s receive any private
information, and if they do not, how are we to reconcile their
knowledge--they are all love-adepts--with the morality of their lives?
"We live like other people, only more purely," says the author of "Some
Private Views," which is all very well. No man is bound to incriminate
himself. But as in the course of his career a successful novelist
describes many hundreds of proposals, all different, are we to believe
that he is so prompted merely by imagination? Are there no "documents,"
as M. Zola says, for all this prodigious deal of love-making? These are
questions which await a reply in the interests of ethics and of art.
Meanwhile an editor of enterprise has selected five-and-thirty separate
examples of "popping the question," as he calls it, from the tomes of
British fiction. To begin with an early case--when Tom Jones returned to
his tolerant Sophia, he called her "Madam," and she called him "Mr.
Jones," not Tom. She asked Thomas how she could rely on his constancy,
when the lover of Miss Segrim drew a mirror from his pocket (like
Strephon in "Iolanthe"), and cried, "Behold that lovely figure, that
shape, those eyes," with other compliments; "can the man who shall be in
possession of these be inconstant?" Sophia was charmed by the "man in
possession," but forced her features into a frown. Presently Thomas
"caught her in his arms," and the rest was in accordance with what Mr.
Trollope and the best authorities recommend. How differently did Arthur
Pendennis carry himself when he proposed to Laura, and did not want to be
accepted! Lord Farintosh--his affecting adventure is published
here--proposed nicely enough, but did not behave at all well when he was
rejected. By the way, when young men in novels are not accepted, they
invariably ask the lady whether she loves another. Only young ladies,
and young men whom they have rejected, know whether this is common in
real life. It does not seem quite right.

Kneeling has probably gone out, though Mr. Jingle knelt before the maiden
aunt, and remained in that attitude for no less than five minutes. In
Mr. Howell's "Modern Instance," kneeling was not necessary, and the
heroine kept thrusting her face into her lover's necktie; so the author
tells us. M. Theophile Gautier says that ladies invariably lay their
heads on the shoulder of the man who proposes (if he is the right man),
and for this piece of "business" (as we regret to say he considers it)