the Greek, it was more a case of general
imitation than specific endeavour; the Sensibility school was very
limited and chiefly attended to tricks of manner; and the "Romantic
vague" was never vaguer than in the vast and rather formless, though
magnificent and delightful, novel-work started by Nodier, Merimee,
Vigny, and Hugo. The Naturalists, on the other hand, had a deliberate
idea of revolutionising the novel--of abolishing old things and creating
new. They could not, and did not, succeed: but their scheme, as well as
its results, may claim consideration.

[456] To which a brief consideration of the curious fancy of some French
critics that there is something "classical" about Naturalism may be
specially relegated.

[457] Merimee, though after his fashion making no fuss about it, was
also an early virtuoso in this kind; and one of his letters contains an
excellent example of the quiet cynicism in which he excelled. Some
ladies had asked to see his collection, and he had very properly warned
them that the "curios" of that ingenious and valiant nation were
sometimes "curious" in a special sense, and had offered to "select."
"Elles ont tout vu," he adds simply, and one hopes his correspondent (I
forgot whether it was one of the _Inconnues_ or Madame de Montijo)
appreciated the Mount-Everest-like Laconism.

[458] The banal phrase has been framed in the amber of "Theo's" verse,
and so debanalised.

[459] The first book of theirs, or rather of Edmond's, though it bore
both names, that I read, and the second French book I ever reviewed, was
the mainly artistic _Gavarni_ of 1873. One has a human weakness in such
cases, but I think one might not have been wholly well disposed to the
author from it.

[460] Pepys had nothing that could be called _bad_ blood. Horace perhaps
had a little, but it was sweet and childlike compared to the
"acrid-quack" fluid of Edmond de Goncourt's veins and heart. Probably
several people have seen in M. de Goncourt the suggestion of an
_un_-Puritan Malvolio.

[461] Not, however, in the second case, by Sainte-Beuve, whose
lukewarmness Edmond--a "Sensitive Plant" in this way if hardly in
others--never forgave.

[462] She served them for a very long period without giving them any
apparent cause for complaint. They only found out her delinquencies
after her death, or in her last illness--I forget which. Probably
nothing could better show "the nature of the animals" than this
_post-mortem_ grub