tecting the fair sex, were looked upon as the primary and indispensible duties of the ancient knights errant. In the period of the first crusades, this combination produced many salutary effects, which it is not necessary here to detail: but, in later ages, when the swords of their gallant successors were unsheathed against the supposed enemies of the church, and they were led under the papal banner against the Albigenses, we may naturally conclude (and indeed the history of the times gives us no very equivocal testimony) that those champions were liberally compensated for their hazards by indulgences, which, according to circumstances, could either be obtained by purchase or military service. The translation of the papal residence from Rome to Avignon, in the 14th Century, had no tendency to retard the operation of these causes, which increased the corruption of the time, and gave but too much room for the spirited invectives of the satirists and reform

ers of the time. Among these Dante and Petrarch made a remarkable figure: but in this, as in other particulars of their poetical character, they trode in the steps of the more ancient Provençal bards or troubadours, a race of men, whose writings had in many respects a tendency, no less to corrupt than to expose the corruptions of the times. It is not improbable, that Dante as well as Petrarch had tasted of the cup of Circe, and been caught for a time in the vortex of dissipation: for this indeed we have the confessions of the former as well as the latter. The author of the Divina Commedia inveighed against the licentiousness of the times in a strain of peculiar acrimony. The latter, though he sometimes indulged in a strain of censure, yet seems to have made it his principal endeavour to refine the belle passion from its grosser terrestrial sediment, and to wing its flight and direct its views to nobler objects; and to exhibit those forms in an engaging light, as

b

Plato and his followers had done before, with whose philosophy he was evidently acquainted. In his talents, and the mode in which they are directed, Dante may sometimes be thought to resemble Swift. In these particulars the Bard of Vaucluse exhibits a nearer similitude to Addison, as the one depicted vice in the most odious colours, the other exhibited virtue in her most engaging form, particularly in the second part of his miscellaneous poems, and in what he calls the Triumphs of Death and of Eternity. The latter has also imitated the former, but probably with less energy: yet when we consider what obligations we are under to each, were it only for opening the mines of modern poetry, and contributing to improve the gross morals of the times in which they lived, it will probably tend to procure for this attempt a favourable reception from the English reader,

* At least through the medium of Augustini (De Civitate Dci, l. 10.), with whose work he was conversant.

and an allowance for the faults of the translation.

We find, in the Récherches sur les Prérogatives des Dames, chez les Gaulois, some curious particulars relative to the influence of the fair sex in the northern and Celtic nations from the earliest times. The author first quotes from Tacitus a description of their great ascendancy among the Germans, on account of their supposed prophetical powers, and their being looked upon as more intimately connected with the superior orders of beings. In consequence hereof, their opinions had a yery high authority in their most important consultations. "It is remarkable," he continues, "that, among the Celts and Scythians, whose passion for the sex being moderated by the climate, is far more temperate than that of the Southern Asiatics and the natives

of the torrid zones; yet the respect and veneration in which women are held by the for

*P. 18, et seq.: Ecl. Paris, 1787,

mer so far exceeds the regard paid to them by the latter, by whom they have been always held in a state of servitude: whereas, among the former, the empire of beauty is confirmed by a religious confidence."

"The Gauls," continues he, "were divided of old into sixty cantons, every one of which sent a female delegate to assist in a council composed of that sex, who deliberated on peace and war, and decided on the disputes which arose between the judges of the different cantons*. This council was established in consequence of a spirited harangue made by a Gallic matron on the choice of a military leader, and the duties of his station. The time of their creation was about 1177 years before the Christian era. By this council the Gauls were governed at the time of Hannibal; for it appears, that in the treaty concluded with him, that if any Gaul committed an offence

* Discours préliminaire de Hist. des Troubadours.