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piring in the midst of revelry and amusement: the gates of its capital were assaulted by a foreign enemy-the energy of the people was employed, and their valour wasted in internal war, but nothing could interrupt the course of festivity. Every day brought fresh disaster without, and new bloodshed within; but every vacant hour was devoted to carousals, and to idle and romantic gallantry. In the work of Hita there are also introduced a number of short poetical romances. Each festival and combat furnishes the author with a subject for these compositions; some of which are probably the invention of Hita, while others apparently have been founded on Arabian traditions.

This romance, or history, was first printed at Alcala in 1604, and soon became extremely popular there was no literal translation till the late one by M. Sané, but a close imitation, published early in the 17th century, is the origin of all those French romances which turn on the gallantries and adventures of the Moors of Granada, as the Almahide of Scuderi, &c.

But though the works above-mentioned may have supplied incidents to the writers of heroic romance, many of the pictures in that, as in every other species of fiction, have been copied from

the manners of the age. That devotion, in particular, to the fair sex, which exalted them into objects rather of adoration than of love, and which forms the chief characteristic of the heroic romance, was a consequence of the peculiar state of feeling and sentiment in the age of Louis XIV. Never was prince so much an object of imitation to his people as that monarch; and hence his courtiers affected the same species of gallantry, practised by a sovereign, who paid to beauty a constant and respectful homage, and whose love, if less chivalrous than that of Francis I., or less tender than that of Henry IV., had more appearance, at least, of veneration and idolatry. "C'est avec eclat et somptuosité," says Segur (Les Femmes, vol. ii. p. 156,) "qu' il (Louis XIV.) offre des hommages a la beauté. Forcé d'aimer il fait une Divinité de l'objet qu' il exhausse, pour ne pas se rabaisser a ses propres yeux, et eleve la Femme devant laquelle il se prosterne. Nous l' imitons tous a la ville et a la cour. Aucun roy n'a donné le ton comme celui-ci, n' a, comme lui influé sur la conduite, et presqué sur les pensées. Notre galanterie a pris la teinte de respect pour le Sexe dont le monarque nous offre l' exemple." We find, accordingly, that whether classical or

Moorish heroes be introduced, the general tone of the heroic romance is nearly the same. But, besides that exalted species of love which no severity could chill, and no distance diminish, for which no sacrifice was too great, and no enterprise too perilous, we always meet with the same interminable length-the same minute descriptionsthe same tedious dialogue-the same interruptions to the principal narrative by stories interwoven with it, which perplex and distract the attention. The introduction of long and constantly recurring episodes, a wretched fecundity, which is a proof of real barrenness, is the great fault of the heroie romance." Eh mon Dieu," said a celebrated philosopher, "si vous avez de quoi faire deux Romans, faites en deux, et ne les melez pas pour les gater l' un l'autre."

I shall now, according to my plan, present the reader with a short account of some of the most celebrated of the Romans de longue Haleine, as they have been termed, which may be vulgarly translated long-winded romances.

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Nearly all of these were written by three authors, Gomberville, Calprenede, and Madame Scuderi. The

! See Appendix, No. 5.

A.

POLEXANDRE

of Gomberville, which was first published in 1632, and enjoyed a high reputation in the age of Cardinal Richelieu, was the earliest of the heroic romances, and seems to have been the model of the works of Calprenede and Scuderi. This ponderous work may be regarded as a sort of intermediate production between these later compositions and the ancient fables of chivalry. It has, indeed, a closer affinity to the heroic romance; but many of the exploits of the hero are as extravagant as those of a paladin or knight of the Round Table. In the episode of the Peruvian Inca, there is a formidable giant, and in another part of the work we are introduced to a dragon, which lays waste a whole kingdom. An infinite number of tournaments are also interspersed through the volumes. In some of its features Polexandre bears a striking resemblance to the Greek romance; the disposition of the incidents is similar; as in the Greek romance, the events, in a great measure, arise from adventures with pirates; and the scene is chiefly laid at sea or in small islands, or places on the sea coast.

Polexandre, the hero of this work, was king of the Canary Islands, and reigned over them soon after the discovery of America. In his early youth he had the good fortune to be captured by a piratical vessel fitted out from Britany, and being carried to France, he there received an education superior to what could have been reasonably expected in the seminaries of the Canary Islands.

After an absence of some years, Polexandre set out on his return to his own country. In the course of his voyage he approached the coast of Africa, where he learned that the hardy Abdelmelec, son of the powerful Muley Nazar, emperor of Morocco, had proclaimed a splendid tournament, with a view of procuring a general acknowledgment from all the heroes and sovereigns on earth, that Alcidiana, queen of the Inaccessible Island, was the most beautiful woman in the universe. The African prince, it is true, had never beheld Alcidiana, but he had fallen in love with this incomparable beauty by seeing her portrait. This notion of princes, for it is a folly peculiar to them, becoming enamoured of a portrait, the original of which is at the end of the world, or perhaps does not exist, seems to be of oriental origin. Thus, in the Mille et un jours, there is the

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