When we find an English word beginning with p, we quite properly suspect it of being an adopted word—if not evidently imitative or of nursery origin. For early English words beginning with p there are two chief sources: Latin (including indirectly Greek) and Celtic. If the word appears only in England, it may a priore have come from either of these languages. If it is found both in England and on the continent, it is almost sure to have come from the Latin. Pickle appears both in England and in North Germany, Holland, etc., and we are therefore justified in suspecting a Latin origin for it. It also belongs to the category of words that we know to have been largely drawn from Italy. In the earliest days the Italian traders introduced piper ‘pepper,’ vinum ‘wine,’ acetum ‘essig,’ etc. Later the Germanic peoples owed much of the development of the culinary art among them to the Christian priests and monks from Italy. They were fond of good living, of spices and of sauces. They brought with them from the South seeds and plants, and they raised vegetables and herbs for the table and for the cure of the sick. It is, therefore, but natural that we should suppose that so artificial a product as pickles should have had a similar source. These considerations and a knowledge of the South-German use of pfeffer in senses similar to those of pickle led me to associate pickle with pepper. One kind of pickling suggested that kipper was only another form of the same word.

In the very exhaustive and thorough account of the Middle English versions of the Seven Sages by Dr. Killis Campbell, which appeared in these Publications, XIV, pp. 37 f., I see that the Bodleian MS. has escaped notice. As I believe that no one has hitherto called attention to this version, it may be worth while to give a brief account of it here. I came across it some years ago whilst working through a number of the Rawlinson MSS. in the Bodleian Library. The MS. in question bears the press mark MS. Rawl. Poet. 175 (New Catalogue 14667) and is a parchment MS. of the middle of the 14th century, The Seven Sages occupying fol. 109-131b. This Rawlinson version is in the Northern dialect and agrees very closely indeed with MS. C (Cotton Galba E. IX); in fact in the portions which I have examined, these two MSS. agree almost word for word, as the following specimen and collations show. To give some idea of the MS. I here append (1) 11. 1-128 in full, (2) the readings from the Rawlinson MS. which differ from MS. C in the Avis story, and (3) the readings from the Rawl. MS. which differ from MS. C in the last portion of the whole (ll. 3913-4002). Contractions are denoted by italics.

In 1894, while preparing my doctor's thesis at Yale University, on the subject, “The Elizabethan Drama, especially in its Relations to the Italians of the Renaissance,” I began to study the Italian sources of the English dramatic poetry of the age of Elizabeth. Many of the plays are dramatized versions of novelle, which, in translation, were so popular at that time. But I soon found that romantic fiction by no means exhausted the treasure-trove of Renaissance literature upon which the great dramatists drew so largely, both for their matter and their inspiration. Italian discovery, history, science, manners, music, all that Italy had so abundantly contributed to the general stock of intellectual wealth, was becoming more and more familiar to the eager, open, impressionable minds of Elizabethan Englishmen, and almost everything of importance that appeared in France and Spain was sooner or later pressed into the service of English genius. So I purposely set aside the main subject of my inquiry, the Italian sources of Elizabethan plays, until I had made a collection, as complete as possible, of all the translations from the Italian during the Elizabethan period, understanding by that, the entire cycle of the great drama, approximately from the accession of Edward VI. to the Restoration, from 1549 to 1660. With this paper, Part IV, I now complete the bibliography. Part I, comprising 70 numbers, on “Romances in Prose,” will be found in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. x, No. 2, June, 1895; Part II, 82 numbers on “Poetry, Plays, and Metrical Romances,” Ibid., Vol. xi, No. 4, December, 1896; and Part III, 111 titles on ‘Miscellaneous Translations,‘ Ibid., Vol. xiii, No. 1, January, 1898. The present paper, an account of 139 translations, is the second half of Part III, and as that dealt with religion and theology, science and the arts, grammars and dictionaries, and proverbs, so this instalment of Miscellanea treats of voyages and discovery, history and politics, manners and morals, and Italian and Latin publications in England. The whole bibliography, corrected to date, consists of 411 translations, representing a total of 219 English translators, and 223 Italian authors.