Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/28

xxiv tastes and sentiments which are embodied in these stories, and appear in the manner in which they were employed, are found to have been common to all the different branches of the Asiatic and European races with the literary history of whom we are acquainted. We find them developed at a much earlier period than those of which I have been speaking in the Fables of Æsop. Æsop's Fables, belonging to a date several centuries before the Christian era, may be regarded as an early prototype of the Gesta Romanorum, under sentiments of a slightly different character, and influenced by the same system of moralization. The old Greek took for his examples anecdotes of animals acting with the sentiments of men. The clerical writer of mediæval times introduced Roman emperors, chieftains, and philosophers, acting as if they were men of his own time. The moralizations of the fables of Æsop, are