modern form. Therefore this little volume has been undertaken. Doubtless unwritten codes of behaviour are coeval with society; but the earliest treatises that we possess emphasize morals rather than manners. Even the late Latin author known as Dionysius Cato (fourth century?), whose maxims were constantly quoted, translated, imitated, and finally printed during the late Middle Ages, does not touch upon the niceties of conduct that we call manners; wherefore one John Garland, an Englishman educated at Oxford, who lived much in France during the first half of the thirteenth century, felt bound to supplement Cato on these points. His work, entitled _Liber Faceti: docens mores hominum, precipue iuuenum, in supplementum illorum qui a moralissimo Cathone erant omissi iuuenibus utiles_,[2] is alluded to as _Facet_ in the first piece in this volume, and serves as basis for part of the _Book of Courtesy_. But, earlier than this, Thomasin of Zerklaere, about 1215, wrote in German a detailed treatise on manners called _Der Wälsche Gast_.[3] And in 1265, Dante’s teacher, Brunetto Latini, published his _Tesoretto_,[3] which was soon followed by a number of similar treatises in Italian. While we need not hold with the writer of the _Little Children’s Little Book_, that courtesy came down from heaven when Gabriel greeted the Virgin, and Mary and Elizabeth met, we must look for its origin somewhere; and inasmuch as, in its medieval form at least, it is closely associated with the practices of chivalry, we may not unreasonably suppose it to have appeared first in France. And although most of the extant French treatises belong to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, a lost book of courtesy, translated by Thomasin of Zerklaere, is sometimes held, on good grounds, to have been derived from French, rather than from Italian. In any case, such of the English books as were not taken immediately from Latin, came from French sources. To be sure, there is a Saxon poem, based it would seem on Cato, though by no means a translation, called _A Father’s Instructions to his Son_; but this, although it is greatly exercised about the child’s soul, takes no thought for his finger-nails or his nose. It is not, therefore, surprising to find that nearly all English words denoting manners are of French origin—_courtesy_, _villainy_, _nurture_, _dignity_, _etiquette_, _debonaire_, _gracious_, _polite_, _gentilesse_, &c., while to balance them I can, at this moment, recall only three of Saxon origin—_thew_ (which belongs rather to the list of moral words in which Old English abounds), _churlish_ and _wanton_ (without breeding), both of which, significantly enough, are negative of good manners. The reason for the predominance of the French terms is simply that “French use these gentlemen,” as one old writer puts it; that is, from the Conquest until the latter part of the fourteenth century the language of the invaders prevailed almost entirely among the upper classes, who, accordingly, learned their politeness out of French or Latin books; and it was only with the growth of citizenship and English together, that these matters came to be discussed in this latter tongue for the profit of middle-class children, as well as of the “bele babees” at Court. We must suppose, from numerous hints and descriptions, that an elaborate system of manners and customs prevailed long before it was codified. The Bayeux tapestry (eleventh century) shows a feast, with a server kneeling to serve, his napkin about his neck, as John Russell prescribes some four hundred years later. The romances again, alike in French and in English, describe elaborate ceremonies, and allude constantly to definite laws of courtesy. Now and again we...