food daily polluted by harpies, till relieved by Astolpho, who descended as from heaven on a winged steed. Besides these circumstances of resemblance, the nations, both in the poem and romance, are of the Christian faith, both monarchs reside in the most sumptuous palaces, and both deliverers are mistaken for deities on their descent. The origin of these, as of most other stories of the same sort, is classical, and is derived from the story of Phineus and the Harpies in the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius:

There on the margin of the beating flood,

The mournful mansions of sad Phineus stood :
Taught by the wise Apollo to descry
Unborn events of dark futurity,

Vain of his science, the presumptuous seer
Deigned not Jove's awful secrets to revere;
Hence, Jove, indignant, gave him length of days,
But quenched in endless night his visual rays;
Nor would the vengeful god indulge his taste
With the sweet blessings of a pure repast,

Though, (for they learned his fate), the country round
Their prophet's board with every dainty crowned.
For, lo! descending sudden from the sky,
Round the piled banquet shrieking harpies fly,
Whose beaks rapacious, and whose talons, tear
Quick from his famished lips the untasted fare.

Fawkes Ap. Rhodius, b. 2.

The Argonauts touch at this place on their voy

age to Colchos, and two of their number, the winged children of Boreas, deliver the prophet from this disturbance.

After having re-installed the king of the Garamantes in the pleasures of a comfortable meal, Agesilan set out on the farther quest of Diana, and arrived at the Desolate Isle. The god Tervagant <had fallen in love with the queen of this country; but, being baulked in his amour, had let loose a band of destructive hobgoblins, who ravaged the land. An oracle of the god declared, that Tervagant would only be appeased, if the inhabitants daily exposed on the sea-shore a fresh beauty, till such time as he found one he liked as well as the queen. As the fair offering to the fastidious god was every day devoured by a sea-monster, the island was now nearly depopulated, and corsairs were employed to ravage other countries, in quest of victims. Diana had fallen into the hands of this crew, and, on her arrival, was bound to the rock. That very day Agesilan descended on his griffin, and offered his services against the seamonster. On proceeding to the place of combat, the discovery of the situation of his mistress invigorated his exertions. Having slain the monster after a dreadful combat, he placed his beloved Di

ana on his hippogroff, and skimmed with her towards Constantinople.

It may be remembered, that in the Orlando Fu rioso (c. 8), Proteus, being offended at the bad treatment the princess of Eubuda had received, in consequence of an affair of gallantry in which she had engaged with him, commissioned herds of marine monsters to depopulate the country, and would only be appeased by a daily offering of a damsel, to glut an ork who was stationed on the shore, in readiness to receive her. Angelica was brought to this country by seamen, who scoured the main for victims, and was bound to the fatal rock when delivered by Ruggiero, who arrived on his winged courser. Orlando, too, delivered Olimpia from a like cheerless situation. This, like the last story, is of classical origin, and has been doubtless suggested by the fiction of Perseus and Andromeda.

On his flight to Constantinople, Agesilan spied beneath him the ship of Amadis, from which he had been originally separated, and which was still on its voyage. He dextrously alighted on this vessel, and proceeded with the rest of his kindred to the Grecian capital, where his nuptials were solemnized with Diana.

Agesilan of Colchos is the faithful lover of this

part of the family chronicle. Rogel of Greece, whose adventures occupy a considerable part of the romance, is the Galaor, or general lover. He was the son of Florisel and Helena, and is I think, by far the most rakish of his kindred. It is true he is specially attached to Leonida, a Greek princess, whom he finally marries; but, at the solicitation of any damsel, he sets out to the relief of her mistress: he usually begins the adventure by an intrigue with the ambassadress, and concludes by an amour with the lady he had served.

The reader, I presume, does not wish any farther to pursue the involved genealogy of the romantic issue of Amadis, and a few words will bring us to the latest posterity.

Many of the chief heroes of the family of Amadis

possess a sentimental and platonic female friend, like the Gradaffile of Lisuarte. Finistea acted in this capacity to Amadis of Greece, and attended him in his long quest of his empress Niquea, who had been carried off while on her way to visit her father. In the course of their peregrinations, Amadis and Finistea came to a desert island, where, having partaken of a certain fruit, they totally divested themselves of their platonic habits, and a son was in consequence produced, who, from the place of his birth, was called

SILVIO DE LA SELVA.'

This prince first distinguished himself at the siege of Constantinople by the Russians, whose king had lately transmitted, by twelve dwarfs, a defiance to the Grecian princes, in which he mentioned that he had entered into a confederacy with a hundred and sixty eastern monarchs, to burn all the habitations of the Greeks, that they might be re-built on an improved plan by his subjects the Russians. A long account is given of the war, which terminated successfully for the besieged; but they are hardly freed from their Russian foes, when the whole bevy of Greek empresses and princesses are carried off by one fell stroke of necromancy. All the knights and heroes set out in search of them, and meet with the accustomed adventures, in which Silvio de la Selva particularly distinguishes himself. After the princesses are brought back to their own habitations, it is found that, during their absence, many have given birth to children. Spheramond, son of Rogel of Greece, and Amadis of

cia.

'Hechos de Silvio de la Selva, hijo de Amadis de Gre