Symple as y had insight / somwhat þe ryme y correcte;
blame y cowde no mañ / y haue no persone suspecte.
Now, good god, graunt vs grace / oure sowles neuer to Infecte!
þañ may we regne in þi regioun / eternally with thyne electe. (l. 1235-50.)
If John Russell was the writer of the Epilogue quoted above, lines 1235-50, then it would seem that in this Treatise he only corrected and touched up some earlier Book of Norture which he had used in his youth, and which, if Sloane 2027 be not its original, may be still extant in its primal state in Mr Arthur Davenport’s MS., “How to serve a Lord,” said to be of the fourteenth century[5], and now supposed to be stowed away in a hayloft with the owner’s other books, awaiting the rebuilding and fitting of a fired house. I only hope this MS. may prove to be Russell’s original, as Mr Davenport has most kindly promised to let me copy and print it for the Society. Meantime it is possible to consider John Russell’s Book of Norture as his own. For early poets and writers of verse seem to have liked this fiction of attributing their books to other people, and it is seldom that you find them acknowledging that they have imagined their Poems on their own heads, as Hampole has it in his Pricke of Conscience, p. 239, l. 8874 (ed. Morris, Philol. Soc.). Even Mr Tennyson makes believe that Everard Hall wrote his Morte d’ Arthur, and some Leonard his Golden Year. On the other hand, the existence of the two Sloane MSS. is more consistent with Russell’s own statement (if it is his own, and not his adapter’s in the Harleian MS.) that he did not write his Boke himself, but only touched up another man’s. Desiring to let every reader judge for himself on this point, I shall try to print in a separate text[6], for convenience of comparison, the Sloane MS. 1315, which differs most from Russell, and which the Keeper of the MSS. at the British Museum considers rather earlier (ab. 1440-50 A.D.) than the MS. of Russell (ab. 1460-70 A.D.), while of the earliest of the three, Sloane MS. 2027 (ab. 1430-40 A.D.), the nearer to Russell in phraseology, I shall give a collation of all important variations. If any reader of the
present text compares the Sloanes with it, he will find the subject matter of all three alike, except in these particulars:
| Sloane 1315. | Sloane 2027. |
| Omits lines 1-4 of Russell. | Contains these lines. |
| Inserts after l. 48 of R. a passage about behaviour which it nearly repeats, where Russell puts it, at l. 276, Symple Condicions. | Inserts and omits as Sl. 1315 does, but the wording is often different. |
| Omits Russell’s stanza, l. 305-8, about ‘these cuttid galauntes with their codware.’ | |
| Omits a stanza, l. 319-24, p. 21. | Contains this stanza (fol. 42, b.). |
| Contracts R.’s chapter on Fumositees, p. 23-4. | Contracts the Fumositees too (fol. 45 and back). |
| Omits R.’s Lenvoy, under Fried Metes, p. 33-4. | Has one verse of Lenvoy altered (fol. 45 b.). |
| Transfers R.’s chapters on Sewes on Fische Dayes and Sawcis for Fishe, l. 819-54, p. 55-9, to the end of his chapter on Kervyng of Fishe, l. 649, p. 45. | Transfers as Sl. 1315 does (see fol. 48). |
| Gives different Soteltes (or Devices at the end of each course), and omits Russell’s description of his four of the Four Seasons, p. 51-4; and does not alter the metre of the lines describing the Dinners as he does, p. 50-5. | Differs from R., nearly as Sl. 1315 does. |
| Winds up at the end of the Bathe or Stewe, l. 1000, p. 69, R., with two stanzas of peroration. As there is no Explicit, the MS. may be incomplete, but the next page is blank. | Has 3 winding-up stanzas, as if about to end as Sloane 1315 does, but yet goes on (omitting the Bathe Medicinable) with the Vssher and Marshalle, R. p. 69, and ends suddenly, at l. 1062, p. 72, R., in the middle of the chapter. |
In occasional length of line, in words and rhymes, Sloane 1315 differs far more from Russell than Sloane 2027, which has Russell’s long lines and rhymes throughout, so far as a hurried examination shows.
But the variations of both these Sloane MSS. are to me more like those from an original MS. of which our Harleian Russell is a copy, than of an original which Russell altered. Why should the earliest Sloane 2027 start with
“An vsschere .y. am / as ye may se : to a prynce Of hyghe degre”