Of flowrys most of honoure,
Of roses whyte þat wylle nott fade,
Whych floure alle ynglond doth glade,
Wyth trewloues medelyed in syght;
Unto the whych floure I wys,
The loue of God and of the comenys,
Subdued bene of ryght.'
This story is a reproduction and improvement of one of the 'Gesta Romanorum,' in which the carpenter gets with his wife a shirt that will never want washing as long as she is faithful to him. In the original story the three lovers are fed on bread and water, and not made to work, as in Adam de Cobsam's poem.
Mr. Furnivall seems to have a special gift for hunting interesting tales and bringing them to earth. His 'Political, Religious, and Love Poems'[203] are a miscellany of good things of various dates; but the 'Babees Book'[204] is a perfect treasure-house of curiosities, which tend to illustrate the manners of the fifteenth century. It contains a 'lytyl reporte' of how young people should behave; 'how the good wijf tauzte hir douztir;' 'how the wise man tauzt his son;' the 'Book of Nurture, or schoole of good maners for men, servants, and children,' by Hugh Rhodes; the 'Boke of Nurture, by John Russell;' the 'Boke of Kerninge;' the 'Booke of Demeanor, and the allowance and disallowance of certaine misdemeanors in companie, by Richard West;' the 'Boke of Curtasye;' the 'Schoole of Vertue, by F. Seager,' and various other pieces on the customs of the times. The authors of these pieces give very good rules for behaviour, and some of them would be appropriate in a book of etiquette of the present day; but others discover a state of society now happily passed away. The subjects treated of rise from the rules laid down for boys, which if they follow,
'Than men wylle say therafter