h it. In regard to Dickens, the resemblance is more
pervading, but more problematical. "Boz" had been earlier, and has been
always, popular in France. _L'excentricite anglaise_ warranted, if it
did not quite make intelligible, his extravaganza; his semi-republican
sentimentalism suited one side of the French temperament, etc. etc.
Moreover, Daudet had actually, in his own youth, passed through
experiences not entirely unlike those of David Copperfield and Charles
Dickens himself, while perhaps the records of the elder novelist were
not unknown to the younger. In judging men of letters as shown in their
works, however, a sort of "_cadi_-justice"--a counter-valuation of
merits and faults--is allowable. I cannot forgive Daudet his inveterate
personality: I can bid him sit down quickly and write off his
plagiarism--or most of it--without feeling the withers of my judicial
conscience in the very least wrung. For if he did not, as others have
done, make what he stole entirely his own, he had, _of_ his own, very
considerable property in rather unusually various kinds.

[Sidenote: His merits.]

The charm of his short Tales, whether in the _Lettres de Mon Moulin_ or
in collections assuming the definite title, is undeniable. The
satiric-pathetic--a not very common and very difficult kind--has few
better representatives than _La Chevre de M. Seguin_, and the purely
comic stories are thoroughly "rejoicing." _Tartarin_, in his original
appearances, "touches the spot," "carries off all the point" in a manner
suggestive at once of Horace and Homocea; and though, as was almost
inevitable, its sequels are less effective, one would have been very
glad indeed of them if they had had no forerunner. In almost all the
books--_Robert Helmont_, by the way, though not yet mentioned, has some
strong partisans--the grip of actual modern society, which is the boast
of the later, as opposed to the earlier, nineteenth-century novel,
cannot be missed. Even those who are most disgusted by the personalities
cannot deny the power of the satiric presentation from _Le Nabab_ to
_Numa Roumestan_. _Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine_ is, quite independently
of the definite borrowing from us, more like an English novel, in some
respects, than almost any other French one known to me up to its date;
and I have found persons, not in the least sentimentalists and very
widely read in novels both English and French, who were absolutely
enthusiastic about _Jack_.

_L'