public have well seen it. But the author ought to seek more
permanent fame, and wish that his work, when its leaves are first
cut open, should be at least fairly judged of. Thus many of the
best novelists have been anxious to give their works such titles
as render it out of the reader's power to conjecture their
contents, until they should have an opportunity of reading them.

All this did not prevent the Tales of the Crusaders from being the
title fixed on; and the celebrated year of projects (eighteen
hundred and twenty-five) being the time of publication, an
introduction was prefixed according to the humour of the day.



The first tale of the series was influenced in its structure,
rather by the wish to avoid the general expectations which might
be formed from the title, than to comply with any one of them, and
so disappoint the rest. The story was, therefore, less an incident
belonging to the Crusades, than one which was occasioned by the
singular cast of mind introduced and spread wide by those
memorable undertakings. The confusion among families was not the
least concomitant evil of the extraordinary preponderance of this
superstition. It was no unusual thing for a Crusader, returning
from his long toils of war and pilgrimage, to find his family
augmented by some young off-shoot, of whom the deserted matron
could give no very accurate account, or perhaps to find his
marriage-bed filled, and that, instead of becoming nurse to an old
man, his household dame had preferred being the lady-love of a
young one. Numerous are the stories of this kind told in different
parts of Europe; and the returned knight or baron, according to