had an assignation, and he, to discharge a game debt, gives up the adventure to his friend Hazard.

The 10th tale is the Châtelaine de Vergy.

The 29th tale has a striking resemblance to the story of Theodosius and Constantia, whose loves and misfortunes have been immortalized by Addison in the Spectator, No. 164.1

The 30th coincides with the 35th of the 2d part of Bandello, and the plot of Walpole's "Mysterious Mother" (see above, vol. ii. p. 219.)

The 36th story concerning the President of Grenoble, which is taken from the 6th novel of the 3d decade of Cinthio, or the 47th of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, has suggested to the same dramatist that part of his Love's Cruelty, which turns on the concealment of Hippolito's intrigue with Clariana, by the contrivance of her husband.

The 38th which was originally the 72d tale of Morlini," is the story of a lady whose husband went frequently to a farm he had in the country. His wife suspecting the cause of his absence, sends provisions and all accommodations to the mistress for whose sake he went to the farm, in order to provide for the next visit, which has the effect of recalling the alienated affections of her husband. This story is in the MS. copy of the Varii Successi of Orologi, mentioned by Borromeo [p. 233, &c.]. The French and Italian tales agree in the most minute circumstances, even in the name of the place where the lady resided, which is Tours in both. This tale is related in a colloquy of Erasmus, entitled Uxor Meu↓íyaμos sive Conjugium. It also occurs in Albion's England, a poem, by William Warner, who was a celebrated writer in the reign of Queen Elizabeth: those stanzas, which contain the incident, have been extracted from that poetical epitome of British history, and published in Percy's "Relics," under the title of the Patient Countess [Ser. I. B. 3, No. 6].

45. La Servante Justifiée of Fontaine, is from the 45th novel of this collection. It was probably taken from the

1 Cf. Langhorne's "Correspondence of Theodosius and Constantia.” 2 This story does not agree with Morlini's 72d in the editions which I have been able to consult.

fabliau of the same Trouveur, who had obtained it from the East, as it corresponds with the story of the shopkeeper's wife [No. 9] in Nakshebi's Persian tales, known by the name of Tooti Nameh, or Tales of a Parrot.

There were few works of any celebrity, written in France in imitation of the tales of the Queen of Navarre. The stories in the Nouvelles Recreations ou Contes Nouveaux have been generally attributed to Bonaventure des Perriers, one of the domestics of that princess; but in the edition 1733, it is shown that they were written by Nicholas Denysot, a French painter. They are not so long as those of the Queen of Navarre, and consist for the most part in epigrammatic conclusions, brought about by a very short relation. It is amusing, however, to trace in them the rudiments of onr most ordinary jest books. The followiug story, which occnrs in the Nouvelles Recreations [vol. ii. 73], may be found in almost every production of the kind from the Facetiae of Hierocles,' to the last Encyclopædia of Wit. An honest man in Poictiers sent his two sons for their improvement to Paris. After some time they both fell sick; one died, and the survivor, in a letter to his father, said, 'This is to acquaint you that it is not I who am dead, but my brother William, though it be very true that I was worse than he.' It has been said that Porson once intended to publish Joe Miller with a commentary, in order to show that all his jests were derived originally from the Greek. This he could not have done, but they may be all easily traced to Greek authors, the Eastern Tales, or the French and Italian novels of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Among the French tales of the sixteenth century may be mentioned the Contes Amoureux of Jeanne Flore; Le Printemps de Jaques Yver, published in 1572; L'Eté de Benigne Poissenot, 1583, and Les Facetieuses Journées, of Gabriel Chapuis.2

The more serious and tragic relations of the Italians were diffused in France during the sixteenth century, by

1 Probably cap. 21 Hierocles, where a twin is asked whether it is he or his brother who is dead.-LIEB.

2 For an account of the sources whence Chapuis drew, see F. W. V. Schmidt's notes to Tales of Straparola, p. 331.

means of the well-known work of Belleforest,' and were imitated in the Histoires Tragiques of Rosset, one of whose stories [No. 5] is the foundation of the most celebrated drama of Ford, who has indeed chosen a revolting subject, yet has represented perhaps in too fascinating colours the loves of Giovanni and Annabella.

Les Histoires Prodigieuses of Boaistuau, published in 1561, seems to be the origin of such stories as appear in the Wonders of Nature, Marvellous Magazine, &c. We are assured upon the authority of Boethius and Saxo, that, in the Orkneys, wheat grows on the tops of the trees, and that the ripe fruits, when they fall to the water, are immediately changed to singing birds: 2 there are besides a good many relations of monstrous births. There is also the common story of a person who was drowned by mistaking the echo of his own cry, for the voice of another. Arriving on the bank of a river, he asked loudly, "s'il n'y avoit point de peril a passer ?Passez.-Est ce par ici ?-par ici."

3

Towards the close of the sixteenth, and beginning of the seventeenth century, a prodigious multitude of tales were written in Spain, in imitation of the Italian novels: "It would be too lengthy a task," says Lampillas (Saggio Storico del. let. Spagnuola, part ii. tom. 3, p. 195,)" to indicate the portentous number of Spanish stories published at that time, and translated into the most cultivated languages of Europe." These Spanish novels are generally more detailed in the incidents than their Italian models, and have also received very considerable modifications from the manners and customs of the country in which they were produced. Those compositions, which in Italy presented alternate pictures of savage revenge, licentious intrigue, and gross buffoonery, are characterized by a high romantic spirit of gallantry, and jealousy of family honour, but

1 For similar information on this writer see F. W. V. Schmidt's "Taschenbuch Deutscher Romanzen," p. 144.

2 Cf. Gervasius Tilb. iii. 123, de avibus ex arboribus nascentibus. 3 It will not be irrelevant to observe here that Boaistuau and Belleforest rendered Bandello's stories into French, Rosset did the same for several works of Cervantes, including part of Don Quixote, and Chapuis translated Ariosto's Rolando, and Amadis de Gaule and Primaleon.

above all, by constant nocturnal scuffles on the streets. The tales of Gerardo, the Novelas Exemplares of Cervantes, the Prodigios y Successos d'Amor of Montalvan, and the Novelas Amorosas of Camerino,1 all written towards the end of the sixteenth, or commencement of the seventeenth century, are scarcely less interesting than the French or Italian tales, in illustrating the manners of the people, the progress of fiction, and its transmission from the novelist to the dramatic poet. Beaumont and Fletcher have availed themselves as much of the novels of Gerardo and Cervantes, as of the tales of Cinthio or Bandello, and many of their most popular productions, as the Spanish

1 In Spain also short stories were more numerous and more successful during the latter part of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries, than any other form of prose fiction, to a great degree independent of tales of Oriental origin, which had been introduced two centuries previously by Juan Manuel, and little affected by Boccaccio and his followers, they borrowed rather from the longer romances, and are a most interesting reflex of contemporaneous society. A few repertories of such stories may be here named, such, for instance, as the El Inventario of Antonio de Villegas, 1561. This contained two stories, Absence and Solitude, and Narvaez. The latter is analysed by Ticknor, (iii. 151). The tale was taken bodily from Villegas, by Montemayor, and appears in the latter's Diana, Bk. iv. materially altered for the worse. Padilla wrought the story into a series of ballads, Lope de Vega founded on it his Remedy for Misfortune, and Cervantes introduced it into his Don Quixote, but it nowhere presents itself with such grace as in the simple tale of Villegas. Juan de Timoneda was a bookseller, and may be considered to have known, and laid himself out to please the popular taste. His earlier efforts were in verse. His Patrañuelo, or Storyteller, (1st part), was published in 1576, but was not continued. Its materials are drawn from widely different sources, a comprehensive list of which is given by Liebrecht (p. 500, etc.) These stories " tend to show what is proved in other ways, that such popular tales had long been a part of the intellectual amusements of a state of society little dependent on books; and after floating for centuries up and down Europe-borne by a general tradition, or by the minstrels and trouveurs-were about this period first reduced to writing, and then again passed onward from hand to hand, till they were embodied in some form that became permanent. What, therefore, the Novellieri had been doing in Italy for above two hundred years Timoneda now undertook to do for Spain." El Sobremesa y Alivio de Caminantes, also by Timoneda, is a collection of anecdotes and jests in the manner of Joe Miller. The work was printed in 1569 and probably earlier. Cervantes, Hidalgo, Suarez de Figueroa, Salas Barbadillo, a very popular writer of short fictions, Diego de Agreda y Vargas, Siñar y Verdugo, and others may be added. See Ticknor's "History of Spanish Literature, 1872,” vol. iii. chap. 36.

Curate, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Chances, Love's Pilgrimage, and Fair Maid of the Inn may be easily traced to a Spanish original. [See also Boccaccio, viii. 8, and Cinthio, vi. 6, other works of importance in this connection are noticed by Graesse, ii. 3, p. 247.] I fear, however, that to protract this investigation would be more curious than profitable, as enough has already been said to establish the rapid and constant progress of the stream of fiction, during the periods in which we are engaged, and its frequent transfusion from one channel of literature to another.

Indeed, I have perhaps already occupied the reader longer than at first may seem proper or justifiable, with the subject of Italian tales, and the imitations of them. But, besides their own intrinsic value, as pictures of morals and of manners, other circumstances contributed to lead me into this detail. In no other species of writing is the transmission of fable, and if I may say so, the commerce of literature, so distinctly marked. The larger works of fiction resemble those productions of a country which are consumed within itself, while tales, like the more delicate and precious articles of traffic, which are exported from their native soil, have gladdened and delighted every land. They are the ingredients from which Shakspeare, and other enchanters of his day, have distilled those magical drops which tend so much to sweeten the lot of humanity, by occasionally withdrawing the mind, from the cold and naked realities of life, to visionary scenes and visionary bliss.