Now comes a second part of the poem, of inferior merit and interest. Beowulf sets sail for his own home, and proposes to visit Higelak and recount his success. He goes accordingly to Sweden, and is welcomed by Higelak ; delivers gifts from Rothgar; relates his adventure; receives other gifts of arms; and presents at court the daughter of Rothgar. Meanwhile, the mother of Grændel comes to claim the aid of the sovereign against Beowulf the murderer of her son: but Beowulf's attack is deemed justifiable. Next, Beowulf goes to sea, apparently to fish for whales: but he takes a sea-worm of enormous length, which wounds him; and this he attributes to the spells of Grændel's mother. Imperfections occur in the manuscript, through which some predatory expeditions may be discerned; and a treasure is taken from a dragon. The death of Higelak is related in the thirty-third saga, which introduces the sons of Octher as cotemporary with his old age. Now, if these be the sons of Octher, the arctic navigator, whose voyage was edited by King Alfred, this will decidedly date the heroes of the poem as coeval with our King Athelstan, who flourished in the middle of the tentli century. Beowulf is stated to have revenged against these sons of Octher their hostility to Higelak. With Hugo, a king of Friesland, Beowulf also wars successfully; he undertakes moreover to avenge the murder of Weoxstan; and he adopts Wiglaf the son of his slaughtered friend, as son-in-law.

The thirty-seventh saga begins a third part of the poem; a sort of epilogue, which narrates the old age and disease of Beowulf, and his determination to die a voluntary death. Accordingly, he recognizes Wiglaf as his successor, mounts the prepared funeral pyre, stabs himself with a sword, and is buried with solemnity. The dying harangue of Beowulf is pathetic and natural:

Thus spake Beowulf:
My wound will not heal,
Black is the flesh,
And I knew that to-day
The pain would increase.
From joys of the earth
I am shut out for ever.
To-day is fixed,

And my death is nigh.
Now, my son, will I hand you
The harness of war,
In which I rejoiced
At the storm of the fight,
Which my father gave me.
And with it I give,

As to the most worthy,
The whole of my wealth.
I have govern'd the people
For fifty winters.

No king of the nations
In reach of my sail

Dared come for my hoard:
I struck them with terror,
While I lived on the earth.
But I gave away meal,
And I gave away beer;
Nor wrong'd I the weak,
Nor broke I my word.
My soul is nowhere
Sick of a wound.

In the ensuing canto, Wiglaf inspects the treasury, and a long inventory is given of the plunder accumulated by Beowulf. On Wiglaf's return, he finds his father-in-law dying of his wound, and a' moving farewell ensues.

Cares

of the funeral succeed; the barrow, or cairn, is heaped on Rone's Ness; and an encomium is chanted by a skald, which closes with these words:

"His hearth-mates said,
Of the kings of the world
He was the mildest man,

The strongest of hand,
The dearest to the people,
The most eager for fame.'

Were we to indulge a conjecture as to the author of this poem, we should feel inclined to ascribe it to Wiglaf, the son-in-law of Beowulf. The final separation of these personages has much the appearance of an historical narrative; and the singular complacency of detail, with which the hoard of Beowulf is catalogued, indicates the information of an inmate, and the pride of an heir. The beginning of the thirty-eighth saga might also be construed to support this hypothesis. The earlier portions of the poem have every mark of being derived from the information of Beowulf himself, to whom probably they had been read: but where did Wiglaf the skald, and his father-in-law Beowulf, finally reside? Beowulf, we find, was of the clan of the Shylds; and, as he calls himself in the fourth canto a Goth, his origin must have been from Gothland, the south-western part of Scandinavia, of which Gottenburg is the chief town. He was, however, become (see pp. 32. 48. 64.) an East-Dane. Now this epithet is applied either with respect to Denmark, or with respect to England. If he was an East-Dane of the Danes of Denmark, he dwelled near Lubeck; if he was an East-Dane of the Danes of England, he dwelled in East-Anglia. The latter appears to us most probable; because, in order to visit Higelak, he is not described as passing the Sound; and because his expedition against the Frieslanders announces a rover of the German sea, not of the Baltic. This being admitted, the name Gar-Dence, or Danes of the Yare, which is repeatedly applied to the crew of Beowulf, must be interpreted to mean Danes sailing from the port of Yarmouth.

In this case, the burg, or castle, which Beowulf, in the thirtysecond canto, builds by the water-side, on the flat ground, near the New Ness,' must have stood in the lower part of the Earl's Town, or Gorleston, opposite to the antient mouth of the river, which seems about this time to have changed its course.

Although, from the colouring of the manners, and from the evidence of the language, which differs not greatly from the Anglo-saxon of Alfred's time, we should be disposed, as before observed, to date this composition in the tenth century, yet one strong argument exists for dating it considerably later. It is this. The Danes and the Goths in this poem both acknowlege Higelak as a common sovereign. Now it was not until the beginning of the twelfth century that the Swedes and Goths quarrelled about the election of a common chieftain; and that the Goths transferred their allegiance to the King of the Danes. According to Ruh's History of Sweden, (see the beginning of the second book,) this union of the Goths and Danes was effected in 1134; and at no prior period would they have acknowleged a common sovereign.

We exhort both the poet and the antiquary to examine this curious production. On the manners and spirit of the Gothic north it throws a new and appropriate light; it is the most brilliant corruscation of the boreal dawn of literature; and it may no doubt be applied to the discovery of historical truth, as well as to the decoration of the skies of fiction.

ART. VI. Del Reggimento e dei Costumi delle Donne, &c.; i. e. On the Conduct and Manners of Women, a Poem, by FRANCESCO DA BARBERINO. 8vo. pp. 644. Rome. 1815.

NDER the pontificate of Urban IV., in the year 1264, and

UNDE

at a country-house belonging to the Barberinos of Florence, was born FRANCESCO the author of this poem: he was consequently by twelve months senior to Dante. His father adopted in education the singular punishment of causing the boy to be stripped, when he had committed any fault, and to stand naked on a table; which so much irritated his natural sense of decency, that he would beg to be flogged, and to be made red by blows rather than by shame. He was sent to school under Brunetto Latini of Florence, effected a great progress in Latin and Greek, and applied to the study of the fathers of the church: but he was passionately fond of the Provençal poets, whom he calls his masters, and who were indeed the first teachers of the poetic art to the whole south of Europe. At twenty-four years of age, he was able to improvise,

improvise, or make extemporaneous verses, in Italian, on any given subject before company. He also distinguished himself in drawing, and has left a figure of Cupid on one of his manuscripts, of which a painter might be proud. He visited Bologna and Padua, where he attended to the civil law until the year 1296, when his father died, and he came back to Florence but the body of his parent being arrested for debt on its way to the grave, he found himself obliged to sacrifice the chief part of his expected inheritance. The Bishop of Florence, however, gave him some situation in the ecclesiastical court; which so far supplied his wants that in 1303 he could afford to marry, and he had several children. Being deputed to Avignon in 1309 on affairs of the church, he was absent from Florence for four years together; during which he visited the court of France, and assisted in saving one of the King's companions, who had fallen asleep on horseback and dropt into the river. In 1313, he returned to Florence, and took the degree of doctor of laws, which was much respected by the citizens, who considered his distinction as an honour to the town. Soon after this incident, he lost his wife, and married a second, resolved to merit the epithet given in his diploma of cherico conjugato. With Boccaccio he was much acquainted. He inclined to the Ghibelline party, and corresponded with the Emperor Henry of Luxemburg; which excited unpleasant suspicions, and occasioned his being admonished in the year 1316 by the corporation of Florence. This form of censure incapacitates the object of it for public office: but it must have been rescinded by the Guelph party, because in 1318 he obtained the inspection of the public contracts, was four times named Captain of our Lady, a respectable post, and in 1341 was made counsellor and consul. He was moreover deputed by the city of Florence to Pope Clement VI.; and in 1345 he gained an election in concert with his son to the Priorate. In the year 1348, it is said, he died of the plague, which then infected Florence; if to die at eighty-four may in fact be ascribed to this occasional cause.

Two works of BARBERINO remain, the Documenti d'Amore begun in 1290, which was edited at Rome in 1640 by Frederico Ubaldini, and illustrated with plates; and the Reggimento delle Donne, which is of later but uncertain date, and is now first edited, not from the author's autograph, which has disappeared, but from an unadorned copy extant in the Vatican library. He was buried in the church of the Holy Cross, and the following epitaph was inscribed on his tomb:

"Inclyta,

"Inclyta plange tuos lacrymis Florentia cives
Et patribus tantis fundas orbata dolorem
Dum redeunt Domini Francisci funera mente
De Barberino et nati nam judicis omne
Gesserat officium sua corda cavendo reatu
Sed satis excedit natum quia doctus utroque
Jure fuit genitor sed solo filius uno

Scilicet in causis quæ sunt sæcularibus ortæ
Hoc sunt sub lapide positi quibus ultima clausit
Perfida Mors oculos paucis dilata diebus
Strage sub æquali quæ totum terruit orbem
In bis senario quater aucto mille trecentis.”

The poem itself is rather an antiquarian curiosity than a literary trophy. It throws light on the sort of Provençal poetry that was prevalent at the time of the revival of learning; and it assists in deciding what are the features of taste which have descended to us from classical antiquity, and what are those which have been derived from modern originality. In the libraries of Italy and Spain, many unpublished specimens of Provençal song may still exist; and it is much to be wished that all those manuscript-books which were sufficiently popular to be exemplary, and which served as models to the founders of Italian and Spanish literature, or which were imitated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by the poets of France, England, and Germany, were to be carefully edited by the antiquaries of the south. The favourable reception of a book like this would probably invite the publication of other such hidden treasures; and we therefore exhort the bibliographer to acquire, the critic to dissect, and the lounger to talk of this volume: which, if it does not much amuse, must occasionally instruct, and will help to detect the old pavement and course of the road of modern literature.

In the preface, or introduction, we have a dialogue, in blank verse of unequal length, between the author, his wife, and an allegorical personage here called Onestade, or Honesty, who represents decorum, or the idea of feminine grace and propriety. A work of twenty cantós, or parts, is here also announced; which is to treat of little girls, of marriageable girls, of young wives, of old maids, of mothers, of widows, of second marriages, of religious vows, of chambermaids, of housekeepers, of governesses, of scullions, of distinction of ranks, of general principles, of consolations, of conversation, of behaviour to men, and of a dedication to my wife.' The author then proceeds to the formal execution of his plan: substituting occasionally terza rima for blank verse, and frequently interspersing a short story, or anecdote, in prose. One of these we will translate:

A Spanish