household of Babio, it is suddenly announced that Croceus is on his way to visit him, and a feast is hastily prepared for his reception. It ends in the knight carrying away Viola by force. Babio, after a little vain bluster, consoles himself for the loss of the damsel with reflections on the virtue of his wife, Pecula, and the faithfulness of his man, Fodius, when, at this moment, Fame carries to his ear reports which excite his suspicions against them. He adopts a stratagem very frequently introduced in the mediæval stories, surprises the two lovers under circumstances which leave no room for doubting their guilt, and then forgives them, enters a monastery, and leaves them to themselves. In form, these "comedies" are little more than scholastic exercises; but, at a later period, we shall see the same stories adopted as the subjects of farces.[82] [82] To judge by the number of copies found in manuscripts, especially of the "Geta," these dramatic poems must have enjoyed considerable popularity. The "Geta" and the "Querulus" were published in a volume entitled, "Vitalis Blesensis Amphitryon et Aulularia Eclogæ. Edidit Fridericus Osannus, Professor Gisensis," 8vo., Darmstadt, 1836. The "Geta" and the "Babio" are included in my "Early Mysteries, and other Latin Poems of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries." Already, however, by the side of these dramatic poems, a real drama--the drama of the middle ages--was gradually developing itself. As stated before, it arose, like the drama of the Greeks, out of the religious ceremonies. We know nothing of the existence of anything approaching to dramatic forms which may have existed among the religious rites of the peoples of the Teutonic race before their conversion to Christianity, but the Christian clergy felt the necessity of keeping up festive religious ceremonies in some form or other, and also of impressing upon people's imagination and memory by means of rude scenical representations some of the broader facts of scriptural and ecclesiastical history. These performances at first consisted probably in mere dumb show, or at the most the performers may have chanted the scriptural account of the transaction they were representing. In this manner the choral boys, or the younger clergy, would, on some special Saint's day, perform some striking act in the life of the saint commemorated, or, on particular festivals of the church, those incidents of gospel history to which the festival especially related. By degrees, a rather more imposing character was given to these performances by the addition of a continuous dialogue, which, however, was written in Latin verse, and was no doubt chanted. This incipient drama in Latin, as far as we know it, belongs to the twelfth century, and is represented by a tolerably large number of examples still preserved in mediæval manuscripts. Some of the earliest of these have for their author a pupil of the celebrated Abelard, named