th scarcely more than three thousand a year.

[48] Paul's scholarship was very rudimentary, as is shown in not a few
scraps of ungrammatical Latin: he never, I think, ventures on Greek. But
whether he was the first to _estropier_ the not ugly form "_Cleodora_,"
I know not. Perhaps he muddled it with "Clotilde."

[49] This cult of the widow might form the subject of a not
uninteresting excursus if we were not confining ourselves to the
literary sides of our matter. It has been noticed before (Vol. I. p.
368), and forms one of the most curious differences between the two
countries. For, putting Mr. Weller out of the question, I have known far
from sentimental critics who thought Trollope's best book by no means
improved by the previous experience of Eleanor Bold. Cherolatry in
France, however, is not really old: it hardly appears before the
eighteenth century. It may be partly due to a more or less conscious
idea that perhaps the lady may have got over the obligatory adultery at
the expense of her "dear first" and may not think it necessary to
repeat. A sort of "measles over."

[50] He also improves his neglected education in a manner not
unsuggestive of Prince Giglio. In fact, I fancy there is a good deal of
half-latent parody of Paul in Thackeray.

[51] There might have been fifteen or fifty, for the book is more a
sequence of scenes than a schematic composition: for which reason the
above account of it may seem somewhat _decousu_.

[52] I think I have commented elsewhere on the difficulty of villains.
It was agreeable to find confirmation, when this book was already in the
printer's hands, given at an exemption tribunal by a theatrical manager.
For six weeks, he said, he had advertised and done everything possible
to supply the place of a good villain, with no success. And your bad
stage villain _may_ be comic: while your bad novel villain is only a
bore.

[53] Frederique, Madame Dauberny (who has, without legal sanction,
relieved herself of a loathsome creature whom she has married, and lives
a free though not at all immoral life), was not very easy to do, and is
very well done.

[54] This, which is short and thoroughly lively, is, I imagine, the
latest of Paul's good books. It is indeed so late that instead of the
_jupons_, striped and black and white, of which Georgette has made
irreproachable but profitable use, she appears at the _denouement_ in a
crinoline!

[55] The most interesting thing in it is a lo