The poem with which this manuscript opens is called “The Book of Apollonius,” and is the reproduction of a story whose origin is obscure, but which is itself familiar to us in the eighth book of Gower’s “Confessio Amantis,” and in the play of “Pericles,” that has sometimes been attributed to Shakspeare. It is found in Greek rhyme very early, but is here taken, almost without alteration of incident, from that great repository of popular fiction in the Middle Ages, the “Gesta Romanorum.” It consists of about twenty-six hundred lines, divided into stanzas of four verses, all terminating with the same rhyme. At the beginning, the author says, in his own person,-- In God’s name the most holy · and Saint Mary’s name most dear, If they but guide and keep me · in their blessed love and fear, I will strive to write a tale, · in mastery new and clear, Where of royal Apollonius · the courtly you shall hear. The new mastery or method--_nueva maestría_--here claimed may be the structure of the stanza and its rhyme; for, in other respects, the versification is like that of the Poem of the Cid; showing, however, more skill and exactness in the mere measure, and a slight improvement in the language. But the merit of the poem is small. It contains occasional notices of the manners of the age when it was produced,--among the rest, some sketches of a female _jongleur_, of the class soon afterwards severely denounced in the laws of Alfonso the Wise,--that are curious and interesting. Its chief attraction, however, is its story, and this, unhappily, is not original.[25] [25] The story of Apollonius, Prince of Tyre, as it is commonly called, and as we have its incidents in this long poem, is the 153d tale of the “Gesta Romanorum” (s. l., 1488, fol.). It is, however, much older than that collection. (Douce, Illustrations of Shakspeare, London, 1807, 8vo, Vol. II. p. 135; and Swan’s translation of the Gesta, London, 1824, 12mo, Vol. II. pp. 164-495.) Two words in the original Spanish of the passage translated in the text should be explained. The author says,-- Estudiar querria Componer un _romance_ de nueva _maestría_. _Romance_ here evidently means _story_, and this is the earliest use of the word in this sense that I know of. _Maestría_, like our old English _Maisterie_, means _art_ or _skill_, as in Chaucer, being the word afterwards corrupted into _Mystery_.