iversally despised,
and see the most important matters managed, not to say mismanaged, by
blockheads, who cannot tell the number of their fingers and toes."

Barclay's adaptation is so thoroughly Englished, and contains such large
additions from the stores of his own bitter experience, as to make it even
more truly his own than any other of his translations.

The fourth and fifth eclogues are imitations,--though no notice that they
are so is conveyed in the title, as in the case of the first three,--of the
fifth and sixth of the popular eclogue writer of the time, Jo. Baptist
Mantuan, which may have helped to give rise to the generally received
statement noticed below, that all the eclogues are imitations of that
author. The fourth is entitled "Codrus and Minalcas, treating of the
behauour of Riche men agaynst Poetes," and it may be judged how far it is
Barclay's from the fact that it numbers about twelve hundred lines,
including the elegy of the Noble Howard, while the original, entitled, "De
consuetudine Divitum erga Poetas," contains only about two hundred. The
fifth is entitled "Amintas and Faustus, of the disputation of citizens and
men of the countrey." It contains over a thousand lines, and the original,
"De disceptatione rusticorum et civium," like the fifth, extends to little
more than two hundred.

In the Prologue before mentioned we are told (Cawood's edition):--

"That fiue Egloges this whole treatise doth holde
To imitation of other Poetes olde,"

Which appears to be a correction of the printer's upon the original, as in
Powell's edition:--

"That X. egloges this hole treatyse dothe holde."

Whether other five were ever published there is no record to show; it
appears, however, highly improbable, that, if they had, they could have
been entirely lost,--especially considering the popularity and repeated
issue of the first five,--during the few years that would have elapsed
between their original publication and the appearance of Cawood's edition.
Possibly the original reading may be a typographical blunder, for Cawood is
extremely sparing of correction, and appears to have made none which he did
not consider absolutely necessary. This is one of the literary puzzles
which remain for bibliography to solve. (See below, p. lxxix.)

The next of Barclay's works in point of date, and perhaps the only one
actually entitled to the merit of originality, is his Introductory to write
and pronounce French, com