"Oh! unhappie quod Zosias, thou shalt shame thy house, and onlye of all
thy kynne thou shalte be adulteresse. Thinkest thou the deede can be
secreate? A thousand eyne are about thee. Thy mother, if shee do
accordinge, shall not suffer thy outrage to be prevye, not thy husbande,
not thy cousyns, not thy maidens, ye, and thoughe thy servauntes woulde
holde theyr peace, the bestes would speake it, y^e dogges, the poostes
and the marble stones, and thoughe thou hyde all, thou canste not hyde
it from God that seeth all ...

"I knowe quod she it is accordinge as thou sayest, but the rage maketh
me folow the worse. My mynde knoweth howe I fall hedling, but furour
hath overcom and reygneth, and over all my thought ruleth love. I am
determined to folow the commandement of love. Overmuche alas have I
wrestled in vaine; if thou have pytie on me, carye my mesage."[46]

If the German translation was adorned with woodcuts, the English text
had an embellishment of a greater value; it consisted in the conclusion
of the tale as altered by the English writer. In the Latin original of
the future pope, Pius II., Lucrece dies, and Eurialus, having followed
the Emperor back to Germany, mourns for her "till the time when Caesar
married him to a virgin of a ducal house not less beautiful than chaste
and wise," a very commonplace way of mourning for a dead mistress. This
seemed insufferable to the English translator. Faithful as he is
throughout, he would not take upon himself to alter actual facts, yet he
thought right to give a different account of his hero's feelings: "But
lyke as he folowed the Emperoure so dyd Lucres folow hym in hys sleep
and suffred hym no nygtes rest, whom when he knew hys true lover to be
deed, meaved by extreme dolour, clothed him in mournynge apparell, and
utterly excluded all comforte, and yet though the Emperoure gave hym in
mariage a ryghte noble and excellente Ladye, yet he never enjoyed after,
but in conclusyon pitifully wasted his painful lyfe."[47]

The greater the display of feeling in such tales of Italian origin, the
bitterer were the denunciations of moral censors, and the greater at the
same time their popularity with the public. The quarrel did not abate
for one minute during the whole of the century; the period is filled
with condemnations of novels, dramas and poems, answered by no less
numerous apologies for the same. The quarrel went on even beyond the
century, the adverse parties meeting with v