y pages few readers can fail to
perceive that they have got hold of a most uncommon book. Its
uncommonness, as was partly said above, does not consist merely in the
excellence of its description; nor in the acuteness of the occasional
_mots_; nor in the passion of the two main characters; nor in the
representation of the mood of that "discouraged generation of 1850" of
which it is, in prose and French, the other Testament corresponding to
Matthew Arnold's in verse and English. Nor does it even consist in all
these added together; but in the way in which they are fused; in which
they permeate each other and make, not a group, but a whole. It might
even, like Sainte-Beuve's _Volupte_ (_v. inf._). be called "not
precisely a novel" at all, and even more than Fabre's _Abbe Tigrane_
(_v. inf._ again), rather a study than a story. And it is partly from
this point of view that one regrets the prologue and epilogue. No
doubt--and the plea is a recurring one--in life these storms and
stresses, these failures and disappointments, do often subside into
something parallel to Dominique's second existence as squire, sportsman,
husband, father, and farmer. No doubt they

Pulveris exigui jactu compacta quiescunt,

whether the dust is of the actual grave and its ashes, or the more
symbolical one of the end of love. But on the whole, for art's sake,
this somewhat prosaic _Versoehnung_ is better left behind the scenes. Yet
this may be a private--it may be an erroneous--criticism. The positive
part of what has been said in favour of _Dominique_ is, I think,
something more. There are few novels like it; none exactly like, and
perhaps one does not want many or any more. But by itself it stands--and
stands crowned.

FOOTNOTES:

[198] Some years after its original appearance Mr. Andrew Lang, in
collaboration with another friend of mine, who adopted the _nom de
guerre_ of "Paul Sylvester," published a complete translation under the
title of _The Dead Leman_; and I believe that the late Mr. Lafacido
Hearn more recently executed another. But this last I have never seen.
(The new pages which follow to 222, it may not be superfluous to repeat,
appeared originally in the _Fortnightly Review_ for 1878, and were
reprinted in _Essays on French Novelists_, London, 1891. The Essay
itself contains, of course, a wider criticism of Gautier's work than
would be proper here.)

[199] For, as a rule, the critical faculty is like wine--it steadily
impr