aracters (with the exceptions named) nor among the French and creole
does one find relief: and when one passes from them to the "machinery"
parts--where, for instance, a "perverse couple," Satan and La Renommee
(_not_ the ship that Trunnion took), embark on a journey in a car with
winged horses--it must be an odd taste which finds things improved. In
Greek verse, in Latin verse, or even in Milton's English one could stand
Night, docile to the orders of Satan, condescending to deflect a hatchet
which is whistling unpleasantly close to Rene's ear, not that he may be
benefited, but preserved for more sufferings. In comparatively plain
French prose--the qualification is intentional, as will be seen a little
later--with a scene and time barely two hundred years off now and not a
hundred then, though in a way unfamiliar--the thing won't do. "Time," at
the orders of the Prince of Darkness, cutting down trees to make a
stockade for the Natchez in the eighteenth century, alas! contributes
again the touch of weak allegory, in neither case helping the effect;
while, although the plot is by no means badly evolved, the want of
interest in the characters renders it ineffective.

[Sidenote: _Les Martyrs._]

The defects of _Les Martyrs_[31] are fewer in number and less in degree,
while its merits are far more than proportionally greater and more
numerous. Needing less historical reinforcement, it enjoys much more.
_Les Natchez_ is almost the last, certainly the last important novel of
savage life, as distinguished from "boys' books" about savages. _Les
Martyrs_ is the first of a line of remarkable if not always successful
classical novels from Lockhart's _Valerius_ to Gissing's _Veranilda_. It
has nothing really in common with the kind of classical story which
lasted from _Telemaque_ to _Belisarius_ and later. And what is more, it
is perhaps better than any of its followers except Kingsley's
_Hypatia_, which is admittedly of a mixed kind--a nineteenth-century
novel, with events, scenes, and _decor_ of the fifth century. If it has
not the spectacular and popular appeal of _The Last Days of Pompeii_, it
escapes, as that does not, the main drawback of almost all the
others--the "classical-dictionary" element: and if, on the other, its
author knew less about Christianity than Cardinals Wiseman and Newman,
he knew more about lay "humans" than the authors of _Fabiola_ and
_Callista_.

It is probably unnecessary to point out at any great le