The Project Gutenberg EBook of Love and Life, by Charlotte M. Yonge

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Title: Love and Life

Author: Charlotte M. Yonge

Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5700]
Posting Date: April 15, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE AND LIFE ***

Produced by Doug Levy

LOVE AND LIFE

An Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume

By Charlotte M. Yonge

Transcriber's note: There are numerous examples throughout this text
of words appearing in alternate spellings: madame/madam, practise/
practice, Ladyship/ladyship, &c. We can only wonder what the publisher
had in mind. I have left them unchanged.--D.L.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The first edition of this tale was put forth without explaining the
old fable on which it was founded--a fable recurring again and again in
fairy myths, though not traceable in the classic world till a very late
period, when it appeared among the tales of Apuleius, of the province
of Africa, sometimes called the earliest novelist. There are, however,
fragments of the same story in the popular tales of all countries, so
that it is probable that Apuleius availed himself of an early form of
one of these. They are to be found from India to Scandinavia, adapted to
the manners and fancy of every country in turn, _Beauty and the Beast_
and the _Black Bull of Norroway_ are the most familiar forms of the
tale, and it seemed to me one of those legends of such universal
property that it was quite fair to put it into 18th century English
costume.

Some have seen in it a remnant of the custom of some barbarous tribes,
that the wife should not behold her husband for a year after marriage,
and to this the Indian versions lend themselves; but Apuleius himself
either found it, or adapted it to the idea of the Soul (the Life)
awakened by Love, grasping too soon and impatiently, then losing it,
and, unable to rest, struggling on through severe toils and labours till
her hopes are crowned even at the gates of death. Psyche, the soul or
life, whose emblem is the butterfly, thus even in heathen philosophy
strained towards the higher Love, just glimpsed at for a while.