cidents that constitute the plots of those tragedies which appeared in the days of Charles II. and William, and to them may be attributed the prevalence of that false taste, that pomp and unnatural elevation, which characterize the dramatic productions of Dryden and Lee. It appears very unaccountable that such romances as those of Calprènede and Scudéry, should in foreign countries have been the object of any species of literary imitation; but in their native soil the popularity of heroic romances, particularly those of Mdlle. de Scudéry, may, I think, be in some measure attributed to the number of living characters that were delineated. All were anxious to know what was said of their acquaintance, and to trace out a real or imaginary resemblance. The court ladies were delighted to behold flattering portraits of their beauty in Ibrahim or Clelia, and perhaps fondly hoped that their charms were consecrated to posterity. Hence the fame of the romance was transitory as the beauty, or, at least, as the existence, of the individuals whose persons or characters it pourtrayed. Mankind are little interested in the eyes or eye-brows of antiquated coquettes, and the works in which these were celebrated, soon appeared in that intrinsic dulness which had received animation from a tenporary and adventitious interest. This charm being lost, nothing remained but a love so spiritualized, that it bore no resemblance to a real passion, and manners which referred to an ideal world of the creation of the author. The sentiments, too, of chivalry, which had revived under a more elegant and gallant form during the youth of Louis XIV. had worn out, and their decline was fatal to the works which they had called forth and fostered. The fair sex were now no longer the objects of deification, and those days had disappeared, in which the duke of Rochefoucault could thus proclaim the influence of the charms of his mistress : Pour meriter son cœur pour plaire a ses beaux yeux, 1 The lines are Du Ryer's. La Rochefoucault wrote them beneath the portrait of Madame de Longueville. See Œuvres de la Comtesse de La Fayette, etc. Paris, 1804, vol. i., p. vii.-LIEB. Besides, the size and prolixity of these compositions had a tendency to make them be neglected, when literary works began to abound of a shorter and more lively nature, and when the ladies had no longer leisure to devote the attention of a year and a half to the history of a fair Ethiopian.1 1 Mdlle. Scudéry was also the author of a couple of stories-Célinte, Paris, 1661, pp. 390; and Célanire, Paris, 1669, 1671, and 1698, pp. 415. The novels of Scudéry (remarks Koerting, p. 405) like those of Camus, Gomberville, and La Calprenède, manifest no literary progress or development in their authors, and this phenomenon is a significant characteristic of the whole idealistic school, and an indication that it lacked in general the springs of fresh pulsating life; that its writers composed without drawing from the fund of their own intimate experiences, feelings, and observation-without projecting into their work their own individuality. Their romances are for the most part like the Greek tales, artificial products of the intellect, elaborated with wonderful niceties of style and composition rather than the genial production of imaginative conception. The first of Scudéry's books is at least as good æsthetically as any of her later works. This stagnation is in noteworthy contrast to the evolution of the modern English novel by Richardson and Fielding, for instance Clarissa Harlowe could no more have been written before Pamela, than Joseph Andrews before Tom Jones.KOERTING, p. 405. Among the numerous minor authors of the school of idealistic romance are several who may be briefly commemorated before we quit the subject. François Sieur de Molière et d'Essartines (born about 1600, killed 1623) published in 1620 a collection of stories under the title of "La Semaine Amoureuse," and subsequently one volume (books i.-iv.) of the half-pastoral, half-heroic romance La Polixène, or Les Advantures de Polixène (Paris, 1623), dedicated to the Princess Conti. The book was very popular, and a continuation was published in 1632, and another, Vraye Suite des Aduantures de la Polixène . . . suivie et conclue sur ses Memoires, in 1634. Sorel, who criticizes the work very unfavourably in his Berger Extravagant (1. xiii.), describes it as nothing more or less than an expansion of the Daphnis episode given at the beginning of vol. iii. of the Astrée. Sorel, however, believed he would have achieved better things if he had not, like Audiguier, prematurely met his death at the hand of one he believed his friend. This Audiguier was the author of Lisandre and Caliste, dramatized by Du Ryer in 1632, and Les Amours d'Aristandre et de Cléonice, noticed in Sorel's "Remarques," p. 495, etc. (See Koerting, pp. 381-384.) François du Soucy, Sieur de Gerzan (born towards end of sixteenth century) first and most important romance, Histoire Afriquaine de Cléomede et de Sophonisbe (Paris, pt. I., 1627, pts. II., III., 1628). De Gerzan purposed to write romances, the scenes of which were to be the other three continents; the heroes he deals with are none other than Scipio, Alexander, Charles V., Henry IV., and Louis XIII., and his narrative is not In addition to all this, the heroic romance, when verging to its decline, was attacked by genius almost equal to that by which the tales of chivalry had formerly been laughed out of countenance. Molière's "Précieuses Ridicules" appeared in 1659, when the heroic romance was too much in vogue to be easily brought into discredit; but the satire of Boileau, entitled Les Héros de Roman, Dialogue, though written about the same period, was not published till after the death of Mdlle. Scudéry, in 1701, by which time the reputation of her romances was on the wane, and was probably still farther shaken by the ridicule of Boileau. That poet informs us, that in his youth, when these works were in fashion, he had perused them with much admiration, and regarded them as the master-pieces of the language. As his taste, however, improved, he became alive to their absurdities, and composed the dialogue abovementioned, which he declares to be "Le moins frivole ouvrage qui soit encore sorti de ma plume." In this work the scene is laid in the dominions of Pluto, who complains to Minos, that the shades which descend from earth no longer possess common sense, that they all talk galanterie, to offend " a chaste and honorable ear." The chief materials of the romance are drawn from the Amadis and from the Greek erotic romances. The beginning is imitated from Heliodorus, and other features are borrowed from Iamblichus and Xenophon, diluted with a liberal amount of alchymical trash, vital elixirs, potable gold, concoctions for making the fair sex fair for ever, etc., much ridiculed by Sorel in his Polyandre, and by Cyrano in Voyage à la Lune. A German translation of the work by "der Färtige,” i.e., Philipp Zesen (1689)—Die Afrikanische Sophonisbe, Frankfurt, sold by Johann David Zunnern, 1674-was dedicated to Queen Christina of Sweden. An analysis of this version is given by Cholevius, p. 29. (See supra, vol. i., p. 20.) It is unnecssary to do more than mention here De Gerzan's second romance, "Histoire Asiatique, de Cerinthe, de Calianthe, et d'Arténice (Paris, 1634). See Koerting, pp. 384-87. In 1633-1635, De la Serre published Clytie, ou le Romant de la Cour, dedicated to the Princess Conti, which attained considerable popularity, "notwithstanding the employment of Greek and Roman names for the characters (a practice from which even Molière in his ripest productions could not emancipate himself), Clytie is a love story of contemporary manners, with a tragic denoûment. The author writes almost exclusively for ladies, and is addicted to inserting moral and religious reflexions. He had indeed, he says in his preface to Pt. II., previously written only 'œuvres de piété.” ” -KOERTING, p. 388. وو and upbraid Proserpine with having l'air Bourgeois. During this conversation, Rhadamanthus announces that all hell is in commotion; that he had met Prometheus at large, with his vulture on his hand, that Tantalus was intoxicated, and that Ixion had just ravished one of the furies. Cyrus, Alexander, and other heroes, are summoned from the Elysian fields to quell the insurrection. They appear accompanied by their mistresses, and the satire on the heroic romances is contained in the extravagance and affectation of their sentiments and language.1 It seems unnecessary to search farther into the reasons of the decay of heroic romance, of which the temporary favour may to a modern reader appear more unaccountable than the decline. Similar causes contributed to render pastoral romance unpopular; and, except in the works of Florian, there have been no recent imitations, of any note, of that species of composition. Spiritual fictions, of which the object was to inculcate a taste for the ascetic virtues, came to be regarded as despicable, in consequence of the increasing lights of reason. Political romances had never formed an extensive class of fiction, nor, in modern times, have there been many imitations of such works as the Utopia or Argenis. 1 The fiction of Boileau seems not less absurd than the works which he ridicules; but the classics were now coming into vogue, and a satire, composed after the manner of Lucian, was, of course, regarded as elegant and witty. CHAPTER XIII. FRENCH NOVELS.-FAIRY TALES.-VOYAGES IMAGINAIRES. THE 'HE human mind seems to require some species of fiction for its amusement and relaxation, and we have seen in the above survey, that one species of fable has scarcely disappeared, when it has been succeeded by another. The decline of tales of chivalry produced those various classes of romantic composition with which we have been recently engaged, and the concurrent causes which hastened their decay, were indirectly the origin of those new sorts of fiction, which became prevalent in France towards the close of the seventeenth, and during the first half of the eighteenth century. These, I think, may be reduced into four classes. 1. That which is founded on a basis of historical events, as the Exiles of the court of Augustus, and those numerous works concerning the intrigues of the French monarchs, from the first of the Merovingian race to the last of the Bourbons. 2. Novels, such as Marianne, Gil Blas, Heloise, etc., of which the incidents, whether serious or comical, are altogether imaginary. 3. A species of romance of a moral or satirical tendency, where foreigners are feigned to travel through the different states of Europe, and describe the manners of its inhabitants. This class comprehends such works as the Turkish Spy, and is partly fictitious and partly real. The journey and characters are the offspring of fancy, but a correct delineation of manners and customs is at least intended. 4. Fairy Tales, to which may be associated the French imitations of the Oriental Tales, and the Voyages Imaginaires. 1. The object of historical novels is to give to moral precept, the powerful stamp of experience and example. |