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Talking of books, I want some one to write a novel, which shall be a metaphysical Gil Blas; which shall deal more with the mind than Le Sage's book, and less with the actions; which shall make its hero the creature of the world, but a different creation, though equally true; which shall give a faithful picture in the character of one man of the aspect and the effects of our social system; making that man of a better sort of clay than the amusing lacquey was, and the produce of a more artificial grade of society.
Talking of books, I want some one to write a novel, which shall be a metaphysical Gil Blas; which shall deal more with the mind than Le Sage's book, and less with the actions; which shall make its hero the creature of the world, but a different creation, though equally true; which shall give a faithful picture in the character of one man of the aspect and the effects of our social system; making that man of a better sort of clay than the amusing lacquey was, and the produce of a more artificial grade of society.
He seeks immortality in an exact description of a linendraper's shop; if the shop conferred immortality it should be upon the linendraper who created the shop, and not on the novelist who described it. And his last novel "l'Œuvre," how spun out, and for a franc a line in the "Gil Blas." Not a single new or even exact observation.
Courtland deliberately pinned the napkin to his waistcoat, ordered all the windows to be thrown open, and set to work like the good Canon in Gil Blas.
Of course she is wicked: so were Iago and Blifil. The only question is, if she be real? Most certainly she is, as real as anything in the whole range of fiction, as real as Tartuffe, or Gil Blas, Wilhelm Meister, or Rob Roy. No one doubts that Becky Sharps exist: unhappily they are not even very uncommon.
If Borrow made a set of letters to the Bible Society into a book like "Gil Blas," he could hardly do less especially when he had been reminded of the fact with his remoter adventures; and having taken out dates and names of persons and places he felt free. He produced his view of himself, as De Quincey did in his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater."
For a moment she blamed a woman's susceptibility to become a mother for her blas? existence but it had been her choice to remain pregnant and it was her choice to raise this being whom she could have easily given away for adoption. Likewise, it was her choice to not seek employment. She had striven for isolation; but she hadn't done it with absolute perfection.
Amongst others, was the chaplain of our division, whose outward man, as I have already said, conveyed no very exalted notion of the respectability of his profession, and who was treated with greater indignity than usually fell to the lot of prisoners, for, after keeping him a couple of days, and finding that, however gifted he might have been in spiritual lore, he was as ignorant as Dominie Sampson on military matters; and, conceiving good provisions to be thrown away upon him, they stripped him nearly naked and dismissed him, like the barber in Gil Blas, with a kick in the breech, and sent him in to us in a woful state.
'Not the Bible, I do hope? said I fervently. 'No, about the other. He was not quite sure but that, instead of "Gil Blas," he ought to have selected "Don Quixote." Now really that seems to me worse than "Gil Blas." 'You mean less excellent, I rejoined; 'you are too young to appreciate the full signification of "Don Quixote."
Where is that Gil Blas gone? Eh? And that Silvio Pellico? And.... But why continue the list.... He knows. And hats. There are people who will exchange hats. Now that is unpardonable. That goes outside that dim borderland of conscience where honesty and dishonesty dissemble. No one can put a strange hat on without being aware of the fact. Yet it is done.
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