a fond old dotard betrayed into disgrace by an unsuitable
match is supported in a lively manner. Pope has nowhere copied the free
and easy versification, and the narrative style of Dryden's Fables, so
happily as in this pleasant tale. He has endeavoured suitably to
familiarise the stateliness of our heroic measure; but, after all his
pains, this measure is not adapted to such subjects so well as the lines
of four feet, or the French numbers of Fontaine. Fontaine is, in truth,
the capital and unrivalled writer of comic tales. He generally took his
subjects from Boccacio, Poggius, and Ariosto; but adorned them with so
many natural strokes, with such quaintness in his reflections, and such
a dryness and archness of humour, as cannot fail to excite laughter. Our
Prior has happily caught his manner in many of his lighter tales,
particularly in Hans Carvel. Of the tale before us, Mr. Tyrwhitt gives
the following account:--"The scene of the Merchant's Tale is laid in
Italy; but none of the names, except Damian and Justin, seem to be
Italian, but rather made at pleasure; so that I doubt whether the story
be really of Italian growth. The adventure of the pear-tree I find in a
small collection of Latin fables, written by one Adolphus, in elegiac
verses of his fashion, in the year 1315. This fable has never been
printed but once, and in a book not commonly to be met with. Whatever
was the real original of this tale, the machinery of the fairies, which
Chaucer has used so happily, was probably added by himself; and indeed I
cannot help thinking that his Pluto and Proserpine were the true
progenitors of Oberon and Titania, or rather that they themselves have,
once at least, deigned to revisit our poetical system under the latter
names. In the History of English Poetry, this is said to be an old
Lombard story. But many passages in it are evidently taken from the
Polycraticon of John of Salisbury: De molestiis et oneribus conjugiorum
secundum Hieronymum et alios philosophos--Et de pernicie libidinis--Et
de mulieris Ephesinae et similium fide. And, by the way, about forty
verses belonging to this argument are translated from the same chapter
of the Polycraticon, in the Wife of Bath's prologue. In the meantime, it
is not improbable that this tale might have originally been oriental. A
Persian tale is just published which it extremely resembles; and it has
much of the allegory of an eastern apologue."--WARTON.

In the art of telling a sto