composition.
Her novels, the most famous of their class, are the _Grand Cyrus_,
otherwise _Artamene_, _Clelie_, _Ibrahim_, or the _Illustrious Bassa_,
and _Almahide_, the latter being partly, but chiefly in the name of the
heroine, the source of Dryden's _Conquest of Granada_. The _Grand Cyrus_
is, at least by title, the best remembered, but it is in _Clelie_ that
the best-known and most characteristic trait appears, the delineation
and description namely of the _Carte de Tendre_[242]. Tendre is the
country of love, through which flows the river of Inclination watering
the villages of 'Pretty Verses,' 'Gallant Epistles,' 'Assiduity,' etc.,
while elsewhere in the region are the less cheerful localities of
'Levity,' 'Indifference,' 'Perfidy,' and so forth. La Calprenede, a
Gascon by birth, was the author of _Cleopatre_ (which ranks perhaps with
_Cyrus_ as the chief example of the style), of _Cassandre_ and of
_Pharamond_. Gauthier de Coste (which was his personal name) figures,
like most of the notable persons of the middle of the century, in the
_Historiettes_ of Tallemant, who says of him, 'Il n'y a jamais eu un
homme plus Gascon que celui-ci.' The assertion is supported by some
characteristic but not easily quotable anecdotes. The criticism of
Tallemant, however, does not apply badly to the whole class of
compositions. 'Les heros,' says he, speaking of _Cassandre_, 'se
ressemblent comme deux gouttes d'eau, parlent tous _Phebus_ (the
euphuist jargon of the time), et sont tous des gens a cent mille lieues
au dessus des autres hommes.' Marin le Roy, Seigneur de Gomberville, who
was something of a Jansenist, attended rather to edification than
gallantry in his _Alcidiane_, _Caritee_, _Polexandre_, and _Cytheree_.
Though earlier in date he is inferior in power to Mademoiselle de
Scudery and to La Calprenede, the first of whom had some wit and much
culture, while La Calprenede possessed a decided grasp of heroic
character and some notion of the method of composing historical novels.
Gomberville, a man of wealth and position, was also a writer of moral
works. Putting the artificiality of the general style out of the
question, the chief fault to be found with these books is their enormous
length. They fill eight, ten, or even twelve volumes; they consist of
five, six, or even seven thousand pages, though the pages are not very
large and the print by no means close. Even the liveliest work--work
like Fielding's or Le Sage's--wo