Letters, published at Newcastle in 1746. (The Dublin edition of 1753 I have not seen.) Though d’Argens’s purpose in Letter 35 may have been to advertise his own novel, what he had to say is interesting.  Like many others, he could scoff at the heroic romances and yet borrow and quietly modify the doctrines of Ibrahim and Clelie.  He proposed a still more “advanced” vraisemblance and decorum—­psychological analysis tinged with cynicism rather than idealism; gallantry but against the background sometimes of the modern city; a plainer style; and only such matters as seemed to this student of Descartes and Locke to be entirely reasonable.  Fielding’s chapter in Tom Jones (IX, i) “Of Those Who Lawfully May, and of Those Who May Not, Write Such Histories as This” could be taken as an indication that he knew not only what Mlle. de Scudery thought were the accomplishments of the romancer but that he had read d’Argens’s words on that subject too.  Both d’Argens and Fielding believed that in addition to “Genius, Wit, and Learning” the novelist must have a knowledge of the world and of all degrees of men, distinguishing the style of high people from that of low.  They agreed that a writer must have felt a passion before he could paint it successfully.  Much more goes into the making of a novel, they sarcastically pointed out, than pens, ink, and quires of paper.  D’Argens, like Fielding, relished reflective passages and could approve, more readily than Mrs. Manley, of “an Historian that amuses himself by Moralizing or Describing.”  D’Argens’s list of the features to be found in good history and good fiction shows him to be a thoroughgoing rationalist and separates his ideal from that of young readers, who, according to the preface to The Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclia (1717), wish to hear of “Flame and Spirit in an Author, of fine Harangues, just Characters, moving Scenes, delicacy of Contrivance, surprising turns of action ... indeed the choicest Beauties of a Romance.”

The two novels that d’Argens recommended had different fortunes in England.  D’Argens’s book, Memoires du Marquis de Mirmon, ou Le Solitaire Philosophe (Amsterdam, 1736) was never translated into English and apparently was not much read.  But Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, the younger, was extolled by Thomas Gray and Horace Walpole, quoted by Sarah Fielding,[9] and had the honor, if one can trust Walpole, of an offer of keeping from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.  His Egaremens du Coeur et de l’Esprit (1736-38) was translated in 1751[10] and is the novel which Yorick helped the fille de chambre slide into her pocket.  Crebillon was damned, however, in The World (No. 19, May 10, 1753) in an essay that, oddly enough, reminds one of d’Argens’s Letter 35.  The work referred to in the third footnote on page 258 is Le Chevalier des Essars et la Comtesse de Berci (1735) by Ignace-Vincent Guillot de La Chassagne.  The last footnote on that page refers to G.H.  Bougeant’s satire, Voyage Merveilleux du Prince Fan-Feredin dans la Romancie (1735).