Sales catalogue: Quaritch

Date:
August 1871
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/17/3
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue: Quaritch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/68 (page 33)
    MANUSCRIPTS: ROMANCES, POPULAR LITERATURE. = 38 En ce questoie en tel destrece Si vi venir a grant noblece Deviers le tour dame Pitie Qi maint cuer triste avoit flequie. The last word quoted here, which evidently stands for the modern word jfléchi, and several other similar specimens of orthography shew that the MS. was executed in the north of France. The language is very curious in many of its forms, as for instance iow for je. chow for ce, wu for ou, iowenes for jeunes, as for aux, vawra for voudra, dius for diew. The opening lines of the poem agree very closely with the reading given in a MS. of the French National Library which Paris declared to con- tain one of the most ancient and best examples of the poem. ‘They run thus :— Maintes gens quident que en songes Nait se fables non et mengongnes. The lines in which the name of the romance is determined stand as follows :— Chou est li romans de le rose U lars damours est toute encloze La matere en est biele et noeve Or doint dius qu é gre le recoive Celle pour cui iou lai enpris Cest celle qui tant a de pris. 140 LIVRE DES CENT EPISTRES (en vers) Que Ornea ta DEESSE ENVOYA A HeEcror DE TROYE QUANT IL ESTOIT EN LEAGE DE QUINZE Ans, avec Glose et Alegorie, small folio, Manuscript, written for CHARLES DE Croy Prince DE CuIMAY (i 1486), calf extra, by F. Bedford, £10. 1486 A note upon the fly-leaf states that a similar MS. to this exists in the Library of the Dukes of Burgundy, but I do not find any such in the catalogues of collections that I have examined. Every section of the text, which is in metre, is accompanied by a gloss, an allegory, and a quotation from the Latin Scriptures. ‘The first gloss commences thus : ‘* Othea scelon grec seult est’ prins pour sagesse de femme. Et comme les anciens non ayaus encore lumiere de foy aonrassent pluise’s dieux et teinssent estranges loix soubs lesquelles loix soit passees les plus haultes seignouries.” 141 APOCALYPSIS CUM FIGURIS, stve Historia Sanort JouaNNis EJUSQUE VISIONES ApocaLyPrrom, folio _A sprenpID Manuscripr upon VELLUM, written in the XIVth century, and ornamented with 85 SUPERB DESIGNS the size of the page, executed with a pen and slightly heightened with colours, having short explanations of the subjects (in Latin) between the drawings, bound in parchment; from the “ Abbaye de Citeaux Bourgogne,” £125. Saec. XIV. This magnificent specimen of Early French art is similar to the celebrated Block-Book bearing the same title, which sold for £445. in the Rev. T. Corser’s sale, and which now forms one of the most interesting items of my stock. It is described post under the heading ‘“ Xylography.” But as to the designs, the MS. is very far superior inexecution. Like as in that work, each design in this manuscript exhibits two or more subjects. ; 142 LIBER BELIAL Jacosr Pattapint pz THERamo, Germanice.... Pitch * daz da betracht ob Ihs Marien sun daz recht hab behabt da er die holl un’ die tuefel hat beraubt an dem tag da er fiir alle menschen die mart’ gelitte’ hat, sm. fol. 70 leaves, neat old German MS. on paper, with 35 large and spirited DRAWINGS, coloured and parily illumi- nated with gold, stamped Dutch vellum, £130. Anthonius Rittel de Pairmenchingn hoe seripsit domino suo Gabriele Mhuller, hoe tempore scriptor suus, 1450 An extraordinary religious Romance, composed towards the end of the four- teenth ceatury, in Latin, and translated afterwards into most of the Knropean lan- guages. The present MS., which is interesting and valuable from several points of view, seems to be the prototype of the earliest printed German version, which ap- peared about 1462, previously to the publication of the first Latin edition. The work has been cousidered Ly some to be the gro esyue creauion of a coarse mind ; D