and their descendants.

[Sidenote: Some drawbacks--awkward history.]

The book, therefore, has not merely a variety, but a certain liveliness,
neither of which is commonplace; but it would of course be uncritical to
suppress its drawbacks. It is far too long: and while bowing to those to
the manner born who say that Baro carried out his master's plan well in
point of style, and acknowledging that I have paid less attention to
Parts IV. and V. than to the others, it seems to me that we could spare
a good deal of them. One error, common to almost the whole century in
fiction, is sometimes flagrant. Nobody except a pedant need object to
the establishment, in the time of the early fifth century and the place
of Gaul, of a non-historical kinglet- or queenletdom of Forez or
"Seguse" under Amasis (here a feminine name[148]), etc.; nor, though (as
may perhaps be remarked again later) things Merovingian bring little
luck in literature, need we absolutely bar Chilperics and Alarics, or a
reference to "all the beauties of Neustria." But why, in the midst of
the generally gracious _macedoine_ of serious and comic loves, and
jokes, and adventures, should we have thrust in the entirely
unnecessary, however historical, crime whereby Valentinian the Third
lost his worthless life and his decaying Empire? It has, however, been
remarked, perhaps often enough, by those who have busied themselves with
the history of the novel, how curious it is that the historical variety,
though it never succeeded in being born for two thousand years after
the _Cyropaedia_ and more, constantly strove to be so. At no time were
the throes more frequent than during the seventeenth century in France;
at no time, there or anywhere else, were they more abortive.[149]

[Sidenote: But attractive on the whole.]

But it remains on the whole an attractive book, and the secret of at
least part of this attractiveness is no doubt to be found stated in a
sentence of Madame de Sevigne's, which has startled some people, that
"everything in it is natural and true." To the startled persons this may
seem either a deliberate paradox, or a mere extravagance of affection,
or even downright bad taste and folly. But the Lady of all Beautiful
Letter-writers was almost of the family of Neverout in literary
criticism. If she had been a professional critic (which is perhaps
impossible), she might have safeguarded her dictum by the addition,
"according to its own scheme and division