Release date : May 17, [eBook ] Most recently updated: January 29, Explanation of the Initials appended to the Notes. Peter Boaistuau, surnamed Launay, To the Reader. A somewhat similar course was adopted by Claude Gruget, who, a year later, produced what claimed to be a complete version of the stories, to which he gave the general title of the Heptameron , a name they have ever since retained.
Although it was known that various contemporary MSS. It is from the authentic text furnished by M. Le Roux de Lincy that the present translation has been made, without the slightest suppression or abridgment. An Essay on the Heptameron from the pen of Mr. George Saintsbury, M. It may be supposed that numerous illustrated editions have been published of a work so celebrated as the Heptameron , which, besides furnishing scholars with a favourite subject for research and speculation, has, owing to its perennial freshness, delighted so many generations of readers.
Such, however, is not the case. Only two fully illustrated editions claim the attention of connoisseurs. The first of these was published at Amsterdam in , with designs by the Dutch artist, Roman de Hooge, whose talent has been much overrated.
To-day this edition is only valuable on account of its comparative rarity. Very different was the famous edition illustrated by Freudenberg, a Swiss artist—the friend of Boucher and of Greuze—which was published in parts at Berne in , and which among amateurs has long commanded an almost prohibitive price.
The Full-page Illustrations to the present translation are printed from the actual copperplates engraved for the Berne edition by Lon-geuil, Halbou, and other eminent French artists of the eighteenth century, after the designs of S.
