In considering the language, we are to bear in mind that it is that of the year 1525, and not of 1573, when the tract was re-printed. This is evidenced, among other things, by the mention of Mahound in the last line but one; it was obtained from the Miracle-plays in which Mahomet figured, and which were frequently represented in the reign of Henry VIII. though they fell into disuse in that of Elizabeth, when the Reformation was fully established. The gown and kirtle of which Edyth was bereft so unceremoniously by Master Guy, was perhaps the gown and kirtle out of which she cheated a draper of London as related in "the sixth merry jest." Not a few of the lady's exploits would now come under the police-office denomination of' shop-lifting.' No doubt there was such a person as the widow Edyth shortly prior to 1525; but nevertheless some of her adventures look like invention, and remind us of tales by Boccaccio and other Italian novelists, as for instance that where she obtained "a nest of goblets," and that where she persuaded three servants of Sir Thomas More (then residing at Chelsea) to become suitors to her at one time.

Our readers will perhaps by this time have had enough of Jill of Brentford and the Widow Edyth; and to compensate in some degree for the unfavourable light in which the fair sex has appeared, taking these two renowned ladies as its representatives, we will now briefly advert to a production of the same genus, but of a different species, which is very interesting also in a bibliographical point of view.

Warton (Hist. Engl. Poetry, III. 426, 8vo.) has made an extract from "The School-house of Women," printed by Wyer in 1542, by Kyng in 1560, by Petyt in 1561, and by J. Allde in 1572, so that it is evident that severe satire upon the female sex was extremely popular. Warton adds, that "the author was wise enough to suppress his name;" and Mr. Utterson, when he reprinted the whole tract in his "Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry," was unable to state by whom The School-house of Women was written. A tract among Mr. Heber's books enables us to settle the point; GENT. MAG. VOL. III.

for in The Praise of all Women, called Mulierum Paan, Edward Gosenhyll, who puts his name to it, avows that he was the author of The School of Women, thinking he might acknowledge it with impunity at the moment when he was making some amends for his former ungallant attack. The Praise of all Women was printed without date by John Kyng, who put forth the edition of The School-house of Women in 1560. The Praise of all Women was intended as an antidote, and Gosenhyll, the author, has certainly, as far as he could, balanced the account. He feigns a vision of ladies while he lay asleep in the month of January, prudently taking one of the longest nights for a dream of corresponding duration. The ladies wake him that he may undertake their defence.

"Awake, they said, sleep not so fast; Consider our grief and how we are blamed,

And all by a book that lately is past, Which, by report, by thee was first framed, The School of Women

'named.

none author

In print is it past, lewdly compiled,
All women whereby be sorely reviled."

Venus, who is present, puts her especial commands upon Gosenhyll; and the body of the work consists of a long harangue by the Queen of Beauty in laudation of the ladies, which the author puts into writing. He cannot, however, avoid making a sly hit now and then at the sex, even in the midst of his panegyric, for after referring to the creation of Eve as Adam's companion, (Venus wisely omits any allusion to the incident of the forbidden fruit,) he inserts the subsequent humourons and satirical stanza :

"Some say the woman had no tongue,
After that God had her create,
Until the man took leaves long
And put them under her palate.
An aspen leaf of the devil he gate,
And for it moveth with every wind,
They say women's tongues be of like

kind."

the Old and New Testaments, in which the heathen Goddess appears to have been remarkably well read. Again, at the conclusion of the poem, Gosenhyll deviates into his natural satyrical vein, and winds up the whole as follows, the lines being far from uninteresting with reference to the manners of the time in which he wrote, nearly 300 years ago:

"Which things remembered, with other

mo,

That might perchance enlarge this book;
Estates commonly where I go,
Trust their wives to overlook
Baker, brewer, butler, and cook,
With other all; man medleth no whit,
Because the woman hath the quicker wit.
My lady must receive and pay,
And every man in his office control;
And to each cause give yea and nay,
Bargain and buy, and set all sole,
By indenture or by court roll.
My lady must order thus all thing,
Or small shall be the man's winning.

A further proof herein as yet,
By common report we hear each day;
The child is praised for his mother wit,
For the father's condition's depraved
alway;

And over that yourself will say,
Surgeons advantage by women small,
Because they be no fighters at all.
An end, therefore, hereof to make,
Methinks these men do nothing well,
So wilfully to brag and crake,
And against all women so to gevel,
And yet who so that longest doth revel,
And this book readeth, I know plainly,
Shall say, or be shamed-" Tongue, I
lie."

The author places his name in the last stanza of the work, which he

there addresses:

ter.

to have any peace of his life; but More was a young volunteer, under twenty, or he would have known betMore's tract has been reprinted by Mr. Utterson in vol. II. of his Early Popular Poetry, but from a copy that was defective in some lines from the mutilation of the binder; these it may be as well here to supply, that those of our readers who have Mr. Utterson's work, and like to be verbally accurate, may correct the errors, though comparatively trifling. The title at the commencement of the body of the tract is, Here begynneth the booke" and not " poem as Mr. Utterson has given it. Line 33, should run, Dyd not the deuyll endeuor to reclayme her to hys fyste.'

"

Line 383 should begin, But yet I

cannot chuse," &c.; and line 457 should begin, By meanes whereof," &c. Although The Defence of Women was not printed by Kyng until 1560, after he had published his edition of The School-house of Women, it was written in 1557.

As we are upon the subject of the attacks upon and defence of ladies, we may here introduce some specimens of a very rare and, on many accounts, interesting poem, which contains a good deal of satirical matter upon the fair sex, by an author of the name of Thomas Feylde, who probably indulged in this vein, because he had been unable to "mollify the marble" of his mistress, whose initials he gives at the close,

"Her name also beginneth with A. B."

This production seems to have been twice printed by Wynkyn de Worde without date, one edition having been sold at the Roxburghe sale, and the other at the auction of Mr. Heber's books. It has for title, A contrauersye bytwene a Louer and a Jaye," and we give it in the letters of the original because they differ materially from those supplied by Dr. Dibdin (Ames, II. 336) who probably took his account of the work from the Roxburghe copy. The wood-cut on the title is the same, but the colophon varies, viz. "Imprynted at London in Fletestrete at the sygne of the Sonne, by Wynkyn de Worde," and both editions are without date. However, these are mere dry matters of biblio

period, and in which the Prologue is written, e. 9.

"Though laureat poets in old antiquity Feigned false fables under clowdy sentence,

Yet some intituled fruitful morality, Some of love wrote great circumstance; Some of chivalrous acts made remembrance;

graphy, and we shall hasten to something better. After a 66 Prologue" in which the author praises Chaucer, Gower, Lidgate, and Hawes, (a poet especially encouraged by Henry VII. who, with all his parsimony, was liberal to the professors of art and literature in his reign,) he goes on to relate, in very tripping and agreeable verse, of a novel metre, that as he lay in a bower in summer time he heard the "contraversy" between the Lover and the Jay. The bird endeavours to wean the man from his silly passion; and after repeating a list of lightsome ladies, he thus winds up with a general assault and battery against the sex:

"Thus in conclusion

Women are confusion
And final destruction
To man at the end.
Yet shame it is

To blame them doubtless,
For, as Clerk says,

They have it of kind.
Therefore remember
Their young age tender,
That love is eager

With lusty courage.
To love in youth
Is pleasure enough,
And in age forsooth,
It is but dotage.

Trust not their words,
Nor merry bordes,
For knights and lords

Deceived have been.
They are oft mutable,
They are false and variable;
Therefore trust them but little
For all their fair een.

Take comfort good,
And change thy mood,
For by the sweet rood

They turn as the wind.
On the sea I have been,
And many jeopardies seen;
What need I more rekene,

Thou knowest my mind."

The lover, called Amator, remains unconvinced; and after the Jay has taken her flight, walks away in a melancholy mood. Feylde is not very particular and exact in his rhimes; but his lyrical measure is much better adapted to the subject than the old ballad staff usually adopted about this

Some as good indited,

philosophers naturally [spended." Thus wisely and wittily their time they

This form of stanza had been handed down from at least the days of Chaucer. He calls it expressly "the balade simple; and it was very much employed in compositions of that description. In The Controversy between a Lover and a Jay, we meet with a mention of the satire called Cock Lorel's Boat, which also came from the press of Wynkyn de Worde, probably not long before.

"Though nature move,
And bid thee love,

Yet wisdom would prove,
Ere it be hot.
When fortune sour,
Doth on thee lour,
Thou gettest an oar

In Cock Lorel's Boat."

The following early notice of the heroes of several of our most famous English romances is also worth quoting:

"Thus am I wrapped

sent.

And in woe umbelapped,
Such love hath me trapped,
Without any cure.
Sir Tristram the good
For his leman Isoude,
More sour never 'bode
Than I do endure.

Lamwell and Lamarock,
Gawayne and Lancelot,
Garath and Caradock,

With the Table Round:
Sir Bevis, Sir Eglamour,
Sir Terry, Sir Triamour,
In more grievous dolour
Were never in bound."

And thus we conclude for the preIn our next article we intend to pursue the subject of old English poetical Facetie, and to examine particularly some very curious and humorous tracts for and againt Matrimony.

Mr. URBAN,

Feb. 5.

A FEW words will be naturally expected of me, in reply to Mr. Sturges Bourne's letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, inserted in your last Number. They shall be very few, and as much as possible to the purpose; to which end, I will say nothing of matters of opinion, nothing of matters of taste, but confine myself entirely to matters of fact. It is not on the score of either taste or opinion, but on that of integrity, that I am arraigned by my antagonist as the Editor of Bishop Lowth's Remains. I therefore offer no argument on the comparison of handwriting, of abbreviations, of orthography, or of style, as manifested on the one hand, in the acknowledged productions of the Bishop, and, on the other hand, in those now attributed to him. Such of your readers as may have had the opportunity of examining both the one and the other, will be enabled to form an estimate upon the subject, according to their previous experience in questions of the same kind; and there I am quite content to let that portion of the subject rest.

Now to facts, which involve more or less directly every statement of importance in Mr. Bourne's letter.

1. Mr. Sturges Bourne informs the Archbishop of Canterbury, that I had "asserted in print, that from twenty-five to thirty volumes of MS. annotations had been sold by auction by the Bishop's representatives, and that these (the two MS volumes of Sermons) might have been amongst them." A reference to the passage alluded to (which occcurs in my former letter, Gent. Mag. for Sept. 1834,) will show that the number specified was eight lots; and that no mention whatever is made of the two Sermons, as supposed to have existed among them: on the contrary, they are distinctly described as composed exclusively of "Annotations and Remarks." This assertion I now repeat, as well as my readiness to authenticate it, when required so to do.

2. Mr. Bourne has informed his Grace, that "I had stated again and again to the public, that I wOULD SWEAR to the Bishop's handwriting with more confidence than to any

man's except my own." Such an allusion I have once made, and only once; it occurs in terms exactly the reverse of those adduced by Mr. Bourne in the letter before mentioned: "I should be LOTH TO SWEAR in a Court of Justice to any body's handwriting but my own; but, next to my own, I THINK I WOULD SPEAK with confidence to that of Bishop Lowth."

3. Mr. Bourne has informed the Archbishop that the titles, preserved in the original MSS. had been cancelled, and the date of 1767 suppressed, and was not to be found in any part of the printed volume. The titles are not cancelled, but are given almost word for word in the second page of the introductory memoir. The date, which had been omitted entirely by a typographical oversight, in its proper place, is also given, with other corrections, on the reverse of the Table of Contents; though the omission not being discovered till after the day of publication, a few copies may possibly have been issued without it. It may be just worth while to add, in order to prove the competency of Mr. Sturges Bourne to form a judgment of comparative handwritings, that the title-pages of the MS volumes are quite evidently written by a different person. Whether in favour of their authenticity or not, neither their owner nor myself, nor any one but Mr. Bourne, pretends to doubt this cir

cumstance.

4. Mr. Bourne informs the Archbishop, that, having first suppressed the date, I then assigned the period of the Sermons to Bishop Lowth's possession of the see of London. The truth is, that, having first given the date, I added, in the same sentence, "while his Lordship held the see of Oxford."

5. Lastly, Mr. Bourne informs his Grace, that the Rev. Peter Hall has represented himself to be " a sounder theologian than Bishop Lowth."Whatever may be the Rev. Peter Hall's opinion of himself (and it is not common to a corrupt nature to think less highly than it ought to think of its own pretensions), he has not yet ventured to offer to the public the expression of any such approval.

THE EDITOR OF LOWTH.