counted. In the mean time crowds from every nation, and of every condition, filled the hall, and each presented his claim to the queen. A messenger is dispatched to summon Eolus from his cave in Thrace, who is ordered to bring his two clarions, called Slander and Praise, and his trumpeter Triton. The praises of each petitioner are then resounded, according to the partial or capricious appointment of Fame; and equal merits obtain very different success. There is much satire and humour in these requests and rewards, and in the disgraces and honours which are indiscriminately distributed by the queen, without discernment and by chance. The poet then enters the house or labyrinth of Rumour. It was built of sallow twigs, like a cage, and therefore admitted every sound. Its doors were also more numerous than leaves on the trees, and always stood open. These are romantic exaggerations of Ovid's inventions on the same subject. It was moreover sixty miles in length, and perpetually turning round. From this house (says the poet) issued tidings of every kind, like fountains and rivers from the sea. Its inhabitants, who were eternally employed in hearing or telling news, together with the rise of reports, and the formation of lies, are then humorously described. The company is chiefly composed of sailors, pilgrims, and pardoners. At length our author is awakened at seeing a venerable personage of great authority; and thus the vision abruptly concludes. "Pope has imitated this piece with his usual elegance of diction and harmony of versification; but in the mean time, he has not only misrepresented the story, but marred the character of the poem. He has endeavoured to correct its extravagances by new refinements and additions of another cast; but he did not consider that extravagances are essential to a poem of such a structure, and even constitute its beauties. An attempt to unite order and exactness of imagery with a subject formed on principles so professedly romantic and anomalous, is like giving Corinthian pillars to a Gothic palace. When I read Pope's elegant imitation of this piece, I think I am walking among the modern monuments unsuitably placed in Westminster Abbey." History of English Poetry, Vol. ii. THE story of January and May now before us is of the comic kind; and the character of a fond old dotard betrayed into disgrace by an unsuitable match is supported in a lively manner. Pope has endeavoured suitably to familiarize the stateliness of our heroic measure in this ludicrous narrative; but, after all his pains, this measure is not adapted to such subjects, so well as the lines of four feet, or the French numbers of Fontaine. Fontaine is, in truth, the capital and unrivalled writer of comic tales. He generally took his subjects from Boccace, Poggius, and Ariosto; but adorned them with so many natural strokes, with such quaintness in his reflections, and such a dryness and archness of humour, as cannot fail to excite laughter. Our Prior has happily caught his manner in many of his lighter tales, particularly in Hans Carvel; the invention of which, if its genealogy be worth tracing, is first due to Poggius. It is found in the hundred and thirty-third of his Facetiæ, where it is entitled, Visio Francisci Philelphi; from hence Rabelais inserted it under another title, in his third book and twenty-eighth chapter. It was afterward related in a book called the Hundred Novels. Ariosto finishes the fifth of his incomparable satires with it. Malespini also made use of it. Fontaine, who imagined Rabbelais to be the inventor of it, was the sixth author who delivered it, as our Prior was the last, and perhaps not the least spirited. Mr. Tyrwhitt gives the following account of this tale: "The scene of the Merchant's Tale is laid in Italy; but none of the names, except Damia and Justin, seem to be Italian, but rather made at pleasure; so that I doubt whether the story be really of Italian growth. The adventure of the pear-tree I find in a small collection of Latin fables, written by one Adolphus, in elegiac verses of his fashion, in the year 1315. This fable has never been printed but once, and in a book not commonly to be met with. "Whatever was the real original of this tale, the machinery of the Fairies, which Chaucer has used so happily, was probably added by himself; and indeed I cannot help thinking that his Pluto and Proserpine were the true progenitors of Oberon and Titania, or rather that they themselves have, once at least, designed to revisit our poetical system under the latter names. In the History of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 421, this is said to be an old Lombard story.' But many passages in it are evidently taken from the Polycraticon of John of Salisbury. De molestiis et oneribus conjugiorum secundum Hieronymum et |