nth-Century Fiction.]

Active, however, as was the cultivation of poetry proper and of the
drama, it is not likely that the nineteenth century will be principally
known in French literary history either as a poetical, or as a dramatic
age. Its most creative production is in the field of prose fiction. It
is particularly noteworthy that every one of the eight names which have
been set at its head is the name of a novelist, and that the energy of
most of these authors in novel-writing has been very considerable. Their
production may be divided into two broad classes--novels of incident, of
which Hugo and Dumas were the chief practitioners, and which derive
chiefly from Sir Walter Scott; and novels of character, which, with a
not inconsiderable admixture of English influence, may be said to be
legitimately descended from the indigenous novel created by Madame de la
Fayette, continued by Marivaux and still more by Prevost, and
maintained, though in diminished vivacity, by later writers. Of this
school George Sand and Balzac are the masters, though much importance
must also be assigned to Stendhal. At first the novelists of 1830
decidedly preferred the novel of incident, the literary success of which
in the hands of Hugo, and its pecuniary success in the hands of Dumas,
were equally likely to excite ambitions of different kinds.

[Sidenote: Minor and later Novelists.]

[Sidenote: Jules Janin.]

A rival of both of these in popularity during the reign of Louis
Philippe, though infinitely inferior to both in literary skill, was
Eugene Sue. With him may be classed another voluminous manufacturer of
exciting stories, Frederic Soulie, and somewhat later Paul Feval, with
next to them Amedee Achard and Roger de Beauvoir. A better writer than
any of these was Jules Janin, whose literary career was long and
prosperous, but not uniform. Janin began with a strange story, in the
extremest Romantic taste, called _L'Ane Mort et la Femme Guillotinee_.
This at a later period he represented as an intentional caricature,
which is not on the whole likely. He followed it up with _Barnave_, a
historical novel full of exciting incident. Both these books, however,
with grave defects, have power perhaps superior to that shown in
anything that Janin did later. Being an exceedingly facile writer, and
lacking that peculiar quality of style which sometimes precludes
popularity with the many as much as it secures it with the few, he
became absorbed i