no way "dodgy" or
"hedgy" expression of the two sides of the French character. For
everybody ought to know that the complaint of Dickens's "Mr. the
Englishman" as to the French being "so d--d sentimental" is at least as
well justified as Mr. Arnold's disapproval of their "worship of
Lubricity." I suppose there are some people who would prefer the
sentiment and are others who would choose the "tum-te-dy," while yet a
third set might find each a disagreeable alternative to the other. For
myself, without considering so curiously, I can very frankly enjoy the
best of both. The opening story of the earlier and, I think, more
popular book, "Mon Premier Reveillon," is not characteristic. It might
have been written by almost anybody, and is in substance a softened and
genteel version of the story of Miss Jemima Ivins, and her luckless (but
there virtuous) suitor, in the "Boz" _Sketches_. "L'Ame en Peine," which
follows, strikes the peculiar Drozian note for the first time; and very
pleasant is the painting of the struggles of a pious youth--pious and
pudibund to a quite miraculous extent for a French _collegien_ of good
family--with the temptations of a beautiful Marquise and cousin who,
arrayed in an ultra-Second-Empire bathing-costume, insists on his
bathing with her. "Tout le Reste de Madame de K." may a little remind an
English reader of the venerable chestnut about the Bishop and the
housemaid's knee; but the application is different. There is nothing
wicked in it, but it contains some of the touches of varying estimate
of "good form" in different countries which make the comparative reading
of English and French novels so interesting. "Souvenirs de Careme" is
(or rather are, for the piece is subdivided) the longest of several bits
of Voltairianism, sometimes very funny and seldom offensive. But, alas!
one cannot go through them all. The most remarkable exercise in the
curious combination or contrast noticed above is afforded by _Une Nuit
de Noce_ and _Le Cahier Bleu_ (tricks of ingeniously "passed-off"
naughtiness which need not shock anybody), combined with the charming
and pathetic "Omelette" which opens the second book, and which gives the
happy progress and the sad termination of the union so merrily begun.
All are drawn with equal skill and with no real bad taste. In one or two
articles of both books the _gauloiserie_ broadens and coarsens, while in
the more purely "Bebe" sections of the first the sentimentality may s