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