e Dernier de M. Paul de Kock." And this
circumlocution became for a time popular, as a new name for the poor
creature on the ornaments of whose head our Elizabethans joked so
untiringly.

[40] A short essay, or at least a "middle" article, might be written on
this way of regarding a prophet in his own country, coupling Beranger
with Paul de Kock. Of course the former is by much a _major_ prophet in
verse than Paul is in prose. But the attitude of the superior French
person to both is, in different degrees, the same. (Thackeray in the
article referred to below, p. 62 _note_, while declaring Paul to be
_the_ French writer whose works are best known in England, says that his
educated countrymen think him _pitoyable_.--_Works_, Oxford edition,
vol. ii p. 533.)

[41] A gibe at the Vicomte d'Arlincourt's very popular novel, to be
noticed below. I have not, I confess, identified the passage: but it may
be in one of the plays.

[42] It would _not_ be fair to compare the two as makers of literature.
In that respect Theodore Hook is Paul's Plutarchian parallel, though he
has more literature and less life.

[43] Charity, outrunning knowledge, may plead "Irony perhaps?"
Unfortunately there is no chance of it.

[44] I really do not know who was (see a little below). Parny in his
absurd _Goddam!_ (1804) has something of it.

[45] And _he_ knew something of it through Addison.

[46] The straight hair is particularly curious, for, as everybody who
knows portraits of the early nineteenth century at all is aware,
Englishmen of the time preferred brushed back and rather "tousled"
locks. In Maclise's famous "Fraserians" there is hardly a
straight-combed head among all the twenty or thirty. At the same time it
is fair to say that our own book-illustrators and caricaturists, for
some strange reason, did a good deal to authorise the libels. Cruikshank
was no doubt a wonderful draughtsman, but I never saw (and I thank God
for it) anything like many, if not most, of his faces. "Phiz" and
Cattermole in (for example) their illustrations to _The Old Curiosity
Shop_ and _Barnaby Rudge_ sometimes out-Cruikshank Cruikshank in this
respect.

[47] Paul's ideas of money are still very modest. An income of 6000
francs (L240) represents ease if not affluence; with double the amount
you can "aspire to a duchess," and even the dispendious Irish-French
Viscount Edward de Sommerston in _La Fille aux Trois Jupons_ (_v. inf._)
starts on his career wi