A NEW VOLUME IN THE " LOEB LIBRARY."' THE editors
of the "Loeb Library" have done well to add to their publications this very interesting book. J3arlaam and Ioasaph is a Christian tract written in the eighth century by some one who was obviously a strong adversary of the Iconoclastic movement. The editors support the traditional attribution to St. John of Damascus, and succeed at least in showing that there is nothing at all definite against the tradition, which was never questioned until recent years. The writer tells us that the tale came to him from India, and the framework of it is evidently Oriental and Buddhistic. Characteristic are the Apologises or Parables used to illustrate the moral teaching of the tract, the best known being that of the caskets, which was repeated by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. Another very striking parable compares the worldly man to one who, in flying from a unicorn (death), falls into a pit, and is caught in the branches of a tree (human life) which.grows in it He sees below him two mice, a black and a white one (night and day), gnawing through the roots of the tree, and below them again a dragon (Satan) waiting to devour him, while four asps (the elements of the body) threaten him from a bole by his side. Then he looks up and catches sight of a drop of honey (worldly delight) clinging to a branch, and straight- way he forgets all the sights of awe and terror, and his whole mind is absorbed in the sweetness of the drop of honey. These Apologues will, to the ordinary reader, be the most attractive part of the book; but the whole is written with a fine eloquence and sincerity, and one is not surprised that it should, in the Middle Ages, have enjoyed a popularity hardly surpassed by that of The Pilgrim's Progress in later times. It is more surprising that the book should afterwards have gone so completely out of fashion. The original work never found its way into print at all until 1832, when J. F. Boisonnade compiled the text on which the present edition is based. The story was, however, included in an abridged form in the famous Legenda Aurea, and an English translation of the " Wonderful Relation of the Life of King Jehoshaphat the Hermit, son of Avenerio, King of Barma in India . . . a Treatise both Pleasant, Profitable, and Pious," was made in 1672, and reprinted several times in the succeeding century.
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