plementary pieces are mainly moralities, as indeed are, in intention,
the _Angoisses_ themselves. These latter seem to me better worth
reprinting than most other things as yet not reprinted, from the
_Heptameron_ (Helisenne, be it remembered, preceded Marguerite) for
nearly a hundred years. The later parts, though (or perhaps even
because) they contrast curiously with the first, are by no means
destitute of interest; and M. Reynier, I think, is a little hard on them
if he has perhaps been a little kind to their predecessor. The lingo is
indeed almost always stupendous and occasionally terrible. The printer
aids sometimes; for it was not at once that I could emend the
description of the B. V. M. as "Mere et Fille de _l'aliltonat_ [ant]
plasmateur" into "_altitonant_" ("loud-thundering"), while _plasmateur_
itself, though perfectly intelligible and legitimate, a favourite with
the _rhetoriqueurs_, and borrowed from them even in Middle Scots, is not
exactly everybody's word. But from her very exordium she may be fairly
judged. "Au temps que la Deesse Cibele despouilla son glacial et gelide
habit, et vestit sa verdoyante robe, tapissee de diverses couleurs, je
fus procree, de noblesse." And, after all, there _is_ a certain nobility
in this fashion of speech and of literary presentation.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--I

_The Pastoral and Heroic Romance, and the Fairy Story_

[Sidenote: Immense importance of the seventeenth century in our
subject.]

The seventeenth century, almost if not quite from its beginning, ranks
in French literature as the eighteenth does with us, that is to say, as
the time of origin of novels or romances which can be called, in any
sense, modern. In its first decade appeared the epoch-making
pastoral-heroic _Astree_ of Honore d'Urfe;[124] its middle period, from
1620 to 1670, was the principal birth-time of the famous "Heroic"
variety, pure and simple; while, from that division into the last third,
the curiously contrasted kind of the fairy tale came to add its quota of
influence. At various periods, too, individuals of more or less note
(and sometimes of much more than almost any of the "school-writers" just
mentioned) helped mightily in strengthening and diversifying the
subjects and manners of tales. To this period also belongs the
continuance and prominence of that element of actual "lived" anecdote
and personal history which has been mentioned more than once before.