Note 142 — Chapter VIII

M. Reynier, in the useful book so often quoted, has shown that, as one would expect, this influence is not absent from the smaller French love-novels which preceded the Astrée; indeed, as we saw, it is obvious, though in a form of more religiosity, as early as the Heptameron. But it was not till the seventeenth century in France, or till a little before it in some cases with us, that "Love in fantastic triumph sat" between the shadowing wings of sensual and intellectual passion.