cs of its
predecessors, had not the same claim to interest. It was unnatural and
artificial, rather than ideal. It imitated the martial character of the
tales of chivalry, but subordinated that character to love. It imitated
the devoted strain of adoration which ran through the fanciful phrases
of pastoral fiction; but that artificial passion which seemed
appropriate to ideal shepherds tuning their pipes under a perpetual
sunshine, became absurd when applied to Greek or Carthaginian soldiers.

Gomberville's "Polexander," complete-in six thousand pages, and
Calprenede's "Cassandra," "the fam'd romance," are now before me.
Greeks, Romans, Turks, Parthians, Scythians, Babylonians are mingled
together in a truly heroic structure of absurdity and anachronism.
Artaxerxes appears on one page, the queen of the Amazons on the next,
then the king of Lacedaemon, Alexander the Great, even a prince of
Mexico, and comparatively private persons beyond computation. This
crowd of names represent personages who imitate the deeds of chivalry,
and converse in the affected style of the French court, while their
ancient bosoms are distracted by a pure, all-absorbing, and never-dying
love as foreign to their nature as to that of the readers of heroic
romance. That this species of fiction should have met with any success,
is largely due to the circumstance, that under the disguise of Greek
warriors or Parthian princesses, there were really described
contemporary beauties and courtiers, who fondly believed that they had
attained, through the genius of Calprenede and Scuderi, an enviable
immortality. Unhappily for them, the characters of heroic romance have
found in that endless desert of phraseology at once their birthplace
and their tomb.

The works of Gomberville, Calprenede, and Scuderi, although little
adapted to the English taste, shared the favor which was extended to
every thing French, and were both translated and imitated. The
"Eliana," published in 1661; although a _bona-fide_ imitation, would
have served much better as a caricature. To the absurdity of incident
is added an absurdity of language which gives the book almost a comic
aspect. The beauty of flowers growing in the fields is disguised under
the statement that Flora "spreads her fragrant mantle on the
superficies of the earth, and bespangles the verdant grass with her
beauteous adornments." A lover "enters a grove free from the
frequentations of any besides the ranging beas