Mr. Carlyle then cites one adventure, that of the Easter Play, which has not been included in the present version; for although it illustrates well enough the interior of a parson’s household of the fourteenth century, there is a smack of profanity about it which it is well to avoid. And, indeed, it is due to the reader of this volume, to inform him, that our present chronicle differs in one material point from all former editions. While it has been my object everywhere to tell the story of Owlglass in a quaint and simple manner, modern good taste required a special duty at the chronicler’s hands: viz., that of purification and modification, for it may readily be believed that a book written _of_ the fourteenth century, _for_ the sixteenth century, would abound with homely wit, not quite consonant with the ideas of the nineteenth. Therefore several stories of a somewhat indelicate, and generally pointless, character have been omitted, and their place supplied with matter obtained by a collation of several editions in the German, French, and Flemish languages.
And another aim which I have had in view has been, where good taste and opportunity admitted, to apply, in a veiled manner, the axioms and quips of our knight-errant of roguery, to subjects and follies not banished from our own more polite age. The reader will thus be able to judge in how far this modern Owlglass differs from its predecessors. In no instance, however, have I permitted myself to lose sight of the object in view, which was to give as good a picture of the original as might be, and that in spirit rather than in letter. This spirit has been so justly estimated by M. Robin, a clever and dashing French critic, whose sad death may still be remembered by a few, that, at the risk of adding too much to this preface, I subjoin an epitome of his remarks:—
“It is quite true,” says he, “that glory is nothing but vanity. I have seen in the sepulchral silence of libraries, names quite unknown, on the backs of gigantic volumes, the librarians could tell me nothing of these, except that they were the authors of these books. I have seen, on the pavement of ancient churches, pompous epitaphs, and heraldic arms, and the nails of the peasant’s shoe tread them under foot. Be then in life a man of learning, knowing every language, be a noble of Spain, a Knight of the Golden Fleece, Viceroy of Mexico or Peru, say you have the right of keeping your hat on in the presence of the King, yet it will scarcely be known that you have lived, while a _vaurien_, a man who had neither hearth nor home, a practical joker, a drunkard, having the devil in his purse, living from hand to mouth, sleeping to-day in the streets, and to-morrow in the bed of his host, whom he never pays, and understanding too well the buffoonery of life ever to have thought of glory; as soon as this man is dead, and ignobly buried, he enters at once into immortality, bequeathing to the people a name which they will never forget, and, to the Attic language of the moderns, a word of which they stood much in need. Who can boast of having invented a word? Very few of the greatest writers can arrogate to themselves this most rare glory. But to leave one’s name to the most grave and self-sufficient language in Europe, to force it to say _espiègle_, because one’s name was Ulenspiegel; and to pass fifty years in practical joking and laughter; to be able to call oneself the father of the great family of Mystificators, surely this is no common fate, and doubtless the contemplator of it will cry out: ‘Where doth Immortality dwell? Poor author, it was well worth thy pains to wear out thy brain in writing folios! Unfortunate hidalgo, it was well worth the trouble of being puffed up with pride at a long name unpronounceable in a breath, that this name should be forgotten, and that the name of a boorish jester should be transmitted almost intact to the most distant posterity.”