To see the fishes in pools play,
To a draw-bridge then shall ye,

Th' one half of stone th' other of tree.
A barge shall meet you full right,
With twenty-four oars full bright,
With trumpets and with clarion,
The fresh water to row up and down.
Then shall you, daughter, ask the wine,
With spices that be good and fine,
Gentil pots with ginger green,

With dates and dainties you between.

Forty torches, burning bright

At your bridges to bring you light

Into your chamber they shall you bring
With much mirth and more liking.

Your blankets shall be of fustiúne,1
Your sheets shall be of cloth of Rennes,
Your head-sheet shall be of pery pight,
With diamonds set, and rubies bright.

When

2

you are laid in bed so soft,

A cage of gold shall hang aloft,

Fustaine, or futaine, Fr. is a thick cotton cloth, of

which coverlets are still commonly made.

With long pepper fair-burning,
And cloves that be sweet smelling,
Frankincense and Olibanum,

That when ye sleep the taste may come.

And, if ye no rest can take,

All night, minstrels for you shall wake.

A modern princess might possibly object to breathing the smoke of pepper, cloves, and frankincense during her sleep; but the fondness of our ancestors for these, and indeed for perfumes of all kinds, was excessive. We have seen that Lydgate thought it necessary that Venus, when rising from the sea, should be "enointe with gums and ointe"ments sweeter for to smell;" and Martial d'Auvergne, a celebrated French poet of the fifteenth century, in his prologue to the Aresta Amorum (Decrees of the Court of Love), observes of the lady-judges of that court, that

Leurs habits sentoient le cyprès
Et le musc, si abondamment,
Que l'on n'eut su être au plus près
Sans eternuer largement,

Outre plus, en lieu d'herbe verd,
Qu'on a accoustumé d'espandre,

Tout le parquet etoit couvert
De romarin et de lavandre.

In the foregoing description of diversions, the good king of Hungary has forgotten one, which seems to have been as great a favourite with the English and French, as it ever was with the Turkish ladies. This is the bath. It was considered, and with great reason, as the best of all cosmetics; and Mr. Strutt has extracted from an old MS. of prognostications, written in the time of Richard II. a medical caution to the women, against “going to "the bath for beauty" during the months of March and November. But it seems also to have been usual for women to bathe together, for the purpose of conversation; for, in the fabliau of Constant du Hamel (in Barbazan's collection), an invitation for this purpose occurs to the wife, as the most natural device for effecting her purpose, and her three female friends are successively the dupes of the artifice. The generality* of the fabliaux, however,

* See Le Grand, Tom. III. p 455; Tom. IV. p. 175, 232. Promiscuous bathing is also exhibited in some of the early specimens of engraving, in which women are often represented as attending men to the bath, as they still do at Berne. Wenceslaus, emperor and king of Bohemia, who died in 1418, was much attached to the bathing girl who attended him during his captivity, and for whose sake he is said to have bestowed many privileges and immunities on the owners of the baths at Baden. Her picture occurs very frequently in a

while they prove that baths, or at least bathingtubs, were to be found even in the houses of the poorest tradesmen, evince also that they were not always very innocently employed; and those of public resort became so infamous, that their very names are expressive of debauchery.

The reader may possibly be of opinion, that the spectacle of an hundred knights, playing at bowls "in alleys cold," would not be so amusing as even the simplest kind of theatrical representations; and as mysteries, or miracle-plays, are mentioned by Chaucer's wife of Bath, as a common and fashionable diversion, it may be thought that one of these might have been advantageously substituted for the regiment of bowling knights. But the mysteries were for a long time exhibited only on stated festivals they were performed solely by ecclesiastics; they required considerable preparation; and there did not exist in England (the only country which seems to have been known to the author of the romance) any company of actors, at the disposal of the court, till after the middle of the sixteenth century.

Mr. Warton, in his History of Poetry, has taken

finely illuminated bible, written at his instance, and still preserved in the Imperial library at Vienna. This anecdote is mentioned by Lambecius, in his account of that library.

great pains to discover the origin, and trace the progress of theatrical entertainments in Europe; and though the subject is much too extensive for the present work, it may be worth while to present to the reader what seems to be the general outline of his opinion.

He observes that, as early as the fourth century, Gregory Nazianzen, an archbishop and poet, with a view of banishing Pagan plays from the theatre of Constantinople, had composed many sacred dramas, intended to be substituted for the Greek tragedies, with hymns in lieu of the chorus. Whatever may have been the result of this first struggle between piety and taste, a second project of a similar nature is stated to have been successful. Theophylact, another patriarch, invented or adopted, about the year 990, a sort of religious pantomimes and farces, since known by the names of Fête des Fous, Féte de l'Ane, Fête des Innocents, &c. in the hopes of weaning the people from the Bacchanalian and Calendary rites, and other Pagan ceremonies, by the substitution of Christian spectacles. These farces passing first into Italy, suggested the composition of mysteries, which, from thence, found their way into France, and the rest of Europe; and were every where eagerly adopted by the clergy, who were glad to have in their own hands the