person; and whether Scoggin is not in fact the hero of many of the pranks attributed to the "Scholar of Oxford," the "Youngman," the "Gentleman," &c. in the following pages, which were in existence many years before the first publication of _Scoggins Jests_. It will hardly be contested at the present day, that "books of the people,"[4] like these now reprinted, with all their occasional coarseness and frequent dulness, are of extreme and peculiar value, as illustrations of early manners and habits of thought. The editor has ventured to make certain emendations of the text, where they were absolutely necessary to make it intelligible; but these are always carefully noted at the foot of the page where they occur. A word or two, here and there, has been introduced between brackets to complete the sense; and a few notes have been given, since it was thought desirable to point out where a tale was common to several collections in various shapes or in the same shape, to indicate the source from which it was derived, and to elucidate obscure phrases or passages. But he has refrained from overloading the book with comment, from a feeling that, in the majority of cases, the class of readers, to which a publication such as this addresses itself, are fully as competent to clear up any apparent difficulties which may fall in their way, as himself. The allusions to the _C. Mery Talys_ and to its companion in old writers are sufficiently numerous.[5] Bathe, in his _Introduction to the Art of Musick_, 1584, says: "But for the worthiness I thought it not to be doubted, seeing here are set forth a booke of a hundred mery tales, another of the bataile between the spider and the flie, &c." A few years later, Sir John Harington, in his _Apologie_(for the _Metamorphosis of Ajax_) 1596, writes: "Ralph Horsey, Knight, the best housekeeper in Dorsetshire, a good freeholder, a deputie Lieutenant. Oh, sir, you keep hauks and houndes, and hunting horses: it may be som madde fellowe will say, you must stand up to the chinne, for spending five hundred poundes, to catch hares, and Partridges, that might be taken for five poundes." Then comes this note in the margin: "according to the tale in the hundred Mery Tales." It is No. 57. In the Epilogue to the play of _Wily Beguild_, printed in 1606, but written during the reign of Elizabeth, there is a passage in which the _C. Mery Talys_ are coupled with _Scoggins Jests_, and in his _Wonderful yeare_, 1603, Decker says: "I could fill a large volume, and call it the second part of the _Hundred Merry Tales_, only with such ridiculous stuff as this of the justice." From this extract, first quoted by Mr. Collier in his valuable History of the Drama, and from the manner in which Shakespeare, through the mouth of Beatrice, speaks of the _Mery Talys_, it is to be gathered that neither writer held this book of jests in very high estimation; and, as no vestiges are traceable