The Age of Fable

ment; those more advanced, a useful companion in their reading; those who travel, and visit museums and galleries of art, an interpreter of paintings and sculptures; those who mingle in cultivated society, a key to allusions which are occasionally made; and last of all, those in advanced life, pleasure in retracing a path of literature which leads them back to the days of their childhood, and revives at every step the associations of the morning of life.

The permanency of those associations is beautifully expressed in the well-known lines of Coleridge, in The Piccolomini :

"The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,

The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty

That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,

Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,

Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished;

They live no longer in the faith of reason;

But still the heart doth need a language; still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names;
Spirits or gods that used to share this earth
With man as with their friend; and at this day
'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,
And Venus who brings every thing that's fair."

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

LOOKING back through many years, I recall with delight the first time I read The Age of Fable; this pleasure has remained with me up to the present day, and therefore it was that I eagerly accepted the call to prepare a new edition of this entrancing book. So many discoveries have been made during the last forty years in the domain of art, literature, and archaeology, that considerable changes were necessary to bring the book up to the present time and to retain or to enhance its usefulness. Nothing has been omitted, however, from the original except some obsolete or inaccurate statements-and very few they were for the time in which they were written and some few poetical quotations from authors who were more or less popular half a century ago, but have now passed quite out of range, and have taken their place in the history of literature as poetasters or as marking a transition from an artificial and stilted style to the more freely moving and natural verse of a later day.

So, too, the discovery of such works of art as the Hermes of Olympia, and the excavations on the coast of Asia Minor, and in Assyria, Babylonia, and Greece have considerably altered our standard of sculpture and architecture, while the archaeological data obtained in the half century just passed have enlightened us upon the life and thought of the ancients, and thereby enable us to account for the origin of many of these " delicious fables." The old spelling of the Greek and Latin proper names has been retained as being more familiar to the general reader, and in many cases they are of such common use that they may be considered as belonging to the English language.

And to the

general reader, and not to the specialist, this book belongs; the latter has many other and more profound sources of information; but no one can read understandingly or enjoy the best English literature, in either poetry or prose, who is unfamiliar with these legends.

Considerable material has been added, and where reference has been made to early authors the original texts have been consulted and verified whenever possible. It has been thought best to incorporate these additions into the text, rather than give them as separate notes, in order that the narrative might be continuous and the appearance of the printed page unmarred.

The publishers have spent considerable time and money in perfecting the illustrations, by which it is believed that the value of the book and the interest in its contents will be greatly enhanced. If it shall succeed in inspiring a greater love for literature and art and in inducing some, by its suggestions, to plunge more deeply into the scientific analysis of mythology, the labor expended upon it will not be deemed in vain.

PHILADELPHIA, November, 1897.

W. H. K.