Georges de Scudéry (1601-1667), the elder of the pair, was born at Havre, whither his father had moved from Provence, in 1601. He served in the army for some time, and, though in the vein of gasconading which was almost peculiar to him he no doubt exaggerated his services, there seems little doubt that he was a stout soldier. But he conceived a fancy for literature before he was thirty, and during the whole of the middle of the century he was one of the most characteristic figures of Paris. Despite his own merit, which was not inconsiderable, and his sister’s, which was more, he was unlucky in his suits for preferment. Indeed from some stories told by men not his friends he seems to have hurt his own chances by independence of spirit. He received, however, the governorship of the fortress of Notre Dame de la Garde near Marseilles in 1643, and in 1650 was elected to the Academy. Long before he had made himself conspicuous by a letter attacking Corneille’s Cid, which he addressed to that body. He was himself an industrious dramatist, L’Amour Tyrannique being the chief piece which (and that only partially) has escaped oblivion. His other most famous work was the epic of Alaric (1654). He lent his name to his sister’s first romances, but did little beyond correcting the proofs. His death occurred at Paris on 14th May 1667. Scudéry’s swashbuckler affectations (he terminates his introduction to the works of Théophile de Viaud by something like a challenge in form to any one who does not admit the supremacy of the deceased poet), the bombast of his style, and his various oddities have been rather exaggerated by literary gossip and tradition. Although probably not quite sane, he had some poetical power, a fervent love of literature, a high sense of honour and of friendship.

His sister Madeleine (1607-1701), born also at Havre in 1607, was a writer of much more ability and of a much better regulated character. She was very plain and had no fortune, but her abilities were great and she was very well educated. Establishing herself at Paris with her brother, she was at once admitted to the Rambouillet coterie, afterwards established a salon of her own under the title of the Société du Samedi, and for the last half of the 17th century, under the pseudonym of “Sapho” or her own name, was acknowledged as the first blue-stocking of France and of the world. Her celebrated novels, Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, Clélie, Ibrahim ou l'Illustre Bassa, Almahide, and others are known by quotation to every one, and were the delight of all Europe, including persons of the wit and sense of Madame de Sévigné. But for at least a century and a half they have lain unread, and their immense length has often been satirized even by persons well read in letters with the term “folio,” when in fact they were originally issued in batches of small octavos, sometimes (allowing for two parts to each volume) running to a score or so. Neither in conception nor in execution will they bear criticism as wholes. With classical or Oriental personages for nominal heroes and heroines, the whole language and action are taken from the fashionable ideas of the time, and the personages can be identified either really or colour-ably with Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s contemporaries. The interminable length of the stories is made out by endless conversations and, as far as incidents go, chiefly by successive abductions of the heroines, conceived and related in the most decorous spirit, for Mademoiselle de Scudéry is nothing if not decorous. Nevertheless, although the books can hardly now be read through, it is still possible to perceive their attraction for the wits, both male and female, of a time which certainly did not lack wit. In that early day of the novel prolixity did not repel. “Sapho” had really studied mankind in her contemporaries and knew how to analyse and describe their characters with fidelity and point. She was a real mistress of conversation, a thing quite new to the age at least as far as literature was concerned, and proportionately welcome. She could moralize—a favourite employment of the time— with sense and propriety, and the purely literary merits of the style which clothed the whole were considerable. Madeleine survived her brother more than thirty years (scandal says that she was not sorry to be relieved from his humours), and in her later days published numerous volumes of conversations (to a great extent extracted from her novels) and short moral writings. Dryden says that he had heard of an intention on her part to translate the Canterbury Tales, and it is not impossible. She never lost either her renown or her wits or her good sense, and died at Paris on 2d June 1701. It is unfortunate and rather surprising that no one has recently attempted an anthology from her immense work.