GESTA ROMANORUM,

which is believed to be a principal store-house of the Italian novelists.

This composition, in the disguise of romantic fiction, presents us with classical stories, Arabian apologues, and monkish legends.

Mr Douce has shown that there are two works entitled Gesta Romanorum, and which, strictly speaking, must be considered as separate performances. The first and original Gesta was written in Latin, on the continent. It was not translated into English till 1703, but has been repeatedly printed in its original form, though no MS. of it has yet been brought to light.

The second work, in its earliest shape, is also in the Latin language, but was written in England, in imitation of the continental Gesta above-mentioned. It was never published in its original form, but an English translation was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and a subsequent edition appeared in 1595. There are extant, however, a number of MS. copies in Latin, which Mr Douce says led Warton to imagine that the two Gestas were the same, and to remark, that there is a great varia

tion in the printed and MS. copies of the Gesta Romanorum.1 The work written in England, consists of 102 chapters, of which fortyntre of the same nature with the stories in the gntinental work, an inoculation of feudal manner, and eastern imagery, on the exploits of classical heroes: but the remainder are somewhat different. The stories in the Anglican Gesta were well known to our early poets, and made much use of by them. Among these tales we find the story of Lear, and the Jew in the Merchant of Venice. Some of them also correspond with the works of the Italian novelists: but the original Gesta is the one to which they were indebted, and which therefore at present is alone deserving of our attention.

This work is attributed by Warton to Petrus Berchorius, who was prior of a Benedictine convent at Paris, and died in 1362. The composition of the Gesta has been assigned by Warton to this monk, on the authority of Salomon Glassius, a theologist of Saxe Gotha, who points him out as the author in his Philologia Sacra. His assertion

'In fact, however, this is a dispute of words--the two Gestas may just as well be considered the same work as the different versions of the Wise Masters, or of the KaliJah u Dambah.

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is fortified by the similarity of the style and exccution of the Gesta, with works unquestionably written b Berchorius. Mr Douce, however, is of opinion that it is the production of a German, as a number of German names of dogs are met with in one of the chapters, and many of the stories are extracted from German authors, as Cesarius, Albert of Stade, &c., which Mr Warton, on the other hand, supposes to have been interpolated by some German editor, or printer.

Whoever may have been the author of the Gesta, it is pretty well ascertained to have been written about the year 1340, so that it had time to become a fashionable work before 1358, the year in which Boccaccio is supposed to have completed his Decameron. The earliest edition, though it is without date, is known to have been prior to 1473. It consists of a hundred and fifty-two chapters, and is thus announced, Incipiunt Historiae Notabiles, collectae ex Gestis Romanorum et quibusdam aliis libris, cum applicationibus eorundem. A subsequent edition, containing a hundred and eighty-one chapters, was published about 1475, and was followed by a number of 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

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 seems to have been compiled in the first place from Arabian fables, found in the tales of Alphonsus; and an old Latin translation of the Kalilah u Damnah, to which Alphonsus was indebted. Indeed, not less than a third of the tales of Alphonsus have been transferred to the Gesta Romanorum. author, in the next place, seems chiefly to have had recourse to obsolete Latin chronicles, which he embellished by legends from the lives 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, &c., 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 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 sto

ries altogether fictitious, and which are total misrepresentations of the 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, 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 every thing 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 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.

Almost every tale in the Gesta Romanorum is of importance in illustrating the genealogy of fic