Binding: Bound in eighteenth-century English red morocco, gilt borders, gilt edges, marbled endleaves, paper flyleaves (one loose), upper cover detached; in a blue cloth case. Other decoration, ff. 40: 2- to 4-line initials in dark blue; a few marginal notes. Script, ff. 40: English cursive book hand. Layout, ff. 40: Collation: i–iii#^8#, iv#^3# [of 4, blank iv canceled after fol. 35], v#^8#, vi#^5# [apparently of 8, blank v–vii canceled after fol. 38], with horizontal catchwords in simple cartouches, traces of leaf signatures; Ruled in plummet, 40 lines to fol. 8v and 41 lines thereafter, written-space approximately 213 mm. by 134 mm.; written in dark brown ink.
Former Owner(s):
Sixteenth-century calligraphic signature W: Newmanat end; Ralph Palmer (1684-1752), first earl Verney, of Little Chelsea, near London, with his armorial bookplate and partially-erased inscription Bibliotheca Palmeriana, Londini, 1747 by descent to Sotheby’s, 12 November 1919, lot 187;
Sir (Robert) Leicester Harmsworth (1870-1937); his sale, Sotheby’s, 15 October 1945, lot 2089; George A. Poole, bought from Lawrence Witten, 1957; acquired by the Lilly Library with the Poole collection in 1958.
Manuscript note: The manuscript was clearly in an institutional library in the late Middle Ages, for there is a coppery-green offset from a chain hasp in the lower centre of the back former pastedown. Bibliography: Allen 1927, pp. 67, 205 and 238; Faye and Bond 1962, p. 179; Marzac 1968, p. 184, no. 202 (as Harmsworth), and p. 185, no. 233 (as Sotheby’s, 1919); Armstrong 1968, passim. Flyleaf: Latin. ff. 40: Latin. Flyleaf: Inscription on the flyleaf, ‘Close the book, for the love [of God]’, is a partial pun on the title of the first text, and it resembles the hand of John Shirley, the London bookseller (d. 1456; cf. Connolly 1998). Explicit, Flyleaf: Claude librum pro amore dei. Incipit, ff. 1r-16v: tua dulcedine, Te mecum & meis commendo sine fine, A.M.E.N. Explicit, ff. 1r-16v: Quoniam mundanorum insania gaudium. ff. 17r-27r: This is the text discussed in 1968 by Elizabeth Armstrong, who notes its similarity to Oxford, Merton College MS 204, fols. 207v-110v, observing that Thomas Hoccleve clearly based part of his Lerne to Die on a similar abridgement in four parts from Book II, chapters 2-5, of the Horologium sapientiae by Henry Suso (c. 1295-1366; for the Merton manuscript, see now Thomson 2009, p... Incipit, ff. 17r-27r: de quo loquitur S dominus noster seculorum, A.M.E.N., Explicit, Quarta particula huius libri que docet qualiter pura mente debeas dominum nostrum ihesum xpistum iugiter laudare, AMEN. Explicit, ff. 17r-27r: Scire more, est paratum habere cor et animam. Incipit, ff. 28r-29v.: hodie non recedit a me, Ergo benedictum sit nomen ihesu in secula seculorum, Amen”. Explicit, ff. 28r-29v.: Oleum effusum nomen tuum ideo adolescentule. ff. 29v-39r.: with chapters 1 (fol. 29v), 2 (fol. 30v), 3 (fol. 31r), 4 (fol. 31v), 5 (fol. 33r), 6 (fol. 33v), 7 (fol. 34r), 8 (fol. 34v), 9 (fol. 35r), 10 (fol. 35v), 11 (fol. 36r) and 12 (fol. 37v). Incipit, ff. 29v-39r.: eternaliter laudare Cui sit honor . . . seculorum Amen, Explicit. Explicit, ff. 29v-39r.: Hic est libellus de emendacione.
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