The Garden of Romance

by various authors

The

Garden of Romance

Romantic Tales of

All Time

Chosen and Edited by Ernest Rhys

London
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. L^td
Paternoster House, Charing Cross Road
1897

The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.

At the Ballantyne Press

Preface

The old taste for the Tale, pure and simple, which, stimulated by such writers as Mr. Kipling and M. de Maupassant, has grown anew of late years, is enough in itself to account for the present anthology. Within its limits will be found, as in a GARDEN, the fine flowers of the art, chosen with a preference for those of a romantic order, and transplanted from many lands and many times. From the East, where Romance may be said to have begun—whence we have taken an "Arabian Night"—to the extreme West, where Hawthorne and Edgar Poe gave the art a new effect; from Sir Thomas Malory to Sir Walter Scott; from Sterne to Hans Andersen; we have ranged to get all the variety in excellence, and all the delight of stories wonderfully well told, to be had within so small a space. Most of the tales are so famous that they need give no account of themselves. To "Balin and Balan," let us remind the reader, however, Mr. Swinburne has lent lately a new interest, and a new excuse, if one be needed, for its being detached from the "Morte D' Arthur." Of the translated tales, we have taken an early seventeenth century version of "Cymon and Iphigenia," and Smollett's, of the "Story of Marcella;" while a new translation has been made for us by sympathetic hands of Hans Andersen's most touching "Pebersvendens Nathue" (Pepper-Vendor's or Old Bachelor's Nightcap).

E. R.

Contents
 

I
	PAGE
The Story of the Lame Young Man From The Arabian Nights	1
II
The Story of Cymon and Iphigenia From The Decameron	28
III
The Story of Balin and Balan From The Morte D'Arthur	47
IV
The Story of Marcella From Don Quixote	79
V
The Story of Le Fevre From Tristram Shandy	110
VI
The Tapestried Chamber By Sir Walter Scott	128
VII
Rip Van Winkle By Washington Irving	148
VIII
My Kinsman, Major Molineux By Nathaniel Hawthorne	170
IX
The Fall of the House of Usher By Edgar Allan Poe	197
X
The "Old Bachelor's" Nightcap By Hans C. Andersen (Translated by Grace Rhys)	223