rhaps one or two more, it
seemed to me that space, becoming more and more valuable, might be
economised, especially as, in his case and theirs, there is nothing
extraordinary to interest, nothing difficult to discuss. _Tolle_, _lege_
is the suitable word for all three, and no fit person who obeys will
regret his obedience.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Reybaud--_Jerome Paturot_, and Thackeray on its earlier
part.]

Any one who attempts to rival Thackeray's abstract ("_with_
translations, Sir!") of the first part of Louis Reybaud's _Jerome
Paturot_ must have a better conceit of himself than that with which the
present writer has been gifted, by the Divinity or any other power. The
essay[290] in which this appears contains some of the rather rash and
random judgments to which its great author was too much addicted; he had
not, for instance, come to his later and saner estimate of Dumas,[291]
and still ranks him with Sue and Soulie. But the Paturot part itself is
simply delightful, and must have sent many who were not fortunate enough
to know (or fortunate enough _not_ to know) it already to the book. This
well deserved and deserves to be known. Jerome's own earlier career as a
romantic and unread poet is not so brilliantly done as similar things in
Gautier's _Les Jeune-France_ and other books; but the Saint-Simonian
sequel, in which so many _mil-huit-cent-trentiers_ besides Jerome
himself and (so surprisingly) Sainte-Beuve indulged, is most capitally
hit off. The hero's further experiences in company-meddling (with not
dissimilar results to those experienced by Thackeray's own Samuel
Titmarsh, and probably or certainly by Thackeray himself); and as the
editor of a journal enticing the _abonne_ with a _bonus_, which may be
either a pair of boots, a greatcoat, or a _gigot_ at choice; the
side-hits at law and medicine; the relapse into trade and National
Guardism; the visit to the Tuileries; the sad bankruptcy and the
subsequent retirement to a little place in the prefecture of a remote
department--all these things are treated in the best Gallic fashion, and
with a certain weight of metal not always achievable by "Gigadibs, the
literary man," whether Gallic or Anglo-Saxon. Reybaud himself was a
serious historian, a student of social philosophy, who has the
melancholy honour of having popularised, if he did not invent, the word
"Socialist" and the cheerfuller one of having faithfully dealt with the