reprint of a unique Caxton on a most interesting subject, yet this Book
of Curtesye from Hill's MS. was at first intended for our original
series, I having forgotten lately that Caxton had written to 'lytyl
Iohn,' though some months back I had entered the old printer's book for
my second collection of Manners and Meals tracts for the Society. After
the copy of Hill--which Mr W.W. King kindly made for his
fellow-members--had gone to press, Mr Hazlitt reminded me of the Caxton,
and its first and last lines in Mr Blades's admirable book showed that
Hill's text was the same as the printed one. I accordingly went to
Cambridge to copy it, and there, before tea, Mr Skeat showed me the copy
of _The Vision of Piers Plowman_ which the Provost and Fellows of Oriel
had been good enough to lend him for his edition of 'Text B.' Having
enjoyed the vellum Vision, I turned to the paper leaves at its end, and
what should they contain but an earlier and better version of the Caxton
that I had just copied part of?[1] I drank seven cups of tea, and eat
five or six large slices of bread and butter, in honour of the event;[2]
and Mr Skeat, with his never-failing kindness, undertook to copy and
edit the Oriel text for the Society. With three texts, therefore, in
hand, I could not well stick them at the end of the Postscript to the
_Babees Book, &c._,[3] and as I wanted Caxton's name to this Book of
Curtesye to distinguish it from what has long been to me THE Book of
Courtesy,--that from the Sloane MS. 1986, edited by Mr Halliwell for the
Percy Society, and by me for our own E.E.T.S.--and as also Caxton's name
is one 'to conjure withal,' I have, with our Committee's leave, made
this little volume an Extra Series one, and called it Caxton's, though
his text is not so good as that of the Oriel MS.

[Footnote 1: Mr Bradshaw was kind enough to copy the rest, and to read
the whole of the proof with Caxton's original.]