Scottish Text Society publications > Third series > Ratis raving and other early Scots poems on morals

XXXVI
INTRODUCTION.
himself, the poems collected in MS. Ashmole 61. In
that case he belonged to the end of the fifteenth century
and has no further interest for the problem we have to
solve.1
Dr Brown suggested another line of approach, which
if it could have been established would have been of the
utmost value for the delimiting of date. In one of the
poems in Ashmole 61 the name of a certain Dr Palere
is introduced. Brown suggested that this was perhaps a
mistake for Palmere, which is possible enough, especially
as it is not known who is meant; and further, that
Palmere is the name of the Italian Matteo Palmieri in
an English dress. This Matteo Palmieri wrote soon
after 1430—for he says at the beginning that the occasion
of the work was a withdrawal from the plague in Florence
of that year—a sort of dialogue the purpose of which
was the making of a good citizen, with a discussion of
the education, customs, and virtues necessary to that
end. Brown says roundly (p. 156) : “ We shall find it
(sc. Ratis Raving) to be neither more nor less than an
abridged and rather loose paraphrase by an ecclesiastic
of Palmieri’s book.”
An examination of the Italian work does not support
the contention. There are points of contact between the
two, but the differences are marked and forbid the assump¬
tion of borrowing, not to speak of paraphrasing, on the
part of the Scottish author. In Palmieri there is nothing
on the five senses. He does deal in his account of the
suitable method of education with the different divisions
of life, the various ages of man ; but while our poet makes
seven ages, Palmieri has but six, and the distribution
of the years differs. Palmieri’s third age, adolescence,
1 By the courtesy of the late Dr Brown a transcript which he had
had made for him of eight of the pieces in Ashmole 61 with Rate’s
name attached, was placed in my hands for examination.