‘The poore young Russian youth, that slave Was to the Prince, and trustie knave To my deere Harrie Wilde, when wee Forsooke that Northern Barbarie, Loe bending at my feete did saye Thancks for my love, and kindely praye, His evills that I would not beare In minde,—the which none, truely, were. This youth I well remember, and In neere, loe, manner kisse your hand; Hoping, of gentle courtesie, You will no worse remember me.’ —MS. Harl. 7002, f. 118. Footnote 15: And as, it must be remembered, Cotton himself believed. Footnote 16: Curiously enough, part of these documents, so carefully brought together by Sir Robert Cotton, remained with the Cottonian MSS., and part of them were severed from that collection for more than two centuries. Their recovery is one of the smallest of the innumerable obligations which the Department of MSS. owes to the care and far-spread researches of the late Keeper, Sir Frederick Madden. Footnote 17: It is COTTONIAN MS., Vitellius, c. 17, ff. 380, _seqq._ Footnote 18: Verses entitled _Sir Philip Sydney lying on his Deathbed_; in MS. Chetham 8012 (Chetham Library, Manchester). Footnote 19: I had noted some of these as worthy, by way of sample, to be printed. But the reduced limits of my book (as compared with its plan) have compelled the omission of much illustrative matter which had been carefully prepared for insertion, and which, as I hope, would have been found to merit the attention of the reader. I will find room, however, to mention one little fact connected with the famous Evangeliary marked ‘Nero D. vi.’ The reader probably remembers Sir Robert COTTON’S fruitless perambulation of the aisle of Westminster Abbey, with that splendid MS. in his hands, on the day of the Coronation of Charles the First. It seems likely that the anecdote was told to Charles the Second when, at length, a like ceremony was to take place for him. Be that as it may, he sent—before he had been many days in England—a confidential servant to borrow the book from Sir Thomas. And the fact of the loan stands recorded on a fly-leaf, by the King’s intermediary, in honour ‘of the most noble Sir Thomas COTTON, the starre of learning and honestie.’ The MS., I may add, is one of those which came to Sir Robert from Dethick (Garter). It bears Dethick’s autograph with the date ‘1603’ and Cotton’s, ‘1608.’ Besides the Four Gospels it contains _Processus factus ad Coronationem Regis Ricardi Secundi_, and _Modus tenendi Parliamentum_. For some momentary fancy or other Sir Robert took out of another superb MS. of his—the _Psalter_ of King Henry the Sixth—a small but beautiful miniature, and made of it a vignette for this Ethelstan volume. So it continued to remain for