sta Romanorum'? The most curious and interesting of all
collections of popular tales. Negatively, one thing they are not: that
is, they are not _Deeds of the Romans_, the acts of the heirs of the
Caesars. All such allusions are the purest fantasy. The great "citee of
Rome," and some oddly dubbed emperor thereof, indeed the entire
background, are in truth as unhistorical and imaginary as the tale
itself.

Such stories are very old. So far back did they spring that it would be
idle to conjecture their origin. In the centuries long before Caxton,
the centuries before manuscript-writing filled up the leisure hours of
the monks, the 'Gesta,' both in the Orient and in the Occident, were
brought forth. Plain, direct, and unvarnished, they are the form in
which the men of ideas of those rude times approached and entertained,
by accounts of human joy and woe, their brother men of action. Every
race of historic importance, from the eastern Turanians to the western
Celts, has produced such legends. Sometimes they delight the lover of
folk-lore; sometimes they belong to the Dryasdust antiquarian. But our
'Gesta,' with their directness and naivete, with their occasional beauty
of diction and fine touches of sympathy and imagination,--even with
their Northern lack of grace,--are properly a part of literature. In
these 'Deeds' is found the plot or ground-plan of such master works as
'King Lear' and the 'Merchant of Venice,' and the first cast of material
refined by Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Schiller, and other writers.

Among the people in mediaeval times such tales evidently passed from
mouth to mouth. They were the common food of fancy and delight to our
forefathers, as they gathered round the fire in stormy weather. Their
recital enlivened the women's unnumbered hours of spinning, weaving, and
embroidery. As the short days of the year came on, there must have been
calls for 'The Knights of Baldak and Lombardy,' 'The Three Caskets,' or
'The White and Black Daughters,' as nowadays we go to our book-shelves
for the stories that the race still loves, and ungraciously enjoy the
silent telling.

Such folk-stories as those in the 'Gesta' are in the main made of, must
have passed from district to district and even from nation to nation, by
many channels,--chief among them the constant wanderings of monks and
minstrels,--becoming the common heritage of many peoples, and passing
from secular to sacerdotal use. The mediaeval Church, with the