PREFACE TO VOL. III.

Before taking leave of his readers, the author would inform them that at the commencement of these "Tales," the earlier ones dating some thirty years back, nothing was further from his intentions than rushing into print, although repeatedly persuaded to do so by certain well-meaning friends, who from time to time were permitted to peruse the hidden MSS. The tales, nearly all of them, were written when the author was living abroad, and to beguile a period of enforced idleness, which otherwise would have been intolerable.

Never in his wildest dreams did he meditate inflicting them on the public mind. Partly, it may be, that he thought with Lord Tennyson, that "fame is half disfame," and that "in making many books there is no end," as Solomon teaches. Or it may be that he didn't care to augment that already numerous class who are said "to rush on where angels fear to tread." However this might be, time passed and the tales began to accumulate, when the author conceived the idea of stringing them together in a decameron, and later stillvi of illustrating them with his own designs. Still years rolled on, and the tales, long abandoned, were consigned to the limbo of a mysterious black box, where they remained all but forgotten till many years later.

vi

"Why on earth don't you publish them?" was the constant cry of those few who were taken into the writer's confidence.

The author answered by a modest shrug of self-depreciation, and still the unfinished MSS. lay at the bottom of the black box. The fact was that a weight of inertia oppressed him, added to a total lack of experience in business matters of this kind, which prevented him from taking the first step. He recoiled from the thought of calling on a publisher and presenting his own MSS., and being occupied in other ways besides writing, he begrudged the time lost in hunting up printers, publishers, and engravers, together with all the delays contretemps, and disappointments attendant on red tape.

What he wanted was a factotum, "an all round man," who would take, so to speak, the dirty work off his hands. Where was such a man to be found? He knew of none. The author is a man of unusually retired habits, and associates with but few of his kind. By proclaiming his want openly, doubtless, many would have presented themselves for the task, but in matters of this sort a certain amount of intimacy with the person employed seems to be necessary; at least, so the author thought, and thus time rolled on, and thevii "Tales" were no nearer 

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