one of which exceeds a hundred pages or so in
length, while many do not extend beyond two or three. Nowhere is the
capacity of the French language for _persiflage_ better shown, and
nowhere, perhaps, are more phrases which have become household words to
be found. Nowhere also, it is true, is the utter want of reverence,
which was Voltaire's greatest fault, and the absence of profundity,
which accompanied his marvellous superficial range and acuteness, more
constantly displayed.

[Sidenote: Diderot.]

No inconsiderable portion of the extensive and unequal work of Diderot
is occupied by prose fiction. He began by a licentious tale in the
manner, but without the wit, of Crebillon the younger; a tale in which,
save a little social satire, there was no purpose whatever. But by
degrees he, like Voltaire, began to use the novel as a polemical weapon.
The powerful story of _La Religieuse_, 1760, was the boldest attack
which, since the Reformation and the licence of Latin writing, had been
made on the drawbacks and dangers of conventual life. _Jacques le
Fataliste_, 1766, is a curious book, partly suggested, no doubt, by
Sterne, but having a legitimate French ancestry in the _fatrasie_ of the
sixteenth century. Jacques is a manservant who travels with his master,
has adventures with him, talks incessantly to him, and tells him
stories, as also does another character, the mistress of a country inn.
One of these stories, the history of the jealousy and attempted revenge
of a great lady on her faithless lover by making him fall in love with a
girl of no character, is admirably told, and has often since been
adapted in fiction and drama. Other episodes of _Jacques le Fataliste_
are good, but the whole is unequal. The strangest of all Diderot's
attempts in prose fiction--if it is to be called a fiction and not a
dramatic study--is the so-called _Neveu de Rameau_, in which, in the
guise of a dialogue between himself and a hanger-on of society (or
rather a monologue of the latter), the follies and vices, not merely of
the time, but of human nature itself, are exposed with a masterly hand,
and in a manner wonderfully original and piquant.

[Sidenote: Rousseau.]

[Sidenote: Crebillon the Younger.]

Neither Voltaire, however, nor Diderot devoted, in proportion to their
other work, as much attention to prose fiction as did Jean Jacques
Rousseau. Even the _Confessions_ might be classed under this head
without a great violation of prop