A few words may also be devoted here in passing to a very different class of fiction —the Spiritual Romance. It originated, without doubt, in the bosom of the church, and from the desire to edify, by stories of religions knight-errantry, a rude and ignorant community, incapable of understanding or relishing abstract doctrines. The first of the series is Barlaam and Josaphat, already alluded to; but by far the greatest work of the kind produced during the middle ages is the Legenda Aurea, or Golden Legend (q.v.), itself believed to be drawn from different and now partly forgotten sources. Besides these may be mentioned a species of spiritual tale—the Conies Divots, prevalent in France during the 12th and 13th c., and which were written by monks, probably with the view of counteracting the witty and licentious stories of the Tronveres; but curiously enough, in these pious fictions, the lives of monks and nuns are represented as far more immoral than in those of time secular satirists. The things, too, which the virgin Mary is repre sented as doing are most astounding, and throw a strange but valuable light upon the religious .notions of the age. In one story she conceals the shame of a favorite nun; in another, she performs the part of a procurers; in a third, she officiates as midwife to an abbess who had been frail and imprudent; and in general, she performs the most degrading offices for the most worthless characters.
Romance of the 16th and 17th Centuries.—During the middle ages, the universal sway of the church and the institutions of feudalism gave a certain character of uniformity to the modes of life, and thereby to the social literature of western Europe; but after the epoch of the reformation, and even earlier, this uniformity disappears, amid we find in every direction a tendency to the opposite extreme of individualism. This tendency manifests itself especially in the fiction of the period, which, vastly increasing in quantity and varying in quality, becomes difficult to classify. We shall, however, endeavor to group the products of modern prose-fiction works under what appears to us a convenient chronological heading.
Daring the 16th and 17th centuries, four different kinds of romance or novel were cultivated-1. The (:'omit Romance; 2. The Political Romance; 3. flee Pastoral Romance; 4. The Heroic Romance.
Comic Romance substantially begins in modern times with Rabelais (q.v.), styled by sir William Temple the flakes of ridicule. Others, indeed, had preceded him in the same path, but they had acquired no celebrity. In him we see unmistakably one form of the modern spirit—its daring freedom of speculation, criticism, and satire, also that lack of reverence exhibited by those who, at the period of the reformation, clearly discerned the abuses of the church, but had not faith in the possibility or efficacy of reforms. Thus Rabelais, in his inimitable burlesque romance, scoffs (witu the tone of a skeptic, however) at the vices of the clergy, the crooked ways of politicians, the jargon of philosophers, and the absurdities of the Coates Devots, and of the medimvat tales generally. The next remarkable romance of a comic nature is the Vita di De•toldo of Julio Cesare Croce (for. at the close of the 16th c.), a work recounting the humorous and successful exploits of a clever but ugly peasant, and regarding which we are told that for two centuries it was as popular in Italy as Robinson Crusoe or the Pilgrim's Progress in England. The substance of the story can be traced back to an oriental source. A few years later appeared Don Quixote (see CERVANTES), in which "war to the knife" was proclaimed against the romances of chivalry, and in which, perhaps, we see more distinctly than in any other fiction of the period the new turn that the mind of western Europe had taken. Almost contemporaneous with Don Quixote was another Spanish romance—Matteo Aletnan's Life of Guzman Alfarache, successively beggar, swindler. pander, student, and galley-slave. In this work, as in others of the same sort, we several indications of the influence of the Italian novelists. It has been supposed that Gasman AY'as.ache suggested to be Sage the idea of Gil Ras, and there is some resem blance between the two; but, at any rate, it gave birth to a host of Spanish romances with baggers and scamps for heroes, of which the best is the Lazarillo de Tonnes, by Diego de Mendoza (158t3). In the following century France produced, among others,
Scarron's Roman Comique, and Furetiere's Roman Bourgeois. /England and Germany have nothing to show in this department.
Political Romance was manifestly suggested partly by the great politico-ecclesiastical changes that took place in Europe in the first half of the 16th c., and partly by the immense increase in the knowledge of the manners and customs of remote nations, occa sioned by geographical discoveries and mercantile adventure. The earliest of the series is the Utopia of sir Thomas More; next,comes the Argenis of Barclay, published in 1621; and to the same class belong a variety of French romances produced about the close of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th c., of which by far the most famous is the Tete mague of Fenelon.
Pastoral Romance.—All through the middle ages, the fame of Virgil kept up a certain interest in compositions devoted to the delineation of rustic or shepherd life. We even find in the poems of the troubadours several specimens of the erotic pastoral; and the Ameto of Boccaccio furnishes us with a prose illustration of the same. But it was after the revival of letters that this branch of fiction, so essentially classical, was most assidu ously cultivated by men of scholarly genius; and though their works have not retained the popularity they originally enjoyed, they are still interesting and valuable from an historical point of view, and abound in descriptive passages of great beauty and sweet ness. The pastoral life which they portray, however, never existed either in Greece or elsewhere. Their shepherds and shepherdesses are as unreal and unhistorical beings as the knights of mediaeval romance. The first important work of the kind' is the Arcadia of Sannazzero, written in Italian about the end of the 15th century. It NV followed by the Diana of Moutemayor, written in Spanish, about the middle of the 16th c., several of the episodes of which are borrowed from the Italian novelists; while Shakespeare has in turn directly taken from it the plot of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, copying occasionally the very language, as well as some of the most amusing incidents in his .‘3fidsunoney. Night's Dream. The Diana was imitated in French by Vonore d'Urfe, whose Astree (1610-251 was for along while held in the highest esteem, and is really, in spite of its tediousness, a work of greet learning and considerable merit. Twenty years before the appearance of Astree, sir Philip Sidney wrote and published his Arcadia, as tiresome, and in substance as unreal, as any production of the same school. but in stateliness and melody of language, in luxury of fancy, in nobility and purity of sentiment, far exceeding them all.
Heroic Romance owed its origin partly to the immediate antecedent pastoral romance partly to an increased acquaintance with classic history, produced by the translation of such books as Plutarch's Lives, and partly to the interest excited in the Moors of Gra nada by a splendid romance in Spanish (professing, however, to be a history) entitled The Dissensions of the Zegris and the Abencerrages, and was printed at Alcala in 1604, and which soon became extremely popular,. especially in France. It was in the latter country alone that the Romans de Longue Haleine (Long-winded Romances), as they have been happily nicknamed, were cultivated. The first of this heavy series was the Polexaruire of Gomberville, published in 1632, in which the influence of the early Greek romances is visible.. His successor,.Calprenede, the hest of a bad lot, wrote Cleopatra, Cassandra, and'Pharaniond. But the most prolifid, and consequentlY the most intolera Me of the school, is Mme. de Scuderi, whose principal romances are Ibrahim, ou t'Illustre Bassa; Mlle; IRstoirc Romaine; Artamenes, ou le Grand Cyrus; and Almakide. The pompous dignity, the hyper-polite address, the dreadful dullness, and the hollow ceremonialism of these ridiculous performances, admirably (if unintentionally) mirror the features of French court-life during the time of the Grand The heroic romances did not long retain their meretricious reputation. Moliere, and still more, Boileau, in his satire Les lIgros de Roman, Dialogue, ridiculed them to death, and in consequence, Mine. de Scuderi had no successor.