a faint resemblance to the complicated and elaborate tales of the Eastern more scientific narrators, while at the same time chivalry with its tales of love and adventure, learned principally in the East, helped forward the change. To Boccaccio is distinctly due the great poem of Chaucer, who, with inexhaustible wit and skill, made mediæval stories and characters in the highest degree amusing. At the same time, another independent element came in to help to lay the foundation for the long and elaborate romance which succeeded the short and bald religious story. A Welsh priest, Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing the history of the British kings, embodied the old traditions of the Cymry as to Arthur and his knights, and thus gave birth to the Arthur poems and ballads, which exercised so great an influence on European literature. In the Arthur poems there is a strange mixture of the romantic element with the ecclesiastical; valiant knights contending with giants, and then building churches, or sending for their confessor. We do not, however, remember to have met with so good an illustration of the religious story passing into the knightly poem as the poem of S. Christopher. Our readers will be familiar with the legend of the huge giant determined to serve only the strongest-how he goes to the king, of whose power he had heard, and then, finding that there was one stronger than he, even the foul fiend, determines at any price to be his man. At length, one stronger even than the fiend is revealed to him, and he becomes the devoted servant of Christ, occupied in carrying pilgrims over the river. As the poem has never been printed, we shall make no apology for quoting the passage in which Christopher meets with the fiend :

'And fra that kynge with steryne mode
He went away als he were wode;
Forthe he wanderde, este and weste,
Thorgh wyldernesse and wyld forest.
Many a mountain and many a valaye
Thorowte he went full many a daye.
And appone a daye als he gan byde
Undir an heghe mountayne syde,
Als so ferre als that he couthe kenne
He saughe ane oste of armede mene.
Foul and ugly were thaire wedis,
And all thay rade on blake stedes.
Als thay come rydand on a route,
A grete tempest come thame aboute;
Ane of the uglyeste of that araye
Comes rydand owte appone straye.
Unsemly was he unto syghte,
Twenty cubettes he was of heghte,
And als sone als he come hym nere,
"Bele amy," he says, "what dose thou here ?

Telle me tyte, withowtten lesynge,
What es the cause of thi comynge?"
Full sone he ansuerde hym agayne,
"Me standes none awe fra thee to layne;
Certanly, the sothe to telle,

I gaa to seke the fende of helle.
Kane thou telle me of hym oghte?
For many a day I bafe hym soghte."

"Whate wolde and thou myghte hym mete?"
"Serue hym," he sayde, "to hende and fete,
And euer mare to be hys mane,

In all the servyce that I kane;
And I may fynde that it swa bee,

That ther be no gretter a lorde than hee."
The totber ansuerde sone and sayde,
"I am the fende, and thou be payede.'

From a MS. of the fifteenth century.

Compare this version with the ordinary one in the Legends of the Saints,' and we see at once how much the ballad element has added to the religious story. The grotesque legend becomes a poem with highly dramatic effects. Just so from mysteries and miracle plays, the dullest of all human compositions, sprang the charming personifications of Spenser's 'Faëry Queen,' and upon stories silly enough in themselves were based some of Shakespeare's most wondrous dramas. In the history of literature, then, the religious story has a place and a certain amount of merit, as being suggestive and productive of higher and greater things.

It is doubtless quite a work of supererogation to criticise mediæval religious stories on the ground of accuracy; but there is one point which seems to us worthy of notice, inasmuch as it affects the amount of credence to be given to these tales, when they do not touch of the supernatural, but affect to relate things from well-known sources. We allude to the way in which the familiar histories of Scripture are related in them. The strange errors which appear in their versions of these may serve to indicate how entirely the very notion of truth and accuracy was discarded from the consideration of a mediæval story-teller, and how, therefore, the plainest historical facts stated in these narratives may not be received without question. We will take a few instances from the Book de la Tour-Laundry.' Here the wife of Lot in her flight is said to have been turned into a stone-the men of Shechem are said to have been slain by all the twelve sons of Jacob-Joseph is tempted by the wife of Pharaoh-Mordecai figures as a lady-the destroyer of Jezebel is Joshua or Josiahthe beheader of John the Baptist is the same Herod who slew the innocents and Mary Magdalene is the sister of Martha;

NO. CXLI.-N.S.

though this interpretation of the identity of the two Maries is by no means confined to the legend writers. The flood is constantly attributed to the great fondness for dress which prevailed among the women of the old world; and on this subject we have a specimen of a sermon preached by a mediaval bishop, which, as an example of how these stories were introduced into pulpit discourses, is worth quoting:

'I wode telle you of a sermon that an holy bishope made, that was a noble and gret clerk, in the which sermon was great foysun of ladies and gentelwomen, that were maruelously araied in diuerse and queint maners and hadde highe hornes; the whiche the holy man beganne to reprove, and geue diuerse ensamples to make hem to be layde doun, as Noyis flode that stroied the world for the pride and the disguysinge that was amonge women. And whanne the deuelle sawe hem so disguysing and counterfetenge hem, he made hem falle into the foule synne of lechery; that displesed so moche oure Lorde, that he made it reyne fourti dayes and fourti nightes withoute cesing, so that the water was byher thanne ani thing on erth or mountayne bi the highthe of ten cubites, and thenne all the worlde was drowned and perisshed. And after, whanne the bishope had shewed these ensamples with other, he saide that the women that were so horned were like to be horned snailes and bestes and unicornes. And he saide they were like the hertys, that bare downe her hedes in the smalle wode; for whanne thei come to the churche and holy water be caste on hem thei bowe downe the hede. "Y doubt not," said the bishope, "that the deuelle sitte betwene her hornes, and that he make hem bowe down the hede for ferde of the holy water." And for sothe he tolde hem many mericales, and hidde no thing, nor of the settinge of her tyre pynnes and array, unto that he had made mani of hem right heui and sore. And he tolde hem an ensample of two yonge women that wolde haue hasted hem to free her felawes towardes a feste, and a gret semble of ladies and gentilwomen, to that extent that they and her new array and disguysing might be furst sayne att the feste; and therfore they yode ouer a mareys for the next waye, but thei felle in the myre, and fouled all her clothes and array, and were later atte the feste thanne they that held the highe way, the whiche had her array clene. Also he told hem how there was onis a gentillewoman that come to a fest so straungely atyred and queintly arraied to haue the lokes of the pepille, that alle that sawe her come ranne towardes her to wonder lik as on a wilde beste, for she was atyred with highe longe pynnes lyke a jebet, and so she was scorned of alle the company, and saide she bare a gallous on her hede.'-Book de la Tour-Laundry, p. 62.

In these days of profound admiration for mediæval peculiarities, it may be interesting to some of our lady readers to know that strange structures on the female head have abundance of orthodox precedent. We commend the good bishop's discourse to their careful consideration.

19

ART. 11.-1. The Odes of Horace.
Verse. By THEODORE MARTIN.
Son, and Bourne. 1861.

Translated into English Second Edition. Parker,

2. The Odes and Carmen Sæculare of Horace. Translated into English Verse. By JOHN CONINGTON, M.A. Bell and Daldy. 1863.

3. Translations into English and Latin. By C. S. CALVERLEY, late Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. Deighton, Bell, and Co. 1866.

4. The Iliad of Homer. Translated by EDWARD, Earl of DERBY; to which are appended, Translations of Poems, Ancient and Modern. Vol. II. John Murray. 1867.

5. The Odes, Epodes, &c.

By CHRISTOPHER HUGHES.

Translated into English Verse.
Longmans. 1867.

6. Horace. Odes, Epodes, and Secular Song. Newly Translated into Verse. By CHARLES STEPHEN MATHEWS.

1867.

Longmans.

7. Translations from the Lyrics of Horace. In English Verse. By E. H. BRODIE, M.A. Smith, Elder, and Co. 1868. WITHIN the last five years an impulse has been given to the ambition generally existing among scholars, men of taste, and dabblers in literature, of translating Horace's Odes into English. And there is no reason to suppose that the fashion, having set in, is likely soon to decline, especially as helps to understanding Horace are more plentiful than they were, and as, in place of stiff German and somewhat bald English editions, a novice can now recur to the excellent editions of Yonge and Milman (and if he wants a good German edition, let him add Dillenburger) in cases of doubt about interpretation or text. But, unfortunately, as there are many candidates for such laurels as are to be won in translating Horace, so are there many and diverse views as to the manner and form of translation that should be adopted; and it may not be a waste of time to endeavour to ascertain which of these are sound and rational, and to test, by the results before us in the shape of volumes of Translations, the relative values of the theories advanced.

The appearance in 1863 of Professor Conington's version of the Odes was, perhaps, the first real step towards solving the

question, how far the untranslateable could be translated; ' and he assuredly propounded a true canon, when he laid it down that some kind of metrical conformity to the original must be aimed at by a translator of Horace.' His inquiries and experiments in this field, as in all upon which he enters, bear the mark of pains and patience, acumen and ability; and his volume has this further recommendation, that the Preface to it consists of a candid exposition of his doubts and difficulties. His translations are tentative, and wear very much the appearance of essays towards the solution of a most difficult question, because in some cases, e.g. in handling the metre called the Second Asclepiad, he has tried four different measures, or varieties of one general measure; so that the student who consults his pages for guidance will have at any rate the advantage of choice. This however he has, we think, succeeded in establishing, that, so far as is feasible, a translator of Horace should aim at conformity of line and stanza to the length, breadth, and semblance of his original; and that to ordinary folk, not born poets, there must be danger in trying to hit off the spirit of Horace in metres nowise Horatian in their character. Of course, the conformity must be general, and must depend on the nature of the case; and in pointing this out, and illustrating it in his practice, he has rendered essential service to translation, by anticipating a movement at all times imminent in the direction of acclimatizing Alcaic, Sapphic, and Asclepiadian metres. Through his reasonable and soundlyconceived compromise we have escaped much Procrustean wracking of the most genial of poets upon a bed which his torturers would in good faith call his own, and our eyes have not yet witnessed insult thus added to injury. As sure as death,' to use the Welshman's expression, the heresy of English hexameters will spread to some extent; and even while we write, the pages of Blackwood are partly occupied by some clever attempts to clothe Horace's metres in an English garb made to the Latin pattern. Nay, more, we have recently been favoured with a sight of some by no means unreadable or unenjoyable versions of the Venusian poet actually in the original metres, although in our vernacular. Perhaps in stomaching them we did just recite, sotto voce, the consolation, 'There must be heresies.' But of this we are persuaded, and we are glad to have so competent a judge of the matter as the Oxford Professor of Latin along with us, that the English taste will have nothing to say to unrhymed lyrics; or, to put it more fairly, that rhyme is the inferior artist's only chance of giving pleasure.' Exceptional poetic power and great gifts of minstrelsy may afford to be bold, and can possibly venture either so far out to sea as to turn Horace into metres