infidelite a des charmes,"
might have been better if the author had known how to make it so. Both
these books have, as has been said, the merit of shortness. Puget de la
Serre's _La Clytie de la Cour_ (2 vols., Paris, 1635) cannot plead even
this; for it fills two fat volumes of some 1500 pages. I have sometimes
been accused, both in France and in England, of unfairness to Boileau,
but I should certainly never quarrel with him for including La Serre
(not, however, in respect of this book, I think) among his herd of
dunces. Like most of the novels of its time, though it has not much
actual _bergerie_ about it, it suggests the _Astree_, but the contrast
is glaring. Even among the group, I have seldom read, or attempted to
read, anything duller. _Le Melante du Sieur Vidal_ (Paris, 1624), though
also somewhat wordy (it has 1000 pages), is much more Astreean, and
therefore, perhaps, better. Things do happen in it: among other
incidents a lover is introduced into a garden in a barrow of clothes,
though he has not Sir John Falstaff's fate. There are fresh laws of
love, and discussions of them; a new debate on the old Blonde _v._
Brunette theme, which might be worse, etc. etc. The same year brought
forth _Les Chastes Amours d'Armonde_ by a certain Damiron, which, as its
title may show, belongs rather to the pre-Astreean group (_v. sup._ Vol.
I. p. 157 _note_), and contains a great deal of verse and (by licence of
its title) a good deal of kissing; but is flatly told, despite not a
little _Phebus_. It is a sort of combat of Spiritual and Fleshly Love;
and Armonde ends as a kind of irregular anchorite, having previously
"spent several days in deliberating the cut of his vestments."

_Les Caprices Heroiques_ (Paris, 1644) is a translation, by
Chateaunieres de Grenaille, from the Italian of Loredano. It consists of
variations on classical stories, treated rather in the declamation
manner, and ranging in subject from Achilles to "Frine." How many
readers (at least among those who read with their eyes only) will affirm
on their honour that they identified "Frine" at first reading? In
Italian there would, of course, be less hesitation. The book is not
precisely a novel, but it has merits as a collection of rhetorical
exercises. Of a somewhat similar kind, though even further from the
strict novel standard, is the _Diverses Affections de Minerve_ (Paris,
1625) of the above-mentioned Audiguier, where the heroine is _not_ the
goddess, an