These Notes are principally concerned with the numerous variations exhibited in the edition printed by I. R. in 1598. See the [Preface].
The references are to the Sections and lines, as numbered.
Prologue; lines 2, 6. See Job, v. 7; 2 Thess. iii. 10.
15. The allusion is to Caxton’s Book of the Chess; see the description of it in Ames’ Typographical Antiquities, ed. Dibdin, i. 36, where woodcuts will be found representing the several pieces.
20. iudges. Caxton calls them rooks, as at present, but he describes them as being vicars and legates of the king, i.e. as occupying the position of judges.
yomenne, pawns. In Caxton, we find the division of pawns into eight classes (answering to the eight pawns on each side), in which the king’s rook’s pawn represents the husbandman. The next in order, the king’s knight’s pawn, is the smith; after which, in due order, we find the notary, merchant, physician, taverner, guard (or watchman), and the ribald or dice-player, whose character is not well spoken of. This eight-fold division seems to me to have suggested the well-known formula which divides men into the eight classes of ‘soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy, thief;’ which is sometimes otherwise varied. The German formula is. ‘Edelmann, Bettelman, Amtmann, Pastor, Kaufmann, Laufmann, Maler, Major;’ also, be it observed, eight-fold. Our soldier, tinker, tailor, apothecary, ploughboy, and thief, may be imagined to correspond, with sufficient exactitude, to Caxton’s guard, smith, merchant, physician, husbandman, and ribald.
27. Remytte, leave. A word is evidently omitted; we must supply to after as, or else substitute to for as. In the Book of Surveying, ch. ix, we find, “I remytte that to menne of lawe;” and again, in ch. xii, “I remytte all those poyntes to menne of lawe.” See also [sect. 7], l. 14.