MORAL.
"My judgment turn'd the whole debate!
My valour saved the sinking state!"
Cowgill.
This fable is found in the collection assigned to Babrius. It is the eighty-fourth in the excellent edition of these fables by Mr. G. Cornewall Lewis: Oxford, 1846.
W. H. G.
Winchester.
Collar of SS. (Vols. iv. and v., passim).—In the discussion on the subject of the collar of SS., in the columns of "N. & Q.," I find no mention of an incidental observation of Thomas Fuller, which occurs in the notice of John Gower, the poet, in the Worthies of Yorkshire, and is deserving of some notice:
"Another author (Stow) unknighteth him, allowing him only a plain esquire, though in my apprehension the collar of SSS. about his neck speaketh him to be more. Besides (with submission to better judgments) that collar hath rather a civil than a military relation, proper to persons in place of judicature; which makes me guess this Gower some judge in his old age, well consisting with his original education."
Mr. Foss, I see, mentions (Vol. iv., p. 147.) the existence of the collar on the poet's monument, and suggests that he might have worn it as a court poet.