the lower end of the scale, what the dukes and the
countesses have begun at the upper. And Crebillon, despite his
verbosity, is never at a loss for pointed sayings to relieve and froth
it up. Nor are these mere _mots_ or _pointes_ or conceits--there is a
singular amount of life-wisdom in them, and a short anthology might be
made here, if there were room for it, which would entirely vindicate the
assertion.

[Sidenote: Inequality of his general work--a survey of it.]

It is true that the praises just given to Crebillon do not (as was
indeed hinted above) apply to the whole of his work, or even to the
larger part of it. An unfavourable critic might indeed say that, in
strictness, they only apply to parts of _Le Sopha_ and to the two little
dialogue-stories just referred to. The method is, no doubt, one by no
means easy to apply on the great scale, and the restriction of the
subject adds to the difficulty. The longest regular stories of all, _Ah!
Quel Conte!_ and _Le Sopha_ itself, though they should have been
mentioned in reverse order, are resumptions of the Hamiltonian idea[347]
of chaining things on to the _Arabian Nights_. Crebillon, however, does
not actually resuscitate Shahriar and the sisters, but substitutes a
later Caliph, Shah Baham, and his Sultana. The Sultan is exceedingly
stupid, but also very talkative, and fond of interrupting his vizier and
the other tale-tellers with wiseacreries; the Sultana is an acute enough
lady, who governs her tongue in order to save her neck. The framework is
not bad for a short story, but becomes a little tedious when it is made
to enshrine two volumes, one of them pretty big. It is better in _Le
Sopha_ than in _Ah! Quel Conte!_ and some of the tales that it gives us
in the former are almost equal to the two excepted dialogues. Moreover,
it is unluckily true that _Ah! Quel Conte!_ (an ejaculation of the
Sultana's at the beginning) might be, as Crebillon himself doubtless
foresaw, repeated with a sinister meaning by a reader at the end.
_Tanzai et Neadarne_ or _L'Ecumoire_, another fairy story, though
livelier in its incidents than _Ah! Quel Conte!_--nay, though it
contains some of Crebillon's smartest sayings, and has perhaps his
nicest heroine,--is heavy on the whole, and in it, the author's
_gauffre_-like lightness of "impropriety" being absent, the tone
approaches nearer to that dismallest form of literature or
non-literature--the deliberate obscene.

_Les Egarements du C