of Christian Platonism, and we
cannot, as we can elsewhere, say what the song says of something else,
that "it certainly looks very queer." The knights and ladies do go to
mass and vespers; but to say that they go punctually would be altogether
erroneous, for Hircan makes wicked jokes on his and Parlamente's being
late for the morning office, and, on one occasion at least, they keep
the unhappy monks of the convent where they are staying (who do not seem
to dare to begin vespers without them) waiting a whole hour while they
are finishing not particularly edifying stories. The less complaisant
casuists, even of the Roman Church, would certainly look askance at the
piety of the distinguished person (said by tradition to have been King
Francis himself) who always paid his respects to Our Lady on his way to
illegitimate assignations, and found himself the better therefor on one
occasion of danger. But the tone of our extract is invariably that of
Oisille and Parlamente. The purer love part of the matter is a little,
as the French themselves say, "alembicated." But still the whole is
graceful and fascinating, except for a few pieces of mere passionless
coarseness, which Oisille generally reproves. And it is scarcely
necessary to say what large opportunities these tones and colours of
fashion and "quality," of passion and manners, give to the future
novelist, whose treatment shall stand to them very much as they stand to
the shorter and sometimes almost shorthand written tales of Desperiers
himself.

[Sidenote: Desperiers.]

With the _Cymbalum Mundi_ of this rather mysterious person we need have
little to do. It is, down to the dialogue-form, an obvious imitation of
Lucian--a story about the ancient divinities (especially Mercury) and a
certain "Book of Destiny" and talking animals, and a good deal of often
rather too transparent allegory. It has had, both in its own day and
since, a very bad reputation as being atheistical or at least
anti-Christian, and seems really to have had something to do with the
author's death, by suicide or otherwise. There need, however, be very
little harm in it; and there is not very much good as a story, nor,
therefore, much for us. It does not carry the art of its particular kind
of fiction any further than Lucian himself, who is, being much more of a
genius, on the whole a much better model, even taking him at that rather
inferior rate. The _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, on the other hand, though