favourite cup. Witness Spenser's musical and vivid description of
"A mazer ywrought of the maple warre,
Wherein is enchased many a fayre sight
Of bears and tygers, that maken fiers warre;
And over them spred a goodly wilde vine,
Entrailed with a wanton yvy twine.
Thereby is a lambe in the wolves jawes;
But see, how fast renneth the shepheard swain
To save the innocent from the beastes pawes,
And here with his sheepehooke hath him slain.
Tell me, such a cup hast thou ever seene?
Well mought it beseeme any harvest queene."
Mazer-bowl, temp. Ric. II.
The latest of our poets who alludes to it is Dryden: in the seventeenth century it may have been still in use among the humbler classes. The annexed cut represents a very perfect mazer[1] of the times of Richard the Second; its material is a highly polished wood, apparently maple, and the embossed rim of silver gilt[2] bears this legend:—
"In the name of the trinite
fille the kup and drinke to me."
In the lapse of time and advance of refinement, we find on the tables of the opulent, drinking-vessels of other forms and various names. The hanap, a cup raised on a stem, either with or without a cover; its form in the early part of the fourteenth century is shewn in the tail-piece, p. 180 ante; the cup said to have been given by King John to the corporation of Lynn is of the same species, as also the accompanying fine specimen of the sixteenth century from the collection of plate
