Which polls and pills the poor in piteous wife, But he himself upon the rich doth tyrannize. SPENSER, B. V. c. ii.

HERE we have the great oppreffive Baron very graphically fet forth: and the Groom of evil guife is as plainly the Baron's vaffal. The Romancers, we see, took no great liberty with these respectable perfonages, when they called the one a Giant, and the other a Savage.

"ANOTHER terror of the Gothic ages "was, Monsters, Dragons, and Serpents." These stories were received in those days for several reasons: 1. From the vulgar belief of enchantments: 2. From their being reported, on the faith of eaftern tradition, by the adventurers into the Holy Land: 3. In ftill later times, from the strange things told and believed, on the discovery of the new world.

THIS

ployed by SPENSER to give an air of probability to his Fairy Tales, in the preface to his fecond book.

Now in all these refpects Greek antiquity very much resembles the Gothic. For what are HOMER'S Leftrigons and Cyclops, but bands of lawless savages, with, each of them, a Giant of enormous fize at their head? And what are the Grecian BACCHUS and HERCULES, but Knights-errant, the exact counter-parts of Sir LAUNCELOT and AMADIS DE GAULE?

For this interpretation we have the authority of our great poet:

Such firft was BACCHUS, that with furious might All th' Eaft, before untam'd, did overcome,

And wrong repreffed and establish'd right,

Which lawless men had formerly fordonne.

Next HERCULES his like enfample fhew'd, Who all the Weft with equal conqueft

wonne,

And monftrous tyrants with his club fubdu'd, The club of juftice drad, with kingly pow'r B. V. c. i.

endu'd

EVEN PLUTARCH'S life of THESEUS reads, throughout, like a modern Romance: and Sir ARTHEGAL himself is hardly his fellow, for righting wrongs and redreffing grievances. So that EuRIPIDES might well make him say of himself, that be bad chofen the profeffion and calling of a Knight-errant for this is the fenfe, and almoft the literal construction, of the following verfes: Ἔθος τόδ ̓ εἰς Ἕλληνας ἐξελεξάμην

Α ΚΟΛΑΣΤΗΣ ΤΩΝ ΚΑΚΩΝ καθεσάναι: Ixérides, ver. 349.

Accordingly, THESEUS is a favourite Hero (witness the Knight's Tale in CHAUCER) even with the Romance

writers.

NAY,

NAY, could the very caftle of a Gothic giant be better defcribed than in the words of HOMER,

High walls and battlements the courts inclofe, And the ftrong gates defy a hoft of foes."

Od. B. XVII. ver. 318.

AND do not you remember that the Grecian Worthies were, in their day, as famous for encountering Dragons and quelling Monsters of all forts, as for fuppreffing Giants?

per hos cecidere justâ

Morte Centauri, cecidit tremenda

Flamma Chimæræ.

t..

3. "THE oppreffions, which it was the glory of the Knight to avenge, were frequently carried on, as we are told, by the charms and enchantments of women."

THESE charms, we may fuppofe, are often metaphorical, as expreffing only

the blandishments of the fex, by which they either feconded the defigns of their Lords, or were enabled to carry on defigns for themselves. Sometimes they are taken to be real; the ignorance of those ages acquiefcing in fuch conceits.

AND are not thefe ftories matched by thofe of Calypfo and Circe, the enchantreffes of the Greek poet?

STILL there are conformities more directly to our purpose.

4. "ROBBERY and piracy were honourable in both; fo far were they from reflecting any difcredit on the antient or modern redreffers of wrongs."

WHAT account can be given of this odd circumftance, but that, in the feudal times and in the early days of Greece, when government was weak, and unable to redress the frequent injuries of petty fovereigns,