A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1

A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 Page 15

by George Saintsbury

  CHAPTER XI

  THE _PHILOSOPHE_ NOVEL

  [Sidenote: The use of the novel for "purpose"--Voltaire.]

  It has been for some time a commonplace--though, like most commonplaces,it is probably much more often simply borrowed than an actual and (evenin the sense of _communis_) original perception of the borrowers--thatnothing shows the comparative inevitableness of the novel in theeighteenth century better than the use of it by persons who would, atother times, have used quite different forms to subserve similarpurposes. The chief instance of this with us is, of course, Johnson in_Rasselas_, but it is much more variously and voluminously, if not inany single instance much better, illustrated in France by the threegreat leaders of the _philosophe_ movement; by considerable, ifsecond-rate figures, more or less connected with that movement, likeMarmontel and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; and by many lesser writers.

  There can be no question that, in more ways than one, Voltaire[351]deserves the first place in this chapter, not only by age, by volume,and by variety of general literary ability, but because he, perhaps morethan any of the others, is a tale-teller born. That he owes a good dealto Hamilton, and something directly to Hamilton's master,Saint-Evremond, has been granted elsewhere; but that he is dependent onthese models to such an extent as to make his actual production unlikelyif the models had not been ready for him, may be roundly denied. Thereare in literature some things which must have existed, and of which itis not frivolous to say that if their actual authors had not been there,or had declined to write them, they would have found somebody else to doit. Of these, _Candide_ is evidently one, and more than one of_Candide's_ smaller companions have at least something of the samecharacteristic. Yet one may also say that if Voltaire himself had notwritten these, he must have written other things of the kind. Themordant wit, the easy, fluent, rippling style, so entirely free fromboisterousness yet with constant "wap" of wavelet and bursting offoam-bubble; above all, the pure unadulterated faculty of tale-telling,must have found vent and play somehow. It had been well if theplayfulness had not been, as playfulness too often is, of whatcontemporary English called an "unlucky" (that is, a "mischievous")kind; and if the author had not been constantly longing to make somebodyor many bodies uncomfortable,[352] to damage and defile shrines, toexhibit a misanthropy more really misanthropic, because less passionateand tragical, than Swift's, and, in fact, as his patron, persecutor, andcounterpart, Frederick the Jonathan-Wildly Great, most justly observedof him, to "play monkey-tricks," albeit monkey-tricks of immense talent,if not actually of genius. If the recent attempts to interpretmonkey-speech were to come to something, and if, as a consequence,monkeys were taught to write, one may be sure that prose fiction wouldbe their favourite department, and that their productions would be,though almost certainly disreputable, quite certainly amusing. In factthere would probably be some among these which would be claimed, bycritics of a certain type, as hitherto unknown works of Voltairehimself.

  Yet if the straightforward tale had not, owing to the influencesdiscussed in the foregoing chapters, acquired a firm hold, it is atleast possible that he would not have adopted it (for originality ofform was not Voltaire's _forte_), but would have taken the dialogue, orsomething else capable of serving his purpose. As it was, the particularfield or garden had already been marked out and hedged after a fashion;tools and methods of cultivation had been prepared; and he set to workto cultivate it with the application and intelligence recommended in thefamous moral of his most famous tale--a moral which, it is only fair tosay, he did carry out almost invariably. A garden of very questionableplants was his, it may be; but that is another matter. The fact and thesuccess of the cultivation are both undeniable.

  [Sidenote: General characteristics of his tales.]

  At the same time, Voltaire--if indeed, as was doubted just now, he be agenius at all--is not a genius, or even a djinn, of the kind thatcreates and leaves something Melchisedec-like; alone and isolated fromwhat comes before and what comes after. He is an immense talent--perhapsthe greatest talent-but-not-genius ever known--who utilises and improvesand develops rather than invents. It is from this that his faculty ofnever boring, except when he has got upon the Scriptures, comes; it isbecause of this also that he never conceives anything really, simply,absolutely _great_. His land is never exactly weary, but there is noimposing and sheltering and refreshing rock in it. These _romans_ and_contes_ and _nouvelles_ of his stimulate, but they do not either restor refresh. They have what is, to some persons at any rate, thetheatrical quality, not the poetical or best-prosaic. But as nearlyconsummate works of art, or at least craft, they stand almost alone.

  He had seen[353] the effect of which the fairy tale of thesophisticated kind was capable, and the attraction which it had for bothvulgars, the great and the small: and he made the most of it. He keptand heightened its _haut gout_; he discarded the limitations to a verypartial and conventional society which Crebillon put on it; but helimited it in other ways to commonplace and rather vulgar fancy, withoutthe touches of imagination which Hamilton had imparted. Yet he infusedan even more accurate appreciation of certain phases of human naturethan those predecessors or partial contemporaries of his who werediscussed in the last chapter had introduced; he _practicalised_ it tothe _n_th, and he made it almost invariably subordinate to a direct,though a sometimes more or less ignoble, purpose. There is no doubt thathe had learnt a great deal from Lucian and from Lucian's Frenchimitators, perhaps as far back as Bonaventure des Periers; there is, Ithink, little that he had added as much as he could add from Swift.[354]His stolen or borrowed possessions from these sources, and especiallythis last, remind one in essence rather of the pilferings of a "lighthorseman," or river-pirate who has hung round an "old three-decker,"like that celebrated in Mr. Kipling's admirable poem, and has caughtsomething even of the light from "her tall poop-lanterns shining so farabove him," besides picking up overboard trifles, and cutting looseboats and cables. But when he gets to shore and to his own workshop, hisalmost unequalled power of sheer wit, and his general craftsmanship,bring out of these lootings something admirable in its own way.

  [Sidenote: _Candide._]

  _Candide_ is almost "great," and though the breed of Dr. Pangloss in itsoriginal kind is nearly extinct, the England which suffered theapproach, and has scarcely yet allowed itself to comprehend the reality,of the war of 1914, ought to know that there have been and arePangloss_otins_ of almost appalling variety. The book does not reallyrequire the smatches of sculduddery, which he has smeared over it, tobe amusing; for its lifelikeness carries it through. As is well known,Johnson admitted the parallel with _Rasselas_, which is among the mostextraordinary coincidences of literature. I have often wondered whetheranybody ever took the trouble to print the two together. There would bemany advantages in doing so; but they might perhaps be counter-balancedby the fact that some of the most fervent admirers of _Rasselas_ wouldbe infinitely shocked by _Candide_, and that perhaps more of the speciallovers of _Candide_ would find themselves bored to extinction by_Rasselas_. Let those who can not only value but enjoy both be thankful,but not proud.

  Many people have written about the Consolations of Old Age, not seldom,it is to be feared, in a "Who's afraid?" sort of spirit. But there are afew, an apple or two by the banks of Ulai, which we may pluck as thenight approaches. One is almost necessarily accidental, for it would berash and somewhat cold-blooded to plan it. It consists in the reading,after many years, of a book once familiar almost to the point of knowingby heart, and then laid aside, not from weariness or disgust, but merelyas things happened. This, as in some other books mentioned in thishistory, was the case with the present writer in respect of _Candide_.From twenty to forty, or thereabouts, I must have read it over and overagain; the sentences drop into their places almost without exercisingany effort of memory to recognise them. From forty to seventy I do notthink I read it at all; because no reason made reading necessary, andchance left it untouched on the shelf. Sometimes, as everybody knows,the result of rene
wed acquaintance in such cases is more or less severedisappointment; in a few of the happiest, increased pleasure. But it isperhaps the severest test of a classic (in the exact but limited senseof that word) that its effect shall be practically unchanged, shall havebeen established in the mind and taste with such a combination ofsolidity and _nettete_, that no change is possible. I do not think Ihave ever found this to be more the case than with the history ofCandide (who was such a good fellow, without being in the least a prig,as I am afraid Zadig was, that one wonders how Voltaire came to think ofhim) and of Mademoiselle Cunegonde (nobody will ever know anything aboutstyle who does not feel what the continual repetition in Candide's mouthof the "Mademoiselle" does) of the indomitable Pangloss, and thedetestable baron, and the forgivable Paquette, and that philosopherMartin, who did _not_ "let cheerfulness break in," and the admirableCacambo, who shows that, much as he hated Rousseau, Voltaire himself wasnot proof against the noble savage mania.[355]

  As a piece (_v. sup._) of art or craft, the thing is beyond praise orpay. It could not be improved, on its own specification, except thatperhaps the author might have told us how Mademoiselle Cunegonde, whohad kept her beauty through some very severe experiences, suddenly lostit. It is idle as literary, though not as historical, criticism to say,as has been often said about the Byng passage, that Voltaire's smartnessrather "goes off through the touch-hole," seeing that the admiral'sexecution did very considerably "encourage the others." It issuperfluous to urge the unnecessary "smuts," which are sometimes not inthe least amusing. All these and other sought-for knots are lost in theadmirable smoothness of this reed, which waves in the winds of time withunwitherable greenness, and slips through the hand, as you stroke it,with a coaxing tickle. To praise its detail would again be idle--nobodyought to read such praise who can read itself; and if anybody, havingread its first page, fails to see that it is, and how it is,praiseworthy, he never will or would be converted if all the eulogies ofthe most golden-mouthed critics of the world were poured upon him in asteady shower. As a whole it is undoubtedly the best, and (except partof _Zadig_) it is nowhere else matched in the book of the romances ofVoltaire, while for those who demand "purposes" and "morals," it standsalmost alone. It is the comic "Vanity of Human Wishes" in prose, as_Rasselas_ is the tragic or, at least, serious version: and, as has beensaid, the two make an unsurpassable sandwich, or, at least, _tartine_.Nor could it have been told, in any other way than by prose fiction,with anything like the same effect, either as regards critical judgmentor popular acceptance.

  [Sidenote: _Zadig_ and its satellites.]

  _Zadig_, as has been indicated already, probably ranks in point of meritnext to _Candide_. If it had stopped about half-way, there could be nodoubt about the matter. The reader is caught at once by one of the mostfamous and one of the most Voltairian of phrases, "Il savait de lametaphysique ce qu'on a su dans tous les ages, c'est-a-dire fort peu dechose," a little more discussion of which saying, and of others like it,may perhaps be given later. The successive disappointments of the almosttoo perfect[356] hero are given with the simplicity just edged withirony which is Voltaire's when he is at his best, though he undoubtedlylearnt it from the masters already assigned, and--the suggestion wouldhave made him very angry, and would probably have attracted one of hismost Yahoo-like descents on this humble and devoted head--from Lesage.But though the said head has no objection--much the reverse--to "happyendings," the romance-finish of _Zadig_ has always seemed to it amistake. Still, how many mistakes would one pardon if they came aftersuch a success? _Babouc_, the first of those miniature _contes_ (theyare hardly "tales" in one sense), which Voltaire managed so admirably,has the part-advantage part-disadvantage of being likewise the first ofa series of satires on French society, which, piquant as they are, wouldcertainly have been both more piquant and more weighty if there had beenfewer of them. It is full of the perfect, if not great, Voltairianphrases,--the involuntary _Mene Tekel_, "Babouc conclut qu'une tellesociete ne pouvait subsister"; the palinode after a fashion, "Ils'affectionnait a la ville, dont le peuple etait doux [oh! Nemesis!]poli et bien-faisant, quoique leger, medisant et plein de vanite"; andthe characteristic collection of parallel between Babouc and Jonah,surely not objectionable even to the most orthodox, "Mais quand on a etetrois jours dans le corps d'une baleine on n'est pas de si bonne humeurque quand on a ete a l'opera, a la comedie et qu'on a soupe en bonnecompagnie."

  [Sidenote: _Micromegas._]

  _Memnon, ou La Sagesse Humaine_ is still less of a tale, only a livelysarcastic apologue; but he would be a strange person who would quarrelwith its half-dozen pages, and much the same may be said of the _Voyagesde Scarmentado_. Still, one feels in both of them, and in many of theothers, that they are after all not much more than chips of an inferiorrehandling of _Gulliver_. _Micromegas_, as has been said, does notdisguise its composition as something of the kind; but the desire toannoy Fontenelle, while complimenting him after a fashion as the "dwarfof Saturn," and perhaps other strokes of personal scratching, have putVoltaire on his mettle. You will not easily find a better Voltairism ofits particular class than, "Il faut bien citer ce qu'on ne comprendpoint du tout, dans la langue qu'on entend le moins." But, as so oftenhappens, the cracker in the tail is here the principal point.Micromegas, the native of Sirius, who may be Voltaire himself, oranybody else--after his joint tour through the universes (much moreamusing than that of the late Mr. Bailey's Festus), with the smaller butstill gigantic Saturnian--writes a philosophical treatise to instruct uspoor microbes of the earth, and it is taken to Paris, to the secretaryof the Academy of Science (Fontenelle himself). "Quand le secretairel'eut ouvert il ne vit rien qu'un livre tout blanc. 'Ah!' dit-il, 'jem'en etais bien doute.'" Voltaire did a great deal of harm in the world,and perhaps no solid good;[357] but it is things like this which makeone feel that it would have been, a loss had there been no Voltaire.

  [Sidenote: _L'Ingenu._]

  _L'Ingenu_, which follows _Candide_ in the regular editions, fallsperhaps as a whole below all these, and _L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus_,which follows it, hardly concerns us at all, being mere politicaleconomy of a sort in dialogue. _L'Ingenu_ is a story, and has manyamusing things in it. But it is open to the poser that if Voltairereally accepted the noble savage business he was rather silly, and thatif he did not, the piece is a stale and not very biting satire. It is,moreover, somewhat exceptionally full (there is only one to beat it) ofthe vulgar little sniggers which suggest the eunuch even more than theschoolboy, and the conclusion is abominable. The seducer and,indirectly, murderer Saint-Pouange may only have done after his kind inregard to Mlle. de Saint-Yves; but the Ingenu himself neither acted upto his Huron education, nor to his extraction as a French gentleman, inforgiving the man and taking service under him.

  [Sidenote: _La Princesse de Babylone._]

  _La Princesse de Babylone_ is more like Hamilton than almost any otherof the tales, and this, it need hardly be said here, is high praise,even for a work of Voltaire. For it means that it has what we commonlyfind in that work, and also something that we do not. But it has thatdefect which has been noticed already in _Zadig_, and which, by itsabsence, constitutes the supremacy of _Candide_. There is in it a sortof "break in the middle." The earlier stages of the courtship ofFormosante are quite interesting; but when she and her lover beginseparately to wander over the world, in order that their chronicler maymake satiric observations on the nations thereof, one feels inclined tosay, as Mr. Mowbray Morris said to Mr. Matthew Arnold (who thought itwas Mr. Traill):

  Can't you give us something new?

  [Sidenote: Some minors.]

  _Le Blanc et le Noir_ rises yet again, and though it has perhaps notmany of Voltaire's _mots de flamme_, it is more of a fairy moraltale--neither a merely fantastic mow, nor sicklied over with itsmorality--than almost any other. It is noteworthy, too, that the authorhas hardly any recourse to his usual clove of garlic to give seasoning._Jeannot et Colin_ might have been Marmontel's or Miss Edgeworth's,being merely the usual story of
two rustic lads, one of whom becomesrich and corrupt till, later, he is succoured by the other. NowMarmontel and Miss Edgeworth are excellent persons and writers; buttheir work is not work for Voltaire.

  The _Lettres d'Amabed_[358] are the dirtiest and the dullest of thewhole batch, and the _Histoire de Jenni_, though not particularly dirty,is very dull indeed, being the "History of a Good Deist," a thingwithout which (as Mr. Carlyle used to say) we could do. The same sort of"purpose" mars _Les Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield_, in which, afterthe first page, there is practically nothing about Lord Chesterfield orhis deafness, but which contains a good deal of Voltaire's crispestwriting, especially the definition of that English freedom which hesometimes used to extol. With thirty guineas a year,[359] thematerialist doctor Sidrac informs the unfortunate Goudman, who has losta living by the said deafness, "on peut dire tout ce qu'on pense de lacompagnie des Indes, du parlement, de nos colonies, du roi, de l'etat engeneral, de l'homme et de Dieu--ce qui est un grand amusement." But thepiece itself would be more amusing if Voltaire could let the Biblealone, though he does not here come under the stroke of Diderot'ssledge-hammer as he does in _Amabed_.

  One seldom, however, echoes this last wish, and remembers the strokereferred to, more than in reference to _Le Taureau Blanc_. Here, ifthere were nobody who reverenced the volume which begins with _Genesis_and ends with _Revelation_, the whole thing would be utterly dead andstupid: except for a few crispnesses of the Egyptian Mambres, whichcould, almost without a single exception, have been uttered on any othertheme. The identification of Nebuchadnezzar with the bull Apis is notprecisely an effort of genius; but the assembling, and putting throughtheir paces, of Balaam's ass and Jonah's whale, the serpent of Eden, andthe raven of the Ark, with the three prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, andDaniel, and with an historical King Amasis and an unhistorical PrincessAmaside thrown in, is less a _conte a dormir debout_, as Voltaire'scountrymen and he himself would say, than a tale to make a man sleepwhen he is running at full speed--a very dried poppy-head of the gardenof tales. On the other hand, the very short and very early _LeCrocheteur Borgne_, which, curiously enough, Voltaire never printed, andthe not much longer _Cosi-Sancta_, which he printed in his queerostrich-like manner, are, though a little naughty, quite nice; and havea freshness and demure grace about their naughtiness which contrastsremarkably with the ugly and wearisome snigger of later work.

  [Sidenote: Voltaire--the Kehl edition--and Plato.]

  The half-dozen others,[360] filling scarce twenty pages between them,which conclude the usual collection, need little comment; but a "Kehl"note to the first of them is for considerable thoughts:

  M. de Voltaire s'est egaye quelquefois sur Platon, dont le galimatias, regarde autrefois comme sublime, a fait plus de mal au genre humain qu'on ne le croit communement.

  One should not hurry over this, but muse a little. In copying the note,I felt almost inclined to write "_M. de_ Platon" in order to put thewhole thing in a consistent key; for somehow "Plato" by itself, even inthe French form, transports one into such a very different world thatadjustment of clocks and compasses becomes at once necessary anddifficult. "Galimatias" is good, "autrefois" is possibly better, the"evils inflicted on the human race" better still, but _egaye_ perhapsbest of all. The monkey, we know, makes itself gay with the elephant,and probably would do so with the lion and the tiger if these animalshad not an unpleasant way of dealing with jokers. And the tomtit andcanary have, no doubt, at least private agreement that the utterances ofthe nightingale are _galimatias_, while the carrion crow thinks theeagle a fool for dwelling so high and flying so much higher. But as forthe other side of the matter, how thin and poor and puerile even thosesmartest things of Voltaire's, some of which have been quoted andpraised, sound, if one attempts to read them after the last sentence ofthe _Apology_, or after passage on passage of the rest of the"galimatias" of Plato!

  Nevertheless, though you may answer a fool according to his folly, youshould not, especially when he is not a fool absolute, judge him solelythereby. When Voltaire was making himself gay with Plato, with theBible, and with some other things, he was talking, not merely ofsomething which he did not completely understand, but of somethingaltogether outside the range of his comprehension. But in the judgmentof literature the process of "cancelling" does not exist. A quality isnot destroyed or neutralised by a defect, and, properly speaking (thoughit is hard for the critic to observe this), to strike a balance betweenthe two is impossible. It is right to enter the non-values; but thevalues remain and require chief attention.

  [Sidenote: An attempt at different evaluation of himself.]

  From what has been already said, it will be clear that there is nodisposition here to give Voltaire anything short of the fullest credit,both as an individual writer of prose fiction and as a link in the chainof its French producers. He worked for the most part in miniature, andeven _Candide_ runs but to its bare hundred pages. But these are of thefirst quality in their own way, and give the book the same position forthe century, in satiric and comic fiction, which _Manon Lescaut_ holdsin that of passion. That both should have taken this form, while,earlier, _Manon_, if written at all, would probably have been a poem,and _Candide_ would have been a treatise, shows on the one side theimportance of the position which the novel had assumed, and on the otherthe immense advantages which it gave, as a kind, to the artist inliterature. I like poetry better than anything, but though the subjectcould have been, and often has been, treated satirically in verse, averse _narrative_ could hardly have avoided inferiority, while evenBerkeley (who himself borrowed a little of novel-form for _Alciphron_)could not have made _Candide_ more effective than it is. It is of coursetrue that Voltaire's powers as a "fictionist" were probably limited infact, to the departments, or the department, which he actually occupied,and out of which he wisely did not go. He must have a satiric purpose,and he must be allowed a very free choice of subject and seasoning. Inparticular, it may be noted that he has no grasp whatever of individualcharacter. Even Candide is but a "humour," and Pangloss a very decidedone; as are Martin, Gordon in _L'Ingenu_, and others. His women are allslightly varied outline-sketches of what he thought women in generalwere, not persons. Plot he never attempted; and racy as his dialogueoften is, it is on the whole merely a setting for these very sparkles ofwit some of which have been quoted.

  It is in these scintillations, after all, that the chief delight of histales consists; and though, as has been honestly confessed and shown, helearnt this to some extent from others, he made the thing definitely hisown. When the Babylonian public has been slightly "elevated" by therefreshments distributed at the great tournament for the hand of thePrincess Formosante, it decides that war, etc., is folly, and that theessence of human nature is to enjoy itself, "Cette excellente morale,"says Voltaire gravely, "n'a jamais ete dementie" (the words reallyshould be made to come at the foot of a page so that you might have toturn over before coming to the conclusion of the sentence) "que par lesfaits." Again, in the description of the Utopia of the Gangarides (samestory), where not only men but beasts and birds are all perfectly wise,well conducted, and happy, a paragraph of quite sober description,without any flinging up of heels or thrusting of tongue in cheek, ends,"Nous avons surtout des perroquets qui prechent a merveille," and foronce Voltaire exercises on himself the Swiftian control, which he toooften neglected, and drops his beloved satire of clerics after thisgentle touch at it.[361]

  He is of course not constantly at his best; but he is so often enough tomake him, as was said at the beginning, very delectable reading,especially for the second time and later, which will be admitted to beno common praise. When you read him for the first time his bad taste,his obsession with certain subjects, his repetition of the same gibes,and other things which have been duly mentioned, strike and maydisgust--will certainly more or less displease anybody but a partisan onthe same side. On a second or later reading you are prepared for them,and either skip them altogether or pass them by without special notice,repeati
ng the enjoyment of what is better in an unalloyed fashion. Andso doth the excellent old chestnut-myth, which probably most of us haveheard told with all innocence as an original witticism, justify itself,and one should "prefer the second hour" of the reading to the first. Butif there is a first there will almost certainly be a second, and it willbe a very great pity if there is no reading at all.

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: Rousseau--the novel-character of the _Confessions_.]

  According to the estimate of the common or vulgate (I do not say"vulgar," though in the best English there is little or no difference)literary history, Rousseau[362] ranks far higher in the scale ofnovel-writing than Voltaire, having left long and ambitious books of thekind against Voltaire's handful of short, shorter, and shortest stories.It might be possible to accept this in one sense, but in one which wouldutterly disconcert the usual valuers. The _Confessions_, if it were notan autobiography, would be one of the great novels of the world. A largepart of it is probably or certainly "fictionised"; if the whole werefictitious, it would lose much of its repulsiveness, retain (except fora few very matter-of-fact judges) all its interest, and gain theenormous advantage of art over mere _reportage_ of fact. Of courseRousseau's art of another kind, his mere mastery of style andpresentation, does redeem this _reportage_ to some extent; but thiswould remain if the thing were wholly fiction, and the other art ofinvention, divination, _mimesis_--call it what you will--would come in.Yet it is not worth while to be idly unlike other people and claim it asan actual novel. It may be worth while to point out how it displays someof the great gifts of the novel-writer. The first of these--the greatestand, in fact, the mother of all the rest--is the sheer faculty, so oftenmentioned but not, alas! so invariably found, of telling the tale andholding the reader, not with any glittering eye or any enchantment,white or black, but with the pure grasping--or, as French admirably hasit, "enfisting"--power of the tale itself. Round this there cluster--or,rather, in this necessarily abide--the subsidiary arts of managing thevarious parts of the story, of constructing characters sufficient tocarry it on, of varnishing it with description, and to some extent,though naturally to a lesser one than if it had been fiction pure andsimple, "lacing" it, in both senses of the word, with dialogue.Commonplace (but not the best commonplace) taste often cries "Oh! ifthis were only true!" The wiser mind is fain sometimes--not often, forthings are not often good enough--to say, "Oh! if this were only_false_!"

  [Sidenote: The ambiguous position of _Emile_.]

  But if a severe auditor were to strike the _Confessions_ out ofRousseau's novel-account to the good, on the score of technicalinsufficiency or disqualification, he could hardly refuse to do the samewith _Emile_ on the other side of the sheet. In fact its second title(_de l'Education_), its opening remarks, and the vastly larger part ofthe text, not only do not pretend to be a novel but frankly decline tobe one. In what way exactly the treatise, from the mere assumption of asupposed "soaring human boy" named Emile, who serves as the victim of afew _Sandford-and-Merton_-like illustrations, burgeoned into the romanceof actual novel-kind with Sophie in the Fifth Book, and the purelynovel-natured, but unfinished and hardly begun, sequel of _Emile etSophie ou Les Solitaires_, it is impossible to say. From the sketch ofthe intended conclusion of this latter given by Prevost[363] it wouldseem that we have not lost much, though with Rousseau the treatment isso constantly above the substance that one cannot tell. As it is, thenovel part is nearly worthless. Neither Emile nor Sophie is made in theleast a live person; the catastrophe of their at first ideal union mightbe shown, by an advocate of very moderate skill, to be largely if notwholly due to the meddlesome, muddle-headed, and almost inevitablymischievous advice given to them just after their marriage by theirfoolish Mentor; and one neither finds nor foresees any real novelinterest whatever. Anilities in the very worst style of the eighteenthcentury--such as the story how Emile instigated mutiny in an Algerianslave-gang, failed, made a noble protest, and instead of being impaled,flayed, burnt alive, or otherwise taught not to do so, was made overseerof his own projects of reformed discipline--are sufficientlyunrefreshing in fact. And the sort of "double arrangement" foreshadowedin the professorial programme of the unwritten part, where, in somethinglike Davenant and Dryden's degradation of _The Tempest_, Emile andSophie, she still refusing to be pardoned her fault, are broughttogether after all, and are married, in an actual though not consummatedcross-bigamy, with a mysterious couple, also marooned on a desertisland, is the sort of thing that Rousseau never could have managed,though Voltaire, probably to the discontent of Mrs. Grundy, could havedone it in one way, and Sir William Gilbert would have done itdelightfully in another. But Jean-Jacques's absolute lack of humourwould have ensured a rather ghastly failure, relieved, it may be, by afew beautiful passages.

  [Sidenote: _La Nouvelle Heloise._]

  If, therefore, Rousseau had nothing but _Emile_, or even nothing but_Emile_ and the _Confessions_ to put to his credit, he could but obtaina position in our "utmost, last, provincial band," and that more becauseof his general literary powers than of special right. But, as everybodyknows, there is a third book among his works which, whether universallyor only by a majority, whether in whole or in part, whether with heavydeductions and allowances or with light ones, has been reckoned amongthe greatest and most epoch-making novels of the world. The full titleof it is _Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise, ou Lettres de deux Amans,habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes, recueillies et publiees,par J. J. Rousseau_.[364] Despite its immense fame, direct and atsecond-hand--for Byron's famous outburst, though scarcely lessrhetorical, is decidedly more poetical than most things of his, and hasinscribed itself in the general memory--one rather doubts whether thebook is as much read as it once was. Quotations, references, and thosehalf-unconscious reminiscences of borrowing which are more eloquentthan anything else, have not recently been very common either in Englishor in French. It has had the fate--elsewhere, I think, alluded to--ofone of the two kinds of great literature, that it has in a manner seededitself out. An intense love-novel--it is some time since we have seenone till the other day--would be a descendant of Rousseau's book, butwould not bear more than a family likeness to it. Yet this, of itself,is a great testimony.

  [Sidenote: Its numerous and grave faults.]

  Except in rhetoric or rhapsody, the allowances and deductions abovereferred to must be heavy; and, according to a custom honoured both bytime and good result, it is well to get them off first. That peculiarityof being a novelist only _par interim_, much more than Aramis was amousquetaire, appears, even in _Julie_, so glaringly as to be dangerousand almost fatal. The book fills, in the ordinary one-volume editions,nearly five hundred pages of very small and very close print. Of thesethe First Part contains rather more than a hundred, and it would beinfinitely better if the whole of the rest, except a few passages (whichwould be almost equally good as fragments), were in the bosom of theocean buried. Large parts of them are mere discussions of some ofRousseau's own fads; clumsy parodies of Voltaire's satiricmanners-painting; waterings out of the least good traits in the hero andheroine; uninteresting and superfluous appearances of the third and onlyother real person, Claire; a dreary account of Julie's married life;tedious eccentricities of the impossible and not very agreeable LordEdward Bomston, who shares with Dickens's Lord Frederick Verisopht thepeculiarity of being alternately a peer and a person with a courtesy"Lord"-ship; a rather silly end for the heroine herself;[365] andfinally, a rather repulsive and quite incongruous acknowledgment ofaffection for the creature Saint-Preux, with a refusal to "implement"it (as they say in Scotland) matrimonially, by Claire, who is by thistime a widow.[366] If mutilating books[367] were not a crime deservingterrible retribution in this life or after it, one could be excused fortearing off the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Parts, with the_Amours de Lord Edouard_ which follow. If one was rich, one would beamply justified in having a copy of Part I., and the fragments aboveindicated, printed for oneself on ve
llum.

  [Sidenote: The minor characters.]

  But this is not all. Even the First Part--even the presentation of thethree protagonists--is open to some, and even to severe, criticism. Themost guiltless, but necessarily much the least important, is Claire. Sheis, of course, an obvious "borrow" from Richardson's lively secondheroines; but she is infinitely superior to them. It is at first sight,though not perhaps for long, curious--and it is certainly a very greatcompliment to Madame de Warens or Vuarrens and Madame d'Houdetot, andperhaps other objects of his affections--that Rousseau, cad as he was,and impossible as it was for him to draw a gentleman, could and did drawladies. It was horribly bad taste in both Julie and Claire to love sucha creature as Saint-Preux; but then _cela s'est vu_ from the time of theLady of the Strachy downwards, if not from that of Princess Michal. ButClaire is faithful and true as steel, and she is lively without being,as Charlotte Grandison certainly is, vulgar. She is very much more areally "reasonable woman," even putting passion aside, than the somewhatsermonising and syllogising Julie; and it would have been both agreeableand tormenting to be M. d'Orbe. (Tormenting because she only half-lovedhim, and agreeable because she did love him a little, and, whether itwas little or much, allowed herself to be his.) He himself, slight andrather "put upon" as he is, is also much the most agreeable of the"second" male characters. Of Bomston and Wolmar we shall speakpresently; and there is so little of the Baron d'Etange that one reallydoes not know whether he was or was not something more than thetyrannical husband and father, and the ill-mannered specimen of thelesser nobility, that it pleased Saint-Preux or Rousseau to representhim as being. He had provocation enough, even in the case of hisotherwise hardly pardonable insolence to Bomston.[368]

  [Sidenote: The delinquencies of Saint-Preux.]

  But Saint-Preux himself? How early was the obvious jest made that he isabout as little of a _preux_ as he is of a saint? I have heard, ordreamt, of a schoolboy who, being accidentally somewhat precocious inFrench, and having read the book, ejaculated, "_What_ a sweep he is!"and I remember no time of my life at which I should not have heartilyagreed with that youth. I do not suppose that either of us--thoughperhaps we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for not doing so--foundedour condemnation on Saint-Preux's "forgetfulness of all but love." Thatis a "forfeit," in French and English sense alike, which has itselfregistered and settled in various tariffs and codes, none of whichconcerns the present history. It is not even that he is a mostunreasonable creature now and then; that can be pardoned, beingunderstood, though he really does strain the benefit of _amare etsapere_ etc. It is that, except when he is in the altitudes of passion,and not always then, he never "knows how to behave," as the simple andsufficient old phrase had it. If M. d'Etange had had the wits, and haddeigned to do it, he might even, without knowing his deepest cause ofquarrel with the treacherous tutor, have pointed out that Saint-Preux'sclaim to be one of God Almighty's gentlemen was as groundless as his"proofs," in the French technical sense of gentility, were non-existent.It is impossible to imagine anything in worse taste than his reply tothe Baron's no doubt offensive letter, and Julie's enclosedrenunciation. Even the adoring Julie herself, and the hardly lessadoring Claire--the latter not in the least a prude, nor given to givingherself "airs"--are constantly obliged to pull him up for his want of_delicatesse_. He is evidently a coxcomb, still more evidently a prig;selfish beyond even that selfishness which is venial in a lover; not inthe least, though he can exceed in wine, a "good fellow," and in manyways thoroughly unmanly. A good English school and college might havemade him tolerable: but it is rather to be doubted, and it is certainthat his way as a transgressor would have been hard at both. As it is,he is very largely the embodiment--and it is more charitable thanuncharitable to regard him as largely the cause--of the faults of theworst kind of French, and not quite only French, novel-hero ever since.

  [Sidenote: And the less charming points of Julie. Her redemption.]

  One approaches Julie herself, in critical intent, with mixed feelings.One would rather say nothing but good of her, and there is plenty ofgood to say: how much will be seen in a moment. Most of what is not sogood belongs, in fact, to the dreary bulk of sequel tacked on bymistaken judgment to that more than true history of a hundred pages,which leaves her in despair, and might well have left her altogether.Even here she is not faultless, quite independently of her sinsaccording to Mrs. Grundy and the Pharisees. If she had not been, asClaire herself fondly but truly calls her, such a _precheresse_, shemight not have fallen a victim to such a prig. One never can quiteforgive her for loving him, except on the all-excusing ground that sheloved him so much; and though she is perhaps not far beyond the licenceof "All's fair, in certain conditions," there is no doubt that, like herpart-pattern Clarissa, she is not passionately attached to the truth.It might be possible to add some cavils, but for the irresistible pleajust glanced at, which stops one.

  _Quia multum amavit!_ Nobody--at least no woman--had loved like that ina prose novel before; nobody at all except Des Grieux, and he is but asa sketch to an elaborate picture. She will wander after Pallas, andwould like to think that she would like to be of the train of Dian (oneshudders at imagining the scowl and the shrug and the twist of the skirtof the goddess!). But the kiss of Aphrodite has been on her, and hasmastered her whole nature. How the thing could be done, out of poetry,has always been a marvel to me; but I have explained it by thesupposition that the absolute impossibility of writing poetry at thistime in French necessitated the break-out in prose. Rousseau's wonderfulstyle--so impossible to analyse, but so irresistible--does much; theanimating sense of his native scenery something. But, after all, whatgives the thing its irresistibleness is the strange command he had ofPassion and of Sorrow--two words, the first of which is actually, in theoriginal sense, a synonym of the second, though it has been expanded tocover the very opposite.

  [Sidenote: And the better side of the book generally.]

  But it would be unfair to Rousseau, especially in such a place as this,to confine the praise of _Julie_ as a novel to its exhibition ofpassion, or even to the charm of Julie herself. Within its properlimits--which are, let it be repeated, almost if not quite exactly thoseof the First Part--many other gifts of the particular class of artistare shown. The dangerous letter-scheme, which lends itself so easily,and in the other parts surrenders itself so helplessly and hopelessly,to mere "piffle" about this and that, is kept well in hand. Much asRousseau owes to Richardson, he has steered entirely clear of thatsystem of word-for-word and incident-for-incident reporting which makesthe Englishman's work so sickening to some. You have enough of each andno more, this happy mean affecting both dialogue and description. Theplot (or rather the action) is constantly present, probably managed,always enlivened by the imminence of disastrous discovery. As has beenalready pointed out, one may dislike--or feel little interest in--someof the few characters; but it is impossible to say that they are out ofdrawing or keeping. Saint-Preux, objectionable and almost loathsome ashe may be sometimes, is a thoroughly human creature, and is undoubtedlywhat Rousseau meant him to be, for the very simple reason that he is(like the Byronic hero who followed) what Rousseau wished to be, if notexactly what he was, himself. Bomston is more of a lay figure; but thenthe _Anglais philosophe de qualite_ of the French imagination in theeighteenth century was a lay figure, and, as has been excellently saidby De Quincey in another matter, nothing can be wrong which conforms tothe principles of its own ideal. As for Julie and Claire, they once more

  Answer the ends of their being created.

  Even the "talking-book" is here hardly excessive, and comes legitimatelyunder the excuse of showing how the relations between the hero andheroine originally got themselves established.[369]

  [Sidenote: But little probability of more good work in novel from itsauthor.]

  Are we, then, from the excellence of the "Confessions" _in pari materia_and _in ipsa_ of _Julie_, to lament that Rousseau did not take tonovel-writing as a special and serious occupation? Probabl
y not. Theextreme weakness and almost _fadeur_ of the strictly novel part of_Emile_, and the going-off of _Julie_ itself, are very open warnings;the mere absence of any other attempts worth mentioning[370] is evidenceof a kind; and the character of all the rest of the work, and of allthis part of the work but the opening of _Julie_, and even of thatopening itself, counsel abstention, here as everywhere, from quarrellingwith Providence. Rousseau's superhuman concentration on himself, whileit has inspired the relevant parts of the _Confessions_ and of _Julie_,has spoilt a good deal else that we have, and would assuredly havespoilt other things that we have not. It has been observed, by all acutestudents of the novel, that the egotistic variety will not bear heavycrops of fruit by itself; and that it is incapable, or capable with verygreat difficulty, of letting the observed and so far altruistic kindgrow from the same stool. Of what is sometimes called the dramaticfaculty (though, in fact, it is only one side of that),--the facultywhich in different guise and with different means the general novelistmust also possess,--Rousseau had nothing. He could put himself in noother man's skin, being so absolutely wrapped up in his own, which wasitself much too sensitive to be disturbed, much less shed. Anything oranybody that was (to use Mill's language) a permanent or even atemporary possibility of sensation to him was within his power; anythingout of immediate or closely impending contact was not. Now some of thegreat novelists have the external power--or at least the will to usethat power--alone, others have had both; but Rousseau had the internalonly, and so was, except by miracle of intensive exercise, incapable offurther range.

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: The different case of Diderot.]

  Neither of the disabilities which weighed on Voltaire and Rousseau--theincapacity of the former to construct any complex character, and of thelatter to portray any but his own, or some other brought into intensestcommunion, actually or as a matter of wish, with his own--weighed uponthe third of the great trio of _philosophe_ leaders. There is everyprobability that Diderot might have been a very great novelist if he hadlived a hundred years later; and not a little evidence that he onlymissed being such, even as it was, because of that mysterious cursewhich was epigrammatically expressed about him long ago (I reallyforget who said it first), "Good pages, no good book." So far from beingself-centred or of limited interests, he could, as hardly any other manever could, claim the hackneyed _Homo sum_, etc., as his rightful motto.He had, when he allowed himself to give it fair play, an admirable giftof tale-telling; he could create character, and set it to work, almostafter the fashion of the very greatest novelists; his universal interestand "curiosity" included such vivid appreciation of literature, and ofart, and of other things useful to the novel-writer, that he never couldhave been at a loss for various kinds of "seasoning." He had keenobservation, an admittedly marvellous flow of ideas, and a style which(though, like everything else about him, careless) was of singularvigour and freshness when, once more, he let it have fair play. But histime, his nature, and his circumstances combined to throw in his waytraps and snares and nets which he could not, or would not, avoid. Hisanti-religiosity, though sometimes greatly exaggerated, was a badstumbling-block; although he was free from the snigger of Voltaire andof Sterne, you could not prevent him, as Horace Walpole complains of hisdistinguished sire, from blurting out the most improper remarks andstories at the most inconvenient times and in the most unsuitablecompanies; while his very multiscience, and his fertility of thought andimagination, kept him in a whirl which hindered his "settling" toanything. Although in one sense he had the finest and wisest criticaltaste of any man then living--I do not bar even Gray or evenLessing--his taste in some other ways was utterly untrustworthy andsometimes horribly bad; while even his strictly critical faculty seemsnever to have been exercised on his own books--a failure forming part ofthe "ostrich-like indifference" with which he produced and abandonedthem.[371]

  [Sidenote: His gifts and the waste of them.]

  It is sometimes contended, and in many cases, no doubt, is the fact,that "Selections" are disgraceful and unscholarly. But what has beensaid will show that this is an exceptional case. The present writerwaded through the whole of twenty-volume edition of Assezat and Tourneuxwhen it first appeared, and is very glad he did; nor is there perhapsone volume (he does not say one page, chapter, or even work) which hehas not revisited more or fewer times during the forty years in which(alas! for the preterite) they remained on his shelves. But it isscarcely to be expected that every one, that many, or that more than avery few readers, have done or will do the same. It so happens, however,that Genin's _Oeuvres Choisies_--though it has been abused by someanti-Ydgrunites as too much Bowdlerised--gives a remarkably full andsatisfactory idea of this great and seldom[372] quite rightly valuedwriter. It must have cost much, besides use of paste and scissors, todo; for the extracts are often very short, and the bulk of matter to bethoroughly searched for extraction is, as has just been said, huge. Athird volume might perhaps be added;[373] but the actual two are farfrom unrepresentative, while the Bowdlerising is by no meansultra-Bowdlerish.

  [Sidenote: The various display of them.]

  The reader, even of this selection, will see how, in quite miscellaneousor heterogeneous writing, Diderot bubbles out into a perfectly told taleor anecdote, no matter what the envelope (as we may call it) of thistale or anecdote may be. All his work is more or less like conversation:and these excursus are like the stories which, if good, are among thebest, just as, if bad, they are the worst, sets-off to conversationitself. Next to these come the longer _histoires_--as one would callthem in the Heroic novel and its successors--things sometimes found bythemselves, sometimes ensconced in larger work[374]--the story ofDesroches and Mme. de la Carliere, _Les Deux Amis de Bourbonne_, thealmost famous _Le Marquis des Arcis et Mme. de la Pommeraye_, of whichmore may be said presently; and things which are not exactly tales, butwhich have the tale-quality in part, like the charming _Regrets sur maVieille Robe de Chambre, Ceci n'est pas un conte_, etc. Thirdly, and tobe spoken of in more detail, come the things that are nearest actualnovels, and in some cases are called so, _Le Neveu de Rameau_, the"unspeakable" _Bijoux Indiscrets_, _Jacques le Fataliste_ (the matrix of_Le Marquis des Arcis_) and _La Religieuse_.

  The "unspeakable" one does not need much speaking from any point ofview. If it is not positively what Carlyle called it, "the beastliest ofall dull novels, past, present, or to come," it really would require amost unpleasant apprenticeship to scavenging in order to discover adirtier and duller. The framework is a flat imitation of Crebillon, the"insets" are sometimes mere pornography, and the whole thing isevidently scribbled at a gallop--it was actually a few days' work, toget money, from some French Curll or Drybutter, to give (theappropriateness of the thing at least is humorous) to the mistress ofthe moment, a Madame de Puisieux,[375] who, if she was like Crebillon'sheroines in morals, cannot have been like the best of them in manners.Its existence shows, of course, Diderot's worst side, that is to say,the combination of want of breeding with readiness to get money anyhow.If it is worth reading at all, which may be doubted, it is to show thereal, if equivocal, value of Crebillon himself. For it is vulgar, whichhe never is.

  [Sidenote: _Le Neveu de Rameau._]

  _Le Neveu de Rameau_, has only touches of obscenity, and it has beenenormously praised by great persons. It is very clever, but it seems tome that, as a notable critic is said to have observed of something else,"it has been praised quite enough." It is a sketch, worked out in a sortof monologue,[376] of something like Diderot's own character without hisgenius and without his good fellowship--a gutter-snipe of art andletters possessed of some talent and of infinite impudence. It showsDiderot's own power of observation and easy fluid representation ofcharacter and manners, but not, as I venture to think, much more.

  [Sidenote: _Jacques le Fataliste._]

  _Jacques le Fataliste_ is what may be called, without pedantry orpreciousness, eminently a "document." It is a document of Diderot'sgenius only indirect
ly (save in part), and to those who can read notonly in the lines but between them: it is a document, directly, of theinsatiable and restless energy of the man, and of the damage which thisrestlessness, with its accompanying and inevitable want ofself-criticism, imposed upon that genius. Diderot, though he did notrhapsodise about Sterne as he rhapsodised about Richardson, was, likemost of his countrymen then, a great admirer of "Tristram," and in anevil hour he took it into his head to Shandyise. The book starts with anactual adaptation of Sterne,[377] which is more than once repeated; itsscheme--of a master (who is as different as possible from my Uncle Toby,except that when not in a passion he is rather good-natured, and atalmost all times very easily humbugged) and a man (who is what Trimnever is, both insolent and indecent)--is at least partially the same.But the most constant and the most unfortunate imitation is of Sterne'sliterally eccentric, or rather zigzag and pillar-to-post, fashion ofnarration. In the Englishman's own hands, by some prestidigitation ofgenius, this never becomes boring, though it probably would have becomeso if either book had been finished; for which reason we may be quitecertain that it was not only his death which left both in fragments. Inthe hands of his imitators the boredom--simple or in the form ofirritation--has been almost invariable;[378] and with all his greatintellectual power, his tale-telling faculty, his _bonhomie_, and othergood qualities, Diderot has not escaped it--has, in fact, rushed upon itand compelled it to come in. It is comparatively of little moment thatthe main ostensible theme--the very unedifying account of the loves, orat least the erotic exercises, of Jacques and his master--isdeliberately, tediously, inartistically interrupted and "put off." Thegreat feature of the book, which has redeemed it with some who wouldotherwise condemn it entirely, the Arcis and La Pommeraye episode (_v.inf._), is handled after a fashion which suggests Mr. Ruskin's famousdenunciation in another art. The _ink_pot is "flung in the face of thepublic" by a purely farcical series of interruptions, occasioned by theaffairs of the inn-landlady, who tells the story, by her servants, dog,customers, and Heaven only knows what else; while the minor incidentsand accidents of the book are treated in the same way, in and out ofproportion to their own importance; the author's "simple plan," thoughby no means "good old rule," being that _everything_ shall beinterrupted. Although, in the erotic part, the author never returnsquite to his worst _Bijoux Indiscrets_ style, he once or twice goes verynear it, except that he is not quite so dull; and when the book comes toan end in a very lame and impotent fashion (the farce being kept up tothe last, and even this end being "recounted" and not made part of themainly dialogic action), one is rather relieved at there being no more.One has seen talent; one has almost glimpsed genius; but what one hasbeen most impressed with is the glaring fashion in which both thecertainty and the possibility have been thrown away.

  [Sidenote: Its "Arcis-Pommeraye" episode.]

  The story which has been referred to in passing as muddled, or, to adopta better French word, for which we have no exact equivalent, _affuble_(travestied and overlaid) with eccentricities and interruptions, the_Histoire_ of the Marquis des Arcis and the Marquise de la Pommeraye,has received a great deal of praise, most of which it deserves. TheMarquis and the Marquise have entered upon one of the fashionable_liaisons_ which Crebillon described in his own way. Diderot describesthis one in another. The Marquis gets tired--it is fair to say that hehas offered marriage at the very first, but Madame de la Pommeraye, awidow with an unpleasant first experience of the state, has declined it.He shows his tiredness in a gentlemanly manner, but not very mistakably.His mistress, who is not at first _femina furens_, but who possessessome feminine characteristics in a dangerous degree, as he might perhapshave found out earlier if he had been a different person, determines tomake sure of it. She intimates _her_ tiredness, and the Marquis makeshis first step downwards by jumping at the release. They are--the old,old hopeless folly!--to remain friends, but friends only. But she reallyloves him, and after almost assuring herself that he has really ceasedto love her (which, in the real language of love, means that he hasnever loved her at all), devises a further, a very clever, but a ratherdiabolical system of last proof, involving vengeance if it fails. Shehas known, in exercises of charity (the _femme du monde_ has seldomquite abandoned these), a mother and daughter who, having lost theirmeans, have taken to a questionable, or rather a very unquestionablemanner of life, keeping a sort of private gaming-house, and extending tothose frequenters of it who choose, what the late George Augustus Salanot inelegantly called, in an actual police-court instance, "thethorough hospitality characteristic of their domicile." She prevails onthem to leave the house, get rid of all their belongings (down toclothes) which could possibly be identified, change their name, move toanother quarter of Paris, and set up as _devotes_ under the fullprotection of the local clergy. Then she manages an introduction, of anapparently accidental kind, to the Marquis. He falls in love at oncewith the daughter, who is very pretty, and with masculine (or at least_some_ masculine) fatuity, makes Madame de la Pommeraye his confidante.She gives him rope, but he uses it, of course, only to hang himself. Hetries the usual temptations; but though the mother at least would notrefuse them, Madame de la Pommeraye's hand on the pair is too tight. Atlast he offers marriage, and--with her at least apparent consent--ismarried. The next day she tells him the truth. But her diabolism fails.At first there is of course a furious outburst. But the girl isbeautiful, affectionate, and humble; the mother is pensioned off; theMarquis and Marquise des Arcis retire for some years to those invaluable_terres_, after a sojourn at which everything is forgotten; and thestory ends. Diderot, by not too skilfully throwing in casuisticalattacks and defences of the two principal characters, but telling usnothing of Madame de la Pommeraye's subsequent feelings or history, doeswhat he can, unluckily after his too frequent fashion, to spoil or atleast to blunt his tale. It is not necessary to imitate him bydiscussing the _pros_ and _cons_ at length. I think myself that theMarquis, both earlier and later, is made rather too much of a _benet_,or, in plain English, a nincompoop. But nincompoops exist: in fact howmany of us are not nincompoops in certain circumstances? Madame de laPommeraye is, I fear, rather true, and is certainly sketched withextraordinary ability. On a larger scale the thing would probably, atthat time and by so hasty and careless a workman, have been quitespoilt. But it is obviously the skeleton--and something more--of areally great novel.

  [Sidenote: _La Religieuse._]

  It may seem that a critic who speaks in this fashion, after an initialpromise of laudation, is a sort of Balaam topsyturvied, and merelycurses where he is expected to bless. But ample warning was given of thepeculiar position of Diderot, and when we come to his latest known andby far his best novel, _La Religieuse_, the paradox (he was himself veryfond of paradoxes,[379] though not of the wretched things which nowdisgrace the name) remains. The very subject of the book, or of thegreatest part of it, was for a long time, if it is not still, taboo; andeven if this had not been the case, it has other drawbacks. Itoriginated in, and to some extent still retains traces of, one of thesilly and ill-bred "mystifications" in which the eighteenth and earlynineteenth century delighted.[380] It is, at least in appearance, badlytainted with purpose; and while it is actually left unfinished, the lastpages of it, as they stand, are utterly unworthy of the earlier part,and in fact quite uninteresting. Momus or Zoilus must be allowed to sayso much: but having heard him, let us cease to listen to the half-god orthe whole philologist.

  [Sidenote: Its story.]

  Yet _La Religieuse_, for all its drawbacks, is almost a great, and mightconceivably have been a very great book. Madame d'Holbach is credited byDiderot's own generosity with having suggested its crowning _mot_,[381]and her influence may have been in other ways good by governing theforce and fire, so often wasted or ill-directed, of Diderot's genius.Soeur Sainte-Suzanne is the youngest daughter of a respectablemiddle-class family. She perceives, or half-perceives (for, though nofool, she is a guileless and unsuspicious creature), that she isunwelcome there; the most certain sign
of which is that, while hersisters are married and dowered handsomely, she is condemned to be anun. She has, though quite real piety, no "vocation," and though sheallows herself to be coaxed through her novitiate, she at last, in faceof almost insuperable difficulties, summons up courage enough torefuse, at the very altar, the final profession. There is, of course, aterrible scandal; she has more black looks in the family than ever, andat last her mother confesses that she is an illegitimate child, andtherefore hated by her putative father, whose love for his wife,however, has induced him to forgive her, and not actually renounce (asindeed, by French law, he could not) the child. Broken in heart andspirit, Suzanne at last accepts her doom. She is fortunate in oneabbess, but the next persecutes her, brings all sorts of falseaccusations against her, strips, starves, imprisons, and actuallytortures her by means of the _amende honorable_. She manages to get hercomplaints known and to secure a counsel, and though she cannot obtainliberation from her vows, the priest who conducts the ecclesiasticalpart of the enquiry is a just man, and utterly repudiates the methods ofpersecution, while he and her lay lawyer procure her transference toanother convent. Here her last trial (except those of the foolishpost-_scrap_, as we may call it) begins, as well as the most equivocaland the greatest part of the book. Her new superior is in every respectdifferent from any she has known--of a luxurious temperament,good-natured, though capricious, and inclined to be very much tooaffectionate. Her temptation of the innocent Suzanne is defeated by thisvery innocence, and by timely revelation, though the revealer does notknow what she reveals, to a "director"; and the wayward and corruptedfancy turns by degrees to actual madness, which proves fatal, Suzanneremaining unharmed, though a piece of not inexcusable eavesdroppingremoves the ignorance of her innocence.

  [Sidenote: A hardly missed, if missed, masterpiece.]

  If the subject be not simply ruled out, and the book indexed forsilence, it is practically impossible to suggest that it could have beentreated better. Even the earlier parts, which could easily have beenmade dull, are not so; and it is noteworthy that, anti-religionist asDiderot was, and directly as the book is aimed at the conventualsystem,[382] all the priests who are introduced are men of honour,justice, and humanity. But the wonder is in the treatment of the"scabrous" part of the matter by the author of Diderot's other books.Whether Madame d'Holbach's[383] influence, as has been suggested, wasmore widely and subtly extended than we know, or whatever else may bethe cause, there is not a coarse word, not even a coarsely drawnsituation, in the whole. Suzanne's innocence is, in the subtlest manner,prevented from being in the least _bete_. The fluctuations andficklenesses of the abbess's passion, and in a less degree of that ofanother young nun, whom Suzanne has partially ousted from her favour,are marvellously and almost inoffensively drawn, and the stages by whicherotomania passes into mania general and mortal, are sketched slightly,but with equal power. There is, I suppose, hardly a book which one oughtto discommend to the young person more than _La Religieuse_. There arenot many in which the powers required by the novelist, in delineatingmorbid, and not only morbid, character, are more brilliantly shown.

  It is not the least remarkable thing about this remarkable book, and notthe least characteristic of its most remarkable author, that its verysurvival has something extraordinary about it. Grimm, who was morelikely than any one else to know, apparently thought it was destroyed orlost; it never appeared at all during Diderot's life, nor for a dozenyears after his death, nor till seven after the outbreak of theRevolution, and six after the suppression of the religious orders inFrance. That it might have brought its author into difficulties is morethan probable; but the undisguised editor of the _Encyclopedie_, theauthor, earlier, of the actually disgraceful _Bijoux Indiscrets_, andthe much more than suspected principal begetter of the _Systeme de laNature_, could not have been much influenced by this. The true cause ofits abscondence, as in so much else of his work, was undoubtedly thatultra-Bohemian quality of indifference which distinguished Diderot--thefirst in a way, probably for ever the greatest, and, above all, the mostaltruistic of literary Bohemians. Ask him to do something definite,especially for somebody else's profit, to be done off-hand, and it wasdone. Ask him to bear the brunt of a dangerous, laborious, by no meanslucrative, but rather exciting adventure, and he would, one cannot quitesay consecrate, but devote (which has two senses) his life to it. Butset him to elaborate artistic creation, confine him to it, and expecthim to finish it, and you were certain to be disappointed. At anothertime, even at this time, if his surroundings and his society, hiseducation and his breeding had been less unfortunate, he might, as itseems to me, have become a very great novelist indeed. As it is, he is agreat possibility of novel and of much other writing, with occasionaloutbursts of actuality. The _Encyclopedie_ itself, for aught I care,might have gone in all its copies, and with all possibility ofrecovering or remembering it on earth, to the place where so many peopleat the time would have liked to send it. But in the rest of him, andeven in some of his own Encyclopaedia articles,[384] there is much ofquite different stuff. And among the various gifts, critical andcreative, which this stuff shows, not the least, I think, was thehalf-used and mostly ill-used gift of novel-writing.

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: The successors--Marmontel.]

  What has been called the second generation of the _philosophes_, whowere naturally the pupils of the first, "were not like [that] first,"that is to say, they did not reproduce the special talents of theirimmediate masters in this department of ours, save in two instances.Diderot's genius did not propagate itself in the novel way at all[385]:indeed, as has been said, his best novel was not known till this secondgeneration itself was waning. The most brilliant of his direct hearers,Joubert, took to another department; or rather, in his famous _Pensees_,isolated and perfected the utterances scattered through the master'simmense and disorderly work. Naigeon, the most devoted, who might havetaken for his motto a slight alteration of the Mahometan confession offaith, "There is no God; but there is only one Diderot, and I am hisprophet," was a dull fellow, and also, to adopt a Carlylian epithet, a"dull-snuffling" one, who could not have told a neck-tale if theHairibee of the guillotine had caught him and given him a mercifulchance. Voltaire in Marmontel, and Rousseau in Bernardin deSaint-Pierre, were more fortunate, though both the juniors considerablytransformed their masters' fashions; and Marmontel was always more orless, and latterly altogether, an apostate from the principle that thefirst and last duty of man is summed up in _ecrasons l'infame_.

  This latter writer has had vicissitudes both in English and Frenchappreciation. We translated him early, and he had an immense influenceon the general Edgeworthian school, and on Miss Edgeworth herself. Muchlater Mr. Ruskin "took him up."[386] But neither his good nor his badpoints have, for a long time, been such as greatly to commendthemselves, either to the major part of the nineteenth century, or towhat has yet passed of the twentieth, on either side of the channel.

  He was, no doubt, only a second-class man of letters, and though heranks really high in this class, he was unfortunately much influenced bymore or less passing fashions, fads, and fancies of histime--_sensibilite_ (see next chapter) philosophism,politico-philanthropic economy, and what not. He was also much of a"polygraph," and naturally a good deal of his polygraphy does notconcern us, though parts of his _Memoirs_, especially the ratherwell-known accounts of his sufferings as a new-comer[387] in theatrocious Bastille, show capital tale-telling faculty. His unequalcriticism, sometimes very acute, hardly concerns us at all; his _Essaisur les Romans_ being very disappointing.[388] But he wrote not a littlewhich must, in different ways and "strengths," be classed as actualfiction, and this concerns us pretty nearly, both as evidencing thatgeneral set towards the novel which is so important, and also in detail.

  [Sidenote: His "Telemachic" imitations worth little.]

  It divides itself quite obviously into two classes, the almost didacticmatter of _Belisaire_ and _Les Incas_, and the still partly didacti
c,but much more "fictionised" _Contes Moraux_. The first part (which isevidently of the family of _Telemaque_) may be rapidly dismissed. Exceptfor its good French and good intentions, it has long had, and is likelyalways to have, very little to say for itself. We have seen that Prevostattempted a sort of quasi-historical novel. Of actual history there islittle in _Belisaire_, rather more in _Les Incas_. But historical factand story-telling art are entirely subordinated in both to moralpurpose, endless talk about virtue and the affections and justice andall the rest of it--the sort of thing, in short, which provoked theimmortal outburst, "In the name of the Devil and his grandmother, _be_virtuous and have done with it!" There is, as has just been said, agreat deal of this in the _Contes_ also; but fortunately there issomething else.

  [Sidenote: The best of his _Contes Moraux_ worth a good deal.]

  The something else is not to be found in the "Sensibility" parts,[389]and could not be expected to be. They do, indeed, contain perhaps themost absolutely ludicrous instance of the absurdest side of thatremarkable thing, except Mackenzie's great _trouvaille_ of thepress-gang who unanimously melted into tears[390] at the plea of anaffectionate father. Marmontel's masterpiece is not so very far removedin subject from this. It represents a good young man, who stirs up thetimorous captain and crew of a ship against an Algerine pirate, and inthe ensuing engagement, sabre in hand, makes a terrible carnage: "Assoon as he sees an African coming on board, he runs to him and cuts himin half, crying, 'My poor mother!'" The filial hero varies this alittle, when "disembowelling" the Algerine commander, by requesting theDeity to "have pity on" his parent--a proceeding faintly suggestive of asurvival in his mind of the human-sacrifice period.

  Fortunately, as has been said, it is not always thus: and some of thetales are amusing in almost the highest degree, being nearly as witty asVoltaire's, and entirely free from ill-nature and sculduddery. Not thatMarmontel--though a great advocate for marriage, and even (for aFrenchman of his time) wonderfully favourable to falling in love_before_ marriage--pretends to be altogether superior to the customs ofhis own day. We still sometimes have the "Prendre-Avoir-Quitter" seriesof Crebillon,[391] though with fewer details; and Mrs. Newcome wouldhave been almost more horrified than she was at _Joseph Andrews_ by theperusal of one of Marmontel's most well-intentioned things, _Annette etLubin_. But he never lays himself out for attractions of a doubtfulkind, and none of his best stories, even when they may sometimes involvebowing in the house of Ashtoreth as well as that of Rimmon, derive theirbait from this kind. Indeed they rather "assume and pass it by" as afashion of the time.

  [Sidenote: _Alcibiade ou le Moi._]

  We may take three or four of them as examples. One is the very first ofthe collection, _Alcibiade ou le Moi_. Hardly anybody need be told thatthe Alcibiades of the tale, though nominally, is not in the least reallythe Alcibiades of history, or that his Athens is altogether Paris; whilehis Socrates is a kind of _philosophe_, the good points of Voltaire,Rousseau, and Diderot being combined with the faults of none of them,and his ladies are persons who--with one exception--simply could nothave existed in Greece. This Alcibiades wishes to be loved "forhimself," and is (not without reason) very doubtful whether he ever hasbeen, though he is the most popular and "successful" man in Athens. His_avoir_, for the moment, is concerned with a "Prude." (Were there prudesin Greece? I think Diogenes would have gladly lent his lantern for thesearch.) He is desperately afraid that she only loves him for _her_self.He determines to try her; takes her, not at her deeds, but at her words,which are, of course, such as would have made the Greeks laugh asinextinguishably as their gods once did. She expresses gratitude for hisunselfishness, but is anything but pleased. Divers experiments are triedby her, and when at last he hopes she will not tempt him any more,exclaiming that he is really "l'amant le plus fidele, le plus tendre etle plus respectueux" ... "et le plus sot," adds she, sharply, concludingthe conversation and shutting her, let us say, doors[392] on him.

  He is furious, and tries "Glicerie" (the form might be more Greek), an_ingenue_ of fifteen, who was "like a rose," who had attracted alreadythe vows of the most gallant youths, etc. The most brilliant of theseyouths instantly retire before the invincible Alcibiades. But in thefirst place she wishes that before "explanations"[393] take place, amarriage shall be arranged; while he, oddly enough, wishes that theexplanations should precede the hymen. Also she is particular about theconsent of her parents: and, finally, when he asks her whether she willswear constancy against every trial, to be his, and his only, whateverhappens, she replies, with equal firmness and point, "Never!" So he isfurious again. But there is a widow, and, as we have seen in formercases, there was not, in the French eighteenth century, the illiberalprejudice against widows expressed by Mr. Weller. She is, of course,inconsolable for her dear first, but admits, after a time, thepossibility of a dear second. Only it must be kept secret as yet. For atime Alcibiades behaves nobly, but somehow or other he finds thateverybody knows the fact; he is treated by his lady-love with obvioussuperiority; and breaks with her. An interlude with a "magistrate's"wife, on less proper and more Crebillonish lines, is not moresuccessful. So one day meeting by the seashore a beautiful courtesan,Erigone, he determines, in the not contemptible language of thatsingle-speech poetess, Maria del Occidente, to "descend and sip a lowerdraught." He is happy after a fashion with her for two whole months: butat the end of that time he is beaten in a chariot race, and, going toErigone for consolation, finds the winner's vehicle at her door.Socrates, on being consulted, recommends Glicerie as, after all, thebest of them, in a rather sensible discourse. But the concluding wordsof the sage and the story are, as indeed might be expected fromXanthippe's husband, not entirely optimist: "If your wife is wellconducted and amiable, you will be a happy man; if she is ill-temperedand a coquette, you will become a philosopher--so you must gain in anycase." An "obvious," perhaps, but a neat and uncommonly well-told story.

  [Sidenote: _Soliman the Second._]

  _Soliman the Second_ is probably the best known of Marmontel's tales,and it certainly has great merits. It is hardly inferior in wit toVoltaire, and is entirely free from the smears of uncomeliness and thesniggers of bad taste which he would have been sure to put in. Thesubject is, of course, partly historical, though the reader of Knollys(and one knows more unhappy persons) will look in vain there, not,indeed, for Roxelana, but for the _nez retrousse_, which is theimportant point of the story. The great Sultan tires of his Asiaticharem, complaisant but uninteresting, and orders European damsels to becaught or bought for him. The most noteworthy of the catch or batch areElmire, Delia, and Roxelane. Elmire comes first to Soliman's notice,charms him by her sentimental ways, and reigns for a time, but loses herpiquancy, and (by no means wholly to her satisfaction) is able to availherself of the conditional enfranchisement, and return to her country,which his magnanimity has granted her. Her immediate supplanter, Delia,is an admirable singer, and possessed of many of the qualifications ofan accomplished _hetaera_. But for that very reason the Sultan tires ofher likewise; and for the same, she is not inconsolable or restive:indeed she acts as a sort of Lady Pandara, if not to introduce, at anyrate to tame, the third, Roxelane, a French girl of no very regularbeauty, but with infinite attractions, and in particular possessed ofwhat Mr. Dobson elegantly calls "a madding ineffable nose" of the_retrousse_ type.

  The first thing the Sultan hears of this damsel is that the Master ofthe Eunuchs cannot in the least manage her; for she merely laughs at allhe says. The Sultan, out of curiosity, orders her to be brought to him,and she immediately cries: "Thank Heaven! here is a face like a man's.Of course you are the sublime Sultan whose slave I have the honour tobe? Please cashier this disgusting old rascal." To which extremelyirreverent address Soliman makes a dignified reply of the proper kind,including due reference to "obedience" and his "will." This brings downa small pageful of raillery from the young person, who asks "whetherthis is Turkish gallantry?" suggests that the restrictions of theseraglio involve a fear that "the skies should rain
men," and more thanhints that she should be very glad if they did. For the moment Soliman,though much taken with her, finds no way of saving his dignity except bya retreat. The next time he sends for her, or rather announces his ownarrival, she tells the messenger to pack himself off: and when theCommander of the Faithful does visit her and gives a little good advice,she is still incorrigible. She will, once more, have nothing to do withthe words _dois_ and _devoir_. When asked if she knows what he is andwhat _she_ is, she answers with perfect _aplomb_, "What we are? You arepowerful, and I am pretty; so we are quite on an equality." In the mostpainfully confidential and at the same time quite decent manner, sheasks him what he can possibly do with five hundred wives? and, stillmore intolerably, tells him that she likes his looks, and has alreadyloved people who were not worth him. The horror with which this Turkishsoldan, himself so full of sin, ejaculates, "Vous _avez_ aime?" may beeasily imagined, and again she simply puts him to flight. When he getsover it a little, he sends Delia to negotiate. But Roxelane tells thego-between to stay to supper, declaring that she herself does not feelinclined for a _tete-a-tete_ yet, and finally sends him off with thisobliging predecessor and substitute, presenting her with the legendaryhandkerchief, which she has actually borrowed from the guilelessPadishah. There is some, but not too much more of it; there can but beone end; and as he takes her to the Mosque to make her legitimateSultana, quite contrary to proper Mussulman usage, he says to himself,"Is it really possible that a little _retrousse_ nose should upset thelaws of an empire?" Probably, though Marmontel does not say so, helooked down at the said nose, as he communed with himself, and decidedthat cause and effect were not unworthy of each other. There is hardly arighter and better hit-off tale of the kind, even in French.

  [Sidenote: _The Four Flasks._]

  "The Four Flasks" or "The Adventures of Alcidonis of Megara," a sort ofoutside fairy tale, is good, but not quite so good as either of theformer. Alcidonis has a fairy protectress, if not exactly godmother, whogives him the flasks in question to use in amatory adventures. One, withpurple liquor in it, sets the drinker in full tide of passion; thesecond (rose-coloured) causes a sort of flirtation; the third (blue)leads to sentimental and moderate affection; and the last (pure white)recovers the experimenter from the effects of any of the others. Hetries all, and all but the last are unsatisfactory, though, much as inthe case of Alcibiades and Glicerie, the blue has a second chance, theresults of which are not revealed. This is the least important of thegroup, but is well told.

  [Sidenote: _Heureusement._]

  There is also much good in _Heureusement_, the nearest to a"Crebillonnade" of all, though the Crebillonesque situations areingeniously broken off short. It is told by an old marquise[394] to analmost equally old abbe, her crony, who only at the last discovers that,long ago, he himself was very nearly the shepherd of the proverbialhour. And _Le Mari Sylphe_, which is still more directly connected withone of Crebillon's actual pieces, and with some of the weaker stories(_v. sup._) of the _Cabinet des Fees_, would be good if it were not muchtoo long. Others might be mentioned, but my own favourite, though it hasnothing quite so magnetic in it as the _nez de Roxelane_, is _LePhilosophe Soi-disant_, a sort of apology for his own clan, in a satireon its less worthy members, which may seem to hit rather unfairly atRousseau, but which is exceedingly amusing.

  [Sidenote: _Le Philosophe Soi-disant._]

  Clarice--one of those so useful young widows of whom the novelists ofthis time might have pleaded that they took their ideas of them from theApostle St. Paul--has for some time been anxious to know a _philosophe_,though she has been warned that there are _philosophes_ and_philosophes_, and that the right kind is neither common nor very fondof society. She expresses surprise, and says that she has always heard a_philosophe_ defined as an odd creature who makes it his business to belike nobody else. "Oh," she is told, "there is no difficulty about_that_ kind," and one, by name Ariste, is shortly added to hercountry-house party. She politely asks him whether he is not a_philosophe_, and whether philosophy is not a very beautiful thing? Hereplies (his special line being sententiousness) that it is simply theknowledge of good and evil, or, if she prefers it, Wisdom. "Only that?"says wicked Doris; but Clarice helps him from replying to the scoffer bygoing on to ask whether the fruit of Wisdom is not happiness? "And,Madame, the making others happy." "Dear me," says naive Lucinde, halfunder her breath, "I must be a _philosophe_, for I have been told ahundred times that it only depended on myself to be happy by makingothers happy." There is more wickedness from Doris; but Ariste, with acontemptuous smile, explains that the word "happiness" has more than onemeaning, and that the _philosophe_ kind is different from that at thedisposal and dispensation of a pretty woman. Clarice, admitting this,asks what _his_ kind of happiness is? The company then proceeds, in themost reprehensible fashion, to "draw" the sage: and they get from him,among other things, an admission that he despises everybody, and anunmistakable touch of disgust when somebody speaks of "his_semblables_."[395]

  Clarice, however, still plays the amiable and polite hostess, lets himtake her to dinner, and says playfully that she means to reconcile himto humanity. He altogether declines. Man is a vicious beast, whopersecutes and devours others, he says, making all the time aparticularly good dinner while denouncing the slaughter of animals, andeulogising the "sparkling brook" while getting slightly drunk. Hedeclaims against the folly and crime of the modern world in not makingphilosophers kings, and announces his intention of seeking completesolitude. But Clarice, still polite, decides that he must stay with thema little while, in order to enlighten and improve the company.

  After this, Ariste, in an alley alone, to digest his dinner and walk offhis wine, persuades himself that Clarice has fallen in love with him,and that, to secure her face and her fortune, he has only got to go onplaying the misanthrope and give her a chance of "taming the bear." Thecompany, perfectly well knowing his thoughts, determine to play up tothem--not for his greater glory; and Clarice, not quite willingly,agrees to take the principal part. In a long _tete-a-tete_ he makes hisclumsy court, airs his cheap philosophy, and lets by no means the meresuggestion of a cloven foot appear, on the subject of virtue and vice.However, she stands it, though rather disgusted, and confesses to himthat people are suggesting a certain Cleon, a member of the party, asher second husband; whereon he decries marriage, but proposes himself asa lover. She reports progress, and is applauded; but the Presidente dePonval, another widow, fat, fifty, fond of good fare, possessed of afine fortune, but very far from foolish, vows that _she_ will make thegreatest fool of Ariste. Cleon, however, accepts his part; and appearsto be much disturbed at Clarice's attentions to Ariste, who, being shownto his room, declaims against its luxuries, but avails himself of themvery cheerfully. In the morning he, though rather doubtfully, accepts abath; but on his appearance in company Clarice makes remonstrances onhis dress, etc., and actually prevails on him to let a valet curl hishair. This is an improvement; but she does not like his browncoat.[396] He must write to Paris and order a suit of _gris-de-linclair_, and after some wrangling he consents. But now the Presidentetakes up the running. After expressing the extremest admiration for hiscoiffure, she makes a dead set at him, tells him she wants a secondhusband whom she can love for himself, and goes off with a passionateglance, the company letting him casually know that she has ten thousandcrowns a year. He affects to despise this, which is duly reported to hernext morning. She vows vengeance; but he dreams of her (and the crowns)meanwhile, and with that morning the new suit arrives. He is admiringhimself in it when Cleon comes in, and throws himself on his mercy. Headores Clarice; Ariste is evidently gaining fatally on her affections;will he not be generous and abstain from using his advantages? But if_he_ is really in love Cleon will give her up.

  The hook is, of course, more than singly baited and barbed. Ariste canat once play the magnanimous man, and be rewarded by the Presidente'sten thousand a year. He will be off with Clarice and on with Mme. dePonval, whom he visits in his new splendour.
She admires it hugely, butis alarmed at seeing him in Clarice's favourite colour. An admirableconversation follows, in which she constantly draws her ill-bred,ill-blooded, and self-besotted suitor into addressing her with insults,under the guise of compliments, and affects to enjoy them. He nextvisits Clarice, with whom he finds Cleon, in the depths of despair. Shebegins to admire the coat, and to pride herself on her choice, when heinterrupts her, and solemnly resigns her to Cleon. Doris and Lucindecome in, and everybody is astounded at Ariste's generosity as he takesClarice's hand and places it in that of his rival. Then he goes to thePresidente, and tells her what he has done. She expresses her delight,and he falls at her feet. Thereupon she throws round his neck arose-coloured ribbon (_her_ colours), calls him "her Charming man,"[397]and insists on showing him to the public as her conquest and captive. Hehas no time to refuse, for the door opens and they all appear. "Levoila," says she, "cet homme si fier qui soupire a mes genoux pour lesbeaux yeux de ma cassette! Je vous le livre. Mon role est joue." SoAriste, tearing his curled hair, and the _gris-de-lin clair_ coat, and,doubtless, the Presidente's "red rose chain," cursing also terribly,goes off to write a book against the age, and to prove that nobody iswise but himself.

  I can hardly imagine more than one cavil being made against this by themost carping of critics and the most wedded to the crotchet of"kinds"--that it is too dramatic for a _story_, and that we ought tohave had it as a drama. If this were further twisted into an accusationof plagiarism from the actual theatre, I think it could be rebutted atonce. The situations separately might be found in many dramas; thecharacters in more; but I at least am not aware of any one in which theyhad been similarly put together. Of course most if not all of us haveseen actresses who would make Clarice charming, Madame de Ponvalamusing, and Doris and Lucinde very delectable adjuncts; as well asactors by whom the parts of Cleon and Ariste would be very effectivelyworked out. But why we should be troubled to dress, journey, waste timeand money, and get a headache, by going to the theatre, when we canenjoy all this "in some close corner of [our] brain," I cannot see. As Iread the story in some twenty minutes, I can see _my_ Clarice, _my_Madame de Ponval, _my_ Doris and Lucinde and Cleon and Ariste andJasmin--the silent but doubtless highly appreciative valet,--and Irather doubt whether the best company in the world could give me quitethat.

  [Sidenote: A real advance in these.]

  But, even in saying this, full justice has not yet been done toMarmontel. He has, from our special point of view, made a real furtherprogress towards the ideal of the ordinary novel--the presentation ofordinary life. He has borrowed no supernatural aid;[398] he has laidunder contribution no "fie-fie" seasonings; he has sacrificed nothing,or next to nothing, in these best pieces, whatever he may have doneelsewhere, to purpose and crotchet. He has discarded stuffing,digression, episode, and other things which weighed on and hampered hispredecessors. In fact there are times when it seems almost unjust, inthis part of his work, to "second" him in the way we have done; thoughit must be admitted that if you take his production as a whole herelapses into the second order.

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.]

  The actual books, in anything that can be called fiction, of Bernardinde Saint-Pierre are of far less merit than Marmontel's; but most peoplewho have even the slightest knowledge of French literature know why hecannot be excluded here. Personally, he seems to have been anineffectual sort of creature, and in a large part of his rathervoluminous work he is (when he ceases to produce a sort of languidamusement) a distinctly boring one.[399] He appears to have beenunlucky, but to have helped his own bad luck with the only signs ofeffectualness that he ever showed. It is annoying, no doubt, to getremonstrances from headquarters as to your not sending any work (plans,reports, etc.) as an engineer, and to find, or think you find, thatyour immediate C.O. has suppressed them. But when you charge him withhis disgraceful proceeding, and he, as any French officer in hisposition at his time was likely to do, puts his hand on his sword, it isundiplomatic to rush on another officer who happens to be present, grabat and draw his weapon (you are apparently not entitled to one), andattack your chief. Nor when, after some more unsuccessful experiences athome and abroad, you are on half or no pay, and want employment, wouldit seem to be exactly the wisdom of Solomon to give a minister thechoice of employing you on (1) the civilisation of Corsica, (2) theexploration of the unknown parts of the Western Continent, (3) thediscovery of the sources of the Nile, and (4) a pedestrian tourthroughout India. But, except in the first instance (for the "Citizen ofGeneva" did not meddle much with cold steel), it was all very like apupil, and (in the Citizen's later years) a friend, of Rousseau,carrying out his master's ideas with a stronger dose of Christianity,but with quite as little common sense. I have not seen (or remembered)any more exact account of Saint-Pierre's relations with Napoleon thanthat given by the excellent Aime-Martin, an academic euphemiser of theFrench kind. But, even reading between his lines, they must have beenvery funny.[400]

  _Paul et Virginie_, however, is one of those books which, havingattained and long kept a European reputation, cannot be neglected, andit may be added that it does deserve, though for one thing only, neverto be entirely forgotten. It is chock-full of _sensibilite_, thecharacters have no real character, and all healthy-minded persons havelong ago agreed that the concomitant facts, if not causes, of Virginie'sfate are more nasty than the nastiest thing in Diderot or Rabelais.[401]But the descriptions of the scenery of Mauritius, as sets-off to anovel, are something new, and something immensely important. _LaChaumiere Indienne_, though less of a story in size and general texture,is much better from the point of view of taste. It has touches of realirony, and almost of humour, though its hero, the good pariah, is acreature nearly as uninteresting as he is impossible. Yet his "black andpolished" baby is a vivid property, and the descriptions are againfamous. The shorter pieces, _Le Cafe de Surate_, etc., require littlenotice.

  * * * * *

  It will, however, have been seen by anybody who can "seize points," thatthis _philosophe_ novel, as such, is a really important agent inbringing on the novel itself to its state of full age. That men like thethree chiefs should take up the form is a great thing; that men who arenot quite chiefs, like Marmontel and Saint-Pierre, should carry it on,is not a small one. They all do something to get it out of the rough; todiscard--if sometimes also they add--irrelevances; to modernise this onekind which is perhaps the predestined and acceptable literary product ofmodernity. Voltaire originates little, but puts his immense power and_diable au corps_ into the body of fiction. Rousseau enchains passion inits service, as Madame de la Fayette, as even Prevost, had not been ableto do before. Diderot indicates, in whatever questionable material, thevast possibilities of psychological analysis. Marmontel--doing, likeother second-rate talents, almost more _useful_ work than hisbetters--rescues the _conte_ from the "demi-rep" condition into which ithad fallen, and, owing to the multifariousness of his examples, does notentirely subjugate it even to honest purpose; while Bernardin deSaint-Pierre carries the suggestions of Rousseau still further in theinvaluable department of description. No one, except on the smallscale, is great in plot; no one produces a really individualcharacter;[402] and it can hardly be said that any one providesthoroughly achieved novel dialogue. But they have inspired and enlivenedthe whole thing as a whole; and if, against this, is to be set the crimeof purpose, that is one not difficult to discard.[403]

  FOOTNOTES:

  [351] His _verse_ tales, even if stories in verse had not by this timefallen out of our proper range, require little notice. The faculty of"telling" did not remain with him here, perhaps because it wasprejudicially affected by the "dryness" and unpoetical quality of hispoetry, and of the French poetry of the time generally, perhaps forother reasons. At any rate, as compared with La Fontaine or Prior, hehardly counts. _Le Mondain_, _Le Pauvre Diable_, etc., are skits orsquibs in verse, not tales. The opening one of the usual
collection, _Cequi plait aux Dames_,--in itself a flat rehandling of Chaucer andDryden,--is saved by its charming last line--

  Ah! croyez-moi, l'erreur a son merite,

  a rede which he himself might well have recked.

  [352] In justice to Voltaire it ought to be remembered that no lessgreat, virtuous, and religious a person than Milton ranked as one of thetwo objects to which "all mortals most aspire," "to offend yourenemies."

  [353] It has been noted above (see p. 266, _note_), how some havedirectly traced _Zadig_ to the work of a person so much inferior toHamilton as Gueulette.

  [354] _Micromegas_ and one or two other things avowed--in fact,Voltaire, if not "great," was "big" enough to make as a rule littlesecret of his levies on others; and he had, if not adequate, aconsiderable, respect for the English Titan.

  [355] Cacambo was not a savage, but he had savage or, at least,non-European blood in him.

  [356] Not in the Grandisonian sense, thank heaven! But as has beenhinted, he is a _little_ of a prig.

  [357] He has been allowed a great deal of credit for the Calas and someother similar businesses. It is unlucky that the injustices he combatedwere somehow always _clerical_, in this or that fashion.

  [358] It was said of them at their appearance "[cet] ouvrage est sansgout, sans finesse, sans invention, un rabachage de toutes les vieillespolissonneries que l'auteur a debitees sur Moise, et Jesus-Christ, lesprophetes et les apotres, l'Eglise, les papes, les cardinaux, lespretres et les moines; nul interet, nulle chaleur, nulle vraisemblance,force ordures, une grosse gaiete.... Je n'aime pas la religion: mais jene la hais pas assez pour trouver cela bon." The authorship, added tothe justice of it, makes this one of the most crushing censures evercommitted to paper; for the writer was Diderot (_Oeuvres_, Ed. Assezat,vi. 36).

  [359] It is a singular coincidence that this was exactly the sum whichJohnson mentioned to Boswell as capable of affording decent subsistencein London during the early middle eighteenth century.

  [360] _Songe de Platon_, _Bababec et les Fakirs_, _Aventure de laMemoire_, _Les Aveugles Juges des Conteurs_, _Aventure Indienne_, and_Voyage de la Raison_.

  [361] It is only fair to mention in this place, and in justice to a muchabused institution, that this Babylonian story is said to be the onlything of its kind and its author that escaped the Roman censorship. Ifthis is true, the unfeathered _perroquets_ were not so spiteful as thefeathered ones too often are. Or perhaps each chuckled at the satire onhis brethren.

  [362] As with other controverted points, not strictly relevant, it ispermissible for us to neglect protests about _la legende desphilosophes_ and the like. Of course Rousseau was not only, at one timeor another, the personal enemy of Voltaire and Diderot--he was, at onetime or another, the personal enemy of everybody, including (not at anyone but at all times) himself--but held principles very different fromtheirs. Yet their names will always be found together: and for ourobject the junction is real.

  [363] Not the Abbe, who had been dead for some years, but a Geneveseprofessor who saw a good deal of Jean-Jacques in his later days.

  [364] "For short" _La Nouvelle Heloise_ has been usually adopted. Iprefer _Julie_ as actually the first title, and for other reasons withwhich it is unnecessary to trouble the reader.

  [365] She dies after slipping into the lake in a successful attempt torescue one of her children; but neither is drowned, and she does notsuccumb rapidly enough for "shock" to account for it, or slowly enoughfor any other intelligible malady to hold its course.

  [366] There is another curious anticipation of Dickens here: for Julie,as Dora does with Agnes, entreats Claire to "fill her vacantplace"--though, by the way, not with her husband. And a third parallel,between Saint-Preux and Bradley Headstone, need not be quite farcical.

  [367] You _may_ tear out Introductions, if you do it neatly; and this Isay, having written many.

  [368] Also Rousseau, without meaning it, has made him by no means afool. When, on learning from his wife and daughter that Saint-Preux hadbeen officiating as "coach," he asked if this genius was a gentleman,and on hearing that he was not, replied, "What have you paid him, then?"it was not, as the novelist and his hero took it, in their vanity, tobe, mere insolence of caste. M. d'Etange knew perfectly well that thoughhe could not trust a French gentleman with his wife, there was notnearly so much danger with his daughter--while a _roturier_ was not onlyentitled to be paid, and might accept pay without derogation, but wasnot unlikely, as the old North Country saying goes, to take it in maltif he did not receive it in meal.

  [369] I observe that I have not yet fulfilled the promise of sayingsomething of Wolmar, but the less said of him the better. He belongswholly to that latter portion which has been wished away; he is arespectable Deist--than which it is essentially impossible, one wouldsuppose, for orthodoxy and unorthodoxy alike to imagine anything moreuninteresting; and his behaviour to Saint-Preux appears to me to besimply nauseous. He cannot, like Rowena, "forgive as a Christian,"because he is not one, and any other form of forgiveness or even oftolerance is, in the circumstances, disgusting. But it was Rousseau'sway to be disgusting sometimes.

  [370] We have spoken of his attempt at the fairy tale; _qui_ Gomersal_non odit_ in English verse, _amet Le Levite d'Ephraim_ in French prose,etc. etc.

  [371] He did not even, as Rousseau did with his human offspring,habitually take them to the Foundling Hospital--that is to say, in thecase of literature, the anonymous press. He left them in MS., gave themaway, and in some cases behaved to them in such an incomprehensiblefashion that one wonders how they ever came to light.

  [372] Carlyle's _Essay_ and Lord Morley of Blackburn's book areexcepted. But Carlyle had not the whole before him, and Lord Morley wasprincipally dealing with the _Encyclopedie_.

  [373] Especially as Genin, like Carlyle, did not know all. There is, Ibelieve, a later selection, but I have not seen it.

  [374] Even the long, odd, and sometimes tedious _Reve de D'Alembert_,which Carlyle thought "we could have done without," but which othershave extolled, has vivid narrative touches, though one is not muchsurprised at Mlle. de Lespinasse having been by no means grateful forthe part assigned to her.

  [375] The cleansing effect of war is an old _cliche_. It has beencuriously illustrated in this case: for the first proof of the presentpassage reached me on the very same day with the news of the expulsionof the Germans from the village of Puisieux. So the name got"_red_-washed" from its old reproach.

  [376] There really are touches of resemblance in it to Browning,especially in things like _Mr. Sludge the Medium_.

  [377] The corporal's wound in the knee.

  [378] Of course, there _are_ exceptions, and with one of the chief ofthem, Xavier de Maistre, we may have, before long, to deal.

  [379] His longest, most avowed, and most famous, the _Paradoxe sur leComedien_, has been worthily Englished by Mr. Walter H. Pollock.

  [380] Its heroine, Suzanne Simonin, was, as far as the attempt torelieve herself of her vows went, a real person; and a benevolentnobleman, the Marquis de Croixmare, actually interested himself in thisattempt--which failed. But Diderot and his evil angel Grimm got up shamletters between themselves and her patron, which are usually printedwith the book.

  [381] _Mon pere, je suis damnee_ ... the opening words, and the onlyones given, of the confession of the half-mad abbess.

  [382] Evangelical Protestantism has more than once adopted the principlethat the Devil should not be allowed to have all the best tunes: and Iremember in my youth an English religious novel of ultra-anti-Romanpurpose, which, though, of course, dropping the "scabrousness," had, asI long afterwards recognised when I came to read _La Religieuse_, almostcertainly borrowed a good deal from our most unsaintly Denis of Langres.

  [383] She seems to have been, in many ways, far too good for hersociety, and altogether a lady.--The opinions of the late M. Brunetiereand mine on French literature were often very different--though he wasgood enough not to disapprove of some of my work on it. But
with theterms of his expression of mere opinion one had seldom to quarrel. Imust, however, take exception to his attribution of _grossierete_ to _LaReligieuse_. Diderot, as has been fully admitted, _was_ too often_grossier_: sometimes when it was almost irrelevant to the subject. Buthere, "scabrous" as the subject might be, the treatment is scrupulously_not_ coarse. Nor do I think, after intimate and long familiarity withthe whole of his work, that he was ever a _faux bonhomme_.

  [384] They have hardly had a fair opportunity of comparison withVoltaire's _Dictionnaire Philosophique_; but they can stand it.

  [385] Unless Dulaurens' not quite stupid, but formless anddiscreditable, _Compere Mathieu_ be excepted.

  [386] In consequence of which Mr. Ruskin's favourite publisher, the lateMr. George Allen, asked the present writer, some twenty years ago, torevise and "introduce" the old translation of his _Contes Moraux_. Thevolume had, at least, the advantage of very charming illustrations byMiss Chris. Hammond.

  [387] They were even worse than Leigh Hunt's in the strictly Englishcounterpart torture-house for the victims of tyranny--consisting, forinstance, in the supply of so good a dinner, at His Most ChristianMajesty's expense, for the prisoner's servant, that the prisoner ate ithimself, and had afterwards, on the principles of rigid virtue anddistributive justice, to resign, to the minion who accompanied him, hisown still better one which came later, also supplied by the tyrant.

  [388] One expects something of value from the part-contemporary,part-successor of the novelists from Lesage to Rousseau. But where it isnot mere blether about virtue and vice, and _le coeur humain_ and so on,it has some of the worst faults of eighteenth-century criticism. Hethinks it would have been more "moral" if Mme. de Cleves had actuallysuccumbed as a punishment for her self-reliance (certainly one of themost remarkable topsyturvifications of morality ever crotcheted); is, ofcourse, infinitely shocked at being asked and induced to "interesthimself in a prostitute and a card-sharper" by _Manon Lescaut_; and,equally of course, extols Richardson, though it is fair to say that hespeaks well of _Tom Jones_.

  [389] See next chapter.

  [390] I wonder whether any one else has noticed that Thackeray, in thevery agreeable illustration to one of not quite his greatest"letterpress" things, _A New Naval Drama_ (Oxford Ed. vol. viii. p.421), makes the press-gang weep ostentatiously in the picture, thoughnot in the text, where they only wave their cutlasses. It may be merelya coincidence: but it may not.

  [391] There are reasons for thinking that Marmontel was deliberately"antidoting the _fanfreluches_" of the older tale-teller.

  [392] In the original, suiting the rest of the setting, it is _rideaux_.

  [393] "Explanations" is quite admirable, and, I think, neither borrowedfrom, nor, which is more surprising, by others.

  [394] She declares that she has never actually "stooped to folly"; butadmits that on more than one occasion it was only an accidentalinterruption which "luckily" (_heureusement_) saved her.

  [395] It is necessary to retain the French here: for our "likes" isambiguous.

  [396] Cf. the stories, contradictory of each other, as to _our_brown-coated philosopher's appearance in France. (Boswell, p. 322, Globeed.)

  [397] Cf. again the bestowal of this title by Horace Walpole, in hislater days, on Edward Jerningham, playwright, poetaster, and _petitmaitre_, who, unluckily for himself, lived into the more roughlysatirical times of the Revolutionary War.

  [398] "The _sylph_ishness of _Le Mari Sylphe_ is only an ingenious anddefensible fraud; and the philtre-flasks of _Alcidonis_ are little morethan "properties.""

  [399] Here is a specimen of his largest and most ambitious production,the _Etudes de la Nature_. "La femelle du tigre, exhalant l'odeur ducarnage, fait retentir les solitudes de l'Afrique de ses miaulementsaffreux, et parait remplie d'attraits a ses cruels amants." By an oddchance, I once saw a real scene contrasting remarkably withSaint-Pierre's sentimental melodrama. It was in the Clifton ZoologicalGardens, which, as possibly some readers may know, were at one timeregarded as particularly home-like by the larger carnivora. It was avery fine day, and an equally fine young tigress was endeavouring toattract the attention of her cruel lover. She rolled delicately about,like a very large, very pretty, and exceptionally graceful cat; she madefantastic gestures with her paws and tail; and she purred literally "asgently as any sucking dove"--_roucoulement_ was the only word for it.But her "lover," though he certainly looked "cruel" and as if he wouldvery much like to eat _me_, appeared totally indifferent to herattractions.

  [400] So, also, when one is told that he called his son Paul and hisdaughter Virginie, it is cheerful to remember, with a pleasant sense ofcontrast, Scott's good-humoured contempt for the tourists who wanted toknow whether Abbotsford was to be called Tullyveolan or Tillietudlem.

  [401] As the story is not now, I believe, the universal school-book itonce was, something more than mere allusion may be desirable. The shipin which Virginie is returning to the Isle of France gets into shallowsduring a hurricane, and is being beaten to pieces close to land. Onestalwart sailor, stripped to swim for his life, approaches Virginie,imploring her to strip likewise and let him try to pilot her through thesurf. But she (like the lady in the coach, at an early part of _JosephAndrews_) won't so much as look at a naked man, clasps her arms roundher own garments, and is very deservedly drowned. The sailor, to one'sgreat relief, is not.

  [402] Julie herself is an intense type rather than individual.

  [403] I have not thought it necessary, except in regard to those of themwho have been touched in treating of the _Cabinet des Fees_, to speak atany length of the minor tale-tellers of the century. They are sometimesnot bad reading; but as a whole minor in almost all senses.

 

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