ed
"Carte de Tendre" ("Map of the Country of Tenderness"--not of
"Tenderness in the _aib_stract," as _du_ Tendre would be). The
discussion of what constitutes Tenderness comes quite early; there is
later a notable discourse on the respective attractions of Love and of
Glory or Ambition; a sort of Code and Anti-code of lovers[199] occurs as
"The Love-Morality of Tiramus," with a set of (not always) contrary
criticism thereof; and a debate of an almost mediaeval kind as to the
respective merits of merry and melancholy mistresses. Moreover, there is
a rather remarkable "Vision of Poets"--past, present, and to come--which
should be taken in connection with the appearance, as an actual
personage, of Anacreon. All this, taken in conjunction with the
"business" of the story, helps to give it the superior liveliness with
which it has, rightly or wrongly, been credited here.

[Sidenote: Rough outline of it.]

Of that business itself a complete account cannot, for reasons given
more than once, be attempted; though anybody who wants such a thing,
without going to the book itself, may find it in the places also above
mentioned. There is no such trick played upon the educated but not
wideawake person as (_v. inf._) in La Calprenede's chief books. Clelie
is the real Clelia, if the modern historical student will pass "real"
without sniffing, or even if he will not. Her lover, "Aronce," although
he probably may be a little disguised from the English reader by his
spelling, is so palpably the again real "Aruns," son of Porsena, that
one rather wonders how his identity can have been so long concealed in
French (where the pronunciations would be practically the same) from the
readers of the story. The book begins with a proceeding not quite so
like that of the _Cyrus_ as some to be mentioned later, but still pretty
close to the elder overture. "The illustrious Aronce and the adorable
Clelia" are actually going to be married, when there is a fearful storm,
an earthquake, and a disappearance of the heroine. She has, of course,
been carried off; one might say, without flippancy, of any heroine of
Madeleine de Scudery's not only that she was, as in a famous and already
quoted saying, "very liable to be carried off," but that it was not in
nature that she should not be carried off as early and as often as
possible. And her abductor is no less a person than Horatius--our own
Horatius Cocles--the one who kept the bridge in some of the best know