[35] Printed _dominus_; but the right reading is _Fæneratur domino_.
These Notes are principally concerned with the numerous variations exhibited in the edition printed by I. R. in 1598. See the Preface.
The references are to the _Sections_ and _lines_, as numbered.
=Prologue=; lines 2, 6. See Job, v. 7; 2 Thess. iii. 10.
15. The allusion is to Caxton’s Book of the Chess; see the description of it in Ames’ Typographical Antiquities, ed. Dibdin, i. 36, where woodcuts will be found representing the several pieces.
20. _iudges._ Caxton calls them _rooks_, as at present, but he describes them as being vicars and legates of the king, i.e. as occupying the position of judges.
_yomenne_, pawns. In Caxton, we find the division of pawns into eight classes (answering to the eight pawns on each side), in which the king’s rook’s pawn represents the _husbandman_. The next in order, the king’s knight’s pawn, is the _smith_; after which, in due order, we find the _notary_, _merchant_, _physician_, _taverner_, _guard_ (or watchman), and the _ribald_ or dice-player, whose character is not well spoken of. This eight-fold division seems to me to have suggested the well-known formula which divides men into the eight classes of ‘soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy, thief;’ which is sometimes otherwise varied. The German formula is. ‘Edelmann, Bettelman, Amtmann, Pastor, Kaufmann, Laufmann, Maler, Major;’ also, be it observed, eight-fold. Our soldier, tinker, tailor, apothecary, ploughboy, and thief, may be imagined to correspond, with sufficient exactitude, to Caxton’s guard, smith, merchant, physician, husbandman, and ribald.
27. _Remytte_, leave. A word is evidently omitted; we must supply _to_ after _as_, or else substitute _to_ for _as_. In the Book of Surveying, ch. ix, we find, “I remytte that to menne of lawe;” and again, in ch. xii, “I remytte all those poyntes to menne of lawe.” See also sect. 7, l. 14.
=1.= 1. For the manner in which I. R. rewrites this section, see the Preface.
=2.= 5. _Chylturne._ As to the sense, we find, in the Book of Surveying, c. 37, the following. “Chylturne grounde and flyntye grounde be light groundes and drye, and full of small stones, and chalke grounde is moche of the same nature, and they wyll weare and washe awaye with water.”