[81] This singular composition was published with notes by M. de Montaiglon, in a Parisian journal entitled, "L'Amateur de Livres," in 1849, under the title of "Fragment d'un Dialogue Latin du ix^e siècle entre Terence et un Bouffon." A few separate copies were printed, of which I possess one. Hrotsvitha is the earliest example we have of mediæval writers in this particular class of literature. We find no other until the twelfth century, when two writers flourished named Vital of Blois (_Vitalis Blesensis_) and Matthew of Vendôme (_Matthæus Vindocinensis_), the authors of several of the mediæval poems distinguished by the title of _comœdiæ_, which give us a clearer and more distinct idea of what was meant by the word. They are written in Latin Elegiac verse, a form of composition which was very popular among the mediæval scholars, and consist of stories told in dialogue. Hence Professor Osann, of Giessen, who edited two of those of Vital of Blois, gives them the title of eclogues (_eclogæ_). The name comedy is, however, given to them in manuscripts, and it may perhaps admit of the following explanation. These pieces seem to have been first mere abridgments of the plots of the Roman comedies, especially those of Plautus, and the authors appear to have taken the Latin title of the original as applied to the plot, in the sense of a narrative, and not to its dramatic form. Of the two "comedies" by Vital of Blois, one is entitled "Geta," and is taken from the "Amphytrio" of Plautus, and the other, which in the manuscripts bears the title of "Querulus," represents the "Aulularia" of the same writer. Independent of the form of composition, the scholastic writer has given a strangely mediæval turn to the incidents of the classic story of Jupiter and Alcmena. Another similar "comedy," that of Babio, which I first printed from the manuscripts, is still more mediæval in character. Its plot, perhaps taken from a fabliau, for the mediæval writers rarely invented stories, is as follows, although it must be confessed that it comes out rather obscurely in the dialogue itself. Babio, the hero of the piece, is a priest, who, as was still common at that time (the twelfth century), has a wife, or, as the strict religionists would then say, a concubine, named Pecula. She has a daughter named Viola, with whom Babio is in love, and he pursues his design upon her, of course unknown to his wife. Babio has also a man-servant named Fodius, who is engaged in a secret intrigue with his mistress, Pecula, and also seeks to seduce her daughter, Viola. To crown the whole, the lord of the manor, a knight named Croceus, is also in love with Viola, though with more honourable designs. Here is surely intrigue enough and a sufficient absence of morality to satisfy a modern French novelist of the first water. At the opening of the piece, amid some by-play between the four individuals who form the