Its importance here.
This, however, is the moral side of the matter, with which we have not much to do. As a division of literature these sentimental novels, artificial as they are, have a good deal of interest; and in a History such as the present they have very great importance. They are so entirely different in atmosphere from the work of later times, that reading them has all the refreshing effect of a visit to a strange country; and yet one feels that they themselves have opened that country for coming writers as well as readers. They are often extraordinarily ingenious, and the books to which in form they set the example, though the power of the writers made them something very different in matter—Julie, La Religieuse, Paul et Virginie,[417] Corinne, René—give their progenitors not a little importance, or at least not a little interest of curiosity. Besides, it was in the school of Sensibility that the author of Manon Lescaut somehow or other developed that wonderful little book. I do not know that it would be prudent to recommend modern readers to study Sensibility for themselves in the original documents just surveyed. Disappointment and possibly maledictions would probably be the result of any such attempt, except in the case of Xavier de Maistre and Constant. But these others are just the cases in which the office of historical critic justifies itself. It is often said (and nobody knows the truth of it better than critics themselves) that a diligent perusal of all the studies and causeries that have ever been written, on any one of the really great writers, will not give as much knowledge of them as half an hour's reading of their own work. But then in that case the metal is virgin, and to be had on the surface and for the picking up. The case is different where tons of ore have to be crushed and smelted, in order to produce a few pennyweights of metal.
Whatever fault may be found with the "Sensibility" novel, it is, as a rule, "written by gentlemen [and ladies] for [ladies and] gentlemen." Of the work of two curious writers, who may furnish the last detailed notices of this volume, as much cannot, unfortunately, be said.
Restif de la Bretonne.
It may, from different points of view, surprise different classes of readers to find Restif de la Bretonne (or as some would call him, Rétif) mentioned here at all—at any rate to find him taken seriously, and not entirely without a certain respect. One of these classes, consisting of those who know nothing about him save at second-hand, may ground their surprise on the notion that his work is not only matter for the Index Expurgatorius, but also vulgar and unliterary, such as a French Ned Ward, without even Ned's gutter-wit, might have written. And these might derive some support from the stock ticket-jingle Rousseau du ruisseau, which, though not without some real pertinency, is directly misleading. Another class, consisting of some at least, if not most, of those who have read him to some extent, may urge that Decency—taking her revenge for the axiom of the boatswain in Mr. Midshipman Easy—forbids Duty to let him in. And yet others, less under the control of any Mrs. Grundy, literary or moral, may ask why he is let in, and Choderlos de Laclos[418] and Louvet de Courray, with some more, kept out, as they most assuredly will be.
In the first place, there is no vulgarity in Restif. If he had had a more regular education and society, literary or other, and could have kept his mind, which was to a certainty slightly unhinged, off the continual obsession of morbid subjects, he might have been a very considerable man of letters, and he is no mean one, so far as style goes,[419] as it is. He avails himself duly of the obscurity of a learned language when he has to use (which is regrettably often) words that do not appear in the dictionary of the Academy: and there is not the slightest evidence of his having taken to pornography for money, as Louvet and Laclos—as, one must regretfully add, Diderot, if not even Crébillon—certainly did. When a certain subject, or group of subjects, gets hold of a man—especially one of those whom a rather celebrated French lady called les cérébraux—he can think of nothing else: and though this is not absolutely true of Restif (for he had several minor crazes), it is very nearly true of him, and perhaps more true than of any one else who can be called a man of letters.
Probably no one has read all he wrote;[420] even the late M. Assézat, who knew more about him than anybody else, does not, I think, pretend to have done so. He was himself a printer, and therefore found exceptional means of getting the mischief, which his by no means idle hands found to do, into publicity of a kind, though even their subject does not seem to have made his books popular.[421] His largest work, Les Contemporaines, is in forty-two volumes, and contains some three hundred different sections, reminding one vaguely, though the differences in detail are very great, of Amory's plan, at least, for the Memoirs of Several Ladies. His most remarkable by far, the quasi-autobiographical Monsieur Nicolas,[422] in fourteen. He could write with positive moral purpose, as in the protest against Le Paysan Parvenu, above referred to; in La Vie de Mon Père (a book agreeably free from any variety of that sin of Ham which some biographical writings of sons about their fathers display); and in the unpleasantly titled Pornographe, which is also morally intended, and dull enough to be as moral as Mrs. Trimmer or Dr. Forsyth.
Indeed, this moral intention, so often idly and offensively put forward by those who are themselves mere pornographers, pervades Restif throughout, and, while it certainly sometimes does carry dulness with it, undoubtedly contributes at others a kind of piquancy, because of its evident sincerity, and the quaint contrast with the subjects the author is handling. These subjects make explicit dealing with himself difficult, if not impossible: but his differentia as regards them may, with the aid of a little dexterity, be put without offence. In the first place, as regards the comparison with Rousseau, Restif is almost a gentleman: and he could not possibly have been guilty of Rousseau's blackguard tale-telling in the cases of Madame de Warens (or, as I believe, we are now told to spell it "Vuarrens") or Madame de Larnage. The way in which he speaks of his one idealised mistress, Madame "Parangon," is almost romantic. He is, indeed, savage in respect to his wife—whom he seems to have married in a sort of clairvoyant mixture of knowledge of her evil nature and fascination by her personal charms and allurements, though he had had no difficulty in enjoying these without marriage. But into none other of his scores and hundreds of actual loves in some cases and at least passing intimacies in others,[423] does he ever appear to have taken either the Restoration and Regency tone on the one hand, or that of "sickly sentimentality" on the other. Against commerce for money he lifts up his testimony unceasingly; he has, as his one editor has put it, a manie de paternité, and denounces any vice disconnected with it. With the privileges of Solomon or Haroun al Raschid, Restif would have been perfectly contented: and he never would have availed himself of that of Schahriar before the two divine sisters put a stop to it.
All this, however, strictly speaking, is outside our present subject, and is merely intended as a sort of excuse for the introduction of a writer who has been unfairly ostracised, not as a passport for Restif to the young person. But his actual qualities as tale-teller are very remarkable. The second title of Monsieur Nicolas—Le Cœur Humain Dévoilé—ambitious as it is, is not fatuous. It is a human heart in a singularly morbid condition which is unveiled: but as, if I remember rightly, either Goethe or Schiller, or both, saw and said near the time, there is no charlatanery about the unveiling, and no bungling about the autopsy. Restif has been compared, and not unfairly, to Defoe, as well as to Rousseau; in a certain way he may be likened to Pepys; and all four share an intense and unaffected reality, combined, however, in the Frenchman's case with a sort of exaggeration of a dreamy kind, and with other dream-character, which reminds one of Borrow, and even of De Quincey. His absolute shamelessness is less unconnected with this dream-quality than may at first appear, and, as in all such cases, is made much less offensive by it. Could he ever have taken holiday from his day-long and night-long devotion to