class before him as a model, he has a man who, for a long time, is given up partly by the unkindness of fortune, partly by natural bent, to intrigue and courtiership. To the last, touches of Nature, though they naturally grow fewer and fewer, chequer and diversify the presentment. Now this was what the French, since they had given themselves up to swallow the doctrines and do the bidding of Horace, as represented or misrepresented by the native critics of the Malherbe-Boileau school, could not attain to, and could hardly even understand. Had Boileau lived a little longer it may be shrewdly suspected that he would have regarded _Gil Blas_ with much more indignation than that with which he regarded _Le Liable Boiteux_, and it is noteworthy that the greater work was far less popular with its author's countrymen than the lesser. They would, doubtless, have liked Achilles to be always _iracundus inexorabilis acer_, and would have preferred that Gil Blas should have outwitted the parasite in the matter of the trout and kept the favour of the Archbishop of Granada. _Gil Blas_, too, is far less full than _Le Diable Boiteux_ of the epigrammatic _pointes_ which have never ceased to delight the true Frenchman--and, indeed, they are delightful enough--and which reach their climax in the writings of Voltaire. Such sayings as: "Vous n'avez pas des idées justes de notre enfer"--"On nous reconcilia, nous nous embrassames, et depuis ce temps nous sommes ennemis mortels"--"Je sais qu'il-y-a de bons remèdes mais je ne sais pas s'il-y-a de bons médecins"--"Tout payeur est traité comme un mari," and a hundred things besides, are worthy of the author of _Candide_ at his very best, and his countrymen could not fail to relish them. They were less keen to relish such a presentment as that of Gil Blas, and therefore Lesage's fame, great as it has been even in France, has been more European than French, and he is to be quoted and compared with foreigners rather than with his countrymen.