ovelist only _par interim_, much more than Aramis was a
mousquetaire, appears, even in _Julie_, so glaringly as to be dangerous
and almost fatal. The book fills, in the ordinary one-volume editions,
nearly five hundred pages of very small and very close print. Of these
the First Part contains rather more than a hundred, and it would be
infinitely better if the whole of the rest, except a few passages (which
would be almost equally good as fragments), were in the bosom of the
ocean buried. Large parts of them are mere discussions of some of
Rousseau's own fads; clumsy parodies of Voltaire's satiric
manners-painting; waterings out of the least good traits in the hero and
heroine; uninteresting and superfluous appearances of the third and only
other real person, Claire; a dreary account of Julie's married life;
tedious eccentricities of the impossible and not very agreeable Lord
Edward Bomston, who shares with Dickens's Lord Frederick Verisopht the
peculiarity of being alternately a peer and a person with a courtesy
"Lord"-ship; a rather silly end for the heroine herself;[365] and
finally, a rather repulsive and quite incongruous acknowledgment of
affection for the creature Saint-Preux, with a refusal to "implement"
it (as they say in Scotland) matrimonially, by Claire, who is by this
time a widow.[366] If mutilating books[367] were not a crime deserving
terrible retribution in this life or after it, one could be excused for
tearing off the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Parts, with the
_Amours de Lord Edouard_ which follow. If one was rich, one would be
amply justified in having a copy of Part I., and the fragments above
indicated, printed for oneself on vellum.

[Sidenote: The minor characters.]

But this is not all. Even the First Part--even the presentation of the
three protagonists--is open to some, and even to severe, criticism. The
most guiltless, but necessarily much the least important, is Claire. She
is, of course, an obvious "borrow" from Richardson's lively second
heroines; but she is infinitely superior to them. It is at first sight,
though not perhaps for long, curious--and it is certainly a very great
compliment to Madame de Warens or Vuarrens and Madame d'Houdetot, and
perhaps other objects of his affections--that Rousseau, cad as he was,
and impossible as it was for him to draw a gentleman, could and did draw
ladies. It was horribly bad taste in both Julie and Claire to love such
a creature as Sa