ugh more than one or two readers, I
hope, would feel his absence as a dark gap in the book. Musset, again,
not ill at short stories, is far better at short plays. _One_ novel of
Vigny's has indeed enjoyed great fame; but, as will be seen, I am
unluckily unable to admire it very much, and I include him here--partly
because I do not wish to herd so clear a name with the Sues and the
Soulies, even with the Sandeaus and Bernards--partly because, though his
style in prose is not so marked as that in verse, some of his minor work
in fiction is extremely interesting. But though so much of their work,
and in Musset's and Vigny's cases all their best work, lies outside our
province, and though they themselves, with the possible exception of
Gerard and Gautier, who have strong affinities, are markedly different
from one another, there is one point which they all have in common, and
this point supplies the general title of this chapter. Style of the more
separable and elaborate kind does not often make its appearance very
early in literary departments; and there may be (_v. inf._) some special
reasons why it should not do so in prose fiction. With the exception of
Marivaux, who had carried his attention to it over the boundary-line of
mannerism, few earlier novelists, though some of them were great
writers, had made a point of it, the chief exceptions being in the
particular line of "wit," such as Hamilton, Crebillon _fils_, and
Voltaire. Chateaubriand had been almost the first to attempt a
novel-_rhetoric_; and it must be remembered that Chateaubriand was a
sort of human _magnus Apollo_ throughout the July monarchy. At any rate,
it is a conspicuous feature in all these writers, and may serve as a
link between them.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Gautier--his burden of "style."]

Some readers may know (for I, and the others, which I shall probably
quote again, have quoted it before now) a remark of Emile de Girardin
when Theophile Gautier asked him how people liked a story which "Theo"
had prevailed on that experienced editor to insert as a _feuilleton_ in
the _Presse_: "Mon ami, l'abonne ne s'amuse pas _franchement_. Il est
gene par le style." Girardin, though not exactly a genius, was an
exceedingly clever man, and knew the foot of his public--perhaps of
"_the_ public"--to a hundredth of an inch. But he could hardly have
anticipated the extent to which his criticism would reflect the attitude
of persons