LITERARY HISTORY OF PARNELL's ' HERMIt/ 151 



plotted to kill his master the night following. And as for 

 that wicked man to whom I gave the cup of gold, he was 

 to have nothing in the other world, I gave him something 

 in this which, notwithstanding, will prove a snare to him, 

 for he will be more intemperate ; and let him which is 

 filthy be more filthy/ The truth of this story I affirm 

 not ; but the moral is very good ; for it shows that God is 

 an indulgent father to the saints when he most afflicts 

 them, and that when he sets the wicked on high ' he sets 

 them also in slippery places, and their prosperity is their 

 ruine.' — Prov. i. 32^^*. 



The caution of the worthy divine is to be commended in 

 declining to affirm the literal truth of this narrative. 



White, it will be noticed, gives Bradwardine as the 

 authority for this apologue. This may be conjectured 

 to be the author who was styled the Doctor profundus 

 and wliose ' Causa Dei contra Pelagium ' was a work of 

 weight and fame in the fourteenth century f- He was an 

 Archbishop of Canterbury, who was born in 1290 or 

 earlier, and died in 1 349, of the plague. We can thus trace 

 the legend in England to the early part of the fourteenth 

 century. 



In Germany it Avas used by Luther and by Joh. Herolt J, 

 whose ' Sermones de Tempore ' were printed at Nuremberg 

 in 1496. 



In the thirteenth century it is found in several forms. 

 From M. Gaston Paris § we learn that it is in the sermons 



* White's (Th.) 'Treatise of the Power of Godliness,' 165S, pp. 376-379. 



t Hook's ' Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury,' vol. iv. (1865) p. 80. 



\ Mitford's ' Life of Parnell,' prefixed to the Aldine edition of that poet. 



§ "L'Ange et I'Ermite, etude sur une legende religieuse, par Gaston 

 Paris, lue dans la siiance publique annuello de I'Aciidemie des Inscriptions, 

 12 Nov. iSSo," Journal Officicl, 16 Nov. 1880. The present paper was in 

 progress before the appearance of the '• etude " of M. Paris. All special in- 

 debtedness to his work has been carefully acknowledged. 



