In l. 382, Thynne corrects _Unto_ to _To_; and in l. 386, has _Beuer_ for _bawar_. In l. 441, he has _syder_ for _ceder_. In l. 501, he has _plyte_ for _plye_, where a letter may have dropped out in E.; but see the note (p. 525). In l. 590, his reading _tokenyng_ suggests that _takning_ (as in E.) should be _takining_ or _takinning_; the line will then scan. The contracted form _taikning_ occurs, however, in l. 232, where the word is less emphatic. Note further, that in l. 216 the original must have had _Philogoney_ (see the Note). This appears in the astonishing forms _Philologie_ (E.), and _Philologee_ (Th.). Laing prints _Phlegonie_, which will neither scan nor rime, without any hint that he is departing from his exemplar. All his corrections are made silently, so that one cannot tell where they occur without reference to the original. For further information concerning Robert Henryson, schoolmaster of Dunfermline, see the preface to David Laing's edition of The Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson, Edinburgh, 1865; and Morley's English Writers, 1890, vol. vi. p. 250. He is supposed to have been born about 1425, and to have died about 1500. On Sept. 10, 1462, the Venerable Master Robert Henrysone, Licentiate in Arts and Bachelor in Decrees, was incorporated or admitted a member of the newly founded university of Glasgow; and he is known to have been a notary public. Perhaps The Testament of Cresseid was written about 1460. It is a rather mature performance, and is his best piece. Perhaps it is the best piece in the present volume. § 49. XVIII. THE CUCKOO AND THE NIGHTINGALE. Of this piece there are several MSS., which fall into two main classes: (A)--Ff. (Ff. 1. 6, in the Camb. Univ. Library); T. (Tanner 346); Th. (MS. used by Thynne, closely allied to T.); and (B)--F. (Fairfax 16), and B. (Bodley 638), which are closely allied. There is also S. (Selden, B. 24) imperfect, which has readings of its own[20]. Of these groups, A is the better, and MS. Ff. is, in some respects, the most important. Nevertheless, MS. Ff. has never been collated hitherto, so that I am able to give a somewhat improved text. For example, in all former editions lines 12 and 13 are transposed. In l. 180, the reading _haire_ (as in Bell and Morris) is somewhat comic (see the Note). In l. 203, MS. Ff. restores the true reading _hit_, i.e. hitteth. Bell, by some accident, omits the stanza in which this word occurs. In vol. i. p. 39, I took occasion to complain of the riming of _now_ with _rescow-e_ in ll. 228-9, according to Bell. The right reading, however, is not _now_, but _avow-e_, which rimes well enough. MS. Selden has _allowe_, which Morris follows, though it is clearly inferior and is unsupported. On the other hand, MS. Selden correctly, and alone, has _leve_ in l. 237; but the confusion between _e_ and _o_ is endless, so that the false reading _loue_ creates no surprise.