THE MANER OF THE WORLD NOW A DAYES.
In giving this poem a place among our author’s undoubted productions, I now apprehend that I deferred too much to the judgment of my friend Mr. J. P. Collier, who had recently reprinted it without suspecting its genuineness. It may, after all, be Skelton’s; but at any rate it is only a rifacimento of the following verses,—found in MS. Sloane, 747. fol. 88, and very difficult to decipher:
“So propre cappes
So lytle hattes
And so false hartes
Saw y never.
So wyde gownes
In cytees and townes
And so many sellers of bromys