P. 121, ll. 8-10. Perhaps instead of, or at least beside, Archdeacon
Grantly I should have mentioned a more real dignitary (as some count
reality) of the Church, Charles Kingsley. The Archdeacon and the Canon
would have fought on many ecclesiastical and some political grounds, but
they might have got on as being, in Dr. Grantly's own words at a
memorable moment "both gentlemen." At any rate, Kingsley was soaked in
Rabelais, and one of the real curiosities of literature is the way in
which the strength of _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ helped to beget the
sweetness of _The Water Babies_.

Chap. viii. pp. 163-175.--After I had "made my" own "siege" of the
_Astree_ on the basis of notes recording a study of it at the B.M., Dr.
Hagbert Wright of the London Library was good enough to let me know that
his many years' quest of the book had been at last successful, and to
give me the first reading of it. (It was Southey's copy, with his own
unmistakable autograph and an inserted note, while it also contained a
cover of a letter addressed to him, which had evidently been used as a
book-mark.) Although not more than four months had passed since the
previous reading, I found it quite as appetising as (in the text itself)
I had expressed my conviction that it would be: and things not noticed
before cropped up most agreeably. There is no space to notice all or
many of them here. But one of the earliest, due to Hylas, cannot be
omitted, for it is the completest and most sententious vindication of
polyerotism ever phrased: "Ce n'etait pas que je n'aimasse les autres:
mais j'avais encore, outre leur place, celle-ci vide dans mon ame." And
the soul of Hylas, like Nature herself, abhorred a vacuum! (This
approximation is not intended as "new and original": but it was some
time after making it that I recovered, in _Notre Dame de Paris_, a
forgotten anticipation of it by Victor Hugo.)

Another early point of interest was that the frontispiece portrait of
Astree (the edition, see _Bibliography_, appears to be the latest of the
original and ungarbled ones, _imprimee a Rouen, et se vend a Paris_
(1647, 10 vols.)) is evidently a portrait, though not an identical one,
of the same face given in the Abbe Reure's engraving of Diane de
Chateaumorand herself. The nose, especially, is hardly mistakable, but
the eyes have rather less expression, and the mouth less character,
though the whole face (naturally) looks younger.

On the other hand, the port