too frequently destroyed by the necessity of changing many of his
excellent words into words far less expressive of his true sense,
to make it read something like prose; and even in some few places,
where his blank verse is given unaltered, as hoping from its simple
plainness to cheat the young readers into the belief that they are
reading prose, yet still his language being transplanted from its own
natural soil and wild poetic garden, it must want much of its native
beauty.

I have wished to make these Tales easy reading for very young
children. To the utmost of my ability I have constantly kept this in
my mind; but the subjects of most of them made this a very difficult
task. It was no easy matter to give the histories of men and women in
terms familiar to the apprehension of a very young mind. For young
ladies too it has been my intention chiefly to write, because boys
are generally permitted the use of their fathers' libraries at a much
earlier age than girls are, they frequently having the best scenes of
Shakespear by heart, before their sisters are permitted to look into
this manly book; and therefore, instead of recommending these Tales to
the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so much better in the
originals, I must rather beg their kind assistance in explaining to
their sisters such parts as are hardest for them to understand; and
when they have helped them to get over the difficulties, then perhaps
they will read to them (carefully selecting what is proper for a young
sister's ear) some passage which has pleased them in one of these
stories, in the very words of the scene from which it is taken; and I
trust they will find that the beautiful extracts, the select passages,
they may chuse to give their sisters in this way, will be much better
relished and understood from their having some notion of the general
story from one of these imperfect abridgments:--which if they be