From “Fairy Mythology.”

	Ecco quei che le carte empion di sogni,
	Lancilotto, Tristano e gli altri erranti,
	Onde conven che il volgo errante agogni.
	—Petrarca.

FEW will now endeavor to trace romantic and marvelous fiction to any individual source. An extensive survey of the regions of fancy and their productions will incline us rather to consider the mental powers of man as having a uniform operation under every sky, and under every form of political existence, and to acknowledge that identity of invention is not more to be wondered at than identity of action. It is strange how limited the powers of the imagination are. Without due consideration of the subject, it might be imagined that her stores of materials and powers of combination are boundless; yet reflection, however slight, will convince us that here also “there is nothing new,” and charges of plagiarism will, in the majority of cases, be justly suspected to be devoid of foundation. The finest poetical expressions and similes of occidental literature meet us when we turn our attention to the East, and a striking analogy pervades the tales and fictions of every region. The reason is, the materials presented to the inventive faculties are scanty. The power of combination is therefore limited to a narrow compass, and similar combinations must hence frequently occur.

  Yet still there is a high degree of probability in the supposition of the luxuriant fictions of the East having through Spain and Syria operated on European fancy. The poetry and romance of the Middle Ages are notoriously richer in detail, and more gorgeous in invention than the more correct and chaste strains of Greece and Latium; the island of Calypso, for example, is in beauty and variety left far behind by the retreats of the fairies of romance. Whence arises this difference? No doubt—

	“When ancient chivalry display’d
	The pomp of her heroic games,
	And crested knights and tissued dames
	Assembled at the clarion’s call,
	In some proud castle’s high-arch’d hall”—

that a degree of pomp and splendor met the eye of the minstrel and romancer on which the bards of the simple republics of ancient times had never gazed, and this might account for the difference between the poetry of ancient and of middle-age Europe. Yet, notwithstanding, we discover such an Orientalism in the latter as would induce us to acquiesce in the hypothesis of the fictions and the manner of the East having been early transmitted to the West; and it is highly probable that along with more splendid habits of life entered a more lavish use of the gorgeous stores laid open to the plastic powers of fiction. The tales of Arabia were undoubtedly known in Europe from a very early period. The romance of “Cléomadès and Claremonde,” which was written in the thirteenth century, not merely resembles, but actually is the story of the Enchanted Horse in the “Thousand and One Nights.” Another tale in the same collection, the two sisters who envied their younger sister, may be found in Straparola, and is also a popular story in Germany; and in the “Pentameron” and other collections of tales published long before the appearance of M. Galland’s translation of the Eastern ones, numerous traces of an Oriental origin may be discerned. The principal routes they came by may also be easily shown. The necessities of commerce and the pilgrimage to Mecca occasioned a constant intercourse between the Moors of Spain and their fellow-sectaries of the East; and the Venetians, who were the owners of Candia, carried on an extensive trade with Syria and Egypt. It is worthy of notice that the “Notti Piacevoli” of Straparola were first published in Venice, and that Basile, the author of the “Pentameron,” spent his youth in Candia, and was afterwards a long time at Venice. Lastly, pilgrims were notorious narrators of marvels, and each, as he visited the Holy Land, was anxious to store his memory with those riches, the diffusal of which procured him attention and hospitality at home.

  We think, therefore, that European romance may be indebted, though not for the name, yet for some of the attributes and exploits of its fairies to Asia. This is more especially the case with the romances composed or turned into prose in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; for in the earlier ones the “Fairy Mythology” is much more sparingly introduced.