darkness. The second presents us with a scathing political satire applicable to all time; and though the key to its special purpose and object has been irrecoverably lost, its brilliant humour and keen sarcasm on the follies of human nature are imperishable. The third, no one who cares to understand the spiritual atmosphere in which our ancestors lived and breathed can afford to neglect.
It has fallen to the lot of the writer of the present notice to have no small share in bringing “Reynard the Fox” and the “Golden Legend” under the notice of the reading public of to-day, and he has now the gratification of presenting the “Romance of the Rose” in such form as he hopes may find acceptance.
He is but too well aware that to produce an ideal translation of such a book would demand a knowledge of old French approaching that possessed by a Gaston Paris, or a Langlois; as intimate an acquaintance with mediæval lore as might be expected from the combined knowledge of a Skeat, a Furnivall, and a Gollancz, and the poetic capacity of a William Morris; while he is fully conscious of the degree to which he falls short of the requirements he has indicated. But the task having been proposed to him by two of the scholars above named, he became, on looking into the book, so greatly interested and fascinated by it, that he determined to undertake the
