dropped out?" I should doubt it, even if a copy of the original
edition had the missing word, for it might easily have been put in by a
dull but conscientious "reader." The plural, in Thackeray's careless
way, comes from his _thinking_ as he wrote "Are they not _all_ ...
personage_s_...." The context confirms this.

[481] There are, of course, comparatively few of these; but the fewness
is not positive, even keeping to prose-fiction. Poetry and drama--under
their less onerous conditions for this special task--would enlarge the
list in goodly fashion.

[482] Shortly after Maupassant's death, I contributed an article on him
to the _Fortnightly Review_. It has never been reprinted, but, by the
kindness of the Editor of that _Review_, I have been permitted to use it
as a basis for this notice. I have, however, altered, omitted, and added
to a much greater extent than in the few other rehandlings acknowledged
in this History. The account of the actual books is wholly new.

[483] I had known Verlaine since his appearance in the _Parnasse
Contemporain_ years earlier, but not yet in his most characteristic
work.

[484] The following summary, to p. 505, formed no part of the original
article and is based on fresh and continuous reading. It is purposely
rather more minute than anything else in these later chapters, and was
not the easiest part of the book to do, owing to the large number of
Maupassant's short stories.

[485] Maupassant _could_ draw gentlemen and ladies, but he often did not
do so. His pretty young countesses (_not_ the same persons as those
referred to in text), who get drunk together _tete-a-tete_, and
discourse on the best way of making more effectual Josephs out of their
footmen, are not pleasing, though they are right in holding that no
perfume, save Eau de Cologne, doth become a _man_.

[486] Vol. I. pp. 150-1.

[487] The usual gutter-Naturalist certainly would--and even M. Zola, I
fear, might--have done the "Ephesian matron" business thoroughly:
Maupassant, as so often, knew other and better things.

[488] It may suggest Leconte de Lisle to others and may even have been
meant for him, but I think it worthy of the earlier and greater poet.

[489] It went, I fear, by mistake with the rest of my books; so I quote
from memory. But Southey and Locker have had their duet pleasantly
changed into a trio since by Mr. Austin Dobson's _Bookman's Budget_.

[490] It may be just, and only just necessary to ob