[190] That is to say, several weeks occupied in the manner above indicated. You may sometimes read two of the volumes in a day, but much oftener you will find one enough; in the actual process for the present history some intervals must be allowed for digestion and précis; and, as above remarked, if other forms of "cheerfulness," in Dr. Johnson's friend Mr. Edwards's phrase, do not "break in" of themselves, you must make them, to keep any freshness in the task. I fancy the twenty volumes were, if not "my sole occupation" (like that more cheerful and charitable one of the head-waiter at Limmer's), my main one for nearly twice twenty days.
[191] In this respect the remarks above extend backwards to the Astrée, and even to some of the smaller and earlier novels mentioned in connection with it. But the "Heroics," especially Mlle. de Scudéry, modernise the treatment not inconsiderably.
[192] Achilles Tatius and the author of Hysminias and Hysmine come nearest. But the first is too ancient and the last too modern.
[193] We have indeed endeavoured to discover a "form" of the greatest and best kind in the Arthurian, but it has been acknowledged that it may not have been deliberately reached—or approached—by even a single artist, and that, if it was, the identity of that artist is not quite certain.
[194] The intolerance of anything but scraps is one of the numerous arms and legs of the twentieth century Baal. There are some who have not bowed down to it.
[195] For Soliman is not indisposed to fall in love with his illustrious Bassa's beloved.
[196] At the close of Old Mortality.
[197] One is lost if one begins quoting from these books. But there is another passage at the end of the same volume worth glancing at for its oddity. It is an elaborate chronological "checking" of the age of the different characters; and, odd as it is, one cannot help remembering that not a few authors from Walter Map (or whoever it was) to Thackeray might have been none the worse for similar calculations.
[198] It is not, I hope, frivolous or pusillanimous, but merely honest, to add that, as I have spent much less time on Clélie than on the other book, it has had less opportunity of boring me.
[199] Cf. the Astrée as noted above.