and had, especially at first, something of it;
and this something seems, to me at least, by no means to have improved
her work. In none or hardly any of the rest is there any evidence of
"school," "system," "pattern," "problem," or the like. Yet they give us
an immense amount of pastime, and I do not think their or their readers'
state was any the less gracious for what they did _not_ give us.

FOOTNOTES:

[328] I have not called this so, because the division into "Books," with
which the _raison d'etre_ of "Interchapters" is almost inseparably
connected, has not been adopted in this _History_.

[329] This fact, as well, perhaps, as others, should be taken into
account by any one who may be at first sight surprised, and perhaps in
the Biblical sense "offended," at finding two-thirds of the volume
allotted to half of the time.

[330] To vary a good epigram of the _Rolliad_ crew on Pitt:

"'The French' for 'France' can't please the _Blanc_,
The _Bleu_ detests the 'King.'"

[331] _V. sup._ on Reybaud.

[332] This is of course quite a different thing from saying that
politicians had better have nothing to do with letters, or that men of
letters may not _discuss_ politics. It is when they become Ministers
that they too often disgust men and amuse angels.

[333] _Adolphe_ actually belongs to the nineteenth century.

[334] As I write this I remember how my friend the late M. Beljame, who
and whose "tribe" have come so nobly for English literature in France
for forty years past, was shocked long ago at my writing "Mazar_in_
Library," and refused to be consoled by my assurance that I should never
dream of writing anything but "Bibliotheque Mazar_ine_." But I had, and
have, no doubt on the principle.

[335] I _hope_, but do not trust, that no descendant of the persons who
told Charles Lamb that Burns could not at the time be present because he
was dead, will say, "But all these were subsequent to 1850."

[336] In my _History of Criticism_, _passim_.

[337] _V. sup._ Vol. I., on the "heroic" romance.

[338] It seems unnecessary to repeat what has been said on Vigny and
Merimee; but it is important to keep constantly in mind that they came
before Dumas. As for the still earlier _Solitaire_, I must repeat that
M. d'Arlincourt's utter failure as an individual ought not completely to
obscure his importance as a pioneer in kind.

[339] "Suppose you go and do it?" as Thackeray says of another matter,
no dou