may fairly venerate the memory of this gentle lady as a promoter of English literature. Dallaway is the first, and, as far as I am aware, with the exception of Mr. Haslewood, the only author who questions the pretensions of Dame Juliana to the authorship of the whole work; and he founds his doubts upon the difference observable between the style of the heraldric essay and the previous ones. He considers the former as the work of some anonymous monk of St. Albans. But as several almost contemporary authors ascribe it to her, and there is no positive proof to the contrary, far be from me that want of gallantry which would despoil the worthy prioress of the honour of having indited this goodly tractate, this 'nobull werke!'[286] If the reader has never seen the Boke of Saint Albans, and feels only half as much curiosity to become acquainted with its contents as I did before I had the good fortune to meet with it, I am sure he will not consider the following choice bits of Old English, extracted from it, impertinently introduced. Dame Julyan Berners merits honourable notice as one of the earliest of English poetesses. The treatise on hunting is in rhyme, and consists of 606 verses. The style is didactic. Take a specimen: "_Bestys of venery._ "Whersoever ye fall by fryth or by fell, My dere chylde take heed how Tristrom dooth you tell, How many maner beestys of venery ther were, Lysten to your dame and then schall you lere, Ffour maner beestys of venery there are; The first of them is the hert--the secunde is the hare, The boore is oon of them--the woolff and not oon moe." "_How ye schal break an hert._ "Then take out the suet that it be not lefte, For that my child is good for lechecrafte (medicine), And in the myddest of the herte a boon shall ye fynde, Loke ye geve hit to a lord--and chylde be kynde. For it is kynd for many maladies." In subsequent parts of the poem, 'the namys of diverse maner houndys,' 'the propertees of a good hors,' 'the company of bestys and fowles,' and other sporting subjects are discussed, and interspersed with proverbs of a somewhat caustic description. The composition very oddly concludes with an enumeration of "all the shyeris and the bishopryckes of the realme of England." From the heraldrical portion of the Boke many short extracts have already been given. Some others follow: "_Note here well who shall gyue cotarmures_: "Ther shall none of the IV. orduris of regalite bot all onli the soueregne kyng geue cootarmur. for that is to hym improperid by lawe of armys.[287] And yit the kyng shall nott make a knyght with owte a cootarmure byfore. "Ev'y knyght cheftayn i the felde mai make a cootarmur knight. "_In how many places a knyght may be made_: "A knyght is made in IV. dyuerse placis. in musturing in lond of werys. In semblyng under baneris. In listys of the bath and at the sepulcur. "_A gentylman spirituall_: