THOUGH this book is primarily intended to supply that
background of social history which is necessary to a
sympathetic comprehension of our own literature in the Middle
Ages, it is hoped that it may appeal also to the general public;
and that, in these extracts, our forefathers may be found speak-
ing for themselves on all the main questions which interest
intelligent people to-day.

A large proportion are translated (and many for the first
time) from Latin or Old French. The rest are presented un-
modernized (though sometimes, as the reader is warned, with
some abridgment) in their medieval garb. To this end the
compiler has made specially free use of such old translations
as those of Trevisa, Lord Berners, and the Alphabet of Tales.
Even where the episode was given more fully by a first-rate
chronicler like Matthew Paris, it seemed preferable to repro-
duce it in Trevisa's naïve rendering of Higden's compilation;
since here we have the actual English that Chaucer heard.

A very few of these illustrations have been chosen from
other countries and from earlier or later dates. This, however,
is only in cases where the thing described, though it happens
to be recorded most clearly in such a foreign document, is also
characteristic of medieval England, and could be inferred,
though more laboriously, from genuine English sources. The
story of Froissart's youth, for instance, may be applied without
much modification to Chaucer and many others among our
own youth at that day.

-v-