conclusions connected with the purposes of the instrument. This he has
made up his mind to do in a forcible as well as simple way; for he has
shrewdly divined a secret, now and then overlooked by those who condense
sciences for babes, that children need to be taught a few things not only
clearly but fully--repetition being in more senses than one "the mother of
studies":--

"Now will I pray meekly every discreet person that readeth or heareth this
little treatise, to hold my rude inditing excused, and my superfluity of
words, for two causes. The first cause is: that curious inditing and hard
sentences are full heavy at once for such a child to learn. And the
second cause is this: that truly it seems better to me to write unto a
child twice a good sentence, than to forget it once."

Unluckily we know nothing further of Lewis--not even whether, as has been
surmised, he died before he had been able to turn to lucrative account his
calculating powers, after the fashion of his apocryphal brother Thomas or
otherwise.

Though by the latter part of the year 1391 Chaucer had lost his Clerkship
of the Works, certain payments (possibly of arrears) seem afterwards to
have been made to him in connexion with the office. A very disagreeable
incident of his tenure of it had been a double robbery from his person of
official money, to the very serious extent of twenty pounds. The
perpetrators of the crime were a notorious gang of highwaymen, by whom
Chaucer was, in September, 1390, apparently on the same day, beset both at
Westminster, and near to "the foul Oak" at Hatcham in Surrey. A few
months afterwards he was discharged by writ from repayment of the loss to
the Crown. His experiences during the three years following are unknown;
but in 1394 (when things were fairly quiet in England) he was granted an