"The edition of 1597 reads:

'After the wren has veines men may let blood.' That is to say, at that season of the year when the young bird is of a certain growth, men shall, if they require it, undergo cupping! In the MS., and in the edition of 1838 (Sir Frederic Madden's,) on the contrary, the line runs thus:

For aftir the wrenne hath veynes, men schalle late HIR blode.' Sir Frederic Madden could make nothing of this passage, and in his Preface he expressly says that the researches made for this purpose [the illustration of it] have not proved successful.' It appears to me that the sense is figurative, and that what the author intended to convey was, that as soon as a person becomes full of substance, the world will fleece him or her, if he or she does not exercise vigilance. This construction is borne out completely by the context."

—(“Which seems to indicate that the writer. . missed the point.” Hazlitt, p. 183, n. 4. See too the way-goose note on 'away goes,' iv. 124.)

No. 12, How the Wise Man tauzt his Sonne, is the parallel of The Good Wife, is shorter than it, and written with less go and less detail. The advice about choosing a wife is extremely good, the way to treat her very judicious,

softe & faire a man may tame

Bope herte and hynde, bucke & do,

as is also the counsel not to be too hasty to fight and chide every one she complains of. That ladies had a supply of pepper sauce on hand for servants (and husbands doubtless) as well as fresh salmon and lamprey (Part II. p. 45), we may gather from Wynkyn de Worde's warning to his Carver, "ladyes wyll soone be angry, for theyr thoughtes ben soone changed" (p. 279). In one point the Wise Man was a degenerate Englishman. The Toulmin Smith of his time would have rebuked him severely for advising his son (in lines 41-8, p. 49) to shirk his share of the work that in this self-governing land should have been his pride, because he must thereby displease his

1 Sir Frederic says only, "One expression would seem to require illustration,Aftir the wrenne hathe veynes, men schalle late hir blode,-but the researches made for this purpose have not proved successful. Could this phrase be found still in existence, it might perhaps afford reasonable grounds for localising the poem."

2 The Cambridge MS. that Mr Hazlitt prints has a reason (not in our text) for the probable injustice of the wife's complaints,

For wemen yn wrethe, they can not hyde,

But sone they reyse a smokei rofe.—(p. 174, l. 120.)

neighbours or forswear himself, and get more ill-will than thanks. "England expects every man to do his duty" was not the Wise Man's sentiment. Ritson printed The Wise Man in his Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry, 1791, p. 83-91, from the Harleian MS. 4596; and Mr Hazlitt printed it in his Early Popular Poetry, vol. i. p. 169-77, from the Cambridge MS. Ff. ii. 38 (or MS. More 690). The Cambridge text is a later and longer one than the Lambeth copy in this volume, of which Mr Hazlitt did not know, and contains 188 lines to our 152, the chief expansions being about a man's duty to his wife; that he should not be jealous, as that'll make her worse; should treat her as reson ys,' and that he should not beat her. Resort to common women is also condemned; and the arrangement of the stanzas is much altered. Mr Hazlitt gives no reason for his statement that "the success and reputation" of The Wise Man led, possibly at no great interval, to the production of "How the Goode Wif thaught hir Doughter." Imitations do not often beat originals, and The Good Wife is the better poem.2 The text printed by Mr Hazlitt looks to me like an altered copy of the original poem, with a proverb in the first stanza imitated from The Good Wife. Still it is possible that the original of The Wise Man was the earlier poem, for in the Luytel Caton in the Vernon MS. (ab. 1375 A.D.), in Latin, French, and English,-about to be edited for us by Mr Brock,-occur these lines,

Now hose wole, he may here

In Englisch langage,

How pe wyse mon tauhte his sone

hat was of tendere age.

The Vernon version differs widely from the later ones printed by Mr Hazlitt and here, but, as their precursor, may have been earlier than the original of The Good Wife. The advice to the boy on his amusements is,

1 1596 he calls it. Mr Hazlitt corrects him.

2 So in 1570-6 it is ladies first, place aux dames. 1570-1. Rd of Ryc. Jounes, for his lycense for pryntinge of a ballett of the comly behavyour for Ladyes and gentlewomen, iiijd.' Collier's Extracts from the Registers of the Stationers' Company,

ii. 15. xvij die Julii, 1576. Ric Jones. Receyved of him, for his lycense to ymprinte a booke intituled how a younge gentleman may behave him self in all cumpanies, &c. viijd., and a copie.'

Take a Toppe, 3if þou wolt pleye,

And not at þe hasardrye.

Vernon MS., fol. 310, col. 1, bottom.

Nos. 13 and 16 are just a page each of Recipes of dishes mentioned in this volume, to fill up blanks. No. 13 is an English Dietorie, and No. 14 its Latin original. Clear air and walking make

good digestion' is a good maxim; to poor folk do thou no violence,' one needed, with its companion

To visite pe poore do pi diligence,

And on pe needi haue compassioun,

For good deedis causip mirpe in conscience,

And in heuene to haue greet possessioun.

A list of some of the other MSS. of the Pcem is given at the foot of p. 58.

After the Recipes No. 16, come Hugh Rhodes's Boke of Nurture, and John Russell's Boke of Nurture with its accompanying illustrative notes and Treatises. Each of these Bokes has its separate Preface, as beforesaid, and to them I refer the reader; only advising him to read Russell's text.

As to the Second Part of this volume, which contains a few French and Latin Poems on the same subjects of Manners and Meals as the English Poems of the First Part, and in illustration of them, I am not prepared to contend that French and Latin are Early English, but having broken the ice by printing the original Latin of two English Poems in the First Part opposite their translations, and being unable to give the Latin original of Stans Puer opposite the English versions of it, because there were two of them, I was obliged to put this Latin into an Appendix or Part II. There was another short poem in the same MS. that it would have been a shame to leave out; and then came a most obliging and kind tempter in the person of Mr Thomas Wright, with a very interesting short volume of French Poems on Manners, edited by his late friend M. de Monmerqué, and with a reference to a Latin Modus Cenandi that might be the original of everything of the kind in French and English. What could one do but yield and be thankful? However, punishment came for one's wandering from the paths of virtue and Early English, for that Modus Cenandi turned out to be no end of a plague; in

many places a corrupt text, written on very thin vellum, through which the ink of one side showed on the other, and both sides had faded. The consequence was, that after troubling Mr Brock and Mr T. Wright, and getting all that was gettable out of them, I was obliged to have recourse to the officers of the MS. Department in the Museum and worry them. Mr Scott kindly gave up much time to the difficult places, but some of them have beaten even him. Professor Seeley has been good enough to give me a literal English translation of the Latin pieces in Part II., but has often had to guess instead of translate. Monsieur Michelant, of the Imperial Library, courteously sent me the first French Poem in the same Part. Without the help of the gentlemen above named I could have made nothing of this Part II., and to them all I am greatly indebted. The ready way in which help is given to one, whenever it is asked for, is one of the pleasantest incidents of one's work.

It only remains for me to say that the woodcuts at the end of the book cost the Society nothing; that the freshness of my first interest in the poems which I once hoped to re-produce in these Forewords, has become dulled by circumstances and the length of time that the volume has been in the press-it having been set aside (by my desire) for the Ayenbite, &c. ;-and that the intervention of other work has prevented my making the collection as complete as I had desired it to be. It is, however, the fullest verse one that has yet appeared on its subject, and will serve as the beginning of the Society's store of this kind of material.' If we can do all the English part of the work, and the Master of the Rolls will commission one of his Editors to do the Latin part, we shall then get a fairly complete picture of that Early English Home which, with all its shortcomings, should be dear to every Englishman now.

3, St George's Square, N. W.,

5th June, 1867.

1 If any member or reader can refer me to any other verse or prose pieces of like kind, unprinted, or that deserve reprinting, I shall be much obliged to him, and will try to put them in type.

PREFACE TO RHODES.

KING Edward the Fourth had in 1461-82 A.D. "Chapleynes and Clerkes of the Chapell, XXVI, by the King's choyce or by the deane his election or denomination, of men of worshipp, endowed with vertuuse morall and speculatiff, as of theyre musike, shewing in descant, clene voysed, well releesed and pronouncynge, eloquent in reding, sufficiaunt in organes pleyyng, and modestiall in all other manner of behaving 1". Such a one, I doubt not, was Hewe Rodes of the Kinges Chappell before 1554, the author of the Boke of Nurture first following2, a Devonshire worthy of Henry VIII's time, much impressed with the duty of teaching Children, Masters and Servants, Young and Old, the way they should go and the good manners they should use, a very Polonius in his overflow of saws and precepts, but alas a man who had to declare of his acquaintance and friends,

In all my lyfe I could scant fynde

One wight true and trusty.

From his care for children, I should like to suppose Rodes to have been Master of the young people who in his sovereign's time represented Edward's "Children of Chapell, VIII, founden by the King's Jewel-house for all thinges that belongeth to thayre apparayle, by the handes or oversight of the Deane, or by the maistyr of songes assigned to teche them; which maister is apoynted by the seyd 2 Page 61, below.

1 Household Ordinances, p. 50.