[Sidenote: The _Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_.]
I am bound to say that in Sorel's other chief works of fiction, the _Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_, I find the same curious mixture of qualities which have made me more lenient than most critics to _Francion_. And I do not think it unfair to add that they also incline me still more to think that there was perhaps a little of the _Pereant qui ante nos_ feeling in Furetière's attack (_v. inf._ p. 288). Neither could possibly be called by any sane judge a good book, and both display the uncritical character,[250] the "pillar-to-postness," the marine-store and almost rubbish-heap promiscuity, of the more famous book. Like it, they are much too big.[251] But the _Berger Extravagant_, in applying (very early) the _Don Quixote_ method, as far as Sorel could manage it, to the _Astrée_, is sometimes amusing and by no means always unjust. _Polyandre_ is, in part, by no means unlike an awkward first draft of a _Roman Bourgeois_. The scene in the former, where Lysis--the Extravagant Shepherd and the Don Quixote of the piece,--making an all-night sitting over a poem in honour of his mistress Charité (the Dulcinea), disturbs the unfortunate Clarimond--a sort of "bachelor," the sensible man of the book, and a would-be reformer of Lysis--by constant demands for a rhyme[252] or an epithet, is not bad. The victim revenges himself by giving the most ludicrous words he can think of, which Lysis duly works in, and at last allows Clarimond to go to sleep. But he is quickly waked by the poet running about and shouting, "I've got it! I've found it. The finest _reprise_ [= refrain] ever made!" And in _Polyandre_ there is a sentence (not the only one by many) which not only gives a _point de repère_ of an interesting kind in itself, but marks the beginning of the "_farrago libelli_ moderni": "Ils ont des mets qu'ils nomment des _bisques_; je doute si c'est potage ou fricassée."
Here we have (1) Evidence that Sorel was a man of observation, and took an interest in really interesting things.
(2) A date for the appearance, or the coming into fashion, of an important dish.
(3) An instance of the furnishing of fiction with something more than conventional adventure on the one hand, and conventional harangues or descriptions on the other.