regional oility :4 .T^uNiyERcm ii BOOKS IN MANUSCRIPT Plate I : BOOK OF KlvI,LS (7th Cent., Irish). Books in Manuscript A Short Introduction to their Study and Use. With eight Illustrations. By Falconer Madan, m.a. Hon. Fellow of Brasenose College Late Lecturer in Mediseval Palaeography in the University of Oxfor.l Second Edition, revised. London Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.; Ltd. MCMXX First Edition, 1893. Second edition revised and corrected, 1920. Preface The study of Manuscripts has a peculiar fascina- tion for that fortunate minority of literary workers who have to do with them. There may be much to attract us in the external beauty of the writing or ornamentation. Their contents also, being often unpublished matter, may be fresh and stimulating objects of original research. But there is this special point about a manuscript, that any one is unlike every other, is unique, has a distinct in- dividuality of its own. A written record, which is handing down the ages some literary treasure, does invest itself with a special colour and complexion, we may say, derived partly from the place and time and circumstances of its production, and partly from the personality of the man who wrote it. If we treat a manuscript as Henry Bradshaw treated a printed book, studying its peculiarities, making friends with it, and watching its features, as a portrait-painter his living subject, it will at length take us into its confidence > and will seem, as Ruskin said of the Alps, to " mutter and whisper to us vi Preface garrulously, in broken and dreaming fits, as it were, about its childhood." The present elementary work is intended to be a plain account of the study and use of manuscripts, such as may interest both the amateur who possesses manuscript treasures, but lacks the time or oppor- tunity to go deeply into the subject, and the student who may wish to have a first view of the character and methods of the study, before entering on the endless details of palaeography and textual criticism. There is little room for original matter, or for refer- ences to substantiate the statements made ; but the writer has attempted to be clear and readable, and to avoid exaggeration and prolixity. If the book leads collectors of manuscripts, or students either of the classics or of historical records, to take a keener and more intelligent interest in their work, its object will be attained. F. MADAN. Oxford, May, 1920. Contents PAGE CHAPTER I Introductory, CHAPTER II Materials for Writing, and Forms of Books, . 6 CHAPTER III The History of Writing, 19 CHAPTER IV Scribes and their Ways, 40 CHAPTER V Illuminations, 55 CHAPTER VI The Errors of Scribes and their Correction, . 68 CHAPTER VII Famous Libr;\ries, 88 CHAPTER VIII Famous Manuscripts, 106 viii Contents PAGE CHAPTER IX Literary Forgeries, 127 CHAPTER X Treatment and Cataloguing of Manuscripts, . 153 CHAPTER XI Public and Private Records, . . . . 167 Appendix A (Statistics of Public Collections of MSS.) 181 Appendix B (Catalogues of MSS. in the British Museum, Bodleian, &c.), .... 184 Appendix C (Select Bibliography), . . . 195 Index, 204 Illustrations PLATE I. Book of Kells (Early Irish Illumination) Frontispiece II. St. Mark (Page from the Bedford Hours) opposite page i III. Sacramentary (Carolingian Minuscule AND earlier hands) - - - - ,, 31 IV. Scriptorium (15TH Cent. Scribe at Work) ,, 45 V. Apocalypse (13TH Cent. French or English Script and Miniature) ----,, 64 VI. St. Michael (Page from a French Hours) ,, 66 VII. Send Inscription (Egyptian Hieroglyphics) ,, 106 VIII. Caedmon (Old English Script and Illumination „ 121 {For notes on the above, see pp. xi.-xv.) NOTES ON ILLUSTRATIONS (See p. ix.) PLATE I. (Book of Kells). Trinity College, Dublin, MS. (Book of Kells), fol. 290 (written in the second half of the seventh century in Ireland). Front, A reproduction, by collotype, of Plate ix. in J. O. Westwood's Facsimiles of Miniatures of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts. London, 1868, reduced about one-half in linear size. It repre- sents the symbols of the four Evangelists, set in a framework of intricate geometrical design. The interlaced bands and spirals are deserving of minute examination, while the comparative rudeness of the drawings of living figures shows clearly the limita- tions of excellence in the Irish School (see pp. 61, 114). The principal colours are yellow, red, pink, and green. Some lacertine figures can be distinguished in two of the limbs of the large diagonal cross. PLATE II. (St. Mark). Brit. Mus. MS., Add. 18,850, fol. 24 (the Bedford Hours). Written about a.d. 1425 in France. A collotype reproduction, reduced about one- half in linear size. p. 1. The Bedford Hours (Horae B. Mariae Virginis) generally known as the Bedford Missal, one of the most splendid ex- amples of fifteenth-century illumination, is a ms. written and painted for John, Duke of Bedford, son of Henry iv., and Anne, his wife, daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, after their mar- riage in 1423, and before the presentation of the volume to Henry vi. in 1430. The style is French, probably Burgundian ; and the illuminations are among the finest known. That in the plate represents St. Mark, ' comment Saint Marc escript I'Euuangile et a figure du lion." The lion, one wing of which is red and the other white, is depicted as holding the inkpot, and the Saint's left hand holds a blunt instrument for steadying the parchment, and preventing the contact of hand and sheet : by the side is a hanging lamp. There is appreciation of xii Notes on Illustrations perspective in the drawing of the architectural background. The border represents scenes in the Ufe of St. Mark. The first two Unes run : — In illo tempore accum | bentibus undecim disci. The devolution of this volume has been remarkable : — The Duchess of Bedford presented it to Henry vi. ; but we find it next in the possession of Henry ii. of France. After an interval of oblivion, it was purchased from Sir Robert Worsley's widow, early in the eighteenth century, by Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford, from whom it passed to his daughter, the Duchess of Portland ; then it was successively sold, in 1 786 to Mr. Edwards, a bookseller, in 1815 to the Duke of Marlborough, and in 1833 to Sir John Tobin, whose son disposed of it to the bookseller from whom the British Museum purchased it in 1852, thus placing it once more with the Harleian Collection. PLATE III. (Sacramentary). Bodl. MS. Auct. D. I. 20, fol. 120, lower part. (Written in the ninth century at Mainz.) p. 31. An example (reproduced by photo-lithography) of ninth - century Continental writing and ornamentation, containing part of the Mass on the occasion of the dedication of a church of St. Michael. The first five lines are : — Sanctorum, per domir.um nostrum. Ill Kalendas Gctobres id est XX. \ Villi die niensis Septembris. dedicatio basilice saiicii angeli michaelis \ Deus qui miro I ordiue angelorum | mysteria hominumque dispensas. j A fair representation of square capital (see page 27) is given by hne 3 ; of Rustic Capitals (see page 27) in lines 1,2, and 9; of uncial (see page 27) by line 4 ; and of ninth-century Carolingian minuscule by the rest (seepage 28). The contracted style of Rustic capitals is well shown, and the rounded character of the ordinary hand, as opposed to the angular Gothic hand which followed it. PLATE IV. (Scribe at Work). Paris (National Library) ms., Ponds frangais 9,198, fol. 19. (Written in 1456, at the Hague, by Jean Mielot, secretary to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy.) p. 45. Notes on Illustrations xiii This is a representation of Jean Mielot himself, writing his collection of Miracles of Our Lady in French, reproduced in collotype (by permission) from the collot5^e which is given in Sir G. F. Warner's Miracles de Nostre Dame, 1885, but reduced to about one-half the linear size. The scribe is writing on a large roll of parchment held steady by a weight, and holds in his left hand a knife for erasure (?), or possibly an instrument to keep the parchment firm without the contact of the hand. Above, on a separate desk, is the ms. to be copied, and by the side are three ink-bottles, while paint-pots hang on the wall. On the spectator's right is an armarium, or cupboard, holding other manuscripts, the upper part of which displaj's drawers which contain books, pens, and, apparently, a double eye-glass for purposes of close inspection. The volumes lying about afford good illustrations of binding. PLATE V. (Apocalypse). Bodl. MS. Douce i8o, p. 6i, (Written about A.D. 1280, probably in France.) p. 64. The MS. contains the Apocalypse, with a commentary in Latin, and is reproduced by photo-lithography, reduced to about one-half the linear size of the original. Illumination. — The subject is the delivery of the Seven Vials to the Seven Angels by one of the Four Beasts (Rev. xv. 5-7) : the door of the Temple is represented in the background. It is in outline only, without colour, but the faces and general style are French or Anglo-Norman. Writing. — The Gothic angular character, which came in in the thirteenth century (see page 30). The first three lines of the text and commentary are : — (i) Et ttnus ex quatuor anima \ libus dedit septem angelis \ septem phialas aureus plenas : (2) Quatuor animalia quamuis quatuor euangelis | tas significeyit. tamen & simul 6- singiilatim christum sig | nificeni. Set quia breuitas non permittit ut dicamus. The contrast between the rounded Carolingian minuscule and this set of letters, which arc chiefly composed of straight lines, is well marked . It is probably French writing, but possibly, as accidentally left on the Plate itself, English. xiv Notes on Illustrations PLATE VI. (St. Michael). Bodl. MS. Douce 144, fol. 129''. (Written in a.d. 1407 in the Diocese of Paris.) p. 66. Illumination. — This plate, a collotype, reduced by about one-fourth in linear size, from a Book of Hours, represents St. Michael the Archangel slaying the Dragon. The inner margin is of a florid formal style, and rather in fourteenth-century style : the outer one is ' ivy-leaf ' work, and contains a repre- sentation of a soul weighed in the balance, and in the lower part a grotesque. The diaper background is also rather of the fourteenth than the fifteenth century in style. The colours are chiefly red, blue, and gold ; St. Michael's mantle is red, but inside, green ; his wings, green and yellow ; his armour, a steely blue : the red and blue diapers contain a ' fleur-de-lys ' : all the gold is of course burnished. Writing. — Michael archangele ueni in ad \ iutorium populo dei. Verset. | In conspectu angelorum psallam \ tibi deus mens. Respons. — This is the beginning of the special service for St. Michael, often found in a Book of Hours, giving the introductory sentence, the Versicle, and the rubric of the Respond ; the rubrics being in French. PLATE VIL (Send Inscription). A photo-lithograph from the engraving in Lepsius's Auswahl, the size of the original monument being i ft. 6| in. x 3 ft. 7I in. p. 106. The following description is abbreviated from G. J. Chester's Catalogue of the Egyptian Antiquities in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1881), page 47 : — A limestone cornice of the false door of a tomb on which, on the left, is a seated figure of S'era, a royal relative, a priest of Sent, king of the second dynasty. At the opposite side is the seated figure of Xenttek, a female, called Mare'st, an unknown title. Between them is a table, covered with reeds, on which is meat. At each end is a basin and water-jug. Above and below the hieroglyphs mention Notes on Illustraliom, XV incense, dates, wine, loaves, linen, flesh, etc., all offerings to the king. ' This is, perhaps, the earliest Egyptian sculpture known.' At present (1920) the probable date is about B.C. 3000. The cartouche in the centre of the upper line contains the king's name, thus ( s j = Send, alphabetically written (!) and the N and d (see page 24) are the symbols which eventually became our corresponding letters. PLATE VIII. (Caedmon). Bodl. MS., Junius ii, p. 66. (Written about a.d. 1000 in a West-Saxon hand : reduced to about one-half the linear size.) p. 121. Illumination. — The Ark, with animals on board : the type of vessel appears to be Norse. The drapery, postures, and faces are distinctively Old EngUsh. The side-rudder, dragon- shaped boat, ornamental iron hinges, and architectural details of the erection on deck are noticeable, and the expression on the pilot's face. That the figure of Christ should be introduced is a characteristic anachronism. Writing (first three lines) .^ — Noe freme. swa hine nergend heht. hyrde tham hal | gan. heofon cyninge ongan, ofostlice thcst hof wyrcan. \ micle mere cieste. magum scsgde. thcBt wcbs threalic thing. I The style is pointed Old English, and characteristic Hiberno-Saxon forms of letters are the g, f, and r : observe also the high e, and the Old English letters, th (thorn) and w (wen), as well as the barred i in line 4 and elsewhere. ir^^S^i^^-'^. |V;nrbimn«ivffmvriniuaiigilfrraiiyjn'6uJwi*«nf£&'pin5rlfli»parf.fflmnlfcnBrtclf{5ufoifiS41 Plate II : St. MARK. From the Bedford Hours, c. 1425. BOOKS IN MANUSCRIPT CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The word ' Manuscript ' (often written MS., in plural MSS.) is derived directly from the Latin expression codices manu scripti (books written by hand), and has always implied precisely what is indicated by its derivation. It is distinguished on the one hand from printed books {codices impressi, libri impressi), and on the other hand from kinds of record not naturally described as handwriting, such as inscriptions cut in stone and metal and wood, or stamped work like coins. We, who are accustomed to a profusion of printed books on all possible subjects, may be tempted to consider the study of written records to be superflu- ous, and this first natural tendency is furthered by the undoubted fact that the manuscripts met with in our ordinary life are the most ephemeral of all the literature presented to us, largely consisting of private records of no permanent value, such as correspondence, diaries, or notes. Even in matters of law, where the importance of ancient records as B 2 Books in Manuscript establishing or refuting a claim cannot be over- looked, the tendency of modern legislation is to make possession even more than ' nine-tenths of the law,' and to bar all claims which have not been recently asserted. Similarly, the modern poUtician finds little to incite him to a study of palaeography, and trusts to the printing-press to supply him with material. But a student cannot too clearly set before himself the simple fact that, until four and a half centuries ago (a.d. 1440, say), every record was a written one. Every monument of literature, every treatise of philosophy, every historical chronicle, every sacred writing which is older than the fifteenth century, — whether preserved to us by the thinnest possible thread of transmission, as are Tacitus and Catullus and Beowulf, or by a body of evidence such as that which supports the New Testament or Virgil, — all this has come down to us solely and singly by the vehicle of thought which is the special subject of this book. For centuries such works were exposed to all the chances and imperfections which attend the scribe and his pen and his book, and, in the Hght of modern discoveries connected with writing, we can never safely claim that a printed edition supersedes further study and comparison of the manuscripts on which it is based. And there is another reason why the study of manuscripts is never Hkely to be a mere antiquarian pursuit. When modern books on past history Introductory 3 written in the current style of literature and in the language of the day, are taken in hand, the student naturally finds very considerable difficulty in reahsing the actual surroundings of the time described. It is inevitable that to some extent this should be so ; but historians now endeavour to minimize it, by presenting in or side by side with their narrative, selections of original documents. These are wonderful helps to appreciation of the time, left in their old spelling and phraseology and appearance. It is to the same feeHng that we owe the growing practice of profusely illustrating books. But a manuscript before one is more than all this, as every reader in the Public Record Ofifice and every possessor of old historical records know. A despatch from Cromwell, hastily written during some cam- paign, an order from Charles I. marked ' for the printer,' but stt aside in consequence of a hurried departure, bring the scene better before us than any laboured description, and there is a freshness in dealing with such records which no modern book, even with the powerful aid of photography, can supply. The terrible neglect of manuscripts in the past — whether historical, liturgical, or literary — shows how long we have taken to learn this lesson. And once more, modem readers who are accus- tomed to skim the Times every morning and a novel every few days, when set down before some import- ant historical work, find that their minds are as it were unstrung and incapable of close attention and 4 Books in Manuscript sustained effort. They are tempted to glance superficially through volumes which ought to be impressed on the mind, and they profit little by the process. For these and such as these the study of an original document in manuscript, a court-roll, a charter, a page of a chronicle, an old political poem, isTthe one corrective which suits the disease, — a bracing, invigorating, and, it may be added, an attractive exercise, the contact of Antaeus with his mother earth. A caution may be here given. A student who may be attracted to original work in mediaeval or ancient subjects can hardly even start unless he has a sound knowledge of Latin. Latin was throughout the Middle Ages the language of the Church, and the lingua franca of scholars and historians and lawyers. It is a sine qua non for any serious study of mediaeval problems. The aim of this little book is to familiarize the possessor of a private collection of MSS,, or one who is about to enter on the study of them, with some sahent features of ancient writing ; with the forms and kinds of books, and the conditions under which they were produced and illustrated ; and with some of the principles by which the errors of a copyist are corrected. It will be lighter work to add a brief account of some famous public and private collec- tions, and of the vicissitudes and romances of a few particular volumes. Finally, the proper treatment and cataloguing of such books will also deserve Introductory 5 attention ; and a list of the more useful works already produced on the subjects treated, with some notices of libraries and their catalogues, will form a natural appendix. CHAPTER II MATERIALS FOR WRITING, AND FORMS OF BOOKS A. — Materials Probably the earliest efforts of the human race to record its thoughts and history were by scratching with some hard instrument on stone or bone. The permanence of the result has always made stone or metal a satisfactory substance to receive engraving, whether for sepulchral tablets, for some official records, such as State decrees, or for honorary inscriptions. Among obvious examples are the drawings of prehistoric man on the walls of caves, the Ten Commandments graven on stone, the Nicene Creed cut in silver by Pope Leo III.'s order (to fix the absolute form decreed by the second General Council), the Parian Chronicle, the Rosetta Stone, and tombs of all ages. It is on stone almost alone that we find in the early classical days of Rome the pure capital forms of letters, as on the tombs of the Scipios. And as material tends to act on style, and as curves are harder to grave than straight lines, writing on stone tends to discard the former and to encourage the latter, so that we find in such inscriptions a decided preference for angular forms of letters. 6 Materials for Writing 7 But another very early material for writing was the wood or bark of trees. It was easy to obtain, soft, and fairly durable. Three of our common terms are derived from the custom of cutting or scratching on wooden boards or bark, the Latin liber (a book, properly the bark of a tree, whence such words as library, libretto), the Latin codex (or caudex, a tree-stump, then sawn boards, then a book, now narrowed to a manuscript book ; compare codicil, a diminutive form), and perhaps the Teutonic word which appears in German as Buck and in English as book, meaning originally a beech tree and beechen boards. Next we come to the substance which has given us much of the terminology of books. A common reed, chiefly found in Egypt, and known to the Greeks as s-aTrupo? {papuros), and to the Romans as papyrus, was discovered to be, when properly pre- pared, a facile and cheap material for writing. The inner rind was cut lengthways into thin strips (^v/3Xoi, bubloi), and laid in order thus : — On this was glued, with the help of rich Nile water or other substance, another set of slips laid on the former transversely, thus : ^^- .-I This cross-formed substance* properly pressed, hammered and dried, presented a smooth but soft receptive surface for ink, and was most extensively used in classical times until parch- ment competed with it, or, more accurately, till the export of papyrus began to fail. The papyrus, 8 Books in Manuscript however, was not used in the form of our books, but as a long roll, with the writing in broad columns placed thus, the writing being represented by wavy lines : — Birt, in his book Das antike Buchwesen (1882), has endeavoured to prove that there was a normal length of about thirty-eight letters in each line, but the length of the entire roll might be anything up to 150 feet. There are also a face and a back to papyri, a right and a wrong side for writing. In the British Museum there is a papyrus roll containing, in Greek, the funeral oration of Hyperides on Leosthenes, B.C. 323 ; on the other side of this is a horoscope of a person born in a.d. 95. Naturally, for some time it was believed that the horoscope was casually inscribed on the back of the Hyperides ; but a closer examination has proved that the horoscope is on the face of the papyrus, and the Hyperides perhaps a school exercise accidentally entered on the back. So that A.D. 95 is not the terminus ad quern of the date, but the terminus a quo. Unfortunately, of all possible materials for per- manent record, papyrus is among the worst. Even when first written on, it must have seemed ominous Materials for Writing 9 that a heavy stroke was wont to pierce and scratch the smooth surface ; so much so that in all papyrus records the writing is along the Hne of the uppermost layers or strips (not across them), and is also of necessity Hght, and hardly distinguishable into up and down strokes. This foreshadowed the time when, on the complete drying of the substance in course of years, the residuum would be fragile, friable, and almost as brittle as dead leaves. Every papyrus that comes into a library should therefore be at once placed between two sheets of glass, to prevent, as far as possible, any further disintegration. The terms used in connexion with writing in Greek, Latin and English are chiefly derived from the rolls of papyrus. Let us begin with two words which have had an interesting history. Oar ' paper ' is derived from the Greek -rraTrvpo^ (through the Latin papyrus), explained above as the name of an Egyptian reed. Thence it came to mean the papyrus as prepared to receive writing. How then has paper, which has always been made out of rags, usurped the name without taking over the material -^ Simply because the term came to signify whatever substance was commonly employed for writing ; so when papyrus was disused (the latest date of its systematic use is the eleventh century), a material formed of rags was beginning to be known, and carried on, so to speak, the term. The Latin charta (paper) has had a partly similar history, for when first found it is applied to papyrus as distinguished from parchment. lo Books in Manuscript Still more interesting is the word Bible. Bv/3Xoi (bubloi) was the Greek term for the strips of the inner part of pap3'rus. Then the book formed of papyrus began to be called /3t/?Aos (biblos) and /?t^Aiov {biblion, a diminutive form). The Romans took over the second word, but chiefly used it in the plural, biblia, which came later to be regarded as a feminine singular, as if its genitive were biblice and not bibliormn. Lastly, the word became specially and exclusively apphed to The Book, the Bible, and as such has passed into English. Other terms which recall the days of papyrus are volume (Latin volumen, ' a thing rolled up,' from volvo, I roll ; corresponding to the Greek KvXivSpos, kulindros) , the long stretch of papyrus rolled up for putting away ; the Latin term evolvere, to unroll, in the sense of ' to read ' a book ; and the common word explicit, equivalent to ' the end,' but properly meaning ' unrolled ' {' explicitus '), the end of the roll having been reached.^ So, too, the custom of writing on parchment with three or even four columns to a single page, as may be seen in our most ancient Greek MSS. of the New Testa- ment, is probably a survival of the parallel columns of writing found on papyri. We next come to the most satisfactory material ever discovered for purposes of writing and illumina- tion, tough enough for preservation to immemorial ^ It will be observed that ' explicit ' is a vox nihili, and can only be properly explained as a contraction of ' explicit{us) ' est liber, the book ' is unrolled to the end.' The corresponding term is inciplt, ' here begins,' which is a good Latin word. Materials for Writing 1 1 time, hard enough to bear thick strokes of pen or brush without the surface giving way, and yet line enough for the most delicate ornamentation. Parch- ment is the prepared skin of animals, especially of the sheep and calf ; the liner quality derived from the calf being properly vellum, and if from the skin of an abortive calf, uterine vellum, the whitest and thinnest kind known, employed chiefly for elaborate miniatures. Parchment has neither the fragile surface of papyrus nor the coarseness of mediaeval paper, and has therefore long enjoyed the favour of writers. Its only disadvantages in mediaeval times were its comparative costliness and its thickness and weight, but neither of these was a formidable obstacle to its use. The name of this substance contains its history. In the first half of the second century before Christ, Eumenes II., King of Pergamum, found himself debarred, through some jealousy of the Ptolemies, from obtaining a sufficient supply of papyrus from Egypt. From necessity he had recourse to an ancient custom of preparing skins for the reception of writing by washing, dressing and rubbing them smooth ; probably adding some new appliances, by which his process became so famous that the material itself was called liipyaix^^vi'i ; in Latin, Pergarnena, ' stuff prepared at Pergamum,' whence the EngHsh word parchment. Both parchment and paper have had less effect than stone or papyrus on styles of writing, because both are adapted to receive almost any 12 Books in Manuscript stroke of the pen. They have rather allowed styles to develop themselves naturally, and are specially favourable to flowing curves, which are as easy as they are graceful in human penmanship. Paper has for long been the common substance for miscellaneous purposes of ordinary writing, and has till recent times been formed solely from rags (chiefly of linen), reduced to a pulp, poured out on a frame in a thin watery sheet, and gradually dried and given consistence by the action of heat. It has been a popular beUef, found in every book till 1886 (now entirely disproved^ but probably destined to die hard), that the common yellowish thick paper, with rough fibrous edge, found especially in Greek MSS. till the fifteenth century, was paper of quite another sort, and made of cotton {charta bombyclna, bombyx being usually silk, but also used of any fine fibre such as cotton). The microscope has at last conclusively shown that these two sorts are simply two different kinds of ordinary linen-rag paper. A few facts about the dates at which papyrus, parchment and paper are found may be inserted here. The use of papyrus in Egypt is of great antiquity, and the earliest Greek and Latin MSS. we possess are on papyrus ; in the case of Greek of the fourth century B.C., in Latin of the first century A.D. It was freely exported to Greece and Rome, and, though it gradually gave way before parch- ment for the finest books, from the first century B.C. onwards, it was not till the tenth century a.d. that Materials for Writing i 3 in Egypt itself its use was abandoned. Practically in about A. D. 935 its fabrication ceased, although for Pontifical Bulls it was invariably used till a.d. 1022, and occasionally till 1050. Parchment has also been used from the earliest times ; and its use was revived, as we have seen, in the second century before Christ, and lasted till the invention of printing, after which it was reserved for sumptuous editions, and for legal and other durable records. Paper was first manufactured (outside China) at Samarkand in Turkestan in about a.d. 750 ; and even in Spain, where first it obtained a footing in Europe (in the tenth century), it was imported from the East, not being manufactured in the West till the twelfth century ; but from that time its use spread rapidly. In England there was a paper-mill owned by John Tate in 1495, when Bartholomaeus Glan- ville's De proprietatibus rerum was issued on native paper. Watermarks in paper (see p. 16) are entirely a Western invention, found first towards the end of the thirteenth century, and never found at all in Oriental paper. Besides stone, papyrus, parchment, and paper, the materials used for writing, though numerous, are rather curious than important. Tablets of wood, hinged like a book and covered with wax, on which letters were scratched with a small pointed metal rod {stilus, whence our words style, stiletto, etc.), were common at Rome in classical and later times, and are believed to have suggested the form of our 14 Books in Manuscript ordinary books. For private accounts and notes these wax tablets are said to have been in use in Western Europe until the time of printing. Various metals, especially lead, have been made use of to bear writing ; and also bones (in prehistoric times), clay inscribed when soft and then baked (as in Assyria), potsherds [ostraka), leaves, and the like. B. — Forms of Books We now come to the forms of books — the way in which they are made up. In the case of papyrus, as has already been observed, we almost always find the roll-form. The long strip was, of course, rolled round a round rod or two rods (one at each end) when not in use, much as a wall-map is at the present day. With parchment the case has been different. Though in classical times in Rome, so far as can be judged, the roll-form was still in ordinary use even when parchment was the material, and though, in the form of court-rolls, pedigrees, and many legal kinds of record, we are still famihar with the appear- ance of a roll, the tendency of writers on parchment has been to prefer and perpetuate the form of book best known at the present day, in which pages are turned over by the reader, and no membranes unrolled. The normal formation of a parchment book in the Middle Ages was this : — four pieces of parchment, each roughly about lo inches high and i8 inches broad, were taken and were folded once across, so Forms of Books 15 that each piece formed four pages (two leaves) as a basis for making a quarto volume. These pieces were then fitted one inside another, so that the first piece formed the ist and 8th leaves, the second the 2nd and 7th, the third the 3rd and 6th, and the fourth the two middle leaves of a complete section of eight leaves or sixteen pages, termed technically in Latin a quaternio, because made of four [quatuor) pieces of parchment. When a sufficient number of quaternions were thus formed to contain the pro- jected book, they were sent in to the scribe for writ- ing on, and were eventually bound. Many variations of form, both smaller and larger than quarto, are found, and often more or fewer pieces than four make up the section or quire. Paper was essentially different from parchment, in that it could be made of larger size and folded smaller ; whereas the cost of skins was almost pro- hibitive, if very large and fine pieces were required. As a fact, paper has almost always been used in book and not roll-form. The normal formation of paper- books has been this :— a piece about 12 inches high by 16 inches wide was regarded as a standard size. This was folded across along the dotted line a h, and if this singly-folded sheet was re garded as the basis of a section, and the whole book was made up of a set of these sections, it was called a folio book ; if, however, the singly-folded sheet was folded f til \ 1 6 Books in Manuscript again across the dotted line c d, and this was treated as a section (containing four leaves or eight pages), the book made up of such sections was called a quarto. Once more, if the doubly- folded sheet was again folded along the dotted line ef, and this trebly-folded sheet was treated as a section (containing eight leaves or sixteen pages), ^ the book was called an octavo. The methods of folding the sheet so as to pro- duce a duodecimo, a i6mo, etc., and the use 7 of half-sheets to form sections, are matters which concern printing rather than wiiting. But it should be clearly understood that, whereas we now mean by a folio a tall narrow book, by a quarto a shorter broad book, and by an octavo a short narrow book, judging by size and shape ; in the earlier days of paper, these terms indicated, not size or even shape, but form, that is to say, the way in which the sheets of paper were folded up to form sections ; and that it is only owing to the fact that a certain size of paper was generally adopted as a standard that the terms came to have their modern signification. So true is this, that some early foHos are quite small, and many quartos larger or smaller than what we call quarto. But there is one infallible test of a true folio, quarto, or octavo. Observe the diamond on the figures on pp. 15-16, and the lines drawn across them. The diamond represents the watermark, a trade design (such as a jug, a unicorn, a pair of scissors, etc.) Forms of Books 17 inserted by the maker in every sheet, and the lines are ' chain-lines,' the marks where the wire frames supported the half liquid paper-sheet as it gathered consistency by being dried. The position of the watermark and the direction of the chain-Hnes were fortunately invariable, and therefore (as may be easily seen by a paper model) every true folio has the watermark in the centre of a page and the chain-Hnes perpendicular ; every quarto has the watermark in the centre of the back, not easy to see, and the Hues horizontal ; and every octavo has a watermark at the top of the back at the inner edge, and the hues perpendicular. These points are not necessarily true of modern books. C. — Instruments and Ink On this subject few words are necessary. For hard substances and for wax and clay, a graving tool or pointed metal rod is necessary ; for papyrus and parchment and paper, a pen. Pens have till modern times always been of one of two kinds, either made of a reed {calamus, arundo, a reed-pen), or made of a quill, usually from a bird's feather {penna,a. quill- pen). The latter appears to be the later in inven- tion, but is found as early as the sixth century of our era. Ink (atramcntum) has hardly varied in composition from the earliest times, having been always formed in one of two ways : either, as was the common practice in classical times, by a mixture of soot with gum and water, which produces a black lustrous ink, c 1 8 Books in Manuscript but is without much difficulty removed with a sponge ; or by galls (gallic acid) with sulphate of iron and gum, which is the modern method, though also so ancient as to be found on the Herculanean rolls. At Pompeii ink of this kind was found still liquid after seventeen centuries of quiescence. The chief coloured inks known to antiquity were red, purple, green, and yellow : gold and silver liquids were sometimes used, especially when the parch- ment had been stained purple to enhance the effect. For the colours used in illumination, Chapter V. may be consulted. So far we have been concerned with passive sub- stances prepared and presented to the scribe, to become instinct with life when the message of the author is consigned to the expectant page. Our next chapters will naturally treat of the writing itself, and of scribes and their ways, the living elements in a book. CHAPTER III THE HISTORY OF WRITING After the invention of speech, the invention of writing was only a question of time. No race of human beings which could speak would rest for long contented with oral communication, but would en- deavour, whether for the transmission of a message or for permanent record, to represent words by visible characters. And as early speech made large use of the imitative (onomatopceetic) faculty, so primitive writing made free use of pictures, first to represent material things, and then by a further advance of its infant powers to represent ideas suggested by those pictures. These two stages are known as ideographic, ideograms meaning either pictures or (for the second stage) pictorial symbols. It is curious to note that the contents of an ordinary printer's case of type show an ideogram still in use. What is ^^ but a ' pictorial symbol,' saying as clearly as in words, ' Look there ! ' ? So, too, the ' Roman ' numerals I, II, III, IIII are in all probability pictures of one, two, three, and four fingers held up, just as V is the whole hand, the four fingers being grouped together as one and the thumb as the other Umb of the figure. X is probably 19 20 Books in Manuscript simply two Vs ; but the higher Roman numerals were not needed by primitive man, and seem not to be ideographic. Savages still use this picture- language ; and Dr. Isaac Taylor, in his History of the Alphabet, gives a striking illustration of a record of a raid made by North American Indians in a.d. 1762, in which almost every part is pure picture writing ! The third stage was perhaps the most momentous, and consisted in fixing a written symbol, not to some object or idea, but to a particular sound, whatever objects or ideas that sound might call up ; as would be the case if the mark ^^ were not taken to represent ' look ! ' or ' attend ! ' or ' there ! ' but the sotmd ' there,' so that it would stand for ' there ' or (pretty nearly) ' their.' This, the ' phonographic ' stage, is the one in which we now are, and consists naturally of three steps — (i) when the written symbol represents a whole word, (2) when it ex- presses a single syllable, (3) when it represents a single letter, as in our present alphabetical writing. The first two of these may be illustrated by the use of & for et in Latin, coupled with its usage in certain centuries in any word containing -et-, so that we 1^n^fier&, perp&uus, and the like ; for in these latter examples the symbol means the sound et and not the word et. The third is, of course, our own usage. The letters which we use in writing and printing have had a history which exhibits in most cases, in spite of our imperfect records, every one of the five The History of Writing 2 i stages described above. We will briefly trace this line, giving the ancestry of the English alphabet, and selecting the letters D and M for illustration. The pedigree is this : — TILL Egyptian (Hieroglyphic), ) Egyptian (Hieratic), about 19th cent, b.c.) Old Semitic. . Phoenician, . , . f Semitic, about 1 100 B.C. Old Greek, . close of Qth cent. b.c. T-atin, . about 600 A.D. ■Aryan. English, J The most extraordinary fact in this line is the transference of the alphabet on two separate occa- sions from one race of languages to another. Each race has its peculiar sounds, vowel and consonantal, and a transference of the symbols without the actual sounds would seem a hopeless and unworkable task. And our surprise is not lessened when we consider three points in which Semitic languages differ from all others — (i) nearly all are written from right to left, (2) the Semitic alphabet proper has no true vowels, (3) it has never varied from twenty-two letters, whereas the Aryan alphabets constantly vary in the number and phonetic value of the letters. For twenty-eight centuries have the Semitic lan- guages preserved these peculiarities ; and that men were able to accomplish the feat of transference to and from a Semitic alphabet is a wonderful testi- mony to human powers of adaptation, 2 2 Books in Manuscript Among the earliest Egyptian Hieroglyphic writings preserved to us is that which is cut on a stone tablet ' in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and carries us back to a priest employed in the cult of the Egyptian king Send, not later than about 3000 B.C. This inscription is still one of the oldest known written records in the world. In this, as well as in later records, we find all five stages coexisting ! This fact will serve to impress on us the immense antiquity of Egyptian writing and of alphabetical writing, and the various rate at which civilization progresses ; for we find alphabetical symbols in B.C. 3000, and purely pictorial symbols in a.d, 1762, though the latter is as certainly prior in conception to the former as the dawn is before the day. By the nineteenth century B.C. the ancient Hieroglyphic picture writing of Egypt was worn down to what is known as Hieratic, in which the symbols would not be at once recognized as pictures, though based on them. In about this century, probably just when the IsraeHtes were in Egypt, the great transference took place : a Semitic people adopted the Egyptian symbols, using them for what is known as Old Semitic, as seen in the Siloam inscription at Jerusalem, and the Moabite Stone now (so far as it has survived) in the Louvre at Paris. We have no evidence whatever of the way in which the Phoenicians acquired and adopted the Old Semitic symbols ; and till recently the weak link of 1 See illustration opposite p. io6. The History of Writing 23 the whole chain of connexion was at this point, the doubt being, not whether the earliest Greek writing was deduced from Phoenician (for that has been universally conceded) , but whether and how Phcenician came from Old Semitic. However, the opinions of De Rouge and others, as described, for instance, in Isaac Taylor's History of the Alphabet, have till lately been generally accepted, and even now no constructive theory has been advanced to take their place. The general effect of the dis- coveries of Sir Arthur Evans and others is to show that the history of the alphabet is more complex than was at one time thought. De Rouge's theory has no doubt been rudely shaken, and it has been shown that all kinds of direct transmission have taken place, as from Egypt and from Philistia to Crete. Non nostrum tantas , but it may still well be true that much of the alphabet passed along De Rouge's lines of transference. It is instructive to see what soHd truth is thus to be found in the old Greek legend of Cadmus, which represents him as a Phcenician of Tyre, yet in- timately connected with Egypt, and as having introduced into Greece from Phoenicia or Egypt an alphabet of sixteen letters. For the Greeks did most undoubtedly derive their own alphabet from the Phoenician, adapting Semitic symbols to an Aryan set of sounds ; and caused it to be used in Greece itself and over all the shores of the ^Egean. The Greek alphabet thus acquired was carried by the 24 Books in Manuscript Chalcidians of Eiibnea, at about the end of the ninth century b.c, to one of their Itahan colonies, the well-known town of Cumae in Campania, and, for some reason not recorded in history, was taken up by the one Italian people destined to found an empire, the earliest inhabitants of Rome. The result may be told in Dr. Isaac Taylor's words : ' It became the alphabet of Latin Christendom, and the literary alphabet of Europe and America. It is now, with the single exception of the Arabic, the only alphabet possessing any claim to cosmopolitan extension.' The letter D is a good example of the changes above described: — In Hieroglyphic, it is a view of the hand, the thumb projecting above (see plate opposite p. io6, in the cartouche) . Clearly the essen- tial point about the figure is, not the view of the fingers, but the projection of the thumb ; accord- ingly in Hieratic the form is -"^V preserving the thumb-line. In Old Semitic this became -^^^ an angular form due to inscriptions (see p. 6), perpetuated in the Greek A, but rounded in Latin to D, and in later forms to d,di, <1 Or take the letter M. In Hieroglyphic this is a side view of an owl, with its face turned towards the spectator, r\ . The owl was mulak, and so when the symbol became syllabic it represented mil, and when alphabetic m. Later the owl loses The History of Writing 25 its ears and tail, but still recalls the picture, fX ; in Hieratic it has come to 3 ^^^ upper curve representing the head and the lower the rounded back, all else being dropped as unessential. This in Old Semitic appears as /^, in Greek as M, in Latin capitals the same, and in smaller letters, from an attempt to write it quickly, m. Let us now trace in rather more detail the history of writing in Western Europe from Roman times to our own. Much of the significance and most of our appreciation of the manuscript volumes to be here- after described will be lost if we do not see clearly, even if in outline only, the changes of writing which mark the principal eras and nationalities which succeeded the empire of Rome. The table on page 26 will illustrate the course and connexion of each kind. The great fundamental division of writing, which is applicable to all periods and peoples, is that which puts on one side the common, ordinary hand in private use, — the hand which we and all our ancestors have used in writing letters, setting down accounts, keeping diaries, and scribbling, — which is Cursive ; and puts on the other side the writing reserved for Uterary monuments, the ornamental, set, careful, impressive hand which we now, owing to the printing-press, hardly know, but in which monks wrote out chronicles, in which old service books were produced, in which legal and regal trans- actions, and everything which seemed to deserve 26 Books in Manuscript ^ w l-i Ph 0) o ^3 ^ ^ p w O M ;z; Ci:5 cS W H Q < ^ u o fn O O ro ta CO •^ O r ;zi fl t— ( < H 4-> h- < a f^ u ;z; o X O O OJ « s o m S •5" I o o • I— I Oi \ s u ta S a / e / o w w o f^ 6 « o o > o en ?^ o o .1 I -03 C/3 -•J O 2§ I— ( -bO The History of Writing 27 immortal record, were enshrined. We ourselves usually have two hands, if we only notice them, a careless private one, and a formal calligraphic style. -^Our survey of Western handwritings naturally begins with the Roman Capital writing. The sudden remark of every one who is shown a specimen for the first time is, how extremely like our own printed capitals ! Take a facsimile of a MS. written in Roman square capitals — every letter from A to Z will be found shaped as ours, except W, which does not exist in Latin, and J, U, which are not distinct from I, V. How this comes to be, in a subject where all is change, will be seen as we proceed. Pure square Capitals are hard to find in writing as distinguished from inscriptions, but exist, for instance, in the fragments of Virgil in the library of St. Gall (fourth or fifth century a.d. : Palceogr. Soc. i. plate 208). But the first declension from the pure type, namely Rustic Capitals, is not uncommon. In this all the letters are capital, but are thinner, compressed laterally as it were, while the numerous horizontal strokes on the right hand of an ordinary capital are often prolonged to the left. Thus E becomes '£^ x becomes I. The first great change is, however, the Uncial hand, which perhaps meaning originally letters an inch {uncia) long, came to be used for a kind in which all the letters are still capital, except that A, D, E, H, M, Q have become ^, 6,6, b, CO, 9- The next step is the still com- moner Half -Uncial hand, in which the general 2 8 Books in Manuscript appearance is no longer capital, and indeed only N and F are clearly and unmistakably of that nature ; the rest approximating in shape rather to our small printed letters, as in p, ra, f (s), T (r). It will be understood that the references in this chapter are to the ordinary, natural hand of a scribe, not to the artificial and ornamental hands reserved for titles and incipits or colophons. It is due to the latter that the plate opposite p. 31 is able to present us with four styles in one example. In the seventh and eighth centuries we find the first tendency to form national hands, resulting in the Merovingian or Prankish hand, the Beneventan of Italy, and the Visigothic of Spain. These are the first difficult hands, except Old Cursive ; and when we remember that the object of writing is to be clear and distinct, and that the test of a good style is that it seizes on the essential points in which letters differ, and puts aside the flourishes and ornaments which disguise the simple form, we shall see how much a strong influence was needed to prevent writing from being ruined by the national hands. That influence was found in Charles the Great. In the field of writing it has been granted to no person but Charles the Great to influence profoundly the history of the alphabet. With rare insight and rarer taste he discoimtenanced the prevalent Mero- vingian hand, and substituted an eclectic hand, known as the Carolingian Minuscule, which may still be regarded as a model of clearness and elegance. The History of Writing 29 The chief instrument in this reform was Alcuin of York, whom Charles placed, partly for this purpose, at the head of the School of Tours in a.d. 796. The selection of an Englishman for the post naturally leads us to inquire what hands were then used in England, and what amount of Enghsh influence the Carolingian Minuscule, the foundation of our modern styles, exhibits. But we must begin with Ireland. If we gaze in wonder on the personal influence of Charles the Great in reforming handwriting, we shall be still more struck by the spectacle presented to us by Ireland in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. It is the great marvel in the history of palaeography. Modern historians have at last appreciated the blaze of Hfe, religious, literary, and artistic, which was kindled in the ' Isle of Saints ' within a century after St. Patrick's coming (which was about a.d. 450) ; how the enthusiasm kindled by Christianity in the Celtic nature so far transcended the limits of the island, and indeed of Great Britain, that Irish missionaries and monks were soon found in the chief religious centres of Gaul, Germany, Switzerland, and North Italy, while foreigners found their toilsome way to Ireland to learn Greek. But less prominence has been given to the artistic side of this great reflex movement from West to East than to the other two. The simple facts attest that in the seventh century, when our earliest existing Irish MSS. were written, we find not only a style of writing (or indeed two) distinctive, national, and of a high type of excellence. 30 Books in Manuscript but also a school of illumination which, in the combined lines of mechanical accuracy and intricacy, in fertile invention of form and figure and of striking arrangements of colour, has never been surpassed. And this is in the seventh century — the nadir of the rest of Europe. The great Irish school of writing and painting passed over to England by way of the monasteries founded by Irish monks in Scotland. There St. Columba {d. 597) founded the first Scottish mon- astery at lona, and thence the first monastery in England was founded by St. Aidan at Lindisfarne or Holy Island, off the Northumbrian coast (a.d. 635). But in 597 St. Augustine of Canterbury had landed in Kent, and with him brought the- old Roman half-uncial hand still to be seen (among other volumes) in the two Latin books of the Gospels, traditionally supposed to be among those actually brought by Augustine, and now preserved at Cambridge and Oxford. These two forces, the Roman and the Irish half-uncial hands, may be said to have met at the Council of Whitby in 664. Was Augustine or Aidan, Rome or Ireland, destined to supply us with our English national hand ? The Irish hand won the day, and the ' Hiberno-Saxon ' (or ' Insular ') hand became the national hand of England, Scotland, and Ireland, until the Norman Conquest at last reversed the national victory of Whitby, and the Roman or Continental hand, which had never wholly lost its footing in England, V — o — ^ c^ ^ CO e» " — ? Ig-o The History of Writing 3 i excluded its rival. It is certain, then, that Alcuin was trained in Insular calligraphy, so that we may be surprised to find that the writing which, under Charles the Great, he developed at Tours, bears hardly a trace of the style to which he was accus- tomed. En revanche, in the ornamentation and illumination of the great Carolingian volumes which have come down to our times, we find those per- sistent traces of English and Irish work which we seek for in vain in the plainer Carolingian writing. This minuscule superseded all others almost throughout the empire of Charles the Great, and during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries underwent comparatively little modification. Even in the two next centuries, though it is subject to general modification, national differences are hardly observable, and we need only distinguish two large divisions, the group of Northern Europe (England, North France, and the Netherlands), and the Southern (South France, Italy, and Spain). The two exceptions are, that Germany, both in writing and painting, has always stood apart, and has lagged behind the other nations of Western Europe in its development ; and that England retained her Hi- berno-Saxon or Insular hand till the great Conquest of 1066. It may be said that the twelfth century produced the finest writing ever known — a large, free and flowing form of the minuscule of Tours. In the next century comes in the angular Gothic hand, the difference between which and the twelfth century 32 Books in Manuscript hand may be fairly understood by a comparison of ordinary German and Roman type. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the writing of each country may be discerned, while the general tendency is towards complication, use of abbreviations and contractions, and development of unessential parasitic forms of letters (see plates facing pp. I, 64, 66). The study of these styles is a study of details, and as such needs the manuals mentioned in the Bibliographies in App. C. How then, to revert to a previous question, does it come about that our modern capitals are like those of ancient Rome, and our ordinary letters, as printed, so like the Carolingian minuscule ? This we can now answer. The early printers of the second half of the fifteenth century took as their models one or other of two ^kinds of letters, either the current Gothic hand, of which modern German type is the direct outcome, or the luxurious style which — itself a revival of the clear twelfth century writing — was adopted in Italy by the scribes of the Renaissance. This latter set of forms, through the collective good sense of successive generations, won its way, and secured for all future time the neat, easily read and sensible forms of the familiar Roman type. We see, then, that readers of the present day owe their eyesight and their comfort to (i) the revival of pure forms of an old Roman kind by Charles the Great ; (2) the almost accidental fact that the later Carolingian writing of the twelfth The History of Writing 33 century was imitated by the Italian scribes of the fifteenth ; (3) the happy natural selection by which printers chose this revived kind of letter. Had any one of these links failed, our type would probably have failed to attain its undoubted excellence. Of court-hand — the stiff, formal writing affected by law courts and royal chanceries — our space does not allow us to treat. It began to diverge from the literary hand in the ninth century, and after the twelfth becomes more and more artificial and per- plexing till at least the seventeenth. It is allowable to doubt whether this is wholly unintentional, and to suggest that in essence court-hand has been more or less an instrument which has helped the lawyers of past times to make their profession exclusive, secret, and mysterious in the eyes of the laity. Abbreviation and Contraction A student, when he has mastered the difficulties connected with the forms of letters — which indeed can almost be met in the case of any particular, MS. by a skilful use of methods used in solving "crypto- grams,— will find himself face to face with the serious trouble of abbreviations and contractions, especially in MSS. later than the ninth century. He finds mia written for miseria or for misericordia, he finds mundus written mud* and the like. Till Ludwig Traube {d. 1907) arose, these difficulties could only be overcome by empiric rules and facts, but that great palaeographer (who occupied a place 34 Books in Manuscript among palteographers almost as eminent as that of Henry Bradshaw among bibliographers) discovered principles where others only saw sequences of fact. Traube was the first who distinguished the true relation between the two great systems of Ab- breviation (by which term is impUed any way of writing a word in short form, although in practice Shorthand is excluded from its scope as being too artificial and mechanical), namely Abbreviation by Suspension and Abbreviation by Contraction. The former class consists of a shortening by suspending the pen, simply not writing the whole of the word (as in A.D. for Anno Domini, Norn for Nomen). The latter is a shortening by giving the beginning and end of the word, and often an important letter in the middle, and recognizing certain definite symbols akin to Shorthand (as in the examples given on p. 33). The history of these two methods is interesting. The earliest of the two at Rome was Suspension, which starts the word for you but gives no inkling of the termination. Examples are H.S.E. {Hie situs est), on sepulchral monuments, S.V.B.E. {Si vales bene est), in letters. But it was especially taken up by lawyers who used numerous forms like .Tm. for Testamentum (where the m is the first m, not the termination ^). This system, though subject to 1 It was allowable in Suspension to give the firsi letter of a syllable in the middle of a word, as well as the first letter of the whole word, but never the termination. Thus noster could be .N. or .NT. The History of Writing 35 the fortunate limitation that the suspended word must be in common use, and therefore partly self- suggestive to educated men, developed so many ambiguities that in the fourth century of our era it began to give way before the insidious approach of a rival system. The system of Contraction started with the Jews, who were accustomed to omit the vowels in the sacred name of Jahwe or Jehovah. It was trans- ferred by Hellenizing Jews to Greek scribes through Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures. From the Greeks it passed to Rome. One of the proofs of Jewish origin is that the usage, even in Latin, was at first absolutely confined to just five Sacred Names : — Deus ic/j ). Jesus {^j^ ), Christus { ^^^ ), Spiritus iS/?^), and Dominus {c//Z5). The Greek stage is obvious from the h of /^/ and the .^;^ of J(ypJ. This Umited set of contractions is found in Rome from about a.d. 300, but in Africa and Gaul from about a.d. 410, and in Spain before A.D. 450. But the floodgates soon opened wider, and other ecclesiastical terms suffered contraction, and by the sixth century lay terms were admitted, and the vogue of Suspension was over. A remarkable example of the fight between the Old and the New is 36 Books in Manuscript afforded by the seemingly insignificant word noster, which derived its importance at first from the common ending of a Hturgical prayer, ' per Dominum nostrum lesum Christum', and the Hke. The oldest form of abbreviation was .N. (Suspension), but its ambiguity was its ruin. The new system quickly killed it, substituting the type ^/ (if we take the genitive case nostri as a convenient case for describing types). But even this was ambiguous ( ^^ = nostro, colliding with non, and /^^ with nam, etc.). So a rival .z?/*/ type arose, which waged a curious and definite war with the older /tS type. Thus in Italy and France the war raged from about a.d. 700 to 900 : in Ireland and England only from 700 to 800 : in Germany from 800 to nearly 1000. In all these battlefields the /7.-^/ type won, and throughout the Middle Ages noster is /?/', nostri /jri nostro :ir/:- , nostrum /zr/77 , etc. This example is a specimen of the fighting which went on every- where, and as the campaigns are pretty well known, we obtain a valuable instrument for dating old MSS. However, for MSS. which my readers are likely to come across, it may be assumed that the full system of Abbreviation by Contraction is in force, and a few details of its chief forms may be given. The History of Writing 37 Abbreviation by Contraction This was of three chief kinds in the Middle Ages : — (A). Abbreviation by abbreviative signs, seven in number : — Form. Position. Value. i. — c?r^ ^ above preced ing letter m orn. ii. S ^rS ditto er,re,ri,iroTr. iii. above, but after, us. preceding letter iv. 7 ^^ above preceding letter ur. V. J on line con, or com. vi. :, , then ^ , then ^ x" on line {q)ue, et. -{b)us, or m. vii. 1^ on line -rum. Thus /ryJc/^ (i' "i)' :^Cta/^ ^^' "' '^^' p/undj^ (vi), /nen^a:^^ (vii). There are also a few general signs, such as : — ^JCO?? (= Exonia, Exonienses, etc.) ^^^f^ (= regis), jj? = ser-). P has a peculiar set : P = pre, !) ^-per, b = pro. (B). Abbreviation by position of letters, i. Vowels over preceding letters indicate sup- pression of r before or after the vowel. Thus S/7?e/7 = crimen, y/^/ = uerbi, not tibi. 38 Books in Manuscript ii. Q omits its u, if the vowel following is o written over the q. Thus n — quo. (C). Abbreviation by omission. i. The first and last letters must be given, and usually one medial ; the word must be in common use ; and as in all "cases of Con- traction, a line must be drawn over the contracted part, e.g. J''^ {similiter)^ 1)i; {videlicet, our viz.), ire {Hiere), oTv {oratio). ii. The following are typical, but cannot all be reduced to the foregoing principles :— - ri3 i-atio) ^/Z? {qtioniam) ' ^/^ {beati) <$?/? {quando) c:/a ^^''^'^ ^/j^ {tantum) ^/^ {tamen) '-N^, {est). 'I' {id est), /y {f rater : so /??/ . pr ) '/2 {enim), ^ («0. -> "^r /?/* [noster : so t-^T", -nester) 4' ^ {iqjtur). ^*^ {er^o) It is happily true of Latin, though not of Greek, that contractions are seldom in any way ambiguous, though a want of familiarity and of special know- ledge may make them seem formidable to a beginner. The History of Writing 39 Such, in briefest outline, has been the history of the handwritings which most nearly concern us. Enough has been said, it may be hoped, to enable our readers to fit roughly into their places the volumes which we may have to describe in future chapters as of such and such an age, style, or nation- ality. The plates in this volume will supply some further help, and reference may be made especially to the Introduction io Greek and Roman PalcFOgraphy by Sir E. Maunde Thompson (2nd ed., Oxford, 1912). CHAPTER IV SCRIBES AND THEIR WAYS In Greece and Rome, scribes (y/ja/x/iarei?, gram- mateis ; KaWiypacpoi, calligraphoi ; librarii, scribce) formed a distinct and important profession. We have, however, very little direct evidence which would enable us to characterize in any special way their modes of work. We know that in Rome the work was done both quickly and cheaply ; the poet Martial, for instance, reminds a friend {Epigr. i. 117) that for five denarii (about 3s. 6d.) he could buy the whole of his first book of Epigrams. It would seem natural that when many copies of such a work as Martial's Epigrams or Virgil's Mneid were needed, dictation should be resorted to, and we can picture a room with twenty or more scribes writing from the dictation of some clear- voiced reader ; but the evidence of dictation is so scanty, that we are driven to conclude that scribes almost invariably copied from a volume in front of them in silence, as was certainly the case in the scriptoria of monasteries. Alcuin, who describes the copying work at York, seems to know nothing of it, and the word dictare, used in connexion with writing, means 'to compose,' 40 Scribes and their Ways 41 not dictate. ^ The only dictation which was common was when a letter or message was dictated by its composer to swift-penned notarii. But when we reach the age of monasticism, we find fuU details of the interior and working of the writing- room or scriptorium of a normal religious establish- ment. Though it is true that the great Benedictine Order, and its daughter the Cistercian, distinctly encouraged the study of literature, even other than theological, and that, as a fact, more than half the literary work of Europe was done within the walls of religious houses, yet it will be found on examina- tion that the important centres of writing and illumination were not numerous, such as, in England, Canterbury, Winchester, St. Alban's, Durham, and Glastonbury ; while, if we regard the smaller houses, since literature and study were after all only a secondary feature in the theory of monastic life, only a small proportion of monks were allowed to take up the work, and often, we may be sure, by accident or design, the copying would fall into second-rate hands, and, not being in especial repute, be neglected or ill done. Few even of the largest abbeys rose to such full appreciation of the claims of literature, whether reading, composing, or copying, as to have a historiographus, or official recorder of the general 1 Thus— ' Hie Augustini liber est simul atque Fi owini : Alter dicta vit, alter scribendo notavit,' only states that Frowinus was the scribe, and that he had copied a treatise of St. Augustine ; see also p. 148. 42 Books in Manuscript and local history of the time (such as was Matthew Paris from 1236 to 1259, ^^ ^t. Alban's), who would give lustre and importance to the whole writing department of the house. Yet at certain times and places the scribe was held in quite conspicuous honour. In Ireland, for instance, in the seventh and eighth centuries, the penalty for shedding his blood was as great as that for killing a bishop or abbot ; and in Scotland, ' scriba ' was regarded as an honourable addition to a bishop's name. Adamnan's Life of St. Columha is full of allusions to the art of writing, in which the Saint himself excelled ; and it is owing to its prominence that such stories are permanently recorded, as of the men who dropped a MS. into a vessel of water, and upset the Saint's own inkhorn. And the vivid picture given us by Sir T, D. Hardy in the Preface to the third volume of the Materials relating to the History of Great Britain, of the estab- lishment at St. Alban's, shows a favourable aspect of the life of copyists in the largest houses. The scriptorium of an ordinary Benedictine monas- tery was a large room, usually over the chapter- house. When no special room was devoted to the purpose, separate little studies were often made in the cloisters, each scribe having a window to himself, as may still be seen in the exquisite cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral (once St. Peter's Abbey) ; but these carrels were fully open on one side to the cloister walk, and it was quite exceptional for a Scribes and their Ways 43 copyist to be allowed a cell or room in any way private. The whole room, or set of studies, was under the general discipline of the monastery, but had special superadded rules of its own. These rules, as preserved to us in certain Benedictine statutes, are as stringent as can well be imagined. Artificial light was entirely forbidden for fear of injuring the manuscripts ; and to prevent idleness and interruption, no one was allowed to enter the room besides the scribes, except certain of the higher officers of the abbey. The Armarius was the special officer who had charge of the scriptorium ; but even he had no power to give out work to be done without the abbot's leave. He had to provide all that was necessary for the work — desks, ink, parchment, pens, pen-knives, pumice-stone for smoothing the surface of the parchment, awls to give guiding marks for ruling lines, reading frames to hold the books to be copied, rulers and weights to keep down the pages. The scribe himself was for- bidden to make any alteration in the text, even when the original which he was copying was obviously wrong. Absolute silence was enjoined ; and as, nevertheless, some method of communication was necessary, there was a great variety of signs in use. If a scribe needed a book, he extended his hands and made a movement as of turning over leaves. If it was a missal that was wanted, he superadded the sign of a cross ; if a psalter, he placed his hands on his head in the shape of a crown (a reference to King 44 Books in Manuscript David) ; if a lectionary, he pretended to wipe away the grease (which might easily have fallen upon it from a candle) ; if a small work was needed, not a Bible or service book, but some inferior tractate, he placed one hand on his stomach and the other before his mouth. Finally, if a pagan work was required, he first gave the general sign, and then scratched his ear in the manner of a dog ! Besides the monks who acted as scribes and illuminators, there were three classes of secular scribes, who would only come to the monastery when their services were needed — illuminatores , when the abbey could not itself provide men capable of finishing off the manuscript by rubrication and painting ; librarii, a common kind of hack scribe ; and notarii, who would be required for legal pur- poses, such as drawing up a deed or will. It is not to be wondered at that the customs of a particular monastery, or group of monasteries, should result in a particular localized style of writing. The study of these local peculiarities has not yet been carried far, but will no doubt be a fruitful source of information in the future. For example, it was at one time the custom to ascribe to the hand of Matthew Paris ail volumes written in a peculiar thirteenth century style, with the long stems of certain letters broken-backed or bent, and dis- tinguished by peculiar orthography, such as imfra for infra. It was discovered by Sir T. Duff us Hardy that this writing was from the school of writing O Scribes and their Ways 45 prevalent at St. Alban's at that time, and not in- variably the autograph of the historiographer himself. Many forms of letters were absolutely peculiar to a place, such as the M of St. Mary's Abbey at York and the Q of the Austin Canons of Carlisle. Let us now consider how a scribe would act at the beginning of his six-hour ^ daily task. A section of plain parchment is brought to him to be written on, each sheet still separate from the others, though loosely put in the order and form in which it will be subsequently bound. First, when the style and general size of the intended writing have been fixed, which would be a matter of custom, the largest style being reserved for psalters and other books to be used for public services on a desk or lectern, the sheets have to be ruled. Down each side of the page, holes were pricked at proper intervals with an awl, or metal wheel bearing spikes on its circum- ference, and a hard, dry, metal stilus was used to draw the lines from hole to hole, with others per- pendicular to mark off the margins ; space was also left for illuminations if it could be estimated before- hand. The stilus made a furrow on one side of the parchment and raised a ridge on the other side, and was carried right across a whole sheet of parchment. This ruUng was not such a simple matter as it might * - Ardua^scriptorum prae cunctis artibus ars est : Difificilis labor est, durus quoque flectere coUa, Et membranas bis ternas sulcare per horas.' {Anon., yth cent. ?) 46 Books in Manuscript seem, and deserves further detail, because the regularity of the system by which it was done enables us to settle some curious points where a manuscript is imperfect. First, it must be noted that the two sides of a piece of parchment are seldom alike ; one is usually smoother and whiter (the original flesh-side), and the other rougher and yellowish (the hair-side). Now a quaternion (see p. 15) was almost always so arranged that wherever the book was opened, the two pages presented to the eye were both hair-side or both flesh-side. Sir E. Maunde Thompson lays down as a general rule that in Greek MSS. the first page of a section generally exhibited a flesh-side, and in Latin MSS. a hair-side. Secondly, — although the point has not been fully investigated, — at any rate in Greek MSS. of the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, the first page of a quaternion usually exhibited a set of ridges, and consequently the second page a set of furrows, when ruled. Putting what has been said together (it can readily be understood from a paper model) , the normal arrangement of a Greek quater- nion would be- - and for Latin — Page. Side. Ruling. Page. Side. Ruling I flesh ridges I hair ridges 2-3 hair furrows 2-3 flesh furrows 4-5 flesh ridges 4-5 hair ridges 6-7 hair furrows, 6-7 flesh furrows etc., until etc., until 16 flesh ridges 16 hair ridges. Scribes and their Ways 47 Now, observe the use of these dull facts by an example. The celebrated Greek ' Codex Venetus ' of the Iliad of Homer has at the beginning five leaves of introductory matter of a peculiarly interesting kind, being a unique account of Homer, and an abstract (not complete) of the poems composing the Epic Cycle. It is clear from the rest of the volume, which is made up of regular quaternions, that these five leaves are the relics of an original eight forming a quaternion. The question which has agitated scholars is the exact order in which these five leaves should be arranged. In 1881 the MS. was in- vestigated to see if the principles of the normal arrangement of leaves with respect to hair and flesh sides, and with respect to furrows and ridges, would make impossible any of the five theories of arrange- ment. It was found that three of the five could be put ' out of court ' at once by these considerations, leaving the important question reduced to the comparative claims of two only — a result well worth the investigation. Doubtless some puzzling ques- tions of perturbed order in other manuscripts will in time yield to the apphcation of similar principles. The scribe has now his ruled leaves before him, his pen and ink in readiness, and the volume to be copied on a desk beside him : he may begin to tran- scribe. How simple this seems ! He is forbidden to correct, but must simply copy down letter for letter what is before him ; no responsibihty, except for power of reading and for accuracy, is laid on him. 48 Books in Manuscript Yet all who know human nature, or who have studied palaeography, will acknowledge that the probability against two consecutive leaves being really correctly transcribed is about a hundred to one. The causes of ' transcriptional error ' will be treated in Chap. VI. ; so that here it need only be said that the wonder is not that there is so much cause for critical treatment of the text of an ancient author, but that there is so little. When the copyist had finished a quaternion, the writing was often compared with the original by another person {8cop6oiri)i, diortlibtes ; in Latin, corrector). Next, the sheets of a completed work were given over to the rubricator, who inserted in red or other colour titles, sometimes concluding notes (called colophons), liturgical directions, lists of chapters, headlines, and the like ; and finally, if need were, to the illuminator. Nothing then remained, but that the binder's art should sew together the sections, and put them in their cover- ing ; a few words on which may here, for complete- ness' sake, be added, although the subject is fully treated in another volume in this series. The common binding in the Middle Ages for books of some size and interest was leather, plain or ornamented, white or brown, fastened over solid wooden boards, with raised bands, four or five or more in number, across the back. The sewing of the sheets and passing of the thread over these bands usually results in a firmness and permanence which no ordinary modern book possesses : not Scribes and their Ways 49 infrequently the solid oak sides may have given way under violent treatment from too great rigidity, while the sewing remains perfectly sound. In general, however, the oak sides are as permanent as the back, and the solid pegging, by which the parchment strings issuing from the thread-sewn back are wedged into the small square holes and grooves cut in the inner oak sides, is a sight worth seeing for workmanship and indestructibility. But for appearance' sake in early mediaeval times the finest books received an ivory, silver, or even gold binding, and the sides were carved or worked into embossed figures and set with jewels ; and some- times even wooden sides were highly ornamented. Thus the Latin Gospel of St. John, taken from the tomb of St. Cuthbert, and now at Stonyhurst, is described as bound (in the tenth or eleventh century) in boards of thin wood covered with red leather, the obverse cover containing in the centre a raised ornament of Celtic design, and above and below small panels, with interlaced work graven on them and coloured. Of the finer kind, a Latin Psalter in the British Museum, written for Melissenda, Countess of Anjou, in the twelfth century, is an example, in which the sides are of carved ivory and set with turquoises. Perhaps the finest collection of these jewelled bindings in England is in the John Ry lands Library at Manchester. In Ireland — but rarely elsewhere — we find a theca or ' cumdach,' a case in which a volume was kept ; and on this, instead of E 50 Books in Manuscript the volume itself, the richest work was lavished. A few still remain, as those of the Stowe Missal and of St. Columba's Psalter, both of the eleventh century ; but the rapacity of rough times has left few of the grander bindings intact. It is pleasant to read that in the twelfth century England was before all foreign nations in binding, — London, Winchester, and Dur- ham having distinctive styles, known from the designs stamped or traced on the leather sides, which in all cases consist in the main of a parallelogram formed by small dies, filled up by circles and portions of circles in great variety. But the history of binding belongs to the subject of printed books rather than to that of manuscripts, for the great majority of bindings now valued are subsequent to the invention of printing. The cost of writing, illumination, and binding is an interesting subject, and though ample material for settUng the question exists, not much has as yet been brought together. In classical times, as we have seen (p. 40), a copy of the 1st book of Martial's Epigrams (about 850 Latin lines of verse) cost only about 3s. td. in Rome : and probably the competition of skilled scribes kept the price down to a level comparable with printed books at the present day. In the monasteries of the Middle Ages we naturally find no mention of cost of writing, as the monk's work was part of his ordinary duty, but the cost of materials and the time taken are not infrequently recorded. In the case of Scribes and their Ways 51 professional scribes employed at monasteries, there is, of course, mention of remuneration, as at Ely in 1372, where one received 43s. 4^. with a tunic as for a year's work ; and the pay of a common scribe in 1300 was Id. a day, equal to about y^d. of our money, while five dozen skins of parchment cost only 2s. 6d. A few examples of cost of production may be given in chronological order. About A.D. 1380, as Professor Middleton shows, John Prust, Canon of Windsor, received 75s. 8d. for writing and illuminating a Textus Evangelii {i.e. a book of the hturgical Gospels, an Evangeliarium) , some of the items being, s. d. 19 quaterni of parchment at /8, . . . 128 Ink, 12 Vermilion, ....... 9 Commons (the writer's meat and drink) for 18 weeks at /lo, 15 o Stipend, i3 4 Illumination. 43 Binding, 3 4 In 1453, John Reynbold agreed at Oxford to write out the last three books of Duns Scotus's Commen- tary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, in quarto, for 2S. 2d. each book. A transcript in folio by this Reynbold of part of this work on the Sentences is in both Merton and Balliol College Libraries at Oxford, one dated 145 1. 52 Books in Manuscript In 1467 the Paston Letters show that a writer and illuminator at Bury St. Edmund's received for producing a Psalter or other liturgical book, adding musical notes, illuminating, and binding, iocs. 2d. For viij hole vynets {i.e. vignettes, small miniatures) . . . prise the vynett xiji, .... viijs Item for xxj d^mi-vynets . . . prise the demi- vjTiett, iiij^, . . . . . • . vijs Item for Psalmes letters xv" (1500) and di' (a half, 1550 in all) . . . the prise of c, iiijiraai ni^ Mjuma^ uK«4>. ^! I u)n 1 i^anS^inlonmi JM •& i iffcrr! ^w i nmi noh laktvtn-jlr.niiui&mni fl'^ adiiwiumjl Stfjtmrj cmrtr-ftRriT>aTgav>HigCH? #;tt cc i Mmuin?rf!i!jaw»teaytn>mlB!iiiai^iiqu3 mmi bi«c4!J^m^c.(ll^ommM£Ait:urauflr.^Try«traa^ ftrnjiadiYauo <""! cmafijntiQT jiniitnt aM?^^ ciuf cjr.'.dumTJi ni»ni9mirrrnwifalv!arTrjy^ iai£p,tp!inqndu'ninimfl;rotrntiaauir.5"ta?[i| ni3j)i« pigm.%iti(Eimi mugi mi rrr. flai? tp ma , Qprnn ane^fomm piaif ftiminr iianmditta ija quflmu m OT»q:^^ pg«mtrpifdicsgg CmOTs , Rtttmii)!)iai a^tttm tnrtrmm. @,iumuH aatmaiia quanm» (luanim niTig^ ^Amc.^ (Pjtalctmwo mm penrmw;ar;i'wj' IToAiTeta of Aristotle, and the mimes of Herodas may be mentioned, as well as traditional sayings of Christ, and numberless frag- ments of classical Greek authors, but very little Latin literature. And among them are such delight- ful pieces as the following schoolboy's letter in Greek of the second or third century of our era : — ' Theon to his father Theon greeting. It was a fine thing of you not to take me with you to Alexandria. Mother said to Archelaiis, " He quite upsets me. Take him away." So send for me, I implore you. If you don't, I won't eat, I won't drink. There now ! ' We may be pretty sure that after firing off this blunderbuss at his father, the youthful Theon sat down to a good dinner, and slept well. The father probably replied, after a chilling interval, that he had better wait and see, and not upset his mother. Famous Manuscripts 1 1 1 The Cottonian Genesis In its original state this celebrated MS. contained 165 quarto leaves, bearing the text of Genesis in Greek, written in uncials, with 250 miniature paint- ings. It was probably written in the fourth century, being the most ancient Greek Septuagint MS. on parchment in existence, but is now, unfortunately, a mass of blackened fragments, some better preserved than others, having been the chief victim in that terrible fire, so often referred to in this volume, which half ruined the Cottonian Collection in 1731- We have, however, collations of the text made before the fire, so that the loss, so far as the text is con- cerned, is not wholly irreparable ; but the very size of the letters was altered by the heat, and the paintings practically destroyed. The Codex Sinaiticus The story of the discovery of this famous manu- script of the Bible in Greek, the oldest existing of all the New Testament codexes, and in several points the most interesting, reads like a romance. Con- stantine Tischendorf, the well-known editor of the Greek Testament, started on his first mission litter aire in April 1844, and in the next month found himself at the Convent of St. Catherine, at the foot of Mount Sinai. There, in the middle of the hall, as he crossed it, he saw a basket full of old parchment leaves on their way to the burning, and was told that two 112 Books in Manuscript baskets had already gone ! Looking at the leaves more closely, he perceived that they were parts of the Old Testament in Greek, written in an extremely old handwriting. He was allowed to take away forty-three leaves ; but the interest of the monks was aroused, and they both stopped the burning and also refused to part with any more of the precious fragments. Tischendorf departed, deposited the forty-three leaves in the Leipzig Library, and edited them under the title of the Codex Friderico- Augustanus, in compliment to the King of Saxony, in 1846. But he wisely kept the secret of their provenance, and no one followed in his track until he himself went on a second quest to the monastery in 1853. In that year he could find no traces whatever of the remains of the MS. except a few fragments of Genesis, and returned unsuccessful and disheartened. At last, he once more took a journey to the monastery, under the patronage of the Russian Emperor, who was popular throughout the East as the protector of the Oriental Churches. Nothing could he find, however ; and he had ordered his Bedouins to get ready for departure, when, happening to have taken a walk with the steward of the house, and to be invited into his room, in the course of conversation the steward said : 'I, too, have read a Septuagint,' and produced out of a wrapper of red cloth ' a bulky kind of volume,' which turned out to be the whole of the New Testa- ment, with the Greek text of the Epistle of Barnabas, Famous Manuscripts 113 much of which was hitherto unknown, and the greater part of the Old Testament, all parts of the very MS. which had so long been sought ! In a careless tone Tischendorf asked if he might have it in his room for further inspection, and that night (February 4-5, 1859) it ' seemed impiety to sleep.' By the next morning the Epistle of Barnabas was copied out, and a course of action was settled. Might he carry the volume to Cairo to transcribe ? Yes, if the Prior's leave were obtained ; but unluckily the Prior had already started to Cairo on his way to Constantinople. By the activity of Tischendorf he was caught up at Cairo, gave the requisite per- mission, and a Bedouin was sent to the convent, and returned with the book in nine days. On the 24th of February, Tischendorf began to transcribe it ; and when it was done, conceived the happy idea of asking for the volume as a gift to the Emperor of Russia. Probably this was the only possible plea which would have gained the main object in view, and even as it was there was great delay ; but at last, on the 28th of September, the gift was formally made, and the MS. soon after deposited at Petrograd, where it per- haps now lies. The age of this MS. (known as N) is supposed to be not later than a.d. 400, and has been the subject of dispute, partly inconsequence of the curious statement of Simonides in 1862, that he had himself written it on Mount Athos in 1839-40 (see p. 142). For other great Biblical MSS. see p. 82. I 114 Books in Manuscript The Book of Kells The Book of Kells, the chief treasure of Trinity College, Dublin, is so called from having been long preserved at the Monastery of Kells, founded by Columba himself. Stolen from thence, it eventually passed into Archbishop Ussher's hands, and, with other parts of his Hbrary, to Dublin. The volume contains the Four Gospels in Latin, ornamented with extraordinary freedom, elaboration, and beauty. Written apparently in the seventh century, it exhibits, both in form and colour, all the signs of the full development and maturity of the Irish style, and must of necessity have been preceded by several generations of artistic workers, who founded and improved this particular school of art. The follow- ing words of Professor Westwood, who first drew attention to the peculiar excellences of the volume, will justify the terms made use of above : — ' This copy of the Gospels, traditionally asserted to have belonged to Columba, is unquestionably the most elaborately executed MS. of early art now in existence, far excelling, in the gigantic size of the letters in the frontispieces of the Gospel, the excess- ive minuteness of the ornamental details, the number of its decorations, the fineness of the writing, and the endless variety of initial capital letters with which every page is ornamented, the famous Gospels of Lindisfarne in the Cottonian Library. But this MS. is still more valuable on account of the various pictorial representations of different scenes in the life o n Famous Manuscripts 115 of our Saviour, delineated in a style totally unlike that of every other school.' The frontispiece will give some idea of the regularity and beauty of the ornamentation, and of the minuteness and profusion of it, though not of the striking harmonies of colour. The next MS. which would naturally be men- tioned is the Lindisfarne Gospels, in the British Museum, of the seventh century ; but as being already described in this series of books (see Mr. Elton's The Great Book-Collectors, p. i8), it is here omitted, so far as relates to its general history and description. But the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibit another point of great interest not there recorded. Each Gospel is preceded by a list, in the order of the Gospel itself, of saints' days, feasts, vigils, etc., on which passages from that Gospel were read ; that is to say, the first days recorded are those on which passages from the first chapter were read, and so on. In 1891 a Benedictine monk observed that the lists clearly proved that the liturgy thus summarized was that of Naples, and was of extreme interest, being more than two centuries older than the oldest known NeapoHtan calendar. But how was it possible for an early calendar of Naples to appear in a Gospel book written at Lindisfarne or Holy Island, off the Northumbrian coast, in the seventh century ? The answer is supplied by Bede, who, in describing the early work of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, after his arrival in England in 668, says 1 1 6 Books in Manuscript that in his peregrination of England he was accom- panied by one Adrian, formerly abbot of a monastery near Naples. At Lindisfarne the archbishop was to consecrate St. Aidan's new cathedral, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the abbot brought with him some volumes from his own abbey, and that the monks of Holy Island took the opportunity of transcribing for their own use this volume. Curiously enough, another less famous MS., also in the British Museum (in the Old Royal Collection), is found to have the same calendar prefixed, and doubtless was written at the same place and time. Directly, the volumes lead us back to the services of Naples in the first half of the seventh century, that is to say, of the time of St. Gregory ; indirectly, they lead to something still more striking. Naples is not far from Rome ; and when it is remembered that no extant MSS. carry us beyond the seventh century in the quest of ancient Roman service books, the real value of these two MSS. becomes clear. They present to us one of the nearest attainable clues to the most ancient Hturgical ceremonies of Rome itself. Alcuin's Bible The connexion of Alcuin of York with the Uterary reforms of Charles the Great has been already referred to (see p. 29). It was natural that the head of the school of Tours should show gratitude to his patron on so great an occasion as the coronation of Famous Manuscripts 1 1 7 Charles the Great as Emperor of Rome on Christmas Day in a.d. 800 ; and from contemporary sources we know that this gratitude took the form of a Latin Bible written under the immediate superintendence of Alcuin, and with a text emended by himself. There is still in existence a Latin Bible directly ascribed to Alcuin himself, a volume bought in 1836 by the British Museum, which sufficiently answers to everything which we know of the circumstances of the gift, and certainly represents Alcuin's revision of the Vulgate text. At the end are certain verses in which the writer's name is given as Alcuinus and Albinus (a not infrequent variety of the former name). It is a splendid volume, both in size and from the four full-page illuminations which, with other smaller paintings, adorn the text. It is known, however, that similar verses are found in another Latin Bible now at Rome, so that the claim of this volume to be the actual gift of the great Enghsh scholar and teacher to the Emperor who honoured him is not incontestable, and the date is asserted to be more probably forty years later than 800. The Old English Chronicle The chronological Annals of England, known familiarly as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, are said to be the finest existing record, having regard to its antiquity and detail, of the early history of any European nation. They begin, after a brief preface. I r 8 Books in Manuscript with Julius Caesar's landing in England, B.C. 65 ; and though at first affording notices of general history, soon settles down to a history of Britain alone. The MSS. we possess of it are extremely interesting in their differences, for almost every one contributes local colouring and local history to the common stock, and each carries the chronicle proper down to a different date. Six complete MSS. still exist : one in the splendid library bequeathed by Arch- bishop Parker to Corpus Christi Library at Cam- bridge, which was written in 891 and continued to 1070, and which, having been first at Winchester, was transferred before it was finally completed to Christ Church, Canterbury ; a second, written in one hand, and ending with a.d. 977, now in the British Museum (Cotton Tiberius, A. vi.), but for- merly also at Canterbury, and noticeable for the incorporation (as is the case also with the next two MSS.) of a Mercian chronicle for the years 902-924 ; a third, an Abingdon chronicle, written in one hand to 1046, and continued to 1066, and now in the British Museum (Cotton Tiberius, B. i.) ; a fourth from Worcester, embodying some Northumbrian annals, written in 1016, with additions to 1079, now also in the National Library (Cotton Tiberius, B. iv.) ; a fifth, given by Archbishop Laud to the Bodleian (Laud Misc. 636), abounding in Peterborough history, and though written in a.d. 1122, continued in Peterborough Abbey to 1154, which is three- quarters of a century beyond any other ; and Famous Manuscripts 119 lastly, a Canterbury MS. of the twelfth century, curious for being bilingual, in Saxon and Latin, and now in the Museum (Cotton Domitian, A. viii.). A seventh was burnt, with the exception of three leaves, in the fatal fire of 1731 (Cotton Otho, B. xi.), but is known from previous editions, and ended in A.D. looi ; and a single leaf of an eighth is known in yet another Cotton MS. [Domitian, A. ix.). This wealth of material gives every facility for a thorough knowledge of the Chronicle, difficult as it is to determine the method and date of its original formation. It is quite possible that Alfred himself ordered its compilation, and at any rate it was formed after Bede's death in 735, and before 895, when Asser, the biographer of Alfred, quotes it. Beowulf The great fire of 1731, which caused such irre- parable damage to the Cottonian Library, mutilated and nearly deprived us for ever of the earliest Enghsh epic, and, with the possible exception of Widsith, of the earliest known English poem. This is known by the name of Beowulf, the hero whose combats with the fiend Grendel and with a dragon, and death from his wounds, form the subject of the book. The scene professes to be laid in Den- mark, and most German scholars attribute its formation (out of older materials) to about the year 600 ; but the late Professor Earle believed that the object of the book was to instruct the English folk I20 Books in Manuscript of the time of Offa, King of Mercia, in the true education and feehngs of a prince. It is supposed, therefore, by him to have been written in the eighth century, on EngHsh soil, though it has survived to our time only in a single MS. of about the date looo, of which the first notice of any kind is not earlier than A.D. 1705, and the first printed edition that of Thorkelin in 1815. The language is Anglo-Saxon. Caedmon The earliest personal name in the history of Eng- lish literature is that of Caedmon, the cow-herd of Whitby, about the middle of the seventh century. Bede, who had good opportunities for knowing the facts about him, tells us how, when each person after supper had to sing a song to his harp, and the turn came to Caedmon, he would slink out, ashamed and stupid, rather than attempt to sing. But in a dream a voice said to him, ' Caedmon, sing, sing something to me ' ; and when he pleaded ignorance and incapacity, and inquired what he should sing, ' Sing,' said the voice, ' the beginning of created things.' Then Caedmon broke out into impromptu song ; and when the matter came to the ears of Hilda, the foundress and first Abbess of Whitby, she caused him to be educated, and exercise his gift of song as a monk. A few of his actual words seem to be preserved to us by Bede ; but one MS., preserved in the Bodleian, has long been beheved to contain, in a modified form, some part of the poems of Caedmon. The name of the poet does not occur, mtclrmtive-nfVm ma5;UTnya;t:£'c-.^-|.'crj-|T\ftAK^h"5- lim amCTT' jdiru? hUp^^tun- innon -jirnxn- roni^an Plate \'III : CAI^DMON (c. 1000. Uiiglisli). Famous Manuscripts 121 but the contents agree fairly closely with what we know from Bede were the subjects of our first Eng- lish poet's songs. These are, of course, all religious, consisting of metrical paraphrases of Genesis, Exodus, and parts of Daniel, with descriptions of scenes in Christ's Hfe and of the day of judgment. Modern critics are disposed to deny any connexion between these West Saxon poems and the North- umbrian songs of Caedmon, but it is still at least probable that this MS., written like that of Beowulf about 1000, contains a substratum and, as the writer in the Dictionary of National Biography is willing to admit, some whole passages from the poet himself. Not the least interesting feature of the MS. is the drawings, chiefly in outline, with slight colouring, with which it abounds. They are of genuine Old English character, and are valuable, not for their fidelity to the subject to be elucidated, but for the evidences they afford of contemporary EngUsh life. Thus, when the ark is to be delineated, the artist racks his brain to think of the largest ship which he has ever seen, and presents us (see the illustration opposite) with a picture of a Scandinavian war galley, with carved figurehead, the side paddle used for steering, and many of the details of the Viking ship discovered in Norway some years ago. On the deck of this he places a large box to contain the animals. So, too, the architectural details of some buildings here drawn are of value for determining the style of church building of that period. 122 Books in Manuscript Sl. Margaret's Gospel-Book The figure of St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland, is perhaps the most striking in the early history of that kingdom. Having regard to the rough times of the eleventh century, and her great personal influence, we may say that she did more to refine and civiUze a nation than any mediaeval queen before or after her. No wonder that the Scotch cherish her memory with especial reverence, and that her oratory in Edinburgh Castle is to them one of the most venerated relics of the past. Grand-daughter of Edmund Ironside, sister of Edgar the Atheling, and mother of the wife of Henry I., she is in the direct line by which our present king traces his descent from the English kings before the Conquest. Margaret fled before the Conqueror to Scotland, and sought refuge in the court of Malcolm Canmore, King of Scotland, who, about a.d. 1070, married her. For details of her character and hfe from this period till her death in 1093, no better account can be wished than her Life written by one who knew her intimately, printed in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum and elsewhere, and issued in Enghsh by Father William Forbes- Leith (2nd ed., London 1889). The discovery of her most treasured volume, which she must often have used within the splendid choir of Dunfermline Abbey, where she was married, has preserved, it may be hoped, to all time a volume, small indeed in size, but of the deepest interest alike Famous Manuscripts 123 to the antiquary, the Church historian, and the Uturgiologist. In 1887 a httle octavo volume in worn brown binding stood on the shelves of a small parish library in Suffolk, but was turned out and offered at the end of a sale at Sotheby's, presumably as being unreadable to country folk, and capable of being turned into hard cash wherewith a few works of fiction might be purchased. The contempt for it thus displayed was apparently shared b}^ the cataloguer, who described it as Latin Gospels of the Fourteenth Century, with Illuminations. For the sum of £6 it passed into the Bodleian Library, and came to be catalogued as an ordinary accession. It was noticed that the writing was of the eleventh century, and that the illuminations were valuable specimens of old English work of the same century, comprising figures of the four evangeHsts of the Byzantine type, which was common in the west of Europe ; the drapery, however, colouring and accessories were purely English. The book itself was seen to be not the complete Gospels, but such portions as were used in the service of the Mass at diiferent times of the year. Further, it was observed that a poem in Latin hexameters had been written, apparently before the end of the same century, on a fly-leaf of the volume, which began by thanking Christ for ' displaying miracles to us in our own days,' and went on to describe how this very volume had been carried in the folds of a priest's robe to a 124 Books in Manuscript trysting-place, in order that a binding oath might be taken on it ; but that unfortunately it had been dropped, without the priest observing it, into a stream, and given up for lost. But a soldier of the party was sent back, who discovered it, plunged head first into the river, and brought it up. To every- one's intense surprise, the beautiful volume was en- tirely uninjured, ' except two leaves, which you see at each end, in which a slight contraction appears from the effect of the water, which testify the work of Christ in protecting the sacred volume. That this work might appear to us still more miraculous, the wave washed from the middle of the book a leaf of silk. May the King and pious Queen be saved for ever, whose book was but now saved from the waves ! ' The silk, was, no doubt, pieces placed loosely in the book to preserve the illuminations from contact with the page opposite ; and, sure enough, a leaf at each end of the book showed unmistakable crinkling from immersion in water. But who were the King and Queen ? By a curious accident connected with the name of Margaret, a lady to whom this story was told remembered a similar incident in Forbes-Leith's edition of the Life of St. Margaret, and the mystery was solved. There in the Life is a passage in prose, beginning : ' She had a book of the Gospels beautifully adorned with gold and precious stones, and ornamented with the figures of the four evangehsts, painted and gilt. . . . She had always felt a particular attachment for this book, Famous Manuscripts 125 more so than for any of the others which she usually read.' Then follows a story almost identical with the one given above, with some variant but not discrepant details. It, too, mentions the pieces of silk and the contraction on certain leaves, and adds that it was found lying open at the bottom of the river. If anything could add to the interest of the volume, it is that in the same Life we read of the King, that ' although he could not read, he would turn over and examine books which the Queen used either for her devotions or her study ; and whenever he heard her express especial liking for a particular book, he also would look at it with special interest, kissing it, and often taking it into his hands.' A Royal Psalter The fortunes of MSS. are well illustrated by a MS. now in Exeter College Library at Oxford. It is a Latin Psalter, followed, as usual, by canticles, a Htany and prayers, beautifully illuminated in Eng- lish style, and from the joint occurrence of the Royal arms and those of Bohun, and the occurrence of the name Humphrey in a collect, probably written and painted for Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford {d. 1361), grandson of Edward I., whose grandniece was married to Henry IV. in 1380. Through her it passed into the Royal Library ; but seems specially to have belonged to the Queens, for both Elizabeth of York and Katherine of Arragon have written their names. In the calendar are obits of the Royal 126 Books in Manuscript family up to the time of Henry VIII., and no doubt it passed to Elizabeth. She seems to have parted with it to Sir William Petre, the re-founder of Exeter College, to which he presented it. Thus it happens that the successive possession of the Tudor sovereigns, and the original authority for the exact date of the birth of the founder of the Tudor dynasty (Jan. 28, ' Hie natus est rex Henricus vij"^' I45f), has dropped into a quiet college library. The foregoing are a selection, as numerous as the scale of the present work would allow, of some well- known MSS. of great Hbraries ; but even though the volumes described are nearly all within the British Isles, the list is very far from exhausted. No place has been found for the Verona Codex of Sulpicius Severus, dated a.d. 517, the earliest dated vellum MS. ; for the splendid Hiberno-Saxon MSS. other than the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels, such as the Chad Gospels at Lichfield, the Gospels of M'Durnan at Lambeth, and several more ; for the Benedictional of St. Ethelwold (see p. 102) ; for an original of Magna Charta in the British Museum ; for the Paston Letters, a unique example of English domestic correspondence from 1422 to 1509 ; or for the Syriac version of Genesis and Exodus, dated a.d. 464, and believed to be the earliest dated MS, extant of any entire book of the Scriptures ; or for the treasures of foreign libraries. But, indeed to give an account of such MSS. as suggest them- selves as famous, would require a volume of itself, and turn a manual like the present into a catalogue. CHAPTER IX LITERARY FORGERIES Forgeries occupy no inconsiderable part of literary history, and it is even true that Palaeography, the study of ancient writing, began in the endeavour to supply tests by which genuine deeds of a legal kind could be established, and forgeries de- tected. In the great Benedictine work by Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica (1681, etc.), a vast treatise, written with this particular object, the whole of Book iv,, or nearly one-sixth of the entire work, is taken up with a list of 163 palaces belonging to the kings of France. This would seem irrelevant, until we understand that one of the greatest difficulties which a forger of some deed of gift would encounter, would be to know where the king was at any par- ticular date which he might select for his spurious work. This hst, therefore, supplies an invaluable means of detecting any mistake in the place where the deed is supposed to have been executed, the name of which would almost certainly occur in a genuine deed, and therefore must be somehow supplied by the forger. But the forgeries of legal deeds were, as a rule, tracked out by the sagacity of lawyers ; and the really gigantic frauds of hterature 127 12 8 Books in Manuscript have been perpetrated in the fields of theology or of history. Before we give illustrations of some famous liter- ary forgeries, it will be well if we try to enter into the forger's mind, for it must be admitted that the subject introduces us to what may be called a high and refined order of crime. Forgery of a Hterary document, to be successful, requires an intellect of no ordinary acuteness. Not only has a style to be imitated, but numberless inter-dependent facts of a particular time and place have to be profoundly studied. Usually facts have to be added which are not to be found in existing authorities, to give an air of original knowledge, and these guesses must be capable of satisfying the ever-increasing knowledge and the soundest methods of criticism of the age. Undesigned coincidences are among the subtlest solvents of a forgery, and proofs of a genuine record. Old paper with its appropriate watermarks, or parchment carefuUy stained, has to be provided and duly discoloured : the ink must be of the right tint and appearance, and the writing, not slowly and falteringly traced, but of a firm, boldly drawn kind. The forger, in fact, has to be armed at every point, and the cost of the armour is fortunately, in many cases, prohibitive. But when once obtained, as in the case of Constantine Simonides, the fraud seems to have a veritable fascination for acute and un- principled adventurers. Again, forgery, really to deserve the name, must be made with intent to Literary Forgeries 129 deceive, whether that deception be for purely humorous purposes or for sordid gain. For we may remember the example of Thucydides, who dehber- ately puts rhetorical speeches, which belong both in point of thought and expression to his own time, in the mouths of his characters, yet neither deceived nor intended to deceive his Athenian readers. This case, which, of course, is not one of forgery, yet shows how carefully its characteristics have to be defined. But even when the aim is reprehensible, it is not enough to put down all forgeries under one class — it is essential to take into consideration both the character of the man and the moral standard of his time. There is a wide difference between Chat- terton, whose boyish mind was entranced by the old papers he found in the muniment room of St. Mary Redchffe at Bristol, seeing in them a means of build- ing up a reputation, while himself far too young to be treated as a precocious man of the world ; and such machinators as Vrain- Lucas or Shapira, whose sole thought was the money to be gained by their scheming. Between them may rank the men who, conscious of great powers both of mind and hand, and under considerable temptation, dehberately set themselves to forge and foist on the world some of the lost treatises of antiquity, either to support preconceived theories of their own, or enjoying the excitement and the uncertainty, the sense of superiority in the hour of success, and the boldness of their bid for that success. K 130 Books in Manuscript The interest of forgeries for the student of litera- ture Hes in the method of detection. The same tests which expose the spurious work estabhsh tenfold the character of what remains. It is the clear cut which they enable us to make between truth and seeming truth which shows that these tests are of real value. I. The Letters of Phalaris Phalaris was ' tyrant ' or petty king of Agrigentum in Sicily in the sixth century B.C., and for a thousand years no writings of his were known. At last Stobaeus, in the fifth century a.d., quoted from his letters, and the existing Epistles were generally received as genuine. In fact, in the controversy which arose in the latter part of the seventeenth century on the comparative merits of ancient and modern literature. Sir William Temple went so far as to write (in 1680), ' I think the Epistles of Phalaris to have more Race, more Spirit, more Force of Wit and Genius, than any others I have ever seen. . . . I think he must have httle Skill in Painting, that cannot find out this to be an Original,' with much to the same effect. This language stimulated the Scholars of Christ Church at Oxford, who were in the habit of producing a classical book once a year, to issue an edition of the Epistles, which was entrusted to the Hon. Robert Boyle, and appeared in 1695. It would probably have excited little atten- tion, but that the one great critic which England Literary Forgeries 131 had produced, Dr. Richard Bentley, inserted in the second edition of his friend William Wotton's Reflec- tions upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1697), a Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris, which appeared, not only to contemporary scholars, but to all succeeding critics, a very miracle of learning, logic, humour and ingenuity ; in fact, in the opinion of no mean scholar of the nineteenth century, ' he so absolutely settled the question, that to a very dolt the maintenance of the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris must seem absurd.' The triumph was not immediate, for an attempted answer to it was pubhshed by Boyle in 1698, which drew from Bentley in the following year the second and complete edition of his Dissertation. The celebrated Boyle and Bentley controversy went on for some years, but nothing could shake the greatness of the Cambridge Dissertation, and it is still acknowledged as the greatest product of EngHsh scholarship in the eighteenth century. Bentley's method was not to examine the MSS. for signs of falsity, for no MSS. of the date of the forger are extant, much less the forger's autograph, but simply to rely on the internal evidence of the letters themselves. Before his dissecting-knife they fell to pieces. Towns were found to be mentioned which were founded after Phalaris. The Messenians and Zancleans are both named, though Zancle was only the old name of Messene, the two towns being one and the same ; Phalaris is angry with a poet 132 Books in Manuscript who wrote tragedies against him, though both the name and thing were unknown till later ; the letters are in an Attic dialect instead of the Doric of Sicily, and not even in the Attic of Phalaris' time, but in New Attic. So, too, the coins mentioned are wrong, and wrong just as a forger would go astray ; for when he speaks of talents, the computation shows that he is thinking of Attic talents, each of which was worth 2,000 Sicilian talents. Finally, Bentley shows that words were used in a sense first given them by Plato, and points out numerous incon- sistencies in the matter itself. But these points are elucidated with so much solid first-hand learning, with such freshness, and in so humorous and per- suasive a style, that in spite of the immense strides we have since taken in these very departments of knowledge, the Dissertation is still thoroughly in- structive as well as entertaining reading. 2. The False Decretals The early history of Church Law, like the history of the Canon of the New Testament, abounds with apocryphal and spurious works, though it is often difficult to say with what amount of deliberate desire to mislead they were fabricated. The first two documents of Canon or Church Law are spurious, the Apostolic Constitutions and the Apostolic Canons, neither having any connexion with the apostles themselves. They are, however, venerable documents, and throw a clear light on the history of Literary Forgeries 133 the time when they were fabricated. Several genuine collections of Canons of ecclesiastical councils were made in succeeding centuries ; and among them the Hispana (sc. collectio), representing chiefly Spanish Canon Law, attained celebrity. At last, in the ninth century, one Isidorus Mercator (often confused with the greater Isidor, Bishop of Seville) edited the Hispana, but foisted into it no less than ninety-five fictitious Decretals (or authori- tative letters from popes to bishops on points in dispute), the earliest professing to be dated a.d. loi ! They were recognized as genuine by Pope Nicholas I. in a.d. 865, who did not scruple to assure Hincmar, against whom they were used, that the originals had lain for centuries in the Roman archives. They were, in fact, accepted everywhere until the fifteenth century, when, under the criticism of Valla Erasmus and others, they dissolved away. The extent to which the claims of the Papacy were affected by these convenient forgeries is a keenly- debated point ; but while it is clear, on the one hand, that the intention of the False Decretals was mainly to protect the bishops from the interference of both laymen and councils, yet the poUcy they professed to initiate, of an appeal to the pope in all greater causes, did certainly aid the popes in their later struggles for temporal power ; and the Decrcium of Gratian (in the eleventh century), which is at the base of the system of Canon Law, certainly received and incorporated these forged documents. 134 Books in Manuscript 3, Ingulphus Among the monastic chronicles of England, the most considerable forgery is that of the Latin History of the Abbey of Croy land, attributed to Ingulphus, an abbot of that monastery, who died in 1109. The historian Ordericus Vitalis went to Croyland within a few weeks of Ingulphus' death, collected all the information he could get on the spot, gives us a considerable and authentic account of him, and says no word of his having written a detailed history of the abbey. When the narrative is looked into, the usual signs of imposture appear. The original charters of the house, which are quoted in full, abound with errors — bishops attest deeds before their appointment or after their death, names of places are spelt before the Conquest as they were spelt in the fifteenth century, feudal words occur too early, lands are granted (in a.d. 1013) for one hundred years at a nominal rent when neither kind of condition was in use in England before the Conquest, and the like. So, too, in the narrative itself, Ingulphus describes his education at Oxford, where he studied Cicero and Aristotle, at a time when Aristotle was in no part of Christendom studied at all ; and admits numerous anachronisms both of language and fact. The curious thing is that four out of five known MSS. of the work have disappeared since a.d. 1600. One ' very ancient ' one, described as the autograph of Ingulphus, used to be kept at Croyland under lock and key, but disappeared in the middle of the seventeenth Literary Forgeries 135 century ; a Cotton MS. which Selden used was burnt in the great fire of 1731 (see p. 95) ; Marsham's codex cannot be traced after about 1690, and Sir Henry Savile's is utterly lost. All that remains is an Arundel MS. in the British Museum, written in the sixteenth century ! This circumstance, and the solid substratum of fact which the History undoubtedly displays (though apparently only adapted from Ordericus Vitalis and others), have induced several modern critics to uphold this suspicious record, and to ascribe its errors to ignorant embellishers But the fact remains that no statement in the entire History can be accepted without corroboration, and that every note of imposture may be found in its pages. 4. Chatterton Thomas Chatterton, the boy-poet, was born in poor circumstances in the parish of St. Mary Red- cUffe at Bristol. In early years he had access, not only to the church itself, where heraldry and monu- mental effigies caught the eye at every turn, but also to the muniment room, where ' Canynge's Coffer,' a massive chest, once secured by six keys, but then forced and lying open, supplied numerous oppor- tunities of studying the style and characters of ancient writing. These surroundings and the few books to which he had access predisposed a mind of great power and activity to the study of old English (for the boy never learnt Latin), and he soon 136 Books in Manuscript compiled a double glossary, of old words with their modern meanings, and of current words with their ancient equivalents. The first use he made of his special knowledge and powers was to produce, in 1764, his twelfth year, a poem entitled ' Elinoure and Juga.' In 1765 he had conceived the idea of making Thomas Rowley, a supposed monk, the fictitious author of several poems. Three years after, Bristol Bridge was reopened with some cere- mony, and the city was startled by an elaborate narrative in a newspaper of the first passage of the Mayor over the bridge in 1248. The interest this excited stimulated Chatterton to produce in the same year the best of his poems, the tragical inter- lude of iElla. Next we find the youth bold enough to write to Horace Walpole, enclosing some old English poems ; but the great man, after a short time of uncertainty, showed his applicant the cold shoulder, and returned the poems. The last period of Chatterton' s short and clouded life was spent in Lon- don, where, after some bold bids for fame, and chilling failures, he put an end to his Hfe on August 25, 1770. In Chatterton' s forgeries we find the least occasion that can be imagined for wholesale condemnation, and the greatest for pity and indulgence. To his family and even to his friends he confessed, under very httle pressure, the simple truth, and the greatest harm he did was to himself. Critics soon saw that the language of the Rowley poems was a mixture of the forms and vocabulary of all past Literary Forgeries 137 time, and that the matter teemed, as was inevitable, with anachronisms and impossibihties. Poems in the author's own name would have secured attention and brought him reputation, so that meanness at least was wanting to his deceit. And we cannot but wonder what future would have been in store, under happier conditions, for one of whom Walpole could say that he knew of no one with so masterly a genius, and who even drew from Johnson the testimony that he was the most extraordinary young man that had encountered his knowledge. 5. The Ireland Forgeries The temporary success of what are known as the Ireland forgeries, so lately as the close of the eighteenth century, can only make us wonder at the invincible credulity of mankind. William Henry Ireland, born in 1777, was the son of a small pub- lisher and bookseller who was enthusiastic about Shakespeare and Shakespeariana. The temptation to the son to play upon his father's weakness was too strong to be resisted, and as early as 1794 the latter was shown a lease purporting to be signed by Shakespeare. The success of this practical joke led to further results. Shakespeare's love-letters, one enclosing a lock of his hair, and countless similar relics, were produced, and a statement that they were given by the poet to William Henrye Irelaunde ^ in gratitude for a rescue from drowning. The father, 1 fmo ordinary Christian names hardly occur before 1700, 138 Books in Manuscript who was quite innocently duped, published these, and many persons accepted them as genuine. At last, as might have been foreseen, a complete play was discovered, with the title ' Vortigern,' and Sheridan actually produced it on April 2nd (it should have been the ist !), 1796, at Drury Lane Theatre. The preparation for this was the crowning point of Ireland's triumph ; for as soon as the play was printed and studied, both the language and sentiments betrayed the fraud. This prevented the appearance of Henry II., another play which had already been written ; and in the same year came a crushing exposure from the pen of Edmund Malone, the Shakespearian commentator, and also both immediately and in 1805 a confession by Ireland himself, in which he displays a certain amount of satisfied vanity at the success he attained. The extraordinary scantiness of our knowledge of Shakespeare's personal life, and of the authority and relationship of the Folio and Quarto editions of his plays, has unfortunately stimulated others besides Ireland to concoct some of the missing information ; and in the last century a deliberate attempt was made to pass off forged and falsified records as genuine, by John Payne Collier {d. 1883), who from 1831 to at least 1853 issued Shakespearian books in which a certain ' Perkin's Folio ' and AUeyn MSS. at Dulwich were freely drawn upon, both of which sources were demonstrably manufactured or tam- pered with by insertion. Literary Forgeries 139 6. Constantine Simonides The greatest forger of the last century was un- doubtedly Constantine Simonides, a Greek, who was born in 1824. To meet the requirements of modern critics, who know styles of writing, the colours of the ink and paints of different times, and the very kinds of parchment used, there is need of such a combina- tion of intellect with versatility, industry with ingenuity, as is rarely found. Yet, as even Juvenal could instance the audacity of the Grceculus esuriens, so in modern times that mixed race has shown many of the qualities which, when perverted to a base use, produce the skilled forger. Simonides started by becoming a citizen of the world. From 1843 on, we find him successively on the shores of the Euxine, in Asia Minor, Thrace, Athos (where he wrote a hagiography) , the ^gean, Cyprus, Alexandria, Cairo, Sinai (1844), Syria, Babylon, Persia, Russia, and Constantinople (in 1846). His next journeys were from Greece to Constantinople again, Odessa, St. Petersburg, and Germany ; then again to Egypt, the iEgean coasts, and finally to Liverpool (in 1853) and London. His stock-in-trade was a large number both of genuine MSS., obtained largely from Mount Athos, and of forged ones written by himself ; and his custom was to present first some genuine ones, and when his customer was off his guard, some of the second sort ; while he paid England and Germany the dubious compHment of selecting them as the 140 Books in Manuscript field of his operations, as possessing either the largest amount of hard cash, or the greatest number of probable dupes. Even in i8-j6 he is stated to have been in possession of 5000 MSS., which he exhibited to savants at Athens. In 1854 3-^d 1855, Simonides was well known at the British Museum and the Bodleian ; but Sir Frederick Madden extracted a considerable number of genuine MSS. from him at the former place, while Mr. Coxe, when asked his opinion of the date of some presented to him in Oxford, assigned them to the latter half of the nineteenth century. In Sir Thomas Phillipps, however, Simonides found a less critical purchaser, and in the great PhilUpps Library at Cheltenham are to be found some of the finest specimens of his powers in a Phocylides, an Ana- creon, and a boustrophedon ^ Hesiod. In 1855 he visited Berlin and Leipzig ; and when in July he met Wilhelm Dindorf, he informed him that he owned a Greek palimpsest, containing three books of records of the Egyptian kings, by Uranius of Alexandria , son of Anaximenes. Dindorf offered a large price for it, but Simonides loftily rephed that he intended to publish it first himself, and then to give the original to the library at Athens. By persistence, however, Dindorf obtained temporary ' 'Rov- a. • -o 0. ; TS and a curved or jagged line [indentura) was cut along the line of dots, so that the two pieces could be for ever identified as fitting precisely into each other when brought together). In ancient times personal signature was not re- quired, and even the sign of the cross, by which before the Conquest the signatories attested their presence, was affixed by the scribe of the whole deed ; in fact, not till the fourteenth century do we find royal attestation, not till the fifteenth the signature of a petitioner or party to a deed, and not till the sixteenth actual autographs of witnesses. In England after the Conquest we do not expect to find deeds dated until after a.d. 1290 ; but, on the other hand, undated ones after 1320 are hardly found at all. Wills are among the most authentic materials of personal history, often abounding in precise informa- tion of relationships, age, and condition. Though private documents, they have from early times been deposited or enrolled in various public offices, such as those of the Prerogative Courts of Canterbury and York. The former collection is now at Somerset House in London, and extends back to the year 1383 ; the York wills go back to 1389 ; but there are numerous lesser offices. Often the old registers Public and Private Records 177 of a town contain early wills enrolled at the desire of the testator, in order to preserve the terms of the will from any tampering or possible loss. Heraldic Visitations, which were held once in every generation in each county from 1530 to 1687, were due to the jealousy with which the right to bear arms was safeguarded. The Heralds' College or College of Arms was specially instituted to preserve this privilege, and to register all recent changes in the line of descent of famihes. The Visitations were personally conducted by heralds, and every change in or addition to pedigrees was investigated by refer- ence to documents or by evidence on oath. The results were finally copied out and certified and sent up to the College of Arms, and still present the most certain pedigrees which we possess. They are classed with private records on account of their subject-matter. One very interesting class of documents remains, the Court Rolls of a manor. The descent of the manor is usually the key to the history of a parish or village ; and where the Court Rolls are preserved, we have as clear a picture as can be obtained of the inner life and changes of a district. It is important to bear in mind that there were two distinct Courts of law which were held within a manor. The first was the Court Leet, the King's Court, properly held by the Sheriff as representmg the king, but usually allowed to be held by the tenants on payment of a sum called the Certum I J?) Books in Manuscript Letae. This Court was for public offences against the commonwealth, for felonies, and the like. The other Court was the Court Baron (Curia Baronis), or Court of the Lord of the Manor. This was local, and in it the customs of the particular manor prevailed ; the causes tried in it were offences against the said customs, personal squabbles, actions for non- payment of debts, for assault, for diverting roads, polluting streams, allowing cattle to trespass, brewing bad beer, and the numberless bickerings which prevent life from stagnating in rural districts. The jury were freemen from the manor itself, or at least from the tithing (decenna, whence their name of decennarii, tithing-men) within which the manor might be, and were presided over by the Steward of the Lord. The jury ' presented ' certain facts, which were inquired into, and punishment meted out. Most amusing as well as interesting these glimpses of real life are to an observant eye ; the quaint solemnity of the proceedings, the simple offences, the fresh -air kind of justice done, the world- old yet modern kinds of men and women concerned. Take, for instance, an ordinary (translated) entry from a Court Roll of Cressingham in a.d. 1329 : — (Presentment) of Thomas Buteler for rescue from the servant of Alexander Nally of one pig taken in the com of Alexander Nally. Of Alice Brun because she did not allow the ale-tasters to do their duty. Of Peter le Miller for a hue and cry justly raised upon him by the wife of William le Fuller. (The fines were 6d., 2d., and 6d. respectively.) Public and Private Records 179 Or this from a Court Roll of Little Barton (in Suffolk, owned by Bury St. Edmund's) /dated 1461 : — And they present that Sir Robert Loote, rector of the church there, did trespass on the meadow of the lord called Netemedowe with three horses. Therefore he is fined vjd. And that John Gooch with his cart, John Goodarde in the usual way, Richard Milton as before, and master Thomas Wellys with his cart, did make a wobbly track at Shakerspatch without a license, where they ought not. Therefore they are fined xij