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ssss1 The full title of d'Urfé's book is L'Astrée, où par plusieurs histoires et sous personnes de bergers et d'autres sont déduits les divers effects de l'Honneste Amitié. The date of publication has long been doubtful; it is now, apparently, established that the First Part, consisting of twelve books, was originally issued in 1607. Only one copy of this edition is known to exist. For a description of this unique volume, discovered by M. Edwin Trossat at Augsburg in 1869, see the Catalogue des livres du baron James de Rothschild (Paris, 1887), vol. ii. p. 197, no. 1527.

D'Urfé had been preceded by Nicolas de Montreux who, under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Olenix du Mont-Sacré, had published the five volumes entitled Les Bergeries de Juliette at Paris between 1585 and 1598: see Heinrich Koerting, Geschichte des französichen Romans im XVII. Jahrhundert (Oppeln und Leipzig), vol. i., pp. 66-68. But, though Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac declares (Œuvres complètes, Paris, 1665, vol. ii. p. 634) that Les Bergeries de Juliette was long preferred to Astrée by French provincials during the seventeenth century, Montreux found so little favour in Paris, that he abandoned pastoralism, and took to writing a history of the Turks instead: see Émile Roy, La Vie et les œuvres de Charles Sorel, sieur de Souvigny, 1602-1674 (Paris, 1891), pp. 115-116. It was d'Urfé who made the pastoral fashionable. Part of his immediate vogue may be attributed to the fact that his Euric, Galatée, Alcidon and Daphnide were supposed to represent Henri IV., Marguerite de Valois, the Duc de Bellegarde, and the Princesse de Conti. These dubious identifications, however, would not explain the enthusiasm of readers so different in taste and character, and so far apart in point of time, as St. François de Sales, Madame de Sévigné, Prévost (the author of Manon Lescaut), and Rousseau. There is no accounting for tastes, and perhaps Márquez Torres's polite Frenchman sincerely admired the Galatea; but indeed he had left a far better pastoral at home. Astrée greatly exceeds the Galatea in achievement, importance, and significance. M. Paul Morillot is within the mark in saying: "L'Astrée de d'Urfé est vraiment notre premier roman; elle est l'ancêtre, la source de tous les autres" (Le Roman en France, p. 1). He perhaps grants too much by his admission (p. 27) that "de nos jours L'Astrée est tout à fait oubliée." A useful Index de "L'Astrée" by Saint-Marc Girardin proves that the book has had passionate admirers down to our time: see the Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France (Paris, 1898), vol. v., pp. 458-483 and 629-646. The Index has an interesting prefatory note by M. Paul Bonnefon.