Chapter 22

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.