ass like the scarlet draperies in a
faded piece of Gobelin tapestry. His gifts are those of an historian or
of a critic, not those of a novel-writer. When in his historical
novels, such as _Les Muscadins_ or _Le Beau Solignac_, he trenches on
the firm ground of the Real, his true force displays itself. In these
works he has attempted to revive the lengthy chronicles of the elder
Dumas, but without that irrepressible verve, that headlong vehemence of
animal spirits, which, like the rush of a locomotive, bore the reader,
breathless and interested, over rough places and smooth alike. The
draught M. Claretie brews for our drinking bears no affinity to that
intoxicating and sparkling champagne. The Dumas brand is exhausted, and
all imitations are but as flat cider in comparison. In the _Renegade_,
which is a specimen of a style of fiction largely in vogue at present in
France--one that might be called the contemporaneous historical
novel--M. Claretie found himself once more on firm and familiar ground.
The hero of the _Renegade_ is a Republican politician who turns
Bonapartist, and who finally commits suicide something after the fashion
of M. Prevost-Paradol, whose career, it is indeed said, suggested the
book.

But M. Claretie is seen at his best when he lays down the pen of a
novel-writer and takes up that of a critic or that of a chronicler of
passing events. His plays possess the same defects as his novels, being
diffuse, devoid of incident and overloaded with unnecessary details. But
the clearness and vigor of the style, the strong sense and daylight
intelligence that reign in all his writings, prevent his poorest works
from being commonplace or uninteresting.

Arsene Houssaye, like his almost un-namable contemporary Belot, is the
Laureate of Vice. His imagination is as unclean as a street-gutter, only
it is a gutter that runs rose-water. He deals exclusively with the
"roses-and-raptures" side of the question. He always lays the scene of
his romances in dainty boudoirs, beneath the soft light of real wax
candles (gas would be far too vulgar). He revels in annals of the
nobility. His heroes seldom or never are without a "handle to their
names." His heroines are usually selected from a set whose name he has
chosen as the title of one of his novels--_Les Courtisanes du Grand
Monde_. His books would be injurious if they were not so very stupid.
They are improbable in incident, immoral in tone, exaggerated in style
and lam