across the centuries. Editors of Shakespeare and the Bible for general
use have long assumed the privilege of altering the spelling, and
except on the principle that earlier works are more important, or are
only to be read by people who have had the leisure and inclination to
familiarise their eyes with the peculiarities of Middle English, there
can be no reason for stopping there, or a century earlier. At some
point, of course, the number of obsolete words becomes so great that
the text cannot be read without a dictionary: then the limit has been
reached. But Caxton, Trevisa, and many others are well within it, and
it is good to remove all obstacles which prevent the ordinary reader
from feeling the continuity of his mother tongue.

THE AUTHOR.--The facts known of our author's life have been summarised
by Miss Toulmin Smith in her article in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_. In the sixteenth century he was generally believed to
date from about 1360, and to have belonged to the Glanvilles--an
honourable Suffolk family in the Middle Ages; but there seems to be no
authority whatever for the statement. We first hear of him in a letter
from the provincial of the Franciscans of Saxony to the provincial of
France, asking that Bartholomew Anglicus and another friar should be
sent to assist him in his newly-created province. Next year (1231) a
MS. chronicle reports that two were sent, and that Bartholomew
Anglicus was appointed teacher of holy theology to the brethren in the
province. We learn from Salimbene, who wrote the Chronicles of Parma
(1283), that he had been a professor of theology in the University of
Paris, where he had lectured on the whole Bible. The subject in
treating of which he is referred to was an elephant belonging to the
Emperor; and Salimbene quotes a passage on the elephant from his _De
Proprietatibus Rerum_. What may be a quotation from the _De
Proprietatibus_ can be found in Roger Bacon's _Opus Tertium_