful statuesque Roman, who has simplified the costume-problem bywearing nothing--literally nothing--except one of two dresses, one blackvelvet and the other white watered silk; and the "Count George" (we arenever told his surname), who gives the overture-orgie. One might, as thelady said to Professor Wilson in regard to the _Noctes_, say to him, "Ireally think you eat too many oysters, and drink too much [not indeed inhis case] whisky, " and I can find no excuse for his deliberatelyupsetting an enormous bowl of flaming arrack punch on a floor swept bywomen's dresses. But he is quite human, and he makes the best speech andscene in the book when he remonstrates with Musidora for secludingherself because she cannot discover the elusive marquis-rajahtiger-keeper, --and, I fear I must add, "tiger" himself, --from whom thething takes its title. [211] [Sidenote: And others. ] It is, however, almost worth while to go through the freak-splendoursand transformation-scene excitements of _Fortunio_ to prepare thepalate[212] to enjoy _La Toison d'Or_ which follows. Here is once morethe true Gautieresque humour, good humour, marvellous word-painting, andromance, agreeably--indeed charmingly--twisted together. There is nofairy-story transposed into a modern and probable key which surpassesthis of the painter Tiburce; and the disorderly curios of his rooms; andhis sudden and heroic determination to fall desperately in love with ablonde; and his setting off to Flanders to find one; and thefruitlessness of his search and his bewitchment with the Magdalen in the"Descent from the Cross" at Antwerp (ah! what has become of it?); andhis casual discovery and courtship of a girl like that celestialconvertite; and her sorrow when she finds that she is only a substitute;and her victory by persuading her lover to paint her _as_ the Magdalenand so work off the witchery. [213] Of course some one may shrugshoulders and murmur, "Always the _berquinade_?" But I do not think _LaMorte Amoureuse_ was a _berquinade_. [Sidenote: Longer books, _Le Capitaine Fracasse_ and others. ] Of Gautier's longer books it is not necessary to say much, because, withperhaps one exception, they are admittedly not his forte. [214] Of thelongest, _Le Capitaine Fracasse_, I am myself very fond. Its opening andfirst published division, _Le Château de la Misère_, is one of thefinest pieces of description in the whole range of the French novel; andthere are many interesting scenes, especially the great duel of the heroSigognac with the bravo Lampourde. But some make it a reproach, not, Ithink, of very damaging validity, that so much of the book is littlemore than a "study off" the _Roman Comique_;[215] and it is, though notexactly a reproach, a great misfortune that in time, kind, and almosteverything else it enters into competition with Dumas, whose gifts as amanager of such things were as much above Gautier's as his powers as awriter were below Théo's. _Le Roman de la Momie_, though possessing theabiding talisman of style, suffers in the first place from being mereEgyptology novelised, and in the second from the same thing having beendone, on a scale much better suited to the author, in _Le Pied de laMomie_. Nor are _Spirite_ and _Militona_ free from parallel charges:while _La Belle Jenny_--that single and unfortunate appeal to the_abonné_ noted above--really may fail to amuse those who are not "irkedby the style. " [Sidenote: _Mlle. De Maupin. _] There remains the most notorious and the most abused of all Gautier'swork, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_. Perhaps here also, as in the case of _LaMorte Amoureuse_, I cannot do better than simply reprint, with veryslight addition, what I said of the book nearly forty years ago. For thecase is a peculiar one, and I have made no change in my own estimate, though I think the inclusion of the _Preface_--not because I agree withit any less--more dubious than I did then. In this _Preface_ thedoctrine of "art for art's sake" and of its consequent independence ofany _licet_ or _non-licet_ from morality is put with great ability andno little cogency, but in a fashion essentially juvenile, from its wantof measure and its evident wish to provoke as much as to prove. [216]Without it the book would probably have excited far less odium andopprobrium than it has actually done; it would, if separate, be anexcellent critical essay on the general subject; while in its actualposition it almost subjects the text to the curse of purpose, from whichnothing which claims to be art ought (according to the doctrine of bothpreface and book) to be more free. With the novel itself it is difficult to deal in the way of abstract andoccasional excerpt, not merely because of its breaches of theproprieties, but on account of the plan on which it is written. Amixture of letters and narrative, [217] dealing almost entirely withemotions, and scarcely at all with incidents, it defies narrativeanalysis such as that which was given to its elder sister innaughtiness, _La Religieuse_. It would seem that Goethe, who in manyways influenced Gautier, is responsible to some extent for its form, andperhaps for the fact that _As You Like It_ plays an even more importantpart in it than _Hamlet_ plays in _Wilhelm Meister_. No one who has readit can fail thenceforward to associate a new charm with the image ofRosalind, even though she be one of Shakespeare's most graciouscreations; and this I know is a bold word. But, in truth, it is in moreways than one an unspeakable book. Those who like may point to a coupleof pages of loose description at the end, a dialogue in the style of apolite _Jacques le Fataliste_ in the middle, a dozen phrases of ahazardous character scattered here and there. Diderot himself--nostrait-laced judge, indeed _particeps ejusdem criminis_--remarked longago, and truly enough, that errors of this sort punish themselves byrestricting the circulation, and diminishing the chance of life of thebook, or other work, that contains them. But it is not these things thatthe admirers of _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ admire. It is the wonderful andfinal expression, repeated, but subtly shaded and differenced, in thethree characters of Albert, Rosette, and Madeleine herself, of theaspiration which, as I have said, colours Gautier's whole work. If he, as has been justly remarked, was the priest of beauty, _Mademoiselle deMaupin_ is certainly one of the sacred books of the cult. The apostle towhom it was revealed was young, and perhaps he has mingled words of claywith words of gold. It would be difficult to find a Bowdler for thisMadeleine, and impossible to adapt her to the use of families. But thosewho understand as they read, and can reject the evil and hold fast thegood, who desire sometimes to retire from the meditation of the wearyways of ordinary life to the land of clear colours and stories, wherethere is none of this weariness, who are not to be scared by the poet'sharmless puppets or tempted by his guileless baits--they at least willtake her as she is and be thankful. [218] Still, as has been said, the book might have been made still better bybeing cut down a little; not, indeed, to the dimensions of a very shortstory, but to something like those of _Fortunio_ or of _Jettatura_. Forundoubtedly, while Gautier had an all but unsurpassed command of theshort story proper, a really long one was apt to develop some things inhim which, if they were not essentially faults, were not likely toimprove a full-sized novel. He would too much abound in description; thewant of _evolution_ of character--his character is not bad in itself, but it is, to use modern slang, rather static than dynamic--naturallyshows itself more; and readers who want an elaborate plot look for itlonger and are more angry at not being fed. But for the short, shorter, and shortest kind--the story which may run from ten to a hundred pageswith no meticulous limitations on either side--it seems to me that inthe French nineteenth century there are only three other persons who canbe in any way classed with him. One of these, his early contemporary, Charles de Bernard, and another, who only became known after his death, Guy de Maupassant, are to be treated in other chapters here. Moreover, Bernard was slighter, though not so slight as he has sometimes beenthought; and Maupassant, though very far from slight, had a _lésion_ (ashis own school would say) which interfered with universality. The thirdcompetitor, not yet named, who was Gautier's almost exact contemporary, though he began a very little earlier and left off a little earlier too, carried metal infinitely heavier than the pleasant author of _LeParatonnerre_, and though not free from partly disabling prejudices, hadmore balance[219] than Maupassant. He had more head and less heart, moreprose logic and less poetical fancy, more actuality and less dream than"Théo. " But I at least can find no critical abacus on which, by tottingup the values of both, I can make one greatly outvalue the other. And tothe understanding I must have already spoken the name of ProsperMérimée. [220] * * * * * [Sidenote: Mérimée. ] All the world knows _Carmen_, though it may be feared that the knowledgehas been conveyed to more people by the mixed and inferior medium ofthe stage and music than by the pure literature of the original tale. Yet it may be generously granted that the lower introduction may haveinduced some to go on, or back, to the higher. Of the unfaultyfaultlessness of that original there has never been any denial worthlistening to; the gainsayers having been persons who succumbed either tonon-literary prejudice[221] of one kind or another or to the peculiarlychildish habit of going against established opinion. For combinedinterest of matter and perfection of form I should put it among thedozen best short stories of the world so far as I am acquainted withthem. The appendix about the gipsies is indeed a superfluity, induced, it would seem, partly by Mérimée's wish to have a gibe atBorrow for being a missionary, and partly by a touch ofinspectorial-professorial[222] habit in him which is frequently apparentand decidedly curious. But it is an appendix of the most appendicious, and can be cut away without the slightest Manx-cat effect. From thestory itself not a word could be abstracted without loss nor one addedto it without danger. The way in which the narrator--it is impossible totell the number of the authors who have wrecked themselves over thenarrator when he has to take part in the action--and the guide are putand kept in their places, as well as the whole part of José Navarro, are_impayables_. If the Hispanolatry of French Romanticism had nothing butGastibelza and L'Andalouse in verse and José Navarro in prose to show, it would stand justified and crowned among all the literary manias inhistory. [Sidenote: Carmen. ] About Carmen herself there has been more--and may justly be a littlemore--question. Is her _diablúra_ slightly exaggerated? Or, to put thecomplaint in a more accurately critical form, has Mérimée attended alittle too much to the task of throwing on the canvas a typical Rommany_chi_ or _callee_, and a little too little to that of bodying forth aprobable and individual human girl? As an advocate I think I could takea brief on either side of the question without scandalising the, on thispoint, almost neurotic conscience of the late Mr. Anthony Trollope. But, as a juryman, my verdict on either indictment would be "Not guilty, and_please_ do it again. " But I had much rather decline both functions and all litigiousproceedings, and go from the courts of law to the cathedral ofliterature and thank the Lord thereof for this wonderful triumph ofletters. And, in the same way, if any quarrelsome person says, "But onlya few pages back you were in parallel ecstasies about _La MorteAmoureuse_, " I decline the daggers. Each is supreme in its kind, thoughthe kinds are different. Of each it may be said, "It cannot be betterdone, " but there may be--in fact there is nearly sure to be--somethingin the individual taste of each reader which will make the appeal of oneto his heart, if not to his head, more intimate and welcome. That hasnothing to do with their general literary value, which in each case isconsummate. And happy are those who can appreciate both. Consummateness, in the various kinds, is, indeed, the mark of Mérimée'sstories. The variety is greater than in those of Gautier, because, justas "Théo" had the advantage of Prosper in point of poetry, he had acertain disadvantage in point of range of intellect, or, to preventmistake, let us say interest--which perhaps is only another _tropos_ (asthe Greeks would have said and as the chemists in a very limited sensedo say after them) of the same thing. Beauty was Gautier's only idol;Mérimée had more of a pantheon. [Sidenote: _Colomba. _] As to _Colomba_ compared with _Carmen_, there is, I believe, a sort ofsectarianism among Prosperites. I hope I am, as always, catholic. I donot know that, in the terms of classical scholarship, it is "castigated"to the same extent as its rival in point of superfluities. Not that Iwish anything away from it; but I think a few things might be awaywithout loss--which is not the case with _Carmen_. Yet, on the otherhand, the danger of the type seems to me more completely avoided. [223]At any rate, my admiration for the book is not in any way bribed by thatRossetti portrait of a Corsican lady to which I have referred above. Forthough she certainly _is_ Colomba, I never saw the face tillyears--almost decades--after I knew the story. [Sidenote: Its smaller companions--_Mateo Falcone_, etc. ] But of the smaller tales which usually accompany her, who shallexaggerate the praise? _Mateo Falcone_, that modern Roman father (by theway, there is said to be more Roman blood in Corsica than in any part ofthe mainland of Italy, and the portrait above mentioned is almost pureFaustina), is another of those things which are _à prendre ou àlaisser_. It could not, again, be better done; and if any one willcompare it with the somewhat similar anecdote of lynch-law in Balzac's_Les Chouans_, he ought to recognise the fact--good as that also is. _Les Âmes du Purgatoire_ is also "first choice. " Of what may be calledthe satellites of the great _Don Juan_ story--satellites with a nebulainstead of a planet for their centre--it is quite the greatest. But ofthis group _La Vénus d'Ille_ is my favourite, perhaps for a ratherillegitimate reason. That reason is the possibility of comparing it withMr. Morris's _Ring given to Venus_--a handling of the same subject inpoetry instead of in prose, with a happy ending instead of an unhappyone, and pure Romantic in every respect instead of, as _La Vénus d'Ille_is, late classical, with a strong Romantic _nisus_. [224] For, though it might be improper here to argue out the matter, theselast words can be fitted to Mérimée's _ethos_ from the days of "ClaraGazul" and "Hyacinthe Maglanovich" to those when he wrote _Lokis_ and_La Chambre Bleue_. A deserter from Romanticism he was never; a Romanticfree-lance (after being an actual Romantic pioneer) with a strongClassical element in him he was always. [Sidenote: Those of _Carmen_; _Arsène Guillot_. ] The almost unavoidable temptation of taking _Colomba_ and _Carmen_together has drawn us away from the companions, as they are usuallygiven, of the Spanish story among Mérimée's earlier works. More thantwo-thirds of the volume, as most people have seen it, consist oftranslations from the Russian of Poushkin and Gogol, which need nonotice here. But _Arsène Guillot_ and _L'Abbé Aubain_, the two pieceswhich immediately follow _Carmen_, can by no means be passed over. If(as one may fairly suppose, without being quite certain) the selectionof these for juxtaposition was authentic and deliberate, it wascertainly judicious. They might have been written as a trilogy, not ofsequence, but of contrast--a demonstration of power in essentiallydifferent forms of subject. _Arsène Guillot_, like _Carmen_, is tragedy;but it is _tragédie bourgeoise_ or _sentimentale_. There are no daggersor musquetoons, and though (since the heroine throws herself out of awindow) there is some blood, she dies of consumption, not of her wounds. She is only a _grisette_ who has lost her looks, the one lover she evercared for, and her health; while the other characters of importance(Mérimée has taken from the stock-cupboard one of the cynical, rough-mannered, but really good-natured doctors common in French and notunknown in English literature) are the lover or gallant himself, Max deSaligny (quite a good fellow and perfectly willing, though he had tiredof Arsène, to have succoured her had he known her distress), and theLady Bountiful, Madame de Piennes. How a "triangle" is establishednobody versed in novels needs to be told, though everybody, however wellversed, should be glad to read. Arsène of course must die; what theothers who lived did with their lives is left untold. The thing is quiteunexciting, but is done with the author's miraculous skill; nor perhapsis there any piece that better shows his faculty of writing like the"gentleman, "[225] which, according to a famous contrast, he was, on asubject almost equally liable to more or less vulgar Paul-de-Kockery, tosloppy sentimentalism, and to cheap cynical journalese. [Sidenote: And _L'Abbé Aubain_. ] As for _L'Abbé Aubain_, it is slight but purely comic, of the very bestcomedy, telling how a great lady, obliged by pecuniary misfortunes toretire with her husband to a remote country house, takes a fancy to, andimagines she has possibly excited fatal passion in, the local priest;attributes to him a sentimental past; but half good-naturedly, halfvirtuously obtains for him a comfortable town-cure in order to removehim, and perhaps herself, from temptation. This moving tale ofself-denial and of averted sorrow, sin, and perhaps tragedy, is told inletters to another lady. Then follows a single epistle from the Abbéhimself to his old Professor of Theology, telling, with the utmostbrevity and matter-of-factness, how glad he is to make the exchange, what a benevolent nuisance the patroness has been, and how he looksforward to meeting the Professor in his new parsonage, with a plumpchicken and a bottle of old bordeaux between them. There is hardlyanywhere a better bit of irony of the lighter kind. It is rather likeCharles de Bernard, with the higher temper and brighter flash ofMérimée's style. [Sidenote: _La Prise de la Redoute. _] All the stories just noticed, except _Carmen_ itself (which is of 1847), appeared originally in the decade 1830-40, as well as others of lessnote, and one wonderful little masterpiece, which deserves notice byitself. This is _La Prise de la Redoute_, a very short thing--littlemore than an anecdote--of one of the "furious five minutes, " or hours, not unknown in all great wars, and seldom better known than in that ofthese recent years, despite the changes of armament and tactics. It isalmost sufficient to say of it that no one who has the slightestcritical faculty can fail to see its consummateness, and that any onewho does not see or will not acknowledge that consummateness may make uphis mind to one thing--that he is not, and--but by some marvellousexertion of the grace of God--never will be, a critic. He may have inhim the elements of a capital convict or a faithful father of a family;he may be a poet--poets, though sometimes very good, have sometimes beenvery bad critics--or a painter, or a philosopher, as distinguished asany of those whose names the Bertram girls learnt; or an electcandlestick-maker, fit to be an elder of any Little Bethel. But ofcriticism he can have no jot or tittle, no trace or germ. The questionis, for once, not one of anything that can be called merely or mainly"taste. " A man who is not a hopelessly bad critic, though he may nothave in him the _catholicon_ of critical goodness, may fail toappreciate _La Morte Amoureuse_ because of its dreaminess andsupernaturality and all-for-loveness; _Carmen_ because Carmen shockshim; _La Venus d'Ille_ because of its _macabre_ tone; _Les Jeune-France_because of their _goguenarderie_ or _goguenardise_. But the case of the_Redoute_ is one of those rare instances where the intellect and theaesthetic sense approach closest--almost merge into each other, --as, indeed, they did in Mérimée himself. The principles as well as thepractice of narrative are here at once reduced to their lowest andexalted to their highest terms. The thing is not merely fermented butdistilled; not so much a fact as a formula, with a formula's precisionbut without its dryness. If we take the familiar trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit and apply it to subject, style, and narrative power ina story, we shall find them all perfectly achieved and perfectly weddedhere. [226] [Sidenote: The _Dernières Nouvelles_; _Il Viccolo di Madama Lucrezia_. ] About the same time as that at which _Carmen_ was published (indeed ayear earlier) Mérimée wrote a shorter, but not very short story, _IlViccolo di Madama Lucrezia_, which for some reason only appeared, atleast in book form, long after, with the _Dernières Nouvelles_ andposthumously. It is, I think, his one attempt in the explained[227]supernatural--a kind for which I have myself no very great affection. But it is extremely well done, and if there are some suggestions ofimpropriety in it, Hymen, to use Paul de Kock's phrase (it is reallypleasant to think of Paul and Prosper--the farthest opposites of Frenchcontemporary novel-craft--together), covers up the more recent of themwith his mantle. But some at least of the other contents of the same volume are worthy ofgreater praise. One, _Le Coup de Pistolet_, is a translation fromPoushkin; another, _Federigo_, an agreeable version of an Italianfolk-tale--one of the numerous legends in which a 'cute' and notunkindly sinner escapes not only perdition, but Purgatory, and takesParadise by storm of wit. [228] A third piece, _Les SorcièresEspagnoles_, is folklorish in a way likewise, but inferior. Yet another trio remains, and its constituents, _Lokis_, _La ChambreBleue_, and _Djoumane_, are among Mérimée's greatest triumphs. _Djoumane_ is not dated; the other two date from the very last years ofhis life and of the Second Empire; and, unless I mistake, were writtendirectly to amuse that Imperial Majesty who lives yet, and who, as allgood men must hope, may live to see the _revanche_, if not of thedynasty, at any rate of the country, which she did so much to adorn. [Sidenote: _Djoumane. _] Of the three, _Djoumane_--the account of a riding dream during acampaign in Algeria--is the slightest, no doubt, and to a certain extenta "trick" story. But it has the usual Mériméan consummateness in its ownway; and I can give it one testimonial which, like all testimonials, nodoubt depends on the importance of the giver, but which, to thatextent, is solid. I have read dozens, scores, almost hundreds ofdream-stories. I cannot remember a single one, except this, which "tookme in" almost to the very awaking. There is no trick in either of the others, though in one of them thereis the supernatural--_not_ explained. But they are examples--closely andno doubt intentionally juxtaposed--in two different kinds, both of themexceptionally difficult and dangerous: the story of more or lessordinary life, with only a few suggestions of anything else, whichresolves itself into horrible tragedy; and the story, again of ordinarylife, with a tragic suggestion in the middle, which unknits itself intopure comedy at the end. [Sidenote: _Lokis. _] _Lokis_ is a story of lycanthropy, or rather _arct_anthropy. ALithuanian Count's mother has been carried off, soon after her marriage, by a bear, and just rescued with a lucky shot at the monster. She goes, as is not very wonderful, quite mad, does not recover when her child isborn, and is under restraint in her own house, as wife and widow, forthe term of her life. Her son, however, shows no overt symptoms ofanything wrong except fits of melancholy and seclusion, being in otherrespects a gentleman of most excellent "havings"--handsome, brave, sportsmanlike, familiar with the best European society, and evensomething of a scholar. He entertains a German minister and professor, whose special forte is Lithuanian, in order that the pundit may studysome rare books and MSS. In his library; and his guest, being a greattraveller, a good rider, and, though simple in his ways, not at allunlike a man of this world, makes a friend of him. It so happens, too, that they have a common acquaintance--a neighbour, and, as is soon seen, an idol of the Count's, Mademoiselle Julie Ivinska, very pretty, verymerry, and, if not very wise, clever enough to take in the scholar, onhis own ground, with a vernacular ("jmoude") version of one ofMickiewitz's poems. All goes well in a way, except for occasionalapparitions of the poor mad Countess; but there is a rather threateningepisode of a ride into a great forest, which is popularly supposed tocontain a "sanctuary of the beasts, " impenetrable by any hunter, and inwhich they actually meet a local sorceress, with a basket of poisonousmushrooms and a tame snake in it. Another episode gives us odd comments, and a sort of nightmare afterwards, of the Count, when his guest happensto mention the blood-drinking habits of the South American gauchos, inwhich the professor himself has been forced to take part. But these things and other "lights" of the catastrophe are veryartistically kept down, and you are never nudged or winked at in theoffensive "please note" manner. The guest goes away, but, not much toanybody's surprise, is very soon asked to return and celebrate thewedding of the Count and Mlle. Ivinska, who are both Lutherans. He goes, and finds a great semi-pagan feast of the local peasantry (which doesnot much please him) and one or two bad omens, including an appearanceof the mad old Countess with evil words, which please him still less. But the feast ends at last and the newly married couple retire, therebeing, of course, no "going away. " Early in the morning the pastor iswaked by the sound of a heavy body (a sound which he had noticed beforebut never interpreted) clambering down a tree just outside his window. Alittle later, as the bridal pair do not appear, their door is brokenopen, and the new Countess is found alone, dead, drenched in blood, andher throat, not cut, but _bitten_ through. The whole story is told by the minister himself to an otherwiseunidentified Theodore and Adelaide (who may be anybody, but who adroitlysoften the conclusion), and with that consummate management of thedifficult part of actor-narrator which has been noted. In every respectbut the purely sentimental one it seems to me beyond reproach and almostbeyond praise. [229] [Sidenote: _La Chambre Bleue. _] There could not, as has been said, be a greater contrast than _LaChambre Bleue_ in everything but craftsmanship. Two lovers (being Frenchthey have to be unlawful lovers, but the story would be neither injurednor improved, as a story, if the relation were taken quite out of thereach of the Divorce and Admiralty division, as it could be by a verylittle ingenuity) meet, in slight disguise, [230] at a railway station tospend "a day and a night and a morrow" together at a country hotel--nota great way from Paris, but outside the widest _banlieue_. They meet andstart all right; but Fortune begins, almost at once, to play themtricks. They are not, as of course they wish to be, alone in thecarriage. A third traveller (one knows the wretch) gets in at the lastmoment, and when, not to waste too much time, they begin to make love inEnglish, he very properly tells them that he is an Englishman, assuringthem, however, that he is probably going to sleep, and in any case willnot attend to anything they say. Then he takes a Greek book from hisbag, and devotes himself first to it and then to slumber. When theirjourney comes to an end, so does his, and he goes to the same hotel, butnot before he has had an angry interview on the platform with some onewho calls him "uncle. " However, at the moment this does not matter much. Still, the _guignon_ is on them; their _chambre bleue_ is between twoother rooms, and--as is the common habit of French hotels and the notuncommon one of English--has doors to both, which, though they can befastened, by no means exclude sound. One of the next rooms is theEnglishman's; the other, unfortunately, is a large upper chamber, inwhich the officers of a departing regiment are entertaining theirsuccessors. They are very noisy, very late, and somewhat impertinentwhen asked not to disturb their neighbours; but they break up at last, and the lovers have, as the poet says, "moonlight [actually] and sleep[possibly] for repayment. " But with the morning a worse thing happens. The lover, waking, sees at the foot of the bed, flowing sluggishly fromthe crack under the Englishman's door, a dark brownish-red fluid. It isblood, certainly blood! and what on earth is to be done? Apparently theEnglishman (they have heard a heavy bump in the night) has eithercommitted suicide or been murdered, perhaps by the nephew; the matterwill be enquired into; in the circumstances they themselves cannotescape examination, and the escapade will come out (blue spectacles andblack veils being alike useless against Commissaries of Police andJudges of Instruction). The only hope is an early Paris train, if theycan get their bill, obtain some sort of breakfast, and catch it. But, just as they have determined to do so, the facts next door arediscovered. The Englishman, who has ordered two bottles of _porto_, hasfallen asleep over the second, knocked it down while still half-full, followed it himself to the floor, and reclined there peacefully, whilethe fluid from the broken bottle trickled over the boards, [231] underthe door, and into the agapemone beyond. Once more (but for onehorrible[232] piece of libel), the thing could hardly be better. [Sidenote: The _Chronique de Charles IX. _] Mérimée's largest and most ambitious attempt at pure prose fiction--the_Chronique de Charles IX_--has been rather variously judged. That thepresent writer once translated the whole of it may, from differentpoints of view, be regarded as a qualification and a disqualificationfor judging it afresh. For a mere amateur (and there areunfortunately[233] only too many amateur translators) it might be oneor the other, according as the executant had been pleased or bored byhis occupation. But to a person used to the manner, something of anexpert in literary criticism, and brought by the writing of many booksto an even keel between _engouement_ and disgust, it certainly shouldnot be a _dis_qualification. I do not think that the _Chronique_, as aromance of the Dumas kind, though written long before Dumas sofortunately deserted the drama for the kind itself, is entirely asuccess. It has excellent characters, if not in the actual hero, in histwo Dalilahs--the camp-follower girl, who is a sort of earlier Carmen, and the great lady--and in his fear-neither-God-nor-Devil brother; goodscenes in the massacre and in other passages also. But as a whole--as amodernised _roman d'adventures_--it does not exactly _run_: the readerdoes not devour the story as he should. He may be--I am--delighted withthe way in which the teller tells; but the things which he tells are ofmuch less interest. One cannot exactly say with that acute critic (ifrather uncritical acceptor of the accomplished facts of life and deathand matrimony), Queen Gertrude of Denmark, "More matter with less art, "for there is plenty of matter as well as amply sufficient and yet notover-lavish art. But one is not made to take sufficient interest in theparticular matter supplied. [Sidenote: The semi-dramatic stories. _La Jacquerie. _] The other considerable and early attempt in historical romance, _LaJacquerie_, is not in pure novel form, but it may fitly introduce somenotice of its actual method, in which Mérimée frequently, Gautier morethan once, and a third eminent man of letters to be noticed presentlymost of all, distinguished themselves. This was what, in Old French, would have been called the story _par personnages_--the manner in whichthe whole matter is conveyed, not by _récit_, not by the usual form ofmixed narrative and conversation, but by dramatic or semi-dramaticdialogue only, with action and stage direction, but no connectinglanguage of the author to the reader. The early French mysteries andmiracles--still more the farces--were not altogether unlike this; we sawthat some of the curious intermediate work of the late sixteenth andearly seventeenth centuries took it, and that both of Crébillon's mostfelicitous, if not most edifying exercises are in dialogue form. Theadmiration of the French Romantics for the "accidented" and "matterful"English, Spanish, and German drama naturally encouraged experiment inthis kind. Gautier has not very much of it, though there is some in _LesJeune-France_, and his charming ballets might be counted in. But Mériméewas particularly addicted thereto. _La Jacquerie_ is injured to sometastes by excessive indulgence in the grime and horror which the subjectno doubt invited. We do not all rejoice in the notion of a Good Fridayservice, "extra-illustrated" by a real crucifixion alive of a generousJacques who has surrendered himself; or in violence offered (it is true, with the object of securing marriage) to a French heiress by an Englishcaptain of Free Companions. Even some of those who may not dislike thesetouches of _haut goût_, may, from the coolest point of view of strictcriticism, say that the composition is too _décousu_, and that, as inthe _Chronique_, there is little actual interest of story. But thephantasmagoria of gloom and blood and fire is powerfully presented. Theearlier _Théâtre de Clara Gazul_, [234] one of the boldest and mostsuccessful of all literary mystifications, belongs more or less to thesame class, which Mérimée never entirely deserted. [Sidenote: _Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement_, etc. ] The best of all these is, to my thinking, undoubtedly the _Carrosse duSaint-Sacrement_. It is also, I believe, the only one that ever wastried on the actual stage--it is said without success--though surelythis cannot have been the form that it took in _La Périchole_, not theleast amusing of those levities of Offenbach's which did so disgust thePharisees of academic music and so arride the guileless public. _LeCarrosse_ itself is a charming thing--very, very merry and by no meansunwise--without a drop of bad blood in it, and, if no better than, verynearly as good as it should be from the moral point of view. _La FamilleCarvajal_ has the same fault of gruesomeness as _La Jacquerie_, withless variety, and _Une Femme est un Diable_, a fresh handling ofsomething like the theme of _Le Diable Amoureux_ and _The Monk_, ifbetter than Lewis, is not so good as Cazotte. But _L'Occasion_ is almostgreat, and I think _Le Ciel et l'Enfer_ absolutely deserves that toomuch lavished ticket. Indeed Doña Urraca in this, like La Périchole in_Le Carrosse_, seems to me to put Mérimée among the greatest masters offeminine character in the nineteenth century, and far above some otherswho have been held to have reached that perilous position. At the same time, this hybrid form between _nouvelle_ and _drame_ hassome illegitimate advantages. You can, some one has said, "insinuatecharacter, " whereas in a regular story you have to delineate it; andthough in some modern instances critics have seemed disposed to put ahigher price on the insinuation than on the delineation, not merely inthis particular form, I cannot quite agree with them. All the same, Mérimée's accomplishments in this mixed kind are a great addition to hisachievements in the story proper, and, as has been confessed before, Ishould be slow to deny him the place of the greatest "little master" infiction all round, though I may like some little masterpieces of othersbetter than any of his. * * * * * [Sidenote: Musset: charm of his dramatised stories; his pure narrationunsuccessful. ] By an interesting but not at all inexplicable contrast the only writerof prose fiction (except those to whom separate chapters have beenallotted and one other who follows him here) to be in any way classedwith Mérimée and Gautier as a man of letters generally--Alfred deMusset--displays the contrast of values in his work of narrative anddramatic form in exactly the opposite way to (at least) Mérimée's. Musset's _Proverbes_, though, I believe, not quite successful at first, have ever since been the delight of all but vulgar stage-goers: theyhave, from the very first, been the delight of all but vulgar readersfor their pure story interest. Even some poems, not given as intendeddramas at all, possess the most admirable narrative quality andstory-turn. As for the _Comédies-Proverbes_, it is impossible for the abandonedreader of plays who reads them either as poems or as stories, or asboth, to go wrong there, whichever of the delightful bunch he takes up. To play upon some of their own titles--you are never so safe in swearingas when you swear that they are charming; when the door of the librarythat contains them is opened you may think yourself happy, and when itis shut upon you reading them you may know yourself to be happier. Butin pure prose narratives this exquisite poet, delightful playwright, andunquestionable though too much wasted genius, never seems quite at home. For though they sometimes have a poignant appeal, it is almost alwaysthe illegitimate or at any rate extrinsic one of revelation of theauthor's personal feeling; or else that of formulation of the generaleffects of passion, not that of embodiment of its working. [Sidenote: _Frédéric et Bernerette. _] Thus, for instance, there are few more pathetic stories in substance, orin occasional expression of a half-aphoristic kind, than _Frédéric etBernerette_. The grisette heroine has shed all the vulgarity of Paul deKock's at his worst, and has in part acquired more poignancy than thatof Murger at his best. Her final letter to her lover, just before hersecond and successful attempt at suicide, is almost consummate. But, somehow or other, it strikes one rather as a marvellous single study--asort of modernised and transcended _Spectator_ paper--a "Farewell of aDeserted Damsel"--than as part, or even as _dénouement_, of a story. When the author says, "Je ne sais pas lequel est le plus cruel, deperdre tout à coup la femme qu'on aime par son inconstance, ou par samort, " he says one of the final things finally. But it would be as finaland as impressive if it were an isolated _pensée_. The whole story isnot well told; Frédéric, though not at all a bad fellow, and an only toonatural one, is a thing of shreds and patches, not gathered together andgrasped as they should be in the hand of the tale-teller; the narrative"backs and fills" instead of sweeping straight onwards. [Sidenote: _Les Deux Maîtresses, Le Fils du Titien_, etc. ] So, again, the first story, [235] _Les Deux Maîtresses_, with itsinspiring challenge-overture, "Croyez-vous, madame, qu'il soit possibled'être amoureux de deux personnes à la fois?" is in parts interesting. But one reader at least cannot help being haunted as he reads by thenotion how much better Mérimée would have told it. _Le Fils duTitien_--the story of the great master's lazy son, on whom even love andentire self-sacrifice--lifelong too--on the part of a great lady, cannotprevail to do more in his father's craft than one exquisite picture ofherself, inscribed with a sonnet renouncing the pencil thenceforth--isthe best told story in the book. But Gautier would certainly have doneit even better. _Margot_, in the same fatal way and, I fear, in the samedegree, suggests the country tales of Musset's own faithless love. [Sidenote: _Emmeline. _] But the most crucial example of the "something wrong" which pursuesMusset in pure prose narrative is _Emmeline_. It is quite free fromthose unlucky, and possibly unfair, comparisons with contemporarieswhich have been affixed to its companions. A maniac of parallels mightindeed call it something of a modernised _Princesse de Clèves_; but thiswould be quite idle. The resemblance is simply in situation; that is tosay, in the _publica materies_ which every artist has a right to makehis own by private treatment. Emmeline Duval is a girl of great wealthand rather eccentric character, who chooses to marry (he has saved herlife, or at any rate saved her from possible death and certain damage) aperson of rank but no means, M. De Marsan. There is real love betweenthe two, and it continues on his side altogether unimpaired, on hersuntroubled, for years. A conventional lady-killer tries her virtue, butis sent about his business. But then there turns up one Gilbert, to whomshe yields--exactly how far is not clearly indicated. M. De Marsan findsit out and takes an unusual line. He will not make any scandal, and willnot even call the lover out. He will simply separate and leave her wholefortune to his wife. She throws her marriage contract into the fire (onedoes not presume to enquire how far this would be effective), dismissesGilbert through the medium of her sister, and--we don't know whathappened afterwards. Now the absence of _finale_ may bribe critics of the present day; for mypart, as I have ventured to say more than once before, it seems that ifyou accept this principle you had much better carry it through, have nomiddle or beginning, and even no title, but issue, in as many copies asyou please, a nice quire or ream of blank paper with your name on it. The purchasers could cut the name out, and use it for originalcomposition in a hundred forms, from washing bills to tragedies. But I take what Musset has given me, and, having an intense admirationfor the author of _A Saint Blaise_ and _L'Andalouse_ and the _Chanson deFortunio_, a lively gratitude to the author of _Il ne faut jurer derien_ and _Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée_, call _Emmeline_a very badly told and uninteresting story. The almost over-elaboratedescription of the heroine at the beginning does not fit in with hersubsequent conduct; Gilbert is a nonentity; the husband, though noble inconduct, is pale in character, and the sister had much better have beenleft out. [236] So the rest may be silence. [Sidenote: Gérard de Nerval--his peculiar position. ] I have been accused (quite good-naturedly) of putting Rabelais in thishistory because I liked him, though he was not a novelist. My conscienceis easy there; and I think I have refuted the peculiar chargebeforehand. But I might have a little more difficulty (though I shouldstill lose neither heart nor hope) in the case of the ill-fated butwell-beloved writer whom gods and men call Gérard de Nerval, or simplyGérard, though librarians and bibliographers sometimes insist on hislegal surname, Labrunie. It certainly would be difficult, from the samepoint of view of strict legality, to call anything of his exactly anovel. He was a poet, a dramatist, a voyage-and-travel writer, abibliographer (strange trade, which associates the driest with the most"necta_w_eous" of men!) even sometimes a tale-teller by name, but eventhen hardly a novelist. Yet he managed to throw over the most unlikelymaterial a novelish or at least a romantic character, which issometimes--nay, very often--utterly wanting in professed and admittedmasters of the business; and he combines with this faculty--or rather heexalts and transports it into--a strange and exquisite charm, whichnobody else in French, except Nodier[237] (who very possibly taughtGérard something), possesses, and which, though it is rather commoner inEnglish and in the best and now almost prehistoric German, is rareanywhere, and, in Gérard's peculiar brand of it, almost entirelyunknown. For this "Anodos"--the most unquestionably entitled to that title of allmen in letters; this wayless wanderer on the earth and above the earth;this inhabitant of mad-houses; this victim, finally, either of his owndespair and sorrow or of some devilry on the part of others, [238]unites, in the strange spell which he casts over all fit readers, what, but for him, one might have called the idiosyncrasies in strangeness ofauthors quite different from each other and--except at the specialpoints of contact--from him. He is like Borrow or De Quincey (though hegoes even beyond both) in the singular knack of endowing or investingknown places and commonplace actions with a weird second essence andsecond intention. He is like Charles Lamb in his power of dropping fromquaintness and almost burlesque into the most touching sentiment andemotion. Mr. Lang, in his Introduction to Poe, has noticed how Gérardresembles America's one "poet of the first order" in fashioning lines"on the further side of the border between verse and music"--a remarkwhich applies to his prose as well. [239] He has himself admitted a kindof _sorites_ of indebtedness to Diderot, Sterne, Swift, Rabelais, Folengo, Lucian, and Petronius. But this is merely on the comic andpurely intellectual side of him, while it is further confined, or nearlyso, to the trick of deliberate "promiscuousness. " On theemotional-romantic if not even tragic score he may write off all imputedindebtedness--save once more in some degree, to Nodier. And theconsequence is that those who delight in him derive their delight fromsources of the most extraordinarily various character, probably neverrepresented by an exactly similar group in the case of any twoindividual lovers, but quite inexhaustible. To represent him to thosewho do not know him is not easy; to represent him to those who do issure, for this very reason, to arouse mild or not mild complaints ofinadequacy. And it must be clear, from what has been already said, thatsome critic may very likely exclaim, in reference to any selected piece, "Why, this is neither a novel nor a romance, nor even in anylegitimate sense a tale!" The inestimable rejoinder alreadyquoted, [240]--episcopal, and dignifying even that order though it wasmade only by a bishop _in partibus_--is the only one here. [Sidenote: _La Bohême Galante_, _Les Filles du Feu_, and _Le Rêve et laVie_. ] The difficulty of discussing or illustrating, in short space and dueproportion, the novel or _roman_ element in such a writer must besufficiently obvious. His longer travels in Germany and the East aresteeped in this element; and the shorter compositions which bear namesof novel-character are often "little travels" in his native province, the Isle of France, and that larger _banlieue_ of Paris, towards Picardyand Flanders, which our Seventy Thousand saved, by dying, the other day. But it is impossible--and might even, if possible, be superfluous--totouch the first group. Of the second there are three subdivisions, which, however, are represented with not inconsiderable variation indifferent issues. [241] Their titles are _La Bohême Galante_, _Les Fillesdu Feu_, and _Le Rêve et la Vie_, the last of which contains only onesection, _Aurélia_, never, if I do not mistake, revised by Gérardhimself, and only published after his most tragic death. Its_supra_-title really describes the most characteristic part or featureof all the three and of Gérard's whole work. [Sidenote: Their general character. ] To one who always lived, as Paul de Saint-Victor put it in one of thebest of those curious exercises of his mastery over words, "in thefringes[242] of the actual world, " this confusion of place and noplace, this inextricable blending of fact and dream, imagination andreality, was natural enough; and no one but a Philistine will find faultwith the sometimes apparently mechanical and Sternian transitions whichform part of its expression. There was, indeed, an inevitable_mixedness_ in that strange nature of his; and he will pass from almost"true Dickens" (he actually admits inspiration from him) in accounts ofthe Paris _Halles_, or of country towns, to De Quinceyish passages, freefrom that slight touch of _apparatus_ which is undeniable now and thenin the Opium Eater. Here are longish excursions of pure family history;there, patches of criticism in art or drama; once at least an elaborateand--for the time--very well informed as well as enthusiastic sketch ofFrench seventeenth-century poetry. It may annoy the captious to findanother kind of confusion, for which one is not sure that Gérard himselfwas responsible, though it is consistent enough with his peculiarities. Passages are redistributed among different books and pieces in a ratherbewildering manner; and you occasionally rub your eyes at comingacross--in a very different context, or simply shorn of its oldone--something that you have met before. To others this, if not exactlyan added charm, will at any rate be admitted to "grace of congruity. " Itwould be less like Gérard if it were otherwise. [Sidenote: Particular examples. ] In fact it is in these mixed pieces that Gérard's great attraction lies. His regular stories, professedly of a Hoffmannesque kind, such as _LaMain Enchantée_ and _Le Monstre Vert_, are good, but not extraordinarilygood, and classable with many other things of many other people. I, atleast, know nothing quite like _Aurélia_ and _Sylvie_, though thedream-pieces of Landor and De Quincey have a certain likeness, andNodier's _La Fée aux Miettes_ a closer one. [Sidenote: _Aurélia. _] _Aurélia_ (which, whether complete in itself or not, was pretty clearlyintended to be followed by other things under the general title of _LeRêve et la Vie_) has, as might be expected, more dream than life in it. Or rather it is like one of those actual dreams which themselves mix uplife--a dream in the composition. Aurélia is the book-name of a lady, loved (actually, it seems) and in some degree responsible for herlover's aberrations of mind. He thinks he loves another, but finds hedoes not. The two objects of his passion meet, and the second generouslybrings about a sort of reconciliation with the first. But he has to goto Paris on business, and there he becomes a mere John-a-Dreams, if not, in a mild way, a mere Tom of Bedlam. The chief drops into reality, indeed, are mentions of his actual visits to _maisons de santé_. But thething is impossible to abstract or analyse, too long to translate as awhole, and too much woven in one piece to cut up. It must be read as itstands, and any person of tolerable intelligence will know in a page ortwo whether Gérard is the man for him or not. But when he was writing ithe was already over even the fringe of ordinary sane life, and near theclose of life itself. In _Sylvie_ he had not drifted so far; and it isperhaps his best diploma-piece. [243] [Sidenote: And especially _Sylvie_. ] For _Sylvie_, with its sub-title, "Souvenirs du Valois, " surely exhibitsGérard, outside the pure travel-books, at his very best, as far asconcerns that mixture of _rêve_ and _réalité_--the far-off goal ofGautier's[244] _Chimère_--which has been spoken of. The author comes outof a theatre where he has only seen Her, having never, though a constantworshipper, troubled himself to ask, much less to seek out, what Shemight be off the stage. And here we may give an actual piece of him. We were living then in a strange kind of time, [245] one of those which are wont to come after revolutions, or the decadences of great reigns. There was no longer any gallantry of the heroic kind, as in the time of the Fronde; no vice, elegant and in full dress, as in that of the Regency; no "Directory" scepticism and foolish orgies. It was a mixture of activity, hesitation, and idleness--of brilliant utopias; of religious or philosophical aspiration; of vague enthusiasms mingled with certain instincts of a sort of Renaissance. Men were weary of past discords; of uncertain hopes, much as in the time of Petronius or Peregrinus. The materialist part of us hungered for the bouquet of roses which in the hands of Isis was to regenerate it--the Goddess, eternally young and pure, appeared to us at night and made us ashamed of the hours we had lost in the day. We were not at the age of ambition, and the greedy hunt for place and honours kept us out of possible spheres of work. Only the poet's Ivory Tower remained for us, and we climbed it ever higher and higher to be clear of the mob. At the heights whither our masters guided us we breathed at last the pure air of solitude; we drank in the golden cup of legend; we were intoxicated with poetry and with love. But, alas! it was only love of vague forms; of tints roseal and azure; of metaphysical phantoms. The real woman, seen close, revolted our ingenuousness: we would have had her a queen or a goddess, and to draw near her was fatal. But he went from the play to his club, and there somebody asked him forwhat person (in such cases one regrets _laquelle_) he went so constantlyto the same house; and, on the actress being named, kindly pointed outto him a third member of this club as the lady's lover-in-title. Thepeculiar etiquette of the institution demanded, it seems, that thefortunate gallant should escort the beloved home, but then go to the_cercle_ and play (they were wise enough to play whist then) for greatpart of the night before exercising the remainder of his rights andprivileges. In the interval, apparently, other cats might be grey. And, as it happened, Gérard saw in a paper that some shares of his, longrubbish, had become of value. He would be better off; he might aspireto a portion of the lady's spare hours. But this notion, it is notsurprising to hear, did not appeal to our Gérard. He sees in the samepaper that a _fête_ is going to take place in his old country of theValois; and when at last he goes home two "faces in the fire" rise forhim, those of the little peasant girl Sylvie and of the châtelaineAdrienne--beautiful, triumphant, but destined to be a nun. Unable tosleep, he gets up at one in the morning, and manages to find himself atLoisy, the scene of the _fête_, in time. One would fain go on, but duty forbids a larger allotment of space; and, after all, the thing itself may be read by any one in half an hour orso, and will not, at least ought not, to be forgotten for half alifetime--or a whole one. The finding of Sylvie, no longer a _little_girl, but still a girl, still not married, though, as turns out, aboutto be so, is chequered with all sorts of things--sketches of landscape;touches of literature; black-and-white renderings of the _Voyage àCythère_; verses to Adrienne; to the actress Aurélie (to become laterthe dream-Aurélia); and, lastly--in the earlier forms of the piece atany rate--snatches of folk-song, including that really noble ballad: Quand Jean Renaud de la guerre revint, which falls very little, if at all, short of the greatest specimens ofEnglish, German, Danish, or Spanish. And over and through it all, and in other pieces as well, there is thefaint, quaint, music--prose, when not verse--which reminds one[246]somehow of Browning's famous Toccata-piece. Only the "dear dead women"are dear dead fairies; and the whole might be sung at that "Fairy'sFuneral" which Christopher North imagined so well, though he did notcarry it out quite impeccably. * * * * * [Sidenote: Alfred de Vigny: _Cinq-Mars_. ] The felicity of being enabled to know the causes of things, a recognisedand respectable form of happiness, is also one which I have recentlyenjoyed in respect of Alfred de Vigny's _Cinq-Mars_. For Vigny as a poetmy admiration has always been profound. He appears to me to havecompleted, with Agrippa d'Aubigné, Corneille, and Victor Hugo, the_quatuor_ of French poets who have the secret of magnificence;[247] and, scanty as the amount of his poetical work is, _Éloa_, _Dolorida_, _LeCor_, and the finest passages in _Les Destinées_ have a definite varietyof excellence and essence which it would not be easy to surpass in kind, though it might be in number, with the very greatest masters of poetry. But I have never been able, frankly and fully, to enjoy his novels, especially _Cinq-Mars_. In my last reading of the chief of them I cameupon an edition which contains what I had never seen before--thesomewhat triumphant and strongly defiant tract, _Réflexions sur laVérité dans l'Art_, which the author prefixed to his book after itssuccess. This tractate is indeed not quite consistent with itself, forit ends in confession that truth in art is truth in observation of humannature, not mere authenticity of fact, and that such authenticity is ofmerely secondary importance at best. But in the opening he had takenlines--or at any rate had said things--which, if not absolutelyinconsistent with, certainly do not lead to, this sound conclusion. Inwriting historical novels (he tells us) he thought it better not toimitate the foreigners (it is clear that this is a polite way ofindicating Scott), who in their pictures put the historical dominatorsof them in the background; he has himself made such persons principalactors. And though he admits that "a treatise on the decline and fall offeudalism in France; on the internal conditions and external relationsof that country; on the question of military alliances with foreigners;on justice as administered by parliaments, and by secret commissions oncharges of sorcery, " might not have been read while the novel _was_;the sentence suggests, with hardly a possibility of rebuttal, that atreatise of this kind was pretty constantly in his own mind while he waswriting the novel itself. And the earlier sentence about putting themore important historical characters in the foreground remains "firm, "without any necessity for argument or suggestion. [Sidenote: The faults in its general scheme. ] Now I have more than once in this very book, and often elsewhere, contended, rightly or wrongly, that this "practice of the foreigners, "in _not_ making dominant historical characters their own dominantpersonages, is _the_ secret of success in historical novel-writing, andthe very feather (and something more) in the cap of Scott himself whichshows his chieftainship. And, again rightly or wrongly, I have alsocontended that the hand of purpose deadens and mummifies story. Vigny'sown remarks, despite subsequent--if not recantation--qualification ofthem, show that the lie of his land, the tendency of his exertion, _was_in these two, as I think, wrong directions. And I own that thisexplained to me what I had chiefly before noticed as merely a fact, without enquiring into it, that _Cinq-Mars_, admirably written as it is;possessing as it does, with a hero who might have been made interesting, a great person like Richelieu to make due and not undue use of; plentyof thrilling incident at hand, and some actually brought in; loveinterest _ad libitum_ and fighting hardly less so; a tragic finish fromhistory, and opportunity for plenty of lighter contrast from Tallemantand the Memoirs--that, I say, _Cinq-Mars_, with all this and thegreatness of its author in other work, has always been to me not a livebook, and hardly one which I can even praise as statuesque. [248] It is no doubt a misfortune for the book with its later readers--theearlier for nearly twenty years were free from this--that it comes intoclosest comparison with Dumas' best work. Its action, indeed, takesplace in the very "Vingt Ans" during which we know (except from slightretrospect) nothing of what D'Artagnan and the Three were doing. Butmore than one or two of the same historical characters figure, and inthe chapters dealing with the obscure _émeute_ which preceded the actualconspiracy, as well as in the scenes touching Anne of Austria's privateapartments, the parallel is very close indeed. [Sidenote: And in its details. ] Now of course Dumas could not write like Vigny; and though, as ispointed out elsewhere, to regard him as a vulgar fellow is the grossestof blunders as well as a great injustice, Vigny, in thought and tasteand _dianoia_ generally, was as far above him as in style. [249] But thatis not the question. I have said[250] that I do not quite _know_D'Artagnan, though I think I know Athos, as a man; but as a novel-herothe Gascon seems to me to "fill all numbers. " Cinq-Mars may be asuccession or chain of type-personages--generous but headlong youth, spoilt favourite, conspirator and something like traitor, finallyvictim; but these are the "flat" characters (if one may so speak) of thetreatise, not the "round" ones of the novel. And I cannot _unite_ them. His love-affair with Marie de Gonzague leaves me cold. His friend, theyounger De Thou, is hardly more than "an excellent person. " Thepersecution of Urbain Grandier and the sufferings of the Ursuline Abbessseem to me--to use the old schoolboy word--to be hopelessly "muffed";and if any one will compare the accounts of the taking of the"Spanish bastion" at Perpignan with the exploit at that otherbastion--Saint-Gervais at Rochelle--he will see what I mean as well asin any single instance. The second part, where we come to the actualconspiracy, is rather better than the first, if not much; and I thinkVigny's presentment of Richelieu has been too much censured. ArmandDuplessis was a very great man; but unless you accept the olderMachiavellian and the more modern German doctrines as to what a greatman may do, he must also be pronounced a most unscrupulous one; whilethere is little doubt (unless you go back to Louis XI. ) that Vigny wasright in regarding him as the original begetter of the FrenchRevolution. But he is not here made by any means wholly inhuman, andVigny makes it justly clear that, if he had not killed Cinq-Mars, Cinq-Mars would have killed him. In such cases of course the person whobegins may be regarded as the assassin; but it is doubtful whether thisis distributive justice of the highest order. And I do not see muchsalvation for France in Henry d'Effiat. This, however, is a digression from our proper subject, but onejustifying itself after a fashion, inasmuch as it results from Vigny'sown faulty handling of the subject itself and is appropriate to his lineof argument in his _Examen_. He has written the novel not as he oughtand as he ought not. The political and historical interests overshadow, confuse, and hamper the purely "fictional" (as people say now), and whenhe has got hold of a scene which _is_ either purely "fictional, " orhistorical with fictitious possibilities, he does not seem (to me) toknow how to deal with it. There is one--of the extremest melodramaticcharacter and opportunities--where, in a hut perched on the side of aPyrenean gorge or cañon, Richelieu's villainous tool, the magistrateLaubardemont; his mad niece, the former Ursuline Abbess, who has helpedto ruin Urbain Grandier; his outcast son Jacques, who has turned Spanishofficer and general bravo; and a smuggler who has also figured in theGrandier business, forgather; where the mad Abbess dies in terror, andJacques de Laubardemont by falling through the flimsy hut-boards intothe gorge, his father taking from him, by a false pretence before hisdeath, the treaty between the Cinq-Mars conspirators and Spain. All thisis sufficiently "horrid, " as the girls in _Northanger Abbey_ would say, and divers French contemporaries of Vigny's from Hugo to Soulié wouldhave made good horrors of it. In his hands it seems (to me) to missfire. So, again, he has a well-conceived interview, in which Richelieu, for almost the last time, shows "the power of a strong mind over a weakone, " and brings the King to abject submission and the surrender ofCinq-Mars, by the simple process of leaving his Majesty to settle byhimself the problems that drop in from France, England, and where orwhence not, during the time of the Cardinal's absence. It is less of afailure than the other, being more in Vigny's own line; but it isimpossible not to remember several scenes--not one only--in _QuentinDurward_, and think how much better Scott would have done it; several inthe Musketeer-trilogy, if not also in the Margot-Chicot series, and makea parallel reflection. And as a final parry by anticipation to theobjection that such comparison is "rascally, " let it be said thatnothing of the kind ever created any prejudice against the book in mycase. I failed to get on with it long before I took the least trouble todiscover critical reasons that might excuse that failure. [Sidenote: _Stello_ less of a novel, but containing better novel-stuff. ] But if any one be of taste sufficiently like mine to find disappointmentof the unpleasant kind in _Cinq-Mars_, I think I can promise him anagreeable, if somewhat chequered, surprise when, remembering _Cinq-Mars_and basing his expectations upon it, he turns to _Stello_. It is truethat the book is, as a whole, even less "precisely a novel" thanSainte-Beuve's _Volupté_. But for that very reason it escapes thedisplay of the disabilities which _Cinq-Mars_, being, or incurringobligation to be, precisely a novel, suffers. It is true also that itexhibits that fancy for putting historical persons in the first "plan"which he had avowed, and over which heads have been shaken. The bulk ofit, indeed, consists of romanticised _histoires_ or historiettes (thenarrator calls them "anecdotes") of the sad and famous fates of twoFrench poets, Gilbert and André Chénier, and of our English Chatterton. But, then, no one of these can be called "a dominant historicalpersonage, " and the known facts permit themselves to be, and are, "romanticised" effectively enough. So the flower is in each case pluckedfrom the nettle. And there is another flower of more positive and lesscompensatory kind which blooms here, which is particularly welcome tosome readers, and which, from _Cinq-Mars_ alone, they could hardly haveexpected to find in any garden of Alfred de Vigny's. For this springsfrom a root of ironic wit which almost approaches humour, which, thoughnever merry, is not seldom merciful, and is very seldom actually savage, though often sad. Now irony is, to those who love it, the saving graceof everything that possesses it, almost equal in charm, and still morenearly equal in power, to the sheer beauty, which can dispense with it, but which sometimes, and not so very rarely, is found in its company. [Sidenote: Its framework and "anecdotes. "] The substance, or rather the framework, of _Stello, ou Les DiablesBleus_, requires very little amplification of its double title toexplain it. Putting that title in charade form, one might say that itsfirst is a young poet who suffers from its second--like many other youngpersons, poetical and unpoetical, of times Romantic and un-Romantic. Having an excessively bad fit of his complaint, he sends for a certain_docteur noir_ to treat the case. This "Black Doctor" is not atrout-fly, nor the sort of person who might be expected in a story of_diablerie_. It is even suggested that he derived the name, by which hewas known to society, from the not specially individual habit of wearingblack clothes. But there must have been something not quite ordinarilyhuman about him, inasmuch as, having been resident in London at the timeof Chatterton's death in 1770, he was--apparently without any signs ofOld Parr-like age--a fashionable doctor at Paris in the year 1832. Hisvisit ends, as usual, in a prescription, but a prescription of a veryunusual kind. The bulk of it consists of the "anecdotes"--again perhapsnot a very uncommon feature of a doctor's visit, but told at such lengthon the three subjects above mentioned that, with "links" andconclusion, [251] they run to nearly four hundred pages. It is possible that some one may say "_Connu!_" both to the storiesthemselves and to the moral of real suffering, as opposed to meremegrim, which is so obviously deducible from them. But Stello was quiteas clever as the objectors, and knew these things quite aswell--perhaps, as far as the case of Gilbert is concerned, rather betterthan most Englishmen. It is in the manner of the Black Doctor's tellingand handling that the charm lies. [Sidenote: The death of Gilbert. ] Even for those gluttons of matter who do not care much for manner thereis a good deal in the three stories. The first avails itself--as Vignyhad unwisely _not_ availed himself in _Cinq-Mars_, though he was wellacquainted with Shakespeare and lesser English masters--of the mixtureof comic and tragic. The suffering[252] of the unfortunate youth who waspartly a French Chatterton and partly a French Clare, his strange visitto the benevolent but rather ineffectual Archbishop of Paris, and thescene at his death-bed, exhibit, at nearly its best, the tragic powerwhich Vigny possessed in a very high, though not always well exercised, degree. And the passage of the poet's death is of such _macabre_ powerthat one must risk a translation: (_The doctor has been summoned, has found the patient in his garret, bare of all furniture save a bed with tattered clothes and an old trunk. _) His face was very noble and very beautiful; he looked at me with fixed eyes, and between them and the nose, above the cheeks, he showed that nervous contraction which no ordinary convulsion can imitate, which no illness gives, but which says to the physician, "Go your ways!" and is, as it were, a standard which Death plants on his conquests. He clutched in one hand his pen, his poor last pen, inky and ragged, in the other a crust of his last piece of bread. His legs knocked together, so as to make the crazy bed crackle. I listened carefully to his hard breathing; I heard the rattle with its hollow husk; and I recognised Death in the room as a practised sailor recognises the tempest in the whistle of the wind that precedes it. "Always the same, to all thou comest, " I said to Death, he himself speaking low enough for my lips to make, in dying ears, only an indistinct murmur. "I know thee always by thine own hollow voice, lent to youth and age alike. How well I know thee and thy terrors, which are no longer such to me![253] I feel the dust that thy wings scatter in the air as thou comest; I breathe the sickly odour of it; I see its pale ashes fly, invisible as they may be to other men's sight. O! thou Inevitable One, thou art here, verily thou comest to save this man from his misery. Take him in thine arms like a child; carry him off; save him; I give him to thee. Save him only from the devouring sorrow that accompanies us ever on the earth till we come to rest in thee, O Benefactor and Friend!" I had not deceived myself, for Death it was. The sick man ceased to suffer, and began suddenly to enjoy the divine moment of repose which precedes the eternal immobility of the body. His eyes grew larger, and were charged with amazement; his mouth relaxed and smiled; his tongue twice passed over his lips as if to taste once more, from some unseen cup, a last drop of the balm of Life. And then he said with that hoarse voice of the dying which comes from the inwards and seems to come from the very feet: At the banquet of life a guest ill-fated. [254] [Sidenote: The satiric episode--contrast. ] But this death-bed, and the less final but hardly less tragic wanderingsof the victim in his visit to the Archbishop (by whom also the doctorhas been summoned), are contrasted and entangled, very skilfully indeed, with a scene--the most different possible--in which he still appears. The main personages in this, however, are his Majesty Louis XV. And thereigning favourite, Mademoiselle de Coulanges, a young lady who, fromthe account given of her, might justify the description, assignedearlier to one of her official predecessors in a former reign, of being"belle comme un ange, et bête comme un panier. "[255] At first the lovers(if we are to call them so) are lying, most beautifully dressed andquite decorously, on different sofas, both of them with books in theirhands, but one asleep and the other yawning. Suddenly the lady springsup shrieking, and the polite and amiable monarch (apart from hisSolomonic or Sultanic weaknesses, and the perhaps graver indifferencewith which he knowingly allowed France to go to the devil, Louis leBien-Aimé was really _le meilleur fils du monde_) does his best toconsole his beloved and find out the reason of her woes. It appears atlast that she thinks she has been bitten by a flea, and as the summer isvery hot, and there has been much talk of mad dogs, she is convincedthat the flea was a mad flea, and that she shall die of hydrophobia. (Asit happens, the flea is not a flea at all, but a grain of snuff. )However, the Black Doctor is sent for, and finds the King as affable asusual, but Mlle. De Coulanges coiled up on a sofa--like somethingbetween a cat and a naughty child afraid of being scolded--and hidingher face. On being coaxed with the proper medical manner, she at lastbursts out laughing, and finally they all laugh together, till hisMajesty spills his coffee on his gold waistcoat, and then pulls thedoctor down on a sofa to talk Paris gossip. And now the Black One clearshimself from any connection with the serpent as far as wisdom isconcerned, though he has plenty of a better kind. Fresh from Gilbert'sappeal to the Archbishop, he tries to interest this so amiable Royaltyin the subject. But the result is altogether unfortunate. The lady ismerely contemptuous and bored. The King gets angry, and displays thatindifference to anybody else's suffering which moralists (whether to anexaggerated extent or not, is another question) are wont to connect withexcessive attention to a man's own sensual enjoyments. After some by nomeans stupid but decidedly acid remarks on Voltaire, Rousseau, andothers, he takes (quite good-naturedly in appearance) the doctor's arm, walks with him to the end of the long apartment, opens the door, quotescertain satiric verses on literary and scientific "gents, " and--shuts iton his medical adviser and guest. I know few things of the kind more neatly done, or better adjusted toheighten the tragic purpose. [Sidenote: The Chatteron part. ] To an Englishman the next episode may be less satisfactory, though itwas very popular in France under its original form, and still more sowhen Vigny dramatised it in his famous _Chatterton_. It is not thatthere is any (or at any rate much) of the usual caricature which was(let us be absolutely equitable and say) exchanged between the twocountries for so long a time. Vigny married an English wife, knewsomething of England, and a good deal of English literature. But, regardless of his own historical _penchants_ and of the moral of thisvery book--that Sentiment must be kept under the control of Reason--hewas pleased to transmogrify Chatterton's compassionate Holborn landladyinto a certain Kitty Bell--a pastry-shop keeper close to the Houses ofParliament, who is very beautiful except that she has the inevitable"large feet" (let us hope that M. Le Comte de Vigny, who was agentleman, took only the first _signalement_ from Madame la Comtesse), extraordinarily sentimental, and desperately though (let us hope again, for she has a husband and two children) quite virtuously in love withthe boy from Bristol. He entirely transforms Lord Mayor Beckford's partin the matter;[256] changes, for his own purposes, the arsenic intoopium (a point of more importance than it may seem), and in one bluntword does all he can to spoil the story. It is too common an experiencewhen foreigners treat such things, and I say this with the fullestawareness of the danger of _De te fabula_. [Sidenote: The tragedy of André Chénier. ] These two stories, however, fill scarcely more than a third of the book, and the other two-thirds, subtracting the moral at the end, deal with amatter which Vigny, once more, understood thoroughly. The fate of AndréChénier is "fictionised" in nearly the best manner, though with theauthor's usual fault of inability to "round out" character. We do notsufficiently realise the poet himself. But his brother, Marie-Joseph, requiring slighter presentment, has it; and so, on a still smallerscale, has the well-meaning but fatuous father, who, hopelesslymisunderstanding the signs of the times, actually precipitates his elderson's fate by applying, in spite of remonstrance, to the tiger-pole-catRobespierre for mercy. The scene where this happens--and where the"sea-green incorruptible" himself, Saint-Just (prototype of so manyRepublican enthusiasts, ever since and to-day), Marie-Joseph, and theBlack Doctor figure--is singularly good. Hardly less so are thepictures--often painted by others but seldom better--of the ghastlythough in a way heroic merriment of the lost souls in Saint-Lazare, between their doom and its execution, and the finale. In this thedoctor's soldier-servant Blaireau ("Badger"), still a gunner on activeservice (partly, one fancies, from former touches, [257] by concealedgood intention, partly from mere whim and from disgust at the drunkenhectorings of General Henriot), refuses to turn his guns on theThermidorists, and thus saves France from at least the lowest depths ofthe Revolutionary Inferno. [258] Perhaps there is here, as with Vigny'sfiction throughout, a certain amateurishness, and a very distinctinability to keep apart things that had better not be mixed. But thereis also evidence of power throughout, and there is actually someperformance. [Sidenote: _Servitude et Grandeur Militaires. _] His third and last work, of anything like the kind, _Servitude etGrandeur Militaires_, is no more of a regular novel than _Stello_; but, though perhaps in an inferior degree, it shares the superiority of_Stello_ itself over _Cinq-Mars_ in power of telling a story. Like_Stello_, too, it is a frame of short tales, not a continuous narrative;and like that, and even to a greater degree, it exhibits the intensemelancholy (almost unique in its particular shade, though I suppose itcomes nearer to Leopardi's than to that of any other great man ofletters) which characterises Alfred de Vigny. His own experience ofsoldiering had not been fortunate. He had begun, as a mere boy, byaccompanying Louis XVIII. In his flight before the Hundred Days; he hadseen, for another fourteen or fifteen years during the Restoration, No wars where triumphs on the victors wait, but only the dreary garrison life (see on Beyle, _sup. _ p. 149) ofFrench peace time, and, in the way of active service, only what allsoldiers hate, the thankless and inglorious police-work which comes onthem through civil disturbance. Whether he was exactly the kind of manto have enjoyed the livelier side of martialism may be the subject ofconsiderable doubt. But at any rate he had no chance of it, and hisframework here is little more than a tissue of transcendental"grousing. " [Sidenote: The first story. ] The first story illustrating "Servitude" is sufficiently horrible, andhas a certain element of paradox in it. The author, actually on his verydisagreeable introduction to a military career by flight, meets with anold officer who tells him his history. He has been at one time amerchant sailor; and then in the service of the Directory, by whom hewas commissioned to carry convicts to Cayenne. The most noteworthy ofthese, a young man of letters, who had libelled one of the tyrants, andhis still younger wife, are very charming people; and the captain, whomakes them his guests, becomes so fond of them that he even proposes togive up his profession and farm with them in the colony. He has, however, sealed orders, to be opened only in mid-Atlantic; and when hedoes open them, he finds, to his unspeakable horror, a simple command toshoot the poet at once. He obeys; and the "frightfulness" is doubled bythe fact that a rather clumsy device of his to spare the wife the sightof the husband's death is defeated by the still greater clumsiness of asubordinate. She goes mad; and, as expiation, he takes charge of her, shifts from navy to army, and carries her with him on all his campaigns, being actually engaged in escorting her on a little mule-cart when Vignymeets him. They part; and ten years afterwards Vigny hears that theofficer was killed at Waterloo--his victim-charge following him a fewdays later. The story is well told, and not, as actual things go, impossible. But there are some questions which it suggests. "Is it, _asliterature_, a whole?" "Is it worth telling?" and "Why on earth did thecaptain obey such an order from a self-constituted authority ofscoundrels to whom no 'sacrament' could ever be binding, if it couldeven exist?"[259] [Sidenote: The second] The second is also tragical, but less so; and is again very well told. It is concerned with the explosion of a powder-magazine--fortunately notthe main one--at Vincennes, brought about by the over-zeal of a good oldadjutant, the happiness of whose domestic interior just before his fate(with some other things) forms one of Vigny's favourite contrasts. [Sidenote: and third. ] But, as in _Stello_, he has kept the best wine to the last. The singleillustration of _Grandeur_ must have, for some people, though it may nothave for all, the very rare interest of a story which would rather gainthan lose if it were true. It opens in the thick of the JulyRevolution, when the veteran French army--half-hearted and gaining nonew heart from the half-dead hands which ought to have guided it--wassubjected, on a larger scale, to the same sort of treatment which thefresh-recruited Sherwood Foresters (fortunately _not_ half-hearted)experienced in Dublin at Easter 1916. The author, having, luckily forhimself, resigned his commission a year or two before, meets an oldfriend--a certain Captain Renaud--who, though a _vieux de la vieille_, has reached no higher position, but is adored by his men, and generallyknown as "Canne de Jonc, " because he always carries that not very lethalweapon, and has been known to take it into action instead of a sword. In the "sullen interval" of the crisis the two talk; and Renaud is ledinto telling the chief experiences of his life. He had known little ofhis father--a soldier before him--but had been taken by that father onBonaparte's Egyptian expedition till, at Malta, he was stopped byBonaparte himself, who would have no boy on it save Casabianca's (pityhe did not stop him too!). But he only sends Renaud back to the MilitaryAcademy, and afterwards makes him his page. The father is blown up inthe _Orient_, but saved, and, though made prisoner by us, is welltreated, and, as being of great age and broken health, allowed, byCollingwood's interest, to go to Sicily. He dies on the way; but is ableto send a letter to his son, which is one of the finest examples ofVigny's peculiar melancholy irony. In this he recants his worship of the(now) Emperor. It has, however, no immediate effect on the son. Butbefore long, by an accident, he is an unwilling and at first unperceivedwitness of the famous historical or half-historical interview atFontainebleau between Napoleon and the Pope, where the bullied HolyFather enrages, but vanquishes, the conqueror by successivelyejaculating the two words _Commediante!_ and _Tragediante!_ (This sceneis again admirable. ) The page's absence from his ordinary duty excitessuspicion, and the Emperor, _more_ _suo_, exiles him to thefarce-tragedy of the Boulogne flotilla, where the clumsy flat-bottomsare sunk at pleasure as they exercise[260] by English frigates. Thefather's experience is repeated with the son, for he also is capturedand also falls into the beneficent power of Collingwood, whom Vignyalmost literally beatifies. [261] The Admiral keeps the young man onparole with him four years at sea, and when he has--"so as by water" ifnot fire--overcome the temptation of breaking his word, effects exchangefor him. But, as is well known (the very words occur here, though I donot know whether for the first time or not), Napoleon's motto in suchcases was: "Je n'aime pas les prisonniers. On se fait tuer. " He goesback to his duty, but avoids recognition as much as possible, andreceives no, or hardly any, promotion. Once, just after Montmirail, heand the Emperor meet, whether with full knowledge on the latter's partis skilfully veiled. But they touch hands. Still Captain Renaud's_guignon_ pursues him in strange fashion; and during a night attack on aRussian post near Reims he kills, in a mere blind mellay, a boy officerof barely fourteen, and is haunted by remorse ever afterwards. A few days after telling the story he is shot by a _gamin_ whom oldermen have made half-drunk and furnished with a pistol with directions todo what he does. And all this is preserved from being merely sentimental("Riccobonish, " as I think Vigny himself--but it may be somebodyelse--has it) by the touch of true melancholy on the one hand and ofall-saving irony on the other. [Sidenote: The moral of the three. ] So also these two curious books save Vigny himself to some extent fromthe condemnation, or at any rate the exceedingly faint praise, which hisprincipal novel may bring upon him as a novelist. But they do so to someextent only. It is clear even from them, though not so clear as it isfrom their more famous companion, that he was not to the manner born. The riddles of the painful earth were far too much with him to permithim to be an unembarrassed master or creator of pastime--not necessarilyhorse-collar pastime by any means, but pastime pure and simple. Hispreoccupations with philosophy, politics, world-sorrow, and other thingswere constantly cropping up and getting in the way of his narrativefaculty. I do not know that, even of the scenes that I have praised, anyone except the expurgated Crébillonade of the King and the Lady and theDoctor goes off with complete "currency, " and this is an episode ratherthan a whole tale, though it gives itself the half-title of _Histoired'une Puce Enragée_. He could never, I think, have done anything butshort stories; and even as a short-story teller he ranks with the otherAlfred, Musset, rather than with Mérimée or Gautier. But, like Musset, he presents us, as neither of the other two did (for Mérimée was not apoet, and Gautier was hardly a dramatist), with a writer, of mark allbut the greatest, in verse and prose and drama; while in prose and verseat least he shows that quality of melancholy magnificence which has beennoted, as hardly any one else does in all three forms, except Hugohimself. * * * * * NOTE ON FROMENTIN'S _DOMINIQUE_ [Sidenote: Note on Fromentin's _Dominique_: its altogether exceptionalcharacter. ] I have found it rather difficult to determine the place most proper fornoticing the _Dominique_ of Eugène Fromentin--one of the most remarkable"single-speech" novels in any literature. It was not published till theSecond Empire was more than half-way through, but it seems to have beenwritten considerably earlier; and as it is equally remarkable for_lexis_ and for _dianoia_, it may, on the double ground, be bestattached to this chapter, though Fromentin was younger than any one elsehere dealt with, and belonged, in fact, to the generation of our later, though not latest, constituents. But, in fact, it is a book like noother, and it is for this reason, and by no means as confessing omissionor after-thought, that I have made the notice of it a note. In anoutside way, indeed, it may be said to belong to the school of _René_, but the resemblance is very partial. The author was a painter--perhaps the only painter-novelist of merit, though there are bright examples of painter-poets. His other literarywork consists of a good book on his Netherlandish brethren in art, andof two still better ones, descriptive of Algeria. And _Dominique_ itselfhas unsurpassed passages of description at length, as well as numeroustiny touches like actual _remarques_ on the margin of the page. Onlyonce does his painter's eye seem to have failed him as to situation. Thehero, when he has thrown himself on his knees before his beloved, andshe (who is married and "honest") has started back in terror, "dragshimself after her. " Now I believe it to be impossible for any one toexecute this manoeuvre without producing a ludicrous effect. For whichreason the wise have laid it down that the kneeling posture should neverbe resorted to unless the object of worship is likely to remain fairlystill. But this is, I think, the only slip in the book. It isexceedingly interesting to compare Fromentin's descriptions with thoseof Gautier on the one hand before him, and with those of Fabre andTheuriet on the other later. I should like to point out the differences, but it is probably better merely to suggest the comparison. His actualwork in design and colour I never saw, but I think (from attacks on itthat I _have_ seen) I should like it. But his descriptions, though they would always have given the bookdistinction, would not--or would not by themselves--have given it itsspecial appeal. Neither does that appeal lie in such story as thereis--which, in fact, is very little. A French squire (he is more nearlythat than most French landlords have cared to be, or indeed have beenable to be, since the Revolution and the Code Napoléon) is orphanedearly, brought up at his remote country house by an aunt, privatelytutored for a time, not by an abbé, but by a young schoolmaster andliterary aspirant; then sent for three or four years to the nearest"collége, " where he is bored but triumphant: and at last, about his_vingt ans_, let loose in Paris. But--except once, and with the result, usual for him, of finding the thing a failure--he does not make thestock use of liberty at that age and in that place. He has, at school, made friends with another youth of good family in the same province, whohas an uncle and cousins living in the town where the college is. Theeldest she-cousin of Olivier d'Orsel, Madeleine, is a year older thanDominique de Bray, and of course he falls in love with her. But thoughshe, in a way, knows his passion, and, as one finds out afterwards, shares or might have been made to share it, the love is "never told, "and she marries another. The destined victims of the _un_smooth course, however, meet in Paris, where Dominique and Olivier, though they do notshare chambers, live in the same house and flat; and the story of justovercome temptation is broken off at last in a passionate scene likethat of "Love and Duty"--which noble and strangely undervalued poemmight serve as a long motto or verse-prelude to the book. It is ratherquestionable whether it would not be better without the thin frame ofactual proem and conclusion, which does actually enclose the body of thenovel as a sort of _récit_, provoked partly by the suicide, or attemptedsuicide, of Olivier after a life of fastidiousness and frivolity. Theproem gives us Dominique as--after his passion-years, and his as yetunmentioned failure to achieve more than mediocrity in letters--a quietif not cheerful married man with a charming wife, pretty children, agood estate, and some peasants not in the least like those of _LaTerre_; while in the epilogue the tutor Augustin, who has made his wayat last and has also married happily, drives up to the door, and thebook ends abruptly. It is perhaps naughty, but one does not want thewife, or the children, or the good peasants, or the tutor Augustin, while the suicide of Olivier appears rather copy-booky. It is especiallyannoying thus to have what one does not want to know, and not what one, however childishly, does want to know--that is to say, the after-historyof Madeleine. Yet even in the preliminary forty or fifty pages few readers can fail toperceive that they have got hold of a most uncommon book. Itsuncommonness, as was partly said above, does not consist merely in theexcellence of its description; nor in the acuteness of the occasional_mots_; nor in the passion of the two main characters; nor in therepresentation of the mood of that "discouraged generation of 1850" ofwhich it is, in prose and French, the other Testament corresponding toMatthew Arnold's in verse and English. Nor does it even consist in allthese added together; but in the way in which they are fused; in whichthey permeate each other and make, not a group, but a whole. It mighteven, like Sainte-Beuve's _Volupté_ (_v. Inf. _). Be called "notprecisely a novel" at all, and even more than Fabre's _Abbé Tigrane_(_v. Inf. _ again), rather a study than a story. And it is partly fromthis point of view that one regrets the prologue and epilogue. Nodoubt--and the plea is a recurring one--in life these storms andstresses, these failures and disappointments, do often subside intosomething parallel to Dominique's second existence as squire, sportsman, husband, father, and farmer. No doubt they Pulveris exigui jactu compacta quiescunt, whether the dust is of the actual grave and its ashes, or the moresymbolical one of the end of love. But on the whole, for art's sake, this somewhat prosaic _Versöhnung_ is better left behind the scenes. Yetthis may be a private--it may be an erroneous--criticism. The positivepart of what has been said in favour of _Dominique_ is, I think, something more. There are few novels like it; none exactly like, andperhaps one does not want many or any more. But by itself it stands--andstands crowned. FOOTNOTES: [198] Some years after its original appearance Mr. Andrew Lang, incollaboration with another friend of mine, who adopted the _nom deguerre_ of "Paul Sylvester, " published a complete translation under thetitle of _The Dead Leman_; and I believe that the late Mr. LafacidoHearn more recently executed another. But this last I have never seen. (The new pages which follow to 222, it may not be superfluous to repeat, appeared originally in the _Fortnightly Review_ for 1878, and werereprinted in _Essays on French Novelists_, London, 1891. The Essayitself contains, of course, a wider criticism of Gautier's work thanwould be proper here. ) [199] For, as a rule, the critical faculty is like wine--it steadilyimproves with age. But of course anybody is at liberty to say, "Only, inboth cases, when it is good to begin with. " [200] I suppose this was what attracted Mr. Hearn; but, as I have said, I do not know his book itself. [201] I do not know how many of the users of the catchword "purelydecorative, " as applied to Moore, knew what they meant by it; but ifthey meant what I have just said, I have no quarrel with them. [202] Yet even inside poetry not so very much before 1830. [203] Of course I know what a dangerous word this is; how often peoplewho have not a glimmering of it themselves deny it to others; and how itis sometimes seen in mere horseplay, often confounded with "wit" itself, and generally "taken in vain. " But one must sometimes be content with[Greek: phônêenta] or [Greek: phônanta] (the choice is open, but Iprefer the latter) [Greek: synetoisi], and take the consequences of themwith the [Greek: asynetoi]. [204] Some would allow it to Plautus, but I doubt; and even Martial didnot draw as much of it from Spanish soil as must have been latentthere--unless the Goths absolutely imported it. Perhaps the nearestapproach in him is the sudden turn when the obliging Phyllis, just as heis meditating with what choice and costly gifts he shall reward hervaried kindnesses, anticipates him by modestly asking, with the sweetestpreliminary blandishments, for a jar of wine (xii. 65). [205] La Fontaine may be desiderated. His is certainly one of the most_humouresque_ of wits; but whether he has pure humour I am not sure. [206] This is an exception to the rule of _tout passe_, if not of _toutcasse_. You can still buy avanturine wax; only, like all waxes, exceptred and black, it seals very badly, and makes "kisses" in a most untidyfashion. Avanturine should be left to the original stone--to peat-waterrunning over pebbles with the sun on it--and to eyes. [207] I once knew an incident which might have figured in these scenes, and which would, I think, have pleased Théo. But it happened just afterhis own death, in the dawn of the aesthetic movement. A man, whom we maycall A, visited a friend, say B, who was doing his utmost to be in themode. A had for some time been away from the centre; and B showed him, in hopes to impress, the blue china the Japanese mats and fans, therush-bottomed chairs, the Morris paper and curtains, the peacockfeathers, etc. But A looked coldly on them and said, "Where is yourbrass tray?" And B was saddened and could only plead, "It is comingdirectly; but you know too much. " [208] They are both connected with the "orgie"-mania, and the last is adeliberate burlesque of the originals of P. L. Jacob, Janin, Eugène Sue, and Balzac himself. [209] It is here that the famous return of a kiss _revu, corrigé etconsidérablement augmenté_ is recorded. [210] He (it is some excuse for him that this suggested a better thingin certain _New Arabian Nights_) buys, furnishes, and subsequentlydeserts an empty house to give a ball in, and put his friends on noscent of his own abode; but he makes this "own abode" a sort of CrystalPalace in the centre of a whole ring-fence of streets, with the oldfronts of the houses kept to avert suspicion of the Seraglio of Easternbeauties, the menagerie and beast fights, and the slaves whom (it israther suggested than definitely stated) he occasionally murders. Heperforms circus-rider feats when he meets a lady (or at least a woman)in the Bois de Boulogne; he sets her house on fire when it occurs to himthat she has received other lovers there; and we are given to understandthat he blows up his own palace when he returns to the East. In fact, heis a pure anticipated cognition of a Ouidesque super-hero as parodied bySir Francis Burnand (and independently by divers schoolboys andundergraduates) some fifty years ago. [211] I have seen an admirable criticism of this "thing" in one word, "Cold!" [212] On the cayenne-and-claret principle which Haydon (one hopeslibellously, in point of degree) attributed to Keats. (It was probably adevilled-biscuit, and so quite allowable. ) [213] "Théo" has no repute as a psychologist; but I have known suchrepute attained by far less subtle touches than this. [214] For more on them, with a pretty full abstract of _Le CapitaineFracasse_, see the Essay more than once mentioned. [215] _V. Sup. _ Vol. I. P. 279-286. Of course the duplication, _asliterature_, is positively interesting and welcome. [216] I--some fifty years since--knew a man who, with even greaterjuvenility, put pretty much the same doctrine in a Fellowship Essay. Hedid not obtain that Fellowship. [217] It might possibly have been shortened with advantage inconcentration of effect. But the story (pleasantly invented, if nottrue) of Gautier's mother locking him up in his room that he might notneglect his work (of the nature of which she was blissfully ignorant)nearly excuses him. A prisoner will naturally be copious rather thanterse. [218] It may amuse some readers to know that I saw the rather famouslithograph (of a lady and gentleman kissing each other at full speed onhorseback), which owes its subject to the book, in no more romantic aplace that a very small public-house in "Scarlet town, " to which I hadgone, not to quench my thirst or for any other licentious purpose, butto make an appointment with--a chimney-sweep. [219] Some might even say he had too much. [220] For reference to previous dealings of mine with Mérimée see_Preface_. [221] It is sad, but necessary, to include M. Brunetière among thelatter class. [222] He was never a professor, but was an inspector; and, though I maybe biassed, I think the inspector is usually the more "donnish" animalof the two. [223] And perhaps in actual life, if not in literature, I should prefera young woman who might possibly have me murdered if she discovered ablood-feud between my ancestors and hers, to one in whose company itwould certainly be necessary to keep a very sharp look-out on my watch. The two risks are not equally "the game. " [224] Many a reader, I hope, has been reminded, by one or the other, orboth, of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, which also contains the story: andhas gone to it with the usual consequence of reading nothing else forsome time. [225] "Mérimée était gentilhomme: Sainte-Beuve ne l'était pas. " I forgetwho said this, but it was certainly said, and I think it was true. [226] This is not merely a waste of explosives. I have actually seen thestory dismissed as a "merely faithful record of the facts" or somethingof the sort. One was at least obliged to the man for reminding one ofPartridge on Garrick. [227] A very "gentle" reader may perceive something _not_ quiteexplained, and I should be happy to allow it. [228] And perhaps--though Mérimée does not allege this--by doing good tohis neighbours likewise; for he rescues twelve companions of his ownnaughtiness from the infernal regions. The mixture of pagan andChristian eschatology, if not borrowed, is exceedingly well and suitably"found. " [229] He had at one time introduced a smirch of grime by which nothingwas gained and a good deal lost--the abduction being not at once cutshort, and the bear being suggested as the Count's actual sire (seeBurton again). But he had the taste as well as the sense to cut thisout. The management of the outsiders mentioned above contrastsremarkably in point of art with the similar things which, as noted (_v. Sup. _ pp. 93-4), do _not_ improve _Inès de las Sierras_. [230] He blue-spectacled, she black-veiled. [231] Uncarpeted and polished, French fashion, of course. [232] Mérimée represents his Englishman (and an Englishman who can readGreek, too!) as satisfied with, and ordering a second bottle of, anextemporised "port" made of ratafia, "quinze sous" _ordinaire_, andbrandy! This could deceive few Englishmen; and (till very recent years)absolutely no Englishman who could read Greek at a fairly advancedperiod of life. From most of the French Novelists of the time it wouldnot surprise us; but from Mérimée, who was constantly visiting Englandand had numerous English friends, it is a little odd. It may have beendone _lectoris gratia_ (but hardly _lectricis_), to suit what even theother novelists just mentioned occasionally speak of as the _Anglais devaudeville_. [233] I use this adverb from no trade-jealously: for I have made as manytranslations myself as I have ever wished to do, and have always beenadequately paid for them. But there is no doubt that the competition ofamateur translation too often, on the one hand, reduces fees to sweatingpoint, and on the other affects the standard of competence ratherdisastrously. I once had to review a version of _Das Kalte Herz_, inwhich the wicked husband persecuted his wife with a "_pitcher_, "_Peitsche_ being so translated by the light of nature, or the darknessof no dictionary. [234] Professed renderings of Spanish plays which never existed. _LaGuzla_--a companion volume with an audacious anagrammatising of "Gazul, "etc. , etc. --is a collection of pure ballads similarly attributed to anon-existent Slav poet, Hyacinthe Maglanovich. Both, in their influenceon the Romantic movement, were only second to the work of actualEnglish, German, and Spanish predecessors, and may rank with that ofNodier. [235] Of the collection definitely called _Nouvelles_. [236] I have left the shortest story in the volume, _Croisilles_, to anote. It has, I believe, been rather a favourite with some, but it seemsto me that almost anybody could have written it, as far as anything butthe mere writing goes. Nor shall I criticise _Mimi Pinson_ and otherthings at length. I cannot go so far as a late friend of mine, whomaintained that you must always praise the work of a writer you like. But I think one has the option of silence--partial at any rate. [237] If anybody pleads for Louis Bertrand of _Gaspard de la Nuit_ as athirdsman, I should accept him gladly, though he is even farther fromthe novel-norm than Gérard himself. I once had the pleasure of bringinghim to the knowledge of the late Lord Houghton, who, the next time I methim, ejaculated, "I've got him, and covered him all over with moons andstars as he deserves. " I hope Lord Crewe has the copy. (For Baudelaire'sstill less novelish following of _Gaspard_, see below. As far as stylegoes, both would enter this chapter "by acclamation. ") [238] This has been already referred to above. After one of theabscondences or disappearances brought about by his madness, he wasfound dead--hanging to a balcony, or outside stair, or lamp-post, orwhat not, in one of those purlieus of Old Paris which were afterwardsswept away, but which Hugo and Méryon have preserved for us in differentforms of "black and white. " Suicide, as always in such cases, is theorthodox word in this, and may be correct. But some of his friends wereinclined to think that he had been the victim of pure murderous sport onthe part of the gangs of _voyous_, ancestors of the later "apaches, " whoinfested the capital. [239] The quality will not be sought in vain by those who read Mr. Lang's own poems--there are several--on and from Gérard. [240] "Perhaps not, my dear; perhaps not. " [241] What, I suppose, is the "standard" edition--that of the so-called_Oeuvres Complètes_--contains them all, but with some additions and moreomissions to and from the earlier issues. And the individual pieces, especially _Sylvie_, which is to be more fully dealt with here than anyother, are subjected to a good deal of rehandling. [242] I may be taken to task for rendering _lisière_ "fringes, " but theactual English equivalent "list" is not only ambiguous, not only toohomely in its specific connotation, but wrong in rhythm. And "selvage, "escaping the first and last objections, may be thought to incur themiddle one. Moreover, while both words signify a well-defined edge, _lisière_ has a sense--special enough to be noted in dictionaries--ofthe looser-planted border of trees and shrubs which almost literally"fringes" a regular forest. [243] _Angélique_, which used to head _Les Filles du Feu_, in front of_Sylvie_, but was afterwards cut away by the editors of the _OeuvresComplètes_ for reasons given under the head of _Les Faux Saulniers_(vol. Iv. Of that edition), is a specially Sternian piece, mixing up thechase for a rare book, and some other matters, with the adventures of aseventeenth-century ancestress of this book's author, who eloped with aservant, zigzagged as much as possible. It is quite good reading, but alittle _mechanical_. Perhaps it is not too officious to remark that_Filles du Feu_ is to be interpreted here in the sense of our "_Faces_in the fire. " [244] Gérard was a slightly older man than Théo, but they were, as theycould not but be, close friends. [245] Even those who care little for mere beauty of style--or who cannotstand the loss of it in translation--may find here a vivid picture, by ahand of the most qualified, of the mental condition which produced themasterpieces of 1825-1850. And the contrast with the "discouragedgeneration" which immediately followed is as striking. [246] Especially, it may be, if one has heard Galuppi's own music playedby a friend who is himself now dead. [247] Some would make it a quintet with Leconte de Lisle, but I think"the King should consider of it" as to this. He is grand _sometimes_:but so are Père Le Moyne and others. It is hit or miss with them; theFour can make sure of it. [248] It does, of course, deserve, and in this place specially shouldreceive, the credit of being the first French historical novel of themodern kind which possessed great literary merit. [249] Alexander, though he actually wrote histories of a kind, was farbelow Alfred in political judgment. [250] _Vide infra_ on Dumas himself. [251] About Plato and Homer, who are very welcome, and "Le MensongeSocial, " which is, perhaps, a little less so. [252] But see note 2 on next page. [253] One wonders if the Black Doctor was so sure of this on his owndeath-bed? [254] The first line of Gilbert's swan-song--the only song of his thatis remembered. It sets Stello himself on the track which the "BlackDoctor" has concealed up to the point. As the original rhythm could notbe kept without altering the substance, I have substituted another--notso unconnected as it may seem. --By the way, Vigny has taken as muchliberty with French dates in this story as with English facts in theChatterton one. Gilbert died in 1780, and Louis XV. Had passed from thearms of his last mistress, Scarlatina Maligna, six years before, to beactually made the subject of a funeral panegyric by the poet. In fact, the sufferings of the latter have been argued to be pure legend. Butthis of course affects _literature_ hardly at all; and Vigny had aperfect right to use the accepted version. [255] Why should a "basket" be specially silly? The answer is that theoriginal comparison was to a "panier _percé_, " a basket which won't holdanything. But the phrase got shortened. [256] He not only, in the face of generally known and public history, makes the man who was positively insolent to George III. A flunky ofroyalty, but assigns, as the immediate cause of the poet's suicide, theoffer to him of a lucrative but menial office in the Mansion House! Now, if not history, biography tells us that Beckford's own death, and theconsequent loss of hope from him, were at least among the causes, if notthe sole cause, of the _subsequent_ catastrophe. [257] He has contrived, with the help of the gaoler's daughter Rose, tosuppress an earlier inclusion of Chénier's name in the tumbril-list; andthus might have saved him altogether, but for the father's insanereminder to Robespierre. [258] But she had to go backwards through the circles between Thermidorand Brumaire, and can hardly be said to have "seen the stars" even then. Vigny has, as we shall see, touched on the less enormous andflagrant--but as individual things scarcely less atrocious--crimes ofthe Directory in the first story of his next book. [259] There might of course have been spy-subordinates (cf. The case ofD'Artagnan and Belleisle), with secret commissions to meet and renderfutile his disobedience; but nothing of the sort is even hinted. [260] Vigny, with perfect probability, but whether with completehistorical accuracy or not I do not know, represents this uselessexposure as wanton bravado on Napoleon's part. [261] There may perhaps have been some private reasons for hisenthusiasm. At any rate it is pleasant to compare it with the offensivemanner in which this "heroic sailor-soul" and admirably good man hassometimes been treated by the more pedantic kind of naval historian. CHAPTER VII THE MINORS OF 1830 There is always a risk (as any one who remembers a somewhat ludicrousoutburst of indignation, twenty or thirty years ago, among certainEnglish versemen will acknowledge) in using the term "minor. " But it istoo useful to be given up; and in this particular case, if the verygreatest novelists are not of the company, there are those whosegreatness in other ways, and whose more than mediocrity in this, shouldappease the admirers of their companions. We shall deal here with thenovel work of Sainte-Beuve, the greatest critic of France; of EugèneSue, whose mere popularity exceeded that of any other writer discussedin this half of the volume except Dumas; of men like Sandeau, Charles deBernard, and Murger, whose actual work in prose fiction is not much lessthan consummate in its own particular key and subdivisions; of one ofthe best political satirists in French fiction, Louis Reybaud; and ofothers still, like Soulié, Méry, Achard, Féval, Ourliac, Roger deBeauvoir, Alphonse Karr, Émile Souvestre, who, to no small extentindividually and to a very great extent when taken in battalion, helpedto conquer that supreme reputation for amusingness, for pastime, whichthe French novel has so long enjoyed throughout Europe. And these willsupply not a little material for the survey of the generalaccomplishment of that novel in the first half of the century, whichwill form the subject of a "halt" or Interchapter, when Dumashimself--the one "major" left, and left purposely--has been discussed. [Sidenote: Sainte-Beuve. --_Volupté. _] When Sainte-Beuve, thirty years after the book first appeared, subjoineda most curious Appendix to his only novel, _Volupté_, he included aletter of his own, in which he confesses that it is "not in the precisesense a novel at all. " It is certainly in some respects an outlier, evenof the outlying group to which it belongs--the group of _René_ and_Adolphe_ and their followers. [Sidenote: Its "puff-book. "] I do not remember anything, even in a wide sense, quite like thisAppendix--at least in the work of an author _majorum gentium_. Itconsists of a series of extracts, connected by remarks of Sainte-Beuve'sown, from the "puff"-letters which distinguished people had sent him, inrecompense for the copies of the book which he had sent _them_. Mostpeople who write have had such letters, and "every fellow likes a hand. "The persons who enjoy being biographied expect them, I suppose, to bepublished after their deaths; and I have known, I think, some writers of"Reminiscences" who did it themselves in their lifetimes. But itcertainly is funny to find the acknowledged "first critic" in the Europeor the world of his day paralleling from private sources the collectionswhich are (quite excusably) added as advertisements from publishedcriticisms to later editions of a book. Intrinsically the things, nodoubt, have interest. Chateaubriand, whose _René_ is effusively praisedin the novel, opens with an equally effusive but rather brief letter ofthanks, not destitute of the apparent artificiality which, for all hisgenius, distinguished that "noble _Why_count, " and perhaps, for all its"butter, " partly responsible for the _aigre-doux_ fashion in which theprais_ee_ subsequently treated the prais_er_. Michelet, Villemain, andNisard are equally favourable, and perhaps a little more sincere, thoughNisard (of course) is in trouble about Sainte-Beuve's divagations fromthe style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Brizeux applaudsin prose _and_ verse. Madame de Castries (Balzac's "Duchesse deLangeais"), afterwards an intimate personal friend of the critic's, acknowledges, in an anonymous letter, her "profound emotion. " Lesser, but not least, people like Magnin join. Eugénie de Guérin bribes herfuture eulogist. Madame Desbordes-Valmore, _the_ French poetess of theday, is enthusiastic as to the book: and George Sand herself writes agood half-dozen small-printed and exuberant pages, in which the only(but repeated) complaint is that Sainte-Beuve actually makes his herofind comfort in Christianity. Neither Lamartine (as we might haveexpected) nor Lamennais (whose disciple Sainte-Beuve had tried to be)liked it; but Lacordaire did not disapprove. [Sidenote: Itself. ] Before saying anything more about it, let us give a brief argument ofit--a thing which it requires more (for reasons to be given later) thanmost books, whether "precisely" novels or not. It is the autobiographichistory of a certain "Amaury" (whose surname, I think, we never hear), addressed as a caution to a younger friend, no name of whom we ever hearat all. The friend is too much addicted to the pleasures of sense, andAmaury gives him his own experience of a similar tendency. Despite thesubject and the title, there is nothing in the least "scabrous" in it. Lacordaire himself, it seems, gave it a "vu et approuvé" as beingsomething that a seminarist or even a priest (which Amaury finishes, tothe great annoyance of George Sand, as being) might have composed foredifying purposes. But the whole is written to show the truth of aquatrain of the Judicious Poet: The wise have held that joys of sense, The more their pleasure is intense, More certainly demand again Usurious interest of pain; though the moral is enforced in rather a curious manner. Amaury is theonly, and orphan, representative of a good Norman or Breton family, whohas been brought up by an uncle, and arrives at adolescence just at thetime of the Peace of Amiens or thereabouts. He has escaped theheathendom which reigned over France a decade previously, and is also agood Royalist, but very much "left to himself" in other ways. Inevitably, he falls in love, though at first half-ignorant of what heis doing or what is being done to him. The first object is a girl, Amélie de Liniers, in every way desirable in herself, but unluckily notenough desired by him. He is insensibly divided from her by acquaintancewith the chief royalist family of the district, the Marquis and Marquisede Couaën, with the latter of whom he falls again in much deeper love, though never to any guilty extent. She, who is represented as the real"Elle, " is again superseded, at least partially, by a "Madame R. , " whois a much less immaculate person, though the precise extent of theindulgence of their affections is left veiled. But, meanwhile, Amaury'stendency towards "Volupté" has, after his first visit to Paris, led himto indulge in the worship of Venus Pandemos, _parallèlement_ with hismore exalted passions. No individual object or incident is mentioned inany detail; and the passages relating to this side of the matter are soobscurely phrased that a very innocent person might--without stupidityquite equal to the innocence--be rather uncertain what is meant. But thetwin ravages--of more or less pure passion unsatisfied and wholly impuresatisfied appetite--ruin the patient's peace of mind. Alongside of thisconflict there is a certain political interest. The Marquis de Couaën isa fervent Royalist, and so willing to be a conspirator that he actuallygets arrested. But he is an ineffectual kind of person, though in nosense a coward or a fool. Amaury meets with a much greater example of"Thorough" in Georges Cadoudal, and only just escapes being entangled inthe plot which resulted in the execution[262] of Cadoudal himself; thepossible suicide but probable murder[262] of Pichegru, if not of others;the kidnapping and unquestionable murder[262] of the Duc d'Enghien, andthe collapse of the career of Moreau. Some other real persons arebrought in, though in an indirect fashion. Finally, the conflict offlesh and spirit and the general tumult of feeling are too much forAmaury, and he takes refuge, through the seminary, in the priesthood. The last event of the book is the death and burial of Madame de Couaën, her husband and Amaury somewhat melodramatically--and perhaps with aslight suggestion both of awkward allegory and possibleburlesque--hammering literal nails into her coffin, one on each side. In addition to the element of passion (both "passion_ate_" in theEnglish and "passion_nel_" in the French sense) and that of politics, there is a good deal of more abstract theology and philosophy, chieflyof the mixed kind, as represented in various authors from Pascal--indeedfrom the Fathers--to Saint-Martin. [263] [Sidenote: Its character in various aspects. ] Now the book (which is undoubtedly a very remarkable one, whether itdoes or does not deserve that other epithet which I have seen denied toit, of "interesting") may be regarded in two ways. The first--as adocument in regard to its author--is one which we have seldom taken inthis _History_, and which the present historian avoids taking as oftenas he can. Here, however, it may be contended (and discussion under thenext head will strengthen the contention) that it is almost impossibleto do the book justice, and not very easy even to understand it, withoutsome consideration of the sort. When Sainte-Beuve published it, he hadrun up, or down, a rather curious gamut of creeds and crazes. He hadbeen a fervent Romantic. He had (for whatever mixture of reasons neednot be entered into here) exchanged this first faith, wholly orpartially, for that singular _un_faith of Saint-Simonianism, which, ifwe had not seen other things like it since and at the present day, wouldseem incredible as even a hallucination of good wits. He had left thisagain to endeavour to be a disciple of Lamennais, and had, notsurprisingly, failed. He was now to set himself to the strange Herculeantask of his _Port-Royal_, which had effects upon him, perhaps strangerat first sight than on reflection. It left him, after these vicissitudesand pretty certainly some accompanying experiences adumbrated in_Volupté_ itself, "L'oncle Beuve" of his later associates--afree-thinker, though not a violent one, in religion; a critic, neverperhaps purely literary, but, as concerns literature and life combined, of extraordinary range, sanity, and insight; yet sometimes singularlystunted and limited in respect of the greatest things, and--one has tosay it, though there is no need to stir the mud as it has been stirred[264]--something of a "porker of Epicurus. " Now, with such additional light as this sketch may furnish, let usreturn to the book itself. I have said that it has been pronounced"uninteresting, " and it must be confessed that, in some ways, the authorhas done all he could to make it so. In the first place it is much toolong; he has neglected the examples of _René_ and _Adolphe_, and givennearly four hundred solid and closely packed pages to a story with verylittle incident, very little description, only one solidly presentedcharacter, and practically no conversation. There is hardly a novelknown to me from which the disadvantages of some more or less mechanicalfault of presentation--often noticed in this _History_--could be betterillustrated than from _Volupté_. I have called the pages "solid, " andthey are so in more than the general, more even than the technicalprinter's sense. One might imagine that the author had laid a wagerthat he would use the smallest number of paragraph-breaks possible. There are none at all till page 6 (the fourth of the actual book);blocks of the same kind occur constantly afterwards, and more than one, or at most two, "new pars" are very rare indeed on a page. Even suchconversation as there is is not extracted from the matrix of narrative, and the whole is unbroken _récit_. It may seem that there is, and has been elsewhere, too much stress laidupon this point. But if I, who am something of a _helluo librorum_, andvery seldom find anything that resists my devouring faculty, feel thisdifficulty, how much more must persons who require to be tempted andbaited on by mechanical and formal allurements? Still, some strong-minded person may say: "These are 'shallows andmiseries'--base mechanical considerations. Tell me _why_ the book, asmatter, has been found uninteresting. " In this instance there will be nodifficulty in complying with the request. Let me at once say that I donot consider it uninteresting myself; that, in fact (and strongertestimony is hardly possible), after reading great part of it withoutappetite and "against the grain, " I began to take a very considerableinterest in it. But this did not prevent my having a pretty clear notionof what seem to me faults of treatment, and even of conception, quiteindependent of those already mentioned. The main one is somewhat "tickle of the sere" to handle. It has beensaid that, despite its alarming title, there is nothing in the book thateven prudery, unless it were of the most irritable and morbid kind, could object to. There is no dwelling on what Defoe ingeniously calls"the vicious part" of the matter; there is no description of it closerthan, if as close as, some passages of the Book of Proverbs (which areactually quoted), and, above all, there is no hint of any satisfactionwhatever being derived from the sins by the sinner. His course in thisrespect might have been a succession of fits of vertigo or epilepsy asfar as pleasure goes. There is even a rather fine piece of realpsychology as to his state of mind after his first succumbing totemptation. But all this abstinence and reticence, however laudable in asense it may be, necessarily deprives the passages of anything butpurely psychological interest, and leaves most of them not much of that. Luxury _in vacuo_ may, no doubt, be perilous to the culprit; but it has, for others, nearly as much of the unreal and chimerical as Gluttonyconfined to "Second intentions. " Yet there is another objection to _Volupté_ which is even more closely"psychological, " and which has been indicated in the word"parallèlement, " suggested by, though largely transposed from, Verlaine's use thereof in a title. There is no connectionestablished--there is even, it may seem, a great gulf fixed betweenAmaury's actual "loves" for Amélie de Liniers, for Lucy de Couaën, andeven for the more questionable Madame R. , and those "sippings of thelower draught" which are so industriously veiled. If Amaury had"disdamaged" himself, for his inability to possess any of his real andsuperior loves, by lower indulgences, it would have been discreditablebut human. But there is certainly no expression--there is, unless Imistake, hardly any suggestion--of anything of the kind. The currents ofspiritual and animal passion seem to have run independently of eachother, like canals at different heights on the slope of a hill. I do notknow that this is less discreditable; but it seems to me infinitely lesshuman. And, while carefully abstaining from any attempt to connect thepeculiarity with the above-mentioned scandals about Sainte-Beuve's lifeand conversation in detail, one may suggest that it offers someexplanation of the unquestioned facts about this; also (and this is ofinfinitely more importance) of that absence of ability to loveliterature in anything like a passionate way, which, with a certainother inability to love literature for itself, prevents him fromattaining the absolutely highest level in criticism, though his commandof ranges just below the highest is wider and firmer than that of anyother critic on record. * * * * * [Sidenote: Jules Sandeau and Charles de Bernard. ] We may next take, to some extent together, two writers of the novel whomade their reputation in the July Monarchy, though one of them longoutlived it; who, though this one inclined to a sort of domestic tragedyand the other to pure comedy, resembled each other not a little inclinging to ordinary life, and my estimate of whom is considerablyhigher than that recently (or, I think, at present) entertained byFrench critics or by those English critics who think it right to beguided by their French _confrères_. This estimate, however, has beengiven at length in another place, [265] and I quite admit that thesubjects, though I have not in the least lowered my opinion of them, canhardly be said (like Gautier, Mérimée, Balzac, and Dumas, in the presentpart of this volume, or others later) to demand, in a general History, very large space in dealing with them. I shall therefore endeavour tosummarise my corrected impressions more briefly than in those othercases. This shortening may, I think, be justified doubly: in the firstplace, because any one who is enough of a student to want more can go tothe other handling; and, in the second, because the only excellent way, of reading the books themselves, may be adopted with very unusualabsence of any danger of disappointment. I hardly know any work ofeither Jules Sandeau or of Charles de Bernard which is not worth readingby persons of fairly catholic tastes in novel pastime. The first-named--the younger by some half-dozen years, but the first topublish by more than as many--concerns those who take a merely or mainlyanecdotic interest in literature by his well-known _liaison_ with GeorgeSand--to whom he gave _dimidium nominis_, and perhaps for a time atleast _dimidium cordis_, though he probably did not get it back so much"in a worse estate"[266] as was the case with Musset and Chopin. Sandeau's collaboration with her in novel-writing was long afterwardssucceeded by another in dramaturgy with Émile Augier, which resulted inat least one of the most famous French plays of the nineteenth century, _Le Gendre de M. Poirier_, based on Sandeau's _Sacs et Parchemins_. Butwe need busy ourselves only with the novels themselves. [Sidenote: Sandeau's work. ] Sandeau was barely twenty when he wrote _Rose et Blanche_, during thetime of, and with his partner in, that most dangerous of all possible_liaisons_. But he was nearly thirty when he produced his own first workof note, _Marianna_. In this, in _Fernand_, and in _Valcreuse_, allbooks above the average in merit, there is what may be called, from nomere Grundyite point of view, the drawback that they are all studies of"the triangle. " They are quite decently, and in fact morally, though notgoodily, handled. But it certainly may be objected thattrigonometry[267] of this kind occupies an exorbitant place in Frenchliterature, and one may be a little sorry to see a neophyte of talenttaking to it. However, though Sandeau in these books showed his ability, his way did not really lie _in_, though it might lie _through_, them. Hehad, indeed, as a novelist should have, good changes of strings to hisbow, if not even more than one or two bows to shoot in. No Frenchman has written a better boy's book than _La Roche auxMouettes_, deservedly well known to English readers in translation: andwhether he did or did not enter into designed competition with his_quondam_ companion on the theme of Pastoral _berquinade_, I do notmyself think that _Catherine_ is much below _La Petite Fadette_ or _LaMare au Diable_. He was a very considerable master of the short story;you cannot have much better things of the kind than _Le Jour sansLendemain_ and _Un Début dans la Magistrature_. But his special gift layin treating two situations which sometimes met, or crossed, or evensubstantially coincided. The one was the contrast of new and old, whether from the side of actual "money-bags and archives" or fromothers. The second and higher development of, or alternative to, thiswas the working out of the subdued tragical, in which, short of the verygreat masters, he had few superiors, while the quietness of his tonesand values even, enhances to some tastes the poignancy of the generaleffect. _Mlle. De La Seiglière_ is, I suppose, the best representativeof the first class as a novel, for _Sacs et Parchemins_, as has beensaid, waited for dramatisation to bring out its merits. The pearls orpinks of the other are _Mlle. De Kérouare_ and _La Maison de Penarvan_, the latter the general favourite, the former mine. Both have admirablymanaged _peripeteias_, the shorter story (_Mlle. De Kérouare_) having, in particular, a memorable setting of that inexorable irony of Fateagainst which not only is there no armour, but not even the chance andconsolement of fighting armourless. When Marie de Kérouare accepts, ather father's wish, a suitor suitable in every way, but somewhatundemonstrative; when she falls in love (or thinks she does) with ahandsome young cousin; when the other aspirant loses or risks all hisfortune as a Royalist, and she will not accept what she might have, hisretirement, thereby eliciting from her father a _mot_ like the best ofCorneille's;[268] when, having written to a cousin excusing herself, shegets a mocking letter telling her that _he_ is married already; whenthe remorseless turn of Fortune's wheel loses her the real lover whomshe at last really does love--then it is not mere sentimental-Romantictwaddle; it is a slice of life, soaked in the wine of Romantictragedy. [269] [Sidenote: Bernard's] In Charles de Bernard (or, if anybody is unable to read novels publishedunder a pseudonym with sufficient comfort, Charles Bernard du Grail dela Villette[270]) one need not look for high passions and great actionsof this kind. He does try tragedy sometimes, [271] but, as has beenalready admitted, it is not his trade. Occasionally, as in _Gerfaut_, hetakes the "triangle" rather seriously _à la_George-Sand-and-the-rest-of-them. The satirists have said that, thoughnot invariably (our present author contains cautions on that point) yetas a rule, if you take yourself with sufficient seriousness, mankindwill follow suit. It is certainly very risky to appear to take yourselfnot seriously. _Gerfaut_, I believe, is generally held to be Bernard'smasterpiece. I remember that even my friend Mr. Andrew Lang, who seldomdiffered with me on points of pure literature, almost gravelyremonstrated with me for not thinking enough of it. There are admirablethings in _Gerfaut_; but they are, as it seems to me, _separately_admirable, and so are more like grouped short stories than like a wholelong novel. He wrote other books of substance, two of them, _UnBeau-père_ and _Le Gentilhomme Campagnard_, each extending to a brace ofwell-filled volumes. But these, as well as the single-volume but stillsubstantial _Un Homme Sérieux_ and _Les Ailes d'Icare_, like _Gerfaut_itself, could all, I think, be split up into shorter stories withoutdifficulty and with advantage. It is of course very likely that thecomparative slighting which the author has received from M. Brunetièreand other French critics of the more theoretic kind is due to this. Thestrict rule-system no doubt disapproves of the mere concatenation ofscenes--still more of the mere accumulation of them. We, on the other hand, _quibus est nihil negatum_, or who at any ratedeny nothing to our favourite authors so long as they amuse or interestus, ought to be--and some of the best as well as the not-best of us havebeen--very fond of Charles de Bernard. How frankly and freely Thackeraypraised, translated, and adapted him ought to be known to everybody; andindeed there was a great similarity between the two. The Frenchman hadnothing of Thackeray's strength--of his power of creating character; ofhis intensity when he cared to be intense; of his satiric sweep and"stoop"; of his spacious view and masterly grasp of life. But in someways he was a kind of Thackeray several degrees underproof--a small-beerThackeray that was a very excellent creature. In his grasp of a pure andsimple comic situation; in his faculty of carrying this out decently toits appropriate end; and, above all, in the admirable quality of hisconversation, he was really a not so very minor edition of his greatEnglish contemporary. Almost the only non-technical fault that can befound with him--and it has been found by French as well as Englishcritics, so there is no room for dismissing the charge as due to amerely insular cult of "good form"--is the extreme unscrupulousness ofsome of his heroes, who appear to have no sense of honour at all. Yet, in other ways, no French novelist of the century has obtained ordeserved more credit for drawing ladies and gentlemen. It has beenhinted that the inability to do this has been brought as a chargeagainst even the mighty Honoré, [272] and that, here at any rate, it hasbeen found impossible to deny it absolutely. But if the company of theHuman Comedy falls short in this respect, it is not because some of itsmembers do "shady" things. It is because the indefinable, but to thosewho can perceive it unmistakable, _aura_ of "gentility"--in the true andnot the debased sense--is, at best, questionably present. This is notthe case with Bernard. It is particularly difficult, in such a book as this, to deal with solarge a collection of what may be most appropriately called "Scenes andCharacters" as that which constitutes his most valuable if not all hisvaluable work. In the older handling referred to, I selected, for prettyfull abstract and some translation, _Un Homme Sérieux_ among longerbooks, and _Le Gendre_ among the short stories; and I still think themthe best, except _Le Pied d'Argile_, which, from Thackeray'sincomparable adaptation[273] of it in _The Bedford Row Conspiracy_, remains as a standing possibility of acquaintance with Charles deBernard's way for those who do not read French, or do not care to"research" for the original. Thackeray also gave a good deal of _LesAiles d'Icare_ in abstract and translation, and he borrowed somethingmore from it in _A Shabby Genteel Story_. _La Peau du Lion_ and _LaChasse aux Amants_ have some slight resemblance to _Le Gendre_, in thatthe gist of all three is concerned with the defeat of unscrupulouslovers, and neither is much inferior to it. I never knew anybody who hadread _La Femme de Quarante Ans_ and its history of sentimentalstar-gazing _à deux_ without huge enjoyment; and _L'Arbre de laScience_, as well as the shorter _Un Acte de Vertu_, deserve specialmention. But, in fact, take the volumes entitled _L'Écueil_, _Le NoeudGordien_, _Le Paravent, _ and _Le Paratonnerre_; open any of them whereyou like, and it will go hard but, in the comic stories at any rate, youwill find yourself well off. The finest of the tragic ones is, I think, _L'Anneau d'Argent_, which in utilising the sad inefficacy of theLegitimist endeavours to upset the July Monarchy, comes close to thealready-mentioned things of Sandeau and Ourliac. That a critic like M. Brunetière should dismiss Bernard as "commonplace"(I forget the exact French word, but the meaning was either this or"mediocre"), extending something the same condemnation, or damninglyfaint praise, to Sandeau, may seem strange at first sight, but explainsitself pretty quickly to those who have the requisite knowledge. Neithercould, by any reasonable person, be accused of that _grossièreté_ whichoffended the censor so much, and to no small extent so rightly. Neitherwas extravagantly unacademic or in other ways unorthodox. But both mightbe called _vulgaire_ from the same point of view which made Madame deStaël so call her greatest contemporary as a she-novelist--one, too, somuch greater than herself. [274] That is to say, they did deal withstrictly ordinary life, and neither attempted that close psychologicalanalysis and ambitious _schematism_ which (we have been told) is thepride of the French novel, and which, certainly, some French criticshave supposed to be of its essence. These points of view I have leftundiscussed for the most part, but have consistently in practicedeclined to take, in the first volume, while they are definitely opposedand combated in more than one passage of this. [275] I admit thatSandeau, save in the one situation where I think he comes near to thefirst class--that of subdued resignation to calamity--is not passionate;I admit that Bernard has a certain superficiality, and that, as has beenconfessed already, his "form" sometimes leaves to desire. But they bothseem to me to have, in whatever measure and degree, what, with me, isthe article of standing or falling in novels--humanity. And theyseem--also to me, and speaking under correction--to _write_, if notconsummately, far more than moderately well, and to _tell_ in a fashionfor which consummate is not too strong a word. While for pure gaiety, unsmirched by coarseness and unspoilt by ill-nature, you will not findmuch better pastime anywhere than in the work of the author of_L'Écueil_ and _Le Paratonnerre_. Indeed these two--though the _berquinade_ tendency, considerably_masculated_, prevails in one, and the _esprit gaulois_, decorouslydraped, in the other--seem to me to run together better than any twoother novelists of our company. They do not attempt elaborate analysis;they do not grapple with thorny or grimy problems; they are notpurveyors of the indecent, or dealers in the supernatural and fantastic, or poignant satirists of society at large or individuals in particular. But they can both, in their different ways, tell a plain tale uncommonlywell, and season it with wit or pathos when either is suitable. Theirmen and women are real men and women, and the stages on which they moveare not _mere_ stages, but pieces of real earth. * * * * * [Sidenote: Sue, Soulié, and the novel of melodrama--_Le Juif Errant_, etc. ] As regards one formerly almost famous and still well-known novelist, Eugène Sue, I am afraid I shall be an unprofitable servant to suchmasters in the guise of readers as desire to hear about him. For he isone more of those--I do not think I have had or shall have to confess tomany--whom I have found it almost impossible to read. I acknowledge, indeed, that though at the first reading (I do not know how many yearsago) of his most famous work, _Le Juif Errant_, I found no merit in itat all, at a second, though I do not think that even then I quite gotthrough it, I had to allow a certain grandiosity. _The Mysteries ofParis_ has always defeated me, and I am now content to enjoy Thackeray'svery admirable _précis_ of part of it. Out of pure goodness and sheerequity I endeavoured, for the present volume, to make myself acquaintedwith one of his later books--the immense _Sept Péchés Capitaux_, whichis said to be a Fourierist novel, and explains how the vices may beinduced, in a sort of Mandeville-made-amiable fashion, to promote thegood of society. I found it what Mrs. Browning has made somebodypronounce Fourier himself in _Aurora Leigh_, "Naught!"[276] except thatI left them at the end actually committing an Eighth deadly sin bydrinking _iced_ Constantia![277] Sue, who had been an army surgeon andhad served during the Napoleonic war, both on land and at sea, wrote, before he took to his great melodramas, some rather extravagant navalnovels, which are simply rubbish compared with Marryat, but inthemselves not quite, I think, so difficult to read as his better knownwork. I remember one in particular, but I am not certain whether it was_La Coucaratcha_ or _La Vigie de Koatven_. They are both very nicetitles, and I am so much afraid of disillusionment that I have thoughtit better to look neither up for this occasion. [278] [Sidenote: Melodramatic fiction generally. ] The fact is, as it seems to me, that the proper place for melodrama isnot the study but the stage. I fear I have uttered some heresies aboutthe theatre in this book, and I should not be sorry if I never passedthrough its doors again. If I must, I had rather the entertainment weremelodrama than anything else. The better the play is as literature, themore I wish that I might be left to read it in comfort and see it actedwith my mind's eye only. But I can rejoice in the valiant curate when(with the aid of an avalanche, if I remember rightly) he triumphs overthe wicked baronet, who is treading on the fingers of the heroine asshe hangs over the precipice. I can laugh and applaud when the heroicmother slashes her daughter's surreptitious portrait in full Academy. The object of melodrama is to make men rejoice and laugh; but it seemsto me to require the stage to do it on, or at any rate to receive animmense assistance from theatrical presentation. So given, it escapesthe curse of _segnius irritant_, because it attacks both ear and eye;being entirely independent of style (which _is_ in such cases actually_gênant_), it does not need the quiet and solitary devotion whichenjoyment of style demands; and it is immensely improved by dresses and_décor_, scenery and music, and "spectacle" generally--all things which, again, interfere with pure literary enjoyment. I shall hope to havedemonstrated, or at any rate done something to show, how Dumas, when athis best, and even not quite at his best, escapes the actualmelodramatic. Perhaps this was because he had purged himself of thestagy element in his abundant theatric exercise earlier. Sue, of course, dramatised or got dramatised a considerable part of his many inventions;but I think one can see that they were not originally stage-stuff. If, however, any one must have melodrama, but at the same time does notwant it in stage form, I should myself recommend to him Frédéric Souliéin preference to Eugène Sue. Soulié is, indeed, a sort of blend of Dumasand Sue, but more melodramatic than the former, and less full of grimeand purpose and other "non-naturals" of the novel than the latter. It isevident that he has taken what we may call his schedules pretty directlyfrom Scott himself; but he has filled them up with more melodramaticmaterial. It is very noteworthy, too, that Soulié, like Dumas, turned_his_ stagy tastes and powers on to actual stage-work, and so kept thetwo currents duly separate. And it seems to be admitted that he hadactual literary power, if he did not achieve much actual literaryperformance. [Sidenote: _Le Château des Pyrénées. _] For myself, I think that _Le Château des Pyrénées_ is a thing, that inDe Quincey's famous phrase, you _can_ recommend to a friend whoseappetite in fiction is melodramatic. Here is, if not exactly "_God's_plenty, " at any rate plenty of a kind--plenty whose horn isinexhaustible and the reverse of monotonous. You never, though you haveread novels as the waves of the sea or the sands of the shore in number, know exactly what is going to happen, and when you think you know whatis happening, it turns out to be something else. Persons who wear, as tothe manner born, the jackets of lackeys turn out to be bishops; andbishops prove to be coiners. An important _jeune premier_ or_quasi-premier_, having just got off what seems to be imminent danger, is stabbed in the throat, is left for dead, and then carries out aseries of risky operations and conversations for several hours. Acastle, more than Udolphian in site, size, incidents, and opportunities, is burnt at a moment's notice, as if it were a wigwam. Everybody's sonsand daughters are somebody else's daughters and sons--a state of thingsnot a little facilitated by the other fact that everybody's wife issomebody else's mistress. Everybody knows something mysterious andexceedingly damaging about everybody else; and the whole company wouldbe cleared off the stage in the first few chapters if something did notalways happen to make them drop the daggers in a continual stalemate. Dukes who are governors of provinces and peers of France are also heads(or think they are) of secret societies--the orthodox members of whichchiefly do the coining, but are quite ignorant that a large number ofother members are Huguenots (it is not long after the "Revocation") andare, in the same castle, storing arms for an insurrection. Spanishcounts who are supposed to have been murdered fifteen years ago turn upquite uninjured, and ready for the story to go on sixteen years longer. When you have got an ivory casket supposed to be full of all sorts ofcompromising documents, somebody produces another, exactly like it, butcontaining documents more compromising still. There is a counsellor ofthe Parliament of Toulouse--supposed to be not merely a severemagistrate, but a man of spotless virtue, and one who actually submitsfearlessly to great danger in doing his duty, but who turns out to be anatrocious criminal. And in the centre of all the turmoil there is awondrous figure, a sorcerer-shepherd, who is really an Italian prince, who pulls all the strings, makes all cups slip at all lips, sets up andupsets all the puppets, and is finally poniarded by the wickedcounsellor, both of them having been caught at last, and the counsellorgoing mad after commission of his final crime. Now, if anybody wants more than this--there is, in fact, a great dealmore in the compass of two volumes, [279] containing between them lessthan six hundred pages--all I can say is that he is vexatious andunreasonable, and that I have no sympathy whatever with him. Of coursethe book is of its own kind, and not of another. Some people may likethat kind less than others; some may not like it at all. But in thatcase nobody obliges them to have anything to do with it. Soulié wrote nearly two score novels or works of fiction, ranging from_Contes pour les Enfants_ to _Mémoires du Diable_. I do not pretend tohave read all or even very many of them, for, as I have confessed, theyare not my special kind. In novels of action there should be a greatdeal of fighting and a great deal of love-making, and it does not seemto me that either[280] was Soulié's forte. But as the _Mémoires_ aresometimes quoted as his masterpiece, something should, I suppose, besaid about them. [Sidenote: _Les Mémoires du Diable. _] One thing about the book is certain--that it is much more ambitiouslyplanned than the _Château_; and I do not think it uncritical to say thatthe ambition is, to a certain extent, successful. One credit, at anyrate, can hardly be denied it. Considering the immense variety incircumstances of the bargains with the Devil which are made in actuallife, it may seem strange that the literary treatment of the subjectshould be so comparatively monotonous as it is. Soulié, I think, hasbeen at least as original as anybody else, though it was of coursealmost impossible for him to avoid suggestions, if not of Marlowe, ofLesage, Goethe, Maturin (whose wide popularity in France at this timemust never be forgotten), and others. At the very beginning there is onetouch which, if not absolutely invented, is newish in the connection. The Château of Ronquerolles, again in the Pyrenean district (besides theadvantages of a mountainous country, Soulié himself was born at Foix), has a range of mysterious windows, each of which has for manygenerations emerged, with the room appertaining, from wall and corridorwithout anybody remembering it before. [281] As a matter of fact thesechambers have been the scenes of successive bargains between the Lordsof Ronquerolles and the Prince of Darkness; and a fresh one is openedwhenever the last inheritor of an ancestral curse (details of which areexplained later) has gone to close his account. The new Count de Luizziknows what he has to do, which is to summon Satan by a certain littlesilver bell at the not most usual but sufficiently witching hour of_two_ A. M. , saying at the same time, "Come!" After a slightly trivialfarce-overture of apparitions in various banal forms, Luizzi compels thefallen archangel to show himself in his proper shape; and the bargain isconcluded after some chaffering. It again is not quite the usual form;there being, as in Melmoth's case, a redemption clause, though adifferent one. If the man can say and show, after ten years, that he hasbeen happy he will escape. The "consideration" is also uncommon. Luizzidoes not want wealth, which, indeed, he possesses; nor, directly, pleasure, etc. , which he thinks he can procure for himself. He wants(God help him!) to know all about other people, their past lives, theirtemptations, etc. --a thing which a person of sense and taste would doanything, short of selling himself to the Devil, _not_ to know. Thereare, however, some apparently liberal, if discreditable, concessions--that Luizzi may reveal, print, and in any other way availhimself of the diabolic information. But, almost immediately, themetaphorical cloven foot and false dice appear. For it seems that incertain circumstances Luizzi can only rid himself of his ally whenunwelcome, and perform other acts, at the price of forfeiting a month ofhis life--a thing likely to abridge and qualify the ten years veryconsiderably, and the "happiness" more considerably still. [282] And thisfoul play, or at any rate sharp practice, continues, as might beexpected, throughout. The evil actions which Luizzi commits are not, asusual, committed with impunity as to ordinary worldly consequences, while he is constantly enlarging the debt against his soul. He is alsoalways getting into trouble by mixing up his supernatural knowledge withhis ordinary life, and he even commits murder without intending orindeed knowing it. This is all rather cleverly managed; though theend--the usual sudden "foreclosure" by Diabolus, despite the effort ofno less than three Gretchens who go upwards, and of a sort of inchoaterepentance on Luizzi's own part before he goes downwards--might bebetter. The bulk, however, of the book, which is a very long one--three volumesand nearly a thousand closely printed pages--consists of the _histoires_or "memoirs" (whence the title) of other people which the Devil tellsLuizzi, sometimes by actual _récit_, sometimes otherwise. Naturally theyare most of them grimy; though there is nothing of the Laclos or even ofthe Paul de Kock kind. I find them, however, a little tedious. [Sidenote: Later writers and writings of the class. ] The fact, indeed, is that this kind of novel--as has been hintedsometimes, and sometimes frankly asserted--has its own peculiarappeals; and that these appeals, as is always the case when they arepeculiar, leave some ears deaf. There is no intention here to intimateany superfine scorn of it. It has another and a purely literary, or atleast literary-scientific, interest as descending from the Terror Novelof the end of the eighteenth century. It shows no sign of ceasing toexist or to appeal to those to whom it is fitted to appeal, and who arefitted to be appealed to by it. Towards the close of the period at whichI ceased to see French novels generally, I remember meeting with manyexamples of it. There was one which, with engaging candour, calleditself _L'Hôtellerie Sanglante_, and in which persons, after drinkingwine which was, as Rogue Riderhood says, "fur from a 'ealthy wine, "retired to a rest which knew no or only a very brief and painful waking, under the guardianship of a young person, who, to any one in any othercondition, would have seemed equally "fur" from an attractive youngperson. There was another, the title of which I forget, in which theintended victim of a plunge into a water-logged _souterrain_ connectedwith the Seine made his way out and saw dreadful things in the houseabove. There is really no great interval or discrepancy (except indetails of manners and morals) between these and the novels ofdetective, gentleman-thief, and other impolite life which delight manypersons indubitably respectable and presumably intelligent in Englandto-day. [283] To sneer at these would be ridiculous. * * * * * [Sidenote: Murger. ] Henry Murger is not the least of the witnesses to the truth of aremark--which I owe to one of the critics of my earlier volume--that inEngland people (he was kind enough to except me) are too apt to acceptthe contemporary French estimates of French contemporary literature andthe traditional French estimates of earlier authors. Murger had, Ibelieve, a hardly earned and too brief popularity in his own country;and though it was a little before my time, I can believe that thisoverflowed into England. But the posthumous and accepted judgments ofhim altered _there_ to a sort of slighting patronage; and I rememberthat when, nearly twenty years after his death, I wrote on him in the_Fortnightly Review_, [284] some surprise at my loftier estimate wasexpressed _here_. The reasons for this depreciation are not hard togive, and as they form a base for, and indeed really a part of, mycritical estimate they may be stated shortly. The "Bohemia"[285] ofwhich Murger was the laureate, both in prose and verse, is a countrywhose charms have been admitted by some of the greatest, but which nowise person has ever regarded, much less recommended, as providing anycity to dwell in; and which has certainly been the scene if not theoccasion, not merely of much mischief, which does not particularlyconcern us, but of much foolishness and bad taste, which partly does. Itwas almost--not quite--the only theme of Murger's songs and words. And--last and perhaps most dangerous of all--there was the fact that, ifnot in definite Bohemianism, there was in other respects a good deal inhim of a far minor Musset, and both in Bohemianism and other thingsstill more of an inferior Gérard de Nerval. I believe the case _against_has been fairly stated here. [Sidenote: The _Vie de Bohême_. ] The case _for_ I have put in the essay referred to with the full, though, I think, not more than the fair emphasis allowed to even acritical advocate when he has to demolish charges. The historian passesfrom bar to bench; and neither ought to speak, nor in this instance isinclined to speak, quite so enthusiastically. I admitted there that Idid not think Murger's comparatively early death lost us much; and Iadmit even more frankly here, that in what he has left there is no greatvariety of excellence, and that while there are numerous good things inthe work, there is little that can be called actually great. But afterthese admissions no small amount remains to his credit as a writer whocan manage both comedy and pathos; who, if he has no wide range orvariety of subject, can vary his treatment quite efficiently, and whohas a certain freshness rarely surviving the first years of journalismof all work. His faintly but truly charming verse is outside our bounds, and even prose poetry like "The Loves of a Cricket and a Spark ofFlame"[286] are on the line, though this particular thing is not farbelow Gérard himself. The longer novels, _Adeline Protat_ and _Le SabotRouge_, are competent in execution and pleasant enough to read; yet theyare not above good circulating-library strength. But the _Vie deBohême_, in its various sections, and a great number of shorter talesand sketches, are thoroughly agreeable if not even delightful. Murgerhas completely shaken off the vulgarity which almost spoilt Pigault, anddamaged Paul de Kock not a little. If any one who has not yet reachedage, or has not let it make him "crabbed, " cannot enjoy Schaunard andthe tame lobster; the philosophic humours of Gustave (afterwards HisExcellency Gustave) Colline; the great journal _Le Castor_, [287] whichcombined the service of the hat-trade with the promotion of highthinking and great writing; and the rest of the comedy of _La Vie deBohême_ proper, I am sorry for him. He must have been, somehow, bornwrong. [Sidenote: _Les Buveurs d'Eau_ and the Miscellanies. ] The serious Bohemia of the _Buveurs d'Eau_ (the devotees of High Art whocarry their devotion to the point of contemning all "commission" workwhatsoever) may require more effort, or more special predestination, toget into full sympathy with it. The thing is noble; but it is nobility_party per_ a very thin _pale_ with and from silliness; and the Devil'sAdvocate has no very hard task in suggesting that it is not evennobility at all, but a compound of idleness and affectation. [288] Withrare exceptions, the greatest men of art and letters have neverdisdained, though they might not love, what one of them called "honestjourney-work in default of better"; and when those exceptions come to beexamined--as in the leading English cases of Milton[289] andWordsworth--you generally find that the persons concerned never reallyfelt the pinch of necessity. However, Murger makes the best of hisLazare and the rest of them; and his power over pathos, which iscertainly not small, assists him as much here as it does _more_ thanassist him--as it practically carries him through--in other stories suchas _Le Manchon de Francine_ and _La Biographie d'un Inconnu_. And, moreover, he can use all these means and more in handfuls of littlethings--some mere _bleuettes_ (as the French call them)--_Comment onDevient Coloriste_, _Le Victime du Bonheur_, _La Fleur Bretonne_, _LeFauteuil Enchanté_, _Les Premières Amours du Jeune Bleuet_. With such high praise still allotted to an author, it may seem unfairnot to give him more room; and I should certainly have done so if I hadnot had the other treatment to refer to. Since that existed, as in thesimilar cases of Sandeau, Bernard, and perhaps one or two more, itseemed to me that space, becoming more and more valuable, might beeconomised, especially as, in his case and theirs, there is nothingextraordinary to interest, nothing difficult to discuss. _Tolle_, _lege_is the suitable word for all three, and no fit person who obeys willregret his obedience. * * * * * [Sidenote: Reybaud--_Jérôme Paturot_, and Thackeray on its earlierpart. ] Any one who attempts to rival Thackeray's abstract ("_with_translations, Sir!") of the first part of Louis Reybaud's _JérômePaturot_ must have a better conceit of himself than that with which thepresent writer has been gifted, by the Divinity or any other power. Theessay[290] in which this appears contains some of the rather rash andrandom judgments to which its great author was too much addicted; he hadnot, for instance, come to his later and saner estimate of Dumas, [291]and still ranks him with Sue and Soulié. But the Paturot part itself issimply delightful, and must have sent many who were not fortunate enoughto know (or fortunate enough _not_ to know) it already to the book. Thiswell deserved and deserves to be known. Jérôme's own earlier career as aromantic and unread poet is not so brilliantly done as similar things inGautier's _Les Jeune-France_ and other books; but the Saint-Simoniansequel, in which so many _mil-huit-cent-trentiers_ besides Jérômehimself and (so surprisingly) Sainte-Beuve indulged, is most capitallyhit off. The hero's further experiences in company-meddling (with notdissimilar results to those experienced by Thackeray's own SamuelTitmarsh, and probably or certainly by Thackeray himself); and as theeditor of a journal enticing the _abonné_ with a _bonus_, which may beeither a pair of boots, a greatcoat, or a _gigot_ at choice; theside-hits at law and medicine; the relapse into trade and NationalGuardism; the visit to the Tuileries; the sad bankruptcy and thesubsequent retirement to a little place in the prefecture of a remotedepartment--all these things are treated in the best Gallic fashion, andwith a certain weight of metal not always achievable by "Gigadibs, theliterary man, " whether Gallic or Anglo-Saxon. Reybaud himself was aserious historian, a student of social philosophy, who has themelancholy honour of having popularised, if he did not invent, the word"Socialist" and the cheerfuller one of having faithfully dealt with thething Socialism. And Jérôme is well set off by his still more"Jeune-France" friend Oscar, a painter, not exactly a bad fellow, but a_poseur_, a dauber (he would have been a great Futurist or Cubistto-day), a very Bragadochio in words and flourish, and, alas! as heturns out presently, a Bragadochio also in deeds and courage. [Sidenote: The windfall of Malvina. ] But the gem of the book perhaps, as far as good novel-matter isconcerned (for Jérôme himself is not much more than a stalking-horse forsatire), is Malvina, his first left-handed and then "regularised"spouse, and very much his better half. Malvina is Paul de Kock'sgrisette (like all good daughters, she is very fond of her literaryfather) raised to a higher power, dealt with in a satiric fashionunknown to her parent, but in perfectly kindly temper. She is, thoughjust a little imperious, a thoroughly "good sort, " and, with occasionalblunders, really a guardian angel to her good-hearted, not uncourageous, but visionary and unpractical lover and husband. She has the sharpest oftongues; the most housewifely and motherly of attitudes; the flamingestof bonnets. It is she who suggests Saint-Simonianism (as a resource, notas a creed), and actually herself becomes a priestess of the firstclass--till the funds give out. She, being an untiring and unabashedcanvasser, gets Jérôme his various places; she reconciles hisnightcap-making uncle to him; she, when the pair go to the Palace and heis basely occupied with supper, carries him off in dudgeon because noneof the princes (and in fact nobody at all) has asked her to dance. Andwhen at last he subsides upon his shelf at the country prefecture, shebecomes delightfully domesticated--and keeps canaries. The book (at least its first two parts) appeared in 1843, when the JulyMonarchy was still in days of such palminess as it ever possessed, andThackeray reviewed it soon after. At the close of his article heexpressed a hope that M. Reybaud "had more of it, in brain or portfolio, for the benefit of the lazy, novel-reading, unscientific world. "Whether, at that time, the hope was in course of gratification I do notknow; but years later, when February had killed July, Thackeray's wishwas granted. It cannot be said that, as too often happens with wishes, the result was entirely disappointing; but it certainly justified thefamous description of a still larger number of them, in that only halfwas granted and the rest "whistled down the wind. " [Sidenote: The difference of the Second Part. ] _Jérôme Paturot à la recherche de la meilleure des Républiques_ almostdooms itself, by its title, to be a very much less merry book than_Jérôme Paturot à la recherche d'une position sociale_. The "sparkle"which Thackeray had justly seen in the first part is far rarer in thesecond; in fact, were it not for Oscar to some extent and Malvina to amuch greater, there would hardly be any sparkle at all. The Republic hasbeen proclaimed; a new "Commissary" ("Prefect" is an altogetherunrepublican word) is appointed; he is shortly after stirred up tovigorous action (usually in the way of cashiering officials), and Jérômeis a victim of this _mot d'ordre_. He goes to Paris to solicit; after acertain interval (of course of failure) Malvina comes to look after him, and to exercise the charms of her _chapeau grénat_ once more. But evenshe fails to find the birds which (such as they were) she had caught inthe earlier years' nests, until after the bloodshed of the barricades, where Oscar unfortunately fails to show himself a hero, while Jérômedoes useful work as a fighter on the side of comparative Order, andMalvina herself shines as a nurse. At last Paturot is appointed"Inspector-General of Arab Civilisation in North Africa, " and the pairset out for this promised, if not promising, land. He, like Gigadibs, provides himself with "instruments of labour"; Malvina, agreeable to thelast, provides _herself_ with several new dress-patterns of the latestfashion, and a complete collection of the _Journal des Modes_. This not very elaborate scenario, as worked out, fills nearly a thousandpages; but it is very much to be feared that the "lazy novel-reader"will get through but a few of them, and will readily return the book tohis own or other library shelves. It is, in fact, a bitterly satiric butperfectly serious study--almost history--of the actual events of theearlier part of the interregnum between Louis Philippe and Napoleon theThird, of the latter of whom Reybaud (writing, it would seem, before hewas even President), gives a very unflattering, though unnamed, description. Certainly more than half, perhaps more than three-quarters, of the book can claim no novel character at all. [292] [Sidenote: Not much of a novel. ] It would be possible to extract (if one had space and it wereproportionately worth while) passages from the remaining portion of veryfair novel interest--the visit of the "Super-Commissary" to theCommissary; the history of the way in which, under the _régime_ of that_atelier national_ which some wiseacres want now with us, a large bodyof citizens was detailed to carry trees of liberty from a nursery gardenin the suburbs of Paris to the _boulevards_; how these were uprootedwithout any regard to their arboreal welfare; how the nationalworking-men got mainly drunk and wholly skylarky on the way, and how theunfortunate vegetables were good for nothing but firewood by the timethey reached their destination; the humours of the open-air feast of theRepublic; the storming of the Assembly by the clubs; the oratory ofMalvina (a very delectable morsel) in one of the said clubs devoted tothe Rights of Women;[293] the scene where Oscar, coming by his ownaccount from the barricades "with his hands and his feet and his raimentall red, " manifests a decided disinclination to return thither--allthese are admirable. But they would have to be dug out of a mass ofhistory and philosophy which the "lazy novel-reader" would, it is to befeared, refuse with by no means lazy indignation and disgust. [Sidenote: But an invaluable document. ] Yet one may venture, at the risk of the charge of stepping out of one'sproper sphere, to recommend the perusal of the book, very strongly, toall who care either to understand its "moment" or to prepare themselvesfor other moments which are at least announced as certain to come. TheFrench revolutionary period of 1848 and the following years was perhapsthe most perfect example in all history of a thing being allowed to showitself, in all its natural and therefore ineluctable developments, without disturbing influences of any kind. It was (if one may usepatristic if not classical Latin in the first word of the phrase)_Revolutio sibi permissa_. There was, of course, a good deal of somewhatsimilar trouble elsewhere in Europe at the time; but there was noEuropean war of much importance, and no other power threatened or was ina position to threaten interference with French affairs--for theexcellent reason that all were too much occupied with their own. Therewas no internal tyranny or trouble such as had undoubtedly caused--andas has been held by some to justify--the outburst of sixty yearsearlier, nor was there even any serious, though perhaps there was someminor, maladministration. But there had been, for twenty years, a weak, amorphous, discreditable, and discredited government; and there was agreat deal of revolutionary spirit, old and new, about. So Francedetermined--in a word unacademic but tempting--to "revolute, " and she"revoluted" at discretion, or indiscretion, to the top of her bent. Thispart of _Jérôme Paturot_ gives a minute and (having had a good deal todo with the study both of history and of politics in my time), I think Imay say boldly, a faithful account of _how_ she did it. And I think, further, that, if at least some of the innocent folk who the other dayhailed the dawn of the Russian revolution had been acquainted with thebook, they might have been less jubilant; while acquaintance would havehelped others to anticipate the actual consequences. And I wish thatsome one would, in some form or other, bring its contents before thosewho, without being actual scoundrels, utter fanatics, or hopelessfools, want to bring revolution nearer home. Reybaud brings out, tooverbosely and heavily perhaps, but with absolute truth and justice, thewaste, the folly, the absolute illogicality of the popular cries, movements, everything. "Labour" was, happily, not then organised inFrance as it is in England to-day. But if any one would extract, andtranslate in a pamphlet form, the dying speech of the misguided toolComtois in reference to his misleader, the typical "shop-steward"Percheron, he would do a mighty good deed. Still, of course this is a parenthesis; and the parenthesis is a thinghateful, I am told, perhaps not to gods but to some men. * * * * * Students of literature, even in a single language, much more in widerrange, are well acquainted with a class of writers, largely increasedsince the introduction of printing, and more largely still since that of"periodicals, " who enjoy a considerable--sometimes almost agreat--reputation in their own time, and then are not so muchdiscredited or disapproved as simply forgotten. They disappear, andtheir habitation is hardly even the dust-bin; it is the _oubliette_; andtheir places are taken by others whose fates are _not_ other. In fact, they are, in the famous phrase, "Priests who slay the slayer, " etc. [Sidenote: Méry. ] Of these, in French, I myself hardly know a more remarkable example thanJoseph Méry, who, born two years before the end of the eighteenthcentury, lived for just two-thirds of the nineteenth, wrote, from a veryearly age till his death, in prose and in verse and in drama; epics, satires, criticisms, novels, travels, Heaven knows what; who had thereputation of being one of the most brilliant talkers of his day; whocollaborated[294] with Gautier and Gérard de Nerval and Sandeau and Mme. De Girardin, and other people much greater than himself; from whose penthe beloved old "Collection Michel Lévy" contained at least thirtyvolumes at the date of his death--the wreckage of perhaps a possiblethree hundred--and of whom, though I have several times in thehalf-century since dived into his work, I do not think I can find asingle story of first, second, or even third-rate quality. [295] [Sidenote: _Les Nuits Anglaises. _] As it happens, one volume of his, _Les Nuits Anglaises_, containsexamples of his various manners, some of which may be noticed. Not allof them are stories, but it is fair to throw in a non-story because itis so very much better than the others. This is a "physionomie" ofManchester, written, it would seem, just at the beginning of the reignof Queen Victoria; and it shows that Méry, as a writer of those middlearticles or transformed _Spectator_ essays, which have played so large apart in the literature of the last century and a quarter, was not quitea negligible person. Moreover, the sort of thing, though not essentialto the novelist's art, is a valuable tool at his disposal. [Sidenote: The minor stories. ] But here the author, who was a considerable traveller and not a badjudge of art, was to a large extent under the grip of fact: when he gotinto fiction he exhibited a sad want of discipline. One must allowsomething, no doubt, for the fact that the _goguenard_ element isavowedly strong in him. The second English Night, with its Oxfordshireelection (he has actually got the name of "Parker" right, thoughWoodstock wobbles from the proper form to "Woostock, " "Wostoog, " etc. )and its experiences of an Indian gentleman who is exposed at Ellora(near Madras) to the influence of the upas tree, by a wicked emissary ofthe Royal Society, Sir Wales, as a scientific experiment; and the last, where two Frenchmen, liberated from the hulks at the close of theNapoleonic War, make a fortune by threatening to blow up the city ofDublin; may sue out their writ of ease under the statute ofGoguenarderie. A third half-Eastern, half-English story (Méry was fondof the East), _Anglais et Chinois_, telling quite delicately thesurprising adventures of a mate of H. M. S. _Jamesina_[296] in a sort ofChinese harem, has some positive merit, though it is too long. Thelongest and most ambitious tale, _Histoire d'une Colline_, if not"wholly serious" (as a famous phrase has it), seems to aim at a gooddeal of seriousness. Yet it is, as a matter of fact, rather more absurdthan the pure extravaganzas. [Sidenote: _Histoire d'une Colline. _] Sir John Lively--who appears neither to have inherited the title (seeingthat his sainted father, a victim of English tyranny, was named ArthurO'Tooley, perhaps one of the tailors of that ilk) nor to have paid M. Méry five or ten thousand pounds for it--is an Irishman of the purestvirtue and the noblest sentiments, who possesses a cottage on a hill notfar from the village and castle of Stafford. From this interestingheight there are two views: one over the beautiful plains of Lancashire, another towards the brumous mountains of Oxfordshire. Lively alwayslooks this latter way, because in coming from London he has seen, at theother village of Bucks, a divine creature who dispenses soda-water andsome stronger liquors to the thirsty. She, like the ninepenny kettle ofthe song, "is Irish _tu_, " and belongs to the well-known sept of theO'Killinghams. They are both fervent Roman Catholics (Méry isastoundingly severe on our "apostate" church, with its "insulted" SaintPaul's and Saint Martin's). She is also persecuted by an abominableEnglish landlord, Mr. Igoghlein. The two meet at mass in "_the_ CatholicChurch of the City, " to which, "as in the time of Diocletian" (slightlyaltered to 1830-40), "a few faithful ones furtively glide, and seem tobe in fear. " To get money, Lively gambles, and (this is the sanest partof the book, for the reason that things went on in much the same way atParis and at London) is cheated. But the cottage, and the hill with suchcommanding views, are discovered to be in the way of a new line and toconceal coal. He sells them to a Mr. Copperas; marries the beautifulO'Killingham; the bells of Dublin ring head over heels, "and Irelandhopes. " Let it also be mentioned that in the course of the story we aremore than once told of the double file of Mauresque, Spanish, Gothic, and Italian _colonnades_ which line the marvellous High Street ofOxford; and that Mr. Copperas visited that seat of learning to consultan expert in railways[297] and see his three largest shareholders. (Oh, these bloated dons!) That three members of "the society of _ti_totalabstinence" drank, at the beautiful O'Killingham's cottage, twenty pintsof porter (White-bread), two flagons of whisky, and three of claret, maymeet with less incredulity, though the assortment of liquor is barbarousand the quantity is certainly large. But let us turn from this nonsenseto the remarkable Manchester article. [Sidenote: The "Manchester" article. ] It was not for some thirty years later than Méry's visit that I myselfknew, and for some time lived in, the new-made "city, " as it became, tothe horror of Mr. Bright, just before Méry saw it. But though there musthave been many changes in those thirty years, they were nothing to thosewhich have taken place in the fifty that have passed subsequently. And Ican recognise the Manchester I knew in Méry's sketch. This may seem tobe at first an exceedingly moderate compliment--in fact something closeto an insult. But it is nothing of the kind. It is true that there isconsiderable _naïveté_ in a sentence of his own: "En général lesnationaux sont fort ignorants sur les phénomènes de leur pays; il fauts'adresser aux étrangers pour en obtenir la solution. " And it is alsotrue that our "nationals, " at that time and since, have beenexcessively ignorant of phenomena which the French tourists of LouisPhilippe's reign discovered here, and surprised, not to say diverted, atthe solutions thereof preferred by these obliging strangers. That Méryhad something of the Michiels[298] in him, what has been said aboveshould show. But in some strange way Manchester--foggiest and rainiestof all our industrial hells, [299] except Sheffield--seems to have madehis brain clear and his sight dry, even in drawing a sort ofhalf-Rembrandt, half-Callot picture. He takes, it is true, some time infreeing himself from that obsession by one of our _not_-prettiestinstitutions, "street-walking, " which has always beset the French. [300]But he does get clear, and makes a striking picture of the greatthoroughfares of Market Street and Piccadilly; of the view--a wonderfulone certainly, and then not interfered with by railway viaducts--fromand of the Cathedral; and of the extraordinary utilisation of the scanty"naval" capabilities of Irk and Irwell and Medlock. But, as has beensaid, such things are at best but accidents of the novel. [Sidenote: Karr. ] If not much is found here about Alphonse Karr, it is certainly notbecause the present writer undervalues his general literary position. Asa journalist and miscellanist, Karr had few superiors in a century ofmiscellaneous journalism; and as a maker of telling and at the same timesolid phrase, he was Voltaire's equal in the first respect and hissuperior in the second. The immortal "Que MM. Les assassins commencent, "already referred to, is perhaps the best example in all literature ofthe terse _argumentum joculare_ which is not more sparkling as a jokethan it is crushing as an argument; "Plus ça change plus c'est la mêmechose"[301] is nearly as good; and if one were writing a history, not ofthe novel, but of journalism or essay-writing of the lighter kind, Karrwould have high place and large room. But as a novelist he does not seemto me to be of much importance, nor even as a tale-teller, except of theanecdotic kind. He can hardly be dull, and you seldom read him longwithout coming to something[302] refreshing in his own line; but histales, as tales, are rarely first-rate, and I do not think that even_Sous les Tilleuls_, his best-known and perhaps best production, needsmuch delay over it. [Sidenote: Roger de Beauvoir--_Le Cabaret des Morts_. ] Roger de Beauvoir (whose _de_ was genuine, but who embellished "Bully, "his actual surname, into the one by which he was generally known) alsohad, like Bernard and Reybaud, the honour of being noticed, translated, and to some extent commented on by Thackeray. [303] I have, in old times, read more of his novels than I distinctly remember; and they are notvery easy to procure in England now. Moreover, though he was of theright third or fourth _cru_ of _mil-huit-cent-trente_, there wassomething wanting in his execution. I have before me a volume of shortstories, excellently entitled (from the first of them) _Le Cabaret desMorts_. One imagines at once what Poe or Gautier, what even Bulwer orWashington Irving, would have made of this. Roger (one may call him thiswithout undue familiarity, because it is the true factor in both hisnames) has a good idea--the muster of defunct painters in an ancientAntwerp pot-house at ghost-time, and their story-telling. The contrastof them with the beautiful _living_ barmaid might have been--but isnot--made extremely effective. In fact the fatal improbability--in theAristotelian, not the Barbauldian sense--broods over the whole. And theCabaret des Morts itself ceases, not in a suitable way, but because theBurgomaster shuts it up!!! All the other stories--one of MarieAntoinette's Trianon dairy; another of an anonymous pamphlet; yetanother of an Italian noble and his use of malaria for vengeance; aswell as the last, told by a Sister of Mercy while watching apatient--miss fire in one way or another, though all have good subjectsand are all in a way well told. It is curious, and might be made ratherinstructive by an intelligent Professor of the Art of Story-telling, whoshould analyse the causes of failure. But it is somewhat out of the wayof the mere historian. [304] [Sidenote: Ourliac--_Contes du Bocage_. ] Édouard Ourliac, one of the minor and also one of the shorter-lived menof 1830, seems to have been pleasant in his life--at least all thepersonal references to him that I remember to have seen, in a longcourse of years, were amiable; and he is still pleasant in literature. He managed, though he only reached the middle of the road, to accumulatework enough for twelve volumes of collection, while probably more wasuncollected. Of what I have read of his, the _Contes_ and _NouveauxContes du Bocage_--tales of La Vendée, with a brief and almostbrilliant, certainly vivid, sketch of the actual history of thatglorious though ill-fated struggle--deserve most notice. Two of the_Nouveaux Contes_, _Le Carton D. _ (a story of the rescue of her husbandby a courageous woman, with the help of the more amiable weaknesses ofthe only amiable Jacobin leader, Danton) and _Le Chemin de Keroulaz_(one of treachery only half-defeated on the Breton coast), may rank withall but the very best of their kind. In another, _Belle-Fontaine_, people who cannot be content with a story unless it instructs theirminds on points of history, morality, cosmogony, organo-therapy, andeverything _quod exit in y_, except jollity and sympathy, may find asection on the youth of 1830--really interesting to compare with themuch less enthusiastic account by Gérard de Nerval, which is givenabove. And those who like to argue about cases of conscience may be gladto discuss whether Jean Reveillère, in the story which bears his name, _ought_ to have spared, as he actually did, the accursed_conventionnel_, who, after receiving shelter and care from women ofJean's family, had caused them to be massacred by the _bleus_, and thenagain fell into the Vendéan's hands. * * * * * But, with one or two more notices, we must close this chapter. Although Dumas, by an odd anticipatory reversal of what was to be hisson's way, spent a great deal of time on more or less trashy[305] playsbefore he took to his true line of romance, and so gave opportunity toothers to get a start of him in the following of Scott, it wasinevitable that his own immense success should stir emulation in thiskind afresh. In a way, even, Sue and Soulié may be said to belong to theclass of his unequal competitors, and others may be noticed briefly inthis place or that. But there is one author who, for one book at least, belonging to the successors rather than the _avant-coureurs_, butdecidedly of the pre-Empire kind, must have a more detailed mention. [Sidenote: Achard. ] Many years ago somebody was passing the small tavern which, dating foraught I know to the times of Henry Esmond, and still, or very lately, surviving, sustained the old fashion of a thoroughfare, fallen, butstill fair, and fondly loved of some--Kensington High Street, justopposite the entrance to the Palace. The passer-by heard one loiterer infront of it say to his companion in a tone of emotion, and almost ofawe: "There was beef, and beer, and bread, and greens, and _everythingyou can imagine_. " This _pheme_ occurred to me when, after more thanhalf a century, I read again Amédée Achard's _Belle-Rose_. I had takenit up with some qualms lest crabbed age should not confirm the judgmentof ardent youth; and for a short space the extreme nobility of itssentiments did provoke the giggle of degeneracy. But forty of the littlepages of its four original volumes had not been turned when it reassuredme as to the presence of "beef, and beer, and bread, and greens, andeverything you can imagine" in its particular style of romance. Thehero, who begins as a falconer's son and ends as a rich enough colonelin the army and a Viscount by special grace of the Roi Soleil, is a_sapeur_, but far indeed from being one of those graceless comrades ofhis to whom nothing is sacred. At one time he does indeed succumb to thesorceries of a certain Geneviève de Châteaufort, a duchess _aux narinesfrémissantes_. But who could resist this combination? even if there werea marquise of the most beautiful and virtuous kind, only waiting to be awidow in order to be lawfully his. Besides, the Lady of the QuiveringNostrils becomes an abbess, her rather odd abbey somehow accommodatingnot merely her own irregularly arrived child (_not_ Belle-Rose's), butBelle-Rose himself and his marchioness after their marriage; and she ispoisoned at the end in the most admirably retributive fashion. There areactually two villains--a pomp and prodigality (for your villain is amore difficult person than your hero) very unusual--one of whom isdespatched at the end of the second volume and the other at the actualcurtain. There is the proper persecuting minister--Louvois in this case. There are valiant and comic non-commissioned officers. There is a brave, witty, and generous Count; a lover of the "fatal" and ill-fated kind;his bluff and soldierly brother; and more of the "affair of the poisons"than even that mentioned above. You have the Passage of the Rhine, fire-raisings, duels, battles, skirmishes, ambuscades, treachery, chivalry--in fact, what you will comes in. And you must be a veryill-conditioned or feeble-minded person if you _don't_ will. Every nowand then one might, no doubt, "smoke" a little reminiscence; morefrequently slight improbabilities; everywhere, of course, an absence ofany fine character-drawing. But these things are the usual spots, andvery pardonable ones, of the particular sun. I do not remember anyFrench book of the type, outside the Alexandrian realm, that is as goodas _Belle-Rose_;[306] and I am bound to say that it strikes me as betterthan anything of its kind with us, from James and Ainsworth to theexcellent lady[307] who wrote _Whitehall_, and _Whitefriars_, and _OwenTudor_. [Sidenote: Souvestre, Féval, etc. ] It must, however, be evident that of this way in making books, and ofspeaking of them, there is no end. [308] Fain would I dwell a little onÉmile Souvestre, in whom the "moral heresy, " of which he was supposed tobe a sectary, certainly did not corrupt the pure milk of thetale-telling gift in such charming things as _Les Derniers Bretons_, _LeFoyer Breton_, and the rather different _Un Philosophe sous les Toits_;also on the better work of Paul Féval, who as certainly did notinvariably do suit and service to morality, but Sue'd and Soulié'd it inmany books with promising titles;[309] and who, once at least, wasinspired (again by the witchery of the country between the Baie desTrépassés and the Rock of Dol) to write _La Fée des Grèves_, a mostagreeable thing of its kind. Auguste Maquet (or Augustus MacKeat) willcome better in the next chapter, for reasons obvious to some readers nodoubt already, but to be made so to others there. And so--for thisdivision or subdivision--an end, with one word more on Pétrus Borel's_Champavert_. [Sidenote: Borel's _Champavert_. ] Borel, whose real Christian name, it is almost unnecessary to say, wasPierre, and who was a sort of incarnation of a "Jeune-France" (beginningas a _bousingot_--not ill translated by the contemporary English"bang-up" for an extreme variety of the kind--and ending as a_sous-préfet_), wrote other things, including a longer and rathertedious novel, _Madame Putiphar_. But the tales of _Champavert_, [310]which had the doubly-"speaking" sub-title of _Contes Immoraux_, arecapital examples of the more literary kind of "rotting. " They areadmirably written; they show considerable power. But though one wouldnot be much surprised at reading any day in the newspaper a case inwhich a boatman, plying for hire, had taken a beautiful girl for "fare, "violated her on the way, and thrown her into the river, the subject isnot one for art. FOOTNOTES: [262] It will be observed that I use the words referred to in this notewith more discrimination than is always the case with some excellentfolk. I sympathise with Cadoudal most of the three, but I quiterecognise that Bonaparte had a kind of right to try, and to execute him. So, if Pichegru had been tried, he might have been executed. The Enghienbusiness was pure murder. In some more recent instances thesedistinctions have not, I think, been correctly observed by publicspeakers and writers. [263] This _philosophe inconnu_ (as his ticket-name goes in French) is, I fancy, even more unknown in England. I have not read much of him; butI think, if it had come in my way, I should have read more. [264] Without doing this, it my be suggested that the contrast elsewherequoted "Mérimée était gentilhomme; Sainte-Beuve ne l'était pas, " waslikely to make its unfavourable side specially felt in this connection. He seems to have disgusted even the Princess Mathilde, one of thestaunchest of friends and certainly not the most squeamish or prudish ofwomen. Nor, in another matter, can I approve his favourite mixture ofrum and curaçao as a liqueur. I gave it a patient trial once, thinkingit might be critically inspiring. But the rum muddles the curaçao, andthe curaçao does not really improve the rum. It is a pity he did notknow the excellent Cape liqueur called Vanderhum, which is not a mixturebut a true hybrid of the two. [265] In articles written for the _Fortnightly Review_ during a largepart of the year 1878, and reprinted in the volume of _Essays on FrenchNovelists_ frequently referred to. [266] _Vide_ the wonderful poem--one of Mr. Anon's pearls, but Donne'sfor more than a ducat--"Thou sent'st to me a heart was crowned, " etc. However, the bitter remark quoted elsewhere (_v. Inf. _) looks like alasting wound. [267] I can conceive a modernist rising up and saying, "And your mawkishante-nuptial wooings? Haven't _we_ had enough of _them_?" To which Ishould reply, "Impossible. " The sages of old have rightly said that 'Theway of a man with a maid' is a mystery always, and the proofs thereofare well seen in literature as in life. But the way of an extra-man withanother person's wife can, as illustrated, if not demonstrated, by themyriads of treatises thereon in French and the thousands of imitationsin other languages (reinforced, if not the Stoic scavenger-researcher sopleases, by the annals of the Divorce Court and its predecessors), bealmost scientifically reduced to two classes. (1) Is the lady_adulteraturient_? In that case results can be attained anyhow. (2) Isshe not? In that case results can be attained nohow. Which considerablyminishes the interest of this situation. The interest of the other isthe interest of "the world's going round" in quality, and almostinfinitely various in detail. But when something has once happened thevariety ceases, or is immensely reduced. [268] "_Bien! mon sang. _" I suppose "democratic" sentiment is quiteinsensible to this, which seems to be a pity. [269] I think it should be added to Sandeau's credit that (as it appearsto me at least) he had a strong influence on the reaction againstNaturalism at the end of the century. [270] Most of his contemporaries would have envied him this admirably_moyen-âge_ and sonorous designation. But it is certainly cumbrous for atitle-page, and its owner--a modest man with a sense of humour--mayperhaps have thought that it _might_ be rather more ridiculous thansublime there. [271] As is usual and natural with men of his time, La Vendée mostlysupplies it; but that glorious failure did not inspire him quite so wellas it did Sandeau or even (_v. Inf. _) Édouard Ourliac. However, he was asound Royalist, for which peace be to his soul! [272] Who, by the way, was a good friend and a good appreciator ofBernard. [273] For any one who cares for the minor "arts and crafts" ofliterature this is _the_ example of Adaptation itself. The story is nottranslated; it is not imitated; it is not parodied. It is simply_transfused_ from one body of a national literature into another, and Idefy the acutest and most experienced critic to find in the English, ifhe did not previously know the facts, any trace of a French original. [274] Corinne made a great blunder: but admirers of Miss Austen havesometimes taken it as being greater than it was. "Vulgaire" and "vulgar"are by no means exact synonyms: in fact the French word is probably usedmuch oftener in a more or less inoffensive sense than otherwise. [275] Especially in the next chapter but one. [276] Or was it Comte that was "naught" and Fourier that was "void"? Iam sure the third person, namely, Cabet, was "puerile"; but I do notthink I could read _Aurora Leigh_ again, even to make sure of thedistribution of the other epithets. [277] The real _old_ Constantia has, I believe, ceased to exist. It wasa delicious _vin de liqueur_, but you might as well ice Madeira or abrown sherry. [278] Thackeray pays Sue the very high compliment of having "triedalmost always [to attain], and in _Mathilde_ very nearly succeeded inattaining, a tone of _bonne compagnie_, " I found the particular bookdifficult to get hold of. Apropos of French naval novels, will somebodytell me who wrote _Le Roi des Gabiers_, an immense _feuilleton_-romance, which I remember reading a vast number of years ago? I think he had (ortook) a Breton name, and wrote others. But the navy, even with Jean Bartand Surcouf and the Bailli, has never attracted any of the _great_French novelists. [279] I ought perhaps to say that the second volume does not seem to meto be quite equal to the first. The "sixteen years allowed forrefreshment" do not justify themselves. [280] In _La Lionne_ (which is not to be confused with _Le LionAmoureux_, a "psychological" diploma-piece praised by some) there arechapters and chapters of love-making "of a sort. " But it is not theright sort. [281] The famous or legendary chamber at Glamis--and perhaps another notso generally known story of a mansion farther north still, where you seefrom the courtyard a window the room belonging to which cannot be foundfrom the inside--will occur. But Soulié, though he might have heard ofthe former, is very unlikely to have known the latter, which comesnearer to his arrangement. [282] The contact _here_ with the _Peau de Chagrin_ need hardly be dweltupon. [283] A little more on this subject may be given later to Gaboriau andPonson du Terrail. [284] Reprinted in _Essays on French Novelists_. [285] A somewhat fuller discussion of this heretical _bona patria_ ofliterature may be found in the original Essay. I had at one time thoughtof reprinting it--in text or appendix--here. But perhaps it would besuperfluous. I ought, however, to add that I have seen, in Frenchwriters, later again than those referred to in the text, some touches ofrevived interest in Murger. [286] Translated at length in the Essay. [287] I have always been a little curious to know whether thatremarkable periodical, Cope's _Tobacco Plant_, which gave us not alittle of James Thomson the Second's work, was really, as it might havebeen, conceived as a follower of _Le Castor_. [288] Murger knows this and allows it. [289] Who, moreover, _did_ work, and that pretty hard, in hisSecretaryship, and by no means disdained pay for it--purely "patriotic"as (in his view) it was. [290] _Jérôme Paturot, with Considerations on Novels in General_, originally appeared in _Fraser_ for September 1843. Not reprinted in theauthor's lifetime, or till the supplementary collection of 1885-86. Maybe found, with some remarks by the present writer, in the "Oxford"Thackeray, vol. Vi. Pp. 318-342. [291] It is fair to say that some of the best Alexandriana were still tocome. [292] The retort courteous, if not even the countercheck quarrelsome, "Then why do you notice it?" is pretty obvious. Taking it as the former, it may be answered, "The political novel, if not the most strictlylegitimate species of the kind, is numerous and not unimportant. It maytherefore be allowed a specimen, and an examination of that specimen. " [293] Malvina, as one might expect, is by this time an "Anti-" of themost stalwart kind; though in the Saint-Simonian salad days, she had (asnaturally) taken the other side. [294] Probably more people know _La Croix de Berny_, which he wrote withSandeau, Gautier, and Madame de Girardin, than anything exclusively his. [295] Others may have been more fortunate. In any case, what follows, whatever its intrinsic merit, is typical of a great mass of similarFrench fiction, and therefore may claim attention here. [296] It would be interesting to know where Méry got this hideous, cacophonous, hopelessly anti-analogical and anti-etymological but alas!actually existing name. I never heard of a ship called by it, but I onceknew a poor lady on whom it had been inflicted at her baptism. Why anyone with Jemima (not, of course, originally a feminine of "Jem, " butadopted as such), which, though a little comic, is not intolerable, Jacqueline and Jaquetta (which are exceedingly pretty), and Jacobina(which, though with unfortunate historical associations, is not itselfugly) to choose from, should have invented this horrible solecism, Inever could make out. It is, I believe, confined to Scotland, and theonly comfort connected with it is the negative one that, in twoconsiderable residences there, I never heard of a "_Charles_ina. " Isuppose "Caroline" and "Charlotte" sufficed; or perhaps, while Whigsdisliked the name (at least before that curious purifier of it, Fox), Tories shrank from profanation thereof. [297] Was it Mr. Augustus Dunshunner? It was just about the time of theGlenmutchkin Railway, and most of "Maga's" men were Oxonians. [298] See in vol. V. Of the Oxford edition of Thackeray (for the thing, though never acknowledged, is certainly his) an exemplary"justification" of this very impudent offender. [299] I have no quarrel with Manchester--quite the reverse--inconsequence of divers sojourns, longer and shorter, in the place, and ofmuch kindness shown to me by the not at all barbarous people. Butneither the climate nor the general "conditions" of the city can becalled paradisaical. [300] They were as much shocked at it as we were at their "Houses ofTolerance" and at the institution of the _grisette_. [301] Not the worst perhaps of the myriad attempts to do something ofthe same kind in English was made recently: "If a man conscientiouslyobjects to be shot _for_ his country, he may be conscientiously shot_by_ it. " [302] Here is one from "Un Diamant" (_Contes et Nouvelles_), which, though destitute of the charms of poetry, rivals and perhaps indeedsuggested our own And even an Eastern Counties' train Comes in at last. "Quelque loin qu'on aille, on finit par arriver; _on arrive bien àSaint-Maur--trois lieues à faire--en coucou_. " [303] In the same article in which he dealt with Charles de Bernard. [304] I know that many people do not agree with me here; but Blake did:"Tell me the facts, O historian, and leave me to reason on them as Iplease; away with your reasoning and your rubbish.... Tell me the What:I do not want you to tell me the Why and the How. I can find that outfor myself. " [305] If my friend Mr. Henley were alive (and I would he were) I shouldhave to "look out for squalls. " It was, as ought to be well known, hisidea that _Henri Trois et Sa Cour_ was much more the rallying trumpet of1830 that _Hernani_, and I believe a large part of his dislike forThackeray was due to the cruel fun which _The Paris Sketch-book_ makesof _Kean_. But I speak as I think and find, after long re-thinking andresearching. [306] I have made some further excursions in the work of Achard, butthey did not incline me to continue them, and I do not propose to sayanything of the results here. I learn from the books that there weresome other Achards, one of whom "improved the production of thebeet-root sugar. " I would much rather have written _Belle-Rose_. [307] Emma Robinson. I used, I think, to prefer her to either of hermore famous companions in the list. But I have never read her _CaesarBorgia_. It sounds appetising. [308] Some may say, "There might have been an end much sooner with someof the foregoing. " Perhaps so--once more. I do not claim to be _hujusorbis Papa_ and infallible. But I sample to the best of my knowledge andjudgment. [309] _Beau Démon_, _Coeur d'Acier_, _La Tache Rouge_, etc. Féval begana little later than most of the others in this chapter, but he is oftheir class. [310] Thackeray, when very young and wasting his time and money inediting the _National Standard_, wrote a short and very savage review ofthis which may be found in the Oxford Edition of his works (vol. I. , asarranged by the present writer). It is virtuously indignant (and nowonder, seeing that the writer takes it quite seriously), but, asThackeray was almost to the last when in that mood, quitebull-in-a-china-shoppy. You _might_ take it seriously, and yetcritically in another way, as a "degeneracy" of the Terror-Novel. Butthe "rotting" view is better. CHAPTER VIII DUMAS THE ELDER [Sidenote: The case of Dumas. ] With Dumas[311] _père_ the same difficulties (or nearly the same) ofgeneral and particular nature present themselves as those which occurredwith Balzac. There is, again, the task--not so arduous and by no meansso hopeless as some may think, but still not of the easiest--of writingpretty fully without repetition on subjects on which you have writtenfully already. There is the enormous bulk, far greater than in the othercase, of the work: which makes any complete survey of its individualcomponents impossible. And there is the wide if not universal knowledgeof this or that--if not of this _and_ that--part of it; which makes suchsurvey unnecessary and probably unwelcome. But here, as there, inwhatever contrast of degree and kind, there is the importance inrelation to the general subject, which needs pretty abundant notice, andthe particular character of that importance, which demands specialexamination. There are probably not quite so many readers as there might have been ageneration ago who would express indignation at the idea that the twonovelists can be held in any degree[312] comparable. Between the twoperiods a pretty strong and almost concerted effort was made by personsof no small literary position, such as Mr. Lang, Mr. Stevenson, and Mr. Henley, who are dead, and others, some of whom are alive, to follow thelead of Thackeray many years earlier still. They denounced, supportingthe denunciation with all the literary skill and vigour of which theywere capable, the notion, common in France as well as in England, thatDumas was a mere _amuseur_, whether they did or did not extend theirbattery to the other notion (common then in England, if not in France)that he was an amuser whose amusements were pernicious. These effortswere perhaps not entirely ineffectual: let us hope that actual reading, by not unintelligent or prejudiced readers, had more effect still. [Sidenote: Charge and discharge. ] But let us also go back a little and, adding one, repeat what thecharges against Dumas are. There is the moral charge just mentioned;there is the not yet mentioned charge of plagiarism and "devilling"; andthere is the again already mentioned complaint that he is a mere"pastimer"; that he has no literary quality; that he deserves at best totake his chance with the novelists from Sue to Gaboriau who have been orwill be dismissed with rather short shrift elsewhere. Let us, as bestseems to suit history, treat these in order, though with very unequaldegrees of attention. [Sidenote: Morality. ] The moral part of the matter needs but a few lines. The objection herewas one of the still fewer things that did to some extent justify and"_sens_ify" the nonsense and injustice since talked about Victoriancriticism. In fact this nonsense may (there is always, or nearlyalways, some use to be made even of nonsense) be used against itsearlier brother. It is customary to objurgate Thackeray as too moral. Thackeray never hints the slightest objection on this score againstthese novels, whatever he may do as to the plays. For myself, I do notpretend to have read everything that Dumas published. There may be amongthe crowd something indefensible, though it is rather odd that if thereis, I should not merely never have read it but never have heard of it. If, on the other hand, any one brings forward Mrs. Grundy's opinion onthe Ketty and Milady passages in the _Mousquetaires_; on the story ofthe origin of the Vicomte de Bragelonne; on the way in which the divineMargot was consoled for her almost tragic abandonment in a few hours bylover and husband--I must own that as Judge on the present occasion Ishall not call on any counsel of Alexander's to reply. "Bah! it isbosh, " as the greatest of Dumas' admirers remarks of another matter. [Sidenote: Plagiarism and devilling. ] The plagiarism (or rather devilling + plagiarism) article of theindictment, tedious as it may be, requires a little longer notice. Thefacts, though perhaps never to be completely established, aresufficiently clear as far as history needs, on the face of them. Dumas'works, as published in complete edition, run to rather over threehundred volumes. (I have counted them often on the end-papers of thebeloved tomes, and though they have rather a knack, like the windows ofother enchanted houses, of "coming out" different, this is near enough. )Excluding theatre (twenty-five volumes), travels, memoirs, and so-calledhistory, they must run to about two hundred and fifty. Most if not allof these volumes are of some three hundred pages each, very closelyprinted, even allowing for the abundantly "spaced" conversation. Ishould say, without pretending to an accurate "cast-off, " that any_three_ of these volumes would be longer even than the great"part"-published works of Dickens, Thackeray, or Trollope; that any_two_ would exceed in length our own old average "three-decker"; andthat any _one_ contains at least twice the contents of the averagesix-shilling masterpiece of the present day. Now it stands to reason that a man who spent only the later part of hisworking life in novel-production, who travelled a great deal, and who, according to his enemies, devoted a great deal of time to relaxation, [313] is not likely to have written all this enormous bulk himself, evenif it were physically possible for him to have done so. One may gofarther, and say that pure internal evidence shows that the whole was_not_ written by the same person. [Sidenote: The Collaborators?] As for the actual collaborators--the "young men, " as Thackerayobligingly called them, who carried out the works in a less funerealsense than that in which the other "young men" carried out Ananias andSapphira--that is a question on which I do not feel called upon to enterat any length. Anybody who cannot resist curiosity on the point mayconsult Alphonse Karr (who really might have found something fitter onwhich to expend his energies); Quérard, an ill-tempered bibliographer, for whom there is the excuse that, except ill-temper, idleness, with aparticularly malevolent Satan to find work for its hands to do, or merehunger, hardly anything would make a man a bibliographer of his sort;and the person whom the law called Jacquot, and he himself by thehandsomer title of Eugène de Mirecourt. Whether Octave Feuilletexercised himself in this other kind before he took to his true line ofnovels of society; whether that ingenious journalist M. Fiorentino alsoplayed a part, are matters which who so lists may investigate. The mostdangerous competitor seems to be Auguste Maquet--the "Augustus MacKeat"of the Romantic dawn--to whom some have even assigned the_Mousquetaires_[314] bodily, as far as the novel adds to the Courtils deSandras "memoirs. " But even with him, and still more with the others, the good old battle-horse, which never fails one in this kind of_chevauchée_, will be found to be effective in carrying the banner ofAlexander the Greatest safe through. How does it happen that in theindependent work of none of these, nor of any others, do the _special_marks and merits of Dumas appear? How does it happen that these marksand merits appear constantly and brilliantly in all the best workassigned to Dumas, and more fitfully in almost all its vast extent?There may be a good deal of apple in some plum-jam and perhaps somevegetable-marrow. But plumminess is plumminess still, and it is theplumminess of "Dumasity" which we are here to talk of, and thatonly--the quality, not the man. And whether Dumas or Diabolus conceivedand brought it about matters, in the view of the present historian, nota _centime_. By "Dumas" is here and elsewhere--throughout this chapterand throughout this book--meant Dumasity, which is something by itself, and different from all other "-nesses and -tudes and -ties. " [Sidenote: The positive value as fiction and as literature of the books:the less worthy works. ] We can therefore, if we choose, betake ourselves with a joyful and quietmind to the real things--the actual characteristics of that Dumasity, Diabolicity, or _Dieu-sait-quoi_, which distinguishes (in measures anddegrees varying, perhaps essentially, certainly according to thediffering castes of readers) the great Mousquetaire trilogy; the hardlyless great collection of _La Reine Margot_ and its continuations; thelong eighteenth-century set which, in a general way, may be said to betwo-centred, having now Richelieu (the Duke, not the Cardinal) and nowCagliostro for pivot; and _Monte Cristo_--with power to add to theirnumber. In what will be said, attention will chiefly be paid to thebooks just mentioned, and perhaps a few more, such as _La_ _TulipeNoire_; nor is even this list so closed that anybody may not considerany special favourites of his own admissible as subjects for the almostwholly unmitigated appreciation which will follow. I do not think thatDumas was ever at his best before the late sixteenth century or afterthe not quite latest eighteenth. _Isabel de Bavière_ and the _Bâtard deMauléon_, with others, are indeed more readable than most minorhistorical novels; but their wheels drive somewhat heavily. As for therevolutionary set, after the _Cagliostro_ interest is disposed of, somepeople, I believe, rate _Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge_ higher than I do. It is certainly better than _Les Blancs et les Bleus_ or _Les Louves deMachecoul_, in the latter of which Dumas has calmly "lifted" (or alloweda lazy "young man" to lift) the whole adventure of Rob Roy at the Fordsof Frew, pretty nearly if not quite _verbatim_. [315] Of more avowedtranslations such as _Ivanhoe_ and _Jacques Ortis_ (the latter about asmuch out of his way as anything could be), it were obviously superfluousto take detailed notice. In others the very titles, such as, forinstance, _Les Mohicans de Paris_, show at once that he is merelyimitating popular styles. Yet others, such as _Madame de Chamblay_[316](in which I cannot help thinking that the "young man" was OctaveFeuillet not yet come to his prime), have something of the ordinarynineteenth-century novel--not of the best kind. But in all these and many more it is simply a case of "Not here!" thoughin the historical examples, before Saint Bartholomew and afterSainte-Guillotine, the sentence may be mitigated to "Not here_consummately_. " And it may be just, though only just, necessary to saythat this examination of Dumas' qualities should itself, with verylittle application or moral, settle the question whether he is a merecirculating-library caterer or a producer of real literature. [Sidenote: The worthier--treatment of them not so much individually asunder heads. ] To give brief specifications of books and passages in the novelsmentioned above, in groups or individually, may seem open to theobjections often made to a mere catalogue of likes and dislikes. But, after all, in the estimation of aesthetic matters, it _is_ likes anddislikes that count. Nowhere, and perhaps in this case less thananywhere else, can the critic or the historian pretend to dispense hisreaders from actual perusal; it is sufficient, but it is at the sametime necessary, that he should prepare those who have not read andremind those who have. For champion specimen-pieces, satisfying, notmerely in parts but as wholes, the claim that Dumas shall be regarded asan absolute master in his own craft and in his own particular divisionof it, the present writer must still select, after fifty years' readingand re-reading, _Vingt Ans Après_ and _La Reine Margot_. Parts of _LesTrois Mousquetaires_ are unsurpassed and unsurpassable; but theBonacieux love-affair is inadequate and intruded, and I have neverthought Milady's seduction of Felton quite "brought off. " In _Le Vicomtede Bragelonne_ this inequality becomes much more manifest. Nothing, again, can surpass the single-handed achievement of D'Artagnan at thebeginning in his kidnapping of General Monk, and few things his failureat the end to save Porthos, with the death of the latter--a thing whichhas hardly a superior throughout the whole range of the novel inwhatever language (so far as I know) it has been written. But the "youngmen" were allowed their heads, by far too frequently and for too longperiods, in the middle;[317] and these heads were by no means alwaysequal to the occasion. There is no such declension in the immediatefollowers of _La Reine Margot_, _La Dame de Monsoreau_, and _LesQuarante-Cinq_. Chicot is supreme, but the personal interest is lessdistributed than in the first book and in the _Mousquetaire_ trilogy. This lack of distribution, and the inequalities of the actualadventures, are, naturally enough, more noticeable still in the longerand later series dealing with the eighteenth century, while, almost ofnecessity, the purely "romantic" interest is at a lower strength. I can, however, find very little fault with _Le Chevalier d'Harmental_--anexcellent blend of lightness and excitement. _Olympe de Clèves_ has hadvery important partisans;[318] but though I like Olympe herself almostbetter than any other of Dumas' heroines, except Marguerite, she doesnot seem to me altogether well "backed up"; and there is here, as therehad been in the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_, and was to be in others, toomuch insignificant court-intrigue. The Cagliostro cycle again appealsvery strongly to some good critics, and I own that in reading it asecond time I liked it better than I had done before. But I doubtwhether the supernatural of any kind was a circle in which Dumas couldwalk with perfect freedom and complete command of his own magic. Thereremains, as among the novels selected as pieces, not of conviction, butof diploma, _Monte Cristo_, perhaps the most popular of all, certainlyone of the most famous, and still holding its popularity with good wits. Here, again. I have to confess a certain "correction of impression. " Asto the _Château d'If_, which is practically an independent book, therecan hardly be two opinions among competent and unprejudiced persons. ButI used to find the rest--the voluminous rest--rather heavy reading. Recently I got on better with them; but I can hardly say that they evennow stand, with me, that supreme test of a novel, "Do you want to readit again?" I once, as an experiment, read "Wandering Willie's Tale"through, every night for a week, having read it I don't know how manytimes before; and I found it no more staled at the seventh enjoymentthan I should have found the charm of Helen or of Cleopatra herself. Ido not know how many times I have read Scott's longer novels (with oneor two exceptions), or Dickens', or Thackeray's, or not a few others inFrench and English, including Dumas himself. And I hope to read them allonce, twice, or as many times more as those other Times which are inSome One's hand will let me. But I do not want to read _Monte Cristo_again. It will be clear from these remarks that, whether rightly or wrongly, Ithink Dumas happiest in his dealings with historical or quasi-historicalmatters, these dealings being subject to the general law, given morethan once elsewhere, that the historical personages shall not, in theirhistorically registered and detailed character, occupy the chiefpositions in the story. In other words, he seems to me to have preferredan historical canvas and a few prominent figures outlined thereon--inwhich respect he does not greatly differ from other historical novelistsso far as they are historical novelists merely. But Dumas, as a novelistof French history, had at his disposal sources and resources, forfilling up his pictures, which were lacking elsewhere, and which, inparticular, English novelists possessed hardly at all, as regardsanything earlier than the eighteenth century. I dare say it has oftenoccurred to other people, as it has to me, how vastly different _Peverilof the Peak_--one of the least satisfactory of Scott's novels--wouldhave been if Pepys's Diary had been published twenty years earlierinstead of two years later. Evelyn was available, but far less suitableto the purpose, and was only published when Scott had begun to writerather than to read. [319] For almost every year, certainly for everydecade and every notable person's life with which and with whom hewished to deal, Dumas had "Memoirs" on to which, if he did not care totake the trouble himself, he had only to turn one of the "young men" toget facts, touches, ornaments, suggestions enough for twenty times hisown huge production. Of course other people had these same stores opento them, and that other people did not make the same use thereof[320] isone of the chief glories of Alexander the Great in fiction. But in anyreal critical-historical estimate of him, the fact has to take itsplace, and its very great place. But there is the other fact, or collection of facts, of greaterimportance still, implied in the question, "What did he do with thesestores?" and "How did he, as it seems to Alexandrians at least, do somuch better than those other people, to whom they were open quite asfreely?" It is, however, before answering these questions at large, perhaps oncemore necessary to touch on what may be called the historical-_accuracy_objection. If anybody says, "The man represents Charles I. As havingbeen taken, after he had been sold by the Scotch, direct from Newcastleto London, tried at once, and executed in a day or two. This was not theway things happened"--you are bound to acknowledge his profound andrecondite historical learning. But if he goes on to say that he cannotenjoy _Vingt Ans Après_ as a novel because of this, you are equallybound to pity his still more profound aesthetic ignorance and impotence. The facts, in regard to the criticism of historical novels as such, illustrate the wisdom of Scott in keeping his historical characters forthe most part in the background, and the _un_wisdom of Vigny inpreferring the opposite course. But they do nothing more. If Dumas hadchosen, he might have separated the dramatic meeting of the Four atNewcastle itself--and the intenser tale of their effort to save Charles, with its sequel of their own narrow escape from the _Éclair_ felucca--bychapters, or a book, of adventures in France. But he did not choose; andthe liberty of juxtaposition which he took is more apparently thanreally different from that which Shakespeare takes, when he jumps tenyears in _Antony and Cleopatra_. What Dumas _really_ borrows fromhistory--the tragic interest of the King's fate--is in each casehistorically true, though it is eked and adapted and manipulated to suitthe fictitious interest of the Quadrilateral. You certainly could not, then or now, _ride_ from Windsor to London in twenty minutes, though youcould now motor the distance in the time, at the risk of considerablefines. And an Englishman, jealous of his country's honour, might urgethat, while the "Vin _de Porto_" itself came in rather later, there werefew places in the England of the seventeenth century where that "Vin_d'Espagne_, " so dear to Athos, was not more common than it was inFrance, though one would not venture to deny that the shortly-to-becomeBaron de Bracieux _had_ some genuine Xérès (as we are told) in hiscellar. But these things are--no more and no less than the greaterones--utter trifles as far as the actual novel interest is concerned. They are, indeed, less than trifles: they can hardly be said to exist. [Sidenote: His attitude to Plot. ] The "four wheels of the novel" have been sometimes, and perhaps rightly, said to be Plot, Character, Description, and Dialogue--Style[321] beinga sort of fifth. Of the first there is some difficulty in speaking, because the word "plot" is by no means used, as the text-books say, "univocally, " and its synonyms or quasi-synonyms, in the differentusages, are themselves things "kittle" to deal with. "Action" issometimes taken as one of these synonyms--certainly in some senses ofaction no novelist has ever had more; very few have had so much. But ofconcerted, planned, or strictly co-ordinated action, of more thanepisode character, he can hardly be said to have been anything like amaster. His best novels are chronicle-plays undramatised--large numbersof his scenes could be cut out with as little real loss as foolish"classical" critics used to think to be the case with Shakespeare; andhis connections, when he takes the trouble to make any, are often hisvery weakest points. Take, for instance, the things that bring aboutD'Artagnan's great quest for the diamonds--one of the most excellentepisodes in this department of fiction, and something more than anepisode in itself. The author actually cannot think of any better waythan to make Constance Bonacieux--who is represented as a ratherunusually intelligent woman, well acquainted with her husband'scharacter, and certainly not likely to overestimate him through anysuperabundance of wifely affection or admiration--propose that he, amiddle-aged mercer of sedentary and _bourgeois_ habits, shall undertakean expedition which, on the face of it, requires youth, strength, audacity, presence of mind, and other exceptional qualities in noordinary measure, and which, if betrayed to an ever vigilant, extremelypowerful, and quite unscrupulous enemy, is almost certain to befrustrated. Still the "chronicle"-action dispenses a man, to a large extent, in theeyes of some readers at any rate, from even attempting exact and tight_liaisons_ of scene in this fashion, though of course if he does attemptthem he submits himself to the perils of his attempt just as his heroessubmit themselves to theirs. But other readers--and perhaps all thosepredestined to be Alexandrians--do not care to exact the penalties forsuch a failure. They are quite content to find themselves launched onthe next reach of the stream, without asking too narrowly whether theyhave been ushered decorously through a lock or have tumbled somehow overa lasher. Such troubles never drown or damage _them_. And indeed thereare some of them sufficiently depraved by nature, and hardened byindulgence in sin, to disregard _general_ action altogether, and to lookmainly if not wholly to the way in which the individual stories aretold, not at that in which they come to have to be told. Of Dumas' powerof telling a story there surely can be no two opinions. The veryreproach of _amuseur_ confesses it. Of the means--or some of them--bywhich he does and does not exercise this power, more may be said underthe heads which follow. We are here chiefly concerned with the power asit has been achieved and stands--in, for instance, such a thing, alreadyglanced at, as the "Vin de Porto" episode or division of _Vingt AnsAprès_, which, though there are scores of others nearly as good, seemsto me on the whole the very finest thing Dumas ever did in his ownpeculiar kind. There are just two dozen pages of it--pages very wellfilled--from the moment when Blaisois and Mousqueton express their ideason the subject of the unsuitableness of beer, as a fortifier againstsea-sickness, to that when the corpse of Mordaunt, after floating in themoonlight with the gold-hilted dagger flashing from its breast, sinksfor the last time. The interest grows constantly; it is never, as itsometimes is elsewhere, watered out by too much talk, though there isenough of this to carry out the author's usual system (_v. Inf. _). Nothing happens sufficiently extravagant or improbable to excite disgustor laughter, though what does happen is sufficiently "palpitating. " Ifthis is melodrama, it is melodrama free from most of the objections madeelsewhere to the kind. And also if it is melodrama, it seems to me to bemelodrama infinitely superior, not merely in degree, but in kind, tothat of Sue and Soulié. [Sidenote: To Character. ] It is in this "enfisting" power of narrative, constantly renewed if notalways logically sustained and connected, that Dumas' excellence, if nothis actual supremacy, lies; and the fact may dispense us from saying anymore about his plots. As to Character, we must still keep theoffensive-defensive line. Dumas' most formidable enemies--persons likethe late M. Brunetière--would probably say that he has no character atall. Some of his champions would content themselves with ejaculatingthe two names "D'Artagnan!" and "Chicot!" shrugging their shoulders, andabstaining from further argument as likely to be useless, there being nocommon ground to argue upon. In actual life this might not be the mostirrational manner of proceeding; but it could hardly suffice here. As isusually, if not invariably, the case, the difference of estimate _is_traceable, in the long run, to the fact that the disputants oradversaries are not using words in the same sense--working inconjunction with the other fact that they do not like and want the samethings. Almost all words are ambiguous, owing to the length of timeduring which they have been used and the variety of parts they have beenmade to play. But there are probably few which--without being absolutelyequivocal like "box" and our other "foreigners' horrors"--require theuse of the _distinguo_ more than "character. " As applied to novels, itmay mean (1) a human personality more or less deeply analysed; (2) onevividly distinguished from others; (3) one which is made essentially_alive_ and almost recognised as a real person; (4) a "personage"ticketed with some marks of distinction and furnished with a dramatic"part"; (5) an eccentric. The fourth and fifth may be neglected here. Itis in relation to the other three that we have to consider Dumas as acharacter-monger. In the competition for representation of character which depends uponanalysis, "psychology, " "problem-projection, " Dumas is of coursenowhere, though, to the disgust of some and the amusement of others, _Jacques Ortis_ figures in the list of his works. _René_, _Adolphe_, theworks of Madame de Staël (if they are to be admitted) and those of Beyle(which no doubt must be) found nothing corresponding in his nature; andthere was not the slightest reason why they should. The cellar of thenovel contains even more than the "thousand dozen of wine" enshrined bythat of Crotchet Castle, but no intelligent possessor of it, any morethan Mr. Crotchet himself, would dream of restricting it to one kind ofvintage. Nor, probably, would any really intelligent possessor arrangehis largest bins for this kind, which at its best is a very exquisite_vin de liqueur_, but which few people wish to drink constantly; andwhich at its worst, or even in mediocre condition, is very poortipple--"shilpit, " as Peter Peebles most unjustly characterises sherryin _Redgauntlet_. Skipping (2) for the moment, I do not know that underhead (3) one can make much fight for Alexander. D'Artagnan and Chicotare doubtless great, and many others fall not far short of them. I amalways glad to meet these two in literature, and should be glad to meetthem in real life, particularly if they were on my side, though theirbeing on the other would add considerably to the excitement of one'sexistence--so long as it continued. But I am not sure that I _know_ themas I know Marianne and Des Grieux, Tom Jones and My Uncle Toby, theBaron of Bradwardine and Elizabeth Bennet. Athos I know or should knowif I met him, which I am sorry to say I have not yet done; and La ReineMargot, and possibly Olympe de Clèves; but there is more guess-workabout the knowledge with her than in the other cases. Porthos (orsomebody very like him) I did know, and he was most agreeable; but hedied too soon to go into the army, as he ought to have done, afterleaving Oxford. And though I never met a complete Aramis, I think I havemet him in parts. There are not many more of this class. On the otherhand, there is almost an entire absence in Dumas of those merelay-figures which are so common in other novelists. There is greatplenty of something more than toy-theatre characters cut out well andbrightly painted, fit to push across the stage and justify their "words"and vanish; but that is a different thing. And this leads us partly back and partly up to the second head, theprovision of characters sufficiently distinguished from others, and socapable of playing their parts effectually and interestingly. It is inthis that he is so good, and it is this which distinguishes himself fromall his fellows but the very greatest. D'Artagnan and Chicot are againthe best; but how good, at least in the better books, are almost all theothers! D'Artagnan would be a frightful loss, but suppose he were notthere and you knew nothing about him, would you not think Planchetsomething of a prize? Without Chicot there would be a blank horrible tothink of. But do we not still "share"? Have we not Dom Gorenflot? It is in this provision of vivid and sufficiently, if not absolutely, vivified characters and personages--"company" for his narrativedramas--that Dumas is so admirable under this particular head. If theyare rarely detachable or independent, they work out the businessconsummately. Lackeys and ladies' maids, inn-keepers and casual guestsat inns, courtiers and lawyers, noblemen and "lower classes, " they alldo what they ought to do; they all "answer the ends of their beingcreated, "--which is to carry out and on, through two or three or half adozen volumes, a blissful suspension from the base realities ofexistence. And if anybody asks of them more than this, it is his ownfault, and a very great fault too. [322] [Sidenote: To Description (and "style"). ] Of Description, as of the "fifth wheel" style, there is little to sayabout Dumas, though the littleness is in neither respect damaging. Theyare both adequate to the situation and the composition. Can you say muchmore of him or of anybody? If it were worth while to go into detail atall, this adequacy could be made out, I think, a good deal more thansufficiently. Take one of his greatest things, the "BastionSaint-Gervais" in the _Mousquetaires_. If he has not made you see theheroic hopeless town, and the French leaguer and the shattered redoubtbetween, and the forlorn hope of the Four foolhardy yet forethoughtfuland for ever delightful heroes, with their not so cheerful followers, eating, drinking, firing, consulting, and flaunting the immortalnapkin-pennant in the enemy's face--you would not be made to see it, though the authors of _Inès de las Sierras_ or of _Le Château de laMisère_ had given you a cast of their office. And, what is more, themethod of _Inès de las Sierras_ and of _Le Château de la Misère_ wouldhave been actually out of place. It would have got in the way of thebusiness, the engrossing business, of the manual fight against theRochellois, and the spiritual fight against Richelieu and Rochefort andMilady. So, again--so almost tautologically--with "style" in the morecomplicated and elaborate sense of the word. One may here once morethank Émile de Girardin for the phrase that he used of Gautier's ownstyle in _feuilleton_ attempts. It _would_ be _gênant pourl'abonné_--even for an _abonné_ who was not the first comer. It is notthe beautiful phrase, over which you can linger, that is required, butthe straightforward competent word-vehicle that carries you on throughthe business, that you want in such work. The essence of Dumas' qualityis to find or make his readers thirsty, and to supply their thirst. Youcan't quench thirst with _liqueurs_; if you are not a Philistine youwill not quench it with vintage port or claret, with Château Yquem, oreven with fifteen-year-old Clicquot. A "long" whisky and potash, abottle of sound Medoc, or, best of all, a pewter quart of not too smallor too strong beer--these are the modest but sufficient quenchers thatsuit the case. And Dumas gives you just the equivalents of these. [Sidenote: To Conversation. ] But it may seem that, for the last head or two, the defence has been alittle "let down"--the pass, if not "sold, " somewhat weakly held. [323]No such half-heartedness shall be chargeable on what is going to be saidunder the last category, which, in a way, allies itself to the first. Itis, to a very large extent, by his marvellous use of conversation thatDumas attains his actual mastery of story-telling; and so thischaracteristic of his is of double importance and requires a Benjamin'sallowance of treatment. The name just used is indeed speciallyappropriate, because Conversation is actually the youngest of thenovelist's family or staff of work-fellows. We have seen, throughout ornearly throughout the last volume, how very long it was before itspowers and advantages were properly appreciated; how mere _récit_dominated fiction; and how, when the personages were allowed to speak, they were for the most part furnished only or mainly withharangues--like those with which the "unmixed" historian used to endowhis characters. That conversation is not merely a grand set-off to astory, but that it is an actual means of telling the story itself, seemsto have been unconscionably and almost unintelligibly slow in occurringto men's minds; though in the actual story-telling of ordinary life byword of mouth it is, and always must have been, frequent enough. [324] Itis not impossible that the derivation of prose from verse fiction mayhave had something to do with this, for gossippy talk and epic orromance in verse do not go well together. Nor is it probable that theold, the respectable, but the too often mischievous disinclination to"mix kinds" may have had its way, telling men that talk was thedramatist's not the novelist's business. But whatever was the cause, there can be no dispute about the fact. It was, it should be hardly necessary to say, Scott who first discoveredthe secret[325] to an effectual extent, though he was not always true tohis own discovery. And it is not superfluous to note that it was aspecially valuable and important discovery in regard to the novel ofhistorical adventure. It had, of course, and almost necessarily, forceditself, in regard to the novel of ordinary life, upon our own greatexplorers in that line earlier. Richardson has it abundantly. But whenyou are borrowing the _subjects_ of the historian, what can be morenatural than to succumb to the _methods_ of the historian--the longcontinuous narrative and the intercalated harangue? It must be donesometimes; there is a danger of its being done too often. Before he hadfound out the true secret, Scott blunted the opening of _Waverley_ with_récit_; after he had discovered it he relapsed in divers places, ofwhich the opening of _The Monastery_ may suffice for mention here. Dumashimself (and it will be at once evident that this is a main danger of"turning on your young man") has done it often--to take once more asingle example, there is too much of it in the account of the great_émeute_, by which Gondy started the Fronde. But it is the facilitywhich he has of dispensing with it--of making the story speak itself, with only barely necessary additions of the pointer and reciter at theside of the stage--which constitutes his power. Instances can hardly berequired, for any one who knows him knows them, and every one who goesto him, not knowing, will find them. Just to touch the _apices_ oncemore, the two scenes following the actual overtures of the_Mousquetaires_ and of _La Reine Margot_--that where the impossibletriple duel of D'Artagnan against the Three is turned into triumphantbattle with the Cardinalists, blood-cementing the friendship of theFour; and that where Margot, after losing both husband and lover, issupplied with a substitute for both; adding the later passage where LaMole is saved from the noose at the door--may suffice. Of course this device of conversation, like the other best things--thebeauty of woman, the strength of wine, the sharpness of steel, and redink--is "open to abuse. "[326] It has been admitted that even thefervency of the present writer's Alexandrianism cools at the "wall-game"of Montalais and Malicorne. There may be some who are not even preparedto like it in places where I do. They are like Porthos, in the greatinitial interchange of compliments, and "would still be _doing_. " Butsurely they cannot complain of any lack of incident in this latest andnot least _Alexandreid_? It may seem that the length of this chapter is not proportionate to themagnitude of the claims advanced for Dumas. But, as in other cases, Ithink it may not be impertinent to put in a reference to what I havepreviously written elsewhere. Moreover, as, but much more than, in thecases of Sandeau, Bernard, and Murger, there is an argument, paradoxicalin appearance merely, for the absence of prolixity. His claim to greatness consists, perhaps primarily, in the simplicity, straightforwardness, and general human interest of his appeal. He wantsno commentaries, no introductions, no keys, no dismal Transactions ofDumas Societies and the like. Every one that thirsteth may come to hisfountain and drink, without mysteries of initiation, or formalities oflicence, or concomitant nuisances of superintendence and regulation. Inthe _Camp of Refuge_ of Charles Macfarlane (who has recently, in an oddway, been recalled to passing knowledge)--a full and gallant private inthe corps of which Dumas himself was then colonel _vice_ Sir Walterdeceased--there is a sentence which applies admirably to Dumas himself. After a success over the other half of our ancestors, and during asupper on the conquered provant, one of the Anglo-Saxon-half observes, "Let us leave off talking, and be jolly. " Nothing could please me betterthan that some reader should be instigated to leave off my book at thispoint, and take up _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ or _Les Quarante-Cinq_, orif he prefers it, _Olympe de Clèves_--"and be jolly". [327] FOOTNOTES: [311] The postponement of him, to this last chapter of the firstdivision of the book, was determined on chiefly because his _novels_were not begun at all till years after the other greater novelists, already dealt with, had made their reputation, while the greatest ofthem--the "Mousquetaire" and "Henri Trois" cycles--did not appear tillthe very last _lustrum_ of the half-century. But another--it may seem tosome a childish--consideration had some weight with me. I wished torange father and son on either side of the dividing summary; for thoughthe elder wrote long after 1850 and the younger some time before it, inhardly any pair is the opposition of the earlier and later times moreclearly exposed; and the identity of name emphasises the difference ofnature. [312] In using this phrase I remembered the very neat "score" made offthe great Alexander himself by a French judge, in some case at Rouenwhere Dumas was a witness. Asked as usual his occupation, he repliedsomewhat grandiloquently: "Monsieur, si je n'étais pas dans la ville deCorneille, je dirais 'Auteur dramatique. '" "Mais, Monsieur, " replied theofficial with the sweetest indulgence, "il y a des degrés. " (This storyis told, like most such, with variants; and sometimes, as in theparticular case was sure to happen, not of Alexander the father, but ofAlexander the son. But I tell it, as I read or heard it, long yearsago. ) [313] You may possibly do as an English novelist of the privileged sexis said to have done, and write novels while people are calling on youand you are talking to them (though I should myself consider it badmanners, and the novels would certainly bear traces of the exploit). Butyou can hardly do it while, as a famous caricature represents the scene, persons of that same sex, in various dress or undress, are frolickingabout your chair and bestowing on you their obliging caresses. Nor arecorricolos and speronares, though they may be good things to write on inone sense, good in another to write in. [314] As far as I know Maquet, his line seems to me to have been dramarather than fiction. [315] I seem to remember somebody (I rather think it was Henley, and itwas very likely to be) attempting a defence of this. But, except _pourrire_, such a thing is hopeless. [316] I think (but it is a long time since I read the book) that it isthe heroine of this who, supposed to be a dead, escapes from "thatgrewsome thing, premature interment" (as Sandy Mackay justly calls it), because of the remarkable odour of _violettes de Parme_ which herunspotted flesh evolves from the actual grave. [317] I do not mind Montalais, but I object to Malicozne both in himselfand as her lover. Mlle. De la Vallière and the plots against her virtuegive us "pious Selinda" at unconscionable length, and, but that it wouldhave annoyed Athos, I rather wish M. Le Vicomte de la Bragelonne himselfhad come to an end sooner. [318] My friend Mr. Henley, I believe, ranked it very high, and so did acommon friend of his and mine, the late universally regretted Mr. GeorgeWyndham. It so happened that, by accident, I never read the book till afew years ago; and Mr. Wyndham saw it, fresh from the bookseller's anduncut (or technically, "unopened") in my study. I told him thecircumstances, and he said, in his enthusiastic way, "I _do_ envy you!" [319] I do not need to be reminded of the conditions of health that alsoaffected _Peveril_. [320] I need not repeat, but merely refer to, what I have said of_Cinq-Mars_ and of _Notre-Dame de Paris_. [321] On the very day on which I was going over the rough draft of thispassage I saw, in a newspaper of repute, some words which perhaps throwlight on the objection to Dumas as having no literary merit. In them"incident, coherence, humour, and dramatic power" were all excluded fromthis merit, "style" alone remaining. Now I have been almost as oftenreproved for attaching too much value to style in others as forattending too little to it myself. But I certainly could not give itsuch a right to "reign alone. " It will indeed "do" almost by itself; butother things can "do" almost without it. [322] To be absolutely candid, Dumas himself did sometimes ask more ofthem than they could do; and then he failed. There can, I think, belittle doubt that this is the secret of the inadequacy (as at least itseems to me) of the Felton episode. As a friend (whose thousand meritsstrive to cover his one crime of not admiring Dumas quite enough), notknowing that I had yet written a line of this chapter, but as ithappened just as I had reached the present point, wrote to me: "Thinkwhat Sir Walter would have made of Felton!" [323] I could myself be perfectly content to adapt George III. On acertain _Apology_, and substitute for all this a simple "I do not thinkDumas needs any defence. " But where there has been so much obloquy, there should, perhaps, be some refutation. [324] "And then he says, says he.... " [325] In modern novels, of course. You have some good talk in Homer andalso in the Sagas, but I am not thinking or speaking of them. [326] "Red ink for ornament and black for use-- The best of things are open to abuse. " (_The Good Clerk_ as vouched for by Charles Lamb. ) [327] Yet, being nothing if not critical, I can hardly agree with thosewho talk of Dumas' "_wild_ imagination"! As the great Mr. Wordsworth wasmore often made to mourn by the gratitude of men than by its opposite, so I, in my humbler sphere, am more cast down sometimes by inappositepraise than by ignorant blame. CHAPTER IX THE FRENCH NOVEL IN 1850 [Sidenote: The peculiarity of the moment. ] It was not found necessary, in the last volume, to suspend the currentof narrative or survey for the purpose of drawing interim conclusions inspecial "Interchapters. "[328] But the subjects of this present are somuch more bulky and varied, in proportion to the space available and thetime considered; while the fortunes of the novel itself altered soprodigiously during that time, that something of the kind seemed to bedesirable, if not absolutely necessary. Moreover, the actual centre ofthe century in France, or rather what may be called its precinct, thepolitical interregnum of 1848-1852, is more than a _mere_ political andchronological date. To take it as an absolute apex or culmination wouldbe absurd; and even to take it as a definite turning-point might beexcessive. Not a few of the greatest novelists then living andworking--Hugo, whose most popular and bulkiest work in novel was yet tocome; George Sand, Mérimée, Gautier--were still to write for the bestpart of a quarter of a century, if not more; and the most definite freshstart of the second period, the rise of Naturalism, was not to takeplace till a little later. But already Chateaubriand, Beyle, Charles deBernard, and, above all, Balzac, were dead or soon to die: and it cannotbe said that any of the survivors developed new characters of work, foreven Hugo's was (_v. Sup. _) only the earlier "writ large" andmodernised in non-essentials. On the other hand, it was only after thistime that Dumas _fils_, the earliest of what may be called the newschool, produced his most remarkable work. But the justification of such an "Interchapter" as this practically isdepends, not on what is to come after, but on what has come before; andin this respect we shall find little difficulty in vindicating theposition and arrangement assigned to the remarks which are to follow, though some of these may look forward as well as backward. [329] * * * * * [Sidenote: A political nadir. ] I should imagine that few Frenchmen--despite the almost infinite andsometimes very startling variety of selection which the _laudatortemporis acti_ exhibits--look back upon the reign of Louis Philippe as agolden age in any respect but one. Regarding it from the point of viewof general politics, the ridiculous change[330] from "King of France" to"King of the French" stamped it at once, finally and hopelessly, as theworst kind of compromise--as a sort of spiritual imitation of themethods of the Triumvirate, where everybody gives up, not exactly hisfather or his uncle or his brother, but his dearest and most respectableconvictions, together with the historical, logical, and sentimentalsupports of them. The king himself--though certainly no fool, and thoughhardly to be called an unmitigated knave--was one of those unfortunatepersons whose merits do not in the least interest and whose defects dovery strongly disgust. Domestically, the reign was a reign, in the othersense, of silly minor revolutions, which, till the end, came to nothing, and then came to something only less absurd than the Russian revolutionof the other day, though fortunately less disastrous;[331] ofbureaucracy of the corrupt and shabby character which seemed to clingto the whole _régime_; and of remarkable vying between two distinguishedmen of letters, Guizot and Thiers, as to which should do most to confirmthe saying of the wicked that men of letters had much better havenothing to do with politics. [332] Abroad (with the exception of theacquisition of Algeria, which had begun earlier, and which conferred nogreat honour, though some profit, and a little snatching up of a fewloose trifles such as the Society Islands, which we had, according toour custom, carelessly or benevolently left to gleaners), French arms, despite a great deal of brag and swagger, obtained little glory, whileFrench diplomacy let itself wallow in one of the foulest sloughs inhistory, the matter of the Spanish marriages. [Sidenote: And almost a literary zenith. ] But this unsatisfactory state of things was made up--and more than madeup--for posterity if not for contemporaries--by the extraordinarydevelopment of literature and the arts--especially literature and mostespecially of all the _belles-lettres_. If (which would be ratherimpossible) one were to evaluate the relative excellence of poetry andof prose fiction in the time itself, a great deal could be said on bothsides. But if one took the larger historic view, it would certainly haveto be admitted that, while the excellence of French poetry was amagnificent Renaissance after a long period of something like sterility, the excellence of the novel was something more--an achievement of thingsnever yet achieved; an acquisition and settlement of territory which hadnever previously been even explored. I venture to hope that no great injustice has been done to the previousaccomplishments of France in this department as they were surveyed inthe last volume. She had been, if not the inventress of Romance, the[Greek: aidoiê tamiê]--the revered distributress--of it to all nations;she had made the short story her own to such an extent that, in almostall its forms, she had reached and kept mastery of it; and in variousisolated instances she had done very important, if not now universallyacceptable, work in the practice of the "Heroic. " With Rabelais, Lesage, almost Marivaux, certainly, in his one diploma-piece, Prévost, she hadcontributed persons and things of more or less consummateness to thenovel-staff and the novel treasury. But she had never quite reached, asEngland for two full generations had reached before 1800, the consummateexpression of the--_pure_ novel--the story which, not neglectingincident, but as a rule confining itself to the incidents of ordinarylife; advancing character to a position at least equal with plot;presenting the manners of its own day, but charging them with essence ofhumanity in all days; re-creates, for the delectation of readers, a newworld of probable, indeed of actual, life through the medium ofliterature. And she had rarely--except in the fairy-tale and a very fewmasterpieces like _Manon Lescaut_ again and _La NouvelleHéloïse_[333]--achieved what may be called the Romantic or passionatenovel; while, except in such very imperfect admixtures of the historicelement as _La Princesse de Clèves_, she had never attempted, and evenin these had never attained, the historical novel proper. Now, in 1850, she had done all this, and more. [Sidenote: The performance of the time in novel. ] As has been seen, the doing was, if not solely effected between 1830 and1848, mainly and almost wholly carried out in the second quarter of thecentury. In the first, only three persons possessing anything likegenius--Benjamin Constant, Madame de Staël, and Chateaubriand--hadbusied themselves with the novel, and they were all strongly chargedwith eighteenth-century spirit. Indeed, Constant, as we saw in the lastvolume, though he left pattern and stimulus for the nineteenth and thefuture generally, really represented the last dying words of that"Sensibility" school which was essentially of the past, though it wasundoubtedly necessary to the future. Likewise in Madame de Staël, andstill more in Chateaubriand, there was model, stimulus, germ. But theyalso were, on the whole, of the eve rather than of the morrow. I haveindeed sometimes wondered what would have happened if Chateaubriand hadgone on writing novels, and had devoted to fiction the talent which hewasted on the _mesquin_[334] politics of the France of his later daysand on the interesting but restricted and egotistic _Mémoiresd'Outre-Tombe_. It is no doubt true that, though old men have oftenwritten great poetry and excellent serious prose, nobody, sofar as I remember, has written a great novel after seventy. For_Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, if it be great, is a romance rather than a novel, and a romance which had much better have been poetry. But this is anexcursion into the Forbidden Country of the Might-Have-Been. We areconcerned with what was. The accomplishment of these twenty or five-and-twenty years is soextraordinary--when bulk, variety, novelty, and greatness of achievementare considered together--that there is hardly anything like itelsewhere. The single work of Balzac would mark and make an epoch; andthis is wholly the property of the period. And though there is still, and is likely always to be, controversy as to whether the Balzacian menand women are exactly men and women of _this_ world, there can, as mayhave been shown, be no rational denial of the fact that they represent_a_ world--not of pure romance, not of fairy-tale, not of convention orfashion or coterie, but a world human and synthetically possible in itskind. [Sidenote: The _personnel_. ] But while the possession of Balzac alone would have sufficed, by itself, to give the time front rank among the periods of the novel, it is not inthe least extravagant to add that if Balzac had been blotted out of itsrecord it could still prove title-deeds enough, and more than enough, tosuch a place. Fault has here been found--perhaps not a few readers maythink to an excessive, certainly to a considerable extent--with thenovel-work of Hugo and with that of George Sand. But the fault-finderhas not dreamed of denying that, as literature in novel-form, _LesMisérables_ and _L'Homme Qui Rit_ and _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_ are great, and that _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ is of the greatest. [335] And onthe other hand, while strong exceptions have been taken from severalsides to the work of George Sand, the fact remains--and no attempt hasbeen made to obscure or to shake it--that George Sand gave noveldelectation, in no vulgar fashion, and to no small extent in the form ofthe pure novel itself, probably to as large a number of readers as anynovelist except Scott and Dumas; and perhaps Dickens, has ever given. Ofthe miraculous production of Dumas himself almost enough should havebeen said before, though a little more may come after; and whatevercontroversy there may be about its purely literary value, therecan--with reasonable people who are prepared to give and take--be littleanxiety to deny that each of these three, like Balzac, might have takenthe burden of the period on his or her own shoulders, while as a matterof fact they have but to take each a corner. Nor, even when thusdivided, is the burden left wholly to them. The utmost perfection, atleast in the short story, is reached by Mérimée and Gautier, little lessthan such perfection by others. For suggestions of new kinds and newtreatments, if for no single performance, few periods, if any, have asuperior to Beyle. But, once more, just as the time need not rely on any single champion ofits greatest to maintain its position, so, if all the greater names justmentioned were struck out, it would still be able to "make good" by dintof the number, the talent, the variety, the novelty of its second- andthird-rate representatives. Even those who may think that I have takenPaul de Kock too seriously cannot deny--for it is a simple fact--thevigorous impulse that he gave to the _popularity_ of the novel as a formof the printed book, if not of literature; while I can hardly imagineany one who takes the trouble to examine this fact refusing to admitthat it is largely due to an advance in reality of a kind--though theymay think this kind itself but a shady and sordid one. On the otherhand, I think less of Eugène Sue than at one time "men of good" used tothink; but I, in my turn, should not dream of denying his popularity, orthe advance which he too effected in procuring for the novel its share, and a vast share, in the attention of the general reader. Jules Sandeauand Charles de Bernard, Soulié and Féval and Achard, and not a fewothers mentioned or not mentioned in the text, come up to support theirpriors, while, as I have endeavoured to point out, two others still, Charles Nodier and Gérard de Nerval, though it may seem absurd to claimprimacy for them, contribute that idiosyncrasy without which, whether itbe sufficient to establish primacy or not, nothing can ever claim topossess that quality. [Sidenote: The kinds--the historical novel. ] But while it is not necessary to repeat the favourable estimates alreadygiven of individuals, it is almost superfluous to rest the claims of theperiod to importance in novel history upon them. Elsewhere[336] I havelaid some emphatic and reiterated stress on the mischief which hassometimes arisen from too exclusive critical attention to "kinds, "classes, and the like in literature--to the oblivion or obscuring ofindividual men and works of letters. But as there has been, and I hopewill be, no ignoring of individuals here, and as this whole bookendeavours to be a history of a kind, remarks on subdivisions of thatkind as such can hardly be regarded as inopportune or inconsistent. [Sidenote: Appearance of new classes--the historical. ] Now it is impossible that anybody who is at all inclined or accustomedto think about the characteristics of the pleasure he receives fromliterature, should not have noticed in this period the fact--beside andoutside of the other fact of a provision of delectable novelists--of agreat splitting up and (as scientific slang would put it) fissiparousgeneration of the the classes of novel. It is, indeed, open to theadvocates or generic or specific criticism--though I think they cannotpossibly maintain their position as to poetry--to urge that a great dealof harm was done to the novel, or at least that its development wasunnecessarily retarded, by the absence of this division earlier. And inparticular they might lay stress on the fortunes and misfortunes of thehistorical element. That element had at least helped to start--and hadlargely provided the material of--the earlier verse-romances and storiesgenerally; but the entire absence of criticism at the time had mergedit, almost or altogether, in mere fiction. It had played, as we saw, agreat part in the novels of the seventeenth century; but it had for themost part merely "got in the way" of its companion ingredients and inits own. I have admitted that there are diversities of opinion as to itsvalue in the _Astrée_; but I hold strongly to my own that it would bemuch better away there. I can hardly think that any one, uninfluenced bythe sillier, not the nobler, estimate of the classics, can think thatthe "heroic" novels gain anything, though they may possibly not losevery much, by the presence in them of Cyrus and Clélia, Arminius andCandace, Roxana and Scipio. But perhaps the most fruitful example forconsideration is _La Princesse de Clèves_. Here, small as is the totalspace, there is a great deal of history and a crowd, if for the mostpart mute, of historical persons. But not one of these has the veryslightest importance in the story; and the Prince and the Princess andthe Duke--we may add the Vidame--who are the only figures that _have_importance, might be the Prince and Princess of Kennaquhair, the Duke ofChose, and the Vidame of Gonesse, in any time or no time since thecreation of the world, while retaining their fullest power of situationand appeal. But this side of the matter is of far less consequence than another. This historical element of the _historia mixta_[337] was not merelyrather a nuisance and quite a superfluity as regarded the whole of thestories in which it appeared; but its presence there and the tricks thathad to be played with it prevented the development of the historicalnovel proper--that, as it has been ticketed, "bodiless childful oflife, " which waited two thousand years in the ante-natal gloom before itcould get itself born. Here, indeed, one may claim--and I suppose nosensible Frenchmen would for a moment hesitate to admit it--that evenmore than in the case of Richardson's influence nearly a centuryearlier, help came to their Troy from a Greek city. To France as toEngland, and to all the world, Scott unlocked the hoard of thisdelightful variety of fictitious literature, though it was not quite atonce that she took advantage of the treasury. But when she did, the way in which she turned over the borrowed capitalwas certainly amazing, and for a long time she quite distanced thefollowers of Scott himself in England. James, Ainsworth, and even Bulwercannot possibly challenge comparison with the author of _Notre Dame deParis_ as writers, or with Dumas as story-tellers; and it was not tillthe second half of the century was well advanced, and when Dumas' ownbest days were very nearly over, that England, with Thackeray's _Esmond_and Kingsley's _Westward Ho!_ and Charles Reade's _The Cloister and theHearth_, re-formed the kind afresh into something which France has neveryet been able to rival. In order, however, to obviate any possible charge of insular unfairness, it may be well to note that Chateaubriand, though he had never reached(or in all probability attempted to reach) anything of the true Scottkind, had made a great advance in something the same direction, and hadindeed to some extent sketched a different variety of historical novelfrom Scott's own; while, before Scott's death, Victor Hugo imbued theScott romance itself with intenser doses of passion, of the subsidiaryinterests of art, etc. , and of what may be in a way called "theory, "than Scott had cared for. In fact, the Hugonic romance is a sort ofblending of Scott and Byron, with a good deal of the author's country, and still more of himself, added. The connection again between Scott andDumas is simpler and less blended with other influences; the chiefdifferences should have been already pointed out. But the importantthing to notice is that, with a few actual gaps, and several patcheswhich have been more fully worked over and occupied than others, practically the whole of French history from the fourteenth century to, and including, the Revolution was "novelised" by the wand of this secondmagician. [338] That the danger of the historical variety was entirely avoided by theseits French practitioners cannot indeed be said. Even Scott had notwholly got the better of it in his less perfect pieces, such, forinstance, as those already glanced-at parts of _The Monastery_, wherehistorical _récit_ now and then supplies the place of vigorousnovel-action and talk. Dumas' co-operative habits (which are as littleto be denied as they are to be exaggerated) lent themselves to it muchmore freely. But, notwithstanding this, the total accession of pleasureto the novel-reader was immense, and the further possibility of suchaccession practically unlimited. And accordingly the kind, thoughsometimes belittled by foolish criticism, and sometimes going out offavour by the vicissitudes of mere fashion, has constantly reneweditself, and is likely to do so. Its special advantages and its specialwarnings are of some interest to discuss briefly. Among the first may beranked something which the foolish belittlers above mentioned entirelyfail to appreciate, and indeed positively dislike. The danger of thenovel of ordinary and contemporary life (which accompanied this andwhich is to be considered shortly as such) is that there may be so much_mere_ ordinariness and contemporariness that the result may bedistasteful, if not sickening, to future ages. This has (to take oneexample out of many) happened with the novels of so clever a person asTheodore Hook in England, even with comparatively elect judges; with thevulgar it is said to have happened even with such consummate things asthose of Miss Austen. With a large number of another sort of vulgar itis said to happen with "Victorian" novels generally, while even theelect sometimes find it difficult to prevent its happening withEdwardian and Fifth Georgian. Now the historical novelist has before himthe entire range of the most interesting fashions, manners, incidents, characters, literary styles of recorded time. He has but to select fromthis inexhaustible store of general material, and to charge it withsufficient power of humanity of all time, and the thing is done. [339]Under no circumstances can the best historical novels ever lose theirattraction with the best readers; and as for the others in each kind, who cares what happens to _them_? There are, moreover, some interesting general rules about the historicalnovel which are well worth a moment's notice, even if this partake tosome extent of the nature of repetition. The chief of them, which atleast ought to be well known, is that it is never safe to make aprominent historical character, and seldom safe to make a prominenthistorical event, the central subject of your story. The reason is ofcourse obvious. The generally known facts cramp and hamper the writer;he is constantly knocking against them, and finding them in the way ofthe natural development of his tale. No doubt there is, and has been, agood deal of otiose and even rather silly criticism of details inhistorical novels which do not satisfy the strict historian. The fusswhich some people used to make about Scott's anachronisms in _Ivanhoe_and _Kenilworth_; the shakings of heads which ought to know better, overThackeray's dealings with the Old Chevalier and his scandals about MissOglethorpe in _Esmond_, can be laughed or wondered at merely. But thenthese are matters of no importance to the main story. It is Ivanhoe andRebecca, Henry Esmond and Beatrix, [340] all of them persons absolutelyunknown to history, in whom we are really interested; and in the othercase mentioned, Amy Robsart is such a creature or "daughter, " if not "ofdreams" "of debate, " that you may do almost what you like with her; andthe book does not sin by presentation of a Leicester so very differentfrom the historical. [341] But, on the other hand, the introduction ofhistorical persons, skilfully used, seasons, enforces, and vivifies theinterest of a book mightily; and the action of great historical scenessupports that of the general plot in a still more remarkable manner. Onthe whole, we may perhaps say that Dumas depends more on the latter, Scott on the former, and that the difference is perhaps connected withtheir respective bulk and position as dramatists. Dumas has made of nohistorical magnate anything like what Scott has made of Richard and ofMary and of Elizabeth; but Scott has not laid actual historical scenesunder contribution to anything like the same extent as that by whichDumas has in a fashion achieved a running panorama-companion to thehistory of France from the fourteenth century to the Revolution and, more intensively, from the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew to theestablishment of Louis XIV. 's autocracy. In fact, the advantages, both to the novelist and to his readers, of thehistorical kind can hardly be exaggerated. The great danger of inventedprose narrative--of _all_ invented narrative, indeed, prose orverse--has always been, and has always from the first shown itself asbeing, that of running into moulds. In the old epics (the Classical, notthe _Chansons_) this danger was accentuated by the rise ofrule-criticism; but the facts had induced, if they did not justify, thatrule-system itself. The monotony of the mediaeval romance, whether_Chanson_ or _Roman_, has been declared more than once in this book tobe exaggerated, but it certainly exists. The "heroic" succumbs to asimilar fate rather fatally, though the heroic element itself comesslightly to the rescue; and even the picaresque by no means escapes. Todescend, or rather to look, into the gutter for a moment, the samenessof the deliberately obscene novel is a byword to those who, in pursuitof knowledge, have incurred the necessity of "washing themselves inwater and being unclean until the evening"; and we saw that even such alight and lively talent as Crébillon's, keeping above the very lowestgutter-depths, could not escape the same danger wholly. In the upper airthe fairy-tale flies too often in prescribed gyres; and the most modernkinds of all--the novel of analysis, the problem-novel, and all the restof them--strive in vain to avoid the curse of--as Rabelais put somethingnot dissimilar long ago--"fatras _à la douzaine_. " "All the stories aretold, " saith the New, even as the Old, Preacher; all but the highestgenius is apt to show ruts, brain-marks, common orientations of routeand specifications of design. Only the novel of creative--not merelysynthetised--character in the most expert hands escapes--for humancharacter undoubtedly partakes of the Infinite; but few are they who cancommand the days and ways of creation. Yet though history has its unaltering laws; though human nature ingeneral is always the same; though that which hath been shall be, andthe dreams of new worlds and new societies are the most fatuous of vainimaginations--the details of historical incident vary as much as thoseof individual character or feature, and the whole of recorded timeoffers them, more than half ready for use, in something like the samecondition as those patterns of work which ladies buy, fill up, andregard as their own. To make an historical novel of the very highestclass, such as the best of Scott and Thackeray, requires of course verymuch more than this--to make one of all but the highest class, such as_Les Trois Mousquetaires_, requires much more. But that "tolerablepastime, " which it is the business of the average novelist to supply atthe demand of the average reader, can perhaps be attained more easily, more abundantly, and with better prospect of average satisfaction in thehistorical way than in any other. [Sidenote: Other kinds and classes. ] [Sidenote: The Novel of Romanticism generally. ] It would, however, of course be an intolerable absurdity to rest theclaims of the French novel of 1825 to 1850 wholly--it would be somewhatabsurd to rest them mainly--on its performances in this single kind. Itfound out, continued, or improved many others; and perhaps most of itsgreatest achievements were in these others. In fact "others" is anincorrect or at least an inexact term; for the historic novel itself isonly a subdivision or offshoot of the great literary revolution which wecall Romanticism. Indeed the entire novel of the nineteenth century, misapprehend the fact as people may, is in fact Romantic, from the firstnovel of Chateaubriand to the last of Zola, though the Romanticism ischequered and to a certain extent warped by that invincible Frenchdetermination towards "Rule" which has vindicated itself so often, andon which shortly we may have to make something almost like an excursus. But this very fact, if nothing else, would make a discussion of theRomantic novel as such out of place _here_; it will have to come, tosome extent at any rate, in the Conclusion itself. Only for the presentneed it be said, without quite the same danger of meeting with scornfulor indignant protest, that all the books hitherto discussed from _René_to _Dominique_, from _Le Solitaire_ to _Monte Cristo_--even the work ofMérimée and Sainte-Beuve, those celebrated "apostates" as some wouldhave them to be--is really Romantic. It may follow the more poeticalromanticism of Nodier and Hugo, of Gautier and Gérard; the historicalromanticism of Vigny and Mérimée; the individualism and analysis ofBeyle and his disciples; the supernaturalism of George Sand and Nodieragain; the adventurous incident of Sue and Soulié and Dumas and theDumasians generally; it may content itself with that modified form ofthe great Revolt which admits "low" or "middle" subjects and discardsthe classical theories that a hero ought to be dignified. But alwaysthere is something of the general Romantic colour about--something overwhich M. Nisard has shaken or would have shaken his respectable_perruque_. [342] So turn we to the other larger group--the largest group of all that comeunder our survey--the New Ordinary Novel, that which concerns itselfwith the last shade of his colour just described. [Sidenote: The "ordinary. "] We had seen, before the beginning of this volume, how Pigault-Lebrun, invulgar ways and with restricted talent, had nevertheless made distinctadvances in this direction; and we saw in the beginning of this how Paulde Kock--with something of the same limitations but with the advantageof a predecessor in Pigault and of further changes in society towardsthe normal--improved upon the earlier progression. But Pigault and Paulwere thrown into the shade by those writers, younger contemporaries ofboth, who brought to their task greater genius, better taste, and if notknowledge of better society, at any rate better knowledge how to usetheir knowledge. Whether Balzac's books can be ticketed _sans phrase_, as "novels of _ordinary_ life, " has been, or should have been, dulydiscussed already. It is certain that, as a rule, they intend to be so. So it is with at least the majority of George Sand's; so with all thoseof her first lover and half name-father Sandeau; so with Charles deBernard; so with some at least of Mérimée's best short stories andMusset's, if not exactly of Gautier's; so with others who have hadplaces, and a good many more for whom no place could be found. France, indeed, may be said to have caught up and passed England in this kind, between the time when Miss Austen died and that when Thackeray at lastdid justice to himself with _Vanity Fair_. And this novel of ordinarylife has continued, and shows no signs of ceasing, to be the kind mostin demand, according to the usual law of "Like to Like. " We shall seefurther developments of it and shall have to exercise careful criticaldiscretion in deciding whether the apparent improvement only meansnearer approximation to our own standard of ordinariness, or to a moreabstract one. But that it was in these twenty or five and twenty yearsthat something like a norm of ordinariness was first reached, hardlyadmits of any question. Still, very much question may arise, and must befaced, on the point whether this novel of ordinary life has notredeveloped a _non_-ordinary subdivision, or many such, in the "problem"novel, the novel of analysis, of abnormal individualism, of theory, naturalist and other, etc. To this we must turn; for at least part ofthis new question is a very important one, though it may requiresomething of a digression to deal with it properly. * * * * * [Sidenote: Discussion on a point of general novel criticism. ] I have in these volumes, rather sedulously--some readers no doubt maythink too sedulously--avoided "fighting prizes" on general points of thecriticism or novel-theory. Not that I have the slightest objection tofighting "for my own hand" or to seeing or reading about a good fightbetween others--very much the contrary. I never thought it the worstcompliment paid to Englishmen--the Indian opinion of us, as reported bythe late M. Darmesteter--that we cared for nothing but fighting, sport, and making love. But the question now to be discussed is so germane toour subject, both general and special; and the discussion of it once forall (with _renvois_ thereto elsewhere) will save so much space, trouble, and inconvenience, that it may as well be handled at full length. There was hinted--in a review[343] of the first volume of this workotherwise so complimentary that it must have satisfied the Archbishop ofGranada himself--a doubt whether I had given sufficient weight tosomething which I shall let the reviewer express in his own words;[344]and whether my admission of Rabelais (of which admission, except onprinciple, he was himself very glad); my relegation of Laclos to theCondemned Corps; and my comparative toleration of Pigault-Lebrun, didnot indicate heresy. Now I feel pretty certain that such a well-wisherwould hardly suspect me of doing any of these things by inadvertence;and as I must have gone, and shall still go, much further from what isthe right line in his (and no doubt others') opinion, I may as wellstate my point of view here. It should supply a sort of justificatorycomment not merely on the chapters and passages just referred to, andothers in the last volume, but on a much larger number in this--in fact, after a fashion, to the whole of this. Any difference of it from thenormal French view will even help to explain my attitude in those partsof this book (_e. G. _ the remarks on Dumas _père_) to which it does notdirectly apply, as well as those (_e. G. _ on Dumas _fils_) to which itdoes. The whole question seems to me to turn on the curiously differentestimates which different people make of what constitutes "humanity. " Tocite another dictum of my friend the enemy, he, while, as I have said, speaking with extraordinary kindness of my chapter on Rabelais initself, disallows it in a _History of the Novel_ because, among otherreasons, Panurge is not, or is very slightly, human. I should have saidthat Panurge was as human as Hamlet, though certainly not so_gentle_human. [345] I never met either; but I might do so, and I amsure I should recognise both as men and brothers. Still, the comparisonhere is of course somewhat rhetorical. Let us take Panurge with Laclos'Valmont, whom, I think, my critic _does_ consider human; whom I am sureI never have met and never shall meet, even if I should be sounfortunate as to go to the place which (but, of course, for theconsolations of the Church) would have been his, _if_ he had been human;and whom I never could in the most impossible event or _milieu_recognise as anything but a synthetised specification. One may perhapsdwell on this, for it is of immense importance to the general question. Panurge and Valmont, comparatively considered, have beyond doubt pointsin common. Both are extremely immoral, and both are--though the one onlysometimes, the other always--ill-natured. Neither is a fool, though theone does, or is going to do, at least one very foolish thing with hiseyes open; while nothing that the other does--even his provocation ofMadame de Merteuil--can be said to be exactly "foolish. " Both areattempts to do what Thackeray said he attempted to do in most of thecharacters of _Vanity Fair_--to draw people "living without God in theworld. " Yet I can tolerate Panurge, and recognise him as human even whenhe indirectly murders Dindenault, even when (which is worse) he behavesso atrociously to the Lady of Paris; and I cannot tolerate or validateValmont even when he excogitates and puts in practice that veryingenious and picturesque idea of a writing-desk, or when he seeks theconsolations and fortifications of the Church after Danceny has done onhim the first part of the judgment of God. And I think I can givereasons, both for my intolerance and for my toleration, "rightly and inmine own division. " The reason why I think that Panurge is rightly and Valmont wrongly"copied or re-created" is that Panurge is made at the hazard of theartist, Valmont according to prescription. There might be--there havebeen--fifty or a hundred Valmonts, the prescription being followed, andslightly--still remaining a prescription--altered. There is and can beonly one Panurge. This difference reminds me of, and may be illustratedby, a fact which, in one form or another, must be familiar to manypeople. I was once talking to a lady who had just come over from China, and who wore a dress of soft figured silk of the most perfectlove-in-a-mist colour-shade which I had ever seen, even in turning overthe wonder-drawers at Liberty's. I asked her if (for she then intendedto go back almost at once) she could get me any like it. "No, " she said, "at least not exactly. They never make two pieces of just the sameshade, and in fact they couldn't if they tried. They take handfuls ofdifferent dyes, measured and mixed, as it seems, at random. " Now that isthe way God and, in a lesser degree, the great artists work, and theresult is living creatures, according to the limitations of artistic andthe no-limitations of natural life. The others weigh out a dram of lust, a scruple of cleverness, an ounce of malice, half an ounce ofsuperficial good manners, etc. , and say, "Here is a character for you. Type No. 12345. " And it is not a living creature at all. But, havingbeen made by regular synthesis, [346] it can be regularly analysed, andpeople say, "Oh, how clever he is. " The first product, having grownrather than been made, defies analysis, and they say, "How commonplace!" One can perhaps lay out the ropes of the ring of combat mostsatisfactorily and fairly by using the distinction of the reviewer (if Ido not misunderstand him), that I have neglected the interval between"to copy" and "to re-create. " I accept this dependence, which mayperhaps be illustrated further from that (in itself) foolish and vulgarboast of Edmond de Goncourt's that his and his brother's epithets were"personal" while Flaubert's were only "admirably good specimens of theepithets of _tout le monde_. " To translate: Should the novelist aim, by _mimesis_--it is a misfortunewhich I have lamented over and over again in print that "Imitation" and"Copying" are such misleading versions of this--of actual characters, toevolve a personality which will be recognised by all competent observersas somebody whom he has actually met or might have met? Or should he, trusting to his own personal powers of putting together qualities andtraits, but more or less neglecting the patterns which the Almighty hasput before him in _tout le monde_--sometimes also regarding conventionaltypes and "academies"--either (for this is important) to follow orviolently _not_ to follow them--produce something that owes _its_personality to himself only? The former has been the aim of the greatEnglish novelists since Fielding, if not since Richardson[347] or evenDefoe. It was the aim of Lesage: he has told us so in so many words. Itis by no means alien from that of Marivaux, though he did not pursue itwith a single eye; and the same may be said even of Crébillon. WhetherPrévost aimed at it or not, he hit the white in _Manon_ as certainly andunmistakably as he lost his arrows elsewhere. Rousseau both did it andmeant it in the first part of _Julie_. Pigault, in a clumsy, botcherlyfashion, made "outers" not infrequently. But Laclos seems to me to have(as his in some sense follower Dumas _fils_ has it in the passage notedabove) "proceeded by synthesis"--to have said, "Let us make amischievous Marquise and a vile Viscount. Let us deprive them of everyamiable quality and of every one that can be called in any sense 'good, 'except a certain kind of intellectual ability, and, in the Viscount'scase, an ingenious fancy in the matter of extemporising writing-desks. "And he did it; and then the people who think that because (to adopt thelanguage of George de Barnwell) "the True is not always the Beautiful"the Ugly must always be the True, hail him as a master. [348] That this half-digression, half-dilemma, is prospective as well asretrospective will hardly form a subject of objection for any one but amere fault-finder. From the top of a watershed you necessarily surveyboth slopes. The tendency which we have been discussing is certainlymore prevalent in the second half of the century than in the first half. It is prominent in Dumas _fils_, with whom we shall be dealing shortly;it increases as time goes on; and it becomes almost paramount in thepractice of and the discussions about the Naturalist School. In the timeon which we look back it is certainly important in Beyle and Balzac. ButI cannot admit that it is predominant elsewhere, and I am prepared todeny utterly that, until the time of the Sensibility and _Philosophe_novels, it is even a notable characteristic of French fiction. Many hardthings have been said of criticism; but, acknowledging the badness of abird who even admits any foulness in his own nest--far more in one whocauses it--I am bound to say that I think the state of the department ofliterature now under discussion was happier before we meddled with it. Offence must come; it would even be sometimes rather a pity if it didn'tcome: but perhaps the old saying is true in the case of those by whomsome kinds of it come. If criticism and creation could be kept asseparate as some creators pridefully pretend, it would not matter. Andthe best critics never attempt to show how things should be done, butmerely to point out how they have been done--well or badly. But when menbegin to write according to criticism, they generally begin to writebadly, just as when women begin to dress themselves according tofashion-mongers they usually begin (or would but for the grace of God)to look ugly. And there are some mistakes which appear to be absolutelyincorrigible. When I was a Professor of Literature I used to say everyyear in so many words, as I had previously written for more than as manyyears, when I was only a critic of it, "I do not wish to teach you howto write. I wish to teach you how to read, and to tell you what there isto read. " The same is my wish in regard to the French Novel. What hasbeen done in it--not what these, even the practitioners themselves, havesaid of it--is the burden of my possibly unmusical song. * * * * * The excuse, indeed, for this long digression may be, I think, madewithout impropriety or "forcing" to coincide with the natural sequel andcorrelation of this chapter. The development of the novel of ordinarylife in the second half of the century _was_ extraordinary; but it wasto a very large extent marked by the peculiarities--some of them near tocorruptions--which have been just discussed. With the possible exceptionof Beyle, there was little more theory, or attempt at synthesis inaccordance therewith, in the "ordinary" than in the "historical"division of this earlier time. We have seen how the absence of "generalideas"--another way of putting it--has been actually brought as a chargeagainst Balzac. George Sand had, especially at first, something of it;and this something seems, to me at least, by no means to have improvedher work. In none or hardly any of the rest is there any evidence of"school, " "system, " "pattern, " "problem, " or the like. Yet they give usan immense amount of pastime, and I do not think their or their readers'state was any the less gracious for what they did _not_ give us. FOOTNOTES: [328] I have not called this so, because the division into "Books, " withwhich the _raison d'être_ of "Interchapters" is almost inseparablyconnected, has not been adopted in this _History_. [329] This fact, as well, perhaps, as others, should be taken intoaccount by any one who may be at first sight surprised, and perhaps inthe Biblical sense "offended, " at finding two-thirds of the volumeallotted to half of the time. [330] To vary a good epigram of the _Rolliad_ crew on Pitt: "'The French' for 'France' can't please the _Blanc_, The _Bleu_ detests the 'King. '" [331] _V. Sup. _ on Reybaud. [332] This is of course quite a different thing from saying thatpoliticians had better have nothing to do with letters, or that men ofletters may not _discuss_ politics. It is when they become Ministersthat they too often disgust men and amuse angels. [333] _Adolphe_ actually belongs to the nineteenth century. [334] As I write this I remember how my friend the late M. Beljame, whoand whose "tribe" have come so nobly for English literature in Francefor forty years past, was shocked long ago at my writing "Mazar_in_Library, " and refused to be consoled by my assurance that I should neverdream of writing anything but "Bibliothèque Mazar_ine_. " But I had, andhave, no doubt on the principle. [335] I _hope_, but do not trust, that no descendant of the persons whotold Charles Lamb that Burns could not at the time be present because hewas dead, will say, "But all these were subsequent to 1850. " [336] In my _History of Criticism_, _passim_. [337] _V. Sup. _ Vol. I. , on the "heroic" romance. [338] It seems unnecessary to repeat what has been said on Vigny andMérimée; but it is important to keep constantly in mind that they camebefore Dumas. As for the still earlier _Solitaire_, I must repeat thatM. D'Arlincourt's utter failure as an individual ought not completely toobscure his importance as a pioneer in kind. [339] "Suppose you go and do it?" as Thackeray says of another matter, no doubt. But I am Crites, not Poietes. [340] Pedantius may urge, "But 'James III. ' is made to affect thefortunes of Esmond and Beatrix very powerfully. " True; but he himself isby no means a _very_ "prominent historical character, " and the exactcircumstances of the agony of Queen Anne, and the _coup d'état_ ofShrewsbury and Argyle, have still enough of the unexplained in or aboutthem to permit somewhat free dealing. [341] If any one says "_Leicester's Commonwealth?_" I say "_The FaërieQueene?_" [342] I intend nothing offensive in thus mentioning his attitude. In my_History of Criticism_ I have aimed at justice both to his short stageof going with, or at least not definitely against, the Romantic vein, and his much longer one of reaction. He was always vigorous in argumentand dignified in manner; but his nature, when he found it, wasessentially neo-classic. [343] In the _Times Literary Supplement_ for Thursday, Nov. 1, 1917. [344] "It is vain to ask, as is the modern custom, whether the leap fromthe word 'copy' to the word 'recreate' (_v. Sup. _ Vol. I. P. 471) doesnot cover a difference in kind.... One feels that Prof. S. Is rathersympathetic to that which traditional French criticism regards asessential ... Close psychological analysis of motive, " etc. And so heeven questions whether what I have given, much as he likes and praisesit, _is_ "A History of The French Novel. " But did I ever undertake togive this _from the French point of view_, or to write a _History ofFrench Novel-Criticism_? Or need I do so? [345] It might, however, be a not uninteresting matter of debate whetherPanurge's conduct to the Lady of Paris was _really_ so very much worsethan part of Hamlet's to Ophelia. [346] By one of those odd coincidences which diversify and relieveliterary work, I read, for the first time in my life, and a few hours_after_ writing the above words, these in Dumas _fils'_ _Thérèse_: "Ilprocède par synthése. " They do not there apply to authorship, but to themotives and conduct of one of the writer's questionable quasi-heroes. But the whole context, and the usual methods of Dumas _fils_ himself, are saturated with synthesis _by rule_. (Of course the other process is, as also according to the strict meaning of the word, "synthetic, " but_not_ "by rule. ") [347] I own I see a little less of it and a little more of the other inhim; whence a certain lukewarmness with which I have sometimes beenreproached. [348] My very amiable reviewer thinks that eighteenth-century Frenchsociety _did_ behave _à la Laclos_. I don't, though I think it did _à laCrébillon_. CHAPTER X DUMAS THE YOUNGER [Sidenote: Division of future subjects. ] No one who has not had some experience in writing literaryhistory knows the difficulties--or perhaps I should say the"unsatisfactorinesses"--which attend the shepherding of examples intoseparate chronological folds. But every one who has had that experienceknows that mere neglect to attempt this shepherding has seriousdrawbacks. In such cases there is nothing for it but a famous phrase, "We will do what we can. " An endeavour has been made in the last chapterto show that, about the middle of the nineteenth century, a noteworthychange _did_ pass over French novel-literature. In a similar retrospect, at the end of the volume and the _History_, we may be able, _si Dieunous prête vie_, to show that this change was not actually succeeded byany other of equal importance as far as our own subject goes. But thestage had, like all such things, sub-stages; and there must becorresponding breaks, if only mechanical ones, in the narrative, toavoid the distasteful "blockiness" resulting from their absence. Afterseveral changes of plan I have thought it best to divide what remains ofthe subject into five chapters (to which a separate Conclusion may beadded). The first of these will be allotted, for reasons to be given, toAlexandre Dumas _fils_; the second to Gustave Flaubert, greatest by far, if not most representative, of all dealt with in this latter part of thevolume; the third to others specially of the Second Empire, but notspecially of the Naturalist School; the fourth to that School itself;and the fifth to those now defunct novelists of the Third Republic, upto the close of the century, who may not have been dealt with before. * * * * * There should not, I think, be much doubt that we ought to begin withAlexandre Dumas, the son, who--though he launched his most famous novelfive years before Napoleon the Third made himself come to the throne, had been writing for about as many earlier still, and lived till longafter the Terrible Year, and almost to the end of our own tether--is yetalmost more essentially _the_ novelist of the Second Empire than any oneelse, not merely because before its end he practically gave up Novel forDrama, but for other reasons which we may hope to set forth presently. [Sidenote: A confession. ] Before sitting down comfortably to deal with him in my critical jacket, I have to put on, for ceremonial purposes, something of a white sheet, and to hold a candle of repentance in my hand. I have never said verymuch about the younger Dumas anywhere, and I am not conscious of anypositive injustice in what I _have_ said;[349] but I do suspect acertain imperfection of justice. This arose, as nearly all positive andcomparative injustices do, from insufficient knowledge and study. Whatit was exactly in him that "put me off" of old I could not now say; butI think it was because I did come across some of his numerous and famousfisticuffs of Preface and Dissertation and controversy. I thought then, and I still think, that the artist has something better to do than to"fight prizes": he has to do things worthy of the prize. "They say. Whatsay they? Let them say" should be his motto. And later, when I mighthave condoned this (in the proper sense of that appallingly misusedword) in virtue of his positive achievements, he had left offnovel-writing and had taken to drama, for which, in its modern forms, Ihave never cared. But I fear I must make a further confession. Theextravagant praise which was lavished on him by other critics, eventhough they were, in some cases at least, [Greek: philoi andres], oncemore proved a stumbling-block. [350] I have endeavoured to set mattersright here by serious study of his novel work and some reference to therest; so I hope that I may discard the sheet, and give the rest of thecandle to the poor, now much requiring it. [Sidenote: His general character. ] One thing about him is clear from his first famous, though not hisfirst, book[351]--a book which, as has been said, actually preceded theSecond Empire, but which has been thought to cast something of aprophetic shadow over that period of revel and rottenness--that is tosay, from _La Dame aux Camélias_--that he was even then a very cleverman. [352] [Sidenote: _La Dame aux Camélias. _] "The Lady with the Camellias" is not now the widely known book that onceit was; and the causes of its loss of vogue might serve as a text forsome "Meditations among the Tombs, " though in respect of ratherdifferent cemeteries from those which Addison or Hervey frequented. As amere audacity it has long faded before the flowers, themselves "over"now, of that Naturalism which it helped to bring about; and the onceworld-popular composer who founded almost, if not quite, his mostpopular opera on it, has become for many years an abomination and ahissing to the very same kind of person who, sixty years since, wouldhave gone out of his way to extol _La Traviata_, and have found in _IlTrovatore_ something worth not merely all Rossini[353] and Bellini andDonizetti put together, but _Don Giovanni_, the _Zauberflöte_, and_Fidelio_ thrown in; while if (as he might) he had known _Tannhäuser_and _Lohengrin_ he would have lifted up his hoof against them. It is thenature of the fool of all times to overblame what the fools of othertimes have overpraised. But the fact that these changes have happened, and that other accidents of time have edulcorated that general ferocitywhich made even men of worth in England refuse to lament the death ofthe Prince Imperial in our service, should on the whole be ratherfavourable to a quiet consideration of this remarkable book. Indeed, Idaresay some, if not many, of the "warm young men" to whom the very word"tune" is anathema might read the words, "Veux-tu que nous quittionsParis?" without having their pure and tender minds and ears sullied andlacerated by the remembrance of "Parigi, O cara, noi lasceremo"--simplybecause they never heard it. A very remarkable book it is. Camellias have gone out of fashion, whichis a great pity, for a more beautiful flower in itself does not exist:and those who have seen, in the Channel Islands, a camellia tree, as bigas a good-sized summer-house, clothed with snow, and the red blossomsand green leaf-pairs unconcernedly slashing the white garment, have seenone of the prettiest sights in the world. But I should not dream oftransferring the epithets "beautiful" or even "pretty" from the flowerto the book. It _is_ remarkable, and it is clever in no derogatorysense. For it has pathos without mere sentiment, and truth, throwing alight on humanity, which is not wholly or even mainly like that of The blackguard boy That runs his link full in your face. The story of it is, briefly, as follows. Marguerite Gautier, itsheroine, is one of the most beautiful and popular _demi-mondaines_ ofParis, also a _poitrinaire_, [354] and as this, if not as the other, thepet and protégée, in a _quasi_-honourable fashion, of an old duke, whosedaughter, closely resembling Marguerite, has actually died ofconsumption. But she does not give up her profession; and the duke in amanner, though not willingly, winks at it. One evening at the theatre ayoung man, Armand Duval, who, though by no means innocent, is shy and_gauche_, is introduced to her, and she laughs at him. But he fallsfrantically in love with her, and after some interval meets her again. The passion becomes mutual, and for some time she gives herself upwholly to him. But the duke cannot stand this open _affiche_, andwithdraws his allowances. Duval is on the point of ruining himself (heis a man of small means, partly derived from his father) for her, whileshe intends to sell all she has, pay her debts, and, as we may say, plunge into mutual ruin with him. Then appears the father, who at lastmakes a direct and effective appeal to her. She returns to business, enraging her lover, who departs abroad. Before he comes back, herhealth, and with it her professional capacity, breaks down, and she diesin agony, leaving pathetic explanations of what has driven him away fromher. A few points in this bare summary may be enlarged on presently. Even from it a certain resemblance, partly of a topsy-turvy kind, may beperceived by a reader of not less than ordinary acuteness to _ManonLescaut_. The suggestion, such as it is, is quite frankly admitted, andan actual copy of Prévost's masterpiece figures not unimportantly in thetale. [355] Of the difference between the two, again presently. The later editions of _La Dame aux Camélias_ open with an "Introduction"by Jules Janin, dealing with a certain Marie Duplessis--the recentlyliving original, as we are told, of Marguerite Gautier. A good deal hasbeen said, not by any means always approvingly, of this system of"introductions, " especially to novels. In the present instance I shouldsay that the proceeding was dangerous but effective--perhaps notentirely in the way in which it was intended to be so. "HonestJanin, "[356] as Thackeray (who had deservedly rapped his knucklesearlier for a certain mixture of ignorance and impudence) called himlater, was in his degree almost as "clever" a man as young Dumas; buthis kind was different, and it did involve the derogatory connotation ofcleverness. It is enough to say of the present subject that it displays, in almost the highest strength, the insincerity and superficiality ofmatter and thought which accompanied Janin's bright and almost brilliantfacility of expression and style. His Marie Duplessis is one of thoseremarkable young persons who, to alter Dr. Johnson very slightly, unite"the manners of a _duchess_ with the morals of" the other object of thedoctor's comparison unaltered; superadding to both the amiability of anangel, the beauty of Helen, and the taste in art of all the greatcollectors rolled into one. The thing is pleasantly written bosh; and, except to those readers who are concerned to know that they are going toread about "a real person, " can be no commendation, and might even causea little disgust, not at all from the moral but from the purely criticalside. A lover of paradox might almost suggest that "honest Janin" had beenplaying the ingenious but dangerous finesse of intentionally setting upa foil to his text. He has certainly, to some tastes, done this. Thereis hardly any false prettiness, any sham Dresden china (a thing, by theway, that has become almost a proverbial phrase in French for_demi-monde_ splendour), about _La Dame aux Camélias_ itself. Nor, onthe other hand, is there to be found in it--even in such anticipated"naturalisms" as the exhumation of Marguerite's _two_-months'-oldcorpse, [357] and one or two other somewhat more veiled but equally ormore audacious touches of realism--anything resembling the exaggeratedhorrors of such efforts of 1830 itself as Janin's own _Âne Mort_ andpart of Borel's _Champavert_. In her splendour as in her misery, in herfrivolity as in her devotion and self-sacrifice, repulsive as thiscontrast may conventionally be, Marguerite is never impossible orunnatural. Her chief companion of her own sex, Prudence Duvernoy, though, as might be expected, a good deal of a _proxénète_, and by nomeans disinterested in other ways, is also very well drawn, and assiststhe general effect more than may at first be seen. The "problem" of the book, at least to English readers, lies in theperson whom it is impossible to call the hero--Armand Duval. It would bevery sanguine to say that he is unnatural; but the things that he doesare rather appalling. That he listens at doors, opens letters notaddressed to him, and so on, is sufficiently fatal; but a very generousextension of lovers' privileges may perhaps just be stretched over thesethings. [358] No such licence will run to other actions of his. In hisearly days of chequered possession he writes, anonymously, an insultingletter to his mistress, which she forgives; but he has at least thegrace to repent of this almost immediately. His conduct, however, whenhe returns to Paris, after staying in the country with his family, andfinds that she has returned to her old ways, is the real crime. Aviolent scene might, again, be excusable, for he does not know what hisfather has done. But for weeks this young gentleman of France devotesall his ingenuity and energies to tormenting and insulting the object ofhis former adoration. He ostentatiously "keeps" a beautiful butworthless friend of hers in her own class, and takes every opportunityof flaunting the connection in Marguerite's face. He permits himself andthis creature to insult her in every way, apparently descending oncemore to anonymous letters. And when her inexhaustible forgiveness hasinduced a temporary but passionate reconciliation, he takes freshumbrage, and sends money to her for her complaisance with another letterof more abominable insult than ever. Now it is bad to insult any one ofwhom you have been fond; worse to insult any woman; but to insult aprostitute, faugh![359] However, I may be reading too much English taste into French wayshere, [360] and it is impossible to deny that a man, whether French orEnglish, _might_ behave in this ineffable manner. In other words, theirresistible _humanum est_ clears this as it clears Marguerite's owngood behaviour, so conventionally inconsistent with her bad. The book, of course, cannot possibly be put on a level with its pattern andinspiration, _Manon Lescaut_: it is on a much lower level of literature, life, thought, passion--everything. But it has literature; it has lifeand thought and passion; and so it shall have no black mark here. [Sidenote: _Tristan le Roux. _] Few things could be more different from each other than _Tristan leRoux_--another early book of Dumas _fils_--is from _La Dame auxCamélias_. Indeed it is a good, if not an absolutely certain, sign thatso young a man should have tried styles in novel-writing so far apartfrom each other. _Tristan_ is a fifteenth-century story of the laterpart of the Hundred Years' War, and of Gilles de Retz, and of Joan ofArc, and of _diablerie_, and so forth. I first heard approval of it froma person whose name may be unexpected by some readers--the lateProfessor Robertson Smith. But the sometime editor of the _EncyclopædiaBritannica_ was exceptionally well qualified for the literary side ofhis office, and could talk about French quite as knowledgeably as hecould about Arabic and Hebrew. [361] He was rather enthusiastic about thebook, an enthusiasm which, when I myself came to read it, for aconsiderable time puzzled me a little. It opens pretty well, but alreadywith a good deal of the "possible-improbable" about it; for when sometwenty wolves have once pulled a horse down and a man off it, his chanceof escaping (especially without revolvers) seems small, even though tworescuers come up, one of whom has a knack of shooting thesecreatures[362] and the other of throttling them. It is on these rescuersthat the central interest of the story turns. Olivier de Karnak andTristan le Roux are, though they do not at the time know it, brothers bythe same mother, the guiltless Countess of Karnak having been drugged, violated, and made a mother by Gilles de Retz's father. They are alsorivals for the love of their cousin Alix, and as she prefers Olivier, this sends Tristan literally "to the Devil. " The compact is effected bymeans of a Breton sorceress, who has been concerned in the earliercrime, and is an accomplice of Gilles himself. That eminent patriotperforms, [363] for Tristan's benefit or ruin, one of his black masses, with a murdered child's blood for wine. Further _diablerie_ opens agreat tomb near Poitiers, where, seven hundred years earlier, in CharlesMartel's victory, an ancestor of the Karnaks has been buried alive, with the Saracen Emir he had just slain, by the latter's followers; andwhere the two have beguiled the time by continuous ghostly fighting. TheSaracen, when the tomb is opened, evades, seen by no one but Tristan, and becomes the apostate's by no means guardian devil. Then we have theintroduction of the Maid (whom Tristan is specially set by his master tocatch), the siege of Orleans and the rest of it, to the tragedy ofRouen. Up to this point--that is to say, for some seven-eighths of the book--Iconfess that I did not, and do not, think much of it. I am very fond offighting in novels; and of _diablerie_ even "more than reason"; and ofthe Middle Ages; and of many other things connected with the work. Butit does not seem to me well managed or well told. One never can make outwhether the "Sarrazin" is, as he is actually sometimes called, Satanhimself, or not. If he is not, why call him so? If he is, why was thereso little evidence of his being constantly employed in fighting with M. De Karnak between the Battle of Poitiers (not ours, but the other) andthe Siege of Orleans? I love my Dark and Middle Ages; but I should saythat there was considerable diabolic activity in them, outside tombs. Orwas the Princedom of the Air "in commission" all that time? Minorimprobabilities constantly jar, and there are numerous small blunders offact[364] of the unintentional kind, which irritate more thanintentional ones of some importance. But at the end the book improves quite astonishingly. Tristan, as hasbeen said, has been specially commissioned by the fiend to effect theruin of Joan. He has induced his half-brother, Gilles de Retz--not, indeed, to take the English side, for patriotism, as is well known, wasthe one redeeming point of that extremely loathsome person, but--to jointhe seigneurs who were malcontent with her, and if possible drug her andviolate her, a process, as we have seen, quite congenial, hereditarilyas well as otherwise, to M. De Laval. He is foiled, of course, andpardoned. But Tristan himself openly takes the English side, inflictsgreat damage on his countrymen, and after our defeat at the bastilles orbastides round Orleans, resumes his machinations against Joan, helps toeffect her capture, and does his utmost to torment and insult her, andif possible resume Gilles's attempt, in her imprisonment; while, on thecontrary, his brother Olivier (they are both disguised as monks) workson her side, nearly saves her, [365] and attends her on the scaffold. Itis somewhat earlier than this that the author, as has been said, "wakesup" and wakes _us_ up. When Tristan, admitted to Joan's cell, designsthe same outrage to which he had counselled his brother, it is theMaid's assumption of her armour to protect herself from him that (inthis point for once historically) seals her fate. But at the very lasthis hatred is changed, _not_ at all impossibly or improbably, to violentlove as she smiles on him from the fire; and he sees the legendary dovemount to heaven, after he himself has flung to her, at her dying cry, animprovised crucifix, or at least cross. And then a choice miraclehappens, told with almost all the vigour of the "Vin de Porto" itself. Tristan seeks absolution, but is, though not harshly, refused, beforepenitence and penance. He begs his brother Olivier's pardon, and isagain refused--this time with vituperation--but bears it calmly. Hetakes, meekly, more insult from the very executioner. At last he makesthe sign of the compact and summons the "Saracen" fiend. And then, aftera very good conversation, in which the Devil uses all his powers ofsarcasm to show his victim that, as usual, he has sold his soul fornaught, Tristan draws his sword, calls on the Trinity, Our Lady, andJoan, and one of the strangest though not of the worst fights in fictionbegins. The Red Bastard is himself almost a giant; but the Saracen is a fiend, and though it seems that in this case the Devil _can_ be dead, he can, it seems also, only be killed at Poitiers in his original tomb. So They wrestle up, they wrestle down, They wrestle still and sore, for two whole years, the Demon constantly giving ground and misleadinghis enemy as much as he can. But Tristan, in the strength of repentanceand with Joan's unseen help, lives, fights, and forces the fiend backover half France and half the world. By a good touch, after long combat, the Devil tries to tempt his adversary on the side of chivalry, askingto be allowed to drink at a stream on a burning day, to warm himself ata fire they pass in a snow-storm, to rest a moment. But Tristan has thesingle word "Non!" for any further pact with or concession to the EvilOne; the two years' battle wears away his sin; and at last he findshimself pressing his fainting foe towards the very tomb in the fields ofPoitou. It opens, and the combatants entering, find themselves by theactual graves. They drop their swords and now literally wrestle. Tristanwins, throws the Saracen into his own tomb, and runs him through thebody, once more inflicting on him such death as he may undergo. [366] There is a grandiose extravagance about it which is reallyOriental;[367] and perhaps it was this which conciliated RobertsonSmith, as it certainly reconciled me. [Sidenote: _Antonine. _] A third "book of the beginning, " _Antonine_, is far inferior to these. It is, in fact, little more than a decentish Paul-de-Kockery, with awould-be philosophical conclusion. Two young men, Gustave Daunont andEdmond de Péreux, saunter after breakfast looking for young ladies'ankles, and Edmond sees a pair so beautiful that he follows thepossessor and her unobservant father home. Having then ascertained thatthe father is a doctor, he adopts the surprisingly brilliant expedientof going to consult him, and so engineering an entry. _He_ thinks thereis nothing the matter with him; but the doctor (it was apparently "attemp. Of tale"--1834, while the port was getting ready, --the practice ofFrench physicians, to receive their patients in dressing-gowns)discovers that he is in an advanced stage of Dumas _fils'_ favourite_poitrine_. He says, however, nothing about it (which seems odd) to hispatient, merely prescribing roast-meat and Bordeaux; but (which seemsodder) he _does_ mention it to his daughter Antonine, the Lady with theAnkles. For the moment nothing happens. But Gustave the friend has formistress an adorable _grisette_--amiability, in the widest sense, _nezretroussé_, garret, and millinery all complete--whom Madame de Péreux, Edmond's mother--a _sainte_, but without prejudices--tolerates, and infact patronises. It is arranged that Nichette shall call on Antonine toask, as a milliner, for her custom. Quite unexpected explanations followin a not uningenious manner, and the explosion is completed by Edmond'sopening (not at all treacherously) a letter addressed to Gustave andcontaining the news of his own danger. The rest of the story need not betold at length. A miraculous cure effected by M. Devaux, Antonine'sfather; marriage of the pair; pensioning off of Nichette, and marriageof Gustave to another adorable girl (ankles not here specified);establishment of Nichette at Tours in partnership with a respectablefriend, etc. , etc. , can easily be supplied by any novel-reader. But here the young author's nascent seriousness, and his still existingBuskbody superstition, combine to spoil the book, not merely, as in the_Tristan_ case, to top-hamper it. Having given us eight pages of rathercheap sermonising about the poetry of youth not lasting; havingrequested us to imagine Manon and Des Grieux "decrepit and catarrhous, "Paul and Virginie shrivelled and toothless, Werther and Charlotte unitedbut wrinkled, [368] he proceeds to tell us how, though Gustave and hisLaurence are as happy as they can be, though Nichette has forgotten herwoes but kept her income and is married to a book-seller, things are notwell with the other pair. Antonine loves her husband frantically, but hehas become quite indifferent to her--says, indeed, that he really doesnot know whether he ever _did_ love her. Later still we take leave ofhim, his "poetry" having ended in a prefecture, and his passion in a_liaison_, commonplace to the _n_th, with a provincial lawyer's wife. _La moralité de cette comédie_ (to quote, probably not for the firsttime, or I hope the last, words of Musset which I particularly like)would appear to be--first, that to secure lasting happiness in matrimonyit is desirable, if not necessary, to have lived for eighteen monthsantenuptially with a charming _grisette_--amiability, _nez retroussé_, garret, and millinery all complete--_or_ to have yourself been thisgrisette; while, on the other hand, it is an extremely dangerous thingto recover a man of his consumption. Which last result the folkloristswould doubtless assimilate to the well-known superstition of the shoreas to the rescue of the drowning. [Sidenote: _La Vie à Vingt Ans. _] Two other early books of this author promise the Pauline influence intheir titles and do not belie it in their contents, though in varyingway and degree. Indeed, the first story of _La Vie à Vingt Ans_--that ofa schoolboy who breaks his bounds and "sells his dictionaries" to go tothe Bal de l'Opéra; receives, half in joy, half in terror, anassignation from a masked _débardeur_, and discovers her to be an agedmarried woman with a drunken husband (the pair knowing from his cardthat his uncle is a Deputy, and having determined to get a _débit detabac_ out of him)--made me laugh as heartily as the great Paul himselfcan ever have made Major Pendennis. The rest--they are all stories ofthe various amatory experiences of a certain Emmanuel de Trois Étoiles, and have a virtuous epilogue extolling pure affection and honestmatrimony--are inferior, the least so being that of the caprice-love ofa certain Augustine, Emmanuel's neighbour on his staircase, who admitsonly one other lover and finally marries _him_, but conceives a franticthough passing affection for her _voisin_. Unluckily there is in thisbook a sort of duplicate but, I think, earlier sketch of the atrociousconduct of Duval to the Dame aux Camélias; and there are some of theauthor's curious "holes where you can put your hand" (as a Jacobean poetsays of the prosodic licences in nomenclature and construction of hisfellows). [Sidenote: _Aventures de Quatre Femmes. _] The other, much longer, and much more ambitious and elaborate book, _Aventures de Quatre Femmes et d'un Perroquet_, seems to me on the wholeworse than any just mentioned, though it at least attempts to fly higherthan _Antonine_. It begins by one of those _goguenardises_ which 1830itself had loved, but it is not a good specimen. Two men who havedetermined on suicide--one by shooting, one by hanging--meet at the sametree in the Bois de Boulogne and wrangle about possession of the spot, till the aspirant to suspension _per coll. _ recounts his history fromthe branch on which he is perched. After which an unlucky thirdsman, interfering, gets shot, and buried _as_ one of the others--"which iswitty, let us 'ope, " as the poetical historian of the quarrel betweenMr. Swinburne and Mr. Buchanan observes of something else. [369] As thebook begins with two attempted and disappointed suicides, so it endswith two accomplished ones. A great part, and not the least readable, isoccupied by a certain English Countess of Lindsay (for Dumas theyounger, like Crébillon the younger, commits these _scandala magnatum_with actual titles). The hero is rather a fool, and not much less of aknave than he should be. His somewhat better wife is an innocentbigamist, thinking him dead; and one of the end-suicides is that of hersecond husband, who, finding himself _de trop_, benevolently makes way. As for the parrot, he nearly spoils the story at the beginning by"_singing_" (which I never heard a parrot do), and atones at the end bygetting poisoned without deserving it. I am afraid I must call it arather silly book. It does not, however, lack the cleverness with which silliness, especially in the young _and_ the old, is often associated, and so doesnot break the assignment of that quality to its author. All these fivebooks were produced (with others) in a very few years, by a man who wasscarcely over twenty when he began and was not thirty when he wrote thelast of them. Now people sometimes write wonderful poetry when they arevery young, because, after all, a poet is not much more than amouthpiece of the Divine, whose spirit bloweth where it listeth. But itis not often that they write thoroughly good novels till, like otherpersonages who have to wait for their "overseership" up to thirty, theyhave had time and opportunity roughly to scan and sample life. There is, in this work of Alexander the younger, plenty of imitation, ofconvention, of that would-be knowingness which is the most amusing formof ignorance, etc. , etc. But there is a good deal more: and especiallythere is plenty of the famous _diable au corps_, of _verve_, of "go, " ofrefusal to be content with one rut and one model. And all this cameonce, even at this period, in _La Dame aux Camélias_, to something whichI shall not call a masterpiece, but which certainly is a powerful thesisfor the attainment of the master's degree. [Sidenote: _Trois Hommes Forts. _] Perhaps there is no better example of the curious mixture of _verve_, variety, and vigorous hitting-off which characterised the youth of Dumas_fils_ than _Trois Hommes Forts_--a book of the exact middle of thecentury, which begins with an idyll, passing into a tragedy; continueswith a lively ship-and-yellow-fever scene; plunges into a villainousconspiracy against virtue and innocence diversified with abull-throwing; and winds up with another killing, which, this time, _is_no murder; a trial, after which and an acquittal the accused and theCrown Prosecutor embrace before (and amidst the chalorous applause of)the whole Court; not forgetting a final _panache_ of happymarriage between innocence, a very little damaged, and thebull-thrower-avenger-_ouvrier_, Robert. It is of course puremelodrama--_Minnigrey_ and the Porte-Saint-Martin pleasantlyaccommodated. But it is not too long; it never drags; and it knocksabout in the cheerfullest "pit-box-and-gallery" fashion from first tolast. When the wicked "Joseph le Mendiant, " _alias_ M. Valéry, _alias_Frédéric Comte de La Marche[370]--who has stabbed a priest with one handand throttled an old woman with the other; then made a fortune inMadagascar; then nearly died of yellow-fever on board ship, butrecovered (something after the fashion of one of Marryat's heroes) bydrinking a bottle of Madeira; then gone home and bought an estate andgiven himself the above title; then seduced the innocent sister of theperson who heard his confession; then tried to marry a high-bornmaiden;[371] then threatened to betray the sister's shame if herbrother "tells"--when this villain has his skull broken by Robert, allright-minded persons will clap their hands sore. But remembrance of onepassage at the beginning may "leave a savour of sorrow. " Could you, evenin Meridional France, to-day procure a breakfast consisting of truffledpigs' feet, truffled thrush, tomato omelette (I should bar thetomatoes), and strawberries in summer, or "quatre-mendiants" (figs, nuts, and almonds and raisins) in winter, _with_ a bottle of soundRoussillon or something like it, for three francs? Alas! one fears not. [Sidenote: _Diane de Lys. _] _Diane de Lys_, a little later than most of the books just mentioned, and one, I think, of the first to be dramatised, so announcing theauthor's change of "kind, " acquired a certain fame by being made (inwhich form I am not certain, but probably as a play) the subject of oneof those odd "condemnations" by which the Second Empire occasionallyendeavoured to show itself the defender of morality and the prop offamily and social life. I do not think that Flaubert and Baudelaire hadmuch reason to pride themselves on their predecessor in this particularpillory. Alexander the younger is not here even a coppersmith; his metalis, to me, not attractive at all. The Marquise de Lys is one of thosebeauties, half Greek, half Madonnish, and wholly regular-scholastic, towhom it has been the habit of modern novelists and poets to assign whatour Elizabethan ancestors would have called "cold hearts and hotlivers. " Dumas _fils'_ theory--for he must, Heaven help him! always haveone[372]--is that it all depends on ennui. I know not. At any rate, Diane is not a heroine that I should recommend, for personalacquaintance, to myself or my friends. With one of those rather sillyexcuses which chequer his cleverness equally, whether they are madehonestly or with tongue in cheek, our author says: "On va sans doutenous dire que nous présentons un caractère impossible, que nous faisonsde l'immoralité" (which the compositors of the stereotyped editionpleasantly misprint "immor_t_alité"), etc. Far be it from me to say thatany woman is impossible. I would only observe that when Diane, neglectedby and neglecting her husband for some two years, determines to take alover, being vexed at the idea of reaching the age of thirty withouthaving one; when she takes him without any particular preference, as onemight call a cab from a longish rank, and then has a fancy to make ascientific comparison of forgotten joys with her husband, decidingfinally that there is nothing like alternation--when, I say, she doesthis, I think she is not quite nice. [373] Nor does her school-friendMarceline Delaunay--who, being herself a married woman irreproachablyfaithful to her own husband, makes herself a go-between, at least ofletters, for Diane--seem very nice either. It is fair to say that Mme. Delaunay gets punished in the latter part of the story, which any onemay read who likes. It is, if not white, a sort of--what shall wesay?--French grey, compared with the opening. [Sidenote: Shorter stories--_Une Loge à Camille_. ] That standard edition of _Diane de Lys_ which has enabled us to pick upsuch a pleasant _coquille d'imprimerie_ contains three shorter stories(_Diane_ itself is not very long). Two or them are not worth much: _Cequ'on ne sait pas_ is a pathetic _grisetterie_, something of the classof Musset's _Frédéric et Bernerette_; _Grangette_ deals with the verytrue but very common admonition that in being "on with" two loves atonce there is always danger, particularly when, as M. Le Baron Francisde Maucroix does here, you write them letters (to save time) in exactlythe same phraseology. Neither love, Adeline the countess or theGris-Grang-ette, is disagreeable; indeed Francis himself is a notdetestable idiot, and there is a comfortable conversation as he sits atAdeline's feet in proper morning-call costume, with his hat and stickon a chair. (Even kneeling would surely be less dangerous, from thepoint of view of recovering a more usual attitude when another callercomes. ) But the whole thing is slight. The third and last, however, _UneLoge à Camille_, is the only thing in the whole volume that isthoroughly recommendable. It begins with an obviously "felt" and "lived"complaint of the woes which dramatic authors perhaps most of all, butothers more or less, experience from that extraordinaryinconsecutiveness (to put it mildly) of their acquaintances which makespeople--who, to do them justice, would hardly ask for five, ten, orfifty shillings except as a loan, with at least pretence ofrepayment--demand almost, or quite, as a right, a box at the theatre ora copy of a book. This finished, an example is given in which thehapless playwright, having rashly obliged a friend, becomes (very muchin the same way in which Mr. Nicodemus Easy killed several persons onthe coast of Sicily) responsible for the breach, not merely of aleft-handed yet comparatively harmless _liaison_, but of a formalmarriage, the knitting of a costly and disreputable amour, a duel, animprisonment for debt, and--for himself--the abiding reputation ofhaving corrupted, half ruined, and driven into enlistment for Africa aguileless scientific student. It is good and clean fun throughout. [374] [Sidenote: _Le Docteur Servans. _] [Sidenote: _Le Roman d'une Femme_. ] Some others must have shorter shrift. One volume of the standard editioncontains two stories, _Le Docteur Servans_ and _Un Cas de Rupture_. Thelatter is short and not very happy, beginning with a rather feeblefollowing of Xavier de Maistre, [375] continuing with stock_liaison_-matter, and ending rather vulgarly. Let us, however, givethanks to Alexander the younger in that he nobly defends the sacredpersons of our English ladies against the venerable Gallic calumny oflarge feet, though he unhappily shows imperfect knowledge of the idiomsof our language by using "Lady" as if it were like "Milady": "RepritLady, " "Lady vit, " etc. _Le Docteur Servans_ is more substantial, thoughitself not very long. It is a rather well-engineered story (illustrativeof a fact to be noticed presently in regard to much of its author'swork) about a benevolent doctor who, at first as a method of kindnessand then as a method of testing character, "makes believe, " and makesothers believe, that he has the secret of Resurrection. [376] On theother hand, I have only read _Le Roman d'une Femme_ in the belovedlittle old Belgian edition which gave one one's first knowledge of somany pleasant things, and the light-weighting and large print of whichare specially suitable to fiction. Putting one thing aside, it is notone of its author's greatest triumphs. It begins with a good deal ofthat rather nauseous gush about the adorable candour of young personswhich, in a French novel, too often means that the "blanche colombe"will become a very dingy dunghill hen before long--as duly happens here. There is, however, a chance for the novel reader of comparing thedeparture of two of these white doves[377] from their school-dovecotwith that of Becky and Amelia from Miss Pinkerton's. And I must admitthat, after a middle of commonplace grime, the author works up an end ofcomplicated and by no means unreal tragedy. [Sidenote: The habit of quickening up at the end. ] The point referred to about the two principal books just noticed, andindeed about Alexander the Younger's books generally, is the remarkablefaculty--and not merely faculty but actual habit--which he displays, ofturning an uninteresting beginning into an interesting end. I cannotremember any other novelist, in any of the literatures with which I amacquainted, who possesses, or at least uses, this odd gift to anythinglike the same degree. On the contrary, some of the greatest--far greaterthan he is--give results exactly contrary. Lady Louisa Stuart's reproachto Scott for "huddling up" his conclusions is well known and by no meansill-justified, while Sir Walter is far from being a solitary sinner. Imust leave it to those who have given more study than I have to drama, especially modern drama, to decide whether this had anything to do withthe fact that Dumas turned to the other kind. The main fact itselfadmits, as far as my experience and opinion go, of absolutely nodispute. Again and again, not merely in _Le Docteur Servans_ and _LeRoman d'une Femme_, but in _La Dame aux Camélias_ itself, in _Tristan leRoux_, in _Les Aventures de Quatre Femmes_, and in others still, I havebeen, at first reading, on the point of dropping the book. But, owing tothe mere "triarian" habit of never giving up an appointed post, I havebeen able to turn my defeat (and his, as it seemed to me) into avictory, which no doubt I owe to him, but which has something of my ownin it too. His heroes very frequently disgust and his heroines do notoften delight me; I have "seen many others" than his baits ofvoluptuousness; he does not amuse me like Crébillon; nor thrill me likePrévost in the unique moment; nor interest me like his closestsuccessor, Feuillet. I cannot place his work, despite the excellence ofhis mere writing, high as great literature. He is altogether on a lowerlevel than Flaubert or Maupassant; and one could not think of eveninghim with Hugo in one way, with Balzac in another, with his own father ina third, with Gautier or Mérimée in a fourth. But he does, somehow orother, manage that, in the evening time, there shall be such light as hecan give; and I am bound to acknowledge this as a triumph of craft, ifnot of actual art. That while a gift and a remarkable one, it is rathera dangerous gift for a novelist to rely on, needs little argument. [Sidenote: _Contes et Nouvelles. _] The formally titled _Contes et Nouvelles_ do not contain very much ofthe first interest. In the opening one there is a lady who, not perhapsin the context quite tastefully, remarks that "Nous avons toutes notrecalvaire, " her own Golgotha consisting of the duty of adjusting "theextremist devotion" to her husband with "remembrance" (there was a gooddeal to remember) of her lover "to her last heart-beat. " To help her toperform this self-immolation, she bids the lover leave her, refuses him, and that repeatedly, permission to return, till, believing himselfutterly cast off, he makes up his mind to love a very nice girl whom hisparents want him to marry. _Then_ the self-Calvarised lady promptlydiscovers that she wants him again; and as he, acknowledging her claim, does not disguise his actual state of feeling, she, though going off ina huff, tells him that she had never meant him either to leave her atfirst or to accept her command not to return. All this, no doubt, is notunfeminine in the abstract; but the concrete telling of it required moreinteresting personages. _Le Prix de Pigeons_ is a good-humouredabsurdity about an English scientific society, which offers a prize of£2000 to anybody who can eat a pigeon every day for a month; _Le Pendude la Piroche_, a fifteenth-century anecdote, which may be a sort of_brouillon_ for _Tristan_; _Césarine_, a fortune-telling tale. But _LaBoîte d'Argent_, the story of a man who got rid of his heart and foundhimself none the better for getting it back again (the circumstances ineach case being quite different from those of _Das kalte Herz_), and _Ceque l'on voit tous les jours_, a sketch of "scenes" between keeper andmistress, but of much wider application, go far above the rest of thebook. The first (which is of considerable length and very cleverlymanaged in the change from ordinary to extraordinary) only wants "that"to be first-rate. The second shows in the novelist the command ofdialogue-situation and of dialogue itself which was afterwards to standthe playwright in such good stead. [Sidenote: _Ilka. _] Some forty years afterwards--indeed I think posthumously--anothercollection appeared, with, for main title, that of its first story, _Ilka_. Subject to the caution, several times already given, of theinadequacy of a foreigner's judgment, I should say that it shows a greatimprovement in mere style, but somewhat of a falling off in originalityand _verve_. The most interesting thing, perhaps, is an anecdote of theauthor's youth, when, having in the midst of a revolution extracted themighty sum of two hundred francs in one bank-note from a publisher for abad novel (he does not tell us which), he gives it to a porter tochange, and the messenger being delayed, entertains the direstsuspicions (which turn out to be quite unjust) of the poor fellow'shonesty. The sketch of mood is capitally done, and is set off by a mostpleasant introduction of Dumas _père_. More ambitious but lesssuccessful, except as mere descriptive _ecphrases_, [378] are thetitle-story of a beautiful model posing, and _Le Songe d'une Nuitd'Été_, with a companion picture of two lovers bathing at night; _Pileou Face_ (a girl who is so divided between two lovers that a friendadvises her to toss up, with the pessimist-satiric addition that nodoubt, between tossing and marriage, she will be sorry she did not takethe other, but afterwards will forget all about him) is slighter; and_Au Docteur J. P. _ looks like a kind of study for a longer novel or atleast a more elaborate novel-hero. [379] [Sidenote: _Affaire Clémenceau. _] And so, at last, we may come to the book which curiously carries out, with a slight deflection, but an almost equivalent intensification, ofmeaning, what has been observed before of others--the singular habitwhich Dumas _fils_ has of quickening up for the run-in. This book was, I believe, in all important respects actually his run-in for thenovel-prize; and what he had hitherto shown in the conduct of individualbooks he now showed in regard to his whole novel-list, betaking himselfthenceforward, though he had nearly a third of a century to live, to thetheatre, to pamphlets, etc. Against _Affaire Clémenceau_[380] there aresome things to be said, and in criticism, not necessarily hostile, agreat many about it. But nobody who knows strength when he sees it candeny that this is a strong book from start to finish. I can very wellremember the hubbub it caused when it first appeared, and the debatesabout "Tue-la!" but I did not then read it, having, as I have confessed, a sort of prejudice--not then or at any time common with me--against theauthor--a prejudice strengthened rather than weakened by reviews of thebook. What did I care (I am bound to say that I might add, "What _do_ Icare?") about discussions whether if somebody breaks the SeventhCommandment to your discomfort you may break the Sixth to theirs? Did Iwant diatribes on the non-moral character of women, or anything of thatsort? I wanted an interesting story; an attractive (no matter in whatfashion) heroine; a hero who is a gentleman, if possible, a man anyhow;and I did not think I should find them here. _Now_, I can "dichotomise"to some extent; and I can get an interesting story, striking moments, ifnot exactly an attractive heroine or hero, at any rate such as taketheir part in the interest, though I may have crows to pluck with them. It is, once more, a strong book: it is nearly--though I do not thinkquite--a great book. And to all sportsmanlike lovers of letters it is, despite its discomfortable matter, a comfortable book, because it showsus a considerable man of letters who has never yet, save perhaps in _LaDame aux Camélias_, quite "come off, " coming off beyond all fair doubtor reasonable question. [Sidenote: Story of it. ] Probably a good many people know the story of it, but certainly some donot. It can be told pretty shortly. Pierre Clémenceau, the _filsnaturel_ (for this _vulnus_ is _eternum_) of a linen-draperess, is made, partly on account of his birth, unhappy at school, being especiallytormented by an American-Italian boy, André Minati, whom, however, hethrashes, and who dies--but not of the thrashing. The father of anotherand _not_ hostile school-fellow, Constantin Ritz, is a sculptor, andaccident helps him to discover the same vocation in young Clémenceau, who is taken into his protector's household as well as his studio, andmakes great progress in his art--the one thing he cares for. He goes, however, a very little into society, and one evening meets a remarkableRussian-Polish Countess, whose train (for it is a kind of fancy ball) isborne by her thirteen-year-old daughter Iza, dressed as a page. The girlis extraordinarily beautiful, and Clémenceau, whose heart is practicallyvirgin, falls in love with her, child as she is; improving theacquaintance by making a drawing of her when asleep, as well as later abust from actual sittings, _gratis_. After a time, however, theCountess, who has some actual and more sham "claims" in Poland andRussia, returns thither. Years pass, during which, however, Pierre hearsnow and then from Iza in a mixed strain of love and friendship, till atlast he is stung doubly, by news that she is to marry a young Russiannoble named Serge, and by a commission for the trousseau to be suppliedby his mother, [381] who has retired from business. The correspondencechanges to sharp reproach on his part and apparently surprisedresentment on hers. But before long she appears in person (the Sergemarriage having fallen through), and, to speak vernacularly, throwsherself straight at Pierre's head, even offering to be his mistress ifshe cannot be his wife. [382] They are married, however, and spend notmerely a honeymoon, but nearly a honey-year in what is, in _Hereward theWake_, graciously called "sweet madness, " the madness, however, beingpurely physical, though so far genuine, on her side, spiritual as wellas physical on his. The central scene of the book (very well done) givesa picture of Iza insisting on bathing in a stream running through thepark (private, but practically open to the public) of the house lent tothem. When her husband has brought her warm milk in a chased-silver cupof their host's, she casts it, empty, on the ground, and on thehusband's exclamation, "Take care!" replies coolly, "What does itmatter? It isn't _mine_. " This may be said to be the third warning-bell; but though it shocks eventhe "ensorceressed" Pierre for the moment, his infatuation continues. Atlast he begins to have an idea that people look askance at him; trainsof suspicion are laid; after one or two clever evasions of Iza's, theusual "epistolary communication" forces the matter, and Constantin Ritzat last tells the unhappy husband that not merely has "Serge"reappeared, but there are nearly half-a-dozen "others, " and that doubtshave even been suggested as to connivance on Pierre's part--doubtsstrengthened by Iza's treacherous complaints as to her husband havingemployed her as a model. A violent scene follows, Iza brazening it out, and calmly demanding separation. Clémenceau goes to Rome after forcing aduel on Serge and wounding him; but the blow has weakened, if notdestroyed, his powers in art. Fresh scandals follow, and theirresistible Iza seduces Constantin himself, characteristicallycommunicating the fact in an anonymous letter to her miserable husband. He returns (for the second time), takes no vengeance on his friend, butsees his wife. The interview provides an audaciously devised but finelyexecuted curtain. She calmly proposes--how shall we say it?--to "putherself in commission. " She loves nobody but him, she says, and knows hehas loved, loves, and will love nobody but her. He ought, originally, to have taken her offer of being his mistress, and then no harm wouldhave happened. She would really like to go back with him to Saint-Assise(the honeymoon place). Suppose they do? As for _living_ with him andbeing "faithful" to him--that is impossible. But she will come to him, at his whistle, whenever he likes, and be absolutely his for a day and anight and a morrow. In fact he may begin at once if he likes: and sheputs her arms round his neck and her mouth to his. He takes her at herword; but when the night is half passed and she is asleep, he gentlyrises, goes into the next room, fetches a stiletto paper-knife withwhich he has seen her playing, half wakes her, asks her if she loveshim, to which, still barely conscious, she answers "Yes!" with ahalf-formed kiss on her lips. Then he stabs her dead with a single blow, leaving the house quietly, and giving himself up to the police at dawn. [Sidenote: Criticism of it and of its author's work generally. ] If anybody asks me, "Is this well done?" expecting me to enter on thediscussion of the _lex non scripta_, I shall reply that this is not mytrade. But if the question refers to the merits of the handling, I canreply as confidently as the dying Charmian, "It is well done, andfitting for a novelist. " In no book, as it seems to me, has the authorobtained such a complete command of his subject or reeled out his storywith such steady confidence and fluency. No doubt he sometimes preachestoo much. [383] The elder Ritz's advice against suicide, for instance, ifsound is superfluous. But this is not a very serious evil, and thesteady _crescendo_ of interest which prevails throughout the storycarries it off. There are also numerous separate passages of realdistinction, the fateful bathing-scene being, as it should be, the best, except the finale; but others, such as the history of Pierre's firstmodelling from the life, being excellent. The satire on the literarycoteries of the Restoration is about the best thing of the kind that theauthor has done; and many of the "interiors"--always a strong point withhim--are admirable. It is on the point of character that the chiefquestions may arise; but here also there seems to me to be only one ofthese--it is true it is the most important of all--on which there shouldbe much debate. The succumbing of Constantin seems perhaps a little morejustifiable by its importance to the story than by its intrinsicprobability. [384] Clémenceau seems to me "constant to himself, " or inthe "good childlikeness" of his character, throughout; and to askwhether it was necessary to make him smash the bust that he finds inSerge's possession seems to be equivalent to asking whether it wasnecessary to put the Vice-Consul of Tetuan in petticoats. [385] It isonly about Iza herself that there can be much dispute. Has that processsynthetic which is spoken of elsewhere been carried too far with her?Have doses of childlikeness, beauty, charm, ill-nature, sensualappetite, etc. , been taken too "boldly" (in technical doctors' sense)and mixed too crudely to measure? A word or two may be permissible onthis. I do not think that Iza is an impossible personage; nor do I think thatshe is even an improbable one to such an extent as to bar her out, possible or impossible. But I am not sure that she is not ratherarbitrarily synthetised instead of being re-created, or that she, thoughpossible and not quite improbable, is not singly abnormal[386] to theverge of monstrosity. It must be evident to any reader of tolerableacuteness that the obsession of _Manon Lescaut_ has not left Dumas_fils_. Although the total effect of Manon and of Iza is very different, and although they are differently "staged, " their resemblances indetail are very great; and, to speak paradoxically, the differences arealmost more resembling still. Iza offers herself as mistress if thereare any difficulties in the way of her being a wife; would, in fact, asshe admits long afterwards, have preferred the less honourable, but alsoless fettering, estate. On the other hand, be it remembered, it wassomething of an accident that Manon and Des Grieux were _not_ actuallymarried. The two women are alike in their absolute insistence on luxuryand pleasure before anything else; but they differ in that Iza does--aswe said Manon did _not_, or did not specially--want "what Messalinawanted. " On the other hand, Iza is ill-natured and Manon is not. Inthese respects we may say that the Manon-formula has passed through thatof Madame de Merteuil, and bears unpleasant signs of the passage. Manonrepents, which Iza never could do. But they agree in the courtesanessence--the readiness to exchange for other things that commodity oftheirs which should be given only for love. I never wish to supply myreaders with problem-tabloids; but I think that in this paragraph I havesupplied them with materials for working out the double question, "IsIza less human than Manon? and if so, why?" for themselves, as well as, if by any chance they should care to do so, of guessing my own answersto it. [387] [Sidenote: Reflections. ] It is more germane to custom and purpose here to add a few generalremarks on the story, and more, but still few, on its author's generalposition. _Affaire Clémenceau_ is certainly, as has been said before, his strongest book, and, especially if taken together with _La Dame auxCamélias_ (which, if less free from faults, contains some differentmerits), it constitutes a strong thesis or diploma-piece for all but thehighest degree as a novelist. Taking in the others which have beensurveyed, we must also acknowledge in the author an unusually wide rangeand a great display of faculty--even of faculties--almost all over thatrange, though perhaps in no other case than the two selected has hethoroughly mastered and firmly held the ground which he has attempted towin. If he has not--if _Tristan le Roux_ is, on the whole, only asecond- or third-rate historical romance; _Trois Hommes Forts_ a fairand competent, but not thrilling melodrama, and so on, and so on--it isno doubt partly, to speak with the sometimes useful as well as engagingirrationality of childhood, "because he couldn't. " But I think it isalso because of something that can be explained. It was because he wasfar too prone to theorise about men and women and to make his booksattempted demonstrations, or at least illustrations, of his theories. Now, to theorise about men is seldom very satisfactory; but to theoriseabout women is to weigh gossamer and measure moonbeams. The very wisestthing ever said about them is said in the old English couplet: Some be lewd, and some be shrewd, _But all they be not so_, and I think that our fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century _vates_showed his wisdom most in sticking to the strict negative in hisexculpatory second line, here italicised. Now if Alexander the Younger does not absolutely insist that "all they_be_ so, " he goes very near to it, excepting only characters ofinsignificant domesticity. When he does give you an "honnête femme" whois not merely this, such as the Clémentine of the _Roman d'une Femme_ orthe Marceline of _Diane de Lys_, he gives them some queer touches. His"_shady_ Magdalenes" (with apologies to one of the best of parodies forspoiling its double rhyme) and his even more shady, because moreinexcusable, _marquises_; his adorable innocents, who let theirinnocence vanish "in the heat of the moment" (as the late Mr. SamuelMorley said when he forgot that Mr. Bradlaugh was an atheist), becausethe husbands pay too much attention to politics; and his affectionatewives, like the Lady in _Thérèse_, [388] who supply their missinghusbands' place just for once, and forget all about it--these _might_ beindividually creatures of fact, but as a class they _are_ creatures oftheory. And theory never made a good novel yet: it is lucky if it hassometimes, but too rarely, failed to make a good into a bad one. But ithas been urged--and with some truth as regards at least the later formsof the French novel--that it is almost founded on theory, and certainlyDumas _fils_ can be cited in support--perhaps, indeed, he is the firstimportant and thoroughgoing supporter. And this of itself justifies theplace and the kind of treatment allotted to him here, the justificationbeing strengthened by the fact that he, after Beyle, and when Beyle'sinfluence was still little felt, was a leader of a new class ofnovelist, that he is the first novelist definitely of the Second Empire. FOOTNOTES: [349] As, for instance, in _A Short History of French Literature_(Oxford, 7th ed. , 1917), pp. 550-552. [350] At the same time, and admitting (see below) that it is wrong tomeet overpraise with overblame, I think that it may be met with silence, for the time at any rate. [351] I have, for reasons unnecessary to particularise, not observedstrict chronological order in noticing his work or that of some others;but a sufficient "control" will, I hope, be supplied by the Appendix ofdated books under their authors' names as treated in this volume. [352] I observe with amusement (which may or may not be shared by "thefriends of Mr. Peter Magnus") that I have repeated in the case of Dumas_fils_ what I said on Crébillon _fils_. The contrast-parallel is indeedrather striking. Partly it is a case of reversal, for Crébillon _père_was a most respectable man, most serious, and an academician; the son, though not personally disreputable, was the very reverse of serious, andacademic neither by nature nor by status. In Dumas' case the father wasextremely lively, and the Academy shuddered or sneered at him; the sonwas very serious indeed, and duly academised. Some surprise was, Iremember, occasioned at the time by this promotion. There are severalexplanations of it; mine is Alexander the son's fondness for the correctsubjunctive. George Sand, in a note to one of her books (I forgetwhich), rebelliously says that the speaker in the text _ought_ to havesaid, "aimasse, " not "aimais, " but that he didn't, and she will not makehim do it. On the other hand, I find "aimasse, " "haïsse, " and "revisse"in just three lines of _La Dame aux Camélias_. And everybody ought toknow the story of the Immortal who, upon finding a man "where nae monshould be, " and upon that "mon" showing the baseness derived from Adamby turning on his accomplice and saying, "Quand je vous disais qu'ilétait temps que je m'en aille!" neglected _crim. Con. _ for _crim. Gram. _and cried in horror, "Que je m'en all_asse_, Monsieur!" But thispreciseness did not extend to the younger Alexander's choice ofsubjects. [353] To whose "music" also our young friends, As they tell us, have "lost the key. " [354] Dumas, like other mid-nineteenth century novelists in France andEngland both, is perhaps too fond of this complaint. But, after all, it_does_ "stage" more prettily than appendicitis or typhoid. [355] Nor is this the only place where _Manon_ figures in the work ofAlexander the younger. Especially in the early books direct references, more or less obvious, are frequent; and, as will be seen, theinspiration reappears in his best and almost last novel. [356] It may perhaps seem to some readers that Janin's own novel-workshould have been noticed earlier. I had at one time thought of doingthis. But his most famous book of the sort, _L'Âne Mort et la FemmeGuillotinée_, is a foolish _fatrasie_ of extravagant, undigested, unaffecting horrors, from the devouring by dogs of the _live_ donkey, atthe beginning, to the "resurrectioning" of the guillotined woman, at theend. Sterne has played tricks with many clumsy imitators, but with noneto more destructive effect than in this case. I read it first in theflush of my early enthusiasm for 1830, and was miserably disappointed; Itried to read it again the other day, and simply broke down. _Barnave_is interesting only as referred to by Gautier; and so on. The fact isthat "J. J. " was "J. J. _J. _"--a journalist merely--with a notunpleasant frothy ginger-beery style, but with nothing whatever withinit or beyond it. [357] And, with dim-fretted foreheads all, On corpses _three_ months old at noon she came. (_The Palace of Art. _) [358] If anybody cannot tolerate the stretching he had better abstainfrom Alexander the younger's work, for "they all do it" there. The factmay have conciliated some of our own contemners of "good form. " [359] Every one is entitled to write this word once in his life, Ibelieve; so I have selected my occasion at last. Of course some one maysay: "You have admitted that he did not know Marguerite's pact with hisfather. " True; and this might excuse the wrath, but not the way ofshowing it. [360] As I write this I remember a comic experience of fifty years ago. I was trying to find out the ruins of a certain castle in Brittany, andappealed, in my very best bad French, to an old road-mender. He scowledat me, as if it had been in the days of the _Combat des Trente_, andanswered, "_Mais c'est de l'Anglais que vous me parlez là!_" [361] Another trait of his may not displease readers, though it be notstrictly relevant. I once, perhaps with some faint mischievous intent, asked him about the competence of Dr. Pusey and of M. Renan in thesacred tongue. "Pusey, " he said, "knew pretty well everything aboutHebrew that there was to be known in his day. " He was not quite socomplimentary about Renan; though, as he put his judgment lesspointedly, I do not remember the exact words. [362] With a bow and arrows, remember; not a Browning pistol. [363] The indebtedness to Michelet is pretty obvious. [364] It may be well to illustrate this, lest it be said that havingbeen more than just to the father (_v. Sup. _) I am still less than justto the son. Merlin is made to visit Morgane la Fée in the _eleventh_century. It is quite true that people generally began to hear aboutMerlin and Morgane at that time. But he had then been for about half amillennium in the sweet prison of the Lady of the Lake--over whom evenMorgane had no power. The English child-King, for whom Bedford wasregent, is repeatedly called Henry _IV_. There would have been quiteother fish for Joan to fry, and other thread for her to retwist, if shehad had to do with Henry of Bolingbroke instead of Henry of Windsor. Tristan's Mauthe Doog--not a bad kind of hound, though--bears the"Celtic" name of Thor. Of course all these things are trifles, but theyare annoying and useless. When the father abridged Charles the First'scaptivity from years to days, he did it for the good of his story. Theson had no such justification. He is also very careless about minutejoinings of the flats at a most important point of the conclusion (_v. Inf. _). Tristan has no sword, begs one of the _bourreau_, and isrefused. He goes straight to church, and immediately afterwards we findhim sword in hand. Where did he get it? By an unmentioned miracle? [365] Tristan defeats an effort of Xaintrailles to rescue her, in a wayvaguely resembling the defeat, in the greater Alexander's work, of therescue of King Charles by the Four. [366] Unluckily, with a young man's misjudgment, Dumas would not let itbe the actual end, though that is not a couple of pages off. After thefight Tristan goes out of the tomb to rest himself; and meets the heraldBretagne, whom he had saved from the wolves in the overture. Bretagnetells him what has happened since the Maid's death, including the fateof his half-brother on the father's side, Gilles de Retz, who, likehimself, has repented in time to save his soul, if not his life. Havingalso seen afar off a cavalcade in which are Olivier and Alix, nowmarried and rapturous, Tristan retires into the tomb, which closes overhim. His horse "Baal" and his dogs, the "Celtically" (in the latter casewe may say _Piratically_) named Thor and Brinda, are petrified round itsentrance. [367] Crusading times, and Jôf or Edessa for Rouen and Poitiers asplaces, might seem preferable. But the fifteenth century did a lot of_diablerie_ in the West. [368] A curious variant of this fancy of his will be noticed later. Whatis more curious still need, perhaps, hardly be indicated for anyintelligent reader--the "sicklying over" of Paul-de-Kockery with a "castof thought"--"pale, " or "dry, " or up to "Old Brown" in strength andcharacter as it may seem to different people. [369] As I have received complaints, mild and other, of the frequency ofmy unexplained allusions, I may here refer explicitly to Mr. Traill's_Recaptured Rhymes_; and if anybody, after looking up the book, is notgrateful to me, I am sorry for him. For the commoner practice here I canonly plead that I follow the Golden Rule. Nothing pleases _me_ so muchas an allusion that I understand--except one that I don't and have tohunt up. [370] _Rather_ too big a title for an adventurer to meddle with, surely? [371] He has found out a secret about her. When she learns his crimesand his fate, she puts an end to herself in a way which I fear OctaveFeuillet borrowed, rather unceremoniously, though he certainly improvedit, in _Julia de Trécoeur_ (_v. Inf. _). I did not read _Trois HommesForts_ till many years after I had read and praised Feuillet's work. Also, is it absolutely blasphemous to suggest that the beginning of thebook has a faint likeness to that of _Les Misérables_ much later? [372] _V. Sup. _ last chapter, _passim_. [373] One remembers, as so often, Dr. Johnson to Boswell: "This lady ofyours, Sir, is very fit for, " etc. [374] This is, I think, the best of his short stories. _Thérèse_ israther a sermon on the somewhat unsavoury text of morbid appetite in theother sex, than a real story. The little _Histories Vraies_, which hewrote with a friend for the _Moniteur_ in 1864, are fairly good. For theformally entitled _Contes et Nouvelles_ and the collection headed by_Ilka_, _v. Inf. _ [375] He represents himself as suffering forty-eight hours of very easyimprisonment for not mounting guard as a "National, " and writing thestory to pass the time. [376] The author has shown his skill by inducing at least one very oldhand to wonder, for a time at least, whether Dr. Servans is a quack, ora lunatic, or Hoffmannishly uncanny, when he is, in fact, somethingquite different from any of these. [377] The other, Clémentine (who is not very unlike a more modern Claired'Orbe), being not nearly so "candid" as her comrade Marie, continueshonest. [378] _V. Sup. _ Vol. I. P. 204. [379] [Sidenote: _Revenants. Sophie Printemps. _] Two early and slight books (one of them, perhaps, the "bad" one referredto above) may find place in a note. _Revenants_ is a fantasy, in whichthe three most famous pairs of lovers of the later eighteenth century, Des Grieux and Manon, Paul and Virginie, Werther and Charlotte, arerevived and brought together (_v. Sup. _ p. 378). This sort of thing, notseldom tried, has very seldom been a success; and _Revenants_ can hardlybe said to be one of the lucky exceptions. _Sophie Printemps_ is thehistory of a good girl, who, out of her goodness, deliberately marriesan epileptic. It has little merit, except for a large episode orparenthesis of some forty or fifty pages (nearly a sixth of the book), telling the prowess of a peremptory but agreeable baron, who first foilsa dishonest banker, and then defends this very banker against anadventurer more rascally than himself, whom the baron kills in a duel. This is good enough to deserve extraction from the book, and separatepublication as a short story. [380] It is constantly called (and I fear I have myself sinned in thisrespect) _L'Affaire Clémenceau_. But this is not the proper title, anddoes not really fit. It is the heading of a client's instruction--a sortof irregular "brief"--to the advocate who (_resp. Fin. _) is to defendhim; and is thus an autobiographic narrative (diversified by a few"put-in" letters) throughout. The title is the label of the brief. [381] This is probably meant as the first "fight" on the shady side ofIza's character; not that, in this instance, she means to insult orhurt, but that the probability of hurting and insulting does not occurto her, or leaves her indifferent. [382] Second "light, " and now not dubious, for it is made a point oflater. [383] It has sometimes amused me to remember that some of the warmestadmirers of Dumas _fils_ have been among the most violent decriers ofThackeray--_for_ preaching. I suppose they preferred the Frenchman'stexts. [384] Neither morality, nor friendship, nor anything like sense of "goodform" could be likely to hold him back. But he is represented as nothingif not _un homme fort_ in character and temperament, who knows his womanthoroughly, and must perceive that he is letting himself be beaten byher in the very act of possessing her. [385] Vide _Mr. Midshipman Easy_. [386] This phrase may require just a word of explanation. I admitted(Vol. I. P. 409) the abnormality in _La Religieuse_ as notdisqualifying. But this was not an abnormality of the _individual_. Iza's is. [387] Perhaps I may add another subject for those who like it. "BothManon and Iza do _prefer_, and so to speak only _love_, the one lover. Does this in Iza's case aggravate, or does it partially redeem, hergeneral behaviour?" A less disputable addition, for the reason givenabove, may be a fairly long note on the author's work outside offiction. [Sidenote: Note on Dumas _fils'_ drama, etc. ] With the drama which has received such extraordinary encomia (the greatname of Molière having even been brought in for comparison) I have noexhaustive acquaintance; but I have read enough not to wish to read anymore. If the huge prose tirades of _L'Étrangère_ bore me (as they do) inthe study, what would they do on the stage, where long speeches, not ingreat poetry, are always intolerable? (I have always thought it one ofthe greatest triumphs of Madame Sarah Bernhardt that, at the verybeginning of her career, she made the heroine of this piece--_if_ shedid so--interesting. ) Over the _Fils Naturel_ I confess that even I, whohave struggled with and mastered my thousands, if not my tens ofthousands, of books, broke down hopelessly. _Francillon_ is livelier, and might, in the earlier days, have made an amusing novel. Butdiscounting, judicially and not prejudicially, the excessive laudation, one sees that even here he did what he meant to do, and though there ishigher praise than that, it is praise only too seldom deserved. As forhis Prefaces and Pamphlets, I think nearly as much must be granted; andI need not repeat what has been said above on the other side. Thecharity "puff" of _Les Madeleines Repenties_ is an admirable piece ofrhetoric not seldom reaching eloquence; and it has the not unliteraryside-interest of suggesting the question whether its ironic treatment ofthe general estimate of the author as Historiographer Royal to the venalVenus is genuine irony, or a mere mask for annoyance. The Preface to thedreary _Fils Naturel_ (it must be remembered that Alexander the Youngerhimself was originally illegitimate and only later legitimated), thoughrhetorical again, is not dreary at all. It contains a very agreeableaddress to his father--he was always agreeable, though with a suspicionof rather amusing patronage-upside-down, on this subject--and a gooddeal else which one would have been sorry to lose. In fact, I can see, even in the dramas, even in the prose pamphleteering, whether the mattergives me positive delight or not, evidence of that _competence_, thatnot so seldom mastery, of treatment which entitles a man to beconsidered not the first comer by a long way. [388] The obliging gentleman who on this occasion plays the part of"substitute" in a cricket-match, is the most elaborate and confessedexample of Dumas' "theorised" _men_. He is what the seedsmen call an"improved Valmont, " with more of lion in him than to meddle withvirgins, but absolutely destructive to duchesses and always ready tosuggest substitution to distressed grass-widows. CHAPTER XI GUSTAVE FLAUBERT [Sidenote: The contrast of Flaubert and Dumas _fils_. ] In doing, as may at least be hoped, justice to M. Alexandre Dumas _fils_in the last chapter, one point was excepted--that though I could rankhim higher than I ever expected to do as a novelist, I could not exactlyrank his work in the highest range of literature. When you comparehim--not merely with those greatest in novel-work already discussed, butwith Musset or Vigny, with Nodier, or with Gérard de Nerval, not tomention others, there is something which is at once "weird and wanting, "as the admirable Captain Mayne Reid says at the beginning of _TheHeadless Horseman_, though one cannot say here, as there, "By Heavens!it is 'the head!'" There is head enough of a kind--a not at all unkemptor uncomely headpiece, very well filled with brains. But it has noaureole, as the other preferred persons cited in the last sentence andearlier have. This aureole may be larger or smaller, brighter or lessbright--a full circlet of unbroken or hardly broken splendour, or a sortof will-o'-the-wisp cluster of gleam and darkness. But wherever it isfound there is, in differing degrees, _literature_ of the highest class;of the major prose _gentes_; literature that can show itself withpoetry, under its own conditions and with its own possibilities, andfear no disqualification. Of this I am bound to say I do not find verymuch in this second division of our volume, and I find none in Dumas_fils_. But I find a great deal more than in any one else in GustaveFlaubert. [Sidenote: Some former dealings with him. ] As I have said this, the reader may expect, magisterially, dreadingly, or perhaps in some very "gentle" cases hopefully, a full chapter onFlaubert. He shall have it. But the same cause, or group of causes, which has been at work before prevents this from being a very long one, and from containing very full accounts of his novels. One of the longestand most careful of those detailed surveys of forty years ago, to whichI have perhaps too often referred, was devoted to Flaubert, and wasslightly supplemented after his death. The earlier form had, though Idid not know it for a considerable time, not displeased himself--afortunate result not too common between author and critic[389]--andthere are, consequently, special reasons for leaving it unaltered andunrehashed. I shall, therefore, as with Balzac and Dumas, attempt ashorter but more general judgment, which--his work being so much lessvoluminous than theirs--may be perhaps even less extensive than in theother cases, [390] but which should leave no doubt as to the writer'sopinion of his "place in the story. " [Sidenote: His style. ] No small part of that high claim to purely literary rank which has beenmade for him rests, of course, upon his mere style--that famous and muchdebated "chase of the single word" which, especially since Mr. Patertook up the discussion of it, has been a "topic" of the most usitate inEngland as well as in France. When I left my chair and my library atEdinburgh I burnt more lecture-notes on the subject than would havefurnished material for an entire chapter here, and I have no intentionof raking my memory for their ashes. The battle on the one side with theanti-Unitarians who regard "monology" as a fond thing vainly invented, and on the other with Edmond de Goncourt's foolish and bumptious boastthat Flaubert's epithets were not so "personal" as his own and hisbrother's, would be for a different division of literary history. Butthere is something--a very important, though not a very longsomething--which must be said on the subject here. I have never foundmyself in the very slightest degree _gêné_--as the _abonné_ was byGautier's and as others are by the styles of Mr. George Meredith and Mr. Henry James--by Flaubert's style. It has never put the very smallestimpediment, effected the most infinitesimal delay, in my comprehensionof his meaning, or my enjoyment of his art and of his story. [391] Whatis more, though it has intensified that enjoyment, it has never--as mayperhaps have been the case with some other great "stylists"--_diverted_, a little illegitimately, my attention and fruition from the storyitself. Style-craft and story-craft have married each other so perfectlythat they are one flesh for the lover of literature to rejoice in. Andif there be higher praise than this to be bestowed in the cases andcircumstances, I do not know what it is. It seems to belong inperfection--I do not deny it to others in lesser degree--to threewriters only in this volume--Gautier, Mérimée, and Flaubert--though ifany one pleads hard for the addition of Maupassant, it will be seen whenwe come to him that I am not bound to a rigid _non possumus_; and thoughthere is still one living writer with whom, if he were not happilydisqualified by the fact of his living, I should not refuse to completethe Pentad. But let this suffice for the mere point of style in itspurer and therefore more controversial aspect. There may be a littlemore to say incidentally as we take the general survey under the oldheads of plot, etc. But before doing this we must--the books being sofew and so individually remarkable--say a little about each of them, though only a very little about one. [Sidenote: The books--_Madame Bovary_. ] Flaubert, after fairly early promise, the fulfilment of which waspostponed, began late, and was a man of eight and thirty when his firstcomplete book, _Madame Bovary_, appeared in 1859--a year, with itspredecessor 1858, among the great years of literature, as judged by thebooks they produced. An absurd prosecution was got up against it by theauthorities of that most moral of _régimes_, the Second Empire, with theeven more absurd result of a "not guilty, but please don't do anythingof the kind again" judgment. This, however, belongs mostly--not (_v. Inf. _) entirely--to the biographical part of the matter, with which wehave little or nothing to do. [392] The book itself is, beyond allquestion, a great novel--if it had a greater subject[393] it would havebeen one of the greatest of novels. The immense influence of _ManonLescaut_ appears once more in it; but Emma Bovary, with far more thanall the bad points of Manon, has none of her good ones. Nor has she thehalf-redeeming greatness in evil of her somewhat younger sister Iza in_Affaire Clémenceau_. Except her physical beauty (of which we do nothear much), there is not one attractive point in her. She sins, not outof passion, but because she thinks a married woman ought to have lovers. She ruins her husband, not for any intrinsic and genuine love ofsplendour, luxury, or beauty, but because other women have things andshe ought to have them. She has a taste _for_ men, but none _in_ them. Yet her creator has made her absolutely "real, " and, scum of womanhoodas she is, has actually evolved something very like tragedy out of herworthlessness, and has saved her from being detestable, because she issuch a very woman. He has, indeed, subjected her to a _kenosis_, anevisceration, exantlation--or, in plain English, "emptying out"--ofeverything positively good (she has the negative but necessary salve ofnot being absolutely ill-natured) that can be added to an abstractpretty girl; and no more. I have paid a little attention to the heroinesof the greater fiction; but she is the only one of all the _mille e tre_I know whom the author has managed to present as acceptable, without itsbeing in the least possible to fall in love with her, and at the sametime without its being necessary to detest her. This defiant and victorious naturalness--not "naturalism"--pervades thebook: from the other main characters--the luckless, brainless, tasteless, harmless husband; the vulgar Don Juans of lovers; theapothecary Homais[394]--one of the most original and firmly drawncharacters in fiction--from all, down to the merest "supers. " It floodsthe scene-painting (admirable in itself) with a light of common day--nottoo cheerful, but absolutely real. It animates the conversation, thoughFlaubert is not exactly prodigal of this;[395] and it presides over theweaving of the story as such in a fashion very little, if at all, inferior to that which prevails in the very greatest masters of purestory-telling. [Sidenote: _Salammbô. _] Hardly any one, speaking critically, could, I suppose, also speak thuspositively about Flaubert's second book, _Salammbô_--a romance ofCarthaginian history at the time of the Mutiny of the Mercenaries. EvenSainte-Beuve--no weak-stomached reader--was put off by its blotches ofblood and grime, and by the sort of ghastly gorgeousness which, if itdoes not "relieve" these, forms a kind of background to throw them up. It was violently attacked by clever carpers like M. De Pontmartin, byeccentrics of half-genius and whole prejudice like M. Barbeyd'Aurevilly, and by dull pedants like M. Saint-René Taillandier; whileit may be questioned whether, to the present day, its friends have notmostly belonged to that "Save-me-from-them" class which simply extolsthe "unpleasant" because other people find it unpleasant. [396] For myown part, I did not enjoy it much at the very first; but I felt itspower at once, and, as always happens in such cases when admiration doesnot come from the tainted source just glanced at, the enjoymentincreased, and the sense of power increased with it, the"unpleasantness, " as a known thing, becoming merely "discountable" anddisinfected. The book can, of course, never rank with _Madame Bovary_, because it is a _tour de force_ of abnormality--a thing incompatiblewith that highest art which consists in the transformation andtranscendentalising of the ordinary. The leprosies, and thecrucifixions, and the sorceries, and the rest of it are ugly; but thenCarthage _was_ ugly, as far as we know anything about it. [397] Salammbôherself is shadowy; but how could a Carthaginian girl be anything else?The point to consider is the way in which all this unfamiliar, uncanny, unpleasant stuff is _fused_ by sheer power of art into something whichhas at least the reality of a bad dream--which, as most people know, isa very real thing indeed while it lasts, and for a little time after. Itincreases the wonder--though to me it does not increase the interest--toknow that Flaubert took the most gigantic pains to make his task asdifficult as possible by acquiring and piecing together the availableknowledge on his subject. This process--the ostensible _sine qua non_ of"Realism" and "Naturalism"--will require further treatment. It is almostenough for the present to say that, though not a novelty, it had been, and for the matter of that has been, rarely a success. It has, as waspointed out before, spoilt most classical novels, reaching its acme ofboredom in the German work of Ebers and Dahn; and it has scarcely everbeen very successful, even in the hands of Charles Reade, who used it"with a difference. " But it can hardly be said to have done _Salammbô_much harm, because the "fusing" process which is above referred to, andto which the imported elements are often so rebellious, is hereperfectly carried out. You may not like the colour and shape of theingot or cast; but there is nothing in it which has not duly felt andobeyed the fire of art. [Sidenote: _L'Éducation Sentimentale. _] That there was no danger of Flaubert's merely palming off, in his novelwork, replicas with a few superficial differences, had now been shown. It was further established by his third and longest book, _L'ÉducationSentimentale_. This was not only, as the others had been, violentlyattacked, but was comparatively little read--indeed it is the only oneof his books, with the usual exception of _Bouvard et Pécuchet_, whichhas been called, by any rational creature, dull. I do not find it so;but I confess that I find its intrinsic interest, which to me is great, largely enhanced by its unpopularity--which supplies a most remarkablependant to that of _Jonathan Wild_, and is by no means devoid of valueas further illustrating the cause of the very limited popularity ofThackeray, and even of the rarity of whole-hearted enthusiasm for Swift. Satire is allowed to be a considerable, and sometimes held to be anattractive, branch of literature. But when you come to analyse theactual sources of the attraction, it is to be feared that you willgenerally find them to lie outside of the pure exposure of general humanweaknesses. A very large proportion of satire is personal, andpersonality is always popular. Satire is very often "naughty, " and"naughtiness" is to a good many, _qua_ naughtiness, "nice. " It lendsitself well to rhetoric; and there is no doubt, whatever superiorpersons may say of it, that rhetoric _does_ "persuade" a large portionof the human race. It is constantly associated with directly comictreatment, sometimes with something not unlike tragedy; and while thefirst, if of any merit, is sure, the second has a fair though morerestricted chance, of favourable reception. Try Aristophanes, Horace, Juvenal, Lucian, Martial; try the modern satirists of all kinds, and youwill always find these secondary sources of enjoyment present. There is hardly one of them--if one--to be found in _L'ÉducationSentimentale_. It is simply a panorama of human folly, frailty, feebleness, and failure--never permitted to rise to any great heights orto sink to any infernal depths, but always maintained at a probablehuman level. We start with Frédéric Moreau as he leaves school at thecorrect age of eighteen. I am not sure at what actual age we leave him, though it is at some point or other of middle life, the most active partof the book filling about a decade. But "vanity is the end of all hisways, " and vanity has been the beginning and middle of them--a perfectlyquiet and everyday kind of vanity, but vain from centre tocircumference and entire surface. He (one cannot exactly say"tries, " but) is brought into the possibility of trying loveof various kinds--illegitimate-romantic, legitimate-not-unromantic, illegitimate-professional but not disagreeable, illegitimate-conventional. Nothing ever "comes off" in a really satisfactory fashion. He is"exposed" (in the photographic-plate sense) to all, or nearly all, theinfluences of a young man's life in Paris--law, literature, art, insufficient means, quite sufficient means, society, politics--includingthe Revolution of 1848--enchantments, disenchantments--_tout ce qu'ilfaut pour vivre_--to alter a little that stock expression for "writingmaterials" which is so common in French. But he never can get any real"life" out of any of these things. He is neither a fool, nor a cad, noranything discreditable or disagreeable. He is "only an or'nary person, "to reach the rhythm of the original by adopting a slang form in notquite the slang sense. And perhaps it is not unnatural that otherordinary persons should find him too faithful to their type to bewelcome. In this respect at least I may claim not to be ordinary. Onegoes down so many empty wells, or wells with mere rubbish at the bottomof them, that to find Truth at last is to be happy with her (withoutprejudice to the convenience of another well or two here and there, withan agreeable Falsehood waiting for one). I do not know that _L'ÉducationSentimentale_ is a book to be read very often; one has the substance inone's own experience, and in the contemplation of other people's, tooreadily at hand for that to be necessary or perhaps desirable. But agreat work of art which is also a great record of nature is not toocommon--and this is what it is. [Sidenote: _La Tentation de Saint-Antoine_. ] Yet, as has been remarked before, nothing shows Flaubert's greatnessbetter than his absolute freedom from the "rut. " Even in carrying outthe general "Vanity" idea he has no monotony. The book which followed_L'Éducation_ had been preluded, twenty years earlier, by some fragmentsin _L'Artiste_, a periodical edited by Gautier. But _La Tentation deSaint-Antoine_, when it finally appeared, far surpassed the promise ofthese specimens. It is my own favourite among its author's books; and itis one of those which you can read merely for enjoyment or take as asubject of study, just as you please--if you are wise you will give"five in five score" of your attentions to the latter occupation and theother ninety-five to the former. The people who had made up their mindsto take Flaubert as a sort of Devil's Gigadibs--a "Swiss, not ofHeaven, " but of the other place, hiring himself out to war on all thingsgood--called it "an attack on the idea of God"! As it, like its smallerand later counterpart _Saint Julien l'Hospitalier_, ends in amanifestation of Christ, which would do honour to the most orthodox ofSaints' Lives, the "attack" seems to be a curious kind of offensiveoperation. As a matter of fact, the book takes its vaguely familiar subject, and_embroiders_ that subject with a fresh collection of details fromuntiring research. The nearest approach to an actual person, besides thetormented Saint himself, is the Evil One, not at first _in propriapersona_, but under the form of the Saint's disciple Hilarion, who atfirst acts as usher to the various elements of the Temptation-Pageant, and at last reveals himself by treacherous suggestions of unbelief. Thepageant itself is of wonderful variety. After a vividly drawn sketch ofthe hermitage in the Thebaid, the drama starts with the more vulgar anddirect incitements to the coarser Deadly Sins and others--Gluttony, Avarice, Ambition, Luxury. Then Hilarion appears and starts theologicaldiscussion, whence arises a new series of actual visions--the excessesof the heretics, the degradation of martyrdom itself, the Easterntheosophies, the monstrous cults of Paganism. After this, Hilarion triesa sort of Modernism, contrasting the contradictions and absurdities ofactual religions with a more and more atheistic Pantheism. This failing, the Temptation reverts to the moral forms, Death and Vice contending forAnthony and bidding against each other. The next shift of thekaleidoscope is to semi-philosophical fantasies--the Sphinx, theChimaera, basilisks, unicorns, microscopic mysteries. The Saint isnearly bewildered into blasphemy; but at last the night wanes, the sunrises, and the face of Christ beams from it. The Temptation isended. [398] The magnificence of the style, in which the sweep of thisdream-procession over the stage is conveyed to the reader, is probablythe first thing that will strike him; and certainly it never palls. But, if not at once, pretty soon, any really critical mind must perceivesomething different from, and much rarer than, mere style. It is theextraordinary power--the exactness, finish, and freedom from any excessor waste labour, of the narrative, in reproducing dream-quality. A verylarge proportion--and there is nothing surprising in the fact--of thebest pieces of ornate prose in French, as well as in English, are busiedwith dreams; but the writers have not invariably remembered one of themost singular--and even, when considered from some points of view, disquieting--features of a dream, --that you are never, while dreaming, in the least surprised at what happens. Flaubert makes no mistake as tothis matter. The real realism which had enabled him to re-create themost sordid details of _Madame Bovary_, the half-historic grime andgorgeousness mixed of _Salammbô_, and the quintessentially ordinary lifeof _L'Éducation_, came mightily to his assistance in this his Vision ofthe Desert. You see and hear its external details as Anthony saw andheard them: you almost feel its internal influence as if Hilarion hadbeen--as if he _was_--at your side. [Sidenote: _Trois Contes. _] The _Trois Contes_ which followed, and which practically completed(except for letters) Flaubert's finished work in literature, [399] haveone of those half-extrinsic interests which, once more, it is the dutyof the historian to mention. They show that although, as has been said, Flaubert suffered from no monotony of faculty, the range of hisfaculty--or rather the range of the subjects to which he chose to applyit--was not extremely wide. Of the twin stories, _Un Coeur Simple_ is, though so unlike in particular, alike in general _ordinariness_ to_Madame Bovary_ and _L'Éducation Sentimentale_. The unlikeness inparticular is very striking, and shows that peculiar _victoriousness_ inaccomplishing what he attempted which is so characteristic of Flaubert. It is the history-no-history of a Norman peasant woman, large if simpleof heart, simple and not large of brain, a born drudge and prey tounscrupulous people who come in contact with her, and almost in hersingle person uniting the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. Iadmire it now, without even the touch of rather youthful impatiencewhich used, when I read it first, to temper my admiration. It is not a_berquinade_, because a _berquinade_ is never quite real. _Un CoeurSimple_ shares Flaubert's Realism as marvellously as any equal number ofpages of either of the books to which I have compared it. But there_is_, perhaps, something provocative--something almost placidlyinsolent--about the way in which the author says, "Now, I will give younothing of the ordinary baits for admiration, and yet, were you theDevil himself, you shall admire me. " And one does--in youth ratherreluctantly--not so in age. _Herodias_ groups itself in the same general fashion, but even moredefinitely in particulars, with _Salammbô_--of which, indeed, it is asort of miniature replica cunningly differentiated. Anybody can see howeasily the story of the human witchcraft of Salome, and the decollationof the Saint, and the mixture of terror and gorgeousness in the desertfortress, parallel the Carthaginian story. But I do not know whether itwas deliberate or unconscious repetition that made Flaubert give ussomething like a duplicate of the suffete Hanno in Vitellius. There isno lack of the old power, and the shortness of the story is at leastpartly an advantage. But perhaps the Devil's Advocate, borrowing from, but reversing, Hugo on Baudelaire, might say, "Ce frisson _n'est pas_nouveau. " The third story, _Saint Julien l'Hospitalier_, has always seemed to meas near perfection in its own kind as anything I know in literature, andone of the best examples, if not the very best example, of thatadaptableness of the _Acta Sanctorum_ to modern rehandling of the rightkind, which was noticed at the beginning of this _History_. [400] Theexcessive devotion of the not yet sainted Julian to sport; the crime andthe dooms that follow it; the double parricide which he commits underthe false impression that his wife has been unfaithful to him; hisself-imposed penance of ferrying, somewhat like Saint Christopher, andthe trial--a harder one than that good giant bore, for Julian has, notmerely to carry over but, to welcome, at board _and_ bed, a leper--andthe Transfiguration and Assumption that conclude the story, give some ofthe best subjects--though there are endless others nearly or quite asgood--in Hagiology. And Flaubert has risen to them in the miraculousmanner in which he could rise, retaining the strangeness, infusing thereality, and investing the whole with the beauty, deserved and required. There is not a weak place in the whole story; but the strongest placesare, as they should be, the massacre of hart, hind, and fawn whichbrings on the curse; the ghastly procession of the beasts Julian hasslain or _not_ slain (for he has met with singular ill-luck); the final"Translation. "[401] Nowhere is Flaubert's power of description greater;nowhere, too, is that other power noticed--the removal of all temptationto say "Very pretty, but rather _added_ ornament"--more triumphantlydisplayed. [Sidenote: _Bouvard et Pécuchet. _] Little need be said of the posthumous torso and failure, [402] _Bouvardet Pécuchet_. Nothing ever showed the wisdom of the proverb abouthalf-done work, children and fools, better; and, alas! there issomething of the child in all of us, and something of the fool in toomany. It was to be a sort of extended and varied _Éducation_, not_Sentimentale_. Two men of retired leisure and sufficient income resolveto spend the rest of their lives "in books and work and healthful play, "and almost as many other recreative occupations (including "teaching theyoung idea how to shoot") as they or you can think of. But the workgenerally fails, the books bore and disappoint them, the young ideasshoot in the most "divers and disgusting" ways, and the play turns outto be by no means healthful. Part of it is in scenario merely; andFlaubert was wont to alter so much, that one cannot be sure even of theother and more finished part. Perhaps it was too large and too dreary atheme, unsupported by any real novel quality, to acquire even thatinterest which _L'Éducation Sentimentale_ has for some. But the moreexcellent way is to atone for the mistake of his literary executors, innot burning all of it except the monumental phrase quoted above, Ainsi tout leur a craqué dans la main, by simply remembering this--which is the initial and conclusion of thewhole matter--and letting the rest pass. There is one slight danger in the estimate of Flaubert to which, thoughI actually pointed it out, I think I may have succumbed a little when Ifirst wrote about him. He is so great a master of literature that onemay be led to concentrate attention on this; and if not to neglect, toregard somewhat inadequately, his greatness as a novelist. Here at anyrate such failure would be petty, if not even high, treason. [Sidenote: General considerations. ] One may look at his performance in the novel from two points ofview--that of "judging by the result" simply and in the fashionof a summing-up; and that of bringing him under certainticket-qualifications, and enquiring whether they are justly applicableto him or not. I need hardly tell any one who has done me the honour toread either this or any other critical work of mine, which of these twoI think the more excellent way; but the less excellent in thisparticular instance, may demand a little following. Was Flaubert a Romantic? Was he a Realist? Was he a Naturalist? This ishow the enquiries come in chronological order. But for convenience ofdiscussion the first should be postponed to the others. "Realist, " like a good many other tickets, is printed on both sides, andthe answer to our question will be by no means the same whichever sidebe looked at. That Flaubert was a Realist "in the best sense of theterm" has been again and again affirmed in the brief reviews of hisnovels given above. He cannot be unreal--the "convincingness" of hismost sordid as of his most splendid passages; of his most fantastic_diableries_ as of his most everyday studies of society; is unsurpassed. It is, in fact, his chief characteristic. But this very fact that it_pervades_--that it is as conspicuous in the _Tentation_ and in _SaintJulien l'Hospitalier_ as in _Madame Bovary_ and the _Éducation_--at oncethrows up a formidable, I think an impregnable, line of defence againstthose who would claim him for "Realism" of the other kind--the cult ofthe ugly, because, being ugly, it is more real than the beautiful. Hehas no fear of ugliness, but he cultivates the ugly because it is thereal, not the real because it is the ugly. Being to a great extent asatirist and (despite his personal boyishness) saturnine rather thanjovial in temperament, there is a good deal in him that is _not_beautiful. But he can escape into beauty whenever he chooses, and inthese escapes he is always at his best. This fact, while leaving him a Realist of the nobler type, at once shutshim off from community with his friends Zola and the Goncourts, andsaves him from any stain of the "sable streams. " But besides this--orrather looking at the same thing from a slightly different point ofview--there is something which not only permits but demands the mostemphatic of "Noes!" to the question, "Was Flaubert a Naturalist?" This something is itself the equally emphatic "Yes!" which must bereturned to the third and postponed question, "Was he a Romantic?" Thereare many strange things in the History of Literature: its strangeness, as in other cases, is one of its greatest charms. But there have beenfew stranger than the obstinacy and almost passion with which theRomanticism of Heine, of Thackeray, and of Flaubert has been denied. Again and again it has been pointed out that "to laugh at what you love"is not only permissible, but a sign of the love itself. Moreover, Flaubert does not even laugh as the great Jew and the great Englishmandid. He only represents the failures and the disappointments and thefalse dawns of Love itself, while in other respects he is _romantique àtous crins_. Compare _Le Rêve_ with _La Tentation_ or _Saint-Julienl'Hospitalier_; compare _Madame Bovary_ with _Germinie Lacerteux_; evencompare _L'Éducation Sentimentale_, that voyage to the Cythera ofRomance which never reaches its goal, with _Sapho_ and _L'Évangéliste_, and you will see the difference. It is of course to a certain extent "LeCoucher du Soleil Romantique" which lights up Flaubert's work, but the_crapauds imprévus_ and the _froids limaçons_ of Baudelaire's epitaphhave not yet appeared, and the hues of the sunset itself are stillgorgeous in parts of the sky. Of Flaubert's famous doctrine of "the single word" perhaps a little moreshould, after all, be said. The results are so good, and the processesby which they are attained get in the way of the reader so little, thatit is difficult to quarrel with the doctrine itself. But it was perhaps, after all, something of a superstition, and the almost "fabuloustorments" which it occasioned to its upholder and practitioner seem tohave been somewhat Fakirish. We need not grudge the five years spentover _Salammbô_; the seven over _L'Éducation_; the earlier and, I think, less definitely known gestation of _Madame Bovary_; and that portion ofthe twenty which, producing these also, filled out those fragments of_La Tentation_ that the July Monarchy had actually seen. Perhaps with_Bouvard et Pécuchet_ he got into a blind alley, out of which suchlabour was never like to get him, and in which it was rather likely toconfine him. But if the excess of the preparation had been devoted tothe completion of, say, only half a dozen of such _Contes_ as those weactually have, it would have been joyful. Yet this is idle pining, and the goods which the gods provided in thisinstance are such as ought rather to make us truly thankful. Flaubertwas, as has been said, a Romantic, but he was born late enough to avoidthe extravagances and the childishnesses of _mil-huit-cent-trente_ whileretaining its inspiration, its _diable au corps_, its priceless recoveryof inheritances from history. Nor, though he subjected all these to asevere criticism of a certain kind, did he ever let this make him (assomething of the same sort made his pretty near contemporary, MatthewArnold, in England) inclined to blaspheme. [403] He did not, like hisother contemporary and peer in greatness of their particular country andgeneration, Baudelaire, play unwise tricks with his powers and hislife. [404] He was fortunately relieved from the necessity ofjourney-work--marvellously performed, but still journey-work--which hadbeset Gautier and never let go of him. [405] And he utilised these gifts and advantages as few others have done inthe service of the novel. One thing may be brought against him--I thinkone only. You read--at least I read--his books with intense interest andenjoyment, but though you may recognise the truth and humanity of thecharacters; though you may appreciate the skill with which they are setto work; though you may even, to a certain extent, sympathise with them, you never--at least I never--feel that intense interest in them, aspersons, which one feels in those of most of the greatest novelists. Youcan even feel yourself in them--a rare and great thing--you can _be_Saint Anthony, and feel an unpleasant suspicion as if you had sometimesbeen Frédéric Moreau. But this is a different thing (though it is agreat triumph for the author) from the construction for you of loves, friends, enemies even--in addition to those who surround you in theactual world. Except this defect--which is in the proper, not the vulgar sense adefect--that is to say, not something bad which is present, but onlysomething good which is absent--I hardly know anything wrong inFlaubert. He is to my mind almost[406] incomparably the greatestnovelist of France specially belonging to the second half of thenineteenth century, and I do not think that Europe at large has ever hada greater since the death of Thackeray. FOOTNOTES: [389] He _might_ have said--to make a Thackerayan translation of whatwas actually said later of an offering of roses rashly made to someFrench men of letters at their hotel in London: "Who the devil is this?Let them flank him his vegetables to the gate!" But what he did say, Ibelieve, though he did not know or mention my name, was that "a blondeson of Albion" had ventured something _gigantesque_ on him. And_gigantesque_ had, if I do not again fondly err, sometimes if not alwaysits "milder shade" of meaning in Flaubert's energetic mouth. [390] As in those cases, and perhaps even more than in most, I havetaken pains to make the new criticism as little of a replica of the oldas possible. [391] Possibly this is exactly what M. De Goncourt meant. [392] There is some scandal and infinite gossip about Flaubert, with allof which I was once obliged to be acquainted, but which I have done thebest that a rather strong memory will allow me to forget. I shall onlysay that his early friend and quasi-biographer, Maxime du Camp, seems tome to have had nearly as hard measure dealt out to him as Mr. Froude inthe matter of Mr. Carlyle. Both were indiscreet; I do not think eitherwas malevolent or treacherous. [393] For in novels, to a greater degree than in poems, greatness _does_depend on the subject. [394] Somebody has, I believe, suggested that if Emma had marriedHomais, all would have been well. If this means that he would havepromptly and comfortably poisoned her, for which he had professionalfacilities, there might be something in it. Otherwise, hardly. [395] His forte is in single utterances, such as the unmatched "J'ai unamant!" to which Emma gives vent after her first lapse (and which"speaks" her and her fate, and the book in ten letters, two spaces, andan apostrophe), or as the "par ce qu'elle avait touché au manteau deTanit" of _Salammbô_; and the "Ainsi tout leur a craqué dans la main" ofthe unfinished summary of _Bouvard et Pécuchet_. [396] It is known that Flaubert, perhaps out of rather boyish pique(there was much boyishness in him), had originally made its offenceranker still. One of the most curious literary absurdities I have everseen--the absurd almost drowning the disgusting in it--was an Americanattempt in verse to fill up Flaubert's _lacuna_ and "go one better. " [397] The old foreign comparison with London was merely rhetorical; butthere really would seem to have been some resemblance between Carthageand modern Berlin, even in those very points which Flaubert (takingadvice) left out. [398] There is a recent and exceptionally good translation of the book. [399] The Letters are almost, if not quite, of first-rate quality. Theplay, _Le Candidat_, is of no merit. [400] Vol. I. P. 4. [401] All these will be found Englished in the Essay referred to. [402] Too much must not be read into the word "failure": indeed the nextsentence should guard against this. I know excellent critics who, declining altogether to consider the book as a novel, regard it as asort of satire and _satura_, Aristophanic, Jonsonian or other, in gistand form, and by no means a failure as such. But as such it would haveno, or very small, place here. I think myself that it is, from thatpoint of view, nearer to Burton than to any one else: and I thinkfurther that it might have been made into a success of this kind or evenof the novel sort itself. But _as it stands with the sketch of acompletion_, I do not think that Flaubert's alchemy had yet achieved orapproached projection. [403] I have sometimes wished that Mr. Arnold had written a novel. Butperhaps _Volupté_ frightened him. [404] There is controversy on this point, and Baudelaire's indulgence inartificial and perilous Paradises may have been exaggerated. That itexisted to some extent is, I think, hardly doubtful. [405] I know few things of the kind more pathetic than Théo's quietlament over the "artistic completeness" of his ill-luck in the collapseof the Second Empire just when, with Sainte-Beuve dead and Mériméedying, he was its only man of letters of the first rank left, and mighthave had some relief from collar-work. But it must be remembered thatthough he had ground at the mill with slaves, he had never been one ofthem, and perhaps this would always have prevented his promotion. [406] Reserving Maupassant under the "almost. " CHAPTER XII THE OTHER "NON-NATURALS" OF THE SECOND EMPIRE If any excuse is needed for the oddity of the title of this chapter, itwill not be to readers of Burton's _Anatomy_. The way in which thephrase "Those six non-natural things" occurs and recurs there; theinextinguishable tendency--in view of the eccentricity of itsapplication--to forget that the six include things as "natural" (in anon-technical[407] sense) as Diet, to forget also what it really meansand expect something uncanny--these are matters familiar to allBurtonians. And they may excuse the borrowing of that phrase as ageneral label for those novelists, other than Flaubert and Dumas _fils_, who, if their work was not limited to 1850-70, began in (but not "with")that period, and worked chiefly in it, while they were at once _not_"Naturalists" and yet more or less as "natural" as any of Burton's six. One of the two least "minor, " Alphonse Daudet, was among Naturalists butscarcely of them. The other, Octave Feuillet, was anti-Naturalist to thecore. [Sidenote: Feuillet. ] This latter, the elder of the two, though not so much the elder as usedto be thought, [408] was at one time one of the most popular of Frenchnovelists both at home and abroad; but, latterly in particular, therewere in his own country divers "dead sets" at him. He had been anImperialist, and this excited one kind of prejudice against him; hewas, in his way, orthodox in religion, and this aroused another; while, as has been already said, though his subjects, and even his treatment ofthem, would have sent our English Mrs. Grundy of earlier days into"screeching asterisks, " the peculiar grime of Naturalism nowheresmirches his pages. For my own part I have always held him high, thoughthere is a smatch about his morality which I would rather not havethere. He seems to me to be--with the no doubt numerous transformationsnecessary--something of a French Anthony Trollope, though he has atragic power which Trollope never showed; and, on the other side of theaccount, considerably less comic variety. [Sidenote: His novels generally. ] As a "thirdsman" to Flaubert and Dumas _fils_, he shows some interestingdifferences. Merely as a maker of literature, he cannot touch theformer, and has absolutely nothing of his poetic imagination, while hisgrasp of character is somewhat thinner and less firm. But it is morevaried in itself and in the plots and scenery which give it play andsetting--a difference not necessary but fortunate, considering his verymuch larger "output. " Contrasted with Dumas _fils_, he affords a moreimportant difference still, indeed one which is very striking. I pointedout in the appropriate place--not at the moment thinking of Feuillet atall--the strange fashion in which Alexander the Younger constantly"makes good" an at first unattractive story; and, even in his mostgenerally successful work, increases the appeal as he goes on. WithFeuillet the order of things is quite curiously reversed. Almost(though, as will be seen, not quite) invariably, from the early days of_Bellah_ and _Onestà_ to _La Morte_, he "lays out" his plan in amasterly manner, and accumulates a great deal of excellent material, asit were by the roadside, for use as the story goes on. But, except whenhe is at his very best, he flags, and is too apt to keep up his curtainfor a fifth act when it had much better have fallen for good at the endof the fourth. As has been noted already, his characters are not deeplycut, though they are faithfully enough sketched. That he is not strongenough to carry through a purpose-novel is not much to his discredit, for hardly anybody ever has been. But the _Histoire de Sibylle_--hisswashing blow in the George Sand duel (_v. Sup. _ p. 204)--though muchless dull than the _riposte_ in _Mlle. La Quintaine_, would hardlyinduce "the angels, " in Mr. Disraeli's famous phrase, to engage himfurther as a Hal-o'-the-Wynd on their side. But Feuillet's most vulnerable point is the peculiar sentimentalmorality-in-immorality which has been more than once glanced at. It wasfrankly found fault with by French critics--themselves by no meansstrait-laced--and the criticisms were well summed up (I remember thewording but not the writer of it) thus: "An honest woman does not feelthe temptations" to which the novelist exposes his heroines. That there_is_ a certain morbid sentimentality about Feuillet's attitude notmerely to the "triangle" but even to simple "exchange of fantasies"between man and woman in general, can hardly be denied. He has a mostcurious and (one might almost say) Judaic idea as to woman as atemptress, in fashions ranging from the almost innocent seduction of Evethrough the more questionable[409] one of Delilah, down to the sheerattitude of Zuleika-Phraxanor, and the street-corner woman in theProverbs. And this necessitates a correspondingly unheroic presentationof his heroes. They are always being led into serious mischief ("in ared-rose chain" or a ribbon one), as Marmontel's sham philosopher[410]was into comic confusion by that ingenious Présidente. Yet, allowing allthis, there remains to Feuillet's credit such a full and brilliantseries of novels, hardly one of which is an actual failure, as very fewnovelists can show. Although he lived long and wrote to the end of hislife, he left no "dotages"; hardly could the youngest and strongest ofany other school in France--Guy de Maupassant himself--have beaten _LaMorte_, though it is not faultless, in power. [Sidenote: Brief notes on some--_Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre_. ] I suppose few novels, succeeding not by scandal, have ever been muchmore popular than the _Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre_, the title ofwhich good English folk have been known slightly to alter in meaning byputting the _pauvre_ before the _jeune_. It had got into its thirdhundred of editions before the present century had reached the end ofits own first lustrum, and it must have been translated (probably morethan once) into every European language. It is perfectly harmless; it isadmirably written; and the vicissitudes of the loves of the _marquisdéchu_ and the headstrong creole girl are conducted with excellentskill, no serious improbability, and an absence of that tendency to"tail off" which has been admitted in some of the author's books. Itwas, I suppose, Feuillet's diploma-piece in almost the strictesttechnical sense of that phrase, for he was elected of the Academy notlong afterwards. It has plenty of merits and no important faults, but itis not my favourite. [Sidenote: _M. De Camors. _] [Sidenote: Other books. ] Neither is the novel which, in old days, the proud and haughty scornersof this _Roman_, as a _berquinade_, used to prefer--_M. De Camors_. [411]Here there is plenty of naughtiness, attempts at strong character, andcertainly a good deal of interest of story, with some striking incident. But it is spoilt, for me, by the failure of the principal personage. Ithink it not quite impossible that Feuillet intended M. De Camors as asort of modernised, improved, and extended Lovelace, or evenValmont--superior to scruple, destined and able to get the better of manor woman as he chooses. Unfortunately he has also endeavoured to makehim a gentleman; and the compound, as the chemists say, is not "stable. "The coxcombry of Lovelace and the priggishness, reversed (though in aless detestable form), of Valmont, are the elements that chiefly remainin evidence, unsupported by the vigorous will of either. I have myselfalways thought _La Petite Comtesse_ and _Julia de Trécoeur_ among theearlier novels, _Honneur d'Artiste_ and _La Morte_ among the later, tobe Feuillet's masterpieces, or at least nearest approaches to amasterpiece. _Un Mariage dans le Monde_ (one or the rare instances inwhich the "honest woman" does get the better of her "temptations") isindeed rather interesting, in the almost fatal cross-misunderstanding ofhusband and wife, and the almost fabulous ingenuity and good offices ofthe "friend of the family, " M. De Kevern, who prevents both from makingirreparable fools of themselves. _Les Amours de Philippe_ is morecommonplace--a prodigal's progress in love, rewarded at last, veryundeservedly, with something better than a fatted calf--a formerlyslighted but angelic cousin. But to notice all his work, more especiallyif one took in half- or quarter-dramatic things (his pure drama does notof course concern us) of the "Scène" and "Proverbe" kind, where he comesnext to Musset, would be here impossible. The two pairs, early and laterespectively, and already selected, must suffice. [Sidenote: _La Petite Comtesse. _] They are all tragic, though there is comedy in them as well. Perhaps _LaPetite Comtesse_, a very short novel and its author's first thing ofgreat distinction, might by some be called pathetic rather than tragic;but the line between the two is a "leaden" barrier (if indeed it is abarrier at all) and "gives" freely. Perhaps the Gigadibs in any man ofletters may be conciliated by one of his fellows being granted some ofthe fascinations of the "clerk" in the old Phyllis-and-Flora _débats_ ofmediaeval times; but the fact that _this_ clerk is also represented as afool of the most disastrous, though not the most contemptible kind, should be held as a set-off to the bribery. It is a "story ofthree"--though not at all the usual three--graced (or not) by a reallybrilliant picture of the society of the early Second Empire. One of theleaders of this--a young countess and a member of the "Rantipole"[412]set of the time, but exempt from its vulgarity--meets in the country, and falls in love with, a middle-aged _savant_, who is doingarchaeological work for Government in the neighbourhood. He despises heras a frivolous feather-brain at first, but soon falls under the spell. Yet what has been called "the fear of the 'Had-I-wist'" and the specialnotion--more common perhaps with men than is generally thought--that shecannot _really_ love him, makes him resist her advances. By rebound, shefalls victim for a time to a commonplace Lovelace; but finds nosatisfaction, languishes and dies, while the lover, who would not takethe goods the gods provided, tries to play a sort of altered part ofColonel Morden in _Clarissa_, and the gods take their revenge for"sinned mercies. " In abstract (it has been observed elsewhere thatFeuillet seldom abstracts well, his work being too much built up ofdelicate touches) there may seem to be something of the preposterous inthis; but it must be a somewhat coarse form of testing which discoversany real preposterousness in the actual story. [Sidenote: _Julia de Trécoeur. _] It may, however, as has been said, seem to some to belong to thepathetic-sentimental rather than to the actually tragic; I at leastcould not allow any such judging of _Julia de Trécoeur_, though thereare more actual faults in it than in _La Petite Comtesse_, and though, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the rather repulsive catastrophe mayhave been more or less borrowed. The _donnée_ is one of the great oldsimple cross-purposes of Fate--not a mere "conflict, " as the sillymodern jargon has it. Julia de Trécoeur is a wilful and wayward girl, as are many others of Feuillet's heroines. Her mother is widowed early, but consoles herself; and Julia--as such a girl pretty certainly woulddo--resents the proceeding, and refuses to live at home or to see herstepfather. He, however, is a friend of his wife's own cousin, and thiscousin, conceiving a passion for Julia, offers to marry her. Herconsent, in an English girl, would require some handling, but offers nodifficulties in a French one. As a result, but after a time, she agreesto meet her mother and that mother's new husband. And then the tragedybegins. She likes at once, and very soon loves, her stepfather--hesuccumbs, more slowly, to Moira and Até. But he is horrified at thenotion of a quasi-incestuous love, and Julia perceives his horror. Sheforces her horse, like the Duchess May, but over the cliffs of theCotentin, not over a castle wall; and her husband and her stepfatherhimself see the act without being able--indeed without trying--toprevent it. The actual place had nearly been the scene of a jointsuicide by the unhappy lovers before. Once more, the thing comes badly out of analysis--perhaps by theanalyst's fault, perhaps not. But in its own presentation, with somefaults hardly necessary to point out, it is both poignant and_empoignant_, and it gives a special blend of pity and terror, the twofeelings being aroused by no means merely through the catastrophe, butby the rise and progress of the fatal passion which leads to it. I knowvery few, if any, things of the same kind, in a French novel, superior, or indeed equal to, the management of this, and to the fashion in whichthe particular characters, or wants of character, of Julia's mother andJulia's husband (excellent persons both) are made to hurry on thecalamity[413] to which she was fated. [Sidenote: _Honneur d'Artiste. _] This tragic undercurrent, surging up to a more tragic catastrophe, reappears in the two best of the later issues, when Feuillet was makingbetter head against the burst sewers[414] of Naturalism. _Honneurd'Artiste_ is the less powerful of the two; but what of failure thereis in it is rather less glaring. Beatrice de Sardonne, the heroine, is asort of "Petite Comtesse" transformed--very cleverly, but perhaps notquite successfully. _Her_ "triangle" consists of herself, a somewhatNew-Yorkised young French lady of society (but too good for the worstpart of her); and her two lovers, the Marquis de Pierrepont, a muchbetter Lovelace, in fact hardly a Lovelace at all, whom she isengineered into refusing for honourable love--with a fatal relapse intodishonourable; and the "Artiste" Jacques Fabrice. He adores her, butshe, alas! does not know whether she loves him or not till too late;and, after the irreparable, he falls by the hazard of the lot in thattoss-up for suicide, the pros and cons of which (as in a formerinstance) I should like to see treated by a philosophical historian ofthe duello. [Sidenote: _La Morte. _] In _La Morte_, on the other hand, the power is even greater--in fact itis the most powerful book of its author, and one of the most powerful ofthe later nineteenth century. But there is in it a reversion to the"purpose" heresy; and while it is an infinitely finer novel than the_Histoire de Sibylle_, it is injured, though not quite fatally, by theweapon it wields. One of the heroines, Sabine, niece and pupil of anAgnostic _savant_, deliberately poisons the other, Aliette, that she maymarry Aliette's husband. But the Agnostic teaching extends itself soonfrom the Sixth Commandment to the Seventh, and M. De Vaudricourt, who, though not ceasing to love Aliette, and having no idea of the murder, has been ensnared into second marriage by Sabine, discovers, at almostthe same time, that his wife is a murderess and a strumpet. She is also(one was going to say) something worse, a daughter of the horse-leechfor wealth and pleasure and position. Now you _may_ be an Agnostic and amurderess and a strumpet and a female snob all at once: but noanti-Agnostic, who is a critic likewise, will say that the second, third, and fourth characteristics necessarily, and all together, followfrom Agnosticism. It may remove some bars in their way; but I canfrankly admit that I do not think it need definitely superinduce them, or that it is altogether fair to accumulate the _post hocs_ with theirinevitable suggestion of _propter_. However, "Purpose" here is simply at its old tricks, and I have known itdo worse things than caution people against Agnostics' nieces. [Sidenote: Misters the assassins. ] On the other hand, the vigour, the variety, and (where the purpose doesnot get too much the upper hand) the satiric skill are very nearlyfirst-rate. And, with the cautions and admissions just given, there isnot a little in the purpose itself, with which one may be permitted tosympathise. After all "misters the assassins" were being allowed verygenerous "law, " and it was time for other people to "begin. " As forFeuillet's opposition to the "modern spirit, " which was early denounced, it is not necessary--even for any one who knows that this modern spiritis only an old enemy with a new face, or who, when he sees the statementthat "Nothing is ever going anywhere to be the same, " chuckles, and, remembering all history to the present minute, mutters, "Everythingalways has been, is, and always will be the same"--to call in theseknowledges of his to the rescue of Feuillet's position as a novelist. That position is made sure, and would have been made sure if he had beenas much of a Naturalist as he was the reverse, by his power ofconstructing interesting stories; of drawing, if not absolutely perfect, passable and probable characters; of throwing in novel-accessories withjudgment; and of giving, by dint of manners and talk and other thingsnecessary, vivid and true portrayals of the society and life of histime. * * * * * [Sidenote: Alphonse Daudet and his curious position. ] [Sidenote: His "personality. "] Perhaps there is no novelist in French literature--or, indeed, in anyother--who, during his lifetime, occupied such a curiously "mixed"position as Alphonse Daudet. [415] No contemporary of his obtained widergeneral popularity, without a touch of irregular bait or of appeal topopular silliness in it, than he did with _Le Petit Chose_, with thecharming bundle of pieces called _Lettres de Mon Moulin_, and later withthe world-delighting burlesque of _Tartarin de Tarascon_. _Jack_ and_Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné_ contained more serious advances, whichwere, however, acknowledged as effective by a very large number ofreaders. But he became more and more personally associated with theNaturalist group of Zola and Edmond de Goncourt; and though he never wasactually "grimy, " he had, from a quite early period, when he wassecretary or clerk to the Duc de Morny, adopted, and more and morestrenuously persisted in, a kind of "personal" novel-writing, whichmight be regarded as tainted with the general Naturalist principle thatnothing is _tacendum_--that private individuality may be made public useof, to almost any extent. Of course a certain licence in this respecthas always been allowed to novelists. In the eighteenth century Englishwriters of fiction had very little scruple in using and abusing thatlicence, and French, though with the fear of the arbitrary justice orinjustice of their time and country before them, had almost less. As thenineteenth went on, the practice by no means disappeared on either sideof the Channel. With us Mr. Disraeli indulged in it largely, and evenThackeray, though he condemned it in others, and was furious when it wasexercised on himself, in journalism if not in fiction, prettynotoriously fell into it now and then. As to Dickens, one need not gobeyond the too notorious instance of Skimpole. Quite a considerableproportion of Balzac's company are known to have been Balzacified fromthe life; of George Sand's practice it is unnecessary to say more. [Sidenote: His books from this point of view and others. ] But none of these is so saturated with personality as Daudet; and whilesome of his "gentle" readers seem not to care much about this, even ifthey do not share the partiality of the vulgar herd for it, it disgustsothers not a little. Morny was not an estimable public or privatecharacter, though if he had been a "people's man" not much fault wouldprobably have been found with him. I daresay Daudet, when in hisservice, was not overpaid, or treated with any particular privateconfidence. But still I doubt whether any gentleman could have written_Le Nabab_. The last Bourbon King of Naples was not hedged with muchdivinity; but it is hardly a question, with some, that his _déchéance_, not less than that of his nobler spouse, should have protected them fromthe catch-penny vulgarity of _Les Rois en Exil_. Gambetta was not theworst of demagogues; there was something in him of Danton, and one mightfind more recent analogies without confining the researches to France. But even if his weaknesses gave a handle, which his merits could notsave from the grasp of the vulgariser, _Numa Roumestan_ bore the styleof a vulture who stoops upon recent corpses, not that of a dispassionateinvestigator of an interesting character made accessible by length oftime. _L'Évangéliste_ had at least the excuse that the Salvation Armywas fair game; and that, if there was personal satire, it was notnecessarily obvious--a palliation which (not to mention another for amoment) extends to _Sapho_. But _L'Immortel_ revived--unfortunately, asa sort of last word--the ugliness of this besetting sin of Daudet's. Even the saner members of Academies would probably scout the idea oftheir being sacrosanct and immune from criticism. But _L'Immortel_, despite its author's cleverness, is once more an essentially vulgarbook, and a vulturine or ghoulish one--fixing on the wounds and thebruises and the putrefying sores of its subject--dragging out of hisgrave, for posthumous crucifixion, a harmless enough pedant of not veryold time; and throwing dirty missiles at living magnates. It is one ofthe books--unfortunately not its author's only contribution to thelist--which leave a bad taste in the mouth, a "flavour of poisonousbrass and metal sick. " [Sidenote: His "plagiarisms. "] Of another charge brought against Daudet I should make much shorterwork; and, without absolutely clearing him of it, dismiss it as, thoughnot unfounded, comparatively unimportant. It is that ofplagiarism--plagiarism not from any French writer, but from Dickens andThackeray. As to the last, one scene in _Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné_simply _must_ be "lifted" from the famous culmination of _Vanity Fair_, when Rawdon Crawley returns from prison and catches Lord Steyne with hiswife. But, beyond registering the fact, I do not know that we need domuch more with it. In regard to Dickens, the resemblance is morepervading, but more problematical. "Boz" had been earlier, and has beenalways, popular in France. _L'excentricité anglaise_ warranted, if itdid not quite make intelligible, his extravaganza; his semi-republicansentimentalism suited one side of the French temperament, etc. Etc. Moreover, Daudet had actually, in his own youth, passed throughexperiences not entirely unlike those of David Copperfield and CharlesDickens himself, while perhaps the records of the elder novelist werenot unknown to the younger. In judging men of letters as shown in theirworks, however, a sort of "_cadi_-justice"--a counter-valuation ofmerits and faults--is allowable. I cannot forgive Daudet his inveteratepersonality: I can bid him sit down quickly and write off hisplagiarism--or most of it--without feeling the withers of my judicialconscience in the very least wrung. For if he did not, as others havedone, make what he stole entirely his own, he had, _of_ his own, veryconsiderable property in rather unusually various kinds. [Sidenote: His merits. ] The charm of his short Tales, whether in the _Lettres de Mon Moulin_ orin collections assuming the definite title, is undeniable. Thesatiric-pathetic--a not very common and very difficult kind--has fewbetter representatives than _La Chèvre de M. Séguin_, and the purelycomic stories are thoroughly "rejoicing. " _Tartarin_, in his originalappearances, "touches the spot, " "carries off all the point" in a mannersuggestive at once of Horace and Homocea; and though, as was almostinevitable, its sequels are less effective, one would have been veryglad indeed of them if they had had no forerunner. In almost all thebooks--_Robert Helmont_, by the way, though not yet mentioned, has somestrong partisans--the grip of actual modern society, which is the boastof the later, as opposed to the earlier, nineteenth-century novel, cannot be missed. Even those who are most disgusted by the personalitiescannot deny the power of the satiric presentation from _Le Nabab_ to_Numa Roumestan_. _Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné_ is, quite independentlyof the definite borrowing from us, more like an English novel, in somerespects, than almost any other French one known to me up to its date;and I have found persons, not in the least sentimentalists and verywidely read in novels both English and French, who were absolutelyenthusiastic about _Jack_. _L'Évangéliste_ is perhaps the nearest approach to a failure, theatmosphere being too alien from anything French to be favourable to thedevelopment of a good story, and perhaps the very subject being unsuitedto anything, either English or French, but an episode. In more congenialmatter, as in the remark in _Numa Roumestan_ as to the peculiar kind ofunholy pleasure which a man may enjoy when he sees his wife and hismistress kissing each other, Daudet sometimes showed cynic acumen nearerto La Rochefoucauld than to Laclos, and worthy of Beyle at his verybest. And I have no shame in avowing real admiration for _Sapho_. Itdoes not by any means confound itself with the numerous studies of theinfatuation of strange women which French fiction contains; and it isalmost a sufficient tribute to its power to say that it does not, asalmost all the rest do, at once serve itself heir to, and enter intohopeless competition with, _Manon Lescaut_. Nor is the heroine in theleast like either Marguerite Gautier or Iza Clémenceau, while thecomparison with Nana, whose class she also shares, vindicates herindividuality most importantly of all these trials. She seems to meDaudet's best single figure: though the book is of too specialised akind to be called exactly his best book. He never had strong health, and broke down early, so that his totalproduction is decidedly smaller than that of most of his fellows. [416]Nor has he, I think, any pretensions to be considered a novelist of thevery first class, even putting bulk out of the question. But he can beboth extremely amusing and really pathetic; he is never unnatural; andif there is less to be said about him than about some others, it iscertainly not because he is less good to read. On the contrary, he is soeasy and so good to read, and he has been read so much, that elaboratediscussion of him is specially superfluous. It is almost a pity that hewas not born ten or fifteen years earlier, so that he might have hadmore chance of hitting a strictly distinct style. As it is, with all hispathos and all his fun, you feel that he is of the _Epigoni_ a successorof more than one or two Alexanders, that he has a whole library ofmodern fiction behind--and, in more than one sense of the word, before--him. * * * * * [Sidenote: About: _Le Roi des Montagnes_. ] There was a time when Englishmen of worth and Englishwomen of gracethought a good deal of Edmond About. Possibly this was because he wasone of the pillars of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Far be it from me tospeak with the slightest disrespect of that famous periodical, to whichI have myself divers indebtednesses, and which has, in the last hundredyears or thereabouts, harboured and fostered many of the greatestwriters of France and much of her best literary work. But persons ofsome age and some memory must remember a time in England when it used tobe "mentioned with _hor_" as Policeman X mentioned something or somebodyelse about the same date or a little earlier. Even Matthew Arnold, inwhose comely head the bump of Veneration was not the most remarkableprotuberance, used to point to it--as something far above _us_--to beregarded with reverence and striven towards with might and main. Whatjustification there might be for this in general we need not nowconsider; but at any rate About has never seemed to the presenthistorian very much of a pillar of anything. His chief generallyaccepted titles to the position in novel-writing are, I suppose, _Le Roides Montagnes_ and _Tolla_, each of which, and perhaps one other, we mayexamine in some detail, grouping the rest (with one further exception)more summarily. They are the better suited for our purpose in that oneis comedy if not farce, and the other a gradually threatening and atlast accomplished tragedy. Of course it would be a very dull or a very curmudgeonly person whoshould fail to see or refuse to acknowledge "fun" in the history ofHadji or Hadgi Stavros. The mixture of sense, science, stupidity, andunconscious humour[417] in the German narrator; the satire on thetoleration of brigandage by government in Greece (it must be confessedthat, of all the reductions to the absurd of parliamentary andconstitutional arrangements in countries unsuited for them, wherein thelast hundred years have been so prolific, Greece has provided the mostconstant and reversed-sublime examples, as Russia has the most tragic);the contrast of amiability and atrocity in the brigands themselves--allthese provide excellent opportunities, by no means always missed, forthe display of a sort of anticipated and Gallicised Gilbertianism. Norneed the addition of stage Englishness in Mrs. Simons and her brotherand Mary Ann, of stage Americanism in Captain John Harris and his nephewLobster, spoil the broth. But, to the possibly erroneous taste[418] of the present taster, it doesnot seem to be a consummated _consommé_. To begin with, there is toomuch of it; it is watered out to over three hundred pages when it mighthave been "reduced" with great advantage to one hundred. Nor is this amere easy general complaint; it would be perfectly possible to point outwhere reductions should take place in detail. No one skilled in the useof the blue pencil could be at a loss where to apply it in thepreliminary matter; in the journey; in the Hadgi's gravely burlesquedcorrespondence; in the escape of the ladies; in Hermann's too prolongedyet absurdly ineffective tortures; in the civil war between the King andhis subjects; in the rather transpontine victory of the two Americansand the Maltese over both; and, above all, in the Royal Ball, whereEnglish etiquette requires that the rescuer must be duly introduced tothose he has rescued. Less matter (or rather less talking about matter)with more art might have made it a capital thing, especially if certaintraces of vulgarity, too common in About, were removed together with themere superfluities. At any rate, this is how it strikes, and always hasstruck, a younger but now old contemporary. [Sidenote: _Tolla. _] The same fault of _longueurs_ makes itself felt in _Tolla_: and indeedthe author seems to have been conscious of it, and confesses it in anapologetic _Preface_ to the editions after the first. But this does notform the chief ground of accusation against it. Nor, certainly, do thefacts, as summarised in a note, justify any serious charge ofplagiarism, [419] though the celebrated Buloz seems for once to have beenan unwise editor, in objecting to a fuller acknowledgment ofindebtedness on the part of his contributor. A story of this tragicalkind will bear much fuller handling than a comic tale of scarcely morethan one situation, recounted with a perpetual "tongue-in-cheek"accompaniment. But, from another point of view, the book does justify the drawing of ageneral literary moral, that true _données_ are very far from beingcertain blessings--that they are, in fact, _dona Danaorum_--to thenovelist; that he should not hug the shore of fact, but launch out intothe ocean of invention. About, in a fashion rather cheerfully recallingthe boasts of poor Shadwell, who could "truly say that he had madeit[420] into a play" and that "four of the humours were entirely new, "assures us that he has invented everything but the main situation, andwritten everything out of his own head except a few of the letters ofTolla. Some of these added things are good, though one of the author'sbesetting sins may be illustrated by the fact that he gives nearly halfa score pages to a retrospective review of the history of a RussianGeneral's widow and her daughter, when as many lines--or, better still, a line or two of explanation here and there--would be all that the storyrequires. [421] But the "given" situation itself is a difficult one tohandle interestingly: and, in some estimates at any rate, the difficultyhas not been overcome here. The son--a younger, but still amply endowedson--of one of the greatest Roman families, compact of Princes andCardinals, with reminiscences of Venetian dogedom, falls in love, aftera half-hearted fashion, with the daughter of another house of somewhatless, but still old repute, and of fair, though much lesser wealth. By agood deal of "shepherding" on the part of her family and friends, and(one is bound to say) some rather "downright Dunstable" on her own, heis made to propose; but _her_ family accepts the demand that the thingshall, for a time, be kept secret from _his_. Of course no such secrecyis long possible; and his people, especially a certain wickedcavaliere-colonel, with the aid of a French Monseigneur and the Russiansabove mentioned, plot to break the thing off, and finally succeed. "Lello" (Manuel) Coromila finds out the plot too late. Tolla dies of abroken heart. It seems to me--speaking with the humility which I do not merely affect, but really feel on the particular point--that this might make a goodsubject for a play: that in the hands of Shakespeare or Shelley it mightmake a very great one in two different kinds. But--now speaking withvery much less diffidence--I do not think it a promising one for anovel; and, speaking with hardly any at all, I think that it hascertainly not made a good one here. Shut up into the narrow action ofthe stage; divested of the intervals which make its improbabilities morepalpable; and with the presentation of Lello as a weaker and baserHamlet, of Tolla as a betrayed Juliet--with all this brought out andmade urgent by a clever actor and actress, the thing might be made veryeffective. Dawdled over in a novel again of three hundred pages, itloses appeal to the sympathy and constantly starts fresh difficultiesfor the understanding. That a very delightful girl[422] may fall in love with a nincompoop whois also notoriously a light-of-love, is quite possible: and, no doubt, is fortunate for the nincompoops, and, after a fashion, good for thecontinuation of the human race. But, in a novel, you must make theprocess interesting, and that is not, _me judice_, done here. Thenincompoop, too, is such an utter nincompoop (he is not a villain, noreven a rascal) that, no comic use being made of his nincompoopery, he isof no use at all. And though an old and haughty Italian family like theFeraldis _might_ no doubt in real life--there is nothing that may nothappen in real life--consent to clandestine engagements of the kinddescribed, it certainly is one of the possible-improbables which arefatal, or nearly so, to art. Two or three subordinate characters--thegood-natured and good-witted Marquis Filippo Trasimeni, the faithfulpeasant Menico, Tolla's foster-brother, and even the bad chambermaidAmarella--have some merit. But twenty of them could not save the book, which, after dawdling till close upon its end, huddles itself up in afew pages, chiefly of _récit_, in a singularly inartistic fashion. [Sidenote: _Germaine. _] _Germaine_, which has been (speaking under correction) a much lesspopular book than either _Le Roi des Montagnes_ or _Tolla_, is perhapsbetter than either. Except for a very few pages, it does not attempt thesomewhat cackling irony of the Greek book; and though it ends with onefailure of a murder, one accomplished ditto, and two more deaths of noordinary kind, it does not even attempt, as the Italian one does, realtragedy. But it has a fairly well-knit plot, some attempt at character, sufficient change of incident and scene, and hardly any _longueurs_. Even the hinge of the whole, though it presents certain improbabilities, is not of the brittle and creaking kind reprobated in that of _Tolla_. A Neapolitan-Spanish Count of Villanera, whose second title is "Marquisof the Mounts of Iron, " possessed also not only of the bluest ofblood, but of mountains of gold, has fallen in love, after anhonour-in-dishonour fashion, with the grass-widow of a French navalcaptain, Honorine Chermidy, and has had a child by her. She is really aworse Becky Sharp, or a rather cleverer Valérie Marneffe (who perhapswas her model[423]), and she forms a cunning plan by which the child maybe legitimated and she herself, apparently renouncing, will reallysecure a chance of, the countdom, the marquisate, and the mountains ofiron and gold. (Of the latter she has got a good share out of her loveralready. ) The plan is that Villanera shall marry some girl (of noblebirth but feeble health and no fortune), which will, according to Frenchlaw, effect or at least permit the legitimation of the little Marques delas Montes de Hierro--certain further possibilities being leftostensibly to Providence, but, in Madame Chermidy's private intentions, to the care of quite another Power. The Dowager Countess deVillanera--rather improbably, but not quite impossibly--accepts this, being, though proud, willing to derogate a little to make sure of anheir to the House of Villanera with at any rate a portion (thesceptical would say a rather doubtful portion[424]) of its own blood. Villanera himself, though in most ways the soul of honour, accepts thisshady scheme chiefly through blind devotion to his mistress; and it onlyremains to find a family whose poverty, if not their will, consents tosell their daughter. Through the agency of that stock and pet Frenchnovel-character, a doctor who is very clever, very benevolent, verysceptical, and not over-scrupulous, the exact material for the mischiefis found. There is an old Duc de la Tour-D'Embleuse, who, half-ruined bythe original Revolution, has been almost completely so by that of 1830, has thrown away what remained, and has become an amiable and adored bututterly selfish burden on his angelic wife and daughter, the latter ofwhom, like so many of the heroines of the 'fifties, especially inFrance, is an all but "given-up" _poitrinaire_. The price of thebargain--an "inscription" of fifty thousand francs a year in Rentes--isoffered on the very day when the family has come to its last _sou_;accepted, after short and sham refusal, by the duke; acquiesced inunselfishly by the mother, who despairs of saving her husband anddaughter from starvation in any other way; and submitted to by thedaughter herself in a spirit of martyrdom, strengthened by the certaintythat it is but for a little while. How the situation works out to an endof liberal but not excessive poetical justice, the reader may discoverfor himself: the book being, though not a masterpiece, nor even veryhigh in the second rank, quite worth reading. One or two things may benoticed. The first is a really clever sketch, the best thing perhaps inAbout's novel-work, of the peculiar "naughty-childishness"[425] whichbelongs to lovely woman, which does not materially affect her charm oreven her usefulness in some ways, but makes her as politicallyimpossible in one way as does that "incapacity for taking more than oneside of a question" which Lord Halsbury has pointed out, inanother. [426] The second is the picture, in the later half of the book, of those Ionian Islands, then still English, the abandonment of whichwas the first of the many blessings conferred by Mr. Gladstone[427] onhis country, and the possession of which, during the late or any war, would have enabled us almost to pique, repique, and capot the attemptsof our enemies in the adjacent Mediterranean regions. [Sidenote: _Madelon. _] All these books, and perhaps one or two others, are about the samelength--an equality possibly due (as we have seen in English examples ona different scale) to periodical publication. But once, in _Madelon_, About attempted something of much "longer breath, " as his countrymensay. Here we have nearly six hundred pages instead of three hundred, andeach page (which is a large one) contains at least half as much again asa page of the others. The book is a handsome one, with a title in redink; and the author says he took three years to write the novel--ofcourse as an avocation from his vocation in journalism. It is difficultto repress, though probably needless to utter, the most obvious remarkon this; but it is not hard to give it another turn. Diderot said (andthough some people believe him not, I do) that Rousseau originallyintended, in the Dijon prize essay which made his fate and fame, toargue that science and letters had _improved_ morality, etc. ; and thathe, Diderot, had told Jean Jacques that this was _le pont aux ânes_, anddetermined him to take the paradoxical side instead. The "Asses' bridge"(_not_ in the Euclidic sense, nor as meaning that all who took it wereasses) of the mid-nineteenth century French novelist was the biographyof the _demi-monde_. Balzac had been the first and greatest engineer ofthese _ponts et chaussées_; Dumas _fils_ had shown that they might leadto no mean success; so all the others followed in a fashion certainlyrather ovine and occasionally asinine. Madelon is a young woman, attractive rather than beautiful, who begins as a somewhat mysteriousfavourite of men of fashion in Paris; establishes herself for a time asa married woman in an Alsatian town; ruins nearly, _mais non tout_, acountry baron; and ends, as far as the book goes, by being a sort ofinferior Lola Montès to a German princeling. It has cost considerableeffort to justify even this short summary. I have found few Frenchnovels harder to read. But there is at least one smart remark--of the"publicist" rather than the novelist kind--towards the end: C'est un besoin inné chez les peuplades germaniques; il faut, bon gré mal gré, qu'ils adorent quelqu'un. They did not dislike puns and verbal jingles, either in France or inEngland in the mid-nineteenth century, as much as their ancestors andtheir descendants in both countries have done before and since. Asurvivor to-day might annotate "Et quel quelqu'un quelquefois!" [Sidenote: _Maître Pierre_, etc. Summing up. ] In fact, to put the matter brutally, but honestly, as far as the presentwriter's knowledge extends, Edmond About was not a novelist at all "inhis heart. " He was a journalist (he himself admits the impeachment sofar), and he was a journalist in a country where novel- or at leasttale-writing had long established itself as part of the journalist'sbusiness. Also he was really a good _raconteur_--a gift which, thoughperhaps few people have been good novelists without it, does not byitself make a good novelist. As a publicist, too, he was of no smallmark: his _Question Romaine_ could not be left out of any sufficientpolitical library of the nineteenth century. Some of his shorter tales, such as _Le Nez d'un Notaire_ and _L'Homme à l'Oreille Cassée_, have hada great vogue with those who like comic situations described withlively, if not very refined, wit. He was also a good topographer; indeedthis element enters largely into most of his so-called novels alreadynoticed, and constitutes nearly all the interest of a very pleasant bookcalled _Maître Pierre_. This is a description of the _Landes_ betweenBordeaux and Arcachon, and something like a "puff" of the methods usedto reclaim them, diversified by an agreeable enough romance. The hero isa local "king, " a foundling-hunter-agriculturist who uses his kingdom, not like Hadji Stavros, to pillage and torment, but to benefit hissubjects. The heroine is his protégée Marinette, a sort of minor IsopelBerners, with a happier end. [428] The throwing into actual tale-form ofcurious and decidedly costly local fashions of courtship is clever; butthe whole thing is a sort of glorified advertisement. Other books, _LesMariages de Paris_ and _Les Mariages de Province_, almost tell theirtales, and something more, [429] in their titles. One cannot but be sorry if this seems an unfair or shabby account of apleasant and popular writer, but the right and duty of historicalcriticism is not to be surrendered. One of the main objects of literaryhistory is to separate what is quotidian from what is not. To neglectthe quotidian altogether is--whatever some people may say--to fall shortof the historian's duty; to put it in its proper place _is_ that duty. * * * * * [Sidenote: Ponson du Terrail and Gaboriau. ] What ought to be said and done about Ponson du Terrail and Gaboriau--theyounger Sue and Soulié; the protagonists of the melodramatic andcriminal _feuilleton_ during the later middle of the century--has beenrather a problem with me. Clearly they cannot be altogether neglected. Deep would answer to deep, Rocambole to M. Lecoq, in protesting againstsuch an omission of their manufacturers. I do not know, indeed, that anyEnglish writer of distinction has done for M. Le Vicomte Ponson duTerrail what Mr. Lang did, "under the species of eternity" which verseconfers, for "(Miss Braddon and) Gaboriau. " I have known those whopreferred that _other_ Viscount, "Richard O'Monroy"--who shared with"Gyp" and Armand Silvestre the cheerful office of cheering the cheerableduring the 'eighties and later--to the more canonical possessor of thetitle before him. But du Terrail was what I believe is called, inScottish "kirk" language, a "supply"--a person who could undertake theduty of filling gaps--of enormous efficacy in his day. That is a claimon this history which cannot be neglected, though the people who wouldfain have Martin Tupper blotted out of the history of English poetry, might like to drop Ponson du Terrail in that of the French novel down anoubliette, like one of his own heroes, and _not_ give him the filemercifully furnished to that robustious marquis. Gaboriau claims, in thesame way, even more "clamantly. " The worst of it is (to play cards on table with the strictness which isthe only virtue of this book, save perhaps an occasional absence ofignorance) that neither of them appeals to me. I have no doubt that thisrecalcitrance to the crime-novel is a _culpa_, if not a _culpa maxima_. I suppose it was born in me. It is certainly not merely due to the factthat, in my journalist days, perhaps because I was a kind of abortion ofa barrister, I had to write endless articles on crimes. Penge murders knew The pencil blue as regards my "copy, " and a colleague once upbraided me for arguing infavour of Mrs. Maybrick. But I had read crime-novels before those days, and they never amused me. Yet perhaps it may be possible to showcause--other than my personal likings--for not ranking these high. [Sidenote: The first--his general character. ] I have somewhere seen it said that Ponson du Terrail, before he took todriving _feuilletons_ five-in-hand, showed some power of less coarsefiction-writing on a smaller scale. But I have not seen any of theseessays, and real success in them on his part would surprise me. For itis exactly in the qualities necessary to such a success that he seems tome to come short. He _did_ possess what, though it may seem almostprofane to call it imagination, is really a cheap and drossy lower kindthereof. He could frame and accumulate, even to some extent connect, melodramatic situations, not so very badly, and not in very glaringimitation of anybody else. But, perhaps for that very reason, thedifference between him and the others strikes one all the morepainfully. _Les Orphelins de la Saint-Barthélemy_ awakes the saddestsighs for Dumas or Mérimée. _La Femme Immortelle_, with its _diablerie_explained and then _dis_-explained and then clumsily solved with alaugh, makes one wish for an hour or two even of Soulié. And when onecomes to the nineteenth century and _Les Gandins_ and a fiendish_docteur rouge_[430] (who is in every conceivable way inferior toVigny's _docteur noir_), and a wicked count who undergoes a spottytranscorporation, it is worse. If any one says, "This is possible, butyou yourself have said that excellence in some one else ought not toaffect the estimate of the actual subject, " I reply, "Granted; butPonson du Terrail bores me. " I have dropped every book of his that Ihave taken up, and only at a second--even a third--struggle have beenable to get knowledge enough of it to speak without critical treason. Moreover, his style (always under caution given) seems to me flat, savourless, and commonplace; his thought childish, his etceteras (if Imay so say) absurd. The very printing is an irritation. Who can readsuch stuff as this? Tout à coup une sonnette se fit entendre. Nana se leva. Cette sonnette état celle qui avertissait la soubrette que sa maîtresse réclamait son office. La jolie fille prit un flambeau et quitta la cuisine. Here you have four separate paragraphs, five lines, and thirty-fivewords to express, in almost idiotic verbiage, the following: "Here her mistress's bell rang, and she left the kitchen. " One might conduct not merely five, but five and twenty novels abreast atthis rate. [Sidenote: The second. ] Not thus would it be proper to write of Gaboriau. With him, exceptincidentally, and when he is diverging from his proper line, [431] onefinds no mere "piffle. " He has a business and he does that. Moreover, itis a business which, if not intrinsically, is historically important. Ofcourse there had been crime-novels and crime-tales before: there alwayshas been everything before. But Gaboriau undoubtedly refashioned andrestarted them, and has been ever since the parent or master of afamily, or whole school, of novelists and tale-tellers who havesometimes seemed, at any rate to themselves, to be pillars, and to beentitled to talk about politics and religion and morals, and the otherthings which, as Chesterfield so delightfully remarked, need notroublesome preparation in the talker. His place here, therefore, issecured. If it is not a large place, that is not entirely due to themere fact that, as has been frankly acknowledged, the present writertakes little pleasure in the crime-novel. It is because the kind, plentiful for those who like it to read, can be conveniently knocked offin specimen for others. For the latter purpose it would not matter verymuch whether _L'Affaire Lerouge_, or _Le Crime d'Orcival_, or _M. Lecoq_itself, or perhaps even others, were taken. The first named, which was, I think, one of the first, if not the actual overture of the series, andwhich happens to be best known to the historian, will perhaps suffice. [Sidenote: _L'Affaire Lerouge. _] No one who takes it up, having some little critical aptitude andexperience, will fail to see, very shortly, that it does mean businessand does do it. The murder of Claudine Lerouge is well plunged into; thearrangements for its detection--professional and amateur--are"gnostically" laid out; and the plot thickens and presents various sidesof itself, like a craftsmanly made and tossed pancake. If you read it atall, you will not skip much; first, because the interest, such as it is, is continuous; and, secondly, for one of those reasons which keepwould-be sinners in other paths of rectitude--that, _if_ you skip, youwill almost certainly find you have lost your way when you come downfrom skipping. Some oddities--partly, but not entirely, connected withthe strange and well-known differences between French and Englishcriminal procedure--will, of course, strike an Englishman--thecollaboration of professional _juge d'instruction_ and amateur detectivebeing perhaps the most remarkable. The love-affair, in which the Judgehimself and the plotted-against Albert de Commarin are rivals, though auseful poker to stir the fire, is not quite a well-managed one: and thelong harangue of Madame Gerdy, between her resurrection from brain-feverand her death, seems a little to strain probability. But no one of thesethings, nor all together, need be fatal to the enjoyment of the book onthe part of, as was once said, "them as likes" the kind. [432] [Sidenote: Feydeau--_Sylvie_. ] Short notice may again serve for another novelist enormously popular inhis day; very characteristic of the Second Empire; a favourite[433] fora time (rather inexplicably) of Sainte-Beuve; but not much of a rose, and very much of many days before yesterday--Ernest Feydeau. He did onething, _Sylvie_, as different as possible from Gérard's book of the samename, but still, as it seems to me, good enough, though it never enjoyeda tenth part of the popularity of his more "scabrous" things, thoughitself is very far from prudish, and though it makes no appearance insome lists and collections of his work. Feydeau (it is a redeemingpoint) was one of "those about" Gautier, and _Sylvie_ is by no meansunlike a pretty free and fairly original transfer from _LesJeune-France_. The hero is a gentleman, decadent by anticipation andromantic by survival to the very _n_th. He abides in a vast chamber, divanned, and hung with Oriental curtains: he smokes endless tchibouks, and lives chiefly upon preserved ginger. To him enters Sylvie, a sort ofguardian angel, with a rather Mahometan angelism, who devotes herself tohim, and succeeds, by this means and that, in converting him to asomewhat more rational system of life and "tonvelsasens, " as Swift wouldsay. It is slight enough, but very far from contemptible. [Sidenote: _Fanny. _] As has been said or hinted, however, this was not at all the sort ofthing that brought or, so long as he did keep it, kept Feydeau's vogue. _Fanny_, with which he "broke out" considerably more than "ten thousandstrong, " as far as sale of copies went, is certainly not a book of the"first-you-meet" kind. There is some real passion in its handling of theeverlasting triangle. But it is passion of the most morbid and least"infinite" kind possible. Whenever Feydeau's heroes are sincere theyhave a peculiar kind of sentimental immorality--a sort of greasygush--which is curiously nauseous. His Aphrodite, if the goddess willpardon the profanation of her name, is neither laughter-loving, nortragic (as Aphrodite can be), nor Uranian in the sense, not of beingsuperior to physical passion, but of transcending it. She is notexactly Pandemic, for Feydeau, like Malvolio, does talk, or tries totalk, of ladies; but she is something like the patroness of the oldSensibility novel "gone to the bad. " [Sidenote: Others--_Daniel_. ] _Madame de Chalis_, according to a memory of many years which I have notthought it worth while to freshen, has a weaker draught of this rancidand mawkish sentimentality. But having in those days missed (or failedover) _Daniel_, I thought it incumbent on me to gird myself up to itseight hundred pages. A more dismal book, even to skim, I have seldomtaken up. The hero--a prig of the first water--marries one of thoseapparently only half-flesh-and-blood wives who, novelistically, neverfail to go wrong. He cannot, in the then state of French law, divorceher, but he is able to return her on her mother's hands. Going toTrouville (about which, then a quite new-fashioned resort, there is agreat deal in the book), he meets a beautiful girl, Louise de Grandmont, and the pair fall--not merely hopelessly, which is, in thecircumstances, a matter of course, but, it would seem, innocently--inlove with each other. But in such a case scandal must needs come; and itis engineered by revenge of the discarded wife and the mother-in-law, bythe treachery of some of Daniel's friends and the folly of others, aswell as, it must be added, by his own weak violence, thoughtlessconduct, and general imbecility. All this is developed at enormouslength, and it ends in a general massacre, Louise's uncle being killedin a duel which Daniel ought to have fought (he is no coward, but ahopeless blunderer), the girl herself dying of aneurism, and Danielputting an end to himself in her grave, much more messily and to quiteinfinitely less tragic effect than Romeo. There is one scene in which heis represented as gathering all his enemies together (including alawyer, who is half-rogue, half-dupe) and putting them all to confusionby his oratory. The worst of it is that one does not in the least see_why_ they were confused, except in one case, where the foe is literallykicked downstairs--an effective method, and one rare enough in Frenchnovels up to this date to be worth notice. [434] * * * * * [Sidenote: Droz. ] It was, for all contemporary readers of the French novel, except thoseof the gravest and most precise kind, a day to be marked, not withvanishing forms in chalk, but with alabaster or Parian, when "Marcellin"of the _Vie Parisienne_--one of those remarkable editors who, withoutever writing themselves, seem to have the knack of attracting and almostcreating writers, enlisted one "Z, " the actual final letter of the nameof Gustave Droz, and published the first article of those to be latercollected as _Monsieur, Madame et Bébé_ and _Entre Nous_. Although thecontents of these books only added a fresh sprout to the age-old treethat, for more than half a millennium, had borne _fabliau_ and_nouvelle_ and _conte_ and _histoire_, and so forth, they had aremarkable, if not easily definable, differentia of their own, and haveinfluenced fiction-writing of the same kind for a good half-centurysince. The later-working "Gyp" and others owed a good deal to them; andI am bound to say that--reading the two books recently after a longinterval--I found my old favourites just as amusing as I found them thevery first time, shortly after they came out. Of course--and only those who have made much study of criticism know howseldom critics recognise this "of course"--you must take the things in, and not out of, their own class. They are not bread, or meat, or milk ofliterature. They are, to take one order of gastronomic preference andtaste, devilled biscuits; to take another, chocolate with whipped creamon it. And the devilling and the creaming are sometimes better than thechocolate and the biscuit. [Sidenote: _Mr. , Mme. Et Bébé_ and _Entre Nous_. ] It is not very easy to say--and perhaps not very important toknow--whether the mixture of naughtiness and sentimentality whichcharacterises these books[435] was what Mr. Carlyle, I think, was firstto call an "insurance" or only a spontaneous and in no way "dodgy" or"hedgy" expression of the two sides of the French character. Foreverybody ought to know that the complaint of Dickens's "Mr. TheEnglishman" as to the French being "so d--d sentimental" is at least aswell justified as Mr. Arnold's disapproval of their "worship ofLubricity. " I suppose there are some people who would prefer thesentiment and are others who would choose the "tum-te-dy, " while yet athird set might find each a disagreeable alternative to the other. Formyself, without considering so curiously, I can very frankly enjoy thebest of both. The opening story of the earlier and, I think, morepopular book, "Mon Premier Reveillon, " is not characteristic. It mighthave been written by almost anybody, and is in substance a softened andgenteel version of the story of Miss Jemima Ivins, and her luckless (butthere virtuous) suitor, in the "Boz" _Sketches_. "L'Âme en Peine, " whichfollows, strikes the peculiar Drozian note for the first time; and verypleasant is the painting of the struggles of a pious youth--pious andpudibund to a quite miraculous extent for a French _collégien_ of goodfamily--with the temptations of a beautiful Marquise and cousin who, arrayed in an ultra-Second-Empire bathing-costume, insists on hisbathing with her. "Tout le Reste de Madame de K. " may a little remind anEnglish reader of the venerable chestnut about the Bishop and thehousemaid's knee; but the application is different. There is nothingwicked in it, but it contains some of the touches of varying estimateof "good form" in different countries which make the comparative readingof English and French novels so interesting. "Souvenirs de Carême" is(or rather are, for the piece is subdivided) the longest of several bitsof Voltairianism, sometimes very funny and seldom offensive. But, alas!one cannot go through them all. The most remarkable exercise in thecurious combination or contrast noticed above is afforded by _Une Nuitde Noce_ and _Le Cahier Bleu_ (tricks of ingeniously "passed-off"naughtiness which need not shock anybody), combined with the charmingand pathetic "Omelette" which opens the second book, and which gives thehappy progress and the sad termination of the union so merrily begun. All are drawn with equal skill and with no real bad taste. In one or twoarticles of both books the _gauloiserie_ broadens and coarsens, while inthe more purely "Bébé" sections of the first the sentimentality may seema little watered out. But you cannot expect acrobatics on wine-glassesof this kind always to "come off" without some slips and breakages. On the whole, I think _Entre Nous_ contains the very best things, andmost good ones. The pathos of the first (which is itself by no meansmere _pleurnicherie_) is balanced at the other end by the audacity of"Le Sentiment à l'Épreuve, " a most agreeable "washing white" of the mainidea of Wycherley's _Country Wife_; and between the two, few in thewhole score are inferior. "Nocturne, " "Oscar, " "Causerie, " and "LeMaillot de Madame" were once marked for special commendation by a criticwho certainly deserved the epithet of competent, in addition to those offair and gentle. It is, however, in this volume that what seems to meDroz's one absolute failure occurs. It is neither comic nor tragic, neither naughty nor nice, and one really wonders how it came to be putin. It is entitled "Les de Saint-Paon, " and is a commonplace, hackneyed, quite unhumorous, and rather ill-tempered satire on certain dubiousaristocrats and anti-modernists. Nothing could be cheaper or lesspointed. And the insertion of it is all the stranger because, elsewhere, there is something very similar, in subject and tendency, but of halfthe length and ten times the wit, in "Le Petit Lever, " a conversationbetween a certain Count and his valet. The plain critical fact is that the non-pathetic serious was in no wayDroz's trade. His satire on matters ecclesiastical is sometimesdelightful when it is mere _persiflage_: an Archbishop might relax overthe conversation in Paradise between two great ladies, one of whom hascharitably stirred up the efforts of her director in favour of her owncoachman to such effect, that she actually finds that menial promoted toa much higher sphere Above than that which she herself occupies. Buthere, also, the more gravity the less goodness. Yet, as was hinted at the beginning of this notice, we ought not toquarrel with him for this, and to do so would be again to fall into theold "gin-shop and leg-of-mutton" unreasonableness. It was M. Droz'smission to start a new form of Crébillonade--_panaché_ (to use anexcellent term of French cookery), here and there, with another new formof Sensibility. He did it quite admirably, and he taught the simplerdevice--the compound one hardly--to pupils, some of whom still divert, or at least distract, the world. I am not at all ashamed to say that Ithink the best of his and their work capital stuff, continuing worthilyone of the oldest and most characteristic strains of French literature;displaying no contemptible artistry; and contributing very considerablyto that work of pleasure-giving which has been acknowledged as supplyingthe main subject of this book. * * * * * [Sidenote: Cherbuliez. ] [Sidenote: His general characteristics. ] Few more striking contrasts--though we have been able to supply a fairnumber of such things--could be found than by passing from Gustave Drozto Victor Cherbuliez. Scion of a Genevese family already distinguishedin letters, M. Cherbuliez became one of the _Deux-Mondains_, a"publicist" as well as a novelist of great ability, and finally anAcademician; but his novels, clever as they are, were never quite"frankly" liked in France--at least, by the critics. This may have beenpartly due to the curious latent grudge with which French writers--tothe country as well as to the language and manners born--have alwaysregarded their Swiss comrades or competitors--the attitude as to a kindof poacher or interloper. [436] But to leave the matter there would benot only to miss thoroughness in the individual case, but also tooverlook a point of very considerable importance to the history of theFrench novel generally. There is undoubtedly something in M. Cherbuliez's numerous, vigorous, and excellently readable novels whichreminds one more of English than of French fiction. We have noticed acertain resemblance in Feuillet to Trollope: it is stronger still inCherbuliez. Not, of course, that the Swiss novelist denieshimself--though he uses them more sparingly--the usual latitudes of theFrench as contrasted with the English novelist during nine-tenths of thenineteenth century. But he does use them more sparingly, and he is aptto make his heroines out of unmarried girls, to an extent which might atthat time seem, to the conventional French eye, simply indecent. He ismuch more prodigal of "interest"--that is to say, of incident, accident, occurrence--than most French novelists who do not affect somewhatmelodramatic romance. On the other hand, his character-drawing, thoughalways efficient, is seldom if ever masterly; and that "schematisation, "on which, as is pointed out in various places of this book, Frenchcritics are apt to insist so much, is not always present. Of actualpassion he has little, and his books are somewhat open to thecharge--which has been brought against those of so many of our ownsecond-best novelists--that they are somewhat machine-made, or, if thatword be too unkind, are rather works of craft than of art. Yet the workof a sound craftsman, using good materials, is a great help in life; anda person who wants good story-pastime for a certain number of nights, without possessing a Scheherazade of his own, will find plenty of it inthe thirty years' novel turn-out of Victor Cherbuliez. [Sidenote: Short survey of his books. ] He did not find his way at once, beginning with "mixed" novelsof a Germanish kind--art-fiction in _Un Cheval de Phidias_;psychological-literary matter (Tasso's madness) in _Le Prince Vitale_;politico-social subjects in _Le Grand-oeuvre_. But these things, whichhave not often been successes, certainly were not so in M. Cherbuliez'shands. He broke fresh ground and "grew" a real novel in _Le ComteKostia_, and he continued to till this plot, with good results, for therest of his life. The "scenes and characters" are sufficiently varied, those in the book just mentioned being Russian and those in _LadislasBolski_ Polish--neither particularly complimentary to the nationalitiesconcerned, and the latter decidedly melodramatic. _Le Comte Kostia_ issometimes considered his best novel; but I should put above it both _LeRoman d'une Honnête Femme_ (his principal attempt in purely Frenchsociety and on Feuilletesque lines, with a tighter morality) and _MetaHoldenis_, a story of a Swiss girl--not beautiful, but "_vurry_attractive, " and not actually "no better than she should be, " but quiteready to be so if it suited her. _Miss Rovel_ with anothergirl-heroine--eccentric, but not in the lines of the usualFrench-English caricatures--is a great favourite with some. _La Revanchede Joseph Noirel_ is again melodramatic; and _Prosper Randoce_ is notgood for much. But _Paule Méré_, one of its author's bestcharacter-books, is very much better--it is a study of ill-starred love, as is _Le Fiancé de Mlle. Saint-Maur_, a book not so good, but not bad. _Samuel Brohl et Cie_ is a very clever story of a rascal. I do not knowthat any of his subsequent novels, _L'Idée de Jean Téterol_, _Noirs etRouges_, _La Ferme du Choquard_, _Olivier Maugant_, _La Vocation duComte Ghislain_, _La Bête_, _Une Gageure_, which closes the list of myacquaintance with them, will disappoint the reader who does not raisehis expectation too high. _Olivier Maugant_ is perhaps the strongest. But the expression just used must not be taken as belittling. In bothFrance and England such novel-writing had become almost atrade--certainly a profession: and the turning out of workmanlike andfairly satisfying articles for daily consumption is, if not a nobleambition, a quite respectable aim. M. Cherbuliez did something more thanthis: there are numerous scenes and situations in his work which do notmerely interest, but excite, if they never exactly transport. And theprovision of interest itself is, as has been allowed, remarkablybounteous. I should not despise, though I should be a little sorry for, a reader--especially an English reader--who found more of it inCherbuliez than even in Feuillet, and much more than in Flaubert orMaupassant. The causes of such preference require no extensiveindication, and I need not say, after or before what is said elsewhere, that this order of estimate is not mine. But it is to some extent a"fact in the case. "[437] * * * * * [Sidenote: Three eccentrics. ] Before finishing this chapter we ought, perhaps, to consider three oddpersons, two of them much extolled by some--Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Léon Cladel, and "Champfleury" of _Les Excentriques_. The two first werethemselves emphatically "eccentrics"--one an apostle of dandyism (heactually wrote a book about Brummel, whom he had met early), adisdainful critic of rather untrustworthy vigour, and a stalwartreactionary to Catholicism and Royalism; the other a devotee of theexact opposite of dandyism, as the title of his best-known book, _LesVa-nu-pieds_, shows, and a Republican to the point of admiring theCommune. The opposition has at least the advantage of disprovingprejudice, in any unfavourable remarks that may be made about either. ToBarbey d'Aurevilly's criticism I have endeavoured to do justice in amore appropriate place than this. [438] His fiction occupied a muchsmaller, but not a small, proportion of his very voluminous work. _LesDiaboliques_ and _L'Ensorcelée_, as well as _Les Va-nu-pieds_, aretitles which entitle a reader to form certain more or less definiteexpectations about the books they label; and an author, by choosingthem, deprives himself, to some extent, of the right justly claimed forhim in Victor Hugo's well-known manifesto, to be judged _merely_according to his own scheme, and the goodness or badness of its carryingout. If Hugo himself had made _Les Orientales_ studies of Montmartre andthe Palais Royal, he could not have made out his right to the privilegehe asserted. The objection applies to Barbey d'Aurevilly even more thanto Cladel, but as the work of the latter is the less important, we maytake it first. [Sidenote: Léon Cladel--_Les Va-nu-pieds_, etc. ] At more times in my life than one I have striven to like--or at any rateto take an interest in--_Les Va-nu-pieds_. Long ago it had for me thepassport of the admiration of Baudelaire, [439] to whom and to VictorHugo (this latter circumstance an important _visa_ to the former) Cladelannounced himself a pupil. But an absolute, if perhaps unfortunate, inability to follow anything but my own genuine opinion prevented mefrom enjoying it. And I cannot enjoy it now. It is not a commonplacebook, nor is anything else of its author's; but the price paid for theabsence of commonplaceness is excessive. A person possessing genius, andsure of it, does not tell you that he has been rewriting his book (notfor correction of fact, but for improvement of style) for ten years, andthat now he doesn't care anything for critics, and endorses it NEVARIETUR (_sic_). [440] The style itself is a mosaic of preciousness, literary jargon, and positive _argot_--not quite contemptible, but, likesome actual mosaic, unattractive; and the matter does not attract me, though it may attract people who like tiger-taming scenes, crimes, grimes, etc. The address of the dedication, "Mienne, " and nothing more, is rather nice, and some of the local scenes (Cladel was passionatelypatriotic towards his remote province of Quercy-Rouergue) are worthreading. But this devotion is better shown in the short single book(_Les Va-nu-pieds_ is a collection) called _Crête-Rouge_--the regimentalnickname of the heroine (an Amazon), who actually serves in the war ofthe Terrible Year, and comes off much better, when her sex is discoveredby the Prussians, than she would have done forty and odd years later. The end-scenes of this book, with her Druid-stone marriage to a comrade, are really good. Of _Le Bouscassié_, _Titi-Froissac IV_, and _La FêteVotive de Saint-Bartholomée Porte-Glaive_ I shall not say much. The"province, " which is strong in them, saves them sometimes. But Cladel'shopeless lack of self-criticism shows itself in the fact of his actuallyreprinting in full an article of Veuillot's (by no meansuncomplimentary) on himself, as a prelude in the book last mentioned, and adding a long reply. The proceeding was honest, but rather suicidal. One may not wholly admire the famous editor of the _Univers_. [441] Butnothing could better throw up his clear, vigorous, classical French andtrenchant logic, than the verbose and ambaginous preciousness, and thecabbage-stick cudgel-play, of Cladel. [442] [Sidenote: Barbey d'Aurevilly--his criticism of novels. ] Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, also a favourite of Baudelaire's, is a writerof an altogether greater clan--indeed one of those who come short but alittle, and one does not quite know how, of individual greatness. Something has been said of his criticism, but a volume of it which wasnot within my reach when I wrote what is there quoted, _Le RomanContemporain_, is a closer introduction to a notice of him as anovelist. As of all his work it may be said of this, that anybody whodoes not know the subjects will probably go away with a wrong idea ofthem, but that anybody who does know them will receive some veryvaluable cross-lights. The book consists[443] of a belittlement, slightly redressed at the end, of Feuillet as a feeble person and animpertinent patroniser of religion; of a rather "magpie" survey of theGoncourts; of a violent and quite blind attack on Flaubert (the worstcriticism of Barbey's that I have ever read); of a somewhat unexpectedlyappreciative notice of Daudet; of an almost obligatory panegyric ofFabre; of another _éreintement_, at great length, of Zola; and ofshorter articles, again "magpied" of praise and blame, on MM. Richepin, Catulle Mendès, and Huysmans. [444] [Sidenote: His novels themselves--_Les Diaboliques_ and others. ] [Sidenote: His merits. ] All this is interesting, but I fear it confirms a variation of the titleof a famous Elizabethan play--"Novelists beware novelists. " Poets have aworse reputation in this way, or course; but, I think, unjustly. Perhapsthe reason is that the quality of poetry is more _definite_, if not moredefinable, than that of prose fiction, or else that poets are morereally sure of themselves. Barbey d'Aurevilly[445] had an apparentlyundoubting mind, but perhaps there were unacknowledged doubts, whichtransformed themselves into jealousies, in his heart of hearts. Formyself, I sympathise with his political and religious (if not exactlywith his ecclesiastical) views pretty decidedly; I think (speaking asusual with the due hesitation of a foreigner) that he writes excellentFrench; and I am sure--a point of some consequence with me, and not toocommonly met--that he generally writes (when he does not get _too_angry) like a gentleman. He sometimes has phrases which please me verymuch, as when he describes two lovers embracing so long that they "musthave drunk a whole bottle of kisses, " or when he speaks of the voice ofa preacher "_tombant_ de la chaire dans cette église où _pleuvaient_ lesténèbres du soir, " where the opposition-combination of "tombant" and"pleuvaient, " and the image it arouses, seem to me of a most absolutefancy. He can write scenes--the finale of his best book, _L'Ensorcelée_;the overture of _Un Prêtre Marié_; and nearly the whole of the last andbest _Diabolique_, "Une Vengeance de Femme"--which very closely approachthe first class. And, whether he meant me to do so or not, I like himwhen in "Un Dîner d'Athées" he makes one of them "swig off" (_lamper_) abumper of Picardan, the one wine in all my experience which I shouldconsider fit _only_ for an atheist. [446] But a good novelist I cannothold him. The inability does not come from any mere "unpleasantness" in hissubjects, though few pleasant ones seem to have lain in his way, and hecertainly did not go out of that way to find them. But _L'Ensorcelée_can only be objected to on this score by an absurdly fastidious person, and I do not myself want any more rose-pink and sky-blue in _Un PrêtreMarié_;[447] while the last _Diabolique_, already mentioned, is acapital example of grime made more than tolerable. [448] Indeed, nothingof the sort can be more unmistakable than the sincerity of Barbey's"horrors. " They mark, in that respect, nearly the apex of the triangle, the almost disappearing lower angles of which may be said to berepresented by the crude and clumsy vulgarities of Janin's _Âne Mort_, and the more craftsmanlike, indeed in a way almost artistic, butunconvinced and unconvincing atrocities of Borel's _Champavert_. [Sidenote: And defects. ] [Sidenote: Especially as shown in _L'Ensorcelée_. ] The objection, and the defect which occasions the objection, are quitedifferent. Barbey d'Aurevilly has many gifts and some excellencies. Buthis work in novel constantly reminds me of the old and doubtlesswell-known story of a marriage which was almost ideally perfect in allrespects but one--that the girl "couldna bide her man. " He can do manythings, but he cannot or will not tell a story, save in such fragmentsand flashes as those noted above. His _longueurs_ are exasperating andsometimes nearly maddening, though perhaps many readers would savethemselves by simply discontinuing perusal. The first _Diabolique_ hasmetal attractive enough of its kind. A young officer boards with aprovincial family, where the beautiful but at first silent, abstracted, and, as the Pléiade would have said, _marbrine_ daughter suddenly, though secretly, develops frantic affection for him, and shows it byconstant indulgence in the practice which that abominable cad inOphelia's song put forward as an excuse for not "wedding. " But, on oneof these occasions, she translates trivial metaphor into ghastly fact byliterally dying in his arms. Better stuff--again of its kind--for atwenty-page story, or a little more, could hardly be found. But Barbeygives us _ninety_, not indeed large, but, in the usual editions, ofexceptionally close and small print, watering out the tale intolerablyalmost throughout, and giving it a blunt and maimed conclusion. _LeBonheur dans le Crime_, [449] _Le Dessous de Cartes_, and theabove-mentioned _Dîner d'Athées_, which fill a quarter of a thousand ofsuch pages, invite slashing with a hook desperate enough to cut eachdown to a quarter of a hundred. _Un Prêtre Marié_, which perhaps comesnext to _L'Ensorcelée_ in merit, would be enormously improved by beingin one volume instead of two. Of _Une Vieille Maîtresse_ I think I couldspare both, except a vigorously told variant (the suggestion isacknowledged, for Barbey d'Aurevilly was much too proud to steal) ofBuckingham's duel[450] and the Countess (not "Duchess, " by the way) ofShrewsbury. _Une Histoire sans Nom_, a substantial though not a verylong book, is only a short story spun out. Even in _L'Ensorcelée_ itselfthe author, as a critic, might, and probably would, have found seriousfault, had it been the work of another novelist. There is lesssurplusage and more continuous power, so that one is carried throughfrom the fine opening on the desolate moor (a _little_ suggested, perhaps, by the meeting of Harry Bertram and Dandie Dinmont, but quiteindependently worked out) to the vigorous close above referred to. Butthe story is quite unnecessarily muddled by information that part of itwas supplied by the Norman Mr. Dinmont, and part by an ancient countess. We never get any clear idea _why_ Jeanne le Hardouey was bewitched, and_why_ the Chevalier-Abbé de la Croix-Jugan suffered and diffused sogruesome a fate. [451] Yet the fate itself is enough to make one close, with the sweet mouth, remarks on this very singular failure of a genius. Few things of the sort in fiction are finer than the picture of theterrible unfinished mass (heralded over the desolate moor at uncertaintimes by uncanny bell-ringing), which the reprobate priest (who has beenshot at the altar-steps before he could accomplish the Sacrifice ofReconciliation[452]) endeavours after his death to complete, beingalways baffled before the consecrating moment. [Sidenote: Champfleury. ] Cladel had a considerable, and Barbey d'Aurevilly an almost exclusive, fancy for the tragical. On the other hand, Champfleury (who, no doubtpartly for a bibliographical memory, [453] prefixed the Champ- to hisactual surname) occupies, as has been said, a curious, but in part farfrom unsatisfactory, position in regard to our subject, and one blessedby the Comic Spirit. His confessed fictions are, indeed, not verysuccessful. To take one volume only, _Madame Eugénio_, the title-story, _not_ the first in order, but the longest, is most unfortunately, butfar too accurately, characterised by a phrase towards its end, "ce_triste_ récit, " the adjective, like our "poor, " being capable of twodifferent meanings. _Histoire du Lieutenant Valentin_, on the otherhand--a story of a young soldier, who, leaving Saint-Cyr incholera-time, has to go to hospital, and, convalescing pleasantly whileshelling peas and making rose-gays for the Sisters, is naïvely surprisedat one of them being at first very kind and then very cold to him--is amiss of a masterpiece, but still a miss, partly owing to too greatlength. And so with others. [Sidenote: _Les Excentriques. _] But in his much earlier _Les Excentriques_ (not unnaturally but wronglycalled "_Contes_ Excentriques" by some), handling what profess to betrue stories, he shows a most excellent narrative faculty. Whether theyare true or not (they rather resemble, and were perhaps inspired by, some things of Gautier and Gérard) matters little--they are quite goodenough to be false. They are, necessarily, not quite equal, and theremay be for some tastes, not for all, too much of the Fourierism andother queernesses of the mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, the book is of1852, and its subjects are almost all of the decade preceding. But someare exceedingly refreshing, the dedication, of some length, to the greatcaricaturist Daumier being not the least so. Yet it is not so unwise asto disappoint the reader by being better than the text. "Lucas, " thecircle-squarer, who explains how, when he was in a room with a lady andher two daughters, he perceived that "this was all that was necessaryfor him to attain the cubation of two pyramids, " is very choice. "Cambriel"--who not only attained the philosopher's stone and theuniversal medicine, but ascertained that God is six feet six high, offlame-coloured complexion, and with particularly perfect ankles--runshim hard. And so does Rose Marius Sardat, who sent a copy of his _Loid'Union_, a large and nicely printed octavo, to every Parisiannewspaper-office, informing the editors that they might reprint it in_feuilletons_ for nothing, but that he should not write the secondvolume unless the first were a success. Some of us ought to beparticularly obliged to Rose Marius for holding that persons overseventy are indispensable, and that, if there are not enough in France, they must be imported. The difference of this from the callousshort-sightedness which talks about "fixed periods" is most gratifying. But perhaps the crown and flower of the book is the vegetarian Jupille, who wrote pamphlets addressed: AUX GOURMANDS DE CHAIR! decided that meat is of itself atheistical, though he admitted a "siren"quality about it; and held that the fact of onions making human beingsweep attests their own "touching sensibility for us" (albeit he had toadmit again that garlic was demoniac). M. Jupille (who was a practicalman, and cooked cabbage and cauliflower so that his meat-eating visitorcould not but acknowledge their charm) explained St. Peter's net ofanimal food with ease as a diabolic deception, but was floored bycrocodiles' teeth. And not the worst thing in the book is the last, where a waxwork-keeper--a much less respectable person than Mrs. Jarley, and of the other sex--falls in love with one of his specimens, waltzeswith her, and unwittingly presents a sort of third companion to one ofthe less saintly kings of the early Graal legends, and to yet anothercharacter of Dickens's, much less well known than Mrs. Jarley, thehairdresser in _Master Humphrey's Clock_, who, to the disgust of hisfemale acquaintances, "worshipped a hidle" in the shape of the turningbust of a beautiful creature in his own shop-window. The book is a bookto put a man in a good temper--and to keep him in one--for which reasonit affords an excellent colophon to a chapter. [454] FOOTNOTES: [407] The technical-scholastic being "things born _with_ a man. " [408] By some curious mistake, his birth used for a long time to beante-dated ten years from 1822 to 1812. At the risk of annoying myreaders by repeating such references, I should perhaps mention thatthere is an essay on Feuillet in the book already cited. [409] I give Delilah (for whom Milton's excessive rudeness naturallyinspires a sort of partisanship) the benefit of a notion that her actionwas, partly if not mainly, due to unbearable curiosity. How many womenare there who could resist the double temptation of seeing whether thesecret _did_ lie in the hair, and if so, of possessing completemistress-ship of their lovers? Some perhaps: but many? [410] _V. Sup. _ Vol. I. Pp. 420-1. [411] It may be worth while to remind the reader that Maupassantincluded this in his selection of remarkable novels of all modern timesand languages. [412] How sad it is to think that a specific reference to thatall-but-masterpiece, as a picture of earlier _fin-de-siècle_ society, Miss Edgeworth's _Belinda_, may perhaps be necessary to escape thedamning charge of unexplained allusion! [413] "Where'er I came I brought _calamity_. " When I read the foolish things that foolish people still write aboutTennyson, I like to repeat to myself that "lonely word" in its immediatecontext. [414] If you can "take arms against a sea" you can, I suppose, make headagainst a sewer. [415] His brother Ernest was a novelist of merit sufficient to make itnot unnatural that he should--as, unless my memory plays me tricks, hedid--resent being whelmed in the fraternal reputation. But he does notrequire much notice here. [416] I do not call Flaubert "his fellow, " or the fellow of any onenoticed in this chapter, for which reason I kept him out of it. [417] It must be remembered that it was long before even 1870. I supposesome one, in the mass of war-literature, must have dealt with "The IdealGerman in European Literature between 1815 and 1864. " If nobody has, anexcellent subject has been neglected. [418] And, according to one reviewer, the deficient sense of humour. [419] They _might_ serve to exemplify About's often doubtful taste. Thecentral story and main figures of _Tolla_ were taken from a collectionof the poor girl's letters published by her family a few years before;and the original of "Lello" was still alive. _His_ relations tried tobuy up the book, and nearly succeeded. In the MS. About had, whileslightly altering the names, referred pretty fully to this document. Thewhole thing has, however, rather a much-ado-about-nothing air and, saveas connected with a periodical of such undoubted "seriousness, " mightsuggest a trick. [420] "It" was _Timon of Athens_. [421] It may please the historically given reader to regard this as anactual survival of the Scudéry _histoire_--_Histoire de Madame Fratieffet de sa fille Nadine_. Only it would, as such, have occupied a score ortwo of pages for each one. [422] Tolla is not so _very_ delightful: but she is meant to be. [423] About has a gird or two at Balzac, but evidently imitates him. Inthis very book, when the old duke (_v. Inf. _) comes under MadameChermidy's influence, he suggests Baron Hulot; and _Madelon_ (_v. Inf. Ib. _) is almost throughout imitation-Balzacian. [424] For Honorine, though managing to retain some public reputation, has long been practically "unclassed"; and it is not only her husband'sprofession which has made him leave her. [425] Germaine, quite naturally and properly, starts with a strongdislike to her husband. When he takes her to Italy, and devotes himselfto the care of her health, this changes to affection. And the more itchanges, the more disagreeable she makes herself to him. [426] This also has, in matters not political, the "charming and useful"side. It would be very unpleasant if she always saw all sides of allquestions. [427] I am quite aware that the giving up of the islands was not the_immediate_ result of his mission. [428] That is to say, supposing that Isopel ever could have been happywith a lover So _laggard_ in love, _though_ so dauntless in war as George Borrow. [429] As well as the Balzacian following, _haud passibus aequis_, abovereferred to. [430] I do not know whether any other novelists continued the series ofdiversely coloured "doctors, " as the fly-makers have done. [431] He _could_ "piffle" when he went out of it. The would-be satiricalcharacterisation of two aristocrats, Madame d'Arlange and M. DeCommarin, in the book shortly to be noticed, is the thinnestand most conventional of things, except, perhaps, the companiontrap-to-catch-the-French-Philistine of anti-clericalism which also showsitself sometimes. [432] Two people, thinking of moving house in London, went once toinspect an advertised abode in the Kensington district. They did notmuch like the street; they still less liked a very grim female whoopened the door and showed them over the house; and there was nothing toreconcile them in the house itself. But, wishing to be polite, the ladyof the couple, as they were leaving, addressed to the grim guardian somefeeble compliment on something or other as being "nice. " "P'raps, " wasthe reply, "for them as likes the ---- Road. " It is unnecessary to saythat the visitors went down the steps in a fashion for which we have noexact English term, but which is admirably expressed by the French verb_dégringoler_. [433] The favouritism declined, and the history of its decline wasanecdotised in a fashion somewhat _gaulois_, but quite harmless. "UncleBeuve, " to the astonishment of literary mankind, put the portrait ofthis "nephew" of his in his _salon_. After _Daniel_ (I think) it wasmoved to the dining-room, and thence to his bedroom. Later it was missedeven there, and was, or was said to be, relegated to _un lieu plusintime encore_. The _trovatore_ of this probably remembered hisRabelais. [434] The labour of reading the book has been repaid by a few usefulspecimens of Feydeau's want of anything like distinction of thought orstyle. He makes his hero (whom he does not in the least mean for a fool, though he is one) express surprise at the fact that when he was _instatu pupillari_ he liked _fredaines_, but when he became his own masterdid not care about them! Again: "Were I to possess the power andinfinite charm of HIM [_sic_] who invented the stars I could neverexactly paint the delightful creature who stood before me. " Comment oneither of these should be quite needless. Again: "Her nose, by a happyand bold curve, joined itself to the lobes, lightly expanded, of herdiaphanous nostrils. " Did it never occur to the man that a nose, separately considered from its curve and its nostrils, is terribly likethat of La Camarde herself? I wasted some time over the tedious trilogyof _Un Début à L'Opera_, _M. De Saint Bertrand_, _Le Mari de laDanseuse_. Nobody--not even anybody _qui_ Laclos _non odit_--need followme. [435] Their author wrote others--_Babolin_, _Autour d'une Source_ etc. But the wise who can understand words will perhaps confine themselves to_Mr. , Mme. Et Bébé_ and its sequel. [436] Cf. _inf. _ on M. Rod. [437] There is a paper on Cherbuliez in _Essays on French Novelists_, where fuller account of individual works, and very full notice, withtranslations, of _Le Roman d'une Honnéte Femme_ and _Meta Holdenis_ willbe found. [438] _History of Criticism_, vol. Iii. See also below. [439] The author of the _Fleurs du Mal_ himself might have beendistinguished in prose fiction. The _Petits Poëmes en Prose_ indeedabstain from story-interest even more strictly than their avowedpattern, _Gaspard de la Nuit_. But _La Fanfarlo_ is capitally told. [440] Hugo might do this; hardly a Hugonicule. [441] There used to be a fancy for writing books about groups ofcharacters. Somebody might do worse in book-making than "Great Editors, "and Veuillot should certainly be one of them. [442] The inadvertences which characterise him could hardly be betterinstanced than in his calling the eminent O'Donovan Rossa "_ledéputé-martyr_ de Tipperary. " In English, if not in French, a"deputy-martyr" is a delightful person. [443] Its articles are made up--rather dangerously, but veryskilfully--of shorter reviews of individual books published sometimes atlong intervals. [444] Who replied explosively. [445] There used to be something of a controversy whether it should bethus or Aur_é_villy. But the modern editions, at least, never have theaccent. [446] Very little above it I should put the not wholly dissimilar liquorobtained, at great expense and trouble, by a late nobleman of highcharacter and great ability from (it was said) an old monkish vineyardin the Isle of Britain. The monks must have exhausted the goodness ofthat _clos_; or else have taken the wine as a penance. [447] Huysmans on this is very funny. [448] A Spanish duchess of doubly and trebly "azured" blood revengesherself on her husband, who has massacred her lover before her eyes andgiven his heart to dogs, by becoming a public prostitute in Paris, anddying in the Salpêtrière. It is almost, if not quite, a masterpiece. [449] Barbey's dislike of Feuillet was, evidently and half-confessedly, increased by his notion that _M. De Camors_ had "lifted" something from_L'Ensorcelée_. There is also perhaps a touch of _Le Bonheur dans leCrime_ in _La Morte_. [450] He knew a good deal (quite independently of Byron and Brummel)about English literature. One is surprised to find somewhere a referenceto Walpole's story of Fielding and his dinner-companions. [451] Observe that this is no demand for the explanation of thesupernatural. Let the supernatural remain as it is, by all means. Butcurses should have causes. Até and Weird are terrible goddesses, butthey are not unreasonable ones. They might be less _terrible_ if theywere. [452] He has for two years been ordered to be present, but forbidden tocelebrate; in punishment for his having, uncanonically, fought as aChouan--if not also for attempted suicide. But we hear of noamorousness, and the husband Le Hardouey's jealousy, though prompted byhis wife's apparent self-destruction, is definitely stated to have nofoundation in actual guilt with the priest. On the contrary, shedeclares that he cared nothing for her. [453] Of Geoffroy Tory's book which (_v. Sup. _ Vol. I. P. 124) helped togive us the Limousin student. [454] It is possible that some readers may say, "Where areErckmann-Chatrian?" The fact is that I have never been able to find, inthose twin-brethren, either literature or that not quite literaryinterest which some others have found. But I do not wish to abuse them, and they have given much pleasure to these others. So I let them alone. CHAPTER XIII NATURALISM--THE GONCOURTS, ZOLA, AND MAUPASSANT [Sidenote: The beginnings. ] If I were writing this _History_ on the lines which some of my critics(of whom, let it be observed, I do not make the least complaint) seem toprefer, or at least to miss their absence, a very large part of thischapter would give me the least possible difficulty. I should simplytake M. Zola's _Le Roman Expérimental_ and M. Brunetière's _Le RomanNaturaliste_ and "combine my information. " The process--easy to any oneof some practice in letters--could be easier to no one than to me. For Iread and reviewed both books very carefully at their first appearance; Ihad them on my shelves for many years; and the turning of either overfor a quarter of an hour, or half at the most, would put its contentsonce more at my fingers' ends. But, as I have more than once pointedout, elaborate boiling down of them would not accord with my scheme andplan. Inasmuch as the episode or passage[455] is perhaps, of all thosewhich make up our story, the most remarkable instance of a deliberate"school"--of a body of work planned and executed under more or lessdefinite schedules--something if not much more of the critical kindthan usual may be given, either here or in the Conclusion. [456] But weshall, I think, learn far better things as to M. Zola and those abouthim by considering what they--at least what he, his would-be teachers, and his greatest disciple--actually did, than by inquiring what theymeant, or thought they meant, to do, or what other people thought aboutthem and their doings. Let us therefore, in the first place and as usual, stick to the history, though even this may require more than one mode and division of dealing. [Sidenote: "Les deux Goncourt. "] The body of Naturalist or Experimental novels which, beginning in the'sixties of the century, extended to, and a little over, its close, haslong been, and will probably always continue to be, associated with thename of Émile Zola. But the honour or dishonour of the invention andpioneering of the thing was claimed by another, for himself and a thirdwriter, that is to say, by Edmond de Goncourt for himself and hisbrother Jules. The elder of the Goncourts--the younger died in earlymiddle age, and knowledge of him is in a way indirect, though we havesome letters--might be said to have, like Restif, a _manie depaternité_, though his children were of a different class. He thought heinvented Naturalism; he thought he introduced into France what someunkind contemporaries called "Japon_i_aiserie";[457] he certainly had agood deal to do with reviving the fancy for eighteenth-century art, artists, _bric-à-brac_ generally, and in a way letters; and he ended byfathering and endowing an opposition Academy. It was with art that "Lesdeux Goncourt"[458] (who were inseparable in their lives, and whomEdmond--to do him the justice which in his case can rarely be donepleasantly--did his best to keep undivided after Jules's death) begantheir dealings with eighteenth-century and other artists[459]--perhapsthe most valuable of all their work. But it was not till the SecondEmpire was nearly half-way through, till Jules was thirty and Edmondthirty-eight, that they tried fiction (drama also, but alwaysunsuccessfully), and brought out, always together and before 1870 (whenJules died), a series of some half-dozen novels: _Charles Demailly_(afterwards re-titled) (1860), _Soeur Philomène_ (next year), _RenéeMauperin_ (1864), _Germinie Lacerteux_ (next year), _Manette Salomon_(1867), and _Madame Gervaisais_ (1869). [Sidenote: Their work. ] It is desirable to add that, besides the work already mentioned andpublished before 1870, the two had given a book called _Idées etSensations_, setting forth their literary psychology; and that, afterthe cataclysm, Edmond published a description of their house and itscollections, his brother's letters, and an immense _Journal desGoncourt_ in some half-score of volumes, which was, naturally enough, one of the most read books of its time. Naturally, for it appealed toall sorts of tastes, reputable and disreputable, literary-artistic andPhilistine, with pairs enough of antithetic or complementary epithetsenough to fill this page. Here you could read about Sainte-Beuve andGautier, about Taine and Renan, about Tourguénieff and Flaubert, as wellas about Daudet and Zola, and a score of other more or less interestingpeople. Here you could read how Edmond as a boy made irruptions into anewly-married cousin's bedroom, and about the interesting sight he sawthere; how an English virtuoso had his books bound in human skin; howpeople dined during the siege of Paris, and a million other things; thewhole being saturated, larded, or whatever word of the kind bepreferred, with observations on the taste, intellect, and generalgreatness of the MM. De Goncourt, and on the lamentable inferiority ofother people, etc. , etc. If it could be purged of its bad blood, thebook would really deserve to rank, for substance, with Pepys' diary orwith Walpole's letters. [460] As it is, when it has become a littleforgotten, the quarterly reviewers, or their representatives, of thetwenty-first century will be able to make endless _réchauffés_ of it. And though not titularly or directly of our subject, it belongs thereto, because it shows the process of accumulation or incubation, and thetemper of the accumulators and incubators in regard to the subjects ofthe novels themselves. [Sidenote: The novels. ] To analyse all these novels, or even one of them, at length, would be aprocess as unnecessary as it would be disagreeable. The "chronicles ofwasted _grime_" may be left to themselves, not out of any mere finicalor fastidious superiority, but simply because their own postulates andaxioms make such analysis (if the word unfairness can be used in such aconnection) unfair to them. For they claimed--and the justice, if notthe value, of the claim must be allowed--to have rested their fashion ofnovel-writing upon two bases. The substance was to be provided by anelaborate observation and reproduction of the facts of actual life, notin the least transcendentalised, inspirited, or in any other way broughtnear Romance, but considered largely from the points of view which theirfriend Taine, writing earlier, used for his philosophical and historicalwork--that of the _milieu_ or "environment, " that of heredity, thoughthey did not lay so much stress on this as Zola did--and the like. Thetreatment, on the other hand, was to be effected by the use of anintensely "personal" style, a new Marivaudage, compared to which, as weremarked above, Flaubert's doctrine of the single word was merelyrudimentary. After Jules's death Edmond wrote, alone, _La Fille Elisa_, which was very popular, _La Faustin_, and _Chérie_, the last of which, with _Germinie Lacerteux_, may form the basis of a short criticalexamination. Those who merely wish to see if they can like or toleratethe Goncourtian novel had perhaps better begin with _Renée Mauperin_ or_Madame Gervaisais_. Both have been very highly praised, [461] and thefirst named of them has the proud distinction of putting "le mot deCambronne" in the mouth of a colonel who has been mortally wounded in aduel. [Sidenote: _Germinie Lacerteux_ and _Chérie_ taken as specimens. ] To return to our selected examples, _Germinie Lacerteux_ is the story ofan actual _bonne_ of the brothers, whose story, without "trimmings, " istold in the _Journal_ itself. [462] The poor creature is as different aspossible, not merely from the usual heroine, but from the _grisette_ ofthe first half of the century and from the _demi-mondaine_ of Dumas_fils_, and Daudet, and even Zola. She is not pretty; she is notfascinating in any way; she is neither good- nor ill-natured in anyspecial fashion; she is not even ambitious of "bettering" herself or ofhaving much pleasure, wealth, etc. If she goes to the bad it is in themost commonplace way and with the most unseductive seducer possible. Herprogress and her end are, to borrow a later phrase and titlemetaphorically, merely a tale of the meanest streets; untouched andunconfirmed by the very slightest art; as destitute of any aestheticattraction, or any evidence of artistic power, as the log-books of acommon lodging-house and a hospital ward could be. In _Chérie_ there isnothing exactly improper; it is merely an elaborate study of aspoilt--at least petted--and unhealthy girl in the upper stages ofsociety, who has at last the kindness--to herself, her relations, andthe reader--to die. If M. De Goncourt had had the slightest particle ofhumour, of which there is no trace in any of his works, one might havetaken this, like other things perhaps, as a slightly cryptic parody--ofthe _poitrinaire_-heroine mania of times a little earlier; but there isno hope of this. The subject was, in the sense attached to the word bythese writers, "real"; it could be made useful for combinedphysiological and psychological detail; and, most important of all, itwas more or less repulsive. [463] [Sidenote: The impression produced by them. ] For this is what it really comes to in the Goncourts, in Zola, and inthe rest, till Guy de Maupassant, not seldom dealing with the samematerial, sublimes it, and so robs it of its repulsiveness, by the forceof true comic, tragic, or romantic art. Or course it is open to any oneto say, "It may repel _you_, but it does not repel _me_. " But this isvery cheap sophistry. We do not require to be told, in the words whichshocked Lord Chesterfield but do not annoy a humble admirer of his, that"One man's meat is another man's poison. " Carrion is not repulsive to avulture. Immediately before writing these words I was reading theconfession of an unfortunate American that he or she found _TheRoundabout Papers_ "depressing. " For my part, I have never given up thedoctrine that _any_ subject _may_ be deprived of its repulsiveness bythe treatment of it. But when you find a writer, or a set of writers, deliberately and habitually selecting subjects which are generally heldto be repellent, and deliberately and habitually refusing or failing topass them through the alembic in the manner suggested--then I think youare justified, not merely in condemning their taste, but in thinking notat all highly of their art. A cook who cannot make his meat savouryunless it is "high" is not a good cook, and if he cannot do withoutpepper and garlic[464] he is not much better. [Sidenote: The rottenness of their theory. ] Dismissing, however, for a moment the question of mere taste, it shouldbe evident that the doctrine of rigid "observation, " "document, ""experience, " and the like is bad in art. Like so many--some optimistswould say like all--bad things, it is, of course, a corruption, byexcess and defect both, of something good or at least true. It cannot benecessary here, after scores of expressions of opinion on the subjectthroughout this book, to admit or urge the importance of observation ofactual life to the novelist. The most ethereal of fairy-tales and thewildest of extravaganzas would be flimsy rubbish if not corroborated byand contrasted with it: it can be strengthened, increased, varied almostat discretion in the novel proper. I hold it, as may be argued perhapsin the Conclusion, to be the principle and the justification of Romanceitself. But, independently of the law just mentioned, that you must notconfine your observation to Ugliness and exclude Beauty--it will not doto pull out the pin of your cart, and tilt a collection of observedfacts on the hapless pavement of the reader's mind. You are not areporter; not a compiler of _dossiers_; not a photographer. You are anartist, and you must do something with your materials, add something ofyourself to them, present something not vamped from parts of actual lifeitself, but reinforcing those parts with aesthetic re-creation and withthe sense of "the whole. " I find this--to confine ourselves strictly tothe famous society so often mentioned in the _Journal_--eminently inFlaubert, and as far as one can judge from translations, inTourguénieff; I find it, to a less extent, in Daudet; I find itsometimes even in Zola, especially, but not merely, in his shorterstories; I find it again, and abundantly, in Maupassant. But I neverfind it in the Goncourts: and when I find it in the others it is becausethey have either never bowed the knee to, or have for the noncediscarded, the cult of the Naturalist, experimental, documentary idol, in itself and for itself. "But, " some one may say, "you have neglected one very important point towhich you have yourself referred, and as to which you have justrecommitted yourself. Did not _les deux_ 'add something, ' a veryconsiderable something, 'of their own'? How about their style?" [Sidenote: And the unattractiveness of their style. ] Certainly they prided themselves on this, and certainly they took agreat deal of trouble about it. If any one likes the result, let himlike it. It appears to me only to prove that an unsound principle is nota certain means to secure sound practice. Possibly, as Edmond boasted, this style is not the style _de tout le monde_. And _tout le monde_ maycongratulate itself on the fact. One can see that it _must_ have giventhem a good deal of trouble--perhaps as much as, say, Paul deSaint-Victor's gave him. But then his excites a cheerful glow ofsatisfaction, whereas theirs only creates, as Saint-Victor himself (toone's regret) says of Swift, _un morne étonnement_. * * * * * [Sidenote: Émile Zola to be treated differently. ] The tone which has been adopted[465] in speaking of the Goncourts (orrather of Edmond de Goncourt, for Jules seems to have been the betterfellow pretty certainly, as well as probably the more genuine talent, ofthe two) would be grossly unfair in dealing with Émile Zola. One maythink his principle demonstrably wrong, and his practice for the mostpart a calamitous mistake. One may, while, if indeed it concerned us, clearing him of the charge of doing any moral harm--such harm would beas likely to be done by records of Bedlam, or the Lock Hospital, or adipsomaniacs' home--put on the wrong side of his account a quantity ofdull and dirty trash, [466] which, without his precept and example, wouldnever have been written, or, if written, read. But the great, if mostlywasted, power displayed in his work is quite undeniable by any realcritic; he did some things--and more parts of things--absolutely good;and if, as has been admitted, he did literary evil, he upset in acurious fashion the usual dictum that the evil that men do lives afterthem. At least it was not his fault if such was the case. Heundoubtedly, whether he actually invented it or not, established, communicated, spread the error of Naturalism. But he lived long enoughand wrote hard enough to "work it out" in a singular fashion--toillustrate the rottenness of the tree by the canker of the fruit to suchan extent, and in such variety of application and example, that nobodyfor a long time has had any excuse for grafting the one or eating theother. Personally--in those points of personality which touch literaturereally, and out of the range of mere gossip--he had many good qualities. He was transparently honest, his honesty being tested and attested by adefect which will be noticed presently. He appears to have had no badblood in him. His fidelity and devotion to what he thought art were asunflinching as Flaubert's own. [Sidenote: Some points in his personality--literary and other. ] Nor was he deficient in good qualities which were still more purelyliterary. We shall speak later of the excellence of his short stories;if he had never written anything else there would be hardly anything butpraise for him. When he does not lose himself in the wilderness ofparticulars, he sometimes manages to rise from it to wonderfulPisgah-sights of description. He has a really vast, though never anabsolute or consummate, and always a morbid, hold on what may be calledthe second range of character, and a drastic, if rather mechanical, faculty of combining scenes and incidents. The mass of theRougon-Macquart books is very much more coherent than the _ComédieHumaine_. He has real pathos. But perhaps his greatest quality, shown atintervals throughout but never fully developed till the chaotic andsometimes almost Blake-like Apocalypses of his last stage, was agrandiosity of fancy--nearly reaching imagination, and not incapable ofdressing itself in suitable language--which, though one traces someindebtedness to Lamennais and Michelet and Hugo, has sufficientindividuality, and, except in these four, is very rarely found in Frenchliterature later than the sixteenth or early seventeenth century. To setagainst these merits--still leaving the main fault alone--there are somestrange defects. Probably worst of all, for it has its usual appallingpervasiveness, is his almost absolute want of humour. Humour andNaturalism, indeed, could not possibly keep house together; as we shallsee in Maupassant, the attempt has happier results than in the case of"Long John Brown and Little Mary Bell, " for the fairy expels the Devilat times wholly. The minor and particular absurdities which result fromthis want of humour crop up constantly in the books; and it is said tohave been taken advantage of by Maupassant himself in one instance, thedisciple "bamming" the master into recording the existences ofpeculiarly specialised places of entertainment, which the fertile fancyof the author of _Boule de Suif_ had created. [Sidenote: The Pillars of Naturalism. ] The Naturalist Novel, as practised by Zola, rests on three principalsupports, or rather draws its materials from, and guides itstreatment by, three several processes or doctrines. The generalobservational-experimental theory of the Goncourts is very widely, infact almost infinitely extended, "documents" being found or made in orout of the literal farrago of all occupations and states of life. But, as concerns the definitely "human" part of the matter, immense stress islaid on the Darwinian or Spencerian doctrines of heredity, environment, evolution, and the like. While, last of all in order, if the influencebe taken as converging towards the reason of the failure, comes the"medico-legal" notion of a "lesion"--of some flaw or vicious andcancerous element--a sort of modernised [Greek: prôtarchos atê] in thefamily, which develops itself variously in individuals. Now, before pointing out the faulty results of this as shown generallyin the various books, let us, reversing the order in which theinfluences or elements have been stated, set out the main lines of errorin the elements themselves. In the first place, it must surely be obvious that insistence on the"lesion, " even if the other points of the theory were unassailable, isgrossly excessive, if not wholly illegitimate. If you are to takeobservation and experience for your sole magazine of subjects, you musttake _all_ experience and _all_ observation. Not the veriest pessimistwho retains sense and senses can say that their results are _always_evil, ugly, and sordid. If you are to go by heredity you must attend to: Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis, as well as to: Aetas parentum pejor avis tulit, etc. Remounting the stairs, it must be evident that Heredity, NaturalSelection, Evolution, Environment, etc. , are things which, at the verybest, can be allowed an exceedingly small part in artistic re-creation. Not only do they come under the general ban of Purpose, but theirpurpose-character is of the most thankless and unsucculent kind. I donot know that any one has ever attempted a mathematical novel, thoughthe great Mr. Higgins of St. Mary Axe, as we all know, wrote a beautifulmathematical poem, of which the extant fragments are, alas! too few. Ifhe had only lived a generation later, how charming would have been thefytte or canto on Quaternions! But, really, such a thing would not bemore than a "farthest" on a road on which heredity-and-selection novelstravel far. It is no use to say, "Oh! but human beings exemplifyingthose things can be made interesting. " If they are it will not bebecause they are dealt with _sub specie hereditatis_, and confined inthe circle of _milieu_. Yet the master error lies, farther back still, in the strictly"Naturalist" idea itself--the theory of Experiment, theobservation-document-"note, " all for their own sake. Something has beensaid of this in relation to the Goncourts, but M. Zola's ownexemplification of the doctrine was so far "larger" in every sense thantheirs, and reinforced with so much greater literary power, that itcannot be left merely to the treatment which was sufficient for them. Once more, it is a case of "corruption of the best. " It is perfectlytrue that all novel-writing--even in a fashion all romance-writingtoo--ought to be based on experience[467] in practical life, and thatinfinite documents are procurable, infinite notes may be made, from thatlife. It is utterly _un_true that _any_ observation, _any_ experiment, _any_ document is good novel or romance stuff. A very few remarks may perhaps be made on approaches to Zolaism--not inthe sense of scabrousness--before Zola. [Sidenote: "Document" and "detail" before Naturalism. ] A writer of one of those theses _à la mode Germanorum_, of which, atdifferent times and in different occupations, it is the hard lot of theprofessional man of letters to read so many, would probably begin withthe Catalogue of Ships, or construct an inventory of the "beds andbasons" which Barzillai brought to David. Quite a typical "program"might be made of the lists of birds, beasts, trees, etc. , so well knownin mediaeval literature, and best known to the ordinary English readerfrom Chaucer, and from Spenser's following of him. We may, however, passto the Deluge of the Renaissance and the special emergence therefrom ofFrench fiction. It would not be an absolute proof of the "monographitis"just glanced at if any one were to instance the curious discussions onthe propriety of introducing technical terms into heroic poetry--whichis, of course, very close to heroic romance, and so to prose fictiongenerally. [Sidenote: General stages traced. ] But, for practical purposes, Furetière and the _Roman Bourgeois_ (_vide_Vol. I. ) give the starting-point. And here the Second Part, of which weformerly said little, acquires special importance, though the first isnot without it. _All_ the details of _bourgeois_ life and middle-classsociety belong to the department which was afterwards preferred--anddegraded--by the Naturalists; and the legal ins and outs of the SecondPart are Zola in a good deal more than the making. Indeed the luckless"Charroselles" himself had, as we pointed out, anticipated Furetière innot a few points, such as that most interesting reference to_bisque_. [468] Scarron himself has a good deal of it; in fact there isso much in the Spanish picaresque novel that it could not be absent fromthe followings thereof. For which same reason there is not a very littleof it in Lesage, while, for an opposite one, there is less in Marivaux, and hardly any at all in Crébillon or Prévost. The _philosophes_, exceptDiderot--who was busy with other things and used his acquaintance withmiscellaneous "documents" in another way--would have disdained it, andthe Sentimentalists still more so. But it is a sign of the shortcomingsof Pigault-Lebrun--especially considering the evident discipleship toSmollett, in whom there is no small amount of such detail--that, whilein general he made a distinct advance in "ordinary" treatment, he didnot reinforce this advance with circumstantial accounts of "beds andbasons. " But with the immense and multifarious new birth of the novel at thebeginning of the nineteenth century, this development also received, inthe most curiously diverse ways, reinforcement and extension. The Terrornovel itself had earlier given a hand, for you had to describe, more orless minutely, the furniture of your haunted rooms, the number andvolume of your drops of blood, the anatomical characteristics of yourskeletons, and the values of your palette of coloured fires. TheHistorical novel lugged document in too often by head and shoulders, introducing it on happier occasions as the main and distinguishingornament of its kind. Romanticism generally, with its tendency toantiquarian detail, its liking for _couleur locale_, its insistence onthe "streaks of the tulip" and the rest, prompted the use and at leastsuggested the abuse. [Sidenote: Some individual pioneers--especially Hugo. ] Nor did the great individual French novelists--for we need not specifyany others--of the earlier part of the century, while they themselveskept to the pleasant slopes above the abyss, fail to point the way toit. Chateaubriand with his flowery descriptions of East and West, andMadame de Staël with her deliberate guide-bookery, encouraged thedocument-hunter and detail-devotee. Balzac, especially in the directionsof finance and commerce, actually set him an example. George Sand, especially in pure country stories, was prodigal of local and technicalmatters and manners. The gorgeous scenery of Gautier, and the sobererbut important "settings" of Mérimée, might be claimed as models. Andothers might be added. But from one point of view, as an authority above all earlierauthorities, and from another as a sinner beyond all earlier sinners, might be quoted Victor Hugo, even putting his _juvenilia_ aside. He hadflung a whole glossary of architecture, not to mention other things ofsimilar kind, into _Notre Dame de Paris_; and when after a long intervalhe resumed prose fiction, he had ransacked the encyclopaedia for _LesMisérables_. _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ is half a great poem and halfa _real-lexikon_ of mechanics, weather-lore, seafaring, ichthyology, andGod knows what else! If _L'Homme Qui Rit_ had been written a very littlelater, parts of it might have been taken as a deliberate burlesque, by aFrench Sir Francis Burnand, of Naturalist method. Now, as the most acuteliterary historians have always seen, Naturalism was practicallynothing but a degeneration of Romanticism:[469] and degeneracy alwaysshows itself in exaggeration. Naturalism exaggerated detail, streak oftulip, local colour, and all the rest, of which Romanticism had madesuch good use at its best. But what it exaggerated most of all was theRomantic neglect of classical _decorum_, in the wider as well as thenarrower sense of that word. Classicism had said, "Keep everythingindecorous out. " Naturalism seemed sometimes to say, "Let nothing thatis not indecorous come in. "[470] [Sidenote: Survey of books--the short stories. ] It was, however, by no means at first that M. Zola took to the"document" or elaborated the enormous scheme of the Rougon-Macquartcycle: though whether the excogitation of this was or was not due to thefrequentation, exhortation, and imitation of MM. De Goncourt is not apoint that we need discuss. He began, after melodramatic and negligible_juvenilia_, in 1864 with a volume of delightful short stories, [471]_Contes à Ninon_, in which kind he long afterwards showed undiminishedpowers. And he continued this practice at intervals for a great numberof years, with results collected, after the first set, in _NouveauxContes à Ninon_, and in volumes taking their general titles from specialtales--_Le Capitaine Burle_ and _Naïs Micoulin_. In 1880 he gave thefirst story, _L'Attaque du Moulin_, to that most remarkable Naturalist"symposium, " _Les Soirées de Médan_, which, if nothing of it survivedbut that story itself and Maupassant's _Boule de Suif_, and if thisrepresented the sole extant work of the School, would certainly inducethe fortieth century to think that School one of the very best infiction, and to utter the most pathetic wails over the loss of the restof its production. Of _Boule de Suif_--in more senses than one thefeminine of the pair--more presently. But _L'Attaque_ itself is asplendid and masculine success--the best thing by far, in respect offlawlessness, that its author ever did, and not far below Mérimée's_Prise de la Redoute_. Unfortunately it was not in these breaches that M. Zola chose to abide. After the war, having no doubt laid his plans long before, he undertookthe vast Rougon-Macquart scheme with its score of volumes; and when thiswas finished, carried on two others, smaller in bulk but hardly lessambitious in scope, "Les Trois Villes"--_Lourdes_, _Paris_, _Rome_; and"Les Quatre Évangiles"--_Fécondité_, _Travail_, and _Vérité_, the fourthof which was never written, while the third, _Vérité_, appeared with ablack line round its cover, denoting posthumous issue. [Sidenote: "Les Rougon-Macquart. "] In all these books the Experimental and Documentary idea is worked out, with an important development in the other directions above glanced at. The whole of the Rougon-Macquart series was intended to picture thevarying careers of the branches, legitimate and illegitimate, of twofamilies, under the control of heredity, and the evolution of thecerebral lesion into various kinds of disease, fault, vice, crime, etc. But further scope was found for the use of the document, human andother, by allotment of the various books, both in this and in the latergroups, to the special illustration of particular places, trades, professions, habits of life, and _quicquid agunt homines_ generally. The_super_-title of the first and largest series, "Les Rougon-Macquart:Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire, " canhardly need comment or amplification to any intellect that is nothopelessly enslaved to the custom of having its meat not only killed, dressed, cooked, and dished, but cut up, salted, peppered, and put intoits mouth with assiduous spoonings. _La Fortune des Rougon_, in thevery year when Europe invited a _polemos aspondos_ by acquiescing in theseizure of Alsace-Lorraine, laid the foundation of the whole. _La Curée_and _Son Excellence Eugène Rougon_ show how the more fortunate membersof the clan prospered in the somewhat ignoble _tripotage_ of their time. Anybody could see the "power" of which the thing was "effect" (to borrowone half of a celebrated aphorism of Hobbes's); but it must have been acurious taste to which (borrowing the other) the books were "a cause ofpleasure. " _La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret_ rose to a much higher level. Toregard it as merely an attack on clerical celibacy is to take a veryobvious and limited view of it. It is so, of course, but it is muchmore. The picture of the struggle between conscience and passion is, foronce, absolutely true and human. There is no mistake in the psychology;there is no resort to "sculduddery"; there is no exaggeration of anykind, or, if there is any, it is in a horticultural extravagance--apiece of fairy Bower-of-Bliss scene-painting, in part of the book, whichis in itself almost if not quite beautiful--a Garden of Eden providedfor a different form of temptation. [472] There is no poetry in _LaConquête de Plassans_ or in _Le Ventre de Paris_; but the one is adigression, not yet scavenging, into country life, and the other emptiesone of M. Zola's note-books on a theme devoted to the Paris Markets--thefamous "Halles" which Gérard had done so lightly and differently longbefore. [473] The key of this latter is pretty well kept in one of themost famous books of the whole series, _L'Assommoir_, where thebeastlier side of pot-house sotting receives hundreds of pages to dowhat William Langland had done better five centuries earlier in a fewscore lines. _Pot-Bouille_--ascending a little in the social but not inthe spiritual scale--deals with lower middle-class life, and _Au Bonheurdes Dames_ with the enormous "stores" which, beginning in America, hadalready spread through Paris to London. _Une Page d'Amour_ recoverssomething of the nobler tone of _L'Abbé Mouret_; and _La Joie deVivre_--a title, as will readily be guessed, ironical inintention--still keeps out of the gutter. _Nana_ may be said, combiningdecency with exactitude, to stand in the same relation to the service ofVenus as _L'Assommoir_ does to that of Bacchus, though one apologises toboth divinities for so using their names. It was supposed, like otherbooks of the kind, to be founded on fact--the history of a certain youngperson known as Blanche d'Antigny--and charitable critics have pleadedfor it as a healthy corrective or corrosive to the morbid tone ofsentimentality-books like _La Dame aux Camélias_. I never could findmuch amusement in the book, except when Nana, provoked at the tediousprolongation of a professional engagement, exclaims, "Ça ne finissaitpas!" or "Ça ne voulait pas finir. "[474] The strange up-and-down of thewhole scheme reappears in _L'Oeuvre_--chiefly devoted to art, butpartly to literature--where the opening is extraordinarily good, andthere are fine passages later, interspersed with tedious grime of thecommoner kind. _La Terre_ and _Germinal_ are, I suppose, generallyregarded as, even beyond _L'Assommoir_ and _Nana_, the "farthest" ofthis griminess. Whether the filth-stored broom of the former really doesblot out George Sand's and other pictures of a modified Arcadia in theFrench provinces, nothing but experience, which I cannot boast, couldtell us; and the same may be said of _Germinal_, as to the miningdistricts which have since received so awful a purification by fire. That more and more important person the railway-man takes his turn in_La Bête Humaine_, and the book supplies perhaps the most strikinginstance of the radically inartistic character of the plan of floodingfiction with technical details. But there is, in the vision of thedriver and his engine as it were going mad together, one of the earliestand not the least effective of those nightmare-pieces in which Zola, evidently inspired by Hugo, indulged more and more latterly. Then camewhat was intended, apparently, for the light star of this dark group, _Le Rêve_. Although always strongly anti-clerical, and at the last, aswe shall see, a "Deicide" of the most uncompromising fanaticism, M. Zolahere devoted himself to cathedral services and church ritual generally, and, as a climax, the administration of extreme unction to his innocentheroine. But, as too often happens in such cases, the saints were notgrateful and the sinners were bored. _L'Argent_ was at least inconcatenation accordingly, seeing that the great financial swindle and"crash"[475] it took for subject had had strong clerical support; butpurely financial matters, stock-exchange dealings, and some exceedinglyscabrous "trimmings" occupied the greater part of it. Of the penultimatenovel, _La Débâcle_, a history of the terrible birth-year of the seriesitself, few fair critics, I think, could speak other than highly; of theactual ultimatum, _Le Docteur Pascal_, opinions have varied much. It isvery unequal, but I thought when it came out that it contained some ofits author's very best things, and I am not disposed to change myopinion. [Sidenote: "Les Trois Villes. "] Before giving any general comment on this mass of fiction, it willprobably be best to continue the process of brief survey, with the tworemaining groups. It is, I believe, generally admitted that in "LesTrois Villes" purpose, and the document, got altogether the better ofany true novel-intention. The anti-religiosity which has been alreadyremarked upon seems not only to have increased, but for the moment tohave simply flooded our author's ship of thought and art, and to havestopped the working of that part of its engine-room which did thenovel-business. The miracles at, and the pilgrimages to, Lourdes filledthe newspapers at one time, and Zola could think of nothing else; thetransition to Rome was almost inevitable in any such case; and thereturn upon Paris quite inevitable in a Frenchman. [Sidenote: "Les Quatre Évangiles. "] With the final and incomplete series--coinciding in its latter part withthe novelist's passionate interference, at no small inconvenience tohimself, in that inconceivable modern replica of the Hermocopidaebusiness, the Dreyfus case, and cut short by his unfortunatedeath--things are different. I have known people far less "prejudiced, "as the word goes, against the ideas of these books than I am myself, whoplumply declare that they cannot read _Fécondité_, _Travail_, or (mostespecially) _Vérité_: while of course there are others who declare themto be not "Gospels" at all, but what Mr. Carlyle used to call"Ba'spels"--not Evangels but Cacodaemonics. I read every word of themcarefully some years since, and I should not mind reading _Fécondité_ or_Travail_ again, though I have no special desire to do so. [476] Both are "novels of purpose, " with the purpose developing into mania. _Fécondité_ is only in part--and in that part mainly as regardsFrance--revolutionary. It is a passionate gospel of "Cultivate _both_gardens! Produce every ounce of food that can be raised to eat, andevery child that can be got to eat it:" an anti-Malthusian andCobbettist Apocalypse, smeared with Zolaesque grime and lighted up withflashes, or rather flares, of more than Zolaesque brilliancy. The scenewhere the hero (so far as there is one) looks back on Paris at night, and his tottering virtue sees in it one enormous theatre of Lubricity, has something of Flaubert and something of Hugo. _Travail_ is revolutionary or nothing, revolutionary "in the mostapproved style, " as a certain apologist of robbery and murder put it notlong ago as to Bolshevism, amid the "laughter and cheers" of Englishaspirants thereto. It takes for scene a quite openly borrowedrepresentation of the famous forges of Creusot, and attacks Capital, the_bourgeois_, and everything established, quite in the purest Bolshevistfashion. Both books, and _Vérité_, display throughout a singulardelusion, aggravating the anti-theism rather than atheism abovementioned, my own formulation of which, in another book some decade ago, I may as well, in a note, [477] borrow, instead of merely paraphrasingit. The milder idiosyncrasy referred to therein will certainly notadjust itself, whatever it might do to the not ungenial ideals of_Fécondité_, to those of _Travail_. This ends in a sort of Paradise ofMan, where electricity takes every kind of labour (except that ofcultivating the gardens?) off men's hands, and the Coquecigrues havecome again, and the pigs run about ready roasted, and a millennium ormill_iard_ennium of Cocaigne begins. Yet there are fine passages in_Travail_, and the author reflects, powerfully enough, the grime andglare and scorch of the furnaces; the thirst and lust and struggles oftheir slaves; the baser side of the life of their owners andofficials--and of the wives of these. There is nothing in the book quiteequal to the Vision of the City of Lubricity in _Fécondité_, but thereare one or two things not much below it. And the whole is once moreBlake-like, with a degraded or defiled Blakishness. In fact, _Fécondité_and _Travail_, illustrated in the spirit of the Prophetic Books, arequite imaginable possessions; and, though a nervous person might notlike to go to sleep in the same room with them, not uncovetableones. [478] The everlasting irony of things has seldom, in literature (though, as wehave seen, it reigns there if anywhere), secured for itself a morestriking opportunity of exemplification than this ending, in apseudo-apocalyptic paroxysm, of the _Roman Expérimental_; perhaps onemay add that never has Romanticism, or indeed any school of letters, scored such a triumphant victory over its decriers. It has beencontended here, and for many years in other places by the presentwriter, that Naturalism was itself only a "lesion, " a _sarcoma_, amorbidly allotropic form of Romance. At this point the degenerationturned into a sort of parody of the attitude of Ezekiel or Hosea; thebusiness-like observer, in counting-house and workshop, in church andstock-exchange, in tavern and brothel, in field and town generally, became himself a _voyant_, beholding all things in nightmare. Yet, indoing so, he effected a strange semi-reconciliation with some who hadbeen, if not exactly his enemies, the exceedingly frank critics andunsparing denouncers of his system. Not much more than half sane, andalmost more than half disgusting, as are _Fécondité_ and _Travail_, theyconnect themselves, as wholes, not with _L'Assommoir_ or _Nana_, notwith _La Terre_ or _Germinal_, but with _La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret_, with _Une Page d'Amour_, and _La Joie de Vivre_, with the best things in_L'Oeuvre_, _La Débâcle_, and _Le Docteur Pascal_. Students of Englishliterature will remember how the doctrine of _Furor poeticus_ was onceapplied to Ben Jonson by a commentator who, addressing him, pointed outthat he was very mad in his primer works, not so mad in his dotages. There was always a good deal of _furor prosaicus_ smouldering in Zola, and it broke out with an opposite result on these occasions, the flames, alas! being rather devastating, but affording spectacles at leastgrandiose. _He_ kept sane and sordid to his loss earlier, and went madlater--partially at least to his advantage. [Sidebar: General considerations. ] Passing to those more general considerations which have beenpromised--and which seem to be to some readers a Promised Landindeed, as compared with the wilderness of _compte-rendu_ andbook-appreciation--let us endeavour briefly to answer the question, "What is the general lesson of Zola's work?" I think we may say, borrowing that true and final judgment of Wordsworth which doth soenrage Wordsworthians, that whenever Zola does well he either violatesor neglects his principles, and that the more carefully he carriesthese out the worse, as a rule, his work is. The similarity, of course, is the more quaint because of the dissimilarity of the personages andtheir productions; but it has not been insisted on from any mere spiritof mischief, or desire to make a paradoxical parallel. On the contrary, this parallel has been made in order to support, at least _obiter_, amore general dictum still, that principles are much more often fatalthan useful to the artist. The successful miniatures of the shortstories hardly prove more thoroughly than the smoky flamingBlakish-Turneresque cartoons of the latest "Gospels, " though they may doso more satisfactorily, that Émile Zola had the root of the Art ofFiction in him. But he chose to subject the bulk of the growths fromthis root to something much worse than the _ars topiaria_, to twist andmaim and distort them like Hugo's Comprachicos; to load their boughs, forbidding them to bear natural fruit, with clumsy crops of dull andfoul detail, like a bedevilled Christmas-tree. One dares say quiteunblushingly, that in no single instance[479] has this abuse of theencyclopaedia added charm, or value, or even force to Zola's work. A manwith far less ability than he possessed could have given the necessarytouch of specialism when it _was_ necessary, without dumping anddeluging loads and floods of technicalities on the unhappy reader. Little more need be said about the disastrous _ugliness_ which, withstill rarer exception, pervades the whole work. There are those who likethe ugly, and those--perhaps more numerous--who think they _ought_ tolike it. With neither is it worth while to argue. As for me and myhouse, we will serve Beauty, giving that blessed word the widestpossible extension, of course, but never going beyond or against it. [Sidenote: Especially in regard to character. ] A point where there is no such precedent inaccessibility of commonground concerns Zola's grasp of character. It seems to me to have been, if not exactly weak, curiously limited. I do not know that his peopleare ever unhuman; in fact, by his time the merely wooden character hadceased to be "stocked" (as an unpleasant modern phrase has it) by thenovelist. The "divers and disgusting things" that they do are neverincredible. The unspeakable villain-hero of _Vérité_ itself is a notimpossible person. But the defect, again as it seems to me, of all thepersonages may best be illustrated by quoting one of those strangeflashes of consummate critical acuteness which diversify the frequentcritical lapses of Thackeray. As early as _The Paris Sketch-book_, inthe article entitled "Caricatures and Lithography, " Mr. Titmarsh wrote, in respect of Fielding's people, "Is not every one of them a realsubstantial _have been_ personage now?... We will not take uponourselves to say that they do not exist somewhere else, that the actionsattributed to them have not really taken place. " There, put by a rather raw critic of some seven and twenty, who was nothimself to give a perfect creative exemplification of what he wrote fornearly a decade, is the crux of the matter. Observe, not "_might_ havebeen" merely, but "have been now. " The phrase might have holes picked init by a composition-master or -monger. [480] Thackeray is often liable tothis process. But it states an eternal verity, and so marks an essentialdifferentia. This differentia is what the present writer has, in many various forms, endeavoured to make good in respect of the novels and the novelists withwhich and whom he has dealt in this book, and in many books and articlesfor the last forty years and more. There are the characters who nevermight or could have been--the characters who, by limp and flacciddrawing; by the lumping together of "incompossibilities"; by slavishfollowing of popular models; by equally slavish, though rather lessignoble, carrying out of supposed rules; by this, that, and the otherwant or fault, have deprived themselves of the fictitious right to live, or to have lived, though they occupy the most ghastly of all limbos andthe most crowded shelves of all circulating libraries. At the other endof the scale are the real men and women of fiction--those whom more orless (for there are degrees here as everywhere) you _know_, whose lifeis as your life, except that you live by the grace of God and they bythat of God's artists. These exist in all great drama, poetry, fiction;and it never would cause you the least surprise or feeling ofunfamiliarity if they passed from one sphere to the other, and you metthem--to live with, to love or to hate, to dance or to dine with, tomurder (for you would occasionally like to kill them) or to marry. [481]But between the two--and perhaps the largest crowd of the three, atleast since novel-writing came to be a business--is a vast multitude offigures occupying a middle position, sometimes with little real vitalitybut with a certain stage-competence; sometimes quite reaching the"might-have-been, " but never the full substance of "has been" for us. Tothese last, I think, though to a high division of them, do Zola'scharacters belong. Of plot I never care to say very much, because it is not with me awedding-garment, though I know an ugly or ill-fitting one when I see it, and can say, "Well tailored or dress-made!" in the more satisfactorycircumstances. Moreover, Zola hardly enters himself for much competitionhere. There is none in the first two Apocalypses; _Vérité_ has what ithas, supplied by the "case" and merely adjusted with fair skill; the_Trois Villes_ lie quite outside plot; and the huge synoptic scheme ofthe Rougon-Macquart series deals little with it in individual books. Ofconversation one might say very much what has been said of character. The books have the conversation which they require, and sometimes (inexamples generally even more difficult to quote than that of Nana'sgiven above) a little more. But in Description, the Naturalist leaderrises when he does not fall. It is obviously here that the boredom andthe beastliness of the details offend most. But it is also by means ofdescription that almost all the books well spoken of before, from thetoo earthly Paradise of _L'Abbé Mouret_ to the Inferno of _Travail_, produce some of their greatest effects. So let this suffice as banning for what is bad in him, and as blessingfor what is good, in regard to Émile Zola: a great talent--at least afailure of a genius--in literature; a marvellous worker in literarycraft. As for his life, it can be honestly avowed that the close of it, in something like martyrdom, had little or nothing to do with the factthat the writer's estimate of his work changed, from very unfavourable, to the parti-coloured one given above. Until about 1880 I did not readhis books regularly as they came out, and the first "nervous impression"of what I did read required time and elaboration to check and correct, to fill in and to balance it. I have never varied my opinion that hismethods and principles--with everything of that sort--were wrong. But Ihave been more and more convinced that his practice sometimes cameastonishingly near being right. * * * * * My introduction to the greatest of M. Zola's associates was morefortunate, for it was impossible to mistake the quality of the newplanet. [482] One day in 1880 the editor of a London paper put into myhands a copy of a just-issued volume of French verse, which had beenspecially sent to him by his Paris correspondent in a fit of moralindignation. It was entitled _Des Vers_, and the author of it was acertain Guy de Maupassant, of whom I then knew nothing. Thecorrespondent had seen in it a good opportunity for a denunciation ofFrench wickedness; and my editor handed it over to me to see what was tobe done with it. I saw no exceptional wickedness, and a very great dealof power; indeed, though I was tolerably familiar with French verse andprose of the day, it seemed to me that I had not seen so much promise inany new writer since Baudelaire's death;[483] and I informed my editorthat, though I had not the slightest objection to blessing Maupassant, Icertainly would not curse him. He thought the blessing not likely toplease his public, while it would annoy his correspondent, and on myrepresentation declined to have anything to do with the cursing. So_nous passasmes oultre_, except that, like Mr. Bludyer, I "impounded"the book; but, unlike him, did not either sell it, dine off it, or abusethe author. Shortly afterwards, I think, the _Soirées de Médan_ reached me, and thisvery remarkable person appeared likewise, but in a new character. Certainly no one can ever have shown to better advantage in company thanM. De Maupassant did on this occasion. _L'Attaque du Moulin_, whichopened the volume, has already been spoken of as part of the best of allM. Zola's voluminous work. But as for the works of the young men, otherthan M. De Maupassant, they had the Naturalist faults in fullestmeasure, unredeemed by their master's massive vigour and his desperateintensity. The contribution of M. Huysmans, in particular (_v. Inf. _)has always appeared to me one of those voluntary or involuntarycaricatures, of the writer's own style and school, which are well knownat all times, and have never been more frequent than recently. But_Boule de Suif_? Among the others that pleasant and pathetic person wasnot a _boule_; she was a pyramid, a Colossus, a spire of CologneCathedral. Putting the unconventionality of its subject aside, there isabsolutely no fault to be found with the story. It is as round andsmooth as "Boule de Suif" herself. Maupassant's work is of very substantial bulk. Of the verse enough forour purpose has been or will be said, though I should like to repeatthat I put it much higher than do most of Maupassant's admirers. Thevolumes of travel-sketches do not appear to me particularly successful, despite the almost unsurpassed faculty of their writer for sober yetvivid description. They have the air of being written to order, and theydo not seem, as a rule, to arrive at artistic completeness eitherobjectively or subjectively. Of the criticism, which concerns us morenearly, by far the most remarkable piece is the famous Preface to_Pierre et Jean_ (to be mentioned again below), which contains theauthor's literary creed, refined and castigated by years of practicefrom the cruder form which he had already promulgated in the Preface toFlaubert's _Correspondence with George Sand_. It extols the "objective"as against the psychological method of novel-writing, but directs itselfmost strongly against the older romance of plot, and places theexcellence of the novelist in the complete and vivid projection of thatnovelist's own particular "illusion" of the world, yet so as to presentevents and characters in the most actual manner. But, as promised, weshall return to it. [Sidenote: _Bel-Ami. _] To run through the actual "turn-out" in novel[484] and tale as far as ispossible here, _Bel-Ami_ started, in England at least, with the mostfavouring gales possible. It was just when the decree had gone forth, issued by the younger Later Victorians, that all the world should bemade naughty; that the insipid whiteness of their Early and Middleelders should be washed black and scarlet, and especially "blue"; andthat if possible, by this and other processes, something like realliterature might be made to take the place of the drivellings andbotcheries of Tennyson and Browning; of Dickens and Thackeray; of Ruskinand Carlyle. To these persons _Bel-Ami_ was a sweet content, a really"_shady_ boon. " The hero never does a decent thing and never says a goodone; but he has good looks and insinuating manners of the kind thatplease some women, whence his name, originally given to him by aninnocent little girl, and taken up by her by no means innocent mamma andother quasi-ladies. [485] He starts as a soldier who has served his timein Algeria, but has found nothing better to do than a subordinate postin a railway office. He meets a former comrade who is high up in Parisjournalism, and who very amiably introduces Georges Duroy to that badresting-place but promising passageway. Duroy succeeds, not so much(though he is not a fool) by any brains as by impudence; by a faculty ofmaking use of others; by one of the farce-duels in which combatants areput half a mile off each other to fire _once_, etc. ; but most of all byhis belamyship (for the word is good old English in a better sense). Thewomen of the book are what is familiarly called "a caution. " They revivethe old Hélisenne de Crenne[486] "sensual appetite" for the handsomebounder; and though of course jealous of his infidelities, are quiteready to welcome the truant when he returns. They also get drunk atrestaurant dinners, and then call their lovers--quite correctly, but notagreeably--"Cochon!" "Sale bête, " etc. This of course is what our_fin-de-siècle_ critics _could_ "recommend to a friend. " But if the reader thinks that this summary is a prelude to anything likethe "slate" that I thought it proper to bestow upon _Les LiaisonsDangereuses_, or even to such remarks as those made on the Goncourts, heis quite mistaken. Laclos had, as it seemed to me, a disgusting subjectand no real compensation of treatment. In _Bel-Ami_ the merits of thetreatment are very great. The scenes pass before you; the charactersplay their part in the scenes--if not in an engaging manner, in acompletely life-like one. There is none of the _psychologie decommande_, which I object to in Laclos, but a true adumbration of life. The music-hall opening; the first dinner-party; the journalist scenes;the death of Forestier and the proposal of re-marriage over hiscorpse;[487] the honeymoon journey to Normandy--a dozen otherthings--could not be better done in their way, though this way may notbe the best. It did not fall to me to review _Bel-Ami_ when it came out, but I do not think I should have made any mistake about it if it had. There are weak points technically; for instance, the character ofMadeleine Forestier, afterwards Duroy--still later caught in flagrantdelict and divorced--is left rather enigmatic. But the general technique(with the reservations elsewhere made) is masterly, and two passages--aVigny-like[488] descant on Death by the old poet Norbert de Varenne andthe death-scene of Forestier itself--give us Maupassant in that mood of_macabre_ sentiment--almost Romance--which chequers and purifies hisNaturalism. But the main objection which I should take to the book is neithertechnical nor goody. The late Mr. Locker, in, I think, that mostfascinating "New Omniana" _Patchwork_, [489] tells how, in theTravellers' Club one day, a haughty member thereof expressed surprisethat he should see Mr. Locker going to the corner-house next door. Theamiable author of _London Lyrics_ was good enough to explain that somenot uninteresting people also used the humbler establishment--bishops, authors, painters, cabinet-ministers, etc. "Ah!" said the Traverser ofPerilous Ways, "that would be all very well if one _wanted_ to meet thatsort of people. But, you see, one _doesn't_ want to meet them. " Now, Ido not want to meet anybody in _Bel-Ami_; in fact, I would much rathernot. [Sidenote: _Une Vie. _] _Une Vie_ is, in this respect and others, a curious pendant to_Bel-Ami_. It illustrates another side of Maupassant's pessimism--theovertly, but for the most part quietly, tragic. It might almost(borrowing a second title from the _Index_) call itself "Jeanne; ou LesMalheurs de la Vertu. " The heroine is perfectly innocent, though both a_femmelette_ and a fool. She never does any harm, nor, except throughweakness and folly, deserves that any should be done to her. But she hasan unwise and not blameless though affectionate and generous father, with a mother who is an invalid, and whom, after her death, the daughterdiscovers to have been, in early days, no better than she should be. Both of them are, if not exactly spendthrifts, "wasters, " very mainlythrough careless and excessive generosity. She marries the first youngman of decent family, looks, and manners that she comes across; and heturns out to be stingy, unfaithful in the most offensive way, with herown maid and others, and unkind. She loses him, by the vengeance of ahusband whom he has wronged, and her second child is born dead inconsequence of this shock. Her first she spoils for some twenty years, till he goes off with a concubine and nearly ruins his mother. We leaveher consoling herself, in a half-imbecile fashion, with a grandchild. Her only earthly providence is her _bonne_ Rosalie, the same who hadbeen her husband's mistress, but a very "good sort" otherwise. The bookis charged with grime of all kinds. It certainly cannot be said of M. DeMaupassant, to alter the pronoun in Mr. Kipling's line, that "[_He_]never talked obstetrics when the little stranger came, " for _Une Vie_contains two of these delectable scenes; and in other respects we aretreated with the utmost "candour. " But the book is again saved by somewonderful passages--specially those giving Jeanne's first night at thesea-side _château_ which is to be her own, and her last visit to it aquarter of a century after, when it has passed to strangers--andgenerally by the true tragedy which pervades it. When Maupassant tookSorrow into cohabitation and collaboration, there was no danger of theresult. _Mont-Oriol_, though not, save in one respect, the most "arresting" ofMaupassant's books, has rather more varied and at the same time coherentinterest than some others. It is also that one which most directlyillustrates--on the great scale--the general principles of theNaturalist school. Not, indeed, in specially grimy fashion, though thereis the usual adultery (_not_ behind the scenes) and the (for Maupassant)not unusual _accouchement_. (His fondness for this most unattractiveepisode of human life is astonishing: if he were a more pious person anda political feminist, one might think that he was trying to make usmodern Adams share the curse of Eve, at least to the extent of thedisgust caused by reading about its details. ) The main extra-amatorytheme throughout is the "physiologie" of an inland watering-place, itsextension by the discovery of new springs, the financing of them, thejealousies of the doctors, the megrims of the patients, etc. All theseare treated quite on the Zolaesque scheme, but with a lightness andbeauty not often reached by the master, though common enough in thepupil. [490] The description of Christiane Andermatt's first bath, andthe sensations of mild bliss that it gave her, is as true as it ispretty; and others of scenery have that vividness withoutover-elaboration which marks their author's work. Nor are hisironic-human touches wanting. Almost at its birth he satirises, in hisown quiet Swiftian way, an absurd tendency which has grown mightilysince, and flourishes now: "'Très _moderne_'--entre ses lèvres, était lecomble de l'admiration. " As for the love-affair itself, one's feelingstowards it are mixed. A good deal of it shows that unusual grasp of theproper ways of the game with which Maupassant is fully credited here. Personally, I should not, after quoting Baudelaire to a lady (so far sogood), inform her that I was a donkey for expecting her to enjoyanything so subtle. But perhaps Paul Brétigny, though neglectful of theSeventh Commandment, was an honester man than I am. And it is quite truethat Christiane was _not_ subtle. Her hot lover's[491] cooling partlydated from the time when she expected him to show palpable interest inthe fact that she was likely to have a child by him. And though her cry(on the question what name this infant, of course accepted as his own bythe unfortunate Andermatt, should bear) that as for _her_ name, "Celàpromet trop de souffrances de porter le nom du Crucifié, " could not bebetter as a general sentiment, the particular circumstances in which itis uttered show a slight want of grace of congruity. Still, the minorcharacters are not only more in number, but more interesting than isalways the case; and the book, if you skip the obstetrics, is readablethroughout. Yet it is, to use wine-language, not above "Maupassant_premier bourgeois_, " except in some of the earlier love-scenes. [Sidenote: _Fort comme la Mort. _] In _Fort comme la Mort_ the author rises far above these two books, powerful as they are in parts. The basis is indeed the invariable andunsatisfactory "triangle. " But the structure built on it might almosthave been lifted to another, and stands foursquare in nearly allrespects of treatment. The chief technical objection that can be broughtagainst it is that there is a certain want of air and space; theimportant characters are too few, the situations too uniform; so that akind of oppression results. Olivier Bertin, one of the most popular ofParisian painters though no longer young, a great man of society, etc. , has, for many years, been the lover of the Countess de Guilleroy, and, of course, the dear friend of her husband. We are introduced to themjust at the time when a sort of disgust of middle age is coming overhim, as well as a certain feeling that the springs of his genius arerunning low. He is not tired of the Countess, who is passionatelydevoted to him; and, except that they do not live together, theirrelations are rather conjugal than anything else. Just at this momenther daughter Annette comes home from a country life with hergrandmother, and proves to be the very double of what her mother was inher own youth. Bertin, without ceasing to love the mother, conceives afrantic passion for the daughter; and the vicissitudes of this take upthe book. At last the explosives of the situation are "fused, " as onemay say, by one of the newspaper attacks of youth on age. Annette'sapproaching marriage, and this _Figaro_ critique of his own"old-fashioned" art, put Bertin beside himself. Either hurryingheedlessly along, or deliberately exposing himself, he is run over by anomnibus, is mortally hurt, and dies with the Countess sitting beside himand receiving his last selfishness--a request that she will bring thegirl to see him before he dies. The story, though perhaps, as has been said, too much concentrated as awhole, is brilliantly illuminated by sketches of society on the greaterand smaller scale: of Parisian club-life; of picture-shows; of thediversions of the country, etc. : but its effect, though certainly helpedby, is not derived from, these. As always with Maupassant, it is out ofthe bitter that comes the sweet. Hardly anywhere outside of_Ecclesiastes_, Thackeray, [492] and Flaubert is the irony of life moreconsummately handled in one peculiar fashion; while the actual _passion_of love is nowhere better treated by this author, [493] or perhaps byany other French novelist of the later century, except Fromentin. [Sidenote: _Pierre et Jean. _] The line of ascent was continued in _Pierre et Jean_. It is not a longbook--a fact which perhaps has some significance--and no small part ofit is taken up by a Preface on "Le Roman" generally (_v. Sup. _), whichis the author's most remarkable piece of criticism; one of the mostnoteworthy from a man who was not specially a critic; and one of the fewbut precious examples of an artist dealing, at once judicially andmasterfully, with his own art. [494] In fact, recognising the truth ofthe "poetic moment, " he would extend it to the moments of allliterature; and lays it down that the business of the novelist is, firstto realise his own illusion of the world and then to make others realiseit too. _Pierre et Jean_ itself has no weakness except that _narrowing_ ofinterest which has been already noted in Maupassant, and which is rathera limitation than a positive fault. There is practically one situationthroughout; and though there are several characters, their interestdepends almost wholly on their relations with the central personage. This is Pierre Roland, a full-fledged physician of thirty, but not yetsuccessful, and still living with, and on, his parents. His father is aretired Paris tradesman, who has come to live at Havre to indulge amania for sea-fishing; he has a mother who is rather above her husbandin some ways; and a brother, Jean, who, though considerably younger, isalso ready to start in his own profession--that of the law. A "friend ofthe family, " Mme. Rosémilly--a young, pretty, and rather well-to-dowidow--completes the company, with one or two "supers. " Just as thestory opens, a large legacy to Jean by an older friend of thefamily--this time a man--is announced, to the surprise of almosteverybody, but at first only causing a little natural jealousy inPierre. Charitable remarks of outsiders, however, suggest to him thetruth--that Jean is the fruit of his mother's adultery with thetestator--and this "works like poison in his brain, " till--Jean, havinggained another piece of luck in Mme. Rosémilly's hand, and having, though enlightened by Pierre and by his mother's confession, verycommon-sensibly decided that he will not resign the legacy, smirched asit is--Pierre accepts a surgeon-ship on a Transatlantic steamer, and thestory ends. On its own scheme and showing there is scarcely a fault in it. The meresettings--the fishing and prawn-catching; the scenery of port and cliff;the "interiors"; the final sailing of the great ship--are perfect. Theminor characters--the good-tempered, thick-headed _bourgeois_ husbandand father; the wife and mother, with her bland acceptance of thetransferred wages of shame, and (after discovery only) her breaking downwith the banal blasphemy of "marriage before God" and the rest of it;the younger brother--not exactly a bad fellow, but thoroughly convincedof the truth of _non olet_; the widow playing her part and no more, --allare artistically just what they should be. And so, always rememberingscale and scheme, is Pierre. One neither likes him (for he is notexactly a likeable person) nor dislikes him (for he is quite excusable)very much; one is only partially sorry for him. But one knows that he_is_--he has that actual and indubitable existence which is the test andquality alike of creator and creation. His first vague envy of hisbrother's positive luck in money and probable luck in love--for bothhave had floating fancies for the pretty widow; the again perfectlynatural spleen when this lucky brother, by an accident, secures theparticular set of rooms in which Pierre had hoped to improve hisposition as a doctor; the crushing blow of finding out his mother'sshame; the process (the truest thing in the whole book, though it is alltrue) by which he tortures both her and himself in constant obliquereferences to her fault; the explosion when he directly informs hisbrother; and all the rest, could hardly be improved. It is not a novelon the great scale, but rather what may be called a long short story. Itdoes not quite attain to the position of some books on a small scale indifferent kinds--_Manon Lescaut_ itself, _Adolphe_, _La Tentation deSaint-Antoine_. But the author has done what he meant to do, and hasdone it in such a fashion that it could not, on its own lines, be donebetter. Maupassant's last novel of some magnitude, _Notre Coeur_, was writtenwhen the shadow was near enveloping him; and it cannot be said to havethe perfection of _Pierre et Jean_. But it still rises higher in certainvery important ways--it is perhaps the book that one likes him best for, outside of pure comedy; and there is none which impresses one more withthe sense of his loss to French literature. [Sidenote: _Notre Coeur. _] The story, like all Maupassant's stories, is of the simplest. AndréMariolle, a well-to-do young Parisian bachelor of no profession, is amember of a set of mostly literary and artistic people, almost all ofwhom have, as a main rendezvous, the house of a beautiful, wealthy, andvariously gifted young widow, Mme. De Burne. She lives chaperoned in amanner by her father; indisposed to a second marriage by the fact thatshe has had a tyrannical husband; accepting homage from all herfamiliars and being very gracious in differing degrees to all of them;but having no "lover in title" and not even being suspected of having(in the French novel-sense[495]) any "lover" at all. For a long timeMariolle has, from whim, refused introduction to her, but at last heconsents to be taken to the house by his friend the musician Massival, and of course falls a victim. It cannot be said that she is aCirce, [496] nor that, as perhaps might be expected, she revenges herselffor his holding aloof by snaring and throwing him away. Quite thecontrary. She shows him special favour: when she has to go to stay withfriends at Avranches she privately asks him to follow her; and finally, when the party pass the night at Mont Saint-Michel, shecomes--uninvited, though of course much longed for--to his room, and (asthey used to say with elaborate decency) "crowns his flame. " Nor doesshe turn on him--as again might be expected--even then. On the contrary, she comes constantly to a secret Eden which he has prepared for her inParis, and though, after long practice of this, she is sometimes ratherlate, and once or twice actually puts off her assignation, it is "nomore than reason, "[497] and she by no means jilts or threatens jilting, though she tells him frankly that his way of loving (which _is_ morethan reason) is not hers. At last he cannot endure seeing her surroundedwith admirers, and flies to Fontainebleau, where he is partly--onlypartly--consoled by a pretty and devoted _bonne_. Yet he sends adespairing cry to Mme. De Burne; and she, gracious as ever, actuallycomes to see him, and induces him to return to Paris. He does so, buttakes the _bonne_ Elisabeth with him; and the book ends abruptly, leaving the reader to imagine what is the outcome of this "doublearrangement"--or failure to arrange. But, as always with Maupassant's longer stories and not quite never withhis shorter ones, the "fable is the least part. " The "atmosphere"; theprojection of character and passion; the setting; the situations; thephrase--these are the thing. And, except for the enigmatic and"stump-ended" conclusion, and for a certain overdose of words (whichrather grew on him), they make a very fine thing. It is here that, onone side at least, the author's conception of love--which at some timesmight appear little more than animal, at others conventional-capriciousin a fashion which makes that of Crébillon universal and sincere--hassublimed itself, as it had begun to do in _Fort comme la Mort_ (_Pierreet Jean_ is in this respect something of a divagation), into very nearlythe true form of the Canticles and Shakespeare, of Donne and Shelley andHeine, of Hugo and Musset and Browning. But it is curious, in the firstplace, that he whom his friends fondly called a _fier mâle_, who hassometimes pushed masculinity near to brutality, and who is alwayscynical more or less, has made his André Mariolle, though a very goodlover, a distinct weakling in love. He is a "too quick despairer, " andhis despair is more illogical than even a lover's has a right to be. Andthis is very interesting, because, evidently without the author'sknowledge (though perhaps, if things had gone more happily, he mighthave come to that knowledge later), it shows the rottenness of thefoundation, and the flimsiness of the superstructure, on and in whichthe Covenant of Adultery--even that of Free Love--is built. Michelle deBurne gives André Mariolle everything with one exception, if even withthat, that the greediest lover can want. She "distinguishes" him atonce; she shows keen desire for his company; she makes the last (orfirst) surrender like a goddess answering a hopeless and unspokenprayer; she is strangely generous in continuing the _don d'amoureuxmerci_; she never really wearies of or jilts him, though he is a mostexacting lover; and when he has flung away from her she allows him, inthe most gracious manner, to whistle himself back. But there is onething, or rather two which are one, that she will not, or perhapscannot, give him. It is the idealised passion which nature has denied toher, though not to him, and the absolute faithfulness and "forsaking ofall others" proper to what?--to a perfect wife. So here, in the realmsof spouse-breach, marriage is once more king, or rather the throne isfelt to be empty--the kingdom an anarchy--without it! The lighter side of the matter reminds one of two celebratedutterances. The first is Paul de Florac's criticism on the LadyClara-Barnes-Highgate triangle, "Do not adopt our institutions _àdemi_. " Here the situation is topsy-turvied in the most curious fashion, for it is the character of marriage that is desiderated in the absencethereof, and in a country where that character itself is scoffed at. Further, it reminds one still more of Sydney Smith's excellent jest whenLady Holland, having previously asked him to stay at Holland House, senthim a formal invitation to dinner, for a day within the period of thelarger hospitality. This, said Sydney, was "an attempt to combine thestimulus of gallantry with the security of connubial relations. " Thatwas precisely the moon that Mariolle sighed for, and that his notexactly Artemis would not--indeed could not be expected to--give him. Of Michelle de Burne herself there is less to be said. The curiousmisogyny which chequered Maupassant's gynomania seems to have tried hardto express itself in her portrait. It is less certain that it does. Theother characters are quite subordinate, except the _bonne_ Elisabeth(who, promising as she is, merely makes her _début_) and a novelist, Gaston de Lamarthe, who may sometimes be taken as the author'smouthpiece, but who does not do him justice. The book on the whole doesmuch to confirm, and hardly anything to invalidate, the position thatits writer had far more to say than he ever said. [Sidenote: _Les Dimanches_, etc. ] The ordinary list of Maupassant's "Romans, " as distinct from "Nouvelles"and "Contes, " ends with _Les Dimanches d'un Bourgeois de Paris_. This, however, is merely a series of tales (some of them actually rehandledfrom earlier ones), with a single figure for centre, to wit, a certainM. Patissot, a bachelor government-official, who is a sort of mixture ofLeech's Mr. Briggs and of Jérôme Paturot, with other predecessors whoget into scrapes and "fixtures. " It is not unamusing, but scarcelyfirst-class, the two political skits at the end being about the bestpart of it. [Sidenote: _Yvette. _] On the other hand, _Yvette_, which is only allowed the eponymship of avolume of short stories, though it fills to itself some hundred andseventy pages, is one of Maupassant's most carefully written things andone of his best--till the not fully explained, but in any caseunsatisfactory, end[498]. Its heroine is the daughter of a sham Marquiseand real courtesan, who has attained wealth, who can afford herselflovers "for love"[499] and not for money, when she chooses, and whokeeps up a sort of demi-monde society, in which most of the men areadventurers and all the women adventuresses, but which maintains outwarddecencies. In consequence of this Yvette herself--in a fashion a littleimpossible, but artistically made not improbable--though she allowsherself the extreme "tricks and manners" of faster society, calls halfthe men by nicknames, wanders about alone with them, etc. , preserves notmerely her personal purity but even her ignorance of unclean things ingeneral, and especially of her mother's real character and conduct. Herrelations with a clever and not ungentlemanly _roué_, one M. DeServigny; his difficulties (these are very curiously and cleverly told)in making love to a girl not of the lower class (at least apparently)and not vicious; his attempt to brusque the matter; her horror at it andat the coincident discovery of her mother's ways; her attempt to poisonherself; and her salvage by Servigny's coolness and devotion--arecapitally done. Out of many passages, one, where Madame la MarquiseObardi, otherwise Octavie Bardin, formerly domestic servant, drops hermask, opens her mouth, and uses the crude language of a procuress-motherto her daughter, is masterly. But the end is not from any point of viewsatisfactory. Apparently (for it is not made quite clear) Yvetteretracts her refusal to be a kept mistress. In that case certainly, andin the almost impossible one of marriage probably, it may be feared thatthe catastrophe is only postponed. Now Yvette has been made too good (Ido not mean goody) to be allowed to pine or poison herself, as asoon-to-be-neglected concubine or a not-much-longer-to-be-loved wife. [Sidenote: Short stories--the various collections. ] That the very large multitude[500] of his short stories (or, one begspardon, brief-narratives) is composed of units very different in meritis not wonderful. It was as certain that the covers of the author of_Boule de Suif_[501] would be drawn for the kind of thing frequently, asthat these would sometimes be drawn either blank, or with the result ofa very indifferent run. To an eye of some expertness, indeed, a goodmany of these pieces are, at best, the sort of thing that a clevercontributor would turn off to editorial order, when he looked into anewspaper office between three and five, or ten and midnight. I confessthat I once burst out laughing when, having thought to myself on readingone, "This is not much above a better written Paul-de-Kockery, " I foundat the end something like a frank acknowledgment of the fact, _with thename_. In fact, Maupassant was not good at the pure _grivoiserie_; hiscontemporary M. Armand Silvestre (_v. Inf. _) did it much better. Touchesof tragedy, as has been said, save the situation sometimes, and atothers the supernatural element of dread (which was to culminate in _LeHorla_, and finally to overpower the author himself) gives help; but thezigzags of the line of artistic success are sharp and far too numerous. For a short story proper and a "proper" short story, _L'Épave_, where aninspector of marine insurance visits a wreck far out on the sands of theIsle of Rhé, and, finding an Englishman and his daughter there, mostunprofessionally forgets that the tides come up rapidly in such places, is nearly perfect. On the other hand, _Le Rosier de Mme. Husson_, one ofthe longest, is almost worthless. [Sidenote: Classes--stories of 1870-71. ] At one time I had designed--and to no small extent written--a runningsurvey of a large number of these stories as they turn up in thevolumes, most of which--the _Contes de la Bécasse_ is the chiefexception--have no unity, and are merely "scoopings" of pieces enough tofill three hundred pages or so. But it would have occupied far too muchspace for its importance and interest. As a matter of fact, they are tosome extent classifiable, and so may be dealt with on a representativesystem. There is the division of "La Revanche, " which might have savedsome of our fools at home from mistaking the Prussian for anything but aPrussian. _Boule de Suif_ heads this, of course; but _Mlle. Fifi_, whichis a sort of tragic _Boule de Suif_--the tragedy being, one is glad tosay, at the invaders' expense--is not far below it. _Deux Amis_, one ofthe best, records how two harmless Parisian anglers, pursuing theirbeloved sport too far, were shot for refusing to betray the passwordback; and _La Mère Sauvage_, the finest of all, how a French mother, hearing of her son's death, burnt her own house with some Germansbilleted in it, and was, on her frank confession, shot. But _Un Duel_, though a Prussian officer (_vile damnum_) pays for his brutality withhis life, restores the comic element, partly at the expense of the twoEnglish seconds. [502] Connected with the war of 1870 too, though not military, is the capital_Coup d'État_, in which a Monarchist French squire checkmates, for themoment at least, a blatant Republican village doctor. [Sidenote: Norman stories. ] Very much larger than any other group is, naturally enough, that onNorman subjects. Maupassant does not flatter his fellow-subjects of thegreat Duchy, but he loves them, and knows them, and delights to talk ofthem--talking always well and often at his best. There must be, in all, several volumes-full of these, though they are actually scattered over adozen: and it is not easy to go wrong with them. Perhaps a new "Farce duCuvier, " quite different from those known to readers of Boccaccio andthe Fabliaux (a very drunk peasant sells his wife[503] by weight ormeasure to another, and scientifically ascertains the exact sum to bepaid by making her fill a butt with water and putting her into it--thedisplacement giving the required result) is the merriest. The story ofthe schoolboy who negotiates a marriage between his Latin tutor and ayoung person is excellent; and that of "Boitelle, " a poor fellow who isprevented (through that singular abuse of _patria potestas_ so longallowed by French law) from marrying an agreeable negress, is the mostpathetic. But I myself am rather fond of the _Légende du MontSaint-Michel_. At first one is a little shocked at finding "the greatvision of the guarded mount"[504] yoked to the old Scandinaviantroll-and-farmer story of the fraudulent bargain as to alternate upper-and under-ground crops. But the magnificent opening description of "thefairy castle planted in the sea"[505] excuses, and is thrown up by, thesequel. Mont-Saint-Michel is not like Naples. When you have seen it, itis not your business to die, but to live and remember the sight of it;and, if you are lucky, your remembrance will have anticipatedMaupassant's words, and be freshened by them. [Sidenote: Algerian and Sporting. ] Algiers and the Riviera were also fruitful in quantity, rather less soin quality. But on the former two stories, _Allouma_ and _Au Soir_, maybe found together, the whole of the first of which, and the beginning ofthe second, are first-rate. The above mentioned _Contes de la Bécasse_are almost all good, though by no means all sporting. [Sidenote: Purely comic. ] For pure comedy one might put as the first three--with the caution thatMrs. Grundy had better keep away from them--_Les Soeurs Rondoli_, [506]for which I feel certain that, when Maupassant reached the ElysianFields, Aristophanes and Rabelais jointly requested the pleasure ofintroducing him to the company, and crowned him with the choicestlaurels; _Mouche_, which is really touching as well as tickling at theend, though the grave and precise must be doubly warned off this; and_Enragée_--which is a sort of blend of an old smoking-room story of theperils of the honeymoon when new, and that curious tale[507] of Vigny'swhich has been given above. [Sidenote: Tragic. ] For pure, or almost pure, tragedy and pathos, again, _Monsieur Parent_stands first--the history of the late vengeance of a deceived husbandand friend. _Miss Harriet_ gives us something more than a stageEnglishwoman with large feet, projecting teeth, tartan skirts, andtracts, though it gives us this too. _Madame Baptiste_--the very shorttale of a hapless woman who, having been the victim of crime in heryouth, is pursued by the scandal thereof to suicide, in spite of herhaving found a worthy husband--is one of Maupassant's intensest. [Sidenote: Tales of Life's Irony. ] As examples, bending sometimes to the comic, sometimes to the patheticside of studies in the irony of life, one may recommend _A Cheval_ (aholiday taken by a poor but well-born family, which saddles them with anunconscionable "run-over" Old-_Wo_man-of-the-_Land_); _La Parure_ and_Les Bijous_ (the first a variant of _A Cheval_, the second a discoveryby a husband, after his wife's death, of her shame); and perhaps best ofall, _Regret_, in which a gentleman of sixty, reflecting on his wastedlife, remembers a picnic, decades earlier, where the wife of hislifelong friend--both of them still friends and neighbours--behavedrather oddly. He hurries across to ask her (whom he finds jam-making)what she would have done if he had "failed in respect, " and receives thecool answer, "J'aurais cédé. " It is good; but fancy not being able totake a walk, and observe the primroses by the river's brim, withoutbeing bound in honour to observe likewise whether the lady by your sidewas ready to "cede" or not! It seems to me that in such circumstancesone would, to quote a French critic on an entirely different author andmatter, "lose all the grace and liberty of the composition. " [Sidenote: Oddments. ] Some oddments[508] may deserve addition. _Fini_, which might have beenmentioned in the last group, is a very perfect thing. A well-preserveddandy in middle age meets, after many years, an old love, and sees, mirrored in _her_ decay, his own so long ignored. Nobody save a mastercould have done this as it is done. _Julie Romain_ is a quainthalf-dream based on some points in George Sand's life, and attractive. The _title_ of _L'Inutile Beauté_ has also always been so to me (the_story_ is worth little). It would be, I think, a fair test of any man'staste in style, whether he did or did not see any difference between itand _La Beauté Inutile_. In _Adieu_, I think, Maupassant has been guiltyof a fearful heresy in speaking of part of a lady's face as "ce _sot_organe qu'on appelle le nez. " Now that a nose, both in man and woman, can be foolish, nobody will deny. But that foolishness is an organiccharacteristic of it--in the sense of inexpressiveness, want ofcharacter, want of charm--is flatly a falsehood. [509] Neither mouth noreyes can beat it in that respect; and if it has less varietyindividually, it gives perhaps more general character to the face thaneither. However, he is, if I mistake not, obliged to retract partiallyin the very story. I have notes of many others--some of which may be special favouriteswith readers of mine--but room for no more. Yet for me at least amongall these, despite the glaring inequality, despite the presence of somethings utterly ephemeral and not in the least worth giving a new day to;despite the "_saleté_ bête"[510] and the monotonous and obligatoryadultery, [511] there abides, as in the large books, and fromcircumstances now and then with gathered intensity, that quality ofabove-the-commonness which has obliged me to speak of Maupassant as Ihave spoken. [Sidenote: General considerations. ] The vividness and actuality of his power of presentation areunquestioned, and there has been complaint rather of the character ofhis "illusions" (_v. Sup. _) than of his failure to convey them toothers. It is not merely that nature, helped by the discipline ofpractice under the severest of masters, had endowed him with a style ofthe most extraordinary sobriety and accuracy--the style of a morescholarly, reticent, and tightly-girt Defoe. It is not merely that hisvision, and his capacity of reproducing that vision, were unsurpassedand rarely equalled for sharpness of outline and perfection ofdisengagement. He had something else which it is much less easy to putinto words--the power of treating an incident or a character (character, it is true, less often and less fully than incident) as if it were aphrase or a landscape, of separating it, carving it out (so to speak), and presenting it isolated and framed for survey. His performances inthese tracks are so numerous that it is difficult to single out any. ButI do not know that finer examples (besides those noticed above in _UneVie_) of his power of thus isolating and projecting a scene are to befound than two of the passages in _Pierre et Jean_, the prawn-catchingparty and Pierre's meditation at the jetty-head. Of his similar butgreater faculty of treating incident _and_ character _Monsieur Parent_is perhaps the very finest example (for _Boule de Suif_ is somethinggreater than a mere slice), though _Promenade_, _Les Soeurs Rondoli_, _Boitelle_, _Deux Amis_, and others are almost as good. But this veryexcellence of our author's carries with it a danger which most of hisreaders must have recognised. His definition and vignetting of separatescenes, incidents, and characters is so sharp and complete that he findsa difficulty in combining them. The attempt to disdain and depreciateplot which the above-mentioned Preface contains is, I suspect (though Iam, as often confessed, no plot-worshipper), as our disdains anddepreciations so often are, itself a confession. At any rate, it isallowed that the longer books, with the exception of _Pierre et Jean_(which was for that very reason, and perhaps for others, disdained bythe youngest and most impressionist school of critics), are deficient inbeginning, middle, and end. _Une Vie_ and _Bel-Ami_ are surveys orchronicles, not dramas or histories. _Mont-Oriol_, open enough toobjection in some ways, is rather better in this point. _Fort Comme laMort_ relapses under the old curse of the situation of teasingunhappiness from which there is no outlet, and in which there is littleaction. _Notre Coeur_ should perhaps escape criticism on this head, asthe shadow of the author's fate was already heavy on him. In fact, asobserved above, it is little more than a torso. Even _Pierre et Jean_, by far the greatest of all, if scale and artistic perfection be takentogether, falls short in the latter respect of _Boule de Suif_, which, small as it is, is a complete tragi-comedy in little, furnished withbeginning, middle, and end, complying fully with those older exigenceswhich its author affected to despise, and really as great as anything ofMérimée's--greater it could not be. There is no doubt that the theory which Maupassant says he learnt fromFlaubert (in whose own hands it was always subordinated to an effort atlarger completeness) does lead to the composition of a series or flockof isolated vignettes or scenes rather than to that of a great pictureor drama. For it comes perilously close--though perhaps in Maupassant'sown case it never actually reached--the barest and boldest (or baldest)individualising of impressions, and leaving them as they are, without anattempt at architectonic. For instance, once upon a time[512] I waswalking down the Euston Road. There passed me a fellow dragging atruck, on which truck there were three barrels with the heads knockedout, so that each barrel ensheathed, to a certain extent, the one infront of it. Astride of the centre barrel, his arms folded and a pipe inhis mouth, there sat a man in a sort of sailor-costume--trousers, guernsey, and night-cap--surveying the world, and his fellow who draggedhim, with an air of placid _goguenarderie_. It was really a strikingimpression, and absorbed me, I should think, for five or six seconds. Ican conceive its coming into a story very well. But Maupassant'stheories would have led to his making a whole story out of it, and hisfollowers have already done things quite as bad, while he has himselfcome near to it more than once. [513] In other words, the method tends tothe presentations of scraps, orts, fragments, instead of completewholes. And Art should always seek the whole. As for the character of Maupassant's "illusions, " there could never bemuch doubt about some of them. _Boule de Suif_ itself pretty clearlyindicated, and _La Maison Tellier_ shortly after showed, at the veryopening of his literary career, the scenes, the society, and the solaceswhich he most affected: while it was impossible to read even two orthree of his stories without discovering that, to M. De Maupassant, theworld was most emphatically _not_ the best of all possible worlds. Thiswas by no means principally shown in the stories of supernatural terrorto which, with an inconsistency by no means uncommon in declaredmaterialists, and, had it not been for his unhappy end, very amusing, hewas so much given. The chief of these, _Le Horla_, has not been much ofa favourite with the lovers of "ghost-stories" in general. I think theyare rather unjust to it. But if it has a fault, that fault lies (and, toavoid the charge of being wise after the event, I may observe that Ithought so at the time) in too much conviction. The darkness is darknesswhich has been felt, and felt so much by the artist that he has losthis artistic grasp and command. There was, perhaps, in his own actualstate, too much reason for this. In earlier things of the kind it isless perceptible. _Fou?_ is rather splendid. _Auprès d'un Mort_--ananecdote of the death-bed of Schopenhauer, whom Maupassant naturallyadmired as the greatest of _saccageurs de rêves_, though there are somewho, admiring the first master of thoroughly good German prose style andone of the best of German critics, have kept the fort of their dreamssafe from all he could do--has merits. _Lettre trouvée sur un noyé_ isgood; _L'Horrible_ not quite so good; _Le Loup_ (a sort of fancy fromthe "bête du Gévaudan" story) better; _Apparition_ of the best, with _LaMorte_ to pair it, and _Un Cas de Divorce_ and _Qui sait?_ to make upthe quartette. Perhaps the best of all (I do not specify its title inorder that those who do not know it may read till they find it out) isthat where the visionary sees the skeletons of the dead rising andtransforming their lying epitaphs into confessions--the last tomb nowbearing the true cause of his own mistress's death. But thedouble-titled _La Nuit--Cauchemar_ runs it hard. Yet it is not in these stories of doubt and dread, or in the ostensibleand rather shallow philosophisings of the travel-books, thatMaupassant's pessimism is most obvious. His preference for the unhappyending amounts almost to a _tic_, and would amount wholly to abore--for _toujours_ unhappy-ending is just as bad as _toujours_marriage-bells--if it were not relieved and lightened by a real presenceof humour. With this sovereign preservative for self, and more sovereigncharm for others, Guy de Maupassant was more richly provided than any ofhis French contemporaries, and more than any but a very few of hiscountrymen at any time. And as humour without tenderness is animpossibility, so, too, he could be and was tender. Yet it was seldomand _malgré lui_, while he allowed the mere exercise of his humouritself too scantily for his own safety and his readers' pleasure. Thatthere was any more _fanfaronnade_ either of vice or of misanthropyabout him, I do not believe. An unfortunate conformity of innatetemperament and acquired theory made such a _fanfaronnade_ asunnecessary as it would have been repugnant to him. But illusion, insuch cases, is more dangerous, if less disgusting, than imposture. Andso it happened that, in despite of the rare and vast faculties justallowed him, he was constantly found applying them to subjectsdistasteful if not disgraceful, and allowing the results to be sickliedover with a persistent "soot-wash" of pessimism which was always rathermonotonous, and not always very impressive. It was, of course, inevitable that, on this side of the Channel atleast, strictures should be passed--and appealed against--on a writer ofthis kind. The impropriety of M. De Maupassant's subjects, the"cruelty, " the "brutality, " the "pessimism, " and what not, of hishandling, were sure to be denounced or defended, as the case may be. Although the merely "shoking" tone (as the spelling dear to Frenchmenhas it) has waned persistently ever since his day, expressions in ithave not been wanting; while, on the other hand, newer-fashioned andprobably younger censors have scornfully waved aside the veryconsideration of this part of the subject. Further, no less a criticthan my friend Mr. Traill entered, long ago, a protest against theadmission of Maupassant's pessimism as a drawback. "He did not, " saysMr. Traill (I quote from memory), "_pose_ as a pessimist; he wasperfectly sincere, and an artist's sincere life-philosophy, whatever itis, is not to be urged against the products of his art. " I think that these questions require a little discussion, even in ageneral _History_. With reference to the impropriety matter, I have myself, after alifetime of fighting against the _hérésie de l'enseignement_, not thevery slightest intention of deserting to or transacting with it. I domost heartily agree and affirm that the subject of a work of art is not, as such, the better or the worse, the more or the less legitimate, because of its tastefulness or distastefulness on moral considerations. But there is a perpetual danger, when we are clearing our minds of onecant, of allowing them to be invaded by another; and I think I have seencases where the determination not to be moral of malice prepense hasbeen so great that it has toppled over into a determination to beimmoral of malice prepense. Now, the question is, whether Maupassant andsome of Maupassant's admirers are not somewhat in this case? It issurely impossible for any impartial critic to contend that the unluckynovelist's devotion to the class of subjects referred to, and his mannerof handling them, did not amount to what has been pedantically, butaccurately, termed an "obsession of the _lupanar_. " Now, it seems to methat all obsession, no matter of what class or kind, is fatal, or, atleast, injurious, to the artist. It is almost impossible that he shouldkeep his judgment and his taste cool and clear under it; it is almostimpossible that his poring shall not turn into preaching. And I think itnot much less hard to defend Maupassant from the charge of having becomea kind of preacher in this way, and so a heretic of instruction, just asmuch as if he had taken to theology, dogmatic or undogmatic. Perpetualrepresentation amounts to inculcation. [514] So, again, in reference to the apologies for Maupassant's pessimism. Icannot see how it can be contended that the perpetual obtrusion of alife-philosophy of any special kind is other than a fault in art. I haveno particular objection to pessimism as such; I suppose most people whohave thought and felt a good deal are nearer to it than to its opposite;and, though both opposites bore me when they are obtruded, I thinkrose-pink and sky-blue bore me rather more than the various shades ofgrey and brown and black. I admit further that, but for the pessimist_diathesis_, we might not have had that peculiar tragedy in which hehas been admitted to excel. But it seems to me that the creative artist, as such, and as distinguished from the critical, has no more business todisplay--to _arborer_--a life-philosophy, than he has to display aphilosophy of any other kind. Signs of it may escape him at times; butthey should be escapes, not deliberate exhibitions. He is to see lifewhole as far as he can; and it is impossible that he should see it wholeif he is under the domination of any 'ism to the extent that Maupassantwas under the domination of this. In the one supreme artist (I amtalking, of course, throughout of the art of letters only) whom we know, there is, perhaps, no more distinctive peculiarity than his elusion ofall attempts to class him as "Thissist" or "Thattist. " And in those whocome nearest to him, though they may have strong beliefs and strongproclivities, we always see the capacity of taking the other side. Thefervent theologian of the _Paradiso_ treats hardly any of his victimswith more consideration than the inhabitants of the City of Dis: theprophet and poet of his own Uranian love for Beatrice swoons at thesight of Francesca's punishment, and feels "so that boiling glass werecoolness, " the very penalty of the Seventh Circle of Purgatory. ButMaupassant's materialism and his pessimism combined shut out from himvast parts and regions of life and thought and feeling, as it were withthe blank wall of his very earliest poem. The fantastic shadows of hispeculiar imagination play on that wall fascinatingly enough; and theregion of passion and of gloom within is not without a charm, if asomewhat unholy and unhealthy one. But beyond the wall there is a wholeuniverse which Maupassant does not merely neglect, but of which he seemsto be blankly ignorant and unconscious, except in flashes of ignorantdisdain. That the infinite province of religious emotion and reflectionis shut out is a matter of course; but most of the other regions, inwhich those who decline religion take refuge, are equally closed. I canremember in Maupassant only the slightest signs of interest in generalliterature (except so far as it bears upon his own special craft), inthe illimitable ranges of history, in politics, in the higherphilosophy. [515] It cannot be said of him, as of his master's dismalheroes, that _tout lui a craqué dans la main_. There is no sign of trialon his part; he starts where Bouvard and Pécuchet end, and takes forgranted a failure which he has not given himself the trouble toexperience. But, it may be said, "What does it matter what he does not do, know, feel, care for, if he treats what he does do, know, feel, and care for, well?" The objection is ingenious, and, as Petruchio would say, "'amight have a little galled me" if its ingenuity had not been theingenuity of fallacy. For the question is whether this insensibility tolarge parts of life has not injured Maupassant's treatment of the partsin which he did feel an interest. I think it has. There were too manythings in emotion and in thought of which he was ignorant. Mrs. Piozzi, in her _Anecdotes of Johnson_, observes that the Doctor, despite hisfreedom from gush and his dislike to religious verse, could never repeatthe stanza of _Dies Irae_ which ends "Tantus labor non sit cassus"without bursting into tears. I know a person very different from Johnsonwho, though he had not read the _Anecdotes_ till an advanced period ofhis life, had never failed to experience something like the same resultat the same line. And, for a third point, it is well known that actualagnostics have often confessed to like affections in similar cases. Thenumerous and complicated causes of this weakness, or, if any one prefersto call them so, the numerous and complicated causes of this enjoyment, had no hold whatever on Maupassant. But this hemiplegia of the intellect and the imagination--thissterilising of one-half, or more than one-half, of the sources ofintellectual and imaginative experience and delight--did not prevent himfrom leaving durable and perdurable results of the vigour of his mindand his sense, in the regions which were open to him. He wrote--asalmost every popular writer in these days who does not shut himself upin a _tour d'ivoire_ and neglect popularity must write--too much; and, in the special circumstances and limitations of his interests and hisgenius, this was specially unfortunate. He repeated himself too often;and he too frequently failed to come up to himself in the repetition. The better part of him, as with Flaubert before, transcended--evenopenly contemned--the 'isms of his day: but he too often let himself besubservient to them, if he was never exactly their Helot. Yet in recompense--a recompense largely if not wholly due to the strongRomantic[516] element which countervails the Naturalist--he wascertainly the greatest novelist who was specially of the last quarter ofthe nineteenth century in France. In verse he showed the dawn, and inprose the noon-day, of a combination of veracity and vigour, ofsuccinctness and strength, which no Frenchman who made his _début_ since1870 could surpass. The limitations of his art have been sufficientlydealt with; the excellences of it within those limitations areunmistakable. He had no tricks--the worst curse of art at all times, andthe commonest in these days of what pretends to be art. He had no splashof so-called "style"; no acrobatic contortions of thought or what doesduty for thought; no pottering and peddling of the psychological kind, which would fain make up for a faulty product by ostentatiously paradingthe processes of production. Had he once got free--as more than once itseemed that he might--from the fatal conventionalities of hisunconventionalism, from the trammels of his obtrusive negations, thereis hardly a height in prose fiction which he might not have attained. Asit is, he gave us in verse _Au bord de l'eau_, which is nearly the"farthest possible" in a certain expression, of a certain mood of youth, and not of youth only; in prose _Boule de Suif_, _Monsieur Parent_, _Pierre et Jean_, which are all in their way masterpieces, and a hundredthings hardly inferior. And so he put himself in the company of "LesPhares"--a light-giver at once and a warner of danger, as well as a partof cet ardent sanglot qui roule d'âge en âge, Et vient mourir au bord de _notre_ éternité. [517] [Sidenote: Huysmans. ] The Naturalist rank and file are so far below Zola and Maupassant thatthey cannot now, whatever they might have done twenty years ago, claimmuch notice in such a history as this. The most remarkable of them wasprobably J. K. Huysmans. It has been charitably suggested or admittedabove that his contribution to the _Soirées de Médan_--a deeply feltstory, showing the extreme disadvantage, when, as Mr. De la Pluchedelicately put it, "your midlands are out of order, " of wanderingquarters and vicissitudes in the country, and the intense reliefexperienced on return to your own comfortable chambers in town, --thatthis _may_ have been written in the spirit of a _farceur_, reducing theGoncourtian and Zolaesque principle to the lowest terms of the absurd. But I am by no means sure that it was so, though this suspicion ofparody pursues the earlier work of Huysmans to such an extent that acertain class of critic might take his later developments as evidence ofdesign in it. _Les Soeurs Vatard_ is a sort of _apodiabolosis_ of theGoncourts and Zola--a history of entirely uninteresting persons (the"sisters" are work-girls in a printing-house, and their companions suitthem) doing entirely uninteresting things, in an atmosphere of foulsmells, on a scene littered with garbage, cheered by wine which is redink, and brandy which is vitriol. _À Rebours_, not really a novel atall, is the history of a certain M. Des Esseintes, who is a sort oftransposed "Bouvard et Pécuchet" in one--trying all arts and sensations;his experiences being made by his historian a vehicle of mostly virulentand almost always worthless criticism on contemporaries. Perhaps themost intolerable thing is the _affiche_ of idolatry for Baudelaire. Oneremembers the glorious lines: Et Charles Baudelaire Dédaigneux du salaire. He certainly might have been disdainful of the salary of the admirationof one of the _farceurs_ of his own "Coucher du Soleil Romantique. " Buton the whole there is a better way of taking leave of this firstNaturalist, and then mystic, and always _blagueur_. "Almost thoupersuadest me to be a Philistine. " Which perhaps was his cryptic andcircuitous intention. Later M. Huysmans took to Black Arts; and at thelast he turned devout--a sort of sequence not by any means uncommon, andone of the innumerable illustrations of the irony of things. Gautier andothers had anticipated and satirised all these stages in the Romanticdawn; they reappeared, serious and dreary, in the twilight of the dusk. [Sidenote: Belot and others. ] Adolphe Belot was not, strictly speaking, a Naturalist, for he was adozen years older than Zola, and ran up a huge list of novels ranging incharacter between Naturalism and melodrama. His most famous book, _Mlle. Giraud ma Femme_, was the most popular of a large number of attempts, about the last third of the century, in the school of _La Religieuse_, but with more or less deliberately pornographic effect. There is, however, some power in this book, and the "curtain"--the foiled husband, after Mlle. Giraud's death, seeing his she-rival swimming, swims outafter and drowns her--is quite refreshing. But I have always liked M. Belot best for a thoughtful and delightful remark in _La Femme de Feu_. "Heureuse elle-même, elle trouva naturel de faire les autres heureux, "which, translated into plain English, means that she was so happy withher husband that she couldn't help making her lover happy. M. Belot didnot work out this modification of the Golden Rule--he was not aphilosophic novelist. But it is very humorous in itself, and theextensions and applications of it are illimitable and vertiginous. [518] Below him it is unnecessary to go. FOOTNOTES: [455] For the early divisions of verse and prose story were all Topsies, and simply "growed"; although the smaller romances of the late sixteenthand early seventeenth century, and the larger of the latter date, wereundoubtedly influenced by the Greek, it was more a case of generalimitation than specific endeavour; the Sensibility school was verylimited and chiefly attended to tricks of manner; and the "Romanticvague" was never vaguer than in the vast and rather formless, thoughmagnificent and delightful, novel-work started by Nodier, Mérimée, Vigny, and Hugo. The Naturalists, on the other hand, had a deliberateidea of revolutionising the novel--of abolishing old things and creatingnew. They could not, and did not, succeed: but their scheme, as well asits results, may claim consideration. [456] To which a brief consideration of the curious fancy of some Frenchcritics that there is something "classical" about Naturalism may bespecially relegated. [457] Mérimée, though after his fashion making no fuss about it, wasalso an early virtuoso in this kind; and one of his letters contains anexcellent example of the quiet cynicism in which he excelled. Someladies had asked to see his collection, and he had very properly warnedthem that the "curios" of that ingenious and valiant nation weresometimes "curious" in a special sense, and had offered to "select. ""Elles ont tout vu, " he adds simply, and one hopes his correspondent (Iforgot whether it was one of the _Inconnues_ or Madame de Montijo)appreciated the Mount-Everest-like Laconism. [458] The banal phrase has been framed in the amber of "Théo's" verse, and so debanalised. [459] The first book of theirs, or rather of Edmond's, though it boreboth names, that I read, and the second French book I ever reviewed, wasthe mainly artistic _Gavarni_ of 1873. One has a human weakness in suchcases, but I think one might not have been wholly well disposed to theauthor from it. [460] Pepys had nothing that could be called _bad_ blood. Horace perhapshad a little, but it was sweet and childlike compared to the"acrid-quack" fluid of Edmond de Goncourt's veins and heart. Probablyseveral people have seen in M. De Goncourt the suggestion of an_un_-Puritan Malvolio. [461] Not, however, in the second case, by Sainte-Beuve, whoselukewarmness Edmond--a "Sensitive Plant" in this way if hardly inothers--never forgave. [462] She served them for a very long period without giving them anyapparent cause for complaint. They only found out her delinquenciesafter her death, or in her last illness--I forget which. Probablynothing could better show "the nature of the animals" than this_post-mortem_ grubbing belowstairs for a "subject, " and washing your ownhousehold dirty linen in public--for profit. [463] It may be well to smash, in a passing note, a silly catchwordpopular with some rather belated English admirers of the Naturalistschool a few years ago. They praised its "frankness. " You might as wellpraise the "straightforwardness" of a man who goes out of his way toexplore laystalls and, having picked up ordure, holds it up to publicview. [464] Both excellent things in their way, of course. Perhaps it would bebetter to say asafoetida. [465] It is perhaps only fair to warn readers who may not know the fact, that some very good and (in the French as well as the English sense)respectable judges think much better of the work, and even of the men orman, than I do. _Renée Mauperin_ especially (as indeed I have admitted)has a considerable body of suffrage; the general style pleases some, andit has been urged for Edmond that good men liked him. But these good menhad not read his diary. There is, however, no doubt that it is anexceptionally strong case of "rubbing the [right or the] wrong way. "Books and men and style all rub me the wrong way; and, though I havesome knack at using the brushes and _fixatures_ of pure criticism, Ican't get myself smoothed down. [466] See note at close of chapter. One of the most comic things in thewhole Naturalist episode was the rising up of some of these disciples torebuke their master, in a round robin, for "right-hand and left-handdefections" from the pure gospel of the sect. [467] The word is used, designedly but not fraudulently, as combining"observation" and "experiment" _to the extent proper to art_. Deliberateand after-thought "experi_ments_" in actual life are (except in trivialmatters) very risky things; and the _Summa Rerum_ itself is apt toresent them, as, for instance, Mr. Thomas Day and Mr. Felix Graham foundin the matter of wife-culture. [468] _V. Sup. _ Vol. I. P. 278. I was much pleased to find that thequotation considerably "put out" one of my few unfavourable critics. "The Importance of Gastronomy in Novels" is a beautiful subject--still, I think, virgin, though Thackeray has touched on it in others once ortwice, and illustrated it magnificently himself. [469] For something on the opposite view, that Naturalism is"classical, " see Conclusion. [470] That Flaubert escaped their error only so far as by fire has beenallowed. One might indeed say so by death. For _Bouvard et Pécuchet_ asit stands, and as outlined further, is very near Naturalism. Earlier hehad carried the principle far in _Salammbô_, and would have carried itfarther if he had not listened to good advice for once. But he had fireenough in his interior to burn the rubbish and smelt the ore in hisbetter books, and skill enough to run off the metal from the dross, intoproper shape. The others had not. [471] I learn from the lucubrations of some Americans--who, having been, rather late and with some difficulty, induced to perceive that Edgar Poewas their chief literary glory, have taken vehemently to his favouritekind, and written voluminously in and on it--that it ought to be calleda "brief-narrative, " the hyphen being apparently essential. This is veryinteresting: and throws much light on the subject. However, having reada great deal on it, I do not find myself much advanced beyond a positionwhich I think I occupied some fifty years ago--to wit, that a shortstory is not merely a long one cut down, nor a long story a short onespun out. [472] Barbey d'Aurevilly's (_v. Sup. _) attack on the book is one of themost remarkable instances of the irresponsibility of his criticism. [473] _V. Sup. _ p. 258. [474] One ought perhaps to verify; but that would be hard lines to haveto read _Nana_ twice! [475] That of the _Union Générale_. [476] _Vérité_, though a remarkable "human document" itself, and anindispensable _historical_ document for any student of the particularpopular madness with which it deals, need surely be inflicted a secondtime on no mortal. It is a transposition into the regions of theunmentionable, of the Dreyfus case itself. But nobody save a failure ofsomething like a novelist of genius, with this failure pushed near theconfines of madness, could have written it. [477] "M. Zola [is] apparently persuaded that, if you can only kill God, the Devil will die--an idea which seems to leave out of considerationthe idiosyncrasy of a third personage, Man" (_The Later NineteenthCentury_, Edinburgh and London, 1907, pp. 93, 94). [478] Only it would have to be real Blake, not imitation, which latteris one of the furthest examples of dreary futility known to the presentwriter. [479] The horticulture of _L'Abbé Mouret_ is nearest to an exception;but even that is overdone. [480] Who might even say, "Is not this a slip of pen or press? Has not'might' dropped out?" I should doubt it, even if a copy of the originaledition had the missing word, for it might easily have been put in by adull but conscientious "reader. " The plural, in Thackeray's carelessway, comes from his _thinking_ as he wrote "Are they not _all_ ... Personage_s_.... " The context confirms this. [481] There are, of course, comparatively few of these; but the fewnessis not positive, even keeping to prose-fiction. Poetry and drama--undertheir less onerous conditions for this special task--would enlarge thelist in goodly fashion. [482] Shortly after Maupassant's death, I contributed an article on himto the _Fortnightly Review_. It has never been reprinted, but, by thekindness of the Editor of that _Review_, I have been permitted to use itas a basis for this notice. I have, however, altered, omitted, and addedto a much greater extent than in the few other rehandlings acknowledgedin this History. The account of the actual books is wholly new. [483] I had known Verlaine since his appearance in the _ParnasseContemporain_ years earlier, but not yet in his most characteristicwork. [484] The following summary, to p. 505, formed no part of the originalarticle and is based on fresh and continuous reading. It is purposelyrather more minute than anything else in these later chapters, and wasnot the easiest part of the book to do, owing to the large number ofMaupassant's short stories. [485] Maupassant _could_ draw gentlemen and ladies, but he often did notdo so. His pretty young countesses (_not_ the same persons as thosereferred to in text), who get drunk together _tête-à-tête_, anddiscourse on the best way of making more effectual Josephs out of theirfootmen, are not pleasing, though they are right in holding that noperfume, save Eau de Cologne, doth become a _man_. [486] Vol. I. Pp. 150-1. [487] The usual gutter-Naturalist certainly would--and even M. Zola, Ifear, might--have done the "Ephesian matron" business thoroughly:Maupassant, as so often, knew other and better things. [488] It may suggest Leconte de Lisle to others and may even have beenmeant for him, but I think it worthy of the earlier and greater poet. [489] It went, I fear, by mistake with the rest of my books; so I quotefrom memory. But Southey and Locker have had their duet pleasantlychanged into a trio since by Mr. Austin Dobson's _Bookman's Budget_. [490] It may be just, and only just necessary to observe (what I knowperfectly well) that Maupassant was, in the direct sense, Flaubert'spupil and not Zola's. [491] He was, says his historian well, "de la race des amants et nonpoint de la race des pères. " [492] The resemblances between Thackeray and Maupassant are verynumerous and most remarkable. That they have both been accused ofcynicism _and_ sentimentality is only, as it were, the index-finger tothe relationship. [493] At the risk, however, of wearying the reader and "forcing opendoors, " one may exemplify, from this book also, the artificial characterof this obligatory adultery. Anne de Guilleroy has all thequalifications of an almost perfect mistress (in the honourable sense)and wife. She is charming; a flirt to the right point and not beyond it;passionate ditto; affectionate; not capricious; inviolably faithful (inher unfaithfulness, of course); jealous to her own pain, but with noresult of malice to others. Yet in order to show all this she has to bean adulteress first--in obedience to this mysterious modernisation andtopsy-turvification of ancient Babylonian custom, and the _jus primaenoctis_, and the proverb as to second thoughts being best, and Heaven orthe other place knows what else. Here also, as elsewhere, Maupassant--satirist of women as he is--makes her lover a very inferiorcreature to herself. For Bertin is a selfish coxcomb, and _does_, atleast half, allow himself to be "snuffed out by an article. " [494] Any one who chooses may compare it with the utterances of the lateMr. Henry James. Maupassant's own selection of novels, to illustrate theimpossibility of defining _a_ novel, is of the first interest. They are:_Manon Lescaut_, _Paul et Virginie_, _Don Quichotte_, _Les LiaisonsDangereuses_, _Werther_, _Les Affinités Électives_, _Clarissa_ [_he_adds _Harlowe_, an unauthentic addition, pardonable in a Frenchman, though not in one of us], _Émile_, _Candide_, _Cinq-Mars_, _René_, _LesTrois Mousquetaires_, _Mauprat_, _Le Père Goriot_, _La Cousine Bette_, _Colomba_, _Le Rouge et Le Noir_, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, _Notre Damede Paris_, _Salammbô_, _Madame Bovary_, _Adolphe_, _M. De Camors_, _L'Assommoir_, and _Sapho_. [495] "Amant" as accurately distinguished by M. Jean Richepin in_Césarine_ (for the benefit of an innocent Hungarian) from "amoureux. " [496] Not that I wish to blaspheme Circe, who always seems to me to haveadjusted herself to a disconcertingly changed situation with more thandemi-goddesslike dexterity and good humour. It may perhaps be notirrelevant, to discussion of novels in general, to mention somethingwhich I have never yet seen put in Homeric discussion, though the bareidea of anything new there being possible may seem preposterous. Thearguments of the splitters-up are, naturally enough, seldom if everliterary, belonging as they do to the class of Biblical, that is to say, _un_literary, criticism. But strictly literary considerations, furnishing argument of the strongest kind for unity, might be brought bycomparing the behaviour of Circe, at the moment referred to, and that ofHelen when Paris returned from his defeat. These situations are, ofcourse, in initial circumstance as opposite as possible, though they_arrivent à pareille fin_. But behind their very opposition there is aconception of the eternal feminine--partly human, partly divine--whichit would be very surprising to find in two different persons, and whichmight, if any one cared to do it, be interestingly worked out fromdivers other Homeric characters of women or goddesses, from Hera andAphrodite in the one poem to Nausicaa and Calypso in the other. "Howgreat a _novelist_ was in _Homer_ lost" is a theme too much neglected. [497] For do not fixed hours always become a bore--except in respect ofmeals? To have to love, or to lecture, or to do anything but eat, at _x_A. Or P. M. Precisely, on such and such days in the week, is a wearinessto the spirit and the flesh alike. [498] "The Novelists Who Cannot End" is one of the title-subjects which, "reponing my senescent art, " I relinquish to others. [499] In the card sense. [500] They run well into, if not over, the second hundred, and it isproper to warn readers (and still more buyers) that different editionsvary the contents of individual volumes; so that, without some care, andeven with it, duplication is nearly certain. This bad habit, not quiteunknown in England, is rather common in France. [501] If any one is fortunate, or unfortunate, enough not to know thisadmirable story, it may be well to say that the title is the nickname ofa young person, more pleasing than proper, who forms part of a convoy orcartel of non-combatants passing through the Prussian lines in 1871. ThePrussian officer, imitating more mildly (and without the additionalvillainy) the conduct of Colonel Kirke, refuses passage to the wholeparty, unless she will give him a cast of her office. The story is toldas inoffensively as possible, and the crowning irony of the shockedattitude of her respectable companions at her liberating them, thoughthey have been frantically anxious she should do so, is sublime. [502] Maupassant does not caricature us (at least our men) veryextravagantly. But he, like the rest of them, always makes us say, "Aoh. " I have frequently endeavoured to produce, otherwise than as adiphthong, this mysterious word (a descendant, perhaps, of the equallymysterious _Aoi_ of the _Chanson de Roland_?). But I cannot make it likethe way in which I say, or in which any well-educated Englishman says, "Oh!" American it may be, and it is not unlike the "Ow" of somedialects, but pure English it is not. It may be, for aught I know, phonetic: and has been explained as representing an affected sneer. Thecurious thing is that "Oh-_a_" actually is a not unfrequent, thoughslovenly, pronunciation. [503] Evidently, therefore, the practice with which we have been sooften reproached is of French--at least Norman--origin. [504] The _other_ one, of course, but here one must admit thesuperiority of the foreign "strength. " And the "story" has Frenchantecedents. [505] This is an actual translation of the Norman poet's words. It makesno bad blank-verse line. [506] Its companions, in the volume to which it gives title, are mostlyinferior specimens of the same class. But some, especially _Le PainMaudit_, are very amusing, and _Lui_? is a curious and melancholyanticipation of _Le Horla_. _La Maison Tellier_, which opens and titlesanother volume of no very different kind, has never seemed to me quiteworthy of its fame. It is not unamusing in itself, and very amusing whenone thinks of its greatly-daring imitators, but rather schoolboyish oreven monkeyish in its determination to shock. (It doesn't shock _me_. )Another "shocker, " but tragic, not comic, _La Femme de Paul_, whichcloses the book, is more powerful. (It is on the theme of _Mlle. Giraudma Femme_ (_v. Inf. _); only the male person, instead of drowning hisshe-rival, far less wisely drowns himself. ) But most of its contentssuffer, not merely from Naturalist grime, but from Naturalist_meticulousness_. [507] _V. Sup. _ p. 269 _sq. _ [508] For the "Terror" group see below. [509] Curiously enough, a few days _after_ writing the above I cameacross, in the last _Diabolique_ of that curious flawed genius, Barbeyd'Aurevilly (_v. Sup. _ p. 453), the words which redress, by longanticipation, the wrong done by his fellow Norman: "Les ailes du nez, _aussi expressives que des yeux_. " [510] In a novel by a contemporary of his, otherwise not worth notice, Sir Walter Scott was accused of "_pruderie_ bête"; I am sure theadjective and substantive are much better mated in my text. [511] I remember, in a book which I have not seen for about two-thirdsof a century, Miss Martineau's _Crofton Boys_, an agreeable anecdote(for the good Harriet, when not under the influence of Radicalism, thedismal science, Anti-Christianity, or Mr. Atkinson, could tell a storyvery well) of a little English girl. It occurred to her one morning thatshe should have to wash, dress, do her hair, etc. , _every day for herwhole life_, and she sat down and wept bitterly. Now, if I were a littleboy or girl in French novel-world, when as I remembered that I shouldhave, as the one, never to marry, or to commit adultery with every onewho asked me; that, as the other, I must not be left five minutes alonewith a married woman, without offering her the means of carrying out herand her husband's destiny; I really think I should imitate MissMartineau's child, if I did not even go and hang myself. "Fay ce quevoudras" may be rather a wide commandment. "Fay ce que dois" may requirea little enlarging. But "Do what you ought not, not because you wish todo it, but because it is the proper thing to do" is not only "thelimit, " but beyond it. I think that if I were a Frenchman of thenovel-type I should hate the sight of a married woman. Stone walls wouldnot a prison make nor iron bars a cage--so odious as this unrelievedtyranny of _concupiscentia carnis_--to order! Perhaps Wilberforce'sAgathos had a tedious time of it in being always ready to resist theDragon; but how much more wearisome would it be to be always on the _quivive_, lest you should miss a chance of _not_ resisting him! [512] The "time" was five and twenty years ago. But this passage, trifling as it may seem to some readers, appeared to me worthpreserving, because my recent very careful reperusal of Maupassant, as awhole, made its appositeness constantly recur to me. [513] Nearest, perhaps, in the story called "En Famille, " to be found inthe _Maison Tellier_ volume. [514] Remarks already made on the particular novels and stories fromthis point of view need only be referred to, not repeated. But it isfair to say that some good judges plead for "warning off" instead of"inculcation. " [515] There are some, but they are very few. [516] See Conclusion. After the above notice of Maupassant was, in itsreconstituted form, entirely completed, there came into my hands a longand careful paper on the novelist's Romanticism, published by Mr. OliverH. Moore in the Transactions of the American Modern Language Associationfor March 1918. Those who are curious as to French opinion of him, andespecially as to the strange superstition of his "classicism" (seeConclusion again), will find large extracts and references on thissubject given by Mr. Moore, who promises further discussion. [517] One never knows what is necessary or not in the way ofexplanation. But perhaps it is wiser to say that I am quite aware that, besides writing _votre_, not "notre, " Baudelaire had originally written"ce long hurlement" before the immense improvement in the text, and thatoriginal "Light-houses" were painters. [518] One slight alteration may seem almost to justify Belot's criticismof life: "Uncomfortable herself, she thought it natural to make othersuncomfortable. " There is certainly no want of psychological observation_there_. CHAPTER XIV OTHER NOVELISTS OF 1870-1900 [Sidenote: The last stage. ] The remaining novelists of the Third Republic, apart from the survivorsof the Second Empire and the Naturalist School, need not occupy us verylong, but must have some space. There would be no difficulty on my partin writing a volume on them, for during half the time I had to producean article on new French books, including novels, every month, [519] andduring no small part of the rest, I did similar work on a smaller andless regular scale, reading also a great deal for my own purposes. Butacknowledging, as I have elsewhere done, the difficulty of equatingjudgment of contemporary and non-contemporary work exactly, I think Ishall hardly be doing the new writers of this time injustice if I saythat no one, except some excluded by our specifications as living, couldput in any pretensions to be rated on level with the greater novelistsfrom Lesage to Maupassant. There are those, of course, who would protestin favour of M. Ferdinand Fabre, and yet others would "throw for" M. André Theuriet, both of whom shall have due honour. I cannot whollyagree with them. But both of them, as well as, for very oppositereasons, MM. Ohnet and Rod, may at least require notice of some length. [Sidenote: Ferdinand Fabre: _L'Abbé Tigrane_. ] _L'Abbé Tigrane_, by Ferdinand Fabre, may be described as one of not theleast remarkable, and as certainly one of the most remarked, novels ofthe later nineteenth century. It never, I think, had a very large sale;for though at the time of its author's death, over thirty years and moreafter its appearance, it had reached its sixteenth thousand, that is notmuch for a _popular_ French novel. Books of such different appeal asZola's and Feuillet's (not to mention for the present a capital exampleto be noted below) boasted ten times the number. But it dared anextremely non-popular subject, and treated that subject with anaudacious disregard of anything like claptrap. There is no love in itand hardly a woman; there is no--at least no military--fighting; noadventure of any ordinary sort. It is neither a _berquinade_, nor acrime-story, nor (except in a very peculiar way) a novel of analysis. Itrelies on no preciousness of style, and has not very much description, though its author was a great hand at this when and where he chose. Itis simply the history of an ambitious, strong-willed, strong-minded, andviolent-tempered priest in an out-of-the-way diocese, who strives forand attains the episcopate, and after it the archiepiscopate, and isleft aspiring to the Papacy--which, considering the characters of theactual successors of Pius IX. , the Abbé Capdepont[520] cannot havereached, in the fifty years (or nearly so) since the book was published. Now, in the first place, it is generations since a clerical novel waslikely to please the French novel-reading public. In this very bookthere is an amusing scene where the _abbé_, then a private tutor, induces his employer, a deputy, to invite clerics of distinction to aparty, whereat the other guests melt away in disgust. And this was along time before a certain French minister boasted that his countrymen"had taken God out of Heaven. " Moreover, while there are two obviousways of reconciling extremists to the subject, M. Fabre rejected both. His book is neither a panegyric on clericalism nor a libel on it. Hishero is as far as possible from being a saint, but he is perfectly freefrom all the vulgar vices. The rest of the characters--all, withinsignificant exceptions, clerics--are quite human, and in no case--noteven in that of Capdepont's not too scrupulous aide-de-camp the AbbéMical--offensive. But at the beginning the bishop, between whom and thehero there is truceless war, is, though privately an amiable andcharitable gentleman (Capdepont is a Pyrenean peasant by origin), ratherundignified, and even a little tyrannical; while a cardinal towards theend makes a distinction--between the impossibility of the Church lyingand the positive duty of Churchmen, in certain circumstances, tolie--which would have been a godsend to Kingsley in that unequalconflict of his with a colleague of his Eminence's. [521] Yet critics of almost all shades agreed, I think, in recognising themerits of M. Fabre's book; and it established him in a special positionamong French novelists, which he sustained not unworthily with nearly ascore of novels in a score and a half of years. It is undoubtedly a bookof no small power, which is by no means confined to the petty matters ofchapter-and-seminary wrangling and intrigue. On the contrary, the scenewhere, owing to Capdepont's spite, the bishop's coffin is kept, in afrightful storm, waiting for admission to its inmate's own cathedral, isa very fine thing indeed--almost, if not quite, in the grandstyle--according to some, if not according to Mr. Arnold. The figure ofthe arch-priest Clamousse, both in connection with this scene[522] andothers--old, timid, self-indulgent, but not an absolutely bad fellow--isof first-rate subordinate quality. Whether Capdepont himself has not alittle too much of that synthetic character which I have discussedelsewhere--whether he is quite a real man, and not something of acomposition of the bad qualities of the peasant type, the intriguingecclesiastic type, the ambitious man, the angry man, and so on--must, Isuppose, be left to individual tastes and judgments. If I am not soenthusiastic about the book as some have been, it is perhaps because itseems to me rather a study than a story. [523] [Sidenote: _Norine_, etc. ] This criticism--it is not intended for a reproach--does not extend toother, perhaps not so powerful, but more _pastimeous_ books, though M. Fabre seldom entirely excluded the clerical atmosphere of hisyouth. [524] A very pleasant volume-full is _Norine_, the title-piece ofwhich is full at once of Cevenol scenery and Parisian contrast, of love, and, at least, preparations for feasting; of sketches of that"Institute" life which comes nearest to our collegiate one; and ofpleasant bird-worship. But M. Fabre should have told us whether thebishop actually received and appreciated[525] the dinner of Truscastrout and Faugères wine (alas! this is a blank in my fairly extensivewine-list), and the miscellaneous _maigre_ cookery of the excellentPrudence, and the splendid casket of _liqueurs_ borrowed from a brother_curé_. _Cathinelle_ (an unusual and pretty diminutive of Catherine) isan admirably told pendant to it; and I venture to think the "idyllic"quality of both at least equal, if not superior, to the best of GeorgeSand. _Le R. P. Colomban_ is, according to M. Fabre's habit, a sort ofdouble-edged affair--a severe but just rebuke of the "popularpreacher, " and a good-humoured touch at the rebuker, Monseigneur Onésimede la Boissière, Evêque de Saint-Pons, who incidentally proposes tosubmit _L'Abbé Tigrane_ to the Holy Congregation of the Index. Finally, the book closes with a delightful panegyric of Alexandre Dumas _père_, and an anecdote avowedly autobiographic (as, indeed, the whole bookgives itself out to be, though receivable with divers pinches of salt)of that best-natured of men franking a bevy of impecunious students at a_première_ of one of his plays. [Sidenote: _Le Marquis de Pierrerue. _] To read _Le Marquis de Pierrerue_ after these two books--one the piecewith which Fabre established his reputation, and the other a product ofhis proved mastery--is interesting to the critic. Whether it would be soto the general reader may be more doubtful. It is the longest of itsauthor's novels; in fact its two volumes have separate sub-titles;[526]but there is no real break, either of time, place, or action, betweenthem. It is a queer book, quite evidently of the novitiate, andsuggesting now Paul de Kock (the properer but not _quite_ proper Paul), now Daudet (to whom it is actually dedicated), now Feuillet, now Murger, now Sandeau, now one of the melodramatic story-tellers. Very possiblyall these had a share in its inspiration. It is redolent of the medicalstudies which the author actually pursued, between his abandonment ofpreparation for the Church and his settling down as a man of letters. Its art is palpably imperfect--blocks of _récit_, wedges of not verynovel or acute reflection, a continual reluctance or inability to "getforrard. " Of the two heroes, Claude Abrial, Marquis de Pierrerue--afervent Royalist and Catholic, who lavishes his own money, and everybodyelse's that he can get hold of, on a sort of private Literary Fund, [527]allows himself to be swindled by a scoundrelly man of business, immureshis daughter, against her wish, as a Carmelite nun, and dies apauper--is a quite possible but not quite "brought off" figure. ThévenFalgouët, the Breton _buveur d'eau_, [528] who is introduced to us atactual point of starvation, and who dies, self-transfixed on the sharpspikes of the Carmelite _grille_, is perhaps not _im_possible, andoccasionally pathetic. But the author seems, in his immaturity as acraftsman, never to have made up his mind whether he is producing an"alienist" study, or giving us a fairly ordinary _étudiant_ and aspirantin letters. Of the two heroines, the noble damsel Claire dePierrerue--object of Falgouët's love at first sight, a love ill-fatedand more insane than even love beseems--is quite nice in her way; andRose Keller--last of grisettes, but a grisette of the Upper House, anartist grisette, and, as some one calls her, the "soeur de charité dela galanterie"[529]--is quite nice in hers. But Rose's action--inburning, to the extent of several hundred thousand francs' worth, notesand bonds, the wicked gains of one of her lovers (Grippon, the Marquis'sfraudulent intendant), and promptly expiring--may pair off withFalgouët's repeating on himself the Spanish torture-death of the_guanches_, [530] as pure melodrama. In fact the whole thing isundigested, and shows, in a high degree, that initial difficulty ingetting on with the story which has not quite disappeared in _L'AbbéTigrane_, but which has been completely conquered[531] in _Norine_ and_Cathinelle_. [Sidenote: _Mon Oncle Célestin. _] This mixed quality makes itself felt in others of Fabre's books. Perhapsthere is none of them, except _L'Abbé Tigrane_ itself, which has been agreater favourite with his partisans than _Mon Oncle Célestin_. Here wehave something of the same easy autobiographic quality, with the samegeneral scene and the same relations of the narrator and the principalcharacters, as in other books; but "Mr. The nephew" (the agreeable andcontinuous title by which the faithful parishioners address theirbeloved pastor's boy relative) has a different uncle and a different_gouvernante_, at least in name, from those in _Norine_ and_Cathinelle_. The Abbé Célestin, threatened with consumption, exchangesthe living in which he has worked for many years, and little good comesof it. He is persecuted, actually to the death, by his rural dean, asort of duplicate of the hero of _L'Abbé Tigrane_; but the circumstancesare not purely ecclesiastical. He has, in his new parish, taken forgoat-girl a certain Marie Galtier, daughter of his beadle, but, unluckily, also step-daughter of a most abominable step-mother. Marie, as innocently as possible, "gets into trouble, " and dies of it, accusations being brought against her guiltless and guileless master inconsequence. There are many good passages; the opening is (as nearlyalways with M. Fabre) excellent; but both the parts and the whole are, once more, too long--the mere "flitting" from one parish to anotherseems never to be coming to an end. Still, the book should be read; andit has one very curious class of personages, the "hermits" of theCevennes--probably the latest (the date is 1846) of their kind inliterature. The general characteristics of that kind do not seem to havebeen exactly saintly;[532] and the best of them, Adon Laborie, afterbeing "good" throughout, and always intending to be so, brings about thecatastrophe by calmly suppressing, in the notion that he will save theAbbé trouble, three successive citations from the Diocesan Council, thereby getting him "interdicted. " The shock, when the judgment incontumacy is announced by the brutal dean, proves fatal. [Sidenote: _Lucifer. _] In Lucifer M. Fabre is still nearer, though with no repetition, to the_Tigrane_ motive. The book justifies its title by being the mostambitious of all the novels, and justifies the ambition itself byshowing a great deal of power--most perhaps again, of all; thoughwhether that power is used to the satisfaction of the reader mustdepend, even more than is usual, on individual tastes. Bernard Jourfier, at the beginning of the book and of the Second Empire, is a young_vicaire_, known to be of great talents and, in especial, of unusualpreaching faculty, but of a violent temper, ill at ease about his ownvocation, and suspected--at least by Ultramontanes--of very doubtfulorthodoxy and not at all doubtful Gallicanism. He is, moreover, thegrandson of a _conventionnel_ who voted for the King's death, and theson of a deputy of extreme Liberal views. So the Jesuits, after tryingto catch him for themselves, make a dead set at him, and secure hisappointment to out-of-the-way country parishes only, and even in thesehis constant removal, so that he may acquire as little influence aspossible anywhere. At last, in a very striking interview with hisbishop, he succeeds in clearing his character, and enters on the way ofpromotion. The cabals continue; but later, on the overthrow ofBonapartism, he is actually raised to the episcopate. His violenttemper, however, is always giving handles to the enemy, and he finallydetermines that life is intolerable. After trying to starve himself, hemakes use of the picturesque but dangerous situation of his palace, andis crushed by falling, in apparent accident, through a breach in thegarden wall with a precipice beneath--"falling like Lucifer, " as hislifelong enemy and rival whispers to a confederate at the end. For theappellation has been an Ultramontane nickname for him long before, andhas been not altogether undeserved by his pride at least. It has beensaid that the book is powerful; but it is almost unrelievedly gloomythroughout, and suffers from the extremely narrow range of its interest. [Sidenote: _Sylviane_ and _Taillevent_. ] Those who are not tired of the Cevenol atmosphere--which, it must beadmitted, is quite a refreshing one--will find a lighter example in_Sylviane_, once more recounted by "Mr. The nephew, " but with hismovable uncle and _gouvernante_ shifted back to "M. Fulcran" and"Prudence"; and in _Taillevent_, a much longer book, which isindependent of uncle and nephew both. _Sylviane_ has agreeable things init, but perhaps might have been better if its form had been different. It is a long _récit_ told by a gamekeeper, with frequentinterruptions[533] and a very thin "frame. " _Taillevent_ ends with twomurders, the second a quite excusable lynch-punishment for the first, and the marriage of the avenger just afterwards to the daughter of theoriginal victim, a combination of "the murders _and_ the marriages"deserving Osric's encomia on sword furniture. So vigorous a conclusionhad need have a well-stuffed course of narrative to lead up to it, andthis is not wanting. There is a wicked--a _very_ wicked--Spaniard forthe lynched-murderer part; an exceedingly good dog-, bear-, andman-fight in the middle; an extensive and well-utilised wolf-trap in thewoods; bankruptcies; floods; all sorts of things; with a course of"idyllic" true love running through the whole. There _is_ a _curé_--arather foolish one; but the ecclesiastical interest in itself is almostabsent from the book. The weakest part of it lies in the characters ofwhat may be called the hero and heroine of the beginning andmiddle--Frédéric Servières and Madeleine his wife. That the formershould fall into the most frantic love before marriage, and almostneglect his wife as soon as she has borne him a child, may be said to becommon enough in books, and, unluckily, by no means uncommon in life. But there may be more question about the repetition of the inconsistencyin other parts of the character--extreme business aptitude and fatalneglect of business, extreme energy and fatal depression over quitesmall things, etc. The general combination is not impossible; it is noteven improbable; but it is not quite "made so. " And something is thesame with Madeleine, who is, moreover, left "in the air" in so curious afashion that one begins to wonder whether the Mrs. Martha Buskbodyattitude, so often jibed at, does not possess some excuse. [Sidenote: _Toussaint Galabru. _] A pleasant contrast in this respect, though the end here is tragic in away, may be found in _Toussaint Galabru_, the last, perhaps, of M. Fabre's books for which we can find special room here, though no doubtsome favourites of particular readers may have been omitted. The novelis divided into two pretty equal halves, with an interval first of tenyears between them and, almost immediately, of sixteen more. The firsthalf is occupied by an adventure of "Mr. The nephew's, " though he is nothere "Mr. The nephew, " but "Mr. The son, " living with his father andmother at Bédarieux, M. Fabre's actual birthplace. He plays truant fromChurch on Advent Sunday to join a shooting expedition with hisschool-fellow Baptistin and that school-fellow's not too pious father, who is actually a church _suisse_, but has received an exeat from the_curé_ to catch a famous hare for that _curé_ to eat. The vicissitudesof the chase are numerous, and the whole is narrated with extraordinaryskill as from the boy's point of view, his entire innocence, when he isbrought into contact with very shady incidents, being--and this is amost difficult thing to do--hit off marvellously well. It is onlytowards the end of this part (he has been heard of before) thatToussaint Galabru, sorcerer and Lothario, makes his appearance--asclever as he is handsome, and as vicious as he is clever. When he doesappear he has his way--with the game shot by others, and with a certain_métayer's_ wife--after the same hand-gallop fashion in which thepersonage in Blake's lines enjoyed both the peach and the lady. The earlier and shorter, but not short, interval, mentioned above, passes to 1852, and does little more than bring the now "Parisian"narrator into fresh contact with his old school-fellow Baptistin, now afull-grown priest, but, though very pious, in some difficulties from hispersistent love of sport. Sixteen years later, again, in 1868, reappears, "coming to his death, "[534] Galabru himself. The part ischiefly occupied by a _récit_ of intervening history (including a sadlyunsuccessful attempt, both at spiritual and physical combat, byBaptistin) and by a much-interrupted journey in snow. [535] But it givesoccasion for another agreeable "idyll" between Vincinet, Galabru's son, and the Abbé Baptistin's god-child Lalie; and it ends with a strikingprocession to carry, hardly in time, the _viaticum_ to the dying wizard, whereby, if not his own weal in the other world, that of the lovers inthis is happily brought about. Not very many generalities are required on M. Ferdinand Fabre. Howcompletely his way lies out of most of the ruts in which the wain of theFrench novel usually travels must have been shown; and it may be hopedthat enough has been said also to show that there are plenty of minororiginalities about him. No novelist[536] in any language known to me(unless you call Richard Jefferies a novelist) has such an extraordinarycommand of "the country"--bird-nature and rock scenery being hisfavourite but by no means his only subjects. For "Scenes of ClericalLife" he stands admittedly alone in France, and has naturally been dealtwith most often from this point of view. Of that intense provincialism, in the good sense, which is characteristic of French literature, therehave been few better representatives. Wordsworth himself is scarcelymore the poet of our Lake and Hill country than Fabre is the novelist ofthe Cevennes. Peasant life and child life of the country (he meddleslittle, and not so happily, with towns of any size) find in himadmirably "vatical" properties and combinations; and if he does not runany risk of Feste's rebuke by talking much of "ladies, " he knows as muchabout women as a man well may. His comedy is never coarse or trivial, and the tragedy never goes off through the touch-hole. Of onesituation--very easy to spoil by rendering it mawkish--the early but not"calf"-love of rustic man and maid, beginning in childhood, he wascuriously master. George Sand herself[537] has nothing to beat (if shehas anything to equal) the pairs of Taillevent and Riquette (in thenovel named from the lover), and of Vincinet and Lalie (in _ToussaintGalabru_). As for his pictures of clerical cabals and clericalweaknesses, they may be too much of a good thing for some tastes; butthat they are a good thing, both as an exercise in craftsmanship and asan alternative to the common run of French novel subjects, can hardly bedenied. In this respect, and not in this respect only, M. Fabre has hisown place, and that no low one. * * * * * [Sidenote: André Theuriet. ] In coming to M. André Theuriet I felt a mixture of curiosity with aslight uneasiness. For I had read not a few of his books[538] carefullyand critically at their first appearance, and in such cases--when novelsare not of the _very_ first order (which, good as these are, I think fewreally critical readers would allot them) nor possessed of those"oddments" of appeal which sometimes make more or less inferior booksreadable and readable again--fresh acquaintance, after a long time, isdangerous. It has been said here (possibly more than once) that, when abook possesses this peculiar readableness, a second reading ispositively beneficial to it, because you neglect the "knots in the reed"and slip along it easily. This is not quite the case with others: and, unless great critical care is taken, a new acquaintance, itself thirtyyears old, has, I fear, a better chance than an old one renewed afterthat time. However, the knight of Criticism, as of other ladies, [539]must dare any adventure, and ought to be able to bring the proper armsand methods to the task. For the purposes of renewal I chose_Sauvageonne_, _Le Fils Maugars_, and _Raymonde_. With the first, thoughI did not remember much more than its central situation and itscatastrophe, with one striking incident, I do remember being originallypleased; the second has, I believe, at least sometimes, been thoughtTheuriet's masterpiece; and the third (which, by the way, is a"philippine" containing another story besides the title-one) is an earlybook which I had not previously read. [Sidenote: _Sauvageonne. _] The argument of _Sauvageonne_ can be put very shortly. A young man offour-and-twenty, of no fortune, marries a rich widow ten years olderthan himself, and, as it happens, possessed of an adopted daughter ofseventeen. He--who is by no means an intentional scoundrel, but acommonplace and selfish person, and a gentleman neither by birth nor bynature--soon wearies of his somewhat effusive and exacting wife; thegirl takes a violent fancy to him; accident hurries on the natural ifnot laudable consequences; the wife covers the shame by succeeding inpassing off their result as her own child, but the strain is too muchfor her, and she goes mad, but does not die. This tragic theme (really a tragic [Greek: hamartia], for there is muchgood in Sauvageonne, as she is called, from her tomboy habits, and, withhappier chance and a nobler lover, all might have been well with her) ishandled with no little power, and with abundant display of skill in twodifferent departments which M. Theuriet made particularly hisown--sketches of the society of small country towns, and elaboratedescription of the country itself, especially wood-scenery. In regard tothe former, it must be admitted that, though there is plenty of scandaland not a little ill-nature in English society of the same kind, thelatter nuisance seems, according to French novelists, to be more_active_ with their country folk than it is with ours[540]--a thing, ina way, convenient for fiction. Of the descriptive part the onlyunfavourable criticism (and that a rather ungracious one) that could bemade is that it is almost too elaborate. Of two fateful scenes of_Sauvageonne_, that where Francis Pommeret, the unheroic hero, comesacross Denise (the girl's proper name) sitting in a crab-tree in theforest and pelting small boys with the fruit, is almost startlinglyvivid. You see every detail of it as if it were on the Academy walls. Infact, it is almost more like a picture than like reality, which is moreshaded off and less sharp in outline and vivid in colour. As for thecharacter-drawing, if it does not attain to that consummateness whichhas been elsewhere described and desiderated--the production of peoplethat you _know_--it attains the second rank; the three prominentcharacters (the rest are merely sets-off) are all people that you_might_ know. Denise herself is very near the first rank, and FrancisPommeret--not, as has been said, by any means a scoundrel, for he onlysuccumbs to strong and continued temptation, but an ordinary selfishcreature--is nearer than those who wish to think nobly of human naturemay like, to complete reality. One is less certain about the unhappyAdrienne Lebreton or Pommeret, but discussion of her would be rather "anintricate impeach. " And one may have a question about the end. We aretold that Francis and Denise keep together (the luckless wife living onin spite of her madness) because of the child, though they absolutelyhate each other. Would it not be more natural that, if they do not part, they should vary the hatred with spasms of passion and repulsion? [Sidenote: _Le Fils Maugars. _] _Le Fils Maugars_ is not only a longer book, but its space is lessexclusively filled with a single situation, and the necessary prelude toit. In fact, the whole thing is expanded, varied, and peopled. Auberive, near Langres, the place of _Sauvageonne_, is hardly more than a largevillage; Saint-Clémentin, on the Charente, though not a large town, isthe seat of a judicial Presidency, of a _sous-préfecture_, etc. "Le_père_ Maugars" is a banker who, from having been a working stone-mason, has enriched himself by sharp practice in money-lending. His son is alawyer by the profession chosen for him, and a painter by preference. The heroine, Thérèse Desroches, is the daughter of a Republican doctor, whose wife has been unfaithful, and who suspects Thérèse of not beinghis own child. The scene shifts from Saint-Clémentin itself to thecountry districts where Poitou and Touraine meet, as well as to Paris. The time begins on the eve of the Coup d'État, and allows itself a gapof five years between the first and second halves of the book. Besidesthe love-scenes and the country descriptions and the country feaststhere is a little general society; much business; some politics, including the attempted and at last accomplished arrest of the doctorfor treason to the new _régime_; a well-told account of a contest forthe Prix de Rome; a trial of the elder Maugars for conspiracy (with asubordinate usurer) to defraud, etc. The whole begins with more than alittle aversion on everybody's part for the innocent Étienne Maugars, who, having been away from home for years, knows neither the fact northe cause of his father's unpopularity; and it ends with condignpoetical justice, on the extortioner in the form of punishment, and forthe lovers in another way. It is thus, though a less poignant book than_Sauvageonne_, a fuller and wider one, and it displays, better than thatbook, the competence and adequacy which mark the author, though theremay be something else to be said about it (or rather about itsillustration of his general characteristics) presently. [Sidenote: _Le Don Juan de Vireloup_ and _Raymonde_. ] _Le Don Juan de Vireloup_, a story of about a hundred pages long, whichacts as makeweight to _Raymonde_, itself only about twice the length, isa capital example of Theuriet at nearly his best--a pleasant mixture of_berquinade_ and _gaillardise_ (there are at least two passages ateither of which Mrs. Grundy would require _sal volatile_, and would thenput the book in the fire). The reformation and salvation of Jean deSantenoge--a poor (indeed penniless) gentleman, who lives in a littleold manor, or rather farm-house, buried in the woods, and whose soleoccupations are poaching and making love to peasant girls--are mostagreeably conducted by the agency of the daughter of a curmudgeonlyforest-inspector (who naturally regards Santenoge with specialabhorrence). She is helped by her grand-uncle, a doctor of the familiarstamp, who has known Diderot's child, Madame de Vandeul (the scene, asin so many of the author's books, is close to Langres), and worshipsDenis himself. As for _Raymonde_, its heroine comes closer to"Sauvageonne, " though she is less of a savagess: and the worst that canbe said against her lucky winner is that he is a little of a prig. But, to borrow, and very slightly alter, one of Sir Walter's pieces of divinecharity, "The man is mortal, and a scientific person. " Perhaps fate andM. Theuriet are a little too harsh to another (but not this timebeggarly) _gentillâtre_, Osmin de Préfontaine, to whom, one regrets tosay, Raymonde positively, or almost positively, engages herself, beforeshe in the same way virtually accepts the physiological Antoine Verdier. And the _dénouement_, where everything comes right, is a littlestagy. [541] But the whole is thoroughly readable, competentlycharactered, and illustrated by some of the best of the author's forestdescriptions. [Sidenote: General characteristics. ] One has thus been able to give an account, very favourable in the main, of these three or four stories--selected with no hidden design, and intwo cases previously unknown to the critic, who has, in addition, a fairremembrance of several others. But it will be observed that there is inthem, with all their merits, some evidence of that "rut" or "mould"character which has been specified as absent in greater novelists, butas often found in company with a certain accomplishment, in _ordonnance_and readable quality, that marks the later novel. The very greatprominence of description is common to all of them, and in three out ofthe four the scenes are from the same district--almost from the samepatch--of country. The heroine is the most prominent character and, asshe should be, the most attractive figure of all; but she is made up andpresented, if not exactly _à la douzaine_, yet with a strong, almost asisterly, family likeness. Far be it from the present writer to regretor desiderate the adorably candid creature who so soon smirches herwhiteness. Even the luckless Sauvageonne--worst mannered, worstmoralled, and worst fated of all--is a jewel and a cynosure comparedwith that other class of girl; while Raymonde (whose maltreatment of M. De Préfontaine is to a great extent excused by her mother's bullying, her real father's weakness, and her own impulsive temperament); theThérèse of _Le Fils Maugars_; and the Marianne of _Le Don Juan deVireloup_ are, in ascending degrees, girls of quite a right kind. Only, it is just a little too much the _same_ kind. And without unfairness, without even ingratitude, one may say that this sameness does somewhatcharacterise M. Theuriet. * * * * * [Sidenote: Georges Ohnet. ] There were some who did not share the general admiration, a good manyyears ago, of the dictum of a popular French critic on a more popularFrench novelist to the effect that, though it was his habit, in thearticles he was writing, to confine himself to literature, he wouldbreak this good custom for once and discuss M. Ohnet. In the firstplace, this appeared to the dissidents a very easy kind of witticism;they knew many men, many women, and many schoolboys who could haveuttered it. In the second, they were probably of the opinion (changingthe matter, instead of, like that wicked Prince Seithenyn, merelyreversing the order, of the old Welsh saying) that "The goodness of witsleeps in the badness of manners. " But if the question had been then, orwere now, asked seriously whether the literary value of _Le Maître deForges_ and its companion novels was high, few of them would, asprobably, have been or be able to answer in the affirmative. For my ownpart, I always used to think, when M. Ohnet's novels came out, that theywere remarkably like those of the eminent Mrs. Henry Wood[542] inEnglish--of course _mutatis mutandis_. They displayed very fair aptitudefor the _business_ of novel manufacture, and the results were such as, in almost every way, to satisfy the average subscriber to a circulatinglibrary, supposing him or her to possess respectable tastes (scarcely"taste"), moderate intelligence, and a desire to pass the timecomfortably enough in reading them once, without the slightestexpectation of being, or wish to be, able to read them again. They mighteven sometimes excite readers who possessed an adjustable "tally" ofexcitableness. But beyond this, as it seemed to their critic of thosedays, they never went. Re-reading, therefore--though perhaps the consequence may not seemdownright to laymen--promised some critical interest. I first selectedfor the purpose, to give the author as good a chance as possible, _SergePanine_, which the Academy crowned, and which went near its hundred andfifty editions when it was still a four-year-old; and _Le Maître deForges_ itself, the most popular of all, adding _Le Docteur Rameau_ and_La Grande Marnière_, which my memory gave me as having seemed to be ofsuch pillars as the particular structure could boast. [Sidenote: _Serge Panine. _] I suppose the Forty crowned _Serge Panine_ because it was a virtuousbook, and an attack on the financial trickeries which, about the timeand a little later, enriched the French language with the word "krach. "Otherwise, though no one could call it bad, its royalty could hardlyseem much other than that which qualifies for the kingdom of the blind. The situations are good, and they are worked up into a Fifth Act, as wemay call it (it occupies almost exactly a fifth of the book, which was, of course, dramatised), _melo_dramatic to the _n_th, ending in adiscovery of flagrant delict, or something very like it, and in theshooting of a son-in-law by his mother-in-law to save the downfall ofhis reputation. But the characters do not play up to their parts, oreach other, very well, with the possible or passable exception of themother-in-law, and of one very minor personage, the secretary Maréchal, whom M. Ohnet, perhaps distrustful of his power to make him more, leftminor. The hero is a Polish prince, with everything that a stage Polishprince requires about him--handsome, superficially amiable, what theprecise call "caressing" and the vulgar "carneying" in manner, butextravagant, quite non-moral, and not possessed of much common sense. His princess Micheline is a silly jilt before marriage and a sillier"door-mat" (as some women call others) of a wife. Her rival, and in afashion foster-sister (she has been adopted before Micheline's birth), does things which many people might do, but does not do them in aconcatenation accordingly. The jilted serious young man Pierre accepts aperfectly impossible position in reference to his former _fiancée_ andhis supplanter, and gives more proofs of its impossibility by hisconduct and speech than was at all necessary. The conversation is veryflat, and the descriptions are chiefly confined to long, gaudyinventories of rich parvenus' houses, which read like auctioneers'catalogues. But the worst part of the book, and probably that which at itsappearance exasperated the critics, though it did not disturb the_abonné_--or, more surprisingly, the Immortals--is the flatness of stylewhich has been already noted in the conversation, but which overflowsinsupportably into the narrative. M. Ohnet speaks somewhere, justlyenough, of "le style à la fois prétentieux et plat, familier auxreporters. " But was he trying--there is no sign of it--to parody theseunfortunate persons when he himself described dinner-rolls as "Cesboules dorées qui sollicitent l'appétit le plus rebelle, et accommodéesdans une serviette damassée artistement pliée, parent si élégamment uncouvert"? Or when he tells us that at a ball "Les femmes, leurssplendides toilettes gracieusement étalées sur les meubles bas etmoëlleux, causaient chiffons sous l'éventail, ou écoutaient lescantilènes d'un chanteur exotique pendant que les jeunes gens leurchuchotaient des galanteries à l'oreille. " This last is really worthy ofthe feeblest member of our "_plated_ silver fork school" between thetime of Scott and Miss Austen and that of Dickens and Thackeray. [Sidenote: _Le Maître de Forges. _] In the year 1902, _Le Maître de Forges_, which was then just twentyyears old, had reached its three hundred and sixty-seventh edition. Sixyears later Fromentin's _Dominique_, which was then forty-five yearsold, had reached its twenty-seventh. The accident of the two books lyingside by side on my table has enabled me to make this comparison, themoral of which will be sufficiently drawn by a reference to what hasbeen said of _Dominique_ above, [543] and by the few remarks on M. Ohnet's most popular book which follow. One old receipt for popularity, "Put your characters up several steps insociety, " M. Ohnet has faithfully obeyed. We begin with a marquisunintentionally poaching on the ironmaster's ground, and (rather oddly)accepting game which he has _not_ shot thereon. We end with themarquis's sister putting her dainty fingers before the mouth of a duke'sexploding pistol--to the not surprising damage of those digits, but withthe result of happiness ever afterwards for the respectable charactersof the book. There is a great deal of gambling, though, unfortunatelytold in a rather uninteresting manner of _récit_, which is a pity, forgambling can be made excellent in fiction. [544] There are several of M. Ohnet's favourite inventories, and a baroness--not a bad baroness--whohas frequented sales, and knows all about _bric-à-brac_. Also there areseveral exciting situations, even before we come to the application of alady's fingers as tompions. M. Ohnet is, it has been said, rather goodat situations. But situations, to speak frankly, are rather things forthe stage than for the story, except very rarely, and of a verystriking--which does not mean melodramatic--kind. And it is veryimportant, off the stage, that they should be led up to, and acted inby, vigorously drawn and well filled in characters. To do M. Ohnet justice, he has attempted to meet this requirement in oneinstance at least, the one instance by which the book has to stand orfall. Some of the minor personages (like Maréchal in _Serge Panine_) arefair enough; and the little baroness who, arriving at a country-house ina whirl of travel and baggage, cries, "Où est mon mari? Est-ce que j'ai_déjà_ égaré mon mari?" puts one, for the moment, in quite a goodtemper. The ironmaster's sister, too, is not a bad sort of girl. Hehimself is too much of the virtuous, loyal, amiable, but not weak man ofthe people; the marquis is rather null, and the duke, who jilts hiscousin Claire de Beaulieu, gambles, marries a rich and detestabledaughter of a chocolate-man, and finally fires through Claire's fingers, is very much, to use our old phrase, _à la douzaine_. But Claire mightsave the book, and probably does so for those who like it. To me sheseems quite wrongly put together. The novel has been so very widelyread, in the original and in translations, that it is perhapsunnecessary to waste space on a full analysis of its central scene--athing not to be done very shortly. It may be sufficient to say thatClaire, treacherously and spitefully informed, by her successful rival, of the fact that she has been jilted, and shortly afterwards confrontedwith the jilter himself, recovers, as it seems to her, to the company, and I suppose to the author, the whip-hand by summoning the ironmaster(who is hanging about "promiscuous, " and is already known to be attachedto her, though she has given him no direct encouragement) and bestowingher hand upon him, insisting, too, upon being married at once, beforethe other pair. The act is supposed to be that of an exceptionally calm, haughty, and aristocratic damsel: and the acceptance of it is made by aman certainly deep in love, but independent, sharp-sighted, andstrong-willed. To be sure, he could not very well refuse; but this veryfact should have weighed additionally, with a girl of Claire's supposedtemperament, in deciding her not to make a special Leap Year for theoccasion. To hand yourself over to Dick because Tom has declined to haveanything to do with you is no doubt not a very unusual proceeding: butit is not usually done quite so much _coram populo_, or with suchacknowledgment of its being done to spite Tom and Tom's preferredone. [545] [Sidenote: _Le Docteur Rameau. _] Two more of "Les Batailles de la Vie" (as, for some not too obvious[546]reason, it pleased M. Ohnet to _super_-title his novels) may perhapssuffice to give a basis for a more general judgment of his position. _LeDocteur Rameau_ is, at least towards its close, one of the mostambitious, if not _the_ most ambitious of all its author's books. Thehero is one of those atheistic and republican physicians who are aptrather to _embêter_ us by their frequency in French novels. He is throwninto the also familiar situation of ascertaining, after his wife'sdeath, that she has been false, and that his daughter, of whom he isvery fond, is probably or certainly not his own. At the end, however, things come right as usual. Rameau is converted from hating hisdaughter, which is well, and from being an atheist, which is better. But, unluckily, M. Ohnet devotes several pages, in his own peculiarstyle, to a rhetorical exhibition of the logic of these conclusions. Itseems to come to this. There is no God and no soul, because freewill issufficient to account for everything. But M. Le Docteur Rameau haswilled, in the free-willingest manner, to hate his daughter, and findshe cannot. Therefore there is a God and a soul. A most satisfactoryconclusion, but a most singular major premiss. Why should there be noGod and no soul because there is (if there is) freewill?[547] But all iswell that ends well: and how can you end better than by being heard toejaculate, "Mon Dieu!" (quite seriously and piously, and not in theordinary trivial way) by a scientific friend, at the church ofSainte-Clotilde, during your daughter's wedding? [Sidenote: _La Grande Marnière. _] _La Grande Marnière_ does not aspire to such heights, and is perhaps oneof the best "machined" of M. Ohnet's books. The main plot is not verynovel--his plots seldom are--and, in parts as well as plots, any one whocared for rag-picking and hole-picking might find a good deal ofindebtedness. It is the old jealousy of a clever and unscrupulousself-made man towards an improvident _seigneur_ and his somewhatrobustious son. The seigniorial improvidence, however, is not of theusual kind, for M. Le Marquis de Clairefont wastes his substance, andgets into his enemy's debt and power, by costly experiments onagricultural and other machinery, partly due to the fact that hepossesses on his estate a huge marl-pit and hill which want developing. There is the again usual cross-action of an at first hopeless affectionon the part of the _roturier's_ son, Pascal Carvajan, a rising lawyer, for Antoinette de Clairefont. But M. Ohnet--still fertile insituations--adds a useful sort of conspiracy among Carvajan's tools ofvarious stations against the house of Clairefont; a conspiracy whichactually culminates in a murder-charge against Robert de Clairefont, thevictim being the pretty daughter of a local poacher, one of the gang, with whom the Viscount has notoriously and indeed quite openly flirted. Now comes Pascal's opportunity: he defends Robert, and not merelyobtains acquittal, but manages to discover that the crime was actuallycommitted by the village idiot, who betrays himself by remorse andsleep-walking. There is a patient, jilted lover, M. De Croix-Mesnil (itmay just be noted that since French novel-heroines were allowed anychoice at all in marriage, they have developed a faculty of alteringthat choice which might be urged by praisers of times past against theenfranchisement); a comic aunt; and several other promoters of business. It is no wonder that, given a public for the kind of book, thisparticular example of it should have been popular. It had reached itssixtieth edition before it had been published a twelvemonth. [Sidenote: Reflections. ] Sixty editions of one book in one year; three hundred and sixty-seven ofanother in twenty; a hundred and forty-two of _Serge Panine_ in five;sixty-nine of _Le Docteur Rameau_ in certainly at the outside not more;these are facts which, whatever may be insinuated about the number of an"edition, " cannot be simply put aside. Popularity, as the wiser criticshave always maintained, is no test of excellence; but as they have alsomaintained when they were wise, it is a "fact in the case, " and it willnot do merely to sneer at it. I should say that the popularity of M. Ohnet, like other popularities in England as well as in France, is quiteexplicable. Novel-writing, once again, had become a business, and he sethimself to carry that business out with a thorough comprehension of whatwas wanted. His books, it is to be observed, are generally quite modern, dealing either with his own day or a few years before it; and modernityhas, for a long time, been almost a _sine qua non_ of what is to pleasethe public. They are, it has been said, full of situations, and thesituation is what pleases the public most in everything. They came justwhen the first popularity of Naturalism was exhausting itself, [548] andthey are not grimy; but, on the other hand, they do not aim at anexcessive propriety. Their characters are not of the best, or even ofthe second-best class, as so often defined, but they are sufficient towork out the situations without startling inadequacy. The public neverreally cares, though part of it is sometimes taught to pretend to care, for style, and the same may be said of the finer kind of description. The conversation is not brilliant, but, like the character, it servesits turn. I once knew an excellent gentleman, of old lineage and fairfortune, who used to say that for his part he could not tell mutton fromvenison or Marsala from Madeira, and he thanked God for it. Thenovel-reading public, --that at least which reads novels by the threehundred and fifty thousand, --is very much of the same taste, and I amsure I hope it is equally pious. * * * * * [Sidenote: Édouard Rod. ] I have quite a lively remembrance of the advent of M. Édouard Rod, ofthe crowning of _Le Sens de la Vie_, and so forth. That advent formedpart of the just mentioned counter-attack on Naturalism, in which, asusual, some of the Naturalist methods and weapons themselves were used;but it had a distinct character of its own. Unless I mistake, it was notat first very warmly welcomed by "mortal" French criticism. There mayhave been something in this of that curious grudge[549] againstSwiss-French, on the part of purely French-French, men of letters whichnever seems to have entirely ceased. But there was something more thanthis, though this something more was in a way the reason, some might saythe justification, of the grudge. M. Rod was exceedingly serious; thetitle of his laureated book is of itself almost sufficient to show it;and though the exclusive notion of "the gay and frivolous Frenchman"always was something of a vulgar error, and has been increasingly sosince the Revolution, Swiss seriousness, with its strong Germanicleaven, is not French seriousness at all. But he became, if not exactlya popular novelist to the tune of hundreds or even scores of editions, aprolific and fairly accepted one. I think, though he died in middle ageand produced other things besides novels, he wrote some twenty or thirtystories, and his production rather increased than slackened as he wenton. With the later ones I am not so well acquainted as with the earlier, but there is a pervading character about these earlier ones which is notlikely to have changed much, and they alone belong strictly to oursubject. [Sidenote: _La Vie Privée de Michel Teissier. _] Next to _Le Sens de la Vie_ and perhaps in a way, as far as popularitygoes, above it, may be ranked, I suppose, _La Vie Privée de MichelTeissier_, with its sequel, _La Seconde Vie de M. T. _ These bookscertainly made a bold and wide separation of aim and subject from thesubject and the aim of most French novels in these recent years. Hereyou have, instead of a man who attempts somebody else's wife, one whowishes to get rid--on at least legally respectable terms--of his own, and to marry a girl for whom he has, and who has for him, a passionwhich is, until legal matrimony enfranchises it, able to restrain itselffrom any practical satisfaction of the as yet illicit kind. He availshimself of the then pretty new facilities for divorce (the famous "LoiNaquet, " which used to "deave" all of us who minded such things manyyears ago), and the situation is (at least intentionally) made morepiquant by the fact that Teissier, who is a prominent statesman andgives up not merely his wife but his political position for this newlove of his, starts as an actual supporter of the repeal of the divorcelaws. To an English reader, of course, the precise problem would nothave the same charm of novelty, except in his capacity as a reader ofFrench novels. But, putting that aside, the position is obviouslycapable of being treated with very considerable appeal. The struggles ofthe husband, who _has_ loved his wife--M. Rod had not the audacity orthe strength to make him love her still--between his duties and hisdesires; the indignant suffering of the wife; and most of all, theposition of the girl who, by ill-fortune or the fault of others, findsherself expending, on an at first illicit and always ill-famed love, what she might have devoted to an honourable one, certainly has greatcapabilities. But I did not think when I read it first, and I do notthink now when I have read it again, that these various opportunitiesare fully taken. It is not that M. Rod has no idea of passion. He isconstantly handling it and, as will be seen presently, not withoutsuccess occasionally. But he was too much what he calls his eidolon inone book, "Monsieur le psychologue, " and the Psyche he deals with is toooften a skinny and spectacled creature--not the love of Cupid and themother of Voluptas. [550] [Sidenote: _La Sacrifiée. _] If he has ever made his story hot enough to make this pale cast glow, itis in _La Sacrifiée_. This is all the more remarkable in that thebeginning of the book itself is far from promising. There is a ratherunnecessary usher-chapter--a thing which M. Rod was fond of, and which, unless very cleverly done, is more of an obstacle than of a "shoe-horn. "The hero-narrator of the main story is one of the obligatorily atheisticdoctors--nearly as great a nuisance as obligatorily adulterousheroines--whom M. Rod has mostly discarded; and what is more, he is oneof the pseudo-scientific fanatics who believe in the irresponsibility ofmurderers, and do not see that, the more irresponsible a criminal is, the sooner he ought to be put out of the way. Moreover, he has theill-manners to bore the company at dinner with this craze, and theindecency (for which in some countries he might have smarted) to condemnout loud, in a court of justice, the verdict of the jury and thesentence of the judge on his pet. Neither can one approve the haste withwhich he suggests to the wife of his oldest and most intimate friendthat she is not happy with her husband. But this time M. Rod had got theforge working, and the bellows dead on the charcoal. The development ofthe situation has something of that twist or boomerang effect which wehave noticed in _Michel Teissier_. Dr. Morgex begins by defendingmurderers; he does not end, but starts the end, by becoming a murdererhimself, though one with far more "extenuating circumstances" than thoseso often allowed in French courts. His friend--who is an advocate of nomean powers but loose life and dangerously full habit--has, when thedoctor warns him against apoplexy, half scoffed, but also begged him, ifa seizure should take place, to afford him a chance of euthanasiainstead of lingering misery. The actual situation, though with stagesand variations which are well handled, arises; the doctor, who has longsince been frantically in love with the wife, succumbs to thetemptation--which has been aggravated by the old request, by thesufferings of the victim, and by the urgent supplications of the family, that he _shall_ give morphia to relieve these sufferings. He givesit--but in a dose which he knows to be lethal. After a time, and having gone through no little mental agony, he marriesthe widow, who is in every sense perfectly innocent; and a brief periodof happiness follows. But his own remorse continues; the well-meaningchatter of a lady, who has done much to bring about the marriage, and towhom Morgex had unwarily mentioned "obstacles, " awakes the wife'ssuspicion, and, literally, "the murder is out. " Morgex confesses, firstto a lawyer friend, who, to his intense surprise, pronounces him legallyguilty, of course, but morally excusable; then to a priest, who takesalmost exactly the opposite point of view, and admitting that the legalcrime may be excusable, declares the moral guilt not lessened; while hepoints out that while the wages of iniquity are retained, no pardon canbe deserved or expected. And so the pair part. Morgex gives himself upto the hardest and least profitable practitioner-work. Of what the wifedoes we hear nothing. She has been perfectly guiltless throughout; shehas loved her second husband without knowing his crime, and afterknowing it; and so she is "La Sacrifiée. " But this (as some would callit) sentimental appeal is not the real appeal of the book, though it isdelicately led up to from an early point. The gist throughout is thetempering and purifying of the character and disposition of Morgexhimself, through trial and love, through crime and sacrifice. It is notperfectly done. If it were, it would land the author at once in thoseupper regions of art which I cannot say I think he attains. But it is avery remarkable "try, " and, with one other to be mentioned presently, itis nearest the goal of any of his books. [Sidenote: _Le Silence. _] On the other hand, if he ever wrote a worse book than _Le Silence_, Ihave not read, and I do not wish to read, that. The title is singularlyunhappy. Silence is so much greater a thing than speech that a speaker, unless he is Shakespeare or Dante or Lucretius, [551] or at least thebest kind of Wordsworth, had better avoid the subject, avoid even theword for it. And M. Rod's examples of silence, preluded in each case(for the book has two parts) by one of those curious harbingerings ofhis which are doubtfully satisfactory, are not what they call nowadays"convincing. " The first and longest--it is, indeed, much too long andmight have been more acceptable in twenty pages than in twohundred--deals with the usual triangle--brutal husband, suffering wife, interesting lover. But the last two never declare themselves, or aredeclared; and they both die and make no sign. In the second part thereis another triangle, where the illegitimate side is established andresults in a duel, the lover killing the husband and establishinghimself with the wife. But a stove for tea-making explodes; she losesher beauty, and (apparently for that reason) poisons herself, though itdoes not appear that her lover's love has been affected by the change. In each case the situation comes under that famous and often-quoted banof helpless and unmanageable misery. [Sidenote: _Là-Haut. _] Nor can I think highly of _Là-Haut_, which is quite literally an accountof an Alpine village, and of its gradual vulgarisation by anenterprising man of business. Of the ordinary novel-interests there islittle more than the introduction at the beginning of a gentleman whohas triangled as usual, till, the husband has, in his, the lover's, presence, most inconsiderately shot his wife dead, has missed (which wasa pity) M. Julien Sterny himself, and, more unconscionably still, hasbeen acquitted by a court of justice, in which the officials, and thepublic in general, actually seemed to think that M. Sterny was to blame!He is much upset by this, and, coming to Vallanches to recuperate, isrewarded later for his good deeds and sufferings, [552] by the hand of avery attractive young woman with a fortune. This poetic justice, however, is by no means the point of the book, which, indeed, has noparticular point. It is filled up by details of Swiss hotel-life: of thewicked conduct of English tourists, who not merely sing hymns on Sunday, but dance on wet evenings in the week (nearly the oddest combination ofcrimes known to the present writer); of a death in climbing of one ofthe characters which is not in the least required by the story; of thescalding of her arm by a _paysanne_ in a sort of "ragging" flirtation, and the operation on the mortifying member by a curé who knowssomething of chirurgy; and of the ruin of some greedy peasants who turntheir châlet into a hotel with no capital to work it, and are boughtout, with just enough to cover their outlay and leave them penniless, bythe general _entrepreneur_. It is a curious book, but the very reverseof a successful one. [Sidenote: _La Course à la Mort. _] The centre, not by any means in the chronological sense (for they wereamong his earliest), but in the logical and psychological, of M. Rod'snovel production, is undoubtedly to be found in the two contrastedlytitled books _Le Sens de la Vie_ and _La Course à la Mort_. The first, which, as has been said, received Academic distinction, I approachedmany years ago without any predisposition against it, and closed with adistinct feeling of disappointment. The other I read more recently witha distinct apprehension of disapproval, which was, if not entirely, to avery large extent removed as I went on. It was strongly attacked asmorbid and mischievous at its first appearance in 1885; and the author, some years afterwards, prefixed a defence to his fifth edition, which isnot much more effective than such defences usually are. It takessomething like the line which, as was mentioned above, Mr. Traill tookabout Maupassant--that Pessimism was a fact like other facts, and onewas entitled to take it as a subject or motive. But it also contained aslip into that obvious but, somehow or other, seldom avoided trap--theargument that a book is "dramatic, " and does not necessarily express theauthor's own attitude. Perhaps not; but the rejoinder that almost all, if not all, M. Rod's books are "sicklied o'er" in this way is ratherfatal. One gets to expect, and seldom misses, a close and dreary airthroughout, often aggravated by an actual final sentence or paragraph oflamentation and mourning and woe. But I do not resent the "nervousimpression" left on me by _La Course à la Mort_, with its indefinitelystated but certain end of suicide, and its unbroken soliloquy of drearydream. For it is in one key all through; it never falls out of tune ortime; and it does actually represent a true, an existent, though apartial and morbid attitude of mind. It is also in parts very wellwritten, and the blending of life and dream is sometimes almost Poesque. A novel, except by the extremest stretch of courtesy, it is not, beingsimply a panorama of the moods of its scarcely heroic hero. And he doesnot "set one's back up" like René, or, in my case at least, produceboredom like most of the other "World-pain"-ers. The still more shadowyappearances of the heroine Cécile, who dies before her lover, while thecourse of his love is more dream than action, are well brought in andattractive; and there is one passage descriptive of waltzing which wouldatone for anything. Many people have tried to write about waltzing, butfew have done it well; this is almost adequate. I wonder if I daretranslate it? We never thought that people might be turning an evil eye on us; we cared nothing for the indignation of the mammas sitting passive and motionless; we hardly felt the couples that we jostled. [553] Thanks to the cradling of the rhythm, to the intoxication of our rapid and regular movement, there fell on us something like a great calm. Drunk with one another, hurried by the absorbing voluptuousness of the waltz, we went on and on vertiginously. People and things turned with us, surrounding us with a gyre of moving shadows, under a fantastic light formed of crossing reflections, in an atmosphere where one breathed inebriating perfumes, and where every atom vibrated to the ever more bewildering sound of music. Time passed, and we still went on; losing little by little all consciousness except that of our own movement. Then it even seemed that we came out of ourselves; we heard nothing but a single beat, marking the cadence with strokes more and more muffled. The lights, melting into one, bathed us in a dreamy glow; we felt not the floor under our feet; we felt nothing but an immense oblivion--the oblivion of a void which was swallowing us up. And doubtless it was so, as has been seen of many in the Time ofRoses. [554] [Sidenote: _Le Ménage du Pasteur Naudié. _] To take one or two more of his books, _Le Ménage du Pasteur Naudié_, though less poignant than _La Sacrifiée_ and with no approach to theextra-novelish merit of _La Course à la Mort_, starts not badly with aninteresting scene, no less a place than La Rochelle, very rarely met, since its great days, in a French novel--a rather unfamiliar society, that of French Protestantism at Rochelle itself and Montauban--and acertainly unusual situation, the desire of a young, pretty, and wealthygirl, Jane Defos, to marry an elderly pastor who is poor, and, though awidower, has four children. That nothing but mischief can come of this proceeding--as of an abnormalleap-year--is clear enough: whether the way in which the mischief isbrought about and recounted is good may be more doubtful. That a personlike M. Naudié, simple, though by no means a fool, should be taken in bya very pretty girl falling apparently in love with him--even though, tothe general dangers of the situation, are added frank warnings that shehas been given to a series of freakish fancies--is not unnatural; thatshe should soon tire of him, and sooner still of the four step-children, is very natural indeed. But the immediate cause of the finaldisruption--her taking a new fancy to, and being atheistically convertedby, a cousin who, after all, runs away from temptation--is not verynatural, and is unconvincingly told. Indeed the whole character of Janeis insufficiently presented. She is meant to be a sort of Blanche Amory, with nothing real in her--only a succession of false and fleetingfancies. But M. Rod was not Thackeray. [Sidenote: _Mademoiselle Annette. _] [Sidenote: _L'Eau Courante. _] With two or three more of his later-middle books (it does not seemnecessary to deal with the very latest, which are actually beyond ourlimit, and could not alter the general estimate very favourably) thepreparation of judgment may cease. _Mademoiselle Annette_ is the historyof a "house-angel" and her family, and the fortunes and misfortunes theygo through, and the little town of Bielle on the Lake of Geneva. [555] Itis told, rather in M. Ferdinand Fabre's way, by a bystander, from thetime when the heroine was his school-dame and, as such dames sometimes, if not often, are, adored by her pupils. Annette dies at last, and M. Rod strews the dust of many others on her way to death. An Americanbrother of the typical kind plays a large part. He is tamed partly byAnnette, partly by a charming wife, whom M. Rod must needs kill, withoutany particular reason. _L'Eau Courante_ is an even gloomier story. Itbegins with a fair picture of a home-coming of bride and bridegroom, ona beautiful evening, to an ideal farm high up on the shore of Leman. Ina very few pages M. Rod, as usual, kills the wife after subjecting herto exceptional tortures at the births of her children, and then settlesdown comfortably to tell us the ruin of the husband, who ends by arsonof his own lost home and drowning in his own lost pond. The interval isall blunder, misfortune, and folly--the chief _causa malorum_ being asenseless interference with the "servitude" rights of neighbours, whomhe does not like, by stopping, for a week, a spring on his own land. Almost the only cheerful character in the book (except a delightful_juge de conciliation_, who carries out his benevolent duties in hiscellar, dispensing its contents to soften litigants) is a blackbilly-goat named Samuel, who, though rather diabolical, is in a way the"Luck of the Bertignys, " and after selling whom their state is doomed. But we see very little of him. The summing up need probably not be long. That M. Rod was no merestuffer of the shelves of circulating libraries must have been madeclear; that he could write excellently has been (with all due modesty)confessed; that he could sometimes be poignant, often vivid, evenoccasionally humorous, is true. He has given us a fresh illustration ofthat tendency of the later novel, to "fill all numbers" of ordinarylife, which has been insisted upon. But that he is too much of a "dismalJemmy" of novel-writing is certainly true also. The House of Mourning isone of the Houses of Life, and therefore open to the novelist. But it isnot the _only_ house. It would sometimes seem as if M. Rod were (asusual without his being able to help it) a sort of _jettatore_, --as ifthere were no times or places for him except that When all the world is old, And all the trees are brown, And all the sport is cold, And all the wheels run down. [Sidenote: _Scènes de la Vie Cosmopolite. _] But there is something to add, and even one book not yet noticed tocomment on, which may serve as a real light on this remarkable novelist. The way in which I have already spoken of _La Course à la Mort, _ whichwas a very early book, may be referred to. Even earlier, or at least asearly, M. Rod wrote some short stories, which were published as _Scènesde la Vie Cosmopolite_. They include "Lilith" (the author, though farfrom an Anglophile, had a creditable liking for Rossetti), which is astory of the rejection of a French suitor by an English governess; theending of a liaison between a coxcomb and a lady much older than himself("Le Feu et l'Eau"); "L'Idéal de M. Gindre, " with a doubtfulmarriage-close; a discovery of falseness ("Le Pardon"); "La DernièreIdylle" (which may be judged from some of its last words: "I have made aspectacle of myself long enough, and now the play is over"), and "Nocesd'Or, " the shortest and bitterest of all, in which the wife, who hasfelt herself tyrannised over for the fifty years, mildly retaliates byproviding for dinner _nearly_ all the things that she likes and herhusband does not, though she effects a reconciliation with _pâté decanard d'Amiens_. I wonder if they ate duck-pies at Amiens in the springof 1918? The purpose of this postscript-account, and of the reference to _LaCourse_, should not be very obscure. It is clear that, at first and fromthe first, M. Rod's vocation was to be a prophet of discouragement anddisappointment. You may be this and be quite a major prophet; but if youare not a major prophet your minority will become somewhat painfullyapparent, and it will often, if not always, go near to failure. I thinkthis was rather the case with M. Rod. * * * * * [Sidenote: Catulle Mendès. ] It is with reluctance that I find myself unable to give more than praisefor admirable French, and "form" in the strict sense, to the work inprose fiction of M. Catulle Mendès, sometime Gautier's son-in-law[556]and always, I think, his disciple. His early verse-work in the _ParnasseContemporain_ fifty years ago, was attractive and promising, thoughperhaps open to the exception which some took to the _Parnasse_generally, and which may be echoed here, _not_ with that generalconcernment, but as to his own novel and tale-work. His late criticalsurvey of modern French poetry was a really difficult thing admirablydone. But his fiction leaves me cold, as Parnassian poetry did others, but not me. A friend of mine, whom I should have thought quiteunshockable, either by principles or practice, once professed himself tome aghast at _Méphistophéla_. But M. Mendès's improprieties neithershock nor excite nor amuse me, because they have a certain air of being"machined. " If anybody wishes to sample them at their very best, thehalf-score loosely and largely printed pages of "Tourterelle" in thevolume entitled _Lesbia_ will be no severe experiment. He may then takehis choice of not going further at all, or of going further at thehazard of faring worse, or as well now and then, but hardly, I think, better. * * * * * I do not propose to add any further studies in detail to those alreadypresented in this chapter. As I have (perhaps more than once) remarked, there are few periods of the century with the minor as well as majornovel work of which I am better acquainted than with that of its lastquarter. As I remember independently, or am in this or that wayreminded, of the names of Jules de Glouvet; of at least threePauls--Alexis, Arène, and Mahalin; of Ernest d'Hervilly; of the prolificHector Malot; of Oscar Meténier, and Octave Mirbeau, and Jules Vallès ofthe Commune, of the brothers Margueritte and of others too many tomention, a sort of shame invades me at leaving them out. [557] Some ofthem may be alive still, though most, I think, are dead. But dead oralive, I have no room for them, and, for reasons also elsewhere stated, it is perhaps as well. The blossoming of the aloe, not once in a hundredyears but all through them, has been told as best I could tell it. Not shame but sorrow attends the exclusion of others, some of them, Ithink, better novelists than those actually discussed in thischapter--especially "Gyp" and MM. Anatole France, Paul Bourget, JeanRichepin, and "Pierre Loti. " It would have been agreeable to pay, oncemore, suit and service to the adorable chronicler of the little rascalBob and the unpretentiously divine Chiffon; to recall the delightedsurprise with which one read _Le Crime de Silvestre Bonnard_, and followthe train of triumphs that succeeded it; to do justice (unbribed, butpleasantly seasoned, by some private gratitude) to the vigour andacuteness of _L'Irréparable_ and its companions; to salute thatmasterpiece of Realism at its best, _La Glu_, and the more complicatedas well as more pathetic history of _Césarine_; and to re-discover thecountries and the manners depicted for us from _Aziyadé_ to _Pêcheurd'Islande_. But the _consigne_ elsewhere laid down and experiencedforbids it, and I think that _consigne_ should not be "forced. " FOOTNOTES: [519] It was in connection with this, at some time in the 'eighties, that I came across a curious survival of the old prejudice againstnovels--deserving perhaps, with better claim than as a mere personalanecdote, record in this history. One French publisher, who held himselfabove the "three-fifty, " and produced dainty books of art and letters, once sent a pathetic remonstrance against his wares being reviewed"sometimes unkindly, _and always with the novels_. " [520] "Tigrane" is a nickname, early accounted for and perhapssuggesting its own explanation. [521] At the extreme end there is an interesting reminder of thatcurious moment when it was thought on the cards that Pius IX. Mightaccept an English asylum at Malta, and that, as a part-consequence, notof course Newman but Manning might be his successor. The probableresults of this, to "those who knew" at the time, are still matter ofinteresting, if unpractical, speculation. [522] He is playing whist comfortably with the cathedral keys in hispocket, and has nearly made a slam (Fr. _chelem_), while the pelting ofthe pitiless storm is on the dead bishop's bier and its faithfulguardians. [523] There is something Browningesque about it, a something by no meansconfined to the use of the history--actually referred to in the text, but likely to be anticipated long before by readers--of Popes Formosusand Stephen. That it did not satisfy Ultramontanes is not surprising;_v. Inf. _ on one of the smaller pieces in _Norine_. [524] He had actually been intended for the Church. [525] One thing, for the credit of the Gallican Church, we may trustthat he did _not_ do. An Anglican prelate, like this his brother on aConfirmation tour, is alleged to have pointed to a decanter on hishost's sideboard and said, "I hope, on my next visit, I shall not see_that_. " I do not know what the rector answered: I do know what _I_should have said, despite my reverence for the episcopate: "My Lord, youwill not have the opportunity. " [526] _La Rue du Puits qui Parle_ and _Le Carmel de Vaugirard_. [527] The _Société des Secours Intellectuels_. [528] See on Murger. [529] Whenever she hears that any of her numerous lovers has fallen ill, she promptly "plants there" the man in possession, and tends and, as faras she can, supports the afflicted. [530] _Vide_ the frontispiece of Settle's _Empress of Morocco_. [531] It would be curmudgeonly to say, "evaded by shortness of space. " [532] They are, however, orthodox after a fashion; and I do not thinkthat M. Fabre, in the books that I have read, ever introducesdescendants of the Camisards, though dealing with their country. [533] M. Fabre is so fond of these interrupted _récits_ that one issometimes reminded of _Jacques le Fataliste_ and its landlady. But, todo him justice, he "does it more natural. " [534] "Come to thy death, Victor _Galbraith_. "--LONGFELLOW. [535] See note above on M. Fabre's weakness for this style of narrative. [536] The next to be mentioned runs him hard perhaps. [537] Her girls are perhaps as good, but scarcely her men. [538] This had _not_ been the case--to an extent which I am puzzled toaccount for--with those of M. Fabre. [539] _Deformem vocant quidam_, as in other cases also: but that isbecause she has eyes and they have none. [540] For instance, in Highbury or Cranford there might be scandal abouta young bachelor's very late visits to a pretty widow. But the adultportion of the population, at any rate, would hardly lay booby-traps totrip him in a river on his return. [541] An old schoolmaster, whom Raymonde has deeply offended byupsetting his just-gathered mushrooms at the beginning of the book, andwho is warmly attached to Antoine, turns out to be the girl's legalfather--her mother, a disagreeable, handsome person, having been runaway twenty years earlier by another character who has passed hithertoas respectable husband and paterfamilias. [542] Excepting some of the "Johnny Ludlow" stories, which were, Ithink, in their kind, better than anything M. Ohnet ever did to myknowledge--I may perhaps observe that the above notice was written, exactly as it stands, _before_ M. Ohnet's death, but under theimpression that the death had occurred. When it did, there were thingsin the obituaries which made me raise my eyebrows. That he was a"belated Romantic" had certainly never occurred to me; but I have noquarrel with the description of him, in another place, as a practitionerof the _roman bourgeois_. [543] _V. Sup. _ p. 277-280. [544] The great scene in Mr. Disraeli's _Young Duke_, when that youthfulnobleman loses, what is it? two hundred and seventeen thousand pounds, Ithink; the brief but poignant plucking of Mr. Dawkins; the occasion in_Sans Merci_ where the hero _will_ not lead trumps, and thereby, thoughnot at once, seals his fate; and a quite nice game at Marmora in Mr. E. F. Benson's _The Babe, B. A. _ emerge from many memories, reinforced bysome of actual experience. Marmora _is_ a nice game: with penny stakes, and three players only, you may have five pounds in the pool before youknow where you are. But I do not know anything more really exciting thana game at which you guess how many marbles the other fellow holds in hisfist. The sequel, however, in which you have to ask for an advance ofpocket-money to settle your "differences", is not so pleasant. [545] Another scene, which brings on the _dénouement_ and in whichClaire is again supposed to have the _beau rôle_, does not please memuch better. Thinking that her husband is flirting with the detestedDuchess, she publicly orders her out of the house--a very natural, but arather "fish-faggy" proceeding. [546] It has been, and will be, pointed out that he was in all waysstudious to run before the wind; and it was just at this time, if Iremember rightly, that the catchword of "conflict" began to pester onein criticism. Perhaps this was the reason. [547] The argument, or assumption rather, is all the odder because, onthe one hand, orthodoxy holds Free-will (if it accepts that) as a Divineendowment of the Soul: and, on the other, serious Atheism is almostalways Determinist. But the study of M. Ohnet was probably not muchamong the Sentences. [548] The obituarist above mentioned, who thought M. Ohnet a belatedRomantic, thought also that he was "struggling against the rising tideof Realism. " I do not think you would ever have found him strugglingagainst rising tides, and, as a matter of fact, the tide was already onthe turn. [549] Already mentioned in the case of M. Cherbuliez (_v. Sup. _ p. 447). [550] [Sidenote: Note on _La Seconde Vie de M. T. _] The second part is occupied with two different but connected subjects. Suzanne, the first wife, dies suddenly, and the two daughters, theelder, Annie, quite, and the second, Laurence, nearly grown up--returnto the custody of their father, and therefore to the society at least ofhis second wife, Blanche, who, though of course feeling the awkwardness, welcomes them as well as she can. The situation, though much _more_awkward, is something like that of Miss Yonge's _Young Stepmother_: butM. Rod makes it more tragic by Annie's death, partly in consequence of alove-marriage failing, through the lover's father's objection to thestate of her family. The other subject is the gradual hankering ofMichel after a return to political life, and his (consequentiallyinevitable) ratting from Right to Left. M. Rod brought into the matterdirect reminiscences of the Parnell and Dilke cases, and possibly owedthe conception of the whole book to them; but he has, as is sometimeshis wont, rather "sicklied it over" with political and other discussion. [551] A pleasant study, in poetic use of imagery and phrase, is thegradation from the bare and grand Lucretian simplicity of _silentianoctis_, through the "favour and prettiness" (slightly tautologicalthough) of the Virgilian _tacitae per amica silentia lunae_, to therecovery and intensifying of magnificence in _dove il sol tace_. By theway, _silentia_ (for the singular undergoes Quintilian's apology for theLatin _-um_) is one of the few instances in which a Latin word beats theGreek. [Greek: sigê] is really inferior. [552] What annoys him most of all is that he should have anuncomfortable feeling about the woman "_comme_ si je l'avais _aimée_!"He had only, you see, done something else. [553] They should not have done this, and I do not think they did; itwas the couples that jostled them. And even this ought not to havehappened. The fastest waltzing (I am speaking of the old _deux-temps_, which this must have been) conveyed an almost uncanny extra power ofvision, and at the same time of avoidance, to the right persons. Indeed, the first three lines of this extract have been objected to as base andinconsistent. I think not; the common out of which you rise to theuncommon is worth indication. [554] It may be added that the contrast of an earlier mazurka--in theslowness of which the pair had time to look at each other, feel eachother, and otherwise remain in Paradise, but outside of the doubleNirvana--is highly creditable. But I hope they _waltzed_ to the mazurka. It is rather annoying to other people who are doing the orthodox step;but it is the perfection of the slow movement, which affords, as above, opportunities that do not exist in the faster and more deliriousgyration. [555] This (which may be called M. Rod's novel-headquarters) occurs alsonot merely in _L'Eau Courante_ but in _Les Roches Blanches_, a bookwhich opens very well in a Mrs. Gaskell or Mrs. Oliphant vein, with theintroduction of a new pastor, but ends much less satisfactorily, with aguiltless but not at all convincing love-affair between this pastor andthe wife of his chief parishioner. [556] His wife for a time, Madame Judith Gautier, who died veryrecently, wrote in a fashion not unworthy of her blood both in verse andprose (part of her production being translations from Chinese), and wasthe only lady-member of the quaint _Contre_-académie formed by E. DeGoncourt. [557] And this shame becomes more acute when I think of one or twoindividual books, such especially as M. Henry Cochin's _Manuscrit deMonsieur C. A. L. Larsonnier_--a most pathetic and delightful story of amental malady which makes time and memory seem to go backward though thevictim can force himself to continue his ordinary duties, and record hissufferings. CONCLUSION The remaining pages of this book should be occupied partly with acontinuation of a former chapter, [558] partly with a summary of thewhole volume, the combination, almost necessary in all cases, beingspecially motived in this by the overlappings referred to above, and aword added on the whole _History_. Not only did Victor Hugo hold, toFrench literature as well as to French poetry, something very like theposition[559] occupied by Tennyson and Browning in English poetry only, by covering every quarter of the century in whole or part with his work;but there was, even in France, nothing like the "general post" ofdisappearances and accessions which marked the period from 1820 to 1860in English--a consequence necessarily of the later revival of French. Noone except Chateaubriand corresponded to the crowd of distinguishedwriters who thus made their appearance, at the actual meeting ofeighteenth and nineteenth, with us; and though, of course, there wereexceptions, the general body of the French reinforcement did not dwindlemuch till 1870 onwards. We noted that the first great development of the nineteenth-centurynovel was in the historical department, though many others made notablefresh starts: and we said something about the second development of the"ordinary" one which followed. It is this latter, of course, which hassupplied the main material of the last third of the present volume, though (of course again) there have been many noteworthy and some greatexamples of the historical itself, of the supernatural, of theeccentric, and of many other kinds. But practically all who tried theselater tried the ordinary, and a great many who tried the ordinary didnot try the others. It is therefore on the development of the novel ofcommon modern life that we must, at any rate for a little time, spendmost of our attention here. The fact of the change is indeed so certain and so obvious, that thereis not much need to enforce or illustrate it, though it must beremembered that, on any true conception of history, the most obviousthings are not those least worthy of being chronicled. Even Hugo, likelyto be, and actually being, the most recalcitrant to the movement, comesclose to modern times, and to such ordinary life as was possible to him, in _Les Misérables_ and _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_. George Sand hadbegun as a sort of modernist; but by any one who can perform the (it istrue not very easy) task of equating relative modernity, it will not befound that _Mlle. La Quintinie_, or even _Flamarande_, are more modernthan _Lélia_ or _Valentine_ in the mere ratio of the dates. The ordinarylife of the 'thirties and that of the 'sixties and 'seventies was nodoubt different, but there is more than that difference in the booksreferred to. The artist is, consciously or unconsciously, trying to getnearer to her model or sitter. And this though George Sand was reallyalmost as self-centred as Hugo, though in another way. But it is, of course, in less idiosyncratic writers than these, whocontinued, and in others who began, to write at this time, that we mustlook for our real documents. Among the elder of this second class, JulesSandeau's work is worth recurring to. He had sometimes gone a littleearlier than his own time, and he had sometimes employed what iscalled--perhaps inconsiderately and certainly to some extentmisleadingly--"romantic" incident in addition to purely novel-characterand presentation. But his general manner of dealing reproduces itself, almost more than that of any of his contemporaries, in those novelistsof the last quarter of the century who do not bow the knee toNaturalism: and one finds some actual recognition of the fact indedications to him by younger novelists such as M. André Theuriet. [560] But, look where you will, the lesson is unmistakable. Take AlexandreDumas _fils_, beginning with a _Tristan le Roux_ and ending with an_Affaire Clémenceau_. Take Flaubert's _Madame Bovary_ and _L'ÉducationSentimentale_, in comparison with which _Salammbô_ and two of the _TroisContes_ (the other is quite in the general drift) are obviousvariations, excursions, reliefs. [561] Feuillet is practically (whatevermay have been his early practice as a "devil"), when he takes to his ownline, modern, and in a sense ordinary or nothing: Daudet the same. Naturalism _en bloc_ would lose almost all pretence of justifying itselfif it did not stick to the ordinary, or at least actual, though it maysometimes be a sort of transformed "ordinariness in abnormality. " Sogreat and so fertile a writer as Maupassant leaves us--except in hissupernaturalisms--nothing at all that goes out of the actual probable oreasily possible experience of a Frenchman of 1880-90. The four novelistswho supply the bulk of the last chapter never outstep this. But sincesuch indulgence in particulars may be thought mere driving at an opendoor, let us take the fact for granted, and turn to some considerationof its causes, results, conditions, features, and the like. One of the causes is of such certainty and importance that a person, notindolent or prejudiced, might ask for no other. It is that sempiternaldesire for change[562]--that principle of revolution, which is so muchmore certain than any evolution, and which governs human life, though itis always bringing that life back to the old places, "camouflaged, " asthey say nowadays, in a fashion that disguises them to the simple. Theromance of incident, historical and other, had had a long innings, andpeople were tired of it. But though this was undoubtedly the maininfluence, there were some others which it would be hardly judicious toneglect. It is true that the greatest of these were, in a fashion, onlypartial actions or reactions of the larger one already mentioned. [563]Beyle and Balzac, the latter of course with important "colours" of hisown, and even the former with some modifications, had, as men of geniusgenerally do, felt or found the spirit of change early, and theiraudiences helped to spread it. And yet minor impulsions might beindicated. It is a commonplace that from the days of the Napoleonic Warto the middle 'fifties there were few great European events; commercialprogress, developments of colonisation, machinery, literature, and thearts, somewhat peddling politics, [564] and the like taking the place ofthe big wars and the grandiose revolutions that ushered in thenineteenth century. But these mostly meaner things themselves claimedattention; they filled the life of men if they did not glorify it;classes and occupations which had been almost altogether non-vocal beganto talk and be talked about, and so the change again held on. Lastly, of course, there was the increase of education: with which thedemand for fiction, plentiful in quantity and easily comprehended, wassure to grow. On the whole, however, the results concern us more than the causes. Whatis the general character of this large province, or, looking at it inanother way, of these accumulated crops, which the fifty years morespecially in question saw added to the prose fiction of France? The answer is pretty much what any wide student of history--political, social, literary, or other--would expect, supposing, which is of coursein fact an impossibility, that he could come to the particular study"fresh and fasting. " Novel-writing in France, as elsewhere, became moreand more a business; and so, while the level of craftsmanship might beto some extent raised, the level of artistic excellence wascorrespondingly lowered. It has been before observed more than oncethat, to the present critic, only Flaubert and Maupassant of the writerswe have been discussing in these later chapters can be credited withpositive genius, unless the too often smoky and malodorous torch of Zolabe admitted to qualify for the Procession of the Chosen. But when wetake in the whole century the retrospect is very different; and whilethe later period may suffer slightly in the respect just indicated, theearlier affords it some compensation in the other noted point. There is, indeed, no exact parallel, in any literature or any branch ofliterature within my knowledge, to the manifold development of theFrench novel during these hundred years. Our own experience in the samedepartment cannot be set in any proper comparison with it, for the fourgreat novelists of the mid-eighteenth century, and their followers fromMiss Burney downwards, with the Terror and the Political schools of theextreme close, had advanced our starting-point so far that Scott andMiss Austen possessed advantages not open to any French writer. On theother hand, the Sensibility School, which was far more numerouslyattended in France than in England, gave other openings, which _were_taken advantage of in a special direction by Benjamin Constant, and muchearlier and less brilliantly, but still with important results, byMadame de Montolieu. The age-long competence of the French in _conte_and _nouvelle_ was always ready for fresh adaptation; and at the verybeginning of the new century, and even earlier, two reinforcements ofthe most diverse character came to the French novel. Pigault-Lebrun andDucray-Duminil (the earliest of whose novels appeared just before theRevolution as Pigault's début was made just after it) may be said tohave democratised the novel to nearly[565] the full meaning of that muchabused word. They lowered its value aesthetically, ethically (at leastin Pigault's case, while Ducray's morality does not go much above the"Be amiable and honest" standard), logically, rhetorically, and in agood many other ways. But they did not merely increase the number of itsreaders; in so doing they multiplied correspondingly the number of itspractitioners, and so they helped to make novel-writing a businessand--through many failures and half-successes--to give it a sort ofregularised practice, if not a theory. Yet if this democratisation of the novel thus went partly but, as doesall democratisation inevitably, to the degradation of it in quality, though to its increase in quantity, there were fortunately otherinfluences at work to provide new reinforcements, themselves in somecases of quality invaluable. It has been admitted that neitherChateaubriand nor Madame de Staël can be said to have written afirst-class novel--even _Corinne_ can hardly be called that. But it isnearer thereto than anything that had been written since the first partof _La Nouvelle Héloïse_: while _René_ and _Atala_ recover, and morethan recover in tragic material, the narrative power of the best comictales. And these isolated examples were of less importance for theactual history--being results of individual genius, which are notimitable--than certain more general characteristics of the two writers. Between them--a little perhaps owing to their social position, but muchmore by their pure literary quality--they reinstated the novel in theUpper House of literature itself. In Madame de Staël there was more thanadequacy--in Chateaubriand there was sometimes consummateness--of style;in both, with whatever varnish of contemporary affectation, there wasgenuine nobility of thought. They both chose subjects worthy of theirpowers, and Madame de Staël at least contented herself with ordinary, ornot very extraordinary, modern life. But the greatest things they did, from the historian's point of view, were introductions of the novel tonew fields of exercise and endeavour. Art and religion were brought intoits sphere, and if _Les Natchez_ and _Les Martyrs_ cannot exactly becalled modern historical novels, they are considerable advances, bothupon the model of _Télémaque_ and upon that of _Bélisaire_. And evenputting this aside, the whole body of Chateaubriand's work, as well asnot a little in Madame de Staël's, tended to introduce and to encouragethe spirit of Romance. Now the proposition which--though never, I trust, pushed to theunliterary extent of warping the judgment, and never yet, I hope, undulyflaunted or flourished in the reader's face--dominates this volume, isthat Romanticism, or, to use the shorter and more glorious name, Romance, itself dominates the whole of the French nineteenth-centurynovel. If any one considers that this proposition is at variance withthe other, that the main function of the novel during the period hasbeen to bring the novel closer to ordinary life, he has failed to graspwhat it might be presumptuous plumply to call the true meaning ofRomance, but what is certainly that meaning as it has always appeared tome. To attempt discussion, or even enumeration, of all the definitions ordescriptions of Romance in general which have been given by others wouldnot only be impossible in the space at command, but would be reallyirrelevant. As it happens, the matter can be cut short, withoutinadequacy and without disingenuousness, by quoting a single pair ofepithets, affixed by a critic, for whom I have great respect, a day ortwo before I wrote these words. This critic held that Romantictreatment--in stage matters more particularly, but we can extend thephrase to fiction without unfairness--was "generous but false. " _I_should call it "generous" certainly, but before all things "true. " Noris this a mere play upon the words of the original. It so happens thatour friend the enemy has supplied a most admirable help. Legally, as weknow, veracity requires "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but thetruth. " I admit that the last clause will not fit Romance. She does giveus something more than the truth, and that is her generosity, but it isa generosity which is necessitated by the fact that Romance is a qualityor function not so much of nature essentially--though happily it issometimes so by accident--as of Art, the essence of which is to require, whether it be art classic or art romantic, art of literature or art ofdesign, art of sight or art of sound, something _added_ to the truth--asthat truth exists in reality. Of what this addition is presently. But Romance, as I see it, insistsupon and gives the truth and the whole truth of nature itself. Who isthe greatest of Romantics? By agreement of all but the purblind and theparadoxer, Shakespeare. Who is the truest and the most universal of allwriters? By consent of classic and romantic, at least of those of eitherkind who "count"--again Shakespeare. Let me say at once that, havingearly sworn allegiance to Logic, I am perfectly aware that a coincidenceof two things in one person does not prove the identity of the things. But it proves their compossibility, and when it is found _in excelsis_, it surely goes near to prove a good deal more. Nor is one in the leastconfined to this argument from example, strong as it is. When youexamine Classicism, which, whatever we may say or not say of it, willalways stand as the opposite of Romance, you find that it always leavessomething out. It may--it does in its best examples--give you truth; itmay--it does in its best examples--add something which is its own"generosity"--its castigation, its order, its reason, its this and thatand the other. To be very liberal, it may be admitted that the perpetualand meticulous presence in it of "Thou shalt not" do or say this orthat, is most conspicuous--let us go to the extreme of generosityourselves and say, is only conspicuous--in its feebler examples. Butthere is always something that it does not give, and some of us thinkthat there are not a few things which it cannot give. There is nothing, not even ugliness itself, which Romance cannot give, though there itsform of generosity comes in, and the ugly in simple essence becomesbeautiful by treatment. I could bestow any amount of tediousness in these generalities on myreaders if I thought it necessary: but having developed my propositionand its meaning, I think it better to pass to the applications thereofin the present subject. Of the wide extension of aim and object effected by Romantic influencein the novel, as in other departments of literature, there can be littledenial, though of course it may be contended that this extension tookplace not as it ought and as it ought not. But of the fact of it and ofthe corresponding variety introduced with it, the very pioneers of theso-called Romantic movement give ample proof. We have seen this even inthe extremely inchoate stage of the first two decades; when the greatdefinitely Romantic leaders made their appearance it was more remarkablestill. The four chief writers who gave the Romantic lead before 1830itself may be taken to be Nodier, Hugo, Mérimée, and Vigny. They standin choice of subjects, as in treatment of them, wide apart; and just asit has been noted of Vigny's poetry, that its three chief pieces, "Éloa, " "Dolorida, " and "Le Cor" point the way to three quite differentkinds of Romantic verse, so, confining ourselves to the same example, itmay be repeated that _Cinq-Mars_ and the smaller stories exemplify, andin a way pattern, kinds of Romantic prose fiction even further apartfrom each other. Always, through the work of these and that of Gautier, and of all the others who immediately or subsequently follow them, thisbroadening and branching out of the Romantic influence--this opening offresh channels, historical and fanciful, supernatural andordinary--shows itself. The contention, common in books, that thissomehow ceased about the middle of the century, or at least died offwith the death of those who had carried it out, appears to me, Iconfess, to be wildly unhistorical and uncritical. At no time--theproofs fill this volume--do we find any restriction, of choice ofsubject or conduct of treatment, to anything like the older limits. Butthe most unhistorical and the most uncritical form of this contention isthe astonishing endeavour to vindicate a "classical" character forNaturalism. Most certainly there is "impropriety" in some of theclassics and "impropriety" in all the Naturalists, but other resemblanceI can see none. As for the argument that as Naturalism is opposed toRomance and Classicalism is opposed to Romance, _therefore_ Naturalismis Classical--this is undoubtedly a very common form of bastardsyllogism, but to labour at proving its bastardy would be somewhatridiculous. The fact is, as should have been sufficiently made good above, thatNaturalism is not opposed to Romance in anything like the sense thatClassicism is: it is nothing but a degradation and exaggeration at onceof certain things in Romance itself. Nor do I think that there is theslightest difficulty in showing that every form of novel-writing whichwe have been surveying in this book--that the work of every one of thosedistinguished or undistinguished writers who have been, with or withoutregret, declined--is still essentially Romantic. It is Romantic in itsinflexible resolution to choose subjects for itself and not according torule; Romantic in its wise or unwise individuality of treatment;Romantic in its preferential appeal to emotion rather than to pureintelligence; above all, Romantic in its quest--often no doubtill-guided and unsuccessful, but always more or less present--for thatelement of strangeness which, though invisible to many who live, is apervading character of Life itself, and the presence of which it is theglory of Romance itself, from its earliest to its latest manifestations, to have recognised and to some extent fixed, in artistic representation. And so, I hope, that what has been discovered in this volume--in the wayof pageant and procession even more than that of examination, thoughwith something of that also--may have shown further progresstowards--nay, actual attainment of, the goal which I ventured to markout in the earlier volume as that of the novelist by the words, "Here isthe whole of human life before you. Copy it or, better, re-createit--with variation and decoration _ad libitum_--as faithfully, but asfully, as you can. " Thesis-writing, however, is but dismal reading, unless (as Mrs. Scotttold Jeffrey she hoped he was for the _Marmion_ review) "you are verywell paid for it. " Nor do I, as I have previously explained, consider ita necessary part of history, though common honesty may require that thepresence of a doctrine, behind the delivery of an account, should beconfessed. I think the account itself should be sufficient to make goodmy point; others may differ. But even if they do, some of them at leastwill, I hope, have found in that account some modicum of the amazingsupply of rest and refreshment contained in the mass of literature wehave been surveying. On the two volumes together there may be a little more to say. I havetouched, I hope not too frequently, on the curious pleasure which Imyself have felt in reading again books sometimes unopened for more thanhalf a century, sometimes read at different times during that period, sometimes positively familiar; and on the contrasted enjoyment ofreading others written long ago in all but a few cases, but not, as ithappened, read at the time of their appearance. I am indeed inclined tolay much stress on the quality of re-readableness in a novel. Perhaps, as indeed is pretty generally the fact in such cases, a capacity ofreading again is required in the person as well as one of being readagain in the book. The late Mr. Mark Pattison was not a friend of mine, and we once had a pitched battle; nor was he in any case given to borrowother people's expressions. But he was a critic, if he was anything, andhe once did me the honour to repeat _verbatim_--whether consciously ornot I cannot say, but in the very periodical where it had originallyappeared--a sentence of mine about "people who would rather read anycirculating-library trash, for the first time, than _Pendennis_ or_Pride and Prejudice_ for the second. " I think this difference betweenthe two classes is as worthy to rank, among the criteria of opposedraces of mankind and womankind, as those between borrowers and lenders, Platonists and Aristotelians, or Big- and Little-Endians. But the vast library through which I have had the privilege ofconducting my readers does not exercise any invidious separation betweenthe two. I have read a good many French novels--hundreds certainly, I donot know that it would be preposterous to say thousands--that I have noteven mentioned in this book. [566] But I have been a very busy man, andhave had to read and to do a great many other things. If I had hadnothing else to do and had devoted my entire life to the occupationwhich Gray thought not undesirable as regards Marivaux and Crébillon, Idoubt whether I could have "overtaken, " as the Scotch say, the entireprose fiction of 1800-1900 in French. On the back of one of the volumesof fiction--itself pretty obscure--which I have noticed in Chapter II. Of this volume, I find advertised the works of a certain Dinocourt, ofwhom I never heard before, and who is not to be found in at least sometolerably full French dictionaries of literature. They have quiteappetising titles (one or two given in the passage referred to), andthere are in all sixty-two volumes of them, distributed in fours, fives, and sixes among the several works. Ought I to have read these sixty oddvolumes of Dinocourt? That is a moral question. That there _are_ sixtyodd volumes of him, probably not now very easily obtainable, butsomewhere for some one to read if he likes, is a simple fact. And thereare no doubt many more than sixty such batches waiting likewise, [567]and quite likely to prove as readable as I found M. Ricard. I have by no means always felt inclined to acquiesce in the endlesslyrepeated complaints that the hackwork of literature is worse done inEngland than it is in France. But having had a very large experience ofthe novels of both languages, having reviewed hundreds of English novelsside by side with hundreds of French as they came from the press, andhaving also read, for pleasure or duty, hundreds of older ones in eachliterature, I think that the mysterious quality of readableness pure andsimple _has_ more generally belonged to the French novel than to theEnglish. This, as I have endeavoured to point out, is not a question ofnaughtiness or niceness, of candour or convention. I have indeedadmitted that the conventions of the French novel bore me quite as muchas anything in ours. It _may_ be partly a question of length, for, aseverybody knows, the French took to the average single volume, of somethree hundred not very closely printed pages, much sooner than we tookto anything of the kind. It is perhaps partly also due to what one ofthe reviewers of my former volume well called the greater "spaciousness"of the English novel, that is to say, its inclusion of more diverseaims, and episodic subjects, and minor interests generally. For this, while it makes for superior greatness when there is strength enough tocarry it off, undoubtedly requires _more_ strength, and so gives moreopenings for weakness to show itself. There are many average Englishnovels which I should not mind reading, and not a few that I should liketo read, again, while there are but few French novels that I should careto read so often as I have cared to read the great English ones. But Icould read, for a second time, a very much larger proportion of averageFrench fiction. Of those books which are "above average" I have tried to say what Ithought ought to be said in the volume itself, and there is no need of a"peroration with _much_ circumstance" about them. It is a long way--aperfect maze of long ways leading through the most different countriesof thought and feeling--from Atala dying in the wilderness to Chiffondoing exquisitely balanced justice to herself and the Jesuit, byallowing that while he and she were both _bien élevés_, he was _un peutrop_ and she was not. It is not so far, except in time, nor separatedby such a difference of intervening country, from the song of theMandragore in Nodier to those muffled shrieks of a better-known varietyof the same mystic plant, that tell us of Maupassant's growing progressto his fate. As you explore the time and the space of the interval youcome across wonderful things. There are the micro- macrocosms of Hugo, where, as in Baudelaire's line on the albatross quoted above, he ispartly hampered because he has come down from the air of poetry to theearth of prose; of Balzac, where there is no such difficulty, but wherethe cosmos itself is something other than yours; of Dumas, where halfthe actual history of France is _dis_realised for your delectation. On alesser scale you have the manners of town and country, of high life andlow life, of Paris most of all, given you through all sorts ofperspectives and in all sorts of settings by Paul de Kock and GeorgeSand, by Sandeau and Bernard, by Alexandre Dumas _fils_ and Feuillet, byTheuriet and Fabre. Gautier and Mérimée make for you that marriage ofstory and style which, before them, so few had attempted at all, yetwhich, since them, so many have tried with such doubtful success. Oncemore in Flaubert and then for the last time, as far as our survey goes, in Maupassant, you come to that touch of genius which exalts the novel, as it exalts all kinds, indefinably, unmistakably, finally. And this journey is not like the one great journey, and more than one ofthe lesser journeys, of our life, irremeable; there is no denial, nocurse, no fiend with outstretched claw, to prevent your going back asoften as you like, wandering in any direction you please, passing orstaying as and where you wish. It has been perhaps unconscionable of meto inflict so big a book on my readers as a cover for giving myself thepleasure of making and remaking such journeys. But if I have persuadedany one of them to explore the country for himself, by him at least Ishall not remain unforgiven. FOOTNOTES: [558] _V. Sup. _ "The French Novel in 1850. " [559] Called by some a "deadening" one. There was some very cheerfulLife in that Death. [560] The better part even of M. Ohnet is a sort of vulgarised Sandeau. [561] _La Tentation_, like others of the very greatest novels, isindependent of its time, save in mere unimportant "colour. " [562] How little this change was one back to classicism--as some wouldhave it--we may see presently. [563] The greatest of all--the direction and maintenance of therevolution under the inspiration of what is called Romance--must beagain postponed for a little while. [564] Of course the convulsions of '48 were ominous enough, but theyseemed to be everywhere repressed or placated for a considerable time;and if there had been a single statesman of genius besides Herr vonBismarck (I anticipate but decline the suggestion of Cavour) in theEurope of the next two decades, they might not have broken out again fora much longer time than was actually the case. [565] Nearly--but fortunately for literature--not quite. The jobbery andthe tyranny which are inseparable from democracy in politics find roomwith difficulty in _our_ "Republic. " [566] I am prepared for blame on account of some of the absences ofmention. Perhaps the most provoking, to some readers, will be thoseaffecting two industrious members of the aristocracy: Mme. La ComtesseDash--more beautifully and properly though less exaltedly, Gabrelli AnnaCisterne de Courtiras, _Vi_comtesse de Saint-Mars--and M. Le ComteXavier de Montépin. They overlapped each other in pouring forth, fromthe 'forties to the 'nineties, torrents of mostly sensational fiction. But I had rather read them than write about them. [567] In the same place another novelist, M. Amédée de Bast, of whom Iagain acknowledge ignorance, advertises no less than _four_ novels of_four_ volumes each, as being actually all at press, _pour paraître àdiverses époques_. Dryden says somewhere "in epoches mistakes. " Let ushope there were none here. APPENDIX DATES OF PUBLICATION OF NOVELS ARRANGED UNDER AUTHOR'S NAMES IN THEORDER OF NOTICE HERE (_These dates are given subject to the caution stated under Addenda andCorrigenda for Vol. I. , p. Xvii of this present volume. It has not beenthought necessary to add editions, etc. , as was done in Vol. I. : almostall the books referred to being in common sale. For dates of the authorsthemselves, see Index as before. Those of some books merely glanced atare excluded to save room. _) Staël, Mme. De. _Delphine_, 1802; _Corinne_, 1807. Chateaubriand. _Atala_, 1801, in the _Mercure_; _René_, 1802, in _Géniedu Christianisme_, 1805; _Le Dernier Abencérage_, 1805; _Les Martyrs_, 1809; _Les Natchez_ in _Oeuvres Complètes_, 1826-31. Paul de Kock. _L'Enfant de ma Femme_, 1812; _Gustave_, 1821; _La Femme, le Mari et l'Amant_, 1829; _Edmond et sa Cousine_, 1843; _André leSavoyard_, 1825; _Jean_, 1828. _Mon Voisin Raymond_; 1822; _Le Barbierde Paris_, 1826. Ducray-Duminil. _Fanfan et Lolotte_, 1787; _Le Petit Carillonneur_, 1809. Ducange, V. _L'Artiste et la Soldat_, 1827; _Ludovica_, 1830. Montolieu, Mme. De. _Caroline de Lichtfield_, 1786. Ricard, A. _L'Ouvreuse de Loges_, 1829-32. Arlincourt, Vicomte d'. _Le Solitaire_, 1821. Nodier, Charles. _Les Proscrits_, _Le Peintre de Salzbourg_, etc. , 1802-6; _Jean Sbogar_, 1818; _Smarra_, 1821; _Trilby_, 1822; _La Fée auxMiettes_, 1831. Hugo, Victor. _Han d'Islande_, 1823; _Bug-Jargal_, 1824-26; _Notre Damede Paris_, 1830; _Les Misérables_, 1862; _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_, 1866; _L'Homme qui Rit_, 1869; _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, 1873. Beyle, Henri. _Armance_, 1827; _Le Rouge et le Noir_, 1830; _LaChartreuse de Parme_, 1839; _L'Abbesse de Castro_, 1832. First set ofposthumous _Nouvelles_, etc. , 1854 onwards; second ditto (_Lamiel_, etc. ), 1887 onwards. Balzac, H. De. Most of the _Juvenilia_ were written, alone or incollaboration, during the years 1821, 1822, 1823, and 1824, but theperiod of the whole extends to that of _Les Chouans_ (originally _LeDernier Chouan_), 1829. The dates of the rest, especially consideringtheir frequent rearrangement, are too numerous to give. Those chieflycommented on in text appeared as follows: _Le Peau de Chagrin_, 1831;_Eugénie Grandet_, 1833; _Le Père Goriot_, 1834; _Les Parents Pauvres_, 1846-47. Sand, George. _Indiana_, 1832; _Valentine_, 1832; _Lélia_, 1833;_Consuelo_, 1842-43; _La Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, 1844-45; _LucreziaFloriani_, 1847; _Elle et Lui_, 1859; _Un Hiver à Majorque_, 1842; _LaMare au Diable_, 1846; _La Petite Fadette_, 1840; _F. Le Champi_, 1849;_Mauprat_, 1837; _La Daniella_, 1857; _Les Beaux Messieurs deBois-Doré_, 1858; _Le Marquis de Villemer_, 1861; _Mlle. La Quintinie_, 1863; _Flamarande_, 1875. Gautier, Théophile. _Les Jeune-France_, 1833; _Mlle. De Maupin_, 1835;_Fortunio_, 1838; _Nouvelles_, 1845; _Jettatura_, 1857; _Le CapitaineFracasse_, 1863; _Spirite_, 1866. Mérimée, Prosper. (_Clara Gazul_, 1825; _La Guzla_, 1827; _Le Carrossedu Saint-Sacrement_, part of _Clara Gazul_ originally, did not reach thestage till 1850. ) _La Jacquerie_, 1828; _Chronique de Charles IX_, 1829. Most of the stories, including _Colomba_, appeared between 1830 and1840. _Carmen_, 1847; _Dernières Nouvelles_, 1873. Musset, A. De. Most of the stories noticed in text appeared originallyafter 1840 in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and were not collected tillafter his death in 1857. _Mimi Pinson_ had been published in 1852. Gérard de Nerval. Work noticed appeared sporadically, in many papers andsome books, between 1828 and his death in 1855. The best edition of the_Oeuvres Complètes_ is of 1868. Vigny, A. De. _Cinq-Mars_, 1826; _Stello_, 1832; _Servitude et GrandeurMilitaires_, 1835. Fromentin, Eugène. _Dominique_, 1863. Sainte-Beuve, C. A. _Volupté_, 1834. Bernard, Ch. De. _Gerfaut_, 1838; _Le Noeud Gordien_, 1838; _LeParavent_, 1839. The rest between 1840 and his death in 1850. Sandeau, Jules. _Marianna_, 1839; _Fernand_, 1844; _Valcreuse_, 1846;_La Roche aux Mouettes_, 1871; _Mlle. De La Seiglière_, 1851; _Sacs etParchemins_, 1851; _Mlle. De Kérouare_, 1842; _La Maison de Penarvon_, 1858. Sue, Eugène. _Le Coucaratcha_, 1832-34; _La Vigie de Koatven_, 1833;_Les Mystères de Paris_, 1842-43; _Le Juif Errant_, 1844-45; _Les SeptPéchés Capitaux_, 1847-49. Soulié, Frédéric. _Mémoires du Diable_, 1837-38; _Le Lion Amoureux_, 1839; _Le Château des Pyrénées_, 1843. Murger, Henri. _[Scènes de] La Vie de Bohême_, 1851; _Les Buveursd'Eau_, 1855; _Adeline Protat_, 1853; _Le Sabot Rouge_, 1860. (Shorterstories at different dates between 1848 (?) and his death in 1861. ) Reybaud, Louis. _Jérome Paturot_, Part I. , 1843; _Jérome Paturot_, PartII. , 1848. Méry, Joseph. _Les Nuits Anglaises_, 1853. Karr, Alphonse. _Sous les Tilleuls_, 1832. Beauvoir, Roger de. _Stories mostly, 1832-53. Ourliac, Édouard. _Stories mostly_, 1835-48. Achard, Amédée. _Belle-Rose_, 1847. Souvestre, Émile. _Les Derniers Bretons_, 1835-37; _Le Foyer Breton_, 1844; _Un Philosophe sous les Toits_, 1850. Féval, Paul. _La Fée des Grèves_, 1851. Borel, Pétrus. _Champavert_, 1833; _Madame Putiphar_, 1839. Dumas père. _Isabeau? [-bel? -belle?] de Bavière_, 1835; _Le Comte deMonte Cristo_, 1844-45; _Les Trois Mousquetaires_, 1844; _Vingt AnsAprès_, 1845; _La Reine Margot_, 1845; _Le Vicomte de Bragelonne_, 1848-50. The sequels of _La Reine Margot_ and the major part of theeighteenth-century series appeared between 1846 and 1850; _Olympe deClèves_ in 1852; _Les Louves de Machecoul_ in 1859. Little of real valuein novel later. The period of chief attack on him for plagiarism, _supercherie_, "novel-manufacture, " etc. , was 1845-48. Dumas fils. _Tristan le Roux_, 1850; _La Dame aux Camélias_, 1848;_Antonine_, 1849; _La Vie à Vingt Ans_, 1854; _Aventures de QuatreFemmes et d'un Perroquet_, 1846-47; _Trois Hommes Forts_, 1851; _Dianede Lys_, 1853; _Affaire Clémenceau_, 1866; _Ilka_, 1895. Janin, Jules. _L'Âne Mort et la Femme Guillotinée_, 1829; _Barnave_, 1831. Flaubert, Gustave. _Madame Bovary_, 1857; _Salammbô_, 1862; _L'ÉducationSentimentale_, 1869; _La Tentation de Saint-Antoine_, 1848-74; _TroisContes_, 1877; _Bouvard et Pécuchet_, 1881. Feuillet, Octave. _Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre_, 1858; _M. DeCamors_, 1867; _La Petite Comtesse_, 1857; _Julia de Trécoeur_, 1872;_Honneur d'Artiste_, 1890; _La Morte_, 1886. Daudet, Alphonse. _Le Petit Chose_, 1868; _Robert Helmont_, 1876;_Lettres de Mon Moulin_, 1869; _Jack_, 1862; _Tartarin de Tarascon_, 1872; _Le Nabob_, 1877; _Les Rois en Exil_, 1879; _Numa Roumestan_, 1890; _L'Évangéliste_, 1883; _Sapho_, 1884; _L'Immortel_, 1888. About, Edmond. _Le Roi des Montagnes_, 1856; _Tolla_, 1855; _Germaine_, 1867; _Madelon_, 1863; _Maître Pierre_, 1858. Ponson du Terrail, Pierre A. _Rocambole_, 1859; _Les Gandins_, 1861. Gaboriau, Émile. _L'Affaire Lerouge_, 1866. Feydeau, Ernest. _Fanny_, 1858; _Sylvie_, 1861; _Daniel_, 1859. Droz, Gustave. _Monsieur, Madame et Bébé_, 1866; _Entre Nous_, 1867. Cherbuliez, Victor. _Le Comte Kostia_, 1863; _Le Roman d'une HonnêteFemme_, 1867; _Meta Holdenis_, 1873; _Miss Rovel_, 1875; _Samuel Brohlet Cie_, 1877; _Olivier Maugant_, 1885. Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules. _Les Diaboliques_, 1874; _L'Ensorcelée_, 1854; _Un Prête Marié_, 1865. Cladel, Léon. _Les Va-nu-pieds_, 1873; _Crête-Rouge_, 1880; _La FêteVotive de Saint-Bartholomée Porte-Glaive_, 1872. Champfleury. _Les Excentriques_, 1852; _Madame Eugénio_, 1874. Goncourt, E. And J. Dates in text: from 1860 to 1870. ---- E. Only. _Chérie_, 1884. Zola, É. _Contes à Ninon_, 1864; _L'Attaque du Moulin_, 1880; TheRougon-Macquart books, 1871-93; "Les Trois Villes, " 1894-98; "Les QuatreÉvangiles, " 1890-1903. Maupassant, Guy de. _Boule de Suif_, 1880; _La Maison Tellier_, 1881;_Bel-Ami_, 1885; _Une Vie_, 1883; _Pierre et Jean_, 1888; _Fort comme laMort_, 1889; _Notre Coeur_, 1890. Smaller Tales, 1880-93, andposthumously. Huysmans, J. K. Contribution to _Les Soirées de Médan_, 1880; _LesSoeurs Vatard_, 1879; _Là-Bas_, 1891; _À Rebours_, 1884. Belot, Adolphe. _Mlle. Giraud ma Femme_, 1870; _La Femme de Feu_, 1872. Fabre, Ferdinand. _L'Abbé Tigrane_, 1873; _Norine_, 1889; _Le Marquis dePierrerue_, 1874; _Mon Oncle Célestin_, 1881; _Lucifer_, 1884;_Taillevent_, 1894; _Toussaint Galabru_, 1887. Theuriet, André. _Sauvageonne_, 1881; _Raymonde_, 1877; _Le FilsMaugars_, 1879. Ohnet, Georges. _Serge Panine_, 1881; _Le Maître de Forges_, 1882; _LeDocteur Rameau_, 1888; _La Grande Marnière_, 1885. Rod, Édouard. _La Course à la Mort_, 1885; _Le Sens de la Vie_, 1889;_La Vie Privée de Michel Teissier_, 1893 (2nd part, 1894); _LaSacrifiée_, 1892; _Le Silence_, 1894; _Là-Haut_, 1897; _L'Eau Courante_, 1902. Mendès, Catulle. _Lesbia_, 1886. (_In a not inconsiderable number of cases a difference of_ one _yearwill be found, from the dates as given in some reference books. This, which renews the elder trouble of "Old" and "New" Style, arises, probably, if not certainly, from the fact of the book having appearedlate in autumn or early in spring, with a title-page, anticipatory orretrospective, as the case may be. The same thing occurs, of course, with English books; but not, I think, so often. French books, moreover, unless I am mistaken, not infrequently appear with_ no _date ontitle-page. _) INDEX (This Index has been constructed on the same principles as that of Vol. I. But the full names, birth- and death-dates, titles, etc. , of authorsincluded in the former Index are not repeated here. ) _Abencérage, Le Dernier_, 20 _note_ About, Edmond (1828-1885), 427-436 Achard, Amédée, 281, 319-321, 349 _Acta Sanctorum_, 408 Addison, 46 _note_ _Adèle et Théodore_, 68 _Adeline Protat_, 305 _Adieu_, 505 _Adolphe_, 3, 17, 286, 336, 346 _note_ _Affaire Clémenceau_, 388-395, 400, 558 _Agamemnon_, the, 26 Ainsworth, H. , 321, 351 _Âmes du Purgatoire, Les_, 240 _Amours de Philippe, Les_, 418 _Anatomy of Melancholy, The_, 240 _note_ _André le Savoyard_, 9, 50, 51 _Angélique_, 259 _note_ _Anti-Jacobin, The_, 31 _Antonine_, 377 _À Rebours_, 515 Aristophanes, 404, 409 _note_ Arlincourt (Charles Victoire Prévot, Vicomte d', 1789-1856), x, 40, 44_note_, 78-80, 352 _note_ _Armance_, 135-137 Arnold, Mr. M. , 25, 28, 35, 97, 164, 279, 412, 436, 444, 520 _Arsène Guillot_, 241 _Astrée_, the, 62, 201 _note_, 350 _As You Like It_, 137, 235 _Atala_, 20 _sq. _, 561, 569 Aubigné, Agrippa d', 262 Augier, E. , 290 _Aurélia_, 257 _sq. _ _Aurora Leigh_, 297 Austen, Miss, 142, 168, 194, 295 _note_, 353, 358, 537, 560 _Avatar_, 226 _Adventures de Quatre Femmes et d'un Perroquet_, 379, 380 _Aziyadé_, 554 _Babe, B. A. , The_, 537 _note_ _Bal de Sceaux, Le_, 162 Balzac, Honoré de (1799-1850), v, 64, 133, 135 _note_, 146, 147_note_, 152-175, 177, 198, 208, 227, 231 _note_, 240, 282, 289, 293, 343, 347, 348, 363, 364, 386, 423, 432 _note_, 434, 436 _note_, 472, 559, 569 _Baptiste Montauban_, 86 Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules (1808-1889), 401, 449-455, 505 _note_ _Barbiere de Paris, Le_, 58, 59 _Barnaby Rudge_, 47 _note_ Bast, A. De, 568 _note_ _Bâtard de Mauléon, Le_, 328 _Battuécas, Les_, 68 Baudelaire, Charles Pierre (1821-1867), 15, 131 _note_, 228, 255_note_, 412, 413, _note_, 450 and _note_, 451, 485, 491, 515, 516, 569 _Béatrix_, 165, 177 _Beau Pécopin, Le_, 110 Beauvoir, Roger de (Édouard-Roger de Bully, 1809-1866), 317, 318 _Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Doré, Les_, 179 _sq. _ Beckford (the father), 271 _note_ Beckford (the son), xix _Bedford Row Conspiracy, The_, 294 Bédier, M. , xiii _Bel-Ami_, 486 _sq. _ _Belinda_, 419 _note_ _Bélisaire_, 562 Beljame, M. , 347 _note_ _Belle-Rose_, 320, 321 Belot, Adolphe (1829-1890), 516, 517 Benson, Mr. E. F. , 537 _note_ Béranger, 41 _note_, 60 Bernard (Charles de Bernard du Grail de la Villette, 1805-1850), v, 208, 237, 240, 281, 289-296, 306, 317, 343, 569 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 18, 22, 101 Bertrand, Louis [or Aloysius] Jacques Napoléon (1807-1841), 82, 228 _Bevis of Hampton_, 124 Beyle, Marie Henri (1783-1842), vi, 133-152, 169, 273, 336, 343, 348, 356, 363, 396, 559 Bismarck, 559 _note_ Blake, 10 _note_, 188, 281, 317, 318 and _note_, 479, 527 Blennerhassett, Lady, 8 _Bohême Galante, La_, 257 _sq. _ _Bookman's Budget, A_, 488 _note_ Borel, Pierre or Pétrus d'Hauterive (1809-1859), 322, 371, 453 Borrow, G. , 238, 256, 436 _note_ Bossuet, 37 _note_ Boswell, xix _Boule de Suif_, 468, 473, 485 _sq. _ Bourget, M. P. , 554 _Bouvard et Pécuchet_, 401 _note_ and _sq. _ _Bovary, Madame_, 400 _sq. _ Braddon, Miss, 205, 457 Bradlaugh, Mr. , 396 Bright, Mr. , 315 _Britannia, The_, 52, 53 _notes_ Brizeux, 282 Broadhead, Mr. , 115 _note_ Brontë, Charlotte, 192 Browne, Sir T. , vii, 205 Browning, 141, 159 _note_, 261, 486, 497, 521 _note_, 556 Browning, Mrs. , 297 Brummell, 449 Brunetière, M. , 166 _note_, 167, 168, 173, 293, 295, 335, 459 Buchanan, Mr. , 380 _Bug-Jargal_, 100, 101, 130, 158 Buloz, 429 Bulwer (the first Lord Lytton), 180, 317, 351 Burney, Miss, 65, 192, 560 Burns, 348 _note_ Burton (of the _Anatomy_), 246 _note_, 409 _note_, 414 _Buveurs d'Eau, Les_, 305-306 Byron, 14, 19, 25 and _note_, 78, 135 _note_, 147 _note_, 154, 184, 352, 455 _note_ _Cabaret des Morts, Le_, 317, 318 Cabet, 297 _note_ Caird, E. , xi _Callista_, 31 _Camp of Refuge, The_, 342 _Candide_, xvii _Canticles_, the, 497 _Capitaine Burle, Le_, 473 _Capitaine Fracasse, Le_, 58, 234 Carlyle, Mr. , 16, 64, 111, 115, 400 _note_, 444, 478, 486 _Carmen_, 237 _sq. _ _Caroline de Lichtfield_, 65-68 _Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement, Le_, 250-251 _Cas de Rupture, Un_, 384 _Castle of Otranto, The_, 170 _Castor, Le_, 305 Castries, Mme. De, 282 _Cathinelle_, 521 Cattermole, 47 _note_ Catullus, 227 Cavour, 559 _note_ Cazotte, 251 _Celle-ci et Celle-là_, 231 _Césarine_, 495 _note_, 554 _Chalis, Mme. De_, 442 _Chambre Bleue, La_, 247-248 _Champavert_, 322, 371, 453 Champfleury (Jules Fleury Husson, 1821-1889), 449, 455-458 Charlevoix, 28 Charrières, Mme. De, xix _Chartreuse de Parme, La_, 137-140, 152 _note_ Chastes, Ph. , 167 _Chasseur Vert, Le_, 148-150 Chateaubriand (François Auguste, Vicomte de, 1768-1848), vi, ix, 1, 2, 18-38, 78, 80, 209, 282, 343, 346, 347, 351, 356, 472, 561, 562 _Château de la Misère, Le_, 90 _note_, 234, 339 _Château des Pyrénées, Le_, 298-300 _Château d'If, Le_, 330 _Châtiments, Les_, 110 Chatterton, 266, 271, 272 Chaucer, 470 _Chef-d'Oeuvre Inconnu, Le_, 162 Chénier, A. , 266 _sq. _ Cherbuliez, Victor (1829-1899), v, 446-449 _Chérie_, 463 Chester, T. , xiii Chesterfield, Lord, 464 _Chevalier de Maison Rouge_, 328 _Chevalier d'Harmental_, 330 _Chevaliers du Cygne, Les_, 69 _Chèvre de M. Séguin, La_, 425 _Chiffon, Le Mariage de_, 554, 569 Chopin, 177 _note_ and _sq. _ _Chouans, Les_, 64, 152 _sq_. _Christabel_, 26 Christophe et Cerfbeer, MM. , 153, 157 _note_ "Christopher North" (Prof. Wilson), 261 _Chronique de Charles IX_, 58, 248-249 _Ciel et l'Enfer, Le_, 251 _Cinq-Mars_, 262 _sq. _, 332, 564 Cladel, Léon (1835-1892), 449-451 Clare (the poet), 268 _Clarissa_, 111, 419 _Clarissa Furiosa_, 144 _note_ _Claude Gueux_, 102, 103, 111 _Clélie_, 111 _Cloister and the Hearth, The_, 141, 351 Cochin, M. Henry, 554 _note_ _Coeur Simple, Un_, 407 sq. Coleridge, 26 _Colline, Histoire d'une_, 314-315 _Colomba_, 239 sq. _Colomban, Le R. P. _, 521, 522 _Combe de l'Homme mort, La_, 86 _Comédie Humaine_. _See_ Balzac Comte, 297 _Comte de Corke, Le_, 69 _Comte Kostia, Le_, 448 _Comtesse de Rudolstadt, La_, 179 _sq. _ Constant, B. , xix, 2 _note_, 3, 346, 560 _Consuelo_, 179 _sq. _ _Contemplations, Les_, 110 _Contes à Ninon_, 473 _Contes de la Bécasse_, 501 _sq. _ _Contes Drolatiques_, 58, 160 _note_, 162, 163 _Contes du Bocage_, 318, 319 _Contes et Nouvelles_ (Dumas _fils_), 387 _Corinne_, vi, 7-91, 38, 106, 201, 561 Corneille, 34, 262, 291 _Course à la Mort, La_, 584 _sq. _ _Cousin Pons, Le_, 164 _Cousine Bette, La_, 157 _sq. _ Crébillon _fils_, 46, 209, 231, 250, 355, 362, 367 _note_, 386, 471, 497, 567 _Crête-Rouge_, 451 _Crime de Silvestre Bonnard, Le_, 554 Croce, Signor B. , xi Croft, Sir H. , 81, 86 _Crofton Boys, The_, 505 _note_ _Croisilles_, 254 _note_ _Croix de Berny, La_, 312 _note_ _Cromwell_, 105 _note_ Cruikshank, 47 _note_ Dahn, 403 _Dame aux Camélias, La_, 367 _sq. _, 389 _Dame de Monsoreau, La_, 329 _Daniel_, 442 _Daniella, La_, 201 Dante, 29 _note_, 188, 512, 546 Darmesteter, M. , 358 "Dash, " La Comtesse (1804-1872), 567 _note_ Daudet, Alphonse (1840-1897), 414, 422-427, 452, 461, 463, 465, 522, 558 Daudet, Ernest, 422 _note_ Daumier, 47, 456 Day, Thomas, 70 _Dead Leman, The_, 210 _note_ Defoe, 287, 362 _De l'Amour_, 135 _note_ Delille, 34 _Delphine_, vi, 2-7, 9 _Demoiselles de Magazin, Les_, 61 De Quincey, 35, 256, 258, 298 _Dernier Jour d'un Condamné, Le_, 101, 102, 111 _Derniers Bretons, Les_, 321 Desbordes-Valmore, Mme. , 283 _Des Vers_, 484 _Deux Frères, Les_, 204 _Deux Maîtresses, Les_, 253 _Diable Amoureux, Le_, 81, 251 _Diaboliques, Les_, 450 _sq. _, 505 note _Diane de Lys_, 382, 383 Dickens, 62, 111, 128, 129, 170, 173, 258, 325, 331, 348, 423, 425, 444, 456, 486, 557 Diderot, 228, 236, 256, 434, 471 _Dies Irae_, 513 _Dimanches d'un Bourgeois de Paris, Les_, 499 Dinocourt, 567 Disraeli, Mr. , 423, 537 _note_ _Djoumane_, 244-245 Dobson, Mr. A. , 488 _note_ _Docteur Rameau, Le_, 535 _sq. _ _Docteur Servans, Le_, 384-385 _Dominique_, 277-280, 356, 537 _Don Juan de Vireloup, Le_, 532 _sq. _ Donne, 26, 290 _note_, 497 _Dot de Suzette, La_, 76 _note_ Droz, Antoine Gustave (1832-1895), 443-446 Dryden, 568 _note_ Du Camp, Maxime, 400 _note_ Ducange (Victor Henri Joseph Brahain, 1783-1833), 40, 71-75, 77, 158 Ducray-Duminil, François Guillaume (1761-1819), x, 40, 64, 70, 71, 98, 158, 560, 561 Dudevant, Amantine Lucile Aurore (1804-1876). _See_ Sand, George Dumas _père_, Alexandre (1803-1870), v, 58, 64, 128, 133, 147 _note_, 228, 234, 249, 264, 281, 289, 298, 307, 319, 323-342, 348, 351, 352, 354, 357, 359, 361 _note_, 522, 569 Dumas _fils_, Alexandre (1824-1895), viii, 153, 344, 362, 363, 365-396, 414, 463, 558, 569 Du Maurier, Mr. , 82 Ebers, 403 Eccelino da Romano (Ezzelin), 115 _note_ _Ecclesiastes_, 26, 492 Edgeworth, Miss, 69, 419 _note_ _Edmond et sa Cousine_, 48-50 Egan, Pierce, 44 _Elle et Lui_, 177 _note_ and _sq. _ Elton, Prof. , xii _Emmeline_, 253-254 _Empress of Morocco, The_, 523 _note_ _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 373 _Entre Nous_, 443 _sq. _ _Epicurean, The_, 37 Erckmann (1822-1899)-Chatrian (1826-1890), 458 _note_ _Esmond_, 351, 354 _Eugénie Grandet_, 157 _sq. _ _Excentriques, Les_, 449, 455 _sq. _ _Fabiola_, 31 Fabre, Ferdinand (1830-1898), 278, 279, 452, 518-529, 569 _Faërie Queene, The_, 354 _note_ Faguet, M. , 155 _Famille Carvajal, La_, 251 _Family Herald, The_, 71 _Fanfarlo, La_, 450 _note_ _Fanny_, 441 _Faux Saulniers, Les_, 259 _note_ _Federigo_, 244 _Fée aux Miettes, La_, 81 _sq. _, 258 _Fée des Grèves, La_, 321 _Femme Immortelle, La_, 438 Fénelon, 205 _Fernand_, 290 Feuillet, Octave (1822-1890), v, 67, 169, 204, 326, 381 _note_, 386, 414-422, 447, 449, 452, 454 _note_, 558, 569 Féval, Paul (1817-1887), 281, 321, 349 Feydeau, Ernest (1821-1873), 440-443 Fielding, 131, 168, 229, 362, 455 _note_ Fiévée, Joseph (1767-1839), 76 _note_ _Fille aux Yeux d'Or, La_, 162, 166, 173 _Filles du Feu, Les_, 257 _sq. _ _Fils du Titien, Le_, 253 _Fils Maugars, Le_, 529 _sq. _ Fiorentino, 326 _Flamarande_, 177 _note_ and _sq. _, 557 Flaubert, Gustave (1827-1880), v, viii _note_, 163, 169, 206, 362, 365, 386, 397-413, 427, 449, 452, 461, 465, 467, 473 _note_, 486, 490_note_, 492 558, 560, 569 _Fleurs du Mal, Les_, 450 _note_ Foa, Eugénie (1795-1853), 76 _note_ Folengo, 256 _Folie Espagnole, La_, 20 _note_ _Fort comme la Mort_, 491 _sq. _ _Fortnightly Review_, vi, 304, 484 _note_ _Fortunio_, 266 _sq. _ Foscolo, Ugo, 25 Fourier, 297 _Foyer Breton, Le_, 321 _Fragoletta_, 155 _note_ France, M. A. , 554 _François le Champi_, 179 _note_ Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71, Maupassant's stories of, 501-502 _Frédéric et Bernerette_, 252-253 _Frère Jacques_, 61 and _note_ _Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné_, 423 Fromentin, Eugène (1820-1876), 277-280, 493, 537 Fronde, Mr. , 400 _note_ Furetière, 471 Gaboriau, Émile (1835-1873), 147 _note_, 303 _note_, 436-440 _Gandins, Les_, 438 _Gaspard de la Nuit_, 228, 255 _note_, 450 _note_ Gautier, Théophile (1811-1872), v, vi, 81, 90 _note_, 206, 208-237, 239, 259, 277, 278, 289, 307, 312, 317, 339, 343, 348, 356, 370 _note_, 386, 399, 413, 441, 456, 461, 472, 553, 564, 569 Gautier, Mme. Judith, 553 _note_ Gavarni, 47, 461 _note_ _Gendre, Le_, 294 _Gendre de M. Poirier, Le_, 290 _Génie du Christianisme, Le_, 20 Genlis, Mme. De, 40, 68, 69 George Eliot, 192, 205 George III. , 339 Gérard de Nerval (Labrunie, Gérard, 1808-1855), vi, 81, 82, 208, 209, 228, 255-261, 312, 349, 356, 397, 456 _Gerfaut_, 292 _Germaine_, 432 _sq. _ _Germinie Lacerteux_, 411, 461 _sq. _ Gibbon, 2 _note_, 3 _note_ Gilbert (French poet), 266 _sq. _ _Gilbert Gurney_, 56 Girardin, É. De, 209, 339 Girardin, Mme. De (Delphine Gay, 1805-1855), 312 _note_ Gissing, 30 Gladstone, Mr. , 434 _Glu, La_, 554 _Goddam!_, 45 _note_ Godwin, 182 Goethe, 24, 25, 154 _Golden Ass, The_, 88 Goncourts, the--Edmond (1822-1896), 169, 206, 362, 399, 411, 423 ---- Jules (1830-1870), 452, 460-466, 487 _Grand Cyrus, Le_, 111 _Grande Bretèche, La_, 162, 163, 173 _Grande Marnière, La_, 535 _sq. _ _Grangette_, 383 Gray, 567 Gregory, Mr. George, 70 _note_ Guérin, Eugénie de, 283 Guizot, 345 _Gustave ou Le Mauvais Sujet_, 44-48 _Guy Mannering_, 152 _note_ _Guzla, La_, 250 "Gyp", 437, 554 Halsbury, Lord, 434 Hamilton, A. , v, xix, 134, 209 _Hamlet_, 15, 26, 157, 235 _Han d'Islande_, 97-100 Harrisse, M. H. , xviii Haydon, 233 _note_ Hazlitt, 135 _note_, 210 _Headless Horseman, The_, 397 Hearn, Mr. L. , 210 _note_, 222 Heine, 19 _note_, 411, 497 Hélisenne de Crenne, 178 _note_, 487 Henley, Mr. , 319 _note_, 324, 328 _note_, 330 _note_ _Hereward the Wake_, 391 _Hernani_, 105 _note_ _Herodias_, 408 Herodotus, 121 Herrick, 210 _Histoire des Treize_, 166, 167 _Histoire du Lieutenant Valentin_, 456 _Histoire d'une Puce Enragée_, 270, 277 _Histoire sans Nom, Une_, 455 Hitchcock, Miss Elsie, xii _Hiver à Majorque, Un_, 177 _note_ and _sq. _ Hoffmann, 81 and 82 _note_, 230 Homer, 27, 32, 33 _note_, 268 _note_, 340 _note_ _Honneur d'Artiste_, 420 _sq. _ Hook, Theodore, 44 _note_, 56, 353 Horace, 404, 425 _Horla, Le_ (and other terror-stories of Maupassant's), 503 _note_, 508, 509 Houghton, Lord, 255 _note_ Hugo, Victor Marie (1802-1885), vi, x, 19, 40, 96-133, 147 _note_, 167, 173, 182, 188, 208, 227, 256 _note_, 262, 266, 277, 343, 348, 351, 356, 386, 450, 459 _note_, 467, 472, 497, 556, 557, 564, 569 Hunt, Leigh, 43 Huysmans, Joris Karl (1848-1907), 452, 453 _note_, 485, 515, 516, 556 _Hypatia_, 31 _Hyperion_ (Keats's), 169 _Idées et Sensations_, 461 _Ilka_, 387-388 _Il Viccolo di Madama Lucrezia_, 243-244 _Indiana_, 177 _note_ and _sq. _ _Inès de las Sierras_, 81 _sq. _, 246, 339 Irving, Washington, 317 _Isabel de Bavière_, 328 _It is Never too Late to Mend_, 102 _Ivanhoe_, 124 _note_, 353 _Jack_, 423 _sq. _ Jacob, P. L. , 231 _note_ _Jacquerie, La_, 249, 250 _Jacques le Fataliste_, 236, 526 _note_ James, G. P. R. , 201, 321, 351 ---- Mr. H. , 399, 493 _note_ Janin, Jules Gabriel (1804-1874), 73, 231 _note_, 369, 370 _note_, 453 _Japhet in Search of a Father_, 61 _note_ _Jean_, 51-54 _Jean Sbogar_, 95 _note_ Jeffrey, 566 _Jérôme Paturot_, 306-312, 499 _Jésus Christ en Flandre_, 162 _Jettatura_, 226 _Jeune-France, Les_, 227 _sq. _, 243, 307, 441 Johnson, Dr. , xix, 17, 65, 370, 383 _note_, 513 _Jonathan Wild_, 403 Jonson, Ben, 121, 409 _note_ _Journal des Goncourt, Le_, 461, 462, 465 _Juif Errant, Le_, 296 _Julia de Trécoeur_, 381 _note_, 418 _sq. _ _Julie_, 225 Juvenal, 404 Karr, Alphonse (1808-1890), 281, 316, 317, 326 Keats, 184, 233 _note_ _Kenilworth_, 124 _note_, 353 Ker, Professor, xii, 15 _note_ Kingsley, Charles, 31, 111, 123, 351, 520 Kipling, Mr. , 3, 70 _note_, 489 Kock, Paul de (Charles P. , 1794-1871), vi, x, 9, 40-63, 69, 74 _note_, 80, 95 _note_, 158, 188, 302, 305, 308, 349, 357, 569 _L'Abbé Aubain_, 242 _L'Abbé Tigrane_, 279, 519 _sq. _ _L'Abbesse de Castro_, 140 Laclos, 6, 231, 302, 359, 360, 426, 487 Lacordaire, 283 _L'Affaire Lerouge_, 439, 440 _La Femme de Feu_, 516 _La Femme, le Mari et l'Amant_, 54-56 _La Fille aux Trois Jupons_, 60 La Fontaine, 227 _note_ La Harpe, 38 _Là-Haut_, 547 _sq. _ _Lalla Rookh_, 31 Lamartine, 25, 283 Lamb, Charles, 82, 256, 341, 348 _note_ Lamennais, 34, 188, 205, 283, 467 La Mettrie, 190 _Lamiel_, 147, 148 Landor, 258 _L'Âne Mort et la Femme Guillotinée_, 370 _note_, 153 Lang, Mr. A. , 210 _note_, 256, 292, 324, 437 _La Religieuse_, 516 La Rochefoucauld, 426 _L'Artiste et le Soldat_, 72 _Last Days of Pompeii, The_, 31 Latouche, Henri de (really Hyacinthe Joseph Alexandre Thabaudde L. (1785-1851)), 154 and _note_ _L'Attaque du Moulin_, 473, 485 _Launfal_, xiii _Laure Ruthwen_, 95 _note_ _L'Eau Courante_, 551 Le Breton, M. , 168 Leconte de Lisle, 262 _note_, 488 _note_ _L'Écueil_, 294 _L'Éducation Sentimentale_, 403 _sq. _, 558 Leech, 499 _Légende des Siècles, La_, 110 _Légende du Mont Saint-Michel_, 502 _Lélia_, 179 _sq. _, 577 Lemaître, M. Jules, 15 _note_ Le Moyne, le Père, 262 note _L'Enfant de sa Femme_, 462 _L'Ensorcelée_, 450 _sq. _ Leopardi, 273 _L'Épave_, 501 Lesage, 301, 346, 362, 471 "Les Quatre Évangiles, " Zola's, 474, 477-480 "Les Trois Villes, " Zola's, 474, 477 _Lettres de Mon Moulin_, 423 _sq. _ _L'Évangéliste_, 411, 426 Lewis, "Monk, " 251 _L'Homme aux Trois Culottes_, 60 _L'Homme Qui Rit_, 122-127, 131, 348, 472 _L'Hôtellerie Sanglante_, 303 _Liaisons Dangereuses, Les_, 143 and _note_, 487 _Liber Amoris_, 135 _note_ _Life in London_, 44 _L'Immortel_, 424 _sq. _ _Lion Amoureux, Le_, 300 _note_ _Lionne, La_, 300 _note_ _L'Irréparable_, 554 Locker, Mr. , 488 Lockhart, 30 _Loge à Camille, Une_, 384 _Lokis_, 245-246 Lokman, 83-86 _Lolotte et Fanfan_, 40, 70 Longfellow, 527 _note_ "Loti, Pierre, " 554 _Louis Lambert_, 166, 174 _Louves de Machecoul, Les_, 328 _L'Ouvreuse de Loges_, 75-77 Lucian, 256, 404 _Lucifer_, 524 _sq. _ Lucretius, 26, 546 _Lucrezia Floriani_, 177 _note_ and _sq. _ _Ludovica_, 72-75, 77 _Lui et Elle_, 177 _note_ Macfarlane, Ch. , 342 Mackenzie, 14 Maclise, 47 _note_ _Madame Bovary_, 169, 400 _sq. _, 558 _Madame de Chamblay_, 328 _Madame Eugénio_, 456 _Madame Gervaisais_, 461 _sq. _ _Madame Putiphar_, 322 _Madelon_, 434 _sq. _ _Mademoiselle Annette_, 551 _Mademoiselle de Clermont_, 68 _Mademoiselle de Kérouare_, 291 _Mademoiselle de La Seiglière_, 290 _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, 235, 236 _Mademoiselle Giraud ma Femme_, 516 _Mademoiselle La Quintinie_, 179 _sq. _, 416, 557 Magnin, 283 _Maison de Penarvan, La_, 291 _Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote, La_, 160 _note_ _Maison Tellier, La_, 503 _note_ Maistre, X. De, 384 _note_ _Maître Cornélius_, 162 _Maître de Forges, Le_, 534 _sq. _ _Maître Pierre_, 436 _Man of Feeling, The_, 14 Manning, Cardinal, 520 _note_ _Manon Lescaut_, 225, 346, 369, 372, 393, 394, 400, 426 _Manuscrit de M. Larsonnier, Le_, 554 note Maquet, A. , 321, 326-327 _Mare au Diable, La_, 179 _sq. _ _Margot_, 253 _Mariage dans le Monde, Un_, 418 _Marianna_, 290 Marie de France, xiii Marivaux, 46, 209, 346, 362, 471, 567 Marlowe, 301 _Marmion_, 566 _Marmontel_, 6, 69, 416 _Marquis de Pierrerue, Le_, 522 _sq. _ _Marquis de Villemer, Le_, 179 _sq. _ Marryat, 64, 297, 381 Martial, 227 note, 404 Martineau, Miss, 505 _note_ Martyrs, Les, 20 _sq. _, 79, 562 _Master Humphrey's Clock_, 457 _Mateo Falcone_, 240 _Mathilde_, 297 _note_ Maturin, 166 _note_, 170, 301 Maupassant, Guy de (1850-1893), vi, viii _note_, ix, 156 _note_, 163, 170, 226, 237, 386, 413, 417, 449, 464, 465, 467, 484-515, 548, 558, 560, 569 _Mauprat_, 200 Mayne-Reid, Captain, 397 Méry, Joseph (1798-1866), 281, 312-318 Méryon, 256 _Melmoth Réconcilié_, 166 _Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe_, 20 _sq. _, 347 _Mémoires du Diable, Les_, 300, 302 _Ménage de Garçon, Un_, 165 _Ménage du Pasteur Naudié, Le_, 550 _sq. _ Mendès, Catulle (?-?), 452, 553 Meredith, Mr. G. , 148, 174, 399 Mérimée, Prosper (1803-1870), v, x, 81, 146 _note_, 208, 228, 237-251, 277, 289, 343, 348, 352, 356, 386, 399, 413, 459 note, 460 _note_, 472, 474, 564, 569 _Messe de l'Athée, La_, 162 _Meta Holdenis_, 448, 449 _note_ Michelet, 282, 373 _note_, 467 Michiels, 315 Milton, 27, 30, 306, 416 _note_ _Mimi Pinson_, 255 _note_ _Mina de Wangel_, 140 Mirecourt, E. De, 326 _Misérables, Les_, 100, 110-116, 131, 348, 382 _note_, 472, 557 _Miss Rovel_, 448 Molière, 227 _Monastery, The_, 341 _Mon Oncle Célestin_, 523 _sq. _ _M. De Camors_, 169, 417 _sq. _, 454 _note_ _M. Dupont_, 61 _Monsieur, Madame et Bébé_, 443 _sq. _ _Monsieur Parent_, 506 _sq. _ _Monte Cristo_, 327 _sq. _, 356 Montolieu, Mme. De (Jeanne Isabelle Pauline Poltier de Bottens, 1751-1832), xix, 40, 65-68, 560 _Mont-Oriol_, 490 _sq. _ _Mon Voisin Raymond_, 56, 57 Moore, Albert, 224 ---- Mr. O. H. , 514 _note_ ---- Thomas, 37 Morley, Prof. H. , xvii ---- Mr. S. , 396 Morris, Mr. W. , 240 _Morte Amoureuse, La_, 210 _sq. _, 243 _Morte, La_ (Feuillet's), 417 _sq. _, 454 _note_ _Mr. Midshipman Easy_, 393 _note_ _Mrs. Perkins's Ball_, 11 Murger, Henry (1822-1861), v, 281, 303-306 Musset, Louis Charles Alfred de (1810-1857), 25, 195, 208, 227, 252-254, 277, 378, 397, 497 ---- Paul de, 177-178 _notes_ _Mystères de Paris, Les_, 296 _Nabab, Le_, 424 _sq. _ _Naïs Micoulin_, 473 _Napoléon le Petit_, 110 Narbonne, M. De, 2 _note_, 7 _note_ _Natchez, Les_, 20 _sq. _, 562 Necker, Mme. (Susanne Curchod), 2 _note_, 3 _note_ _Neuvaine de la Chandeleur, La_, 87 _New Arabian Nights, The_, 232 _note_ Newman, Cardinal, 31, 520 _note_ _Nez d'un Notaire, Le_, 435 Nisard, 282, 357 _Noctes_ [_Ambrosianae_], the, 233 Nodier, Jean Charles Emmanuel (1780-1844), vi, x, 24 _note_, 40, 80-95, 255, 256, 349, 356, 357, 397, 459 _note_, 564, 569 _Noeud Gordien, Le_, 294 _Norine_, 521 _sq. _ Norman Stories, Maupassant's, 502, 503 Norris, Mr. W. E. , 144 _Northanger Abbey_, 265 _Notre Coeur_, 495 _sq. _ _Notre Dame de Paris_, 58, 98, 100, 103-111, 129-131, 332 _note_, 351, 472 _Nouvelle Héloïse, La_, 346, 561 _Nuits Anglaises, Les_, 313 _sq. _ _Numa Roumestan_, 424 _sq. _ O'Donovan Rossa, 451 _note_ _Oeuvres de Jeunesse_ (Balzac's), 157 _sq. _ Ohnet, Georges (1848-1917), 78 _note_, 518, 534-542, 558 _note_ _Old Curiosity Shop, The_, 47 _note_, 164 Oliphant, Mrs. , 205 _Olivier Maugant_, 449 _Olympe de Clèves_, 330 _sq. _ _Omniana_, 488 _Oreille Cassée, L'Homme à l'_, 435 _Orientales, Les_, 105 _note_, 132, 450 _Orphelins de la Saint-Barthélemy, Les_, 438 Ossian, 35, 82 Ourliac, Édouard (1813-1848), 281, 318, 319 _Our Mutual Friend_, 179 _note_ _Paratonnerre, Le_, 237, 294 _Paravent, Le_, 294 _Parent, M. _, 504 _Parents Pauvres, Les_, 163 _sq. _ _Parnasse Contemporain_, Le, 485 _note_, 553 _Parny_, 45 _note_, 74 _note_ _Patchwork_, 488 Pater, Mr. , 205, 398 Pattison, Mr. Mark, 566 "Paul Sylvester, " 210 _note_ _Paule Méré_, 448 _Paysans, Les_, 166 _Peau de Chagrin, La_, 133 _note_, 157 _sq. _, 302 _note_ _Pêcheur d'Islande_, 555 _Pendennis_, 567 Pepys, 48, 462 _Père Goriot, Le_, 163 _sq. _ _Peter Simple_, 26 _Petit Carillonneur, Le_, 70, 71 _Petit Chose, Le_, 423 _sq. _ _Petit Robinson de Paris, Le_, 76 _Petite Comtesse, La_, 418 _sq. _ _Petite Fadette, La_, 179 _sq. _ _Petits Poëmes en Prose_, 450 _note_ _Petits Tableaux de Moeurs_, 41, 42 Petronius, 256 _Peveril of the Peak_, 331 _Philtre, Le_, 140 "Phiz, " 47 _note_ _Pied d'Argile, Le_, 294 _Pierre et Jean_, 486 _sq. _ Pigault-Lebrun, 1, 19, 20 _note_, 40, 41, 46, 69, 70, 71, 77, 98, 158, 159, 305, 357, 359, 362, 471, 560, 561 Piozzi, Mrs. , 513 Pitt (the younger), 3 _note_, 344 _note_ Pixérécourt, 75 Plato, 268 _note_ Plautus, 227 _note_ Poe, 82, 256, 317, 473 _note_ Ponson du Terrail, Pierre Alexis, Vicomte (1829-1871), 303 _note_, 436-438 Pontmartin, M. De, 401 Pope, 97, 109, 137 _Port-Royal_, 286 _Prêtre Marié, Un_, 453 _sq. _ Prévost, xvii, 46, 346, 362, 369, 386, 471 _Pride and Prejudice_, 567 _Princesse de Clèves, La_, 68, 253, 346, 350 _Prise de la Redoute, La_, 242-243, 474 _Pursuits of Literature, The_, 31 Pusey, Dr. , 373 _note_ _Quarante-Cinq, Les_, 329 _sq. _ _Quarterly Review_, v, 152 _note_, 172 _note_ _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, 127-129, 347, 348 _Quentin Durward_, 109, 266 Quérard, 326 _Question Romaine, La_, 435 Quintilian, 546 _note_ Rabelais, 20, 227, 256, 355, 359 _Racine et Shakespeare_, 135 _note_ Radcliffe, Mrs. , 71, 75, 78, 79, 89 _Ravenswing, The_, 43 _Raymonde_, 529 _sq. _ Reade, Charles, 102, 351, 403 _Recaptured Rhymes_, 380 _Recherche de l'Absolu, La_, 162 _Redgauntlet_, 337 _Réflexions sur la Vérité dans l'Art_ (Vigny's), 262 _Reine Margot, La_, 144 _note_, 327 _sq. _ _Religieuse, La_, 235, 393 _note_ Renan, M. , 373 _note_, 461 _René_, 20 _sq. _, 114 _note_, 282, 286, 336, 356, 561 _Renée Mauperin_, 461 _sq. _ Restif de la Bretonne, 460 _Rêve, Le_, 411 _Rêve et la Vie, Le_, 257 _note_ _Revenants_, 388 _note_ _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 427 Reybaud, 306-312, 317 Reynolds, G. W. M. , 75 ---- Mr. S. H. , 119 Ricard, Auguste (?-?), 65, 75-76 "Richard O'Monroy, " Vicomte, 437 Richardson, 7, 111, 112, 362 Richepin, M. Jean, 452, 495 _note_, 554 Richter, J. P. , 174 _Ring and the Book, The_, 141 _Ring given to Venus, The_, 240 Rivington, Messrs. , xii _Robert Helmont_, 426 Robertson-Smith, Prof. , 373, 377 Robinson, Crabb, 8 _Roche aux Mouettes, La_, 291 _Roches Blanches, Les_, 551 _note_ Rod, Édouard (1857-1910), 67, 447 _note_, 518, 542-553 _Roi des Gabiers, Le_, 297 _note_ _Roi des Montagnes, Le_, 420 _sq. _ _Rolliad, The_, 344 _note_ _Roman Bourgeois, Le_, 471 _Roman Comique, Le_, 234 _Roman Contemporain, Le_, 452 _Roman de la Momie, Le_, 234 _Roman d'un Femme_, 385 _Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre_, 417 _Roman Expérimental, Le_, 459 _Roman Naturaliste, Le_, 459 Rossetti, D. G. , 94 _note_, 224-225, 552 _Rouge et le Noir, Le_, 133 _note_, 141-146, 148, 152 _note_ _Rougon-Macquart, Les_, 169, 467 _sq. _ _Roundabout Papers, The_, 464 Rousseau, J. J. , 14, 18, 101, 148, 362, 434 Ruskin, 486 _Sabot Rouge, Le_, 305 _Sacrifiée, La_, 544 _sq. _ _Sacs et Parchemins_, 290-291 _Saint Julien l'Hospitalier_, 405 _sq. _ Saint-Martin, 285 Saint-René Taillandier, 401 Saint-Victor, Paul de, 257, 466 Sainte-Beuve, C. A. (1804-1869), 242 _note_, 266, 279, 281-288, 307, 356, 401, 413, 440, 441, 461, 463 _note_ _Salammbô_, 401 _sq. _, 473 _note_, 558 _Samuel Brohl et Cie_, 448 Sand, George (_see_ Dudevant, A. L. A. ), vi, 68, 111, 133, 147_note_, 155 _note_, 165, 176-208, 227, 283, 343, 348, 364, 367_note_, 472, 486, 529, 557, 569 Sandeau, Jules (1811-1883), v, 177 _note_, 195, 208, 281, 289-296, 306, 312, 349, 522, 556, 569 _Sans Merci_, 537 _note_ _Sapho_, 411 _Sauvageonne_, 529 _sq. _ _Scènes de la Vie Cosmopolite_, 552 Schiller, 137 Scott, Sir W. , 28, 58, 78, 82, 106, 107, 109, 115, 117 _note_, 123, 124_note_, 135 _note_, 152, 168, 262, 263, 266, 331, 332, 338, 340-342, 348, 351, 352, 353-355, 386, 505 _note_, 533, 537 ---- Mrs. , 566 Scudéry Romances, the, 33, 111, 112 _Seconde Vie de M. Teissier, La_, 544 _note_ Senancour, 25 _Sens de la Vie, Le_, 542 _sq. _ _Sept Péchés Capitaux, Les_, 297 _Séraphita_, 166, 172 _note_ _Serge Panine_, 535 _sq. _ _Servitude et Grandeur Militaires_, 273 _sq. _ Settle, Elkanah, 523 _note_ Seventeenth-Century Novels, Note on some Additional, xiv-xvi Sévigné, Mme. De, 62 Shakespeare, 15, 47, 126, 142, 174, 268, 431, 497, 546, 563 Shelley, 100, 128, 184, 188, 431, 497 _Sibylle, Histoire de_, 416 _sq. _, 421 Sidney, Sir Philip, 58 _Silence, Le_, 346, 347 Silvestre, Armand, 437, 501 _Sir Charles Grandison_, 111 _Smarra_, 88 Smith, Prof. Gregory, xii ---- Sydney, 2, 6, 498 Smollett, 178 _note_, 471 _Soeur Béatrix, La Légende de_, 81 _sq. _ _Soeurs Rondoli, Les_, 503 _Soeurs Vatard, Les_, 515 _Soirées de Médan, Les_, 473 _sq. _, 485, 515 _Solitaire, Le_, 78-80, 83 _note_, 356 _Soll und Haben_, 18 _note_ Sommer, Dr. , xi _Songe d'Or, Le_, 82-86 _Sophie Printemps_, 388 _note_ Sorel, M. , 8, 14 ---- Charles, 471 Soulié [Melchior], Frédéric (1800-1847), 166, 208, 266, 281, 298-302, 307, 319, 335, 357 _Sous les Tilleuls_, 317 Southey, 488 _note_ Souvestre, Émile, 281, 321 _Spectator, The_, 43, 315 Spenser, 470 _Spiridion_, 179 Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, M. , 153 _St. Irvyne_, 100 Staël, Mme. De (Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne de Staël-Holstein, 1766-1817), ix, 1-19, 80, 295, 336, 347, 472, 561, 562 _Stello_, 266 _sq. _ Stendhal. _See_ Beyle Sterne, 256 Stevenson, Mr. , 97 _note_, 324 Stryienski, M. C. , 134 _sq. _ _Succube, La_, 162 Sue, Eugène (really Joseph Marie, 1804-1859), 111, 147 _note_, 166, 208, 231 _note_, 281, 296 _sq. _, 307, 319, 335, 349, 357 _Sur Cathérine de Médicis_, 166 Swift, 205, 256, 403, 466 Swinburne, Mr. , 97 _note_, 128, 155 _note_, 380 _Swiss Family Robinson, The_, 65 _note_ _Sylviane_, 525 _sq. _ _Sylvie_ (G. De Nerval's), 257 _note_ and _sq. _ ---- (Feydeau's), 441 _Taillevent_, 525 _sq. _ Taine, 461, 462 _Tale of Two Cities, A_, 129 _Talisman, The_, 124 _note_ Tallemant des Réaux, 263 _Tartarin de Tarascon_, 423 _sq. _ Tasso, 27 _Télémaque_, 30, 32, 562 _Tempest, The_, 15, 108 Tennyson, 7, 96, 184, 420 _note_, 486, 556 _Tentation de Saint-Antoine, La_, 405 _sq. _, 558 _note_ _Terre, La_, 198, 279 Thackeray, 41 _note_, 43, 54 _note_, 62-63 _note_, 82_note_, 168, 173, 179, 183, 184, 193, 229, 293, 296, 297 _note_, 306_sq. _, 316 _note_, 317, 319 _note_, 322 _note_, 324-326, 331, 351, 353, 355, 358, 360, 370, 392 _note_, 403, 411, 413, 423, 425, 471 _note_, 482, 486, 492, 537, 550 _Théâtre de Clara Gazul_, 250 _Thérèse_, 361 _note_, 384 _note_, 396 Theuriet, André (1839-1907), 67, 278, 518, 529-534, 558, 569 Thiers, 345 Thomson, James (the Second), 305 _note_ _Times, The_, 359 _note_ _Timon of Athens_, 430 _Tobacco Plant_ (Cope's), 305 _note_ _Toison d'Or, La_, 233 _Tolla_, 428 _sq. _ Tory, Geoffroy, 456 _note_ Tourguénieff, 461, 465 _Toussaint Galabru_, 527 _sq. _ Traill, Mr. , 380, 510, 548 _Travailleurs de la Mer, Les_, 116-121, 129-131, 348, 472, 557 _Trilby_, 82, 83 _Tristan le Roux_, 372 _sq. _, 558 _Trois Contes_, 407 _sq. _, 558 _Trois Hommes Forts_, 381 _Trois Mousquetaires, Les_, 325 _sq. _, 356 Trollope, A. , 51 _note_, 94, 205, 239, 325, 415, 447 _Une Femme est un Diable_, 251 _Une Gaillarde_, 55, 60 _Une Passion dans le Désert_, 162 _Une Vie_, 489 _sq. _ _Univers, The_, 451 _Valcreuse_, 290 _Valentine_, 179 _sq. _, 557 _Valerius_, 30 _Vampire, Le_, 95 _note_ _Vampires, Les_, 95 _note_ _Vanity Fair_, 63, 358, 360, 425 _Va-nu-pieds, Les_, 449 _sq. _ _Veillées du Château, Les_, 68, 69 Venables, Mr. G. S. , 123 _Vénus d'Ille, La_, 240 _Veranilda_, 30 Verlaine, P. , 228, 288, 485 Veuillot, 451 _Vicomte de Bragelonne_, 110 _note_, 112, 113, 329 _sq. _ _Vie à Vingt Ans, La_, 379 _Vie de Bohême, La_, 305 _Vie de Henri Brulard_, 134, 148 _Vie Parisienne, La_, 443 _Vie Privée de M. Teissier, La_, 543 _sq. _ _Vieille Maîtresse, Une_, 454 _sq. _ Vigny, Alfred Victor, Comte de (1799-1863), x, 208, 227, 261-277, 332, 352, 356, 397, 459 _note_, 564 Villemain, 282 Villon, 40, 109 _Vingt Ans Après_, 329 _sq. _ Virgil, 27, 546 _note_ Voltaire, 28, 209 _Volupté_, 266, 279, 282-288 _Voyages_ (Chateaubriand's), 20, 21 _Wahlverwandtschaften, Die_, 18 _note_ Walpole, H. , 455 _note_, 462 _Wandering Willie's Tale_, 94, 330 _Waverley_, 341 _Werther_, 24 and _note_, 81 _Westward Ho!_, 351 Wilberforce, Bishop, 506 _note_ _Wilhelm Meister_, 18 _note_, 235 Wilson, Prof. ("Christopher North"), 233 Wiseman, Cardinal, 31 Wood, Mrs. Henry, 535 Wordsworth, 306, 342 _note_, 480, 528, 546 Wright, Dr. H. , xiv Wycherley, 445 Wyndham, Mr. George, 330 _note_ Xavier de Montépin, 567 _note_ Yonge, Miss, 544 _note_ _Young Duke, The_, 537 _note_ _Young Stepmother, The_, 544 _note_ _Yvette_, 499 _sq. _ _Zastrozzi_, 100 Zola, Émile (1840-1902), vi, vii, ix, 170, 198, 356, 423, 452, 459 _note_, 460 _sq. _, 466-484, 488 _note_, 490 _note_, 560 THE END