From the reader who has followed me through the mazes of this enchanting romance I must ask pardon for having omitted in my rendering of it many passages of rare beauty and touching humanity. My business in this volume, however, is to present the thread of the story, to describe its main incidents, and, keeping as closely as possible to the adventures and doings of its principal characters, to supply an outline of the whole. I might readily have enhanced the brilliancy and readableness of my account if I had chosen to narrate isolated adventures and the incidents of more surpassing excellence with which it teems. But my purpose, as I have said, is to provide readers who have little time to peruse an original text with the story in brief. At the same time I have attempted to conserve the true spirit of the romance, and if I have failed to do so that must in some measure be attributed to the difficult task of compression with which I was confronted. In the words of one who 'set' Amadis to verse, I may say, with justice: To tell as meet the costly feast's array, My tedious tale would hold a summer's day. I let [46] to sing who mid the courtly throng Did most excel in dance or sprightly song, Who first, who last, were seated on the dais, Who carped of love and arms in courtliest phrase. [47] CHAPTER IV: THE SEQUELS TO "AMADIS DE GAUL" "Inferior as these after-books of Amadis certainly are, they form so singular an epoch in the history of literature that an abridgment of the whole series into our language is to be desired."--Southey In dealing with the literatures of the Peninsula, a task for which he was eminently well equipped, Southey followed an instinct of natural discrimination which seldom played him false. Feeble as some of the 'after-books' of Amadis undoubtedly are, we cannot afford to ignore them, if only because of the literary phenomena they present. In these fantastic tales the imagination which had flowered so luxuriantly in Amadis became overblown. They are, indeed, the petals fallen from the fading rose--so quickly did the wonderful blossom of chivalric fiction droop and wither. The first of these sequels, called The Fifth Book of Amadis, is more generally known as Esplandian, as it chiefly refers to the adventures of that hero. Cervantes is, perhaps, rather more unkind to this romance than its peculiar merits deserve, for he makes his critical curate say of it: "Verily the father's goodness shall not excuse the want of it in the son. Here, good mistress housekeeper, open that window and throw it into the yard. Let it serve as a foundation to that pile which we are to set a-blazing presently."