Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Hooper.djvu/41

Rh in distant parts, might have this person's name and residence affixed, not from any dishonest motive, but merely to announce the place in which they were to be sold. Such a supposition is not beyond the bounds of probability, and may be worth considering. Many copies will be found without date or place; and perhaps the inconvenience and difficulty which a new title-page created, might on some occasions induce the booksellers to omit it altogether.

idioms and proverbial expressions are so frequent in the Gesta Romanorum, that they might lead to a supposition quite the reverse of Mr. Douce's idea; but I rather conceive them the necessary consequence of transcription; and that the manuscript was thought to require verbal flourishes, as well as gilded margins and illuminated initials. In like manner I account for the Saxon names of dogs [Tale CXLII.], which are quite unnecessary, and seem introduced in the most arbitrary manner. The incidents of one story [Tale CLV.] are said to occur in the bishopric of Ely. "This fact," says the writer of the Gest, "related upon the faith of many to whom it was well known, I have myself heard, both from the inhabitants of the place and others." The inference, therefore, is that the narrator was either an Englishman, or one well acquainted with the localities or the place he describes. If the origin of the other stories be deducible from the position laid down by Mr. Douce, then, by parity of reasoning, the writer of the tale in question was the compiler of the series—and most probably an Englishman: at all events, his work might be prepared in England. But this would not be conceded; and it is only by supposing an interpolation of the story, or of part of the story, that the difficulty is to be obviated. At any rate, the circumstance itself cannot justly be adduced in proof either one way or the other. But whoever was the author, or authors (which is more probable), and wherever they were produced, it is for the most part agreed that these tales were collected as early as the commencement of the fourteenth century—if not long before. Through a period of five hundred years, they have afforded a popular entertainment: the uncultivated minds of the Middle Ages valued them as a repertory of theological information, and later times as an inexhaustible fund of dramatic incident.

Of that which is called by Mr. Douce the, it now remains to speak. "This work was undoubtedly composed in England in imitation of the other; and therefore it will be necessary for the future to distinguish the two works by the respective appellations of