Most noble damsels, for whose solace I addressed me
to this long and toilsome task, meseems that, aided
by the Divine grace, the bestowal whereof I impute
to the efficacy of your pious prayers, and in no wise
to merits of mine, I have now brought this work to
the full and perfect consummation which in the outset
thereof I promised you. Wherefore, it but remains
for me to render, first to God, and then to you, my
thanks, and so to give a rest to my pen and weary
hand. But this I purpose not to allow them, until,
briefly, as to questions tacitly mooted—for
well assured I am that these stories have no especial
privilege above any others, nay, I forget not that
at the beginning of the Fourth Day I have made the
same plain—I shall have answered certain
trifling objections that one of you, maybe, or some
other, might advance. Peradventure, then, some
of you will be found to say that I have used excessive
license in the writing of these stories, in that I
have caused ladies at times to tell, and oftentimes
to list, matters that, whether to tell or to list,
do not well beseem virtuous women. The which I
deny, for that there is none of these stories so unseemly,
but that it may without offence be told by any one,
if but seemly words be used; which rule, methinks,
has here been very well observed. But assume
we that ’tis even so (for with you I am not
minded to engage in argument, witting that you would
vanquish me), then, I say that for answer why I have
so done, reasons many come very readily to hand.
In the first place, if aught of the kind in any of
these stories there be, ’twas but such as was
demanded by the character of the stories, which let
but any person of sound judgment scan with the eye
of reason, and ’twill be abundantly manifest
that, unless I had been minded to deform them, they
could not have been otherwise recounted. And
if, perchance, they do, after all, contain here and
there a trifling indiscretion of speech, such as might
ill sort with one of your precious prudes, who weigh
words rather than deeds, and are more concerned to
appear, than to be, good, I say that so to write was
as permissible to me, as ’tis to men and women
at large in their converse to make use of such terms
as hole, and pin, and mortar, and pestle, and sausage,
and polony, and plenty more besides of a like sort.
And therewithal privilege no less should be allowed
to my pen than to the pencil of the painter, who without
incurring any, or at least any just, censure, not
only will depict St.
Michael smiting the serpent, or
St. George the dragon, with sword or lance at his
discretion; but male he paints us Christ, and female
Eve, and His feet that for the salvation of our race
willed to die upon the cross he fastens thereto, now
with one, now with two nails.
