APPENDIX D. p. 196.
Cardinal Valerio, Bishop of Verona (in his ‘De Rhetorica Christiana’ cited in Ludovic Lalanne’s ‘Curiosités des Traditions,’ iv. 403–4), has a very ingenious mode, among others, of accounting for the amplification of Legends; he says it was the custom in many monasteries to give the young monks liberty as a sort of exercise and pastime to write variations of the acts of the saints and martyrs, and they exerted their fancy in producing imaginary conversations and incidents of a nature consonant with the original story; that the most ingenious and well-written of these would sometimes be placed among other MSS. in the Library, and would mislead readers in later times.