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ALES are the learning of a rude age. In the progrefs of letters, fpeculation and enquiry commence with refinement of manners. Literature becomes fentimental and difcurfive, in proportion as a people is polished: and men must be inftructed by facts, either real or imaginary, before they can apprehend the fubtleties of argument, and the force of reflection.

Vincent of Beauvais, a learned Dominican of France, who flourished in the thirteenth century, obferves in his MIRROR of HISTORY, that it was a practice of the preachers of his age, to rouse the indifference and relieve the languor of their hearers,. by quoting the fables of Efop: yet, at the fame time, he recommends a sparing and prudent application of these profane fancies in the difcuffion of facred fubjects". Among the Harleian

a SPECUL. HIST. Lib. iii. c. viii. fol. 31. b. edit. Ven. 1591.

VOL. III.

a

manuscripts

manuscripts in the British Museum we find a very antient collection of two hundred and fifteen stories, romantic, allegorical, religious, and legendary, which were evidently compiled by a profeffed preacher, for the use of monaftic focieties. Some of these appear to have been committed to writing from the recitals of bards and minstrels: others to have been invented and written

by troubadours and monks. In the year 1389, a grand system of divinity appeared at Paris, afterwards tranflated by Caxton under the title of the COURT OF SAPYENCE, which abounds with a multitude of hiftorical examples, parables, and apologues; and which the writer wifely fuppofes, to be much more likely to interest the attention and excite the devotion of the people, than the authority of fcience, and the parade of theology. In confequence of the expediency of this mode of of instruction, the Legends of the Saints were received into the ritual, and rehearsed in the courfe of public worship. worship. For religious romances were nearly allied to fongs of chivalry; and the fame grofs ignorance of the people, which in the early centuries of christianity created a neceffity of introducing the vifible pomp of theatrical ceremonies into the churches, was taught the duties of devotion, by being amufed with the achievements of spiritual knight-errantry, and impreffed with the examples of pious heroifm. In more cultivated periods, the DECAMERON of Boccace, and other books of that kind, ought to be confidered as the remnant of a fpecies of writing which was founded on the fimplicity of mankind, and was adapted to the exigencies of the infancy of fociety.

Many obfolete collections of this fort ftill remain, both printed and manufcript, containing narratives either fictitious or historical,

Of king and heroes old,

Such as the wife Demodocus once told

In folemn songs at king Alcinous' feast *.

MSS. HARL. 463. membran. fol.

Milton. AT A VACATION EXERCISE, &C.

Among

But among the antient ftory-books of this character, a Latin compilation entitled GESTA ROMANORUM feems to have been the favorite.

This piece has been before incidentally noticed: but as it operated powerfully on the general body of our old poetry, affording a variety of inventions not only to Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, but to their distant fucceffors, I have judged it of fufficient importance to be examined at large in a feparate differtation which has been defignedly referved for this place, for the purpose both of recapitulation and illustration, and of giving the reader a more commodious opportunity of surveying at leisure, from this intermediate point of view, and under one comprehenfive detail, a connected difplay of the materials and original fubjects of many of our past and future poets.

At

Indeed, in the times with which we are now about to be concerned, it seems to have been growing more into esteem. the commencement of typography, Wynkyn de Worde published this book in English. This tranflation wasre printed, by one Robinson, in 1577. And afterwards, of the fame tranflation there were fix impreffions before the year 1601 . There is d. an edition in black letter fo late as the year 1689. About the year 1596, an English verfion appeared of "Epitomes des cent "HISTOIRES TRAGIQUES, partie extraictes des ACTES DES "ROMAINS et autres, &c." From the popularity, or rather familiarity, of this work in the reign of queen Elisabeth, the title of GESTA GRAYORUM was affixed to the history of the acts of the Christmas Prince at Grays-inn, in 1594°. In Sir GILES GOOSECAP, an anonymous comedy, prefented by the Children of the Chapel in the year 1606, we have, “Then "for your lordship's quips and quick jefts, why GESTA ROMANORUM were nothing to them '." And in George Chapman's MAY-DAY, a comedy, printed at London in 1611, a man of the highest literary tafte for the pieces in vogue is cha

66

See fupr. vol. ii. p. 18. feq.

• Printed, or reprinted, in 1688. 4to.

a 2

4to.

f Lond. Printed for John Windet. 1606.

racterised,

racterised, "One that has read Marcus Aurelius, GESTA Ro"MANORUM, the Mirrour of Magiftrates, &c.-to be led by "the nose like a blind beare that has read nothing!" The critics and collectors in black-letter, I believe, could produce many other proofs.

The GESTA ROMANORUM were first printed without date, but as it is fuppofed before or about the year 1473, in folio, with this title, Incipiunt HISTORIE NOTABILES collecte ex GESTIS ROMANORUM et quibufdam aliis libris cum applicationibus corundem". This edition has one hundred and fifty-two chapters, or GESTS, and one hundred and feventeen leaves. It is in the Gothic letter, and in two columns. The first chapter is of king Pompey, and the last of prince, or king, Cleonicus. The initials are written in red and blue ink. This edition, flightly mutilated, is among bishop Tanner's printed books in the Bodleian library. The reverend and learned doctor Farmer, master of Emanuel college in Cambridge, has the second edition, as it feems, printed at Louvain, in quarto, the fame or the fubfequent year, by John de Westfalia, under the title, Ex GESTIS ROMANORUM HISTORIE NOTABILES de viciis virtutibusque tractantes cum applicationibus moralifatis et myfticis. And with this colophon, GESTA ROMANORUM cum quibufdam aliis HisTORIIS eifdem annexis ad MORALITATES dilucide redacta bic finem habent. Quæ, diligenter correctis aliorum viciis, impreffit Joannes de Weftfalia in alma Vniverfitate Louvanienfi. It has one hundred and eighty-one chapters *. That is, twenty-nine more than are contained in the former edition: the first of the additional chapters being the story of Antiochus, or the substance of the romance of APOLLONIUS of TYRE. The initials are in

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ferted in red ink'. Another followed foon afterwards, in quarto, Ex GESTIS ROMANORUM Hiftorie notabiles moralizatæ, per Girardum Lieu, GOUDE, 1480. The next edition, with the use of which I have been politely favoured by George Mason efquire, of Aldenham-Lodge in Hertfordshire, was printed in folio, and in the year 1488, with this title, GESTA RHOMANORUM cum Applicationibus moralifatis et mifticis. The colophon is, Ex GESTIS ROMANORUM cum pluribus applicatis Hiftoriis de virtutibus et viciis myftice ad intellectum transsumptis Recollectorii finis. Anno nre falutis MCCCCLXXX viij kalendas vero februarii xviij. A general, and alphabetical, table, are fubjoined. The book, which is printed in two columns, and in the Gothic character, abounding with abbreviations, contains ninety-three leaves. The initials are written or flourished in red and blue, and all the capitals in the body of the text are miniated with a pen. There were many other later editions". I must add, that the GESTA ROMANORUM were tranflated into Dutch, fo early as the year 1484. There is an old French verfion in the British Museum.

This work is compiled from the obfolete Latin chronicles of the later Roman or rather German ftory, heightened by romantic inventions, from Legends of the Saints, oriental apologues, and many of the shorter fictitious narratives which came into Europe with the Arabian literature, and were familiar in the ages of ignorance and imagination. The claffics are fometimes cited for authorities; but these are of the lower order, fuch as Valerius Maximus, Macrobius, Aulus Gallius, Seneca, Pliny, and Boethius. To every tale a MORALISATION is fubjoined, reducing it into a christian or moral leffon.

Most of the oriental apologues are taken from the CLERICALIS DISCIPLINA, or a latin Dialogue between an Arabian Philo

It has fignatures to K k,

For which fee fupr. vol. ii, p. 15. fopher

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