ing altogether to appreciate the
real success and merit of the work as judged on that only criterion,
"Has the author done what he meant to do, and done it well, on the lines
he chose?" Of course, if our reader says, "I don't care about all this,
I merely want to be amused and interested," one cannot prevent him. He
had, in fact, as was hinted just now, better read nothing but _Atala_
and _Rene_, if not, indeed, _Atala_ only, immense as is the literary
importance of its companion. But in a history of the novel one is
entitled to hope, at any rate to wish, for a somewhat better kind of
customer or client.

According to Chateaubriand's own account, when he quitted England after
his not altogether cheerful experiences there as an almost penniless
_emigre_, he left behind him, in the charge of his landlady, exactly
2383 folio pages of MSS. enclosed in a trunk, and (by a combination of
merit on the custodian's part and luck on his own) recovered them
fifteen years afterwards, _Atala_, _Rene_, and a few other fragments
having alone accompanied him. These were published independently, the
_Genie_ following. _Les Martyrs_ was a later composition altogether,
while _Les Natchez_, the _matrix_ of both the shorter stories, and
included, as one supposes, in the 2383 waifs, was partly rewritten and
wholly published later still. A body of fiction of such a singular
character is, as has been said, not altogether easy to treat; but,
without much change in the method usually pursued in this _History_, we
may perhaps do best by first giving a brief argument of the various
contents and then taking up the censure, in no evil sense, of the
whole.

[Sidenote: _Atala._]

_Atala_ is short and almost entirely to the point. The heroine is a
half-breed girl with a Spanish father and for mother an Indian of some
rank in her tribe, who has subsequently married a benevolent chief. She
is regarded as a native princess, and succeeds in rescuing from the
usual torture and death, and fleeing with, a captive chief of another
"nation." This is Chactas, important in _Rene_ and also in the _Natchez_
framework. They direct their flight northwards to the French settlements
(it is late seventeenth or early eighteenth century throughout), and of
course fall in love with each other. But Atala's mother, a Christian,
has, in the tumult of her early misfortunes, vowed her daughter's
virginity or death; and when, just before the crucial moment, a
missionary oppor