xxvi
PREFACE.
was carried by the Western clergy to a rather extravagant degree.
It would thus appear that in Western Europe, as well as probably among the Eastern peoples, the use of these stories with moralizations or applications, had been in fact derived from the ancients. The Æsopean fables had paved the way for the Oriental apologues, and for the subsequent formation of the Gesta Romanorum.
THOMAS WRIGHT.
London, Nov. 1871.
