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as if we ought to. Nay, far west of the
Rhine, about Ostend, where the Fleming
asserts himself so stoutly against his
"Welsh" neighbours, how homelike is the
look of the people, and how you "stand
corrected" if at some little inn you have
asked for "viande" and the hostess with
a grave shake of the head drawls out "Nit
fleisch." You never felt at home in Bohe-
mia; the lodging is still as "indifferent
as it was in Boorde's day; but it is some-
thing about the people which shows they
are not of us.

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In Poland our author was chiefly struck with its poverty; he makes here too a mistake about language "theyr speche is corrupt Doche.' Boorde would have had an effort made to drive the Turks out of Hungary. His Hungarian says:

If we of other nacions might haue any helpe, We wold make them to fle like a dog or a whelpe.

Boorde's righteous soul was vexed, like other righteous souls, at the state of Rome: "I dyd se lytle vertue there, and much abhominable vyces." He is also worried by their way of reckoning time, "for they do recken vnto xxiii a cloke, and than it is mydnyght."

What he says of Venice reads like Childe Harold's lines put into old prose: "Whosoeuer that hath not seene the noble citie of Venis, he hath not sene the bewtye and ryches of thys worlde." The Doge may not leave the city so long as he doth live; there is not a poor person to be seen in Venice; "the Venyscions hath great prouision of warre, for they haue euer in a redynes tymber to make a hondred gates or more." They are not superstitious: "When they do heare masse they doth clap theyr hand on theyr mouth, and do not knock themself on the brest." In fact the Venetians were a satisfactory people. them, and which made their city in his The laxness which Byron found among

Christ that of alle mischief is triakel.

He grows quite poetical about the "regall flod of Danuby;" but he does not appear to have passed beyond it; for about Con- eyes an Italian Seville, belonged in Borde's stantinople he romances, talking of Saint day to Genoa. Thomas, in his History of Sophia as not a mosque, but "the fairist Italy (1561) says: "One thing I am sure cathedral churche in the worlde... they of, that if Ouide were now alive, there be say that there is a thowsande prestes that in Genoa that could teache him a dousen doth belong to the church: before the funt poinctes de arte amandi." Boorde as a doctor of course noticed Genoa treacle, is a pycture of copper and gylt of Iustinθηριακνόν, whose virtues are witnessed to in ian, that sytteth upon a horse of coper." Chaucer's line: All which smacks rather of Mandeville than of personal observation. The kindliness of the man comes out in his way of noticing the Great Schism: "The Greciens do erre in many articles concerning our fayth, the whyche I do thinke better to obmyt, and to leue vnwryten than to wryte it." Bravo Boorde! How well you contrast with some of our moderns. I took up A Vacation Tour in Brittany not long ago, and was vexed to find all that was new in it made up of tirades against Popish darkness and superstition."

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We are wrong, Boorde must have been in Greece, for he gives an unusually long Greek and English dialogue, ending with the pious Cherete apapantes with which the modern host dismisses his guests.

Harking back from Greece towards Calais, Boorde takes Southern Europe, beginning with Sicily and Italy; the thing which chiefly struck him in every part of which was the prevalence of old fashions in dress and behaviour:

Al new fashyons to England I do bequeat, says the Neapolitan;

In my apparel I am not mutable, says the Roman, and so on.

Of it he says: "Whan thay do make theyr tracle, a man wyll take and eate poysen, and than he wyl swel redy to brost and to dye, and as sone as he hath takyn trakle he is hole agene."

After the old-custom-loving Italians it is a change to come into France, where they "wyll euery daye a new fashion." France suits our author's love of good cheer, and though he has a special word for "good Aquitany," as he affectionately calls it, he is able to say of the whole that "Fraunce is a noble countre, and plentiful of wyne, bread, corne, fysh, flesh and whyld foule. there a man shall be honestly orderyd for his mony, and shal haue good chere and Aragon, where nothing is to be had but good lodging." Very different this from measly bacon and sardines so bad that, when Englishmen have been there,

Thither neuer after they wyll come agene.

The rest of Spain is as bad, except by the sea-side, where, like Portugal, it is enriched by trade. Elsewhere "the countrey is baryn of wine and corne, and skarse of vitels; a man shal not get mete in many

places for no mony; other whyle you shall | brayne." Bad air putrifies the brain; and get kyd, and mesell bakyn, and salt sar- among things which corrupt the air are dyns, which is a lytle fysh as byg as a pyl-"standing waters, stynkyng mystes and cherd, and they be rosty. al your wyne marshes, caryn lyinge longe aboue the shal be kepte and caryed in gote skyns.. grounde, moche people in a smal rome ... whan you go to dyner and to supper lying vnclenly and beynge fylthe and slatyou must fetch your bread in one place. and your wyne in a nother place, and your meate in a nother place; and hogges in many places shal be vnder yovr feete at the table, and lice in your bed. the best fare is in prestes houses, for they do kepe typlinge houses."

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tyshe." Above all, buttery, cellar, larder, and kitchen are to be kept clean and free from accumulations of filth; if there is a moat, it must be often scoured and kept free from mud, so must the fishponds. Stables, brewhouse, and bakehouse are to be kept well away from the dwelling-house. When he come to Navarre Boorde tells Such a house must have plenty of land at full length the story of the white cock about it, "for he the whyche wyll dwell at and hen which were kept at St. Domingo pleasure, and for proffyte and helth of his in memory of the sad fate of the Joseph-body, he must dwell at elbowe-roome." like young pilgrim who was on his way to The prospect too must be good; "for, and Compostella. At which Compostella, by the eye be not satysfied, the mynde can the way, an old blear-eyed doctor of di- not be contented. And the mynde not vinity tells Boorde that "our clergy doth contented, the herte cannot be pleased; illude, mocke and skorne the people to do yf the herte and mynde be not pleased, Idolatry, making ygnorant people to wor- nature doth abhorre. And yf nature do ship the thynge that is not here; all the abhorre, mortyfycacion of the vytall and bones, &c., of St. James and others, having anymall and spyrytuall powers do consebeen placed by Carolus Magnus in St. quently folowe." Of aspects the south is Severin's in Toulouse. I am sorry to say the worst, "for the south winde doth cor. that Brittany-"litle Britten"-has not rupt and make euyl vapours:" the best is a good character in Boorde: the east, "for that wynde is temperate, fryske, and fraugrant - testimony, as Mr. Halliwell writes, to the same effect as that of Mr. Kingsley in his well-known Ode. Never set up house till you have three years' "rent" (i. e. money for all outgoings) in coffer. Divide your income into three parts: one for food; another for dress, wages, liveries, alms; the third for urgent calls, such as sickness and the "charges of a man's last ende."

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Of all nacions I hate free Englyshe men, is what the Breton says; but then as Boorde's Breton speaks French, let us hope he is misrepresented as regards his dislikes as well as his language.

So having got back to Calais again, Boorde goes on to treat of Moors and of Turks, whose "Macomyt, a false felow," deceived the people by teaching tricks to his dove and his camel; much as many Keep your household well in hand, and Irish believe Henry VIII. taught a donkey put down swearing; "for in all the worlde to "discover" the Book of Common Prayer, ther is not suche odyble swearyng as is which the apostate King had secretly vsed in Englonde, specyally amonge yonth buried. With which notice of "Macomyt "and children, and no man doth go aboute let us leave the travel-book and turn to to punnysshe it."

66

"Dyetary," written in Montpelier, and Sleep according to your temperament, dedicated to Thomas Duke of Norfolk. but not too long; have a fire in your room And here the striking feature is Boorde's to consume evil vapours, "for the breath compendiousness; he treats of everything, of man may putryfye the ayre within the from where you are to cytuat your chambre." Wear a scarlet nightcap and house, and how you should build it, "for plenty of bedclothes. And, if you must to lengthen your lyfe," down to "how a sleep in the day-time, sleep leaning against sycke man shuld be vsed that is lykly to a cupboard or sitting upright in a dye." chair.

On house-building he is not only before his age, but far in advance of our own practice; he has a true notion of sanitary laws: "The ayre cannot be to clere and pure .. for we lyue by it as the fysshe lyueth by the water. for yf the ayre be fryske, pure, and clere, it doth conserue the lyfe of man, it doth comfort the

Eat and drink moderately, "for else the lyuer, which is the fyre vnder the potte, is subpressed that he can not naturally nor truely decocte ne dygest." Fond as Boorde was of good beer, he did not like even to see men let "the malt-worme playe the deuyll in theyr heade." He also cries out against our English plan of eat

ing the "gross meats" first, leaving those makyth a gentylman good pastyme;" but which are wholesome and light of digestion he would leave it to the dogs to eat. for servants. "Water," he confesses, "is" Conys flesshe (on the contrary) is good, not holsome, sole by it selfe, for an Eng- but rabettes flesshe is best of all wylde lysshe man;" above all, avoid well-water beestes, for all thynges the whiche doth and standing water. Claret or "Raynyshe" sucke is nutrytyue." Here Boorde helps is best with meat. Of "hote wynes" he us to distinguish synonyms a rabbit in gives a long list; but would have none of his day was a sucking cony. Beer, again, them taken but very sparingly and after as we saw, he marks off from the ale with dinner. The distinction between ale and which it is so often confounded. beer will be new to some readers: ale is Further on he treats of vegetables, and only malt and water," and they which do proves that either the story of Queen put any other thynge to ale except yest, Elizabeth sending to Holland for a salad barme, or godes good doth sofysticat theyr is apocryphal, or else gardening must have ale." It is the Englishman's natural drink, died out in the troubles of the reign of as beer (of malt, water, and hops) is the Edward VI.; for here we have radish, letDutchman's: "bere nowe of late dayes is tuce, sorrel, endive, besides rocket, alexmoche vsed in Englande to the detryment anders, and other plants, which our of many Englyshe men, whom it kylleth." modern English cuisine superciliously Boorde insists strongly, as all men of sense do, on the importance of good bread; "sophysticating bakers he would set standing up to their chin in the Thames. He is also great on pottage, which he says "is not so much vsed in al crystendom as it is vsed in Englande." Fish, too, sea and river both, we have more of than any other country.

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Our Doctor's verdict is (contrary to that of modern physicists) that "fysshe doth lytele nourishe," and also that fish and flesh should not be eaten together at one meal. He then gives a curious classification of birds according to their digestibility, giving the chief place to the partridge," whiche is a restoratyue meate, and do the comforte the brayne and the stomache." A woodcock, on the contrary, is "a meate of good temperaunce." But of wild fowl in general he makes a remark which is of much wider application: "All these be noyfull, except they be well orderyd and dressyd; as he says elsewhere, "the cook is more than half a physician."

Mixed with his dietetics are all sorts of queer jottings from his experiences abroad. Thus he had seen in "Hygh Alman" what anyone who travels there or in Hungary may see now-a-days, "swyne kept clene." The Germans, he says, make them swim once or twice a day in their great rivers. The English let theirs lie about in filth and feed on "stercorus matter;" and the Spaniards he found worse in this respect than the English.

I am happy to find that brawn and all such strange meats Boorde pronounces bad. Of two of them he says: "Yf a man eate nether of them bothe, it shall neuer do hym harme."

Hares he would have hunted: "it

neglects.

Boorde next arranges a diet for the sanguine, melancholy, phlegmatic, and choleric man, and also for patients suffering rom moral diseases; recommending fresh air, cleanliness, care against infection, and a reference to "my Breuyary," just as if he was a nineteenth century physician. Better advice than this could not be given: "No one can be a better physician for you than your own self can be, if you will consider what does you good and refrain from what harms you. Let euery one beware of sorrow, care, thought, and inward anger. Sleep well and go to bed with a mery heart. Wherefore

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let euery man be mery; and yf he can not, let hym resorte to mery company to breke of his perplexatyues." Further, wash your hands often, and comb your head, and keep chest and stomach warm and head cool; and if you are seriously ill, make your will, and have too or three good nurses, not slepysshe, sloudgysshe, sluttygshe," and have sweet flowers kept in your room, and no babbling women about.

Of human nature Boorde was at least as good a judge as he was of the diagnosis of diseases; his estimate of the female character, for instance, is that of the Arthusian Romance: "Women desire sovereignty." The man, he says, who would be at peace must " please his wyfe, and beate her nat, but let her haue her owne wyl, for that she wyll haue, who so euer say nay." As a prison reformer he was centuries before his day. But after speaking, as Howard might, about the filth and bad air in prisons, he quietly adds: "The chefe remedy is for man to so lyue and so to do that he deserue not to be brought into no prison." Before his time, too, are

his views on demoniacal possession: incu- the delight of innumerable eager readers. bus and succubus, he says, are of "a vaperous humour or fumositie rysinge out and frome the stomake to the brayne."

Parents grumbled then as they do now at the idleness of the rising generation; "the feuer horden," Boorde calls it, and reccommends unguentum inculinum as the remedy. Care, too, must be taken that they "put no Lubberworte into their potage."

The charm communicated by the works of those Dioscuri of the French literary firmament of our day Erckmann-Chatrian is doubtless akin to the feeling of gratifica which our ancestors enjoyed on first_reading Defoe's productions in fiction. Defoe, indeed, did not bring into full development what is now called a novel. That description of contemporary manners thrown round and identified with fictitious per

too improbable history, is of later date. The honour of its invention was reserved for the humbler, but no less real genius who, twenty years after the publication of Crusoe, gave to the world Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and Sir Charles Grandison, vol

In fact there is a world of quaintness sonages who move about the stage of ordiand good sense in Boorde; and Mr. Furni-nary life and enact an imagined and not vall has only tantalized us by giving us extracts from books which make us anxious for more. How such a man could be taken as the type of what we mean by Merry Andrew it is hard to say: he is always recommending mirth, and he owns to his love of good cheer; but it is not at allume by volume, too slowly for an intermerry-andre wish to sum up advice in this honest, earnest way: "Fyrste lyue out of syn, and folowe Christes doctrine, and then vse honest myrth and honest company, and vse to eate good meate and to drink moderatly."

Enough about Boorde: this is one of the most interesting books to people in general that the Early English Text Society has yet given us.

From The Spectator. NOVELISTS AS PAINTERS OF MORALS.*

We

ested and excited body of readers. Read-
ers of memoirs and letters between 1740
and 1860 will continually meet with allu-
sions to Richardson's works. The vivid
impression of reality communicated by his
characters was evidently not exceeded by
the effect not yet obliterated of Dickens's
stories on their first appearance.
have seen an unpublished letter written
by a Welsh lady in 1754, in which the fol-
lowing passage occurs, "Methinks I should
be glad to know what part of Sir Charles
Grandison's character the critics are dis-
pleased with." The fair correspondent
seems as much hurt as if a personal friend
had received an injury. "I have been
much diverted," she continues, "by a
charge of coquetry laid upon Miss Byron
by a neighbour and kinsman of ours.
must know something more of her than
Mr. Richardson has informed us common
readers, for I think nothing is more oppo-
site his account of her than that character.
I am glad to see by the newspaper that the
seventh volume is to be published next
Thursday. Mr. H. is very merry in the
ludicrous detail he gives of what we must
expect relating to Sir Charles in this last
account of him, when all his wicked tricks
in Italy are to be brought to light, and I
do not know if he is not to be hanged
before we have done with him." Every-
body seemed full of the subject, the corre-
spondents, their kinsmen, and their friends.
Could literary reputation further ago?

He

ENGLAND has hardly received the honour she deserves as the birthplace of the modern novel. Except the incomparable Don Quixote, what had Europe produced in the way of narrative fiction before the appearance of Robinson Crusoe in 1719? Madame Scudery, in 1650, had told the idle world the loves and adventures of Artamenes in the Grand Cyrus, filling twenty plump volumes with her story. The English translation of that romance, dated 1653, is a weighty folio of close print, as also is Clelia, a Romance, and Ibrahim, or the Illustrious Bassa, by the same popular writer. Omitting the Oroonoko and other histories of Mrs. Aphra Behn, sixty years elapsed ere Scudery's renown was dimmed by the appearance of Gil Blas in her own country and the immortal Robinson Crusoe in ours. Memoirs of a Cava- Pamela had the honour of provoking lier, Colonel Jack, Captain Singleton, Moll Joseph Andrews into existence with the Flanders followed in quick succession, to never-to-be-forgotten Parson Adams. The success of this book induced our "prose Homer" to write and publish Tom Jones, and thus add, according to Gibbon, another glory to the House of Hapsburg.

The Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century in Illustration of the Manners and Morals of the Age. By W. Forsyth, M.A., Q.C. London: Murray. 1871.

Amelia, though full of tenderness and Tatler, the World, the Connoisseur add contruth, wants the bracing inspiring vivacity firmation strong to the testimony of and vigour of the other two novels of Parson Adams, Trulliber, Trunnion, Squire Fielding. The open-air and roadside-inn Western, the Fool of Quality, Betsey adventures of Joseph and the parson on Thoughtless, and the like. Compare the the one hand and of Tom Jones on the picture of past times thus obtained with other give a picture of rural life in Eng- the impression produced by our own age. land that is unsurpassed in our litera- Admitting that we are as a community ture. The indelicacy and coarseness of more decent and refined than were our many passages in these works, transcripts forefathers, are we more virtuous? In as they doubtless are from nature, seem the general progress of refinement vice blown away by the hearty laughter, the participates, and is none the less poisonous bluff robust merriment that accompanies for being distilled. We wear the mask them. Smollett, who studied the same better than did the gallants and gay ladies models that Fielding copied, has not the of old, and so far render the homage same breadth of hand or power of execu- which vice pays to virtue in hypocrisy. tion, and some of his scenes excite a feel- The revelations of the law courts, no less ing of disgust that honest readers of Tom than the sensational stories of our novelJones never can feel. Recurrence to mere ists, betray the existence of much evil in indecency as a means of entertainment our society. Upon the whole, however, marks a very low intellectual type, and by there is reason enough not to wish for the this canon of criticism Mrs. Aphra Behn return of the old times. That the coarseought to be judged. Mr. Forsyth justly ness of manners did grievously blunt the reprobates the social condition which could edge of moral sensibility is pointedly permit Behn's works to be read aloud in a shown by Fielding, in the unconsciousness drawing-room among ladies with applause, with which he makes his hero keep up and he gives the oft-repeated anecdote connection with Lady Bellaston after he told by Sir Walter Scott of his grand-aunt, has formed an attachment to Sophia Mrs. Keith, who in old age turned with Western. with nausea from reading the books she had heard with complacency in her youth. We suspect there was as much stupidity as want of refined taste in the society that permitted reading of that kind. A man may pass indulgently over Shakespeare's double entendres who would not endure to read Wycherly from beginning to end. Stories of the Mrs. Keith kind could easily be multiplied. We knew an octogenarian veteran of high standing who, finding no amusement in the Guy Livingstones and Lady Audleys of the day, had recourse to Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, and their compeers, in order to wile away the sleepless hours of night. These exhausted, he was induced by the notoriety of the lady to try Aphra Behn's works. Man of the camp though he was, and far from squeamish, the dirty dullness of the book thoroughly repelled him, and before many pages were read he put the volumes

Mr. Forsyth has an amusing chapter on the parson of the seventeenth century. The book of Eachard's entitled Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy, which he quotes, was once very pithily, though cynically, answered by a note on the flyleaf," The good sense of the laity." Mr. Forsyth has collected evidence enough to show that it was the selfishness and bad manners of the laity that more than anything else placed the clergy in a false and humiliating position. The best specimen of the class is Sir Roger de Coverley's chaplain, “a person of good sense and some learning, of a very regular life and obliging conversation," who understood backgammon, and lived in the family rather as a relation than a dependent, and who showed his good sense by preaching in regular succession the sermons of Tillotson, Saunderson, Barrow, Calamy, and South, instead of wasting his spirits in laborious compositions of his own. He heartily loved Sir Mr. Forsyth, in his instructive and en- Roger, and stood high in the old knight's tertaining volume, has succeeded in show-esteem, having lived with him thirty years, during which time there had not been a lawsuit in the parish.

away.

ing that much real information concerning the morals as well as the manners of our ancestors may be gathered from the novelists of the last century. With judicial impartiality he examines and cross-examines the witnesses, laying all the evidence before the reader. Essayists as well as novelists are called up. The Spectator, the

Here is a chapter on dress suggestive of comparisons. Costume is a subject on which novelists, like careful artists, are studiously precise. The late Mr. Thackeray, when inquiring for a life of Wolfe to assist him in the Virginians, said, in his

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