ed her very disagreeable daughter to
her very agreeable son; and more than any one else the inventor, or at
least perfecter, of the hectoring heroic style which we associate with
Dryden's plays. Indeed the Artaban of _Cleopatre_ is much more the
original of Almanzor and Drawcansir than anything in Madeleine, though
_Almahide_ was actually the source of Dryden's story, or heroine.
Besides this, though La Calprenede has rather less of the
intricate-impeach character than his she-rival, there is much more
bustle and "go" in him; he has, though his books are proper enough, much
less fear of dealing with "the kissing and that sort of thing," as it
was once discreetly put; and he is sometimes positively exciting in his
imbroglios, as when the beautiful Amazon princess Menalippe fights a
real duel on horseback with Prince, afterwards King, Alcamenes of
Scythia, under the impression that he has killed a certain Alcimedon,
who was her lover; discovers, after no small time and considerable
damage, that he is Alcimedon himself; and, like a sensible and agreeable
girl, embraces him heartily in the sight of men and angels.

[Sidenote: _Cleopatre_--the Cypassis and Arminius episode.]

This is among the numerous _divertissements_ of _Cleopatre_ (not the
earliest, but perhaps the chief of its author's novels[200]), the
heroine of which is not

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands

herself, but her daughter by Antony, who historically married Juba of
Mauretania, and is here courted by him under the name of Coriolanus,
while he is in disgrace with Augustus. La Calprenede (all these
romancers are merciful men and women to the historically unlucky, and
cruel only, or for the most part, to fictitious characters) saves her
half-brother Caesarion from his actual death, and, after the due
thousands of pages, unites him happily to Queen Candace of AEthiopia.
There is the same odd muddle (which made a not unintelligent Jesuit
label this class of books "historia _mixta_") with many other persons.
Perhaps the most curious of all episodes of this kind is the use made of
Ovid's "fusca Cypassis." If Mrs. Grundy could be supposed ever to have
read the _Amores_, the mere sight of the name of that dusky handmaid--to
whom Ovid behaved, by his own confession, in such an exceedingly shabby
as well as improper fashion--would make her shudder, if not shriek. But
La Calprenede's Cypassis, though actually a maid of honour to Julia, as