no Sterne; yet Diderot's work is not really like the work
of either of his celebrated contemporaries. They gave him the suggestion
of a method and a sentiment to start from, and he mused and brooded over
it until, from among the clouds of his imagination, there began to loom
figures of his own, moving along a path which was also his own. This was
the history of his adaptation of _The Natural Son_ from Goldoni. We can
only be sure that nothing became blithe in its passage through his mind.
He was too much of a preacher to be an effective humorist.

There is in _Jacques le Fataliste_ none of that gift of true creation
which produced such figures as Trim, and my Uncle Toby, and Mr. Shandy.
Jacques's master is a mere lay figure, and Jacques himself, with his
monotonous catchword, "_Il etait ecrit la-haut_," has no real
personality; he has none of the naturalness that wins us to Corporal
Trim, still less has he any touch of the profound humour of the immortal
Sancho. The book is a series of stories, rather than Sterne's subtle
amalgam of pathos, gentle irony, and frank buffoonery; and the stories
themselves are for the most part either insipid or obscene. There is
perhaps one exception. The longest and the most elaborate of them, that
which Schiller translated, is more like one of the modern French novels
of a certain kind, than any other production of the eighteenth century.
The adventure of Madame de Pommeraye and the Marquis d'Arcis is a crude
foreshadowing of a style that has been perfected by M. Feydeau and M.
Flaubert. The Marquis has been the lover of Madame de Pommeraye; he
grows weary of her, and in time the lady discovers the bitter truth.
Resignation is not among her virtues, and in her rage and anguish she
devises an elaborate plan of revenge, which she carries out with the
utmost tenacity and resolution. It consists in leading him on, by
skilful incitements, to marry a woman whom he supposes to be an angel of
purity, but whom Madame de Pommeraye triumphantly reveals to him on the
morning after his marriage as a creature whose past history has been one
of notorious depravity. This disagreeable story, of which Balzac would
have made a masterpiece, is told in an interesting way, and the
humoristic machinery by which the narrative is managed is less tiresome
than usual. It is at least a story with meaning, purpose, and character.
It is neither a jumble without savour or point, nor is it rank and gross
like half the