Note to the last Three Chapters.
Although the list of names mentioned here under the respective heads of poets, dramatists, and novelists is considerable, it is very far indeed from being exhaustive. It may, indeed, be said generally that it is only possible in this history, especially as we leave the invention of printing farther and farther behind, to mention those names which have left something like a memory behind them. The dramas and novels of the seventeenth century are extremely numerous, and have been but very partially explored. In regard to the poems there is an additional difficulty. It was a fashion of the time to collect such things in recueils—miscellaneous collections—in which the work of very large numbers of writers, who never published their poems separately or obtained after their own day any recognition as poets, is buried. Specimens, published here and there by the laborious editors of the greater classics in illustration of these latter, show that with leisure, opportunity, and critical discernment, this little-worked vein might be followed up not without advantage. But for such a purpose, as for the similar exploration of many other out-of-the-way corners of this vast literature, conditions are needed which are eminently 'the gift of fortune.' These remarks apply more or less to all the following chapters and books of this history. But they may find an appropriate place here, not merely because it is from this period onwards that they are most applicable, but because this special department of French literary history—the earlier seventeenth century—contains, perhaps, the greatest proportion of this wreckage of time as yet unrummaged and unsorted by posterity.
FOOTNOTES:
[242] Not du Tendre, as it is often erroneously cited in French and English works.
[243] The learned editor of Tallemant des Réaux calls her Marie Hortense. She also wrote verses and plays. There were many other romance writers of the period now forgotten, or remembered only for other things, such as the Abbé d'Aubignac.
[244] I cannot boast of an intimate or exhaustive acquaintance with the 'heroic' romances; but I have taken care to satisfy myself of the accuracy of the statements in the text.
[245] Ed. Dillaye. 2 vols. Paris, 1881.
[246] The full title is Histoire Comique des États de la Lune et du Soleil. Cyrano's works have been edited by P. L. Jacob. 2 vols. Paris, 1858.
[247] Ed. Colombey. Paris, 1877.
[248] Ed. Jannet. 2 vols. Paris, 1878.