such as you are for the most part, it had been folly to
go seeking and wearying myself to find very choice and exquisite
matters, and to use great pains to speak very measuredly. Algates,
whoso goeth reading among these, let him leave those which offend and
read those which divert. They all, not to lead any one into error,
bear branded upon the forefront that which they hold hidden within
their bosoms.

Again, I doubt not but there be those who will say that some of them
are overlong; to whom I say again that whoso hath overwhat to do doth
folly to read these stories, even though they were brief. And albeit a
great while is passed from the time when I began to write to this
present hour whenas I come to the end of my toils, it hath not
therefor escaped my memory that I proffered this my travail to idle
women and not to others, and unto whoso readeth to pass away the time,
nothing can be overlong, so but it do that for which he useth it.
Things brief are far better suited unto students, who study, not to
pass away, but usefully to employ time, than to you ladies, who have
on your hands all the time that you spend not in the pleasures of
love; more by token that, as none of you goeth to Athens or Bologna or
Paris to study, it behoveth to speak to you more at large than to
those who have had their wits whetted by study. Again, I doubt not a
jot but there be yet some of you who will say that the things
aforesaid are full of quips and cranks and quodlibets and that it ill
beseemeth a man of weight and gravity to have written thus. To these I
am bound to render and do render thanks, for that, moved by a virtuous
jealousy, they are so tender of my fame; but to their objection I
reply on this wise; I confess to being a man of weight and to have
been often weighed in my time, wherefore, speaking to those ladies who
have not weighed me, I declare that I am not heavy; nay, I am so light
that I abide like a nutgall in water, and considering that the
preachments made of friars, to rebuke men of their sins, are nowadays
for the most part seen full of quips and cranks and gibes, I conceived
that these latter would not sit amiss in my stories written to ease
women of melancholy. Algates, an they should laugh overmuch on that
account, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the Passion of our Saviour and
the Complaint of Mary Magdalen will lightly avail to cure them
thereof.

Again, who can doubt but there will to boot be found some to say that