None the less, the "Arcadia" was popular in the last century, and, at the same time as it attracted the attention of fair Leonoras, it also interested and delighted a much commoner sort of readers. It was several times printed in an abbreviated form, and circulated, with engravings, as a chap-book. Sometimes the whole of the "Arcadia" was compressed into a small volume, sometimes only an episode was given to the public. The story of Argalus and Parthenia was especially popular.[236] The engravings, it is needless to say, were very coarse; and if Sidney had taken little trouble to be historically or geographically accurate, the wood-block makers took even less, and they offer to our eyes an extraordinary medley of fifteenth-century knights, Roman soldiers, gentlemen in flowing wigs and court swords, all of them supposed to have at one time adorned with their presence the groves of Arcady. A few specimens of these engravers' art are here given; no doubt the reader will be pleased to know what the famous Argalus and Parthenia were supposed to have been like, how the bathing of Philoclea in the Ladon was represented, and the sorts of fetes and courtly dances that enlivened the marriage of that princess. More striking even than these tributes to Sidney's merits as a novelist is the treatment awarded him in France. The famous Du Bartas in his second "Week" names Sidney as one of the "three firm pillars of the English Speech." This speech, according to the French poet, is mainly supported by Thomas More and Bacon, "Et le milor Cydne qui cygne doux-chantant Va les flots orgueilleux de Tamise flatant; Ce fleuve gros d'honneur emporte sa faconde Dans le sein de Thetis et Thetis par le monde."[237] [Illustration: "HOW THE TWO PRINCESSES PAMELA AND HER SISTER PHILOCLEA WENT TO BATH THEMSELVES ... AND WHAT AFTER HAPNED."]