(27).—Th.; Fairfax, Tanner.
XX. The Flower and the Leaf (595).—Speght (1598).
XXI. The Assembly of Ladies (756).—Th.; Addit. 34360; Trin. R. 3. 19.
XXII. A goodly Balade (71).—Th.
XXIII. Go forth, King (14).—Wynkyn de Worde; Th.
XXIV. The Court of Love (1442).—Stowe (1561); Trin. R. 3. 19.
XXV. Virelai (20).—Stowe (1561); Trin. R. 3. 19.
XXVI. Prosperity (8); XXVII. Loyalty (7).—Selden MS.
XXVIII. Sayings (14).—Caxton; reprinted, Th. (1542).
XXIX. In Praise of Chaucer (7).—Stowe (1561); Trin. R. 3. 19.
§ 7. I. The Testament of Love; by Thomas Usk.
Of this piece no MS. copy has been discovered. The only authority is Thynne's edition of 1532, whence all later editions have been copied more or less incorrectly. The reprints will be found to grow steadily worse, so that the first edition is the only one worth consulting.
The present edition is printed from a transcript of Thynne (1532), made by myself; the proof-sheets being carefully read with the original. In making the transcript, I have altered the symbol u to v, when used as a consonant; and (in the few places where it occurs) the consonantal i to j. I have also substituted i for y when the vowel is short, chiefly in the case of the suffix -yng or -ynge, here printed -ing or -inge. In nearly all other cases, the original spellings are given in the footnotes. Thynne's chief errors of printing occur in places where he has persistently altered the spelling of the MS. to suit the spelling in fashion in the days of Henry VIII. His chief alterations are as follows. He prints ea for open ee, written ee or e at the beginning of the fifteenth century; thus, he has ease for ese, and please for plese. He most perversely adds a useless final e to the words howe, nowe, and some others; and he commits the anachronism of printing father, mother, together, wether, gather, in place of fader, moder, togeder, weder, gader; whereas the termination in these words invariably appears as -der till shortly before 1500. Further, he prints catche for cacche, perfection for perfeccion, and the like; and in several other ways has much impaired the spelling of his original. Many of these things I have attempted to set right; and the scholar who compares the text with the footnotes will easily see why each alteration has been made, if he happens to be at all conversant with MSS. written in the fourteenth century.
I believe that this piece is almost unparalleled as regards the shameful corruption of its text. It cannot be supposed that Thynne or any one else ever read it over with the view of seeing whether the result presented any sense. Originally written in an obscure style, every form of carelessness seems to have been employed in order to render it more obscure than before. In a great number of places, it is easy to restore the sense by the insertion of such necessary words as of, or but, or by. In other places, non-existent words can be replaced by real ones; or some correction can be made that is more or less obvious. I have marked all inserted words by placing them within square brackets, as, e.g., am in l. 46 on p. 6. Corrections of readings are marked by the use of a dagger (†); thus 'I †wot wel' in l. 78 on p. 7 is my emendation of Thynne's phrase 'I wol wel,' which is duly recorded in the footnote. But some sentences remain in which the sense is not obvious; and one is almost tempted to think that the author did not clearly know what he intended to say. That he was remarkable for a high degree of inaccuracy will appear presently.
A strange misprint occurs in Book III. ch. 4, ll. 30, 31 (p. 117), where nearly two whole lines occur twice over; but the worst confusion is due to an extraordinary dislocation of the text in Book III. (c. iv. l. 56—c. ix. l. 46), as recently discovered by the sagacity of Mr. H. Bradley, and explained more fully below.
I have also, for the first time, revised the punctuation, which in Thynne is only denoted by frequent sloping strokes and full stops, which are not always inserted in the right places. And I have broken up the chapters into convenient paragraphs.
§ 8. A very curious point about this piece is the fact which I was the first to observe, viz. that the initial letters of the various chapters were certainly intended to form an acrostic. Unfortunately, Thynne did not perceive this design, and has certainly begun some of the chapters either with the wrong letter or at a wrong place. The sense shews that the first letter of Book I. ch. viii. should be E, not O (see the note); and, with this correction, the initial letters of the First Book yield the words—MARGARETE OF.
In Book II, Thynne begins Chapters XI and XII at wrong places, viz. with the word 'Certayn' (p. 86, l. 133), and the word 'Trewly' (p. 89, l. 82). He thus produces the words—VIRTW HAVE MCTRCI. It is obvious that the last word ought to be MERCI, which can be obtained by beginning Chapter XI with the word 'Every,' which suits the sense quite as well.
For the chapters of Book III, we are again dependent on Thynne. If we accept his arrangement as it stands, the letters yielded are—ON THSKNVI; and the three books combined give us the sentence:—MARGARETE OF VIRTW, HAVE MERCI ON THSKNVI. Here 'Margarete of virtw' means 'Margaret endued with divine virtue'; and the author appeals either to the Grace of God, or to the Church. The last word ought to give us the author's name; but in that case the letters require rearrangement before the riddle can be read with certainty.
After advancing so far towards the solution of the mystery, I was here landed in a difficulty which I was unable to solve. But Mr. H. Bradley, by a happy inspiration, hit upon the idea that the text might have suffered dislocation; and was soon in a position to prove that no less than six leaves of the MS. must have been out of place, to the great detriment of the sense and confusion of the argument. He very happily restored the right order, and most obligingly communicated to me the result. I at once cancelled the latter part of the treatise (from p. 113 to the end), and reprinted this portion in the right order, according to the sense. With this correction, the unmeaning THSKNVI is resolved into the two words THIN USK, i.e. 'thine Usk'; a result the more remarkable because Mr. Bradley had previously hit upon Usk as being the probable author. For the autobiographical details exactly coincide, in every particular, with all that is known of the career of Thomas Usk, according to Walsingham, the Rolls of Parliament, and the continuation of Higden's Polychronicon by John Malverne (ed. Lumby, vol. ix. pp. 45–6, 134, 150, 169); cf. Lingard, ed. 1874, iii. 163–7.
The date of the composition of this piece can now be determined without much error. Usk was executed on March 4, 1388, and we find him referring to past events that happened towards the end of 1384 or later. The most likely date is about 1387. I here append an exact account of the order of the text as it appears in Thynne; every break in the text being denoted, in the present volume, by a dark asterisk.
Thynne's text is in a correct order from p. 1 to p. 118, l. 56:—any mouable tyme there (Th. fol. 354, col. 2, l. 11)[5].
(1) Next comes, in Thynne, the passage beginning at p. 135, l. 94:—Fole, haue I not seyd—and ending at p. 143, l. 46:—syth god is the greatest loue and the (Th. fol. 356, back, col. 1, l. 5).
(2) Next, in Thynne, the passage beginning at p. 131, l. 97:—ne ought to loke thynges with resonnyng—and ending at p. 132, l. 161, at the end of a chapter (Th. fol. 356, back, col. 2, last line).
(3) Next, in Thynne, the
