The reader can best understand what I. R. conceives to be elegance of style by comparing the following extract with section 1 at p. 9.
“_Chapter 2._ ¶ _By what a Husbandman cheefely liueth._
The most generall and _commonest experienst liuing_ that the _toyle-imbracing_ Husbandman liueth by, is either by plowing and sowing of his Corne, or by rearing and breeding of Cattell, and not the one without the other, _because they be adjuncts, and may not be disceuered_. Then sithens that the Plough is the first good instrument, by which the Husband-men _rips from the Earths wombe a well-pleasing liuing, I thinke_ it is most conuenient first to speake of the _forme, fashion, and_ making therof.”
The words italicised (except in the title) are all his own.
The Glossarial Index, a very full one, was almost entirely prepared, in the first instance, by my eldest daughter, though I have since added a few explanations in some cases, and have revised the whole, at the same time verifying the references. As to the meaning of a few terms, I am still uncertain.
Fitzherbert’s general style is plain, simple, and direct, and he evidently has the welfare of his reader at heart, to whom he offers kindly advice in a manner least calculated to give offence. He is in general grave and practical, but there are a few touches of quiet humour in his remarks upon horse-dealing. “Howe be it I saye to my customers, and those that bye any horses of me, and [_if_] euer they wil trust any hors-master or corser whyle they lyue, truste me.” I would have trusted him implicitly.
The difficulties of his language arise almost entirely from the presence of numerous technical terms; and it is, indeed, this fact that renders his book one of considerable philological interest, and adapts it for publication by the English Dialect Society. By way of a small contribution to English etymology, I beg leave to take a single instance, and to consider what he has to tell us about the word _peruse_.
The whole difficulty as to the etymology of this word arises from the change of sense; it is now used in such a way that the derivation from _per-_ and _use_ is not obvious; nor does it commend itself to such as are unacquainted with historical method. For this reason, some etymologists, including Webster, have imagined that it arose from _peruise_ = _pervise_ to see thoroughly, the _i_ being dropped, and the _u_ (really _v_) being mistaken for the vowel. This is one of those wholly unscrupulous fictions to which but too many incline, as if the cause of truth could ever be helped forward by means of deliberate invention. But there is no such word as _peruise_, nor any French _perviser_. Fitzherbert is one of the earliest authorities for _peruse_, though it also occurs in Skelton, Philip Sparrow, l. 814. Investigation will show that, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, there was a fashion of using words compounded with _per-_, a number of which I have given in my Dictionary, s. v. _peruse_. The old sense was ‘to use up, to go through thoroughly, to attend to one by one;’ and the word was sometimes spelt with a _v_, because _vse_ (_use_) was generally so spelt. Examples are:--