'And as the gyse was in his contré,
Ful heye upon a chare of gold stood he,
With foure white boles in a trays.
Insteade of cote armour over his harnays,
With nales yelwe, and bright as any gold,
He had a beres skyn, cole-blak for old.'

Here the Harleian manuscript reads in his harness,' but in the nature of the case, a bear skin must be worn over the harness not in it, as one of its parts or details. This was, in fact, the manner of wearing the coat armour here referred to, the surcoat being worn over the hauberk of metallic rings. Surcoats,' says Sir S. R. Meyrick, seem to have originated with the Crusaders, for the purpose of distinguishing the many different nations, and to throw a veil over the iron. armour, so apt to heat excessively when exposed to the rays ' of the sun.' And this account of the origin and use of the military surcoat is illustrated in a few lines further on, in the brilliant picture of the great Demetrius King of Inde,' who accompanied Arcite riding on a bay steed traped in steel, and whose coat armour was of cloth of Tars.' In this line again the associated texts are superior to the Harleian, which reads, of a cloth,' somewhat to the detriment both of the metre and the sense. But the error with regard to the surcoat is not the only one made by the Harleian text in connexion with armour. The fourteenth century was the golden age of armour and heraldry, and Chaucer's writings abound with minute references to both. But the scribe of the Harleian text seems not to have been very familiar with the details of these mediaval arts, at least he is not always exact in discriminating them. In describing the harness of the various knights accompanying Palamon, Chaucer alludes to the chief kinds of body armour common at the time, and concludes with a brief reference to some of the more prominent arms used in battle :

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'Some wol ben armed in an habergoun,
In a bright brest-plate and a gyperon:
And some wold have a peyre plates large;
And some will have a Pruce scheld, or a targe;
Some wol been armed on here legges weel,
And have an ax, and some a mace of steel.'

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Here the Harleian manuscript reads and eek a mace of 'steel.' But we believe the axe and mace of steel were never carried together, and the 'eek' would thus be a false blazon in the living art of heraldry which a tournament illustrates. The associated texts accordingly agree in the correcter reading ' and some a mace of steel.' Again, in the following account of finding the two princes on the field of battle:

'And so byfel, that in the taas thei founde,
Though girt with many a grevous blody wounde,
Two yonge knightes ligging by and by,;
Both in oon armes wrought ful richely;
Of which two Arcita hight that oon,
And that other knight hight Palamon.
Nat fully quyk, ne fully deed they were,
But by here coote-armures, and by here gere,
The heraudes knewe hem best in special,

As they that weren of the blood real.'

The Harleian manuscript reads 'clad full richly,' which not only weakens the description but destroys its special meaning -takes away its distinctive significance. How they were clothed we are already told in the first part of the line. They were clothed in armour, and both in the same kind of armour. The difference between these young knights and other bodies around also clothed in armour, lay in the superior richness, delicacy, and finish of the work upon their martial dress. And a leading feature of this difference comes out immediately after in the allusion to the arms emblazoned on their coats, by which the heralds would at once recognise their royal blood and lineage. This was in fact the main difference between the armour of the squire and the knight-the squire having a plain and the knight a richly blazoned surcoat. This not only distinguished them in the fight, but enabled their bodies to be easily recovered from the heaps of slain on the field. And at a time when the wearing of armour was general, blazoned coats were of essential service in this respect. An incident mentioned by Stowe in his Annals sufficiently illustrates this:

At the battle of Bannockburn there was slain Gilbert de Clare, earle of Gloucester, whome the Scottes would gladly have kept for a ransome, if they had known him; but he had 'forgotten to put on his coat of armes.' As the Duke of Gloucester lost his life through neglecting this customary mark of rank, so the lives of the young Theban princes were saved by the elaborate blazonry on their coat armour. The true reading of the line therefore is that in which all the associated manuscripts agree,' wrought full richly.'

There are minor points connected with the science, the natural history, and even the geography of the time, in which the readings of the Harleian text are less accurate and precise than those of the associated texts. In the description of the Franklin the Harleian reads:

'A Frankeleyn ther was in his companye;
Whit was his berde, as is the dayesye.

Of his complexioun he was sanguyn.

Weel loved he in the morn a sop of wyn.
To liven in delite was al his wone,

For he was Epicurius owne son.'

But the old arts of health and manuals of longevity support the better reading in which the six texts agree: well loved he by the morn a soppe in wine.' These manuals recommend, to elderly people especially, a sop in wine in order to comfort and revive the stomach and dissipate the undigested fumes of sleep. The Regimen Sanitatis Salerni,' a popular and authoritative book in Chaucer's day, enumerates the special advantages of the practice, and these as given in the old English metrical version are as follows :—

'Foure special vertues hath a sop in wine,

It maketh the teeth white, it cleeres the eyne,
It addes unto an empty stomache fulness,

And from a stomache fill'd, it takes the dulness.'

In the text and commentary of the same work, translated by Paynell, and published in 1530, the advantages of an early wine sop in cleansing the teeth and sharpening the sight are specially insisted on, and it is laid down that the bread sopped in the wine should be first toosted or dried on imbers.' These are just the virtues likely to recommend a sop in wine to one so extremely particular about his person, his health, his food, and his enjoyments, as the well-to-do Franklin described by Chaucer is Epicurius' own son.' The taking of a wine sop in the morning, especially by elderly people, was common in Chaucer's day, and he has himself in the Merchant's Tale' given us a good illustration of the custom. The worthy knight, who was past sixty years of age, awakes in the early morning when

The custom was not merely a local or temporary one, for we find in Turriano's Italian Dictionary, under Páne Laváto,' 'toasts of bread laid in wine and presently taken out, and store ' of sugar and cinamon cast upon them, which in Spain is the 'first service brought in at their tables, especially of the morn'ing meal.' There can be no doubt therefore that the true reading of the line is, as the six manuscripts give it, a soppe ' in wine.'

Again in the description of the Shipman's knowledge of seamanship,

'But of his craft to rikne wel his tydes,

His stremes and his dangers him bisides,

His herbergh and his mone, his lodemenage,
Ther was non such from Hulle to Cartage.
Hardy he was, and wise to undertake;

With many a tempest hath his berd ben schake,
He knew wel alle the havens, as thei were,
From Gotland to the Cape of Fynestere.'

The Harleian, strangely enough, reads Scotland instead of Gotland, the reading of the rest. The change is an arbitrary one and seems to us quite inadmissible. All the known

In the

reasons of the case are in favour of the catholic text. fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Gotland was not only familiarly employed as a designation of the Far North, but it conveniently represented an extreme point in the great arc of European commerce. Before the splendid maritime discoveries at the end of the fifteenth century, the sea-going trade of Europe circulated from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. The Hanseatic Commercial League was then in its glory, and had confederate ports along the whole line from Cadiz and Lisbon to Lubeck and Königsberg. Wisby, the chief town and port of the island of Gotland, was a great central depôt of the Baltic trade, and an accomplished seaman of the time would know, not only all the ports and harbours from Carthage in the south of Spain to Hull, the most northern British port he would be likely to enter, but from Cape Finisterre, along the whole sweep of north-eastern coast to the centre of the Baltic-in other words, to Gotland. On the other hand, there was hardly any trade at all with Scotland, and almost the only British ports which an English captain devoting himself to foreign trade would be likely to visit regularly were those of Bristol, Plymouth, London, or Hull. The whole context sufficiently shows that the reference intended is to the established coastline of European trade, and that the true reading must be from Gotland to the Cape of Finisterre."

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We have only space for another illustration under the general head of contemporary knowledge, and this is derived from the references to the four elements which occur in the 'Knight's Tale.' In the natural science of the time as well as in the popular mind, the four so-called elements were arranged in the order of their relative density-Earth, Water, Air, Fire. As the name suggests, these elements were regarded as ultimate principles in the explanation of all natural phenomena. They were however not only combined in all living organisms, in all material bodies indeed, but existed apart in separate elementary spheres lying above and beyond each other. There was a central earthly sphere, beyond this a watery zone, above

these an airy sphere, and highest of all a fiery sphere, and towards the points of contact the lower or higher parts of each might by expansion or contraction change their form and pass into the other. This order was so thoroughly well known, so fixed in the popular mind, that one of the early printers, John Rastall, embodies it pictorially in his engraved mark or plate. The lower part of the picture consists of four arcs; the first a solid one of earth, with hills and towers distinguishable on the surface, the second of flowing billowy waves, a third of very bolsterlike clouds, and the fourth of ascending tongues of flame, above which rises the planetary sphere, and highest of all the Divine Throne. When a poet or popular writer had occasion to enumerate the elements, he would usually do so in the recognised order of their mutual relation and dependence, unless there was some special reason for departing from it. Chaucer substantially observes this arrangement in his references to the elements in the Knight's Tale.' They are enumerated twice, and on each occasion from a different point of view, from the lower and higher extreme, or in the ascending and descending order respectively. But in both cases the recognised arrangement in which the associated manuscripts agree is capriciously disturbed in the Harleian text. The first instance is the despairing address of Arcite on gaining his freedom at the price of banishment from Emily, the object of his life's devotion:

'But I that am exiled, and bareyne
Of alle grace, and in so gret despair,
That ther nys erthe, water, fyr, ne cyr,
Ne creature, that of hem maked is,

That may me helpe ne comfort in this.'

:

It will be seen that even in the reading of the associated texts fire comes before air, but the two higher elements were regarded not only as more ethereal, but as also more alike in their nature, more closely connected in their operation, and as more readily passing into each other, than the two lower elements, which were distinctively dense, passive, and mundane. Thus Cleopatra in the grand speech of her dying hour, in which she renounces everything but love, says:

The Harleian text, however, reverses the position of these lower