The history of the English novel 1924

Front matter

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THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL

Preface

SOME of my very good-natured critics have complained that in the two preceding volumes of this supposed history of the English novel the novel itself has hardly yet appeared. It will not appear in its complete form till the next volume, which deals with the age of Richardson and Fielding. My tentative definition of the novel was “‘ The interpretation of human life by , means of fictitious narrative in prose.” So far, the - works of fiction or the studies of life and character considered have been defective either as stories or as interpretations of life. It was perhaps worth while to trace the process of natural selection by which a form evolved combining the two elements, a form that may be regarded as the type, even though fiction has developed since in many directions and become almost as protean as the kinds of literature out of which it grew.

In the preceding volume, and still more in the present,

| I feel myself under a peculiar obligation to Mr Esdaile, whose famous List of English Tales and Prose Romances

| printed before 1740 has been for long the chief map and guide to those who would explore the jungle of prose fiction during this period. The spade-work of

| Dr Secord and M. Dottin on Defoe and his pre-

\decessors has also been invaluable in helping to form an estimate of that great pioneer’s relative originality land indebtedness to others. Lastly I have to acknowedge the kindness of Dr F.S. Boas in looking through the proofs, and of Mr Egbert E. Smart in again undertaking the analytical index. It is only fair to mention that Dr Boas does not see eye to eye with me on several points; for instance, he thinks I have done less than justice to Grace Abounding. Mrs Boas, who is a devoted student of Bunyan, reminds me also that the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress displays acute insight into women: see, for example, the gathering of the neighbours before Christiana’s departure ; their very names—Mrs Know-nothing, Mrs Bats-eyes, Mrs Light-mind, etc. It contains, perhaps, the most poetical lines Bunyan ever wrote: ‘“‘ Who would true valour see . . .”——now often used as the sole hymn at a wedding. ‘Think also of the beautiful passage at the end where the pilgrims who have journeyed together await their final summons, each alone to pass the river. Each speaks in character to the last. ‘“‘ The words of Valiant-for-truth have, to my knowledge, impressed hearers of many types; and, of course, the passage about the sounding of the trumpets is among the mostquoted in our literature.” I quote her remarks without any serious dissent.

Fo aes

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE I. Tue Revivat or RoMANcE II II, THe Anti-RoMANCEs AND OTHER COUNTERBLASTS 38 III. Bunyan 50 IV. Mrs Beun anv some EncuisH Anti-RoMANCES 79 V. Tue Fottowers oF Mrs BEeun 107

VI. Tue EstTaBLiIsHMENT OF REALISM—DEFOE AND

““RoBINsoN CRUSOE” 3 130

Chapter I

In the seventeenth century novel-writing became a regular business, affording remuneration to a number of experienced hands. This was due to the steady multiplication of those who read, and also to a growing responsiveness between authors and readers. Booksellers and authors studied the public taste, instead of trying to lead it. The university wits and their humbler rivals in the previous age were not, of course, unmindful of the commercial side of their work; Greene, for instance, depended on the proceeds of his stories and miscellaneous pamphlets, probably more than on his productions for the stage, to keep body and soul together. But, at any rate, Greene made his own choice of the kind of writing with which his customers were to be regaled, whilst such arbitrary persons as Nashe and Dekker were more inclined to dictate what their admirers should like than wait to be told what was wanted. It was a season of effort in tried and untried directions. All sorts of fashions were started or brought in from abroad, not one of which was finally accepted as the very thing that all were in quest of, the most interesting way of picturing life or retailing a story. But in the course of the following century certain stock forms gradually came to be recognized, and large groups of readers began to look for a steady supply of their favourite article. Before the end of the seventeenth century, one of these forms began to be described as novels, in distinction from romances and such special varieties as the rogue-story. The modern novel, the more elastic and comprehensive form which was to absorb all the others, was still in the distance. Before that came into being, the training of readers was as necessary as the training of writers.

It

Advent of the professtonal novelist

Gradual emergence of the novel

as the favourite kind of fiction

In the meantime, there was not one reading public eagerly waiting for the next new novel, but a number of different publics, each wedded to a particular type of fiction. ‘Those high-bred enthusiasts who welcomed the French heroic romance were not more different from the vulgar who still cherished the old-fashioned romance of chivalry than from the wits who amused themselves with the Theophrastian character. The heroic romance was superseded by heroic drama, when the theatre reopened at the Restoration. But its high-flown sentiment and counterfeit sublimities went into the romance of real life, which speedily succeeded it. From this evolved, on the one hand, the domestic novel of sentiment, and on the other, the scandalous chronicle caparisoned as fiction. ‘There were still other kinds, as distinct as Ingelo and Bunyan’s religious allegories and the realistic tales of low life and rascality coarsely translated from Spanish or French. Readers of the one kind of book would look askance at readers of the other. Writers plodded on in the path they marked out for themselves at the outset, without much deviation, and without any sudden brilliant advance. They were not, however, merely marking time. These mere day-labourers had their share in the final establishment of the novel, since they habituated readers to look to fiction for their amusement and to expect to find in it some reflection of real life. We owe something to the predecessors of Shakespeare, and we are equally indebted to the obscure predecessors of Fielding. It was not merely that the predecessors showed the artist when he arrived how to start writing plays or novels, but also that they provided him with a public and a livelihood.?

1 A public that probably held most sorts of fiction in abhorrence, the serious Puritans addressed as ‘‘ Christian Readers,” gave a warm reception to a collection of admonitory xovelle by John Reynolds, The Triumphs of God's Revenge, against the crying, and execrable Sinne of Murther: or His Miraculous discoueries and seuere punishments thereof: In thirty seuerall Tragicall Histories (digested in Sixe Bookes) acted in diuers Countries beyond the Seas and neuer till now published (3 vols., 1621-1623). This was reprinted, amplified, and abridged in numerous editions down to 1688.

2 The disuse of the old custom of dedication to a wealthy patron is a roughand-ready index of the changed relations between author and public. With a ready market for his wares, the novelist became more dependent on the tastes of the average reader. .

At the time when the character-writers were compiling their Examples annotated catalogues of human virtues and vices, as related in 2 2/4er the preceding volume, the booksellers were well stocked with eee ; } still reprints of both the fiction that appealed to educated tastes pp rroyy and that which was adapted for popular consumption. The iz she

old-fashioned romance, now fallen into a very trite and dilapi- seven-

dated condition, was still in demand, not solely, perhaps, “@¢74 i LE) te Uy ERR

among the uneducated. New editions and crude imitations

kept the printers at work. But it was not for the common herd

that Sidney’s Arcadia reappeared in expensive folios every

few years, or that Underdowne’s version of Heliodorus was

frequently reprinted, until ousted from favour by the new

translation done by a Person of Quality. There was a brisk

demand for Lyly’s Euphues down to the sixteen-thirties, and

Lodge’s Rosalynde had a fair sale. On the other hand, the class

of readers who exhausted edition after edition of Deloney’s

histories of the clothiers and cordwainers, which they were

probably very far from recognizing as in any way fictitious,

were voracious consumers of romantic tales, such as Valentine

and Orson or Paris and Vienne, which had come down from

the Middle Ages in a form not less but more primitive than

when they first set out. Caxton’s Recwyell, considerably

altered and given a new title, The Auncient Historie of the

destruction of Troy, went on being reprinted until it was in

an eighteenth edition in 1738. Mandeville also kept up his

vogue, and so too with such chap-book stories as Dr Faustus

and even Fortunatus. Greene’s Pandosto, usually under the style

of Dorastus and Fawnia, and his Ciceronis Amor, were extra-

ordinarily popular well into the century after his death; but

the Groats-Worth, Never too Late, and other of his confessional

tracts, were also long in request.

The new productions that had most success as chap-books Survival were Richard Johnson’s Seven Champions of Christendom and from old History of Tom a Lincoln, and Emanuel Forde’s Parismus, Popular Ornatus and Artesia, and Montelion, Knight of the Oracle, 7°”? debased travesties of an already degenerate form of authentic romance. And Johnson and Forde had to stand the competition of numerous though less prolific authors. A glance at the contemporary registers shows such entries as these— The Herotcall Adventures of the Knight of the Sea (1600); The First and Second part of the History of the famous Evordanus Prince of Denmark ; with the strange adventures of Iago Prince of Saxonie (1605); The Moste famous and delightfull History of Urano otherwise called the Grene knighte and the moste bewtifull Princess Beroshia Daughter to the Kinge of Brittaine (1605) ; The most Famous and renowned Historie of that woorthie and illustrious knight Mervine, Sonne to that rare and excellent Mirror of Princely prowesse, Oger the Dane (1612). ‘The last-named, which was published the same year as Shelton’s translation of the first part of Don Quixote, was the second edition + of a tale that began its course as a chanson de geste. It was Englished from a late French prose redaction by that omnivorous scholar Gervase Markham, who also took it upon himself to invent an English Arcadia, Alluding his beginning from Sir Philip Sydnes ending (2 parts, 1607-1613).

These sequels or supplements to Sidney, by Sir William Alexander, Gervase Markham, Richard Beling, and divers others who had the assurance to detect and rectify what they regarded as defects,” together with Lady Mary Wroath’s Urania, written in hero-worship of her renowned kinsman, are further signs that romance was not yet a drug in the market. Readers of all classes craved for it still; and, if it had to contend in popular esteem with the plebeian literature mentioned, those who plumed themselves on having superior taste and refinement were soon entirely subjugated for a while by a renovated form of the time-worn genre that had come into vogue across the Channel, the heroic romance. When a French princess became queen of England, in 1625, it was not long before not merely French fashions and etiquette, but also the new style

1 First ed. licensed 1596.

2 « A young Gentlewoman,” Anne Weamys, wrote 4 Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia; Wherein is handled The Loves of Amphialus and Helena, Queen of Corinth, Prince Plangus and Erona (1651); and a novel, Almanzor and Almanzaida, was passed off as ‘¢ written by Sir Philip Sidney and found since his death amongst his papers” by a certain Mlle de la Roche Guilhem (1678), who was the author or translator of some half-dozen similar effusions. The chap-book versions of the Argalus and Parthenia episode were evidently much in demand in the last quarter of the century.

_— of French romance and the standards of breeding, speech, and conduct derived therefrom, were taken up as eagerly at the English Court as the poetry and the doctrines of chivalry and gallantry of the Provencal courts of love had been adopted by English knights and dames under the Angevins.

The pastoralism of Honoré d’Urfé, author of the Astrée, was of like extraction to that of Sidney’s Arcadia; but it was untainted with the exciting strain of heroic adventure which Sidney brought in from the Amadis and its kin. The direct ancestor, Montemayor’s Diana, had been put into French by Nicole Collin (1578), and there had already been an imitation in La Pyrenée et pastorale amoureuse of Belleforest (1571). These works appear to have fallen flat; there was as yet no public in France for the novel of sentiment. But three decades later, after the close of the religious wars, things had altered. The later years of the reign of Henry IV. saw a society idle, frivolous, eager for amusement, grouped around the Court. Here was fertile soil for the novel, and the seeds already sown began to germinate. The famous Asirée, the three parts of which completed by d’Urfé himself came out from 1607 to 1619, was only one, though beyond rivalry the chief, among a number of romances having the same ancestry and very similar features.1 It was a pastoral after the manner of Sanazzaro and Montemayor, in a French setting. The time is supposed to be the fifth century, and the scene the country of Forez, where the writer had spent his boyhood. In this peaceful region Queen Amasis rules over a kingdom of shepherds and shepherdesses, who are in reality persons of rank who have betaken themselves to the pastoral existence for the sake of its quietude and purity. :

D’Urfé’s is the usual motive: to depict a golden age of innocence and simplicity, in contrast with the vicious and jaded life of the modern world. The contrast is complete but for many curious mannerisms and ingrained affectations which it was not easy for a contemporary to eliminate. Obviously, the shepherds and shepherdesses are really denizens of polite society, and, as we are warned in the preface, none of your

1 Reynier, Gustave, Le Roman sentimental avant Astrée (1908).

French TOMANCE , ad’ Urfé's * Astrée”

needy villagers obliged to drive their flocks out to pasture for their living. They are, in truth, poets and idealists in masquerade, with a fluent command of amorous dialectic and neat versification, anxious to pay their way as settlers in Arcadia and to observe all the conventions. ‘The main occupation of that happy land is the making of love, according to the rules, and the rules have been thoroughly learned. In conversations long drawn out, in diffuse letters and sententious bzllets-doux, which were prized by d’Urfé’s readers as gems of the epistolary art, he lingers reverently over the most tenuous vibrations of sentiment, illustrating the moral casuistry of life and love by both example and precept: all this in an elegant, highly elaborate, seductive style, which quickly found numerous imitators.

The story is enormously long, with some seventy or eighty stories attached to the main thread. This in itself is compara tively simple, but it is entangled and protracted to suit the writer’s whim. The two lovers in chief, Céladon and Astrée, belong to families who are at enmity. Céladon has to disguise himself as a woman before he can declare his love, and then to avoid suspicion feigns that he is enamoured of all shepherdesses alike. Astrée cannot contain her jealousy, and treats him with disdain. From this situation all the rest of the action languidly flows. The story meanders on, interspersed with islets of verse in the traditional style, the one thing in which we can still take unfeigned pleasure being the descriptive stretches in which d’Urfé shows us the beloved scenery of Forez and the meads and groves watered by the Lignon.

Yet there is true feeling in the Astrée, if the form selected for its expression seems to us stilted and overwrought. D’Urfé was an idealist who depicted his vision of a world where all the women were beauteous and good, and all the men their adoring slaves, with his back deliberately turned to the ugly facts of life. Women in France were indeed beginning to acquire a new status, a new freedom, culture, and dignity; and d’Urfé, believing that such was their right, and that there was a high place and function for women in a reformed society, painted them as he would have them be, and as a result helped materially in their emancipation. Love in the Asérée is a lofty cult, a with an intricate and well-recognized ritual. ‘That cult was soon to be accepted in all its rigours by the coteries of superfine ladies and gentlemen who met in the Hotel de Rambouillet and other salons. Captivated by make-believe in fiction, they went on to make-believe in earnest. Life itself became an esoteric art, and the romances that reciprocally inspired and were inspired by it far outwent the Astrée in extravagance.

It was the same in this country as in France, though the movement had no native momentum here and was not very productive, except in translations. D’Urfé’s romance was published in English almost as fast as the successive instalments appeared in French. It was licensed as early as 1611, and an anonymous version of the first part came out in 1620 with the title The History of Astrea. ‘There was another translation, this time of the whole work, by “‘ A Person of Quality,” + in three folio volumes, entitled Astrea (1657-1658). Many amateurs of leisure, either single-handed or with professional assistance supplied by the booksellers, dealt with the still longer productions of d’Urfé’s followers, cutting them down to such a length as English readers would endure ; and the work seems to have been very poorly done, to judge by the strictures of Dorothy Osborne, and also of Mrs Lennox, who in the course of time was to deliver another of the death-strokes that always failed to finish off romance.”

But before going on to the later performances of the school established by d’Urfé, let us glance at a famous romance that belongs in strictness neither to French nor to English literature, though it has certain important links with both? The Argenis of John Barclay was written and first published in Latin, at

1 John Davies of Kidwelly, who soon became an old hand at the business. For a general account of the English translations of French romances, see Charlanne, L., L’Influence frangaise en Angleterre au 17¢ Siécle, 1906, pp. 387-404.

2 The Lady Arabella goes as mad as Don Quixote through making too good use of her father’s library, ‘‘ in which, unfortunately for her, were great store of romances, and what was still more unfortunate, not in the original French, but very bad translations ” (The Female Quixote, Bk. I., c. 1). See also Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, ed, E. A. Parry, pp. 160-161.

8 Professor Saintsbury declines to regard it as a French novel, and apparently was unable to get on with it very far (Hist. of French Novel, i. 152).

VOL. IlI.—-B

Translations

of i, ** Astrée

Barclay’s * Argenis”

Paris (1621),! with a dedication to Louis XIII., and was the work of a young man, half-Scottish, half-French, born in France, and a subject of the French king, though he spent some part of his life in England and Italy, and when it suited him claimed that he had been officially connected with the Court of James I. Barclay was a scholar and what would now be termed a publicist. He had already brought out a commentary on Statius, a collection of his own Latin poems, a survey of the

European peoples entitled Icon Animorum (1614),2 and among _ other works a satirical novel of a picaresque character, Euphormionis Lucinint Satyricon (1605-1607), in which, along with a great deal rather in the vein of Petronius than of the Spanish novelists, there are attacks on the Jesuits, philosophical disquisitions on matters of current interest, disguised portraits of living notabilities, and some allegorical treatment of contemporary politics. Barclay was on dangerous ground, and did not escape censure; nor did his Euphormionis Satyricit Apologia (1610) safely exonerate him. In the Argenis, which is a critical account of the affairs of France during the epoch of the religious wars, put into the oblique form of an heroic romance, he employed the allegorical machinery with more discretion, and, for reasons which he sets forth in a discourse by his mouthpiece, Nicopompus, in the middle of the book, instead of a preface at the beginning, he leaves the real incidence of many episodes, and even the identity of various actors in them, doubtful for those of his own time and still more difficult for later readers to make out with certainty.

After explaining to Antenorius and Hieroleander that he purposes to show the king how he hath done amiss, “‘ and what anchor the history of former times doth yet offer him in his now near shipwreck,” and hearkening to their remonstrances that he will only excite further animosity by unmasking the vices of factious men, Nicopompus unfolds the length and breadth of his scheme :

I will compile some stately fable, in manner of a history ; in it will I fold up strange events, and mingle together arms,

1 The Clavis (key to the countries and personages) was first provided in the edition of 1623. 2 Translated as The Mirrour of Mindes (1631).

marriages, bloodshed, mirth, with many and various successes. The readers will be delighted with the vanities there shown incident to mortal men; and I shall have them more willing to read me when they shall not find me severe or giving precepts. I will feed their minds with divers contemplations, and, as it were, with a map of places. Then will I with the show of danger stir up pity, fear, and horror ; and by and by cheer up all doubts, and graciously allay the tempests. Whom I please I will deliver, and whom I please give up to the Fates. I know the disposition of our countrymen: because I seem to tell them tales I shall have them all; they will love my book above any stage-play or spectacle on the theatre. So first, bringing them in love with the potion, I will after put in wholesome herbs; I will figure vices and virtues, and each of them shall have his reward. While they read, while they are affected with anger or favour, as it were against strangers, they shall meet with themselves, and find in the glass held before them the show and merit of their own fame. It will perchance make them ashamed longer to play those parts upon the stage of this life for which they must confess themselves justly taxed in a fable. And that they may not say they are traduced, no man’s character shall be simply set down: I shall find many things to conceal them which would not well agree with them if they were made known. For I, that bind not myself religiously to the writing of a true history, may take this liberty. So shall the vices, not the men, be struck; neither can any man take exceptions, but such as shall with a most shameful confession discover his own naughtiness. Besides, I will have here and there imaginary names, to signify several vices and virtues, so that he may be as much deceived, that would draw all in my writing, as he that would nothing, to the truth of any late or present passage of state.}

Disarmed by this reasoning, Antenorius withdraws his objections, and, ‘‘ merely rubbing his hands,” says :

Bestow, I pray you, this pains upon the commonwealth : you are bound to it, if you respect either yourself or this age. Such a book would wear out many ages, and make his author glorious to all posterity, besides the infinite profit in laying open and confounding the frauds and practices of the wicked, and arming honesty against them.?

1 Kingsmill Long’s translation, Lib, l., c, 14. 2 Ibid.

If such declarations were lost sight of, and the book accepted for what on the surface it appears to be, the Argenis would be read as another complicated romance of love and heroic adventure, of like architecture to that erected by Sidney on the Heliodorian plan, but more heavily didactic, with its sermons and reflections on the moral and political truths exemplified in the events, and especially on the excellence of monarchy in comparison with all other forms of government. ‘The action begins in Sicily, in the time-honoured way, with the arrival of a stranger, Archombrotus. His services are straightway invoked to assist Poliarchus, who is found valiantly defending himself against a band of robbers. Having discomfited these marauders, the pair converse at the house of Timoclea, the lady who had sent Archombrotus to the rescue, and he is then enlightened concerning the revolts and cabals that are disturbing the peace of the kingdom. No doubt, the robbers are from the camp of Lycogenes, a disaffected noble, who had plotted against the king, Meleander, refusing to recognize the succession of his daughter, the Princess Argenis, had aspired to her hand, and being refused had tried to carry her off by force. Lycogenes for the time being has been defeated, but Meleander is still too weak to extinguish opposition, and is about to enter into a league of peace with the factious nobles. To this accommodation Poliarchus, who is secretly beloved of Argenis, strenuously opposes himself.

Hard pressed by his enemies, Poliarchus takes refuge in a cavern, and is given out for dead. He makes his way, however, first to Italy, and then to Mauretania, the queen of which, Hyanisbe, is supposed to be the mother of Archombrotus, who is likewise a suitor for the hand of the fair Argenis, and is regarded favourably by her father. ‘There is also a fourth claimant, Radirobanes, king of Sardinia, who does not stick at fraud, but corrupts the princess’s waiting-maid, and even attempts abduction. Poliarchus frustrates all the conspiracies against the person of his lady, kills Radirobanes in single combat, and is relieved of rivalry on the part of Archombrotus through the discovery that this prince is Meleander’s son. All complications are eventually adjusted, and the royal lovers united.

This is the merest sketch of an enormously involved and enigmatical story, which becomes absolutely cryptic if much exactness is sought in the allegorical meanings. But Barclay expressly warned his readers that he was writing “‘ a fable like a history.” He provided a key, but left many of the doors ajar because there was nothing to conceal. At this time of day, it would be of little interest to identify the host of individuals glanced at in the princes and nobles and knights and ladies who are the minor characters. Enough to recognize the central personages and the main lines of the events figuratively narrated. Sicily is obviously intended to represent France, during the troublous times that ended with the concordat under Henry IV. This prince, apparently, had duality of representation, Archombrotus standing for his earlier character and career when he was prince of Béarn, and Poliarchus for the statesman and monarch of mature years. Meleander is Henry III., and his daughter Argenis personifies the succession to the throne of the Valois. All the French nobility implicated in the wars of the League, and a crowd of foreign potentates, politicians, and dignitaries of the Church, figure in appropriate roles. The names of some are anagrammatized: Ibburanes is Cardinal Barberini; Dunalbius, Cardinal Ubaldini; Dereficus Comes, Frederic, Count Palatine; and so on. Usinulca is Calvin, and his followers, the Hyperephanians, are of course the Huguenots. Mergania is Germany; Mauretania, the country over against Sicily, is manifestly England, with its queen, Hyanisbe, of limited prerogative, as clearly signifying Elizabeth. The rapacious and high-handed Radirobanes, king of Sardinia, must of course be Philip of Spain, and his disastrous expedition against Mauretania typifies the ill-starred Armada. The narrative should be read, however, as a metaphorical version of human history in general, with particular applications, but also with philosophical lessons of universal import.

The book had immediate and enormous vogue. Latin editions abounded, and it was translated into the leading European languages, affording plots for a number of dramas.!_ A translation

+ See Bibliography in the edition of the Argenis by K. F. Schmid (Berlin, 1904), and A. Collignon’s Notes historiques, littéraires et bibliographiques sur lV’ Argenis (Mem. de l’ Académie de Stanislas, Paris, 1902).

Key to the allegory

Translations and influence of ‘‘Ar= genis”

Ingelo’s “ Bentia volio and Urania”

by Ben Jonson was entered at Stationers’ Hall (1623); but the first English version printed was Kingsmill Long’s Barclay his Argenis, or, The Loves of Polyarchus and Argenis (1625), which was republished (1636) “with a Key Prefixed to unlock the whole Story.’ ‘There followed another translation, “upon his Majesty’s command,” the prose by Sir Robert le Grys and the verses by Thomas May, Esq. (1628) ; an Epitome of the History of Faire Argenis and Polyarchus, translated from a French abridgment by “‘a yong Gentlewoman,”’ Judith Man (1640); and The Phenix ; or, the History of Polyarchus and Argenis, translated by “‘ a Lady,” Clara Reeve, the novelist (1772).

Barclay’s was one of the influences that went to the shaping of the heroic romance, in the hands of Gomberville, La Calprenéde, and Mlle de Scudéry. In England, his method was followed, without much skill or intelligence, by the author of Nova Solyma, for instance, and by Richard Braithwaite, in his Panthalia: or the Royal Romance. A Discourse Stored with infinite variety in relation to State-Government (1659), in which Panthalia represents England recovered from the incendiaries by Charicles, who is of course Charles I]. Another imitator was the “ Honourable Person ”’ responsible for Cloria and Narcissus. A Delightfull and New Romance. Imbellished with divers Politicall Notions, and singular Remarks of Moderne Transactions (1653). Boyle was indebted to Barclay for some of the pomposities of his heroic romance Parthenissa. Mackenzie, in the stories interspersed in his Aretina, was under more obligations, although his allegorical reference to the political relations of England and Scotland is far from lucid.