THE .XXVIII. GLOSE. Cadmus was a moche noble man and founded Thebes, whiche cytie was greatly renomed. He set there a study & he hym selfe was moche profoundly lettered and of great science. And therfore sayth the fable that he daunted the serpent at the fountayne, that is to vnderstande the science and sages that alwayes springeth; the Serpent is noted for the payne and trauayle which it behoueth the student to daunte afore that he maye purchase scyence. And the fable sayth that he hym self became a serpent, which is to vnderstande he was a corrector and mayster of other. So wol Othea say that the good knight ought to loue and honour the clerkes lettered, which ben grounded in science. To this purpose sayeth Arystotle to Alexandre, “Honour thou scyence and fortyfie it by good maysters.” THE .XXVIII. ALLEGORIE. Cadmus whiche daunted the Serpent at the fountayne, whiche the good knyght ought to loue, we may vnderstande the blyssed humanite of Jesu christ, which dompted the serpent and gaigned the fountayne, that is to say the lyfe of this world, from the which he passed afore with great payne and with great trauayle. Wherof he had perfyte victory whan he rose agayne the thyrd day, as sayth S. Thomas, “Tertia die resurrexit a mortuis.” In conclusion it only remains to say a few words on the possible connexion of Stephen Scrope with two other works already mentioned, which, like his “Epistle of Othea” or “Boke of Knyghthode” and his “Sayings of the Philosophers,” were written for Sir John Fastolf or under his influence. One of them, the “Boke of Noblesse,” is preserved in a unique copy in the British Museum, Royal MS. 18 B. xxii., and was edited for the Roxburghe Club in 1860 by Mr. J. Gough Nichols. In the form in which it has come down to us, it was addressed to Edward IV. at the time of his invasion of France in 1475, professing to be “write and entitled to courage and comfort noble men in armes to be in perpetuite of remembraunce for here noble dedis, as right conuenient is soo to bee,” or, more precisely, for the purpose of inciting the English to recover by force of arms their lost foreign conquests. The contents were admirably summarized in the editor’s introduction, and all that need be said of them here is that, in addition to a highly interesting retrospect of English relations with France, they include a large amount of matter derived from a French treatise on the art of war, which is spoken of as the “Arbre de Batailles” and attributed to “Dame Cristyn.” Although the editor failed to identify the author, he pointed out that he must have been intimately associated with Fastolf and had access to his papers. Strictly speaking, Fastolf’s name is not specially prominent except in the marginal insertions and notes, where the writer refers to him as “myne autor” and gives several curious anecdotes as heard from his lips. The body of the MS.