Chapter 16
She herself, therefore, is in no better plight, for Aryante and Andramite continue the flight, with her and her ladies, to a port on the Euxine, destroying, that they may not be followed, all the s.h.i.+pping save one craft they select, and making for the northern sh.o.r.e. Here after a time Aryante surrenders Mandane to his sister Thomyris, as he cannot well help doing, though he knows her violent temper and her tigress-like pa.s.sion for Cyrus, and though, also, he is on rather less than brotherly terms with her, and has a party among the Ma.s.sagetae who would gladly see him king. Meanwhile the King of Pontus and Phraortes, Araminta's carrier-off, fight and kill each other, and Araminta is given up--a loss for Mandane, for they have been companions in quasi-captivity, and there is no longer any subject of jealousy between them.
Having thus created a sort of "deadlock" situation such as she loves, and in the interval, while Cyrus is gathering forces to attack Thomyris, the author, as is her fas.h.i.+on likewise, surrenders herself to the joys of digression. We have a great deal of retrospective history of Aryante, and at last the famous Scythian philosopher, Anacharsis, is introduced, bringing with him the rest of the Seven Ancient Sages--with whom we could dispense, but are not allowed to do so. There is a Banquet of them all at the end of the first volume of the Part; and they overflow into the second, telling stories about Pisistratus and others, and discussing "love in the _aib_-stract," as frigidly as might be expected, on such points as, "Can you love the same person _twice_?"[184] But the last half of this IX. ii. is fortunately business again. There is much hard fighting with Thomyris, who on one occasion wishes to come to actual sword-play with Cyrus, and of whom we have the liveliest _ecphrasis_, or set description, in the whole romance.
[Sidenote: Thomyris on the warpath.]
As for Thomyris, she was so beautiful that day that there was no one in the world save Mandane, who could have disputed a heart with her[185] without the risk of losing.
This Princess was mounted on a fine black horse, trapped with gold; her dress was of cloth of gold, with green panels shot with a little carnation, and was of the shape of that of Pallas when she is represented as armed. The skirt was caught up on the hip with diamond clasps, and showed buskins of lions' muzzles made to correspond with the rest. Her head-dress was adorned with jewels, and a great number of feathers--carnation, white and green--hung over her beautiful fair tresses, while these, fluttering at the wind's will, mixed themselves with the plumes as she turned her head, and with their careless curls gave a marvellous l.u.s.tre to her beauty. Besides, as her sleeves were turned up, and caught on the shoulder, while she held the bridle of her horse with one hand and her sword with the other, she showed the loveliest arms in the world. Anger had flushed her complexion, so that she was more beautiful than usual; and the joy of once more seeing Cyrus, and seeing him also in an action respectful towards her,[186] effaced the marks of her immediately preceding fury so completely that he could see nothing but what was amiable and charming.
Thomyris, however, is as treacherous and cruel as she is beautiful; and part of her reason for seeming milder is that more of her troops may turn up and seize him.
On another occasion, owing to false generals.h.i.+p and disorderly advance on the part of the King of Hyrcania, Cyrus is in no small danger, but he "makes good," though at a disastrous expense, and with still greater dangers to meet. Thomyris's youthful son (for young and beautiful widow as she is, she has been an early married wife and a mother), Spargapises, just of military age, is captured in battle, suffers from his captors' ignorance what has been called "the indelible insult of bonds," and though almost instantly released as soon as he is known, stabs himself as disgraced. His body is sent to his mother with all sorts of honours, apologies, and regrets, but she, partly out of natural feeling, partly from her excited state, and partly because her mind is poisoned by false insinuations, sends, after transports of maternal and other rage, a message to Cyrus to the effect that if he does not put himself unreservedly in her hands, she will send him back Mandane dead, in the coffin of Spargapises. And so the last double-volume but one ends with a suitable "fourth act" curtain, as we may perhaps call it.
The last of all, X. i. and ii., exhibits, in a remarkable degree, the general defects and the particular merits and promise of this curious and (it cannot be too often repeated) epoch-making book. In the latter respect more especially it shows the "laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere" fas.h.i.+on in which the endless and, it may sometimes seem, aimless episodes, and digressions, and insets are worked into the general theme.
The defects will hardly startle, though they may still annoy, any one who has worked through the whole. But if another wickedly contented himself with a sketch of the story up to this point, and thought to make up by reading this Part of two volumes carefully, he would probably feel these defects very strongly indeed. We--we corrupt moderns--do expect a quickening up for the run-in. The usual beginning may seem to the non-experts to promise this, or at least to give hopes of it; for though there is a vast deal of talking--with Anacharsis as a go-between and Gelonide (a good confidante), endeavouring to soften Thomyris, one can but expect it--the situation itself is at once difficult and exciting.
The position of Aryante in particular is really novel-dramatic. As he is in love with Mandane, he of course does not want his sister to murder her. But inasmuch as he fears Cyrus's rivalry, he does not want him to be near Mandane for two obvious reasons: first, the actual proximity, and, secondly, the danger of Thomyris's temper getting the better (or worse) of her when both the lovers are in her power. So he sends private messengers to the Persian Prince, begging him _not_ to surrender. Cyrus, however, still thinks of exchanging himself for Mandane. At this point the neophyte's rage may be excited by being asked to plunge into the regular four-hundred page _Histoire_ of a certain Arpasie, who has two lovers--a Persian n.o.bleman Hidaspe, and a supposed a.s.syrian champion Meliante, who has come with reinforcements for Thomyris. And no doubt the proportion _is_ outrageous. But "wait and see," a phrase, it may be observed, which was not, as some seem to think, invented by Mr. Asquith.
At last the business does begin again, and a tremendous battle takes place for the possession of certain forests which lie between the two armies, and are at first held by the Scythians. Cyrus, however, avails himself of the services of an engineer who has a secret of combustibles, sets the forests ablaze, and forces his way through one or two open defiles, with little loss to himself and very heavy loss to the enemy, whose main body, however, is still unbroken. This affords a fine subject for one of the curious frontispieces known to all readers of seventeenth century books. A further wait for reinforcements takes place, and the author basely avails herself of it for a no doubt to herself very congenial (they actually called her in "precious" circles by the name of the great poetess) and enormous _Histoire_ of no less a person than Sappho, which fills the last 250 pages of the first (nineteenth) volume and about as much of the second (twentieth) or last. It has very little connection with the text, save that Sappho and Phaon (for the self-precipitation at Leucas is treated as a fable) retire to the country of the Sauromatae, to live there a happy, united, but unwed and purely Platonic (in the silly sense) existence. The foolish side of the _precieuse_ system comes out here, and the treatment confirms one's suspicion that the author's cla.s.sical knowledge was not very deep.
It does come to an end at last, however, and at last also we do get our "run-in," such as it is. The chief excuse for its existence is that it brings in a certain Mereonte, who, like his quasi-a.s.sonant Meliante, is to be useful later, and that the tame conclusion is excused by a Sapphic theory--certainly not to be found in her too fragmentary works--that "possession ruins love," a doctrine remembered and better put by Dryden in a speech of that very agreeable Doralice, whose name, though not originally connected with this part of it, he also, as has been noted, borrowed from the _Grand Cyrus_.
The actual finale begins (so to speak) ant.i.thetically with the last misfortune of the unlucky Spithridates. His ill-starred likeness to Cyrus, a.s.sisted by a suit of armour which Cyrus has given to him, make the enemy certain that he is Cyrus himself, and he is furiously a.s.saulted in an off-action, surrounded, and killed. His head is taken to Thomyris, who, herself deceived, executes upon it the famous "blood-bath" of history or legend.[187] Unfortunately it is not only in the Scythian army that the error spreads. Cyrus's troops are terrified and give way, so that he is overpowered by numbers and captured.
Fortunately he falls into the hands, not of Thomyris's own people or of her savage allies, the Geloni (it is a Gelonian captain who has acted as executioner in Spithridates's case), but of the supposed a.s.syrian leader Meliante, who is an independent person, admires Cyrus, and, further persuaded by his friend Mereonte (_v. sup._), resolves to let him escape. The difficulties, however, are great, and the really safest, though apparently the most dangerous way, seems to lie through the "Royal Tents" (the nomad capital of Thomyris) themselves. Meanwhile, Aryante is making interest against his sister; some of Cyrus's special friends, disguised as Ma.s.sagetae, are trying to discover and rescue him, and the Sauromatae are ready to desert the Scythian Queen. One of her transports of rage brings on the catastrophe. She orders the Gelonian bravo to poniard Mandane, and he actually stabs by mistake her maid-of-honour Hesionide--the least interesting one, luckily. Cyrus himself, after escaping notice for a time, is identified, attacked, and nearly slain, when the whole finishes in a general chaos of rebellion, arrival of friends, flight of Thomyris, and a hairbreadth escape of Cyrus himself, which unluckily partakes more of the possible-improbable than of the impossible-probable. The murders being done, the marriages would appear to have nothing to delay them; but an evil habit, the origin of which is hard to trace, and which is not quite extinct, still puts them off. Meliante has got to be rewarded with the hand of Arpasie, which is accomplished after he has been discovered, in a manner not entirely romantic, to be the son of the King of Hyrcania, and both his marriage and that of Cyrus are interfered with by a supposed Law of the Medes and of certain minor Asiatic peoples, that a Prince or Princess may not marry a foreigner. Fresh discoveries get rid of this in Meliante's case, while in that of Cyrus a convenient Oracle declares that he who has conquered every kingdom in Asia cannot be considered a foreigner in any. So at last the long chart is finished, Doralise retaining her character as lightener of this rather solid entertainment by declaring that she cannot say she loves her suitor, Prince Myrsilus, because every phrase that occurs to her is either too strong or too weak. So we bless her, and stop the water channels--or, as the Limousin student might have more excellently said, "claud the rives."
[Sidenote: General remarks on the book and its cla.s.s.]
If the reader, having tolerated this long a.n.a.lysis (it is perhaps most probable that he will _not_ have done so), asks what game one pretends to have shown for so much expenditure or candle, it is, no doubt, not easy to answer him without a fresh, though a lesser, trial of his patience. You cannot "ticket" the _Grand Cyrus_, or any of its fellows, or the whole cla.s.s, with any complimentary short description, such as a certain school of ancient criticism loved, and corresponding to our modern advertis.e.m.e.nt labels--"grateful and comforting," "necessary in every travelling bag," and the like. They are, indeed, as I have endeavoured to indicate indirectly as well as directly, by no means so dest.i.tute of interest of the ordinary kind as it has generally been the fas.h.i.+on to think them. From the charge of inordinate length it is, of course, impossible to clear the whole cla.s.s, and _Artamene_ more particularly.[188] Length "no more than reason" is in some judgments a positive advantage in a novel; but this _is_ more than reason. I believe (the _moi_, I trust, is not utterly _ha.s.sable_ when it is necessary) that I myself am a rather unusually rapid, without being a careless or unfaithful, reader; and that I have by nature a very little of that faculty with which some much greater persons have been credited, of being able to see at a glance whether anything on a page needs more than that glance or not, a faculty not likely to have been rendered abortive (though also not, I hope, rendered morbid) by infinite practice in reviewing. I do not say that, even now, I have read every word of this _Artamene_ as I should read every word of a sonnet of Shakespeare or a lyric of Sh.e.l.ley, even as I should read every word of a page of Thackeray. I have even skimmed many pages. But I have never found, even in a time of "retired leisure," that I could get through more than three, or at the very utmost four, of the twenty volumes or half-volumes without a day or two of rest or other work between. On the other hand, the book is not significantly piquant in detail to enable me to read attentively fifty or a hundred pages and then lay it down.[189] You do, in a lazy sort of way, want to know what happened--a tribute, no doubt, to Mlle. Madeleine--and so you have to go on ploughing the furrow. But several weeks' collar-work[190] is a great deal to spend on a single book of what is supposed to be pastime; and the
The fact is that not only was the time not yet, but something which was very specially of the time stood in the way of the other thing coming, despite the strong _nisus_ in its favour excited by various influences spoken of at the beginning of this chapter. This was the devotion--French at almost all times, and specially French at this--to the type. There are some "desperate willins" (as Sam Weller called the greengrocer at the swarry) who fail to see much more than types in Racine, though there is something more in Corneille, and a very great deal more in Moliere. In the romances which charmed at home the audiences and spectators of these three great men's work abroad, there is nothing, or next to nothing, else at all. The spirit of the _Epistle to the Pisos_, which acted on the Tragedians in verse, which acted on Boileau in criticism and poetry, was heavier on the novelist than on any of them. Take sufficient generosity, magnanimity, adoration, bravery, courtesy, and so forth, a.s.sociate the mixture with handsome flesh and royal blood, clothe the body thus formed with brilliant scarfs and s.h.i.+ning armour, put it on the best horse that was ever foaled, or kneel it at the feet of the most beautiful princess that ever existed, and you have Cyrus. For the princess herself take beauty, dignity, modesty, graciousness, etc., _quant. suff._, clothe _them_ in garments again magnificent, and submit the total to extreme inconveniences, some dangers, and an immense amount of involuntary travelling, but nothing "irreparable," and you have Mandane. For the rest, with the rare and slight exceptions mentioned, they flit like shadows ticketed with more or less beautiful names. Even Philidaspes, the most prominent male character after the hero by far, is, whether he be "in cog" as that personage or "out of cog" as Prince and King of a.s.syria, merely a petulant hero--a sort of cheap Achilles, with no idiosyncrasy at all. It is the fault, and in a way the very great fault, of all the kind: and there is nothing more to do with it but to admit it and look for something to set against it.
How great a thing the inception (to use a favourite word of the present day, though it be no favourite of the writer's) of the "psychological"
treatment of Love[191] was may, of course, be variously estimated. The good conceit of itself in which that day so innocently and amusingly indulges will have it, indeed, that the twentieth century has invented this among other varieties of the great and venerable art of extracting nourishment from eggs. "We have," somebody wrote not long ago--the exact words may not be given, but the sense is guaranteed--"perceived that Love is not merely a sentiment, an appet.i.te, or a pa.s.sion, but a great means of intellectual development." Of course Solomon did not know this, nor Sappho, nor Catullus, nor the fas.h.i.+oners of those "sentiments" of the Middle Ages which brought about the half-fabulous Courts of Love itself, nor Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor Shakespeare, nor Donne. It was reserved for--but one never names contemporaries except _honoris causa_.
It is--an "of course" of another kind--undeniable that the fas.h.i.+on of love-philosophy which supplies so large a part of the "yarn" of Madeleine de Scudery's endless rope or web is not _our_ fas.h.i.+on. But it is, in a way, a new variety of yarn as compared with anything used before in prose, even in the Greek romances[192] and the _Amadis_ group (nay, even in the _Astree_ itself). Among other things, it connects itself more with the actual society, manners, fas.h.i.+ons of its day than had ever been the case before, and this is the only interesting side of the "key" part of it. This was the way that they did to some extent talk and act then, though, to be sure, they also talked and acted very differently. It is all very well to say that the Hotel de Rambouillet is a sort of literary-historical fiction, and the _Precieuses Ridicules_ a delightful farce. The fiction was not wholly a fiction, and the farce was very much more than a farce--would have been, indeed, not a farce at all if it had not satirised a fact.
It is, however, in relation to the general history and development of the novel, and therefore in equally important relation to the present _History_, that the importance of the _Grand Cyrus_, or rather of the cla.s.s of which it was by far the most popular and noteworthy member, is most remarkable. Indeed this importance can hardly be exaggerated, and is much more likely to be--indeed has nearly always been--undervalued.
Even the jejune and partial a.n.a.lysis which has been given must have shown how many of the elements of the modern novel are here--sometimes, as it were, "in solution," sometimes actually crystallised. For any one who demands plot there is one--of such gigantic dimensions, indeed, that it is not easy to grasp it, but seen to be singularly well articulated and put together when it is once grasped. Huge as it is, it is not in the least formless, and, as has been several times pointed out, hardly the most (as it may at first appear) wanton and unpardonable episode, digression, or inset lacks its due connection with and "orientation"
towards the end. The contrast of this with the more or less formless chronicle-fas.h.i.+on, the "overthwart and endlong" conduct, of almost all the romances from the Carlovingian and Arthurian[193] to the _Amadis_ type, is of the most unmistakable kind.
Again, though character, as has been admitted, in any real live sense, is terribly wanting still; though description is a little general and wants more "streaks in the tulip"; and though conversation is formal and stilted, there is evident, perhaps even in the first, certainly in the second and third cases, an effort to treat them at any rate systematically, in accordance with some principles of art, and perhaps even not without some eye to the actual habits, manners, demands of the time--things which again were quite new in prose fiction, and, in fact, could hardly be said to be anywhere present in literature outside of drama.
To set against these not so very small merits in the present, and very considerable seeds of promise for the future, there are, of course, serious faults or defects--defaults which need, however, less insistence, because they are much more generally known, much more obvious, and have been already admitted. The charge of excessive length need hardly be dealt with at all. It has already been said that the most interesting point about it is the opportunity of discovering how it was, in part, a regular, and, in fact, almost the furthest possible, development of a characteristic which had been more or less observable throughout the progress of romance. But it may be added that the law of supply and demand helped; for people evidently were not in the least bored by bulk, and that the fancy for having a book "on hand" has only lately, if it has actually, died out.[194] Now such a "book on hand" as the _Grand Cyrus_ exists, as far as my knowledge goes, in no Western literature, unless you count collections of letters, which is not fair, or such memoirs as Saint-Simon's, which do not appeal to quite the same cla.s.s of readers.
A far more serious default or defect--not exactly blameworthy, _because_ the time was not yet, but certainly to be taken account of--is the almost utter want of character just referred to. From Cyrus and Mandane downwards the people have qualities; but qualities, though they are necessary to character, do not const.i.tute it. Very faint approaches may be discerned, by very benevolent criticism, in such a personage as Martesie with her shrewdness, her maid-of-honour familiarity with the ways and manners of courtly human beings, and that very pardonable, indeed agreeable, tendency, which has been noticed or imagined, to flirt in respectful fas.h.i.+on with Cyrus, while carrying on more regular business with Feraulas. But it is little more than a suggestion, and it has been frankly admitted that it is perhaps not even that, but an imagination merely. And the same observation may apply to her "second string," Doralise. No others of the women have any character at all, and we have already spoken of the men.
Now these things, in a book very widely read and immensely admired, could not, and did not, fail to have their effect. n.o.body--we shall see this more in detail in the next chapter--can fail to perceive that the _Princesse de Cleves_ itself is, from one point of view, only a _histoire_ of the _Grand Cyrus_, taken out of its preposterous _matrix_ of other matter, polished, charged with a great addition of internal fire of character and pa.s.sion, and left to take its chance alone and unenc.u.mbered. n.o.body, on the other hand, who knows Richardson and Mademoiselle de Scudery can doubt the influence of the French book--a century old as it was--on the "father of the English novel." Now any influence exerted on these two was, beyond controversy, an influence exerted on the whole future course of the kind, and it is as exercising such an influence that we have given to the _Great Cyrus_ so great a s.p.a.ce.
[Sidenote: The other Scudery romances--_Ibrahim_.]
After the exhaustive account given of _Artamene_, it is probably not necessary to apologise for dealing with the rest of Mlle. de Scudery's novel work, and with that of her comrades in the Heroic romance, at no very great length. _Ibrahim ou L'Ill.u.s.tre Ba.s.sa_ has sometimes been complimented as showing more endeavour, if not exactly at "local colour," at technical accuracy, than the rest. It is true that the French were, at this time, rather amusingly proud of being the only Western nation treated on something like equal terms by the Sublime Porte, and that the Scuderys (possibly Georges, whose work the Dedication to Mlle. de Rohan, daughter of the famous soldier, pretty certainly is) may have taken some pains to acquire knowledge. "Sandjak"
(or "Sanjiac"), not for a district but for its governor, is a little unlucky perhaps; but "Aderbion" is much nearer "Azerbaijan" than one generally expects in such cases from French writers of the seventeenth or even of other centuries. The Oriental character of the story, however, is but partial. The Ill.u.s.trious Pasha himself, though First Vizir and "victorious" general of Soliman the Second, is not a Turk at all, but a "Justinian" or Giustiniani of Genoa, whose beloved Isabelle is a Princess of Monaco, and who at the end, after necessary dangers,[195] retires with her to that Princ.i.p.ality, with a punctilious explanation from the author about the Grimaldis. The scene is partly there and at Genoa--the best Genoese families, including the Dorias, appearing--partly at Constantinople: and the business at the latter place is largely concerned with the intrigues, jealousies, and cruelties of Roxelane, who is drawn much more (one regrets to say) as history paints her than as the agreeable creature of Marmontel's subsequent fancy. The book is a mere c.o.c.kboat beside the mighty argosy of the _Cyrus_, running only to four volumes and some two thousand pages. But though smaller, it is much "stodgier." The _Histoires_ break out at once with the story of a certain Alibech--much more proper for the young person than that connected with the same name by Boccaccio,--and those who have acquired some knowledge of Mlle. Madeleine's ways will know what it means when, adopting the improper but defensible practice of "looking at the end," they find that not merely "Justinian" and Isabelle, but a Horace and a Hypolite, a Doria and a Sophronie, an Alphonse and a Leonide are all married on the same day, while a "French Marquis" and an Emilie vow inviolable but celibate constancy to each other; they will know, that is to say, that in the course of the book all these will have been duly "historiated." To encourage them, a single hint that Leonide sometimes plays a little of the parts of Martesie and Doralise in the _Cyrus_ may be thrown in.
There is, however, one sentence in the second volume of _Ibrahim_ which is worth quotation and brief comment, because it is a text for the whole management and system of these novels, and accounts for much in their successors almost to the present day. Emilie is telling the _Histoire_ of Isabelle, and excuses herself for not beginning at the beginning: "Puisque je sais que vous n'ignorez pas l'amour du Prince de Ma.s.seran, les violences et les artifices de Julie, la trahison de Feliciane, le genereux ressentiment de Doria [this is another Doria], la mort de cet amant infortune, et ensuite celle de Julie." In other words, all these things have been the subject of previous histories or of the main text.
And so it is always. Diderot admired, or at least excused, that procedure of Richardson's which involved the telling of the conversation of an average dinner-party in something like a small volume. But the "Heroic" method would have made it necessary to tell the previous experiences of the lady you took down to dinner, and the man that you talked to afterwards, while, if extended from aristocratic to democratic ideas, it would have justified a few remarks on the cabmen who brought both, and the butcher and fishmonger who supplied the feast. The inconvenience of this earlier practice made itself felt, and by degrees it dropped off; but it was succeeded by a somewhat similar habit of giving the subsequent history of personages introduced--a thing which, though Scott satirised it in Mrs. Martha Buskbody's insistence on information about the later history of Guse Gibbie,[196] by no means ceased with his time. Both were, in fact, part of the general refusal to accept the conditions of ordinary life. If "tout _pa.s.se_" is an exaggeration, it is an exaggeration of the truth: and in fiction, as in fact, the minor shapes must dissolve as well as arise without too much fuss being made about them.[197]
[Sidenote: _Almahide._]
_Almahide_ is, I think, more readable than _Ibrahim_; but the _English_ reader must disabuse himself of the idea (if he entertains it) that he will find much of the original of _The Conquest of Granada_. The book does, indeed, open like the play, with the faction-fights of Abencerrages and Zegrys, and it ends with Boabdelin's jealousy of his wife Almahide, while a few of the other names in both are identical. But _Almahide_ contains nothing, or hardly anything, of the character of Almanzor, and Dryden has not attempted to touch a hundredth part of the copious matter of the French novel, the early history of Almahide, the usual immense digressions and side-_histoires_, the descriptions (which, as in _Ibrahim_, play, I think, a larger relative part than in the _Cyrus_), and what not.
[Sidenote: _Clelie._]
[Sidenote: Perhaps the liveliest of the set.]
Copious as these are, however, in both books, they do not fill them out to anything like the length of the _Cyrus_ itself, or of its rival in size, and perhaps superior in attraction, the _Clelie_. I do not plead guilty to inconsistency or change of opinion in this "perhaps" when it is compared with the very much larger s.p.a.ce given to the earlier novel.
_Le Grand Cyrus_ has been estated too firmly, as the type and representative of the whole cla.s.s, to be dislodged, and there is, as we shall see presently, a good deal of repet.i.tion from it in _Clelie_ itself. But this latter is the more amusing book of the two; it is, though equally or nearly as big, less labyrinthine; there is somewhat livelier movement in it, and at the same time this is contrasted with a set or series of interludes of love-casuistry, which are better, I think, than anything of the kind in the _Cyrus_.[198] The most famous feature of these is, of course, the well-known but constantly misnamed "Carte de Tendre" ("Map of the Country of Tenderness"--not of "Tenderness in the _aib_stract," as _du_ Tendre would be). The discussion of what const.i.tutes Tenderness comes quite early; there is later a notable discourse on the respective attractions of Love and of Glory or Ambition; a sort of Code and Anti-code of lovers[199] occurs as "The Love-Morality of Tiramus," with a set of (not always) contrary criticism thereof; and a debate of an almost mediaeval kind as to the respective merits of merry and melancholy mistresses. Moreover, there is a rather remarkable "Vision of Poets"--past, present, and to come--which should be taken in connection with the appearance, as an actual personage, of Anacreon. All this, taken in conjunction with the "business" of the story, helps to give it the superior liveliness with which it has, rightly or wrongly, been credited here.
[Sidenote: Rough outline of it.]
Of that business itself a complete account cannot, for reasons given more than once, be attempted; though anybody who wants such a thing, without going to the book itself, may find it in the places also above mentioned. There is no such trick played upon the educated but not wideawake person as (_v. inf._) in La Calprenede's chief books. Clelie is the real Clelia, if the modern historical student will pa.s.s "real"
without sniffing, or even if he will not. Her lover, "Aronce," although he probably may be a little disguised from the English reader by his spelling, is so palpably the again real "Aruns," son of Porsena, that one rather wonders how his ident.i.ty can have been so long concealed in French (where the p.r.o.nunciations would be practically the same) from the readers of the story. The book begins with a proceeding not quite so like that of the _Cyrus_ as some to be mentioned later, but still pretty close to the elder overture. "The ill.u.s.trious Aronce and the adorable Clelia" are actually going to be married, when there is a fearful storm, an earthquake, and a disappearance of the heroine. She has, of course, been carried off; one might say, without flippancy, of any heroine of Madeleine de Scudery's not only that she was, as in a famous and already quoted saying, "very liable to be carried off," but that it was not in nature that she should not be carried off as early and as often as possible. And her abductor is no less a person than Horatius--our own Horatius Cocles--the one who kept the bridge in some of the best known of English verses, not he who provoked, from the sister whom he murdered, the greatest speech in all French tragedy before, and perhaps not merely before, Victor Hugo. Horatius is the Philidaspes of _Clelie_, but, as he was bound to be, an infinitely better fellow and of a better fate. Of course the end knits straight on to the beginning. Clelie and Aronce are united without an earthquake, and Porsena, with obliging gallantry, resigns the crown of Clusium (from which he has himself long been kept out by a "Mezentius," who will hardly work in with Virgil's), not to Aronce, but to Clelie herself. The enormous interval between (the book is practically as long as the _Cyrus_) is occupied by the same, or (_v. sup._) nearly the same tissue of delays, digressions, and other maze-like devices for setting you off on a new quest when you seem to be quite close to the goal. A large part of the scene is in Carthage, where, reversing the process in regard to Mezentius, Asdrubals and Amilcars make their appearance in a very "mixedly" historical fas.h.i.+on. A Prince of Numidia (who had heard of Numidia in Tarquin's days?) fights a lively water-combat with Horatius actually as he is carrying Clelie off, over the Lake of Thrasymene. All the stock legends of the Porsena siege and others are duly brought in: and the atrocious s.e.xtus, not contented with his sin against Lucrece, tries to carry off Clelie likewise, but is fortunately or wisely prevented. Otherwise the invariable propriety which from the time of the small love-novels (_v. sup._ pp. 157-162) had distinguished these abductions might possibly have been broken through.
These outlines might be expanded (and the process would not be very painful to me) into an abstract quite as long as that of Cyrus; but "It Cannot Be."
One objection, foreshadowed, and perhaps a little more, already, must be allowed against _Clelie_. That tendency to resort to repet.i.tion of situations and movements--which has shown itself so often, and which practically distinguishes the very great novelists from those not so great by its absence or presence--is obvious here, though the huge size of the book may conceal it from mere dippers, unless they be experts.
The similarity of the openings is, comparatively speaking, a usual thing. It should not happen, and does not in really great writers; but it is tempting, and is to some extent excused by the brocard about _le premier pas_. It is so nice to put yourself in front of your beginning--to have made sure of it! But this charity will hardly extend to such a thing as the repet.i.tion of Cyrus's foolish promise to fight Philidaspes before he marries Mandane in the case of Aronce, Horatius, and Clelie. The way in which Aronce is kept an "unknown" for some time, and that in which his actual relations.h.i.+p to Porsena is treated, have also too much of the _replica_; and though a lively skirmish with a pirate which occurs is not quite so absurd as that ready-made series of encores which was described above (pp. 181-2), there is something a little like it in the way in which the hero and his men alternately reduce the enemy to extremity, and run over the deck to rescue friends who are in the pirates' power from being butchered or flung overboard.
"Sapho's" invention, though by no means sterile, was evidently somewhat indiscriminate, and she would seem to have thought it rather a pity that a good thing should be used only once.
Nevertheless the compliment given above may be repeated. If I were sent to twelve months' imprisonment of a mild description, and allowed to choose a library, I should include in it, from the heroic or semi-heroic division, _Clelie_, La Calprenede's two chief books, Gomberville's _Polexandre_, and Gombauld's _Endimion_ (this partly for the pictures), with, as a matter of course, the _Astree_, and a choice of one other. By reading slowly and "savouring" the process, I should imagine that, with one's memories of other things, they might be able to last for a year.
And it would be one of the best kind of fallows for the brain. In antic.i.p.ation, let us see something of these others now.
[Sidenote: La Calprenede: his comparative cheerfulness.]
It has seemed, as was said, desirable to follow the common opinion of literary history in giving Madeleine de Scudery the place of honour, and the largest as well as the foremost share in our account of this curious stage in the history of the novel. But if, to alter slightly a famous quotation, I might "give a short hint to an impartial _reader_,"
I should very strongly advise him to begin his studies (or at least his enjoyment) thereof, not with "Sapho," but with Gauthier de Costes, Seigneur de la Calprenede, himself according to Tallemant almost the proverbial "Gascon _et demi_"; a tragic dramatist, as well as a romantic writer; a favourite of Mme. de Sevigne, who seldom went wrong in her preferences, except when she preferred her very disagreeable daughter to her very agreeable son; and more than any one else the inventor, or at least perfecter, of the hectoring heroic style which we a.s.sociate with Dryden's plays. Indeed the Artaban of _Cleopatre_ is much more the original of Almanzor and Drawcansir than anything in Madeleine, though _Almahide_ was actually the source of Dryden's story, or heroine.
Besides this, though La Calprenede has rather less of the intricate-impeach character than his she-rival, there is much more bustle and "go" in him; he has, though his books are proper enough, much less fear of dealing with "the kissing and that sort of thing," as it was once discreetly put; and he is sometimes positively exciting in his imbroglios, as when the beautiful Amazon princess Menalippe fights a real duel on horseback with Prince, afterwards King, Alcamenes of Scythia, under the impression that he has killed a certain Alcimedon, who was her lover; discovers, after no small time and considerable damage, that he is Alcimedon himself; and, like a sensible and agreeable girl, embraces him heartily in the sight of men and angels.
[Sidenote: _Cleopatre_--the Cypa.s.sis and Arminius episode.]
This is among the numerous _divertiss.e.m.e.nts_ of _Cleopatre_ (not the earliest, but perhaps the chief of its author's novels[200]), the heroine of which is not
The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands
herself, but her daughter by Antony, who historically married Juba of Mauretania, and is here courted by him under the name of Coriola.n.u.s, while he is in disgrace with Augustus. La Calprenede (all these romancers are merciful men and women to the historically unlucky, and cruel only, or for the most part, to fict.i.tious characters) saves her half-brother Caesarion from his actual death, and, after the due thousands of pages, unites him happily to Queen Candace of aethiopia.
There is the same odd muddle (which made a not unintelligent Jesuit label this cla.s.s of books "historia _mixta_") with many other persons.
Perhaps the most curious of all episodes of this kind is the use made of Ovid's "fusca Cypa.s.sis." If Mrs. Grundy could be supposed ever to have read the _Amores_, the mere sight of the name of that dusky handmaid--to whom Ovid behaved, by his own confession, in such an exceedingly shabby as well as improper fas.h.i.+on--would make her shudder, if not shriek. But La Calprenede's Cypa.s.sis, though actually a maid of honour to Julia, as her original was a handmaid to Corinna, is of unblemished morality, flirted with certainly by Ovid, but really a German princess, Ismenia, in disguise, and beloved by, betrothed to, and in the end united with no less a compatriot than Arminius. This union gives also an ill.u.s.tration of the ingenious fas.h.i.+on in which these writers reconcile and yet omit.
La Calprenede, as we have seen, does not give Arminius's wife her usual name of Thusnelda, but, to obviate a complaint from readers who have heard of Varus, he invents a protest on "Herman sla lerman" part against that general, who has trepanned him into captivity and gladiators.h.i.+p, and makes him warn Augustus that he will be true to the Romans _unless_ Varus is sent into his country.[201]