hand on Guilhot. The authorship of the poem is unknown, but there are reasons for surmising that it was written in Catalonia. The other romance is Guilhem de la Barra.1 The author was Arnaut Vidal de Castelnaudary, leader in a Guilhem de movement, hereinafter to be mentioned, for la Barra. the restoration of Troubadour verse; and the poem was finished in May 1318. The "plot" is as follows: The King of Serra sets out for the wars, and during his absence appoints Guilhem de la Barra his vicegerent. The young queen falls in love with him, but Guilhem rejects her overtures. Thereupon he is calumniated à la Joseph. He escapes with his son and daughter, and the latter marries the Count of Terramada. Fifteen years pass, and Guilhem, unrecognised by his daughter, acts as governor to his children. Meanwhile his son, adopted by the King of Armenia, is on the point of fighting a duel with Guilhem, who enters the lists as champion for the Count of Terramada. The same battle - cry "Barra! Barra!" unmasks their relations, and this is followed by a similar scene between father and daughter. The Queen of Serra confesses her guilt, and all ends satisfactorily. There is a close resemblance between this romance Origin of the and Boccaccio's novel (ii. 8), The Count of Romance. Antwerp. It is hard to say whether the romance was the source of the novel, or whether they had a common origin. It is conceivable at least that 1 Guillaume de la Barra, Roman d'aventure. Par Paul Meyer. Paris, 1868. both were based on an historical incident, to which Dante alludes in the Purgatorio (vi. 22): "I saw Count Orso; and the soul divided As it declared, and not for crime committed, Pierre was, in fact, accused by Marie of Brabant, wife of Philippe le Bel, of having written love-letters to her, and condemned to death. Whatever may be the case with the Decameron, there can be no question as to the influence of ProThe Cento No- vençal life and literature on the Cento velle Antiche. Novelle Antiche. Thus in N. 61, which presents so vivid a picture of Provençal manners, the sonorous langue d'oc involuntarily supplants the Italian prose. Sometimes single words, sometimes whole sentences, thrust themselves in, and at length we are brought full in view of a Provençal ode. The knight begins his complaint in pure Tuscan ("altresi come il leofante quando cade non si puo levare "), then he gets mixed, and, finally, he drops into pure Provençal ("per tos temps las non cantar"). It looks very much as though the author had sought to translate the poem, and afterwards, finding the task too irksome for him, had abandoned the attempt. The identity of the author is profoundly ob 1 Translated by Longfellow. Opinions vary as to the merits of this translation. The rhythm is good, and it is extremely literal. Mainly for its fidelity it has been adopted, for purposes of citation, throughout. scure. Signor D'Ancona conjectures that he was a Florentine merchant and a Ghibelline; but this is mere guesswork. The traditional belief is that the Cento Novelle Antiche were the work of more than one author, and the great variety of the tales may be considered in some measure confirmatory of this belief. The collection probably dates from the middle or latter half of the fourteenth century, as mention is made in the sixteenth novel of Ricciardo de' Manfredi, who died in 1340. The title by which it is now most generally known is that of the first edition, printed in 1525 at Bologna; but it is also (since 1835) referred to as the Novellino, while Borghini's edition (Florence, 1572) was published under the title of Libro di novelle e di bel parlar gentile. The matter is of some importance, as it is certain that the fourteenth-century MSS. do not contain exactly a hundred. tales. Some have more, some less; and it is not improbable that the number 100 was fixed on in imitation of the Decameron. It is to be observed, also, that the work does not consist only of tales. It says of itself, "This book treats of certain flowers of speech, and of beautiful courtesies, and of beautiful answers, and of beautiful deeds of valour"; in other words, anecdotes, witticisms, puns, in addition to the novels, help to fill its pages. Thus Borghini's more ample title corresponds better with the facts.1 1 The best edition, however, is not that of Borghini, who "edited” in favour of the Catholic reaction, but Michele Colombo's, whose text has been reprinted by Tosi (Milan, 1825), and by Mazzini and Gaston (Florence, 1867). The date of the collection, then, is comparatively late; but as regards their spirit the Cento Novelle Antiche belong to an earlier time, to which, indeed, some of them must be referred chronologically. The Greeks and the Romans are pictured, after the manner of the Middle Age, as knights, and this is the best evidence for the age of the tales in question. The anecdotes and tales about the giovane rè, about Lancelot and Queen Ginevra, might have sprung up when chivalry was already declining; but this false portrayal, this "knighting" of antiquity, could only have occurred at the time of its highest bloom. In Italy chivalry never attained to full development, and therefore the tales penetrated by its spirit have probably been imported from France. The Cento Novelle Antiche show very little art, and this, their artlessness, constitutes their main charm. Insensibly we are reminded of the old simple Florentine days when, as Dante records, the women lightened their toils with such stories : "One o'er the cradle kept her studious watch, Told o'er among her family the tales Of Trojans and Fesole and Rome." —Paradiso, xv. 121. There is a close connection between N. 51 of the The Avventur- Cento Novelle Antiche and book iii, of Ľ’Avventuroso Ciciliano, a romance composed quite early in the fourteenth century-probably about oso Ciciliano. 1311-by Busone de' Rafaelli da Gubbio, a friend and admirer of Dante. In both cases the proximate source was undoubtedly the French poem L'Ordene de Chevalerie by Hue de Tabarie; and a comparison of the two writings suggests that the novel was either written by Busone da Gubbio, or, as is more probable, that he had at some earlier date translated the poem, and that his translation, with the omission of certain parts, was received into the Novellino. The Adventurous Sicilian is a very tedious work. It has neither the naïve simplicity of the old style of fiction, nor the studied elegance of the new. It was written for a moral object-" for the instruction. of all those who shall be stricken by the Fortune of the world, to give them comfort that they may not despair." The word "instruction" has an ugly sound, and prepares us for a total absence of inspiration. On an examination of the romance it will be found that the great inspirations of chivalry-honour, ladies' favour, and zeal for the Christian faith-have receded into the background. The noble knights are by no means indifferent to lucre. They are in truth soldiers of fortune and precursors of the condottieri who, at this period, broke up the city-republics and established personal lordships in their room. The following is an outline of the story. After the famous Vespers (A.D. 1282) Sicily was in an unsettled condition, and five barons found themselves constrained to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Three of them-Gianni, Olinborgo, and Simonetto— |