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who wrote about the year 1400, in his enumeration of Berchorius's writings, fays nothing of this compilation".

Had other authentic evidences been wanting, we are fure of the age in which Berchorius flourished, from the circumstance of his being employed to translate Livy by John king of France, who acceded to the throne in the year 1350, and died in the year 1364. That Berchorius died, and probably an old man, in the year 1362, we learn from his epitaph in the monastery of faint Eloy at Paris, which is recited by Sweertius, and on other accounts deserves a place here.

HIC JACET VENERABILIS MAGNÆ PRO

FUNDÆQUE SCIENTIÆ,

ADMIRABILIS ET SUBTILIS ELOQUENTIÆ,
F. PETRUS BERCOTH,

PRIOR HUJUS PRIORATUS.

QUI FUIT ORIUNDUS DE VILLA S. PETRI
DE ITINERE

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The COSMOGRAPHIA abovementioned. i Of Livy.

k Sweertii EPITAPHIA Joco-feria. edit.. Colon. 1645. p. 158. It must not be dif fembled, that in the MORALISATION OF the hundred and forty-fifth chapter, a proverb

1

Berchorius was conftituted grammatical preceptor to the novices of the Benedictine Congregation, or monaftery, at Clugni, in the year 1340. At which time he drew up his Notes on the Profody, and his Commentary on Ovid, for the use of his fcholars. About the fame time, and with a view of rendering their exercises in Latinity more agreeable and easy by an entertaining Latin story-book, yet refoluble into leffons of religion, he probably compiled the GESTA: perpetually addreffing the application of every tale to his young audience, by the paternal and affectionate appellation of CARISSIMI". There was therefore time enough for the GESTA to become a fashionable book of tales, before Boccace published his DECAMERON. The action of the DECAMERON being fuppofed in 1348, the year of the great peftilence, we may fafely conjecture, that Boccace did not begin his work till after that period. An exact and ingenious critic has proved, that it was not finished till the year 1358 ".

I have just observed, that Berchorius probably compiled this work for the use of his grammatical pupils. Were there not many good reafons for that fuppofition, I fhould be induced to think, that it might have been intended as a book of stories for the purpose of preachers. I have already given instances, that it was antiently fashionable for preachers to enforce the several moral duties by applying fables, or exemplary narratives: and, in the present case, the perpetual recurrence of the address of CARISSIMI might be brought in favour of this hypothefis. But I will here fuggeft an additional reafon. Soon after the age of

verb is explained, vulgariter, in the German language. Fol. 69. a. col. 2. And in the hundred and forty-third chapter, a hunter has eight dogs who have German names. Fol. 67. a. col. 1. feq. 1 fufpect, nor is it improbable, that those German words were introduced by a German editor or printer. Mr. Tyrwhitt fuppofes, that we may reasonably conjecture one of our countrymen to have been the compiler, because three couplets of English verfes and fome English names,

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Berchorius, a fimilar collection of ftories, of the fame caft, was compiled, though not exactly in the fame form, professedly defigned for fermon writers, and by one who was himself an eminent preacher: for, rather before the year 1480, a Latin volume was printed in Germany, written by John Herolt a Dominican friar of Bafil, better known by the adopted and humble appellation of DISCIPULUS, and who flourished about the year 1418. It confifts of three parts. The firft is entitled "Incipiunt Ser"mones pernotabiles DISCIPULI de Sanctis per anni circu"lum." That is, a fet of Sermons on the Saints of the whole year. The second part, and with which I am now chiefly concerned, is a PROMPTUARY, or ample repository, of examples for compofing fermons and in the Prologue to this part the author fays, that faint Dominic always abundabat exemplis in his difcourses, and that he constantly practiced this popular mode of edification. This part contains a variety of little hiftories. Among others, are the following. Chaucer's Friar's tale. Ariftotle falling in love with a queen, who compels him to permit her to ride upon his back. The boy who was kept in a dark cave till he was twelve years of age; and who being carried abroad, and presented with many striking objects, preferred a woman to all he had feen". A boy educated in a defert is brought into a city, where he fees a woman whom he is taught to call a fine bird, under the name of a goofe and on his return into the desert, defires his fpiritual father to kill him a goofe for his dinner. These two laft ftories Boccace has worked into one. The old woman and her little dog. as we have seen, is in the GESTA ROMANORUM'. who will not fhoot at his father's dead body'. these as fpecimens of the collection. The third part contains

EXEMPL. lxvii. Sub litera, M. "De regina quæ equitavit Ariftotelem." He cites Jacobus de Vitriaco. [See fupr. p. xix.]

EXEMPL. xxiv. Sub Litera, L.

This,

The fon
I give

• Ibid. EXEMPL. xxiii. [See fupr. p. 1.] EXEMPL. xii. Sub. lit. V.

• CH. xxviii.

This is alfo in the GESTA, CH. xlv. -EXEMPL. viii. Lit. B.

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stories for fermon writers, confifting only of select miracles of the Virgin Mary. The firft of these is the tale of the chafte Roman emprefs, occurring in the Harleian manuscripts of the GESTA, and verfified by Occleve; yet with fome variation'. This third part is closed with these words, which also end the volume. 66 Explicit tabula Exemplorum in tractatulo de Exemplis gloriofe Virginis Marie contentorum." I quote from the first edition, which is a clumfy folio in a rude Gothic letter, in two volumes; and without pagings, fignatures, or initials. The place and year are also wanting; but it was certainly printed before 1480", and probably at Nuremburgh. The fame author alfo wrote a fet of fermons called Sermones de tempore ". In thefe I find * Alphonfus's ftory, which in the GESTA ROMANORUM is the tale of the two knights of Egypt and Baldach'; and, in Boccace's DECAMERON, the hiftory of TITO and GESIPPO: Parnell's HERMIT: and the apologue of the king's brother who had heard the trumpet of Death; both which laft are alfo in the GESTA". Such are the revolutions of tafte, and fo capricious the modes of composition, that a Latin homily-book of a German monk in the fifteenth century, should exhibit outlines of the tales of Boccace, Chaucer, and Parnell!

It may not be thought impertinent to close this discourse with a remark on the MORALISATIONS, fubjoined to the stories of the GESTA ROMANORUM. This was an age of vision and myftery and every work was believed to contain a double, or

See fupr. p. lxxxiii.

For the fecond edition is at Nuremburgh, 1482. fol. Others followed, before 1500.

The only edition I have feen, with the addition of the SERMONES DE SANCTIS, and the PROMPTUARIUM EXEMPLORUM abovementioned, was printed by M. Flaccius, Argentin. 1499. fol. But there. is an earlier edition. At the close of the laft Sermon, he tells us why he chofe to be ftyled DISCIPULUS. Becaufe, “non "fubtilia per modum MAGISTRI, fed fim"plicia per modum DISCIPULI, con

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fecondary, meaning. Nothing escaped this eccentric spirit of refinement and abstraction: and, together with the bible, as we have seen, not only the general hiftory of antient times was explained allegorically, but even the poetical fictions of the claffics were made to fignify the great truths of religion, with a degree of boldness, and a want of a discrimination, which in another age would have acquired the character of the most profane levity, if not of abfolute impiety, and can only be defended from the fimplicity of the state of knowledge which then prevailed.

Thus, God creating man of clay, animated with the vital principle of respiration,, was the ftory of Prometheus, who formed a man of fimilar materials, to which he communicated life by fire ftolen from heaven. Chrift twice born, of his father God and of his mother Mary, was prefigured by Bacchus, who was first born of Semele, and afterwards of Jupiter. And as Minerva fprung from the brain of Jupiter, fo Chrift proceeded from God without a mother. Chrift born of the Virgin Mary was expreffed in the fable of Danae shut within a tower, through the covering of which Jupiter defcended in a shower of gold, and begot Perfeus. Acteon, killed by his own hounds, was a type of the perfecution and death of our Saviour. The poet Lycophron relates, that Hercules in returning from the adventure of the Golden Fleece was shipwrecked; and that being devoured by a monstrous fish, he was difgorged alive on the shore after three days. Here was an obvious fymbol of Christ's refurrection. John Waleys, an English Francifcan of the thirteenth century, in his moral expofition of Ovid's Metamorphofes, affords many other inftances equally ridiculous; and who forgot that he was defcribing a more heterrogeneous chaos, than that which makes fo confpicuous a figure in his author's exordium, and which combines, amid the monstrous and indigested aggregate of its unnatural affociations,

Sine pondere habentia pondus".

< I have before mentioned Berchorius's OVID MORALISED.

METAM. L, i. 20.

At

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