The which booke direct to the kyng
Alyfaundre, both in the werre and pees",
Lyke his request and royall commanding,
Fulle accomplishid by Ariftotiles.

Feeble of age.

Then follows a rubric "How Aristotile declareth to kynge "Alyfandre of the ftonys "." It was early tranflated into French profe, and printed in English, "The SECRET OF " ARISTOTYLE, with the GOVERNALE OF PRINCES and every "maner of estate, with rules for helth of body and foul, very

gode to teche children to rede English, newly translated "out of French, and emprented by Robert and William "Copland, 1528." This work will occur again under Occleve and Lidgate. There is also another forgery confecrated with the name of Aristotle, and often quoted by the aftrologers, which Gower might have ufed: it is DE REGIMINIBUS COELESTIBUS, which had been early translated from Arabic into Latin'.

Confidered in a general view, the CONFESSIO AMANTIS may be pronounced to be no unpleafing mifcellany of those shorter tales which delighted the readers of the middle age. Most of these are now forgotten, together with the voluminous chronicles in which they were recorded. The book which appears to have accommodated our author with the largest quantity of materials in this article, was probably a chronicle entitled PANTHEON, or MEMORIE SECULORUM,

" Peace. • According to.

P MSS. Bibl. Bodl. Laud. B. 24. K. 53. Part of this manufcript is printed by Afhmole, THEATR. CHEMIC. ut fupr. p. 397. See Julius Bartolocc. tom. i. Bibl. Rabbinic. p. 475. And Joann. a Lent, Theol. Judaic. p. 6.

a Mém, de Litt. tom. xvii. p. 737. 4-to. Octavo. A work called Ariftotle's PoLITIQUES, or DISCOURSES OF GOVERNMENT, from the French of Louis le Roy,

compiled in Latin, partly in profe and partly in verse, by Godfrey of Viterbo, a chaplain and notary to three German emperours, who died in the year 1190. It commences, according to the established practice of the hiftorians of this age, with the creation of the world, and is brought down to the year 1186. It was first printed at Bafil, in the year 1569". The learned Muratori has not scrupled to infert the five last fections of this univerfal history in the feventh tome of his writers on Italy". The subject of this work, to use the laborious compiler's own expreffions, is the whole Old and New Teftament; and all the emperours and kings, which have existed from the beginning of the world to his own times of whom the origin, end, names, and atchievements, are commemorated. The authors which our chronicler profeffes to have confulted for the gentile ftory, are only Jofephus, Dion Caffius, Strabo, Orofius, Hegefippus ', Suetonius, Solinus, and Julius Africanus: among which, not one of the purer Roman hiftorians occurs. Gower also seems to have used another chronicle written by the fame Godfrey, never printed, called SPECULUM REGUM, or the MIRROUR OF KINGS, which is almost as multifarious as the last; containing a genealogy of all the potentates, Trojan and German, from Noah's flood to the reign of the emperour Henry the fixth, according to the chronicles of the venerable Bede, Eufebius, and Ambrofius'. There are befides, two ancient

See fup. vol. i. p. 351. Notes, h. And Jacob. Quetif. i. p. 740.

"In folio. Again, among Scriptor. de Reb. Germanicis, by Piftorius. Francof. fol. 1584. And Hanov. 1613. Laftly in a new edit. of Piftorius's collection by Struvius, Ratisbon. 1726. fol. There is a chronicle, I believe fometimes confounded with Godfrey's PANTHEON, called the PANTALEONE, from the creation to the year 1162, about which time it was compiled by the Benedictine monks of Saint

collectors of marvellous and delectable occurrences to which our author is indebted, Caffiodorus and Ifidorus. These are mentioned as two of the chroniclers which Caxton ufed in compiling his CRONICLES OF ENGLAND'. Caffiodorus' wrote, at the command of the Gothic king Theodoric, a work named CHRONICON BREVE, commencing with our first parents, and deduced to the year 519, chiefly deduced from Eufebius's ecclefiaftic hiftory, the chronicles of Profper and Jerom, and Aurelius Victor's Origin of the Roman nation. An Italian translation by Lodovico Dolce was printed in 1561*. Ifidorus, called Hifpalenfis, cited by Davie and Chaucer, in the feventh century, framed from the fame author a CRONICON, from Adam to the time of the emperor Heraclius, first printed in the year 1477, and tranflated into Italian under the title of CRONICA D' ISIDORO, fo foon after as the year 1480'.

These comprehenfive fyftems of all facred and profane events, which in the middle ages multiplied to an excessive degree, fuperfeded the use of the claffics and other established authors, whose materials they gave in a commodious abridgement, and in whofe place, by felecting those stories only which fuited the taste of the times, they substituted a more agreeable kind of reading: nor was it by these means only, that they greatly contributed to retard the acquifition of those orna

Bale, apud Lewis's CAXTON, p. xvii. poft pref. And in the prologue to the FRUCTUS TEMPORUM, printed at St. Alban's in 1483, one of the authors is "Caffiodorus of the actys of emperours and "bifshoppys."

See CONFES, AMANT. lib. vii. f. 156. b. col. 1. And our author to king Henry, Urry's Ch. p. 542. v. 330.

It has often been printed. See OPERA Caffiodori, duobus tomis, Rothomag. 1679. fol.

• Compendio di Sefto Ruffo, con la CRONICA DI CASSIODORO, de Fatti de Romani, &c. In Venezia, per il Giolto, 1563. 4-to.

See fupr. vol. i. p. 230, Notes, u.

f Stampata nel Friuli. It is fometimes called Chronica DE SEX MUNDI ÆTATIBUS, IMAGO MUNDI, and ABBREVIATIO TEMPORUM. It was continued by Ifidorus Pacenfis from 610 to 754. This continuation was printed in 1634, fol. Pampelon. Under the title "Epitome Imperatorum "vel Arabum Ephemeridos una cum Hif"paniæ Chronico."

Ifidore has likewife left a hiftory or chronicle of the Goths, copied alfo by our author, from the year 176, to the death of king Sifebut in the year 628. It was early printed. See it in Grotius's COLLECTIO RERUM GOTHICARUM, pag. 707. Amst. 1655. 8-vo.

ments of style, and other arts of compofition, which an attention to the genuine models would have afforded, but by being written without any ideas of elegance, and in the most barbarous phraseology. Yet productive as they were of these and other inconvenient confequences, they were not without their use in the rude periods of literature. By gradually weaning the minds of readers from monkifh legends, they introduced a relish for real and rational history; and kindling an ardour of inquiring into the transactions of past ages, at length awakened a curiofity to obtain a more accurate and authentic knowledge of important events by fearching the original authors. Nor are they to be entirely neglected in modern and more polished ages. For, befides that they contain curious pictures of the credulity and ignorance of our ancestors, they frequently preferve facts transcribed from books which have not defcended to pofterity. It is extremely probable, that the plan on which they are all constructed, that of deducing a perpetual history from the creation to the writer's age, was partly taken from Ovid's Metamorphofes, and partly from the Bible.

In the mean time there are three hiftories of a less general nature, which Gower feems more immediately to have followed in fome of his tales. These are Colonna's Romance of Troy, the Romance of Sir Lancelot, and the GESTA ROMANORUM.

From Colonna's Romance, which he calls The Tale of Troie, The Boke of Troie, and fometimes The Cronike", he has taken

Of Palamedes and Nauplius, "The boke of Troie whofo rede." Lib. ii. fol. 52. b. col. 2. The ftory of Jafon and Medea, "whereof the tale in fpeciall is in the "boke of Troie writte." Lib. v. fol. 101. a. col. 2. Of the Syrens feen by Ulyffes, "which in the tale of Troie I finde." Lib. i. f. 10. b. col. 1. Of the eloquence of Ulyffes," As in the boke of Troie is "funde." Lib. vii. f. 150. a. col. 1. &c. &c. See fupr. vol. 1. p. 227.

In the ftory of the Theban chief Capaneus, "This knight as the CRONIKE "feine." Lib. 1. f. 18. b. col. 2. Of Achilles and Teucer, "In a CRONIQUE I "fynde thus." Lib. iii. fol. 62. a. col. 1. Of Peleus and Phocus, "As the CRONIQUE "feithe." Lib. iii. f. 61. b. col. 1. Of Ulyffes and Penelope, "In a CRONIQUE "I finde writte." Lib. iv. f. 63. b. col. 2. He mentions alfo the CRONIQUE for tales of other nations. In the CRONIQUE

all that relates to the Trojan and Grecian story, or, in Milton's language, THE TALE OF TROY DIVINE. This piece was first printed at Cologne in the year1477'. At Colonia an Italian translation appeared in the fame year, and one at Venice in 1481. It was tranflated into Italian fo early as 1324, by Philipp Ceffi a Florentine *. By fome writers it is called the British as well as the Trojan ftory'; and there are manuscripts in which it is entitled the history of Medea and Jafon". In most of the Italian tranflations it is called LA STORIA DELLA GUERRA DI TROJA. This history is repeatedly called the TROIE BOKE by Lydgate, who translated it into English verse".

As to the romance of fir Lancelot, our author, among others on the subject, refers to a volume of which he was the hero: perhaps that of Robert Borron, altered soon afterwards by Godefroy de Leigny, under the title of le ROMAN DE LA CHARETTE, and printed with additions at Paris by Antony Verard, in the year 1494.

as I finde, Cham was he which first the "letters fonde, and wrote in Hebrew "with his honde, of naturall philofophie." Lib. iv. fol. 76. a col. 1. For Darius's four queftions, Lib. vii. fol. 151. b. col. 1. For Perillus's brazen bull. f. &c. &c. See below.

In quarto. HISTORIA TROJANA, a Guidone de Columpna Meffanenfi Judice edita 1287. Impresa per Arnoldum Therburnem Colonia commorantem, 1477. Die penult. Nov. I am mistaken in what I have faid, fupr. vol. i. p. 126. There is another edition at Oxford by Rood, 1480, 4-to. Two at Strafburgh 1486, and 1489. fol. Ames calls him Columella. Hift. Print. P. 204.

* See Haym's Bibl. Italian. p. 35. edit. Venez. 1741. 4-to. I am not fure whether Haym's Italian tranflation in the year 1477 is not the Latin of that year. They are both in quarto, and by Arnoldo Terbone. A

Florence edition of the tranflation in 1610, quarto, is faid to be most scarce.

1 Sandius and Hallerwood, in their Supplement to Voffius's Latin Hiftorians, fuppofe Colonna's Trojan and British chronicle the fame. In Theodoric Engelhufen's CHRONICA CHRONICORUM, compiled about the year 1420, where the author fpeaks of Troy, he cites Colonna de Bello Trojano. In the Preface he mentions Colonna's CHRONICA BRITANNORUM. See Engelhufen's first edition, Helmft. 1671, 4-to. Or rather, Scriptor. Brunfvic. Leibnitii, tom. p. 977. See alfo Fabyan and other hiftorians.

m See fupr. vol. i. p. 138. Notes. It will occur again under Lydgate.

n Tragedies of Bochas, B. i. ch. xvi.. How the tranflatoure wrote a booke of the fiege of Troy, called TROYE BOKE. And ib. St. 7. 17. 20. edit. Wayland. fol. xxx.. b. xxxi.a. And in Lydg. DESTR, of Troy

For