_17th-Century Fiction._--In the department of literature which comes between poetry and prose, that of romance-writing, the 17th century, excepting one remarkable development, was not very fertile. It devoted itself to so many new or changed forms of literature that it had no time to anticipate the modern novel. Yet at the beginning of the century one very curious form of romance-writing was diligently cultivated, and its popularity, for the time immense, prevented the introduction of any stronger style. It is remarkable that, as the first quarter of the 17th century was pre-eminently the epoch of Spanish influence in France, the distinctive satire of Cervantes should have been less imitated than the models which Cervantes satirized. However this may be, the romances of 1600 to 1650 form a class of literature vast, isolated, and, perhaps, of all such classes of literature most utterly obsolete and extinct. Taste, affectation or antiquarian diligence have, at one time or another, restored to a just, and sometimes a more than just, measure of reputation most of the literary relics of the past. Romances of chivalry, fabliaux, early drama, Provencal poetry, prose chronicles, have all had, and deservedly, their rehabilitators. But _Polexandre_ and _Cleopatre_, _Clelie_ and the _Grand Cyrus_, have been too heavy for all the industry and energy of literary antiquarians. As we have already hinted, the nearest ancestry which can be found for them is the romances of the _Amadis_ type. But the _Amadis_, and in a less degree its followers, although long, are long in virtue of incident. The romances of the _Clelie_ type are long in virtue of interminable discourse, moralizing and description. Their manner is not unlike that of the _Arcadia_ and the _Euphues_ which preceded them in England; and they express in point of style the tendency which simultaneously manifested itself all over Europe at this period, and whose chief exponents were Gongora in Spain, Marini in Italy, and Lyly in England. Everybody knows the _Carte de Tendre_ which originally appeared in _Clelie_, while most people have heard of the shepherds and shepherdesses who figure in the _Astree_ of Honore D'Urfe (1568-1625), on the borders of the Lignon; but here general knowledge ends, and there is perhaps no reason why it should go much further. It is sufficient to say that Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) principally devotes herself in the books above mentioned to laborious gallantry and heroism, La Calprenede (1610-1663) in _Cassandre et Cleopatre_ to something which might have been the historical novel if it had been constructed on a less preposterous scale, and Marin le Roy de Gomberville (1600-1647) in _Polexandre_ to moralizings and theological discussions on Jansenist principles, while Pierre Camus, bishop of Belley (1582-1652), in _Palombe_ and others, approached still nearer to the strictly religious story. In the latter