Page:Stories after Nature.pdf/16

xii standard of the Decameron; yet even he will remark that they want the direct aim and clear comprehension of story which are never wanting in Boccacio. And the youngest reader will probably take note that 'there is a savour of impossibility (so to speak), a sort of incongruous beauty dividing the subject and the style, which removes the Stories after Nature from our complete apprehension, and baffles the reader's delight in them;' that 'even the license of a fairy tale is here abruptly leapt over; names and places are thrust in which perplex the very readiest belief even of that factitious kind which we may accord to things practically impossible: English kings and Tuscan dukes occupy the place reserved in the charity of our imaginations for kings of Lyonesse and princesses of Garba; the language also is often cast in the mould of Elizabethan convention; absolute Euphuism, with all its fantastic corruption of style, breaks out and runs rampant here and there; especially in a few of