Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/285

Rh and social conditions perhaps, but also to the admiration of Spanish literature and the study of Plutarch, shaped the romance, as it did tragi-comedy and ultimately tragedy, and the general plan of these endless works traces the heroic adventures of lovers by sea and land—combines, in short, the chivalrous incidents of the Amadis with the refined gallantry of the Astrée and the Hôtel. Historical epochs and characters are introduced, but the result is the wildest romantic travesty of history. All the heroes of antiquity, the Persian Cyrus and the Roman consul Brutus, the savage Tomyris and the chaste matron Lucretia, are equally gallant and refined, equally familiar with the geography of the "pays de tendre," all equally ready to compose high-flown speeches and madrigals. In these romances, as already in the Astrée, an additional interest for curiosity was provided by the introduction of "déguisements," the adumbration in the dramatis personæ of contemporary characters. But the persons are so indistinctly and so romantically delineated that this additional interest is for us infinitesimal. The heroic romances are valuable reflections of the ideals and affectations of the day, but they cannot be used to throw light on incidents or characters.

Of the authors mentioned, Gombauld stands somewhat by himself. His Endymion (1624) is a pale allegory of his respectful and a little absurd affection for Marie de Médicis. Gomberville's Polexandre (1637) is the first example of the seventeenth-century heroic romance proper. The