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petually passing through the Byzantine empire in their way to the Holy-land, and had now every opportunity of gratifying curiosity, and imbibing some portion of the literature and polish of the prostrate Greeks. The fifth, sixth, and seventh crusades, also, the two former of which occurred during the dominion of the Latin emperors, namely, in 1218 and 1248, kept vigorously open the communication with the East, and afforded time for a considerable familiarity with its marvellous fictions and embellishments.

Another powerful auxiliary to the introduction and knowledge of Asiatic imagery, which existed in the thirteenth century, was the increase of literary travellers. Though the martial enthusiasm, which had for nearly one hundred and eighty years continued to precipitate all Europe on the continent of Asia, expired in 1270; it was happily succeeded by an eager curiosity to visit the regions where such wonderful events had taken place; and the lovers of literature and science sate musing on those plains over which the warriors of the West had so lately poured with terror and destruction in their train.

To Marco Paulo de Veneto and William de Rubruquis, we are indebted for much valuable information relative to the eastern world. The enterprising genius of Marco had been stimulated

by the example of his father and uncle, both great and celebrated travellers; and he had the singular good fortune not only to obtain fame by his extensive journeys, but to accumulate, as their result, a very handsome property. The adventurous Venetian, after passing through Syria and Persia, and residing seventeen years in the court of the Khan of Tartary, returned to Europe, and published in his native dialect the narrative of his surprising expedition. His travels very early received a Latin version under the title of De Regionibus Orientis ; and from the curious facts and marvellous incidents which they displayed were rapidly dispersed, and every where perused with avidity. Much credulity and some mistakes are necessarily to be expected, considering the period of their production; but with this allowance their general veracity is unimpeached, and they had the merit of exciting a spirit of enquiry, and of rendering a knowledge of the manners, customs, and literature of the East greatly more accurate and familiar.

Of William de Rubruquis but little is known; it appears, however, that he was a monk of the Franciscan order, and was sent, A. D. 1253, by Louis the Ninth, king of France, into Persic Tartary, to congratulate the Khan on his conversion to christianity; on the same mission likewise,

and nearly at the same time, Pope Innocent the Fourth sent Carpini; and their books, which are filled with the most wonderful and romantic stories, though mingled with much useful and curious matter, were widely diffused on their

return.

In fact, the publication of these travels, the frequent immigrations of the Arabians into Europe, and the numberless tales of the crusaders who had penetrated into the Holy Land, produced such a multitude of wonders relative to eastern countries, that the monks, who had sufficient leisure and taste for the employment, collected these marvels into treatises under the titles of Mirabilia Mundi, De Mirabilibus India et Arabia, De Mirabilibus Terra Sunctæ, &c. &c. To these we may add a countless succession of Fabliaux in French verse; such indeed is their number, that we may justly call the thirteenth century the age of metrical romance. Of this a very convincing proof may be drawn from the prologue to one of our first English romances in rhyme, entitled, Richard Cuer Du Lyon, and which is certainly known to have existed before the year 1300. Here about thirty romances are mentioned as popular both in France and England. Besides these, which are in verse, several very bulky prose romances were written at this period; the

most celebrated of which was composed at the request of Mattheo de Porta, archbishop of Salerno, by Guido de Colonna, a native of Messina, and finished in 1260. It is divided into fifteen books, written in Latin, and termed Historia de Bello Trojano. This work, which was speedily naturalized in various languages, and in the fifteenth century paraphrased by Lydgate and translated by Caxton, superseded the tales of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, and abounds, as Warton observes, with oriental imagery, of which the subject was extremely susceptible *.

During this century too, and part of the preceding, the communication with the Arabians of Spain, which had been much limited in the tenth and eleventh centuries by the mutual operation of ignorance and animosity, became more open and unreserved. They had ceased to be formidable, and were consequently viewed in a less odious light; whilst at the same time the newly acquired taste for oriental magnificence and fable, the result of the crusades, rendered their customs and literature objects of research, and materials for romantic embellishment.

It is a remarkable circumstance, and a proof of the rapid diffusion of oriental imagery, that towards he close of the thirteenth century the

*See Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 126. ̧

wilds of Scotland should produce a necromancer, of whose life the most marvellous events are intimately connected with the beautiful mythology of Persia. About the year 1270, flourished at Ercildoune, in the county of Berwick*, Thomas Lermont, commonly called Thomas the Rymer, or Thomas of Ercildoune. This extraordinary character, the Merlin of the North, was held in the highest veneration as a poet, a prophet, and a magician. His supernatural powers were universally ascribed to an intercourse with the Queen of Fairy, a being not of a diminutive form like the fairies of more modern poetry, but endowed with the most exquisite symmetry and beauty of person, and whose attractions were such as almost irresistibly to allure and charm those who beheld her.

Exactly of this nature were the Peris of Persia; and the term Fairy, or Faërie, observes Mr. Scott, is probably of oriental origin, and derived from the Persic, through the medium of the Arabic. "In Persic, the term Peri," he continues, "expresses a species of imaginary being, which resembles the Fairy in some of its qualities, and is one of the fairest creatures of romantic fancy. This superstition must have been known to the Arabs, among whom the Persian Tales or Ro

* See Irving's Lives of the Scotch Poets, vol. i. p. 227.

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