The chief source of information concerning Nicholas Breton's early life is the will of his father, written in 1557-8, probated in 1558-9. This will, a lengthy document, provides liberally for the wife and the five children, devises generous legacies to a number of household servants, remembers various hospitals, the “poorest creatures” in several parishes, “poorest Skoolers of the university of Cambrydge,” and even sets apart a sum of money for “repayringe the hyghe wayes brydges and other most needful and necessary thinges.” There are mentions of “jewelles” and plate and valuable furniture and clothes, and the whole tone of the will indicates that its maker was a man who had wealth and was accustomed to use it freely and generously. That he was as liberal in thought as in money-matters, that he had due regard to the preferences of others, may be fairly inferred from a bequest to one Henry Knighte, “so that he continew to study at the Lawe, or use any other honest exereyse of Lyvinge.” That the wife was a woman of and this association takes the reader away from the atmosphere of Early English poetry.“

The work in which his Defence of Poetry occurs, the De Genealogia Deorum, was first suggested to Boccaccio while he was yet a young man, by Hugo, king of Cyprus. Hugo sent to the young poet, asking him to write a work upon the mythology of antiquity, there being no such book then in existence. Boccaccio seems to have been by no means eager for so tremendous a task, but urged on by his royal patron he at last began it, and continued to work on it at intervals, though the king who had originally set him the undertaking did not live to see its completion. Completed, indeed, it never really was, and it was without the author's knowledge and against his wishes that the manuscript passed out of his hands before it had undergone revision. This accounts in part for the desultory character of the work, its diffuseness, its repetitions, its lack of arrangement and subordination; only in part, of course, for something of all this—that, namely, which corresponds with the essentially undiscriminating, non-selective mind of the author himself—could not have been eliminated by any amount of revision.

Norway regained her political independence in 1814. Since then efforts have been made to establish a language-standard, truly national and Norwegian. The different theories set forth, the arguments advanced, the practical plans submitted, the struggle still going on between the opposing factions, present a linguistic condition, in many ways similar to the one existing in modern Greece, so well described by Prof. Wheeler in a recent issue of the American Journal of Philology. In this short paper it is possible only to state, in the briefest way, the facts as I have found them, regarding this question of language in Norway.

The following edition of the De Ortu Waluuanii is based on an exact transcript of the Cottonian ms. (only with resolution of the usual contractions) which was made for me by Mr. D. T. B. Wood, of the Department of Manuscripts of the British Museum, during the months of August and September, 1897. I have endeavored to print the Latin text as it appears in this transcript with as little change as possible. It has occasionally been necessary, however, to supply words omitted in the ms., yet obviously required by the sense, and wherever this has been done the inserted words will be found enclosed in brackets. In the case of corrupt or simply misspelt forms I have placed the ms. readings at the bottom of the page and incorporated the emended forms (italicized) into the text. Only in the case of the words sublimis and pugna and their derivatives I have retained the consistent spellings of the ms.— sullimis, pungna, and the like.