CAXTON'S INTRODUCTION
The holy and blessed Doctor S. Jerome saith this authority: Do alway some good work, to the end that the devil find thee not idle. And the holy Doctor S. Austin saith in the book of the labour of monks that, no man strong or mighty to labour ought to be idle. For which cause, when I had performed and accomplished divers works and histories translated out of French into English at the request of certain lords, ladies, and gentlemen, as the story of the Recuyel of Troy, the Book of the Chess, the History of Jason, the History of the Mirror of the World, the fifteen books of the Metamorphoses, in which he contained the Fables of Ovid, and the History of Godfrey of Boulogne in the Conquest of Jerusalem, with other divers works and books, I ne nyste what work to begin and put forth after the said works tofore made; and forasmuch as idleness is so much blamed, as saith S. Bernard the mellifluous Doctor, that she is mother of lies and stepdame of virtues, and that it is she that overthroweth strong men .into sin, quencheth virtue, nourisheth pride, and maketh the way ready to go to hell: and John Cassiodorus saith that the thought of him that is idle, thinketh on none other thing but on lickerous meats and viands for his belly: and the holy S. Bernard, aforesaid, saith in an epistle : 'When
