64. _Jack Upland._ An invective against friars, in prose, worth printing, but obviously not Chaucer's.
65. Chaucer's A. B. C. Genuine; here printed as poem no. I.
66. _Eight goodly questions with their answers_; printed in Bell's Chaucer, vol. iv. p. 421; nine 7-line stanzas. In st. 3, _tree_ rimes with _profer_; but _tree_ is an obvious misprint for _cofer_! In st. 5, the gerund _to lie_ (Ch. _ly-e_) rimes with _honestie_ (Ch. _honestee_). This is quite enough to condemn it. But it may be Lydgate's.
67. _To the Kings most noble Grace, and to the Lords and Knights of the Garter_; pr. as above, p. 424; eight 8-line stanzas. In MS. Phillipps 8151, and written by Hoccleve; it much resembles his poem printed in _Anglia_, v. 23. The date may be 1416. The 'King' is Henry V.
68. _Sayings._ Really three separate pieces. They are all found on the fly-leaf of the small quarto edition of Caxton, described above, p. 27. When Caxton printed Chaucer's _Anelida_ and _Purse_ on a quire of ten leaves, it so happened that he only filled up nine of them. But, after adding _explicit_ at the bottom of the ninth leaf, to shew that he had come to the end of his Chaucer, he thought it a pity to waste space, and so added three popular sayings on the front of leaf 10, leaving the back of it still blank. Here is what he printed:--
'Whan feyth failleth in prestes sawes And lordes hestes ar holden for lawes And robbery is holden purchas And lechery is holden solas Than shal the lond of albyon Be brought to grete confusio_u_n.
Hit falleth for euery gentilman To saye the best that he can In mannes absence And the soth in his presence.
'Hit cometh by kynde of gentil blode To cast away al heuynes And gadre to-gidre wordes good The werk of wisedom berith witnes Et sic est finis ****.'
The first of these sayings was probably a bit of popular rime, of the character quoted in Shakespeare's _King Lear_, iii. 2. 81. Shakespeare calls his lines _Merlin's_ prophecy; and it has pleased the editors of Chaucer to call the first six lines _Chaucer's_ Prophecy[234]. They appear in Bell's Chaucer, vol. iii. p. 427, in an 'improved' form, not worth discussing; and the last eight lines are also printed in the same, vol. iv. p. 426. Why they are separated, is mysterious. Those who think them genuine may thank me for giving them Caxton's spelling instead of Speght's.