A History of the French Novel. Volume 2. To the Close of the 19th Century. Saintsbury George

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for which reasons could perhaps be given. And it certainly does not apply to Balzac.

128

He was now forty-four, and had published not a few volumes, mostly small, of other kinds – travel description (which he did uncommonly well), and miscellaneous writing, and criticism, including the famous Racine et Shakespeare, an avant-coureur of Romanticism which contained, besides matter on its title-subjects, some sound estimate of Scott as a writer and some very unsound abuse about him as a man. This last drew from Byron, who had met Beyle earlier at Milan, a letter of expostulation and vindication which did that noble poet infinite credit, but of which Beyle, by no means to his credit, took notice. He was only too like Hazlitt in more ways than one: though few books with practically the same title can be more different than De l'Amour and Liber Amoris.

129

As for instance, those from Dekker and Massiger; Camoens and Ercilla are allowed their native tongues "neat."

130

The actual "Chartreuse" of Parma only makes its appearance on the very last page of the book, when the hero, resigning his arch bishopric, retires to it.

131

He is the younger son of a rich and noble family, but his father disowns and his older brother denounces him quite early. It is characteristic of Beyle that we hear very little of the father and are practically never even introduced to the brother.

132

These four words somehow make me think of Samuel Newcome's comment on the unfortunate dinner where "Farintosh" did not appear: "Scarcely anything was drank."

133

See note above.

134

Both would have declined to meddle with her, I think, but for different reasons.

135

Beyle, who had himself no good looks, is particularly lavish of them to his heroes.

136

Perhaps one of the rare biographical details which, as has been explained, may "force the consigne" here, is that Beyle in his youth, and almost up to middle age, was acquainted with an old lady who had the very unenviable reputation of having actually "sat for" Madame de Merteuil.

137

This bad bloodedness, or κακοηθεια, of Beyle's heroes is really curious. It would have qualified them later to be Temperance fanatics or Trade Union demagogues. The special difference of all three is an intense dislike of somebody else "having something."

138

In that merry and wise book Clarissa Furiosa.

139

She keeps the anniversary of his execution, and imitates Marguerite in procuring and treasuring, at the end of the story, Julien's severed head. (It may be well to note that Dumas had not yet written La Reine Margot.)

140

In proper duel, of course; not as he shot his mistress.

141

Its great defect is the utter absence of any poetical element. But, as Mérimée (than whom there could hardly be, in this case, a critic more competent or more friendly) said, poetry was, to Beyle, lettre close.

142

It seems curiously enough, that Beyle did mean to make the book gai. It is a a very odd kind of gaiety!

143

This attraction of the forçat is one of the most curious features in all French Romanticism. It was perhaps partly one of the general results of the Revolutionary insanity earlier, partly a symptom or sequel of Byronism. But the way it raged not only among folks like Eugène Sue, but among men and women of great talent and sometimes genius – George Sand, Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo – the last and greatest carrying it on for nearly two generations – is a real curiousity of literature. (The later and different crime-novel of Gaboriau & Co. will be dealt with in its place.)

144

V. sup. vol. i. p. 39.

145

A pseudonymous person has "reconstituted" the story under the title of Lucien Leeuwen (the hero's name). But some not inconsiderable experience of reconstitutions of this kind determined me to waste no further portion of my waning life on any one of them.

146

It may be desirable to glance at Beyle's avowed or obvious "intentions" in most if not all his novels – in the Chartreuse to differentiate Italian from French character, in Le Rouge et le Noir to embody the Macchiavellian-Napoleonic principle which has been of late so tediously phrased (after the Germans) as "will to" something and the like. These intentions may interest some: for me, I must confess, they definitely get in the way of the interest. For essays, "good": for novels, "no."

147

Vide Guy Mannering as to the "macers."

148

Les Chouans.