amused themselves in various pastimes. About midday they all assembled round a delightful fountain, where a sovereign being elected to preside over this entertainment, each related a tale. The party consisting of ten, and ten days of the fortnight during which this mode of life continued, being partly occupied with story-telling, the number of tales amounts to a hundred; and the work itself has received the name of the Decameron. A short while after the novels of the day were related, the company partook of a supper, or late dinner, and the evening concluded with songs and music.

Boccaccio was the first of the Italians who gave a dramatic form to this species of composition. In this respect the Decameron has a manifest advantage over the Cento Novelle Antiche, and, in the simplicity of the frame, is superior to the eastern fables, which, in this respect, Boccaccio appears to have imitated. Compared with those compositions which want this dramatic embellishment, it has something of the advantage which a regular comedy possesses over unconnected scenes. Hence, the more natural and defined the plan—the more the characters are diversified, and the, more conspicuous will be the skill of the writer, and his work will approach the nearer to perfection. It has been objected to the plan of Boccaccio, that it is not natural that his company should be devoted to merriment, when they had just interred their nearest relations or abandoned them in the jaws of the pestilence, and when they themselves were not secure from the distemper, since it is represented as raging in the country with almost equal violence as in the city. But, in fact, it is in such circumstances that mankind are most disposed for amusement; amid general calamities every thing is lost but individual care; it is then, "Vivamus, mea Lesbia!" and even the expectation of death only urges to the speediness of enjoyment:

"Falle diem; mediis mors venit atra jocis."

Sannaz. Ep.

APPENDIX.

No. 1. p. 39.

JAMBLICHUS

Was born of Syrian parents. In his youth he was placed under the care of a learned Babylonian, who instructed him in the manners and customs of his country, and particularly in its language, which by this time must have been somewhat simplified. His Babylonish preceptor, however, was taken prisoner, and sold as a slave at the time of Trajan's Syrian conquest. After this Jamblichus applied himself chiefly to Greek literature, but he informs us that he did not forget his magic, for, when Antoninus sent his colleague Verus against Vologesus, King of the Parthians, he predicted the progress and issue of that

contest.

Photius has given a pretty full account of the Sinon and Rhodanes of Jamblichus, in his Myriabibla. A MS. of the romance was formerly extant in the library of the Escurial, which was burnt in 1670. Another copy was in possession of Jungerman, who died in the beginning of the seventeenth century, but it has since disappeared. Some fragments originally transcribed by Vossius, from the Florentine library, were published in 1641, by Leo Allatius, in his excerpts from the Greek Rhetoricians (Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, vol. xxxiv. p. 57).

Jamblichus, the author of this romance, must not be confounded with either of the Platonic philosophers of that name, both of whom lived in the reign of the Emperor Julian, and were great favourites of the Apostate.

No. 2. p. 43.

HELIODORUS,

TOWARDS the close of his romance, informs us, that he was of the race of the Sun, and indeed his name seems expressive of some alliance with that luminary. Though of this high mythological extraction, he accepted of the bishopric of Tricca, in Thessaly, under the Christian emperors Arcadius and Honorius, who reigned in the beginning of the fifth century. It has been said, that a synod having given him the choice either to burn his romance, or renounce his bishopric, the author preferred the latter alternative. This disposition, however, seems nearly as questionable as the solar origin of the family of Heliodorus.

The earliest Greek impressions of the Ethiopics was edited at Basle, in 1535, in 4to, by Vincent Obsopoeus, who purchased the MS. from a soldier who had pillaged the library of Matthias Corvinus at Buda. This edition was followed by that of Commelinus, 1596, 8vo., and of Bourdelotius, printed at Paris in 1619. The last and best Greek edition is that of Coray, Paris, 1804, 2 vols, 8vo. Soon after the Romance was first published in Greek, it appeared in almost all the modern languages of Europe. The whole work was turned into English prose by Thomas Underdown, and printed 1577: part of it was also versified in English hexameters, by Abraham Fraunce, and published in this form, 1591, 8vo. There have been at least four French translations, the earliest of which was by Amyot, whose version is said to have so pleased Francis I., that he presented him to the abbacy of Bellozane. Strange, that ecclesiastical preferment should have been obtained by the translation of a work, of which the original composition is said to have cost its author deposition from a bishopric!

Theagenes and Chariclea soon became a favourite work in France. We are told in particular, that the preceptor of a monastery, at which Racine was educated, having found his pupil engaged in its perusal, took the book from him. The young poet, having procured another copy,

was again detected at the same employment by his pedagogue, whom he now told that he was welcome to burn it, as he had got tho whole by heart.

Is supposed by some to have lived in the fourth century, but Boden thinks he must have been later, because, in some of his descriptions he has obviously imitated the poet Musaeus, whom he thinks posterior to that time. He was a rhetorician, and is said to have composed various treatises connected with astronomy and history. There is an epigram in praise of him, particularly of the chastity of his romance, by the Emperor Leo Philosophus. The lines have also been attributed to Photius, but it is not probable he was the author, if we consider the opinion he gives of the work of Tatius in his Myriabibla. Jerome Commelinus first undertook an edition of this romance; but, as he died before it was completed, it was published by his nephews in 1601. About forty years afterwards, a more perfect edition was given by Salmasius, at Leyden, and the work was illustrated by a number of notes, which have been generally added to the more recent impressions, of which the last was in 1792, forming the first volume of an intended Bipontine edition of the Scriptoris erotici. Clitophon and Leucippe was translated into French by the Abbe Desfontaines. There is also a German version by Seybold, with a criticism prefixed, and an English one printed at Oxford in the seventeenth century.

No. 4. p. 65.

LONGUS.

It seems to be very uncertain who LONGUS was, or at what time he lived. Photius says nothing of him in his Myriabibla, nor is he mentioned by any of the authors with whom he is supposed to have been contemporary.