o have made up its
mind to prove for all time that, in democracies, the scum comes to the
top?--that assembly in which Fabre d'Eglantine stood for poetry, Marat
for humanitarianism, Robespierre for justice, Hebert and Chaumette for
decency, Sieyes and Chabot for different forms of religion, the
composers of the Republican Calendar[120] for common sense? where the
only suggestion of a great man was Danton, and the only substitutes for
an honest one were the prigs and pedants of the Gironde? To which the
only critical answer must be, even when the critic does not contest the
correctness of this description--"Why, no!"

It is better, no doubt, that a novelist, and that everybody else, should
be a _bien-pensant_; but, as in the case of the poet, it will not
necessarily affect his goodness in his art if he is not. He had, indeed,
best not air his opinions, whatever they are, at too great length; but
_what_ they are matters little or nothing. A Tory critic who cannot
admire Shelley or Swinburne, Dickens or Thackeray, because of their
politics, is merely an ass, an animal unfortunately to be found in the
stables or paddocks of every party. On the other hand, absurdities and
faults of taste matter very much.

Now from these latter, which had nearly ruined _L'Homme Qui Rit_,
_Quatre-Vingt-Treize_, if not entirely free, suffers comparatively
little. The early and celebrated incident of the carronade running amuck
shows characteristic neglect of burlesque possibilities (and, as I
believe some experts have maintained, of actual ones), but it has the
qualities of the Hugonian defects. An arm-chair critic may ask, Where
was the English fleet in the Channel when a French one was allowed to
come out and slowly mob the _Claymore_ to destruction, without, as far
as one sees, any interference or counter-effort, though the expedition
of that remarkable corvette formed part of an elaborate and carefully
prepared offensive?[121] Undoubtedly, the Convention scenes must be
allowed--even by sympathisers with the Revolution--to be clumsy
stopgaps, unnecessary to the action and possessed of little intrinsic
value in themselves. The old fault of verbosity and "watering out"
recurs; and so does the reappearance, with very slight change, of
figures and situations. Cimourdain in character is very much of a more
respectable Claude Frollo; and in conduct, _mutatis_ not so very many
_mutandis_, almost as much of a less respectable Javert. The death of