and the women fall in love with Habrocomas, as well as the men with
Anthia, literally by dozens at a time: the plot, however differs from
that of the others in marrying them at the commencement, and sending
them through the ordinary routine of dangers afterwards. The
_Ephesiacs_ are, however, noticeable from its having been supposed by
Mr Douce, (_Illustrations of Shakspeare_, ii. 198,) that the
catastrophe in Romeo and Juliet was originally borrowed from one of
the adventures of Anthia, who, when separated from her husband, is
rescued from banditti by Perilaus, governor of Cilicia, and by him
destined for his bride. Unable to evade his solicitations, she
procures from the "poverty, not the will" of an aged physician named
Eudoxus, what she supposes to be a draught of poison, but which is
really an opiate. She is laid with great pomp, loaded with gems and
costly ornaments, in a vault; and on awakening, finds herself in the
hands of a crew of pirates, who have broken open her sepulchre in
order to rifle the treasures which they knew to have been deposited
there. "This work," (observes Mr Douce,) "was certainly not published
nor translated in the time of Luigi da Porto, the original narrator of
the story of Romeo and Juliet: but there is no reason why he might not
have seen a copy of the original in MS. We might enumerate several
more of these later productions of the same school; but a separate
analysis of each would be both tedious and needless, as none present
any marked features of distinction from those already noticed. They
are all, more or less, indifferent copies either from Heliodorus or
Achilles Tatius; the outline of the story being generally borrowed
from one or the other of these sources, while in point of style,
nearly all appear to have taken as their model the florid rhetorical
display and artificial polish of language which characterize the
latter. Their redeeming point is the high position uniformly assigned
to the female characters, who are neither immured in the Oriental