th as near an approach to the
original as modern founts of type will permit.

I have also reprinted Haslewood's "Preliminary Matter," which give the
Dryasdust details about the biography of Painter and the bibliography of
his book in a manner not too Dryasdust. With regard to the literary
apparatus of the book, I have perhaps been able to add something to
Haslewood's work. From the Record Office and British Museum I have given
a number of documents about Painter, and have recovered the only extant
letter of our author. I have also gone more thoroughly into the literary
history of each of the stories in the "Palace of Pleasure" than
Haslewood thought it necessary to do. I have found Oesterley's edition
of Kirchhof and Landau's _Quellen des Dekameron_ useful for this
purpose. I have to thank Dr. F. J. Furnivall for lending me his copies
of Bandello and Belleforest.

I trust it will be found that the present issue is worthy of a work
which, with North's "Plutarch" and Holinshed's "Chronicle," was the
main source of Shakespeare's Plays. It had also, as early as 1580, been
ransacked to furnish plots for the stage, and was used by almost all
the great masters of the Elizabethan drama. Quite apart from this
source of interest, the "Palace of Pleasure" contains the first English
translations from the _Decameron_, the _Heptameron_, from Bandello,
Cinthio and Straparola, and thus forms a link between Italy and England.
Indeed as the Italian _novelle_ form part of that continuous stream of
literary tradition and influence which is common to all the great
nations of Europe, Painter's book may be termed a link connecting
England with European literature. Such a book as this is surely one of
the landmarks of English literature.

INTRODUCTION.

A young man, trained in the strictest sect of the Pharisees, is awakened
one morning, and told that he has come into the absolute possession of a
very great fortune in lands and wealth. The time may come when he may
know himself and his powers more thoroughly, but never again, as on that
morn, will he feel such an exultant sense of mastery over the world and
his fortunes. That image[1] seems to me to explain better than any other
that remarkable outburst of literary activity which makes the
Elizabethan Period unique in English literature, and only paralleled in
the world's literature by the century after Marathon, when Athens first
knew herself. With Elizabeth England came of age, a