But the variations of both these Sloane MSS. are to me more like those from an original MS. of which our Harleian Russell is a copy, than of an original which Russell altered. Why should the earliest Sloane 2027 start with

"An vsschere .y. am as ye may se: to a prynce Of hyghe degre" if in its original the name of the prince was not stated at the end, as Russell states it, to show that he was not gammoning his readers? Why does Sloane 1315 omit lines in some of its stanzas, and words in some of its lines, that the Harleian Russell enables us to fill up? Why does it too make its writer refer to the pupil's lord and sovereign, if in its original the author did not clench his teaching by asserting, as Russell does, that he had served one? This Sloane 1315 may well have been copied by a man like Wynkyn de Worde, who wished not to show the real writer of the treatise. On the whole, I incline to believe that John Russell's Book of Norture was written by him, and that either the Epilogue to it was a fiction of his, or was written by the superintender of the particular copy in the Harleian MS. 4011, Russell's own work terminating with the Amen! after line 1234.

But whether we consider Russell's Boke another's, or as in the main his own, allowing that in parts he may have used previous pieces on the subjects he treats of, as he has used Stans Puer (or its original) in his Symple Condicions, 1. 277-304,-if we ask what the Boke contains, the answer is, that it is a complete Manual for the Valet, Butler, Footman, Carver, Taster, Dinner-arranger, Hippocrasmaker, Usher and Marshal of the Nobleman of the time when the work was written, the middle of the fifteenth century. For I take the date of the composition of the work to be somewhat earlier than that of the MS. it is here printed from, and suppose Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, "imprisoned and murdered 1447," to have been still alive when his Marshal penned it.-Reading it, we see "The Good Duke" rise and dress', go to Chapel and meals, entertain at feasts in Hall, then undress and retire to rest; we hear how his head was combed with an ivory comb, his stomacher warmed, his petycote put on, his slippers brown as the waterleech got ready, his privy-seat prepared, and his urinal kept in waiting; how his bath was made, his

I have put figures before the motions in the dress and undress drills, for they reminded me so of "Manual and Platoon: by numbers."

table laid, his guests arranged, his viands carved, and his salt smoothed'; we are told how nearly all the birds that fly, the animals that walk the earth, the fish that swim in river and sea, are food for the pot we hear of dishes strange to us, beaver's tail, osprey, brewe, venprides, whale, swordfish, seal, torrentyne, pety perveis or perneis, and gravell of beef3. Bills of fare for flesh and fish days are laid before us; admired Sotiltees or Devices are described; and he who cares to do so may fancy for himself the Duke and all his brilliant circle feasting in Hall, John Russell looking on, and taking care that all goes right. I am not going to try my hand at the sketch, as I do not write for men in the depths of that deducated Philistinism which lately made a literary man say to one of our members on his printing a book of the 15th century, "Is it possible that you care how those barbarians, our ancestors, lived?" If any one who takes up this tract, will not read it through, the loss is his; those who do work at it will gladly acknowledge their gain. That it is worthy of the attention of all to whose ears tidings of Early England come with

4

Mr Way says that the planere, 1. 58, is an article new to antiquarians.

2 Randle Holme's tortoise and snails, in No. 12 of his Second Course, Bk. III., p. 60, col. 1, are stranger still. "Tortoise need not seem strange to an alderman who eats turtle, nor to a West Indian who eats terrapin. Nor should snails, at least to the city of Paris, which devours myriads, nor of Ulm, which breeds millions for the table. Tortoises are good; snails excellent." Henry H. Gibbs.

3"It is nought all good to the goost that the gut asketh" we may well say with William who wrote Piers Ploughmon, v. 1, p. 17, 1. 533-4, after reading the lists of things eatable, and dishes, in Russell's pages. The later feeds that Phylotheus Physiologus exclaims against are nothing to them: "What an Hodg-potch do most that have Abilities make in their Stomachs, which must wonderfully oppress and distract Nature: For if you should take Flesh of various sorts, Fish of as many, Cabbages, Parsnops, Potatoes, Mustard, Butter, Cheese, a Pudden that contains more then ten several Ingredents, Tarts, Sweet-meats, Custards, and add to these Churries, Plums, Currans, Apples, Capers, Olives, Anchovies, Mangoes, Caveare, §c., and jumble them altogether into one Mass, what Eye would not loath, what Stomach not abhor such a Gallemaufrey? yet this is done every Day, and counted Gallent Entertainment."

4 See descriptions of a dinner in Parker's Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages, iii. 74-87 (with a good cut of the Cupboard, Dais, &c.), and in Wright's Domestic Manners and Customs. Russell's description of the Franklin's dinner, 1. 795-818, should be noted for the sake of Chaucer's Franklin, and we may also notice that Russell orders butter and fruits to be served on an empty stomach before dinner, 1. 77, as a whet to the appetite. Modus Cenandi serves potage first, and keeps the fruits, with the spices and biscuits, for dessert. Part II. p. 38, 1. 54.

Monthly Observations for the preserving of Health, 1686, p. 20-1.

welcome sound across the wide water of four hundred years, I unhesitatingly assert. That it has interested me, let the time its notes have taken on this, a fresh subject to me, testify. If any should object to the extent of them', or to any words in them that may offend his ear, let him excuse them for the sake of what he thinks rightly present. There are still many subjects and words insufficiently illustrated in the comments, and for the names venprides (1. 820); sprotis, (sprats, as in Sloane 1315), and torrentille (1. 548); almond iardyne (1. 744); ginger colombyne, valadyne, and maydelyne (1. 132-3); leche dugard, &c., I have not been able to find meanings. Explanations and helps I shall gladly receive, in the hope that they may appear in another volume of like kind for which I trust soon to find more MSS. Of other MSS. of like kind I also ask for notice.

The reason for reprinting Wynkyn de Worde's Boke of Keruynge, which I had not at first thought of, was because its identity of phrase and word with many parts of Russell,-a thing which came on me with a curious feeling of surprise as I turned over the leaves,-made it certain that de Worde either abstracted in prose Russell's MS., chopping off his lines' tails,—adding also bits here2, leaving out others there, or else that both writers copied a common original. The most cursory perusal will show this to be the case. It was not alone by happy chance that when Russell had said

O Fruture viant / Fruter sawge byñ good / bettur is Frutur powche; Appulle fruture is good hoot / but pe cold ye not towche (1. 501-2) Wynkyn de Worde delivered himself of

"Fruyter vaunte, fruyter say be good; better is fruyter pouche; apple fruyters ben good good hote/ and all colde fruters, touche not,"

1 The extracts from Bulleyn, Borde, Vaughan, and Harington are in the nature of notes, but their length gave one the excuse of printing them in bigger type as parts of a Text. In the same way I should have treated the many extracts from Laurens Andrewe, had I not wanted them intermixed with the other notes, and been also afraid of swelling this book to an unwieldy size.

2 The Termes of a Kerver so common in MSS. are added, and the subsequent arrangement of the modes of carving the birds under these Termes, p. 15-17. The Easter-Day feast (p 14) is also new, the bit why the heads of pheasants, partridges, &c., are unwholesome for they ete in theyr degrees foule thynges, as wormes, todes, and other suche '-and several other pieces.

altering not's place to save the rhyme; or that when Russell had said of the Crane

The Crane is a fowle / that stronge is with to fare ;

be whynges ye areyse / fulle large evyn thare;

of hyre trompe in pe brest / loke pat ye beware

Wynkyn de Worde directed his Carver thus: "A crane, reyse the wynges fyrst, & beware of the trumpe in his brest." Let any one compare the second and third pages of Wynkyn de Worde's text with lines 48-137 of Russell, and he will make up his mind that the old printer was either one of the most barefaced plagiarists that ever lived, or that the same original was before him and Russell too. May Mr Davenport's hayloft, or some learned antiquarian, soon decide the alternative for us! The question was too interesting a "Curiosity of Literature" not to be laid before our Members, and therefore The Boke of Keruynge was reprinted-from the British Museum copy of the second edition of 1513-with added side-notes and stops, and the colophon as part of the title.

Then came the necessary comparison of Russell's Boke with the Boke of Curtasye, edited by Mr Halliwell from the Sloane MS. 1986 for the Percy Society. Contrasts had to be made with it, in parts, many times in a page; the tract was out of print and probably in few Members' hands; it needed a few corrections1, and was worthy of a thousand times wider circulation than it had had; therefore a new edition from the MS. was added to this volume. Relying on Members reading it for themselves, I have not in the notes indicated all the points of coincidence and difference between this Boke and Russell's. It is of wider scope than Russell's, takes in the duties of outdoor officers and servants as well as indoor, and maybe those of a larger household; it has also a fyrst Boke on general manners, and a Second Book on what to learn at school, how to behave at church, &c., but it does not go into the great detail as to Meals and Dress which is the special value of Russell's Boke, nor is it associated with a writer who tells us something of himself, or a noble who in all our English Middle Age has so bright a name on which we can look back

1 do the, 1. 115, is clothe in the MS.; grayne, 1. 576 (see too 11. 589, 597,) is grayue, Scotch greive, AS. gerefa, a kind of bailiff; resceyne, ll. 547, 575, is resceyue, receive; &c.

as "good Duke Humphrey." This personality adds an interest to work that anonymity and its writings of equal value can never have; so that we may be well content to let the Curtasye be used in illustration of the Nurture. The MS. of the Curtasye is about 1460 A.D.,

Mr Bond says.

I have dated it wrongly on the half-title.

The Booke of Demeanor was "such a little one" that I was tempted to add it to mark the general introduction of handkerchiefs. Having printed it, arose the question, Where did it come from?' No Weste's Schoole of Vertue could I find in catalogues, or by inquiring of the Duke of Devonshire, Mr W. C. Hazlitt, at the Bodleian, &c. Seager's Schoole of Vertue was the only book that turned up, and this I accordingly reprinted, as Weste's Booke of Demeanor seemed to be little more than an abstract of the first four Chapters of Seager cut down and rewritten. We must remember that books of this kind, which we look on as sources of amusement, as more or less of a joke, were taken seriously by the people they were written for. That The Schoole of Vertue, for instance-whether Seager's or Weste's --was used as a regular school-book for boys, let Io. Brinsley witness. In his Grammar Schoole of 1612, pp. 17, 18, he enumerates the "Bookes to bee first learned of children":-1. their Abcie, and Primer. 2. The Psalms in metre, because children wil learne that booke with most readinesse and delight through the running of the metre, as it is found by experience. 3. Then the Testament.' 4. "If any require any other little booke meet to enter children; the Schoole of Vertue is one of the principall, and easiest for the first enterers, being full of precepts of ciuilitie, and such as children will soone learne and take a delight in, thorow the roundnesse of the metre, as was sayde before of the singing Psalmes: And after it the Schoole of good manners', called, the new Schoole of Vertue, leading the childe as by the hand, in the way of all good manners." I make no apology for including reprints of these little-known books in an Early English Text. Qui s'excuse s'accuse; and if these Tracts do not justify to any reader their own appearance here, I believe the fault is not theirs. A poem on minding what you say, which Mr Aldis

This is doubtless a different book from Hugh Rhodes's Booke of Nurture & Schoole of Good Manners, p. 71, below.