The romance of Partenopex is undoubtedly of the same class as those of Cupid and Psyche and Melusine, in which one spouse must not behold another on pain of loss. The loss invariably occurs, but poetical justice usually demands that recovery should take place after many trials. Frequently the husband or wife takes beast or reptile shape, as in the grand old romance of Melusine, to which Partenopex bears a strong resemblance, and by which I think it has certainly been sophisticated. But in the story with which we have been dealing the reputed semi-reptilian form which the heroine is said to possess is proved to be the figment of the brain of a jealous rival, and in this we have a valuable variant of the main form of the legend, illustrating the rise within it of more modern ideas and the skilful utilization of an antique form to the uses of the writer of fiction. The tale of Partenopex de Blois certainly deserves fuller study at the hands of folklorists than it has yet received, and I hope they will peruse its Catalonian as well as its French form, thus rendering their purview of the tale more embracive. Tirante the White The grand old tale of Tirante the White was the work of two Catalonian authors, Juan Martorell and Juan de Gilha, the latter completing the work of the former. Martorell states that he translated the romance from the English, and it certainly seems as if portions of the work had been sophisticated or influenced by the old English romance of Sir Guy of Warwick. I cannot, however, discern any signs of direct translation, and think it very probable that the author's statement in this regard is one of those polite fictions employed by the romance-writers of Old Spain to render their efforts more mysterious or to guard themselves against the merciless critics with whom the Peninsula seems to have swarmed in a period when well-nigh everybody was bitten with the craze for belles-lettres. The romance was first printed at Valencia in 1490. It contains reference to the Canary Islands, which were first discovered in 1326, and were not well known even in Spain until the beginning of the fifteenth century, so that we may perhaps be justified in fixing the date of its composition about that period, especially as it alludes to a work on chivalry entitled L'Arbre des Batailles, which was not published until 1390. The book was translated into Castilian and produced at Valladolid in 1511, and was followed by Italian and French translations by Manfredi and the Comte de Caylus respectively, but the latter has dreadfully mutilated the original, and has even altered its main plot as well as many of its lesser incidents, and has imported into it an unhealthy atmosphere which we do not find in the work as given us by Martorell.