impossibly--indeed probably--have suggested Jean Ingelow's great
single-speech poem of _Divided_; the Princesses Pimprenelle and
Lumineuse are the right sort of Princesses; _Nonchalante et Papillon_,
_Bleuette et Coquelicot_ come and take their places unpretentiously but
certainly; Mignonette and Minutieuse are not "out." Caylus is not
Hamilton by a long way; but he has something that Hamilton has not. He
is still less Perrault or Madame d'Aulnoy, but he has a sufficient
difference from either. With these predecessors he makes the select
quartette of the fairy-tale tellers of France.

After him one expects--and meets--a drop. No reasonable person would
look for a really great fairy tale from Jean Jacques, because you must
forget yourself to write one; and _La Reine Fantasque_, though not bad,
is not good. Madame de Villeneuve may, for ought I know, have been an
excellent person in other ways, but she deserves one of the worst
bolgias in the Inferno of literature for lengthening, muddling, and
altogether spoiling the ever-beloved "Beauty and the Beast." Mlle. de
Lussan, they say,[241] was too fond of eating, and died of indigestion.
A more indigestible thing than her own _Les Veillees de Thessalie_,
which figure here (she wrote a great deal more), the present writer has
never come across. And as for _Prince Titi_, which fills a volume and a
half, it might have been passed without any remark at all if it had not
become famous in connection with the Battle of Croker and Macaulay over
the body of Boswell's _Johnson_.[242]

A break takes place at the thirtieth volume of the _Cabinet_, and a
fresh instalment, later than the first batch, follows, with more
particulars about authors. Here we find the attributions of the very
large series of imitative Eastern tales already noticed, and to be
followed in this new parcel by _Soirees Bretonnes_, to Thomas Simon
Gueulette. The thirty-first opens with the _Funestine_ of
Beauchamps[243]--an ingenious title and heroine-name, for it avoids the
unnatural sounds so common, is a quite possible feminine appellation,
and though a "speaking" one, is only so to those who understand the
learned languages, and so deserve to be spoken to. Moreover, the idea,
though not startlingly original or a mark of genius, is good--that of an
unlucky child who attracts the malignity of _all_ fairies, and is ugly,
stupid, ill-natured, and everything that is detestable. Her reformation
by the genie Clair-Obsc