If John Russell was the writer of the Epilogue quoted above, lines 1235-50, then it would seem that in this Treatise he only corrected and touched up some earlier Book of Norture which he had used in his youth, and which, if Sloane 2027 be not its original, may be still extant in its primal state in Mr Arthur Davenport's MS., "How to serve a Lord," _said_ to be of the fourteenth century[6], and now supposed to be stowed away in a hayloft with the owner's other books, awaiting the rebuilding and fitting of a fired house. I only hope this MS. may prove to be Russell's original, as Mr Davenport has most kindly promised to let me copy and print it for the Society. Meantime it is possible to consider John Russell's Book of Norture as his own. For early poets and writers of verse seem to have liked this fiction of attributing their books to other people, and it is seldom that you find them acknowledging that they have imagined their Poems on their own heads, as Hampole has it in his _Pricke of Conscience_, p. 239, l. 8874 (ed. Morris, Philol. Soc.). Even Mr Tennyson makes believe that Everard Hall wrote his _Morte d' Arthur_, and some Leonard his _Golden Year_. On the other hand, the existence of the two Sloane MSS. is more consistent with Russell's own statement (if it is his own, and not his adapter's in the Harleian MS.) that he did not write his Boke himself, but only touched up another man's. Desiring to let every reader judge for himself on this point, I shall try to print in a separate text[7], for convenience of comparison, the Sloane MS. 1315, which differs most from Russell, and which the Keeper of the MSS. at the British Museum considers rather earlier (ab. 1440-50 A.D.) than the MS. of Russell (ab. 1460-70 A.D.), while of the earliest of the three, Sloane MS. 2027 (ab. 1430-40 A.D.), the nearer to Russell in phraseology, I shall give a collation of all important variations. If any reader of the present text compares the Sloanes with it, he will find the subject matter of all three alike, except in these particulars:
Omits lines 1-4 of Russell. --Contains these lines.
Inserts after l. 48 of R. a passage about behaviour which it nearly repeats, where Russell puts it, at l. 276, _Symple Condicions_. --Inserts and omits as Sl. 1315 does, but the wording is often different.