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bind up their own time with the past, and in this way, though morę or less unconscious of their achievement, they stressed the underlying unity of literary taste in the Middle Ages, the period of Earocco and the era of Romanticism. Sueh is the international aspect of the problem.

Finally Polish literaturę, which owed the favourite subjects of its medieyal stories to the West and South of Europę, paid its debts in a significant manner; that is, it transmitted the majority of the stories, translated in the 16-th cen tury, to the nat-ions with which Poland lias been in constant touch for many long centuries. Accordingly, most of the 16-th century Polish novels passed on to the Russian nations; e. g. »Attila«, »The Seven Sages«, the »G-esta Romanorum«, »Sowizrzał«, »Melusine«, »Ma-guellonne«, »The Emperor Otho«, »The History of Fortune«, »The History of Barnabas«, and a few others have been widely read both in G-reat Russia and in the Ukrainę. The most interesting seems to have been the fate of »The Seven Sages«, and of its finał story, the »Amici«, in particular. Both the whole collection and the separate story of »Amici« have been preserved in many Russian manuscripts, and the latter exerted some influence upon the famous »byliny«. The story of »Amici« passed also into the Latvian popular tales. Morę than that, the entire book has been recently published in modern French owing to an amusing mis-understanding¹. The point is that the Polish »Poncian« was translated, in the early years of the 17-th century, into Armen-ian. The Armenian MS, preserved in the Bibliotheąue Nationale in Paris, attracted the attention of French orientalists; eventually it was translated into French and printed as an apparently unknown specimen of the oriental branch of the world-famous story!

1

La Yersion Armenienne de 1’Histoire des Sept Sages de Romę. Misę en Franęais par F. Macler. Introduction par Y. Chauvain. Paris, E. Leroux, 1919.