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.' 6 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 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. in Early England. SOME NOTES USED AS FOREWORDS TO A COLLECTION BY FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL, M.A. TRIN. HALL, CAMBRIDGE; MEMBER OF COUNCIL OF THE PHILOLOGICAL LONDON: N. TRÜBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1867. Price One Shilling. UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA But it is the plain duty of all [As the subject of these notes may interest many people into whose hands the volume of which the notes constitute the Preface may not fall, 500 copies have been pulled for separate circulation. Schoolmasters and Educators to join the Early English Text Society at once.] E 370.942 .98 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 man' 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 4-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. 428562 NOV 24 '29 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 mond 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 i 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 goyng and sittinges, after they be of honour. Morcover to teche them sondy 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. |