These tales are translated from a variety of authors. The translator has been chiefly led to task by the hope of composing an entertaining volume out of materials not generally accessible. The works in which many of them are found, and indelicacy with which almost all collections of Italian tales are polluted, deservedly from general perusal.

Such care has however, been employed in the following selection, and such liberties taken with the originals, that it is hoped this little book will escape the censure too justly cast upon Italian works of humour, in general—a censure which falls heavily upon many of the otherwise admirable tales of Boccaccio.