CHAPTER XI. The _philosophe_ Novel 377

THE PHILOSOPHE NOVEL 377

The use of the novel for "purpose"; Voltaire--General characteristics of his tales--Candide--Zadig and its satellites--Micromégas--L'Ingénu--La Princesse de Babylone--Some minors--Voltaire, the Kehl edition, and Plato--An attempt at different evaluation of himself--Rousseau: the novel character of the Confessions--The ambiguous position of Émile--La Nouvelle Héloïse--Its numerous and grave faults--The minor characters--The delinquencies of Saint-Preux--And the less charming points of Julie; her redemption--And the better side of the book generally--But little probability of more good work in novel from its author--The different case of Diderot--His gifts and the waste of them--The various display of them--Le Neveu de Rameau--Jacques le Fataliste--Its "Arcis-Pommeraye" episode--La Religieuse--Its story--A hardly missed, if missed, masterpiece--The successors--Marmontel--His "Telemachic" imitations worth little--The best of his Contes Moraux worth a good deal--Alcibiade ou le Moi--Soliman the Second--The Four Flasks--Heureusement--Le Philosophe Soi-disant--A real advance in these--Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.