lready
inserted. The work is ended by Wynkyn de Worde's well known tripartite
device.

We now proceed to insert, in its entire shape, the third tract upon this
amusing subject, premising that (like our preceding quotations) it is
from an unique copy. It will remind the reader in several places of
passages in the Prologue of Chaucer's "Wife of Bath," especially where
she remarks,

"Thou sayst droppyng houses, and eke smoke,
And chidyng wyves maken men to flee
Out of her owne houses. Ah, benedicite!
What ayleth suche an olde man for to chide?"

But the Wife of Bath does not quote Solomon for the proverb, as we find
him referred to on p. 20. Again, in a subsequent stanza, p. 21, we are
strongly reminded of the lines where the Wife of Bath thus describes her
conduct after she had married her fifth husband:--

"Therfore made I my visytations
To vigilles, and to processyons,
To preachyng eke, and to pilgrymages,
To playes of myracles, and to mariages,
And weared on my gay skarlet gytes."

The main difference is that instead of saying, with Chaucer, that women
frequent "playes of myracles," the author of the ensuing tract tells us
that they delight "on scaffoldes to sytte on high stages," from whence
they usually beheld such performances. Throughout, the writer seems to
have had our great early poet more or less in his eye, and hence we may
possibly conclude, that if the two other pieces on the same subject were
translations, this was original. It, therefore, deserves the more
attention.

The Payne and Sorowe of Evyll Maryage.

THE PAYNE AND SOROWE OF EVYLL MARYAGE.

Take hede and lerne, thou lytell chylde, and se
That tyme passed wyl not agayne retourne,
And in thy youthe unto vertues use the:
Lette in thy brest no maner vyce sojourne,
That in thyne age thou have no cause to mourne
For tyme lost, nor for defaute of wytte:
Thynke on this lesson, and in thy mynde it shytte.

Glory unto god, lovynge and benyson
To Peter and Johan and also to Laurence,
Whiche have me take under proteccyon
From the deluge of mortall pestylence,
And from the tempest of deedly vyolence,
And me preserve that I fall not in the rage
Under the bonde and yocke of maryage.

I was in purpose to have taken a wyfe,
And for to have wedded without avysednes
A full fayre mayde, with her to lede my lyfe,
Whome that I love