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Le Moyen de Parvenir of Béroalde de Verville, Canon of St. Gatien at Tours, once a Hugenot, then a Catholic, finally "neither one nor the other," is a work little known to the English reader, be he studentor bibliophile. The cause is not far to seek; no complete and unexpurgated English translation of this much censured book exists. Machen's rendering, while claiming to be the first in our language, is in no sense full and literal, although free and full-flavoured; the translator, as he admits in his humourous preface, "has been forced, much to his sorrow, to weed out some strongly-scented flowers from this Canonical Garden." His text, indeed, shows many notable omissions, in particular the more licentious asides and interjections which have no actual bearing on the stories; further, there are sundry additions not found in the old French text—"odd scraps from his own workshop," as Machen terms them.

For the student, then, there are: Machen's delightful (but partial) translation, limited to 500 numbered copies and now a rare book, and