Pandion layes Claufus

HEROICAL DEEDS IN A HEROICAL NOVEL, 1665.

IN

CHAPTER VII.

AFTER SHAKESPEARE.

I. .

N 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 longsustained 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 ncrease 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 Scudéry 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 mediaval 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;" 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." 2 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

I

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.

2 Advertised by Ch. Bates at the end of "the history of Guv earl of Warwick," London, 1680 (?), 4to (illustrated).

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

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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. 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 wellknown 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 From a chap-book of the eighteenth century: "History of Guy earl of Warwick," 1750 (?)

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." But as well as Guy of Warwick, Lancelot wanted some " rajeunisseient.' 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.

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!

"De la Lecture des vieux romans," by Jean Chapelain, ed. Feillet, Paris, 1870, 8vo.

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