chess of
Orleans. Ten or twelve years after the appearance of the first volume,
she was curious to know what Parthenissa was doing in the wood, and
begged Roger Boyle to bring her out of it. He wrote a sixth part in
four books and dedicated it to her.

Are we to imagine that the author is now going to lead his impatient
readers in search of the heroine? Not at all. Callimachus, who was
unfairly interrupted in his tale, proposes to his companions to leave
one of them, Symander, on guard, and to go and refresh themselves. When
they were rested, "they conjur'd him to prosecute his story, though what
they had seen and heard gave them impatiences which nothing but their
desires of knowing so generous a friend's fortunes could have dispensed
with." The four books of the sixth part are devoted to this narrative;
Boyle, as he said in his preface, had thought at first of concluding
everything in this supplement; but he was forced to recognize that it
was impossible to "confine it within so narrow a compass." This
statement will be found on page 808 of his folio volume. Why Parthenissa
entered the grove was never to be known nor what she had to say in her
justification. Boyle, who had taken up his pen again at the instance of
the young duchess, had very soon no reason to continue: Bossuet was
calling on the court of the Grand Roi to weep with him for the loss of
this charming woman, whose beauty and grace had only blossomed "for one
morning."

As soon as the book was out, Dorothy Osborne had a copy sent to her, but
she did not like it so much as the French models. She writes to Temple:
"I'll ... tell you that 'Parthenissa' is now my company. My brother sent
it down and I have almost read it. 'Tis handsome language; you would
know it to be writ by a person of good quality though you were not told
it; but on the whole I am not very much taken with it. All the stories
have too near a resemblance with those of other romances; there is
nothing new and _surprenant_ in them; the ladies are all so kind they
make no sport."[344]

Boyle, it is said, besides his dramas and other works, again tried his
fortune as a novel writer, and published in 1676 "English Adventures by
a person of honour." It is in a style so absolutely different from his
former romance that it is scarcely credible that both came from the same
pen. "English Adventures" tell the story of the amours of King Henry
VIII., of Brandon, and others. All the reserve in "Parthe