Earl of Orrery Roger Boyle

“ For as I writ not a Romance, wherein Authors are wont to aim no higher, than to Delight the Delicate Readers, and Escape the Critical ones, by making their Composures Diverting and Regular; so I presum’d that to employ a more Useful, though less Fashionamble way of Writing, was allowable for Me, who ought to endeavour in such a piece as This, rather to propose Patterns of Vertue, than Models of Skill or Eloquence; and to think it more Successful, if the Readers shall upon perusing it, Imitate our excellent Martyrs Piety, than if they should only Applaud their History. ”

“ Wit and ability of mind do so shine in many Religious Discourses, that we cannot justly make that pretended defect an Excuse for our deferring of sober studies. Now God forbid that we should think his Gifts so imprudently thrown amongst men, that none should be able to get them that would use them to the adorning of that which most deserves it, Vertue; which, though by reason of its innate beauty it least needs any adventitious ornament, yet doth not scorn the light vaile of Romance, if it be of that fashion which I shall by and by describe. ”

“ I know that these who have devanced us in this imployment, will as our oldest brothers in time, have a double portion of fame bestowed upon them, and no wonder, seing they had store both of expression and invention to make choice of, and if any of us use their expressions, albeit we were only debtor to our own invention for them, yet we should be thought to plagiarize: wherefore he who writes now, should read what hath been written formerly; not to the intent that he may borrow, but least he should borrow any thing that is theirs. ”

“ But so leave such Phanaticks in the bedlame of their own fancies, who should blush to trace in these paths, which the famous Sidney, Scuderie, Barkley, and Broghill hath beaten for them, besides thousands of Ancients, and Moderns Ecclesiasticks, and Laicks, Spaniards, French, and Italians, to remunerat whose endeavours, fame hath Wreathed Garlands (to betemple their ingenious and ingenuous heads) which shall never fade whilest Learning flourishes. ”

“ But without inquiry, whether it be not our Interest, or our Envy, that Makes Women what we are wont to decry them for Being; I shall not scruple to own, that I have sometimes had the honour to converse with Ladys, that convinc’d me, That, to attain to a great proficiency in Knowledge, ’tis not necessary to be a Doctor of Divinity, or so much as a Man, since they discours’d of Divine things, with no less Wit than Piety. ”

“ It is an ungratefull folly and a pride to be laugh’d at, when men are unwilling that others should endeavour to further their Good, because they gave them not leave to prescribe them the way for doing of it: but they should consider, that there may be such in the world which understand that which themselves do not, and are delighted with such things as they contemn. ”

“ Fancy is not uselesse, and may as lawfully be gratified with excellent forms of Invention, as the Eye may entertain it self with the Beauty of well-plac’d Colours, or the Sense of Smelling please it self with the odours of a delicious Rose. ”

“ And I shall not scruple to own, that I, who value time above most other things, did not think it worth the expence of mine, to give my self the trouble of Writing a Book, only to give others a Divertisement in Reading it. And whilst I was Conversing with such Excellent Company, as our noble Martyrs, and Meditating on such Serious Subjects, as are Death, and the Worth of that Heavenly Religion for whose sake They despis’d It ”

“ For, since the best eyed fancy, cannot observe any traite in your peerless faces, wherein nature hath not prodigalled her charmes; so perfection were imprudent, and so no perfection, if it palaced not it self in such accomplisht creatures. And if there be any Orthodox maxime in Phisognomy, we may conclude, that such excellent faces are assorted with excellent souls: Providence being like these prudent Artists, who bestow the choisest cases only upon the richest pieces. ”

“ He never attained to that kind of writing himself in Aretina but the new style, for all that, was presently to be succinctly catalogued in all its essentials by the members of the Royal Society and was to provide the staple of the English novel when it ventured outside “the circumference of wit” and attained popularity in Defoe and Fielding.
Ingelo takes us at once into the narrower realm of traditional commonplace. “The whole Rhapsody of Homer’s Iliads and Odysseis,” he quotes, “beginning and End, is but a woman.” Even the chastest delights are dangerous to the “Dignity of Reasonable Souls.” ”

“ But some that mean well, and think they are not mistaken in the sense of their proposition, humbly desire that those Excellent Wits would lay their design of Romance deeper then the Shallows of Fancy; that so the Reader may not stick upon every Shelf of Fiction, and that the streams of Wit be made navigable for the Importation of such Wisdom as is necessary for our best life. The design to please is then as well accomplished; but not terminating in the surface of Recreation, it is improv’d into a higher advantage of those nobler faculties which God hath given us. ”

“ How ravish’d upon the conceit of Beauties which owe themselves only to the paint which came out of the Poets Ink-pot? How are they taken with pleasure and sorrow for the good and bad success of the Romantick Lovers? They are apt also to draw to themselves or their friends such things as they read in far-fetch’d references: if the resemblances suite in some little points, they seem to do and suffer such things ”

“ For Reason is no such severe Mistresse as to detain us with Awe that is void of Love and Joy; but besides the solid Complacencies of Vertue, allows also the chearfull entertainments of Wit and Fancy. There are Books good store where Truths of greatest Importance are presented neither besmeared with loathsome Nonsence, nor blended with unprofitable Disputes, which adde nothing to Religion, but trouble and darknesse, and where Excellent sense and good words offer themselves in such lovely Embraces, that they are a perfect content to all beholders but such as cannot Fancy, Understand and Love. ”

“ Nor is it any wonder, that they should think That Religion worth Studying, that they thought worth Dying for. I will not here examine, whether the Ignorance wont to be imputed to Women, be Their fault, or that of their Accusers, and whether it is any natural want of Capacity, or rather want of Instruction, that keeps most of them from Knowledge, though This regards not Sexes. ”

“ I answer, that such Discourses indeed were somewhat strange, if they were ascrib’d to a young Gallant, and a younger Lady, of Our degenerate Times; wherein so many Persons of that sort, make Diversion their grand Business; and, having as little Leisure as Concern to mind any thing, but their Pleasures and petty Interests, think it their Priviledge to know little of Religion, and leave to meaner People the study of things Serious and Useful. ”

“ So these who have seen a Philoclea, or Cleopatra, depenciled by the curious wits of Sidney, and Scuderie, will hardly be invassalled by the (to them scarce approaching) treats of these, whom this age garlands for admired beauties. Others forsooth accuse them, for robbing us of our precious time; but this reproach is ill founded; for if the Romance be abject, none will trifle away their time in reading it, except these who would mispend it however, and if they be excellent, then time is rather spent then mispent in leafing them over. ”

“ For some such reason, I suppose, the great Sidney before his death charg’d his friend Sir Fulk Grevill, who had the onely Copy of his Arcadia, that he should never permit it to be made publick.
The other pieces, which fill up the intervalls of the story, and grace it with pleasing varieties, are commonly frivolous devices of wit in some contemptible matter, and serve but to some such slight purpose, as doth the writing of Verses in the form of an Egge or Hatchet, where the measures of words and sense are constrain’d to suite with the odde proportions of such figures. ”

“ Romance à la Scudéry was never indigenous in English soil. Even Roger Boyle had never succumbed wholeheartedly to its sophistications which explains why his book was so lamely sponsored by diffidence, dubiety and want of will. ”

“ As when there is no morall design of making men better, the Work is done but by the Halves, as we say: so if that lie under ground in such deep conceits as but few can dive into the bottom of them, their labour is so far only not lost, as that some who are more ingenious will take the pains to understand what they meant. ”

“ Those which govern not their life by this Principle, do either suffer themselves to be benum’d with Idleness, or abuse the activity of their Souls in some vain employment.
The first of these two out of their great love to do nothing, can make no better wish for themselves, then that they might sleep out the other half of their time; and it is rationall to do so, if his Rule were good for any thing, who said, He values his life at a just rate, who would be content to forgoe it for a Dream. ”

“ Divers of their admired Authors are so empty of true worth, that if the entire sense of their books were summ’d up, it would onely amount to some small matter as triviall as uselesse: And if most of them, whether Antient or Modern, were examined with a Judicious Eye, they would appear to be full of the grossest Indecorum’s of Invention, as odious misrepresentations of Divinity, unnaturall Descriptions of Humane Life, Improper and Prophane Allusions to Sacred Things, frequent and palpable Contradictions, Sottish stories, and in short, all the absurdities of wild Imagination. ”

“ It were a thing to be wondred at, that by many nothing is esteem’d witty, except Poetry and Romances, but that want of Judgement doth notoriously discover it self in those persons who are highly pleas’d with pittifull things. ”

“ Roger Boyle.
The stylistic aspect of the Romancer’s problem is well illustrated by the Apologie prefaced to his Aretina (1660) by Sir George Mackenzie. This is the critical exercise of a young man in search of a style. Sidney, Scudéry, Barkley and Broghill are his saints and patrons if only because they had shown a distaste for “things impracticable ... above the reach of man’s power” such as filled the pages of Amadis de Gaulle. But serious Romance (and Aretina is that) can “strain the christal streams of vertue from the puddle of interest” ”

“ Is there any more proper entertainment for it then the Conceit and Language of a well-form’d Romance? Many books, which pretend to declare better matters to us, do it so jejunely, that it is a work of more then ordinary patience to give them the reading; and we are put into a doubt, whether or no those who wrote them did intend any should make use of their Understandings in the perusall of them, or whether they were able to give that which others would expect as a reasonable satisfaction. ”

“ And seing one look darted from your irresistible eyes, is able to conquer, in a moment, these over whom neither reason, nor courage, could never raise their trophies; we may conclude that there is something in you, which nothing in man (who seigneurises over all other creatures, and who can pretend to nothing stronger then courage and reason) can ever equal. ”

“ But he is so unfit for others, that Plato desired they might not see him, ἱνα μη μυθους οιησοιντο γραφειν τον Ἡρωα, i.e. for fear they should think that the Hero wrote fables, which he had good reason to expect upon the perusall.
Besides this, as many others do, he hath so form’d the representations of Vertue and Vice, that it is hard to say, which is commended and which reproved; whil’st the Gods are frequently brought in practising Immoralities, he doth at least equall Vice to Vertue, and nourish that which he should eradicate. For, why should men endeavour to be better then their Gods? ”

“ The fourth style is where the cadence is sweet, and the epithets well adapted, without any other varnish whatsoever: and this is that style which is used at Court, and is paterned to us by eloquent Scuderie. I hear there is now a ridiculous caball of Ladies at Paris, who terme themselves the precious, and who paraphrase every thing they speak of, terming a mirrour, the conselour of beauty, and a chair, the commoditie of conversation, &c. ”

“ Such as do not like true happinesse, because it is a serious thing, have a reasonable Soul bestowed upon them in vain, and would have been better pleas’d if God had made them worse, and more content if God had not design’d them to so Noble an End. But those which like nothing except what goes in a plain Rode of talk, may as reasonably desire every body to spell, when they read. ”

“ I shall not here tell you in what Places I have intrench’t upon, or borrowed of Truth, since that might silence a Curiossity, the raising wherof is one of my cheefest ends in writeing this Booke. Neither shall I here endeavour to Apologize for Romances, for though I thinke I could say somthing for them, yet I am certaine I can say more against them, & so much, that had I bin of the same Minde when this Romance was first Designed, as I am now of, at the finishing of the Fourth Tome, I had never begun the First ”

“ He, like others, resorted to history for the balance of the parts and the establishment of vraisemblance in terms of what would address itself to the reader as representative and probable. These were now the commonplaces of the romancer’s art. In his Preface to Birinthea (1664) John Bulteel sets his face against those who “can relish no Romance that is not forced with Extravagant Impossibilities.” The tale, however told, should be limited to the scope of “that predominant faculty of the Soul, the Judgement.” ”