THEOCRITUS. The Infant Hercules and the Serpents CATULLUS. Catullus's Return Home FROM THE ENGLISH DRAMA OF " AMYNTAS."-Song of UMM OF STORY OF RIMINI. Time, the Fourteenth Century. The Scene lies first at Ravenna, and afterwards at Rimini. ARGUMENT. THIS Poem is founded on the beautiful episode of Paulo and Francesca in the fifth book of the INFERNO, where it stands like a lily in the mouth of Tartarus. The substance of what Dante tells us of the history of the two lovers is to be found at the end of the third Canto. The rest has been gathered from the commentators. They differ in their accounts of it, but all agree that the lady was, in some measure, beguiled into the match with the elder and less attractive Malatesta,-Boccaccio says, by having the younger brother pointed out to her as her destined husband, as he was passing over a square. Francesca of Ravenna was the daughter of Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of that city, and was married to Giovanni, or, as others call him, Launcelot Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, under circumstances that had given her an innocent predilection for Paulo, his younger brother. The falsehood thus practised upon her had fatal consequences. In the Poem before the reader, the Duke her father, a weak, though not ill-disposed man, desirous, on a political account, of marrying her to the Prince of |