FRENCH ROMANCES AND SCARCE HISTORIES.

Mary Catherine des Jardins, famous for her romances, flourished in the XVIIth century. She was born at Alençon, a little town, whereof her father was provost. When she came to be about nineteen or twenty years old, she began to consider her small estate; and being poor, and having as much wit as ambition, she came to Paris with a design to make herself known, and to change her fortune. She was not altogether mistaken in this: having a great genius, she was quickly talked of, and people were ambitious to be acquainted with her. M. de Ville-Dieu, a gentleman well made, and in pretty good circumstances, was one of the first that knew this lady; he esteemed and loved her, and though she was not handsome, he married her. But by ill fortune he died some time after, and his widow retired for grief into a nunnery; but when she had a little recovered from her affliction, she left it, and married Mr de la Châte for her second husband, whom she buried also. Being sensibly touched with this new misfortune, she utterly renounced marriage, and resolved to spend the rest of her days in gallantry. She began to hearken to the love-discourses of the sparks, and answered them in verses and letters, which have a fine and delicate turn.

The first, or one of the first of her romances was intituled Alcidiane, or Alcidamie; it was to contain several volumes in 8vo. according to the custom of

that time. But she did not carry it on so far as she designed; and I have heard the reason of it was, because it was known, that she intended to represent under fictitious names, and with some disguises, the adventures of a great lady, who had under-matched herself. She was threatened with the resentment of those concerned, if she carried on the intrigue to the end of the work; whereupon she went no farther. But she did not bury her talent; on the contrary, having found out a new way of writing romances, she published a great many with very good success. She brought into fashion those little gallant novels, which quickly shew the good or ill success of a soft passion, and she put out of request those tedious and vast relations of heroical, warlike, and amorous adventures, which had brought so much profit to the printers of Cassandra, Cleopatra, Cyrus, Clelia, &c. The new taste she created still prevails; and though such books quickly lose the grace of novelty, yet the first romances that she composed upon this new model, are still read with pleasure; as her “Journal amoureux,” her “Annales Galantes,” her “Galanteries Grenadines,” and many others. She published in 1672, “Les Exilez de la Cour d’Auguste;” a romance which Madame de Sevigné thought very pretty. That which is intituled “Les Desordres de 1’Amour,” and another intituled “Portrait des Faiblesses humaines,” are not inferior to the former. It is an unhappy thing that Mdme des Jardins should have opened a way to a liberty, that is daily more and more abused; which is, to father our inventions and love-intrigues upon the greatest men of the later ages, and to mix them with matters of fact, that have some foundation in history. This mixture of truth and fiction which is spread in abundance of new books, spoils the taste of young people, and makes them unwilling to believe what is really credible. It is an inconvenience which daily gains ground by the liberty that is taken to publish the secret amours, the secret history, &c. of such and such lords famous in history. Booksellers and authors do all they can to make it believed that these secret histories have been taken from private manuscripts: they very well know, that love-intrigues, and such like adventures, please more when they are believed to be real, than when they are thought to be mere fables. Hence it is, that the new romances keep as far on as possible from the romantic way; but by this means true history is made extremely obscure; and I believe the civil powers will at last be forced to give these new romancers their option; either to write pure history, or pure romance; or at least to use crotchets to separate the one from the other, truth from fiction. What would Bayle say to the multiplication of books of a kindred species within the last half century, which indisputably pervert many youthful understandings, in respect to historical facts and characters. This interference of the civil power, however, would only make bad worse.—Ed. ³⁶ —Art. Des Jardins.