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xiv ter's Tale; nor are we much shocked at even the absurdities of the Gesta Romanorum. I have again read these delightful Stories, nearly fifty years since my first reading of them; and I own to reading them with the same pleasure and admiration as at first, finding them, notwithstanding their youthfulness and inequalities, true Stories after Nature, sincerely natural, fraught with Nature's own simple truth and most healthful teaching. As Mr. Swinburne further remarks in a too depreciatory tone, Leigh Hunt's influence may be seen; but I think that most generous of critics would not have set any of them down as "somewhat thin and empty," but have rejoiced in their fresh luxuriance, and recognized in the writer a worthy follower and comrade. Strange indeed it seems that he, so wide and so appreciative a reader, the friend also of Keats, has not, that I can recollect, anywhere expressed even an opinion of Wells' prose or poetry!

In 1845 I was engaged on two magazines,