2. In 1520–30, we meet with another edition, the title of which we here transcribe: “Ayn Kurtz Wylich | lesen van Tyel Ulenspiegel: geboren | vyss dem land Brunzwyck. Wat he seltzamer boitzen be | dreuen hait syn dage, lüstich tzo lesen.” Printed by Servais Kruffter, in quarto, in old Gothic letters; thirteen sheets, A-N, with 104 unnumbered pages. This edition is known from two imperfect copies, which, however, restore, when collated, the whole. The first twelve sheets are in the Imperial Library of Vienna, and the Royal Library of Berlin has the last eleven. This edition differs from all others by possessing no preface. There are seventy-eight stories; and the one which appears second in this edition (which has been taken from the English Black Letter) first makes its appearance as an Eulenspiegel, as do Adventures 93 and 95.
3. A Dutch edition is first found about this time (1520–30), printed at Antwerp by Michiel Van Hoochstraten. The following is the title page:
| (Picture of the | “Vlenspieghel. | (Picture of the |
| Owl.) | Van Vlēspieghels leuen. | Mirror.) |
En̄ schimpelicke werckē, en̄ wōderlijcke auontueren die | hi hadde want he en liet hem gheen boeuerie verdrieten.”
The sheets run to K ij., and forty leaves in small quarto. The only known copy is at Copenhagen, in the Royal Library, and wants two leaves. Forty-six, perhaps forty-eight, stories (counting two for the missing leaves) are contained in this edition, but they are not numbered.
4. 1528–1530. The two editions now to be described are perhaps more interesting to English readers than any others, and deserve careful examination. Of the English “Howleglas” two copies only remain, of different editions and presumed years. At the time when Dr. Lappenberg, in 1854, completed his bibliographical list, one of these copies only had reached the British Museum. They are both imperfect; but, fortunately, what is wanting in one copy is completed in the other. The title is as follows:
“Here beginneth a merrye Jest of a man that was called Howleglas, and of many marueylous thinges and Jestes that he dyd in his lyfe, in Eastlande and in many other places.”
Occupying nearly the whole of the remainder of the quarto page is a rude woodcut of a king upon his throne with two people standing before, alluding evidently to the story of the King of Poland’s Jester and Eulenspiegel.[[14]] The colophon of the earliest edition, which has no date, but to which 1528 is assigned by the British Museum Catalogue (Dr. Lappenberg dates it at 1540–1556), is as follows: “Imprynted at London in Tame Street at the Vintre on the thre Craned wharfe by Wyllyam Copland (⸪).”
The book begins immediately at the back of the title with the following preface:
“For the great desyryng and praying of my good frandes. And I ye first writer of this boke might not denye thē. Thus haue I compled & gathered much knauyshnes & falsnes of one Howleglas made and done within his lyfe, whiche Howleglas dyed ye yeare of our lorde God .M.CCCC. & .L.[[15]] Nowe I desyre to be pardoned both before ghostly & worldly, afore highe & lowe afore noble and unnoble. And right lowly I requyre all those yt shall reade or heare this presēte Jeste (my ignoraūce to excuse). This fable is not but only to renewe ye mindes of men or women, of all degrees frō ye use of sadnesse to passe the tyme, with laughter or myrthe. And for because ye simple knowyng persons shuld beware if folkes can see. Me thinke it is better to passe the tyme with such a mery Jeste and laughe there at and doo no synne: than for to wepe and do synne.”