A poem on minding what you say, which Mr Aldis Wright has kindly sent me, some Maxims on Behaviour, &c., which all end in -ly, and Roger Ascham’s Advice to his brother-in-law on entering a nobleman’s service, follow, and then the Poems which suggested the Forewords on Education in Early England, and have been partly noticed in them, p. i-iv. I have only to say of the first, The Babees Boke, that I have not had time to search for its Latin original, or other copies of the text. Its specialty is its attributing so high birth to the Bele Babees whom it addresses, and its appeal to Lady Facetia to help its writer. Of the short alphabetic poems that follow,—The A B C of Aristotle,—copies occur elsewhere; and that in the Harleian Manuscript 1304, which has a different introduction, I hope to print in the companion volume to this, already alluded to. Vrbanitatis, I was glad to find, because of the mention of the booke of urbanitie in Edward the Fourth’s Liber Niger (p. ii. above), as we thus know what the Duke of Norfolk of “Flodden Field” was taught in his youth as to his demeanings, how mannerly he should eat and drink, and as to his communication and other forms of court. He was not to spit or snite before his Lord the King, or wipe his nose on the table-cloth. The next tracts, The Lytylle Chyldrenes Lytil Boke or Edyllys Be[16] (a title made up from the text) and The Young Children’s Book, are differing versions of one set of maxims, and are printed opposite one another for contrast sake. The Lytil Boke was printed from a later text, and with an interlinear French version, by Wynkyn de Worde in ‘Here begynneth a lytell treatyse for to lerne Englisshe and Frensshe.’ This will be printed by Mr Wheatley in his Collection of Early Treatises on Grammar for the Society, as the copy in the Grenville Library in the Brit. Mus. is the only one known. Other copies of this Lytil Boke are at Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Oxford. Of two of these Mr David Laing and Mr Henry Bradshaw have kindly given me collations, which are printed at the end of this Preface. Of the last Poem, Stans Puer ad Mensam, attributed to Lydgate—
as nearly everything in the first half of the 15th century was— I have printed two copies, with collations from a third, the Jesus (Cambridge) MS. printed by Mr Halliwell in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, v. 1, p. 156-8, and reprinted by Mr W. C. Hazlitt in his Early Popular Poetry, ii. 23-8. Mr Hazlitt notices 3 other copies, in Harl. MS. 4011, fol. 1, &c.; Lansdowne MS. 699; and Additional MS. 5467, which he collated for his text. There must be plenty more about the country, as in Ashmole MS. 61, fol. 16, back, in the Bodleian.[17] Of old printed editions Mr Hazlitt notes one “from the press of Caxton, but the only copy known is imperfect. It was printed two or three times by Wynkyn de Worde. Lowndes mentions two, 1518, 4to, and 1524, 4to; and in the public library at Cambridge there is said by Hartshorne (Book Rarities, 156) to be a third without date. It is also appended to the various impressions of the Boke of Nurture by Hugh Rhodes.” This Boke has been reprinted for the Early English Text Society, and its Stans Puer is Rhodes’s own expansion of one of the shorter English versions of the original Latin[18].
The woodcuts Messrs Virtue have allowed me to have copies of for a small royalty, and they will help the reader to realize parts of the text better than any verbal description. The cuts are not of course equal to the beautiful early illuminations they are taken from, but they are near enough for the present purpose. The dates of those from British Museum MSS. are given on the authority of trustworthy officers of the Manuscript Department. The dates of the non-Museum MSS. are copied from Mr Wright’s text. The line of description under the cuts is also from Mr Wright’s text, except in one instance where he had missed the fact of the cut representing the Marriage Feast at Cana of Galilee, with its six water-pots.
The MS. of Russell is on thick folio paper, is written in a close—and seemingly unprofessional—hand, fond of making elaborate capitals to the initials of its titles, and thus occasionally squeezing up into a corner the chief word of the title, because the T of The preceding
has required so much room.[19] The MS. has been read through by a corrector with a red pen, pencil, or brush, who has underlined all the important words, touched up the capitals, and evidently believed in the text. Perhaps the corrector, if not writer, was Russell himself. I hope it was, for the old man must have enjoyed emphasizing his precepts with those red scores; but then he would hardly have allowed a space to remain blank in line 204, and have left his Panter-pupil in doubt as to whether he should lay his “white payne” on the left or right of his knives. Every butler, drill-serjeant, and vestment-cleric, must feel the thing to be impossible. The corrector was not John Russell.
To all those gentlemen who have helped me in the explanations of words, &c.,—Mr Gillett, Dr Günther, Mr Atkinson, Mr Skeat, Mr Cockayne, Mr Gibbs, Mr Way, the Hon. G. P. Marsh—and to Mr E. Brock, the most careful copier of the MS., my best thanks are due, and are hereby tendered. Would that thanks of any of us now profiting by their labours could reach the ears of that prince of Dictionary-makers, Cotgrave, of Frater Galfridus, Palsgrave, Hexham, Philipps, and the rest of the lexicographers who enable us to understand the records of the past! Would too that an adequate expression of gratitude could reach the ears of the lost Nicolas, and of Sir Frederic Madden, for their carefully indexed Household Books,—to be contrasted with the unwieldy mass and clueless mazes of the Antiquaries’ Household Ordinances, the two volumes of the Roxburghe Howard Household Books, and Percy’s Northumberland Household Book[20]!—They will be spared the pains of the special place of torment reserved for editors who turn out their books without glossary or index. May that be their sufficient reward!
3, St George’s Square, N.W.
16 Dec., 1866.
[ HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.]
Mr C. H. Pearson has referred me to a most curious treatise on the state of Duke Humphrey’s body and health in 1404 (that is, 1424, says Hearne), by Dr Gilbert Kymer, his physician, part of which (chapters 3 and 19, with other pieces) was printed by Hearne in the appendix to his Liber Niger, v. ii. p. 550 (ed. alt.), from a MS. then in Sir Hans Sloane’s Collection, and now Sloane 4 in the British Museum. It begins at p. 127 or folio 63, and by way of giving the reader a notion of its contents, I add here a copy of the first page of the MS.
Incipit dietarium de sanitatis custodia preinclitissimo principi ac metuendissimo domino, domino humfrido, duci Gloucestrie, Alijsque preclaris titulis insignito, Scriptum & compilatum, per venerabilem doctorem, Magistrum Gilbertum Kymer, Medicinarum professorem, arcium ac philosophie Magistrum & in legibus bacallarium prelibati principis phisicum, Cuius dietarij colleccionem (?) dilucidancia & effectum viginti sex existunt capitula, quorum consequenter hic ordo ponitur Rubricarum.