ts-off to a
novel, are something new, and something immensely important. _La
Chaumiere Indienne_, though less of a story in size and general texture,
is much better from the point of view of taste. It has touches of real
irony, and almost of humour, though its hero, the good pariah, is a
creature nearly as uninteresting as he is impossible. Yet his "black and
polished" baby is a vivid property, and the descriptions are again
famous. The shorter pieces, _Le Cafe de Surate_, etc., require little
notice.

* * * * *

It will, however, have been seen by anybody who can "seize points," that
this _philosophe_ novel, as such, is a really important agent in
bringing on the novel itself to its state of full age. That men like the
three chiefs should take up the form is a great thing; that men who are
not quite chiefs, like Marmontel and Saint-Pierre, should carry it on,
is not a small one. They all do something to get it out of the rough; to
discard--if sometimes also they add--irrelevances; to modernise this one
kind which is perhaps the predestined and acceptable literary product of
modernity. Voltaire originates little, but puts his immense power and
_diable au corps_ into the body of fiction. Rousseau enchains passion in
its service, as Madame de la Fayette, as even Prevost, had not been able
to do before. Diderot indicates, in whatever questionable material, the
vast possibilities of psychological analysis. Marmontel--doing, like
other second-rate talents, almost more _useful_ work than his
betters--rescues the _conte_ from the "demi-rep" condition into which it
had fallen, and, owing to the multifariousness of his examples, does not
entirely subjugate it even to honest purpose; while Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre carries the suggestions of Rousseau still further in the
invaluable department of description. No one, except on the small
scale, is great in plot; no one produces a really individual
character;[402] and it can hardly be said that any one provides
thoroughly achieved novel dialogue. But they have inspired and enlivened
the whole thing as a whole; and if, against this, is to be set the crime
of purpose, that is one not difficult to discard.[403]

FOOTNOTES:

[351] His _verse_ tales, even if stories in verse had not by this time
fallen out of our proper range, require little notice. The faculty of
"telling" did not remain with him here, perhaps because it was
prejudicially affected by