[330]. This is very interesting in connection with Sarrasin’s appearance in Chapelain’s dialogue and his own other work (v. supra, p. 260).
[331]. Scudéry thinks Four things necessary to Epic—the authority of History, the observance of received Religion, the exercise of Poetic Licence in Fiction, and the provision of Great Events. He is not uninteresting for his connection with his sister’s prose Romances in which he had some, if not much, share, and which he never forgets. Also, he clings to the Pléiade technicalities to some extent—kindly, however, explaining such words as Hune, Quille (which, he says rather quaintly, is un bois courbé qui est au plus bas d’un vaisseau), and Calfater. The Ibrahim preface, thirteen years earlier, exhibits the same obliging explanation of technicalities, and the same virtuous adherence to The Rules. “Provided,” he says, “that an Architect takes his measures right, he is assured of the beauty of his building,” which would seem to dissuade any one from advancing beyond the packing-case style of architecture. And he is sure that a Romance, like an Epic, should never go beyond one year in time.
[332]. De Poemate Epico. Paris, 4to, 1652.
[333]. Aliquantum furoris aspergi non negaverim.—De Poem. Ep., p. 269.
[334]. Neque, tamen si quis atra polleat bile ... continuo is in poetis censendus est, nisi accesserit disciplina, &c.—Ibid., post.
[335]. There is no absolutely complete and authentic edition—that of Desmaiseaux (frequently reprinted in the fifty years after the author’s death, from 3 vols. 4to at London, 1705, to 12 vols. 12mo at Paris, 1753) was at least authorised. The critical matter will be found well arranged in the 2nd vol. of Giraud’s Œuvres Mêlées de Saint-E. (3 vols., Paris, 1865). I may refer to an essay of mine, first published in the Fortnightly Review for July 1879, and reprinted in Miscellaneous Essays (2nd ed., London, 1895).
[336]. V. inf., p. [385 note].
[337]. Ed. Réveillé, Paris, 3 vols. (Paris and London, 1846).
[338]. Ed. cit., i. 340, 354; ii. 35, 321.
[339]. “Certainement il faut en louer Dieu,” says his editor, himself a doctor, with a kind of shudder, in reference to Patin’s pious gratitude for the recovery of a colleague whom he had bled thirty-two times. His exploits in the direction of ensuita purgare are too appalling to particularise.