LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 353 



nation [of wylle] is correct." He is willing to give up 

 one blunder, if only he may have one left to comfort 

 himself withal ! Wylle is simply a rhyming fetch for 

 mid, and the passage means that the king rode at ran- 

 dom. The use of wild with this meaning is still com- 

 mon in such phrases as " he struck wild." In " Have- 

 lok " we find it in the nearly related sense of being at a 

 loss, knowing not what to do : — 



" To lincolne barfot he yede 

 Hwan he kam ther he was ful ml, 

 Ne hauede he no frend to gangen til." 



All wylle, in short, means the kind of editing that is 

 likely to be done by a gentleman who picks up his mis- 

 information as he goes along. We would hint that a 

 person must know something before he can iise even a 

 glossary with safety. 



In the " King and the Barker," when the tanner finds 

 out that it is the king whom he has been treating so 

 familiarly, and falls upon his knees, Mr. Hazlitt prints, 



" He had no meynde of hes hode, nor cape, ne radell," 

 and subjoins the following note : " Radell, or raddle, 

 signifies a side of a cart ; but here, apparently, stands 

 for the cart itself. Ritson printed ner adell." Mr. 

 Hazlitt's explanation of raddle, which he got from Halli- 

 well, is incorrect. The word, as its derivation (from 0. 

 F. rastel) implies, means the side or end of a hay-caxt, in 

 which the uprights are set like the teeth of a rake. But 

 what has a cart to do here 1 There is perhaps a touch 

 of what an editor of old doggerel would benignantly call 

 humor, in the tanner's forgetfulness of his raiment, 

 but the cart is as little to the purpose as one of Mr. 

 Hazlitt's own notes. The tanner was on horseback, as 

 the roads of the period required that he should be, and 

 good old Ritson was plainly on the right track in his 

 reading, though his text was muddled by a misprint. 



