'So than I dressed me in myn aray, And asked her, _whether it were wel or no?_' To attribute such a question as 'how will my dress do' to a male writer is a little too dramatic for a mere narrative poem. The two MSS. have now been collated for the first time and afford some important corrections, of which l. 61 presents remarkable instances. MS. Addit. 34360 is of some value. § 62. A considerable part of The Assembly of Ladies that is now of little interest may have been much appreciated at the time, as having reference to the ordering of a large medieval household, with its chambers, parlours, bay-windows, and galleries, carefully kept in good order by the various officers and servants; such as Perseverance the usher, Countenance the porter, Discretion the chief purveyor, Acquaintance the harbinger, Largesse the steward, Bel-cheer the marshal of the hall, Remembrance the chamberlain, and the rest. The authoress must have been perfectly familiar with spectacles and pageants and all the amusements of the court; but she was too humble to aspire to wear a motto. 'And for my "word," I have non; this is trew. It is ynough that my clothing be blew As here-before I had commaundement; And so to do I am right wel content'; A. 312. We must not forget that the period of the Wars of the Roses, especially from 1455 to 1471, was one during which the composition of these poems was hardly possible. It is obviously very difficult to assign a date to them; perhaps they may be referred to the last quarter of the fifteenth century. We must not put them too late, because The Assembly exists in MSS. that seem to be as old as that period. § 63. XXII. A GOODLY BALADE. For this poem there is but one authority, viz. Thynne's edition of 1532. He calls it 'A goodly balade of Chaucer'; but it is manifestly Lydgate's. Moreover, it is really a triple Balade, with an Envoy, on the model of Chaucer's Fortune and Compleynt of Venus; only it has seven-line stanzas instead of stanzas of eight lines. An inspection of Thynne's volume shews that it was inserted to fill a gap, viz. a blank page at the back of the concluding lines of The Legend of Good Women, so that the translation of Boethius might commence on a new leaf. It is obvious that the third stanza of the second Balade was missing in Thynne's MS. He did not leave it out for lack of space; for there is plenty of room on his page. That it is not Chaucer's appears from the first Balade, where the use of the monosyllables _shal_ and _smal_ in ll. 8 and 10 necessitates the use of the clipped forms _al_ for _al-le_, _cal_ for _cal-le_, _apal_ for _apal-le_, and _befal_ for _befal-le_. Moreover, the whole style of it suggests Lydgate, and does not suggest Chaucer.