riety, and Rousseau's only other large
books, _La Nouvelle Heloise_, 1760, and _Emile_, 1764, are avowed
novels. In both of these the didactic purpose asserts itself. In the
latter, indeed, it asserts itself to a degree sufficient seriously to
impair the literary merit of the story. The second title of _Emile_ is
_L'Education_, and it is devoted to the unfolding of Rousseau's views on
that subject by the aid of an actual example in Emile the hero. It had a
great vogue and a very considerable practical influence, nor can the
race of novels with political or ethical purposes be said to have ever
died out since. As a novel, properly so called, it has but little merit.
The case is different with _Julie_ or _La Nouvelle Heloise_. This is a
story told chiefly in the form of letters, and recounting the love of a
noble young lady, Julie, for Saint Preux, a man of low rank, with a kind
of afterpiece, depicting Julie's married life with a respectable but
prosaic free-thinker, M. de Wolmar. This famous book set the example,
first, of the novel of sentiment, secondly, of the novel of landscape
painting. Many efforts have been made to dethrone Rousseau from his
position of teacher of Europe in point of sentiment and the picturesque,
but they have had no real success. It is to _La Nouvelle Heloise_ that
both sentimental and picturesque fictions fairly owe their original
popularity; yet _Julie_ cannot be called a good novel. Its direct
narrative interest is but small, its characters are too intensely drawn
or else too merely conventional, its plot far too meagre. It is in
isolated passages of description, and in the fervent passion which
pervades parts of it, that its value, and at the same time its
importance in the history of novel-writing, consist.

Some lesser names group themselves naturally round those of the greater
_Philosophes_ in the department of prose fiction. Voltaire's style was
largely followed, but scarcely from Voltaire's point of view, and those
who practised it fell rather under the head of _Conteurs_ pure and
simple than of novelists with a purpose. The prose _Conte_ of the
eighteenth century forms a remarkable branch of literature, redeemed
from triviality by the exceptional skill expended on it. The master of
the style was Crebillon the younger, in whom its merits and defects were
both eminently present. Son of the tragic author, Crebillon led an easy
but a rather mysterious life, married an Englishwoman, and was