h eighteenth century and to French prose, almost what the ballad
was to the English eighteenth century and to English verse; almost what
the _Maerchen_ was to the prose and verse alike of yet un-Prussianised
Germany. They were more than twice blessed: for they were charming in
themselves; they exercised good influence on other literary productions;
and they served as precious antidotes to bad things that they could not
improve, and almost as precious alternatives to things good in
themselves but of a different kind from theirs.

What, however, none of the kinds discussed in this chapter gave
entirely, while only the fairy story gave in part, and that in strong
contrast to another part of itself, was a history of ordinary
life--high, low, or middle--dealing with characters more or less
representing live and individual personages; furnished with incidents of
a possible and probable character more or less regularly constructed;
furnished further with effective description of the usual scenery,
manners, and general accessories of living; and, finally, giving such
conversation as might be thought necessary in forms suitable to "men of
this world," in the Shakespearian phrase. In other words, none of them
attained, or even attempted to fulfil, the full definition of the novel.
The scattered books to be mentioned in the next chapter did not,
perhaps, in any one case--even Madame de la Fayette's--quite achieve
this; but in all of them, even in Sorel's, we see more or less conscious
or unconscious attempt at it.

FOOTNOTES:

[124] Herr Koerting (_v. sup._ p. 133) gave considerable space to
Barclay's famous _Argenis_, which also appeared fairly early in the
century. To treat, however, a Latin book, written by a Scotsman, with
admittedly large if not main reference to European politics, as a
"French novel," seems a literary solecism. I do not know whether it is
rash to add that the _Argenis_ itself seems to me to have been wildly
overpraised. It is at any rate one of the few books--one of the still
fewer romances--which have defied my own powers of reading at more than
one attempt.

[125]

[Sidenote: Note on marked influence of Greek Romance.]

The repetition, in the seventeenth century, of something very like a
phenomenon which we noticed in the twelfth, is certainly striking, and
may seem at first sight rather uncanny. But those who have made some
attempt to "find the whole" in literature, and in that attempt have at
lea