red to, not repeated. But it is
fair to say that some good judges plead for "warning off" instead of
"inculcation."

[515] There are some, but they are very few.

[516] See Conclusion. After the above notice of Maupassant was, in its
reconstituted form, entirely completed, there came into my hands a long
and careful paper on the novelist's Romanticism, published by Mr. Oliver
H. Moore in the Transactions of the American Modern Language Association
for March 1918. Those who are curious as to French opinion of him, and
especially as to the strange superstition of his "classicism" (see
Conclusion again), will find large extracts and references on this
subject given by Mr. Moore, who promises further discussion.

[517] One never knows what is necessary or not in the way of
explanation. But perhaps it is wiser to say that I am quite aware that,
besides writing _votre_, not "notre," Baudelaire had originally written
"ce long hurlement" before the immense improvement in the text, and that
original "Light-houses" were painters.

[518] One slight alteration may seem almost to justify Belot's criticism
of life: "Uncomfortable herself, she thought it natural to make others
uncomfortable." There is certainly no want of psychological observation
_there_.

CHAPTER XIV

OTHER NOVELISTS OF 1870-1900

[Sidenote: The last stage.]

The remaining novelists of the Third Republic, apart from the survivors
of the Second Empire and the Naturalist School, need not occupy us very
long, but must have some space. There would be no difficulty on my part
in writing a volume on them, for during half the time I had to produce
an article on new French books, including novels, every month,[519] and
during no small part of the rest, I did similar work on a smaller and
less regular scale, reading also a great deal for my own purposes. But
acknowledging, as I have elsewhere done, the difficulty of equating
judgment of contemporary and non-contemporary work exactly, I think I
shall hardly be doing the new writers of this time injustice if I say
that no one, except some excluded by our specifications as living, could
put in any pretensions to be rated on level with the greater novelists
from Lesage to Maupassant. There are those, of course, who would protest
in favour of M. Ferdinand Fabre, and yet others would "throw for" M.
Andre Theuriet, both of whom shall have due honour. I cannot wholly
agree with them. But both of them, as well as, f