[480] Who might even say, "Is not this a slip of pen or press? Has not 'might' dropped out?" I should doubt it, even if a copy of the original edition had the missing word, for it might easily have been put in by a dull but conscientious "reader." The plural, in Thackeray's careless way, comes from his thinking as he wrote "Are they not all ... personages...." The context confirms this.
[481] There are, of course, comparatively few of these; but the fewness is not positive, even keeping to prose-fiction. Poetry and drama—under their less onerous conditions for this special task—would enlarge the list in goodly fashion.
[482] Shortly after Maupassant's death, I contributed an article on him to the Fortnightly Review. It has never been reprinted, but, by the kindness of the Editor of that Review, I have been permitted to use it as a basis for this notice. I have, however, altered, omitted, and added to a much greater extent than in the few other rehandlings acknowledged in this History. The account of the actual books is wholly new.
[483] I had known Verlaine since his appearance in the Parnasse Contemporain years earlier, but not yet in his most characteristic work.
[484] The following summary, to p. 505, formed no part of the original article and is based on fresh and continuous reading. It is purposely rather more minute than anything else in these later chapters, and was not the easiest part of the book to do, owing to the large number of Maupassant's short stories.
[485] Maupassant could draw gentlemen and ladies, but he often did not do so. His pretty young countesses (not the same persons as those referred to in text), who get drunk together tête-à-tête, and discourse on the best way of making more effectual Josephs out of their footmen, are not pleasing, though they are right in holding that no perfume, save Eau de Cologne, doth become a man.
[486] Vol. I. pp. 150-1.
[487] The usual gutter-Naturalist certainly would—and even M. Zola, I fear, might—have done the "Ephesian matron" business thoroughly: Maupassant, as so often, knew other and better things.
[488] It may suggest Leconte de Lisle to others and may even have been meant for him, but I think it worthy of the earlier and greater poet.
[489] It went, I fear, by mistake with the rest of my books; so I quote from memory. But Southey and Locker have had their duet pleasantly changed into a trio since by Mr. Austin Dobson's Bookman's Budget.