the image, which stood in the corner with the bow and arrow, immediately shot at the carbuncle, which was shattered into a thousand pieces. At that moment the hall became black as night. In this darkness the clerk, not being able to find his way out, remained in the subterraneous palace, and soon suffered a miserable death. All this is, of course, moralized; the palace is the world-the figure with the bow is mortality-and the carbuncle human life. William of Malmesbury is the first writer by whom this story was recorded: he relates a similar tale of Pope Gerbert, or Sylvester the Second, who died in the year 1008.

In their obvious meaning, it is probable, that these magical tales, which are evidently borrowed from the East, suggested to the Italian novelists the enchantments with which their works are occasionally embellished.

It must, however, be remarked, that the Gesta Romanorum supplies few of those tales of criminal yet ingenious gallantry which appear in all the Italian novelists, and occupy more than a third of the Decameron. Indeed, I have observed but two stories of this description in the Gesta, chapters 121 and 122, both of which are taken from Petrus Alphonsus. The origin of the tales of this nature must chiefly be sought in the

CONTES ET FABLIAUX.

France, in a literary point of view, may be considered as divided into two parts during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Soon after Gaul had been subdued by the Romans, the conquered nation almost universally adopted the language of the victors. During many centuries Latin continued the sole or prevalent tongue, but on the inroads of the northern bands it became gradually corrupted. From these innovations there were formed two languages, both of which were called Romaine, or Romance, from Latin still continuing the principal ingredient in their composition. About the ninth century these dialects began to supersede Latin as a colloquial tongue, in the different districts of France in which they were spoken. One species of Romance was used in those French provinces which lie to the south of the river Loire, and from the circumstance of the inhabitants of that country using the word oc as their affirmative, it was called Langue d'oc. The sister dialect, which was spoken to the north of the river Loire, received the name of Lang'd'oil, from the term oil being the affirmation of the northern provinces. It is from this latter

dialect that the modern French language has been chiefly formed. The southern romance was something between the French and Italian, or rather the Spanish.

It is not my intention, nor indeed is it connected with my subject, to enter into the dispute concerning the dialect to which the French nation has been indebted for the earliest specimens of metrical composition, and whether the Trouveurs of the north, or the Troubadours of the south, are best entitled to be regarded as the fathers of its poetry. The question, which is involved in much obscurity, has never been very profoundly agitated, and its full discussion would require, from the innumerable MSS. that must be perused, a time and attention that few have inclination to bestow.

Versifiers, however, seem to have made an early appearance both in the northern and southern regions of France. A large proportion of the latter district was possessed by Raimond IV. count of Provence. All his dominions, in consequence, received the name of Provence; the southern romance, or Langue d'oc, was called the Provençal language, and the versifiers who composed in it the Provençal poets. They also distinguished them. selves by the name of Troubadours, or Inventors, an appellation corresponding to the title of poet,

and assigned to all those who wrote in Provençal rhyme,whether of the southern provinces of France, of the north of Italy, or Catalonia.

The Provençal poets, or Troubadours, have been acknowledged as the masters of the early Italian poets, and have been raised to perhaps an unmerited celebrity by the imposing panegyrics of Dante and Petrarch. The profession of the Troubadours existed with reputation from the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the fourteenth century. Their compositions contain violent satires against the clergy, absurd didactic poems, moral songs versified from the works of Boethius, and insipid pastorals. But they were principally occupied with amorous compositions, and abstruse speculations on the nature of love. It was in the Tensons, or pleas before the celebrated tribunals in which amatory questions were agitated, that they chiefly attempted to signalise themselves. These tensons were dialogues in alternate couplets, in which they sustained their various speculative opinions.

In the works of the Troubadours, however, we can hardly trace any rudiments of those tales, either of horror or gallantry, which became so prevalent among the Italians. The literary history of the Troubadours presents us with only two stories which have any resemblance to the Italian novels

of gallantry. In one of these, by Raimond Vidal, we are told that a lord of Arragon, who was a jealous husband, pretended to take his departure on a journey, but suddenly returned, and introduced himself to his wife in the disguise of the knight he suspected as her lover. The lady recognises her husband, but pretends to be deceived, and, after shutting him up, goes to find her lover; and, moved with indignation at the prying disposition of her lord, grants the knight what she had hitherto refused him. Next morning she assembles her servants to take vengeance, as she gives out, on a vassal who had made an attempt on her virtue : he is thus beat in the place of his confinement by his own domestics, but is at length recognised, and obtains pardon on vowing thenceforward unbounded confidence in his wife. The second story is by Arnauld de Carcasses. A knight dispatches his parrot to a lady with a declaration of his passion: but though the fair one accepts the offer of his heart, the lover is much embarrassed to devise the means of procuring an interview. The bird hits on an expedient, which is to set fire to her castle, in hopes that the lady might escape to her lover in the confusion which would result from the event. This project the parrot executes in person, by means of some wild-fire which he carries in his claws. The lady elopes as was ex