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 beasts and pleasing birds, whose dulcet notes exulsecrate him out of his melancholy contemplations."[87]