Page:Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (Volume 1).djvu/16

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XII
Preface.

but many of them are exceedingly entertaining. Lebrecht and Tieck are the authors of many beautiful legends, but they have generally trusted to their own fancy instead of building themselves on antient traditions. Backzo’s legends are something in the manner of La Motte Fouqué, though neither so fanciful nor so original. But to detail all the volumes of German legend and romance would be to give a bookseller’s catalogue; for, not only has Moravia, Silesia, Thuringia, and Austria, each its distinct legends, but every quarter of the Harz Mountains, east, west, north, and south, has its own exclusive terrors; and when to these are added the fictions of later writers, the catalogue swells beyond all reasonable limit.

It may perhaps be objected to the present collection that, in two instances, it goes over ground that has already