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It is quite openly a picaresque novel: and imitated not merely from the Spanish originals but from Sorel's Francion, which had appeared in France some forty years before. Yet, if we compare this latter curious book with Head's we shall see how very far behind, even with forty years' advantage in time, was the country which, in the next century, was practically to create the modern novel.
Pasquale had made love to her from the very first minute of their acquaintance even while I was hunting for the L'Histoire Comique de Francion. He had met her many times unknown to me. They had corresponded, her letters being addressed to a little stationer's shop close by. She did not love him. Of that I have an absolute conviction.
Winstanley, p. 208, has informed us, that at the coming out of this first part, he was with him at the Three Cup tavern in Holborn drinking a glass of Rhenish, and made these verses upon him, What Gusman, Buscan, Francion, Rablais writ, I once applauded for most excellent wit; But reading thee, and thy rich fancy's store, I now condemn, what I admir'd before.
I knew Francion was there on the top shelves, and rather than leave it undiscovered, I would have spent the whole night in search. I suppose every one has a harmless lunacy. This is mine. I must have hunted for that book for twenty minutes, pulling out whole blocks of volumes and peering with lighted matches behind, until my hands were covered with dust.
He proved himself an adept in parody and satire, and so long as he contented himself with laughing at people like Charles Sorel, the author of Francion, who had no friends, the Academicians were calm and amused, But Furetière was not merely the author of that extremely amusing medley, Le Roman Bourgeois , which still holds its place in French literature as a minor classic, but he was also a real student of philology, and one of those who most ardently desired to see the settlement of the canon of French language.
Francion is not a work of genius: and it does not pretend to much more than the usual picaresque farrago of adventure, unmoral and sometimes rather cruel, but comic of a kind, strung together with little art in fable, and less in character. But the author is to some extent "cumbered about serving."
He chose to study classical models rather than nature or life, and his most formidable poem, merely a beginning of some five or six thousand verses on "the race of French kings, descended from Francion, a child of Hector and a Trojan by birth," ended prematurely on the death of Charles IX, but served as a model for a generation of imitators.
The Francion of Sorel and the Roman Bourgeois of Furetière the latter, published in 1666, of especial interest to students of the English novel had prepared the way for the exact opposite to the heroic romance; namely, the realistic story of every-day life. Bunyan and Richard Head, Mrs. Behn and Defoe each had marked a stage in the development of English fiction.
To stand on a chair and burn wax matches in order to find a particular book is ignominious and uncomfortable. The successive illumination of four wax matches did not shed itself upon L'Histoire Comique de Francion. If there is one thing that frets me more than another, it is not to be able to lay my hand upon a book.
He proceeded to relate a most scandalous, but highly amusing story. An amazing, incredible tale; but it seemed familiar. "That," said I, at last, "is incident for incident a scene out of L'Histoire Comique de Francion." "Never heard of it," said Pasquale, flashing. "It was the first French novel of manners published about 1620 and written by a man called Sorel.
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