The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Bon Gaultier Ballads, by William
Edmonstoune Aytoun, et al, Illustrated by Richard Doyle, et al

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Title: The Bon Gaultier Ballads

Author: William Edmonstoune Aytoun
Theodore Martin

Release Date: January 28, 2007 [eBook #20477]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BON GAULTIER BALLADS***

This eBook transcribed by Les Bowler

THE BOOK OF BALLADS

EDITED BY
BON GAULTIER

_WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES_

ILLUSTRATED BY
DOYLE, LEECH, AND CROWQUILL

NEW EDITION

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MCMIV

_All Rights reserved_

PREFACE.

A further edition of this book--the sixteenth--having been called for, I
have been asked by the publishers to furnish a preface to it. For
prefaces I have no love. Books should speak for themselves. Prefaces
can scarcely be otherwise than egotistic, and one would not willingly add
to the too numerous illustrations of this tendency with which the
literature of the day abounds. I would much rather leave the volume with
the simple "Envoy" which I wrote for it when the Bon Gaultier Ballads
were first gathered into a volume. There the products of the dual
authorship of Aytoun and myself were ascribed to the Bon Gaultier under
whose editorial auspices they had for the most part seen the light. But
my publishers tell me that people want to know why, and how, and by which
of us these poems were written,--curiosity, complimentary, no doubt, but
which it is by no means easy for the surviving bard to satisfy. It is
sixty years since most of these verses were written with the light heart
and fluent pen of youth, and with no thought of their surviving beyond
the natural life of ephemeral magazine pieces of humour. After a long
and very crowded life, of which literature has occupied the smal