uld become tiresome on such a scale as
this; and it is still incomprehensible how any one not having some
special object to serve by it could struggle through such enormous
wastes of verbiage and unreality as form the bulk of these novels. Even
when the passion for the heroic style strictly so called began to wane
no great improvement at first manifested itself. Catherine
Desjardins[243] (who wrote under the name of Madame de Villedieu)
produced numerous books (the chief of which is _Le Grand Alcandre_), not
indeed so absolutely preposterous in general conception, but even more
vapid and destitute of originality and distinction[244].

These impracticable and barren styles of fiction were succeeded in the
latter half of the century by something much better. The Picaroon
romance of Spain inspired Paul Scarron with the first of a long line of
novels which, in the hands of Le Sage, Defoe, Fielding, and Smollett,
enriched the literature of Europe with remarkable work. Madame de la
Fayette laid the foundation of the novel proper, or story of analysis of
character; and towards the close of the century the fairy tale attained,
in the hands of Anthony Hamilton, Perrault and Madame d'Aulnoy, its
most delightful and abundant development.

[Sidenote: Scarron.]

Paul Scarron was one of the most remarkable literary figures of the
century in respect of originality and eccentric talent, though few
single works of his possess formal completeness. He was of a family of
Piedmontese origin and very well connected, his father, of the same
name, being a member of the Parliament of Paris, and of sufficiently
independent humour to oppose Richelieu. Paul Scarron the younger (he had
had an elder brother of the same name who had died an infant) was born
in 1610, and his mother did not outlive his third year. His father
married again; the stepmother did not get on well with Paul, and he was
half obliged and half induced to become an abbe. For some years he lived
a merry life, partly at Rome, partly at Paris. But when he was still
young a great calamity fell on him. A cock-and-bull story of his having
disguised himself as a savage in a kind of voluntary tar-and-feather
suit, and having been struck with paralysis in consequence of plunging
into an ice-cold stream to escape the populace, is usually told, but
there seems to be no truth in it. An attack of fever, followed by
rheumatism and mismanaged by the physicians of the day, appears to have
bee