Warton, in his History of English Poetry, took much pains to gather together some information on the subject, and his remarks are therefore quoted here, nearly at length, for the reader's convenience.

'The Canterbury Tales,' says Warton, 'are unequal, and of various merit. Few perhaps, if any, of the stories are the invention of Chaucer. I have already spoken at large of the Knight's Tale, one of our author's noblest compositions. That of the Canterbury Tales which deserves the next place, as written in the higher strain of poetry, and the poem by which Milton describes and characterises Chaucer, is the Squire's Tale. The imagination of this story consists in Arabian fiction engrafted on Gothic chivalry. Nor is this Arabian fiction purely the sport of arbitrary fancy: it is in great measure founded on Arabian learning. Cambuscan, a King of Tartary, celebrates his birthday festival in the hall of his palace at Sarra with the most royal magnificence. In the midst of the solemnity, the guests are alarmed by a miraculous and unexpected spectacle: the minstrels cease on a sudden, and all the assembly is hushed in silence, surprise, and suspense; see ll. 77-88.

'These presents were sent by the King of Arabia and India to Cambuscan, in honour of his feast. The Horse of Brass, on the skilful movement and management of certain secret springs, transported his rider into the most distant region of the world in the space of twenty-four hours; for, as the rider chose, he could fly in the air with the swiftness of an eagle: and again, as occasion required, he could stand motionless in opposition to the strongest force, vanish on a sudden at command, and return at his master's call. The Mirror of Glass was endued with the power of shewing any future disasters which might happen to Cambuscan's kingdom, and discovered the most hidden machinations of treason. The Naked Sword could

Keightley, in his Tales and Popular Fictions, published in 1834, at p. 76, distinctly derives Chaucer's Tale from the travels of Marco Polo. I let the sentence stand, however, as an example of undesigned coincidence.

66

pierce armour deemed impenetrable, were it as thikke as is a branched ook" (l. 159); and he who was wounded with it could never be healed, unless its possessor could be entreated to stroke the wound with its edge. The Ring was intended for Canace, Cambuscan's daughter, and while she bore it in her purse, or wore it on her thumb, enabled her to understand the language of every species of birds, and the virtues of every plant.

'I have mentioned in another place, the favourite philosophical studies of the Arabians. In this poem the nature of those studies is displayed, and their operations exemplified: and this consideration, added to the circumstances of Tartary being the scene of action, and Arabia the country from which these extraordinary presents are brought, induces me to believe this story to be identical with one which was current at a very ancient date among the Arabians1. At least it is formed on their principles. Their sciences were tinctured with the warmth of their imaginations, and consisted in wonderful discoveries and mysterious inventions.

'This idea of a Horse of Brass took its rise from their chemical knowledge and experiments in metals. The treatise of Jeber, a famous Arab chemist of the middle ages, called Lapis Philosophorum, contains many curious and useful processes concerning the nature of metals, their fusion, purification, and malleability, which still maintain a place in modern systems of that science, The poets of romance, who deal in Arabian ideas, describe the Trojan horse as made of brass. These sages pretended the power of giving life or speech to some of their compositions in metal. Bishop Grosseteste's speaking brazen head, sometimes attributed to Roger Bacon, has its foundation in Arabian philosophy. In the romance of Valentine and Orson, a brazen head fabricated by a necromancer in a magnificent chamber of the

1 So in Mr. Hazlitt's edition; Warton originally wrote to believe this story to be one of the many fables which the Arabians imported into Europe.'

castle of Clerimond, declares to those two princes their royal parentage. We are told by William of Malmesbury that Pope Sylvester II, a profound mathematician who lived in the eleventh century, made a brazen head, which would speak when spoken to, and oracularly resolved many difficult questions. Albertus Magnus, who was also a profound adept in those sciences which were taught by the Arabian schools, is said to have framed a man of brass, which not only answered questions readily and truly, but was so loquacious, that Thomas Aquinas, while a pupil of Albertus Magnus, and afterwards an Angelic doctor, knocked it in pieces as the disturber of his abstruse speculations. This was about the year 1240. Much in the same manner, the notion of our knight's horse being moved by means of a concealed engine corresponds with their pretences of producing preternatural effects, and their love of surprising by geometrical powers. Exactly in this notion, Rocail, a giant in some of the Arabian romances, is said to have built a palace, together with his own sepulchre, of most magnificent architecture and with singular artifice in both of these he placed a great number of gigantic statues or images, figured of different metals by talismanic skill, which in consequence of some occult machinery, performed actions of real life, and looked like living men.

We must add that astronomy, which the Arabian philosophers studied with a singular enthusiasm, had no small share in the composition of this miraculous steed. For, says the poet,

"He that it wroughte coude ful many a gin;

He wayted many a constellacion,

Er he had don this operacion." (11. 128-130.)

'Thus the buckler of the Arabian giant Ben Gian, as famous among the Orientals as that of Achilles among the Greeks, was fabricated by the powers of astronomy, and Pope Sylvester's brazen head, just mentioned, was prepared under the influence of certain constellations.

'Natural magic, improperly so called, was likewise a favourite pursuit of the Arabians, by which they imposed false appear

ances on the spectator. . . . Chaucer, in the fiction before us, supposes that some of the guests in Cambuscan's hall believed the Trojan horse to be a temporary illusion, effected by the power of magic (I. 218).

...

'Optics were likewise a branch of study which suited the natural genius of the Arabian philosophers, and which they pursued with incredible delight. This science was a part of the Aristotelic philosophy which, as I have before observed, they refined and filled with a thousand extravagances. Hence our strange knight's Mirror of Glass, prepared on the most profound principles of art, and endued with preternatural qualities (11. 225-234, 132-141).

‘Alcen, or Alhazen, mentioned in 1. 232, an Arabic philosopher, wrote seven books of perspective, and flourished about the eleventh century. Vitellio, formed on the same school, was likewise an eminent mathematician of the middle ages, and wrote ten books on Perspective. The Roman Mirror here mentioned by Chaucer, as similar to this of the strange knight, is thus described by Gower:

"Whan Rome stood in noble plight,

Virgile, which was tho parfite,

A mirrour made of his clergye [by his skill],

And sette it in the townes ye [eye, sight]

Of marbre on a piller withoute,

That they, by thritty mile aboute,

By day and eek also by nighte

In that mirrour beholde mighte

Her ennemies, if any were;" Conf. Amant. bk. v.

'The Oriental writers relate that Giamschid, one of their kings, the Solomon of the Persians and their Alexander the Great, possessed among his inestimable treasures cups, globes, and mirrors, of metal, glass, and crystal, by means of which he and his people knew all natural as well as supernatural things. The title of an Arabian book translated from the Persian is-The Mirror which reflects the World. There is this passage in an ancient Turkish poet: "When I am purified by the light of

heaven, my soul will become the mirror of the world, in which I shall discern all abstruse secrets." Monsieur Herbelot is of opinion that the Orientals took these notions from the patriarch Joseph's cup of divination and Nestor's cup in Homer, on which all nature was symbolically represented. Our great countryman Roger Bacon, in his Opus Majus, a work entirely formed on the Aristotelic and Arabian philosophy, describes a variety of Specula, and explains their construction and uses. This is the most curious and extraordinary part of Bacon's book, which was written about the year 1270. Bacon's optic tube, with which he pretended to see future events, was famous in his age, and long afterwards, and chiefly contributed to give him the name of a magician. This art, with others of the experimental kind, the philosophers of those times were fond of adapting to the purposes of thaumaturgy; and there is much occult and chimerical speculation in the discoveries which Bacon affects to have made from optical experiments. He asserts (and I am obliged to cite the passage in his own mysterious expressions) 'omnia sciri per Perspectivam, quoniam omnes actiones rerum fiunt secundum specierum et virtutum multiplicationem ab agentibus hujus mundi in materias patientes,' &c.1 Spenser feigns that the magician Merlin made a glassy globe, and presented it to King Ryence, which showed the approach of enemies, and discovered treasons, (F. Q. iii. 2. 21). This fiction, which exactly corresponds with Chaucer's Mirror, Spenser borrowed from some romance, perhaps of King Arthur, fraught with Oriental fancy. From the same sources came a like fiction of Camoens in the Lusiad (canto x), where globe is shown to Vasco de Gama, representing the universal fabric or system of the world, in which he sees future kingdoms and future events. The Spanish historians report an American tradition, but more probably invented by themselves, and built on the Saracen fables in which they were so conversant. They pretended that some years before the

1 All things can be known by Perspective, because all operations of things take place according to the multiplication of forms and forces, by means of this world's agents, upon yielding materials.'