of the metre, as was sayde before of the singing Psalmes: And after it _the Schoole of good manners_[16], called, _the new Schoole of Vertue_, leading the childe as by the hand, in the way of all good manners.” I make no apology for including reprints of these little-known books in an Early English Text. _Qui s’excuse s’accuse_; and if these Tracts do not justify to any reader their own appearance here, I believe the fault is not theirs. A poem on minding what you say, which Mr Aldis Wright has kindly sent me, some Maxims on Behaviour, &c., which all end in _-ly_, and Roger Ascham’s Advice to his brother-in-law on entering a nobleman’s service, follow, and then the Poems which suggested the _Forewords_ on Education in Early England, and have been partly noticed in them, p. i-iv. I have only to say of the first, _The Babees Boke_, that I have not had time to search for its Latin original, or other copies of the text. Its specialty is its attributing so high birth to the Bele Babees whom it addresses, and its appeal to Lady Facetia to help its writer. Of the short alphabetic poems that follow,--_The A B C of Aristotle_,--copies occur elsewhere; and that in the Harleian Manuscript 1304, which has a different introduction, I hope to print in the companion volume to this, already alluded to. _Vrbanitatis_, I was glad to find, because of the mention of _the booke of urbanitie_ in Edward the Fourth’s Liber Niger (p. ii. above), as we thus know what the Duke of Norfolk of “Flodden Field” was taught in his youth as to his demeanings, how mannerly he should eat and drink, and as to his communication and other forms of court. He was not to spit or snite before his Lord the King, or wipe his nose on the table-cloth. The next tracts, _The Lytylle Chyldrenes Lytil Boke or Edyllys Be_[17] (a title made up from the text) and _The Young Children’s Book_, are differing versions of one set of maxims, and are printed opposite one another for contrast sake. _The Lytil Boke_ was printed from a later text, and with an interlinear French version, by Wynkyn de Worde in ‘_Here begynneth a lytell treatyse for to lerne Englisshe and Frensshe_.’ This will be printed by Mr Wheatley in his Collection of Early Treatises on Grammar for the Society, as the copy in the Grenville Library in the Brit. Mus. is the only one known. Other copies of this Lytil Boke are at Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Oxford. Of two of these Mr David Laing and Mr Henry Bradshaw have kindly given me collations, which are printed at the end of this Preface. Of the last Poem, _Stans Puer ad Mensam_, attributed to Lydgate-- as nearly everything in the first half of the 15th century was-- I have printed two copies, with collations from a third, the Jesus (Cambridge) MS. printed by Mr Halliwell in _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, v. 1, p. 156-8, and reprinted by Mr W. C. Hazlitt in his _Early Popular Poetry_, ii. 23-8. Mr Hazlitt notices 3 other copies, in Harl. MS. 4011, fol. 1, &c.; Lansdowne MS. 699; and Additional MS.