46 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. dialogue referred to; it can still be obtained. It is hardly necessary to marvel at this story. The dialogue was publivshed at a time when, in spite of profound erudition, there was hardly an ink- ling of the substratum of a language, or even of the true relation of languages to each other, to be found in the world of learning; at a time when the greatest imaginable nonsense was uttered in an erudite manner. (Specimens in point are the Latin essays, comprising large vol- umes, concerning the question whether Adam was created with a navel.) At a large waste of learning, it was also proven at that period that Adam and Eve, before biting into the apple in Paradise, must have spoken Dutch, but after the fall, the French language. As a diversion, let us take but a small sample of the comic ingenuousness from the dialogue : " The lion asks : Quo sono credis haec veteres extulisse ? "Ursus: Referam quod in senatu grammati- corum audivi (namely, from the Parisian rogue). "Leo: Sat erit. " Ursus : Conjecturam faciebant ex Unguis popularibus, in quibus utcunque corruptis resi- dent an ti quae pronunciationis vestigia, oi diph- thongus gallis quibusdam est familiarissima,
