Page:The booke of thenseygnementes and techynge that the Knyght of the Towre made to his doughters - 1902.pdf/217

 extant was unknown to Caxton, as to the lady, or he would probably not have set himself the unnecessary task of making a new one, especially as he is obliged to apologise for his unskilfulness in the French language. Moreover, despite the number of translations he made, he was not over-skilled in English either, as he acknowledges in his prologue to another book, where he speaks of the "symplenes & vnperfightness that I had ... in frenshe and in englissh, for in france was I neuer, and was born & lerned myn englissh in kente in the weeld, where I doubte not is spoken as brode and rude englissh as is in ony place of englond." It will be noticed, in these pages, that Caxton's sentences sometimes halt, or are dislocated by a misreading, or perhaps by a too faithful following of a faulty original, while easily-recognised French words frequently occur and testify to the provenance of the book, just as the source of his REYNARD THE FOX stands revealed by the Dutch and Low German forms which he often transfers without translating. No attempt to correct Caxton's text has been made here, except in the case of the most obvious misprints.

The chapters are not all of the same quality, but many will be found highly quaint and amusing, while the language in which they are clothed, though not archaic enough to embarrass the modern reader, is sufficiently old-fashioned to lend them additional colour. They give many peeps into the domestic life of the later middle ages, and glimpses of it simplicity, its piety, its supertitions, its virtues and its vices. The feminine iconoclast of to-day will note that the Knight of the Tower takes for granted, without stooping to argument, the superiority of spear over