himself, however, most dexterously afterwards), cannot be
tolerated in Paradise. Moreover, besides creating of necessity a sort of
fresh dialect in which it had to be told, and producing a set of
personages entirely unhackneyed, it did an immense service by
introducing a sort of etiquette, quite different from the conventions
above noticed,--a set of manners, as it may almost be called, which had
the strongest and most beneficial influence--though, like all strong and
good things, it might be perverted--on fiction generally. In this all
sorts of nice things, as in the original prescription for what girls are
made of, were included--variety, gaiety, colour, surprise, a complete
contempt of the contemptible, or of that large part of it which contains
priggishness, propriety, "prunes, and prism" generally. Moreover (and
here I fear that the above promised abstinence from the contentious must
be for a little time waived) it confirmed a great principle of novel and
romance alike, that if you can you should "make a good end," as, _teste_
Romance herself, Guinevere did, though the circumstances were
melancholy.

The termination of a fairy tale rarely is, and never should be, anything
but happy. For this reason I have always disliked--and though some of
the mighty have left their calm seats and endeavoured to annihilate me
for it, I still continue to dislike--that old favourite of some part of
the public, _The Yellow Dwarf_. That detestable creature (who does not
even amuse me) had no business to triumph; and, what is more, I don't
believe he did. Not being an original writer, I cannot tell the true
history as it might be told; but I can criticise the false. I do not
object to this version because of its violation of poetical justice--in
which, again, I don't believe. But this is neither poetical, nor just,
nor amusing. It is a sort of police report, and I have never much cared
for police reports. I should like to have set Maimoune at the Yellow
Dwarf: and then there would have been some fun.

It is probably unnecessary to offer any translations here, because the
matter is so generally known, and because the books edited by that
regretted friend of mine above mentioned have spread it (with much other
matter of the same kind) more widely than ever. But the points mentioned
above, and perhaps some others, can never be put too firmly to the
credit of the fairy tale as regards its influence on fiction, and on
French fiction parti