roduces the religious wars, a sojourn of the lovers on a desert
island, which M. Reynier[139] not unjustly calls Crusoe-like, and other
"varieties."

[Sidenote: Francois de Moliere--_Polyxene._]

I have not seen the other--quite other, and Francois--Moliere's _Semaine
Amoureuse_, which belongs to this class, though later than most; but his
still later _Polyxene_, a sort of half-way house between these shorter
novels and the ever-enlarged "Heroics," is a very fat duodecimo of 1100
pages. The heroine has two lovers--one with the singular name of
Cloryman,--but love does not run smooth with either, and she ends by
taking the (pagan) veil. The bathos of the thought and style may be
judged from the heroine's affecting mention of an entertainment as "the
last _ballet_ my unhappy father ever saw."

[Sidenote: Du Perier--_Arnoult et Clarimonde._]

Not one of the worst of these four or five score minors, though scarcely
in itself a positively good thing, is the Sieur du Perier's _La Haine et
l'Amour d'Arnoult et de Clarimonde_. It begins with a singularly banal
exordium, gravely announcing that Hate and Love _are_ among the most
important passions, with other statements of a similar kind couched in
commonplace language. But it does something to bring the novel from an
uninteresting cloudland to earth by dealing with the recent and still
vividly felt League wars: and there is some ingenuity shown in plotting
the conversion of the pair from more than "a little aversion" at the
beginning to nuptial union--_not_ at the end. For it is one of the
points about the book which are not commonplace, though it may be a
survival or atavism from mediaeval practice--that the latter part of it
is occupied mainly, not with Arnoult and Clarimonde, but with the loves,
fortunes, and misfortunes of their daughter Claride.

[Sidenote: Du Croset--_Philocalie._ Corbin--_Philocaste._]

The _Philocalie_ of Du Croset (1593) derives its principal interest from
its being not merely a _Bergerie_ before the _Astree_, but, like it, the
work of a Forezian gentleman who proudly asserts his territoriality, and
dedicates his book to the "Chevalier D'Urfe." And its part name-fellow,
the _Philocaste_ of Jean Corbin--a very tiny book, the heroine of which
is (one would hardly have thought it from her name) a Princess of
England--is almost entirely composed of letters, discourse on them, and
a few interspersed verses. It belongs to the division of
backward-looki