Part 14 (1/2)

Then came the necessary comparison of Russell's Boke with the _Boke of Curtasye_, edited by Mr Halliwell from the Sloane MS. 1986 for the Percy Society. Contrasts had to be made with it, in parts, many times in a page; the tract was out of print and probably in few Members' hands; it needed a few corrections[15], and was worthy of a thousand times wider circulation than it had had; therefore a new edition from the MS. was added to this volume. Relying on Members reading it for themselves, I have not in the notes indicated all the points of coincidence and difference between this Boke and Russell's. It is of wider scope than Russell's, takes in the duties of outdoor officers and servants as well as indoor, and maybe those of a larger household; it has also a _fyrst Boke_ on general manners, and a _Second Book_ on what to learn at school, how to behave at church, &c., but it does not go into the great detail as to Meals and Dress which is the special value of Russell's Boke, nor is it a.s.sociated with a writer who tells us something of himself, or a n.o.ble who in all our English Middle Age has so bright a name on which we can look back as ”good Duke Humphrey.” This personality adds an interest to work that anonymity and its writings of equal value can never have; so that we may be well content to let the _Curtasye_ be used in ill.u.s.tration of the _Nurture_. The MS. of the _Curtasye_ is about 1460 A.D., Mr Bond says. I have dated it wrongly on the half-t.i.tle.

_The Booke of Demeanor_ was ”such a little one” that I was tempted to add it to mark the general introduction of handkerchiefs. Having printed it, arose the question, 'Where did it come from?' No Weste's _Schoole of Vertue_ could I find in catalogues, or by inquiring of the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, Mr W. C. Hazlitt, at the Bodleian, &c. Seager's _Schoole of Vertue_ was the only book that turned up, and this I accordingly reprinted, as Weste's Booke of Demeanor seemed to be little more than an abstract of the first four Chapters of Seager cut down and rewritten. We must remember that books of this kind, which we look on as sources of amus.e.m.e.nt, as more or less of a joke, were taken seriously by the people they were written for. That _The Schoole of Vertue_, for instance--whether Seager's or Weste's--was used as a regular school-book for boys, let Io. Brinsley witness. In his _Grammar Schoole_ of 1612, pp. 17, 18, he enumerates the ”Bookes to bee first learned of children”:-- 1. their Abcie, and Primer. 2. The Psalms in metre, 'because children wil learne that booke with most readinesse and delight through the running of the metre, as it is found by experience. 3. Then the Testament.' 4. ”If any require any other little booke meet to enter children; _the Schoole of Vertue_ is one of the princ.i.p.all, and easiest for the first enterers, being full of precepts of ciuilitie, and such as children will soone learne and take a delight in, thorow the roundnesse of the metre, as was sayde before of the singing Psalmes: And after it _the Schoole of good manners_[16], called, _the new Schoole of Vertue_, leading the childe as by the hand, in the way of all good manners.”

I make no apology for including reprints of these little-known books in an Early English Text. _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_; and if these Tracts do not justify to any reader their own appearance here, I believe the fault is not theirs.

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 n.o.bleman'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 Ma.n.u.script 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_[17] (a t.i.tle 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 _Reliquiae Antiquae_, 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.[18] 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[19].

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 Ma.n.u.script 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 t.i.tles, and thus occasionally squeezing up into a corner the chief word of the t.i.tle, because the _T_ of _The_ preceding has required so much room.[20] 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Gunther, Mr Atkinson, Mr Skeat, Mr c.o.c.kayne, 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 grat.i.tude 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 ma.s.s and clueless mazes of the Antiquaries' _Household Ordinances_, the two volumes of the Roxburghe _Howard Household Books_, and Percy's _Northumberland Household Book[21]!_--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 dietariu{m} de sanitatis custodia p{re}inc.l.i.tissi{m}o p{r}incipi ac metuendissimo d{omi}no, d{omi}no humfrido, duci Gloucestrie, Alijsq{ue} p{re}claris t.i.tulis insignito, Sc{r}iptu{m} & co{m}pilatu{m}, p{er} ven{er}abile{m} doctore{m}, Magistru{m} Gilbertum Kymer, Medicinar{um} p{ro}fessorem, arciu{m} ac ph{ilosoph}ie Mag{ist}r{u}m & in legib{us} bacallariu{m} p{re}libati p{r}incipis phisicu{m}, Cui{us} dietarij[A]

c{ol}l{e}cc{i}o{n}em (?) dilucidancia & effectu{m} viginti s.e.x existu{n}t capit{u}la, q{u}or{um} {con}seque{n}t{er} hic ordo ponit{ur} Rubricar{um}[B].

[Textnotes: A: The letters are to me more like cl, or c{ol}l than anything else, but I am not sure what they are. B: The MS. runs on without breaks.

[Transcriber's Note: Marker [A] is printed at the end of ”dietarij”, but must be intended for the following word.]]

Cap{itulu}m 1^m est ep{isto}la de laude sanitat{is} & vtilitate bone diete.

Cap{itulu}m 2^m est de illis in quib{us} consist.i.t dieta.

Cap{itulu}m 3^m de toci{us} co[r]p{or}is & p{ar}ciu{m} disposi{ci}one.

Cap{itulu}m 4^m est de Ayer{e} eligendo & corrigendo.

Cap{itulu}m 5^m de q{ua}nt.i.tate cibi & potus sumenda.

Cap{itulu}m 6^m de ordine sumendi cibu{m} & potu{m}.

Cap{itulu}m 7^m de temp{or}e sumendi cibu{m} & potu{m}.

Cap{itulu}m 8^m de q{ua}nt.i.tate cibi & potus sumendoru{m}.

Cap{itulu}m 9^m de pane eligendo.

Cap{itulu}m 10^m de gen{er}ib{us} potagior{um} sumendis.

Cap{itulu}m 11^m de carnib{us} vtendis & vitandis.

Cap{itulu}m 12^m de ouis sumendis.

Cap{itulu}m 13^m de lacticinijs vtend{is}.

Cap{itulu}m 14^m de piscib{us} vtendis & vitand{is}.

Cap{itulu}m 15^m de fructib{us} sumendis.

Cap{itulu}m 16^m de co{n}dime{n}t{is} & sp{eci}ebus vtendis.