Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/169

 Rh stories, "Pastels of Men," which are not prose poems at all, nor brief pen pictures; but tales of a rather elaborate and unclean order, full of wan sentiment, and that cheerless vice which robs the soul without gratifying the body. Occasionally, as in the sketch of the poor old teacher living his meagre life from hour to hour, M. Bourget draws for us, with melancholy skill, a single scene from the painful drama of existence. This is perhaps a pastel, since the word must be employed; but why should an interminable and shifting tale about a rich young widow, who cannot make up her mind in less than a hundred pages which of her four lovers she will marry, be called by the same generic title? If it be equally applicable to every kind of story, short or long, simple or involved, descriptive or analytic, then it has no real meaning at all, and becomes a mere matter of capricious selection. "Wandering Willie's Tale," and "The Cricket on the Hearth" could with propriety have been termed pastels.

Nor does the matter stop here. In Mr. Gosse's recent volume of essays, he has included two admirable criticisms on Mr. Robert