Page:The booke of thenseygnementes and techynge that the Knyght of the Towre made to his doughters - 1902.pdf/216

 Caxton's for its superior literary merit, was edited in 1868 by Mr. T. Wright, F.S.A., for the Early English Text Society. The MS. being imperfect, the editor supplied the missing passages with extracts from Caxton's rendering. "With this trifling exception, if exception it can be considered, Caxton's KNIGHT OF THE TOWER, as it is usually called, has never been reproduced, and therefore the following selections, comprising a little more than half of the whole book, will be new to the great majority of readers, since the extreme rarity of the Caxton original renders it practically inaccessible to all but a very few. The present reprint is from one of the two copies in the British Museum.

The Knight's prologue sets forth how he came to compose the book for the instruction of his little girls, and now he employed "two preestes and two clerkes that he hadde" to collect the materials. He began to write in rhyme, but abandoned rhyme for prose almost immediately. Caxton's translation came into being at the desire of an English matron, whose name is not recorded, who so highly approved of the book that she wished her daughters to have the benefit of a version in their own language, and requested Caxton to furnish it. Caxton himself endorses this lady's good opinion of the work in the warmest terms, and " fo as moche as this book is necessary to euery gentilwoman, of what estate she be," he advises "euery gentilman or woman, hauyng such children, desyryng them to be vertuously broujt forth, to gete and haue this book, to thende that they may lerne hou they oujt to gouerne them vertuously in this present lyf by whiche they may the better and hastlyer come to worship and good renommee."

It may be assumed that the English MS. copy already