hing
that goes on in French literature as I once did--with Prevost,
demonstrating that _Manon_ was a posthumous work of the Regent (who was
a clever man), or an expression of a real passion which lay at the back
of Richelieu's debauchery, or written by some unknown author from whom
the Abbe bought it, and who died early, or something else of the kind.

There does not, however, appear to be the slightest chance or hope or
fear (whichever expression be preferred) of the kind. Although Prevost
elsewhere indulges--as everybody else for a long time in France and
England alike did, save creative geniuses like Fielding--in
transparently feigned talk about the origins of his stories, he was a
very respectable man in his way, and not at all likely to father or to
steal any one else's work in a disreputable fashion. There are no other
claimants for the book: and though it may be difficult for a foreigner
to find the faults of style that Gustave Planche rebukes in Prevost
generally, there is nothing in the mere style of _Manon_ which sets it
above the others.

For once one may concede that the whole attraction of the piece, barring
one or two transient but almost Shakespearian flashes of
expression--such as the famous "Perfide Manon! Perfide!" when she and
Des Grieux first meet after her earliest treason--is to be found in its
marvellous humanity, its equally marvellous grasp of character, and the
intense, the absolutely shattering pathos of the relations of the hero
and heroine. There are those, of course, who make much of the _persona
tertia_, Tiberge, the virtuous and friendly priest, who has a remarkable
command of money for a not highly placed ecclesiastic, lends it with
singular want of circumspection, and then meddles with the best of
intentions and the most futile or mischievous of results. Very
respectable man, Tiberge; but one with whom _on n'a que faire_. Manon
and Des Grieux; Des Grieux and Manon--these are as all-sufficient to the
reader as Manon was more than sufficient to Des Grieux, and as he, alas!
was, if only in some ways, _in_sufficient to Manon.

One of the things which are nuisances in Prevost's other books becomes
pardonable, almost admirable, in this. His habit of incessant,
straight-on narration by a single person, his avoidance of dialogue
properly so called, is, as has been noted, a habit common to all these
early novels, and, to our taste if not to that of their early readers,
often disastrous. Here