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But the young cavaliers, distinguished by high descent and undoubted loyalty, attracted no more attention from Edith than the laws of courtesy peremptorily demanded; and she turned an indifferent ear to the compliments with which she was addressed, most of which were little the worse for the wear, though borrowed for the nonce from the laborious and long-winded romances of Calprenede and Scuderi, the mirrors in which the youth of that age delighted to dress themselves, ere Folly had thrown her ballast overboard, and cut down her vessels of the first-rate, such as the romances of Cyrus, Cleopatra, and others, into small craft, drawing as little water, or, to speak more plainly, consuming as little time as the little cockboat in which the gentle reader has deigned to embark.

She preserved the old romantic manner, a kind of corruption of the splendid Scudéry and Calprenède folly of the middle of the seventeenth century. All that distinguished her was her vehement exuberance and the emptiness of the field. Ann Lang was young, and instinctively attracted to the study of the passion of love. She must read something, and there was nothing but Eliza Haywood for her to read.

Scudery, Scarron, Prevost, Madame La Fayette and Calprenede were the chief sources of his information touching the life and manners, morals and gayeties of people who, as he supposed, stirred the surface of that resplendent and far-off ocean called society.

She says that they were "so disguised that I, who am their old acquaintance, hardly knew them." They had, moreover, changed their form. In France they had come out in an infinite number of small, manageable tomes. For instance, Calprenède published his Cléopatre in twenty-three volumes; but the English Cleopatra is all contained in one monstrous elephant folio.

The weather is frightful; she is occupied a good deal in reading the romances of La Calprenede and the Grand Cyrus, as well as the Ethics of Nicole. "For four days it has been one continuous tempest; all our walks are drowned; there is no getting out any more.

Dryden translated Satires 1, 3, 6, 10, and 16 of Juvenal, and the whole of Persius. His Essay on Satire was prefixed. 'Cassandra' and 'Cleopatra' were romances from the French of Gautier de Costes, Seigneur de la Calprenede, who died in 1663. He published 'Cassandra' in 10 volumes in 1642, 'Cleopatra' in 12 volumes in 1656, besides other romances.

Following upon the "great sword-thrusts" of La Calprenede or Mdlle. de Scudery, this delicate, elegant, and virtuous tale, with its pure and refined style, enchanted the court, which recognized itself at its best, and painted under its brightest aspect; it was farewell forever to the "Pays de Tendre."

The custom was to publish these romances a volume at a time. A pretty and rich widow smitten with the 'Cleopatra' while it was appearing, married La Calprenede upon condition that he finished it, and his promise to do so was formally inserted in the marriage contract. The English translations of these French Romances were always in folio.

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.

His favourite books were the antiquated romances of a Calprenede, and others of a similar stamp: from these he derived his extravagant and ill-connected plots. One of the means to which he everywhere has recourse, is the unconscious or intentional disguise of the principal characters under other names; the first example of which was given in the Heraclius.