when every other
layer is "stummed" folly or nauseous bad taste. A novel is not like a
book of poems, where, as you see that you have hit on a failure, you
turn the page and find a success. To which it may be added finally that
while erudition of _any_ kind is a doubtful set-off to fiction, the
presentation of ragbag erudition of this kind is, to speak moderately
and in his own words of something else, "a rather hideous thing."[118]

Still, with readers of a certain quality, the good omens may to some
extent shame the ill even here. The death of Dea, with its sequel, is
very nearly perfect; it only wants the verse of which its author was
such an absolute master, instead of the prose, where he alternately
triumphed and bungled, to make it so. And one need not be a common
paradoxer to take either side on the question whether on the whole the
omen, if not the actuality, of _L'Homme Qui Rit_ or that of _Les
Travailleurs de la Mer_ was the happier. For, while the earlier and
better book showed how faults were hardening and might grow worse still,
the later showed how these very faults, attaining their utmost possible
development, could not entirely stifle the rarer gifts. I do not
remember that anybody in 1869 took this apparently aleatory side of the
argument. If he did he was justified in 1874.

[Sidenote: _Quatre-Vingt-Treize._]

One enormous advantage of _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_ over its immediate
predecessor lay on the surface--an advantage enormous in all cases, but
almost incalculable in this particular one. In _L'Homme Qui Rit_ Victor
Hugo had been dealing with a subject about which he knew practically
nothing, and about which he was prepared to believe, or even practise,
anything. Here, though he was still prepared to believe a great deal, he
yet knew a very great deal more. A little room for his eccentricities
remained, and long after the truth had become a matter of registered
history, he could accept the legendary lies about the _Vengeur_; but
there was no danger of his giving us French wapentakes brandishing
iron-weapons, or calling a French noble by any appellation comparable to
Lord Linnaeus[119] Clancharlie.

But, it may be said, is not the removal of these annoyances more than
compensated, in the bad sense, by things inseparable from such a
subject, as treated by such an author?--the glorification of
"Quatre-Vingt-Treize" itself, and, in particular, of the
Convention--that remarkable assembly which seems t