Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/285

RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 273 d'Elide' reminds us of Orlando and Florizel and Touchstone and Shakespeare's woodland scenes. c Melicerte,' which treats of the ' tourments et tristesses de Tamour profonde/ is a pastoral full of grace and pathos ; while ' Les Amants Mag- nifiques ' contains a love-scene of great beauty. Eriphile, a princess, is in love with Sostrate, c born in a rank less high than his desires ' ; but she can- not permit herself the misalliance, her rank and her position forbid it. Therefore she determines to sacrifice her happiness noblesse oblige but, first, with what seems an unnecessary refinement of cruelty, she confesses to Sostrate that his love is returned. c Soyez sur, Sostrate, que, si j 'avals pu tre maitresse de moi, ou j'aurais etc a vous, ou je n'aurais etc a personne. Voila, Sostrate, ce que j 'avals a vous dire ; voila ce que j'ai cru devoir a votre merite, et la consolation que ma tendresse peut donner a votre flamme.' It is a pity that the author gives so much of other people's criticism and so little of his own, for where he speaks iin his own person, he shows himself an admirable critic. One of the essays in Abel Lefranc's c Grands ecrivains fra^ais de la Renaissance ' is entitled ' Le roman d'amour de Clement Marot,' and in it the author solves a literary and historical problem in revealing the identity of the lady whom Marot sang under the name of Anne. She was Anne d'Alen9on, who c par voie batarde ' was the niece of the author of the Heptameron. Lefranc has reconstituted the delightful love-story in most