and all are disfigured with affected antithesis and cumbrous erudition.'

We have already had occasion to mention the Contes Dévots, which were coeval with the Fabliaux of the Trouveurs. A collection of stories, partly imitated from spiritual tales, particularly the Pia Hilaria of Angelin Gazée, and partly extracted from larger works of devotion, with some added by the publisher, appeared in modern French in the middle of the seventeenth century. A few examples may be given as specimens of what for a considerable period formed the amusement of the religious communities of France and the Netherlands.

OVICULA S. FRANCISCI.

A countryman one day was driving some lambs to slaughter; fortunately for them, St. Francis happened to be on the road. As soon as the flock perceived him, they raised most lamentable cries. The saint asked the clown what he was going to do with these animals-"cut their throats," replied he. Good St. Francis could not contain himself at this revolting idea, nor resist the sweet supplications of these innocents; he left his mantle with the barbarous peasant, obtained the lambs in exchange, and conducted them to his convent, where he allowed them to live and thrive at their leisure.

It

Among this little flock there was a sheep which the saint loved tenderly: he was pleased sometimes to speak to her, and instruct her. "My sister," said he, "give thanks to thy Creator according to thy small means. is good that you enter sometimes into the temple; but be there more humble than when you go into the fold; walk only on tiptoe; bend your knees, give example to little children. But, above all, my dear sister, run not after the rams; wallow not in the mire, but modestly nibble at the

1 Koerting (p. 180) quotes from St. Francis of Sales the following judgment of Camus: "Beaucoup de science et d'esprit, une mémoire immense, une modestie parfaite, un mélange de naïvete et de finesse, une piété solide, de la gaîté, de l'apropos, mais pas de mesure, pas de goût : il ne lui manquait que le jugement."

grass in our gardens, and be careful not to spoil the flowers with which we deck our altars."

Such were the precepts of St. Francis to his sheep. This interesting creature reflected on them in private, (en son particulier,) and practised them so well, that she was the admiration of every one. If a Religious passed by, the beloved sheep of St. Francis ran before him, and made a profound reverence. When she heard singing in the church, she came straightway to the altar of the Virgin, and saluted her by a gentle bleat; when a bell was sounded, which announced the sacred mysteries, she bent her head in token of respect. "O blessed animal!" exclaims the author, "thou wert not a sheep, but a doctor: thou art a reproach to the worldly ones, who go to church to be admired, and not to worship. I know," continues he, "that the Huguenot will laugh, and say this is a grandmother's tale; but, say what he will, heresy will be dispelled, faith will prevail, and the sheep of St. Francis be praised for evermore." 1

On another occasion, St. Francis contracted with a wolf, that the city would provide for him, if he would not raven as heretofore." To this condition he readily assented, and this amiable quadruped farther gratified St. Francis by an assiduous personal attendance. Many saints have taken pleasure in associating with different animals, and St. Anthony, we are somewhere told, made the goose his gossip; but this brotherhood with wolves seems peculiar to St. Francis.

Conrad the abbot of Corbie had the laudable custom of tenderly rearing a number of crows, in honour of the name of his monastery. One of these birds was full of tricks and malice. Sometimes he pecked the toes of the novices, sometimes he pinched the tails of the cats, at other times

1 A. Gazaus, Pia Hilaria, a collection of legends and anecdotes extracted from divers writers; Ovicula S. Francisci. See Bollandists, Acta Sanctorum, Oct. tom. ii. pp. 628, 704, 764, etc.

2 Not a few saints, according to popular traditions, have similarly prevailed over the ferocious nature of the wolf, effected a complete reform in his character, and reduced him to profitable servitude. See Bagatta, Admiranda Orbis Christiani, lib. vii. cap. 1.

He is, however, more generally represented with a pig, because he was a swineherd, and could heal this animal's distempers.

he flew away with the dinner of his comrades, and obliged them to fast like the good fathers; but his highest delight was to pluck the finest feathers from the peacocks, when they displayed their plumage.

One day the Abbot having entered the refectory, took off his ring to wash his hands: our crow darts on it adroitly, and flies off unobserved. When the abbot goes to put on his ring, it is not to be found; being unable to learn what has become of it, he hurls an excommunication against the unknown author of the theft. Soon the crow

becomes plaintive and sad-he does nothing but pine and drag a languishing life-his feathers drop with the lightest breeze-his wings flag-his body becomes dry and emaciated-no more plucking of peacocks' feathers-no more pinching of novices' toes. His condition now inspires compassion in those he had most tormented, and the commiseration even of the peacocks is excited. With a view of ascertaining the cause of his malady, his nest is visited, to see if he has gathered any poisonous plant. What is the astonishment of all, when the ring which the abbé had lost, and now forgotten, is here discovered! As there is no longer a thief to punish, the anathema is recalled, and the crow resumes in a few days his gaiety and embonpoint.1

Such were the tales invented and propagated by the monks, partly with pious, and partly with politic designs, and which doubtless the multitude received with eager curiosity and often with devout credulity.

Some of these stories, absurd as they are, have served as the basis of French and English dramas: Les Fils Ingrats of Piron, coincides with one of these spiritual fictions. Another tale which occurs in the Pia Hilaria, is that of a drunk beggar, who is carried by the duke of Burgundy to his palace, where he enjoys for twenty-four hours the

1 The Ingoldsby legend, The Jackdaw of Rheims, will at once occur to the memory. The story is given in the Pia Hilaria, "ex Libro de Viris illustribus ordinis Cisterciensis."

2 The first representation of this piece proving rather unsuccessful, the Abbé Desfontaines caustically remarked that the Fils Ingrats deserved their name as they had lowered the reputation of their father, and Piron renamed the drama l'Ecole des Pères.

pleasures of command. This story is told of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in Goulart's "Histoires Admirables," whence it was translated in one of Grimstone's "Admirable and Memorable Histories," which Malone considers the origin of the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew. The first notion, however, of such an incident was no doubt derived from the east. In the tale of the Sleeper Awakened, in the Arabian Nights Entertainments, the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid gives a poor man, called Abon Hassan, a soporific powder, and has him conveyed, while under its influence, to the palace, where, when he awakes, he is obeyed and entertained as the Commander of the Faithful, till, another powder being administered, he is carried back on the following night to his humble dwelling.1

Of the various spiritual romances which have appeared in different countries, no one has been so deservedly popular as the

1 Cf. also Calderon de la Barca's "Vida es Sueño" (Life is a Dream), translated by Mr. Oxenford in the Monthly Magazine, vol. xcvi. In this drama, King Basilio, who had learned from the stars, on the birth of his son Sigismund, that the latter would turn out a reckless, impious, and cruel monarch, and oppress the kingdom into discontent and treason, had his heir reared in confinement (cf. Richter's "Unsichtbare Loge "), under the tuition of a wise preceptor, Clotaldo. Upon his son's growing up, the King devises a trial to test his character:

...

My son, Sigismund,
to-morrow I will place

Beneath my canopy, upon my throne-
But that he is my son he shall not know.
Then shall he govern and command you all,
While you unite in vowing him obedience.
First, if he prove benignant, prudent, wise,
Belying all that fate has told of him,

Then will you have your natural prince, so long
A courtier of the rocks, a friend of brutes.
Secondly, if he prove audacious, cruel,

Rushing through paths of vice with loosen'd rein,
Then ev'ry duty I shall have fulfill'd,
And in deposing him I shall but act
As a free monarch; it will be but just,
Not cruel, to return him to his dungeon.

of John Bunyan (1628-1688), an allegorical work, in which the author describes the journey of a Christian from the city of Destruction to the heavenly Jerusalem. The origin of the Pilgrim's Progress has been attributed by some to Barnard's Religious Allegory, entitled: The Isle of Man, or Proceedings in Manshire, published in 1627, while others have traced it to the story of Jean de Cartigny's "Wandering Knight," translated from the French by Wm. Goodyeare, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Le Pèlerinage de I'Ame, which was composed in verse by Deguilleville, prior of Chalis, afterwards reduced to prose by another monk, Jehan de Gallopes, and printed at Paris in 1480. From the text of Gallopes was made, as has been thought, by J. Lydgate, the English version printed by Caxton at Westminster in 1483. This Pylgremage of the Sowle3 re

The Pilgrim's Progress from this world, to That which is to come. Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream Wherein is Discovered, The manner of his setting out, His Dangerous Journey; And safe Arrival at the Desired Countrey, By John Bunyan. Licensed and Entred according to Order. London, Printed for Nath. Ponder at the Peacock in the Poultrey near Cornhil, 1678. The above is the title of the first edition, one copy only of which is known.

The number of English editions of this work already published can hardly be less than three hundred, various versified editions, abridgments, explanations, imitations, selections, continuations, parodies, keys, phonetic, stenographic monosyllabic and engrossed editions have appeared. The whole or part of the work has been translated into at least twenty-four languages, among which are Hebrew, Arabic, Icelandic, Dakota, Malagese, Maori Oriya, Rarotongan, Tahitian, Bengalee, Yoruba.

2 See Blades, Life of Caxton, 1861-63, vol. ii. p. 131.

3 In the first half of the fourteenth century a French poet named Guillaume de Deguilleville, following the plan of the Roman de la Rose, composed three romances, entitled, Le Pèlerinage de l'Homme ou de la Vie humaine, Le Pèlerinage de l'âme sortie du corps, and Le Pèlerinage de Jesu Christ ou la Vie de Notre Seigneur. These romances are sometimes found united under the general title of Roman des trois Pèlerinages (Graesse, ii. 3, p. 464, etc.). They were the type of divers later productions, of which the most celebrated is Bunyan's" Pilgrim's Progress;" T. Wright, St. Patrick's Purgatory, p. 105. Also in the celebrated poet Rutebeuf's poem, "The way to Paradise (Euvres com*plètes de Rutebeuf publ. par Achille Jubinal, vol. ii. p. 21, etc.) are