has been made, in various books, of the transaction so well known to the readers of plays and romances, the conspiracy for ruining a lady's reputation by carrying her friends to a hiding-place from whence they could spy the improper behaviour of a person who was dressed so as to resemble her. This clumsy contrivance seems to have been stolen by Bandello from Ariosto,-and has been employed both by Shakespeare and Spenser. And when authors endowed with so fertile inventions condescend to borrow incidents so ill-contrived, (and indeed they sometimes stoop to still poorer thefts), we cannot doubt that similar plagiarisms must have been frequent among the inferior practitioners in the trade of story-making.

In fact, the piracy of incidents may be traced from the most remote antiquity down to modern times, in the histories both of supernatural agents and of mortal men. There are strong presumptions that the Grecian archives of Hercules, and of Jupiter himself, have been enlarged by plunder both from Egypt and Asia. The Jewish visionaries superadded to the truths of the sacred Scriptures many curious anecdotes relating to the celestial principalities, which they learned from the authentic records of their Chaldean conquerors. The Romances of chivalry have been enriched by contributions from various quarters; from the songs of the Scalds, the bards of the Northern tribes that overran so many provinces of the Roman empire; from the tales of Arabia, Persia, and other eastern nations; and also from the fables transmitted by the classics of Greece and Rome. Mr. Dunlop very properly rejects any theory which would ascribe the beauties of romantic fiction to any one of these sources exclusively, and we shall quote his general account of the subject, as a fair specimen of his style and sagacity.

'From a view of the character of Arabian and Gothic fiction, it appears that neither is exclusively entitled to the credit of having given birth to the wonders of romance. The early framers of the tales of chivalry may be indebted to the northern bards for those wild and terrible images congenial to a frozen region, and owe to Arabian invention that magnificence and splendour, those glowing descriptions and luxuriant ornaments, suggested by the enchanting scenery of an eastern climate,

"And wonders wild of Arabesque combine
With Gothic imagery of darker shade."

'It cannot be denied, and indeed has been acknowledged by Mr. Warton, that the fictions of the Arabians and Scalds are totally different. The fables and superstitions of the Northern bards are of a darker shade and more savage complexion than those of the

Arabians. There is something in their fictions that chills the imagination. The formidable objects of nature with which they were familiarized in their northern solitudes, their precipices and frozen mountains and gloomy forests, acted on their fancy, and gave a tincture of horror to their imagery. Spirits who send storms over the deep, who rejoice in the shriek of the drowning mariner, or diffuse irresistible pestilence; spells which preserve from poison, blunt the weapons of an enemy, or call up the dead from their tombs -these are the ornaments of northern poetry. The Arabian fictions are of a more splendid nature; they are less terrible indeed, but possess more variety and magnificence; they lead us through delightful forests, and raise up palaces glittering with gold and diamonds.

It may also be observed, that, allowing the early Scaldic odes to be genuine, we find in them no dragons, giants, magic rings, or enchanted castles. These are only to be met with in the compositions of the bards who flourished after the native vein of Runic fabling had been enriched by the tales of the Arabians. But if we look in vain to the early Gothic poetry for many of those fables which adorn the works of the romancers, we shall easily find them in the ample field of oriental fiction. Thus the Asiatic romances and chemical works of the Arabians are full of enchantments similar to those described in the Spanish, and even in the French, tales of chivalry. Magical rings were an important part of the eastern philosophy, and seem to have given rise to those which are of so much service to the Italian poets. In the Eastern peris, we may trace the origin of the European fairies in their qualities, and perhaps in their name. The griffin or hippogriff of the Italian writers, seems to be the famous Simurgh of the Persians, which makes such a figure in the epic poems of Sadii and Ferdusii.

'A great number of these romantic wonders were collected in the East by that idle and lying horde of pilgrims and palmers who visited the Holy Land through curiosity, restlessness, or devotion, and who, returning from so great a distance, imposed every fiction on a believing audience. They were subsequently introduced into Europe by the Fablers of France, who took up arms and followed their barons to the conquest of Jerusalem. At their return, they imported into Europe the wonders they had heard, and enriched romance with an infinite variety of Oriental fictions.

A fourth hypothesis has been suggested, which represents the machinery and colouring of fiction, the stories of inchanted gardens, monsters, and winged steeds, which have been introduced into romance, as derived from the classical and mythological authors; and

as being merely the ancient stories of Greece, grafted on modern manners, and modified by the customs of the age. The classical authors, it is true, were in the middle ages scarcely known; but the superstitions they inculcated had been prevalent for too long a period, and had taken too firm a hold on the mind, to be easily obliterated. The mythological ideas which still lingered behind were diffused in a multitude of popular works. In the travels of Sir John Mandeville, there are many allusions to ancient fable; and, as Middleton has shown that a great number of the Popish rites were derived from Pagan ceremonies, it is scarcely to be doubted, that many classical were converted into romantic fictions. This at least is certain, that the classical system presents the most numerous and least exceptionable prototypes of the fables of romance.

'In many of the tales of chivalry, there is a knight detained from his guest, by the enticements of a sorceress; and who is nothing more than the Calypso or Circe of Homer. The story of Andromeda might give rise to the fable of damsels being rescued by their favourite knight, when on the point of being devoured by a sea monster. The heroes of the Iliad and Eneid were both furnished with enchanted armour; and in the story of Polyphemus, a giant and his cave are exhibited. Herodotus, in his history, speaks of a race of Cyclops who inhabited the North, and waged perpetual war with the tribe of Griffons, which was in possession of mines of gold. The expedition of Jason in search of the golden fleece; the apples of the Hesperides, watched by a dragon; the king's daughter who is an enchantress, who falls in love with and saves the knight,— —are akin to the marvels of romantic fiction-especially of that sort supposed to have been introduced by the Arabians. Some of the less familiar fables of classical mythology, as the image in the Theogony of Hesiod, of the murky prisons in which the Titans were pent up by Jupiter, under the custody of strong armed giants, bear a striking resemblance to the more wild sublimity of the Gothic fictions.' (Vol. 1. p. 135.)

Thus Bayes is not the only poet whose invention is indebted to his memory or commonplace book; and the art of fictitious narrative, like every other art, seems to have arisen gradually from very humble beginnings; and to have consisted, at first, not in the invention of incidents, but in the exaggeration, natural even to eyewitnesses, in relating any interesting or surprising event; and afterwards, in borrowing incidents, true or false, from every quarter, whenever such a license had the chance of escaping detection, or of being favourably received.

But the licence, whether of exaggerating, of borrowing, or of inventing incidents, would be more freely assumed by the bard, and

more indulgently admitted by his audience; and indeed the reports of travellers, who have always enjoyed a peculiar privilege, would provide the materials of fiction in greater variety, and of a more wonderful kind, when the scene of the hero's adventures happened to be in distant and unknown regions, inhabited by other races of men, enclosed by other mountains and other seas, subject to the influence of other skies, and governed by other gods and another order of Nature. The Odyssey is a curious example.-If we except the usual interposition of the usual deities, the history of what passes in Ithaca and Greece seems to contain little which may not be more easily conceived to have actually happened, than to have been invented by the poet. But when we accompany Ulysses to Italy, Sicily and Ogygia, countries so little known in those early times to the inhabitants of Ionia or Greece, we find ourselves in another world. We meet with the enchantments of Circe, the mother of a large family of enchantresses; and the songs of Sirens-whose fascinating progeny has multiplied still more extensively both in verse and in prose. meet with Giants who devoured human flesh, and are manifestly near of kin to the raw-boned gentlemen against whom not only the knightserrant of after-times, but also our dearly beloved schoolfellow Jack the Giant-killer exerted his prowess and sagacity-though we have some pleasure in remarking that the more modern giants are of a finer breed, and farther removed from the savage state, as they look through two eyes instead of one, and live in castles instead of caves. What is more wonderful, we meet with the road to hell; not indeed the broad way through the wide gate, so well known and so much frequented by men of all ranks in every age of the world; but the secret path which it requires mystic rites to open, and by which a hero, a saint, or a poet, with a proper guide and good interest at court, may not only descend with all his flesh and blood about him to gratify his curiosity, but also return safe and sound, to entertain his friends above ground with the sights he saw below.

We

It appears, then, in what manner the bards, prompted by patriotism, and the desire of exciting the wonder of their auditors, might be enabled, without any great trouble of invention, to adorn with fiction the songs which recorded the exploits of their own countrymen; and their freedom in this respect would be the greater, according to the distance of time or place. But all restraint would be removed, when the hero of the tale was a foreigner. The historical truth would in this case be indifferent to the audience, and the narrative would be more acceptable, according as it was more extraordinary, affecting, and miraculous. Now it is obvious, that as the bards were indebted to their powers of amusing company for their estimation in society,

and even for their livelihood, they would be prompted, by vanity and interest, as well as by their genius and habits, to provide an ample store and variety of tales; and not to confine themselves to transactions where they must have been fettered by the national records or traditions, but to adopt also those other subjects, where they could employ without controul all the materials which were furnished by their experience, memory or fancy. It is obvious, too, that recourse to foreign subjects would become the more frequent, according as the nation advanced in knowledge and refinement, and ceased to depend on their poets for the preservation of their history. And when the professions of the poets and historians were completely separated, the former would be fully and for ever invested with the privilege of fiction, the quidlibet audendi potestas, in all their narratives, whether of foreign or domestic transactions-subject only to the remonstrances of the critics, not for telling lies, but for telling ill-contrived or uninteresting lies.

We have dwelt the longer on the origin of fictitious narrative, not only because the subject has been strangely misrepresented by the critics, but also because it is entirely overlooked in our author's history. And this oversight seems to have produced another very material defect, the limitation of his plan to fictions in prose.

The earliest fictions are obviously entitled to the greatest attention, on account of the information which may be extracted from them with regard to the history, manners, and opinions of the nation and age to which they belong. They are also connected with many of the succeeding fictions; so that, by a mutual comparison, they are all rendered more intelligible and agreeable, more valuable both to the antiquary, the philosopher, and the innocents who read for amusement. But all the early fictions are composed in verse; and after fiction became less connected with history, many of the finest specimens of poetry are also the finest specimens of fictitious narrative. In fact, if we except a very few Italian tales, and some of the firstrate French and English novels, by far the best fictitious narratives in existence are poems. And a history of Mathematics which should exclude Archimedes and Newton, would not be more extraordinary, than a history of Fiction which excludes Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, Lucan, Ariosto, Tasso, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Scott, Campbell and Byron.

The reason alleged for this exclusion appears to us, we will confess, altogether unsatisfactory.

The history of Fiction,' says our author in his Introduction, 'becomes in a considerable degree interesting to the philosopher, and occupies an important place in the history of the progress of society.