such a history as this, or in
any history of French literature. For it is a notable instance of the
coming and, indeed, actual invasion, by fiction, of regions which had
hitherto been the province of more serious kinds; and it is a link, not
unimportant if not particularly meritorious, in the chain of the
eccentric novel. Lucian of course had started it long ago, and Rabelais
had in a fashion taken it up but a century before. But the fashioners of
new commonwealths and societies, More, Campanella, Bacon, had been as a
rule very serious. Cyrano, in his way, was serious too; but the way
itself was not one of those for which the ticket has been usually
reserved.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mme. de la Fayette and _La Princesse de Cleves_.]

But the last of this batch is the most important and the best of the
whole. This is _La Princesse de Cleves_, by Marie Madeleine Pioche de
Lavergne, Comtesse de la Fayette, friend of Madame de Sevigne and of
Huet; more or less Platonic, and at any rate last, love of La
Rochefoucauld; a woman evidently of great charm as well as of great
ability, and apparently of what was then irreproachable character. She
wrote, besides other matter of no small literary value and historical
interest, four novels, the minor ones, which require no special notice
here, being _Zaide_, _La Comtesse de Tende_, and (her opening piece)
_Madame de Montpensier_. Their motives and methods are much the same as
those of the _Princesse de Cleves_, but this is much more effectively
treated. In fact, it is one of the very few highly praised books, at the
beginnings of departments of literature, which ought not to disappoint
candid and not merely studious readers.

It begins with a sketch, very cleverly done, of the Court of Henri II.,
with the various prominent personages there--the King and the Queen,
Diane de Poitiers, Queen Mary of Scotland ("La Reine Dauphine"),
"Madame, soeur du Roi" (the second Margaret of Valois--not so clever
as her aunt and niece namesakes, and not so beautiful as the latter,
but, like both of them, a patroness of men of letters, especially
Ronsard, and apparently a very amiable person, though rude things were
said of her marriage, rather late in life, to the Duke of Savoy), with
many others of, or just below, royal blood. Of these latter there are
Mademoiselle de Chartres, the Prince de Cleves, whom she marries, and
the Duc de Nemours, who completes the usual "tri