down afterwards by a literary man, and they owe "the
crispness, fluency, and elegance," which, as Prof. Saintsbury remarks,
they possess in such a striking degree, to the genius of Antoine de la
Sale. He was born in 1398 in Burgundy or Touraine. He had travelled much
in Italy, and lived for some years at the Court of the Comte d' Anjou.
He returned to Burgundy later, and was, apparently, given some sort
of literary employment by Duke Philippe le Bel. At any rate he was
appointed by Philippe or Louis to record the stories that enlivened the
evenings at the Castle of Genappe, and the choice could not have fallen
on a better man. He was already known as the author of two or three
books, one of which--_Les Quinze Joyes de Mariage_--relates the woes
of married life, and displays a knowledge of character, and a quaint,
satirical humour that are truly remarkable, and remind the reader
alternately of Thackeray and Douglas Jerrold,--indeed some of the
Fifteen Joys are "Curtain Lectures" with a mediaeval environment, and
the word pictures of Woman's foibles, follies, and failings are as
bright to-day as when they were penned exactly 450 years ago. They show
that the "Eternal Feminine" has not altered in five centuries--perhaps
not in five thousand!

The practised and facile pen of Antoine de la Sale clothed the dry bones
of these stories with flesh and blood, and made them live, and move.
Considering his undoubted gifts as a humourist, and a delineator of
character it is strange that the name of Antoine de la Sale is not held
in higher veneration by his countrymen, for he was the earliest exponent
of a form of literary art in which the French have always excelled.

In making a translation of these stories I at first determined to adhere
as closely as possible to the text, but found that the versions differed
greatly. I have followed the two best modern editions, and have made as
few changes and omissions as possible.

Three or four of the stories are extremely coarse, and I hesitated
whether to omit them, insert them in the original French, or translate
them, but decided that as the book would only be read by persons of
education, respectability, and mature age, it was better to translate
them fully,--as has been done in the case of the far coarser passages of
Rabelais and other writers. This course appeared to me less hypocritical
than that adopted in a recent expensive edition of Boccaccio in which
the story of Rusticus and