Note Dd — APPENDIX I. AN ESSAY ON THE ANCIENT MINSTRELS IN ENGLAND.

[A species of men who did not sing, &c.] It appears from the passage of Erasmus here referred to, that there still existed in England of that species of jongleurs or minstrels, whom the French called by the peculiar name of conteours, or reciters in prose. It is in his Ecclesiastes, where he is speaking of such preachers as imitated the tone of beggars or mountebanks: "Apud Anglos est simile genus hominum, quales apud Italos sunt circulatores [mountebanks] de quibus modo dictum est; qui irrumpunt in convivia magnatum, aut in Cauponas Vinarias; et argumentum aliquod, quod edidicerunt, recitant; puta mortem omnibus dominari, aut laudem matrimonii. Sed quoniam ea linguâ monosyllabis fere constat, quemadmodum Germanica; atque illi (sc. this peculiar species of reciters) studio vitant cantum, nobis (sc. Erasmus, who did not understand a word of English) latrare videntur verius quàm loqui."—Opera, tom. v. c. 958 (Jortin, vol. ii. p. 193). As Erasmus was correcting the vice of preachers, it was more to his point to bring an instance from the moral reciters of prose, than from chanters of rhime; though the latter would probably be more popular, and therefore more common.