(1)
1 This dedicatory preface appeared in the first edition of
Queen Margaret's Tales, published by Boaistuau in 1558 under
the title of _Histoires des Amans Fortunez_. The Princess
addressed was the daughter of Charles, Duke of Vendome; she
was wedded in 1538 to Francis of Cleves, Duke of Nevers, and
by this marriage became niece to the Queen of Navarre.--Ed.
Madam, That great oracle of God, St. John Chrysostom, deplores with
infinite compassion in some part of his works the disaster and calamity
of his century, in which not only was the memory of an infinity of
illustrious persons cut off from among mankind, but, what is more, their
writings, by which the rich conceptions of their souls and the divine
ornaments of their minds were to have been consecrated to posterity, did
not survive them. And certainly with most manifest reason did this good
and holy man address such a complaint to the whole Christian Republic,
touched as he was with just grief for an infinity of thousands of books,
of which some have been lost and buried in eternal forgetfulness by
the negligence of men, others dispersed and destroyed by the cruel
incursions of war, others rotted and spoiled as much by the rigour
of time as by carelessness to collect and preserve them; whereof
the ancient Histories and Annals furnish a sufficient example in the
memorable library of that great King of Egypt, Ptolemy Phila-delphus,
which had been formed with the sweat and blood of so many notable
philosophers, and maintained, ordered, and preserved by the liberality
of that great monarch.
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