FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79  
80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   >>   >|  
importance to literature as literature. But all have their importance to literary--and especially departmental-literary--history, in ways which it is hoped presently to show: and there is still amusement in some. The chief, though not the only, names that require notice here are those of Mesdames de Montolieu and (again) de Genlis, of Ducray-Duminil, born almost as early as Pigault-Lebrun, even earlier a novelist, and yoked with him by Victor Hugo in respect of his novel _Lolotte et Fanfan_ in the sneer noted in the last volume;[37] the _other_ Ducange, again as much "other" as the other Moliere;[38] the Vicomte d'Arlincourt; and--a comparative (if, according to some, blackish) swan among these not quite positive geese--Paul de Kock. The eldest put in his work before the Revolution and the youngest before Waterloo, but the most prolific time of all was that of the first two or three decades of the century with which we are dealing. With these, but not of them--a producer at last of real "letters" and more than any one else except Chateaubriand (more "intensively" perhaps even than he was) a pioneer of Romanticism--comes Charles Nodier. [Sidenote: Paul de Kock.] Major Pendennis, in a passage which will probably, at least in England, preserve the name of the author mentioned long after his own works are even more forgotten with us than they are at present, allowed, when disparaging novels generally, and wondering how his nephew could have got so much money for one, that Paul de Kock "certainly made him laugh." In his own country he had an enormous vogue, till the far greater literary powers and the wider range of the school of 1830 put the times out of joint for him, and even much later. He actually survived the Terrible Year: but something like a lustrum earlier, when running over a not small collection of cheap novels in a French country inn, I do not remember coming across anything of his. And he had long been classed as "not a serious person" (which, indeed, he certainly was not) by French criticism, not merely of the most academic sort, but of all decidedly literary kinds. People allowed him _entrain_, a word even more difficult than _verve_ to English exactly, though "go" does in a rough sort of way for both. They were of course not very much shocked at his indecorums, which sometimes gave occasion for not bad jokes.[39] But if any foreigner made any great case of him they would probably have looked, if they d
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79  
80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

literary

 

earlier

 

French

 
country
 
novels
 

allowed

 
importance
 

literature

 

disparaging

 

present


enormous
 

Terrible

 

survived

 

greater

 

powers

 
wondering
 

generally

 

school

 

nephew

 
difficult

English

 
shocked
 

foreigner

 

looked

 

indecorums

 

occasion

 

entrain

 
remember
 

coming

 

running


lustrum

 

collection

 

academic

 

decidedly

 

People

 

criticism

 

classed

 

person

 

Victor

 

respect


Lolotte

 

novelist

 

Pigault

 

Lebrun

 

Fanfan

 

Vicomte

 
Arlincourt
 

comparative

 

Moliere

 

Ducange