English master. The idiotic yell of "plagiarism" has been raised,
of course, by critical cretins. M. Daudet, as I understand what he
says in "Trente Ans de Paris," had not read Dickens at all, when he
wrote "Froment Jeune"--certainly had not read "Our Mutual Friend."
But there is something of Dickens's genius in M. Daudet's, and that
something is kept much better in hand by the Frenchman, is more
subordinated to the principles of taste and of truth.

On the other hand, to be done with this point, look at Delobelle,
the father of Desiree, and compare him with Dickens's splendid
strollers, with Mr. Vincent Crummles, and Mr. Lenville, and the
rest. As in Desiree so in Delobelle, M. Daudet's picture is much
the more truthful. But it is truthful with a bitter kind of truth.
Now, there is nothing not genial and delightful in Crummles and Mrs.
Crummles and the Infant Phenomenon. Here Dickens has got into a
region unlike the region of the pathetic, into a world that welcomes
charge or caricature, the world of humour. We do not know, we never
meet Crummleses quite so unsophisticated as Vincent, who is "not a
Prussian," who "can't think who puts these things into the papers."
But we do meet stage people who come very near to this naivete of
self-advertisement, and some of whom are just as dismal as Crummles
is delightful.

Here, no doubt, is Dickens's forte. Here his genius is all pure
gold, in his successful studies or inventions of the humorous, of
character parts. One literally does not know where to begin or end
in one's admiration for this creative power that peopled our fancies
with such troops of dear and impossible friends. "Pickwick" comes
practically first, and he never surpassed "Pickwick." He was a poor
story-teller, and in "Pickwick" he had no story to tell; he merely