method of dissecting knights and giants. On the other hand, circumstances were in some degree more favourable to them than to the authors of the fictions concerning Arthur and the companions of the Round Table. The Saracens were a more romantic people than the Saxons; and the tales of eastern fairies and eastern magnificence offered new pictures to delight and astonish the mind. These, indeed, are much less agreeable than genuine pictures of life and nature; but they are better, at least, than descriptions of continual havoc, and of the unprovoked slaughter of giants. APPENDIX. No I.-p. 10. JAMBLICHUS WAS born of Syrian parents. In his youth he was pla ced 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 burned in 1671. Another copy was 5 |