To one charge which has been brought against _Gil Blas_, that of undue length, it is difficult to offer a very valid defence. That this length conduced to the anachronisms which the author admits in a characteristic and sarcastic _avertissement_ is very probable, but these are matters of very little consequence and may be ranked with the sea-coast of Bohemia and Hector's reference to Aristotle. It is of more importance that the extreme prolongation of the book has made it--it may freely be admitted--to a certain extent tedious. Nor does it seem reasonable to doubt that this prolongation was, in some degree, artificial--that is to say, that the favour with which the book was received and the offers of the publishers very likely induced the author to extend it a good deal more than he had at first designed. _Per contra_ it can only be alleged that, in the peculiar style of which _Gil Blas_ is an example, there is no natural limit to the exposition. The book having no defined plot, but being a picture of _quotquot agunt homines_ in so far as the life of a particular person touches that action, nothing but the death of the hero can be said to bring it to a close. This, indeed, is of the essence of the romance as opposed to the epic, and, in its so-called regular or non-Shakspearean form, the drama. These two latter presuppose a definite and limited plot. The romance does not, and it admits not only an indefinite extension in a straight line, but also digressions and episodes _ad infinitum_. That this is rather a weakness than a strength of the style may certainly be admitted, and the fact had been sufficiently exemplified, not merely in the mediæval poem and prose romances but in the _Amadis_ cycle, where the reader is conducted from generation to generation in a manner sufficient to weary the patience of the most robust. But it was characteristic of Lesage that he was an innovator rather in detail than in the general. He did not produce the modern novel--that was reserved for his younger contemporary Prévost. He only took an existing _genre_, made many small improvements in it, and produced a masterpiece therein. Perhaps it would be ungrateful to complain when he did so much that he did no more.