_, showed the enormous power which was working half blindly.
How the strength got eyes, and the eyes found the right objects to fix
upon, must be left, if fortune favour, for the next volume to tell.[436]

FOOTNOTES:

[404] We have seen above how things were "shaping for" it, in the
Pastoral and Heroic romances. But the shape was not definitely taken in
them.

[405] In the following pages, and here only in this volume, the author
has utilised, though with very considerable alterations, some previously
published work, _A Study of Sensibility_, which appeared originally in
the _Fortnightly Review_ for September 1882, and was republished in a
volume (_Essays on French Novelists_, London, 1891) which has been for
some years out of print. Much of the original essay, dealing with
Marivaux and others already treated here, has been removed, and the
whole has been cut down, revised, and adjusted to its new contexts. But
it seemed unnecessary to waste time in an endeavour to say the same
thing differently about matters which, though as a whole indispensable,
are, with perhaps one exception, individually not of the first
importance.

[406] These words were originally written more than thirty years ago. I
am not sure that there was not something prophetic in them.

[407] Madame de Fontaines in _La Comtesse de Savoie_ and _Amenophis_
"follows her leader" in more senses than one--including a sort of
pseudo-historical setting or insetting which became almost a habit. But
she is hardly important.

[408] Readers of Thackeray may remember in _The Paris Sketch Book_ ("On
the French School of Painting," p. 52, Oxford ed.) some remarks on
Jacquand's picture, "The Death of Adelaide de Comminge," which he
thought "neither more nor less than beautiful." But from his "it
appears," in reference to the circumstances, it would seem that he did
not know the book, save perhaps from a catalogue-extract or summary.

[409] The extreme shortness of all these books may be just worth
noticing. Reaction from the enormous romances of the preceding century
may have had something to do with it; and the popularity of the "tale"
something more. But the _causa verissima_ was probably the impossibility
of keeping up sentiment at high pressure for any length of time,
incident, or talk.

[410] _Vide_ on the process Crebillon's _Les Egarements du Coeur et de
l'Esprit_, as above, pp. 371, 372.

[411] The parallel with "George Eliot" will strike most people