vour the story as he should. He may be--I am--delighted with
the way in which the teller tells; but the things which he tells are of
much less interest. One cannot exactly say with that acute critic (if
rather uncritical acceptor of the accomplished facts of life and death
and matrimony), Queen Gertrude of Denmark, "More matter with less art,"
for there is plenty of matter as well as amply sufficient and yet not
over-lavish art. But one is not made to take sufficient interest in the
particular matter supplied.

[Sidenote: The semi-dramatic stories. _La Jacquerie._]

The other considerable and early attempt in historical romance, _La
Jacquerie_, is not in pure novel form, but it may fitly introduce some
notice of its actual method, in which Merimee frequently, Gautier more
than once, and a third eminent man of letters to be noticed presently
most of all, distinguished themselves. This was what, in Old French,
would have been called the story _par personnages_--the manner in which
the whole matter is conveyed, not by _recit_, not by the usual form of
mixed narrative and conversation, but by dramatic or semi-dramatic
dialogue only, with action and stage direction, but no connecting
language of the author to the reader. The early French mysteries and
miracles--still more the farces--were not altogether unlike this; we saw
that some of the curious intermediate work of the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries took it, and that both of Crebillon's most
felicitous, if not most edifying exercises are in dialogue form. The
admiration of the French Romantics for the "accidented" and "matterful"
English, Spanish, and German drama naturally encouraged experiment in
this kind. Gautier has not very much of it, though there is some in _Les
Jeune-France_, and his charming ballets might be counted in. But Merimee
was particularly addicted thereto. _La Jacquerie_ is injured to some
tastes by excessive indulgence in the grime and horror which the subject
no doubt invited. We do not all rejoice in the notion of a Good Friday
service, "extra-illustrated" by a real crucifixion alive of a generous
Jacques who has surrendered himself; or in violence offered (it is true,
with the object of securing marriage) to a French heiress by an English
captain of Free Companions. Even some of those who may not dislike these
touches of _haut gout_, may, from the coolest point of view of strict
criticism, say that the composition is too _decousu_,