[Footnote 12: Hazlitt, after remarking that Shakespeare's play of "All's Well that Ends Well" is taken from Boccaccio, adds: "The poet has dramatized the original novel with great skill and comic spirit, and has preserved all the beauty of character and sentiment without improving upon it, which is impossible." In the town of Certaldo, Tuscany, the house in which Boccaccio was born is shown to curious travellers. On the façade is an inscription speaking of the small house and a name which filled the world. "Before seven years of age," says Boccaccio, "when as yet I had met with no stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my letters, I had a natural talent for fiction, and produced some small tales."] [Footnote 13: The author has stood upon the Bridge of Pinos, at Granada, from whence Columbus, discouraged and nearly heart-broken, was recalled by Isabella, after having been denied and dismissed, as he supposed, for the last time. The messenger of the relenting queen overtook the great pilot at the bridge, and conducted him back to the Hall of the Ambassadors, in the Alhambra.] [Footnote 14: Disraeli tells us that the French ambassador to Spain, meeting Cervantes, congratulated him on the great success and reputation gained by his "Don Quixote;" whereupon the author whispered in his ear: "Had it not been for the Inquisition, I should have made my book much more entertaining." When Cervantes was a captive, and in prison at Algiers, he concerted a plan to free himself and his comrades. One of them traitorously betrayed the plot. They were all conveyed before the Dey of Algiers, who promised them their lives if they would betray the contriver of the plot. "I was that person," replied Cervantes; "save my companions, and let me perish." The Dey, struck with his noble confession, spared his life and permitted them all to be ransomed.] [Footnote 15: "The Testimony of the Rocks," a noble and monumental work, by Hugh Miller, was published in 1857. The night following its completion its author shot himself through the heart. The overworked brain had given out, and all was chaos. He had sense enough left to write a few loving lines to his wife and children, and to say farewell.] [Footnote 16: Falling into a state of morbid despondency and mental derangement, Tannahill committed suicide, by drowning, in his thirty-sixth year. James Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd," visited him a short time before his death. "Farewell," said Tannahill, as he grasped his brother poet's hand; "we shall never meet again!"] [Footnote 17: One of Bunyan's biographers tells us his library consisted of two books,--the Bible and Fox's "Book of Martyrs." The latter work, in three volumes, is preserved in the Bedford town library, and contains Bunyan's name at the foot of the titlepages written by himself. Bunyan's crime, for which he was imprisoned twelve years, was teaching plain country people the knowledge of the Scriptures and the practice of virtue.]