Gomberville's "Polexander," complete-in six thousand pages, and Calprenède's "Cassandra," "the fam'd romance," are now before me. Greeks, Romans, Turks, Parthians, Scythians, Babylonians are mingled together in a truly heroic structure of absurdity and anachronism. Artaxerxes appears on one page, the queen of the Amazons on the next, then the king of Lacedæmon, Alexander the Great, even a prince of Mexico, and comparatively private persons beyond computation. This crowd of names represent personages who imitate the deeds of chivalry, and converse in the affected style of the French court, while their ancient bosoms are distracted by a pure, all-absorbing, and never-dying love as foreign to their nature as to that of the readers of heroic romance. That this species of fiction should have met with any success, is largely due to the circumstance, that under the disguise of Greek warriors or Parthian princesses, there were really described contemporary beauties and courtiers, who fondly believed that they had attained, through the genius of Calprenède and Scudéri, an enviable immortality. Unhappily for them, the characters of heroic romance have found in that endless desert of phraseology at once their birthplace and their tomb.
The works of Gomberville, Calprenède, and Scudéri, although little adapted to the English taste, shared the favor which was extended to every thing French, and were both translated and imitated. The "Eliana," published in 1661; although a _bona-fide_ imitation, would have served much better as a caricature. To the absurdity of incident is added an absurdity of language which gives the book almost a comic aspect. The beauty of flowers growing in the fields is disguised under the statement that Flora "spreads her fragrant mantle on the superficies of the earth, and bespangles the verdant grass with her beauteous adornments." A lover "enters a grove free from the frequentations of any besides the ranging beasts 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 Cæsar'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.
