WITH LIFE AND CRITICAL REMARKS BY THE REV. THOMAS DALE, AND SEVENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS, FROM DRAWINGS BY JOHN GILBERT. "In the beauty of its type, the vellum-like character of its paper, the amplitude of its margins, and the number of its illustrations, it appears to us the handsomest of the editions of Cowper."-Spectator. DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET. and the colophons, with which, as with a satisfactory flourish of the pen, they closed their long-continued labours. Many of these are very curious; expressing joy, humility, remorse; entreating the reader's prayers and pardon for the writer's sins; and sometimes pronouncing a malediction on any one who should steal the book. A few of these I subjoin : "As pilgrims rejoice, beholding their native land, so are transcribers made glad, beholding the end of a book.” "Sweet is it to write the end of any book." Ye who read, pray for me, who have written this book, the humble and sinful Theodulus." "As many, therefore, as shall read this book, pardon me, I beseech you, if aught I have erred in accent, acute and grave, in apostrophe, in breathing soft or aspirate; and may God save you all; amen." "If anything is well, praise the transcriber; if ill, pardon his unskilfulness." "Ye who read, pray for me, the most sinful of all men, for the Lord's sake." "The hand that has written this book shall decay, alas! and become dust, and go down to the grave, the corrupter of all bodies. But all ye who are of the portion of Christ, pray that I may obtain the pardon of my sins. Again and again I beseech you with tears, brothers and fathers, accept my miserable supplication, O holy choir! I am called John, woe is me! I am called Hiercus, or Sacerdos, in name only, not in unction." "Whoever shall carry away this book, without permission of the Pope, may he incur the malediction of the Holy Trinity, of the Holy Mother of God, of St. John the Baptist, of the one hundred and eighteen holy Nicene Fathers, and of all the Saints; the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah; and the halter of Judas; anathema, amen." "Keep safe, O Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, my three fingers, with which I have written this book." "Mathusalus Machir transcribed this divinest book, in toil, infirmity, and dangers many." "Bacchius Barbardorius and Michael Sophianus wrote this book in sport and laughter, being the guests of their noble and common friend Vincentius Pinellus, and Petrus Nunnius, a most learned man." This last colophon, Montfaucon does not suffer to pass without reproof. "Other calligraphers," he remarks, "demand only the prayers of their readers, and the pardon of their sins; but these glory in their wantonness." Drink down to your peg!-PAGE 135. One of the canons of Archbishop Anselm, promulgated at the beginning of the twelfth century, ordains "that priests go not to drinking-bouts, nor drink to pegs." In the times of the hard-drinking Danes, King Edgar ordained that "pins or nails should be fastened into the drinking-cups or horns at stated distances, and whosoever should drink beyond those marks at one draught should be obnoxious to a severe punishment." Sharpe, in his History of the Kings of England, says: "Our ancestors were formerly famous for compotation; their liquor was ale, and one method of amusing themselves in this way was with the peg-tankard. I had lately one of them in my hand. It had on the inside a row of eight pins, one above another, from top to bottom. It held two quarts, and was a noble piece of plate, so that there was a gill of ale, half a pint Winchester measure, between each peg. The law was, that every person that drank was to empty the space between pin and pin, so that the pins were so many measures to make the company all drink alike, and to swallow the same quantity of liquor. This was a pretty sure method of making all the company drunk, especially if it be considered that the rule was, that whoever drank short of his pin, or beyond it, was obliged to drink again, and even as deep as to the next pin." The convent of St. Gildas de Rhuys.-PAGE 137. Abelard, in a letter to his friend Philintus, gives a sad picture of this monastery. "I live," he says, "in a barbarous country, the language of which I do not understand; I have no conversation but with the rudest people. My walks are on the inaccessible shore of a sea, which is perpetually stormy. My monks are only known by their dissoluteness, and living without any rule or order. Could you see the abbey, Philintus, you would not call it one. The doors and walls are without any ornament, except the heads of wild boars and hinds' feet, which are nailed up against them, and the hides of frightful animals. The cells are hung with the skins of deer. The monks have not so much as a bell to wake them; the cocks and dogs supply that defect. In short, they pass their whole days in hunting; would to heaven that were their greatest fault! or that their pleasures terminated there! I endeavour in vain to recall them to their duty; they all combine against me, and I only expose myself to continual vexations and dangers. I imagine I see every moment a naked sword hang over my head. Sometimes they surround me, and load me with infinite abuses; sometimes they abandon me, and I am left alone to my own tormenting thoughts. I make it my endeavour to merit by my sufferings, and to appease an angry God. Sometimes I grieve for the loss of the house of the Paraclete, and wish to see it again. Ah, Philintus, does not the love of Heloise still burn in my heart? I have not yet triumphed over that unhappy passion. In the midst of my retirement I sigh, I weep, I pine, I speak the dear name Heloise, and am pleased to hear the sound.". Letters of the Celebrated Abelard and Heloise. Translated by Mr. John Hughes. Glasgow, 1751. Were it not for my magic garters and staff.-PAGE 170. The method of making the Magic Garters and the Magic Staff is thus laid down in "Les Secrets Merveilleux du Petit Albert," a French translation of "Alberti Parvi Lucii Libellus de Mirabilibus Naturæ Arcanis." "Gather some of the herb called motherwort, when the sun is entering the first degree of the sign of Capricorn; let it dry a little in the shade, and make some garters of the skin of a young hare: that is to say, having cut the skin of the hare into strips two inches wide, double them, sew the beforementioned herb between, and wear them on your legs. No horse can long keep up with a man on foot, who is furnished with these garters.” — P. 128. 66 'Gather, on the morrow of All-Saints, a strong branch of willow, of which you will make a staff, fashioned to your liking. Hollow it out by removing the pith from within, after having furnished the lower end with an iron ferule. Put into the bottom of the staff the two eyes of a young wolf, the tongue and heart of a dog, three green lizards, and the hearts of three swallows. These must all be dried in the sun, between two papers, having been first sprinkled with finely-pulverized saltpetre. Besides all these put into the staff seven leaves of vervain, gathered on the eve of St. John the Baptist, with a stone of divers colours, which you will find in the nest of the lapwing, and stop the end of the staff with a pomel of box, or of any other material you please; and be assured that this staff will guarantee you from the perils and mishaps which too often befall travellers, either from robbers, wild beasts, mad dogs, or venomous animals. It will also procure you the good will of those with whom you lodge." -P. 130. HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET, LONDON. |