unusual importance; for it deals with two persons of great
distinction, and already introduced in the story, Queen Panthea and her
husband Abradates. It is also one of the longer batch, running to some
four hundred pages; and a notable part in it and in the future main
story is played by one Doralise--a pretty name, which Dryden, making it
prettier still by substituting a _c_ for the _s_, borrowed for his most
original and (with that earlier Florimel of _The Maiden Queen_, who is
said to have been studied directly off Nell Gwyn) perhaps his most
attractive heroine, the Doralice of _Marriage a la Mode_. Another
important character, the villain of the sub-plot, is one Mexaris.[175]
At the end of the first instalment we leave Cyrus preparing elaborate
machines of war to crush the Lydians.

Early in Book II. we hear of a mysterious warrior on the enemy side whom
nobody knows, who calls himself Telephanes, and whom Cyrus is very
anxious to meet in battle, but for the time cannot. He is also
frustrated in his challenge of the King of Pontus to fight for
Mandane--a challenge of which Croesus will not hear. At last Telephanes
turns out to be no less a person than Mazare, Prince of Sacia, whom we
know already as one of the ever-multiplying lovers and abductors of the
heroine; while, after a good deal of confused fighting, another inset
_Histoire_ of him closes the tenth volume (V. ii.). It is, however, only
two hundred pages long--a mere parenthesis compared to others, and it
leads up to his giving Cyrus a letter from Mandane--an act of generosity
which Philidaspes, otherwise King of Assyria, frankly confesses that he,
as another Rival, could never have done. After yet another _Histoire_
(now a "four-some") of Belesis, Hermogenes, Cleodare, and Leonice,
Abradates changes sides, carrying us on to an "intricate impeach" of
old and new characters, especially Araminta and Spithridates, and to the
death in battle of the generous King of Susiana himself, and the grief
of Panthea. There is, at the close of this volume, a rather interesting
_Privilege du Roi_, signed by Conrart ("_le silencieux Conrart_"),
sealed with "the great seal of yellow wax in a simple tail" (one ribbon
or piece of ferret only?), and bestowing its rights "nonobstant Clameur
de Haro, Charte Normande, et autres lettres contraires."

The first volume of the Sixth Part (the eleventh of the whole and the
first of what, as so many words of the kind are required, we ma