ople
have taken as the author's masterpiece, I apologise. But if I spoke more
seriously I should also speak more severely.

[191] He is a frantic devotee of the _Astree_, and George Sand brings in
a good deal about the most agreeable book, without, however, showing
very intimate or accurate knowledge of it.

[192] The Spaniard (rather his servant with his connivance) has murdered
and robbed Bois-Dore's brother.

[193] He is also very handsome, and so makes up for the plurality of the
title.

[194] Alvimar lies dying for hours with the infidel Bohemians and
roistering Protestant _reitres_ not only disturbing his death-bed, but
interfering with the "consolation of religion"; the worst of the said
Bohemians is buried alive (or rather stifled after he has been
_half_-buried alive) by the little gipsy girl, Pilar, whom he has
tormented; and Pilar herself is burnt alive on the last page but one,
after she has poisoned Bellinde.

[195] Taking her work on the whole. The earlier part of it ran even
Trollope hard.

[196] Her points of likeness to her self-naming name-child, "George
Eliot," are too obvious to need discussion. But it is a question whether
the main points of _un_likeness--the facility and extreme fecundity of
the French George, as contrasted with the laborious book-bearing of the
English--are not more important than the numerous but superficial and to
a large extent non-literary resemblances.

[197] I have said little or nothing of the short stories. They are
fairly numerous, but I do not think that her _forte_ lay in them.

CHAPTER VI

THE NOVEL OF STYLE--GAUTIER, MERIMEE, GERARD DE NERVAL, MUSSET, VIGNY

In arranging this volume I have thought it worth while to include, in a
single chapter and _nominatim_ in the title thereof, five writers of
prose novels or tales; all belonging to "1830"; four of them at least
ranking with all but the greatest of that great period; but no one
exclusively or even essentially a novelist as Balzac and George Sand
were in their different ways, and none of them attempting such imposing
bulk-and-plan of novel-matter as that which makes up the prose fiction
of Hugo. Gautier was an admirable, and Musset and Vigny at their best
were each a consummate, poet; while the first-named was a "polygraph" of
the polygraphs, in every kind of _belles-lettres_. Merimee's novels or
tales form a small part of his whole work. "Gerard" is perhaps only
admissible here by courtesy, tho