263 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



Bad her take the pot that sod ouer the fire 

 And set it abooue vpon the astire. 



Mr. Hazlitt s note upon astire is hearth, i. q. astre? Know 

 ing that the modern French was atre, he too rashly inferred a 

 form which never existed except in Italian. The old French 

 word is aistre or estre, but Mr. Hazlitt, as usual, prefers some 

 thing that is neither old French nor new. We do not pretend 

 to know what astire means, but a hearth that should be abooue 

 the pot seething over the fire would be unusual, to say the least, 

 in our semi-civilised country. 



In the Lyfe of Roberte the Deuill (Vol. I. p. 232), Mr. 

 Hazlitt twice makes a knight sentre his lance, and tells us in a 

 note that the Ed. 1 798 has /entered] a very easy misprint for 

 the right word /entered. What Mr. Hazlitt supposed to be the 

 meaning of sentre he has not vouchsafed to tell us. Faittre 

 (sometimes /altre or feutre} means in old French the rest of a 

 lance. Thus in the Roman du Renart (26517), 



Et mist sa lance sor \&fautre. 



But it also meant a peculiar kind of rest. In Sir F. Madden s 

 edition of Gawayne (to which Mr. Hazlitt refers occasionally) 

 we read, 



Theyfetifred their lances, these knyghtes good; 



and in the same editor s William and the Werwolf/ 



With sper festened mfeuter, him for to spille. 



In a note on the latter passage Sir F. Madden says, There 

 seems no reason, however, why it [feuter] should not mean the 

 rest attached to the armour. But Roquefort was certainly right 

 in calling it a garniture d une selle pour tenir la lance. A spear 

 fastened to the saddle gave more deadly weight to the blow. 

 The l him for to spille implies this. So in Merlin (E. E. 

 Text Soc., p. 488) : Than thei toke speres grete and rude, and 

 putte hem in fewtre, and that is the grettest crewelte that oon 

 may do, ffor turnement oweth to be with-oute felonye, and they 

 meved to smyte hem as in mortall werre. The context shows 

 that the fewtre turned sport into earnest. A citation in Ray- 

 nouard s Lexique Roman (though wrongly explained by him) 

 directed us to a passage which proves that this particular kind 

 of rest for the lance was attached to the saddle, in order to 

 render the blow heavier: 



Lances a [lege as] arfons afeutrees 

 Pour plus de dures colees rendre. 



BrancJie des Royaux Lignages, 4514, 4515. 



Mr. Hazlitt, as we have said, lets no occasion slip to insinuate 



