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tales of his country, and delivered them in the purest stile, enlivened with interesting circumstances. Sacchetti published tales before him, in which are many anecdotes of Dante and his contemporaries. Boccace was faintly imitated by several Italians, Poggio, Bandello, Cinthio, Firenzuola, Malespini, and others. * Machiavel himself did honour to this species of writing, by his Belphegor.

To produce, and carry on with probability and decorum, a series of events, is the most difficult work of invention; and if we were minutely to examine the popular stories of every nation, we should be amazed to find how few circumstances

* Michiavel, who possessed the liveliest wit with the profoundest reflection, wrote also two comedies, Mandgragora and Clytia, the former of which was played before Leo X. with much magnificence; the latter is an imitation of the Cassina of Plautus: "Indigna vero homine Christiano (says Balzac) qui sanctiores Musas colit, et, in ludicris quoque, meminisse debet severitatis." Epist. Select. pag. 202. I have been informed that Machiavel, towards the latter part of his life, grew religious, and that some pieces of ascetic devotion, composed by him, are preserved in the libraries of Italy. Lord Bacon says remarkably of Machiavel, that he teaches what men usually do, not what they ought to do.

circumstances have been ever invented. Facts and events have been, indeed, varied and modified, but totally new facts have not been created. The writers of the old romances, from whom Ariosto and Spenser have borrowed so largely, are supposed to have had copious imaginations: but may they not be indebted, for their invulnerable heroes, their monsters, their enchantments, their gardens of pleasure, their winged steeds, and the like, to the Echidna, to the Circe, to the Medea, to the Achilles, to the Syrens, to the Harpies, to the Phryxus, and the Bellerophon, of the ancients? The Cave of Polypheme might furnish out the ideas of their giants and Andromeda might give occasion for stories of distressed damsels on the point of being devoured by dragons, and delivered at such a critical. season by their favourite knights. Some faint traditions of the ancients might have been kept glimmering and alive during the whole barbarous ages, as they are called; and it is not impossible, but these have been the parents of the Genii in the eastern, and the Fairies in the western world. To say that Amadis and Sir Tristan have a classical

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Satyra quidem tota nostra est: in qua primus insignem laudem adeptus est
Lucilius; qui quosdam ita deditos sibi adhuc habet amatores, ut eum, non
ejusdem modo operis autoribus, sed omnibus poetis, præferre non dubitent.
QUINTILIAN.

LONDON:

Printed by Thomas Maiden, Sherbourn-Lane, Lombard-Street,

FOR W. J. AND J. RICHARDSON; OTRIDGE AND SON; J. WALKER;
CUTHELL AND MARTIN; R. FAULDER; R LEA OGILVY AND SON;
J. NUNN; E. JEFFERY; LACKINGTON, ALLEN, AND CO. LONGMAN,
HURST, REES, AND ORME; CADELL AND DAVIES; J. AND A. ARCH;
J. ASPERNE; AND VERNOR, HOOD, AND SHARPE.

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