HISTORY A^ 7 D LITERATURE. 5 



granted, too, that one would hardly go to them now for instruc- 

 tion, though as a matter of fact the first principles of the craft 

 have changed but little since their day ; we may teach dif- 

 ferently, but we teach pretty much the same doctrine. Still, 

 they were quite as keen about their business as Somerville, 

 and, allowing for the inevitable change of years, knew quite 

 as much about it. And, certainly, they are very much more 

 amusing than Somerville, if not quite so classical as is that 

 erudite squire. 



' The earliest manuscript on hunting I have met with,' says 

 Strutt, in his ' Sports and Pastimes of the People of England,' 

 ' is one in the Cotton Library at the British Museum, written at 

 the commencement of the fourteenth century.' The manu- 

 script Strutt saw was an English version of a French treatise, 

 according to a note in Warton's ' History of English Poetry ' at 

 that time in the possession of a Mr. Farmer, of Tusmor in 

 Oxfordshire. Its full title was as follows : 'Art de Venerie le 

 quel Maistre Guillaume Twici venour le Roy d'Angleterre fist 

 en son temps per Aprandre autres.' This Master William Twici 

 was huntsman to Edward II. The King, as became a royal 

 sportsman, had another ' Maister of the Game,' an Englishman, 

 one John Gyfford, and he it was who made the translation of 

 the Frenchman's treatise that Strutt saw. A second translation, 

 or rather a rescript of the first with additions, was made later 

 by Henry IV.'s huntsman, for the special edification of that 

 1 imp of fame,' Harry of Monmouth, Prince of Wales. This 

 may be identical with the ' Maister of the Game,' to be men- 

 tioned later, but neither Strutt nor ' Cecil' (who, in his 'Records 

 of the Chase,' quotes largely from it) makes this clear. From 

 the extracts the latter gives, it is, however, evident that the 

 writer, whether the Duke of York or another, had carefully 

 studied his predecessor's work. 



Next we come to the treatise popularly ascribed to Dame 

 Juliana Berners, of pious and immortal, if somewhat apocryphal 

 memory, and included in the famous ' Boke of St. Albans,' so 

 called from having been printed at that town in 1486. A cloud 



