Page:The German Novelists (Volume 1).djvu/13

We here close our extract, as it is not intended to make trial of the reader’s literary patience or taste for black letter research, at the expence of more agreeable requisites. To combine the two, as far as was conceived quite agreeable to the primary and more popular purposes of all fiction, amusing narrative and novelty of incident, has been the aim of the following pages, however inadequately accomplished. It would have opened too wide and unbeaten a field of enquiry, and would have been too little in unison with the light and popular materials of the text, to have attempted any detailed analysis and illustration of the individual origin and ramifications of the specimens here selected from a rich storehouse of traditionary reliques. Far, therefore, from presuming to encroach upon the ancient domain of learned commentators, either of this or a preceding age, all that the editor has, at most, adventured upon, has been to hover a little round the outskirts. To have attempted to introduce his readers into all the learned labyrinths of those ancient and secluded regions of romance, “from time immemorial, set apart for the old wizards and heroes of the north,” would have been on his part far too ambitious an effort.