fact, they were only rude collections of hovels—­were built, fortresses were founded, and rivers were named from princes or princesses drowned in them, in accidental journeys, or by the violence of rival claimants to their thrones.  The pretended records contain a vast number of legends, of very little interest or value, as the reader will readily admit when we tell him that the famous story of King Lear is the most entertaining one in the whole collection.  It is this: 

There was a king in the line named Lear.  He founded the city now called Leicester.  He had three daughters, whose names were Gonilla, Regana, and Cordiella.  Cordiella was her father’s favorite child.  He was, however, jealous of the affections of them all, and one day he called them to him, and asked them for some assurance of their love.  The two eldest responded by making the most extravagant protestations.  They loved their father a thousand times better than their own souls.  They could not express, they said, the ardor and strength of their attachment, and called Heaven and earth to witness that these protestations were sincere.

Cordiella, all this time, stood meekly and silently by, and when her father asked her how it was with her, she replied, “Father, my love toward you is as my duty bids.  What can a father ask, or a daughter promise more?  They who pretend beyond this only flatter.”

The king, who was old and childish, was much pleased with the manifestation of love offered by Gonilla and Regana, and thought that the honest Cordiella was heartless and cold.  He treated her with greater and greater neglect and finally decided to leave her without any portion whatever, while he divided his kingdom between the other two, having previously married them to princes of high rank.  Cordiella was, however, at last made choice of for a wife by a French prince, who, it seems, knew better than the old king how much more to be relied upon was unpretending and honest truth than empty and extravagant profession.  He married the portionless Cordiella, and took her with him to the Continent.

The old king now having given up his kingdom to his eldest daughters, they managed, by artifice and maneuvering, to get every thing else away from him, so that he became wholly dependent upon them, and had to live with them by turns.  This was not all; for, at the instigation of their husbands, they put so many indignities and affronts upon him, that his life at length became an intolerable burden, and finally he was compelled to leave the realm altogether, and in his destitution and distress he went for refuge and protection to his rejected daughter Cordiella.  She received her father with the greatest alacrity and affection.  She raised an army to restore him to his rights, and went in person with him to England to assist him in recovering them.  She was successful.  The old king took possession of his throne again, and reigned in peace for the remainder of his days.  The story is of itself nothing very remarkable, though Shakspeare has immortalized it by making it the subject of one of his tragedies.