2c


386  ROMANCES   OF  ROGUEKY

whose  daughter  he  has  designs.  Leonardo,
the  wicked  page,  given  the  task  of  winning  for
his  master  this  lady's  favor,  and  failing,  pre-
tends to  Ludovico  that  she  will  consent  to
anything,  provided  he.  first  furnish  her  with  a
husband,  who  is  promptly  provided  in  the  un-
conscious Mauricio.  After  Ludovico  and  Leo-
nardo in  Paris  have  led  a  dissolute  life,  the
count  returns  to  his  estate,  robs  a  church  of  its
treasure,  and  attempting  to  put  into  execution
his  plot  with  regard  to  the  bride  of  Mauricio,
discovers  the  perfidy  of  Leonardo,  whom  he
kills.  Then,  kidnapping  both  Mauricio  and
the  lady,  he  binds  the  husband  where  he  can
overlook  the  entertainment  prepared  for  his
bride ;  but,  heaven  fortunately  interfering,  the
villain  hears  himself  irresistibly  summoned,  and
on  the  very  spot  where  Mauricio  had  demanded
justice,  Ludovico  is  enveloped  in  a  black  cloud
and  vanishes.  This  mystical  climax  and  the
entire  story  were  unpicaresque  enough,  and  the
book  was  in  the  spirit  of  an  expanded  Italian
novella,  lacking  humor  and  imagination;  yet  it
indicated  an  endeavor  to  overpass  the  bounds  of
the  romance  of  roguery,  although  by  insisting
so  violently  upon   the   moral   obliquity  of  the


DECADENCE   OF  THE  PICARESQUE  NOVEL     387

anti-hero  it  made  him  a  monster  unreal  and
repugnant.  In  English  fiction  precisely  the
same  step  was  taken  in  Dr.  John  Moore's
Zeluco  of  1786,  and  in  that  case,  on  the  author's
own  confession,  the  moral  aim  was  responsible
for  the  exclusion  of  comedy  and  the  central
figure's  consequent  transformation  from  a  rogue
to  a  villain.  "  If  the  hero  of  a  romance,"  said
Dr.  Moore,  referring  to  his  own  novel  and
to  Smollett's  Ferdinand  Count  Fathom,  "is
described  devoid  of  principle,  and  perfidious,
the  more  detestable  he  is  made  in  all  other
respects,  the  better  will  the  work  serve  the  pur-
pose of  morality,"  ^  —  a  plan  fruitful  perhaps  in
edification,  but  barren  certainly  for  art.
