matised stories; his pure narration
unsuccessful.]

By an interesting but not at all inexplicable contrast the only writer
of prose fiction (except those to whom separate chapters have been
allotted and one other who follows him here) to be in any way classed
with Merimee and Gautier as a man of letters generally--Alfred de
Musset--displays the contrast of values in his work of narrative and
dramatic form in exactly the opposite way to (at least) Merimee's.
Musset's _Proverbes_, though, I believe, not quite successful at first,
have ever since been the delight of all but vulgar stage-goers: they
have, from the very first, been the delight of all but vulgar readers
for their pure story interest. Even some poems, not given as intended
dramas at all, possess the most admirable narrative quality and
story-turn.

As for the _Comedies-Proverbes_, it is impossible for the abandoned
reader of plays who reads them either as poems or as stories, or as
both, to go wrong there, whichever of the delightful bunch he takes up.
To play upon some of their own titles--you are never so safe in swearing
as when you swear that they are charming; when the door of the library
that contains them is opened you may think yourself happy, and when it
is shut upon you reading them you may know yourself to be happier. But
in pure prose narratives this exquisite poet, delightful playwright, and
unquestionable though too much wasted genius, never seems quite at home.
For though they sometimes have a poignant appeal, it is almost always
the illegitimate or at any rate extrinsic one of revelation of the
author's personal feeling; or else that of formulation of the general
effects of passion, not that of embodiment of its working.

[Sidenote: _Frederic et Bernerette._]

Thus, for instance, there are few more pathetic stories in substance, or
in occasional expression of a half-aphoristic kind, than _Frederic et
Bernerette_. The grisette heroine has shed all the vulgarity of Paul de
Kock's at his worst, and has in part acquired more poignancy than that
of Murger at his best. Her final letter to her lover, just before her
second and successful attempt at suicide, is almost consummate. But,
somehow or other, it strikes one rather as a marvellous single study--a
sort of modernised and transcended _Spectator_ paper--a "Farewell of a
Deserted Damsel"--than as part, or even as _denouement_, of a story.
When the author says, "Je ne sais pas lequel est le plus