The French manuscripts just referred to (_additional_, 10,292) are full of illuminations, some illustrating in an especial way the carvings on ivories of the same date. Another, of the same character and of like interest and value, is in the Bodleian: the romance of Alexander. The romance of the Rose was a dull and monotonous poem of perhaps ten thousand lines, from which for nearly three hundred years its readers, if they looked at it with pious and religious eyes, learnt their maxims of morality, of science, and philosophy. Others, again, read it as men now read Ovid’s Art of love and saw nothing of its mysticism or scholastic subtleties. It was written somewhere about the year 1300, and, with the omission of some five thousand lines in the middle, Chaucer’s translation is very accurate and good. It was frequently moralised: in France, by Clement Marot; and in England (perhaps from the French also) long before, by Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln. These made the Rose to be the Virgin Mary, and the towers and the defences of the castle are the four cardinal virtues, and holy chastity, and buxomness, and meekness. The castle itself is thus described: “This is the castel of love and lisse, Of solace, of socour, of joye, and blisse, Of hope, of hele, of sikernesse, And ful of alle swetnesse.” Among the many fictions which were founded on the traditions of king Arthur none were more common or better known than those which related the love adventures of Lancelot and queen Guinevre; and of Tristan and Isoude, the queen of Mark king of Cornwall. Subjects from both these tales are frequent on ivory caskets and mirror cases. The disgrace of Aristotle comes from the romance of Alexander; and from that of Virgil we have the poet in his mediæval character of magician. Both the poet and the philosopher, in spite of their great age and wisdom, are made fools of by the ladies of the story. One is induced to carry his mistress on his back, the other is hauled up in a basket to a window and left there dangling at sunrise before all the people. We must not leave caskets without mention of the very graceful open work with which the panels of many of them were often decorated, and which have come down to us (speaking generally) only in parts or fragments. Two woodcuts are given here, full size, from a series of small panels, formerly in the Meyrick collection, which is, unhappily, now dispersed. [Illustration] [Illustration]