247. Skeat explains #þane loþe#, the hostile one, and #lead#, keep on one’s side, #so#, by fair words. T reads So mo{n} mai welþe lengest helden, which is easier of interpretation, but is just as inept. I think both scribes or their exemplars have altered as best they could a displaced line to fit it into its new context. Its proper place is after the good advice of ll. 248-51 (comp. l. 263), and it may have originally run, So myght þu fayre lif · lenguste leden. 248. ‘Nolito quaedam referenti credere saepe: | Exigua est tribuenda fides, qui multa locuntur,’ Cato 224/20. 249 is a very lame verse; we might read, þat feole speken can. 251. With #singen#, comp. ‘Noli homines blando nimium sermone probare: | Fistula dulce canit, uolucrem dum decipit auceps,’ Cato 220/27. 252. #swikelne#, deceitful: comp. ‘Ueond þet þuncheð freond is swike ouer alle swike,’ AR 98/5; ‘Habet suum venenum blanda oratio,’ Syrus 80/214. 254. #cuþe#, give warning. 256. Alfred would hardly have said that a man learns wisdom from proverbs and prudence from good luck. Read for #sawe#, sorewe (the scribe has overlooked the contraction for _re_), and for #hiselþe#, uniselþe, misfortune. Comp. ‘In þes middeneardes iscole · selðen ⁊ uniselðen,’ OEH i. 243/7: ‘Vitat maiora sapiens post dampna minora,’ Prov. Hein. 240. Borgström reads his elde, where _his_ is surely doubtful and þ interchanging with _d_ without parallel. 258. The editors leave out #And#, which is not in T, but l. 257 is complete in itself; #And vnwurþ#, and despicable, is a sort of afterthought: for the combination comp. 4/37; ‘þat he biðe vnworð & lah’ (loþ, MS. O), L 3464, and further for this meaning of #vnwurþ#, 143/92; ‘þe idele ȝelp us beo eure unwurð,’ OEH i. 107/8. 259. #hokede#, thievish: in thieves’ slang, a hook is a pickpocket, his fingers are hooks. Comp. ‘Sutoribus custodem addidit et ut eorum curvos ungues observaret . . . rogavit,’ Disciplina Clericalis, ed. Hilka u. Söderhjelm, 28/19; ‘Arpiis similes armantur in ungue ferino,’ Fec. Ratis, de Predonibus, 173/1154. #þat he bereþ# is rejected by Skeat as a ‘gloss.’ It is certainly feeble; perhaps we should read, þat he herȝeþ, with which he plunders; the relative would be under the régime of the preceding #þurh#. 261. #From--wune#, (dis)accustom thyself from lying: a singular phrase. 262. #þe# may be the reflexive dat. as at 13/34, but it is more probably a mistake, due to #þe# in the previous line: its omission improves the metre. 263. #on þeode#, a tag beloved of Layamon: with him it is always local; comp. ‘he þohte to quellen[;] þe king on his þeode{n},’ 20056 (in his londe, MS. O); ‘þa weoren Rom-leoden[;] bliðen on heore þeoden,’ id. 11144: it corresponds to ‘vpen eorþe,’ 22/123, and differs from #in alle leode#, among all the people, Layamon’s ‘on folke,’ 2218.