ENT

A lady has two suitors, a young and an old one, the latter of whom wins
her against her inclinations by practising the artifice of Hippomanes in
his race with Atalanta. Being very jealous, he locks her up in a tower;
and the youth, who continued to be her lover, makes a subterraneous
passage to it; and pretending to have married her sister, invites the old
man to his house, and introduces his own wife to him as the bride. The
husband, deceived, but still jealous, facilitates their departure out of
the country, and returns to his tower to find himself deserted.

This story, like that of the _Saracen Friends_, is told by a damsel to a
knight while riding in his company; with this difference, that she is the
heroine of it herself. She is a damsel of a nature still lighter than the
former; and the reader's sympathy with the trouble she brings on herself,
and the way she gets out of it, will be modified accordingly. On the
other hand, nobody can respect the foolish old man with his unwarrantable
marriage; and the moral of Boiardo's story is still useful for these
"enlightened times," though conveyed with an air of levity.

In addition to the classics, the poet has been to the Norman fablers for
his story. The subterranean passage has been more than once repeated in
romance; and the closing incident, the assistance given by the husband
to his wife's elopement, has been imitated in the farce of _Lionel and
Clarissa._

SEEING AND BELIEVING.

My father (said the damsel) is King of the Distant Islands, where the
treasure of the earth is collected. Never was greater wealth known, and I
was heiress of it all.

But it is impossible to foresee what is most to be desired for us in this
world. I was a king's daughter, I was rich, I was handsome, I was lively;
and yet to all those advantages I owed my ill-fortune.

Among other suitors for my hand there came two on the same day, one of
whom was a youth named Ordauro, handsome from head to foot; the other an
old man of seventy, whose name was Folderico. Both were rich and of noble
birth; but the greybeard was counted extremely wise, and of a foresight
more than human. As I did not feel in want of his foresight, the youth
was far more to my taste; and accordingly I listened to him with perfect
good-will, and gave the wise man no sort of encouragement. I was not at
liberty, however, to determine the matter; my father had a voice in it;
so, fearing what he would advise, I thought