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and consistency. They were created before the human race; and deities alone were their antagonists: but the story-tellers of the middle ages made a clumsy incorporation of their own fables with the relics of classical poetry, in order to embellish the giants whom they fashioned out of holy writ.

III. Classical literature was strangely corrupted, in fact it was scarcely known; and this state of things lasted till the age of Petrarca. It is a mistake to suppose that Dante was acquainted with Homer: before his time the Italians often quoted a Latin translation of the Iliad ascribed to one Pindar, a poet of Thebes. Forty years after the death of Dante, and not till then, Homer was really translated from the original by Leontius, a learned Calabrese, who made his translation at the suggestion of Boccaccio; and Petrarca, who did not understand the Greek language himself, induced the novelist to urge the accomplishment of the task. It is an error to suppose that Dante alludes to Homer in the following verses.

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'Di quel Signor de l'altissimo canto

Che sovra gli altri come aquila vola.'

If these lines are read attentively, and compared with the context, and if, at the same time, the reader takes care not to look at the commentators, it will be clear that the praises of Dante are to be applied only to Virgil. Daute employed a few words of Greek origin, which he found in the Latin poets. When his commentators adduce these vocables as proofs of his knowledge of Greek, they do their best to deceive the world; the contrary appears most plainly from his own confession: in quoting a passage from Aristotle in his Convito he acknowledges his difficulties; 'because,' as he says, the two Latin translations, which I use, contradict each other.' And in one of his songs he states in the plainest terms that he was wholly ignorant of the Greek language. The allusions which Dante makes to the Trojan war refer to events which are not related in the Iliad; and the history of the voyage of Ulysses in the twenty-sixth canto of the Inferno is wholly different from that contained in the Odyssey. Dante made use of the matter which he found in Virgil; he also consulted the apocryphal traditions of Guido delle Colonne, which served also as a text-book to Chaucer and Shakspeare. On this occasion the commentators of Shakspeare have not been more fortunate than their fellow illustrators of Dante. Dryden maintained that an Italian translation of Guido delle Colonne written by Lollius existed in England in the sixteenth century: Mr. Stevens triumphs over Dryden and contradicts him, and he assures us that Lollius was the historiographer of the duchy of Urbino. If we are not greatly mistaken, there never was an Italian historian of that name; it might almost

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be suspected that Mr. Stevens has confounded the Lollius of the sixteenth century with Lollius Urbicus the historian of the Emperor Severus. As to the opinion of Dryden, it is not supported by proofs, neither can it be contradicted by arguments: but we can state that a manuscript of the poem of Guido existed in England fifty years before Chaucer flourished. It is (or rather was) preserved in the archives of York Cathedral, and ends with these words :: Factum est præsens opus dominica incarnationis 1287. This colophon must be understood of the transcript; the original was finished at least fifteen years before, for it is dedicated to an archbishop of Salerno who died in 1272. If John Bonston, a contemporary of Chaucer, does not deceive us, Edward I. became acquainted with Guido at Messina, on his return from the Holy Land, and, appreciating the talents of the poet, he brought him over to England; and in this country Guido may have allowed a transcript to be made of his poem. We earnestly request the antiquaries (for it is solely to please them that we have entered into these details) to ascertain whether the manuscript be yet to be found in the Minster library. Our readers, who know how easily modern historians and travellers gain credit for veracity, on the strength of their own assertions, ought not to be surprized that the imposture of Guido succeeded in a less cultivated age. He said that Homer (whom he certainly never read) was a downright liar: that the true history of the Trojan war had been written by Dares the Phrygian (Hector's secretary), and Dictys Cretensis (the aidede-camp of Idomeneus), both of whom had been eye-witnesses thereof. Cornelius, the nephew of Sallust the historian, (Guido renders the name Nepos as indicating consanguinity,) translated Dictys and Dares into Latin; and he, Guido, having added many details hitherto unknown, offers to the world the genuine and authentic history of Troy.

The Greek Christians and the Italians hated each other most cordially during the Crusades. This antipathy may have induced Guido to dress himself in the Trojan uniform, for he calumniates the heroes of the camp of Agamemnon, and is warm in his praises of good King Prian and all his royal family. Religion is blended in all the fictions of the earlier ages as well as the romances of subsequent date. In Ariosto and Bojardo we are told that Ruggiero is lineally descended from Constantine, and Hector is placed at the head of the genealogy of the first Christian emperor. With respect to the works ascribed to Dares and Dictys, and other authors of this class, we do not think that they are monkish forgeries, but that the monks merely imitated the romances which appeared under the lower empire, and which were composed to gratify the vanity of the descendants of Constantine. The discussion of this question

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we willingly leave to the antiquaries, and shall content ourselves with pointing out the fragments of classical literature which found their way into the tales of the story-tellers..

The enchantments to which we alluded in a former paragraph were also combined with pagan literature and heathen customs. This delusion had not been kept alive by books; for human nature always seems to long after the society of supernatural beings. Doctrines and opinions which excite terror are carefully cherished by the multitude, and ignorance fosters and increases them. The Tempest bears a near affinity to the enchantments of Medea. Shakspeare, without consulting the Metamorphoses, might have availed himself of the traditions of the common people; and if he had borrowed directly from the classics, his auditors would not have been prepared to believe him. It is true that in romantic poetry, both the names and the accompaniments are changed, and we are ignorant of the etymology of the word fata (fairy). But if we compare the transformations of Proteus and of Vertumnus, and the palace of Thetis, and the island of Calypso, with the Gardens of Falerina and Alcina and Armida, no material difference is discoverable. In the loves of Aurora and Cephalus we discover the origin of the ideas entertained by the inhabitants of Messina and Reggio respecting the Fata Morgana; they suppose that the Fata, out of compliment to his young lover, produces the well-known aerial phænomenon seen in the summer over the straits which divide Italy from Sicily. A peasant of the Ionian isles cannot be persuaded to venture out of his cottage at noon during the month of July, he is then afraid of the fairies whom he calls Aneraides, i. e. Nereïdes. These sea-damsels, together with their sister nymphs, exercise the same power over man as the sylphs of the Cabalists.

IV. The popular story-tellers found another source of fiction in the manners of the Saracens and the Normans, and in feudal chivalry in general. We dissent however from the general opinion, that much was derived directly from the Arabs, or from the crusaders on their return to Europe. The adventures of Antar prove that the Arabs were far more metaphysical in their ideas respecting love and religion than the Italian story-tellers; besides which, no traditions respecting the crusades were transmitted by the latter to the romantic poets, who never allude to the holy wars: but we refer the influence of oriental manners and of western chivalry to an earlier period, during which the Lombards, the Greeks, and the Saracens contested the dominion of the various provinces of the kingdom of Naples, and ending in the year 1030, when they were all expelled by the Normans. From these wars, and from the revolution of the nations who were engaged in

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them, originated all the delineations of Asiatic and European -knights, who figure in the tales of romance. The crusaders had a better opportunity of becoming acquainted with the Mahometans; but during the tenth and eleventh centuries the Turks were considered as pagans. The Macone of the romantic poets is evidently a corruption of Mahomet, for the Italians do not aspirate the h, they pronounce it like a k. And Trivigante, whom the predecessors of Ariosto always couple with Apollino, is really Diana Trivia, the sister of the classical Apollo, whose worship, and the lunar sacrifices which it demanded, had been always preserved amongst the Scythians. The feudality of this period assumed a romantic cast, the expeditions undertaken by the lords against their neighbours, their fortified castles in the midst of trackless deserts, the dangers to which they exposed themselves in destroying the wild beasts which then infested Italy, then covered with wood, their exploits against troops of robbers and banditti, and lastly the slavery and misery of the great mass of the population, all these causes concurred to give a feudal chieftain the character of a being of a superior order. Parental vigilance and severity inflamed the passion of love; Christianity refined it, honour supplied the place of laws. Each was obliged to revenge his own wrongs; but sometimes men were found sufficiently powerful and generous to revenge the wrongs of others, and their generosity exalted their valour. The story-tellers were not able to examine these warriors with minuteness, they consequently exaggerated all their qualities, both good and bad, and without being aware of the transformation that they were producing, they added those ideal features which convert the man into the hero.

V. And lastly, the story-tellers obeyed the maxim of Homer, although they learnt from experience, and not from the Odyssey, That novel lays attract our ravished ears,

But old, the mind with inattention hears.

Thus their tales contain narrations of lengthened wars, which no historian ever heard of; descriptions of nations and kingdoms, which cannot be discovered on the map; episodes wholely unconnected with the main subject; and exploits which surpass probability. Yet they were always careful to adhere to the staple groundwork, the exploits of Charlemagne, and his Paladins. In a more cultivated age their practice was applauded and imitated by Ariosto, Instead of inventing an entire new story, he proposed continuing the Orlando Innamorato of Bojardo, because if he had introduced strange names and events till then unknown, he could not have attained the same degree of attention, and instead of amusing the Italians, would have tired them.' These are nearly his own expressions. Humbler artifices were employed by the story-tellers:

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sometimes, for the purpose of raising the attention of their auditors, and sometimes, for the purpose of illustrating the fictions of heroic existence by analogous events taken from common life, they enlivened their narratives by the insertion of laughable anecdotes; they joked and jested, and uttered many a sarcasin on female and sacerdotal chastity; and as the originals of their jests were better known to the crowd than the Paladins of Charlemagne, the comic prototypes of the picture were drawn more accurately by the artist, and best appreciated by the hearers.

. If we have entered with so much boldness into the darkest periods of the middle ages, it is because we have been guided in our conjectures by the Italian story-tellers of the present day. The profession has never become extinct in Italy. In the year 1812 we were often present at their recitations in the Piazza of St. Mark, at Venice; and were again convinced that the usages of the common people possess more durability than their government, than the monuments raised by their architects, or even than the works of their best writers. The favourite subject of one of these reciters was the Persecution of the Christians under Nero. At first we imagined that he had been reading an Italian translation of Tacitus, and that he combined the facts of the historian with the miracles of the legend; but after much research we discovered that he derived his stories from certain political romances, written towards the beginning of the 17th century, when the ambition of Philip II. and the system of the balance of power made the cabinets and hearts of kings the objects of scrutinizing curiosity. Amongst other historical novels of the age in question, we discovered one entitled Agrippina Minore, a prototype perhaps of the historical romances of Madame de Scudery, which was the text of the tale of the Venetian story-teller; but the writer disguised her ancient heroes in the fashionable court-dress of Louis XIV., whilst the additions made to the novel by our story-teller were wholly of a different nature. According to him, Rome was peopled by three million of Christians; the soldiers of Nero murdered them all every morning: in the course of the day they were all miraculously raised from the dead by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, who were confined in the tyrant's prisons, and on the morrow, the martyrs of yesterday were all ready to be killed over again. As the story-teller was aware that the common peo ple delight in horrors, he gratified them with agonies and tortures to their heart's content. The narrative of the murder of Agrippina created an amazing deal of horror and delight. Whilst speaking of the Roman empress and the Roman princesses, he illustrated their characters by comparing them to certain Venetian ladies, who held a conspicuous station in the scandalous chronicle of Venice. The

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