ical part of French tastes was accepted immediately
and with great enthusiasm. The extraordinary number of folio heroical
romances still to be seen in old English country houses testifies at
the present day to their extraordinary hold upon the polite society of
the time. The King gave the example. Charles I. had been a reader of
such novels; on the eve of his death he distributed a few souvenirs to
his most faithful friends, and we see him give away, besides Hooker's
"Ecclesiastical Polity" and Dr. Andrews' sermons, the romance of
"Cassandre," which he left to the Earl of Lindsey. During the troublous
times of the civil war, Dorothy Osborne constantly alludes, in her
letters to Sir William Temple, to the books she reads, and they are
mostly these same French novels. While troops are marching to and fro;
while rebellions and counter-rebellions are preparing or breaking out,
the volumes of "Cleopatre" and "Grand Cyrus" go to and fro between the
lovers and are the subject of their epistolary discussions. "Have you
read 'Cleopatre'? I have six tomes on't here that I can lend you if you
have not; there are some stories in't you will like, I believe."--"Since
you are at leisure to consider the moon, you may be enough to read
'Cleopatre,' therefore I have sent you three volumes.... There is a
story of Artimise that I will recommend to you; her disposition I like
extremely, it has a great deal of practical wit; and if you meet with
one Brittomart, pray send me word how you like him."--"I have a third
tome here [of "Cyrus"] against you have done with that second; and to
encourage you, let me assure you that the more you read of them, you
will like them still better,"[338] and so on.

The wife of Mr. Pepys was not less fond of French romances than Dorothy
Osborne, and we sometimes find her husband purchasing copies at his
bookseller's to bring home as presents. But he himself did not like them
very much; he seems to have been deterred from this kind of literature
by his wife's habit of reciting stories to him out of these works; some
quarrel even took place between the couple about "Cyrus," though it
seems that "Cyrus" was in this case more the pretext than the reason of
the discussion, as honest Pepys with his usual frankness gives us to
understand: "At noon home, where I find my wife troubled still at my
checking her last night in the coach in her long stories out of 'Grand
Cyrus,' which she would tell, though nothing to the pur