custom of having something of the same kind in the Third Book
of every Part. For though there is some "business," it slips into
another regular "History," this time of Prince Thrasybulus, a naval
hero, of whom we have often heard, and his Alcionide, not a bad name for
a sailor's mistress.[172] Finally, we come back to more events of a
rather troublesome kind: for the _ci-devant_ Philidaspes most
inconveniently insists in taking part in the rescuing expedition,
which--saving scandal of great ones--is very much as if Mr. William
Sikes should insist in helping to extract booty from Mr. Tobias Crackit.
And we finally leave Cyrus in a decidedly awkward situation morally, and
the middle of a dark wood physically.

[Sidenote: Some interposed comments.]

Here, according to that paulo-post-future precedent which she did so
much to create, the authoress was quite justified in leaving him at the
end of a volume; and perhaps the present historian is, to compare small
things with great, equally justified in heaving-to (to borrow from Mr.
Kipling) and addressing a small critical sermon to such crew as he may
have attracted. We have surveyed not quite a third of the book; but this
ought in any case--_teste_ the loved and lost "three-decker" which the
allusion just made concerns--to give us a notion of the author's quality
and of his or her _faire_. It should not be very difficult for anybody,
unless the foregoing analysis has been very clumsily done, to discern
considerable method in Madeleine's mild madness, and, what is more, not
a little originality. The method has, no doubt, as it was certain to
have in the circumstances, a regular irregularity, which is, or would be
in anybody but a novice, a little clumsy: and the originality may want
some precedent study to discover it. But both are there. The skeleton of
this vast work may perhaps be fairly constructed from what has already
been dissected of the body; and the method of clothing the skeleton
reveals itself without much difficulty. You have the central idea in the
loves of Cyrus and Mandane, which are to be made as true as possible,
but also running as roughly as may be. Moreover, whether they run rough
or smooth, you are to keep them in suspense as long as you possibly can.
The means of doing this are laboriously varied and multiplied. The
clumsiest of them--the perpetual intercalation or interpolation of
"side-shows" in the way of _Histoires_--annoys modern readers
particula