frequency of this name--not a
very pretty one in itself, and with no particular historical or other
attraction--in France and French of the earlier nineteenth century. It
was certainly due to _Le Solitaire_.

[79] If any proper moral reader is disturbed at this conjunction of
_amante_ and _mere_, he will be glad to know that M. d'Arlincourt
elsewhere regularises the situation and calls Night "_l'epouse_
d'Erebe."

[80] In the Radcliffian-literary not the Robespierrean-political sense.
For the Wertherism, _v. sup._ on Chateaubriand, p. 24 note.

[81] He was four years older than Nodier, but did not begin to write
fiction nearly so early. The _Phantasiestuecke_ are of 1814, while Nodier
had been writing stories, under German influence, as early as 1803. It
is, however, also fair to say that all those now to be noticed are later
than 1814, and even than Hoffmann's later collections, the _Elixiere des
Teufels_ and _Nachtstuecke_.

[82] The prudent as well as judicious poet who wrote these lines
provided a variant to suit those who, basing their position on
"Ramillies _cock_," maintain that it was a hat, not a wig, that was
named after Villeroy's defeat. For "grave--big" read "where Gallic hopes
fell flat," and for "wig" "hat" _simpliciter_, and the thing is done.
But Thackeray has "Ramillies _wig_" and Scott implies it.

[83] Nodier, who had been in Scotland and, as has been said, was a
philologist of the better class, is scrupulously exact in spelling
proper names as a rule. Perhaps Loch Fyne is not exactly "Le Lac Beau"
(I have not the Gaelic). But from Pentland to Solway (literally) he
makes no blunder, and he actually knows all about "Argyle's Bowling
Green."

[84] If phonetics had never done anything worse than this they would not
be as loathsome to literature as they sometimes are.

[85] On the other hand, compared with its slightly elder contemporary,
_Le Solitaire_ (_v. sup._), it is a masterpiece.

[86] Two little passages towards the end are very precious. A certain
bridegroom (I abridge a little) is "perfectly healthy, perfectly
self-possessed, a great talker, a successful man of business, with some
knowledge of physics, chemistry, jurisprudence, politics, statistics,
and phrenology; enjoying all the requirements of a deputy; and for the
rest, a liberal, an anti-romantic, a philanthropist, a very good
fellow--and absolutely intolerable." This person later changes the
humble home of tragedy into a "scho