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"But consider, brother," said the curate once more, "there never was any Felixmarte of Hircania in the world, nor any Cirongilio of Thrace, or any of the other knights of the same sort, that the books of chivalry talk of; the whole thing is the fabrication and invention of idle wits, devised by them for the purpose you describe of beguiling the time, as your reapers do when they read; for I swear to you in all seriousness there never were any such knights in the world, and no such exploits or nonsense ever happened anywhere."
Burney, the younger, supposed him capable of giving a Greek word for almost every English one. Romances were always a favourite kind of reading with him. Felixmarte of Hircania was his regular study during part of a summer which he spent in the country at the parsonage-house of Dr. Percy.
This countrie, as it is sene in Ptolomie, hath on the Northe, the sea named Hircanum, on the West Armenia, and Assiria, on the Southe Persie, and on theast Hircania and Parthia. Sauing that betwixte Parthia and it, there ronneth a mounteigne, that separateth their frontiers. The feactes that thei mooste exercise, are shooting and ridyng.
After all this, in An. 1562, I passed againe ouer the Caspian sea another way, and landed in Armenia, at a citie called Derbent, built by Alexander the great, and from thence trauelled through Media, Parthia, Hircania, into Persia to the court of the great Sophie called Shaw Tamasso, vnto whom I deliuered letters from the Queenes Maiestie, and remained in his court 8 moneths, and returning homeward, passed through diuers other countries.
From the description she gave me of your person, from the time, from the dromedary on which you were mounted, and from every other circumstance, I inferred that Zadig was the man who had fought for her. I doubted not but that you were at Memphis, and, therefore, resolved to repair thither. Beautiful Missouf, said I, thou art more handsome than I, and will please the Prince of Hircania much better.
"The author of that book," said the curate, "was the same that wrote 'The Garden of Flowers, and truly there is no deciding which of the two books is the more truthful, or, to put it better, the less lying; all I can say is, send this one into the yard for a swaggering fool." "This that follows is 'Florismarte of Hircania," said the barber.
By God your worship should read what I have read of Felixmarte of Hircania, how with one single backstroke he cleft five giants asunder through the middle as if they had been made of bean-pods like the little friars the children make; and another time he attacked a very great and powerful army, in which there were more than a million six hundred thousand soldiers, all armed from head to foot, and he routed them all as if they had been flocks of sheep.
The first that he opened he found to be "Don Cirongilio of Thrace," and the second "Don Felixmarte of Hircania," and the other the "History of the Great Captain Gonzalo Hernandez de Cordova, with the Life of Diego Garcia de Paredes." When the curate read the two first titles he looked over at the barber and said, "We want my friend's housekeeper and niece here now."
He next produced a young man who, being desperately in love with a lady whom he was going to marry, had yielded her up to his friend, whose passion for her had almost brought him to the brink of the grave, and at the same time had given him the lady's fortune. He afterwards produced a soldier who, in the wars of Hircania, had given a still more noble instance of generosity.
About the middle of the book he gives some account of the ideas of the Saracens concerning Christ; and then falls into a roaming description of various countries, obviously compiled without consideration of time or changes of people and names; deriving most of his materials from ancient authors, particularly from Pliny, and describing Mesopotamia, Chaldea, Albania, Hircania, Bactria, Iberia, and others, as if such had actually existed in the geography of the fourteenth century.
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