other Lords" to ascertain the fact. Their visit finds

"Alberto spinning thread,

And Vdislao reeling it, with fretting well nie dead.

The Lady shewde the new come Lords the matter all and some,
And how to tame their lawless loue, the barons bid this dome;
The Chauncelor what erst is shone, returned to the king,

Whose pleasure was, he should with him, with speede both parties bring,
They all arriued at the court, the King iudg'd out of hand,
Vlrico had the wager wonne, and he should haue the land,
And more against the spoiled Lords, with iustice to perseuer,
In penaunce of their lauish tongues they were exilde for euer;
Fair Barbara, for foyling them, did to this honour mount,
She was the chiefe abount the Queene, in credit and account,
Whereas she liued many dayes, and held her wish at will,
Nowe being dead in worthy fame, her vertues liueth still."

The incident of the Queen falling in love with the Knight, does not form a part of Whetstone's relation; and the picture also bears very little sway in the progress of the story. To obtain it, in the first instance, appears the principal object; as the Knight, confidently relying upon the shifting shadows, has not then any further obstacle to prevent his going to the wars. The gift by the magician, and its effect, is thus described.

"Anon he comes, with picture fram'de, much like Vlrico's wife;
So long (quoth he) this form keepes faire, she lives an honest life;
If yellowe, tempted then she is, if black with merrie gayles,
Unto the Cornish mount god buoy, in hast her honour sayles."

The colours vary with threatening aspect upon Alberto not returning, and before Vdislao's departure on the same errand, when the poet says;

"I leaue a space,

To shewe what rumor in the court, in euery corner roung,
Some say Alberto's ioyes were such, as loth to part he soung;
Vlrico oft his image view'd, to see what hue it bare,

And all the while it yealowe seem'd, he liu'd in perilous feare;

But when it turn'd to white againe, what so the courtiers say ;

He knewe Alberto had the foyle, and he had won the lay.".

Barbara never appears to have obtained any knowledge of the effect or existence of the picture, neither is there any altercation upon the subject of jealousy between her and the Knight. Whetstone has also a poem of "the Complaint of the Lorde Alberto, &c."

J. H.

ART. DCCCLXXVIII. The Mysterious Mother.

IN part reply to the inquiry of a correspondent it may be observed, that the story that forms the ground-work of this play was universally known in the sixteenth century. Its first appearance in the English language proves the original of a theological source, and traced to a period earlier than has yet been supposed. The following extract is from chapter the eleventh upon Incest of "Beautifull Blossomes gathered by John Byshop."

"Any auncient example of this beastlike lust [incest] wil I rehearse none, but one out of MANLIUS his common places, reported by him vppon Doctour Martin Luther's credit, to have been done in his time at Erphurst in Germanie. There was, saies hee, a maide of an honest stocke, and she herself also honest, which was servant unto a rich widdowe, whose sonne (a young man) being inflamed with the love and

The whole title is given in a former volume of CENSURA.

beauty of this maide, hotly solicitated her to be naught with him. The maide, abhorring the foul facte, did often repell the furious youthe: but in the ende, when he became euery day more troublesome instant on her then other, the maide was forced for the safegarde of her honesty, to declare all the whole matter vp to his mother, desiring her to bridle and restraine her sonne that lay in continuall awaite for her. The mother after she had deliberated on the matter, tooke this order with the maide, that she shoulde consent to him, and prescribe him a certain place, and houre of the night, when and where she would be her selfe : that by that occasion she might represse and chastise the lewdnesse of her sonne. The maide liked very wel of the deuise, & made a sure promise unto y*. young man according vnto her mistres her minde. At the prefixed houre, the glad man went vnto the place appointed, where he found, in steede of his mayd, the mother, who had come thither to correct the leacherous rage of her sonne, but (out alas) she being ouercome with vnnatural lust, prostituted her wicked body to her owne sonne. Of this heynous incest was there a woman child born, which being for a time secretly brought vp abroade, at the lengthe the mother took home vnto her. The same vnhappie sonne, being altogether ignorant of all these things, began to fall in loue with his sister, and daughter, being growne vp, and made her also his wife." P. 51.

The late Lord Orford states his knowledge of the story as being heard when very young, "and that the guilty mother had consulted Archbishop Tillotson ;" but, after the play was written, he "accidentally

discovered the origin of the tradition in the novels of the Queen of Navarre."* The same observation is repeated by the late George Steevens: "the remotest origin of the tale is to be met with in a collection of mock causes proposed for arguments at a mooting in France, a custom anciently observed in our own seminaries of law. From this publication it found its way into the Queen of Navarre's novels, and from thence into similar books of entertainment."+

Under the marvel of a supposed fable it became in general repute. That a confined distribution attended the writings of the theologist appears undoubted, as the learned Henry Stephens, in his preliminary treatise to an apology for Herodotus, has repeated the same story with no other authority than the novel. Stephens's work was also rendered into English, and a transcript of it, as there given, will satisfactorily prove that the whole was copied from Manlius.

"We reade in the Queene of Nauarre's narrations of one who lying with his mother (thinking he had laine with her gentlewoman) had a child by her, which was his sister and daughter, and afterwards his wife; and so from one simple incest fell into two other, though as ignorant thereof as he was of the former; which happened through his mother's default, presuming too much of her constancie; for she not crediting her gentlewoman's report, that her

It is minutely detailed by Bandello (No. 35, part ii.) who heard it related by the Queen of Navarre to his patroness, Gostanza Rangona e Fregoza." Walker's Hist. Memoir on Italian Tragedy, 1799, p. 273.

Suppressed leaves of the Biographia Dramatica.

sonne did intice and sollicite her to folly; to the end she might know the truth, went at the time appointed in her roome; weere, in stead of preuenting a lesse euil, by this meanes, she kept her roome so well (not making herselfe knowne) that she caused her sonne to fall into that so horrible and detestable a sinne: who afterwards (not knowing nor once suspecting any such thing) married her whom he had begotten in such incest."*

One of these sources probably suggested it to an anonymous writer as an interesting subject for a tragedy brought forward at Drury-Lane Theatre in 1698, as The Fatal Discovery, or Love in Ruins; which contains the only instance of variation from the original, in an attempt to soften the principal incident, by supposing the mother ignorant of the person of her son at the time of meeting.

In 1715 appeared the ninth volume of the Spectator, which contains the history as "delivered to us among the writings of Mr. Perkins," and has been several times reprinted. Mr. Perkins is stated to have been a Puritan, and his name generally substi tuted for that of Archbishop Tillotson.

A "worthless piece" written for the stage by Mr. Gould, called Innocence distressed, or the Royal Penitents, posthumously printed in 1737, is founded on the same event.

The next was a fictitious narrative by some unprincipled writer, published by Cooper in 1751, under

* A World of Wonders, or an Introdvction, &e. London, printed by John Norton, 1607." Again, "Edinburgh, Imprinted by Andrew Hart and Richard Lawson, 1608. Fo."