Summer is comen with love to town,
With blossom and with birdës roun,
The nut of hazel springeth.

The dewes darkeneth in the dale.
For longing of the nightingale,

The fowles merry singeth.

The poet hears the Thrush accuse women of various wrongs (fickleness, falsehood, uncleanness), citing such witnesses as Alexander, Adam, Sir Gawain, also examples of deceived men like Constantine and Samson-whereupon the Nightingale defends them stoutly, and finally puts the Thrush to shame by mention of the Virgin. The Thrush owns her folly in saying ill of maidens and wives, when there exists so preeminent an example of divine womanhood, and agrees to leave the woodshaw where the two birds have been together.

Other debates are the admirable alliterative poems of Winner and Waster and Death and Life (the former of which has been mentioned among the Visions) and The Carpenter's Tools, which unite in disapproval of their master's intemperance-a spirited little poem of the fifteenth century. The writing of debates continued in full vigour to Elizabethan times, when a large number of dialogues, contentions, controversies, comparisons, and the like appeared. Debates served also to develop one sort of drama, illustrated by Heywood's Wit and Folly and Pardoner and Friar.

In the form of dialogue are Chaucer's allegorical Tale of Melibeus (derived ultimately from a treatise of Albertano of Brescia) and that noble work familiar to every cultivated man in the Middle Ages, translated by King Alfred, Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth, the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.

BOOKS OF INSTRUCTION AND UTILITY

A very large number of books of instruction primarily for youths and children were written in English, especially in the fifteenth century (but also earlier and later), and usually in versebooks of courtesy, nurture, behaviour, urbanity, civility—etiquettebooks for "babes" and dietaries presumably for adults-books

of manners and morals, to serve all sorts of persons of different ranks in different circumstances. These books are in truth just what Lydgate modestly said of his Stans Puer ad Mensam: "compendious of sentence" but "barren of eloquence." If one would get a clear idea of social usages in mediæval times, no documents are more valuable; but to the name of literature they have but slight claim. That some knowledge of them is helpful in understanding the training and milieu of characters in fiction as well as in real life, every reader of Chaucer is aware.

The pattern of good manners among the Canterbury pilgrims was the Prioress ("in curteisye was set ful much her lest"); but the Squire likewise was a model of the best training afforded a noble youth. For such as he were prepared books of guidance to refinement and polish that contrast markedly with the poems of plain salutary counsel for humbler folk. We understand better, after reading both types, the reasons for the diverse predilection of the medieval high and low, the questions of their daily solicitude, the quality of their ideal standards. They reveal, on the one hand, the workaday lives, the dull duties, the practical vexations, the exterior roughness, the crude simplicity, of ordinary folk; and on the other, the adventurous careers, the spectacular pomp, the luxurious ease, the elaborate sophistication, the "vain confabulations" of the courtly classes.

The trouble with treating courtesy - books as indicative of actual conditions in England at any given time is that they are seldom native in origin: they seldom contain other than long-perpetuated advice. French books of manners and meals, of the ways of chivalry and domestic economy, abounded in the fourteenth century. Noteworthy are similar treatises produced in Italy from the time of Brunetto Latini, Bonvicino and Barberino in the thirteenth century or a little later, to that of the accomplished Castiglione, who was knighted by Henry VIII.

The Courtier is a book the reading of which would surely profit every man. The same may perhaps be said of certain works, much less attractive in style, which were particularly

prepared as rules for princes, such as the Secretum Secretorum, attributed to Aristotle, and the De Regimine Principum of Egidio Colonna, versions of which are extant from the hands of Lydgate and Occleve, undertaken under princely patronage. Of the former we have three redactions in English prose, besides the metrical one of Lydgate and his follower Burgh. The book itself has an interesting history: first perhaps compiled in Syriac in the eighth century, it appears to have been translated into Arabic for some Mohammedan ruler; it was put into Latin by Philip of Paris in the thirteenth century, and this redaction was reproduced in French. Sir William Forrest treated the same material in his Poesye of Princely Practise written for the benefit of Edward VI.

Requiring but slight attention in such a book as this, yet necessary to note, are the numerous books of utility and pseudoscience dating from the fourteenth century on: books of cookery and carving; books of hunting and fowling, of heraldry and precedence; books of medicine and surgery, of "quintessence" and astrology; books of geography and travel; a translation of Palladius on husbandry-and the like. These are all interesting in their way, and some of them excessively quaint and curious; but their purpose being almost wholly pedagogic, and their information not helpful to moderns, we leave them with this reference "in passing." From the time of Edward I. dates a Fragment on Popular Science, several hundred long lines in the metre of Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, which deserves more notice as the first attempt of the sort in English. It deals with supposed facts of astronomy, meteorology, physical geography, and physiology, the source not having been as yet determined. Chaucer, it will be remembered, wrote an Astrolabe for his "little son" Lewis (whoever he may have been).

If one would get an idea of medieval science of every kind, the most compendious book of information on the subject is the De Proprietatibus Rerum of Bartholomew, an English Franciscan who flourished about the middle of the thirteenth century, con

temporary with Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas-the result, it would seem, of the University lectures that this learned professor of theology at Paris gave to numerous young friars, who perpetuated their master's ideas wherever they travelled and preached. This work, very popular in all parts of Europe for a long time, was turned into English in 1397 by John of Trèves (Trevisa), the translator of Higden, who was chaplain of Sir Thomas, Lord of Berkeley. It was printed as early as 1495.

Written thus in the age of Dante, translated in that of Chaucer, and printed before and in the time of Shakspere, it throws most valuable light on many antiquated notions entertained by all three of these great writers and by a host of others, their lesser contemporaries. Here we get a succinct account of medieval beliefs concerning astronomy, physiology, physics, chemistry, geography, and natural history, as well as all sorts of side-lights on conditions of early society. The author gathered his information from various authorities, such as Dionysius the Areopagite for heaven and the angels; Aristotle for physics and natural history; Pliny, Isidore of Seville, and Arab writers for astronomy; Constantinus Afer for medicine; indeed, from every ancient or modern scientific treatise accessible. From bestiaries and lapidaries he drew extensively to explain the properties of gems and animals.

Not because of their significance in any serious way, but because of their quaint curiosity, and incidentally to illustrate John's style, may be given his brief descriptions of a maid and a cat, which we are at liberty to regard as the result of personal observation.

Of a Maid. Men behoove to take heed of maidens: for they be tender of complexion; small, pliant, and fair of disposition of body; shamefast, fearful, and merry. Touching outward disposition they be well nurtured, demure and soft of speech, and well ware of what they say, and delicate in their apparel. And for a woman is more meeker than a man, she weepeth sooner. And is more envious, and more laughing, and loving; and the malice of the soul is more in a woman than in a man. And she is of feeble kind, and she maketh more lesings (untruths), and is more shamefast, and more slow in working and in moving than is a man.

Of the Cat. He is a full lecherous beast in youth, swift, pliant, and merry, and leapeth and rusheth on everything that is before him; and is led by a straw, and playeth therewith; and is a right heavy beast in age and full sleepy, and lieth slyly in wait for mice; and is aware where they be more by smell than by sight, and hunteth and rusheth on them in privy places; and when he taketh a mouse, he playeth therewith, and eateth him after the play. In time of love is hard fighting for wives, and one scratcheth and rendeth the other grievously with biting and with claws. And he maketh a ruthful noise and ghastful, when one proffereth to fight with another; and hardly is hurt when he is thrown down off an high place. And when he hath a fair skin, he is as it were proud thereof, and goeth fast about; and when his skin is burnt, then he bideth at home, and is oft for his fair skin taken of the skinner, and slain and flayed.

If our ideas of astronomy and chemistry and physics have changed, if our geographical knowledge has increased, if we are less disposed to seek symbols in history and natural phenomena, our observation of human and animal peculiarities is no keener than of yore. Nor is our patriotism greater. We read with pleasure the description of England, "beclipped all about by the sea," which ends as follows:

England is a strong land and a sturdy, and the plenteousest corner of the world, so rich a land that scarcely it needeth help of any land, and every other land needeth help of England. England is full of mirth and of game, and man ofttimes able to mirth and game, free men of heart and with tongue, but the hand is more better and more free than the tongue.