actually
reprinting in full an article of Veuillot's (by no means
uncomplimentary) on himself, as a prelude in the book last mentioned,
and adding a long reply. The proceeding was honest, but rather suicidal.
One may not wholly admire the famous editor of the _Univers_.[441] But
nothing could better throw up his clear, vigorous, classical French and
trenchant logic, than the verbose and ambaginous preciousness, and the
cabbage-stick cudgel-play, of Cladel.[442]

[Sidenote: Barbey d'Aurevilly--his criticism of novels.]

Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, also a favourite of Baudelaire's, is a writer
of an altogether greater clan--indeed one of those who come short but a
little, and one does not quite know how, of individual greatness.
Something has been said of his criticism, but a volume of it which was
not within my reach when I wrote what is there quoted, _Le Roman
Contemporain_, is a closer introduction to a notice of him as a
novelist. As of all his work it may be said of this, that anybody who
does not know the subjects will probably go away with a wrong idea of
them, but that anybody who does know them will receive some very
valuable cross-lights. The book consists[443] of a belittlement,
slightly redressed at the end, of Feuillet as a feeble person and an
impertinent patroniser of religion; of a rather "magpie" survey of the
Goncourts; of a violent and quite blind attack on Flaubert (the worst
criticism of Barbey's that I have ever read); of a somewhat unexpectedly
appreciative notice of Daudet; of an almost obligatory panegyric of
Fabre; of another _ereintement_, at great length, of Zola; and of
shorter articles, again "magpied" of praise and blame, on MM. Richepin,
Catulle Mendes, and Huysmans.[444]

[Sidenote: His novels themselves--_Les Diaboliques_ and others.]

[Sidenote: His merits.]

All this is interesting, but I fear it confirms a variation of the title
of a famous Elizabethan play--"Novelists beware novelists." Poets have a
worse reputation in this way, or course; but, I think, unjustly. Perhaps
the reason is that the quality of poetry is more _definite_, if not more
definable, than that of prose fiction, or else that poets are more
really sure of themselves. Barbey d'Aurevilly[445] had an apparently
undoubting mind, but perhaps there were unacknowledged doubts, which
transformed themselves into jealousies, in his heart of hearts. For
myself, I sympathise with his political and religious (if not exactly
w