Thomas Usk, with whom he seems to have been acquainted. Now, in a lengthy prose work of about 1387, called _The Testament of Love_, I one day discovered that its author had adopted a similar device--no doubt imitating Higden--and had so arranged that the initial letters of his chapters should form a sentence, as follows:--"Margarete of virtw, have merci on Thsknvi." There is no difficulty about the expression "Margarete of virtw," because the treatise itself explains that it means Holy Church, but I could make nothing of _Thsknvi_, as the letters evidently require rearrangement. But Mr Henry Bradley, one of the editors of the _New English Dictionary_, discovered that the chapters near the end of the treatise are out of order; and when he had restored sense by putting them as they should be, the new reading of the last seven letters came out as "thin vsk," i.e. "thine Usk"; and the attribution of this treatise to Thomas Usk clears up every difficulty and fits in with all that John Malverne says. This, in fact, is the happy solution of the authorship of _The Testament of Love_, which was once attributed to Chaucer, though it is obviously not his at all. But it is time to return to John Trevisa, Higden's translator. This long translation is all in the Southern dialect, originally that of Gloucestershire, though there are several MSS. that do not always agree. A fair copy of it, from a MS. in the library of St John's College, Cambridge, is given side by side with the original Latin in the edition already noticed. It is worth adding that Caxton printed Trevisa's version, altering the spelling to suit that of his own time, and giving several variations of reading. Trevisa was also the author of some other works, of which the most important is his translation into English, from the original Latin, of _Bartholom{ae}us de Proprietatibus Rerum_. I am not aware of any important work in the Southern dialect later than these translations by Trevisa. But in quite modern times, an excellent example of it has appeared, viz. in the _Poems of Rural Life, in the Dorset Dialect_, by William Barnes. CHAPTER VII THE SOUTHERN DIALECT OF KENT Though the Kentish dialect properly belongs to Southern English, from its position to the south of the Thames, yet it shows certain peculiarities which make it desirable to consider it apart from the rest.