ts and pleasing birds,
whose dulcet notes exulsecrate him out of his melancholy
contemplations."[87]

Dunlop considered the best work of this description to be the
"Parthenissa," published in 1664, by Roger Boyle, afterward Earl of
Orrery. This romance, although marked by the faults of prolixity and
incongruity characteristic of the heroic style, is not without
narrative interest or literary merit. The hero is Artabanes, a Median
prince, as usual "richly attired, and proportionately blessed with all
the gifts of nature and education." At the Parthian court he becomes
enamored of the beautiful Parthenissa, and in her honor performs many
distinguished deeds of arms. Distracted, however, at the suspicion of
Parthenissa's preference for a rival, he leaves the Parthian court with
the determination to spend the remainder of his life on the summit of
the Alps. This intention is frustrated by pirates, who take him
prisoner and bestow him as a slave upon their chief. Artabanes soon
escapes from bondage, suddenly turns out to be the historic Spartacus,
and returns to Asia. There he finds that Parthenissa, to avoid the
importunities of an objectionable lover, has swallowed a potion which
gives her the appearance of death. In this dilemma he journeys to "the
Temple of Hieropolis in Syria, where the Queen of Love had settled an
oracle as famous as the Deity to whom it was consecrated." The priest
of this temple, after listening patiently to the long account of
Artabanes' misfortunes, tells the story of his own remarkable career,
by which it appears that he is Nicomedes, king of Bythinia, the father
of Julius Caesar's Nicomedes. While Artabanes is listening to this
narrative, he sees two persons land upon the shore, and enter a
neighboring wood. One is a young knight, and the other the exact
counterpart of Parthenissa. At this apparition Artabanes is thrown into
the greatest confusion. The lady he has seen presents every outward
appearance of his mistress, and yet he believes her dead, and is unable
to conceive that if living, she should so far forget her duty to him
and the rules of propriety, as to place herself in so suspicions a
position. Here the romance comes to an abrupt end, leaving Artabanes in
the condition of painful uncertainty in which he has ever since
remained.

Heroic romance proved as ephemeral in England as the cloaks and
feathers with which it had crossed the Channel, and we may pass over
such trivial literary a