ohnson, though he might well think
little of _Titi_, need not have despised the whole _Cabinet_ (or as he
calls it, perhaps using the real title of another issue,
_Bibliotheque_), and would not on another occasion. Indeed the
diary-notes in which the thing occurs are too much in shorthand to be
trustworthy texts.

[243] Pierre Francois Godard de Beauchamps seems to have been another
fair example of the half-scholarly bookmakers of the eighteenth century.
He wrote a few light plays and some serious _Recherches sur les Theatres
de France_ which are said to have merit. He translated the late and
coxcombical but not uninteresting Greek prose romance of _Hysminias and
Hysmine_, as well as that painful verse-novel, the _Rhodanthe and
Dosicles_ of Theodoras Prodromus: and he composed, under a pseudonym, of
course, a naughty _Histoire du Prince Apprius_ to match his good
_Funestine_. The contrasted ways and works of such bookmakers at various
times would make a not uninteresting essay of the Hayward type.

[244] "Engageant," "Adresse," "Parlepeu," etc. The _Avertissement de
l'Auteur_ is possibly a joke, but more probably an awkward and miss-fire
_supercherie_ revealing the usual ignorance of the time as to matters
mediaeval. "Alienore" (though it would be better without the final _e_)
is a pretty as well as historic form of one of the most beautiful and
protean of girl's names: but how did her father, a "seigneur _anglais_,"
come to be called "Rivalon Murmasson"? And did they know much about
Arabia Felix in Brittany when "Daniel Dremruz" reigned there between
A.D. 680 and 720? Gueulette himself was a barrister and
Procureur-Substitut at the Chatelet. He seems to have imitated Hamilton,
to whom the editors of the Cabinet rather idly think him "equal,"
though, inconsistently, they admit that Hamilton "stands alone" and
Gueulette does not. On the other hand, they charge Voltaire with
actually "tracing" over Gueulette. ("_Zadig_ est calque sur les _Soirees
Bretonnes_.") This is again an exaggeration; but Gueulette had,
undoubtedly, a pleasant and exceedingly fertile fancy, and a good knack
of narrative.

[245] The best perhaps is of a certain peppery Breton, Saint-Foix, who
was successively a mousquetaire, a lieutenant of cavalry, aide-de-camp
to "Broglie the War-god," and a long-lived _litterateur_ in Paris. M. de
Saint-Foix picked a quarrel in the _foyer_ of the opera with an unknown
country gentleman, as it seemed, and "gave