e the correct rendering; for Lydgate, in the
Prologue to his Translation of Boccaccio's _Fall of Princes_, when
enumerating the writings of his "maister Chaucer," tells us, that
"In youth he made a translacion
Of a boke which is called _Trophe_
In Lumbarde tonge, as men may rede and se,
And in our vulgar, long or that he deyde,
Gave it the name of Troylous and Cressyde."
_Corinna._--Chaucer says somewhere, "I follow Statius first, and then
Corinna." Was Corinna in mistake put for _Colonna_? The
"Guido eke the Colempnis,"
whom Chaucer numbers with "great Omer" and others as bearing up the fame
of Troy (_House of Fame_, b. iii.).
_Friday Weather._--The following meteorological proverb is frequently
repeated in Devonshire, to denote the variability of the weather on
Friday:
"Fridays in the week
are never _aleek_."
"Aleek" for "alike," a common Devonianism. {304} Thus Peter Pindar
describes a turbulent crowd of people as being
"_Leek_ bullocks sting'd by apple-drones."
Is this bit of weather-wisdom current in other parts of the kingdom? I
am induced to ask the question, because Chaucer seems to have embodied
the proverb in some well-known lines, viz.:--
"Right as the Friday, sothly for to tell,
Now shineth it, and now it raineth fast,
Right so can gery Venus overcast
The hertes of hire folk, right as hire day
Is gerfull, right so changeth she aray.
_Selde is the Friday all the weke ylike_."
_The Knighte's Tale_, line 1536.
_Tyndale._--Can any of your readers inform me whether the translation of
the "_Enchiridion Militis Christiani Erasmi_," which Tyndale completed
in 1522, was ever printed?
J.M.B.
Totnes, Feb. 21. 1850.
* * * * *
LETTER ATTRIBUTED TO SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.
In Banks's _Dormant Peerage_, vol. iii. p. 61., under the account of
_Pulteney, Earl of Bath_, is the following extraordinary letter, said to
be from Sir Robert Walpole to King George II., which is introduced as
serving to show the discernment of Walpole, as well as the disposition
of the persons by whom he was opposed, but evidently to expose the
vanity and weakness of Mr. Pulteney, by exhibiting the scheme which was
to entrap him into the acceptance of a peerage, and so destroy his
popularity. It is dated Jan. 24. 1741, but from _no place_, and has but
little appearance of authenticity.
"Most sacred,
"The violence of the fit of the stone,
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