Of the Frankish period of Greek history the _Chronicle of the Morea_ is the most curious literary production, valuable alike as an historical source—save for occasional errors of dates and persons, especially in the earlier part—and as a subject for linguistic study. The present edition, the fruit of many years’ labour, is almost wholly devoted to the latter aspect of the _Chronicle_, about which there is much that is of interest. Versions exist in French, in Italian, and in Aragonese, as well as in Greek; and the question as to whether the Greek or the French was the original has been much discussed. The present editor, differing from Buchon and Hopf, believes that the French _Livre de la Conqueste_ could not have been the original. In any case, the Greek _Chronicle_ is of more literary interest than the French, because it throws a strong light on modern Greek. Any person familiar with the modern colloquial language could read with ease, except for a few French feudal terms, this fourteenth century popular poem, many of whose phrases might come from the racy conversation of any Greek peasant of to-day, and is very different from the classical imitation of the contemporary Byzantine historians. Its poetic merits are small, nor does the jog-trot “political” metre in which it is composed tend to lofty flights of poetry. We know not who was its author; but, on the whole, there seems to be reason for believing that he was a Gasmoulos—one of the offspring of mixed marriages between Greeks and Franks—probably employed, as his love of legal nomenclature shows, in some clerkly post. Unpoetical himself, he has at least been the cause of noble poetry in others; for, as Dr Schmitt shows, the second part of Goethe’s _Faust_ has been largely inspired by its perusal; and the hero of that drama finds his prototype in the chivalrous builder of Mistra. * * * * *