SOURCE: Bühler, Curt F. “A Survival from the Middle Ages: William Baldwin's Use of the Dictes and Sayings.” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 23, no. 1 (January 1948): 76-80.

In the following essay, Bühler argues that in composing his Treatise of Moral Philosophy Baldwin borrowed from the version of the thirteenth-century Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers that was translated into English by Earl Rivers.

William Baldwin's¹ A Treatise of Morall Phylosophie, judging from the number of editions which were called forth, seems to have been extremely popular among Tudor and Stuart readers, no fewer than twenty-three editions² having been issued between 1547 and 1651. The Treatise is divided into four parts, the first containing ‘The Lives and Witty Answers of the Philosophers’ and the remainder devoted to ‘Precepts and Counsells,’ ‘Proverbs and Adages’ and ‘Parables and Semblables,’ in that order. It purports to be, in the main, a collection...