n) are ladies. It is with him, in this last
point at any rate, as with our own Congreve, whom he rather closely
resembles in some ways: though I was amused the other day to find some
twentieth-century critical objections to actresses' rendering of _Love
for Love_ as "too well-bred." The fact is that the tradition of
"breeding" never broke down in France till the _philosophe_ period,
while with us it lasted till--when shall we say?

CHAPTER XI

THE _PHILOSOPHE_ NOVEL

[Sidenote: The use of the novel for "purpose"--Voltaire.]

It has been for some time a commonplace--though, like most commonplaces,
it is probably much more often simply borrowed than an actual and (even
in the sense of _communis_) original perception of the borrowers--that
nothing shows the comparative inevitableness of the novel in the
eighteenth century better than the use of it by persons who would, at
other times, have used quite different forms to subserve similar
purposes. The chief instance of this with us is, of course, Johnson in
_Rasselas_, but it is much more variously and voluminously, if not in
any single instance much better, illustrated in France by the three
great leaders of the _philosophe_ movement; by considerable, if
second-rate figures, more or less connected with that movement, like
Marmontel and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; and by many lesser writers.

There can be no question that, in more ways than one, Voltaire[351]
deserves the first place in this chapter, not only by age, by volume,
and by variety of general literary ability, but because he, perhaps more
than any of the others, is a tale-teller born. That he owes a good deal
to Hamilton, and something directly to Hamilton's master,
Saint-Evremond, has been granted elsewhere; but that he is dependent on
these models to such an extent as to make his actual production unlikely
if the models had not been ready for him, may be roundly denied. There
are in literature some things which must have existed, and of which it
is not frivolous to say that if their actual authors had not been there,
or had declined to write them, they would have found somebody else to do
it. Of these, _Candide_ is evidently one, and more than one of
_Candide's_ smaller companions have at least something of the same
characteristic. Yet one may also say that if Voltaire himself had not
written these, he must have written other things of the kind. The
mordant wit, the easy, fluent, rippling style, so e