his
fellow-members--had gone to press, Mr Hazlitt reminded me of the Caxton,
and its first and last lines in Mr Blades's admirable book showed that
Hill's text was the same as the printed one. I accordingly went to
Cambridge to copy it, and there, before tea, Mr Skeat showed me the copy
of _The Vision of Piers Plowman_ which the Provost and Fellows of Oriel
had been good enough to lend him for his edition of 'Text B.' Having
enjoyed the vellum Vision, I turned to the paper leaves at its end, and
what should they contain but an earlier and better version of the Caxton
that I had just copied part of?[1] I drank seven cups of tea, and eat
five or six large slices of bread and butter, in honour of the event;[2]
and Mr Skeat, with his never-failing kindness, undertook to copy and
edit the Oriel text for the Society. With three texts, therefore, in
hand, I could not well stick them at the end of the Postscript to the
_Babees Book, &c._,[3] and as I wanted Caxton's name to this Book of
Curtesye to distinguish it from what has long been to me THE Book of
Courtesy,--that from the Sloane MS. 1986, edited by Mr Halliwell for the
Percy Society, and by me for our own E.E.T.S.--and as also Caxton's name
is one 'to conjure withal,' I have, with our Committee's leave, made
this little volume an Extra Series one, and called it Caxton's, though
his text is not so good as that of the Oriel MS.

[Footnote 1: Mr Bradshaw was kind enough to copy the rest, and to read
the whole of the proof with Caxton's original.]

[Footnote 2: I must be excused for not having found the poem before, as
it is not in the Index to Mr Coxe's Catalogue. In the body of the work
it is entered as "A father's advice to his son; with instructions for
his behaviour as a king's or nobleman's page. ff. 88, 89, 78. Beg.

"Kepeth clene and leseth not youre gere."]

[Footnote 3: The Treatises in _The Babees Book, &c._, and the Index at
the end, should be consulted for parallel and illustrative passages to
those in Caxton's text.]

On this latter point Mr Skeat writes:

"The Oriel copy is evidently the best. Not only does it give better
readings, but the lines, as a rule, run more smoothly; and it has an
extra stanza. This stanza, which is marked 54, occurs between stanzas 53
and 54 of the other copies, and is of some interest and importance. It
shows that Lidgate's pupil, put in mind of Lidgate's style by the very
mention of his name, introduces a ballad of three