Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/319

 MIRACLE CYCLES. 305 possibly the very ' original ' in the hands of the Sporiers and Lorimers of York, from which Y also derived, more probably from a defective copy of the same. W, in those portions where it is parallel to Y, appears to be somewhat the less correct copy of the two. It betrays a tendency to corrupt the metre by introducing a fourth accent into the lines of the quatrain. The most interesting variant is where Y alludes to the passage in the Psalms, ' Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings/ and W breaks the stanza in order to introduce extrametrically the Latin quotation (Y 114, W 90). That the words were intended to be spoken by the a<5tor seems proved by a subsequent alteration. The portions of W which are not parallel to Y appear to have been written in complete indepen- dence. As regards the extant portion of scene 2, certain supposed similarities have indeed been pointed out. For instance, it has been suggested l that the lines in W : Masters, youre resons ar right good And wonderfull to neuen, 9-10 are a reminiscence of those in Y : That was wele saide, so mot I the, Swilke notis to neven me thynke wer nede. 61-2 We could hardly, I think, have stronger evidence of the independence of the two texts. In the divergent passage containing the Commandments there are no parallels except such as are due to the subjeft matter, unless we regard as such the use 1 Craig, ' Two Coventry Plays,' p. xxx.