Dumas _père_ is praised, largely we infer, because his work was sanctioned by Englishmen: “The three musketeers are as famous in England as in France. Thackeray could read about Athos from sunrise to sunset with the utmost contentment of mind, and Robert Louis Stevenson and Andrew Lang have paid tribute to the band.” Pierre Loti, however, in a short biography, hardly meets with British approval. “Many of his best books are long sobs of remorseful memory, so personal, so intimate, that an English reader is amazed to find such depth of feeling compatible with the power of minutely and publicly recording what is felt.” Loti, like de Musset, lacked that prudish restraint which is so admirable a virtue in English writers. Daudet, in a short and very inadequate biography, is written down as an imitator of Dickens; and in Anatole France’s biography, which is shorter than Marryat’s or Mrs. Oliphant’s, no adequate indication of his genius is given. Zola is treated with greater unfairness than perhaps any other French author. Zola has always been disliked in England, and his English publisher was jailed by the guardians of British morals. But it is somewhat astonishing to find to what lengths this insular prejudice has gone in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. Zola’s biography, which is shorter than Mrs. Humphry Ward’s, is written by a former Accountant General of the English army, and contains adverse comment because he did not idealize “the nobler elements in human nature,” although, it is said, “his later books show improvement.” Such scant treatment of Zola reveals the unfairness of extreme prejudice, for no matter what the nationality, religion, or taste of the critic, he must, in all fairness, admit that Zola is a more important and influential figure in modern letters than Mrs. Humphry Ward. In the biography of George Sand we learn that “as a thinker, George Eliot is vastly [_sic_] superior; her knowledge is more profound, and her psychological analysis subtler and more scientific.” Almost nothing is said of Constant’s writings; and in the mere half-column sketch of Huysmans there are only a few biographical facts with a list of his books. Of Stendhal there is practically no criticism; and Coppée “exhibits all the defects of his qualities.” René Bazin draws only seventeen lines—a bare record of facts; and Édouard Rod is given a third of a column with no criticism.