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of suppositious or altered facts, Wadington himself fills his work with a great number of "Contes devots," which cannot boast of more authenticity than the "Miracles" invented by his rivals. But he had found these fables in other authors. Criticism had not in those times promulged her laws; by which truth may be distinguished from falsehood; while it required judgment and information of an ordinary kind only, to obferve that the "miracles," represented at that day, were pieces composed by modern authors; and it was easy to distinguish what was the produce of their own invention, or alteration, by comparing them with the lives of the saints then in use.

This work of William of Wadington is of near six thousand verses. It is to be found in the manuscripts of the duke of Norfolk, in the library of the Royal Society, and in the British Museum, Bib. Reg. 20 B. XIV. et Bib. Harleiah, N^o 273, 4657, and 4974. It is at the conclusion of the two last manuscripts, that the poet speaks of himself by name, and enters into all the details of his history, which are not to be found in the two first mentioned copies. The author says, that he mould not have undertaken to translate his work into French verse, but to make it more palatable to a nation, that pursued with avidity every thing written in that language, and to the end, continues he, that it might be understood, as well by the great, as the lower class of people, which is of itself sufficient to shew, how much the stile of Romance was then generally received in England. In short, he asks forgiveness from his reader for the faults, which he might have been guilty of, whether against the language, or rhyme; because, being an Englishman by birth, it might easily happen that some errors, as to one or the other, might have escaped him.

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