rly, and has, as a rule, since been itself beautifully and
beneficently lessened, in some cases altogether discarded, or
changed--in emancipation from the influence of the "Unities"--to the
form of second plots, not ostentatiously severed from the main one. But,
as has been pointed out, a great deal of trouble is at any rate taken to
knit them to the main plot itself, if not actually and invariably to
incorporate them therewith; and the means of this are again not
altogether uncraftsmanlike. Sometimes, as in the case of Spithridates,
the person, or one of the persons, is introduced first in the main
history; his own particular concerns are dealt with later, and, for good
or for evil, he returns to the central scheme. Sometimes, as in that of
Amestris, you have the _Histoire_ before the personage enters the main
story. Then there is the other device of varying direct narrative, as to
this main story itself, with _Recit_; and always you have a careful
peppering in of new characters, by _histoire_, by _recit_, or by the
main story, to create fresh interests. Again, there is the contrast of
"business," as we have called it--fighting and politics--with
love-making and miscellaneous fine talk. And, lastly, there are--what,
if they were not whelmed in such an ocean of other things, would attract
more notice--the not unfrequent individual phrases and situations which
have interest in themselves. It must surely be obvious that in these
things are great possibilities for future use, even if the actual
inventor has not made the most of them.

Their originality may perhaps deserve a little more comment.[173] The
mixture of secondary plots might, by a person more given to theorise
than the present historian--who pays his readers the compliment of
supposing that that excessively easy and therefore somewhat negligible
business can be done by themselves if they wish--be traced to an
accidental feature of the later mediaeval romances. In these the
congeries of earlier texts, which the compiler had not the wits, or at
least the desire, to systematise, provided something like it; but
required the genius of a Spenser, or the considerable craft of a
Scudery, to throw it into shape and add the connecting links. Many of
the other things are to be found in the Scudery romance practically for
the first time. And the suffusion of the whole with a new tone and
colour of at least courtly manners is something more to be counted, as
well as the cons