eat poifon. Sir John Maundeville's Travels, I believe, will afford other inftances.

CHAP. xii. A profligate prieft, in the reign of the emperor Otto, or Otho, walking in the fields, and neglecting to fay mass, is reformed by a vision of a comely old man.

CHAP. xiii. An emprefs having loft her husband, becomes fo doatingly fond of her only fon, then three years of age, as not to bear his abfence for a moment. They fleep together every night, and when he was eighteen years of age, the proves with child by him. She murthers the infant, and her left hand is immediately marked with four circles of blood. Her repentance is related, in confequence of a vision of the holy virgin.

This story is in the SPECULUM HISTORIALE of Vincent of Beauvais, who wrote about the year 1250 2.

CHAP. xiv. Under the reign of the emperor Dorotheus, a remarkable example of the filial piety of a young man, who redeems his father, a knight, from captivity.

CHAP. XV. Eufemian, a nobleman in the court of the emperor of Rome, is attended by three thousand fervants girt with golden belts, and cloathed in filken vestments. His house was crouded with pilgrims, orphans, and widows, for whom three tables were kept every day. He has a fon, Allexius; who quits his father's palace, and lives unknown seventeen years in a monastery in Syria. He then returns, and lives seventeen years undiscovered as a pilgrim in his father's family, where he fuffers many indignities from the fervants.

Allexius, or Alexis, was canonised. This story is taken from his Legend. In the metrical Lives of the Saints, his life is told in a fort of measure different from that of the reft, and not very common in the earlier stages of our poetry. It begins thus.

Lefteneth alle and herkeneth me,
Zonge and olde, bonde and fre,

2 Lib. vii. cap. 93. feq. f. 86. b. edit. Ven.

b.

b 2

See Caxton, GOLD. LEG. f. ccclxiii.

And

When Alexius returns home in disguise, and asks his father about his fon, the father's feelings are thus defcribed.

So fone fo he spake of his sone,
The guode man, as was his wone,
Gan to fike fore';

At his burial, many miracles are wrought on the fick.

With mochel fizt, and mochel fong,
That holy cors, hem alle among,

Bifchoppis to cherche bere.

The blinde come to håre fizt,
The croked gonne fone rizt*,

The lame for to go:
That dombe wer fonge' fpeeche,
Thez herede god the fothe leche ",
And that halwe also.

The day zede and drouz to nyzt,
No lenger dwelleꞌ they ne myzt,

To cherche they mofte wende;
The bellen they gonne to rynge,
The clerkes heze to fynge,
Everich in his ende '.

Tho the corfe to cherche com
Glad they wer everichon

That there ycure wer,

The pope and the emperour
By fore an auter of feynt Savour
Ther fette they the bere.

Aboute the bere was moche lizt
With proude palle was bedizt,
I beten al with golde '.

The hiftory of Saint Alexius is told entirely in the fame words in the GESTA ROMANORUM, and in the LEGENDA AUREA of Jacobus de Voragine', translated, through a French medium, by Caxton. This work of Jacobus does not confift

i Their.

k Strait.

I Found.

m The true phyfician, Heried. Bleffed.

Hallowed,

▸ Tarry.

• High.

At his feat in the choir.

• MSS. Coll. Trin. Oxon. Cod. 57. fupr. citat.

HYSTOR. lxxxix. f. clviii. edit. 1479. fol. And in Vincent of Beauvais, who quotes GESTA ALLEXII, SPECUL. HIST. Lib. xviii. cap. 43. feq. £. 241. b.

folely

folely of the legends of the faints, but is interspersed with multis aliis pulcherrimis et peregrinis hiftoriis, with many other most beautiful and strange hiftories.

CHAP. XVI. A Roman emperor in digging for the foundation of a new palace, finds a golden farcophagus, or coffin, inscribed with mysterious words and fentences. Which being explained, prove to be fo many moral leffons of inftruction for the emperor's future conduct.

CHAP. xvii. A poor man named Guido, engages to serve an emperor of Rome in fix feveral capacities, or employments. One of these services is, to fhew the best way to the holy land. Acquitting himself in all with fingular address and fidelity, he is made a knight, and loaded with riches.

CHAP. xviii. A knight named Julian is hunting a stag, who turns and says, "you will kill your father and mother." On this he went into a distant country, where he married a rich Lady of a castle. Julian's father and mother travelled into various lands to find their fon, and at length accidentally came to this castle, in his abfence; where telling their story to the lady, who had heard it from her husband, she discovered who they were, and gave them her own bed to fleep in. Early in the morning, while she was at mass in the chapel, her husband Julian unexpectedly returned; and entering his wife's chamber, perceived two perfons in the bed, whom he immediately flew with his fword, haftily fuppofing them to be his wife and her adulterer. At leaving the chamber, he met his wife coming from the chapel; and with great astonishment asked her, who the persons were fleeping in her bed? She answered, They are your parents, who have been seeking you fo long, and whom I "have honoured with a place in our own bed." Afterwards they founded a fumptuous hofpital for the accommodation of travellers, on the banks of a dangerous river.

This story is told in Caxton's GOLDEN LEGENDE ", and in

t In the Colophon.

Fol. 90. edit. 1493.

the

the metrical Lives of the Saints ". Hence Julian, or Saint Julian, was called hofpitator, or the gode herberjour; and the Pater Nofter became famous, which he used to say for the fouls of his father and mother whom he had thus unfortunately killed *. The peculiar excellencies of this prayer are difplayed by Boccace. Chaucer speaking of the hofpitable difpofition of his FRANKELEIN, fays,

Saint Julian he was in his own countre 2.

This history is, like the laft, related by our compiler, in the words of Julian's Legend, as it ftands in Jacobus de Voragine *. Bollandus has inferted Antoninus's account of this faint, which appears also to be literally the fame. It is told, yet not exactly in the fame words, by Vincent of Beauvais .

I take this opportunity of observing, that the Legends of the the Saints, fo frequently referred to in the GESTA ROMANORUM, often contain high ftrokes of fancy, both in the ftructure and decorations of the story. That they should abound in extravagant conceptions, may be partly accounted for, from the fuperftitious and vifionary caft of the writer: but the truth is, they derive this complexion from the east. Some were originally forged by monks of the Greek church, to whom the oriental fictions and mode of fabling were familiar. The more early of the Latin lives were carried over to Conftantinople, where they were tranflated into Greek with new embellishments of eastern imagination. These being returned into Europe, were translated into Latin, where they naturally fuperfeded the old Latin archetypes. Others of the Latin lives contracted this tincture, from being written after the Arabian literature became common in Europe. The following ideas in the Life of Saint Pelagian