d have made it, and is "knocked off rather haphazardly." Another
critic of 1830, now perhaps too much forgotten, Gustave Planche, does
not mention the _Grecque_, and brushes aside the three earlier and
bigger books rather hastily, though he allows "interest" to both
_Cleveland_ and the _Doyen_. Perhaps, before "coming to real things" (as
Balzac once said of his own work) in _Manon_, some remarks, not long,
but first-hand, and based on actual reading at more than one time of
life, as to her very unreal family, may be permitted here, though they
may differ in opinion from the judgment of these two redoubtable
critics.

[Sidenote: The books themselves--_Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne_.]

I do not think that when I first wrote about Prevost (I had read _Manon_
long before) more than thirty years ago, in a _Short History of French
Literature_, I paid very much attention to these books. I evidently had
not read the _Grecque Moderne_, for I said nothing about it. Of the
others I said only that they are "romances of adventure, occupying a
middle place between those of Lesage and Marivaux." It is perfectly
true, but of course not very "in-going," and whatever reading I then
gave any of them had not left very much impression on my mind, when
recently, and for the purpose of the present work, I took them up again,
and the _Histoire_ as well. This last is the story of a young modern
Greek slave named Theophe (a form of which the last syllable seems more
modern than Greek), who is made visible in full harem by her
particularly complaisant master, a Turkish pasha, to a young Frenchman,
admired and bought by this Frenchman (the relater of the story), and
freed by him. He does not at first think of making her his mistress, but
later does propose it, only to meet a refusal of a somewhat
sentimental-romantic character, though she protests not merely
gratitude, but love for him. The latter part of the book is occupied by
what Sainte-Beuve calls "delicate" ambiguities, which leave us in doubt
whether her "cruelty" is shown to others as well, or whether it is not.
In suggesting that Crebillon would have made it charming, the great
critic has perhaps made another of those slips which show the novitiate.
The fact is that it is an exceedingly dull book: and that to have made
it anything else, while retaining anything like its present "propriety,"
either an entire metamorphosis of spirit, which might have made it as
passionate as _Manon_ itsel