MM. de Goncourt, besides their work in Naturalist (they would have preferred to call it "Impressionist") fiction, devoted themselves especially to study and collection in the fine arts, and produced many volumes on the historical side of these, volumes distinguished by accurate and careful research. This quality they carried, and the elder of them after his brother's death continued to carry, into novel-writing (_Renee Mauperin_, _Germinie Lacerteux_, _Cherie_, &c.) with the addition of an extraordinary care for peculiar and, as they called it, "personal" diction. On the other hand, Alphonse Daudet (who with the other three, Flaubert to some extent, and the Russian novelist Turgenieff, formed a sort of _cenacle_ or literary club) mixed with some Naturalism a far greater amount of fancy and wit than his companions allowed themselves or could perhaps attain; and in the _Tartarin_ series (dealing with the extravagances of his fellow-Provencaux) added not a little to the gaiety of Europe. His other novels (_Fromont jeune et Risler aine_, _Jack_, _Le Nabab_, &c.), also very popular, have been variously judged, there being something strangely like plagiarism in some of them, and in others, in fact in most, an excessive use of that privilege of the novelist which consists in introducing real persons under more or less disguise. It should be observed in speaking of this group that the Goncourts, or rather the survivor of them, left an elaborate _Journal_ disfigured by spite and bad taste, but of much importance for the appreciation of the personal side of French literature during the last half of the century.