er story told by Araxe; wherefore,
instead of finding ourselves back among the actors of the principal
tale, we alight only among those in Araxe's narrative.[325] These
stories are thus enclosed in one another like Chinese boxes.

II.

This literature as soon as imported into England realized there the most
complete success. To find a parallel for it we must go back to the time
when mediaeval Lancelot and Tristan were sung of by French singers, and
afterwards by singers of all countries. Cyrus and Mandane, Oroontades
and Tireus, Grand Scipio and Illustrious Bassa, Astree and Celadon, our
heroes and our shepherds once more began the invasion and conquest of
the great northern island. As was to be expected from such unparalleled
conquerors, they accomplished this feat easily, and their work had
consequences in England for which France can scarcely offer any perfect
equivalent. Through their exertions there arose in this country a
dramatic literature in the heroical style which, thanks especially to
Dryden, has still a literary interest. But in France our heroes of
fiction were curtailed of much of their glory by the inexorable Boileau.
They left, it is true, some trace of their influence in the works of
Corneille and even of Racine, but the heroic drama, properly so called,
was restricted to the works of the Scuderys and Montchrestiens, which is
saying enough to imply that it was not meant to survive very long.

During the greater part of the century French romances were in England
the main reading of people who had leisure. They were read in the
original, for French was a current language in society at that time, and
they were read in translations both by society and by the ordinary
public. Most of them were rendered into English, and so important were
these works considered that sometimes several translators tried their
skill at the same romance, and published independently the result of
their labours, as if their author had been Virgil or Ariosto, or any
classical writer. French ideas in the matter of novels were adopted so
cordially that not only under Charles I., but even during the civil war
and under Cromwell this rage for reading and translating did not abate.
The contrary, it is true, has often been asserted, without inquiry, and
as a matter of course; but this erroneous statement was due to a mere
_a priori_ argument, and had no other ground than the improbability of
the same fashion predominating in the Lon