The celebrated first edition of 'Chaucer's Works,' edited by William Thynne in 1532, made no attempt to establish any canon. Thynne simply put together such a book as he believed would be generally acceptable; and deliberately inserted poems which he knew to be by other authors. Some of these poems bear the name of Lydgate; one has the name of Gower; and another, by Hoccleve, is dated 1402, or two years after Chaucer's death. They were tossed together without much attempt at order; so that even the eleventh poem in the volume is 'The Floure of Curtesie, made by Ihon lidgate.' The edition, in fact, is a mere collection of poems by Chaucer, Lydgate, Gower, Hoccleve, Robert Henrysoun, Sir Richard Ros, and various anonymous authors; and the number of poems by other authors almost equals the number of Chaucer's. The mere accident of the inclusion of a given piece in this volume practically tells us nothing, unless it happens to be distinctly marked; though we can, of course, often tell the authorship from some remark made by Chaucer himself, or by others. And the net result is this; that Thynne neither attempted to draw up a list of Chaucer's genuine works, nor to exclude such works as were not his. He merely printed such things as came to hand, without any attempt at selection or observance of order, or regard to authorship. All that we can say is, that he did not knowingly exclude any of the genuine pieces. Nevertheless, he omitted Chaucer's A.B.C., of which there must have been many copies in existence, for we have twelve still extant. § 3. The mere repetition of this collection, in various reprints, did not confer on it any fresh authority. Stowe indeed, in 1561, added more pieces to the collection, but he suppressed nothing. Neither did he himself exercise much principle of selection; see vol. i. p. 56. He even added The Storie of Thebes, which he must have known to be Lydgate's. Later reprints were all edited after the same bewildering fashion.