hing like real episodes, or at any rate supply connecting threads
of the whole, in a manner not entirely unlike that which some critics
have so hastily and unjustly overlooked in Spenser. Then we have an
imbroglio about forged letters, and a clearing-up of a former charge
against the hero, and (still within the twenty pages) a very curious
scene--the last for the time--of that flirtation-without-flirtation
between Cyrus and Martesie. She wants to have back a picture of Mandane,
which she has lent him to worship; and he replies, looking at her
"attentively" (one wonders whether Mandane, if present, would have been
entirely satisfied with his "attention"), addresses her as "Cruel
Person," and asks her (he is just setting out for the Armenian war) how
she thinks he can conquer when she takes away what should make him
invincible. To which replies Miss Martesie, "You have gained so many
victories [_ahem!_] without this help, that it would seem you have no
need of it." This is very nice, and Martesie, who is herself, as
previously observed, quite nice throughout, lets him have the picture
after all. But Cyrus, for once rather ungraciously, will not allow her
lover, and his henchman, Feraulas to escort her home; first, because he
wants Feraulas's services himself, and secondly, because it is unjust
that Feraulas should be happy with Martesie when Cyrus is miserable
without Mandane--an argument which, whether slightly selfish or not, is
at any rate in complete keeping with the whole atmosphere of the book.

[Sidenote: The advent of Araminta.]

Now, as this is by no means a very exceptional, certainly not a unique,
score of pages, and as it has taken almost a whole one of ours to give a
rather imperfect notion of its contents, it follows that it would take
about six hundred, if not more, to do justice to the ten or twelve
thousand of the original. Which (in one of the most immortal of
formulas) "is impossible." We must fall back, therefore, on the system
already pursued for the rest of this volume, and perhaps even contract
its application in some cases. A rash promise of the now entirely, if
not also rather insanely,[171] generous Prince not to marry Mandane
without fighting Philidaspes, or rather the King of Assyria, beforehand,
is important; and an at last minute description of Cyrus's person and
equipment as he sets out (on one of the proudest and finest horses that
ever was, with a war-dress the superbest that can be imagin