od Almighty's gentlemen was as groundless as his
"proofs," in the French technical sense of gentility, were non-existent.
It is impossible to imagine anything in worse taste than his reply to
the Baron's no doubt offensive letter, and Julie's enclosed
renunciation. Even the adoring Julie herself, and the hardly less
adoring Claire--the latter not in the least a prude, nor given to giving
herself "airs"--are constantly obliged to pull him up for his want of
_delicatesse_. He is evidently a coxcomb, still more evidently a prig;
selfish beyond even that selfishness which is venial in a lover; not in
the least, though he can exceed in wine, a "good fellow," and in many
ways thoroughly unmanly. A good English school and college might have
made him tolerable: but it is rather to be doubted, and it is certain
that his way as a transgressor would have been hard at both. As it is,
he is very largely the embodiment--and it is more charitable than
uncharitable to regard him as largely the cause--of the faults of the
worst kind of French, and not quite only French, novel-hero ever since.

[Sidenote: And the less charming points of Julie. Her redemption.]

One approaches Julie herself, in critical intent, with mixed feelings.
One would rather say nothing but good of her, and there is plenty of
good to say: how much will be seen in a moment. Most of what is not so
good belongs, in fact, to the dreary bulk of sequel tacked on by
mistaken judgment to that more than true history of a hundred pages,
which leaves her in despair, and might well have left her altogether.
Even here she is not faultless, quite independently of her sins
according to Mrs. Grundy and the Pharisees. If she had not been, as
Claire herself fondly but truly calls her, such a _precheresse_, she
might not have fallen a victim to such a prig. One never can quite
forgive her for loving him, except on the all-excusing ground that she
loved him so much; and though she is perhaps not far beyond the licence
of "All's fair, in certain conditions," there is no doubt that, like her
part-pattern Clarissa, she is not passionately attached to the truth.
It might be possible to add some cavils, but for the irresistible plea
just glanced at, which stops one.

_Quia multum amavit!_ Nobody--at least no woman--had loved like that in
a prose novel before; nobody at all except Des Grieux, and he is but as
a sketch to an elaborate picture. She will wander after Pallas, and
would like t