er reading than
_Parismus_ for some holiday evenings, or even after pretty tough days of
literary and professional work. _The Famous History of Montelion, the
Knight of the Oracle_ (1633?) proclaims its Amadisian type even more
clearly: but I have only read it in an abridged edition of the close of
the century. I should imagine that _in extenso_ it was a good deal
duller than _Parismus_. And of course the comparative praise which has
been given to that book must be subject to the reminder that it is what
it is--a romance of disorderly and what some people call childish
adventure, and of the above-ticketed "conjuror's supernatural." If
anybody cannot read _Amadis_ itself, he certainly will not read
_Parismus_: and perhaps not everybody who can manage the original--perhaps
not even everybody who can manage _Palmerin_--could put up with Ford's
copy. I can take this Ford as I find him: but I am not sure that I would
go much lower.

[2] It is pleasant to remember that one of the chief publishers
of these things in the late seventeenth century was _W.
Thackeray_.

_Ornatus and Artesia_ (1607?), on the other hand--his second or third
book--strikes me as owing more to Heliodorus than to Montalvo, or
Lobeira, or whoever was the author of the great romance of the last
chivalric type. There are more intricacies in it; the heroine plays a
rather more important part; there is even something of a nearer approach
to modern novel-ways in this production, which reappeared at "Grub
Street near the Upper Pump" in the year 1650. Ornatus sees his mistress
asleep and in a kind of deshabille, employs a noble go-between, Adellena
(a queer spelling of "Adelina" which may be intentional), is rejected
with apparent indignation, of course; writes elaborate letters in vain,
but overhears Artesia soliloquising confession of her love for him and
disguises himself as a girl, Silvia. Then the villain of the piece,
Floretus, to obtain the love of this supposed Silvia, murders a person
of distinction and plots to poison Artesia herself. Ornatus-Silvia is
banished: and all sorts of adventures and disguises follow, entirely in
the Greek style. The book is not very long, extending only to signature
R in a very small quarto. Except that it is much less lively and
considerably less "free," it reminds one rather in type of Kynaston's
verse _Leoline and Sydanis_. In fact the verse and prose romances of the
time are very closely connected: and Cham