Though no excuse can be needed for including in our Extra Series a
reprint of a unique Caxton on a most interesting subject, yet this Book
of Curtesye from Hill's MS. was at first intended for our original
series, I having forgotten lately that Caxton had written to 'lytyl
Iohn,' though some months back I had entered the old printer's book for
my second collection of Manners and Meals tracts for the Society. After
the copy of Hill--which Mr W.W. King kindly made for his
fellow-members--had gone to press, Mr Hazlitt reminded me of the Caxton,
and its first and last lines in Mr Blades's admirable book showed that
Hill's text was the same as the printed one. I accordingly went to
Cambridge to copy it, and there, before tea, Mr Skeat showed me the copy
of _The Vision of Piers Plowman_ which the Provost and Fellows of Oriel
had been good enough to lend him for his edition of 'Text B.' Having
enjoyed the vellum Vision, I turned to the paper leaves at its end, and
what should they contain but an earlier and better version of the Caxton
that I had just copied part of?[1] I drank seven cups of tea, and eat
five or six large slices of bread and butter, in honour of the event;[2]
and Mr Skeat, with his never-failing kindness, undertook to copy and
edit the Oriel text for the Society. With three texts, therefore, in
hand, I could not well stick them at the end of the Postscript to the
_Babees Book, &c._,[3] and as I wanted Caxton's name to this Book of
Curtesye to distinguish it from what has long been to me THE Book of
Courtesy,--that from the Sloane MS. 1986, edited by Mr Halliwell for the
Percy Society, and by me for our own E.E.T.S.--and as also Caxton's name
is one 'to conjure withal,' I have, with our Committee's leave, made
this little volume an Extra Series one, and called it Caxton's, though
his text is not so good as that of the Oriel MS.
[Footnote 1: Mr Bradshaw was kind enough to copy the rest, and to read
the whole of the proof with Caxton's original.]
[Footnote 2: I must be excused for not having found the poem before, as
it is not in the Index to Mr Coxe's Catalogue. In the body of the work
it is entered as "A father's advice to his son; with instructions for
his behaviour as a king's or nobleman's page. ff. 88, 89, 78. Beg.
"Kepeth clene and leseth not youre gere."]
[Footnote 3: The Treatises in _The Babees Book, &c._, and the Index at
the end, should be consulted for parallel and illustrative passages to
those in Caxton's text.]
On this latter point Mr Skeat writes:
"The Oriel copy is evidently the best. Not only does it give better
readings, but the lines, as a rule, run more smoothly; and it has an
extra stanza. This stanza, which is marked 54, occurs between stanzas 53
and 54 of the other copies, and is of some interest and importance. It
shows that Lidgate's pupil, put in mind of Lidgate's style by the very
mention of his name, introduces a ballad of three stanzas, in which
every stanza has a burden after the Lidgate manner. The recurrence of
this burden no doubt caused copyists to lose their place, and so the
stanza came to be omitted in other copies. Its omission, however, spoils
the ballad. Both it and the curious lines in Piers Ploughmans Crede,
"For aungells and arcangells / all Þei whijt vseÞ
And alle aldermen / Þat ben _ante tronum_,
"i.e. all the elders before the throne, allude to Rev. iv. 10. This Crede
passage has special reference to the _Carmelites_ or _White_ Friars.
"The first two leaves of the Oriel copy are misplaced inside out at the
end; but this is not the only misarrangement. The poem has evidently
been copied into this MS. from an older copy having a leaf capable of
containing _six stanzas at a time_; which leaves were out of order.
Hence the poem in the Oriel MS. is written in the following order, as
now bound up, Stanzas 11 (l. 5)-18, 25-30, 37-42, 19-24, 49-54, 31-36,
43-48, 55-76, 8-11 (l. 4), 4 (l. 5)-7, 1-4 (l. 4)."
As an instance of a word improved by the Oriel text, may be cited the
'_brecheles_ feste' of Caxton's and Hill's texts, l. 66, and l. 300,
ffor truste ye well ye shall you not excuse
ffrom _brecheles feste_, & I may you espye
Playenge at any game of rebawdrye.--_Hill_, l. 299-301.
Could it be 'profitless,' from A.-Sax. _bréc_, gain, profit; or
'breechless,' a feast of birch for the boy with his breeches off? The
latter was evidently meant, but it was a forced construction. The Oriel
_byrcheley_ set matters right at once.
Another passage I cannot feel sure is set at rest by the Oriel text.
Hill's and Caxton's texts, when describing the ill-mannered servant
whose ways are to be avoided, say of him, as to his hair, that he is
Absolon with disheveled heres smale,
lyke to a prysoner of saynt Malowes,[1]
_a sonny busshe able to the galowes_.--_Hill_, l. 462.
[Footnote 1: An allusion to the strong castle built at St Malo's by
Anne, Duchess of Bretayne.--Dyce.]
For the last line the Oriel MS. reads,
_a sonny bush myght cause hym to goo louse_,
and Mr Skeat says,--"This is clearly the right reading, of which
_galowes_ is an unmeaning corruption. The poet is speaking of the
_dirty_ state of a bad and ill-behaved servant. He is as dirty as a man
come out of St Malo's prison; a sunny bush would cause him to go and
free himself from minute attendants. A 'sunny bush' probably means no
more than a warm nook, inviting one to rest, or to such quiet pursuits
as the one indicated. That this is really the reading is shown by the
next stanza, wherein the poet apologizes for having spoken too bluntly;
he ought to have spoken of such a chase by saying that he goes
_a-hawking_ or _a-hunting_. Such was the right euphemism required by
'norture.'"
If this is the meaning, we may compare with it the old poet's reproof to
the proud man:
Man, of Þi schuldres and of Þi side
Þou mi3*te hunti luse and flee:
of such a park i ne hold no pride;
Þe dere nis nau3*te Þat Þou mighte sle.
_Early English Poems_, ed. F.J.F., 1862, p. 1, l. 5.
and remember that one of the blessings of the early Paradisaical _Land
of Cokaygne_ is:
Nis Þer flei, fle, no lowse,
In cloÞ, in toune, bed, no house.
_Ib._, p. 157, l. 37-8.
We may also compare the following extract about Homer's death from
"Pleasant and Delightfull Dialogues in Spanish and English: Profitable
to the Learner, and not vnpleasant to any other Reader. By _John
Minsheu_, Professor of Languages in London. 1623," p. 47.
"F ... a foole with his foolishnesse framed in his owne imagination may
giue to a hundred wise men matter to picke out.
"I, So it hapned to the Poet Homer, that as he was with age blinde, and
went walking by the sea shoare, & heard certaine Fishermen talking, that
at that time were a _lowsing_ themselues, and as he asked them, what
fish they caught, they vnderstanding that he had meant their lice, they
answered, Those that we [1]haue, we seeke for, and those that we [2]haue
not wee finde, but as the good Homer could not see what they did, and
for this cause could not vnderstand the riddle, it did so grieue his
vnderstanding to obtaine the secret of this matter, which was a
sufficient griefe to cause his death."
[Footnote 1: i. Haue in their clothes. i. lice.]
[Footnote 2: i. Haue not in hand.]
But the subject is not a very pleasant one for discussion, though the
occupation alluded to in the Oriel Text must have been one of the
pastimes of many people in Early England.
The book itself, _Lytill Johan_, is by a disciple of Lydgate's--see l.
366, p. 36-7--and contains, besides, the usual directions how to dress,
how to behave in church, at meals, and when serving at table, a wise
man's advice on the books his little Jack should read, the best English
poets,--then Gower, Chaucer, Occleve, and Lydgate,--not the Catechism
and Latin Grammar. It was very pleasant to come off the directions not
to conveye spetell over the table, or burnish one's bones with one's
teeth, to the burst of enthusiasm with which the writer speaks of our
old poets. He evidently believed in them with all his heart; and it
would have been a good thing for England if our educators since had
followed his example. If the time wasted, almost, in Latin and Greek by
so many middle-class boys, had been given to Milton and Shakspere,
Chaucer and Langland, with a fit amount of natural science, we should
have been a nobler nation now than we are. There is no more promising
sign of the times than the increased attention paid to English in
education now.
But to return to our author. He gives Chaucer the poet's highest gift,
Imagination, in these words,
what ever to say he toke in his entente,
his langage was so fayer & pertynante,
yt semeth vnto manys heryng
_not only the worde, but veryly the thyng_. (l. 343.)
And though the writer has the bad taste to praise Lydgate more than
Chaucer, yet we may put this down to his love for his old master, and
may rest assured that though the cantankerous Ritson calls the Bury
schoolmaster a 'driveling monk,' yet the larking schoolboy who robbed
orchards, played truant, and generally raised the devil in his early
days (_Forewords to Babees Book_, p. xliv.), retained in later years
many of the qualities that draw to a man the boy's bright heart, the
disciple's fond regret. We too will therefore hope that old Lydgate's
sowle be gon
(To) the sterred paleys above the dappled skye,
Ther to syng _Sanctus_ insessavntly
Emonge the mvses nyne celestyall,
Before the hyeste Iubyter of all. (l. 381-5.)
In old age the present poem was composed (st. 60, p. 42-3); 'a lytill
newe Instruccion' to a lytle childe, to remove him from vice & make him
follow virtue. At his riper age our author promises his boy the
surplusage of the treatise (st. 74, p. 50-1); and if a copy of it
exists, I hope it will soon fall in our way and get into type, for 'the
more the merrier' of these peeps into old boy-life.
On one of the grammatical forms of the Oriel MS., Mr Skeat writes:
"It is curious to observe the forms of the imperative mood plural which
occur so frequently throughout the poem in the Oriel copy. The forms
ending in _-eth_ are about 31 in number, of which 17 are of French, and
14 of A.S. origin. The words in which the ending _-eth_ is dropped are
42, of which 18 are of French, and 24 of A.S. origin. The three
following French words take _both_ forms; _avyse_ or _avyseth_, _awayte_
or _awayteth_, _wayte_ or _wayteth_; and the five following A.S. words,
_be_ or _beth_, _kepe_ or _kepeth_, _knele_ or _knelyth_, _loke_ or
_loketh_, _make_ or _maketh_. Thus the poet makes use, on the whole, of
one form almost as often as the other (that is, supposing the scribe to
have copied correctly), and he no doubt consulted his convenience in
taking that one which suited the line best. It is an instance of what
followed in almost every case of naturalization, that A.S. inflections
were added to the French words quite as freely as to those of native
origin. Both the _-eth_ and _-e_ forms are commonly used without the
word _ye_, though. _Be ye_ occurs in l. 58. In the phrase _avise you_
(l. 78), _you_ is in the accusative."
Commenting also on l. 71 of Caxton and Hill, Mr Skeat notices how they
have individualised the general 'child' of the earlier Oriel text:
"71. Here we find _child_ riming to _mylde_. In most other places it is
_Johan_. The rime shows that the reading _child_ is right, and _Johan_
is a later adaptation. The Oriel MS. never uses the word _Johan_ at all;
it is always _child_."
I may remark also, that on the question lately raised by Mr Bradshaw,
'who before Hampole,[1] or after him, used _you_ for the nominative as
well as the correct _ye_,' Hill uses both _you_ and _ye_, see l. 47, 51,
52, &c., though so far as a hasty search shows, Lydgate, in his Minor
Poems at least, uses _ye_ only, as do Lord Berners in his _Arthur of
Lytil Brytayne_, ab. 1530, the Ormulum, Ancren Riwle, Genesis and
Exodus, William of Palerne, Alliterative Poems, Early Metrical Homilies,
&c.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Pricke of Conscience_, p. 127, l. 4659; and p. xvii.]
[Footnote 2: Mr Skeat holds that in the various reading _3*ow drieth_
from the Univ. Coll. Oxford MS. (of the early part of the 15th century)
to the Vernon MS. _þou drui3*est_, l. 25, Passus 1, of the Vision of
Piers Plowman, the 3*ow is an accusative, "exactly equivalent to the
Gothic in the following passage--'_hwana_ þaursjai, gaggai du mis, i.e.
_whom_ it may thirst, let him come to me.' John vii. 37. I conclude that
3*ow is accusative, not dative. The same construction occurs in German
constantly, '_es dürstet mich_' = it thirsts me, I thirst."]
The final _d_, _f_, _t_, of Hill's MS., often have a tag to them. As
they sometimes occur in places where I judge they must mean nothing, I
have neglected them all. Every final _ll_ has a line through it, which
may mean _e_. Nearly every final _n_ and _m_ has a curly tail or line
over it. This is printed _e_ or _[=n]_, though no doubt the tail and
line have often no value at all. The curls to the _r_s are printed _e_,
because _ther_ with the curly _r_, in l. 521, Hill, rimes to _where_ of
l. 519.
At the end of Caxton's final _d_ and _g_ is occasionally a crook-backed
line, something between the line of beauty and the ordinary knocker.
This no doubt represents the final _e_ of MSS., and is so printed, as Mr
Childs has not the knocker in the fount of type that he uses for the
Society's work. Caxton's _[=n]_ stands for _u_n in the _-aunce_,
_-aunte_, of words from the French. No stops or inverted commas have
been put to Caxton's text here, but the stanzas and lines have been
numbered, and side-notes added.
"The _Book of Curtesye_," says Mr Bradshaw, "is known from three early
editions. The first, without any imprint, but printed at Westminster by
Caxton ab. 1477-78,[1] the only known copy of which is here reproduced.
The second (with the colophon 'Here endeth a lytyll treatyse called the
booke of Curtesye or lytyll John. Emprynted atte Westmoster') is only
known from a printer's proof of two pages[2] preserved among the Douce
fragments in the Bodleian. It must have been printed by Wynkin de Worde
in Caxton's house ab. 1492. In the third edition it was reprinted at the
end of the _Stans puer ad Mensam_ by Wynkin de Worde ab. 1501-1510. The
Cambridge copy is the only one known to remain of this edition."
[Footnote 1: In his type No. 2, _Blades_, ii. 63.]
[Footnote 2: In Caxton's type No. 5, _Blades_, ii. 235 (not 253 as in
Index).]
I have no more to say: but, readers, remember this coming New Year to do
more than last for what Dr Stratmann calls "the dear Old English." Think
of Chaucer when his glad spring comes, and every day besides; forget
not Langland or any of our early men:
reporte
& revyue _th_e lawde of the_m_ th_a_t were
famovs i_n_[1] owr_e_ langage, these faders dere,
whos sowles i_n_ blis, god et_er_nall avaunce,
_th_at lysten so[2] owr_e_ langage to enhavnce!
(_Hill_, l. 430-4.)
[Footnote 1: Founders of, _Oriel_ MS.]
[Footnote 2: some, _Hill_; so, _Oriel_.]
_3, St George's Square, N.W.