Clje #rbmng of a Jfunerall, $t, barging $trsions of CIjc <&oob % llan, lk flams, fj&jjate's ©rtar of |m1s, § $fftra fln f ttsliti, ©alete an prtrs' Pen, #t. ,i ©biUb bg F. J.TURNIVALL, M.A., TRIN. HALL, CAMB. iSElilli fssags ou <$arlg Italian; anir German Books of Courtesg W. M. ROSSETTI, ESQ., & E. OSWALD, ESQ. LONDON: TUBLISHED FOR THE EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY, BY K TEUBKEE & CO., 60, PATEENOSTEE EOW. > MDCCCLXIX. £13*. via. o ©jftra Suits, VIII. JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. CONTENTS. PAET I. FOREWORDS ... I. QUEENS ELIZABETHES ACHADEMY, BY SIR H. GILBERT II. A BOOK OF PRECEDENCE ... III. THE ORDERING OF A FUNERALL FOR A NOBLE PERSON IN HENRY VII.'S TIME IV. A FUNERAL IN POPISH TIMES V. THE DEFINITION OF AN ESQUIRE, AND THE SEVERALL SORTES OF THEM ACCORDING TO THE CUSTOMS AND VSAGE OF ENGLAND ... ... ... ... ... - VI. THE GOOD WYFE WOLD A PYLGREMAGE ... v VII. HOW fE GOODE WYFE TAUjT HYR DOUBTER 'VIII. HOW A WYSE MAN TAUGHT HYS SONE IX. STANS PUER AD MENSAM ... X. THE ABCE OF ARISTOTILL ... XI. ARISTOTLE'S ABC 1/ XII. PROVERBS OF GOOD COUNSEL ) - XIII. HOW TO RULE ONE S SELF AND ONE S HOUSE XIV. GOOD ADUICE TO A GOUERNOUR ... XV. WARNINGS AND COUNSELS FOR NOBLEMEN XVI. THE SAGE FOOLS TESTAMENT XVII. LYDGATE'S ORDER OF FOOLS CONTENTS. PAGE XVIII. A PROPHECY. WHAT CAN MAN POSSESS? ILLS OF OUR TIME ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 85 XIX. QWAT SAL I D01 ... ... ... ... ... ... 86 XX. ILLS OF OUR TIME (a BETTER COPY) ... ... ... 88 XXI. THE ORDER OF THE GUESTS AT THE CORONATION BANQUET OF CATHERINE OF VALOIS ... ... ... ... 89 XXII. COURSES OF A DINNER AND SUPPER GIVEN TO HENRY V. BY SIR IOHN CORNEWELLE ... ... ... ... 90 XXIII. COURSES OF A MEAL OR BANQUET ... ... ... 92, XXIV. A SCOTCH COPY OF A POEM ON HERALDRY ... ... 93 NOTES ON THE HERALDRY POEM ... ... ... 102 XXV. OCCLEVE: OF PRIDD AND OF WASTE CLOTHYNG OF LORDES MEN ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 105 xxvi. sir peter idle's directions to his son (an extract) ... 109 NOTES to queene elizabethes achademy ... ... Ill glossarial index ... ... ... ... ...112 index of names, persons, and places ... ... 122 general index ... ... ... ... ... 126 PAET II. 1. MR W. M. ROSSETTl'S ESSAY ON EARLY ITALIAN COURTESY BOOKS ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 1 2. mr e. Oswald's essay on thomasin von zirclaria, and some other German'works on courtesy ... ... 77 3. note on 'le menagier de paris,' 1302-4 a.d. by f. j. furnivall ... ... ... ... ... ... 149 FOREWORDS. This volume is meant as a kind of small brother to our fat Babees Book of 1868. It has been produced mainly to let the reader see the very interesting account in Part II. of early Italian Courtesy books by Mr W. M. Eossetti, and the more elaborate essay on the earliest German one (by an Italian) by Mr E. Oswald. To these I have added a very short, bare sketch of the curious early French treatise on the spiritual, social, and household duties of a wife, about 1393 a.d., Le Menagier de Paris, a book to be read by all readers of ' The Knight de la Tour Landry.' 1 Part II. I look on as the body of this second Babee; Part I. as its frock or coat. Still, I hope that the stuff and trimmings of the boy's garment will be found worthy of examination, as well as his eyes and legs. The first tract in Part I., QueeneElizabethes Academy,"1 is printed, 1. because it is another scheme drawn up for the same end as Sir Nicholas Bacon's for the bringing up of the Queen's wards, mentioned on pages xxii, xxiii of the Forewords to the Babees Book, on the author- ity of Mr Payne Collier, and displays more fully than my cutting- down of Mr Collier's sketch,' the course of study of well-bred youths 1 I hoped to have added an account from the pen of Mr F. W. Cosens, of an Early Spanish MS, in the Madrid Library, of a Mother's Instructions to her Daughter; but it will take too much time to get the MS copied, &c. Perhaps enough material for another volume on Manners and Courtesy will turn up by the time the Spanish poem is ready. 2 I ask readers to correct ('of) will, (religion'), 1. 7 of text, to 'evil,' and cut out the comma after it. SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT'S AOHADEMY. in the early years of Elizabeth's reign'; 2. because it is an admirable scheme of Educational Eeform; and 3. because the Eeformer is Sir Humphrey Gilbert,1 one of the ablest and gallantest men of the Elizabethan age. Some of my readers may know the account of him in Hakluyt; and others, that in Mr Froude's noble article in the West- minster on " England's Forgotten Worthies." At any rate, here is the latter, to give pleasure to all who read it: Some two miles above the port of Dartmouth, once among the most important harbours in England, on a projecting angle of land which runs out into the river at the head of one of its most beautiful reaches, there has stood for some centuries the Manor House of Greenaway. The water runs deep all the way to it. from the sea, and the largest vessels may ride with safety within a stone's throw of the windows. In the latter half of the sixteenth century there must have met, in the hall of this mansion, a party as remarkable as could have been found anywhere in England. Humfrey and Adrian Gil- bert, with their half-brother, Walter Ealeigh, here, when little boys, played at sailors in the reaches of Long Stream; in the summer evenings doubtless rowing down with the tide to the port, and won- dering at the quaint figure-heads and carved prows of the ships which thronged it; or climbing on board, and listening, with hearts beating, to the mariners' tales of the new earth beyond the sunset. And here in later life matured men, whose boyish dreams had become heroic action, they used again to meet in the intervals of quiet, and the rock is shown underneath the house where Ealeigh smoked the first tobacco. Another remarkable man, of whom we shall presently speak more closely, could not fail to have made a fourth at these meetings. A sailor boy of Sandwich, the adjoining parish, John Davis, showed early a genius which could not have escaped the eye of such neigh- bours, and in the atmosphere of Greenaway he learned to be as noble as the Gilberts, and as tender and delicate as Ealeigh. Of this party, for the present we confine ourselves to the host and owner, Humfrey Gilbert, knighted afterwards by Elizabeth. Led by the scenes of his childhood to the sea and to sea adventures, and afterwards, as his mind unfolded, to study his profession scientifically, we find him, as soon as he was old enough to think for himself or make others listen to him, 'amending the great errors of naval sea cards, whose common fault is to make the degree of longitude in every latitude of one com- mon bigness ;' inventing instruments for taking observations, study- ing the form of the earth, and convincing himself that there was a north-west passage, and studying the necessities of his country, and 1 It has Lord Burghley's endorsement on it [Sr Hronf. Gilbert for an Academy of y° wardci], but is without date, It was probably laid before the Queen about the year 1570. (Sir H. Ellis in Archasologia, XXI., p. 506.) MR FKOUDE'S LIFE OF SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. iii discovering the remedies for them in colonisation and extended markets for home manufactures. Gilbert was examined before the Queen's Majesty and the Privy Council, and the record of his ex- amination he has himself left to us in a paper which he afterwards drew up, and strange enough reading it is. The most admirable con- clusions stand side by side with the wildest conjectures. Homer and Aristotle are pressed into service to prove that the ocean runs round the three old continents, and that America therefore is necessarily an island. The Gulf Stream, which he had carefully observed, eked out by a theory of the primum mobile, is made to demonstrate a channel to the north, corresponding to Magellan's Straits in the south, Gilbert believing, in common with almost every one of his day, that these straits were the only opening into the Pacific, and the land to the South was unbroken to the Pole. He prophesies a market in the East for our manufactured linen and calicoes :— "The Easterns greatly prizing the same, as appeareth in Hester, where the pomp is expressed of the great King of India, Ahasuerus, who matched the coloured clothes wherewith his houses and tents were apparelled, with gold and silver, as part of his greatest treasure." These, and other such arguments, were the best analysis which Sir Humfrey had to offer of the spirit which he felt to be working in him. We may think what we please of them; but we can have but one thought of the great grand words with which the memorial con- cludes, and they alone would explain the love which Elizabeth bore him :— 1" Desiring you hereafter neuer to mislike with me, for the taking in hande of any laudable and honest enterprise: for if through pleasure or idlenesse we purchase shame, the pleasure vanisheth, but the shame remaineth for euer. "And therefore to giue me leaue without offence, alwayes to liue and die in this mind, That he is not worthy to liue at all, that for feare, or danger of death, shunneth his countries seruice and his owne honour, seeing death is ineuitable and the fame of vertue immortall. Wherefore in this behalfe, Mutare vel timere sperno." 2 Two voyages which he undertook at his own cost, which shat- tered his fortune, and failed, as they naturally might, since inefficient help or mutiny of subordinates, or other disorders, are inevitable con- ditions under which more or less great men must be content to see their great thoughts mutilated by the feebleness of their instruments, did not dishearten him; and in June 1583 a last fleet of five ships 1 I quote the extracts from Hakluyt, instead of Mr Froude's modernized versions. 2 His [Raleigh's] half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, having obtained a patent to colonize some parts of North America, he embarked in this adven- ture; but meeting with a Spanish fleet, after a smart engagement, they re- turned without success, in 1579.—Platt, v. 231. iv MR FROUDE'S LIFE OF SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. sailed from the port of Dartmouth, with commission from the queen to discover and take possession from latitude 45° to 50° North—a voyage not a little noteworthy, there being planted in the course of it the first English colony west of the Atlantic. Elizabeth had a foreboding that she would never see him again. She sent him a jewel as a last token of her favour, and she desired Ealeigh to have his picture taken before he went. The history of the voyage was written by a Mr Edward Hayes, of Dartmouth, one of the principal actors in it, and as a composition it is more remarkable for fine writing than any very commendable thought in the author. But Sir Humfrey's nature shines through the infirmity of his chronicler; and in the end, indeed, Mr Hayes himself is subdued into a better mind. He had lost money by the voyage, and we will hope his higher nature was only under a tem- porary eclipse. The fleet consisted (it is well to observe the ships and the size of them) of the Delight, 120 tons; the barque Ealeigh, 200 tons (this ship deserted off the Land's End); the Golden Hinde and the Swallow, 40 tons each; and the Squirrel, which was called the frigate, 10 tons. For the uninitiated in such matters, we may add, that if in a vessel the size of the last, a member of the Yacht Club would consider that he had earned a club-room immortality, if. he had ventured a run in the depth of summer from Cowes to the Channel Islands. "We were in number in all (says Mr Hayes) about 260 men: among whom we had of euery faculty good choice, as shipwrights, masons, carpenters, smithes, and such like, requisite to such an action; also, minerall men and refiners. Besides, for solace of our people, and allurement of the Sauages, we were prouided of Musike in good variety: not omitting the least toyes, as Morris dancers, Hobby horsse[s], and May-like conceits to delight the Sauage people." The expedition reached Newfoundland without accident. St John's was taken possession of, and a colony left there; and Sir Humfrey then set out exploring along the American coast to the south, he himself doing all the work in his little 10-ton cutter, the service being too dangerous for the larger vessels to venture on. One of these had remained at St John's. He was now accompanied only by the Delight and the Golden Hinde, and these two keeping as near the shore as they dared, he spent what remained of the summer ex- amining every creek and bay, marking the soundings, taking the bear- ings of the possible harbours, and risking his life, as every hour he was obliged to risk it in such a service, in thus leading, as it were, the forlorn hope in the conquest of the New World. How dangerous ft was we shall presently see. It was towards the end of August. "The euening was faire and pleasant, yet not without token of storme to ensue, and most part of this Wednesday night like the Swanne that singeth before her death, they in the Admiral or De- light continued in sounding of Trumpets with Drummes and Fifes; MR FROUDE's LIFE OF SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. V also winding the Cornets and Haughtboyes, and in the end of their iollitie left 'with the battell and ringing of dolefull knels." Two days after came the storm; the Delight struck upon a bank, and went down in sight of the other vessels, which were unable to render her any help. Sir Humfrey's papers, among other things, were all lost in her; at the time considered by him an irreparable misfortune. But it was little matter, he was never to need them. The Golden Hinde and the Squirrel were now left alone of the five ships. The provisions were running short, and the summer season was closing. Both crews were on short allowance ; and with much difficulty Sir Humfrey was prevailed upon to be satisfied for the pre- sent with what he had done, and to lay off for England. "So vpon Saturday, in the afternoono, the 31 of August, we changed our course, and returned backe for England, at which very instant, euen in winding about, there passed along betweene vs and towards the land which we now forsooke, a very lion, to our seeming, in shape, hair, and colour; not swimming after the maner of a beast by moouing of his feete, but rather sliding vpon the water with his whole body, excepting the legs, in sight; neither yet diuing vnder and againe rising aboue the water, as the maner is of Whales, Dolphins, Tunise, Porposes, and all other fish; but confidently shewing himselfe aboue water without hiding, Notwithstanding, we presented our- selues in open view and gesture to amase him, as all creatures will be commonly at a sudden gaze and sight of men. Thus he passed along, turning his head to and fro, yawning and gaping wide, with ougly demonstration of long teeth and glaring eies; and, to bidde vs a fare- well, comming right against the Hinde, he sent forth a horrible voyce, roaring or bellowing as doeth a lion, which spectacle wee all beheld so farre as we were able to discerne the same, as men prone to wonder at euery strange thing, as this doubtlesse was, to see a lion in the ocean Sea, or fish in the shape of a lion. What opinion others had thereof, and chiefly the General! himselfe, I forbeare to deliuer. But he took it for Bonum Omen, reioycing that he was to warre against such an enemie, if it were the deuill." We have no doubt that he did think it was the devil; men in those days believing really that evil was more than a principle or a necessary accident, and that in all their labour for God and for right, they must make their account to have to fight with the devil in his proper person. But if we are to call it superstition, and if this were no devil in the form of a roaring lion, but a mere great seal or sea- , lion, it is a more innocent superstition to impersonate so real a power, f&nd it requires a holder heart to rise up against it and defy it in its living terror, than to sublimate it away into a philosophical principle, and to forget to battle with it in speculating on its origin and nature. But to follow the brave Sir Humfrey, whose work of fighting with the devil was now over, and who was passing to his reward. The 2nd of September the General came on board the Golden Hinde 'to MR FROUDE'S LIFE OF SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. make merry with us.' He greatly deplored the loss of his books and papers, but he was full of confidence from what he had seen, and talked with eagerness and warmth of the new expedition for the fol- lowing spring. Apocryphal gold-mines still occupying the minds of Mr Hayes and others, they were persuaded that Sir Humfrey was keeping to himself some such discovery which he had secretly made, and they tried hard to extract it from him. They could make nothing, however, of his odd ironical answers, and their sorrow at the catastrophe which followed is sadly blended with disappointment that such a secret should have perished. Sir Humfrey doubtless saw America with other eyes than theirs, and gold-mines richer than California in its huge rivers and savannahs. 'Leauing the issue of this good hope [about th« gold], (continues Mr Hayes), vnto God, who knoweth the trueth only, and can at his good pleasure bring the same to light, I will hasten to the end of this tragedie, which must be knit vp in the person of our Generall. And as it was God's ordinance vpon him, euen so the vehement per- suasion and intreatie of his friends could nothing auaile to diuert him from a wilfull resolution of going through in his frigat; . . . . and when he was intreated by the captaine, master, and others, his well- wishers of the Hinde, not to venture in the Frigat, this was his answere—" I will not forsake my little company going homeward, with whom I have passed so many stormes and perils."' Two-thirds of the way home, they met foul weather and terrible seas, 'breaking short and pyramid wise.' Men who had all their lives ' occupied the sea' had never seen it more outrageous. 'We had also vpon our maine-yard an apparition of a little fire by night, which seamen doe call Castor and Pollux.' "Munday, the ninth of September, in the afternoone, the Frigat was neere cast away, oppressed by waues, yet at that time recouered, and giuing foorth signes of ioy, the Generall, sitting abaft with a booke in his hand, cried out vnto vs in the Hind so oft as we did approch within hearing, "We are as neere to heauen by sea as by land," reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a souldier resolute in Iesus Christ, as I can testifie he was. The same Monday night, about twelue of the clocke or not long after, the Frigat being ahead of vs in the Golden Hinde, suddenly her lights were out, whereof as it were in a moment we lost the sight; and withall our watch cryed, the General was cast away, which was too true. "Thus faithfully (concludes Mr Hayes, in some degree rising above himself) I have related this story, wherein may alwaies appeare though he be extinguished, some sparkes of the Knight's vertues, he re- maining firme and resolute in a purpose by all pretence honest and godly as was this, to discouer, possesse, and to reduce vnto the service of God and Christian pietie, those remote and heathen Countreys of America Such is the infinite bountie of God, who from euery euill deriueth good. For besides that fruite may growe in time of our MR FROUDE'S LIFE OF SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. vii travelling into those Northwest lands,1 the crosses, turmoiles, and afflictions, both in the preparation and execution of this voyage, did correct the intemperate humors which before we noted to bee in this gentleman, and made vnsauorie and lesse delightfull his other mani- fold vertues. "Then as he was refined and made neerer drawing vnto the image of God, so it pleased the diuine will to resume him vnto himselfe, whither both his and euery other high and noble minde haue alwayes aspired." Such was Sir Humfrey Gilbert; still in the prime of his years when the Atlantic swallowed him. Like the gleam of a landscape lit suddenly for a moment by the lightning, these few scenes flash down to us across the centuries: but what a life must that have been of which this was the conclusion! We have glimpses of him a few years earlier, when he won his spurs in Ireland—won them by deeds which to us seem terrible in their ruthlessness, but which won the applause of Sir Henry Sidney as too high for praise or even reward. Chequered like all of us with lines of light and darkness, he was, nevertheless, one of a race which has ceased to be. We look round for them, and we can hardly believe that the same blood is flowing in our veins. Brave we may still be, and strong perhaps as they, but the high moral grace2 which made bravery and strength so beautiful is departed from us for ever.—Froude's SJwrt Studies on Great Subjects; vol. ii. p. 136-45. 1 Hayes says further:— 1 These considerations may helpe to suppresse all dreads rising of hard euents in attempts made this way by other nations, as also of the heauy suc- cesse and issue in the late enterprise made by a worthy gentleman our country- man Sir Humfrey Gilbert, Knight, who was the first of our nation that caried people to erect an habitation and gouernment in those Northerly counfreys of America. About which, albeit he had consumed much substance, and lost his life at last, his people also perishing for the most cart: yet the mystery thereof we must leaue vnto God, and iudge charitably both of the cause (which was iust in all pretence) and of the person, who was very zealous in prosecuting the same, deseruing honourable remembrance for his good minde, and expense of life in so vertuous an enterprise. Whereby neuerthelesse, least any man should be dismayd by example of other folks calamity, and misdeeme that God doth resist all attempts intended that way: I thought good, so farre as myselfe was an eye witnesse, to deliuer the circumstance and maner of our proceedings in that action : in which the gentleman was so infortunately incumbred with wants, and woorse matched with many ill disposed people, that his rare iudge- ment and regiment premeditated for those affaires, was subiected to tolerate abuses, and in sundry extremities to holde on a course, more to vpholde credit, then likely in his owne conceit happily to succeed.'—Hakluyt't Voyages, vol. iii. p. 145. 2 Compare 'the intemperate humours' of which Hayes speaks above. I don't believe Mr Froude's conclusion a bit, though it was generous in him to write it. The Victorian gentleman mayn't have so much devil in him, or break out into such humours, as the Elizabethan : but in moral grace he is far ahead of him. Self-restraint and moral grace have grown in the latter days. viii platt's life of sir Humphrey gilbert. Some other details as to Sir Humphrey's early life are given in Platt's Universal Biography,} and follow here: "Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a brave officer and navigator, born about 1539, in Devonshire, of an ancient and honourable family. He inherited a considerable fortune from his father. He was edu- cated at Eton and Oxford. Being introduced at court by his aunt, Mrs Catharine Ashley, then in the Queen's service, he was diverted from the study of the law, and commenced soldier. Having dis- tinguished himself in several military expeditions, particularly that of Newhaven, in 1563, he was sent over to Ireland to assist in sup- pressing a rebellion, where, for his singular services, he was made commander-in-chief and governor of Munster, and knighted by the lord deputy, Sir Henry Sydney, Jan. 1, 1570. He returned soon after to England, where he married a rich heiress. In 1572 he sailed with a squadron of nine ships to reinforce colonel Morgan, who meditated the recovery of Flushing. In 1576 he published his book on the north-west passage to the East Indies. In 1578 he obtained an ample patent, empowering him to possess in North America any lands then unsettled. He sailed to Newfoundland, but soon after returned to England without success; nevertheless, in 1583 he em- barked a second time with five ships, the largest of which put back on account of a contagious distemper on board. He landed at New- foundland on the 3rd of August, and on the 5th took possession of the harbour of St John's. By virtue of his patent he granted leases to several people; but though none of them remained there at that time, they settled afterwards in consequence of these leases; so that Sir Humphrey deserves to be remembered as the real founder of the vast American empire. On the 20th of August he put to sea again, on board a small sloop, which on the 29 th foundered in a hard gale of wind. Thus perished Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a man of quick parts, a brave officer, a good mathematician, a skilful navigator, and of a very enterprising genius. He was also remarkable for his elo- quence, being much admired for his patriotic speeches in the English and Irish Parliaments. His work entitled ' A Discourse to prove a passage by the north-west to Cathaia and the East Indies,' is a mas- terly performance, and is preserved in Hakluyt's collection of voy- ages, vol. iii. p. 11. The style is superior to most, if not to all, the writers of that age, and shows the author to have been a man of con- siderable reading."—Platt's Universal Biography, vol. v. p. 219. The Poet Gascoigne, in his Epistle to the Eeader, in A Discourse for a new Passage to Cataia. Written by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 1 See also Camden's Elizabeth, p. 287; Wood's Athena Oxonienses, by Bliss; Rose's Biogr. Diet.; Pict. Hut. of England, ii. 791. X SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT'S EDUCATIONAL REFORMS. But noble men borne, 621 To lerne they haue scorne, But hunt and blowe an horne, Lepe ouer lakes and dykes, Set nothing by polytykes. Again, the laziness and viciousness of those who did go to Univer- sities, is complained of (p. 10), and the crying evil of the education of those only places of training pointed out,—an evil of which they are not yet free,—their narrowness: that 'sehol learninges' only are taught at Oxford and Cambridge; no 'matters of action meet for present practize, both of peace and warre.' This narrowness made men then, as in later days, 'vtterly lose their tymes yf they doe not follow learning onely.' Other protests by Sir Humphrey against this narrow- ness are seen in other parts of his plan, of which the first will come especially home to the hearts of our own Members, the study and use of English 1 (as against Latin) on which he insists at p. 2, complain- ing of ' the scholasticall rawnesse of some newly commen from the vniuersities.' 'Besides, in what language soeuer learninge is at- tayned, the appliaunce to vse is principally in the vulgare spcach, as in preaching, in parliament, in counsell, in commyssion, and other offices of Common Weale.' Again, Sir Humphrey would have lec- tures on 'Ciuill Pollicie.' By which meanes Children shall learne more at home of the ciuill pollicies of all forraine countries, and our owne, then most old men doe which haue trauailed farthest abroade.' . . . and 'men shalbe taught more witt and policy than schole- learninge can deliuer . . . ffor [as Chaucer says] the greatest Schole Clarks are not always the wisest men . . . ffor suche as govern Common Weales, ought rather to bend themselves to the practizes thereof, then to be tyed to the bookish circumstances of the same' (p. 3, 4). Again, Sir Humphrey would have his boys ' muscular Chris- tians,' would teach them riding (p. 4), shooting, and marching (p. 5), navigation and the parts of a ship (p. 5), simple doctoring (p. 5, 6), and Natural Philosophy—the teachers of the two latter practising together 'to search and try owt the secreates of nature, as many waies as they possiblie may.'—' The Phisition should also teach surgery. By reason 1 See Babees Book, p. lix. SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT'S ACHAVKMY. xi that Chirurgerie is not now to be learned in any other place then in a Barbers Shoppe' (p. 6). Law is to be taught because 'It is ne- cessary that noble men and gentlemen, should lerne to be able to put their owne case in law, and to haue some iudgment in the office of a Justice of Peace, and Sheriffe.' Of languages, besides Greek, Latin, and Hebrew (p. 2), French, Italian, and High Dutch or German (p. 7) are to be taught. 'Also there shalbe one Master of Defence, who shalbe principally expert in the Eapier and Dagger' &c, and who was to 'haue a dispensation against the Statute of Eoages,' under which he would have been liable to branding and imprisonment, &e. (See Pref. to Awdeley and Harman, p. xiii.) So also the Phisician and Natural Philosopher were to be protected from the statute against Alchemists (p. 6). Music was also to be taught1; and the mention of the Bandora here (p. 7) enables us to say that Sir Hum- phrey's scheme was not written before 1562, when the Bandora was first invented by John Eose, citizen of London (see Notes, p. 111). Heraldry was to be taught too (p. 8), but not, we may be sure, with the nonsense clinging round its origin, of which a sample is given in pages 93-102 of the present volume. For other particulars the reader is referred to the little tract itself; but let him notice that the ng poor men's sons out of the endowments only for the poor' Book, p. xxxvi.) of which Harrison complained in 1577, and another writer before, was going on in Sir Humphrey's time: And also the other vniueraities shall then better suffize to releive poore schollers, where now the youth of nobility and gentlemen, taking vp their schollarshippes and fellowshippes, do disapoincte the poore of their livinges and avauncementes. The plan of the Achademy is in fact one for the establishment of a great London University for the education of youths in the art of political, social, and practical life,—a kind of prototype of the London University so wisely pleaded for of late years by Professor Seeley, which should gather into itself the whole range of modern London teachers and studies. I venture to think that Sir Hum- phrey's scheme will not detract from his fame for nobleness of spirit, keenness of sight, and directness of aim. After the copy of the tract 1 See Forewords to the Babees Book, p. xxiii. b 'scroogi (Babees i xii A BOOKE OF PRECEDENCE. in this volume had been printed, Mr Wheatley informed me that Sir Henry Ellis had printed it before in the Archceologia, vol. xxi. p. 506, &c. But this fact only rendered the presence of the Acharfemy here more appropriate, as our Extra Series is for reprints. I only wish Sir Henry had added some of the notes and illustrations to the tract, which he was so much more competent to give than I am, so that I might have reprinted those too. The second tract, 'a Booke of Precedence' (p. 13), is printed, not mainly because 'John Bull loves a Lord '-—although sensible out- siders proved to him last session that his dear Peers were politically hereditary nuisances, the obstructers of all liberal legislation,—but because the question of Precedence was so important a one in old social arrangements, and the feeling of caste still so strongly pervades all English society. Moreover, it is curious to know that a lady of title, in the presence of her higher in rank, might not have her train borne by a woman, though she might by a man (p. 15), as that marked her lowerness of station; while a poor baroness mightn't have her train borne by any one; but if she had a gown with a train, she was obliged to bear it herself (p. 25). The third and fourth pieces in this volume describe, the third shortly (p. 29-31), and the fourth at greater length (p. 32-36), the manner of ordering the funerals of noble or knightly persons in late Popish times in England. One is bound to show how people's corpses were dressed and dealt with, as well as their bodies; and to some churchy and upholstery people the details in these parts will no doubt have a more special interest. The 'Liveryes for Noblemen att Intery- ments,' at p. 36, represent, I suppose, the scarf, hatband, and gloves, given to commoners at funerals now. The fifth piece is the ' Definition of the Esquier,' of which copies more or less different are found so often in MSS and books. Next, ought to have been added a short account of a curious, solomn procession of one of our Tudor queens, when she took to her chamber to lie in, and bear a child; but between Mr Childs and me the copy somehow disappeared. It shall, however, be printed in our third 'Babee,' if that ever sees the light. The sixth piece is therefore a late and quite-changed version of EARLY ENGLISH GIRLS' BEHAVIOUR. xiii I 'How the Good Wife taught her Daughter,' Babees Book, p. 36, . \ while the seventh piece is a less late and less changed version of the /.- l same poem, hut still having enough differences, and noting enough fresh points of conduct, to render it worth printing. As might have been expected concerning such teachings in early days, there' is somewhat plainer speaking on the part of the mother, put down in the MS, than would appear in print now, as well as re- cord of a ruder butcher-remark hy the lookers-on, when a young woman happened to lift her petticoats rather high: 1T Do:$ttwr, seyde J?e good wyfe, hyde thy legys whyte, IT .And schew not forth thy stret hossyn to make men have de-lytt; 52 IT Thow hit plese hem for1 a tym, hit schaft be thy de-spytt, IT And men wyll sey "of fi hotly fou carst but lytt." 56 1T Wttt an) O and an) I, seyd Hit is futt ryve, IT "The bocher1 schewyth feyre his fiesche, for1 he wold sell hit futt blythe." 60 But that the thing was once done in Scotland, we have Sir David Lyndesay's testimony: Bot I lauch oest to se ane Nwn, Gar beir hir taill aboue hir bwn, For no thing ellis, as I suppois, Bot for to schaw hir lillie quhyte hois. Sir D. Lyndesay's Syde Tailis, 1. 55-8. Marketing was also one of the occasions of warning and danger to young women: Go not as it wer A gase Fro house to house, to soke fe mase - Ne go frm not to no mo-ket To sell thi thryft; be wer of itte. Later on, Stubs comments savagely on the purposes which mer- chants' wives made carrying their baskets serve; another satirist has the following skit on the practice: Item, I bequethe to ouery yong woman maydenlyke, when she shall goe to the market, a poore woman to buye her meate, that she Xiv TUK GOOD MAN. LACED SLEEVES OF EDWARD IV.'tj REIG.V. in the mene time may go to a baudy house for her recreacion, or elles to a dauncyng scoole to learne facions, &c. (The Wyll of the DeuyU, and last Testament, ab. 1550, a.d., p. 10 of Collier's reprint.) The poet who wrote the version at p. 46, 1. 73-5, below, and ex- horted young damsels not to go to a wrestling, or a cock-fighting, or 'shooting,' like a strumpet or a gyglote (light hussy), would, I suppose, have been scandalized if he could have heard of Victorian ladies attending a pigeon-match, to say nothing of wrestling-matches, and athletic sports. Manners change, and mutual charity is needed when one time sets itself to judge another. In one of Mr Lumby's forth- coming texts for the Society, there is an extremely interesting Scotch version of the Good Wife, called The Thewis of Gudwomen, in 320 lines, p. 103-112, Eatis Eaving, Book III. The eighth and ninth pieces (pp. 52, 5G) are altered versions of 'How the Good Man taught his Son,' and ' Stans puer ad Mensam,' Babees Book, pp. 48, 26; though the latter poem is so enlarged, by the addition of an Introduction and many new maxims, that it has hardly a claim to the title of Lydgate's short poem. The present copy dates itself, more or less nearly, by its telling the servants not to wear laced sleeves; for those sleeves were fashionable in Edward IV.'s reign, and the lacing was put across a full-padded sleeve. The nobility and gentry of the day conceived that this wearing of ' bolsters or stuffing of wool, cotton, &c.,' was their special privilege; and accordingly, a statute of the 3rd year of Edward IV. a.d. 1463, forbids any yeoman or person under that degree to wear these bolsters, and therefore the laced sleeves; see p. 62, note. Of an earlier kind of sleeve, Occleve complains below, p. 106, as we shall see. Who the Dr Palere is, who is introduced into our 9th piece so often (p. 63-4), as a great authority, I do not know. For our 10th and 11th pieces (p. 65, 66), we have altered versions of ' The A B C of Aristotle,' of which two copies were printed in the Babees Book, p. 9-12. The 10th piece, p. 65-6, is so different from its originals as to almost claim the character of a new piece. In the 12th piece, 'Proverbs of Good Counsel,' of which I don't remember any other copy, there is a nice line, 'of all treasure, Know- ledge is the flower :' THE FOOL'S TESTAMENT IMPORTANT. XV Son), yf fou wyste whate thyng1 hyt were, Connyng1 to lerne, & with to bere, Thow wold not myspend on) howre; for of all Tresure Conny[n]g* ys flowwr. 50 Passing over the simple 13th piece, p. 71, we come to the 14th and 15th, ' Good Aduice to a Gouernour,' and ' Warnings and Coun- sels for Noblemen;' and we are shown by the satire of the 16th piece, 'The Sage Fool's Testament' (p. 77),—though it is of an earlier date than the two bits that precede it—how much needed the Good Advice to the Governor and Nobleman really was; how power and place, with money and little restraint, worked in early social England. There's a good slice of English History in that Fool's Testament; and I commend it to the reader. As an Appendix to it I have added our 17th piece, Lydgate's 'Order of Fools,' p. 79, a poor copy of a poor poem, but no doubt containing among its 63 caps, one that '11 fit each of us. In the 18th piece (p. 85), are three interesting little bits, 'When England shall come to Grief,' 'All is phantom that we deal with'— eternity alone, reality,—and 'Ills of our Time,' when a good sure friend is hard to find. Of this last, a fuller copy, with Latin originals, is given as our 20th piece at p. 88. The intervening poem, No. 19, p. 86, is the only pathetic piece in the volume. In his Northern dialect the writer, deserted by un- kind, false friends, asks 'Qwat sal I do?' Loving and true himself, he cannot understand why the world is thus false to him. He com- plains to God, desiring to die, and prays Him to quite those who have made his life so hard to lead. May his sad burden be new to all of us: that I most trayste, it is all waste! sor may me rew! The 21st, 22nd, and 23rd pieces are a change: 'The Order of the Ladies at the Coronation of Queen Catherine, Queen of Henry VII.' (p. 89); 'Courses of a Dinner and Supper given by Sir John Cornwell to Henry V. ;' and ' Courses of a Meal or Banquet.' The latter were printed by Mr Edward Levien of the British Museum, he sends me word, in a late number of the Journal of the Archceological XVI SAHARA. A SCOTCH COPY OF A POEM ON HERALDRY. Association, but as it is not on the shelf of the Museum Eeading-room, where it ought to be, I cannot say what Mr Levien has made of these meals. For me, they are just continuations of Eussell's in the Babees Book; and the cracking of one nut in them pleased me—Bamako,, p. 89.—What it could be I couldn't conceive; perhaps some preserve of salmon, if fish were potted in those days: but the Forme of Cury's Sambocade, p. 77, which the excellent Pegge never put in his unal- phabetical Glossary that worries everybody who refers to it, proved the need.'ul pair of crackers; it was—'Sambocade; as made of the Sarnbucus or Elder' (Pegge): curds, sugar, white of eggs, flavoured with elder-flowers, put in a crust, baked up with ' curose '—whatever that may be: 'curiously!' says Pegge,—and mossed forth. The reader has seen that our gallant Sir Humphrey Gilbert would have Heraldry taught in his Achademy (pp. xi, 8). It is beyond question that our ancestors attributed much importance to the study of the art that recorded their descent and alliances; and, no doubt, one's namesakes with the Conqueror and Coeur de Lion thought much of their arms, if they had any, as their Caerlaverock fol- lower had. This interest of our old men in the subject, is my only excuse for printing the 24th piece in this volume,a Poem on Heraldry (p. 93-102), about gules, and pales, and tortells, and masklewis, &c. &c, which J are all Hebrew to me. A wonderful and fearful language it is that Heralds talk; but I've bought a little Grammar of Heraldry by Mr Cussans (Longmans, 1866), and hope, by the help of the woodcuts, to understand it some day. Well, in turning over the Harleian Catalogue, I came on the title of this Poem (vol. iii. 332, col. 1), and Mr Bond, the Keeper of the MSS, decided that it was in the same hand as the second treatise in its volume, Harl. 6149, which is de- scribed in the Catalogue as "A treatise of the Signification of Armory, .... and at the end is 'Explicit iste liber honorabil. armig. Wilelm. civit. de Jordelleth ah. marchemond herald,' or something near it, with the date 1494." Not much sense was to be made out of this; but a reference to the MS showed that the rubric printed in the Catalogue, though defaced in parts by dashes of black ink, was yet quite readable with A SCOTCH COPY OF A POEM ON HERALDRY. XVU a little trouble; and the 'something near it' of the Catalogue, proved to be: Explicit iste liber honorabili armigero Wilelmo cummyn de Inuerellochy1 alias Marchemond heraldo per (fc^*\=manum"] Ade loutfut2 Anno Domini M" CCCC" nona7esimo quarto memis uero Septembn's. [Harleian MS 6149, leaf 44.] Thus one of the many skews in the Harleian Catalogue was set straight. (Don't let any one abuse the first Cataloguer of a Collec- tion for skews. For all Catalogues (as for all Indexes) one ought to be grateful: for those without mistakes, most grateful.) The questions then were, 1. "Who was Sir William CummynJ and, 2. was the Poem by him, or at least by a Scotchman, as from its language it seemed to be t The 2nd question was most kindly answered in the negative by a learned authority on Scotch Heraldry, whose name Mr David Laing mentioned to me, and who responded to the application of me, a stranger, by sending me the valuable notes printed on pages 102—104 below, and in them pointing out that certain marks of cadency mentioned in the poem were never used in Scotch Heraldry, though they were in Eng- lish. The conclusion then forced on me was, that Adam Loutfut, Sir Wm. Cummyn's scribe, had copied the poem from an English original, and scottified it as he copied, in the same way as he has scottified in leaves 83—108 of his MS, A "Buk of thordre of Che- ualry translatid out of Franche in to Ynglis by me William Caxtonne duelling in Westmynstre ; " which seotti- fication I hope some day to print opposite Caxton's own text, to see what the worthy Adam—-who sometimes copied / for s, c for t, and vice versa, &c. &c.—has made of our rare old printer's southern speech. What made the question of the authorship more important was, that the writer of the poein tells us he has written a Siege of Thebes (L 30), A Troy-Book (1. 36-9), and a Brut (1. 52); perhaps three books: perhaps only one, taking in the three stories generally told separately. Here are the linos; the reader can judge for himself: 1 'Innerellochy,' say the Charters, p. xxii below. 2 or loutfut. XVlii A NEW SIEGE OF THEBES, TROY BOOK, AND BRUT. The eldest, gret, most populws, mortal were, wes at thebes, quhiche at linth I did write, Quhare palamon?;e and arsite, woundit there, Be ther coti*' of armes knawin parfite, 32 Be heraldw war, sum sais, bot that I nyte, ffor in thai dais heraldis war not create, Nor that armes set in propir estate. Bot eftir that troy, quhar so mony king is war 36 Seging without, and other within the toune, So mony pn'ncis, knychtis, and peple there, as this my buk the most sentence did soune, all thocht spedful in o conclusioune, 40 That nobillis bere merkis, to mak be knawin, tJier douchtynes in dedis of armes schawin: . . . . 77tan troy distroyit, the werm endit, the lordis I soir landis removit; and so brutws, (his lif and dait my buk efter recordis,) 52 Come in brutane with folkis populiw, And broc/tt with him this werly merkis thus, quhiche succedw in armes to this date; Bot lang efter troy, heraldw war nocAt creat. 56 Now Lydgate wrote a Troy-Book and a Siege of Thebes. He may also have written a Brut of some kind; but I do not believe that he was the English author whom Loutfut scottified. The writer of the poem must surely have been a Herald's clerk, or a Herald of an inferior degree,—though as proud as a peacock of his order and his art, and his fellows, the salt of the earth,—for he thus speaks of the Heralds above him: How thai1 be born, in quhat kindis, and quhare, 196 also be quhom, and eftir in excellence, That I refer to my lordis to declair, kingis of armes, and heraldis of prudens, and persewantw,2 and grant my negligens 200 thai I suld not attempe thus to commoune, Bot of ther grace, correctioune, and pardoune, .... 202 And I confess my simple insufficiens: llitil haf I sene, and reportit weil less, of this, matera's to haf experience. Tharfor, quhar I al neidful not express, 248 'That is, planets, signs of the air, herbs, birds, fishes, borne as arms. * They, the 3rd and lowest order of Heralds, are yet above the writer. A SCOTCH COPY OF A POEM ON HERALDRY. XIX In my waiknes, and not of wilfulnes, my seid lordi* ' correk me diligent, To maid menis, or sey the remanent! Wanted, then, the author of the present poem and the Siege of Thebes, the Troy Book, and Brut, above named. It is possible that he may have been a Frenchman, if the heraldry suits the French rules—as my Scotch authority tells me it does not, for many reasons, and especially that the classification of roundles "was quite unknown in France,—for another treatise once in this collection of Sir Wm. Cummyn's, but now cut out, was translated for him from the French, by his obedient son in the office of Arms, Kintyre, Pursevant: [Harleian MS 6149, leaf 78.] [H]eir eftyr folouis ane lytil trecty of the Instruccioun of the figuris of armes and of the Masoning of the samyn, eftir the frayncho oppinyon,1 translatit owt of fraynche in Scottis at the command of ane wirschepfull man, Wilzem Cumyn of Inuerellochquy, alias Marchemond herald, be his obedient sone in the office of armes, kintyre, purseuant, and vndir his correccioun, as efter folowis be cheptours (The treatise itself is cut out from the MS.) Having looked through the MS and dipped into likely-seeming parts, I think it quite certain that the writer of the poem does not refer to any of the short tracts in this MS volume of Sir Wm. Cum- myn's, in none of which tracts could he have written "at linth," as he says, of the Theban War. Mr E. Brock, who has gone in like manner over the volume, is of the same opinion. In the 2nd tract in the volume, "the Signification of Armoury,"—the 1st is the fre- quent " Gaige of Battaill"—Julius Csesar is spoken of, as in the poem (lines 57, 204), as the originator of Arms. [Harl. JUS 6149, leaf 5.] In the tyme that Iulius Cesar, emperour of romme, conquest Afferik, Sumtyme namyt the land lucyant in the partis of Orient, Eychtsua quhen pompe of romme conquest Ewrop, other wais callit the land of Ionnet, in the Occident, than war maid the rial officii til MS oppimyon. 'THE FfRST FYNDING OF AKMES.' wnderstand and govern al thingis pertenyng to the craft of armes, and for to discut and ju'ge the richfa's that followis tf/ier-appon. In the first wes constitut and ordanit be the said princig the office of counstable; Secoundly, the office of ammerall; The third, the office of m«rschall; The ferd war maid the capitanys the fift, to be at juge- meut of armes the heraldis. and ilkane of Maim seruand in his dogre. Passing over the 3rd tract in the volume, on the Habiliments of Knights, (leaf 44), and the 4th, on Funerals (leaf 48), we come to the 5th, Liber Armorum, of which Mr Brock says, 'There is no account of any wars in the Liber Armorum,1 so far as I can see; but there is a fabulous story which traces the gradual rise of Arms, &c.2 A similar story is given in ' The First Fynding of Armes' at leaf 140.3 It makes mention of Troy and certain Trojans. Here is an extract:— [Harleian MS 6149, leaf 141, back.] And for to proeed ioither in our matois, the quhilk kind of peple of the forsad lemares; within certane process of jeris come our lady that I spak of before, the quhilk lemares wes trogelius dochter, that maid troye beforsaid qahether for the britons cornyfye (1), and wald be lawe of petigre chalaifi kinrend of the vergin our lady, of the fader joachim, because thaj war troians, and come of troye be lynage of trogelius. To pas in our materis; Trogelius had thre sonnys in troy, The eldast wes callit arbaldus, The secound is callit Erewfilix, The third arbegraganus. [of whom] witAin vo jere, be ryc/tt lyn«o come Ectowr of troye, throuc/i al the warld anne of the ix worthiest, of the eldast sone arbaldus, efter the distructioune of troye xij testis, be Tycht lynwe come brutes, of the quhilk ryc/tt lyne of brut?(s witMn certane process of ^eris come arthowr, anne of the ix worthi, throuc/t al the warld be law of armes callit. Of the second sone, Erewfilix saragefi in sertagia, efter the distructione of troe vj° jere xlviij ; come luliws Cesar, and enterit in brettane that tyme apon cace, mony wynter befor king arthoitr. 1 A book of heraldry, superscribed ' Incipit liber Armorum,' the first chapter of which is, ' How gentilmen shal be knowene from churles, and how thai f'yrst began, and how Noye dyvyded the world in thre parts to his thre sonnes.' Harl, Catal. 2 The whole MS seems to be written by the same hand, except perhaps these two tracts : Art. 6, If. 62, De coloribus in armis depictis et eorum nobilitate ac differewcia. Art. 7, If. 79, Heraldorum nome« et olficium vade exUjrsum sit Epistola, Sec. 3 "Here begynnys the first fynding of armes callit the origynall" SIR WILLIAM CUMMYN OF INVERELLOCHY. Xxi I repeat again, then, 'Wanted, the author of our Poem and his three other Books!' To hark back to our 2nd question, p. xvii above, 'Who was Sir Wil- liam Cummyn of Inverellochy' t The answer is given in the following extract from the Appendix to Mr George Seton's Law and Practice of Heraldry in Scotland, 1863, to which Mr David Laing was good enough to refer me, and which Appendix Mr Seton states to be greatly indebted to Mr Laing's researches1: 'Sir William Cumyng of Inverallochy, Co. Aberdeen—c. 1512. Second son of William Cumyng of Culter and Inverallochy (t), by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Meldruin of Fyvie, and fourth in descent from Jardine, second son of William Cumyng, Earl of Buchan, who got the lands of Inverallochy from his father in the year 1270. (Nisbet's Heraldry, ii. Appendix, p. 57.) Sir William appears to have held the office of Marchmont Herald in the year 1499 (Keg. Secreti Sigilli); and the lands of Imierlochy were granted to him and Margaret Hay, his spouse, by a charter under the Great Seal, dated 18th January, 1503-4. He was knighted in 1507, and in a charter -of glebe lands in favour of John Quhyte (31st January, 1513), he is described as "circumspectus vir Will"" Cumyn de Imierlochy, Bex Armorum supremi domini nostri Begis." (General Hutton's Tran- scripts, Adv. Lib.) His character of " circumspectus " (canny) is thus referred to by Bishop Leslie, in connection with the year 1513 :— "Leo fecialis Angli Begis responsum sapienter eludit." (History of Scotland, 1578, p. 361.) In a deed dated 17th July, 1514, he is styled, "Willelmus Cumyng de Innerallochy miles, alias Leo Eex Armorum;" and again, in 1518, he is designed "Lioun King-of- Armes." The following curious account of Cumyng's insult by Lord Drummond, in the year 1515, is from the Genealogie of the House of Drummond, compiled by the first Viscount Strathallan in 1681, and printed about thirty years ago :—" John Lord Drummond was a great promoter of the match betwixt his own grandchild, Archibald Earle of Angus, and the widdow Queen of King James the Fourth, Mar- garet Teudores; for he caused his own brother, Master Walter Drummond's sone, Mr John Drummond, dean of Dumblane and person of Kinnowl, solemnize the matrimonial bond in the Kirk of Kinnowl, in the year 1514. Bot this marriage begot such jealousie in the rulers of the State, that the Earle of Angus was cited to appear before the Council, and Sir William Cummin of Inneralochy, Knight, Lyon King-at-Armes, appointed to deliver the charge; in doeing whereof, he seemed to the Lord Drummond to have approached the Earle with more boldness than discretion, for which he (Lord D.) gave the Lyon a box on the ear; whereof he complained to John Duke of Albany, 1 Sje also the note, p. 102 below. Xxii SIR WILLIAM CUMMYN OF INVERELLOCHY. OCCLEVE. then newly made Governor to King James the Fifth, and the Governor, to give ane example of his justice at his first entry to his new office, caused imprison the Lord Drummond's person in the Castle of Blackness, and forfault his estate to the Crown for his rash- ness. Bot the Duke considering, after information, what a fyne man the Lord was, and how strongly allyed with most of the great families in the nation, wes well pleased that the Queen-mother and three Estates of Parliament, should interceed for him; so he was soone re- stored to his libbertie and fortune."'—Page 478 (Appendix, Notices of the Lyon Kings-of-Arms), Seton's Law and Practice of Heraldry in Scotland, 1863. Mr David Laing writes :— "' Cumming' is the modern mode of spelling the name. In earlier times there are a great variety, such as Cumin, Cumine, Cuming, Cumyng, etc. The form in the Museum MS should be preferred. The following is copied from the List of Charters under the Great Seal. Cumming alias Merch-f Ca£ta Williel™, et Margarete Hay ejus mondHerauld j f^i^*™* ^ ^^y, 18 Cumyn ah'as Merch- ( Carta Willielmo, super Maritagijs Suorum mond Herauld ( hseredum 4 Apre 1507 I Carta Willielmo, filio et hseredi Willielmi Cumyng filio I Cumyng de Innerellochy, Militis, Terra- 'rum de Innerelochy &c." 14 Julij 1513 \ The 25th piece in our volume was brought under my notice by the note k in Warton, ii. 480, on Lyndesay's Syde Taillis already quoted in these Forewords at p. xiii, and which the reader will per- haps have characterized, with Warton, as a poem having 'more humour than decency.' It is a censure on the affectation of long trains worn by the ladies, and now in type for the Society's Part V. of Lyndesay's Works, under Mr J. A. H. Murray's editorship. The note in Warton says, 'Compare a manuscript poem of Occleve: Of Pride and wast clothing of Lordis men, which is a^ens her astate. 'MSlf* Laud K. 78, f. 67 b. Bibl. Bodl. His chief complaint is against pendent sleeves, sweeping the ground, which, with their fur, amount io more than twenty pounds.' There are no doubt better MS copies of the poem than that printed here; but I had not time to hunt for them, and Mr George Parker copied this Laud one, and read it with OCCLEVE AND SIR PETER IDLE. xxiii the MS, as he did the other pieces from the Bodleian in this volume. It may have been printed before, but is not in the Percy Society's Poems and Songs on Costume, or any other volume that I remember. The 26th and last piece in Part I. is a short extract from the least uninteresting part of Sir Peter Idle's ' Instructions to his Son' in the Cambridge University Library MS Ee. 4, 37, for which I am indebted to a young friend of Mr H. Bradshaw's, who wisely learns MSS as well as Mathematics, at college. The treatise has been long on our list for printing, Eitson's BibliograpMa Poetica having tempted me, with this description, p. 64, to put it there: Idle Peter, of Kent, esquire, wrote 'Liber consolacionis ei consilii,' or Instructions to his son, extant in the Bodleian Library (Ligby, 181), where his name is 'Peter Idywerte;' in the publick library, Cambridge (MSS More 124, [nowEe. 4, 37]); in the British Museum (MSS Har. 172, leaf 21), and in Trinity College, Dublin, D. 2. 7: 'In the begynnyng of thys lytill werke.' But on looking through the MS, I found it at first little more than an expansion of Stans Puer ad Mensam and like poems,1 while in the latter part it went off into biblical and saints'dives stories, of little interest to modern ears. So, though we must print the poem some day, it may stand over for a time. Print it, I say, because, if our old people were dull, foolish, and dirty, as well as interesting, wise, noble, and pure, we want the dulness, folly, and dirt, as well as their interestingness, wisdom, nobleness, and purity. We don't want to deceive ourselves about them, or fancy them cherubs without sterns. Let's know their weakness as well as their strength, and not talk gammon about 'the good old times' without looking fairly into them; though, when we have done this, we may still be able to say to the rest of the world, 'Match our old men if you can!' This volume, then, the reader will see, may be looked on, from one point of view, as a kind of Eesurrection Pie like we used to have once a week at school, in which we declared old left bits reappeared. But I prefer another metaphor, and hold, that through all the book's 1 Our extract should be compared with the Babees Book piece, pp. 34 5, 'Of the Manners to bring one to Honour and Welfare.' DABEE NO. 2. THANKS. different-looking limbs, one life of old England runs; and as irrever- ent friends in the Society have christened the first Bahces Book my babee, I prefer to look on this present volume as my 2nd babee. Some may care to look at its eyes, some at its toes; some may perhaps pene- trate to its navel, that continual marvel to the infantile mind 1; prigs, no doubt, will scorn it all as trash; but it may lead some back to knowledge of days nearer England's childhood than our time is; and if it does, I shall be content. To Mr J. M. Cowper of Faversham, who has kindly made the Indexes to Part I.; to Mr G. E. Adams, Rouge Dragon, and the learned authority on Scotch Heraldry, who have helped in the very difficult Heraldry Poem; to our copiers and readers, Messrs E. Brock, G. Parker (of Oxford), and W. M. Wood; and lastly to Mr W. M. Eossetti and Mr Oswald for their valuable and interesting Essays in Part II., I tender hearty thanks. Nov. U, 1869. 'I wonder whether Chaucerian and Tudor babies kept on asking their daddies ' What's this for?' as they put their little fingers in the hole, and when scolded as naughty boys, answered with 'Gog, gog !' and a grin. PART L tn totrg man sfjall goe after 8« utate proceMl°"": anb £pegr« that t^cg ttt of, in befo orber. First, The Orders of Freres as they bee accustomed, i. Friars. Then the monkys and Chanons; after them the j. Monks. Clarkys; then the Priests; and then they of [the] s. cierke. Church where ye Body shalbe buried must have the church-attemi- preeminence to goe nearest the Corse within their ants' jurisdiction. Then yc Proelats that bee in Pontifica- 6. Prelates, libus; Then sertayne gentleme?i in Dowle,1 their hood 7. Men in black, vppon their sholders; Then the Chaplyn or Chaplyns g. cimpiain. of the defunct; next them the Overseers; Then the 9. Overseers. executowrs weryng their hoods2 on their Heddes, going 10. Executors, in good Order, ij and ij. Then a gentylman in a 11. Banner- mourning habit, with a hood on his face, to bere ye Banner of his Armes, if hoe bee not vnder ye degree of a Baneret; and if hee bee but a Bachelowr TLnight, hee to have but a Penon of his Arnies, and a guidon with his Creste, And a paust (sic) writyng therein, and ye Crose of Saint George. * In ye first quarter the Banarette to [* leaf 133, bank ] have his Standard made in likewyse, with his Crest, the Bannor or Pennon on ye right side before the Corps, and the Standard or guidon on the other side before the Corps, and ye Herald of Armes betweene them, a space 12. Herald, before theme. Then the Corps and i Banners of The corpse, and four gentle- 1 mourning. Cf. ' mourning habit,' 6 lines down. 2 MS has ' Heddes on their hoods.' THE ORDER OF THE PROCESSION. 33 sanctes1 att the fewer Corners, borne by 4 gentilmen men bearing in mourning habattes, with hoddys on their faces, Te one of the Trynity att ye Hede, on ye right side; the other, of our Lady, att the Hede on the other side; The third, of the Armes of Saint George, att ye Feet on the ryght side; The 4'*, of his avowry2, of the other syde: Then next after the Corps, the Chiefe mournowr 14. chief Mourner. alone, and the other mournowrs to goe two and two, 15. other Mourn- ceartayne space one from another; and next theyme the greatest statys, and a space after theyme all other to 16. Nobles. follow as servantes, and theyme that will. and when 17. servants. ye Corps commyth, where yc shall remayne, att the At the west door, West dore of the Church, A prselat shall sens the censed?186" * Corps, which shall do the devyne service; then sixe of c* leaf 134] theyme of ye place, being prestys or religious, whither they bee, bere ye Corps, or else so many gentylmen; and att ye 4 Corners of the rych Cloth, fower of the greatest estates of the sayd Church must bee support- yng of yc iiij Corners, as if they bare him; and so had then borne into . , , , ii , i, the Quire, where into the Quier, where must bee a goodly herse well is a herse, with garnished with Lightes, pencelles, and scochyns of his hgbts' Armes; and if hee bee an Earle, hee must have a Cloth of Magesty, with a Vallance fryngyd ; and if hee bee a Knight Banarett, hee may have a vallance fryngyd, and a Bachelour Knight none. The sayd herse must bee raylyd about, and hangyd with blake hung with black Cloth; and the Grownd within the Eayles must bee ctoth' coveryd with blake Cloth; And the fourmes that the mourners do lene vppon within the Eayles; the Chiefe morner att the Head, the other morner att the sydes; and the Helme, Crest, wreth, and mantyll must bee att the Hede vppon the bere, the shild over the left syde, and ye sword on the right side; The *Cote of Armes r."leaf 134,back] on the bere, the banneres to be holdyn without the rayles, in forme as they wente; The Herauld to stand 1 saints. MS sancles. 8 See p. 30, note. 3 34 A FUNERAL IN POPISH TIMES. att the Hedde without the rayles, weryng the Kings After the Dirge, Cote of Armes. The derge don, the prelates and pon- the clergy sur- round the Corpse, tificialles to Fence the Corps within the rayles, and all the Covente standing about y6 Herse, without the rayles, sin? anthems, and singing diuerse antems; and att every Kyrie lyson, one b.ij i.r.ijLr». ^ ^ with an high voice for ye sowle A Pater noster: the sayd morneres to bee gon their way before that the The t Banners are Seremonyes bee don: then the iiij banneres to bee borne to the .. - i . i i i grave; borne to the grave, but nothing else, then to bee sett agayne att ye Herse till over the morow that ye Masses the Executors see bee sayd: The executoris must see ye buryng of the the Corpse buried. Corps; the Helme, Crest, shilde, Coote of Armes, and swerde, must bee taking away, and sitt apon the high Awter, till over the morow att ye massis; then to bee sette over ye bere. Deaf is5] &be marmn att % (Sffering att l(je intcrarrttrri of H0bU-ntf.tr. Next morning ail First in y° morning betymes, Masse of our Lady bee hear Mass, and [said], the banners to bee holdyn, the helme, Childe,' on%rmgs! r sword, the Cote of Armes, to bee layd vppon ye bere in dew order, and the morners in there places: Att the offering tyme the cheife morner, accompanyd with all the other, to goe forth att ye hede, att the left hede of The chief Monm- the herse, and none to offer but y* chiefe mourner att ero eras*.i*i. masse, and hee to offer iijs iiijd, and then to re- turne, on the other side, to his place that hee came fro; the harald weryng his Cote if the mourners bee not The Executors present att ye sayd masse; The executory to goe in like offer one by one. mannowr y 0fferyng) and none to offer but one of theyme, and then to goe to their places that they came fro. The 2nd Mass is The second masse of the trynite att ye offering like- of the Trinity. ^se, as before fanyng.2 That hee shaU offer 5s; and the [• leaf is6, back ] third masse must bee of * Eequiem), and that to bee song 1 Shield. 2 not 'sauyng'? (G. P.) THE OFFERINGS OF MOURNERS AT A FUNERAL. 35 by ye noblest prelat Pontificalibus. The chefe morn- The chief Mourn- jv j» ers offer 7«. 9d. for eres, accompanyd as before, snall offer for the masse the mass-penny. pene vijs viiijd; then to their places as they came fro, att every tyme; the Heraulde or Heraulds there beyng, weryng their Masteres Cote of Armes, going before the morners to and fro the offeryng, and so to bring theyme to their places agayne on) the other side; and the sayd officers of Armes to stand without the rayles att the Hede. Item, there must bee offeryd the Cote of Armes by The deceased's Coat of Arms, two of the gretyst gentylmen. Item, too other to offer his swerd, the pomell and sword, the Crosse foreward Item, ij to offer his Helme and Crest, and if hee helm and crest, bee of ye degree of a Earle, then a Knight rydyng On a If he was an Earl, Corser trapyd with the Armes of ye defunct, the sayd Knight armyd att all peces savyng the hede, having in his hand a battle-axe, the poynt downeward, led by *twey too other Knightes from the west dore of the [• ieafis7] Church tyll hee came to the dext.1 in the quire, the officer or offycers att Armes going before hym; and there the sayd Knight to alight, and the sexton there to take ye Horse as is fee, and the Knight to bee ledd to w> horse goes as the Sexton's fee, the offeryng, and there to offer ye axe, and the poynt and his axe to the downeward; then ye sayd Knight to bee convayd into charcl1, the revestre, and there to bee vnarmyd. Then the rest of the mornyrs to goe, too and too, to the offeryng; and so to their placys. Also, yf it bee an Earle, there must bee too gentyl- For an Earl too, men to bryng too Clothes of bawdkyn from the one syde of the quire, and deliver them to the Herald, which shall deliver them to too of ye gretest estatys, which must offer theyme, the lowest estate first, and pails, or cloths of gold, must be then the other, some men) calles this Clothys ' pawlles,' offered. and sume 'Clothys of gold,' which shall remayne in ye 1 desk :—the Litany or fald-stool. 36 A FUNERAL IN POPISH TIMES. La»uy, ail offer Churche: then all the othyr to offer that wyll,1 the that will. J J' [• leaf 137, tack ] gretyst estatys to * offyr first, next after the executores. The offering don, the sermon to begyn; and atl y* last end of the masse, Att ' Verbum Caro,' the banner of Armes or pennon shalbe offeryd, as ye state is of degre. &|ie gtombrt of moriurs, afttr ge brgrte of % btfuntl. a King has The King to have xv. A Earle to have ix. A Duke to have xiij. A Baron to have vij. and a Knight 5. A Marcus to have xj. A Knight to have v. Sglling of $toblemnt. Blood royal gives A Dukes sonn and heire, beyng of the blood royall, precedence to a noble. shalbe sett above A Marquis; and if hee bee not of ye blood Eoyall, hee shall sitt above an Earle; And an Erles eldest sonn, if hee bee of blood ryall, shall sitt above a Vicount; and if hee bee not of blood riall, hee shall sitt above a Baron. [• leaf 188 j *And as for all Ladyes and gentylwomen: to bee Ladies take their i-p j» husbands' rank, sytt after the degree of their husbandes; and 11 any 01 the Ladyes or gentylwomen bee of the blood ryall, the King may command them att his plesure. $ibtrges for Uoblemtn att ftrhrgnurits, tbtrg man aeorbgng to jiis tastat. A Duke, for his owne slope and mantyl, 16 yerde-* att x s the yerde, and Livery for eighteene; And a Erle, for his gowne, slope, and mantyll, sixteene yerdes att viijs. the yerd, and Livery for 12 servcmte.?. Allowances for a A Baron or Banneret, beyng Knight of the Garter, Baron, who is a l jt- i- Knight of the for his gowne and hood, sixe yerdes / and Livery for viij servcmtes. A Knight, 5 yards, six shillings eight pence ye yard, and liuerie for fower servantes. 1 After £at, fast at hande Come8 ]jo time of offrande: Offer or leeue, whefier Jje lyst. Lay-folks Mass Book. B. 240-243. Garter. LIVERIES FOR NOBLEMEN AT INTERMENTS. 37 A Squyer for ye Body, as a Knight, and Livery for iij servantes. All other Es'qw?res and gentylmen, att five shil- lings? ye yard; and * livery for iij servantes. And every c* leaf is8, back j gentylman servcmt iiij yards. Non to were no hoodes vnder the degree of a Hoods worn by Esqwier of Household, bot onely typpetes of a quarter mpe'rio™: of a yard brode; and in tyme of ned the[y] mey wher 'Soraf the'r hodds. Also, non to wher no hoddes with a Eoll slyvyd, on No hoods with his hede, or otherwise beyng of that fasion, vnder ye degre of a Baron, or an Erles sonn and heire; bott "Baron- onely hoddes without Eolles. ajjjjcrtagnmg to jf ©ffitm att grains. Item, att ye Buryall of on, being a Pere of y6 At the burial oi a Eealme, of the bloode Eyall, or elles in any of theis the Blood Offices, as Conestable, Mareshall, Chanceloitr, Hegh or one in the high Tresorer, Chamberlayn, Steward, Admirall, or Lord ^,orParlia" Privy Seale, there hath been accustomyd, all ye offecers the Officers of of Armys to wher their Cottes of ye Kings armys, and eoaTs-oT-trms'T'1' to have their gownes, and hoddes; and five Pounds to and have 51. » t . -i -i atti c -r i between them. bee divided amongst them. *ln likewys, yl any Lord [• leaf isaj of the parlement chance to dye duryng the tyme of ye parlement, they to have as affor is sed. P. 29. Mr G. B. Adams, Rouge Dragon, says: "No doubt 'his beste' means his crest; and query if it is not a miswriting of the MS for crest instead of beast. For it would not follow that a man has a beast for his crest: mine is (a beast of) a Bird, and that of Lord Hill 'a Castle,' no beast at all. No doubt, however, beasts, or bits of them, are most common. In olden time (days of gold for us) the Heralds arranged all the state funerals. The Lord Chamberlain is an innovation, in- troduced to manage the private funerals of Royalty, as being more under the Sovereign's thumb than the 'Earl Marshal' (an hereditary office) and his Heralds. The Lord Chamber- lain has even now only to do with private funerals, such as those of the Duchess of Kent, and of 'Albert the Good,' &c. &c. Those of the Dukes of York and Kent, of George III. and IV., William IV., Duke of "Wellington, Sec, devolved on us.' 38 Cfre fcefira&m of an €%ymt, atib % (totatw wfis Usage d dfwjglanb. [Ashmole MS 837, art. viii.fol. 162.] An Esquire, called in latine Armiger, Scutifer, et homo ad arma, is he that in times past was Costrell to a Knight, the bearer of his sheild and helme, a faithfull companion and associate to him in the Warrs, serving on horsehacke; whereof euery knight had twoe at the least [in] attendance upon him, in respect of the fee, For they held their land of the Knight by Cottage, as the Knight held his of the King by Knight service. At this day, that Vocation is growne to be the first degree of gentry, taken out of the service in the warrs, from whence all the other degrees of nobility are borowed. The first sort of them, and the most ancient, are the Eldest sonnes of Knightes, and the eldest sonnes of them successively in infinitum. The second sort, are the eldest sonnes of the younger sonnes of Barons and noblemen of higher degree, which taketh end, and are determined, when the Cheife Males of such Elder sonnes doe fayle, and that the in-heritance goeth away with the heires female. The third sort, are those that by the King are Created Esquires by the gift of a coller of SS, or such bearing armes are the principall and cheife of that Coate Armowr, and of there wholle race; out of whose familys, although divers other houses doe spring and Issue, yet the Eldest of that Coate armure only is an Esquire, and the residue are but gentlemen. The fourth and last sort of Esquires, are such, as bearing office in the Commonwealth or in the Kinges house, are therefore called and reputed to be Esquires, as the Sergeants at the law, the Escheators in Euery Shire and in the Kings house, the heralds of armes, the Ser- geants at Armes, and the Sergeants of Euery office, who haue the Coller of SS given them, but hauing noe Armes, that degree dieth with them, and theire Issue is not Ennobled thereby. 39 [Porkington MS, No. 10, ?ea/135, fwcA-, ai. U60—70 A.D.] rphe good wyf wold a pylgremage vnto y holly londe: IT sche sayd, "my dere doyttur, buu most vndor1-stonde IT For to gowerne well this hous, and saue thy selfe frow schond. IT For to do as I y teche, I charge the bou fonde. IT Witt an) O & a ny, seyd hit ys futt jore,1 I T That lotho chylde lore be-howytt, and leve chyld moehe more. IT When I am out of y toune, loke that [thou] be wyse, IT And rene bou not fro hous to house lyke a nantyny gryce; H Foi0 y yonge men cheres the, they wyll sey bou art nyce, % And euery boy wyll wex bold to stere y to lovd 2 wysse. I T Witt an O & a I, my talle bou atende: IT Syldon mossyth the stone fat oftyn ys tornnyd & wende. The good wife tells her daughter [leaf 186 ] how to manage her house and herself. 12 When I'm away, don't run about like a St 16 Anthony's Pig, or every boy will want to 20 seduce you. 24 1 This line, like many others in the poem, is written in the MS as part of the one above it. * t lewd. 40 THE GOOD WYFE WOLD A PYLGREMAGE. Don't show off to attract meu'8 [leaf 136, back ] On holy days, when you sing or dance, don't hang your girdle too low Also, hide your white legs, and don't show your stockings (or drawers) [leaf 137] like a butcher the flesh he wants to sell. IT Schowe not thy selfe to proude, passynge thyn a-stat, IT To make men loke aftw r y, and aske, "who ys that?" 28 IT A gentyft woman, or1 a callot, men wyll deme thow arte. IT Were no nodor1 a-ray this weke ben thow meyst were alt .gatt. 32 IT Witt an O & a I, men wyll sey fis, "Be wyne hope men mey se where fe tawerne ys." 36 IT Dojtt«r, in alt company vppon Y hally day, I T Wheber fou wylt daunee or synge, or1 witt thy fellowys pley, 40 IT Honge thy gordolt nott to lowe, but take fe knot a-way. IT Where no beydts a-bout fe, but liit fall for1 thyn a-raye. 44 IT Witt an O & a I, thus men wyll tell, IT " The corsser1 hathe his palfrey dyjt alt reydy for1 to sell." 48 IT "Do^ttur, seyde Tpe good wyfe, hyde thy legys whyte, IT And sehew not forth thy stret hossyn to make men have de-lytt; 52 IT Thow hit plese hem for1 a tym, hit schalt be thy de-spytt, IT And men "wyll sey "of fi body fou carst but lytt." 56 IT Witt an) O and an) I, seyd Hit is fult ryve, IT "The bocher1 schewyth feyre his flesche, for1 he wold sell hit fult blythe." GO THE GOOD WYFE WOLD A PYLGREMAGE. 41 64 68 72 I T Be fou noJ^t of low^ttur lyjt, no^ of contenance lyjt; I T Oner homly ys not best, men may dem Aryjt. IT Tyk not witt hondis nor1 fette, hit ys not a goodly sy$t; IT Schamfast schuld maydons be, and stronge witt aft ther1 myjt. I T Witt a O & a I, Y mon ys at p° foU, IT That he wyll lowys scheppis flesche, That wettytt his bred in woll. IT Take hede to f1 byssenis, & make not out of sesson; IT Syt not witt no man a-loune, for1 oft in trust ys tressoun; IT Thow fou thenk no fenke a-myse, jett feyre wordis be gayssoun; H Feyre and towe I-leyde to-gedore, kyndoll hit woll, be resson. I T Witt a O & a I, wett ore euer fou wende, I T A fyre of sponys, and lowe of gromis, Futt soun woll be att a nende. I T Dojttwr, temper well f1 tonge, & vse not monny tallts, IT For1 lessynggis wyll lepe out amonge, that oftyn brewis ballys. 1T Bost not to meche of thy selfe, but kepe a mese for1 allys; I T Take not euery roppys-end witt euery man fat hallis. I T Witt an 0 & a I, I wolde f<3u vnder-stode, I T A folk's bolt ys son I-schot, and dothe but lyttyll gode. Don't indulge in light laughter or looks. Don't tap (?) with your hands or feet. 76 80 Don't sit alone with men: Are and tow will kindle. 84 [leaf 137, back ] Don't talk too much: 88 92 96 a fool's bolt is soon shot. 12 Don't change l>on't swear, or give pledges hastily. [leaf 188] Try before you trust. Don't be fond of slander, and keep a stedfast mind. THE GOOD WYFE WOLD A PYLGREMAGE. IT Change not thy frend aft day for1 no feyre speche; I T A trusty frende ys good I-fonde, who-so may hyme reche, 100 IT Jefe anny fortun fait amysse, then mey he be thy leche; IT Jefe he fynde f* in a?my wronge, then meyst fou wyne his wreche. 104 f Witt a 0 & a I, a fient wol make a slyde; I T So gothe y frendles forowe fc toun, no man bydyth hym a-hyde. 108 If Dojttwr, 0 finge I fe for1-bede; vse not for1 to swere; II keppe thy hondis, & geyfe no trevthe, for weddynggts bythe in were; 112 I T He is a foll fat wyll be honde whyll he mey for1-bere. A lowely lokynge & a porse makys follys her and bere. 116 IT Witt a O & a I, a-say or1 euer fow trust; II When dede is doun, hit ys to lat; be ware of hady-wyst. 120 IT Loke what woman fou wolt be, and there-on set thy thowjt; IT Tallf's flatterynge nor1 sclandorynge, loke thowe loue hem nowjt; 124 II A stydfast wett ys meche I-prevyde 1 i1 ? approved] there womens wytt ys sowjt, I T And fer J>at wette wanttythe longe, full dere hit ys I-bowjt. 128 IT Witt a O & a I, men wyft sey so, I T " Jefe ]jou benke to do no syne, do no fynge Jwt longythe there-to." 132 THE GOOD WYPE WOLD A PYLGREMAGE. 43 If you want to remain a maid, don't gad about to taverns. [leaf 188, back] Don't drink too much or gorge. Yfe fou wylt no hosbonde have, but where thy maydon croun, Ken not a-bout in eueri pley, nor1 to tawern in tovne; 136 IT Syt sadly in fin arey; let moMrnynge be f1 goun; IT Byd fi priers spessyally witt good devossyon), 140 IT Witt a O & a I, al day men mey see, IT "The tre crokothe son bat good cambrel1 wyll be." 144 IT Revle be well in met & drenke, dojttwr, it is nede; IT lechery, sclanderynge, & gret dyssese, commythe of dronken hede; 148 IT Fatt moselh's & swett, makyth mony on) to begge there brede; IT He fat spendyth more ben he gettythe, a beggerris lyfe he schaft lede. 152 IT Witt a O & a I, seyd hit ys be southe, IT Wynttwr ettyJ;6 bat somer gettyb, to olde men is vnkoth[e]. 156 IT Far-well doujtter, far-welt nowe! Farewell, I go vn-to my pylgremage; IT kepe fe wel on) my blessynge tyl bou be more of a[ge], I T let no merth ner1 Iollyte fis lesson frowe be swage; IT Then bou schalt have be blys of heyvyn to thy errytage. 164 IT Witt a O & a I, dojttwr, pray for1 me; IT A schort prayer1 wynnythe heyvyn), the patter nosfer and an) ave .Amen. 168 1 From cam, crooked. Topsell uses cambril for the back of a horse (Halliwell). "We allus gives 'em a little gamier, Sir," said a Cambridge boat-builder to me in 1844, when I complained that a funny he was making was not on a straight keel. Don't spend more than you earn. keep to my 160 preoept8' and you shall go to heaven. HOW THE GOODE WYFE TAUGHT HYR DOUGHTER. 45 laughe f ou to scorne nof er olde ne jonge; Be of gode berynge and of gode tonge; Yn thi gode berynge be-gynnes f1 worschype, My dere doubter, of yis take kepe. Yf any man pnrfer1 bee to wede, A curtaa ai^uer1 to hym be seyde, And schew hym to thy frendes alle; For1 any thing1 fat may be-fawle, Syt not by hym, ne stand f ou noujht Yn sych place per synne mey be wroght. Scorn no one. 2 4 Good behaviour wins honour. If a wooer eorae3, 28 show him to your friends. 32 What man fat bee doth wedde with rynge, loke f ou hym loue A-boue?i Alle thinge; Yf fat it forteyne pus with the That he be wroth, and angery be, 36 loke fou mekly ansuere hym, And meue hym nof er lyth ne lymme; And pat schaft sclake hym of hys mode; Than schaft fou be hys derlynge gode: 40 Fayre wordes wreth do slake; Fayre wordes wreth schaft neuer make; Ne fayre wordes brake neuer bone, Ne neuer schaft in no wone. 44 Love your husband, and if he gets angry, don't answer him. Fair words break no bones. Keep a fair countenance; Be fayre of semblant, my dere doujter, Change not f1 countenans with grete latter; And wyse of maneres loke f ou be gode, Ne for1 no tayle change f1 mode; 48 Ne fare not as fou A gyglot were, don't be giddy, Ne lauje f ou not low, be f ou f er-of sore. luke bou also gape not to wyde, or gape too wide. For1 Any thinge fat may be-tytde (sic). 52 Suete of speche, loke fat thow be; Trow in worde and dede: lerne f ws of me. Be sweet of speech. 46 HOW THE GOODE WVPE TAUGHT HYR DOUGHTER. [leaf 7, back] Don't toss your head about, and don't swear. Don't go to market or taverns. Don't drink too much. Don't go to cock-fights, but stay at h Don't make friends with every man you meet Loke f ou fle synne, vilony, and blame,1 And se ber be no man fat seys the Any schame. 56 When f ou goys in f e gate, go not to faste, Ne hyderwerd ne thederward thi hede feu caste. No grete othes loke f ou suere; By ware, my doujter, of syche A maner! 60 Go not as it wer A gase Fro house to house, to seke f e mase; Ne go f ou not to no merket To sell thi thryft; be wer of itte. 64 Ne go f ou noujht to f e tauerne, Thy godnes forto selle f er-Inne; For1-sake fou hym fat tauerne hanteht, And alle fe vices fat fer-Inne bethe. 68 Wher1-euer f ou comme, at Ale other 2 wyne, Take not to myche, and leue be tyme; For1 mesure f er-Inne, it is no herme, And droun)ke to be, it is f1 schame. 72 Ne go f ou not to no wrastlynge, Ne jit to no coke 3 schetynge, As it wer a str[u]mpet of er A gyglote, Or as A woman) fat lyst to dote. 76 e. Byde f ou at home, my doujter dere; Thes poyntes at me I rede f ou lere, And wyrke f1 werke at nede, All fe better f ou may spede: 80 Y suere bee, doujter, be heuen kynge, Mery it is of Althynge. A-queynte bee not -with euer[y] man) Jjat Inne f e strete f ou metys than), 84 1 MS Wane. 2 MS o'. * MS 'coke fyghtynge'; but 'fyghtynge' has four small dashes under it, as if it were intended to be erased. HOW THE GOODE WYFE TAUGHT HYR DOUGHTER. 47 Thof1 lie wold be Aqueynted with the; Grote hym cwrtasly, and late hynt be; loke by hym not longe bou stond, That thorow no vylony f1 hert fond: 88 Alle f men) be not trew That fare speche to bee can) schew. For1 no eouetys, no 3iftys bou take; Bot bou wyte why, sone them for1-sake; 92 For1 gode women, with gyftes Me f er honowr fro them lyfte*', Thofe pat f ei -wer Att trew As Any stele fat bereth hew; 96 For1 with thei1 giftes men bem oner gone, Thof f ei wer trew as ony stone; Bounde fei be fat giftys take, Ther1-for1 thes giftes bou for1-sake. 100 1 Yn of er mens houses make f ou no maystry, For1 drede no vylony to bee be spye. loke f ou chyd no wordes bolde, To myssey nober jonge ne olde; 104 For1 and f ou any chyder be, Thy neyjbors wylle speke bee vylony. 8 Be f ou not to enuyos, For1 drede thi neyjbors wyll bee curse: 108 Enuyos hert hym-selue fretys, And of gode werky[s] hym-selue lettys. 3 houswyfely wyft f ou gone On werke deys in thine Awne wone. 112 Pryde, rest, and ydell-schy[pe],4 Fro pes werkes f ou the kepe; 1 See the first stanza (from the Trin. Coll. Camb. MS) in Babees Booh, p. 42, note. * This stanza is not in the Babees-Booh copy. * 1. 153, Babees Booh, p. 43. 4 a d at end partly blotted out. Fair talkers are not all true. Take no gifts from men; they may lose you your honour. Don't make a fuss in other people's houses, and don't chide. [leaf 8] Don't be envious. Work on work- days, 48 HOW THE GOODE WYFE TAUGHT HYR DOUGHTER. &nd worship God on holy days. Don't ape ladies with rich robes. So a good housewife, and gentle. And kepe fou welle thy holy dey, And thy god worschype whe[n] fou may, More for1 worschype than for1 pride; And styfly in thy feyth fou byde. 'loke fou were no ryche robys; Ne coun)terfyte fou no ladys; For1 myche schame do them' be-tyde pat lese per worschipe thorow fer pride. 2 Be fou, doujter, A hous-wyfe gode, And euer-more of mylde mode. Wysely loke thi hous And men-e?e; The beter to do fei schall be. Women pat be of yuelt name, Be je not to-gedere in-same; loke what moste nede is to done, And sette f' men[e] fer-to ryjht sone: That thinge pat is be-fore done dede, Eedy it is when fou 3 hast nede. And if thy lord be fro home, lat not thy men-eje I-dell gone; And loke fou wele who do hys dede, Quyte hym fer-after to his mede; And fei pat wylle bot lytell do, Thereafter pou quite is mede also. if you've a heavy A grete dede if pon haue to done, job, go at one end . „ , , of it at once. At pe tone ende fou be ryjht sone; Get work wanted, done quickly. When your husband's away, Bet your people to work. 116 120 124 128 132 136 140 And if f«t fou fynd any fawte, Amend it sone, and tanye note: Mych thynge be-houen them' Jjat gode housold schall kepyn). 144 Amend thy hous or fou haue nede, For1 better after fou schalt spede; 1 See the first stanza of the note, p. 45 of Babees Book. 'See 1. 102, p. 41, Babees Book. 3 MS J-ou thow. HOW THE GOODE WYFE TAUGHT HYR DOUGHTER. 49 own broad. And if fat thy nede be grete, when need is, And in fe country cowrne1 be stry te, 148 and take your Make An hous-wyfe on thy-selue, Thy bred f ou bake for1 hous-wyfys helthe. Amonge f1 semantes if f ou stondyne, Thy werke it schall be soner1 done; 152 To helpe them sone bou sterte, For1 many handes make lyjht werke. 2 By-syde bee if thy neghbores thryue, Ther1-fore bou make no stryfe; Bot thanke god of all thi gode put he sende bee to thy fode; And fan thow schall lyue gode lyfe, And so to be A gode hous-wyfe. At es he lyues fat Awe[s] no dette; Yt is no les, Wit^-outen) lette. Don't grudge 1 r« your neighbour's li)0 Buccess, but thank God for your own. 160 3 Syte not to longe vppe At euene, For1 drede witA Ale fou be ouer-sene; loke bou go to bede by tyme; Erly to ryse is fysyke fyne. And so Jjou schalle be, my dere chyld, Be welle dysposed, both meke and myld, For1 att f er es may f ei not haue, pat wytt thryue, and f er gode sauo, [leaf 8, back] 164 Go to bed betimes, and rise early: 168 you can't take your ease if you'll thrive. 4 And if it f w-s the be-tyde, pat frendea falle bee fro on euery syde, And god fro bee thi chyld take; Thy wreke one god do bou not take, 172 If friends fall away, or your child dies, don't abuse God. 1 The Lambeth MS 853 in Babees Book, p. 41, 1. 116, reads 'tyme.' * See 1. 146, p. 43 of Babees Book. * See the last stanza in the note, p. 44 of Babees Book. 'This stanza is not in the Lambeth or Trin, Coll. Canib. MSS in the Babees Book. i 50 HOW THE GOODE WYFE TAUGHT HYR DOUGHTER. Marry your daughters early: girls arc un- Don't borrow, or spend other men's money. Pay servants when their work is done. This is what my mother taught Forget it not I For1 thy-selue it wyit vn-do, And alle thes bat bee longes to: 176 Many one for1 ber Awne foly Spyllys them-selue vn-thryftyly. 1 loke, doujter, no thing1 bou lese, Ne f1 housbond bou not desples. 180 And if bou haue A doi^ter of age, Pute here sone to maryage; Fore meydens, pei be lonely, And no thing1 syker1 ber-by 184 Borow bou not, if bat thou meye, For1 drede thi neybowr wyit sey naye; Ne take bou noujht to fyrste, Bot bou be Inne more bryste.2 188 Make bee not ryche of ober mens thyng1, Jje bolder to spend be one ferthyng1; Borowyd thinge muste nedes go home, Yf1 bat bou wyit to heue?* gone. 192 3 When b' seruantes haue do ber wi rke, To pay fer hyre loke fou be smerte, Wheber bei byde or fei do wende: Thus schatt boa kepe y m euer f' frende: 196 And pus thi frendes wylle be glade Jjat thou dispos be wyslye and sade. Now I haue taujht bee, my dere doujter, The same techynge I hade of my modowr: 200 Thinke ber-on both nyght and dey; For1-gette them not if bat bou may; For1 A chyld vn-borne wer better Than be vn-taught, pus seys pe letter. 204 1 See 1. 193-201, p. 46 of Babees Book. * Corrupt. See 1. 181-2, p. 45 of Babees Book, and the last stanza in the note. * See 1. 139, p. 43, Babees Book. HOW THE GOODE WYPE TAUGHT HYR DOUGHTER. 51 Ther1-for1 att-myghty god Inne trone, Spede vs Alle, bothe euen and morne; And bringe vs to thy hyghe blysse, That neuer more fro vs schaft mysse! Amen, quod Kate. [With a drawing of a fish (? a jack) and a flower underneath. A fish is also drawn at bottom of leaf 7, back.] God speed and save us all 1 208 52 Unfa a W&£Bt Utan tagjxt jjgs quod Kate. [Atihmole MS 61, 7ea/ 6.] Lordynges, and wylle here How A wyse man taujht hys sone, Take god hede to pis matere, [' fond, And to debate sekethe occasioxin; 100 Fool, No. 44. Abyde so long to he be betyn downe, Dronkyn, lame, fat he may not flee; Fool, No. 45. And who so reioysethe to soiorne in prisoun, Enrolle hym vppe, for he shal neuer the. 104 Fool, No. 46. A lusty galant fat weddythe a olde wiche For grete tresoure, be-cause hys purse ys bare; 1 MS Holde. LYDGATES ORDER OF FOOLS. A lmngrey hunter fat holdythe hym1 A biche Fool, No. 47. Kemyl of mouthe for to mordyr A hare; 108 Nyghte riotours 2 fat wil no waryn spare, fool, No. 48. Wythe-outen licens or eny liberte, Tyl sodyn perel bryng hem yn fe snare, A preperatif fat bey shal neuer the. 112 Who dothe amysse, or lawghethe hym selfe to skorne, Fool, No. 49. Or com to counsel or fat he be callyd!, Fool, No. so. Or lowde lawghys whan he dothe 3 morne, Foo'. No. 51. Amonge foles of rijt he may be stallyd!; 116 [That] purposithe hys wyage whan hys hors ys gallyd!, Fool, No. 52. [And] pluckethe of hys shone toward! hys iorney, Fool, No. 53. Forsakythe fresshe wyne, And drynkythe Ale Apallyd!; Fool, No. 54. Suche foltishe taste,4 god let hem neuer the. 120 And he fat is a riatter al hys life, Fool, No. 55. Arid [hathe] hys felow and hys neghbor yn dispite, Fool, No. 56. And wondythe hym selfe with hys owne knyfe, Fool, No. 57. Of j. candyl wenethe ij. were lighte, 124 Slepethe on the day and wacchis al f8 nyghte; Alle masse be done long or he redy be; Suche I may clayme, be very titul of rijte, To be a brothyr of hem fat shal neuer the. 128 "Who holdythe hys tresoure fat he wissethe, Fool, No. 58. And gaderithe hym gossomerto packe hytfor hys wolle, And he ys a fole afore the nette fat fysshes,6 Foo>. N°-M- And he ys a fole fat dothe Federys pulle 132 Fooi,No.6o. Of fat caponys vp mwyd to the fulle, Hath no thyng but bonys for hys fee; N[u]llatensis a-sesythe 6 hath hys bulle To alle suche, fat neuer of hem shalle the, 136 "When fat gander grasythe on f grene, Fool, No. 01. The sleyghty fox dothe hys brode beholde, 1 houndithe on. Harl. 2 motoners. Harl. 3 laughyng. whan that he shuld. Harl. 4 foolis. Harl. 5 dothe wisshithe. Harl. 'ensealed1. Harl. 81 LYDGATE8 ORDER OF FOOLS. He takythe the fatte [and] cast a-way the lene, And [sigrums] 1 chefe wardyn of the folde, 140 Takythe to hys lnrd[er] at what pryse fey be solde, Grettest lamber, on or to, to or iij.; [In wynter n]ythys the frostw be so colde, The shepard slepyth; god let thym neuer the! 144 Pool, No.at [A fo]ryn2 likenes whych shal no man displece, [By] a strange vncouthe comparisoun, [V/]hen the belwedyr pasturythe at hys ese, [T]how alle the flocke hawe but smal foysoun, 148 [S]lepethe at leyser, makythe noyse none nor soune, [Ca]rethe for no more so he haue plente: [A]l tho b«t make suche a departysowne [AJmong her suggettts, god lett hem neuer the! 152 Fool, No. M. "With ful wombe bey prechyd of Abstinence, Ther botel Fyllyd! of freshe wyne or ale, Loue rownyng, loutyng and reuerence, Nwe fals reporte -with many glosyng tale; 156 The lay more cherychyct fan the nyjtyngale, Tabourers with her duplicite Plesithe more bys days, when stuffyd! ys fer male Farsed wit/t flateryng; god let hem neuer the! 160 8 [L]eto thys frary a confirmacioun, [And] soin worthy byshoppe nwllatence, * [/4«rf] graunten hem a general pardoun [^4wd] a patent to be-gyn her dispence, 164 [Er]ly and late to walke with licence [WitA] opyn walet frely en eche countre, [He]r bul enselycH, concludyng in sentence 167 [Th]at none of al bys ordyr ys neuer like to the. Amen. 'Harl. 2 A foreyn. Harl. * Pared off. Harl. 2251 has three different stanzas fcr this last one. 85 [Additional MS 8151, leaf 200, back; at the end of William of Nassington's 'Mirror of Life,' and in the same hand as that."\ IT pronjwtia. IT Whene pryde is moste in prys, Aude couetyse moste wys, Ande lucchery moste in vse, fefe maade reue, J5e?me sohatt englonde mys-chewe. [©Ijat ran man: possm ?] Jjat .I. ete and fat .I. drynke, fat may .I. haue; }5at .I. lene fals mene, longer .I. may hyt craue; Jjat .I. dele for my sonle, fat may .I. fynde; J5at .I. lefe my sekatoures, fat is longer by-hynde. Aft hyt is fantome fat we wife fare, Ande for of ere mennes goode is aft oure care; Alle come we hyder nakude and tare, Whenne we hefene passe, is fere no mare. [|Us of am lime. Seep. 88.] Gyfte is domusmane, Gyle is chapemane; Lordes bene lawles, Cbyldere bene awles; "VVysemene are blynde, Defe is oute of mynde, Cosyns bene vnkynde, A goode sykere frende is yuelt to fynde; Ande euere, in weele and in woo, Jjenke one fe ioy fat lastefe for oo. When England shall come to grief. 8 Gifts to God come back. 12 Naked we came, naked we go. Bribery is Judge, 16 children aweleBS, 20 sure friends are scarce. MM shall | b0? (A COMPLAINT AGAINST THE UNKINDNESS AND BASENESS OF FALSE FRIENDS.) [Egerton MS 1624, leaf 1, Jab. 1470 a.d ] als I mo sat my self alkm, in my hart makand1 my mon, I said "allas, my gammys ar gon! qwat sal I do? 4 that I most trayste, it is all waste! sor may me rew! My hert was set fill stedfastly on tham that nojt was set on me; thus am I sted ful heuely. god lord, qwat sal woi th of me ] qwat sall I do &c' I wold fayn lof w[M]out verraunce tham that my hert I haf gyffyn to: it wyllnot be, for no kyn chauns, that I can audwr say or do. 16 v[t] sup;-a 1 This -and, with the qwat, tall, haf, lof, tluii puttis, poiut to a Northern writer. 8 12 WHAT SHALL I DO 1 deer god! qwat may this mene t qwy is this ward1 thus fals to me t I am the create?- that il kan feiio 20 any falsed or trechere: qwat sall I do? &c' witA care my hert is vmbe-set; qwat I sal do I cannot say; 24 tham for to lof I ca?mot let,, that me has broght vn-to this, fray: [qwat sal I do ?] &c' wold god that I war broght in clay! 28 ful hard it is this lyf to lede! I pray god qwytte tham nyjt and day, that me thus make to haue this nede! [qwat sal I do, &c] 32 god wot, jit was I neuer vnkynd to tham, ne jit to non of ttayrs; ther was neuer non so mykyll2 in my my?2de, qwo' so I haue don to tha.ni and thers. 36 [qwat sal I do, &c] that thai me putt*s thus out of mynde, qwat that thai men I wold fayne wytte. god wot I was neuer jit vn-kynde, 40 of no thyng that thai haftec3 me jit. [qwat sal I do? that I most trayste, it is all waste! 44 sor may Me rew!] 1 world. . 2 MS mylkyll. * This word is doubtful—q , or q with a long curl to the v, has been written under it, and the curl carried into the eft. Hashed, for asked, was no doubt meant. of am ®ime. (A better copy than that on p. 85. The stops are those of the MS.) [Harleian MS 2251 (? in Shirley's hand), leaf 153.] % Munus fit1 Judex, fraus est mercator in vrbe Non lex est dominis. nee timor est pilaris IT Yift is made, domesman Gyle is made, chapman 4 Lordes ben lawles And children ben awles IT Ingen \um dolus est. amor omnis cera 2 vohiptas Ludus rusticitas. et gula festa dies 8 Witte is towmed!. to trechery Love is toiirned!. to lechery Pleye is towrae[d] to vilany And haliday. to gloteny 12 II Etas ridetur. midier pulsatur amore Dives laudatui. pauper* adheret hvmo Olde men. ben skorned1 Wymmen. ben wowed ! 16 Eiche men. bien pleasit? And pore men. ben diseasid1 IT Prudentes ceci. cognati degeneres sunt Mortuus Ignotus. nullus amicus amat 20 Wise men. bien blynde And kynrede. is vnkynde The dede is. out of mynde Triew friende. can noman fynde. 24 1 MS sit '1 for certa or mera. * MS paupere 89 % ©rfcer rt % (fests at % €axa- itation §ani[H£t af (£a%rinx ai Irakis, 24 FEB., 1421.' [MS Addit. 18,752, leaf 162.] Thetramamaton.2 THE COEONAC/OiSr OFF TZ?E QWENE. THE QWENES BORDE THE DAT OFF THE CORONAC/ON. On) the ryght honcB of the qwene, the Erchebysshope off Canter- bury // The Bysshope off Wynchester // On) the lyfte hond! off the qwene / The kyng off Scottes yn A State // At the End" off the qwene-ys borde / The duchesse of yorke, The Cowntes off hunthyng- ton) // Vnder the borde. / wayting on) the Qwene / The Cowntes off kente, The cownt[e]z marchatt // On) the ryght syde of the qwene knelyd! / The Erle of the marche holdyng the Ceptre And on) the lyfte syde knelyd! / the Erle off Stafford! holdyng the yarde // The Seeownd! Borde of the ladys The cowntes off Stafford // The Cowntez off marche. The Cowntez off Arundelt // The Cowntez off Westmorland! The Cowntez off Northhumhurland! // The cowntez off Oxonford! The lady Nevyle // My lady lone Somersett // My lady Moumbrey, dowgthere off the Erle MarchaH // My lady Margarete Somersetf // The lady Eoos // The lady Clyfforde, The lady Burgeveny // The lady Talbott // The lady Wylloby // The lady Mawley // Alice Nevett, wyffe to sir 'Richard Neuyle // The Mayde Grey, dougther to the lore? Grey // Oon) of the dougthers of Westemoreland! // The lorctez dougthere ffythzhug // ij Susters of the lord Wylleby. THE SECONDE DAY AFTi'fi THE CORONACJON ATT THE QWENE-YS BORDE The Duchesse off yorke // The Countesse off huntyngton // Att the Second! borde. The Cowntez off Stafforde // The Cowntez off March, The Cowntez off kente // The cowntez off Arundett, The Cowntez Marchall / And! o there ladya afture the Cowrs of the day a-ffore-Seyde // 1 Catalogue of Additions to the MSS in the Brit. Mus., 11848-53, printed 1868, p. 145. 2 So in MS. Ill) Cmtrsts of ;i ginner anb Super giben 10 |)cn. 0. by Sir Jojw doxnkA [Additional MS 18,752, tea/ 162, back.] Hoc ffestum ffecit duminus Iohanncs Cornewett Eegi Anglie //2 .A. [TVie mtf o/ the page is blank.] [leafi&i] Thetragramaton3 In prandio The 2. course Nonbles6 ffrumenty with veneson4 Blawmanger15 Beffe and Moton Signetys Capons off haute grece vele heronseux venyson y-bake leche ffloree Gelee 7 il'esaunte pysg primus kydde Pygeons Pcwtrycches venyson) roste Crastades8 blancj bake leche dahnayn) Semaka 9 fryej 1 Catal. of Addit. MSS, Brit. Mus., 18C8, p. 145-6. 2 The Additional MSS-Catalogue applies this heading to the piece before it, printed on p. 92 here, though the hand-writing and colour of the ink seem to connect the heading with what follows on the next leaf (163) of the MS. The whole of this piece on leaf 163 is in the same hand and ink as the Coronation, whilst the piece printed on p. 92 here is in paler ink and different writing,— earlier, as I think. 3 This is at the top of the page. 1 'For to make Furmenty' in Forme of Oury, p. 91, "messe yt forthe wyth fat venyson and fresh moton." See also the Earl of Devon's Feast in Harl. Misc., No. 279. Pegge, in Forme of Oury, p. 157. 5 Eecipe for 'Blonc MaDger' in Liber Cure Coe., p. 9; 'Blomanger' in Forme of Cvry, p. 93. 6 Recipe in Forme of Oury, p. 16, 94; //. Ord., p. 427; Lib. C. Coe., p. 10. 7 Recipe for 'mete Gelee,' clear, in Forme of Oury, p. 103; 'Gele of Fyssh,' ib. p. 50; 'Gele of Flessh,' ib. p. 51. See H. Ord., p. 437. 8 Recipe for ' Crustade' in Household Ordinances, p. 442. • 'On Flessh-Day . . At the seconde course . . a leche, ai;d samakade, and bake mete,' H. Ord., p. 450. See the recipe for Sambocade—curd, eggs, &c, flavoured with elder flowers: Sambucus, the Elder,—in Forme of Cury, p. 77. SIR JOHN OOBNWELL'S DINNER AND SUPPER TO HEN. V. 91 The 3 course Mameny1 ryatl Chare de wardou Eabetys Byteres 3 Egretys Popelers4 Quayles Plouers Smalt byrdia"5 larkes Venyson) on) broche Creme boylle9 Pygg in Sauge10 Schuldres of Moton) Capons of haute grece Heronseux Partrych Chekyns y-bake lete11 lardes y-fryeil In Cena Payn) puffe 6 leche lumbard'e Cryspes fryej 8 The last course Colde Creme12 Gele Venyson roste kyde roste Eabetts Pegeons Egretys Quayles SmaH byrd/d Doucetw13 y-bake Leche damasqwe Nota bene the coronacion) yri) the leffe nexte be-fore thus 1 Recipes in Forme of Cury, p. 19, 88; H. Ord., p. 480. s ? Apple marmalade. 'Bitterns. See ' Betowre' in Babees Book index. 4 Popple, to move quickly up and down, as a cork dropped on water. Webster. 5 See Liber Oure Cocorum, p. 3C, 1. 8. • Recipe in //. Ord., p. 450; Forme of Cury, p. 89. 'Recipe in H. Ord., p. 438; Forme of Cury, p. 36; Babees Book, Pt II, p. 95. 8 Recipes for ' Cryspes' and 'Cryspels' in Forme of Cury, p. 73; for 'Crvppys,' ib. p. 99. • Recipe for ' Crem Boyled' in II. Ord., p. 447, p. 463. 10 'Pigge en Sage' at the Earl of Devon's Feast in Harl. Misc., No. 279. Pegge. "See the recipes for ' Letlardys' (Leche Lardys), in Liber Cure Coc., p. 13, and 'Leche Lardys' in II. Ord., p. 439. 12 On Flessh-Day . . At the thridde cours, colde creme, and gele to potage; and therwith fylettes of venyton, rosted pejons, egretys, partoriches, rabettes and qwales . . . and cuspis and dmicettes. H. Ord., p. 450. "Recipe in Babees Boo/;, p. 60; and see Index to B. B. 92 <&amm ai u Steal ax $ ampul. [MS Addit. Brit. Mus. No. 18752, leaf 162, lack.1] Grene pese, with veneson. Graunte chare.2 Capon of hawte grece. Signet.3 Blawnche custarde, dyaburde with byrdys. leche maskelyn. Eoo in brothe.4 liosey.5 Kydde. Heronsewe. Mownter in manterl. Chykyfi dyaburde. veneson y-bake. H'ruter lumbarde. leche rubby. Datys in composte. Blawnche creme, with annys in confete. Lardys of veneson. Eabbettis. Qwayle. ^Suggearke larkys. | [Sugar-work ?] Eysshewes.6 vyandys cowched with lyons. 1 leche of his Armys. 1 In different ink and hand from the Coronation, page 89, above. 8 A great joint. Cp. 'and therwith gret flessh weel rosted, and chapon, and man rosted.' Souseh. Ord., p. 450. s cygnet, swanling. 4 See recipe in Househ. Ord., p. 428; and ' Eoo in a Sewe,' Lib. C. Coc. p. 23. 5 'For to make Eosee,' Forme of Cury, p. 105, 108; 'Rosee,' ib. p. 31; 'Rose to potage' in Houschold Ordinances, p. 430; 'Rose' in Lib. Cure Coc. p. 13; 'Rose dalmoyne,' ib. p. 19. "Ryshews of Fruyt, in Forme of Cury, p. 82, No. 182. See too ' Rissheus' (of pork, eggs, &e.) in Lib. C. Coc. p. 39. 93 \Harleian MS 6149, leaves 151-—155, /rom a 6oo& o/ Sir William Cummyn's of Fnverallochy, Marchmond Herald, ab. 1500 a.d.] This poem appears to have been composed late in the 15th century, by one of that unwise class of writers on Heraldry, who, not content with assigning to that science its proper place as a handmaid to History (which, by enabling the ownership and dates of various buildings, charters, monuments, &c, to be identified, the matrimonial alliances of noble families to be proved, &c. &c, it certainly is) by claiming for it a fabulous origin, and one so manifestly capable of disproof, brought the whole subject into such contempt and ridicule, that the study of it in later generations was almost entirely neglected. Such, in 1661 a.d., was Sylvanus Morgan, who ascribes arms to Adam, Eve, Joseph, &c.; and various others both in England and Scotland.—G. E. Adams. (The heraldic footnotes are Mr Adams's too.) First as 1 the erth incresith populus, So convalit variance and vicis,2 Amang men materis maliciouse, So that few mycht laubowr for discrepancy, quhill nobilnes in armes, lordly pusancw, and of heraldw the werschipful ordour, Of quham I think to tret, set weyis sure. In werris of thebes, athenis, and troyis tounis, -with otheria mo of gret antiquiteis, Banneris, standeras, gittovnis,3 pensalis, penonis, borne by pn'ncis, nobillis, and cowmyniteis, In ferre of werre, pes, or ony degreis, I find thai war most merkis, as merchandw Ben's toknis or signet?'s on ther handw. 'th — y of MS. * MS vic?> & variance * Getoun, a banner, properly 2 yards in length,—Arcliceol, xxii. 397. See note, p. 29, above. As people and vices increase, 4 few men work for the distinctions which heralds deal with. 8 In the wars of Thebes, Athens, and Troy, banners, &c., were borne by nobles and others. 12 94 A SCOTCH COfY OF A TOEM ON HERALDRY. Quhill cfter euer the langest leving men hcris, spem, and lernis more felle and wit, Diuerse folkw ingenyouse fyndene thene In well degest mynde's considoit, inspired by God, Be celestial inspiring pnrt tuk it, To set armes in metallw and coloum, ffor seir causis bering sertyn figoum, ingenious folk •et Arms la figures of lfi 20 Sum sonne, sum monne, sum sternis, sura elementis, bo»su, birds, &c., Sum best, sum bird, sum fische, suni fmt, su?n nown's, some like Nature and somo not. and mony mo siclik; Sum with deflferentis, Sum alterit, als sum in tlter awin nature; Sum, not the hole, bot part in raschit1 figowri*', As my simplest consate sal suin mak clere, With correctioun, and now quha Yikis heir. 24 28 In the Theban war (which I wrote of at length) Palamon and Arcite were known by their The eldest, gret, most populws, mortal were, wes at thebes, quhiche at linth I did w?ite, Quhare palamonne and arsite, woundit there, Be ther cotis of armes knawin partite, Be heraldis war, sum sais, bot that I nyte,2 ffor in thai dais heraldis war not create, Nor that armes set in propir estate. 32 After the siege of Troy (about the knights at which my llook tells), nobles wore marks to record their doughtiness, Bot eftir that troy, quhar so mony king?'*- war Scging w?'t/iout, and other wit/tin the tonne, So mony prmcis, knychtis, and peple there, as this my buk the most sentence did soune, all thocht spedful in o conclusioune, That nobillis bere merYis, to mak be knawin, ther douchtynes in dedw of armes schawin: 36 40 1 Erased. See 1. 1(58. 'In Heraldry, the Member of any Beast which seems torn from the Body, is called Erased:— Gloss. Angl. Nov. * Deny. Chaucer is one of the 'sum ' contradicted; see his Knightes Tale, A. 1016-17, Ellesmere MS, But by here Cote Armures / and by hir gere The luiravdes / knewe hem best in special A SCOTCH COPY OF A POEM ON HERALDRY. 95 The fader the hole, the eldast son deflerfe]nt,1 quhiche a labelle; a cressent the secouud; third a molet; the fourt a merl to tent; fift anno aglot ;2 the vj a flowr had fond, Clepit delice.3 than iader or we the suld grond Armes to mo, gif thai be with difference As plesit him: thus armes begofi from thens. and the sons bore distinctions 44 on their fathers' 48 77 The next is—If thou bringest dishes to the board in serving, Thou must keep thy thumbs on the rim of the dish. If thou takest hold with the thumb on the rim of the dishes, Thou canst set them down in their place without any one else to help thee. 172 The third after the fortieth is—If thou offerest the cup, .Never touch with the thumb the upper edge of the bowl. Hold the bowl at the under end, and present it with one hand: He who holds it otherwise may be called boorish. 176 The fourth after the fortieth is—hear who will- Neither frying-pan nor dishes nor bowl should be overfilled. Measure and moderation should be in all things that are: He who should transcend this will not have done courtesy. 180 30 CORTEXIA 45—50. L' oltra che segue e questa: reten a ti lo cugiale, Se te fi tolegio la squella per azonzere de lo mangiale; Se 1' e lo cugial entro la squella, lo ministrante inpilia; In tute lo cortexie ben fa chi s' asetilia. 184 L' oltra e questa: se tu mangi con cugial, Ho debie infolcire tropo pan entro mangiare; Quello che fa impiastro entro mangia da fogo, El fa fastidio a quilli che ghe mangiano da provo. 188 L' oltra che segue h questa: s' el to amigo e tego, Tan fin ch' el mangia al descho, sempre bochona sego; Se forse t' astalasse, ni fosse sazio anchora, Forse anchora s' astalarave per vergonza inlora. 192 L' oltra e: mangiando con oltri a qualche inviamento, No mete entr' a guayna lo to cortelo anze tempo; No guerna lo cortello anze ch' alo compagno; Forse oltro ven in descho d'onde tu no fe raxon. 196 La cortexia seguente e: quando tu e mangiao, Fa si che Jesu Xristo ne sia glorificao. Quel che rezeve servixio d'alchun obediente, S'elo no lo regratia, tropo h deschognosente. 200 La cinquantena per la darera: Lavare le man, poy beve dro bon vino dra carera: Le man poxe lo convivio per pocho pon si lavae, Da grassa e da sozura e Tin netezae. 204 1 'Chi s' asetilia.' Signor Biondelli cannot assign the exact sense of this verb. I should suppose it to be either a form of 'Assettarsi,' to settle oneself, to keep one's place, or a corruption of 'Assottigliarsi,' to subtilize, to be punc- tilious, to 'look sharp.' 1 'D' alchun obediente.' This phrase, if directly connected with the 'Jesu Xristo' of the previous line, seems peculiar. I am not quite clear whether BONVICINO. COURTESY 45—50. 31 The next which follows is this: Keep thy spoon, If thy plate is removed for the adding of some viands. If the spoon is in the plate, it puts out the helper. In all courtesies he does well who is heedful.1 184 The next is this: If thou art eating with a spoon, Thou must not stuff too much bread into the victuals. He who lays it on thick upon the cooked meats Is distasteful to those who are eating beside him. 188 The next that follows is this: If thy friend is with thee, As long as he eats at the board, always keep up with him. If thou perchance wert to leave off, and he were not yet satisfied, Maybe he also would then leave off through bashfulness. 192 The next is—Dining with others by some invitation, \ Put not back thy knife into the sheath before the time: j Deposit not thy knife ere thy companion. Perhaps something else is coming to table which thou dost not reckon for. 196 The succeeding Courtesy is—When thou hast eaten, So do as that Jesus Christ be glorified therein. He who receives service from any that obeys,2 If he thanks him not, is top ungrateful. 200 The fiftieth for the last. "Wash hands, then drink of the good and choice wine.3 After the meal, the hands may be a little washed, And cleansed from grease and impurity. 204 the whole stanza is to be understood as an injunction to render grace after meat, in thankfulness for what Christ has given one—or to thank the servants who have been waiting at table, and so to glorify Christ by an act of humility. * 'Dro bon vino dra carera.' The general sense is evidently near what the translation gives: but Signor Biondelli is unable to assign the precise sense. No wonder therefore that I am unable. on TOMASIN VON ZIRCLARIA. As far as I know (though I cannot affect to speak with authority) this poem by Fra Bonvicino, and those by Francesco da Barberino of which we shall next take cognisance, are considerably the oldest still extant Courtesy-Books (expressly to be so termed) of Chris- tianized Europe;1 except one, partly coming under the same defini- tion, which has been mentioned to me by a well-read friend, Dr Heimann (of University College), but of which I have no direct personal knowledge." This also, though written in the German language, is the production of an Italian. It is entitled Der Walsche Gast (the Italian Guest), and dates about 1210. The author's name is given as Tomasin von Zirclaria, born in Friuli. The book supplies various rules of etiquette, in a very serious and well-intentioned tone, as I am informed.—Fra Bonvicino would, on the ground of his antiquity alone, be well deserving of study. His precepts moreover (with comparatively few exceptions) cannot even yet be called obso- lete, though some of them are unsophisticated to the extent of being superfluous. In order that the reader may see in one coup a"ceil the whole of this curious old monument I subjoin a classified abridgment of the injunctions :— 1. Moral and Eeligious. To think of the poor first of all. To remember grace before meat. To eat enough, and not too much. Not to get drunk. To pass over for the time any cause of quarrel. To say grace after meat. 2. Practical Eules still fairly operative. To offer water for washing the hands before dinner. Not to plump into a seat at table at haphazard. To sit at table decorously and in good humour. 1 Several others must nevertheless have heen written hefore or about the same time; for Barberino himself, in the exordium to his Reggimento e Costvmi delle Donne, says— 'There have been many who wrote books Concerning the elegant manners of men, but not of women.' ! A full account of it by Mr Eugene Oswald follows the present Essay. SUMMAEY OF BONVICINO. 33 Not to tilt oneself forward on the table. Not to gorge or bolt one's food. To subordinate talking to eating. Not to drink with one's mouth full. To remain seated at table, even though fresh guests should arrive. Not to suck at solid food eaten with a spoon. To use up one's bread. To abstain from raising objections to the dinner. Not to scrutinize one's neighbour's plate. To cut bread as it comes, not in all sorts of ways. To carve for the ladies. To give the guests prime cuts. To make the guests thoroughly welcome, without oppressive urgencies. To abstain at dinner from stroking cats and dogs. Not to speak with one's mouth full. To abstain from imparting bad news at dinner. To keep down any symptoms of pain or illness. To avoid calling attention to anything disagreeable which may accidentally be in the dishes. The attendants to hold the dishes by their rims. Not to hand round the bowl by its upper edge. Not to overload the dishes, goblets, &c. Not to hurry through with one's eating, so that others, who are left behind, would feel uncomfortable. To wash hands and drink the best wine after dinner. 3. Mules equally true and primitive. Not to tilt one's legs on the table between-whiles. To turn aside if one sneezes or coughs., Not to set down before the guests utensils fresh from the kitchen, The attendants to be clean—not to spit, &c. To blow one's nose on 'foot-cloths,' not through the fingers. Not to scratch at one's head or elsewhere. Not to pick one's teeth with the fingers. Not to lick one's fingers clean. o 34 BONVICINO'S IDEA OF COURTESY. 4. Rules which may be regarded as over-punctilious or obsolete. Not to sit at table with one's legs crossed. To offer the cup to others only when they want it. (The rules as to drinking seem throughout to contemplate that two or more guests are using one cup or vessel.) To use both hands in drinking. Never to decline the cup when another offers it, but to drink no more than one wishes. (This rule still has its analogue at tables where the custom lingers of requesting 'the pleasure of taking wine with' some one else.) Not to rummage about in the dish from which one is eating along with others. Not to dip bread into the wine of which one is drinking along with othsrs. To suspend eating while a man of importance is drinking. To postpone drinking till the man of importance has finished. Not to speak to a man who is in the act of drinking. (This rule seems to contemplate 'potations pottle-deep,' such as engage all one's energies for some little while together: for a mere modern sip at a wine-glass such a rule would be superfluous.) To retain one's spoon when one's plate is removed for another help. (One spoon, it may be inferred, is to last all through the meal, serving as a fork.) Not to eat an excessive quantity of bread with the viands. Not to re-place one's knife in its sheath prematurely. (It may be presumed that each guest brings his own knife.) The reader who considers these rules in their several categories, and with due allowance for difference of times, manners, and 'pro- perties,' will, I think, agree with me in seeing that the essentials of courtesy at table in Lombardy in the thirteenth century, and in England in the nineteenth, are, after all, closely related; and that, while some of our Friar's tutorings would now happily be super- erogatory, and others are inapplicable to present dining conveniences, not one is ill-bred in any correct use of that word. The details of etiquette vary indefinitely: the sense of courtesy is substantially one FRANCESCO DA BARBERINO. 35 and the same. In Fra Bonvicino's manual, it appears constantly in its genuine aspect, and prompted by its truest spirit—not so much, that of personal correctness, each man for his own credit, as of uniform consideration for others. The same is eminently the case with some of the precepts given by our next author, Francesco da Barberino. Nothing, for instance, can go beyond the true rationale of courtesy conveyed in the follow- ing injunction 1 (which we must not here degrade from its grace of Tuscan speech and verse): 'Colli minor si taci, E prendi il loco che ti danno; e pensa Che, per far qui difensa, Faresti lor, per tuo vizio, villani.' Or this:8 'E credo che fa male Colui che taglia essendo a suo maggioro: Che non v' e servitore S'el non dimanda prima la licenza.' Indeed, I think that the tone prevalent throughout Barberino's maxims of courtesy on all sorts of points is fairly to be called ex- quisite. Our extract from him brings us (it may be well to re- member) into the closest contact with the social usages which Dante in his youth must have been cognisant of and conforming to; for, in passing from Bonvicino to Barberino, we have passed from Lombardy to Tuscany—the latter poet being a native of the Val d'Elsa, in the same district as Boccaccio's birth-place, Certaldo. The date assigned to Barberino's work, the Documenti d'Amore, is just about the same as that of Bonvicino's, or from 1290 to 1296. Yet I apprehend we must receive this early date with some hesitation. In 1290 Bar- berino was but twenty-six years of age; whereas the Documenti oV Amore, a lengthy and systematic treatise on all kinds of moral and social duties and proprieties, seems to be rich with the hoarded ex- perience of years. That so young a man should even have sketched out for himself a work of such axiomatic oracularity seems a priori unlikely, though one has to accept the fact on authority: that he 1 This injunction forms stanza i in our extract from Barberino beginning at p. 38. 1 See at p. 40, the stanza beginning 'And I think that he does amiss.',. 3G BARBERIXO'S CAREER. should towards that age have completed the poem as we now possess it appears to me barely compatible with possibility. His other long poem, still more singular on the like account, is referred to nearly the same date. I observe in it, however, one passage (Part 6) which must have been written after 1308, and probably after 1312. It refers to a story which had been narrated to Barberino 'one time that he was in Paris.' Now his journey on a mission to Provence and France began in 1309, and ended in 1313. I shall here give place to my brother, and extract verbatim the notice of Barberino contained in his book of translations, The Early Italian Poets.1 'Francesco da Barberino: born 1264, died 1348. 'With the exception of Brunetto Latini (whose poems are neither very poetical nor well adapted for extract), Francesco da Barberino shows by far the most sustained productiveness among the poets who preceded Dante, or were contemporaries of his youth. Though born only one year in advance of Dante, Barberino seems to have under- taken, if not completed, his two long poetic treatises some years before the commencement of the Commedia. 'This poet was born at Barberino di Valdelsa, of a noble family, his father being Neri di Eanuccio da Barberino. Up to the year of his father's death, 1296, he pursued the study of law chiefly in Bologna and Padua; but afterwards removed to Florence for the same purpose, and became one of the many distinguished disciples of Brunetto Latini,2 who probably had more influence than any other one man in forming the youth of his time to the groat tllings they accomplished. After this he travelled in France and elsewhere ; and on his return to Italy in 1313, was the first who, by special favour of Pope Clement V., received the grade of Doctor of Laws in Florence. Both as lawyer and as citizen, he held great trusts, and discharged 1 The Early Italian Poets, from Ciullo d'Alcamo to Dante AHgkieri (1100-1200-1300), in the Original Metres: together with Dante's Vita Axuova. Translated by D. G. Rossetti. Smith and Elder, 1862. 'There is evidently something erroneous in this statement: Brunetto died in 1294. The Editor of a collection of Italian Poets (Lirici del Secolo secondo, fyc.— Venezia, Antonelli, 1841) says: 'Francesco went through his first studies under Brunetto Latini. Hence he passed to the Universities of Padua and of Bologna.' Barberino being a Tuscan, this seems the natural course for him to adopt, rather than to have gone to Padua and Bologna before Florence. My brother's remark, as to the death of Neri in 1296, and as to Francesco's subsequent sojourn in Florence, agrees, however, with the statement made by Tiraboschi : apparently we should understand that Fran- cesco had been in Florence both before and after his stay in Padua and Bologna, and that his studies under Brunetto pertain to the earlier period. BARBERINo's WRITINGS. 37 them honourably. He was twice married, the name of his second wife being Barna di Tano, and had several children. At the age of eighty-four he died in the great plague of Florence. Of the two works which Barberino has left, one bears the title of Document? d'Amore, literally Documents 1 of Love, but perhaps more properly rendered as Laws of Courtesy; while the other is called Del Eeggi- mento e dei Costumi delle Donne,—of the Government and Conduct of Women. They may be described, in the main, as manuals of good breeding or social chivalry—the one for men, and the other for women. Mixed with vagueness, tediousness, and not seldom with artless absurdity, they contain much simple wisdom, much curious record of manners, and (as my specimens show) occasional poetic sweetness or power—though these last are far from being their most prominent merits. The first-named treatise, however, has much more of such qualities than the second, and contains moreover pas- sages of homely humour which startle by their truth, as if written yesterday. At the same time, the second book is quite as well worth reading, for the sake of its authoritative minuteness in matters which ladies now-a-days would probably consider their own undisputed re- gion, and also for the quaint gravity of certain surprising prose anec- dotes of real life with which it is interspersed. Both these works remained long unprinted; the first edition of the Documenti d'Amore being that edited by Ubaldini in 1640, at which time he reports the Eeggimento &c. to be only possessed by his age "in name and in de- sire." This treatise was afterwards brought to light, but never printed till 1815. I should not forget to state that Barberino at- tained some knowledge of drawing; and that Ubaldini had seen his original MS of the Documenti, containing, as he says, skilful minia- tures by the author. 'Barberino never appears to have taken a very active part in poli- tics, but he inclined to the Imperial and Ghibelline party. This contributes with other things to render it rather singular that we find no poetic correspondence or apparent communication of any kind be- tween him and his many great countrymen, contemporaries of his long life, and with whom he had more than one bond of sympathy. His career stretched from Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, and Cino da Pi- etoia, to Petrarca and Boccaccio: yet only in one respectful but not enthusiastic notice of him by the last-named writer (Genealogia degli Dei) do we ever meet with an allusion to him by any of the greatest men of his time. Nor in his own writings, as far as I remember, are they ever referred to. His epitaph is said to have been written by Boccaccio, but this is doubtful. On reviewing the present series, I am sorry, on the whole, not to have included more specimens of Bar- berino; whose writings, though not very easy to tackle in the mass, would afford an excellent field for selection and summary,' 1 Teachings or Lessoning! of Love might probably express the sense more exactly to an English ear. 40 BARDERINO. BEHAVIOUR OF GUESTS. And also he who sets to At fortifying himself,1 or exploring the bottom of the platter. Nor do I think it looks quite well To gnaw the bone with the teeth, and still worse To drop it into the saucepan ;a Nor is salt well deposited on the dish. And I think that he does amiss Who carves, being at the table of his superior; For none can perform service If he does not first ask leave. With thine equal, begin, If . the knife lies at thy right hand: If not, leave it to him. With fruit, thou canst not fitly help thy companion. With women, I need not tell thee: But thou must help them to everything, If there is not some one who undertakes Both the carving and other details. But always look to it That thou approach not too close to any of them. And, if one of them is a relative of thine, Thou wilt give more room to the other. And, in short, thou wilt then Do and render honour to thine utmost: And here always mind That thou soil not their dress. Look them in the face but little, Still less at their hands while eating, For they are apt to be bashful: And with respect to them, thou mayst well say " Do eat." When sometimes there come Dishes or fruits, I praise him who thinks of avoiding To take of those Which cannot with cleanliness be handled. Ill does the hand which hurries To take a larger help out of a dish in common; And worse "he who does not well avoid To loll, or set leg upon leg. 1 'Chi vuol fare merli.' The phrase means literally 'he who wants to make battlements'—or possibly ' to make thrushes.' I can only guess at its bearing in the present passage, having searched for a distinct explanation in vain. It seems to be one of the myriad 'vezzi di lingua' of old Italian, and especially old Tuscan, idiom. * 'Di mandar a laveggio.' I am far from certain as to the real meaning. BARBERINO. THE SERVITORS. 41 And be it observed That here thou shouldst speak little and briefly: Nor here must there be speech Of aught save elegant and cheerful pleasantness. I have shown thee above Concerning the respect due to [thy lord], and saluting him. I will now tell thee More than I before said concerning service. Take care that, in every operation Or service that thou dost before him, Thou must think steadily Of what thou art about, for it goes ill if thou art absent-minded. Thou shouldst keep thine eye, When thou servest him, on that which he likes. The silent tongue is aright, Always without questioning, during service; Also that thou keep thyself, Thou who hast to serve, clean in dress and hands. And I would have thee also serve strangers, If they are at the meal with him. Likewise have an eye to it That thou keep things clean before him thou servest. And thou dost well if thou keepest The slice entire, if thou canst, in carving; And amiss if neglectfully Thou makest too great a lump of the carved viands; And -worse if thou art so long about it That they have nothing to eat. And, when there may be Viands which make the hands uncleanly, In some unobtrusive way Get them washed by the time the next come on. Thou shalt always be observant of the same In bringing forward the fruits: For to offer these about, As I said before, befits not the guests. Also I much complain Of thee who wouldst then be correcting others: For the present it must suffice thee, In this case, to do right for thyself only. He puts me out who has So awkward a manner in cutting BARBERINO. DEMEANOUR. 43 Before parting from the Documents cHAmore, I will summarize a few more of Barberino's dicta on points of courtesy and demeanour in general. There are seven offences in speaking: 1. Prolixity; 2. Curtness; 3. Audacity; 4. Mauvaise Honte; 5. Stuttering; 6. Beating about the bush; 7. Eestlessness of gesture, and this is the least support- able of all. Eemedies against all these evils are assigned. For the 6th, as we are told, the (then) modern usage is to speak out what you have to say with little or no proem. As to the 7th, the moving about, as a child would do, the hands, feet, or head, or the using action in speech, shows deficient firmness. See that you stand firm. Yet all this is to be modified according to place, time, and the auditory. (It is amusing to find the dignified Tuscan of the < thirteenth to fourteenth century reprobating that luxuriance ofj gesture which is one of the first things to strike an English eye in Italy down to our own day—more especially in the southern parts of the country. To have striven to obey Barberino's precept, under pain of being pronounced bad company, must have proved hard lines to some of his contemporaries and catechumens.) > If you chance into uncongenial company, take the first opportune occasion for getting away, with some parting words that shall not bewray your antipathy. To casual companions speak on their own respective subjects; as of God to the clergy, health to doctors, design to painters. 'With ladies of refinement and breeding, laud and uphold their honour and state by pleasant stories not oftentimes told already. And, if any one is contrary and froward, reply in excuse and defence; for it is derogatory to contend against those the overcoming of whom is loss.' If you come into the company of a great lord, or of persons who are all your superiors, and if they invite you to speak, inquire what the topic shall be. If you find nothing to say, wait for some one else to start you; and at worst be silent. In such company, be there no gesturing (again !). If you are walking with a great lord in any country, conform in a measure to the usages there prevalent. Following your superior, be respectful; to your equal, com- 44 BARBERINO. SALUTATIONS. plaisant, and treat him as superior; and, even with your inferior, tend towards the same line of conduct. This, however, does not apply to your own servant. Better exceed than fall short in showing respect to unknown persons. If your superior, in walking with you, wants to have you by his side, go to his left as a general rule, so that he may have the full use of his sword hand. If it rains, and he has no cloak, offer him yours; and, even if he declines, you must still dispense with it yourself. The like with your hat. Pay similar attentions to your equal, or to one that is a little your inferior: and even to your positive inferiors you must rather overdo courtesy than fall short. Thus also with women: you must explore the way for them, and attend on them, and in danger defend them with your life. In church, do not pray aloud, but silently. Wait not to be saluted. Be first in saluting; but do not overdo this, and never reiterate a salutation. Your own lord you must not salute, unless he comes from afar. You should uncover to him: then, if he is covered, cover again. Do not exceed in saluting an intimate, but enter at once into conversation; and do not hug him, unless he and you are indeed one.1 Bow to ladies without much speaking: and in towns ascertain the ordinary practice in such cases, and observe it. If you see a female relative in your own town, she being alone, or in company with only one person, and if she is hand- some, accost her as though she were not your relative, unless your relationship is a fact known to the bystanders. (This is a master- touch: and here is another, of a nearly similar sort)— In serving a man of distinction, if you meet his wife, affect not to observe her; and, if she gives you any commission to fulfil, don't show that it gratifies you. The 16th 'Documento' sets forth 'the method of making pre- sents so that the gift be acceptable.' It is so admirable in point of both sense and expression that I quote the original in a note, secure that that will be a gift acceptable to all such readers of these pages 'Prettily worded in the Italian: 'Ne abbracciar stringendo, Se non sei ben una cosa con quelle' BARBERINO. CONFERRING OBLIGATIONS. 45 as may te readers of Italian also.1 What can be more perfect than the censure awarded to those who are in a chafe until, by recipro- cating any service rendered to them, they shall have wiped it out*! 'Be all aware That it is no small flaw to mislike Eemaining under an obligation: Nay, it then seems that one is Uberal by compulsion.' Barberino's second work, Del Eeggimento e dei Costumi delle Donne, furnishes, strange to say, hardly any express rules for conduct at table; but some details may, for our general purpose, be picked out of an emporium whose abundance can be surmised from the fol- lowing programme. 1 Ancor c' è molta gente Ch' han certi vizj in dono ed in servire, Sì che poco gradire Vediamo in lor quando ne fanno altrui: Chè non pensano a cui, Nè che nè come, nè tanto nè quanto. Altri fanno un procanto Di sue bisogne, e poi pur fanno il dono. Ed altri certi sono Che danno indugio, e credon far maggiore. E molti che colore Pongon a scusa, e poi pur fanno e danno. Ed altri che, com' hanno Servigio ricevuto, affrettan troppo Disobbligar lo groppo Col qual eran legati alli serventi: Onde sien tutti attenti Che non è picciol vizio non volere Obbligato manere; Anzi par poi che sforzato sia largo. Dicemi alcuno: 'Io spargo Li don, per mia liberiate tenere; Non per altrui piacere.' Questo è gran vizio: ed è virtù maggiore, E più porta d'onore, Saver donar la sua persona altrui, Ricevendo da lui, E star apparecchiato a meritare E non ti vo' lassare Lo vizio di colui che colla faccia Non vuol dar sì che piaccia, Ma turba tutto, e sta gran pezza mutto. BARBERINO. THE REGGIMENTO DELLE DONNE. 'I will divide this work into 20 parts: And each part Shall present certain distinct grades, As the foregoing reading shows. The 1st will relate how a girl Should conduct herself When she begins to appreciate right and wrong, And to fear shame. 2nd, How, when She comes to a marriageable age. 3rd, How, when she has passed The period for marriage. 4th, if, after she has given up the hope of ever Obtaining a husband, it happens That yet she gets one, and remains At home awhile before going to him. The 5th, How, after she is married; And how the first, and how The second and third, Up to fifteen days; and the first month, And the second and third; And how on to her end: Both before having children, and afterwards, and if she Has none: and how in old age. The 6th, How, if she loses her husband: And how if she is old; And how if she is of middle age; And how if she is left young; And how if she has children; And how if she is a grandmother; And how if she still Eemains mistress of her husband's property; And if she, being a widow, takes The garb of religion. The 7th sets forth How she should comport herself If she marries again; And how if to a better [husband], And how if to a worse And less wealthy one; And how if she yet goes to a third; And how, after she has become a widow, And has again taken a husband, She remains awhile at home Before going to him; And how far re-marrying is praised or blamed. 8th, How, she BARBERINO. MEDIEVAL SLAVES. 47 Who assumes the habit . Of a religious order at home; And how this is praised or no. 9th, How, being shut up in a monastery In perpetual reclusion; And how the Abbess, Superior, and Prioress, And every other Portress or Nun. 10th, How she Who secludes herself alone Is named a Hermitess; and wherein this is to blame. 11th, How The maid who is In companionship with a lady; . And how if she is alone, And how if one among others in the like office. 12th, How Every serving-woman shall conduct herself, Whether serving a lady alone, or a lady along With the master; and also if any, by herself, Serves a master; and how This is to be praised, and how not. 13th, How, A nurse in the house, and how apart. 14th, How, . The female serf or slave ;1 1 The mention of a slave in a Florentine household of the late 13th or early 14th century may startle some readers. I translate the note which Signor Guglielmo Manzi, the editor of the Beggimento, supplies on this sub- ject. 'Slavery, which abases mankind, and revolts humanity and reason, diminished greatly when the Christian religion was introduced into the Roman Empire—that religion being in manifest opposition to so barbarous a system. The more the one progressed in the world, the more did the other wane; and, as Bodino observes in his book De BepuMica, slavery had ceased in Europe, to a great extent, by 1200. I shall follow this author, who is the only one to afford us some degree of light amid so great obscurity. In the year 1212 there were.still, according to him, slaves in Italy; as may be seen from the ordinances of William, King of Sicily, and of the Emperor Frederick II. for the kingdom of Naples, and from the decretals of the Topes Alexander III., Urban III., and Innocent III., concerning the marriages of slaves. The first of these Popes was elected in 1158, the second in 1185, and the third in 1198; bo that the principle of liberty cannot be dated earlier than in or about 1250— Bartolo, who lived in the year 1300, writing (Hostes de OaptivU, I.) that in his time there were no slaves, and that, according to the laws of Christendom, men were no longer put up to sale. This assertion, however, conflicts with the words of our author, who affirms that in his time—that is, at the commence- ment of the 14th century—the custom existed. But, in elucidation of Bar- tolo, it should be said that he implied that men were no longer sold, on the ground that this was prohibited by the laws of Christendom, and the edicts of sovereigns. In France it can be shown that in 1430 Charles VII. gave their BARBERINO. ROLES FOR LADIES. 49 And how she receives it; And how the Virtues Come before her.' The promise here is rich indeed, and the performance also is rich; though it may fairly be said that various sections fall considerably below one's expectations, and some of them are jejune enough. But, after every deduction has been made, the work fills a niche of its own, and without competitor. I add a few of the details most germane to our purpose. A young girl should drink but little, and that diluted. She must not loll at table, nor prop her arms thereon. Here she should speak even less than at other times. The daughters of Knights (Cavalier da Scudo), Judges, Physicians, or others of similar condition, had better learn the art of cooking, though possibly circum- stances will not call upon them to put it in practice. A Princess approaching the marriageable age should not go out to church; as she ought, as far as possible, to avoid being seen about. (The marriageable age, be it understood, is very early by Barberino's reckoning, being twelve years.) A woman should never go out alone. An unmarried young lady had better wear a topaz, which is proved by experience to be an antidote to carnal desire. A Provencal gentleman, who was praising his wife for her ex- treme simplicity in attire, was asked, '"Why then does she comb her hair 1' He replied: 'To show that she is a woman, whose very nature it is to be trim in person.' A Lady's-maid should not tell tales to her mistress of any pecca- dilloes of the husband: still less should she report to the husband anything against his wife, unless it be a grave and open misdoing. The section concerning Nurses (Part 13) contains much curious matter: especially as showing how much reliance was placed upon swaddling and other details of infant management, for the improve- ment of good looks, and correction of blemishes. Here we find also that the system against which Eousseau waged such earnest war, of mothers' not suckling their own children, was already in full vigour in Barberino's time. He enters no protest against it; but does re- commend mothers to follow the more natural plan, if they can, and so please God, and earn the children's love.1 A she-Barber must not ogle or flirt with her customers, but attend to her washes and razors. A Fruiteress must not put green leaves with old fruits, nor the best fruits uppermost, to take her customers in. A Landlady must not sell re-cooked victuals. / 1 Matteo Palmieri (see p. 58) indicates that the state of things was the same in his time, about 1430: he is more decided than Barberino in condemn- ing it. u 50 uarberi.no. a royal wedding-feast. A shrew earns the stick sometimes; nor should that form of cor- rection be spared to women who gad about after fortune-tellers. Beware of a Doctor who scrutinizes your pretty face more than your symptoms. Also of a Tailor who wants to serve you gratis, or who is over-officious in trying on your clothes: and beware still more yjf a Tailor who is tremulous. If you go to any balls where men are present, let it be by day, or at any rate with abundance of light. The use of thick unguents is uncleanly, especially in hot weather; it makes the teeth black, the lips green, and the skin prematurely old- looking. Baths of soft water, not in excess, keep the skin young and fresh: but those in which hot herbs are boiled scorch and blacken it. Dark hair becomes lighter by being kept uncovered, especially in moonlight. 'Courtesy is liberal magnificence, which suffers not violence, nor ingenuity, nor obligation, but pleases of itself alone.' To these brief jottings I subjoin one extract of some length, de- scriptive of the marriage-festivity of a Queen. To abridge its details would be to strip it of its value: but I apprehend that some of these details require to be taken mm grano salis, Barberino having allowed himself a certain poetical license. Now it behoves to dine. The trumpets sound, and all the instruments, Sweet songs and diversions around. Boughs, with flowers, tapestries, and satins, Strewn on the ground; and great lengths of silk "With fine fringes and broiderings on the walls. Silver and gold, and the tables set out, Covered couches, and the joyous chambers, Full kitchens and various dishes; Donzels deft in serving, And among them damsels still more so. Tourneying in the cloisters and pathways; Closed balconies and covered loggias; Many cavaliers and people of worth, Ladies and damsels of great beauty. Old women hidden in prayer to God, Be they served there where they stay. Wines come in, and abundant comfits; There are the fruits of various kinds. The birds sing in cages, and on the roofs: The stags leap, and fawns, and deer. Open gardens, and their scent spreads. There greyhounds and braches run in the leash. Pretty spaniel pets with the ladies: BAM3EHIN0. THE BRIDE. 51 Several parrots go about the tables. Falcons, ger-falcons, hawks, and sparrow-hawks, Carry various snakes all about. The palfreys houselled at the doors; The doors open, and the halls partitioned As suits the people that have come. Expert seneschals and other officers. Bread of manna only, and the weather splendid. Fountains rise up from new springs: They sprinkle where they are wanted, and are beautiful. The trumpet sounds, and the bridegroom with his following Chooses his company as he likes. Ladies amorous, joyous, and lovely, Trained, and noble, and of like age, Take the bride, and. usher her as befits: They give her place to sit at table. Now damsels and donzels around, The many ladies who have taken their seats, All prattle of love and joy. A gentle wind which keeps off the flies Tempers the air, and refreshes hearts. From the sun spring laughs in the fields: Nowhere can the eye settle. At your foot run delightful rills: At times the fish leap from the water. Jongleurs1 clad by gift: Here vestments of fashion unprecedented, There with pearls and precious stones Upon their heads, and solemn garb: Here are rings which emit a splendour Like that of the sun outside. Now all the men and all the ladies have washed, And then the water is given to the bride: And I resume speaking of her deportment. Let her have washed her hands aforetime, So that she may then not greatly bedim the water. Let her not much set-to at washing in the basin, Nor touch mouth or teeth in washing: 1 'Uomin di corte.' This term was first applied to heralds, chamberlains, and the like court-ofBoials: subsequently to the entertainers of a court, 'giullari,' jesters, and buffoons : and in process of time it came to include courtiers of whatever class. In the early writers—such as Barberino, Boc- caccio, &c.—it is not always easy for a translator to pitch upon the precise equivalent: the reader should understand a personage who might be as romantic as a Troubadour, or as quaint as a Touchstone—but tending rather towards the latter extreme. BARBER1N0. THE BRIDAL CHAMBER. For she can do this afterwards in her chamber, When it shall be needful and fitting. Of the savoury and nicest viands Let her accept, but little, and avoid eating many: And let her, several days before, have noted The other customs above written; Here let her observe those which beseem the place. Let her not intervene to reprehend the servitors, Nor yet speak, unless occasion requires. Let it appear that she hardly minds any diversion, But that only timidity quenches her pleasure: But let her, in eating, so manage her hands That, in washing, the clear water may remain. The table being removed, let her stay with the ladies Somewhat more freely than at her arrival: Yet for this day let her, I pray, Abstain from laughing as far as she can, keeping Her countenance so as not to appear out of humour, But only timid, as has often been said. If the other ladies sleep that day, Let her also repose among them, And prepare herself the better for keeping awake. Let her drinking be small. I approve a light collation, Eating little: and in like wise at supper Let her avoid too many comfits or fruits: Let her make it rather slight than heavy. Some ladies make ready to go, And some others to retire to their chambers. Those remain who are in charge of her: All approach to cheer her. She embraces her intimates: Let her make the kindest demonstrations to all—- 'Adieu, adieu'—tearful at parting. They all cheer her up, and beg her to be Confident, and many vouch That her husband has gone to a distance: Her guardians say the same. They bring her inwards to a new chamber, Whose walls are so draped That nothing is seen save silk and gold; The coverlets starred, and with moons. The stones shine as it were the sun: At the corners four rubies lift up a flame So lovely that it touches the heart: Here a man kindles inside and out. Richest cambrics cover the floor. BARBERINO. ITS DECORATION. 53 Here baldaquins and the benches around All covered with woven pearls; Pillows all of smooth samite, With the down of griffin-birds'inside; Many topazes, sapphires, and emeralds, With various stones, as buttons to these. Beds loaded on beds with no bedstead, Draped all with foreign cloths : 2 Above the others the chiefest and soft, With a new covering of byssus.3 Of this the down is from the phoenix-bird : 4 It has one bolster and no more, Not too large, but of fine form. Over it sheets of worked silk, Soft, yielding, delicate, and durable: A superb quilt, and cuttings-out5 within; And, traced with the needle and of various cutting, Fishes and birds and all animals. A vine goes round the whole, The twigs of pearls, and the foliage of gems, Among which are those of all virtues, Written of or named as excellent. In the midst of it turns a wheel Which represents the figure of the world; Wherein birds, in windows of glass, Sing if you will, and if not they are all mute. There puppies of various kinds, Not troublesome, and they make no noise: If you call them, they make much of you. On the benches flowers heaped and strewn— Great is the odour, but not excessive: Much balsam in vessels of crystal. 1 'Uccelli grifoni.' This seems a daring suggestion: possibly, as a griffin is a compound of eagle and lion, we are to understand that the eagle is the griffin-iinf. 1 'Drappi oltramarin'—which may mean foreign (from beyond sea), or else of ultramarine colour: I rather suppose the former. "'Lana di pesce'—literally, fish's wool. The term is new to me, nor do I find it explained in dictionaries: I can only therefore surmise that it de- signates the silky filaments of certain sea-mollusks, such as the pinna of the Mediterranean. This byssus is still made use of in Italy for gloves and similar articles. 4 1! * 'Intaglj ; * and the next line gives the word 'Scolture. Giovanni Villani notes that in 1330 a prohibition was issued against 'dresses cut-out or painted :' the fashion having run into the extravagance of 'dresses cut-out with different sorts of cloth, and made of stuffs trimmed variously with silks.' BARBERINO. THE BRIDEGROOM. A nurse says: 'All things are yours. You will lie by yourself in that bed: We will all be sleeping here.' They show her the wardrobe at one side, "Wherein they say that they remain keeping watch. They wash the Lady's face and hands With rose-water mixed with violets, For in that country such is the wont. They dress her hair, wind up her tresses, Stand round about her, help her to disrobe. Who takes her shoes off, happy she! Her shoes are by no means of leather. They look her in the face whether she is timorous: She prays them to stay. They tell her that they will sleep outside the bed, At her feet, on the cloths I have spoken of. They make-believe to do so, and the Lady smiles. They put her to bed: first they hold her,— They turn the quilt over: and, her face being displayed, All the shows of gems and draperies Wane before that amorous beauty Which issues from the eyes she turns around. Her visage shines: the nurses disappear: The Lady closes her eyes, and sleeps. Then these nurses trick the Lady. They leave by the door which they had not shown her: They go to the bridegroom who is waiting outside. Him they tell of the trick. There come around the new knight, Young lord, puissant crown, Many donzels and knights who wait Solely for his chamber-service. They give him water, as to the Lady: His blond head each adorns, Bright his countenance. Every one Has gladness and joy, glad in his happiness. They leave him in his jerkin, they bring him within: They take off his shoes at the draped entry. They all without, and the nurses at one side, Stay quiet. A reveillee begins, And so far off that it gives no annoy. The comely King crosses himself, and looks: The Lady and the gems make a great splendour, And it seems to him that this Queen is asleep. He enters softly, and wholly undresses: It appears that the Lady heaves a sigh. 5(3 ORAZIOLO DE' BOMBAGLIOLI. These ere I yield I must know well to whom; And, for that I would not be robbed of them, I speak not all the virtue that they have: Yet thus far speaking— Blessed were the man Who once should touch them, were it but a little: See them I say not, for that might not be. My girdle, clipping pleasure round-about, Over my clear dress even unto my knees Hangs down with sweet precision tenderly; And under it Virginity abides. Faithful and simple and of plain belief She is, with her fair garland bright like gold, And very fearful if she overhears Speech of herself; the wherefore ye perceive That I speak soft lest she be made ashamed. Lo ! this is she who hath for company The Son of God, and Mother of the Son. Lo ! this is she who sits with many in heaven: Lo ! 'this is she with whom are few on earth.' Tiraboschi mentions a book which might perhaps be useful in further illustrating Italian manners at the end of the 13th century: but I have no direct knowledge of it,—a Treatise on the Governing of a Family, written by Sandro di Pippozzo in 1299. A treatise on Moral Virtues {Sopra le Virtu Morali) was composed by Graziolo de' Bombaglioli, a Bolognese, in Italian verse, with a comment in Latin, the date being about the middle of the 14th century; and was pub- lished in 1642, being at that time mistakenly attributed to King Robert of Naples. It is not a Courtesy-Book; but, referring back to what has been said (on p. 12) regarding the definitions of nobility given by Brunetto Latini, Dante, and Barberino, I may cite part of what Bombaglioli says on the same subject: 'Neither long-standing wealth nor blood confers nobility; But virtue makes a man noble (gentile); And it lifts from a vile place A man who makes himself lofty by his goodness.' A third and older book, no doubt very much to our purpose, would be one which Ubaldini (in his edition of Barberino's Reggimento) refers to as having been laid under contribution by that poet in com- piling his Documenti ot'Amore—viz. a rhymed composition, in the Eomagnole dialect, on Methods of Salutation, by TJgolino Brucola AGNOLO PANDOLFINI. 57 (or Bruzola). This work, again, is unknown to me; and, as I can trace no mention of it even in Tiraboschi, a writer of most omnivorous digestion, I infer that it may not improbably have perished. Skipping therefore about a century and a quarter, within which Italian literature was made for ever illustrious by the Vommedia of Dante, and the writings of Petrarca and Boccaccio, not to speak of others, we come to the early 15th century, still in Florence. Agnolo Pandolfini wrote on the same subject as Sandro di Pippozzo, the Governing of a Family {Del Governo della Famiglia). He died in 1446, aged about 86; and the date of his treatise seems to be towards 1425—30. This work must not be confounded with one bearing the same title, frequently cited in the Dizionario della Crusca, and which deals more particularly with morals and religion. Pandolfini, both by birth and doings, was a very illustrious son of Florence: in 1414, 1420, and 1431, he held the highest dignity of the state, that of Gonfalonier of Justice. He opposed the banishment of Cosmo de' Medici, and was treated with distinguished honour by that great though dangerous citizen on his return. His treatise takes the form of a dialogue, wherein Agnolo holds forth ore rotundo to his sons and grandsons. The old gentleman is indeed fearfully oracular, and possessed with a fathomless belief in himself. He writes well, and with plenty of good sense. His book is not, in the straitest acceptation of the term, a Courtesy-Book, but rather a cross between the moral and the prudential—a dissertation of (Economics. Here are some samples of his lore. To choose a house wherein one can settle comfortably for life is a great consideration. A locality with good air and good wine should be sought out: better to buy it than to rent it. The whole family should have one roof, one entrance-door, one fire, and one dining-table: this subserves the purposes both of affection and of thrift. The family and household should be well dressed. Even when living a country life, they should keep on the town dress: good cloth and cheerful colours, but without fancy-ornaments save for the women. The head of the family should commit to his wife the immediate care of the household goods: men, however careful, should not be poking and prying into every corner, and looking whether the candles have too thick a wick. 'It is well for every lady to know PALMIERI. THE VITA CIVILE. 59 Fortitude, and Prudence, are treated of at large—also other virtues comprised in these. The next is 3rd in order, and is all devoted to Justice, which is the noblest part of men, and above all others neces- sary for maintaining every well-ordered commonwealth. Wherefore here is diffusely treated of Civil Justice; how people should conduct themselves in peace; and how wars are managed; how, within the city by those who hold the magistracies, and beyond the walls by the public officials, the general well-being is provided for. The last book alone is written concerning Utility, and provides for the plenty, ornament, property, and abundant riches, of the whole body politic. Then in the final portion, as last conclusion, is shown, not without true doctrine, what is the state of the souls which in the world, /intent upon public good, have lived according to the precepts of life here set forth by us; in reward whereof they have been by God re- ceived into heaven, to be happy eternally in glory with his saints.' Palmieri would have boys eschew any sedentary pastimes. They may jump, run, and play at ball; and music is highly suitable for them. To beat them is a barbarism. This may indeed, sometimes and perhaps, be necessary with boys 'who are to follow mechanical and servile arts,' but not with those who are carefully brought up by father and preceptor. Begin with encouragements to the well- behaved, and admonitions to the naughty: and the severer punish- ments should be 'to shut him in; to withhold such food and other things as he best likes, to take away his clothing, and so on; to make him ponder long while over his misdoing.' (This is singularly gentle discipline for a.d. 1430: indeed Palmieri intimates that 'almost all people' advocated manual correction in his time. Had any other writer, of so early a date, discovered that 'spare the rod and spoil the child' is not the sum-total of management for minors t) A dinner-party is considered well made up, in point of numbers, if the persons present are not less than three, nor more than nine. A larger number than the latter cannot all join together in united conversation. 'The expenses of a munificent man should be in things that bring honour and distinction; not private, but public—as in build- ings, and ornaments of churches, theatres, loggias, public feasts, games, entertainments; and in such like magnificences he should not compute nor reckon how much he spends, but by what means the works may be to the utmost wonderful and beautiful.' (Nice G2 CASTIGLIONE. GRACE. Almost the only illustration which Castiglione supplies of the art of dining is the following anecdote: 'The Marquis Federico of Mautua, father of our Lady Duchess, being at table with many gentlemen, one of them, after he had eaten a whole stew, said, " My Lord Marquis, pardon me ;" and, so saying, he began to suck up the broth that was left. Forthwith then said the Marquis: "You should ask pardon of the pigs, for to me there is no harm done at all!"' Some other points I take as they come. 'Having many a time reflected wherefrom Grace arises (not to speak of those who derive it from the stars), I find one most uni- versal rule, which seems to me to hold good, in this regard, in all human things done and said, more than aught else; and this is—to avoid affectation as much as one can, and as a most bristling and perilous rock, and (to use perhaps a new-coined word) to do every- thing with a certain slightingness [sprezzatura], which shall conceal art, and show that what is done and said comes to one without trouble and almost without thinking.' Yet there may be as much affectation in slightingness itself as in punctilio. Instances adduced of the latter, as regards the care of the person, are the setting a scrap of looking-glass in a recess of one's cap, and a comb in one's sleeve, and keeping a page to follow one perpetually about with a sponge and a clothes-brush. Female affectations were ' the plucking out the hair of eyebrows and forehead, and undergoing all those inconveniences which you ladies fancy to be altogether occult from men, and which nevertheless are all known.' The perfect Courtier ought to know music—sing at sight, and play on various instruments; he ought also to have a practical know- ledge of drawing and painting. Better even than singing at sight is singing solo to the viol, and most especially thus singing in recita- tive [per recitare], 'which adds to the words so much grace and force that great marvel it is.' All stringed instruments are well suited for the Courtier; not so wind-instruments, 'which Minerva interdicted to Alcibiades, because they have an unseemly air.' The Court Lady also ought to have knowledge of letters, music, and painting, as well as of dancing, and how to bear her part in entertainments [festeggiare]. 'Old men blame in us many things which, of themselves, are neither good nor bad, but only because they used not to do them: and they say that it is unbefitting for young men to go through the city riding, especially on mules; to wear in the winter fur linings and long robes; to wear a cap [berrettd], at any rate until the man has reached eighteen years of age,—and other the like things. Wherein in sooth they mistake : for these customs, besides being con- venient and serviceable, are introduced by fashion, and universally accepted,—as aforetime to dress in the open tunic [giornea], with open CASTIGLIONE. FACETIAE. 03 hose and polished shoes, and for gallantry to carry all day a hawk on i the fist for no reason, and to dance without touching the lady's hand, 1 and to adopt many other modes which, as they would now be most awkward, so then were they highly prized.' Federico Fregoso, the chief speaker of the second evening, is of opinion that a man of rank ought not to honour with his presence a village feast, where the spectators and company would be coarse people. To this Gaspar Pallavicino demurs; saying that, in his native Lombardy, many young noblemen will dance all day under the sun with country people, and play with them at wrestling, running, leap- ing, and so on—exercises of strength and dexterity in which the countrymen are often the winners. Fregoso rejoins that this, if done at all, should be not by way of emulation but of complaisance, and when the nobleman feels tolerably sure of conquering; and generally, in all sorts of exercises save feats of arms, he should stop short of anything like professional zeal or excellence. [A concluding hint worth consideration in these days of 'Athletic Clubs.'] The discourse of Bernardo Bibiena on facetiae is a magazine of good things, both anecdotic, epigrammatic, and critical. The speaker is particularly severe on 'funny men' and 'jolly dogs'; concerning whom I venture to introduce one consecutive extract of some little length. 'The Courtier should be very heedful of his beginnings, so as to leave a pleasing impression, and should consider how baneful and fatal it is to fall into the contrary. And this danger do they more than others run who make it their business to be amus- ing, and assume with these their quips a certain liberty authorizing and licensing them to do and say whatever strikes them, without any consideration. Thus these people start off on matters whence, not knowing their way out again, they try to help themselves off by raising a laugh: and this also they do so scurvily that it fails; so that they occasion the severest tedium to those who see and hear them, and they themselves remain most crestfallen. Sometimes, thinking thus to be witty and lively, in the presence of ladies of honour, and often even in speaking to them, they set-to at uttering most nasty and indecent words: and, the more they see them blush, so much the more do they account themselves good courtiers: and ever and anon they laugh and plume themselves at so bright a gift which they think their own. But for no purpose do they commit so many imbecilities as in order to be thought "boon companions." This is that only name which appears to them worthy of praise, and which they vaunt more than any other; and, to acquire it, they bandy the most blun- dering and vile blackguardisms in the world. Often will they shove one another down-stairs; knock ribs with bludgeons and bricks; throw handfuls of dust into the eyes; and bring down people's horses upon them in ditches, or on the slope of a hill. Then, at 64 CASTIGLIONE. FRENCHMEN AND SPANIARDS. table, soups, sauces, jellies, all do they flop in one another's face : and then they laugh! And he who can do the most of these things ac- counts himself the best and most gallant courtier, and fancies he has gained great glory. And, if sometimes they invite a gentleman to these their pleasantries, and he abstains from such horse-play, forth- with they say that he makes himself too sage and grand, and is not a "boon companion." But worse remains to tell. There are some who vie and wager which of them can eat and drink the most nauseous and fetid things; and these they hunt up so abhorrent to human senses that it is impossible to mention them without the ut- most disgust.—" And what may these be 1" said Signor Lodovico Pio.—Messer Federico replied: "Let the Marquis Febus [da Ceva] tell you, as he has often seen them in France; and perhaps the thing has happened to himself."—The Marquis Febus replied: "I have seen nothing of the sort done in France that is not also done in Italy. But, on the other hand, what is praiseworthy in Italian habits of dress, festivities, banqueting, fighting, and whatever else becomes a courtier, is all derived from the French."—"I deny not," answered Messer Federico, " that there are among the French also most noble and un- assuming cavaliers : and I for my part have known many truly worthy of all praise. Yet some are to be found by no means well-bred : and, speaking generally, it appears to me that the Spaniards get on better in manner with the Italians than the French do; since that calm gravity peculiar to the Spaniards seems to me much more conformable to us than the rapid liveliness which is to be recognized almost in every movement of the French race—which in them is not derogatory, and even has grace, because to themselves it is so natural and appro- priate that it indicates no sort of affectation in them. There are in- deed many Italians who would fain force themselves to imitate that manner; and they can manage nothing else than jogging the head in speaking, and bowing sideways with a bad grace, and, when they are walking about, going so fast that the grooms cannot keep up with them. And with these modes they fancy they are good French people, and partake of their offhand ways: a thing indeed which seldom succeeds save with those who have been brought up in France, and have got into these habits from childhood upwards." The reader will probably agree with me in thinking that Casti- glione's own opinion is expressed here rather in the speech of Federico Fregoso than of the Marquis Febus; and that the all-accomplished Italian patrician of the opening sixteenth century by no means re- garded the French as the courteous nation par excellence. Elsewhere it is remarked that the French recognize nobility in arms only, and utterly despise letters and literary men; and that presumption is a leading trait in the national character. GIOVANNI BATTTSTA POSSEVINI. 65 Castiglione does not seem to have entertained the same objection to gesturing that Francesco da Barberino did. In amusing narration or story-telling, at any rate, he approves of this accompaniment; speaking of people who 'relate and express so pleasantly something ,which may have happened to them, or which they have seen or heard, that with gestures and words they set it before your eyes, and make you almost lay your hand upon it.' The banefulness of a wicked Courtier is set forth in strong terms. 'No punishment has yet been invented horrid and tremendous enough for chastising those wicked Courtiers who direct to a bad end their elegant and pleasant manners and good breeding, and by these means creep into the good graces of their sovereigns, to corrupt them, and divert them from the path of virtue, and lead them into vice: for such people may be said to infect with mortal poison, not a vessel of which one only person has to drink, but the public fountain which the whole population uses.' j The last two authors on our list, Giovanni Battista Possevini and Giovanni della Casa, will bring us to about the middle of the six- teenth century; beyond which I do not propose to pursue the subject of Italian Courtesy-Books. We are now fairly out of the middle ages, and in the full career of transition from the old to the new. Indeed, were it not that Della Casa's work, II Galateo, is so pecu- liarly apposite to our purpose, I might have been disposed to leave both these writers aside as a trifle too modern in date: but, coming closer as that does to the exact definition of a Courtesy-Book than any other of the compositions which we have been considering, it must perforce find admission here,—and a few words may at the same time be spared to Possevini, who introduces us to a special department of manners. And first of Possevini. This writer was (like Castiglione) a Mantuan, and died young—- perhaps barely aged thirty. A famous man of letters, Paolo Giovio, found him to be 'a son of melancholy, and so learned, according to the title of Christ on the cross,1 as to make one marvel: he is a good poet.' The book we have to deal with is of considerable size, a 1 A noticeable proverbial phrase. It ia new to me ; but I suppose it means' either ' learned in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin' (the three languages in which the inscription over the cross was written), or else perhaps 'learned in lan- guages generally.' E DELLA CASA. THE GALATEO. 67 his poems are noted for licentiousness, and are even reputed to have damaged his ecclesiastical career, and lost him a Cardinal's hat. The works thus impugned appear all to belong to his youth. He had already obtained some church-preferment, and was settled in Eome, by the year 1538. On the election of Pope Julius III., in 1550, Delia Gasa lived privately in the city or territory of Venice, in great state, and distinguished for courteous and charitable munificence. Paul IV., who succeeded to the papacy in 1555, re- called him to Eome, and created him Secretary of State. The Gulateo (written, I presume, somewhere about 1550) has always been a very famous book in Italy; and of that sort of fame which includes great general as well as literary acceptance. It is a model of strong sententious Tuscan; approaching the pedantic, yet racily idiomatic at the same time. The title in full runs Galateo, or concerning Manners; wherein, in the Character of an Elderly Man [Vecchio Idiota"\ instructing a Youth, are set forth the things which ought to be observed and avoided in ordinary intercourse. The paragraphs are numbered, and amount to 180.1 The name Galateo is 'That most capital and characteristic book, the Autobiography of the tragedian Alfieri, contains a reference to the Galateo, which, longish as it is, I am tempted to extract. 'My worthy Paciaudi was wont to advise me not to neglect, amid my laborious readings, works in prose, which he learnedly termed the nurse of poetry. As regards this, I remember that one day he brought me the Galateo of Delia Casa; recommending me to ponder it well with respect to the turn of speech, which assuredly is pure Tuscan, and the reverse of all Frenchifying. I, who in boyhood had (as we all have) read it loosely, understood it little, and relished it not at all, felt almost offended at this schoolboyish and pedantic advice. Full of venom against the said Galateo, I opened it. And, at the sight of that first Conciossiacosache, to which is trailed-on that long sentence so pompous and so wanting in pith, such an impulse of rage seized me that, hurling the book out of window, I cried like a maniac: "Surely a hard and disgusting necessity, that, in order to write tragedies at the age of twenty-seven, I must swallow down again this childish chatter, and relax my brain with such pedantries!" He smiled at my uneducated poetic furor; and prophesied that I would yet read the Galateo, and that more than once. And so it turned out; but several years afterwards, when I had thoroughly hardened my neck and shoulders to bear the grammatical yoke. And I read not only the Galateo, but almost all our prose writers of the fourteenth century, and annotated them too: with what profit I cannot say. But true it is that, were any one to give them a good reading as regards their turn of phrase, and to manage availing himself with judgment and skill of their array, rejecting the cast clothes of their ideas, he might perhaps afterwards, in his writings as well philosophic as poetic or historic, or of any other class, give a richness, brevity, propriety, and force of DELLA CA8A. COUNT RICCIA.RDO. given to the book in consequence of a little anecdote which it in- troduces, apparently from real life. There was once a Bishop of Verona named Giovanni Matteo Giberti, noted for liberality. He entertained at his house a certain Count Eicciardo—a highly accom- plished nobleman, but addicted (proh jmdor I) to eating his victuals with 'an uncouth action of lips and mouth, masticating at table with a novel noise very unpleasing to hear.' The Bishop therefore deemed it the kindest thing he could do to have the Count escorted on his homeward way by a remarkably discreet, well-bred, and experienced gentleman of the episcopal household, named Galateo, who wound up a handsome compliment at parting with a plain exposition of the guest's peccadillo. His own misdoing was news to the Count: but he took the information altogether in good part, and seriously pro- mised amendment. Let us now dip into the Galateo for a few axioms; first on dining, and afterwards on other points of manners. You must not smell at the wine-cup or the platter of any one, not even at your own; nor hand the wine which you have tasted to another, unless your very intimate friend; still less offer him any fruit at which you have bitten. Some monsters thrust their snouts, like pigs, into their broth, and never raise their eyes or hands from the victuals, and gorge rather than eat with swollen cheeks, as if they were blowing at a trumpet or a fire; and, soiling their arms almost to the elbows, make a fearful mess of their napkins.1 And these same napkins they will use to wipe off perspiration, and even to blow their noses. You must not so soil your fingers as to make the napkin nasty in wiping them: neither clean them upon the bread which you are to eat: [we should hope not]. In company, and « most especially at table, you should not bully nor beat any servants; colour, to his style, which I have not as yet seen fully gracing any Italian writer.' A word or two may be spared to the formidable-looking vocable Conciosnacosachi which so excited Alfieri's bile. It might be translated literally as ' Herewith-be-something-that;' and corresponds in practice to the English 'Forasmuch as'—or more briefly 'since,' or 'as.' The Italian word poiclie serves all the same uses, save that of longwindedness. But Concios- tiacosache itself is not lengthy enough for some Italian lips: and I believe that even the phrase into which it has sometimes been prolonged—' Con cio sia cosa fosse massimamente che'—has been used for other than burlesquing purposes.. 1 The comparison whereby our Archbishop illustrates the condition of the napkins must perfume our page only in its native Italian—' Che le pezze degli agiamenti sono piu nette.' DELLA CASA. RULES POIl THE TABLE. 69 nor must you express anger, whatever may occur to excite it; nor talk of any distressful matters—wounds, illnesses, deaths, or pesti- lence. If any one falls into this mistake, the conversation should be dexterously changed: 'although, as I once heard said by a worthy man our neighbour, people often would be as much eased by crying as by laughing. And he affirmed that with this motive had the mournful fictions termed tragedies been first invented: so that, being set forth in theatres, as was then the practice, they might bring tears to the eyes of those who had need of this, and thus they, weeping, might be cured of their discomfort. But, be this as it may, for us it is not befitting to sadden the minds of those with whom we converse, especially on occasions when people have met for refreshment and recreation, and not to cry: and, if any one languishes with a longing to weep, right easy will it be to relieve him with strong mustard, or to set him somewhere over the smoke.') You should not scratch yourself at table, nor spit; or, if spit you must, do it in a seemly way. Some nations have been so self-controlling as not to spit at all.1 'We must also beware of eating so greedily that hence comes hiccupping or other disagreeable act; as he does who hurries so that he has to puff and blow, to the annoyance of the whole company.' Rub not your teeth with the napkin—still less with your fingers: nor rinse out your mouth, nor spit forth wine. 'Nor, on rising from table, is it a nice habit to cany your toothpick2 in your mouth, liko a bird which is in nest-building,—or behind the ear, like a barber.' You must not hang the toothpick round your neck: it shows that you are 'overmuch prepareaand provided for the service of the gullet,' and you might as well hang your spoon in the same way. Neither must you loll on the table; nor by gesture or sound symbolize your great relish of viands or wine—a habit fit only for tavern-keepers and topers. Also you should not put people out of countenance by pressing them to eat or drink. 'To present to another something from the plate before oneself does not seem to me well, unless he who presents is of much the 1 This is affirmed by Xenophon of the Persians: he says in the Cyropeedia that, both of old and in his own time, they did without either spitting or blow- ing the nose—a proof of temperance, and of energetic exercise which carried off the moisture of the body. 2 Stecco. 'Toothpick' is the only appropriate technical sense for stecco given in the dictionaries; and I suppose it is correct here, although Delia Casa's very next sentence, denouncing the carrying of this implement round the neck, designates it by the word stmzicadenti, and it seems odd that the two terms should be thus juxta-posed or opposed. If stecco does not in this passage really mean 'toothpick,' I should infer that it indicates some skewer-like object, used possibly as a fork—i. e. to secure the viands on the plate, while they are severed with a spoon, and by that conveyed to the mouth (see pp. 21 and 34 as to the use of spoon instead of fork in Bonvicino's time). This would in fact be a sort of chop-stick. Such au inference is quite compatible with the general sense of the word stecco—any stake or splint of wood. 70 DEIXA CA8A. THE SERVITORS. higher grade, so that the recipient is thereby honoured. For, among equals in condition, it looks aa if he who offers the gift were setting himself up somehow as the superior: and sometimes that which a man gives is not to the taste of him it is given to. Besides, it implies that the dinner has no abundance of dishes, or is not well distributed, when one has too much, and another too little: and the master of the house might take it as an affront. However, in this one should do as others do, and not as it might be best to do in the abstract: and in such fashions it is better to err along with others than to be alone in well-doing. But, whatever may be the best course in this, you must not refuse what is offered you; for it would seem as if you slighted or reproved the donor.' For one man to pledge another in the wine-cup is not an Italian usage, nor yet rightly nationalized, and should be avoided. Decline such an invitation ; or confess yourself the worse drinker, and give but one sip to your wine. 'Thank God, among the many pests which have come to us from beyond the mountains, this vilest one has not yet reached us, of regarding drunkenness as not merely a laughing-matter, but even a merit.' The only time when you should wash hands in company is before going to table: you should do it then even though your hands be quite clean, 'so that he who dips with you into the same platter may know that for certain.' "Well-bred servitors, serving at table, must on no account scratch their heads or any other part of the body, nor thrust their hands anywhere under their clothes out of sight, but keep them 'visible and beyond all suspicion,' and scrupulously clean. Those who hand about plates or cups must abstain from spitting or coughing, and most especially from sneezing. If a pear or bread has been set to toast, the attendant must not blow off any ash-dust, but jog or otherwise nick it off. He must not offer his pocket-handkerchief to any one, though it be clean from the wash; for the person to whom it is offered has no assurance of that fact, and may find it distasteful. The usher must not take it upon himself to invite strangers, or to retain them to dine with his lord: if he does so, no one who knows his place will act on the invitation. Scraping the teeth together, whistling, screaming, grinding stones, and rubbing iron, are grievous noises: and a man who has a bad voice should eschew singing, especially a solo. Coughing and sneezing must not be done loud. 'And there is also to be found such a person as, in yawning, will howl and bray like an ass; and another who, with his mouth still agape, will go on with his talk, and emits that voice, or rather that noise, which a mute produces when he tries to speak.' Indeed, much yawning should be altogether avoided: it shows that your company does not amuse you, and that you are in a vacant mood. 'And thus, when a man yawns among others who are idle and unoccupied, all they, as you may often have observed, yawn forthwith in response; as if the man had recalled to 72 DELLA CASA. CEREMOXIOUSNESS. least ceremonious nation, I suppose, under heaven (and that is by no means a term of disparagement). I subjoin the passage from Della Casa, not a little condensed; followed by another, still more abridged, concerning the essence and right of elegant manners. 'And therefore ceremonies (which we name, as you hear, by a foreign word, as not having one of our own—which shows that our ancestors knew them not, so that they could not give them any name) -—ceremonies, I say, differ little, to my thinking, from lies and dreams, on account of their emptiness. As a worthy man has more than once shown me, those solemnities which the clergy use in relation to altars and the divine offices, and towards God and sacred things, are pro- perly called "ceremonies." But, as soon as men began to reverence one the other with artificial fashions beyond what is fitting, and to call each other " master" and "lord," bowing and cringeing and bend- ing in sign of reverence, and uncovering, and naming one another by far-sought titles, and kissing hands, as if theirs were sacred like those of priests,—somebody, as this new and silly usage had as yet no name, termed it "ceremoniousness ": I think, by way of ridicule. Which usage, beyond a doubt, is not native to us but foreign and barbarous, and imported, whencesoever it be, only of late into Italy,—which, unhappy, abased, and spiritless in her doings and influence, has grown and gloried only in vain words and superfluous titles. Cere- monies, then,—if we refer to the intention of those who practise them—are a vain indication of honour and reverence towards the person to whom they are addressed, set forth in words and shows, and concerned with titles and proffers. I say "vain " in so far as we honour in seeming those whom we hold in no reverence, and do some- times despise. And yet, that we may not depart from the customs of others, we term them " Jllustrissimo Signor" so-and-so, and "Eccel- lentissimo Signor" such-a-one: and in like wise we sometimes pro- fess ourselves " most devoted servants'-' to some one whom we would rather dis-serve than serve. This usage, however, it is not for us in- dividually to change—nay, we are compelled (as it is not our own fault, but that of the time) to second it; but this has to be done with discretion. Wherefore it is to be considered that ceremonies are practised either for profit, or for vanity, or by obligation. And every lie which is uttered for our own profit is a fraud and sin and a dis- honest thing (as indeed one cannot in any sort of case lie with honour) : and this sin do flatterers commit. And, if ceremonies are, as we said, lies and false flatteries, whenever we practise them with a view to gain we act like false and bad men: wherefore, with that view, no ceremony ought to be practised. Those which are practised by obligation must in no wise be omitted; for he who omits them is not only disliked but injurious. And thus he who addresses a single person as " You " (if it is not a person of the very lowest condition) 74 DELLA CASA. TRATTATO DEGLI UFFICI COMUNI. got on perfectly well without them: as our own nation, not longogo, did almost wholly. But the illnesses of others have infected us also with this and many other infirmities. For which reasons, when we have submitted to usage, all the residue in this matter that is super- fluous is a kind of licit lying: or rather, from that point onwards, not licit but forbidden—and therefore a displeasing and tedious thing to noble souls, which will not live on baubles and appearances. Vain and elaborate and superabundant ceremonies are flatteries but little covert, and indeed open and recognized by all But there is another sort of ceremonious persons who make an art and trade of this, and keep book and document of it. To such a class of persons, a giggle; and to such another, a smile. And the more noble shall sit upon the chair, and the less noble upon the settle. Which ceremonies I think were imported from Spain into Italy. But our country has given them a poor reception, and they have taken little root here; for this so punctilious distinction of nobility is a vexation to us:1 and therefore no one ought to set himself up as judge, to decide who is more noble, and who less so.—To speak generally, ceremoniousness annoys most men; because by it people are prevented from living in their own way—that is, prevented from liberty, which every man desires before all things else.' 'Agreeable manners are those which afford delight, or at least do not produce any vexation, to the feelings, appetite, or imagination, of those with whom we have to do. A man should not be content with doing that which is right, but should also study to do it with grace. And grace [leggiadria] is as it were a light which shines from the fittingness of things that are well composed and well assorted the one with the other, and all of them together; without which measure even the good is not beautiful, and beauty is not pleasurable. Therefore well-bred persons should have regard to this measure, both in walking, standing, and sitting, in gesture, de- meanour, and clothing, in words and in silence, and in rest and in action.' Besides the Galateo, Monsignor della Casa has left another and shorter Tractate on Amicable Intercourse between Superiors and Inferiors (Trattato degli Ujjici Comuni tra gli Amid Superiori e Inferiori). This deals not so much with the relation between those who are rich and those who are poor in the gifts of fortune, taken simply on that footing, as with the connection between 1 This is, I think, still a national trait among Italians, and a most credit- able one : the endless grades and sub-grades, shades and demi-shades, of good society, as maintained in England (with an instinct comparable to the mar-' vellous power of a bat to wing its dark way amid any number of impedi- ments, and to be impeded by none of them), are unintelligible to ordinary Italians-or, where intelligible, detestable. Long may they remain so! DELLA CASA. SERVITUDE. 75 master and servant, patron and client, magnate and dependent. The tone is grave and humane, with an adequate share of worldly wisdom interspersed. The opening is interesting and suggestive; and shows that the great ' Servant Controversy,' of which the pages of English daily newspapers are now almost annually conscious in the dull season, was by no means unknown to Italy in the sixteenth century:— 'I apprehend that the ancients were free from a great and con- tinual trouble; having their households composed, not of free men, as is our usage, but of slaves, of whose labour they availed them- selves, both for the comforts of life, and to maintain their re- pute, and for the other demands of society. For, as the nature of man is noble, copious, and erect, and far more apt to commanding than obeying, a hard and odious task do those undertake who assume to exercise masterdom over it, while still bold and of undi- minished strength, as is done now-a-days. To the ancients, in my judgment, it was no difficult or troublesome thing to command those who were already quelled and almost domesticated—people whom either chains, or long fatigues, or a soul servile from very childhood, had bereaved of pride and force. We on the contrary have to do with souls robust, spirited, and almost unbending; which, through the vigour of their nature, refuse and hate to be in subjection, and, knowing themselves free, resist their masters, or at least seek and demand (often with reason, but sometimes also without) that in com- manding them some measure be observed. Whence it arises that every house is full of complaints, wranglings, and questionings. And certainly this is the fact; because we are unjust judges in our own cause,—and, as it is true that everybody unfairly prizes his own affairs higher than those of others, albeit of equal value, and con- sequently always persuades himself that he has given more than he has received, the thing cannot go on pari passu. Hence comes the wearisome complaint of the one, "I have worn myself out in your house;" and the rebuke of the other, " I have maintained and fed you, and treated you well."' I can afford only one more extract from this treatise; which indeed handles its general subject-matter more on the ground of fairness, good-feeling, and expedient compromise of conflicting claims, than as a question of courtesy—though neither is that left out of view. 'In giving orders and assigning duties which have to be ful- filled, let regard be paid to the condition of the individuals; so that, if anything uncleanly is to be done, that be allotted to the lowest, and it come not to pass (as some perverse-natured people will have 7C DELLA CASA. CONCLUSION. it) that noblemen1 should sweep the house, and carry slops out of the chambers. Let not things of much labour be committed to the weak, nor the degrading to the well-mannered, nor the frivolous and sportful to the aged. Moreover let the masters be heedful not to impose upon any one anything of uncommon difficulty or labour or painstaking, unless of necessity or for some great cause; for the laws of humanity command us not to make a call upon a man's diligence and solicitude beyond what is reasonable, or as if in levity— especially if it exceeds the ordinary bounds.' With this I shut up Della Casa's volume, and take final leave of my reader—trusting that, after perusing, skimming, or skipping, so much matter concerning Courtesy, he will part from me on the terms of (at lowest) a 'courteous reader,' in more than the merely con- ventional sense. 1 Nobili. I presume this is to be understood literally; the household in which noblemen could be thus employed being of course one of exalted position. EARLY GERMAN COURTESY-BOOKS. AN ACCOUNT OF Cjje Italian (tot % Cjjonmsm kn %mkxm, OF 'HOW THE KNIGHT OF WINSBEKE TAUGHT HIS SON, AND THE LADY OF WINSBEKE HER DAUGHTER,' itrman Cato, AND Eannfjaeuser's Courtlg Buying, BY EUGENE OSWALD. F 79 In the Gorman literature of the 13th century, Thomasin of Zerklaere, or, in the Italian form of his name, Tommasino di Circlaria, occupies a distinguished position. This position is due not only to the fact that his writing, addressed in purest German and in a loving spirit by an Italian poet to a German public, forms a refreshing link between two nations otherwise much and long divided (though this fact in itself is remarkable enough), but also for the intrinsic value of that one of his works which we still possess. This work, by the peculiar tone of his mind, introduces a striking element of variety into a rich but (without him and Walther von der Vogelweide) somewhat one-sided period of literature. He exercised by his own work and that of his successors, a healthy influence which, though not generally acknowledged, continued down towards the age of lie- formation. Finally, Kis principal and well-preserved poem affords us a full revelation of an individuality clearly marked, thoroughly sound, wise, and enlightened, gentle in strength, whose words we can hardly read without loving him who uttered them. Thomasin wrote two works, at least; for to the present writer there seem to be indications of his having written others beside the two which are mentioned by literary historians and critics. The first of these was a Treatise on Courtesy. Unfortunately it is lost, but we have direct evidence of its production and contents by the mention the author makes of it in his larger work, in which he reproduces, in translation, one portion of his earlier writing, and summarizes others. We say in translation, for that lost work was not written in German. It is not so certain what the language was in which it was produced. The author himself says it was written so thomasin's courtesy book. in teclhuehe (the modern German wiilsch).1 This exceedingly elastic word, for which we see no equivalent in English, and which designates equally people and things, of Romance speech or Celtic origin, from the mountains of the principality to the plains of the lower Danube, from the Ardennes to the Alps, and from the Pyrenees to the Apen- nines, may indeed be translated by Italian, and this, apparently, recommends itself by the fact of the author being introduced to us, by Mr Eossetti,2 and others, as an Italian. Thus Professor Max Miillor has also translated the name of Thomasin's greater work, der icelJtische Gaxt, by 'the Italian Guest,' a translation we do not wish to disturb.8 But on the other hand, the Editor of Thomasin, Heinrich Ruckert, translates in this connection, the word welhische without hesitation by North-French. Striking as this difference may appear at first sight, and Professor Ruckert states no reasons for his rendering, there seems to us, on second consideration, good ground for it. For the langue d'oyl had towards the second half of the 12th century become a fashionable tongue, and by it had been chiefly promulgated those romances of King Arthur and the Eound Table which then filled the imagination of the poets of Christendom, and with which Thomasin was well acquainted; King Richard Coeur de Lion was familiar with it and had perhaps written in it, as well as in the langue d'oc, and Thomasin, at one time, was at the court of Eichard's cousin and com- panion in arms, Otto of Brunswick; moreover he tells us that he knew welhisch, which, if the word here meant Italian, was hardly necessary or likely to be mentioned, it being a matter of course (unless indeed he should have meant to imply, which seems to us possible, but not pro- bable, that, beside his local dialect, he knew another and purer one: with respect to which supposition we must not forget that the Tuscan 1 also ich han hie vor geseit an mim buoch von der hufscheit daz ich welhschen han gemacht.—V. 1173-75. and: er mac hoeren manic lere die ich wider die valscheit in welhscher zunge han geseit.—V. 1552-54. * V. above, pt. 2, pp. 5, 30. 3 In the catalogue of the Vatican library, which for a long time possessed the best MS., the book was entered as Hospes Italicus, seu Tractatus de Virtutibus et Vitiis. Adelung, Nachrichten, p. 22. THE ITALIAN* GCEST. The second work of Thomasin is the wiihche Gost, already mentioned. It is a long didactic poem, or at any rate a metrical performance of nearly fifteen thousand lines, quite finished by the author, which is note-worthy in a period abounding in unfinished productions, in works of vast plan, for which the authors had not breath enough; it possesses a certain unity which equally distinguishes it from many of the productions of his contemporaries, who began somewhere, not knowing whither they were going, and rambled on till they came to an end, though not to a conclusion; and it is in an almost complete state of preservation, having been handed down to us in many MSS., though edited for the first time but recently. It is a treatise, of a strongly exhortatory character, on the intellectual and moral life of man; the physical part of his nature being neglected, which in a similar work in our days would have justly demanded a great space both as to the preservation and development of our faculties. Of this book it has become our task "to give an account, and to trans- , late the courtesy part of it." But first as to the individuality of the author, of his life and character, for which, however, in the absence of any biography, we are almost reduced to the scanty hints the poem gives and to such combinations as they allow us. Thomasin van Zerclaere1 was born about the year 1185, in the Friuli. The place he himself gives us ;2 the date we obtain in this maimer. Speaking of that taking of Jerusalem by the Saracens which occasioned the third crusade, that of Eichard Coeur de Lion, he says it is about thirty years since we lost it: of Thomasin, in order to arrive, if possible, at more complete clearness on thia point. His courteous answer, in letter d.d. Gnadenfrei, Silesia, Sept. 10, con- firms his view, strengthening it chiefly by the consent of others, and by the then ordinary use of the word malhisch, which is to be taken as meaning simply one of Romance language, and is only specified, if necessary, by the addition of the particular home of the individual, viz. malhisch from Lom- bardy, &c. But this would not seem to prove that the ' melhisch ' covld not have been used here to mean the then existing Italian; Muller and Zarncke give one instance, at least, in their dictionary, where the word, without specializing additions, means plainly Italian, vol. iii. p. 467 ; and all things well considered, we prefer to leave the passage as it stands, inclined as we are to accept Professor RUckert's view, but expressing it in that more guarded manner which seems fitting where no direct and irrefragable evidence is forthcoming. 1 Ich heiz Thomasin von Zerclaere, v. 75. ■ Ich bin von Friule geborn, v. 71. b2 THE ITALIAN GUEST. The second work of Thomasin is the walsche Gad, already mentioned. It is a long didactic poem, or at any rate a metrical performance of nearly fifteen thousand lines, quite finished by the author, which is note-worthy in a period abounding in unfinished productions, in works of vast plan, for which the authors had not breath enough; it possesses a certain unity which equally distinguishes it from many of the productions of his contemporaries, who began somewhere, not knowing whither they were going, and rambled on till they came to an eud, though not to a conclusion; and it is in an almost complete state of preservation, having been handed down to us in many MSS., though edited for the first time but recently. It is a treatise, of a strongly exhortatory character, on the intellectual and moral life of man; the physical part of his nature being neglected, which in a similar work in our days would have justly demanded a great space both as to the preservation and development of our faculties. Of this book it has become our task "to give an account, and to trans- late the courtesy part of it." But first as to the individuality of the author, of his life and character, for which, however, in the absence of any biography, we are almost reduced to the scanty hints the poem gives and to such combinations as they allow us. Thomasin van Zerclaere1 was born about the year 1185, in the Friuli. The place he himself gives us ;2 the date we obtain in this manner. Speaking of that taking of Jerusalem by the Saracens which occasioned the third crusade, that of Eichard Coeur de Lion, he says it is about thirty years since we lost it: of Thomasin, in order to arrive, if possible, at more complete clearness on thia point. His courteous answer, in letter d.d. Gnadenfrei, Silesia, Sept. 10, con- firms his view, strengthening it chiefly by the consent of others, and by the then ordinary use of the word walhisch, which is to be taken as meaning simply one of Romance language, and is only specified, if necessary, by the addition of the particular home of the individual, viz. walhisch from Lom- bardy, &c. But this would not seem to prove that the ' welhisch ' could not have been used here to mean the then existing Italian; Miiller and Zarncke give one instance, at least, in their dictionary, where the word, without specializing additions, means plainly Italian, vol. iii. p. 467 ; and all things well considered, we prefer to leave the passage as it stands, inclined as we are to accept Professor Eiickert's view, but expressing it in that more guarded manner which seems fitting where no direct and irrefragable evidence is forthcoming. 1 Ich heiz Thomasin von Zerclaere, v. 75. - Ich bin von Friule geborn, v. 71. 84 THOMASIN'8 NATIONALITY of local origin; but there is no place called Circlaria to be found in that Friuli where Thomasin was born, and where Bernard lived.1 The suggestion has been made,2 and immediately rejected, to connect the name with Zirklach, a place in Carniola (Krain). Now we are inclined to take up again this supposition, and believe it to be preg- nant with the explanation of much in the poem which requires ex- planation and has not received it. Our theory is that Circlaria or Zerclaere, which latter is Thomasin's version, the former that of the latinizing notary, is a corruption of the German Zirklach,3 and that the author, though born in Friidi, was descended, in the first or second degree, from a German family from Krain or Carniola, who had immigrated into the Friul. He says indeed that he is a thorough Italian, or at least Welhisch,4 and apologizes for his shortcomings in German. But the former may be quite an ordinary and legitimate expression for one born of an Italian mother in Italy, though her husband were a German, or for the grandson of Italianized Germans; and the shortcomings are indeed so small that the author's great familiarity and sympathy with German much more require an explanation than his rare insuffici- encies, while his speech has at the same time not unfrequently a pro- vincial character which points quite unmistakably to the Duchy of Austria and to Carinthia or Styria. Yet his knowledge evidently flows healthily and about equally from two sources—literary study and conversational opportunity. And the latter must have been more than that which frequency of talk with strangers or acquaint- ances affords: such intimate knowledge as his is not acquired unless the heart undertake a part of the teaching. At first we were inclined 1 Thus the German writers, especially Karajan at Vienna; the maps con- firm them. But our Italian friends furnish us with the information, that in the 14th century, an estate called Cerclaria existed near Cividale.—' Prope Civitatem Austrise erant bona in loco appellato Cerclaria, ut in documento anni 1335, 6 Nov., ut in actis Stephani Condelarii, notarii de Civitate.' 2 Haupt, ut supra, p. 242. * The name appears in the MSS. in the following variations: Zerclaere,— Zerclar,—Zirklere,—Tirklere,—Tirkler Claer,—Verrere (Ferrara), the last of these in a quite recent copy, which was only made in the 18th century, and to which no authority attaches. Haupt, ut supra, p. 242.—To this add: Thoma- sin von Clar, in Piiterich von Eeicherzhausen, 15th century, quoted further on. '69. Wan ich vil gar ein walich bin. AND PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES. 85 to suppose him to have been married to a German lady, and to have .written this poem in the retirement of an early widowerhood.1 To such a bereavement the gravity and mellowness of his thoughts and feelings may point, together with the fact that the retirement in which he wrote it2 was not an habitual mood of life with him, that on its conclusion he reckoned upon returning to the gaieties of the world which he had formerly shared,3 that it occupied about a year,4 a period on which he strongly insists as the right period of mourning after the loss of husband or wife,5 and which he might well wish to fill up with this consoling and absorbing business of his ten lay- sermons, for so they may be called. Nor need this hypothesis be necessarily abandoned in favour of that of his distant German descent: the grandson of a German family, born in Italy, he may have returned to the home of his fathers, there to wed a German wife. In all this inquiry it is right to bear in mind that we have not to do with countries far distant from each other, that Krain and Friuli are border-lands, where Italian, German, and Slaave elements are greatly mingled, partly in juxtaposition, and that part of Friuli only is Italian, while another part, still Austrian, has belonged to the Empire not only, but to Germany, from Otho I., at least, to the disruption of Germany by the war of 18G6. Those shortcomings in language just alluded to, and which in a general way he declares himself conscious of, are, we may say this in 1 Leaving him, perhaps, with a son; v. 12660-63. But the passage is not conclusive.—That, at the time of writing the ' Italian Guest,' he was not mar- ried, is certain from v. 4097 : "ob icli em^rvip haben golds." 'Do du mit riter n und mit vrouvven Phlaege buhurt und tanz schouwen, Do was ich harte gern hi dir: Wan do, geloubestu ouch mir, Do du woldest ze hove sin Unter den liuten, do was mm Geloube daz ich wsere baz Bi dir dan inder, wizze daz.—V. 12241-48. ■ Mich luste harte wol ze schouwen Beidiu riter unde vrouwen, Doch dunket mich daz baz getan Daz ich mich ir ein wile an.—V. 12319-22. « V. 12278-82. s V. 5605-26. 86 WAS GERMAN A FOREIGN TONGUE TO OUR AUTHOR] passing, to us moderns by no means considerable.1 Many of them an unguided modern ear would not even detect. They are so incon- siderable, that one of the first modern writers who occupied himself with Thomasin inclined to the belief that the writer was purely a German who, for reasons of his own, assumed the characters of a foreigner, as a nam Je plume may be assumed.2 They consist, for the greater part, in deficiencies of ear as to rhyming, and in occasion- ally doubtful accents as to rhythm. Thomasin's contemporaries had arrived at a surprising, perhaps at a pedantic, exactness as to their rhymes, which is far from having descended to Schiller and Goethe, who can hardly lay claim to greater purity than Thomasin. Besides this, by us very pardonable, want of delicacy in hearing, a few instances occur where our author uses a word drawn from the Italian, which, however, may very well have already belonged to that South- German dialect that surrounded him, and need not have been intro- duced by him, who starts with the intention not to "streak with foreign words his German speech," 3 an intention he very laudably carries out, and wherein the immense majority of later German writers have not followed him. In one or two instances a technical or political term occurs to him more readily in Italian than in German;4 and in one instance he naively confesses that he does not know the German for a shrub of which he has got something to say.5 These two latter details seem to us to support the theory that his education and early impressions belong to Italy, and that when he wrote his great work, he was in Germany—a fact otherwise patent, and far from those who might have furnished him with the necessary translation. He evidently had the best education which Ids age could afford. He was not an ecclesiastic when he wrote the Italian Guest, though, 1 V. 55-70. Wise people, he thinks, will not mind them; and again: v. 1684-86. 2 Eschenburg, Denkmiiler, p. 114-41. 8 V. 35-42. 'V. 845.—Potestat = mayoralty = podestaria. Vide also tcmpern, for to cut, as applied to the penknife, the Italian temperino; v. 12232. ? Ez ist ein krut des enkau ich niht genennen tiusche, v. 14086, et seg. He means the Oleander (Nerium Oleander, L.). thomasin's education and learning. 87 from what we know of his reading, it is not impossible that he entered on the career of one, and, for reasons unknown to us, left it. Eccle- siastical influences had surrounded him at some time in his life, as was natural enough if that Bernardus de Circlaria whom we have mentioned as connected with the Patriarch of Aquileja, was really his father or uncle. His later education may have lain more in the direction of the Law Schools.1 He had for his time a respectable knowledge of physics and astronomy. "Whether his university was Bologna or Padua will remain undecided, but it was probably one of the two.2 In riper years he was conscious, as many an other man3 has been since, that he might have worked harder when at col- lege. But his reading was extensive and varied. The philosophers Seneca and Boethius are the ancient authors who have left the strong- est traces on his mind. With Horace, too, he was familiar, but to him Thomasin's graver mind reverts less frequently. Among the fathers, Tertullian and St Augustine were read by him; among the Latin authors of the Middle Ages, Gregory the Great—the only one whom he cites directly,—John of Salisbury, Petrus Alphonsus,4 Isidor of Sevilla,5and especially Hildebert of Tours (1057—1134) made the greatest impression on him. His reading was not empty book-learn- ing, it entered the flesh and blood of his mind, and when he quotes, it is not by taking a volume from the shelf of a library, as we must, but from the stores of his memory, which served him as a common- place book,—a memory which must have been excellent, and played him no evil trick, though his quotations are not textual. It is worth whde to say that they have been verified, with very great pains, by his German editor, H Euckert. With the romantic literature of his time he was well acquainted, and in a passage, hereafter to be referred to again, he seems to allude to the titles of several romances which to us are lost. He not un- 1 V. 2285-420. 'Euekert, Vorwort, p. xi. * Says the pen to the author: Do du da, ze schuole wasre Do muotestu mich niht so hart. v. 12256-57. 4 Petrus Alphonsus, a Jew, haptized in 1106,44 years of age, wrote Dialogi XII. contra Judseos, Diseiplina clericorum. 5 Isidor of Sevilla (Sententiarum libri tres), p. 636. THE MISSION OF THE FOET. 89 his mind, presented itself as indissolubly connected with the papal authority, and with respect to which a mere maker of love-songs was at least to be suspected of lukewarmness, and of being little qualified to give counsel. "For the poet," he says,— "For the poet again it is not seemly 11212 To be a liar, Since both he and the preacher Are to support Truth. 11215 A certain man might (now) With one word do more good to Christendom Than he can do it ever after. Methinks that all his singing Both in short measure and in long, 11220 Cannot have pleased God so much As that one thing must displease him, Since he hath befooled thousands So that they have paid no heed To God's and the Pope's command." 11225 Walther is not mentioned; but the passage evidently relates to him whose partial opposition might easily lead men further away than he intended from the undertaking which he himself seems to have had at heart perhaps as much as Thomasin. Somewhat later he even set out personally on a Crusade, though he did not reach the Holy Land. But he clung to the Imperial authority as opposed to the Papal. And Thomasin was a Guelph. The two poets probably met personally, when Walther visited the court of the Patriarch of Aquileja.1 But then, as now, it was difficult for men of opposite camps, especially if difference of temper and tastes were added, to understand each other, and find out what common ground might be possessed by both. This, however, is the only passage in which some bitterness mixes 1 "Nel secolo stesso (XIII) frequento la corte del Patriarca d'Aquileja Volftero di Leubrechtkirchen (1204-1218) il minnesinger tedesco Walter von der Vogelweide." From notes, the result of researches, made by Doctor Vincento Joppi and Signor Antonio Joppi, in the archives of Udine, Vicenza, Aquileja, and Venice, for the special purpose of this essay, and communicated to the present writer by the courtesy of Professor Quinto Maddalozzo at Vicenza, with whom he was brought in connection by his kind friend Dr Fran- cesco Genala at Soresina. To all these gentlemen best thanks are due, and tendered. ITALY AND ROME. 01 READ NOT HASTILY NOR TOO MUCH. Der pfaffe der vil buoche hat The priest who has many books si stoete an eim von minem rat, Let him be steady atone, by my advice, wan wil ers eins tags iibersehen If he will survey them all in a day gar, so mac daz niht geschehen It is impossible daz er vernem ir aller sin. For him to understand their meaning. man siht niht wol durch eine tiir, One cannot well see through a door, ob man ze snell wil loufen viir. If one wishes to run on too quickly.1 And again: Ein buoch sol lange wern. A book shall last a long time.2 Thomasin's knowledge of contemporary history is very great, and lie seems to have watched carefully the political transactions of his time; witness his allusions to the history of King John of England,3 to the revolutions of the Greek empire,4 and so on. No Italian patriotism is to be found in Thomasin. The time for such national and oppositional feeling had not yet come. When he speaks of Unity,5 in connection with Eome, it seems to us that his meaning must be twisted to be made to refer to the modern idea of Italian unity which had not then dawned: it is rather the Unity of Christendom which occupied him; and in bewailing its divisions, it is natural for him to regret the loss of the great power of ancient Eome, the capital of the old Empire, and, to hiin, in uninterrupted line, of the Christian world. Eome once commanded the universe, he says; now her voice is mocked even at Viterbo.6 The name of Italy does not occur. With Italian affairs, especially those of Lombardy and Tuscany, he shows himself especially acquainted, and in his survey of 1 V. 1905-9. 2 V. 14626. Eschenburg; 'Benhmaler altdcuttclier Dichtknnst' reads this line: 'Mein buoch sol lange wern,' which would recall Horace's 'JExegi nwnnmentum cere perennins,' and is not incompatible with the considerable consciousness of his own value which Thomasin elsewhere shows. 3 V. 3423-26. 1 V. 10607 et seqq.; and again, v. 11003-22. Vide also his Survey of Europe, v. 2421-96. 5 V. 2423-39. * Man viirht si ze Biterbe niht, v. 2438. Of a period but slightly anterior, that of Thomas a Beckett, Machiavelli says: nientre che il Papa aveva tanta autorita nei principi longinqui, non poteva farsi ubbidire dai Eomani; dai quali non potette impetrare di potere stare in Roma, ancorache prometesse d'altro che dell ecclesiastico non si travagliare; tanto le cose che paiono sono piu discosto che d'appresso temute. Istorie Fiorentine, lib. i. 94 MODERATION- IN BLAZONRY". Abont eight weeks and more: Then this displeased me exceedingly That there appeared in his shield No less than three lions and half an eagle. 10480 That was doing it immoderately In two directions, surely. Three lions were too much. He who wishes to bear (in his shield) one lion, If he can direct his course of action by such a model, 10485 Him I think an upright man. Likewise you shall know That half an Eagle is not sound: I will in this to you not lie: Half an Eagle cannot fly. 10490 That was in Little and in Much Immoderation, if you will understand it. I have an inkling that it was to signify What was to come afterwards. One lion shows highmindedness, Three lions shows arrogance. 10496 He who has the heart of three lions, Follows the counsel of arrogance; If one has the spirit of one lion Methinks that he does enough. !10500 The eagle flies very high, His high flight betokens honour, And so truly betokens Half an eagle the parting of honour. Now every one will see 10505 That SirOtho has Parted with the Empire by arrogance. He who wishes to ascend With the hearts of three lions beyond the spirit of man, He must shortly descend in the course of victory: 10510 However high half an eagle might be, He could not but fall, that is true. I do not say this in order To reproach him in any way With being arrogant. 10515 Were I to do so, it would not seem to me good. For however he has fared I will yet guard myself Not to speak evil of him, Since I should weaken myself 10520 By doing so; it shall not happen If I can help it. • But what I have said, DATE OP THE POEM. 95 I have said, That people may get sense, 10525 Otherwise I should not have said it, Yet I may well say it That everyone may mark it, And take an example thereby That things have happened thus with him. 10530 Innocent III. had died in 1216, two years before the luckless Emperor. His death is not mentioned by Thomasin, and had it occurred at the time of the writing of der icelhische Gast, it would in all probability not have been passed over by the poet, who is suffici- ently in the habit of moralizing on contemporary events, and who moreover was evidently a strong adherent of Innocent, and much under the influence of that pope, Thomasin's fervent exhortation to a new Crusade being, as H. Eiickert has well shown, chiefly a para- phrase of the Bull of Innocent. This observation, if we desire further confirmation of the date we have assigned to the poem, singularly narrows the calculation. The poem cannot have been written before 1215, and not after 1216, and we know that the first eight cantos were written in as many months. Whether when Frederic II. in his time came into collision with the Pope, Thomasin was capable of retaining his affectionate allegi- ance for " our child," may fairly be doubted. His old Guelph remin- iscences, his unfaltering adherence to the spiritual power and to ortho- doxy, his very veneration for mind as distinguished from outward authority, his associations with clerical learning, the small store he set on princes and the nobility, unless they were officering to the welfare of the community of their fellow-men; all this must have drawn him towards, if not into, the ranks of those who hunted to death that brilliant ruler. But we are allowed, from Thomasin's bearing towards the falling Otho, to conclude that if his allegiance would be withdrawn from Frederic, somewhat of his affection would remain, and his with- drawal would be marked, not by the fiery spirit of the zealous renegade, but by the sad thoughts of one who in grievous disappointment cuts himself off from old ties, respecting the fallen because he respects him- self, of whom the lost one was a part. But this is speculation : with the death of Innocent, the image of Thomasin, while yet a young man, THOMASIV'S CHARACTER, recedes from our view. 'Whatever fights he fought, whatever books he wrote, have vanished into the gray abyss. Whatever his con- temporaries may have learnt from him, whether or not they felt the debt which the world owes, for the example he sets, to a man of great mind and stout heart, they do not speak of him. One single excep- tion to this exists: his death is mentioned, again, in the shadowy manner which surrounds him, and which we have tried somewhat to clear up: no date is affixed, in the registers of the cathedral of Aquileja, to the bare record of his demise. Yet we learn by it that he did enter, or re-enter, the priesthood, and attained the dignity of a Canon.1 We have the ' Italian Guest;' the rest is silence. And it remains to us but very briefly to sum up the man's character, and that of his book. A man who has seen life and tasted its sweets, who has acquired the best knowledge his time could give him, and has found some- thing higher; thinking knowledge of small account when not improv- ing wisdom; going in all things to the root of the matter; sufficiently penetrated with the then current modes of viewing human life to enable him to understand his time, yet himself penetrating through the ele- gant skins and savoury flesh of the fruit to the very kernel; ascending from courtesy to goodness, from nobility of rank to nobleness of heart; seeing in all station and dignity but an office and an obliga- tion, exchanging for a real respect for women, as one half of God's creation of noble human beings, that unhealthy tone of gallantry2 which his age had carried to its utmost excess, and which has so con- stantly become the flimsy cover of real wrong; loudly proclaiming, in accents that remind us of Eobert Burns, and of Schiller, the inde- structible privileges of man in even the humblest condition ; modest, yet self-conscious; convinced that he has to say things worth hearing, yet unwilling to speak to the utterly corrupt, while indefatigable in 1 (Sine anno) . . . Obitus Tomasini de Cerclara Canonici Aquilejensis. Ex necrologio ecclesise Aquilejensis. Found by Signori Joppi, and communicated by Professor Maddalozzo at Vicenza to the present writer, who is happy to call to this newly-discovered fact the attention of the German historians of literature. ,, 'lJ^,neal P°etry . . . . degenerated into an unworthy idolatry of ladies." Mammller. The German Classics, xvii. AS SHOWN BY HIS BOOK. 97 drawing forth the germs of good in those who are fit and in- clined to hear his teaching; wholly indifferent to the mockeries of the mot, though ready to value the good opinion of the honourable and the distinguished;1 most delicate in his appreciation of things and persons, drawing a teaching from apparently empty forms, find- ing "sermons in stones and good in everything ; " always firm of pur- pose, surprising us sometimes by the refinement of feeling which ac- companies the justness of his thought; almost always grave, rarely stern, grave with the gravity of one mellowed by misfortune and me- ditation, full of sympathy in contact, of illustration in speech; inces- santly warring, above all, against all unsteadiness and all frivolity, sometimes with a touch of fun and real humour; ever generous to the fallen; gentle and mild to all men, barring heretics—thus appears to us Thomasin, as unconsciously painted by himself. A few extracts will justify the apparent extravagance of our praise, the reader being pleased to remember what was that age of almost universal oppression—so, at least, it appears to us—wherein our author wrote. And first as to heretics. Their existence in Lombardy and else- where2 having been observed by him, and treated as an unmitigated evil, seeing that, in his eyes, the heretic is a man To whom anything seems good 11269 That he happens to like doing, he is betrayed into this grim joke: ON HERETICS. Lombardy would be exceedingly well off Had she . . . the Lord of Austria 12686 1 Boeser liute spot ist mir unmsere. Han ich Gaweins hulde wol, Von reht mm Key spotten sol. v. 76-78. Most of our readers are familiar with the personages of the King Arthur cycle of legends. To others, we could perhaps not bring home in a more com- pendious'form the force of the allusions to Gawein ( = Owain) and Key ( = Kai) than by this passage from the Lady of the Fountain : "In very truth, said Gwenhyvar, it were better thou wert hanged, Kai, than to use such uncourteous speech towards a man like Owain." Lady Guest's Mabinogian, Lady of the Fountain, Welsh text, vol. i. p. 1—38, Engl, transl. 39—84. 2 In Provence, where they have expelled Steadiness, v. 2471-72; in Milan, v. 2489. IIS ON HERETICS Who knows how to seethe the heretics. He would find there a fine opportunity for doing justice; l1e docs not wiBh the devil Should break his teeth at once When he eats them, therefore he has them Well boiled and roasted. 12692 This Lord of Austria, let it be said in passing, is Leopold VI.1 (1198—1230), surnamed pater clericorum, the successor of that Leo- pold with whom llichard Ceeur de Lion had a mutually unpleasant acquaintance, and otherwise, it appears, a man not without good parts; at any rate, a patron of the arts. Other testimony, contemporary and later, may be adduced, that the heretic-hunt did not do all the good that was expected. The almost complete eradication of Protestant- ism from Austria was reserved for later princes and another dynasty. Whilst, however, inclined to excuse, to a great extent, by the prevalent views of the age, the savageness of feeling expressed by a man otherwise so gentle, we must yet observe that outside the ranks of the heretics themselves, there must then have been some people pleading, in the spirit of our own age, for that toleration which most of the heretics themselves, if we are to judge them by their mental descendant, Calvin, would be so little inclined to give. For Thomasin himself introduces such a one in conversation, in order to conquer what would appear to him but specious arguments. After having expatiated on the insufficiency of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and claimed the.arm of the secular power, he continues: Here says perhaps a man, Who cannot rightly understand the matter: One ought not to force any one Into right and sound belief. "We even leave the Jews unhurt, Though they do not wish to be Christians." I will give him answer: If my child would not live According to my wish, as his duty is to do, I should beat him and censure him well. But if your child would not live Accordingly, and as by rights he ought, 1 Not Leopold VII., as Riickert has it in his notes, p. 603, by a misprint probably. 12653 12655 12660 AND JEWS. 99 I should not trouble myself J2665 About beating him; you had better do that. Thus shall act the Church; She shall well coerce her own children And shall leave strange children Subject to their own fathers. 12670 Why should she coerce the Jews In any way? Tbey do not belong to her. As to heretics, it is her part to coerce them, Since they truly were her children. If a man is baptized, 12675 He is her child from that time; If he afterwards wishes To depart from her, oh, believe me, One ought to coerce him Into acting rightly and well. 12680 And let there be secular judgment If the ecclesiastical will not avail. Poor as this reasoning may appear to us, there is perhaps cause for congratulation in it: if generally accepted, it protected at least one class of human beings—for we can hardly say of the community— against bigotry, and may have paved the way, by the mere fact of some unbelievers remaining unpersecuted, to broader views. Things might have been worse. Thomasin helped to prepare the fifth Crusade; not only the first, hut also the third, only a quarter of a century before he wrote, were almost, as a matter of course, ushered in by a grand massacre of Jews.1 Yet one very important observation must be made in excuse of Thomasin and his contemporaries: to us, at least to many, let us hope to most of us, heresy is a matter of dogma, and we are capable of dis- tinguishing between the holding of theological opinions and the 1 Michaud, Croisades, Livre ii.—Bichard of Devizes, Lest. 3.— : About that solemn hour, in which the Son was immolated to the Father, a sacrifice of the Jews to their father the devil was commenced in the city of London, and so long was the duration of this famous mystery, that the holocaust could scarcely be accomplished the ensuing day. The other cities and towns of the kingdom emulated the faith of the Londoners, and with a like devotion dis- patched their blood-suckers with blood to hell. In this commotion there was prepared, although unequally, some evil against the wicked, everywhere throughout the realm, only Winchester alone, the people being prudent and circumspect, and the city always acting mildly, spared its vermin.—Sohn's Edition.—Similar testimony abounds. 100 NO WORTHLESS PERSON TO READ THOMASIN's BOOK. doing of moral acts. Not so with Thomasin; the heretic is so, in his eyes, because he is a bad and immoral man. He is a being To whom anything seems good 11269 That he happens to like doing, and this he thinks he can safely assert from having known a thou- sand of them (v. 11300). And therefore it is useless to argue with heretics: they are without doctrine and without sense (v. 11303).1 And Thomasin, while wishing to encourage, enlighten, and strength- en those whose dispositions are on the whole good, yet thinks it use- less to occupy himself with those who are already thoroughly bad. Thus, in his Introduction, he wishes his book to fall into the hands of no unsteady man, and towards the conclusion of his book, he is very emphatic on this point. Addressing his work, as he sends it out into the world, he says: Now be exhorted, Italian Guest, When you have hold of a noble branch, 14710 Let not yourself be drawn from it By a bad thorn. Though One may say to the wolf The Lord's prayer all day long, He yet will never speak anything 14715 Like a lamb. Thus it happens With the bad man, whatever one say to him, It goes, as far as truth is concerned, In by the one ear and out by the other. How could there be any lasting impression 14720 Where a person does not think over (what has been said)? Know ye that a worthless person Does not like to force his thoughts Away from frivolous things to good. Know ye that one cannot fill 14725 A sack with holes in it. Therefore, my book, shalt thou remain With him who is willing to write you Into his heart and spirit. 1 Thus, even half a century later, Saint Louis, fiercer than Thomasin, advises his court: "So I say to you, said the King, that no one, if he is not a very learned clerk, ought to dispute with them; but a layman when he hears the Christian law gainsaid, should not defend it except with the sword, which he should drive into the gainsayer's body as far as he can make it go." Joinville, ed. Michel et Didot. 1858.—BoTm's ed. p. 862. (Chronicles of the Crusades.) 'EX NIHILO NIHIL FIT.' 101 And again: No man shall show to his lady-love, 14667 Either through carelessness, oc through lovingness, Nor to his lord, nor to his lady, Nor to his friend, This my speech, Unless virtue appear in them. It may be difficult for Thomasin to conciliate with his orthodox Christianity, this repelling of those who are not already virtuous; but perhaps he only exaggerates the truth, that no fruit can be expected where there is no germ, a truth which in the following form recom- mends itself to, and will be approved by, educators: To him who is virtuous or becoming so 14631 To him I give in friendship My book, that with it He may steer his beautiful manners.1 Let him also with good action 14635 Improve what he has Read in my book; Let him be exhorted thereto. But he who has no good breeding aud does not know how to act handsomely2 Let him have nothing to do with it. 14640 No teaching has power To make him virtuous In whom virtue is not inherent. You may strike the water all day long And yet it will not give fire,3 14645 Since to have fire is not in its nature. However cold a stone be Yet with cunning one wins Fire out of it, since that is in it. If there be sense in a man 14650 However slow he may be to good works Yet one may with teaching bring him To virtue and piety. Know ye this as a truth; Tinder brings out the fire well, 14655 1 We have intentionally preferred this" literal translation to one which, though more elegant, would wash out the original colouring of the thought. * Swer nien hat zuht und sclwenc site. The translator has tried to come as nearly as seemed possible to him, to a convenient word expressing somewhat the KaXoKayadia of the ancients. "Handsome is that handsome does." 8 Strike the water—the old way, which some of our generation still recollect, of striking sparks with a steel out of flint, and catch them up with tinder. TRUK NOBILITY, AND NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 103 RECOGNIZE MAN S NATURE IN A SERVANT. Ja sol man siuen eigenkneht lazen leben each mannes reht. man sol an im got era, man sol von im des dienstes gern, daz man an die menscheit gedenke, diu hohe ist beleit. wil du vertreten mit dem vuoz den der liht hoher sitzen muoz denne du in unsers herren riche, daz enstet niht riterliche. Nay, as to your own servant One shall let him live according to Man's Rights. One shall in him honour God, One shall of him ask service In such a manner as to be mindful of humanity. The Wilt thou trample underfoot Him who perchance may sit higher Than thou in the kingdom of our Lord? That is ill-befitting a knight.1 TRUE NOBILITY, AND NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Nobility also may 3855 Make us dream. If a man Is nobler (by birth) than another And thinks himself always of more account He deceives himself in that: No one is noble but the man 3800 Who has set his heart and mind Towards that which is really good. If a man be well-born And have lost the nobility of his disposition, I may truly tell you 3865 He quite shames his birth: If a man be well-born His birth demands at all times That he act well and justly.2 If he do not control himself thus to act, 3870 Then his vice is all the greater: His birth diminishes his honour. If ye have understood me well, 3915 You know that it is a mistake to think That he is courtly (gentle, hiifsch) at all times, Who is noble in the world: For as I have said even before this, To do well, that is Courtliness. 3920 If one has a courteous disposition, He does justly whatever he does. He who acts well at all times, 1 V. 7865-74. * Ainsi plus votre rang vous eleve en ce monde, Plus il faut que chez vous le vrai merite abonde; C'est lui seul qu'on estime, et vous devez savoir Combien sur les humains l'exemple a de pouvoir. Frederic de Pruste a ton frire. 104 POLITICAL VIEWS. Know ye that he is noble: Again, know ye that they are noble 3925 Who are wholly the children of God. Yet Thomasin is hardly a democrat, certainly not a revolutionist; see his book iii. sect. vi. Each one is to keep his place, and it is foolish for a peasant to want to be a lord. As to the latter: The people are to be as dear to him 3092 As his own life is to him. So that we arrive very nearly at the axiom: everything for the people, nothing through the people. Yet even thus to sum up, with the for- mula of enlightened despotism, his political views—the democratic tendency of which seems to us to have been exaggerated by Gervinus —would appear to be a mistake: formulas for constitutional govern- ment, whatever be their value to us, were very far from Thomasin's mind. He was not a constitution-monger. He accepted the state of the world as he found it, and instead of devising new machinery for guiding it, he rather sought to penetrate with a living spirit of justice and kindness the forms existing. Mr Mathew Arnold ought to rejoice in his acquaintance. Modern French socialists would he shocked by his incapacity for recognizing an equality where none exists; he by no means overlooks the difference between the courtly knight or learned clerk and the boorish peasant; when he wants to point out a particularly mean way of conduct, he is very apt to say that such a one acts like a tradesman, and he is, above all, a gentle- man writing for gentlemen, no doubt with the view of making them conceive that word in its highest sense. His views on the position and duties of gentlemen seem to us greatly to coincide with that line chapter in Pascal where the author forcibly shows to the young nobleman the unrealities and the unjustifiableness of his position unless filled for the public good.1 Leaving politics alone, we may show our author's refinement and justness of feeling in some passages on Presents and Liberality. Presents, he says, may be given out of wealth unjustly acquired, or with a view to a future advantage, or again from luxuriousness 1 Pcnsees, art. xii. Stir les conditions dcs Grands. 106 ON THE RIGHT SPIRIT IN MAKING PRESENTS. One is to give presents to any one in suchwise 14195 That no one derive displeasure by the gift From whom it may have been taken. He who wants to give justly, Let him not delay too much. 14260 He who lets himself be begged much, Know ye that ho has sold What he gives away. Such is not the action of the gentle-man Who can give justl}', For he seeks out to whom to give And what he'd better give. 14290 He who sets an angry countenance When he gives: know ye 14310 He had better give nothing. He who gives, fearing the giving, And holds back at all times, He is full of cowardice, 14315 And is equal to him who refuses. One ought, by one's eyes and mouth, To show at the time Of giving, that one's disposition Of willingly giving is perceived. 14320 Know ye that he gives properly Who so gives always, That with the present, he bestows Both his will and heart. He is but a poor fellow1 14325 Who thinks of the money When he is to give anything: He is quite a tradesman Who gives for gain, that is true. We have, in the foregoing, while speaking of the author, antici- pated much that might be said of the book. On the whole, it may be observed, it justifies the remark of Hallam 2 that " in the books pro- fessedly written to lay down the duties of knighthood, they appear to 1 Boeserciht,—but that word had not then, or at least plainly not always, the meaning of its modern form. 2 Middle Ages. Chap. ix. Part II. Chivalry connected with religion, and with gallantry. PRAISE OF STEADINESS. 107 spread over the whole compass of human obligations. But these, like other books of morality, strain their schemes of perfection far be- yond the actual practice of mankind." And Thomasin's conception of courtesy may again well be summed up in Hallam's observation1 that "this word expressed the most highly refined good-breeding, founded less upon a knowledge of ceremonious politeness, though this was not to be omitted, than on the spontaneous modesty, self-denial, and respect for others, which ought to spring from the heart." Yet it ought to be observed that Thomasin consciously took a wider range, and fathomed more deeply human life than similar writers did, or than he had done himself in this first book from which the second distinctly is a progressive step. Hence the more he proceeds in Hie Italian Guest, the more do externals disappear, whilst in the first canto, the partial reproduction of the Courtesy book, they still hold their place. As one who had heard much of virtue in those books which glorified chivalry, and related to the search for the Graal and to similar subjects, he proposed to himself to inquire what then was really virtue, and what the conditions of arriving at it, an inquiry by which he necessarily was led to condemn much of that very spirit which pervaded those novels and was exhibited as a model. For it appeared to him that virtue could not be acquired or kept, un- less by Steadiness, a word which would, in his sense and in our vocabu- lary, comprise Firmness, Consistency, Fortitude, and perhaps a few more cardinal virtues. To this Steadiness, allying itself to Sense, is opposed Unsteadiness, as allying itself with Nonsense, or Frivolity and Un-wisdom, and whose children are Anger and Lies, while her sister is Immoderation.2 And against that Unsteadiness, whereof the hero Percival had his good share, Thomasin's shafts are for ever levelled in many passages, whereof the following is a fair sample , UNSTEADINESS. What is Unsteadiness? A shame to the Lords, A going-astray in all lands. Unsteadiness is steadiness in bad things: No one can constrain her 1840 1 Ibid., Courtesy. 'V. 9885. MSM. OF THE 'ITALIAN GUEST.' 109 sages of great terseness occur, frequently in connection with an unex- pected turn of thought. Thomasin, like Lord Lytton, in our days, has dedicated his hook to Germany, whose guest, very likely a welcome one, he felt himself.1 We have said that The Italian Guest is preserved in many MSS. The oldest of these dates from 1248, and is preserved at Erbach; it is written with great neatness, and adorned with many illuminations, which Eiickert believes may be reproductions of such as Thoma- sin himself made or indicated. The best, perhaps belonging to the end of the 13th century, is now again at Heidelberg; whence in the Thirty Years' War it had, with the rest of the library, been carried to the Vatican. It forms the basis of the text before us. Others are * found at Gotha, Stuttgard, Dresden, Munich, Wolfenbiittel; and all the more valuable ones have been collated by .our editor, while the Gotha MS. has served for some fragments published independently. To our Italian friends, mentioned above, we owe the information that the Abbey of Moggio in Friuli possesses, or possessed, a copy of Thomasin, the date of which reaches almost to the Erbach one.2 These MSS., not counting several made in the last century, descend to the year 1457, showing therefore a continued appreciation of the book during about two centuries and a half. A writer, belonging to the middle of the 15th century, a Bavarian Knight, briefly mentions our book in his Ehrenbrief, which includes a kind of metrical cata- logue raisonne of the literary works he was acquainted with.3 Still it had not the honour of being multiplied by the new art of printing; and however much it may have contributed to the spirit which produced Erasmus and the Eeformers, it was not brought out again from partial oblivion by these, as was the case with Piers Ploughman, because it did not offer such polemical material 1 V. 86-136. 1 Da inventario di bene dell' Abazia di Moggio in Friuli si ha: Anno 1250 . . . liber teutonicus dictus Valixergast. Dall' archivio Capitolare di Udine.—No trace of this in ltiickert or the other German writers. * Stanza 104. Den walischen Gast gezieret Hat Thomasin von Clar. J. C. (the elder) Adelung's ed. of Piiterich von Eeieharzhausen. 1788, (in the l!r. Mus.) p. 15. ii 110 THE 'ITALIAN GUEST' BROUGHT TO LIGHT AGAIN. as that book. For the first time, since the Eeformation, Thomasin is mentioned by an obscure writer, named Turgel, in a short notice of MSS. in the Gotha Library, published in 1691.1 After that, we find the book alluded to three or four times during the 18th century,2 but merely as a literary fossil, and in a manner which leaves us very doubtful whether the notice which some literary antiquarians took of the MSS., led thom to really read the book, and, to any extent, be- come aware of its spirit. The younger Adelung,8 when inquiring into the literary treasures of the Eome of his time, was one of the first to call more serious attention to The Italian Guest, at the end of the last century.* Between his two publications on the Vatican Manuscripts, Eschenburg, the man who first gave to Germany a complete transla- tion of Shakespere, published a few extracts from the Wolfenbiittel copy,6 and shortly after gave a chapter to our author in his 'Monu- ments of Old German Poetry.'6 It is, however, fairly allowable to believe that none of the writers mentioned had read Thomasin at all completely. This was reserved for our century, to the Grimms and their school. W. Grimm, in his Eeynard the Fox, published from it a charmingly told fable; Wackernagel, in his Eeading book, another extract on Etiquette or Courtesy rules. These two fragments have now been, for several years, before the English public, Max 1 Monatl. Unterredungen. 1691. p. 926. 2 By Cyprian, Schilter, Abbot Gebert of St Blasien, Miller, Gottsched, Bodmer. Vide Eschenburg, Denkmiiler altdeutscher Dichtkunst. Bremen, 1799. pp. 114-144. (In the Br. Mus.) 3 Frederick Adelung. Nachrichten von altdeutschen Gedichten, welche aus der Heidelbergischen Bibliothek in die Vaticanische gekommen sind. Konigsberg, 1790. Altdeutsehe Gedichte in Rom, oder fortgesetzte Nashrichten von Heidel- bergischen Handschriften in der Vatioanischen Bibliothek, v. Fr. Adelung. Kiiuigsberg. 1799. 'Habait sua fata libelli! Adelung, in the first of these works just quoted, says (p. 39), "Perhaps this notice will serve to call greater attention to the treasures of the Vatican, which, alas, are probably for ever lost to our country." General Tilly, 1C22, had carried away those treasures from Heidelberg; his master, Maximilian of Bavaria, presented them to the Pope. The rise of Napoleon was required to bring them from the Vatican to Paris, his fall to bring back to Heidelberg what had remained of them in spite of Tilly's soldiers and other pilferers. s In Braga and Hernwde. vol. 2, Sect. II. pp. 134-56, &c. (not in Br. Mus.); quotation from Adelung's second report on the Vatican library. 6 Eschenburg, Deiikmaler. Vide above. 112 OS EDITIXG OLD BOOKS. wish to stray into the paths of old national literature; they appear rather to invite him by a little freshness in the very hedgerows which surround their paradise, and to take him kindly by the hand, and help on his step, though it be a little faltering at first, instead of scaring him with thorns and brambles of grim learning, and strik- ing awe into him for approaching the sanctum of the initiated. Will the editor, whom we have to thank, not only with all his readers, for the immense labour he has bestowed on the book, but also per- sonally for a courteous communication in reply to an inquiry of ours, and will other German scholars who may read this, pardon us for this friendly expression of a doubt whether by writing too much as professional and professorial Gdehrte for a class, nay almost a caste, of Gdehrte, and enwrapped in their dignity, utterly scorning the dilettante, they do not, almost wilfully, restrict too much the number of their readers, fail in their mission of interesting a large section of the educated public, and drive them into the insipidities of what is called in Germany popular literature 1 We now proceed to summarize at some length the first, and for this ' Book of Courtesy' most important, canto, proposing to give a much slighter sketch of the following ones. And for the first portion of this, we use an old summary, which is found in the Gotha-manu- script, written by the same hand as the whole poem, and repeated, with small variations, in most of the other MSS. Though not by Thomasin himself, it is undoubtedly very old,—much older than that Gotha MS. itself, whose date is 1340; it is made, on the whole, fairly enough, and for its naive qnaintness may merit partial repro- duction. S U M M A E Y. BOOK THE FIRST. V. 1 1706. "He who wants to know the matter whereof this book speaks, will find (here) the matters all marked down one after the other. This book is divided into ten parts, and each part has its chapters; some parts have ten chapters, some more, some less, and each chapter haii some sub-sections, some many, some few. V. 1—140. Before I begin the book, I say in my preface that 114 BOOK I. VARIOUS RULES OF COURTESY. ist (>in aber wert der, to habent «i sin beide er. man enweiz niht wer der frorode ist, da von er man in zallcr frist. swenn ze hove chumt ein fremder goat, diu chint suln im dienen vast Ram er wnere ir aller hOrre, daz ist der ziihte wille und lere. si sulen habcn chiuschiu wort, wan daz ist der ziihte hort. Ein frowe sol sich sehen lan, chumt zir ein vremeder man. swelihiu sich niht sehen lat, diu sol uz ir chemcnit sin allenthalben unerchant; biieze aim, si ungenant. ein frowe sol niht vrevelich schimphen, daz stet wiplich. ich wil ouch des verjehen, ein frowe sol niht vaste an sehen ein fremden man: daz stet wol. ein edel juncherre sol beidiu ritter unde vrowen gezogenliche gerne schowen. ein juncfrowe sol senfticlich und niht lut. sprechen sicherlich. ein juncherr sol sin so gereit daz er vernem swaz man im seit, so daz ez undurf t si, daz man im aber sage wi. zuht wert den vrowen alln gemein Bitzen mit bein iiber bein. ein juncherr sol uf ein banc, si si churz oder lane, deheine wise sten niht, ob er ein ritter da sitzen siht. ein vrowe sol ze deheiner zit treten weder vast noch wit. wizzet daz ez ouch iibel stet, ritt ein ritter d& ein vrowe get. Bat if he be worthy of it. Then both parties are honoured. One does not know who a stranger may be: Therefore let him be honoured at all times. \Vhen a strange guest comes to the Hall, The young people shall do him great service, The same as if he were the lord of all of them: Such is the will and teaching of Good Breeding; Let them speak choice words, Seeing such is the treasure of Good Breeding. A lady shall allow herself to be seen, When a stranger-man comes to her: She who does not allow herself to be seen, She shall, out of her own withdrawing room, Be unrecognized everywhere; Let her thus suffer for it, let her not be mentioned. Let not a lady jest boldly: That looks as if she were a common woman. This too I will maintain: A woman shall not look much at A stranger-man: that is befitting. A noble young lord shall Like to look modestly Both upon knights and ladies. A young lady shall assuredly speak softly And not loud. A young lord (younker) shall be so ready That he understands what one says to him, So that there may be no need That one should for a second time say to him, how (to do it). Good Breeding forbids all ladies To sit with one leg over the other. A young lord shall not step upon a bench Be it short or long, In any wise, If he sees a knight sitting there. A lady shall at no time Step out fast nor wide. Know again that it is ill befitting If a knight rides where a lady goes. BOOK I. VARIOUS 115 RULES OF COURTESY. ein vrowe sol sich, daz geloubet, cheren gegen des pherdes houbet swenn si ritet; man sol wizzen, si sol niht gar dwerhes sizzen. ein ritter sol niht vravelich zuo frowen riten sicherlich, ein vrowe ersehraht hat dick getan den spruch der bezzer waer verlan. swer sinem rosse des verhenget daz ez eine vrowen besprenget, ich wasne wol daz sin wib ouch ane meisterschaft belib. zuht wert den rittern alln gemein daz si niht dicke schowen ir bein, swenn si ritent; ich wsene wol daz man uf sehen sol. ein vrowe sol recken niht ir hant, swenn si ritet f iir ir gewant; si sol ir ougen und ir houbet stille haben, daz geloubet. ein juncherr unde ein ritter sol hie an sich ouch behiieten wol, daz er stille habe die hant so im ze sprechen si gewant: er sol swingen niht sin hende wider eines frumen mannas zende. swer der ziihte wol geloubet, der sol setzen uf niemens houbet sin hant der tiurer si denn er, noch uf sin ahsel: daz ist Or. Wil sich ein vrowe mit zuht bewarn, so sol si niht an hiille varn; si sol ir hiill ze samne han, ist si der garnaasch an: lat si amne libe iht sehen bar, daz ist wider ziihte gar. ein riter sol niht vor vrowen gen barschincher, als ichz chan versten. ein vrowe sol niht hinder sich dicke sehen, dunchet mich. si ge viir sich gerihte unde sehe umb ze nihte; gedench an ir zuht iiber al ob si gehoer deheinen schal. ein juncfrowe sol selten iht A lady shall, believe ye, Turn herself towards the head of the horse When she rides: one must know She is not to sit quite crossways. A knight shall not boldly Ride up to ladies: A woman, frightened, has often (done) uttered The speech that were better not made. He who allows his horse To bespatter a lady, I quite suppose that his wife Is without a good master likewise. Good Breeding forbids all knights To look much at their legs When they ride : I am much of opinion That one is to look upwards. A lady shall not stretch her hand Out of her garment, when she rides; She shall keep quiet her eyes and her head, Believe ye that. A younker and a knight shall Be careful in this too, That he keeps his hand quiet If he has to speak: lie shall not swing his hands Against a good man's teeth. He who well believes in Good Breeding, Let him place on no one's head His hand, who is of greater account than himself, Nor upon his shoulder : that is honour- able. If a lady wants to keep herself within good breeding, Let her not go out without mantle; She shall gather her mantle together If she is without her long upper gown: If she let any part of her body be seen bare That is quite against Good Breeding. A knight shall not go before ladies With bare legs; as far as I can under- stand things. A lady shall not much Look behind her, so it appears to me: Let her go forth straightways And not look about her, Everywhere mindful of her good breeding, Even though she hear a noise. A young lady shall rarely BOOK I. VARIOUS RULES OP COURTESY. 117 daz man mit dem gemazzen1 iht As, at the same time with one's com- grife in die schiizzel mit der hant: wan da von wirt unzuht bechant. panion, To put one's hand into the dish: For by that want of good breeding der wirt sol ouch der spise enpern appears. The host, again, shall go without such der sine geste niht engern und diu in ist ungenasme, wan daz niht wol zasme; und geb ouch niht ungemeine. food As his guests do not like, And which is unpleasant to them, As that is not well befitting; And let him also give nothing apart der wolf izzet gerne eine: der olbent izzet eine niht ob er des wilds iht bi im siht. dem volgt der wirt mit eren baz dann dem wolve, wizzet daz. der wirt nach dem ezzen sol daz wazzer geben: daz stet wol. da sol im dechein chneht denne dwahen: daz ist reht; wil dwahen im ein juncherre, der ge hin dan vil verre. {for one). The wolf likes to eat by himself: The camel2 does not eat by himself, If he sees any of the beasts near him. Him follows the host with more honour Than the wolf, know that. The host, after dinner, shall Hand the water: that befits him well. Therein shall no page (?) Then wash {his hands): that is right; If a younker wants to wash, Let him go far away. "We return to the summary, but give up from here the quotation of the old resume,, still, however, availing ourselves of it, extending or restricting it, as may seem best, and varying it by the introduction of passages. III. v. 527—580. That one ought not to laugh too much, nor secretly spy out one's companion's doings; and that one ought to beware of him who likes thus to play the spy; and that one shall faithfully keep secret what one's companion tells one, and why one ought to do so, and that one is to be careful of whom, to whom, what, how, and when one speaks; and of what the children of lords are to rV. v. 581—686. That one is to speak little, and to listen much. Children are to be taught reverence. Thus made to feel reverence, 1 gtmazzen? Thus the Gotha MS., in M. Midler's book. Dr Eiickert, following the Heidelberg MS., has gesellen, which is plain. 1 Olbente, olbende, or, more rarely olpent, seems, etymological^, clearly elephant, IXiipag, avrog, with which compare Goth, albendas, O.H.G. olpenta, but is not used to designate this animal, but the camel.— Grimm, GeschicMe der deutschen Sprache. 42. Yet, we find in Mutter # Zarnche's Mittettwch- deutsoh. Worterbuch (whereof the leaves in the Brit. Mus. copy were first cut by the present writer), p. 437, two or three passages which seem plainly to point to the elephant. beware. BOOK L ON SENSE AND NONSENSE IN WOMEN. 119 v. 837. A woman has enough sense In that she be courteous and pliable, And also have good gestures With beautiful speech and a chaste mind. If she then have more sense, Let her have Good Breeding and Teaching, Let her not make a show of what she has in her mind; One does not require her for a Mayor.1 A man must have many arts: In a noble woman Good Breeding requires That she have not much artfulness, If she is honest and noble. Simplicity sits well upon women, Yet it is right that a woman Have that teaching and that sense That she may beware of un-love. One often calls Love the thing That one had better call Un-love.: 854 That beauty, friends, birth, riches, love (or loveliness 1) are worthless without sense; and that Beauty may do harm to honour; and that Beauty and lightheadedness (lit. nonsense, unsinn) are two girdles on a woman's body (?) 2 which draw her the wrong way. diu schoene macht daz man si bite, The beauty causes her to be solicited, so hilfet der unsin vast da mite And the nonsense greatly helps there- daz er rast der vrouwen wol To advise the woman [with ze tuon daz si niht tuon sol. To do what she ought not to do.3 VII. v. 881-994. That one is not to give away honour for beauty; or with a view to be made beautiful for ever: Durch boesen Kouf ze Markte gat He makes a bad bargain Swer umbe sohoen sin gre l&t, Who gives his honour for beauty; and that beauty is dishonoured without discipline. Every kind of malice has its gestures (or outward appearance). (Yet) one is deceived by appearances; seeing deceives vastly, in both women and men \_am sehen triuget man mch dicke, 939]. beidiu man und ouch wip Both man, and also woman, erzeigent oft daz in ir lip Often show that which in their bodies und in ir herzen niender ist: And in their hearts is nowhere: daz machet gar ir boeser list. That is caused by their wicked cun- ning. 1 ze potestdt. The author thinks of the Italian podesth, as chief municipal magistrate or mayor; one of the few passages by which he betrays his origin. 2 Gebende: ornaments, head-dresses, according to Wackernagel, EdeUteine; neither gives a satisfactory sense. The word Ge-bend-e point* to the verb bind. » v. 877-86. BOOK I. HOW TO GUARD A WIFE. 121 good wife; and what young gentlewomen and younkers like to be told; and whom they are to follow; and what those are to hear and to read who have come out of childhood,—romantic poems 1—aven- tures—are good for the young and the little-cultivated, as are pic- tures. But those whose minds are more developed, or literally who have come to their senses, they are to be taught (lit. mastered) differ- ently from children; and that an eloquent (lit. well-speaking) man shall not depart from truth. IX. v. 1163—1337. I have travelled away from my aim, and have said things that I should not have said but for the young people. I should yet have liked to speak of Knights and ladies, as I have done formerly in a book on Courtesy which I wrote in Italian." Of what nature is love. Der minn nature ist so getan: si machet wiser wisen man, und git dem torn mer niirrischeit, daz ist der minne gewonheit. This is the nature of love: It makes a wise man wiser, And gives the fool more foolishness, That is love's custom.2 How one is to guard a wife; and one is neither to gain her by magic, nor force her, nor buy her ;3 HOW TO GUARD A WIFE. I taught (in the lost Italian book) that one Ought to conquer one's wife with (good things) kind acts; fj That she should be steadfast (staete) to one. He who locks her up alone He dispenses quite with her service. Now tell me, of what good is it, That I lock up her body, If then her will is not as it should be? No lock will keep the mind: The Body without the heart is a feeble possession: Locks create great hatred: 1 Here, v. 1029-78 is introduced a list of legendary names, the subjects either of well-known French and German poems, or mentioned in some of these; and in some cases perhaps the title? of books that are lost. The list, beginning with Andromache, who is not known to have given the title to any substantive poem, finishes with a paean in honour of Percival. Some passages in this are difficult and obscure. H. Eiickert, 528—32. 2 V. 1179-82. * Vide W. Humboldt, Sphere and Duties of Government, p. 31, seq., on Matrimony and Love. 122 BOOK I. ON LOVE. Kind actions act as a better safeguard. Love, gained by magic and by force, And bought love, are no love. He who lias had recourse to magic, Know ye that he has violated Her whom he has loved by such means; He has the (manners) ways of an uncourteous man. He has quite an uncourteous mind Who does violence to women. that bought love is not love;— swer mit hiifscheit niht werven kan, He who cannot woo with courtesy, der wirt billich ein koufman. Let him properly become a tradesman, gekouft minn hat niht minne kraft: Bought love has not the power of love. that love would be a serf (eigen) if one were to buy it; and that it is to be free. And what one is to give through love: One shall give heart for heart, One shall with faith give faith, With love (liebe, not minne) one shall gaiu love. One shall with steadiness confirm Steadiness and truth.1 and that the gift does not mend what is evil. That a man gives to her who makes a fool of him;—that a man gives (will give) to her who herself has enough, and not give to her who has nothing. A fool sees what ornaments a woman has outside on her body, the wise man sees what are the ornaments of her soul;—the follow- ing goes again into the direction of woman's right, and this time on the side of our reformers. That a man shall not deny a woman her possessions (fjuof). On this subject our author expresses himself briefly but pithily: Ich lert daz dehein biderbe man niht enker sinn muot dar an daz er abe spricht eim wibe ir guot. wan swelch wip daz getuot, ez stat ir vil boesliche: doch stat es wirser ungeliche einem man, daz suit ir glouben. wizzt daz ich gerner wolde rouben. I taught (again in the lost Italian book) that no upright man Should turn his mind to Denying a woman her goods. If any woman does such a thing It befits her very ill: But incomparably more ill does it befit A man: that you shall believe. Know ye that I sooner would rob on the highways* 1 v. 1251-56. 8 v. 1330-37. 128 SUMMARY. BOOK IV. AND V. 11. Of nobility, and its obligations; and what real nobility is; and that we are all God's children by birth, and those who remain so are really noble. 12. On various desires, which various men have: Play, the pleasures of the Table, Hawking, Lying in one's Inn, Hunting, Women; and how all these give us much trouble both whilst we are engaged with them ; and, when not possessing them, whilst we dream of them. BOOK IV. 1. On Eiches, Dominion, Power, Name, Nobility and Desire, as connected with Unsteadiness. These need not trouble us if we do not wish to serve Un-virtue. 2 & 3. On Steadiness; definition.1 A few virtuous acts do not make a virtuous man. Various subdivisions of this matter. The good man turns whatever befalls him into good, the bad man to eviL Thus the bad man, if he becomes rich, is uncharitable.2 4. Why God permits a bad man to do harm to a good one; and how it can be right that the devil is powerful. 5. Why evil sometimes befalls the good man, whilst it goes well with the bad one. , 6. No one can penetrate God's decrees, and what he does is done well. 7. Let the good man fear nothing, and not care how long, but how, he lives. 8. On the death of friends, which is to be regretted, but with moderation. On the death of married people, and on second marriage, not too hastily to be entered into; and on chastity during widowhood. On secret transgressions. 9. Whether one shall recognize one's friends in the world to come. book v. 1. Division of things into good, evil, and neutral. 2. The Summum Bonum, and the way to it. 1 V. 4345-62. * V. 4391-4400. 130 SUMMARY. BOOK. VI. AND VII. is wortldesa. Of heartless rich men and usurers. On bringing one's children up to being merciful. 3. Of gentleness, and of anger, arrogance, envy, and unchastity, as sources of sorrow. Of robbers and thieves. 4. Mild men are more rarely injured than heartless ones. Malice comes from cowardice. Of the necessity of a pious knight waging war against the vices; and details of this warring, in which the Devil and the World and Desire help the Vices. Four troops of Vices and their order of battle. 5. Exhortation to knights and to priests. Of the duty of lords to those who are submitted to them, and how we ask our inferiors often to do both good and evil, whilst God asks us to do good only. Of our duties towards our friends. 6. Against wicked counsellors, the devil's whetstone and net. Dangers of greediness. Good cheer in poverty. On the necessity of faith in God's judgments. And some more about hell, whither hasten both priests and laymen. BOOK VII. 1. Of the souk and of its relations with the body, and its supe- riority to it. 2. Of the mind being tuned either to good or bad things; and some more of the misdoings of priests and knights, and also of greedy judges. Of the four powers: Imagination, Memory, Eeasoning power, and Intellect. 3. Of the Arts. None is so little that one could know it wholly. Of the seven arts, and who were the best masters in each. i. Of Theology and Medicine. 5. Of the decrease of learning. Exhortation to parents. 6. Of the five doors of the soul. The five senses as the servants of the four powers (vid. above, 2). 7. The soul in the body, as a king in his land. 8. Resuming the remarks on the powers of the body and soul, and their application. BOOK VIII. 1. Un-Steadiness has a sister: Immoderation, who is also the mes- 132 CLOSE OF THE SUMMARY. — IS LEARNING CONDUCIVE TO MORALITY t BOOK X. treats of Mildness, Liberality, and Kindness; and winds up the subject, the author taking leave of his readers, and addressing hia book as he sends it into the world. Before we ourselves take leave of gentle and good Thomasin, we append a few further detached extracts from the last nine books, with which we did not wish to break the summary, and which we have thus reserved as a bonne Louche: IS LEARNING CONDUCIVE TO MORALITY 1 He who injures the mind of his child, 9291 By (false) economy and by (desire of) gain, In not sending him to school Nor to court, know ye that he turns His profit into a great loss. 9295 If one leaves to his child not sense, And leaves him riches, he knows not well What he is to do with them. Maybe that an unwise man Who knows nothing at all or but little, 9300 Nor, in consequence of his laziness, wishes to learn, Offers speech like the following: He answers me that The un-learned act better Than he who is a good scholar, 9305 And does not do as he ought. The priest who has got good learning Is hankering, just like unlearned people, After wicked things and sin, And making gains at all times. 9310 "Why then should we learn anything, Since we see that such things happen?" I will give him an answer To his speech, with one word: Doestthou fancy, that he who can read decently 9315 Is therefore a learned man? Truly there is a goodly number of priests, I really mean to assure you of that, Who read that they may see what is written, And yet may never succeed 9320 In understanding the writing. Thus it happens to a peasant Who goes to church PROPER MOURNING FOR A FRIEND. 133 And stands in front of the pictures: Although he sees the painting, 9325 Yet what it means he knows not; He does not know what the picture signifies: Understanding is not such a common thing. How then wilt thou, that he Should know better than another 9330 What he is to do, if he can understand Nothing at all of what is the meaning of the writing ? 1 Now let us assume that he is really learned, Cannot you take a like case In the well-instructed physician, 9335 Who greatly craves after unwholesome food And yet knows that it will injure him, But follows his greediness:' Thus perchance acts a man Whtr can well understand the writings, 9340 And whom yet his lechery draws Into that whereby he gains trouble and sorrow. (Yet) the art is to be held dear by us: The physician can with his physic Restore his health 9345 If at any hour be fall sick. If a man falls into a ditch, know ye That he comes out of it better If he has sight than if he has none. Just so it fares with him 9350 Who is really learned: if he do sin, He thinks of it at another hour That he may again do good, And comes back again to the Commandments. 9355 Rarely an unlearned man doeth that. PROPER MOURNING FOR A FRIEND. Ich wil iu sagen daz ich wil I will tell you that I wish daz man sin vriunt niht klage vil, A man not to bewail much the loss of a friend; doch sol man niht &n klage lata Yet one shall not let sine vriunt von hinne g&a. One's friend go hence without mourn- . . * ing.2 Swie ich daz gesprochen hfin, As I have said daz man schier l&z sin vriunde g&n, That one is to leave one's friends to depart, man solz also versten niht, You must not understand 1 The question, thus put, is still practical. See the excellent pamphlet: 'An exaggerated estimate of the value of reading and writing,' by Dr Hodgson. 1868. a V. 6579-82. 134 MEDICAL PRACTICE. SWEET SIX. swelhem man liht daz geschiht daz er sinn vriunt verlorn hat, daz er habe so tcerschen rat daz er zebant var unde spil: wan taet er daz, des waer ze vil. er mac die bluomen lazen sin ein wile, deist der rat min: im stet niht wol der bluomen kranz. er sol ouch m!den gem den tanz, den buhurt und daz seitespil, daz ist daz icb raten wil. MEDICAL Ein arzat der wol erzen kan, der erzent dicke einn siechen man mit durst, mit hunger und mit prant. er bint in uf zuo einer want, er snidet und stichet in vil hart. eim andern rouft er stnen bart und sin b£r, wan er wil daz er niht enslaf ze vil. That he to whom perchance it happens To lose bis friend, Should be so foolishly advised As to go off straightways to sport: If he did so, it would be too much. He may leave flowers alone Awhile, that is my advice: The wreath of flowers sits not well upon bim. Let him also avoid dancing, Tournaments and music, That is what I wish to counsel.1 PRACTICE. A physician who can cure well, He cures vigorously a sick man With thirst, with hunger, and with burning. He ties him up against a wall, He cuts and pricks him a very great deal. He tears another's beard And hair when he desires Him not to sleep too much.2 SWEET BIN. Ez ist ein knit des enkan ich niht genennen tiusche, swenn daz geschiht daz sin ein schaf izzt, ez ist tot, und ist dem schaf doch harte not nach dem selben knit: sin suoz machet daz ez sterben muoz. al daz selbe uns geschiht: There is a shrub that I cannot Name in German, if it happen That a sheep eat of it, she dies. And yet that sheep has a great longing After that same shrub: its sweetness Is the cause of her death. Just so it happens to us.' ON MODERATION IN BLAZONRY. 10425 10430 If one, having in his shield Roses, would also Take the very flowers from the fields Into his shield,4 That would seem to me extravagant. The same I will tell yon Of one, who having in his shield the sun, Should bethink himself of having also The stars, and moreover the moon And the sky, it would be strange: It would, whatever he might urge, be quite over-much.5 10435 1 V. 6591-605. 2 V. 5089-96. s V. 14087-93. 1 N.B. Crest is not tlie word. It really refers to the ornament on the helmet. What is meant here, is the ornament in the shield itself, not in the imitation of it with which heraldry deals. 5 Those who are familiar with modern Austrian dialects, may he amused ON MODERATION IN BLAZONRY. 135 if Truly I will tell you / What one sees in a man's exterior I Is not without significance, Since it points at all times To that which is within. 10440 / / By one's weapons and by one's dress . One's heart is greatly known. I will tell you, if a man Can with uprightness and gentleness bring it about That one oares more for him 10445 Than for his weapons and arms, that is good. As to what he has in his shield, If he is upright in the field, I care for it the more, You may believe me in that. 10450 Yet shall one have measure in these things: It would seem to me not well done, If a man were to have the sea-dogs (?)1 'And would therefore paint On his weapons the monsters of the sea, 10455 And the fishes below. If one bears a boar On his shield, let him guard Against having a swine-herd, For that would look ill, that is true. 10460 He who wants to bear a dog, Let him not embellish the matter So as to bring in the very hunt: Let not his work be such. If one were to bear a wolf, 10465 How would it look if he wished To have in his field The she-wolf and the whelps? One cannot praise it In him to whom such a thing happens. 10470 OP A JUDGE WHO DOES NOT ENJOY SUFFICIENT AUTHORITY. Should there be a lord who has not That power in his judgment seat Which he justly ought to have If people were (properly) submissive to him, 12870 in finding here a very characteristic expletive, difficult of translation in all cases, and which we hardly would have expected to meet with in grave Thomasin: sin waere halt gar ze vil. 1 The passage is doubtful: the MSS. vary. The word may refer to some- thing like those waving lines which, on Sicilian coins, indicate the sea. 136 OF A JUDGE WHO DOES NOT ENJOY SUFFICIENT AUTHORITY. Let him do like the eagle, That ye may truly believe. When the eagle has come to be aged He flies then so high That the sun sets on fire 12875 His wjngs, that is true; Then he leaves the sun, And lets himself fall down into a well, And thus renews himself, That he becomes new, whole and gladsome. 12880 Thus a lord ought to act: If he cannot well control His people and lands, Let him raise himself at once Towards God with humility, 12885 With prayer, and with kindness, That He may help him to judge well, And so do that which he is to do. When he has done so, Then he is to let himself down 12890 To his work, and at once Justly judge his land. Lot him not be out of spirits For what people may say or do to him, For all that will be well disposed of, 12895 If he has that piety and gentleness That he desires To accomplish his duty. If this extract gives a curious instance of free handling of the ancient mythological tradition of the phoenix, the following may sbow in what manner our author treats a bit of the historical legends of antiquity: OMNIA MEA MECUM PORTO. Ein stat gevangen wart A town was captured von ir vinden, do vluhen hart By her enemies, then fled hastily die man in der stat vant: Those that were found in the town: si truogen phenninge unde gewant. They bore money and dresses, do was ein man under in, There was a man among them der het den wistuom unde den sin Who had the wisdom and the senje daz er niht wolde tragen: Not to wish to bear (away) anything: die andern vuoren gar geladen. The others were heavily laden, einer vreite in zwiu er faete daz. Some one asked him why he did so. do antwurte er im baz Then he answered him well danner vr>e: er sprach 'min moot His question: he said, ' My spirit treit min phenninge und min guot.' Is my money and my goods.' er meinte sine tugent dermite, He meant thereby his virtue, 'OMNIA mea MECUM PORTO.' 137 sinen wistuom und sin schoene site: daz was doch ir aller spot. do reit n&ch des herren bot der die stat hete behert und viengens alle an der vert, wan si warn geladen hart. der ein der niht truoc an der vart, der was ringe und kom wol hin, wan wistuom, tugende unde sin miiezen ze jungest brechen viir, swie lange si sin vor der tiir. His wisdom, and his fair manners. Yet that was (an object of) mockery to all of them. Then rode after them men sent by the lord Who had besieged the town, And they caught them all on their way, Since they were heavily laden. The one who bore nothing on his road He was light of foot, and got well off. Thus wisdom, virtue, and sense Must at the end break forth However long they be before the door.1 We must forbear the temptation to quote a fable of the Ass and the Wolf, very prettily told at some length and with great amplitude of moralities annexed: our readers will perhaps, by this time, care sufficiently for their Thomasin, to look it out in Max Miiller's ' Ger- man Classics,' page 207-11, where a translation into modern German is given. And we conclude with this characteristic Dialogue, men- tioned above, between the Author and his Pen. DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE AUTHOR AND HIS PEN. "Let me rest, since it is time," 12223 Speaks my pen; "he who never gives To his own servant 12225 Rest, he greatly wrongs him. So have I—this is true— Served you this whole winter, That you never allowed me to remain (still): I had to write day and night. 12230 You have quite slit my mouth, Since for more than ten hours A day you used to mend2 and cut me. How could I suffer that so long? You cut me now large now small, 12235 And have made me common By writing about masters and servants. You do me great wrong. When you used to keep up good manners 1 V. 6817-40. 1 Tempern. 11 tempering = the penknife.—Miiller and Zarncke, T. iii. p. 29, certainly give the word in several other passages from other writers, and other words derived from the same root, but in all of them it has the meaning of properly mixing, and the like; none remind us, as our passage does, of the tempering of steel. Here we have one of the few instances in which the ex- pression betrays our author's Italian origin. 138 THE PEN REMONSTRATES WITH THE AUTHOR. I very much liked to be with you. When you with knights and ladies Used to attend tournaments and dances, Then I liked exceedingly to be near you: When you—believe mo that1— Would be at court Amongst the people, then was my Belief that I was better By you than elsewhere; but you know Now you have dlscontinued (all) that, And have given up that (sort of) thing, And thrown yourself quite backwards. I have gained nothing by that, Since I must write all day long: Know that I won't stand it. You have become a hermit. Whilst you were at College, You did not give me so much trouble. Your door is (now) barred all day: Say on, what has happened to you? You have no wish to see ladies or knights. I am troubled beyond measure by your light, Which you burn all night long. If you mean in one year To write and eke put into verse What you have in you to write, I have no wish to remain with you. He who gives himself up to poetry Must become quite undone, Seeing he altogether loses himself With thoughts, that is true." To which remonstrance the Pen receives this answer: "Leave your complaint, complain not so much, And hear what I will tell you. If I had taken to poetry From a desire to kill time, I should not have got In four years to where I am, 12275 Unless I am much mistaken You know well that I speak truth. In eight months have I quite Finished the eight parts (Not without much night-watching on your side aleo), 12280 And I am to make two more of them: So you must do still two months' watching. With that, observe that my poetizing 1 This line is obscure in the original. 12240 12245 12250 12255 122G0 12265 12270 THE AUTHOR'S REPLY TO HIS PEN. 139 Is no amusement to me at all. I might get out of it something like five years 12285 Of amusement, that is true, If I had taken to it for amusement. As it is, I have taken it up From necessity, as I see well That people never do as they ought. 12290 Therefore have I put aside What I otherwise should have done, As I must absolutely speak out What to be silent about troubled ine much, You say that he becomes undone 12295 Who gives himself to poetry: If people had not in olden times Been thus undone, there Would not have been so many good men As we read of in books. 12300 And we should now be quite undone If we did not find written that Wherein a man may take a model and meaning. I have become aware of one thing, That one gets quite lost in thought 12305 Whilst one poetizes, that is true, So that one can hardly bear oneself properly Whilst one is thinking much of it. But when it has all come out And one has in good time returned to oneself, 12310 One may yet bear oneself better Than one did before, know you that. If my door is barred for a while, That must not disturb (you) too much, Since in a (secluded) corner one must 12315 Make a foot for a poem, That in aftertimes it may run In the wide, wide world. I am exceedingly desirous of seeing Both knights and ladies, 12320 Yet methinks it is well done That I should miss their company for a while, In the words that I speak (And) that are to be for the good of both. He has not good counsel 12325 Who, having served much and well, Would for the sake of one small service, Lose what he has served for well. Thus I speak for your sake: • You have with your service gained me; 12330 140 THE KNIGHT AND LADY OF WINSBEKE. But if now you will leave me, Then what you have done is lost I have of Unsteadiness, With your help, said much, (Also) of Steadiness and Measure; 12335 Wild-conduct (lit. Unmeasure) I do not overlook, Since of it I have also said That she is the sister of Unsteadiness. Steadiness and Measure are sisters, They are children of one virtue. 12340 Eight is the brother of the twain, And of him I am now To say willingly and to write well What I have to say of him.— And thou Right, write in my heart about right, 12345 That in my utterance of it it become not wrong. Thou indeed writest not with ink: But everything will be worthless That I may write with ink, Unless it be that Thou seest to it all the day long." 12350 In looking out for other books of about the same period, and treating of kindred subjects, we find the Advice of a Father to his iSon by (the knight of) Winsbeke, to which is added the answer of the son. The date is not ascertainable, further than that the language assigns it to the 13th century, and that an allusion to Wolfram's Percival, which was written between 1205 and 1215, shows it to be later than this poem, and consequently later than our Thomasin. Like that greater author, Winsbeke deals little in the externals of ceremony, much less than the writers of similar English performances in this volume and in the Babees Book. Another hand has added Advise of the Lady of Winsbeke (die Winsbekin) to her Daughter. Both books, of much smaller extent than Thomasin, were edited by Haupt, in 1845.' They are divided into stanzas, and the metre is rather more lively than Thomasin's. We quote a few passages from the ADVICE OF THE FATHER. Sun, swer M dir ein nisere sage, Son, if any one in your house tell a tale, mit worten imz niht widersprich: Do not contradict him in terms: 1 Moritz Haupt. Der Winsbeke and die Winsbekin. Mit Anmer- kungen, Leipzig. Weidmann, 1845 (Br. Mus ). * THE KNIGHT ADVISES HIS SON. 141 und swer dir sinen kumber klage in schame, des erbarme dich: der milte got erbarmet sich iiber alle die erbiirmic sint. den wlben alien schone sprich: ist undr in einiu saslden vrt, da wider sint tusent oder me den tugent und ere wonet bi.1 Sun, du solt kiusober worte sen und stetes muotes: tuost du daz so habe ez uf die triuwe min, du lebst in eren deste baz. trae niemen nit nach langen haz, wes gen den vlnden wol gemuot, den friunden niht mit dienste laz, d& bi in ziibten wol gezogen, und griieze den du griiezen solt, s5 has dich. sselde niht betrogen. And if some one makes plaint to you of his grief With a feeling of shame, have pity on him. Gentle God has pity On all those who are pitying. To all the ladies speak courteously (beautifully): If there is among them one too free, There are, as a set off, a thousand and more In whom dwell virtue and honour. Son, thou shalt use choice (chaste) words And be of steady spirit: if thou dost so Thou may'st believe on my faith Thou shalt live in honour all the more. Do not long bear hatred against any- one, Be of good spirit towards thy enemies, Do not grow tired of serving thy friends, Be at the same time like one well brought up in Good-Breeding, And salute him whom it is right for thee to salute, Then thou wilt be rarely disappointed.2 That late Latin author who justly, or by a mistake, has been called Dionysius Cato, and who, according to one who has specially inquired into the matter, may have lived in the fourth century after Christ, left to our ancestors a favourite reading book, in his Sentetdice, or collection of maxims on life. A very early prose translation was made of them by Notker in the 10th century (d. 1022). Many translations, extensions, adaptations followed, each writer altering or adding to the ground-work as, in his desire for the moralization of the world, appeared fit to him. Of such a " German Cato," which seems not to be later then the middle of the 13th century, we throw together a few extracts, bearing, to some extent, on the subject of courtesy.3 121 Wis ob dinem tische vr6: 121 Be joyful at your own table: an vromder stat tuo niht als6. At that of a stranger it is not equally fitting.4 1 Stanza 10. 'Stanza 39. * Fr. Zarncke, Der deutsche Cato. Geschichte der deutschen Ueber- setzungen der im Mittelalter unter dem Namen Cato bekannten Distichen bis zur Verdraengung derselben durch die Uebersetzung Seb. Brant's am Ende des 15 Jahrhunderts.—Leipzig, G. Wigand, 1852. (In the Brit. Mus.) 4 Compare the injunction in the Babees Book, II. 26/29, ' to talk morosely' K l a TABLB-DISCin,INE. If (rood is done by yon. 28 Be mindful of the great need Of orphans, wherein they are: Give them,' through God, your bread, Bo you shall free yourself from hell. No two noble men shall 33 Use the same spoon in eating their broth:' That is well befitting for courteous people, For very uiiknightly things happen. To drink out of the dish befits no one, Though many a one praise such bad manners, 38 Who takes it very wrongfully, And pours down (the broth) like an enraged man; And him who leans over the dish Whilst he eats, like a pig, 42 And, in a very uncleanly manner, snorts And smacks with his mouth. Konie people bite off pieces of bread And thrust it (the remainder) back into the dish, 46 According to boorish manners: Such I11 Breeding courteous people give up. Some people are inclined, When they have gnawed a bone, 60 To put it back again into the dish: That you have to consider as acting greatly amiss. Those who like to eat mustard and sauces, Let them be very careful 54 To forbear being dirty, And not to push their fingers into them. He who belches when he is to eat And blows his nose into the table-cloth, Both these things are not befitting,' As far as I can understand. 60 He who grunts (snouts), like a waterbadger,4 Whilst he eats, as some are accustom- ed to do, And smacks like a Bavarian, How much does he renounce Good Breeding. 64 He who wishes both to speak and eat, To do the two kinds of work at the same time, And to speak in his sleep, Ho can but very rarely rest well. 68 During meal, leave disputing alone Whilst you eat, as some do: Think on that, oh my friends, That never were there such ill-befitting manners. 72 The man who puts the loaf against his body, And cuts as a sick woman may do 75 And if a little dish is brought in With sauce when you go to dine, You must not put into it Your bare hand, that befits ill. 80 It appears to me a very bad action, In whomsoever I see this piece of ill- breeding, If a man has got in his mouth some- thing to eat, And the while drinks like a beast. 84 Some people blow into their drink.; Many a one likes to do so as a regular thing: It is very uncertain whether you will be thanked for doing so; Such ill-breeding one ought to be without.5 88 Some people look over their beakers Whilst they drink; that does not be- fit well: Have not such people as cavaliers Where you are to have the best. 92 Before you drink, wipe your mouth, Lest you dirty the drink with fatty matter: Courtly manner befits well at all mo- ments, And is a courtly of thinking. 96 1 An additional touch, not contained in the Italian parallel poem. 2 Same remark. 8 Vide Mr Eossetti's Essay, p. 23, and note. 4 The compound word not to be found : about the parts there is no doubt, but I know not what animal is meant. An otter? or beaver? 5 In potum tuum sufflare nolito. Bdbeet Boo/t, II. 28/29. TABLE-DISCIPLINE. 145 Between the courses a man may Well drink, if need impels him, (And) if he can have the drink; Not all people like it. 100 He who puts his finger on the knife Whilst he cuts, as a skinner1 does, How rarely does such a man stir When one conquers over heathens! And those who loll on the table Whilst they eat,—which does not befit well— How rarely they shake their helmets When one is called upon to serve the Ladies! 108 Again, you must not scratch your throat, Whilst you eat, with the bare hand: But if it happen (that you cannot help scratching) Then courteously take a portion of your dress, 112 And scratch with that: that is more befitting. Than that your skin should become dirtied, The lookers-on observe it (In him) who does not refrain from such ill manners. 116 You are not to clean your teeth With knives, as some do, And as still happens here and there: He who does so, it is not good. 120 He who likes to eat with spoons, And cannot manage to lift the food with them, Let him forbear from the dirty way Of shoving it on them with his fingers. He who whilst at table, takes it into his head 125 To let out his girdle, He may for a long while wait for me, He is an odd fish, and not sound to the back-bone.2 He who blows his nose at table And rubs it with his hand, 130 He is a disgraceful fellow, if I under- stand it well; He is not aware of better breeding. If it happen that one must Place some little dish between (several guests), Ye would be wanting in all good breeding If ye were to put your hands in all at the same time. 136 He who means to eat with bread (steeping it into the broth) Whilst another eats with him, Let him well guard against that, If he has got the least virtue.3 140 I hear it said of some (If it is true, it is ill-befitting) That they eat without having washed themselves: May their joints grow lame I 144 Some are so over-joyous, They eat, as it appears to me, Without being aware of the where- abouts of their mouths And bite their own fingers, 148 And their tongue, so I hear it said.' To whom will he complain of the damage. . . .' 152 Now take good care of your manners: If your companion at table wishes to drink, You must not be eating the while: That is courteous and well-befitting. He who takes matter from his nose And from his eyes, as some do, 1 The ' skinner' makes his appearance here somewhat unexpectedly; but very likely be may be thought of as connected with the knacker, and the hitter's business was ordinarily combined with the functions of the executioner, —of whom courtesy and fighting the heathen could certainly not be expected. 2 er ist niht visch unz an den grdt,—bis avf die Griiten, nicht ganz was er scin soil—not a fish to the backbone. 3 Perhaps this translation is rather forced. The original is obscure, and some line or lines may be lost. 4 lioere ich, which is repeated below, is, at present, a frequent expletive among the Germans of Bohemia: this observation, were it strengthened by others, might allow a guess at the home of the author. NOTE ON LE M&XAQIEB DE PARIS, 1393-4 A.D. , 151 young orphan-girl of 15; "seldom will you see ever so old a man who will not willingly marry a young woman" (i. 158). And though, as the reader will have seen, the old man has some regard for his creature and sexual comforts, yet he looks even more to his young wife's second hushand than, himself, and more to her being as thoroughly mistress of her household for her own sake than for his. A sweet and loving wife, a sensible religious woman, and a finished housewife, would the good old bourgeois husband—a gentleman in spirit and station too—make of the young untrained girl whose life he had linked to his own. The work is divided into three Distinctions or Parts, each with its articles or sections. I. How to gain the love of God and the salvation of your soul. 1. Pray to God and the Virgin when you wake in the morning. (p. 9-15) 2. On choosing good companions, going to church, confession, &c. 15-16 3. Always love God and the Virgin; with an abstract of a treatise on Eepentance, Confession, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Seven Virtues. 16-62 4. Live chastely, like Susanna, Lucretia, &c. 62-76 5. Love your husband (whether me or another) like Sarah, Eobekah, Eachel. 76-96 6. Be humble and obedient to jr0ur husband, like Grisild, &c. In the illustrative story, p. 158-165, a cure for a saucy wife is given: bleed her till she faints. 96-168 7. Be 1 curieuse' and careful of his person (From this is the extract above, p. 149, 150. An interesting chapter) 168-177 8. Keep your husband's secrets, and conceal his faults; don't talk scandal, exaggerate, as other women do, &c. 177-185 9. If your husband's going to make a fool of himself like Melibeus, quietly stop him, as Prudence did 185-240 Part II. begins the second volume, and is of Managing the Household, gaining Friends, guarding against Mishaps and Old Age. OR JILATE CARD