Blake did:
"Tell me the facts, O historian, and leave me to reason on them as I
please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish.... Tell me the What:
I do not want you to tell me the Why and the How. I can find that out
for myself."

[305] If my friend Mr. Henley were alive (and I would he were) I should
have to "look out for squalls." It was, as ought to be well known, his
idea that _Henri Trois et Sa Cour_ was much more the rallying trumpet of
1830 that _Hernani_, and I believe a large part of his dislike for
Thackeray was due to the cruel fun which _The Paris Sketch-book_ makes
of _Kean_. But I speak as I think and find, after long re-thinking and
researching.

[306] I have made some further excursions in the work of Achard, but
they did not incline me to continue them, and I do not propose to say
anything of the results here. I learn from the books that there were
some other Achards, one of whom "improved the production of the
beet-root sugar." I would much rather have written _Belle-Rose_.

[307] Emma Robinson. I used, I think, to prefer her to either of her
more famous companions in the list. But I have never read her _Caesar
Borgia_. It sounds appetising.

[308] Some may say, "There might have been an end much sooner with some
of the foregoing." Perhaps so--once more. I do not claim to be _hujus
orbis Papa_ and infallible. But I sample to the best of my knowledge and
judgment.

[309] _Beau Demon_, _Coeur d'Acier_, _La Tache Rouge_, etc. Feval began
a little later than most of the others in this chapter, but he is of
their class.

[310] Thackeray, when very young and wasting his time and money in
editing the _National Standard_, wrote a short and very savage review of
this which may be found in the Oxford Edition of his works (vol. i., as
arranged by the present writer). It is virtuously indignant (and no
wonder, seeing that the writer takes it quite seriously), but, as
Thackeray was almost to the last when in that mood, quite
bull-in-a-china-shoppy. You _might_ take it seriously, and yet
critically in another way, as a "degeneracy" of the Terror-Novel. But
the "rotting" view is better.

CHAPTER VIII

DUMAS THE ELDER

[Sidenote: The case of Dumas.]

With Dumas[311] _pere_ the same difficulties (or nearly the same) of
general and particular nature present themselves as those which occurred
with Balzac. There is, again, the task--not so arduous and by no means
so hopeless as some may think,