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 appetite, or a passion, but a great means of intellectual development." Of course Solomon did not know this, nor Sappho, nor Catullus, nor the fashioners 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 fashion of love-philosophy which supplies so large a part of the "yarn" of Madeleine de Scudery's endless rope or web is not _our_ fashion. 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, fashions 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.