Spanish, have merit, and his _Roman Comique_[245], though also inspired to some extent from the peninsula, has still more. It is the unfinished history of a troop of strolling actors, displaying extraordinary truth of observation and power of realistic description in the style which, as has been said, Le Sage and Fielding afterwards made popular throughout Europe. [Sidenote: Cyrano de Bergerac.] With Scarron may be classed another writer of not dissimilar character, but of far less talent, whose eccentricities have given him a disproportionate reputation even in France, while they have often entirely misled foreign critics. Cyrano de Bergerac was a Gascon of not inconsiderable literary power, whose odd personal appearance, audacity as a duellist, and adherence, after conversion, to the unpopular cause of Mazarin, gave him a position which his works fail to sustain. They are not, however, devoid of merit. His _Pedant Joue_, a comedy, gave Moliere some useful hints; his _Agrippine_, a tragedy, has passages of declamatory energy. But his best work comes under the head of fiction. The _Voyages a la Lune et au Soleil_[246], in which the author partly followed Rabelais, and partly indulged his own fancy for rodomontade, personal satire, and fantastic extravagance, have had attributed to them the great and wholly unmerited honour of setting a pattern to Swift. Cyrano, let it be repeated, was a man of talent, but his powers (he died before he was thirty-five) had not time to mature, and the reckless boastfulness of his character would probably have disqualified him at all times from adequate study and self-criticism. Personally, he is an amusing and interesting figure in literary history, but he is not much more. In company with him and with Scarron may be mentioned Dassoucy, alternately a friend and enemy of Cyrano, and a light writer of some merit. [Sidenote: Furetiere.]