The present volume contains a careful reprint of Berthelet’s edition of 1534, which is a fairly good one. I have collated it throughout with the curious edition of 1598, which abounds with “corrections,” some of them no improvements, and with additional articles. It is a very curious book, and I have given all the more interesting variations in the notes, with a description of the additions. The author, who only gives his initials “I. R.” (by which initials I have been often obliged to quote him[18]) has the effrontery to tell us that he has reduced Fitzherbert’s work “into a more pleasing forme of English then before;” and says that he has “labored to purge the same fro_m_ the barbarisme of the former times.” Again he addresses the reader, saying--“Gentle Reader, being vrged by the consideration of the necessitie of this worke, and finding it almost cast into perpetuall obliuion, I haue purged it from the first forme of missounding termes to our daintie eares.” This means, of course, that he has altered terms which he did not understand, and occasionally turns sense into nonsense; yet he seems to have taken considerable pains with his author, and his additions are frequently to the point. Whether his discourses upon the keeping of poultry (p. 145, note to sect. 144) were really due to his “owne experience in byrds and foules,” or whether he copied much of it from some of his predecessors, I have not been curious to discover. His references to Virgil, to the fable of Cynthia and Endymion, the Cinyphian goats, and the rest, are in the worst possible taste, and he was evidently far too staunch a Protestant to be able to accept all Fitzherbert’s religious views, though modestly and unobtrusively introduced. After carefully reading his production, I infinitely prefer Fitzherbert’s “barbarisme” to I. R.’s pedantic mannerism, and I find the patronising tone of his occasionally stupid amendments to be almost insufferable; but he may be forgiven for his zeal. The art of sinking in poetry has rarely been so well exemplified as in the verses which are printed at pp. 145 and 148. The reader can best understand what I. R. conceives to be elegance of style by comparing the following extract with section 1 at p. 9. “_Chapter 2._ ¶ _By what a Husbandman cheefely liueth._ The most generall and _commonest experienst liuing_ that the _toyle-imbracing_ Husbandman liueth by, is either by plowing and sowing of his Corne, or by rearing and breeding of Cattell, and not the one without the other, _because they be adjuncts, and may not be disceuered_. Then sithens that the Plough is the first good instrument, by which the Husband-men _rips from the Earths wombe a well-pleasing liuing, I thinke_ it is most conuenient first to speake of the _forme, fashion, and_ making therof.” The words italicised (except in the title) are all his own.