certainly one which gives
him a place in the story of the novel, and which justifies not merely
these general remarks on him, but some analysis (not too abundant) of
his particular works. As for translating him, a Frenchman might as well
spend his time in translating the English newspaper _feuilletons_ of
"family" papers in the earlier and middle nineteenth century. Indeed
that _Minnigrey_, which I remember reading as a boy, and which long
afterwards my friend, the late Mr. Henley, used to extol as one of the
masterpieces of literature, is worth all Pigault put together and a
great deal more.

[Sidenote: _L'Enfant du Carnaval and Les Barons de Felsheim._]

The worst of it is, that to be amused by him--to be, except as a
student, even interested in a large part of his work--you must be almost
as ill-bred in literature as he himself is. He is like a person who has
had before him no models for imitation or avoidance in behaviour: and
this is where his successor, Paul de Kock, by the mere fact of being his
successor, had a great advantage over him. But to the student he _is_
interesting, and the interest has nothing factitious in it, and nothing
to be ashamed of. There is something almost pathetic in his struggles to
master his art: and his frequent remonstrances with critics and readers
appear to show a genuine consciousness of his state, which is not always
the case with such things.

The book which stands first in his Works, _L'Enfant du Carnaval_, starts
with an ultra-Smollettian[429] passage of coarseness, and relapses now
and then. The body of it--occupied with the history of a base-born
child, who tumbles into the good graces of a Milord and his little
daughter, is named by them "Happy," and becomes first the girl's lover
and then her husband--is a heap of extravagances, which, nevertheless,
bring the picaresque pattern, from which they are in part evidently
traced, to a point, not of course anywhere approaching in genius _Don
Quixote_ or _Gil Blas_, but somehow or other a good deal nearer general
modern life. _Les Barons de Felsheim_, which succeeds it, seems to have
taken its origin from a suggestion of the opening of _Candide_, and
continues with a still wilder series of adventures, satirising German
ways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Very
commonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, with
frequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffably
dre