Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/27

Rh and sentiments of these remote ages. For from whatever sources the stories may have been derived, and there can be no doubt that a very large amount of Eastern fiction was introduced into Western Europe after the time of the crusades, the details of the stories of the Gesta Romanorum are, in their character, perfectly those of Western Europe in the thirteenth century. We know that in the East, at the time of the Crusades, the taste for telling stories and moralizing upon them, had become almost a passion among the Oriental peoples, but it no doubt existed among the Arab population of the West also, the Maurs of Africa and Spain, and when we consider the influence which the Arabian science and literature exercised on those of Christian Europe, we can understand how naturally the popular fiction of those peoples would be imported hither.

However, as I have already said, the same