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And the Parson wrung his hands and began to shake like a dish of jelly in a thunder-storm. "Captain Audaine," Mr. Vanringham resumed, with more tranquillity, "you are correct. Clidamira and Parthenissa would never have fled into the night without leaving a note upon the pin-cushion. The folly I kindled in your wife's addled pate has proven my ruin. Remains to make the best of Hobson's choice."
I was called the cruel Parthenissa. I have broke many a window that has had verses to the cruel Parthenissa in it. Sophy, I was never so handsome as you, and yet I had something of you formerly. I am a little altered. Kingdoms and states, as Tully Cicero says in his epistles, undergo alterations, and so must the human form."
It was not thought proper that the lady should yield her hand until the gentleman had exhausted the resources of language, and had spent years of amorous labour on her conquest. When Roger Boyle, in 1654, published his novel of Parthenissa, in four volumes, Dorothy Osborne objected to the ease with which the hero succeeded; she complains "the ladies are all so kind they make no sport."
I am disputing again, though you told me my fault so plainly. I'll give it over, and tell you that Parthenissa is now my company. My brother sent it down, and I have almost read it. 'Tis handsome language; you would know it to be writ by a person of good quality though you were not told it; but, on the whole, I am not very much taken with it.
But it cannot be said to be much it is a little more interesting as a story than Parthenissa, and it is written in a most singular lingo not displaying the racy quaintness of Mackenzie's elder contemporary and fellow-loyalist Urquhart, but a sort of Scotified and modernised Euphuism rather terrible to peruse. A library is "a bibliotheck richly tapestried with books."
We find it advertised in Mercurius Politicus, 19th January 1654: "Parthenissa, that most famous romance, composed by the Lord Broghill, and dedicated to the Lady Northumberland." It is a romance of the style of Cléopâtre and Cyrus, to enjoy which in the nineteenth century would require a curious and acquired taste.
One is a young knight, and the other the exact counterpart of Parthenissa. At this apparition Artabanes is thrown into the greatest confusion.
It is remarkable that his lordship's family have been smatterers in wit and learning for three generations: his grandfather has left monuments of his good taste in several rhyming tragedies, and the romance of Parthenissa. People could easier forgive his being partial to his own silly works, as a common frailty, than the want of judgment in producing a piece that dishonoured his father's memory.
The nursery was quite a separate establishment; there was no mingling with the guests of royalty, who were only seen in excited peeps from the window, or when solemnly introduced to the presence chamber to pay their respects to the Prince. As to books, the only secular one that Anne saw while at Whitehall was an odd volume of Parthenissa.
I cannot say that I have read Parthenissa through: and I can say that I do not intend to do so. It is enough to have read Sainte Madeleine of the Ink-Desert herself, without reading bad imitations of her. Frank Churchill's, and probably a good deal more sincere in their conventional way, but pretty certainly less amusing.
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