LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 357 



not vouchsafed to tell us. Fautre (sometimes faltre or 

 feutre) means in old French the rest of a lance. Thus 

 in the Homcui du Reiiart ( 2 G5 17), 



" Et mist sa lance sor \% fautre,.^'' 



But it also meant a peculiar hind of rest. In Sir F. 

 Madden's edition of Gawayae (to which Mr. Hazlitt 

 refers occasionalh') we read, 



" They feuired their lances, these knyghtes good "; 



and in the same editor's " William and the Werwolf," 



" With sper festened in feuter^ 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 Roque- 

 fort was certainly right in calling it a " garniture d une 

 selle pour tenir la lance." A spear fastened to the sad- 

 dle gave more deadly weight to the blow. The ^^ him 

 for to sjyille'" implies this. So in '' Merlin " (E. E. Text 

 Soc, p. 488) : " Than thei toke speres gTcte and rude, 

 and putte hem in fewtre, and that is the grettest 

 crewelte that oon may do, ftbr turnement oweth to be 

 with-oute felonye, and they moved to smyte hem as in 

 mortall werre." The context shows that the fewtre 

 turned sport into earnest. A citation in Raynouard's 

 Lexique Roman (though wrongly explained by him) di- 

 rected 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] argons afeutr^es 

 Pour plus de dures colees rendre.''^ 



Branche des Boyaux Lignages, 4514, 4515. 



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

 insinuate the inaccuracy and carelessness of his pre- 

 decessors. The long and useful career of Mr. Wright, 



