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 associate 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 Cypassis and Arminius episode.] This is among the numerous _divertissements_ 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