IV^e siecle par un maitre d'ecole de la ville de
Bruges_. Paris: Librairie Tross.]

The text of Caxton's original cannot, indeed, have been precisely
identical with that of the MS. used by Michelant. It contained many
passages which are wanting in the Paris MS., and in some instances had
obviously preferable readings. Caxton's English sentences are very often
servile translations from the Flemish, and he sometimes falls into the
use of Flemish words and idioms in such a way as to show that his long
residence abroad had impaired his familiarity with his native language.
The French _respaulme cet hanap_, for instance, is rendered by 'spoylle
the cup.' Of course the English verb _spoylle_ never meant 'to rinse';
Caxton was misled by the sound of the Flemish _spoel_. Caxton's 'after
the house,' as a translation of _aual la maison_ (throughout the house),
is explicable only by a reference to the Flemish version, which has
_achter huse_. The verb _formaketh_, which has not elsewhere been found
in English, is an adoption of the Flemish _vermaect_ (repairs). Another
Flemicism is Caxton's _whiler_ (= while ere) for 'some time ago,' in
Flemish _wilen eer_. It is still more curious to find Caxton writing 'it
_en_ is not,' instead of 'it is not'; this _en_ is the particle prefixed
in Flemish to the verb of a negative sentence. As is well known,
Caxton's translation of 'Reynard the Fox' exhibits many phenomena of a
similar kind. From all the circumstances, we may perhaps conclude that
Caxton, while still resident in Bruges, added an English column to his
copy of the French-Flemish phrase-book, rather as a sort of exercise
than with any view to publication, and that he handed it over to his
compositors at Westminster without taking the trouble to subject it to
any material revision.

The original work contains so many references to the city of Bruges that
it is impossible to doubt that it was compiled there. According to
Michelant, the Paris MS. was written in the first half of the fourteenth
century. The MS. used by Caxton must itself have been written not later
than the second decade of the fifteenth century; unless, indeed, it was
an unaltered transcript from an older MS. The evidence on which this
conclusion is based is somewhat curious. Caxton's text contains two
passages in which the pope is spoken of as still resident at Avignon.
Now the 'Babylonish captivity' of the popes ended in 1378; and, even if
we suppose that at Br