poignancy.

[Sidenote: _La Fee aux Miettes._]

In fact, acknowledging most humbly that I could not write even the worst
and shortest of Nodier's stories, I am bound to say that I think he was
not to be trusted with a long one. _La Fee aux Miettes_ is at once an
awful and a delightful example. The story of the mad shipwright Michel,
who fell in love with the old dwarf beggar--so unlike her of Bednal
Green or King Cophetua's love--at the church door of Avranches; who
followed her to Greenock and got inextricably mixed between her and the
Queen of Sheba; who for some time passed his nights in making love to
Belkis and his days in attending to the wisdom of the Fairy of the
Crumbs (she always brought him his breakfast after the Sabaean Nights);
who at last identified the two in one final rapture, after seeking for a
Singing Mandrake; and who spent the rest (if not, indeed, the whole) of
his days in the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum;--is at times so ineffably
charming that one is almost afraid oneself to repeat the refrain--

C'est moi, c'est moi, c'est moi!
Je suis la Mandragore!
La fille des beaux jours qui s'eveille a l'aurore--
Et qui chante pour toi!

though, after all, every one whose life has been worth living has
listened for the song all that life--and has heard it sometimes.

To find any fault with the matrix of this opal is probably blasphemous.
But I own that I could do without the Shandean prologue and epilogue of
the narrator and his man-servant Daniel Cameron. And though, as a
tomfool myself, I would fain not find any of the actions of my kind
alien from me, I do find some of the tomfoolery with which Nodier has
seasoned the story superfluous. Why call a damsel "Folly Girlfree"? What
would a Frenchman say if an English story-teller christened some girl of
Gaul "Sottise Librefille"? "Sir Jap Muzzleburn," the Bailiff of the Isle
of Man, and his black poodle-equerry, Master Blatt, amuse me but little;
and Master Finewood, the shipbuilder,--whose rejected six sons-in-law,
lairds of high estate, run away with his thirty thousand guineas, and
are checkmated by six sturdy shipwrights,--less. I have no doubt it is
my fault, my very great fault, but I wish they would _go_, and leave me
with Michel and La Fee, or rather allow me to _be_ Michel _with_ La Fee.

[Sidenote: _Smarra_ and _Soeur Beatrix_.]

_Smarra_--which made a great impression on its contemporaries and had a
strong influence on