ieved a running panorama-companion to the
history of France from the fourteenth century to the Revolution and,
more intensively, from the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew to the
establishment of Louis XIV.'s autocracy.

In fact, the advantages, both to the novelist and to his readers, of the
historical kind can hardly be exaggerated. The great danger of invented
prose narrative--of _all_ invented narrative, indeed, prose or
verse--has always been, and has always from the first shown itself as
being, that of running into moulds. In the old epics (the Classical, not
the _Chansons_) this danger was accentuated by the rise of
rule-criticism; but the facts had induced, if they did not justify, that
rule-system itself. The monotony of the mediaeval romance, whether
_Chanson_ or _Roman_, has been declared more than once in this book to
be exaggerated, but it certainly exists. The "heroic" succumbs to a
similar fate rather fatally, though the heroic element itself comes
slightly to the rescue; and even the picaresque by no means escapes. To
descend, or rather to look, into the gutter for a moment, the sameness
of the deliberately obscene novel is a byword to those who, in pursuit
of knowledge, have incurred the necessity of "washing themselves in
water and being unclean until the evening"; and we saw that even such a
light and lively talent as Crebillon's, keeping above the very lowest
gutter-depths, could not escape the same danger wholly. In the upper air
the fairy-tale flies too often in prescribed gyres; and the most modern
kinds of all--the novel of analysis, the problem-novel, and all the rest
of them--strive in vain to avoid the curse of--as Rabelais put something
not dissimilar long ago--"fatras _a la douzaine_." "All the stories are
told," saith the New, even as the Old, Preacher; all but the highest
genius is apt to show ruts, brain-marks, common orientations of route
and specifications of design. Only the novel of creative--not merely
synthetised--character in the most expert hands escapes--for human
character undoubtedly partakes of the Infinite; but few are they who can
command the days and ways of creation.

Yet though history has its unaltering laws; though human nature in
general is always the same; though that which hath been shall be, and
the dreams of new worlds and new societies are the most fatuous of vain
imaginations--the details of historical incident vary as much as those
of individual character or featur