“With a bastard large and longe,”

and that with the right word (baslarde) staring him in the face from Ritson’s text. We wonder he did not give us an illustrative quotation from Falconbridge! Both editors have allowed some gross errors to escape, such as “come not” for “come” (v. 425); “so leue he be” for “ye be” (v. 593); “vnto her chambre” for “vnto your” (v. 993); but in general Ritson’s is the better and more intelligent text of the two. In the “Knight of Curtesy,” Mr. Hazlitt has followed Ritson’s text almost literatim. Indeed, it is demonstrable that he gave it to his printers as copy to set up from. The proof is this: Ritson has accented a few words ending in tè. Generally he uses the grave accent, but now and then the acute. Mr. Hazlitt’s text follows all these variations exactly. The main difference between the two is that Ritson prints the first personal pronoun i, and Mr. Hazlitt, I. Ritson is probably right; for in the “Scholehouse of Women” (vv. 537, 538) where the text no doubt was

“i [i. e. one] deuil a woman to speak may constrain,
But all that in hel be cannot let it again,”

Mr. Hazlitt changes “i” to “A,” and says in a note, “Old ed. has I.” That by his correction he should miss the point was only natural; for he evidently conceives that the sense of a passage does not in the least concern an editor. An instance or two will suffice. In the “Knyght and his Wyfe” (Vol. II. p. 17) we read,

“The fynd tyl hure hade myche tene
As hit was a sterfull we seme!”

Mr. Hazlitt in a note explains tene to mean “trouble or sorrow”; but if that were its meaning here, we should read made, and not hade, which would give to the word its other sense of attention. The last verse of the couplet Mr. Hazlitt seems to think perfectly intelligible as it stands. We should not be surprised to learn that he looked upon it as the one gem that gave lustre to a poem otherwise of the dreariest. We fear we shall rob it of all its charm for him by putting it into modern English:—

“As it was after full well seen.”

So in the “Smyth and his Dame” (Vol. III. p. 204) we read,

“It were a lytele maystry
To make a blynde man to se,”

instead of “as lytell.” It might, indeed, be as easy to perform the miracle on a blind man as on Mr. Hazlitt. Again, in the same poem, a little further on,