applicable, but because this special department of French literary history--the earlier seventeenth century--contains, perhaps, the greatest proportion of this wreckage of time as yet unrummaged and unsorted by posterity. FOOTNOTES: [242] Not _du_ Tendre, as it is often erroneously cited in French and English works. [243] The learned editor of Tallemant des Reaux calls her Marie Hortense. She also wrote verses and plays. There were many other romance writers of the period now forgotten, or remembered only for other things, such as the Abbe d'Aubignac. [244] I cannot boast of an intimate or exhaustive acquaintance with the 'heroic' romances; but I have taken care to satisfy myself of the accuracy of the statements in the text. [245] Ed. Dillaye. 2 vols. Paris, 1881. [246] The full title is _Histoire Comique des Etats de la Lune et du Soleil_. Cyrano's works have been edited by P. L. Jacob. 2 vols. Paris, 1858. [247] Ed. Colombey. Paris, 1877. [248] Ed. Jannet. 2 vols. Paris, 1878. [249] Ed. Garnier. Paris, 1864. [250] Madame de la Fayette also wrote _La Comtesse de Tende_, and interesting Memoirs of Henrietta of England. _Zaide_ was published under the name of Segrais, who was a _nouvelle_-writer of no great merit, though a pleasant poet. [251] See H. Bonhomme, _Le Cabinet des Fees_. [252] Ed. Lefevre. Paris, 1875. Ed. Lang. Oxford, 1888. CHAPTER IV. HISTORIANS, MEMOIR-WRITERS, LETTER-WRITERS. Although the seventeenth century did not witness the acceptance in France of what may be called a philosophical conception of history, and though few or none of the regular histories of the time (with the exception of that of Mezeray) hold high rank as literature, no period was more fruitful in memoirs, letters, and separate historical sketches of the first merit. The names of Madame de Sevigne, of the Cardinal de Retz, of La Rochefoucauld, and at the extreme end of the period of Saint Simon, rank among those of the most original writers of France, while the historical essay has rarely assumed a more thoroughly literary form than in the short sketches of Retz, Sarrasin, and others. The subject of the present chapter may, therefore, be divided into four parts, the historians properly so called (the least interesting of the four), the historical essayists, the memoir-writers, and the letter-writers, with an appendix of erudite cultivators of historical science and of miscellaneous authors of historical gossip and other matters. [Sidenote: General Historians. Mezeray.]