I have discussed the question of the genealogy of this tale elsewhere, but, after a somewhat more minute comparative analysis of the several versions, am disposed to modify the opinion which I then entertained. I think we must consider as the direct or indirect source of the versions and variants the “Miles Gloriosus” of Plautus, the plot of which, it is stated in the prologue to the second act, was taken from a Greek play. It is, however, not very clear whether Berni adapted his story from Plautus or the “Seven Wise Masters”; probably from the former, since in both the lady is represented, to the captain and the cuckold, as a twin sister, while in the S. W. M. the crafty knight pretends that she is his leman, come from Hungary with tidings that he may now with safety return home. On the other hand, in the S. W. M., as in Plautus, the lovers make their escape by sea, an incident which Berni has altered to a journey by land—no doubt, in order to introduce further adventures for the development of his main plot. But then we find a point of resemblance between Berni and the S. W. M., in the incident of the cuckold accompanying the lovers part of their way—in the latter to the sea-shore; while in Plautus the deceived captain remains at home to prosecute an amour and get a thrashing for his reward (in Plautus, instead of a wife, it is the captain’s slave-girl). It is curious that amidst all the masquerade of the Arabian story the cuckold’s wife also personates her supposititious twin-sister, as in Plautus and Berni. In Plautus the houses of the lover and the captain adjoin, as is also the case in the modern Italian and Sicilian versions; while in Berni, the S. W. M., the Arabian, and the Persian story cited in this note they are at some distance. With these resemblances and variations it is not easy to say which version was derived from another. Evidently the Arabian story has been deliberately modified by the compiler, and he has, I think, considerably improved upon the original: the ludicrous perplexity of the poor fuller when he awakes, to find himself apparently transformed into a Turkish trooper, recalls the nursery rhyme of the little woman “who went to market her eggs for to sell,” and falling asleep on the king’s highway, a pedlar cut off her petticoats up to the knees, and when she awoke and saw her condition she exclaimed, “Lawk-a-mercy me, this is none of I!” and so on. And not less diverting is the pelting the blockhead receives from his brother fullers—altogether, a capital story. _TALE OF THE SIMPLETON HUSBAND.—Vol. I. p. 239._ The “curious” reader will find European and Asiatic versions of this amusing story in “Originals and Analogues of some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales,” published for the Chaucer Society, pp. 177–188 and (in a paper contributed by me: “The Enchanted Tree”) p. 341–364. _TALE OF THE THREE MEN AND OUR LORD ISA. Vol. I. p. 250._