ENDYMION PLUNGED INTO THE RIVER IN THE PRESENCE OF DIANA. (French Engraving used in an English book.) [p. 367. 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 Calprenède's "Cléopatre," 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 præludia"; 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 præludia," you have not yet done with preliminaries. I . But this constant delaying of an event, sometimes "Loveday's letters, domestick and foreign," seventh impression. London, 1684, 8vo, p. 146 (first edition 1659). announced, as in "Clélie," 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," 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. Such topics, and many more of a higher order, which were the subject of persistent debate in the drawing-rooms of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, were also discussed in England; there was, it is true, no Hôtel 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 à panache of her French neigh By Scudéry, translated by J. Philips, London, 1677, fol. part ii. bk. ii. p. 166. Books entirely made up of "conversations were published by Mdlle. de Scudéry, 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 Sévigné highly praises them. They were translated into English: "Conversations upon several subjects, . . . done into English by F. Spence," London, 1683, 2 vol. 12mo. |