Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/84

64 but what renders them peculiarly interesting is, the ideas they afford us of the manners and customs of the English. in these ancient times. I am entirely persuaded that the authors or compilers of them are to be sought for in the monasteries of England; the morals bear too frequent an allusion to a monastic life, and whole sentences of the vulgate and the writings of the fathers are too often introduced to suffer us to think otherwise. I have, in vain, examined these MSS. in the hopes of finding the 39 fables of which Mary has left a translation, but of which the original authors are unknown; I have only been able to trace three or four, and these with different readings. Some may, perhaps, be disposed to conclude that these 39 fables were actually composed by Mary, but I believe that upon a little reflection this opinion must be abandoned. Mary herself terms her work a translation, she glories in the enterprize, and, if it had been only in part the labour of her genius, can it be imagined that she would have passed over that circumstance in silence? When a person takes a pride in the character of a translator, self- love would hardly permit him to make a sacrifice of that of author, if he could claim it. Again, Denis Piramus, who commends the rich and fertile genius of Mary, does it in her Lays, and not in the fables which she had merely translated.

Monsieur Le Grand has published 43 of Mary's fables in prose, and these are nearly all that I have met with in any of the fabulists, ancient, or of the middle ages. His translation, however, is not always literal, and seems, in many places, to have departed from the original. He has likewise published many of the fabliaux, or little Stories which he has unadvisedly attributed to the transcribers of them, and which I have Shewn to belong indisputably to Mary. I have