time of Swift and Defoe to reach their
highest point. Defoe has left the best examples of the picaresque tale
extant in English literature, and Swift revived Grobianism with
unparalleled excellence in his "Directions to Servants" and his
"Complete Collection of genteel and ingenious conversation, according to
the most polite mode and method now used at court and in the best
companies of England."[310]

As for the "Quinze joyes," turned also into English by Dekker, its
popularity was equally great in England; a new and different translation
was published in the seventeenth century and had several editions. It
was prefaced with a note "to the Reader," in which the satirical aims of
the author in this study of woman's foibles is accentuated by a tone of
pretended praise, savouring of Grobianism and anticipating the sort of
ridicule which was to be relished by Pope and the critics of Queen
Anne's time. "This treatise ... will at least shake, if not totally
explode, that common opinion, viz., that women are the worst piece of
the Hexameron creation.... This is the composition of some amorous
person, who, animated with the same spirit and affection as I am, hath
undertaken, and judged it his duty too, to satisfie you, and he hopes so
far as to work upon you a persuasion that the modesty, bashfulness,
debonairete and civility, together with all qualifications that adorn
and beautifie the soul, are as exemplarily eminent in women of this age
as ever they were in any of the former; and instruct you to set a value
on their actions as the best creatures in the worst of times, whose
vertue must needs shine with the greater lustre, being subject to the
vain assaults and ineffectual temptations of men grown old, like the
times, in wickednes, malice and revenge."[311]

[Illustration: CAPRICORNUS.]

FOOTNOTES:

[245] "The first and best part of Scoggins Iests ... being a
preservative against melancholy, gathered by Andrew Boord," London,
1626, 8vo. Many of the jests, tricks, and pranks recounted here are to
be found in other collections of such anecdotes, English as well as
foreign. For example, the coarse story explaining "how the French king
had Scogin into his house of office, and shewed him the King of
England's picture" appears in Rabelais, where however the two kings play
exactly opposite parts. Andrew Borde died in 1549.

[246] One of the few passages which would raise a laugh even to-day is
the rapturous speech with which