"'Hast thou not seen it, marquis? Oh! on my soul I think it very funny, and I am no fool in those matters. I know the canons of perfection and Corneille reads me all that he writes.'
"Thereupon he gave me a summary of the piece informing me, scene after scene, of what was about to happen; and when we came to any lines which he knew by heart, he recited them aloud before the actor could say them. It was in vain for me to resist; he continued his recitations, and towards the end rose a good while before the rest. For those fashionable fellows, in order to behave gallantly, especially avoid to listen to the conclusion."[309]
Grobianism and the picaresque novel, long survived both Nash and Dekker. English, Spanish, and French rogues, invented or imitated, swarmed in the English literature of the seventeenth century, without, however, in any case reaching the level attained by "Jack Wilton." Both kinds of writing had to wait for the time of Swift and Defoe to reach their highest point. Defoe has left the best examples of the picaresque tale extant in English literature, and Swift revived Grobianism with unparalleled excellence in his "Directions to Servants" and his "Complete Collection of genteel and ingenious conversation, according to the most polite mode and method now used at court and in the best companies of England."[310]
As for the "Quinze joyes," turned also into English by Dekker, its popularity was equally great in England; a new and different translation was published in the seventeenth century and had several editions. It was prefaced with a note "to the Reader," in which the satirical aims of the author in this study of woman's foibles is accentuated by a tone of pretended praise, savouring of Grobianism and anticipating the sort of ridicule which was to be relished by Pope and the critics of Queen Anne's time. "This treatise ... will at least shake, if not totally explode, that common opinion, viz., that women are the worst piece of the Hexameron creation.... This is the composition of some amorous person, who, animated with the same spirit and affection as I am, hath undertaken, and judged it his duty too, to satisfie you, and he hopes so far as to work upon you a persuasion that the modesty, bashfulness, debonaireté and civility, together with all qualifications that adorn and beautifie the soul, are as exemplarily eminent in women of this age as ever they were in any of the former; and instruct you to set a value on their actions as the best creatures in the worst of times, whose vertue must needs shine with the greater lustre, being subject to the vain assaults and ineffectual temptations of men grown old, like the times, in wickednes, malice and revenge."[311]
capricornus.
FOOTNOTES:
[245] "The first and best part of Scoggins Iests ... being a preservative against melancholy, gathered by Andrew Boord," London, 1626, 8vo. Many of the jests, tricks, and pranks recounted here are to be found in other collections of such anecdotes, English as well as foreign. For example, the coarse story explaining "how the French king had Scogin into his house of office, and shewed him the King of England's picture" appears in Rabelais, where however the two kings play exactly opposite parts. Andrew Borde died in 1549.
[246] One of the few passages which would raise a laugh even to-day is the rapturous speech with which good Basilius greets the morning after his "mistakes of a night": "Should fancy of marriage keep me from this paradise? or opinion of I know not what promise bind me from paying the right duties to nature and affection? O who would have thought there could have been such difference betwixt women? Be jealous no more O Gynecia, but yield to the preheminence of more excellent gifts," &c. (bk. iv. p. 410). See also the ridiculous fight between Clinias and Dametas pp. 276 et seq.; and a story told in verse, bk. iii. p. 390. Molière built his "Ecole des maris" upon a similar plot.
[247] "Arcadia," ed. of 1633, p. 619.