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ordered them from the masters of the Iagellon University and in this way laid foundations for the Polish chap book. The ap-peal was answered by a group of writers, such as Biernat z Lublina, Baltazar Opeć, Jan z Koszyczek, Jan Sandecius and others, who resorted to the favourite specimens of Latin prose fiction,. the »Life of Aesop«, the »Dialogue of Salomo and Marcolphus«, the »Gesta Romanorum«, the »Seven Sages of Rome«. etc. They did not despise the yernacular texts either, such as the Czech »History of Fortune« or the German »Tyll Eulenspiegel«, but the Latin booklets always preyailed.

As far as the German sources and models were concerned,. their influence was rather limited to a special proyince of the romance of adyenture, four books of which (»Tba Emperor Octa-vian«, »Maguellonne«, »Melusine« and »Fortunatus«) appeared in the sixteen seyenties, and to a few lesser episodes which will be mentioned later on.

Equally scarce were translations from the Romance languages. So far no yersions from French or Spanish have been discovered, except the renowned story of »Aurelio and Isabella«, which how-ever was taken, like yersions of it in other European languages, not from the Spanish original but from its Italian translat-ion by Lelio Manfredi. Of stories from the Italian, only the »De-camerone« became a centro of lively interest. The whole of it had not been translated into Polish, but its separate tales were eagerly read and rendered into Polish, although, as a matter of fact, the most popular among them originated not in the Italian text of Boccaccio but in the Latin translations of it by Petrarch, Leonardo Bruni and Beroaldo.

Further, the Polish novelists of the 16-th century explored other provinces in which to find new subject matter for their stories; they picked it out from the Bibie and the ancient epics. So a group of obscure poetasters perused the works of Ovid, took separate episodes from them and rounded them off into independent tales in yerse. One of them, M. Pudłowski did not hesitate to put together yarious pieces from Yirgil and Ovid and to amalgamate them into a poem on »Dido«. Others did not re-frain from turning into stories the current events in the religious and political life of the period. So, about the middle of the century, Stanislas Murzynowski blended together yarious accounts