n "Margarete of virtw," because the treatise itself explains
that it means Holy Church, but I could make nothing of _Thsknvi_, as
the letters evidently require rearrangement. But Mr Henry Bradley, one
of the editors of the _New English Dictionary_, discovered that the
chapters near the end of the treatise are out of order; and when he
had restored sense by putting them as they should be, the new reading
of the last seven letters came out as "thin vsk," i.e. "thine Usk";
and the attribution of this treatise to Thomas Usk clears up every
difficulty and fits in with all that John Malverne says. This, in
fact, is the happy solution of the authorship of _The Testament of
Love_, which was once attributed to Chaucer, though it is obviously
not his at all.

But it is time to return to John Trevisa, Higden's translator. This
long translation is all in the Southern dialect, originally that of
Gloucestershire, though there are several MSS. that do not always
agree. A fair copy of it, from a MS. in the library of St John's
College, Cambridge, is given side by side with the original Latin in
the edition already noticed. It is worth adding that Caxton printed
Trevisa's version, altering the spelling to suit that of his own time,
and giving several variations of reading.

Trevisa was also the author of some other works, of which the most
important is his translation into English, from the original Latin,
of _Bartholom{ae}us de Proprietatibus Rerum_.

I am not aware of any important work in the Southern dialect later
than these translations by Trevisa. But in quite modern times, an
excellent example of it has appeared, viz. in the _Poems of Rural
Life, in the Dorset Dialect_, by William Barnes.

CHAPTER VII

THE SOUTHERN DIALECT OF KENT

Though the Kentish dialect properly belongs to Southern English,
from its position to the south of the Thames, yet it shows certain
peculiarities which make it desirable to consider it apart from the
rest.

In Beda's _Ecclesiastical History_, Bk I, ch. 15, he says of the
Teutonic invaders: "Those who came over were of the three most
powerful nations of Germany--Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes
are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those
also in the province of the West-Saxons who are to this day called
Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight"; a remark which obviously
implies the southern part of Hampshire. This suggests that the speech
of Kent,