Ornatus and Artesia (1607?), on the other hand—­his second or third book—­strikes me as owing more to Heliodorus than to Montalvo, or Lobeira, or whoever was the author of the great romance of the last chivalric type.  There are more intricacies in it; the heroine plays a rather more important part; there is even something of a nearer approach to modern novel-ways in this production, which reappeared at “Grub Street near the Upper Pump” in the year 1650.  Ornatus sees his mistress asleep and in a kind of deshabille, employs a noble go-between, Adellena (a queer spelling of “Adelina” which may be intentional), is rejected with apparent indignation, of course; writes elaborate letters in vain, but overhears Artesia soliloquising confession of her love for him and disguises himself as a girl, Silvia.  Then the villain of the piece, Floretus, to obtain the love of this supposed Silvia, murders a person of distinction and plots to poison Artesia herself.  Ornatus-Silvia is banished:  and all sorts of adventures and disguises follow, entirely in the Greek style.  The book is not very long, extending only to signature R in a very small quarto.  Except that it is much less lively and considerably less “free,” it reminds one rather in type of Kynaston’s verse Leoline and Sydanis.  In fact the verse and prose romances of the time are very closely connected:  and Chamberlayne’s Pharonnida—­far the finest production of the English “heroic” school in prose, verse, or drama—­was, when the fancy for abridging set in, condensed into a tiny prose Eromena.  But Ornatus and Artesia, if more modern, more decent, and less extravagant than Parismus, is nothing like so interesting to read.  It is indeed quite possible that there is, if not in it, in its popularity, a set-back to the Arcadia itself, which had been directly followed in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania (1621), and to which (by the time of the edition noted) Charles I.’s admiration—­so indecently and ignobly referred to by Milton—­had given a fresh attraction for all good anti-Puritans.  That an anti-Puritan should be a romance-lover was almost a necessity.

When the French “heroics” began to appear it was only natural that they should be translated, and scarcely less so that they should be imitated in England.  For they were not far off the Arcadia pattern:  and they were a distinct and considerable effort to supply the appetite for fiction which has been dwelt upon.  But except for this, and for fashion’s sake, they did not contain much that would appeal to an English taste:  and it is a little significant that one great reader of them who is known to us—­Mrs. Pepys—­was a Frenchwoman.  Indeed, save for the very considerable “pastime” of a kind that they gave to a time, much of which required passing, it is difficult to understand their attraction for English readers.  Their interminable talk never (till perhaps very recently) was a thing to suit our nation:  and the “key”