THE YOUNG CHILDREN’S BOOK
MS. Ashmole 61 (Bodleian Library), fol. 20, about 1500.
p. [21]. Seven Sciences, i.e., knowledges, hence Arts. The introduction is nearly identical, but very few of the maxims agree.
p. [22]. What you get with your hands. One of the many allusions which suggest adaptation to the middle class. Others are to buying and selling, to getting your money honestly, &c. The stress upon morals rather than manners is perhaps due to the same cause.
p. [25]. At the school. The inference seems to be that they would learn manners there.
p. [25]. Quoth Kate. The same name occurs at the end of the three next poems as they appear in MS. Ashmole 61. It is probably a corruption, unless we have here one of the rare instances of a woman copyist. Cato suggests itself as the most likely original; and in this way. He was undoubtedly identified with the Wise Man, as appears from the Luytel Caton of the Vernon MS. (see p. [189], below). Accordingly, Quod Cato might have stood at the end of this poem, and have become confused with Kate from Katharine or Catherine.