[58] For a picture of an actual grisette, drawn by perhaps the greatest master of artistic realism (adjective and substantive so seldom found in company!) who ever lived, see that _Britannia_ article of Thackeray's before referred to--an article, for a long time, unreprinted, and therefore, till a comparatively short time ago, practically unknown. This and its companion articles from the _Britannia_ and the _Corsair_, all of 1840-41, but summarising ten or twelve years' knowledge of Paris, form, with the same author's _Paris Sketch Book_ (but as representing a more mature state of his genius), the best commentary on Paul de Kock. They may be found together in the third volume of the Oxford Thackeray edited by the present writer. [59] Unless they start from the position that an English writer on the French novel is bound to follow--or at least to pay express attention to--French criticism of it. This position I respectfully but unalterably decline to accept. A critical tub that has no bottom of its own is the very worst Danaid's vessel in all the household gear of literature. [60] The scene and society are German, but the author knows the name to have been originally English. [61] Such, perhaps, as Gibbon himself may have used while he "sighed as a lover" and before he "obeyed as a son." It should perhaps be said that Mme. de Montolieu produced many other books, mostly translations--among the latter a French version of _The Swiss Family Robinson_. [62] In dealing with "Sensibility" earlier, it was pointed out how extensively things were dealt with by _letter_. In such cases as these the fashion came in rather usefully. [63] The treatment of the authors here mentioned, _infra_, will, I hope, show that the introduction of their names is not merely "promiscuous." [64] I am quite prepared to be told that this was somebody else or nobody at all. "Moi, je dis Madame de Genlis." [65] P. 436. [66] The kind endeavours of the Librarian of the London Library to obtain some in Paris itself were fruitless, but the old saying about neglecting things at your own door came true. My friend Mr. Kipling urged me to try Mr. George Gregory of Bath, and Mr. Gregory procured me almost all the books I am noticing in this division. [67] The British Museum (see Preface) being inaccessible to me. [68] Readers will doubtless remember that the too wild career of this kind of vehicle, charioteered by wicked aristocrats, has been among the thousand-and-three causes assigned for the French Revolution. [69] Of course the author of the glossaries himself was, by actual surname, Dufresne, Ducange being a seignory. [70] It should be observed that a very large number of these minor novels, besides those specially mentioned as having undergone the process, from Ducray's downwards, were melodramatised.