FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   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  
105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   >>   >|  
to the end of the book, hides her trouble in the bosom of her aunt while Dominique presses her hand to his heart (the aunt seems here superfluous), etc., etc. Altogether the book is, to the historian, a not unsatisfactory one, and joins its evidence to that of Pigault as showing that new sources of interest and new ways of dealing with them are being asked for and found. In filling up the map of general novel-development and admitting English examples, we may assign to its author a place between Mrs. Radcliffe and the _Family Herald_: confining ourselves to French only, he has again, like Pigault, something of the credit of making a new start. He may appeal to the taste of the vulgar (which is not quite the same sort of thing as "a vulgar taste"), but he sees that the novel is capable of providing general pastime, and he does his best to make it do so. [Sidenote: V. Ducange.] [Sidenote: _L'Artiste et le Soldat._] "The other Ducange," whose patronymic appears to have been Brahain, and who perhaps took the name of the great scholar[69] for the sake of contrast, was even more famous for his melodramas[70] than for his fiction, one piece especially, "Trente Ans, ou La Vie d'un Joueur," having been among the triumphs of the Porte-Saint-Martin and of Frederick Lemaitre. As a novelist he did not write for children like Ducray-Duminil, and one of his novels contains a boastful preface scoffing at and glorying in the accusations of impropriety brought against him. I have found nothing very shocking in those books of his which I have read, and I certainly have not thought it necessary to extend my acquaintance in search of it. He seems to have been a quarrelsome sort of person, for he got into trouble not only with the moralists, not only with the Restoration government, but with the Academy, which he attacked; and he is rather fond of "scratchy" references such as "On peut meriter encore quelque interet sans etre un Amadis, un Vic-van-Vor [poor Fergus!], un Han, ou un Vampire." But his intrinsic merit as a novelist did not at first seem to me great. A book worse _charpente_ than that just quoted from, _L'Artiste et le Soldat_, I have seldom read. The first of its five volumes is entirely occupied with the story (not badly, though much too voluminously told) of a captain who has lost his leg at Waterloo, and though tended by a pretty and charming daughter, is in great straits till helped by a mysterious Black Nun, who love
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   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  
105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

vulgar

 

novelist

 

Soldat

 
Artiste
 
general
 

Sidenote

 
Ducange
 

trouble

 

Pigault

 

straits


acquaintance
 

thought

 

search

 

extend

 

daughter

 
moralists
 

Restoration

 

government

 

pretty

 
charming

person

 
quarrelsome
 

shocking

 

boastful

 

preface

 

scoffing

 

glorying

 
novels
 

Duminil

 

children


Ducray

 

accusations

 

helped

 

tended

 

mysterious

 

impropriety

 

brought

 

Fergus

 

Vampire

 

intrinsic


occupied

 

quoted

 

charpente

 

volumes

 

Amadis

 

scratchy

 
references
 

captain

 

seldom

 

Academy