If they be crafty, rekin and nombre
And tell of every thing the nombre,
Yet shullde fail to rekin even
The wonders we met in my sweven.
By another correspondent in the same miscellany[1] these lines were not thought to afford any elucidation of the subject, and the person who appealed to them was certainly incorrect in his transcript. Admitting, however, THE FIGURES NEWE to imply that they were not known long before Chaucer composed this Dreme, the question is not improper, whether for more than a century afterwards there are any traces of reckoning and numbering with figures TEN by any English Argus, who was a crafty and professed countour; and therefore my first article of inquiry shall be, Where is to be seen the oldest original MS. public or private, of a pecuniary account in which all the sums received and disbursed are entered in Arabic figures?
From what I can recollect of Madox's History of the Exchequer, (a book which I have it not in my power to consult) we shall search in vain for any such ancient statement in any department in that office. Clear is it from the wardrobe account of king Edward the Ist, published by the Society of Antiquaries, that all the sums are specified in Roman characters; and I have understood that in the like accounts of several succeeding princes there is not an Arabic figure to be seen.
Turn we then to the registers of monasteries, where considerable sums of money were received and paid, and the accounts kept with great exactness. Custumale Roffense has been already mentioned, and a reference shall now be made to the second volume of Decem Scriptores, in which are many items of the income and expences
- ↑ Vol. LIII. p. 639.
of
