Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/162

cxxxvi exhibit at the inartifical 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 proportion ably great. We ought not to make our own, the 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