A Poem to Help One Remember the Muses

Guarino Veronese (1374-1460)
Carmina de Musis

Esse Iovis natas cecinere poemata Musas,
Nanque hominum rebus dextras deus obtulit artes.
Instruit historiis mortales vivere Clio.
Tempora plantandi docuit legesque Thalia.
Euterpe monstrat quas fundat tibia voces.
Melpomene exponit varios distinguere cantus.
Terpsichore oblectat dehinc lumina nostra choreis.
Conubiis Erato gratos moderatur amores.
Ostendit sulcos segetesque Polymnia vitae.
Urania polos docet et portenta polorum.
Calliope vates ornat vocesque serenat.

The poems they sang were Muses, Jupiter’s daughters,
For the god offered skillful arts for the affairs of men.
Clio teaches mortals to live on in histories.
Thalia taught the seasons and rules for planting.
Euterpe teaches the flute which notes to utter.
Melpomene explains how to distinguish different songs.
Thereupon, Terpsichore adds cheer to our lives with dances.
Erato navigates pleasing loves into marriages.
Polymnia reveals the furrows and fields of life.
Urania shows the heavens and celestial omens.
Calliope honours poets and brightens their voices.

Guarino Veronese, Guarini Veronensis carmina, ed. by Aldo Manetti (Bergamo: Istituto universitario di Bergamo, 1985), pp. 61-62. My translation.

Learn to Read or Take a Beating

[item 33]

    of an a.b.c.
This a.b.c. you do read
    but little do prevail
vnless y^t you take heede
    well whipt shalbe your tail.

Steven W. May, Henry Stanford's Anthology: an Edition of Cambridge University Library Manuscript Dd.5.75 (New York; London: Garland, 1988), p. 44.

Written by Henry Stanford for Robin Carey (later Sir Robert) the eldest son of Sir Edmond Carey, third surviving son of Henry Carey Lord Hunsdon. From a group of poems written to assist Tudor children in learning to write poetry in poulter’s metre. Poem dated 1 Jan 1586/87.

A Poem on Conjectural Emendation

Eustace H. Miles, How to Learn Philology: a Simple and Introductory Book for Teachers and Learners (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1899), p.254:

First get the sense, then find the flaw,
the word or words you'd fain restore :
these in a bracket now should stand
in capitals and cursive-hand.
Then try to change them for the best.
The faulty words by sense are guessed,
by metre, style of Author, next
by nearness to the given text
Show reasons for the alterations,
then add appropriate illustrations,
[N.B.] Learn all you can of MSS. :
then danger of mistakes is less.