ciples of architecture inculcated by him in his annotations on Vitruvius, may it not be reasonably sus❤ pected, that Philander was the deviser of this literary imposture, in order to support his own opinions by the authority of antiquity. The fraud might have been detected, had the work issued from the hands of Philander, or the palace of the cardinal. That he might remove suspicion from himself, and conduct the reader as it were to other ground, he wrote an amatory romance. There, as if incidentally, he inserted the precepts of his art, and, concealing his own name, he ingeniously employed that of Lamané, for the possessor of the manuscript, and Fumée for the French translator. However it may be," he continues, "the romance is ingeniously contrived, artfully conducted, enlightened with unparalleled sentiments, and precepts of morality, and adorned with a profusion of the most delightful images, most skilfully disposed. The incidents are probable, the episodes are deduced from the main subject, the language is perspicuous, and modesty is scrupulously observed. Here there is nothing mean, nothing unnatural or affected, nothing that has the appearance of childishness or sophistry." Huet, however, complains that the conclusion of the fable of this romance is far removed from the excellence of the introduction,

I have now taken a successive view of the Greek romances, and have attempted to furnish such an analysis of them as may enable the reader to form some notion of their nature and qualities. One quality, it is obvious, pervades them all, and it is the characteristic not only of Greek romance, but of the first attempt at prosaic fiction in every country. This is making the interest of the work consist in a succession of strange, and often improbable, adventures. Indeed, as the primary object of the narrator was to surprise by the incidents he rehearsed, the strangeness of these was the chief object to which he directed his attention. For the creation of these marvels sufficient scope was given him, because, as little intercourse took place in society, the limits of probability were not precisely ascertained. The seclusion, also, of females in these early times gave a certain uniformity to existence, and prevented the novelist from painting those minute and almost imperceptible traits of feeling and character; all those developements, which render a well-written modern novel so agreeable and interesting. Still, amid all their imperfections, the Greek romances are extremely pleasing, since they may be considered as almost the first productions in which

woman is in any degree represented as assuming her proper station of the friend and the companion of man. Hitherto she had been considered almost in the light of a slave, ready to bestow her affections on whatever master might happen to obtain her; but, in Heliodorus and his followers, we see her an affectionate guide and adviser-we behold an union of hearts painted as a main-spring of our conduct in life-we are delighted with pictures of fidelity, constancy, and chastity, and are encouraged to persevere in a life of virtue by the happy consequences to which it leads. The Greek romances are less valuable than they might have been, from giving too much to adventure, and too little to manners and character;-but these have not been altogether neglected, and several pleasing pictures are delineated of ancient customs and feelings. In short, these early fictions are such as might have been expected at the first ef fort, and must be considered as not merely valuable in themselves, but as highly estimable in pointing out the method of awaking the most pleasing sympathies of our nature, and affecting most pow erfully the fancy and the heart.

CHAPTER II.

Introduction of the Milesian Tales into Italy. -Latin Romances.-Petronius Arbiter.Apuleius, &c.

THE Milesian Fables had found their way into Italy even before they flourished in Greece. They had been received with eagerness, and imitated by the Sybarites, the most voluptuous nation in the west of Europe; whose stories obtained the same celebrity in Rome, that the Milesian tales had acquired in Asia and in Greece. It is not easy to specify the exact nature of the western imitations, but if we may judge from a solitary specimen transmitted by Ælian, they were of a facetious description, and intended to promote merriment. They enjoyed great popularity for a long period, and at length, in the time of Sylla, the Milesian tales of Aristidis were translated into Latin by Sisenna,

who was prætor of Sicily, and author of a history of Rome.

The taste for the Sybarite and Milesian fables increased during the reign of the emperors. Many imitators appeared, particularly Clodius Albinus, the competitor of the Emperor Severus, whose stories have not reached posterity, but are said to have obtained a celebrity to which their merit hardly entitled them. It is strange that Severus, in a letter to the senate, in which he upbraids its members for the honours they had heaped on his rival, and the support they had given to his pretensions, should, amid accusations that concerned him more nearly, have expressed his chief mortification to arise from their having distinguished that person as learned, who had grown hoary in the study of old wives' tales, such as the Milesian-Punic fables. -Major fuit dolor, quod illum pro literato laudandum plerique duxistis, cum ille neniis quibusdam anilibus occupatus, inter Milesias Punicas Apuleii sui, et ludicra literaria consenesceret.

But the most celebrated fable of ancient Rome is the work of Petronius Arbiter, which is, perhaps, the most remarkable fiction which has dishonoured

I Milesias nonnulli ejusdem esse dicunt, quarum fama non ignobilis, quamvis mediocriter scriptæ sunt.-Capitolinus vit. Clod. Albini.