stroking his feet with her soft palms." The Institutes took
excellent care of Brahmans and cows, as the Decretals did of the
Pope and the clergy, and the earliest Popes had about as much hand
in the Decretals as Vishnu had in his Institutes. Hommenay, in
'Pantagruel,' did well to have the praise of the Decretals sung by
filles belles, blondelettes, doulcettes, et de bonne grace. And
then Hommenay drank to the Decretals and their very good health. "O
dives Decretales, tant par vous est le vin bon bon trouve"--"O
divine Decretals, how good you make good wine taste!" "The miracle
would be greater," said Pantagruel, "if they made bad wine taste
good." The most that can now be done by the devout for the
Decretals is "to palliate the guilt of their forger," whose name,
like that of the Greek Macpherson, is unknown.

If the early Christian centuries, and the Middle Ages, were chiefly
occupied with pious frauds, with forgeries of gospels, epistles, and
Decretals, the impostors of the Renaissance were busy, as an Oxford
scholar said, when he heard of a new MS. of the Greek Testament,
"with something really important," that is with classical
imitations. After the Turks took Constantinople, when the learned
Greeks were scattered all over Southern Europe, when many genuine
classical manuscripts were recovered by the zeal of scholars, when
the plays of Menander were seen once, and then lost for ever, it was
natural that literary forgery should thrive. As yet scholars were
eager rather than critical; they were collecting and unearthing,
rather than minutely examining the remains of classic literature.
They had found so much, and every year were finding so much more,
that no discovery seemed impossible. The lost books of Livy and
Cicero, the songs of Sappho, the perished plays of Sophocles and
AEschylus might any day be brought to light. This was the very