[338] One does not know whether it was prudence, or that materialism which, though he was no philosophe, he shared with most of his contemporaries, which prevented Marivaux from completing this sharp though mildly worded criticism. The above-mentioned profane have hinted that both the placidity and the indifference of the persons concerned, whether Catholic or Calvinist, arise from their certainty of their own safety in another world, and their looking down on less "guaranteed" creatures in this. It may be just permissible to add that a comparison of Chaucer's and Marivaux's prioresses will suggest itself to many persons, and should be found delectable by all fit ones.
[339] His books on Margaret of Anjou and William the Conqueror are odd crosses between actual historical essays and the still unborn historical novel.
[340] Mlle. de Launay, better known as Mme. de Staal-Delaunay, saw, as most would have seen, a resemblance in this to the famous Mlle. Aïssé's. But the latter was bought as a little child by her provident "protector," M. de Ferréol. Mlle. Aïssé herself had earlier read the Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité and did not think much of them. But this was the earlier part. It would be odd if she had not appreciated Manon had she read it: but she died in the year of its appearance.
[341] The excellent but rather stupid editor of the [Dutch] Œuvres Choisies above noticed has given abstracts of Prévost's novels as well as of Richardson's, which the Abbé translated. These, with Sainte-Beuve's of the Mémoires, will help those who want something more than what is in the text, while declining the Sahara of the original. But, curiously enough, the Dutchman does not deal with the end of Cléveland.
[342] He had a fit of apoplexy when walking, and instead of being bled was actually cut open by a village super-Sangrado, who thought him dead and only brought him to life—to expire actually in torment.
[343] Crébillon père, tragedian and academician, is one of the persons who have never had justice done to them: perhaps because they never quite did justice to themselves. His plays are unequal, rhetorical, and as over-heavy as his son's work is over-light. But, if we want to find the true tragic touch of verse in the French eighteenth century, we must go to him.
[344] "Be it mine to read endless romances of Marivaux and Crébillon."
[345] Learnt, no doubt, to a great extent from Anthony Hamilton, with whose family, as has been noticed, he had early relations.
[346] He goes further, and points out that, as she is his really beloved Marquise's most intimate friend, she surely wouldn't wish him to declare himself false to that other lady?—having also previously observed that, after what has occurred, he could never think of deceiving his Célie herself by false declarations. These topsy-turvinesses are among Crébillon's best points, and infinitely superior to the silly "platitudes reversed" which have tried to produce the same effect in more recent times.
[347] It has been said more than once that Crébillon had early access to Hamilton's MSS. He refers directly to the Facardins in Ah! Quel Conte! and makes one of his characters claim to be grand-daughter of Cristalline la Curieuse herself.