CHAPTER I. 



ISTORIANS and Biographers, together with Libra- 

 rians and Bookfellers, have a natural antipathy to 

 anonymous books ; and, wherever they can, are willing 

 to accept the smalleft amount of evidence as proof 

 of paternity. It faves much trouble and avoids 

 numerous errors in cataloguing, when a recognifed name can be 

 affociated with an anonymous work. From this tendency a bad habit 

 has arifen of attributing to particular writers books concerning which 

 the evidence of authorfhip is doubtful, if not altogether untru ft worthy. 



In this very book we have a ftriking inftance of fuch erroneous 

 attribution. The three treatifes, of which the book is made up, are 

 quite diftint, and to a portion only of one of thefe is there any 

 author's name attached. Yet that name, "Dam Julyans Barnes," 

 altered by degrees to " Dame Juliana Earners," is now univerfally 

 received as the name of the authorefs of the whole volume. With 

 even lefs (how of reafon fhe is credited with the authorfhip of 

 a " Treatife on Fifhing " for which there is not the fhadow of evidence, 

 that treatife having been added ten years later by Wynken de Worde, 

 who, when reprinting the Book of St. Albans, thought that the subject 

 of Fifhing would complete the work as a Gentleman's Vade Mecum. 



There are really four diftincl: tractates in the Book of St. Albans, 

 although the two laft being on Heraldry are generally counted as one. 



