te 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."

Furetiere, 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."[355]

Without speaking of the more important works of Cervantes and
Rabelais,[356] 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 it is and ever will be."[357] "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 co-habiting 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 seen, if they meet but with
an intentive melancholy and a spirit apt to be overborn by such
follies;"[358] a spirit, in fact, such as Lady Lurewell's, whose reading
of "Cassandra" had, as we have seen, such remarkable consequences.[359]

[Illustration: A POET'S DREAM REALIZED, FROM "THE EXTRAVAGANT SHEPHERD,"
1653.]

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