nce both as regards manner and matter. But though Dickens
was then widely read and much admired in France, plagiarism is out of
the question. If there is a little of Dickens about 'Le Petit Chose,'
there is a great deal more of Daudet himself in it. Young Eyssette, the
hero of the novel, starts in life as Daudet had done and at the same
period of life, in the quality of an usher at a small provincial
college. Whether we take it as a fiction, with its innumerable bits of
delicate humor, lovely descriptions of places and glimpses of characters
in humble life, or whether we accept it as an autobiography which is
likely to bring us into closer acquaintance with the inner soul of a
great man, the first part is delightful reading. But we lose sight of
him through all the adventures, at once wild and commonplace, which are
crowding in the second part, to culminate into the most unconvincing
denouement. Even when speaking of himself, Daudet is sometimes at a
disadvantage, perhaps because, as he justly observed, "it is too early
at twenty-five to comment upon one's own past career." Only the old man
is able to look at his former self through the distance of years and to
see it as it stood once, in its true light and with its real
proportions.

'Tartarin of Tarascon' saw the light for the first time in 1872. Strange
to say, the readers of the Petit Moniteur, to whom it was first offered
in a serial form, did not like it. In consequence of their marked
disapproval, the publication had to be abandoned and was then resumed
through the columns of another newspaper. This time the mistake was
entirely on the side of the public. For--apart from the fact that the
immortal Tartarin was not yet Tartarin, but answered to the much less
typical name of Chapatin--the general outlines of the character were
already visible in all their distinctness from the beginning, as all
those who have read the introductory chapters will readily admit. And
the same lines were to be followed with an undeviating fixity of
artistic purpose and with unfailing verve and spirit to the last. 'The
Prodigious Adventures of Tartarin,' 'Tartarin on the Alps,' and
'Port-Tarascon,' form a trilogy; and I know of no other example in
modern French literature of so long and so well sustained a joke. How is
it then that we never grow tired of Tartarin? It is probably because
beneath the surface of Daudet's playful absurdity there underlies a rich
substratum of good common-sen