s, including a regular siege of the capital,
Marcilly.

[148] The constant confusion, in these quasi-classical romances, of
masculine and feminine names is a rather curious feature. But the late
Sir W. Gilbert played some tricks of the kind in _Pygmalion and
Galatea_, and I remember an English novelist, with more pretensions to
scholarship than Gilbert, making the particularly unfortunate blunder of
attributing to Longus a book called "_Doris_ and Chloe."

[149] It is fair to say that Urfe has been praised for these historical
excursions or incursions of his.

[150] Its difficulty of access in the French has been noted. The English
translation may be less rare, but it is not a good one even of its kind.
And, in face of the most false and misleading statements, never more
frequent than at the present moment, about the efficacy of translations,
it may be well to insist on the truth. For science, history philosophy
(though in a descending ratio through these three) translations may
serve. The man who knows Greek or Latin or any other _literature_ only
through them knows next to nothing of that literature as such, and in
its literary quality. The version may be, as in the leading case of
FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam, literature itself of the highest class; but
it is quite other literature than the original, and is, in fact, a new
original itself. It may, while keeping closer, be as good as Catullus on
Sappho or as bad as Mr. Gladstone on Toplady in form; but the form, even
if copied, is always again other.

[151] Some reasons will be given later for taking this first--not the
least being the juxtaposition with the _Astree_. The actual order of the
chief "Heroic" authors and books is as follows: Gomberville, _La
Caritee_, 1622; _Polexandre_, 1632; _Citheree_, 1640-42. _La
Calprenede_, _Cassandre_, 1642; _Cleopatre_, 1648; _Faramond_, 1662.
Mlle. de Scudery, _Ibrahim_, 1641; _Artamene_, 1649; _Clelie_, 1656;
_Almahide_, 1660.

[152] Cousin relieved his work on "The True, the Good, and the
Beautiful" not only with elaborate disquisitions on the ladies of the
Fronde who, though certainly beautiful were not very very good, but with
a long exposition of French society as revealed in the _Grand Cyrus_
itself.

[153] Scudery bore, and evidently rejoiced in, this sounding title,
which can never have had a titular to whom it was more appropriate. The
place seems to have been an actual fortress, though a small one, near
Marseille