and let the rest be "wrop in mystery," it would probably have been the
best way. But the bulk of the book is beyond improvement: and there is a
fluid grace about the autobiographical _recit_ which is very rare
indeed, at least in French, except in the unfortunate Gerard de Nerval,
who was akin to Cazotte in many ways, and actually edited him. A very
carping critic may object to the not obvious nor afterwards explained
interposition of a pretty little spaniel between the original diabolic
avatar of the hideous camel's head and the subsequent incarnation of the
beautiful Biondetto-Biondetta; especially as the later employment of
another dog, to prevent Alvare's succumbing to temptation earlier than
he did, is confusing. But this would be "seeking a knot in a reed."
Perhaps the greatest merit of the story, next to the pure tale-telling
charm above noted, is the singular taste and skill with which Biondetta,
except for her repugnance to the marriage ceremony, is prevented from
showing the slightest diabolic character during her long cohabitation
with Alvare, and her very "comingnesses" are arranged so as to give the
idea, not in the least of a temptress, but of an extra-innocent but
quite natural _ingenue_. Monk Lewis, of course, knew Cazotte, but he has
coarsened his original woefully. It may perhaps be added that the first
illustrations, reproduced in Gerard's edition as curiosities, are such
in the highest degree. They are ushered with an ironic Preface: and they
sometimes make one rub one's eyes and wonder whether Futurism and Cubism
are not, like so many other things, merely recooked cabbage.

CHAPTER IX

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--II

_From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Cleves"_--_Anthony Hamilton_[247]

[Sidenote: The material of the chapter.]

Justice has, it is hoped, been done to the great classes of fictitious
work which, during the seventeenth century, made fiction, as such,
popular with high and of low in France. But it is one of the not very
numerous safe generalisations or inductions which may be fished out from
the wide and treacherous Syrtes of the history of literature, that it is
not as a rule from "classes" that the best work comes; and that, when it
does so come, it generally represents a sort of outside and uncovenanted
element or constituent of the class. We have, unfortunately, lost the
Greek epic, as a class; but we know enough about it, with its few
specimens, such as Apollonius