n front of your
beginning--to have made sure of it! But this charity will hardly extend
to such a thing as the repetition of Cyrus's foolish promise to fight
Philidaspes before he marries Mandane in the case of Aronce, Horatius,
and Clelie. The way in which Aronce is kept an "unknown" for some time,
and that in which his actual relationship to Porsena is treated, have
also too much of the _replica_; and though a lively skirmish with a
pirate which occurs is not quite so absurd as that ready-made series of
encores which was described above (pp. 181-2), there is something a
little like it in the way in which the hero and his men alternately
reduce the enemy to extremity, and run over the deck to rescue friends
who are in the pirates' power from being butchered or flung overboard.
"Sapho's" invention, though by no means sterile, was evidently somewhat
indiscriminate, and she would seem to have thought it rather a pity that
a good thing should be used only once.

Nevertheless the compliment given above may be repeated. If I were sent
to twelve months' imprisonment of a mild description, and allowed to
choose a library, I should include in it, from the heroic or semi-heroic
division, _Clelie_, La Calprenede's two chief books, Gomberville's
_Polexandre_, and Gombauld's _Endimion_ (this partly for the pictures),
with, as a matter of course, the _Astree_, and a choice of one other. By
reading slowly and "savouring" the process, I should imagine that, with
one's memories of other things, they might be able to last for a year.
And it would be one of the best kind of fallows for the brain. In
anticipation, let us see something of these others now.

[Sidenote: La Calprenede: his comparative cheerfulness.]

It has seemed, as was said, desirable to follow the common opinion of
literary history in giving Madeleine de Scudery the place of honour, and
the largest as well as the foremost share in our account of this
curious stage in the history of the novel. But if, to alter slightly a
famous quotation, I might "give a short hint to an impartial _reader_,"
I should very strongly advise him to begin his studies (or at least his
enjoyment) thereof, not with "Sapho," but with Gauthier de Costes,
Seigneur de la Calprenede, himself according to Tallemant almost the
proverbial "Gascon _et demi_"; a tragic dramatist, as well as a romantic
writer; a favourite of Mme. de Sevigne, who seldom went wrong in her
preferences, except when she preferr