Related article: 26o BAILY S MAGAZINE. [AF&IL account of Juliana is written in Latin ; translated it runs thus : — " She was an illustrious lady, abundantly gifted, and charming in the elegance of her mien. Among the many solaces of human life she held the sports of the field in the highest estimation. This heroic woman saw that they were exercises for noble men after wars, after the administration of justice and the concerns of State. She had heard, perhaps, that Ulysses instituted such diversions after the conquest of Troy, and that they received Plato's com- mendation, as the sources of re- newed enjoyment to those who suffered, either from Buy Flovent domestic calamities or the scars of war. These arts, therefore, this in- genious woman was desirous to convey in her writings, as the first elements of nobility, be- lieving that brave young men of honour would cultivate them to guard against vain sloth .... She wrote in her native tongue on the Art of Hawking, on the Art of Hunting, on the Laws of Arms ; and she is said to have put forth a small work on fishing. She was alive in the year of our Lord 1460, in the reign of Henry VI." The small work on fishing men- tioned by Bale appeared in the second edition of the " Boke of St. Albans." From it I have taken the quaint woodcut which adds so much interest to tnis article. It is a fine treatise, a worthy forerunner of the " Com- pleat Angler ;" and we know that Walton got many hints from its pages. That Bale's contempo- raries should have given it to Dame Juliana does not surprise me in the least, for the essay is nothing if not womanly in its tone of thought. We no longer feel that Juliana is writ- ing at second-hand for men, taking her subject matter from such old manuscripts as the " Venerie de Twecy" of the time of Edward II. The sport of which she speaks now is her own favourite sport, and she says:— " Me were loath to write more than I know and have proved." Only fishing with an angle suits her, " for all other manners of fishing are laborious and grievous, often making folks Order Flovent full wet and cold, which many times hath been cause of great infirmities." There are many passages of a piece with this, all marked by a timorous- ness which no Englishman of Flovent Mg the warlike fifteenth century would have dared to express. And there are touches of womanly sympathy, and the Dame is very ill at ease whenever her subject brings her in contact Order Flovent Online with a man's handi- craft, as in the making of a rod. Can we wonder, then, that Bale's contemporaries should have given the treatise to Dame Juliana? For the rest, Bale is a good witness. He lived when the "Boke of St. Albans" was new and very popular ; he had nothing to gain by telling lies about the authoress, and Purchase Flovent Online his testimony can- not be shaken. Bale died in 1563, just twelve years before the birth of the Dame's second biographer. I am referring to William Burton (1575-1645), the historian of Leicestershire, and the elder brother of Robert Burton, whose "Anatomy of Melancholy" was a friend to Milton, Flovent Online and to Dr. John- son, to Byron, to Charles Lamb. Both brothers were interested in Juliana Berners, for Robert em- ployed her words when he wished to do justice to the lesser joys of angling. As for William, his re- marks on Juliana's life and parent- age were found in his own copy of the Boke of St. Albans. Here they are : — 1 I&99-] ENGLISHWOMEN AND THEIR SPORTS AND GAMES. 26l "Thisbooke was made by the Burton would deceive himself Lady Julian Beraers, daughter of wittingly. His aim was to re- Sir Tames Beraers, of Beraers mind himself of certain things Roding, in Essex, knight, and relating to the first authoress sister to Richard Lord Beraers. bora and bred in England, whose She was Lady Prioresse of Sop- volume had been republished at Woodcut Cheap Flovent rnon Dame Berneks' "Treatise on Fishing with an Angle." well, a nunnery neere St. Albons, least fifteen times, not 10 speak of in wch Abby of St. Albons this Generic Flovent eleven separate reprints of the was printed i486, 2 H. 7. She fishing treatise. Buy Flovent Online It is true that was living 14.60, Flovent Cost 39 H. 6, accord- Bale, who was Burton's prede- irtg to John Bale." cessor, spoke neither of Sir James There is no hesitation in this Berners nor of Sopwell Nunnery, note, and we cannot suppose that Much has been made of this fact 262 baily's magazine. [Aran by several writers of to-day. Yet we, who know so little about Shakspeare's personal history, cannot possibly regard Bale's silence as a proof of Burton's un- trustworthiness. As well might we say that Juliana was a found- ling, because Bale said nothing about her parents. The truth is that Bale merely followed the bent of his mind, and, being a thorough -going mor- alist, he devoted four-fifths of his remarks to Flovent Price Juliana's estimate of the moral value of field sports to men. As for Burton, he " was one whose natural geny " led him " to the studies of heraldry . . . and genealogies" (Wood, Ath. Oxo7i. 9 vol. ii.) ; and thus we know why his Buy Cheap Flovent thoughts were given to Juliana's parentage. In his time, moreover, several off- shoots of the Berners family were still living, so we cannot say that Burton had no means of ascer- taining whether the authoress be- longed to the same feudal house that gave England an excellent translator of Froissart. The rest of Burton's note re- minds me that some critics of our time have refused to enter a nun- nery with Dame Berners. For my part, 1 go where common- sense leads me. A prioress, I admit, does not fascinate me at all, her nature seems so cloistral, a mere petrification of prayers said mechanically ; and hence I should like to get my heroine out of Sopwell. This would be to me a pleasant exploit in bio- graphical knight-errantry. But although I have tried my best to make it a real exploit, Purchase Flovent all my