16.-V. VIII. XIII. XVI. XVIII. XIX. (See vol. i. p. 51.)

Bodley 638.—V. VIII. XVIII. (See vol. i. p. 53.)

Tanner 346.—V. VIII. XVIII. XIX. (See vol. i. p. 54.)

Ashmole 59.—VII. X. XIII. (See vol. i. p. 53.)

Arch. Selden B. 24.—V. VIII. XVIII. XXVI. XXVII. (See vol. i. p. 54.)

Digby 181.—V. VIII. (See vol. i. p. 54.)

Camb. Univ. Lib. Ff. 1. 6.—V. XII. XVI. XVIII. (See vol. i. p. 55.)

Pepys 2006.—VIII. (See vol. i. p. 55.)

Trin. Coll. R. 3. 19.—XIV. XVI. XXI. XXIV. XXV. XXIX. (See vol. i. p. 56.)

Trin. Coll. R. 3. 20.—V. (One of Shirley's MSS.)

Trin. Coll. O. 9. 38.—XIV.

Addit. 16165, B. M.—XIII. (See vol. i. p. 56.)

Addit. 34360, B. M.—XXI.

Harl. 372, B. M.—XVI. (See vol. i. p. 58.)

Harl. 2251, B. M.—VII. XII. XIV. (See vol. i. p. 57.)

Harl. 7578, B. M.—XIII. (See vol. i. p. 58.)

Sloane 1212, B. M.—X. (A fair copy.)

Phillipps 8151.—VI. (See Hoccleve's Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 1.)

Ashburnham 133.—V. (See the same, p. xxvii.)

§ 6. Conversely, I here give the authorities from which each piece is derived. For further comments on some of them, see the separate introductions to each piece below.

I. The Testament of Love (prose).—Th. (Thynne, 1532).

II. The Plowmans Tale (1380 lines).—Th. (Thynne, 1542).

III. Jack Upland (prose).—Early edition, Caius College library; Speght (1598).

IV. Praise of Peace (385 lines).—Th. (1532); Trentham MS.

V. Letter of Cupid (476 lines).—Th. (1532); Fairfax, Bodley, Tanner, Selden, Ashburnham, Digby MSS.; Trin. Coll. R. 3. 20; Camb. Ff. 1. 6; also in the Bannatyne MS.

VI. To the King's Grace (64).—Th. (1542); Phillipps 8151.

VII. A Moral Balade (189).—Th. (1532); Caxton; Ashmole 59, Harl. 2251. (I also find a reference to Harl. 367, fol. 85, back.)

VIII. Complaint of the Black Knight (681).—Th. (1532); Fairfax, Bodley, Tanner, Digby, Selden, Pepys; Addit. 16165. Also printed, separately, by Wynkyn de Worde (n. d.); and at Edinburgh, by Chepman and Miller, in 1508.

IX. The Flour of Curtesye (270).—Th. (1532).

X. In Commendation of our Lady (140).—Th.; Ashmole 59; Sloane 1212.

XI. To my Soverain Lady (112).—Th.

XII. Ballad of Good Counsel (133).—Th.; Camb. Ff. 1. 6; Harl. 2251.

XIII. Beware of Doubleness (104).—Stowe (1561); Fairfax 16, Ashmole 59, Harl. 7578, Addit. 16165.

XIV. A Balade: Warning Men (49).—Stowe (1561); Harl. 2251, fol. 149, back; Trin. R. 3. 19; Trin. O. 9. 38.

XV. Three Sayings (21).—Stowe (1561).

XVI. La Belle Dame sans Mercy (856).—Th.; Fairfax, Harl. 372; Camb. Ff. 1. 6; Trin. R. 3. 19, fol. 98.

XVII. Testament of Cresseid (616).—Th.; Edinburgh edition (1593).

XVIII. The Cuckoo and the Nightingale (290).—Th.; Fairfax, Bodley, Tanner, Selden; Camb. Ff. 1. 6.

XIX. Envoy to Alison (27).—Th.; Fairfax, Tanner.

XX. The Flower and the Leaf (595).—Speght (1598).

XXI. The Assembly of Ladies (756).—Th.; Addit. 34360; Trin. R. 3. 19.

XXII. A goodly Balade (71).—Th.

XXIII. Go forth, King (14).—Wynkyn de Worde; Th.

XXIV. The Court of Love (1442).—Stowe (1561); Trin. R. 3. 19.

XXV. Virelai (20).—Stowe (1561); Trin. R. 3. 19.

XXVI. Prosperity (8); XXVII. Loyalty (7).—Selden MS.

XXVIII. Sayings (14).—Caxton; reprinted, Th. (1542).

XXIX. In Praise of Chaucer (7).—Stowe (1561); Trin. R. 3. 19.

§ 7. I. The Testament of Love; by Thomas Usk.

Of this piece no MS. copy has been discovered. The only authority is Thynne's edition of 1532, whence all later editions have been copied more or less incorrectly. The reprints will be found to grow steadily worse, so that the first edition is the only one worth consulting.

The present edition is printed from a transcript of Thynne (1532), made by myself; the proof-sheets being carefully read with the original. In making the transcript, I have altered the symbol u to v, when used as a consonant; and (in the few places where it occurs) the consonantal i to j. I have also substituted i for y when the vowel is short, chiefly in the case of the suffix -yng or -ynge, here printed -ing or -inge. In nearly all other cases, the original spellings are given in the footnotes. Thynne's chief errors of printing occur in places where he has persistently altered the spelling of the MS. to suit the spelling in fashion in the days of Henry VIII. His chief alterations are as follows. He prints ea for open ee, written ee or e at the beginning of the fifteenth century; thus, he has ease for ese, and please for plese. He most perversely adds a useless final e to the words howe, nowe, and some others; and he commits the anachronism of printing father, mother, together, wether, gather, in place of fader, moder, togeder, weder, gader; whereas the termination in these words invariably appears as -der till shortly before 1500. Further, he prints catche for cacche, perfection for perfeccion, and the like; and in several other

ways has much impaired the spelling of his original. Many of these things I have attempted to set right; and the scholar who compares the text with the footnotes will easily see why each alteration has been made, if he happens to be at all conversant with MSS. written in the fourteenth century.

I believe that this piece is almost unparalleled as regards the shameful corruption of its text. It cannot be supposed that Thynne or any one else ever read it over with the view of seeing whether the result presented any sense. Originally written in an obscure style, every form of carelessness seems to have been employed in order to render it more obscure than before. In a great number of places, it is easy to restore the sense by the insertion of such necessary words as of, or but, or by. In other places, non-existent words can be replaced by real ones; or some correction can be made that is more or less obvious. I have marked all inserted words by placing them within square brackets, as, e.g., am in l. 46 on p. 6. Corrections of readings are marked by the use of a dagger (†); thus 'I †wot wel' in l. 78 on p. 7 is my emendation of Thynne's phrase 'I wol wel,' which is duly recorded in the footnote. But some sentences remain in which the sense is not obvious; and one is almost tempted to think that the author did not clearly know what he intended to say. That he was remarkable for a high degree of inaccuracy will appear presently.

A strange misprint occurs in Book III. ch. 4, ll. 30, 31 (p. 117), where nearly two whole lines occur twice over; but the worst confusion is due to an extraordinary dislocation of the text in Book III. (c. iv. l. 56—c. ix. l. 46), as recently discovered by the sagacity of Mr. H. Bradley, and explained more fully below.

I have also, for the first time, revised the punctuation, which in Thynne is only denoted by frequent sloping strokes