W. A. Clouston Popular Tales and Fictions

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Wright, in his introduction to an old English metri cal text of the Seven Wise Masters,' printed for the Percy Society, states that he had met with the story among the Latin tales of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but could not call to mind in what collec tion: it is found, he adds, a little varied in detail, in the Nouveaux Contes a rire,' Amsterdam, 1737, under the title of J ugsment subtil du Duc d'ossone contre deux Marchands. Apparently Wright was not aware that the story in this form occurs in one of the novels of Le Sage, The History of Vanillo Gonzales,' ch. Xvi., which was published in 1734. The hero, while a page to the Duke of Ossuna, governor of Sicily, is met on the street one day by a young citizen of Palermo, who.