evidences of the
vanity of misplaced ambition. During twenty years JEAN CHAPELAIN,
a man of no mean ability in other fields, was occupied with his _La
Pucelle d'Orleans_; twelve cantos at length appeared magnificently
in 1656, and won a brief applause; the remaining twelve cantos lie
still inedited. The matter of history was too humble for Chapelain's
genius; history is ennobled by an allegorical intention; France
becomes the soul of man; Charles, swayed between good and evil, is
the human will; the Maid of Orleans is divine grace. The satire of
Boileau, just in its severity, was hardly needed to slay the slain.

In the prose romances, which are epics emancipated from the trammels
of verse, there was more vitality. Bishop Camus, the friend of
Francois de Sales, had attempted to sanctify the movement which d'Urfe
had initiated; but the spirit of the _Astree_ would not unite in a
single stream with the spirit of the _Introduction a la Vie Devote_.
Gomberville is remembered rather for the remorseless war which he
waged against the innocent conjunction _car_, never to be admitted
into polite literature, than for his encyclopaedic romance
_Polexandre_, in which geography is illustrated by fiction, as
copious as it is fantastic; yet it was something to annex for the
first time the ocean, with all its marvels, to the scenery of adventure.
Gombauld, the _Beau Tenebreux_ of the Hotel de Rambouillet, secured
a reading for his unreadable _Endymion_ by the supposed transparence
of his allusions to living persons. Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin
relieved the amorous exaltations of his _Ariane_, a tale of the time
of Nero, by excursions which touch the borders of comedy. These are
books on which the dust gathers thick in ancient libraries.

But the romances of LA CALPRENEDE and of GEORGES and MADELEINE DE
SCUDERY might well be taken down by any lover of literature who
possesses the virtue of fortitude. Since d'Urfe's day the taste for
pastoral had declined; the newer romance was gallant and heroic.
Legend or history supplied its framework; but the central motive was
ideal love at odds with circumstance, love the inspirer of limitless
devotion and daring. The art of construction was imperfectly
understood; the narratives are of portentous length; ten, twelve,
twenty volumes were needed to deploy the sentiments and the adventures.
In _Cassandre_, in _Cleopatre_, in _Pharamond_, La Calprenede
exhibits a kind of universal history; the dissol