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rhymed story (49) »The History of Four Youths Wooing the Per-sian Princess« (1589).

Taken as a whole, the Polish novel in the 16-th century can be appreciated from several viewpoints. So far as its artistic merita are concerned, every item of it should be judged separately, for it contains a few extremely fine specimens both of verse and prose, and a number of works without any artistic merit whatever. The mixture of successful achievements and failureSj however, acquires an entirely different aspect if looked upon from the historical point of view. First of all, it forms a vast province within the limits of which one may easily study the growing flexibility and perfection of the language and style of poetry as well as of prose. The writers compelled to keep to their Latin and other models, did their best to develop the means of expression so as to attain the artistic effects of the Latin form. The circumstance that the majority of the works examined here came from the pens of obscnre writers, accounts for the fact that many of them were failures, but just this circumstance is interesting evidence »quantae molis erat« to create the narrat-ive style in Poland, to what an extent the average lovers of literaturę were attracted by the literary life of their time, and as to how far they were able to contribute to the generał move-ment. In this way the student of Polish literaturę is given, in the field of the novel, an exceptional opportunity to examine not only the very highest literary production of the period from the recognised masters, but also the dregs of it, the endeavours of the insignificant, the humble and the forgotten, whose work, nev-ertheless, contributed greatly to the raising of literary standards among readers.

Moreover, as now the province of the novel was added, tradition in Poland, both orał and literary, became permeated with elements drawn from the international wealth of many stories, ancient and oriental, enjoyed by readers of every degree all over Europę. They became part of the Polish folk-lore, and inevitably re-appeared from time to time upon the surface of literaturę to create a unity between various periods. Their importance is very noticeable in the rich collections of merry »facetiae« which were in vogue in the 17-th century, and even morę in the history of Polish Romanticism. The Romantic writers used them gladly to