ng novels, semi-chivalrous in type, and its hero is as
often called "The Black Knight" as by his name.

[Sidenote: Jean de Lannoi and his _Roman Satirique_.]

The _Roman Satirique_ (1624) of Jean de Lannoi is another example of the
curious inability to "hit it off" which has been mentioned so often as
characterising the period. Its 1100 pages are far too many, though it is
fair to say that the print is exceptionally large and loose. Much of it
is not in any sense "satiric," and it seems to have derived what
popularity it had almost wholly from the "key" interest.

[Sidenote: Beroalde de Verville outside the _Moyen de Parvenir_.]

The minor works--if the term may be used when the attribution of the
major is by no means certain--of Beroalde de Verville have, as is usual,
been used both ways as arguments for and against his authorship of the
_Moyen de Parvenir_. _Les Aventures de Floride_ is simply an attempt,
and a big one in size, to _amadigauliser_, as the literary slang of the
time went. The _Histoire Veritable_, owing nothing but its title and
part of its idea to Lucian, and sub-titled _Les Princes Fortunes_, is
less conventional. It has a large fancy map for a frontispiece; there
are fairies in it, and a sort of _pot-pourri_ of queernesses which might
not impossibly have come from the author or editor of the _Moyen_ in his
less inconveniently ultra-Pantagruelist moments. _Le Cabinet de Minerve_
is actually a glorification of "honest" love. In fact, Beroalde is one
of the oddest of "polygraphers," and there is nobody quite like him in
English, though some of his fellows may be matched, after a fashion,
with our Elizabethan pamphleteers. I have long wished to read the whole
of him, but I suppose I never shall.

And it is time to leave these very minor stars and come to the full and
gracious moon of the _Astree_ itself.

[Sidenote: The _Astree_--its author.]

Honore D'Urfe, who was three years younger than Shakespeare, and died in
the year in which Charles I. came to the throne, was a cadet of a very
ancient family in the district or minor province of Forez, where his own
famous Lignon runs into the Loire. He was a pupil of the Jesuits and
early _fort en theme_, was a strenuous _ligueur_, and, though (or
perhaps also because) he was very good friends with Henri's estranged
wife, Margot, for some time decidedly suspect to Henri IV. For this
reason, and others of property, etc., he became almost a naturalised
Savoy