University of Virginia Library

Further Texts of Chaucer's Minor Poems
by
A. I. Doyle and George B. Pace

In Speculum for January 1969 Robert E. Nichols, Jr., publishing transcriptions of manuscripts of Chaucer's Fortune, Truth, and Gentilesse, remarks: "the following transcriptions . . . are probably not only the last unpublished manuscript versions of the three works, but the final unpublished manuscripts of Chaucer's Short Poems."[1] Professor Nichols subtitles his article: "The 'Last' Unpublished Manuscript Transcriptions." Ironically, at the very time the article came out Norman Davis published his transcription of a newly discovered manuscript of Gentilesse (Nottingham MS.),[2] and in the previous year we noted the existence of an unpublished copy of Truth in the same manuscript and of the A B C in the Melbourne MS[3]. We do not say that the transcriptions we publish in this paper are the final transcriptions. We do say that they are the principal unpublished manuscripts of the Short Poems known to us which we consider definitely worth publishing (but see section V below).

A manuscript of these poems is worth publishing if it can be called "a genuine witness" (Davis's phrase; p. 46); that is, if it is a valid manuscript, not, say, a mere copy of some early printed text.[4] In the 19th century the Chaucer Society published transcriptions of nearly all of the manuscripts of Chaucer's Short Poems. Since then Chaucerians have kept adding to the collection so that we now have in print for these poems a corpus scriptorum which is perhaps unique in medieval English literature. Of what other group of poems extant

in a large number of manuscripts, even poems by Chaucer, can it be said: all the manuscript evidence is available for the student?

In this paper we publish transcriptions of the version of the A B C in the Melbourne MS. (State Library of Victoria, Felton Bequest, Deguileville in English), of Truth in the Nottingham University Library MS. ME LM 1 (Mellish), and of Against Women Unconstant (probably by Chaucer)[5] in Fairfax 16, Bodleian.[6] None has been published before; the Fairfax copy is the best version of that poem. In parts I-III we comment on the manuscripts themselves; in part IV we give the transcriptions along with brief statements of textual affiliations; in part V we list additional unpublished manuscripts of the Short Poems and also early printed copies with claim to manuscript authority.

Parts I-III are by A. I. Doyle. This introduction and parts IV-V are by George B. Pace.

I

The Melbourne text of the A B C (like five other copies) is in a manuscript of the English prose version of Deguileville's Pilgrimage of the Manhood, followed by that of his Pilgrimage of the Soul, which has been described at some length by Dr. K. V. Sinclair.[7] This is the only surviving volume known to me in which the two occur together,[8] but there was a copy of the two together in the collection of Henry Savile of Banke (W. Yorks., d. 1617)[9] which could have been the same

as another in the library of the Earl of Kingston, said to have been destroyed by fire in 1745.[10] The Savile manuscript is said in his catalogues to have been written or compiled by John Lacy, Dominican friar and anchorite of Newcastle upon Tyne, who wrote and illuminated an extant Latin and English volume sometime between 1420 and 1434, and owned a copy of the earlier version of the Wycliffite New Testament.[11] Like Lacy's, apparently, the Melbourne manuscript treats the two Pilgrimages as the first and second book of one work, to which it gives the title Grace Dieu, the name of the pilgrim's guide in the Manhood, but somewhat paradoxically attached in other surviving manuscripts not to that but to the Soul, where that personification plays a smaller part.[12] The texts are also peculiar in that the Manhood contains another poem[13] as well as Chaucer's A B C, and the Soul eight extra (likewise unknown elsewhere) besides the usual fourteen, to three of which there are additional stanzas.[14] The prose of the Soul is modified to accommodate these hymns, especially at the end, where other copies vary considerably, some giving the date 1413 and a translator's colophon with the cryptogram Ak, not found in Melbourne.[15] The additional verse in both Pilgrimages, strongly latinate in its vocabulary, derivative from liturgical sources, is not very different from the usual pieces in the Soul which have been attributed to Thomas Hoccleve because of the occurrence of one of them in his autograph collection, Huntington HM 111, where there is nothing attributable to anyone else.[16] It may, however, have been appropriated for the Soul (as, presumably, Chaucer's A B C was for the Manhood) with the others made to match, and so too the Melbourne imitations. Whether John Lacy was responsible for the last is an open question; the English of his extant writing is not consistently or strongly northern and could have been modified by re-copying. The language of the Melbourne manuscript has been assigned to Lincolnshire,[17] and the writing of the main scribe, who signs himself Benett, is probably of the second quarter of the fifteenth century or thereabouts, a very well-formed even cursiva anglicana formata with an admixture of letter-forms from secretary script (occasional alternative simple a, g constantly and final s usually).[18] Although his þ and y are quite distinct, he sometimes oddly uses the former in initial positions for the latter. One leaf only, the first of the Pilgrimage of the Soul (folio 96), is by another hand, a good set secretary of the second or third quarter of the century with alternative reversed e from anglicana, and its orthography also appropriate to Lincolnshire. It matches Benett in having high decorative whiplike ascenders in the top line and "secundus liber prima pars" as a running title (both f. 96v), but the spaces left for an opening rubric, miniature and decorated initials are not filled, as they are in the rest of the volume with pen-drawings of an expressive unpretentious style and standard blue and red flourished penwork initials, to complete a piece of very competent provincial book-production.[19] The drawings seem to be independent of those in other copies of the Pilgrimages, which deserve further study. Sir John Rouclyff of Cowthorpe (W. Yorks., d. 1531), whose name is on the book, was bequeathed by his father Sir Brian in 1495 all his English, Latin and French books, and his father, Guy (d. 1460), could have been its first owner in regard to date, though his will is silent.[20]

II

The Mellish manuscript, deposited in Nottingham University Library (Me LM1), has been recently discussed by Professor Norman Davis (see fn. 2 above), but his first-hand description is confined to the one page (f. 20r) containing the poems he prints and he refers to Henry Bradshaw for a fuller account of the volume and to Brown and Robbins for the other English verse therein. Each of these is however incomplete and it is possible to say something more about the relationship of the English contents to the rest of the manuscript and its background. The book is made up of good membrane leaves of the best matt finish, measuring about 15 x 101/2 inches, and includes a Sarum kalendar, hours of the Blessed Virgin, vigils of the dead, a liturgical psalter, with litanies and prayers, and Originalia doctorum (i.e. quotations from Bernard, Augustine, Jerome and others)—all in Latin except for an English rubric;[21] and several English pieces before and after the kalendar, some uniform in style of script and decoration with the remainder of the volume, but others obviously added later in spaces left blank. The illumination of the first page of the hours (f. 21r), incorporating the arms of the Harpur family in what seems to be the original work, is a good specimen of a style current in the second quarter and middle of the fifteenth century, with which that on other pages agrees.[22] The same escutcheon appears however to be a subsequent addition to the first page of the psalter (f. 79r), where there is also a miniature of King David in original illumination of the same period. The litany after the psalms and canticles invokes a number of relatively unusual Anglo-Saxon and more recent English saints, whom it is not easy to connect with a single locality or particular interest, though they suggest a deliberate choice.[23] The second portion of the volume may therefore have been adapted, not made or completed

like the first portion, for John Harpur, who gave it and other books for use in the chapel he endowed at Rushall (Staffordshire), his wife's ancestral home.[24] The English verses which explain his intentions are written on the page (f. 20v) facing the first of the hours, in a fine large text-hand, with alternate lines in different colours and decorated initials matching those of the preceding kalendar and of the rest of the volume. Latin verses in the kalendar concerning the consecration of the church "et locus extra", 1440, added by a similar textura quadrata, provide a terminus for the assembly and assignment of the whole book, which is not contradicted by any other internal or external evidence, but its main parts could have been commissioned or procured up to ten years previously, and possibly from London rather than from a provincial shop, in view of the standards of execution and the spelling of the original English contents.

The leaves (ff. 1-5r) before the kalendar are ruled in two columns and contain, in a proficient small text-hand, with initials and paraphs flourished in an equally expert mid-fifteenth century manner, like those of the bulk of the volume, in verse the Dietary, the Kings of England up to Henry VI (with space originally left at the end for continuation), and three stanzas from the Fall of Princes,[25] all by Lydgate but not ascribed here; and a prose history of the Russhale family from the Norman Conquest until the marriage of Eleanor, the heiress, with John Harpur, and her parents' deaths.[26] The dates of the latter (1429-30) are amongst entries in the kalendar by a cursive hand which resembles that responsible for the copy of Chaucer's Gentilesse and the Proverbs on f. 20r (judged to be mid to late fifteenth-century by Professor Davis), and it could be William Ball's, first Harpur chaplain and vicar of Rushall, whose own death in 1455 is recorded by another hand.

The copy of Chaucer's Truth and a further stanza from Lydgate's

Fall [27] occupy the space on f. 2v originally left vacant after the Kings and Fall stanzas. Both are in a different convention of script from that of the other additions: a "bastard anglicana" which combines the vertical and rectilinear characteristics, broken strokes and angular feet, and some of the letter-forms (d, g, final s) of text-hand, with the looped or hooked ascenders (b, h, k, l), long f, r and s, and other forms (D, S, e, w) from traditional English cursive.[28] "Le bon councell de Chawcer" is in fact written in the margin in a smaller and less bastard style, though probably by the same hand; and in the second column, while the title, "A Balade for dysceyuors", is in textura, the Lydgate stanza itself is in a less emphatic version of bastard anglicana, though still apparently by the same scribe. There is not perfect regularity or evenness in the performance of either mode, but it is competent enough to make arguable an identification with the scribe of f. 20r, whose ink at least is similar.[29] Filling up the space at the end of the Kings might imply that it was done before Henry VI's first deposition in 1461 or his death in 1471, after each of which continuation stanzas were composed, yet not necessarily available everywhere and not often added to existing copies.[30] Altogether it is likely that the copy of Truth is of the same era as that of Gentilesse, both added to the Mellish (Nottingham) manuscript after its chaining in the church at Rushall, by a versatile amateur hand, perhaps of one of the clergy or family, in augmentation of an anthology which had a distinctly secular as well as a religious aim.

III

The physical features and textual relationships of Bodleian MS. Fairfax 16 have been most fully discussed by Miss E. P. Hammond and A. A. Brusendorff.[31] They have shown how this collection of long and short Chaucerian and post-Chaucerian poems is made up of separable

booklets, of one or more quires each, corresponding partly in contents (though not precisely in order) with those of Tanner 346, also divisible into separate booklets, Bodley 638 and Digby 181, the so-called Oxford or Hammond group with a common ancestry from which they derive some unique and rare texts. A structure of such booklets, as in the mid-fourteenth century Auchinleck manuscript or the productions of the later fifteenth-century heirs of John Shirley, is often taken to imply commercial pre-fabrication, ready for selection and combination to the taste and purse of various purchasers.[32] That Fairfax 16 was completed in this way from ready-made elements, rather than commissioned from the start by its purchaser, is indicated by the fact that the illustration opposite the opening of Chaucer's Mars and Venus, the first text, is on the last page of two preceding quires otherwise left blank (except for the added list of contents), as were two at the end of the volume, presumably meant for further augmentation of the anthology, to some extent carried out in the later fifteenth and the sixteenth century. The full-page miniature (with considerable historical and iconographical interest) and the accompanying illuminated sprays, which incorporate the armorial bearings of one of the Stanley family, are stylistically of the second quarter or so of the fifteenth century and of a high (probably metropolitan) standard.[33] The membrane of the bulk of the book, however, is not of the highest quality (being smooth and wavy, not matt and flat, and sometimes flawed), and the hand responsible for all the original contents, a fluent, clear, well-punctuated and apparently accurate mixed cursive, with fere-textura or bastard headings, is modest in comparison with the illumination.[34] The copying can also be assigned to the second quarter of the century, not earlier, from details of the script and the authorship of some of the contents.[35] The date 1450 on the manuscript has generally been accepted as contemporary evidence, and a terminus ante. Although the first owners may have been from Cheshire,[36] the language as well as the decoration suggests London as the place of origin. The copyist of the Fairfax booklets may well have used more than one similar set as his source, to judge from the recurrence and rearrangement of the texts in different surviving manuscripts. The amount of activity implied, and the accessibility of authoritative (even unfinished) Chaucerian originals, point in the same direction.

IV

In the transcriptions below the abbreviations are expanded without italics. The brief statements of affiliation which precede the transcriptions are expressed in terms of Robinson's The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (see fn. 5 above), Textual Notes, pp. 915-920. We believe this to be the edition most likely to be compared. Our intention is not to give a full treatment of the textual problems involved, which could not be done in the space available to us.

An A B C. Chaucer's A B C survives in 16 manuscript copies and in Speght's printed edition of 1602.[37] Robinson views the authorities as comprising two groups, an α and a β. The group with which the Melbourne copy is affiliated is the β: Additional 36983, British Museum; Cambridge University Library Ff. 5. 30; Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, U. 3. 12; St. John's College, Cambridge, G. 21; Laud Misc. 740, Bodleian; Sion College, London, Arc. L.40.2/E.44. Except for the first, these texts all appear in manuscripts of the Middle English prose version of Deguileville's Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine. As the Melbourne copy occurs also in a manuscript of the prose Deguileville, the major affiliation is virtually certain. Melbourne's

closest kinships within the β group are with St. John's and Laud (both published by the Chaucer Society in No. 57). The three share a number of variants (most strikingly, the peculiarities in lines 98-99, 120, and 135; see transcription); the northerly coloring to the language is also characteristic of all three. The relationship, however, is not simple but rather complex; Melbourne is hardly a copy of either of these or of any extant manuscript.

The β manuscripts are looked upon by most editors as forming the superior group.

The Melbourne scribe uses the following abbreviations: the common signs for er; es/is (both occur written out; es is arbitrarily chosen); per; pre. There are frequent flourishes which suggest abbreviations—and some conceivably may be. These markings are not recorded, however, the line being exceedingly hard to draw.[38] The scribe, who distinguishes þ from γ (see part I above), in a few instances writes þow where grammatically yow is expected (perhaps the exemplar did not clearly differentiate þ and y); in these cases the expected form is inserted within square brackets.

In the manuscript F is actually always ff. Each stanza begins with an illuminated initial. The italicized names (line 89, etc.) are, of course, only underlined in the manuscript. The passages from the prose Deguileville are included so that the transcription may match those given by the Chaucer Society.

Truth. Chaucer's Truth survives in 24 manuscript copies and some six early printed editions with pretensions to manuscript authority. Robinson presents 18 of these texts as forming three groups: α, β, γ. By far the largest is the last: Caxton's edition, c. 1478; Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 203; Fairfax 16, Bodleian (2 copies); Harley 7333, British Museum; Hatton 73, Bodleian; Cambridge University Library Kk. 1.5; Lansdowne 699, British Museum; Arch. Selden B. 10

and B. 24, Bodleian.[40] The Nottingham copy, which belongs to this group, has the greatest overall similarity to Fairfax (2nd copy), which is printed by the Chaucer Society in No. 59.[41] Nottingham seems also related to Caxton (Chaucer Society, ibid.), Corpus (Chaucer Society, No. 60), and the editions of Thynne, Tottel, and Stowe (see fn. 40 above), for it shares with them the variant (probable error) Rede for Reule, line 6.[42] The omitted article in line 1 (all other texts read the before pres) is Nottingham's only unique reading. Although editors have generally preferred the α and β readings, the γ variants may also come from Chaucer.[43] Although far from perfect, Nottingham is a better than average γ text.

The problems of transcription are slight. The Scribe employs only one abbreviation, the common sign for er. F is ff in the manuscript.

Against Women Unconstant (or Newfangelnesse). Robinson views the four authorities as forming two groups: α Fairfax 16, Bodleian; β Harley 7578, British Museum; Cotton Cleopatra D. vii, British Museum; Stowe's edition, 1561. Only the Cotton copy has been printed (Chaucer Society, No. 60). Robinson observes: "variants from the other copies are registered by Skeat (Oxf. Chau., I, pp. 409 f.) and the Globe editor. Type α [i.e. Fairfax] is superior; the C [Cotton] text has been corrected by comparison with it" (apparently means comparison with the variants from it given by Skeat and the Globe). The printed variants, however, are by no means complete.[44] Moreover, we have the anomaly of the best manuscript's not being in print.[45]

The problems of transcription are slight. Except for one instance of omitted r (grace, line 2; α written above the line thus: gace), the only abbreviation is the common sign for er. F is actually ff in the manuscript.

V

We bring together below manuscripts which have been referred to as unpublished and also certain early printed editions which have never been reprinted.[46]

(1) Complaynt d'Amours. The authorities for this poem (uncertainly Chaucer's; see Robinson, p. 524) are Harley 7333, British Museum (ff. 135v-136r); Fairfax 16, Bodleian (ff. 197r-198v); and Bodley 638, Bodleian (ff. 212r-214r). Robinson says: "None of these copies has been printed exactly, but Skeat (Oxf. Chau., I, 411 ff.) gives a text based upon H[arley] and records numerous variants of F [Fairfax] and B [Bodley]" (p. 920). These manuscripts are "genuine witnesses"; they could be published elsewhere—although it is possible, while laborious and open to misinterpretation, to recover nearly all of the substantive variants if Skeat's readings are supplemented (they are far from complete) by the variants recorded in the Globe Chaucer, pp. 635-637, and by Koch, Geoffrey Chaucers Kleinere Dichtungen, pp. 72-74.[47] Some features cannot be got from the variant readings: a full picture of the spelling; the virgules (see fn. 44 above) with which Fairfax is punctuated.

(2) Against Women Unconstant. The copy in Harley 7578, British Museum (ff. 17v-18), as said above (part IV), has never been published.

Editors since Skeat have apparently depended on Skeat's variants, which are of course unsatisfactory for spellings and not quite complete even for substantive variation (line 4, I haue lyue &). This text could be printed. We do not do so here, feeling there is no pressing need to have it in print as it is similar to Cotton Cleopatra (published), which is a better text in the same tradition. Robinson also lists the copy in Stowe's edition of Chaucer's Works (1561) among the authorities. This copy, which resembles Cotton also, hardly needs reprinting as Stowe's edition is not an extremely rare book.

(3) A Complaint to his Lady. Robinson (p. 916) cites the copy in Stowe's edition of Chaucer's Works (1561) as one of the three authorities and notes that it "closely resembles H [Harley 78]." Although there are differences, Stowe's version hardly requires reprinting, for the reason given immediately above.

(4) Adam Scriveyn. The Brown-Robbins Index of Middle English Verse includes (No. 120) among the authorities the copy in Cambridge University Library Gg. 4. 27, 1 b; Koch, in his Geoffrey Chaucers Kleinere Dichtungen, also refers to this manuscript (p. 26). This is one of the 17th-century additions to the famous manuscript; it has no textual value, being simply taken from the 1598 printed edition of Chaucer's Works; see fn. 4 above, and also Manly and Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales, 1, 178.

(5) The Complaint of Chaucer to his Empty Purse. The Robbins-Cutler Supplement (1965) to the Brown-Robbins Index adds, under No. 3787, the copy in MS. Gg. 4. 27, 1 b (f. 35r); the comment made above under (4) applies.

(6) Merciles Beaute. The Brown-Robbins Index, under No. 4284, lists the copy in Additional 38179, British Museum (II, f. 51r) and identifies it as "xvii century transcript by Ainsworth". Since only one manuscript of this delightful poem has been known, the existence of a second manuscript should be exciting. Alas, the second appears to be taken from the first (Pepys 2006). Like Pepys (Chaucer Society, No. 77), Additional has the inversion in line 1 (Your two Yen) and this (apparently for ther) in the last line. There are differences, however, which seem worth noting (and which may mean that the source of Additional is not Pepys 2006 but Pepys 2006's source): numerous differences in spelling; a few minor substantive differences (wille for woll, line 1; will [so also Ch. Soc.] for woll, line 4; An for Mi, line 5); better handling of final -e. Interestingly, whereas Pepys is untitled, Additional is headed Mercilese Beautee (cf. Skeat: "The title 'Mercilesse Beaute' is given in the Index to the Pepys MS"; Works, I, 548).[48]

(7) Gentilesse. Eleanor P. Hammond[49] mentions a copy of the poem as being in Bossewell's Workes of Armorie (1572). This text (on ff. 13v-14r) is virtually identical with the second copy of the poem in Stowe's edition of Chaucer's Works (1561), from which it is obviously taken.

(8) Lak of Stedfastnesse. Caroline F. E. Spurgeon[50] mentions a copy of the envoy to this poem in Hanmer's The Auncient Ecclesiastical Histories (1577), p. 408. The source of this text is one of the Thynne editions (1532, etc.), all of which, like the Hanmer copy, omit O, line 25, and read the for thy, line 26.

(9) Truth. C. Brown (Register of Middle English Religious Verse, No. 515),[51] Brown-Robbins (Index, No. 809), and Robinson (p. 918) refer with a query to a possible copy in MS. Phillipps 11409; Mr. Nichols also mentions this possible copy (p. 46). The Phillipps collection has now been rather widely dispersed, and no one seems to know the location of this manuscript. We would note that the catalog of the Phillipps collection (Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum in Bibliotheca Phillippica, 1837) gives a table of contents for MS. 11409 but does not mention a copy of Truth.[52]

There are also three early printed copies of Truth which have never been reprinted (see fn. 40 above). That in Stowe's edition (1561; sig. O005v-6r) resembles Caxton's edition (Chaucer Society, No. 59) but has "right" readings in lines 1 (Fle; Caxton Fle ye), 2 (though; Caxton yf), and 6 (canst; Caxton omits). The copies in de Worde's Prouerbes of Lydgate (c. 1515; sig. A3v) and Pynson's edition of Chaucer's Works (1526; The boke of fame, sig. e4r) are similar and closely associated with the manuscript Arch. Selden B. 10, Bodleian (Chaucer Society, No. 77). The three share identical Latin titles and the striking variants cocle for crokke, line 12, and our lorde for God, line 19, as well as other similarities. Interestingly, the manuscript here is from one of the printed copies.[53] The manuscript,

as noted, has been printed; the printed editions have never been reprinted. They could be reprinted, of course, but it is hardly essential that they be. They are not of great textual value. They resemble, but are below, the Leyden Vossius 9 text published by Mr. Nichols (p. 49).

(10) Fortune. The Truth in de Worde's Prouerbes of Lydgate just mentioned is preceded by, on sigs. A2r-A3v, a copy of Chaucer's Fortune which likewise appears to be the source of the version in the Selden B. 10 manuscript (which the Chaucer Society prints in No. 77); see fn. 53 above.

Notes