een; but it would split the parallel.

[258] Scarron had, in Le Destin's account of himself, made a distinction
between the pastoral and heroic groups and the "old" romances, meaning
thereby not the true mediaeval specimens but the _Amadis_ cycle.
Furetiere definitely classes all of them together.

[259] The time is well known to have been fond of anagrams, and
"Charroselles" is such an obvious one for "Charles Sorel" that for once
there is no need to gainsay or neglect the interpreters. The thing, if
really meant for a real person, is a distinct lampoon, and may perhaps
explain the expulsion and persecution of Furetiere, by his colleagues of
the Academy, almost as well as the ostensible cause thereof--his
compiling, in competition with the Academy itself, of a French
Dictionary, and a very good one, which was not printed till after his
death, and ultimately became the famous _Dictionnaire de Trevoux_. Not
that Sorel himself was of much importance, but that the thing shows the
irritable and irritating literary failing in the highest degree.
Furetiere had friends of position, from Boileau, Racine, and Bossuet
downwards; and the king himself, though he did not interfere, seems to
have disapproved the Academy's action. But the _Roman_ was heavily
"slated" for many years, though it had a curious revival in the earlier
part of the next century; and for the rest of that century and the first
part of the nineteenth it was almost wholly forgotten.

[260] She falls in love with an ebony cabinet at a fair which they visit
together, and he gives it her. But, anticipating that she will use it
for her most precious things, he privately gets a second set of keys
from the seller, and in her absence achieves the theft of the promise.

[261] Any one who has, as the present writer has had, opportunities of
actually doing this, will find it a not uninteresting operation, and one
which "amply repays the expense" of time and trouble.

[262] This is a point of importance. Details of a life-like character
are most valuable in the novel; but if they are not "material" in the
transferred sense they are simply a bore. Scott undoubtedly learnt this
lesson from his prentice work in finishing Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_,
where the story is simply a clumsy vehicle for conveying information
about sports and pastimes and costumes and such-like "antiqu_ar_ities."

[263] To us small, as are not those of its predecessors.

[264] Not a bad instance of