2 Ploughman, to keep them waiting three years for organ-blowers, when they are willing and ready to give us at once fresh music from our far-off early land? "Not if we can help it," say several Members to whom I have spoken. The chances of life and fortune are so many, that brain-work offered should be accepted while it can be had. It is want of Editors, not of money, that has shut up Societies hitherto; and the quicker the Early English Text Society can get its work in hand, and out, the better. My proposal therefore is, to have an EXTRA SERIES, to take principally, and in the first instance, the Re-editions on the Society's list-thus leaving the Original Series free for first work at the Manuscript only;2-the subscription to be one guinea due on every 1st of June. To make sure of some measure of relief to the parent-funds by this means, I have put to the credit of this Extra-Series Fund fifty guineas from the anticipated profits on the Percy Folio, and as soon as £200 more is realized from that source, I will add that sum to the fund, provided that Caxton's print of Maleore's Morte D'Arthur be re-edited in the Extra Series. We have had enough adulterated or modernized editions of this book to make us want a genuine one; Southey's, at from 4 to 6 guineas, is not accessible to many of us; moreover, it does not in certain particulars properly represent the original; and looking at the work before the Society, they could not take up this book, in the ordinary course, under 10 years from this time. As further aids to the Extra-Series Fund, will be issued LargePaper Quarto copies of all the books, on choice ribbed paper, the subscription for which will be two guineas a year. Several demands have been made for such copies of all our E. E. T. Soc. Texts; and the beginning of a new series will enable it to start with Large-Papers.3 As also these re-editions will be works with a reputation more or less established, they will sell to the public, and thus bring in a further revenue in aid of the fund. (I say these things in order to show subscribers that they'll get their guinea's worth for their guinea, though the number of subscribers to the Extra Series will not equal that to the Original one.) The first works that I propose for the Extra Series are CHAUCER'S PROSE WORKS, to be edited from the best MSS., with a Preface on the Grammar and Dialect of Chaucer, and Notes, by Richard Morris, Esq.-the Rev. W. W. Skeat assisting in the I Just ready. This is to meet the objection that the Texts of the Original and Extra Series would cross and clash with one another. I don't believe it possible, as the management of both Series is in the same hands, and should have preferred making the Extra Series simply a relief one to the Original Series for any Texts. 3 If you would like a Three-Guinea Large-Paper issue of the E. E. Text Soc.'s future texts of the Original Series, and are willing to pay Three Guineas a year for it (we publish so much that One Guinea over the ordinary subscription would not cover the extra cost of paper and print), will you let Mr Wheatley or me know? If 50 Members will subscribe for such an issue, I have little doubt that the Committee will order it. And of the Texts for 1864, -5, & -6, to be reprinted, Large-Papers may also be printed, if people like to subscribe for them. 3 Treatise on the Astrolabe,—and an Essay on the Pronunciation of Chaucer and Shakspere by Alexander J. Ellis, Esq., F.R.S. WILLIAM AND THE WEREWOLF, to be re-edited from the unique MS. in King's College, Cambridge, by the Rev. W. W. Skeat, M.A. MORTE D'ARTHUR, "ended the .ix. yere of the reygne of kyng Edward the Fourth [A.D. 1468] by syr Thomas Maleore, knyght," and by Caxton "deuyded in to xxi bookes, chaptyred and emprynted and fynysshed in thabbey Westmestre the last day of July the yere of our lord MCCCCLXXXV," to be re-edited from the original edition, with an Index, Glossary, and new Preface. Of Chaucer's Prose Works no separate edition has ever been published (so far as I know), and yet his Astrolabe contains words that bring him home to us perhaps more than any other, the expression of his fatherly love for his boy. For these Works there must be a demand outside of the Society. William and the Werewolf has long been out of the market, and never has been accessible to the general student. The reason that Havelok the Dane is not proposed for reprinting is that Sir Frederic Madden, when generously putting the result of his editorial labours at the Society's service, expressly desired that the new edition of Havelok should be left to him to publish in his own way and at his own time. And, much as the book is wanted by students, much as the Committee have desired to see it in print, much as the cause of Early English suffers from the continued keeping-back of the book, the Committee have felt bound to respect the original Editor's wish. Otherwise the text would have been out in 1865. I have received the following names of Subscribers to the Extra Series, and ask you if you will add yours to them. Will you help to blow the organ? Names and Subscriptions should be sent to Hy B. Wheatley, Esq., 53, Berners St, or to Messrs Trübner; or names may come to me. Adams, G. E., Esq. Bain, J., Esq. For 8vo Copies. Lumby, Rev. J. R. Melbourne Public Library. Trübner, Messrs., 25 copies. Subscribers may rely on the same care and energy being given to the Extra Series as have been devoted to the Original one. Nonmembers may subscribe to the Extra Series only. The Texts will be on sale at fixed prices separately, as the Society's other Texts regularly are. Hoping that I may look on the work-this Extra Series-as, through your help, begun, and as sure to be carried through, (it is indeed the only way through the Society's heavy work,) there remains only to consider the objections to doing it. Objection-making is easy work; and 'how not do it' is much less trouble than 'how to do it.' It has been urged, then, 1. That we are overdoing it.' This is a shadow from 'pe Clowde of Vnknowyng' (MS. to be printed in 1869). We have a field of 50 acres to reap in a harvest-time, how short, who can tell? Let us get one acre done as soon as we can. 2. That it is not fair to original subscribers.' One of them answered this in nearly these words:-Though I don't mean to subscribe myself, I'm not such a dog in the manger as to want to keep other Members and the public out of the new Texts for perhaps 10 years, till the original fund could give them, just to suit myself, especially when I can buy separately such Texts as I want.' 3. Men won't subscribe; they don't care enough for old work; their book-shelves are full, &c., &c.' Some won't, of course,-what has antiquity done for them?-even some who do care for the old men won't feel justified in subscribing; but others will, others will back men now giving their brains and time to increase our old men's fame, and let us know more of the thoughts they thought and the words they spoke. I hope you are one of these, and that you will help us if you can. Yours truly, F. J. FURNIVALL. *** I should be glad of more names at once for the Preliminary List of Subscribers. William and the Werewolf will go to press forthwith. Chaucer's Prose Works are being copied, FOREWORDS. "THE naturall maister Aristotell saith that euery body be the course of nature is enclyned to here & se all that refressheth & quickeneth the spretys of man1 wherfor I haue thus in this boke folowinge 2" gathered together divers treatises touching the Manners & Meals of Englishmen in former days, & have added therto divers figures of men of old, at meat & in bed,3 to the end that, to my fellows here & to come, the home life of their forefathers may be somewhat more plain, & their own minds somewhat rejoiced. The treatises here collected consist of two main ones-John Russell's Boke of Nurture and Hugh Rhodes's Boke of Nurture, to which I have written separate prefaces and certain shorter poems addressed partly to those whom Cotgrave calls "Enfans de famille, Yonkers of account, youthes of good houses, children of rich parents 1 The first sentence of Aristotle's Metaphysics is 'All men by nature are actuated by the desire of knowledge.' Mr Skeat's note on 1. 78 of Partenay, p. 228. 2 Lawrens Andrewe. The noble lyfe & natures of man, of bestes, &c. Johñes Desborrowe. Andewarpe. 3 The woodcuts are Messrs Virtue's, and have been used in Mr Thomas Wright's History of Domestic Manners and Customs, &c. 4 If any one thinks it a bore to read these Prefaces, I can assure him it was a much greater bore to have to hunt up the material for them, and set aside other pressing business for it. But the Boke of Curtasye binding on editors does not allow them to present to their readers a text with no coat and trowsers on. If any Members should take offence at any expressions in this or any future Preface of mine, as a few did at some words in the last I wrote, I ask such Members to consider the first maxim in their Boke of Curtasye, Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Prefaces are gift horses; and if mine buck or shy now and then, I ask their riders to sit steady, and take it easy. On the present one at least they'll be carried across some fresh country worth seeing. B ii EDWARD THE FOURTH'S HENCHMEN. (yet aliue)," partly to merchants' sons and good wives' daughters, partly to schoolboys, partly to people in general, or at least those of them who were willing to take advice as to how they should mend their manners and live a healthy life. The persons to whom the first poems of the present collection are addressed, the yonge Babees, whome bloode Royalle Withe grace, feture, and hyhe habylite Hathe enourmyd, the "Bele Babees" and "swete Children," may be likened to the "young gentylmen, Henxmen,-VI Enfauntes, or more, as it shall please the Kinge," at Edward the Fourth's Court; and the authors or translators of the Bokes in this volume, somewhat to that sovereign's Maistyr of Henxmen, whose duty it was "to shew the schooles of urbanitie and nourture of Englond, to lerne them to ryde clenely and surely; to drawe them also to justes ; to lerne them were theyre harneys; to haue all curtesy in wordes, dedes, and degrees; dilygently to kepe them in rules of goynges and sittinges, after they be of honour. Moreover to teche them sondry languages, and othyr lerninges vertuous, to harping, to pype, sing, daunce, and with other honest and temperate behaviour and patience; and to kepe dayly and wekely with these children dew convenity, with corrections in theyre chambres, according to suche gentylmen; and eche of them to be used to that thinge of vertue that he shall be moste apt to lerne, with remembraunce dayly of Goddes servyce accustumed. This maistyr sittith in the halle, next unto these Henxmen, at the same boarde, to have his respecte unto theyre demeanynges, howe manerly they ete and drinke, and to theyre communication and other formes curiall, after the booke of urbanitie." (Liber Niger in Household Ordinances, p. 45.) That these young Henxmen were gentlemen, is expressly stated,2 1 scholars? 2 Sir H. Nicolas, in his Glossary to his Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII., p. 327, col. 2, says, "No word has been more commented upon than ‘Henchmen' or Henxmen. Without entering into the controversy, it may be sufficient to state, that in the reign of Henry the Eighth it meant the pages of honour. They were the sons of gentlemen, and in public processions always walked near the monarch's horse: a correct idea may be formed of their appearance from the representation of them in one of the pictures in the meeting room of the Society of Antiquarians. It seems from these entries (p. 79,* 125, 182, 209, 230, 265) that they lodged in the p. 79, Item the same daye paied to Johnson the mayster of the kingis barge for the Rent of the house where the henxe men lye xl s. |