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The History of the Dukes of Normandy by Benoît de Sainte-More is based on the work of Wace. The 43,000 lines which it contains are of but little interest to the historian; they are too evidently the work of a romancier courtois, who takes pleasure in recounting love-adventures such as those he has described in his romance of Troy.
Do not suppose that the poet, the romancier, is most poetic, most romantic, when he is striving, struggling, labouring, to check the rush of his ideas, and materialize the images which visit him as souls into such tangible likenesses of flesh and blood that the highest compliment a reader can bestow on them is to say that they are lifelike: No: the poet's real delight is not in the mechanism of composing; the best part of that delight is in the sympathies he has established with innumerable modifications of life and form, and art and Nature, sympathies which are often found equally keen in those who have not the same gift of language.
Do not suppose that the poet, the romancier, is most poetic, most romantic, when he is striving, struggling, labouring, to check the rush of his ideas, and materialize the images which visit him as souls into such tangible likenesses of flesh and blood that the highest compliment a reader can bestow on them is to say that they are lifelike: No: the poet's real delight is not in the mechanism of composing; the best part of that delight is in the sympathies he has established with innumerable modifications of life and form, and art and Nature, sympathies which are often found equally keen in those who have not the same gift of language.
He wrote: "Tolstoy, comme créateur, comme romancier, comme poète épique, pour mieux dire, est un des quatre ou cinq plus grands génies de notre siècle. Comme penseur, il est un des plus faibles esprits de l'Europe." Not all that, replies Remy de Gourmont; Tolstoy may be wildly mistaken, but he is never weak-minded.
A very clever French critic, whose fancy is often more lively than his observation is deep, M. Emile Montégut, writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes, in the year 1860, invents for our author the appellation of "Un Romancier Pessimiste." Superficially speaking, perhaps, the title is a happy one; but only superficially.
"A laquelle donc des deux doit on compâtir Madame ou Mademoiselle?" Yet he did not like Keene the worse for the impatient gesture with which the latter shook himself loose, muttering, "Je vous croyais trop sage, M. le Vicomte, pour vous amuser avec ces balivernes de romancier."
To speak of Hawthorne, as M. Emile Montégut does, as a romancier pessimiste, seems to me very much beside the mark. He is no more a pessimist than an optimist, though he is certainly not much of either. He does not pretend to conclude, or to have a philosophy of human nature; indeed, I should even say that at bottom he does not take human nature as hard as he may seem to do.
"Parbleu, c'est ca," cries Florac, "he speaks like a book the romancier!" I confess, for my part, I thought that a good woman might plead with him, and touch that manly not disloyal heart now trembling on the awful balance between evil and good. "Allons! let us make to come the drague!" cries Florac. "Jack, thou returnest with us, my friend!
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