PREFACE.

The first printed version of the famous Tales of Margaret of Navarre,
issued in Paris in the year 1558, under the title of "Histoires des
Amans Fortunez," was extremely faulty and imperfect. It comprised but
sixty-seven of the seventy-two tales written by the royal author, and
the editor, Pierre Boaistuau, not merely changed the order of those
narratives which he did print, but suppressed numerous passages in them,
besides modifying much of Margaret's phraseology. A somewhat similar
course was adopted by Claude Gruget, who, a year later, produced what
claimed to be a complete version of the stories, to which he gave the
general title of the _Heptameron_, a name they have ever since retained.
Although he reinstated the majority of the tales in their proper
sequence, he still suppressed several of them, and inserted others in
their place, and also modified the Queen's language after the fashion
set by Boaistuau. Despite its imperfections, however, Gruget's version
was frequently reprinted down to the beginning of the eighteenth
century, when it served as the basis of the numerous editions of the
_Heptameron_ in _beau langage_, as the French phrased it, which then
began to make their appearance. It served, moreover, in the one or the
other form, for the English and other translations of the work, and down
to our own times was accepted as the standard version of the Queen
of Navarre's celebrated tales. Although it was known that various
contemporary MSS. were preserved at the French National Library in
Paris, no attempt was made to compare Gruget's faulty version with the
originals until the Société des Bibliophiles Français entrusted this
delicate task to M. Le Roux de Lincy, whose labours led to some most
valuable discoveries, enabling him to produce a really authentic version
of Margaret's admired masterpiece, with the suppressed tales restored,