_Les Caprices Heroiques_ (Paris, 1644) is a translation, by Chateaunieres de Grenaille, from the Italian of Loredano. It consists of variations on classical stories, treated rather in the declamation manner, and ranging in subject from Achilles to "Frine." How many readers (at least among those who read with their eyes only) will affirm on their honour that they identified "Frine" at first reading? In Italian there would, of course, be less hesitation. The book is not precisely a novel, but it has merits as a collection of rhetorical exercises. Of a somewhat similar kind, though even further from the strict novel standard, is the _Diverses Affections de Minerve_ (Paris, 1625) of the above-mentioned Audiguier, where the heroine is _not_ the goddess, and all sorts of places and personages, mythological, classical, historic, and modern, compose a miraculous _macedoine_, Brasidas jostling Gracchus, and Chabrias living in the Faubourg Saint-Martin. This _is_ a sort of story, but the greatest part of the volume as it lies before me is composed of _Lettres Espagnoles_, _Epitres Francaises_, _Libres Discours_, etc. We can apparently return to the stricter romance, such as it is, with the _Histoire Asiatique_ of the Sieur de Gerzan (Paris, 1633), but it is noteworthy that the title-page of this ballasts itself by an "Avec un Traite du Tresor de la Vie Humaine et La Philosophie des Dames." I confess that, as in the case of most of the books here mentioned, I have not read it with the care I bestowed on the _Cyrus_. But I perceive in it ladies who love corsairs, universal medicines, poodles who are sacrificed to save their owners, and other things which may tempt some. And I can, by at least sampling, rather recommend _Les Travaux du Prince Inconnu_ (Paris, 1633) by the Sieur de Logeas. It calls itself, and its 700 pages, the completion of two earlier performances, the _Roman Historique_ and the _Histoire des Trois Freres Princes de Constantinople_, which have not come in my way. There is, however, probably no cause to regret this, for the author assures us that his new work is "as far above the two former in beauty as the sun is above the stars." If any light-minded person be disposed to scoff at him for this, let it be added that he has the grace to abstract the whole in the _Avis au Lecteur_ which contains the boast, and to give full chapter-headings, things too often wanting in the group. The hero is named Rosidor, the heroine Floralinde; and they are married with "la rejouissance generale de toute la Chretiente." What can mortals ask for more?