Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/62

xxxvi If my hypothesis, therefore, be just, with the return of the exiled Christians from the East, originated romantic fiction in Europe. But this, of course, must be taken with modifications. Time alone could mature, what in its progress acquired such extensive popularity; and it seems to me, one of the glaring defects of other systems, that they would represent the rise of that particular kind of fable in question to have been almost instantaneous: to have followed swift upon the incursions of the Saracens—to have sprung up mysteriously among the Scandinavians, or equally, if not more so, among the Armoricans. Whereas, that which was so wide in its extent—so singular in its effects—so deeply impressed on a large portion of the globe, must inevitably have had a beginning, and a middle: it must have been long crescent, before it was at the full. It is true, the classical