distorted echo of more musical[122] appellations in Arabic and other
Eastern tongues, or to a certain childishness, for there is no doubt
that the youthful mind delights, and always has delighted, in such
things. The immense length of these romances even in themselves, and
still more with continuations from father to son and grandson, and
trains of descendants sometimes alternately named, can be less charged
as an innovation, though there is no doubt that it established a rule
which had only been an exception before. But, as will have been seen
earlier, the continuation of romance genealogically had been not
uncommon, and there had been a constant tendency to lengthen from the
positively terse _Roland_ to the prolix fifteenth-century forms. In fact
this went on till the extravagant length of the Scudery group made
itself impossible, and even afterwards, as all readers of Richardson
know, there was reluctance to shorten.

[Sidenote: The "cruel" heroine.]

We have, however, still to notice another peculiarity, and the most
important by far as concerns the history of the novel: this is the
ever-increasing tendency to exaggerate the "cruelty" of the heroine and
the sufferings of the lovers. This peculiarity is not specially
noticeable in the earliest and best of the group itself. Amadis suffers
plentifully; yet Oriana can hardly be called "cruel." But of the two
heroines of _Palmerin_, Polisarda does play the part to some extent, and
Miraguarda (whose name it is not perhaps fantastic to interpret as
"Admire her but beware of her") is positively ill-natured. Of course the
thing was no more a novelty in literature than it was in life. The
lines--

And cruel in the New
As in the Old one,

may certainly be transferred from the geographical world to the
historical. But in classical literature "cruelty" is attributed rather
indiscriminately to both sexes. The cliff of Leucas knew no distinction
of sex, and Sappho can be set against Anaxarete. Indeed, it was safer
for men to be cruel than for women, inasmuch as Aphrodite, among her
innumerable good qualities, was very severe upon unkind girls, while one
regrets to have to admit that no particular male deity was regularly
"affected" to the business of punishing light o' love men, though
Eros-Cupid may sometimes have done so. The Eastern mistress, for obvious
reasons, had not much chance of playing the Miraguarda part as a rule,
though there seems to me more chance of