as to feel, is prominent, and continued to
be so in all the best novels, or parts of novels, till nearly the middle
of the nineteenth century. There is far too much mere _narration_--the
things being not smartly brought before the mind's eye as _being_ done,
and to the mind's ear as _being_ said, but recounted, sometimes not even
as present things, but as things that _have been_ said or done already.
This gives a flatness, which is further increased by the habit of not
breaking up even the conversation into fresh paragraphs and lines, but
running the whole on in solid page-blocks for several pages together.
Yet even if this mechanical mistake were as mechanically redressed,[261]
the original fault would remain and others would still appear. A scene
between Javotte and Lucrece, to give one instance only, would enliven
the book enormously; while, on the other hand, we could very well spare
one of the few passages in which Nicodeme is allowed to be more than the
subject of a _recit_, and which partakes of the knock-about character so
long popular, the young man and Javotte bumping each other's foreheads
by an awkward slip in saluting, after which he first upsets a piece of
porcelain and then drags a mirror down upon himself. There is "action"
enough here; while, on the other hand, the important and promising
situations of the two promises to Lucrece, and the stealing by the
Marquis of his, are left in the flattest fashion of "recount." But it
was very long indeed before novelists understood this matter, and as
late as Hope's famous _Anastasius_ the fault is present, apparently to
the author's knowledge, though he has not removed it.

To a reader of the book who does not know, or care to pay attention to,
the history of the matter, the opening of the _Roman Bourgeois_ may seem
to promise something quite free, or at any rate much more free than is
actually the case, from this fault. But, as we have seen, they generally
took some care of their openings, and Furetiere availed himself of a
custom possibly, to present readers, especially those not of the Roman
Church, possessing an air of oddity, and therefore of freshness, which
it certainly had not to those of his own day. This was the curious
fashion of _quete_ or collection at church--not by a commonplace verger,
or by respectable churchwardens and sidesmen, but by the prettiest girl
whom the _cure_ could pitch upon, dressed in her best, and lavishing
smiles upon the congreg