One of the greatest solaces of the writer of this book, and, he would

fain hope, something of a consolation to its readers, has been the

possibility, and indeed advisability, of abstention from certain stock

literary controversies, or at worst of dismissing them with very brief

mention. This solace recurs in reference to the large, vague, and hotly

debated subject of folklore and fairy stories, their connection, and the

origin of the latter. It is true that "the pleasure gives way to a

savour of sorrow," to adopt a charming phrase of Mr. Dobson's, when I

think of the amiable indignation which the absence of what I shall not

say, and perhaps still more the presence of some things that I shall

say, would have caused in my friend, and his friend, the late Mr. Andrew

Lang.[220] But the irreparable is always with us. Despite the undoubted

omnipresence of the folk-story, with its "fairy" character in the

general sense, I have always wanted more proof than I have ever

received, that the thing is of Western rather than of Eastern origin,

and that our Western stories of the kind, in so far as they affected

literature before a very recent period, are independent. But I attach no

particular value to this opinion, and it will influence nothing that I

say here. So with a few more half-words to the wise, as that Mme.

d'Aulnoy had been in Spain, that the Crusades took place in the eleventh

century, that, independently thereof, Scandinavians had been

"Varangians" very early at Constantinople, etc. etc., let us come to the

two great literary facts--the chorus of fairy tale-telling proper at the

end of the century (of which the coryphaei are the lady already

mentioned and Perrault), and the epoch-making translation of _The

Arabian Nights_ by Galland.

[Sidenote: Its _general_ characteristics--the happy ending.]

In a certain sense, no doubt, the fairy tale may be said to be merely a

variety of the age-old _fabliau_ and _nouvelle_. But it is, for literary

purposes, a distinctly and importantly new variety--new not merely in

subject, even in the widest possible sense of that rather disputable

(or at least disputed) word, but in that _nescio quid_ between subject

and treatment for which I know no better term than the somewhat vague

one "atmosphere." It has the priceless quality of what may be called

good childishness; it gives not merely Fancy but Imagination the freest

play, and, till it has itself created one, it is free from any

convention. It continued, indeed, always free from those "previous"

conventions which are so intolerable. For it is constantly forgotten

that a convention in its youth is often positively healthy, and a

convention in the prime of its life a very tolerable thing. It is the

_old_ conventions which, as Mahomet rashly acknowledged about something

else (saving himself, however, most dexterously afterwards), cannot be

tolerated in Paradise. Moreover, besides creating of necessity a sort of

fresh dialect in which it had to be told, and producing a set of

personages entirely unhackneyed, it did an immense service by

introducing a sort of etiquette, quite different from the conventions

above noticed,--a set of manners, as it may almost be called, which had

the strongest and most beneficial influence--though, like all strong and

good things, it might be perverted--on fiction generally. In this all

sorts of nice things, as in the original prescription for what girls are

made of, were included--variety, gaiety, colour, surprise, a complete

contempt of the contemptible, or of that large part of it which contains

priggishness, propriety, "prunes, and prism" generally. Moreover (and

here I fear that the above promised abstinence from the contentious must

be for a little time waived) it confirmed a great principle of novel and

romance alike, that if you can you should "make a good end," as, _teste_

Romance herself, Guinevere did, though the circumstances were

melancholy.

The termination of a fairy tale rarely is, and never should be, anything

but happy. For this reason I have always disliked--and though some of

the mighty have left their calm seats and endeavoured to annihilate me

for it, I still continue to dislike--that old favourite of some part of

the public, _The Yellow Dwarf_. That detestable creature (who does not

even amuse me) had no business to triumph; and, what is more, I don't

believe he did. Not being an original writer, I cannot tell the true

history as it might be told; but I can criticise the false. I do not

object to this version because of its violation of poetical justice--in

which, again, I don't believe. But this is neither poetical, nor just,

nor amusing. It is a sort of police report, and I have never much cared

for police reports. I should like to have set Maimoune at the Yellow

Dwarf: and then there would have been some fun.

It is probably unnecessary to offer any translations here, because the

matter is so generally known, and because the books edited by that

regretted friend of mine above mentioned have spread it (with much other

matter of the same kind) more widely than ever. But the points mentioned

above, and perhaps some others, can never be put too firmly to the

credit of the fairy tale as regards its influence on fiction, and on

French fiction particularly. It remains to be seen, in the next chapter,

how what a few purists may call its contamination by, but what we may

surely be permitted to call its alliance with, "polite literature" was

started, or practically started, through the direct agency of no

Frenchman, but of a man who can be claimed by England in the larger and

national sense, by Scotland and Ireland and England again in the

narrower and more parochial--by Anthony Hamilton. His work, however,

must be left till that next chapter, though in this we may, after the

"blessed originals" just mentioned, take in their sometimes degenerate

successors for nearly a hundred years after Perrault's time.

[Sidenote: Perrault and Mme. d'Aulnoy.]

Well, however, as the simpler and purer fairy-tales may be known to all

but twentieth-century children (who are said not to like them), it is

doubtful whether many people have considered them in the light in which

we have to regard them here, so as to see in them both a link in the

somewhat complicated chain of novel development, and also one which is

not dead metal, but serves as a medium for introducing powerful currents

of influence on the chain itself. We have dwelt on one point--the

desirableness, if not necessity, of shortness in them--as specially

valuable at the time. No doubt they need not all be as short as

Perrault's, though even among his there are instances (not to mention

_L'Adroite Princesse_ for the moment), such as _Peau d'Ane_, of more

than twenty pages, as against the five of the _Chaperon Rouge_ and the

ten of _Barbe Bleue_, _Le Chat Botte_, and _Cendrillon_. Mme. d'Aulnoy's

run longer; but of course the longest[221] of all are mites to the

mammoths of the Scudery romance. A fairy story must never "drag,"

and in its better, and indeed all its genuine, forms it never does.

Further (it must be remembered that "Little Red Riding Hood,"

in its unadulterated and "_un_happy ending" form, is not a fairy

story at all, for talking animals are not peculiar to that), "fairiness,"

the actual presence of these gracious or ungracious but always

between-human-and-divine-creatures, is necessary,[222] and their agency

must be necessary too. In this and other ways it is interesting to

contrast two stories (which are neighbours to each other, with _Peau

d'Ane_ between them, in the convenient one-volume collection of French

Fairy Tale classics published by Gamier), Mme. d'Aulnoy's _Gracieuse et

Percinet_ and _L'Adroite Princesse ou Les Aventures de Finette_, which

appeared with Perrault's, but which I can hardly believe to be his. They

are about the same length, but the one is one of the best and the other

one of the worst examples of its author and of the general style. It may

be worth while to analyse both very briefly. As for Perrault's better

work, such analysis should be as unnecessary as it would be irreverent.

[Sidenote: Commented examples--_Gracieuse et Percinet_.]

That _Gracieuse et Percinet_ is of an essentially "stock" character is

not in the least against it, for so it ought to be: and the "stock"

company that plays its parts plays them well. The father is perhaps

rather excessively foolish and unnatural, but then he almost had to be.

The wicked and ugly stepmother tops, but does not overtop, _her_ part,

and her punishment is not commonplace. Gracieuse herself deserves her

name, not only "by her comely face and by her fair bodie," but by her

good but not oppressive wits, and her amiable but not faultless

disposition. She ought not to have looked into the box; but then we

should not have liked her nearly as much if she had not done so. She was

foolishly good in refusing to stay with Percinet; but we are by no means

certain that we should like her better if she had thrown herself into

his arms at the first or second time of asking. Besides, where would

have been the story? As for Percinet, he escapes in a wonderful fashion,

though partly by help of his lady's little wilfulnesses, the dangers of

the handsome, amiable, in a small way always successful, and almost

omnipotent hero. There is a sort of ironic tenderness, in his letting

Gracieuse again and again go her wilful way and show her foolish

filiality, which saves him. He is always ready, and does his spiriting

in the politest and best manner, particularly when he shepherds all

those amusing but rebellious little people into their box again--a feat

which some great novelists have achieved but awkwardly in their own

cases. There is even pathos in the apparently melancholy statement that

the fairy palace is dead, and that Gracieuse will never see it till she

is buried. I should like to have been Percinet, and I should

particularly like to have married Gracieuse.

Moreover, the thing is full of small additional seasonings of incident

and phrase to the solid feast of fairy working which it provides.

Gracieuse's "collation," with its more than twenty pots of different

jams, has a delightful realty (which is slightly different from reality)

even for those to whom jam has never been the very highest of human

delights, because they prefer savouries to sweets. Even the abominable

duchess seems to have had a splendid cellar, before she took to filling

the casks with mere gold and jewels to catch the foolish king. It is

impossible to imagine a scene more agreeably compounded of politeness

and affection than Percinet's first introduction of himself to the

Princess: and it is extraordinarily nice to find that they knew all

about each other before, though we have had not the slightest previous

information as to the acquaintance. I am very much afraid that he made

his famous horse kick and plunge when Grognon was on him; but it must be

remembered that he had been made to lead that animal against his will.

The description of the hag's flogging Gracieuse with feathers instead of

scourges is a quite admirable adaptation of some martyrological stories;

and when, in her dilapidated condition, she remarks that she wishes he

would go away, because she has always been told that she must not be

alone with young gentlemen, one feels that the martyrdom must have been

transferred, in no mock sense, to Percinet himself. If she borrows

Psyche's trials, what good story is not another good story

refreshed?[223]

[Sidenote: _L'Adroite Princesse._]

But if almost everything is good and well managed in _Gracieuse_, it may

also be said that almost everything is badly managed in _Finette_.[224]

To begin with, there is that capital error which has been noticed above,

that it is not really a fairy tale at all. Except the magic

_quenouilles_, which themselves are of the smallest importance in the

story, there is nothing in it beyond the ways of an ordinary adventurous

_nouvelle_. The touch of _grivoiserie_ by which the Princesses

Nonchalante and Babillarde allow the weaknesses ticketed in their names

to hand them over as a prey to the cunning and blackguard Prince

Riche-Cautele, under pretence of entirely unceremonised and unwitnessed

"marriage," is in no way amusing. Finette's escapes from the same fate

are a little better, but the whole is told (as its author seems to have

felt) at much too great length; and the dragging in of an actual fairy

at the end, to communicate to the heroine the exceedingly novel and

recondite maxim that "Prudence is the mother of safety," is almost

idiotic. If the thing has any value, it is as an example, not of a real

fairy tale nor of a satire on fairy tales (for which it is much too much

"out of the rules" and much too stupid), but of something which may save

an ordinary reader, or even student, from attacking, as I fear we shall

have to do, the _Cabinet des Fees_ at large, and discovering, by painful

experience, how excessively silly and tedious the corruption of this

wise and delightful kind may be.

One might, of course, draw lessons from others of the original batches,

but this may suffice for the specimen batch under immediate review.

_Peau d'Ane_, one of the most interesting to "folklorists" and

origin-hunters, is, of course, also in itself interesting to students of

literature. Its combination of the old theme of the incestuous passion

of a father for his daughter, with the special but not invariable shadow

of excuse in the selfish vanity of the mother's dying request, is quite

out of the usual way of these things. So is the curious series of fairy

failures--things apparently against the whole set of the game--beginning

with the unimaginative conception of dresses, weather-, or sky-, moon-,

and sun-colour, rendered futile by the success of the artists, and

ending in the somewhat banal device of making yourself ugly and running

away, with the odd conclusion-contrast of Peau d'Ane's squalid

appearance in public and her private splendour in the fairy garments.

[Sidenote: The danger of the "moral."]

Still, the lessons of correction, warning, and instruction to be drawn

from these gracious little things, for the benefit of their younger and

more elaborate successors, are not easily exhausted. They are, on the

whole, very moral, and it is well that morality, rightly understood,

should animate fiction. But they are occasionally much _too_ moral, and

then they warn off instead of cheering on. Take, for instance, two other

neighbours in the collection just quoted, _Le Prince Cheri_ and the

ever-delightful _La Belle et La Bete_. Both of these are moral; but the

latter is just moral enough, while _Cheri_, with one or two alleviations

(of which, perhaps, more presently), is hardly anything if _not_ moral,

and therefore disgusts, or at any rate bores. On the other hand,

"Beauty" is as _bonne_ as she is _belle_; her only fault, that of

overstaying her time, is the result of family affection, and her reward

and the punishment of the wicked sisters are quite copy-book. But it is

not for this part that we love what is perhaps the most engaging of all

the tales. It is for Beauty's own charm, which is subtly conveyed; for

the brisk and artistic "revolutions and discoveries"; above all, for the

far from merely sentimental pathos of the Beast's all but death _for_

love, and the not in the least mawkish bringing of him to life again

_by_ love.[225]

[Sidenote: Yet often redeemed.]

One may perhaps also make amends to Prince Cheri for the abuse just

bestowed on him. His story has at least one touch which is sovereign for

a fiction-fault common in the past, and only too probable in the future,

at whatever time one takes the "present" of the story. When he is not

unjustly turned into a monster of the most allegorical-composite order

of monster architecture--a monster to whom dragons and wyverns and

chimaeras dire are as ordinary as kittens--what do they do with him?

They put him "with the other monsters." _Ce n'est pas plus raide que

ca._ The present writer need hardly fear to be thought an

anti-mediaevalist, but he is very much afraid that an average mediaeval

romancer might have thought it necessary to catalogue these other

monsters with the aid of a Bestiary. On the other hand, there have been

times--no matter which--when this abrupt introduction and dismissal of

monsters as common objects (for which any respectable community will

have proper stables or cages) would have been disallowed, or explained

away, or apologised for, or, worst of all, charged with a sort of wink

or sneer to let the reader know that the author knew what he was about.

Here there is nothing of this superfluous or offensive sort. The

appropriate and undoubting logic of the style prevails over all too

reasonable difficulties. There are monsters, or how could Cheri be made

into one? If there are monsters there must, or in the highest

probability may, be other monsters. Put him with them, and make no fuss

about it. If all novelists had had this _aplomb_, we should have been

spared a great deal of tediousness, some positive failures, and the

spoiling, or at least the blotting and marring, of many excellent

situations. But to praise the good points of fairy stories, from the

brief consummateness of _Le Chat Botte_ to the longer drawn but still

perfectly golden matter of _La Biche au Bois_, would really be

superfluous. One loathes leaving them; but one has to do it, so far as

the more unsophisticated part of them is concerned. Yet the duty of the

historian will not let him be content with these, and, to vary "The

Brave Lord Willoughby" a little, "turning to the [_others_] a thousand

more," he must "slay," or at least criticise.

[Sidenote: The main _Cabinet des Fees_--more on Mme. d'Aulnoy.]

He who ventures on the complete _Cabinet des Fees_[226] in its more than

forty volumes, will provide himself with "cabin furniture" of nearly as

good pastime-quality, at least to my fancy (and yet I may claim to be

something of a Balzacian), as the slightly larger shelf-ful which

suggested itself to the fancy of Mr. Browning and provoked (_as_ "cabin

furniture") the indignation of Mr. Swinburne. But he had better look

over the contents before he takes it on board, or he will find himself,

if his travelling library is anything like as large as that of the

patriarch Photius, in danger of duplication. For the _Cabinet_ holds,

not merely the _Arabian Nights_ in the original translation of Galland,

but also Hamilton: as well, of course, as much of what we may call the

classical fairy matter proper on which we have already dwelt, and which

is known to all decent people. Still, he will find more of Mme. d'Aulnoy

than, unless he is already something of an expert, he already knows, and

perhaps he will not be entirely rejoiced at the amplification. She wrote

more or less regular heroic romances,[227] which are very inferior to

her fairy tales; and though these are not in the _Cabinet_, she

sometimes "mixes the kinds" rather disastrously in shorter pieces. The

framework of _Don Gabriel Ponce de Leon_, which enshrines the sad but

charming "Golden Sheep," and a variant of _Cendrillon_, is poor stuff;

and _Les Chevaliers Errans_ only shows what we knew before, that the

junction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is not the time or

the place in which to find the loved one, if that loved one is

mediaeval. Still, this invaluable lady does generally reck and exemplify

her own immortal rede. "Il me semble," says Prince Marcassin to the

fairies, "a vous entendre, qu'il ne faut pas meme croire ce qu'on voit."

And they reply, "La regle n'est pas toujours generale; _mais il est

indubitable que l'on doit suspendre son jugement sur bien des choses, et

penser qu'il peut entrer quelque chose de Feerie dans ce que nous paroit

de plus certain_."

[Sidenote: Warning against disappointment.]

Alas! it was precisely this _quelque chose de Feerie_ which is wanting

in the majority of the minor fairy-tale writers. That they should attain

the wonderful simplicity, freshness, and charm of Perrault at his best

was not to be expected; hardly that they should reach the more

sophisticated grace of Hamilton; but it might have been hoped that some

would come more or less near the lower, and much more unequal, but

occasionally very successful art or luck of Mme. d'Aulnoy herself.

Unfortunately very few of them do. It was easy enough to begin _Il

etait autrefois un roi et une reine_, to put in a Prince Charming and a

Princess Graciosa, and good fairies and bad fairies, and magicians and

ogres and talking beasts, and the like. It was not so easy to make all

these things work together to produce the peculiar spell which belongs

to the true land of Faery, and to that land alone. Still more

unfortunately, wrong ways of attempting the object (or some other

object) were as easy as the right ways were difficult. They cannot avoid

muddling the fairy tale with the heroic romance: and with the

half-historical sub-variety of this latter which Mme. de La Fayette

introduced. The worst enchanter that ever fairies had to fight with is

not such an enemy of theirs as History and Geography--two most

respectable persons in their proper places, but fatal here. They will

make King Richard of England tell fairy tales to Blondel out of the

Austrian tower, and muddle up things about his wicked brother the Count

of Mortagne. They will talk of Lemnos and Memphis and other _patatis_

and _patatas_ of the classical dictionary and the _Grand Cyrus_. In a

fashion not perhaps so instantly suicidal, but in a sufficiently

annoying fashion, they will invent clumsy "speaking" names, or dog-Latin

and cat-Greek ones. And, perhaps worst of all, they prostitute the

delicate charms of the fairy tale to clumsy adulation of the reigning

monarch, and tedious half-veiled flattery or satire of less exalted

persons, or, if "prostitute" be too harsh a word here, attempt to force

a marriage between these charms and the dullest moralising. In fact, it

is scarcely extravagant to say that, in regard to too many of them--to

some of them at least--everything that ought not to be, such as the

things just mentioned and others, is there, and everything that ought to

be--lightness, brightness, the sense of the impossible in which it is

delightful to believe, the dream-feeling, the magic of gratified wish

and realised ideal--is not.

[Sidenote: Mlle. de la Force and others.]

Of course, in these other and minor writers that the _Cabinet_ has to

give, all these disappointments do not always occur, and the crop is

mixed. Mlle. de la Force[228] was one of those _dames_ or _demoiselles

de compagnie_ who figure so largely in the literary history of the

French eighteenth century, and whose group is illustrated by such names

as those of Mlle. Delaunay and Mlle. de Lespinasse. Her full name was

Charlotte Rose de Caumont de la Force, and she was, if not an

adventuress, a person of adventures, who also wrote many

quasi-historical romances in the _Princesse de Cleves_ manner. Her fairy

tales are thin, and marred by weak allegory of the "Carte de Tendre"

kind. A "Pays des Delices," very difficult to reach, and constantly

personated by a "Pays des Avances," promises little and performs less.

The eleven (it is an exact eleven) called _Les Illustres Fees_ is

scarcely so illustrious as the All England and the United were, in the

memory of some of us, in another and better played kind of cricket. The

stories are not very long; they run to a bare eighteen small pages

apiece; but few readers are likely to wish them longer. _Blanche-Belle_

introduces the _sylphes_--an adulteration[229] which generally produces

the effect that Thackeray deplored when his misguided friend would have

_puree_ mixed with _julienne_. _Le Roi Magicien_ is painfully destitute

of personality; we want names, and pretty names, for a fairy tale. _Le

Prince Roger_ is a descendant of Melusine, and one does not think she

would be proud of him. _Fortunio_ is better, and _Quiribirini_, one of

the numerous stories which turn on remembering or failing to remember an

odd name,[230] perhaps better still; but the rest deserve little praise,

and the last, _L'Ile Inaccessible_, appears to be, if it is anything but

pure dulness, a flat political allegory about England and France.

The style picks up a little in the miscellany called (not without a

touch of piquancy) _La Tyrannie des Fees Detruite_, by a Mme.

d'_Auneuil_, whom persons of a sceptical turn might imagine to be a sort

of factitious rival to Mme. d'Aulnoy.[231] It returns to the Greek or

pseudo-Greek names of the heroic romance, and to its questionable device

of _histoires_ stuck like plums in a pudding. Nor are the _Sans

Parangon_ and the _Fee des Fees_ of the Sieur de Preschac utterly bad.

But _Les Aventures d'Abdalla_, besides rashly incurring the danger (to

be exemplified and commented on more fully a little later) of vying with

the _Arabian Nights_, substitutes for the genuine local colour

and speech the _fade_ jargon of French eighteenth-century

"sensibility"--_autels_ and _flammes_ and all the rest of the trumpery.

But it does worse still--it tries to be instructive, and informs us of

the difference between male and female _dives_ and _peris_, of the

custom of suttee, and of the fact that there are many professional

singers and dancers among Indian girls. This is simply intolerable.[232]

[Sidenote: The large proportion of Eastern Tales.]

[Sidenote: _Les Voyages de Zulma._]

The great prominence of the Eastern Tale, indeed, in this collection is

likely to be one of the most striking things in it to a new-comer. He

would know, of course, that such tales are not uncommon in contemporary

English; he would certainly be acquainted with Addison's, Johnson's,

Goldsmith's experiments in them, perhaps with those of Hawkesworth and

others.[233] He could see for himself that the "accaparation" by France

of the peerless _Arabian Nights_ themselves must have led to a still

greater fancy for them there; and he might possibly have heard the

tradition (which the present writer[234] never traced to its source, or

connected with any real evidence either way) that no less a person than

Lesage assisted Galland in his task. But though the _Nights_ themselves

form the most considerable single group in the _Cabinet_, the united

bulk of their congeners or imitations occupies a still larger space.

There are the rather pale and "moon-like" but sometimes not

uninteresting _Thousand and One Days_, and the obviously and rather

foolishly pastiched _Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour_. There are

Persian Tales--origin of a famous and characteristic jibe at "Namby

Pamby" Philips--and Turkish Tales which are a fragment of one of the

numerous versions of the _Seven Sages_ scheme. The just mentioned

_Adventures of Abdallah_ betray their source and their nature at once;

the hoary fables of Bidpai and Lokman are modernised to keep company

with these "fakings," and there are more definitely literary attempts to

follow. _Les Voyages de Zulma_, again an incomplete thing which actually

tails off towards its failure of an end, shows some ingenuity in its

conception, but suffers, even in the beginning, from that mixing of

kinds which has been pointed out and reprobated. An attempt is made to

systematise the fairy idea by representing these gracious creatures as

offspring of Destiny and the Earth, with a cruel brother Time, and an

offset of mischievous sisters who exactly correspond to the good

ones--Disgracieuse to Gracieuse, and so on--and have a queen

Laide-des-Laides, who answers to the good fairy princess,

Belle-des-Belles. A mortal--Zulma--is, for paternal rather than personal

merits, chosen by Destiny to enjoy the privilege of entering and

understanding the fairy world, and Gracieuse is the fairy assigned as

his guide. The idea is, as has been said, rather ingenious; but it is

too systematic, and like other things in other parts of the collection,

"loses the grace and liberty of the composition" in system. Moreover,

the morality, as is rather the wont of these imitators when they are not

(as a few of the partly non-cabinetted ones are) deliberately naughty,

is much too scrupulous.[235] It is clear that Zulma is in love with

Gracieuse, that she responds to some extent, and that Her Majesty Queen

Belle-des-Belles is a little jealous and inclined to cut Gracieuse out.

But nothing in the finished part of the story gives us any of the nice

love-making that we want.

[Sidenote: Fenelon.]

Madame le Marchand's _Boca_ is a story which begins in Peru but finishes

in an "Isle of Ebony," where the names of Zobeide and Abdelazis seem

rather more at home; it is not without merit. As for the fables and

stories which Fenelon composed for that imperfect Marcellus, the Duke of

Burgundy, they have all the merits of style, sense, and good feeling

which they might be expected to have, and it would be absurd to ask of

them qualities which, in the circumstances, they could not display.

The _Chinese Tales_ are about as little Chinese as may be, consisting of

accounts of his punitive metempsychoses by the Mandarin Fum Hoam (a name

afterwards borrowed in better known work), who seems to have been

excluded from the knowledge of anything particularly Celestial.[236] But

they are rather smartly told. On the other hand, _Florine ou la Belle

Italienne_, which is included in the same volume with the sham

_Chinoiseries_, is one of the worst instances of the confusion of kinds

noted above. It honestly prepares one for what is coming by a reference

in the Preface to Fenelon; but a list of _dramatis_ (or _fabulae_)

_personae_, which follows, would have tried the saintliness even of him

of Cambrai almost as much as a German occupation of his archiepiscopal

see. "Agatonphisie," for a personage who represents, we are told, "Le

Bon Sens," might break the heart of Clenardus, if not the head of

Priscian.

_The Thousand and One Quarter Hours_, or _Contes Tartares_, have as

little of the Tartar as those above mentioned of the Chinese, but if

somewhat verbose, they are not wholly devoid of literary quality. The

substance is, as in nearly all these cases, _Arabian Nights_ rehashed;

but the hashing is not seldom done _secundum artem_, and they have, with

the _Les Sultanes de Gujerate_ and _Nouveaux Contes Orientaux_, which

follow them, the faculty of letting themselves be read.

The best of these[237] (except the French translation of the so-called

Sir Charles Morell's (really James Ridley's) _Tales of the Genii_ (see

above)) is perhaps, on the whole, _Les Sultanes de Gujerate_, where not

only are some of the separate tales good, but the frame-story is far

more artistically worked in and round and out than is usually the case.

But taking them all together, there is one general and obvious, as well

as another local and particular objection to them. Although the

sub-title (_v. sup._ again) lets them in, the main one regards them

with, at best, an oblique countenance. The differences between the

Western fairy and the Eastern _peri_, _dive_, _djin_, or whatever one

chooses to call her, him, or it, though not at all easy to define, are

exceedingly easy to feel. The magicians and enchanters of the two kinds

are nearer to each other, but still not the same. On the other hand, it

is impossible for any one who has once felt the strange charm of the

_Arabian Nights_ not to feel the immense inferiority of these rehashes

and _croquettes_ and _rissoles_, and so forth, of the noble old haunch

or sirloin. Yet again, from the special point of view of this book,

though they cannot be simply passed over, they supply practically

nothing which marks, or causes, or even promises an advance in the

general development of fiction. They may be said to be simply a

continuation of, or a relapse upon, the pure romance of adventure, with

different dress, manners, and nomenclature. There is hardly a single

touch of character in any one; their very morals (and no shame to them)

are arch-known; and they do not possess style enough to confer

distinction of the kind open to such things. If you take _Les Quatre

Facardins_, before most of them, and _Vathek_[238] (itself, remember,

originally French in language), after them all, the want of any kind of

genius in their composers becomes almost disgustingly apparent. Yet even

these masterpieces are masterpieces outside the main run of the novel.

[Sidenote: Caylus.]

Although, therefore, it would be very ungrateful not to acknowledge that

they do sometimes comply with the demands of that sensible tyrant

already mentioned, Sultan Hudgiadge, and "either amuse us or send us to

sleep," it must be admitted to be with some relief that one turns once

more, at about the five and twentieth volume, to something like the

fairy tale proper, if to a somewhat artificial and sophisticated form of

it. The Comte de Caylus was a scholar and a man of unusual brains;

Moncrif showed his mixture of Scotch and French blood in a corresponding

blend of quaintness and _esprit_; others, such as Voisenon in one sex

and Voltaire's pet Mlle. de Lubert in the other, whatever they were,

were at any rate not stupid.

[Sidenote: _Prince Courtebotte et Princesse Zibeline._]

To Anne Claude Philippe de Tubieres de Grimoard de Pestels de Levi,

Comte de Caylus, one owes particular thanks, at least when one comes to

the history of _Le Prince Courtebotte_, after wrestling with the

_macedoine_ of orientalities just discussed. It is not, of course,

Perrault, and it is not the best Madame D'Aulnoy. But you are never "put

out" by it; the hero, if rather a hero of Scott in the uniform propriety

of his conduct, or of Virgil in his success, is not like Waverley,

partly a simpleton, nor like Aeneas, wholly a cad. One likes the

Princess Zibeline both before she had a heart and afterwards; it can be

very agreeable to know a nice girl in both states. Perhaps it was not

quite cricket of the good fairy to play that trick[239] on the

ambassador of King Brandatimor, but it was washed out in fair fight; and

King Biby and his people of poodles are delightful. One wonders whether

Dickens, who was better read in this kind of literature than in most,

consciously or unconsciously borrowed from Caylus one of his not least

known touches.[240]

[Sidenote: _Rosanie._]

In the next of the Caylus stories there is an Idea--the capital seems

due because the Count was a man of Science, as science (perhaps better)

went then, and because one or his other tales (not the best) is actually

called _Le Palais des Idees_. The idea of _Rosanie_ is questionable,

though the carrying of it out is all right. Two fairies are fighting for

the (fairy) crown, and the test is who shall produce the most perfect

specimen of the special fairy art of education of mortals. (I may, as a

_ci-devant_ member of this craft, be permitted to regret that the

business has been so largely taken over by persons who are neither

fairies in one sex, though there may be some exceptions here, nor

enchanters in the other, where exceptions are very rare indeed.) The

tutoress of the Princess Rosanie pursues her task, and pursues it

triumphantly, by dividing the child into twelve _interim_ personalities,

each of whom has a special characteristic--beauty, gentleness, vivacity,

discretion, and what not. At the close of the prescribed period they are

reunited, and their fortunate lover, who has hitherto been distracted

between the twelve _eidola_, is blessed with the compound Rosanie.

Although it is well known to be the rashest of things for a man to say

anything about women--although certainly sillier things have been said

by men about women than about any other subject, except, of course,

education itself--I venture to demur to the fairy method. Both _a

priori_ and from experience, I should say that unmixed Beauty would

become intolerably vain; that Discretion would grow into a hypocritical

and unpleasant prude; that Vivacity would develop into Vulgarity; and

that the reincarnation of the twelve would be one of the most

intolerable creatures ever known, if it were not that the impossibility

of the concentrated essences being united in one person, after

separation in several, would save the situation by annihilating her.

[Sidenote: _Prince Muguet et Princesse Zaza._]

Caylus, however, makes up in the third tale, _Le Prince Muguet et la

Princesse Zaza_, where, though the principal fairy, she of the _Hetre_,

is rather silly for one of the kind, Muguet is a not quite intolerable

coxcomb, and Zaza is positively charming. Her sufferings with a wicked

old woman are common; but her distress when the fairy makes her seem

ugly to the Prince, who has actually fallen in love with her true

portrait, and the scenes where the two meet under this spell, are among

the best in the whole _Cabinet_--which is a bold word. The others,

though naturally unequal, never or very seldom lack charm, for the

reason that Caylus knew what one has ventured to call the secret of

Fairyland--that it is the land of the attained Wish--and that he has the

art of scattering rememberable and generative phrases and fancies.

_Tourlou et Rirette_, one of the lightest of all, may not

impossibly--indeed probably--have suggested Jean Ingelow's great

single-speech poem of _Divided_; the Princesses Pimprenelle and

Lumineuse are the right sort of Princesses; _Nonchalante et Papillon_,

_Bleuette et Coquelicot_ come and take their places unpretentiously but

certainly; Mignonette and Minutieuse are not "out." Caylus is not

Hamilton by a long way; but he has something that Hamilton has not. He

is still less Perrault or Madame d'Aulnoy, but he has a sufficient

difference from either. With these predecessors he makes the select

quartette of the fairy-tale tellers of France.

After him one expects--and meets--a drop. No reasonable person would

look for a really great fairy tale from Jean Jacques, because you must

forget yourself to write one; and _La Reine Fantasque_, though not bad,

is not good. Madame de Villeneuve may, for ought I know, have been an

excellent person in other ways, but she deserves one of the worst

bolgias in the Inferno of literature for lengthening, muddling, and

altogether spoiling the ever-beloved "Beauty and the Beast." Mlle. de

Lussan, they say,[241] was too fond of eating, and died of indigestion.

A more indigestible thing than her own _Les Veillees de Thessalie_,

which figure here (she wrote a great deal more), the present writer has

never come across. And as for _Prince Titi_, which fills a volume and a

half, it might have been passed without any remark at all if it had not

become famous in connection with the Battle of Croker and Macaulay over

the body of Boswell's _Johnson_.[242]

A break takes place at the thirtieth volume of the _Cabinet_, and a

fresh instalment, later than the first batch, follows, with more

particulars about authors. Here we find the attributions of the very

large series of imitative Eastern tales already noticed, and to be

followed in this new parcel by _Soirees Bretonnes_, to Thomas Simon

Gueulette. The thirty-first opens with the _Funestine_ of

Beauchamps[243]--an ingenious title and heroine-name, for it avoids the

unnatural sounds so common, is a quite possible feminine appellation,

and though a "speaking" one, is only so to those who understand the

learned languages, and so deserve to be spoken to. Moreover, the idea,

though not startlingly original or a mark of genius, is good--that of an

unlucky child who attracts the malignity of _all_ fairies, and is ugly,

stupid, ill-natured, and everything that is detestable. Her reformation

by the genie Clair-Obscur would not be bad if it were cut a great deal

shorter.

It is followed by a series of short tales, beginning with _The Little

Green Frog_, and not of the first class, which in turn are succeeded by

two (or, as the latter is in two parts, three) longer stories, sometimes

attributed to Caylus--_Le Loup Galeux_ and _Bellinette et Belline_. The

_Soirees Bretonnes_ themselves, though apparently the earliest, are not

the happiest of Gueulette's _pastiches_; the speaking names[244]

especially are irritating. A certain Madame de Lintot, who does not seem

to have had anything to do with the hero of Pope's famous "Ride with a

Bookseller," is what may be called "neutral," with _Timandre et

Bleuette_ and others; nor does a fresh instalment of Moncrif's efforts

show the historian of cats at his best. But in vol. xxxiii. Mlle. de

Lubert, glanced at before, raises the standard. She should have cut her

tales down; it is the mischief of these later things that they extend

too much. But _Lionnette et Coquerico_ is good; _Le Prince Glace et la

Princesse Etincelante_ is not bad; and _La Princesse Camion_ attracts,

by dint of extravagance in the literal sense. Fairy trials had gone far;

but the necessity of either marrying a beautiful sort of mermaid or else

of _flaying_ her, and the subsequent trial, not of flaying, but braying

her in a mortar as a shrimp, show at least a lively fancy. Nor is the

anonymous _Nourjahad_--an extremely moral but not dull tale, which

follows--at all contemptible.

The French Bar, inexhaustible in such things, gave another tale-teller

in one Pajon, who, besides the obligatory _polissonneries_, not included

in the _Cabinet_, composed not a few harmless things of some merit. The

first, _Eritzine et Paretin_, is perhaps the best. Nor is the complement

of vol. xxxiv., the _Bibliotheque des Fees et des Genies_ (the title of

which was that of a larger collection, containing much the same matter

as the _Cabinet_, and probably in Johnson's mind when he jotted down

_Prince Titi_), quite barren. _La Princesse Minon-Minette et le Prince

Souci_, _Apranor et Bellanire_, _Grisdelin et Charmante_, are none of

them unreadable. The next volume, too, is better as a whole than any we

have had for a long time. Mme. Fagnan's _Minet Bleu et Louvette_

contains, in its fifteen pages, a good situation by no means

ill-treated. The pair are under the same spell--that of being ugly and

witty for part of the week, handsome, stupid, and disagreeable for the

other part, and of having the times so arranged that each sees the other

at his or her most repulsive to her or his actual state. The way in

which "Love unconquered in battle" proves, though not without fairy

assistance, victorious here also, is very ingeniously managed.

One of the cleverest of all the later fairy tales is the _Acajou et

Zirphile_ of Duclos, who, indeed, had sufficient wits to do anything

well, and was a novelist, though not a very distinguished one, on a

larger scale. The tale itself (which is said to have been written "up

to" illustrations of Boucher designed for something else) has, indeed,

a smatch of vulgarity, but a purely superfluous and easily removable

one. It is almost as cleverly written as any thing of Voltaire's: and

the final situation, where the hero, who has gone through all the

mischiefs and triumphs of one of Crebillon's, recovers his only real

love, Zirphile, in a torment and tornado of heads separated from bodies

and hands separated from arms, is rather capital.

Not much less so, in the different way of a pretty sentimentality, is

the _Aglae ou Naboline_ of the painter Coypel; while the batch of short

stories from Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont's _Magasin des Enfants_ have had

a curious fate. They are rather pooh-poohed by French editors and

critics, and they are certainly _very_ moral, too much so, in fact, as

has been already objected to one of them, _Le Prince Cheri_. But

allowances have been allowed even there, and, somehow or other, _Fatal

et Fortune_, _Le Prince Charmant_, _Joliette_, and the rest have

recovered more of the root of the matter than most others, and have

established a just popularity in translation.

And then comes the shortest, I think, of all the stories in the one and

forty volumes; the silliest as a composition; the most contemptibly

_thought_--but by the accidents of fate endowed later with a

tragic-satiric _moralitas_ almost if not quite unrivalled in literature.

Its author was a certain M. Selis, apparently a very respectable

schoolmaster, professor, and bookmaker of not the lowest

class--employments and occupations in respect of all of which not a few

of us have earned our bread and paid our income-tax. Unluckily for him,

there was born in his time a Dauphin, and he wrote a little adulatory

tale of the birth, and the editors of the _Cabinet_ Appendix thanked him

much for giving it them. It is not four pages long; it tells how an

ancestral genie--a great king named Louis--blessed the child, and said

that he would be called "the father of his people," and another followed

suit with "the father of letters," and a third swore _Ventre Saint

Gris!_ and named the baby's uncle as "Joseph," and a still greater Louis

said other things, and a fairy named Maria Theresa crowned the

blessings. Then came an ogre mounted on a leopard and eating raw meat,

who was of Albion, and said he was king of the country, and observed

"_God ham_" [_sic_], and was told that he would be beaten and made to

lay down his arms by the child.

And the Dauphin, unless this _signalement_ is strangely delusive, lived

to know the worst ogres in the world (their chief was named Simon), who

were of his own people, and to die the most unhappy prince or king in

that world. And he of the Leopard who said _God ham_, would have saved

that Dauphin if he could, and did slay many of his less guiltless

relations and subjects, and beat the rest "thorough and thorough," and

restored (could they have had the will and wit to profit by it) the race

of Louis and Francis, and of the genie who said "Ventre Saint Gris!" to

their throne. And this was the end of the vaticinations of M. Selis, and

such are the tears of things.

The rest of this volume is occupied by a baker's dozen of _Contes

Choisis_, the first of which, _Les Trois Epreuves_, seems to imitate

Voltaire, and is smartly written, while some of the others are not bad.

Volume xxxvi. is occupied (not too appositely, though inoffensively in

itself) by a translation of Wieland's _Don Silvia de Rosalva_, which is

a German _Sir Launcelot Greaves_ or _Spiritual Quixote_, with fairy

tales substituted for romances of chivalry. The author of _Oberon_ was

seldom, if ever, unreadable, and he is not so here; but the thing is

neither a tale proper (seeing that it fills a whole volume), nor a real

fairy tale, nor French, so we may let it alone.

Then this curious collection once more comes to an end, which is not an

end, with a very useful though not too absolutely trustworthy volume of

_Notices des Auteurs_, containing not only "bio-bibliographical"

articles on the actual writers collected, but references to others,

great and small, from Marivaux, Lesage, Prevost, and Voltaire downwards,

and glances, sometimes with actual _comptes rendus_, at pieces of the

class not included. That it is conducted on the somewhat irresponsible

and indolent principles of its time might be anticipated from previous

things, such as the clause in the Preface to Wieland's just noticed

book, that the author had "gone to Weimar, where perhaps he is still,"

an observation which, from the context, seems not to be so much an

attempt at _persiflage_ as a pure piece of lazy _naivete_. The volume,

however, contains a great deal of information such as it is; some

sketches, ingeniously draped or Bowdlerised, of the "naughty" tales

excluded from the collection itself, and a few amusing stories.[245]

As, however, has been said, there was to be still another joint to this

crocodile, and the four last volumes, xxxviii. to xli. (_not_, as is

wrongly said by some, xxxvii. to xl.), contain a somewhat rash

continuation of the _Arabian Nights_ themselves, with which Cazotte[246]

appears to have had a good deal to do, though an actual Arab monk of

the name of Chavis is said to have been mainly concerned. They are not

bad reading; but even less of fairy tales than Gueulette's

orientalities.

* * * * *

Not much apology is needed, it may be hoped, for the space given to this

curious kind; the bulk of its production, the length of its popularity,

and the intrinsic merit of some few of its better examples vindicate its

position here. But a confession should take the place of the unnecessary

excuse already partly made. The artificial fairy tale of the more

regular kind was not, by the law of its being, prevented almost

unavoidably from doing service to the novel at large, as the Eastern

story was; but, as a matter of fact, it did little except what will be

mentioned in the next paragraph. That it helped to exemplify afresh what

had been shown over and over again for centuries, the singular

recreative faculty of the nation and the language, was about all. But

another national characteristic, the as yet incurable set of the French

mind towards types--which, if the second volume of this work ever

appears, will, it is hoped, be shown to have spared the later

novel--seized on these tales. They are "as like as my fingers to my

fingers," and they are not very pretty fingers as a rule. Incidentally

they served as frameworks to some of the worst verse in the world, nor,

for the most part, did they even encourage very good prose. You may get

some good out of them; but unless you like hunting, and are not vexed by

frequent failures to "draw," the _Cabinet des Fees_ is best left to

exploration at second-hand.

* * * * *

To collect the results of this long chapter, we may observe that in

these three departments--Pastoral, Heroic, and Fairy--various important

elements of _general_ novel material and construction are provided in a

manner not yet noticed. The Pastoral may seem to be the most obsolete,

the most of a mere curiosity. But the singular persistence and, in a

way, universality of this apparently fossil convention has been already

pointed out; and it is perhaps only necessary to shift the pointer to

the fact that the novels with which one of the most modern, in perhaps

the truest sense of that word, of modern novelists, though one of the

eldest, Mr. Thomas Hardy, began to make his mark--_Under the Greenwood

Tree_ and _Far from the Madding Crowd_--may be claimed by the pastoral

with some reason. And it has another and a wider claim--that it keeps

up, in its own way, the element of the imaginative, of the fanciful--let

us say even of the unreal--without which romance cannot live, without

which novel is almost repulsive, and which the increasing advances of

realism itself were to render more than ever indispensable. As for the

Heroic, we have already shown how much, with all its faults, it did for

the novel generally in construction and in other ways. It has been shown

likewise, it is hoped, how the Fairy story, besides that additional

provision of imagination, fancy, and dream which has just been said to

be so important--mingled with this a kind of realism which was totally

lacking in the others, and which showed itself especially in one

immensely important department wherein they had been so much to seek.

Fairies may be (they are not to my mind) things that "do not happen";

but the best of these fairies are fifty times more natural, not merely

than the characters of Scudery and Gomberville, but than those (I hold

to my old blasphemy) of Racine. Animals may not talk; but the animals

of Perrault and even of Madame d'Aulnoy talk divinely well, and, what is

more, in a way most humanly probable and interesting. Never was there

such a triumph of the famous impossible-probable as a good fairy story.

Except to the mere scientist and to (of course, quite a different

person) the unmitigated fool, these stories, at least the best of them,

fully deserve the delightful phrase which Southey attributes to a friend

of his. They are "necessary and voluptuous and right." They were, to the

French eighteenth century and to French prose, almost what the ballad

was to the English eighteenth century and to English verse; almost what

the _Maerchen_ was to the prose and verse alike of yet un-Prussianised

Germany. They were more than twice blessed: for they were charming in

themselves; they exercised good influence on other literary productions;

and they served as precious antidotes to bad things that they could not

improve, and almost as precious alternatives to things good in

themselves but of a different kind from theirs.

What, however, none of the kinds discussed in this chapter gave

entirely, while only the fairy story gave in part, and that in strong

contrast to another part of itself, was a history of ordinary

life--high, low, or middle--dealing with characters more or less

representing live and individual personages; furnished with incidents of

a possible and probable character more or less regularly constructed;

furnished further with effective description of the usual scenery,

manners, and general accessories of living; and, finally, giving such

conversation as might be thought necessary in forms suitable to "men of

this world," in the Shakespearian phrase. In other words, none of them

attained, or even attempted to fulfil, the full definition of the novel.

The scattered books to be mentioned in the next chapter did not,

perhaps, in any one case--even Madame de la Fayette's--quite achieve

this; but in all of them, even in Sorel's, we see more or less conscious

or unconscious attempt at it.

FOOTNOTES:

[124] Herr Koerting (_v. sup._ p. 133) gave considerable space to

Barclay's famous _Argenis_, which also appeared fairly early in the

century. To treat, however, a Latin book, written by a Scotsman, with

admittedly large if not main reference to European politics, as a

"French novel," seems a literary solecism. I do not know whether it is

rash to add that the _Argenis_ itself seems to me to have been wildly

overpraised. It is at any rate one of the few books--one of the still

fewer romances--which have defied my own powers of reading at more than

one attempt.

[125]

[Sidenote: Note on marked influence of Greek Romance.]

The repetition, in the seventeenth century, of something very like a

phenomenon which we noticed in the twelfth, is certainly striking, and

may seem at first sight rather uncanny. But those who have made some

attempt to "find the whole" in literature, and in that attempt have at

least found out something about the curious laws of revolution and

recurrence which take the place of any progress in a straight line, will

deem the thing natural enough. We declined, in the earlier case, to

admit much, if any, direct influence of the accomplished Greek Romance

on the Romance of the West; but we showed how classical subjects,

whether pure or tinctured with Oriental influence, induced an immensely

important development of this same Western Romance in two

directions--that of manners, character, and passion, and that of marvel.

In the later period classical influences of all sorts are again at work;

but infinitely the larger part of that work is done by the Greek

Romances themselves--pastoral, adventurous, and sentimental,--the dates

of the translations of which will be given presently. And the newer

Oriental kind--coming considerably later still and sharing its nature

certainly, and perhaps its origin, not now with classical mythology, but

again, in the most curious way, with Western folk stories--supplements

and diversifies the reinforcement.

[126] Scudery writes "Urfe," and this confirms the _obiter dictum_ of

Sainte-Beuve, that with the Christian name, the "Monsieur," or some

other title you must use the "_de_," otherwise not. But in this

particular instance I think most French writers give the particle.

[127] I myself, in writing a _Short History of French Literature_ many

years ago, had to apologise for incomplete knowledge; and I will not

undertake even now to have read every romance cursorily mentioned in

this chapter--indeed, some are not very easy to get at. But I have done

my best to extend my knowledge, assisted by a rather minute study of the

contemporary English heroic romance in prose and verse; and I believe I

may say that I do now really know the _Grand Cyrus_, though even now I

will again not say that I have read every one of its perhaps two million

words, or even the whole of every one of its more than 12,000 pages. In

regard to the _Astree_ I have been less fortunately situated; but "I

have been there and still would go."

[128] The above remarks are most emphatically _not_ intended to refer to

the work of Mr. Greg.

[129] The sheep, whether as a beast of most multitude or for more

recondite reasons, has, of course, the preference; but it may be

permissible to say that no guardian of animals is excluded. Goat-herds

in the Greek ran the shepherd hard; neat-herds and swine-herds abound

everywhere except, as concerns the last, in Jewry; even the goose-girl

figures, and has in Provencal at least a very pretty name--_auquiera_.

[130] The mediaeval _pastourelle_ is no doubt to some extent

conventional and "made in moulds." But it is by no means so unreal as

(whether Greek was so or not) Roman pastoral pretty certainly was, and

as modern has been beyond possibility of doubt. How good it could be,

without any convention at all, Henryson showed once for all in our own

language by _Robene and Makyne_.

[131] _Theagenes and Chariclea_ had preceded it by thirteen years,

though a fresh translation appeared in the same year, as did the first

of _Hysminias and Hysmine_. Achilles Tatius (_Cleitophon and Leucippe_)

had been partly done in 1545, but waited till 1568 for completion.

[132] _Op. cit. sup._

[133] They are almost always _Amours_ after their Greek prototypes,

sometimes simple, often qualified, and these most frequently by such

adjectives as "Infortunees et chastes," "Constantes et infortunees,"

"Chastes et heureuses," "Pudiques," etc. etc. Not a few are taken direct

from episodes of Ariosto or other elders; otherwise they are "loves" of

Laoniphile, Lozie, Poliphile and Mellonimphe, Pegase (who has somehow or

other become a nymph) and Leandre, Dachmion and Deflore (a rather

unlucky heroine-name), etc. etc. Their authors are nearly as numerous as

their titles; but the chief were a certain Sieur de Nerveze, whose

numerous individual efforts were collected more than once to the number

at least of a good baker's dozen, and a Sieur des Escuteaux, who had the

same fortune. Sometimes the Hellenism went rather to seed in such titles

as _Erocaligenese_, which supposed itself to be Greek for "Naissance

d'un bel amour." It is only (at least in England) in the very largest

libraries, perhaps in the British Museum alone, that there is any chance

of examining these things directly; some of them escaped even the mighty

hunt of M. Reynier himself. What the present writer has found is treated

shortly in the text.

[134] M. Reynier (most justly, but of course after many predecessors)

points out that the common filiation of these things on Marini and

Gongora is chronologically impossible. We could, equally of course,

supply older examples still in English; and persons of any reading can

carry the thing back through sixteenth- and fifteenth-century examples

to the Dark Ages and the late Greek classics--if no further.

[135] It is fair to say that the first is "make-weighted" with a

pastoral play entitled _Athlette_, from the heroine's rather curious

name.

[136] It _has_ two poems and some miscellanea. Something like this is

the case with another bookmaker of the class, Du Souhait.

[137] It may be childish, but the association in this group of

ladies--three of them bearing some of the greatest historic names of

France, and the fourth that of the admirable critic with no other

namesake of whom I ever met--seemed to me interesting. It is perhaps

worth adding that Isabel de Rochechouart seems to have been not merely

dedicatee but part author of the first tale.

[138] The habit is common with these authors.

[139] He gives more analysis than usual, but complains of the author's

"affectation and bad taste." I venture to think this relatively rather

harsh, though it is positively too true of the whole group.

[140] _La Vie et les Oeuvres de Honore d'Urfe._ Par le Chanoine O. C.

Reure, Paris, 1910.

[141] The Abbe Reure, to whom I owe my own knowledge of the translation

and dedication, says nothing more.

[142] M. Reynier, in the useful book so often quoted, has shown that, as

one would expect, this influence is not absent from the smaller French

love-novels which preceded the _Astree_; indeed, as we saw, it is

obvious, though in a form of more religiosity, as early as the

_Heptameron_. But it was not till the seventeenth century in France, or

till a little before it in some cases with us, that "Love in fantastic

triumph sat" between the shadowing wings of sensual and intellectual

passion.

[143] They had, indeed, neither luck nor distinction after Honore's

death: and the last of the family died, like others of the renegade

nobles of France, by his own hand, to escape the guillotine which he

himself had helped to establish.

[144] The more orthodox "laws of love" which Celadon puts up in his

"Temple of Astraea" are less amusing.

[145] He constantly plays this part of referee and moraliser. But he is

by no means exempt from the pleasing fever of the place, and some have

been profane enough to think his mistress, Diane, more attractive than

the divine Astree herself.

[146] Very delicate persons have been shocked by the advantages afforded

to Celadon in his disguise as the Druid's daughter, and the consequent

familiarity with the innocent unrecognising heroine. But _honi soit_

will cover them.

[147] There is plenty of this, including a regular siege of the capital,

Marcilly.

[148] The constant confusion, in these quasi-classical romances, of

masculine and feminine names is a rather curious feature. But the late

Sir W. Gilbert played some tricks of the kind in _Pygmalion and

Galatea_, and I remember an English novelist, with more pretensions to

scholarship than Gilbert, making the particularly unfortunate blunder of

attributing to Longus a book called "_Doris_ and Chloe."

[149] It is fair to say that Urfe has been praised for these historical

excursions or incursions of his.

[150] Its difficulty of access in the French has been noted. The English

translation may be less rare, but it is not a good one even of its kind.

And, in face of the most false and misleading statements, never more

frequent than at the present moment, about the efficacy of translations,

it may be well to insist on the truth. For science, history philosophy

(though in a descending ratio through these three) translations may

serve. The man who knows Greek or Latin or any other _literature_ only

through them knows next to nothing of that literature as such, and in

its literary quality. The version may be, as in the leading case of

FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam, literature itself of the highest class; but

it is quite other literature than the original, and is, in fact, a new

original itself. It may, while keeping closer, be as good as Catullus on

Sappho or as bad as Mr. Gladstone on Toplady in form; but the form, even

if copied, is always again other.

[151] Some reasons will be given later for taking this first--not the

least being the juxtaposition with the _Astree_. The actual order of the

chief "Heroic" authors and books is as follows: Gomberville, _La

Caritee_, 1622; _Polexandre_, 1632; _Citheree_, 1640-42. _La

Calprenede_, _Cassandre_, 1642; _Cleopatre_, 1648; _Faramond_, 1662.

Mlle. de Scudery, _Ibrahim_, 1641; _Artamene_, 1649; _Clelie_, 1656;

_Almahide_, 1660.

[152] Cousin relieved his work on "The True, the Good, and the

Beautiful" not only with elaborate disquisitions on the ladies of the

Fronde who, though certainly beautiful were not very very good, but with

a long exposition of French society as revealed in the _Grand Cyrus_

itself.

[153] Scudery bore, and evidently rejoiced in, this sounding title,

which can never have had a titular to whom it was more appropriate. The

place seems to have been an actual fortress, though a small one, near

Marseilles.

[154] I blushed for my namesake when I found, some time afterwards, that

he had copied this unusual (save in German) feminisation of the sun from

Gomberville (_v. inf._ p. 240).

[155] That is classical education: in comparison with which "all others

is cagmaggers."

[156] I have wavered a little between adopting French or Greek forms of

names. But as the authors are not consistent, and as some of their more

fanciful compounds classicalise badly, I have finally decided to stick

to the text in every case, except in those of historical persons where

French forms such as "Pisistrate" would jar.

[157] Like Robina in _Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy_.

[158] There are ten parts, each divisible into two _volumes_ and three

books. There is also a division at the end of the fifth "part" and the

tenth volume, the first five (ten) having apparently been issued

together. The "parts" are continuously paged--running never, I think, to

less than 1000 pages and more than once to a little over 1400.

[159] Drama may have done harm here, if those dramatic critics who say

that you must never "puzzle the audience" are right. The happy

novel-reader is of less captious mood and mould: he trusts his author

and hopes his author will pull him through.

[160] Some exception in the way of occasional flashes may be made for

two lively maids of honour to be mentioned later, Martesie and Doralise.

[161] There is an immense "throw-back" after the Sinope affair, in which

the previous history of Artamene and the circumstances of Mandane's

abduction are recounted up to date--I hope that some readers at least

will not have forgotten the introduction of Lancelot to Guinevere. We

have here the Middle Age and the _Grand Siecle_ like philippines in a

nutshell.

[162] To understand the account, it must be remembered that the combat

takes place in a position secluded from the two armies and strictly

forbidden to lookers-on; also that it is to be absolutely _a outrance_.

[163] It is not perhaps extravagant to suggest that Sir Walter had

something of this fight, as well as of the _Combat des Trente_, in his

mind when he composed the famous record of the Clan Chattan and Clan

Quhele battle.

[164] Praed's delightful Medora might have found the practice of the

_Grand Cyrus_ rather oppressive; but she would have thoroughly approved

its principles.

[165] He is King of Cappadocia now, Astyages being alive; and only

succeeds to Media later. It must never be forgotten that the

_Cyropaedia_, not Herodotus, is the chief authority relied upon by the

authors, though they sometimes mix the two.

[166] There is a very great physical resemblance between the two, and

this plays an important and repeated part in the book.

[167] The King of Assyria, the King of Pontus, and the later Aryante

(_v. inf._). The fourth is the "good Rival" Mazare, who, though he also

is at one time in possession of the prize, and though he never is weary

of "loving unloved," is too honourable a gentleman to force his

attentions on an unwilling mistress.

[168] It is probably, however, not quite fair to leave the reader, even

for a time, under the impression that it is _merely_ an excursion. Of

all the huge and numerous loop-lines, backwaters, ramifications,

reticulations, episodes, or whatever they may be called, there is hardly

one which has not a real connection with the general plot; and the

appearance of Thomyris here has such connection (as will be duly seen)

in a capital and vital degree.

[169] Some readers no doubt will not need to be reminded that this is

the original title of _The Marriage of Kitty_,--literally "gangway," but

in the sense of "makeshift" or "_locum tenens_."

[170] Cf. John Heywood's Interlude of _Love_. These stories also remind

one of the short romances noticed above.

[171] No gentleman, of course, could refuse a challenge pure and simple,

unless in very peculiar circumstances; but hardly Sir Lucius O'Trigger

or Captain M'Turk would oblige a friend to enter into this curious kind

of bargain.

[172] Another instance of the astonishing interweaving of the book

occurs here; for here is the first mention of Sappho and other persons

and things to be caught up sooner or later.

[173] Such knowledge as I have of the other romances of the "heroic"

group shows them to be, with the possible exception of those of La

Calprenede, inferior in this respect, even allowing for the influence of

the _Cyropaedia_.

[174] An extract may be worth giving in a note: "For the rest, if there

is anybody who is not acquainted enough with all my authors [_this is a

very delightful sweep over literature_] to know what was the Ring of

Gyges which is spoken of in this volume, let him not imagine that it is

Angelica's, with which I chose to adorn Artamene; and let him, on the

contrary, know that it was Ariosto who stole this famous ring which gave

his Paladins so much trouble; that _he_ took it from those great men

whom I am obliged to follow" [_a sweep of George's plumed hat in the

best Molieresque marquis style to Herodotus, Xenophon, and Cicero (who

comes in shortly) and the others_].

[175] The opening sentences of this _Histoire_ give a curious picture of

the etiquette of these spoken narrative episodes, which, from the

letters and memoirs of the time, we can see to have been actually

practised in the days of _Precieuse_ society. [_The story is not of

course delivered in the presence of Panthea herself; but she sends a

confidante, Pherenice, to tell it._] "They were no sooner in Araminta's

apartment than, after having made Cyrus sit down, and placed Pherenice

on a seat opposite to them, she begged her to begin her narrative and

not to hide from them, if it were possible, the smallest thought of

Abradates and Panthea. Accordingly this agreeable person, having made

them a compliment so as to ask their pardon for the scanty art she

brought to the story she was going to tell, actually began as follows:"

[176] Observe how _vague_ what follows is. A scholar and a _modiste_,

working in happiest conjunction, might possibly "create" the dress; but

as for the face it might be any one out of those on one hundred

chocolate-boxes.

[177] This passage gives a key to the degradation of the word "elegant."

It has kept the connotation of "grace," but lost that of "nobility."

[178] _Abstracts_ of all the principal members of this group and others

occurred in the _Bibliotheque Universelle des Romans_, which appeared as

a periodical at Paris in 1778. But what I do not know is whether any one

ever arranged an elaborate tabular syllabus of the book like that of

Burton's _Anatomy_. It would lend itself admirably to the process if any

one had time and inclination to do the thing.

[179] With the exception, already noted, of Urfe; and even he is far

below Donne.

[180] There were, though not many, actual instances of capital

punishment for disregard of the edicts against duelling, and

imprisonment was common. But the deterrent effect was very small.

Montmorency-Bouteville was the best-known victim.

[181] It is amusing, as one reads this, to remember Hume's essay in

which he lays stress on the _contrast_ between Greek and French ideas in

this very matter of the duel.

[182] A curious and rather doubtful position; well worth the

consideration of anybody who wishes to write the much-wanted _History

and Philosophy of Duelling_.

[183] The author uses "Prince," as indeed one might expect, rather in

the Continental than in the English way, and the persons who bear it are

not always sons of kings or members of reigning families. The two most

agreeable _quiproquos_ arising from this difference are probably the

fictitious unwillingness of the excellent Miss Higgs to descend from

"Princesse de Montcontour" to "Duchesse d'Ivry," and the, it is said,

historical contempt of a comparatively recent Papal dignitary for an

English Roman Catholic document which had no Princes among the

signatories.

[184] Nobody, unless I forget, has the wisdom to put the

counter-question, "Can you ever cease loving if you have once really

loved?" which is to be carefully distinguished from a third, "Can you

love more than once?" But there are more approaches to these _arcana_ in

the _Astree_ than in Mlle. de Scudery.

[185] A very nice phrase.

[186] He had refused to cross swords with her, and had lowered his own

in salute.

[187] Compare the not quite so ingenious adjustment of the intended

burning of Croesus.

[188] _Clelie_ is about as bad in this respect, _v. inf._: the others

less so.

[189] I have said that you _can_ do this with the _Astree_, and that

this makes for superiority in it: but there also I think absolutely

continuous reading of the whole would become "collar-work."

[190] That is to say, several weeks occupied in the manner above

indicated. You may sometimes read two of the volumes in a day, but much

oftener you will find one enough; in the actual process for the present

history some intervals must be allowed for digestion and _precis_; and,

as above remarked, if other forms of "cheerfulness," in Dr. Johnson's

friend Mr. Edwards's phrase, do not "break in" of themselves, you must

make them, to keep any freshness in the task. I fancy the twenty volumes

were, if not "my _sole_ occupation" (like that more cheerful and

charitable one of the head-waiter at Limmer's), my main one for nearly

twice twenty days.

[191] In this respect the remarks above extend backwards to the

_Astree_, and even to some of the smaller and earlier novels mentioned

in connection with it. But the "Heroics," especially Mlle. de Scudery,

_modernise_ the treatment not inconsiderably.

[192] Achilles Tatius and the author of _Hysminias and Hysmine_ come

nearest. But the first is too ancient and the last too modern.

[193] We have indeed endeavoured to discover a "form" of the greatest

and best kind in the Arthurian, but it has been acknowledged that it may

not have been deliberately reached--or approached--by even a single

artist, and that, if it was, the identity of that artist is not quite

certain.

[194] The intolerance of anything but scraps is one of the numerous arms

and legs of the twentieth century Baal. There are some who have not

bowed down to it.

[195] For Soliman is not indisposed to fall in love with his illustrious

Bassa's beloved.

[196] At the close of _Old Mortality_.

[197] One is lost if one begins quoting from these books. But there is

another passage at the end of the same volume worth glancing at for its

oddity. It is an elaborate chronological "checking" of the age of the

different characters; and, odd as it is, one cannot help remembering

that not a few authors from Walter Map (or whoever it was) to Thackeray

might have been none the worse for similar calculations.

[198] It is not, I hope, frivolous or pusillanimous, but merely honest,

to add that, as I have spent much less time on _Clelie_ than on the

other book, it has had less opportunity of boring me.

[199] Cf. the _Astree_ as noted above.

[200] He also wrote several plays.

[201] This would supply the ghost of Varus with a crushing answer to

"Give me back my legions!" in such form as "Why did you send me with

them?"

[202] At another time there might have been a little gentle satire in

this, but hardly then.

[203] It would seem, however, that the Scuderys were not originally

Norman.

[204] Chateaubriand hardly counts in strictness.

[205] Although some say that almost every one of the numerous _personae_

of the _Astree_ had a live original.

[206] These books, having been constantly referred to in this fashion,

offer a good many traps, into some of which I have fallen in the past,

and may have done so even now. For instance, Koerting rightly points out

that almost every one calls this "_La_ Jeune Alcidiane," whereas A. is

the hero, who bears his mother's name.

[207] I had made this remark before I knew that Koerting had anticipated

it.

[208] The more recent books which refer to him, and (I think) the

British Museum Catalogue, drop this addition. But he was admittedly of

the Pontcarre family.

[209] Neither the original, however, nor this revision seems to have

enjoyed the further honour of a place in the British Museum. Other books

of his which at least sound novelish were _Darie_, _Aristandre_,

_Diotrephe_, _Cleoreste_ (of which as well as of _Palombe_ analyses may

be found in Koerting). The last would seem to be the most interesting.

But in the bibliography of the Bishop's writings there are at least a

dozen more titles of the same kind.

[210] Cf. the "self-precipitation" of Celadon. Perhaps no class of

writers has ever practised "imitation," in the wrong sense, more than

these "heroic" romancers.

[211] I am glad to find the high authority of my friend Sir Sidney

Colvin on my side here as to the wider position--though he tells me that

he was not, when he read _Endimion_, conscious of any positive

indebtedness on Keats' part.

[212] _V. sup._ p. 177, note 3.

[213] Gombauld seems to have been a devotee of both Queens: and

commentators will have it that this whole book is courtship as well as

courtiership in disguise.

[214] A kind of intermediary nymph--an enchantress indeed--who has

assisted and advised him in his quests for the goddess.

[215] Emile Magne, _Mme. de V._, Paris, 1907.

[216] This sometimes causes positive obscurity as to fact. Thus it is

impossible to make out from M. Magne whether Hortense, in her last days,

actually married the cousin with whom she had been intimate in youth, or

merely lived with him.

[217] By M. H. E. Chatenet, Paris, 1911.

[218] There is a little in the verse, most of which belongs to the

"flying" kind so common in the century.

[219] _V. inf._ upon it.

[220] His own admirable introduction to Perrault in the Clarendon Press

series will, as far as our subject is directly concerned, supply

whatever a reader, within reason further curious, can want: and his

well-known rainbow series of Fairy Books will give infinite

illustration.

[221] The longest of all, in the useful collection referred to in the

text, are the _Oiseau Bleu_ and the charming _Biche au Bois_, each of

which runs to nearly sixty pages. But both, though very agreeable, are

distinctly "sophisticated," and for that very reason useful as gangways,

as it were, from the simpler fairy tale to the complete novel.

[222] Enchanters, ogres, etc. "count" as fairies.

[223] Apuleius, who has a good deal of the "fairy" element in him, was

naturally drawn upon in this group. The _Psyche_ indebtedness reappears,

with frank acknowledgment, in _Serpentin Vert_.

[224] If Perrault really wrote this, the Muses, rewarding him elsewhere

for the good things he said in "The Quarrel," must have punished him

here for the silly ones. It has, in fact, most of the faults which

_neo_-classicism attributed to its opposite.

[225] For a spoiling of this delightful story _v. inf._ on the

_Cabinet_.

[226] Its full title, "ou Collection Choisie des C. des F. _et autres

Contes Merveilleux_," should in justice be remembered, when one feels

inclined to grumble at some of the contents.

[227] This indeed was the case, in one or other kind of longer fiction

writing, with most of the authors to be mentioned. The total of this in

the French eighteenth century was enormous.

[228] She is even preceded by a Mme. de Murat, a friend of Mme. de

Parabere, but a respectable fairy-tale writer. It does not seem

necessary, according to the plan of this book, to give many particulars

about these writers; for it is their writings, not themselves, that our

subject regards. The curious may be referred to Walckenaer on the Fairy

Tale in general, and Honore Bonhomme on the _Cabinet_ in particular, as

well as (_v. inf._) to the thirty-seventh volume of the collection

itself.

[229] There is sometimes alliance and sometimes jealousy on this

subject. In one tale the "Comte de Gabalis" is solemnly "had up," tried,

and condemned as an impostor.

[230] _Ricdin-Ricdon_, one of those which pass between Coeur de Lion and

Blondel, is of the same kind, is also good, and is longer.

[231] She seems, however (see vol. 37 as above), to have been a real

person.

[232] The would-be anonymous compiler (he was really Gueulette, on whom

_v. inf._) of this and the other collections now to be noticed, when

acknowledging his sufficiently evident _supercherie_ and some of his

indebtednesses (_e.g._ to Straparola), defends this on Edgeworthian

principles. But though it is quite true that a healthy curiosity as to

such things may be aroused by tales, it should be left to satisfy

itself, not forestalled and spoilt and stunted by immediate information.

[233] The once very popular _Tales of the Genii_ (_v. inf._) which are

often referred to by Scott and other men of his generation, seem to have

dropped out of notice comparatively. We shall meet them here in French.

[234] The late Mr. Henley was at one time much interested in this point,

and consulted me about it. But I could tell him nothing; and I do not

know whether he ever satisfied himself on the subject. Lesage _is_ said

(though I am not sure that the evidence goes beyond _on dit_) to have

revised the work of Petis de La Croix in the _Days_; and some of his own

certainly corresponds to it.

[235] Or, as it was once put, with easy epigram, when the artificial

fairy tale is not dreadfully improper it is apt to be dreadfully proper.

[236] Nothing suits the entire group better than the reply of the

ferocious and sleepless but not unintelligent Sultan Hudgiadge, in the

_Nouveaux Contes Orientaux_, when his little benefactress Moradbak says

that she will have the honour to-morrow of telling him a _histoire

Mongole_. "Le pays n'y fait rien," says he. And it doesn't.

[237] All of them, be it remembered, the work of Gueulette (_v. inf._).

[238] The recently recovered "episodes" of this are rather more like the

_Cabinet_ stories than _Vathek_ itself; and perhaps a sense of this may

have been part of the reason why Beckford never published them.

[239] He came to ask, or rather demand, Zibeline's hand for his master:

and the fairy made his magnificence appear rags and rubbish.

[240] Mr. Toots's "I'm a-a-fraid you must have got very wet." When

Courtebotte returns from his expedition, across six months of snow, to

the Ice Mountain on the top of which rests Zibeline's heart, "many

thousand persons" ask him, "_Vous avez donc eu bien froid?_"

[241] She is also said to have been a "love-child" of no less a father

than Prince Eugene.

[242] Anybody who is curious as to this should look up the matter, as

may be done most conveniently in an _excursus_ of Napier's edition,

where my "friend of" [more than] "forty years," the late Mr. Mowbray

Morris, in a note to his own admirable one-volume "Globe" issue, thought

that Macaulay was "proved to be absolutely right." Morris, though his

published and signed writings were few, and though he pushed to its very

furthest the hatred of personal advertisement natural to most English

"_gentlemen_ of the press," was a man of the world and of letters in

most unusual combination; of a true Augustan taste both in criticism and

in composition; of wit and of _savoir vivre_ such as few possess. But,

like all men who are good for anything, he had some crazes: and one of

them was Macaulay. I own that I do not think all the honours were on T.

B. M.'s side in this mellay: but this is not the place to reason out the

matter. What is quite certain is that in this long-winded and mostly

trivial performance there is a great deal of intended, or at least

suggested, political satire. But Johnson, though he might well think

little of _Titi_, need not have despised the whole _Cabinet_ (or as he

calls it, perhaps using the real title of another issue,

_Bibliotheque_), and would not on another occasion. Indeed the

diary-notes in which the thing occurs are too much in shorthand to be

trustworthy texts.

[243] Pierre Francois Godard de Beauchamps seems to have been another

fair example of the half-scholarly bookmakers of the eighteenth century.

He wrote a few light plays and some serious _Recherches sur les Theatres

de France_ which are said to have merit. He translated the late and

coxcombical but not uninteresting Greek prose romance of _Hysminias and

Hysmine_, as well as that painful verse-novel, the _Rhodanthe and

Dosicles_ of Theodoras Prodromus: and he composed, under a pseudonym, of

course, a naughty _Histoire du Prince Apprius_ to match his good

_Funestine_. The contrasted ways and works of such bookmakers at various

times would make a not uninteresting essay of the Hayward type.

[244] "Engageant," "Adresse," "Parlepeu," etc. The _Avertissement de

l'Auteur_ is possibly a joke, but more probably an awkward and miss-fire

_supercherie_ revealing the usual ignorance of the time as to matters

mediaeval. "Alienore" (though it would be better without the final _e_)

is a pretty as well as historic form of one of the most beautiful and

protean of girl's names: but how did her father, a "seigneur _anglais_,"

come to be called "Rivalon Murmasson"? And did they know much about

Arabia Felix in Brittany when "Daniel Dremruz" reigned there between

A.D. 680 and 720? Gueulette himself was a barrister and

Procureur-Substitut at the Chatelet. He seems to have imitated Hamilton,

to whom the editors of the Cabinet rather idly think him "equal,"

though, inconsistently, they admit that Hamilton "stands alone" and

Gueulette does not. On the other hand, they charge Voltaire with

actually "tracing" over Gueulette. ("_Zadig_ est calque sur les _Soirees

Bretonnes_.") This is again an exaggeration; but Gueulette had,

undoubtedly, a pleasant and exceedingly fertile fancy, and a good knack

of narrative.

[245] The best perhaps is of a certain peppery Breton, Saint-Foix, who

was successively a mousquetaire, a lieutenant of cavalry, aide-de-camp

to "Broglie the War-god," and a long-lived _litterateur_ in Paris. M. de

Saint-Foix picked a quarrel in the _foyer_ of the opera with an unknown

country gentleman, as it seemed, and "gave him a rendezvous." But the

other party replied coolly that it "was his custom" to be called on if

people had business with him, and gave his address. Saint-Foix goes next

morning, and is received with the utmost politeness and asked to

breakfast. "That's not the question," says the indignant Breton. "Let us

go out." "I never go out without breakfasting; _it is my custom_," says

the provincial, and does as he says, politely repeating invitations from

time to time to his fretting adversary. At last they do go out, to

Saint-Foix's great relief; but they pass a _cafe_, and it is once more

the stranger's sacred custom to play a game of chess or draughts after

breakfast. The same thing happens with a "turn" in the Tuileries, at

which Saint-Foix does not fume quite so much, because it is on the way

to the Champs Elysees, where fighting is possible. The "turn" achieved,

he himself proposes to adjourn there. "What for?" says the stranger

innocently. "What _for_? A pretty question _pardieu_! To fight, of

course! Have you forgotten it?" "_Fight!_ Why, sir, what are you

thinking of? What would people say of me? A magistrate, a treasurer of

France, put sword in hand? They would take us for a couple of fools."

Which argument being unanswerable, according to the etiquette of the

time, Saint-Foix leaves the dignitary--who himself takes good care to

tell the story. It must be remembered--first that no actual _challenge_

had passed, merely an ambiguous demand for addresses; secondly, that the

treasurer, as the superior by far in rank, had a right to suppose

himself known to his inferiors; and thirdly, that to challenge a

"magistrate" was in France equivalent to being, in the words of a

lampoon quoted by Macaulay, "'Gainst ladies and bishops excessively

valiant" in England.

[246] Although there is a good deal of merit in some of these tales,

none of them approaches the charming _Diable Amoureux_ which Cazotte

produced in 1772, twenty years before his famous and tragical death

after once escaping the Revolutionary fangs. This little story, which is

at least as much of a fairy tale as many things "cabinetted," would be

nearly perfect if Cazotte had not unluckily botched it with a double

ending, neither of the actual closes being quite satisfactory. If, in

one of them, he had had the pluck to stop at the outcry of the succubus

Biondetta when she has at last attained her object,

"Je suis le diable! mon cher Alvare, je suis le diable!"

and let the rest be "wrop in mystery," it would probably have been the

best way. But the bulk of the book is beyond improvement: and there is a

fluid grace about the autobiographical _recit_ which is very rare

indeed, at least in French, except in the unfortunate Gerard de Nerval,

who was akin to Cazotte in many ways, and actually edited him. A very

carping critic may object to the not obvious nor afterwards explained

interposition of a pretty little spaniel between the original diabolic

avatar of the hideous camel's head and the subsequent incarnation of the

beautiful Biondetto-Biondetta; especially as the later employment of

another dog, to prevent Alvare's succumbing to temptation earlier than

he did, is confusing. But this would be "seeking a knot in a reed."

Perhaps the greatest merit of the story, next to the pure tale-telling

charm above noted, is the singular taste and skill with which Biondetta,

except for her repugnance to the marriage ceremony, is prevented from

showing the slightest diabolic character during her long cohabitation

with Alvare, and her very "comingnesses" are arranged so as to give the

idea, not in the least of a temptress, but of an extra-innocent but

quite natural _ingenue_. Monk Lewis, of course, knew Cazotte, but he has

coarsened his original woefully. It may perhaps be added that the first

illustrations, reproduced in Gerard's edition as curiosities, are such

in the highest degree. They are ushered with an ironic Preface: and they

sometimes make one rub one's eyes and wonder whether Futurism and Cubism

are not, like so many other things, merely recooked cabbage.