he varieties of
incident and character; the manners and interiors and fantastic
adjustments; the sentiment rising to passion--which are to determine the
developments and departments of the fiction of the future. They leave,
as far as we have seen them, great opportunities for improvement to
those immediate followers to whom we shall now turn. Hamilton is,
indeed, not yet much followed, but Lesage far outgoes Scarron in the
raising of the picaresque; Marivaux distances Furetiere in painting of
manners and in what some people call psychology; _Manon Lescaut_ throws
_La Princesse de Cleves_ into the shade as regards the greatest and
most novel-breeding of the passions. But the whole are really a _bloc_,
the continental sense of which is rather different from our "block." And
perhaps we shall find that, though none of them was equal in genius to
some who succeeded them in novel-writing, the novel itself made little
progress, and some backsliding, during nearly a hundred years after they
ceased to write.

NOTE ON _TELEMAQUE_

It may not perhaps be superfluous to give the rest of that
criticism of Hamilton's on _Telemaque_, the conclusion of
which has been quoted above. "In vain, from the famous
coasts of Ithaca, the wise and renowned Mentor came to
enrich us with those treasures of his which his _Telemaque_
contains. In vain the art of the teacher delicately
displays, in this romance of a rare kind, the usefulness and
the deceitfulness of politics and of love, as well as that
fatal sweetness--frail daughter of luxury--which intoxicates
a conquering hero at the feet of a young mistress or of a
skilful enchantress, such as in each case this Mentor
depicts them. But, well-versed as he was in human weakness,
and elaborately as he imitated the style and the stories of
Greece, the vogue that he had was of short duration. Weary
of inability to understand the mysteries which he unfolded,
men ran to the Palais to give back the volume," etc., etc.

Hamilton, no doubt intentionally, has himself made this
criticism rather "mysterious." It is well known that, if not
quite at first, very soon after its appearance, the fact
that the politics, if not also the morals, of Fenelon's book
were directly at variance with Court standards was
recognised. At a time when Court favour and fashion were the
very breath of the upper c