the original Latin, from seven manuscripts in the King’s Library, Paris, by the Société des Bibliophiles (Paris, 1824, 2 tom. 12mo). Fr. W. V. Schmidt--to whom those interested in the early history of romantic fiction are much indebted for the various contributions he has brought to it--published the Disciplina anew in Berlin, 1827, 4to, from a Breslau manuscript; and, what is singular for one of his peculiar learning in this department, he supposed his own edition to be the first. It is, on account of its curious notes, the best; but the text of the Paris edition is to be preferred, and a very old French prose version that accompanies it makes it as a book still more valuable. The Count Lucanor--a personage of power and consideration, intended probably to represent those early Christian counts in Spain, who, like Fernan Gonzalez of Castile, were, in fact, independent princes--finds himself occasionally perplexed with questions of morals and public policy. These questions, as they occur, he proposes to Patronio, his minister or counsellor, and Patronio replies to each by a tale or a fable, which is ended with a rhyme in the nature of a moral. The stories are various in their character.[108] Sometimes it is an anecdote in Spanish history to which Don John resorts, like that of the three knights of his grandfather, Saint Ferdinand, at the siege of Seville.[109] More frequently, it is a sketch of some striking trait in the national manners, like the story of “Rodrigo el Franco and his three Faithful Followers.”[110] Sometimes, again, it is a fiction of chivalry, like that of the “Hermit and Richard the Lion-Hearted.”[111] And sometimes it is an apologue, like that of the “Old Man, his Son, and the Ass,” or that of the “Crow persuaded by the Fox to sing,” which, with his many successors, he must in some way or other have obtained from Æsop.[112] They are all curious, but probably the most interesting is the “Moorish Marriage,” partly because it points distinctly to an Arabic origin, and partly because it remarkably resembles the story Shakspeare has used in his “Taming of the Shrew.”[113] It is, however, too long to be given here; and therefore a shorter specimen will be taken from the twenty-second chapter, entitled “Of what happened to Count Fernan Gonzalez, and of the answer he gave to his vassals.” [108] They are all called _Enxiemplos_; a word which then meant _story_ or _apologue_, as it does in the Archpriest of Hita, st. 301, and in the “Crónica General.” Old Lord Berners, in his delightful translation of Froissart, in the same way, calls the fable of the Bird in Borrowed Plumes “an Ensample.” [109] Cap. 2. [110] Cap. 3. [111] Cap. 4.