Publisher's Synopsis
"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," writes the author of this series.
"Never in his wildest dreams did he meditate inflicting them on the public mind. . . . 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 still of illustrating them with his own designs."
