en of. It, that is to say the first part of it, was
translated into English by no less a person than William Browne, just at
the close of his life; and, perhaps for this reason, the British Museum
does not contain the French original; but those who cannot attain to
this lose the less, because the substance of the book is the principal
thing. This makes it one of the liveliest of the whole group, and one
does not feel it an idle vaunt when at the end the author observes
cheerfully of his at last united hero and heroine, "Since we have so
long enjoyed _them_, let us have so much justice as to think it fitting
now that _they_ should likewise enjoy each other." Yet the unresting and
unerring spirit of criticism may observe that even here the verbosity
which is the fault of the whole division makes its appearance. For why
not suppress most of the words after "them," and merely add, "let them
now enjoy each other"?

The book is, in fact, rather like a modernised "number" of the _Amadis_
series,[207], and the author has had the will and the audacity to
exchange the stale old Greeks and Romans--not the real Greeks, who can
never be stale, or the real Romans, who can stand a good deal of
staling, but the conventional classics--as well as the impossible
shadows of the Dark Ages, for Lepanto and the Western Main, Turks and
Spaniards and Mexicans, and a Prince of Scotland. Here also we find in
the hero something more like Almanzor than Artamene, if not than
Artaban: and of the whole one may say vulgarly that "the pot boils."
Now, with the usual Heroic it too often fails to attain even a gentle
simmer.

[Sidenote: Camus--_Palombe_, etc.]

Jean Camus [de Pontcarre?],[208] Bishop of Belley and of Arras--friend
of St. Francis of Sales and of Honore d'Urfe; author of many "Christian"
romances to counteract the bad effects of the others, of a famous
_Esprit de Saint Francois de S._, and of a very great number of
miscellaneous works,--seems to have been a rather remarkable person,
and, with less power and more eccentricity, a sort of Fenelon of the
first half of the century. His best known novel, _Palombe_, stands
practically alone in its group as having had the honour of a modern
reprint in the middle of the nineteenth century.[209] The title-giver is
a female, not a male, human dove, and of course a married one. Camus was
a divine of views which one does not call "liberal," because the word
has been almost more sullied by ignoble use