CHAPTER VII.

AFTER SHAKESPEARE.

I.

In the works of Nash and his imitators, the different parts are badly

dovetailed; the novelist is incoherent and incomplete; the fault lies in

some degree with the picaresque form itself. Nash, however, pointed out

the right road, the road that was to lead to the true novel. He was the

first among his compatriots to endeavour to relate in prose a

long-sustained story, having for its chief concern: the truth. He

leaves to his real heroes, Surrey, More, Erasmus, Aretino, their

historical character, and he gives to his fictitious ones caprices and

qualities which make of them distinct and living beings like those of

every-day life. He gives us no more languid shepherds, no more romantic

disguises, no more pretended warriors whose helmets cover, as in

Ariosto, a woman's fair locks. His style is flexible, animated, suited

to the circumstances, free from those ornaments of language so sought

after in his time; no one, Ben Jonson excepted, possessed at that epoch,

in so great a degree as himself, a love of the honest truth. With Nash,

then, the novel of real life, whose invention in England is generally

attributed to Defoe, begins. To connect Defoe with the past of English

literature, we must get over the whole of the seventeenth century and go

back to "Jack Wilton," the worthy brother of "Roxana," "Moll Flanders,"

and "Colonel Jack."

But shepherds were not yet silenced, nor had romantic heroes spoken

their last. On the contrary, their best time was still to come; in the

seventeenth century they resumed their hardly interrupted speeches,

conversations, correspondence, exploits and adventures, and flourished

mightily in the world. We come to the time of the heroic romance and

heroic drama. The main originality of the romance literature in England

during this century was the increase and over-refinement of heroism in

works of fiction. For many among the reading public of that age,

Shakespeare was barbarous and Racine tame; but Scudery was the "greatest

wit" that ever lived.

This kind of writing was thus partially renovated through certain

superadded characteristics, the part allotted to "heroism" being the

foremost; but the groundwork was as old as the very origin of the

nation. For this new species of novel was mainly a development of the

old chivalrous romances of early and mediaeval times. These romances, as

we know, had continued in Elizabethan times to enjoy some reputation,

and under an altered shape to have a public of their own. Even in the

seventeenth century they had not passed entirely out of sight.

Palmerins, Dons Belianis and Esplandians continued to be written,

translated, adapted, paraphrased, printed, purchased, and read. There

was still a brisk trade in this sort of literature. People continued to

read "the auncient, famous and honourable history of Amadis de Gaule,

discoursing the adventures loves and fortunes of many princes;"[312] or

again "the famous history of Hercules of Greece, with the manner of his

encountering and overcoming serpents, lyons, monsters, giants, tyrants

and powerful armies."[313] Guy of Warwick, our friend of former

chapters, still carried on, with undaunted energy, his manifold exploits

throughout the world. Only, as time passes, we find that he has become

civilized; he has taken trouble to improve his mind, he has read books;

he has even gone to the play. And his choice shows him a man of taste

and feeling; a man with a memory too; for reaching a cemetery somewhere

in his travels he "took up a worm-eaten skull, which he thus addressed:

Perhaps thou wert a prince or a mighty monarch, a King, a Duke or a

Lord. But the King and the beggar must all return to the earth; and

therefore man hath need to remember his dying hour. Perhaps thou

mightest have been a Queen or a Dutchess, or a Lady varnished with much

beauty; but now thou art worms meat, lying in the grave, the sepolchre

of all creatures." We are only surprised that "Alas poor Yorick" does

not come in. The page is beautifully adorned with an engraving

representing Sir Guy in cocked hat, addressing a skull he carries in his

hand.[314]

[Illustration: SIR GUY OF WARWICK ADDRESSING A SKULL.]

The same phenomenon was taking place in France, and from France were to

come the first examples of the regular heroic romance. "I have read

[Lancelot]" says Sarasin, in a conversation reported by the well-known

Jean Chapelain, the author of "La Pucelle," and "I have not found it too

unpleasant. Among the things that have pleased me in it I found that it

was the source of all the romances which for four or five centuries

have been the noblest entertainment of all the courts of Europe and have

prevented barbarism from encompassing the whole world."[315] But as well

as Guy of Warwick, Lancelot wanted some "rajeunissement." His valour was

still the fashion, but his manners, after so many centuries, and his

dress too, were a little out of date. The new heroism was to pervade the

whole man, and, in order to make him acceptable, to influence his

costume as well as his mind. There was to be something Roman in him, and

something French; he was to be represented in the style of Louis the

Fourteenth's statues, where the monarch appears in a Roman tunic and a

French wig.

[Illustration: BURIAL OF SIR GUY OF WARWICK.]

The transformation occurred first in France, and was received with great

applause. The times indeed were most propitious for a display, not of

the barbaric heroism of olden times, but of courtly heroism; of an

heroism which plumes, wigs and ribbons well fitted, and which, with

scarcely any change, could be transferred from the battle field to the

drawing-room, from Rocroy to the Hotel de Rambouillet: no mean heroism,

however, for all its ribbons. At this period, in France, manly and lofty

virtues, as well as worldly ones, were worshipped in life, in literature

and in art. From the commencement to the end of the century, examples of

undoubted heroes were not lacking; Henri IV., Richelieu, Mme. de

Longueville, Conde, Louis XIV., Turenne, now by their good qualities,

now by their caprices, now by their deeds and now by their looks,

resembled heroes of romance, and popularized in France an ideal of

nobleness and greatness. In order to please and to be admired, it was

necessary to show a lofty character; men must be superior to fortune,

and women must appear superior to the allurements of passion; the hero

made a display of magnanimity, the heroine of chastity. The hero won the

battle of Fribourg, and the heroine had Montausier to pay court to her

for thirteen years before she consented to be united to him in the bonds

of wedlock. Such were the persons most admired in real life; such were

the characters of romance and tragedy whom the public liked best,

without, however, distinguishing between them. The Cid, Alceste,

Artaban, Nicomede, as well as Julie d'Angennes, Montausier and Conde,

were all members of the same family, and not any one of them more than

another appeared comic or ridiculous: that is why Montausier was very

far from being offended that traits of the character of Alceste were

thought to be found in him, and that is why Mme. de Sevigne, a

passionate admirer of Corneille, becomes as honestly enthusiastic over

the extravagant heroes of the new romances as over those of the great

Cornelian tragedies. "I am mad for Corneille; everything must yield to

his genius ... My daughter, let us take good care not to compare Racine

with him. Let us feel the difference!"[316] She writes elsewhere with

regard to the heroes of La Calprenede: "The beauty of the sentiments,

the violence of the emotions, the grandeur of the incidents and the

miraculous success of their invincible swords, all that delights me like

a young girl."[317]

This change, which consisted, not of course in the introduction of

heroism into novels, where it had in all times found place, but in the

magnifying, to an extraordinary degree, of this source of interest, and

in a transformation of costume and of tone of speech, appeared not only

in romances, but in the drama also, and even in history. Everything

worthy of attention was for many years to be heroical. Heroes defy earth

and heaven; they do not, like Aucassin, with a temper of ironical

submission, give up Paradise in the hope of joining Nicolete in the

nether world; they make the nether world itself tremble on its

foundations: for nothing can resist them. Even in serious historical

works the old rulers of the French nation appear under an heroical garb.

King Clovis is thus described by Scipion Dupleix, historiographer royal,

in his "Histoire Generale de France," 1634: "The hour of Easter-eve at

which the King was to receive the baptism at the hands of St. Remy

having come, he appeared with a proud countenance, a dignified gait, a

majestic port, very richly dressed, musked and powdered; his flowing wig

was curiously combed, curled, frizzed, undulated and perfumed, according

to the custom of the old french Kings;"[318] but much more it seems

according to the custom of less ancient sovereigns; and there is at the

Louvre, a portrait of Louis XIII. bare-legged, periwigged,

ermine-cloaked, which corresponds far better to this description than

anything we know of Clovis.

The same characteristics appear in the epic and the drama. Antoine de

Montchrestien, besides having written the earliest treatise of political

economy, and thus having stood, if nothing more, godfather to a new

science,[319] wrote a number of plays, flavoured most of them with a

grandiloquence and heroism which give us a foretaste of Dryden. In his

"Aman ou la vanite," he treats the same subject as Racine in his

"Esther," but he has nothing in common with his successor, and much with

the dramatists of the heroical school. In order, doubtless, to justify

from the first the title of the play, Aman indulges his "vanite" in an

opening monologue to the following effect:

"Whether fair Phoebus coming out of the hollow waters brings back colour

to the face of the world, whether with his warmer rays he sets day

ablaze or departs to take his rest in his watery bower, he cannot see in

all the inhabited world a single man to be compared with me for

successes of any sort. My glory is without peer, and if any of the gods

were to exchange heaven for earth and dwell under the lunar disc, he

would content himself with such a brilliant fortune as mine."[320]

Nearly all the dramas of Scudery are made up of such speeches, and they

were the rage in Paris before Corneille arose, Corneille in whom

something of this style yet lingers. Each of Scudery's heroes, be it in

his dramas, in his epics, in his romances, is like his Alaric, nothing

less than "le vainqueur des vainqueurs de la terre"; and having

conquered all the world is in his turn conquered by Love. To write thus

was supposed to be following the noble impulse given by the Renaissance,

to be Roman, to outdo Seneca.[321]

In the novel especially this style shone in all its lustre and beauty.

All the heroes of the interminable romances of the time, by Gomberville,

George and Madeleine de Scudery, La Calprenede and many others, be they

Greek, Roman, Turk or French, are all of them the conquerors of the

world and the captives of Love. "I can scarcely believe," wrote wise

censors, "that the Cyrus and the Alexanders have suddenly become, as I

hear it reported, so many Thyrsis and Celadons."[322] But their protests

were of no avail, for a time, and romance heroes continued to reign in

France, having had from the first for their palace and chief place of

resort the famous Hotel de Rambouillet.

This hotel had been building from 1610 to 1617 in the Rue St.

Thomas-du-Louvre. Polite society began to gather there soon after its

completion, and began to desert it only thirty years later. The heroic

romances of the period were among the chief topics of conversation; and

this is easily understood: they were meant as copies of this same polite

society, and of its chiefs; under feigned names people recognized in

Cyrus the Grand Conde; in Mandane, Madame de Longueville; in Sapho, the

authoress herself, Mdlle. de Scudery; in Aristhee, the poet Jean

Chapelain. Persons thus designated often continued in real life to be

called by their romance appellations; thus Madame de Sevigne is wont to

subscribe herself "the very humble servant of the adorable

Amalthee."[323] Men and women considered it a great honour to have their

portraits in a romance; they felt sure then of going down to the

remotest posterity, a fond belief to which posterity has already given

the lie. Much intrigue went on to obtain such a valuable favour. While

we are scarcely able now to plod on for a few chapters along the winding

road which led Cyrus to his victories, these volumes were awaited with

intense interest and discussed with passion as soon as published.

Neither the expectation of the next number of the "Revue des deux

Mondes," when it contains some important new study of actual life, nor

the discussion about the last play of Dumas, can give us now an adequate

idea of the amount of interest concentrated in Paris at that time upon

those heroical, grandiloquent, periwigged figures.

And sometimes it was a very long time before the end of the adventures,

and the answers of the lovers were known. These books were not written

without care and thought and some attention to rules and style. In the

preface to his "Ibrahim" Scudery gives us a sort of "Ars poetica" for

heroic romance writers; he states what precepts it is necessary to

follow, and those which may sometimes be dispensed with; he informs us

that attention is to be paid to the truth of history, and that manners

must be observed. For example, in "Ibrahim" he has thought fit to use

some Turkish words, such as "Alla, Stambol"; these he calls "historical

marks," and they correspond to what goes now under the name of local

colour; according to his way of thinking they give a realistic

appearance to his story. His heroes in this particular romance are not

kings, he confesses; his excuse is that they are worthy to be such, and

that besides they belong to very good families. He has been careful to

use an easy, flowing style, and to avoid bombast "except in speeches."

He has something to say about the unities, which have their part to play

even in romances. Nothing must be left to chance in those works; and as

for himself, he would have refused, he declares, the praise bestowed

upon the Greek painter who, by throwing his brush against his work,

obtained thus the finest effect in his picture. In Scudery's picture

everything is drawn with a will and a purpose, everything is the result

of thought and calculation, and, if we are to believe him, much art was

thus spent by the gallant Gouverneur de Nostre Dame; much art that is

now entirely concealed from the dim eyes of posterity.[324]

[Illustration: A MAP OF THE "TENDRE" COUNTRY.

(_From an English translation of "Clelie."_)]

Speeches, with descriptions, letters (which are always given in full as

if they were documents of state), conversations and incidental anecdotic

stories, were among the most usual means employed to fill up the many

volumes of an ordinary heroical romance. For the volumes were many:

"There never shone such a fine day as the one which was to be the eve of

the nuptials between the illustrious Aronce and the admirable Clelie."

Such is the beginning of the first volume of "Clelie, histoire romaine,"

by Madeleine de Scudery, published in January, 1649. It happens that the

marriage thus announced is delayed by certain little incidents, and is

only celebrated towards the end of the tenth and last volume published

in September, 1654. Volume I. contained the famous "Carte du Tendre," to

show the route from "Nouvelle amitie" to "Tendre," with its various

rivers, its villages of "Tendre-sur-Inclination," "Tendre-sur-Estime,"

with the ever-to-be-avoided hamlets of Indiscretion and Perfidy, the

Lake of Indifference and other frightful countries. Let us turn away

from them and go back to our heroes.

One of their chief pleasures was to tell their own stories. Of this

neither they nor their listeners were ever tired. Whenever in the course

of the tale a new person is introduced, the first thing he is expected

to do is to tell us who he is and what he has seen of the world.

Sometimes stories are included in his own, and when the first are

finished, instead of taking up again the thread of the main tale, we

merely resume the hearing of the speaker's own adventures: a custom

which sometimes proves very puzzling to the inattentive frivolous reader

of to-day. As for the supposed listeners in the tale itself, the men or

women the hero has secured for his audience, they well knew what to

expect, and took their precautions accordingly. We sometimes see them go

to bed in order to listen more comfortably. In "Cassandre," the eunuch

Tireus has a story to tell to Prince Oroontades: "The prince went to his

bedroom and put himself to bed; he then had Tireus called to him, and

having seats placed in the _ruelle_, he commanded us to sit," and then

the story begins; and it goes on for pages; and when it is finished we

observe that it was included in another story told by Araxe; wherefore,

instead of finding ourselves back among the actors of the principal

tale, we alight only among those in Araxe's narrative.[325] These

stories are thus enclosed in one another like Chinese boxes.

II.

This literature as soon as imported into England realized there the most

complete success. To find a parallel for it we must go back to the time

when mediaeval Lancelot and Tristan were sung of by French singers, and

afterwards by singers of all countries. Cyrus and Mandane, Oroontades

and Tireus, Grand Scipio and Illustrious Bassa, Astree and Celadon, our

heroes and our shepherds once more began the invasion and conquest of

the great northern island. As was to be expected from such unparalleled

conquerors, they accomplished this feat easily, and their work had

consequences in England for which France can scarcely offer any perfect

equivalent. Through their exertions there arose in this country a

dramatic literature in the heroical style which, thanks especially to

Dryden, has still a literary interest. But in France our heroes of

fiction were curtailed of much of their glory by the inexorable Boileau.

They left, it is true, some trace of their influence in the works of

Corneille and even of Racine, but the heroic drama, properly so called,

was restricted to the works of the Scuderys and Montchrestiens, which is

saying enough to imply that it was not meant to survive very long.

During the greater part of the century French romances were in England

the main reading of people who had leisure. They were read in the

original, for French was a current language in society at that time, and

they were read in translations both by society and by the ordinary

public. Most of them were rendered into English, and so important were

these works considered that sometimes several translators tried their

skill at the same romance, and published independently the result of

their labours, as if their author had been Virgil or Ariosto, or any

classical writer. French ideas in the matter of novels were adopted so

cordially that not only under Charles I., but even during the civil war

and under Cromwell this rage for reading and translating did not abate.

The contrary, it is true, has often been asserted, without inquiry, and

as a matter of course; but this erroneous statement was due to a mere

_a priori_ argument, and had no other ground than the improbability of

the same fashion predominating in the London of the Roundheads and the

Paris of the Precieuses. What likelihood was there of any popularity

being bestowed upon heroes who were nothing if not befeathered heroes,

heroes _a panaches_ at a time when Puritans reigned supreme, staunch

adversaries as we know of _panaches_, curls, vain talk, and every sort

of worldly vanity? Was it not the time when books were published on "The

unlovelinesse of Love-lockes," being "a summarie discourse prooving the

wearing and nourishing of a locke or love-locke to be altogether

unseemely, and unlawfull unto Christians. In which there are likewise

some passages collected out of Fathers, Councells and sundry authors and

historians against face-painting, the wearing of supposititious,

poudred, frizled or extraordinary long haire, the inordinate affectation

of corporall beautie, and womens mannish, unnaturall, impudent, and

unchristian cutting of their haire"?[326] So early in the century as

1628 it was thus discovered that women's short hair and men's long wigs

were equally unchristian. What was to be the fate of our well-curled

heroes? They were received with open arms. "Polexandre," for example,

was published in English in 1647; "Ibrahim ou l'illustre Bassa,"

"Cassandre," and "Cleopatre" in 1652; "Le Grand Cyrus" in 1653, the very

year in which Cromwell became Protector; the first part of "Clelie" in

1656; "Astree" in 1657; "Scipion" in 1660, &c.

The English prefaces to these French novels plainly showed that,

notwithstanding the puritanical taunts of the party in power, publishers

felt no doubt as to the success of their undertaking. These works were

not spread timidly among the public; they were announced noisily in the

most pompous terms:

"I shall waste no time to tell you how this book hath sold in France

where it was born: since nothing falls from Monsieur de Scudery's hand,

but is receiv'd there as an unquestionable piece, by all that have a

taste of wit or honour. The translator hath inserted no false stitches

of his own, having only turn'd the wrong side of the Arras towards us,

for all translations, you know, are no other."[327]

The translator of "Astree" was fain to inform his readers of a judgment

passed, as he pretends, on this work by "the late famous Cardinall of

Richelieu. That he was not to be admitted in the Academy of wit who had

not been before well read in Astrea." And he claims for his author a

highly beneficial purpose, that could be condemned by none except

obdurate Puritans: "These are the true designs and ends of works of this

nature: these are academies for the lover, schools of war for the

soldier, and cabinets for the statesman; they are the correctives of

passion, the restoratives of conversation, ... in a word, the most

delightful accommodations of civill life."[328]

Another goes so far as to give the lie direct to the Puritans, to

"those morose persons" who condemn novels; in truth, "delight is the

least advantage redounding from such compositions." French romances

(which seem to have altered somewhat in this respect) are nothing but a

school of morality, generosity, and self-restraint: "Not to say anything

concerning the ground work which is generally some excellent piece of

ancient history accurately collected out of the records of the most

eminent writers of old, ... the addition of fictitious adventures is so

ingenious, the incident discourses so handsome, free and fitted for the

improvement of conversation (which is not undeservedly accounted of

great importance to the contentment of human life), the descriptions of

the passions so lively and naturally set forth; yea the idea of virtue,

generosity and all the qualifications requisite to accomplish great

persons so exquisitely delineated that ... I must speak it, though I

believe with the envy and regret of many, that [the French] have

approv'd themselves the best teachers of a noble and generous morality

that are to be met with."[329]

[Illustration: ENDYMION PLUNGED INTO THE RIVER IN THE PRESENCE OF DIANA.

(_French Engraving used in an English book._)]

Sometimes both the engravings and the story were imported from France.

As the illustrations to Harington's translation of "Ariosto" had been

originally made by an Italian artist, so now French engravings began to

be popularized in England. For example, when a translation appeared

of "Endimion," the curious mythological novel of Gombauld, with its

pleasant descriptions and incidents, half dreamy, half real, the plates

from drawings by C. de Pas were sent over to England and used in the

English edition. Sometimes, too, the English copies had original plates

or engraved titles; but even in these the French style was usually

apparent. Robert Loveday, who translated La Calprenede's "Cleopatre,"

prefaces his book with one such plate; and it is curious to notice when

reading his published correspondence that the engraving was made

according to his own minute directions. The bookseller "offer'd to be at

the charge of cutting my own face for the frontispiece, but I refused

his offer." As, however, the publisher insisted on having something, "I

design'd him this which is now a-cutting: Upon an altar dedicated to

Love, divers hearts transfix'd with arrows and darts are to lye broiling

upon the coals; and upon the steps of it, Hymen ... in a posture as if

he were going to light [his taper] to the altar; when Cupid is to come

behind him and pull him by the saffron sleeve, with these words

proceeding from his mouth: Nondum peracta sunt praeludia";[330] a

statement that is only too true and in which Loveday summarizes unawares

the truest criticism levelled at these romances. You may read volume

after volume, and still "nondum peracta sunt praeludia," you have not yet

done with preliminaries.

But this constant delaying of an event, sometimes announced, as in

"Clelie," at the top of the first page, was not in the least displeasing

to seventeenth-century readers. The lengthy episodes, the protracted

conversations, enchanted them; it was an age when conversation was at

its height in France, and from France the taste spread to other

countries. Translators, as we have seen, expressly mentioned as an

attraction in their books the help they would give to conversation.

Numberless examples of this polite pastime are provided in the heroic

romances; in "Almahide, or the Captive Queen,"[331] among others, we

read discussions as to whether it is better for a man to court a lady in

verse or in prose, whether an illiterate lover is better than a learned

one, &c., &c.

[Illustration: "HYMEN'S PRAELUDIA."

(_Frontispiece of the translation of La Calprenede's "Cleopatre."_)]

Such topics, and many more of a higher order, which were the subject of

persistent debate in the drawing-rooms of the Hotel de Rambouillet, were

also discussed in England; there was, it is true, no Hotel de

Rambouillet, but there was the house of the Philips at Cardigan. There

was no Marquise, but there was Catherine Philips, the "matchless

Orinda," who did much to acclimatize in England the refinements,

elegancies, and heroism _a panache_ of her French neighbours. With

the help of her friends she translated some of the plays of Corneille,

not without adding something to the original to make it look more

heroical. The little society gathered round her imitated the feigned

names bestowed upon the habitues of the Parisian hotel. While she went

by the name of Orinda, plain Mr. Philips, her husband, was re-baptized

Antenor; her friend Sir Charles Cotterel, translator of "Cassandre," was

Poliarchus; a lady friend, Miss Owen, was Lucasia;[332] fine names, to

be sure, which unfortunately will remind many a reader not only of

matchless Arthenice, of the Hotel de Rambouillet, but of Moliere's

Cathos and Madelon, who, too, had chosen to imitate the Marquise, and

insisted on being called Aminte and Polixene, to the astonishment of

their honest father.[333]

The high morality and delicacy, both of the "Hotel," and, alas, of

Moliere's "Precieuses," were also imitated at Cardigan. To get married

was a thing so coarse and vulgar that people with refined souls were to

slip into that only at the last extremity. "A fine thing it would be,"

says the Madelon of the "Precieuses," "if from the first Cyrus were to

marry Mandane and if Aronce were all at once wedded to Clelia!" We have

seen that such is not the case, and that ten volumes of adventures

interpose between their love and their marriage. In the same way an

eternal friendship, a marriage of soul to soul, having been sworn

between Orinda and Lucasia, it was a matter of great sorrow, shame and

despair for the first when the second, after thirteen years of this

refined intercourse proved frail and commonplace enough to marry a lover

of appropriate age, fortune and position.

Another centre for heroic thoughts and refined morality was the country

house of the pedantic but pretty Duchess of Newcastle, a prolific writer

of essays, letters, plays, poems, tales, and works of all kinds. To her,

literature was a compensation for the impossibility, through want of

opportunity, of performing with her own hand heroical deeds: "I dare not

examine," says she, "the former times, for fear I should meet with such

of my sex that have out-done all the glory I can aime at or hope to

attaine; for I confess my ambition is restless, and not ordinary;

because it would have an extraordinary fame. And since all heroick

actions, publick employments, powerfull governments and eloquent

pleadings are denyed our sex in this age or at least would be condemned

for want of custome, is the cause I write so much."[334]

[Illustration: A FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION.]

She wrote a great deal, and not without feeling a somewhat deep and

naively expressed admiration for her own performances. The epithet

"restless" which she applies to her ambition, well fits her whole mind;

there is restlessness about everything she did and wrote. She is never

satisfied with one epistle to the reader; she must have ten or twelve

prefaces and under-prefaces, which forcibly remind us of her

contemporary, Oronte, in his famous sonnet scene with Alceste. Her

"Natures pictures drawn by Fancies pencil to the life" is preceded by

several copies of commendatory verses and a succession of preambles,

entitled: "To the reader--An epistle to my readers--To the reader--To

the reader--To my readers--To my readers"; each being duly signed "M.

Newcastle." It seems as if the sight of her own name was a pleasure to

her. These prefaces are full of expostulations, explanations and

apologies, quite in the Oronte style: "The design of these my feigned

stories, is to present virtue, the muses leading her and the graces

attending her.... Perchance my feigned stories are not so lively

described as they might have been.... As for those tales I name

romancicall, I would not have my readers think I write them either to

please or to make foolish whining lovers.... I must entreat my readers

to understand, that though my naturall genius is to write fancy, yet ...

Although I hope every piece or discourse in my book will delight my

readers or at least some one, and some another ... yet I do recommend

two as the most solid and edifying." Great is the temptation to answer

with Alceste: "Nous verrons bien!"[335] But how could one say so when

she was so pretty? The best preface to her volumes is in fact the

charming engraving representing a party meeting at her house to tell and

hear tales round the fire, and of which we give a reproduction. The only

pity is that the figure meant as her portrait, though laurel-crowned,

looks much more plain and commonplace than we might have expected.

She wrote then abundantly "romancicall" tales, as she called them, with

a touch of heroism; edifying tales in which she prescribes "that all

young men should be kept to their studies so long as their effeminate

beauties doth last;" dialogues "of the wise lady, the learned lady and

the witty lady," the three being only too wise; plays in which she

depicts herself under the names of Lady Sanspareile, of Lady Chastity,

&c., unpardonable sins, no doubt, to give oneself such names; but it is

reported she was so beautiful!

Among the mass of her writings, it must be added, ideas are scattered

here and there which were destined to live, and through which she

anticipated men of true and real genius. To give only one example, she

too may be credited with having anticipated Richardson in her "Sociable

Letters," in which she tries to imitate real life, to describe scenes,

very nearly to write an actual novel: "The truth is," she writes, "they

are rather scenes than letters, for I have endeavoured under cover of

letters to express the humors of mankind, and the actions of man's life

by the correspondence of two ladies, living at some short distance from

each other, which make it not only their chief delight and pastime, but

their tye in friendship, to discourse by letters as they would do if

they were personally together."[336] Many collections of imaginary

letters had, as we have seen, been published before, but never had the

use to which they could be put been better foreseen by any predecessor

of Richardson.

[Illustration: CONVERSATION AND TELLING OF STORIES AT THE HOUSE OF THE

DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE, 1656.]

The Duchess lived till 1674, surrounded by an ever-increasing group

of admirers, deaf to the jokes of courtly people concerning her

old-fashioned chastity; more than consoled by the firm belief she had as

to the strength of her mind and genius. In this persuasion "she kept,"

wrote Theophilus Cibber, "a great many young ladies about her person,

who occasionally wrote what she dictated. Some of them slept in a room

contiguous to that in which Her Grace lay, and were ready at the call of

her bell to rise any hour of the night to write down her conceptions,

lest they should escape her memory. The young ladies no doubt often

dreaded Her Grace's conceptions, which were frequent."[337] Here, again,

her restless spirit was in some manner anticipating unawares another

great writer, namely, Pope.

Thus, in spite of Cromwell and the Puritans on the one side, and Charles

II. and his courtiers on the other, French ideas as to the possible

dignity and purity of lives in which the worldly element was not wanting

grew to some extent on the English soil, though, it is true, with less

success, being as we see mainly relegated at that time to the country.

The true hour for virtues not the less real because sociable, virtues

such as they were understood by Madame de Sevigne or Madame de

Rambouillet, had not yet come. They were to be thoroughly acclimatized

only in the next century, principally through the exertions of Steele

and Addison.

But the strictly heroical part of French tastes was accepted immediately

and with great enthusiasm. The extraordinary number of folio heroical

romances still to be seen in old English country houses testifies at

the present day to their extraordinary hold upon the polite society of

the time. The King gave the example. Charles I. had been a reader of

such novels; on the eve of his death he distributed a few souvenirs to

his most faithful friends, and we see him give away, besides Hooker's

"Ecclesiastical Polity" and Dr. Andrews' sermons, the romance of

"Cassandre," which he left to the Earl of Lindsey. During the troublous

times of the civil war, Dorothy Osborne constantly alludes, in her

letters to Sir William Temple, to the books she reads, and they are

mostly these same French novels. While troops are marching to and fro;

while rebellions and counter-rebellions are preparing or breaking out,

the volumes of "Cleopatre" and "Grand Cyrus" go to and fro between the

lovers and are the subject of their epistolary discussions. "Have you

read 'Cleopatre'? I have six tomes on't here that I can lend you if you

have not; there are some stories in't you will like, I believe."--"Since

you are at leisure to consider the moon, you may be enough to read

'Cleopatre,' therefore I have sent you three volumes.... There is a

story of Artimise that I will recommend to you; her disposition I like

extremely, it has a great deal of practical wit; and if you meet with

one Brittomart, pray send me word how you like him."--"I have a third

tome here [of "Cyrus"] against you have done with that second; and to

encourage you, let me assure you that the more you read of them, you

will like them still better,"[338] and so on.

The wife of Mr. Pepys was not less fond of French romances than Dorothy

Osborne, and we sometimes find her husband purchasing copies at his

bookseller's to bring home as presents. But he himself did not like them

very much; he seems to have been deterred from this kind of literature

by his wife's habit of reciting stories to him out of these works; some

quarrel even took place between the couple about "Cyrus," though it

seems that "Cyrus" was in this case more the pretext than the reason of

the discussion, as honest Pepys with his usual frankness gives us to

understand: "At noon home, where I find my wife troubled still at my

checking her last night in the coach in her long stories out of 'Grand

Cyrus,' which she would tell, though nothing to the purpose, nor in any

good manner. This she took unkindly, and I think I was to blame indeed;

but she do find with reason that in the company of Pierce, Knipp, or

other women that I love I do not value her as I ought. However very good

friends by and by." As a penance doubtless we see him buying for her

later "L'Illustre Bassa in four volumes" and "Cassandra and some other

French books."[339]

III.

But reading and translating was not enough for a society so enamoured of

heroical romances; some original ones were to be composed for English

readers and the composing of them became a fashionable pastime. "My lord

Broghill," writes again Dorothy Osborne to her future husband, Sir

William Temple, the patron hereafter of the yet unborn Jonathan Swift,

"sure will give us something worth the reading. My Lord Saye, I am told,

has writ a romance since his retirement in the isle of Lundy, and Mr.

Waller they say is making one of our wars, which if he does not mingle

with a great deal of pleasing fiction, cannot be very diverting, sure,

the subject is so sad."[340]

The following year, that is 1654, the English public received, according

to Dorothy's previsions, the first instalment of the most noticeable

heroical romance composed in their language. It was called

"Parthenissa,"[341] and had for its author Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill,

afterwards Earl of Orrery, one of the matchless Orinda's great

friends.[342]

In this heroic romance, the imitation of France is as exact as possible;

the few literary qualities perceptible in the vast compositions of

Mdlle. de Scudery and of La Calprenede, do not shine with any brighter

lustre in "Parthenissa." As in France ancient history is put to the

torture, though Scudery, as we have seen, had set up as a rule that the

truth of history was to be respected in romances; of observation of

nature there is little or none, and the conversations of the characters

are interminable. "Turning over the leaves of the large folio," wrote

one of the last critics who busied themselves with this work, "I

perceived that ... the story some-how or other brought in Hannibal,

Massinissa, Mithridates, Spartacus, and other persons equally well

known.... How they came into the story or what the story is I cannot

tell you; nor will any mortal know any more than I do, between this and

doomsday; but there they all are, lively though invisible, like carp in

a pond."[343] We must make bold, though doomsday has not yet come, to

draw forth some of these carp out of the water, and, after all, this is

not the darkest pond in which we shall have fished.

At the commencement, Boyle introduces us to a young and handsome

stranger who comes to Syria in order to consult the oracle of Venus. The

priest Callimachus appears before him, and quite suddenly asks for his

history. The stranger is very willing to tell it. His name is Artabanes

and he is the son of the King of Parthia; he is in love with the

Princess Parthenissa and has proved his affection for her in the manner

of Sidney's heroes: he met on one occasion an Arab prince, who was

travelling with a collection of twenty-four pictures, representing the

mistresses of twenty-four famous champions overthrown by him. Artabanes

in his turn measured swords with the Arab and got possession of the

twenty-four paintings, and one in addition, which represented the

mistress of his adversary: whence it results that Parthenissa is the

most beautiful woman in the world, exactly what the hero intended to

prove.

Artabanes has a rival, Surena; he fancies that Surena is the happy man,

leaves Parthenissa and goes to live in solitude. Pirates carry him off,

and sell him at Rome for a slave. Then under the name of Spartacus, he

stirs up a revolt and accomplishes exploits attributed by ancient

writers to that rebel; however he does not die as in history, but

returns to Asia. There, Parthenissa, rather than surrender to a lover,

swallows a drug and dies; but hers is only an apparent death and she

returns to life. Artabanes, in the same way, stabs himself, but he is

cured; and then it is that he comes to consult the oracle.

Callimachus thanks him for his interesting but somewhat lengthy story,

and revenges himself by relating his own. Unfortunately he is

interrupted: they see a lady who looks exactly like Parthenissa herself

enter a neighbouring grove; she is accompanied by a young cavalier; they

embrace and disappear among the trees. Artabanes' anguish at this sight

cannot be described. But here Roger Boyle found that he was tired and

wrote no more. His romance, which already comprised five parts, was

published by him in this unfinished form.

For a long time the public was left in suspense. The Protector was dead,

his son had fallen, the Stuarts had again ascended the throne, and no

one knew the end of the loves of Prince Artabanes. The continuation of

the romance is due to the charming Henrietta of England, Duchess of

Orleans. Ten or twelve years after the appearance of the first volume,

she was curious to know what Parthenissa was doing in the wood, and

begged Roger Boyle to bring her out of it. He wrote a sixth part in

four books and dedicated it to her.

Are we to imagine that the author is now going to lead his impatient

readers in search of the heroine? Not at all. Callimachus, who was

unfairly interrupted in his tale, proposes to his companions to leave

one of them, Symander, on guard, and to go and refresh themselves. When

they were rested, "they conjur'd him to prosecute his story, though what

they had seen and heard gave them impatiences which nothing but their

desires of knowing so generous a friend's fortunes could have dispensed

with." The four books of the sixth part are devoted to this narrative;

Boyle, as he said in his preface, had thought at first of concluding

everything in this supplement; but he was forced to recognize that it

was impossible to "confine it within so narrow a compass." This

statement will be found on page 808 of his folio volume. Why Parthenissa

entered the grove was never to be known nor what she had to say in her

justification. Boyle, who had taken up his pen again at the instance of

the young duchess, had very soon no reason to continue: Bossuet was

calling on the court of the Grand Roi to weep with him for the loss of

this charming woman, whose beauty and grace had only blossomed "for one

morning."

As soon as the book was out, Dorothy Osborne had a copy sent to her, but

she did not like it so much as the French models. She writes to Temple:

"I'll ... tell you that 'Parthenissa' is now my company. My brother sent

it down and I have almost read it. 'Tis handsome language; you would

know it to be writ by a person of good quality though you were not told

it; but on the whole I am not very much taken with it. All the stories

have too near a resemblance with those of other romances; there is

nothing new and _surprenant_ in them; the ladies are all so kind they

make no sport."[344]

Boyle, it is said, besides his dramas and other works, again tried his

fortune as a novel writer, and published in 1676 "English Adventures by

a person of honour." It is in a style so absolutely different from his

former romance that it is scarcely credible that both came from the same

pen. "English Adventures" tell the story of the amours of King Henry

VIII., of Brandon, and others. All the reserve in "Parthenissa" has

entirely disappeared, and scenes are presented to the eye which, except

at the time of the Restoration, have usually been veiled. Love is in

this novel the subject of many discussions, and so it was in heroic

romances, but while it was spoken of there with decency and dignity, it

is never mentioned in "English Adventures" but in a tone of banter and

raillery. The discourses about this passion recall Suckling's ideas much

more than those of Madeleine de Scudery. "Pardon me, madam, Wilmore

reply'd, if I think you mistake the case, for I never said I was for a

siege in Love: that is the dull method of those countries whose

discipline in amours I abominate. I am for the French mode, where the

first day, I either conquer my mistress or my passion." Whether or not

this be according to "the French mode," we are obviously very far from

the Montausier ideal. The author continues: "Nor indeed did I ever see

any woman (I mean in France) cry up constancy, but she was decaying; for

when any thing but love is to maintain love 'tis a proof Beauty cannot

do it, and then, alas, nothing else can."[345] If this and the very

licentious adventures which follow are really Boyle's, it must be

conceded that the change worked upon him by the new Restoration manners

was indeed vast and comprehensive.

Other original attempts at the heroical romance were made in England at

this period. It will be enough to mention one more. The two main defects

of the heroical dramas of Dryden and his contemporaries are bombast in

the ideas and bad taste in the expressions. In Crowne's heroical novel

of "Pandion and Amphigenia"[346] both defects are pushed to an extreme

which, incredible as it may seem to the readers of Dryden, was never at

any time reached by the laureate.

The story is the usual heroical story of valorous deeds and peerless

loves; the author is careful to assert that he is perfectly original:

"All ... is genuine, nothing stole, nothing strained." He has been

especially careful to avoid imitating the French and the elegancies of

"that ceremonious nation." After such a declaration we are rather

surprised to hear Periander thus answer a lady who, in the usual way,

had asked him for his inevitable story: "Madam," said he, "your

expressions speak you no less rich in virtue than beauty.... I should

be more savage then the beasts that Orpheus charmed into civility,

should I remain inexorable to the intreaties of so sweet an orator,

whose perfections are such that I cannot but account it as great a glory

to obey you, as it would make me sensible of shame to refuse any thing

you should command, though it were to sacrifice my life and honour,

which are the only jewels I ever prized in my prosperity, and which is

all that Fortune hath left to my disposal in my adversity." Then he

tells his story, which we had better not listen to, for it begins: "Know

you then that in the city of Corinth, there dwelt a gentleman called

Eleutherius ...," and we know full well what such beginnings threaten.

The romance goes on describing bloody feuds and matchless beauties. Here

is in characteristic style a portrait of a matchless beauty:

"The pillow blest with a kiss from her cheeks, as pregnant with delight,

swelled on either side.... A lock that had stollen from its sweet

prison, folded in cloudy curls, lay dallying with her breath, sometimes

striving to get a kiss, and then repulsed flew back, sometimes obtaining

its desired bliss, and then as rapt with joy, retreated in wanton

caperings.... Her breasts at liberty displayed were of so pure a

whiteness as if one's eye through the transparent skin, had viewed the

milky treasures they inclosed."

Oh! for a Boileau, shall we exclaim, to cut off the flowers of such

paper gardens! for a Defoe to show how prose fiction should be written!

But Boileau is abroad and Defoe's time is yet to come. Wait, besides,

for this is nothing and we have better in store; that was love, here is

war:

"The signal for the battail being given, there began such a terrible

conflict, as that within a short time thousands lay dead in the place,

both sides maintaining their assaults with such impetuous rage as if the

Gyants had been come to heap mountains of carcasses to assail heaven and

besiege the gods; nothing but fury reigned in every breast, some that

were thrust through with lances would yet run themselves farther on to

reach their enemies and requite that mortal wound ... the earth grew of

a sanguine complexion, being covered with blood, as if every soldier had

been Death's herald, and had come to emblazon Mars's arms with a sword

Argent on a field Gules.... In one place, lay heads deposed from their

sovereignties, yawning and staring as if they looked for their

bodies."[347] One refreshing thought is the remembrance of the pure,

deep pleasure Crowne must have found in fastening together such an

unparalleled series of conceits. "Peste," is he sure to have said with

Sosie:

"Peste! ou prend mon esprit toutes ces gentillesses?"

As for the final result of these wars and love-makings, it is a very

airy one; for Crowne seems to have entertained a higher ideal of purity

than even Montausier and Orinda. His ladies bestow upon their lovers

nothing at all, not even marriage, and the author, after having been at

some trouble to re-establish order in Thessaly and other countries,

gives up all idea of getting Pandion and Amphigenia wedded, this lady,

she of the pillow above described, being as he says so very "coy."

Though not quite a match for Crowne's it must be conceded that neither

is Dryden's bombast of a mean order. The following passage which very

nearly bears comparison with the above, will show how heroism appeared

when transferred to the stage. In one of the dramas, the plot of which

Dryden took from the French romances, Almanzor thus addresses a rival:

"If from thy hands alone my death can be,

I am immortal and a god to thee,

If I would kill thee now, thy fate's so low

That I must stoop ere I can give the blow:

But mine is fixed so far above thy crown,

That all thy men,

Piled on thy back, can never pull it down:

But at my ease, thy destiny I send,

By ceasing from this hour to be thy friend.

Like heaven, I need but only to stand still,

And not concurring to thy life, I kill."[348]

[Illustration: HEROES (MOORISH ONES) AS THEY APPEARED ON THE STAGE, FROM

SETTLE'S "EMPRESS OF MOROCCO," 1673.]

Any number of speeches of this sort are to be found in the heroical

dramas of Dryden, Settle, Lee, and their contemporaries. Roman, Arab,

Turk, Greek or Moorish heroes, pirates or princes, when they mean to set

anything at defiance, choose nothing less than heaven and earth as their

object; they divide the world between them as if it were an orange; they

rush to the fight or stop for a speech with a fine shake of the head

which sends a majestic undulation round the wig worn by them, even by

the Moors, as we may see in one of the very rare dramas then published

with engravings. They are represented there with embroidered

justaucorps, wigs and ribbons.[349]

Crowne besides his romance wrote several dramas that secured him a wide,

if temporary, popularity. He also adapted Racine's "Andromaque" for the

English stage, but he was very much disgusted with this work; the French

original, though not "the worst" of French plays, was after all so mean

and tame! "If the play be barren of fancy, you must blame the original

author. I am as much inclined to be civil to strangers as any man; but

then they must be strangers of merit. I would no more be at the pains to

bestow wit (if I had any) on a French play, than I would be at the cost

to bestow cloaths on every shabby Frenchman that comes over." Here we

have Racine put in his proper place; what claim had he to be considered

"a stranger of merit"? True, some crabbed English critics seem to have

taken his part against the translator, and, incredible as it may seem,

they have expressed a thought that "this suffered much in the

translation.--I cannot tell in what," answers Crowne, "except in not

bestowing verse upon it, which I thought it did not deserve. For

otherwise, there is all that is in the French play, verbatim, and

something more, as may be seen in the last act, where what is dully

recited in the French play is there represented, which is no small

advantage."[350] And true, it is, Pyrrhus is slain before our eyes;

there are "alarums" and other lively, if customary, ornaments.

In this age obviously Racine could not please. Nor would Shakespeare

have pleased a French audience, but as we know no attempt in that

direction was made in Paris. The two nations lent one another, if

anything, their defects. "Alaric" was named with praise by Dryden;

Scudery and La Calprenede continued to be most popular French authors

during the century. Even in the next we find something remaining of

their fame. Among the books in the library of the fashionable Leonora,

Addison notices: "'Cassandra,' 'Cleopatra,' 'Astraea' ... the 'Grand

Cyrus,' with a pin stuck in one of the middle leaves ... 'Clelia,' which

opened of it self in the place that describes two lovers in a

bower,"[351] &c. The passions in them which seem to us now so incredibly

frigid, had not yet cooled down; their warmth was still felt: so much so

that in one of Farquhar's plays, "Cassandra" is mentioned as greatly

responsible for Lady Lurewell's first and greatest fault, the beginning

of many others: "After supper I went to my chamber and read 'Cassandra,'

then went to bed and dreamt of it all night, rose in the morning and

made verses ..."[352] We cannot follow her in her account of the

consequences.

All that was truly noble and simple in French literature was known, but

at the same time generally misunderstood in England. To make French

authors acceptable, grossness was added to Moliere, bombast to Racine;

even Otway, when translating "Berenice," transformed Racine's "Titus"

into a bully of romance who, in order to assuage his grief, goes to

overrun "the Universe" and make "the worlds" as wretched as he is.[353]

Madame de la Fayette had shown how it was possible to copy from life, in

a novel, true heroism and true tenderness without exaggeration; her

exquisite masterpiece was translated of course as was everything then

that was French; but oblivion soon gathered round the "Princess of

Cleve," and the only proof we have that it did not pass unnoticed is a

clumsy play by Lee, in which this best of old French novels is

mercilessly caricatured.[354] There was no attempt to imitate the

Comtesse's pure and perfect style and high train of thought.

IV.

Reaction against the heroical romances did not wait, however, till the

eighteenth century to assert itself in England; it set in early and very

amusingly: but it remained powerless. As the evil had chiefly come from

France, so did the remedy; but the remedy in France proved sufficient

for a cure. In that country at all times the tale had flourished, and at

all times in the tale, to the detriment of chivalry and heroism, writers

had prided themselves on seeking mere truth. Thus, in the charming

preface of the Reine de Navarre's "Heptameron," Dame Parlamente

establishes the theory of these narratives, and relates how, at the

court, it had been decided to write a series of them, but to exclude

from the number of their authors "those who should have studied and be

men of letters; for Monseigneur the Dauphin did not wish their artifice

to be introduced into them, and was also afraid lest the beauty of

rhetoric should in some place injure the truth of the tale."

In the seventeenth century, the tradition of the old story-tellers is

carried on in France in more developed writings, in actual novels, such

as the "Baron de Foeneste" of D'Aubigne, 1617; the "Francion" of Charles

Sorel, 1622(?); the "Berger extravagant" of the same, 1628; the "Roman

Comique" of Scarron, 1651; the "Roman bourgeois" of Furetiere, 1666, and

many others. Scarron, who had travestied Virgil, was not the man to

spare La Calprenede, and he does not lose his opportunity. "I cannot

exactly tell you," he writes of one of his characters, "whether he had

sup'd that night, or went to bed empty, as some Romance-mongers use to

do, who regulate all their heroes' actions, making them rise early, and

tell on their story till dinner time, then dine lightly, and after their

meal proceed in the discourse: or else retire to some shady grove to

talk by themselves, unless they have something to discover to the rocks

and trees."

Furetiere, writing in the same spirit, declares that he wishes to

concern himself with "persons who are neither heroes nor heroines, who

will neither raise armies nor overturn kingdoms; but who will be good

people of middling rank who quietly go on their usual way, of whom some

are handsome and others plain, some wise and others foolish; and the

latter have the appearance indeed of forming the greatest number."[355]

Without speaking of the more important works of Cervantes and

Rabelais,[356] most of these novels were translated into English, and in

the same spirit as they had been written, that is, to be used as engines

of war against heroes and heroism. "The French themselves," writes one

of the translators, "our first romantique masters ... have given over

making the world otherwise than it was; are now come to represent it to

us as it is and ever will be."[357] "Among all the books that ever were

thought on," writes another, who curiously enough had about the same

opinion of the favourite novels of his time as Sidney had had of the

drama a century earlier, "those of knight errantry and shepherdry have

been so excellently trivial and naughty, that it would amuse a good

judgment to consider into what strange and vast absurdities some

imaginations have straggled ... the Knight constantly killing the gyant,

or it may be whole squadrons; the Damosel certainly to be relieved just

upon the point of ravishing; a little childe carried away out of his

cradle after some twenty years discovered to be the sone of some great

prince; a girl after seven years wandring and co-habiting and being

stole, confirmed to be a virgin, either by a panterh, fire or a

fountain, and lastly all ending in marriage ... These are the noble

entertainments of books of this kinde, which how profitable they are,

you may judge; how pernicious 'tis easily seen, if they meet but with

an intentive melancholy and a spirit apt to be overborn by such

follies;"[358] a spirit, in fact, such as Lady Lurewell's, whose reading

of "Cassandra" had, as we have seen, such remarkable consequences.[359]

[Illustration: A POET'S DREAM REALIZED, FROM "THE EXTRAVAGANT SHEPHERD,"

1653.]

Efforts made in England to imitate this style and to lead, by means of

the romance itself, a reaction against the false heroism that the

romance had introduced, proved sadly abortive. These attempts have

fallen into a still more profound oblivion than those of the

story-tellers of Shakespeare's time. The English were not yet masters of

the supple, crisp and animated language which suited that kind of tale,

and which the French possessed from the thirteenth century. A few

original minds like Sidney in his "Apologie" had employed it; but they

formed rare exceptions, and in the seventeenth century most men

continued to like either the pompous prose with its Latin periods, held

in highest honour by Bacon, or the various kinds of flowery prose used

by Lodge, Greene, Shakespeare and Sidney. So the romance writers who

attempted to bring about a reaction received no encouragement and were

forgotten less from want of merit than because even their

contemporaries paid no attention to them. Thinking to open up a new

path, they got entangled in a blind alley where they were left. The

ground was to be broken anew by more robust hands than theirs, the hands

of Defoe.

Some of these attempts however are worthy of attention, notably one in

which imitation of Scarron and Furetiere is to be found, entitled "The

Adventures of Covent Garden."[360] The scene is laid in London among the

cultivated upper middle class: life is so realistically represented,

that this work, now entirely unknown, is one of those that best aid us

to re-constitute that society in which Dryden, Wycherley and Otway

lived.

Peregrine, the hero of the tale, spends his evenings at the "Rose" or at

"Will's," Dryden's favourite coffee-house, or at the theatre, where the

"Indian Emperor," one of Dryden's heroic dramas, was being played. With

the Lady Selinda, in whose box he sits, he discusses the merits of the

play, the value of the French rules and the license of Shakespeare and

Ben Jonson. Many interesting remarks occur in these conversations which

seem put in writing after nature, and are very curious in the history of

literature. If they do not exactly recall the Moliere of the "Critique

de l'Ecole des Femmes," they will recall Furetiere, no insignificant

praise. It is, besides, a compliment difficult to apply to any other

English novelist of the period. Here is a specimen of literary criticism

if not deep, at least lively, such as was going on at the play, or in

the drawing-rooms at the time of the Restoration:

"You criticks, said Selinda, make a mighty sputter about exactness of

plot, unity of time, place and I know not what, which I can never find

do any play the least good (Peregrine smiled at her female ignorance).

But, she continued, I have one thing to offer in this dispute, which I

think sufficient to convince you. I suppose the chief design of plays is

to please the people,[361] and get the playhouse and poet a livelihood?

"You must pardon me, madam, replyed Peregrine, Instruction is the

business of plays.

"Sir, said the lady, make it the business of the audience first to be

pleased with instruction, and then I shall allow you it to be the chief

end of plays.

"But, suppose, madam, said he, that I grant what you lay down.

"Then sir, answered she, you must allow that whatever plays most exactly

answer this aforesaid end are most exact plays. Now I can instance you

many plays, as all those by Shakespeare and Johnson, and the most of Mr.

Dryden's which you criticks quarrel at as irregular, which nevertheless

still continue to please the audience and are a continual support to the

Theatre. There is very little of your unity of time in any of them, yet

they never fail to answer the proposed end very successfully....

Certainly, these rules are ill understood, or our nature has changed

since they were made, for we find they have no such effects now as they

had formerly. For instance, I am told the 'Double Dealer' and 'Plot and

no Plot' are two very exact plays, as you call them, yet all their unity

of time, place and action neither pleased the audience nor got the poets

money. A late play called 'Beauty in distress,'[362] in which the author

no doubt sweat as much in confining the whole play to one scene, as the

scene-drawers should, were it to be changed a hundred times, this play

had indeed a commendatory copy from Mr. Dryden, but I think he had

better have altered the scene and pleased the audience; in short, had

these plays been a little more exact as you call it, they had all been

exactly damn'd."

Further, some traits of character almost worthy of Fielding are to be

remarked in the course of the tale, though, it is true, it grows

confused towards the end, and touches the melodramatic in the same way

as Nash's novel. Thus the above conversation is interrupted by the

entrance of the coquette Emilia, long before loved by Peregrine who had

vainly asked for her hand. "Peregrine would have answered, but a pluck

by the sleeve obliged him to turn from Selinda to entertain a lady

mask'd who had given him the nudg. He presently knew her to be Emilia,

who whispered him in the ear: I find sir, what Guyomar said just now is

very true:

That love which first took root will first decay;

That of a fresher date will longer stay.

Peregrine tho surprised was pleased with her pretty reprimand, being

delivered without any anger, _but in murmuring, complaining accents,

which never fail to move_ ..."

Thus again, Peregrine goes to the famous St. Bartholomew fair, which was

still, as in Ben Jonson's time, a place of general meeting. "Lord C." is

there discovered, who had a masked lady with him; she pulls off her mask

and smiles at Peregrine, who again recognizes Emilia. The mixed

impressions that this sight makes on the hero are analysed in these

terms:

"He took a secret pride in rivalling so great a man, and it confirmed

his great opinion of Emilia's beauty to see her admir'd by so

accomplish't a person and absolute a courtier as my lord C. These

considerations augmenting his love increased his jealousy also, and

every little familiarity that my Lord us'd, heightened his love to her

and hatred to his Lordship; he lov'd her for being admir'd by my Lord,

yet hated my Lord for loving her."

The vain woman for her part is sufficiently interested in Peregrine to

put a stop to a dawning passion which she discovers in him for another

woman, and which might have ended in a marriage; but not at any rate

enough to repay his sacrifice by true love. Emilia's artifices are

studied with much skill, and the author seems, here too, to be imitating

nature, and recounting personal experiences: "_Quorum pars magna fui_,"

as he says on the title-page of his book. At one time Emilia feels that

Peregrine is escaping her; what does she conceive will keep him attached

to her? At such a crisis she is shrewd enough not to resort to vulgar

coquetries, feeling that they are no longer in season. With excellent

instinct she guesses that the only means of recovering possession of

honest Peregrine is to appeal to his good heart: instead of promising

him her favours, she asks of him a service. Peregrine would have

despised himself had he not rendered it, and it is only afterwards that

he perceives his chain is by this means newly forged. Emilia has fixed

ideas on the usefulness of men of this sort, and puts them very clearly

before Lord C. Only unsubstantial favours must ever be granted them, in

order that the favours by which they see their rivals profit, may not

give them too gloomy suspicions. They are very useful for defending

publicly their mistress' honour; they must if possible be men of a lofty

and refined mind, for only such persons are simple enough to feed their

passions on nothing.

The direct satire and caricature of heroical novels in the style of

Scudery and La Calprenede, which had been also practised in France, is

to be found in a few English tales, of which the best, as entirely

forgotten as the worst, is entitled "Zelinda, an excellent new romance,

translated from the French of Monsieur de Scudery."[363] With an amusing

unconcern, and a very lively pen, the author hastens, on the first

page, to give the lie to his title, and to inveigh against the

impertinences of publishers in general. "Book-sellers too are grown such

saucy masterly companions, they do even what they please; my friend Mr.

Bentley calls this piece an excellent romance; there I confess his

justice and ingenuity. But then he stiles it a translation, when (as

Sancho Panca said in another case) 'tis no more so then the mother that

bore me. Ingrateful to envy his friend's fame.... But I write not for

glory, nor self-interest, nor to gratifie kindness nor revenge. Now the

impertinent critical reader will be ready to ask, for what then? For

that and all other questions to my prejudice, I will borrow Mr. Bays's

answer and say, Because--I gad sir, I will not tell you--I desire to

please but one person in the world, and, as one dedicates his labours

and heroes to Calista, another to Urania, &c., at the feet of her my

adored Celia, I lay all my giants and monsters."

There follows a story in the manner of Scudery, the plot of which,

however, is drawn not from Scudery, but from Voiture,[364] and which is

treated in a playful accent, and with an air of persiflage that reminds

us of Byron's tone when relating the adventures of Don Juan. It is

Voiture indeed, but Voiture turned inside-out. As with Byron, the

raillery is from time to time interrupted by poetical flights, and, as

with him, licentious scenes abound and are described with peculiar

complacency.

Alcidalis and Zelinda, both pursued by a contrary fate, adore one

another, but at a distance: for tempests, pirates, family feuds separate

them, according to the classical standard of the grave romances of the

day. They mutually seek one another; Alcidalis, who only dreams of

Zelinda, has every good fortune he does not want. He believes his

_fiancee_ has been married to an elderly Italian duke distractedly in

love with the young princess: "As we are never so fond of flowers, as in

the beginning of spring, or towards the end of autumne; the first for

their novelty, and the others because we think we shall see them no

more: so the pleasures of love are at no time so dear to us as in the

beginning of our youth and the approaches of our age." Alcidalis,

deceiving the jealous vigilance of the duke, makes the tour of a

promontory in a boat by night, climbs to a window by means of a

rope-ladder, and in the second visit gains the favour of the duchess,

who was not at all the lady whom he thought to find. "Ye gods! do I

again behold the fair Zelinda? cries Alcidalis in his joy (a very

pertinent question, for it is to be remembred there was no light)."

Very unseasonably the husband arrives; Alcidalis has as much difficulty

in escaping as Don Juan; and the duchess, just like the first mistress

of Byron's hero, bursts out into reproaches against her bewildered

husband, who has much trouble to obtain her pardon. "O woman! woman!"

continues the author in an apostrophe Byron would not have disowned;

"thou dark abysse of subtility; 'tis easier to trace a wandring swallow

through the pathless air, then to explicate the crafty wyndings of thy

love or malice."

During this time, Alcidalis in flight, comes "to the sea side, where a

ship being just ready to leave the port (for that must never be wanting

to a hero upon a ramble)," he gets on board and resumes his search for

the true Zelinda. He encounters many new adventures, and in a battle

dangerously wounds a warrior. This warrior is a woman, Zelinda herself.

The lovers recognize one another, embrace, and relate their adventures.

Alcidalis omits nothing except the episode of the duchess, and shows

himself as fond a lover as at starting: "Were I racked to ten thousand

pieces, as every part of a broken mirrour presents an entire face, in

every part of Alcidalis would appear the bright image of my adored

Zelinda." At length they are married; the couple recline at their

banquet of love, "and if no other pen raises them, they shall lye there

till Doomsday."

V.

Thus in two different ways a reaction showed itself against the

literature in fashion, and the merits of those who attempted it only

made its failure the more felt. The caricature of the heroic romance and

the attempt at the novel of common life were without effect. Their

authors had come too soon, and remained isolated; the false heroism now

scoffed at in France continued in England until the eighteenth century.

The writers under Queen Anne, in order to destroy it, were obliged to

recommence the whole campaign. Addison, as we have seen, found heroism

still in fashion, and the great romances in their places in ladies'

libraries. They were still being reprinted. There is, for example, an

English edition of "Cassandra" dated 1725, and one of "Cleopatra" dated

1731. Fielding saw heroism still in possession of the stage, and he

satirized it in his amusing "Tom Thumb." Carey attacked it in his

"Chrononotontologos."[365]

The hundred years which follow Shakespeare's death are, therefore, taken

altogether, a period of little invention and progress for romance

literature. The only new development it takes, consists in the

exaggeration of the heroic element, of which there was enough already in

many an Elizabethan novel; it consists, in fact, in the magnifying of a

defect. The imitation of France only resulted in absurd productions

which were so successful and filled the literary stage so entirely that

they left no space for other kinds of romances. In vain did a few

intelligent persons, such as the authors of "The Adventures of Covent

Garden" and of "Zelinda," attempt to bring about a reaction; their words

found no echo. The other kinds of novels started in Shakespearean times

continued to be cultivated, but were not improved. The picaresque

romance as Nash had understood it, includes in the seventeenth century

no original specimen but Richard Head's "English Rogue,"[366] one of

the worst compositions in this style to be found in any literature. The

allegorical, social, and political novel, as inaugurated by Sir Thomas

More, continued by Bacon, by Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, and by

Godwin,[367] that novel which was to gain new life in the hands of Swift

and Johnson, is, if we except Bunyan's eloquent manual of devotion,

mainly represented in the second half of the century by barren

allegories, such as Harrington's "Oceana," 1656, and Ingelow's

"Bentivolio and Urania," 1660; or by short stories like "The perplex'd

Prince," "The Court Secret," &c.[368] When we have read ten pages of

these it is difficult to speak of them with coolness and without an

aggressive animosity towards their authors.

Persistent and close analysis of human emotion and of the passion of

love in the way in which Sir Philip Sidney had caught sight of it,

disappeared from the novel until the day when a second "Pamela" was to

figure on the literary stage, and to fill with emotion all London and

Paris, down even to Crebillon fils, who was to write to Lord

Chesterfield: "Without 'Pamela' we should not know what to read or to

say." And at reading it, the author of "The Sopha" was "moved to tears."

One work alone was published towards the end of the century in which an

original thought is to be found, the "Oroonoko"[369] of Mrs. Behn. The

sentiment that animates it is of another epoch, and belongs to a quite

peculiar class of novel; with her begins the philosophical novel,

crowded with dissertations on the world and humanity, on the vanity of

religions, the innocence of negroes, and the purity of savages. These

are the ideas of Rousseau before Rousseau: other ideas of Rousseau had

been, as we have seen, anticipated, in the history of the novel, by

Lyly.

Remains of the ordinary heroic style are of course not wanting. Being

love-struck Oroonoko, an African negro, well read in the classics,

refuses to fight, and following Achilles' example, retires to his tent.

"For the world, said he, it was a trifle not worth his care. Go,

continued he, sighing, and divide it amongst you, and reap with joy what

you so vainly prize!" In trying to carry out this advice his companions

are utterly routed, until after two days Oroonoko consents to take up

his arms again, and the victors are at once all put to flight.

Oroonoko's death is also in the heroical style, but a peculiar sort of

heroism which recalls Scudery, and at the same time Fenimore Cooper.

But more striking are the parts in which the manners of the savages are

compared to those of civilized nations. "Everything is well," Rousseau

was to say later, "when it comes fresh from the hands of the Maker of

things; everything degenerates in the hands of man."[370] Mrs. Behn

expressed many years before the very same ideas; her Oroonoko has been

educated by a Frenchman who "was a man of very little religion, yet he

had admirable morals and a brave soul," an ancestor obviously of

Rousseau himself, and a fit tutor for this black "Emile." The aborigines

of Surinam live in a state of perfection which reminds Mrs. Behn of Adam

and Eve before the fall: "These people represented to me an absolute

idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin: and

'tis most evident and plain that single nature is the most harmless,

inoffensive and virtuous mistress. 'Tis she alone, if she were

permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions of

man. Religion would here but destroy that tranquillity they possess by

ignorance, and laws would but teach 'em to know offences of which now

they have no notion. They made once mourning and fasting for the death

of the English governor who had given his hand to come on such a day to

'em and neither came nor sent; believing when a man's word is past,

nothing but death could or should prevent his keeping it."

The words "humanity," "mankind," are repeated also with a frequency

worthy of Rousseau, and the religion of humanity is set in opposition to

the religion of God with a clearness foreshadowing the theories of

Auguste Comte. When the sea captain refuses to take the word of Oroonoko

as a pledge equivalent to his own, "which if he should violate, he must

expect eternal torments in the world to come,"--"Is that all the

obligations he has to be just to his oath? replyed Oroonoko. Let him

know, I swear by my honour; which to violate, would not only render me

contemptible and despised by all brave and honest men, and so give me

perpetual pain, but it would be eternally offending and displeasing to

all mankind, harming, betraying, circumventing and outraging all

men."[371]

Most of these ideas, including an embryo-taste for landscape painting,

were to be cherished and eloquently defended by Rousseau. Mrs. Behn, as

a novelist, can only be studied with the authors of the middle of the

eighteenth century; she carries us at once beyond the times of Defoe,

Richardson, and Fielding, and takes us among the precursors of the

French Revolution. With the change she foreshadows, philosophy and

social science are perhaps more concerned than the novel proper.

It can, all things considered, be stated with truth that, between the

age of Elizabeth, and the age of Anne and the Georges, there is in the

history of the novel a long period of semi-stagnation. The seventeenth

century, which furnishes hardly any important name, added very little,

apart from an exaggerated heroism, to the art of the novel. Defoe,

Richardson and Fielding are, as novelists, more nearly related to the

men of the time of Shakespeare than to the men of the time of Dryden.

They have been thus so completely separated from their literary

ancestors that the connection has been usually forgotten. It cannot,

however, be doubted.

Now that we have carried so far this sketch of the history of the early

English novel, as far indeed as the time of writers whose works are

still our daily reading, we have to take leave of our heroes, picaroons,

and monsters, of Arthur and Lancelot, Euphues and Menaphon, Pyrocles and

Rosalind, Jack Wilton and Peregrine, Oroontades and Parthenissa; nor let

us forget to include in this farewell our Lamias, Mantichoras, dragons,

and all the menagerie of Topsell and of Lyly. Mummified, buried and

forgotten as most of these romances have long been, they managed somehow

not to die childless, but left behind them the seed of better things.

"No, those days are gone away," says Keats, thinking of the legends of

early times,

"And their hours are old and grey,

And their minutes buried all

Under the down trodden pall

Of the leaves of many years....

Gone, the merry morris din;

Gone, the song of Gamelyn;

Gone, the tough-belted outlaw;

All are gone away and past."

With them many reputations are gone. White fingers circled with gold no

longer turn over the pages of "Euphues" or "Arcadia." But the writings

of the descendants of Greene and Nash and Sidney afford endless delight

to-day. And that is why these old authors deserve not the lip-tribute of

cold respect, but the heart's offering of warmest gratitude; for they

have had the most numerous and the most brilliant posterity, perhaps the

most loved, that literary initiators have ever had in any time or

country.

[Illustration: AQUARIUS.]

FOOTNOTES:

[312] London, 1619, fol., translated by Anthony Munday (first edition of

first part, 1590, 4to). Another translation of the same romance was made

by F. Kirkman, and published in 1652, 4to.

[313] Advertised by Ch. Bates at the end of "the history of Guy earl of

Warwick," London, 1680 (?), 4to (illustrated).

[314] From a chap-book of the eighteenth century: "History of Guy earl

of Warwick," 1750(?).

[315] "De la Lecture des vieux romans," by Jean Chapelain, ed. Feillet,

Paris, 1870, 8vo.

[316] Edition of the "Grands Ecrivains de la France," vol. ii. pp. 529

and 535.

[317] 12th July, 1671, "Grands Ecrivains," vol. ii. p. 277. A few days

before, on the 5th, she had been writing: "Je suis revenue a 'Cleopatre'

... et par le bonheur que j'ai de n'avoir point de memoire, cette

lecture me divertit encore. Cela est epouvantable, mais vous savez que

je ne m'accommode guere bien de toutes les pruderies qui ne me sont pas

naturelles, et comme celle de ne pas aimer ces livres la ne m'est pas

encore entierement arrivee, je me laisse divertir sous le pretexte de

mon fils qui m'a mise en train."

[318] "L'heure de la veille de Pasques, a laquelle le Roy devoit

recevoir le baptesme de la main de S. Remy estant venue, il s'y presenta

avec une contenance relevee, une demarche grave, un port majestueux,

tres richement vestu, musque, poudre, la perruque pendante, curieusement

peignee, gauffree, ondoiante, crespee et parfumee, selon la coustume des

anciens rois Francois" ("Histoire Generale de France," Paris, 1634, vol.

i. p. 58).

[319] "Traicte de l'Economie politique," Rouen, 1615, 4to.

[320]

"Soit que le blond Phoebus, sortant du creux de l'onde

Vienne recolorer le visage du monde;

Soit que de rays plus chauds il enflame le jour,

Ou qu'il s'aille coucher en l'humide sejour,

Il ne void un seul homme en ce monde habitable

Qui soit en tout bon-heur avec moi comparable:

Ma gloire est sans pareille, et si quelqu'un des Dieux

Vouloit faire a la terre un eschange des cieux,

Et venir habiter sous le rond de la lune,

Il se contenteroit de ma belle fortune."

"Aman ou la vanite"; "Tragedies d'Antoine de Montchrestien," Rouen,

1601, 8vo.

[321]

"Outre qu'on m'a vu naistre avec une couronne,

La fortune qui m'aime est celle qui les donne,

Et sans prendre la leur, ce bras a le pouvoir

De m'en acquerir cent, si je les veux avoir.

Mais souffrez mon discours, il est pour votre gloire;

Je suy, je suy l'Amour et non pas la Victoire."

("L'amour tirannique," 1640. Speech by Tiridate.)

"Je tiens en mon pouvoir les sceptres et la mort;

Je t'arracherais l'un, je te donnerais l'autre ...

Mais j'ay cette faiblesse," &c. ("Ibrahim," 1645.)

[322] Boileau, "Les heros de romans, dialogue a la maniere de Lucien,"

written in 1664, published 1713, but well known before in literary

drawing-rooms, where Boileau used himself to read it aloud.

[323] _I.e._, Mme. du Plessis Guenegaud, who figures in "Clelie" under

this name. "Letter to Pompone, Nov. 18, 1664."

[324] Scudery's preface to "Ibrahim, or the illustrious bassa ...

englished by Henry Cogan," London, 1652, fol.

[325] "Cassandre," vol. i book v.

[326] By William Prynne, London, 1628, 4to.

[327] Preface to "Artamenes, or the Grand Cyrus," London, 1653-1654,

five vols. fol.

[328] "Astrea ... translated by a person of quality," _i.e._, J.

D[avies?], London, 1657-8, 3 vols. fol.; prefaces to vols. i and ii.

Dramas with their plots taken from "Astree" were written in England and

in France, such as "Tragi-comedie pastorale ou les amours d'Astree ...

par le Sieur de Rayssiguier," Paris, 1632, 8vo; "Astrea, or true love's

mirrour, a pastoral," by Leonard Willan. London, 1651, 8vo.

[329] "The Grand Scipio ... by Monsieur de Vaumoriere, rendered into

English by G. H.," London, 1660, fol.

[330] "Loveday's letters, domestick and foreign," seventh impression.

London, 1684, 8vo, p. 146 (first edition 1659).

[331] By Scudery, translated by J. Philips, London, 1677, fol. part ii.

bk. ii. p. 166. Books entirely made up of "conversations" were published

by Mdlle. de Scudery, treating of pleasures, of passions, of the

knowledge of others and of ourselves, &c. They read very much like

dialogued essays; and it is interesting to compare them with Addison's

essays which treat sometimes of the same subjects. They were received

with great applause; Madame de Sevigne highly praises them. They were

translated into English: "Conversations upon several subjects, ... done

into English by F. Spence," London, 1683, 2 vol. 12mo.

[332] About this curious little society see Mr. Gosse's "Seventeenth

Century Studies," 1883, pp. 205 _et seq._

[333] "_Cathos_: Le nom de Polixene que ma cousine a choisi et celui

d'Aminte que je me suis donne ont une grace dont il faut que vous

demeuriez d'accord" ("Precieuses Ridicules," sc. v.).

[334] "Natures pictures," London, 1656, fol., preface No. 2.

[335] Her "Playes," 1662, are preceded by two dedications, one prologue,

and _eleven_ prefaces.

[336] "CCXI. Sociable Letters," London, 1664, fol.

[337] "Lives of the Poets ... to the time of Dean Swift," London. 1753,

5 vols. 12mo; vol. ii. p. 164.

[338] "Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-4," ed.

Parry, London, 1888, 8vo. Letter ix. p. 60; Letter x. p. 64; Letter

xxiv. p. 124, year 1653.

[339] May 13, 1666; Feb. 24, 1667-8; Nov. 16, 1668.

[340] Letter xxxiv. p. 162. Year 1653.

[341] "Parthenissa, that most fam'd romance," London, 1654.

[342] He assisted her in getting her translation of Corneille's "Pompee"

represented at Dublin with embellishments, consisting in dances, music,

songs, &c. He was born in 1621 and was held in great esteem both by

Cromwell and by the Stuarts. He left dramas and other works and died in

1679.

[343] "British Novelists," by David Masson, Cambridge, 1859, 8vo. p. 72.

[344] Letter LI. p. 236, year 1654.

[345] P. 54. Part of the tale, viz.: the adventures of Brandon, supplied

Otway with the plot of his "Orphan" (performed 1680).

[346] "Pandion and Amphigenia, or the history of the coy lady or

Thessalia adorned with sculptures," London, 1665, 8vo. Crowne died about

1703; his dramatic works have been published in four vols., 1873.

[347] Pp. 140, 141.

[348] "Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada," performed

(with great success) in the winter, 1669-70, act iii. sc. 1.

[349] Settle's "Empress of Morocco," London, 1673, 4to. The engraving we

reproduce represents the interior of a Moorish prison, with Muley Labas,

son of the Emperor of Morocco, and the Princess Morena.

[350] "Andromache, a tragedy, as it is acted at the Dukes Theatre,"

London, 1675, 4to.

[351] _Spectator_, April 12, 1711.

[352] "The Constant Couple, or a trip to the Jubilee," 1700, act iii.,

last scene.

[353] "Titus and Berenice; a tragedy," 1677.

[354] "The Princess of Montpensier," 1666; "The Princess of Cleve ...

written by the greatest wits of France, rendred into English by a person

of quality at the request of some friends," 1688: "Zayde," 1688. Nat.

Lee's play is entitled, "The Princess of Cleve," London, 1689, 4to. As

to the popularity of this novel in France, it will be enough to notice

Madame de Sevigne's allusion to "ce chien de Barbin," who does not

fulfil her orders when she wants books, because she does not write "des

Princesses de Cleves."

[355] "Je ne vous dirai pas exactement s'il avait soupe et s'il se

coucha sans manger comme font quelques faiseurs de romans qui reglent

toutes les heures du jour de leurs heros, les font se lever de bon

matin, confer leur histoire jusqu'a l'heure du diner, reprendre leur

histoire ou s'enfoncer dans un bois pour y aller parler tout seuls, si

ce n'est quand ils out quelque chose a dire aux arbres et aux rochers"

("Roman comique," chap. ix. ed. 1825).

"Je vous raconteray sincerement et avec fidelite plusieurs historiettes

et galanteries arrivees entre des personnes qui ne seront ny heros ny

heroines, qui ne dresseront point d'armees, ny ne renverseront point de

royaumes, mais qui seront de ces bonnes gens de mediocre condition, qui

vont tout doucement leur grand chemin, dont les uns seront beaux et les

autres laids, les uns sages et les autres sots; et ceux-cy out bien la

mine de composer le plus grand nombre" ("Roman bourgeois," ed. Janet, p.

6).

[356] Rabelais by Urquhart, London, 1653, 8vo; Cervantes in 1612; and

again by T. Shelton in 1620 and by J. Philips, 1687.

[357] Scarron's "Comical romance: or a facetious history of a company of

strowling stage-players," London, 1676, fol. Preface to the

continuation. The translator is at some pains to anglicize his original;

when Scarron speaks of Paris, the translator puts London; Ragotin is

heard defending Spenser (chapter xv.). The poet in Scarron brags of his

acquaintance with Corneille and Rotrou, and in the English text, with

Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson (chap. viii.). There were other

translations of Scarron: "The whole comical works of M. Scarron,"

translated by Mr. T. Brown, Mr. Savage, and others, London, 1700, 8vo;

"The comic romance," translated by O. Goldsmith, Dublin, 1780(?) 2 vol.

12mo. His shorter novels or stories were separately translated by John

Davies, who states in the preface of "The unexpected Choice," London,

1670, that he did so at the suggestion of the late Catherine Philips,

the matchless Orinda.

[358] "The extravagant Shepherd, the anti-romance, or the history of the

shepherd Lysis," London, 1653, another edition 1660. Strange to say,

besides some adaptations from Spanish authors ("La Picara," 1665; "Donna

Rosina," 1700?), a translation of Voiture's Letters, 1657, the same John

Davies of Kidwelly, who had written this eloquent appeal against

heroical romances, translated "Clelia," 1656, and part of "Cleopatra" in

conjunction with Loveday.

[359] See also in Furetiere's "Roman bourgeois" how the reading of

"Astree" made of Javotte "la plus grande causeuse et la plus coquette

fille du quartier" (Ed. Janet, i. p. 173).

[360] "The Adventures of Covent Garden, in imitation of Scarron's city

romance," London, 1699, 16mo. "Scarron" is here evidently for

"Furetiere." This work, the author of which is unknown, has long been

forgotten, though deserving a better fate. It is dedicated "to all my

ingenious acquaintance at Will's coffee-house."

[361] _Cf._ Moliere: "Je voudrais bien savoir si la grande regle de

toutes les regles n'est pas de plaire, et si une piece de theatre qui a

attrape son but n'a pas suivi un bon chemin.... Laissons nous aller de

bonne foi aux choses qui nous prennent par les entrailles et ne

cherchons point de raisonnements pour nous empecher d'avoir du plaisir"

("Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes," sc. 7).

[362] "Double Dealer," by Congreve; "Plot and no Plot," by Dennis;

"Beauty in distress," by Motteux.

[363] By T. D., perhaps T. Duffet (Bullen), London, Bentley, 1676, 12mo.

[364] From his "Histoire d'Alcidalis et Zelide." Voiture had begun it in

1633 in the style fashionable at the Hotel de Rambouillet, and even, as

he pretends, with the help of Mdlle. de Rambouillet, to whom it is

dedicated. It was left unfinished and was published after his death,

being completed by Desbarres. A regular translation of it was published

in English in 1678.

[365] These two pieces which appeared in 1730 and 1734 are not, as is

often stated, caricatures of classical tragedy. In the same way as the

Duke of Buckingham in his "Rehearsal" (1671), Fielding and Carey

ridicule heroic drama, born of romance _a la_ Scudery, as Dryden and his

followers had understood it.

[366] "The English Rogue described in the life of Meriton Latroon,"

London, 1665, 8vo, continued by F. Kirkman, 1661, _et seq._, 4 vols.

(reprinted by Pearson).

[367] The "Mundus alter et idem," by Hall, was written about 1600, and

appeared some years later on the continent, without date. "The Man in

the Moon or a discourse of a voyage thither," by F. Godwin, appeared in

1638, and was translated into French, which allowed Cyrano de Bergerac

to become acquainted with it: "L'Homme dans la Lune ou le voyage

chimerique fait au monde de la Lune" ... by Dominique Gonzales (pseud.),

Paris, 1648, 8vo. The translation is by that same Baudoin who had

already turned Sidney's "Arcadia" into French. Barclay's "Argenis"

belongs to European rather than to English literature.

[368] "The perplex'd Prince," by T. S. In this romance Westenia is

Wales; Otenia, England; Bogland, Scotland; the amours of Charles II. and

those of the Duke of York (the Prince of Purdino) are related in it

under fictitious names. "The Court Secret," 1689; Selim I. and Selim II.

represent Charles I. and Charles II.; Cha-abas, Louis XIV., &c. In

"Oceana," Parthenia is Queen Elizabeth; Morpheus, James I.; in Ingelow's

work, Bentivolio represents "Good will," and Urania "Heavenly light."

"Oceana" and "Bentivolio" are didactic treatises rather than romances;

the first is a political treatise, and the second a religious treatise,

an enormous morality in prose. "The Pilgrim's Progress" must be placed

among religious literature properly so-called, as being its master-work

in England.

[369] "The plays histories and novels of the ingenious Mrs. Aphra Behn,"

London (Pearson's reprint), 1871, 6 vols., 8vo, vol. i. "Oroonoko or the

royal slave," first printed, 1698. The adventures and virtues of

Oroonoko made him very popular; his story was transferred to the stage

by Th. Southern; his life was translated into German, and into French

(by La Place, 1745). Mrs. Behn's other novels show much less

originality. She died in 1689.

[370] Beginning of "Emile."

[371] "Oroonoko," _ibid._, pp. 121, 79, 135.

INDEX.

INDEX.

A.

Acolastus, 316

Actors, Nash on, 316;

as playwrights, 156-158

Addison, 25, 381, 396, 412

"Adventures of Covent Garden," 404-408;

412

"Alcida," Greene's, 112, 155

Alexander, poem imitated from the French romance, 39

Alfarache, Guzman d', 292, 293, 294

Alfred, literature under, 33

"Almahide," 370

"Almanzor and Almahide," 392

Amadis of Gaul, Munday's translation of, 349

Amourists, The, 245

"Anatomie of Absurditie," Nash's, 169 _note_, 279

Andrews, Dr., Sermons by, 382

"Andromaque," Racine's, English translation of, 395, 396

Angennes, Julie d', 352

Anglo-Saxons, songs and legends of the, 32;

gloom of the literature of the, 33, 34

"Apologie for Poetrie," Sidney's, 229-233; 235, 254, 255, 301