These men were favourite
authors of the nascent democracy; and, in an age when reprints of
older writers were much rarer than to-day, would be far more likely to
appeal to a boy's taste than seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
authors. At an after-period only, when he had definitely entered upon
his maturer literary career, was he to take up the latter and use
them, together with Rabelais, La Bruyere, Moliere, and Diderot, as his
best, if not his constant, sources of inspiration. In the stories of
the first of the three above-mentioned modern writers, the reader
usually meets with some child of poor parentage, who, after most
extraordinary and comic experiences, marries the child of a nobleman.
In those of the second, the hero or heroine struggles with powerful
enemies, is aided by powerful friends, and moves in an atmosphere of
blood and mystery until vice is chastized and virtue finally rewarded.
The two writers, however, differ more in their talent than in their
methods, the first having an amount of originality which is almost
entirely wanting to the second. With both, indeed, the main object is
to impress and astonish, and the finer touches of Lesage and Prevost
are seldom visible in either's work.
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