[36] English translation of the Author’s Preface.
[37] Masuccio: The Novellino, translated into English by W. G. Waters: London, Lawrence and Bullen, 1895.
[38] Masuccio, of course, cannot claim any peculiar virtue in this respect, lust in the guise or under the cloak of religion being a favourite theme of mediæval and even later novelists. We shall deal at length with the subject in the second volume of Anthologica Rarissima: The Way of a Priest.
[39] C.f. The New Metamorphosis, or The Golden Ass of Apuleius altered and improved to Modern Times, by Carlo Socio: London, 1822, extracts from which, exactly germane to Masuccio’s denunciation, will be found in vol. 2 of Anthologica Rarissima: The Way of a Priest.
[40] J. S. Farmer: Merry Songs and Ballads: vol. 5: by John Lockman: from Musical Miscellany, (1731). Farmer, of course, is the editor and compiler of Slang and its Analogues, to which we make constant reference.
[41] Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles: “now first done into the English tongue by Robert B. Douglas, (One Hundred Merrie and Delightsome Stories)”: Paris, Charles Carrington, 1899 (?): 82nd story. The editors of Anthologica Rarissima have taken slight liberties with Mr. Douglas’ translation, deeming archaic phraseology more fitting to the atmosphere of the narrative.
[42] The phrase has passed into use as an accepted slang term for the sexual act.
[43] Songs of the Groves: Records of the Ancient World, (The Vine Press: Steyning, Sussex: 1921), has a singularly charming account of a rustic courtship. The Wooing, the poem to which we refer, is a rendering from the Greek of Theocritus, and is remarkable for the vivid picture conjured up before our eyes in a few lines of verse. Daphnis, a young shepherd, and a maiden, discourse of love and marriage; eventually she yields to his passion:—
“Remove your hand, you satyr; do not seek my blossoms so!”
“Just a first glance! Oh! I must see those snowy flowers of mine!”