CHAP. XLVI.-The emperor Alexander made a law that no man should turn a flat-fish on his plate, so as to eat the other side, under pain of death; it being nevertheless permitted him to ask three things before his execution. The son of an offender against this law saves his father's life by his ingenuity, and contrives to marry the emperor's daughter.

CHAP. XLVII.-A law was made that if any child should die, or even be hurt by the negligence of the person to whose care it were committed, such person should suffer death. A knight requested, as a reward for some services, that he might have the care of the king's son. This was accordingly, granted, and the child delivered over to nurses. In their absence at a fair, a wolf entered the house and carried off the infant towards a wood. A shepherd gathering fruit in an orchard saw the affair and gave the alarm. The child was recovered, but not till it had received a bite that left a mark in its forehead. When the king had received back his son, he discovered the wound and menaced the knight with the punishment of the law. The knight asserted that he was not a God, nor able to controul the effect of nature. The king maintained that the mark was not natural, but produced by accident; and the knight

at length confessed the fact and threw himself on the king's mercy. He was only injoined to do exclusive homage to the king, and taken into favour.

In the moral, God is the maker of the law. He delivers man's soul to him pure and unspotted, to be nourished in deeds of virtue. The ecclesiastics are the nurses, who instead of attending to their duty, frequent the worldly fairs. of wickedness and vanity. The wolf is the Devil, who seizes the soul and endeavours to precipitate it into hell; but the good preacher, sitting in the arbour of the holy scriptures, gives the alarm, and delivers it from the clutches of the Devil, &c.

CHAP. XLVIII. This story has been given from the old English translation in manuscript, at the end of the notes to the Merchant of Venice. See vol. i. p. 281.

CHAP. XLIX.-An emperor made a law that whoever violated a virgin should lose both his eyes. His own son is found guilty of the crime, and the emperor, notwithstanding the entreaties. of his nobles, enforces punishment, but consents to divide the loss of sight with the aggressor.

CHAP. L. This story is in the other Gesta, but differently related. A king A king on some do

mestic difference with his wife, had been told by her that one only of his three sons was legitimate; but which of them was so she refused to discover. This gave him much uneasiness; and his death soon afterwards approaching, he called his children together, and declared in the presence of witnesses, that he left a ring which had very singular properties to him that should be found to be his lawful son. On his death a dispute arose between the youths, and it was at length agreed to refer its decision to the king of Jernsalem. He immediately ordered that the dead body of the father should be taken up and tied to a tree; that each of the sons should shoot an arrow at it, and that he who penetrated the deepest should have the ring. The eldest shot first, and the arrow went far into the body; the second shot also, and deeper than the other. The youngest son stood at a distance, and wept bitterly; but the king said to him, "Young man, take your arrow and shoot as your brothers have done." He answered, He answered, "Far be it from me to commit so great a crime. I would not for the whole world, disfigure the body of my father." The king said, "Without doubt you are his son, and the others only bastards; to you therefore I adjudge the ring."

This story has been entitled, The judgment of Solomon, and is probably of oriental origins. It is often represented in that illumination which in the ancient manuscripts of the French translation of the Bible by Guiars des Moulins is prefixed to the proverbs of Solomon, although the story itself does not occur in that bible, nor in the original commentary by Petrus Comestor. It appears to have been a great favourite in the middle ages, and was often related from the pulpith. The original judgment of Solomon in the first book of Kings had probably reached the continent of India at some very early period, as it is imitated in the following story which occurs in one of the books belonging to the kingdom of Pegu. Two women went out together to bathe, each accompanied by her child. Whilst they

* See Le Grand, Fabliaux et contes, ii. 426, who quotes the Tartarian tales for a similar story.

See the exempla at the end of the Sermones discipuli, ex. ix. de. B. The Sermones fratris Gulielmi Cartusiensis, 1494, 12mo, sig. V. 7 b. An ancient collection of Latin sermons in the Harl. coll. No. 5396. See likewise A christen exhortation unto customable swearers, at the end of The christen state of matrimonye, 1543, 12mo, p. 28, the author of which cites the Preceptorium Johannis Beets, a German preacher about 1450; and Burton's Unparellelled varieties, p. 21.

were in the water, the children being left on the bank of the river, an alligator seized one of them and carried it away. A dispute arose between the women for the possession of the remaining infant, and they at length agreed to go before the judge. To determine the controversy the judge ordered one of the women to lay hold of the child's head, and the other of its heels, and thus to pull for it. In the course of the struggle, the child was hurt, and cried out; one of the women instantly quitted her hold, and the other carried off the prize. The judge ordered her to be brought back, and told her that as she had manifested so little compassion for the sufferings of the child, she could not possibly be its mother. The infant was restored to the other woman. There is another ingenious adjudication by the emperor Claudius, scarcely inferior to Solomon's.

i From Memorandums in India by John Marshall, beginning Sep. 11th, 1678, preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British museum, No. 4523. The above person appears to have been a very curious and intelligent tra veller, and many of his observations on the manners of the Indians would be exceedingly well worth publishing. Marshall was educated at Cambridge, had a great desire to travel, and by the interest of Lord Craven, went out 1667, ine th India ship the Unicorn, in the company's service.