Other copies of this Lytil Boke are at Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Oxford. Of two of these Mr David Laing and Mr Henry Bradshaw have kindly given me collations, which are printed at the end of the Prefaces here. Of No. 7, Stans Puer ad Mensum, attributed to Lydgate -as nearly everything in the first half of the 15th century was—I have printed two copies, with collations from a third, the Jesus (Cambridge) MS. printed by Mr Halliwell in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, v. 1, p. 156-8, and reprinted by Mr W. C. Hazlitt in his Early Popular Poetry, ii. 23-8. Mr Hazlitt notices 3 other copies, in Harl. MS. 4011, fol. 1, &c. ; Lansdowne MS. 699; and Additional MS. 5467, which he collated for his text. There must be plenty more about the country, as in Ashmole MS. 61, fol. 16, back, in the Bodleian.' Of old printed editions Mr Hazlitt notes one "from the press of Caxton, but the only copy known is imperfect. It was printed two or three times by Wynkyn de Worde. Lowndes mentions two, 1518, 4to, and 1524, 4to; and in the public library at Cambridge there is said by Hartshorne (Book Rarities, 156) to be a third without date. It is also appended to the various impressions of the Boke of Nurture by Hugh Rhodes." This is printed below, and its Stans Puer is Rhodes's own expansion of one of these shorter versions of the original Latin' (Part II. p. 30). No. 8 is an incomplete poem on Manners from

the Lambeth MS. 853. Nos. 9 and 10 are short bits that Mr W. Aldis Wright was kind enough to send me. Of the latter of these Mr Thomas Wright says, "The verses at the bottom of p. 35, with this bytel,' &c., belong to a medieval story, which you will find, with the verses, in my 'Latin Stories' (printed for the Percy Society), pp. 28, 29. It is, in fact, the same story as King Lear and his Dauthers. You will find more about it in the note at the end of my volume, and another copy of the verses."

No. 11, The Good Wijf, is a mother's advice to her daughter as to her behaviour generally, her choice of a husband, and the management of her household. It bears trace of the greater freedom of action allowed to women in early times than now, a freedom shown

1 P.S. Mr Hazlitt, iv. 366, notices two others in MS. Ashmole 59, art. 57, and in Cotton MS. Calig. A II. fol. 13, the latter of which and Ashmole 61, are, he says, of a different translation.

* See Hazlitt, iv. 366.

in Langlande's 'Cesse the souteresse' and 'Rose the dyssheres' in the celebrated alehouse scene (Vision of Piers Pl.), in Chaucer's Wif of Bathe, in women's membership of gilds, &c. The injunction not to get drunk often, as that would be shameful (1. 39), is a sign of the times. And the advice to the girl to scorn no wooer, whatsoever he might be (11. 32-3), looks as if husbands were as scarce an article then as they are now. In 1838, Sir Frederic Madden printed a few copies of this poem for private distribution from a Henry the Sixth MS., which contained 35 stanzas against our 31, but the text is inferior to our Lambeth one, especially in the tags of the stanzas. This text Mr Hazlitt reprinted in the 1st volume of his most interesting collection of Early Popular Poetry (4 vols. J. R. Smith, £1), and I have not collated it with the text printed in the present collection, because Mr Hazlitt's volumes should be in all our members' hands. The Trinity College (Cambridge) MS. of the poem, Mr Aldis Wright has kindly collated with our text, in the notes to it. Another version of it, different in almost every stanza, is in the Porkington MS. No. 10, and this I hope to print for the Society some day or other. Mr Lumby will, I believe, print yet another version for us this year from the Lancelot-of-the-Laik MS.; and a MS. also containing the poem, Ashmole 61, fol. 7, has not been examined for or by me. Lastly, Mr Hazlitt notes that a poor copy of the text was printed in 1597 (in 33 stanzas) under the title of The Northern Mothers Blessing. The Way of Thrift'. Written nine years before the death of G. Chaucer. This latter date is possible, for I feel certain that all the copies above mentioned are but variations from some original type that has not yet turned up. The Good Wijf contains an odd instance of how even good editors are sometimes thrown off the scent. In it occurs the proverb, " aftir þe wrenne hap veynes, Men must lete hir blood," that is, bleed her according to her tiny veins, or as we say, 'cut your coat according to your cloth,' spend according to your income. On this Proverb in his Text, Mr Hazlitt says (Early Popular Poetry, vol. i. p. 187),

This is a separate poem which I shall print. The vol. is 238 a. 13, in Brit. Mus.

2 Cp. Ask your purse what you should buy'; 'Ken when to spend and when to spare, and ye needna be busy, and ye'll ne'er be bare,' from Hislop.

'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, 1. 120.)

66

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 þe 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.

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. ‘xvijh 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 pou 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