just one public school at which English is studied historically-the City of London School-and that in this school it was begun only last year by the new Head-Master, the Rev. Edwin A. Abbot, all honour to him. In every class an English textbook is read, Piers Plowman being that for the highest class. This neglect of English as a subject of study is due no doubt to tutors' and parents' ignorance. None of them know the language historically; the former can't teach it, the latter don't care about it; why should their boys learn it? Oh tutors and parents, there are such things as asses in the world.

Of the school-life of a Grammar-school boy in 1612 we may get a notion from Brinsley's p. 296, "chap. xxx. Of Schoole times, intermissions and recreations," which is full of interest. 1. The Schooletime should beginne at sixe: all who write Latine to make their exercises which were giuen cuernight, in that houre before seuen'. -To make boys punctual, 'so many of them as are there at sixe, to haue their places as they had them by election or the day before all who come after six, euery one to sit as he commeth, and so to continue that day, and vntill he recouer his place againe by the election of the fourme or otherwise. . . If any cannot be brought by this, them to be noted in the blacke Bill by a speciall marke, and feele the punishment thereof: and sometimes present correction to be vsed for terrour. . . Thus they are to continue vntill nine [at work in class], signified by Monitours, Subdoctour or otherwise. Then at nine.. to let them to haue a quarter of an houre at least, or more, for intermission, eyther for breakefast. . or else for the necessitie of euery one, or their honest recreation, or to prepare their exercises against the Masters comming in. [2.] After, each of them to be in his place in an instant, vpon the knocking of the dore or some other sign.. so to continue vntill eleuen of the clocke, or somwhat after, to counteruaile the time of the intermission at nine.

(3.) To be againe all ready, and in their places at one, in an instant; to continue vntill three, or halfe an houre after: then to haue another quarter of an houre or more, as at nine for drinking and necessities; so to continue till halfe an houre after fiue: thereby in

1 See p. 273-4, all of a fourme to name who is the best of their fourme, and who is the best next him '.

that halfe houre to counteruaile the time at three; then to end so as was shewed, with reading a peece of a Chapter, and with singing two staues of a Psalme: lastly with prayer to be vsed by the Master.'

To the objectors to these intermissions at nine and three, who may reproach the schoole, thinking that they do nothing but play, Brinsley answers, 2. By this meanes also the Schollars may bee kept euer in their places, and hard to their labours, without that running out to the Campo (as the[y] tearme it) at school times, and the manifolde disorders thereof; as watching and striuing for the clubbe, and loytering then in the fields; some hindred that they cannot go forth at all. (5.) it is very requisite also, that they should have weekly one part of an afternoone for recreation, as a reward of their diligence, obedience and profiting; and that to be appointed at the Masters discretion, eyther the Thursday, after the vsuall custom ; or according to the best opportunity of the place. . . All recreations and sports of schollars, would be meet for Gentlemen. Clownish sports, or perilous, or yet playing for money, are no way to be admitted.'

On the age at which boys went to school, Brinsley says, p. 9, "For the time of their entrance with vs, in our countrey schooles, it is commonly about 7. or 8. yeares olde: six is very soone. If any begin so early, they are rather sent to the schoole to keepe them from troubling the house at home, and from danger, and shrewd turnes, then for any great hope and desire their friends haue that they should learne anything in effect."

Enough has been

To return from this digression on Education. said to show that the progress of Education, in our sense of the word, was rather from below upwards, than from above downwards ; and I conclude that the young people to whom the Babees Boke, &c., were addressed, were the children of our nobility, knights, and squires, and that the state of their manners, as left by their home training, was such as to need the inculcation on them of the precepts contained in the Poems. If so, dirty, ill-mannered, awkward young gawks, must most of these hopes-of-England have been, to modern notions. The directions for personal cleanliness must have been much needed when one considers the small stock of linen and clothes that men not

1 key of the Campo, see pp. 299 and 300, or a club, the holder of which had a right to go out.

rich must have had; and if we may judge from a passage in Edward the Fourth's Liber Niger, even the King himself did not use his footpan every Saturday night, and would not have been the worse for an occasional tubbing:

"This barbour shall have, every satyrday at nyght, if it please the Kinge to cleanse his head, legges, or feet, and for his shaving, two loves, one picher wyne. And the ussher of chambre ought to testyfye if this is necessaryly dispended or not."

So far as appears from Edward the Fourth's Liber Niger Domus, soap was used only for washing clothes. The yeoman lavender, or washer man, was to take from the Great Spicery as muche whyte soape, greye, and blacke, as can be thought resonable by prcufe of the Countrollers,' and therewith tenderly to waysshe . . the stuffe for the Kinges propyr persone' (H. Ord. p. 85); but whether that cleansing material ever touched His Majesty's sacred person (except doubtless when and if the barber shaved him), does not appear. The Ordinances are considerate as to sex, and provide for " weomen lavendryes" for a Queen, and further that "these officers oughte to bee sworne to keepe the chambre counsaylle." But it is not for one of a nation that has not yet taken generally to tubbing and baths, or left off shaving, to reproach his forefathers with want of cleanliness, or adherence to customs that involve contradiction of the teachings of physiologists, and the evident intent of Nature or the Creator. Moreover, reflections on the good deeds done, and the high thoughts thought, by men of old dirtier than some now, may prevent us concluding that because other people now talk through their noses, and have manners different from our own, they and their institutions must be wholly abominable; that because others smell when heated, they ought to be slaves; or that eating peas with a knife renders men unworthy of the franchise. The temptation to value manners above morals, and pleasantness above honesty, is one that all of us have to guard against. And when we have held to a custom merely because it is old, have refused to consider fairly the reasons for its change, and are inclined to grumble when the change is carried out, we shall be none the worse for thinking of the people, young and old, who, in the time of Harrison and Shakspere, the "For

gotten Worthies "1 and Raleigh, no doubt hated those nasty new oak houses and chimnies,' and sighed for the good old times:

"And yet see the change, for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oken men; but now that our houses are come to be made of oke, our men are not onlie become willow, but a great manie through Persian delicacie crept in among vs, altogither of straw, which is a sore alteration. . . Now haue we manie chimnies, and yet our tenderlings complaine of rheumes, catarhs and poses. Then had we none but reredosses, and our heads did neuer ake.2 For as the smoke in those daies was supposed to be a sufficient hardning for the timber of the house; so it was reputed a far better medicine to keepe the goodman and his familie from the quack or pose, wherewith as then verie few were oft acquainted." Harrison, i. 212, col. 1, quoted by Ellis.

If rich men and masters were dirty, poor men and servants must have been dirtier still. William Langlande's description of Hawkyn's one metaphorical dress in which he slept o' nightes as well as worked by day, beslobbered (or by-moled, bemauled) by children, was true of the real smock; flesh-moths must have been plentiful, and the sketch of Coveitise, as regards many men, hardly an exaggeration :

as a bonde-man of his bacon his berd was bi-draveled,

With his hood on his heed a lousy hat above,

And in a tawny tabard

Al so torn and baudy

of twelf wynter age

and ful of lys crepyng,

But if that a lous3 couthe han lopen the bettre,

See Mr Froude's noble article in The Westminster Review, No. 3, July, 1852 (lately republished by him in a collection of Essays, &c.).

2 Their eyes must have smarted. The natives' houses in India have (generally) no chimneys still, and Mr Moreshwar says the smoke does make your eyes water. 3 Mouffet is learned on the Louse.

"In the first beginning whilest man was in his innocency, and free from wickednesse, he was subject to no corruption and filth, but when he was seduced by the wickednesse of that great and cunning deceiver, and proudly affected to know as much as God knew, God humbled him with divers diseases, and divers sorts of Worms, with Lice, Hand-worms, Belly-worms, others call Termites, small Nits and Acares.. a Lowse. . is a beastly Creature, and known better in Innes and Armies then it is wellcome. The profit it bringeth, Achilles sheweth; Iliad I. in these words: I make no more of him then I doe of a Lowse; as we have an English Proverb of a poor man, He is not worth a Lowse. The Lice that trouble men are either tame or wilde ones, those the English call Lice, and these Crab-lice; the North English call them Pert-lice, that is, a petulant Lowse comprehending both kindes; it is a certain sign of misery, and is sometimes the inevitable scourge of

She sholde noght han walked on that welthe so was it thred-bare. (Vision, Passus V. vol. 1, 1. 2859-70, ed. Wright.)

In the Kinge and Miller, Percy folio, p. 236, when the Miller proposes that the stranger should sleep with their son, Richard the son says to the King

Nay, first," quoth Richard, "good fellowe, tell me true,

hast thou noe creepers in thy gay hose?

art thou not troabled with the Scabbado?"

The colour of washerwomen's legs was due partly to dirt, I suppose. The princess or queen Clarionas, when escaping with the laundress as her assistant, is obliged to have her white legs reduced to the customary shade of grey:

Right as she should stoupe a-douñ,
The quene was tukked wel on high;
The lauender perceiued wel therbigh
Hir white legges, and seid "

ma dame,

Youre shin boones might doo vs blame;

66

Abide," she seid, so mot I thee,

More slotered thei most be."

Asshes with the water she menged,

And her white legges al be-sprenged.

ab. 1440 A.D., Syr Generides, p. 218, 11. 7060-8.

If in Henry the Eighth's kitchen, scullions lay about naked, or tattered and filthy, what would they do elsewhere? Here is the King's Ordinance against them in 1526:

God." Rowland's Mouffet's Theater of Insects, p. 1090, ed. 1658 (published in Latin, 1634). By this date we had improved. Mouffet says, "These filthy creatures .. are hated more than Dogs or Vipers by our daintiest Dames," ib. p. 1093; and again, p. 1097, "Cardan, that was a fancier of subtilties, writes that the Carthusians are never vexed with Wall-lice, and he gives the cause, because they eat no flesh... He should rather have alledged their cleanliness, and the frequent washing of their beds and blankets, to be the cause of it, which when the French, the Dutch, and Italians do less regard, they more breed this plague. But the English that take great care to be cleanly and decent, are seldom troubled with them." Also, on p. 1092, he says, 'As for dressing the body: all Ireland is noted for this, that it swarms almost with Lice. But that this proceeds from the beastliness of the people, and want of cleanly women to wash them is manifest, because the English that are more careful to dress themselves, changing and washing their shirts often, having inhabited so long in Ireland, have escaped that plague... Remedies. The Irish and Iseland people (who are frequently troubled with Lice, and such as will fly, as they say, in Summer) anoint their shirts with Saffron, and to very good purpose, to drive away the Lice, but after six moneths they wash their shirts again, putting fresh Saffron into the Lye.' Rowland's Mouffet (1634), Theater of Insects, p. 1092, ed. 1658.

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