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Notes
Fifteenth Century English Books (Bibliographical Society, Illustrated Monograph no. XVIII, 1917).
Edward Hodnett, English Woodcuts 1480-1535 (Bibliographical Society, Illustrated Monograph no. XXII, 1935). No certain conclusions can be drawn from the impressions of the cut of the Trinity (Hodnett 313), the only cut common to all three. Hodnett also notes that the block of no. 374 had suffered a diagonal crack through the entire length of the block by the time it was used for Duff 2. This cut also appears in the three editions of Alcock's Mons perfectionis, which will be discussed below.
A similar instance can be cited from a quotation from Isaiah (64.1). In M (b5v, line 15), the citation incorrectly reads: "Vtinam dirumperam celos et descenderes." With this C agrees while F more correctly has: "Vtinam disrumperes celos et descenderes" (b5, β, 20-21). If F intervenes between M and C, it is difficult to account for these two editions having the same mistake ("dirumperam" for the Biblical "dirumperes").
It is, of course, mathematically possible (if unlikely from a logical point of view) that one edition might have served as the original for the other two, independently composed. This line of argument too can be dismissed for these reasons: C and F could not have been set up independently from M because their identical "make-up" shows obvious dependence of the one upon the other; M and C could not have been separately produced from F since they are textually related; and, finally, M cannot have been set up from C for reasons we shall now set forth in the text.
M contains certain anachronisms in orthography which can best be accounted for by assuming that it was composed from a much earlier manuscript. Thus M (b2, line 9) has "pine of hell" where both other editions print "payne". In the inflectional endings too, M often has "-is", "-yth", and "-yd" where the other editions have the more modern forms "-es", "-eth", and "-ed".
A quotation from the Bible ("Vae misero mihi!"—Jeremiah 45.3) undergoes strange mutations. In M one finds "Ve michi misero"; in C, "Ve michi misere"; and in F, "Ve michi miseri"!!
While both M and C here have "indeuowte", F (a6, α, 23) prints "vndeuowte". This is a further indication that F cannot intervene between M and C.
That Wynkyn de Worde followed this practice in other cases seems certain from his Treatise of Love (Duff 399), most copies of which are still bound together with the Chastising of God's Children (Duff 85). It is also known that Richard Pynson too issued some of his books in series of this sort; compare the present writer's "Notes on a Pynson Volume," Library, 4th ser., XVIII (1937-38), 261-267.
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