Frederick James Furnivall

“ Do not carry your knife to your mouth with food, or hold the meat with your hands in any wise; and also if divers good meats are brought to you, look that with all courtesy ye assay of each; and if your dish be taken away with its meat and another brought courtesy demands that ye shall let it go and not ask for it back again. ”

“ How the times change and manners multiply! But throughout the centuries—on the lengthening road of which we shall plant another milestone presently with feasting and merry-making—good manners and bad have ever gone hand in hand. ”

“ When ye be set, keep your own knife clean and sharp, that so ye may carve honestly your own meat.
Let courtesy and silence dwell with you, and tell no foul tales to another.
Cut your bread with your knife and break it not. Lay a clean trencher before you, and when your pottage is brought, take your spoon and eat quietly ”

“ A Matter of Manners IN this present day, when chivalry has achieved at last its perfect bloom, it is hard to realize that but a scant four centuries ago the children of even the very best families in England had to be taught their table manners. ”

“ The ‘Promptuarium Physices’ and ‘De iudicijs urinarium,’ which Bale assigns to Boorde, maybe his ‘Breuyary,' and its second part, ‘The Extravagantes.' Besides the first Handbook of Europe, we owe to Boorde the first printed specimen of the Gypsy language, given in his description of Egypt in his 'Introduction.' His anticipation of Shakspere in the close of the passage following is well known: ‘Englishmen be bold. strong, and mighty; the women be ful of bewty, and they be decked gaily. They fare sumptiously; God is serued in their churches deuoutly ”

“ A third volume in manuscript, in Bishop Cosin's Library at Durham, No. v. iii. 9, is dedicated to ‘my Lady of Westmorlande,’ Joanna, aunt of Henry V, daughter of John of Gaunt [q. v.] , and contains (1) Hoccleve's Complaint of his friends' unkindness, written when he was fifty-three (after 1422) ; (2) the story of the ‘Wife of the Emperor Gerelaus,’ from the ‘Gesta Romanorum;’ (3) the ‘Art of Dying;’ (4) another ‘Gesta’ fable of Jonathas and a wicked woman (the story of Fortunatus) , which William Browne introduced from a manuscript in his possession into his ‘Shepheard's Pipe,’ 1614. ”

“ Harrison unluckily began his ‘Description of England’ by turning into words ‘maister Thomas Sackfords cardes’ or ‘Charts of the seuerall prouinces of this realme,’ describing the courses of rivers, &c.; but once clear of these in book i., he gave in book ii. a very valuable account of the institutions and inhabitants of England, their food, dress, houses, &c. ”

“ Today the graces of deportment come by nature to our youth; and the generation that has produced the immortal Rollo can not comprehend the rude manners of the “bela babee,” or beautiful well-born boy of Queen Elizabeth’s time. ”

“ He also confesses himself a coward, and fond of treating ‘Venus femel lusty children deer’ to sweet wine and wafers. He haunted the taverns and cookshops at Westminster (ll. 177–84) . When he wrote his best-known work, ‘De Regimine’ (1411–12) , he lived at ‘Chestres Inne, right fast by the Stronde’ (De Reg. p. 1) . ”

“ When you enter your lord’s place, say “God speed,” and with humble cheer greet all who are there present. Do not rush in rudely, but enter with head up and at an easy pace, and kneel on one knee only to your lord or sovereign, whichever he be. ”

“ But oh, young babies, whom blood royal hath endowed with grace, comeliness, and high ability, it is on you I call to know this book, for it were great pity but that ye added to sovereign beauty virtue and good manners. Therefore I speak to you specially, and not [Pg 12] to old men expert in governance, decorum, and honest manners, for what need is to give pangs to Hell, joy to Heaven, water to the sea, or heat to fire already hot? ”

“ By 1571 he had married Marion Isebrande, ‘daughter to William Isebrande and Ann his wife, sometyme of Anderne, neere vnto Guisnes in Picardie.’ On 23 April 1586 Harrison was appointed canon of Windsor, and installed the day after. At Windsor he died in 1593, and his will—dated at Radwinter, 27 July 1591—was proved by his son Edmund on 22 Nov. 1593. He left also an unmarried daughter, Anne, and another daughter married to Robert Baker. He outlived his wife. ”

“ Boorde was no doubt in England when his ‘Dvetary’ was published in 1542, though its dedication to the Duke of Norfolk is dated from Montpelier, 5 May, for Barnes says that on Boorde's return, evidently to London, where many patients resorted to him, he ‘had set forth bokes to be prynted in Fleet Strete.’ He probably settled at Winchester, and in 1545 published a ‘Pronosticacion,' as he most likely did in earlier and later years. In 1547 he may have been for a time in London—a ‘Doctor Borde’ was then the last tenant of the house appropriated to the master of the hospital of St. ”

“ He probably came back through Naples and Rome, crossed the Alps, and settled down for a time at his favourite university, Montpelier, ‘the most nobilis vniversite of the world for phisicians and surgions,' ‘the hed vniuersite in al Europe for the practes of physycke.' There, by 1542, he had written his ‘Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge' (publ. 1547 ?) -the first printed ‘Handbook of Europe’—his ‘Dyetary’ (publ. 1542 ?) ”