"
The dialogue happily takes a turn, and the task of writing the
_Princess_ is assigned to the author, as one of the tales in the
Decameron of Boccaccio. A neighbouring princess of the south (so the
story runs as the prince tells it) is in childhood betrothed to a like
childish prince of the north:--
"She to me
Was proxy-wedded with a _bootless calf_ [?]
At eight years old."
Both grew up, the prince, all imaginative, filling his mind with
pictures of her perfections; but she turning a female reformer of the
Wolstencroft [_sic_] school, resolved never to wed till woman was raised
to an equality with men, and establishing a strange female colony and
college to carry this vast design into effect. In consequence of this
her father is obliged to violate the contract, and his indignant father
prepares for war to enforce it. The prince, with two companions, flies
to the south, to try what he can do for himself; and in the disguise of
ladies they obtain admission to the guarded precincts of the new
Amazonian league. He, meanwhile, sings sweetly of his mistress--
"And still I wore her picture by my heart,
And one dark tress; and all around them both
Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen.
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