A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2

by George Saintsbury

  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 EugeneSue, 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 Soulie, Mery, Achard, Feval, Ourliac, Roger deBeauvoir, Alphonse Karr, Emile 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.--_Volupte._]

  When Sainte-Beuve, thirty years after the book first appeared, subjoineda most curious Appendix to his only novel, _Volupte_, 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 _Rene_ 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 _Rene_ 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. Eugenie de Guerin 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 approuve" 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,Amelie 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 Couaen, 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 "Volupte" has, after his first visit to Paris, led himto indulge in the worship of Venus Pandemos, _parallelement_ 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 Couaen 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 Couaen,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 oftena
s 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_Volupte_ 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 _Rene_ 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 _Volupte_. 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 _recit_.

  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 _Volupte_ which is even more closely"psychological," and which has been indicated in the word"parallelement," 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 Amelie de Liniers, for Lucy de Couaen, 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 _confreres_. 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, Merimee, 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 Emile 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: Sandea
u'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 Debut 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 Seigliere_ 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 Kerouare_ and _La Maison de Penarvan_,the latter the general favourite, the former mine. Both have admirablymanaged _peripeteias_, the shorter story (_Mlle. de Kerouare_) 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 Kerouare 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 _a 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-pere_ and _Le Gentilhomme Campagnard_, each extending to a brace ofwell-filled volumes. But these, as well as the single-volume but stillsubstantial _Un Homme Serieux_ 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. Brunetiereand 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 Honore,[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 Serieux_ 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 _a 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'Ecueil_, _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. Brunetiere should dismiss Berna
rd 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 _grossierete_ 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 deStael 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'Ecueil_ 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, Soulie, and the novel of melodrama--_Le Juif Errant_,etc.]

  As regards one formerly almost famous and still well-known novelist,Eugene 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 _precis_ 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 Peches 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_genant_), it does not need the quiet and solitary devotion whichenjoyment of style demands; and it is immensely improved by dresses and_decor_, 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 Frederic Souliein preference to Eugene Sue. Soulie 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 Soulie, 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 Chateau des Pyrenees._]

  For myself, I think that _Le Chateau des Pyrenees_ 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 a
lso 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.

  Soulie wrote nearly two score novels or works of fiction, ranging from_Contes pour les Enfants_ to _Memoires 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 Soulie's forte. But as the _Memoires_ aresometimes quoted as his masterpiece, something should, I suppose, besaid about them.

  [Sidenote: _Les Memoires du Diable._]

  One thing about the book is certain--that it is much more ambitiouslyplanned than the _Chateau_; 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. Soulie, 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 Chateau of Ronquerolles, again in the Pyrenean district (besides theadvantages of a mountainous country, Soulie 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 _recit_, 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'Hotellerie 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 reason
s 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 Gerard de Nerval. I believe the case _against_has been fairly stated here.

  [Sidenote: The _Vie de Boheme_.]

  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 Gerard 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 deBoheme_, 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 deBoheme_ 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 Enchante_, _Les Premieres 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--_Jerome 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 _JeromePaturot_ 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 Soulie. 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. Jerome'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 Jeromehimself 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 _abonne_ 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 Jerome 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 Jerome 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 Jerome 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, sheb
ecomes 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.]

  _Jerome Paturot a la recherche de la meilleure des Republiques_ almostdooms itself, by its title, to be a very much less merry book than_Jerome Paturot a 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 Jeromeis 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 grenat_ 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 Jeromedoes 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 _regime_ 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 _Jerome 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: Mery.]

  Of these, in French, I myself hardly know a more remarkable example thanJoseph Mery, 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 Gerard de Nerval and Sandeau and Mme.de Girardin, and other people much greater than himself; from whose penthe beloved old "Collection Michel Levy" 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 Mery, 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 (Mery 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.Mery 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 (Mery 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 Mery'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 Mery 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 Mery'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 _naivete_ in a sentence of his own: "En general lesnationaux sont fort ignorants sur les phenomenes de leur pays; il fauts'adresser aux etrangers 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 Meryhad 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 ca change plus c'est la memechose"[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 t
he 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_.]

  Edouard 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 Vendee, 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 Gerard de Nerval, which is givenabove. And those who like to argue about cases of conscience may be gladto discuss whether Jean Reveillere, 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 Vendean'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 Soulie 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 Amedee 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 Genevieve de Chateaufort, a duchess _aux narinesfremissantes_. 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, Feval, 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 onEmile 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 Feval, who as certainly did notinvariably do suit and service to morality, but Sue'd and Soulie'd it inmany books with promising titles;[309] and who, once at least, wasinspired (again by the witchery of the country between the Baie desTrepasses and the Rock of Dol) to write _La Fee des Greves_, 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 Petrus 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-prefet_), 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, b
ut 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 "Merimee etait gentilhomme; Sainte-Beuve ne l'etait 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 curacao as a liqueur. I gave it a patient trial once, thinkingit might be critically inspiring. But the rum muddles the curacao, andthe curacao 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-age_ 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 Vendee mostlysupplies it; but that glorious failure did not inspire him quite so wellas it did Sandeau or even (_v. inf._) Edouard 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 Soulie, 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] _Jerome 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 ma
y claim attention here.

  [296] It would be interesting to know where Mery 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 aSaint-Maur--trois lieues a 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 Demon_, _Coeur d'Acier_, _La Tache Rouge_, etc. Feval 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.