e and saying, "Quand je vous disais qu'il
etait temps que je m'en aille!" neglected _crim. con._ for _crim. gram._
and cried in horror, "Que je m'en all_asse_, Monsieur!" But this
preciseness did not extend to the younger Alexander's choice of
subjects.

[353]

To whose "music" also our young friends,
As they tell us, have "lost the key."

[354] Dumas, like other mid-nineteenth century novelists in France and
England both, is perhaps too fond of this complaint. But, after all, it
_does_ "stage" more prettily than appendicitis or typhoid.

[355] Nor is this the only place where _Manon_ figures in the work of
Alexander the younger. Especially in the early books direct references,
more or less obvious, are frequent; and, as will be seen, the
inspiration reappears in his best and almost last novel.

[356] It may perhaps seem to some readers that Janin's own novel-work
should have been noticed earlier. I had at one time thought of doing
this. But his most famous book of the sort, _L'Ane Mort et la Femme
Guillotinee_, is a foolish _fatrasie_ of extravagant, undigested,
unaffecting horrors, from the devouring by dogs of the _live_ donkey, at
the beginning, to the "resurrectioning" of the guillotined woman, at the
end. Sterne has played tricks with many clumsy imitators, but with none
to more destructive effect than in this case. I read it first in the
flush of my early enthusiasm for 1830, and was miserably disappointed; I
tried to read it again the other day, and simply broke down. _Barnave_
is interesting only as referred to by Gautier; and so on. The fact is
that "J. J." was "J. J. _J._"--a journalist merely--with a not
unpleasant frothy ginger-beery style, but with nothing whatever within
it or beyond it.

[357]

And, with dim-fretted foreheads all,
On corpses _three_ months old at noon she came.

(_The Palace of Art._)

[358] If anybody cannot tolerate the stretching he had better abstain
from Alexander the younger's work, for "they all do it" there. The fact
may have conciliated some of our own contemners of "good form."

[359] Every one is entitled to write this word once in his life, I
believe; so I have selected my occasion at last. Of course some one may
say: "You have admitted that he did not know Marguerite's pact with his
father." True; and this might excuse the wrath, but not the way of
showing it.

[360] As I write this I remember a comic experience of fifty years ago.