hundred and two minae and enters her room past midnight for his act of
abnegation. And at the end, looking, perhaps, for a mortal woman,
Perion finds, in a flesh not unscarred by years, the rose beyond
destruction, the high silver flame of immortal happiness.

So much, then, everything in the inner questioning of beings condemned
to a glimpse of remote perfection, as though the sky had opened on a
city of pure bliss, transpires in _Domnei_; while the fact that it is
laid in Poictesme sharpens the thrust of its illusion. It is by that
much the easier of entry; it borders--rather than on the clamor of
mills--on the reaches men explore, leaving' weariness and dejection for
fancy--a geography for lonely sensibilities betrayed by chance into the
blind traps, the issueless barrens, of existence.

JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER.


CRITICAL COMMENT

_And Norman_ Nicolas _at hearte meant
(Pardie!) some subtle occupation
In making of his Tale of Melicent,
That stubbornly desired Perion.
What perils for to rollen up and down,
So long process, so many a sly cautel,
For to obtain a silly damosel!_

--THOMAS UPCLIFFE.