Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Hooper.djvu/69

Rh for the commission of enormous ones, form no small part of the present compilation. Every natural phenomenon is a miracle; and constmed as best may serve the interests, or accord with the prejudices of the party. The first object is to espouse some ineffably fair daughter: whose affections are disposed of, not according to the common excellent system of policy, or power, or wealth, but by the simple and singularly efficacious method of resolving certain mysteries; in expounding riddles, or in compliance with some inexplicable vow. If this should be considered no very favourable account of what the reader may look for, it should be remembered that the tales in question are faithful representations of other days, and that the character with which the period is impressed tolerates and justifies many absurdities. Yet are we not to suppose everything absurd which now appears so. The progress of civilization has introduced a vast number of unnecessary refinements, at which our ancestors would laugh; perhaps more boisterously, but with as much regard to justice as their politer descendants exhibit at the inartificial character of earlier times.

Ignorance is always credulous; and therefore, in considering the probability or improbability of the fable, we must consider how it was calculated to impress those for whom it was invented, or to whom it was told. If the narrator suited his contrivance to the understanding, and communicated pleasure to the imagination, of his readers or auditors, he possessed the requisite ingenuity; and his merit was proportionably great. We ought not to make our own tbe standard of others' judgments; much less ought we to impose our own age and nation as the criterion of past times and foreign countries. Comparatively secluded as the monks at all times were, their views of life must necessarily have been confined also: and their simplicity would easily be duped by those who were interested in deceiving them. From the pulpit, whence it would appear that their stories were delivered, the opportunity of adding new fictions, for the purpose of illustrating new positions, would be irresistible; and here we trace the source of many of the strained allusions which so repeatedly occur. The good old custom likewise, of enlivening a winter's evening by the relation of fabliaux, accompanied, no doubt, by moral and mystical applications, gives us a delightful picture of the social intercourse and familiarity of remote times; but discovers to us another incentive to extravagant fancy and high-flown conceit. The attention of their hearers could only be riveted by the marvellous; and that which was barely probable, from the constant