nineteenth, wrote, from a very
early age till his death, in prose and in verse and in drama; epics,
satires, criticisms, novels, travels, Heaven knows what; who had the
reputation of being one of the most brilliant talkers of his day; who
collaborated[294] with Gautier and Gerard de Nerval and Sandeau and Mme.
de Girardin, and other people much greater than himself; from whose pen
the beloved old "Collection Michel Levy" contained at least thirty
volumes at the date of his death--the wreckage of perhaps a possible
three hundred--and of whom, though I have several times in the
half-century since dived into his work, I do not think I can find a
single story of first, second, or even third-rate quality.[295]

[Sidenote: _Les Nuits Anglaises._]

As it happens, one volume of his, _Les Nuits Anglaises_, contains
examples of his various manners, some of which may be noticed. Not all
of them are stories, but it is fair to throw in a non-story because it
is so very much better than the others. This is a "physionomie" of
Manchester, written, it would seem, just at the beginning of the reign
of Queen Victoria; and it shows that Mery, as a writer of those middle
articles or transformed _Spectator_ essays, which have played so large a
part in the literature of the last century and a quarter, was not quite
a negligible person. Moreover, the sort of thing, though not essential
to the novelist's art, is a valuable tool at his disposal.

[Sidenote: The minor stories.]

But here the author, who was a considerable traveller and not a bad
judge of art, was to a large extent under the grip of fact: when he got
into fiction he exhibited a sad want of discipline. One must allow
something, no doubt, for the fact that the _goguenard_ element is
avowedly strong in him. The second English Night, with its Oxfordshire
election (he has actually got the name of "Parker" right, though
Woodstock wobbles from the proper form to "Woostock," "Wostoog," etc.)
and its experiences of an Indian gentleman who is exposed at Ellora
(near Madras) to the influence of the upas tree, by a wicked emissary of
the Royal Society, Sir Wales, as a scientific experiment; and the last,
where two Frenchmen, liberated from the hulks at the close of the
Napoleonic War, make a fortune by threatening to blow up the city of
Dublin; may sue out their writ of ease under the statute of
Goguenarderie. A third half-Eastern, half-English story (Mery was fond
of the East), _Anglais