According to the Translator's Preface: "He claimed for his book the protection of all those to whom literature was dear, because it was a work of art--and a work of art, in the highest sense of the word, it undoubtedly is.Like Boccaccio, Rabelais, the Queen of Navarre, Ariosto, and Verville, the great author of The Human Comedy has painted an epoch. In the fresh and wonderful language of the Merry Vicar Of Meudon, he has given us a marvelous picture of French life and manners in the sixteenth century."