etins_. M. Daudet, as I
understand what he says in "Trente Ans de Paris," had not read Dickens at
all, when he wrote "Froment Jeune"--certainly had not read "Our Mutual
Friend." But there is something of Dickens's genius in M. Daudet's, and
that something is kept much better in hand by the Frenchman, is more
subordinated to the principles of taste and of truth.

On the other hand, to be done with this point, look at Delobelle, the
father of Desiree, and compare him with Dickens's splendid strollers,
with Mr. Vincent Crummles, and Mr. Lenville, and the rest. As in Desiree
so in Delobelle, M. Daudet's picture is much the more truthful. But it
is truthful with a bitter kind of truth. Now, there is nothing not
genial and delightful in Crummles and Mrs. Crummles and the Infant
Phenomenon. Here Dickens has got into a region unlike the region of the
pathetic, into a world that welcomes _charge_ or caricature, the world of
humour. We do not know, we never meet Crummleses quite so
unsophisticated as Vincent, who is "not a Prussian," who "can't think who
puts these things into the papers." But we do meet stage people who come
very near to this _naivete_ of self-advertisement, and some of whom are
just as dismal as Crummles is delightful.

Here, no doubt, is Dickens's _forte_. Here his genius is all pure gold,
in his successful studies or inventions of the humorous, of character
parts. One literally does not know where to begin or end in one's
admiration for this creative power that peopled our fancies with such
troops of dear and impossible friends. "Pickwick" comes practically
first, and he never surpassed "Pickwick." He was a poor story-teller,
and in "Pickwick" he had no story to tell; he merely wandered at
adventure in that merrier England which was before railways were.
"Pickwick" is the last of the stories of the road that begin in the
wandering, aimless, adventurous romances of Greece, or in Petronius
Arbiter, and that live with the life of "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote," of
"Le Roman Comique," of "Tom Jones" and "Joseph Andrews." These tales are
progresses along highways bristling with adventure, and among inns full
of confusion, Mr. Pickwick's affair with the lady with yellow curl-papers
being a mild example. Though "Tom Jones" has a plot so excellent, no
plot is needed here, and no consecutive story is required. Detached
experiences, vagrants of every rank that come and go, as in real life,
are all the mat