BULFINCH'S MYTHOLOGY

LEGENDS OF CHARLEMAGNE

BY THOMAS BULFINCH


PUBLISHERS' PREFACE


No new edition of Bulfinch's classic work can be considered
complete without some notice of the American scholar to whose wide
erudition and painstaking care it stands as a perpetual monument.
"The Age of Fable" has come to be ranked with older books like
"Pilgrim's Progress," "Gulliver's Travels," "The Arabian Nights,"
"Robinson Crusoe," and five or six other productions of world-wide
renown as a work with which every one must claim some acquaintance
before his education can be called really complete. Many readers
of the present edition will probably recall coming in contact with
the work as children, and, it may be added, will no doubt discover
from a fresh perusal the source of numerous bits of knowledge that
have remained stored in their minds since those early years. Yet
to the majority of this great circle of readers and students the
name Bulfinch in itself has no significance.

Thomas Bulfinch was a native of Boston, Mass., where he was born
in 1796. His boyhood was spent in that city, and he prepared for
college in the Boston schools. He finished his scholastic training
at Harvard College, and after taking his degree was for a period a
teacher in his home city. For a long time later in life he was