First Words
The raison d’être, cause for existence, and origin of this book, may be found in the following extract from a review of the Florentine Legends, which appeared in the Daily Chronicle of June 19, 1895:—
‘Mr. Leland frequently refers throughout his narratives to a certain Flaxius. We were somewhat puzzled as to whom this Flaxius might be, until we came across the statement that the author had once begun a book entitled, The Experiences of Flaxius the Immortal. The reflections of the Immortal are quoted extensively in this volume, and we can only say we wish the Flaxius project a happy ending, and would not be surprised if the new sage, racy of Italian soil, as he appears to be, should even a little eclipse Mr. Leland’s old hero of Lager beer celebrity.’
For which kind word all thanks, and from the heart, since it suggested what had never been seriously thought of; for, in truth, the experiences had no more been written than the books which appear in the catalogue of the library given in the Chronicle of Pantagruel. Now, I have had all my life a strange love for works on varied subjects, in unity of style, even as in Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words there are many melodies forming one work. Such were the best sketches of Irving, and such was my first original venture, Meister Karl’s Sketch-Book, which had the remarkable fortune to attract, most unexpectedly, a very kind letter on it from Washington Irving, and subsequently another of seven large closely written pages, critical and laudatory, from Lord Bulwer Lytton, the novelist, who, with all modesty be it said, took several palpable hints from it for his Kenelm Chillingly, into which he introduced me under a pseudonym, as a small memento. And it is in this style that the present work is composed of different stories, which, however, make one parure, or, changing the metaphor, of varied dishes in one dinner met.
I beg the reader to pardon this fond disquisition, but it is natural for an author to think fondly of his first work, as it is for a mother to do the same by her first-born; and I was the more influenced to do so by its having been in the same genre as the present volume.
The comparison, made by the reviewer of the Chronicle, between the warrior-bard Hans Breitmann and his possible rival Flaxius, suggested the idea of making the two meet in this volume, the result of which encounter is two Breitmann ballads, never before published, with others which had indeed appeared casually in another form, but not as yet in any edition of the poems, and which will be assuredly new to most of my readers. And as these later lays—of which I have only given a specimen—all turn on marvellous mediæval legends of magic, I will mention, by way of avant-courier, that I have in manuscript, and have been writing or revising this thirty years, a curious collection of Ballads of Witchcraft and Songs of Sorcery, which I cannot but think would greatly please all lovers of occulta, and which will be published should sign be given that it would be wanted by the public.
I would end by recording that this work is most kindly and cordially dedicated to certain friends who have greatly aided me at different times in collecting Italian folk-lore, that is to say, to Miss Roma Lister, who was from the first specially interested in Flaxius, and to Mrs. Tessa Arbuthnot; whereunto I might add the names of all who have for many years and in many ways shown friendship and cordial kindness—of late in sad trials by illness—to whom be all thanks.