tionibus eorundem." A subsequent edition, containing a hundred and eighty-one chapters, was published in 1475, and was followed by many translations, and about thirty Latin editions, most of which preserved the number of a hundred and eighty-one chapters. That printed in 1488 is the most approved.

The Gesta, as is well known, presents us with the manners of chivalry, with spiritual legends, and eastern apologues, in the garb of Roman story. It appears to have been compiled in the first place from Arabian fables, found in the tales of Aphonsus; and an old Latin translation of the Kalilah ve Damnah, to which Alphonsus was indebted. Indeed, not less than a third of the tales of Alphonsus have been transferred to the Gesta Romanorum. In the next place, the author seems chiefly to have had recourse to obsolete Latin chronicles, which he embellished with legends of the saints, the apologues in the history of Josaphat and Barlaam, and the romantic inventions of his age. The later classics also, as Valerius Maximus, Macrobius, etc., are frequently quoted as authorities. Sometimes, too, the author cites the Gesta Romanorum, the title of his own work, by which he is not understood to mean any preceding compilation of that name, but the Roman, or rather ancient history in general.

The contents of this collection are not such as might be expected, from its name or the authorities adduced. It comprehends a multitude of stories altogether fictitious, and which are total misrepresentations of Roman history: the incidents are described as happening to Roman knights or under the reign of Roman emperors, who, generally, never existed, and who seldom, even when real characters, had any connection with the circumstances of the narrative. To each tale or chapter, a moral is added, in which some precept is deduced from the incidents, an example which has been followed by Boccaccio, and many of his imitators. The time in which the Gesta appeared was an age of mystery, and everything was supposed to contain a double or secondary meaning. At length the history of former periods, and the fictions of the classics, were attempted to be explained in an allegorical manner. Acteon, torn to pieces by his own hounds, was a symbol of the persecution of our

Saviour. This gave rise to compositions like the Romaunt of the Rose, which were professedly allegorical; and to the practice adopted by Tasso and other Italian poets, of apologizing for the wildness of their romantic compositions, by pretending to have accommodated them to certain remote analogies of morality and religion.1

Almost every tale in the Gesta Romanorum is of importance in illustrating the genealogy of fiction, and the incorporation of eastern fable and Gothic institutions with classical story. There are few of the chapters in which the heroes of antiquity, feudal manners, and oriental imagery have been more jumbled than in the first. Pompey has a daughter whose chamber is guarded by five armed knights and a dog. Being on one occasion allowed to attend a public spectacle, she is seduced by a duke, who is afterwards killed by a champion of Pompey's court.

She

is subsequently reconciled to her father, and betrothed to a nobleman. On this occasion she receives from Pompey an embroidered robe, and crown of gold-from the champion who had slain her seducer a gold ring—a similar present from the wise man who had pacified her father, and from her spouse a seal of gold. All these presents possessed singular virtues, and were inscribed with proverbial sentences, suitable to the circumstances of the princess.

1 Luther, in a curious passage in his Commentary on Genesis (cap. 30), attributes the origin of this practice to the monks, and it would appear that it had been derived by them from the east. "In Turcia," says he, "multi religiosi sunt, qui id student ut Alcoranum Mahometi interpretentur allegorice, quo in majore estimatione sint. Est enim Allegoria tanquam formosa meretrix, quae ita blanditur hominibus, ut non possit non amari, praesertim ab hominibus ociosis, qui sunt sine tentatione. Tales putant se in medio Paradisi et in gremio Dei esse, si quando illis speculationibus indulgent. Et primum quidem a stolidis et ociosis monachis ortae sunt, et tandem ita late serpserunt ut quidam Metamorphosin Ovidii in allegorias verterint; Mariam fecerunt Laurum, Apollinem Christum. Ego itaque odi allegorias. Si quis tamen volet iis uti, videat cum judicio eas tractet."

Sir F. Madden, in the Introduction to his edition of the English Gesta Romanorum (printed for the Roxburgh Club), notices the remarkable parity between the moralisation of an Arabian writer and that of the Gesta upon the same narrative. See Thomas Wright, Essays on the Literature, Popular Superstitions, and History of England in the Middle Ages, London, 1846, vol. ii. p. 61 note.

The Gesta Romanorum, too, had a powerful influence on English poetry, and has afforded a variety of adventures not merely to Gower, and Lydgate, and Chaucer, but to their most recent successors. Parnell, in his Hermit, has only embellished the eightieth chapter by poetical colouring, and a happier arrangement of incidents.

It is chiefly, however, as having furnished materials to the Italian novelists, that the Gesta has been here so particularly mentioned. In the 56th chapter we find the rudiments of those stories of savage revenge, of which there are some examples in Boccaccio, and which is carried to such extravagance by Cinthio, and subsequent Italian novelists. A merchant is magnificently entertained in a nobleman's castle. During supper the guest is placed next the hostess, and is much struck with her beauty. The table is covered with the richest dainties, served in golden dishes, while a pittance of meat is placed before the lady in a human skull. At night the merchant is conducted to a sumptuous chamber. When left alone, he observes a glimmering lamp in a corner of the room, by which he discovers two dead bodies hung up by the arms. In the morning he is informed by the nobleman, that the skull which had been placed before the lady, was that of a duke he had detected in her embraces, and whose head he had cut off with his own sword. As a memorial of her crime, and to teach his wife modest behaviour, her adulterer's skull had been converted into a trencher.' The corses in the chamber, continued he, are those of my kinsmen, murdered by the sons of the duke. To keep up my sense of revenge for their blood, I visit their dead bodies daily. It is not explained, however, why this dismal apartment was assigned to the stranger. This story occurs in more than one of the romantic poems of Italy. It is also the plot of an old Italian tragedy, written by Rucellai, and has been imitated by many subsequent writers, in the 32nd tale of the Queen of Navarre, in Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and in the German ballad of Count Stolberg. Such atrocious fictions, however, were not peculiar to the

Ma foi (says the queen of Navarre) si toutes celles a qui pareille hose est arrivée buvoient a de semblables vaisseaux, Je crains fort qu'il auroit bien des coupes de vermeil qui deviendroient tetes de morts.

middle ages, but had their model in classic fable,—in the revenge of Progne, and the banquet of Atreus.'

A few of the Italian tales are founded on, or embellished by, magical operations. The story of Sultan Saladin, one of the most beautiful in the Decameron [ix. 9], and also that of the magician who raises up a blooming garden in the depth of winter, are of this description. Now a great proportion of the stories in the Gesta Romanorum are of this nature also. Thus chapter 102 contains the story of a knight who went to Palestine, and whose lady, meanwhile, engaged in an intrigue with a clerk. Her infidelity was discovered to her absent husband by an eastern magician, by means of a polished mirror.3 Stories of this sort were common both in romance and tradition. It is said that during the Earl of Surrey's travels in Italy, Cornelius Agrippa showed him in a looking-glass his mistress Geraldine. She was represented as indisposed, and reclined on a couch, reading her lover's verses by the light of a waxen taper. In Spenser's "Fairy Queen" [bk. iii., cant. 3], Merlin is feigned to have been the artificer of an enchanted mirror, in which a damsel viewed the shadow of her lover.*

There is also a magical story in chapter 107, entitled "De Imagine cum digito dicente, percute hic." It is told that there was an image in the city of Rome, with its right hand stretched forth, on the middle finger of which was written "Strike here." For a long time no one could understand the meaning of this mysterious inscription.

1 See Graesse's "History of Literature," ii. 2, p. 1121, etc.; Espinel's "Marcos de Obregon," rel. iii. desc. 6, 7, and from this in Le Sage's "Estevanille Gonzales,” pt. ii. l. 3, ch. viii. Titus Andronicus, v. 2 and 3, and infra, p. 38.

2 See Decameron, x. 5, and note thereto.

3 See Lay of the Last Minstrel, c. vi. 16-20.

See the Faery Queen, B. iii. c. ii. st. 18, etc., and B. iii. st. 6, etc. The idea of such a fabled mirror is natural enough, and its origin need not be sought further than the wishes suggestive of the conception, which is of frequent occurrence. Liebrecht refers to the following instances: Keller, Li Romans des Sept Sages, p. 221; Introduction to Life of Diocletian, p. 59; Loiseleur des Longchamps, Essai sur les Fabl. Ind., p. 152, etc.; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie.—Delrius, Disquis. Mag. iii. P. i. Qu. iv. Sect. 4, p. 436, Colon. 1657. See also The Fountain of Truth, note to Astrée, vol. iii., infra. In the Story of Prince Ahmed and Pari Banou, in the Arabian Nights, there is an ivory tube which rendered visible people at a distance.

At length a certain subtle clerk, who came to see this famous image, observed, while the sun shone against it at mid-day, the shadow of the inscribed finger on the ground at some distance. He immediately took a spade, began to dig on that spot, and at last reached a flight of steps which descended far under ground, and led him to a stately palace. In a hall of this edifice he beheld a king and queen sitting at table, surrounded by their nobles and a multitude of people, all clothed in rich garments—but no person spoke. He looked towards one corner, where he saw an immense carbuncle,' which illuminated the whole apartment. In the opposite corner he perceived the figure of a man, with a bended bow, and an arrow in his hand, prepared to shoot; on his forehead was written, “I am who I am; nothing can escape my dart, not even yonder carbuncle which shines so bright." The clerk viewed all with amazement. Entering another chamber, he beheld the most beautiful women working at the loom: but all was silence. He then went into a stable full of the most excellent horses, richly caparisoned: but those he touched were instantly turned into stone. Next he surveyed all the apartments of the palace, which apparently abounded with everything he could desire; but on returning to the hall he had first entered, he began to reflect how to retrace his steps. Then he very justly conjectured that his report of all these wonders would hardly be believed unless he carried something back with him as evidence. He therefore took from the principal table a golden cup and a golden knife, and placed them in his bosom. On this the image, which stood in the corner with the bow and arrow, immediately shot at the carbuncle, which was shattered

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1 It may not be here uninteresting to remark how many of the ancient names for this stone (carbuncle), referred to its fiery gleam, thus lychnis, lamp-stone, ävepak = live coal, Pyrops, fiery eye. Hebrew word translated carbuncle (Exodus xxviii. 17) is Bareketh = flashing, and Kadkod the glow of fire, is the Hebrew term for the "carbuncle" of Isaiah liv. 12, while the Latin carbunculus is derived from carbo, coal. The stone was in high estimation among the ancients, and is described by Pliny as very precious, as seeming to be of fire yet resisting fire (vii. c. 7). "Probitas est carbunculus." Sentences of Publius Syrus (Larousse). See supra, note, vol. i. p. 408, and vol. i. supp. note, p. 471.