63. _The Flower and the Leaf._ This is rather a pretty poem, in 7-line stanzas. The language is that of the fifteenth century. It professes to be written by a gentlewoman, like the Assemble of Ladies; and perhaps it was[232]. Very likely, the same 'gentlewoman' wrote both these poems. If so, the Flower and the Leaf is the better finished, and probably the later of the two. It contains the word _henchman_, for which the earliest dated quotation which I have yet found is 1415 (Royal Wills, ed. Nichols, p. 220). An interesting reference is given in the lines--
'Eke there be knightes old of the garter That in hir time did right worthily.'
The order of the Garter was established in 1349; and we should expect that more than half a century would elapse before it would be natural to refer to the Knights as _old_ knights, who did worthily _in their time_. Of course the poem cannot be Chaucer's, and it is hardly necessary to look for rimes such as he never uses; yet such may easily be found, such as _grew_, pt. t. sing., riming with the dissyllabic _hew-e_, _new-e_; _sid-e_ with _espide_, pp. (Ch. _espy-ed_); _eie_, eye (Ch. _y-ë_) with _sie_, saw (Ch. _sy_); and _plesure_[233] with _desire_; after which we may stop.
In 1602, Speght issued another edition, in which, according to Bonn's edition of Lowndes' _Bibliographer's Manual_, two more pieces were added, viz. the prose treatise against Friars called _Jack Upland_, and the genuine poem entitled 'A. B. C.' But this is not all; for I find, in a still later edition, that of 1687, which is said to be a 'reimpression of Speght's edition of 1602,' that, at the very end of all the prefatory matter, on what was probably a spare blank leaf, three more poems appear, which might as well have been consigned to oblivion. But the editors of Chaucer evidently thought that a thing once added must be added for ever, and so these three productions are retained in Bell's Chaucer, and must therefore be noticed with the rest. I find, however, that they had been printed previously, viz. at the end of the Table of Contents in ed. 1542 and ed. 1550, where they are introduced quite casually, without a word of explanation. Moreover, they are copied from MS. Trin. Coll. Cam. R. 3. 15, a MS. which also contains the Canterbury Tales; and no doubt, this fact suggested their insertion. See Todd's Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 120.