"Legende Dorée, ou Sommaire de l'Histoire des Freres-mendians de l'ordre de Saint François. (Par Nic. Vignier.) Amsterdam, 1734. 12mo. Réimpr. sur l'ed. de Leyde, 1608 in 8vo."
Thomas of Celano, the friend and scholar of St. Francis, and the author of the famous Dies Iræ, after the saint's death composed a brief account of his life, which he afterwards greatly enlarged, and which even now is the most authentic we possess. I should be glad to know the best, as well as the latest editions of this life.
"Francis," said Luther, "was no doubt an honest and just man. He little thought that such superstition and unbelief should proceed out of his life."—Tischreden.
Berington says of St. Francis:
"In an age of less intemperance in religion, miracles and the fancied intervention of peculiar favours from heaven, would not have been deemed necessary to stamp worth and admiration on a character which in itself possessed the purest excellences that fall to the lot of man. But this circumstance, and more than this, the reception which an institute so peculiarly framed met with, serve to manifest the singular taste of the age."—Berington's Henry II., p. 629.
"It is scarcely possible," says Mr. Massingberd, "to read the history of St. Francis of Assisi, without believing that there was in him a sincere and self-devoted, however ill-directed, piety." We must not let the foolish legends afterwards written of him lower him in our estimation, nor cease to regard him as a sincere and devoted Christian.
Mariconda.
Minor Notes.
Charles Lamb's Epitaph.—Perhaps the following lines, which I have copied from the gravestone of Charles Lamb, who lies in the churchyard at Edmonton, may be interesting to those of your readers who are among the admirers of the witty and gentle Elia:—