even Otway, when translating " Bérénice," 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. 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.2 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

I

"Titus and Berenice; a tragedy," 1677.

2 "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 Sévigné'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 Clèves." 26

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" Heptaméron," 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 Fœneste" of D'Aubigné, 1617; the "Francion" of Charles Sorel, 1622 (?); the "Berger extravagant" of the same, 1628; the "Roman Comique" of Scarron, 1651; the "Roman bourgeois" of Furetière, 1666, and many others. Scarron, who had travestied Virgil, was not the man to spare La Calprenède, 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."

Furetière, 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." I

Without speaking of the more important works of Cervantes and Rabelais, 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

I

"Je ne vous dirai pas exactement s'il avait soupé et s'il se coucha sans manger comme font quelques faiseurs de romans qui règlent toutes les heures du jour de leurs héros, les font se lever de bon matin, conter leur histoire jusqu'à l'heure du dîner, reprendre leur histoire ou s'enfoncer dans un bois pour y aller parler tout seuls, si ce n'est quand ils ont quelque chose à dire aux arbres et aux rochers" (" Roman comique," chap. ix. ed. 1825).

"Je vous raconteray sincèrement et avec fidélité plusieurs historiettes et galanteries arrivées entre des personnes qui ne seront ny héros ny héroïnes, qui ne dresseront point d'armées, ny ne renverseront point de royaumes, mais qui seront de ces bonnes gens de médiocre 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 ont bien la mine de composer le plus grand nombre " ("Roman bourgeois," ed. Janet, p. 6).

2 Rabelais by Urquhart, London, 1653, 8vo; Cervantes in 1612; and again by T. Shelton in 1620 and by J. Philips, 1687.

it is and ever will be." I 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 cohabiting 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

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.