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xii details, have been rendered unobjectionable to the English, reader. In order, however, to render the work as complete as possible, a brief analysis of the plot of each of these stories will be found in the Appendix, page 609.

Had not the many liberties I have taken with the Fairy Tales of Madame d'Aulnoy, in adapting them to the stage, made it a point of conscience with me to adhere as rigidly as possible to the original text on this occasion, I should have been stimulated to it by another circumstance, which evidently had a precisely contrary effect on my predecessors. The numberless allusions to the persons, events, works, manners, and customs of the age in which they were written, were doubtlessly considered incumbrances by those whose only object was to provide amusement for the Nursery; and I do not dispute the discretion with which they might have been altered or omitted in abridgments made for that special purpose; but such a plea cannot be put in for the translators of "the best edition of the original French," who professed to give the general English Public the works of a "celebrated wit of France," whose "thoughts are so elegant and refined, their beauties would be lost in a paraphrase."

I indulge in the hope that a new interest will be imparted to these old favourites, when they shall be found to be not only amusing fictions, but curious reflexions of the Courts of Versailles and Madrid, at the close of the seventeenth century; the dress and manners accurately described, and the pomps and pastimes in