152 MK. WILLIAM E. A. AXON ON THE 



of Jacques de Vitri, who died in 1240, and in the ' Scala 

 Coeli ■" of Jean le Jenne, who wrote about the commence- 

 ment of the fourteenth century. ''^This beautiful apologue/' 

 observes Mr. Thomas Wright, " is of frequent occurrence 

 in old MSS., and differs considerably in different copies.^' 

 He has printed a Latin version from the HarleianMSS. of 

 the thirteenth or fourteenth century*. The great collec- 

 tion of gtories known as the ' Gesta Uomanorum/ there is 

 reason to suppose, was compiled in England about the close 

 of the thirteenth century for the use of preachers. It has 

 been a storehouse for the poets and dramatists also ; but 

 its original intention was to provide the ecclesiastics with 

 something wherewith to enliven their dry theological dis- 

 courses. The story of the Hermit and the Angel is the 

 eightieth of this collection ; and an abstract of it is given 

 by Wartonf- 



The story is found in a French conte, published in 1823, 

 by Meon, who found it added to some of the manuscripts 

 of the ' Vie des Peres/ to which it did not originally belong. 

 In this poem we have the incidents of a cup stolen from 

 one host and given to another, of the servant drowned, of 

 the infant strangled, and of an abbey burned down that 

 the monks might once more be poor and pious. By a 

 pi-ocess of natural selection Voltaire has omitted one of 

 the murders, and Parnell has left out the conflagration. 

 From this it may be doubted whether the witty French- 

 man was indebted to the English poet or to one of the 

 earlier texts. This has also been commented upon by 

 DunlopJ. 



The story is also in some of the recensions of the 'Vitse 



* ' Latin Stories,' edited by T. Wright, 1842, pp. 10 and 247. 

 t WartoD, Hist, of English Poetry, edited by Hazlitt (i 871), vol. i. p. 256. 

 \ Dunlop, 'History of Fiction,' 4th edit. 1876, p. 289. Wright's ' Latin 

 Stories,' 1842, p. 10 1. 



