evil habit, the
origin of which is hard to trace, and which is not quite extinct, still
puts them off. Meliante has got to be rewarded with the hand of Arpasie,
which is accomplished after he has been discovered, in a manner not
entirely romantic, to be the son of the King of Hyrcania, and both his
marriage and that of Cyrus are interfered with by a supposed Law of the
Medes and of certain minor Asiatic peoples, that a Prince or Princess
may not marry a foreigner. Fresh discoveries get rid of this in
Meliante's case, while in that of Cyrus a convenient Oracle declares
that he who has conquered every kingdom in Asia cannot be considered a
foreigner in any. So at last the long chart is finished, Doralise
retaining her character as lightener of this rather solid entertainment
by declaring that she cannot say she loves her suitor, Prince Myrsilus,
because every phrase that occurs to her is either too strong or too
weak. So we bless her, and stop the water channels--or, as the Limousin
student might have more excellently said, "claud the rives."

* * * * *

[Sidenote: General remarks on the book and its class.]

If the reader, having tolerated this long analysis (it is perhaps most
probable that he will _not_ have done so), asks what game one pretends
to have shown for so much expenditure or candle, it is, no doubt, not
easy to answer him without a fresh, though a lesser, trial of his
patience. You cannot "ticket" the _Grand Cyrus_, or any of its fellows,
or the whole class, with any complimentary short description, such as a
certain school of ancient criticism loved, and corresponding to our
modern advertisement labels--"grateful and comforting," "necessary in
every travelling bag," and the like. They are, indeed, as I have
endeavoured to indicate indirectly as well as directly, by no means so
destitute of interest of the ordinary kind as it has generally been the
fashion to think them. From the charge of inordinate length it is, of
course, impossible to clear the whole class, and _Artamene_ more
particularly.[188] Length "no more than reason" is in some judgments a
positive advantage in a novel; but this _is_ more than reason. I believe
(the _moi_, I trust, is not utterly _haissable_ when it is necessary)
that I myself am a rather unusually rapid, without being a careless or
unfaithful, reader; and that I have by nature a very little of that
faculty with which some much greater persons hav