The Glossarial Index, a very full one, was almost entirely prepared, in the first instance, by my eldest daughter, though I have since added a few explanations in some cases, and have revised the whole, at the same time verifying the references. As to the meaning of a few terms, I am still uncertain. Fitzherbert’s general style is plain, simple, and direct, and he evidently has the welfare of his reader at heart, to whom he offers kindly advice in a manner least calculated to give offence. He is in general grave and practical, but there are a few touches of quiet humour in his remarks upon horse-dealing. “Howe be it I saye to my customers, and those that bye any horses of me, and [_if_] euer they wil trust any hors-master or corser whyle they lyue, truste me.” I would have trusted him implicitly. The difficulties of his language arise almost entirely from the presence of numerous technical terms; and it is, indeed, this fact that renders his book one of considerable philological interest, and adapts it for publication by the English Dialect Society. By way of a small contribution to English etymology, I beg leave to take a single instance, and to consider what he has to tell us about the word _peruse_. The whole difficulty as to the etymology of this word arises from the change of sense; it is now used in such a way that the derivation from _per-_ and _use_ is not obvious; nor does it commend itself to such as are unacquainted with historical method. For this reason, some etymologists, including Webster, have imagined that it arose from _peruise_ = _pervise_ to see thoroughly, the _i_ being dropped, and the _u_ (really _v_) being mistaken for the vowel. This is one of those wholly unscrupulous fictions to which but too many incline, as if the cause of truth could ever be helped forward by means of deliberate invention. But there is no such word as _peruise_, nor any French _perviser_. Fitzherbert is one of the earliest authorities for _peruse_, though it also occurs in Skelton, Philip Sparrow, l. 814. Investigation will show that, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, there was a fashion of using words compounded with _per-_, a number of which I have given in my Dictionary, s. v. _peruse_. The old sense was ‘to use up, to go through thoroughly, to attend to one by one;’ and the word was sometimes spelt with a _v_, because _vse_ (_use_) was generally so spelt. Examples are:-- “Let hym [i.e. the husbandman who wants to reckon the tithe of his corn] goo to the ende of his lande, and begynne and tell [i.e. count] .ix. sheues, and let hym caste out the .x. shefe in the name of god, and so to _pervse_ from lande to lande, tyll he have trewely tythed all his corne;” sect. 30, l. 4. “And thus [let the shepherd] _peruse_ them all tyll he haue doone;” sect. 40, l. 23.