I hope I have not dwelt unduly on these stories considered as pictures of the customs and philosophy of their times. Perhaps, after all, these matters are of interest to the archæologist and the ecclesiologist rather than to the general reader. Not being a scholar myself, I have no pretension to write for scholars. My object is more modest. I have tried to bring together a little garland for the pleasure of the amateurs of beautiful tales. To me these mediæval stories are beautiful, and I have striven to decant them from one language into another with as little loss as may be. To this end I have refined a phrase, or, perhaps, softened an incident here and there. I do not pretend that they are perfect works of art. "All poets are unequal, except the bad, and they are uniformly bad." Sometimes a story drags, or there are wearisome repetitions. The psychology occasionally strikes a modern reader as remarkably summary. When Amis, for example, became a leper, we are gravely told that his wife held him in bitter hatred, and many a time strove to strangle him. Here is an author who, obviously, is astonished at nothing. But in reading these narratives you will remember how they have delighted, and been used by, writers in some cases greater than their own authors. Is it possible, for instance, to peruse "The Lay of the Little Bird" without recalling Shelley's "Sensitive Plant"? The tale of "The Divided Horsecloth" is told, in another version, both by Montaigne and Browning. The principal incident of "King Florus and the Fair Jehane" is used by Shakespeare in "Cymbeline." "Our Lady's Tumbler" and "A Jew who took as Surety the Image of Our Lady" have been re-written by Monsieur Anatole France with such perfection of art and artistry as to be the admiration and despair of all who come after him. It should not be forgotten that the majority of these stories were intended to be recited, and not read. Repetition, therefore, is the more easily excused. This also accounts for the dramatic use of dialogue, so noticeable in "The Palfrey" and in "Aucassin and Nicolette." But it is evident that this Introduction, already over-long, will not permit me to go _seriatim_ through these tales, "Item, a grey eye or so. Item, two lips, indifferent red." Let me therefore content myself with appreciating the most lovely of them all, "Aucassin and Nicolette."