To retain one’s spoon when one’s plate is removed for another help, (_One_ spoon, it may be inferred, is to last all through the meal, serving as a fork.) Not to eat an excessive quantity of bread with the viands. Not to re-place one’s knife in its sheath prematurely. (It may be presumed that each guest brings his own knife.) The reader who considers these rules in their several categories, and with due allowance for difference of times, manners, and ‘properties,’ will, I think, agree with me in seeing that the essentials of courtesy at table in Lombardy in the thirteenth century, and in England in the nineteenth, are, after all, closely related; and that, while some of our Friar’s tutorings would now happily be supererogatory, and others are inapplicable to present dining conveniences, not one is ill-bred in any correct use of that word. The details of etiquette vary indefinitely: the sense of courtesy is substantially one and the same. In Fra Bonvicino’s manual, it appears constantly in its genuine aspect, and prompted by its truest spirit—not so much that of personal correctness, each man for his own credit, as of uniform consideration for others. [Sidenote: FRANCESCO DA BARBERINO.] The same is eminently the case with some of the precepts given by our next author, Francesco da Barberino. Nothing, for instance, can go beyond the true _rationale_ of courtesy conveyed in the following injunction[28] (which we must not here degrade from its grace of Tuscan speech and verse): ‘Colli minor sì taci, E prendi il loco che ti danno; e pensa Che, per far qui difensa, Faresti lor, per tuo vizio, villani.’ Or this:[29] ‘E credo che fa male Colui che taglia essendo a suo maggiore: Chè non v’ è servitore S’ el non dimanda prima la licenza.’