"form" of the greatest
and best kind in the Arthurian, but it has been acknowledged that it may
not have been deliberately reached--or approached--by even a single
artist, and that, if it was, the identity of that artist is not quite
certain.

[194] The intolerance of anything but scraps is one of the numerous arms
and legs of the twentieth century Baal. There are some who have not
bowed down to it.

[195] For Soliman is not indisposed to fall in love with his illustrious
Bassa's beloved.

[196] At the close of _Old Mortality_.

[197] One is lost if one begins quoting from these books. But there is
another passage at the end of the same volume worth glancing at for its
oddity. It is an elaborate chronological "checking" of the age of the
different characters; and, odd as it is, one cannot help remembering
that not a few authors from Walter Map (or whoever it was) to Thackeray
might have been none the worse for similar calculations.

[198] It is not, I hope, frivolous or pusillanimous, but merely honest,
to add that, as I have spent much less time on _Clelie_ than on the
other book, it has had less opportunity of boring me.

[199] Cf. the _Astree_ as noted above.

[200] He also wrote several plays.

[201] This would supply the ghost of Varus with a crushing answer to
"Give me back my legions!" in such form as "Why did you send me with
them?"

[202] At another time there might have been a little gentle satire in
this, but hardly then.

[203] It would seem, however, that the Scuderys were not originally
Norman.

[204] Chateaubriand hardly counts in strictness.

[205] Although some say that almost every one of the numerous _personae_
of the _Astree_ had a live original.

[206] These books, having been constantly referred to in this fashion,
offer a good many traps, into some of which I have fallen in the past,
and may have done so even now. For instance, Koerting rightly points out
that almost every one calls this "_La_ Jeune Alcidiane," whereas A. is
the hero, who bears his mother's name.

[207] I had made this remark before I knew that Koerting had anticipated
it.

[208] The more recent books which refer to him, and (I think) the
British Museum Catalogue, drop this addition. But he was admittedly of
the Pontcarre family.

[209] Neither the original, however, nor this revision seems to have
enjoyed the further honour of a place in the British Museum. Other books
of his which at least sound novelish