It is perhaps hardly fair to mention together with such a production other works by monkish authors sometimes replete with simple-minded piety and never without the quaint charm of mediæval narrative. Such are the paraphrases of Biblical and other religious legends of which Provençal literature shows a goodly array. None of them, however, calls for detailed notice, their character showing no essential deviation from similar works in other languages, and their subject and treatment being widely remote from the artistic poetry with which this book is chiefly concerned. Suffice it to mention the names of some of the saints chosen for treatment, such as St. Alexius, St. Honorat, and Sta. Fides, (the MS. of the last-mentioned legend dating, according to Fauchet, as far back as the eleventh century), also rhymed paraphrases of the apocryphal gospels of ‘St. Nicodemus,’ and the ‘Infancy of Christ.’ Of much greater importance than any of these is a semi-religious didactic poem treating of that favourite hero of the pseudo-historic Muse in the middle ages, Boethius, and the spiritual comfort he derived in his worldly misfortune from what Shakespeare, perhaps with a faint reminiscence of this very man, calls ‘adversity’s sweet milk philosophy.’ The goddess of that divine science appears to Boethius, ‘Count of Rome,’ in prison, to which he has been sent by the Emperor Teiric (Theodoric), a usurper and unbeliever whose claims to the throne the single-hearted statesman refuses ta acknowledge, and whose vices he has publicly reprimanded. Boethius is condemned on a false charge of having invited the Greeks to invade Rome. In his dungeon he laments his fate and regrets his sins, an opportunity for moralising of which the poet avails himself by enforcing the didactic key-note of his poem: ‘The good and evil deeds of our youth find their just reward in advanced age.’ The darkness of the prison is suddenly brightened by the appearance of a beautiful maiden clad in garments of resplendent richness. She is the daughter of a mighty king, and her own power and gifts are without measure. ‘Beautiful is the lady,’ the poet repeats, ‘although her days have been many; no man can hide himself from her glance.’ She herself has woven her gorgeous robes, ‘one fringe of which could not be bought for a thousand pounds of silver.’ At the bottom of her garment is inscribed the Greek letter Π, while her headdress shows a Θ, the former signifying, according to the poet, ‘the life which is entire,’ the latter ‘the just law of heaven.’ A number of birds ascending steps which are suspended between the two letters signify mankind in its struggle for divine righteousness. Some more allegory of the same kind finishes the poem, which is evidently the fragment of a much larger work, founded possibly on the celebrated ‘Consolatio Philosophiæ.’