Norse feeling of making the best of everything, and keeping a good face to the foe. The language and tone are perhaps rather lower than in some other collections,
Mr. Taylor, into English. In France the first collection of this kind was made by Charles Perrault, who, in 1697, published eight tales, under a title taken from an old Fabliau, Contes de ma, Mère l'Oye, whence comes our "Mother Goose." To these eight, three more tales were added in later editions. Perrault was shortly followed by Madame d'Aulnoy (born in 1650, died 1705), whose manner of treating her tales is far less true to nature than Perrault's, and who inserts at will verses, alterations, additions, and moral reflections. Her style is sentimental and over-refined; the courtly airs of the age of Louis XIV. predominate, and nature suffers by the change from the cottage to the palace. Madame d'Aulnoy was followed by a host of imitators: the Countess Murat, who died in 1716; Countess d'Auneuil, who died in 1700; M. de Preschac, born 1676, who composed tales of utter worthlessness, which may be read as examples of what popular tales are not, in the collection called Le Cabinet des Fées, which was published in Paris in 1785. Not much better are the attempts of Count Hamilton, who died in 1720; of M. de Moncrif, who died in 1770; of Mademoiselle de la Force, died 1724; of Mademoiselle l'Héritier, died 1737; of Count Caylus, who wrote his Féeries Nouvelles in the first half of the eighteenth century, for the popular element fails almost entirely in their works. Such as they are, they may also be read in the Cabinet des Fées, a collection which ran to no fewer than forty-one volumes, and with which no lover of popular tradition need trouble himself much. To the playwright and the story-teller it has been a great repository, which has supplied the lack of original invention. In Germany we need trouble ourselves with none
